The Immortals of Notoriouslandia
Chapter Twenty-Five: Crystals in the Snow
Descent Interrupted
The morning sun glinted across the white peaks of the Heabary Mountains, soft beams reflecting off icy ridges as the Unbound Team made their descent from the summit after their latest "Grandalfert incident."
They were tired, bruised, and more than a little emotionally fried from his poetic theatrics, but the air was calm. The snow beneath their boots crunched quietly. For once, it felt like the world was letting them rest.
Until it didn't.
RUMBLE.
The ground began to tremble—deep, rhythmic, like a slow pulse rising from the belly of the mountain.
"Earthquake?" Mr. Shonk asked, bracing his stance."We didn't break the mountain, did we?"
"No," Sapphire said, voice sharper. "This isn't tectonic. It's growing."
Then the snow ahead of them began to crack.
Lines of bright blue crystal light formed in the ice—spreading like spiderwebs, pulsing with energy.
From the ground rose a colossal shape—twelve feet tall, humanoid, coated in jagged shards of translucent crystal. It had no face, only a glowing chest core and twin spiked arms that glittered in the sun.
Sapphire stepped back, eyes wide.
"That's a Crysalkhul. It's from my universe.But that's impossible…"
The Battle – The Crystalline Yeti
The Crysalkhul let out a bone-grinding roar, the vibration enough to crack the ice beneath their feet. It charged—arms swinging with diamond force.
Descentedrain hurled a wave of fire, but the energy refracted off its mirrored body.
Kukranchunlikryting's poisons did nothing—vaporized by radiant crystal heat.
Sapphire blinked behind it, slashing into a joint with her reforged crystal blades. One arm shattered into a spray of fractal fragments.
Mr. Shonk hurled himself into a tackle that shattered the second arm, breaking its balance.
The beast roared, stumbled—and collapsed, slamming into the snow with a deep whump, causing a localized avalanche down the opposite slope.
A Strange Signature
The team approached the fallen construct, its glow fading.
Sapphire knelt beside the cracked chest core, holding her palm just above it.
"This energy is... my universe's signature. I recognize the pattern—it's from the Crystar Depths, a region only accessible through dimensional folding. We sealed it off years ago."
Descentedrain narrowed his eyes.
"So how did something from your closed realm end up here, buried in a mountain that's existed for centuries?"
Before anyone could answer—Descentedrain's wristband flashed red.
Incoming transmission.
The Notification
📡 PRIORITY ALERT – Balgandreantauy MAIN DISTRICT A portal has opened above Central Sky Tower. Crystalline creatures identified. Multiple casualties. Reinforcements requested immediately.[📷 IMAGE ATTACHED]
The photo showed a massive swirling blue portal split open above the capital.
From it, dozens of flying crystalline beasts emerged—some shaped like dragons, others like serpentine spiders made of mirrored glass. Streets below burned. Energy shields flickered across rooftops.
Sapphire went pale.
"That's them. That's exactly what we faced when the Crystar Depths almost bled into my universe."
"So they're invading here now?" Mr. Shonk said.
Kukranchunlikryting folded his arms.
"The Crysalkhul was not random. It was the scout. This was planned."
"But why now?" Sapphire asked."Why here?"
The wind howled across the summit again, scattering glittering dust across the snow.
No answers came.
Just the quiet hum of the dying crystal core still pulsing in the ice.
And behind them, far in the north sky—
the blue glow of that portal reached a little higher.
Then they went back to the city
The sky above Balgandreantauy glowed with a sickly blue light as the team descended the final slope of the Heabary Mountains, the city stretching far beneath them like a jewel fractured by war.
What they saw turned every step into a sprint.
From a massive, swirling portal above the central Sky Tower, crystalline monsters poured into the streets, crashing through towers, cracking highways, and letting loose sonic screeches that rippled through the skyline. People ran. Defenses blinked into place. The once-thriving city had become a battlefield again.
But this time... the invaders weren't from this world.
And some of them weren't even supposed to exist.
Returning to the Fray
Descentedrain led the team with a gravity-pulse drop that slammed them straight into the battle zone, their impact forming a glowing crater on a plaza bridge.
The monsters were everywhere.
And each one was worse than the last.
"I thought we left the nightmare behind in Heabary," Mr. Shonk muttered, spinning his trident.
"No," Sapphire said, scanning the skyline. "These aren't just creatures from the Crystar Depths… these are the Sealed Ones. Beasts buried by the Crystal Kings over five hundred years ago."
"And now they're back," Kukranchunlikryting growled. "Who the hell broke the seals?"
The answer would have to wait.
Because the first titan was already charging them.
1. Cryastalabazar – The Tyrant of Crystal
It stood nearly six stories tall, built like a Tyrannosaurus but entirely composed of multi-layered crystal plating, its roar like an earthquake played backward. Its footsteps shattered the ground, leaving glowing scars across the streets.
As it rampaged through the northern plaza, it let out a deafening howl and swung its tail, sending cars flying like paper.
"We hit the legs!" Descentedrain shouted, forming a strategy mid-flight.
"Obviously!" Shonk replied, already in motion.
Kukranchunlikryting created a toxin-mist that blocked the beast's view while Sapphire blinked around its ankles, striking with precise shattering points.
Descentedrain lifted one of its legs with psychic force, and Mr. Shonk leapt in and hammered the joint.
The leg snapped. The beast staggered.
Another joint hit—and the monster toppled forward like a falling building, collapsing into its own weight, shattering into crystal ruins.
One down.
2. Cratucucu – The Plasma-Claw Crab
The ground beneath them trembled and exploded upward, revealing a massive crab-like creature, armored in jagged prism-shells. Its pincers sparked with swirling crystal energy, each snap releasing plasmic crystal shockwaves that vaporized buildings.
"Watch those claws!" Descentedrain warned.
The team dodged a blast that carved a crater the size of a stadium.
The beast scuttled sideways, launching wave after wave of burning crystal force.
"Its weakness is the eyes," Sapphire reminded them.
Descentedrain pulled debris into a floating shield while Shonk threw his trident to disorient its aim. Kukranchunlikryting summoned blinding steam by reacting his toxins with the pavement, giving Sapphire a clean shot.
She teleported above the beast and fired a concentrated mirror-piercing shard into both eyes.
The monster shrieked, spasmed, and fell backward, its body crystallizing into statuesque death.
Two down.
3. Crajujunhent – The Jellyfish Forge
The sky turned dark as a monstrous floating shape descended—a giant jellyfish, shaped from rotating crystal rings and dripping with elemental energy.
It fired waves of sharp, glowing crystal spears from its tendrils, each one tipped with fire, lightning, or frost. Worse: it spawned miniature versions of itself, swarming like bees around the battlefield.
"It's a forge jelly," Kukranchunlikryting hissed. "We're going to get overwhelmed."
Sapphire flew into the cloud of mini-creatures, using synchronized blink-jumps to slice them mid-air, while Shonk threw ground punches that shattered waves of crystal-tentacled drones.
Descentedrain telekinetically redirected the elemental shards back at the monster's main core, forcing it to defend with its own power.
Then he charged.
With a burst of firestone energy, he drove his blade straight through the central membrane, splitting the core.
The Crajujunhent pulsed—once, twice—then exploded into crystal dust.
Three down.
4. Croutanlalaer – The Crystal Bird of Terror
From above, the skies cracked open again as a colossal crystal bird swooped through, its wings wide enough to cast shadows across three city blocks. Every flap rained piercing icicles of crystal that struck like missiles.
"It's weak to water," Sapphire shouted.
"Then it's bath time," Shonk grinned.
Kukranchunlikryting activated a burst of acidic water vapor, coating his toxins into a condensed blast of toxic steam that fused into the bird's wing.
Sapphire redirected a water tower's reserve into a focused jet, blasting the bird mid-flight and softening its crystal skin.
Mr. Shonk leapt high, threw his trident directly into the weakened wing—and Descentedrain followed with a gravity slash that snapped the bird's balance.
It crashed into a building and shattered on impact.
Four down.
5. Crystaleon Returns – Stronger, Sharper
Then came the familiar form—Crystaleon, the Yeti-like crystalline beast they had fought on Mount Heabary.
But it had evolved.
Its chest now pulsed with three energy cores, and its arms regrew from denser crystal alloy. It moved faster, roared louder, and leapt directly at the team from above.
"It's back!" Sapphire shouted. "And stronger!"
They broke formation.
Crystaleon landed, cracking the street with seismic force, unleashing a cold blast that froze nearby structures.
But the team wasn't caught off-guard this time.
Descentedrain held it mid-air with gravity locks while Mr. Shonk tore through one arm with a magma-boosted punch. Kukranchunlikryting infected the remaining arm with corrosive micro-bursts, and Sapphire blinked through the core, striking in perfect rhythm with Descentedrain's pulse.
The final blow: a synchronized combo of trident, blade, poison, and pressure.
Crystaleon collapsed for the second—and possibly final—time.
Ancient Truths Resurface
The dust settled.
The portal still pulsed above the city, but the tide was turning.
In the silence, Descentedrain received a transmission from a hidden archive beacon, long sealed under Balgandreantauy's oldest library.
It was a record—a faded recording of a voice speaking in Sapphire's native tongue.
Translated through the crystal-link embedded in her armor, the message played aloud:
"The Sealed Ones shall rise when balance breaks, and the stars of glass return.Only the Crystal Kings' blood may close what has been torn."
Sapphire stared at the message, lips parting slightly.
"That prophecy was forbidden. It means someone didn't just break the seal—they're trying to resurrect the Crystal Kings themselves."
"And those kings weren't saviors," Descentedrain said grimly."They were monsters who used order to conquer."
Preparing for What's Next
As emergency services arrived to secure the city, the team regrouped near the western ruins of the plaza.
They had fought hard.
But this wasn't over.
"The portal's not closing," Kukranchunlikryting said."And the readings show more things trying to come through."
"Something bigger's coming," Sapphire said, gazing up at the swirl of blue light."And I think it's from my past."
They took a moment. Just one.
Beneath the eerie portal-glow, they stood side by side—Descentedrain, Sapphire, Shonk, and Kukranchunlikryting—looking up.
Weapons charged.
Hearts steady.
And the unknown waiting just beyond the crystal light.