As Daios stood defiantly amid the dust and debris, the king let out a furious scream and leapt headlong at his foe. With a quick deke, Daios altered his step, and after catching the flying serpent, he turned Forneus’s momentum into a powerful slam.
Forneus smacked hard against the marble, and as his back broke from the crash, Daios used his power to raise the Serpent back into the air. With Forneus suspended perilously before him, Daios pulled Forneus powerfully back and smashed his knee into the back of Forneus’s skull.
The devastating force snapped the king’s neck, and as Daios relinquished his hold of the king, the outer ring of fire extinguished, and Forneus’s limp and lifeless body fell back to the stone floor.
With his opponent broken, Daios summoned six spears from the heap of dead Vayne and slowly approached the battered Forneus.
Forneus began to cough up more green ichor, and again, after a succession of wheezes and gasps, the Serpent’s voice turned to a sadistic cackle.
However, as Forneus tried to rise, Daios halted his movement with a motion of his hand and slammed Forneus so forcefully back down against the marble that the floor fractured beneath him. As Forneus screamed and fought furiously to rise, Daios suspended the six spears methodically over him, and electing to trap the king, he plunged the spears violently down into the serpent. The spears pierced though both of Forneus’s feet, knees, and hands and pinned the Serpent helplessly against the marble floor.
Rendered defenceless, Forneus’s voice crowed throughout the Throne Room.
“You do yourself no favours!” he screamed. “You are only courting your defeat! You will lose, son of Serich, I promise you!”
“I told you I would break you to your knees,” Daios said defiantly. “This, serpent, is how it ends.”
As blue embers fell like rain, Daios summoned a dagger into his grip and clutched strongly to Forneus’s skull. Desperately, Forneus tried to wrestle, but with great poise, Daios put the blade against Forneus’s scales, and after a powerful stab, he used the dagger to slice into the back of the Serpent’s neck.
“No!” Forneus screamed as he realized Daios’s intent.
Wildly, the serpent tried to break free his pinned legs and hands; however, as he bucked his appendages, it was his flesh and bone that broke.
After using the dagger to complete a deep cut into the back of the king’s neck, Daios reached his right hand deep into Forneus’s wound. With blue embers lighting the scene, Daios searched the gash, and after hearing a loud hiss, he clutched his hand around its source and ripped a four foot snake out of the considerable tear in the screaming king’s neck.
The snake, the great evil that had bonded with Forneus at the Dark Pool, hissed and snapped its jaws at Daios.
With godly conviction, Daios clenched tightly to the snake’s neck and stared remorselessly into its orange eyes.
“Your trail of death is avenged,” he said.
Using his dagger, Daios began to saw through the snake’s neck, and after a succession of powerful slices, the snake’s head fell lifelessly to Throne Room floor.
With a disgusted grimace, Daios tossed the snake’s dead body to the ground, and looked over the defeated Forneus.
The hellish orange hue of Forneus’s eyes had disappeared, and, instead, the great traitor of Animus Letum looked painfully up at Daios with his natural purple eyes.
Forneus trembled as tears streamed from his face. The man had separated from the monster, and as the leftover man looked helplessly up at Daios, his eyes pled for pardon.
“I’m sorry,” Forneus wept. “I am so sorry.”
“That is not enough,” Daios ruled.
“Kill me…” Forneus begged. “Kill what’s left…”
As terrified tears streamed down Forneus’s face, the sheer horror in his eyes implied that Serich’s faithful general had never died. It was as if he had survived inside the monster and watched helplessly as the Serpent tortured an entire world.
“Kill me!” Forneus screamed. “End me! End my torture!”
Daios consented.
In the name of the Throne’s Eye and the Lyran House, Daios plunged his dagger deep into Forneus’s heart.
Forneus gasped in pain, and as Daios twisted his blade, Forneus expelled an airy scream, and fell to death.
The great villain of the afterlife was no more.
As Daios surveyed the destruction streaked across the Throne Room, he saw Haren ascend to the royal court carrying the crown of Animus Letum. Haren was quickly followed by Adara and nearly one hundred of her armed parishioners.
Haren looked, baffled, over the destruction in the Throne Room. She was awestruck by the great feat she thought Odin had accomplished. As she looked at her old friend, she quickly realized the truth.
“Daios…” she whispered
Daios smiled back.
“A little late,” he said.
“Fashionably late,” Haren corrected as she held up the crown.
However, Daios could not yet accept the crown. He needed to commit one last deed before he could be anointed.
With an air of royalty, Daios took his rightful seat on the throne of Animus Letum. After pressing the button on each of the throne’s arms, two blades appeared, and Daios ran his palms over their edges. As he reclined on the throne, Daios’s blood flowed slowly towards the crater that Galian’s thunderous scream had left, and as the blood reached the base of Forneus’s expired Soul Cauldron, blue electric snaps cracked across the Throne Room. The cracks increased in volume until, with a sudden and thunderous boom, a massive pillar of electric blue energy burst up from the base of the crater.
The new Soul Cauldron and the new reign had been born.
As Daios’s blue Cauldron burnt through the dark clouds above and opened the skies to the first view of the night stars in twenty years, Haren approached the king and offered him the crown.
“My king,” she said with a smile. “This is yours.”
Daios bowed to Haren, and after accepting the crown with careful hands, he placed it on his head.
In an instant, an incredible rush of godly power awoke in Daios’s mind. His royal eyes grew wide, and as his soul surged with the level and extent of his inherited strength, Daios gained every power, thought, and memory ever held by a king of Animus Letum.
By his inheritance, Daios had become a deity. He had become the ruler of the afterlife.
As Haren and her hundred followers recognized that truth and humbled themselves to a knee before the new king, Daios accepted his birthright.
The new reign – the promised redemption of Animus Letum’s soul – had come.
The Lyran House had taken reign of the afterlife once more. But for the first time ever, heaven needed to be built on a foundation that had suffered nearly a quarter-century of hell.
For this reason, Daios chose edelweiss as his bloom.
During Forneus’s rule, the people of Animus Letum had become a mirror of the nature around them. They had been scarred and broken. They had lived in an age of decay.
But like his bloom, Daios would forge beauty from bleakness. Like edelweiss, Animus Letum would rise mightily from the barren rock.
The age of Daios had begun.
*
After I had delivered Odin across the seas of the afterlife, I, both patient and invested, waited on the banks of Animus Letum’s mainland. Bound to my shackle, I acknowledged Odin’s pursuit of the impossible. I did not pray, but begged. Fate, I implored, bestow speed and courage upon Odin’s task. Endow our great legend’s seed with the might of our even greater hope.
And fate was good.
From my boat, I heard first the thunder of a brother’s love, and I saw second the blue light of Animus Letum’s true blood. Serich’s great act of martyrdom, his payment of immense faith, had come to find its heirs atop the throne.
My thankfulness found me in a daze of jubilance. I, in memory of those lost, made time to grieve the black dusk that the serpents had felled on our
land. But I then, with greater heart and more time, celebrated the beautiful dawn that was rising.
I must have lost nearly an hour to my revel. As I lay on my back, savouring the night stars I had not seen in an age, one bright star seemed to soar and dive down to me.
I stood up, alerted by the falling light, but as it grew close, I froze in awe. The new king, using his inherited power of flight, was the star.
As he descended from the skies with infinite poise, he landed his feet gracefully onto my bank.
“My king,” I welcomed as I dropped to a knee, “thank you for making time. You have come a long way.”
Daios nodded.
“Your scar,” I noted of Daios’s mirrored marks. “It has grown a twin.”
“I am no longer the man you transported,” Daios informed. “Odin’s entirety was merged perfectly with his brother’s soul to create me. I am Daios.”
“You are both?” I asked.
“Both as one,” Daios replied.
“That certainly resolves any of the quarrels posed by two heirs,” I said with a smile.
Daios nodded and then pointed to my shackle.
“I come with a gift,” he said.
“What gift?” I asked.
Daios smiled at me, and with a flick of his hand he broke open the shackle on my right ankle.
I immediately crouched down and began tend to the wound that the chains had guarded from me for nearly a quarter century.
“It hurts so good,” I laughed.
I then looked up at the new king. “I think this wound can heal now.”
As Daios smiled and then extended his hand to me, I took it in thanks.
“I often feared I’d be chained here forever,” I said.
“I hope now that you will find a place in my court,” Daios said.
I smiled, but declined.
“Your court is fine without me. Besides, I have a job here, with this boat.”
“But you fear this labour,” Daios reminded me.
“I fear not having a choice,” I amended. “The people need to be brought to your kingdom, and I can offer them that travel.”
After bowing, I stepped back into my boat.
“People deserve your reign Daios, and I wish to deliver them to that privilege.”
“As you wish,” Daios said. “But if ever you seek leave of your duty and wish to join me, simply set your strides to my throne.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Daios offered a respectful nod, and after ascending effortlessly into the air, he soared back into the starry night of Animus Letum.
I watched his flight until he disappeared, and then I picked up my oar.
“Unbelievable,” I marvelled as I set the oar into the water. “Couldn’t have written it better myself.”
**
After I had reached the Isle of the Lost, it was not long until my workmate Zyled brought me a soul who had been given the Boatman rite.
I offered Zyled the customary gems for his work, and then addressed the very first man I would bring to the kingdom of Daios.
“You have no idea how great your timing is,” I said to the tall and slender man carrying a cloth covered box.
The man simply nodded.
“If you’ll hold still,” I said, “I’ll fix those eyes of yours.”
After the man nodded again, I knocked my hand into the back of his head and caught the coins that fell from his eye sockets.
“Not bad,” I measured of the coins.
As I looked up to the man’s eyes, I stumbled back, shocked by the hue that was staring back at me.
The eyes were blood red: a colour of pure evil.
Before I had any chance to act, the man drew a dagger and pointed it to my throat.
“Get in the boat,” he said.
“And if I don’t?” I challenged.
The man laughed. “Bravery doesn’t suit you, Charon. Let me make this simple: if you have any intention of seeing Adara again, you’ll get in the boat.”
Upon hearing my daughter’s name, my voice turned fearsome.
“How do you know that name?”
“I know what I must,” the man replied. “This moment has been years in the making.”
As the man continued to point his dagger to my throat, I tried to weave and displace it from his hand. The man was clearly experienced in combat, and as I tried to reach for the dagger, he jolted my abdomen with a strong kick and flung me helplessly into my boat.
“We should have done it the easy way,” the man said.
Arrogantly, the man stepped into my boat and then laid his cloth covered box on the floor. As I clutched my injured stomach, he pushed off the dock and then dropped an oar onto my back.
“Don’t test me again,” he said. “Your life and Adara’s life depend on it. Besides, there is someone on the mainland whom I would like you to meet.”
The man reclined confidently on my boat, daring me to make a mistake.
I knew I couldn’t. For my daughter, I had to set my oar into the water – for my daughter, I had to knowingly bring evil into heaven.
As I sculled across the sea, the man did not say another word. However, as we neared the mainland and he saw a giant figure draped in a massive black cloak on the shore, he became noticeably excited. I paddled suspiciously to the shore, and the moment I docked, the man leapt from the boat and knelt before the cloaked giant.
“I bring them back to you,” the man said as he held out his draped box.
The dark figure responded with an inhumanly deep growl.
“You have done well, Usis,” he commended.
As the giant removed his hood, fear struck hard into my heart.
“Malum Ludus!” I gasped.
Ludus shot me a cold grin and then received the box from his apprentice. The Great Terror opened the box and retrieved both of his red, pulsating eyes.
I knew I needed to warn my king.
Ludus began to insert his eyes back into their vacant sockets, and I began a desperate sprint to the Throne Room. As Ludus’s eyes became fixed back into his skull, his power instantly returned. Ludus cast his eyes on me, and after reading my fear, the chain shackle that was still attached to my boat hunted me like a serpent does it prey.
The chain caught me in seconds and snapped painfully around my ankle.
I was a prisoner once more.
I tried desperately to wrestle the chain off, but it was no use. Ludus had realized my greatest fear.
Usis shot me a mocking smirk and then turned to his master.
“What is our next move?” he asked.
“Incite madness,” Ludus replied. “We must break the king.”
“How?” Usis wondered.
“The greatest fear of all kings is the suffering of their people,” Ludus said.
With a snicker, his mouth turned to an evil and salivating grin.
“It is time, my apprentice, to finish the Master Labyrinth.”
Ω
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