“Hey, Zary!” Yeal shouted at the girl on the metal cube “Samriel is almost here! Drop the girl down!”
Zary nodded and the cube inclined a bit, making Sarah slip off the metal spike and drop on the ground with a disgusting splat.
“...You could have come down a bit before dropping him.” Yeal judged Zary but she couldn’t care less and shrugged her shoulders as an answer.
The guy sighed and looked at Amore, who was still mourning his defunct husband
“Amore, I need you to take the guy and put it near Sarah.” but the woman replied
“Can’t you do it? You might be small but you are still strong.”
Yeal looked at his brother, who, judging by his silence, didn’t seem to like her answer and got close to her to whisper something in her ear; meanwhile, Dai was looking at them and was trying to understand what they were saying but he wasn’t able to. Amore suddenly stood at attention when Yll was about to remove one of his gloves and said
“Okay okay, jeez. I’ll do it.” she then went to Sarah, moved her near Dai while murmuring
“I fucking hate those twins…why am I working with them?” and then returned to mourning for her husband.
Now, it was the right time to act. Dai whispered to the centipede hiding behind him to go and shortly after, it was climbing over Sarah’s unconscious body, which started absorbing the insect instinctively like it was already searching for him; after that, her body started regenerating and Sarah opened her eyes.
She tried to speak but didn’t have the lower jaw and looked at Dai a bit pissed off about the whole situation
“Don’t worry and don’t act stupidly. We’ll be fine…for now. Samriel is coming here, I don't know what happened to Nysilia.” he whispered to her “Do you have enough energy to regenerate instantly?”
Sarah nodded at the question and Dai said “Good, I heard Samriel is almost here so acting now would be too reckless. We’ll wait for the right moment.”
Sarah nodded again.
‘Hoping there will be a moment- uh?’
Suddenly a drop of water fell on his head, it was raining but it quickly evolved into a storm and as bolts of lightning started falling, Yll started yelling
“Oh great! Now even lightnings! The world really wants to annoy me today eh?!”
‘He surely doesn’t have a lot of patience. What a crazy little guy.’ Dai thought while looking at him.
In the middle of all those noises, one started echoing and attracted everyone’s attention; footsteps. Zary looked in the direction of the sound through the gunsight of her sniper, saw Samriel and talked for the first time
“The Boss is here!”
After hearing that sentence, Yeal, who had just sat against the remains of a wall, quickly stood up and went with his brother to welcome Samriel.
“Welcome back Boss.” they said in unison, then only Yeal started speaking
“How did it go?”
Samriel simply nodded at their welcome “It went well, thanks to your discovery on how to implement the Gods’ powers in my body. Without that, I wouldn’t have been able to resist her blood-control powers. Good job. Same for the projectiles obviously.”
Yeal’s heart became full of happiness hearing to those words “Thank you, boss.”
Samriel noticed the dead body “Did Tyrant die?”
“Yes, it was Dai’s fault.” the twins said in unison.
“...I see. We’ll bury him once we are back home. Now…” Samriel stopped walking when he was in front of Sarah and Dai, who were looking at him with dead eyes “Let’s talk about these two. Do they want to join us?”
“Well, at first the guy said no and the girl wasn’t awake but it would have been a no too for sure, maybe now their answer will be different now that you are here.” Yll explained.
“Hm.” Samriel got closer to Dai and Sarah and crossed arms “Then? What do you say about it?”
Even with that mask, both of them could feel his serious gaze upon them.
“You already know our answer.” the guy said.
“Well, I’m not surprised. I wasn’t expecting you two to abandon that Goddess so willingly.”
He started removing the bandages around his left arm “Unfortunately, that means I have to force you.”
“What’s your plan…?” Dai asked timorously.
“You’ll see soon” he said as he continued to remove the bandages, slowly revealing a black arm with red stripes across it, the hand didn’t have nails and the fingertips weren’t pointy. It was somewhat incomplete but still enough to alarm Dai.
“You…are a Wanderer?! But your aura is nothing like the one you brought!”
-While Zonnikies have auras that can resemble a flame, Wanderers’ auras look more like smoke being dispersed into the air.-
Samriel laughed a bit at the guy’s sentence “Fortunately I’m not! I would never want to be under their crazy rules! They are even worse than what we, Zonnikies, had to bear.”
“Then, how…?”
“It doesn’t matter now.” he said and pointed the palm of the black hand towards her and Dai, there was a circle in the middle and all the lines were connected to it “In about, five minutes, you’ll have completely forgotten about Nysilia and the memories you saw. Your past will be completely changed and you two will start seeing me as the Boss. Now, close your eyes-”
Suddenly, a strong earthquake started out of nowhere, it was strong enough to almost make everyone fall, also thanks to the wet terrain.
“What the hell?!” Yll shouted “Is this even natural???”
Samriel was looking in the direction he came from
“Natural earthquakes can be as strong as this one but this time, it’s not natural.” Everyone looked where Samriel’s head was pointed and what they saw made them fall into silence completely.
Where the fight between Samriel and Nysilia happened, now there was a humongous cloud of dust, dirt and other materials that was covering something huge and only two red dots and a black silhouette were visible. An immense aura could be sensed by everyone, so powerful to make them all shiver, except for Samriel, who was starting to laugh joyfully at that sight.
“B-Boss, d-do you know what is happening?” Yeal said fearfully
Samriel stopped laughing but there was still excitement on his tone
“Nothing serious. Just Nysilia wanting to ruin my plans again.”
As he said that, a loud screeching sound was emitted and a strong wind uncovered Nysila’s body from the cloud. Saying she was tall would have been a euphemism, she was probably taller than the Burj Khalifa and that was without considering her length because her lower body didn’t have legs but was like an indefinitely long centipede with every segment being black with yellow stripes and red outlines. The upper body was human-like from the belly and up, it was covered in red scales in an irregular way, she had four arms and each forearm was surrounded by a tough shell made of red and black scales with fingers being sharp, the chest was also covered by a thick shell of the same colours and it was highlighting her forms; then the face was human-like only for the eyes, which were black for the scleras and the pupils were red, the nose was normal, meanwhile the mouth was wide with two long fangs coming out of the sides and to finish, the hair was black with yellow ends and the wind was moving them in a way that it almost looked like they were alive.
Nysilia emitted another screeching sound and this time it was pronouncing Samriel’s name and he smiled under the mask
“You really can’t fall into a slumber without me eh?” he made his great sword appear out of thin air “THEN LET ME HELP YOU!” he then jumped towards Nysilia and used such a force that left many cracks on the ground. While he was flying towards her, a crevasse opened in the terrain and a wall of lava raised all the way up to him, but it was nothing as he went through it without a problem and reached his opponent. She tried to hit him with one of her hands but she was too slow, he managed to dodge it in the middle of the air and subsequently cut through that arm with ease, but that moment made him too full of himself as he couldn’t dodge Nysilia’s grab and got thrown with enough force to reach the moon, with the impact creating a new crater.
He immediately jumped off the satellite and slowly approached Earth’s atmosphere, where Nysilia was waiting with a tensioned bow made of blood, the same for the arrow and she shot once he was in her radius of action.
Samriel had just entered the atmosphere when he saw the giant arrow coming towards him and he was barely able to divert it with the flat side of the sword and quickly flew down to counterattack. As soon as Nysilia saw him, she tried to block him with hundreds of thousands of bolts of lightning but it just delayed what was going to happen.
Being hit that many times only slow him down a bit but it didn’t matter because he controlled gravity on himself and quickly fell towards Nysila; in response, she opened her mouth wide like a snake and with her side fangs full of venom ready she approached her opponent and once she was close enough, Samriel changed gravity on himself again, quickly dodged Nysilia massive bite and sliced through the left side of her mouth, cutting down the fang. She then managed to hit him hard with a flaming punch and made him fall into the previously opened crevasse, which was full of lava and shortly after, it closed itself with him in it.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Seconds passed and there was no sign of him, when suddenly he popped out of the ground, surrounded by a weird orange and dark light that was bending the space around him
“You learned quite a few tricks after you won the war against us.” Nysilia was able to speak even without being able to move her mouth and her voice was echoing strongly through the air.
“I mean, that’s obvious. I trained hard and acquired many powers just to be ready for a fight like this, but I’m sad. You really liked to slack off during these years right?”
“Yeah, I always liked doing nothing I guess. But now it’s time to change.” Cuts formed all over Nysilia’s body and from the blood that came out she created three katanas “You’ll be honoured it was a god at ending your life!”
“You wish!”
Like before their swords crossed and the battle continued, meanwhile, Samriel’s pawns could only watch, incapable of doing anything; it was the right moment. Dai and Sarah looked at each other and immediately after, they instantly regenerated their lost body parts.
Amore noticed them but she was quickly targeted by Sarah, with her forearms transformed into blades and her opponent blocked the attack with her bare hands
“You aren’t half bad then! Surely better than your husband.” Sarah mocked her and obviously, Amore didn’t take it happily
“Shut up! I’ll let you pay for what you did!” she grabbed hard on her blades causing her hands to bleed. Her throat started inflating and shortly after, she puked acid on Sarah.
“Gross! And it also burns!” the woman didn’t give her time to clean her eyes as she kicked her hard enough to make her go against one of the few intact walls.
“Sarah!” Dai shouted worried and barely managed to parry with his katana the twins' simultaneous attack with metal rods given by Zary.
“You shouldn’t distract yourself like that!” Yeal said to him
“Yeal is right! Otherwise, you could end up like this!” Yll said as he attacked him on the head and then the stomach, while his brother was distracting Dai.
While he was fighting with the twins, Amore went closer to Sarah and took her for the throat, now the girl’s face was disfigured because of the acid.
“Oh look at you! More beautiful than ever!” she mocked her and laughed “It’s a real shame you can regenerate this. The thought of someone like you being in these conditions is exciting-”
Another bang.
Amore fell to the ground because of a sharp pain in her right knee.
“What the fuck!” she then looked at Zary “Why did you do that?!”
Zary, who was still on her floating metal cube, shrug her shoulders “I just missed.”
“You little- I’ll bring to the death row and-” Before she could finish her sentence, Sara had grabbed her by the hair
“Now, you’ll shut up.” her breath was visible and the temperature was dropping a lot
“Y-You’ll pay for this!” Amore swore as she was slowly frozen alive.
Meanwhile, the twins’ rods shrunk down for some reason and Dai managed to neutralize Yeal by cutting both his arms and giving him a good punch in the face, which sent him against a bunch of rubbles and Yeal fled away by disappearing out of thin air.
“We have to keep our guard high…” Dai said to Sarah as he turned around towards her and saw a Wanderer behind her, but he didn’t seem to be an enemy as he didn’t attack but just to be cautious said “Turn.around.slowly.”
When she did that she was surprised by him, she didn’t sense him at all and both she or Dai didn’t know if they could manage a fight against him.
Suddenly, Zary spoke up for the Wanderer “Just like me, he’s here to help you”
Dai and Sarah looked at each other, then the girl asked
“Why are helping us?”
Zary shrug her shoulders “Like that Wanderer, I’m just obeying Nysilia’s orders because I trust her…the only difference is that I’m not being controlled by a weird centipede like that man…”
Dai looked back at the man “So, he’s basically like a Zombie.”
Zary nodded “Yeah. Pretty rough, don’t you think? Anyway, I did my job, now it’s your turn. The wanderer will create a fracture and you two will have to go through it. That’s what Nysilia wants.”
“...but why?” Dai asked and Zary shrug her shoulders again
“I don’t know the details, the only thing I know is that she’s wasting Samriel’s time to let you escape and-”
“Then we have to help her. We can fight Samriel if we work-” Sarah stopped speaking when a projectile flew near her
“Are you dumb?” Zary said coldly while keeping the sniper pointed at them “Are you even seeing what’s happening there?” she said as she pointed to the fight that was happening in the distance. Nysilia was losing, soaked in her own blood and almost on the ground while Smariel was attacking her with the sword being 10 times bigger than before, trying to break through the armour on her chest.
“But-” Dai wanted to say something to defend Sarah’s point but was interrupted coldly by Zary
“Don’t talk. Nysilia is losing. Do you think there is something you two can do? Then go, but I won’t be there to help. The only thing I can do is kill you to not let Samriel brainwash you. If you really want to play the hero or heroine role, then do it after going through the fracture.” as she said that, the Wanderer opened a spatial fracture behind Dai and Sarah
These harsh but realistic words left both of them speechless for a moment and then Dai had the courage to speak
“The fracture…do you know where it will bring us?”
Again, Zary shrugs her shoulders “Sorry but I don’t know. Nysilia didn’t tell me, but she said that once you are there, she will let you know through the silver ring you have.”
Dai looked at the silver ring with that turquoise-coloured and unknown phrase engraved in it
“So, it wasn’t just a gift…”
“It was a gift for preotecting you and-”
A loud roar interrupted her and the three looked immediately where the fight was happening, Nysilia had completely fallen on the ground.
“There is no time. You have to go now!” Zary said to them and both Dai and Sarah, without any other choice, followed her order. Dai was the first to go through the fracture and Sarah was going to follow him when suddenly, she heard someone hitting the ground, when she looked back, both Zary and the Wanderer were unconscious and shortly after, she was also on the ground because someone hit her in the back of the head.
———
Nysilia was on the ground exhausted, she couldn’t move that massive body anymore and unfortunately, there wasn’t time anymore; with one last slash, Samriel broke through the scale armour on the giant body’s chest and now, in front of him, there was a nude and defenceless Nysilia. He was looking at her for a second too long and she said
“Stop looking at me, pervert.”
Samriel giggled “There isn’t much to look at anyway.” he then took her outside and threw her on the ground and then she said
“You, moron…I still won. At this point, both of them have gone through a spatial fracture, away from this cursed world.”
“That’s a bummer, but it doesn’t matter. Now, we have you, the missing piece of the puzzle. With you, we can easily find a way to find them.”
Nysilia smiled tiredly “It won’t be easy and once you find them, it will be too late. They will be strong enough to kick your ass.”
Samriel laughed “We’ll see.” he said and it was clear he didn’t believe her words “Now, it’s time for you to fall into a slumber like your brothers and sister did.”
Nysilia was still smiling and thought ‘Yes…he’s right. My time has come and did everything I needed to do…I’ll see you soon, family-”
“Ehy Boss!” someone shouted while running towards Samriel and Nysilia looked at that person, it was Amore. She was full of frostbites but still had enough strength to run and Sarah was on her shoulder, like a back of potatoes.
Samriel laughed at that sight, then said to Nysilia “It looks like you failed, Goddess!”
Nysilia couldn’t believe her eyes ‘No…no no no no! Everything I did…has gone to waste!?’
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch Dai and he went through the fracture and it closed shortly after.” Amore explained.
“That’s fine. You still did great. We’ll start her brainwashing right away!”
Nysilia punched the ground ‘Move. Stupid body, MOVE!’ she was trying to move her body, but her will alone wasn’t enough to make her move, she was simply too tired.
‘Fuck. FUCK! Everything I did!- IT CAN’T END LIKE THIS!’ she continued to despair while Sarah was being put on the ground and Samriel was leaning over with that black arm that who knows how he got it.
‘MOVE! MOVE! JUST THIS LAST TIME PLEASE! I HAVE TO SAVE HER! I HAVE TO PROTECT HER AND DAI! THEY STILL HAVEN’T GOTTEN THEIR FULL MEMORIES BACK! I HAVE TO PROTECT THOSE SMILES! I HAVE TO GRANT THEM A FUTURE!’ she tried to move with all her remaining strength but it was useless. Her body was too weak and she could feel her eyes slowly closing while looking at Samriel starting the brainwashing process.
‘No…please…one last…time.’ as her eyes shut off, her hopes were being crushed and what she worked for so long became useless. “Goddess” that word never had any meaning for someone like her.
‘You can do it.’
Right before her eyes shut off, she started hearing her brothers' and sister's voices from both the past and the dream, she quickly opened her eyes.
‘You are our pride.’
She rolled over and put her hands against the ground, trying to get up.
‘If you think you can’t do it or this isn’t your place, then fall into an eternal slumber like us. We won’t hate you for that…but…”
She painfully managed to get on her knees, with her body trying to fight against her.
‘DON’T let your past dictate what you are now and prove to Fate that you are able to change it because what you achieved so far, makes you the greatest Deity amongst us!’
She gritted her teeth as she tried to move her legs and stood up.
‘If you think you can finish what you started, then do it without hesitation!’
“I-” she tried to say but coughed blood instead.
‘̷W̴h̶a̴t̶ ̴i̶s̴ ̴y̵o̸u̷r̶ ̷c̸h̸o̴i̶c̶e̴?̸’̷
Suddenly, with the energies she took from what remained of her brothers and sister’s powers, Nysilia shouted at the top of her lungs “I, NYSILIA, THE YOUNGEST AMONG THE GODS, WILL BREAK THE SECOND GOLDEN PROMISE!”
As she said those words, time stopped.
‘Huh?’ Samriel was trying to move but he felt blocked by something ‘What is happening?’ he could only speak or move his eyes. Nysilia slowly walked past him and went close to Sarah.
‘What is She doing and how is she able to move-’
Both Nysilia’s arms were black with red stripes and with ease, reverted what Samriel was able to do to Sarah. It was like watching the lancets of a clock being turned the other way.
‘No! You bastard!’
Nysilia looked at him, with her tired eyes and smiled, like she could hear his thoughts, she then put something in Sarah’s pocket and opened a fracture.
‘STOP! STOP! YOU ARE RUINING EVERYTHING!’
Nysilia, with her remaining strength, tossed Sarah in the fracture and closed it shortly after and then the time started flowing again.
Samriel immediately shouted “What…did you do?! How were you able to block the time?! You Gods promised to not use those powers ever again since the Wanderers' creation!”
Nysilia turned towards him “It’s simple.” There were multiple cracks on her face and light was coming out of them “I broke the promise we made and I’ll pay the consequences for it.”
Other cracks opened.
“How can you be so idiot? Are you even a goddess? Shouldn’t you care more about the people who follow you or loves you?” Samriel said incredulously at what was happening and even more at what he was saying.
Nysilia smiled, there was sadness in it “You hoped I would have let myself be tempted by those thoughts and give up…but I know, that if people truly loved me, they will remember me, in their hearts.” she paused while other cracks were forming all over her body “You failed Samriel.”
That last sentence left him speechless and he fell to his knees, while cracks continued to form on Nysilia’s body.
“I’m sorry brothers and sister, I won’t be able to see you again. I’m sorry Dai and Sarah for what you had to go through. I’m sorry world for our mistakes. And…” she looked at Samriel, then took off his mask and while still smiling said “I’m sorry to you too for…” her next words made Samriel’s eyes widen.
Her body cracked one final time and her eyes weren’t grey anymore but of many vibrant colours, mostly due to the light coming out of her body. She slowly closed them and thought
“Farewell everyone.”
In an instant, her body broke off into millions of pieces, they were all similar to pieces of mirrors and Samriel could see himself. He tried to take a piece, not for malice but for another reason he didn’t understand, but the wind quickly dispersed everything, leaving nothing of the Goddess- no, of the true human who stopped him once again.
The storm had calmed down but it was still raining…