From the void: Chapter Six

The two pitch-black followers snaked through the realm, mimicking the size and movements of the light entities. They engulfed the realm with more speed than any of Abraxus’s prior extensions, and their hardened substances seemed to pierce the very cosmos as they approached Avar and Zaki. One of them took on a strange, inverted U-shape, as if it was mirroring Avar’s structure—while Avar had a shining, golden arc of light on one side of his form, the dark follower had an inverted curve of darkness surrounded by the same, crystallized substance Abraxus had made it in. Surrounding its form was a vibrating pulse of energy that served as a barrier of some sort, repelling Avar’s glowing light.

The other follower advanced toward Zaki and this extension, too, seemed to vaguely mimic the design of the blueish-green entity. The extension had been made with two additional lengths of darkness that guarded its own consciousness; a perverse, warped shape of shadows with streaks of ink running throughout its form.

Avar released a beam of light that stopped the follower’s movement, but this time it did not dematerialize. Avar hurled mini, golden beams on his left to thwart the constant incoming of Abraxus’s form, thinking how these new, independent extensions were agile and seemed to mimic his abilities with an unnatural speed, bending the space around them effortlessly. However, instead of vaporizing, the extension shoved the light beam back, protected by a barrier of dark energy, and repelled the contradicting nature of light. Undaunted, Avar reinforced his huge, golden ray of energy with white waves that halted the extension’s movement, but it was still not deterred.

Zaki and Avar then conjured hundreds of light spheres, vigorously hurling them from all sides toward the followers. As the apocalyptic, red-green super nebula of light swept over the followers, their dark energy became infused with light, effortlessly reflecting the light orbs and scattering them throughout the realm.

Abraxus unleashed a surging wave of energy that brought a sense of unholy doom.  It roared triumphantly at its successful creation–nothing would suppress its pride now, upon such an accomplishment.

Zaki’s bluish-silver core suddenly began flickering dimly, for he sensed Abraxus’s prideful shadow approaching towards them. Despite the astronomical distance between them, Avar could sense Zaki’s anxiousness.

He flashed a golden wave of solidified light particles from his outer core and roared, “You rejoice too early, Abraxus, and that will be your downfall!”

Avar’s powerful aura repelled the looming shadows of darkness converging all around him. Flashes of gold and teal emerged as the light entity attempted to impede the followers, approaching in incoming waves.

A flash of golden light burst around Avar’s form and, after it had faded, a lustrous beam of seemingly indestructible aura had connected to Avar’s outer rim. Zaki, whose brightness had been revived by Avar’s steadfast aura, had been shrouded by a turquoise glow. It shimmered faintly around him as thousands of smaller, indestructible spikes of turquoise light materialized around his massive form.

The advancing followers, sensing the unfamiliar energy being emitted from these lights, recoiled at first, but at Abraxus’s command, they charged, slithering threateningly toward Avar and Zaki. One extension targeted Avar but as soon as it lashed out, Avar’s indestructible light beam slashed cleanly through it. It was these light particles, embedded within the pointed beam of indestructible light, that were strong enough to penetrate the plasma shield surrounding the dark followers and sever their solidified forms, disintegrating them into a smoky vapor that spread from the point of the strike to the very tips of its expansive structure.

Upon sensing this, the other minion let out a shrill hiss before turning toward Zaki. As it approached, Zaki nonchalantly launched his spikes of light to rain down upon the perverted follower, where they pierced its coat of hardened plasma. The follower reared back, hissing loudly at the impact as the spikes ripped countless holes in its coat. Like the other, it, too, was vaporized, overpowered by the dominance and strength the light particles possessed.

But as the debris cleared, the main core of the followers that had remained intact began to tremble and reassemble into new followers from Abraxus’s unending dimension. Abraxus fed more of the dark consciousness into its followers, escalating their durability and rendering them stronger than before. The second wave of these deranged entities met Avar’s light beam head-on.

Avar struck it again, more forcefully than he had last time, and the blow left a concave mark in the left side of the follower’s form. It hissed vengefully as it lashed out once again, determined to smother Avar in its own black smoke. Avar effortlessly dodged and counterattacked, this time slicing his indestructible light beam twice more with such blinding speed throughout the minion’s structure that it split in half—as did leagues of Abraxus’s dimension behind the follower. Avar could now sense that this wave had been stronger than the last.

Zaki, who was slowly positioning himself closer to Avar, showered the other follower with indestructible light beams. As he approached Avar, a third wave of followers emerged. Zaki sent a thunderous shower of spikes toward them but this time, the dark minions ignored them, merely hissing with irritation at the beams. Zaki watched as the holes slowly filled with the constant darkness supplied by Abraxus.

“Their strength is surely growing,” Zaki said uneasily to Avar. Still, the light entities held firm as they moved ahead to strike the followers, all the while shielding themselves from the dark, shadowy spirals that bombarded them from every direction.

Avar was fully aware of the darkness’s strategy. “Abraxus has been mimicking our nature from the very beginning, Zaki. The darkness learns from our presence–if we are relentless, Abraxus will attempt to be even more so. We must make haste to overcome the darkness’s followers and pierce its inner core.”

Avar was unflinching in the face of these obstacles, teleporting throughout the realm and slashing at them with all his might, coordinating with Zaki’s unlimited supply of torpedoes of light that slowed down the minions of darkness until, with a series of at least five blows, the minions were once again reduced to shadowy dust.

Avar and Zaki, acting as a dual light dimension, had forced themselves through the center and right flank and halfway into Abraxus’s dimension. As the followers kept coming, they seemed to be expanding, their warped, pitch-black shapes overshadowing the light; in fact, their forms were so impossibly durable now that the light entities were forced to halt their advance.

Zaki emitted countless light spikes and summoned another surge of small, rapidly rotating spheres of blue-green energy, spreading them with infinite speed toward these undying, dark creations. Avar teleported as soon as Zaki’s light made contact and reinforced Zaki’s impact with his own that destroyed the wave of followers again. Avar now hovered in place to analyze things instead of heading farther into the abyss.