So here he was again.

Standing inside the halls he longed for, for thousands of years if not tens of thousands, he gazed at the pillars made of golden spiked spines and ribs. They supported the transparent metal at the ceiling, and the royal blue of the ocean painted the blood-red marrows of the leftover Deep Sea Kings like a brush on a canvas. He could hear the waves high above the tomb, crashing and colliding and drowning people and islands alike.

Or they were the sounds of him kicking the bodies down at his feet.

The pleasant smell could also be their blood and innards.

He did not mind them and plucked the half-gnawed corpse of the old man’s disciple. He trod on the small set of stairs of the altar, Altar Of Sovereigns. He couldn’t help but shed a tear at the sight of the so magnificent work of art and effort. The silver red linings at its base that reached like tunnels of an underground city to the four small circles around it and the pure white statues on those four, depicting the deities of the beginning. Oh, great lord! How long was it again?

He asked the same question over and over again with each step, reminiscing about the suffering and sorrow of not being able to reach this point in his life. Even after killing the children of draken when he was a first essence warrior, or right before challenging the old god of beasts, he never thought this moment could come.

And he felt the utmost joy of, for the first time, disproving himself.

He came at the center of the linings and the small circles and stood right before the small empty gouge. Teardrops filled the nothingness before the blood of the corpse could, and he felt a deep engraved satisfaction in this accomplishment. Who wouldn’t? He was about to face the greatest and stupidest existence of all, after all.

He took out the cloak covering his body, and let his face bathe under the few sneaking sunlight among the ocean. His eyelids hid the light-emerald pupils from the world, and his thick eyebrows almost challenged his nose in size. His long red hair fell down to his waist like a waterfall. It covered the belt he fastened around the dark-brown armor he crafted with the scales of draken’s children. There was also a sparkling white dagger, forged with the blood of the late beast god, and the wave-like curves on its edge reflected the horrified face of the young man beneath him.

He felt pity for him and his master, not because he would sacrifice them.

They couldn’t live to see what would come now.

Unsheathing the dagger on his belt, he turned the bloody mess of a body of the man to face him, then slashed at his throat. The splendid dagger easily cut through the still warm neck and separated the body from the head. As the head rolled down the altar, he let the blood flow freely, and in no time, fresh red painted all over the linings. Then a buzzing sound invaded his mind with the brightening of the four statues. He waited. A second, two seconds, three seconds...

After fifty-nine seconds, the buzzing stopped and a deathly silence filled the tomb.

Hehehehe!

He grinned. He couldn’t help it. It was hesitating. But it didn’t hold much longer. The altar brightened again, and a small flame lit on the altar. It sucked all the blood from the environment, excluding the pond outside the altar, and turned into the face of an old man. Though one couldn’t see it in full size, he knew that the beard on his face was longer than it looked. And he also knew the fake smirk on that face was a facade.

‘’So, you decided to become the sovereign’s servant, Su’en?’’

‘’...’’ Su’en did not heed any word of the man, only continued to grin.

‘’Su’en? Su’en Ravindra?’’

The flame sizzled, then the old face warped into one of horror.

‘’Su’en! You won’t be able to, I wi-’’

As if cutting the old man’s words in the middle, Su’en pulled the corpse of Windblade with telekinesis and grasped it from the throat. Then he slammed down the body at the small gouge. The wrinkled, old corpse turned into a pool of blood from the force beneath his muscles. He continued to grin, ‘’HEHEHEHE!’’ His grin turned into something just short of laughter, and the altar started to shake like a boat in the midst of a storm.

‘’Damned forsaken! Then come as you wish!’’ The face in the flame roared, and the flames enveloped the body of the Su’en, tightly wrapped around his limbs and head, then flew into the sky like a ghost. With that, the altar dimmed in light and color, and four statues cracked.

In the meantime, Su’en inspected the fire around him for a moment. It passed through everything without any hindrance and reached high above the clouds, then surpassed that height. In a few milliseconds, Su’en left the world and found himself amidst the starry sky, under the gaze of the trillions of celestial beings. And among those celestial beings was a particularly distinct, and close, being, so close that he could see its body.

It sat upon a throne comprising of thousands of mountain-sized moons, stacked together like a lump of meatballs. Donning a long white robe, with no dirt nor words on its torso, the being’s hollow eyes burned with the same fire around his body. Its beard, the most interesting thing he wanted to know, reached the length of a whole world serpent, and it coiled around both its throne and the world he resided in.

‘’Su’en, what do you want to do?’’ God asked, its gaze blazing with an intense ferocity like the rising sun behind its huge physique. But that wasn’t all there was to the god. There was anxiety, hidden behind those slithering tongues of flames covering its eyelids, hardly kept under control by the proficiency and dignity it had gained over millenniums. Being a god wasn’t that easy after all. Su’en expected his adversary to have at least this amount of tenacity when it came to confronting someone of his caliber.

And he wasn’t being arrogant by saying that. That was confidence, the pure materialization of his efforts and power accumulated over the time no less than his foe at the front; and Su’en also believed that the thing, god, in front of him knew when and how to differentiate these two things.

‘’I came for something.’’ He did not act polite.

‘’What is the something so important that you had to come over to my feet, then act this presumptuous?’’ It almost shouted, but god’s voice faltered towards the end of its words. ‘’Now tell me, and I won’t shred your soul into billions of pieces this instant!’’

‘’First, you don’t have that power,’’ Su’en simply revealed the truth, or what he believed to be the truth. Of course, the lack of fear and reverence the god received made it restless, yet more so humiliated. When did its playthings, the puppets it watched from afar since the sovereigns assigned it to this planet, got strong enough to rebel? Su’en also intended to reveal that, but god had no such intention.

‘’Cease-’’

‘’Second, I will tell you now.’’ With that, after interrupting god’s speech, Su’en took out one of the seven rings donning his fingers, then sent his consciousness into the folded space inside. Among many treasures, spirits, souls, demons, angels, materials, and so on he instantly found the thing he had been looking for.

Under god’s gaze, Su’en took out a small scroll, old and dusty and shriveled, with an air that carried ages upon its shoulders. The texture, tattered and covered by many hands from many races; the imprints of those slender, rough, soft, long, and small fingers, carried on their existence on the fabric that read God Decree.

‘’You-How come you have a decree? Where did you get sovereigns’ power!?’’

‘’Just picked it up from an old woman,’’ He sneered and completely opened the scroll. With the oscillating of the sheet came four different manifestations of power; Light, dark, life, death. Su’en knew what he had to utter to become the new king of the world or to become an overseer candidate to be something like the man in front of him. But he chose another thing, he chose to be free.

And that freedom came from a hard and arduous choice that would suffer millions in both continents, with the complete death of the third. Yet, to reach that point of salvation no other person knew, or was aware but chose to ignore, the simple act of sacrificing normal people did not seem that a heavy decision.

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Especially when the dying people would be neither immortals or forsakens, but the creations of the it who almost collapsed from the fright.

‘’God, your eye is mine now!‘‘

*********

Leopold tree’s branches slithered around Cinder’s wrinkled wrist like a docile pet. They vibrated every time a small pop sounded out of the huge fissure that now covered the sky.

‘’I understand, but you don’t need to fear.’’ Cinder tried to console the young spirit and patted its trunk. It replied with a soft rustling of leaves and retracted a few of its branches. It didn’t forget leaving behind a small pile of leaves on his head though.

‘’Haha, it’s not the time to act playful.’’ After smiling, his gaze hardened and the Qi inside him erupted into several streaks of lines. In what seemed like an instant, these invisible strands of lights touched upon the borders of the scar upon the sky and transmitted whatever they could absorb to his body.

Then another popping sound, louder than the past pops, echoed and the strands of lights collapsed.

Cinder couldn’t help but frown at the aura of the things inside that fissure. They were strong, stronger than any other person or thing he encountered, but not necessarily so than the personas he read about. What mattered was the former situation though. What kind of a conflict two beings at that level faced off for worried him more than knowing the existence of two such beings. Well, after all, he also knew someone as strong as those two. It was the woman who spoke and ordered to him every once in a while.

‘’Hey! Cinder! Old man!?’’

‘’Oh?’’ Cinder let out a sigh, then responded back to the Qi transmission. ‘’What’s it, Snow?’’

‘’What’s it? WHAT’S IT!? Are you dumb Cinder? Mountain almost fell into the ocean because of that thing! Where the hell were you at that time?’’

‘’Oh Snow, you know I’m always busy. Also, both you and the girl Light were there to support it. Why do you complain about that?’’

Snow sounded offended and angrier than ever as he cussed out some words not appropriate for Cinder to recount, then took a deep breath to calm himself.

‘’Huuuuuu-anyway. I saw you send up some traces of Qi.’’

‘’Oh, how perceptive.’’

Snow paused for a moment, then asked in a quiet voice: ‘’...did you find anything?’’ The young Snow’s irresistible fondness of random compliments made him quite easy to please and soothe, and Cinder used this to its fullest every time he upset the boy. Of course, he wasn’t a villain enough to use it much.

At least not that much.

‘’I felt the essence of a mountain. It was overbearing, even more than you.’’

‘’Now that is interesting,’’

‘’Interesting indeed. But there is something more fearsome than that. Some kind of energy different from Qi and Buyuh.’’

‘’Hm? Is it like the mana of rainbow phantoms, then? Or can you explain the properties of it? And more fearsome? That is no laughing matter now. Even I would feel threatened by something stronger than a mountain essence.’’

‘’...can you stop your rambling?’‘

‘’Ummm, no?’’

‘’Haah-I can’t understand that much from a brief contact, boy Snow. You can try for yourself if you want to know more but-’’

‘’But?’’

‘’It is indeed more like the mana of rainbow phantoms.’’

‘’Now that is interesting and worrying. Alright old Cinder, Light is calling for me. There is a huge mess of disciples, some brats actually shit themselves on the disciple hall. Oh my god- it is disgusting. This is fu-’’

‘’Take care boy.’’

With that, he severed the connection with the snow and let out another sigh. It would be better if he stopped reminding my old age. He wasn’t old, wasn’t he? I mean, even Leopold tree looks older than me-

He felt the tugging of a branch on his robe’s neck, and Cinder just laughed it off.

‘’How perceptive indeed, all of you.’’

It was then Cinder suddenly shook, no the whole mountain shook once more. Waves rose on the ocean below and the seas inland, then the fissure grew in size.

‘’Indeed!’’ His voice bordering a shout, Cinder stood up and stomped on the ground. Instantly, his Qi acted like ghosts and infiltrated the stabilizing formation of the mountain. With several surges of Qi, the formation’s destabilization ceased. He felt the Qi strand of Snow reach out to him once more, but he did not pay it any heed and severed it again.

Because something else caught his attention.

‘’MY EYE! GIV-’’

A huge hand appeared from the humongous fissure, covered in a blood-stained white robe, and shot towards a black dot that was falling down from the fissure. Hm? Cinder revolved the Qi inside his meridians in a hurried manner and launched hundreds of Qi surges to home down on the beholder of the mountain essence.

They couldn’t get close, however, as a domineering force field sprang out of the arm to trap the essence holder. ‘’-E ME MY EYE BACK!’’ With that, the pure white fingers of the arm clenched around the holder and crushed the space around it to dust.

The force did not stop there and kept going over to the western continent. Then Cinder watched with his third eye, in amazement and horror, as it struck.

Land spontaneously turned into a hell of fire and dust as the continent sunk a few hundred meters. The few scarce hills and mountains on it collapsed over the tribal cities and towns of the barbarians and the sea tides and tsunamis washed over the shores.

Although he could only observe with his third eye, and couldn’t even see the silhouette of the continent clearly, Cinder somehow heard the sorrow and the wails of the people. His heart did not sting at the imaginary sounds, however. He didn’t care about a handful of useless failures dying under such a graceful exemplary of power. And the people in there also did not care for him, they cared only for their futile attempts at survival.

With that, more and more ocean water seeped inside the land cracks and the land sunk more and more inside the body of water. In a matter of minutes, the entire world witnessed a new level of power.

A power that could change the geographical structure of a whole world.

And that strength’s display was one of another shock as well. After the continent disappeared inside the waters, with some land masses left as little islands here and there, the clenched arm also stopped moving. A brilliant light shone inside the arm, then exploded into a bloody moon.

‘’WHAT!?’’

Cinder’s jaw dropped as the clenched hand seperated from the wrist by the unforeseen attack. The red light of a full moon that darkened the skies struck over and over again until the fingers fell off one by one, then the same streak of light enveloped the holder of the mountain essence.

‘’NO! I WON’T LOSE MY ARM AS WEL-’’

It lost its arm, though.

The fissure collapsed into inside in a instant and retracted like a tide after striking the shores. The fissure shrunk around the elbow of the arm and continued to pressure it. Then with a pop sound, the fissure closed and the remnants of the arm fell into the ocean alongside the continent.

Cinder stood without any reaction, like millions who watched the same scene and awoke from his stupor by a Qi transmission.

‘’Cinder, come to see me inside the Life-Exchange Formation.’’ It was a stoic, soulless voice with no other attribute fitting more than coldness. Cinder shivered, then replied with the utmost respect from his heart.

‘’Yes, Ancestor!’’

*********

Tulpar flew across the skies and watched the arm fell down into the ocean, then swooped down to dive into the water. Her wings did not stop moving as she dived down and sent a strand of her consciousness to envelope the god’s arm, then sent it into the folded space inside her belly. She did not collect the remnant blood, as they would help the world renew the Qi source of the mother earth.

‘’Is this enough?’’ She asked as she stormed outside the water and flew towards the southern continent.

‘’Yes, thank you.’’ The man on her back said, then she let out a snort.

‘’No need. With this, my debt is gone.’’

‘’Still...thank you.’’ Su’en said before falling unconscious on her back.

Tulpar trembled, then fell silent.

Her destination was the Garden Of Life.

And she wasn't sure whether she could stay calm in this silence.

*********

Inside the Hall Of Revenge, amidst the blood-colored pillars adorned with white and golden jewels and dragon inscribed statues, on top of a throne made of highest grade divine metal, A forsaken looked down at his kneeling subjects inside the room numbering in thousands.

‘’High King is coming back!’’ He said as his eyes shined with fervent fanaticism. ‘’And we need a good tribute to please his broad heart!’’

His subjects, most elite warriors of his territory cheered alongside and stood upright without the orders of their liege. They knew what he would say, and acted always according to that. Even tiring the vocal cords of their master was an offense when they had a way not to do it.

‘’So we will give him the biggest of the joys!’’

‘’We will give him the biggest of the glory!’’ His warriors chanted back, and he let out a huge smile.

‘’Then go! Go assist those half-breeds and lowly beasts to knock down the mighty pedestals of the mortal immortals!’’ They roared, their voices shook the hall and the people alike, and they left. He knew they would mount the wyverns in a short moment and depart for the countless cities bordering the continent. He felt relieved and slumped back on his throne.

And when the High King comes back, we all will reach that salvation! We won’t put up with the measly life force and Buyuh. He thought to himself.

Then we will see, Cindersnow, who triumphs over the other.

We will see.

*********