FVN Chapter 174 The Dark Terror
Chapter 174 The Dark Terror
Chapter 174 The Dark Terror
Time seemed to slow as the devil disappeared into the air, and the shadow of those obscene skewers descended toward him—
—only to be obstructed by an immense barrier of ice that flowered into existence.
Ryan stepped through the frozen wall, his face twisted in cold fury as layer after layer of jagged shards spiraled from his outstretched hands.
With a defiant roar of his own, he unleashed a blistering blizzard of ice that encased the beast in a tornado of glacial spikes.
But the abomination barely flinched, glacial spikes bouncing off its carapace as it charged bull-like towards the two humans.
Its massive footfalls cracked the earth itself, shaking the air with thunderous shockwaves.
As its gaping maw opened wide to cleave their flesh, Ryan sidestepped, sliding on a trail of ice and blasted fresh volleys of ice from the side.
The battle had well and truly begun against this black carapace demon.
Arlem dug in his heels, his armored form bracing for the next onslaught as Ryan wove intricate attacks of frozen fury.
Could they stand against such an ancient evil?
Arlem moved on instinct, his blade a whirling cyclone of metallic light as he deflected the gruesome strike of the devil.
Ryan's hands blurred in an esoteric weave, conjuring a shimmering barrier of refracting ice that tried to capture the monster.
But Dark Terror was too fast, the devil disappeared into the shadowy embrace and streaked away.
An eerie silence ensued for a while.
Both drifters stood cautiously, with all their faculties of perception alerted. Knowing fully well, that a slight misstep could cost them their lives.
The unsettling silence stretched on, the swirling mists rendering their surroundings an impenetrable veil.
Arlem and Ryan stood back-to-back, senses straining against the deathly stillness.
A faint tremor in the earth was their only warning before Dark Terror exploded from below in a eruption of dirt and shattered stone.
Those four obsidian arms, tipped with wicked talons, scythed through the air, cleaving deep gouges where the two drifters had been standing an instant before.
Arlem rolled to his feet, winged shoulder plates gouging furrows as his armored bulk slashed a path through the dense fog.
Then the first arctic tomb slammed down around them, trapping Dark Terror within its crystal embrace.
Layer after layer followed, Ryan snarling through bloodied teeth as he subsumed the evil under hundreds of tons of ice and sub-
zero pressures.
When at last the young prodigy's exertions tapered off, a towering glacier entombed their foe - an icy obelisk piercing upwards into the gloom, the only indication of Dark Terror's entrapped presence the vague, distorted murk of its massive shape just visible within the core.
Arlem staggered, his armor cracked in a thousand places, flesh beneath mottled with savage bruising.
Blood trickled from his split lip as he glared towards that frozen spire and the restrained evil it contained.
"That...that should end it," he wheezed, for once allowing his stoic mask to slip with a glimmer of cautious respect.
"Your powers are..." He shook his head slowly. "Unreal, kid."
Ryan offered no response, merely sinking to his knees as the last tremors of exertion taxed his frame.
For a long, pregnant pause the two warriors simply knelt in silence, depleted but victorious.
Until, inevitably, there came a faint rumbling from the icy mountain's core.
Both Ryan and Arlem looked up, pale faces daring to hope against hopeless truth.
Blossoming cracks fissured across the glacier, growing wider and more severe as a dull red radiance seeped outwards from the epicenter.
That pulsing crimson glow intensified with each passing heartbeat until all at once Dark Terror's shape shattered free, with surging black flames and jagged talons ripping through the confining ice in an explosion of glacial shrapnel.
Liberated at last, the devil slowly trudged forward, those four baleful eyes instantly finding the humans kneeling there - tired, depleted, their powers spent.
And perhaps in that moment, Dark Terror registered something almost akin to...cruel respect.
For it stood in front of them, motionless... as if waiting...
But what they saw of this monster as its shape came before them made their faces to contort in utter horror.
Whatever had ripped through that ice was no jagged talons.
This monster... it... it was standing, holding four different blades, made out of black flames.