Chapter 12

Countless memories had been flooding Trap since he had woken up. At first he had been in the backyard he had grown familiar with in life. Then he had seen his old master, Calvin, again. The appearance of his former was the sweetest fate Trap could hold in his heart. Then he became robed in light and felt empowered.

“Fight well,” Calvin told him. “Trap. Fight well.”

And then everything changed in an instant. Suddenly he was in a world he had never seen before. He was suspended in midair, the world beneath him red as blood and the sky above as black as night. Weird flashes stormed around him. He looked around in fear, the oddity of the atmosphere instilling terror.

The day he was a small puppy, sitting in a cage, alone and terrified. It was his first real taste of fear. He’d been taken from his mother just after he’d been weaned and separated from his siblings. Trap shook in the cold, isolated cage as he wondered what the next cruel happening fate would burden him with.

I will die here. He thought.

“Hey mom, look!” a voice said.

He looked up to see a young boy with bright blond hair look down at him. The pup backed away as he opened the door of the cage in the back of the pick-up truck. The human stretched his arm to pet the top of his head, stroking it rather gently. While the pup didn’t trust the boy immediately, the fact that his first interaction was a pleasurable one made him half-trust the new creature.

“He looks kind of scared,” the boy’s mother said as she walked behind him.

“Yeah,” he said.

He then rubbed the pup’s ear between his fingers as he smiled into his eyes.

“But that’ll change,” the boy said. “Because I love him already.”

It was that memory that made his heart glow with a soft, yet vibrant bravery. He was no longer intimidated. He narrowed his eyes at the world around him, intent on completing his master’s will.

Calvin told me to fight. He thought. My kind are supposed to be subservient to their masters and obey their every whim. We are to fight and live for them.

Any part of him that felt reluctant to engage in combat disappeared upon further memory of his former life.

But Calvin was never that way with me. Trap thought. He never once commanded me to risk my life for him, never once asked me to hunt or bring back animals as prey for him to feast on. In fact…Calvin did his best to feed me and serve me like I was the most important thing to him.

Trap was amazed at his ability to fly as he hovered in the air. He felt so energetic as he recognized the sky was his domain more than the Earth had ever been. He smiled, feeling youthful like a pup.

If only Calvin could see me now. He thought.

The roar of thunder bellowed beside him and a flash of fire crashed down in front of his eyes.

What on Earth? Trap thought.

He looked up in confusion to see the source of the destructive weather. He was surprised to see monstrosities of writhing flesh and evil appearances staring down at him. Many had multiple limbs, eyes or did not look human in the least bit. Sitting in the black sky as they did, they looked more like pieces of meat that had been jammed together and compiled from different bodies.

Disgusting. Was his only thought.

The putrid monsters fired beams of fire and lightning that Trap had to continuously avoid to not be wounded by. He raced through the air, intent on taking down these ferocious beasts. He barked up at them, just as a lightning bolt struck Trap. In the middle of the blast as his world was lit up with a bright white, he thought back to all that Calvin had done for him as a pup.

And it is my turn to return the favor. He thought. Not as a servant, a pet or a hunting dog…but as a friend.

The lightning bolt did nothing to him. Whatever Trap was clothed with, it shielded him from the harsh energy that thunder was constructed of. He looked down to see the lightning bolt had instead struck a city below. It was obliterated.

And since humans were so kind to me…He thought. I must be kind to them in return.

He raced up to the sky, barking furiously as he soared towards the creature that had launched the thunderbolt. As Trap approached the monster he found it was essentially a man’s torso with bat wings growing from the bottom of it. A single bloodshot eye grew from the middle of the monstrosity. Four human heads in total growing from the sides of its body. The heads had no eyes, only two ears and wide mouths with teeth twice as large as a normal human’s. The lowest head where legs would have grown on a normal torso was crackling with electricity as it had launched a lightning bolt from its jaw. The other three heads now crackled with white lightning as they laughed at the destruction they had wreaked.

However, the creature did not get the chance to do so as Trap bit into the topmost neck. Every head of the creature screamed in pain before he shook the monster around in his mouth, feeling it let out a death rattle before lying still in his jaw. Once he felt life had fled from the abomination, Trap let go of it and watched how it plunged to the red sea below.

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He looked to his right to see a jet of flames stream down from the layer of black above. It had been fired by a creature with the talons and legs of a bird as tall as trees with the body of a flat disc. Beneath its pancake-like body was the mouth of a wolf that breathed the hot red flames.

A hole had emerged in the sea of red beneath it as if the liquid was subservient to the destructive whim of whatever was above it. When the red sea gathered itself into an empty hole to reveal a human city below. Trap raced across the sky as fast as possible, hoping to intercept the blast before it could harm anyone.

In that city could be good people, like Calvin. He thought. And there, in that very city, could be people with strong bonds like we had.

As he neared the blast to feel the heat of the fire, Trap thought back to the sorrow Calvin experienced in the final days of his first life.

I wouldn’t want any boy to lose his pet like he did with me. Trap thought. I’d rather die than any human experience that loss.

When he intercepted the blast of fire, Trap experienced the flames have no effect on him. It was as though they were no hotter than a gust of wind. Even stranger he felt the fire absorb into the coat of light that surrounded him. Red tongues of heat emanated around the clothing of yellow light. Trap could understand the fire was now at his disposal to do with as wished.

He looked up at the terrible creatures firing lightning, wind and flames down below to destroy whatever they could. He growled in anger at them before barking as loudly as possible. Trap released the flames from around him, multi-directional beams of red heat jettisoning from his body into the sky above. Each blast targeted a different creature, the fire commanded at Trap’s will to attack as many of the monsters as possible. Trap looked up and was satisfied to see the charred ashes of many of the creatures falling to the sea below. He gave a happy bark before rushing up to the black sky.

A creature that looked like a snake with half a dozen human bodies writhing like separate snakes was his next target. The men and women that sprouted from his back or side inhaled air while the main snake creature blasted it out from its mouth in the form of a tornado. As Trap climbed higher and higher into the air he opened his jaw to breathe in the tornado.

It gathered in his belly before his stomach expanded. No longer able to hold in the circulating vortex of wind, Trap expelled it in a howl. The tornado not only shredded the multi-bodied serpent above on contact but circulated across the entire layer of black above. The sky above was shaking like a mattress being slammed into, many of the monsters above falling as the tornado he breathed out threw them to the sea of blood below. Many of the monsters were torn to pieces in the process of being hit with the tornado.

After expelling the tornado, Trap looked around to find any other monsters plastered to the black sky above to find one giant looking down at him. It looked exactly like a blue human except with eyes covering its entire body and was far taller than a human. Each individual leered at him in anger. Preemptively ready for the attack, Trap climbed into the air after it, barking ferociously as the giant growled with no visible mouth.

The dragon was having a wonderful time during his rampage. He had transformed into something more akin to what he was before the grand star cast him out. The thrill of crushing every living being in his sight was truly ecstatic.

Every one of them fell to his claws and jaw. He gored so many of the treasured people with his horns that their golden blood colored his head a bright yellow. Claw marks from his feet could be seen lying among the defeated, a testament to the dragon’s pride. No matter what weapon the treasured people pulled from their body, it shattered upon contact with him. He laughed the whole way he marched down the street of gold. The spawns Nathan had procured stood at attention, laughing with the dragon at their victory.

“When the grand star rises in the morning,” the dragon said as he headbutted a treasured person attempting to stab him with a bejeweled spear. “He’ll find the heavens have a new king.”

He then turned to see a winged creature standing near him. The wings were feathered, like a bird’s, but the rest of his body was as smooth as a newborn's with no hair. He had three pairs of eyes, one in his head, another in his chest and another on each of his legs. The dragon looked at him with his leftmost head.

“Go tell the spawns that have taken the lower level of the heavens to no longer destroy anymore of the Earth,” he ordered. “The humans have got the message of whom to fear.”

“Yes, sire,” the creature said.

He jumped into the air and flew toward the tower Nathan’s spawns had constructed. He dived into the space between the golden floor and the tower walls. However, he came up sooner than the dragon expected and flew toward him in fear. The winged monster was visibly shaken.

“Sire,” he said. “All those that have replaced the star guardians are dead.”

“Dead?!” the dragon said. “Impossible!”

“B-But I saw it-!” the winged creature said.

“I suppose I’ll have to go check for you,” he said. “Your eyes must be defective.”

The dragon pushed the winged creature out of the way before rushing toward the tower before finding something flew out of the empty space. He stopped in his tracks to find a dog wearing gold meeting him. The dog gave a happy pant before growling at the sight of the dragon. The dragon leered curiously at the creature before his eyes widened in fear as he recognized the raiment that covered him.

He is clothed with the sun! The dragon recognized. It is the ultimate power the grand star can grant to a mortal creature! But-but if he’s wearing that-

He shook all seven of his heads in disbelief.

Could the knife of choice be purified of my influence? He wondered. No, that's impossible! Unless…

He glared at the dog, growling back at him as the canine bared his teeth.

Unless that girl did that. He thought. Whatever returns from the grave is given extraordinary power. And considering she never committed an evil act…it’s possible she purified the knife.

He shook his head.

No matter. He thought.

“Attack!” the dragon shouted.

The spawns rushed toward the dog only for the creature to howl in anger. Bright light shone from the robe of sunlight clothing him and the creatures nearest to the dragon blackened like charcoal. Their ashes fell to the golden floor beneath them, the other monsters fleeing in fear at the sight of the dog.

Darn it. He thought. Any creature any less powerful than me could easily be slain by a creature returned from beyond death’s boundary while wearing the sun robe. I’ll just have to take care of this myself.

The dragon rushed forward, attempting to bite at the dog before he jumped in the air to dodge. The dog fell down to bite at one of his horns, irritating the dragon. He roared in frustration before throwing him off, the dog skidding across the ground. The dragon rushed forward with his centermost head bowed, ready to gore the dog. However, the canine rushed to his feet and howled in defiance.