Alitia: Crown of Ash

XLVII: Twins of Scorpio

Nebula had been running for far too long, and her lungs began to protest with each breath that she took in. She couldn't easily fly given how small the tunnels had gotten, and even if she allowed herself to fly, her feet would have dragged along the ground below. She hated how tight the spaces were all of a sudden, and Nebula decided that she would have been perfectly fine never moving into confines of this nature ever again. 

Cerise had made her way to the front of the group, and her electricity magic was the only thing that continued to light up the path. She occasionally sent forks of lightning backwards that barely managed to streak through the empty space between Nebula, Anneliese, Altina, December, Fromir, and the nearby walls. Nebula heard Fromir hurling back attacks as well, but she didn't trust her aim enough to keep from hitting those who were behind her. 

There was a strangely large amount of noise reaching Nebula's ears from somewhere ahead, and she couldn't help but wonder what in the world was going on. Her heart continued to pound in her chest, and Nebula almost feared that it would burst free of her ribcage and leave her screaming for breath once again. She wasn't ever going to neglect her training of the physical variety again after all of this. 

The crowd appeared to be full of leaths, and Nebula could see that various torches had been lit around an open space within the tunnels. This was a dead end as far as she could tell, and there weren't any other tunnels that led out of the arena of sorts that had been created. Only three entrances were scattered around the area, and all of them were behind the line of leath defensive forces. One was the passage that Nebula herself had come through, another was bringing in new leath fighters, and the final one was abandoned and empty. Nebula glanced back over her shoulder once again, and she saw that the thrashing Shadows from behind had come closer. 

Fromir was quick to create a defensive wall in the face of them, and he threw up a barrier of black magic that kept them at bay. The darkness in the area began to writhe at his command, and a shield formed across the tunnel that Nebula and her group had just come through. She let out a heavy breath of relief, and she finally allowed herself a moment to catch herself once again. That had been nothing short of exhausting, and she knew that she never wanted to go through anything like that again.

It was only after Nebula managed to force air back into her lungs that she realized what was happening around her. The leath forces were all pressing closer to a small group that was left to back against the far wall in panic. Nebula frowned and tried to pick out familiar figures among the crowd, but she found nothing. For a brief moment, Nebula could have sworn that she saw Caius among the crowd, but it was impossible to say if he was there since his outline shifted and vanished a moment later. 

Nebula heard an unholy shuffling sound, and every part of her body went tense when she realized that Shadows were there. She glanced back to the hole that Fromir had plugged and recognized that the creatures couldn't have been coming through that area given how firmly it was closed off from the rest of the cave. The Shadows were undoubtedly located elsewhere. 

Nebula forced her wings to carry her off the ground, and she realized that the ceiling was high enough to support flight. She could see that there was a large group of Shadows curled around one specific person, and a gasp left her lips as her eyes went wide. 

Surion was there, and he had been cornered. 

It took only a few moments for Nebula to rationalize how all of this had come to be, and she let out a sigh of relief that he had been found. It wasn't going to be easy to defeat him given how much raw strength he possessed on top of the ability to summon more Shadows. He had likely been hiding in the tunnels beneath the castle, keeping close enough to the Shadows to continue commanding them, but when the leaths breached the palace, they started searching. It was the explanation that made most sense to Nebula, and she was more than willing to accept it as reality.