Becoming a Monster

Chapter 391: Chapter 391: What Are You?

The moment Noah stepped into the open, he looked to his side, to where all the humans gathered.

And instantly he saw it.

A man who was pierced through by Pandora’s roots. The body was still twitching faintly, blood seeping into the dirt beneath. The display made Noah curious; his expression didn’t shift, but his eyes lingered on the sight longer than usual.

There was no reason for her to keep the body restrained like that. The fact that she hadn’t retracted her roots told him enough. She wanted it left as a warning.

The humans could feel his presence before they saw him. Heads quickly turned, freezing the moment they noticed his gaze facing them.

Memories of him stripping the creature of its soul haunted them, but even worse...

When the humans were frantically trying to uncover the culprit for Yossef’s death, Noah’s emergence filled them with a haunting thought.

They remembered, just before Yossef was murdered, he was encouraging them to go against this monster. And now that he died, the monster coincidentally came out of its home?

Whispers spread quickly, no one noticed who was brave enough to mutter it first. One by one, the human’s fear began to twist into suspicion.

"It did it... It killed Yossef."

"No, that means it heard us. Killing Yossef is its warning to us. We should never have thought of going against it in the first place."

The tension thickened as they noticed that the monster still hadn’t moved. Their voices rose and fell in frightened murmurs, feeding off of one another until the fear made their thoughts delirious.

"...What is it waiting for?"

"You don’t think... Is it thinking of killing us all?"

"I knew it... it was never going to let us live."

"If we stay, we’ll all end up like Yossef, he was right, we should have never trusted that the monster would keep its word."

"Gods... what have we done?"

The murmurs grew louder, overlapping into panicked nonsense, everyone was divided with their thoughts. Their trembling eyes darted between the corpse still impaled by Pandora’s roots and the silent figure surrounded by other fierce monsters standing across from them.

Their eyes began to gleam with undisguised terror and the desperate will to live. Hands tightened around their weapons, while others were already inching towards the trees, ready to leave the others. They didn’t believe that they could outrun the beast by the monster’s side, but they just needed to be faster than the others.

Noah watched all of this without saying a word. And still, he didn’t move. He stood where he was, not because he enjoyed watching them squirm, but because he was waiting, trying to come to a decision.

He could see it, the way they came up with their own delusional assumptions, the way their thoughts twisted into whatever fit their beliefs. The same look he’d seen on so many faces before: fear pretending to be reason, guilt trying to become justification. And their regret trying to paint the victimized party into the aggressor.

Noah exhaled slowly. He wasn’t angry.

If anything, he was... disappointed.

"Pandora"

His voice was low, but the moment the name was fully spoken, Pandora’s form instantly appeared in front of him, staring intently into his eyes, as if waiting for his judgment.

"What happened?" His question was direct, it was better that way when speaking to Pandora who spoke with the same bluntness.

Pandora seemed to hesitate to answer, but as she thought about how the human was rising, inciting to oppose the person that mattered most to her, her aura turned dark as she muttered one word.

"Enemy." The answer was short, beyond vague, but it was just like her.

Noah’s gaze swept the crowd again, unhurried and detached. Pandora’s explanation only explained so little. He could only understand that the person killed must have harbored malicious intentions towards them, but he didn’t know if the others were implicated along with the man. As he looked over them, his emotions were surprisingly calm, he wouldn’t pretend he’d feel much if he had to kill them all. The thought sat without stirring him.

However, the way he viewed them, as if their lives were losing meaning didn’t escape Amara’s gaze. All this time she was weighing her options, using fate to guide her toward the right path to get them out of this mess.

She only had enough time to work through three paths before she made her decision. She couldn’t wait any longer to plan out any other options. If fate didn’t wait for gods, it certainly wouldn’t wait for a mortal like her. If she waited any longer, she would be forced into a fate that was unavoidable.

"....."

A stillness gripped the others the moment Amara stepped forward. Everyone seemed to respond to her movements as if they were waiting for her to make a decision all this time.

This didn’t escape Noah’s observation either. If there was anyone he hesitated to kill, it was her. For a moment he saw his old self in her, his foolish human self. The woman seemed to be carrying all of their burdens on her small shoulders and yet the people were ungrateful for all that she’d done. And yet, the woman also was too foolish to realize she was nothing but a tool to them.

Pity...

He couldn’t help feeling such an emotion when he looked at her. He pitied Anubis for choosing such a person to have his power, only for it to be spent saving these ungrateful swine.

Amara swallowed hard as her gaze shifted toward the creature that stood beside Noah. Its tree-like body looked awfully similar to the roots that were still impaling Yossef. The sight made her chest tighten. She didn’t need confirmation to know that this was the same creature that had killed him; the one that now stood loyally beside the being everyone feared.

It didn’t take much to piece together. From the moment, she saw the detached look in Noah’s eyes, she was positive.

He knew.

She didn’t know exactly what that creature had said, but she assumed that it had told Noah everything Yossef and the others had said. So she had to speak up in their defense.

Her throat tightened, but she forced herself to step forward again. Even as her legs trembled, she didn’t stop. This wasn’t the time to let fear take over. She had faith in her god, and Anubis respected this creature, so she needed only to believe that the creature could still be reasoned with.

"I... understand what you’re thinking," she began, her voice shaky at first, then steadying as she found her resolve. "But please, listen to me before you decide what happens next."

Noah said nothing. He looked towards Pandora, as if to confirm whether she saw Amara as one of the supposed enemies. Pandora showed no reaction when looking at the woman, and when Noah turned back to Amara, neither did he. And that somehow made it feel worse.

Amara forced herself to keep going. "Whatever that creature told you, I want to clarify that it wasn’t all of us. It was him." She turned her eyes briefly to Yossef’s lifeless body. "He tried to make the others turn against your good will. The rest... they only listened because they were afraid. None of them would have acted on it."

Her words came faster, trembling even. Because when she turned to Yossef’s body, she noticed something terrifyingly misplaced. Everyone’s threads were grey, not one of them were different, it was as if fate itself was undecided as to what was going to happen. This had never happened before...

She looked toward Noah again. This time there was true fear. She didn’t see a man or a monster, she saw endless darkness and the being before her was the one who would decide who would see it.

’What are you?’ The question almost escaped her thoughts. The confidence she built up was almost instantly shattered. It wasn’t the fact that somehow, a creature was able to defy fate; it was the fact that now she had lost her way. She had never made a decision without her gift.

For the first time since her awakening as Anubis’s vessel, Amara felt completely lost.

Her gaze dropped. She couldn’t take the pressure of deciding the others’ fate blindly. She looked back to the others, wanting to see their faces for what could be the last time. She wanted to etch their faces in her heart so that she wouldn’t forget them even in death.

But when her gaze landed on her father, her heart thumped. The others seemed to echo her fear, they returned her gaze, doubt clouded their eyes as they took in her lost expression. Yet her father still had the same serene, warm gaze as before, never doubting her.

"Punish me..."

The words tore from her throat before she realized she was speaking. Amara kept her head bowed, shoulders trembling under the weight of her guilt.

She couldn’t protect them, she couldn’t even promise their safety anymore. So instead, she offered up the only thing she had left, herself.

Her whisper trembled on the verge of breaking. "I’m the one who brought them here. I’m the one who made the deal with you to allow us to stay. If someone must be punished... then punish me. Let the others go."