HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 185

Chapter One Hundred and Eighty -Five

Roaring. 

It was roaring, the wind was--

"Horst..."

My consciousness expanded.

As if taking my first breath of life, my existence exploded with gorgeous colors, distant clouds all bathed in hues of gold and pink, flowing white set afire by the sun hovering over the glittering ocean lapping at my hooves. Wind tousled my hair as I stood still, dazed, and slowly lifted my hands, looking down at my tingling fingers. I blinked slowly, pulse thundering in my ears. 

My body was made of light... or rather, I didn't have a body.

I was just raw light shaped like my body.

I tingled from head to toe, sleepily blinking at my strange limbs. 

Ocean water lapped across my light-hooves, and yet I felt nothing. 

I swiveled, but my jaw dropped when I realized that the desert had changed. It was the same desert from all the previous times, but it looked like a lively oasis of some sort had started growing since the last time I'd found myself here. It was only at the last second that I noticed a cord of some sort drifting away from me, intangible and somehow incorporeal. I followed it with my vision, mesmerized, to its end, where a shining green figure was lying on a patch of grass.

My heart thumped and joy filled my core.

My lips parted and, in a voice that held absolutely no strength or volume, whispered, "Luka..."

The world quaked and the gorgeous day flashed into a nightscape the moment I spoke. I looked up as the sky darkened further, casting deep shadows as clouds tumbled overhead, frothing.

Luka lay still, fast asleep, but panic rose up my throat as lightning flashed overhead, the sky torn asunder as the water boiled and heaved. My eyes were wide, and then my body locked, unable to move, as my head was jerked down by a strange force, making me face the ocean.

I could see a figure thrashing in the air, violently.

Arms over its head, body flailing like a fish on a hook, legs kicking and struggling. Lightning flashed behind the figure, silhouetting the shadow of a massive dragon, and then it kept flashing, striking rapidly, burning still-frame shadows into my existence of the beast's writhing.

A distant roar came from the figure, one full of terror and fury and pain.

My eyes went wide as a pulse of ice stabbed through my lungs, 

"Huang?" I whispered, and it echoed, the entire universe resounded with his name, growing louder, and louder, and louder--

"Horst..." the voice from before whispered, barely there. "Home."

Fear closed my throat as the figure flailed yet again, followed by a second roar. "What?"

"After... tod---trial..." the voice crackled at me. "Go... h---Echo...." 

I squinted, ears ringing.

It was was oddly distorted.

"I can't hear you!" I cried. "What are you saying?!"

Lightning flashed, silhouetting the dragon's shadow again, but fear filled my throat since the humanoid figure dangling in the air thrashed and a very human scream of rage came from it.