Chapter 19: A World Without Chains
Silence was a disease.
For an indefinite time, Lykaon had existed in a state of forced dormancy, his consciousness healing in the cocoon of his own realm. The Great War, which had been the apocalyptic soundtrack to his recovery, had faded, leaving behind a cosmic void.
He no longer felt the fiery arrogance of Lucifer, nor the suffocating pressure of God's light. The universe had fallen silent. For the survivors, it was the beginning of an era of fragile peace. For Lykaon, it was an excruciating boredom.
It stood in the shapeless blackness of its dimension, a mountain of night and restored power. It was complete. Stronger than ever. His pride had been purged by the fire of defeat, replaced by a cold and predatory patience. He had waited. He had healed.
Now, it was time to hunt.
He chose his starting point not by strategy, but by whim. He sought out the world's tallest shadow, the one cast by the largest mountain peak, a tusk of stone and ice that scratched the stratosphere.
One instant he was in the void of his kingdom, and the next, he was there.
He emerged on top of the world, the air so thin and icy that it would have frozen the lungs of a mortal being. The sun was a distant, white sphere, its light stripped of heat by altitude. Below him, a sea of clouds stretched to the horizon, a landscape of infinite whiteness.
There was no anchor. There was no leash. There was no invisible circle. Only the howling wind and a whole world at his feet.
'Free.'
The thought was not one of joy. It was a simple statement of fact. And the first act of a free being is to move.
His first instinct was to run.
He launched himself from the peak of the mountain, not falling, but flowing. It dissolved into its own shadow and spilled down the mountainside like an avalanche of liquid night. He traversed glaciers, his shadow-like form gliding over the ice without a trace.
It reached the foothills and its shape solidified again. Four legs on dry land. Muscles of darkness tensing.
And then, it exploded.
It was not the desperate race of an escape. It was the exultant race of an unleashed power. He crossed the icy plains, a patch of darkness that moved faster than the wind. The tundra became a blur of white and gray under its legs. He didn't need to touch the ground; he ran over the shadows of the clouds that slid over the earth, his path was a river of gloom.
'No leash. Without anchor. Just speed. Only power.'
He crossed continents in a matter of hours. The boreal forests became temperate forests, then humid and suffocating jungles. The smell of the world was an overwhelming symphony to his heightened senses: the scent of pine and cold earth, the stench of decay and lush jungle life, the dry, dusty smell of the desert.
He did not stop. This was not a trip. It was an affirmation. A reaffirmation of his dominance over the physical space that had been denied him for so long.
But running wasn't enough. The floor was a cage in itself. He looked up at the sky, the domain of his former jailer.
'My playground now.'
Jumped. It was not a simple leap, but an explosion of will. It projected its essence upward, dissolving into an upstream of darkness. He joined the shadow cast by a huge storm cloud, becoming one with it.
He was no longer running. Flew.
The feeling was of an even deeper freedom. He moved with the air currents, a specter of night riding the wind. He plunged into the heart of the storm, feeling the lightning crackle around him, elemental energy a negligible caress against his conceptual self.
He saw the world from above, not through the eyes of a host, but with his own perception. He saw rivers winding like veins of silver, mountain ranges like the spine of a sleeping world, and deserts stretching like golden, cracked skin.
The sun was still a nuisance, an irritating presence. But now, free and at the peak of his power, it was no longer painful. It was just... annoying. It moved from the shadow of one cloud to another, a game of cosmic leaps, avoiding its direct light by pure preference.
His aimless journey inevitably led him to the edge of a continent. And there, he met the sea.
He stopped on a cliff, his wolf-like form solidified again, observing the endless expanse of blue and white. He had felt the oceans through his hosts, but to see it, to smell it, to feel it with his own senses... it was different. It smelled of salt, of life, and of a depth that rivaled that of his own kingdom.
'Another abyss. But this one is alive. Full of prey.'
He threw himself off the cliff. Not for swimming. Ran.
Its paws hit the surface of the water, but it did not sink. With each step, the shadow beneath his paw solidified for a fraction of a second, creating an ephemeral platform of darkness on which to propel himself. It ran over the surface of the ocean, a displaced trail of water marking its pace, faster than any ship, faster than any sea creature.
Then, out of sheer curiosity, he stopped. And it sank.
He dropped into the blue, his body of shadows cutting through the water without resistance. It descended lower and lower, the sunlight fading rapidly, replaced by a blue gloom, then by total darkness. Down here, in the abyss of the ocean, it felt almost at home. The pressure, which would have crushed the steel like aluminum foil, was a comforting caress against its shape.
He swam in the abyssal blackness, a shadow leviathan among other leviathans. He saw nightmarish creatures: colossal squid with saucer-sized eyes, bioluminescent sea serpents glowing with ghostly light. They watched him with an ancient and fearful intelligence, recognizing a predator of a higher order.
He did not hunt. He just watched. This was another kingdom, with its own rules, its own kings. But even here, in the darkest depths of the world, there were shadows. And where there were shadows, he was the master.
Finally, he grew bored of the depths. It ascended, traversing miles of water in seconds, and exploded on the surface in a burst of foam and power.
He continued his journey, but now, something was guiding him. Not a conscious thought. Not a plan. But a pull. An ancient echo, a resonance in its own mythical essence.
He crossed the sea, his race on the waves a blur of speed. And finally, he arrived in a new land.
The light here was different. Brighter, sharper. The air smelled of salt, wild thyme, and olive trees. The sea was such a deep blue that it hurt to look at it. And everywhere, there were ruins of white stone, the bones of a civilization that had not yet been fully born.
He stopped on a cliff, overlooking a sea dotted with islands. The shade from which it emerged was that of an ancient, twisted olive tree, its wood a testament to centuries of fighting against wind and sun.
I didn't know why I had come here. But I felt a connection. He could feel a different magic in the air, not the raw magic of the Underworld, nor the ordained magic of Egypt. This was a magic of passions, of stories, of gods who walked among mortals.
'This place...' he thought, his ember eyes sweeping the sun-drenched earth. 'It smells like beginnings. And at the end.'
He had arrived in Greece. The place where his legend, that of the man punished by the gods, would be whispered for the first time. He had come home, to a home he had never known. And this new hunting ground, full of arrogant gods and unsuspecting nymphs, promised to be infinitely more entertaining.
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