The echoes of the suffering rose from the depths and rained from the heights, a constant, ghostly shroud. Lionel glared through the rusted bars, his gaze fixed on the executioner hovering near Cinco’s cell. Nearby, skeletal guards stood like statues, their bony fingers wrapped tight around the shafts of their glaives.
Sorry, Cinco. I’m going to have to use you, Lionel thought, his jaw tightening.
He thrust his hand through the bars, reaching toward the distant rafters. Above, the darkness swallowed the ceiling, leaving only the oppressive, crimson glow of the giant skulls’ eyes to light the way.
Gold light pulsed within Lionel’s cat-like pupils. He curled his fingers into a claw. At his feet, the shadows began to churn, a localized gale that whipped the hem of his gold-trimmed black robes against his boots.
The executioner stiffened. It swiveled its cowl toward the abyss below, sensing the sudden shift in the air.
"I don't... like that feeling, either," Cinco wheezed. His voice was thin, strained by the loss of his light.
Amidst the cacophony of wailing souls, Cinco pressed his face against the cold bars, peering down into the dark.
The executioner raised its blade, watching the void with eerie stillness.
WHOOOSH!
A spiral of darkness, laced with veins of brilliant gold, erupted from the pit. It soared and roared. The cyclone tore through the open air, a predator of shadow aiming straight for the executioner’s heart.
There was no room to dodge. The executioner angled its obsidian blade, attempting to catch the brunt of the storm and deflect the energy. But the impact was a physical weight. The force slammed into the creature, sending it hurtling backward through the labyrinth of hanging cages.
Prisoners dangled in the wake of the blast, their fingers white-knuckled as they clung to their bars in silent shock.
Cinco collapsed, clutching his ribs as a violent cough racked his rib. He rolled onto his side, trembling, trying to find the strength to rise.
"Stay angry, Cinco! I need that heat!" Lionel’s voice boomed from the darkness below.
Cinco’s lip curled into a snarl. "You’re taking... more than you’re asking, you bastard!"
"Pick your poison! Would you rather let that hooded freak hollow you out? Be my guest!" Lionel snapped.
Cinco let out a jagged sigh, his head thumping against the floor of the cage. "Ugh! Fine... 'your highness'!"
He poured his frustration into the bond, the resentment flowing out of his skin in waves of raw radiance. The executioner, having steadied itself, saw the light hemorrhaging from Cinco's body. It lunged forward, blade raised to harvest the spill, but Lionel’s darkness was faster. The shadows surged up, intercepting the light and swallowing it whole before the executioner could touch a single spark.
Cinco gasped, a copper taste filling his mouth as he wiped blood from his lips.
I've turned into a damn battlefield for these two...
The air turned heavy as the two powers clashed. The executioner and Lionel fought a silent war of wills, using Cinco’s very life force as the rope in their tug-of-war.
In the surrounding cells, the atmosphere shifted. Fists began to thrust through bars. Some prisoners shook their cages in a rhythmic, metallic beat, rooting for the whirlwind of darkness. Others simply howled, hungry for the spectacle of a prisoner and an executioner tearing each other apart.
The executioner had seen enough. It ascended toward the giant skulls, raising its blade high. Shadow bled from its ghostly form, flowing upward like ink in water until it saturated the massive bone structures above.
With a sudden, violent motion, the executioner pointed its blade toward the abyss.
The giant skulls unhinged their jaws. A silent command rippled through the ward. Below, the necks of the skeletal guards snapped in unison, their hollow sockets locking onto Lionel. On the higher tiers, a hundred more guards mimicked the movement, their bones clicking and popping in a terrifying chorus.
Every red, pinprick eye in the prison was now fixed on a single point.
Cinco’s jaded eyes went wide. He looked at the endless spiral of platforms, now a sea of white bone and sharpened steel.
"Lionel, I think they spotted you..." His voice trailed off as he stared into the dark. "Wherever you are," he whispered, pressing a hand to his glowing wound.
Lionel stepped back, his hands slipping from the bars.
"Great," he muttered. He swept his gaze across the skeletal army. "And now what? Are you going to unlock the door, or try to chew me to pieces first?"
As if in answer, every guard leveled their glaive. Brilliant red spheres of light ignited at the tips of their weapons, illuminating the darkness and stripping away Lionel’s cover. The prince stood revealed.
The executioner pivoted in mid-air, its blade humming.
"Heads up!" Cinco screamed.
"Just focus on directing your energy to me—"
TWANG!
The executioner’s blade crashed into the cell bars, cutting Lionel off.
The iron groaned, shattered, and collapsed into a cloud of choking dust. Through the haze, the executioner dived, its weapon a streak of black death.
Lionel blurred to the side, the blade missing his throat by a hair's breadth.
Above and around, the guards fired. Beams of red light rained down like falling stars.
Lionel looked back, his breath hitching. The executioner was already repositioning for a second strike, closing the distance while Lionel was distracted by the barrage.
Lionel threw his arms wide, the shadows under his skin reacting to his desperation. On his back, the Capricorn glyph burned through his bandages with a hot, gold heat.
Two dark vortices swirled into existence at his palms.
The executioner’s charge carried it straight into the first portal. In a flash of displaced air, the creature was funneled through and spat out of the second vortex, directly into the path of the thousand beams fired by its own guards.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The prison shook with the force of the friendly fire.
Cinco slammed against his bars, watching in awe as his cage swung like a frantic pendulum. The prisoners erupted into a deafening roar, a sea of pumping fists.
The executioner tumbled across the brimstone floor, skidding before catching itself on one hand. The obsidian blade shrieked against the stone as the creature rose, looming larger than before.
Lionel stepped out from the ruins of his cell. Heavy iron chains dragged behind him, the metal clinking against the rock, though the ends of the links simply faded into the ether, anchoring him to the realm itself.
The executioner looked up at the cheering masses, then back at the one cage that glowed with a pure, agonizing light.
Cinco looked down, his face pale and his breathing shallow. He rested his forehead against the iron, his hand soaked in the light leaking from his side.
"So that’s what you look like, huh? Tall, dark, and menacing kid," he coughed, a weak smirk tugging at his lips.
The executioner didn't care for the commentary. To it, Lionel was merely an obstacle to be cleared. It twirled the obsidian blade with a robotic precision and darted forward, a black blur aiming a wide, horizontal slash at Lionel’s chest.
Lionel didn't flinch. He crossed his forearms, meeting the god-slaying steel with the reinforced iron of his own shackles. Sparks showered the floor.
Seeing their leader engaged, the skeletal horde surged. They abandoned their posts, throwing themselves from the high platforms with glaives pointed down like harpoons.
"LIONEL!" Cinco’s warning echoed through the chamber, but the sound was swallowed by the screech of a thousand undead throats.
Lionel dropped his guard, looking up. A rain of white bone and sharpened steel was descending upon him, an army of the dead falling from the sky while the executioner stood its ground in front of him.
Lionel planted his feet, bracing against the tremors of the brimstone floor. The gold-trimmed hem of his black robes snapped in the gale of his own rising mana from his core.
The darkness at his feet swirled and howled, a predatory shadow rising to meet the descent of the dead.
The skeletal guards fell like a curtain of bone and steel, their glaives converging on him from every angle.
As the first glaive grazed the crown of his head, the world went silent.
Then, the abyss swallowed the light.
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