Infinite Realm: Monsters & Legends

Interlude - Freedom

Eratemus watched the young Ranker stumble toward him, his hand reaching out. He didn’t know how he had escaped Hastur’s mental prison, and there was no time to wonder. They had been entrapped the moment they stepped through the portal from the Ethereal Realm. The others had all fallen under Hastur’s mental attack within seconds of arrival. The countermeasures that Eratemus gave them were not enough, not when he couldn’t bolster them. He had underestimated just how powerful of a mental attack they would suffer. He had keyed it for the low intensity, but constantly building attacks, not one massive strike.

As the others succumbed to the mental attacks, black tendrils had ripped out of the ground, physically restraining him and the others, silencing his powers. His undead fought for a bit, but in the end, they had been ambushed. His undead destroyed, so much wealth and preparation, worth nothing in the end. The Dome Leader had taken them all to the center of the city, tendrils that stretched across the city carrying them. Hastur had never moved from his throne, and Eratemus had only seen a glimpse of him sitting. He did understand what the Dome Leader was doing, he was converting the others to taken, and he kept Eratemus imprisoned. His vessel had mental wards inscribed on its skull, every part of his body had protections, not even the Dome Leader could get through. Eratemus had wished that the Dome Leader made the mistake of trying to kill him, but somehow Hastur knew, or suspected. In case of the vessel’s destruction, his soul would be ripped back to his home, protected in the transit, with the knowledge of what had happened. By keeping him imprisoned, the Dome Leader had neutralized him as a threat. He was trapped inside the vessel, unable to move his soul out on his own.

Their imprisonment happened three days ago, and Eratemus had spent that time watching, listening. There had been no signs of any monsters in the city, nothing but silence and the Dome Leader sitting on his throne. Something was wrong, he just had no idea what. There should be monsters here, generals at least. There were none.

Eratemus kept his eyes on Zach. Whatever the Dome Leader had put him through had taken its toll, he was obviously confused, his eyes wild and changing focus as if he was trying to understand everything around himself. He had asked him if he was real, and that worried Eratemus, the gravity of what he had to have gone through to not be sure… But, he was free, and now there was hope.

Then, there was another thing, Zach’s willpower was billowing around him, almost a physical thing. The air around his body was twitching as if struggling to understand what he wanted from it. Eratemus felt it, even through the silencing effects of the tendrils gripping him tightly, which… shouldn’t be possible.

And then the tendrils were broken apart, and Eratemus frowned. Zach shouldn’t have any skill like what he just used. For a moment he worried that he had succumbed to the Dome Leader’s mental powers as well, that he just didn’t realize it, but then he pushed that thought out of his head. His formations would not be easily overcome, and certainly not without him noticing.

Zach stood there, his eyes now studying the sky. He seemed as if he had no care in the world, as if he was content to look around and explore everything that surrounded him.

“The others,” Eratemus whispered. “Quickly now.”

He looked around at the other prisoners, then he moved. His willpower extended to all of them and Eratemus saw the tendrils starting to crack under pressure. He focused on himself, without the tendrils sapping his power and disabling his items, he reached into his storage ring and pulled out formation plates. He threw them around, their position, and immediately they activated, creating a barrier that surrounded them and shielded them.

Next, he pulled out a blank plate and his engraving tools.

He focused his mind and with perfect precision activated his skill; |Perfect Engraving: My Touch, Memory of Opus|. The formation came into being, his deft movements carving into the plate. Once finished, he placed a hand on it, activating it and feeding it his Qi. He pushed, as much as he could, urging it to go faster, emptying more than half of his core. Soul Qi went in, charging the formation. He couldn’t afford to miscalculate, to come up short. He was weakening himself for the fight, but if he didn’t… there would be no fight at all. He looked up, seeing that the others were about to be free. He stopped the flow of his Qi then used his |Greater Mind Link| to touch every mind around him, the formation pulsed beneath his palm attaching itself to the formations on the amulets.

With one big exertion of will and power, he triggered the formation.

It was a brute thing, but he had no time for anything else. The amulets around their necks exploded with light, and he channeled the attack on the mind prison through his own mind. It struck at their prisons, and broke through from the other side, freeing them all. He wrapped a bubble around their minds, protecting them from further attacks. It wouldn’t last for long, but hopefully, just long enough.

The others started to wake, slowly, their eyes fluttering open. Looking around in confusion.

And then, Hastur, the King in Yellow stood up from his throne.

Naha

Her eyes opened as she felt her body drop to the ground. She caught herself on the ground, confused, her mind foggy. She felt as if she had just woken from a deep slumber, her mind filled with fading memories of a dream. Pieces of it were flashing before her eyes, but she couldn’t focus on them, couldn’t remember them.

She shook her head as she got a handle on herself and remembered the last thing she did before waking up. They had come to attack the Dome Leader, entered his city and then… Something happened, if the state of her mind was anything to go by, they had suffered a mental attack. She raised her eyes and saw Zach standing above her, his eyes looking down at him with no recognition in them. The others were around them, each in the same state as she was.

“Zach? What happened?” She asked him.

His eyes had no recognition in them. Her blood froze as he leaned down, picked up her face in his hand, holding her chin and looked at her eyes.

“You know me?” He whispered. Then he reached out with his other hand and traced a line down her face, from brow, the bridge of her nose, and over her lips with two of his fingers. Then he tilted his head. “Naha, yes. Are you real?”

Her head struggled to come up with the right words, with any words really, to answer him. She opened her mouth to speak, but then the ground shook.

She looked around and saw tendrils smashing at the glowing sphere of light that surrounded them. Beyond, through the wild swinging of the tendrils, she saw a figure dressed in yellow.

Selia

She woke up slowly, the dream fleeing before the waking world. Her body struck the ground, but she could barely care. Her heart ached. She felt a sense of… loss, but she didn’t know why. The bond inside her head mirrored her feelings, intertwined so deeply that she could barely tell where she started and where he ended.

“Ryun? What…”

“I… I don’t know,” Ryun sent back to her. She looked around, finding him nearby on his knees looking at her. Something intruded, a sound, and both of them looked away at the same time, saw a glowing barrier and tendrils trying to get through. “The Dome Leader,” he said.

It came back to her, they had come to kill Hastur, had entered the city. Then… she couldn’t remember how they got here. Her head was a mess, pieces of a dream that she couldn’t quite recall were stuck inside her mind. Fleeting, getting fainter with every moment that clarity rose to the surface. But the emotions remained, something lost.

She turned around, saw Erdania next to her and forced herself to move.

She stood up and walked over to her, helping her stand. She felt drained, and felt the same from Ryun.

“Selia? What..?”

“I don’t know, we had to have been attacked when we came into the city. Put under a mental attack,” Selia paused as the barrier around them shook. And then it broke, tendrils heading for them. She cycled her Qi, but already knew that it was coming too slow. She was sluggish, her power barely able to keep up.

Then, another barrier came into place, just in time.

A moment later, a voice spoke. The light of the amulet around her neck intensified, and then something slammed into her mind making her scream in agony.

Eratemus

The Dome Leader, Hastur, the King in Yellow, walked toward them as tendrils that had exploded out of the ground tried to get through his formation. Hastur wore a tattered yellow robe, filled with holes, some that had been stitched together, others not. He was limping, half of the wooden mask that hid his face was cracked. He did not look anything like what Eratemus had imagined.

The others were in the process of waking up, but they wouldn’t be ready. He could see. He tried to prepare his domain, but the tendrils were too fast, too powerful. They broke through his barrier, but Eratemus threw down another, buying them more time. And then a voice thundered.

“No. You are mine.”

A wave of Mind Essence left Hastur and smashed into the others, he felt it through the amulets he was still connected to. The others weren’t ready, and even with what he had done, the defenses weren’t going to be enough. He was going to break into their minds again and take them. And Eratemus couldn’t let that happen. He saw his amulets glowing, everyone fall to the ground as their minds were attacked again, only Zacharia remained standing, and he just looked around almost as if he was confused by the struggle of everyone else.

Eratemus roared, all of his will, all of his Qi, flowing out of him and through the formation still in his hand. All that he had went, into the amulets. He felt the attack, the power of it. The will that surpassed anything that he had ever felt before.

It smashed into them, into him. He struggled, his conduits burned as he inscribed, adapting the formation in his hand, changing it. Faster than he ever had before, he crafted. Still, he was too slow; an amulet cracked and burst into pieces, followed by another. Eratemus focused his will, improving on his design on the fly, faster and faster. Another amulet shattered, and then he was done. A great work, the greatest he had ever wrought. It would not last, they won’t have much time. But it was all that he could do, and it took all that he had. He only hoped that it was enough.

Ryun

He shook his head, trying to dispel the dizziness. His mind was fuzzy, as if he had been asleep for a long time, and had been woken up from a deep dream state. Selia felt the same.

He was looking around, seeing that others had suffered the same thing. Eratemus and Zach were the only ones standing and he could see the lines of power stretching from the undead to each of them, touching the amulets around their necks.

Zach was… Ryun couldn’t explain it. The Essence around him was different. As if it was moving with his body, as if the reality itself feared him, feared even touching him. Ryun felt a powerful will, just simmering beneath the surface.

His study was interrupted by the tendril attacks breaking through, a second barrier springing into place to protect them. The Dome Leader, Hastur, stood outside of it, and then he spoke.

The attack hit Ryun like a mountain. He felt the pressure on his mind, and knew that that will could crush him, that it wanted to take all that he was, and he knew that it was going to succeed.

And then something was fighting it, helping Ryun defend. His chest burned, but he couldn’t focus on that, he could only sit and wait as a battle was fought for his mind. It felt like an eternity of struggle, and then… like a blazing white sun, something snapped into place around his mind, a shield that protected his mind.

Ryun stumbled, then opened his eyes, following the glowing line of Essence that had attached itself to his amulet and his body. He found Eratemus, the undead body smoldering as if it burnt from the inside, not with fire, but something else, Death and Soul Qi. He saw a bubble snap into place around something as the body fell, a sphere that ensnared a soul. And then Essence flashed and the soul and its protective shell were gone.

Ryun raised his head, looked around and saw the others around him all on their knees, and beyond them—Hastur, the King in Yellow.

Light glared from behind his cracked mask, he raised his hand and pointed at them, then spoke.

“Kill them.”

Three figures rose, and turned their eyes on everyone else.