The island was quiet. The sands were white. Nolan pulled the boat he borrowed from Back and tied it on a stake on the beach. He surveyed the land. Strange trees that resemble the palm trees in his world. Some of these trees had finger-size thorns. It was quiet aside from the occasional squeaky voices. Nolan burdened the great sword on his shoulder and approached silently. As long as he holds the sword then the spell and contract have an effect. It worked like a charm.

Nolan wanted to pull the strings to weave power, but he chose not to. He shapeshifted his arm with a familiar obsidian mass of flesh hardening into blade-like claws. He sheathed the great sword. He walked calmly with the sigil of the Shadowed Wolf appearing in his eyes. He recalled the name of Gael Jag, the boy who tried to fight Ciara, the boy who was turned by the Old Revenant.

With the Sigil of the Shadowed Wolf, he walked past without the green skin monsters noticing. He swung his hardened flesh of an arm and used it as a whip to crack the spines of the goblins. Planting his arm, he spread his flesh like roots and manifested it to stab the goblins from the bottom.

Nolan expected blood, but he saw the goblins bathed in milky white. They turned into orbs of light that turn into bullets of light that disappeared out of his sight. Some of the goblins left their material belongings while those who belonged to this world stayed in their spikes.

“The Hominy Contract isn’t perfect, but,” he watched.

Earthen roots suddenly grabbed hold of the goblins who were not included in the contract. They were covered by sturdy roots that dragged them into a cocoon made of earth. The earth’s embrace was the conclusion of those who created the grand spell.

“It’s still killing,” Nolan took his arm back and shifted it back into normal. The earth rumbled for a second and he saw a goblin made out dirt, bigger than the rest, with a goblin riding on the head. The goblin looked around and saw none of his skin. Nolan released smoke made out of lights that revealed himself.

The goblin shot out earthen bullets at Nolan. Shifting his arm to form a shield, he blocked the earthen bullets and deflected the bullet. Pointing his palm at the goblin, he fired a ball of compressed flesh that exploded into snakes of flesh that stabbed all over the earthen creation. The goblin riding on top of that goblin golem fell face-first. Before it could regain its footing Nolan raised a hand to flatten the goblin, turning said goblin to orbs of light.

Back then he had been unable to completely kill humanoid creatures so simply. He recalled being happy being able to kill a single creature on his own, but yet he was unhappy. It took him many lives and many sacrifices to reach this point.

Nolan’s eyes seethed red with the eternal hawk’s sigil coming out. The screams of his fellow bleak walkers and his screams resounded throughout the air. They all screamed at him. All of their words directed at Nolan.

Nolan’s expression did not change.

Why do you live while we are dead?

By what right do you have a beating heart?

It’s not fair! Why you?

The words were a storm of insults and woes. The woes of the dead did not stop hurling. Nolan watched calmly without a flinch, he scanned the area and used the eyes of a hawk to get a view from above. He looked at his transformed hand and thought of the demoness that lived with him.

Even without Tania, he was able to use her power. Her soul had been bound too long inside of him that it became a part of him.

I was a monster to you. Even with all of the hardships that you had faced, you didn’t leave me. You were there for me to the point of breaking your soul. I couldn’t do anything for you.

Nolan thought of the demoness he trapped within him. She was someone who wanted to fight for her power, and yet because of his ignorance, he had trapped her into eternity with a soul who was too weak to fight. Even with this power, he couldn’t repay her, no, does he even have the right to do so?

Why were you so willing to stay with me, Tania? Why? When all I did was make use of you? I don’t understand how could you put up with a nobody.

He understands some of the reasons why, but he felt like he didn’t deserve it. Nolan shook the thought out of his head and spread the roots of obsidian flesh to every hostile being that he could find. Tania of the Obsidian Flower, she called herself that.

Nolan met her forces at the height of the war. She gathered the attention of all the light’s army and made devastating attacks that rose mountains and broke armies. It took a lot of effort to bound her, and it was only because she was protecting something that she lost. Nolan understood what she was fighting, no, when he lived with those demons in that underground city, he understood that she was acting as their guardian.

“The Obsidian Flower,” Nolan said, making of a garden made out of obsidian-like flowers. His skin glowed with rune tattoos and symbols that were carved on his flesh, each of them acting like circuits and wires that flowed power inside of him.

“I wouldn’t be able to do this without this body, hell, am I even human?” Nolan withdrew the flesh he released all over the island. Before long, the goblins in the island turned into orbs of light, some of them being called by the earthen mother back to the ground, where they were embraced to their rest.

“They call it peaceful, a merciful way of death, in the end, it’s just a nicer way to die. You still hurt them, wound them, and make them bleed.”

Nolan’s arm shifted back to normal. The voices that squeak when he came here were gone.