Chapter 4
1335 Words
The voice came, clearer than ever, echoing in his mind like distant thunder. 'Do you want more power?' she asked, her voice resonating with unquestionable authority.
She repeated the question, each word laden with immense weight. 'Do you want more power?'
Hye remained silent.
"..."
'Do you want to see her again?'
The basilisk leaped at him without warning.
It seemed to fly, its black scales tearing through the air as if it were made of paper.
Rocks exploded in its path, while monsters were shredded like mere rag dolls.
Its eyes burned with fury.
To it, Hye was not just prey. He was something that should suffer as much as possible before dying in the most painful way imaginable.
'Yes...'
'Do you want to see her again?'
"Yes," Hye answered, his voice barely more than a whisper.
'Do you want more power to do that?'
"...Yes."
Time stopped.
The dimension itself was destroyed.
Everything had just reduced to nothing in an impossible-to-quantify moment.
The white-scaled basilisk had vanished, not a single fang remaining.
While the black-scaled one hovered in the infinite, not by choice, but because there was no life left in that destroyed body.
"How arrogant can you be, child?"
Hye was different. The very void molded around him and created a throne.
His voice, only with his voice and using strange words, words that did not belong to any dialect known to mere humans, words similar to those Lucifer spoke when he came to the mortal plane in 2012, he was destroying the basilisk from the inside out and from the outside in simultaneously.
Or was it thanks to his presence, the same presence that destroyed the dimension they were in for being too weak and small to contain such grandeur?
"Don't do something like this again. Life for you should be more important. So don't throw yours away so carelessly."
The being rose from his throne. He walked to the basilisk and stopped before it. –Live once more.– he said, and the basilisk was soon fully restored.
The creature trembled.
'I... died..?' it wondered, memories of an inescapable darkness, an endless void that loomed everywhere, flooding its mind.
Not even the one who had cast it into that small dimension had such presence.
Not to mention bringing the dead back to life, that is not something so simple, it requires time, even for gods.
But this being had just revived it with only a few simple words?
That's impossible!
The man turned, giving his back to the terrified creature.
With each step, flowers emerged around him.
A new world was being created in the deepest, purest void; the home of a darkness that seemed to have a life of its own.
On the sixth step, the white-scaled basilisk began to reappear, as well as the unhatched monster eggs, starting from its tail and ending at its head.
Seven steps were enough.
Not only larger but also more beautiful.
A new world full of flowers, trees, and vast terrain. Even if it tried, that basilisk could never traverse the entire place. No one but its creator could.
It's impossible.
The man continued walking on a dirt road while the body of the overseer floated beside him.
The void followed him.
The basilisk looked in terror, but also admiration, at that being as he walked towards a portal made of the purest, densest darkness, a portal that, unlike the normal ones, could indeed be touched.
"Could I be a little more greedy...?" the creature murmured with extreme hesitation, bowing instinctively in a demonstration of deep respect to the being before it.
"Tell me, child."
The basilisk was surprised.
Its head did not rise even a millimeter, in fact, now it was even closer to the ground.
However, its eyes acted completely differently, lifting and looking with a kind of idleness at the grand and, in a way, terrifying figure before it.
"Sir, if you please, could you... name me..."
"I understand..."
Basilisks, flaws in creation.
No.
They are unexpected mutations that escape any being's control.
How are they created?
How could a colossal creature with divine blood be born from the egg of a simple serpent?
The first, as known, emerged in ancient times, when the concept of time had not yet been established, when the great dragon Ryujin was killed by Izanami.
On that day, the blood of the great dragon formed rivers, lakes, and dyed entire oceans, taking, according to the current measure of time, at least three times the time since the creation of the universe where the angels dwell for these waters to be "detoxified from the essence of its blood."
During the time the world remained covered in blood, strange creatures began to appear, gigantic beings capable of destroying mountains with a simple flick of their tails.
Beings that carried in their eyes the dreadful power to turn almost anything they glanced at into stone.
These were the first basilisks.
Creatures born from the mixture of a simple serpent's egg with the blood of a fearsome dragon, a blood comparable to that of a god.
Their mere existence, when out of control, could cause the fall of an entire universe.
A factor that could further increase this danger would be the existence of a certain ability, in this case, a restriction, which was only discovered at the moment of Ryujin's "rebirth" and the birth of the three great dragon gods during the devastating battle against Susanoo.
A fight that devastated the world.
The renegade son of Izanami and Izanagi, the storm god, Susanoo, fought fiercely against dozens of basilisks simultaneously.
His blows destroyed parts of the world, a place several times larger than the first universe of the angels, and caused the death of several of his enemies, one after another.
However, his greatest and only mistake during that battle, the mistake that caused his death, came at the end of the fight, when almost all the enemies had already been defeated.
By comparing, in a demonstration of respect, the greatest of the three remaining basilisks, the most powerful up to that moment, with the dragon Ryujin, and finally naming him Ryujin, the dragon god of the sea, as he did with the other two, Yamata no Orochi, the dragon god of thunder and rain, and Fūryū, the dragon god of winds, considering the special abilities they all demonstrated during the combat, Susanoo ended up creating creatures that not even his parents could easily handle.
From that moment on, those were no longer mere basilisks, for upon being named, as would happen with the imugis, they transcended their own existences and became, in fact, pure and majestic dragons.
From that point on, the end of the fight was decreed.
Susanoo died so quickly and pathetically, his body enveloped by a massive, resistant ball of water, burned from the inside out by lightning that seemed to come from nowhere but emerged within his own body, and his entire body cut by air slashes that appeared in the place, that even his parents could do nothing to help him.
Through Susanoo's mouth, from that day on, the three great dragon gods were born.
The world would be divided: in the waters, Ryujin; in the sky, Kiyohime; on the land, Yamata no Orochi. Leaving the other realms for the remaining gods to govern.
**************
"This indeed should not happen, but..." The man smiled.
Incomprehensible words passed the lips of the one who once could be called Hye.
The basilisk trembled.
Shadows from the void enveloped its gigantic body in an instant.
Its last vision before everything darkened was that beautiful and terrifying figure passing through the black portal.
"Thank you..."
The creature felt a strange sensation, as if something inside it had changed. It didn't know what it was, but it knew something was different. Greater and stronger than ever.
From that moment on, it had become something completely new, not like the other dragons or basilisks, something unique.
- Writer
