Out in the naked night, into the dark forest of potential horrors, bright flashes of light were seen scattered around the trees and bushes. The sources of the light beams were flashlights held by certain individuals who were running around as if they were in pursuit of someone or something.
They were alpha transcendents- the first ranking in the transcendental hierarchy. They belonged to the T.I.A, Chicago. The chase was undertaken by three youngsters under no supervision or warrant from a higher power.
They were dressed in the casual haunting regalia designed for American transcendents; a dark armor-plated spandex suit, with an imprint of a star-spangled design that ran through the chest like a sash. They had several pouches that surrounded their waist and arms, holding different mystical weapons and gadgets in place.
The trio chased down a blurry figure that constantly maneuvered its way through trees. It was said to be a demoniac, as reported by one of the pursuers who got a clearer view. They scaled through the dark woods on fast heels, trying to catch up with the sprinting abomination.
How exactly the chase began wasn’t clearly understood, and who prompted the late call was another question to be left blank.
“I think I see him!” screamed Jason Cohan, one of the sharpest and most skilled alphas in the American institute. He stretches his legs further as he takes a good aim at the blur, firing several balls of blue fire from his fist. He misses to several trees, burning them down instantly.
He was capable of doing such a feat with the use of the ELEMENTRIC that has pretty much advanced throughout the years. Elementrics are celestial platonic solids of luminous manifestation; they can be conjured to manipulate shields and weaponry of any form.
“Damn it! The sucker’s one hell of a runner! Keep your eyes open for anything that streaks by,” Jason speaks into his ear radio once again.
“Yeah, anything” a voice with a sarcastic tone speaks out on Jason’s radio
“I don’t mind hitting you when you cross by,” the voice bursts into laughter.
“Damien, this is some intense shit we’re dealing with. I don’t feel humor is gonna exorcise that guy sooner enough,” Jason replies, taking the path the demoniac ran through.
“Just chase him down till he runs out of route options. Demons aren’t smart navigators- we’ll round him up that way!” the voice belonged to Damien Spencer, an alpha whose intelligence is top-notch, exceeding every alpha transcendent in four world institutes. He was the brain, but he sure wasn’t willing to waste it's use for this chase.
“We have to keep close heels and eyes on him, guys. We don’t know what his goals are at the moment, so don’t expect anything minor coming out of his offense pocket!” another voice was heard on the other side of the woods, sounding clear on Damien and Jason's ear radios.
Jane Austin, the deputy head of the alpha transcendents in the T.I.A gave her instructions. She had a tight spot for quirky humor so Damien didn’t mind replying, despite their intimate relationship.
She aims her flashlight ahead when she sees a blurry figure zoom by. She enables her elementric abilities and her eyes turned purple, seeing the demoniac’s running path. She stretches forth her arms and bright objects like skeletal chains shot out, reaching for the demoniac. The chains missed him by millimeters as he takes a sharp turn to the right.
“Shit!” Jane curses.
“What? You hurt yourself?” Damien says, overhearing Jane’s sigh of grief.
“No, I'm good. I almost had him!”
“Yeah, and you say I'm a better liar,”
“Shut up!” Jane bursts. Damien knew she wasn't going to buy the joke, but he tried.
Jason jumps across a few felled trees and scattered logs. He sees the demoniac pull over on his left side before scampering back into the darkness in alertness. Jason engages his pyroelementric and sends multiple flaming daggers into the darkness, lighting up the woods like traveling fireworks. They hit different spots but none of them makes contact with the possessed man.
“How does he move so fast!” Jason exclaims in exhaustion, looking through the path of flaming trees he caused.
“Dude’s high on that demon juice,” Damien watches the shirtless man streak past him as soon he speaks. He stops running and points his flashlight further ahead, waiting for the demoniac to run by. The man didn’t run up ahead which implied he was still within Damien’s range.
“Alright, I think I've got him in my position. I'm sending my coordinates right now. You guys try to flank from wherever you stand, I’ll head in more to see if-”
Damien pauses and turns around when he hears a branch snap. He reaches for his radio and mutes it. Raising the beam of his flashlight towards the spot of suspicion, Damien realizes he was face to face with the energetic demoniac.
There he stood, a thin shirtless man with bruises and cuts all over his body. His eyes were blood-shot red; blood dripping down the corner of his bottom eyelid. His teeth were jagged and twisted; having the resemblance to little thorns. Damien knew this class of demon was no joke at all.
“Well, would you look at that,” Damien grins, staring into the eyes of the deeply possessed man “Hell’s speedster finally took a break,”
“Oh, I'm not done yet!” the demon within speaks.
Damien opens his palm and a red tetrahedron forms. He directs an adequate energy to the tetrahedron and it transforms into a machete elementric- its form brighter than the ray of his flashlight.
The demon wasn’t scared seeing the blade. He laughs wildly and raises his left arm to the air, showing Damien the item clenched in his palm,
“Better stay back, kid!” the demon threatens, “Haunting season’s over!”
Damien points his flashlight to the demon’s hand, taking a good look at the object. His cockiness drops when he realizes what it was.
“Alright, easy pal!” Damien disengages his elementric, trying not to pose as a threat.
The object was a medallion; a weapon of unspeakable paranormal chaos. Damien knew its potential, and he wasn’t going to mess around knowing the position he was in right now.
“Damien, status report!” Jane screams from the other side of the radio.
Damien switches his ear radio off. He didn’t want any interference; he didn’t want to piss the demon off by any means. He tries playing mind games with the demon, keeping his strike agitation in check as he paces around.
The demon mirrors Damien’s movements, pacing along carefully as he held the mysterious medallion close.
Damien’s flashlight accidentally points to the ground, revealing what seemed to be the next step of the demon’s scheme. Damien stares at what seemed to be a symbol drawn at a wide radius on the ground; the symbol was a demonic marking to one of hell’s authorities. Damien did a quick calculation and figured out what the whole deal was about.
“Look fella, I don’t want trouble, and I guess, neither do you. So how about you hand that over and I promise I won’t send you back under Lucifer’s skirt,” Damien knew his bargain sounded more like a threat, but he was ready for anything now as he regenerates the machete elementric.
The demon wasn’t moved at all. It still made its host wear a confident smile, pacing around the pattern on the ground.
“You’re in no position to negotiate. If I drop this little thingy here, you're gonna have to kiss your world sayonara!” said the demon
Damien was tired of the back and forth quick wit “Alright, I did my best!” he raises the elementric machete to the demon “I’m going to say this once, so you have to listen carefully or I'm gonna send that head of yours airborne!”
The demon keeps up with the taunts, “You wouldn’t chop off an innocent’s head, would you? This asshole I wear right here... He's got a clean life- a life cleaner that your transcendental ledger! ”
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Damien swears with vast irritation “Drop it, goddamit!”
“Gladly”
“Oh, shit!” Damien watches as the demoniac opens his palm, loosening his grip on the medallion.
The medallion mysteriously freezes mid-air. The demoniac then drops to his knee like a statue. He was being held down by a serious telepathic lock.
Jason emerges from the bushes behind the demon, his hand held up in the air, bright lights in form of mists surrounding his entire right arm. It was a ‘daystar locker’, an elementric designed to hold supernatural threats in place.
“Okay, I got em’” Jane announces as she comes forward from another side in the woods. She stretches her right arm out and moves her left hand in a certain motion around it. A yellow spark of lights emerges and a glowing pattern like the Star of David forms on her right palm. Large concentric circles then envelope the pattern, projecting it to the air.
Jane engaged the exorcism elementric. She began spewing some prayers at once.
ICK LAMAUS TOMBRE INSTABRUKSMAN, SHALONZI IZ LI IVILIA DONZA…
The demoniac shook violently while light emits from his eyes, the demon within screamed and cursed in pain. Radiant cracks made their way from his torso up to the forehead.
Damien and Jason cover their eyes as a minor gale blew across the place, scattering sand around. Damien couldn't still comprehend the possibility of a demon knowing about his ledger.
… SATANA EXPELUS, ADIEU!
The last verse was pronounced and a bright beam burst through the demoniac’s mouth. An inhuman cry was heard within the pillar of light as it made its way into the dark sky. The host drops to the ground unconscious.
Damien catches the frozen medallion in time before it hits the ground where the symbol laid
“Well... We can say that was a close one,” Damien dangles the object by the chain, smiling in relief.
“What the hell are you talking about?!” Jane draws close to Damien, her eyes almost penetrating into his “What the fuck were you thinking- switching off your radio?!”
“I tried to come in terms with the little sucker, okay,” Damien said.
“Yeah, I'm pretty sure the machete right there made him pretty relaxed!” Jason said sarcastically, staring at the elementric Damien still held “Dude, were you trying to chop his head right off?"
Damien pauses for a second, “Ugh, n- no. It was a warning!”
“If it wasn’t for your boot trails we wouldn’t have gotten here in time, and that bastard could’ve dropped whatever he had in hand!” Jane was still furious.
“Look, babe. I already had it under control. He had no options at all,” Damien holds Jane’s hands and stares into her eyes passionately.
“Control?” Jason’s brows furrowed “He already dropped that medallion. You even had the wrong elementric up to play the trick!”
Damien disengages the machete, “Okay, let’s not stress the issue further,”
“This is so unlike you, babe,” Jane said,
“Yh, you left your brain hanging on a branch or something?!” Jason made sure he rubbed the shame on Damien's face.
“I’m just tired. I haven’t had shut-eye for hours now, okay” Damien cuddles Jane tight.
Jason goes over and retrieves the medallion on Damien’s hand
“Hey, what do you guys think this is?” he said
Damien and Jane stop embracing and stare at the metal fragment.
“I don’t know. Maybe some kind of satanic mini-artillery,” said Jane.
The medallion had a heavy copper coating and was constructed in a manner of two triangles fixed upside down, conjoined at endpoints to a circular frame made of bronze.
“That’s the Abaddon asuhura,” Damien stared closely.
Jane and Jason froze.
“You mean THE Abaddon asuhur- the hell opening thingy?” Jason wanted to be sure.
“Yup,” Damien replies “The compilation of all seven lamaus. Its power is pretty much above every demonic zenith.”
“So it’s capable of opening the gates of hell- all at once?” Jason asked.
“Not necessarily all gates, just the one the user marks out. A larger summoning ritual is required for the opening season, and by the looks of it, this demon didn’t plan to open all the gates,” said Jane.
Damien bends over with his flashlight, examining the symbol drawn on the ground.
“Looks like we’ve got a door carved down here!” he announces. "That demon wanted one gate open,"
Jane and Jason approach the spot.
“Whose region is that? Lucifer? Leviathan?” Jane runs her eyes through the pattern.
“I can’t tell. This Archdemon seal isn't popular like the rest. He could be some kind of a dark… introvert. I don’t think anyone knows this pattern… its new!” Damien said.
“Adrian would know,” Jason said.
“Maybe” Jane replies as she takes a picture of the seal drawn below.
Damien runs his fingers through the dirt used to draw the pattern; his phalanges within his hand glowed red, his bone outline could be seen shining through his flesh.
“This pattern leads up to a doorway very far from Al Jizah. Don’t tell me demons are already building manifestation transits all over the world!” Damien’s face was slapped with surprise.
“So that means demons from hell’s gates can manifest anywhere these ‘transits’ are positioned?” Jane said.
“Yeah, and I feel this one could be close by!” Jason said.
Damien gets up on his feet “Well, you're not wrong. I feel some dark aura close too!” he takes the Abaddon asuhura from Jason and reexamines it.
“At least we aborted his plans. Now let’s get back to the institute, my eyes are sinking here,” Jason steps right over the collapsed demoniac, walking ahead of the other two.
Jane goes forward, following Jason behind. She stops and stares back at Damien who was thinking deeply.
“What’s the matter? It’s over” she softly spoke.
“The Abaddon asuhura was handed over to Archangel Michael years back. How the hell did a minor demon get his hands on it?!” Damien questions.
Jane caresses his cheek and kisses it slowly, “It’s over. Let’s just head back and relax,”
“I've got a bed and pillow to get into, guys!” Jason complains, stomping his feet so he wouldn’t sleep off. A circular faint light forms behind him and a portal tears open.
“Relax a little, no need to pull out a portal so early!” Damien laughs as he presses his lips on Jane’s.
Jason stood confused “What portal?!”
Before he could turn around, an arm proceeds from the portal’s space and stabs a metal rod through his abdomen.
“Fuck! Jason!” Jane screams as she lets go of Damien, going for Jason’s dropping body.
Damien stood still, clenched by the hands of fear. He stares at Jason’s massive wound with unblinking eyes. The portal shut close and a dark figure runs through the other side, racing into the forest.
Damien runs after the anonymous assaulter, sprinting through the bushes with hard gulps of air and fury; his boots hit the ground with the same force he aims to deliver to the face of whoever this person was.
The shadowy figure seemed to run in a manner of stealth and grace, dodging every elementric Damien lunged forward. It seemed to Damien that this person was a veteran in these fields.
Damien engages a pyroelementric and sends it ahead like a water hose, but the shadowy figure counters by waving its cloak in the air causing wind to quench the flames. Damien watches in exhaustion as the person makes a sharp turn to the left.
“Damn it!” Damien exclaims in exhaustion, his eyes burning in massive fury. He follows the runner nevertheless.
The chase goes on for a longer period than Damien expected. His eyes were failing him and his toes were becoming numb. The only thing his eyes could capture was the blurry outline of the runaway assaulter. But a sudden flash of light sends him to the ground after tripping blindly over a log.
Damien looks up and crawls back from the bright light source. He shields his eyes from the heat that blasted from its radiant mass. It was a portal. The same portal he saw back at the assault scenario.
Next to the portal stood the anonymous personality who was now projected in silhouette by the light.
Damien strains his weak eyes a bit and manages to see the figure staring back at him before proceeding into the portal. He didn’t get the face but he could tell by the physique that it was a woman.
The light dies off and the portal was gone.
Letting his arms down in disappointment and bitterness, Damien rose to his feet cursing out as loud as he could. He stops his inappropriate barking and stares deeply at the spot the portal popped up.
“Who the hell was that?!” Damien could be heard, later on, pacing around restlessly as he spoke to Jane on the radio. “Something tells me we’re in a war we don’t even know about. We’re talking magic hits from the darkest minds out there!”
“We have to tell Adrian about this!” Jane speaks from the other end.
Damien draws an exasperated gasp and stares into the darkness “How’s Jason doing?”
The radio begins to crack up once the message was delivered. The earth shook mildly and a gentle breeze blows through the woods; trees swayed back and forth, some branches snapped off.
Damien tries contacting Jane again but his radio fails. He flicks it with his fingers, attempts a hard boot, and changes signal frequency, but nothing seemed to work.
SCREECH! Went the earpiece as Damien tampered with it further. He pulls it off his ear quickly before it renders him deaf. The ear radio vibrated on the ground as it changed frequencies on its own. Damien watched and listened to the numerous voices booming out of the speaker- voices that were crying for help, pleading for rescue from whatever tortured them over there.
Alongside the pleading voices were inhuman laughter, seemingly deriving joy from the ongoing agony over there.
Damien knew it was hell.
The earpiece stops vibrating and the voices within cease. Damien stoops to pick it back up but was amazed when he saw a pattern that was drawn by the device’s vibrating path of motion on the sand.
IDRO DERTA CUZIN were the words Damien pronounced. It translated to WE ARE COMING in demonological texts. Damien didn’t mind picking his device back up.
The earth shook once more, but this time more violently than the first occurrence. Damien tries getting back on his feet but the troubled ground was a limitation to his now wobbling limbs. The trees rocked back and forth violently, swinging branches around like ballistics. Lighting danced around the sky as claps of thunder deafened the night.
Damien had no idea what was going on. He looked on as the devastation around him unfolded and then suddenly pauses with a hit of grief in his heart. He slowly navigates his eyes to his hands- the Abaddon asuhura was gone!
Back at the horrifying assault scenario, Jane does her best to heal Jason who was fatally wounded. But the current state of the woods wasn’t making it easier for her. She generates an elementric shield dome to withstand flying debris and tree parts. Within the shield Jane generates a healing factor elementric that was informally termed ‘the copper serpent’, but this wasn’t doing any good to Jason’s condition. She watches in sorrow as her friend draws his last breath.
Jason was gone.
Jane fixes her tear-filled eyes on Jason’s lifeless body. She draws her lips closer to his right ear and whispers “They will pay for this!”
Just in the middle of the heartbreak, when situations couldn’t be expected to get worse, the ground around the forest begins to crack open and a violent gale of dark clouds swept into the place with force. Trees were uprooted by this force and the ground dried up to a state worse than a drought.
They were several colors of light dancing in the sky, sounding out abnormal siren screeches. Jane never knew she would be so frightened in her life.
Moments later, Damien runs into parameter out of breath, staggering forward as he leaned on the shaking trees for support. He was shocked he was still alive after the rough run through the forest.
He collapses to the ground and stares at the elementric shield dome, seeing Jane embrace Jason in tears. His eyes shifted suddenly to the brightest light source in the woods right now- the glowing medallion as it laid on the drawn doorway pattern. Its radiation was like heated gold glimmering in a furnace.
Damien pulls himself to his feet like a stag and rushes over to pull the medallion off the ground. His palm takes a grasp of it but the heat burns through his leather gloves and a force knocks him over into a tree.
“Damien, are you alright!” Jane screams out from within the protective dome, trying to make her voice heard despite the raging noises in the troubled forest.
“Yeah… I'm fine!” Damien stares at his smoking hand and the roasted parts that bled. He staggers up to his feet once more, placing his shaking legs firmly on the quaking ground. He stares at the glowing medallion and tries another go at it.
“I don’t think you should. If you get closer you’ll get pulverized!” Jane yells out the warning.
Damien does the math after he sees a flare from the radiation burn a tree down.
“Well, we’ve got to find a way to get that medallion off that symbol!” Damien said, sharply dodging an incoming branch.
Loud peals of thunder followed by a bright flash of white light proceed from the symbol, shinning across the woods like a wild inferno. Damien and Jane both set their eyes to the west as a bright beam of light, really far away, protrudes to the sky. The radiation from the drawn pattern on the ground and the Abaddon asuhura increases as well. Damien shields his eyes as he crawls back from the flares that shot out from the light source. Trees were stripped down to thin ashes and grasses were turned to carpets of flames.
They both listen carefully and paid attention to the wicked and disturbing laughter that surrounded the place. Damien recognized the laughter, hearing it earlier on his malfunctioning ear radio. Multiple dark figures like shadows follow up the light beam that shot to the sky at the west. The location where this was happening was far from the forest so Jane and Damien could only see a fraction of the beam and the clouds of dark figures that hovered around.
Jane couldn’t see what they looked like despite her now enhanced vision, but she reckoned what they were, and so did Damien.
“Oh, not this! Not now!” Damien exclaims, staring at the beings that covered the sky like a dark duvet. He gets up on his feet and runs through the burning grass, making his way to the position of the engaged medallion. He approaches the area and fires a death beam elementric at the ongoing manifestation. He pulls out the last energy left in his muscles to push out more elementric beams. But it was no use.
Damien opens his mouth wide and a red beam shoots through it, aiding the work his arms did. The ongoing tug-of-war between Damien and the manifesting doorway causes an energy collision that grew gradually into a red sphere of lightning bolts.
As luck would have it, the sphere collapses and a mild explosion spread out from its epicenter, causing a shockwave that throws Damien to a tree.
The manifestation was terminated- Late but lucky.
Damien looks up from the dirt. He watches how the Abaddon asuhura cools down like a hot metal dropped in water.
Jane watches as the forest pacifies from the madness. She lets the shield dome down and continues healing Jason.
“What the hell just happened!” Damien couldn’t believe his eyes. No transcendent would believe their eyes. This is probably the most supernatural encounter he had ever experienced, and probably the biggest paranormal thing to go down in Chicago.
“It’s the damn door the hell, that’s what!” Jane focuses her healing factor on the gaping hole planted at Jason’s back. Her energy was depleting and no improvement was noticed “Damn it!” she curses as her hot sweaty palms shivered in exhaustion. The elementric was extinguished.
“How’s he doing?” Damien asks, drawing close to Jason’s body.
Jane wanted to speak but she waited for Damien to discover it himself.
Damien places a finger on Jason’s neck for a pulse. He waits for a while and tries again, three fingers this time. He pauses and wears a weary look on his face as he stares at Jane.
“No, this can’t… this can’t be” he grabs Jason’s neck with his full palm and shakes him violently, tears filling up in his eyes “C’mon man, quit playing!”
Jane withdraws Damien’s hands “Damien, he’s gone!” she blinks and a tear drops to Jason’s pale cheek.
Damien couldn’t believe his ears. He didn’t expect the mission to go otherwise at all. Not only did he lose his best friend, but the T.I.A just lost its most competent alpha. He didn’t know how to explain this to the superintendent.
“So t-the gate, it's open right now?” Damien’s lips tremble with a stutter. He wasn’t thinking straight and he didn’t know why he asked such a useless question.
Jane stares back at him; her slick brows furrowed “What? You think it’s some kind of busted housewarming?!”
Damien gets up with the burden of confusion. He fondles his hair savagely and looks around with tears in his eyes.
“Adrian’s gonna kill us!” he said.
Jane pulls Jason up on her shoulders “Wait till Christie finds out about this,”
Damien stares back at her “You don’t seem worried about this all,”
“You mean Jason’s death or the doorway?”
“Both of em’!”
Jane sighs, “My heart is torn to shit right now of course. But I've got a plan!”
Damien’s eyes didn’t brighten up at all.
“I could do a rejuvenation spell, that way we could-"
“Oh, Jesus!” Damien throws his arms in the air “You wanna try a rejuvenation technique? That crap hasn’t been done since the ’50s, and I'm talking 19th century '50s! The pages are probably brittle as cobwebs!”
“It’s worth a shot! We’ve got to bring Jason back or we’re gonna get excommunicated, and I’m just an alpha, I haven’t even seen the archangels' strongholds yet!” Jane said.
“You’ll see them when you get killed by that depressing ex-communication vibe!”
“The point is we have to bring Jason back no matter what!” Jane concludes.
Damien draws a sigh, placing his arms on his waist “What about the doorway we just opened?”
“One problem at a time, babe” Jane walks Jason’s corpse forward “Open a transporter, we need to get back to the institute before drill session”
Damien pulls out a device from one of his pouches and aims it to thin air. He pushes a button and a faint yellow light beams out, tearing a portal open.
They both walk through and the portal shuts behind them, leaving the madness they experienced behind.