Twilight of a Hybrid

by Ryan Johnson

  But Uragiru waved his hand with circled fingers at Valverno, who froze in a second. Uragiru unleashed a magic wave of what seems to be an invisible ice spell. He saw Valverno standing still like a white marble stone statue. “This is my world you are in, and here I am the god. No one is above the god king. Everything may be an illusion, but an illusion under my creation nonetheless. And you are not above me… the god king.

  “Since you dare to defy me instead of joining me, Marina, you will now face the penalty: you will watch me watch I lay this unworthy specimen to waste. You will watch as he will slowly die in this world of illusions and the real world where your bodies lie in my throne room.”

  Uragiru snipped fingers on both hands, and long spikes of a black Shadow power pierced through Valverno’s body with ease, sticking from the end they pierced and out the other they came out. Uragiru pulled out a dagger from his cloak and stabbed Valverno in the chest but he kept the dagger’s pointy tip on Valverno’s chest.

  Valverno growled in agony as Marina helplessly watched as the demigod feeling the pain of a dagger sinking deep into his chest. The Siren shouted his name “Valverno” to him, but his loud growls made his ears unable to pick up what Marina was saying.

  Uragiru released the dagger and the dagger very, very, very slowly magical sank into Valverno’s skin. Valverno growls suddenly grunted softer, as he could feel the dagger slowly going into his skin, moving slower than a snail moving with a heavy shell.

  “You now know the feeling of pain, and you will be feeling the aftereffects. The deeper the dagger sinks into you, the more harm it is going to do to your real body sleeping in my throne room. Such a pity to see raw power go to waste. Now, the Crystal Dragon will see he’d picked the wrong living specimen to be his ‘son’ and his hybrid warrior. He should have chosen me, the king of an island and its civilians.”

  Valverno grunted and growled loudly as he felt the dagger sinking into his skin. He saw Uragiru walking back to Marina. Every time he would move his body, he felt each spear moving back and forth within his body if they were sharp saws cutting through a tree trunk. And the dagger would also sink deeper less than an inch by the minute.

  The great struggle he was making made him feel weaker and weaker of each passing second. He arms could barely slant and his legs couldn’t bend. His wings were folded so tightly they were roll up like rolling a carpet. It was if there were chains tied around his entire body, there wasn’t any joints of his that could make him move and made him look like a stick.

  He could not bear to watch the king try to kidnap the Siren whom Valverno was sworn into marriage. He did give a sacred vow to protect Marina from any harm, not because she was a wife or a creature of the sea; he did love her and that is what made him feel alive.

  The bond of his love for her kept him growing strong, and he wasn’t going to allow another man take the woman away from the demigod.

  Valverno gave a gently sign and gripping his hands into tight fists. The demigod felt his wings unfolding and legs going into a standing position; he felt himself breaking free from whatever was tying him down. He felt the power of his god and human sides converging into one form within his body, a great unison of mortally and immortally rallying into one form.

  Of this scary, great, unknown, mysterious transformation Valverno was feeling, he slipped from his floating positon and fell to the unseen ground.

  This caught the attention of Uragiru, who just slammed his hand on Marina’s hands. He saw the hybrid starting to stand up and free from the magic keeping him trapped.

  “This may be a world of illusions, but I am the human god here, not you!” said Uragiru. “There may be some resistance people may put up with. However, in the end, I end up coming on top of everyone. You may have broken free, but you’ll be tied down soon enough.”

  Then Uragiru waved his hand toward Valverno but was grabbed so tightly by one of Valverno’s hands. Uragiru gazed upon Valverno’s eyes, which weren’t demonic anymore; Valverno’s eyes had turned human.

  “You are no king of Shimabellia and you are not a god. You may have created a different dimension of illusions, but it is created by illusions, objects that are not real or physical, something we can see but can’t touch. And I am here to show you I am not weak as you claim me to be. You just can’t admit I am stronger than you, and I always have been.”

  Valverno head-butted the king, who fell to the ground. Valverno pulled out the dagger from his chest and his wings destroyed the two spikes penetrating his body; he was free at last.

  After breaking free, the demigod stretched out his right arm and a long white, glowing spear appeared. It was a long thin spear with a four-foot blade. After drawing out a weapon of his liking, Valverno snipped a finger and Marina behind Uragiru suddenly dropped to her feet. “Sorry, Marina, I’ll be a few seconds, once I do some god slaying here.”

  “You can’t you that! No one can! No one mere mortal can break my world I have created! I am the human god king of this world! No mortals can’t say otherwise.”

  “Any ordinary mortal, in your dictionary! I am a demigod, half mortal. The other half is a god waiting to take over the half mortal when the half mortal feels weak and ready to go into disappear. You claim you have great power, but the power you hold is false power, as is magic. Magic is a false power as illusions are false images like you are.”

  Valverno dashed and sliced off one of the king’s arms. Then his tail plunged into Uragiru’s legs to prevent him from moving. Valverno could hear the young version of the king yelling in great pain.

  Then the demigod swung the spear and cutting off the upper half of the king’s body from his bottom half. “Who’s the weak one now, false human god?” Feeling the power being channeled through him, Valverno grabbed Uragiru’s hair of the head from the upper half he just cut and lifted up the entire half body.

  “You tried to mistreat my love with your own hands, considering the gods gave her to me and not to you. You betrayed the human race. You allied with Lusìvar with promises of false power that only Lusìvar will only have. And worst of all, you called yourself a god yet you bleed. There is one thing I have learned about immortal gods: they don’t bleed. But you do. This is the end of your world of illusions, where I am a human god slayer and will destroy this world of illusions you created and your false body, and the last thing you will see is the blade of illusion running through your skull.”

  Seeing the tears of horror drip from the head Valverno was carrying, he vigorously threw Uragiru’s upper half torso into the air and lifted up the spear he created pointed directly at the head. And the last thing the illusion image of King Uragiru’s younger self, and through his own eyes, was that his head falling and being impaled through the spear’s long and wide blade.

  Uragiru’s body on the spear (and the bottom half of the body made from illusion magic) faded into purple-red smoke.

  After seeing his victory, Valverno dropped the spear and rushed over to Marina and embraced her in his arms. “Sorry to have taken so long.”

  Marina was overjoyed to see the hybrid embracing her. “Oh, my love. You did come to protect me and you have shown the false king what strength you have.”

  “It is because I love you. It was no mistake our first meeting was the power of fate. We were destined to be a part of each other. And no matter what kind of danger there is, I will drop everything I would be in and come to your aid. Speaking of danger, how did you even get here?”

  “It was that witch! Belver—”

  A sound of snapping fingers sprang loudly. The dark space quickly changed back to the throne room.

  Valverno and Marina blinked their eyes several time; they were no longer in the fake world but in the throne room. They were lying on the ground and feeling weaker than they were.

  Behind them, Valverno saw the king Uragiru sitting on his throne; he was the old man Valverno and Marina remembered seeing. His face was heavily scared and his eyes were petrified if he was struck by a sharp b
lade. Then he waved his hands at the door entrance, which burst open quickly.

  Uragiru’s bodyguards came and swarmed around Marina and Valverno. They placed their spears around the two prisoners and were ready for an order to kill both of them. About a hundred of them were ready to strike and kill without any hesitating.

  Then Uragiru pointed a hand at Valverno and suddenly black chains came floating down from the ceiling and wrapped around Valverno’s entire body. In a matter of seconds, Valverno was chained up and couldn’t move a single portion of his body.

  “If you won’t join me, then you will die. Guards, escort Marina outside and place her on the stable set in the lower levels of the city. And send word to my secret army at once and have them invade the Western Region. Tell them to kill Geraldus, his family, and everyone living in the Western Region. I want no obstacles in my way to victory. Kill everyone in the Western Region! Kill them all!”

  Two guards grabbed Marina and carried her outside the throne room. The rest of the guards placed their spears at Valverno. One guard grabbed the Crystal Sword from Valverno and gave it the king.

  “The Crystal Sword will fit me nicely,” said the king. “The Crystal Dragon will always favor the strongest and not the weak.” The king began to walk with a small battalion of soldiers while thirty men kept their spears pointing at the demigod. “You may have won against my younger self in my world of illusions, but you will never win against the real me.”

  Valverno wanted to talk back but one of the black chains was wrapped around his chin tightly he couldn’t utter a word or even move a finger. His body was completely trapped at the mercy of the king. Even back in the real world from whatever dimension he and Marina were in, he was completely weak and his strength was gone; all he had was the feeling from the Pool of Shadows.

  “And yes,” said the king, turning to see Valverno from the other side of the throne room. “Since you ended up choosing the losing side instead of my side, you and Marina are sentenced to death. You will die through a spear piercing, like in my world you destroyed, and Marina will be burned alive.”

  Valverno flashed with great anger now. He had grown a lust to kill both the king and the witch. With all his strength gone, he still felt had some fighting spirit left in him. But without his physical strength to support his moving muscles, it was useless to resist; all he could do was stare angrily.

  “Before you do die, you will witness Marina before you die.” King Uragiru snapped his fingers again and the chains magical moved from the throne room and fly outside.

  Valverno, strapped to the magic chains he could not break free from, was in the courtyard and ironically it was the place where he married Marina. The black chains carried Valverno over the cliffs of the courtyard where he could see the entire southern lower levels of the city.

  From his hybrid eyes, he saw a very large crowd gathered around and he could see the two soldiers dragging Marina to a tall pillar standing upon a table of straw and hay and a large wooden stake. The two guards place Marina around the wooden pillar tightly tied her wrists around the pillar.

  The king walked and went aboard the stake, where Marina would end up being tied up to. Then an unarmored soldier with a cloth covering his head, which only showed his eyes and mouth, carrying a torch walked to the king and gave him the torch.

  Then the king held up a crystal ball, which glowed brightly, couched it with the lit torch of fire. The ball sprouted down a dozen more crystal balls, which shot off in random locations at once and went off in different directions into the horizon.

  After ten seconds, the floating ball turned red and King Uragiru spoke, “Attention, witnesses of Shimabellia, is it I Uragiru, rightful king of the island. The hybrid Vaeludar and his wife have refused to take sides with me. From the beginning, they were never poisoned by Geraldus’s lies but they were indeed acting of their own record to kill me.”

  As Uragiru laid talking to the crystal ball and the people crowded around the people with lies, the ball came floating to the chained Valverno and the tied-up Marina, intending to show the people horrifying penalties of what happens to people who would betray him. The ball flying in front of Vaeludar was showing the island his form: the corrupted form he was given from the Pool of Shadows.

  “Geraldus was no master mind in the past, but once my friend. But from the start, when he found this hybrid and the Siren, he knew they would be the key elements of what would had me dead and Geraldus on the throne. As he pretended to be my friend, the Siren I took into my home and raised as my daughter was with him all along.

  “And Vaeludar, who you see here in his true form, would have landed the killing blow upon me, but now he has been captured and subdued to my will. Both these soulless, cold-hearted monsters pretended to show love to one and other but it was all a ruse to get near me and kill when they had the chance, which they don’t any more.

  “And to those who would betray me, let this be a lesson; those who are guilty to the crime to treason and sentenced to die upon the Flame of Eternal Torment.” Then the king, without any reluctance, placed the torch upon the on the hay and watched it erupted into flames beneath Marina’s feet.

  Down below, Marina shined a great horror in her eyes upon the fire quickly burning through the hay and straw in a matter of seconds and there was a cry of shouts coming from the people witnessing the horrifying torment.

  Valverno, chained only seeing from his hybrid eyes, growled in anger. He could no longer bear to be weak and see Marina suffer any more before he eyes. He could no longer resist of what was lingering inside him: a shadowy power lurking somewhere inside. In that moment, the second of seeing the fire burning, he let go of his resisting power and let it consume him.

  This made his skin grow paler and his eyes turned bright red-yellow. His strength seemed to have returned and tried to break free from the magic chains keeping him chained to save the Siren. He felt a great darkness, a great evil when he released the Shadow power he kept at bay for quite a while.

  Now he fully unleashed it and the evilness one small once of liquid was very, very strong, strong as his divine power given to him by the Crystal Dragon.

  With an awesome evil power circulating in his body, he suddenly popped his jaw open and bit apart one of the chains holding both a wing and his arms. With great strength pouring back into him, he pulled with the strongest of his hybrid demigod might to break free from the chains.

  Suddenly, the guards surrounding him and jabbed their single spears into the hybrid’s body, impaling him with ease.

  However, their weapons didn’t take a single effect on Valverno, as the dark energy he released kept his body from dying. As he pulled the chains to break free, he saw the spears piercing right through his skin but he wasn’t feeling pain nor was he dying from any metal piercing

  Then in a single and final push of his wings, a great whipping of his tail, the crunching of his legs, and a pull of his arms, Valverno broke free and the chains faded into clouds of smoke.

  He landed in a thundering strike into the ground, which sent a powerful shockwave and sent the surrounding soldiers flying in different directions at once.

  The colors of his dragon scales swirled like fire and darkened, a black mist swirled from his red-yellow eyes, his long red hair waved in the air like cloud, and smoke puffed from his wings; he had unleashing the evil power from the Pool of Shadows within him.

  A DARK POWER UNLEASHED

  Valverno, now in a changed form to a fully demonic being, gazed down from the edge he was watching from. He saw the fire rising around Marina tied to the pillar. He growled ferociously and squeezed his fists into the palm of his hands. He wasn’t going to let the last Siren go up in smoke.

  As he broke from his chains, he looked at his hands. He signed a heavy misty from his mouth as he saw he lost the red color he’d always had and saw the skin grey. His appearance stayed the same when he jumped out from the Pool of Shadows, but the colors had darkened in great contrast. His face stil
l retained its human form, but dragon scales grew over his human skin and his horns became more twisted. His hair the same: long and bright red. Blood circulated around the scar across his right eye.

  Valverno let the corruptible power of the Pool of Shadows take hold of him, no longer fearing the power the evilness that may affect him. Hastily, he gazed upon a reformed body that was more monstrous than human.

  By unleashing this great, horribly power and taking over his body, Valverno caught the screams of Marina’s voice down below. His eyes turned down to the stake Marina was tied to.

  The crimson fires were spreading quickly and sparking higher than the pillar Marina was tied to. Marina was feeling the heat from the rising flames and her fish scales were starting to fall from her skin and her skin was dehydrating to bone-rock dry.

  Valverno quenched his eyebrows and jumped off the cliff with his wings wide open; black smoke smoldered the air from his wings flapping out the heavy clouds. He swirled around in the air and slammed onto a high wall. He stood sideways on a vertical wall as he looked down more and saw where each guard either guarding the stake of fire was or pushing away any civilian trying to push their away through the guards.

  He could see King Uragiru standing closely to the stake as he looked with no remorse and gave a frightful, stern look he gave the Siren.

  Valverno wasn’t going to have such a horrifying fate King Uragiru was displaying to the public of his castle home and the island. Valverno started running on the wall and flapped with a strong might of his smoking wings. He soared around the lower levels of the city and rained down fireballs upon a squad of guards his saw or any catapult ready to launch a rock to an invading army.

  Then he came soaring down to the stake and landed into the fire. With one hard breath of a fierce wind from his mouth, the fire was doused out. Valverno wrapped one arm around Marina, who was conscious and suddenly afraid when she gazed upon Valverno’s demonic form, and used his other arm to break the ropes from Marina’s tied wrists. Valverno sliced the ropes with his claws.