Strength in Humility

The mournful wails of spirits echoed out as a fiery explosion erupted from around the corner. Anak appeared from the smoke that followed like a spirit himself, a spirit that devoured spirits. The ghosts in this hallway immediately forsook all ideas of a fight and fled through the walls.

"Tch." Anak sneered. "They're not so tough once you find a way to hurt them back." He cockily swaggered through the short corridor before stepping through a high entryway into a massive chamber. Its exquisitely designed walls gleamed, as the polished brass reflected the light of a bonfire in the middle of the room. Otherwise, it appeared empty.

Anak approached the bonfire warily, unsure what to expect. He drew close and, when nothing happened, he decided to relax by the fire. As he sat comfortably being warmed in the soft fire-light, sleep fell upon him swiftly, like a tsunami of dreams.

...

Anak found himself in a grey, misty space, where thick fog seemed to be both impossibly close, and immeasurably far away. Anak felt as if he was floating, and when he kicked his leg out, he propelled backwards as if swimming. As he started to enjoy the sensation of swimming in air, a voice called out from the fog.

"Having fun? I hope so. It won't be fun for much longer." The echoing call seemed to push away a portion of the fog, and as it cleared a tall, hulking figure was revealed. He too wore a robe of enkallibar thread, with a thick broadsword strapped to his back. His face was shaded by a hanging hood, but as he strode forward he ripped it away revealing a thickly bearded chin and a protruding brow. "Prepare to die."

Anak stopped his aimless meandering as he saw the figure. He smiled in anticipation. He hadn't before fought anyone that favored a sword as large as his own. Then he frowned at the saber in his hands. He had also tried picking up a staff from a ghost before, but whatever magic they used, he was incapable of making it work. The saber wouldn't match up well at all versus the broadsword. "Is there a chance I can have a decent weapon first?" Anak attempted to turn his grimace into a smile, fairly certain his request was in vain.

However, the hairy-faced man nodded, "In this place you may have any weapon you please. Picture it and it will come."

Anak smiled in surprise and delight. "Fantastic!" He closed his eyes and pictured his personal broadsword. He felt the sabre in his hand increase significantly in weight, clearly having transformed into the weapon of his imagination. However, before he even opened his eyes he felt a heavy impact across his torso and he went flying through the air, head banging into a solid wall he couldn't see.

"You are too comfortable." The heavy voice intoned disdainfully. "Is this all you're worth? I thought you were supposed to be strong." The man goaded arrogantly.

Anak slowly stood up coughing blood, anger etched across his face. "You attack when I'm not looking and have the gall to brag?" He spat. He held his broadsword in front of him in a ready pose.

"Don't stop looking, and I can't attack you while you're not." The mocking didn't cease.

Anak flung himself forward, sword held in front, ready to parry any counter and finish his foe in one strike. Things didn't go as he expected however. The enemy held his broadsword up in front flatly like a shield, and Anak's prized sword, even perfected within his imagination, bounced off it and shattered.

Even as Anak's hand shook from the vibrations of his breaking sword, the edge of the enemy blade came swinging at his throat. He had to throw himself prostrate to the ground at his foe's feet to avoid the blow. The bearded man laughed uproariously.

"Ah, yes. That's right. What a good posture for you, little weakling." He kicked Anak directly in the spine as he lay on the floor, eliciting from him a miserable cry.

Anak bent over on the floor from the excruciating pain. If he was a normal human, he would've been completely ripped in half by that stomp. He still didn't know how his spine wasn't cracked, but it felt like how he'd imagined a breaking spine would feel. "I'm... not... weak!" Anak spat out along with blood as he raged at the hulking brute, swinging his jagged broken broadsword at his foe's ankles.

The man dodged easily, smirking, "Yet here you are, bent before me, beaten." He crouched low as he mocked Anak, "You spent your life training to be strong, and this is the result? Do you even have any value? You're just a man, but I- I am a living weapon!" The man proudly declared. "You can never defeat me with your meager strength."

Anak's expression stiffened at the words 'living weapon.' Was this the 'truth' he was supposed to gain from this? That to win, he must sacrifice everything to fighting? He shook his head violently at the thought. Maybe once, not too long ago, the thought would've excited him, but having experienced murder, having finally grown closer to his father, Edo, having found a future with Tzipora, he could no longer see the value in living as just a strong fighter with nothing else.

As this thought occurred to him, he looked at the weapon in his hand. What foolishness had possessed him? He was told he could have any weapon he was able to imagine, and he decided to fight this monstrous person head on, on even terms? What kind of prideful nonsense was going through his head at the time? He finally realized the truth he was meant to discover here.

Thinking this, Anak raised his head to the still crouching bearded brute. "It's true. I have little value as a weapon. I can hurt tremendous amounts of weak people, but what weapon can't? Faced with someone strong like yourself, if my value was just in a fight, I'd be worthless." As he said this Anak was beaming happily, making his enemy shrink back in confusion, expecting some kind of trick. Anak slowly stood to his feet, letting go of the broadsword. It vanished from existence as he did. "You may be a weapon, but a man can wield weapons...and put them down."

"What are you doing? You can't give up!" The ugly barbarian bellowed.

Anak shook his head, still smiling, "Don't worry. The fight will continue. I just have this to say," As he spoke his once tense body was relaxed and calm, loose and unafraid. This demeanor baffled his opponent to no end. "Where I lack, I have support to prop me up. When I am weak, my father is at my back, when I'm stubborn or stupid, Tzipora straightens me out, and when I am upset, my mother comforts me. That's what it means to be alive. And in the face of the dark curses of this world, I can trust in the promise of the Most High." While he was preaching, an oddly shaped red whip was slowly forming in his hand, taking much longer than the broadsword had, but Anak's words had absorbed the hairy fellow's attention. "So, while I live as a man, you were merely a weapon, not alive at all," he twisted and threw back the words used to mock him earlier.

The man recoiled as if slapped by Anak's closing. "We will see who's stronger in the end!" He bellowed savagely, charging forwards with his broadsword.

The whip in Anak's hand finally completed its form. It was red as blood and glowed with a crimson radiance, as its ends split off jaggedly like a bolt of lightning. Anak kicked forcefully downwards, sending himself soaring high into the foggy air. He reared back with the whip and proclaimed, "I know you're stronger than me. I don't need to be the strongest individual though... I couldn't be that to begin with. Don't you know? That spot's already taken." Anak smiled and snapped the whip in the air once. That was all he needed.

From the place where he struck, red lights like cracks in space began forming and expanding. After swelling up in a ball shape the size of a small cloud, the red cracks of light dispersed across the fog in a rapid dash. The fog flickered with red electric impulses like thunder clouds, and the bearded man trembled , understanding what just happened.

"You brought out Fulguis! That isn't possible!" He screamed in terror, before a swarm of lightning strikes poured out on his body like a flurry of divine swords, turning him into red mist, blowing away the fog for a circumference of miles, and even cracking the darkness itself. This was the full power of the real Fulguis, a whip made for a star and the battles of stars. Wherever anything like a cloud could be found, Fulguis would display it's most supreme might, sending streaks of its horrid cutting lightning through them, to target anything regarded as an enemy. It was a weapon to make the most of the nebulae, and was given specifically to Azrael, a commander and trainer of nebulae.

From the crack in the darkness, a pair of watchful eyes were revealed, even darker than the void that was slashed, seeming to embody emptiness and entropy. "Go back." A voice more terrible than a host of worldly armies shouting all at once, and weightier than the seas of seven planets combined pushed at Anak's consciousness, and he found himself snapping back to wakefulness by the bonfire.

Anak took several deep breathes to calm himself. What was that thing? It seemed even more dreadful than the Demon King. After finally gathering his thoughts, he recalled his epiphany that he'd had while under the duress of incessant beating. He looked upwards as he thought of his family and loved ones.

"Thank you, Triac." For the first time in his life, Anak offered up a prayer of thanks to his parents' old friend and Father. Then standing up, he went through a previously unopened portal to a new space in the labyrinth.