The cut

Lyra, euryce and me scrambled around as the enormous monstrosity moved towards us with terrifying speed. We were forced to abandon his cloak back in the center as we ran away towards sacrifice mountain.

“I usually don’t do any of this, but allow me to give you all a show before you die.” Said the inhuman voice that came from that monster.

It extended one of its hands towards his cloak and grabbed it, before shoving it inside his chest. Then, in his hand, one of the gadgets that was stored in it appeared. It then pointed it towards the ground.

Something started pouring out from the device. A strange rubber like liquid that then started to move towards us, its speed increasing every second.

Euryce saw what was going on and grabbed my arm, pulling me towards her. In a single move she then pulled me up and started carrying me in her arms. Lyra saw what she was doing and understood what she was doing.

Light coalesced in both of them as they gathered as much as they could, now shooting throught the forest at max speed.

The distance that in any other situation would have taken hours had been reduced to minutes. They deaccelerated as the boost faded, but they were still moving at a much higher speed than I would be able to if I sprinted as fast as I could.

Even then, the strange liquid was still following us through the ground. It managed to keep its pace, bubbling and rising from the ground as if to catch us while Euryce and Lyra jumped between the trees.

“Lyra, I can’t outrun it!” screamed Euryce, starting to run out of breath, the arms she was carrying me with starting to tremble as she got tired.

“Don’t give up, we are almost there!” Screamed Lyra, seeing the entrance to sacrifice mountain in the distance.

“Lyra…” said Euryce again, her speed decreasing as the rubber like liquid got closer and closer.

She then smiled at her, before turning towards me and whispering in my ear:

“I’m sorry for this. Take good care of her.”

As Lyra started returning to help Euryce move faster, she rose me above her head, looking at her daughter with a smile.

“I trust you!” Euryce screamed, as she threw me towards Lyra who had to stop suddenly and catch me to avoid falling in the ground. Her skin shone bright as she invoked the light for the strength to carry me.

“Now, let’s do it one more time.” Said Euryce, the light starting to shine bright as they both once gathered all they could, shooting forward in a great burst of light.

I could barely keep track of what was going on, I felt dizzy as I was moved at high speeds, thrown around, held in their arms as they ran from the strange goo that had accelerated again just as we did.

Euryce started moving more and more apart from us, finally separating and moving out of sight as she could not follow Lyra’s pace. I looked back in worry, but the goo did not try to follow her, it was focused on us.

“We can do this. We will do this!” Screamed Lyra, as she barely managed to escape from the goo with a high jump that shot her above the trees, far away from the goo that almost catched us.

When we rose above, illuminated by the stream that was now so close to us, was the giant monster that followed us, walking over the trees with its scrawny limbs.

When we jumped in the air we appeared right in front of us. Lyra was about to crash into it, as it extended it hand to grab us, but Lyra kicked the hand away in mid air.

“Ack!” She screamed when she did, her leg hurting for kicking something so hard as the monster was. We started falling down in the forest again, but Lyra managed to get her bearings when we stumbled down the treetops and started jumping between the trees to avoid the ground that was still full of the rubbery liquid.

The liquid was now starting to climb up the trees, just as the hands of the monster started coming down upon us. The end of the forest was right in front of us, and in front of it, the entrance to the mountain.

Lyra grabbed ahold of me even tighter, and with a battle cry, she used another boost of light. The trees she used as support fell apart as we both flew in the air inside the mountain, barely dodging the sticklike hands that grazed us as we passed.

I looked back a moment, I could see the monster starting to touch the liquid, which started coalescing around him as if it was skin.

Lyra did not stop to look back, she ran inside as fast as she could, until we finally reached the place we were looking for from the start.

Inside the mountain, in an enormous room decorated with an enormous assortment of symbols and hyroglyphs, was a pillar or light. A shiny beacon that engulfed us with it’s brightness as we started approaching it.

“Pole, now!” Screamed Lyra, letting me go on the side of the stream just as an otherworldly screech approached from behind us.

I brought out the trinket I had managed to snatch from the visitor’s cloak when we ambushed him. The stream cutter. I looked at the stream, wondering how I was supposed to handle it. The cutter looked like a small scalpel, but the stream was as big as a house. How was I supposed to cut it?

As soon as I touched the stream with the cutter, it pulled me in. The upwards force of the stream forced me into it agaisnt my will, as I felt something grabbing my feet.

When I looked down I managed to see the hand of the visitor, as both of us were dragged upwards with the stream.

“I’m going to make you suffer the worse fate the seven layers have ever seen!” Screeched the visitor as we both ascended.

I could feel as if something inside me was breaking apart. My skin started to shine, but instead of an uniform brightness like Lyra’s, it seemed like I had become glass and was about to break apart in a thousand pieces.

The visitor looked like it, but soon, it’s body recomposed itself, its control of the light so precise that he could handle the force of the stream that was tearing me apart.

Before he could take the cutter from my hand, something stopped him. Someone else had started to ascend through the stream with us.

Lyra stopped the visitors hand. Now in the stream of light, she looked more powerful than she ever had. The visitor tried to grab her with her six arms but she was quicker than him. In one swift movement, she brought up the device he had used to put me in a nightmare.

The visitor was quick enough to grab it, but not enough to stop her from shooting.

A pained screech resounded all the way into Nochightdad as the visitor was forced into an uneasy sleep. Its body contracted upon itself, its enormous length reduced as it folded back into an human shaped form.

I lost sight, as my eyes started to break apart.

Lyra grabbed me by my arm, and soon grabbed my face. When she did, I could feel my eyesight returning to me as she controlled the light around us with extreme ease.

“Lyra, I can’t cut it, It’s too strong.” I said, barely managing to hold the stream cutter.

She looked at me with doubt for a moment. She looked down, we were now in the sky, ascending more and more. Her face twisted with sadness until it suddenly steeled back with determination.

“Let’s go.” She said taking the cutter from my hand and doing a simple movement with it. It was as simple as smooth as if she had been cutting butter.

We would never know it, but in that instant, the pillar of light split in half. The part we were in shot towards the skies at full speed, while the visitor’s sleeping body was forced downwards, dissapearing in the depths of the earth as the stream slingshot us in opposite directions.

With a resounding bang, the stream was no more.

Lyra and me hugged each other as we shot through the otherworldly space at unbelievable speeds. Everything was bright, until suddenly, something changed in reality around us, as if we had crossed an invisible barrier.

We continued moving onward, towards the world above us, without any idea what we would find in it.