"I’ll accept your offer, K----!" said a small cat after much deliberation.
"Hmm? You're sure? Know that you’ll regret it and that your future will be ‘uncertain’," said a being shaded in emptiness. "You will suffer and struggle. You will survive only by shedding your bounds, something you will despise ever doing. This, I know all too well from experience. You will wish to die and pull yourself forward by the cuff of your neck with only the sight of the sky as a guiding light. And one day, you will return, yes, thinking things are as they were when they are not. You will see lotuses in a dry lakebed. You will hear laughter meant for others. Tears not dried on your cuffs. Gifts to and from strangers' hands… You will see your grave and find yourself as just a small passage in people’s memories. Forgotten like the eddies."
"Yeah, I know. Still, you talk as if you know those I’ll leave will grow just fine. Little Mafdet and your own daughter, they, I surmise that I’ll be able to see them once more, right?"
"…" The pure emptiness didn’t respond, void above void above void. All that was left without her voice was nothingness. Yet, to the cat, this very emptiness felt so full and complex. Her not responding was the same as saying a thousand words, and the cat’s brain focused on those small hints as if trying to grasp the reality of the situation.
"How many times have I died?" asked the cat, throwing a stone in the dark.
"…" heavy, oppressive, and drowning nothingness.
"You know too much, miss."
"And you, nothing. Not once have you died. Do not delude yourself with hypothetical truth when you have no proof other than literal empty words," responded the emptiness K. She formed back into her own flesh behind the cat to put a simple, measly finger to his nape. Information began crawling toward the cat’s brain as K whispered into Vergeltung’s ear, "Wanna know the truth; and the Burden that comes with it – that thing able to even fragment Gods and reduce everything to –"
"STOP!" screamed Vergeltung. He followed his outcry by lunging forward, escaping the crawling sensation at the back of his neck. He was feeling sick from this interaction, as if a weight had been put on his shoulders. As he looked back toward K, he could feel her smiling behind her strange veil, but what followed wasn’t something he was expecting. There, she melted like a candle in the lapse of a mere second, such that all that remained was a book all too familiar to the cat… She was mocking him.
"Knowledge is a Burden… If you can’t endure it. Wanna know what happen?" She whispered again in his ear. Her voice was sly and, at the same time, melancholic. The cat, hearing it, understood that everything that surrounded K was better left unknown unless he wanted to return to a simple story…
"Forget what I asked…"
"I can’t accept this blessing. But onto our earlier talk. You will die, and I shall move your soul upon a place called, in old, Moshiri. There, you will forgo your name and go by Okikurumi. Although you might forgo your current name, you shall never forget it, for it describes your noble heart, and you may use both names at your discretion."
"Blessing?" Vergeltung muttered. A small book flashed in his mind, and he hurriedly accepted K’s terms. There was much he wanted to ask, such as the meaning behind Moshiri and Okikurumi, but he felt like he would have no answers to his questions. "Then, what must I do as this Okikurumi?"
Vergeltung felt a sense of nostalgia wash over him with the use of this name, and he saw in front of him, standing with a disposition like he had never seen before – almost like an amplified reflection of himself – a masked man with long, flowing red hair, entwined with flowers, and shining with a luster as if both the moon and sun were embracing him. He was tall, with an equally tall spear made as if plucked from the most exquisite mugworts combined into one strong structure. Soft flames diffused from his armor which looked as if it was a large willow tree turned whole into protective gear. This impressive being lowered himself to the ground so that he was level with the cat and presented the animal a hand of his. Vergeltung accepted this hand, and a flash of light came to him with an almost sad whisper from K, "Let the sky be your guide and you, a guide for what has once been… maybe then, you can be a guide for what is to come after I."
✿
Mafdet, she had allowed her instinct to take the better of her and jumped onto John's neck. There was something demanding that she move and destroy the slithering thing in front of her. She bit hard on the scales. Then, a sweet taste spread in her mouth, so sweet that it made her quiver in joy as it dripped down her throat. That abomination’s blood, like nectar, invited her for more and made her mind go blank. This divine water was poisoning the child’s mind without her realization, such that she didn’t feel the coming danger. From John’s back, spikes spurted out and impaled her. Her small body was thrown into the air where, confused from the sudden pain, saw Vergeltung next to her assailant and cried out to him, "Fath---er…"
A fire plume covered the area with the small cat in the center of it. The frigid trees turned to ashes with embers dancing wildly like butterflies. After this outburst, Mafdet, who thought she had been consumed by the fire, found herself restored anew, even with her clothes repaired. She looked up with tears in her eyes as a mix of emotions rose in her young mind to regal in the sight of he whom she called father… His expression, she thought, it wasn't her father's expression… She looked blankly at the melancholic expression on the cat's face, which was almost drowning her under a sea of intense sadness.
"Father…?" she asked again. The cat returned a forced smile before lunging towards John. The beast caught the snake-like head and plunged its burning staff into one of the abomination’s eyes, which it followed by pulling up – up into the air as sudden fleshy burning wings sprouted from the animal’s back to take flight with tendrils seemingly climbing instead of the batting of a bird's.
"Fool..." whispered the cat before plunging down like a meteor with John in tow. The impact was magnificent, with bursting flames mixed with dust. No doubt, John had been greatly wounded.
"DAD!!!" screamed Mafdet, who ran toward the point of impact even before the dust could settle. There, she saw John, with a broken mask still attached, screaming in pain as he held his head like a madman. But more importantly, she saw the small cat with its back bleeding profusely from wounds left by the strange wings.
"DAAAAAAD!!!!!"
"Hurg…" muttered Vergeltung, his head muddy. Little Mafdet wanted to throw herself at him, but a nearby scream turned her aghast. It was John, shouting words she had never heard before toward the sky. They sounded like a curse, not that she could know for sure. Still, what was obvious was the rage and madness coming from John, biting her skin like a million poisonous snakes. "Run…" tried to say Vergeltung.
No! she told herself. With her small, trembling limbs, she placed herself in front of her father, ready to protect him if the need arose. While her opponent was screaming and lamenting whatever pain ailed him, she prayed. Prayed for anything, be it bright or dark, be it friendly or not so, be it strong or weak, be it godly or mortal… she prayed with her eyes closed and filled with tears.
Tap Tap Tap
A strange sound came to her and what felt like the warmest embrace from something, someone unseen. In front of her, two girls she knew somewhat had appeared.
"Apophis? APOPHIS!!! Please! Please save Daddy!" suddenly shouted a little girl standing between a masked man and a bleeding cat.
Hoomaikai looked back and smiled toward the child in the hope of giving her courage…
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Splat!
The sorceress as well as the other two feel shocked and crestfallen at the sudden change in front of them. The air seemingly split open as a singular scream drowned out all other sounds: "DAAAAD!"
A strange giant vulture-like bird had descended from God knows where and landed onto Vergeltung, where it promptly bit his head off…
The cat had seen the bird approaching and remembered his talk with K. In his last moment, his instinct, or maybe it was K, dictated that he look at the strangest girl he had ever laid eyes upon and allow emotions and ideas to dance in his mind. It was like a message that was more complete, faster, and more direct than words. And Tsuki, to whom this message was dedicated and who could understand it, was mystified. There was hope, providence, proudness, acceptance, and wistfulness among many. There was also a strange pull in those sentiments that felt like Vergeltung was saying, "You all, take care. I’ll be seeing you later."
Tsuki’s mind blanked for a moment as her vision almost completely twisted into a spiraling hell in which small cat heads formed and melted. It was a scream that almost made her go deaf that pulled her back. Or, more aptly, made her take control of that madness plaguing her mind.
That vulture and that man… They were the same as back then… It still felt so distant due to the accident with her hound Sinorous, but…
Mafdet ran past her with the expression of a mad beast. Then, there was a spark, uncontrolled and unusual, that stopped the child’s advance. It entrapped her in a raging fury and bound her to the ground as she screamed her hatred. Tsuki glanced at Hoomaikai, her lower lips bleeding from biting too hard on it, as she tried to stop Mafdet from killing herself on John…
Tsuki was momentarily overwhelmed and sick from every emotion directed at her at once. It was so awful that even when she was older, it would still manage to make her shudder and curse this so-called blessing… She, back in her early days as an abomination, knew not of the inner workings of people and so developed this ability to sense people's emotions toward her when she changed into a simple human girl – the Child’s blessing. To learn. And presently, cursing it as she may from its sickening, overwhelming presence, she felt all sorts of strange emotions she hadn’t expected from the others. She thought Mafdet was imagining her dying for not protecting Vergeltung, and this was pure hatred like she had never felt before. As for Hoomaikai… there was fear. It was all directed at herself, and they weren’t all. From John, it was a sort of contradicting ball of emotion that didn’t really make much sense to her. She also felt worried coming from behind her, where all there was was burned dirt, where a pair of feet had stopped running. She felt as if there was someone familiar hiding there, someone who had asked her to kill them not that long ago… There were other myriads of feelings and emotions surrounding her while being unseen. It was unnerving to the girl who was still processing Vergeltung’s sudden death. It was like a thousand eyes were watching to see the result of this confrontation, as if she was a simple gladiator. But above all of them, in the farthest reach she could sense, almost unseen, was an overwhelming melancholia. She didn’t know why it was even present, and it only lasted for a fraction of a fraction of a second, but its presence… It was like a sun appeared in the sky and downed the earth with its warmth of which couldn’t be ignored no matter how bright and wonderful anything else might be.
Tears rolled down her cheeks uncontrollably, and she allowed everything to be. The tears, the anger, the confusion, the foreboding, the empathy, the fear… and the madness. The madness that was trying to take over her mind. The world blurred, and swirled, and turned, and curved, and warped in twine, and rolled in coil, and… There was no change. This world that her mind tried to escape twisted back and forth into every possible permutation of maddening wonder until all that remained were senses and feelings... Not feeling as in emotion but instinctive or logical reactions and responses from outside stimulus. The cold wind mixed with blood was all but real, and so were the many emotions folding into her from unseen presences. She was at the border of seeable and unseeable, of real and unreal, of logical and illogical, of mortal and God. Her very own soul, not as Tsuki but as the abomination, rejected this conception altogether. The Child was made to be among the mortals while the Knight was made to be among the gods, and those two combined, making Tsuki’s current self – Alice’s body and left eye but Tsuki’s mind and right eye – was simply unaccounted for. Tsuki, with her vision and senses going out of control under stressful conditions, wasn’t mad; her whole existence, unbeknown to herself until recent introspection, was pure madness.
All that allowing the madness to take control of her mind did was force a sort of correction on her existence. A knight and nothing more; a knight and nothing less. Made to watch and ward the weak against all kinds of ill. In this time, she had failed this task. Someone she considered a friend, someone she wanted to depend on died. Her weapons, a knife to cut at any defenses, a glaive to spread an army of her own, and a fan to divide and control forces at her will, their existence laid in warfare as were the flowers blooming on her left arm. She, the abomination, was a hearth whose flame could warm generation after generation with warm meals waiting… and waiting… and waiting. There was the correction on her being, as she had waited, her people just vanished like wisps of flame in the wind. With no one to tend to her flame, the hearth is either bound to die or…
"I’LL BURN YOU ALIVE!!!" shouted Tsuki, who manifested her golden fan to first bring it up high above her head and then crash it down with a tempest of wind on its tail. The braze created by Vergeltung – or more aptly, K controlling the cat – gained a new life from the newly gained oxygen. Before the fan could fully crash on the burnt dirt, she changed it into a long glaive, which upon contact blossomed a field of flowers immediately taken up by the pressured gust of wind. In those thousand or so petals, only those colored yellow allowed themselves to burn, while those that were either white or black, from them formed their respective armies. Uncountable white owls descended upon the large vulture, while crows aimed for John, whose voice got drowned in their cries.
Among the chaos, Hoomaikai had managed to rear back Mafdet to safety. A task that quickly got harder as luminous projectiles were flung from the vulture’s wings. She was quite troubled when Sinorous showed up next to her to act like a shield, diffracting the projectiles away. Still, now wasn’t the time to let emotion cloud her judgment. That beast she came to despise was surely sent by none other than Tsuki herself. It lowered its head, not to pay respect or demand pardon, but like a horse helping a child up on its back. She scoffed at this but felt a pull on her right hand. It was Mafdet whose eyes were solely focused on the large bird. "I need to kill that thing at once…" All emotions were gone from her voice, and all that remained was a beast looking at a prey. Her eyes were now glowing yellow, with two black lines going from the inner corner of her eyes to each side of her clenched lips. Multiple black dots started appearing on her skin and spread quickly. Soon to be completely black like the night, she looked at Hoomaikai with eyes like a sun in the night and said, "Apophis. Use me, and let me destroy this creature…" Her body then collapsed unto itself as its bones cracked without so much as a pained cry from the child, until what was left was a simple scepter with a long dark claw on its side, sharper than any sword the sorceress ever saw.
Hoomaikai looked at the weapon now in her grasp, where there used to be an adorable young child, and gripped hard on it. She wanted to scream and lament.
The sorceress mounted the cursed hound, and she felt with disgust its shape undulating in and out of reality. "Go!" she coldly ordered the beast forward. Lightning formed around her as the hound gave her more strength than she needed, and in an instant, the hound jumped through space to reappear before the giant bird that was too occupied with the endless owls. She flashed her weapon into its flesh as if it was sucked by it, and she ripped into its neck with amazing precision.
There was a scream of pain coming from both John and the vulture that fused into one. Tsuki had managed to slit her opponent's throat using just her dagger. But, the scream of pain changed slowly into laughter, and both girls were pushed away from their opponent. John then spurted out, his blood flowing down to the charred ground, "Do you think me a mere mortal?!!!" He clasped his hands together, and reality began to shift around. Eyes, uncountable eyes, appeared from small parts of broken reality, and the one behind them laughed and laughed and laughed and… also cried.
🙧🙚🙘🙥
With dust howling like a mad prophet, a small beast looked around itself. In a desolate landscape, a tree laid dead and broken, with traces of being hit by lightning. As for the beast, he awkwardly lifted himself like a newborn calf and let his eyes glance toward the sky. He, almost blinded by a rising cloud of dust and sand, saw far away a sight that filled him with melancholy. A disk-like structure in space, one that he once saw in the past. He used to think it was a planet… He knew many good people up there. Lifting a limb producing soft flames, he dried the tears in his eyes and looked up no more. There were things he needed to do.
Okikurumi stood tall and strong and began walking on a planet that had long seen its demise. So long ago that most immortals that lived upon it managed to find the liberation of death together with the history of this old Moshiri…
