They returned to the great hall and freed the captives hanging on the walls. Some of them had been dead for a long time. The freed victims could barely stand and immediately began sitting down on the floor by the walls. Among those who had been freed was a young blonde woman. She seemed to have lost almost none of her strength and even helped the All-Seeing lie down on the bed of a special machine.
"This is exactly what I need," the companion said. "A Tissue Regenerator, Model 5. With it, I will recover within a few days. After that, the restoration of my energy circuit will begin."
"I thought they had only torture devices here," the Cursed said.
The space in the hall opened up, forming a portal, and a hooded figure wearing a cloak bearing the emblem of the maw devouring the moon stepped out of it. The figure stopped when it saw what was happening and saw the Cursed and the All-Seeing by one of the devices. It was holding a black box.
The Cursed reached the cultist before he could react. In an instant, a long dagger was at his throat, slitting it open. The cultist fell dead, spilling blood onto the floor.
"He arrived at a very convenient time," the All-Seeing said. "This portal leads to the palace."
The Cursed wrapped himself more tightly in the cloak, pulled up the hood, and stepped through the portal.
A room with dark metal walls. Many terrifying faces were embedded into their surface. They were frozen in grimaces of malice and hatred. Their eyes had been closed until the very moment he appeared. Since then, they had opened, as if sensing his presence, and stared into the space inside the room with an otherworldly focus.
But his cloak was capable of something. It could make unseen what was not meant to be seen. Unless it was the Ice Queen or beings like her.
After several dangerous moments, he realized that he had not been discovered. He moved forward, passed through the doorway, and found himself in a corridor.
Containers were moving through the corridor in the air. They floated one after another at a distance of 16 feet apart.
"These are containers in which the stolen energy of entities is delivered to the cities of the Demon-King," he heard the All-Seeing's voice. "Try to follow them — they should lead you directly to the gates."
He continued down the corridor in the direction where the containers were floating. Strange currents were flowing through the corridor. They lifted him into the air, and from then on he was flying above the floor. The containers continued drifting into the distance. Several times, figures in hoods appeared from the side corridors, and he kept killing them with his sword.
Something appeared ahead. Something strange and threatening. A dark, semi-transparent substance filling the corridor from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling. All the containers were drifting into it. A portal was located beyond the dark substance. The containers were disappearing inside it.
"Stop! This dark substance is deadly! It protects the portal from enemies and spies trying to enter it. Try to find the switch that controls this substance. Move toward the center of the palace."
He turned into a side corridor that led deeper into the building. Here, the currents disappeared, and he could move only on foot. Along the way, he kept encountering muscular warrior-cultists, whom he was killing with his sword.
Stone stairs led him to the very top of the palace, into a large hall where a huge creature stood in the center. Short black hair, a muscular body bare from the waist up. Below, he wore black leather trousers. He was kneeling, his head bowed. Around him stood cultists with chained victims. The stranger towered like an unmoving, grim statue over the hooded figures and the victims beside them. The pale light of the moon fell through the large, tall windows of the hall, turning what was happening inside into an otherworldly, sinister ceremony.
"The price one has to pay for becoming a monster."
The cultists simultaneously slit the victims' throats, and streams of blood were flowing from the wounds that appeared. They rushed along grooves toward a channel surrounding the platform on which the kneeling figure stood. The blood filled the channel. And the one standing on the platform suddenly began his transformation.
His body was covered with swirling vortices, behind which something terrifying and black began to emerge. A powerful scream rang out through the hall, throwing back the hooded figures and the Cursed, who was standing in the distance. The cultists remained lying motionless, blood seeping from beneath their hoods onto the floor.