Prison of the Firmament

Arlok's hands pressed against an invisible wall. He could see the corridor extending further, but he couldn't pass through it. Even his strength didn't affect these gates. With each surge of Eden into the gates, the invisible wall pulsed but remained unchanged.

"Ah! Damn it!" He pounded his fist against the gates. "What was that? Why won't it let me in?!" He shouted.

"Analysis impossible, Eden does not respond to the gates, nor do they to it," Arlok breathed heavily but quickly calmed down.

When the strange enticing feeling vanished, his eyes abruptly blinked, and his right palm reached towards the visible wall.

Eden was invisible, but people could sense it. Small, invisible threads began slowly creeping towards the wall. They penetrated through it until completely enveloping the strange figure.

When Carnage clenched his right fist, the wall crumbled with a crash, and something flew out. It was the baron, an old man who suddenly began transforming into something much larger. His body was covered in huge blisters that didn't burst but instead consumed his body more and more.

"Do you think this will work again?" Carnage's wild smile accentuated the arrogant appearance of his attire.

The old man's body began to collapse, and the force pressing on him surpassed its limits. It was hundreds of tons crushing and distorting the baron's strange body. Carnage himself was altering the "human" body before him, trying to restore the old appearance of this old man.

"Think you can escape from me by exploding? You can't even fathom what is being discussed." His eyes became serious, chilling. "Your greatest sin is not the absence of reason but taking the form of a human body. The body of those I swore to protect!"

The old man's eyes were restless until suddenly they stopped and glanced at Arlok.

"Do you think I'm irrational?" The old man spoke in the Alliance's tongue, catching Arlok off guard.

The moment Arlok's strength slightly weakened, the body exploded and reassembled elsewhere.

"He speaks?" Arlok couldn't trust his body; it had failed him several times in the last hour.

"Yes," Aria replied in his mind.

A corner of his lips rose. Arlok found amusement in the situations he found himself in. He had been tried to be killed for the first time in his life by exploding before him. He couldn't see people around, his spiritual world began to distort, and his memory was failing. All of this amused the strongest of men.

When Arlok's eyes fell from the old man's head to his feet, the baron's body immediately stuck to the ground.

"Roar… It interferes…" The noise in his head intensified the moment Arlok exerted force.

The baron's eyes were admiring, perhaps even fearful, but more than that, they saw something peculiar in Arlok. These old eyes seemed to see a fairytale come to life before them.

"Melody..."

The play of powerful drums, that's what Arlok began to hear. His ears caught every beat but couldn't see the source. Even understanding how far or near the drums were from him was impossible.

The roar was interrupted by the Melody, and they alternated on the pedestal of what Arlok heard best. These sounds were equal until the drumming accelerated, and the old man rose from his place, making Arlok lift his gaze and not look down.

"Surprising, you resist," Arlok began approaching the old man, who struggled but stood.

"You can be anyone, but your era has passed, your empire has fallen!" the old man shouted.

The smile vanished from Arlok's face. He closed his half-opened mouth, slightly turned his head to the side.

Two red eyes appeared directly in front of the baron. Carnage appeared before him in a fraction of a second, so fast that blinking was impossible in that time.

The white-gloved hand grabbed the "old man" by the throat, and suddenly, all the columns on both sides from the entrance to the gates cracked.

The creature was unknown to Eden, and it couldn't feel it, but had it been a human, it would have died from the sheer amount that was now acting upon it.

"Fallen? Something happened to the Alliance?" Eden began to destroy the surroundings even more, only the invisible gates resisted this force. "My country destroyed?" It was a quiet whisper, yet accompanied by a force emanating from his body. "Answer!" Arlok's fingers had already torn the baron's flesh.

Aria tried to convey something to her master, but not a single word reached him.

"Speak!" Light began to fade, huge ceiling lamps were breaking.

"Ha-ha-ha! Now you're nothing more than a mere remnant of the dead - a "fragment," you're worthless, the mightiest of..." The old man's tongue flew out of his mouth. Something resembling a tongue quickly changed its shape and soon ceased to resemble a human part - it turned into a spider.

"Ugh!" Arlok sighed, and the force that was destroying the environment disappeared as abruptly as it had appeared.

"You, pathetic Carnage, everyone who believed in you died praying for you, but now you won't see anyone. Your time has come, "its" appearance is imminent, the second..." The old man began to speak; he grew himself a new tongue, but everything repeated again, Arlok's power didn't wane, it only grew.

"You know, it's so amusing. You saw how I accidentally got angry, and you think I'll continue?" Arlok released the old man and looked down at him again.

Arlok looked at the corridor, which was barely intact. Then he turned back to the baron and pinned him to the ground again.

"Eden senses only the living, so you, being dead, mean nothing. Therefore, you are nothing more than a puppet of the 'swarm,' a collective mind. What do you do, assume or only transmit? It doesn't matter, you..." The old man started to break into pieces, and Arlok was pulling small and large parts away from him. "...like your race, will be disassembled, examined, and eliminated."

Crimson eyes surveyed the area; this place resembled a strange trap.

"To assume that something like this can stop me..." Arlok's lips would rise in a smile and then fall again. "You overestimate yourself, or perhaps only you?" He looked at the baron's head.

"Huh?" Amidst hundreds of pieces of clothing and body, red eyes saw a drawing. Strange symbols - unknown letters to him - were inscribed near three individuals. Two men and a girl. "Are you grooming a human? That's odd, could it be that your kind is drawn to humans... that's dangerous..." Some parts of the baron began to disappear.

Arlok spread his arms, blinked, and looked at the baron's head.

"See what happens to those who go against me..."

Invisible lines, they spread throughout the corridor, diverging in all directions. It was Eden, and those who knew what was to come could be counted on one hand. The principle of a black hole, when Arlok draws everything into one point and compresses it so tightly that eventually a more powerful explosion occurs.

"Ahem!" Instead of a destructive explosion, there was a cough.

The white glove was bloodied; it was his own blood. Crimson eyes looked at his trembling hand. Something that had just blocked Carnage's powers, something managed to suppress him, and something in his body caused that pain.

The distorting last part of the baron's body - the head - spoke:

"Your time has long passed, you will become fodder for 'its' arrival! We are already at the destination! You are nothing but a 'fragment' of an old image! You are just a human!..." The baron vanished, and at that moment, the gates opened.

Slowly, Carnage looked there, seeing a lake, a bridge, an altar, and huge golden scales. On one side, there was a heart, on the other, a mind - these scales were held by a woman's hand.

"Prison of the Firmament" - this inscription was as invisible as the gates. Even if Carnage had seen these words, he wouldn't have been able to translate or understand them.

The white, delicate-looking female hand began to be covered in blood. Each drop flowed onto the scales, which leaned one way and then the other...