A Tale of Forgotten Gods

Chapter 116: The Lost from Light

The purple light from the wall crack flared wildly, casting long, sickening shadows as the creature’s claw-hair tightened its grip on the fabric of reality and threatened to tear it further.

Its face appeared for a moment, encased in an armor of gold and ribcage-like structure. The thick, curved horns, like a shape, gripped the sides of its head, creating a terrifying mask that shielded its true features from the world.

Giygogagohgwooh!!!

The roar tore through reality itself as the whole place shook violently.

Then, its face disappeared from the crack, and the ink-like liquid dropped from the tear on the ground. It shifted into a perfect sphere.

Then, it bubbled up again. And from deep inside the circle, a large head slowly came out covered in the substance. Its crimson eyes glowed as the head rose further and the body came out half from the sphere. It opened its tendrils, which had sharp spikes, and from them the black liquid dripped on the ground one by one. Its head slightly tilted but the the face was covered behind the ink, smelling like a bitter, rotten lemonade.

The drops created more circles in the ground. It raised its tendrils and surged forward.

Murphy stepped back. Mo Fei’s mind was screaming, filled with baffling thoughts. ”How the hell am I going to defeat that thing?”

But the detective side pulled him forward as the creature lunged at him. The golden plate framing its face split open from the middle, opening up like wicked mandibles of an underground predator. The small pincers flexed and clicked, ready to snap shut and crush anything caught in their jaw-like grip. The sharp edges gripped Murphy’s coat as it pulled him inside one of the circles created by the ink.

GRAAAAAHHHH!!

The high-pitched roar of the creature ran through the silence.

Murphy grabbed its head as he was being pulled inside another dimension. The gravity of a distorted world.

He clenched its armored mandible and pushed his coat out of its grip, then his body floated in the gravity-defying dimension. He swam across the place and looked behind where the portal had been closed.

There were multiple small islands that floated around, including various homes and broken debris.

He quickly moved through the path and entered a large floating mansion.

GIYGOGAGOHGWOOH!!!

The scream reached his ears as he hid behind the wall.

A large dragon moved through the space, its face opened the mandible-shaped armor and screamed again. It had no wings, only the tendrils on its neck, which were made of shadows, with crimson claws waved through the air.

Its body had silver spikes with half golden edges on top. It flew through the place, trying to find him.

”Divine Serpent. What is that thing?”

Hearing that, the Serpent remained silent and spoke nothing for a long moment.

Mo Fei asked again. ”Divine Serpent.”

With a long pause, it finally spoke. ”Great Master, I’d advise you to escape this place.”

”Tell me.”

The Serpent closed its eyes and finally spoke in his ancient, calm tone. ”The place you are currently is...” It paused as if thinking whether to say or not. ”The Spirit World’s counterpart, a place given to the second embodiment of the Lightless Realm.”

Murphy’s boots dug into the place; his expression turned surprised as he looked at the thing flying through the world. ”That thing is like you?”

”Pardon me for not telling you sooner, Great Master. I didn’t anticipate it opening the doorway to the distorted world.”

”What does it want?”

The Serpent hissed once and opened its eyes. ”Vengeance. My counterpart had darkness, anger, and destruction. Lord Lightless gave it this world to live here, but later it was forgotten as what it believes, although it didn’t know what happened to Lord Lightless and believed it had been betrayed; its heart had been shaken by that.”

”Why did it pull me here then?”

”You are the Lightless now, and this city had been the place ’He’ came, and that might have been why it came here. To it, you are ’Him’.”

Murphy moved through the floating islands, his boots landing silently on cobblestones. The dragon’s roar echoed once again, and suddenly from behind him, a shadow fell. The dark world shifted as it came behind him and launched itself toward him.

Murphy pulled out his revolver and jumped back, then shot it multiple times.

It quickly twisted its body, the spikes reflecting the bullets without forming a single scratch. The attempt made it furious even further as it smashed its massive tail on the mansion.

Murphy tried to jump, but he still wasn’t used to this gravity and crashed into the wall.

The mansion shattered into debris as he hit a floating cobblestone behind, the gravity catching him wrong, flipping his body.

He steadied himself and looked up where the creature had stopped.

It hung in the air above him, enormous and utterly still, with its tendrils moving around as it started down with its shapeless crimson eyes. The shadow tendrils extended, reaching around the floating pillars.

They gripped the broken pillars and pulled them toward it.

GRAAAAAHHHH!!!

With a loud roar, it threw the debris toward him one by one.

Murphy rolled, and the first chunk of pillar ran past his shoulder, snapping a wind off his ear.

The second pillar reached before he could react and clipped his ribs, sending him spinning into the dark towers behind.

’I can’t keep doing this.’

Mo Fei’s thoughts. Not Murphy’s of course. Murphy didn’t have thoughts like that.

He crashed into a smaller floating island; just then a fragment of cobblestone, which was not larger than a table knife, stabbed his chest. He grabbed the edge of a tree as gravity caught him sideways. His legs dangled above nothing. He pulled out the sharp fragment, keeping his persona, that pain brought nothing.

Mo Fei had learned, in the last three minutes of his life, that its roaring was survivable. That roaring was not emotionless; it had many, but they were crushed.

Mo Fei pointed his revolver again.

’What are you doing? That’s pointless...’

Murphy stared at the thing and slowly lowered the revolver.

The creature’s head tilted with slow movement, extending its tendrils toward the island he was on and wrapping around the floating cobblestone above him.

Oh F**k...

The island got pulled as the gravity flipped. What had been the edge he gripped became the surface he was plastered against, and what had been below him was now a wall of nothing, while Mo Fei’s hands scrabbled as the blood dripped from his chest.

The creature pulled it, the island and everything on it, including Murphy, who hurtled toward a larger mass of debris to the left.

He quickly let go of the tree and moved away.

He dropped into the dark between. Murphy spread his arms. Two floating structures ahead. Gap between them and only three meters distance, closing as they drifted. If he could reach the nearer one before...

His boots hit its surface at the wrong angle, and he slid, fingers catching on a broken window frame, the old wood almost breaking under his grip.

The Dragon smashed the two islands, grinding them together. The gap he’d fallen through closed. If he’d been half a second slower, it would have taken his legs.

He looked above, but it wasn’t there anymore.

The creature slowly emerged from behind the debris, from a shadow in the darkness.

Its mask mandibles opened, and it let out a soft breath. That time it didn’t roar. That time Mo Fei finally saw what it was actually feeling. It wasn’t looking at him with vengeance.

It was alone in a world where no companion had followed it.

Its crimson shapeless eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at the new Lightless, and the dragon spoke with a cracked voice, almost as if it tried to hold its emotions. ”Why... Why me?” Its tendrils lowered. ”What did... I do? Wasn’t I... I... your favorite being... Why must I... see hell and the Serpent see heaven?” The counterpart of the light paused, its crimson eyes weren’t filled with anger anymore. It was a profound ache now. ”I never failed you... right? Did I?”

At that moment, the Divine Dragon of the light wasn’t a divine being, it wasn’t a vengeful dragon, and it wasn’t an emotionless being who was seeking revenge.

It stood in front of the new Lightless, demanding not to avenge but to answer, yet the Lightless wasn’t able to give them.

Mo Fei stared at the being; his gaze lingered on its shadow tendrils, then at its shapeless eyes. Its voice was filled with unusual doubt about its own duty that it had been doing. The question it asked... How could he answer them? When they were his own questions too. He couldn’t lower its doubt on the existence of self.