CHAPTER SEVEN: The Eternal Struggle: Immortality and its Consequences
"Soon everything will be back to normal, and we will still... well, we will still be." The borders between good and evil became a neutral zone of action and reaction, cause and effect. There were no sides in actuality, and this was winner-take-all.
The opposer bit his lower lip till it bled, regenerating instantly and clenching his fists. He asked the man, mulling it over in his mind while not letting the degradation take over entirely. He said, What about the ones already gone? He said it as a sort of advocate, indifferent to the idea. Lucifer may survive this unscathed, living to fight another day, but his hood will be hooded away. The pride he was so proud of, the rebellion, the war. What would it all have been for if he had given up now? He asked this question as a question for a thousand others.
Your lip is bleeding for one, he said, getting closer and pointing at the injury. It was not an act of quarrel but of aid. Lucifer deeply inhales just to keep the distance between them. The man stops to show his hands, as he did. Okay, I get it. The man appeared to have scoffed, staring at what the opponent was saying: I'll answer you this one question. He closes both fists limply. There is nothing to be done about the dead; we move forward, take what we can, and run. I'm running too, you know? He paused, then emphasized: It was the best I could think of. This isn't just about YOU.
Lucifer could not stand for such hypocrisy. I know this! He said it offendedly: The ones who are dead... that's... it was everything. Our home was everything, and you're letting it all go to waste as if it were trash. You imbecile! He began to rant. I knew about the void far before even you. I've known about the unnamed fundamental components of the heavens and the universe and proposed the very theories that are accepted as facts today. He poked at his chest, knocking on it like a door, and quickly said it with even more aggression: I was the one who brought to light the history of the 'Wish' inscribed in the vestiges of the 9th circle. It was me! Not you! He used all the energy he had gained. He finished with, And I know, oh, I know your dirty little secret.
The man shook his head in confusion and replied. What are you on about? You've finally lost it, haven't you? Lucifer spoke inaudibly through the memory. At that singular moment, the man choked Lucifer, picking him up by the neck with his right arm before a reaction could ever be made.
He struggled, kicking his legs and attempting to pry with his two hands, the one. His face became overcome with the blood that rushed out and locked in his head. Warm red hemoglobin squirted from the nose. The hand charged its power, and overheating it turned the water molecules within the air into a sauna-like steam that barricaded over the appendage. It was a geyser of condensation, a chimney producing smoke. The hand imprinted on Lucifer's neck; he struggled further, punching the man out of desperation. He could not be budged.
A dark, septic green blade, rigid and battered, was stabbed through the man's stomach from behind. His hand charged to completion, clasping the neck and breaking it. The blade ran up the stomach and passed the chest, cutting the throat vertically and the head like half an apple. The man struggled to stand up the way he was. He waddled side to side, back and forth, his movement similar to that of a toddler's. His organs and head, which were hard to fall out of, stayed intact, spilling minimal amounts of blood.
Lucifer wielded a katana. He admired the blade, putting it close to his face, and licked the man's blood from the Yaibi (the cutting edge). "I didn't think you fell for things like that anymore, not ever since reaching the level of perfection you have." It was the discarded sacred 'Chi' (blood) blade, a creation of the late greats Eitri, Brook, and Buri. It was acidic, degrading everything it touched and spreading an infection. It was also poisonous; it could forcibly shut the victim's central nervous system down.
The man turned around like a penguin would. Squared off with Lucifer, the man quickly began to heal from the stomach up, stitching himself back together. He gave himself no time to rest, dashing to slice his head off. In the same instance, the man pointed his index finger at the weapon, turning the blade floppy. What the fuck? How did he do that? This surprises Lucifer, changing his course of action. He jumped above him, spinning and flipping in such a way that the floppy blade tied a noose-like knot around the man's neck. Lucifer pulls on the handle of the Katana, dragging him to the ground as soon as he touches land. The weapon stretched longer; thinning kept its integrity. Lucifer opened a considerably large portal, tossing the hilt inside. The green noose around his neck tightened and pulled only the line he was dragged upon, like a fish hooked and reeled.
Lucifer consoled the man as he kicked and ripped at his neck for release. He now struggled to breathe, as Lucifer did, but in a different way. He said it to him softly yet sternly. Did you ever think, when we were younger, it would've ever been like this?
The man wheezed, Stop. His right hand motioned up, fluttering a bright blue before dimming back down to its natural state. He looked at his hand and, with the other, tried to release the tie. He raised it back to try again, but this time Lucifer kicked his hand away.
He explained, The commandments won't work. Your healing factor is being zapped away at a hundred different angles. Your super-analyzing right hand, or whatever that thing is, can only do so much. I've killed you approximately a dozen times. The man approached the portal. Lucifer glanced at the right hand of God like he had a thousand times before. In deep thought, Lucifer revised a new hypothesis. The right hand of God wasn't a 'gift' or angelic power; it was possibly a sentient hand that could combat any endeavor. I just mean, did you ever stop to think that it would be me who defeated you? And if you didn't, then it is you who are the ignorant one. The man entered inside. Goodbye, Jehovah. The tunnel was slowly sealed.
Jehovah pierced back through the other end. His right hand gripped the noose, separating it, but it did not detach it completely. He brought with him a large, dark black hand that pulled on his face from behind. His hand steamed over, supercharging itself to the point that all there was to be seen was smoke coming from the appendage. He freed himself from the chained noose, but whatever was on the other side threw him back.
Before closing, a large monstrosity came running out of the portal. In his hands, Jehovah was being squeezed in the face. He stood about nine feet tall, with dark black skin like the hand may have suggested; he was made of pure muscle. Stocky and gorilla-like were his two definitive features, nothing else. He was an animalistic, crazed, and sadistic person. He was untamable; Lucifer was not his master, merely a manipulator.
CHAPTER EIGHT: We Were the Last of Them.
Jehovah blasted the beast in the chest with a beam that came from his right hand. He was released. landing on the ground, he did the technique in repetition; this time he put his wrists together, hands open, and a much bigger energy blast disintegrated the beasts from the waist up. 'Level 3' he said. The rest of the beast fell.
Lucifer, in a surprise attack, flies at high speeds, picking up Jehovah from the side of his head. He flies upwards past the skyline. Jehovah breaks Lucifer's levered-out arm, climbing on him and grabbing hold of Lucifer's left-wing side, ripping one of them off during the fall. Jehovah punches him in the face, sending Lucifer back to land. The ground rose, and debris flew up. A dirt cloud was made. On top of that, Jehovah used the commandment, 'Down!' His voice was amplified. It sounded as though there were a hundred of him saying that one word at the same exact time. The gravity in the area multiplied, smashing the dust cloud down and raining rocks and mounds of dirt on Lucifer.
Lucifer forces himself to sit up, but the pressure is too much. Jehovah, now enraged, yelled out. I should have realized you wouldn't give up that easily! He lowers himself, saying, There is one way to end this for good.
The black beast had regenerated and jumped, snatching the man out of the sky. I thought he'd never shut up, Lucifer said. The commandment ended with a distraction. He got up, cleaning himself off, before flying out of the hole he was in.
The beast hugged Jehovah tightly, trapping both arms and gnawing on his head. Lucifer summoned several dark matter spears around the two, sending them off and piercing both friend and foe. The beast was killed instantly from a stray to the head; it nailed his noggin back to the floor. They were shish kebab together; Jehovah was stabbed through both legs and both arms, and two spears went in the opposite direction from the chest to the back and vice versa, pinning him in place and to the black beast.
Down! Lucifer was brought to his knees. The same commandant now affects Lucifer directly. Release me, he said, just to say words with the power behind them. He added, Listen to me, Lucifer; this is your last chance. If you don't stop and give me the wish, I'll help you realize what the second catalyst of true power is. Do you think that toy on your chest is going to save you for long? The man laughed hard to breathe, shallow and short. You think I'm scared of you; you're powerless!' He puked out red, green, and black poisonous blood mixtures from his mouth in that staked position. The Chi Blade's secondary phase is kicking in, 'The Black Plague.'
Lucifer smirked with a big, bright snicker and spoke: You need to stop talking; you're ruining this for yourself.
'PUSH!' Jehovah used his last commandment using the tidbit of oxygen left in his lungs; it was a screaming, weak wheeze of what was being said. Everything repelled off Jehovah and was pushed out with excessive force.
Lucifer mustered up all his willpower not to listen. Putting his hands on top of each other, they faced different directions. The thumb lay over the pinky finger on one side, and on the other side, his pinky over the thumb was parallel. Flashbacks flooded into his head.
Through brimstone and fire, never-ending deserts, with Jehovah by his side, build brick by brick humanity's cathedral. But then, as the story goes, one of the two believes the other wasn't doing enough, that he could do better, and if this was the end of the world, he was the one who was going to save it. A flash showed a woman—so small and so sweet. I remembered what I was doing this for. Thy betrayal he was forced into, and how there was no excuse, but he had one; it fell upon deaf ears, and Lucifer remembered that God did what he did too. He may have been wrong, but so was he. This was a clash of either two truths or lies. And he remembers the promise he made to the sweet, small woman. He had told her while holding her, his finger running down through their silky brunette hair and looking into her beady, dark brown eyes, under the moonlit and twinkled cosmos. He would not crawl; he was to serve no one, and it was to be him who ushers in the New World. I refuse, he said. Searching deep within the Law Defyer, Lucifer found a new rule to add to his collection, "Rules of Nature #25: Ikigai, The Perfect Balance." He spoke aloud, word by word, slowly. A hush came down through the valley in an abrupt silence. A swishing in the ear as things turned off in the distance, natural or not, just stopped. The spirit of the north wind dares not release his air over the land at this moment. It held its breath, for it had known this was a moment to be feared and nothing else.
The memory became hazy before it came to an end. I needed this to play through. What happened next? Did he die? It was quiet for a while. He and I, I and Him. It's been a long time since I've had clarity. I could tell him a little bit. A piece of mind: see where it went wrong, how I could have fixed it, and what I would've preferred. He didn't say anything; I thought he would've been antsy and restless after that fiasco. He was always ready to listen. The only thing that needed to be done was to talk. "I met him by accident."
In this visage, past, present, and future meet at a focal point. A place in time where a conversion doesn't matter, but a choice is made. There was no purpose, no pose; if it is in vain, then it abides by his unholy beliefs. A paradoxical brick wall he couldn't get over until now. He had to be set free in a way, that he had to let bygones be bygones—the law in which the world worked. There was actually a place and a moment where those beliefs were different. Those days are so far removed. When they were only nineteen.
PROLOGUE CONCLUSION
As this extraordinary tale unfolds, the echoes of the past resonate, leaving behind a tapestry woven with themes of immortality, existential dilemmas, and the perpetual struggle between opposing cosmic forces. Lucifer's six wings will now carry us vicariously through his life and its entirety. In contempt of the eternal rivalry between Lucifer and Jehovah, we find ourselves immersed in a story that transcends itself. This book invites readers to reflect on the profound questions of life, death, morality, and the consequences of free will.
The cautionary tale is not of Christian mythology like John Milton's Paradise Lost. Bonds will be one of struggle and people, breaking complex character(s) down into their simplest forms and watching as Heaven is thrust into pandemonium. The bare bones of 'what would you do if you could do it?' The narrative's philosophical echoes linger, challenging us to ponder the very essence of our existence in the vast and unfathomable cosmos, while detailing the exploration of self and self-identity, justice, and society. 'How can evil be good?' Unlike its contractionary statement, evil can be used as a tool of reverence. Not the necessity of evil, but the fog and confusion around individuality and the animalistic nature we all have inside us. The positive notion is that acceptance of bad things and people's like(s) is the cause of convergence. We have to drag evil out of the trench it is in. The book captures this while showing how arrogant, blind, and dark 'the good' can be, and that all sides are still the same from any point of view. Good is good and bad is bad, but often mirrors reflect what cannot be seen. It was staring down into a box that was endless. You peek inside; you see as far as the eyes let you. But it's only a fraction of it—less than <00000.1%—yet the whole thing, and we know it. The box is in sight, you are above the box, and the box is everything. This is Bonds, the cohesive story of contradiction, coincidence, and the power of one angel. The so-called 'box' Lucifer finds himself in. His unsolvable quandary will soon be revealed.
