Amentia

Chapter 60 - No more

In front of them was a monster. There was no other word for it. Almost as tall as the mountains stood a shadowy figure, deeper than any night sky and with a pull stronger than any black hole. It emitted a low and constant pulse that reverberated in the air and on the mountain stone, imbuing any living creature nearby with the weight of itself. Like gravity, it pulled them down, distorting their senses, making reality blurry. It was no longer thin smoke or underground slime that slithered around. It was solid as the mountains, as the very ground upon which it walked its slow and heavy steps. It was sorrow, rage, desolation, shame, fear, despair, hatred and regret. It was evil itself. It was death.

And it wasn't alone.

A battle was underway. A second, much smaller figure stood its ground in front of the dark giant, almost imperceptible had it not been for the loud grunts it let out as it struggled against the giant hand that pushed it back. It was tiny in comparison to its enemy —not much taller than the five human girls who were watching the scene frozen at the invisible door that had just opened up for them—, and its appearance was practically the exact opposite to the dark giant. Instead of a blackness that covered its entire body, this small figure was transparent: its edges were unperceivable and its shape would've been impossible to determine if it wasn't for the veins that ran through the inside of its body from head to toe. Before it was shattered, there used to be a tall glass statue on the entrance of the Market Plaza that looked exactly like this.

If Nati hadn't already been sitting on the ground, she certainly would've lost her balance. It's not every day that you see a God in the flesh, especially one you'd assumed wasn't even real until then.

Aurora's tiny figure was holding a wooden staff between her and the giant's hand. The staff emitted a soft white light at the tip and created an energy field around her to keep the monster at bay. But the Goddess' feet slid back on the dirt, unable to sustain the giant's incredible force, and a moment later she was propelled backwards until her back hit the mountains, leaving a new indentation in the already heavily cracked rock.

When she fell down to the ground, she didn't get back up right away, letting out moans of pain that seemed to come from a much deeper place than a simple physical injury. She dropped her staff to hold her head with her hands, bending forward and crying out in anger and frustration.

As the monster started reaching its enormous black hand towards her again, Aurora lifted her head panting and growling, picked up the staff, and charged at the monster. The glowing shield formed again as the opposite energies of the Goddess and the dark giant clashed against each other, like sparks flying between two metal swords. But it was hopeless: Aurora was thrown back again, landing awkwardly on the ground and having to curl into a ball to keep away the emotional pain that came with touching the surface of evil itself. But she kept trying, over and over again. Each time the giant moved its hand to attack her, she swung her staff and faced the monster's heavy influence head on.

In the midst of this, a spine-chilling scream filled the air, turning all heads towards it, including the Goddess herself, who stopped mid-run and acknowledged the girls' presence for the first time.

"How did you get in here?!" she asked, her soft but rich voice traveling through the air in echoes, at the same time that a creature appeared before the five humans seemingly out of nowhere.

It was a tall and slim figure that the girls were all-too familiar with and would've preferred to never see again. All of them except Nina got up from the ground and retreated immediately as they saw Nina's human-moth hybrid open its wings to release the golden dust that clouded the mind of anyone near enough to breathe it.

Nina screamed again and began crawling backwards on the ground as fast as she could, whimpering and unable to look away from the creature's black eyes, until she reached the invisible wall that hid the scene from the rest of the world. She kept trying to scuttle away despite the barrier behind her as the moth began walking towards her with the same slow step that her mother had when she was about to scold her.