The Twelve Apocalypses: A Damned Soul's Path to the Abyss

Finding Glaustro was as easy as I thought it would be, though he wasn’t exactly at the center of the forming crowd. Sure, he was surrounded, but the demons were all hanging back carefully, watching the major as he talked to a lanky-looking demon in a hushed voice.

Mia and I had no such reservations, of course. As soon as I saw Glaustro, I released the poor demon I had been lugging around and beelined towards my major.

"-many were there?"

I caught the tail end of a question, but I was more interested in the obvious excitement in Glaustro’s voice. A smile snuck up on me. I knew how stressed he had been over the last few days of seeing nothing but snow on Breskwor.

"At least five, from what I could tell," the demon, presumably Cardin, answered just as eagerly. There was a spark in his eyes that I wasn’t used to seeing in demons. "They vanished into the snow so quickly, and I didn’t want to leave my post."

"Yes, yes, so you’ve said," Glaustro groused, but his tone of voice betrayed his amusement. "It is commendable that you stuck to your post in spite of the… temptation. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see my sergeants are here."

Cardin nodded several times in a hurry, then tried to scurry off, only to realize there was a wall of demons between him and freedom. I heard him gulp rather loudly as they descended upon him for more details, but I ignored all of that and approached Glaustro.

"Exciting news," I said with a grin, sweeping my eyes over the horizon.

"Indeed. Can’t fucking tell you how much of a relief that was. If we had failed to find anything…" Glaustro trailed off, but his brief slip into profanity told me all I needed to know about his glee. "What about you? Is everything alright?"

The question threw me for a loop, but a moment later I blanched and looked away. Of course a camp full of demons would be aware of someone in their midst going through an emotional meat grinder. I had probably been broadcasting my emotions half the world over while reading my mother’s letter.

I cleared my throat to buy myself an extra second, then finally looked Glaustro in the eye again.

"Yeah. Yeah, everything’s alright. Nothing to worry about. I… Well, I’ve been putting off claiming an inheritance through my mother’s sword, so…"

I could see the exact moment realization slammed into Glaustro. His smile faltered, replaced briefly by a grimace. When the smile came back, it was slightly strained.

"Ah. Family. I understand." He most assuredly did. "Well, hopefully this will get your mind off of everything. I have an urgent task for you and Sergeant Mia here. I want you two to put your talents towards tracking down these locals. You can take a small group of soldiers with you, but I’d honestly prefer if you do this quietly. We don’t want to alarm them just yet."

I mulled that over, then glanced at Mia. The cat demoness threw me a slow, malicious smile before she spoke up.

"We don’t need anyone else. We’ll find those locals. Trust me."

Glaustro nodded. "I do. That’s why I’m sending you two."

"Good." Mia stretched, then grabbed my hand and started dragging me away. "We’ll be back soon."

"Mia, don’t rush this!" I protested, though I didn’t put any effort into actually holding her back.

"I’m not. We have everything we need already." She rapped her knuckles against her armor before her free hand fell to land on her sheathed sword.

I gave up and let the cat demoness have her way. Sure, it would be nice to have food, warmth, and similar conveniences while traipsing through the endless snow, but we were demons. We had armor and weapons. That was all we needed. Experience more tales on NovelBin.Côm

I wasn’t going to complain about some alone time with my best friend, either.

—

While I had griped a fearsome amount under my breath about Breskwor’s monotonous landscapes, I wasn’t blind to the beauty of the scenery. Really, the words ’endless snow and ice’ didn’t do it justice.

Those words failed to mention the tall spires of ice that dotted the horizon, jutting into the sky like spears and glittering in an endless cascade of rainbows when the sun was up. They also could not capture the beauty of a mild snowfall under generous amounts of moonlight. The moon was either far larger or far closer to the planet than was customary for most worlds, so the celestial body provided ample illumination all through the night.

There were a thousand and one other little moments of awe to be snatched from the unforgiving landscape of Breskwor.

But at the moment, I was once again cross with it.

I had flown up into the sky, hoping an aerial vantage point would help me spot movement on the ground. Movement I did indeed spot, except it was just the constant shift of snow in the wind, rather than the fleeing forms of locals.

While Breskwor didn’t have a storm raging over it constantly like Lagyel, it was still a pretty windy planet. Most of the time, this just meant a playful breeze that swirled snowflakes around our feet. But once it properly got going, the wind transformed everything into an impenetrable curtain of white, forcing us to rely fully on our mana senses.

Annoyingly enough, the snow here was wet enough to clump together as it swirled in the wind, which formed an array of perpetually rolling snowballs. If these formations took place on a hill, and the snowballs gained enough momentum on their way down, the resulting boulders could potentially threaten mortals. This was less rare than one might expect, seeing as the landscape of Breskwor was rather hilly. Rolling dunes of snow were all over the place.

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All in all, I was not in the mood to marvel at the ’endless snow and ice.’ At least the moon wasn’t bright enough to lend blinding radiance to the snow, like the sun. I had made the mistake of flying up to scout exactly once during the day. I didn’t cherish the thought of trying that again.

"Anything?" I asked as soon as I landed carefully next to Mia. I was forced to beat my wings more than I usually would to land lightly and avoid burying myself in the snow, but that just sent a flurry of snowflakes up around us.

"Mmm," the cat demoness purred, then gave me a self-satisfied smile. "I have their scent. My senses are much sharper since ascension."

I didn’t doubt that, and it made me mildly envious.

As a cat beastfolk in her mortal life, Mia had started off with better senses, more physical prowess, and ungodly flexibility. Even before we ascended, she could contort herself in ways that made my bones ache just to look at, and she sometimes accomplished attacks I would have broken my limbs trying to replicate. All of that had been amplified throughout the process of building up to ascension, and then amplified again when she fully became a demon.

I was strong too, of course. Much, much stronger than I once was, even at my peak as a mortal, but Mia could still bend me like a pretzel — if we fought relying on only our physical bodies. Things got a bit more complex once mana was added to the mix, which was the only reason I felt comfortable saying I could probably match her.

"Lead on, then." I shook out my wings, causing another mini snowfall. "I’m afraid my aerial superiority is not going to be much help. The wind and all the snow aren’t giving you trouble?"

"Not as much as I feared they might," the cat demoness admitted, nose wrinkling slightly in displeasure. "These mortals smell."

I almost laughed at her expression. Almost. In the past, she had given me reason to worry about those claws of hers when she felt like I was laughing at her rather than with her.

"Doesn’t sound very pleasant," I agreed. "But hey, we’re making progress."

"It’s so musky, though," Mia whined, and I barely bit back a chuckle.

Instead, I focused on my sense of smell. Despite the strengthening my own senses had undergone, I was nowhere close to Mia’s level, especially in the middle of a snowy, windblown wilderness. So when even I managed to pick up something faint, I knew she wasn’t joking about the odor’s intensity.

I fed a small amount of mana to my sense of smell out of curiosity, then immediately regretted it. The odor really was pungent. It smelled worse than rotten eggs and month-old rotting garbage, combined. Since one of the few memories I had so graciously retained from my old life was a large, nasty garbage container that butted right up to my apartment building and was only emptied out every month or so, I could attest to that from personal experience.

Gagging, I dispelled the sense boost, then flushed mana through my nose in an attempt to get rid of the smell. The memory still lingered, though, haunting me with its intensity as we stalked closer to our prey.

"You’ve been putting up with THAT, this entire time?" I gasped.

"Feel free to appreciate me more."

"I do, I really do."

A lighthearted mood prevailed, and even after our banter petered out, neither Mia nor I felt uncomfortable walking together in silence. Things only soured once she led us to the base of a massive snow dune that stretched at least fifty feet above our heads.

The cat demoness stopped there, sniffing left and right, then tried to glare a hole straight through the snow. "The scent ends here."

"Here? Just… ends?" I approached, but I couldn’t spot a single sign of someone climbing up the dune. Granted, it was hard to spot a sign of anything when the wind so helpfully erased all tracks as quickly as they formed, but still… "They didn’t climb up, did they?"

"No." Mia shook her head adamantly, still glaring. "The scent just vanishes here."

I hmmed in thought, then imposed my mana on the world.

Mana wasn’t naturally inclined to phase through solids. Unless pushed, senses that relied on mana typically didn’t offer a good picture of what was within the ground. It was possible to overcome this by manually directing your mana, but that wasn’t a very cost-effective thing to do unless you were adept at manipulating the element you were trying to see through. That’s why Glaustro could see through the ground much further than I ever could.

Snow was a bit easier to work with, though. The naturally porous nature of its layers let mana slip through more easily. But this time, my senses ran into a solid layer of ice right under the surface of the ’dune’ in front of us.

"Unless I’m sorely mistaken…" I paused, tilting my head to the side. "This particular ’snow dune’ is so tall because most of it is actually ice. It’s more like a very tall hill than a dune."

I placed my hand on the hill and pressed through the snow. My fingers met ice just inches in, and I focused before forcing mana through that, too. Most of the ice was one big, solid chunk. However, as I explored, I realized this didn’t hold true for the entire hill.

Before I could question myself, I moved a little to the right, then pressed down on the space in front of me with all my strength. The thin wall of ice shattered immediately. My mana slipped through right after, revealing the tunnel beyond in all its glory.

"Well, what do we have here?"

I turned to grin at Mia, but she just rolled her eyes and started helping me snap off more of the fake ice wall.

It was actually five or so inches thick, and even mildly reinforced by mana, which I found very interesting. But it was still no match for even the natural strength of a demon, let alone what we could do with a proper strengthening technique. Full demolition wasn’t our goal, though. We stopped as soon as we could both slip through comfortably into the tunnel. I even would have sealed the hole behind us if I had any skill with ice spells, but my casting repertoire was something I still needed to work on.

So, instead of messing around with that, I signaled to Mia that I was ready to follow her again. Not that I necessarily needed her to lead anymore. The tunnel stank to high heaven and only provided a single path to follow, but she seemed intent on taking point, so I didn’t argue.

Still, it wasn’t even fifteen minutes later when I suddenly grabbed her wrist to get her to stop.

"Can you feel that?" I asked without preamble. She frowned and shook her head. "Focus on the ambient mana."

There was a… tremor in the mana, like a shudder passed through it every couple of seconds. Focusing much harder, I slowly realized the waves of disturbance were coming from the walls of the ice cavern. I stepped closer to the wall on our left, intent on finding the source of the tremor.

That was when a spike of ice almost took me through the chest.

It was only because I habitually ran my strengthening technique almost all the time now that I managed to dodge the blow. Lunging away, I watched as the cavern walls began to ripple like water.

One by one, boulders of pure, see-through ice dropped out of the walls and ceiling. A few even floated up from the floor. They rippled like the surrounding ice for a second, and then a multitude of different limbs erupted out of them.

Some scurried towards us like spiders. Some took on almost humanoid forms. Others just looked like blobs of ever-shifting ice as they advanced.

I fought the urge to curse.

"Oh, not again!"

The sight reminded me a bit too much of the Lagyel constructs. So when I lashed out with perhaps a bit too much strength and shattered the closest ’blob’ into miniscule pieces of ice… I blamed the memories.