THE ABYSS
The air was not hot in the Abyss; it was not cold, either. It was simply wrong. It felt like the absence of everything; a colossal, silent void where gravity was a suggestion and time was a joke. Here, light did not shine; it was consumed.
Helcurt materialized in a swirl of shimmering dark particles, the oppressive density of the dimension settling over his armored form like a shroud. He stood on a spire of jagged, obsidian rock, the only sound the dry, rasping whir of his own cybernetic systems adjusting to the shift in reality.
The silence lasted only a moment.
A figure detached itself from the nearest wall of darkness, materializing in a cascade of black and violet energy. She was beautiful and terrible, her wings like solidified shadow, her smirk a roadmap of millennia of malice.
"Nice name huh... Henry?!" Alice said, her voice a seductive, dangerous melody.
Helcurt didn't flinch. He didn't like her. He respected the power, but hated the condescending way she wore it. "Were you following me?"
Alice laughed, the sound echoing flatly in the void. "I can sense you anywhere in the universe." She drifted closer, her gaze unnervingly focused, not on his face, but on the energy residue clinging to his armor. "That Carlos seems powerful, isn't he?"
Helcurt shifted his weight, preparing for a fight he knew he couldn't win. "He is unusual. A strong elemental core, suppressed by human genetics. A strange mix."
Alice tilted her head, her smile predatory. "Helcurt, you really don't have an idea in that universe huh?"
"What?"
Alice just laughed, a long, rolling, irritating sound. "Whatever! Even though how many times I told you that don't go anywhere because you are not powerful like me, you don't listen." She finished the sentence and turned her back, vanishing in a flash of purple smoke, bored with the conversation already.
Helcurt's jaw tightened. He fought the urge to smash the spire he was standing on. Instead, he forced his internal systems to quiet. He didn't need her. He had his own mission. He would prove his worth on his own terms.
"You should really stop talking to yourself," a new voice drawled from behind him.
Selena.
She was leaning against the nearest dark spire, her twin form shimmering with the familiar, confusing mix of light and shadow; the dark, demonic side dominating here in the Abyss. Her gaze was sharp, analyzing him with clinical intensity.
"Hey, why did you disturb that kid? Huh?" Selena asked.
Helcurt scoffed. "Who? Carlos? Nothing, he seems powerful."
"I mean, every alternate universe has its powerful one," Selena countered, pushing off the pillar and stepping closer. "Why you disturbed him anyway?"
"Why Abyss has always been interested in everywhere I go!?" Helcurt shot back, his frustration boiling over.
Selena rolled her eyes. The simple human gesture seemed out of place on her demonic form. "Look, that kid... he feels special for me. I feel his power is like an... an aberration." She paused, searching for the right word. "A glitch. A mistake in the matrix."
"Huh?"
Selena threw her hands up in disgust. "Crap! If you don't understand, stop going anywhere." She had wasted enough time.
Before she could vanish like Alice, the dimension itself seemed to shudder. A wave of arrogant, youthful energy washed over the spires.
Prince Dyrroth arrived.
He didn't step out of the shadows; he burst from them, a flash of black armor and cruel purpose. He landed between them, his posture demanding immediate fealty.
Selena stiffened, her eyes narrowing. "Are we supposed to kneel? You are not my prince."
Dyrroth didn't even look at her. He addressed Helcurt, his voice sharp with command. "So... Helcurt... What makes that kid special?"
Selena instantly turned on Dyrroth, her usual scorn replaced by suspicion. "Wait, did you order Helcurt to go there?"
Dyrroth finally glanced at her, his lips curling into a vicious smile. "If I am not your prince then stop talking to this slave Helcurt."
The word "slave" hit a nerve. Helcurt roared, the sound an electronic screech. His claws extended, crackling with dark energy. "Me? Slave? Huh... you want to fight now?"
Selena sighed, the brief moment of alarm gone, replaced by profound boredom. "Pathetic, I really don't know why I'm wasting my time with the two of you." She didn't wait for a response. She simply dissolved, retreating from their childish bickering.
Dyrroth didn't care. He turned his attention back to the lesser demon. "Helcurt, how's that alternate universe?"
Helcurt felt the surge of black smoke well up in his core—his silent, desperate way of asserting independence. "You go there, why are you asking me?!"
With a surge of dark, thick smoke that instantly coated the air in a temporary, blinding haze, Helcurt vanished. He is gone, leaving Dyrroth alone on the obsidian spire.
Dyrroth stood amidst the rapidly dissipating smoke. He wasn't truly angry; he was thoughtful, calculating. He looked out over the desolate landscape of the Abyss, the dark clouds swirling above like a hungry, watchful beast.
"What makes that Carlos special?!" Dyrroth asked himself, the question a dry, venomous whisper. "He's just an aberration."
He began to walk, descending the spire alone, his armored boots scraping on the jagged rock. The question burned in his mind, fueling his restless ambition. Aberration. The word Alice and Selena used. The word he'd heard whispered in the ancient corners of the Abyss. It implied a mistake, a vulnerability, a resource that was up for grabs.
He continued his solitary walk into the deeper, blacker chasms of the Abyss, asking the same question over and over. "What makes that Carlos special?"
Suddenly, a massive, muscular form materialized on his right side, shrouded in burning rock and cinder. Thamuz.
"Prince Dyrroth," Thamuz rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. "Seems Helcurt is not obeying."
Dyrroth barely acknowledged the Flame Lord. "Hmmm, I don't care. That Carlos... I'll get him before anyone of you could do it. If I get that aberration creature, The Abyss will bless me!!!"
Thamuz's mouth, a jagged hole in his obsidian face, stretched into a terrifying, silent grin.
The loud, arrogant laugh of Prince Dyrroth echoed, bouncing off the lifeless stone walls, proclaiming a hunt had begun in the suffocating silence of the Abyss.