Chapter 34: One Second of Eternity

The Fae Dragonrider blinked.

He was… Where was he?

A blank space. Darkness. How did he get here? What had he been doing?

He… He was fighting? No, it was barely a fight. He had been playing with his victim. A creature most brutal, yet powerless in his hands, as were all lesser lifeforms.

Yes… It was called ‘Human’. But the way it acted and behaved gave it the moniker fitting of all abnormals within the Great Game. 

Demon.

He had that Demon in his hands. He remembered mocking it. And then the Demon… did something…

And now he was here. 

The Dragonrider tried to move. He could not. He could feel nothing — not the enchanted armour around his form or even the heat of his breath upon his tongue. The Dragonrider looked down.

He could not see his body. Only an infinite blackness beneath him.

And then, a voice.

“A curious place, is it not? This realm of empty blackness. Most people see this space and deem it worthless with a glance — blank of value or shape. But you and I… We are alike in some way; crafters of rare tastes and repute. The artist sees the void as their canvas. You can feel it, can’t you? This darkness… begging for colour.”

“And who are you?” the Dragonrider demanded. His voice was an echo in the void. “Show yourself. A conversation cannot be had when one party hides like a coward.”

“I hide not for my sake, but for yours, little torturer. I am the End of All Things. To look upon my visage is to know the futility of life. I would not impart on you such a precious curse — not until He delivers you fully to my embrace.”

“That is not a name.” The Dragonrider tried to summon his weapons. He could not. “I have never heard of you, or the Title you claim to possess.”

“Of course you have.” A chuckle. “We have met many times — at the end of your lance tip as you impaled your foes’ hearts; at the surgical table as you reaped the final agony from your subject’s loins. You have met me as you have met the last light in your victim’s eyes before they flicker to nothingness. And we will meet again, before the last sun for you sets and the life in your eyes goes dark forevermore.”

“Enough of this circus play. Tell me your name and your guild, now,” the Dragonrider snarled. “I don’t know which of my Father’s rivals you belong to, but hear me well: You will release me from this illusion, or you shall have the wrath of the Fae descend upon you and your worthless Guild. We will spare no one. Those you protect, we will kill. Those you care for, we shall turn into slaves. And for you, and I shall impart upon you every agony I know and break you for this insult. This I swear!”

“I know. And I believe you, First Born of the Wild Folk Monarch. I was there with you in your inaugural murder as you took your first life. I was there beside the Lunar Pools when you sacrificed a hundred slaves to tempt that sliver of moonlight into your killing lance. I was there — in your shaking hands — when you birthed the first of your monstrous hybrids from the wombs of your chained siblings. That you could not see me is of no concern. I was there, always, and I witnessed the makings of you each time you performed my craft and sang my song.”

The Dragonrider felt his bile rise with every word. Something settled upon his soul — a pale gaze that he could not hide from. The darkness before him no longer felt infinite. There was no space large enough to escape the sense of confinement when that gaze settled down upon him.

The void felt heavy. He had no lungs, yet he felt as if his breathing was choked. The black of the world was giving way to a pale haze. The Dragonrider’s soul squirmed and recoiled. He had never felt so small in his life — not even before his Father, or the great Giants of old when he was younger.

Something incomprehensibly vast was now looking at him with its undivided attention.

“What is this? What has that demon done?!” he demanded. The words fell flat, their anger weakened by his rising panic. “What magic is this? A Spell?! A Curse?!”

“No spell. No curse. No magic. My face is nothing so vulgar. This is merely a precious moment we share. All life is a collection of fleeting instances, but this breath I give to you now may be made eternal, if I deem it so.”

“R-release me,” the Dragonrider gasped. “Release me!”

“No. This is the climax of our time together — the court where your heart is weighed against that of a Demon’s. Are you not curious about the outcome… To see which of your souls bears the greater burden?”

“The human is a wretched primitive! Before today, he did not even know about the wider universe!” he screamed. “My worth is a hundred times that of some murderous psychopath! You have no right to hold me! You are nothing! You have nothing!”

“I have this moment. And it is enough. My reach is one that strains both the vast ocean of chaos and order. It carries the weight of uncounted sins and virtues. You are not beyond my hand. You have committed acts of such vile ecstasy that even those you call Gods no longer wish to see you.”

The Dragonrider wanted to move. He needed to move, but he was caged. His soul begged to crawl. The pressure was a vice grip on his brain, squeezing and rubbing.

“S-system! SYSTEM! TELEPORT ME! SEND ME BACK TO THE HUB! I’LL PAY THE FEE!” He screamed. “GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

There was no answer. The familiar blue box that had dominated every aspect of his life since his birth…

… was now gone.

“The time for discourse is over. Look now, First Born of the Wild Folk Monarch. Look upon the End, and see the light of the Demon’s eyes reflected in mine.”

The Dragonrider, against his will, looked up.

It could not be called a face —  A face implied the rational boundaries of symmetry and proportion. This thing he saw had none.

It stretched endlessly, horizon to horizon, as though it had been etched into the very edge of the universe — a titanic presence fused to time, space, and void. What might have been eyes, or perhaps the dying stars of wheeling galaxies, shimmered far above. And there, at the centre of the celestial graveyard, a wound — opened in a smile that spoke of pale hunger.

It was looking at him. To be merely aware of its gaze broke him. From that gaze alone came the slow, slicing realisation of what now judged his naked soul. There was rapture in that knowing. There was also ruin. The two braided so tightly together that he could no longer name which was which — only that he would never be whole again, simply because he now knew this thing existed in the darkness between dimensions, waiting for the end of all life.

He might have wept, if you could. He only stared.

“And so now we meet. And so now you know.”

He did. He knew what he was looking at.

That knowledge would not save him.

“We begin: One Second of Eternity.”

~~~

“The First.”

The Dragonrider was screaming, but the voices tearing from ‘his’ throat were not ‘his’ scream — he was not in his body.

Some phantom memory told him he was in a pregnant woman’s body. He could not move her limbs or cry through her lips.

But he felt her pain. The tearing of her insides. The splitting of her womb and groin. A festering monster was trying to break free from within her.

“TAKE IT OUT!” He begged. He wanted to howl, to thrash and wail. The pain was indescribable.

But the body he was forced to inhabit was still. Calm. The silver-haired woman merely looked down upon her swelling, squirming belly and bore the flesh-tearing assault with not a word or cry.

Nestled in a freezing hut, she sat by a frosted window on a wooden chair, occasionally viewing the moon reflected upon a snowy field outside.

The pain he was feeling was her pain. Yet though the agony rose to heights unimaginable, the most the woman ever expressed was a shuddering breath as she shakily stroked her belly, her touches affectionate despite the horror inflicted upon her.

The Dragonrider screamed and screamed. The woman remained silent.

Eventually, her internals were ripped asunder, and the thing with her finally tore free.

Flesh broke, blood sprayed. The Dragonrider felt every moment. As the woman’s eyes went white from the indescribable pain, and the window at the side went dark with gore, he saw her final moments through her eyes.

Chewing on her flesh, a fully grown newborn sat within her mangled lower torso. Bloodied in her blood, head to toe, the Demon’s eyes of silver turned to meet hers.

For her, those burning silvers were the last thing she saw before blissful darkness took her.

For the Demon, that dying, tearful smile on her face — the first sight of his new life — would define him for the rest of his existence.

~~~

“The Second.”

The knife tore through his torso with an expert’s hand. Into the belly, up the sternum, and then a crossing slash that severed his lungs in two.

The man in a rugged lab coat collapsed. The pain was a convulsing fire within him, horribly beyond words. Guts and innards spilt out from chest to groin. He watched his murderer through tear-stained vision.

A white-haired boy, not even a teen. Pale silver eyes looked down upon him — the same colour as his own.

The child was crying, too.

The Dragonrider felt the man’s lips curl into a smile, even as Death came to claim him.

~~~

“No more,” the Dragonrider gasped, his soul convulsing from the lingering agony of phantom deaths. “Please, no more!”

“No more? But we are just getting started.”

“We have many, many more to go.”

~~~

And so came the Third Death. The Fourth Death. The Fifth.

And then hundreds more after.

Death by strangulation. Death by blades. Death by bullets. Death by fists and teeth. Hundreds of different deaths, the full scope of each victim’s agony and horror acutely felt as a pale-eyed Demon delivered their final, violent moments.

The Dragonrider experienced what it was like to be burned alive, to be beaten to death, to be torn limb from limb by superhuman strength.

In most final moments, he saw that same pale gaze and white hair. The Demon killed, over and over. Under winter’s snow. Under desert’s sun. Under tropical rain. In cities, in ruins, in space.

By the first hundred Deaths, the Dragonrider lost count. By the second hundred, he could no longer scream for mercy. The third hundred, his mind shut down to save itself. The fifth hundred, his soul was blackened by unending pain.

And so then came the sixth hundred death. Then the seventh hundred. Then the thousandth. 

And then yet another ten thousand more.

Twenty-eight years of the Demon’s life. A murderer from the first breath he took. And he never stopped killing.

For twenty-eight years.

When the last few deaths came — the tearing of flesh from a golden halberd through the Fae-Hyrids and the Fae Dragon — the Dragonrider could no longer think.

“Fourteen thousand, six hundred, and ninety-two souls, delivered personally by his violent hands to mine. Did you enjoy seeing it? The canvas my Harbinger painted for me over this eternity of nothingness.”

The Dragonrider said nothing.

“Your mind is broken. That is understandable. However, you may take comfort in knowing that it will be healed the moment you return to the Zone. You will not remember this precious moment we shared together. But your soul will.”

“When you return to the world above, and when you see those pale eyes of his once more, you might think to weigh your soul against his.”

“But if you are found wanting a second time, your soul shall be mine. And we shall play these scenes over and over again.”

“Until the last star burns out in Heaven.”

The gaze turned away. The mangled soul of the Firstborn began its ascent back to the reality above.

And just like that, one second of Eternity passed.

~~~

[Leader ‘Eldarin Prince’ is Reaperbound.]

The Dragonrider’s lance dropped from numb fingers. The grip holding Axel’s neck slackened.

The soldier — half his face gone, his hands severed, and his lower jaw missing — staggered as he slipped from the paralysed Dragonrider, landing on his two feet.

The Dragonrider’s horrified eyes came down, meeting the lone, pale gaze of the soldier. “Y-you… What did you—”

Axel snarled — the sound coming from his mangled throat and missing lower jaw nothing short of hellish horror — and lunged.

The crown of his head smashed into the Dragonrider’s nose, sending the stunned Eldarin to the ground.

With that same gurgling, inhuman howl, Axel fell upon him.

The man had no hands, not even his jaws, such that he might bite the Prince’s neck and tear out his throat. 

Axel only had his half-melted head left.

It would suffice.

Axel pinned the numbed Eldarin beneath his weight. Then, he reared back his body — spine and neck arching in full — before he sent his forehead hurtling down upon the Eldarin’s face with every force of his being.

Crunch. Cartilage snapped. Blood dribbled from burst vessels within the Eldarin’s nose. Still, the noble could not move, gripped tight by Pale Terror.

Axel raised his head again. And hammered.

Crack. This time, the sound was sharp and sickeningly wet. The Eldarin’s nose broke entirely like the snapping of dry branches underfoot. Still, the noble was paralysed with fear, eyes wide with begging.

Axel did not question it. He could barely think. Only one thought remained in his broken head.

Kill.

There was only the kill. Nothing else mattered. All he needed to do… was…

“Kill.”

He had his orders. Axel, breathing ragged, raised his head again.

With a feral, high-pitched wail, he brought it hammering down.

Crunch.

And again.

Spolrch. 

And again. And again. And again. And again.And again.And again. And again and again and again andagain andagain andagainandagainandagainandagain—!

…

Axel raised his head again.

He could no longer see — otherwise, he might have realised the Eldarin’s face no longer existed. Just a flattened mangle of red flesh and pale broken bone remained.

He could no longer think — otherwise, he might have realised he could summon a health potion into his open throat, to heal his horrific wounds before he succumbed to them.

He could no longer find the will to live — otherwise, he would have stopped long ago, before the skin of his forehead peeled off from abuse, showing a cracked skull and the pink of brain within.

Axel brought his head hammering down.

Splat.

You… and everyone that crushed me under their feet, to look at me with those eyes, to build this wall between me and my Death…

Axel raised his head again.

I will carry you all with me… Remember all your faces… And put them in a cage…

And hammered it down.

Squelch.

So that when the day comes that my strength fails… And when I am dragged to the deepest pits of hell… 

You will be there with me… Keeping my company…

Axel raised his head again.

So that I will no longer be alone anymore.

Axel brought his head hammering down—

LET ME DIE!

— And was stopped.

Axel tried to lean forward, to bring his mangled forehead down.

He could not. Someone was hugging him tightly from behind, restricting him.

He felt their warmth. The blood on his face, throat, and torso was so cold, but those arms holding him…

Warm. When had he felt something so warm?

Something pricked his open throat—a needle.

Then, a flaming agony engulfed him. It was a familiar pain, comforting in its healing burns.

The searing heat of a gold potion consumed his wounds. His flesh regrew. His bones snapped back to alignment. The severed mess of his missing arms, hands, and jaw was replaced by a burst of spurting remoulding gore.

He was made whole once more — against his will.

Axel’s face was wet, cheeks flushed and raw from healing. The air reeked of pulverised meat and bones.

He looked down. The Eldarin’s face was no longer recognisable. The Prince was clearly dead. The pain he suffered must have been horrid to behold.

He had done this. Him, Axel. This brutal, terrible killing that no living creature should have experienced.

The arms around him tightened. A body pressed against his back in a hug.

He felt the warmth of sorrow drip on his shoulder.

Axel turned around. He smiled. “Here to take the kill, princess?”

The moon hung behind them. Shadows veiled Lune’s face, even as she held him.

Behind them, the Giant General, Ymir, stood as well, his expression unreadable.

“Both of you once asked me who I was. I did not tell you then,” Axel softly said. “Because this is me. This is all of me.”

Neither of them spoke.

“This is what I am.” The Demon declared, his smile at peace. And in his words, there was a finality that the soldier accepted.

All I do is kill.