Heir of the Fog

The Banishing of Shadows

Once cast outside the library, I felt nothing but emptiness in the void, surrounded by darkness for what seemed like hours, yet only minutes had passed when I woke.

Many Frostkin lay dead around me, those who had sacrificed themselves for my ascent to the auric form, to godhood, though the notion still baffled me. Beyond the line, even more fell, and Sjakthar, though injured, had his focus entirely on me and the Frostkin, since all others who had opposed him were dead.

Still, my creations protected me, with many falling each minute against a power beyond their own. I felt their passion and their struggle, but when I returned to the waking world, I also felt revulsion, for I saw my own form.

My actions had unleashed a plague upon the world, the grey, which would continue to spread as I had shattered its container. My punishment was swift and unforgiving, for that same rift in space now resided within me. My flesh had turned into ice, so translucent it resembled glass. My organs were clearly visible, but mostly obscured by what moved within.

The frost-glass revealed the bodiless specters of the dead, countless entities pressed against the living realm, trapped inside me like prisoners in a cage. Their faces and forms were fully visible to anyone who looked, scratching at my insides in search of a way out. Their spectral fingers found purchase on the frost-glass, leaving marks of their passage, yet I felt no pain from it.

Was this my punishment? For breaking the artifact, had I become a lens to another realm altogether?

Though the thought afflicted me, I knew it was more than that. My aspect, Creation, demanded souls to begin the cycle. My form had been shaped to make that possible, using the rift I had opened to forge this monstrosity that was my new body.

I had lost the tentacles, and although my new height of 2.1 meters kept a humanoid shape, this body was worse than any monster I had seen. The specters moving within raised a chorus that traveled through my flesh, as if built to make it resonate and rattle the mind, causing madness to anyone who heard it.

"Silence," I commanded and to my surprise, they heard and abided by my command. Countless entities fell quiet.

"I greet you, the one who walks in between," the elf said, still watching the battlefield.

Had she known this was what I would become? No. How could she?

Though the rift was contained, the corruption still spread through me, within my mist and under my control as it had never been before. My blood shone gold as it coursed through my veins, and the power within made everything around me feel insignificant.

The world, once hidden in fog, now revealed itself in full. High above, the sky stretched, with faint traces of blue breaking through. I saw mana and even wills as luminous threads, waves coursing through the air in every direction.

Beyond that, yellow flowers like the first I had seen began to sprout as soon as I woke. They appeared across the battlefield, drinking the blood of the corrupted, resonating with it, and sending their vitality toward me.

I felt mana stream toward an already full core and spill around me, generating even more of those yellow flowers as they spread through the mist.

There was no mistake; there was no turning back from what I had become, a monstrosity among monstrosities, one that might drive a person insane simply by looking at, with the power to wield souls at my fingertips.

"Sjakthar," I called, for all of this was his fault. At my call, a thousand voices chanted his name, resonating through my flesh and echoing farther as if from every direction at once. They felt my pain, my regret, and beyond that, my anger, and they made him feel it too.

That chasm of a face that had once filled me with fear, now still with golden blood pouring from it, turned to me, and within that darkness I saw fear. The voices persisted, and in my presence, Winged Death's light gained strength from the corruption of the mist.

Sjakthar's attack ceased as he took a defensive stance. He was injured, and he faced two gods on two different battlefields.

I opened my mouth, and from it came a breeze so dense and cold it made the air unbreathable. Even the elf seemed shaken by it, yet I paid her no mind. She had shown no interest in joining the fight, and she proved it again by retreating and vanishing moments later.

Then, that same breeze spread quite quickly, freezing anything it touched. The entire ground, even the distant hills of the Deep Abyss, began to shimmer as ice surged and covered everything. The ground beneath Sjakthar froze over, cutting him off from one of his main affinities. Strangely, the yellow flowers were unaffected by the ice; they remained standing without care.

The Frostkin, noticing I was awake, came to me. "All of them did it willingly, a necessary sacrifice," Ella said, offering her excuses for following the elf's guidance behind my back.

Humanity had long been lost, yet I clung to a semblance of it, pretending some fragment remained within me. I had never wished to reach such heights unprepared, blind to what it truly meant to be a God. Still, despite my anger toward Ella, I couldn't fault her.

As one of the Isari, she had acted exactly as I had shaped her to act. Her brothers and sisters had paid the greatest price for this change with their lives. Had Haldrin been there, he too would have given himself without hesitation. I, their creator, bore the same duty: to show no hesitation. "I know. You did what was needed," I told her.

Next came Haldrin. "MASTER, THE TROOPS ARE READY TO ADVANCE ON YOUR COMMAND," he shouted, as usual.

His vessel bore countless wounds. The best of the Frostkin had followed him into Sjakthar's domain and fallen. I could not tell how Haldrin had managed to survive, yet there he stood—alive, though barely.

"Retreat. Go home," I told him.

"WHAT?" Haldrin asked.

Looking over the battlefield, among countless fallen abominations, I saw way too many Frostkin bodies. More than half of their brothers and sisters had been lost either to the sacrifice or to the fight. Losing any more was pointless.

"I said retreat. You have done your part masterfully. There is no need for any more to fall."

"BUT MASTER, WE ARE READY TO BATTLE," Haldrin protested, but I had no time for this; Sjakthar recovered a little more from his wounds with each passing moment.

"Retreat, he said." The voices echoed through me, feeling my anger and speaking on my behalf.

"To the frozen lands, he said."

"Now, he said."

Haldrin was one of the grey, a soul carved into living frost, yet the voices reached even him. He moved without further protest, and the remaining Frostkin followed.

Stolen story; please report.

"I could never have asked for better warriors," I finally said, feeling pained to see them dismissed after all their sacrifices. Yet, it was precisely because of those sacrifices that I wanted them gone as quickly as possible, before any more of them fell.

I knew they understood me through our connection. They had all come to my rescue, but their battle had ended. Mine, however, was not finished, for I still had to slay a God.

***

As soon as the Frostkin began to withdraw, I turned my attention back to Sjakthar. He still bled, but the wound had nearly closed. Little of that golden blood flowed anymore, something I intended to remedy.

Above us, clouds converged in a breath. From them fell icicles the size of pillars, several meters long and needle-tipped. The land quaked beneath the heavy ice rain, one capable of killing titans and reshaping the land.

They pierced his form, shallow at first, but the relentless rain quickly became a tremendous toll even on him. I felt his gaze the moment lava started flowing from his massive back. Given enough time, anything would succumb to this rain, but he wouldn't allow such time.

From his form, hundreds of vines suddenly appeared. Just as before, they surged from all directions simultaneously, though the shadows now struggled to hide them all. Hazeveil was far away from me, so I had no shadow step to dodge such speed, but the power flowing through me allowed me so much more.

I felt a deeper, more instinctive connection to frost than before. Ice tentacles erupted from my back, only four, but they extended further and further, 1 meter, then 2, then 10, and continued growing. As they stretched farther, ramifications appeared; what started as four tentacles quickly multiplied into dozens, each one alive and ready to strike at the vines advancing toward me.

Soon, several dozen ice tentacles moved around me. Thick and powerful, with an edge, resembling a form very similar to Sjakthar's own vines, which they kept tearing apart or being torn by the vines themselves.

The fallen ice tentacles reached and pierced the ground, then began to sprout and extend high again. They moved with a mind of their own, driven by the purpose marked into their very being.

Some of my ice tentacles lifted me, hauling me dozens of meters into the air. I was a spark over a battlefield of ice and vines, with the two tearing at each other relentlessly. With every breath, the vines reached higher, and they would have taken me in moments.

Three vines came dangerously close, but at the last second, one of the ice tentacles struck all three down, just before it was torn apart. Falling to the ground, it then began acting independently as a new one was born to replace it.

The same ice tentacles that lifted me, extensions of me driven into the ground, started to tighten, pulling me downward, gathering strain the way a body crouches before a leap. I felt the pull crest, then they released at once and hurled me forward. The air shattered with the sound barrier breaking as I shot straight toward Sjakthar.

Before me, monstrous shadow giants appeared within his domain—giants much taller than the Frostkin or even the hills around us. Giants as tall as Sjakthar himself stood in my way, but I pierced through them all, their shadows vanished and none of them slowed me down. At last, I struck Sjakthar and pierced his rocky flesh with my own bare ice hands.

The moment my hands reached his insides, ice spread like roots, not freezing but cutting everything in its way as it pushed deeper and deeper, branching the further it went, even as I pulled my hands free to avoid the shadow monsters coming my way. The ice kept tearing his insides like a living thing with a mind of its own, because that was essentially what it was.

Within his domain, my control over frost was limited, but what I left inside him held a spark of consciousness, a brief life. The aspect of Creation was being willed into my attacks, just like the tentacles that could act on their own.

Everything I touched could come to life if I willed it, for that was the aspect of my claim.

Moments later, golden blood began pouring from the chasm again, a waterfall that delighted the yellow flowers, which followed me into his domain, piercing the shadows, weakening his domain and increasing the corrupt mist influence.

Sjakthar's anger pressed on me, and his attacks became more relentless. Not a moment within his domain passed without my own shadow trying to stab me, though it had difficulty piercing my new flesh.

Then, my own shadow abandoned its attempts to stab me and began weaving runes in the air, constructs fueled by the enormous flow of mana all around us. The runes shimmered, and their purpose soon revealed itself—they were curses.

My movements slowed as a wave of weakness surged through me and my vision doubled. One by one, the other shadows followed suit, weaving runes of their own. Soon, hundreds of curses filled the air, each one carving a toll into my strength.

Furthermore, my ice tentacles, though alive in their own right, could not match the speed at which Sjakthar regenerated his vines, nor could I fend off his army of shadows forever. Despite his wounds and fatigue, he remained the Devourer of Gods, and I was a newly ascended God with only a fraction of the power of someone as old as Sjakthar.

However, I didn't need to win; my only goal was to nullify his domain of shadows.

Each time I pierced into his flesh, a shard of ice was left, which ramified and struck much deeper than I ever could. Luckily, golden blood poured from him in waves so large that it could feed hundreds of yellow flowers, which drank the corrupted blood eagerly, for he was truly being corrupted.

The edges of his domain grew shorter and shorter, the mist creeping closer and as the shadows waned I saw the countless cracks across his form, fissures in his rocky body from which light began pouring through—Winged Death's light.

Once his domain of shadows became only a faint presence and only the mist remained, I spoke. "I lay my claim upon this land and forbid the shadows to remain," using the Language of the World to bend the world to my will, though at great cost, banishing the remnants of his domain.

Just as the shadows were banished, his entire mountain-like body crumbled, and probably the whole of Araksiun shook as rocks fell to the ground. An earthquake threatened what was left of the city, but from within, a new form emerged: the perfect form of Winged Death, the Perfect God, reborn with Sjakthar's weakened yet mighty core.

"Sjakthar shall never breathe again, in this life or the next, for he is no more," I willed, using my influence over the grey to banish his presence even from the grey realm itself, but at a significant cost to my own will.

The Devourer of Gods, who had controlled the Abyss and kept me imprisoned for so long, was permanently dead.

Still, before me stood The Perfect God, with his beautiful butterfly wings. A titan among titans, one who achieved perfection in every single one of his actions, from the perfect way he breathed to the perfect way he walked.

A God without openings, without weakness. Each of his attacks would be perfect; each action would achieve nothing but perfection. Even the land, once jagged, flattened in his presence to offer a perfect surface for him to walk upon.

His light pushed against my mist, for as one reborn from the grey, my corruption would not touch him.

"A rematch?" I asked, knowing full well the battle was not over, or so I thought, for his following action surprised me.

He threw a sphere directly at me with perfect aim: a golden sphere—an auric core.

"What?" I was stunned. "Where did this core come from?"

I failed to see how that was meant to intimidate or harm me. But it all became clear once he spoke, not using the Language of the World but human tongue, so perfectly that it made me sound like an ape for the way I spoke. "Sjakthar was as much a master of deceit as of shadow. Before enemies, he would never consume an auric core and grant them an opening. What you hold is my former core."

It surprised me to see that he had truly not consumed it. The power emanating from it, although the core was small enough to fit in my palm, was greater than anything I had seen before, except for the one inside my chest.

"You are giving me the chance to consume it and grant you an opening, then?" I asked, as we stared at each other and waited to see who would strike first.

"No. This is my thanks to you, the one who walks in between," he said. "I did not bind you of my own will, but at his command alone. Let this stand as my sign of truce, for nothing is gained in further slaughter this day."

A truce?

I hadn't expected Winged Death to offer a truce. He clearly had the upper hand with the power he inherited from Sjakthar's core and with how spent I was after banishing Sjakthar from the grey realm, all of which he could see clearly.

However, once free, he offered a truce, a chance to live. "I agree. A truce, then, until we meet again."

He stood over forty meters tall, his light so intense it pierced my mist and revealed even the Isari still hidden within it, defying my command. For a moment, I thought this was a perfect lie, yet true to his words, all six of his butterfly wings spread wide. Their radiant patterns shimmered like stained glass set ablaze, casting colors across the Abyss.

Then, in the next instant, he shot upward faster than sound. The air tore with a deafening crack, a shockwave rippling through ice and stone, while his trail of light burned across the sky, tearing open the darkness as he disappeared overhead.

He was finally free from this cage, and so was I.