I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 480: The Death of Lizard Person Anu

City of Fire Protection

Torches burned high overhead inside the royal palace. A great procession carried a coffin deep into the palace court.

At last the coffin was carried before King Morabi. An ability user commander bowed, straightened at once, and opened it before addressing the king.

"Your Majesty, look."

King Morabi stepped closer. There within lay the ruined remains of the deputy commander's body. Nothing about the corpse resembled a man any longer. It had been reduced to scattered pieces of flesh.

King Morabi's face turned grave. Something thoughtful moved behind his eyes.

"Dead?"

"How did he die, exactly?"

One after another, those present shook their heads. No one knew.

The commander answered, "All we know is that a curse and corruption killed him. Exactly how it happened, we still can't say. But this was Anu's doing, no question."

One hand still resting on the coffin, King Morabi showed not the least grief at the Guard Captain's death.

"Our preparations were not enough after all. Something went wrong."

More than that, he turned at once to question another attendant standing behind him, already moving on to what came next.

"The letters to every apostle and every divine chosen, have you delivered them all?"

The attendant replied, "Your Majesty, I have already arranged..."

All at once, every ability user in the royal palace of Suinhor, high rank and low alike, lifted their heads toward the sky above the City of Fire Protection.

"Someone's coming!" Someone leapt straight up onto the top of the wall.

"Third rank? Or fourth rank?" More ability users sprang into motion.

"That's..." Someone caught sight of a streak of light flaring above the sea of clouds.

"Hold the barrier steady!" Someone let out a sharp, piercing cry in that same instant.

A streak of sword-light came down out of the sky, the light spinning in circles as it fell, as though it meant to tear the earth itself open where it smashed into the royal palace.

Rumble!

The barrier split wide open in an instant. Ritual node after ritual node burst apart as whole stretches of palace and building came crashing down.

Anu appeared, fused with his wind lizard dragon, transformed into the dark scale giant.

High against the vault of the sky he stood gripping the Moon Eclipse's Remnant Light, his gaze fixed on those below.

Inside the palace and out, chaos broke loose. Everyone sprang into motion.

"Stop him!"

"Protect His Majesty!"

"It's Lizard Person Anu!"

"He's here!"

Consumed with wrath, Anu drove himself to his very limit. Commanding the power of dragon and wind alike, he cut his way straight into the royal palace.

But amid all the chaos, King Morabi looked up at Anu in the sky without giving way. Instead, he pushed aside the guards at his side, stepped forward, and faced him head-on.

"Your Majesty!"

"Your Majesty!"

"Be careful..."

All around him people were shouting, but Morabi walked forward all the same.

He raised a hand and spoke.

"He stands before us already. Do you truly believe the rest of you can hold him back?"

"Is that not so, Anu!"

The dark scale giant came down out of the heights. Not a word passed from him, but the flaming sword in his hand twisted and swung down toward those below.

Whoosh!

The flame rolled forward in a wave of heat, tearing down the corridor of the palace court, only to split as it reached King Morabi and sweep away to either side.

Something of Black Dragon Anu's own voice entered his tone as he questioned the small, fragile mortal king.

"Are you not afraid to die, Morabi?"

The heat wave rocked King Morabi where he stood, but he lifted his head all the same and met Anu's gaze.

He saw the dark scale giant's eyes gone red, burning like the flaming blade in his hand.

To Anu's eyes, set beside what he had been, set beside that Morabi who had just ascended the throne full of ambition and lofty resolve, this mortal king had grown far older.

Time and the years had worn away the bearing he once carried. Only those eyes had never changed at all. If anything, age had sharpened them, leaving them keener and more alive than ever.

King Morabi raised a hand and put right the crown and the hair the wind had tousled on his head.

Still straightening it, he said, "Every mortal must die in the end. I am fortunate. I know where I am bound."

Lizard Person Anu stared hard at Morabi.

"Do you know that you have just destroyed the hope of ending the plague?"

King Morabi shot back, "Was it not you who brought this plague upon us in the first place, Anu!"

The dark scale giant erupted at once, shouting back at him.

"I have told you already. None of this has anything to do with me!"

King Morabi retorted, "Nothing to do with you? Then was it a lie, that you forged the totem pillar out of corpses?"

The dark scale giant clenched his fist tight around the flame. "That was to end the plague," he told King Morabi. "Everything I did, I did to save people, to save the people of Moonlight Province."

King Morabi met his eyes.

"Just so. All of this was for the snake people. Nor was I doing any of it for myself."

He went on, "And that is why I can trust no one. Least of all you, a lizard person."

Anu said, "Were the lizard people not changed from snake people to begin with? Each of us was a snake person once."

Morabi replied, "You said it yourself. That was the past."

As Anu looked at Morabi, something came clear to him all at once.

To Morabi, the threat the lizard people and Anu himself posed was greater than the plague.

The plague was only a disaster. Disasters passed in the end.

But in Morabi's mind, what stood between lizard people and snake people was a struggle between races, a war between races of wisdom.

That conflict outweighed everything else, far surpassing the plague and any disaster of nature.

Anu, too, understood it all now. His dream had been a delusion from the very beginning. Morabi had never once considered coexistence with the lizard people at all. He had only ever been using him.

Those naive fantasies of his, the laughable notion that lizard people and snake people might live side by side in peace, could never come true. Not in this age, at least.

The dark scale giant lifted his head and let out a low growl, like some wounded beast, his voice sliding back out of Black Dragon Anu's timbre into Lizard Person Anu's.

Blow after blow had fallen until the string drawn taut inside his heart seemed at last to snap.

"Anu, you fool!"

"You idiot."

"Everyone looks at you like you are a fool. Everyone thinks you are an idiot."

"You think you are doing the right thing. In truth, nothing could be more foolish."

"What beautiful dream are you chasing?"

"What wonderful fantasy is running through your head?"

Wrath roared fierce in Anu's heart. Flame poured even from between the dark scale giant's very scales until he stood a towering giant of fire.

"Why haven't you woken up yet!"

"Even a foolish beast, a tooth beast, would have changed by now."

In that same moment it was as though a voice inside his very body were screaming at him, roaring at him.

"Kill him!"

"Kill him!"

"Kill Morabi!"

"Kill him, and you can avenge your brothers, avenge everyone."

"Kill him, then take the throne yourself, and become king over both snake people and lizard people alike."

"Rule this nation. Change this world."

The dark scale giant let out a roar.

"Aaah!"

Anu swung his blade. The Moon Eclipse's Remnant Light tore across the sky to come down upon Morabi.

All around, those who had been watching Anu's every move sprang forward, rushing toward King Morabi in fury and terror alike, desperate to drag him clear.

Some even charged forward, meaning to throw themselves bodily between Morabi and the blade.

But nothing they did could match the speed of Anu, master of both wind and fire. It was already too late.

"How dare you!"

"Go!"

"Avenge His Majesty!"

But when the flames had fallen away entirely, Morabi's voice came from within them, trembling.

"All of you, stop."

Anu's single strike, they saw, had burned one of Morabi's arms clean to ash and had also scorched his long hair black, leaving him a wretched, ruined sight.

The hand gripping Anu's sword was shaking. In that final instant he had reined in the fury and killing intent inside him, choosing instead something else buried deep within his heart.

Hiss!

A sound of pain escaped King Morabi, yet he did more than merely hold his ground. He even stepped forward to address Anu in a loud, ringing voice.

"Why have you not killed me, Anu?"

The dark scale giant's hand, clenched so tightly around the flaming sword, slowly loosened. His arm sank low.

"Forget it!"

"Forget it!"

"I do not care anymore."

"You are right. I am a lizard person."

"However many of you die, what is that to me?"

"The stability of this nation, what is that to me?"

"What is any of it to me, a lizard person?"

"I do not care anymore... I do not care anymore..."

Anu broke into laughter. Some nameless sorrow and desolation rang through it, as though the very pillar of faith inside his heart had come crashing down in that one instant.

Light surged across the dark scale giant's body. The giant split into two separate shadows.

Anu let the dark scale giant's form go before mounting the wind lizard dragon once more. The wrathful fire in his hand faded back at last into its silver dark flame.

Restored now to his lizard person form, Anu looked down at Morabi below, looked at this royal palace he had once guarded, at the king he had once guarded.

"Did you not once tell me, in this very palace, that I was your right hand?"

"Now, that arm of yours is gone."

"This is what you owed me."

With that, the wind lizard dragon spread its wings wide against the night. A raging wind swept across the sky.

It shot into the sky on that raging wind, leaving the City of Fire Protection behind.

Morabi watched Lizard Person Anu ride the wind lizard dragon away into the distance, vanishing into the night.

Physicians rushed to him at once and set to treating his wounds, but Morabi kept his eyes fixed on the sky the whole while.

The Royal Steward beside him trembled from head to foot.

"Your Majesty, that was a very near thing just now!"

But King Morabi said, "In truth, I would rather he had killed me."

King Morabi then laid out to those around him the plan he had made from the first.

"I have already written letters to every other apostle, written to all the great temples, and revealed to them the lizard people's scheme, the plan to swallow Suinhor whole and turn every snake person into a lizard person."

"The moment I die, every word of it stands proven beyond any doubt."

"This is the snake people's island. No one could ever accept a lizard person taking the leading role upon it."

"The instant I die, the lizard people die with me, and the threat is undone along with it."

"Better that than leaving things as they stand now."

At that very moment, Anu's voice came drifting on the wind.

"Rest easy!"

"The lizard people and I will all be leaving. Keep your lonely island, then, and be the lonely king of it, with no one left beside you!"

"Morabi... King!"

In the noise of the wind, that final word, King, landed with unusual weight.

Morabi broke into a smile. That line of his, it seemed, had been meant for Anu's ears all along.

This answer was exactly the outcome he had wanted.

Watching that smile, the Royal Steward beside him felt a fierce dread well up within him.

This mortal king before him truly feared neither life nor death. He treated everyone as nothing more than pieces on a board, purging every source of instability in blood.

Even one like Lizard Person Anu, once his usefulness was spent and he had become a threat instead, was shown no mercy at all.

Perhaps that was precisely why he had become Suinhor's very first mortal king!

---

The wind lizard dragon flew on over the earth.

As it passed over a mountain peak, it came to a stop.

Anu came down on the mountaintop and drove the longsword in his hand into the stone at its peak.

That done, he turned and walked away without a word, as though he had no intention at all of taking the sword back.

He had truly thrown away that sword of boundless power.

But at that moment, a voice came from behind him.

"You noticed, then?"

Anu showed no surprise at all. He turned back to look at the matte blade.

"Because I am Anu!"

"I will never let my own hatred bring disaster down on people who have nothing to do with it."

"This is what I hold to, my will, and nothing anyone does can shake it."

"You cannot change me. You cannot shake me either."

Dark Moon's illusory shadow rose up behind the sword, one hand resting upon it as he leaned there.

"It sounds very noble. In truth it is folly."

Anu had no wish to argue with Dark Moon.

"Your kind will never understand."

But Dark Moon still wanted to say his piece.

"A person's wrath is a power. A power that changes fate. Wrath, and the refusal to accept defeat, are what have driven people to break the bounds of fate at all."

Dark Moon said all this out of regret, regret that Anu had not killed King Morabi just now.

"Had you killed Morabi just now, you might have changed your fate."

"Even if he held some hidden card, the odds were not against you either. Claim the throne, take hold of this nation, and anything becomes possible."

"All you needed was to seize an apostle's power, with mythology at your back, and outside forces to draw upon..."

Dark Moon looked at Anu and shook his head.

"A pity. In the end you still chose to give it up."

"What a chance that was. More than enough to stake everything on."

The Moon Eclipse's Remnant Light trembled, straining as though to tear itself free of the stone, calling out to Anu.

Dark Moon spoke again.

"Anu, it is not too late. You can still go back."

Anu was not moved in the slightest, nor swayed by the "bright" future Dark Moon spoke of.

"But whoever won and whoever lost, all that would fall upon this nation, upon every innocent soul in it, would be nothing but pain and disaster."

"That was never what I hoped for from the start, and it is not what I want."

With that, Anu paid Dark Moon no further mind and walked away.

But the illusory shadow on the sword went on speaking.

"I thought, once, that we would become the same kind of person."

"It seems we are not the same after all."

A beam of light twisted and warped, dragging the divine artifact, the Moon Eclipse's Remnant Light, down into a whirlpool of darkness.

---

Dark Prison Abyss

On the throne, the flame-scorched corpse caught hold of the longsword and ran gentle fingers along its length. A small sigh tinged with regret escaped him.

Elsewhere, Anu abandoned everything he had spent years striving to earn. He returned once more to the Volcano Forest.

Listless and lost, he made his way down beneath the Feathered Serpent's Pyramid.

The lizard person stopped and lifted his head to the powerful force and barrier radiating from the pyramid.

From the very beginning, it had never been the lizard people guarding the pyramid. It was the Feathered Serpent, Kurmis, who sheltered the lizard people.

Placed where it was, the pyramid was still something few could ever hope to breach. The lizard people had leaned on it all along to see them through their weakest years. Without Kurmis they could never have survived those days at all.

Anu went into the pyramid and knelt in the passage, facing the Feathered Serpent's golden seed jar.

With practiced ease he performed the ritual to open a channel to Kurmis's memory vessel.

He entered that fantastical forest, thick with every kind of magic herb. Once more he saw the great winged serpent coiled within it, its golden mane catching the light.

It was as beautiful as some creature out of a dream.

Anu came before the great serpent and sat down cross-legged, speaking with the deepest reverence.

"Lord Kurmis, I have come back!"

Then, as he always did, he reported on the changes out in the world beyond.

"These past days You have gained several dozen more temples and shrines of Your own. Even across the sea, in the New World, people have begun to know Your name."

"You already have thousands upon thousands of divine servants, and countless believers."

"Before long now, You will wake in truth from Your long sleep, and rise in the bearing of a divine being, to stand above a divine kingdom of Your own."

"Not like when we first came here, when we had nothing at all."

"..."

Anu talked on for a long while, calling up one memory after another from days past, until it struck him suddenly, as he spoke, that so many of the people in those memories were gone now.

His voice grew smaller and smaller, until at last he could not even find the words to go on.

Only sorrow remained.

After a while, Anu lifted his head.

"Lord Kurmis, I mean to leave. I mean to take every lizard person with me."

"Will You come with us?"

The Feathered Serpent's memory vessel had listened to his story all this while. Now, at last, it lifted its head and opened its eyes just a fraction.

"Leave?"

"Why would we leave? This is Ruhe Beast Island. This is our home."

Anu said, "But this is not our home any longer. It no longer belongs to the lizard people."

The Feathered Serpent's memory vessel only said, "This is our home. This is our homeland."

Kurmis's memory vessel gave no direct answer to his words, but that in itself was answer enough.

It stood for the answer buried deep within Kurmis's heart, the one thing he could not let go of.

Anu seemed to have known this answer long before. He raised his head to the Feathered Serpent Kurmis's shadow and smiled, as though it hardly mattered to him at all.

"So it is, after all, Lord Kurmis!"

"All You have ever felt for us is guilt."

In his youth, Kurmis had been a guard to Shana, the city lord of Maya City. He had lived out his whole life as a monster.

All he had chased, his life long, was to become a snake person once again.

Anu understood everything about Kurmis. He understood his obsession and stubbornness, but above all his ideals.

Kurmis had sheltered the lizard people, but that never meant he was willing to give up the snake people for their sake.

It was only guilt, guilt toward the lizard people, guilt toward Anu himself. Kurmis's own wish to make the brown ball vine was what had turned them from snake people into lizard people in the first place.

At the same time, Kurmis now stood bound completely to the snake people's faith. If he meant to become a true god, he still needed them.

Kurmis's memory vessel stared blankly at Anu, watching the tears run down his face.

"Why are you weeping, Anu?"

Lizard Person Anu told Kurmis, "Because You cannot walk this road with us. Because You love the snake people more than You love us."

Kurmis's memory vessel said, "Did I say something wrong?"

Lizard Person Anu answered, "You need not feel guilty. You have never wronged us."

"We were willing, back then. We wanted to make the brown ball vine too. We wanted to become heroes too."

"It is only that none of us knew, back then, that it would come to this."

With that, Anu rose to his feet and left this world of memory.

He walked away from the golden seed jar and made his way back out.

But just as he reached the far end of the passage, he suddenly sensed something.

Anu turned back.

All at once he saw an enormous feathered-serpent head emerge from the void of that other world, looking straight at him.

Anu looked into Kurmis's two great golden serpent eyes. Tears seemed to be welling within them.

Anu froze for a moment, then asked the very question Kurmis himself had just asked him.

"Lord Kurmis, why are You weeping?"

The Feathered Serpent's shadow said nothing, but Anu broke into a grin, the same innocent smile he had worn as a boy.

Back then he had still been a snake person, the sort who could be happy half a day over a single piece of cake, carrying a food box back and forth to Kurmis's dwelling every single day.

Neither of them had known yet how many stories still lay ahead of them.

"It is alright, Lord Kurmis!"

"I will take every lizard person, and we will live better lives somewhere else."

"I will lead them to find our true future, the place we truly belong."

With that, he lingered no longer. He walked straight out of the Feathered Serpent's Pyramid.

In the lizard people's village, Anu had seemed thoroughly listless ever since leaving the Feathered Serpent's Pyramid.

He had spent a very long time inside the pyramid talking with Kurmis, as though pouring out every last word buried deep within his heart.

But now that it was all spoken, his heart seemed to have been hollowed out along with it.

Nothing at all remained.

Anu did nothing but lie on the bed in his room, unwilling to go anywhere at all.

It seemed all he wanted was to sleep on and on like this, until the very end of the world.

Meanwhile every lizard person in the village, the children included, was hard at work, making ready to leave Ruhe Beast Island behind just as Anu had instructed.

The plan to leave had two parts, two separate preparations running side by side.

The first was to reach out to the Avel, who commanded the sea routes bearing their name. With their aid, the lizard people could travel to the New World, a continent holding many unknown lands where they might find some place to carve out a home of their own.

The second was to build a teleportation gate. The Door Nymph, Rosa, had once put a key into Anu's hands and told him that this gate led toward distant places, toward hope. In truth the gate had begun taking shape long before this. Anu had simply never imagined he would end up using it here.

Before long, the distant Avel sent word back through the Rainbow Tree. Their ship stood ready and waiting.

They had only just set out from the Avel Peninsula, though. It would be some time yet before they arrived.

After another stretch of time, the teleportation gate stood finished.

But not a shred of longing stirred in Anu's heart. He was like a lizard burrowed deep into the ground, curled into a tight ball, paying no mind to the world outside.

That day a lizard person came and knocked at his door from outside.

"Chief Anu, the teleportation gate is finished!"

Lying on the bed with his back to the door, Lizard Person Anu answered, "Oh!"

The lizard person outside spoke again, "But we can't get the teleportation gate open."

Anu had no choice but to get up. Without a thought for how his clothes looked, he pulled them on and carried the key out to the teleportation gate.

But how could Anu, with neither hope nor will left inside him, ever open this gate?

He fitted the key into the lock and turned it feebly for a good long while, but the gate did not so much as stir.

Anu seemed not to care either way. He turned around as though it hardly mattered, spreading his hands toward the gathered lizard people with an air of easy unconcern.

"Never mind, I still have the ship ready!"

"When the time comes we can sail out to sea instead."

Anu drifted lazily back the way he had come. Every lizard person there watched him go. In former days, he had been so high-spirited, always so full of energy and drive. Now he had been brought down to such a state that not one of them knew what to say.

At that moment one of the lizard people stepped forward, with something to tell Anu.

"Chief Anu, the Death Demon Plague has spread as far as Maya Province now. Do you want to go out and take a look?"

Anu's body went still for a moment. Those behind him could not see his face. They could only hear his voice.

"Take a look?"

"Like hell I will!"

"What business is it of ours!"

---

Limestone City, Outside the Volcano Forest

The Death Demon Plague had already reached this place. All through the city, people stricken with it could be seen wailing.

Those out on the streets hurried along, every one of them hugging the edge of the road, every one of them wrapped tight from head to toe, none daring to go near anyone else at all.

The merchant caravans that had once come in an endless stream were nowhere to be seen now.

"Faster!" A handful of low-status people, picked to haul away the dead, hurried through the streets with corpses and bore them out beyond the city.

"These few still have breath in them, carry them in." More fresh victims were dumped down onto the square.

"What do we do? There's no saving them." The physicians in the square were utterly powerless. A method using divine technique had lately been found that could ease the earliest symptoms, but its price was not one an ordinary person could afford.

"There's nothing for it. This is all we can do." The ones before them now were plainly far gone already. With no way to help them, the physicians could only say as much.

Before the temples, in the squares, along the streets, the sick and the dead lay everywhere.

To ordinary mortals, a disaster like this plague was a flood tearing an anthill apart.

There was nothing to be done but wait for the flood to pass.

No one knew quite when Lizard Person Anu had appeared atop the walls of Limestone City. He had said with his own mouth that he would not come to look. In the end, he had not been able to help himself.

He watched the scenes unfolding within the city, watched the snake people there, his face blank, his eyes hollow.

He had always thought of himself as a snake person. Even after becoming a lizard person, there were times he still forgot that he was no longer one.

But as time went on, he found it harder and harder to say just who he truly was.

"Was I Snake Person Anu?"

"Or Lizard Person Anu?"

"Or Beast Knight Anu?"

In that moment another shadow rose up behind him, all at once, a shadow no one else could see at all.

The shadow added one more line from behind him.

"Or Giant Dragon Anu!"

Somewhere along the way, as the changes within Lizard Person Anu himself grew greater and greater, his resistance to Black Dragon Anu had grown weaker and weaker.

And so Black Dragon Anu had begun slipping out now and again through the cracks within his own heart.

At times he would even appear directly before him.

The shadow behind him spoke to Lizard Person Anu, pointing a finger down at the scene below.

"Did you not always love meddling in other people's business? Why have you stopped now?"

It looked like two people carrying on a conversation. To any outside eye, it was only Lizard Person Anu talking to himself alone.

Lizard Person Anu gazed at Limestone City with indifferent eyes, watching the plague's tragedy unfold within it.

"I do not meddle anymore."

The shadow asked again, "Truly not anymore?"

Lizard Person Anu said, "Truly. Not anymore."

Black Dragon Anu burst into laughter, as though mocking Lizard Person Anu.

"The power of years changes you, changes me, changes everything."

"Only, you have changed far too fast."

"You, the self I once was. You are even more fragile than I ever imagined!"

Lizard Person Anu could not be bothered to answer his mockery.

"The totem pillar is already shattered. There is nothing left to manage."

After the divine artifact, the Ancestor Totem Pillar, had been shattered, Lizard Person Anu had gathered up its pieces. But reforging it was no small task to see done in a hurry. In any case, he had no heart left for it now.

Black Dragon Anu said again, "Is there not still one other way? You know it well enough!"

Indeed, without the totem pillar, Anu still had one other way.

Lizard Person Anu could accept Black Dragon Anu's memories and power, transforming himself completely.

But after that, he would no longer be Lizard Person Anu. He would be Black Dragon Anu.

He would no longer be a beast knight either, but a black dragon.

He would walk the black dragon's path once more, repeating the whole course of another life entirely.

Black Dragon Anu watched Lizard Person Anu, who said nothing for a long while.

"What, are you really so afraid of becoming me?"

Lizard Person Anu fell silent all at once.

He had realized that even as some part of him feared becoming Black Dragon Anu, in truth he was already, little by little, becoming him.

Once again he found himself remembering the words Black Dragon Anu had spoken before.

"The power of time, of passing years, will make you into me in the end."

"One day, you will cast aside your ideals, and forget justice too."

"And in the end, even that hatred carved into your very flesh, that grudge burned into your bones, will fade away, little by little, until it is forgotten."

He asked Black Dragon Anu, "Is it only the power of years?"

Black Dragon Anu answered, "Perhaps something is wrong with you yourself, too."

"In this real world, there is no room for your naive, beautiful dreams."

"Anu, it is time you embraced this cruel world, this imperfect world."

"Time to cast aside those childish notions of yours."

Black Dragon Anu turned the very words Lizard Person Anu had once spoken before King Morabi back upon him, to shake his heart once more.

"You've already tasted bitterness enough times over. Why haven't you woken up yet!"

"Even a foolish beast, a tooth beast, would have changed by now."

Lizard Person Anu climbed down from the city wall and made his way out through empty streets and alleys.

Out on the street, a young boy strained to haul a cart toward the square, a shoddy little spiked-ball magical beast floating at his shoulder.

He shouted toward the square, his voice raw and broken with anguish.

"Save her, please save her!"

"Save my mother, please, hurry!"

"Is anyone out there? Someone, please, come!"

But the city had fallen into total chaos by then. The sick lay everywhere. There was no time to tend to them all.

No one else dared come near to help him either. People fled from the sick as fast as they could.

It was then that the boy caught sight of Lizard Person Anu, standing in the alley.

He stopped short, as though he had recognized Anu from behind.

"Is that you, Lord Anu?"

A tremor went through Anu's body. He too knew at once who this was.

This was one of the very first apprentices to join the Harvest Temple of Limestone City, back when it had only just been founded, a beast knight apprentice to whom Anu himself had personally granted power.

With his extraordinary memory he could still recall the scene from back then, the boy gazing up at him with open worship.

"Lord Anu, they say you once followed King Osis and helped seal away the King of Ghouls?"

"Oh, Lord Anu, when will we ever grow as strong as you?"

Lizard Person Anu lowered his head and quickened his pace.

"You have the wrong person."

But the boy chased after him. "Don't you recognize me anymore?" he asked.

"Lord Anu?"

"They all say it was you who brought this plague upon the world. Is that true?"

Lizard Person Anu turned back.

"Do you believe them?"

The boy shook his head.

"I don't."

Lizard Person Anu laughed, the sound touched with feeling as well as bitterness.

"Thank you."

He was truly moved. At least someone was still willing to believe in him, even if it hardly mattered anymore.

Anu swept out a hand. A beam of light shot straight into the boy's mother's body.

"Take her to the temple in Maya City now, and find a divine servant of the second rank to perform the divine technique of purification. There is still time."

The boy threw himself to the ground in thanks, calling out loudly at Anu's retreating back.

"You once said it yourself."

"God will bring food to this world, magic potions and magical beasts. One day, the divine being will fly forth from beneath the volcano, and scatter harvest and magic across the mortal world."

"And we will go together with him, and drive away all the hunger and disaster in this world, and win true happiness."

"We will create, together with the divine being, the world of our ideals."

"I don't believe a person who could say words like that would ever bring disaster on this world."

The boy even struck the very same pose Anu himself had once struck, back when he had believed with his whole heart that he could build such a world together with the divine being, every motion of his lit as though from within.

But now, the listless, dispirited lizard person only murmured back, mocking.

"So that is what they call an ideal. A thing that never existed at all."

Anu made his way back toward the Volcano Forest, his spirit adrift.

The boy's words went on echoing in his ears without end, calling back memories of days gone by.

Those words he had once said over and over, those beliefs and vows he had once held to again and again, those people who had once followed blindly at his side.

Face after face rose up again before him, lizard people and snake people alike, among them his own deputy commander, who had died only recently.

As he walked on, the ache in Anu's heart grew heavier and heavier.

At the last, he stopped short in his tracks.

"Why..."

"Why did it come to this?"

"I only... I only wanted everyone to be well. I wanted no one to go hungry, wanted everyone to live in happiness and peace."

"Snake people and lizard people both."

"Was that so wrong?"

He stood there a long while, then turned and started back out of the forest, as though he meant to return to Limestone City once more.

At that moment, the shadow just behind his shoulder called out and stopped him.

"Hey!"

"What do you think you are doing?"

Lizard Person Anu turned partway to look at the other self standing there.

That self who did not truly exist.

He lifted his head slowly. The expression of former days came back across his face, along with the old light in his eyes.

He who had been so heavy with gloom, so utterly listless all this while, broke at last into a smile.

Those eyes shone with life once more, earnest and resolute.

He had come to some decision at last. A long breath escaped him, leaving him feeling as though he had come back to life once again.

He spoke to that other self.

"Just let me be that fool Anu one last time."

He raised a hand, held up one finger, then grinned wide.

"Just... one last time."

With that he strode swiftly toward the world outside, little by little breaking into a run.

As he ran, Anu's very form began to change, bit by bit.

A tremendous force twisted through his own source power, gathering his extraordinary strength up into itself. On his brow, that power drew together into a single magic crystal, within which a mimicry-shadow slowly etched itself into being.

He was walking now toward another extraordinary path entirely, toward a power beyond measure, a perfect template of mimicry that had taken countless years to come into its final shape.

All at once he shifted from Beast Knight Anu into Lizard Person Anu.

Then, right after, from Lizard Person Anu into the shape of Snake Person Anu.

Little by little he even took on the shape of his boyhood self.

Behind him, the shadow that had been speaking with him all along swelled up. Slowly, it took the form of a massive black dragon.

The black dragon said to Anu, "What is the point?"

"No one will thank you!"

"No one knows what effort you once made for them. No one knows what price you once paid, what you once sacrificed."

"Even those who know the truth will only laugh at you."

"Laugh at your foolishness, and call you an utter fool."

Now in the shape of a snake person, Anu ran across the earth. Even as he burst into unrestrained laughter, he went on speaking.

"If everyone in this world were that clever, what fun would there be left in it?"

"Because some people are hopeless fools, precisely because some people are that foolish, is that not what makes it interesting?"

Snake Person Anu twisted his tail and slid swiftly across the ground. It had been so very long since he last moved on his tail like this that he seemed to have all but forgotten what kind of person he had once been.

He burst out of the forest with a cheer to stand at last beneath the open sun.

Facing into the wind, he threw his arms wide.

The sunlight blazed bright. It seemed to shine straight down into the very bottom of Anu's heart.

"Blend into this world?"

"Sorry."

In that instant his expression changed.

With a look on his face that refused, utterly, to admit defeat, he shouted out across the hillside, as though howling at the whole world itself.

"I refuse to lose to this world. I refuse to let this world, or time itself, change me."

"Just let me stay right here, in this moment, forever and ever!"

His voice echoed through the valley, carrying out into the world.

Boy Snake Person Anu tilted his head back to look at the black dragon, watching him with open mockery, an expression of utter contempt and disdain on his face.

"Oh, Black Dragon Anu, you who let this world swallow you whole, you whom the years have changed."

He shook his head, drew a deep breath through his nose, then let it out again.

"You really are... pathetic!"

Black Dragon Anu stared at Boy Snake Person Anu, stunned.

For some reason he could not name, something inside him broke in that moment too, in this being who had lived through hundreds of thousands of years.

He stood frozen where he was, tears welling up without end from his dragon eyes.

He had long since lost the ability to feel sorrow. Yet his heart was filled with regret all the same.

In the end, the black dragon's shadow passed completely into Anu's own body.

Anu accepted every one of the black dragon's memories, merging with the dragon completely.

The beast knight's power was cast aside. A magic crystal formed within his mind as the black dragon's template etched itself into completion.

Anu's shape changed in a wild rush. Within the light he became a "perfect" black dragon, a fourth-rank black dragon.

Lizard Person Anu had died. All that remained now was Black Dragon Anu.

The black dragon, eyes closed, opened his mouth and spoke.

"Pathetic?"

"You called me pathetic?"

"Am I not you?"

But now, there was no other self left to answer him.

Black Dragon Anu opened his eyes and looked out over the world before turning toward the lizard people's village.

"At least, this world still has the lizard people."

"The lizard people are still here."

The black dragon beat his wings, stirring up a violent storm of dust.

The disturbance was great enough to be seen even from within Limestone City.

Everyone stared in shock as some colossal shape burst out of the distant forest.

A giant black dragon rose from within the Volcano Forest. It swept low over Limestone City before flying off into the distance.

Roar!

With that single roar, countless wisps of black mist surged up out of every plague victim throughout the whole city, rushing skyward, pouring into the black dragon's own body.

The young beast knight, who had only just found a big, brand-new cart and settled his mother upon it, saw it all unfold too.

He stared up at the sky in stunned disbelief, unable to understand where such a thing had come from.

But as he watched the black dragon sweep across the sky, the black marks on his mother's body began to fade. Impossibly, the plague simply lifted.

All at once he understood.

"Lord Anu!"

The young beast knight watched the black dragon circle several times above the city, then fly on toward the next.

The black dragon flew on across Suinhor, swallowing the endless plague into himself.

He was the plague now. He was death itself.

He was disaster given form.