Selene…
A week passed as both Marcus and herself were too busy with their own things to end up catching each other at home.
To some degree, she felt relieved that the circumstances were giving her more time to think over what she learned.
She didn’t want to hide what she knew from him if she could help it and wanted to tell him as soon as possible, but the implications of what this might mean for her made her hesitate.
She ended up dwelling on it so much that she ended up distracted in the middle of battle when she dived back into the Labyrinth.
Selene realized early on that the Chaos Bringers weren’t necessarily weak creatures.
Rather, she was just so much stronger than them that she hardly needed to put much effort into killing them and keeping her team safe.
This affected how she fought, and while Sarah and Terrance were working on opening the entrance to the third stratum, she was hardly putting in any genuine effort as she smacked away one of the Chaos Bringers that had followed them and sent it flying up against one of the walls so hard that it splattered into paste.
Rather than rely on her magic, she focused only on physical reinforcement as the pressure of her soul was powerful enough on its own to fend off anything that came their way.
The others were certainly not in any danger, and because of that, she let her mind wander as she paced back and forth absentmindedly.
But then, in the corner of her eye, a different Chaos Bringer appeared and swung its arm through the air hard and fast enough to send Selene crashing into a wall hundreds of feet away.
Sarah, who had spotted it before she did, failed to warn her in time and called out to her, “Selene!”
Yet she hardly felt the blow at all as she pulled herself free from the rubble of the wall without much issue and lunged towards the beast that had attacked her.
Most Chaos Bringers that they fought were pretty similar in their appearance and how they fought. However, there were some that were stronger and more powerful than others in ways that set them apart from the rest.
The minor Chaos Bringers were little more than small creatures with warped flesh and spiritual energy pouring out of them uncontrollably as their minds were destroyed by the process of being transformed.
But then there were Greater Chaos Bringers, much like the one that Selene fought when she first entered the Labyrinth. These creatures were far cleverer than the minor class of their kind, yet all of them seemed to have the same kind basic set of abilities.
To emit a thick red fog from their bodies to hide their presence and obscure the environment to confuse and corner their prey, as well as the ability to swap magics with their prey if they deem it stronger than their own, and use it against them.
The appearances of Greater Chaos Bringers varied slightly, but more often than not, they were partially skeletal in appearance while holding a weapon of some kind.
This class of Chaos Bringers usually came about because the skeletal souls of sinners had somehow managed to escape from Hell and ended up exposed to Chaos’s power before appearing in the Labyrinth.
Marcus had told her of what Hell was like when he had died fighting Ares.
He said that it was like an infinite desert made of the crushed bones of souls that appeared as skeletons in Hell, and that the realm was filled with fire that burned the souls down to nothing before bringing them back to life to be tortured over and over again.
But the creature that attacked her just now was something far stronger than that.
It was something that Sarah had warned that, if they ever came across it, they were not to engage, but to run away at all costs.
What had appeared before them was one of the Yaldo-Bhaoth. A creature of pure Chaos magic, without any of Hell’s influence or entanglement in its power.
All of the Yaldo-Bhaoth had the same horrifying appearance.
Their true height was massive, hundreds of feet tall, yet they can easily shift their size to suit their needs.
Their bodies seemed attached to a strange serpentine creature as its core. A flaming lion skull connected to the skeleton of a basilisk snake.
Surrounding the skull was a set of multiple red concentric rings with Chaos letters within each row, spinning around it like a warped halo.
The skeletal tail of the basilisk core dragged behind the creature as its massive legs, made of Black Iron, glowed red hot with the heat emanating from its body.
Everywhere it stepped, glowing hot footprints were left behind in its wake.
The entirety of its body aside from its core seemed to be made of overlapping plates and rods of Black Iron.
Its arms, legs, wings, and torso save for its center, all took on the appearance of a Gargoyle like being with a large muscular frame and bat like wings.
The forelimbs of Yaldo-Bhaoth wings were the only part that were composed of the same smoldering Black Iron as the rest of its body. The remaining part of the wings seemed to be comprised of the smoke being emitted from it, as it was gathered in the wings and shaped to form them.
As Selene looked closer at the smoke making up the wings, she could see human faces formed out of the smoke. Not faces like you would normally see on a person walking past, properly shapen to their head, but rather after they had been skinned off, flattened out, and stitched together like a leather tarp.
Within the eyes of the faces in the smoke, Selene could see a deep red glow shining through them, yet their mouths stayed closed.
What struck Selene however was a large blade made of the red hot Black Iron of the Yaldo-Bhaoth’s own body.
Shaped as a massive claymore, flames burned along its edges that were so hot that the walls around them turned to molten rock from being near it.
Despite not being able to damage her armor or leave any injuries on her, it had still managed to send her flying with a single strike.
She couldn’t afford to dwell on her thoughts on Marcus with something like this appearing before them.
Drawing both of her swords from her sheaths, she teleported back in front of the creature just as its eyes fell on the rest of the group.
Sarah had already positioned herself defensively in front of them, with Terrance standing directly between her and the others as they were preparing to escape into the next stratum and avoid dealing with this creature.
The moment that Selene reappeared in front of them, she felt something change within her.
Rather than have her magic swapped with the Chaos Bringer’s power, she felt it disconnect entirely. As if the creature was suppressing her ability to use magic instead of simply changing its nature.
Of course, it still left her with the power to reinforce her body with raw spiritual energy alone, but that would only go so far if she couldn’t protect the rest of her team with magic and only managed to save herself.
In a panic, Selene released several seals on her power and reinforced her body so that every swing of her sword would have enough power behind it to smack away the Yaldo-Bhaoth’s flames.
The Chaos Bringer’s flaming eyes narrowed as it focused its attention on her and brought its sword high into the air before slamming it down with outrageous speed.
Selene raised her swords above her to guard it, yet without her magic, it was far more strenuous than she would have ever imagined. The impact brought her to her knees, yet she remained steadfast as she grunted from effort and parried it away.
Before the creature could swing its sword again, Selene lunged forward and kicked at its serpentine core, hoping to dislodge it from the rest of its body and disrupt its power.
However, it reacted in the last minute as it formed a shell of Black Iron over it, causing it to be knocked back and crashing into a wall far behind them.
When she landed on the ground again, Selene shouted, “What’s taking so long?! Get the damn door open already!”
“We can’t! The Yaldo-Bhaoth is locking the door down! We can’t get through until we’re out of range or its dead!” Terrance shouted back.
“If we can’t get to the next stratum, then we need to call it quits for this expedition! We can’t hope to beat a Yaldo-Bhaoth! No one has killed one since the Warring States Era! Not even Moyako has managed it!” Sarah said.
Not even Moyako, The Immortal?! That’s insane!
“If that’s really true, then get us the hell out of here!” Selene shouted at Terrance.
“I can’t! That thing is putting out enough energy to completely disrupt our energy flow! We can’t do anything until we get out of its range! I can’t manifest the power of Rebirth and teleport us out of here unless someone leads it far enough away!” he said, with a frustrated look on his face.
As Selene turned her head to look at the Yaldo-Bhaoth, it was already getting to its feet and preparing to attack once again.
She grit her teeth and said, “I’ll do it! I’ll lead it away while you get everyone else out!”
Sarah shook her head as she shouted, “No! If you do that, you’ll die! That thing will kill you!”
Selene smiled and said, “Have a bit more faith in me! I’ll be fine!”
She then released more of the seals on her soul as the air became thicker and heavier around her as it was weighed down by the immense pressure emitted from her soul.
She figured their had to be a limit to how much the Yaldo-Bhaoth could manage to seal off a person’s magic before the pressure of their soul could ward it off.
But if she managed to ward off the sealing while she was in the vicinity of her team, she might burn them alive by accident anyways.
It was the right move to lead this creature away so they could flee, so she figured that things would be alright.
But even if she could ward off the sealing, would she be able to fight on par with such a creature and live?
She then lunged after the Chaos Bringer and slashed both her swords at its left arm as she shouted, “GO! NOW!”
The impact from her swords was enough to send it hurtling through the air as it crashed into a section of the second stratum, sprawled with its wide from as its back flattened out across it.
But in spite of the heavy blow, it got back on its feet and started running towards them in seconds. Though large in size, much like Malthael, it was able to manipulate the flow of time through its body to unnaturally accelerate itself.
Selene chased after it, jumping into the air as she released all of the seals on her power and slammed into it with so much force that she sent it crashing back into the stratum that the floor beneath it began to crack.
Noticing this, she sheathed one of her swords, pulled back her right arm, and punched the Chaos Bringer so hard that the two of them crashed through the second stratum and fell into the third beneath it.
The impact from falling to the third stratum was so great that it disrupted the Yaldo-Bhaoth’s flow of energy it was using to suppress Selene’s power as her body erupted in flames and moonlight.
Selene looked at herself and wondered if this would be far enough away to get them out of range, but frowned as she thought to give them more breathing room.
She pulled her right arm back once more, gathered a mass of power within her fist, and struck the creature in the chest again.
As she did, she shouted, “NOVA IMPACT!”
The Black Iron shell surrounding the Yaldo-Bhaoth’s core was immensely strong and held up enough to withstand her strike, but the Labyrinth was not as the floor collapsed once more, sending them crashing through the third, the fourth, and even the fifth stratum until Selene and the Chaos Bringer crashed into the sixth stratum together where she fell next to it.
When she stood up, she could feel just different being in the sixth stratum was from the first.
The effects of being near the realms of Hell and Chaos were more apparent than ever as she could feel her magic being distorted from it. It was immensely difficult to control her power down here, even with all of her power being released.
Terrance had once told her that their expeditions have only ever managed to make it as far as the entrance to the fifth stratum before the effects of the two realms became unbearable to pass through.
Only now did she really understand what that felt like.
Breathing heavily from the dense air and pressure of spiritual energy around her, she looked at the environment of the sixth stratum and realized just how warped and distorted everything was.
Some of the paths and doorways merged with each other in ways that didn’t make any logical sense.
In the upper stratums, the paths at least appeared to look methodically designed, but down here it looked as if entropy was causing everything to fall apart and merge together without any rhyme or reason.
The walls of the sixth stratum almost appeared to be melting together while smoke billowed up from the floor of the seventh stratum as flames from Hell while chaos letters glowed along the floor’s surface.
She doubted that Sarah or Terrance even knew that there were levels beyond the fifth stratum.
If Selene managed to make it out of this area alive, she hoped to see the bewildered expressions on their faces when they learned of her discovery.
Thinking about it made her laugh as she watched the Yaldo-Bhaoth stand up and face her once again.
It was clearly frustrated that it had been separated so far from the rest of its prey as it roared at her in anger.
As it did, the mouths of the face on its wings began opening one after the other. As they did, Selene felt the pressure of the Yaldo-Bhaoth’s power grow until she could feel it seal her magic once again.
“Oh shit!” she cursed as the Chaos Bringer swung its sword at her once again and she managed to deflect it with her raw strength alone, but this time, it took far more effort on her end to match its power.
The Yaldo-Bhaoth must have noticed too that it wasn’t yet strong enough to completely overpower her, so it took a few steps back, fully unfurled its wings, tilted its head upwards, and roared as every mouth on its smoking wings opened and roared in unison with it.
The crushing pressure released from the Chaos Bringer was so massive that Selene started to feel suffocated just being near it.
Once it stopped roaring, it fixed its eyes on her once more, grabbed its sword with both hands, and brought it down upon her.
Selene barely reacted in time as she brought both her swords up to block it, but the impact was so great that the ground cracked under her feet, causing her to form, and the Chaos Bringer’s sword collided with her shoulder.
Her back slammed into the floor with such force that she felt the air get knocked out of her and she was buried in the ground so deep that she couldn’t get out.
Am I...really going to die in here? She wondered to herself as she looked through the cracks of the sixth stratum’s floor and noticed the tip of the Chaos Bringer’s sword aimed at her as it drove it down deep to try and run her through.
Though it failed to pierce her armor, it did manage to send her crashing into the seventh stratum as she fell through the roof of the sixth.
Angry that this creature had managed to bury her so deep into the Labyrinth, Selene swung her swords through the air and the pressure was so vast that it cleaved through the roof and opened up a hole large enough for the Chaos Bringer to fall through it and join her.
“If I’m gonna crash into this godforsaken pit, I’m dragging you down with me!” she shouted.
But as she said that, she knew that if she didn’t figure something out, she really was going to die down there.
She racked her brain to think about what she could do to escape.
She could try jumping out, but she worried she might not be fast enough to avoid getting caught by the Chaos Bringer.
Realistically, she needed to land a blow strong enough to ground the Chaos Bringer long enough to give her a window to escape.
However, with her magic sealed as it was, physical reinforcement wouldn’t be enough to break through that shell of the Yaldo-Bhaoth’s Black Iron body.
What should I do…?
Then Selene’s mind went back to the time her mother gave up her moonlight sword to her and it allowed her to awaken the second aspect of her power.
She then looked at the hilt of the sunlight sword and saw the opening that was perfectly shaped to accept the moonlight sword within it.
The two swords were half blades of a single sword split to be infused with two separate types of magic.
The Sunlight Sword was clearly forged with her father’s power in mind, and so was the Moonlight sword for her mother’s. Yet they were forged to be brought together for some reason, as if they were supposed to be wielded as a single weapon.
When Selene unlocked her moonlight magic, it caused her well of power to quadruple in size, far beyond what it was before.
She could only imagine how massive it would grow if she learned that she had another aspect of her power yet to be awakened.
Selene then pulled her sunlight sword from its sheath and tried to insert the tip of the moonlight sword into the opening.
The tip slid in easily enough and as a result, she felt something within her start to stir, but she then felt a strange sensation of resistance as she couldn’t seem to fully insert the Moonlight Sword all the way down. Almost as if there was some kind of force acting on it and keeping her from fully unifying the two blades.
“Dammit!” she cursed just as the Yaldo-Bhaoth crashed to the ground a few hundred feet away from her.
Selene tried again as she poured all of her strength into fully inserting the two swords together, but still it would not budge.
She knew that there was something within the blade calling to her, telling her that there was another part of her power waiting for her, but it would not budge an inch to be awakened.
Cursing the sword’s refusal to obey, she took the moonlight sword out and held it firm in her armored hand as she prepared for battle against the Chaos Bringer with just her raw strength alone.
But just as the Yaldo-Bhaoth reared its ugly head to stare at her, it seemed to freeze in place.
“What the-,” she started as she felt confused as to why this had happened, but then her eyes caught the form of a strange woman walking next to her.
Her voice became caught in her throat at the ethereal beauty of this woman whose appearance was unlike anything she had ever seen in Erebus.
The woman was abnormally pale and had strange pink scales along the back of her arms and hands, the tops of her feet, and as she turned her head to face Selene, there were even the same scales surrounding her eyes. Her hair was pure white and shaped like the hood of a cobra, with the irises of her eyes shaped like a snake’s as well.
She wore a long white flowing dress which was semitransparent, barely obscuring her bare naked skin beneath it. Over her breasts, plates of overlapping gold hung from her neck in circular rows.
The strange woman turner head back to the Yaldo-Bhaoth and walked right up to it as she placed a hand against its face gently, as if like a caring mother.
She then turned to face Selene once more with a smile on her face as she asked, “Do you wish to slay this creature?”
Selene answered, “Yes, but...who or...what are you?”
The woman placed a finger over her lips as if to silence Selene and continued to speak.
“This creature is one of my dearest creations. I cannot simply allow you to slay something akin to a child of mine...but I will help you escape by releasing that dormant power of yours. What say you?”
“Yes! Please, help me!” Selene pleaded with her and the woman nodded before she disappeared.
Selene turned her head to wonder where she vanished to just as she reappeared right in front of her a placed a hand over Selene’s heart.
In an instant, she felt a terrifying shift within her soul as her well of power grew dozens of times in size and she could feel the nature of her power become altered once again.
When the strange woman pulled her hand free, Selene dropped to her knees as time around her resumed as normal and the Yaldo-Bhaoth’s head rose up to bear down on her.
She raised her head and felt all of the dormant power that was suddenly awakened rush through her all at once with such force that she gasped at the feeling.
The mass of energy coursing through her was so great that it was already starting to overpower the Chaos Bringer’s sealing magic.
Sparks of her new magic began leaking out of her in the form of a strange, red volatile energy that, when it came in contact with the ground, eroded it into nothing at the slightest touch.
She then looked up at the Chaos Bringer and jumped forward as she tried to kick its leg out from under it, but ended up dislodging the whole limb and sent it flying out of sight on the other end of the seventh stratum.
With one of its legs missing from the rest of its body, it collapsed to the ground once more as it laid on its back and stared at her.
The chaos rings hovering over its head stopped turning as it focused its attention solely on trying to snuff out her magic, but it no longer had the necessary strength to suppress her completely.
All it could seem to do was limit how much of her power she could release at once as Selene stood on top of it and held her hand down in front of her as she released everything she could muster.
The power of her new magic, even while suppressed, pinned the Chaos Bringer to the ground and started breaking off pieces of the Black Iron shell around its serpentine core keeping itself together.
By the time she had managed to scatter all of the Black Iron that made up its various limbs and exposed its core to the open, she had very nearly run out of steam and didn’t have the strength to finish the job.
The Chaos Bringer under her feat also seemed too weakened to continue fighting as it relented control over her magic and waited for her to leave.
“If I see you again...I’ll finish what I started…,” she muttered in exhaustion as she sheathed her swords and returned to the surface.
Once she could feel the cool air of Alken brush through her hair and her feet sink into the grass, she collapsed to the ground, hearing Sarah and Terrance run towards her.