Shadow Slave

It took some time for the ancient king’s fury to subside.

It took more time to convince him to have a conversation with Sunny and Nephis, both of whom he seemed to detest. Azarax had been hanging on the sacred tree since before the Doom War ended and the gods fell, so he was not exactly aware of the current state of the world.

It was difficult to fathom that the very foundations of existence he had been familiar with were meaningless now, and that his disdain toward them was unwarranted as a result.

However, there was a keen and cunning mind hidden behind his overbearing demeanor. Even driven half-mad by thousands of years of imprisonment, Azarax still retained his edge — he knew all too well that everything he had once known was gone. It was just that, in a manner typical of a Supreme, he did not care.

So what if the world had irrevocably changed? It was the duty of the world to adhere to how Azarax saw it, not the other way around.

In the end, quite unexpectedly, it was the presence of Saint that convinced him. Azarax seemed to respect the Stone Saints as much as he disdained carriers of the Nightmare Spell or those who served the gods. It made sense, really — after all, Saint and her people had been created by Nether, the Demon of Destiny, and were the indomitable core of the Demon Army.

Since Sunny and Nephis were in the company of the shadow of a Jade Saint, Azarax was willing to at least hear them out.

‘That coy bastard…’

In truth, Azarax wanted to get off the tree he had been nailed to thousands of years ago as much as they wanted to enlist his assistance. No matter how much he tried to hide it, Sunny could tell — he knew more than most about wanting to be free, after all.

Azarax had an entirely different reason to want to be freed from Eurys, though. Eurys wanted to find a proper death before the curse of Shadow God turned him into a mindless beast… the ancient king, however, wished for the opposite.

He wanted to be taken off the tree precisely because he longed to become one of the Deathless. Anyone would mistake the Nightmare Desert for hell, but to him, it was heaven. An eternal, endless battle between the legendary warriors cursed to never know peace… that was exactly what a conquering tyrant like Azarax wanted and dreamed about.

It was being nailed to a tree, cursed to watch the glorious battles of the Deathless for thousands of years without being able to join them, that had been hell for the ancient tyrant.

So, despite all his contempt and hatred, he was not going to refuse the beings who could free him from that hell and deliver him to paradise.

Sunny and Nephis were not entirely sure that they could trust the half-crazed skeleton, though. They needed a guarantee that he would not turn on them as soon as they pulled him down from the tree first. Both were exhausted after a long night of battle, so they rested on the bank of the small pool of water and enjoyed the shade of the sacred tree. There was a lot of time before sunset, and they intended to spend it getting some answers from Azarax.

Nephis drank some water from the pool, while Sunny summoned the Endless Spring. He also produced cooking utensils from his Soul Sea and went about preparing a simple meal.

“I’ve always wanted to know… what were the armies of the daemons and the gods doing here, in the Nightmare Desert, to begin with? Were you fighting for the Tomb of Ariel?”

Azarax stared at him darkly from the tree.

“No… not at all. It was just a convenient place to fight.”

The ancient tyrant ground his teeth, then spat in a scornful tone:

“And why are you calling this realm the Nightmare Desert? Didn’t your parents teach you anything about Hell of Ariel?”

Sunny looked at him strangely.

“That’s just what we call it. And my parents had no idea that this place existed. Did this realm belong to the Demon of Dread, then?”

Azarax clacked his teeth.

“No. It was only turned into hell by him. A hell is a hell — a desolate realm where nothing lives. Actually, there were many mortal realms that had been turned into harrowing, desolate nightmares by some calamity or another… I even created one or two myself. Those realms were called hells. But this one was special, because it was isolated from all others. One couldn’t just cross its boundary, even if they were of a high enough Rank to travel between realms. The Hell of Ariel was only connected to one other land.”

He pushed against the nails impaling him to the tree, as if hoping that they would come loose, and ground his teeth again.

“Because the Hell of Ariel was dead and isolated, it became favored by the gods. This was where they put everything that they hated, feared, or wanted to punish… well, according to the myth, at least. That was why parents used to scare their children with the Hell of Ariel. However, there was another, far more dreadful reason why everyone feared it.”

Sunny raised an eyebrow.

“Why?”

Azarax turned his skull south, where the black wall of the Hollow Mountains was visible in the distance.

“Because the only realm Hell was connected to was the Underworld. A long journey awaits all living beings once they die — their shadows have to travel all the way to the Underworld and cross the Rivers to enter it, then descend to the very bottom of the Underworld and plunge into the Abyss. Only after traversing the Abyss will they finally reach the Shadow Realm and find peace.”

He turned to Sunny.

“However, if a shadow got lost on its way through the Underworld, it would end up here, in Hell. Forever. So, funnily enough, the Hell of Ariel had been a prison for those who had been denied death even before Shadow God unleashed his curse.”

Azarax stared at Sunny and let out a vicious laugh.

“Don’t worry, though. All those unfortunate souls were consumed and eradicated once the Hell of Ariel became a battlefield. We couldn’t tolerate the threat they posed, so we destroyed them.”

He slammed the back of his skull against the tree and stared at the sky.

“Neither of the myths about the Hell of Ariel had anything to do with why the Demon Legion and the Divine Host chose it as a battlefield, though. We simply needed a large enough battlefield and did not want to turn more realms into hells. So, this was why we gathered in the desert to wage war against each other.”

Azarax remained motionless.

“…But despite how close to the Underworld we were, most of us never got to the Realm of Death, anyway.”

His voice sounded both envious and resentful.