The Immortals of Notoriouslandia
Chapter Six: The Betrayal of Joab
For weeks, the Unbound Team had watched the Door of Never.
The seal was cracked, but not broken.
And yet… something had changed.
The air trembled in whispers.
Dreams bled into waking thoughts.
Animals screamed without sound.
Then, one night, the sky above Notoriouslandia tore open like paper soaked in oil, and a voice unlike any other poured through the void:
"I give you a name born of screams…Arise…Bulchaariitpoundersonderic."
And from the rent heavens, the monster fell
It landed in the center of New Voxspire, flattening ten city blocks in an instant.
The creature had no consistent form—its body folded in on itself like a crumpled concert hall, echoing with screams that weren't coming from any mouths. Its surface throbbed with jagged ridges that emitted vibrational shockwaves, enough to shatter bone. Every footstep caused buildings to pulse like tuning forks. Windows exploded from its aura alone.
It didn't roar.
It played.
Every motion a sick symphony of weaponized sound.
Civilians collapsed as resonance sickness overtook them—blood pouring from their ears, their brains overloading from inaudible frequencies.
The monster began broadcasting fear into the minds of every living being.
Terror was not just felt.
It was heard.
The Battle Begins
Descentedrain, Sapphire, and Kukranchunlikryting arrived from the shattered sky, each descending like comets of raw power.
Descentedrain landed first, eyes glowing black and violet, gravity spiraling around him in reverse funnels.
"That's not just a beast," he muttered. "It's a message."
Sapphire hovered above, surrounded by an ever-shifting aura of multiversal crystals—fragments of extinct dimensions.
"Let's silence it."
Kukranchunlikryting raised both arms, releasing a cloud of phosphorescent green vapor. With a hiss, he summoned two toxin-infused sky-serpents, which flew straight at Bulchaariitpoundersonderic.
The battle erupted.
Sapphire dove first, crystals arcing around her like arrows. Each shard struck the beast and detonated in harmonized bursts, disrupting its frequencies.
Descentedrain hurled compressed spheres of telekinetic force, folding sound waves back onto themselves, creating vacuums that temporarily neutralized the creature's attacks.
Kukranchunlikryting infected a nearby flock of birds, transforming them into screech-crows—sonic predators that gnawed at Bulchaariitpoundersonderic's core, shrieking back its own noises.
The monster faltered.
For a moment, victory felt close.
Until the earth split open beneath their feet.
Joab came out...
The three heroes rejoiced and asked "Where were you..?"
Joab lifted his pen and muttered a single word:
"Erase."
The sky pulsed. The ground flickered.
The Unbound HQ disappeared from existence—deleted like a character from a page. Not destroyed—unwritten. Their sanctuary, their technology, their archives, their future… gone.
Sapphire screamed.
"You maniac!"
Kukranchunlikryting turned his toxins feral.
"I will make you drink your betrayal."
But Joab only laughed, drawing a sonic augmentation cannon and fusing it to Bulchaariitpoundersonderic's back.
The thre were concerned and asked "Why are you doing this?"
Joab told them this
A voice like ten thousand whispers dragging across a chalkboard, but also your favorite song slowed to a crawl.
Joab(turning in the void):
"You again. I told you—this isn't part of the deal."
Septiceye(voice echoing from everywhere and nowhere):
"You drew my mark on your soul, child. I own your signature now.""I am the parchment beneath your talent… the ink in your veins.""And you're ready, aren't you?"
Joab(bitter):
"They don't respect me. Descentedrain treats me like a sketchpad.Sapphire looks at me like I'm a joke with a pencil.I created everything for them… and still, I'm just… 'the guy who draws.'"
Septiceye(softly, seductively):
"You're not a sidekick. You are Genesis.You don't draw weapons—you design realities.""You could rewrite this world like a rough draft and toss it into the fire."
Joab(fist clenched):
"So what? You want me to betray them? Kill them?""That wasn't the arrangement."
Septiceye(chuckling):
"I never said kill.Just erase their footing.Mute the noise.When the Door breaks, I want silence. No interruptions. No heroes."
A pause. Joab floats in stillness, face trembling. The guilt gnaws—but the hunger is louder.
Septiceye(leaning in—his shape a shifting silhouette of wings, jaws, limbs, and teeth):
"Do it, Joab… and when I rise, I will hand you creation itself.""You will never sketch again. You will declare.""And the universe will obey."
Joab(a whisper):
"…what happens to them?"
Septiceye(smiling with voices):
"They will become what all stories become, Joab."
"Forgotten."
Joab, staring into blackness, closes his eyes. When he opens them, they burn with ink and betrayal.
Joab(quietly):
"Then hand me the ink…"
"I'll redraw the world for you."
With its new weapon, the sound-beast roared—a detonation of harmonics that folded streets, tore towers in half, and reduced two entire neighborhoods into rubble. Citizens bled from the ears, falling unconscious from the sheer vibrational overload.
Descentedrain surged into the air, catching Kukranchunlikryting in a gravity field before he was flattened.
Sapphire darted around the monster, hurling hyper-compressed crystal discs that vibrated at counter-frequencies.
Kukranchunlikryting, now glowing with merged crystal-blood toxin, launched a god-sized neuroburst into the monster's flank.
Bulchaariitpoundersonderic screeched, body cracking.
Descentedrain ripped the amplifier off with a psychic vortex and imploded it in Joab's face, who crashed into the ground in a crater of burning ink and betrayal.
Retreat
Bulchaariitpoundersonderic staggered, folding into itself as its sonic systems collapsed.
Joab's hand twitched, summoning a failsafe portal, its glyphs burning with Septiceye's mark.
He and the beast escaped through it—howling, broken, but alive.
Aftermath
The city was a field of ash and broken sound.
Kukranchunlikryting stood over the crater, fuming.
"Let me find him next time."
Sapphire's armor flickered, her lip bloody.
"He erased our home."
Descentedrain looked toward the Door of Never, sensing another chain fracture.
"And he'll try to erase more…"
"But we're not just heroes anymore."
"We're all that's left between him…"
"...and everything else."