Chapter 72: The Sunken Coffin[1]
The feeling of despair set in Alice as one of the guards shouldered her and she stumbled and fell, rolling across the ground.
She quickly jumped back with her spear in hand and stabbed it towards the guard near her, he blocked it with his sword and was pushed back, his feet dragging on the mud.
Her hands trembled, the red eyes of the guards reminded her of the past. She remembered that twenty years ago, when her Tribe was attacked...she saw a man with blood red eyes just like theirs.
He was the one to kill her sister, she saw her heart getting ripped out right in front of her but she couldn’t help her.
She was weak and thin back then, barely being able to lift up the spear her sister dropped. With trembling hands that day she drove the spear into the man’s back.
But he laughed and shrugged it off like it was nothing, as if this was like a needle pricking his finger.
He swung her around and she met the ground hard, and with his hand he pulled out the spear and threw it beside her. He left laughing, leaving behind the fifteen years old Alice groaning, trembling and crying.
From that day onwards she changed, the death of her sister made her want to get strong, and so she did.
But six years ago she was captured while saving her Tribe and taken to the gate of the Abyss so that she and the other slaves could be sacrificed to the Being which resided on the farthest edge of the Abyss.
She was accepting her death as she had gotten stronger and saved her people, now she would be meeting her sister and parents really soon.
But something changed when a boy, about fifteen years old was added to the slaves. Looking at him, she was reminded of her younger self full of despair.
But there was something different about him, unlike her...he didn’t have a will to live and despite that he protected her.
She made up her mind to not be pessimistic, she wanted to live for that boy, she wanted to help that boy.
Because Xior had shown kindness despite being on the verge of dying, she was not going to cower anymore.
So, she swung her spear horizontally to push the guards back. They blocked but a gust of wind erupted from the tip of the spear throwing them all back.
She jumped towards the ones unaffected and ducked under slashes and stabbed through three of them with her spear.
All of them coughed blood and fell down dead, she brought her attention to the ones who were getting up and another gust of wind escaped the tip of the spear making them fall again.
But then she raised one of her hands and clicked her fingers together while activating her runes. A compressed gust of wind jumped out of her hand and blew off the arm of one of the guards.
She had seen Rain and the others do this and so she mimicked Rain’s wind bullet, which was quite effective but left some cuts on her hands as well.
She didn’t waste more time and fought the remaining guards, Becca and Meeka came running and helped her kill the remaining ones.
"You alright?" Becca asked as she hugged Alice.
Alice hugged back and closed her eyes, Becca was in a sense similar to her older sister but since Becca was younger than her she didn’t say that.
"Yes, I’m fine...you on the other hand look battered my dear." She replied with her usual caring tone.
Becca shrugged and nodded before moving towards the final place, the trio rushed towards the sound of shrieks coming from not too far away.
When they got there, they were in shock. Blood painted the grass red, the tree stumps were also red and so were the rocks.
It was as if someone was drained of the whole blood in their body and it was dumped in here.
In the distance, they saw Beatrice–laying down on the ground and being restricted by the guards while two of them were on top of her cutting off her tentacles which regenerated quickly.
There were five swords stabbed in her abdomen while her tentacles kept on getting severed. She bashed her head against the ground in pain, her shrieks full of rage and sorrow filled the air.
The three couldn’t move at first but then Alice jumped and sent a wind burst towards them to topple them off from her.
Becca and Meeka also joined, Alice quickly covered Beatrice’s body and faced the guards. There was a satisfied grin on their face as their faces were bloody with her blood.
No words were needed to be said, Beatrice was getting tortured by these bastards, they would pay with their lives for this.
Becca swung her sword and slid down between one guard’s legs and stabbed his crotch with her dagger, she pulled hard and blood dripped down along with the cutoff genitals.
The other guards groaned as they saw that, but Meeka used her holy power and blinded them all.
Becca and Alice did the same to the others, their blood filled the ground as all of them dropped on the ground as they grabbed onto their cut off genitals.
But Alice wasn’t done, she raised her hand and shot wind bullets to their heads which exploded like they were balloons.
Alice ran towards Beatrice who just sobbed quietly as her wounds regenerated. She looked down with regret and hugged her.
Beatrice might look like an adult woman, but she was just a child who had seen her mother and sister get killed in front of her and had no choice but to adapt by absorbing her sister.
The man who had killed them was kind enough to take her in, at first since she was a Nameless offspring, her intelligence was high enough that she wanted to take revenge against Xior.
But seeing how he treated her, she changed her mind. Then she met amazing people like Kayla, Fenra, Tharnak, Alice, Becca, Maria and Rain and had thought her life was going to go just fine.
But these guards who knew she was a Nameless started torturing her, she tried to fight against them but they were much more powerful than the Tiger Tribe members she had fought against previously.
The three women comforted Beatrice and helped her get up, her clothes were stained with her blood but she couldn’t care less about it. She was glad there was someone who helped her.
They walked back to their bonfire and sat down, they were now waiting for Xior to show up.
*****
Down in the underground city, Xior was out of breath. After sitting there for some time he got up and was about to leave the city when he got curious.
He had strange visions and had heard strange things, could those have been related to the Mother?
If so he had to see who she really was. He walked towards the cathedral in the distance, everyone was holed up in their houses.
No guards could be seen as they had all been killed by Xior. Each step he took towards the cathedral was heavy.
As if some unknown force was weighing him down, the smell of blood got thicker as he became closer to it.
He entered to see the inside dimly lit by lanterns, in the middle there was a platform which was raised and just in front of it was a deep pit.
He walked up the platform and looked down at the endless pit full of darkness. He took off his shirt and jumped inside the pit.
He kept falling for some time before his body hit the water which splashed everywhere, he took a deep breath and completely went underwater.
He swam down into the deepest part of the pity, there he saw a large coffin wrapped in chains.
He went and straightened it, he looked at it in awe. The coffin had snakes engraved upon it as if they were the ones who coiled around it and kept it shut.
He touched it with his hand but nothing happened, the chains didn’t move a single bit when he tried to open them.
Then he thought of something. He cut his right palm and put the bleeding hand on the coffin. The blood dripped down from his hand and onto the coffin.
The eyes of the snakes glowed and they moved, it was as he imagined it would be. They uncoiled themselves from around the coffin.
The chains loosened and fell down on the floor, the snakes fully uncoiled to reveal the unlocked coffin.
Xior’s hand healed and he pushed away the lid, inside he didn’t see anything then a sudden darkness erupted from the coffin and engulfed him.
His world went dark and so did all his senses, all he heard was the same humming he had heard before.