Realm Wraith (53 page)

“I know you’re beginning to grasp it. I’ve seen it in your more lucid moments. The real you is right there inside you. The longer you stay in the Abyss, the easier it will become to remember. You know this. You must have felt it the moment you returned, as some small part of you connected to your past self.”

“Why would you want this, though? For me to be what I was? I was a monster!”

“Yes, you are. That is the Nen’kai I know. This you,” he waved a hand at Rayne, “it’s as you said. A mental wreck. Wretched, pathetic. You never were the nicest or most compassionate being, but I think over those billions of years, we’ve reached an understanding.” He saw the hesitation in Rayne’s fourteen eyes. “Don’t worry about Levi; I’ll take care of him. Just stop Azaznir. Keep your promise.”

Ivannos spoke coldly, but Rayne understood his bluntness had reason. It was an odd friendship they shared, but a friendship no less.

“I understand,” he said as he pulled himself back through the curtain between worlds. “I won’t be imitated so easily.”

* * *

Rayne brought himself deep within Azaznir’s domain, a world filled with nothing but all-consuming fire. Lava falls descended from a fractured sky into an ocean of swirling flames. Chunks of red and orange soil floated within the great void above the fiery sea, covered in ruined rock that formed like broken structures, fallen columns and dilapidated statues of a very alien design, intertwined with twisting metal shapes that scattered and reflected the firelight like an irradiated jewel. Every floating stone blistered with flaming geysers, and a yellow haze lessened visibility even more than the distorted air. The heat was unbearable, as Rayne stood upon one of the stone platforms, dodging the white-hot flame exploding around him, blinded by the light created in every burst.

“You really came here,” a wicked, laughing voice boomed out around him. “I can’t believe it! I thought you’d already proved your stupidity in the material world but here you are, trying to outdo yourself!”

“Azaznir!” Rayne roared. “Where are you?! Show your ugly face!” He could not stand at all under the oppressive heat which bore down on all of his heads. There was a valiant struggle to keep himself upright but the sheer force practically bent him in half.

A great monster burst forth from the sea of magma, far larger and more awe-inducing than the creature he had faced in the pond. The sheer size of it dwarfed entire cities, leaving Rayne nothing more than the tiniest of specks in its presence. Flaming vortexes of pyroclastic fragments spun through the air like living fireworks, blackening the yellow colored haze.

Its visage was a mix of skeletal flame, charred bones supporting three great skulls that distended in beak-like shapes cratered with empty sockets, each filled with starry light. Fire and magma burned beneath the bones as a liquid flesh flowing in waterfalls off the creature’s body into the sea below. The tendrils of flames fanned out behind it as red feathers, arrayed from the many heads as well as the two arms that reached down towards Rayne with clawed, charred fingers.

“Sorry, I meant ugly faces,” Rayne mocked. His serpent’s tail and heavy upper body did not make it easy to dodge the demon god’s attacks, but he exploited his much smaller size, slipping from between the blackened fingers before they could clasp him. The thick sense of danger grew with every passing moment. Rayne had no plan, just a consuming urgency that this had to be ended tonight. The smoke burned his eyes, forcing him to reach out with other senses, anticipating Azaznir’s movement by the energy around him drawing close.

“Am I to play games with you for eternity?” the demon god roared, his voice coming from his entire being; not just his mouths but the very flames that consumed him. “A mighty Abyss Lord, reduced to dodging my fingers, too small and frightened to fight back. If you will not even humor me with a proper fight, perhaps you would like to join the mortal souls I keep chained here!”

The mighty stone platform shook, forming the tiniest of cracks that spread out from around Rayne and permeated the ground around him, growing larger, breaking rocky form into shattered fragments. The broken structures tumbled forward beneath the mighty quaking, faltering into the sea of fire below, and as the ground beneath Rayne became no more than a useless piece of crumbling earth, it became drawn by the nature of gravity to the sea below, taking him down with it.

He did not have time to scream, not here. He would not be counted among the shrieking of mindless souls below him. The cold within him spread outwards, chilling the flames of hell, freezing magma to stone, coating it with a thickening frost, consuming the stone and transforming it into ice for him to land upon. Water flowed around him, forming out of nothing. He called it into being, a part of his own soul transfigured, and within moments monumental waves poured into the magma, obliterating the air with pale steam that drove back even Azaznir’s black smoke. A potent mixture of seawater and burning embers poured down around them both. The ground became as a sea that pushed back the lava with blackened waves tipped red in fire’s light.

There were no words from the demon god of flame as Rayne’s power spread through his domain, turning fire to water, but his shrieking roar burned with the energy of an unforgiving sun, making his fury clear. The water around them both hissed and boiled, dissolving into effervescent vapor that floated upwards and dissipated into nothing with a simple breath of air from the demon god’s mouths, and magma once more entrenched itself around Rayne’s body, threatening to melt his icy refuge. In desperation he tried to hold his position and keep the ice solid, and a back and forth tug of war began between the two beings struggling for control in this realm.

Rayne’s memories became easier to grasp as his power continued to flow through him. He began to understand the futility of these battles, mere repetitions of many previous clashes in the past, never a clear victor between two equally powerful deities. And right now he struggled to survive against the oppressive force of a monster who grasped its identify far better than he his own.

“You sense it too,” Azaznir said, as his efforts to rain molten flame upon his enemy’s head were blocked by a wall of cold water that spread up through the blazing fall, converting it into a pillar of ice that burned away in the white fire around it. “It’s the same back and forth we always do. Endlessly, since the dawn of time, when I decided I didn’t like your smart little mouths and their constant mockery.”

“It’s not my fault you feel I’m some sort of threat!” Rayne sneered.

“That! That is exactly what I’m talking about! You are weaker than me, yet you talk as if you’re my better! When I bury you away this time, I will ensure that no one ever finds you, not until the universe breathes its last!”

A thundering tempest whirled around them, dark clouds swirling in a vortex with thunder and wind, and ever pervasive rain.

“I won’t let you imprison me, not ever again!” Rayne howled, his voice a very part of the crashing thunder.

“Did you forget already that I have the advantage now? Did you forget why it is you fell the last time we fought?”

The skies above cracked open, and a whirling tornado of black dust poured into the realm of flames, shrieking and howling with reckless madness. Within the dust storm were many limbs, lined by blades, all moving as one mass that descended down upon them. Reapers, millions of them. The dark army of collectors who served Azaznir’s whim, weak as one, powerful as many. Rayne remembered their forces now, what they were capable of when combined with the might of a great demon god. Azaznir’s fire spread among their billowing forms, and the shrieking hordes charged at Rayne with many blades. He could not fight them, not while holding back the encroaching fires as well.

With a thud, a black form fell before Rayne on the ground. At the base of his coils it twitched, a smoky mass of dust surrounding a pile of bones with taut flesh cut and pulled away. It looked up at Rayne with pitiful white eyes and a dancing leer upon its lips, a false mask of reassurance against overwhelming odds and impending doom, rather than any genuine expression.

“Forgive me, my lord,” Darrigan creaked. “I was able to hold them back so they could not attack you in the material realm, but it was only for so long. There is little that I can do. I am only one. They are many. Too many—” The light in his eyes faded, the glowing mouth opening in the strangled chokes of one dying.

“Darrigan, no!” Rayne reached down towards the fallen one, the heads upon his back howling in mourning.

“You really pity that weaker being?” Azaznir mocked. “Was it because he served you? Or has being away from the Abyss so long caused you to grow a heart?”

“I take care of those who serve me,” Rayne replied. “Loyalty should be rewarded, after all. What good is a ruler who commands through fear? The moment they sense the slightest weakness, a tyrant faces his downfall before disgruntled subjects.”

“Is that something you learned walking among the mortals?”

“No.” Rayne’s memory stretched farther back than his experiences on Earth. “It is something I’ve held to, long before you set your hatred upon me. When I command dominion, I seek utter obedience, but it is something that must be given through free will. Why do you think I chose that boy to serve me as my catalyst? I saw into his soul, a lost innocent who sought his place in the universe, seeking a higher power to lead him down his path. I became that higher power.”

“Your forked tongue bends the truth as always. You call it free will, I call it trickery. They only think they want to serve you.”

The swarming black smoke bore down upon Rayne, and he felt the stinging of millions of blades tearing at his flesh, blood pouring from wounds torn through his form, a strange black colored blood that flowed like sludge. He forced his assaulters back with a chorus of shrieking waves.

“And they only serve you because you force them to!” Rayne retorted.

As he spoke, he saw a black tear in the fiery air behind Azaznir, one that widened like a yawning mouth. A black shadowy mass edged with purple appeared behind the flame god’s body, reaching out with many tendrils as the shape of the portal grew larger, a great flaming eye wreathed in darkness centered within, consumed by anger and hatred. Tomordred, come to serve his master in an hour of need, to atone for his failure of the past, now seizing his chance as his appendages restrained Azaznir’s body. A frozen wind blew past them both, and the hell beast shrieked all his fury as he wrestled a monster far more powerful than himself.

Azaznir, caught off-guard, forgot Rayne as he turned on this new threat, his shrieking laughter a mockery of Tomordred’s efforts.

“Is this the best you can do? Your weak little pet? Then you can watch as I destroy him!”

Azaznir grabbed one of Tomordred’s tendrils in a bony hand and ripped it away, searing the wound with his molten fire. Tomordred cried out in pain, but he refused to let go. Determination burned in his eyes, and he wrapped three tendrils around that arm, and cracked the bone with frozen crystal. The entire world around them roared as Azaznir grabbed his broken limb in pain.

The reapers suddenly went still, hovering above the lake of fire as a black cloud. Azaznir recovered himself and waved his other hand towards the swarm.

“Don’t just stand there, you worthless smoke! Destroy him!”

A strange thought occurred to Rayne as he sensed the reapers’ hesitation. One that he would have considered mad any other day, but today it felt like business as usual. He looked to Tomordred and nodded, and his loyal subordinate went for Azaznir’s bony neck in a full out assault. The reapers, meanwhile, didn’t know what to do, looking between the half-snake man lying helpless on the ground, and the hell beast assaulting their overlord.

“I said destroy him!” Azaznir shrieked, his roars filling the air with burst of magma.

“You force your power out to bend anything that opposes you in scorching fire,” Rayne said. “How long before your loyal reapers turn against you, sensing weakness?”

“There is no weakness to sense,” Azaznir sneered. “Their combined might pales next to the power of a single Abyss Lord.”

“Then what if they were to serve another god?”

“Why would they? They have no reason to. They serve me because I allow them to live. In exchange they are my army. There is no better bargain for them.”

“Allow them to live? You almost burned them just now!”

“So they know their place!”

Rayne turned to the reapers. “I know you only serve him out of fear. But what if I made you a better offer?”

The cloud of black smoke hovered there, waiting for him to continue.

“Don’t listen to him! Slice him!” Azaznir commanded.

“Go ahead, side with him,” Rayne said. “And burn for it. Or you can help me overthrow this tyrant, and I will see to it no demon god ever rules over you again.”

Rayne’s connection to his former self had become far deeper, conversing with this other god. Time seemed lethargic now. He looked down at himself, at what he had become. He saw black fluid that wasn’t truly blood pouring from his veins, and grasped the scope of his existence. In this blood, he saw the remnants of faces, millions of them, pale shades and fragmented existences. This was what remained of the souls he had fed upon as Nen’kai, there for all eternity as part of him, forever drifting through his soul. He closed his eyes and felt their presence, including one very familiar one, a lost soul he had fulfilled a final promise to. This feeling of power that surged within him grew stronger, fueled by the intense hatred that consumed him in the grip of his enemy. Deep inside, he sensed the demonic spirit that dwelt there, felt it beckoning to him, and his mind underwent a change as a strange understanding began to stir. For the first time, he embraced the instinct inside, not surrendering to it, but commanding it, as it was his very nature that slept within him.