Shadowbane

... Is this really supposed to be a dangerous journey, Arkaios?

{.......}

Even though I've been running in this direction for hours, I've yet to see a single Demon.

I continue sprinting through the forest, weaving through the shade as I go. The only thing I hear is the sounds of wildlife, and that strange bug, but I think that droning sound is starting to grow on me.

About twenty minutes later I finally hear something out of place in this serene forest. It sounds like two large beasts are going at it. Despite the distance, I can feel some of the sounds reverberating in my chest.

I pivot to the right a little, heading directly for whatever is battling it out right now. Not long after that, a large Demon comes rolling through the trees up ahead, smashing several of them over in the process. As it finishes its roll, it swings backwards with its massive axe at an opponent I can't quite see yet.

I know this Demon... It's a Minotaur. I only saw one of these in the other realm, and I only know its name because I asked Viktor if he had seen one before. Surprisingly, he had. It's about thirty meters tall and made entirely of muscle. It can't cast spells but it obviously doesn't need to. One swing of that axe is all it needs, or it should be all it needs... What the hell could possibly be fighting this thing?

The Minotaur leaps out of view and I hear the sound of its axe smashing into the ground. My curiosity piqued, I circle around the left side and come out to a small clearing where I see the Minotaur exchange blows with a creature I've never seen or heard of before. It's also around thirty meters tall, but it's wielding a long serrated greatsword with one hand instead of two. I quickly realize why when I see it only has one arm. Its head vaguely resembles that of a lion with a long white mane, but nothing else about it makes sense. It has pure white eyes with blood dripping down them, shark-like teeth, and its jaw is completely unhinged.

It could be an Eldritch Lord, but something in my gut is telling me that's wrong. Everything about this creature feels off, including its weapon. When the two of them stopped exchanging blows for a moment I noticed something that's really creeping me out. The serrated part of the lion's(?) sword is moving. The pointed ends are wiggling around as if they're alive...

What the hell is this thing... Do you know, Arkaios?

{Unknown.}

Even he doesn't know...

The Minotaur, now bleeding from nearly every part of its body, tries to roll to the side again, but the lion-thing was one step ahead of him. With one swift strike from above, the creature brought its blade down onto the Minotaur mid-roll, cutting his head cleanly off. After the Minotaur's body stopped moving, the lion bent down and put its mouth near the Minotaur's chest. It didn't take me long to understand why it was doing that. I could see the Minotaur's soul that was about to explode get sucked into the lion's mouth. However, much to my surprise, there was no explosion from inside the lion after that. It stopped the soul from exploding? This is all so bizarre...

With the battle over, I turned around and restarted my sprint for the temple. But as I ran, I couldn't help but glance over my shoulder multiple times to make sure the creature wasn't following me. This isn't my usual carefulness. I'm scared of that creature on some level...

Is this it?

{Yes.}

It took a few more hours, but eventually, I found the temple. There are no other buildings nearby, nor is it outside of the forest. It's literally just a very old abandoned temple sitting in between a bunch of trees.

I walk up to the temple and head straight through the doorless entrance. The inside looks like your usual temple ceremony rooms, except it is a little larger than I'm used to seeing. I reach the altar and place the artifact on top of it.

{... Empty. Need more bodies. Need Nisha.}

Empty... As in the energy here is completely empty? And where is Nisha? I'm guessing you want me to grab her and Shana first before looking for Ishar. They'd know where to find him anyway.

{Yes. Follow light. Leave artifact, connecting to core.}

Another blue light comes out from the artifact. I follow it outside and it immediately turns to the right. After that it goes straight for a bit but it doesn't disappear this time, instead it speeds up. Oh right, I don't have the artifact so he wants to make sure I don't get lost on the way.

About twenty minutes later the light suddenly stops. I look around and see a familiar sight. Heh, feels like it's been ages since I've seen one of her mana lines... I follow the mana line up high into a tree, where I find Shana sitting with her back against the tree, deep in meditation.

Her clothes are ragged and she's covered in dirt... How long have these two been stuck here deep in this forest?

I sit down and remove my veil. "Hello, Shana."

I must have scared her quite a bit because she immediately banged her head against the tree while attempting to grab her daggers. After a few seconds of freaking out she stopped and began to give me a thorough look-over. Her eyes flitted between my hair and eyes several times before she finally said, "... R-Rei....?"

I nodded and lifted some of my hair up, "Yeah, I had to dye my hair to get through Jericho." I smiled, "Even caked in dirt you still look beautiful as ever."

An indescribable emotion appeared on her face for a moment as she relaxed and put her daggers away. She hung her head down, saying nothing for a while.

"S-Sorry, it's just... it's just been a long time, Rei. I'm having a hard time believing this is real..." Shana said, still looking down.

"It's fine, take your time. I don't know what you have been through but Arkaios gave me some minor details here and there, so I think I know how you ended up here."

Shana's head whips up, "Arkaios?! You spoke to him? Does he know what is happening here right now?!"

I shook my head, "No. We just got here, and judging from his attitude when we arrived, he thought I was going to end up fighting Demons to reach his temple. Instead, all I saw was one Minotaur getting killed by... I don't even know. Something else."

Shana sighed when I said that. "Something else is a good way to describe those things... I'll explain back at our hideout. Nisha is begging us to return. She sounds happy, which is a tone I haven't heard from her since the day I rescued her."

Shana leaps to the next tree over, waiting for me to follow her. I jump over as well and she quickly jumps to another tree. She does this for a while until we eventually reach an area of the forest with trees that are completely covered in mini-branches and leaves, making it hard to navigate forward.

Fortunately, we didn't need to make our way through these trees for long. Shana jumped directly up through a large bundle of leaves, so I did the same. Once I passed through all the leaves I saw her hanging off of a branch so I grabbed onto it as well. Looking around, I saw we were in a large room completely hidden from the outside, but it still had enough light penetrating from above to light the room up. Shana and I swung onto the floorboards ahead.

Nisha, who was lying down on a makeshift bed of leaves exited her meditation and stood up. She quite literally began jumping while squealing in joy.

"I didn't think you'd be this happy to see me, but it does confirm one suspicion I had back then. I always had this feeling that you were in love with me..."

"Oh god, I forgot how weird you were," Nisha said, still holding the biggest smile I've ever seen. "You said 'we' back there, so Arkaios is here too, right?! So you definitely brought the artifact. It must be back at the temple... You have no idea of what this means, Rei..."

"We can bring back your original party members and Markus's templars, right?"

"Yes! We'll bring back Markus and his templars first, they're much better at praying than we are. They'll fill the artifact up much faster, and we'll need to repair the temple too... It's defenseless as it is. In fact, let's hurry there now. We can't let anything take or destroy the artifact." Nisha said.

Shana nods and grabs some of the hand-woven bags sitting in the back of the room. Nisha and I grab the others and head back to the hole we jumped in through. The two of them take one last look at the room with solemn looks on their faces.

"We've been hiding here for a long time Rei... It kind of hurts to be saying goodbye to it so suddenly." Nisha said.

I can understand that. I've lost plenty of temporary homes over the years. Hell, I even felt sad saying goodbye to that first hole in the ground I woke up in long ago.

Shana looks at me, "We'll explain when we get there. For now, we need to hurry."

"Wait, isn't Nisha super slow?"

Nisha nods and ties her bags onto her shoulders, jumping onto my back after she's done. "... I know how bad I smell right now. We haven't had much of a chance to clean ourselves."

"Eh, don't worry about it. I'm more concerned with running into one of those creatures."

"There shouldn't be any over here, but my clones have seen some near the temple. The last sighting was a few days ago." Shana said right before she jumped down below.

"Aren't you going to grab my legs or something?" Nisha asked.

"No need. You haven't noticed? I already made it so the parts you're touching are stuck to you. You won't fall off unless something rips you off."

After answering her I immediately jump down below and follow behind Shana as she begins jumping through the trees again.

"It's really here..." Nisha said as we entered the temple. I released her from my armor and she ran over to the artifact. Soon after that, she entered a prayer pose.

I looked at Shana, "You going to have your clones keep watch while we pray to this thing?"

Instead of answering me, Shana walked over and hugged me. It took me by surprise, but I quickly hugged her back. We stayed like that for a while before she finally began speaking. "I'm sorry, Rei. I feel like it was ages ago when you disappeared..." After saying that she pulled away and sat down on a nearby bench. I walked over and sat next to her.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

Shana nodded, "After we left Aresa's manor I tried to keep an eye on our surroundings, but we were ambushed from a place I didn't expect. Men from Jericho came running out of one of the nearby homes as we passed by it. As you'd expect, Nisha was subdued almost instantly, but unfortunately I was too... They hit me with several shots from a gun that electrocuted me. My barrier didn't block it and in my panicked state I didn't enhance myself fast enough, which led to them knocking me out."

Shana continued, "Next thing I knew they were loading us onto a strange-looking wagon, something I now know is a 'vehicle'. They took their hands off me for a split second as they were locking me into the manacles, which gave me a chance to swap positions with one of my clones. They only realized their blunder at one of their 'checkpoints' inside of Jericho. You saw all their security at the start of those bridges, right? Those bone things we ran into under Kellog had scanned my clone, giving the game away. It didn't matter though. They just killed the clone and kept going. As a result, it took me forever to figure out where they took Nisha."

"Did you blend into town like I did?"

Shana nodded, "I should have dyed my hair like you did, but my tail grows out pretty fast, so it would have been difficult to maintain. Anyway, I found Nisha's location and even saw Ishar with her, but breaking them out was proving impossible. The cell didn't use keys, it was some kind of digital thing that I struggled to understand. I broke into several homes to try and teach myself about all the new technology around me, but I still couldn't find a workaround for the 'retinal scanners'.

"Oh shit, I wouldn't know how to get past those either. The gate into that area had fingerprint scanners, but all I had to do was wait for a truck to come through. Which I'm guessing you did the same."

Shana smiled, "Not quite. I hid on the truck that was going into the portal area."

"Clever as always."

"I need to be. Unlike a certain someone else, I can't turn invisible. It sure would be nice though! I found myself thinking about you during my time in Jericho. I was constantly wondering just how easy it would be for... Wait." Shana narrowed her eyes at me, "How long did it take you to make your way through Jericho and discover where everyone went?"

"... I did it all in a couple of days. I had to hide after killing someone in the citadel that leads to the portal area. Plus, I needed time to look through his memories. Oh, and uh, I also had the Chimera's tracking ability that showed me exactly where Ishar went, which helped me a lot."

Shana put her head into her hands, "It's all so unfair..."

I reach over and rub her back. She looks up at me with her first genuine smile yet, "I'm really happy you're back, Rei..." I went to respond but Shana cut me off, "Oh, I haven't got to the important part yet. Arkaios was right, there was Demons here. They were everywhere in fact. The Demons were forcing Ishar and all the other prisoners to dig for something. I tried torturing the humans who were working with the Demons, trying to get any information I could out of them, but they didn't actually know anything. All of their followers only knew one thing, that their masters were looking for something here."

"Looking for something...? Also, what do you mean by 'masters'? Humans who summon Demons are almost always the masters. Actually, how the hell did they summon that many Demons?"

Shana shook her head, "They were Demon worshipers. I know that sounds strange, but apparently, they exist, and not only that, there is a large Demon civilization being built on another moon right now, and this was merely a detached force of theirs. The Demon leading them sent them here to dig something up, and while they were doing this, Nisha and I were formulating a plan to free everyone. I was close to achieving it when suddenly those creatures appeared and began killing all of the Demons. I can't even get close to the dig site now with all those creepy creatures crawling around..."

What the hell? Back when Arkaios told me about my friends being on another moon, I obviously had no idea of what would be waiting for me, but I never in a million years would have expected this.

"Okay, well... What should we do now? I can probably reach Ishar and see if he and the other prisoners are okay."

"No." Nisha cut in, "Arkaios says we need to bring Markus back first. If the three of us pray we should have enough energy to bring him back around the same time Arkaios has fully connected his temple to the moon's core. After that, we can start to formulate a plan."

Shana looked at me and I just shrugged. We both stood up and walked over to Nisha, sitting down on both sides of her. Before long, all three of us were meditating while focusing all of our energy into the artifact.

"Okay, um, I think only I need to do this next part?" Nisha said.

Shana literally falls over from her sitting position and rolls herself onto the bedding near the wall. "That's it, I'm done. Never doing this again..."

It's been a long week, no doubt about that. It was supposed to take way longer, but Arkaios managed to connect to the moon's core and has been siphoning energy from it directly. According to him, all temples do it, but if you try forcing it past the natural amount you're supposed to take, like he's currently doing, Eldritch will come in droves and destroy your temple. So normally he wouldn't do something like this, but since this moon is owned by Demons or whatever the hell is killing them, he says we shouldn't need to worry about any Eldritch showing up.

Both Nisha and the artifact begin to glow, giving off a bright white light that grows larger with every passing second. I began to wonder just how long it was going to take when suddenly the light on both of them disappeared out. All three of us immediately noticed what the light was replaced with. Markus was lying there on the stone floor between Nisha and the artifact, completely nude.

"Uncle Markus!" Nisha shouted, smiling yet again.

Oh wow, I completely forgot that these two were related.

Markus groaned as he rubbed his temples. "Nisha? Why are..." Markus jumps to his feet and reaches for his sword, which is obviously not there. He stares at his nude body with a perplexed expression. Next, he slowly looks around the temple before finally settling his gaze on us. "Ah shit... I remember now. Fucking embarrassing that I'd try and get revenge on Rai'ga while the city was being invaded."

Nisha tilted her head, "Revenge?"

"The fucker killed my men. And I know that for a fact, because after Rei released me from prison I immediately returned to my temple and found that none of their souls were tied to the artifact, which meant something had absorbed them. So unless Lady Aresa ate them, the only other option was Rai'ga. I went to his temple but he wasn't there, and he wasn't fighting the Xerath either. I ended up dying to two of those tall purple fuckers while I was looking for him." Markus said.

"Wait! Something you just said stuck out to me. You're saying that if an Eldritch or Xerath absorbs Keith, he's gone forever? I thought Arkaios would pull their soul back before that happens, like how the Tengu saves his Lords."

Markus nodded, "Correct on both fronts. However, there are times when my Lord cannot retrieve his subject's souls. A powerful Eldritch locking them down would be one such time."

Damn, I thought they were all immortal warriors under Arkaios, but it looks like there are some caveats in that 'immortal' title.

"Alright, give me the rundown. Where the hell are we? You two look like shit and Rei dyed her hair for some reason." Markus said.

Before we could speak, Markus reached out and touched the artifact. He began to shine a bright white again but this time when the light went away, there were no extra bodies in the room. Instead, Markus was in his original templar gear again.

"Whoa, now that's impressive!"

Markus smiled at me, "Damn right it is. This is one of the perks of serving my Lord. I get to wear some of the best armor around, although it does drain quite a bit of energy to create or repair it. Odds are you three could've summoned me much earlier, but I would have been half useless without my armor and weapon."

Markus sat down next to his niece and began praying. "Now speak, I can both pray and converse at the same time."

I sure as hell couldn't do that...

Shana and I took turns explaining to him everything that had happened up until this point.