Flame of Disparity

by Cinders of War

Chapter 25: Forgotten Gallows - Part II

One second, two seconds, three seconds…

Cracking open one eye, Sunset was relieved to see she was still alive.

“I can traverse the Abyss!” she exclaimed, more to let herself know that she could do this.

An explosion behind reminded her she needed to move, so stepping all the way in, Sunset first noticed an empty feeling, as though she was standing in a large empty room, but that wasn’t the case. There were buildings, rocks, and everything seemed to be alive.

Next was the sound. Looking back out of the Abyss, Sunset could see flares of fire coming from around a few buildings, but she could no longer hear them.

“How odd…” Sunset breathed. Her voice itself sounded echoey in this dark expanse.

With only the light of her flame to guide her, Sunset ventured on, knowing she needed to find her way out and to the Primordial Grotto where Gravewing resided. He had the last Flame of Death she needed to get back.

With only one way forward, Sunset stepped deeper into the Abyss, keeping her sword out in front of her, ready for anything.

Unfortunately, that alone wasn’t enough.

From the depths of the darkness itself, an arm with long and damp hair clamped around her waist and somehow pulled her down from where she had been standing, going deeper and deeper until she was suddenly face to face with a grotesque beast. The skin on its face was gone, leaving only a snarling skull staring back at her, its empty sockets almost boring holes through her soul.

A surge of electricity traveled across its hair-covered neck and it tightened its grip around her.

“Aah!”

Dropping her sword, Sunset teleported herself to it, escaping the beast’s grasp, rolling away just in time as it smashed its other fist down on the spot she had been standing on.

With a mighty roar, the beast charged her, running to her like an overgrown ape, swinging a fist along the ground and towards her.

Rolling again, Sunset dodged the blow, along with a fistful of dirt that splashed out from its swing.

Running to its legs, Sunset cut twice at them, then slid under it and lobbing a fireball on its back, lighting its hair on fire.

Bending its neck back at such an impossible angle, the beast gazed at her while its body still faced forward. Suddenly, a beam of lightning emerged from its mouth, catching Sunset by surprise and hitting her straight in the chest.

Lightning coursed through her entire body, making all her muscles clench up as hot pain flashed all across her body, burning her skin and lighting her organs aflame. When it was over, Sunset fell to her back, unable to stand, but she managed to grab an estus flask and down it shakily. Thankfully, even the gravest of injuries could be cured by these and she was soon up again, ready to fight.

Another beam emerged from the creature, but Sunset rolled three times to her right, avoiding all of it, before leaping into the air and throwing her sword above the beast.

Throwing another fireball at it, Sunset also threw her sword down, teleporting to it right before it stuck into the creature’s neck. Twisting her blade and yelling, Sunset dug through its flesh and pulled as hard as she could, tearing her sword out the side of its long neck.

The beast screeched an unholy scream, but then stopped as its neck lolled to the side, hanging on by the other end of its neck. Sunset finished it by cutting off the other side of its neck with one quick slice, leaping off the beast’s back as it fell on its side, its skeletal face still grinning at her.

“Oh man…” She took some time to catch her breath. This beast had really come out of nowhere and caught her by surprise, literally, but at least that was over.

Or so she thought.

Sunset was suddenly yanked into the air by her feet, staring back into the same hollow eyes from earlier, only this time, the beast was holding its head in its left hand, while the right held her up. Where the neck had once been was now a stump of red flesh, which seemed to writhe like the darkness itself.

“Gross. Let go!” Sunset cut its fingers, severing three of them, letting her fall back to the ground.

What happened next was even worse than the beast holding its head in its hand. Digging deep into its severed neck, the beast yanked out its neck bone, which was serrated at the edge.

“Of course it was…”

Sunset almost threw up at the sight, but she teleported away as it swung its new weapon at her.

The beast quickly covered the distance, leaping overhead and slamming its neck spine down where she stood. Sunset had rolled away and slashed at its body, then climbing its back, she jammed her sword deep into its neck wound, pulling it out to parry its sword, then jamming it back in twice more, each time splattering more blood across her armor.

With one final stab, the beast stopped moving, flaking away into nothing as Sunset dropped back to the floor, wiping sweat from her brow.

“I hate this place.”

There was a rocky slope leading further down ahead, with more abandoned buildings occupying her left and right. And then, finally, after walking along aimlessly, Sunset spotted an unlit bonfire in the middle, just seemingly hovering over the darkness.

“Yes, yes!” She ran to it as quickly as she could and lit it.

Immediately, all her aches and pains dissipated and she was safe once again. It felt almost like weeks since she had last sat at a bonfire.

“Even though it was only probably about an hour ago…” Sunset said to herself, if only to make a little sound in this silent hellscape.

The fire lit a small ring around the area, while the rest faded away into the void. She could just barely make out what was solid and what was darkness, but it was still hard to tell where the floor ended, though the Abyss seemed to bend even logic, with her walking on invisible darkness before she had been pulled down here by that dark beast.

When she felt ready to press on again, Sunset got up and reluctantly left the bonfire, venturing deeper into the Abyss.

There was another set of gallows further down, but this one had been smashed in half, with a giant sword sticking out of its middle.

Sunset was about to say she recognized the sword when two more of those dark beasts dropped down in front of her from above.

She almost screamed from the sudden surprise, but dodged to the right as the first one swung a fist at her, its teeth chattering as its jaw rocked up and down when it moved.

Sunset fired off a combustion right in its face, but the fire did not catch. Instead, she had to curve around a beam of lightning, more of her hair getting scorched in the process, but at least she didn’t get blasted head on this time.

Swinging wildly, she cut it many times across the skull, with the last one dislodging its jaw and sending it sailing away into the darkness. The beast growled and smashed its fists into the ground, which Sunset rolled to avoid.

Teleporting up, Sunset aimed for the chest of the first one, thrusting her sword deep through its flesh until she felt something burst within.

The beast roared and swung its arms around, one cutting through Sunset’s back, but not fatal enough for her to need an estus. In no time, the first dark beast was down and Sunset had already thrown two fireballs at the second one.

Planting both hands on the ground, it fired a beam of lightning at her, which Sunset dodged by throwing her star sword high and teleporting to it.

Using the gravity to her advantage, she dug the swordtip right through the creature’s neck, then like the first beast she encountered, she cut clean through its neck, sending the long appendage and its head to the ground. And knowing better this time, Sunset attacked the flesh under the stump of its missing neck, cutting deep to avoid the beast from rising again.

This time, both beasts didn’t get back up, much to Sunset’s relief, which allowed her to press on through the dark.

Along the way, there were more derelict buildings, most of them missing their roofs, and there was another broken platform where gallows used to be. Whatever the Abyss has done here, the inhabitants had either all fled long ago, or perhaps they had been turned into one of those dark beasts she had fought on the way.

The floor ahead suddenly dropped off to nothing, making the girl stop, one foot hovering over thin air. Sunset pulled it back and looking over the dark expanse, trying to see what was ahead. Of course, being the darkness that it was, she couldn’t even see five meters ahead.

Earlier, she had been walking on nothing before the creature pulled her lower down. Perhaps this floor would be the same. Sunset didn’t know, but there was only one way to find out. Reaching a foot back out over the dark expanse, Sunset tipped herself forward, screwing her eyes shut and waiting for her foot to hit solid ground.

Unfortunately, it never came and Sunset found herself falling through the dark, her screams echoing across the Abyss as she searched for something, anything to grab on to.

It turned out to be the other way around as a long and dark hand snaked up and wrapped its long and skinny fingers around her, before pulling her deeper. This hand was different. Instead of the large and hairy arms of the beasts earlier, this one was hairless and slim, with fingernails protruding way past the fingertips, sharpened into dark and chipped claws.

“Welcome, Bearer of the Flame of Life…” a voice boomed in the empty darkness. It was a woman’s voice, but low and wispy, like that of a ghost, or at least what Sunset thought a ghost would sound like. “We have been waiting for you…”

“Who are you? What do you want?” Sunset managed to stick one arm out, throwing her sword down and teleporting to it, escaping the hand’s grip.

She landed on a rocky ground, surrounded by broken buildings and gallows. Before her, the hand returned to a figure shrouded in a black cloak, where a mask with a smile too wide for any face could be seen under a turban of sorts with spikes coming out of it. Behind her, Sunset could see a fog door through the dark, somehow not affected by the darkness itself. It wasn’t much, but at least it told her where to go when she was done here.

“Your Flame…” The figure pointed at her. “We all do… But there is a more pressing matter. My master wants you dead. And so it shall be that I shall carry out his will.”

“Your master?” Sunset readied her weapon. “Is it the Lord of the Waking Nightmare?”

“You know of him? Good.” The wispy woman glided around her, the constant smile on her mask an eerie glow in the darkness of the Abyss. “I am Higrun, Abyssal Nightmare. And today, I have but one task. To put out the Flame of Life.”

By now, threats like this were starting to lose their edge on Sunset Shimmer. Just about everyone here wanted something to do with the Flame of Life she held, and she wasn’t going to give it up to any of them. She wasn’t sure she even could.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble, uh, Higrun,” Sunset said, waving her blade in front of her face. “I just need to get to the Primordial Grotto and claim the last Flame of Death there.”

“We know…” The woman was suddenly beside her ear, whispering into it. As Sunset turned, she had moved again, now across from her. “And you shall not make it. I, Higrun, the Great Sorceress of Marestoria, the Abyssal Nightmare, the Woman of Shadows, the Witch of the Old Lands, the Eye of-”

“I get it, I get it.” Sunset spun her sword. She didn’t know why some of these people had so many titles. “I’m ready for the fight.”

“Oh, are you now?” Higrun’s voice echoed around in the darkness. Then a bolt of dark purple magic shot from above, smashing into the ground and making a shockwave that threw Sunset off her feet. “Then meet your fate!”

Sunset staggered upright, but something was wrong. She tried running, but it felt as though she were being weighed down by huge boulders on her shoulders. She could not manage more than a slow walk.

Higrun laughed maniacally and swiveled her upper body around like a bobblehead, all the while projecting up small purple orbs into the air, which began to slowly descend towards Sunset one at a time.

“Ah, crap,” Sunset said, mopving as fast as she could away from the falling orbs, which was not very fast at all. With nothing else left to do, she tossed her sword away, then warped to it just as the orbs fell where she had been standing.

And then Higrun was in front of her, swiping her up in her long claws. Pulling back, she threw Sunset down on the ground, knocking the wind from her lungs; Sunset felt her left shoulder pop.

“What can you do against a master of the Abyss?” The sorcerer laughed. “The Abyss is more powerful than you could ever know. I once sought to end its spread, but now I see, the Age of Dark means us no harm. No. It means to evolve us.”

Sunset dug around her pack for an estus flask, but then she remembered something else. Instead of retrieving an orange flask from her pack, her hand emerged with a white flask instead. It wouldn’t last forever, but she would definitely make sure it counted.

Sunset got up shakily, ready to drink from the flask, but out of nowhere, a purple flaming chain whipped out and wrapped around one of her legs. Sunset fell onto her face, the white estus flask bouncing away.

“No!” Sunset shouted. She hacked at the chain using her sword. The chain was pulled and Sunset was dragged backward, struggling to break free.

A purple flaming skull leered out of the darkness, a face that Sunset thought she had vanquished.

“The Head of the Charge has returned!” he announced, stretching his arms wide.

“I see you have defeated my apprentice, Nicolash.” Higrun rubbed at her chin. “He was the most foolish of my apprentices, but he serves his purpose as he does once again. Yes, Bearer of the Flame of Life, I can bring back those you have defeated, so prepare to die.”

Dodging another whip attack from the Nicolash spectre, Sunset removed an estus flask and drank it to heal herself before trying to grab for her white estus flask.

And then a trio of ghostly tentacles shot out from the darkness, grabbing her around her legs and right arm, pulling her away from her glowing flask.

The giant beak of the galleon kraken rose up before her, opening wide to crush her. Sunset threw her sword at its exposed eye, teleporting to it and thrusting it deeper in. Even though it was just a spectral form of the monster, ghostly purple fluid burst from its eye as Sunset pushed her sword all the way to the hilt.

It stopped moving and dropped her, just in time for Nicolash to smash her over the head with his burning chain. As she lay there dazed, she felt Nicolash’s chains wrapping around her legs.

Higrun laughed as she danced around them, creating more of her tiny orbs and radiating her gravitational aura. “Surrender. You cannot win.”

“I’m a vampire!” Nicolash declared.

“No… you’re… not!” Sunset groaned with anger. She reached into her pack and took out one of the three remaining jars of blue elixir and threw it at her legs. The elixir splashed all over the chain, making her legs slippery and invisible. Sunset wriggled free like a fish, sprinting for the white estus flask.

And then a giant sword speared down in front of her, blocking her path as it floated on its own, ready for battle.

“Ah, I have failed to mention…” Higrun cackled. “These swordbeasts are mine. I have plenty all across the world, ready to fight the able adventurer. I am sure you must’ve encountered them in your travels.”

She talks too much.

Throwing her sword in a curve, Sunset teleported behind it, grabbing her white estus flask and teleporting away as the sword did a horizontal slash.

Seeing her chance, Sunset downed the drink and waited. The floating sword raised itself up for a mighty downwards chop. Suddenly there was a blaze of light around Sunset, orange and white flames licking all around the girl, but not harming her. The floating sword came crashing down, but unbelievably, Sunset raised her own sword and blocked it almost effortlessly.

“Now we’re talking.” She smiled as her eyes flashed white and her hair grew out into a ponytail. Then she parried the giant sword aside and followed up with a jumping upwards slash. Her blade met resistance and the unseen monster wielding the sword bellowed as it was cut down.

Higrun pointed at Sunset and Nicolash charged at her with his chain outstretched, intending to clothesline her with it. Sunset caught the chain in her hand and pulled, yanking Nicolash right off his feet. He flew towards her with a gasp and as he got close enough, Sunset released his weapon and dashed through him with her sword cutting upward. His body never touched the ground, disappearing into the air as it fell in two.

“What is this power?” Higrun mused as Sunset turned to face her. “I must have it for myself.”

Sunset’s feet hammered on the blackened ground as she closed in on Higrun, leaping up into the air and casting a combustion under her boots to propel herself further.

“Hyaargghh!” Sunset roared as she rocketed toward Higrun, who raised her hand in an attempt to catch the blade of Sunset’s sword.

It worked- partially.

Higrun’s hand closed around the blade of Sunset’s star sword, stopping it for an instant, but there was too much momentum behind Sunset’s strike that the blade sliced through Higrun’s hand all the way up to her elbow, bifurcating the sorceress’s arm in a spray of black blood.

“Hhrrraaaah!” she hissed at Sunset, then faded away to the left to reappear on Sunset’s right, a ball of purple magic growing between them.

But Sunset had been expecting it. Holding out her left hand, a mighty, orange-red fireball grew in her palm and smashed into Higrun’s own spell. A blast of force emitted from where both spells clashed, lighting up the Abyss for a moment.

Leaping through it, Sunset swiped at Higrun, but the sorceress moved fast, disappearing into the shadows only to grab her from behind.

“You will die!” Higrun formed a tendril of darkness over her mutilated arm and wrapped it around Sunset’s neck.

Spinning around, Sunset cast a combustion between them, rocking the area in a ball of brilliant orange, sending Higrun wisping away into the darkness and Sunset to the opposite end. She didn’t know how long she could keep this form up, but she knew she was doing considerable damage to the sorceress. She could do this.

“That flame will be mine!” She swooped back out of the dark, both arms outstretched. “My master will be proud!”

“No he won’t!”

Sunset placed her sword behind herself and waited. As Higrun got closer, she blasted a combustion behind herself and jumped, using the explosion of flame to propel herself forward, at the same time, throwing her sword at Higrun as hard as she could.

The star sword lodged deep into Higrun’s chest, hitting her so hard that her advance stopped and she floated backwards. Reappearing at her blade in a flash, Sunset grabbed hold of it and yanked it up and out, then slashing in a clean arc, freeing the sorceress’ head from her body.

For added measure, Sunset conjured a fireball and threw it at the head, watching it vanish in an explosion of fire. The rest of the body thrashed for a few seconds, then began to dissolve into the ground, the shadowy cloak of the sorceress dissipating away into the darkness of the Abyss, returning the world to its deathly silence of the void.

“Phew…” Sunset pushed sweaty locks of her hair from her face as she began to return back to normal, the light in her eyes fading and her hair returning to its normal length. She had made it in time and she was now one step closer to the end.

The fog gate ahead had vanished, making it harder for Sunset to find her way to the exit, but she did find it eventually. Beyond it was a bonfire, just sitting there in the middle of a circular room, where most of its walls had been broken down, revealing more darkness beyond them.

Using this time to recover and rest, Sunset looked out into the cold gaze of the Abyss. In her short time here, she could feel it. This place was unlike anywhere else in the world. This was the source of corruption, the source of all the madness she’d faces up until now, and at the center of all this was the one responsible for putting her here.

She didn’t know just how long she’d already been asleep, but if she could get to him, she could finish it. She could wake up.

Gripping her sword tighter in her hand, Sunset resolved to see this to the end. She wasn’t going to give up, no matter how many times she were to perish. She had this Flame of Life for a reason and she was going to make sure to fulfill her purpose here, one way or another.

Author's Note:

Achievement Unlocked:
Higrun, Abyssal Nightmare - You defeated Higrun, Abyssal Nightmare.

Getting close to the end now.

Comments

[Venerable Ro]

Well what do you know, I've caught up. Ah well, one more thing to track I suppose.

[A bag of plums]

9838235
Bloodlines is the story continuity/universe that most of Cinders of War and my stories take place in. The story of how Sunset got her skills is explained in my story, Leap of Faith. As for the rats, my only explanation is that Sunset is used to fighting human enemies. Mutant rats are a bit outside of her area of expertise. It's like how soldiers aren't called in to exterminate dangerous animals. Glad you're enjoying the story so far, though to get the full picture you'd really have to read the other stories in the continuity.

[Cinders of War]

9838264
Hey there, and thanks for reading what I have so far! Yes, I apologize for some bad writing in there. I do hope to improve, so thank you for that feedback! But yes, I suppose killing an animal is somewhat different from killing people. Like perhaps killing a guy compared to a dog , think you know what I mean.