36

  “It’s like looking at a mirror and seeing the devil staring back at you…” Omar couldn’t believe his eyes, for the demon standing in front of him, a shadow of himself, but twisted. It stood ready for battle. Although Omar held his sword, he couldn’t determine a way to attack. The losses of Dante and Leonidas wayed heavy on his mind. He once was an undefeated warrior, but now stained with defeat, his mirror self-readied a third loss for him. How could someone defeat the demon side of them?

  The dark shadow of Omar paced slowly with his blade grinding on the stone brick floor. Sparks burst like fireworks. This is no mirage, the shadow lives as an ordinary being. It’s organic. “How can I beat myself?” Omar pondered at the question. The being sparked a devilish laugh time and time again. It played like a steady low symphony that made the ears bleed.

  “Why stutter, Diborn?” Gaia’s voice hung in the air. “Can’t stomach seeing the truth. That you… are a monster.” She sympathized.

  Omar couldn’t withstand it. His stomach lacked the taste for it. He hid away his pain best he could, yet it revealed mountains of regret and fear. A small boy remained trapped within the walls of his own mind. His three friends could only watch tied up in their chairs. Tears hung down their eyes, as they all knew Omar treated this mission to recover Elysium like a one-way trip.

  Gaia laughed, mocking the fear musty in the air. “Then, you can die, Diborn.” She stated. “My shadow, attack this soulless monstrosity.”

  “What?” Omar coughed, the shadow already underneath him, lunging his sword like a battering ram and delivering a painful slash to Omar’s gut. Omar delayed the blow, backstepping and taking a slash that broke skin, luckily nothing else.

  Omar made distance between them, but the shadow’s speed maneuvered and closed in a instant. It’s blade meeting Omar’s with a clash of black and blue magical energies coming from their swords. The clash echoed throughout the whole chamber awakening the dead. Sparks flew as metal continued to meet between them. The shadows sinister laugh, frightened Omar, lowering his guard, seeing the monster beside him.

  The force of the shadow’s swings were mightier, knocking Omar off balance. His sword arm reverberating from each end of the shadow’s attack. It swung relentlessly. The shadow didn’t care to send the house on each attack. It lived like each attack may have been its last. Omar couldn’t resist analyzing the strikes. Every enemy he faced always had a pattern, yet this devil is him. “What is his pattern? How can a spawn of true evil be willing to attack like this?” Omar questioned, as the shadow’s blade pushed him onto his knees.

  The shadow performed a three-sixty backswing with his sword, knocking Omar’s out of his hand. “It’s faster than me. Stronger…” Omar admitted. “I… I… can’t beat this thing.” His friends watched aimlessly, seeing doubt spread all across his face. The shadow swung his monstrous blows. But they were Omar’s own. The movements were fluid and relentless from the years of practice built up from the Kings guard. He trained with the best and even anticipating the shadow’s strike failed him. This being is a perfect organism.

  It’s everything Omar wanted to be. Omar managed to dodge its horizontally circle swing with a dodge sweeping it off its feet. The shadow held its free hand to its side, creating a black orb that touched Omar’s chest detonating on impact. It backflipped into the air with a cackling laugh. The shadow moved freely with no risk. It laughed like this moment had been the greatest one in his life. Omar flung back into the door, denting it. He coughed out blood, dripping from his mouth, like a vampire who just had dinner.

  The shadow landed on its feet, kicking Omar his side. “You cannot beat him.” Omar told himself. “It will always be the reason you falter.” His voice traumatized by the realization his sword cracked between the center of it. The same as his mind. They were on the brink of snapping.

  “I cannot believe you are me.” The shadow spoke, his voice darker and more demanding than Omar’s. Omar rose to see the shadow, but its lips never moved. “With all this power…” A black orb glew from its left hand. “You choose to waste it, because you hate yourself. If power had been given to every man in this world, they would be normal. So why are you still normal, child.” The shadow approached Omar with his flaming orb activated all around his forearm.

  “Have some courage to stand.” The shadow fired an explosive shot, but Omar barely dodged it, scurrying away like a rat. He crawled and the shadow rolled its eyes, seeing the weak Diborn presented to him.

  “Fight me!” The shadow demanded. Omar desperately swung his sword with a wide arm, trying to cleave its head. The shadow ducked, sliding around with godly speed. It grasped Omar’s sword and with a vertical smash like a blacksmith, broke it into two pieces. The clank of the end of his sword, broke Omar.

  The shadow laughed, kicking Omar in the gut. He flung towards the staircase leading to his friends and the tomb of Gaia. “You fight to protect a world already dying, why do you keep going?” It kicked him up the stairs a second time. “Omar Marshall, fated hero of the dying world of Eurafalia. No one will remember your name.” The shadow mocked him. Omar crawled.

  The words began to cut deeper than the pain the shadow could physically deliver. With each word, doubt sunk deeper into his mind. Omar faltered, his defense weakened, and the shadow made sure to capitalize, slicing into his abdomen. Pain flared, Omar screeched, his friends carelessly looked on trying to fight out of the chains.

  “Scream. You’re a failure. How can you be a hero you admire? You fail. You fail. You fail.”

  The pain staggered him back to reaility. Each gaping wound the shadow delivered was another reason to fight back to his feet. The shadow pulled a knife and stabbed him in his chest the same way Dante did before. He put a second into Omar’s back. The shadow laughed. “Remember this?” Omar glared at the being in sheer pain, but determination clouded it.

  “What…?” The shadow tilted its head in confusion. “Your right.” Omar repeated. He stood taller now. “I have failed so much in my life. I hate myself and am more afraid than anything now that if I use my powers I will lose someone I care about.” Omar panted, the wounds started to shorten his breaths. “But, it doesn’t mean I will quit. I will fail until I succeed.”

  Luna could only observe, but her violet eyes crystalized at the sight of Omar. His brows tucked in and a grin done with everything rose. “My tragedies are not my shackles, they are my armor.” He promised the shadow, pulling the blade out of his chest and pushing it to the shadows. The shadow whimpered.

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  Omar pushed the blade out and forced another strike into its chest. The shadow stumbled back unable to take a beating like Omar could. Its form breaking apart like smoke caught inside a storm. The chamber trembled. The crimson light in its veins dimmed as the shadow let out a piercing scream, Omar kicked it down the stairs.

  Omar stood alone at the top of the stairs. He stood alone, the black blood dripping from the knife lowered as he turned his back to the sword. He paid his friends no mind, climbing the steps to where it watched. The object of his destiny muttered to him, “climb.”

  The soulless hero climbed the steps. His body failing him, but he pushed the pain into the back of his mind climbing the steep hill. The shadow couldn’t regain to its feet, but it saw the glowing light at the end of the staircase to the tomb below the throne. It opened magically on its own. A great power shined a white reflection upon the chamber. A blade of power.

  The battle at a pause, for Omar held his own long enough to proclaim a destiny written for him already. “Stop you fool, that blade has not chosen you.” Gaia’s voice trembled with fear. Omar ignored it as the steps were shrouded in darkness, but he confronted it this time, walking through the veil of shadows into the light. The light at the end of the tunnel directed him. The shadows clawed at Omar, grabbing his body, stabbing him to slow him down.

  Endless brutality came forth. Omar dropped to his knees thriving in pain. But he kept marching, even on his knees he crawled towards the rising light. “The shadows may consume me, but light shall save my home.” He proclaimed, reaching the tombs, grave.

  Five skeletons shot arrows into his back, as he used the tomb to gather himself. He fell again, but he stood fast onto his feet. “Give up!” Gaia’s voice yelled out. Worry mumbled on the demand. Omar continued to stand on his feet. He nearly fell to the tomb from his wounds, as he reached for the majestic object inside of it.

  Omar lowered his guard as something whispered from inside the tomb. “Omar Marshall, son of the chronicler. Chosen.” The voice echoed. This time the source of it obvious.

  It sat upon hundreds of swirling stones. A gravestone of skulls and bones upon the crumbled throne and tomb. Every man who chosen to find this spot did not last long after finding themselves unworthy. Omar gazed upon its presence, so did the red eye on the hilt of the blade. Its energy scattered with the ruins like the being who caused it all. The handle is crisp. A blade strong enough to stab through stone made from the ancients. It continued to attract Omar over to it with its prowess. The being of the ruins, a true Lotus Blade.

  “Impossible.” Omar muffled. The handle of the blade striped of pure white ivory silver and ancient dwarven gold. The pommel is non-existent as the holy flames that crafted this blade were left over. The cross guard perfectly knitted around the red pupil eye of the blade. The gold wrapped around the eye like a snake calling to the Diborn. The power emitting from the edge of the blade matched the same as Omar’s. Omar dropped his guard walking towards it. Black flames turned white omitted from the blade, turning the bones of ancients into ash.

  The closer Omar reached held the blade, the closer the shadows dagger fell in comparison to this one. The sword had a perfect precision of miniature blades upon its two-inch wide frame. The blade in length matched the height of your average dwarf. Shorter than Omar’s old blade. The sheathing of the sword sat on the top of the staircase. A golden coil wrapped around the silver sheath.

  “A Lotus Blade. Not a shard. Not a copy. You are very real.” Omar said in disbelief.

  “I don’t know how to do it. I just wish, you to save my home.” He begged, and a white light consumed him.

  …

  The vision vaporized quickly like a lucid dream, as Omar gasped after a paused breath. He awoke face plant on the floor catching his breath. He rose from the rocky bedside next to the blade. Its dull red eye is now an onyx-black obsidian one. The hilt was glamoured with the golden carving of the name “Omar” on it. The aura’s power left the blade. From a distance, it appeared no more than a regular longsword now.

  Omar stood up and gripped the blade with his sturdy right hand. He pulled for eons. The blade embedded in the hard bedrock, came screaming out. He successfully bestowed the blade in his right hand sheathing it. “I promise.”

  He pounded his chest as the moonlight from the sky poured on top of him. A lonely star in the darkness. The light of an approving goddess. He turned deeper into the underground with one goal.

  “Luna…?” Omar questioned, as she lied unconscious across a couple of rocky mountains.

  …

  Coiled in the burning flames. Omar sat naked wrapped in a fetal position as they burned all around him. He could see from afar as Jericho and the others made it down. It was a vision. Not his actual eyes. Those were putting him in another dimension of some sort. Underneath him were warm golden waters.

  “Piss? Where the hell am I now!? Why am I always traveling to other places.” Omar concerningly asked in his nude appearance.

  “Greetings, Pegasus. Or should I say Omar Marshall? The Omar Marshall.” A voice from the distance echoed.

  “Alright. Echoes and echoes. No one ever just says hi or shows their face these days.”

  The voice fell silent. A bright ray of light shined right in front of the endless sea in front of Omar. Coming out of thin air seemingly from the endless abyss he found himself in, was a woman. A blonde-haired woman with a silk white dress. Her smile uplifted the thousands who came across it. Golden eyes that matched this sunset-lit sea. She stood in the water with her bracelets dangling. She offered her hand to Omar.

  “Holy… mother loving shit. It's her.” Omar gurgled his words before dropping to a knee. “Lady, Altira. Its. It's my honor.”

  Altira took his hand and reached down for his other. She held his smile firmly before helping him up. She quickly bestowed her goddess magic on him, awarding him a silver coat of armor. She held his hand in silence, gazing upon it.

  “So, it is quite true. You were blessed with Pegasus. Like we all knew you would be.” Altira giggled. “Heavens couldn’t bestow another soul for this power. It had to be you.”

  Omar remained confused. He scratched the back of his head as the two went for a stroll. They passed by mountains over the sea, as the silence became Altira’s code of codex. “How do you mean, when you say we knew you would be? And I don’t deserve the praise of an immortal being putting the word “The” in front of my name. I am just a lowly Diborn.”

  “Quite right. That is what you only recall correct?” Altira applauded. “At the age of eight, your earliest memory is the day you came to the heavens with your father to see the old chronicler, Parcalynx. What if I told you, that you were much more than that name?” She asked knowing something more than what Omar already knew. He bit. “Like what?”

  “Let's call it a Deity, perhaps.” Altira interrupted slowly. “I’m so sort of God. I only wield the sword you created nothing more.” Omar laughed.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Altira walked to the edge of the sea, where nothing but a silver light remained in the depths of the edge. “I only came to greet you this one time. You plan to use your powers for good. I see it. We see it. Pegasus. With every being who holds the shards of the Lotus crystal, more time will reveal itself to you. I will tell you one thing and that is you are more than a Diborn. You are more than Pegasus. You just have to believe it yourself now. Be the change you want in this world.” Altira smiled at him.

  “Did Gaia test me…?” Omar asked the goddess.

  Altira held her tongue for a moment, as she looked upon the endless golden sea. “She blames herself, Dragni tricked her long ago when the Lotus Blade was first made. The first devil blade of power. She never wants that to happen again, so she tests people to ensure the day one takes Elysium, they are the hero the world needs. Not a remnant.”

  “You are a Soulless hero, Marshall.” Her lips pecked Omar’s forehead. A light quickly shrouded over Omar as her voice became a whisper in his ear. “Now. Rise… Pegasus.”