Eye of the Abyss

The bronze giant door slowly closed amid the stardust, sealing off the graveyard's dead silence. Kane stood atop the pegasus, beneath him a roiling sea of dark purple clouds, through whose gaps enormous shadows occasionally flickered—as if some creature were breathing. Alice's long hair was torn by the wind into silver banners, and the ice blade in her hand pointed straight toward the center of the swirling vortex in the cloud sea—where a black, eyeball-like celestial body hung, its iris formed from countless interwoven gears and blood vessels.

"Eye of the Abyss."Ash licked his parched lips as embers on his greatsword drifted toward the celestial body, only to be ground into sparks by its gears upon contact. "The things the Church fears people will see are usually the most interesting."

Suddenly, the pegasus let out a shrill cry. Mechanical, vine-like tentacles extended from the clouds, their ends armed with spinning chainsaws. Alice swung her sword and severed the nearest one; as the chainsaw plummeted into the cloud sea, it splashed not blood but gears and springs oozing with hot oil. "The Church has turned the Abyss into an armory," she said, kicking aside a piece of metal wedged in the pegasus's saddle. "Watch out for those red-eyed drones—they're busy collecting battle data."

Kane's right hand unconsciously caressed the four-leaf clover earring. The markings along its edge perfectly matched the coordinates left by Elena, reminding him of Lia's final touch before she faded away—her fingertip, as cold as the frost on a pottery workshop's winter window, yet as gentle as if afraid to shatter an unfired clay vessel.

Three drones burst forth from the gear-formed iris, their cameras locking onto Kane's brow.

Ash's greatsword was quicker than Kane's reaction. Its burning edge sliced through the lens of the first drone; amid the billowing black smoke, instead of sparks from circuitry, thick, viscous brain tissue fluid erupted. The second drone took advantage of the chaos to circle under the pegasus; its chainsaw tore open a gash, and Alice, with a swift reverse motion, drove her ice blade into its energy core—causing its frozen brain matter to burst into crystalline ice upon the metallic shell.

"Leave a live one!" Kane suddenly shouted as he seized the third drone. His mutated right hand plunged into its chassis, and silver blood coursed along its conduits into the central system. In that moment, countless images flashed before his eyes: the High Inquisitor standing before a matrix of incubation pods, each containing a clone of Lia; Elena's ice coffin suspended in a secret chamber, with Alice's ceremonial sword still impaled in her chest; and finally, surveillance footage from the Eye of the Abyss, where a red dot flickered deep within the gear-formed iris.

The drone's lens suddenly began to weep blood, and its mechanical tones warped into Lia's whimper: "Brother, it's so dark here…"

Kane crushed its core. Shards of metal sliced his palm as silver blood dripped onto the pegasus's wound, where the flesh began to slowly mend. Alice caught sight of this, and her ice blade veered off by half an inch—snipping a strand of her own silver hair in the process.

"Nine o'clock," Ash declared, kicking aside the drone's wreckage as his sword's tip pointed to a faded gear on the iris. "That thing mimics a human blink—once every thirty seconds."

In the instant the pegasus dove, Kane saw familiar silver blood oozing from the crevices between the gears—exactly the same as what he had seen in Lia's incubation pod.

The pupil of the Eye of the Abyss revealed an annular laboratory. Incubation pods, arranged like a beehive, were embedded in a fleshy wall—each pod housing a clone of Lia. Their spinal conduits converged at the center of the laboratory onto an ice coffin, inside of which lay Elena's remains, with Alice's ceremonial sword still lodged in her chest; the rose crest on its hilt now blackened.

"Mother…"Alice's ice blade clattered to the ground. She remembered that sword—when she was seven, her father hung it in the study, claiming it was her mother's heirloom. Now she could finally read the small inscription on the crossguard:"For Alice, may your sword be drawn only for the truth."

Ash's breathing suddenly grew heavy. He tugged at his collar, revealing the rose brand beneath his clavicle—the very same as Elena's. "Your mother once said, if the Church uses her corpse for evil…" he murmured, pressing his sword's tip against the ice coffin, "then let it be burned clean."

Kane's right hand began to mutate uncontrollably. Suddenly, the nearest incubation pod exploded; the silver hair of Lia's clone floated upward without wind, and its spinal conduits coiled like serpents, as if crying, "Brother, are you going to abandon me again?"

"No," Kane replied, snapping the advancing conduits, as silver blood splattered onto Elena's ice coffin. "This time, I'm taking you home."

All the incubation pods opened simultaneously.

The clones tumbled onto the metal floor, their joints twisting at inhuman angles as they crawled. Ash's flames had drawn a barrier across the laboratory, only to be doused by the silver blood of the clones. Alice picked up her mother's ceremonial sword; its blade reflected her pallid face—at that moment, she and the Elena in the ice coffin were mirror images.

"Father never truly wanted to hide the godslayers…" she declared, plunging her sword into the ground. Cold ice, mingling with silver blood, flowed along and froze the nearest clone. "…but the truth is, Mother was the first vessel."

The four-leaf clover earring in Kane's arms suddenly grew hot. In the ice coffin, Elena opened her eyes; her conduits automatically detached as black blood poured from the sword wound in her chest, coalescing midair into a single message:"Kill me."

Ash's greatsword was the first to plunge into the ice coffin. Elena's remains smiled amid the flames, as if she had long awaited this moment. All the clones simultaneously screamed, disintegrating into silver sand that flowed toward Kane's right hand, while his mutated bone blade swelled to three meters, its surface now bearing the visage of Lia.

The Eye of the Abyss began to collapse.

As the pegasus burst from the vortex, Kane's right arm had reverted to normal—save for a gear-shaped scar on his palm. Alice clutched her mother's sword, the inscription on its crossguard rendered even clearer by the dark blood. Ash tossed her a bottle of strong liquor he'd filched from the laboratory, while he himself downed nearly half a bottle against the backdrop of the burning sea of clouds.

"What's our next stop?" he laughed until tears streamed down his face. "Let's get this straight—I'm sick of all this family sentimentality."

Kane spread his hand, and from within the gear-shaped scar emerged a holographic star map. Lia's voice drifted from the void, carrying the dampness of a rainy day at the pottery workshop:"Come find me, where the gods lie."

The pegasus swept past the last falling gear and vanished toward the coordinates marked on the star map, disappearing at the edge of the blood moon.