A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 151: Apostles in the Underworld

Unlike last time, there were no rains or storms that toiled in the background of the battle. There were no endless swaths of land susceptible to the rage of battle, with lives hidden in the background hanging onto the desperate and unlikely fate of victory. There were no enemies for me to perceive while flying through the air, waking up to seeing a horrible red sky above and a shadow flying by above.

     My awakening was gradual, and it really still felt like time was standing still. The shadow moved quick enough that it was just a blip in existence, but my body was just...moving horizontally with no trouble at all. There was pressure on my head slowly making itself known to me, and wounds on my body that I slowly felt more and more. I really felt strange, since I was sure it'd been years since I fought anyone or anything. That black abyss was so peaceful and calm that it was hard to remember what that world of violence had been like, the one that I'd not seen for so long-

     But my imagination didn't have to concoct anything for me to fill in the blank spots. I got the picture when the pressure on my head identified itself as intense wind resistance from being flung by a STR stat of likely in the hundred thousands, and the pain was searing hot like I was paper being burned up from the edges inward.

     My back arched. I wasn't slowing down, but gravity was calling me back to the dusty black floor down below, full of bones sticking up and out and what looked like guts pulled tight like the strings of an instrument between them all. I could clearly see the knots tied between intestines, could see the separate organs that were strung between, some shriveled and old and others pulsing like they were still filtering through food and liquid.

     Agh, I blinked, vision still taking a bit to come back. The situation didn't seem like the type, at all, that I should've been slowly awakening for, but I was tired enough that it felt like I was being pulled out of the depths of my soul. My ki-...

     I was so sure I'd seen him, somewhere, somehow, in that black abyss, but there was no time to worry about that. No, I was seeing someone else before my two red-filmed eyes, no doubt from blood getting in them, and the warrior's spirit in me was being renewed.

     Even if it felt like I'd been there for decades, sleeping, becoming a real human, letting myself go, feeling the extent of emotion I'd never allowed myself to feel before because of some sort of...mental block-

     There was no way I didn't remember the face of the man...no, the god, that pried my long-lost left arm out of his storage and fed it to his dogs in front of me.

     There was no way I didn't remember the face of the god that hammered a stake through my chest and put a shackle around my throat.

     There was no way I didn't remember the face of the god that-

     "THANOS!"

     He smirked in his bloody glory, readying himself for my attack. In the second before we collided, I flipped, feeling what was left of the blood in my body begin to boil. I was not paper burning anymore - I was the kerosene about to set that guy on fire.

     "So you've finally awakened!" A straight fist launched itself out to me, and my legs pedaled in the air before I put my own fist forward as well. I couldn't tell how much strength was left in me, how long we'd been fighting, anything. I just hoped that he was weak as he looked.

     In the spirit of manga, his body proportions seemed much larger than when our first battle had happened, and it somehow didn't look strange. My form was that of the half-Dragon that I'd somehow instinctively donned, and I didn't look much stronger than before, putting my small brown knuckles against the barrel he put out.