Speech = ``…..´´
Thoughts = … ….
….In search of purpose...
The abyss…
A word rarely spoken, tenebrous and grim….fitting the nature of that prison. Yet not understanding the lengths of brutality that it really was.
Few remember who built the Abyss, even less know where is situated and what laid in the other side of the Tranxiot system that leaded to it.
What everyone knew was that after the age of extinction, when mortals and the divine fought against one another in a war for survival that after the defeat of the latter, they were sent down into this hellish pit. A one way ticket in which nothing acme back.
The first of many gifts that the Dark lord and the few surviving leaders of the war managed to grant what little remained of the world.
They would never hurt them again, the fallen could finally rest easy knowing that they were done for..
Angels, demons, gods...and every soul that had flocked to their side with the goal to wipe out the mortal races...
All together in damnation.
And so inside that dark pit separated from any reality and only tethered to the world by a small sanctum would remain trapped those vile creatures for all eternity, just as their judgement had decreed.
A punishment that for those affected by it had appeared irrelevant. And given their fickle, and violent nature there was some sense to such arrogant perception.
No matter how flawed it was without understanding the nature and inner workings of their prison.
They believed themselves the monsters that everyone feared, that they were safe from further retribution from their jailers in this forgotten place instead of being given the edge of a sword. They even thought in their arrogance that nothing but their fellow kin could rival them and prove a threat to them, that while trapped they could grow fat and lazy. That this was merely a momentary stop and that they could get out at any time
They were terror…
They were might...
They were without mercy...
But they were all deceived…, for there was no hope to be found here, no demon mighty enough to break through the barriers, no time for them to enjoy and bid their time.
They were their own jailers…, unwillingly and unknowingly feeding the darkness with their own essence, with every thought they took, with every action they did..they only made it stronger.
And with primal glee and murderous intent he was more than glad to dispel such silly notions from their minds and show them the truth.
The butcher was home and they were his cattle to do as he pleased.
So he gave them that…., a monster.
But one that they could never win or ran away from…, one that they could see coming, but never stop. Merely hide and whimper until they too were found. Most were defiant, some braver than most….but they all broke under his heel.
Their blood coated every step of the way as he had ventured through inverted mountains and endless pits where sanity was nothing but a foregone memory. Their broken bodies and mutilated limbs littered every nock and cranny imaginable, piling up into mountains of gore and guts. The starless, fake sky nothing but a mantle of darkness that enveloped for eternity every corner of this realm while acid rained down the blacken sharp rocks and dead flesh made forest of tentacles of former convicts who had succumbed to the touch of the abyss...
Mortals, self proclaimed divine or just demons from the lowest or highest orders..they were all pushed into this one sided slaughter. Cut out from their patrons and their masters and their sources of power, they could do little with their current strength…, strength that was syphoned and weakened with each death they suffered.
Death was nothing but the beguiling of their suffering, not its end….
And it was then that they realized the cruelty of this cell without walls. Their despair growing as they felt their souls being chipped away, their memories slowly being tampered, erased...as more and more was taken from them.
Consumed….
The stupid charged towards him either in a blind pursuit of glory or suicide, or running in fright and terror at his sight alone
The smart used the weak and gullible with empty promises of power as meat shields against him and the others who tried to rule this place for as long as they could, for lives had become currency and they were more than willing to pay all but their own to keep themselves in the game.
But they too sowed what they reaped...
Time and time again...
The twin burning suns for eyes he bore onto them before he sliced them up into ribbons with the sharp edge of his psyche becoming the first natural source of light they would ever see in this dark pit. A light that did not promised salvation from the invisible hand of this realm, but one that promised a quick departure towards the waiting metaphorical maws of it.
While the soft, metallic jangling of the tubes connected to the archaic breather acompanied with the sharp breaths through the mask becoming the very last thing they could heard before their demise.
They had taken everything…, every joy, every small, little spark of hope…, they had burn them, they had consumed then, they had corrupted them. But this they could not take away from him...
For once...he was glad to be cursed as he gave himself to the slaughter.
The craven would not find shelter in the shadows. The Shadows would prey upon them..
So they died...
Again..
And again..
Some pleaded, and he killed them..
Some made families, and he killed them...
Some gave up.., and he just killed them.
It was rinse and repeat, like a tedious task. Their cries ignored as steel made its way into their forms. Their vocal cords ripped out from their throats by sharp talons of steel and bone fused into his hands.
Forced to be reborn time and time again, fully aware of the pain and the way they died under his hands.
Never fully knowing which one would be their last...
They had done this to themselves, why should his hand been stain by mercy when they gave none?
When the powerful died, their whimpers were no different than those of a meek creature...it almost made once think how could they believed themselves above the food chain when they had never fought anyone who wasn't lesser than them?
Sadly there were just so many times a soul could be ripped out, consumed and recycled over and over again in what had appeared to be an endless loop of suffering before they too disappeared into nothingness, leaving nothing behind.
Not even a shred of existence but the blood of their previous deaths...
It had been their fate all along.
It had been what he had intended to happen, what it had to occur since he dragged them from whatever hellhole had plucked them into his reality and threw them into this wall-less prison.
Or at least..that was what he believed his former self had tried to do, he wasn't so sure any-more. Memory was such a fickle thing, it had been so many years.., so much time drowned under oceans of blood and butchered flesh.
But now that it had happened….he felt empty, hollow, broken…
As if he had put himself to work towards a goal he had never planned to accomplish in his wildest dreams…., putting himself to task over a matter that it could never be resolved, only for it to laid done before his eyes...and he only had himself to blame for it.
He had waited, patiently for more monsters to be drag here into the Abyss…, that outside these boundaries more bastards were causing chaos so that they would join those that had came before them so that he could return to the monotony of brutalizing and terrorizing them until their bodies and minds shattered under the strain of forced rebirth.
For how long? He did not know...time was not something that could be controlled or checked in this real. It could have been a thousand years, a hundred thousand...or less.
The answer was not clear, but he waited nonetheless.
It was all that he could do...
Yet no one came…
Not a soul, not even a whisper from the voices in his head remained, a fact that he had been glad for a while before he sorely regretted the lack of presence of another being in his vicinity. Even the poisonous words and ill intent of imaginary beings was more fulfilling than this empty pause...
By all means and words he was left...alone in this wasteland.
Two baleful orbs of crimson had tried to peer through the shroud of darkness around him to refute such truth, yet they had proved nothing to show for it.
The silence was crushing him.., like an endless ocean that he could not see, nor touch, but just feel its raw power over his shoulders.
He could not fight that…
Nor there was any satisfaction in killing and maiming the mindless husks of his labour, the bloated and terrific beasts made of flesh and bone from the countless souls whose last meat bags transformed into predators with just one directive. They could not feel pain, they could be scared…, there was nothing to punish from them
And now, like him...they were aimless…
Roaming everywhere in search to quench their thirst for more souls that the abyss tricked them on hearing always near, away from sight.., but never reaching them for none to find in the first place.
In the end, with no one left to torment...the good hound that the Abyss had being, turned on him...its hunger directed at the only living or unliving thing in its domain the same way a body's immune response finally started to kick in when a foreign object had made its way inside..
Those dark ethereal tendrils..., trying to break him, biting the hand that feed it…, it was not alone though. The chains wrapped around his arm, grew tighter and tighter while burned brightly against his limb like melting lava, aching and commanding to be let loose one more time in senseless bloodlust.
But it would never work, no matter how much it would try…, it could not consume its architect.
Besides, what was left to break anyway? He had been the one to end the only joy he had.
So he left, weary and tired he left the hellhole he had come to call home. The only place that the madness of his mind had seem fit for it while also deluding himself to be the only one sane inside that place, but now felt alien to him..never to return to it.
The world outside was no better..
It was bright..., the sun beaming softly above his hooded head. Revealing the cracks and scratches the skull he bore for mask had received through out those years
It was healthy…, the green flushed grounds and the sweet scent of the flowers around the gate-point becoming a stark contrast with his black figure.
It was not natural, it could not be. Every ounce of his body had told him as such, and he had wanted to believe it.
But perhaps he was the one that was not…the wounds in his soul had not left scars, they had fester, rot deep within. He knew he was jarred, but the dissonance between him and the scenery finally spoke how much as he now trod the ground he had left all those years ago, leaving instead of entering.
His footsteps echoed heavily on the stone, immaculate floor who even after being abandoned for who knows how long was still bereft of any sign of dust in the air or ground. In fact it reflected his visage like some sort of mirror.
The air moving away instead of brushing against him as it grew colder with each step, frost and a dark mist slowly slipping out of him as he made his way out through the colossal dual doors…the barriers that had been erected around it and sealing the entire chamber shut vanishing into cinders when he pressed his hand against the doors and pushed. Their massive frames opening rather easily and leading him to a sight he was not expecting.
Vehicles made of metal that resembled the old prototype models for individual transport he had seen once ran through the black and cold asphalt with elegance and simplicity, something that was mirrored by the same type of objects though devoid of any wheels as they floated above their heads.
Buildings made out of glass and steel that could not have been for any purpose than labour spiralling out to the heavens…, people of many races mingling and working with them or just walking by, clearly minding their own business..
He would have chuckled had he remember how...
It definitely had been a long while since he left if someone decided to build a city around the sanctum where they threw the worst of the worst…
Or they had forgotten what was within and who...remained there. A thought that he did not understood why it felt so callous…
So bitter inside his chest.
From there it was just a blur of notions going around him.
The world welcomed him and celebrated his return, chants and fireworks clogged the bright skies with a myriad of voices and colours, the streets becoming overcrowded from one day to the next for weeks without end..
The explosions reminded him of canons shooting down the fell beast out of the go-damn skies, while the voices of the people became the pleads for mercy of those mortals watching with widen eyes at the monstrosities that were about to laid siege to them.
Old men were telling stories and deeds to the young of times that could only be described as legend, while mothers held their children tightly and over their shoulders so that they would not be lost among the crowds and see him better through the distance.
When they should have been running away in terror.
They saw a hero…
He was not...
They were thrilled to be in his presence, he did not share their enthusiasm. It was as if someone was parading an animal before the streets and everyone was trying to a get a good glimpse of the new event in town.
They were marvelled at what laid before them, some even adored him as they rose papers in the air and demanded a signature of him. He did not know what to feel but dizziness at the cacophony he was subjected to, there was no fear in their eyes, nor ill intent..
He was thankful that his face was covered from sight for he could not bare to look at them in the eye.
As the ugliness of his heart came to be.
Envy..., he could only feel envy of their simple, finite lives…even the few who had transcended the veil between those barriers of peril frailty for they at least had a drive to push on unlike him..
He could bare it, everything was a mess. He was a fish out of its own stream.
So he distanced himself from them...
Away from the dark imprint of the abyss, away from the chaotic nature of his newfound reality he thought he would find something to focus on. In time he realized that he had changed an emptiness for another. The only difference being the noise now stuck at the back of his skull.
Now what…..?
It was a question that he had asked himself as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months.
Now what could he do...?
A part of him told that he was more capable to do more than butchery…, that he could lead again, that he could drop the mask and make a new chapter for himself.
But where had that lead him to if not misery? What would he even do if he did..?
No, there was no such choice for him, not any-more. This world, his world... had been built over the mountains of corpses, innocent and guilty alike as the war ravaged every organism that could put two and two together...
Most of them his own making..
The tremors of his hand paled in comparison with the vivid memories passing before his eyes, entire millenniums compacted in mere seconds. Had it been necessary? Definitely…, but should have happened?
``…..´´
No, he would not.. he had given out his hold over the reins when they could stand on their own.., he would not blemish this pure and alien reality from the one his past remembered with his blacken soul. A thought that was reinforced as he gazed at the dried blood of his talons.
He had never clean them, never polished them…
He had never thought he would have to, now they clashed with his clean surroundings.
Tainted...
The past would still cling to him like a cancerous decease, pulling his strings...
He clenched his fist. He needed something to fill the emptiness inside him….something like a foe, a goal...or purpose. Anything…
He looked away from his hands and into the bleeding form of the sun setting down.
He did not know what, he did not know when, but he swore he would find something worth of his efforts. Perhaps then he could find solace in this old heart.
A fools errand perhaps….but he knew better than to hope for empty things, but one that he allowed himself to do for his own sake.
So that was why he decided to do the only thing he thought he could do: To leave through the Atlas Gate.
The nature of his world as a nexus for many others where the wavelengths of magic and reality became entangled that had allowed for such space and time anomalies should now grant him the possibility to go further than this piece of rock in the vast emptiness of the void and go somewhere else, no matter the distance between realities from one point to the other and without the threat of other beings in the great ocean from poking and redirecting him away from his intended destination.
….
At least in theory...
He lowered the control levers, energy flushing through a myriad of tubes making The Gate coming to life. Sparks of raw energy coming out from the exposed pillars all around the circle that made the massive gate, all of that energy colliding in one small pocket at the centre of it all. Leaving a thick and heavy smell of burnt out silver in the process.
It did not vanish or reached the ground, it instead remained in place, floating...creating a distortion that could have been mistaken by the uneducated by a black hole. His red, glowing eyes watching under the skull mask at the light show, not-fazed at the growing, rippling pool of blue, purple and black energy that if worse came to be cold blow up the entire place into a different reality.
In time it grew and reached the very same pillars that was feeding the tear in reality, flickering for one second or two until it became stable. The room still silent if not by the buzzing of the machinery and the crackling sound of energy still whipping the air..
``Lets get this thing a try...´´
He said, eyeing carefully the open window to the great ocean, as if expecting something to pour out of it at any given moment, and though he spoke softly it came out like a strong, booming growl from the filters of his mask.
A second later and he disappeared through it.
º
...A few attempts later…
º
``….´´
``….´´
He sighed, the sound coming out cold and sharp through the filters...
``Why it is so difficult to find a damn world..?´´
He snarled, the room shaking by the sound of his voice alone. A dark miasma spreading from him like poisonous gas, but doing nothing more than that...
There were countless worlds outside in the reach of this damn thing but curiously enough, most of them were uninhabited of any sign of life. Barren of life that had yet to nurture through their soil, or had been wiped out a long time ago, be by the species own idiocy...or more threatening predators in the void.
Some scars on the surface of those worlds which he recognised only left a sour taste in his mouth.
Even dead the Destroyer seemed to screw with him. For someone who had wanted to rule all realities he had being hell-bent on destroying what he was meant to rule.
Sadly, the few he had managed to make contact with sentient life had not given him what he was searching for.
The last one being nothing but a disappointment from start to finish.
Its cultures simple, its politics crude and unrefined and the evil of those worlds was just petty thievery and common crookedness than actual contamination from the darkness and anything vile that came from that boiling pot..
In fact, those worlds could have fixed themselves with out intervention whatsoever...so having him reaping souls left and right, no matter how enticing it could appeal to the deepest corners of his soul..was not what he needed.
But perhaps the worst of all had to do with the suicidal, maddened look in that boys eyes.
How that whelp had started bashing his head against a tree for no reason apparent, how his mind became nothing but fumbling nonsense of petty needs and even more strange desires before his sanity was suck up dry when he saw those lights approaching from the distance in the road.
It should have been a little disturbing to see someone as young as that boy to grimace with glee and manically start crying out that damn word, over and over and again like a broken record as he ran as fast as his legs could take him in his one directional voyage to meet his fate…
Naked…
Bleeding..
And completely euphoric...
In a sane world those three words should never have been together….
Still, he had seen worse...
What he had not seen was that it was not out of pain or the desire of someone giving up on life, but someone...with a childish dream taken to the extreme.
He would never admit it, but it had thrown him off at first…, especially since even now he could not understand it.
Atomic..?
Eminence in Shadow..?
Mob character..?
Magic..?
All but the last part were terms alien to him, they did seem to hold a lot of importance to that person though. He had even tried to peer through his mind whether he was been controlled by a different entity through some sophisticated level of manipulation, or he was just sick…
And apart from a healthy amount of psychopathy, he saw nothing wrong with him...
Strange...
Still, he had picked that punk before he became mince meat on the road and knock him out on the spot before hanging him over a tree branch. If he was to die, then he would have the decency to do it outside his sight.
Who knew, perhaps when he woke up he would break his neck...that should satisfy the two parties.
After that he left..
And so, here he was again.., thirty attempts, and none of them had taken him where his heart wanted to be.
He looked at the machine with almost pure contempt, his fist landing on its frame, not out of anger but tired of this stream of failures, though the plate still bended comically where it landed.
He sighed, tired….
``Can you at least do what you are told to do? Or do I have to wreck every bolt from you to make you listen?´´
No one answered, as expected...
He shook his head, dragging his feet towards the lever one more time. His hands grasping the handle carefully, almost fearfully as if he would rip it out from its hinges if he put a little more strength to it.
Eyes narrowed behind the mask as he pulled it down.
``One last chance….or I throw myself into a sun´´
Sadly, he knew that if it came to it….he would sadly survive that.
He had tried it once...
º
...unknwon location…
º
A young woman with long dark purple hair lay trapped in the depths of a room forgotten by the world, yet remembered by a few wicked souls.
Her slender, elegant body though restrained by a series of chains, binding her tightly against a kind of cross that protruded from the floor was unaffected by the passage of time that the room appeared to be as dust covered the ground and tainted the air with thick particles of dirt.…
Her name was Aurora...
She had been in that position for a long time. Kingdoms had risen and fallen as she stood there passing the time like a springless puppet whose master had forgotten in the toy box.
Once she had held power away above than everyone else in this world, a walking calamity, a destroyer..
Now she was nothing but a prisoner of a forgotten memory. Left to rot and bask in her own company for all eternity.
Some would have called it a fitting end for a such a hateful witch…
Her face was lined with sorrow, her lip quivering a bit.., remembering all the desolation that she had unleashed before the apprehension vanished from her shoulders as quickly as it had come.
It was useless to beat herself about it now, wasn't it?
And as the time passed, there had been nothing for her to do in such place. No soul to strike a conversation with, no game long enough to not become tedious in her mind, she could not even sleep yet her body never suffered such deprivation.
So with resignation she had endured a slow and boring existence within those four walls.
Doing nothing...
She was now hanging her head low, her soft, almost like silk hair was covering a part of her face, only leaving the other to the view. Her features were graceful and soft that if someone had come in they would have thought she had fallen asleep in the meantime.
Even though the truth could not have been more different...
But when the floor of the room cracked in two as a wave of energy arrived, pushing away and disturbing the dust from the air, leaving a nitid pathway clean off it she could not help but open her eyes at the metaphorical and literal sensation of a titanic hand shaking her cell back and forth for a few brief seconds.
Her bindings remained as strong as ever, yet for some reason she felt she could breath in the fresh air of the outside world. Her heart slowly beating a little more faster, her gloved fingers flexing as she took a few, long.., deep breaths..
To say that she was curious at the strange occurrence would have been an understatement, what could have done such thing? Who?
The energy she felt was thick, pure in its sheer amount...yet she had the feeling that it was just a faint touch. Like the weak leftovers winds brushing against a farmer from a hurricane thousands of miles a way.
Her eyes narrowed in contemplation as she studied the thin, almost invisible threads of energy that were floating in the air.
She was sure it was not coming from within the structure. She would have discovered it immediately had it been the case.
No, this was foreign, not just outside the walls of the sanctuary, but even the city outside of it...she was sure of it.
Soon, her countenance became smiling, then serious before ending with mild amusement on her lips as the sensation struck a cord inside her. Something that she had not felt before…
In long, long time..
``So someone has fallen into this world again…´´
She spoke out loud to no one in particular, hearing the sound of her own voice after a long time through that empty space surprised her a bit before her eyes darted to the sides and finally to the door leading outside.
No, not at the door...her eyes were peering outside the boundaries that her body remained trapped within. Leaving this Sanctuary made labyrinth and flying with her mind through the air towards the presence she felt like a moth to a flame all that while she could sense rather briefly the magical bindings that kept her still trying to rebuild themselves from the impact.
She had no much time to satiate her curiosity, but she would not have to wait for long.
What she was about to witness would always remain in her memory as her eyes widened, almost threatening to fall out of her sockets, pupils shaking uncontrollably. Her mouth open in sheer awe...
Power…
Just, unending raw power….
It was like a massive column of fire had protruded from the ground and rise to the heavens covering everything she could see.
Thick with darkness, swirling in all direction, yet none at the same time. Like a void, a wound in reality...yet it glowed with a light of its own as-well. Sparks of twilight and the beams of light of a sun of morning fighting to outshine the converging tide of blackness...
It was contradictory, its weight was massive as if it could bend mountains on its own and for a moment she thought she could hear the shrieks of a million souls emanating from the smoke.
Ever condensing, ever expanding...
Anyone else would have fainted on the spot or died out in a heart attack. She could only blink amazed.
She knew power, or at least she had thought she did. Now she was not sure...she had never saw something like it before. For this was not a magical anomaly, or an ancient artefact out of control.
This was coming from a living, breathing being...
No matter how impossible such thing resulted in her mind, how no one like that could ever retain such amount of energy and not die or explode by it she was sure of it as she saw the dark, hooded figure at the centre of it all.
She could not help became engrossed on this being, studying every small detail that her eyes could see. Taking on the pale bone skull that was covered by a thick and heavy black hood.
Two massive pauldrons of unknown white steel in each of his shoulders, one bearing the form of a laughing skull while the other was bereft of anything but spikes, the two held together by a pair of chains that had wrapped around his chest, something similar to the metallic contraction in which those two jangling tubes where connected to his face, glowing with energy... while the rest of his body was encased in a large black trench coat.
``Who are you..?´´
She muttered to herself as she glared at him, if she could have she would have scratched the back of her head in deep thought.
It was only then that two twin crimson stars that beamed inside that fog and looked not towards her, but right at her…. as if it had heard her.
The suddenness of the act made her fall into panic for one or two seconds as she broke the connection and retreated back to her cell.
Her body shivering at the coldness of the stare, yet before long she could not but wonder with a bit of childish interest what such thing would mean for this world of men and the ones trying to control it.
For better or for worse...the dices had been cast and the gods had made their choice.
She rose her head one more time before she tried to return to her fake sleep. Her lips parting ways before she spoke softly, almost in a whisper, the air dragging the words away.
``What will your actions bring…., strange one?.´´
And for once after all this time, she had something to truly look forward to.
º
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A/N
An idea that came across though I don't know where will it lead me to. (It will still be in revision if I decide to change things on this or any chapter).
Have a good day...