Shadow Slave

Sunny remained silent for a while, pondering on what Azarax had told them. It was quite interesting, but not entirely useful knowledge… it certainly wasn’t going to help them conquer the Nightmare Desert, at the very least.

However, Sunny felt very refreshed while talking to Azarax. Even if the ancient tyrant was not entirely sane, he was far more talkative and far less untrustworthy than Eurys — finally, there was someone from the bygone era with whom they could hold an actual conversation.

Nephis regarded the ancient skeleton intently, then asked in an even tone:

“There had to be a reason why all these warriors clashed in the Hell of Ariel, though. How did this battle even happen?”

Azarax raised his skull to the sky and let out a cackling laughter.

“How did it happen? How did it happen… ah…”

His voice broke strangely, and he fell silent for a moment.

“That is not for you to know, abomination.”

He attempted to sound spiteful, but Sunny did not miss a hint of a deeper, far more profound emotion in the skeleton’s disembodied voice.

That emotion was fear.

Azarax did not fear to remember the battle in the Hell of Ariel, where countless lives had been reaped by the jaws of war. Rather, it seemed that he was frightened by the fact that he could not remember.

His spite was meant to hide the fact that he had no answer.

Thousands of years of imprisonment were too much even for a Supreme to endure. Eurys admitted freely that he had lost his mind many times while hanging on the tree… Azarax, however, was not willing to admit even a hint of weakness, and therefore, he had no choice but to hide his broken state.

“It does not matter why the battle happened. All you need to know is that it was glorious.”

The skeleton laughed again.

“Dozens of Supremes had led the endless legions of their Domains to the Hell of Ariel to slaughter each other. We proud few were merely subordinated on this awesome battlefield, though! Spirits and Divine Beasts led the great armies, all clamoring to rip each other apart. Millions of Awakened, thousands of Transcendent sages, hordes of Devils, hundreds of Titans — all locked in a fierce battle, making the very foundation of the world tremble, making the winds howl in terror.”

His skeletal grin was the same as always, but somehow, it seemed to widen.

“Soon enough, the sands of Hell were painted golden red, blood and ichor mixing like wine and water. Days passed, then weeks. Then, months…”

Nephis interrupted his tirade with a pointed question:

“So why did Shadow God curse you all?”

Azarax glared at her in anger.

“Why else? It was because the Divine Host was on the verge of suffering defeat. Those dogs wanted to besiege the Underworld, but they couldn’t even conquer Hell — so, in the end, Shadow had to descend into Hell himself. We lured him here with a dazzling hecatomb! Here, he faced the Demon of Repose in combat… but instead of fighting to the bitter end, the coward chose to end the battle and crawl back into his lightless realm.”

Sunny perked up.

“Shadow God fought Rime here? And was forced to retreat?”

Azarax let out a contemptuous laugh.

“Of course! Death held no power over our Lady of Repose. Death could not eradicate hope, either, so he was powerless against the Demon of Desire as well. The Demon of Imagination ruled everything she could imagine, and since she could easily conceive of death, Death feared her too. He could not dream of defeating any of the Demons, that faint and feeble god — that coward. So he could only slither away in defeat.”

Sunny gave Azarax a dubious glance. Somehow, he doubted that the ancient tyrant was telling the truth.

Even if Shadow God had indeed fought the Demon of Repose in the Nightmare Desert, Sunny was sure that the story of their battle was quite different from what Azarax thought he knew.

Sunny was also certain that Shadow God could have been anything, but he definitely had been neither weak nor feeble. After all, he was the last one to fall when the Nightmare Spell rose from Weaver’s corpse to devour the gods.

“What do you mean when you say that Shadow God descended into Hell?”

Nephis had walked away from the pool of water and was now standing in front of the crucified skeleton.

“Shadow God was the Shadow Realm, and the Shadow Realm was Shadow God. How could he have come to Ariel’s Hell and then retreated back?”

Azarax looked down at her, darkness nestling in his empty eye sockets.

“His vessel did.”

The ancient tyrant moved his skull a little.

“The gods… the gods were younger, once. But by the time the daemons rose against them in rebellion, they were old. They had wasted too much of themselves, becoming too vast and too great to resemble living beings. They barely possessed any personhood anymore, slowly turning into elemental forces. So, they could only retain their agency by limiting themselves to the confines of a mortal vessel — of an avatar.”

Azarax hissed.

“It was the avatar of Shadow God who came to Ariel’s Hell, lost the battle against the Demon of Repose, and destroyed both armies with his cruel curse. To mock her!”

Sunny raised an eyebrow.

“Such a terrifying battle… the greatest battle to have ever been fought, perhaps. I would have expected the avatar of War God to show up, instead.”

The ancient tyrant laughed.

“That one? That one was not ready for the horror of our battle, yet.”

Sunny frowned.

“How so?”

Azarax turned his head sideways and stared at the wounds on the bark of the sacred tree where another set of nails had once been, impaling another skeleton.

“The avatar of War was too young. The former one… the Dragon… was the founder of the War Empire. He was merely a cheap imitation, though — an imitation of me.”

Sunny and Nephis looked at each other. After remaining silent for a few moments, Sunny scratched the tip of his nose.

“What? That doesn’t really… make sense. First of all, had the War Empire not existed for a thousand years? Wouldn’t you be an imitation of its founder, instead?”

He shook his head.

“Actually, I wanted to ask. You call yourself a great conqueror, but conquest and warfare were the bread and butter of the War Empire. Weren’t you a champion of War God, yourself?”

Azarax simply laughed.

There was a hint of bitterness in his voice, though.

“A champion of War God? No… why should I have bowed to a god? I, Azarax the Conqueror, have never bowed to anyone — or any thing. Countless realms bowed to me, instead.”

He paused for a moment, then added in a wrathful voice:

“But in the end, my empire was destroyed by a champion of War God. The War Empire was built on its ruins — and in its image — and ruled by an avatar of War, thriving for a thousand years.”

His empty eye sockets glistened wickedly.

“Until Eurys, that cunning wretch, killed the avatar of War God and sealed the Empire’s fate. That was why when the Doom War started, an avatar of War God was nowhere to be seen.”