Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

The terror affinity may have left Indena along with the Reaper's exit, but walls of despair were still closing in on her soul.

With the fog of darkness all around, limiting visibility to only a mere few meters, it must have been suffocating. Her heart and her body were both feeling the oppression of this demonic atmosphere.

I helped her lean up against a tree. She was shivering really badly. A flame spawned around her body as some sort of cocoon to prevent anything from getting close.

“Indena, were going to be okay,” I told her. “Look, we need to get out of here and find safety.”

“How can you even still have hope?!” she shouted. “You saw that thing. We’ve got the freaking Grim Reaper after us!”

She was right to be afraid, I was too, but something about this didn’t rattle me to the core like it did her.

Like I mentioned before, something about this felt natural to me. The fear of staring down a demon was almost exciting. Maybe because I wanted to destroy them myself for daring to attack a human. If I had a natural enemy, it would be them.

But a human like her wasn’t a synthetic life form made to fight darkness. This sort of thing wasn't natural for her.

Those locusts were closing in on us. Prowling just on the edge of the dark fog.

Neither her or I would be able to kill them, but Indena still had magic to fight. If only I could get her back to her senses.

“Uh…Indena?!” I spoke out flustered. “Listen, were not getting out of here unless you help. Okay?”

“We're not getting out at all,” she said in despair.

Crud, this wasn’t going to work!

“H-hey, let’s not lose hope yet!” my shaky voice sounded less than convincing. “Come on, what happened to that angry confidence you always have?”

She wasn’t even listing now. Her eyes were so lifeless behind those flames.

“Crap…” I swore under my breath, seeing those locusts preparing to pounce. “Well, there’s only one thing left to do…”

SMACK!

I slapped her right in the face!

“G…Get a hold of yourself! You can’t die here! What are you, a pansy?”

She blankly looked at me, rubbing the spot I’d smacked.

“Get up! Y-you want me to write on your grave that a bunch of tiny bugs took you down? Man up! Or…um…woman up?”

Indena was always hard on herself. Trying to play miss-nice-guy wasn’t going to get her engines fired up. But call her out as weak, and maybe she’ll respond with a challange?

Within a few seconds, a small flicker of light returned to her eyes.

“You think these bugs can take me out?”

She extended her hand out toward the crowd of scurrying abominations.

BOOM!

A blast of hot fire erupted out of her fire aura and turned them all crispy!

“These bugs can go to Hell!” she stood up, grabbing my arm and throwing me behind her. “I’m gonna’ protect you. Count on it! No bag of bones or dumb bugs are gonna' keep me from that!”

“Indena…”

Her sudden second wind inspired me.

Fire whipped around at her command, striking anything other than me.

Even though she wasn’t killing the demons, her attacks were much stronger then before. All of the locusts were taking massive damage, even burning to the bone! Watching their chard bodies twitch and slowly scatter back into the darkness made me both hopeful and disgusted all at once.

“Shrimp, you alright?” she asked.

I nodded from behind her. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Great. Because look who’s back…”

A terrible dread filled my soul again, a clear sign that Ol’ Grim had returned for round two.

He gracefully hovered down across from us, the fog of darkness near him swirled around and dissipated so we’d be able to see him.

“What do you want from us?!” Indena asked, but he didn't reply.

Those menacing red eyes just kept on staring, perhaps waiting for a chance to swoop forward and end our young lives.

A weapon spawned in his clutches. It had a sharp curved blade at the very end of its rod. That was a scythe, just what I'd expect from the Grim Reaper…

“Crap.” Indena stood as steady as she could, ready for anything. “Are you seriously all out of that stardust stuff?” she asked me.

My Sp reserves were tapped, but my systems were telling me that there was a little stardust, not enough to make a weapon though.

The Reaper flew in for a swipe of his scythe!

Swoosh!

Indena jumped, tugging both of us out of the way just in time!

“Keep your head down!” Indena shouted to me.

The Reapers swings were so wide sweeping, it would have gotten both of us if Indena hadn’t been so quick on the draw.

Indena retaliated by sending out a fire ball at the Reaper.

BOOM!

That explosion was big!

As the smoke and flame cleared, the Reaper was still there, wielding his scythe. Bits of flame caught onto his cloak, bathing him in a hellish orange heat.

He wasn’t detoured in the slightest. He came rushing in with another swipe. I kept low to the ground this time, so I was safe, but Indena had to dodge. She just barely made it out of the way in time, a swipe nicking her right jacket sleeve.

Where it cut, I saw threads of cloth begin to glow bright blue then fade away into black dust. The dust rained down to the ground like ash.

The tare started to burn up her jacket sleeve.

“Oh gods,” Indena breathed out as she tore the sleeve from her jacket.

I’d hate to find out what that thing would do to anyone it touched. That scythe was super deadly.

The Reaper struck the ground with his scythe several times. Pools of sludge water appeared, and dozens of demon locusts came crawling out. These ones took to the sky and started flying at the two of us in a swarm.

“More of these freaks!?” She gripped her fist tightly and powered up her flame aura. “Yalda!”

We were completely defenseless against them! Indena tried to strike them with fire, but her attacks weren’t doing enough against the demons.

“Oh no!”

One was just about to bite into me, but then…

SWOOP!

*Chrip!*

A blur of blue swiped across the locusts just before it hit me, then the demon bugs fell to the ground.

Did something just kill that demon? The locust looked wounded, unable to fight, but not dead. What just happened?

I saw that blue bird from before land on a tree branch next to me. More came to his side, then a whole flock of them dropped down from the sky.

“Birdy!” I smiled. “You came to help us!”

*Chrip!*

“I hate birds,” Indena growled. “Don’t trust them!”

-Spirit Bluebird tagged; Friendly-

That seemed like a fitting name for a spirit bird.

We didn’t have much of a choice but to trust them. This flock of spirit blues was our backup, wherever they came from.

The birds flew down and started attacking the locusts. Though the demons were much bigger, the birds really put up a fight against them with sheer numbers.

Some of the spirit blues were hazing up in mid air, then they'd turn into a concentrated form of mana and zip into the locusts! It was like watching blaster bolts fire off in the sky, like in sci-fi movies.

With the clash of those mythical beings all over, the whole battle field lit up with craziness! Luckily, Indena and I reconvened with each other and focused on how we’d stop the Reaper, who seemed to be preoccupied by staring at the birds.

What was he, a bird watcher?

“Any ideas how we can stop this guy?” I asked.

Indena shook her head. “I’ll just keep hitting it with fire.”

“That wasn’t working before. We need to find some other way.”

She gave me a nasty scowl, then grunted like she was shrugging me off.

“What else am I supposed to do? I gotta’ try something here!”

There had to be something I could do to make her attacks mean more. I looked through my support skill list, which wasn’t much to speak of right now, but there was something interesting that might be helpful.

When I last leveled up, I gained this power that used both Stardust Points and Incantation Points called Stardust Aura.

Straight from the HELP menu, this power would form an aura of stardust around the target to protect them from attacks using darkness. Stardust Aura also gave the light affinity to the targets attacks attacks, which I safely assumed will be helpful here.

There wasn't a particular minimum amount of stardust that needed to go into the spell, but the less I put in the weaker it would be.

Maybe this was a long shot, but whatever I had left in me would have to be enough for her to put up a fight.

“Stardust Aura!” I announced the incantation.

Red sparkling particles started to glow around Indena.

I saw a little star icon appear next to her vitals and the virtual nametag above her head. That must have shown she had the light affinity.

“What is this?” she asked, noticing the red sparkles all over her body. “Is this supposed to help me fight that thing?”

“Yeah. It should protect against his darkness attacks and allow you to hit him.”

It must have been red because most of the energy was in the infrared spectrum. I think that might have been the case because I was mostly absorbing light from Indena's fire. I could only hope it would be enough to hurt a demon.

We still didn’t know all the Reaper could do yet. We knew he could use some sort of pestilence fog that killed things on contact. We also knew he had a scythe and could spawn locusts.

I had to assume that Stardust Aura would protect against the pestilence fog. But that scythe might be a whole other issue.

With a little confidence, Indena leapt into action and tried to attack the Reaper by whipping her fire at him.

The fire was all twinkly! it struck the trees and made them burn bright. This fire was actually lighting the demon fog up.

When it made contact with the Reaper, he let out a screech of pain.

He retaliated with a quick slash of his scyth, dark energy swirling around its metal.

He got a direct hit on her!

The scythe slashed across her chest, mostly deflected by the Stardust Aura. It protected her, but that also depleted the aura completely.

She wasn’t protected anymore by the light affinity.

The attack stumbled her.

Then the Reaper approached. His scythe came down with one more swing through her.

“Noooo!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

But even though the blade clearly gone through her, it seemed to have phased through without a single cut.

A string of glowing orange light stuck to the end of his weapon as it lifted away from her. It traced back to Indena, coming out of her chest. What was that?

The once powerful lensing effect of mana and darkness that swirled around him calmed, revealing his cloaked skeletal body underneath.

Bone hands carefully took hold of the string of orange energy, while the sudden appearance of a third hand from under his cloak revealed an empty wooden spool.

He tied the string to the spool, then spun it around like a string.

My sensors were reading that as mana energy. He was stealing away Indena’s spirit! But why? What was he going to do with it?

Indena fainted in the process, but rather than let her fall, the reaper summoned a large claw of bone from the ground and let her rest in it.

If he stole all her spirit, she’d die. I had to think of something quickly.

Wait, I did have that mana cannon. That was the only offensive option left.

If he wanted mana, I’d give it to him alright.

I initiated the charging sequence, but then a dialogue box popped up.

-Warning! At current level, system shut down will occur to protect the body from sustaining long term damage from cannon usage. Please insure any threats in the vicinity will be neutralized before using cannon-

So, I only got one shot. Actually, according to my systems, I was only going to use a fraction of a percent of the actual beam, so who knows what this would do at full strength?

I chose to go ahead and begin charging the cannon. My crystal heart lit up bright. Energy radiated out of it in waves and big holographic targeting reticles were summoned in front of me. They spun like halos, giving me sight lines.

Mana was taken from my crystal heart in large quantities and pooled up just above the surface.

This is going to be big.

The Reaper looked over at me, then severed Indena’s spirit from his spindle. His arm reached out as if he saw a new prize he wanted to grasp.

So he was after mana. He really was a stealer of souls.

A sharp screech rattled through the air as the cannon primed to fire. The power levels were enormous. And this was only a fraction of its potential?

Finally, the cannon was ready to fire.

Words automatically left my mouth. “Mana cannon firing in…!”

“3…”

“2…”

“1…”

“Firing cannon!”

BWOOV!

BOOOOOM!

A brilliant burst of mana fired out of my heart! It shot at the Reaper and exploded like a big bomb!

I was blasted back from the incredible force. I used my wings to catch myself from tumbling around, scrambling for cover behind a rock.

Sleepiness hit my eyes hard, and I started to feel really awful. With what strength I had left in me, I looked to see what became of the Reaper.

The blue mana haze from the explosion rose like a mushroom cloud. Within seconds it stretched so thin that the blast site was visible.

He was gone. Not a trace of him left. Just a big empty crater. I checked the map just to be sure. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I think that was it, he must have been dead.

But, why…still feel so...awful? This…was…

“That was very impressive, Little One of Hyam. But you’ve hardly slain death.”

Who…th…

-Hibernation mode activating. All cognitive functions temporarily shutting down-