Prism Academy 5- Chapter 26 (Patreon)

Chapter 26- Shadow Revealed

I clenched my fists, feeling the heat of anger rising within me at Bosch's words. I knew that he was twisting the truth, painting me as the villain in the tragedy that unfolded in Mexico City. But I also knew that I had to keep my emotions in check, for the sake of my bonds and the innocent people that might be caught in the crossfire if things escalated.

"Those accusations are baseless and you know it," I replied, my voice cold and measured. "I have never sought anything but the protection of humanity. You know that as well as I do. That is the one and only time that I will let you make that accusation.”

Bosch smirked, clearly relishing in the situation. "Oh, I know. And I know that you think you're above the law, that you can just do whatever you want without consequence. But that's not how things work in NAAG, Aden. You're going to have to answer for your actions, one way or another. Even now you’re threatening violence, as though that was the way things are solved."

As I stared down Bosch, my senses continued to probe the room, trying to get a better read on the shadow energy that seemed to surround him and the three supers standing behind him. Something was definitely off, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Inferna stepped forward, her voice filled with disdain. "Aden has done more for this world than you could ever dream of, Bosch. He's the one who's been out there, risking his life day after day to keep humanity safe. What have you done besides hide behind your walls and your lies?"

Bosch's smug grin widened. "My dear, you have no idea what I've done, or what I'm capable of. But you'll find out soon enough."

I could feel the tension in the room building, like a storm about to break. My bonds were restless, their emotions boiling just beneath the surface. Aqueous and Demis exchanged glances, and I could tell they were itching for a fight, but I hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Everything was happening differently than I’d anticipated. My Precognition ability was humming with a generalized sense of danger but seemed unable to lock down on exactly what was about to happen. I’d expected Bosch to be the one pulling the strings, but he had always relied upon public pressure. I had thought he’d talk and try to negotiate, but something was off about him now. He wasn’t the man that I’d known before.

As I tried to find my bearings in this new situation, I caught a subtle shift in the room's energy. It was almost imperceptible, but there was a sudden increase in the concentration of shadow energy around Bosch and the supers. I knew that it could only mean one thing - they were about to make their move.

I turned to my bonds and spoke through our telepathic connection. "Be ready. They're going to attack."

When Bosch spoke again, his voice had a different timbre. It was no longer the voice of an arrogant human. This was the voice of an ancient monster, a being from beyond this dimension. “I’d thought to play with you a bit more. Oh, how much delightful food me and mine would have derived from the anguish of a fallen hero. The dark emotions this would have spawned would have been delicious. But you’ve changed Son of Light.

“I wasn’t sure, but you’ve evolved your senses too far. Even a few minutes ago, I was willing to play with you, but you’ve been pounding at my barrier the entire time you’ve been in this room. You’ve been trying to see what lies beyond. Well, look and know despair.”

Then it was like a veil was torn away and I felt some of the deepest, darkest concentrations of shadow energy I’d ever felt before. It was beyond even the monstrous shadow creature I’d faced in Mexico City the first time, yet it was all compacted into this single being. There was a faint touch of Essence on it, but it didn’t feel the same as what I’d experienced when fighting Krig. This was more…insidious was the only word that I could put on it.

Whereas the energy in Krig had sought to destroy or quash everything that wasn’t it, this sought to subvert. I felt whispers enter my mind and saw myself once again as that scared teenager whose parents had just been murdered. No one was helping me. I sat alone at the police station as they questioned me. No one offered sympathy. I was on my own, with no help in the world.

The feeling was overwhelming. I felt like I was going to drown in it. But then I felt warm fingers touch mine. That simple physical contact shattered whatever power this creature was weaving over me. I stepped forward and Light’s Judgment surged within me, forming a cocoon around me.

The three supers behind Bosch were also exposed for what they were. They were no longer humans, perhaps they never had been. Or maybe they were the remnants of people who had tried to test to become supers and failed, fleeing into the wild only to be fully and truly consumed by the shadow. They were dark supers like I’d never seen before.

Energy Sense could now feel the power flowing through them, but instead of Progenitor energy it was the darker side of the same power. Light and shadow must co-exist and can often achieve the same thing, but in different ways. My mind raced through all these thoughts and I filled my bonds in. At the same time, I knew the support team was already making their move. I urged restraint against those not controlled by the shadow, but told them their lives were more important.

Bosch’s hand transformed and at a speed which even I strained to track it became a blade of pure shadow stuff. Then with barely a flick of his wrist the President-General’s head was gone and fountain of blood sprayed over the thing that looked like Bosch, over the table and even up against my Cascading Frequency Shield which I had instinctively raised.

“Oops, humans are so fragile. This one tastes delicious. He thought he was going to be so much more. I had planned to lead him on for decades more, savoring his descent into darker and darker debauchery, but your evolutions have forced my hand. I’ve had to consume him and now I’ll consume you.”

“You wouldn’t be the first shadow to try it.”

“You’ve defeated other shadows, but never one like me. I am one of the eldest of our kind. Only the first darkness existed before me. Your life, your petty human civilization, is nothing but a speck in the span of my time. I will destroy you and forget you and never even care. But oh, how your people will care. I can’t wait to tell the public, how the Prism went insane and killed the President-General. Undoubtedly, the brave Representative Bosch will have to take his place.”

“Not gonna happen.” Then I began drawing more power into Light’s Judgment.

As if on cue, Bosch snapped his fingers and the three supers behind him lunged forward. In an instant, the room was filled with the sounds of battle. The male shadow-super, a muscular man with a metallic sheen to his skin, charged at Aqueous, his fists slamming against her water form like a battering ram. She barely flinched, her body flowing around the impact and reforming as she counterattacked, her own fists striking with the force of a tidal wave.

Demis took to the air, her wings unfurling as she faced off against one of the female supers. The vaulted ceiling didn’t give her enough room to truly fly, but she still used the space to clear the table as she tried to take the fight to her foe. This woman had some sort of telekinetic power which manifested in a black energy. She sent waves of black spikes through the air towards Demis, attempting to knock her out of the air. But Demis was agile and evasive, dodging the attacks. She retaliated with one of her newer evolutions, which came about because of my bond with Sybilla but had only recently activated.

Consuming Mind activated but instead of using her necrotic energy to break down matter, she broke down the psychic energy which formed the spikes. It was still telekinesis even if it was formed with shadow energy and Demis’ new power ate that energy up. She proved her mind was as deadly as her fists.

Inferna squared off against the second female super, a woman with an aura of crackling electricity surrounding her. As bolts of lightning shot towards Inferna, she summoned walls of flame to shield herself; the air filling with the scent of ozone as the two elements clashed.

I knew that I had to deal with Bosch, the apparent mastermind behind this ambush. If he was truly some type of elder shadow creature, I’d have to be prepared for him to be stronger than any of the other’s which I’d fought so far.

Light’s Judgment

The power blasted out of my hands in a beam of light bright enough to sear the cornea. It shot straight into Bosch and lifted his form, which was leaking black shadow as it seemed to be transforming. The force of the blast sent him into the far wall behind him and I sped forward with so much force that the table between us was turned into kindling as I sheared through it.

He slumped against the wall for a minute. My power was eating away at the shadow energy. That was what Light’s Judgment did. It destroyed the shadow. This was why I’d been able to defeat every shadow monster I’d encountered so far. Yet, something was off this time.

As I focused my attention on him, I was shocked to see the shadow energy start to coalesce and reassemble around Bosch's form. The sheer amount of darkness contained within him seemed to be resisting the effects of Light's Judgment. He stared at me, his eyes burning with an intensity that sent shivers down my spine.

I cut off the flow of power to Light’s Judgment and came to a stop mere feet from him. I needed to re-evaluate the best strategy.

"Interesting," he said, his voice deep and menacing. "You truly are powerful, Son of Light. In fact, you’re too powerful to be allowed to continue. Even those fools you call the light will eventually realize that. Not that it matters. You’re still no match for me."

The dark energy swirled around Bosch, forming a thick, black cocoon that seemed to be drawing in even more shadow energy from the surroundings. It was as if the darkness was feeding on itself, growing stronger and more potent with each passing second. Dark tendrils as thick as a man’s leg blasted out from all over the cocoon. I knocked aside those that came at me, but they kept going.

I worried that one of my bonds might have been struck, but they’d all managed to avoid or defend against the tendrils. That was when I heard the screaming. We’d never been the target at all. The tendrils had blasted through the walls and killed unsuspecting people in other parts of the building. With each injury, each scream of pain, each bit of chaos, the cocoon seemed to grow. It pulsed like a beating heart.

I knew I had to do something. I couldn't let this ancient shadow creature continue to gain strength, or it might become unstoppable. Whatever it was becoming inside that thing was too much.

I reached out to my bonds telepathically, coordinating our efforts as we continued to battle the shadow supers. They were each winning, but it was taking time. Now that the veil was gone, I looked one more time at each of their cores. There was no white center, no gray ring, their cores were simply black spheres of emptiness.  “They’ve been consumed by the shadow. There is no saving them, no humanity left.”

Inferna let out a sigh, “Thank god, then there’s no reason for me to hold back.” The heat around her surged as she activated seemed to go nova for a second. The walls of the room melted and were scorched. I was unaffected, but all the others were pushed back. Even a couple of the cocoons tendrils were burnt up to nothingness.

Then she surged forward activating a new evolution which she gained from Wraith. She took on a fiery form, but unlike her normal orange flames, she was now wispy and purple. She flew forward and the electrical current being discharged by the shadow-super passed right through her. She was just out-of-phase enough that she couldn’t be touched.

Inferna’s body fused into that of the other super and then she erupted as she transformed into her Angel of Light form. The shadow stuff which held the long dead human form together burst apart, and that foe fell.

I was taking all of the battle in while my mind worked with ANOP, trying to process a way to cut through the shadow cocoon. Aqueous ended her fight with a use of an evolution which I’d rarely seen her use. Life Drain allowed her to suck the very stuff of life out of cells. The shadow-super who was wrestling with her withered to her touch and once he realized what was happening, it was too late.

He struggled to pull away, but she was simply too strong. Her fluid form completely engulfed him and glowed with a purplish light as she drained the live out of the human host. The body turned to dust and the shadow energy was purged without a host to survive in.

Demis finished her fight at the same time. Her fist crushed the skull of the final shadow-super. Once those three would have been fearsome foes, which we would have only been able to beat as a team, now with the boosts of Bonded Affinity, my girls were more than a match for them on their own.

Aqueous was the first to take notice of the cocoon. “Eww… gross, what is that?”

Inferna was still in her fiery, angelic form as she snapped, “Whatever it is, it makes me sick to my stomach. The energy within me wants to flee it, but I can feel it snuffing out lives outside.”

I looked around and saw that the tentacles of shadow had continued to grow. They were now as thick as a man’s torso and spread throughout the entire building. It was going to come down on our heads any second. I felt before I saw or heard, the rest of my team arriving. Some of them were covered in blood, none of it their own, and others were smudged from where they’d been fired on, but they were all safe and sound. That might not be the case though, if this thing got to reach its full power.

I felt like I was in one of those old anime episodes where the hero stands by and watches as the enemy powers up to its final stage and becomes unbeatable. But screw that noise, I wasn’t gonna live my life like a cartoon.

“I’m gonna have to go all out to stop this thing.” My tone was grave.

My bonds nodded their understanding. I appreciated the bond more than ever in that moment, as I didn’t have to take the time to explain it to my girls. They knew what to do. They all spread throughout the building and started evacuating as many as they could. Meanwhile, I gathered my powers and started activating abilities.