Gedeon didn’t quite know where or what to do next. The more he flew out across the sky, the more he began to live his past life all over again. He kept seeing Rayrh’s face baring down on him, the belt in his one hand and the cold, steel hammer in the other. It was enough to drive him mad, the memories! After so long, the memories still lived on. His own abuse wasn’t nearly as horrible as the memory of what he had done to Carain, his poor, innocent mother who was only trying to save her son from a wild, drunken beast. It was a part of Chryarnth’s past, the memory of the human child that he once was. It had happened so long ago, but he still remembered it well.
He was cowering in the corner of the living room between the cow print couch and coffee table. His father, Rayrh, had ran after him at the sight of the dent in his brand new sports car. He said, “A gash like this just doesn’t appear out of thin air!” By the glint in Chryarnth’s father’s eyes, he knew that he expected an answer… but either way, he would still be punished; even if he was innocent, he would still receive the same amount and intensity of punishment as though he were guilty. And so he said nothing. He stayed quiet, huddled over in the corner.
That is when Rayrh lost it and reached for the belt on the couch. “You’ve got nothing to say about this?” he said. “The silence gives you away, boy, and you will have to learn to speak up when your father asks something of you!” With that, Rayrh smacked him on the back with the belt over seven times, possibly eleven, but still Chryarnth uttered not a sound. He had bitten his tongue to keep from crying out, the taste of blood trickling down his throat, choking him. At last Rayrh stopped the beating only to reach out for a hammer that was lying on the ground. Once the beatings had stopped, Chryarnth turned to look back, then saw Rayrh picking up the hammer and holding it like some sort of monster, grinning as he stroked the handle. “One way or another, I will get an answer outta you, boy.”
Walking deathly slow towards the corner in which Chryarnth again took up his huddle position, Rayrh raised the hammer and was about to strike when Carain came in the room. She immediately reached for the hammer in Rayrh’s hand, but he just jerked her off. Again she came back at him, hands ripping at the hammer, trying to wrench it out of his hands. But this only angered him more. Without looking, he swung the hammer backward, which contacted with the side of her head and sent her flying into the wall. Blood splattered both the wall and the hammer that Rayrh still held outstretched and ready to continue on with Chryarnth. When Chryarnth realized that Carain was in the room, he again turned around to see what was happening— then a second later, he saw Carain’s head being impaled by the curved end of the hammer. He had never seen anything so horrific, so evil as this. He wanted to run to her, who still lay motionless at the bottom of the wall, but when he tried to get up, Rayrh chucked the hammer hard against the wall next to Carain, then grabbed his neck and held him as high as the ceiling, strangling all the air from his little body.
“You’ve defiled her, tainted her with your child-sprites and fairies. You’ve made her stray from her duties, which is to do whatever I tell her to do; but still, she is as worthless as you are, boy. I don’t need either of you— you’re nothing but a burning amber in my wallet, and I will have nothing more to do with you.”
He lowered Chryarnth to the level of his big chest and began to strangle him with both of his hands. The little boy scrambled with his own hands to try and break free. A flash of red glinted in Rayrh’s eyes, and then with a slight flick of his wrist, he sent Chryarnth flying off into the same wall where Carain crashed into. Gasping for breath, he quickly drew back from Carain’s body that he nearly landed full force on, tried to get to his feet and dash off into the dark landscape outside of the house. If the beating and the sight of Carain’s death wasn’t enough, Rayrh was more than happy to add to the pile of torture. Before Chryarnth was able to run away, Rayrh grabbed his right arm, squeezing it so tightly that he instantly cut off the blood flow to his hand. Without a single word, Rayrh walked past his dead wife’s body, all through the kitchen and out the garage, dragging little Chryarnth all the way. Once in the garage, Rayrh walked out to his workbench, picked up a nice length of rope and began tying Chryarnth’s hands behind his back. Next he grabbed a few extra pieces of rope and dragged Chryarnth back inside. He took the boy back into the living room and sat him down beside his mother. Next, he stripped them both of their clothing, and tied them together with the last pieces of rope. With one end of the rope tied tightly around Chryarnth’s neck, Rayrh dragged both the body of his wife and son out to his truck and threw them in the back end. Before getting in the truck to drive off with them, Rayrh smiled at his son and said, “Ya know, you’d never get anywhere with a small one like yours, anyway.” With that, he jumped in the truck and began to drive off, leaving the hatch to the back end of the truck open.
He went on through the night for what seemed to be hours, then finally, as he turned on to a unkempt dirt road, the bumps jerked the two of them from the back and threw them harshly onto the road below and they rolled off into the concealed ditch next to it. Rayrh never stopped or turned back. That was the last Chryarnth had ever seen of his father. But at least he wasn’t alone. Carain was there with him, too. The last of his breaths came smoothly and he had no regret to leave this world— he saw his mother waiting beyond the dark tunnel for him and he wanted to go to her.
But the gods had other plans for him. The great goddess of heaven took pity on his soul for all the suffering he had to bear through his short lifetime. She, the one without a name and yet reverently called the “Sun Goddess,” swept Chryarnth’s soul up in her hands before he had a chance to reunite with his mother on the other side; took it and built upon it. With a sweet breath, she awoke him by whispering his new name in his ear: Gedeon. Apparently, it had been several months after Chryarnth’s death did the Sun Goddess give him new life. He had spent long, agonizing days and nights trekking through the blackness of the so-called “Tunnel to Heaven” only to be taken out of it at the last minute, right when he could see the other side, and placed in a far different sort of heaven than the one he so wanted to go to. At first it was nothing but pure hell for him, assuming a new name and fitting into a whole new life style and… family? Yes, the Sun Goddess also gave him a family, a brother, in fact. His new brother’s name was Aurien, and he was all of the family he had ever gotten to know. Aurien’s father was the banished god of fire, and he hadn’t seen much of his Sun Goddess mother. They had become the best of siblings, as much as anyone could be; but there was always something missing between them. Because Gedeon could still remember his past, horrific life as Chryarnth, there wasn’t a day that passed that he did not in some way envy Aurien. Aurien was a demi-god, not a full-fledged god like all of the top dogs of heaven, and yet he was the pure product of two respected gods: the Sun Goddess of Light and the God of Fire; however, due to a severe misunderstanding, the top gods exiled the Fire God to a distant star, never to return to heaven again. In any case, Aurien was 100% demi-god; there was not a drop of human blood within Aurien’s being, and that angered Gedeon. Even though he no longer held his earthly form, Gedeon still felt exactly the same as he had before— he felt like a human in a god’s body, and in fact, he was. It is said that most demi-gods act somewhat like humans in the beginning; before the arena trial. Afterward, they are said to become enlightened and accepted as true gods of heaven and thus act according to their given title.
Enlightened. Gedeon could care less about such a thing, especially since it’s such a long line of processes and acceptances to even be allowed into the arena matches. One must train almost constantly to be considered even in the slightest, and after Gedeon’s ordeal through life and death, all he wanted to do was hang out and cause as much chaos as he could.
But that was all in the past, and so much had changed since then. He and his brother were lost to each other, enemies. One sought the other’s death and the other fought back simply to save his own life— the cosmic struggle of power. And now Aurien’s soul was missing, cut and scattered in pieces, and Gedeon’s own mind was forever split in two; one side of him wanting and needing peace, and the other wanting nothing but revenge, sweet and bitter. As he flew throughout the night with Hisoka in his arms, he felt the side of him that yearned for peace, a part of him that he had grown to hate and stomp out of existence. He knew all too well that this human held a small shred of his brother’s spirit sleeping inside of him. It made him feel distressed at just the thought of being so close to his brother and yet so very far away. Even the thought of feeling this way angered him, and he did not know quite what to do. But then he decided, he had to get rid of Hisoka, put him as far away as possible or else he might lose his mind and focus completely. Just as they were passing by the harbor, Gedeon swept down low, near the bank, and released Hisoka into the shallow water.
“That was easy,” he thought, as he
flew off into the distance without the slightest glance back.
Yes, it was easy, but still
the feelings of warmth eradiated from his arms as he held the human close to
him for a very long time through the ride in the sky. He would not give up his plans so easily. And no minute feelings of sibling loyalty
would ever get in the way, either. He
would have his revenge, against all those who sought to harm him, and whomever
chose to stand in his way would suffer just the same.
The wind of the night bit coldly at his skin. Both the howl of the wind and the jingling sound of his earring helped keep his mind on other things besides the human he had just left behind, the very human who could potentially become his brother. After all these years, he still didn’t understand it, the way magic and the flow of destiny worked. Too many things have happened that it was impossible to be destiny at work— Gedeon did not believe in predestination, however, the thought did evoke a strange feeling in his gut. What if there was a higher power, higher than even the gods of heaven that he became accustomed with in his new life, that controlled everything, laid out everyone’s lives to work a certain way and in a certain direction? Where would that leave free will? Would there be any freedom in a world whose fate is already determined— the beginning and the end? Where would that leave the demi-gods? Humans? Animals, plants? Is life just some little game for someone to sit back and watch, amused with how life goes on struggling against the clock, the rope tied around its neck? But still, what did Gedeon care about any of these extra things, other people besides himself? None of them mattered, even the fate of his pitiful brother. Gedeon told himself that he didn’t care what happened to that human that he saved from the Dredge, but then when he though of how much he risked in doing so, he wondered if there wasn’t some other hidden meaning in it all; if there wasn’t some part of himself that really did want to save him, to save his brother from the depths of fate.
Gedeon’s black wings faltered in the turbulence of the cloud-streaked sky. He couldn’t go on any more, he couldn’t keep running from the things he didn’t understand or the things that he vowed he would one day destroy. He had to know the reason why he did such a thing back in the PCM building, and the only way to do that was to see and possibly speak with the human known as Hisoka.
Gritting his pointed teeth and clenching his fists tightly, Gedeon turned around, and glided through the rising mist of the cold night back to the bay. Not more than a minute passed by since he deposited the human into the water offside the shore, so he couldn’t have drifted very far. He cautiously flew in low to the surface of the water, his black wings blending in with the water’s midnight color. Scanning the edge of the shore, he found the figure of a man wading half in and half out of the water, lying on his back on the beach. “What a pathetic sight,” he thought as he set foot on the beach, his soft black shoes falling under the sand a bit. He sat down on the cool sand and put his hands behind his back to prop him up casually. Before clearing his throat, he brushed off some sand from his dark robes and looked on to Hisoka.
He could wake him up like it was nothing at all, or he could let the boy awaken on his own, however long that would take. But still, by doing either of these, he would be leaving room for error— and that would not be acceptable. If there was a way for him to talk to the human in a sort of artificial reality; not necessarily a dream, but in actual life that could be “reset” like a typical video game system if the outcome is not desirable, then he wanted to take it. He wasn’t very familiar with this sort of magic, but he had every intention of casting the spell for the first time without any errors. Still sitting back beside Hisoka, Gedeon waved a hand that glowed a bright bluish-purple color over him. The light flowed from his hand, twinkled down around the entire length of the human, and gently faded from sight as Gedeon finished the spell. He wasn’t quite sure how it was going to work, but he was certain he would have his fun tonight.
Teasingly kicking Hisoka’s foot with his own, Gedeon grinned and said, “C’mon kid, time to wake up.”
When Hisoka didn’t respond, Gedeon continued. “You know, for some reason this beach reminds me of the time you had fallen asleep during study hours. I came by and found you. That was such a sight, too. It wouldn’t have surprised me if you had a line of drool falling from your mouth. But anyway, I wanted to wake you up in a way that would both scare and piss you off… so I grabbed a hand full of sand and began slowly dropping it over your face. After a while I guess you started breathing in the sand, so you jumped up, gasping for air.” Gedeon laughed, immersed in the memory. “Oh, god, I can still picture that so clearly…” He dug his fingers into the sand, feeling particles of sand crawling under his fingernails. “You know, I could do the same thing now… maybe it’ll jog your memory, maybe it won’t. Either way, it would be a lot of fun!” With a sly grin spreading across his face, lighting his dark features up from the darkness, Gedeon wiggled his fingers over Hisoka’s head to let the sand fall from his hand in small amounts. After a short while, Hisoka started to frown, his nose wriggling as he slowly began to awaken. Then finally, he quickly sat forward and sneezed.
Brushing off the rest of the sand on his hands, Gedeon intently looked on the human with a look of stern playfulness. “Ahh, welcome back. I’m surprised you woke up so soon, especially from that wicked accident.”
Glancing about dazed, Hisoka looked at the person before him. He had never seen this person before and yet he felt he knew him somehow. It was so dark alongside the beach that it was difficult to get a good picture of what he looked like. Trying to compose his thoughts, Hisoka stood and tried to figure out where he was and how he got there. The last thing he could remember was stepping into the Dredge and drowning… Why was he at the harbor? He looked back down to the man who still sat on the beach floor and noticed that he was in no way human at all. The figure had huge bat-like wings that stretched outward from his back as if he was playfully testing their range. Hisoka’s mouth dropped and he tried to step back but fell flat on his butt instead. He did know this person! It was the demon in his dreams!
It was so amusing for Gedeon to see the human reacting the way he did, with such fear and uncertainty. Again his darker side exploded in his spirit and violently took hold of his actions. His eyes flashed a dark crimson-purple as he grinned malevolently. “Hmm, looks like you remember me, or something like that,” Gedeon said, a slight frown drowning out his cheery tone. “But still, I would like to hear who you think I am.” He glared down into Hisoka’s wide, frightful eyes.
“W-who are you?” Hisoka asked, still trying to get as far away as possible.
“That’s what I’m asking you. Who do you say that I am?”
“You’re that… that monster in my dreams…!” Hisoka said, swallowing hard as he tried to keep the thoughts and memories of the dreadful nightmare from resurfacing.
“Hmm? In you’re dreams, you say? Why, I’m flattered, really I am. But, what did you see? Tell me about these dreams…”
Gedeon’s idea was proving to be an interesting run of events. He enjoyed the credit given to him for haunting Hisoka’s dreams, yet he was no dream chaser. The last he had anything to do with the surreal world and this human was back at the PCM building, just before the machine went haywire and triggered a response to Hisoka’s hidden power. Gedeon had nothing to do with the monsters that continued to plague his dreams. Still, if he had nothing to do with them, the information that he could get from him now would be irreplaceable. He could uncover both the key to fate and the course in which Hisoka arrived to this point in time and the others left behind…
“This has to be another dream,” Hisoka thought, resting his head in his hand for a moment. He closed his eyes and shut the sight of the being in front of him. This person did look remarkably like the demon that flew after him in the nightmare, the one in which he could find no escape, although there were a few slight alterations in the person’s appearance. The demon in his dream had short red hair, this person had long bluish-purple hair. The demon’s eyes were red, and this man’s were a light purple. The demon’s strong, muscular physique was almost the complete opposite to the figure that sat before him now, and yet the one thing that frightened him the most upon sight was the feeling in his eyes. It was as if he knew something else that Hisoka did not, something that Hisoka should know, but had no clue of what it could be. But maybe he could learn something from this dream, maybe learn what that something was. If this was just a dream, then there was no need to fear anything, right?
Hisoka turned back to face the demon beside him, most of his fear running off with the innate fear of the nightmare. He wanted to recall the events of it to tell this person, but he wanted to leave behind the feelings that it fashioned. With his eyes wandering off to the side, Hisoka began, “I don’t exactly know how it happened or where it started, but at some point in this dream, a demon was chasing after me. It didn’t say much, but what it did scared the shit out of me— with its voice alone. I was running and it cornered me against this huge, slanted cliff…”
Gedeon’s eyes sparked. “A slanted cliff? As if a staircase or pillar to the sky?”
Suddenly interrupted, Hisoka shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess so… But then it started to attack me with its claws and it had to of struck me with its dagger at least two times, maybe more.”
This time Gedeon was the one who looked away, trying to make any sense of this new information. “A dagger, you say? Can you describe it at all?”
“Well, it was a double sided dagger. It’s hilt was golden and in the shape of a dragon’s head.”
A dragon’s head! What sort of dream was this kid dreaming? It was so nuts, but these few fragmented, seemingly unrelated pieces were beginning to paint an odd picture in Gedeon’s head, a picture that actually had some truth to it.
“That’s very interesting,” he said, rubbing a hand against his chin in thought.
“The demon dragged me up the side of the cliff and eventually dropped me off the side— that’s when two, white wings appeared on my back… and I glided the rest of the way down to the ground, safely. Then just before I woke up in my bed, a strange golden orb sunk deep into my chest… That’s when I finally got the courage and strength to fight the demon… And that was it.”
“Very, very interesting…” Gedeon repeated.
Yes, his plan was uncovering some interesting information. First the cliff, then the dagger, the wings, and the orb! He knew the cliff very well and he wished he could forget the whole thing— not because of his brother’s sake, but for his own. And the dagger… He admired it so much that with even the slightest description of it, he could tell that’s what it was: the so-called Dragon Dagger. It was said to have magical powers that only its owner could use… Then the wings! If he didn’t know for certain yet, he knew it now. There were only two demi-gods in the entire expanse of heaven that had wings; one had black bat-like wings, and the other had whitish-gold angel wings; one was himself, and the other was his brother! Finally, the golden orb that submerged into Hisoka’s chest… That was the last clue that Gedeon would ever need to identify Hisoka as the carrier of Aurien’s soul. And at last he knew what he had to do…
Abruptly standing to his feet, rising high above Hisoka’s head, Gedeon glared down at him with his same darkly evil smile of death. He wanted to tease his soul as much as possible, taunt him as much as he could, then leave him bleeding once he was finished. Gedeon had had his fun for now, but there was still room for more.
“I know you are at a loss for your identity. You want to know who you are, your place in this world. But I can give you this information that you’ve been trying so hard to find throughout your feeble little lifetime. With just a few words I can make your whole world crumble and shatter, completely fall apart; and with it your life will follow…”
Suddenly the fear returned to Hisoka’s eyes, the memory of the nightmare and the demon screamed deftly acute in his mind. He swallowed hard and continued to stare at the person before him.
“You are the human my brother has become and with your account of those nightmares, I can prove it.”
“What? What are you saying?” Hisoka cried out, scowling at the man, not knowing whether or not to find the truth in the man’s words.
“Number 1: The cliff. This was the location of the final arena battle; not between you and the other seven monsters, but between you and me.”
No! He was wrong, telling lies! Hisoka knew very well who he was… he was an average high school student simply trying to cope with his problems. But his problems were far different than anyone else’s, he knew. But still, no matter how different he might be from the other kids he knew at school, he was still a human being just like everyone else.
“Number 2: The dagger. The Dragon Dagger is part of Aurien’s armory.”
The dagger that seemed so familiar in the dream… Could it be true? But one thing didn’t make sense. The golden dragon was also somehow connected to the dagger— were they one and the same or just linked spiritually?
“Number 3: The wings. Aurien, the god of fire and light, was one of the two gods that had wings…”
Wings… How he had always wanted wings, how he’d used to play around outside and pretend that he had wings to fly around in the open sky. Still, there could be no truth in these words. No human would suddenly sprout wings like they had done in his dream. It meant nothing and it was for nothing; they were just an escape from the horror the demon posed within the dream.
“Number 4: The orb. This is the most curious piece from your description… and I’m not exactly sure what it is or what it means… but,” Gedeon said, stepping nearer to Hisoka and squatting down to get in his face. He playfully ran a hand up Hisoka’s chest. “If you want, we can find out.” Instantly, Gedeon’s eyes turned dark red and his nails grew long and black. Still grinning, Gedeon dug his hand deep into Hisoka’s chest.
The human gasped, a white hot pain ripping through his body. He felt as though he were paralyzed, unable to move or breathe. He wanted to grab a hold of the demon’s hand that slowly sunk deeper and deeper into his chest, but there was nothing he could do.
Finally, when Gedeon’s wrist faded from view, deep below the gaping hole, he felt something oddly powerful, something shaped in the form of a small, round ball. This was it! He grabbed the orb and ripped it from Hisoka’s body, shoving him down on the beach. With his hand dripping with warm, red blood, Gedeon stared at the glowing sphere in his hand. Whatever it was, it was giving Hisoka the power to withstand the nightmares… to fight the poison that had been running through his soul for countless generations. The orb served as a focus point of power, and as he held it, he could also feel the remaining presence of a spirit…
“Mukashi!” he said with disbelief. Suddenly, the orb wiggled in his hand, sparkled brightly yellow, then flashed into the little body of a dragon. “So it is you.”
“Gedeon…” the dragon said so sadly, its eyes droopy and wet. “Why are you doing this…? Why can’t you just leave us alone?”
Gedeon smiled as he grabbed a hold of the dragon’s neck. Apparently, the little guy had used much of his energy to keep Hisoka from falling victim to his dreams once again that he hardly had any energy left to defend himself. Gedeon was surprised that he was even able to transform back into his dragon form. “Ahh, pitiful creature. You can’t even begin to imagine the pain that I have gone through nor could you understand the things that I may do…” Gedeon, wrapped his hands around the dragon, his hand with the long nails and red blood stains squished and compacted the dragon’s form to give in and re-form the glassy orb of gold. With one last glance at the beauty and awe of the object, Gedeon threw the orb straight into the air, raised his blood soaked hand, and shot a single bolt of blue lightning to tear the orb into such fine pieces that it glittered back to the earth like magic fairy dust.
Shaking his head as he bent down over Hisoka, who was out cold from the pain and bleeding to death from the massive hole in his chest, Gedeon wiped off his hand with a piece of Hisoka’s clothing. “Pitiful dragon, pitiful dragon-god.”
As he stepped away from the human, he again raised his hand and destroyed the time magic that he had created earlier. Hisoka would neither remember a second with the demon nor would he have any remaining physical or mental injury to make him subconsciously remember these passing events. The hole in his chest glittered with blue light and repaired itself, however, the magical orb that was implanted inside was truly destroyed along with it the spirit of the golden dragon, gone forever.
Slowly, Gedeon walked past the human and jumped into the air on his broad, black wings, laughing as he dove off into the dark sky just as a single tear fell from Hisoka’s face.