Those existing outside of the Nibiru Empire's complicated diplomacy lacked a certain understanding of how convoluted things had become as the centuries carried on. The legends of old Horizon celebrated simplicity above all else, there was good, there was evil, and there was heartbreak. There was no collective of gaudy noblemen arguing over parchment and ego's, no underhanded political maneuvers to supress those living at the bottom of the world's view while the others sipped decadent wine and parleyed evermore. Everyone had mutual respect for one another, a simpler time, but one Adell understood would have to end eventually. When the Nibiru Alliance began to encompass not only the four nations of Horizon, but the nations of several dozen others strewn across the six planets in the solar system, the world around them had grown almost impossibly large.
Norivdia was no different. Forged on the back of the pale goddess who rode into the darkness single-handedly pushing back an army, it's capital, Wyse, was home of the greatest military academy in the world. Of their many territories that they occupied through the monopoly of bureaucratic gestures they thwarted: the mountains of Galbarea. The largest resource of several minerals that once existed underneath in the world's geomantrical creation, it was the ideal location for a hidden laboratory removed from both the national budget and the overseeing Nibiru Alliance's skeptical eye.
Yet there was one who remained unabated by Norivdia's "democracy" and "freedom" to act in the best interests of it's people. The secret laboratory, hidden some ways away from the capital of Wyse, was lodged into the depths of the mountain without a perceptible entrance. Perhaps the only way to gain access conventionally was to go through the capitol itself, but for somenone who was on the opposite side of the spectrum of humanity despite his appearances that would matter little to Adell.
Thus, over the course of many hours, Adell scoured the mountains just west of Wyse, stopping several dozen steps at a time to touch the ground and read what was beneath him from the earth itself. As a world that Adell had personally helped create, he had a personal attachment to it to some degree. That wasn't to say he didn't have preternatural sensory abilities that far ranged beyond that of any human being (a total of 126 altogether), but knowing much about the planet's origin's and being connecting to it almost spiritually helped.
Hours later, he'd found an entrance to something tucked away from Loncordis and any other civilization.
"...what the hell..." Adell muttered under his breath in confusion. The scope of just how developed the world underneath was...what all had Norivdia been doing?
"Someone is splenetic..." a voice echoed behind him.
ibb.co/i512FmThere was a certain aura that encapsulated this maverick who wore a helmet, a single sword sheathed at his side, and from the protrusion Adell could feel on his back, a gun that was far from ordinary as well. There had been legends of Four Horsemen emulating old, beyond ancient tales of another world that existed millions of years before there own, when the chalice of the world shattered and the people of the world above migrated to one of many planets acrossthe omniverse: the first tale of "Earth" and "humanity". To see one appear before Adell, no, his eyes didn't avert from the ground beneath him where he'd found the entrance to heart of the conundrum that was causing issues across Horizon.
"The Dark Rider..." Adell spoke almost mockilingly, raising his bejeweled right hand to scratch his nose but for a second. Then a smirk appeared, "you either gotta bigger pair of balls, bigger dick altogether, or you're just plain unlucky..."
"I'd say quite the opposite..." the voice began to shift. A once older, darker, evil demonic voice slowly but surely began to become young once again. "You see, as the sun sets, and you prepare to venture into the unknown, you're charting your own demise without even realizing what you will have to sacrifice to save whatever left is close to you."
Adell tilted his head for a moment and turned his neck to glance at the Black Rider from the corner of his right eye, the intensity mounting between the two threatening to shatter everything that dared witness the propensity. "Is that a threat?"
"Not at all..." the voice was now that of a woman, and the footsteps of the Black Rider afterwhich brought the mysterious stranger to the edge of the cliff not far away from where Adell stood. "But I'm also someone you would do well to respect and listen to. You've survived much, but you've lost more. If you do this, you won't have anything left."
Adell paused to the words of the stranger as the shimmering bright sun began to set in the horizon, not a single cloud permeating their view.
Then he burst into hysterical laughter.
"You sound just like Maleficius! Enigma! Everything I've ever faced, Rider. If a fight has to happen, be quick about whatever it is you wish to attempt. I don't have time to bother with scum like you, my world is dying." Adell sneered, a light tap of his left foot creating a rumbling in the world beneath that, over the course of the few last moments of intensity behind his words, became an isolated earthquake beneath them.
"Very well...if you will not heed my warning, watch for my brethren who will come for you, and for the trials ahead. I suppose I will see why they call you The King of the Lost Dragons."
"What?!" Adell gasped, turning only to see that the Black Rider was gone. The Last Hero...only few understood that name and it's importance. Before Adell could trace any of the mysterious energy that remained from it's twisted aura, the ground beneath him collapse into complete obscurity, and Adell with it, but not without smiling halfway down. Just like old times, Adell had a way of doing things that was unconventional and completely out of the question usually...if he asked permission. It was simply the way he did things. Some called him belligerent and dangerous, others ambitious and charismatic, but one thing everyone agreed upon was his knack for finding danger. Adell would attest it to his royal bloodline, one that had been extinct since the beginning of time on both ends, but the truth was he was merely a voracious animal who barked in the face of danger and sought to bring any quandry beneath his heel. The world's problems seemed to be his problem always, everywhere he went, and sometimes it didn't always end well.
Would the same become of Horizon II?
Rather than just letting a bunch of boulders and rocks crush him underneath, or even much less put a mere wrinkle in his environmentally-friendly mastercrafted stark black suit (white wasn't the best for an outdoor adventure), he twisted, turned, and found that as he focused, the world became much slower around him, almost to a creeping halt that would allow him to leap from the entrance he had created above into the pit beneath.
While the facility in question spanned several hundred miles, it was this place that was the center of the eldritch shortages and the sudden expansion of energy that interrupted energy wavelengths and even matter across the globe. Of course, it had only been happening for a momnth, but that was long enough for anyone to deduce that there was a serious issue not rooted in the framework of the planet itself.
"...w-what is this..." Adell murmured.
i.pinimg.com/564x/19/39/12/19391231a9da42935a09eced7d7eec7e.jpgDeath.
Everywhere. Not just a dozen, but several dozen soldiers lay all across the expansive chambers, while just in it's epicenter, where only part of the ceiling had collapsed, was an ancient giant armored in technological renovations that seemed even unknown to Adell, but he made ascertain one thing: it wasn't the source, it was part of the equation. It didn't take Adell long at all to see they had been experimenting with transmutation, and soul attachment, yet even the giant, assuredly dead, couldn't handle whatever it was happening there.
"Hmph..." bowed, and slipped his left index and middle finger across the floor, a green liquid tainging their fringes.
"...this would burn through anything else but my hand. Acidic, several chemicals mixed in, overflowing with energy that evades me...no survivors? Maybe in the rest of the facili-"
Then he felt a soul. It was no ordinary soul, in-fact, the moment he felt it he felt something that had eluded him for centuries.
Was it anticipation or fear?
He rose to his feet and looked to the curved wall of the chamber to his right, where one of the soldiers lay. While the rest were ripped into pieces, torn apart, entrails mixed with other unknown substances laying on the floor, obviously killed without any remorse, or even suddenly - one remained almost unhinged by any of it: and what was more, the spirit of that individual was powerful enough to shake even the physical world for a moment. Just what in the hell was going on here? Why did a soldier that looked as ordinary as the others possess power that far superceded what any human being could ever hold. There was no augmentation that Adell could think of, legal or not, that could give this much power to someone of his race.
"What the hell have these fucking idiots done!" Adell shouted, taking a step forward to survey whether or not the soldier was yet to live.
