Sis lies on the ground, close to his final breath. Cindy aims her palm at him to finish the job. But then, seething fme towards her which prompts herself to back away. Anya, clenches her fist as fming aura emits, trying to hold her ground. Parts of her body are fking away as her fming aura forming a shape. A tail and long ears. Her eyes become feline as her fingernails become cws. More tails are formed out of Anya’s aura, and one of them wipe the water off Sis’s head, allowing him to breathe.
*Gasp*
[Sis]: “Haa… Haa…”
Cindy grabs the sword and that’s when Anya halts her transformation and charges towards her. Cindy then makes a hand sign before shouting at Anya.
[Cindy]: “Phantasmagoria!”
A powerful psionic energy invisible to the naked eye, struck Anya’s head.
Phantasmagoria. One of Sio’s Psionic abilities before she loses her powers, it allows for one to send a direct mental attack towards a target and damaging them, if hits, it guaranteed for the target to be stunned for half a minute if they don’t have a resistance to it. It creates mental illusion that brings about their greatest fear. Unfortunately, for her, she is not immune to it. Cindy took the opportunity to fly towards the entrance.
[Sis]: “C-Cindy! I-I won’t let you!”
He makes chase and she manages to exit to the door, that’s when he speeds up trying to reach her before she makes her escape.
[Sis]: “Why, Cindy. Whyyyyyyyyy!”
Suddenly a flood of water struck them both, pinning them to the wall for before it all dissipates. Sis with all his might quickly tries to get up to find out what’s going on, he sees Cindy with her forearm resting on a pilr, trail of blood behind her. Eyes widened of horror, her hand trembling as she tries to lift it up to make a hand sign. When Sis looks over his shoulder, he sees another Cindy cracking her neck as she grabs the sword Sunder.
[Cindy-Sunder]: “Revival magic isn’t all that uncommon, but I must admit, I didn’t expect that you would be able to recover from that.”
[Wounded Cindy]: “Bell Tolls.”
A rge golden white clock hovering right behind her back.
[Cindy-Sunder]: “A chronomancy as well, heheh,” gncing at Anya, “And as though it would seem that the young dy is about to snapped back to reality. How inconvenient.”
[Sis]: “Wh-Who, who are you.”
[Cindy-Sunder]: “And why would I answer you? An ant whose sole purpose is to be a fodder for others to—.”
[Wounded Cindy]: “Tempest Spiral!”
Turbulent wind under the Sunder’s feet, she grunts as violent wind about to crush her from all surrounding, but then she sets her eyes on the wounded Cindy.
[Cindy-Sunder]: “What a nuisance.”
She teleports behind her and Sis’s eyes widened, his heart dropped and his feet moves by themselves to save the wounded Cindy as the other struck her chest with the sword.
[Wounded Cindy]: “Haaargh?!”
[Sis]: “No! Cindy!”
Unlike Sunder where anything just goes through, her chest bleeds.
[Cindy-Sunder]: “I don’t get why they keep a useless pet like you.”
She scratches Wounded Cindy’s face and, revealing part of it when the cloth is torn.
[Sis]: “Hraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Sunder sees the incoming strike and teleports. Appearing right above him as she delivers a plunge, breaking his ribs.
*Boom*
[Cindy-Sunder]: “Off you go with her.”
Suddenly, a tempest barrage, making her unable to strike as she is forced to back away. An armored elemental entity, the ruler of the Storm Guard Realm, Xander. But his body is cloaked with a raging thunder. With a swipe of his hand, violent lightning strike. However, it simply passes through Cindy without the slightest of it touching her. Although, she does make an effort to dodge, the attack is simply too fast for her to predict. He flies towards her and she teleported to the window up in the ceiling, creating a wormhole and tosses the sword to it.
Anya breaks out of the nightmare and breaks out of the entrance to the treasury and found both Cindy and Sis on the ground, but there’s another Cindy on the ceiling.
[Cindy]: “Haaaa… come now. I expect an honorary fight, but two against one?”
[Xander]: “Thieves like you have honor?”
[Cindy]: “This body have. Aaaaahahahahahaha!”
Xander sends a thunder strikes at her but again, it passes through her body.
[Xander]: “?”
[Cindy]: “Ohh, cheeky. Well, it’s not the time yet, but we’ll meet again soon enough.”
[Cindy]: “Heheheheh.”
She disappears into the wormhole, and Xander is too te to reach it. A turbulent wind all around him, but he remembers something. Below him is another Cindy dragging herself to Sis who is now unconscious, and putting her hand on his back. The giant clock on her back, the bell tolls. Golden white energy surges from it and into Sis, healing both him and herself before it disappears.
Anya undoes her transformation and approaches them but Xander got to them first. He sees the healing effect that her ability does and Sis opens his eyes with a gasp.
[Sis]: “Haa haa… wh-what just… Cind—.”
He sees part of her face. Charred, disturbingly wounded.”
[Cindy]: “D-Don’t look at me!”
Hiding her face as she’s shaken horribly.
[Cindy]: “D-Don’t… don’t…”
[Xander]: “Get up, the both of you. The intruder has stolen the artifact belonging to our lord. We have to retrieve it before it’s too te.”
[Anya]: “Before that, Xander. There’s some expining you need to do…”
[Anya]: “Sis.”
Xander and Anya’s attention lies solely on him.
[Sis]: “Huh? I-I don’t….”
[Anya]: “The treasury is housed by numerous barriers to protect it, even Sunder as well cannot be wielded just by anyone. You were the only one who guarded the treasury when I arrived. There’s no way that the intruder can enter if you don’t give her the access.”
[Sis]: “What? Are you saying I’m— no, no way I’d let that happen. Xander, please. I was just there. I never went to the treasury to—.”
[Xander]: “Enough, Sis.”
Xander turns his attention to the groveling mage, Cindy who is struggling to bandage her face, and there he notices that in one of Cindy’s fingers lies a ring of which he gave not too long ago. Xander takes out the same cloth from his dimensional storage and assist her in wrapping her face fully. He also notices the doll at the top of her bandages, and the ck of it on the intruder.
[Xander]: “Now, recall what happened. You were supposed to rest.”
[Cindy]: “Haa… Haa… Haa…”
[Xander]: “Cindy.”
[Cindy]: “Huh? Ahh, yes. Uhh, yes. My lord, forgive me. I…”
[Xander]: “Calm yourself. Now stand.”
Shaken, he assisted her in getting up. Anya notices the hole in Cindy’s chest. Although patched up, it still not healed fully.
[Anya]: “Should I call Lyra, Xander?”
[Xander]: “In a moment.”
[Xander]: “Now, Cindy. Tell us what happened?”
[Cindy]: “Yes. Yes. I was in my room and when she’s there. She did a-all sorts of things, I don’t know… b-but worse sh-she took my form and I was there…”
Xander sees the blood trails and decided to follow that, now he knows what it came from.
[Xander]: “Who is it?”
[Cindy]: “She-she had my face… before I…”
[Xander]: “Cindy. Who is it?”
Her head tilts up towards Xander.
[Cindy]: “Abyss…”
Anya’s eyes widened.
[Anya]: “What did you say?”
[Cindy]: “She called herself… Mage of the Abyss.”
Lightning strikes as the barrier around the city is lifted. Everyone can feel it with the sudden change of temperature and droplets of rain hitting their skin. Sis and Xander turns to Anya.
[Anya]: “The invaders…”
On the outskirts of the city lies Cindy with the Sunder sword absorbing the st of the barrier before teleporting away to a certain part of the forest where an orb is buried. With a stomp, that orb levitates and she simply grabs it.
[Cindy]: “It is done.”
Suddenly, it brings forth a massive surge of energy into the sky. That energy gathers in one spot where it converges into three different points. Portals appeared where demons and undead are visible from the other side. But there’s also one smaller portal appearing in front of her. Coming out from the other side is a tall bck-haired woman with an orange eye while the other is a slime that takes an appearance of Sio.
{Replica, Mage of the Abyss / Rank: Ethereal / Approximate Level: 10000+ / Human}
{Goog, Death’s Mother / Rank: Ethereal / Approximate Level: 10000+ / Death Slime}
[Replica]: “Never thought you’d take this long to accomplish the job. I guess you weren’t amount to much after all.”
[Goog]: “Hm?”
They stand in the presence of Cindy. However, something feels somewhat amiss. Replica narrows her eyes down to a slit, “This power…”
[Goog]: “Impossible.”
A slight fear in her eyes. Cindy tilts her head as she slowly pys with the leave under her sword, poking it and caressing it, and the two are looking at that sword, yet nervously. As if, they’re anticipating the unexpected, and Cindy just throw the sword at their feet. She teleports in front of her. An immense shudder.
[Goog]: “…”
[Cindy]: “Go on, what’re you looking at it for? Just take it. That’s what you sent me here for, isn’t it?”
Looking down at her, she knows it perfectly well what Goog must do, and she simply does it. Lowering her upper body to grab the sword, as if she’s kneeling before Cindy. Replica gnces at the humiliating pose that Goog is doing in that form and it disgusted her, but lessen when seeing Cindy, all satisfied with a grin behind that bandage.
[Replica]: “What happened to the Traveler?”
Tilting her head to a gnce. The aforementioned traveler is now grabbing several staves from her collection and giving one to the dy with long ears.
[Cindy]: “Thank you, miss Lyra.”
[Lyra]: “Fufu, I’ll accept this, but know that I’m just gd you’re okay.”
[Cindy]: “Mm.”
She continues her preparation.
[Lyra]: “…”
[Lyra]: “Immortal as you may be, all these suffering you’ve been through are real. Have you truly never considered leaving, Cindy?”
[Cindy]: “I would if I could. It would’ve been easier if I’m never immortal.”
[Lyra]: “Don’t say that. There’s a lot for you to see out there.”
[Cindy]: “I’ve seen enough.”
She turns to see her.
[Cindy]: “That thing took my form. I’ll get the sword back, and… fix this.”
[Lyra]: “Cindy…”
Suddenly, a trumpet blown from the outside. A mass signal to all in the vicinity, and Cindy quickly looks to her window to see. Many are gathering and if she looks to the sky, there lies three massive portals that keeps leaking something out. She cannot see it, but there’s countless number of undead free falling from those portals.
[Cindy]: “What’s happening?”
[Lyra]: “An emergency, let’s go.”
She follows Lyra out of the room. Within the hall of the castle, chaos brewed as preparation is being made. People walking back and forth, bringing weapons, armors, and items of all kinds. The leader of this group, Xander, is also making his own preparation by creating several elemental creatures. Him, Sis, Anya, and one other person, a man of mechanical nature with limbs of gold and steaming back are present. The tter took a notice of Lyra and Cindy.
[Cindy]: “Lord Rhys.”
{Rhys, Rune Master / Rank: Eternal / Approximate Level: 6000+ / Dwarven Atrophy}
[Rhys]: “You were right, mage. It seems that nothing is ever unbreakable. With the barrier destroyed, we are now exposed to the storm of this realm. We must deal with the invaders as soon as possible and erect another one. And we will have answers of how they did it.”
[Cindy]: “There seems to be many missing from our lineup. Are the invaders does not merit for us to go at them at full force? After a firsthand experience with one of the invaders, I’d say we cannot afford NOT to give it our all, my lord.”
[Xander]: “We will, Cindy.”
[Xander]: “I expected Era to station herself here in the castle, but the elf is now missing and I can’t let Dorian and Magnus to leave their assigned job. No, we’ll have to do this ourselves.”
[Cindy]: “B-But what about Mage of the Abyss? She has a great treasure, dy Lerusagon’s treasure. Once she finds out what she can do with Sunder…”
[Xander]: “Be that as it may, Sunder is not the only treasure Lerusagon has graced us.”
With a widened eye, Cindy bear witness upon a scythe that constantly emits the opposite kind of energy that Sunder emits, not a shining bright light, but a deep dark one.
