Chapter 69: Earth, Wind, and Fire, Part 3

1

Once again, Cynthia thought, lying in a pool of her own blood, we go back into the fray. If one could only be brave when they were scared, then one could only be strong when they stood up knowing they would fall again. Be prepared for that.

Sylvester... Or rather, what was controlling him, had done a good job. He had taken care of Ryan. Then he had slit his guts open, which he barely kept inside, pushing with a hand so drenched in blood that sometimes he couldn’t see it through his blurry, blinking vision. On the brink of unconsciousness. On the brink of death. And then, as if that wasn't enough, he had destroyed the weapons.

But one of them still worked. She lifted it. By now, Cynthia had perfect control over the four elements. So, when she pulled the trigger, she used fire to cauterize the wound and then... ice to seal it. The spikes pierced deeply, and they would have elicited a scream had she enough air in her lungs to do more than gasp pathetically. It would have been a stupid act that would have killed her... if she were still a human being. Since she wasn’t, it would give her time, and she would regenerate.

Cynthia began to crawl on the ground, leaving a trail of her own blood, out of the pool and towards Ryan, just like her. She touched his shoulder. He had been decisively defeated. Crushed, but he still maintained his Lunar Remnant form. She touched his shoulder.

“Are you okay, big guy?”

“Alive,” he spat, breathing heavily.

Yeah. Alive, though not exactly well. How the hell could he be? Cynthia sighed with relief. It was a miracle that he was okay. Sylvester was dangerous because he didn’t just see them as enemies; he was wild, but that was a double-edged sword. He hadn’t realized he hadn’t finished the job... Or maybe part of him had resisted doing it, fighting against the mind control. In any case, they were very lucky to be alive.

“What the hell happened to the sky?” Ryan muttered.

Cynthia took a look. At first, she thought—wished—that she was seeing things due to blood loss and lack of oxygen. That they were both seeing different things for the same reasons, but in any case, something that couldn’t be true.

Then some... things started crawling out of the holes in the sky.

2

Despite looking at the moon, it took Sylvester quite a while to realize what was happening to the sky. Once he did, he rubbed his eyes as if it would be just an illusion from exhaustion, a trick his mind had played on him.

Of course, it was very real. And very fucked up. The night sky was full of holes, and from those holes, creatures began to crawl. Mountains of flesh, blind eyes, thin, discolored hands like those of a corpse, tentacles, golden wings, and many other things, but that’s where the limits of human language, sanity, and intelligence ended.

Those terrifying creatures opened holes in the vast sea of the night, making reality tremble. And if it were just one of those things, but there were more and more holes and more creatures. And they shot out... something, he couldn’t quite see it. The point was that this something hit various points in the city that had the bad luck of being chosen by him for a little vacation.

As a result, buildings bent, sank as if pulled by quicksand, and... changed, forming a kind of tree of steel and glass and wood unlike anything in this world, wet and pulsing like the heart of some great beast, emitting a flash of a color that burned the eyes. What color? He couldn’t say.

Sylvester realized he was just pretending. He was a stronger-than-average human, but a human nonetheless. Just as limited. Just as small. Feeling he was about to go blind, Sylvester managed to tear his gaze away from that tree of another world and lowered it. Because there were many others growing right now, equally dangerous, all over the city. He could hear it. The collapse and the restructuring. The howls of reality as those creatures forced their way through.

Feeling extremely vulnerable, the first thing he did was open the statistics page. He had become too strong and only evolved when fighting Heather, his equal. Even in training fights without the slightest risk, it had worked. So, now that he had finally defeated her, he should have many points waiting to be spent. He should be able to become much, much stronger. He had to, to repel the invasion of those... creatures.

Only deep down in his heart did he know that wasn’t the right word. They weren’t mere creatures; they couldn’t simply be another participant in this multi-universal game of death. And if they couldn’t be that, nor Lunar Remnants for that matter, then there was only one other explanation. Anyone would realize the only possibility left on the table after simple elimination.

The numbers were erased, and the screen disappeared before he could do anything. His hands only touched air; there was no way to put everything back in its place.

Yes. It was very simple. The beings behind the curtain had come out to play.

3

With trembling hands, the man loaded the rifle. It wasn’t the first time he had thought about “it,” far from it. The first time, he vividly remembered, had been in his adolescence. Before he had hair on his balls. At the edge of the train tracks, he had wondered what would happen if he stepped forward when the train arrived at the station, as if it wasn’t obvious. He had toyed with the idea. Only later would he realize he had been serious from the beginning.

Back then, he had no real reasons. The reasons had come later, one after another, in an avalanche. Before he could recover from one kick, the next was ready to kick him in the balls and leave him gasping. But he had carried on because that’s what you were supposed to do, the right thing. Despite God’s, life’s, destiny’s, or whatever the hell’s best efforts, he hadn’t taken himself out of the picture. He hadn’t found anyone to support him, but that was okay. He had a decent salary and could afford to do what he more or less liked. It wasn’t a special lifestyle, but he had never wanted to be special. He had just wanted to be happy. That was special enough for him.

An entire life fighting against the curse he was born with ended in an instant when the man took a look at what was beyond the windows, at what was tearing apart the night sky, at the beings twisting and bearing a darkness deeper than the space between the stars, and the green lights of strange trees that seemed to call him home.

So that’s what he did. He put the rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

4

The city had been transformed into an alien landscape in the blink of an eye. Not that Sylvester was familiar with the city; this was literally his first day in it, an infernal day that hadn’t ended yet. And he didn’t even know the name of the city. But it was such a drastic change that even if it had been Kaleidoscope City, another disaster ravaging the ruins still standing and the newly reconstructed buildings and roads, it would have been unrecognizable. He couldn’t look directly at anything for long due to the light burning his retinas and pounding his head. That didn’t help, of course.

Were they weapons? Those twisted trees and the strange lights of colors that drove human perception to the brink of total destruction? It was like living in black and white and seeing a touch of color for the first time. No matter how beautiful that color was, you couldn’t help but go mad, as it changed everything you thought you knew.

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No living being liked the unknown, surprises, especially not humans. That’s why they desperately tried to name everything, to put it in a little box. That’s why, before understanding why storms happened, they had to be Poseidon’s wrath. Sitting and fearing the wrath of a temperamental god and trying to appease him was much better than admitting you didn’t know why it happened. That it would happen again and you couldn’t do anything to prevent it.

The same here. His sense of reality was being shattered. To compare again, his entire existence so far had been revealed as a triviality on a sheet of paper, which those things had taken and were now tearing apart, bit by bit. Based on that logic, there was no way to resist. The “character” drawn by some artist couldn’t resist having their sheet filled with holes. His creator and he were simply in different dimensions; there was no comparison.

But he would find one. He would find some way to compare himself to those beings and resist. Just because it didn’t seem possible didn’t mean it wasn’t. The only problem was exhaustion. Just after one fight ended, another tremendous one began. But at least this was simpler. No complicated feelings against traitors. No doubting himself. It was like chess. Black and white and everything perfectly squared.

Sylvester regenerated his right wing, gritting his teeth to endure the pain. As usual, the remedy was worse than the disease. That is, Heather had cut off his wing, but he had barely noticed it. While it grew back, however, oh, it was like his back was being torn open. Once finished, he took flight. A wave of dizziness overcame him, but he managed to keep his trajectory steady. Pain, dizziness. Passing sensations that shouldn’t distract him from his mission.

He didn’t know what to do against those enormous beings, more real than reality.

He didn't know what the hell he could do.

But he couldn’t let those trees keep spreading their otherworldly light and who knows what else. So, he dashed towards the nearest one. Once he got there, well, he’d improvise on the fly. So far, it had worked for him...

Hahaha!

Around that tree swarmed creatures that, if he had to compare them to something from his sane and logical reality, he’d say they resembled ants. But they didn’t really resemble ants all that much.

For starters, they weren’t small.

And just looking at them caused a headache similar to looking at one of those demonic trees, because their proportions made no sense.

It felt like they should collapse under their own weight, but they crawled forward, occasionally scratching the ground, cars, or the guts of some poor devil with their claws.

Their mouths were just as disproportionate.

Their bodies were large, especially compared to ants or any other insect, but not so large that they could have a mouth, split in two, that seemed capable of swallowing a bus. Nothing made sense, but the pieces remained in place no matter how much he looked, no matter how much he refused to accept it.

They were from another world in the strictest sense of the word, those things, the trees, the colors, and those god-like beings.

They had brought another common sense with them and were painting over his fragile reality carelessly.

Maybe this isn’t a fight that can be won, thought Sylvester.

Grounding himself, engaging in another fight before he realized it.

Losing control had helped him against Heather, but here it would be different. He had to be cautious, assuming that one hit was the same as death, whether long or short, dead was dead.

If they could stain him, infect him, degrade him the same way they were degrading reality, he really couldn’t afford to be hit even once.

Then move away, what are you doing so close? he thought, and he was right.

Sylvester took off, up and back. The air lifted by the beating of his wings scattered the swarm of monsters, sending them flying against buildings, shards of glass, and right back at the tree that had spawned them.

Yes, he had the means to fight those monsters from a distance without losing any effectiveness, even before he had stolen a sword that for some reason also allowed him to attack from afar.

So... it was common sense to keep his distance.

It wasn’t some profound revelation that he should take the path of least effort and risk if he could.

But, nonetheless, it felt like a great breakthrough.

He was clearing his head.

Coming up for air.

From what? Coming up for air from what? To the surface, but from where?

Well, he didn’t know. But if he didn’t concentrate, he wouldn’t pull his head and the rest of his body out of those mouths, that was clear.

He killed many of those bugs, shooting darkness from the sword, creating mountains of spikes, using his entire arsenal without holding back, almost as if this were the last fight he would face tonight.

And he killed them quickly, but not quickly enough.

They kept coming out of the tree and those he killed were quickly replaced. It wasn’t useless, they would have doubled in number if he had stood idly by.

But his effort to keep that plague under control would be very unproductive if he didn’t uproot the problem.

He looked at the Color for too long and Sylvester felt something break.

But it had already become clear to him how limited human understanding was about anything. What did he know about breaking? Had he ever been whole, to begin with?

In any case, upon realizing he was reflected in that Color, he ended up inside it.

For no apparent reason. Without a transition, it was more like he had been there from the beginning. It had just taken him a while to realize it, that’s all.

The beginning. Of what, when, and how?

Sylvester shuddered.

Because the space seemed to vibrate in response to the voiceless voice of his thoughts.

Because he wasn’t alone.

There was nothing but monsters around him, and their shadows that extended over him like a prison weren’t shadows, but another type of monster that came attached.

After everything he had seen today, the fact that shadows were alive and separate from their sources, from the creatures that projected them, wasn’t even close to the strangest thing he had seen. But that didn’t make it any less disturbing, of course not.

Because, his own shadow…

There was something alive there, swimming. No, like the surroundings, his shadow had been replaced in an instant by something inhuman.

Sylvester gathered strength and struck the ground, trying to use the Skill [Mountain of Needles]. It alluded to the mountain of the Buddhist hell, so it was most appropriate now that he suddenly found himself in a true hell.

But it didn’t work.

He had been frightened when, after the appearance of those beings and the trees they planted, the screen had shattered and the numbers had been erased. But then he had been able to continue using his Skills without problems, so he had set it aside.

That was over. He tried and failed a second time, but it wasn’t that his energy had run out.

He had lost access to his Skills, the power he had always depended on, which had become a part of him over the past ten years.

So, for the first time since he was a child, Sylvester felt fear. Not for others, not for what might happen if he failed, but for himself.

Because now he was weak. Vulnerable. And he found himself in the deepest entrails of hell.

5

Robert woke up with the feeling that an elephant had run over him. His eyes were open, but he couldn’t see a damn thing. Nothing physical was preventing him, but he was unable to breathe.

Anyone would say it was perfectly normal after a car accident, but Robert knew that had already happened, that it had nothing to do with it, even as important things like his own name slipped away like grains of sand through his fingers.

Deep down he wasn’t hurt. So, if it had only been the accident, he would have already managed to drag himself out and now be cursing the bastards who had suddenly remodeled the road or rather, getting the hell out of there and maybe calling the tow truck later, if he didn’t completely forget. He wasn’t exactly very brave.

He was sensitive, rational.

Come on, a more or less normal guy. That’s why he could recognize what was abnormal at first glance.

First, the bastards who had suddenly remodeled the road were nothing more than trees of concrete, glass, and mostly steel.

Second, that color.

The color fallen from the sky was the most abnormal thing of all.

He couldn’t breathe while looking at it, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away either, and each time his symptoms, for lack of a better word, got worse.

That is, it became increasingly difficult for him to breathe and the last remnants of his vision, like points of light in the infinite darkness of outer space, threatened to disappear and that was forever.

He was dying and Robert didn’t want to die like this, he didn’t want to die in any way.

But he was unable to tear his gaze away in every sense of the word. It was difficult, inside the car that had overturned during the accident, but he should be able to do it if he tried a little, changing position. It wasn’t like something was pressing him down, pinning him to the ground, forcing him to stay there looking in that direction. It was something inside him... or inside that Nameless Color.

Robert smiled when he found the solution. What drug could be more potent than a little hope in the midst of despair? The solution was very simple. If the problem was the Color invading his vision, he simply had to get rid of it. What did he need it for?

Nowadays you could replace your eyes if you had enough money to pay for synthetic ones, anyway. A mechanical replacement not only perfectly functional, but better than your real eyes.

And yet, of course, it was easier said than done. It was a great sacrifice.

But Robert did it.

He did it with a big smile on his lips. Raising his thumbs, placing them on his eyelids, which trembled as they closed, knowing what awaited them.

Then he pressed.

He didn’t stop until everything went dark and he began to feel blood and other fluids sliding between his fingers.

But he had made a grave mistake.

Now the only thing he could see was that Color.

Earth, Wind, and Fire, Part 3: END