[I humbly tender my sincere apologies for skipping on a release the day before..,it was a busy day on my part..
I sincerely hope you understand my plight..I truly apologize..]
The Author
littledivingduck
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Chapter 21: The Sun
"I deem the Great Seal binding you... O monstrous pawn of mine." Then, with a dreary, timeless pause...
"A futility."
His form dissolved into ethereal mist, laden with swirling stars, reemerging into reality atop the towering spire of the Cathedral of the Primordial Sun. His hands spread outstretched, his white hair danced in the wind in ethereal steps, and his face was now covered by the convoluted horned helm of Fate. The entirety of the Province of Valen sprawled before him,
A labyrinth of fog-shrouded cobblestone streets lit by flickering gas lamps, grand Gothic spires piercing the smoggy sky, horse-drawn hansom cabs clattering along avenues lined with wrought-iron railings and ornate townhouses. Factories belched steam from the industrial outskirts, while the distant chime of Big clock towers echoed through the bustling markets and shadowed alleys of the slums.
"Arise," his voice thundered like a god from above. The denizens below lifted their eyes to his form, erupting into chaos.
"A condemnation... it's a humanoid condemnation!" A cry burst from a scholar in the crowd, his outstretched hands trembling in rhythm with the terror in his bloodshot eyes.
"A condemnation!"
"Run!"
"Someone alert the Inquisitors!"
"Tom... Tom! I can't find my son... my son!"
The crowd dissolved into a mesmerizing haze of pandemonium. The scholar who had first named him crumpled to the ground, groping blindly for his glasses, now crushed beneath the stampede of wailing bodies.
Nobles struggled to straddle their overturned carts and luxurious carriages, screaming for drivers who had fled on foot. Traders bolted their shop doors, tossing crates of porcelain teacups and bolts of silk into the gloom.
Slum dwellers, ragged in threadbare coats and top hats pilfered from the gentry, seized the disorder—snatching golden pocket watches, jeweled brooches, or coin purses from the nobles' grasp.
But it was all too late.
His silver eyes caught the figure of a little mortal—a child, as humans called it—ignorantly crawling toward the hat. His tousled expensive suit scraped against the grimy cobblestones, the boy no less than eight years old, bearing a playful glint in his eyes.
How brave.
This little one was far braver than all the mortals he had witnessed.
He watched the mother—the one who had screamed earlier—dashing toward the child.
"Tommie... Tom!"
Her eyes were watery, laden with urgency.
He observed with amusement as the scene unfolded amid the chaos.
Was this perhaps what mortals gauged as love? Risking the end of your existence for another who seemed merely worth it—because you had brought it into being, or perhaps forged a short, dramatic bond with it?
A parasitic emotional dependency, where both hosts fed on each other and claimed mutual satisfaction.
A consensual self-destruction.
How stupid. Futile. And perhaps... how foolish of the Creator, birthing these cursed dependencies that had ignited his own rebellion.
Yet he watched on. After all, one learned most from those stupid enough to live their lives as examples.
The mortal child crawled onward, finally dipping his hands into the hat. Shadows of hastened footsteps occasionally crossed his smiling form.
Like he had claimed a treasure.
The other mortal—referred to as the mother by humans—dragged herself to a halt on the concrete pavement. Her jewelry and gold necklaces sparkled in the sun as she pulled the child into a crushing hug, tossing the cracking orb as far as she could.
The sound of the orb crashing against the ground was drowned in the chaos of screams and footsteps.
"Tommie." He watched the mother, her hands framing the frowning child's face as she inspected his form. A smile played on her lips when she saw he was unharmed.
An inconsequential delay.
He sighed.
The orb detonated in an exploding impact, a ring of force rippling outward like a cinematic shockwave in slow motion. In a heartbeat, the blast consumed all life forms—mortals and beasts of burden alike—reducing them to bloodied pastes of bone and flesh.
Within a hundred-kilometer radius, the world crumbled, Architectural facades shattered into jagged ruins, gas lamps erupted in fiery bursts, and carriages splintered like matchwood. The windy aftermath whipped against his form, now threatening to topple the Cathedral of the Primordial Sun into rubble.
Debris swirled in a vortex of dust and screams silenced forever, the air thick with the acrid scent of scorched stone and iron, painting a brief yet immersive tableau of utter annihilation.
A great crater yawned in the city district, now laden with a gigantic surging sea of dark ichor. The few remaining mortals' eyes widened as they resumed their frenzied haste, directionless, legs driven by instinct to flee as far from the crater as possible.
A futile attempt. For the monster itself was now free.
It came first as winter, under the blazing sun of Valen. An encroaching cold swept in, and from the clear skies, snowy flakes fell, landing in pristine form on the decapitated city—on the bodies of nobles and slum dwellers alike, who beheld it in scary awe.
Their eyes bore nothing but fear as the cold silence and wind bathed them, along with buried memories. Their gazes darkened, bodies shook as if reliving their worst nightmares.
Then, slowly, while some ran, others stood as if they had lost all hope.
"It's it... the Terror of years ago... it's coming!" someone screamed from the crowd—a slum dweller in a tattered cloak, hastening away with frightened eyes.
Yet his words birthed a great effect on the pausing throng; their frenzy ignited. The silhouette of an old, crippled woman crumpled to the floor as she was crashed into, her body trampled like an insignificant step toward survival.
"The Winter Monstrosity... it's the Winter Monstrosity!"
Cries bellowed. Parents swung their children onto shoulders, adrenaline surging to keep pace with the others. Even denominators from the churches fled alongside them, boots kicking up the snow.
Hypocrites... just like their Creator.
"Vortagem... has it been found?" His eyes wandered to the ichor now overflowing in floods from the crater, scorching the ground into a low-spreading chasm, devouring some unfortunates along with it.
"Not yet, my Lord. But I shall..soon. Pardon my inconsistency." Vortagem chimed, her crow form disappearing from above.
"I see not inconsistency, but devotion. Continue searching, dear reliable partner of mine." His form was shadowed by the colossal rise of the dark viscera, slowly taking the shape of a gigantic humanoid. The great shadow drowned the entirety of the city against its huge grey walls.
He could now see it: the grey, cold orbs of the moon locked on his form as it gazed like a god from above. The ichor solidified to form its terrifying shape, now blocking the sun and forcing Valen into a state of night.
Its jagged head, crowned by two halos, left those below as mere skittering figures. Tilting its head, it dismissed them; its eyes locked back on his visage.
He smiled.
He knew how prideful this monster was—it recognized only power; it would settle for nothing less.
How burdensome.
The tattered clothes he wore faded into wisps of darkness, replaced by encroaching armor of night. His dark cape, laden with auroras, flapped in the air, defying gravity itself.
His figure stood as a dark beacon against the chaos and impending doom.
This was the Plague.
The monster took a step forward. Its grand stump of a leg rattled the entirety of Valen, crushing architecture to rubble under its great feet—a tremor into the planet's tectonic plates, sending seismic forces that cleaved buildings and mortals alike. Even the great monolithic clock in the distant slums gave way, its hands frozen mid-chime.
"It's the end... the end..." A woman clothed in an apron screamed, her form now nestled on the ground. Her hands held the cleaved body of a man who appeared to be her partner, tears gushing from her eyes as she resigned to fate.
The great foot of the Winter Monstrosity crushed her form and half the district to pulp. The remainder of the running crowd was tossed under the impact but regained their footing, fleeing further.
The noble quarter was now gone, as the walking destruction made its way toward the Cathedral spire, where another dark masked enigma stood.
His glance remained unperturbed. For all this had been his plan. He wasn't going to fight this little monstrosity...
They would.
After all, it was for that purpose they had been told.
His dear resistance.
He raised his hands in a vertical swipe toward the impending monstrosity.
"Boom," he muttered.
And thus it happened—not by his hand, but a blinding, blazing meteor tore from the sky above, painting the world in shades of blazing crimson. The Great Titan glanced toward it, but perhaps it was too late; before its concurrent halos could spin...
The descending phoenix rammed into its form, severing it in a vertical cleave, ushering a bright white twinkle—a gigantic door of exploding cataclysm. A spike in geothermal heat melted steel to liquid scarlet and buildings to charred dust.
It evaporated much of the black flood of viscera, deepening and expanding the crater into a red basin while carving a deep, red-hot chasm across it.
Like a miniature sun.
In that instant, simultaneously, a crimson rift as large as the basin tore open in the sky above. From it, multiple long crimson tentacles wove downward, the air bending around them.
The tentacles spun like threads, weaving a circular dome spanning the destroyed district—like blood spreading on water, drowning the visage of the sun as it enclosed him, the monstrosity-who now reformed itself, rendering the vertical cleave a futility, and the new "sun."
A figure he couldn't make out amid the glorious light burning from its form stood far below on the concrete ground—or whatever remained of it—at the chasm's edge.
But he could tell it was humanoid. It held a sword—a golden blade forged not of matter but of strings of burning energy, its size as huge as the figure itself, who bore a burning orb emanating the light and glory of the sun within its chest.
Yet the environment around it was untouched: a glowing beacon in this new crimson world.
Such absurd control over its essence. Quite applaudable for a mortal.
Then the figure boomed, its finger outstretched. Debris and rocks tore from the ground, hurtling toward its hand from all directions. They collided and compressed, faster and faster, until they ignited into a miniature, unstable sun—a fiery orb now encircled by a golden ring of debris moving at relativistic speeds.
"Tell me, treacherous invaders of Valen," the golden figure took a step.
"Have you ever witnessed the beauty of the sunrise?"