Chapter 213: I Am Me
The northwest of the continent, the Godfall Land.
The scar of the world, the place where a god had fallen, a place of a shattered space and a raging divine power, the site of the final battle between the god-slayer and the god. The power that had been released from the dying goddess was not a blessing, but a curse, a corrosive and destructive thing that had covered the land in a thick, black mud, a living, breathing thing that had consumed the original black mist and had become the new ruler of this land.
In the past, the bravest of warriors and mages could, with a powerful defensive spell, approach the edge of this dangerous land. But now, it was impossible. To even get close was to feel the terrifying power of the divine miasma. And in the past thousand years, any who had dared to venture here had been consumed by it, transformed into a rabid, monstrous thing, and then had died. It was a power that was beyond mere physical destruction, a power that was a denial of existence itself.
And yet, this land of death was now, slowly, but surely, changing. The great and mighty power of time was a magic of its own. And in this land, there had been another, an intentional, and deliberate, interference. The once-thick black mist was now a thin and ethereal thing, its corrosive power now a receding tide. The absolute darkness had given way to a landscape of a twisted and charred rock. And the suffocating miasma... it was now a faint and barely-perceptible thing.
You could even see it now, the ancient battlefield where he had fought the goddess, a place where the black mud had once been at its thickest, now just a thin and wispy fog. The adventurers had noticed it, but the news had not yet spread.
And then, one day, the last of the black mist disappeared. The shackle that had bound this land for a thousand years was now broken.
The sunlight, for the first time in a millennium, fell upon the scorched and broken earth. There was no green, no life, only a desolate and heartbreaking silence. This was the true face of the Godfall Land, a great and terrible wasteland, a giant tombstone, a monument to the cruel and brutal battle that had brought an end to the Age of Myth.
And in the very center of it, a ripple in space appeared.
And then, a figure emerged, as if from the water.
The Demon King, Annelise.
She stood barefoot on the barren ground, but left no footprints, as if she were a part of the very land itself. Her appearance had not changed, but the aura around her... it was different. Heavier.
She was no longer just standing in the Godfall Land. She was the Godfall Land, a凝聚 of a thousand years of its corrosive power, the very core of this once-forbidden zone, now a walking, breathing "nuclear" power.
"A thousand years..." she murmured. "It is finally... complete."
Her very birth had been an impossibility. She was not a true demon. A thousand years ago, in his final battle, he had been forced to abandon his old body, to escape the all-pervasive corrosion of the goddess's power. And that body, which should have been consumed, had, by a twist of fate, encountered the very same corrosive power that had been released from the dying goddess.
His body had once held the authority of the Goddess of Life, and had been filled with a potent life-force. The Goddess of Procreation's own power was a thing of a dark and corrosive nature. And in the heart of the Godfall Land, the two opposing forces had begun a process of a mutual consumption and fusion. A frenzied, instinctive struggle. The Goddess of Procreation's lingering will had not wanted to die, had tried to use his old body as a vessel for a new life. But the power of the Goddess of Life had been its antithesis. The two could not co-exist. But the will of the body he had abandoned... it had its own, powerful, and overriding will to survive.
And in the end, a twisted kind of a balance had been achieved. His body had provided a stable vessel for the two warring divine powers, and the powers had, in turn, granted the vessel a strength and an immortality beyond all comprehension. And in that vessel, a new and twisted consciousness had been born: Annelise. She was his abandoned past, a remnant of the goddess's own corruption, a unique being, born on the edge of destruction.
And the past thousand years... they had been a long and arduous process of a fusion. She had, with herself as the vessel and with her own magic as the guide, slowly, bit by bit, absorbed the corrosive divine power that had been left behind. It was a feat that should have been impossible. But she had done it. And what had sustained her had not been some grand ideal, but the one thing that both his body and the goddess's own power had in common: an extreme and unyielding obsession with life.
And the remnant of the goddess's power... it had been the only thing that could have kept her own, now-warped, body from falling into chaos and ruin.
And now, she had succeeded. But the price... was that she had become a walking miasma of a divine corruption, a living, breathing container for a thousand years of a condensed and corrosive divine power, a miniature Godfall Land. She was a sword of a Damocles hanging over the entire world. If she were to die, that power would be unleashed, and it would be a disaster of a magnitude far greater than the original, a true and final apocalypse.
To kill her... would be to destroy the world.
And he, of course, had known this.
And to seal her away... it was a thing he had not been able to do a thousand years ago, and it would be even more difficult now.
This... this was her greatest protection, her ultimate trump card.
A thin, inky black thread of an energy now coiled around her fingertip. The very air around it hissed, as if it were being slowly corroded.
"Not yet stable," she murmured, a little dissatisfied. To be able to wield such a power... it would take time.
She lowered her hand and turned her gaze to the west, to the place where he and Serie now were. "They're there, he had told her. Not going after Bazalt?" She did not care about the slow and methodical extermination of the elven race. The only thing she wanted to see was his own reaction, to see if he would stop it. But he... he was now on a leisurely stroll with the elven miss. Was he not aware? Or did he have another plan? She didn't know.
Since the moment she had been born, he had always defied her expectations, had always strayed from the path she had predicted for him. To just... wander... it was not the man she had thought he was, not the god-slayer who had been so singularly focused on his mission a thousand years ago. Or was her own understanding of him... flawed?
"Why?" she said, and looked at her own pale hands. "We are of the same origin." She placed a hand on her chest. "Your choices, your path... they are the same as mine. After all, my birth... it was a result of your own abandonment. My body... it was your vessel. Even the source of my power... it is the same as the one you once fought. I am your abandoned past, the shadow of your own power, the other side of your own existence." Her voice grew louder, a crazed and certain sound. "I am you!"
But she did not understand. He had been forced to abandon his body to save the world, and she, with a twisted and obsessive logic, believed that he, too, was now still bound by that same duty. But she had forgotten one thing: they were two different souls. He had long since moved on, had spent a thousand years with her, with the elven miss. But she... she had been born in that tainted and empty shell, a twisted anomaly, a fusion of a dying will and a lingering instinct. She was not his other half, not another him. She was just a sad and terrible monster, born in the wreckage of his past, a casualty of a war between two gods.
"What are you looking for, Rhodes? What do you want?" she thought, and her own form began to fade.
It did not matter. She could wait. For the day when he would finally decipher the formula of life, for the day when he would once again stand before her, to bring an end to their shared, and separate, destinies. And in the meantime... he was free to wander. He would come to her, in the end.
Under the grand and vaulted ceiling of the great library, he and Serie were on their way out when a sharp and reedy voice called out, "Wait!"
A disheveled-looking man, a man in a rumpled white robe and a pair of thick spectacles, was now rushing towards them, a thick notebook clutched in his hands. He was staring at him, his eyes wide and unblinking.
"Kael, no shouting in the library," Akaf said with a frown.
But he didn't seem to hear him. He stopped a few feet from him and, his chest heaving, he pointed a trembling finger at the Codex of Origin, high on its pedestal. "You... what did you say? 'Obsolete'?"
The sound of his voice was a sharp and jarring thing in the quiet of the library. A few of the other scholars looked over, their own faces now a mixture of a curiosity and a slight annoyance.
Serie's own eyes narrowed. To have eavesdropped on their conversation, and to now be questioning him with such an arrogant tone... Who does he think he is? A small flicker of a magical light appeared at her fingertip.
He saw it, and with a gentle squeeze of her hand, he stilled her.
He looked at the red-faced and agitated young man before him. "Is there a problem?" he asked calmly.
(End of chapter)
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