Salvation

by voroshilov

Scourge of the Light

The object was lit up, revealing it to not be a simple object, but a creature, without a doubt the creature Penumbra and Ablazed Glory had spoken to. It was a good twenty feet tall, with an emaciated, grey, chitinous frame, numerous white scars across its body and large, deep cracks in its skin. Its eyes were a pair of muted green semi-circumferences, visible through a helmet similar in shape to Nicholas’ crown, though thinner and shorter with a large crack through its centre, clearly the result of a weapon strike. The helmet didn’t fit properly, clearly designed for someone with a head about twice as large as the creature’s; the same principle applied for the rest of its clothing, which was a cross between a flowing scarlet robe and grey bone armour, both covered with bloodstains. Its feet were covered by its robe, but its two hands each had three long, translucent claws. It had a pair of paper thin wings, torn in many places, though with a fifty four feet long wingspan; evidently the creature had once been healthier.

The Shining amulet spoke up, “this is Kaurava, once Scourge of the Light. Even weak as she is now she is still a formidable adversary.”

Kaurava cackled - a cackle that could very easily be mistaken for a pained wail - her cries echoing and bathing the room in light, revealing her surroundings in their entirety. The door slammed shut behind the two alicorns, in essence, creating an arena.

Both of the alicorns interpreted Shining’s speech as a warning, which proved to be the smart move as a pair of swirling spheres of energy careered past them, both narrowly dodging. They dropped into combat stances, both their horns lighting, with Ablazed Glory summoning a shield of magical needles, whilst Penumbra created a large, circular shield to complement her sword.

Two more balls of energy formed in Kaurava’s hands, which she threw towards the pair as she cackled again. Penumbra managed a closer inspection of the spheres before they were released: they were almost identical - though smaller - to those Nicholas had used, though they seemed more diluted. They pulsed weakly and were grey, almost watery in colour.

“Time for us to die,” she wailed, a dozen spheres appearing over her head. Her wings beat once, propelling her forwards, whilst her magic threw her upwards, more spheres emerging from her hands as the dozen that had haloed her were fired forwards.

Between Penumbra’s shield and Ablazed Glory’s dodging, the two alicorns remained unharmed, though the steadily increasing barrage gave them both reason for concern. Before they had time to formulate plans, Kaurava slammed downwards between them both, forcing them into opposite sides of the room, the bloodthirsty maniac entering close combat with Penumbra.

Kaurava’s balls of energy could, as she quickly showed, be formed into a variety of shapes. Two of them formed a staff some twenty metres long, which struck out at Penumbra the second she realised it existed, only her lightning reflexes and shield stopping her being impaled. Regardless, the shield cracked visibly on impact, Penumbra being thrown backwards, barely able to stay on her feet and recovering a second before Kaurava launched another attack, the energy staff missing her head by half an inch at most.

Seizing on the gap in Kaurava’s defences, Penumbra launched her counterattack, sweeping her sword up in a long arc, right across Kaurava’s torso. Her opponent reacted with terrifying speed, her energy staff whipping around to catch Penumbra’s sword just before it reached her body, the edges of her robes singed slightly. For such an emaciated figure, Kaurava was freakishly strong, holding back even Penumbra’s immense force for a minute, before steadily pushing her back, gradually opening Penumbra’s own defences.

Before Kaurava could strike again, Ablazed Glory launched a barrage of flaming, magical needles, aiming to catch the creature off guard. Though Kaurava was able to spin and defend herself, she did open the way for Penumbra, who launched her shield like a discus into Kaurava’s back. The magical projectile impacted solidly between Kaurava’s shoulders, driving through her armour, a cackling screech following.

Kaurava staggered forwards, arms weakly flailing and spasming to locate and remove the projectile buried within her spine. Ablazed Glory, recognising the situation immediately, doubled her efforts.

Though Kaurava had been damaged, Penumbra had felt her magical reserves were heavily depleted. Although she had not realised it at the time, close proximity to Leviathan had badly drained her magic, with the Heart of Sorrow somehow preventing her from replenishing. As she attempted to summon up another shield, her horn sparked and no energy came forth, her sword dropping to the floor in silence. Breathing heavily, she staggered backwards, attempting to put distance between herself and Kaurava, who was still preoccupied with Ablazed Glory’s magical barrage.

Barely a second later, Ablazed Glory’s barrage had ceased, the alicorn also having fallen prey to magical burn-out. Unlike Penumbra, who had not relied on her magic to defend her in that moment, Ablazed Glory was suddenly defenceless, with Kaurava realising it the moment the needles stopped flying. With a disorienting wail, Kaurava struck out towards Ablazed Glory, who, still reeling from her burn-out, only just managed to dodge Kaurava’s attempted impalement, though was helpless to defend herself when the energy staff sweeped horizontally along her torso, swatting her like a tennis ball into the opposing wall.

Ablazed Glory was knocked unconscious in an instant, with Kaurava recognising her lack of threat and rotating to face Penumbra, who would be forced to rely on only her wits and talons for the duration of the fight, which she hoped and relied upon would not be long.

She was thankful for Emperor Nicholas’ training, which allowed her to not only fight proficiently, but somewhat see into the mind of her opponent, both through knowledge of subtle cues and through the fact Nicholas trained Kaurava, enabling her to understand the counters to Kaurava’s potential moves. Hopefully, the same could not be said for Kaurava herself, as it was unlikely that Penumbra could win in a force of arms contest, though she had been wrong about such things before.

Kaurava wailed her challenge, with Penumbra flexing the muscles in her legs in preparation for her opponent’s attack. One of the very first things Nicholas had taught her was to allow the enemy to attack first, in order to catch them off guard with a parrying strike - though she no longer had a shield with which to carry out a traditional parry. She knew Kaurava had been taught the same, but her bloodlust pushed her onto the attack, launching herself towards Penumbra, energy staff in one hand and claws fizzling with black magical fire on the other.

Penumbra did not duck, knowing that doing so would only allow Kaurava the chance to strike once she was off her footing. Instead, she caught Kaurava’s attack in a guard, using Kaurava’s own momentum against her to throw her upwards, Penumbra herself kicking the ground beneath her to launch into a spin, the talons of her legs slicing upwards and across Kaurava’s chest.

The attack connected, cutting five long swathes through Kaurava’s cloak, the chitinous skin below shattering before the impact. Though she did not consider it such at the time, the attack’s success was down to the pure luck of its placement, striking right at the weakest point on Kaurava’s abdomen, missing the armour entirely. Kaurava cackled wildly, her punctured wings still having enough strength to slam her down onto Penumbra, who found herself suddenly locked as Kaurava’s burning claws and energy staff attempted to drive themselves through her and into the ground beneath her.

Her perception of time slowed, like a boxer’s vision before a punch, allowing her mind to formulate a strategy. What Kaurava was using was not a tactic taught by Nicholas, but was similar enough to one he had taught Penumbra a good defence against. Though his strategy had involved the usage of a sword, Penumbra was confident enough in her own abilities to use solely her talons. Simply, her plan was to suddenly drop back, allowing Kaurava’s own strength to make her fall forwards, with Penumbra striking when Kaurava had gone off stance.

She allowed her talons to suddenly give way, though Kaurava did not refrain from pushing forwards as she had expected, plowing down into Penumbra and driving her burning talons to within an inch of Penumbra’s heart. The alicorn, immediately overcome with adrenaline, kicked hard at Kaurava’s left hip - or where her stress addled brain assumed the left hip was - hard enough to shunt Kaurava a foot or so to the right. Penumbra thrust herself upwards and rotated towards Kaurava, using the reeling creature’s body to launch herself backwards, landing in a guarded stance as the adrenaline subsided.

Penumbra’s mind raced, her last half-baked strategy had almost gotten her killed, immediately beginning to send her into panic mode, which was only prevented by her training, allowing herself a deep breath and refocusing on her objective. Had Kaurava been an intelligent opponent, or at least not one apparently driven by a mad bloodlust, Penumbra felt sure her regimented strategies would allow her a hard fought but relatively painless victory. Unfortunately, Kaurava’s madness made her unpredictable, an unreliable variable that Penumbra would have to adapt in spite of.

Though she was by no means an expert at fighting, she did know the basic necessities for winning: remove an opponent’s will to fight. Doing such could be achieved in many ways, either by demoralising them, killing them or maiming them to a point they could no longer make any meaningful action; or, by tiring them out to the point of making their actions weak enough to finish them. She knew that demoralisation was out of the question - she didn’t know if Kaurava had morale let alone if it could be broken - as was outright killing her, due predominantly to the fact Kaurava’s defences seemed to far exceed her own: five deep gashes right through her abdomen and a magical discus the size of a manhole cover to the spine hadn’t even served to slow her down.

Penumbra, meanwhile, was beginning to fray. Her magic was entirely burned out, necessitating at least days of recuperation before it could be used again. With magical burn-out came tiredness, staved off by her brutally adaptive metabolism and the rush of adrenaline that fighting brought about. Her two front shoulders also ached, badly, the result of being battered at by Kaurava, who gave no clear indication of tiredness or injury, even with the gashes in her abdomen.

Kaurava cackled again, though, with the distance between the two fighters, Penumbra had a good second or two before an attack reached her, allowing her to quickly formulate a plan of attack.

After the previous defensive strategy had so nearly ended in disaster, Penumbra decided upon a strategy of offence. She would use her wings to launch herself forwards, then, using Kaurava’s own staff, swing herself around to Kaurava’s rear, giving herself at least a second to strike before Kaurava could bring up an adequate defence. What that tactic relied upon, however, was both Penumbra’s strength and reflexes being perfect, but also that Kaurava’s be significantly weaker than they were.

Regardless of the glaring issues with her plan, she didn’t really have much of a choice, not in the few seconds she had before Kaurava inevitably attacked again. Pre-empting said attack, Penumbra shot forwards like a meteor, closing on Kaurava in less than a second. Once she had her momentum, she folded her wings onto her back and opened her front talons, her eyes locked to the staff grasped in Kaurava’s claws. Kaurava lifted up the staff slightly, intending to strike at Penumbra before she reached her, but that only gave Penumbra an easier time grasping onto it and whipping around, turning a full 180 degrees to face Kaurava’s back.

Not wasting even a picosecond, Penumbra struck out, her talons spread to maximise the area of damage. The area around her initial wound on Kaurava became tattered with rips and gashes, though her armour proved difficult to shred. A stray claw caught the membrane of Kaurava’s right wing, nearly completely severing it and leaving it held in place only by a cable like nerve. The wing crumpled, eliciting a cackle from Kaurava who swung round, staff leading her, aiming to swipe Penumbra across the room.

Penumbra used her wings to leap upwards, her torso perfectly dodging the incoming strike. The same, however, could not be said for her legs, which shot out from under her and dragged her into the far wall, which she impacted with a discouraging number of echoing cracks.

She found herself trapped, several of her ribs were broken, as were both the legs on her left side, the front of which was stuck beneath her, bent at two very unnatural angles. Her right side was, whilst nominally intact, similarly battered. She had no doubt there were cracks in the bone, she was certain there was internal and external bleeding, and she suspected that her hip had been dislocated. All in all, she wasn’t in a fantastic state. Even more unfortunately, Kaurava clearly understood this.

However, Penumbra was saved by the damage she had caused Kaurava. The creature was no longer flying, instead, she had dropped onto her invisible feet, her robe spilling onto the ground around her. Her right wing collapsed limply behind her, dragging along the floor as she limped towards where Penumbra lay. Though Kaurava was in considerably better shape than Penumbra, she was still damaged, hopefully putting them on a more or less level playing field.

Kaurava’s energy staff crackled in her grip, with her previously alight talon burnt out entirely. She was hunched over slightly, with her legs pulling her along slowly. Evidently, Penumbra had done far more damage than she had previously realised. The issue came, however, in the fact that Kaurava wasn’t dead, or in any way out of the fight, whereas Penumbra wasn’t sure if she could stand, let alone defend herself.

She knew it would take her minutes to repair the absolute worst of the damage and restore her ability to fight. Those minutes, however, were far too long. Penumbra needed to be healed within a minute, at most, if she was to stand so much of a chance at not being killed. Even though she could feel the sinew rebuilding, the bones knitting themselves back together, even though she could hear her muscles growing back, she still didn’t have enough time.

Kaurava reached her, just as feeling began to return to the end of her broken front leg. Without any sort of ceremony, Kaurava grasped her by the nape of the neck and threw her. Penumbra flew a good dozen or so metres, landing in a heap on the ground, though that gave her a valuable few seconds of healing before Kaurava struck again.

Strike again she did. Dragging her staff behind her like a mace, she slunk over, completely silent. Slowly, Penumbra guessing due to pain, she brought her staff above her head, giving it a platform to launch from with one hand. Penumbra looked on helplessly, before yelling out in pain as the staff impacted her right on her centre of mass. Kaurava pulled back, giving a groaning wail as she did so, before readying her staff for another strike, this one intending to impale.

Fortunately for Penumbra, the final killing blow never came. With a yell of fury, Penumbra’s sword was thrust through Kaurava’s thorax, piercing something important, which made an audible pop then an echoing scream. Kaurava collapsed, revealing Ablazed Glory, Penumbra’s sword grasped crudely in her front right talons. There were cuts all along her body, with one the size of a hair dribbling a miniscule trickle of boiling blood down her cheek. She nodded to Penumbra, who slowly pushed herself onto her haunches, resetting her hip and placing her still broken back left leg into a position that wasn’t circular.

Ablazed Glory exhaled sharply. “Damn.” She unceremoniously dropped Penumbra’s sword on the ground. “That was a piece of work.”

Penumbra tried to laugh, but all that came out was a long wheeze. “You can say that again.” She let herself breathe slowly again, the adrenaline from her fight quickly subsiding.

“Thank you,” Kaurava choked, her voice lower, quieter and overall almost normal, though it echoed like a ghost even partially whispered, “for freeing me.”

“Freeing you?” Ablazed Glory questioned, “but you’re dead. Or, at least, you’re going to be shortly.”

“Precisely.”

Kaurava raised an emaciated hand shakily, gesturing towards her helmet. Cautiously, Ablazed Glory moved over, then, when sure Kaurava was not a threat, pulled the helmet off. It was surprisingly light, considering its size, but was still exceptionally heavy. Ablazed Glory, still injured, shoved it to the side, revealing Kaurava’s true face.

She had three eyes, two were the muted green semi-circumferences visible through the helmet, the third was a red outline of a diamond above the two of them, a large scar stopping just before it. She had no nose, only a raised region of chitin just like Nicholas and Aurora, though hers was grey and pockmarked with scars and assorted small wounds. Her lips - if the two cracked areas in the chitin around her mouth could be called such - were tiny, only about an inch long, but the inside of her mouth seemed enormous, far larger than her head actually was, containing what appeared to be thousands of wickedly spiked teeth.

“I was made this way,” she lamented, “by Emperor Nicholas. He built my body from Darkness, which was destroyed when he left.”

Her eyes began to gradually darken. “I was almost destroyed myself, but I was forced to endure, even whilst my mind wished for death. My kind endure by the blood - but after our Emperor’s fall, we have lost that which kept us sane. I imprisoned myself here to prevent myself from causing destruction in the material world.”

“Then why did you call me here?” Penumbra asked, her speech vaguely normal again, her legs probably okay to walk on.

“To end it,” Kaurava said as her eyes flickered, “to finally fulfil my last wish.”

Ablazed Glory squinted. “If you wanted us to kill you, why did you try to kill us?”

“Do not try to put a logical reason to what can be described as madness,” she spluttered, “My mind has not been fully my own for some time. The blood burns our minds away, without it we are consumed. Only in a chance moment of awakeness was I able to send you the message, to call you here and have you kill me.”

“Nearly killed us in the process,” Ablazed Glory mumbled, “you did a number on us, what would have happened if you’d killed us?”

Kaurava sighed. “I cannot say. Perhaps I would never have been freed, doomed to languish in this cell for the rest of time Perhaps I would have had another moment of clarity, after another thousand years, enough to send out another message. Or, perhaps, my soul would have perished eventually, the great winds of time extinguishing me as they have all others.”

“Well,” Ablazed Glory said, joining Penumbra in sitting on her haunches, “aren’t you lucky?”

“There is no such thing as luck, young one,” Kaurava’s voice lowered to a whisper, the lights of her eyes all but fully dimmed, “there is only will, I trusted you would keep moving forwards. I have one thing to offer you, as thanks for your efforts: heed my warning, there is a great trial coming, a great evil lurking in the dark, you alone cannot stop it. Court your allies and keep them close to you, they will be needed when the time comes. I thank you for aiding me and apologise for the harm I caused you. Ah, so dark. Father, did I do good?”

With those final words, Kaurava’s eyes faded to black, her head tilting backwards slightly. Within seconds, her form was cracking and becoming dust; within a minute, she was reduced to nothing but her breastplate and helmet, the armour pieces serving as the only reminder - save the wounds of the two alicorns - that Kaurava was ever there.

The two alicorns sat in silence for another few minutes, both recovering from the worst of their wounds and thinking over what Kaurava had said to them. Her warning had been worryingly similar to that of the WarSynth in her tower, making Penumbra believe there was an urgent truth to it. Where her warning and that of the WarSynth’s differed was the wording, Kaurava specifically using the term ‘great trial’, the same term that Nicholas had used millennia ago during the War in Heaven, when Penumbra first became Penumbra. Whatever her ‘great trial’ was, it was coming.

“Your legs sorted?” Ablazed Glory asked her, “because I want to leave, like right now.”

Penumbra nodded, pushing herself onto her feet cautiously. “Agreed, let’s unanimously decide to not come here again.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

The door to Kaurava’s former cell had opened, with the two of them hoping it hadn’t been like that since they entered. The stairway back up to the foyer was still dark, though there was no sense of dread or phantasmal echo. The foyer seemed identical, though Penumbra saw fit to check the stairway up one last time.

The staircase did indeed lead somewhere, up onto a second floor which led up another flight of stairs to a third floor and so on for about seven floors, before finally opening out onto one of the lift pads they had encountered earlier.

With recently healed broken legs beneath her, Penumbra was more than happy to board the pad and be calmly lifted safely to her destination, realising mid-flight that she didn’t know where said destination actually was. Ablazed Glory, meanwhile, followed her, with Penumbra forming an excuse for their detour as they glided upwards. When she arrived on the upper platform, however, her excuse vanished, as did all of her desire to leave.

Though its roof had been blasted open, the components of it hanging in the air like clouds in a photograph, the top floor of the Citadel was powerful in its aesthetics and what it represented. The floor was finely polished marble, with insets of purple crystal forming intricate swirling patterns through it, what bits of the walls were still intact were built from the same material, again with patterned insets of purple crystal that twinkled brightly despite there being no visible source of light. In the room’s centre was a throne, carved from a purple crystal some twenty metres tall. Unlike its equal in Entropy’s Pinnacle, it looked genuinely comfortable, with red plush cushions set into its seating area: a throne fit for an Emperor.

Ablazed Glory seemed to recognise the room’s significance too. “So, this was the throne room,” she mused, trotting up to the throne, “and this was his throne.” She marvelled at it for a moment, before stepping around behind it, finding a balcony that looked out over the back of the Heart of Sorrow. “Penumbra,” she called back, “you should come and see this.”

What Ablazed Glory had found was the absence of any support for the throne room. Several parts of the Citadel’s walls very nearly made the connection, but none could quite connect top to bottom fully. The force of gravity did not seem to apply to many of the Heart of Sorrow’s objects, but for even the throne room to be left theoretically adrift seemed to Penumbra to be a little too out of the ordinary.

Rather than think about it further, she turned back around, to formulate a plan to return to Entropy’s Pinnacle.

She promptly finished her plan upon noticing a fully intact portal, identical to the one in Entropy’s Pinnacle, only deactivated. She stood in front of it, closed her eyes, and imagined it activating, just as Leviathan had said. Sure enough, with a faint flicker of light, it activated, a swirling membrane filling the void in the frame.

Well that was easy.

She whistled Ablazed Glory over. “There’s our way out.”

“You had no idea that would be here.”

“No,” Penumbra admitted, “but it is, and so I’ll take it and pretend I had it planned.”

Ablazed Glory took one last look out into the Heart of Sorrow. “Fucking hate this place,” she declared as she turned and marched triumphantly into the portal, “glad to leave.”

Penumbra, meanwhile, was not so sure her companion’s words expressed her feelings fully. Regardless, she embraced them. “Yeah,” she said, stepping through the portal’s membrane to be met with the much kinder Entropy’s Pinnacle.

Her lungs instantly filled with a kinder air, her eyes with light she knew was actually real and her ears with sounds other than speech and wind.

“Penumbra,” Ablazed Glory shouted from the platform the Retaliator had landed on, “we’re leaving, I need a coffee and a smoke, preferably somewhere that isn’t hell. And when I say coffee I mean whiskey, a lot of it, I’m talking a good half a litre at least.”

As she trotted towards the ship, Penumbra shouted back, “you couldn’t do half a litre, you’d be out cold after one glass.”

Even at a distance she could see Ablazed Glory squinting. “Go on then, try me, you won’t.”

Penumbra laughed, perhaps she would, after all.