The Twelve Apocalypses: A Damned Soul's Path to the Abyss

The moment Wilhelmina made her proclamation, her stance shifted, and her soul unfurled.

I hadn't noticed before just how much she was holding back. She kept her soul curving inwards to hide the garish wounds that marred it. Now those same wounds were proudly bared, and they were gushing mana.

The demoness's body took this change poorly. Even as she vanished and teleported right in front of Glaustro, blood streamed down her cheeks, marring her green skin with grotesquely purple patches.

She ignored all of this and struck with savage ferocity. The blow her dagger dealt when it met Glaustro's massive sword made my major stumble. He roared, actual flames of rage leaping up in his eyes. His return strike managed to balance the scales when it sent Wilhelmina reeling. Then the pair descended into a whirlwind of slashes that left gouges in the ice wherever they passed.

Their battle was a stunning spectacle of destruction, but the rest of the cavern wasn't exactly boring.

Everywhere I looked, demons were turning on demons, catching the undead between them. I almost felt pity for the ancient frozen bones that were crushed underfoot, mere casualties of a greater conflict between forces the locals could never withstand.

As if to prove that claim wrong, the first awakened god made himself known by driving his spear through Wilhelmina's shoulder from behind. Glaustro had seen the divine specter draw near and distracted the demoness, leading her into a position where she couldn't avoid the strike.

The indignation on her face was a delight, matched only by her scream of pain.

Slightly less delightful was the next moment, when the god shoved his spear aside roughly and sent Wilhelmina sliding across the ice, only to then try and skewer Glaustro. The dance of the two majors suddenly shifted to include a third participant, each point of the triangle trying to snuff out the other two.

I didn't worry about Glaustro, though. My major knew what he was doing, and Wilhelmina had stepped up to the brawl with a load of festering wounds to drag her down. No, I decided to give all my attention to the second god who was just wrapping up her own debut into the world.

Or goddess, I should say.

The yeti female that tore her way out of the banner was a startlingly horrid sight. Her fur was long, matted, and filthy. Actual vines and pieces of bark covered her body. These were all coal-black in color and and appeared quite solid, despite being made up of pure Divinity. In her hands, she held a gnarled bow made out of some creature's horns and sinew. The latter looked so oily and bloody, it might have been extracted from its former owner just seconds prior.

She seemed a tad more aware from the start than her previous fellow. A vicious grin snuck onto her features immediately and stayed there as she eyed the demonic invaders.

Her blow came as suddenly as a strike of lighting. One second, she stood idle. The next, she drew back her bowstring. A pitch-black arrow materialized there out of thin air, and she fired it. The projectile plowed directly into and through several demons caught fighting in a mob, pulverizing all flesh in its path.

That's about when I realized our original plan was well and truly shot.

"Handle the yeti! I'll distract the goddess." Mia must have come to the same conclusion, because she was already moving before she finished speaking.

"Unfair!" I groused, but she was halfway across the cavern by then.

I couldn't blame her, of course. Who would go after mere mortals when there was a god to challenge?

Regardless, now that she had broken our stealth, I suddenly became the focus of the undead. They were losing badly, and their numbers were a fraction of what they used to be, but they could still present a minor nuisance.

With a sigh, I reached deep into my mana and closed my eyes. When they snapped open again, I beheld countless crystal rose bushes suddenly breaking through the ice. The effect was purely visual, and even took a tiny bit more mana to push my constructs into the layer of ice, but the results were well worth it.

The sea of crystalline flowers ravaged the skeletons, winding around bones and crushing or stabbing all in their path. It was a glorious sight. Even Wilhelmina's forces briefly faltered to stare. But when my flowers reached them, the awe turned to pain and horror.

It was my first time turning the spell against any fellow demons who didn't happen to be called Mia, and the effects were more impressive than I expected. My feline companion was agile enough to squirm away, as well as skilled and strong enough to shred my constructs.

Most of the demons in Wilhelmina's host fell short of Mia's level.

My living crystal snared their limbs, dragged them down to the floor, and then proceeded to burrow through their flesh. I wished I could have added a couple more runes to my creations like 'feasting' and 'absorption' to make them self-healing and auto-perpetuating, but for the present moment, I had to control everything manually.

That's why I was stuck in place, keeping my impressive work up and running while I watched Mia clash with a goddess.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The sight of her sent a shiver down my spine and filled me with a quiet kind of awe. A whole section of the cavern was filled with her clones, all slashing and dodging and twisting individually in stunning displays of athleticism.

The goddess was struggling to pin her down. Even when an arrow managed to pop one of Mia's clones, the cat always paid for it in kind. Wounds appeared all over the goddess's body, as if from thin air. Golden ichor dripped from each cut. The goddess already had a small puddle around her feet.

I wanted to laugh, knowing that none of the visible bodies was the actual bratty cat. She'd worked hard in our sparring sessions on an invisibility spell, and had mastered it to a level where it managed to fool even my senses. She was now making the best possible use of it.

Who knew? An archer did not make a very good match for an assassin.

Glaustro, too, was making progress. Wilhelmina had conjured a massive shroud of mana that shredded everything she approached, then proceeded to send massive wind blades slashing out with every strike of her daggers. But she was visibly flagging.

Glaustro had asked me to conjure him a large supply of crystal before Mia and I set out. It was now wound around him like armor. The material resisted him somewhat, but crystal mana was basically just a subset of earth. If he flooded the crystal with his own mana, he could still handle it with an agility that nearly matched his preferred element.

As such, Glaustro was unphased and unscathed. I could tell he'd used far more mana than he probably liked in such a short time span, but at least he had some protection against Wilhelmina's miniature storm and the god's giant spear.

The god was faring the worst out of the trio. He had no decent protections, and no way to break through the demonic defenses. Like the goddess, he was covered in golden ichor from multiple weeping wounds. His right eye had been carved out of its socket by a vicious blow that marred most of his face.

Naturally, that's when the living yeti decided to make themselves a nuisance again.

My crystalline roses had rushed towards the circle of banners, but they'd slammed into a massive barrier that shimmered into existence quite abruptly. I suspected it was there from the start, but I was not yet as adept at sensing Divinity as I was at detecting mana.

My crystal constructs kept trying. They had crawled a good six feet off the ground and developed wickedly sharp thorns to boot. Still, they had failed to gain purchase and pierce through the barrier.

In the meantime, the third banner began to glow brighter, heralding the birth of yet another god.

No, I growled to myself. Enough is enough.

I redoubled my efforts. My eyes positively glowed as I dumped half of my remaining mana into a channeled surge. All over the cavern, my constructs exploded into propagation. They swallowed a good quarter of Wilhelmina's troops, dragging them under a tangle of crystal thorns and savaging them further.

The barrier around the praying yeti still held. But as crystal roses spread to cover almost every inch of it, I saw cracks starting to develop.

The yeti's chanting took on a fearful lilt.

I took a deep breath, summoned my sword to my hand, then launched into the air. My wings beat feverishly as I struggled to keep my mind on task. I was already strained from controlling so much crystal, and the body strengthening as well as the shield spell I'd added to the mix almost broke my concentration.

Moving felt impossibly difficult, but I still managed to fly forward, pushing myself through the air until I buried my sword into the barrier.

I knew it was unwise to think my sword would never fail me. I had told myself often that I would eventually regret my dependence on it.

Today, however, was not that day.

My blade sliced through the barrier as easily as it would through butter, and the ailing shield shattered into golden specks.

A brief burst of mana, a second of additional strain, and a misty clone formed right behind one of the chieftains. I switched places with the clone instantly, and my sword sliced through the back of the chieftain's neck without resistance.

One of the yeti guards roared and abandoned his kneeling position. Most of his fellows groped for weapons. The chanting faltered. Only the shamans persisted, but the terror shining in their eyes betrayed them.

The third god was only halfway through pulling itself off the banner. As the chanting trailed off, he froze, then collapsed into a puddle of gold that was sucked back into the totem.

I gave the yeti a grin full of violence and wicked intent, then followed through immediately as my fist met the head of the second chieftain. The head exploded, and a soul was added to my purse.

My slaughter of the others was just as messy. I didn't want to use my sword again just yet. The first chieftain's soul was still melting into me, and it was rather annoying to have to resist the pull of the memories. At least the burst of mana from the soul's digestion helped me maintain control over my crystal flowers.

By the time my mind cleared and I realized I had a second sword I could have used, all but two of the yeti were dead. The last two shamans had fled to the feet of the divine statue, and now watched me with terror and disbelief.

I advanced on them slowly, suddenly aware of the thick cloud of Woe that hung around them like a funeral shroud. It was delicious. It was nourishing. It made my soul sing and exult, like a drink of the sweetest divine ambrosia.

Was that how Crewe felt when he inspired Terror in his enemies? Because if so, I suddenly understood how he could lose himself in his games.

A languid smile came over my face. The Emotion in the air deepened as my enemies cringed.

Oh yes, I understood. And I wanted more of it.

Then the two idiots exchanged glances, and their delectable Woe was infected by an icy resolve. I didn't like that at all. But before I could remind them exactly what they should be doing, they drew a pair of bone daggers and jammed the blades right into their own necks.

I froze, caught between petulant displeasure and a sudden foreboding. Then I swore as the shamans' spilling lifeblood made the statue pulse.

The wave of Divinity it released made me stagger. But when its limbs began to shudder and its eyes started to twitch, I forced myself to move.

In that moment, I didn't care about how upset Glaustro would be if I ruined the damned thing. Every instinct in my body was screaming not to let the statue awaken, so I drove my sword right into its chest and then violently dragged the blade to the side.

The statue's quivering paused. The long, jagged rent I had created sparked with Divinity. I dealt another blow, this time severing the arm holding the massive club aloft.

The stump sparked even harder than the previous wound. A tremor shook the cave when the limb impacted the ground, but it was not a physical sensation. I had all of a second to wonder if that was enough divine desecration for the day before the mana of the cave screamed.

It was a heartbreaking, desperate sound. Every living thing in the cavern paused, feeling a profound sense of pity well up in their hearts.

So, of course that was the moment the statue chose to explode.