All around him, Jonathan could see nothing but darkness. Complete, pitch darkness, the antithesis of his elemental essence. It reminded him of... Eclipsis. His psychotic inner demon. And his head was hurting, badly.
Hmm...? Was someone speaking just now? Jonathan thought he had heard a faint voice. "...dies, the rest of you can move on. Make sure he can see. Good luck!"
What? What was that? Jonathan mused. Who were the "rest of us"?
No, this is no good if I couldn't see anything. Gathering the powers of Light to his right palm, Jonathan sent a piercing shaft of blinding white light into the dark abyss before him. And...
Jonathan involuntarily cringed, taking a few steps back. In the same instant, that thing in front of him let out a blood-curdling, ear-piercing scream. A dozen black tentacles, scaly and oozing with dark slime, slithered out of the illuminated shadows toward Jonathan. He felt a shiver run down his spine, but Jonathan had faced far more terrible beasts in his life than this monstrosity before him. He quickly drew his sword, the Excalibur, and let his will and energy flow into the silvery-white blade. The sword glowed brightly, a beacon of light in the pitch darkness. Jonathan swung his sword, sending a crescent-shaped wave of white Light into the slimy tentacles. The beast shrieked in agony as its limbs were sliced apart.
Jonathan could see the thing's face now. It was eerily human-like, but grotesquely deformed and covered by patches of dark scales; its skin was black. A writhing mass of black tentacles sprouted from its scalp, where its hairs were supposed to be. It had two pairs of eyes stacked on top of each other, glowing with a crazed, blood-red glint; its jaws were abnormally wide, with seemingly more razor-sharp fangs than the amount that can fit into that mouth. Where the monster's tongue was supposed to be, there was another tentacle, thicker than the others; it ended in the shape of a cobra's head, except it had no eyes and too many teeth. The monster had no body, only a head with thousands of tentacle-hairs; it was about five times larger than Jonathan himself.
In the name of Sol Invictus, what is that thing?! Jonathan thought.
Suddenly, something seemed to slam into the monster's writhing mass of tentacles. It resembled a pudgy blue sphere, about the size of Jonathan's own head, made of a strange, jelly-like substance; a single, metallic-looking spike protruded from the sphere. Jonathan watched in horrified fascination as the black tentacles twined around the sphere's bulbous body. With a sickening sound, the monster plunged the tip of one of its tentacles into the sphere. It quickly shriveled, until it was nothing but a spike attached to an empty blue husk.
Then, the monster turned its attention to Jonathan. He gathered his powers, and materialized several longswords in the air, made of condensed Light. Jonathan Solaris, reincarnation of Sol Invictus, prepared for battle.
