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Forgotten Sky
32 : The Broken Witch of Inexistence

32 : The Broken Witch of Inexistence

Blood strewed across the wet dirt as a shattering impact was felt after the strange cat in a trench coat was impaled in the chest. His torso was simply removed from the rest of his body as if it didn’t belong to him anymore. Still, as entrails sprawled on the ground with blood mixing with the acidic rain, the catactive got up. Not by his severed body in a ghoulish display of an undead, but by someone who was untouched by the attack since the catactive was in truth three cats in a trench coat. But it didn’t change the fact that something was dying.

The heavy rain was like balls of ice for this small detective’s burning mind. Only now did he realize the reason behind his simple wardrobe which he seemed to not have any control over. It was a sordid tale he didn’t even know about. A tale that was written to put a silly smile on children’s faces…now meeting the cruel reality of the world.

The catactive was now naked as the trench coat was pulled by the other wounded cat. This cat he used to know so well; the one he used to love so much; the one he thought was kidnaped… She moved under the cloth painted red with a burning rod pinning her in place. Slowly, flames fueled by the rain oversaturated by a vile compound spread on the bleeding mass, and as the cloth burned away, turning to ash, the detective saw it: the dark eyes of the one he loved filled with tears and pain.

A silly story of a cat wanting to be a detective that was written by a man who had lived for a long time in a fishing village… This detective was always lost in his mind and thinking about saving other cats like a hero in the dark. He was so stuck in his own world that he would walk headfirst on hard walls and fall down high ledges. One day, all cats in the imaginary village of cats were given a voice by a kind god. The wife and daughter of this detective, seeing how the god was generous, asked to become his arms and legs respectively. It accepted and made them such in exchange that the detective knows not of this pact or else the two women would return to be simple cats.

“Don’t look!” Screamed the burning detective’s wife. Her fur being eaten away and flesh melting, she could only pray that her husband would look away and forget everything less their daughter, still alive and breathing, lost her personality to return to being a simple cat.

But it was useless, he had noticed them, and the gift of language was fading from them. The mother's screams slowly shifted into pained meowling while the daughter barely managed to lift one paw to her father whom she admired so much. “Daddy…” she said before getting on all four and hissing at the new strangers in front of ‘it’…

Tears rolled down the whisker of the detective who still couldn’t believe nor understand what happened. His brain must have been tricked for him to not realize how close those two were. All those nights of loneliness, drinking until his mind couldn’t think, and despair at the loss of the light in his life. All for his silly dream of making the world a better place so that the two pearls in his eyes could live a peaceful life…those two had always been by his side, literally supporting him and now it was all gone…

The detective crawled toward his daughter who was now hissing at him. His eyes bowling tears like no tomorrow. He wanted to take her in his arm like the day she was born, caress her short coat of fur that so easily fell at a touch and often needed a lot of care…He kept screaming in his mind that he should be the one to die and not them and as his paw was about to touch the small red nose of his daughter, she – or more aptly it – swatted it off. His paw stung as a string of blood went down his claw, but he tried again, as patiently as he could. This time, the cat tried to sniff the detective’s paw but then, another rod was shot by the hunter which ended this young cat’s life…

He couldn’t even cry or scream. He simply looked back, atop the large wall, only to see the hunter of Tindalos smile, or what could be inferred as a smile.

*Duuuuuuuuung*

Tsuki struck the unmoving hound, now that Yuu was removing the gas in the air, which created a loud ringing like a bell reverberating. The clash didn’t even leave a scratch as all the energy from the impact was transferred as heat and sound.

“What even is that swing, girl!?” complained the flying Yuu. “Ya main hand in the back; weak one in the middle. Thumbs forward! Shaft to your chest, blade up. Main-side foot forward, you cut down diagonally. Shoulder, hip, leg, whatever, you don’t just swing with your arms! Ya do the fancy stuff only when you can understand the base. Swing at that mutt now!”

Yuu tried her best to guide Tsuki who didn’t even know how to hold her weapon correctly. Tsuki did try to do as the spirit said but she couldn’t grasp most of the information she heard. It was the first time she had to think about which foot to place first as every swing she did in the past was after a run-up. She would have been better off swinging a club than a complex weapon like a glaive. She couldn’t use it like a spear with simple trust and neither could she use it like a light sword.

*Daaaaang*

She struck awkwardly while spinning her body too much. Luckily, the hound was still not moving but the damage she dealt was nonexistent. The atoms forming the hound were placed in a precise and delicate matrix where the bounds were so strong that it was able to transfer almost all of the energy from the impact into heat and sound. It was to say that Tsuki’s impact had almost no effect on the hound’s skin. A pick or a hammer would have been able to break the hard shell of the hound easily. Worst was the hunter which was made from a similar material, and he already had a rod in a tube that acted as a sort of railgun.

The cat in the alligator plushy threw his sword to the wind and lifted the hound with ease to then launch it in the air to intercept the hunter’s large rod that was aimed at the catactive. The burning rod got stuck in the hound’s body which started to bend as if it was melting metal.

“Sorry little missy, but we do things my way now,” said El-Cato, enraged at the death of his sister. His eyes lit red as he went deeper into the giant plushie until his furry little head was completely replaced by fluffy plush. The little cat was now only a headless giant alligator made from wool.

The catactive screamed at his nemesis as he knew this cat had given to dark power and might never return to who he was in the past. The plushyfied cat then rushed toward the wall that the hunter was perched atop and crashed into it, causing a large hole to appear.

The hunter responded by jumping down and pinning the alligator under his enormous body. No one could have imagined how this otherworldly being really looked atop those tall walls but now that he was down, his imposing form brought fear to Tsuki’s mind. His form was wilder than the hound which could have somewhat been linked to an abstract sculpture of a dog. But the hunter, even if his body was made from the same rods as the hound, they were placed in complex ways and kept moving constantly as if undulating. Some parts almost looked like organs protected by a transparent liquid constantly dripping down. He was at least five meters tall with limbs constantly fusing and separating from one another. His body was only made from perfectly straight lines yet, all the movement made him look like a moving ooze.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Tsuki came running toward such an ungodly creature and tried to stab with her glaive at what looked like its organs. *Claaaaaang* The bell-like sound reverberated again as her hands became numb from the shock. A part of this abomination turned toward her, possibly its head which was to his side, and a bundle of fifty or so rods rubbed against one another by constantly producing dark blue pus. A sound she couldn’t even imagine existed was produced by such action.

It was talking to her or to something else, Tsuki didn’t know if it was truly looking at her and neither did she know what it was saying.

“DON’T TOUCH HER!!” Screamed the small Yuu whose voice suddenly drowned every other sound.

But the creature did no such thing and grabbed the weak girl. The hunter of Tindalos was simply too fast for her as his movements were literally explosive. It was a bit slower than the hound as it instead used a constant kind of combustion like a missile or a rocket instead of the hound which used bursting pods. This meant that the hunter’s body was constantly covered by the dark slippery pus.

“STOP!” Screamed Yuu again as she tried to move toward Tsuki but was blocked by an invisible wall. “Huh? What? WHAT!?”

This fairy tried to break the wall until something else grabbed her as well. This time, it was the doll Tsuki had seen outside. It held her in a tight grip as if mirroring the hunter. As the hunter’s grip became stronger, so did the doll who cackled at the little thing in its hand squirming in pain.

Then rapidly, strange luminous runes started to appear around Yuu. There were thousands of them, all overlapping over one another as they created a wall of light. Yuu was trying to create a gate to her real body so she could use her full power against the doll but when this gate was fully created, the doll simply threw her inside and disappeared as if it never had existed. This action from the doll caused the hunter to also throw Tsuki inside the gate where she disappeared…

҉

Yuu had lived for a really long time. As the stars died around her, she was forced to keep moving forward. Those she knew and loved all died and she was always alone. Not even a mother or a father, she was a mistake that should have never been born. Yet she was alive, and she tried to live a life she could be proud of.

There were a lot of people who impacted her life and one of them was a young girl with black hair whom she couldn’t forget. She should have simply killed this girl who came from the sea but instead, she took care of her. This spirit fed and healed the weak castaway and even gave her a name: Tsuki… for the moon that shined strongly in the ocean of stars and guided people home.

It was so far back in time and still, she couldn’t forget this girl who would call her mother by mistake. But like always, Yuu was forced to see this girl she treated as her daughter die. It’s the curse of those who cannot die. But after so many millennia, she found someone similar who also went by the same name. She probed and found it was the same soul as the one she knew but she also knew that it wasn’t the same person. What determines someone isn’t their soul but the things they experience while they are alive.

So, Yuu knew that the girl she named Tsuki in the past was long dead and the one she found by chance was someone completely different. Yet, she wanted to protect her. She didn’t really know why but she simply did.

As she interacted with Tsuki, she could only feel pain in her heart as the young girl would often do the same thing as the one in the past. It troubled her so much that she wanted to fight against her so that she could find minute differences but the more they fought, the more the spirit saw her daughter in Tsuki…

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad…” she said to herself.

This broken witch, broken in mind and body, wanted to help this little girl the best she could. Her life led her on a path that hurt many people. People she respected for their valor and strength. If this spirit had to be classified as a hero or a villain, the title of villain would fit her well. This is why she knew many people she could respect: they were those who tried to defeat her, real heroes who fought against evil… She contacted some of them for help, and Folkvang was among them.

She was happy that Folkvang accepted as he was a brave man who started as a weak messenger and became a god that protects the weak. He was someone reliable which Yuu believe would help Tsuki. Yet, he couldn’t really do anything as there were things he didn’t understand about the girl. Yuu was a spirit who never had to wonder how magic worked for lowly mortals and knowing Tsuki was different than most worried her greatly.

Thus, Yuu made a complex spell that didn’t require any magical knowledge for this girl. It came with multiple functionalities that any scholar would have killed to study. She did so while keeping an eye on Tsuki and was amazed by how strong she was. This led Yuu to believe that everything would be fine as the weak girl was able to stand proudly when faced with a god, like Scylla. So, when she saw she was fighting the resident of Tindalos or more so its impostor, this spirit was sure it would have been a walk in the park. They were weak monsters after all… or so was the perception of this witch who had faced many gods as if they were nothing.

How weak are the weak? How far is the sky for an ant that can never leave the ground…Yuu realized her perception was messed up when she saw Tsuki sobbing in a ball. This little girl knew she couldn’t face those monsters. She was weak and didn’t even know how to fight. It was too much to fight things like them. Everyone needs to start somewhere and throwing them into the pit of hell when they are still growing can only lead to their downfall.

Yuu panicked and tried to make Tsuki summon her, but it failed. The gas paralyzed the fireflies she used. She didn’t know what was happening because of that and forcefully created a small body that could help the young girl. She tried to put on a smile and act innocently so as to not push the girl more into despair.

‘Fight and I’ll guide you’ thought the spirit. She believed that her knowledge would be able to help the girl. That she could make her strong with only words. Yet Tsuki wasn’t even able to produce any straight cut. She might have been able to damage those otherworldly creatures if she had trained. Yuu hoped that this little girl would understand how to fight like how the one in the past did…But they weren’t the same person…They lived wildly different lives which she had forgotten at that moment…

It all led to the little body she created being destroyed when thrown into the gate she made. The chaotic energy around her real body was simply too much for a small thing like the fairy she created. That porcelain doll, only then did she realize who was controlling it. She would have liked to shred it into pieces, but she couldn’t as the weak Tsuki was also about to enter the gate. Tsuki would die if nothing was done. Her skin shredded and her soul turned asunder…

Yuu used her body to protect Tsuki from the many spells in place against intruders. The gate was broken and Tsuki was now stuck in a prison made to lock the worst evil in existence. With all the alarms going off, Yuu was unable to open a new gate…The only way to do so was by breaking free. Something that would have dire consequences for this spirit as people would target her out of fear…A fear so great that some would go as far as attacking her puppets and even putting those around them in danger. This meant that there would be strong beings that might put Tsuki in danger. Even if Tsuki was the purest child in existence for some, there are no costs too high to kill Yuu…

All she wanted to do is keep this young child safe and happy. But now, because of that doll that had played her for a fool… Yuu was scared. She knew that the one controlling the doll was the one to move Tsuki from her previous world and separated her from Alice. She was scared at the extent of this being’s actions. What good would it even bring them to have Yuu released from her jail? People will target them when they find the truth. So, Yuu couldn’t understand and was scared for the future.

Still, she could only move forward and as guards made their way inside her prison, Yuu broke her seal and disappeared with Tsuki. Yuu, the most feared being in existence, was now free from her jail.

That day, every living organism in existence felt a sense of dread as the only goddess of inexistence was free…