Chapter 111: Ending it!

The group of them quickly took up various angles as they stared at the Swarm-Beast and Swarm-lings who prowled around, ready to pounce and rip them to shreds at the smallest opportunity given.

~ROARR!~

The Swarm-Beast suddenly shrieked, a ferocious roar that rattled the countless lesser abominations that were still pouring through the rift.

Some skittered on insectile limbs, others crawled with too many hands, still others slithered with jaws blooming where heads should be. It was not a horde. It was an ocean.

And at its center, swarm-beast towered like a god of hunger. Its torso alone was the size of a fortress wall, plated in jagged black carapace that cracked and oozed ichor with every movement. Its wings, fractured realities of membrane and claw, scraped the veil between worlds.

And its eyes ,hundreds, blinking and unblinking all at once, locked on the four intruders with the same hungry clarity of a predator sighting prey.

“This is where we end this for good,” Persephone said, lifting her hand and summoning black flames that coated her arm until it resembled the limb of an Abyssal beast.

“Come at me!” She roared, and the fire wave of Swarm-lings pounded forward venomously, leaping and flying at them from different angles as their ravenous mouths dripped abyssal liquid.

Persephone’s arm snapped outward, a wall of black flames erupted and quickly cut across the entire battlefield in a sweeping deadly crescent, erasing dozens of swarm-lings in an instant fashion.

The survivors screeched as the fire clung to them, devouring flesh, carapace, and even their very essence.

~BANG~BANG!~

Meanwhile, Albedo continuously fired off a barrage of Infernal & Graviton bullets into the opening that Persephone created, the graviton slugs continuously pulled a variety of the swarm-lings together for the scarlet explosions of infernal bullets to burn them to ash.

At the same time, Ember’s hooves blazed across the battlefield, crushing through the front-lines like a raging storm.

Ember jumped to the left, kicking multiple of the monsters, her corrosive flames burning them down and giving Morgana freedom to lay on her attacks.

Morgana’s threads surged outward. One lash wrapped around a swarmling’s throat, yanking it forward only for another thread to spear its skull from behind. She spun her victims like sickles, smashing through clusters with grotesque precision.

Elara was in the center of them all. She tossed out healing spells towards the group, and used her Nature Magic to restrict various attacks and stop the swarm-lings from overwhelming them.

She knelt at the center, blood dripping from her nose as her Battle Map flared bright gold above her. Lines of predictive arcs lit up every angle of the enemy assault, “West flank! Twenty incoming, burrowers beneath!”

Her warning came just as the soil trembled. Mandibles burst from the earth, swarmlings clawing upward. But Persephone was already moving, she slammed her heel into the ground, black fire surging downward.

The earth itself exploded, burrowers disintegrating into ash before they fully emerged, but that wasn’t the end of it as Elara had yet another warning for the group, “Sky, thirty, maybe more!”

Above them, a swarm of winged horrors darkened the moonlight. Morgana snarled, her threads lashing upward like a storm of spears, pinning dozens to the sky and snapping them down like broken kites.

The ones that broke through dove toward Albedo, but he lifted Havoc, runes blazing.

“Rainfire.”

A storm of crimson bullets tore through the night sky, each exploding like miniature suns. Ash rained, wings burned, and bodies plummeted to the earth. Ember trampled the remains into ichor.

As they were taking down all of the swarm-lings, the actual monstrosity swarm-beast finally moved itself.

One massive claw, jagged, dripping with ichor, lashed out from the rift, carving through trees as though they were reeds. The sheer force of the swipe created a gale that sent worshippers tumbling.

“Scatter!” Albedo barked.

They split apart just as the claw crashed down, the impact splitting the corrupted earth in two. Black fire erupted from the glyph, feeding the summoning.

Persephone’s eyes narrowed, “No.”

She raised both hands. The flames surged higher, then folded inward, compressing into a spear of pure annihilation. With a motion like striking down a titan, she hurled it at the claw.

The spear exploded on impact. Ichor rained like molten tar, the beast shrieking in outrage as the flames seared deep into its flesh.

Morgana cackled, “Bleed, monster!”

But even wounded, more and more of the beast pressed further through the rift. Its thorax emerged, then its second pair of wings. The chanting of the cultists redoubled, feeding it with their lifeblood as they cut into their own skin, glyphs glowing brighter.

Elara’s eyes widened as her map flared. “The summoners, they’re stabilizing it! If we don’t stop them, it’ll be fully through in minutes!”

“I’ll take them,” Albedo said.

“No.” Persephone’s voice cut through him like steel. “I will.”

She blurred forward. Every step detonated in black fire, cultists vanishing into heaps of smoldering ash as she passed.

One raised his dagger, but his body split in two before he could finish the motion. Another screamed a prayer, but Persephone’s delicate hand closed around his face, and he dissolved to bone dust.

She moved through them like a reaper, unstoppable and untouchable. Her black death fire spread like a plague, igniting the summoning circle itself and destabilizing it greatly.

The swarmlings poured harder, enraged by the assault on their kin as they tried to swarm and cut down Persephone, but Albedo wouldn’t allow that to happen.

“Cover her!” Albedo roared.

He spurred Ember into motion, the mare exploding across the battlefield in streaks of flame. His pistols blazed nonstop, Ruin and Havoc alternating between graviton slugs that dragged hordes into clusters and infernal bullets that erased them in storms of crimson fire.

Morgana laughed wildly, threads dancing from her fingertips in dozens of directions. She split swarmlings apart, pulled their corpses into her shadows, and weaponized them, using twitching carcasses as spiked clubs to batter their brethren, “Come then! Come die in my web!”

Elara trembled, her barrier faltering, then hardened her will. Her hands slammed into the soil. “Verdant Bind!”

Roots as thick as iron chains surged upward, wrapping around swarmlings in clusters of ten, twenty. Thorns erupted, piercing eyes and soft spots in carapaces. With a scream, Elara ripped her arms apart, and the roots tore the bound monsters in half.

~BOOM~BOOM!~

Still, the tide pressed as the Swarm-Beast began to shoot down intermittent attacks that completely ravaged the battlefield, constantly leaving the group to shift their positions.

Persephone noticed this as she stood alone within the summoning circle, surrounded by burning cultists and unraveling glyphs. Her black fire had eaten through half the sigil, but the beast still pressed forward.

She lifted her arm.

The black flame flared outward in an eruption that blotted out the moon, forming wings across her back, jagged, skeletal wings of annihilation fire. Shadows bent toward her, pulled into her orbit. Even Morgana paused, lips parting in awe.

Persephone’s voice was quiet, but it carried across the battlefield.

“Fall.”

The wings slammed downward. A tidal wave of black flame surged from her, a hurricane that swept across the battlefield.

Thousands of swarmlings ignited in unison, screeches silenced as their bodies turned to dust. Even the ground smoldered, the summoning glyph unraveling as its anchors were incinerated.

The swarm-beast thrashed, shrieking as the fire seared its face. One eye burst, ichor pouring like acid rain.

Persephone lifted her gaze, her flames burning higher, “You do not belong here.”

She said, snapping her fingers and igniting even more of the swarm-lings to ash, her overwhelming power beginning to completely dominate the battlefield and lead the way for the others to follow.

At this point, Albedo had seen that and could see just how monumentally powerful Amethyst ranks were, and he wanted to be there.

Still, he didn’t let that distract him, as he seized the moment, “Now!”

He launched a graviton slug at the beast’s chest, the bullet exploding into a crushing sphere that pinned its head and wings forward. Ember barreled along its side, her hooves blazing so bright they left afterimages, searing the beast’s carapace.

Morgana threw every thread she had, latching onto wounds, prying them wider, dragging ichor out like rivers. Her shadow-web pulsed, feeding on the monster’s very essence.

Elara poured the last of her strength into the earth. Vines the size of towers erupted, spearing into the swarm-beast’s limbs, binding it against the shrinking rift. Blood burst from her nose, her body shaking, but she screamed, “Now, Persephone!”

Persephone floated above them, wings of black fire unfurled, her entire body glowing with apocalyptic radiance. For the first time, her expression shifted, into something almost divine, almost mercilessly human.

She extended her hands.

A spear of pure annihilation formed between them, larger than any spell she had yet cast, a jagged lance of voidfire that hummed with the power to erase worlds.

The beast shrieked, struggling against its bindings, but by this point, it was far too late.

Persephone hurled the spear and the environment wast lit with black light.

The spear struck the beast’s head. The explosion was silent at first, then a roar of collapsing reality tore across Hollowwood.

The swarm-beast’s skull shattered, its body convulsing as ichor sprayed across the battlefield in a boiling rain. The rift twisted, shrieking as it collapsed inward, sucking the beast’s corpse halfway back into the Abyss.

The swarmlings fell silent. Those that remained screeched in despair, collapsing as their tether to the summoning unraveled. One by one, they burned, melted, or dissolved into dust.

The cultists were ash. The forest shook, then fell quiet as the dust settled on this battle.

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