This Beautiful Darkness Shall Protect Me...

by Timemaster

29-Life in the mind of a god...

"You can't be serious!" I say, leaning my head against the hard mirror.

I lay in the infinite mind of a lunatic, only a single mirror for comfort. When I look towards the mirror, its cold touch calming me, I feel something weird. I move away from the mirror for a second, looking at my reflection. I stare for what seems like an eternity at every single detail of my reflection, finally seeing something off. I get closer to the small dent in the mirror, seeing a rectangular indentation. Against all good reason, I pull on it, feeling a burst of energy as I do so...

---

A tear drops from my eye as a piece of dirt flies into it.

---

I see a never ending darkness emerge from what was once a bright mirror, but there was something else there. I walk over the small bump that is the bottom of the mirror, feeling a hard marble floor. I continue down the marble path for some time, thinking about this place, and see what I had felt. I saw a light, small and powerless, the mist the ethereal darkness. I feel absolute fear, but I edge closer to it, feeling it increasing in its blasphemous size every second I inched near. I start to feel my stomach clenching and gurgling, puking in my own mind once more, watching it fall past the marble floor to the empty floor, yet I am walking on it.

The light had grown to the size of an orange at this stage of my journey, but I felt too sickened to go any further. I lay there, motionless, feeling light vibrations coming from below me, filling me with some emotion I could not comprehend. Worse than horror or terror, as if it was my absolute goal to continue, the emotion filled me up to the brim and clouded my mind.

I ran towards the light, seeing colors far off in the distance.

---

I land on the tepui I landed on earlier, the dragon tooth still there, and the current leader of the Ruby Dogs is stunned. He stares at me, a fellow bipedal animal, but he is not educated enough to know what I am. I smile a friendly smile, walking to him in a diplomatic matter.

---

The colors, so magnificent, emblazon my path as I continue to run. I see images, blurred and slightly charred, as I began to slow down. I did not feel exhausted, but my questions of the area only grew the more I looked at them. Looking at the way they are laid out, they look like memories, but, as I got closer, the colors seeped away from the images. I ran to one image that caught my attention, but it seemed to go farther and farther away the more I ran to it, all the while losing color. I stared at a completely colorless picture, seeing it move.

After hours of watching, I knew that these were the memories of someone else caught in my mind, but of whom? The memories showed a dark man in a desert, repeatedly trying to smash a boulder with a rock. The smacks, though inaudible, were making me hear them through my imagination. I was about to go, but, as I went, I heard an explosion from the image. I look back, seeing that the memory was not just of a man trying to break a boulder, but of a man trying to break a boulder off his legs. But then it stopped there, for it seemed that whoever was hunting him had shot his neck, leaving him alive long enough for me to see the killer.

But, for an unknown reason, the killer's face was censored out of the picture. The body, though, was pure white and silky, unlike the blackened man in the memory.

---

After touching the Ruby Dog leader with my thumb. A surge of pain spikes through my head like an anvil, vibrating my skull at immense speeds. An electrical charge connects between our faces for a fraction of a second, creating a deep bond between us as I shared with him my memories. Thankfully, unlike previous encounters on different worlds, he understood my past and accepted it,

"Never tell anyone, my friend," I say to him, "and never say my real name in front of people."

He nods, knowing that I could obliterate him, but I sense sympathy within him aimed at me. It made me feel sick, letting another creature know of my past, but I really did need a new ally. Allies are easily gained if they can trust you, and if he doesn't trust me completely now, he never will. If he never does, then I would have to rise against him, which is stupid, so I smile at his small sign of sympathy in his eyes.

I am just so happy he cannot see my real memories.

We go into the tepui to start making introductions.

---

An immense flash of light ricochets across the mirrorrealm, blinding me for a moment before leaving. I think nothing of it, for it must have been Allen doing something, but I do wonder what he is doing to cause that. I shrug, continuing down the path once more, my vision blurred more than it already was.

The path was becoming lighter and brighter the more I went down, and many more images were present. As I look across all of them, I make a startling discovery. The Charred Man was not just Allen and the 'original' one, but also several incarnations from eons past in human society. I walk closer to one of the past Charred Men, the color graying again as I got closer.

After a minute of running, I reached the greyist it could go, leading to yet another motion picture. Unable to move my head once more, I observe the odd picture depicting a darkened man's arms in the main ground. The hands of the man, who must be another previous owner of the Charred Man's gift, seemed to be attempting a spell. Magic flickered through the middle of his fingers, seeming to burn the the man's hands, but it continued. He looks down at his legs, falling over, and seeing his body flood with electricity. The man looks up, shaking his head violently, probably in pain. I feel sympathy for a moment, but then the man stopped moving. I tried getting up, but I guess the memory is not over, so I was forced down.

Darkness flooded the screen, but I knew it wasn't the end. I could not get up, so I waited an hour or two, watching the man open his eyes extremely slowly. The light flickered on an off after opening his eyes, him sitting back up. He looks at his hands, seeing them charred and burnt to a crisp. The flesh is barely hanging on to his visible arm bone. I feel sick, but nothing is in my stomach, as I watch the flesh slowly grow back onto him with small electric shocks coming out. This sight made me turn my head away entirely, realizing that the memory was over.

I walk back out to the hall, questioning if it would be a good idea to continue down this road.

---

We make it down the hallway of a neighboring tepui, seemingly aged well and carved out in a pretty unique way. Unsurprisingly, it seems that their base of operations, which is in this tepui, had not been used lately. Well, that is going to change today, for we are getting piles of paper out of the back room. We carried them down a the long hall, but he suddenly nudges a wall, showing that some walls move. We entered the cool room, filled with piles of books and large shelves. He told me to dump them on the long table on the northern side of the room, which seemed to be 18 meters long and empty. As we let the papers go onto the table, dust flew into our faces.

"So, how long until we can begin our campaign?" I say, nudging him.

"My bipedal friend, it seems that it will take a few weeks for you to be acquainted with my people. Even though they elected me as leader many years in a row, letting an outsider join us is something big," he huffs, us walking back to get more papers.

"And how will I become acquainted with them?" I ask, touching the dark wall as we walk past it. Sadly, it doesn't move.

We reach the room when he stops rubbing his chin, "You will have to been a good samaritan for some time to gain their trust, but our problems are petty. Nothing a neigh god cannot handle," he picks up a big stack of paper, but not as big as the one I pick up.

"So, what, saving cats from trees?" I say.

"No, my friend," he nearly drops it, but leans on the wall, "you'll have to kill some thieves who've been ravaging our coasts for some time," he coughs, us entering the room. We set the dust flying again, but this time he touches my shoulder.

"Here," he says, giving em a sheet of paper, "this is a map made hastily by one of our sailors. Sadly, he was barely literate and had no sense of maps, but this is what we know from his voyages."

I pick it up, viewing it. It looked like some kindergartner scribbled on paper.

"Any more maps?"

"Yes, but they are all full of lies."

"Lies?"

He pulls out a book from a shelf. A book of maps was opened in front of me, he holds it high. He points to the south-east point of the map, "What is missing from this?"

I look closely at both maps, "The volcano?"

He nods, putting the book back, "Yes, that volcano is wrapped up in heavy Equestrian guards, though it is not really their border."

"This map says it is within the border."

"Remember, he only sailed the sea and went places, he had no time to do such things."

"So, who owns the area?"

"Strangely enough, the Equestrians own that one piece of land, but all the land surrounding it is owned by the renegades."

"Renegades?"

"I'll," he says, picking up his pace to the outside, me following, "tell you later, but we really need to empty out this backroom before night time."

"Why?"

"Because, at night, we hunt."

"Hunt what?"

"You'll see, and I think, you will like it."

I shrug, picking up a bigger pile of blue books.

---

I sit down, watching another man gain his powers. Unlike the last hundred, he seems to have pale skin. He seems to be wearing a helmet, obscuring our vision. He is pale, yes, but is covered in gunk. Red gunk. He shakes from breathing hard as he continually stabs at a darkened man with his sword, seemingly pure white and glowing. The man he was stabbing was wearing a black sit of armor, but in the end they both fatally wounded one another. The sword, declining the death of the man, blasted him alive with a burst, but something went wrong. The black energy from the man, who seemed to die mourning, stretched across the man. The man screamed at the sword, declaring himself dead, and charged into the forest.

Sadly, the camera still focused on the sword, which was picked up by a woman who was drenched in water as if she had just been swimming, and she shakes her head left and right. She looks to the heavens, dropping a note to the ground reading, 'The Rightful King has died at the hands of a traitor, but his tale will never be forgotten. It will be diluted through time, but, in the end, his name shall echo through time without his sinful wife beside him'. And then the picture froze at the beautiful lady looking at the heavens.

The god-forsaken heavens...

Author's Note:

{MAP OF THE FIRST FLOOR OF TEPUI SO FAR}

Basic map of the first floor of the Tepui. Drew it quickly, but I will draw an actual interpretation later. I am a bad artist, I know, dun judge me.

Well, here is a map that is still in development. I litterally made it in a minute, so don't judge my inability to write/draw.

Comments

[All of the Above]

Slow down! You're going to fast. I'm not even to chapter 11 yet.

[Timemaster]

3362201 My fingers say "neigh!"

[Timemaster]

3362201 How far are ya' now?

[All of the Above]

3369349
Chapter 11. I have little time to read.