The air grew still, the picturesque thunderstorm remained stagnant causing a tranquil feeling to wash over the rather tumultuous scene. The winds howling, swirling and rippling through everything initially was nowhere to be felt as a void-like presence overcame the world.
In this contradictory imagery, two humanoid figures floated at a considerable distance away from another figure that had nothing ordinary about him–the other two were certainly eye-catching, especially the towering one… but before this golden haired otherworldly beauty, their uniqueness was muted.
"Aren't you elated, little ones? Free of your limitations. You've been given the chance to attain your true potential, isn't that something great? Something to be happy about?" The golden haired Horror asked.
Valor's expression was always constant. A feeling of amusement constantly emanating from that radiant smile of his. He gave of an easygoing vibe based on body language yet he still terrified both–Adrac
"What have you done to us?" Serkin asked calmly. He was genuinely shocked by how calm he felt and how he seemed to be accessing the situation and making reasonable deductions. He really felt like he was another person in his own body. It was a strange feeling–to be able to perceive this state of his. It was as if he suddenly knew that there was a "former" Serkin and now, a "current" Serkin even though there really shouldn't exist any difference between the two. Yet… there was. Somehow, Serkin felt different.
"You can feel the change, so why ask? I've rid you of your limitations… though, I'm unfortunately unable to rid you of your Divinities too. That, you'd have to do on your own. Wouldn't you do so?" Valor asked, his smile even more radiant and chilling.
Serkin turned to Adrac, who'd immediately met his gaze with an understanding nod. Serkin couldn't read Adrac's expression. His marble-like skin gave him a statuesque air, making him look inanimate if he stood still. There was no emotions to be read from this block of marble.
"Who or what are you, Valor? You don't seem to be a Chosen, as evidently seen from your display of authority. Are you perhaps similar to Maliketh, the one who gave us our powers?" An archaic voice suffused with the stench of eternity exploded from within Adrac, disrupting the very space around him. Merely his voice had displayed such destructive capability.
What have you become, Adrac?! Serkin thought as he took his gaze away from the dazzling statue and turned it to an even more dazzling entity.
"Maliketh?" He mumbled, tilting his head a bit. "I'm unfamiliar with such a name… That's not his real name, I suppose. I can hear the tone of a Suv'rian slipping through when you uttered that name. Even then, I'd still be oblivious of the identity of this individual you speak of… after all, I'm not of your world, younglings."
Unfamiliar with the name 'Maliketh'? Hmmmm, there's nothing I can deduce any further from this information. No, no, there's too much to deduce from all Valor has uttered. Fuck! I don't really wanna do that now. I should probably ask the next question that's still been left unanswered for a while now…
"What's your purpose here, Sir Valor?" Serkin asked, trying his best to match the bearings of Valor and Adrac.
Just as his words began propagating through the air, the stagnant thunderstorm experienced a quick yet silent change.
The piercingly radiant lightning bolts retreated back into the the dark, gloomy clouds, vanishing within its obscurity. The lumps of the grey clouds smoothen out, expanding nearly instantaneously until their edges couldn't be perceived. The grey clouds expansion thinned it out–still, no piece of the sky was left uncovered–giving way slightly for the lights of the heavens to make their way through, albeit, in a different form.
The lights of the heavens, filtered by the grey clouds, shone down as grey lights, encompassing the land in a deteriorating air of melancholia and death.
The Grey Light are obscuring your incandescent beauty, my love…
I'm afraid to look at you, my love. So… let me blind myself with these lights.
I miss you, Galenna…
"My purpose? You dare ask me of my purpose?" It was sudden. Nothing would have prepared them for what came next. What was it he said that triggered him that much? What had made this Smiling Horror become a fiendish embodiment of wrath and insanity?
Was it the word purpose? What was it about that word that provoked such a reaction?
'Fools!' shrieked shrill voices from beyond the boundaries of reality before everything suddenly silent.
All that happened next was a thing of tumultuous madness mixed with a certain kind of rationality, meaning and complexity… but still insanity, nevertheless.
Valor vanished from where he floated like a transcient phantom. Serkin didn't perceive him moving through the folds of space–a new perception he had gained due to the transformation–when a figure appeared by his side.
There was no time to react, quite literally none. The spatial time was brought to a pause as all movements were halted.
Serkin and Adrac were frozen in space with only their mind left functioning, their perception was still very functional but their ability to react was utterly restricted.
"Why would you pry?" These were the words Serkin heard before the world began swirling and then, everything went blank for him.
Adrac saw Valor's palm collide with Serkin's cheek, a powerful sound reverberated through the frozen world as Serkin shot downwards like a meteor entering the planet's atmosphere.
Adrac didn't care about happened to Serkin for now. Now, he'd had to pay attention to the change he was experiencing.
Adrac felt his marble-like form resisting against the binds of the spatial time. His body was instinctly adapting in the right direction in order to counter the situation he was in, something his original Adaptation was incapable of.
A new aspect that didn't need conscious control in order to function with necessary accuracy–having a negligible level of uncertainty of what would be birthed–It was a realm above his previous self.
Three mental seconds later, Adrac tore through the binds of the stagnant spatial time, his towering form immediately shot towards Valor at an explosive speed very unexpected of such a body that looked like it would lack dexterity even though it was quite visibly streamlined.
Just before making contact with Valor–who didn't seem to have perceive that Adrac had broken through the constraints of the stagnant spatial time–Adrac twisted his waist, his body now very upright, his right hand stretched out and clenched into a fist, ready to collide destructively and insultingly with Valor's face.
Adrac had no thorough knowledge of Valor–didn't know his durability, his abilities despite how much power he has shown, his true strength and if he had any ways to defend himself… But why should he care?
If Valor had any means he didn't know of, as long as those means came into use, he'd inevitably adapt to them. It didn't matter if Valor was hiding his cards now, Adaption would eventually lead to his downfall if he refused to take this fight seriously.
"Do you want to know my purpose too? I won't conceal it from all of you… After all, it was because of you she died, because of people like you."
Huh?… This sound of confusion was the only thing that resounded in his mind when he felt an insurmountable force grasp his fist, disintegrating all his momentum as if it never existed.
'Huh? Did he just destroy my momentum? How!??' Adrac was stupefied, unable to believe what he was witnessing. This was a true dissipation of energy without it being transformed into another kind… he just dissipated it as if it never existed. How was that even possible? This act quite literally went against the very laws of the universe–destroying energy.
"Once, I was a valiant knight, a hero amongst men, he who sought to bring peace and prosperity to all. I was VALOR! I was good, I fought against the forces of evil, I lost comrades, I sacrificed my friends who fought alongside me to save the lives of the people… I was good, I was without blemishes… just like she wanted me to be. I WAS A GOOD MAN, YOU DAMN IMBECILES!" A monstrous voice, quaking with an unstable intensity sounded out in all directions. It sounded nothing like the 'Valor' Adrac had heard his voice. This was… something else.
Then, a clearly unstoppable force, struck his chest. He felt his right hand–being grasped by the logic-altering and insurmountable force–come right off at his shoulder. His marble-like physique–whose durability had increased beyond that of most materials on the planet–didn't even provide any resistance against the forces, instantly coming right off akin to wet paper being pulled.
The rest of the force gave him the exact same treatment as Serkin. His body shot downwards like a missile as he broke through multiple sound barriers, creating sonic booms after sonic booms upon his descent.
"Now… I'm as hideous as they described. Now, I'm sinful as they claimed. Now, I'm the Accursed Fiend that brings purgatory to worlds. I'm no longer the blessing I was. I'm now merely Misery and Death. I'm now… Broken."
Adrac, could feel the cracks running through his entire body. He had been fractured and had it not been for this new body of his being so unyielding and durable, he'd probably be nothing more than fragments all over the place.
Pressing his only remaining hand against the ground in the middle of the new crater he created within the old one, Adrac pushed himself up with great difficulty.
"Valor! Please stop! You can keep your purpose to yourself! We don't want to know anymore! But please, we are harming the innocents with this needless fight!" Adrac's voice, a masterpiece of this new body of his, reverberated loud enough for anyone within the city to hear him clearly.
"You don't seem to understand, do you?" A voice whispered closely behind Adrac. Then, a palm collided with the side of his head, tossing him away to the closest barely-standing building as if he was a rag doll.
Adrac tore through several ruins before he finally lost momentum.
"You really don't understand. My purpose is simply… to kill anything human. I hate humans. I no longer care whether they are innocent or guilty. I no longer care about saving them from the monstrosities around them because now, they must face the monstrosity within. I kill because I hate, child. My purpose is shallow… but why should I care? When they drove me to madness, did they care? When I was framed for the most senseless of crimes, did the fools I sacrificed so much to protect care about how I felt as they believed those lies? When they killed her–my beautiful sweetheart–when they tainted, broke, and tore her apart, did they care how I felt? …Didn't everyone believe I deserved that? That she deserved that?"
Adrac felt one of his eyes go blind, his head ached terribly until he realized that a metal rod was protruding out of it. Grabbing the rod, he pulled it out without even the slightest bit of reaction. Such a mundane thing couldn't kill him no matter if it had pierced a vital part of him. After all, he was still a Primordial, albeit, partly.
Standing up, Adrac felt his body mending finally. His torn arm hastily growing out–bones protruding and layering, flesh weaving, and a marrble-like substance, layering and mending everything together. The cracks all over his body vanished instantaneously, his vision returned too as the terrible headache dissipated moments later.
Adrac stood there, fully mended as if nothing had happened. Not even a single blemish could be seen on his perfectly smooth marble skin.
"If I now kill without reason, I'm meant to be the villain now? Of course, I had no qualms being seen as the devil, the abomination capable of heinous crimes… but why did they have to take her away from me? Why did they have to taint her with their sins? Why, why, why, why, why…" Valor muttering trailed off into a fading string of why's. Yet, Adrac and Serkin could sense the pain he was in.
"Everyone and everything here will die… everything. Do you know why? Because they said I did so… they said I, Valor, did that… as such, everything will die because Valor killed everyone. I'm Misery and Death, after all."
"She would have hated this version of me… she would have stopped loving this version of me… but how can she? THEY TOOK HER AWAY FROM ME! How can she love me when she's dead? How can she hate me when you tore her to shreds, leaving her pieces behind for me to gather from within your filths? I would love for her to hate me, for her to stop loving me… if it meant she'd still be alive… Now, all I can do is become depraved." Tears, the color of blood, trailed down his perfect face.
"I kill without reason, younglings. My purpose is shallow and senseless. You don't have to understand it, after all… you are all going to be dead."
*****
"What have I done?!" This was the first thing that he screamed out before bending over and vomiting his stomach out.
Andrew, after several minutes of trying to stop his nausea, finally took in the macabre scenery. Innards hanging around, detached heads places randomly, ripped out limbs all over the place–mangled and torn bodies… piles of them formed multiple pyramids taller than a two storey building. There was exactly seven of these gruesome pyramid-like structures.
The thick scent of blood pervaded the air, a concentrated iron-like taste filled his mouth as some kind of bloody mist filled the entire place with the smell of blood and innards.
Andrew bent over again and retched until there was nothing more within his stomach to expel.
Trying his possible best not to faint, Andrew turned his gaze back to the seven gory pyramid-like formation and it was at that moment that he noticed that the fourth–and the centre–pyramid had a broken, towering marble statue at its top. It lay there motionless.
"What the hell happened here?" Andrew muttered to himself as he tried to remember how the world suddenly became this nightmarish purgatory to no avail.
The only thing he remembered was the anguish of his grandma's death and the urge to… kill?
*****
"What have I done?" This time, he didn't scream but merely stared in horror.
The dim room was now suffused with the nauseating smell of fresh blood.
With barely enough illumination, Andrew could still see the forty to fifty people sitting on their seats. The only difference was that the walls of the entire room was covered in blood and lumps of something Andrew knew quite well. As for the people themselves, the only change was that they were now headless–their heads having exploded, painting the walls with bloods as pieces of the flesh and brain matter clung to the walls.
"What have you done, Andrew?" He mumbled to himself.
"I didn't know. I swear I didn't know." His voiced changed as it quivered in fear and horror.
"Look what you've done again!" His voice changed again, this time, into one of anger.
"I didn't know. I swear! I would never harm anyone. I would never! It wasn't me!" Andrew screamed until suddenly, his expression changed into one of utter nonchalance.
He sat there, in a dim room filled with several dozen headless, innocent people that just wanted to help each other–help him. The dim lights amplified the sharp glint of orange in his eyes that immediately vanished after.