You look the Valghul directly into its eyes as it stands in front of you.
" No thanks. "
You say as you open a portal behind it and front kick it in the chest with an incredible force, sending it flying through the portal. The Valghul instantly reacts after the strike, grabbing your foot on its way through the portal and pulling you through with it. As you both emerge mid-air on the other side of the portal, the Valghul swings you around and loses its grip on you, causing the both of you to tumble in two different directions at an incredible speed. Your body shatters trees and puts craters into the ground as you bounce and fly until you finally lose momentum and land on your stomach in the dirt.
You're a bit dizzy as you slowly get up, wiping the dirt and grass off of you, and see that you're in an overgrown jungle in the middle of the night. You remember the portal that you opened was intended to take the Valghul to a random planet in a random universe, then you suddenly stop for a moment to look at yourself and realize that you're perfectly uninjured after that tumble. It seems like now that you remember how to use your powers, you can't get hurt as easily as you used to.
What were all of my abilities again?
You think to yourself. Surely the Valghul omitted this knowledge from you to ensure that you would be less of a threat if things didn't go its way.
The Valghul's deep demonic voice startles you as it echoes from within the trees.
" That was a mistake, Abbadon. "
In a panic, you look around at the seemingly infinite depth of trees in your environment. Your pulse quickens and you feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest as you nervously scan the dark jungle surrounding you. The Valghul is close, but the darkness of the jungle and the thickness of the vegetation makes looking for the Valghul impossible. If you don't do something quick, you know that it's going to murder you just like it murdered Aatu and Noeh.
The Valghul's voice echoes once more, this time coming from a different direction.
" It's just you and me, Donny. "
Think… think… I need to act right now. What can I do to find the Valghul?
Suddenly in a moment of realization, you use your ability to see Light and Darkness to try and locate the Valghul through the trees. As you look at the environment around you, your sight reaches as far as the horizon, but you can only see the vegetation and wildlife of the jungle.
" Fuck. "
You mutter to yourself in duress as your heart beats faster and faster. You begin to sweat thinking about your impending doom.
Where is it?
Frustrated, you revert your vision back to normal. However, to your surprise, you see a pair of glowing red beastly eyes lurking in the darkness staring directly at you. They're too close for you not to have seen them before, and these eyes are too monstrous to belong to a humanoid being…
Could that be the Valghul?
You switch your sight again to see the shape of what it is, but again you don't see anything.
It's almost as if nothing's there…
Your heart sinks into your stomach as you connect the dots in your head.
That's exactly what it is. Nothing is there.
You slowly walk backwards and revert your sight back to normal. You can hear the beast breathing and growling demonically under its breath as the glowing red eyes silently follow you. You begin to see a faint silhouette that leads you to believe this is some sort of large cat.
Is that a panther? No, it's far too large to be any normal wild cat. The eyes on this thing are easily larger than my fists.
You continue to walk backwards without breaking eye contact with this monster as your mind races on what to do.
This thing is definitely stronger and faster than me, so running isn't an option. Another portal isn't an option either because that's too easy to anticipate. What should I do? What CAN I do?
Suddenly the eyes disappear and the breathing stops, leaving the jungle uncannily quiet. You can infer exactly why it hasn't killed you yet.
It's playing with its food.
You take a few deep breaths to calm yourself and focus, recalling the things that you were capable of doing in the past. In your memories, you saw yourself using a variety of abilities. You could levitate and move things with your mind just like Tom does. You had a heightened perception and speed when those Black Traps tried to surprise attack you from the crowd. You also had incredible strength when you pulled Anito towards you and crushed his neck with one hand, being immune to the stabs that Anito tried inflicting on your arm with his dagger. That's all you saw yourself doing, but those were only short memories. It's highly possible that there are more abilities that you have and just don't know about.
As you focus your mind on the memories that you re-experienced, the feeling of your power becomes familiar to you again. You feel just like you did back then and close your eyes for a brief moment, breathing deeply to collect yourself.
Before you can open your eyes, you sense an incoming threat leaping towards you from behind. So in one fluid motion, you step to the side and open your eyes to see that it's the beast pouncing on you before you strike the side of the beast's head with your fist as it tries to bite you. The sound of your knuckles making contact with its skin cracks like a gunshot and the beast tumbles into a tree with an incredible force, knocking the tree down along with a few other trees that are entangled around it in the forest canopy.
The beast snarls unnaturally as it gets up and your stomach turns while you gaze upon this monstrosity. The Valghul has taken the form of some sort of demonic feline, and once it's on its feet, you see that it has to be at least ten feet tall when it's standing upright on all four legs. It locks its eyes onto you and begins growling while slowly approaching. You can hear it pulverize the wood and rocks under its feet with each step due to its immense weight, and you can see the beast's gigantic muscles moving under its undead gray skin as it approaches. It speaks to you in a taunting tone.
" Where's your book, Abbadon? "
You instinctively look down at your hands and then around at your surroundings as you realize that The Holy Omniverse Transcript is missing.
Where did it go? I must've dropped it when the Valghul pulled me through the portal, or worse, when I was tumbling through the jungle.
While you're distracted by the duress of losing the book, the demon leaps towards you again. You instantly snap back into the moment and telekinetically pull a log from a fallen tree towards you and fall down backwards as you put the log into the Valghul's jagged maw, saving you from being bitten as the beast stands over you. As soon as the Valghul bites down on the log, it explodes into a smoke made of the Light and Darkness within it. Instantly, you see the Light get dimmer and the Darkness get brighter until the entire cloud of smoke turns gray and fades out of existence. Your heart is pounding and you're in shock as you just witnessed The Bite of Abrogation.
Shit… Whatever you do, don't let it bite you.
The monstrosity, towering over you as you lay on your back, snarls and goes in for another bite; but you catch the beast's jaws with your hands and hold its mouth open over you with all of your strength. The sheer weight and strength of the beast's neck pushes against you as its mouth gets closer and closer to your face. Your body sinks into the ground as you desperately try to push the giant jaws away from your face, but you're still slowly losing the struggle. You let out a scream of exertion as the demon growls impatiently before a whole tree comes flying down from the sky at the speed of a bullet and knocks the beast off of you, completely shattering as it sends the beast tumbling to the side.
Your drop your arms to the ground and take a moment to recover as you look up at where the tree came from. There you see Tom floating in the sky with five other trees floating around him.
" I'm not losing you again, Donny. "
You let out a sigh of relief and your eyes tear up as you get emotional. You've never been so relieved to see someone.
" Get your ass up. I didn't save it for nothing. "
Tom says, breaking the tension as he hides a grin. You smile and get up out of the body-shaped crater that you're in.
" How'd you find me? "
You ask as you look up at him.
" I read your mind as you opened the portal so I could open one of my own. After I followed you here, I heard a loud crack coming from this direction. Once I saw this clearing, I grabbed a few trees and came to help. Looks like I arrived just in time too. And don't worry, Mimi is safe with the King of Moriarch and Sir Gerard. "
Tom then pulls out The Holy Omniverse Transcript from his cloak and shows it to you.
" You dropped this in the cafe. Catch. "
Tom says as he tosses it to you. You pull the book into your hands telekinetically and the book unlocks. You then realize that the book was still locked while Tom was holding it, so you look up and say something about it.
" You've been weakened. The man back at the castle had tainted Light inside of him. That's why you couldn't use the book. "
Tom nods at you as he responds.
" Figures. I do remember the Light that I took from him feeling abnormal. "
" What are we gonna do about it? "
You ask him. Tom looks over in the direction of the Valghul as he answers you.
" I don't know yet. Right now we need to focus on neutralizing this threat. "
As you also look over at the Valghul, you can see it shrinking in size and morphing back into a humanoid.
You ask Tom a question.
" What do you have in mind? "
You see a glimmer in Tom's eye as he answers.
" We're gonna break this Valghul's grasp on Sir Arthur and send him to Havnahm to be with Veronica. "