The night was dark, the moon sheathed in dense storm clouds that rolled across every corner of the horizon. Howling winds whipped across the steppe, carrying the raspy promise of snow in the near winter. The air was chilled, but not unbearable. The ground was soaked through from the passing storms, but not flooded.
Heavy boots sunk deep into soft earth and knots of coarse, stubborn grass. A long, glistening blade winked in the fleeting light of the moon as it peeked nervously through its cover of clouds. The wind in the grass was restless. The looming mountain in the distance seemed to hackle in anticipation. The very heavens above quaked with wild trails of lightning.
It was as if the land itself felt what was coming.
What was fated.
It had taken five months to travel here, but the journey was finally coming to a close. Just as the curtains began to fall on the very scapegoat the entire world had bet its life on.
The Godslayer trekked across the steppe, eyes hard and trained on the mountain up ahead. Blade slung across his back and purpose thrumming in every step he took, the Godslayer didn't dread the moment of his death. This was his fate, after all. This was the hand he'd been dealt. There was no sense turning back now.
He marched head on towards the Mountain of One Thousand Suns.
The infamous resting place of Nika, the King of the Gods…
And the man he had been tasked with killing at any cost.
…
In a world where any man could become a God, to kill a God was to become a God oneself. The task was simple: kill the God, and in doing so destroy the prison. Die alongside one's target, and cleanse the world of the last remnants of the Age of Chaos.
To slay a god was to slay oneself.
To be named a Godslayer, was to be sentenced to death.
…
The crest of the Mountain was nothing like how it appeared from a far distance. From the steppe it boasted a jagged peak, unforgiving and cold. Up close, the Mountain spelled quite a different story.
Two enormous slopes, melding together as they fell to form a secluded valley at the crown of the world. The slopes were coated in the brightest green grass. It swayed in the wind, whispering soothing songs and smelling sweet in the late autumn sunshine. In the heart of the valley lay a quaint mountain village.
The houses were constructed from smooth blocks of black stone, the very stone that formed the Mountain under their feet. The valley was speckled with them, like the freckles across a young woman's cheeks. Small, wind worn huts blowing trails of cheerful smoke into the clear mountain air. Clotheslines slunk from building to building like a spider's web, and townsfolk dressed in tanned goat hide hummed and shouted cheerfully as they milled about in their secluded haven.
It was peaceful. One could feel it in the air like a sheen.
Trafalgar Law strayed through the field of swaying green grass. His boots crunched on fertile soil laced with spindly roots, the enormous silver sword clinking against his back where it lay. He approached the village at his leisure. He wasn't in any rush. This would be his final day walking the earth… it didn't feel real.
The sun warmed his dark skin and stirred shafts of inky hair across his brow. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The townsfolk were warm, and greeted him with cheerful smiles and friendly introductions.
Goa, they called it. It was a Mortal village, forgotten by time. The people were colorful, and the children playful as they ran in circles around Law's ankles. It almost reminded him of Flevance. He couldn't help but wonder if these seemingly kind people would react the same way to the dark feathered wings that lurked, sealed away beneath his skin.
They asked about his travels, fed him warm broth. The children ogled his sword while the older folks politely refrained from asking. The day passed quicker than Law could think to breathe. It was… nice. He wouldn't hate it. Dying here. Assuming he was at the right place, after all.
He'd checked several other mountain tops, already. You'd think that the prison of a God would be less difficult to come by. He couldn't help but wonder if the others had had this much trouble seeking their targets…
The last of them had died months ago.
Law had felt Hancock's death as clearly as he'd felt Eustass', Mone's, and Bonney's.
He was the last one. Four Gods dead and one remaining. The Age of Chaos truly would become a thing of the past, wouldn't it?
The townsfolk were kind enough to distract him from the melancholy of his thoughts. They showed him around. Gave him a taste of what a normal life would have been like. A normal life that he could have led had he not been dealt such an awful hand…
At high noon a band of hyper children took Law by the hands and dragged him in looping trails up the slopes, down, and back again. They led him to the very edge of the valley, where the drop off boasted a grand view of the surrounding steppe. An endless sea of tough, colorless grass. The sky was beautiful, though.
The children asked him about the sea.
He humored their endless questions.
They reminded him of Lammy… and a time long since dead.
At the far corner of the valley, backed up against the treacherous mountain path that wound down the face of the mountain, there were graves. Thousands of them. Marked by stone cairns, stained white after hundreds of years sitting through the beating sun and wind and rain.
The children hushed up as they passed, quickly scurrying along as not to disturb the dead. Law lingered at the field of graves. It stretched out as far as the eye could see. The sprawling green slopes hadn't seemed so huge before they'd been measured to the scale of so many fallen souls.
With the gravesite at his back, Law followed the children back to the village. He ended up carrying three sleeping bodies half the way back, nestled in his arms and slumped over his shoulders. Their parents cooed and thanked him with kind smiles.
As the sun began to dip behind the slopes, Law found himself seated in a temple at the edge of the village. The structure was open walled, bare to the elements and filled to the brim with offerings and incense. Carvings of suns lined the walls, depictions of a thousand eerie grins bored Law down with eyes hidden behind shafts of swirling hair.
The elderly woman sat on her knees with her heels folded neatly beneath her. Her blind eyes gazed into nothingness, her gray braids swished gently in the breeze. The candles flickered as she tilted her head towards Law.
"This place is holy," she rasped.
Law held her blind gaze. Pale, unseeing eyes bored into his sharp, golden ones.
"There are a thousand grounds touched by Nika," she continued, "But none as sacred as this."
"You worship him," Law said, barely at a whisper.
"Of course," the woman hummed. "But not many know him."
Law couldn't help but feel that she knew why he was there. Why he was truly there.
She told him a tale. A tale of a young boy who dreamed, and a man who strayed too close to the sun. Of a man who was born in this exact town, more than a thousand years before Law found it in a sea of rolling hills and endless tundra. Of a man who was imprisoned here, of a man laid to rest at the highest peak, where the Mountain brushed the sky.
Law's hands clenched into fists where they lay in his lap.
This was the place, alright. He'd finally found it.
"Do you have regrets, my dear boy?" the old woman asked. Her back was turned to him. To Law, who stood in one of the many arching doorways that lined the walls of the temple to Nika. The God Law had been sent to slay.
His breath caught in his throat. The old woman's words bit.
"You will be a Godslayer, Law."
To think that man remained alive, after everything he'd done. After everything he'd ruined. Law sucked in a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Of course he had regrets.
"I lived a good life," Law breathed. A lie if there ever was one.
The old woman hummed. "Don't give yourself up if you hold regret in your heart. You're a good one. Your soul shouldn't be damned to linger after you've gone."
She definitely knew.
There was no way she didn't.
Law shook his head. He didn't need to be thinking right now. This was his destiny. He hadn't chosen this path, it had been allotted for him. This was his purpose. To slay a God… and die a warrior.
It wasn't as if I had a choice…
Law didn't respond to the woman. He stepped out of the temple, and set off towards the slopes.
"You always have a choice, my dear."
Law stiffened. Perhaps it had been the old woman to whisper those words. Perhaps it had been the wind, merely his mind playing tricks on him. In any case, he ignored them. It was far too late to turn back now.
The trek up the slope was quiet, peaceful. Law's only company was the hissing of the grass against his legs and the familiar weight of the blade against his back. He climbed up, up, up, until the grass could no longer reach. The ground beneath his feet turned to hard stone, and he left the village far in his wake. He climbed and picked his way to the very tip top of the Mountain of One Thousand Suns, and at the very crown, he found the cavern.
It was non distinct.
Empty.
Cold.
It was far too high up for life to reach. The altitude turned the Mountain air frigid. Stepping within the cavern offered a warm reprieve from the whipping winds and treacherous drop off.
The cavern was dark. Nothing more than a hollow pock in the mountain. The ground was unnervingly smooth and flat, but other than that… just an ordinary cave. The irony was enough to make Law scoff.
He didn't hesitate. He'd stopped rebelling against his fate ages ago. After four years of trying to escape the training grounds and failing again and again, his spirit had been broken in time. This was who he was. A Godslayer. This was his duty. His purpose.
His death.
Law took a deep breath, and drew his sword from the hook across his back. Kikoku. A cursed blade. Forged with this exact purpose in mind. Less for slaying the God, and more for entering the prison.
The prisons nullify the Gods' power, Law reminded himself, going over the instruction that had been drilled into his head for the past thirteen years. They've been imprisoned for centuries, they're weak. They're armed only with their imposing presence, their will, and the fear we still hold from the memory of the Age of Chaos.
Law took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and squeezed Kikoku's hilt.
Remember, the God is defenseless. The prison already did the work. All I have to do…
"...Is finish the job," he whispered.
His heart fluttered with a final bout of nerves, which Law killed the second they arose. He sent a quick prayer to his fellow Godslayers, who had each died one by one. Slaying their respective Gods and methodically ensuring the reign of the Age of Peace. The only piece left in the puzzle was Law.
I'll be joining you soon, he thought. Hoping that Eustass, Bonney, and the others could hear his thoughts.
Damn the storm that still brewed within him. Damn the words of that old hag. It was too late to avenge Corazon now. Far too late. That pink feathered bastard had won the game the moment he'd sold Law off to this crooked fate…
With his teeth gritted, Law dropped to the ground. He lay flat on his back in the cavern, and stared up at the ceiling overhead. He felt… empty. Hopeless. Which was a good thing. If he didn't fear his death, then he wouldn't fear gazing into the face of a God.
"Damn it all to hell," Law spat. He then slammed his eyes shut tight, and fell into the easy, meditative trance that he'd trained more than a decade to master. He was the chosen one. The Godslayer. The prison would open its gates for him and him alone. From there he'd step within, and come face to face with the one and only King of the–
It was dark.
It was empty.
It was cold.
It was endless yet impossibly constrained, infinite yet inescapable.
Law stood upon an ocean of pitch black water, and stared into the mind-melding abyss that mad managed to contain him.
One moment Law was alone.
And in the next moment, he wasn't.
A pair of enormous, looming hands burst forth from the darkness. Law could do nothing but stand and gawk, utterly frozen on the spot with Kikoku clenched in his fist. The hands were enormous, fingers stretching wide and trembling with centuries of pent up rage as they extended around Law in a cage that braced to snap.
From the void crested blinding white light, a mop of wild, sterile white hair that glowed brighter than a thousand suns. The head became a neck, the neck became shoulders, the shoulders became a torso, extending out from the endless vat of nothingness to close in upon Law, reaching out for him as he stood frozen. Terrified.
Shadows pooled beneath the mop of blinding white hair, and from the void within curled a devilish grin.
Those hands reached out, then snapped together to crush Law into an infinite loop of agony–
It was over.
Law stood, stiff as a board, in a cave not unsimilar to the one he'd lie down in not moments before hand. Only this one was unimaginably big, with a cavernous expanse stretching out and meshing with an endless black nothingness.
And on the floor of the cave, laying right before Law, propped up on his elbows, lay an enormous man. An enormous man with tanned skin, wild white hair, and a grin that cut through the void surrounding them. Caging them here, together, in the prison of a God.
Law could do nothing but stare, and crane his neck as he gawked at the creature that had razed continents. Moved mountains. Cracked the world in two.
The only coherent thought on Law's mind was: "Nika."
The God tilted his head to one side, and laughed. It was light, sinister, little more than a snicker.
Law had never felt so insignificant in his entire life. His entire body trembled from head to toe. Nika was enormous, how in the fuck was he supposed to kill a creature like this—
"One thousand years," the God hummed. The grin didn't leave his face, even as he spoke. "That's how long it's been since I last saw a Mortal."
A horrid frisson ran through Law's entire being. The God was talking to him, addressing him directly, holy fuck if it hadn't been for the prison then his mere gaze would have been enough to reduce Law to mere ashes–
The God's next words were enough to shake Law from his stupor.
Nika propped his chin on the heel of his hand and gazed down his nose at Law. He smirked at him, tilting his head back and revealing his eyes from the drifting waves of glowing hair that cast his features in strange shadows. His eyes were a shocking red.
"Are you here to kill me?" the God asked. He sounded bemused. So impossibly unbothered. He was a God, wasn't his kind supposed to be all knowing?! Law was here to kill him, didn't he understand that?
Was he looking down on Law? Did he not see the Godslayer before him as a threat?
Law ground his teeth and tightened his grip on Kikoku. His thoughts raced a million miles a minute. He widened his stance and braced for the kill blow. It would only take one shot. Nika was defenseless. Broken. The prison reduced him to little more than a fish in a barrel. A giant fish at that. One easy fucking target.
One quick slash from Kikoku and his head would roll.
Law would kill a God, and in doing so ascend to something other. To kill a God was to surpass one, after all. And to surpass the incredible power of a God was to become one yourself. Which was dangerous. And the reason why the prison was designed to self destruct when its original inmate was killed.
The prison would implode, killing Law alongside it.
His purpose would be completed, and he would finally, finally reunite with everyone he'd lost– He'd see his mother, his father, Lammy, Cora–
But…
But.
Why. Why did he hesitate?
Why couldn't he move? It would take a single flick of the sword and then it would be over. He didn't fear his own death, craved it, actually. So what was this restless, terrible, monster that thrashed within him? This horrific voice in the back of his mind that told him to wait.
That told him not to kill the God.
"You will be a Godslayer, Law."
His jaw ached as his teeth screeched against each other. Gods fucking dammit. That bastard was still alive. Still living. Still breathing. He'd been telling himself for the past thirteen years that it didn't matter, that it wasn't important, but gods dammit if he hadn't been gaslighting himself that whole fucking time–
The old woman had asked Law if he had regrets… Of fucking course he had regrets.
And why the fuck would Law play nice and kill the God as he was told… when he had unlimited, unimaginable power sitting right in front of him?
Law found himself faced with a choice. A question. And an answer.
Fuck it.
Fuck it all to hell.
Law bared his teeth in a snarl, and whipped Kikoku up. He pointed the tip of the blade directly at the God, and looked him right in the eye. "That's up to you," Law declared. His heart raced in his chest. This was a God he was talking to, he was scared out of his gods damned mind! But that didn't matter. All that mattered was his revenge, and he'd be damned if he rolled over and died while that pink feathered demon still had the audacity to breathe.
"Whether you live, or whether I kill you. Right here. Right now." Law had no idea what the fuck he was saying. The God narrowed his eyes at him, but Law refused to back down.
Nika snorted. The entire prison shivered as he backed down, deigning to humor the tiny man that stood before him. "Go on."
Law sucked in a breath. Holy shit. What am I doing– "I can free you," he found himself saying. "But only if you do something for me in return."
"And what would that be?" Nika asked. His voice made reality tremble.
Law broke eye contact. His hands shook. His heart raced. He dropped his arm. Kikoku's tip scraped the ground of the prison and made the rock shriek in protest. He took a shaky breath, "Destroy a man for me."
The world gave pause.
Nika smirked. "Is that all?"
The entire prison lurched.
Law gasped and cried out in surprise as the God shoved himself upright. He loomed taller than a mountain, his head rose higher than the moon. Then Nika was crashing down, and his palms slammed into the ground on either side of Law's tiny, insignificant form.
The ground shook and groaned and Law crashed onto his back with a shout of pain and blinding terror. Law could have sworn that Nika was about to crush him like an ant beneath his thumb but–
In one moment he was larger than the northern sea.
In the next shrunk down to the size of a Mortal.
Law's eyes blew wide as he struggled and failed to comprehend how. His mind stumbled to catch up with what he was seeing.
Nika, the size of an average adult Mortal, loomed over Law in all his godly glory. He sat perched on Law's hips with his arms boxing him in, hovering over him close enough to draw breath. The tips of that wild white hair brushed across Law's brow, its touch felt like how the sun looked.
Wild red eyes bored into eyes of burnt gold, and Nika grinned wider than the moon.
"Deal," he declared.
For the second time, the prison lurched.
So it was sealed, Law had struck a deal with a God. What in the ever loving fuck had he gotten himself into– Holy shit, what had he done–
"For the record," Nika purred, he leaned in close. Law gasped as lips ghosted across his before dipping low to hover near his ear. Nika's weight shifted on his waist. "You're a terrible Godslayer," the God taunted.
Law couldn't breathe–
The God was over him again. "Now hold still."
Law tried to voice a protest, but it was too late. Nika melted against him. He sighed heavily as his body pressed fully against Law's. A shiver ran from the balls of Law's feet to the crown of his skull as Nika began to get heavier. His body crushed Law into the ground, pressing in impossibly close and melding with Law's until he didn't know who was who anymore.
Laughter rang in Law's ears, and then Nika's lips were crashing against his. He didn't have time to react before a tongue was forcing its way past his lips, and from there Nika melted into his body and phased clean through him as Law shuddered and spun in wild circles within his own head.
Law had agreed to free Nika, and in turn the God used his body as a conduit to pass from his prison back into the mortal realm.
Law awoke with a gasp.
He shot upright in a panic, his arms flailing as he sucked down air and reeled from– from–
"What in the…" Law breathed. He glanced around. He was… back in the cavern. Alone. Sitting exactly where he'd laid down. He'd come here to slay the God, hadn't he? So… why was he still alive?
Then he remembered.
Law was on his feet in an instant. Fuck, where was the God?! Law just released the embodiment of destruction upon the world and–
He wasn't alone.
Law gripped Kikoku tight and fell into a defensive position. There was someone standing at the mouth of the cavern. At some point night had passed and the morning had come, for they stood and gazed out at the rising sun and the pink stained sky. They were silhouetted from the light of the dawn outside, standing perfectly still. Perfectly silent.
A prickle crawled at the back of Law's mind. He slunk closer.
It was a man. He was slender, a head shorter than Law. He was dressed in tattered clothes that barely clung to his frame. He had black hair the color of soot and tanned skin from years spent under the sun. As Law drew close enough to make out more details, he found a skinny, rope of a tail spilling from under his rags to pool at the ground at his feet, and a pair of small horns poking from his skull.
Law stopped in his tracks, his eyes fluttering in surprise.
A Devil?
He shook himself, and adjusted his grip on Kikoku. It didn't matter if the man was Mortal or Devil or Seraphim, he'd stumbled upon the prison of a God so Law needed to kill him.
"I missed the sun."
Law froze with Kikoku half lifted to swing.
The man had turned around. He gazed over his shoulder at Law, not bothered in the slightest by the sword being raised against him. There was a thin scar under his left eye, and a jagged knot of scar tissue blazoned across his chest. His eyes were a startling red. The mark of Godling.
He smiled at Law, sharp incisors flashing in the weak sunlight. "Thank you for freeing me."
Freeing…? Wait–
Law dropped Kikoku clean onto the ground. "Nika?"
What? What was going on?! This couldn't be right. There was no way. This was the God Law had encountered in the prison? The King of all Gods? The man who had held the entire world in his hand?! He didn't look like a destroyer of worlds at all–
The strange young man snickered, and it sounded so damn similar to Nika's that Law startled.
The God smiled at Law, though it was a different one from the maniacal grin he'd worn in the prison. It didn't glow like the sun or send shocks of fear skittering up and down Law's spine. This one was kind, soft.
It caught Law off guard.
The stranger that was Nika turned to face him. "Call me Luffy."