Chapter 718

Chapter 718: Falling Into the Abyssal Deep

In the valley at the heart of Sanctuary Island, Vanna was leading the team and setting up camp at the tunnel entrance when she received news from the cave. She stared in shock and blurted out: “Shirley and Dog are gone?”

“Strictly speaking, they were ‘shifted’ somewhere else by some kind of space-time mechanism in the cave,” Duncan’s voice sounded in Vanna’s mind. “Have you seen any changes on the surface?”

“No. Everything on the surface is normal. Amber just led a team to search the depths of the valley. They found nothing but a few empty huts and some human remains that had been half swallowed by the island,” Vanna answered at once. “The island is very quiet right now…”

Deep in the underground cavern, Duncan nodded slightly after hearing Vanna’s report from the surface. Then his gaze fell on Morris and Alice nearby.

“The surface is normal. Sanctuary Island has not shown any signs of ‘coming alive’. It seems what happened to Shirley and Dog is not the same as what happened to those Annihilators.”

“Then where did they go?” Alice asked anxiously. “Didn’t you say you could still feel their ‘mark’? Are they safe now?”

“They are still alive, but they are in a place I cannot pinpoint. I suspect…”

Duncan stopped halfway. He did not rush to a conclusion, but it was clear he already had a guess in his heart. After a brief silence, he raised his head and looked thoughtfully toward the depths of the cavern.

In the drowsy darkness, a vast shape seemed to stand there in the distance.

Every time he blinked, a huge prism appeared there, wrapped in many cables and pipes. Lights flashed across its surface, as if sending out a silent invitation.

He walked over and let his flame drive back the darkness. In the light of the spirit flame, a grand gate stood in silence, as if it had been set directly into the rock walls on both sides.

On the open ground around the gate lay many tools scattered in haste. In the floor and nearby walls, human shapes were half fused into the stone and soil, melted until no details remained. They looked twisted and horrific.

There was no doubt this was the “final chamber” Shirley had mentioned, the last excavation site deep under Sanctuary Island, the place where those Annihilators had finally “woken” the whole island.

Duncan came to the gate and quickly examined its structure by firelight. The black stone door was tightly shut. Its surface was rough and uneven, as if vines had once covered it and had now rotted away, leaving only a chaos of pits and grooves. In that messy, almost patternless web of lines, Duncan still faintly made something out.

They were the strange characters he had seen in that “hall”, the symbols he had seen before in the vision of the New Hope’s crash.

He frowned slightly, but before he could read the message hidden in the lines, Alice, who stood beside him, broke the silence in a small voice: “Navigator One… access interface?”

Duncan turned his head at once and looked at the doll craning her neck to study the gate: “You can read what is written on this door?”

Alice frowned and slowly shook her head: “I don’t see any writing on the door… It just suddenly popped into my head…”

Duncan stared into Alice’s eyes. His thoughts raced, then he drew back his gaze and turned to the gate again. After a few seconds of hesitation and thinking, he placed his hand on the stone and closed his eyes a little, gathering his mind.

ghostly green flame spread from his fingertips and flashed across the door, then vanished.

In his other sight, in a distant, dark, and strange dimension, a tiny spark suddenly flickered as if stirred by wind. Deep in the darkness, it swayed and flashed once.

In that weak, swaying fire, Duncan heard Shirley’s voice. It was clearer than before, but still separated from him by a thick layer of the Veil.

She was very scared. She was very cold. She had just lost something important. She was carefully building a shell of self-protection around herself, while something with ill intent gathered around her.

Duncan opened his eyes.

“Lucy.” He called in his heart to the witch waiting on the Radiant Star.

Lucretia’s voice came at once: “Do you need me?”

“Bring that Saint over. I have found the ‘connection point’,” Duncan said. “Now I need to open a door and go into the Abyssal Deep Sea, to bring them back.”

“Understood.”

The voice in his mind faded. Duncan slowly raised his right hand. In his palm, a ball of fire was forming, unusually bright, bright enough to sting the eyes.

He pressed the fire onto the black stone door and watched it slowly seep into the gate, then into that strange, dark dimension behind it. Before the flame vanished completely, he spoke softly to it: “…Shirley, don’t be afraid.”

…

It was very dark. It was very cold. Her body felt as heavy as if it were filled with lead. A strange sharp pain spread from her arm, up to her shoulder, then to half of her body. The pain slowly changed into numbness, as if this body no longer belonged to her, as if her flesh had quietly turned into something she could neither understand nor control.

The “swamp” around her had faded at some unknown time, but an even stronger sense of malice and danger kept rising from all directions. Shirley curled up deep inside a “thicket” that twisted together like broken bones. She hid there without moving.

Mad howls and rambling whispers came from far away. Invisible hunters were prowling in the dark, searching for the uninvited guests who had entered this place. The hunters’ presence was slowly drawing near. It was only a matter of time before the “prey” was found.

But this time there was no Abyssal Hound to protect her.

Shirley hugged her twisted, deformed arm even tighter and shrank deeper into the thicket. She had already “smelled” the air here and figured out where she was.

This was the Abyssal Deep Sea. It was Dog’s “homeland”.

It was the lair of demons.

The faint sound of “thump, thump” beat by her ears. The pulse rising from her chest pulled Shirley out of her daze. She lowered her head in a trance and looked at the two hearts she held in her arms.

“Dad… Mother…”

She muttered softly, just like when she had refused to sleep as a child, hiding in her bed to whisper to “them”.

“I am a bit scared… I want to hold you…”

The two hearts still beat slowly. The sound of thump, thump was so clear. For many years they had been beating inside the body of a Abyssal demon. Behind thick bones and swirling black smoke, their beating had never sounded so clear to Shirley.

Shirley clenched her arms a little tighter, and the feeling in her hands seemed wrong.

She lowered her head and saw a pair of arms covered in a thin layer of bone armor. Blade-like structures stretched out from her elbow joints, slowly opening and closing like living things. Then she looked at her chest.

There was a terrifying hollow there. Inside the hollow was a skeleton surrounded by rising black smoke. A damaged dark red organ beat with difficulty among the bones and smoke, growing weaker with every passing second.

In a human body, this damaged organ was called a “heart”.

“…So my heart was bitten open by Dog back then… No wonder it is so cold…”

Shirley spoke in a low voice as she shifted her position a little in the thicket. She saw that her legs were also slowly being covered by a layer of strange black bone plates. Smoke that marked Abyssal Deep corruption kept rising from the plates and spreading into the air.

She felt more and more sleepy.

Would she die in the form of a Abyssal demon? Or had she already been a Abyssal demon wearing human skin ever since twelve years ago, when Dog fused with her?

This brief thought rose in Shirley’s mind for no reason, but soon even that thought faded in the heavy drowsiness.

She did not want to think about this, and she could not think about this.

She did not understand such things. These “deep” questions were too hard for her.

She cared more about water, food, fuel for the fire, and warm clothes for winter.

The roars and whispers grew closer. The hunters in the dark were drawing near this borderland. Their swelling and shrinking shapes cast even darker shadows in the darkness. A chilling touch seemed to reach her skin a step ahead of them.

But her body was already slowly tipping over. Even the two still beating hearts could no longer wake her from the strong sleepiness. Inside her broken chest, the heart that demons had chewed was slowly beginning its last beat.

A warm light rose in the darkness, as if a ray of gentle sunlight shone on her face. Shirley narrowed her eyes a little and let out a relaxed, content sigh.

It was a warm winter afternoon.

sunlight streamed in through the window and fell on a wooden sill with peeling paint. The kettle on the stove gave a happy hiss. Mother was busy in the kitchen, and the smell of baking biscuits drifted into the sitting room. Dad did not have to work today. He was crouched by the dining table, trying to fix the boards that always creaked. From the street came the clear bell of the postman’s bicycle as he crossed the corner and the sound of carriage wheels rolling over the cobblestones.

Shirley dozed on the sofa and was about to fall asleep.

Then Dad would come over. He would pick her up and carry her to the bed in her room. Mother would come out of the kitchen and tap Dad on the head with a long-handled ladle, because his dirty hands had smudged their Daughter’s dress…

Lying on the sofa, Shirley slowly showed a faint smile, just like that afternoon many years ago. She rolled over a little. Her arm slipped from the back of the sofa onto her own body and curled against her chest.

Her hand touched a heart that had stopped beating.

All the warmth collapsed at once. Darkness and cold tore through that gentle afternoon sunlight like an avalanche. In the darkness Shirley’s eyes flew wide open. When the roar of fear rushed in, she saw the figure that had been crouching by the dining table slowly stand up and walk toward her.

That figure changed in the flames and burned everything in the dark.

“Shirley, don’t be afraid.”