Chapter 174 The Dark Terror
Time seemed to slow as the devil disappeared into the air, and the shadow of those obscene skewers descended toward him—
—only to be obstructed by an immense barrier of ice that flowered into existence.
Ryan stepped through the frozen wall, his face twisted in cold fury as layer after layer of jagged shards spiraled from his outstretched hands.
With a defiant roar of his own, he unleashed a blistering blizzard of ice that encased the beast in a tornado of glacial spikes.
But the abomination barely flinched, glacial spikes bouncing off its carapace as it charged bull-like towards the two humans.
Its massive footfalls cracked the earth itself, shaking the air with thunderous shockwaves.
As its gaping maw opened wide to cleave their flesh, Ryan sidestepped, sliding on a trail of ice and blasted fresh volleys of ice from the side.
The battle had well and truly begun against this black carapace demon.
Arlem dug in his heels, his armored form bracing for the next onslaught as Ryan wove intricate attacks of frozen fury.
Could they stand against such an ancient evil?
Arlem moved on instinct, his blade a whirling cyclone of metallic light as he deflected the gruesome strike of the devil.
Ryan's hands blurred in an esoteric weave, conjuring a shimmering barrier of refracting ice that tried to capture the monster.
But Dark Terror was too fast, the devil disappeared into the shadowy embrace and streaked away.
An eerie silence ensued for a while.
Both drifters stood cautiously, with all their faculties of perception alerted. Knowing fully well, that a slight misstep could cost them their lives.
The unsettling silence stretched on, the swirling mists rendering their surroundings an impenetrable veil.
Arlem and Ryan stood back-to-back, senses straining against the deathly stillness.
A faint tremor in the earth was their only warning before Dark Terror exploded from below in a eruption of dirt and shattered stone.
Those four obsidian arms, tipped with wicked talons, scythed through the air, cleaving deep gouges where the two drifters had been standing an instant before.
Arlem rolled to his feet, winged shoulder plates gouging furrows as his armored bulk slashed a path through the dense fog.
He came up in a low crouch, saber leading in a defensive fighter's stance as Dark Terror's burning crimson glare bored into him from the roiling gloom.
Ryan was already counterattacking, flashing hand signs igniting frozen mandalas that spiraled outwards in refracting shards.
The devil almost seemed to flow around them, its bulk and speed defying such paltry constraints of physics.
Those hooked forelimbs blurred, each swipe trailing cyclonic wakes that detonated Ryan's ice constructs into powder.
With a deafening roar, Dark Terror unleashed a focused shockwave of sonic force that staggered them both.
Arlem grunted, anchoring his stance as he was driven backwards through the compacted earth. Ryan, more lightly framed, was flung bodily until he managed to ice-sculpt a curved ramp to bleed off his momentum.
No sooner did they rally then Dark Terror surged forward again, seeming to materialize directly before them.
All four of its arms were sheathed in a spiraling plumes of black flames- a cloak of dancing flames that fragmented the very air with each devastating strike.
"Hieek!" Arlem grunted, his blade was a whirling cyclone of deflection, ringing with the percussive detonations of every parried blow.
He saw openings, tried to retaliate with stabbing ripostes, but the devil was ever-moving, phasing out of the material world in lurching translocation bursts.
Ryan's abilities were better suited, psionic ice lances and frozen artillery splitting Dark Terror's shadowy form - only for the beast to reappear, reforming from the shadows as if its substance was a black smoke given flesh.
"We can't compete against its speed!" Arlem bellowed over the tumult. "We need to lock it down!"
Nodding grimly, Ryan braced his footing and raised both fists skyward.
The young prodigy's face was a stoic mask of concentration, veins pulsing with exertion as he poured the full might of his powers into this desperate stratagem.
Towering glaciers erupted around them, spiraling skyward as Ryan consolidated every remaining shard and ice crystal in the vicinity.
They thickened, converging at a dizzying rate until a veritable mountain arose - all of it aimed towards containing the elusive devil within its frozen confines.
Dark Terror seemed to sense the deadly convergence bearing down.
It turned those baleful crimson eyes towards Ryan, hurtling forward in an obsidian missile-blur of lancing talons and slashing force...
...only to impact against Arlem's locked guard like a thunderclap.
The ground quaked as the warrior's armored boots dug furrows, his saber blade ringing like a bell from the sheer ferocity of deflecting that aimed charge.
For a span of straining heartbeats, Arlem held the devil's vicious onslaught at bay - his entire world narrowed to the excruciating grind of locking that lethal storm of obsidian shadow in an unyielding stalemate.
Then the first arctic tomb slammed down around them, trapping Dark Terror within its crystal embrace.
Layer after layer followed, Ryan snarling through bloodied teeth as he subsumed the evil under hundreds of tons of ice and sub-
zero pressures.
When at last the young prodigy's exertions tapered off, a towering glacier entombed their foe - an icy obelisk piercing upwards into the gloom, the only indication of Dark Terror's entrapped presence the vague, distorted murk of its massive shape just visible within the core.
Arlem staggered, his armor cracked in a thousand places, flesh beneath mottled with savage bruising.
Blood trickled from his split lip as he glared towards that frozen spire and the restrained evil it contained.
"That...that should end it," he wheezed, for once allowing his stoic mask to slip with a glimmer of cautious respect.
"Your powers are..." He shook his head slowly. "Unreal, kid."
Ryan offered no response, merely sinking to his knees as the last tremors of exertion taxed his frame.
For a long, pregnant pause the two warriors simply knelt in silence, depleted but victorious.
Until, inevitably, there came a faint rumbling from the icy mountain's core.
Both Ryan and Arlem looked up, pale faces daring to hope against hopeless truth.
Blossoming cracks fissured across the glacier, growing wider and more severe as a dull red radiance seeped outwards from the epicenter.
That pulsing crimson glow intensified with each passing heartbeat until all at once Dark Terror's shape shattered free, with surging black flames and jagged talons ripping through the confining ice in an explosion of glacial shrapnel.
Liberated at last, the devil slowly trudged forward, those four baleful eyes instantly finding the humans kneeling there - tired, depleted, their powers spent.
And perhaps in that moment, Dark Terror registered something almost akin to...cruel respect.
For it stood in front of them, motionless… as if waiting…
But what they saw of this monster as its shape came before them made their faces to contort in utter horror.
Whatever had ripped through that ice was no jagged talons.
This monster… it… it was standing, holding four different blades, made out of black flames.