I agreed with En's suggestion. My sense of danger was blaring even looking at the dark void heading towards the lowest point of the abyss, the abyssal floor.
While I was searching the ceiling of the abyssal trench, I tried to peek inside various holes that nightmare origins had turned into a home to look for Eric's mother, I could not help but ask En about the abyss.
"Hey En, why is the abyss too deep? And I noticed it's larger than the whole plains of sleep, from shallows till the deep."
"Well, nothing wrong in telling you this. Once upon a time, the abyss was not this deep, you remember the start of the trench right, that was where the natural abyss ended."
"Natural?"
"Yes, natural. Dream eaters inhabited the natural abyss they were the native creatures that lived in the natural abyss. They eat dreams resulting in the person whose dreams were eaten waking up in cold sweat. There were no stranded since there was no corrupting miasma present. But something happened inside the plains of sleep. All I can tell you is that a war was waged, an almighty being fell and created the crack in the natural abyss, its body sank even deeper as it corroded the natural abyss creating the large cavern you can see now, and finally with its blood, it corrupted the once harmless dream eaters creating the first nightmare origins.
"Then what was that being we saw when the maelstrom formed and showed the deepest part of the abyss?"
"That...that was the remnant of the being that had fallen, its body had corroded, its mind is broken, yet it is still cunning and always wanted to escape to finish the war it had started."
"Although it's dead?"
"Yes, although it's already dead, the mission it wanted to finish had lingered inside its rotting body and only amplified by its hunger to devour the plains of sleep."
"Why does it want to do that?"
"Because it is the spawn of..."
"En?"
"I'm sorry Phil, it seems it's not time yet for you to know about this thing."
I wanted to ask En more questions but he refused to answer. I sighed and focused on looking inside the holes and tried my luck, maybe I'll find Eric's mother somehow.
The journey was not smooth. Eclaireuse's energy use was getting larger the more time we spend inside the lower abyss, of the 20 batteries I had, I had already used 7 to replenish Eclaireuse's energy, 3 was used like a grenade to kill a single nightmare origin that had tried to trap me inside its cave and wanted to eat me. The dang thing could talk like a human and lured me inside telling me it had seen Eric's mother, it also somehow made a dummy from the remnants of the nightmare origin it had consumed and fashioned a human-like a dummy that has the same size as Eric's mother. You might think that I'm a fool but remember, every strand that had made their way inside the lower parts of the abyss is heavily corroded and various cancerous growth or blight could be seen on their bodies. The dummy that the nightmare origin could not be any closer than real stranded.
That encounter made me alert on the nightmare origins that had survived in this part of the abyss, they are not only stronger than those who lived on the upper abyss, but are also able to trick their prey and lure them inside their caves and devour them.
I was down 10 batteries and continued my journey, I have seen various kinds of nightmare origin as I searched for Eric's mother. There are nightmare origins that glancing at them can make you puke, beautiful nightmare origins that temp you only to reveal its hideous true form and slowly devour you, colossal nightmare origins and a colony of tiny nightmare origins that can devour a colossal nightmare origin in mere minutes. Every single one of them was horrendous and without protection from Eclaireuse and En, I would be dead by now.
Minutes passed as my batteries were slowly decreasing, I decided to stop the expedition and return topside and rest. I slowly made my way back towards the trench when suddenly everything became frantic. The nightmare origins scrambled towards their burrows and tried covering their entrance to the best they could, colossal nightmare origins that we're unable to fit inside caves swam quickly away from the trench, while some cowered on the ceiling and rolled itself into a ball making itself smaller. En suddenly shouted inside my head.
"Phil! Quick, run away!"
Without any hesitation, I swam towards the trench and tried to escape.
"Stop, hide inside a hole now!"
Confused about why En suddenly changed his command, I decided to trust him and quickly changed my direction towards a hole in the ceiling. Thankfully the hole had no one inside it and I safely took shelter.
"What's happening En?"
"Look towards the trench and you'll see."
I carefully peeked outside the hole and saw a slug-like creature, crawling near the exit of the lower abyss. Its body was black and slimy, it was large, larger than a buss, but compared to the colossal nightmare origins that roamed in the lower abyss, its size was relatively small, multiple tentacles squirmed in the air as multiple eyes slithered on them like roaches that crawl on walls, fast and creepy.
"What is that En? Why are those nightmare origins that are bigger, so afraid of them."
"Those are altered shoggoths or corrupted shoggoth. They are the result of a husk successfully given life by the miasma. As I told you before, they are the strongest inhabitants of the abyss. Something is strange though, they should be on the abyss floor and rarely travel on the upper parts of the lower abyss just to hunt food."
"Wait, what do you think it's doing here. Don't tell me it's waiting for me."
"I don't know. We should quickly return, I sense a bad thing is about to happen."
The corrupted shoggoth roamed the exit of the lower abyss, and when it saw a nightmare origin trying to go out of the lower abyss, it would attack it and devour its body slowly. Once it saw a colossal nightmare origin that was trying to escape, its body split in the middle and a row of sharp teeth was seen, countless eyes that were dotted on its body focused on the nightmare origin, it then leaped towards the nightmare origin and devoured half of its body, leaving the other half to sink towards the abyss floor. The nightmare origins that had seen the death of the colossal nightmare origin began to panic, those who were overwhelmed with fear began to frantically escape, they came out of their holes and swam quickly away from the shoggoth, some even dared to swim towards the trench only to be ambushed by more shoggoths that were hiding inside the trench walls.
Dang, what's happening. My hand started to shake as I noticed some shoggoths started to crawl away from the trench and started looking inside the holes that came on their way. The nightmare origins that were found hiding inside the holes were directly eaten by the shoggoths. Even Eclaireuse was shaking as I felt the sextant vibrate.
"Hey kid, I don't have enough power to protect you. They are too stong that even one of their blows will shatter my barrier."
I could not help but curse. I tried asking En what I needed to do, but even he does not have any solutions.
The shoggoths were getting closer now. More and more nightmare origins were getting killed and eaten as they spread out. I had 10 batteries left, not enough to hide inside the lower abyss forever until the shoggoth's return to the abyssal floor, I also had thought in using the batteries as grenades to use it and kill a shoggoth, but when I saw it use a single tentacle to pierce the same kind of nightmare origin I killed using three grenades, I gave up with the idea.
I hid myself deeper inside the hole and prayed that the shoggoth will somehow be unable to find me. I closed my eyes and huddled my body on the far corner of the hole.
Minutes later, I heard the slow crawling of a shoggoth, it hissed at the entrance of the hole and started using its tentacles to survey the inside of the hole. I closed my eyes even more hoping not to be found, and by some miracle, with my eyes closed I could somehow hear the shoggoth crawl away. After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and turned around, I sighed as I looked towards the entrance of the hole and saw that the shoggoth had truly leaved.
I wanted to scream with joy, when suddenly a tentacle wrapped on my waist, it quickly bound my arms to my body and the sextant on my chest, what's weird was that it successfully penetrated the golden barrier that Eclaireuse had created without breaking it, it simply phase through the barrier and bound me.
I looked in horror as I saw the shoggoth cleverly flattened it's body and hid on the ceiling of the hole, its eyes were looking at me as it slowly returned to its normal state, a large slug-like creature with the size of a bus.