Broken Chains

Every breath Puck took, he was intently aware of. Every heartbeat he gave off, he would have suppressed if he could have.

Scarlet's descriptions and explanations of their enemy had been both very calculative and factual and not at all intended to awaken fear in their listeners.

And yet they did.

At least in Puck, these descriptions called up real fear. What Scarlet described was not some random other miserable Gremlin, it was a network of darkness and ancient will so old, so powerful he couldn’t imagine it.

Of course, they were only fighting a small part of this darkness, and Scarlet focused her explanations on this small part, but even then, this small part was more than terrifying enough. It was enough of a threat to bring down whole Gremlin villages.

What made Puck’s fear grow more than anything else, though, was that he saw this same fear in Scarlet. Scarlet, the unshakable mentor, the mysterious outsider, she ... she shouldn’t fear anything. And yet, even though she tried to hide it, she clearly did.

A part of Puck wanted to ask why she knew so much about the darkness and if she had experiences fighting it in the past, but he knew that was likely a very bad idea.

Feeling Puck’s thoughts circle ever faster, Zephyrian stepped in. A calming and deeply confident presence streamed through Puck’s connection to the sword and helped Puck settle himself.

Thanking Zephyrian and concentrating on his task again, Puck steadily walked forward next to Scarlet, his sword held high, and his eyes and ears perked.

As Scarlet had said, any subterfuge or hiding in the domain of a heart of darkness was to no avail, as its domain was absolute in both perception and physical expanse.

When they had stopped to talk about their enemy, Scarlet had apparently started to hear the heartbeat of their enemy. By now, Puck did too.

It was fast and heavy, beating more than once per second and so low that it was felt more in the bones than heard.

Scarlet had told Puck that this staccato-like beat was the surest sign that they had already been spotted. Normally, a heart of darkness only beat about once every few minutes, but not so when it found prey.

When it found something to eat and consume, it fell into a feeding frenzy that made its whole organism go into overdrive. This frenzy was both a great strength and a weakness of their enemy. In this frenzy, the heart lost nearly all its intelligence and only became a beast-like enemy, while also expending its resources in a rush.

Sadly, the fast expenditure of resources was no real weakness unless you managed to cut the heart's connection to the true darkness, but the lost intelligence was. In terrifying contrast to that, though, lay the bestial and inhuman strength the heart and its minions would be able to exhibit in the frenzy.

As they had already walked through the tunnels toward the source of the heartbeats for quite some time, Puck could already be sure that some of the tendrils of the heart were hidden in the walls around them. More than that, they were expecting an attack at any moment now.

Slowly walking on for another five minutes, Puck only managed to stay somewhat calm thanks to Zephyrian as the heartbeat slowly got louder, and then the expected attack finally came.

First, they only heard a distorted howling and shrieking coming from the tunnel before them, then many different kinds of steps and movements joined them. Soon, the enemy came around the last corner and into view.

It was a mess.

Even though both Scarlet and Puck could see clearly in the darkness, they couldn’t exactly make out their distinct enemies.

It was an avalanche of horror creatures, crafted out of putrid flesh and shadows.

Fighting against his instincts to flee, Puck was frozen as he felt the whole tunnel start to shake and quake as the heartbeat got ever more powerful and physical in its presence.

Even though Puck froze, Scarlet seemed to face no such problems. At least for the time being, she had dominion over the shadows of her past and was ready to fight.

Taking a few steps forward, Scarlet threw one last look over her shoulder before the enemies were upon her. Stiffly nodding towards Scarlet, Puck managed to signal that he remembered the plan.

The plan, as it happened to be, was nothing all too complex. Complexity was the downfall of the inexperienced, as Scarlet had said. Instead, Scarlet and Puck both had only one single role to fulfil.

Scarlet would stand at the front before Puck and face the enemies. Puck in turn, would have to kill any enemy that managed to get by Scarlet and would be able to reach her back.

As the enemies approached Scarlet, Puck’s fear for her started to surpass his fear for himself though, and he already wanted to rush forward and stand beside her to be more of a help, but Zephyrian scoldingly stopped him.

Then, Puck could only gawk as Scarlet faced the avalanche.

There was no magic, at least none Puck would be able to discern. There were no diversions, just the absolute dominance of Scarlet’s physical power.

Her axes flashed so fast through the air that Puck could only see gleaming lines in the air where they must have moved, and any enemy that got hit was either instantly bisected or flung back into their own ranks.

Starting to get drawn into the beauty of Scarlet’s fighting, it was again Zephyrian that shook Puck out of his staring, as finally, one already injured creature made it past Scarlet.

The creature was a fleshy abomination with three spider legs and a slithering, winding torso that had four arms attached. Between the segments of flesh, seemingly living darkness clung. There was no head attached to its shoulders, instead it had a great maw and too many eyes plastered over its torso. Many of the eyes at least, were already destroyed by a deep cut from Scarlet.

Knowing that this was his moment, a deep calm settled over Puck as he lifted Zephyrian. He wouldn’t let Scarlet down, he would do his part of the fight.