Chapter 19 : Afternoon
In the instant the dome fell away, Reality was lost.
Fueled by the connection they had to Anton, Fiona and Kianna spared no thought to conserving their power as they unleashed the full might of their combined auras out into the world around them.
Ila and Nokko both froze where they stood as existence itself was bathed in a cold, unnatural darkness.
Nokko's eyes went wide as the sky above began to dim down into a sickening ashy blackness, and the sun, sitting over the horizon behind the dark elves, suddenly shifted into a sinister, blood red orb that now hung menacingly above the darkening world.
Taking a step back, the kiochi's breath became caught in her throat as the air all around her fell flat and grew heavy. Her unblinking eyes began to strain in their sockets as she watched, horrified, while the edges of the world appeared to tilt inwards. This effect caused the horizons to rise in such a way that the land itself seemed to have been transformed into a massive, inescapable maw, which now threatened to close in above and seal away all the unlucky souls that found themselves trapped within its expanse.
Reality had truly been lost, stripped away by the wills of monstrous beings, and in its place was left a dire landscape filled with nothing but darkness and dread.
"Hm... Well now..." mused Anton as he gazed up at the darkened sky before glancing about at the now twisted terrain "This is certainly impressive... So this is what happens when they work together... I do hope that this is just an illusion of some sort, and they're not actually ripping apart the world... Because that is going to be pretty unfortunate if they are..."
Instinctively reaching for her weapons, Nokko stopped short as her eyes fell back on the dark elves. Although they were already naturally taller than herself, the sisters had somehow seemed to be to have become much larger than they were even mere moments before. With the red orb that was once the sun hanging in the sky between and just above them, the now towering dark elves remained completely silent as the features of their faces and bodies began to fade behind a thick, enveloping darkness that seemed to encase their entire beings, and left them as solid black, living silhouettes.
Nokko made a small sound in the back of her throat as she watched, mesmerized, as the eyes of the two dark elves lit up and began to blaze with an angry, fiery red glow that shined out brightly against the blackness around them.
The kiochi's chest tightened as a bone-chilling, nonexistent wind carried by the dark elves auras, rolled straight through to her core as it spread outwards and saturated the very landscape itself with not only a message of their power, but their wordless promise of impending entrapment, despair and pain.
Frozen where she stood, Nokko did nothing as her mother's tail wrapped itself tightly around her middle and jerked her backwards. Snapped free from her trance, she grunted and blinked in surprise as a series of pink and green glowing rings winked into existence in the spot she had been standing in less than a second before. In the next instant, a tangle of pink and green chains erupted out of the rings and began to angrily rip at each other as they searched for their intended prey.
Furious now, Nokko pulled her gun from its holster and went to level it at one of the dark elves.
Though she had regained her senses, she was disheartened to find that her movements and reactions were being heavily hampered by not only the feeling of intense dread that permeated her being, but by the very environment itself. The air around her had become so dense that moving through it in anyway was no longer an easy task. It literally felt as though she was now deep underwater or more accurately, had been buried in sand, and this not only worked to break her focus, but caused her limbs to feel so weighted that even lifting her feet off the ground was now a struggle.
Though she was no where near as experienced in combat as her parents were, Nokko was still savvy enough to know that this hindrance could easily cost her the fight against the still quickly moving dark elves. This notion was immediately illustrated when in the moment before she could even pull the trigger of her gun, a pink bubble winked into existence around the dark elf she was aiming at, and the end of a glowing, neon green whip sliced through the air and wrapped itself around her weapon.
Unable to react fast enough to make any meaningful difference, Nokko could do nothing but cry out as her weapon was ripped away from her and sent sailing into the hand of the attacking dark elf.
Turning to her assailant, she stopped short when she found the barrel of her own gun was being aimed right back at her. She couldn't help but to grin when a click sound rang out and indicated it had failed to fire.
"Heh! Bitch!" she sneered as she watched the dark elf's glowing eyes tighten in annoyance as she looked down at the gun in her hand "It's not synced to you, you idiot!"
Turning back to her, the dark elf narrowed her eyes even further as she took in Nokko's mocking expression. The gleeful light in the kiochi's eyes quickly died when in the next instant, three thin, tentacle-like glowing green chains snaked out of the dark elf's palm, wrapped themselves around the gun and commenced to violently rip it apart.
"...You! Bitch!" breathed Nokko as she watched the pieces of her former weapon fall to the ground "You stupid bitch!"
Fiona didn't respond as her attention was taken up by Ila suddenly disappearing from behind her daughter. Summoning her own shield out of caution proved to be the right move when Ila reappeared in the air over Fiona's head and went to strike her from above. The elder kiochi's swords bounced harmlessly off the side of the aura field and using this momentum, she flipped herself backwards so as to land on her feet in front of Fiona and fall into a fighters stance with her weapons at the ready.
Focused on her Mother's antics, Nokko came back to her senses when several pink rings suddenly winked into existence around her. Startled into reacting, she immediately teleported herself up into the air and out of the rings reach.
Enraged at the effort made to entrap her, the kiochi pulled a set of daggers from a pair of sheaths strapped to her thighs and curling her tail up and over her head, dove down at the waiting dark elf. Slamming onto the top of her bubble, Nokko preceded to furiously strike at the exact same spot over and over with both her bladed spade as well as her twin daggers.
Circling slowly around Fiona, Ila jumped back in surprise when the dark elf suddenly dropped her shield and stuck at her with her whip. Feinting a forward strike, the kiochi froze when a set of green rings appeared around her. Rather than teleport away as her daughter had, Ila instead tucked her swords and tail in close to her sides and hopped into the air. As she dropped back down from her little jump, the kiochi failed to land back on the ground, as instead, she sank down into her own shadow.
Fiona's glowing eyes tightened in question as she watched Ila disappear, and they became annoyed when the shadow the kiochi had disappeared into began to quickly move about across the ground and out from under her rings.
Brandishing her whip, Fiona struck at the shadow as it zipped back and forth around her and in anticipation of Ila resurfacing, she kept summoning more rings into existence whenever the shadow would stop moving.
Sunk down into her shadow, Ila found the effects of the dark elves auras had been lessened quite a bit for her, unfortunately she wouldn't be able to maintain for too much longer without air and would need to resurface at some point soon.
"These stupid bubbles!" growled Nokko as she worked to both keep chipping away at the bubble and ignore the glowing red eyes that were staring up at her "If it wasn't for this shit you and that bastard over there would both be dead already!"
Kianna's eyes widened in fury before narrowing down into thin slits. Reestablishing her composure, she took a step back and out from under the kiochi.
Preoccupied as she was, Nokko failed to notice the dark elf as she pointed a finger up at her. And the next sequence of events happened far too quickly for the hindered shinoccubi to react in time, as all at once the bubble she was sitting on disappeared while at the same moment a thin, glowing pink chain shot out from Kianna's fingertip and almost instantly latched onto the now free falling kiochi's tail.
