Desrho: The view before the end ~ Past

Oh, how blissful truly is ignorance.

Knowledge is a curse that scars your mind, leaving a trace that can never be deleted. You can learn, but you can’t unlearn, no matter how much pain that brings to you.

When the skies gave way to pour the other world in her head, she immediately knew that she had lost any semblance of humanity. That is the only way she could even begin to make sense of what happened to her. After all, no human should be able to see the things she had a terrifying glimpse at in that moment.

The other world, the energy, the power, the true shape of those that we foolishly call Gods. All of them as part of a vast expanse that went beyond what even her otherworldly eyes could see. She would have been happy if that was the only thing she saw, but that was only an insignificant mirage compared to what came after.

What truly scarred her was not the world of the Gods, not even the understanding that there were even more worlds beyond those two that even she had no way of seeing. What made her wish to gouge her own eyes out was the split second she managed to see what lived in the breach in between the worlds.

It was as if her own world was a bubble, a small, diminutive bubble in the foam of the sea. Everything that made sense in the world was a fragile, easily burstable bubble in the middle of an infinite ocean of monsters. There were monsters and creatures so unbelievably massive that a simple ripple from their smallest movement could tear both their world and the God’s world apart, only safe now because of their insignificance and distance from the leviathans.

But of course, there weren’t only massive creatures, and that was the problem.

The small ones? Those could see them. An infinite expanse of amorphous creatures that saw the world and tried to pour through the cracks of reality, trying to push themselves to the bubble, but barely making their way through. She understood how they had managed to make their way through, only to eventually be pushed back where they belong when the world fought back.

But just as the foam in the ocean, that could not last forever. A myriad of truths became evident in that small moment, and some of them found a place in the forefront of her mind for the rest of her days.

The most glaring one was that the world was destined to end. There was no power in her world nor the God's world that could permanently push back that which always watched them from the space in between their worlds.

But even then, somehow, that was not the most scarring realization she had. No, there was something even more unescapable than the fate the world had in store. What truly split her mind was the fact that she recognized herself in the eyes of the endless expanse of monsters that would end it all, and the monsters recognized her back. She saw a reflection in the endless abyss and that reflection looked back.

After all, how could they not recognize one of their own?

She woke up the moment the skies returned to their place. The needle had left, and the heavens immediately bounced back into place with a cloud of thunder that shot to all directions, creating a bright light that even those far away from the island could see.

The first thing Electryone saw was Halia, now Leucothea, her grandmother, fighting an otherworldly man who was attacking her with a trident. When the being she could now recognize as a “God” pushed forward, she could see the waves from the sea hitting the island, causing tremors that increased in intensity the longer the battle went on.

From the ruins of the now broken palace she could see the exterior, hundreds of people battling in a field covered in blood, once between themselves, but now against the creatures that fell down to them from the skies.

That’s when she started feeling the pain. Every time one of those winged monstrosities was hurt, it felt like she was the one getting stabbed. It was unbearable, the pain of dying while being alive threatened to crumble to dust what remained of her hurt psyche.

In the madness that the world had plunged into, in the middle of the battle against the keres, the telchines, the residents of the island and the armies of the Gods, finally a single ray of hope shone on it.

“This is enough!”

The Goddess of Wisdom moved her hand and from thin air her sacred weapons appeared, a shining, golden spear and a round shield. When she raised the spear, an amulet she had tied on its tip started to shine with intensity while the clouds on top of the ruins formed a circle, and then, a spiral that covered the entire island.

When she lowered the spear forward, a myriad of thunders struck down.

Unlike the thunders that attacked indiscriminately when the worlds collided, these ones fell on a series of targets, more precisely, they fell on every single winged monster that flew over the battlefield in that moment. It was both instantaneous and simultaneous, and just as it all had started, it was over.

“No, I won’t let you!”

Deuxithea screamed and soon enough Makelo followed her. Even if a God was their opponent, they were determined to support her sister Leucothea up until the end. Unfortunately for them, that end had now arrived.

Before the amulet had completely vanished into dust, the Goddess of Wisdom pointed her spear at Dexithea, bringing down a last ray of light from the sky. The thunder was so massive that the light engulfed her completely, only leaving a silhouette of her true form, a human with the head of a dog, before obliterating her completely.

Makelo refused to stop her charge, even if her beloved sister had fallen just a couple of meters at her side. With tears in her eyes, she engaged in a one on one fight with the Goddess. She, of course, engaged her by receiving the blow of her spear with her shield and then returning with a blow of hers.

“I won’t entertain this foolish tantrum any longer, for let it be known, that even the God of war is not a match for me in battle.”

The two of them traded quick blows, in close quarters, not letting the other get far away enough to use the tip of the spear in their favor. The way Makelo, even with her otherworldly body, was forced to continuously step back showed how marked the rhythm of the fight.

Finally, The Goddess of Wisdom gave an upwards blow, leaving her opponent wide open for an attack. But instead of giving the final blow, she jumped back and threw her spear at her. Makelo tried to defend herself as she could, managing to dodge the lance by the skin of her teeth, letting it fly behind her. That was the only chance she had to attack, and she was not going to waste it.

She pounced forward, disregarding her defense, trying to go through the Goddess of Wisdom shield with pure brute strength, but it was useless. She could not even try to break through it before a trident had embedded itself on her chest and she fell dead on the floor.

The spear that Wisdom had thrown hit her target perfectly, landing on the side of Leucothea, and pinning her into the remains of a wall on her side. In front of her, The god of the Sea let out a sigh of relief when she noticed how close the fight had been, but soon enough, collapsed into a single knee. He looked absolutely exhausted, his face starting to become blue.

“You know, I could have handled her myself, right?” He said, trying to feign that he was not in pain.

Leucothea had been left a babbling mess, bleeding, but still clinging to life. Her thick clothing had been torn in the fight and showed that there were almost no human features left anywhere in her. Even her voice, so calm and sweet, had started to transfigure into screeches the more her babbling went on. Wisdom saw her and recognized what she was doing immediately.

“No, you could not. Now kill her, you vainglorious buffoon. Your bluffing may be the end of us all.”

Wisdom took the spear that Makelo dropped when she died and without waiting for the God of the Sea to react, she threw it into Leucothea’s head. That would have been the end, another pushback of the inevitable that would keep the world sane for a few decades, maybe a couple of centuries if they were lucky enough.

But this time, there would be no such luck, as the final page of the story of the world started being written. A giant winged monstrosity fell from the sky, catching the spear in midair and crushing it on their claw. It was as if all the monsters that were attacking the battlefields before had now congregated into a single being that now had saved Leucothea from her demise.

Within the few seconds the giant monster got her, Leucothea finished her babbling, a spell that would allow her to come back to the home she had avoided ever since she was born. A new gap in reality had opened at her side, in the remains of the wall. It wasn’t a gigantic needle that split the skies, but a silent gap she fell through, silently, leaving no trace that she had ever been there in the first place.