Falling into the Abyss

Editor: Kat, Proofreader: Yuzu

After rushing out of the lavender atmosphere of the Eves’ planet, several spaceships appeared from all directions to intercept them. It was obvious that they had received the order to take off when the trio left the castle. Tanisiel couldn’t get rid of them, and it was difficult to break through in any direction. He clenched his teeth, deciding to take a risk, and disregarded the mainframe’s dissuasion, rushing into a meteorite belt.

He ordered the mainframe to concentrate most of its energy on the shield as sweat oozed from the palms. Theonile’s call request popped out in mid-air again, flashing an urgent red light. He thought for a moment and agreed to the request.

When Theonile saw him, his first words were, “Tanisiel! Are you out of your mind? Come back immediately, and I will not blame you for your stupid actions!”

Tanisiel, however, tightened his lips and shook his head firmly.

Theonile’s eyes cooled from anger. He appeared infinitely disappointed and sad, and he lowered his head slightly and rubbed his eyebrows with his hands. He had a headache. When he raised his eyes again, he looked tired and old.

“Are you in love with him?”

Tanisiel didn’t know how to answer. He had never loved someone, and he didn’t know what it was like to love someone. He had been lonely since childhood, and he became a priest when he was young. Although he learned a lot about how to use his unique charisma to guide believers in his later years, he never thought that he would obtain feelings such as love.

He felt that his current emotions should not be love, because love should be pure and clean, full of passion, and not tainted with the colors of deception and utilization from the beginning or stained with sadness. Therefore, he didn’t answer Theonile’s question.

His teacher said, “I taught you for so many years about what an unstable thing love is. Any interference, even time alone, will destroy it. You are just muddled by the illusion of pity for him. The so-called love may also be caused by your inner guilt. Are you really willing to break the blood contract with the crawling chaos for an illusion that might dissipate at any moment? It won’t be long before you regret it, but it’s not too late!” Theonile paused, with a sense of threat in his oppressive gaze. “What happened to the last person who dared to fool the crawling chaos? Have you forgotten?”

Of course, Tanisiel recalled that there was once a priest in the God of Disorder faction who used the name of the King in Yellow—the mortal enemy of Nyarlathotep—and tried to use the power of the King in Yellow to trap the crawling chaos, who was said to be using an Eve’s identity on the planet. As a result, his Lord God failed to protect him. That night, in the village on the edge of the mountain’s forest, someone heard his shrill cry. No one knew what the crawling chaos had done to him, but when people found him in the forest, he only had a piece of skin left, and his internal organs had turned into stinking corpse fluid. Thousands of maggots wriggled in the filth, devouring bits of meat.

Tanisiel’s eyes dropped as if he was undecided. “Even without you, the spiritual integration with Azathoth is also his inevitable fate, the reason why he was born. You don’t have to be burdened at all. Child, I’ve always thought of you as my own son. I don’t want to see you send yourself to the land of doom!”

Tanisiel closed his eyes and looked as if he was struggling. Just when Theonile thought he had finally convinced Tanisiel, he saw the blond priest’s hand move and cut off the contact.

And subsequently, on his screen, he saw Tanisiel’s spaceship hurtling toward the meteor belt at 10 percent the speed of light.

Countless stardust storms hit the outer cover of the spaceship, and the whole spaceship shook violently, the damaged alarm lights capable of dazzling people. Tanisiel staggered to his feet and went to the sleeping cabin.

He stumbled, keeping his hand against the wall the entire time. He felt Ethan’s intense anxiety. He seemed to have awakened from his coma and was worried about him. He heard Ethan uneasily call his name again and again in the depths of his heart, but he wasn’t even calling him consciously. Rather, it was an instinct. Even though Ethan knew that he had been betrayed, his subconscious still trusted him, making Tanisiel bitterly clench his teeth.

With a sneer, Samuel stepped out of the way, took off his coat, and went into his sleeping cabin. Tanisiel helped him set the sleep time, and the countdown began. Seeing that Samuel had closed his eyes and was ready to sleep, Tanisiel turned towards Ethan.

Ethan looked at him with a very complicated look and asked in a low voice, “Where are you taking me this time?”

“To the end of the Milky Way.” Tanisiel placed Ethan’s index finger in his mouth and bit it hard. Then, he gently took off Ethan’s coat and placed it by Samuel before drawing a strange emblem on the left side of his chest. It seemed to be a tree with five branches, three on the left and two on the right. After drawing it, he placed his palm gently on Ethan’s chest and felt the heartbeat that was much faster than ordinary people.

Ethan looked into his drooping eyes. There was a torrent in the midst of the silverish gray. The priest did not appear the same as he did previously. He was no longer sure of his life, and he had lost some confidence in grasping the winning straw. However, the smile on his face at this moment was more real than ever, filled with an indescribable sadness.

“This elder sign may protect you. It is said that it is the emblem of Nodens, one of the most powerful gods of Order. With it, Azathoth can’t hurt you. However, I don’t know how true this statement is……” he said, laughing at himself. How could the omnipotent core of the universe be afraid of a small emblem.

But……he used his blood as a servant of Azathoth to draw it, so it should be able to attract the attention of some gods of Order. Maybe they would help Ethan block Nyarlathotep, or perhaps they would hurt Ethan, who was the son of Nyarlathotep.

Therefore, he pressed onto Ethan’s shoulders with both hands and said seriously, “This sign may help you block Nyarlathotep, but at the same time, it is also very dangerous. If you see a god of Order in your dream and feel that they are going to hurt you, you should quickly erase it!”

“Yes……”

Tanisiel suddenly leaned over and gave him a peck on the forehead. “I heard that Moania’s sunset is beautiful. Live well, and go and have a look for me.”

Ethan suddenly had an ominous premonition. Why did he feel that Tanisiel was telling him his last words?

However, he didn’t ask anything.

Time was running out. Tanisiel pressed Ethan to lie down, closed the cover of the sleeping cabin, and set the program. Then, he turned and walked outside.

With all the energy being used on the shield to resist the stardust, the spaceship’s mainframe would definitely refuse to enter the warp drive flight mode, which was a safety lock on every spaceship to prevent the intelligent mainframe from losing control and preventing people from committing suicide. After all, during warp drive, the spaceship had a certain probability of being punctured by the stars.

Therefore, he had to use his master’s authority to temporarily shut down the mainframe and manually control the spacecraft to enter warp drive flight mode. That was to say, he would enter warp drive flight mode in a sober state.

Even for human beings with weak mental power, waking up during warp drive flight mode was suicidal behavior and was forbidden by all planetary states. The last time on Red Earth, the nonhuman who was punished by Samuel for bullying Ethan and entered warp drive flight mode in a sober state seemed to have breathed his last when he was found. At that time, he was crouching, and half of his body was integrated with the wall. After dissection, they discovered that his brain was severely liquefied. No one knew what kind of terror he had experienced during that process.

Compressing space allowed the spaceship to pass through the vast universe at a speed faster than the speed of light, which was equivalent to entering the universe of another frequency for a short time.

Tanisiel was not afraid, as even if he didn’t die now, he would fall into the hands of Nyarlathotep in the future. He was afraid that at that time, he would rather be dead than alive.

He didn’t know whether he regretted making such a crazy choice, just as he didn’t know whether he regretted choosing to be the servant of Azathoth. He never thought about what it would be like if he didn’t make those choices, since it would be meaningless to consider that.

He could only follow the dark and bumpy road to welcome his possible end.

.

All of Ethan’s senses slowly returned to his body. He tried several times to lift his heavy eyelids, and a cold feeling caused his whole body to spasm uncontrollably.

The cold cut his skin, and the extreme discomfort and fear swept over him like an overwhelming wave. The light’s glare made him want to vomit, and any external stimulation made him feel more uncomfortable. He wanted to curl up, but his body, which had just awakened from dormancy, was out of his control and stayed rigid.

Amid the chaos, he realized that his pupa period was not over yet.

When he finally opened his eyes, he was shocked to find that he was not in the sleeping cabin, but was lying on a medical bed. The ground was clean, the walls were white, and there was a faint smell of disinfectant floating in the air.

What was going on?

He was very upset, but he couldn’t figure out why he felt that way. A place in his heart was empty. There was a hole, as though he had lost the most important thing, and even taking a breath was so painful. He struggled to sit up and look for someone. For a moment, he couldn’t even remember the name of that person. He just remembered his golden hair, a pair of mysterious gray eyes, and his hand that rescued him from the darkness.

He covered his heart and rolled off of the bed. His body fell to the ground heavily, making a loud noise. Although the room’s illumination was bright and clean, he felt that his surroundings were unknown and dangerous. He felt that something he always had was missing, and he had become a lonely man wandering in the dark universe. He was crawling, but his hands could not work. He was flailing on the ground like a fish, helpless and pitiful.

Then he heard a familiar voice exclaim, “Ethan!” A pair of powerful hands picked him up from the ground. Ethan opened his eyes slightly and looked into someone’s deep gaze.

Roland?

Why was this man here?

Ethan hesitated for a moment. Roland had picked him up and placed him on the bed. Ethan put in some effort and asked in a somewhat vague voice, “Where’s Samuel?”

“He’s safe, but your ship was seriously damaged and intercepted by our ship. Samuel has almost recovered, and he will come to see you in a moment.”

As if in response to his words, just as he spoke, Ethan heard a burst of urgent footsteps, and the door was kicked open. Samuel rushed over and pushed Roland away from the bed, taking a protective stance in front of Ethan.

“Ethan! How are you?” Samuel asked.

Ethan blinked slowly and asked laboriously, “Tani……Tanisiel……where is he?”

Samuel seemed to suddenly grow mute. His mouth was tightly closed, and after a long time, he said, “We’ll talk when you’re better.”

Ethan suddenly grabbed Samuel’s arm. He was not very strong, given the current state of his body. His slender pair of shockingly green eyes stared at him. “Where is he?”

Samuel struggled for a long time. Roland, who was behind him, said, “He’s dead.”

Ethan’s body shook for a while, but he still did not let go of Samuel. “That’s impossible……”

“Your ship was too badly damaged, and it had jumped out of warp drive flight mode and lost all of its power. It had been pulled into the orbit of a planet, and we could only rescue you and Samuel in time. We did not know that there was a third person on the ship. That ship has now crashed against an asteroid on the border of the Third Empire.”

Ethan looked at him as if he didn’t understand what he was saying. Slowly, two black lines seeped out from his unblinking eyes. The black blood and tears spread over his face, causing his agonizing expression to appear even stranger.

Ethan finally knew what was missing.

The soul bond between him and the priest was broken.