Gods Amongst Mortals (Aper)

[Shai]

Shai stepped through the portal, feeling himself torn from the plain and transported to a large arena - a colosseum, the boy realized, like they had in Rome.

His pure white eyes scanned the area casually, looking for his opponent as he flipped the hood back to expose long shaggy black hair and unfurled his jet black wings. He stood motionless, shrugging the robe off to expose nothing but flesh - nothing to see, however, he was much like a doll.

The child flexed his fingers slightly, and if he had pupils they would narrow.

"Come forth." He said simply, yet quietly.

He was ready to fight.

[Veran]

Even as the words were spoken, the boy would see something creeping into his peripheral vision – a shadow – and no later than when he’d promptly return his gaze to it, there it stood. Opposite to him in the ancient coliseum, adorned with a black cape concealing every parcels of flesh from his body, there was a man – or at the very least something that appeared to be. There was a slight feeling of despondency, like a disquieting solitude surrounding the figure. Perhaps it was due to the opaque veil surrounding it, or maybe the ease with which it had made an entrance so unnoticed even by one as gifted as Kyal’s son. But there was that mask. Cut out from a skull. Pale like porcelain. There were two thin lines running from the top of the sockets… they were red like tears of blood. And in the centre of the forehead was a jewel, bronze and shinning like a third eye linking the two halves of the faceless visage together. And beyond it there was nothing. No eyes to identify an assailant; not even the glimpse of a being lying beneath the disguise.

Returning Shai’s gaze was only a hollow, empty abyss. Unmoving. Waiting.

[Shai]

Shai smiled softly.

"My father spoke of you, though he never met you. An Arashi, like Aper. Veran, was it?" He asked, but expected no answer. Instead, he stepped forward. If Veran noticed, he would see two almost invisible 'strings' drop from Shai's palms.

The boy almost casually flicked his wrists and the strings took form; moving far faster than many could track, one was pure white while the other black as night. One wrapped around Veran's throat, the other one of his arms. Smirking, Shai flicked his wrist again-

And both strings exploded in opposite clouds of energy; as if someone had detonated a nuclear bombs - they would tear craters in the ground but if Veran was anything like Aper, it wouldn't kill him. Silently the boy waited to see the results of his attack.

[Veran]

The conflagration illuminated the arena like a third sun. The air became like a hurricane. The sound was deafening. There were no shadows – they were all swallowed by the pure white light – and for spectacularly long moments it remained so, as though the flames fuelled themselves in their own cataclysmic display of power… and never receded.

The wind stopped. Everything grew silent. There was only the flash – that blinding inferno that grew and grew until it threatened to melt one’s eyes. And in spite of all this, an icy chill still travelled through the stadium like a serpent’s venom in the veins of its victim. It was ominous, threatening; as though that simple sensation overshadowed the very notion of danger. There was a strange distortion amidst the cloud of energy, like a subtle musical rhythm akin to a heart beat. And it pulsed. Shrunk. Blackened.

And disappeared, leaving the sinister silhouette of the cloaked figure.

‘‘Arashi…’’ A voiceless rasp whispered to Shai’s ears. The phonemes of the name were barely distinguishable from what seemed to be the cries of a mass. And even after the word had ended, the disheartening chorus was still very audible. It was dusk, and although the sun faded at this hour, darkness fell upon the two like a hammer, enveloping the vicinity within a haze of thick shadows. At first, there appeared to be no visible source to the incessant laments, but as moments passed by, and the cold intensified, something caught the senses of the boy…

‘‘What it is, is beyond the boundaries of knowledge.’’

He stood within the crater of his own attack.

[Shai]

Shai's eyes widened for a moment before he suddenly realized he'd just targeted himself. The waves of energy touched him but didn't harm him - his skin simply took the light and darkness and absorbed them into his body once more with merely a flutter of his wings.

"Perhaps you are unfathomable, Arashi." Shai replied as darkness covered both figures. "But it is very true that neither of us know what the other is capable of. I underestimated you; you clearly do not fight as your kin does."

He paused, smiling as he stepped out of the crater.

"But this makes us level, does it not? Sizing each other up, although I doubt you look at it as such."

With that, Shai's hands began to glow, as did his eyes - a bright white that pushed away the darkness as if it could not bear to be in the radius, but otherwise he did not attack. Instead, he lifted one hand and held it before him, and his fingers began to glow now too; brighter than his eyes or the rest of his hands, before the glow abruptly died down and the boy stood motionless but for his eyes that looked around.

"So bring it."

[Veran]

The anguished screams stopped at Shai’s statement, although there was no way to truly know whether it was a voluntary act on the cloaked being’s part or if it was simply another illusion, given how the boy had been unmistakably tricked by the shifting environment. Regardless of the matter, there was little left to doubt that the figure was at the one pulling the strings, and to that effect, it remained hauntingly still almost as if it had not heard Shai at all. Were it not for the moving shades of black within its cape, it would have surely been mistaken for a statue. The lack of response, unquestionably, did not help to ease away that feeling.

The thickness of the shadows seemed to lessen as the boy began to glow with celestial purity, allowing him to see the coliseum once more. What could be seen, however, was barely recognizable from the place he had been standing in only moments before. Behind the figure, the entire scenery had aged beyond recognition; the few threads of grass had disappeared under the barren land while trees had blackened and rotten. Most terrifying of all, even the stone of the ancient complex eroded and began to dust. It remained unnaturally suspended in a horrible mockery of its former glorious state, and was then swept away by an unnatural wind, only to be hidden once more by the oppressing veil of darkness.

There, in the middle of the void. The two stood. There was a distant wail – so imperceptible it only tugged at the mind. It was quickly followed by pained echoes of a chaotic harmony of screams. It intensified. Intensified into a painful chorus even more horrifying than the hellgate itself. The last moment of countless beings flowed through Shai; an eternity of death in an instant… And then all stopped. As if time skipped, the figure stood, towering, only a few feet away from the child, with no transition whatsoever between its sudden changes of position. With it, the shadows grew along with the agonizing yells.

And the light was smothered.

“A sacrifice of blood is what it demands, for the cleansing of its world.”

A hand shot out to grip at Shai’s throat – the simple touch of the beast more unbearable than the inhuman strength with which it crushed his neck. It was like through a mere gesture an iron maiden had shut its jaws on the son of the God of Paradise. And through the simple knowledge of having Veran’s gaze on him, he suffocated.

“The gate is prepared!” It bellowed in a thunderous roar that encircled the pair in a vortex of dust, bone and blood. In that same flash of horror, the cold granite floor beneath their feet began to turn to ash. The moon shone a deep red in the sky whilst tormented shadows danced around them. “The evil that was vanquished shall raise anew. Wrapped in the guise of man shall he walk amongst the innocent and terror shall consume they that dwell upon the earth.” It was then that the darkness was replaced with the burning sunlight, in an instant; everything around them was turned into a desert. A glance beyond the storm’s veil was enough to prove that assumption wrong, for the countless buildings of Aircano laid in ruin, washed in the blood of its inhabitants while the heavens poured tears of flames. “The skies shall rain fire, the sea will become as blood. The righteous shall fall before the wicked and all creation shall tremble beneath the burning standards of hell.” The fire was replaced by blood, and the earth beneath now sounded hollow with the skulls of all species… All were victim to the genocide the boy witnessed.

The grip loosened.

[Shai]

The grip that choked Shai indeed crushed his throat - but Shai didn't need the breathe. Instead, he simply watched as the surroundings changed; sights that would drive a man insane mealy made Shai smirk softly.

"I am a being borne of Death and life, Arashi." He whispered mentally, though his throat was all but crushed under the grip. "Do you honestly believe you can dissuade me simply by showing me a few rotting things and spouting off words your kind have said time and time again"

He watched without reaction as everything shifted once more; the skulls of all the races laid out before him, and in response he simply laughed even harder, eyes glowing again.

"Your prophecy will come to pass, I agree with that." He smirked, and raised one hand and pressed it to the force that held him; as though it was psychically there. "By your hand or someone else's, I cannot say."

His hand glowed; a sudden spark of light rippled along the force and travelled; shattering the illusions wherever it touched and thus it did bounce like light in a prism until the entire arena was seeming nothing but white.

"But now it is my turn, Arashi."

The Child raised his hands and the reality shifted; shapes began to reach from the white space, hands and arms, each clutching at the figure that was now all too exposed - for the moment, anyway. They gripped the figure; where they touched was like a strength beyond compare as Shai walked forward.

"I am the very essence of existence." He growled as he stepped almost nose to nose with the pinned being. "You are powerful, perhaps beyond compare. But you cannot defy what is, they very laws of everything that keeps you together. I am those laws!" He roared, a parody of what Veran had done.

And then he did something perhaps no other creature in existence could claim; he reached out and grasped the Arashi's mask, craning his face closer - if there was any good in this child, right now it couldn't be seen.

"You are nothing to me." He said simply, and pushed backwards. The Arashi would hit the wall and it would all shatter; finding themselves back in the colosseum, with the boy standing opposite the Arashi in whatever state it may be in.

[Veran]

Just like that, they were back.

The coliseum shook with Veran’s impact against the edge of the arena. A large cloud of dust and rubble rose from the crevasse. A satisfying sense of accomplishment emanated from the motion, just as one manages to tread over a once-insurmountable obstacle. The sun shone brightly on the child prodigy and the warm breeze caressed his body like a mother’s embrace – the fates smiled on him this day. His torment receded, and the dust fell back on the earth.

And there was nothing…

In the crevasse where the figure should have been: Nothing. The realisation washed over the field like an irrevocable panic. Clouds blotted out the sun, and an unnatural chill established itself amidst the surroundings. Senses came in full alert. To the left. Nothing. The right. Nothing. Above. Below. There was nothing. Nothing but shadows.

And all of a sudden there is was, right in front of the boy, in plain view when only a moment ago the spectre seemed utterly absent from the setting — not only that, but a thin icy membrane that expanded from its near-shapeless form to the fields, and soon covered the arena under a crystalline mirror. It simply stood there, silent, like a predator observing its prey. Voracious. But it did not speak nor did it move. It was simply there, a sentinel, completely immobile. And in the stillness of that unnatural winter, the disturbed moaning of the damned returned.

Something cold, glacial in fact, grasped at Shai’s feet. Beneath the two, the ice had turned to a sea of putrid, decomposed flesh. And the bodies clawed their way from the hellish abyss to drag him down beneath. Their gaping maws open. Hungry. Relentless. And they were legion.