87 Judgemen (1/2)
A sterling aegis loomed over the vast expanse of what seemed like infinity. It, alone, would be the final line in the sand.
Should it fall, that'd be it. There wouldn't be a second chance.
Not against that. There were so many of them it didn't seem even real. It felt like someone had played a cruel joke on him. There was no winning against that eldritch monstrosity out there.
Hundreds of millions of lives were on the line, maybe even more than that.
He could not fail. Could. Not. Fail. If there was ever a time to not fail, it would be right now.
The pressure continued to mount on his shoulders as he stared at the mind-numbingly colossal tendril of darkness head towards him.
At a distance, it looked like it was a uniform pitch-black but once it got close enough, Reed gasped silently.
It was made of Infested. Hundreds of trillions of Infested — likely even more than that — had been fused together into a single… appendage.
The words length, width, and height could not be applied to it because he could not find anything comparable to it despite all he knew.
Continents. Planets. Stars. Planetary systems. Galaxies. All useless.
He wagered that the tendril likely held enough Infested that it could drown an entire universe with them. The worst part of it all was that the tendril was just one of the smaller ones.
Far, far away, several thick brush-strokes of darkness could be seen coiling around a multiverse as they strangled the life out of it.
The sight of it was too much to bear for a normal person. He fell over and retched up everything in his stomach. It was too awful to witness…
That was what he had been tasked with holding back — the ultimate manifestation of despair, decay, and loss.
The Grand Swarm.
He could hear his companion saying something to him but it didn't register in his head. Her voice seemed faint and fleeting like a whisper in a thunderstorm. She sounded concerned — that much he could tell from the tone of voice.
Reed shakily got up from his knees and said, ”I-I'll be fine. I won't run away so stop jabbering in my ear, Lacrima.”
Not as if I could even run in the first place. My feet won't move.
The aegis he had created needed a constant supply of Anima in order for it to function. That meant that he would have to remain beside it for the entire duration of the process.
Whether Reed liked it or not, he'd given himself a front-row seat that couldn't be exchanged anymore. He stood a couple of hundred meters away from the hole itself, behind the transparent aegis as he waited for the inevitable.
The closer the tendril inched towards the hole, the larger it became. Slowly but surely, it was blotting out the surrounding space until nothing could be seen aside from it.
It was laughing. Thoroughly amused, it cackled even louder than before when it finally saw the piddling wall that Reed had put up.
Hundreds of trillions of voices — unwilling participants — laughed in unison as they approached the hole.
They did not want to do this. Not to the boy, nor his home but they could not stop. They would violate and destroy this reality until nothing was left. Nothing. Such was the will of their masters…
Reed's heart throbbed wildly like an out-of-control piston as he watched them close in on the hole. It would only be a matter of minutes until they would arrive.
He turned around and looked Lu'um who had sealed all of her senses in order to focus on her side of the job. She couldn't afford to become distracted. Not now, at the final stretch.
Neither he, nor she could afford to make any mistakes. They were on their own from here on out.
”⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛,” said Reed. That was all he wanted to say to her in case they failed.
The laughter had grown so loud outside that his voice had been drowned out. Still, he had told her. That was enough for him.
He turned back toward the aegis and put his hands on it. Direct contact would enable him to channel Anima into it even faster, at the cost of becoming linked with it.
The aegis had become a direct extension of himself and shone brighter than before as if it had suddenly been reinforced. Its twelve layers glittered like shining diamonds in the dark as the tendril closed in on it.
Hold. Please, please hold. Don't break. Please…!
Endless, scornful snickering filled the void when they saw what Reed had done. A futile, meaningless gesture. It would not change anything, as far as they were concerned.
Reed grit his teeth and planted his feet down into the ground as firmly as he could. He would hold them back even if it cost him everything, even his life…
And then, after what seemed like an eternity-in-waiting, the time had come for him to prove what he had promised to himself.
They had arrived.
”You poor, miserable child. Look at you… Still struggling even in the face of the inevitable.”
A foreign voice had intruded into his mind the moment that the swarm had struck the aegis. An indifferent, deep voice spoke in a disappointed tone as the swarm continued to assault the aegis without end.
”What are you even hoping to accomplish? For what purpose do you resist?”
Reed couldn't block out the voice, no matter what he tried. It was as if the voice had a permanent, direct connection into his mind.
”For your lover? For your family? Your people? The world?”
Despite his efforts, the first layer had already begun to break. Large cracks formed on its surface as the Infested smashed into it with even greater intensity than before.
”No.”
Reed groaned in pain and bit his lip when the first layer broke. Its destruction had rebounded back on him in full. The force of the rebound had traveled up through his arms into his entire body. It felt like a super-cruiser had struck him at full speed.