23 Chapter 22: Soul Eater (1/2)

Blood still dripped out of Luca's wounds, and even more of it pooled beneath his unconscious body, dying the green grass red. Bits of red droplets staining his wings a dark crimson where Luca had landed on them. Bits of blood falling freely to the ground off the end of his feathers and off the ends of his fingertips. In any other turn of events, Luca would have been long dead.

At the behest of the words he had uttered before passing out and being rent unconscious by blood loss, an arcane circle appeared beneath him. The circle opened up into a dark void sprawling across the grounds as Luca lay suspended in the middle of it. A portal connecting this reality to another, a darker nether dimension, and from that dimension, something was to come forth.

A symbol appeared within the portal to that nether world, the symbol of the school of conjuration flashing in purple light and forming an inscribed pentagon with the blood that had pooled, his blood, and Steels. Smoke began to rise from the dark world on the other side of the portal as Luca's mana was fed into the spell. His very lifeforce calling to the Nightmare that was to bound to him.

A cloud of bubbled up from the circle, tainting all the untouched grass around Luca's body as more of his life's bleed feel freely into the portal, further powering the ability and also taxing his unconscious body. Though Luca was no longer at risk for death, simply a prolonged period of rest as he healed, even as the spell pulled energy from his body.

An oppressive dense aura of malevolent darkness descended on the entire area. Calling 2Face's and Tatiana's attention to it and even drawing that of the Huntsmen Spider. Whatever malignant being was coming, they all knew to fear it, and though it was a terrible fear, 2Face and Tatiana both ran towards the source, wanting and needing to know what was happening.

When they saw the source of the creeping aura of malice was coming from Luca's body, they both shuddered. Afraid of what was coming next. Whether they had admitted it or not, the kid had freaked them out. Neither had ever wanted him on the team, not really. It was only at Dominic's urging that Tatiana had even initially propositioned the kid to join their team when he had arrived.

From within the circle, a slender, though well-muscled arm reached out with long clawed fingers and grabbed the edges of the portal and began pulling itself up out of the nether realm from which it had come. The Nightmare revealing itself. Showing a heavily marred body of matted purple and red scar tissue, barely covered in places by the shredded black leather armor it wore from head to toe. Rusted iron chains were bound around its wrists and its torso.

The Nightmare's head was not readily apparent underneath its armor, but as it lifted its body out of the pit it had emerged from, Tatiana and 2Face could see it wore a triangle-shaped hat, and beneath the hat, the Nightmares features were entirely obscured by an unnatural darkness, all that could be seen were two yellow orbs where its eyes were.

The thing that Luca had summoned grasped at the other side of the summoning pit within the arcane circle with its off-hand. With an otherworld effort, it hefted itself up, launching itself out of the pit. It landed perfectly upright on two spindly, unsteady looking legs. Where the Nightmare had landed, the grass began to rapidly turn to grey ash, and the earth beneath it blackened with blight. A trail of rot spread out from the Nightmare as the disease it spawned promptly killing the nearby vegetation.

2Face recognized the monster for it was it, seeing that Luca was still alive by noticing the heaving of his chest as he continued to draw breath. Just as 2Face recognized that Luca had summoned the monster, Tatiana also recognized it was a danger to them. ”We need to get back away from that thing right now. Whatever you do, don't let that blight touch you.”

Even as she yelled it out, 2Face was taken back in surprise by the suddenness of her outburst and quickly obeyed, pulling back in suspicion from the battlefield as he lacked in suspicion at both the Nightmare and the Huntsman spirt who was now eyeing the newest participant on the field with thinly veiled fear.

The Huntsmen Spider was not like the group of humans that had milled around trying to harm it before running away. It had sensed the sensation of danger long before it had recognized were the sensation of danger was coming from, and unlike the humans, the Huntsmen Spider turned as it could on its damaged legs to meet this new threat head-on. Planning on killing it and consuming it later, just like it had done with the other two humans.

The Nightmare grinned, showed a row of razorsharp triangle shaped teeth as it saw the spider it's master had summoned it to kill.

Splitting its attention between both the Huntsman Spider, the running humans, and a third party that waited and watched in the distance, the Nightmare announced itself. ”I am Ars Goethe, a Nightmare Duke of the Nether Realm. Bound on this day to serve the Black Seraph forevermore. On behalf of my master, I will take your lives as a gift on this glorious day of his dark ascension.”

The Nightmare stood upright like a man. As it moved, its limbs and bones cracked and popped. Though if it held any weakness, it did not show otherwise. The Huntsman Spider glared and hissed as the Nightmare approached it, knowing the fear of the many prey it had killed and consumed over the millennia.