"Fear is a weapon of mass destruction."
— Dennis Kucinich
The surroundings broke into pieces.
"I..was about to give my soul away?"
The realization cleared the vision, sitting before me was a real vampire. I comfortably assumed that…was Asta's real form.
"I need to break this illusion."
I tapped into my divinity, but it was…frozen—trapped in time.
"Your divinity won't help you Dante." Asta whispered, mockingly.
"That's impossible! My divinity never fails me!"
But it did. It felt as if climbing a peak that only grew higher the further I reached.
I closed my eyes, held my breath. I had never fought this hard to summon what had always been there, protecting me in moments of danger.
"Its there, I can feel it but…I can't reach it."
"its… almost there."
But it dragged itself away, in sight—yet out of control.
"LUCIAN!" Theron's voice found it's way inside this hell, inside this…nothingness.
"Tch. Your friend is insufferable," Asta muttered, clicking his tongue.
Perhaps…Theron wasn't the one who trapped me.
"Just… a bit closer. I'll reach it."
"DAMMIT!" Asta screamed, grabbing his own neck—as if, pulling an invisible pair of hands that choked him.
"DO…NOT…TRUST THE…" he struggled to speak, blood swelling on his pale face.
"What?"
"THE…THE WITCH…" just then, his body snapped.
Tore into pieces of flesh before fading into red.
The same red aura, now surrounded the illusion. Pulling us into the pool of blood, yet again.
Just this time, I didn't feel trapped.
"AGHHH!" Asta's voice echoed it drowned him into the depths of the ocean.
In that moment, I finally, tapped into my divinity—a ray of light, but it wasn't mine. It was Theron's aura, menacing and red.
He broke the illusion.
My divinity burst out, blinding everything with a flash of light.
…
The light faded. I took a breath, and the stench of smoke filled my lungs.
I no longer was in the basement, and this time, it wasn't an illusion.
As if the land had burst open from the inside, surroundings brighter than any torch could ever make it. Because the temple itself crackled in flames.
Faint screams, moans, and sounds of flares. The smoke tickled my cold body.
"What… happened."
"Monster indeed." A voice came from the behind.
I turned to see Theron, his body—half burned. One eye dangling out of his socket. He carried a woman on his back, eyes closed, fainted. Dark hair, pale, and naked—untouched by the fire that surrounded her.
"Lunette…" I muttered.
My legs gave out, and I collapsed to my knees.
Above me, the sky blackened with smoke, and below…
"Massacre"
Laid bodies of hundreds, if not thousands. Tattered cloths revealed their burnt skin, and some…hanging between life and death crushed by the pillars. Snow more red than white.
And this time, the blood didn't appetite me.
"These priests… how did their divinity fail them?"
"Divinity doesn't protect against divine flames," Theron said coldly, stepping over the charred remains of a priest.
I looked up at him, wide-eyed. "You mean—?"
"Who else Lucian. Only you are capable."
"I caused this… explosion?"
As far as my eyes could see, there were no saviors. "Where…? Where is aid, healers? Mages? Not even a soldier to pick the corpses up the ground?"
"There won't be any," Theron replied. "And there can't be, not right away."
He was right, there couldn't be any.
"Temple sends aid, but this…is temple." I stood up, back on my feet. "What…happened to me Theron?"
He paused, his burnt face unreadable. "You've changed."
I looked down at myself. "How? Where… are my wings?"
"You're no longer that monster breed."
Theron turned toward the ruined gates. "We need to leave before the radiation fades and soldiers arrive."
Radiation. The word sent a chill through me. That explained why no aid was sent, even any from palace.
I followed his gaze over the ruined temple and the endless carnage. He was right. Even at night, the place lit like a cemetery. Broken limbs scattered throughout what once we called a garden of pearls.
Shards of glass windows etched inside flesh of many, Stars hidden behind the smoke, fragments of marble walls, marble gates, marble statues—
"The statue?"
"I'm sure this would go down in history as the worst disaster mankind has witnessed after that" Theron continued talking, clearing the smoke.
"Wait."
The statue… one that looked like a spitting image of Eloven—one I saw during my return from the auction, appeared in sight as we neared the gate.
"Theron…do you see this?"
He turned, glancing towards where I pointed. The white, towering, marble statue of Eloven. One in which her veil didn't hide her face neither her annoying grin. I clenched my fists.
"She stands tall while everything else has been destroyed," Theron muttered. "Strange."
"Odd." I whispered.
He froze. "And…not just odd but why is it…?"
"The divinity?" I responded.
Perhaps he felt it too, the statue radiated divinity, I could sense it. Because I carried it myself. How mana users recognized mana users, and Dark energy didn't hide itself from other dark beings.
"No." His voice lowered. "The…blood"
"What?"
He shook his head, brushing off the thought. "Nothing. Let's move."
"what did you see?"
"NOTHING! I mean, nothing. We must leave this place before dawn."
He suspiciously over reacted, yet the thing that remained the most suspicious of all: the statue, how…did the statue not sustain a single scratch, while the temple had been turned to ruins.
Let alone a scratch, not a speck of dust—or snow for that matter.
I did not press Theron more.
We strode past the bodies, stepping over corpses as we continued the way lit by flames around us.
Theron's burned feet left a bloodied trail with each step he took while his burned face remained exposed to the shivering cold, and hot smoke.
Snow pierced wounds like salt but he seemed to force himself to walk.
Until, he collapsed, along with his mother's body that hung on his back.
"Theron!" I grabbed him as he coughed violently.
"Hah…" he sighed, then huffing. "This is bad. Will I die here?" Biting his lip to control the pain.
"No, you won't! You must not give up!" I yelled. He gave me a blank stare.
"If he died, my last passage to escape this world would be…"
Eyes squinted in pain, teeth clenched and his head on my lap, strangely the scene felt like something out of a tragic story where the hero dies. Except he was a villain.
Coughing, he gripped on snow, trying to pull himself up, "You sick bastard." He shouted.
"Huh?"
"I've been waiting for half an hour. When the hell are you going to heal me?!"
"Oh…" I blinked. "Right."
"I totally forgot I could."
I concentrated my divinity, channeling into his body as a healing force. Among the nauseating light of death the burning temple emitted, my healing exuded a bright, lively, green light.
But as it worked, I felt something tugging at me—something wrong.
The force healed him, but why was I…
The same force, that restricted my divinity—one that pushed it further as I tried to reach it. I felt it—once again, but worse.
"OUGH" I coughed, "There is something—"Cough.
Theron stood up, patting my back, "what now?"
My divinity, it felt as if something—no, someone just… grabbed into it.
"From…the back" I realized
"THERON! THE BACK." I screamed, we both looked back.
"The statue…" Theron muttered. "There's nothing, its just…the statue."