Amidst this detestable carnage, one of them began to show signs of greater determination and confidence, not Kentrik¨®s, whose movements displayed more doubt and fear, while the monster Koryf¨ª continued savagely tearing off his skin with bites and scratches. Kentrik¨®s let out a chilling howl from the horror he felt in his soul, trying with all his might to shake off that beast.
Seeing his enemy trying to escape his grasp, Koryf¨ª launched even faster and more savage attacks than before, targeting the exposed flesh, deforming his skull with blows that made a hollow sound as they struck the ground. Despite everything, he showed no signs of stopping, even though his rival had long since surrendered with tears in his eyes, begging him to stop. But the liberator of humanity continued to attack him. When it was all over, the only sound in the throne room was Koryf¨ª¡¯s heavy breathing, who was kneeling, observing the bloody pulp that was once the most powerful ruler the world had ever known.
Thus was born Exous¨ªa, the most glorious and prosperous empire humanity had ever seen, which thrived for 50 years under Koryf¨ª¡¯s rule, who occasionally had to defend his position from usurpers, invaders, traitors, and anyone who considered themselves ambitious and powerful enough to lead the world. But none ever came close to the power of his greatest rival, whom he remembered with great respect for being the greatest challenge of his life.
Now that he stood at the peak, all he had left was to await his imminent downfall at the hands of a still nonexistent rival, having to face mediocre plebeians in an eternal cycle only broken by death or his fall brought by someone with more determination, ambition, and desire than him. Koryf¨ª no longer felt as he did in his youth, having achieved his goal, his ambition waned, and one day he simply abandoned his throne, leaving the empire he had sacrificed so much to achieve. Leaving it all to seclude himself in a humble cabin in the most distant village from the capital, staying there as a mere peasant, waiting for death.
The Curse Beneath the Meadow
Once again, my dreams had pushed me into a strange vision, a familiar landscape, that prairie stretching beyond sight, but this time it was different. Now, immense and terrible mountains as black as the purest onyx surrounded everything, limiting the infinite beauty of the lush meadows. And in the center of it all, a crystal tree, so immense that it could touch the very clouds.
But I, being a slave to my dreams that followed the will of that evil goddess, was led into the interior of those nightmare mountains, descending deeper and deeper through the dark, salty tunnels.
It was in that dizzying descent that I encountered those children, a girl with golden hair leading the way while the boy with brown hair followed behind, trembling as he held her hand. Under the orb that projected a ghostly white light, I saw them horrified by their state of dehydration and their sweat-soaked clothes clinging to their bodies, with great exhaustion and irritation. It was clear that every step was an immense agony for them.
But when I thought that the cruel Goddess who had cursed me with these horrible visions sought to torture me by forcing me to watch those children die, I began to move again, descending an endless staircase, as if I were falling to the fiery heart of the Earth.
When I stopped, I thanked all the real and fictional gods.
Once I managed to calm down, I surveyed the area, astonished to find myself in an immense, perfectly rounded chamber, with ancient drawings from forgotten eras on its walls. I will now transcribe what I found in those paintings.
The first panels showed the origin of tall, dark beings with humanoid appearances emerging from a primordial dark sea, and how they moved across the land to germinate on the surface, where they began to stalk strange creatures whose tentacles stretched toward the sky, branching like tree limbs. These beings, whom I will call Kladians due to the peculiar branching of their tentacles, tried to expel the dark ones from their lands, to no avail.
The Kladians abandoned their lands to hide, but the shadows of the dark ones were always wherever they went, always waiting for them, always stalking them as if they only wanted to torment them.
Succumbing to panic, the unfortunate Kladians tried to appease their tormentors by offering members of their own species as sacrifices.
But this only seemed to encourage the dark ones to torment them more. Their next strategy was to create cyclopean cities to defend themselves, but again, it only worsened the situation, as it made them easier prey, confined to more limited areas with the dark ones watching from every corner of their new homes.
In the next row of paintings on the wall to my right, a small human boy was depicted, whom the Kladians shunned and the dark ones hated with a great passion, tormenting and harassing him with unholy obstinacy, filling his head with melancholic and fearsome ideas. But when they tried to deliver the final blow, an amber light fell from the skies, manifesting in the form of a girl, whose light managed to drive away the atrocious dark ones, and since then, she never left the boy¡¯s side.
The dark ones, who appeared less frequently out of fear of the girl, remained in the dark lake that had once given them life, and the Kladians, emboldened by the pathetic state of their former enemies, marched to the caves of the abominable onyx mountains.
When I reached the last images, destroyed with a blind fury, my visions led me to the entrance opposite the stairs I had descended. I entered a vast, dark corridor, passing through the immense and moldy door covered in chains at the end.
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What I found there would never leave me. The poor children who had descended through those horrible, dark, salty tunnels were frozen and their faces disfigured by horror. Following their gazes, I found the reason. My fear was palpable. In front of us were countless mummified corpses of unfortunate Kladians. But what terrified me the most was the lake extending through the chamber, filled with a dark and viscous liquid, for I knew the terrible implications it represented.
I no longer wished to stay another second in that place, but my body was not mine to command, as it followed the malignant will of the witch goddess. I could only stay in my place, observing with the eye of my mind the gruesome images and listening to the atrocious whispers that filled my being with corruption and impious messages of unremembered curses, while feeling watched from the darkness by small, imperceptible eyes.
I heard their laughs embedded deep within my consciousness. They laughed at me, at my weakness, at how pathetic I was. I couldn¡¯t take it anymore. The hatred and resentment boiled unbearably within me. I hated myself and the creatures of the dark. I wanted to kill them and commit suicide. When I started having those hateful thoughts, I felt disgusted with myself, terrified of what I might do, unable to control it. I wished that the malignant goddess who had put me in such a situation would have a shred of mercy and free me from that nightmare, but that desired scenario never occurred. I was helpless. Desperation and panic seized every part of my being. I pleaded in my mind with feverish anxiety, but nothing happened.
In that altered state, I failed to notice that my surroundings were moving and the lake of darkness was slowly approaching, making the whispers louder. I could feel my head being flooded with oppressive negative feelings and perverse messages, interrupted only by the girl¡¯s desperate cries. I still didn¡¯t understand why she remained there or why she cried out in despair and not terror, but at that moment, I couldn¡¯t care less. I only wanted to end my life to escape the incessant cacophony of disdain and sadness.
Those emotions swirled in my consciousness in such quantities that I could create my own lake of unfathomable darkness in my soul, and perhaps that was the point.
When I saw the lake closer, bathing those primordial rocks with its repulsive darkness, my desperation turned into hopelessness, thinking I would not escape alive, engulfed by those fearsome waters while my body in reality became an empty shell. It was at that moment that my vision went dark, and before me stretched a world of incalculable anguish and melancholy. I did not remember how long I had been sinking, though it felt like years I spent crumbling in that lake, yet I seemed far from reaching the bottom.
Feeling my last gram of sanity and energy fading away, I saw them, hundreds of thousands of dark humanoid figures as tall as houses, their bodies seeming immaterial, appearing to form part of a whole with the lake in a corrupt symbiosis. With their imperceptible eyes and immense mouths, they mocked my unfortunate fall, or so I thought, for I felt a small and weak presence above me, which seemed to have the attention of those repugnant beings. But nothing mattered anymore. I had resigned myself to my fate, my eternal damnation, and it was at that moment that a glowing amber light burst from the surface. The hideous howls of pain and rage of the dark ones were felt throughout the cave, and everything vanished for an instant.
When I regained vision, I was beside the crystal tree, and the boy, collapsed at its trunk, looked different, older and more decayed despite being comforted by his companion, who seemed, although to a lesser extent, more worn and tired.
That was until black smoke began to emanate from their bodies, to be absorbed by the tree that emitted a beautiful white light in response, which significantly changed the demeanor of both, although this process filled me with conflicting emotions¡ªjoy, tranquility, disgust, displeasure, sorrow, remorse, and a great guilt I didn¡¯t know the source of.
But now, those children, happier and more relaxed, slept holding hands, and a breeze stirred their hair and the crystal branches above them. I knew unconsciously that it wouldn¡¯t end there and that black smoke was neither the first nor the last to go to the tree. With that thought, my blood ran cold, and I awoke.