1 Going Back in Time

The Dark Continent

Forbidden Zone -The Sorrowful Dark Mountain

The sky veiled in encompassing dark clouds to foretell rain is but immediate. A man pierced with his right hand into the now lifeless body of another. A light movement. Splat. The corpse was tossed and hit the floor.

The man looked around. He had one eye gouged out and the other a sinister red. Cuts spread like vines on his body, starting and stopping at the exposures of bone. He wasn't pained, neither angry nor sad. Rather his face held a smirk as he looked at the fields of gore: admiring his work, breathing in the death, stretching his arms out, laughing, as if to let the miasma of death embrace him. He felt liberated. He had broken through. Ascended from the mortal realm to the mysteries of beyond.

"Bloodshed really is calming to the nerves." The man said as he took a deep breath. "It is sad I can not join the pilgrims... I can but only send them off on their journey." His eyes beaming red with pleasure as if putting on a play where he was doing an angel's work, pleasing the God of death by being his scythe.

Taking a few slow steps the man flickers and appears before a blue beast; a Dragon head and tail, a deer's body, Branching antlers of silver, now red. It was reminiscent of the ancient beast from archaic mythos- the Qilin. It was bleeding out from all apertures. But lost most blood from the deep gorge on its back.

Looking at the beast the man's eyes soften, his voice sweet and fatherly, "Well done coming this far. You and your friends worked hard. For that, I must award you. Since your friends have left us, I shall give you their share."

The beast unmoving, stared back at the man dead in the eyes. It didn't believe the man. It knew the man didn't hold anything dear. Those comforting eyes were a pretence to hide his true insidious nature. Much less thank the beast, it knew the man was finally going to replace it.

When it had been captured. Its naive nature had led it to believe in the man, but with every teammate that fell, it lost a piece of its trust with them. The realisation that it was a bird in a cage came too late, it had no option but to abide by him. Now it didn't want to die ashamed, it held pride in its eyes as it lay pitifully on the floor. It was born of noble blood, flashes of its mother dying with the same hands went through its head. Its eyes grew a little wet.

The man looked at the beast frowning unaware of the mental resilience of the beast. "The best award I can think of is letting you free..."

The beast in its emotional state turns its head in the faintest of hope.

"Through death that is." The world turned quiet. A red light flickered out from the man's finger and entered the beast, Its eyes dulled and eventually lost their life.

drip.

drip. drip. drip.

The rain started to torrent down as the clouds thundered. The water striking with ferocity on the beast's body hoping to awaken it, yet it was all null. It could only wash away the blood in hope that its ephemeral life could bloom others.

The man couldn't help but snort at the hopeful face.

A book broke out from his body, it flipped through the pages and stopped at a page that had the image of the blue beast. The page tore into lights and disappeared and a shrieking crack grew through the book. The man grabbed it and stamped the back of his hand onto the cover of the closed book. The crack, with a golden sheen, looked to be regenerating. He finished by waving his fingers, sinking the book into his heart again.

He muttered an incantation in an ancient language. Light burst out from his body like a blazing golden fire his injuries healed almost instantly.

"Looks like it really is hard for you to make friends. None of them have your survivability." the man said in a snarky tone, not even addressing who he was talking to as if he knew it already thought this.

A body formed seamlessly from the shadows. It was a wolf. Gray fur, black eyes as deep as the abyss and claws razor sharp. It had darkness emitting from it like a shadow that expanded out in three dimensions. It had appeared a moment later than the start of the downpour.

Its eyes grew melancholic looking at the body of the Blue beast. But then looking at its hope-filled face its eyes turned menacing. For a long time, the beasts had planned a way to kill this man. So it didn't grief at its death too long. They both knew to kill the man they would die themselves. It was something they had long prepared themselves for.

Not noticing the change in expression the man walked his merrily way up the mountain.

As the clouds wept he walked past the chaotic field of fire, flesh and blood. The Battlefield continued to the horizon, the burnt and dismembered bodies, both human and beast mixed into a serene puddle of blood. The pitter-patter of water meeting blood resonated through the air as the wind blew, trees and flowers waved for the souls which had departed.

He reached the peak of the mountain to find his goal in front of him.

An egg.

Resembling black ink. It seemed to suck in all light. The light bent around it, creating a disc. It seemed more of a tear in space than an egg. The nest around it was a swirl of black gas surrounding it as if the ebony darkness flowed out of the egg creating another layer of protection.

"Magnificent! Indeed, I am blessed. After losing my prized possessions I can already start filling in the shelf, truly unthinkable." Treating his beast as collectables was second nature, The man laughed loudly flaunting his theatrical personality. "I need to make a blood contract. Then I'll have to go to the eternal abyss to get the energy to hatch the egg", the man said softly as he pulled up his hand into the gas.

Dark spots started to propagate on his arm but a golden light similar to the one on the book grew and erased the spots as quickly as they appeared. Without care, the man put his hand above the egg to drop the blood that his finger was already soaked in.

As the blood drips onto the egg, the world seemed to brighten. The black gas burst out. A book flashed in front of the man's chest and flipped to a blank page. A mythical beam of energy broke through the clouds connecting the sky, book and egg. The egg levitated off the ground and absorbed the energy the man gave it.

"You really do need a lot of energy." The man said with a smirk while his face grew paler.

"Come here, I need something to lean on so I don't fall." The man said to the wolf, his remaining contract beast.

The wolf which had stopped meters away, stared down the man, not holding it in anymore, with a movement it disappeared. Its mouth opened. White blade-like fangs were painted with blood. The man jumped forward pushing the egg into the book with his right hand as the wolf landed in front of him with his left arm in its mouth.

Seeing the runic writing on his opponent's forehead the man had his eyes fill with revulsion. He started chanting silently a golden flame ignited at the place where his arm used to be. However the unexpected happened, the arm didn't regenerate rather a black venom like substance in the wound devoured the flames. Sensing the failure the man had his eyes tense, he knew he had made the wrong decision. In the time taken to chant the wolf had moved, Its eyes not even half a meter away looked at the man with scorn and forced joy. Trying to capture the same look all beasts killed by this man had seen before their lives ended.

"You..." before the man could even finish the first word the wolf turned into a shadow and bit the man's throat, flinging his head high in the air.

As the head fell, rain droplets stagnated in place, the world froze in time. The sound of cracking could be heard. A silver ray of light shot out, from the still floating book, dying the world silver. An ethereal figure appeared, its grey shark-like body coloured with dull silver veins. The figure seemed to be going in and out of existence, disappearing and appearing, it then swallowed the man's dissipating soul.