Ruvick, three weeks later…
The man opened his eyes with a gasp for air as if he had been submerged underwater, desperate for a breath of fresh air, despite the fact that he did not need to breath at all.
He looked around with a puzzled expression as he could not remember where he was, how he ended up there, or what had happened prior to the start of Marcus’s battle with Moyako.
As he dragged his hands across the grass to pull himself back to his feet, he looked around and said aloud, “Where am I…?”
As he tried to sense his surroundings, he knew right away that he was no longer on Erebus, nor was he in its universe either.
From what he could deduce, he had appeared in some kind of alternate space or dimension that he was not familiar with.
The sky above was not like a black abyss of nothingness that he expected from Erebus, nor was it set with endless stars that might have suggested that Nyx or Nøkkra had brought him here. Rather, it was filled with murky clouds that seemed on the verge of rainfall. The land was like a marshy swamp land with fog rolling over the water of many rivers surrounding him.
Concerned about whether this was the intervention of a primordial, he tried to feel around for The All Black, but could not manage to sense it anymore.
He reached out his hand to forcefully call it back to him, yet there was no response.
This isn’t good…, he thought to himself as he tightened his hands into fists as his power began to shake the infinite plane.
He wasn’t going to waste his time trying to find a way out, and rather just force one to appear, even if it meant tearing this space apart entirely to do so.
Before he could get the chance, a woman’s voice called out to him with a strangled tone as she said, “Enough…”
Ruvick turned around to face her and was shocked to see that Styx, the Primordial Goddess of Oaths herself, had appeared before him.
In a low tone, and through gritted teeth, he asked, “Why did you bring me here?”
“The oath you made to Marcus when you spoke of the Forrosan legend of the three gods, and you lied to him. You had sworn upon my name that he was not involved, even though you felt a certain level of certainty that he was. You were brought here to be served your punishment for falsifying an oath in my name,” she said, yet the strength of Ruvick’s power made her voice strain.
“Is that so?” he asked as he lunged towards her and wrapped his hand around her throat and continued, “How do you intend to punish me exactly? With what power do you intend to threaten me with?”
Though she was being strangled, she smiled up at him as she replied, “Power? What power could hope to stand against you and win? No, there is no curse or physical punishment I could hope to inflict upon you that would amount to anything.”
Unnerved by her words, he asked, “Then what? What do you intend to inflict upon me as means of punishment? Some fate worse than death? I’m afraid someone already beat you too it.”
She shook her head, with some difficulty due to being in his vice grip, as she said, “No no...I’m going to give you...exactly what you want. What you have been looking for.”
Hearing this, he let go of her as he said, “Elaborate.”
Her smile widened as she locked eyes with him and said, “You wanted answers, knowledge, to know what awaits you in the future. To know the truth of why events are playing out the way that they are, correct? Well then, I will show you.”
He then felt her fingers press up against his forehead before he could process that it had happened and a vision played out in his mind.
The vision began with an argument between himself and Kayron regarding Marcus’s godhood. Kayron’s simple minded and one track hatred of gods and monsters was something that Ruvick thought he could ignore if it meant he could make use of the connections the man had built over the centuries. He had plotted towards infiltrating kingdoms all across Erebus as a means of controlling their governments and military to achieve his goal.
However, in this moment, it seemed that Kayron’s hatred for gods would lead to him going after Marcus and his family if he was left alive. This future version of Ruvick had decided he was too dangerous to be left alive and killed him. He punched through Kayron’s torso, took hold of his soul, and ripped it from his carcass.
A flash of light then flooded his mind and the scene changed.
A brief discussion between himself and Marcus seemed to take place until the space around them distorted as Lucifer appeared.
Lucifer is here? On Erebus? How? Why? How have I not seen any sign of him anywhere? What is happening?
Upon his sudden appearance, the landscape all around them changed as the Seraphim Azrael appeared behind Marcus with a familiar blade in her hands pressed up against Marcus’s eyes as she held him hostage.
Lucifer brandished Light Taker and Ruvick took up All Black as well to try and rescue him from her grasp.
Moyako also appeared as she snuck up behind Azrael and cut off the arm holding the sword before burning her wings to ashes.
As the charred Angel of Death scrambled to get away, Moyako held Marcus in her arms to make sure he was safe while Lucifer and Ruvick walked towards her to finish her off.
But before they could get the chance, Cassiel appeared behind Azrael and shoved his hand through her back and killed her.
Cassiel had managed to absorb the power of Sheqar Khad and ascend to what seemed like a primordial god.
Yet as Ruvick stood prepared to fight, Lucifer tried to talk to Cassiel as if they had struck some kind of deal together.
But Lucifer failed to get even a single word in as Cassiel vanished with a flash of light and disappeared from all of creation.
Though there were no words for Ruvick to discern the context of the situation, it seemed that Cassiel had betrayed Lucifer and left him to rot.
With Sheqar Khad’s power taken by Cassiel and leaving creation behind, it left behind a vacuum with nothing to fill the endlessly growing void.
Nothing about the broken state of creation was ever fixed, the nature of death was still a curse upon existence, and what was worse, time would reveal the collapse of everything.
Millions of years passed in that vision in the span of a few minutes as Ruvick watched all of creation collapse into a meaningless void of nothingness.
The vision ended as Styx pulled her fingers away from his forehead and Ruvick recoiled, holding his face in his hands as he took a step away from her.
“W-What...was that? What did you just show me?” Ruvick demanded.
“Your future if you decide to protect Marcus by killing Kayron. In that future, after the events you witnessed have finished playing out, your curse of undeath will vanish, and you will be able to live out the rest of your life until you die. No one will interfere beyond that. As for everyone else…,” she said as her voice trailed off.
The answer was obvious.
All the poor souls that died in ages past, all those who continued to be cannibalized by other, stronger souls, and left to waste away in state of insanity for eternity who have no salvation.
After all, Valhalla, the Underworld of Hades, and A’aru were nothing more than separate realms existing within the local universes for souls to inhabit so that they did not lose their sanity and fall to complete despair. These half-baked afterlives, these prototypes, they would never serve as a true salvation for the souls of the dead.
He did not know how to process any of this. None of this solved anything. It did not repair the damage that Sheqar Khad had caused for billions of years. It only ended the war between them for them to wait until reality collapsed around them.
Ruvick glared at Styx and shouted, “If this is your idea of a joke, then truly you have no sense of humor. This solves nothing! Simply ending the war with no retribution for the crimes inflicted on our lives? Living the rest of our existence in momentary peace while all the dead still suffer? I cannot accept this.”
“Of course you can’t, but you must be forewarned. The path to killing Sheqar Khad and achieving true salvation is not one without enormous struggle. Many billions more sacrifices would have to be made for that vision to happen. So much suffering and blood must be shed to realize this,” Styx said to him without an ounce of sympathy in her eyes.
“Are you suggesting a second path?”
At the mention of another possible future, a disturbing glint shone in Styx’s eyes as she grinned and said, “Yes...but you are not going to like it.”
“Show it to me,” he said and Styx pressed her fingers against his forehead once more.
A flash of light flooded Ruvick’s mind once again and it started with the same argument with Kayron, but rather than end with his death, Kayron disappeared in an explosion of blood mist.
The version of Ruvick within the vision tried to chase after him, but his presence became hidden even from him.
What followed after was the sight of Marcus walking down a hallways filled with dozens of Kayron’s cultist members as he carved his way through them all. He tore them apart and splattered their corpses against the walls without any mercy until he ran through a door and fell into a trap of hooked chains.
While captured in the mess of chains, Kayron walked towards him, hauling a naked Thalia along with him and tossing her to the ground in front of him.
Thalia had a broken, traumatized expression on her face as it seemed that she had been tortured and raped while Marcus fought his way back to try and save her.
Marcus only managed to lay his eyes on her for mere moments before Kayron lifted her off the ground by her hair and stabbed her in the back.
She met his eyes one last time as she tried to say something but a burst of energy ran through her body as Kayron destroyed her soul and took her power.
As Thalia’s lifeless, soulless body fell to the ground, and Marcus was forced to stare at it, Julian walked into the room.
Two black Seraphim wings adorned his back, but they collapsed and disappeared as he hauled Selene’s corpse into the room and tossed it next to Thalia.
Hundreds of stab wounds marked Selene’s corpse, one of her eyes were gouged out, and her belly was split open with her innards spilling out.
This is...impossible. There is no feasible way that either of these two should have the strength to over power them.
How could this...this fantasy possibly happen?
Before Kayron could finish Marcus off and take his power, Moyako appeared and reduced Julian to a pile of smoldering ashes.
She then tried to kill Kayron, but after having taken Thalia’s power, he shrugged off the heat and sent her into the depths of Hell.
Kayron approached Marcus once more to kill him and take his power, but Azrael’s hand erupted from his chest and took Thalia’s power from him before sending him flying against a wall.
The Angel of Death knelt down in front of Marcus and forced Thalia’s power, or rather, his own true power back into himself, and his hair was set aflame.
This is ludicrous…how could this possibly play out?
Its just not possible.
He refused to believe it, but still, he demanded to see the rest of the story. He wasn’t convinced that this was true at all.
The scene changed as Marcus, now with his true power returned to him, had started hunting down all of Kayron’s cultists. Slaughtering all of them without care for who they were, man, woman, child, every last one of them.
As the scene began with Marcus finishing off a group of cultists in a large abandoned building, Dean Smith, Cole Mohr, and Moyako appeared to try and get him to stop.
Both Dean and Cole were ready to try and kill him, while only Moyako spoke to him, desperately trying to get through to him.
For a brief moment, it seemed like Marcus was about to calm down. But then, a flash of golden light lit up within his eyes, showing that Azrael was possessing him ever since Selene and Thalia were killed.
In the next instant, Moyako’s head burst apart as Marcus backhanded her into a wall, and chaos ensued.
Cole and Dean tried to kill him, even using Moyako as the recipient for every death blow Marcus dealt them, but still they failed to bring him down.
The scene then changed once again as Ruvick appeared in the scorched ruins of Lindyll, where Lucifer had been waiting for him, and they engaged in battle.
The fight then suddenly concluded with Lucifer carrying Ruvick’s lifeless body away as he had managed to kill him
Only one thought occupied Ruvick’s mind as he watched that scene play out…This is nonsense.
There was no feasible way that Lucifer would be able to defeat him in a one on one battle, of which Ruvick was absolutely certain.
Though Lucifer could manipulate causality, Ruvick’s power was beyond it in every way imaginable that there should be no reason for him to die at his hands at all.
Unless of course...Lucifer was hiding a part of his power from him this whole time.
The scene then changed once more as it showed Marcus standing over Kayron’s body after he had managed to put him down for good.
He then turned around as Erebus appeared, dragging Moyako by her arms, and presenting her to him.
But before either of them could exchange words, Erebus turned his head to look at Ruvick.
What the...is he looking at me through the vision?
Erebus maintained eye contact with Ruvick, even through the vision, until Marcus shouted at Erebus, as if to demand what he wanted.
Erebus then returned his attention to him and began to speak with him.
Despite the fact that Ruvick could hear none of it, whatever was said was clearly important as Marcus’s eyes, which already seemed devoid of any hope he might have had, seemed to sink even lower as he stared at Moyako moments before Erebus ripped out her soul and destroyed it right in front of him.
Upon seeing this, Marcus’s sanity seemed to collapse entirely as he lost himself to his Wrath and released a Seraphic form right then and there.
In mere seconds, the planet of Erebus was destroyed as Marcus chased after the primordial of darkness in his attempt to kill him.
As the two of them fought, Marcus continued drawing on more and more power while Erebus only taunted him, fueling into his wrath until finally, Marcus did something unspeakable.
He released a different kind of form while in his Seraphic state which destroyed the concept of physics themselves.
Marcus’s body began to accelerate many trillions of times faster than light, and anything that even remotely came in contact with him was destroyed.
As if in response to this apocalyptic threat, even Lucifer, Cassiel, and Sheqar Khad appeared to try and stop Marcus, but the overwhelming might of Marcus’s power refused anything from being to get near him.
As the three of them drew his attention, Erebus disappeared and watched as Marcus continued to destroy every concept and fundamental constant that maintained existence.
Everything that made up existence itself was being broken down and erased, causing even Sheqar Khad’s concept of existence to weaken as nothingness began to replace reality.
Eventually, there was nothing left but Marcus’s wrath, but even that seemed to collapse as there was nothing left to fuel his anger.
Life no longer had meaning as it no longer existed in the vast nothing.
As Marcus wiped himself out of existence, only Erebus remained to revel in his victory.
Regardless of which scenario played out, Erebus would be the only winner.
Ruvick then smacked away Styx’s fingers as he said, “This...this can’t be all that’s left. You’re lying to me. What was the whole point of all of Erebus’s actions leading up to now? Why go to such lengths to separate Artemis from Selene as a child? What was the point of doing that?”
“That is for me to know, and for you to find out,” Styx said.
“Even if I were to entertain that what I saw was the truth, how could you possibly be okay with this? If Erebus wins, you die too. Everything dies. Everything!” he shouted at her, but she didn’t seem to care.
“This is the punishment that befalls an oath breaker,” she said to him with a snide tone.
“Isolation has driven you to insanity,” Ruvick said as he observed just how unstable Styx had become since he last saw her during the great flood, after Thanatos had given himself up to Lucifer as a weapon to use against Sheqar Khad.
“Perhaps...but its your fault for failing to kill that bastard when you had the chance, or perhaps, both chances I should say,” she cackled, though he did not know what she was talking about.
Not wanting to exhaust himself listening to her any longer, he swung his hand through the air and blew her head apart.
The sound of her laughing could be heard as her body turned to water and the world that contained Ruvick fell apart as he reappeared in the arena.
Not even a split second later, Gomori appeared next to him as she said, “Ruvick! You...you’re back! Where have you been?”
He said nothing to answer her as he was contemplating everything he saw in horrified silence.
He didn’t want to believe that any of it was true, or possible in the first place. He had thought for the longest time that Sheqar Khad was the only enemy that Ruvick needed to kill, but in reality, it seemed that even the false god was being played.
Regardless, he was not going to lie down and accept the future that had been presented to him.
If the primordials have been able to alter the events of history to their favor, then surely he would be able to do the same.
And even if he couldn’t change the future, he would force a new one to exist whether Erebus or Sheqar Khad liked it or not.
Marcus…
After settling in his new home with Selene, he had been working closely with King Razel Aldia on introducing new forms of technology into the world.
Today, he had informed him about the reality of space travel and how the world beyond Erebus was not simply a life stealing void, and rather that it was a vacuum.
The king was initially skeptical, but not wanting to doubt Marcus, asked him to give him demonstrative proof.
So Marcus took him to the moon and the man returned with a starstruck expression on his face at the idea that the entire universe was there, waiting for them to conquer it.
He told the king that he would work on ideas regarding space travel for future investment as he left the throne room and went for a walk through town.
As he passed by various shops and businesses, he mused about how the progression of his life had been inverted from his time on Terra.
For the first seven to eight years of his life, he remembered the peaceful life in the countryside and small towns of Nebraska.
Then, shortly before Thalia was born, he moved to the big city area of The Bronx and his life became a living hell, with his new sister being the only positive out of it.
Then, coming into Erebus, Thalia now lived in a more country adjacent town of Lycea while Marcus was enjoying life in a big city within Alken.
It was a rather ironic turn of fate to be certain.
While Marcus was walking past a cafe, the sight of Ruvick’s head peaking through the window caught his eye.
He immediately turned around and headed inside to see the very same man sitting at a table inside, reading a book, and drinking a cup of coffee like he usually did.
“What the…,” Marcus muttered to himself as he sat down at Ruvick’s table without the man even bothering to notice he was there.
“Hey!” Marcus said as he shook the table and Ruvick closed his book to look at him.
“Hello there.”
Marcus shrugged his shoulders in disbelief as he asked, “Where the hell have you been? Its been weeks since I last heard from you, no, since anyone has. What happened to you?”
Ruvick looked at him with an annoyed expression on his face as he didn’t have the urgency to answer him right away.
“Didn’t you say that if I won the contest, you would answer all of my questions and tell me everything I would need to know?”
Ruvick looked down at the table as if there was something on his mind that was bothering him, yet he sighed and said, “Yes…I did say that.”
“So…?”
He nodded silently as he thought to himself for a moment and said, “Why don’t we talk about your father, for starters.”
Marcus gave him a confused look as he said, “There’s nothing interesting about my father. I already told you, his name was Lucien-”
“Your father is Lucifer.”
The words left Marcus entirely as he could do nothing but stare in disbelief.
“I understand that you think you are just some demigod with a father who left before you were born. That’s what you think right?”
Marcus stayed silent.
“Well, you’re wrong. For one thing, you’re not a human to begin with. You’re a god. Your mother Hestia, and your father Lucifer were very close for hundreds of thousands of years even before you were born, but never sought to have children. Of course...until the Exodus event stranded them on Terra,” he continued.
Marcus could not find the words to express his thoughts and could only look down at his hands and clench them into fists.
“I understand that this is...a little much to take in, but-”
“Oh shit…I don’t want to be the anti-Christ,” Marcus muttered to himself with a demoralized expression on his face.
Ruvick narrowed his eyes as he tilted his head in confusion and asked, “What are you talking about?”
Marcus looked back up at him and seemed to recollect his thoughts as he shook his head and said, “Uh...nothing. Never mind. Forget I mentioned it.”
“Right...well, regarding Lucifer, he’s here, somewhere on Erebus,” Ruvick revealed.
“What? Are you serious? Are you sure?” Marcus asked as he leaned forward.
“W-Well...actually, I’m not entirely certain as the evidence that suggests it is questionable, but I believe he is here on Erebus,” Ruvick said.
Marcus went quiet for a while until a thought came to mind as he asked, “Regarding the prophecy of the three gods, I want to ask. We already know that I am the God of Wrath and Moyako is the Goddess of Rebirth somehow-”
Ruvick’s head perked up when he heard that as he said, “You’re certain?”
“You mean...you’re not?”
“I’m...not sure but, continue,” Ruvick said.
“Right. Like I was saying, if we are to assume that we know who the God of Wrath and the Goddess of Rebirth is, then who is the God of Humanity? The third and final one?” Marcus asked.
Ruvick smiled and laughed quietly to himself as he said, “I’m surprised that you hadn’t already figured that out yourself.”
He then leaned forward and locked eyes with Marcus as he said, “I am the God of Humanity.”