Church of the Flowing Eclipse / Bullet Train (VI)

Bellona and the others quickly stood up and summoned a weapon, be it manifested from their heart or an Ability. Mona appeared beside Bellona as Pyralis jumped over the large, black chain link fence around the boxing ring.

The sound of someone's voice infiltrated the minds of the children.

[Hello all, my name is Brother Bradley, and I come here with an offering!]

A robed figure descended into the boxing ring, several floodlights flashing their light onto him. Behind the sunlight, however, the floodlights didn't seem to illuminate him all that much.

[You can either come with the Church of Pale Eclipses, or you can continue on your journey! Be it with me blocking your way.]

Teacher Brutus jumped into the boxing ring and awaited the robed figure to touch the ground. Teacher Brutus's arms were crossed, and he wore an annoyed expression as if he knew exactly what was going on.

[Of course, "we" have already dealt with a majority of the sentries on top of the train. But you do not need to worry! You are to join the rest in eternal bliss and fulfillment!]

Teacher Brutus's expression slowly melted from his annoyance to one of boredom. He waited and then waited a little longer for the robed figure to touch the ground.

As soon as the robed figure did touch the ground of the boxing ring, Teacher Brutus then spoke aloud to the robed figure, as well as to his students.

"It has been three months in a row you do this, you're not making it out this time. Kids, be careful."

The robed figure lifted his hood and placed it behind him, revealing an unnaturally pale and handsome face with long, silky white hair flowing behind him like a waterfall of coconut juice. 

Brother Bradley then replied with a soothing voice.

"That is where you are wrong, Caesar, by the grace of my pale lady, we shall never die! Only more and more join our ranks by the day! We are soon to outpace even the Hive itself!"

Brother Bradley then floated several meters above the ground, all the while raising his arms. He lifted his right arm around to his left and with a sharp nail, drew blood down the inside of his forearm.

Blood flowed and solidified after dropping off of his arm, Brother Bradley then grabbed the solidified blood and it shifted into the shape of a scythe.

Bellona's eyes were wide and her breathing was almost uncontrollably shaky. She heard Mona sigh before saying something to herself.

"Damned fool, you should have expected this."

Bellona turned to face Mona, and before she could ask what Mona meant by her words, a loud explosion was heard all across the arena.

Michael spoke up in shock.

"Oh, my Gods, Teacher Brutus slammed him into the ground!"

Bellona twisted her head once more to observe the unfolding disaster, but a cloud of dust obscured the two.

The sound of repeated pounding against something hard echoed across the room still filled with the lingering cheering of the disembodied voices. Bellona could have sworn that she saw somebody under a ray of sunlight in one of the seats.

As quickly as the shimmering form appeared in her peripheral vision, it vanished. Bellona didn't pay that much mind, however, as students started falling into the forced-open Mind Space manifestation.

'Crap.'

Bellona readied her sword in case the other students were enemies, but they seemed to be jumping down, making impact, and preparing their weapons.

Mona appeared beside one of the fallen students and started a conversation.

Pyralis flashed teal, not dissimilar to Michael, and appeared several meters in the air. Immediately after, he started dashing forward in the air one meter at a time in rapid succession. After reaching the ring, he let himself plummet to the ground, more dust and debris being kicked up by the rhythmic pounding against the floor.

Torm threw Jude.

'Wait, what?'

Jude flew into the ring, and Torm jumped after him, his body filled with that glowing red aura.

It was just Michael and Bellona left to enter the wide boxing ring.

The two looked at each other, then ran. Upon getting to the 

Bellona walked up to Mona, who had just finished speaking to a slightly injured student, and asked:

"What's going on?"

Mona replied between the ground shaking.

"The Bullet Train is under attack by a rival church of New York City. The Church of the Flowing Eclipse, it seems by the branch that follows the Pale Moon."

Bellona understood what Mona meant, for the first time ever.

There are twelve, well, thirteen new churches since the Domain Crisis began, twelve belonging to the six new suns and moons, and one to the flowing eclipse.

The celestial bodies have powers, some that would be deemed supernatural, and the Pale Moon essentially turns people into vampires. But the vampires are brutishly strong, immortal, eternally young, feed on blood, and can walk under sunlight.

New York's known church was that of the golden sun and moon, as it granted blessings regarding physical and mental fortitude during day and night respectively. Those two celestial bodies were also considerably hotter and brighter, as well as larger than the original sun and moons were.

However, the churches of the golden bodies were rivals with those of the pale and crimson bodies. It was rough for New York, but they made it work.

Bellona personally worshipped the Azure Moon, but that was a conversation for another time. It seemed that a fanatic of the Pale Moon was currently getting the daylights beaten down, and Bellona had a foreboding feeling in her bones.

Just as chills went down her spine, Jude spoke while looking up.

"There's the other students, and... a lot of blood fiends."

Oh yeah, another thing about following the Pale Moon, once you get indoctrinated, if you don't follow the Brood Mother with your whole heart, you turn into a monster.

'What a bastard Goddess.'

Bellona looked upwards, and just behind the rest of the falling students, several fiends covered in dripping red blood appeared. They were constantly screaming as if the humanity left in them was in horrible agony.

Not only were the fiends screaming, but so were a large amount of the falling students. 

Following the first wave of the blood fiends were more fiends, and then after them was another wave of more blood fiends fell behind them.

They landed close behind the injured students and immediately started wreaking havoc, one big into another student's arm, immobilizing the poor boy and instilling fear into the rest of the unprepared group.

Bellona quickly realized that their group was missing two students; Hilia and Strella. After hearing the clamor of several shrieking students, Bellona activated Ruination and ran over.

She turned her head to the side to announce to the rest of the group: 

"If you can still fight, do so. I'm going to go look for Hilia and Strella. Help others and kill as many as you can."

'Hilia and Strella are likely to be in the boxing ring somewhere, that, or the worst came to affect them. Being indoctrinated.'

Bellona avoided a grab from a blood fiend and quickly dispatched of it, her emotions slightly dulled, despite her extremely high heartbeat.

'I probably can't keep Ruination activated for long, I should affect as many blood fiends as I can before deactivating it.'

Bellona reached the source of the shrieking, finding a boy covered in blood bashing the skull of a blood fiend in.

"I think it's dead, you can calm down."

Bellona reached an arm to the boy, who took it, slipped because his hand was still soaked in blood, and then stood up. His eyes betrayed him and portrayed the extreme terror that he was going through. 

"Get in a group and start fighting for yourselves, be quick."

The boy nodded and ran into the thinner part of the smoke cloud.

Bellona dispatched one after another, but the rain of blood-soaked humanoid monsters never ended. The air was starting to get more and more covered by dust as the pounding continued.

'I hope that's Teacher Brutus, because if he's gone, then we're all dead.'

Despite their horrific scenario, Bellona felt quite calm, too calm for a normal sixteen-year-old. But Bellona had been through hell before, and in comparison to the time spent in a place arguably worse than hell, a few bogus monsters didn't seem too bad.

Of course, there was still danger, but Bellona was strong now, probably strong enough to duel and bring a second-year student at the Terrarium to a stalemate. So it wasn't a long shot to say that Bellona was quite strong, definitely strong enough to deal with grunts.

As she continued around the kicked-up dirt and dust, Bellona helped more and more students group up and deal with the blood fiends. At a certain point, Bellona ran around the boxing ring twice but didn't find her targets, so she jumped up and out of the boxing ring, clearing the fence with slight difficulty.

The situation was much, much worse out in the bleachers.

Bellona quickly targeted a group of blood fiends relentlessly chasing a poor student and weakened them all before reactivating Ruination. The flames grew darker, as if she were looking at pure darkness, and the blood fiends started evaporating.

The worst part of her second activation was that they didn't notice. Bellona didn't know exactly what was happening, but instead of burning like a normal flame, the black flames of Ruination erased the very memory of anything it burned.

To the blood fiends, it was as if they had never had that skin, or that left arm, or their torso. Bellona shuddered at the sight of the fiends falling cluelessly onto the ground, burning into nothingness before her eyes.

The worst part was the fact that there wasn't even ash or a smell that lingered. No, they just vanished, as if they never existed.

'I'm not going to use this flame anymore.'

The student thanked Bellona and she continued on her way, weakening any fiend that she came across. But as time slowly passed, Bellona started to feel the effects of overexertion on the mental level. 

'I can't keep this up much longer.'

It was likely the second activation that made Bellona run through her stamina reserves faster, but now was the time to activate Creation.

Bellona made a mental order to herself to activate Creation just long enough to summon weapons, then immediately deactivate it and return to normal. So she did, upon deactivating Ruination, she activated Creation and thus began her summoning spree. 

Several blades fell to the ground before sweat grew on her brow, several more, and Bellona was looking pale, after the third batch, she buckled and almost fell to the ground.

'That should be enough for everyone.'

Bellona deactivated Creation before the aloofness took over and made her make a potentially life-ending mistake. But now she was about to make a slightly less life-ending mistake, yelling.

Bellona cupped her hands after making sure all the blood fiends around her were eradicated, she then took a deep breath and yelled.

"Everyone! There are swords near me! If you do not have a weapon! Come here!"

Several blood fiends looked her way through the dancing colorful lines of the boxing ring, and the growing amount of sunshine. More and more of the people in the bleachers appeared in Bellona's peripheral vision, but as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared.

Bellona suddenly felt a deep sense of dread deep within her bones, and her instincts rarely lied. After a chill ran its course through Bellona, a huge wail stunned Bellona, and she stumbled, covering her ears and feeling dazed.

The thumping on the ground stopped, and another shriek filled the air, this time, at the very middle of the manifestation of Teacher Brutus's Mind Space.

A floating corpse appeared, it was beaten several times in, and the head was a simple lump of flesh oozing blood from every "orifice," as if its entire body wasn't one. Loud, exhausted breathing emanated from the creature. The only identifiable feature of the creature, outside of its scarlet robe was long, flowing white hair.

'What did Teacher Brutus do to him?'

Bellona's eyes were wide with fear.

Brother Bradley continued to float upwards and outside of the shattering Mindspace, upon reaching reality, something roared. A dragon flew overhead just as Brother Bradley exploded into a pile of gore and blood. 

But one thing was still hovering past the blood.

That thing? It was Bradley, fresh, untouched, and somehow in another robe.

Just as Bellona was about to hatch a plan to do anything of meaning, Teacher Brutus's voice appeared over the speakers.

"Students of the Terrarium, reinforcements are on their way, until then, there are weapons spread around the manifested Mind space."

The blood fiends turned to look up and into the sky. The speaker continued.

"There is an adult dragon and an enemy Champion."

The raving lights illuminated the remaining darkness of the arena as shards fell like glass.

"When this Mind space collapses, we will all be on top of the Bullet Train, prepare to enter the armored car. Do not lose hope, fight like your life depends on it, because it does."

As the speaker died down, so did the lights, and then sunlight blinded Bellona as the sound of glass breaking filled her ears once more.