Artemis reeled backwards, assaulted by the sudden pain that churned in his empty eye socket. It wasn't like the fiery pain that originated from the ink-marks on his back, it was sharp and strenuous, like a knife was clawing into the sinew of his eye socket, peeling each minute layer away bit by bit until he had been rendered to bone, the strain of each tear bitter and tragic.
My eye… it really did eat my eye!
That same hollow and vile laugh echoed through his head. This Daemon was one truly imbibed with joy through tragedy. He knew this much, he expected this much, and still he was often surprised that any being who experienced life could be so endowed with cruelty.
"I did. I told you I would do that much. Well, maybe I told you I would inhabit you in place of it… but where else was I supposed to put it? Do you really want to carry around your left eye? If it makes you feel any better, it really was delicious."
But this… this was far more shocking than losing a part of his body. The Daemon had reacted to his contemplation!
"You can hear my thoughts?"
"I'm in your head… quite literally. Did you imagine you could hide much from me?"
He was quickly starting to regret this deal. He wondered what mattered to him more— the fact that he had lost his left eye, or the fact that he had lost his privacy and dignity?
He could deal with this pain… ignore it as best he could, add it to the pile of the things that weighed him down. Pain, exhaustion, confusion, it was all just a mess of tragedies he could storm through.
So he decided to at least get the facts straight, to determine what all of this had wrought in his favour.
"You said you would grant me great power. What did you mean by this? What did I even get out of this? I'm assuming you don't intend for me to hunt terrifying monsters without assistance? Of course, even if you do, I'll accomplish this. I want to return home at any cost, after all…"
"You dying would be very detrimental to me." The Daemon chuckled. "So yes, this 'contract' of ours will grant you great power. How you use it will certainly determine its practicality, but having browsed through your history, I'm not too worried about that."
"So what is it? Stop meandering and tell me."
Trudging through the ash was quite a task. When he would take a single step, he would sink straight into the sea of ivory, nearly up to his upper thighs. Moving only a couple of paces was exhausting, not even considering the fact that he was already devoid of stamina.
And yet he kept on, afraid to remain where he had started. He had some sort of strange feeling that if he kept to where he had been, he would meet dire misfortune. Almost like he just had, when he had almost fallen off of the cliff-face. Although at that time, it had been the Daemon's fault, not his.
As the tragic stretch of white began to dissipate, revealing the bare pocks of stone crags on the distant horizon, Artemis quickly began to piece this Cradle of Ash together. Why it was so desolate, why despite its rocky under-craft, it was covered in a sea of white powder that simultaneously rained down in soft sheets like snowfall.
A towering ivory tree burst upwards into the heavens like a terribly beautiful collection of woven serpents, a bough of branches sprouting outwards throughout the sky as a canopy that enshrouded the distant landscape in shadow.
And the collection of titanic branches closest to where he was now was set afire, bright and brilliant crimson flames that mirrored the lowest depths of hell, crackling and screaming their passion through the echo of the cold breeze. These branches had become charred a deep midnight black, paralleling the pearline colour of the tree itself.
However, it seemed that there was a section where the char of the branches did not cross, where the branches had stretched out so far from the remainder of the bough that it seemed like the very tree itself was trying to distance itself from the flames by growing outward. This brought it as close as possible to the Cradle.
So the flames wrought the Ash that coated the Cradle like a sea, burning eternally in a shower of smog, smoke, and heaven-stain.
As he stared at this tree in the distance, Artemis could suddenly discern the patterns of the floating lights, these shapes that had twisted and malformed into legible script. They were… words. Nothing like he had ever seen before, but one that he was quite proficient in.
He muttered under his breath as he bent this script against his tongue, which seemed so frail and unused to the way the words were spoken, as if they weren't sounds meant to be uttered from human lips. The words crackled as he spoke them, laced with the bitterness of history and the uniqueness of the unknown.
"[In the bough of Ivory he set aflame, Eocyro sought peace. All he burnt was his people.
Peace comes in the form of Ash.
Ash is the result of suffering's end.]"
He raised an eyebrow, waiting for the Daemon to comment on what he had said.
But failing to reprise anything from silent inquisition, he formally asked.
"The ability to… discern things. To know what they are. Are you serious? This is the power I've been granted? To become… a historian?"
That vile laugh, a bit more casual and relaxed now, more demeaning than anything else, echoed once more.
"All things have a purpose, boy. One thing that seems utterly useless now might have dire repercussions for your enemies in the future. Your eyes are not your own, know this."
There's no way I'm being herded with bullsh-t philosophical rambling.
He felt like he had definitely been cheated.
"You're a bastard."
"No, from what I can discern, you are a bastard, Artemis Lunastre."
His eyebrow twitched. "You're discerning my life? You can see my memories too?"
If that was really the case, he was quite annoyed. It wasn't only that he had been cheated by the Daemon, but now he was privy to its lack of privacy, and its bare contempt for decency.
What a fool it was.
"Even the ones that you've forgotten. I'm starting to understand why you're here, bastard Hunter." Lark chuckled wryly.
"Then won't you enlighten me?" Artemis wiped remnant sweat off of his forehead. "Why am I here? What do you know? If this world is all you know, lest none of mine, then tell me of it. At least, this Cradle of Ash. Are there dangers? Benefits? Where should I expect to end up?"
"Too many questions, far too many answers. I could give you a general explanation, but I think you'll find many of your answers in just a moment."
"So where the hell am I going?" Artemis chided. "Give me this answer at least? If you're my passenger, do you really want to be wandering about endlessly?
He suddenly raised his hand, pointing straight ahead of him.
Wait, hold on…
"Yes, I'm moving it for you. I have full control of your body. But our contract didn't stipulate that I would be your tyrant. I'm merely doing this as a matter of quality, relax."
F-cking bastard…
"Again with that word! It seems to be your favourite thing! How lax is your vocabulary as a Prince? Did you shirk your studies in favour of the sword? Then how is it that you remain the prime loser against your brother?"
"Just shut it…" Artemis cursed, continuing to trudge through the deep sea of ash.
Whatever. It's fine. If I can really return home by completing this Hunt, then whatever else is involved with it doesn't matter at all. The loss of an eye, this pain, this struggle, this exhaustion, I don't care about it in the slightest…
Of course, that was a blatant lie. He did care about all of these things. No person alive enjoyed being uncomfortable, at least not the sane type.
But whatever inconvenience that was placed on him was something he could soldier through and act the part of the stoic commander. That was the duty and skill of the Captain of the Guard. And it was his most annoying and inconsolable habit.
He watched the sheets of black crystals in the night above as he trudged through the ash. There was a bright white ball in the center of it all, gleaming past the craters that pocked its surface.
"What manner of creature is that, Daemon?" he asked, pointing towards it.
"Do you mean the moon?"
"That big white ball on the cavern ceiling, is that what it's called?"
"Cavern ceiling? What do you mean, boy? There is no cavern ceiling, we're not in a cave. That's open sky."
"I don't know what any of that means. How can we not be in a cavern? How else would you explain the crystals that glimmer on the ceiling? Do you mean to tell me that they're floating? And if there's no ceiling, then what is there? An empty abyss?"
The Daemon chuckled wryly. "Those are stars, my boy. Oh, you're surely an interesting one… these things, these stars and the moon, they mark the end of daytime, mark their passing, the emergence of the night. I don't know what it's like where you come from, but this is commonplace everywhere, even in Hell."
He did not know what any of this meant, what it entailed. They were the strange uniquenesses of a new world. But he had gleaned something very important from what he was saying.
Does time pass even now as I struggle in the Cradle? I may not reach it before August returns from his trip…
Reading his mind, the Daemon readily replied. "It's static, this time. You could remain here for the rest of your life and he may never return in conjunction with your remnant natural lifespan."
"Sorry… let me get this straight, I'm not sure I was following correctly. Time won't pass in this ancient shadow?"
"Not at all. At least, not wherever you come from. We're frozen in place, here."
If this was really the case, then wasn't appearing in this otherworld a boon? He had been so worried about his advancement in skill, to the extent that he had shirked his duties to train. But now he was in a place where time never passed, where as long as he stayed, he could improve.
He could surpass August in this Shadow.
He could surpass them all.
A slight grin curled up his expression.
"Thank you."
And as Lark had promised, something other than the dread of the endless waves of ash soon emerged. Buried in those dunes of white, a large and omnipresent structure revealed itself, comprising of several sheets of stone that jutted out from deep underneath the ash, piercing the sky and supporting the dilapidated wooden building between them. Posts held up crumbling verandas and railings that had sunken inwards, rotten and infested with mites and mold.
They heard the clattering of metal, stone crunched underneath boots as two gleaming eyes opened in the darkness that bordered the ruins.
Terror stepped out from the shadows, quickly approaching Artemis as it wielded a fearsome onyx blade.