When the sun sets in the obsidian desert, the heat slowly fades away, replaced by a chilling cold. The moon rises causing the black sand to glow revealing countless tiny stars hidden somewhere in the depths of the black sand. The moon itself is pure white casting it glow on the endless dunes of the shifting sands.
And then when it was daybreak, the reverse happened. The sun rises from the west, the stars disappear and the crushing heat returns.
Leo still hasn't gotten accustomed to this specific nature of the desert. It still amazed him every single night. To a kid of his age, it was beautiful.
Raising his neck up, and opening his mouth wide enough to swallow a whole cottage, as if yawning, Leo stared at the horizon. The sun had risen and the damned heat was back.
But he wasn't angry, hungry or tired. He had a great night sleep, strangely the sand had quite filled his stomach and he wasn't angry because…hell,if he knew.
'Hmm.. I feel positive today.'
He uncooked himself in the large ship and glanced around, his dreadful serpentine gaze hiding his positivity.
Before sleeping last night, he had thought of one thing to do, try and find a way through the tiny door. It was almost impossible given he was too big to fit into it and he couldn't break it because every part of the ship was indestructible.
'Well first, let me find another way. If I don't find it, I'll figure another way to enter the door.'
By now the sun had fully risen, it spread its glow in the whole lucid skies creating a harrowing lilac that looked like a trapped ocean. Leo would have been scared as usual to why the sky always looked like that but today things were clicking.
'A ship. An ocean-like sky. A desert. Hmm.. Makes sense.'
Unable to think further, he sighed and began exploring the ship in hopes of finding another way to get into the inner decks.
He slithered to and fro but found nothing. He studied the instruments and they weren't of help either. They were too ancient and new at the same time to be used or described.
'If this was a shipwreck, why is there no single dead body? Fossil? Bones?'
He was currently glued to the side of the ship, studying the ancient language again but this time he wasn't studying the large ones called Aquarius. Beneath it were small letters like a message of sorts.
Auric Codex came with the system, yes. But humans were finally able to understand it since the language is something actually spoken by the beings that existed before the Conceptual War.
Of course the primordial war was just a myth. No one knew the hero of the war or the mysterious beings. No one knew what happened before, during and after the war or if it ever occurred. But the Auric Codex stands as a testament of the so-called war.
Not as if Leo wanted to know more about the war. Only he wants is to become the strongest, further fueling his pride.
He studied the tiny language for a while before finally sticking his tongue out in joy.
'I got it! I got it.'
The message read:
"I am the weakest of brothers, but the little power I have comes from engineering. And you, as my first invention... I name you after me, Aquarius. No one but me and the ones I allow with a calm mind shall be able to reach you. You are as tall as the Raging Tower. You are as big as the Ocean of Existence. With you, I shall save the world. Together, we shall save the world and clear the burden. You are Aquarius."
Leo went still, his golden scales shimmering under the lilac sky. The words hummed with a desperate sort of hope.
'The weakest of brothers?' Leo mused. 'An engineer named Aquarius created this titan just to save the world? From what? Why is it buried in the dirt of a dead desert? What has happened?'
He looked at the tiny door again. "No one but me and the ones I allow."
If the ship was indestructible and the door was sealed to outsiders except those Aquarius allows, then Leo being here—in this body—might not be an accident or a glitch from the Aura System.
If truly this was the nature of the Advent Volume, what exactly is the Advent Volume?
Leo then remembered himself trying to get to the main deck yesterday but it seemed too far.
'Tall as the Raging Tower, big as the Ocean Of Existence. Wow! I don't know what those places are, but they sound cool. But how exactly was I allowed to enter the main deck of the ship? Has the magical enchantment of sort placed by Aquarius worn off. Or could I get into the main deck and not into the small door. Calm mind, huh?'
He shook his head and glanced at the message one last time, then went to check the other side. It said the same thing. After that he searched for more doors or ways to enter the inner deck but it looks like only the small door was the way in.
Leo grunted and slithered to the main deck. He remained in front of the door not moving for a while, his serpentine eyes piercing and murderous.
If a calm mind was the key, his current frustration wasn't helping.
He closed his eyes and cleared his mind. Although he felt positive today, there was still fury hiding in soul and all he had to do was destroy that fury.
Leo focused on his breathing—or at least, the serpentine equivalent of it. Each slow draw of air made his massive ribs expand, the golden scales rubbing against each other with the sound of clinking coins. He suppressed the urge to lash his tail. He pushed away the memory of the scorching sand and the hunger that had gnawed at him for three days.
'Calm... just be calm.'
As he emptied his mind, the murderous glint in his eyes softened. The internal fury he had felt since the transformation began to recede, cooling like the obsidian sand at night.
Then, it happened.
A soft, melodic click vibrated through the deck. It wasn't coming from the piano-like instrument or any other instruments, but from the tiny door itself.
Leo opened his eyes and gasped, a long, drawn-out hiss. The door hadn't grown larger, but the air around it was warping, shimmering like a desert heat haze.
'Wait, is the door getting bigger... or am I getting smaller?'
The perspective shift was nauseating. The towering masts of the Aquarius seemed to stretch even further into the lilac sky, and the piano keys behind him now looked like massive wooden monoliths. His golden body, once long enough to coil around the ship's mast, was shrinking, compressing, and refining.
He didn't return to his human form, but he was no longer a leviathan. He was now a slender, elegant golden serpent, no thicker than a man's arm.
. The tiny door, which had looked like a toy's entrance moments ago, was now perfectly sized for his new form.
'Engineering,' Leo thought, a spark of genuine admiration hitting him.
With a flick of his black tongue, Leo slithered over the threshold.
The moment he crossed the line into the inner deck, the sunlight from the sky disappeared, replaced by the soft, steady pulse of the ship's interior. He expected a dark, cramped hallway. Instead what he saw left him in awe.
He was on a wooden platform that circled around a swirling vortex of black void. The void swirled violently, trying to swallow everything.
Leo gasped and tried to slither back outside but the door immediately closed behind him. The platform beneath him creaked and after that things happened fast.
He ran in circle as the platform kept breaking behind him. As the last piece of wood was about to fall into the vortex, he pushed his serpentine body up and coiled over wood that held the main deck from within. But the wood also started cracking.
'I thought this damn thing was indestructible.'
After the wood broke, he fell and landed into the void. As soon as he crossed the void to the other side, the feminine voice of the Aura System whispered.
[You've left the Present Consciousness Of Aquarius]
[You've entered the Past Consciousness Of Aquarius]