Chapter 31: Eldritch Guest
Hugo waited on a separate branch from the trio, the Omnitrix on his chest suddenly glowing a warning red, then With a final flash of crimson light, he reverted to his human form, the massive strength of the Tetramand leaving him feeling small and vulnerable.
'Alright, Sunny. Just wait for the signal...'
he thought, his eyes fixed on the churning, ink-black sea as it began its nightly advance.
The second part of their plan was far riskier than the first which was shocking considering they had just baited and wounded an Awakened Demon.
He waited, his breath held until the Omnitrix symbol shifted from red back to its steady, ready blue. A grim smile touched his lips. He twisted the dial, the vague silhouette of the Pyronite appearing.
Hugo slammed it down.
A flash of blue light illuminated the world in a beautiful blue light and Hugo was remade. His skin became cracked, volcanic rock, his core a churning furnace of magma. His head ignited into a roaring blaze. In an instant he became a living beacon of light in the endless night.
The effect was instantaneous.
A storm of fury erupted from the summit of the barrow. The Carapace Demon emerged, its polished metal carapace reflecting Hugo's fiery glow. Its movements were still slightly sluggish from the weakening charm but its rage was a tangible force. Two pits of scarlet hellfire locked onto the humanoid flame torch.
Simultaneously, Sunny's voice cut through the tension from a high branch. "HEY, ASSHOLE! COME GET ME IF YOU DARE!"
The demon's head twitched, distracted for a single crucial second.
That was all Hugo needed.
He leaped from the branch headfirst, appearing as a missile of fire.
The flaming bolt slammed into the demon's head, his four-fingered hands latching onto its horned helmet. "GO TO HELL!" he roared, and willed every ounce of his being as he activated his [Calokinesis] attribute.
His internal and external temperature skyrocketed. The air around him warped and screamed as it slowly begun to boil.
The residual centipede oil still slick on the demon's metal shell instantly vaporized and then ignited with a dangerous light.
The creature became the heart of a sudden, miniature sun. A deafening WHOMP igniting the air was followed by a pillar of fire that lit up the entire ashen wasteland.
The Carapace Demon's shriek was terrifying and inhuman defying all that was sane but Hugo didn't stop, he continued reading the temperature as far as he could.
The polished armor of the demon glowed cherry red then white-hot in patches.
The creature thrashed and twisted it's limbs dangerously but Hugo kept holding into its humanoid torso, burning it's mouth —or what was supposed to be it's mouth— and eventually melting off it's entire skull.
The creature stumbled, flailing as it finally succumbed to agony.
[You have slain an Awakened Demon: Carapace Demon.]
[You have received a Memory: Midnight Shard.]
The massive body hit the ashen sand with a ground-shaking THUD, the flames still greedily consuming every part of it.
"I... I actually killed it," Hugo breathed, the Pyronite's voice a crackle of exhausted triumph. He stood over the burning corpse, a fiery victor in a sea of darkness.
But his victory was short-lived.
A change suddenly swept over the island, so profound that it felt like the world itself had taken a sickening breath. The familiar roar of the waves distorted unnaturally, morphing into a wet gulping sound.
The air grew thick and heavy, a chill seeping through it that bypassed his fiery form entirely, a cold that settled directly into the marrow of his soul utterly unaffected by the inferno he radiated. A wall of thick, grey fog, unnervingly silent rolled out from the black water. It moved against the wind, purposeful and wrong, a shroud advancing with malevolent killing intent.
From the heart of that advancing fog, something stirred. A shape so vast and wrong that Hugo felt like he was going insane just by looking at it.
"Don't open your eyes!" Cassie's scream filled with undiluted terror from somewhere above him. "Hugo, don't look!"
But it was too late. His fiery gaze, a beacon in the glooming darkness had already attracted the abomination.
His eyes, twin points of intense living light, met the heart of the fog.
And it saw him.
What made the situation even more profound was that There were no eyes to meet his. There was only a shifting, impossible geometry—a form that seemed to be made of solidifed soul essence, one that was dark and twisted as if touched by something it shouldn't have. It was a presence so profound, so ancient and vile, that the perception of it landed like a physical blow to his mind making his very consciousness recoil in pain against it. The creature was a mass of that corrupt fog but the fog itself was wrong, a darkness so absolute it seemed to drink the light from the world making the already oppressive night grow deeper and more suffocating.
Hugo breath hitched as The very flames that composed his being flickered and wavered violently, their light dimming as if trying to retreat from the creature's mere presence, as if the fire itself was afraid.
Then without warning the creature descended upon it's prey ignoring the other three dormant sleepers.
a void slithered past Hugo fiery exterior, it ignored the unyielding resistance of his rocky skin and plunged directly into the core of his being. The creature of nothingness bypassed his body entirely, it's vile essence seeped straight into his soul, into the sacred space where the Omnitrix was anchored and where the essences of his imprints resided.
It was inside him.
He felt it there, a sliver of infinite cold and predatory silence, a stain of pure corruption spreading through the azure expanse of his soul sea, tainting everything it touched.
"Get out..." The thought was a weak, mental whimper.
"GET OUT!" hugo roared, the sound a crackling desperate inferno of fear and defiance.
A terror so raw and primal hit him, ond that he had never known before not even in the depths of his First Nightmare.
He was left with nothing to do, He couldn't fight tig physically; there was nothing to punch, nothing to burn in the outside world. He also couldn't run from an enemy that was lready inside him.
So, he did the only thing he could.
He burned.
He turned his will inward, drawing out all the power he could from his soul. a purifying flame of conflagration erupted outward. He poured every ounce of his will, his fear, his rage, his soul essence, everything went to this final desperate attempt at preserving his life.
His body became a crucible for his own spirit, a spirit which was filled with Omni energy, which in turn fueled his flames making it burn with an even hotter willl then before.
The attribute [blazing spirit] added to the intensity as well considering Hugo was burning his very soul.
The only reason the tree behind did not burn was because of the thick fog containing the flames.
But even that did not last for long as The air around him begun to scream, reality itself writhing as spiritual and physical energy collided into a single point. The ashen sand at his feet instantly fused into a sheet of shimmering, black glass. The advancing fog recoiled from his immediate vicinity, repelled by the sheer intensity of the spiritual inferno he was immiting.
Inside, the vile presence writhed. It made no sound for it was a thing of absolute silence but he felt its shock, its alien, icy fury as the divine fire of a primordial star—the very essence of a Pyronite—turned inward to scour it away. The cold stain in his soul sizzled and receded, the corruption being forcibly expelled by the desperate white-hot intensity of his being.
For a glorious, hopeful moment, he felt it weakening, its grip loosening around his soul.
But the creature, faced with annihilation did not retreat outward. It could not. The spiritual flames barred its escape. So, in a final horrific act of invasion, it did the unthinkable, It fled deeper.
It dug down, past the surface of his consciousness, past the safeguards of his will burrowing into the deepest, most fundamental layers of his soul, into places he didn't even know existed. It wasn't just inside him anymore, it was assimilating him into it .
Hugo's eyes, wide with a terror beyond comprehension lost their fiery light. The Omnitrix on his chest, sensing the catastrophic violation glowed with frantic, panicked light as its robotic voice spoke directly into his crumbling mind:
[Foreign essence detected...]
[Host integrity compromised...]
[Life signs critical... Failsafe activated...]
A surge of power, vast and alien, erupted from the divine relic serving as a final line of defense.
He felt it try to isolate and destroy the invader, but even that failed.
The Omnitrix while a divine relic, could not function to it's full might with it's host being a mere awakened creature.
[...]
[ERROR! CONTAINMENT FAILED.]
[Essence purge failed...]
[...]
[Activating Failsafe N10...]
There was a final, desperate pulse of energy from the Omnitrix, a flash of light so bright it eclipsed his own flames for a single instant. And then...
silence.
The light from the Omnitrix symbol on his chest extinguished, all vitality draining from it in an instant leaving a dead, cold, metallic disc on his skin.
His Pyronite form dissolved, the magnificent fire snuffed out from within. His body twisted violently before reverting to his helpless human form collapsing limply to the glassed ground, utterly unmoving.
The fog was gone, but so was the Paragon of purity.