Fairy Tail: Swallow the Fire

52. Decadence in Dead Memories

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Hurried footfalls roared through the adamantine halls of an ivory tower floating within an endless astral sky.

At the forefront of the legions of angered deities and angels were two, immovable and determined archons.

The first, towering over the other beside him, kicked down the last of the doors blocking them from the sole individual that had angered the heavens.

"Eel-ilia!" the horned god bellowed upon seeing the granite-skinned God of Discovery in the middle of an opalescent domain tainted by whorling black arcana.

The god in question barely sparred the duo a glance before he went back to work, hands weaving and pulling strings of ether as his attention became fully focused on the portal on the ground before him he was determined to open.

"Eel-ilia, please! Cease this before the consequences can't be undone!" the second god pleaded, the large feathers that formed a sleeve down his arms being the only thing allowing him to open his eyes in the stormy room.

"I'm afraid that isn't possible, Alleize. Not anymore," Eel-ilia responded. "Though I may thank you for acting on your position as a servant of diplomacy."

Taking the god's rejection as his queue to act, the horned god tried to charge forward only for the God of Diplomacy to block him with his own body. "If this is your course of action, then tell us, why!? What do you seek to obtain by confronting the World of Nil!?"

"Discovery, just as my nature dictates it. Where does magic, the source of our power come from? Where were we, and all of creation, born? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Light or darkness?" Finally looking up at the hoard confronting him, they saw the usually despondent eyes were full of stony conviction. "It is my full belief that the corridor between life and death, the endless void where nothing should and yet does exist is the answer to all and more."

"Heresiarch!" The towering god bellowed again with a leap, the titanic glaive in his four grey hands held high as his white mane streaked behind him.

"Belteh!"

"Die so your magic may be possessed by one more worthy!" As he plunged, the head of the glaive pierced through Eel-ilia's stony skin without any resistance, letting the divine ichor flow out of the wound as iridescent light.

"Ever headstrong, just as expected of a God of War," the god spoke with continued calm even as he was hoisted atop the end of the glaive. "Servants to your domains, performing your orders dutifully. But just as you have done yours, so have I."

Just as the war god threw the heretical god aside, the chaotic whorling reached an apotheosis and then everything stilled. The portal that had once been unstable was calm as a low, echoing hum had begun to quickly draw itself into a deafening static sound of infinite voices.

The titanic god stared into the abyss before him just as it erupted.

Countless amorphous wraiths shot out of the gate and flooded the visions of all, dispersing into the greater cosmos as the Gate of the Wraith's Wail was opened for the first time.

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In the middle of a human village, a hamlet of no more than eighty people, a woman covered in sweat held her newborn close to her as tears poured from her eyes, her husband hugging her close to him.

"We have to run, Mylyitta," his voice came out broken, strained, but with the unwavering conviction of a determined father.

"Where would we even go, Zaibu!? Where!?" the mother cried. "The priest has already seen our child! The angels will be here soon and there's nothing we can do about it!"