Chapter 83
Above and Below
Death reigned and all bowed beneath its shadow.
Severed heads flew off, the untoward rain dyed with crimson, a pile-up of corpses growing taller and taller with each passing second. Asher moved like a blur, his body bleeding like a river, yet healing just before it became too dangerous. He took turns exchanging blows with the young man and decapitating the knights that tried to sneak past him and toward the mountain pass. Though he hated having to split his attention two ways, it wasn’t particularly difficult, especially considering that the knights stopped putting up a fight.
As soon as he would reach them, they would surrender in body and spirit, silently closing their eyes and awaiting the only certainty on the battlefield--death.
Cold had begun seeping into his bones, in part due to rain and in part due to his apathy toward everything. Lives were overgrowths, weeds that needed to be uprooted and he was the sickle and the pickaxe.
Here and there, the young boy managed to throw in a rather accurate thrust or a stab that opened up a massive gash that bled profusely, but it never stuck. On the other hand, the boy's body was in complete disarray--his left arm was cut off cleanly, his guts were hanging loose on the side, and one of his eyes was gouged out. It was shocking that he was even standing at all, and slightly inspiring.
Something’s wrong, Asher finally awoke himself from the stupor and haze.
The Difficulty Rating was nearly 100... and yet, it felt easy. Though it hurt, and it hurt often, and some of the wounds burned like someone encased hellfire within his veins, and the sheer scope of the stage was staggeringly overwhelming... it did not warrant the difficulty. Even the 'bosses', though difficult and annoying and strong, seemed... lacking.
So, he grew cautious; whatever amplified the Difficulty Rating as much as it did hadn’t appeared just yet. Perhaps the cause of the Stage was to lull him and strike from the dark with something that he couldn’t react to.
"It's not that," a voice spoke up suddenly, prompting Asher to swing wildly about in anticipation. However, there were only the familiar knights that were felled and the boy who was rebuffed, sliding back through the mud for nearly twenty yards down the mountain. "Idiot." the voice was in his head.
He'd nearly forgotten as she hadn't said a word since being locked up in there, but he wasn't alone any longer. Caey resided in the depths of his mind, imprisoned against her will. She gave him a vague goal to strive toward and then appeared to go comatose.
“... what is it then?” he mumbled into his jaw, letting the sword tear through his right lung while beheading the knight.
“Two things,” she said, yawning lazily. “No human should be so immune to being violently wounded, even if the wounds heal.”
“Second thing?”
“Him,” Asher knew who she was talking about without her describing it any further.
“... yeah, feared as much.”
“Then you should have pretended you were having a hard time,” she said. “He’s coming.”
“They can’t do that, can they?! It’s barely been three hours!”
“Who knows? Maybe he just wants to chat.”
She fell back into the shadows once again, growing silent. The knights retreated and though the boy tried to as well, Asher caught him and held him back. The latter was beaten to the point of uselessness--his fingers were so weak that he couldn’t even hold the sword any longer.
The sea of the knights parted in perfect unison and a figure walked through. Eerily, the rain seemed to divert around him as though there was an invisible shield preventing it from touching him. His steps were slow and even and a bit loose, suffused with boundless confidence and a certain detachment, as though all of this was beneath him.
He was dressed neither as a knight nor was sparsely as the boy--he wore ordinary clothes, though well made and of high material, with a silver overcoat. Despite trudging through the mud and the rain, there wasn't a trace of dirt on its surface.
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The strangest thing of all was that Asher couldn’t make out the man’s features--it was as though there was a thick veil coating his face, and though Asher’s brain recognized there was a face, it couldn't put together what it looked like. Yet, even so, he felt strangely drawn to it, coming close to compulsion when he first faced Caey and her father.
Pausing some ten yards in front of Asher, the man gently raised his right arm and snapped his fingers. Suddenly, the world came crashing into stillness--the same kind of stillness that appeared when Asher was selecting a weapon or leveling up. He frowned, recognizing a certain possibility.
“Why do I smell myself on you?” the man suddenly asked. His voice was quaint and pleasant, like a perfect lullaby.
“Maybe ‘cause neither one of us has bathed in a bit too long?” the man snapped his fingers yet again and Asher felt his left arm fly off, exploding in a shower of blood. He glanced to the side and the hanging stump bleeding profusely before looking back at the man in front of him. All the while, his face remained expressionless, dulling even further. “Hm. I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“You being any different than the cunts who put me here.” the man snapped his fingers yet again, and Asher felt his left leg give way. He nearly stumbled and fell, barely managing to stabilize himself by using the sword. “What are you doing?”
“Teaching a mindless mongrel a lesson.”
“Really?” Asher arched his brows and smiled faintly. “To me, it seems like you’re venting your frustrations. Your little army got dicked hard, and now you came in strutting to show me who’s the boss.”
“Do you not fear death, human?” the man asked, appearing confused.
“’course I do,” Asher shrugged. “But there’s one thing I fear even more.”
“What?”
“Giving cunts the pleasure of lording over someone.”
“Hm. Heedless posturing of a dying man. Ordinarily, I would have tempered you toward the end--but you have betrayed the spirit of this place. You do not deserve to live, let alone be tempered.”
“... haah, I’m getting really fuckin’ sick of this shit,” Asher mumbled as his limbs grew back out. “Ancient relics like you should just shut the fuck up and stay where they belong--in the past.” Just as the man was about to snap his fingers again, light tore through Asher’s forehead and a glowing figure appeared floating in front of him.
Caey had a disinterested expression as she stared down at the man opposite of her who stared back, light of recognition in his eyes.
“Descendant,” he said. “Hm. Why are you with that mongrel?”
“For the same reason you are here,” she replied coldly. “Instead of resting. I’m chained to him, as you are chained to this memory. Humph,” she scoffed. “Not to mention, it is a memory of your greatest failure.”
“...” the man frowned gently, cracking a faint smile. “The descendant has a sharp tongue. Looks like the teachings of my lineage have been forgotten.”
“You have failed,” she said. “At everything you tried. Your name is spelled out as a cautionary tale. We exist today in spite of you, and not because. You, of all things, have no right to lord over anyone--not even one, pathetic human. You have condemned us to eternal fate, all because you could not live with the truth that you were weak.”
“Careful, little one--”
“--shut up,” she interrupted, metaphorically and literally spitting at him, much to the shock of everyone present--especially Asher. “If you had a smidgen of pride, you would have ended this pathetic spirit of yours eons ago. Bargaining death by becoming their tool for entertainment. Old, wretched thing, how dare you call yourself my ancestor? I’d sooner shear my bloodline than be thought of as one of yours.”
The man snapped his fingers angrily... but nothing happened. Only the sound echoed loudly, though still drowned out by the thunder. He snapped again. And again. And again. It soon became a song, a pathetic, pitiable, rueful song that had no rhyme or reason to it.
All the while, Caey grinned--widely and freely, hands on her hips. Asher felt the lungful of resentment vanish, watching her. For a change, absurdly insane levels of hatred were not targeted toward him but rather at someone else.
“Pathetic,” Caey spelled out the word letter by letter, enunciating perfectly, her voice booming like the crack of thunder. “Even in rot and death, I have mastered what you struggled to touch for the entirety of your life. And you want to use it against me? Ha ha ha. It’s almost as funny as where I am right now--here, defending a human who caused my current state, because of how much I loathe the very name you were given.
“Before I permanently erase you,” she added coldly as she began to fade, retreating into Asher’s psyche. “Be a good dog and go back behind that army of yours. Let this boy here play to his heart’s content, and watch in desperation as he does what you never could--evolve from being a crawling, profane worm.”
Asher whistled in amusement--his gaze drifting from Caey to the man who stood frozen, shaking. Whatever burned in his eyes, Asher couldn’t recognize--it was a concoction of many things, he supposed, things he never had to face quite so blatantly.
Once again, however, the old belief was reaffirmed--everyone seemed to be enslaved to something or someone else. Another person, entity, a thought, or an idea. Dogmatically dogged by their beliefs, they devoutly carried out whatever they thought was the best course of action--all while spitting down at those beneath them, just to reaffirm to themselves they were above someone.
And it happened--like a dog with wet ears, he turned around and walked away without even looking at Asher. His back seemed so tiny and crumpled as it faded into the masses. Luckily for him, the world was frozen and none of the knights seemed to have seen what just transpired. His shame, unto death, would be his own, as Asher hardly had a reason to share it.
Life resumed, stunned for a moment--they recalled the wind guiding their rear appeared in front of them, the man who would avenge the lethargic pain they were suffering, but he was nowhere to be found. Rather, there was only him--the face cast in dark shadows, entrenched in horrors that would haunt them even in death. There was only him... and the humming blade thirsty for their souls.