Not too far away from where I was, I could see a pair of red glowing eyes, standing out in the middle of the darkness that surrounded me. A moment later, the shape of the owner of those eyes started forming. I knew it very well, after all, killing him was what brought our world into complete destruction.
His head had three sets of horns. A couple of large ones protruded from the sides of his forehead, going forward and up; another couple from the side of his head, much thicker than the ones at the front, and these ones bending downwards and forward, almost framing his face; and the last set come from the top-back of his head, moving along the sides and ending in a pointy bit at the front, with several smaller spikey bits all over, giving it the appearance of a crown.
As for his body, it was wide and muscular, pitch black, almost like the darkness all around us, with a tight and fit waist from which a pair of muscular legs that bent like that of a beast could be seen; the feet were long and the tips of his toes had pointy claws. On his back, three sets of wings sprouted, all of them in the shape of dragon wings, with the one on top being the largest and the one at the bottom being the smaller. And on his lower back, a thick, pointy tail was swaying from side to side.
Finally, his face… one that at one point I hated more than anything else. He had no nose, only a pair of slits that made one think that it was removed; his mouth was wide and full of black, pointy teeth; his eyes were large and sharp, filled with a red glow; and all of that was on a sharp face, that had a wide jaw and a long chin.
“What are you doing here, Salrak,” I asked, my eyes set on the red glows that were his eyes.
“I came looking for you,” he calmly replied, his usual deep voice resounding in the space as he cocked his head to the side slightly, as if it was obvious.
“How did you get in here? I thought that you were supposed to be dead; that there was no body for you to exist, and yet…”—I looked at him up and down—“It seems like that wasn’t completely true.”
“It is still true,” he said with a nod, before looking down at his own body. “This is just a thing that I made thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me?” I asked with my eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t remember such a thing.”
“And how could you? You’ve lost your mind, after all,” he said, one side of his mouth lifting in a smirk. “I’m aware of what you’re doing.”
I lifted my chin slightly, and considered my former enemy for a moment. “What would that be?”
He chuckled and shook his head in amusement. “I might not be the same God that I used to be when I was alive, but there are still things that I can do, especially more so when you let your power—my former power—run rampant and without care.”
I remained silent as I just looked at him. He, in turn, just stared back, and after a moment, a halo of red Hellfire appeared behind his head, illuminating him much clearly. Then, like that halo, three sets of rings formed around his arms, and his legs, floating in the air without touching his skin.
He crossed his arms, and started floating to the side, slowly going around me as if he was inspecting me. I just looked at him, and waited to see what it was that he was planning, but just from the slow way that he was moving, I could tell that he wasn’t here to fight.
“Tell me,” he said once he was on my right side. “What is it that you hope to gain by throwing yourself into poorly remembered memories of your past?”
With my head turned to him and my eyebrows furrowed, I followed his slowly moving figure. “Poorly remembered? How could you possibly know that?”
He chuckled once more, shaking his head and placing one hand in his chin while the other one remained in the same crossed-arms position. “The life and story of the greatest Hero of the Holy Gods is not one that is easily forgotten, and as my greatest foe, it was my duty to ensure that I knew as much about you as I could. There are spells to do that as well, and in my prime as a God, such things were nothing to me.”
As he talked, he moved to my back, and I just turned my head to the other side as I tried to keep him within my eyesight. “And what makes you so sure that what I remember is wrong and what you know is true?”
“Ah… the details of how such a thing is possible are non-important,” he said, dismissively waving his hand in the air. “Lets just say that as someone that was able to travel the cosmos, there are things that can be gleaned from doing things like that.”
“Like what?”
He continued slowly moving around me, not saying anything until he was already on my left, and I just looked at him, waiting for him to answer.
“Like that Celeste girl,” he said, and I raised my eyebrows. “You didn’t know that girl. She was nothing more than some innocent victim of skeletons that you couldn’t save in your past.”
“That is not—”
“Or the voice of my dear sister,” he interrupted and I paused, nearly frozen. “Altheras never talked to you back then. She wouldn’t lower herself to do that with someone that had yet to prove themselves. It wasn’t until you were a Holy Knight that She approached you. Until then, everything was handled by the High Priests and Priestesses that spoke for Her.”
I shut my eyes tightly, shaking my head and refusing to accept what he was saying but… But so far, Salrak hadn’t lied to me… and even if I wanted to believe it wasn't so, as I tried to run away from the memories, they came flashing back to me.
The girl… she was indeed a stranger who didn’t even look like that. I did try to save her, but I wasn’t strong enough to do it. The rage I felt from that carried over even stronger when back home we found out that my dad and older brother were dead. It was with that fury that I decided to rush out of my home and join any army that would take me to fight against any of Salrak’s forces.
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With my lips tightened for a moment, and my eyes closed, I decided to ask, “Why do you do this to me? Why do you come here to correct these things?”
Salrak remained quiet, but I could tell that he was still moving. “Because you cannot hide in here. I didn’t bring you back to this world for you to sit back as your powers destroyed what little I tried to save.”
I finally opened my eyes and looked at him, floating a short distance away in front of me. “What are you talking about?”
He slightly tilted his head to the side. “Don’t tell me that you’re unaware of what is going on in the real world.”
“I…”
I tried to answer, but I would much rather just go back to the memories of the past, regardless of how real or fake they were.
“Hmm…” Salrak considered for a moment. “I guess I’d better show you then.”
He uncrossed his arms and snapped the fingers in his right hand. A rectangle of red hellfire appeared in the air next to him, and after a moment, the fire from the middle cleared away to create what appeared to be a window—or in this case, something akin to a screen.
I finally moved from the spot I’d been floating, and quickly moved over to where he was. There, I looked through the screen.
I saw how something similar to Salrak’s dark arms, with the claw-like hands, and the fire rings around His arms—but without the same musculature—were viciously swinging, and slashing non-stop at someone else.
The victim of this unrelenting assault was someone that I’d grown to despise… A blonde elf with a large damaged sword who was just as desperately trying to block the assault by creating Holy Power Barriers that were immediately shattered, lifting her blade to block, and repeating as many times the same thing to keep the attacks from getting to her.
It seemed like my enemy wouldn’t be able to last longer, as from what little I could glance, she had already lost a leg, and her face was full of both sweat and blood. It was just a matter of time before she was properly pierced.
Eventually, from one of those dark hands, a powerful beam of pure darkness sent her flying through the air to crash with a mountain.
I felt a bit of the rage I felt for her subside slightly as the feeling of jumping into the screen to end her myself filled me, but Salrak’s presence allowed me to stay calm, so I just half-turned my face to him without taking my eyes off the screen.
“Why are you showing me this? It seems like things are going exactly like how they should be,” I said, as the perspective of the screen remained the same, and instead of flying after the victim, in between the claw-like hands, a ball of pure darkness formed.
“Because…” Salrak said, and the screen slowly turned away from the forming dark ball to another place. “You’re destroying everything in your path—yes, you.”
“Huh?” I replied, dumbfounded.
Those claw-like hands and dark arms were mine? But, I didn’t remember having that shape… and what’s more, I didn’t remember ever losing myself like that, to the point where I could fight without being aware of it.
What caught my attention this time was what was below it all. From this bird’s eye view, I could see what was happening in the ground. The trees were turned into red burning messes; a large black hole in the ground where the base was supposed to be was burning in red fires; and the people that had come with me were scrambling to get away from this place, without success.
From there, I could see a Holy Knight in golden armor, screaming for help as he reached his hands up to the sky, while his bottom half had been torn away from a sudden beam of darkness. Another knight in a white armor had suffered an even worse fate as he desperately tried to put away the burning Hellfire off his face, which kept melting him down, but he couldn’t hold it back and fell to the ground, lifeless.
I saw with widened eyes how another Holy Knight in a white armor picked up one of our allied soldiers—an enemy for her—and threw her away from a falling Hellfire tree that crashed upon this Holy Knight, leaving nothing under it.
And I even saw how both a Holy Knight in a white armor and one in a golden armor stood side-by-side with their hands raised as they tried their best to create a Holy Barrier to contain the Hellfire that was slowly surrounding them, as other soldiers, both allied and enemies, ran away from it all.
“Is this truly what you want, Althea?” Salrak asked, and the images I was seeing froze. “Do you really want to become for this world the thing you believed I was in ours?”
I furrowed my eyebrows while keeping my eyes on the few people that were burning, on the ones that were dead by the fight between that uncontrolled me and Eletha, and the ones that were running away. But among them all, there was one thing I couldn’t see, someone I wasn’t going to see ever again… someone whose appearance overlapped over the dead Celeste of my ‘made up’ memories… Nicole.
“I…” I started, but paused as my lips tightened in a frown. “I would rather it all goes away.”
“Really…?” Salrak countered, not angry, but sounding somewhat disappointed. “You are still free to do as you please, even destroy this world if you want to, but is that truly what you believe? Is that really what you want?”
“This… this world… that world… It’s always the same,” I said, and I could feel myself getting heated. “Every time I go out to do something right, it always turns out worse. I thought that I was fighting to save the world, only for it to be destroyed, and this time, I thought that I could save someone that reminded me of my former self, and in the end, all I did was have someone really dear to me killed.”
I turned to look up at Salrak, at his demonic, red glowing eyes, and I could feel tears forming at the edges of my eyes.
“Why did you have to intrude inside my mind? I would rather let it all disappear and live in the fantasies of my memories, where I might yet find the peace and happiness that I’ve been unable to get,” I said, and those tears finally spilled down the sides of my face, before I turned away from his serious expression and back to the frozen screen. “Let everything be destroyed.”
“Hmm…” he considered once more, and I felt infuriated by his seemingly dismissive attitude. “Even if… there’s still hope to keep that which you have lost?”
Was he playing with me right now? What hope was there to keep what was already lost? I saw with my own eyes how the Holy Gods destroyed the world I fought for, and how in this world, by the hands of one of Their Heroes, I lost someone dear to me. If I couldn’t even protect her, what hope was there left for anything else?
“What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice lower than before.
“I had hoped to appeal to your sense of justice before showing you, but…” he said, and the image shown on the screen moved once more.
It turned away from the burning jungle, and into someone else flying away from the conflict. It was James, and in his arms, he carried someone else. I widened my eyes, and lunged at the screen, only to be stopped by an invisible glass.
“Is-is that…? There’s no way…!” I said, my desire to jump back into the world to confirm what I saw growing stronger.
Salrak snapped his fingers and the screen disappeared, causing me to stumble forward. I urgently turned to look at him to demand he bring it back up, but his shape was already losing form. There was a serious look on his demonic face, so I waited to hear what he had to say.
“This is as far as I can stay,” he said, and like the proud being that he used to be, he raised his chin up and looked down at me. “It is now time to decide. What will you do?”