Chapter 32: Death
[Sunny's POV]
Sunny's horrified expression slowly eased as the terrifying pressure imposed on them slowly disappeared.
In a matter of a few more seconds, The creature that had come from the dark sea was gone.
Drawing a hesitant breath, Sunny extended his shadow sense to encompass the area around him.
He felt Nephis and Cassie beside him and the gigantic tree as well, though the thing he felt next shook him to his core.
Near the base of the tree, there were two shadows, both gigantic and vast.
But both were empty and lifeless.
The first was of the Carapace Demon. It seemed Hugo had actually managed to kill it...
As for the second one... it was Hugo's own strange shadow.
Sunny's eyes widened as a strange kind of dread consumed his entire body.
"No. No, no..." His breath hitched as a terrible thought began to find it's way into his mind.
'Did the plan fail?!' Sunny thought, wanting to open his eyes and check but he couldn't. The creature could still be hiding Somewhere.
And while he considered Hugo his friend, his own life mattered more in the end.
"You can open your eyes now."
Sunny instantly shivered recognizing the voice.
It was Nephis's voice.
But that could be another trick...
"Sunny, it's me. Open your eyes. It's... gone..."
Gulping, Sunny opened his eyes. Thankfully, there was nothing out of the usual. It was just the endless darkness and the black sea...
At that moment, Sunny instantly lowered his head, looking down from the tree bark.
He could see from afar the dead body of the demon... and beside it, there was a small, tiny dot...
Sunny's expression turned sour as he sent his shadow forward to scout.
Not long after, his shadow finally reached the demon's body and found what that dot actually was...
Sunny eyes widened, feeling a terrible realization downing on him.
"Oh, gods..." he muttered slightly, his expression contorted into an ugly frown.
"Sunny?" Nephis said, unable to see anything in the darkness "What is it?"
Sunny remained silent for a moment, the pain within his throat boiling up as he tried his best to resist his Flaw But eventually, the pain became too unbearable...
"Hugo... he's dead."
Near the Carapace Demon body, Hugo's lifeless corpse was laying on a pile of glass and sand, his eyes wide open and his face frozen in an expression of absolute terror. The strange device on his hand had lost its beautiful azure glow, dying with its master. His armor memory , too, was unsummoned, suggesting that he was truly gone.
——
Back in the waking world, Awakened Rock was standing near one of the Sleeper pods of this year's batch.
His eyes were locked on one particular pod belonging to one of the youths he had taken a liking to, his expression amix pain, pity, and strange regret.
The pod was glowing red, confirming Rock's fear.
The Paragon of Purity's soul was destroyed, and he had become a hollow.
——
When the morning came and the dark sea retreated, Sunny, Nephis, and Cassie made their way down the tree bark carefully, eventually walking towards the Carapace Demon.
Sunny's expression was blank, his eyes drowsy and tired. He tried to remain awake, but he barely could, having gotten no sleep the other night. The terrible pressure on his mind didn't help either but he was currently too busy to think about that.
Reaching the Carapace Demon, Sunny ignored the monster's body immediately and went to the human, naked corpse near it.
His fears were proven true.
He had wished that he was under some sort of mental attack.
He had wished his shadow was playing tricks on him.
But none of his wishes had come true.
The truth was right in front of him.
Hugo was dead.
He was dead because of Sunny's plan.
A plan which relied on him playing the bait so they could escape...
A terrible mix of guilt, sadness, and regret hit Sunny's heart as his face contorted into an even uglier expression.
"Wake up..." he murmured slightly, looking down at the still body beneath him.
"I SAID WAKE UP!" Sunny screamed, shaking the body as hard as he could. He tried everything; he slapped the body, pinched it and even tried to press the strange dial on Hugo's device.
None of it worked.
The Paragon of Purity was dead.
Nephis looked at him, her aloof interior breaking down into one of sadness and similar guilt.
"Sunny, please stop... He's gone..." She said, her voice shaking slightly.
Cassie shivered slightly, tears swelling in her eyes as the truth was confirmed.
"No, no, no, he is isn't d—" He suddenly stopped, the pain of his Flaw not allowing him to lie.
Sunny's entire body bagan to shake violently, refusing to accept that he was dead, especially now that they were so close to escaping the crimson labyrinth.
"Come on, you can't be really dead! You bastard! You still have the second and third nightmare to conquer!" he shouted at the still corpse. "How come someone with your dream die first!"
He was once again met with absolute silence
——
The trio spent some more time in the Ashen Hell, burying Hugo's corpse and making a small gravestone for him.
Days after that, they remained in the exact same place, as if unable to leave by some strange force.
On the second week, Sunny decided to climb the gigantic tree to get some more apples for nephis.
On his way, he came across the spawn of a particularly nasty bird and killed it.
He came down the tree changed entirely, and not long after, he tricked Nephis into making a boat and managed to get her and Cassie on it to escape the tree—which he had found out was a harrowing Nightmare Creature capable of casting a mind hex on it's victims.
His heart stung deeply, remembering that he had left Hugo's body buried right under the abomination.
But once again, he was too weak to do anything about it.
That feeling of helplessness ignited a terrible fire within Sunny.
A fire that was supposed to ignite years later, but had awakened earlier due to the intervention of an insidious shapeshifter.
———
Somewhere, in a faraway realm within the Dream Realm, a human with pale skin and shimmering blue eyes was sprinting as fast as he could through a strange labyrinth maze of pure blue.
The human, a boy no older than seventeen, was like a madman, running away from nothing.
But only a fool would not run away from nothing.
——
[Hugo's POV]
'Shit! Shit, shit, SHIT!' Hugo screamed in his mind as he ran as fast as he could, trying to outpace the vile abomination that had entered his soul.
He didn't know how long he had spent in here, time itself had become irrelevant the moment he lost his connection to his physical body.
He had found himself in his Soul Sea, which was in a state of chaos. The blue sun representing his Soul Core was shaking violently, as if under attack by something, the maze itself was also functioning strangely, it was constantly morphing and changing in a rythme that didn't make any sense making all the routes Hugo had learnt in the past useless.
He did not need to speculate on why all of this way happening as the reason was quite obvious.
That reason was Nothing.
Or at least, a creature that did not possess a physical body.
Indeed, the vile abomination from the dark sea had followed him into his soul after his Omnitrix pulled him here as a last desperate messure to save his life.
The creature, as always was unrelenting, seeking to devour Hugo whole and corrupt him with its vile darkness. Hugo had become prey within his own Soul Sea. What was worse was the fact that he had lost his ability to transform. His Innate and Dormant abilities were both gone, leaving him powerless.
Whatever the Omnitrix was doing, it was stopping him from using its functions.
The creature pursuing Hugo seemed to be... weakened as well.
No, weakened was the wrong term. Limited was the right one. The abomination was of a high rank, no doubt—perhaps a Fallen or a Corrupted—but it could not utilize its true powers in here as if it was chained by some cosmic law, which was the only reason Hugo had been able to play cat and mouse with it for so long.
'What the hell is this!' he shouted mentally, unable to shout with his mouth, considering it could alert the creature.
Reaching one of the many turns of his soul sea, Hugo stopped to catch his breath, His body—his spirit body—was full of sweat.
'Just what the hell am I supposed to do?!'
There was no way out of this situation. He was being chased by an abomination he couldn't pierce, couldn't kill and couldn't do anything to, all while his Soul Sea was shaking violently, as if his very soul was breaking down but by bit.
Putting his hand on the maze wall, Hugo tried to focus, to find anything that would help him like he did once when trying to find the DNA rooms.
He felt only chaos.
The entire place was practically on fire, which only added to his frustration.
'Isn't there supposed to be a miniature god inside this damn watch?! Why isn't it doing anything!' The thought of letting the parasite invading his soul fight the god he had seen in his vision was tempting but he didn't even know where that imprint was located within the vast endless maze.
Even if hee did, that god will probably be an unholy being and not a divine one considering how every Imprint he received from his aspect legacy had a seed of nightmare...
Just then, Hugo spotted something in the corner of his vision. It was a slim tendril made of fog, crawling from another side of the shifting hallway.
'Shit!'
Hugo got to his feet and started running again not even bothering to attempt fighting the abomination.
The more he ran, the more he felt the maze shift and change. The very architecture of his soul was betraying him. Corridors he had just passed would slam shut like a valve, while new, treacherous paths of shimmering, unstable blue energy would tear open in the walls. The ground beneath his feet sometimes felt solid, other times like running on the surface of a disturbed pond. The harrowing whispers of the creature seemed to emanate from the walls themselves now.
Eventually, on one of the shifting corridors, he saw it.
A beautiful, translucent rift inside his soul, possessing no edges, no back or front.
His eyes gleamed with hope as he pushed his body as fast as he could, feeling the abomination intensify its pace as well. The fog condensed forming and grasping a semi-solid claws that scraped against the shifting walls behind him.
Right as the maze was about to change again, Hugo jumped into a strange structure that resembled stairs and latched onto them. He felt the structure shift, but he pushed forward, leaping from the stair and slamming right into the rift seconds before the entire maze shifted again.
Hugo fell and rolled on his face as he landed inside the DNA room.
"Im alive..." he mummuered slightly, taking in a moment to process all of this.
Then a mad smile appeared on his face as he broke into a terrifying unhinged laughter.
"TAKE THAT, YOU BASTARD!" he shouted, knowing the parasite could not enter this place Or at least, he assumed it wouldn't be able to...
He looked at the ten pods containing the same strange liquid with a face that only a mother could love. Hugo had never been happier to see these things in his life, but he was also quite confused at the moment.
What was he supposed to do now that he'd escaped?
Dive into one of the pseudo-trials?
And do what? Die? His Omnitrix was currently inactive rendering him useless against any Awakened creature.
Escaping from one terrible creature to another was not ideal at all.
"Just what the hell am I supposed to do?..." he said, walking around the circular room with a tense face.
He wondered what Sunny and Nephis would have done in his situation...
Sunny would have probably kept running away from the abomination and kept outrunning it out of sheer spite.
While Nephis would try to kill it and probably succeed somehow.
"Sounds like them, alright..." he said, a small smile tugging at his lips as he wondered what happened to his friends back in the dream realm...
It was then that he found himself near the two pods that were purified of their Seeds of Corruption, the ones representing the Pyronite and Tetramand DNA imprints...
"I wonder..."
He raised his head, slowly touching the pod's glass.
Once again, his arm passed through the translucent glass but this time, he wasn't pulled into a trial or anything. Instead, his arm began to shift and burn turning from flesh into a mix of rock and flame.
Horrified, he immediately pulled it out.
Hugo looked at his hand, finding that it had changed completely resembling that of a Pyronite...
"Huh?"
Curious, He tried inserting his other hand inside.
Once again, the shift occurred turning his entire arm into that of a Pyronite.
After a moment of looking at his new arm he sighed
"Fuck it." He jumped inside completely, feeling his entire body being remade in divine flames.
Within moments, he stepped out in the body of a Pyronite although this was different from his transformations. There was no Omnitrix symbol on his chest, nor was it on his hand. He also felt the lack of a timer.
But most importantly, he was weaker then his original transformation, being only of the dormant rank rather then an awakened.
"So I can transform into any creature I purified?"
Hugo wondered if that meant that when he wakes up, he could do this process to turn into a full-blown Nobel creature without the help of the Omnitrix...
"i should probably focus on survive this pla-"
Right then, Hugo suddenly felt a cold familiar presence encompass the entire room. The terrible mist started to seep inside from nothing.
It was formless at first, then slowly it started taking shape. The shape was wrong and dark, constantly shifting from one thing to another in an order that made no sense, Creatures that Hugo had never seen appeared within the mist but there were also creatures that he recognized—Nightmare Creatures, humans and Nobel creatures.
All sharing one thing in common.
The shining crimson eyes burning deep within the heart of the fog.
Hugo scowled, feeling his personality shift a little duo to his flaw still being active.
"You piece of shit, don't you have anything better to do?" he said, his voice raspy and contorted.
The creature, to his surprise, seemed to react to this.
It let out a terrible shriek but not long after, the scream slowly began to form into words...
"I... Am..."
Hugo's magmatic eyes widened. Hearing a Nightmare Creature talk wasn't something you saw every day especially considering that same Nightmare Creature was using his own voice.
"...Destroyed us... Corrupted us... Mirage... Daemon..."
The creature let out a myriad of strange names and syllables that Hugo couldn't understand, some were so wrong even the Nightmare Spell refused to translate them.
"Be... Become one... With us... We... Need... Each other... Cleanse... oo our.... corrruuuu... ppption..... "
The creature voice shifted slightly, within the dark mist something spoke, strangly Hugo felt the presence of the vile creature lessen a little as the creature muttuered it's next words.
"To retrieve our divi--- vi----- nni---- t----y...."
The creature suddenly stopped, which made Hugo's eyes narrow as he noticed something else about the creature...
'It's in pain...'
He thought, moving slightly behind one of the pods containing a blue and black liquid, his expression dire and tense.
Right at that moment, Hugo decided he had enough of listening to a Nightmare Creature trauma dumping on him.
and so he did the only sane thing in this situation.
He jumped backward into the pod, attempting to escape the abomination through a pseudo-trial.
But the creature had seen that coming, and while it was weakend , it was still strong enough to match Hugo's nascent speed.
So just as he entered the pod, the mist abomination entered with him, a split second later.
[Corrupted DNA sample detected.]
[Corruption detected...]
[Purifying corruption...]
[Purification impossible...]
[Failsafe activated.]
[Generating a trial...]
[ERROR!]
[FOREIGN ESSENCE DETECTED!]
[FAILSAFE FAILED]
...
The voice of the Omnitrix remained silent for a moment before speaking in a final tone.
[Failsafe 7 activating...]
[Wielder of the Omnitrix! Creature of Nothing! Prepare for your trials!]