Jibril looks up with her final decision to purge the entire containment chamber. She didn't expect this ... she didn't expect any of this. Where did it all go wrong? One moment she was at home in Medressa guarding the mosque with her friends, the next she was traveling alone to a foreign lands so far from home, another she's a thug for a power broker to a pawn in a dark god's insane plan. Why her of all people? There's nothing extraordinary about her. Wrong place at the wrong time.
Jibril looks to Jimmy, the monster he has become. All because of them. It wasn't enough that Jibril got her friend killed in her reckless escape, they destroyed him and put him back together. Built all wrong, he looks so broken as he is.
Jibril looks down and inputs the commands Kane had instructed her to do.
The sequence goes through and the room slowly awakens as Kane begins to smoke a red plume of hot ash and blackened soot. Maruda's containment cell is filled with blindly light reverberating an octave of glass warping and the shrieking of the metal and glass pierced the air like nails on a thousand chalkboards. The scales of the demonic serpents are wound so tightly that the metallic exoskeletons bend and break the cell all the while they shed their scales of black. Like hot coals, the scales of the serpents flake off, drop and pierce the ground with sharp tingling where they land, smoke radiates off the scales and burn with a scorching heat glowing brighter until they turn a flaming blue color.
Maruda hammers at her cell, her body contorts and shapeshifts into all manner of monstrosity just to fill the emptiness of her cell and break her containment. Jibril watched as Maruda was showing genuine fear of death as her waling and shrieks were drowned out by the ear shattering ringing of the cell warping between her thrashing about in a panic and Kane screaming as his human flesh melts into a puddle and reveals his reptilian exoskeleton as a pure scarlet red beneath it. He doesn't scream as Maruda does despite the absolute pain he must be feeling with holy magic scorching him down to the very soul of his being.
Jibril stepped from the control station as the podiums retract into the circle and the seal itself begins to spin counter clockwise like one giant mechanism causing the room to shift and move like clockwork. The walls of the entire cell block pulsed when a sequence of spells were made with gear tiles matching the lines of the random variations of tiles. A self-solving rubix cube of runic incantations casting spells when a trigger mechanism sets off the chain reaction. The written spells of the glass of each chamber glow white briefly then yellow, then blue, then green then the chalk vanishes with the containment cells being completely empty and cleaned of any residue. The next cell does the same in a clockwise fashion around the room surrounding Maruda's chamber and Jimmy's cell in almost next in the cycle.
Jibril laments that this may be her last moments.
She walks over to Jimmy's cell and sees him thrashing about, she plants a hand on his glass prison and thinks about the last time she saw him. Back then within the hospital clean room where she sat with Jimmy. A memory of him plays in her final moments.
"Is he going to release you?"
"I hope so. Can't stand it being here like this for too much longer" Jimmy sighs, "I miss home, i didn't expect this to happen to me. I should have kept my mouth about the plan, maybe we could have saved more of those people we left behind."
"It wasn't you fault" Jibril assured him.
"You can't say that, Jib, we both got blood on our hands that won't come off" He states, "I'm use to it by now but after a while, you think long and hard about the shit that we do. You and I, we've buried a lot of associates back in Heifong for one thing or another. We always said that we were just defending ourselves and getting revenge against the gangs but what did it matter in the end when Heifong is long gone? It's crazy to think we're here now and we're actually inside the one place the empires can't reach."
"What if you're wrong" Jibril asked, "What if that aren't true?"
"Then we'll have to make it work, like we always have" Jimmy answered, "When i get out of here, I'm going to find a way to reverse this thing. Getting my life back together again, opening up a brothel of my own and that will be my happy ending to this shit show. There's nothing better than feeling someone in your arms, mine can't even feel anything except the cold and what numbing feeling i get from hitting a wall."
"You can't feel anything?"
"Nada, got so angry when Kane told me that I'm decomposing and wouldn't tell me how long i have before whatever magic is keeping me alive"
"Don't worry about it" Jibril tells him, "We'll find away to turn you back. Actually, I'm hoping this will work"
Jibril pulls out the potion and slide it into the mail slot and Jimmy grabs it and pulls it through.
"What is it?" He asked, examining it.
"Something our friends gave me, told me it's very powerful stuff"
"Smells weird, like peaches" Jimmy comments, she hears the corking.
"I'm told it works better for two lovers, maybe strong enough to bring someone back to life" Jibril answered.
"You think so? And you're ... giving it to me?"
"Sure, why not?"Jibril answered, "May not be exactly lovers but what's to say it may or may not work unless we try?"
"Jibril ... I"
"Just drink it and tell me if it works" she says, waiting to hear him drink it.
Silence. Jimmy reaches out his hand and presents it back to Jibril.
"I'm not doing it"
The potion slides back through the mail slot of his cell.
"I can't do that to Kor'da" Jimmy answered, "What if it was your sons that needed it? How can you live that down if one of them were to get hurt so badly that they could die and i lived? I can't live with that, I won't accept it. Those boys love you like they were your own. I can't be the reason that you lose one of them. So you hang on to that vial and use it in good health, I'll find a way on my own to fix this."
The memory ends and Jibril snaps back to the present and sees Jimmy's glowing eyes staring back at her with an inch of glass separating the two of them. His deranged torn skin isn't the man she knew. Tears run down the side of her face. Her final words:
Jibril springs open her eyes. Half her face was buried in a very familiar black sand going through what appears to be a sandstorm blowing through the realm of crimson red skies with a back drop of black sand dunes and valleys. Jibril coughs as if she were in her physical form, the gale type winds shred her scale violently as she digs herself out of the sand as the dunes shifted and moved. She is familiar that this was the Sea of Time, home to the Bahameth, the Tempest.
Jibril stands up wobbling back and forth with the sand beneath her feet shifting and the swift winds carrying her off the side of the dune she found herself in. She falls. She rolls. She collapses face first into the swirling vortex of dunes surrounding her and from the edge of the peak of the dunes was an enormous figure craning their body over the dunes revealing themselves to be the God, Bahameth, the Divine Serpent of Time and Destiny. Jibril knew this was going to be an eventuality for her upon her previous death. If Kane was on to something about her resurrection or time loop, then nothing she did before mattered - none of it did.
Bahameth narrows its eight eyes lining the sides of its head and the slits focus harshly upon her. Jibril sits on her knees and lowers her head - not out of respect, but fear.
"Kheee loh Aujhak Khazen'feh mall'yek?" Bahameth spoken plainly.
"I don't understand."Jibril says, the words not making any sense to her.
"R'oh! Fus! Ghaha! Zett!" Bahameth bellowed in the gurgling vibrations of its voices.
"Zett? Death? Why am I here!" Jibril screams at Bahameth.
Then from the echoing of the realm around her, a voice roared over Bahameth to spur the gigantic serpent to turn its head towards the crimson skies.
As the skies parted in the middle, a slit opens up and the iris of a violent black hole with thousands of exploding stars and the light they had created a shimmering ring in the blackest abyss. Deep within the abyss lies billions of worlds all of them swirling the vortex and forming then decaying, forming and decaying over and over again as a cycle of death and to rebirth. The eyelid of this cosmic vortex before Jibril and Bahameth moves away from them revealing that the entire skies of red were actual the color of the cosmic being moving the realm from its face. Once the eye was furthest enough away, it revealed the face that genuinely shocked Jibril to her core.
A four-eyed monster with horns grown into the shape of an elegant crown and jagged spikes layered in tentacles draped over their shoulders, the skeletal face was deep and iridescent red that become black when away from the light mixing with the backdrop of pure darkness. When this monstrous being stares down at Jibril and Bahameth, they smile widely so unnaturally so that the teeth were mirror shined moons made into the shape of teeth and fangs.
Jibril is fighting back the existential dread that violently falls upon her. Her body is weak and she vomits violently as her head is screaming many many voices with shrieking of pain and agony. Her instincts was to fight or flight, but all she can do is scream at the sight of this cosmic horror before her that causing her to slip into complete madness just at the mere sight of it.
She sees, she hears women and children eaten alive, unfathomably built cities at the peak of their creation, reduced to cinders. Abominations of contorting flesh made into the shape of corrupt machinations that butcher whole armies of men that resisted. War machines from land, sea and air all brought to heel under the sheer terror of the existential pain and screaming of the damned. Jibril watches as swaths of entire species commit mass suicides, form death cults and purging their worlds of all life to deny the death that awaits the all consuming mass of red death approaching their world and the horrors of hell it brings with it. She is witnessing every conceivable horror any and all life is capable of bringing to reality compressed in a manner of a few brief moments that explode into a Big Bang cosmic event within that brief time span.
Jibril suffers unnerving tremors and is petrified to move her body. Jibril's brief moment of insanity is broken when that cosmic entity vanishes and she flinches when that being is replaced by Kane crouching next to her as if he were there the entire time. Kane's eyes share that same swirling vortex of supernovas she recognizes. It confirms what Kane had told her before - that was his Godly form of the World Eater.
He speaks in a coarse and gritty tone of voice.
"Heeeeey there. How ya feeling?" He smiles leaning into the palm of his hand.
Jibril is rendered mute at the sudden moment she's back from her hellish nightmare.
"Here to see God before you go?" Kane laughs manically.
Kane vanishes one moment then reappears on the dune that is now Bahameth's body when it starts to move.
"So! You must be Bahameth! The Divine Beast! Time and Destiny all wrapped up in one!" Kane mocks, he pets Bahameth's body and picks up the sand.
Bahameth speaks but it seems it was speaking directly to Kane.
"Well, that would be an excellent question!" Kane answers, he begins to translate, with apparently fluency in all languages.
"How did I get here" He states, "Well, when a mommy snake and a daddy snake love each other very much, they make eggs, then I come along and mind my own fucking business. But you wouldn't know about that would you, my noodle friend?"
Bahameth speaks a few words. Kane interrupts them.
"Nonono" Kane smiles before shushing them, "I'm a little offended you think I had any affect on what you believe is 'yours'."
Kane looks in Jibril's direction then teleports seamlessly without the use of portal to 'blink' in and out of existence. Kane stares at Jibril and helps her off her back and sits her upright. He talks to Bahameth while check Jibril over, tilting his head from side to side before slapping Jibril to snap her awake - still in a state of shock.
"So concerned about 'responsivities' of others, are we? You have a mortal in your presence and you care nothing of her wellbeing. Well that's just being a terrible host." Kane continues to mocks.
Bahameth speaks followed by Kane rolling his eyes. Kane puppets with his hand moving his fingers with how long it takes for Bahameth to speak in long drawn out sentences.
"You understand him?" Jibril asks.
"Yeah ... great work, kiddo!" Kane ignores Bahameth and pats Jibril on the back.
Kane sits beside Jibril and gestures a hand towards Bahameth with his scarlet reptilian hand, a gesture of his claw turned into a middle finger.
"Bahameth is the Divine Beast; the Tempest is the reality he's grounded to. Making Bahameth, the Tempest one and the same. Practically the same as my domain of darkness within the void is tethered to my soul. You understand him because your life is in the grains of sand."
Kane hands Jibril a fistful of black sand. He pinches a little of it then spreads the little specks on the tip of his index finger. The specks turn yellow and glow, Jibril stares and sees a brief moment of someone becoming a father while another speck shows someone going to school for the first time in a place that doesn't exist yet. Kane wipes his hands of the sand.
"Bahameth collects the sands of time as the god of past, present and future. Keeps everything of what was and shall be in this bleak reality. All of this waste of potential. No aesthetics, no practical use for all this sand, gods forbid if a giant snake doesn't just scream egotistical."
Kane stands on his bare feet and walks through the warm sand looking up at Bahameth.
"What do you think, cutie?" Kane asked Bahameth.
"D ... Did you just call Bahameth, cutie?!" Jibril is startled by the wording he used.
A voice from behind Jibril: "Looks can be deceiving"
Out of Jibril's shadow, a squall of sand bursts and solidifies into a form and shape of a humanoid figure that takes on a Nagini likeness that is clothed in a flowing white and gold robes with a modest sash secured at the waist. Their black scales shifted as if they were a negative space in the night skyin contrast with Kane's crimson bony scales.
Bahameth: "What is she to you?"
Bahameth spoke in a fluent and comprehensive speech Jibril understood in her native Kha.
Kane: "Much better"
Bahameth aims a Kopesh sword at Kane's face threating him with it.
Bahameth: "Answer"
Kane slides the blade through him and it doesn't affect him as it would appear, it was purely decorative to demonstrate a point. Kane, however, doesn't care. In fact, Kane is rather gentle in stroking the head of Bahameth's Nagini form as if he were a child.
Kane: "Such an adorable noodle!"
Kane wrapped his arms around Bahameth which takes both of them by surprise.Bahameth opens his mouth and bites into Kane's shoulder.
Kane: "Well that wasn't very nice"
Bahameth: "UNHAND ME!!"
Kane: "Only if I get to boop that snoot"
Kane grips his arms tighter and it looks like it's affecting Bahameth in some unusual way.
Bahameth: "I will destroy you!"
Kane chuckled at that threat, treating Bahameth like a child.
Kane: "If I didn't think you were adorable and wanted to kill you ...
Kane's face shapeshifts back to the monstrous godly form that creates a another vortex of pure rage and hatred projecting upon Bahameth's face.
Kane spoke in a deep, raspy tone: "I will bend you to MY will" in the harshest of whispers.
Then Kane in the next moment 'blinks' to his previous state of smothering Bahameth.
As happy and cheerful as he can be: "So how about we get down to business, shall we?"
Bahameth plants his Kopesh sword into the sand and creates a bedrock center where sand does not touch their feet and Jibril sits on the cold granite beneath all that sand which now makes a very deep sand pit with all three of them at the epicenter.
Bahameth: "You interfered with my Chosen"
Kane: "And you interfered with my plans."
Bahameth: "You killed Maurda, the Unclean"
Kane: "We did"
Jibril: "I didn't-"
Kane: "Don't be shy about it, Jibril. You're a God Killer, now! All I had to do was put the gun in your hands. You pulled the trigger"
Jibril looked down at her hands.
Jibril: "What have I done?"
Kane: "Killing an Infernal God was justified."
Bahameth: "Who are YOU to decide what is justified. You, an outsider, together with my Chosen. Corrupted its purpose for your selfish desire."
Kane: "Her name is Jibril, little noodle."
Bahameth: "Stop calling me that!"
Kane: "Then give me what I want"
Bahameth: "I do not have what an Outsider could want, nor is it something I can give even if i had!"
Kane: "I want three things, only three. Free me from this prison I find myself stranded inside of so that I may return to where I came from. Second, tell me of other methods of killing gods. Lastly, give me the power of true resurrection. Fulfill my three desires, I shall be done with this reality and my intrusion will bother no other otherworldly entity."
Bahameth: "Did you hear me?"
Kane: "You're just the messenger in this transaction, Bahameth. Be sure you tell your creator god that I will do as they decreed as part of our bargain but I intend to leave this place with my pockets fit to burst with riches and power."
Bahameth: "You dare make demands of our Maker!"
In a quick sudden quip, Kane retorts:
"If I don't get what I want and at the very least a reply acknowledging my demands, I'll continue to hunt every God, Goddess, Infernal and Celestial, even tear open the fabric of reality to unleash the Heralds of the Dark Gospel. Maruda was the first to die. With you, Bahameth, I shall make another example of. However! I'm in a very cheerful mood. I see no reason to keep spilling blood of the divines over a simple deal. You don't want me here, I don't wanna be here. But since I'm here against my will, I might as well plunder this world and all worlds of any value they have and take it with me?"
Bahameth: "Not if I have a say in that"
Kane coughs into his clenched hand then palms a small black sphere that catches Jibril's eye, She steps beside Kane away from Bahameth.
"Look I don't understand what's any of this got to do with me. Why am I still alive?" Jibril says confused by the back and forth ranting.
"He used you to get to me" Bahameth simplified things for Jibril.
"Oh" Jibril bobs her head in acknowledgment, "What the fuck, Kane."
"Yeah, I did. Didn't I?" Kane says in a half-hearted manner.
"You're an asshole" Jibril comments, "I should have destroyed that relic when I had the chance!"
"You were Chosen, he took advantage of my blessing upon you. By sealing a deal with this outsider, your soul and physical form now belongs to him. Your blessing is tied to my realm, tied to me. Upon your death, you return here."
"The Blood Oath" Jibril, realizing her mistake. "That's why you had everyone sign contracts. Contract magic is Pacted Bound."
"Somebody give this girl a Nobel Prize for figuring it out! Someone, somewhere is God-Touched in some way. If I sink enough ships, kill and manipulate them enough something was bound to happen. I struck gold with you, kid! Kill one god, got me an audiance with the second, I'm eager to start a killing spree."
Jibril stops Kane from speaking.
Jibril: "Wait. Can we not antagonize my God for a moment?"
Kane, raising an eyebrow at her request. He simply nods given his recklessness and gestures toward Bahameth as he steps aside. Jibril looks away from Kane and sees Bahameth staring back at her with a dispproving look in their eyes but relatively quiet, reserved. His expression relaxes when Jibril is very hesitant in their presence on the verge of a mental breakdown.
At this moment Jibril is standing before her creator god, Bahameth, the Tempest. So many times she's been killed and resurrected and each time he had saved her for a purpose beyond her recognition. As she tries to formulate coherent sentence to express her feelings, she is overwhelmed with many emotions she can only best describe as shock and awe of their presence.
Jibril: "I have so many questions ... Khaz Bahameth nos' halja ... I don't know where to start"
Bahameth, gestures with a hand to his chest: "Malik Shal' noch, my Chosen. At least one of you has some manners to address one in their own realm"
Shooting a glare at Kane.
Jibril has her God's undivided attention. What does she wish to say or do in this opprotune moment?
Jibril looks to Jimmy, the monster he has become. All because of them. It wasn't enough that Jibril got her friend killed in her reckless escape, they destroyed him and put him back together. Built all wrong, he looks so broken as he is.
Jibril looks down and inputs the commands Kane had instructed her to do.
The sequence goes through and the room slowly awakens as Kane begins to smoke a red plume of hot ash and blackened soot. Maruda's containment cell is filled with blindly light reverberating an octave of glass warping and the shrieking of the metal and glass pierced the air like nails on a thousand chalkboards. The scales of the demonic serpents are wound so tightly that the metallic exoskeletons bend and break the cell all the while they shed their scales of black. Like hot coals, the scales of the serpents flake off, drop and pierce the ground with sharp tingling where they land, smoke radiates off the scales and burn with a scorching heat glowing brighter until they turn a flaming blue color.
Maruda hammers at her cell, her body contorts and shapeshifts into all manner of monstrosity just to fill the emptiness of her cell and break her containment. Jibril watched as Maruda was showing genuine fear of death as her waling and shrieks were drowned out by the ear shattering ringing of the cell warping between her thrashing about in a panic and Kane screaming as his human flesh melts into a puddle and reveals his reptilian exoskeleton as a pure scarlet red beneath it. He doesn't scream as Maruda does despite the absolute pain he must be feeling with holy magic scorching him down to the very soul of his being.
Jibril stepped from the control station as the podiums retract into the circle and the seal itself begins to spin counter clockwise like one giant mechanism causing the room to shift and move like clockwork. The walls of the entire cell block pulsed when a sequence of spells were made with gear tiles matching the lines of the random variations of tiles. A self-solving rubix cube of runic incantations casting spells when a trigger mechanism sets off the chain reaction. The written spells of the glass of each chamber glow white briefly then yellow, then blue, then green then the chalk vanishes with the containment cells being completely empty and cleaned of any residue. The next cell does the same in a clockwise fashion around the room surrounding Maruda's chamber and Jimmy's cell in almost next in the cycle.
Jibril laments that this may be her last moments.
She walks over to Jimmy's cell and sees him thrashing about, she plants a hand on his glass prison and thinks about the last time she saw him. Back then within the hospital clean room where she sat with Jimmy. A memory of him plays in her final moments.
[Flashback]
"Is he going to release you?"
"I hope so. Can't stand it being here like this for too much longer" Jimmy sighs, "I miss home, i didn't expect this to happen to me. I should have kept my mouth about the plan, maybe we could have saved more of those people we left behind."
"It wasn't you fault" Jibril assured him.
"You can't say that, Jib, we both got blood on our hands that won't come off" He states, "I'm use to it by now but after a while, you think long and hard about the shit that we do. You and I, we've buried a lot of associates back in Heifong for one thing or another. We always said that we were just defending ourselves and getting revenge against the gangs but what did it matter in the end when Heifong is long gone? It's crazy to think we're here now and we're actually inside the one place the empires can't reach."
"What if you're wrong" Jibril asked, "What if that aren't true?"
"Then we'll have to make it work, like we always have" Jimmy answered, "When i get out of here, I'm going to find a way to reverse this thing. Getting my life back together again, opening up a brothel of my own and that will be my happy ending to this shit show. There's nothing better than feeling someone in your arms, mine can't even feel anything except the cold and what numbing feeling i get from hitting a wall."
"You can't feel anything?"
"Nada, got so angry when Kane told me that I'm decomposing and wouldn't tell me how long i have before whatever magic is keeping me alive"
"Don't worry about it" Jibril tells him, "We'll find away to turn you back. Actually, I'm hoping this will work"
Jibril pulls out the potion and slide it into the mail slot and Jimmy grabs it and pulls it through.
"What is it?" He asked, examining it.
"Something our friends gave me, told me it's very powerful stuff"
"Smells weird, like peaches" Jimmy comments, she hears the corking.
"I'm told it works better for two lovers, maybe strong enough to bring someone back to life" Jibril answered.
"You think so? And you're ... giving it to me?"
"Sure, why not?"Jibril answered, "May not be exactly lovers but what's to say it may or may not work unless we try?"
"Jibril ... I"
"Just drink it and tell me if it works" she says, waiting to hear him drink it.
Silence. Jimmy reaches out his hand and presents it back to Jibril.
"I'm not doing it"
The potion slides back through the mail slot of his cell.
"I can't do that to Kor'da" Jimmy answered, "What if it was your sons that needed it? How can you live that down if one of them were to get hurt so badly that they could die and i lived? I can't live with that, I won't accept it. Those boys love you like they were your own. I can't be the reason that you lose one of them. So you hang on to that vial and use it in good health, I'll find a way on my own to fix this."
The memory ends and Jibril snaps back to the present and sees Jimmy's glowing eyes staring back at her with an inch of glass separating the two of them. His deranged torn skin isn't the man she knew. Tears run down the side of her face. Her final words:
"Goodbye Jimmy. We had one hell of a ride, didn't we?"
There was only Light.
Then there was Darkness
There was only Light.
Then there was Darkness
Jibril springs open her eyes. Half her face was buried in a very familiar black sand going through what appears to be a sandstorm blowing through the realm of crimson red skies with a back drop of black sand dunes and valleys. Jibril coughs as if she were in her physical form, the gale type winds shred her scale violently as she digs herself out of the sand as the dunes shifted and moved. She is familiar that this was the Sea of Time, home to the Bahameth, the Tempest.
Jibril stands up wobbling back and forth with the sand beneath her feet shifting and the swift winds carrying her off the side of the dune she found herself in. She falls. She rolls. She collapses face first into the swirling vortex of dunes surrounding her and from the edge of the peak of the dunes was an enormous figure craning their body over the dunes revealing themselves to be the God, Bahameth, the Divine Serpent of Time and Destiny. Jibril knew this was going to be an eventuality for her upon her previous death. If Kane was on to something about her resurrection or time loop, then nothing she did before mattered - none of it did.
Bahameth narrows its eight eyes lining the sides of its head and the slits focus harshly upon her. Jibril sits on her knees and lowers her head - not out of respect, but fear.
"Kheee loh Aujhak Khazen'feh mall'yek?" Bahameth spoken plainly.
"I don't understand."Jibril says, the words not making any sense to her.
"R'oh! Fus! Ghaha! Zett!" Bahameth bellowed in the gurgling vibrations of its voices.
"Zett? Death? Why am I here!" Jibril screams at Bahameth.
Then from the echoing of the realm around her, a voice roared over Bahameth to spur the gigantic serpent to turn its head towards the crimson skies.
Only
They weren't skies.
They weren't skies.
As the skies parted in the middle, a slit opens up and the iris of a violent black hole with thousands of exploding stars and the light they had created a shimmering ring in the blackest abyss. Deep within the abyss lies billions of worlds all of them swirling the vortex and forming then decaying, forming and decaying over and over again as a cycle of death and to rebirth. The eyelid of this cosmic vortex before Jibril and Bahameth moves away from them revealing that the entire skies of red were actual the color of the cosmic being moving the realm from its face. Once the eye was furthest enough away, it revealed the face that genuinely shocked Jibril to her core.
A four-eyed monster with horns grown into the shape of an elegant crown and jagged spikes layered in tentacles draped over their shoulders, the skeletal face was deep and iridescent red that become black when away from the light mixing with the backdrop of pure darkness. When this monstrous being stares down at Jibril and Bahameth, they smile widely so unnaturally so that the teeth were mirror shined moons made into the shape of teeth and fangs.
Jibril is fighting back the existential dread that violently falls upon her. Her body is weak and she vomits violently as her head is screaming many many voices with shrieking of pain and agony. Her instincts was to fight or flight, but all she can do is scream at the sight of this cosmic horror before her that causing her to slip into complete madness just at the mere sight of it.
That smile, that accursed smile!
So many worlds, exploded.
No!
Devoured!!
She sees, she hears women and children eaten alive, unfathomably built cities at the peak of their creation, reduced to cinders. Abominations of contorting flesh made into the shape of corrupt machinations that butcher whole armies of men that resisted. War machines from land, sea and air all brought to heel under the sheer terror of the existential pain and screaming of the damned. Jibril watches as swaths of entire species commit mass suicides, form death cults and purging their worlds of all life to deny the death that awaits the all consuming mass of red death approaching their world and the horrors of hell it brings with it. She is witnessing every conceivable horror any and all life is capable of bringing to reality compressed in a manner of a few brief moments that explode into a Big Bang cosmic event within that brief time span.
Jibril suffers unnerving tremors and is petrified to move her body. Jibril's brief moment of insanity is broken when that cosmic entity vanishes and she flinches when that being is replaced by Kane crouching next to her as if he were there the entire time. Kane's eyes share that same swirling vortex of supernovas she recognizes. It confirms what Kane had told her before - that was his Godly form of the World Eater.
He speaks in a coarse and gritty tone of voice.
"Heeeeey there. How ya feeling?" He smiles leaning into the palm of his hand.
Jibril is rendered mute at the sudden moment she's back from her hellish nightmare.
"Here to see God before you go?" Kane laughs manically.
Kane vanishes one moment then reappears on the dune that is now Bahameth's body when it starts to move.
"So! You must be Bahameth! The Divine Beast! Time and Destiny all wrapped up in one!" Kane mocks, he pets Bahameth's body and picks up the sand.
Bahameth speaks but it seems it was speaking directly to Kane.
"Well, that would be an excellent question!" Kane answers, he begins to translate, with apparently fluency in all languages.
"How did I get here" He states, "Well, when a mommy snake and a daddy snake love each other very much, they make eggs, then I come along and mind my own fucking business. But you wouldn't know about that would you, my noodle friend?"
Bahameth speaks a few words. Kane interrupts them.
"Nonono" Kane smiles before shushing them, "I'm a little offended you think I had any affect on what you believe is 'yours'."
Kane looks in Jibril's direction then teleports seamlessly without the use of portal to 'blink' in and out of existence. Kane stares at Jibril and helps her off her back and sits her upright. He talks to Bahameth while check Jibril over, tilting his head from side to side before slapping Jibril to snap her awake - still in a state of shock.
"So concerned about 'responsivities' of others, are we? You have a mortal in your presence and you care nothing of her wellbeing. Well that's just being a terrible host." Kane continues to mocks.
Bahameth speaks followed by Kane rolling his eyes. Kane puppets with his hand moving his fingers with how long it takes for Bahameth to speak in long drawn out sentences.
"You understand him?" Jibril asks.
"Yeah ... great work, kiddo!" Kane ignores Bahameth and pats Jibril on the back.
Kane sits beside Jibril and gestures a hand towards Bahameth with his scarlet reptilian hand, a gesture of his claw turned into a middle finger.
"Bahameth is the Divine Beast; the Tempest is the reality he's grounded to. Making Bahameth, the Tempest one and the same. Practically the same as my domain of darkness within the void is tethered to my soul. You understand him because your life is in the grains of sand."
Kane hands Jibril a fistful of black sand. He pinches a little of it then spreads the little specks on the tip of his index finger. The specks turn yellow and glow, Jibril stares and sees a brief moment of someone becoming a father while another speck shows someone going to school for the first time in a place that doesn't exist yet. Kane wipes his hands of the sand.
"Bahameth collects the sands of time as the god of past, present and future. Keeps everything of what was and shall be in this bleak reality. All of this waste of potential. No aesthetics, no practical use for all this sand, gods forbid if a giant snake doesn't just scream egotistical."
Kane stands on his bare feet and walks through the warm sand looking up at Bahameth.
"What do you think, cutie?" Kane asked Bahameth.
"D ... Did you just call Bahameth, cutie?!" Jibril is startled by the wording he used.
A voice from behind Jibril: "Looks can be deceiving"
Out of Jibril's shadow, a squall of sand bursts and solidifies into a form and shape of a humanoid figure that takes on a Nagini likeness that is clothed in a flowing white and gold robes with a modest sash secured at the waist. Their black scales shifted as if they were a negative space in the night skyin contrast with Kane's crimson bony scales.
Bahameth: "What is she to you?"
Bahameth spoke in a fluent and comprehensive speech Jibril understood in her native Kha.
Kane: "Much better"
Bahameth aims a Kopesh sword at Kane's face threating him with it.
Bahameth: "Answer"
Kane slides the blade through him and it doesn't affect him as it would appear, it was purely decorative to demonstrate a point. Kane, however, doesn't care. In fact, Kane is rather gentle in stroking the head of Bahameth's Nagini form as if he were a child.
Kane: "Such an adorable noodle!"
Kane wrapped his arms around Bahameth which takes both of them by surprise.Bahameth opens his mouth and bites into Kane's shoulder.
Kane: "Well that wasn't very nice"
Bahameth: "UNHAND ME!!"
Kane: "Only if I get to boop that snoot"
Kane grips his arms tighter and it looks like it's affecting Bahameth in some unusual way.
Bahameth: "I will destroy you!"
Kane chuckled at that threat, treating Bahameth like a child.
Kane: "If I didn't think you were adorable and wanted to kill you ...
Kane's face shapeshifts back to the monstrous godly form that creates a another vortex of pure rage and hatred projecting upon Bahameth's face.
Kane spoke in a deep, raspy tone: "I will bend you to MY will" in the harshest of whispers.
Then Kane in the next moment 'blinks' to his previous state of smothering Bahameth.
As happy and cheerful as he can be: "So how about we get down to business, shall we?"
Bahameth plants his Kopesh sword into the sand and creates a bedrock center where sand does not touch their feet and Jibril sits on the cold granite beneath all that sand which now makes a very deep sand pit with all three of them at the epicenter.
Bahameth: "You interfered with my Chosen"
Kane: "And you interfered with my plans."
Bahameth: "You killed Maurda, the Unclean"
Kane: "We did"
Jibril: "I didn't-"
Kane: "Don't be shy about it, Jibril. You're a God Killer, now! All I had to do was put the gun in your hands. You pulled the trigger"
Jibril looked down at her hands.
Jibril: "What have I done?"
Kane: "Killing an Infernal God was justified."
Bahameth: "Who are YOU to decide what is justified. You, an outsider, together with my Chosen. Corrupted its purpose for your selfish desire."
Kane: "Her name is Jibril, little noodle."
Bahameth: "Stop calling me that!"
Kane: "Then give me what I want"
Bahameth: "I do not have what an Outsider could want, nor is it something I can give even if i had!"
Kane: "I want three things, only three. Free me from this prison I find myself stranded inside of so that I may return to where I came from. Second, tell me of other methods of killing gods. Lastly, give me the power of true resurrection. Fulfill my three desires, I shall be done with this reality and my intrusion will bother no other otherworldly entity."
Bahameth: "Did you hear me?"
Kane: "You're just the messenger in this transaction, Bahameth. Be sure you tell your creator god that I will do as they decreed as part of our bargain but I intend to leave this place with my pockets fit to burst with riches and power."
Bahameth: "You dare make demands of our Maker!"
In a quick sudden quip, Kane retorts:
"If I don't get what I want and at the very least a reply acknowledging my demands, I'll continue to hunt every God, Goddess, Infernal and Celestial, even tear open the fabric of reality to unleash the Heralds of the Dark Gospel. Maruda was the first to die. With you, Bahameth, I shall make another example of. However! I'm in a very cheerful mood. I see no reason to keep spilling blood of the divines over a simple deal. You don't want me here, I don't wanna be here. But since I'm here against my will, I might as well plunder this world and all worlds of any value they have and take it with me?"
Bahameth: "Not if I have a say in that"
Kane coughs into his clenched hand then palms a small black sphere that catches Jibril's eye, She steps beside Kane away from Bahameth.
"Look I don't understand what's any of this got to do with me. Why am I still alive?" Jibril says confused by the back and forth ranting.
"He used you to get to me" Bahameth simplified things for Jibril.
"Oh" Jibril bobs her head in acknowledgment, "What the fuck, Kane."
"Yeah, I did. Didn't I?" Kane says in a half-hearted manner.
"You're an asshole" Jibril comments, "I should have destroyed that relic when I had the chance!"
"You were Chosen, he took advantage of my blessing upon you. By sealing a deal with this outsider, your soul and physical form now belongs to him. Your blessing is tied to my realm, tied to me. Upon your death, you return here."
"The Blood Oath" Jibril, realizing her mistake. "That's why you had everyone sign contracts. Contract magic is Pacted Bound."
"Somebody give this girl a Nobel Prize for figuring it out! Someone, somewhere is God-Touched in some way. If I sink enough ships, kill and manipulate them enough something was bound to happen. I struck gold with you, kid! Kill one god, got me an audiance with the second, I'm eager to start a killing spree."
Jibril stops Kane from speaking.
Jibril: "Wait. Can we not antagonize my God for a moment?"
Kane, raising an eyebrow at her request. He simply nods given his recklessness and gestures toward Bahameth as he steps aside. Jibril looks away from Kane and sees Bahameth staring back at her with a dispproving look in their eyes but relatively quiet, reserved. His expression relaxes when Jibril is very hesitant in their presence on the verge of a mental breakdown.
At this moment Jibril is standing before her creator god, Bahameth, the Tempest. So many times she's been killed and resurrected and each time he had saved her for a purpose beyond her recognition. As she tries to formulate coherent sentence to express her feelings, she is overwhelmed with many emotions she can only best describe as shock and awe of their presence.
Jibril: "I have so many questions ... Khaz Bahameth nos' halja ... I don't know where to start"
Bahameth, gestures with a hand to his chest: "Malik Shal' noch, my Chosen. At least one of you has some manners to address one in their own realm"
Shooting a glare at Kane.
Jibril has her God's undivided attention. What does she wish to say or do in this opprotune moment?
