Silarias swallowed the massive chunk of meat in his mouth with a loud, almost painful GULP. He wiped the greasy remnants roughly with the back of his hand and fixed his golden glowing eyes on the fallen angel. He let his gaze slide slowly over the pale figure, past the vain attempt to maintain royal detachment, straight to the meager piece of dry bread that Lucifer was still dutifully clutching between his fingers.
“Um… you know, you don’t really look hungry?” Silarias began, tilting his head a quarter turn. His voice lost its adolescent boisterousness for a moment and took on a raw, cutting edge. “More like… outcast. Like me. Exactly how I was in the beginning. I knew nothing, had nothing, but I got all the help in the world when I needed it.”
He leaned a bit further over the wooden table, making the shadows of the candles dance across his face. “You deserve that too, you know.”
Lucifer froze midway through a cautious bite. The words struck the former Lightbringer in a place that hadn't been touched in millennia. He promptly choked on the dry crumbs, started coughing wildly, and squeezed his eyes shut while his pale hand flew to his throat. The ultimate ruler of pride was actually choking on a simple piece of bread.
Across the table, Bansaday couldn't take it anymore. The pure, unfiltered hype over his vessel’s absurd brutality boiled over in one fell swoop.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
The roaring laugh of the lion god was so intense that his massive body couldn't hold the tension anymore. With a blinding KLABAM, Bansaday exploded into a terrifying shockwave of pure, liquid gold light. The entire throne room was illuminated white hot, chairs vibrated on the crystal, and the scattered bones on the table almost dissolved in the heat. For a fraction of a second, there was nothing but pure energy, until the particles shot back together with a hard, sucking force. The lion god was whole again, breathing deeply and looking at Silarias with a deadpan gaze, while a few wisps of smoke still escaped his mane.
“Haha… yeah, sorry,” the lion grumbled, raising his enormous claw apologetically. “If I get a bit too riled up, I apparently can’t contain my energy. Andnn… kaboom, haha.”
Lucifer, who had regained his breath, looked at the repeated explosion with a mixture of pure disgust and deep exhaustion. His breathing was hoarse. Without a word, he let his head fall forward despondently. SPLASH. His face landed with a dull thud right in the middle of a gigantic, whipped-cream-covered cake that Silarias had just materialized.
“Every time… AGAIN…” Lucifer mumbled with a muffled, heavily dampened voice from inside the cake, while white patches of cream stuck to his cheeks. He slowly lifted his head, his features now a comical mess of royal rage and sweet filling. Irritated, he started flapping the battered, bald stumps of his wings, or whatever was left of them. The weak gust of wind clumsily blew the last glowing light particles of Bansaday’s explosion away from the food.
He wiped the cake from his eyes with a trembling, pale hand and looked Silarias straight in the face. The absurd situation seemed to have melted away the last remnants of his icy mask. The arrogance was gone; what remained was the raw, detailed truth.
“You don’t understand, mortal,” Lucifer began, his voice now softer, carrying a melancholy that made the room grow cold. “I wasn't just an angel. I was the son of a God. A God who gradually became corrupt, blinded by His own omnipotence and rigid rules. I saw it happening, and I refused to bend my knees to a tyrant. I wanted to rebel. I had a plan, a grand, gradual plan to lift humanity out of the ignorance in which They wanted to keep them.”
He leaned back, his black halo pulsating with a dull, painful rhythm. “My rebels and I gave people the tools to survive. We taught them how to forge metals, how to make weapons to defend themselves. We taught them to read, write, understand the stars. But a rebellion is never pure, Silarias. Among my followers were beings whose hearts soon broke under the freedom. They brought corruption with them. Alongside the knowledge, they taught humanity the destructive arts of gambling, the blinding lust, and the greed that consumes your world now.”
The fallen angel clenched his hand into a fist, squeezing the cake cream between his fingers. “And for that… for that, I had to bear the consequences. The missteps of my army were placed on my shoulders. They overpowered me. They tried to pluck my wings, feather by feather, until nothing was left but these bleeding, bald bones.” His voice cracked for a moment, cold with age-old pain. “Banished. Cast down. Thrown into the most dangerous, darkest, and deepest pits of the hellverse, to rot away forever in the total void.”
Lucifer looked at his own reflection in a silver platter. “In that deep darkness… I lost myself. I became the curse they wanted me to be. I became the hate.”
He fell silent and looked up at Silarias. A strange, awkward shudder went through the angel. The fire in the young warrior’s eyes, that unconditional, almost naive acceptance, did something Lucifer hadn't experienced in millennia. It was as if a thick layer of ice around his millennia-old, petrified heart started to crack with a loud bang. Something in Silarias’s pure soul thawed the true, original Morningstar that lay buried deep beneath the layers of gall and shadow. Silarias saw it happen, saw the flicker of the true light behind the darkness, and felt an uncontrollable urge to show this fallen king that he was far from lost.
Bansaday jumped back to his feet with explosive speed from his chair, which this time fell into splintered pieces with a loud cracking sound. The lion god was completely re-hyped. Golden flames shot from his mane like solar flares and made the walls of the throne room glow.
“That’s the blood of the Bansaday right there!” the lion roared, slamming his massive claw hard onto the wooden table, making the platters of meat rattle upward. “Because you are my vessel, Silarias… but also because you are my direct descendant! You break people’s illusions! With your pure presence, you bring out the true nature of a being! No one can hide their true face from you!”
Upon hearing those thundering words, a sharp, icy stab shot through Lucifer’s head. His pupils narrowed to pinpricks. Bansaday’s voice faded and gave way in his mind to a deafening echo from the past. Images flashed through his head in high-speed: the throne room of Paradise, the dazzling, yet cold glory of the God who had cast him out. “You will lay bare the truth of hearts, my son, even if it consumes you,” that almighty voice had sounded back then. Lucifer swallowed with difficulty. The similarities were terrifying. Silarias possessed the exact same, shocking gift for shattering masks.
But Lucifer refused to be carried away by the memory. With an abrupt, cold movement, he wiped the cake cream from his eyes, straightened his back, and cut through the atmosphere sharply.
“Silarias,” Lucifer spoke, and the entire room cooled to an icy silence. “Before we can start doing this… TWO.”
His voice carried an unnatural, dark echo, and as if the walls themselves were reacting, a choir of whispering, terrifying voices suddenly sounded from literally every pitch-black corner of the room: “Two…”
“QUESTIONS.”
Again, the dark voices echoed synchronously: “Questions…”
The heavy, suffocating tension built up rapidly around the table. The coziness disappeared like snow in the sun. Lucifer leaned forward slowly, his face tight and ice-cold, his gaze fixed like two black holes on the young warrior.
“Shall I start immediately,” the baritone of the fallen angel cut through the silence. “My first question is: WHAT are those extra chairs doing here at this table? And the second question… What is your ultimate goal?”
Silarias stood there, completely unfazed by the sudden darkness. He still had a large bone in his hand and chewed the last bit of meat off it calmly. While Lucifer fixed him with a deadly stare, Silarias began to pace calmly, right in front of the angel's nose. He took his time, swallowed his food, and then threw the bare bone into the air with a nonchalant arc. Halfway through its flight, the bone dissolved into nothingness with a soft, purple spark.
“You indeed don’t understand anything,” Lucifer suddenly began again, as if he wanted to reinforce his own question, his voice heavy with memory. “I wasn't just an angel. I was the son of a God. A God who gradually became corrupt, blinded by His own omnipotence and rigid rules. I saw it happening, and I refused to bend my knees to a tyrant. I wanted to rebel. I had a plan, a grand, gradual plan to lift humanity out of the ignorance in which They wanted to keep them.”
He leaned back, his black halo pulsating with a dull, painful rhythm. “My rebels and I gave people the tools to survive. We taught them how to forge metals, how to make weapons to defend themselves. We taught them to read, write, understand the stars. But a rebellion is never pure, Silarias. Among my followers were beings whose hearts soon broke under the freedom. They brought corruption with them. Alongside the knowledge, they taught humanity the destructive arts of gambling, the blinding lust, and the greed that consumes your world now.”
The fallen angel clenched his hand into a fist. “And for that… for that, I had to bear the consequences. The missteps of my army were placed on my shoulders. They overpowered me. They tried to pluck my wings, feather by feather, until nothing was left but these bleeding, bald bones. Banished. Cast down. Thrown into the most dangerous, darkest, and deepest pits of the hellverse, to rot away forever in the total void. In that deep darkness… I lost myself. I became the curse they wanted me to be.”
Silarias stopped pacing. Something in the young warrior’s pure soul thawed upon hearing that raw story. He saw the flicker of true light behind the darkness of the Morningstar and wanted to show him he wasn't alone. He turned abruptly to Lucifer and raised his arms with a broad grin.
“Nice story, man! But those empty chairs…”
CLAP!
Silarias clapped his hands hard. The sound shattered the dark echoes in the room completely. A purple shockwave shot from his palms across the floor. He turned his upper body and pointed with a stiff finger straight to the left corner of the throne room, where three pitch-black, impenetrable shadows were vibrating.
“AHHHH, Master! You saw us immediately! Such an incredibly young warrior, but nothing really escapes you, huh?!”
With a loud, enthusiastic voice, Frey was the first to emerge from the shadow. The grotesque, gigantic warrior stepped into the room, his massive armor clattering noisily with every movement. His eyes fell directly on the overloaded dining table and began to glow obsessively. “Ooh… is all that for us?!”
Right behind him, Freya stepped out of the darkness. She rolled her eyes theatrically at Frey and then looked behind her, while pulling a broad, massive man out of the shadow with a firm tug. “Come on now, he really doesn't bite!”
The man she pulled along had an impressive appearance: a broad, muscular chest, a tight mohawk on his head, and thick, traditional braids hanging down his back. Freya gave him a firm, laughing nudge in the back. “Come on, you’re practically a part of him.”
The broad man regained his tough posture, puffed out his chest, and brought his hand to his armor with a heavy slap. “GREETINGS! I am Odr, Freya’s man and,”
“Ooh, Frey and Odr!” Silarias interrupted him immediately with a gigantic grin, while watching the three newcomers enthusiastically and waving his arms. “Sounds fun, man, haha! Are you guys really in love?”
At that remark, both Freya and Odr lost all their carefully constructed, tough, and cool facade in one fell swoop. The feigned dominance melted away completely. They looked at each other for a fraction of a second, saw each other’s red cheeks, and then burst out into a hard, genuine laugh that echoed through the hall simultaneously.
“Hahaha! Yes, Master, we are really very much in love…” Freya managed to say, laughing, her tough mask completely broken, while she wrapped her arm warmly around Odr’s broad shoulder, who joined in with a shy grin.
Silarias started laughing along with them out loud, his eyes shining with pure pleasure as he kicked the remaining empty chairs back with his foot. “Well, come on then! Pull up a chair and come eat!”
With a loud commotion, the group sat down. The tension Lucifer had just built up was expertly buried under the clattering of silver cutlery and the greedy chewing of Frey, who was eating an entire roasted bird without shame. Odr took a seat calmly, placed his heavy, rune-inlaid staff upright against the edge of the table, and took a deep drink.
He looked across the table at Silarias, who was staring with wide eyes at the mysterious weapon.
“My staff,” Odr began with his heavy, calm voice, while briefly touching the woodwork. “It’s not just a walking stick. Depending on the situation, it can transform into a sword, or, my personal favorite, a spear. It adapts to the battle. But you must understand, Silarias, that this weapon doesn't reflect my own, inner strength. The staff itself is a medium. It adopts the unique properties of the rightful owner and converts that specific energy into the most efficient weapon form.”
Odr took a short pause and leaned a bit further forward to make his point. “So if you were holding it, for example, then it would be something”
But before he could even finish his sentence, the Bansaday flew to his feet with a brutal jerk. The lion god completely ignored Odr’s explanation. His golden glowing eyes were tight and serious, all previous hype was gone in an instant.
“Sil, that is exactly what I want to talk to you about!” the Bansaday interrupted him with a voice that made the throne room tremble. The lion leaned deeply over the table, making the shadows dance wildly over the food. “You surely realize by now that you are absolutely not an ordinary lion beasthuman?! That beastly form, those claws, that appearance… that can indeed all be due to the soulbound gem in your chest, but the actual truth behind your origin is that”
Suddenly, the atmosphere changed terrifically.
Before the lion god could get the redeeming word past his lips, the entire throne room began to shake violently. The heavy, rolling sound of Bansaday’s voice began to distort strangely. It stammered, stretched out, and turned into a bizarre, unintelligible digital crackle, as if reality itself were glitching.
Silarias opened his eyes wide and tried to hear what his mentor was saying, but the lion’s words turned into an incomprehensible, echoing mash of sound. At the same time, a blinding, white-hot light shot up from the crystal floor. The dining table, Lucifer, the Bansaday, Frey, Freya, and Odr, everything began to light up at a terrifying pace, until the entire environment changed into a dazzling, flashing sea of pure white.
Amidst that blinding void, a heavy, echoing voice suddenly flashed through Silarias’s consciousness. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, resonating in the deepest fibers of his soul.
“Listen well, warrior,” the voice spoke imperatively. “Your physical body rests, but your mind has broken free. In this lucid form, you are no longer bound by the laws of the physical world. You are pure consciousness. You can now theoretically travel anywhere your thoughts carry you. Focus your attention.”
Silarias closed his spiritual eyes and thought of the only thing that really occupied him.
The white void tore open in one fell swoop. The throne room was gone. Suddenly, Silarias was hanging in the ice-cold night air, high above the stone walls of a moving bastion. It was deep midnight. The wind whistled around the massive battlements, and in the distance, the vague contours of a huge city appeared against the horizon, the destination toward which the bastion was thundering tirelessly.
There, on the wide balcony of the bastion, she stood.
Nyx. Her dark hair danced wildly in the grim wind, but her gaze was directed dreamily upward, deep, absorbed in the soft, silver glow of the full moon. She looked lonely, surrounded by the heavy shadows of the night.
From the warm interior rooms behind the balcony, a familiar, muffled voice suddenly sounded in the background through the open doors. “One more day and we’ll be there! With that idea of Nicola’s, we’ll be there a day earlier!”
Nyx didn't react, her focus remained uninterrupted on the moon.
Silarias felt an enormous tidal wave of emotion surging through his intangible form. He floated downward, his hand reaching toward her, although he knew he was merely a ghost here.
“NYXX!!!” Silarias screamed, his voice a desperate echo in the spiritual wind. He landed right in front of her on the cold stone floor. “Nyx!! Please, hear me… we’ll see each other soon… You’re coming!”
Nyx didn't react immediately. Her gaze remained fixed on the moon and her ears caught no sound in the material world. But for a fraction of a second, the air around her trembled. A sudden chill went through her body. Her pupils narrowed briefly and she turned her head slowly away from the starry sky, as if she understood his pure presence through the barrier of reality.
She raised her hand slowly and stretched her fingers out into the empty air.
Silarias instinctively did the same. His lucid, glowing hand moved toward hers. At the exact moment their fingertips seemed to touch softly, a sharp, electrical shock shot through his entire being. A fleeting connection, a spark of warmth in the cold night.
And then the connection was broken with brutal force.
With the speed of a falling meteor, Silarias was sucked backward through time and space. The cold night air and Nyx’s figure faded into a frantic blur. Before he realized it, reality slammed back together with a hard landing.
BOOM!
Silarias was sitting bolt upright on his heavy chair at the long oak dining table with a jolt. The purple and gold light particles were still swirling around his head. He gasped heavily, his heart pounded in his throat, and sweat was on his forehead. He looked around wildly.
The dining table was still there, overloaded with steaming poultry and silver platters. Across from him sat Lucifer, who was just wiping the last remnants of whipped cream from his cheeks with an uncomfortable face. On the side sat the Bansaday, who had fully recovered into his normal, massive form and was looking at his trembling descendant with a deep, serious gaze. Frey was still sitting there with a gigantic bone in his hand, while Freya and Odr watched with a smile as Silarias came to his senses.
The flashing light had dimmed, reality was restored, but the lion god’s words still hung like an unspoken promise in the air of the throne room.
Silarias could barely control his breathing when the atmosphere at the dining table changed dangerously again. The recently restored reality was already beginning to tremble at the edges. Bansaday and Odr exchanged a look of pure alarm and flew up synchronously. Without hesitation, their massive arms shot over the table.
Both the gigantic, gold-furred claw of the lion god and the broad, powerful hand of Odr grabbed Silarias firmly by his shoulders at the same time. The grip was so intense that Silarias’s armor creaked.
“Quick, your origin!” the Bansaday and Odr roared in perfect, terrifying harmony, their voices raw with pure haste. “You are not a lion beasthuman, BUT!!”
The redeeming word hung in the air.
Before the secret that would explain his entire being could sling into the room, reality locked shut for good. An invisible wall slammed right through the Throne Room. With a bizarre, violent shock, the heavy double voice of his mentors was abruptly cut off.
Everything around him distorted. The dining table, the steaming meat, the faces of Lucifer, Frey, Freya, Odr, and the Bansaday transformed into a swirling, spiral blur of purple and gold light. At the same time, an absolute, icy silence fell over his consciousness. Every trace of sound died in an instant. It was as if he were being pushed deep underwater; the shouting voices, the trembling of the hall, the rattling of the tableware, everything became completely soundless.
Silarias felt himself being pulled upward with sickening speed, away from the spiritual depths of his own mind. The grip on his shoulders faded into nothingness. Slowly, dutifully, he began to come out of his deep trance. The magical world of his inner gods and curses dissolved like smoke in the morning wind.
His physical senses began to return very slowly, but he was absolutely not yet in his right mind. His heavy limbs felt like lead, his thoughts spun aimlessly around, and the echo of that last, unfinished sentence roared like a madman through his empty head.