As Axel tried to flex even a muscle and command his body but it began to move on its own. First, he moved into the room fully releasing his halberd as he knelt on the broken chunks of the wall as Lyra finished moving next to the tall man with a raspy voice. Her body then turned its back on the tall shadowy man, and Axel could see the fear in her dilated eyes, which seemed to be the only thing she had control of. Aria then released her knife and moved next to Axel, kneeling down and facing Lyra.
Axel noticed that this room was one of the larger suites of the inn having even a small dining area with a two-person table and chairs. The bed, now empty was in a mess set against the right corner of the room while there was a large space between the wall and door. The room that would have had several bunks was used to give the feeling of luxury to the owner. The room held nothing but slight moonlight coming in from the window to give it any illumination.
Besides the man Axel threw into the room there were two others that held Adept power signs watching from the side of the room. Axel could not tell much about them as they were wearing dark clothing in a dark room concealing their details from his eyes. The attacker that was thrown in was still lying on the floor unmoving, so Axel hoped that he either killed the person or they were knocked out. Axel then noticed movement from the raspy man as he started to move.
The raspy tall man walked forward to the bed and retrieved the knife that Aria had dropped, only to return to his position and held it out to Lyra by the hilt. Lyra reached out and took the knife while he looked between Aria and Axel slowly several times before speaking again. A white-toothed smile appears in the shadows that hide his face.
“Well, Lyra, it is not every time I personally come and pick up someone, but your little group has hurt several of my operations teams, and I really did not have another available so here I am,” he said in his raspy voice. Axel could see gleaming white teeth shining out of the shadow of his hood but besides his eyes, he could not see any other features. “I normally leave loved ones to finish my training on, but since we have a spare that you deeply care for, who should die? Your new lover or your childhood friend?”
The man looked over at Axel and chuckled before adding, “I tried to make it easier on her by having my man kill you in your room Axel, but I guess he needs more training. So, I do want to thank you for helping to show me the deficiencies in my people's training through this mission.”
As Axel listened to whoever this man was, he screamed and raged in his mind, but nothing was happening. He could access his journal and saw from his medical data that there was strange neuron activity, but that did little for him right now. The worst part was seeing the tears roll down Lyra’s face while her face was in a slight smile, almost showing her look of joy if you could ignore her eyes.
Axel couldn’t even seem to access his gravity power as it was not responding to his mental commands, but he seemed to still be using core power with each attempt. Axel began to hear the man urge Lyra to pick as time was winding down, and she did not want him to pick as it would be the one that hurt the most. Axel pushed the sound of the man's voice out and focused inward, deciding to make a gamble.
---
Axel’s inner palace seemed to be shaking in a storm, constantly attacked by bolts of black lightning against a clear sky while rains of purple flames assaulted as if it was rain in a storm. Sitting in its cage, with another small crack at the bottom, was the crimson entity watching the show and critiquing it with bored amusement.
“Well, someone seems angry, but why use that lightning? It would be so much better to use tongues of pink flame to contrast the hellfire rain. Then the waste of energy on someone so much weaker but still not locking them out of a mental world? Really?” the lanky faceless being complained.
As Axel looked at it, he hesitated before saying, “Is there anything you can do about this?”
“Not really,” the being shrugged long shoulders. “If I was in my original body, he would be fleeing in terror, but that is gone, my power is chained, and you are too weak to take the power to even fight him for a few moments, even if I burnt myself for the attempt.”
“Can you free me from the control at least?” Axel asked, desperation filling him as though he already guessed the answer.
“You could free yourself at any time, and you know it, but you fear my cage weakening.” The entity turned its almost smooth face to him. “This is why I did my best to convince you to chain yourself to me. After seeing this terrible work in your mind, I knew that they were not done with you. I even co-opted the dreams he sent to weaken your will to try.”
Axel did not believe it for now and decided to take a risk while returning to his body from his inner mind.
---
Nothing much had changed but Lyra shaking her head as the man kept on asking her to kill either Aria or Axel. With each question, Lyra seemed to have taken a step closer to them. At this point, Lyra was only about five steps away, with the hand holding the knife steady as a rock. Axel quickly accessed his system and began to try to override Berserker but received a warning.
Power locked due to danger to the user by Admin Hope. Contacting Admin….
“Well, if you cannot choose, why don’t I pick for you?” the raspy-voiced man said with a disappointed sigh Axel could have heard from his mother when he didn’t complete a chore on time. “Since it is such a new love, why don’t we choose Aria? This way, you can reflect on the could-have-beens during your training.”
As Lyra’s body pulled back and moved to lunge, time slowed to a crawl, but this was not from the stress. Axel saw the embodiment of the Goddess appear in the room. She stood at a height of just under five feet, rather short for one of the people, with her dress of white flames swirling around her white body as the lines of energy moved through circuits all over any of her exposed flesh.
“I see your activation of your protocore power is an emergency,” the Goddess said in a calm monotone voice, not the one that Axel was used to but more unnatural than before. “Assessing situation… Completed…”
“I find that even with the activation of your protocore, you have less than a four percent chance of surviving this as there is an Expert and two enemy Adepts in the room,” the Goddess said while returning to her cold but more human voice. “My data does suggest that you could free yourself from control as your power source comes from a higher-tiered being and contains mental protection abilities, but you will only be able to slightly wound your attacker.”
Axel could not move to speak this time like the others, as he was still locked in his body, and sent a thought to send a journal entry. “Can I save them with that power?”
The Goddess tilted her head in thought for a moment then shook it. “All models show that you die, Aria dies, you save Aria but Lyra is taken and you die, or your capture happens to then suffer the same fate with Lyra, with Aria being killed later by one of you.”
Axel cursed in his mind, fighting despair before calming down and sending, “Is there nothing I can do?”
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“Axel, you are human and one of the children that survived the death of their home to get here. The chance of the people making it here to this point in life is less than .000001% based on all data the best minds before the exodus could calculate,” the Goddess said with a smile, her voice losing the coldness and taking a more animated state. “All you can do is what you are able and what you can push past your limits to get that bit more. I will unlock your protocore, but please be careful as the more corruption you gain, the harder it will be for you later down the line.”
Axel then felt power begin to flood his system, but a surprise appeared a moment later as a very tall and lanky entity with no face appeared in the air next to the Goddess. It stood a good eight feet tall as it stretched out its arms that seemed to reach the floor even as its emaciated limbs began to fill with muscles. Its faceless head moved around the room as if taking it in, and then it locked its head in the direction of the Goddess as it finished its scan of the room.
“Well, this is a surprise,” the crimson said with happiness in its voice. “You must be what Axel calls the Goddess. You look just like his memories show and are likely the only one who can loosen my bindings even this much. What a mess this is.”
The crimson entity then started to change and turned into the form of the Goddess, but instead of white flames, its dress was a display of black. Its skin was still white, but instead of the blue lines of power, it was covered in red.
“This should be much more appealing to my host and makes a great symmetry for his fate,” the Goddess’s voice came from its lips but in a huskier tone that seemed to hold more meaning in it than Axel had time to process at the moment.
“Desist from taking that form,” the Goddess said, and pain entered Axel’s body around his core, causing him to want to scream in pain but stop shortly after when she noticed what was happening.
“Now, now, now,” the crimson said with a smile and waved its finger at the Goddess. “You hurt my host if you want to punish me, and he does not have the time or energy for that if that ever-so-slowly moving knife is going where I assume it is.”
The Goddess just stared at the crimson for a moment before looking at Axel and saying, “I will only allow its activity for a short time to limit its damage to you, so hurry as you would be better dead than falling to its corruption.”
The Goddess then began to vanish, and before time sped up, the crimson looked to Axel, and winked while saying, “I know you will do me proud and last at least twenty seconds.”
Time then began to speed up again, and Axel felt control wash over his body. His mind cleared, and he moved with each hand doing a task. His left hand grabbed his halberd, followed a split second later by launching to catch the very telegraphed knife attack with his right hand. Axel had no time and caught the knife through his hand while with every fiber of his being threw his halberd while linking it with the strongest gravity anchor he could.
The halberd flew straight, leaving a boom in its wake as it seemed to land on target, and the raspy man flew out the side of the building leaving a large hole in the wall where a window was. Axel’s left arm was useless as everything in it was shattered so he then turned to yell at Aria to flee, but she was still in her kneeling position unmoving but for her eyes, and he could feel Lyra was still trying to push the knife through his hand to kill Aria. Axel could feel panic on the edge of his mental state when a shadow changed form allowing for the cloaked man to reappear holding Axel’s halberd by the handle just barely with the tip piercing his shoulder causing blood to run down his clothing.
“Well, I had heard about your powers but who knew it could break my mental hold on you.” The man then grabbed the head of the weapon and shattered the axe followed by snapping the shaft with both hands. “I can say I was not expecting that, and you have likely alerted the patrols that something is happening here.”
The man made a dramatic gesture and looked around the lightless room seeming to be looking for something.
“Jareth, or are you calling yourself something else now? I assume you are here and you are still so cold, I spent so much time making the girl walk slowly to kill her lover to see if you would save your young friends, but well, I can't play around anymore,” the man calmly stated to the room, receiving no reply but seeming not to expect one. “I am now on a much shorter time frame. I will now kill young Axel and take my leave with my prize.”
Axel could not move his hand, or Aria would get a knife to the heart, so he did the next best thing and pulled Lyra in, taking the knife to his lower gut and then slicing through his hand to free it from the knife so he could wrap his good arm around Lyra. But before he could complete this action, he received a sidekick from one of the three Adepts in the room.
This sent Axel flying across the room to the corner that held the bed. This broke all of his ribs, and he reflexively turned to take all the force, so Lyra was safe as he smashed into the bed turning it into splinters and ending up against the wall. Axel could still see that the person who attacked him was slowly lowering their leg and walking slowly closing in on him.
Axel knowing that time was not on his side then moved from the wall, ignoring his injuries, to grab Aria with his shattered left arm, trying to flee still as he noticed that two of the adepts were closing in on him even as he tore his legs apart to move faster. His only hope was to grab Aria and jump to the side back into his room and try for a getaway from there.
After his first step, he was attacked by precis jets of water that only just missed as he had thrown all his strength into moving but would have taken out his leg to the knee. Then on his second step the one that would have slowed the run, the ground flash froze to lock him in place but the power in his movement was too much for the ice and it shattered but left him with little traction even a gravity anchor would not help. Axel lost his footing and began to slide the last few feet.
As Axel slid, he snagged Aria with his damaged arm and then changed the slide's direction to the hole he made when he threw the halberd at the leader with a gravity anchor as making it outside through that seemed the best option. Axel was starting to feel hope that he would be able to get everyone out when he felt a piercing pain and his body suddenly stopped. Axel’s mind grayed out for a moment, and when his senses returned, he saw the broken shaft of his halberd through his chest, locking him on the floor just before the hole in the wall.
The handle missed his heart by less than an inch, but his upper chest was incredibly damaged, making even breathing hard as Axel could not see a ribe or even place on his spine uninjured at this time. Axel used what energy he could to turn his head, looking for his companions. Both Aria and Lyra were laying there unmoving just off the side of the hole, and Axel would have thought they were dead if not for the fact that he could see their eyes moving in panic.
“Well, that was a show for sure,” the raspy voice said with laughter in his voice from a location Axel could not see. “You gave me a great show, Axel! Well, Lyra, since Axel here seems to have injured himself so badly, I guess I won't make you kill your new lover. You can see as Axel bleeds out from his heart being pierced, as even templet regeneration will not save him before his core runs out and he dies though it really does not matter I guess.”
The man then moved into Axel’s sight, walking through a moonbeam, as he reached a hand down to give Lyra a hand up. Lyra raised her hand and took his, but at this moment, the last Adept in the room appeared out of a shadow as a shaft of moonlight rolled over them as clouds must have moved in the sky. As Axel saw this, he was reminded of the Shadow Fang from what felt like a lifetime ago for the man was one with the shadow he was in. The man reached out and attempted to grab the outstretched arm with a bare webbed hand, and Axel could see the moment when he touched the raspy man, and the first look of concern appeared in the raspy man’s eyes.
The man in the shadows was then assaulted by a spear of ice and a pinky-thin stream of water, making them release and dodge out of the way. The third party, for lack of a better term from Axel, vanished into the darkness again with a flip leaving a wake of cut wall and knife-like ice in his wake. While the room was only so large, there were now several holes in the walls that he could have jumped through in his retreat. The raspy man coughed up a large clot of blood and picked up Lyra with a jerk seeming to lose his mirth in the process.
“That was much closer than last time, Jareth, but you did not get me again. What would your wife think of how poorly you have tried to avenge her.” The man laughed, though Axel could not hear the glee he held earlier in a hoarse voice before looking to the other two adepts and said, “Time is up as I can feel several powers converging on me, and I need to go, but please know Jareth that I will keep all of them safely until they can kill you. Axel, know that I will take care of Lyra well in your passing and make her live up to the potential she holds. She can then finish her training by killing her lover over there, the whore-like species that hers is to truly be what she needs to be.”
With that, the two adepts walked into Axel’s view, and before they were swallowed up by a shadow, each pulled off a mask to reveal Pearl and Larimar who looked at Axel with cold eyes before they, Lyra, and the man vanished. Axel’s last sight before his vision blurred was seeing Lyra’s tear-stricken face locked in a gentle smile, swallowed by shadows.