In an ivory white room that glowed with a magnificence that could not be described, lied an injured prince on the ground, his eyes dark and empty, his clothes tattered and sullied with his own blood, with a sword tied to his hands by a cloth dyed crimson. Then, softly came a voice.
"Your visage has been shattered, your love killed in front of you, and your vassals eradicated, leaving behind only the blood and the cloth that you tie around your hands." The woman stated walking around him, her footsteps echoing through the room.
Met with silence, the woman raised her hand and raised the mangled corpse of a maiden out of the ground that acted like water, rippling under the prince's unmoving solitude. The woman grows impatient, walking towards the prince and raising his head by the chin, showing him the corpse.
The prince's eyes remain bleak as tears, stained red, flow like rivers from his eyes.
"I saved your life because I saw potential in you, I saw the same in that woman. I can bring her back to life, only if you both agree to be my apprentice."
The woman retracts her hand from the prince's chin, bringing with it, his injuries that followed her hand like smoke chasing the gales. The woman stands up, her tall figure accentuated to the prince as he looks up. The white rim light presenting the elegance in the woman's all black clothing paired with her large veiled hat ornamented by black roses and thorns throughout her dress.
"If you desire your lover's resurrection, then kneel before me with your head on your hands and draw your own blood."
Slowly, the prince's hands move towards each other, his head bowing down towards the woman. He bites the tip of his tongue off and draws blood from the wound, staining the pure white floor that surrounded them.
"Then let it be known, the greatest witch in all realities has taken on her first apprentices. Tarnished prince, abandon the name you were given and, in its place, remember this story!"
From nowhere, a blade that glimmered in brilliance appeared, as soon as it was held by the woman in black it turned rusted and withering. The room shakes as she began to speak
"The keeper of time was borne with the burden of eternity, in his misery he gave me three worlds, a clock, and his most prized possession, in exchange for a death with no issue. The keeper of time gave me his name, and now I shall pass it on to you. Be reborn with the strike of my blade, grow strong under the weight of his name, and learn as my disciple and teach the world of my majesty, so that in the end, your freedom could be earned."
The prince closes his eyes waiting for the blade to strike him. The brief eternity of silence he had experienced at that very moment was bothered by the piercing pain of a sword down his spine, cutting through to the side gutting him. Still he keeps kneeling with his head on the ground as the same sword was raised once more, cutting off his head.
In the maddening silence and darkness the prince was left in, he heard the woman's voice.
"Live once more, be reborn and let your soul assimilate again in this body I tailored for you."
The boy hears his heart beat as he floats in dead space, only to get pulled back up once more.
"Rise, my apprentice."
The boy wakes up, shivering from the cold, curling up on the ground, with no clothes left on his back. Everything around him overloading his senses as if it was the first time he had woken up.
Horus hears his heart beat while he's surrounded by Kanonikoi Anthropi with Danica standing a fair distance away from them. Horus signals the five before getting closer to Danica, eventually being able to rest his hand on her shoulder.
"Give me his head, and I shall give you your reward." Horus says, his voice calm as his hand burns with a blue flame.
"He is still alive." Danica responds, the heat from her shoulder intensifying.
"I will deal with him, so give me the head."
Danica shoves away Horus in fear and steps back before raising her blade towards him.
"Just what in the world are you?"
Horus responds with nothing but silence, his gaze calm and tired as he wipes off the flames that caught on his clothes.
"Answer me goddamit!" Frustrated, Danica crushes Osial's head more as she raises her blade higher towards him, blue fire flutters in the air behind the path of her blade as she trembles.
"Continue on with this nonsense and that thing your holding in your hands will invade your body and kill you, later using your body as a vessel for its spirit. If that happens even the five would have some trouble."
"Stop dodging the question and answer me!" Danica rips the air with fire as she flails her blade.
"I am but a humble captain." Horus says with a flat expression, his eyes felt sincere.
In Danica's eyes, she saw something far different. She saw a monster hiding behind a thousand cages, its eyes invoking a spine-chilling fear to anyone who meet it, and its dark figure hulking over any being that would ever stand before it.
"How rude." The beast spoke to the fool that dared meet eyes with it. Danica's whole body screamed as her hands loosened their grip on the blade she held, the five behind Horus began to sweat as well.
Suddenly, Horus sees veins spreading to Danica's fingertips. His eyes shoot open as he dashed towards Danica, slicing her hand off and grabbing Osial's head. Danica screams as she regains her senses, she catches her breath as she falls to her knees and looks at her hand. She loses her words as she sees it severed; the blood spilling out everywhere. Danica falls backwards as she grips her hand and lets out incomprehensible cries, until she turns to tears.
Horus walks towards her, grabbing her by the wrist and raising it up. Blue flames rage uncontrollably as bones muscle and skin reform inside the inferno, Danica watches in disbelief as she regains sensation in her hands, soon passing out from the shock.
Horus passes a glance to the conductress on his ship who was watching the events go down, running down towards them at a blistering speed and bending her knee in front of Horus.
Horus throws Danica into the conductress' hands and places Osial's head on the ground. Snakes begin to slither from the ground, eating away at the sea god's head, crawling into his ears and mouth, consuming him completely.
Horus raises his hand and the conductress evacuates the scene while the five ready their formation. Horus hands them better weaponry and looks at them with a cold expression.
"Will you simply let a child outclass you like that? Go on, prove yourselves." Horus says before hands made of shadows erupt from the ground, grabbing Horus and pulling him down. Horus' eyes were painted in an intense and bright crimson, glowing like gems as he's eventually pulled down completely, leaving the five to fend for themselves.
The ground shakes and swells, Osial's head is raised above the ground by hundreds of snakes slithering up one another, forming a body. As if they were being controlled, the snakes group around Osial's head, forming the body of a titan that towered over the trees that the elven race usually resided. Its shape was menacing and could send shivers down anyone's spine as miasma slowly started to pour out of the cracks in between the accursed form.
Soon, the body was covered in black miasma that bonded the snakes that formed the titan's shape into skin and bone. Its flesh was scaly and black, like chainmail that wrapped around the whole giant. Though the being was not as tall as the undead giants that he had clutter the sea with waves higher than mountains, its eyes that glowed under the helm of a giant snake's skull leaked devilish miasma that flowed pitch black, tainting the gales that pass by it.
"Prepare, foolish mortals. I shall not let you leave." Osial says calmly as a fog of darkness fills the ground, causing the dirt to rise and form into golems of stone and dirt, covered in armor by the plague of darkness that surrounded them
"Ad infinitum." Frieda announces, striking the titan with a thousand bolts of lightning and piercing the thick fog, breaking through the near endless golems that rumbled the earth.
Hundreds of them get shattered with every shot that leaves Alexandria's barrel. Her every breath was patient, calm, and focused to a terrifying degree as she imbues every bullet with high tier magic in mere seconds.
Osial attempts to stomp the ground only to be stopped by Erick, cutting his leg off as he walks towards him, lacerating the golems that he passes by while Hinderfin throws and smashes the golems like Zeus throwing lightning at the menacing titan as it tried to step back.
Quinn rides one of the thrown giants to pierce the titan through his heart. Quinn raises his spear over his shoulder, imbuing it with a magic that surrounds it with a blinding light a hundred times bigger than the spear itself, throwing it and breaking the sound barrier before falling back to the ground harshly.
Osial narrowly avoids the spear that flew like thunder towards him, letting it burrow deep into the ground behind him
Magic sputters, bullets fly, and sparks melt the ground as the sun gets blotted out from a spell that Frieda begins to cast.
"This is the first blessing of the world. With its power I shall strike you down with the power of the gods… Death is your only repentance." Frieda blocks out the sun completely and enchants Erick's blade.
Erick takes a breath and Osial sees a giant bigger than himself raises his blade to swing. In that split second, the titan regenerates his leg and braces for the giant's blade to fall upon him. As he tries to anticipate the giant's oncoming blow, he feels his leading leg getting cut off from below.
"Illusionist!" Osial cries as he reforms his body to try and retaliate. Once more the sea god sees a giant now thrice his size, the sea god ignores him and throws a passing asteroid the same size as a castle.
Erick looks up at the titan with disdain in his eyes while the giant above him grabs the asteroid as it split the clouds and smashes it into Osial's face, shattering the meteor as well as the titan's skull. And with a blinding flash of light, Erick cuts the titan into a fog of black mist before he could fall to the ground
The island falls silent for a second as everything stops. The golems freeze in their tracks until the ground begins to shake uncontrollably. The fog of miasma begins to float, twist and rise towards the sky, forming into a tornado that attracts a storm in the darkness.
Rain begins to fall as the ground keeps shaking. The golems all simultaneously shatter, making a deafening noise that echoed in the storm as the ground started to flood. Not from the rain, but rather from the sea. It was rising at an unnatural pace, flooding the island in water before spiraling to the center, engulfing the whole island under the sea.
Erick dissipates the giant behind him and fashions a bright set of armor that glowed like the sun, filling the field with light and making the thing at the opposite side of the five visible.
Water formed the shape of a body which was 8 feet tall, eventually turning pitch black and thick, soon bursting like a bubble and revealing the being that was inside.
A soul reaper with a cloak painted in nebulas which was almost perfectly pristine except for a hole near the heart and a face made of pale flesh with a scar at the center of its head.
Erick tunes his rhythm to the gentle beat of his heart, the blade in his hands shimmering with the glow of the sun. He knows how long the spell Frieda casted would last, and he knows just how to defeat his opponent, all he needs is to come forward and fight.
He took the first step and raised his stance. The cultivation of millennia of training has led to this moment for him, thus he aims to give it his everything.
Erick flies through the near endless spells the tyrant casts as Quinton hurled spears at Osial while Hinderfin guards the women. Each step that Erick takes, the earth under him crumbles, leaving him no platform to back off from, not that he ever had the intention to. His eyes jump from one thing to another, attacking and defending back and forth against the relentless attacks of the sea god.
Osial aims to tire out the swordsman before he can get close to him, and to him this strategy was working. Although none of his attacks were inflicting any damage, it was still taking energy away from Erick with each and every evasion he succeeded.
The field was never filled with a single voice. Every single one of them knew how to act, how to move, and how to behave as if they replayed the same event tens of thousands of times before this.
Quietly, the five fought the hardest fight they would ever fight all for the sake of the man who raised them to this point
The fight continues for over 30 minutes, witling down at the strength of both sides. Erick had been in a perpetual bout with the sea god directly ever since the start of the fight and he showed not a sign of weakness as he relentlessly battled the tyrant.
Osial himself was slowly beginning to struggle as well, his thoughts were bothered by the five's persistence, not giving him a second to plan anything out. And with how long the battle had been going, the tyrant god had run out of cards.
Osial never meant to go to this reality in the first place. The tyrant snake of the sea was once a beggar on the streets only known as Igneous. One day he had come across a group of men in robes painted in nebulas same as his today. His eyes met theirs in an alleyway in the slums he had called home at the time and the men held him by his collar and leered at him till they grew tired of it. A man with tinted hair and strange eyes tossed Igneous a bag of coins and told him to come with them.
Though Igneous had hesitated for a moment, a strange feeling had pulled him in like he was tied to a rope, drawing him towards them as they were waiting for him. Then he journeyed with them. The men fed him, clothed him, and let him follow them in their travels, getting closer to him with every conversation they had made and each area they went to. Then they arrived at a strange place. A machine surrounded in large roots and twisted trees; its core was a deep purple that reminded Igneous of the scales on the snakes he used to eat when he was starved for weeks at a time.
Their group ventured closer to the strange machine and once more, he felt that tugging feeling he had felt before, this time calling him from inside a crevice that led inside the strange machine that began to whir as they drew closer. One of Igneous' friends, a man with bright red hair and royal blue eyes that had ivory white diamonds around them called to him.
"It's drawing you in, isn't it? Go ahead, we'll make sure you're safe so answer its calls" The man pushed him towards the crevice and reassured him once more with a wave.
Igneous went in slowly, his hands were trembling as he crawled through the damp and narrow passaged filled with moss. The tunnel almost seemed endless as he crawled for what felt like hours until he had reached the center. There stood the purple core that whirred from a distance, this time, its rumbling split Igneous' head open even as he just stood there; he dared not stop even as his vision went blurry.
Slowly, he walked towards the machine, pulled by the strings that had led him here in the first place. He had reached half way before falling to his knees, forcing him to crawl till he was under the machine. He lied down on his back, barely able to think, making out what looked to be a sphere filled with something, feeding the earth and soil. A liquid started to pool at the bottom of the sphere, eventually dripping on to Osial.
He blinks before the liquid hits him and the rumbling suddenly stops. Opening his eyes he saw snakes with their jaws wide open falling towards him, biting him in the neck and all through his body, filling him with venom that made him scream in pain as they gnawed and ate his flesh while he flailed around before eventually stopping, writing in pain as his consciousness fades away before he died.
"Rise, the tyrant of the sea, Osial."
Outside, Igneous' friends were waiting for him from afar, they watched as the core rumbled and the ground quaked. Then, one of them notices an eye of a snake open from under the machine. Suddenly, a giant snake erupted from below the machine, swallowing it whole in a single bite, and crashing down in the trees. Causing Osial's friends to run over to the location.
Osial wakes up lying on the ground with the men surrounding him. One was laughing, another was watching from a distance, and the man with red hair was holding his head up as he woke up.
"What in the world happened?" Osial asks, coughing blood as he tried to sit up.
"You've become one of us, you've become a god." The man with red hair replied, his eyes wide as he looked at Osial, later noticing his gaze and shooting him a smile.
Osial passes out again and his friends carry him back to the tent they had made before.
Moving forward in time, Osial reminisces one of the last memories he had with his old friends. They were moving forward in a blizzard, there were ten of them at the time and they were talking about their plans. One wanted to move out of the continent, another talked about retiring to read some of the books they had gathered during their trip, and the others chatted amongst their selves while they walked. But after a while, he notices their conversation die down until they eventually went silent. Gradually, Osial begins to slow down until he eventually stops. But before he could utter a word, he felt a gunshot near his heart.
From outside the barrier of water, a bullet coated in a large shell of magic pierced the barrier of rushing water, making a hole where Osial's heart should've been, this time, annihilating his core along with it.
He turns around and finds the man who invited him to all of this. His bleak eyes that leered at him, his long hair that flowed with the harsh cold winds that blew threw him, and the weapon he only ever held against those he considered enemies, everything about him at that very moment made what just happened sting more than it should have.
"I missed." The man said as Osial tried to move, shooting him on the opposite side of the chest, almost hitting his heart and making him fall to the ground, coloring the snow crimson. The heavy flakes of snow that fell inhibited his sight, barely seeing his friend even as he walked closer to him, only seeing the barrel of his gun as his friend had pointed it at his head and shot him without another word.
The world went dark before Osial could process anything that had just happened, and after a long silence, he woke up. And he was alone again. From that moment on, he decided he wanted to get his revenge. Thus, he pulled on the strings of the world and lead a ship to the island where he was deserted. Even as he was injured, he took upon a grandiose form and bestowed powers to the meager bandits that came to him, hoping to rule the world by the time he had healed fully.
Frustration had set inside him as he felt his armies fade into thin air, their existence erased from the records of time itself as if they never existed, and behind it all he saw the face of a human no more futile than the bandits he had originally given power to.
Alexandria puts a hole in Osial's skull as he falls to his knees. His eyes lose the light in them and he slumps to the ground. His defamed figure fell with a face of pure frustration as his hands gripped on the earth as his consciousness slowly fades for good. The only thing filling his mind were the memories he had made with the people he felt closest to, remembering their faces, their personalities, and then how he was betrayed.
Tears ran down the tyrant god's face as he heaved his final breath, collapsing the barrier of water that surrounded them, and making the earth rumble one last time as the water crashed down like a tsunami.