Moments later, a sonic boom.
"Woah woah whoa!" Sab raised his guard.
Before him floated a beast, constantly kicking about the clouds around it with each flap of its nigh infinite wings. Its Eyes stared deep into his soul, as if they could peer into his very soul, his very nature. Sab was immediately reminded of the cherubim, and yet its face was kind. No, not its—his.
"Elegy...?" Sab gulped.
"Yo!" He waved, "Check it, I beat the cherubim and took its wings! Pretty cool, right?"
"Yeah, I guess?" Sab furrowed his brows, "But like... Aren't you afraid?"
"Afraid of what?"
"Surely you've heard of the trope." He went on to explain, "The good guy takes the villainous monster's strength for himself and in turn gets turned evil by the sheer strength of the power."
An angel taking and using a cherubim's wings, the mere notion was unheard of! So to expect nothing unpredictable to come out of Elegy's stunt would be pure naivety incarnate. Sab's worry was completely valid.
"What? So the twist was that the villainous monster was never evil to begin with, but rather the actual power was the one making it so?" Elegy raised a counter-question.
"No, that wasn't the point I was trying to-"
"Because you're right!" He shrieked, tightly grabbing his head and twitching uncontrollably, "I-I don't think I can control it! Sab, while I still can, you have to run away! Save... yourself...!"
Despite the initial jolt, Elegy's little act didn't convince Sab at all. Instead, after a few more seconds of him trying to double down, Elegy finally stopped, sulking after he realized how dumb he looked.
Sab sighed, "Elegy."
"...Too soon?"
Finally, Elegy dropped all the other wings surrounding him, leaving only a pair to use for himself. Two wings were necessary for flight, only these ones had Eyes aplenty blinking on them, their gazes wandering everywhere around him. The rest of the wings would be used to carve out a new neck for Vastoria to use, but how they would go about accomplishing that is a whole different issue.
"You've really outdone yourself." Sab's jaw dropped, "Hey, can I take a pair for myself?"
"If you want, but just know we might end up burning through a lot of attempts." Elegy shrugged, "If the situation calls for it, we'll definitely have to relinquish them. Remember who we're doing all this for."
Sab was reminded of the kindhearted girl whom all these events revolved around. The one that currently rests comatose, her neck barely even attached to her head. Though her soul remains intact due to her angelic body, it doesn't change the fact that she's only a hair's breadth away from soul destruction.
"Vastoria, I know." Sab looked away helplessly, "But our current objective is to go help Migu and the others."
"...Hm." Elegy's smiled turned upside down, "Oh crap!"
"Don't tell me you-!?"
"Yeah, I forgot; now quit yapping and let's get going!" Elegy hastily rushed to the Abode, his new wings carrying him beyond the speed of light.
The duo were seasoned pilots, or well—at least they've had experience in being airborne. A few larger leaps to start them off before they could freely and easily glide their way through the skies. What would originally take a good hour of running was now reduced to a mere fraction of a second. However, what they saw wasn't the familiar Abode they were expecting. No, something much more sinister was afoot.
Sab gasped, "Oh God..."
"The Hell happened here?" Elegy scanned the surroundings, "This place is ruined."
What remained of the Gods' Abode was a mere field of ruin. A sea of bricks, marble and roof tiles as far as the Eye could see, and to make matters worse—neither friends nor foes could be seen nearby.
"Migu!! Dammit, Energy!?" Sab yelled out to no avail.
"Hats! Hey, kid, you there!?" Elegy shouted as well.
They rummaged through the heavy rubble, finding nothing worthy of note. The shouts became quieter with each echoed cry, yet no answer came up despite their best efforts. Eventually, Elegy had to face the facts.
"Sab, they probably escaped while the place was falling apart." He turned around, "I don't think... Urk!"
"Yo, what's the matter? I didn't hear that last par-" Sab walked over to him, realizing why such a grave face was being made, "Tch, there's no way...!"
Greymatter, just barely protruding from beneath the layers of rubble and marble. Bloody gore beneath it, the kind that wasn't possible to create without the aid of a golden edge.
"Sab..." Elegy kept his Eyes locked on the terrifying sight, "They got Energy."
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
"No..."
"They used the pickaxe to kill him, there's no other way to deal damage to a Heavenly Being." His voice grew livid, "Sab, they freaking won. The Gods, I mean."
"Energy can't be dead, man!" Sab shook him up, "That ain't him! We can't know for sure if it is!"
"You really think it's one of the Gods under there?" Elegy turned to him tiredly, "If it was, this entire world would be destroyed. A world without one of the Five Gods might as well have never existed, that's the vibe I got from them."
"T-Then it's someone else!" Sab refuted.
"Who, exactly? Migu? Hats?" He groaned, "At this point, it'd be better if it was Energy than one of them."
"Bastard...!" Sab's Eyes saw Red, "How could you even say that!? He's your family, jackass!"
"...Sigh." Elegy gave up, "Let's go, c'mon."
"Oi, we're not done here!"
Elegy finally snapped, "Exactly, we're not done. So that's why we need to go and look for the others and see if anyone's still around."
"..."
"Now come on." Elegy started turning over heavy rocks, "The sooner we confirm if everyone's dead or alive, the sooner we get to go after the survivors."
The mood was completely ruined, an unpredictable event had washed away all their hopes just like that. How fickle, the afterlife of a soul is.
----------------------------------------
***
----------------------------------------
Elegy paced around the perimeter, kicking over as many rocks as he could. Employing the nifty strength of his new wings to overturn the ones that were too large to normally flip, he had found no signs of Migu and the others.
"Come on, you gotta be in here, this ain't nothing for you, dammit!"
Sab intruded on his anxiety.
"Elegy! Found something!"
He sprang to action, "Who is it!? Are they alive!?"
It was obvious by his reaction just how scared he was. After seeing what had seemingly become of Energy, he could no longer stave away his worries with the simple belief that his allies are all indestructible Heavenly Beings. Knowing the Gods don't mind killing them, and knowing that they have the means to do so is already enough to prove all but him and Sab are long gone. But well, hope finds a way into one's heart whether they like it or not.
Elegy clicked his tongue, staring down at the golden pickaxe peeking out of the rubble below Sab, "Quit playing around. We're looking for people, Sab, PEOPLE."
"The Hell are you on about? This is huge news!" He smiled back, "The pickaxe somehow made its way here, isn't that incredible?"
"Oh..."
"It's a huge clue towards finding the others, not to mention..." He tried and failed to pull the tool out of the rocky ruins, "Urgh... It's gonna be way easier to dig them out if we do find them."
Elegy was about to puke. Scratch that, he was already holding back gags. The sheer weight of his actions made his innards all too queasy. Right, Elegy was the one who strategically placed the pickaxe near the Abode. He was the one to entrust it to Migu and Energy, the reason why Energy was now split into thousands of pieces, never to be brought back again...
"Urk!" He couldn't hide it on his face anymore.
Sab was confused at first, "Dude, you good?"
"Hrm..." Elegy thought about what to say.
Notably, he thought to steer clear of the topic.
"I'll help lift the rock." He ordered, "You pull it out as soon as I do."
"Huh? But Elegy, that gagging you did just now...?"
Before he could even properly get an answer, Elegy had grabbed tightly onto the rock before applying all of that weight to his wings. Thanks to their strength, the rocks were dealt with quite easily. Of course, he hid this fact from Sab to cover his own tracks.
"Hnghh!!" Elegy groaned, "Q-Quickly! I can't hold it for long!"
Sab, not wanting to forsake his ally, sprung to action accordingly.
"Ack, gotcha!"
Tugging it out with little to no effort, Sab had successfully repossessed the golden pickaxe. Falling back on his butt, he stood up with the pick proudly resting on his shoulder. Elegy could barely even look at the sight without breaking down.
"Heh, piece of cake!" Sab announced.
"Sab, that pick..." Elegy gulped, "Golden edges and points are the only things that can deal damage to Heavenly Beings. Chances are—that thing was used to kill Energy."
Sab's Eyes shrunk back in fear and disbelief. He quickly stopped playing around with it, treating it with the respect this powerful tool deserved. Now holding it with both hands and in front of him this time, he inspected the golden edge until a certain Color stuck out.
"R-Red...!" He started hyperventilating, "Blood! Holy crap..."
Elegy took this moment to snatch the pick from his friend. Using the guise of it being for Sab's own good, Elegy went out of his sight, digging in a different location in the hopes of finding his other friends.
"Come on, you gotta be down here somewhere...!"
Elegy stopped.
"Even if it's just your bodies, I'd like to see them for myself..."
By this point, he was crestfallen. Defeated, ruined, destroyed internally... He was just done. This entire party, wiped out in a flash while these two were just being toyed around by a bunch of stupid Eyes and wings. No, even before that, it was the fault of the Gods for not properly giving them what they had wanted. Of course, these were all the excuses Elegy had thought of and more.
"Truth is, I'm the one at fault."
Acknowledgment of one's own sins. One's own mistakes. In truth, it was Elegy's idea to hand the pickaxe over to Migu, naively believing she would keep it away from the Gods. No, again he was shifting the blame onto someone else. Migu just did what she was told to do, with the tools she was given. Elegy was the one who gave her the orders, and the one who gave her the tools...
"I'm so stupid!"
He tossed the pick away in a fit of rage.
"A goddamned moron!" He continued, "Damn the Gods! Damn this pick... And damn me for burying it for them to find!"
Behind him, a voice weakly quivered.
"E-Eh?"
It was Sab. Of course it was Sab, who else would it be? Elegy was being overly loud with his freakout, and they weren't exactly on the other side of Heaven 2.0 to not hear each other. Maybe this was what Elegy wanted. Possibly, even though his outer emotions showed pure fear in his Eyes... Maybe he just wanted to come clean to someone and get the retribution he deserved.
"Sab!"
"You... What?" Sab took a step towards him.
At the very next moment, a marvelous dropkick to the face, so strong it sent Elegy flying into the hard marble rubble behind him.
"Ghack!" Elegy cried out in pain.
"You did all this...?" Sab cracked his fingers as he closed the distance, "You destroyed the Abode, you ruined our teleportation system, you let the Gods get away... You got Energy killed. All of this was... you?"
"...Yes."
There was no more lying. After all, what could you even say in this situation to get out of it scot-free? Elegy didn't at all dislike that sucker kick, in fact he actively welcomed it. A murder's accomplice deserves at least that much, after all.