Belos doing Belos stuff
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
A shower of achromatic liquid erupts in the core of the spacious chamber, where only a whisper of light dares to permeate. From one drop to another, the liquid bubbles and twists before exploding into a colorless mist that fills a quarter of the room, lowering onto the marble floor the decomposing body of the kind medic.
She felt her stomach lurch and melts in its acid, expelling whatever remnants lingered within onto the mosaic-shaped tiles. For a fleeting moment, a single second of all-encompassing hell, she feels her head burn like molten magma was poured into the confines of her skull, her agonized scream stifled by the constriction of her tightening throat, suffocating the cry of torment within like a bird with its wings torn off stuck in a glided golden cage.
Panic's icy tendrils clawed up her windpipe as she took in their foreign surroundings, her breath came in ragged gasps, each exhalation echoing into her ears.
The room's walls, a silent congregation of linear shapes that formed their empire sigil, loom like the sentinels of a forgotten pantheon and subsequent tomb of a forgotten deity. The capricious dance of the only light present in the room was birthed from four golden cauldrons, each created in the core of a vein of gold, violet fire raging in its center and emitting fumes not too dissimilar to ash that shaped a visual symphony of quiet disquiet.
Her throbbing heart hammed against her ribcage as any attempt to stand up proved fruitless, her legs collapsing under the tidal wave of pain surging to her body, forcing them back down as the room spun in a maddening waltz.
Suddenly, a soft, sickening squelch of raw and pulsating flesh sound froze what blood was left in her arteries, the woman's body recoiling back from the puddle of bile that began to twitch and bubble. Her eyes oscillated with the rhythm of her racing thoughts, a subtle quaking of her irises as she stared at the pool of filth, barely holding in her scream as grotesque appendages emerged from the congealed liquid.
Attach at the base of the stretching appendages was a tiny squirming chunk of meat that formed a macabre symphony of shifting folds and tangled neurons that was covered in vital fluid that was nauseatingly recognizable to her after years in the medical industry.
A chunk of brain...of her brain
Even though her stomach was empty, she could feel her gag reflex pull at her insides, for a moment, the laughing of the nightmare in the sky became a second thought.
The abomination turned toward her, the flesh piece splitting in half and showcasing a row of malformed and jagged sets of shining glass-like teeth, each tooth gleaming with a glint of resentment.
Resentment toward her.
She could almost sense the creature's hatred toward her, with each click of its teeth swearing a thousand curses upon her name for her mistake that had doomed her for the rest of her
One single touch ruined the life they built.
A shrill, blaring cry erupted from the grotesque mass of quivering flesh, slicing through the stagnant air like the hot edge of a blade, its body turning from gelatinous to gas, its anatomy dwarfed for the split second the cry rang into the silent throne room before reforming to its 'natural' self.
Leaning down, the flesh quivered, appendages tensing before it hurtled itself toward the paralyzed woman. The velocity was staggering, a blur of horror that seemed to warp the very space as the gnarled teeth clacked together in a macabre symphony of incomprehensible sounds.
And then, before the creature could reach its target, a reinforced golden boot slammed onto it, smashing into the floor with a thunderous crash that formed cracks in the pristine foundation and the golden walls encircling the room.
The woman staggers back, her nails dragging across tiles and subsequently some of the breaking in the process, her quivering eyes staring at the large form of their island emperor, his armor dwarfing the room's golden walls in their purity.
She could momentarily sense the Nightmare's displeasure simmering at the audacity of someone interrupting its revelry, its form receding further into the twilight and leaving only a shadow across the devastated sky. For even if the roof above her blocked her view, she could almost feel the abomination's presence, from the nauseating movement of their appendages as they stretched at wrong angles to its verdant orbs that shone brighter than all the stars in the sky.
Steeling her gaze onto the emperor, she couldn't help but gasp as his bare face came into view, his recognizable mask absent from its rightful pace.
His face was old, battered, and deeply scared, each one etched into his white skin, with the most prominent being a long circular scar that formed right above his right eyebrow and wrapped around his noseโlike a bolt of lightning that was carved by an inadequate artist, before finishing unceremonial in the center of his left cheek. The golden and pale strands that fell on his shoulder now looked different than the last time she had caught a glimpse of the portrait made after the man. Their color did not change, but there was something in how they shifted in the air, not too dissimilar to the movement of the solar flares of a brooding star.
But that wasn't what caught her gaze and held tight to it.
It wasn't his right eye that seized her attention, the one that burns with the luster of the first fire, a brilliant blaze spun from threads of melted gold and rimmed with an azure line of a cold blaze, but his left one for it bore no particular attribute.
The left eye looked older than the rest of the emperor, older than her entire lineage, a frigid ocean of cruelty forged into the blade of a guillotine.
"I must apologize, Miss Ema, for this untimely abduction, but there wasn't enough time to properly invite you to the royal suit. It would have been the least you would have deserved in your final hours, but the truth is that you have less than minutes to spend."
The revelation didn't surprise her, especially after watching a part of her brain trying to murder her, but what did was the mention of her name.
She doesn't remember ever being called that, perhaps her partner had done it, but the love of her life...she meant her wife whose name she remembers vividly was...
She felt her functional hand push into her scalp, pulling strands of hair along the way as she strained her memory to remember her mother or father, her brotherโdid she even have one?, or did she really know anyone?
Was it all a wonderful dream, and now sh-
Her thoughts froze in their track as the gloved hand of the Emperor rested on her trembling shoulder, capturing her wavering attention. Gazing at the man, she senses his unyielding left eye fixated on her, and when she met his stare with her own, she was not met with sorrow or pity, for something inside of her knew that someone so cruel could not offer eighter, but it was understanding that shone dimly from the blue orb.
"No point in dwelling on the past. Something erased by a Nightmare can't ever be recovered. Be at ease that your loved ones are safe and away for now from their influence."
And that?
Was enough for the dying soul of Ema.
Maybe she deserved to get more, to live her life unbothered by the cruel truth that lay above in the indifferent cosmos. But that path was cut off when her curiosity won over primal instincts.
The woman's body collapsed like a sack of potatoes, bone rusted over and organs crackling like fireworks, the bits of meat and bone dust forming runes to bring forth Titan knows what atrocity. Her heart was wading, each pulse throbbing more leisurely through her arteries, like a rancid tide's stagnant ebb and flow, propagating its last moment under a starless sky.
And then she exploded in a heap of fire.
The blaze was warm, enveloping her in a blanket of azure blaze that curled around her soul but did not tighten, only holding it for a couple of moments before letting it pass into Death's loving embrace.
"It is the only gift I can give you. What is destroyed by a Nightmare can't ever be brought back, but I will offer you the second best thing."
Stretching out from his shadow, a creature of nuclear fire rose from the depth, its form compressing through dimensions and alien shapes until it reached an equilibrium.
"In these fleeting moments, you shall live the life stolen from you, relearning the joys of life and its hardships."
The being species did not bear a name, its only recognizable feature being the cluster of galaxies swimming in its center, its body easily dwarfing them a dozen times over.
"And only when your voyage finally ends, surrounded by the loved ones the nightmare had taken from you, shall you know death."
And yet, as it passed the threshold into the real, it shrunk, the cluster becoming nothing more than spots of churning plasma, its length barely doubling the Emperor's already terrifying height.
Reaching the remains of the women, the churning miasma swallows the surviving ashes, the long obsidian chain infused into its being suddenly straightening, dragging it back into the sunless depth of the Emepror shadow.
"For this is the least you deserve. A life of wonder, no matter how fabricated it may be, where you had never grabbed the attention of the abominable deities of the Forest, the disgusting, loathsome, and repugn-"
"Why so serious Philip? You know your nasty word wound me deeply, and here I thought we were friends." A shrill laughter swallows the room, an awful combination of an echo of a child giggle, and the piercing sound of glass and scratching chalkboard tumbled in an old drier. Every reflexive surface, be it the windows above him or the swelling puddles of the bill, cracks like mirrors and spreads into uneven shards that prograde endless reflections of words lost to Crystal Madness.
Pivoting swiftly on his armored heel, the Monarch twists his body around, his eyes shifting into a glare at the appearance of a floating disk, its circumference covered by an emblem of a sun cleaved into two unequal halves and from the cosmic wound dozens of solar rays stretched forward, attempting to swallow the perfect circular and intact moon adjacent to it.
"And besides, we aren't all that bad."
Not even allowing a moment to pass, the man stretches his power, every creature with some semblance of control over space and matter in his servitude brought forward as the room is swallowed by a pocket dimension that is transported far away from Life's domain.
The shards of varying types of materials, not necessarily solid, are pulled toward the silver disk, losing their color and anatomy as they begin to shine in nauseating patterns.
Or at least nauseating to a lesser man
The pocket dimension stains and shifts under the influence of something unseen, the hoards of abominable gods and unhallowed monsters chain to his soul cowering behind Belos's divinity, even his title of the strongest creature alive only possible to attain because the Nightmares themself were not alive to begin with.
The shards fuse into the surface of the silver disk before exploding like meteor showers that engulf the entire space, and when the light faded a hand formed from blinding crystals and festering shadows breached from the shell of the disk.
The appendage stood still for a second, before its seven fingers curled around the empty air, each one piercing the flimsy sheet that constructed the reality, in the process leaving a small trail of broken shards of space that hovered around it. And without a heave, the appendages pulled from within the disk unrestrained body of the seventh Nightmare.
A long shadow stretches across the room like ink across a bare canvas, sharp crystals of reversed-time peaking through the shadowy veil, each bent at circular angles. Across the surface, uncountable clusters of galaxies and lone stars shone with a cold light, brightening the entire room in their crushing glow.
The atmosphere grows thick and sulfuric, saturated with the acrid tang of pleasure that morphs the throne room into a grotesque parody of what it once was. The walls seemed to ooze with dampness, and the ground beneath was neither solid nor entirely liquid but a vile semi-solid plasma that depicted a tableau of agitation sub-merged in the grip of time's halt.
His golden throne also changes, the gold peeled off and replaced with a blue hide, the foundation replaced with the small, so small, skulls of titans, gazing too for long into their eyesocket evoking in his ear the echo of distant cries of children that seem so near, yet out of reach.
He senses his hearts give up on beating, his lung pooping like balloons under the gaze, and his armor melting into his body, flesh melding with it like a second skin. The damage doesn't even make him blink, the corpse he wears is nothing more than decoration put to display for the people of the island, otherwise, they would go mad each time he decides he wants to go on a stroll through his empire.
He subtly glared at the nightmare, a gaze suffused by the power of his enslaved horde that could make even the first Monarchs tense, before shaking his head knowing it would be of no use.
"What do I hold the pleasure of your...unexpected visit, Collector."
The glowing body churns, back twisting to ninety degrees as it stretches abruptly across the room, appendages twisting in a grotesque synergy as it curls onto itself.
"I got bored of waiting, Philip, my big and so-so awesome brother game is finally coming to an end, and I can't even play with my little brother. How can life be this cruel." The Collector whines, crystalline tears falling from his blinding eyes, one of his arms extending behind his back before tenderly sweeping his hands to remove the shimmering trails of crystalline waterwork.
Then the atmosphere shifted, the pout sprawl on the Collector's face morphing, the unaligned edges of his mouth turning barely downward, deepening into a frown, nay a sneer that is less teeth and more a maw filled by fragments of frozen time sharp and transparent as unbroken glass.
"And that big meanie banishing us to this lonely place with no one to play with, I shouldn't have trusted such a cheater."
His incisors moved further apart, considerable gaps dotted between each one and revealing a black mass bubbling before poping with a gut-wrenching noise, leaking an indigo liquid that foamed at his mouth, something from deep inside his gullet smiling at the Belos with absolute glee that betray the Collector emotions.
The roof collapses to the ground from the sudden pressure, sending an explosion of gold across the room, the walls crumbling in the form of stardust, revealing the blank void of the pocket dimension. The vacuum thrashes like a leaf stranded in an aggressive ocean, the Collector's influence one step away from bleeding into the real and turning Creation and the Abyss into his playground once more.
The enslaved creatures in his soul scream in resentment, citing their right to exist and their amas power before being subjugated by the Strongest Creature Alive, their will straining as the Collector counters their right with his existence alone.
The facade of a child fades away, the childish demeanor of the Collector forsaken to the cold demeanor of a proud torturer as the shadows enveloping him drip with crystal madness, each reflective surface showcasing the untold past where disease spread through the world, the boiling sea replaced by the violet ocean, beneath its waves of frozen patches of time one could catch glimpses of creatures of alien logic.
Running on top of the ocean, the last titans are hunted down by relentless organisms that fly on wings of heat unshattered from above, and from beneath, crystalline abominations wait for every churn of the sea to strike, the desperate survivors not deterred even when their loved ones are dragged below.
The entire sky shines with unholy light, a dark sun encompassing every edge of the cosmos and consuming all but the petite moon, stretching past infinity yet barely concealing the laughing Nightmare behind it.
Six pairs of crystal eyes bore onto the Emperor, silencing the chores of his endless horde as the depraved concept of light that flashes beneath crystal cast a shadow that spans across Creation a thousand times over.
And Belos knows deep in his very undefined soul that despite the fake persona and the untold numbers of reflections in the form of Collector copies in all Creation who are simply misguided souls, some he had met others that he had heard from Darius, that this one is devoid of warmth, of compassion, and indifferent in his cruelty.
Finally, after what feels like eons but Belos knows it's an excruciating second, the nightmare relents, the form of an undying abomination of crystal, starlight, and delirium vanishes, replaced by the iconic silly caricature of a child he masquerades around with.
"You are too unfun Philip, you never play with me properly."
"I believe it would not be beneficial to my health to play with you properly." The Collector doesn't even dispute Belos's claim, chuckling with the same intonation of the shrill sound of a child's laughter and a threnody of torment evermore.
"Why do you have to be so boring and yet so cool, like that awesome speech you gave, it gave me goosebumps."
His body shook in and out of reality, hands gliding across his skin as if to warm himself.
"But I always knew you that beneath that cruel exterior, there was a warm spot of kindness, you just need to warm up to the world and everyone will see again the hero inside little Philip." As he spoke, he materialized beside the throne of tiny titan skulls, nudging one of the larger skulls two times with his finger before continuing. "Jermy didn't believe me when I told him, never once agreeing with me, but maybe that's because he is dead." The Nightmare exploded in a cackle of belly-shaking laughter, the pocket dimension trembling under his weight as the Emperor scowled at the poor attempt at a joke.
"It was the least I could have done, my mercy may be thin and cruelty plentiful, but I am not unreasonable and have the decency to admit my own faults, and the truth is that Ema, a bright doctor who had proved to be of great help to my people, shouldn't have ever caught a silver of the Hunter attention."
Moving forward, he grabbed the silver disk still floating in the air, before proceeding toward the only remaining wall standing in the throne room, an almost unseen door engraved in its surface, before proceeding to unlock it to reveal a gaping hole that went down indefinitely.
With a shrug, he brushed off the immature cries and protest of the Collector as he comically held onto the body of Belos in hopes of stopping his march. Powerful above all he might be, but while stuck in the disk and locked away in the remnants of the In-Between, his annoying presence being the only dangerous characteristic for someone like the Emperor of Chains.
"Please it's so boring out there, at least let me go out and have some fun with my small brother, we promise to not break anything, pinky promise!" The exclamation made the man pause for a moment, the disk dangling over the hole as Belos arched an unconvinced eyebrow at the Nightmare.
The Collector's facade stood impenetrable for a few moments, if not for the fact that he unconsciously rubbed the back of their neck before finally, in a defeated and meek tone he whispered.
"Maybe just... a few words?"
That was all he could say before the silver disk was discarded, dragging him down into the hole along the screams of child-like indignation.
Finally, with a tired sight, Belos dissipated the pocket dimension engulfing the space around him, the throne room reformed to its natural and returning to its rightful pace.
With a thunderous boom, the enormous golden gate swung wide open, the forms of his royal guards breaching into the room second away from unleashing their attack, halting instantly as they saw their Emperor's raised hand.
Their heads and knees hit the floor, each one's power dissipating into the air and sparing his fortress from being vaporized. They do not beg for any answers to the sudden disappearance of the throne room, knowing that if needed, their master will tell them.
"Number three, " He turned his gaze to the smallest of his guards, the mention guard raising its head, the white mask barely revealing long strands of hair not too dissimilar to a prismatic arch.
"deliver this message to Darius while I am gone." There is nothing more to be said, the information required was shared through their link, soon after followed by their body from her clothes to her flesh exploding into a thick waft of steam constructed of entropic fog older than the frigid flames of hell, the mist fleeing the room through the thigh ventilation system.
Focusing on the next crucial task that needed to be done until the day was over, he clicked his finger, an enormous transparent jug of apple blood appeared in the air, the plummeting glass container snatched in mid-air by Number Two before it could shatter across the quartz floor.
The crimson juice swirled recklessly inside the container, the liquid an undulating tempest with a mass sufficient to keep a heavy drinker satisfied for a few months.
Stepping forward, the thin veil of the world crackles like a panel of glass into uneven shards left under a rotting star, the formed portal materializing a path to the lowest ring of the abyss.
A war rages around him as he graces the battlefield, something akin to a black hole the size of a universe battling a shard of the very concept of war, at its side a battalion of unborned ones.
The battlefield freezes as millions of eyes turn toward the Emperor of Chains, a small smile blooming on his battered face as the opportunity to unwind has unexpectedly come up and offered itself on a silver tray.
Pulling from his shadow the nuclear fire elemental that had failed to his bidding in removing every bit of Ema's body, without the restraint of the First Dream its natural form towers over the fizzeling and almost-wooden forms of the unborn ones, yet is all but an annoying speck when compared to the blackhole or the concept of war.
That doesn't matter, he will make it stand taller.
Twisting his wrist, the enslaved creature contorted in the shape of his command, its gargantuan size, barely under the scope of the Virgo Cluster, condenses down to a single point not bigger than the head of a pin.
The action creates rips in the fabric of spacetime, the pantheons of unborn ones swallowed alongside the nuclear beast that had been attached to his soul.
The condensed point emits waves of sinew that deny the existence of the alien laws of physics that had been imposed by the Shard Of War on this infinitesimal portion of the lowest ring of the Abyss, shattering the remaining legions of unborn ones that rose their tributes to the Shard of war out of sync with reality, burning their fleeting form that tried to escape to the past and vaporizing the left stuck in the present.
BE NOT
Flickering the sphere forward, it cut across the indefinable distance between him and the last deities, shattering space and destiny on its way as it connected with both of them simultaneously, rupturing in one denarius flash, a holocaust of azure flames that dissolved both of them, the remaining energy speeding outward in the endless void.
Belos takes another step, the influence of the Forest Kingdome fading away as the laws of physics take their hold on the man and the restrain of the First dream binding him to the mortal plane, the large cabin of the owl lady coming into view.
Their presence, bathed in the Abyss influence, draws the irk of the witch's pet, the long and perfectly circular body of Hooty charging at the invaders of Eda's territory, its squeaky voice sprouting some nonsense Belos had no interest in listening.
Hooty's mouth unhinged, growing large enough to swallow both the emperor and his royal guard, only the rest of the body remaining the same size.
The emperor feels the tension of Number Two as its hollow eye sockets glare at the Hooty, making it freeze for a beat, body suspended in the air.
Pathetic
"How lowly the heir of the Worm Gods had fallen." He feels disgust roll on his at the lowly state of the last Worm God of its kind, who, for whatever reason, had yet to shed their carapace for the infectious dark liquid he had grown accustomed their kind to have.
The door of the house swings wide open, and before he can open his mouth, a shell of light shoots past Belos's temple, vaporizing the patch of tall trees behind him.
Raising his arms in surrender, he pinned Number Two to the floor as his guard let the glass container fall from his grip and grabbed the blade beneath his powder white coat, his scales hand grasping the hilt with brutal intent.
FALL
Power vibrated from Eda's staff that extinguished the shadows around them, her golden eyes shimmering with royal radiance in the dwindling twilight.
Long ashen feathers grew adjacent to her ears and around her neck like a mane, each ending tip of the feathers vane shaped and shaded like obsidian blades that slightly shifted at radome intervale.
He got to give it to her, those were so good instincts to be able to sniff his presence in a few moments.
But not enough time for what was to come
"I bring no ill intention, Owl Witch, quite the opposite."
Waiting for her approval, the woman shifted her eyes from him toward his royal guard and then to him again, a set of orange rings formed behind her that most people wouldn't have caught.
Finally relenting, she moved her staff to her left arm and placed her free hand on her hip, raising an eyebrow that conveyed a mix of judgment and a subtle tinge of apprehension.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of this surprise visit of our esteemed ruler?" A demeaning smile paid on her lips, her body shifting so it covered the entrance to the house.
'Ah, it had been some time since the owl lady had received guests into her house.' He mused as he turned his attention toward the women again.
The Emperor stayed silent, not needing to raise a hand to forestall his guard, the pressure weighting on Number Two shoulder lessening but not completely, in case it decided to do something less favorable. Picking up the spotless glass container, it swiftly moved forward and placed it at Eda's feet before retreating behind Belos, allowing a hint of its animosity to glimmer to the surface when the hanging blade buckled to its hip narrowly missed Hooty's body.
Eda didn't seem to notice, her face contorting in a puzzled frown as she shot him a questioning gaze.
Alas, with her eyes still trained on him, she bent down to pick the juice up, grabbing the container with three fingers and hoisting it in the air.
"It's Apple Blood of the highest caliber, I offer this as a sign of my goodwill and nothing more, if you would accept it, I believe we could start negotiating reparations to ensure no conflict comes of this."
Blinking in confusion, Eda stared at him for a few seconds to decipher if he was fucking with her before blurring out.
"W-why?"
"It would be disgraceful to not repay the damage done by my subordi-"
"No, I mean why do you even care? Aren't you like the "lord" of the Isle? Shouldn't you try to imprison me or something like your 'subordinate' had been trying and mind I remind you falling to do for the past decades."
The ancient man smiled behind the mask, taking one step forward and placing his hand across his armored chest in an apologizing manner.
Although earning the title of the biggest criminal on the island, that title was nothing more than an empty promise for the aristocrats that the reason for the sudden absence of a portion of their fortunes would one day be brought to justice, most of the normal guards not actually capable of doing anything when it came to the Eda.
A spike of anger, quickly kindled and extinguished, surged within him at the thought of the higher-ranking individuals in his court, those whom he had shown a glimmer of trust and had explicitly warned against meddling with the Owl Lady and her associates doing exactly what they were told not to.
They should count their luck that Eda was far a kinder person than most could imagine, for if she desired, he would have their heads hanging from wooden spikes if it meant he could remove all animosity with the successor of one of the first Monarchs.
"Able minds won fairly are much more reliable than those taken by force, I would be foolish not to know that. Please don't take the poor behavior of my said-to-be-competent subordinate as my own will."
As he talked, something massive rose beside Eda, two sets of eyes staring at him behind a prolonged white mane that swerved in the sudden breeze before resting its head on the witch's shoulder, galaxies of unknown wonder reflecting from within each eye socket. Its smooth skin was covered in charcoal grey stripes, a dusk color similar to the metal pewter peaked beneath the blanket of obsidian feathers that glistened under the sun's rays.
The feathers shifted around as the owl beast made itself comfortable, only to be disturbed as the elongated form of Hooty came barreling toward Eda, curling around her like a python, a glimmer of irritation shining between the ocean of starlight that he could relate to.
The moment Hooty began to speak, Belos muted any sound coming from the offspring of the Worm Gods, one second of hearing its squeaky voice being enough.
Eda didn't offer any reply to the babbling creature, merely petting its head until it calmed down enough to retreat to the hole in the center of the door, sparing him of its incessant words. While still glaring at Hooty, the owl beast turns its head toward the witch, whispering into her ear its recommendation of what to request.
" A blade mended from the carapace of a smith God should suffice due to our lack of weapons for close-quarters combat. We can also demand to be mended into our staff fo- ."
"How about two hundred thousand snails." Disregarding the Owl Beast's bizarre gibberish, Eda pins the Emperor with her gaze, waiting for him to back down after hearing the insurmountable offer, all the while seamlessly disregarding the beast's whining.
Suspended for a moment in anticipation, a wooden box that was previously absent surrendered to gravity's gentle pull, its lid parted from the box, revealing a cascade of golden snails, glinting in the ambient light as they spilled forth like a gleaming river of wealth.
Her hands hovered hesitantly in mid-air, caught in a suspended dance of uncertainty as if waiting for the punchline to a joke to arrive.
"I hope this would suffice."
For a moment, his gaze met the owl beast, the creature's nuances of emotions, subtly etched in the lines around their eyes, betraying a spectrum of fear as it turned away.
"It's a pleasure to meet you again Behemoth, terror of Babylon."
His words seemed to break Eda from her stupor, her eyes widening to the size of dinner plates as swung back and forth between her companion and Belos in pure stupefaction.
"You see itโ wait more importantly, how do you know each other ."
The woman gazed at her companion with an expression of sheer incredulity, as if it had suddenly sprouted a second head right before her eyes, a look mingled with disbelief and skepticism blooming on her face.
"Although I have yet to properly converse with your companion, its kin had proved to be an elusive guest to converse with over a cup of tea."
While he talks, another glass portal that bridges the gap between the material world and the abyss opens, followed by another one parallel to it, showcasing his golden throne room.
"Nevertheless, I hope this offering can pay the reparations needed to fix the damage done by my subordinate, and regarding the tragic news that will ... in the coming days, you have my earnest sympathy."
After waiting for a couple more moments for any objection, the strongest creature alive tilts his head forward before passing through the gaping hole in reality, leaving the dumbfounded witch and her life companion to the tranquility of their porch.
"Eda, who are you talking to?" The voice of the three kids reached her ears just as the Emperor passed through the gap, their little heads peaking behind the edge of her couch.
"No worries kids, just the delivery of some goods Mama needs," Eda replied in a singsong tone, a green glow enveloped the box of snails, and levitated it upstairs before she closed the door with one hand, the other one occupied by the glass container.
"So... Behemoth terror of Babylon huh?" She couldn't help but laugh as a tinge of poppy red smeared the owl beast's ashen skin, grumbling deeper than any creature should, as it returned to its glass cage without responding to her question.
Perhaps she could have prodded her companion for more but everyone deserves their secrets, even when only a thin border of grass separates the two minds.
Depositing the vast reserve of Apple Blood in the basement, she returned to the living room, dropping onto the couch as she turned her attention toward the three kids.
"So, given the interruption, have you three identified had enough time to come out with any convincing arguments regarding why I should let you rascals host a Moonlight Conjuring at my house when the next full moon comes?"
"We sure do."
They did not, in fact, have any convincing arguments.
The tremendous mark on destiny made and soon to be made by the second generation of Monarchs is something that can never be overlooked. But one must never forget the first monarchs who had shaped the past we trek onto, for their strength is not matched by a single being from Creation or the Abyss; their true glory only lessened in the conjointed and diploid words of the First Dream.
They are the only true Gods of the material, immaterial, and the fusion of the two respectively, power recognized by the Nightmares themself, even if infinitely lesser when compared to these horrendous abominations.
For they are the Monarch of Dawn , Luceafฤrul, first son of Life,
The Forgotten Prince of Death and Fire, Abaddon, Monarch of Equilibrium
And last but not least, the last primordial devil now in hiding,
the Monarch of the Abyss .
A part from a manuscript found in the ๐ ๐จ๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ญ ๐จ๐ ๐๐จ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ง๐๐ฌ๐ฌ
Notes:
Another lore-packed chapter? The author must be crazy, but that is a given.
With a better introduction of Belos and the renowned three enigmatic Monarchs( the old and new generation), the fic will now mostly focus on Luz and her not-so-fun adventures until the daunting and unchangeable Grom where shit this the fan.
And as always, If you have any questions, remember to leave them in the comment.
Until next time, take care.