Chapter 32 The Dormant soulwell

Chapter 32 The Dormant soulwell
The two males turned to reaction. From within the void of the Soulwell, a vibration hummed, shaking the ground and the walls around them with slight tremor. Jorren wondered what in the Soulwell was capable of making the world rumble this much. Davan Rell glanced around him, thinking this was a confusion he didn’t sign up for.

Jorren abandoned him and walked further inside the Soulwell into a dimly lit hallway, his eyes fixed on his goal. He knew that the Keeper emphasizing that  they finding the dormant Soulwell also meant interacting with it. 

The hummings from the wall didn’t stop, nor did the slight tremors on the ground. Jorren’s tactical intelligence kicked in. Whatever was reacting had detected that they were here. He arrived at the of the hallway and made a turn, and he froze. Though his face was void of expression, his heart sank. 

An axe flew towards him at impossible speed. Jorren didn’t dodge, he reacted. His soul reached into his core like it did on his second ascension, and he detected the life powering the wood and the metal heading towards him. In one fluid motion, he pulled the life out of it.

The axe shattered to sugar grains of wood and metal right before his nose. 

As soon as Davan Rell showed from the corner, an arrow was hurled from the darkness ahead towards his forehead. He noticed too late, but a brilliant essence appeared before his face and consumed the arrow, flickering black ashes in the space before him.

From the darkness, the hum shaking the walls and the floor around them increased, and a mechanical growl followed. Jorren and Davan looked on into the void between them, unwilling to move, sure beyond reasonable doubt that whatever that they were dealing with was the shadow before them. 

Then two pairs of light flashed, and a pair of smoke appeared and disappeared into nothingness. A giant emerged from the darkness. 

The two young men taught they were looking at a minatour. The figure before them had the head of a bull and the body of a man, but the skin was so smoothly polished it shown like marble.

It took a few steps towards them and stopped and a mechanical voice came from the being.

“Jorren Thale: Fractured bloodlines. Unregistered pivot. Fractured bloodlines. Unregistered Pivot.”

The head of the being turned slightly to Davan. “Davan Rell: Intruder. Unauthorized.”

Both young men shared a look with each other. It didn’t last.

The minotaur moved. They did too.

Davan lifted himself off the ground as the monster hurled itself towards them. Jorren smashed himself into the wall in an attempt to protect himself. He looked at Davan, who looked at him. It was in that moment that they realized why the Keeper sent them together.

They had to work together, even if they did not necessarily agree. 

Still airborne, Davan rained a huge, pure volume of heavy essence on the beast, dissolving a huge chunk of the large beast. It flung his arm, narrowly missing Davan by inches. The impact and the power of the wave sent him flying.

Jorren reached into his core and using his negative resonnce, he pulled at the minotaur's life force. The beast reacted, spinning around and it's eyes locked in on Jorren. Jorren moved, becoming one with the darkness and disappearing at once. 

He was at Davan’s side at once. “We can't kill this the way we are going. I need you to use your energy to hold him down for me.” 

“For you? What the heck are you going to do? Break it?”

Jorren shook his head. “Now’s probably a bad time.” 

“You started the joke first,” Davan snorts.

The beast charged at them again. Davan unleased the fullness of his essence on it, but it only dissoved a part of it, the dissoved part quickly regenerating. Jorren simply jumped out of the way. 

“You have to listen to me, Davan. Hold him down!” Jorren barked at Davan.

“That would be killing us in one swoop,” Davan cried. “I can't risk it.”

The beast swung its head at Davan and he jumped, but he was not so lucky. The beast’s horns pulled at Davan's clean cloak sending him staggering. 

Jorren pulled again at the monster's soul,  and the monster snapped his head towards him. The monster lunched itself at Jorren, almost smashing him into bits, but Jorren had pulled on the threads of reality, giving him a 2 second advantage to step out of the way.

“Alright, this is becoming ugly,” Davan said as Jorren ascended from the cloud of concrete, a small, dark cloud shrouding his outline. 

“I'm going to try this now,” Davan added. Jorren nodded at him. 

As the beast struggled to get out of the rubble, Davan stretched his hands towards the beast. Bands of yellow golden light lashed out of Davan's palm, slamming into the monster and wrapping around its limbs. Small tongues of flames joined the bands wrapping around the beast and occasionally flared.

Jorren took a step forward, stretching one hand and closing his eyes. Unlike the yellow, orange or golden light he saw as the essence of people's souls, he saw blue. He reached out the darkness of his soul, attempting to drown the blue light with his darkness. The beast thrashed wildly, nearly making Davan grip.

“I don't want to regret this!” Davan cried out.

Jorren forced his darkness into the being, sending his darkness into the beast in waves. The beast waved it's tails, almost catching Davan in the process.

“I'm freaking out!” Davan cried out. 

Jorren pushed everything he had, that his body visibly shook from the wave of negative resonance. In his closed eyes, the black cloud from him rushing towards it and wrapping around the blue light of his soul finally consumed the blue glow. 

A huge, ground rattling thud made Jorren open his eyes. The beast had fallen on both knees, unable to hold on, before exploding into splinters of black smoke.