Into the Abyss - Part One

The story always continues after the curtain falls.

That was a realization Cobalt was too afraid to face.

However, the sharpness of the knife drew in just how true that statement was…

I never asked for an audience.

The heads tilted to the side curiously.

Analyzing him like a dissected pig fetus who’s about to have his organs taken out onto a metal plate…

My story’s done… Go home.

But twisting the knife in fascination, the faceless cloaks proceeded their analysis without complication.

The pain’s only now setting in…

His twisted ankle. His bruised fists. His crushed right hip. His smashed jaw. Only now did the sensations of those misfortunes acknowledge themselves in Cobalt’s mind as pain.

I roughed myself up worse than you pieces of shit can.

His sweater and shirt were lifted, exposing his stomach and chest. His sweaty palms, restrained by rope, gripped themselves, driving fingernail into flesh.

I’ve got nothin’ to be afraid of anymore…

Were the words he confidently said to himself… However, that mantra fell flat at his restrained feet.

He was lying almost vertically. Looking above him, he saw the ledge of a cliff concealing both the Moon and the Southern Star.. To his left and right, steep walls of rock. And to his front…

“Immensely curious.”

“How curious.”

“Very curious.”

The red-cloaked cultists picked and prodded at him, lightly tracing the knife down the center line of his torso, drawing blood.

“The way that his Essence.”

“Reacts to the sense of pain.”

“The way his Essence reacts.”

Funny thing about pain… Cobalt ran his frantic mind on separate tangents, practically stalling him with useless distractions.

You can punch yourself in the face and leave blood just fine and it doesn’t hurt… Like, if you know where you’re hitting…

The faceless figures continued to pry at him.

But if you stub your toe out of the blue, or twist your leg… It hurts a lot more… It’s almost like fear is what makes you feel pain, not the actual sensation…

He had no idea where he was. He had no idea who these figures were. He had no idea what would become of him. He had no idea how to survive.

I don’t get it, but… If you think your leg is broken, it’ll hurt a lot more. Or if you have a stomach ache or crack your neck in the wrong way… Like you don’t know if you’ll be okay, you don’t know what’ll happen… And that’s what makes it hurt the most.

What exactly was he rambling about?

I don’t think I’ll make it outta this… I don’t know what to expect… My expectations are just… They’re not here anymore…

He tried closing his eyes, but it didn’t help.

My ability to just escape from anything… To save myself or detach myself from the rest of the world… I just… Don’t feel it anymore…

The knife on his chest scratched deeper and deeper.

It’s the unknown… Being afraid… That makes something hurt the most…

This audience of nightmarish figures… This darkness… This chilling feeling that it won’t be okay in the end…

And right now… I’m really fuckin’ afraid.

He winced against it. They were testing him. That’s all he was. Just a labrat. Just prey waiting to be devoured.

But they won’t hear me scream…

Even his internal voice sounded like it had completely given up.

This last act of defiance—his silence—was the only thing motivating him.

But to say that it served him as hope wouldn’t be accurate.

“The Essence.”

“It is residing in his white blood cells.”

“His Essence is taking shape.”

“In the white blood cells.”

What the hell were these freaks talking about?

Peering over him, several cultists investigated, what he assumed was, the way his body reacted to the cuts they gave him.

The knife never cut too deep. Nothing to leave a scar…

But feeling this unknown sensation, in this unknown place, with these unknown people…

Was easily the most painful experience he had ever found himself in.

As the knife traced over his rapidly beating heart, a cloaked figure peered right into Cobalt’s eyes.

Only a few centimeters away, staring into his abyssal face, he could see no mouth, nose, eyes…

Speaking all in unison…

His horrors played out in stereo.

“Immensely…”

“Exceedingly…”

“Tremendously…”

“Remarkably…”

“Supremely…”

Thumpthump.

Thumpthump.

Thumpthump.

『”Curious.”』

Shaking through his ribcage, a thunderous eruption burst through the rocks, sending surges of chillingly low vibrations across the examination. Already tense from the anticipation of the blade, his chest noticed first. After that, the deafening explosion blasted through his eardrums.

“!!!”

“What could—”

A sharp glint appeared across Cobalt’s vision, rushing from his left to—

The cultist, thrown back, barely caught its footing against the jolt backwards.

Leaning so far back it might as well have been seeing the world upside down, the figure exploded a sudden ferocity from the interior of its cloak, rising from the impact.

And piercing all the way through the back of his hood, a sharp serrated spear hung from his U-shaped body, having been tossed at near mach speed.

Cobalt’s face drenched in sweat as he hopelessly watched their reaction.

Noticing a chaotic black ashy mist ooze skyward from the pierced “skull” of his former tormentor, its knife dropped to the dirt ground, sticking in its red tip which held a small part of Cobalt downward, soaking his former blood into the soil.

Then frantically, turning in tandem with the other cultists, to his left-

A cataclysmic burst of fire seeped in through the sky, sending a shockwave through the group.

If Cobalt wasn’t restrained, he likely would have collapsed on the spot, but the cultists, catching themselves with menacingly tilted heads against the fire’s peculiarity, hung sturdy against the burst of force and smoke with an abyssal visage reeking with the appearance of death.

An ambush—?

Still feeling the pulsating whips of a forced wind and smoke, he winced against the sensation. His lifted shirt and sweater dropped down over his belly, giving him at least the subtle sense of dignity…

But below the surface, two widened and cognized eyes reflected the glimpse of fire, whipping frantically between the source of the blast, still igniting in a scintillating blaze, and his former tormentor, still bent over from the serrated spear’s impact…

The world played itself in slow-motion…

Thumpthump. Thumpthump. Thumpthump.

Was this… Even real?

What type of fiery hell had crashed down on Cobalt’s persecution?

As its body, oozing from a misty inhuman burst of black ash, played its descent in slow motion before Cobalt’s hysteric eyes…

And its U-shaped cadaver finally touched the back of its skull against the dirt—

W I S P . . .

His red-cloaked tormentors vanished all at once, abandoning the thumping pierced corpse’s against the dirt, leaving the faintest afterimage as their winded cloaks seemingly evaporated from the air.

“...”

Wordlessly, Cobalt blinked at the sudden change of course…

From having his torso violated with a knife, to being left out on the cutting board…

“Nhn!”

No time to think about this shit!! Cobalt furiously pulled at his bounded arm, trying to escape from his ropes.

Was escape even possible?

Giving himself rope-burn in the process, he couldn’t afford to doubt himself.

Pulling his left hand, his right pulled back in the same direction…

And pulling his right hand, his left pulled with it as well…

Meaning:

The only thing I’m tied to is myself!!

A smirking grin comparable to the word “hope” spread itself across his entire face in tandem with the glint his eyes lit up with.

If Cobalt could wriggle his arms up and over the “cutting board” he was tied to, he had a good chance of getting out…

But first goes my legs.

“Mnh!!”

Pulling himself up against the weight of gravity…

He had to pull his arms as far forward as he could to prevent his bottom from slipping out, but even that…

“Come on!!!”

He felt like a superhero clinging from two different ledges. Pulling his arms as far forward as he could, it felt like his ulna would snap any second…

But without taking risks, Cobalt’s chances of survival…

“AHA!!”

There’s the rhythm!!

Snaking his legs up together and pressing them back against the board in cycles, he could just barely manage to keep his movement upwards.

But even then, there was another foot or two above him before even his arms were free.

KRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHH

Another enormous eruption, and Cobalt’s confident expressions were forced back into a wince.

Following the inhuman snaps of two cultists being thrown against the cave wall and shattering like twigs, he too felt the weight of the shockwave pressing himself against the board…

“!!!”

Which now leaned forward following the ricochet of that burst of force.

“SHIT!!!”

He didn’t have any time.

Getting closer and closer to facing the ground with each millisecond, he frantically wriggled his hands and feet upwards…

Racing against gravity, his life was once again facing irreconcilable danger.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!”

Cobalt screamed desperately into the now-warm night air as he faced the crippling fate of being crushed…

Catching himself on all fours, Cobalt had no time to look back.

His racing mind, madly repeating the words ‘Holyshitholyshitholyshit’ in his head, had gone into fight or flight.

And once again desperately fighting against losing his own life, Cobalt just barely passed without dying in the process…

Once his hands clutched the top of the “cutting board”, Cobalt had used the centripetal force to propel his whole body, binded legs included, forward as quickly as possible.

Which just barely granted him his life.

However, his ankles were still binded to one another…

As were his wrists.

I’ve got about two or so meters between my hands… And somewhere between two and three connecting my feet.

Ignoring all reason, knowing he was limited on time, Cobalt once again burst into a sprint, rushing to safety as quickly as humanly possible.

Better not botch this up, then!!!

The wisping and whirling world around him spat at him with the bitter flames of fire.

Within just thirty seconds, everything had spiraled so far out of control…

Dozens, maybe even a hundred cloaked figures.

All with flesh which felt metal, blood which evaporated like ash, and a soulless expression which reeked of death…

I swear to God…

Charging towards the never-ending horde, ropes in hand and a desperate “all-or-nothing” inferno piercing within his eyes, he clenched his bruised fists in a rough and coiled rope.

“I’M GONNA MAKE IT OUT THIS TIME!!!”

Leaping through the air with the poise of a battle-virgin child, he threw away his doubts about his fighting stances.

He may not know anything about the right way to do this, but even so…

“I’M A SUPER SOLDIER!!! SO I’LL FIND A WAY TO KICK YOUR ASSES!!!”

Screaming like a child, he crashed his foot down against the temple of a distracted cultist. Then sliding off it with sloppy footwork, he brazenly shifted his weight to his upper body. The rope between his hands lashed itself around the cultist’s throat. And before he could react…

Cobalt swung the rest of his body in a full 180°, delivering the final blow with his feet crashing into the back of the cultist’s spine…

And landing stylelessly like a frog, Cobalt caught himself on the dirt, a sadistic grin on his face.

To deliver as much pain to your enemy as possible… In as short of time as possible.

That was the mantra of a brain in combat. But could Cobalt really match that?

Standing up, ropes still connected to his wrists, he punched his thumb confidently against his chest, stealing as much attention from the blazing explosive infernos as he was able to. Then, he spat against the dirt where his faceless enemy lay, before turning his sharp gaze back to the relentless fire, the mysterious invader, and the enemies which fought against it.

And referring to his former screams against the night, he continued: “And that’s a promise, goddamnit.”