Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse
Chapter 3: Critical

Chapter 3: Critical

{ Critical chronicle connection error! }

{ Critical awakening error! }

Dion had already been on the way to some kind of adrenaline-driven sobriety from the performance that he had just put in.

Coupling that urgency with this only shot him forth into that seriousness a lot quicker.

His head whipped around the toilet illuminated with white light. It had been a while since the last person had walked into this bathroom after him and her. It was the furthest one from all the partying after all.

"Is there anyone there?" He asked regardless, finding it hard to believe that a voice could just appear in his head all of a sudden without there being some kind of gimmick at play. His attention had been particularly towards the closed toilet stalls. "Shijo?"

His brows furrowed, and his expression only became more serious as he heard the voice in his head insist.

{ Recalibration necessary! }

{ Retrying immediately! }

{ Critical chronicle connection error persists! }

The insistence made him freeze, and then, in the distance, he heard how the music gradually began to die down in the club.

’Seriously, what the fuck is going on? Was there something in my drinks? What drug would even make someone see and hear these things?’

At that thought, he didn’t bother continuing to try to clean himself up.

Dion turned on his heel, and he headed straight out, intent on finding Shijo immediately.

Whatever was going on, whether it was only with him from being spiked, or something was going on in the building itself.

It made his gut stir, and he did not want to be here any longer.

Parties be damned!

The door blasted open as he ran, the errors continuing throughout his ears as he found himself in a hallway.

Unfortunately, Dion didn’t make it far when suddenly, he skidded to a stop.

His eyes pried wide as he heard the scrape of screams break through the club, the shatter of bottles, and the madness of rumbling footsteps.

And thereupon, the earth quaked.

{ Critical error persists! }

{ Critical error identification process will commence! }

At that moment, Dion was thrown to the ground in pain as the floor beneath him trembled.

The world spun, his vision blinded with flashes of the pale blue panel’s light, and his hands snapped to his head, clutching through his hair.

"Aaarrgh!!"

He surrendered a broken roar as he curled himself into the foetal position, where even his gut ached terribly, as if he had been punched in it hundreds of times within that singular moment.

It forced all the air out of his lungs, forcing him to cough it out harshly.

Dion choked on spit and that same air as veins bulged across his face.

Something terrible felt as if it were crawling through his body, festering and poisoning him.

His heart throbbed in pleas; he heard the wails from everyone else through the fog of his own.

And thereupon, he heard the most damning thing: The voice in his head speaking in coherent, booming sentences.

{ Laudations, Gaia! Your world of old ends, and the dawn, the great Awakening of the new world begins! Rise, you barren souls! Stir the warring your blood remembers! Satiate the lost hunger of your souls!

Gaia’s has awakened, and it shall no longer cradle the weak! Carve your names into the Akashic Records, or be slain before the foot of those creatures, those beings and entities that hunger for existence, who dare to heights greater than you!

The age of beings without wonder has ended. Ascend, or fall to those worthy of remembrance.

To see your records, call for your Chronicle. }

His eyes, furrowed shut tighter, his will begging to pry them wide despite that as he tried to listen beyond his pain.

’Ascension? Remembrance?’

He did not understand anything of what was going on, hardly able to process much intricate thought.

Then, he felt the tremors through the earth finally reducing.

And none of the intricacies mattered anymore.

The one thing that he understood was that the voice had condemned them to something, and whatever this was, they had to, apparently, fight to survive it.

Thereupon, Dion heard the roars of monsters, things that should have only existed to threaten and screech in movies; he heard their rumbling, monstrous roars tear right through the building.

And despite his agonies, he growled, "Get up..."

"Get up."

’GET UP!’

Dion had clawed himself over to spread his body.

His figure trembled to allow his arms to help him rise, his mouth slobbered slimy spit, veins bulged up his neck so full they looked as if they would pop, and desperation filled his dark eyes.

’I have to find Shijo! I have the keys! We’ve got to get out of here, now!’

Dion’s bones creaked as he rose.

Then, strangely, all of the pressure that had made him struggle to stand dissipated, and he felt a euphoric, invigorating rush fill his body.

He spun on his heel, refusing to let himself head in the direction where most of the people were.

There was no time to wonder what the cause of that had been.

He stumbled into his run, heaving for breath. It felt as if he had just run a marathon and was forcing himself to go beyond limits that should have had him falling a long time ago, his legs leaden and his brain foggy, even despite the lingering rush within him.

He should have never drunk. It was only making this worse!

Dion went out towards the back. He didn’t know where their back door was, but he had better damned find it!

In his escape attempts, with the growing commotion behind him, Dion watched as he approached one of the fire hydrants.

He knew what he had heard, and with everything that was going on, as well as with the constant error messages flaring in his head, he understood that nothing was as it should have been.

He had to have something to protect himself.

’I really wish I had a damn gun right about now!’

Dion pulled the fire extinguisher off of the wall with a forced satisfaction.

There was nothing more reassuring that he could get for himself than it, and it would have to do.

There, he heard, and felt through his feet, a loud shatter of bricks, as if a wall had been broken through, and the screams and incoherent shouts of people who should have been having a good time drowned out anything that had made a sound beneath it.

His eyes were trained forwards, where he finally saw a partly opened door, and he felt a cold breeze flow in from it.

’The back door!’

Dion’s brows finally eased that little bit, his furrow lifting faintly, and his pace increased.

He smashed through the door.

Then he suddenly dragged to a stop.

The tearing of flesh and the crunch of bone, as well as inhumane, monstrous groans, had become all that he could hear.

Blood slurped, and agonised wheezes came next, and his eyes gradually widened, looking downwards.

A figure lay beneath another.

The one mounted to the top, its head leaned down, gorging itself, was a zombie.

He didn’t have any other description for its black-green veined and deathly pale fleshed figure.

And Dion was possessed by a malicious fury.

"Get off him, bitch!!"

Dion stomped forward. The extinguisher shimmered in the moonlight as he raised it high.

Then, he crashed it down hard, and the shattering of skull split through the back alley.

Before the thing could fall, Dion kicked hard against its torso.

The body was flung and tumbled metres away, and Dion stood hovering over his best friend, lying over a pool of his blood.

Blood coughed through Shijo’s throat, and a wide grin spread, his mouth bloodied, his teeth barely visible beneath it.

And still, he laughed through the blood clogging his throat.

"You’re... looking good, Dionysus. The lipstick... it... suits you."