Confronting the Dark Divine
Doors opened magically as Dalen trotted into a sanctuary full of murals, burning candles, and penitent ponies. “For eons, the Goddess Nagu’n has watched us from above the clouds. Only recently has she made herself visible before us. This, of course, was made possible by the glorious intercession of Princess Lasairfion, blessed by Nagu’n.”
“Yeah, I got a question,” Kera muttered, fidgeting alongside him in a silken gown. “Why am I wearing the dress?” She bucked one rear limb while fussing with her straight mane. “Guh! Darn it…”
“Shhhh…” Dalen adjusted the folds of his robes and knelt directly in front of a wall etched with carvings. The chiseled lines depicted a regal Xonan unicorn standing before the edge of a cliff, casting a spell as a ginormous serpent Goddess is summoned from the depths. “From the great abyss, Lasairfion heard Nagu’n’s song, and she reached out to him. In Her infinite grace, Nagu’n chose to spare Lasairfion’s head, and that is when she acted as the bridge of communication between mortals and the Serpent Eternal.”
“But… uh…” Kera fumbled to kneel down beside him. “Where does Rainbow Dash come into all of this?”
“The Xonans are the oldest civilized equines to live in this area,” Khao explained. With careful precision, she unclasped the fasteners anchoring the Pendant of Loyalty to the rigging right in front of Rainbow Dash. “They are so old that they share much of the same language as the Angels.”
She paused, turning to glare over her shoulder at Rainbow Dash’s bloodied face.
“However, like most heathens, they fail to understand the substance behind the ancient words. They believe that Austraeoh--the spark and the flame bringer--exists simply as a means of supporting their dragon goddess Nagu’n. You see, in their eyes, you are a false Harbinger. They’ll use you for their own wicked means. They already have.”
“Unlike you, huh?” Rainbow Dash seethed as another trickle of blood ran down her muzzle. “Nnngh… wh-what makes them so much more wicked than the Herald?”
Khao actually shuddered as she said, “Well, for one, we have never been prone to sacrifice.”
Rainbow’s ruby eyes blinked. “Sacri...f-fice…?”
“I was inspecting the prison bay,” Roarke said in a cold tone from beyond the bars. “Where they were keeping your fellow soldiers bound.” She gulped. “And I heard much screaming coming from a source of glowing light at the far end of the corridor. Now, I am not unaccustomed to atrocities done towards helpless ponies. I’ve come from a very merciless society, after all. But this…” She hesitated.
Basso and Zetta listened, breathless. Zaid fidgeted while Nightshade remained absolutely silent.
Roarke glanced up at them, her lenses glinting coldly. “This was different…”
”Blaak jeem rev sleen!” A Xonan shouted at the top of his lungs, aiming a scimitar forward that brimmed with hissing ghost-serpents. “Kaak suun maal brett, Ledomulian trentte!”
Several haggard Ledomaritan soldiers backtrotted from the various guards and their intimidating weaponry. They were forced into a tight cage lined with rusted black bars. When they were so thickly stuffed inside the compartment that they could barely move, the Xonans finally sealed it from the outside.
It was then that a large humming noise could be heard over the rattling length of the cage. The stallions sweated and panted in abject terror. Finally, one of them took a fateful glance upwards, and he let loose a shout. Several blue crystals were sparkling overhead, arching towards one another with electrically bright fingers. A grand shout rose through the group, but just as their paranoia hit a fever pitch--
Thunder. The crystals overloaded, and every stallion vanished with one swift scream.
“That, at least, would have been a mercy killing,” Roarke said. “But I suspected there was something more at hoof. After all, I had seen stranger things in my travels. So, I inspected the cavern beyond, and my assumptions were verified. The stallions weren’t being eliminated. They were being teleported. But, as for their destination…”
Roarke stopped in mid sentence. She stared at a blank spot in the floor of the prison. Slowly, her metal plates began to clatter.
The Ledomaritans landed across a metal slab. They grunted and hissed in pain as they struggled to stand upright. Only when they were on all fours did they realize how tall the metal walls were over three sides of the slab. The barricades were practically unscaleable. As they trotted around, several of them slipped. They looked down to see the surface of the slab coated in day-old blood and strings of vomit.
Hundreds of voices rose in a furious chatter as several of the ponies began hyperventilating. When they looked up, all they saw was pitch-black darkness, save for a pair of floating crystals that dimly lit the nightmarish platform upon which they stood.
It wasn’t until a full minute into the plight that a stallion or two dared to peer over the edge of the slab that wasn’t walled. When they gazed down into the abyss, they saw nothing at first, but then something bloomed from the darkness: scant sources of a dim silver glow. For a few seconds, they could make out white shards waving in the shadows.
That was when the slab started to move. The walled ends began rising and rising, tilting towards the unseen ceiling above.
The gravity of this situation thickened by the second. With each degree that the slab tilted, the stallions found it harder and harder to stand upright. Several of them cried in panic; the entire group scrambled towards the far end, struggling with their hooves, tails, and horns to grip onto something. Limbs slipped, throats shrieked, and bodies plunged into the darkness below.
As more and more stallions fell, a loud blood-curdling growl filled the cavern. A pair of slitted eyes opened from below, and that’s when the screams truly began.
“Aaaaugh!”
“What in Spark’s name is that?!”
“Climb! Climb!”
“I can’t! It’s too slippery!”
“Move, soldiers! Move!”
The air heated up like a furnace. Steam rose from the stallions’ twitching flesh as Nevlamas raised her burning snout. Bleeding crystalline dust, the ravenous Divine let out a furious roar before opening her twin jaws at the base of the tilting platform.
One by one, like scrambling mice, the stallions lost their grip and slid into her waiting mouths. Their screams only ended when their flesh did--burning to a crisp inside the crucible of her draconian throat. The feeding went on for far too hellishly long, with the last few brave Ledomaritans clinging to the very edge of the platform as they dangled above their end.
“Aaaaa-haaaugh!”
“Don’t let go! Don’t--”
“Blessed Spark, save us!”
“I don’t want to die! I don’t--”
“Yaaaa-aaaugh!”
The last of the sobbing stallions fell, their bodies curling into fetal positions as the bright white flame boiled their blood inside out.
“Lasairfion said that Negu’n had spoken to her in a dream,” Dalen murmured as the candles reflected off his distant eyes. “Our Goddess was no longer willing to wait idly by while we suffered at the hands of the Ledomulien oppressors. She had come to… absorb all suffering… and absorb all hate.”
He gulped dryly and glanced aside at Kera’s flabbergasted expression.
“That is the only way we’ve turned the tide in this war. She became a bastion of pain and vengeance, so that we may no longer suffer, but instead allow Her righteous fury to consume our enemies, in every sense of the act. She devours the Ledomaritan heathens and turns their filth into the power of the serpent.”
“Which is really just a lie that the tattooed bloodmongerers have subscribed to,” Khao said as she approached Rainbow Dash with the pendant. “The fact is, the Divine had corrupted herself long ago. She began an exhausting crusade against the powers of chaos, but gradually lost that war over time. Nevlamas is now an avatar of chaos, much like she is a goddess to these dogmatic fools.”
“Then Lasairfion is mistaken to have found what she thought was ‘Nagu’n,’” Rainbow Dash wheezed out loud. “She’s leading her own ponies astray.”
“Don’t be weak-minded, Harbinger,” Khao said with a cold glint to her eyes. “Look at this place that we’re in. Witness the monsters at the Xonans’ disposal.” Slowly, Khao shook her head. “No. Lasairfion is using Nevlamas to her own ends. How else would the monarch have risen to power when it was not her dynasty’s time to rule?”
Slowly, Khao reached forward and clasped the pendant of Loyalty around Rainbow’s neck.
Rainbow shuddered as her eyes flickered back to solid ruby. The shaggy coat hair along her limbs began shrinking into their roots.
“Nevlamas is no longer in control of herself,” Khao said. “She’s been fed too much.”
“The ponies…” Roarke sighed as she ran a hoof through her mane. The metal ringlets rattled, adding a cold punctuation to her tale. “They are the fuel to her spawnlings. All this time, the Ledomaritans have been battling their own kind--but in ghostly, nightmarish form.”
Lying at the bottom of a craggy cavern laced with steam vents, Nevlamas shuddered from snout to tail. As a dull moan emanated through her leprotic body, she allowed dozens of metal-suited Xonans to trot across her cracked scales.
The equines hissed through gas masks as they poked and prodded the Divine’s body with glowing white blades. At spots where the pale aura was the brightest, the Xonans congregated. They dug into the pliable flesh, parting it like shredded blubber as hard structures poked out with a burst of steam and silver blood.
One by one, giant white crystals protruded from Nevlamas’ flesh. Through the translucent surface, the battered and decaying forms of ponies could be seen. The Xonans crowded around these shards and zapped them with sparkling mana-sticks.
Suddenly, inside one of them, a partially-digested Ledomaritan’s eyes opened. He writhed and squirmed, his meaty stubs dissolving from underneath him. He tried to scream, but all that came out was red mist and scraps of entrails--all of which soon dissolved in a bright white fire that consumed him like melting ice.
Soon after, that shard--and all the ones alongside it--turned to a pure alabaster sheen. Only then did the masked Xonans pull the structures bloodily from the flesh of their Goddess.
Throughout the Sacred Hold, these large crystals were conveyed. Hundreds of Xonan grunts and laborers transferred them to a forge where they would be smelted into liquid form, then poured into framework that converted the essence into miniature strips.
Through hammer and chisel, the chaos metal was refined, then mutated into swords and necklaces and totems of various shapes.
At the far end of the elaborate industry, robed Xonans breathed into the finished strips, and glowing white serpents materialized around them, orbiting the priests as they cast a ghostly song into the air of the cavern.
“The Ledomaritans have been fighting an insurmountable war for the past few years,” Roarke explained. “And now, with fresh new legions at her disposal, the Xonans’ Goddess is going to stage a battle to end all battles with the Confederacy.”
Zetta clung to Basso. The other soldiers shivered as they heard Roarke’s words.
“Already, this mountain--the Sacred Hold--is heading towards Prime Enforcer Seclorum’s coordinates. I’ve caught word that Lasairfion herself intends to pilot the Lightning Bearer in order to pierce enemy lines and surprise the opposition. Between the captured battleship and an undead dragon incarnate, I doubt there’s a chance of Ledomare--or any civilization--surviving what happens next.”
“We will finally bring an end to this horrible conflict,” Dalen said, shutting his eyes in the candlelight. “And Nagu’n, with Lasairfion at Her side, will usher in an new Age of Xon.”
Kera blinked. She swallowed her throat dryly and leaned forward. “Then how come you don’t sound exactly thrilled about it all?”
Dalen’s eyes fluttered open. He glanced at her. “But of course I am.”
Kera shook her head. “Uh uh. I don’t believe it for a second. You’re bothered by something.”
Dalen said nothing.
Kera squinted. “Is it because something about how Nagu’n is doing all of this is really bugging you? Or Lasairfion for that matter?”
The stallion opened his mouth, but lingered. He glanced into the candles, sighing out his nostrils. “Things… do not make sense. Several of the Xonan Prophecies have been completely unfulfilled. If this is to be our Age of Retribution, then why isn’t Nagu’n speaking to each of us personally? Why must She rely on the blood of her enemies to spawn Her children? Where does Lasairfion come into play?”
“And Austraeoh?”
Dalen glanced nervously at Kera.
The filly smirked. “That’s what changed everything, huh? As soon as you saw the rainbow-colored mare with the swag around her neck, it turned your world upside down, didn’t it?”
Dalen swallowed and said, “The Oss Tray Oh is said to be a beacon from the past, and hope for the future. It… confuses me that Nagu’n would still be wanting to wage a war after having received her.”
“And you were the one to do it, huh?” Kera straightened her emerald bangs. “You and Zytharros, I mean? You both delivered Oss Tray Oh to your Goddess, and how do you get repaid? Lasairfion and this Archshod guy totally blew you off, dude!”
Dalen’s brow merely furrowed in thought.
Kera fought her shivers in time to say, “Don’t tell me that something isn’t fishy about all this! What is it that the Prophecies of Xon say should happen next?”
“The…” Dalen murmured towards the murals. “The flame.” He bit his lip. “Nagu’n must taste of the flame to ascertain true righteousness…”
“Well…” Kera grinned from ear to ear. “That can be arranged, don’tcha think?”
Two stubby antlers fell bloodily to the surface of the dais.
“Unnf!” Rainbow Dash collapsed onto her forelimbs. She winced as two wounds closed on her forehead.
Behind her, Khao fumbled to cut loose the last two bonds. The pegasus breathed easier and easier as the last vestiges of chaos left her body.
“Lasairfion is a traitor to her own kind,” Khao murmured. “And Nevlamas is beyond salvation. Yes, they might bring victory to the Xonan war effort, but at what cost? This land will be blanketed in suffering and chaos. You know this better than any other pony that exists, Harbinger. But you also have a journey to complete, one that I can still help you with.”
Khao trotted around to Rainbow Dash’s front and knelt low.
“But we cannot go without the book. You need the flame, Rainbow Dash. This world needs the flame. It needs the spark. Without it, all is good and dead--”
“Nnnngh!” Rainbow Dash suddenly pounced on Khao.
The mare was slammed into the ground. She writhed under Rainbow’s furious weight.
“Dead?!” Rainbow snarled, her muzzle caked with dry blood. “What do you know about what is good?! It’s all because of you that me and my friends are in this mess! You deceived me! Attacked me! And now you’re supposed to think that… that I’ll…” She grew faint, her eyes rolling back as she collapsed onto the ground beside Khao. “Unnngh…”
Khao calmly stood up, brushing herself off. “The book is still having an effect on you. The chaos within your body might be suppressed, Harbinger, but you are still weakened by powers you barely understand. I don’t expect you to appreciate the part I have to play in all of this. But, in all seriousness…” She knelt low, heaved, and lifted Rainbow Dash by the forelimb so that the two stood side by side. “What can you do to resist?”
Rainbow sneered out the side of her mouth. “I won’t even entertain the idea of trusting you. I can’t forgive you for what you did to Pilate… and to Kera!”
“I lost many brothers and sisters in the struggle to contain you and the flame, and yet I am willing to forgive you,” Khao said, glaring. She dragged the two of them along a pale bridge towards the edge of the cavern. “I was willing to sacrifice all that I hard to assume this identity and infiltrate this den of vipers. If we focus selfishly on our differences, we will allow something truly venomous to consume this world.”
“Nevlamas…” Rainbow Dash tiredly murmured as she limped alongside Khao. “She thinks she’s delivering righteous energy to the machine world.” She gulped. “She’ll only be injecting pure chaos into the foundation of this plane.”
“Indeed,” Khao said with a nod. “There are evil forces at work here that even the Herald has been powerless to stop. But--together--we can fight the Dark Divine and bring Harmony to this landscape. Lasairfion and all her lackeys will see their bloody dream collapse before them. But that matters little, for once we’ve stopped Nevlamas, it will be up to you to make sure that the same taint of chaos doesn’t curse the rest of this realm.”
“But…” Rainbow gulped. “How?”
“First thing’s first,” Khao said. “We need that book.”
Nightshade blinked. “The tome? But why?”
“Whoever has control of it determines the fate of Rainbow Dash,” Roarke said. “And if there’s anypony who can save this situation right now, it’s her.”
“Really?” Zaid squeaked. “Not you, rattleflanks?”
Roarke slowly shook her head. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe otherwise.”
Zetta and Basso exchanged glances. They looked back. “Then what do we do next?”
“Something incredibly stupid.” Then, with one swift smack, Roarke knocked the lock loose and opened the prison cell. “We’re making our way to where the tome is held.”
“But…” Zaid was the first to slither out. He gawked at the mare with a pale expression. “I thought you said it was suicide!”
“Do you see me changing the story?”
The former cultist bit his lip.
Roarke glanced at Nightshade, then rushed over to collect Princess Luna’s saddlebag from the table of pilfered items. “There is more at stake here than the whole lot of us. Only now am I coming to understand the gravity of it all.” As Ledomaritans rushed to restock on their stolen weapons, the metal mare’s hoof grasped a hooflet inscribed with a hauntingly familiar symbol. “We are a motley crew, a frantic group of ponies. But we’re all that she’s got. We must not fail.”
“Right,” Zaid nodded as he skirted past the lengths of the room to stare out the door for passing guards. “So long as somepony is serving tacos at the victory party.”
Nightshade said nothing. She stood along the sidelines, gazing into the wall in thought.
“This is a mistake,” Dalen murmured into torchlight as he and a petite filly stood at a junction of cavernous hallways. His eyes were fixated on a door where two guards stood at attention. “Even if Nagu’n was to hear this lowly servant’s plea, I doubt I’d last long enough to bequeath her the flame.”
“Shhhh…” Kera leaned into him and smiled. “You don’t strike me as the sort of stallion to lose faith in tight situations.”
He squinted down at her. “You are a presumptuous little filly. It’s easy to be brave when you have nothing left to lose.”
“That sort of makes the both of us, doesn’t it?” Kera asked. “I mean… y’know?”
Dalen sighed, then gazed firmly at the door ahead. “I do.”
Kera bit her lip.
“Stay behind me, child,” Dalen said. “You may speak much wisdom, but only I know the words that will get us through this.”
“I’ll try not to suplex anypony unless I have to.”
“Agreed.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.058 seconds
Total duration
1,019 users online
1,299,713 hits today, 1,822,946 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Guh...
I don't even...
GUH!
Forty pushups and forty situps, ):(. Knock 'em out!
Is this a gambit pileup I see?
This is gonna be good.
Ah, good old-fashioned Nightmare Fuel. Nothing like screaming boiling sacrifices to brighten up your day.
Ho-lee hell, IC. Just... goddammit. This was supposed to be a simple story, and now look at it!
ARTISTS!
GO!
Well, thankfully I haven't had lunch yet.
That's a pretty gruesome fate. Can Rainbow & Co. cleanse Nevlamas' mind so she can see what Lasairfion is making her do and try to rectify it?
Boy, I sure hope so.
Yes that sounds like an excellent idea!
Hmm... It seems to all be coming together... Sehr interessant.
This place needs to be purified out of this disgusting evil. I didn't come up earlier that IC can invent something that bad, cruel and evil.
It gives me a thought, what will happen far later? There will be probably more countries, but what can beat Xonans in their masterful evil? Knowing IC imagination, we have to brace ourselves for the later chapters.
I guess, that despite all this harsh situation, all the cruel and evil neighbours, the Commonwealth shall always preveil.
Well that's utterly fucked up.
And here we come, gambit pileup!
0-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/vp/image/1364/17/1364178546980.png
For some reason I wasn't aware until now that the Queen actually had two independent mouths. The more you know! Everything points to an epic showdown, plenty of madness and chaos and best of all: most likely her death! It's like everything I've ever wished for a character to be is being distilled into a single person, who then also happens to bear my name. Christmas has antlers this year!
I'm the most wretched thing the world has ever seen! This is so boundlessly horrifying, I'm giggling with excitement!
Let the Race for the Book of Flames and Squiggly Lines commence!
Team RainKhao: Get the Book.
Team KeraDalen: Feed the Book to "Nagu'n"
Team Prisoners: Get the Book.
Team Zaid: Acquire Grilled Cheese.
Uh, I-I mean... *clears throat*
So yeah, I've always dug this torrent-of-exposition-juggled-between-different-groups-with-sentences-strung-across-transitions approach, and this felt like the right time to do it. Kind of brought everyone onto the same page - namely, all trying to do the same goddamn thing for different reasons.
Looks like we may well see the end of the Ledomare-Xona war this installment, which is nifty. That was really the last big bugaboo dragging everyone down on this continent. It'd be kinda swell if Nevlamas could be purified and redeemed somehow. As for Lasairfion: bitch gotta go.
The next few chapters oughta be entertaining.
3541801 I support this notion.
We,no, the world needs art of Kera suplexing somepony.
Kera... Never stop being a badass. Someday you might even out-awesome Rainbow and Roarke. Combined.
Oh damn...That is just so sick and wrong...Nightmare fuel, man.
Hmmm...dark, powerful superbeing, royalty wishing to harness said being's power for own design, giant floating fortress...anyone else getting a slight Chrono Trigger vibe from this, or is it just me?
Damn, I'm not sure that any of these will work out but hopefully at least Rainbow will continue her journey.
I love the way all the dialogue came together! NOW ONWARDS TO ADVENTURE
lol everyone is betting on RD
Hope she can get dem ditzy spells under control
Blue used Surprise Lore!
It's super effective!
~Basso
It was unusual to see all the parties on the same track with their theories/predictions.
Also, RD and Khao do seem to be getting friendlier, I predict that they will end up as allies.
I have high hopes for the battle with the Ledomaritians, I have a feeling that will be the time everything comes together.
Things are definitely coming to a multiway pileup.
Dropping the book, the cleansing flame, on teh corrupted dragon is sure to lead to intresting times.
Im wondering though, where is Rourke going to get the several tons of finely ground combustible metal powder to disperse in that cavern, so that on the first application of flame, we find out just how good that flying island is at withstanding a nuke yield blast within?
Khao reminds me of Esau. Esau was a very strong man, a skilled hunter favored by his father. His twin brother, Jacob was a momma's boy, staying at home and keeping quiet. God had promised both the father and grandfather of these men that a great nation would come out of them someday. Who better to lead that nation than Esau? But God chose Jacob to become the nation instead. Why choose Jacob over Esau?
I would also ask "Why choose either one at all?" Neither brother was very good. In fact, they're both pretty bad. Esau recklessly gave away the whole inheritance he was supposed to receive from his father - for a single meal. Of course, Jacob is the one who makes the deal in the first place. Then Jacob deceives his own father into giving him the blessing that he was going to declare on Esau. Esau reacts to this news by vowing to take the life of his own brother after their father dies.
The nations that come out of them aren't that great either. The nation of Edom comes from Esau, and it turns into a godless nation, bent on the suffering and destruction of the Israelites. Israel is arguably worse. Even though the Messiah (Jesus) does come from them, they are in constant rebellion against God, and one of their biggest problems is that they don't take care of their poor - whom are also part of the Israelite community.
I could go on more, but the point remains as to why would God choose Jacob over Esau, or choose even one of them. The answer to that is rather simple: because it brings God more glory. It would be obvious that any great achievements Jacob gets done were by God's strength, not his own.
Let me ask you a question: which is more impressive, writing a strong character in a story and showing him to conquer many foes, or drawing a weak character and showing to conquer many foes? Jacob was chosen over Esau exactly because he was less expected to be what God wanted, not because he was going to be some kind of good person that God wanted.
I wonder if Zaid will ever remind me of Jacob...
3542487
Odd that Khao refers to your namesake's character as "the Dark Divine." I suspect The "Queen of Shadows" to play a role in the next story, moreso than 'your' Queen of Magic.
3542082 The question is, if this is what the chaos avatars on this side of the world are doing, where their power is weakened... what will be faced when they cross over into the other side?
3542702
images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130405202935/theamazingworldofgumball/images/a/af/No-meme-rag-face-1-.jpg
NO-ONE and I mean NO-ONE beats Rainbow Dash at being a badass
but Kera is still pretty badass
3544528 A fallen goddess, possessed by demons, harbinger of chaos, catalyst of the destruction of all that is, feeding on the souls of her enemies, nursing surreal abominations in her bloated, warped, sickened body - Endrax wishes she was this Dark. Endrax rests at the Twilight Armoury for all we know; then again, Nevlamas was resting at the northern fringes of the world for all we knew until less than ten chapters again. In either case, I highly doubt that Khao was referring to Endrax at any point. It remains to be questioned if she even knows of her. Endrax, I suspect, will keep us company through the latter arcs of the series.
By the way, isn't it curious how every single Divine we've heard of thus far started of good or at least kind of good and then turned evil? Axan grew bitter and resentful, Nevlamas overestimated her power and ended up broken and corrupted, Endrax fled to the dark side of the world. We do not know much of Sturke or Verlax yet, but I get the nagging feeling that Shining and Mr. Brad Sentry are in for a wild ride...
Oh, goodness. All these scene changes.
3545112
Knowing IC's writing, with what we now know of Nevlamas, I shudder to think how dark Endrax is actually going to be when we get to her. Or how dark the Dark Realm is going to be... or if/when Rainbow returns to Equestria, she's going to have to face Chaos Celestia, the Black Hole, as the ultimate final boss because of her constant fight with chaos...
Now I'm wondering if Axan will literally swoop in to fight Nevlamas during the huge, epic battle that is soon to come.
3546337
I shudder to even think about the other world that RD will eventually go to. I mean, with all this talk about chaotic energies thriving in the Xonan livelyhood, It's making Discord sound like a little kid. Honestly, what could be more dangerous than a mix-matched creature that can bend reality to his will, and create chocolate milk that explodes?!
Okay, so Khao may be a completely deluded idiot, but she's right about one thing, Nevlamas does need to be stopped.
Things are really picking up here. No matter how bad the measures Ledomare goes to may seem, all of that pales in comparison to this latest revelation.
This is going to be one hell of a ride.
Dalen, turn nice
Khao, be temporary ally and don't hurt dashie's friends
Everyone else, get ready to fuck shit up
Dalen is going to get inducted into this little group aint he?
We're only at chapter 90 and yet it seems we are reaching the climax of the story. Either this battle is going to drag on really, really long, we have a giant denouement, or the second half is going to be a great big surprise.
IIIIIt's Dashie's evaluation time!
There is literally nothing to say about this chapter' gore that hasn't been said before. Also, wow. This is shaping up to be really cool right now. I didn't predict any of what was revealed here...These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
3541801 I've got a lot of chapters ahead of me, but... has anybody done this yet?
3541801 Here you go. Cheers!
fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/039/f/0/kera_suplexes_nightshade_by_happyswitch-d75ni9q.png
Well how about that for some backstory. That was both horrifying as well as enlightening. And those poor buggers that became dragon chow...if that wasn't enough, now they're being used by their enemies as evil spirit snakes until they get killed again. A fate worse than death, indeed...
Also, everyone gets a get-out-of-jail-free card. Well, maybe not free. I'm sure something terrible is going to happen in the near future that'll make the cost quite apparent.
Onward!
Nightmare fuel indeed.
Hoo boy. Things are going to start going down pretty soon, now.
I love the three-way narrative, by the way. I've seen it done before, but never with more than two "storytellers".
Oh, Kera... You so silly~
-Spirit
Oh man, I am SO glad that it wasn't Chaos-Dash Roarke saw. I called it that Xonans were being fooled, but I figured it was the princess.
“The…” Dalen murmured towards the murals.
“The flame.” He bit his lip.
“Nagu’n must taste of the flame to ascertain true righteousness…”
“Well…” Kera grinned from ear to ear.
“That can be arranged, don’tcha think?”
.......the seed of the whole fucking FOREST of how this new xonan campaign is going to be COM-PA-LETELY flipped on its FUCKING head RIGHT here...i cant emphasise it enough how much plot, heroics, saving, turmoil, and other hoo-hah i already see unfolding from these words alone.....now i know how pilate feels when OASIS gives him an intellectual overdose...
GAHHHHHHHHHHHH :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Um . . . wow. That's a lot of fucked up in one chapter.
I do believe the actual quote went, "Whoever controls Halo controls the fate of universe." Captain Keyes wasn't a pony like Roarke, but they are both Grade-A badasses.
I have finally caught up to Regidar....
also this chapter was all sorts of screwed up. This is the only story that has made me empathize and sympathize with the hero...I'm too emotional for my own good sometimes...
So! We know where the Xonans get their chaos metal from. In addition, it's Nevlamas that was the monster the ledomartians had to face down, not Chaos Dash. Good to know.
Started The Bends.
Well...
This was something alright.