Angel Monarch

The portal closed behind Bea and her unit of five people.

They looked around the jungle with curiosity, then began to walk south. They were on the north side of the island, and the entrance was supposedly in the middle.

The jungle was dense. Vines hang down from the trees and the foliage prevented seeing more than a few meters away.

Bea felt great in this environment, but also strange. She touched the vines and trunks, but they sent a shiver down her spine. They were alive, but also dead, and when one of the vines moved, she quickly realized why.

It attacked Vicky, but she teleported away before the vines could entangle her. Another attacked Faith, but she just turned into a shadow.

Lucy and will couldn't dodge so easily, but using her power over death, she killed any vines that approached.

The last person was Connor. He was part of the Ouroboros Cohort. The man was tall and stocky. He carried a long axe, which was close to a halberd in size. He wore the cohort's signature armor, with their symbol on his chest.

His helmet was the only thing defining him from the rest of the Cohort. It was shaped like a bull, with glowing red eyes.

The vines enveloped his arms and legs, but he just walked on without care. The vines tightened and tried to hold him back, but eventually they just snapped, raining blood on the green foliage.

This picked his interest and knelt down with his axe's butt to the ground.

"What the fuck is that?" he said in a whisper, causing everyone to look at the torn, bloody vines.

They wriggled on the ground, squirting blood, then eventually died down and dissolved.

The six of them watched with wide, disgusted eyes as the forest absorbed the vines. The sight was awful, but it confirmed some of Bea's suspicions.

Without waiting, she opened her watch's scanning feature and scanned the jungle. It took a few minutes, in which they started walking again, but they payed much more attention to their surroundings.

"Fuck me... That's bad..." Bea mumbled to herself as the results came back. The others just looked at her with confusion and wariness, so she elaborated.

"It seems the whole jungle is one giant monster. It's definitely an Abomination, but it's probably sleeping or something."

"How do you know that?" asked Connor, while looking around the forest, his expression hidden behind the bull mask. Bea just giggled to herself and continued to walk calmly. After a few seconds, she answered, "We are still alive, aren't we?"

Connor understood the message, and they moved on towards the facility entrance.

Bea also warned everybody of their discovery, but most of them already figured it out. It was lucky that communication on the island was possible, they just couldn't send messages to the outside.

It was only about 12 kilometers to reach the middle of the island, but as they walked further, more and more 'plants' attacked them. They were easy to take care of. The main problem was that the jungle grew thicker as well.

Above them, the branches closed in, fully hiding them from the sun's rays.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

As the time passed, the messages started to roll in from the other units. For now, three out of the six had made it to the entrance, but they had bad news about the situation. It was guarded.

Jill's, David's and Adam's unit had made it there, since they were the closest. If everything went according to plan, the next one to arrive would be Melinda.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, she sent a message and also a detailed description of the situation.

The entrance is defended by a horde of Ascended soldiers, and a few Horrors of the 1st Tier. It was nothing they couldn't take care of, but Melinda felt something off about them.

They were immune to her plague powers, and they didn't seem to die from regular deathly wounds. They also moved and fought thoughtlessly, with no self preservation.

By the time Damien's unit reached them, Melinda had figured out what was going on.

Melinda: 'It's Legion! He is an Ascended with necromancy powers, but something changed. I have never met him, but by Sera's account, he shouldn't look like how he is. Also, he shouldn't be able to resurrect Horrors! Be extra careful!'

Bea told her unit to pick up the pace. Without saying a word, Connor stepped to the front and sprinted forward. He didn't seem to care about the living vines, trees, foliage, even rocks. He sprinted through them, leaving a human-sized path behind.

The others looked at each other with a bit of bewilderment, then quickly followed after him, before the foliage closed back up.

Instead of taking another ten or more minutes, they reached the clearing where the entrance was under one minute.

The entrance was obvious, since there were no other buildings in the area. It was a small, simple-looking building in the middle of a clearing. The jungle Abomination was keeping away from here, which is how they guessed where the entrance was.

Previously, Kastral made a few fly-bys above the island as a recon mission. He was the one who reported the patch of emptiness in the island consuming forest.

Warfare consumed the clearing. There were hundreds of these armored Ascended, and there were even a few Transcended, which Melinda didn't report of. The Horrors were mostly dead, most of them were impaled on spikes of ice, which meant Damien killed them.

The fighting was at its earnest near the entrance, where Jill lead the Black Crusaders in an attempt to break through the enemy lines. Adam's unit was helping them too, and each second, more enemies died.

Everything was going fine, but as Bea's unit stepped into the clearing, something changed.

Suddenly, they all felt the connection to their essence getting blocked, causing a disturbance in the offensive.

The people leading the attack suddenly stumbled and a lot of them suffered injuries. Nobody got killed yet, but each and everyone was getting overwhelmed.

Bea looked to the far side of the clearing, where two people stood. Both were motionless and wore the same armor as the Ascended army.

Cassandra and Damien had seen them too, and after the last of the dead Transcended died by their hands, they ran towards them.

Both of them have lost their connection to their essence too, which meant that these two were Transcended too.

Bea ran with her unit to help the five other teams, but suddenly a Horror jumped out in front of them.

With the loss of their essence, they couldn't summon their weapons and their armor.

The beast was a ten-legged spider with human legs. On its face, a human torso grew out, with two wicked scythes in place of its arms. The head was terrifying. Its head had dozens of eyes all over it, and there were four mandibles in its mouth.

The thing didn't make a sound as it swiped towards Bea. The attack was slow, so she dodged to the side with ease, but she had to dodge a second time to avoid the other scythe.

From left and right, Lucy, Will, Faith and Connor attacked, while Vicky stayed back, looking at everybody with concern.

The human spider scurried closer to Bea and tried to trample her. She evaded the first two feet and got below the spider.

It then tried crushing her with its extremely heavy weight, but Bea jumped out at the last moment.

With its body on the ground, the other four attacked like demons from hell. They used their Ascended strength to further immobilize the monster, giving Bea ample time to get up and face it.

She ran towards its head, grabbed onto it, and with quick move snapped the spine.

For a second, she thought it was over, but the body of the spider still moved. With a groan of annoyance, she dragged the broken necked body closer. She used its body as leverage, and with all her strength, she pulled the head clean off.

Her body was covered in yellow blood, which was very disgusting.

Next to her, the spider stopped its struggle. Everybody breathed a sigh of relief, and they continued to run towards the front line.

Damien's and Cassandra's attack was in a stalemate. If they both had their powers, there would be no question about the winner, but now it wasn't so clear.

While running, Bea watched them, and quickly realized their problem. Those two needed to die for them to be able to leave, but they also had to hurry with the rescue.

Bea was sure Harold had already known about the assault, and the more time passed, the more afraid she got. He could've come here any time in the past minute, and his victory could've been achieved.

But seeing that nobody from the six units had died yet, she was really curious about what he was planning.

The dead soldiers were fighting adamantly, but they never seemed to go for killing blows.

Her mind was racing, but after a few more seconds, they reached the front line, and she lost focus of her thoughts.