" Go fuck yourself. "
You say to the three Valghuli that are standing around you.
" Insulting us when you're at our mercy? I don't know if that's bravery or ignorance. "
The robed man remarks with an attitude as he walks closer to you and looks down at you imposingly. The womanly demon speaks up from behind the robed man, chiming in in a taunting demeanor.
" You're lucky that Our Lord needs your vessel, little one. If this was any other circumstance, a mouth like that would earn you a beautifully excruciating death. "
She then looks up at the demon that's holding you as she continues to speak.
" Let's take him to The Null. "
" No. "
The robed man responds.
" I'm afraid that the Lamenter isn't going anywhere with us just yet… he's not actually here with us. He's dreaming. "
You feel a wave of relief wash over you, but the stress immediately returns when the robed man turns towards the woman and continues talking.
" Would you like to do the honors of killing his soul before we return to the mortal realm and retrieve his body? "
" You'd give the honor to me? I'd love to! You always knew how to spoil a woman, Verzo. "
The demonic woman says playfully as she materializes a glowing dagger in her hand and begins walking towards you. You do your best to break free, but the Valghul's grasp on your shoulder is steadfast and unmoving. You hear a beastly and sinister laugh as it looks down at you trying to struggle. You desperately close your eyes and focus your entire being on summoning the power within you.
It can't end like this. You still need to see Ariel in Voldoor. You need to go find your wife. Think about Ariel…
Unexpectedly, you hear Sowzo's voice whisper into your ear. His voice sounds eager and almost excited as it seems like he's intruding into your mind.
" Let loose, mortal. Tilt the board. Let the madness touch you once more. "
You instantly dig down deep into your heart and focus on the feeling of despair that you felt when you lost your family, and as you do so, a radiant wave of green energy explodes out of you. The force from this explosion breaks you free from the giant demon's grasp and knocks back the woman and man onto the floor. You open your eyes to see the robed demon looking at you with excitement. His eyes look happy and you can almost make out a smile behind the shredded flesh on his face. Completely unfazed by the aura of power radiating around you, his words try at your patience as he stands up.
" Ahhh, now we can have some fun. Let's see how powerful the Lamenter really is. "
As you stare at the robed demon before you, the familiar feeling of madness engulfs you and you can feel your mental stability faltering.
" Dₑ𝘴𝚝ᵣₒy 𝓱ᵢᗰ... Dₑ𝘴𝚝ᵣₒy... Kᵢᄂᄂ... Kᵢᄂᄂ 𝚝𝓱ₑ 𝚍ₑᗰₒ𝚗. "
In the blink of an eye, the robed man lunges at you. You sidestep each of his strikes walking backwards as your heightened perception allows you to see each of his attacks coming from a mile away. Each strike being thrown at you breaks the sound barrier, but the explosions around your body and head don't seem to bother you. The only thing you can feel is an unquenchable rage deep inside you, just like the night you lost Rosie.
" T𝓱ₑ 𝚍ₑᗰₒ𝚗 wᵢᄂᄂ 𝚗ₒ𝚝 𝘴𝚝ₒ𝐩 yₒᵤ fᵣₒᗰ 𝘴ₑₑᵢ𝚗g ₐᵣᵢₑᄂ... T𝓱ₑ 𝚍ₑᗰₒ𝚗 wᵢᄂᄂ 𝚗ₒ𝚝 𝐩ᵣₑᵥₐᵢᄂ... 𝚍ᵢₑ... 𝚝𝓱ₑ ᵥₐᄂg𝓱ᵤᄂ ᗰᵤ𝘴𝚝 𝚍ᵢₑ… "
As soon as you see an opening in the Valghul's onslaught, you punch it square in the face and the entire realm shakes and begins to crack as you send him flying out into the ruined Somniohm. Then in an instant, you can sense the glowing dagger being swung at you from behind. You immediately turn and catch the demon's arm and pull her face down into your knee and the strike from your knee cracks the realm even further as it explodes. You begin to see white Light peeking through the cracks as the realm slowly breaks from the power of your strikes.
" Kᵢᄂᄂ… "
You can see the robed man getting up out in the distance, so you throw the woman to the side and jump out into the distance to punch the robed man. However, unexpectedly your fist goes right through him and he weaves behind you to grab your arm from behind.
" Let's see how you like it… "
The robed man says before he spins and throws you back towards the direction that you came from. You use your ability to levitate to catch yourself mid-air but before you can react, the woman comes down on top of you and returns a knee back in your face, sending you down into the ground in an explosion which cracks the realm even further. The ground begins to quake underneath you and pieces of the sky begin to fall down and crash into the ruined Somniohm. The people who are dreaming begin chanting once more as they watch the Valghuli fight you, completely unaware of the realm crumbling around them. Many people get crushed within their dreams from the pieces that are falling, but they die in their dreams complacently as the others continue to chant and stare at you with their empty eye sockets.
" NONE… NONE… NONE… NONE… "
You try to get up and roll to the side, but you get no time to breathe as she comes down on top of you and begins throwing an onslaught of strikes with her fist, legs, and the dagger towards you faster than the man did. Still, you keep up with the strikes and are barely able to evade them before you sense a red beam coming from the direction of the robed man towards you. After you jump out of the way of the beam and slide on the ground, you see the beam melt everything in its path into the same smoke you saw when the Valghul bit that log in the forest. The beam is turning everything and everyone it touches into nothing.
The beam stops firing after erasing an entire horizon of Somniohm and you see the woman slowly walk towards you with a smirk on her face. You don't want the robed demon who's firing the beams to see you, so you lay low on your back inside the large crater from your impact with the ground. The demon in the robe speaks up from the distance while you refuse to break eye contact with the woman as she slowly approaches.
" I think we've gauged his strength pretty well, Valanyah. He's definitely more powerful than a god, but it appears that he's still a weakling without the book. "
" He isn't entirely a weakling… his strikes on us were able to fracture the fabric of this immortal realm. There was never a question about my faith in Our Lord's plan; but still, now that I have seen the potential of this vessel with my own eyes, I know that The One is as good as dead after we seize it… "
The woman begins materializing and throwing daggers at you and they vaporize the ground as you crawl backwards and dodge them. Your mental stability is still faltering, but the fear from experiencing the unmatched strength from these demons has you frozen. It's clear that the woman is just toying with you as she approaches and you need an out. You know that you have no chance at defeating one of these Valghuli, let alone all three of them. The giant one hasn't even started fighting yet.
In a moment of desperation you try to open up a portal underneath you to fall into it and escape, but to your surprise, nothing happens.
" W𝓱ₐ𝚝?- Why aren't portals working? Is this the Valghuli's doing?- Yₒᵤ 𝚌ₐ𝚗'𝚝 𝚋ₑ 𝘴𝚝ᵤ𝚌𝓴 𝓱ₑᵣₑ… yₒᵤ 𝚌ₐ𝚗'𝚝… "
The woman laughs in a mocking demeanor and makes a remark after reading your mind.
" There's no escape… and there's nobody here that can save you. "
Suddenly Sowzo's voice echoes throughout his ruined dimension, and to your surprise, he's not rhyming anymore. Instead, he sounds disappointed and confused.
" I… I understand now… Sowzo must do what it takes to keep the Lamenter on Father's path… "
Sowzo then appears in front of you in a puff of purple smoke and looks back at you out of the corner of his eye as he stands between you and the demon. He shouts at you with more emotion than you ever thought you'd hear from him.
" You need to wake up, mortal! Go into the Light! "
You look up into the sky and see the white Light coming from outside the realm. Then, Sowzo claps his hands twice and several hundreds of the purple skeletons that you once saw in his palace all emerge from the ground around you and take the shape of perfect clones of you. Sowzo then smirks before turning himself into a clone of you as well and the clones begin rushing the Valghuli. In the brief window of opportunity that Sowzo has given you, you take off flying up into the sky with hundreds of other clones while the rest of the hundreds of clones all surround the demons and fight them. You look down at the Valghuli to see all three of them effortlessly taking on your clones around them as their strikes blend into a perfect blur that leaves blood and mutilated corpses in their wake. You look back upwards and continue to reach for the Light as you ascend quickly, but you immediately sense the red beam behind you, so you and several other clones evade the beam by flying around in all manner of directions as you desperately continue to fly upwards. You watch all around you as a multitude of your clones get vaporized into nothingness and you see the robed man flying behind the decreasing number of clones in the air as he shoots the beams from his hands at them. You can almost touch the Light before the woman flies up in front of you and blocks you from reaching it. Without hesitation she swings her dagger at you faster than you can register it, but before the dagger reaches you, a clone appears in front of you and takes the dagger to the chest. He lets out an agonizing scream as the illusion fades and you can see that the clone that just sacrificed himself for you was Sowzo. As he disappears into nothingness, the rest of the realm instantly falls apart upon his death. The Light glows brighter as his realm shatters and it touches you before the Valghuli can reach you. Everything instantly goes black.