May Short Story [Volke's Time in the Abyssal Hells]

Hey Peeps!

Here is May's short story. It's NOT CANON, but you WILL see the creature that's here later in the Astra Academy series.

Hopefully you enjoy!

Shami

Volke’s Time in the Abyssal Hells

            I was one with the darkness when Luthair and I were merged. Some people feared the shadows, but I wasn’t one of them. I was the thing in the darkness that individuals feared so much.

            However, the fogs of the abyssal hells were my metaphorical shadows. They were the place where my fears dwelled.

            I stood at the edge of the fifth abyss, just as Death Lord Deimos had instructed. He and the others had headed deep within to speak with Death Lord Umbriel, and potentially stop her from opening the Oblivion Gate. I was to remain as a guard—to make sure nothing interfered.

            The area I guarded was an odd one. There was a cave, with a mouth that was at least twenty feet high and ten feet wide. It was the perfect shape for an abyssal dragon to step through, but not much else.

            Around me was a thick fog of gray and white. It lingered in the air, swirling back and forth, despite the lack of wind.

            The ground was nothing more than blood red rocks. They were large, and the ground stable, but these boulders resembled dragon-sized hearts—at least, that was what my imagination said they were.

            Sad, dull, gray plants grew from the cracks between the huge red rocks, some of them with arm-like twigs and buds that resembled faces. Death Lord Deimos said they were souls who were being punished before being thrown into the destructive void. These were all people who had been vile murderers, beyond redemption.

            “Careful, my arcanist,” Luthair said to me in my mind, our thoughts basically as one. “Something approaches.”

            Luthair’s knightmare magic swelled within me. My veins filled with ice as I turned to the subtle noises hidden in the fog.

            With Luthair on my body, I was fully protected. I had plate armor made from hardened shadows covering me from head to toe. My gauntlets ended in claw-like fingers, and so did my boots. My cape sparkled, since the inner lining was the glorious night sky filled with thousands of stars. My helmet protected my face fully, but I could see through the void of magic.

            “Show yourself, fiend,” I called out.

            My voice was a perfect blend of mine and Luthair’s, but it was carried off into the ominous fog regardless.

            The click of claws put me on edge. Now was the time for combat, no doubt in my mind.

            I pulled my artifact sword from my sheath. The black blade, spotted with emerald stars in the shape of a serpent, was made using the bones of the apoch dragon. It could cut through any magical being as though they weren’t even there.

            “Hello?” a feminine voice asked, the words floating through the fog.

            The voice sounded familiar…

            “We can’t allow anything through, my arcanist,” Luthair said to me.

            I nodded as I squared my stance.

            “No one is allowed to pass,” I said, louder than before. “If you value your life—or maybe just your soul—you’ll leave this place.”

            The fight to the edge of the fifth abyss had been a rough one. Elder mystical creatures were frightening, mostly because of their seemingly endless supply of stamina and magic. They were more powerful, larger, and healed rapidly. They could also use their auras without an arcanist, which wasn’t true in the land of the living.

            I gripped my sword, ready to fight whatever sort of monstrosity emerged from the fog.

            But then…

            A woman appeared.

            She stepped through the mists with an elegant gait. Her white hair, purple at the edges, was striking. Her eyes, violet, were rare and beautiful. At first, I thought it was my wife, Evianna. She had white hair, and gorgeous violet eyes…

            But this wasn’t Evianna.

            I almost dropped my sword as I lost my breath.

            “Volke?” the woman asked.

            She wore a riding outfit, complete with white pants and fitting black top.

            This was Lyvia, my wife’s sister. And she looked exactly like she did the day I met her by the river.

            I couldn’t speak, because… Lyvia was dead. I had watched her die during the sovereign dragon’s Trial of Worth. She had fallen during her death match against her brother, Rishan. He cut her down…

            And there was nothing I could do about it.

            Lyvia walked forward, her riding boots clicking on the crimson stones, her footfalls echoing in the fog. It was both mystical and sinister. Why was she here? Or was this her soul? Had she been sent to the edge of the fifth abyss to suffer?

            “Have you come to save me, Volke?” Lyvia brought a hand up to brush her white hair back. “After all this time? You’ve finally come to my rescue?”

            I didn’t know what to say. Rescuing her had never been an option. I had… accepted her death and moved on, as any normal person would do.

            “Don’t let regrets cloud your thoughts, my arcanist. Doubts are quicksand, waiting to drag you down. Dispel them.”

            Lyvia continued forward, until she was just a breath from me. I held my breath, shaken. For a moment, I thought I would unmerge with Luthair—this was too surreal, and I wasn’t mentally prepared—but I managed to swallow down my anxiety and hold true.

            “You fought Rishan because you believed it was right,” I said, my voice firm and steeled with Luthair’s. “There was nothing to save you from. I’m… sorry.”

            Lyvia was just as I remembered. Sixteen or seventeen—athletic and beautiful.

            But every time I looked into her eyes, all I saw was Evianna. My wife, who had been with me for decades, the mother of my children—it was Evianna’s face I saw when I thought of my soulmate.

            “You should’ve helped me,” Lyvia whispered, her expression turning cold. “I needed help, I just couldn’t ask for it. But you refused. My death… It was so painful. And you did nothing.”

            “This is a trick,” Luthair said to me. “Cut her down.”

            That… I didn’t know if I could do that.

            This could be Lyvia’s soul. It could be.

            I had already seen others…

            “Lyvia,” I said, my voice strained. “I didn’t know.”

            “When I died, the world fell apart. If you had helped me, things would’ve been different.”

            Her death had been a major turning point not just in my personal history, but in world history. If Lyvia hadn’t died, perhaps the Second Ascension wouldn’t have attacked Thronehold, and maybe, as a sovereign dragon arcanist, she would’ve given the Frith Guild the rune stones, and we all would’ve been god-arcanists long before the Autarch.

            Lyvia stared at my helmet, her eyes searching for mine, but unable to meet my gaze. “We could’ve been together. Everything would’ve been better. It would’ve been right.”

            She reached out a hand, slow and hesitant, her fingers outstretched and inches from my shadowy armor.

            I didn’t move.

            Out of respect for Lyvia, I couldn’t strike her down.

            Lyvia grazed her fingers over my armor. “Volke… You’re a monster who forgot about me. You let me die, and then you never same for me. Never spared a thought for me afterward.”

            “Evianna and I are married,” I said, my voice barely audible and lost in the fog. “We named one of our daughters after you. We both miss you very much—you were never forgotten.”

            “Don’t you remember what Master Zelfree taught you?” Luthair’s grip on my mind and body tightened, as though he were feeding me more strength and willpower than ever before. “Only fools trip on what’s behind them. Let her go!”

            A sharp, lancing pain shot through my body.

            Something had struck me from behind.

            When I glanced down, I saw the spine of something had pierced through my shadowy armor, but only halfway. The spine was in my side, practically puncturing my kidney, and all my melancholy over Lyvia’s death vanished.

            I ripped myself from the spine and dove into the darkness around my feet. Once in the dol embrace of the shadows, I moved at least thirty feet away from Lyvia and then emerged. While the fog was thick, and hindered some of my sight, I saw Lyvia and my attacker easily.

            Mostly because the monster that had attacked me was quite large.

            It was a house?

            No.

            It was the shattered remains of a building, animated through magic, much like a relickeeper was a dragon held together by threads.

            This monster was once an iron and wood building. It was shattered, and the wood and iron were now held together with visible hate. The furniture once inside was torn to shreds and acted as a sort of guts for the fractured interior. It had a single arm made of splintered wood from the front door, and glass shards it used as “claws” at the end of the eight fingers.

            “It’s a haunt,” Luthair said.

            And I agreed.

            Haunts were creatures I had read about in fairy tales. They were mystical creatures that played with people’s ashes and conjured images of the ghosts to lure people inside of its body. Like a flytrap plant, the haunt would collapse on the unsuspecting person and kill them.

            But this haunt was different. It was an elder haunt.

            It was larger than most, with spines on its bizarre arm, and all along its wood. The “ghost” it had conjured of Lyvia was nearly perfect, and I could see other souls grafted to the haunt’s insides that represented all the people it had consumed since it was in the abyssal hells.

            “Where have you gone?” Lyvia asked.

            No. Not Lyvia.

            That was the haunt. It had the ability to read someone’s mind and draw forth old memories of grief and anguish. That was the only reason it knew anything about Lyvia.

            I should’ve known she wasn’t the real Lyvia the moment she mentioned the world falling apart after her death! How would the real Lyvia had known that? She wouldn’t have.

            My star-lined cape tore down the middle and then formed into bat-like wings. The tearing was a sound that echoed in the fog, drawing the massive haunt’s attention.

            How had I not seen him? The haunt’s magic—it must’ve blinded me to its real self.

            “There you are,” Lyvia said in a sickening sweet tone. “Humans are never seen here, which means you must be with that traitor, Deimos!” She smiled, her expression cruel. “The humans in the living world will be food for mystical creatures. There’s nothing you can to stop—”

            I slipped into the darkness, rushed forward, and flew out of the shadows at speeds I knew the haunt wasn’t expecting. Red energy crackled off my body as I slashed my blade through the body of the beast, my sword’s black edge sailing through the broken wood as though it were just air.

            I flew through the haunt, cutting it in half with a single strike, and then landed on the opposite side of it.

            One slash wasn’t enough, though.

            While the monster was still reeling, I turned on my heel, and went again.

            The elder haunt couldn’t keep up. It lifted its massive arm, and flexed its eight fingers, but it was all too late. I slashed it in half a second time before the beast could even attack.

            “No!” Lyvia screamed as she collapsed onto the red rocks. “Volke—how could you!”

            But I didn’t listen. Luthair had been right. I shouldn’t have given in to regrets and doubts. Now I had a minor injury in my side that throbbed. I could’ve avoided that if I hadn’t been so sentimental.

            As the haunt fell apart, the souls it had grafted and consumed melted away, seeming into the cracks of the crimson boulders. The sickening plants, the ones with faces and arms, reached for the souls as they disappeared, but none of the plants could hold them.

            “We must resume our post,” Luthair whispered to me.

            I nodded. Even as “Lyvia’s” phantom disappeared, I paid her no mind. I flew off to the cave mouth, and then resumed my watch.

            No other creature would get by.

            No other creature would fool me.

            Death Lord Deimos and the others would have all the time they needed.