A continuation of my tale from Part Two
….
It has been a week, I’m still traveling south but I’ve picked up a band of followers traveling with me. The Abyss was still in hiding from me which told me he was still healing and contemplating. However, in the meantime I had used this to my advantage to practice my new found abilities. I had found I could give people hope, and comfort, within small ranges around me. Being around me was like being around a warm campfire after months stuck in the snow.
We traveled, south. I could still feel her when I reach out, stronger than ever now. I did my best to send hope her way but doing something at will from such a distance without being full of divine fury was hard. I wasn’t even sure it was making it most of the time. But every once and while, I can feel it. A spark inside her, a spark of hope. A spark of life.
It almost seemed like other people we encountered were changing. The grief and hopelessness still prevailed but there was something new. A restlessness. People seemed to be able to feel something was different, that things were happening.
So, I collected people, and we traveled south. To her.
….
That was the day he finally came back for me; he must have healed. I was more scared than ever though, the only reason I had lucky victories were because neither of us knowing what the hell I was. In his eternity of existence, he had never faced something that held power against him. Had never felt pain, or fear. But I also knew he’d never stop coming for me now that he knew I existed. He could never be in peace knowing I’m out there. Or that one day he’d have to face me anyway to complete his ultimate goal.
And then the sky darkened, I held out my hand for everyone to stop. He was hiding himself from me, I reached out. And then he revealed himself, I felt him only moments before seeing him. A black hole opened in the sky, no bigger than a boulder, and The Abyss descended, unholy skeletal wings outstretched wide and angry.
The elderly woman behind me only had a moment to let out a scream before her heart exploded and we watched as her soul stretched out from it, pale and ghostly, into The Abyss’s long, narrow, stretched out mouth. Then another, and another, each one I felt an existence snuffed out.
I was filled with a righteous anger as I force a connection with him. And suddenly the world broke. I didn’t exist for a moment, then I did, then everything that ever existed or ever will throughout all time and space connected with me. I saw everything as it was many infinities ago, so long the human mind begins to lose all reason and logic trying to comprehend it. There existed nothing but two halves, dark and light. As the two halves sat opposite each other eternities passed, time had no meaning here.
And then it happened, for seemingly no explicable reason light rippled, and darkness bled. Then light exploded consuming darkness, and all was lost.
…
And then I was back, and I realized I was doing something that shocked me some much I almost let go. I was holding a soul back from entering The Abyss. His eyes were large, full of anger hatred and fear. And I pulled the soul back towards me, and I’m not sure how I knew what to do but I pulled the soul towards my chest. I pushed the soul into my heart, surrounded it with hope, and locked it away.
And then The Abyss was in front of me, and faster than I could react my feet were off the ground, and we rose, only moments passed before we broke above the clouds, and he stopped. Fear penetrated deep inside me, not only had I failed everyone and everything, I had failed her. The Abyss rose one hand high in the air, blacker than anything in existence and demonic, he plunged it into my chest.
I felt his hand wrap around my heart, and he smiled. “For all your love and false sense of divine retribution you would have never been enough to save anyone. For you see, you are not my retribution, I am life’s retribution, and you will bow to ME!”
I felt the rage in his voice, it rolled over me like waves of destruction, nuclear bombs going off in every nerve of my body. His anger was righteous and just, and I would let myself die. I felt my heart slowly stop beating as I start to die. My grief and despair knew no bounds. My soul wept for existence.
And then I felt her, not her but the woman whose soul I had locked in my heart. She pulsed and I fell. There was no surviving this fall, or the wound in my chest, I had survived the battle to lose the war.
I slammed into the ground and the world broke again
But only for a moment.
I woke.
I stood.
Battered and bleeding I look down at my chest. My shirt torn and basically nothing but strings. Where my heart is was a giant scar, about the size of The Abyss’s fist. He couldn’t hurt me physically, because of the soul I put away.
I only had a moment to process this before he slammed down into me like an asteroid to the Earth. As he rose from the small crater, I stood shakily up. There was no fear at this point as I connected with him, only anger. An anger so deep and powerful that it could cause worlds to quake beneath it.
And I got a feeling, I wasn’t quite sure what it was trying to tell me, but I knew something very bad was about to happen. And for the third time that day the world broke, and I found myself somewhere else. It was a hellish landscape, deep hues of purple and red, black lightning struck down from the purple red sky to hit the ground. I wasn’t sure where I was, but I knew this was finally the end for me. I could feel it deep down in my bones, in my very soul and being.
Shadows rose up from the ground and locked around my ankles, wrists, waist, and neck, and rose me up high into the air. Once I was high enough to see my surroundings, my heart dropped even further than ever. Below me was a giant face, a face of evil and malice, and it was rising me up to bring me down into its mouth. And it swallowed me.
I fell through The Abyss, he had managed to lock me away inside him. It was a never-ending fall, an eternity passed as I felt nothing. I had become emotionally blunted. There was nothing to feel. No misery, suffering, hope, sadness, pleasure, pain. No feelings at all. It was so pleasant, not to worry. I couldn’t even really remember why I had ever been so afraid or worried in the first place. I was fine staying here.
An eternity passed.
Two.
Three.
And I felt something. Her. The little hope she felt, it was lost, and it broke me. So I broke him. And I woke.
I lie on the ground barely able to breath, my group of people around me. A man lowers his hand toward me, I take it and he pulled me up. A woman puts her shoulder under my arm and they help me sit down on a rock nearby. I could feel The Abyss still, he wasn’t dead, just too wounded to hide himself from me. But he knew I was wounded too, neither were a threat to the other at this moment.