We walked to the chamber at the end. Along the way, each step amplified the needles digging into my skin. Whatever manner of presence stored wherever we are is almost as bad as that man.
I felt a door, heavy to the push and cold to the touch. A sharp sensation jabbed into my fingers when I met the door.
Guy and I opened the double-door, letting it swing shut before we picked our heads up.
Dear God.
The sight before us was beyond anything I could have prepared for. In the center of the room, surrounded by what I could only guess were layers of occult and technological protections, lay a child—or what was left of one. His small body was parted like baking ingredients around a kitchen.
Rings of some kind of ash, jagged metal shards, circles of salt, and crucifixes hung in the air, their presence deeply unsettling. Bloodied symbols lined the walls, still glistening as if freshly drawn, and chains that looked like they were forged in nightmares crisscrossed the space.
My stomach twisted at the sight of glass containers filled with flesh, floating in cyan liquid. Fingers and toes were splayed to boards, and organs—if that's what they were—had been methodically unshelled. The horror of it all nearly paralyzed me, but nothing prepared me for the moment the child turned its head.
Two cauterized wounds for eyes read me, and its mouth—sewn shut with its lips pressed into its mouth. The threads radiated a faint moonlight. I knew it learned of all that makes me Liora. My breath caught in my throat, and I took an involuntary step back, the sheer wrongness of the child's existence overwhelming every instinct I had to remain calm.
"Bloody 'ell." I muttered without anything more coherent to express the feelings combining in my chest over the mockery and blasphemy displayed.
"Fils de pute." Guy seemed to have similar trouble with words.
A voice echoed in our minds with authority.
"Indeed, I am."
"You-your alive?" Guy fearfully asked.
"Painfully." It replied, the sound a mix of agony and malice. "Tell me. What makes a fate string black?"
"What?" We exchanged confused, fearful glances. The question made no sense, but the way it was asked, with such cold intensity, sent a shiver down my spine.
"Woman, your dark star.... Explain."
My breath caught in my throat, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
Dark star... No, it knew?
My stomach overturned. I could not let anyone- not Guy... not this thing- know.
"It must be a regret."
"Regret?"
"Something I wished never happened."
"Ah... like being born."
"The day I killed a man," I began, a slight shake in my tone, just enough to sell emotion. "The day my lover died."
Guy's eyes widened in shock, his expression going from confusion to horror in an instant. "What the hell are you talking about, Liora?"
I couldn't look at him, not yet. I kept my gaze on the being. "It was... a decade ago. Ten years... We were after a goddess of death. Felix thought we could handle her."
I could feel Guy's eyes on me, burning with the need for answers.
"Felix was as reckless as usual," I continued, forcing the words out as if they were a confession. "He tried to reach the cauldron, but the Morrigan struck. I—I panicked."
"He kept pushing us, pushing me. He abused our trust, led us into danger after danger, and got people hurt. Manon... Manon died because of him." My voice faltered, the weight of that loss hitting me all over again. "I couldn't take it anymore. He crossed too many lines, got one too many killed."
Guy took a step back, his face pale, disbelief turning to anguish. "You... you killed him?"
I finally turned to face Guy, my heart breaking at the sight of his pain.
"He left no choice," I said softly, guilt washing over me. "He would've done it to all of us. I had to stop him."
"Lies wrapped in truth... a dark star indeed." It paused, as if contemplating, before adding, "But there is more. There is always more."
I felt a cold dribble of sweat bead down my back.
Guy was alternating between grief and betrayal, "How could you keep this?"
Then, with a an almost gentle voice, "This seems stronger... The present clings to you, woman. It is more that just a murder... it is a defilement. A knife to a throat."
"There's nothing else," I replied quickly, too quickly. I forced myself to sound calm, to maintain the façade, but the words were slipping through my grasp. "That day… that was the turning point. I had to stop Felix before he destroyed us all."
The being's gaze narrowed, as if it could see right through me. "Lies and half-truths. You play god in a wretched gambit."
"I do what I have to do," I said, my voice shaking slightly. "Felix was… he was a danger. I had to protect everyone from him."
Guy, still reeling from the earlier revelation, looked at me with confusion and hurt. "But why keep this from me? Why didn't you trust me, Liora? I thought we were in this together."
"You were closer than brothers," I said, though the words felt hollow. "Would you have committed to the right path?"
Before Guy could react, the door to the chamber swung open, and the atmosphere in the room shifted. A golden light flooded in, and I turned to see someone—no, not just someone, but a man—standing in the doorway. His skin gleamed like polished gold, and his cape was almost blinding. He moved with a grace that seemed otherworldly, and in his arms, carried as if he weighed nothing, was Felix.
The sight of Felix, lifeless and limp. But it was the being's reaction that froze my blood. Its gaze, once piercing and cold, softened as it watched the golden man bring Felix into the room. There was a solemnity to its expression, a silent acknowledgment of something deeper.
Guy, still trying to make sense of everything, looked at the golden man in awe and confusion. "What… who are you?"
But the golden man said nothing, his focus entirely on Felix. He laid him down gently, almost reverently.
Then, the dissected child watched with a sorrowful gaze, and I felt a cold dread creep into my heart. The god's sorrow of Felix turned to anger of the golden man.
"Intruder!" the entity roared, its voice now a deep, echoing thunder that made the walls buckle, raining dust from the ceiling. "You do not belong here!"
The air grew thick with a malevolent energy suffocating my breaths. The ground beneath quaked, and objects around lifted.
The golden man, standing amidst the chaos, remained unshaken. The moving floor glided under his feet as if he levitated a millimeter above. He moved with calm, deliberate grace, the fury of the god-entity swirling around him like a storm battering against an immovable mountain.
Dark tendrils of energy began to snake across the room, crackling with black lightning as they lashed out at the walls, tearing through the air with a force that sent chills down my spine. The sigils and symbols that had been etched into the walls glowed with an ominous light, their power feeding into the entity's growing wrath.
"Return whence you came! "
But the golden man remained unfazed, his focus unwavering as he looked down at Felix. His calm demeanor seemed to defy the very laws of the space we occupied, as if he were untouched by the darkness that surged around him.
Amidst the chaos, the golden man finally turned his attention to Guy and me. His gaze was warm, almost comforting, despite the destruction unfolding around us.
"Are you his friends?" he asked, his voice cutting through the din with an otherworldly serenity.
I hesitated, taken aback by the sudden shift in attention. "We—" I started, my voice trembling as the room quaked, "Were… Are his friends."
Guy added, "I am at least."
"It wasn't worth it, boy," he said softly, looking at Felix.
The god-entity's rage only intensified, the room darkening as its power reached a fever pitch. The ground beneath us heaved violently, causing cracks to spiderweb across the stone floor. Objects flew off the shelves and walls, crashing into one another, while the air itself seemed to hum with a dark, oppressive energy. The tendrils of dark energy grew thicker, more aggressive, coiling through the air like serpents ready to strike.
"You will regret this!" the entity bellowed, its voice now a cacophony of rage and despair. "You are an interloper in a domain that is not yours!"
He replied meekly, "It's not yours either."
"My name is Adam," he said, turning to us.
Adam's voice sounded gentle yet resonant, as if it carried the weight of ages and the wisdom of realms. His focus shifted to the door just before it burst open, a flood of agents storming into the room, weapons drawn.
"Hands where we can see them!" one of the agents shouted, his voice sharp with authority. "Step away from the entity!"
"Get on the ground, now!" another ordered.
Their eyes flicked between us, the god-entity, and Adam, clearly unsure of which posed the greatest threat. But despite their numbers and their weapons, Adam remained unperturbed. He didn't flinch, didn't even seem to acknowledge the danger surrounding him.
Adam said calmly, turning back to Guy and me, his voice cutting through the cacophony of orders being yelled around us. "Protect him, and stay close."
I moved quickly, my hands trembling slightly as they followed his order. Guy joined me, his expression resolute despite the chaos.
As we took Felix from Adam, the golden man turned to face the agents, his calm demeanor unshaken. The agents, still yelling commands, hesitated as Adam met their gaze, his presence seemingly imposing even in the face of their weaponry.
And then a strange thing happened.
The cluster of guns that had been trained on us suddenly clattered to the floor in front of me. The sound of metal hitting stone echoed through the chamber, and I looked down in shock to see the agents' weapons lying at my feet, as if they had been plucked from their hands by an invisible force.
The room fell into a stunned silence. The agents looked at each other in confusion, their hands gripping nothing but empty air. They stared down at their fingers, still poised as if holding their weapons, but grasping at nothing.
"What the hell?" one of them muttered, his voice laced with disbelief.
"What just happened?" another asked, glancing around as if expecting the answer to materialize in front of him.
Adam's expression remained serene, as if this turn of events was exactly as he intended. The agents, now disarmed and bewildered, seemed unsure of how to proceed, their once confident stances faltering in the face of an inexplicable phenomenon.
"You do not need those," Adam said simply, his voice carrying a gentle authority that silenced the room. "In fact, we were just leaving."
My interrogator, still seething in the background, seemed to take this moment to recede slightly, its dark energy no longer thrashing as wildly. It watched the scene unfold with a quiet, simmering rage, but did not intervene.
As Adam's words hung in the air, a sudden gust of wind swept through the chamber, ruffling my hair. The air felt different, charged with an energy that hadn't been there before. I blinked, and in the next moment, everything changed.
The oppressive darkness of the chamber was gone. Instead, I found myself standing on a rocky peak, the air crisp and thin. Clouds drifted lazily overhead, their edges tinged with the golden light of a setting sun. The scene was surreal, as if we had been plucked from one world and dropped into another in the blink of an eye.
Beside me, Guy stood rigid, his eyes wide with disbelief as he took in our new surroundings. I followed his gaze and saw Felix, still unconscious, lying in the same position as before. But now, he was surrounded by a strange sense of calm, his breathing steady, as if the turmoil of the chamber hadn't followed us here.
A few feet away, the child-god stood, or what remained of him. The dissected and twisted remnants of the being that had once filled me with dread now looked almost fragile in the open air. His hollow eyes stared blankly ahead, the same unsettling emptiness in them, but with a strange sense of resignation as he pulled his body back together.
And then there was Adam. He stood at the edge of the peak, looking out over the vast landscape before us, his golden form glowing softly in the fading light. His presence seemed to anchor us, providing a sense of stability in this disorienting transition.
I took a step forward, my boots crunching on the loose gravel of the peak, and looked across the chasm that separated us from the mountain opposite. There, nestled into the rocky face, was a heavily guarded facility entrance. Armed guards patrolled the area, their figures small but unmistakable against the rock.
I thought that Adam was invisible every second or so, but just as my mind registered something amiss, he was there. A large population of mystical races accrued around us. Elementals, giants, fair-folk, legends new, and legends old looked around bewildered.
My amusement at our situation was ruined when I heard a voice.
"What… where are we?" Felix weakly said.