Chapter 79: Masked Guardian!

The masked guardian didn’t move at first. It instead stood still, with its staff crooked across its chest, the screaming bone mask gleaming faintly due to Ember’s flames.

~DRIP~DRIP~DRIP!~

Blood continued to seep out of the walls behind it and dropped onto the floor. Then the Catacombs whispered once more.

’Albedo’

The sound wasn’t a single voice anymore. Now it was hundreds of voices, some of them hissed his name like a curse while others sang it sweetly, almost pleading for him to give in.

The overlapping tones pressed against his skull, trying to smother his own thoughts. The guardian’s head twitched. And then it lunged venomously.

~BANG!~

The guardian’s staff came down like an executioner’s blade. The air around it bent as if the weapon were dragging gravity itself in its wake.

Albedo twisted aside and the blow smashed into the floor, cracking it open. Blood welled instantly from the fissure and began snaking toward him, as if alive.

He fired Havoc in Infernal Mode, the crimson blast hammering into the guardian’s ribs. Flames spread over its flesh-robes, but instead of screaming, it simply stepped forward through the fire.

“Ugh,” Albedo groaned, the smell of the guardian was nauseating, like burning rotting skin.

From the wall to his left, two spineless shadows peeled themselves free, slipping low across the ground.

Ember immediately ran towards them, her hooves igniting with a brilliant white-blue flare. She rammed into the first, crushing it under her physical force, its body splattering into smoldering ribbons.

The second tried to slide under her, but her tail lashed, a streak of searing flame that bisected it instantly, burning its remains down to ash.

Meanwhile, the guardian swung again, this time from the side trying to cleave Albedo in half, but he blocked the attack with Ruin.

Then, swapping to Graviton Mode, he fired and the slug tore a spiral of bone out of the guardian’s mask and slammed the thing into the nearest wall, which flexed like flesh, absorbing the impact and pushing it back toward him.

’Albedo – Answer me!’

The voices now felt hot

, like molten metal being poured into his ears. He clenched his jaw, refusing to even think a response as he moved away.

~CRUMBLE~BANG!~

Then, the floor under him suddenly gave way, sending him dropping onto a lower floor, Ember landing beside him.

~WHOOSH!~

However, above them, more shapes were moving, dozens if not hundreds of shadows dripped down like liquid nightmares, reforming as they hit the ground. The guardian’s bony staff-tip appeared through the gap, then the whole figure leapt down after them.

The Catacombs sealed the hole above them, trapping them down here.

Albedo spun Havoc, cutting down three shadows before they reached him. One managed to leap for his throat, but Ember’s horn caught it midair, skewering it on a spike of flame.

The guardian thrust its staff forward and a beam of compressed bone dust roared toward him. He barely twisted out of the way.

The beam hit the wall, and suddenly that section opened like a wound splitting wider. An arm the size of a tree trunk reached out, skeletal fingers grasping blindly before retracting.

The ground beneath Ember began to tilt sharply, pulling her toward a black pit that had appeared without warning. She dug her hooves in, stone cracking under her weight.

Albedo dropped to one knee, Ruin snapping into Mana-Drain Mode as he fired off a shot that hit the guardian square in the chest, stealing enough mana from it that the pit behind Ember sealed instantly.

The shadows adapted. Now they clung to the ceiling, dropping in unison, trying to smother him in writhing numbers. Ember reared, unleashing a shockwave of fire that rolled through the corridor, incinerating anything above or below them.

The robed figure stepped through the wave unharmed, but its movements were slowing now, each blow of its staff leaving behind shallow craters instead of chasms.

The staff came down again, a low, brutal arc meant to split him from hip to shoulder this time, but Albedo once again ducked under it and dove forward, closing the distance before the guardian could recover, Havoc’s muzzle flaring once more.

~BLAM!~

An Infernal Bullet shot out directly into the Guardian, tearing away another chunk of its midsection, spilling more and more black ichor onto the floor, but the creature didn’t flinch.

Its free hand shot forward, skeletal fingers stretching and bending in ways no joints should, aiming to spear straight through his chest.

Albedo twisted away just in time but the hand didn’t stop. It instead extended, bones elongating unnaturally to chase him.

~CRACK!~

Ember’s hoof came down like a hammer, snapping the limb in half. The broken pieces squirmed before disintegrating into oily smoke. She bared her teeth, her horn and mane blazing bright enough to throw long shadows across the shifting walls.

The guardian hissed, not in pain, but in frustration, and then slammed its staff down into the ground causing the floor to ripple.

Walls bulged outward as if something beneath the surface were crawling inside the stone itself. Cracks split open in the ceiling, and from them poured a rain of more shadows, their boneless limbs stretching toward the pair.

They hit the ground in waves. The corridor vanished behind black, writhing bodies.

Albedo holstered Havoc in one smooth motion, brought Ruin up in Graviton Mode, and fired straight into the swarm.

~BOOM!~

The slug detonated midair, an implosive blast tearing inward rather than outward. Shadows shrieked soundlessly as their bodies collapsed in on themselves, drawn into a single writhing knot before vanishing entirely.

The implosion bent the walls, the ceiling, even the air, dragging loose debris and broken stone into its singular point before releasing with a bone-rattling pop.

More of them came at him alongside the guardian, and the Catacombs whispered at Albedo louder, hundreds upon hundreds of voices invading his mind.

’Give in – Stop fighting – Lie down!’

Albedo fired into the shadows again, ignoring the voices, every shot taking down more and more of the attackers.

~BANG~BANG~BANG!~

Ember tore through the enemy line beside him, her hooves splintering stone and shadow alike. Her tail whipped in burning arcs, severing anything that got too close.

A boneless thing tried to wrap around her legs, but she stomped down, hooves cracking the floor wide enough to send it tumbling into the black abyss below.

“Burn them!” Albedo barked.

Ember reared, hooves striking the air. The flames along her mane and horn roared outward, surging into a rolling wave of white-blue fire.

The corridor lit up like a sunburst, heat scalding the stone until it glowed. Shadows evaporated instantly, leaving only the guardian in the inferno.

It stood there, still aflame, mask cracking further, blood pouring down its frame, and then it moved faster than before.

~WHUMP!~

The staff came in from above with killing intent, the sheer force of the downswing blasting away the lingering fire and shoving hot air into Albedo’s face.

He caught the movement in the edge of his vision and easily twisted away. The more the battle moved on, the more Albedo saw the Guardian’s moves, the easier he found it to read and defeat it.

The attack crashed onto the floor, blood sprayed from the fissures again, tendrils writhing toward him, grasping like the hands of the drowned.

Havoc was already in his right hand, Infernal Mode flaring.

~BANG!~

A roaring crimson projectile hammered into the guardian’s sternum, blowing a fist-sized hole clean through. The detonation ignited the blood on the ground, burning the tendrils before they could close around his legs.

But the guardian didn’t fall. It staggered forward instead, as if pulled by unseen strings, its arm raising for another strike.

“Enough,” Albedo growled.

Ruin once again snapped into Mana-Drain Mode in his left hand, muzzle glowing an icy violet as he fired. The shot punched into the guardian’s chest, siphoning a tide of mana so violently the air cracked like lightning.

The light in the guardian’s mask dimmed, its movements slowing as the energy was ripped away.

Ember struck at that exact moment.

~BOOM!~

Her hooves slammed into the ground, white-blue fire exploding outward in a shockwave. The guardian was caught in the blast, its tattered frame igniting in pure celestial flame. Its robes turned to drifting cinders in an instant.

The mask began to melt.

It tried to raise its staff for a final strike, but Albedo stepped in close, both pistols leveled at the heart of the robed figure.

“Fall.”

He pulled both triggers at once, ready to end this~

~BOOM!~

Havoc’s Infernal round and Ruin’s Graviton slug struck together, fire and crushing gravity detonating in perfect unison.

The guardian’s torso collapsed inward under impossible force before bursting outward in a torrent of black ichor and bone shards. The screaming mask shattered completely, fragments spinning through the air before turning to ash.

What remained of the guardian toppled forward, hitting the floor with a wet crack. The Catacombs went still. The whispers finally stopped stopped.

~GRRRRMMM!~

From behind where the guardian had stood, the wall began to tremble. Old stone split and curled away, as if peeled back by invisible hands.

A gate of solid obsidian emerged from the wall, engraved with shifting runes that burned faint gold against the black.

The surface rippled once, like the skin of water disturbed by a drop. The gate pulsed, slow, steady, like the heartbeat of something enormous, and then it began to open.

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