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The Sole of the Destroyer

Part 2: Infected Inquisition

For EdgeofObsidian

By Draconicon

Abyss woke with a jerk and a growl. He turned his head to the left, then the right. Whatever those...things...had done to him, they'd left him on the same rooftop that they'd defeated him on, and there was no sign of where they'd disappeared to.

"They will all die," he hissed after a few moments of silence.

The hedgehog pushed himself to his feet, only to grunt at a sudden sharp stab of pain under his feet. The fact that he was barefoot was bad enough; he had been wearing boots up until that point, and good quality ones, at that. If they had stolen those...

Slowly, Abyss turned his leg, looking at the underside of his foot. There, right in the arch of his foot, was a bite mark. Two fangs had penetrated the bottom of his foot, almost looking like the bite marks of a vampire along the side of someone's neck. He glared at the mark, looking a bit harder at it as he felt something a bit...different coming off it.

Corruption. That's what it was. It was faint, but whatever had bitten him had done something else to him. There was a green light to the bottom of his foot, a green light that started at the wound and spread up along the side of his arch, towards his toes and heel, and around to the hard stirrup on the outside of his foot. The lines of green were hardly visible yet, but he could see them trying to creep ever further upwards.

Abyss stomped his foot down, leaving a crack through the top of the building. A quick check on his other foot showed that it had been likewise marked, the green light already spreading an inch away from the bite marks.

"Hmmph. They will all die...slowly."

The thought pleased him as he shook his head, looking around the city.

He could tell that he had burned through most of the power that he'd absorbed from the skyscraper, but that was fine. He still strong, probably more than powerful enough to take on those witches in a one-on-one fight. Possibly not in a three-on-one fight, considering the outcome of the last one...

Abyss snorted. He had been tricked. He had underestimated them. That would not happen again.

But...

Much as he hated to admit it, there was another problem. There had been many other bats that had popped over the city, dropping down to the streets before leaving his sight. That meant that there were potentially far more members of this...infestation...than just the three that had humiliated him. If they were working together...

Well, he might just have a way of ferreting out their information.

Let's see what the little ones have to say...

The black and gray hedgehog dropped from the roof to the streets below. He wasn't sure how much time had passed since he'd been knocked unconscious, but from the looks of things, at least an hour. There were no more people on the streets, none of the nightlife that he had been expecting at this hour of the night. Sure, the neon signs were still blazing, and he could see people here and there exiting the bars, but there were none of the crowds that had come through his and Edge's shared dreams.

Where are they...

Abyss shook his head, grabbing one of the power lines exiting from the base of the building. If nothing else, he could -

The hedgehog paused, staring at the gathering energy between his fingers and the power line. Normally, his power manifested itself as white lightning, pure and destructive and blinding in its intensity. Now...

Now, there was something almost sickly about it. The purity had been destroyed, replaced by something that was...wrong. Very, very wrong. Slightly green.

His eyes drifted back to the moon above. It wasn't the same green, not by some way, but they were closer than he'd like.

The witches had come with the moon, and his power was tainted to its shade. There was no way that the two facts weren't connected in some way.

The desire to kill the witches was shifting into a desire to utterly obliterate them from existence. But first, he had to find them.

Grumbling to himself, Abyss disappeared into the wire, transmuting himself to electricity and rushing through the city, looking for some sign, any sign, of this infestation. He would root it out, and then he would go back to his previous plans. He would not be deterred.

#

The hedgehog was flying through the power lines for nearly twenty minutes before he found one of the lower creatures. A bat dropped by the line he was traveling through, shifting from her bat form to a panda girl. She hit the ground, smiling, not wearing a robe but wearing a cloak, one with a footprint on the back of it. She wore a top that didn't cover her belly, almost like a belly dancer's shirt, and she wore a skirt rather than pants, with no footwear.

All in all, he imagined she was meant to entice others to their doom, and if they had such low standards as to fall for a female like this, he imagined that they deserved it. But she wasn't aware of him, which meant that she was the perfect prey.

He diverted his course, shifting his power through one of the power lines that were connected to a building behind her. The hedgehog popped out soundlessly, save for a little sizzle as the lightning transmuted itself back to flesh. He flexed his fingers, cracking his knuckles as he got back to his feet.

Each step he took reminded him of the bite marks on his soles, and he had to grit his teeth to not make sounds of anger and rage every time his humiliation was recalled to him. They would pay, but first, this little witchling would learn the cost of invading his city.

Abyss prided himself on being perfect at everything that he chose to do. The blemish on his record would be corrected in short order, but for now, he reminded himself of his skills by sneaking up on the panda woman. She was completely unaware of him as he crept through the alley, staring at the street as if she was waiting for someone to take down herself, unaware of the threat lurking behind her.

It was just as he liked it. Allow the prey to believe that they were safe, and then he could strike with impunity.

He was barely a few feet away when he became aware of a horrible reek in the area. A scent of sweat, of pungent feet, something almost like what he had smelled when their 'queen' slammed her foot down on his face. He stifled a grunt, though only barely. The stink was so powerful that it left him dizzy for a split second, taking his attention off of the female in front of him for less than a blink.

But it was enough for her to turn around.

Her eyes went wide and her mouth opened wide. Perhaps it was to scream, perhaps it was to cast a spell, but he wasn't going to let her do any such thing. Abyss lifted his hand, shoving a finger into her mouth with a deep growl and a narrow-eyed glare.

"Make one sound...and you will find out what it feels like to have lightning shoot through your brain."

"..."

"Come."

He curled his finger, hooking it into the soft tissue of the roof of her mouth. She yelped as he dragged her forward, almost falling onto her face, but he didn't care. Nor did he care about the fact that she was grunting in complaint as he dragged her back into the darkness of the alley. This was as undignified for him as it was for her.

"You foul creatures, ruining my plans. Do you really think that there would be no consequences for this? Did you think that the Destroyer would just let you invade his territory without showing you the error of your ways?"

She didn't answer, of course. His finger was still in her mouth, and he doubted that she had any real thoughts to share that were worth listening to. He was going to interrogate her to get what he wanted.

With some effort, he yanked a drainpipe off the wall, using his powers to melt the metal in the right places to allow for reshaping it. He curled it around the witchling, pulling her upside-down for that additional stretch of discomfort, and finally stepped away from her.

The panda-girl finally spoke.

"So, you're the one that the Queen talked about. I can see why she likes you."

"You will tell me everything that I need to know about this Queen and your people. Why are you here?"

"Why do you want to know?" the panda asked, shrugging both her shoulders and, somehow, her feet. "You want to help us out?"

He glared at her, lifting his finger.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

She screamed as he blasted her from sole to head with a bolt of electricity. Not the full power of lightning, of course; he didn't need her dead just yet, but he wanted her to understand that this wasn't the time for jokes.

As far as he was concerned, joke o'clock needed to be ripped off the timepiece.

Abyss let the smoke clear before he spoke up again.

"Who is this Queen?"

"She...she...her name is Paige," the panda-girl said, her words coming from a much more helpful place. "She led us all out of the other world. The portal opened as soon as the green moon rose."

"You came from elsewhere?"

"Yes, yes. A dark place, where there was nothing. We were drawn here again after a thousand years."

The hedgehog nodded slowly. There were many places outside of this world, and few were the people that were able to escape them. He had been lucky enough to do that, and he would never go back.

Never.

However, empathy did not mean sympathy. Understanding did not mean kindness.

"You could have chosen any other city. You knew - you knew - that this one belonged to me. Why did you come here?"

"The...the prophecy..."

"Prophecies are nothing but lies."

"This one isn't!"

"..."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! STOP STOP! PLEASE! STOOOOOOOOOP!"

Feeling no particular urge to give her any mercy for her stupidity, Abyss kept the white lightning streaming from his fingers over the other woman. The bolts streaked from his fingers to her face, to her chest, to the little buds that were the start of breasts and the narrow hips that were more suitable to females than the wide hips meant to tempt men. This girl had grown into a proper woman, he supposed, rather than the overly-luscious ones that tempted Edge.

He kept the bolts streaming from his fingers. He would have felt almost bored if it weren't for the fact that he was getting a measure of revenge for how he had been treated. Her clothes were steaming and burning in places, ripped and left ragged by the bolts of lightning shooting from his fingers, bits and pieces of it ripping away, showing nipples, showing some of her panties...

And yet...

His eyes were drawn further up her legs as her feet became a lightning rod for his power, her soles sucking the streaking cracks of white light to them. She screamed all the louder as he pumped his electrical outrage into her soles, the muscles tensing, the toes curling, the bolts bouncing between one droplet of sweat along the bottom of her foot to another -

Abyss stopped the torture as he realized that he was getting over-focused. He shook his head, deliberately looking away from those yellow soles, feeling...something...something in his head that he didn't like. A fascination that was not him.

"Ah...ah...I...I'm sorry...I didn't mean...ow...owwwwww...."

As the panda mewled and whimpered, Abyss growled, holding one hand over his face.

"Shut up."

"It hurts...it hurts..."

"I said, SHUT UP!"

I do not feel attraction for people. I do not feel attraction for parts. This is not me. This is NOT me.

He opened his eyes again, deliberately making himself look at the soles of the panda witchling. He expected to look at them and be repulsed, as he always was when his other half had looked at them when he was shoved to the back of their shared skull. He expected it, even hoped for it.

Instead...

As he looked at those tensing, twitching yellow soles, looking at the red that mingled with the yellow from the various burns that she had suffered, he felt a twinge down below, a sudden spasm in his crotch that demanded attention. He was not hard, but he was becoming so.

And that never, ever happened.

This curse...this curse is more than just corruption of power. This is a corruption of mind.

Abyss roared at the top of his lungs, slamming his fist down against the building behind him. The power of lightning and thunder combined, the crack of air as thunder rippled and pulsed through it shattering the brick behind him to dust, and lightning surging through the building and blowing up the appliances that it found.

As the store turned into an inferno, the hedgehog panted, staring down at the female before him. She was looking up at him with fear, but also...curiosity.

He would not let that stand.

"Witchling...what is this...Prophecy...that you're talking about? Tell me what stupid thing you're following."

"It's...it's the Prophecy of the Queen and the Destroyer," she said, her voice quiet but...less afraid? Why was she less afraid? Why would she be anything less than terrified after what he'd done? "She must come at the rising of the green moon, searching for her husband."

"Hmmph. Trust it to be a way to subjugate herself."

"No! The Queen is all-powerful. She seeks a husband to rule, a tool that she can use to destroy anyone that opposes her. She...did she already mark you?"

"..."

"She said that his feet would be marked, bitten to remind him with every step that he was walking to her, that he was fulfilling her plan."

If there had been a cap to his rage, it blew off as he heard that. The fact that anyone believed that he could be controlled, that anyone believed that they could manipulate him, own him, was outraging beyond belief.

He was tempted to obliterate the witchling for her words, but he needed more information. Telling himself that she was passing on the words of another, that he needed more and he could always kill her later, he leaned in, kneeling down and grabbing her by the hair, twisting her head up to look at him.

"I belong to nobody. I am Abyss the Destroyer, and I will kill your Queen and anyone that stands between me and her."

"I...but the prophecy -"

"IS A LIE!"

He slammed her head against the brick wall of the building behind her, panted as his rage got the better of him.

"There is no such thing as destiny! There is no fate that controls us or binds us. Prophecy is nothing but a lie to make someone fulfill some old man's wish. And I'll prove it by killing every last one of you!"

He blasted her again, so angry that he sent his lightning right into the top of her spine. The blast spread through her entire body, hitting every part of the nervous system and setting it on electric fire.

The panda could no longer scream, not in any way that could be heard over the electric agony that he was pushing through her. She flailed, spasming, flailing, her arms beating against the metal that bound her, her fingers shaking, clenching and fanning, and her toes -

Abyss's attention was drawn back to them against his will, making him look up rather than down. He could see them dancing, curling, clenching, fanning, unfurling. They were flicking their sweat all over the place, like the woman had some sort of font of foul water just beneath her skin.

And the urge to be closer hit him again.

This time, he felt the power of his electricity wane. He pulled back, letting go as fast as he could.

Was this witchling draining his power somehow? Did she have a spell on her that sapped it from him and gave it to her?

No, that was impossible. He would have felt that, and besides, he was almost as strong as he had been just a moment ago. She would have taken far more if that sort of spell had been upon her.

But why...

He looked at her feet again, and this time he felt it properly. The conflict. The push between rage and arousal. The less angry he felt, the less powerful his lightning, his electricity was.

No...no, that's not how it works. My power is boundless. BOUNDLESS!

And yet, it had changed. He looked at the sparks that were coming from the woman, the little bits that still bounced from her body to the metal. The more conflicted he felt, the less pure white it was, and the more green was twisted through it. Impossible, but present. Impossible, yet all too possible.

He took a step back, shaking his head slowly. Abyss had never felt this sense of...dread. Not fear, but dread, knowing that someone had done something to him that could weaken him to this extent. Not since he had to share a body had he felt like this. Not since he had been so starkly limited by not being in charge all the time had he worried about actually...losing.

No. I am the Destroyer. I am rage. I am power incarnate. This curse, this...limitation...will not stop me, he told himself. I cannot be beaten. I cannot be killed. I cannot be leashed. I will NOT be leashed.

The panda had recovered, and much to his chagrin, she seemed to realize what was going through his head...and she smiled.

"The Queen marked you, alright. Look at you. Or rather...how about you look at my feet?"

She turned her soles to face him, pointing her toes downwards so the long length of her yellow feet could be seen. The little droplets of sweat ran from her heels all the way down to her toes, leaving wet lines between the burn marks. Burn marks that were starting to heel, he realized.

Regeneration. They have regeneration.

It was useful information, but he was giving up a fascination of his own, a cursed thing that he hated. He growled, shaking his head, but there was something almost...hypnotizing about her soles. Something that was forcing him to keep looking.

"Oooh, yes, she's gotten you good. What's the matter, Destroyer? Can't think straight when you got a pair of feet to look at?"

"I am not interested in any such things. I am merely plotting how to punish you for this insubordination."

"Oh, really? Are you gonna zap my feet again? Make my little tootsies dance for you? Make the muscles spasm and pretend that they're wrapped around your cock while they're twitching and shaking?"

The way that she talked confirmed that she'd lost all fear of him. He needed to either kill her or leave, one or the other. He needed to do remind her that she wasn't in charge. He needed...

He needed to do something besides stare at the soles of her feet!

Abyss pulled out his chain, swinging it around slowly. He dragged the cool underside of the links against the bottom of her feet, glaring down into her eyes.

"Do you think making me angry is a good idea?"

"I think you're so horny for my feet that -"

"I do not get horny. I get ANGRY!"

He swung the chain, beating it against the soles of her feet. She gasped, shrieking, but it didn't sound like she was in pain. No, it sounded almost...aroused?

Looking past her feet, he could just make out her panties beneath her electricity-damaged skirt. He could see the wetness in her crotch, could see that she was horny. She was very, very horny.

Disgusting woman. I've tortured her, and she's enjoyed it? A mark against her. A terrible, horrid woman...

He knew better than to keep trying. At this point, it was far better to cut his losses and get the hell out of here. Particularly as he felt the tug of fascination towards her feet again, knowing that if he kept this up, he might do something that would push the corruption further.

Abyss took a deep breath, regretting it almost immediately as the stink of hot soles followed the action, and pulled at his powers. In a burst of green and white, he disappeared, zapping himself away to a different part of the city.

#

The hedgehog slammed his fist against his forehead.

"Careless..."

He had been far too careless, though that seemed to be par for the course when things came from other worlds like this. Abyss looked down at his feet, glaring at the little green lights that he could see through the flesh of the top of his feet. It hadn't spread up to his toes or around his heel yet, but he could tell that it had definitely spread out from the bite marks on his arches. There was no avoiding that.

The hedgehog turned his attention to the heavens. Clouds were slowly rolling in from the distant north, storm clouds that would probably be here a little before dawn. If he could last long enough, there was the possibility of using them, but that would require waiting.

And he hated waiting.

Abyss growled under his breath, running his hands along the edge of his chain the way that another person might have done a scarf or some other precious thing. He was trying to pull the hate back in, but...

Those soles...

The dancing toes of the panda-girl were still strongly embedded in his mind, and the fact that they had made him feel something pissed him off beyond all reason. He wanted to rip through the city, pull out entire buildings by the root and send them flying across the country. He wanted to rip up the streets and wrap them up like a child's snack and then shove them down the throats of his enemies.

And he wanted to feel that foot on his face.

No, no, he didn't. He didn't want anything of the sort. He wanted to torture that woman. Wanted to make her scream again. Wanted to leave her shrieking and flailing and spasming until his lightning made her heart give out, then start it up again so she knew it wasn't going to be that easy for her to escape judgment. His judgment.

His wrath.

His destruction.

"I am Abyss the Destroyer. I feel nothing but the urge to break and control. I will clear this black mark. I will remind everyone of what I am," he growled into the gap in the scarf. He moved his hand from one link in the chain to another, repeating the mantra, and then moved to the next, repeating it again. Over, and over, and over.

Little by little, the power of his hate grew, and the 'arousal' that he'd felt just by being around those feet disappeared. They lingered in his mind, unable to be completely banished, but at least they were no longer causing him to feel...twinges...down there.

The hedgehog slowly pulled himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the discomfort underfoot. He wished he had his boots, wanting nothing more than to hide what had happened to him, isolate it down there so that it couldn't spread, but he could not help but think that the 'Queen', this Paige, would have already found a way to keep him from doing that.

And considering how powerful they were, and what they had done to him with this curse, they'd covered their bases well. They knew how to limit him, had forced a way of weakening his power on him so that they wouldn't face defeat if they fought him again.

They were clever...but then, witches often were.

He clenched his hand into a fist, pulling at the electricity in him. It formed slowly, the jagged edges of lightning slowly extending out of either side of his fist, forward and back, until it created a spare of white with a green line around the edges.

He tossed it up, caught it again. The spear barely held its shape, but it would do. He pumped it full of power, making sure that it was as strong as he could make it, and then, he threw it to the heavens.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Abyss screamed as he loosed the spear to the skies. It flew a hundred, two hundred feet overhead before exploding into a shining skull of pure lightning, shrieking with the power of the storm.

It was a simple message. He was not surrendering. He was not submitting. And he would bring death to whoever he saw. Nobody could miss that. As long as they could see, they would not miss that.

And now...

The curse on his feet lingered. He would need to do something about it, or he would be useless in any fight that he tried to start. If he didn't start a fight at an advantage, if he wasn't prepared, all it would take was one well-placed kick, and one of the Queen's helpers - or the Queen herself - would be able to overpower him. His strength would fade, replaced by this...infernal arousal...and he would lose.

If the chain had been insufficient to scare the witchling, then a fight against one of the more powerful ones would be...more humiliating than he could bear.

Hate...I am hate...

He pulled at the rage in his core, forcing it to the front of his mind. He let it burn through his mind like a raging fire after a lightning storm, and it soothed him. It was as close to comfort as he could bring himself to feel.

Slowly, Abyss calmed himself down, and he managed to jump down to the street again.

If there was information about the curse, he imagined that it would be found in the...Cathedral. He avoided that place as a matter of principle, considering its holy nature. It was a place where he ached, even when it was Edge visiting it. Being out front, being in charge, would likely make that into a painful torture.

But he would take torture over humiliation. Torture could almost become a badge of honor. Humiliation lingered. Forever.

The only thing keeping him from taking the fight to them, right that moment, was a lack of information. His rage was powerful, demanding, but it wasn't stupid. It would not drive him towards a second defeat.

I will learn about them...and I will break them. They will regret thinking that I could become their tool.

Even though there was a tiny part -

That...is Edge...not me...Abyss would never, ever feel a need for...that.

He kept reminding himself of that, using his chain almost like a worry stone as he walked down the streets, making his way through the narrow alleys towards the church. The long walk would be a torture of its own on his feet and his patience, but he had not come this far to have it all taken from him now.

And besides...after using up that much power in interrogation, he needed time to recover, anyway. And it would give him time to think.

A group of witches - and who knew what else - that believed that they were following a prophecy. That meant that he was dealing with a cult, at best, and possibly a bunch of zealots at worse. They followed a Queen from another world, which meant that he was dealing with a power source potentially on the same level as his.

Of course, considering they were cheating with magic, they were obviously weaker than him and needed an advantage to even be considered a threat. He smirked. Once he figured out the secret to their magic, they would be less than harmless. They would be swept aside in the storm of his wrath.

All he needed was knowledge, and though many didn't know it, the Cathedral had more than just the records of faith. There were other things, dark secrets buried beneath the catacombs of the old building. He had felt them long ago, but had never bothered to seek them out. His power had been sufficient...

And it still was, he hastened to remind himself. What was lacking was his understanding. And that...that was something that he could fix.

Abyss was the Destroyer. He could never - and would never - change that. However, even the Destroyer could become more capable.

And when he was done, he would wipe this Queen, her Sirens, and the entire blasted cult from the face of the earth. Whether they wanted him, this city, or something else entirely didn't matter. They had come to his neighborhood, they'd humiliated him, and now, they were going to pay the price.

Abyss grinned at the thought of making them pay. It was going to be...delicious.

The End