Cursed Yoshi

 

Chapter 53 = Chaos

 

Disclaimer: Although all characters here are of my own invention, the original idea of Yoshies, Birdos, etcetera, are copyright of Nintendo, and I make no money from writing this.

 

Manny’s head was spinning. Blood was splashed across his hands, running down his chest, and smeared along his arms… he felt dizzy and disoriented, barely able to keep hold of his consciousness as he ran, struggling with his burden and finding it difficult to keep his eyes focused…

It had all started when he and Darkmark had set out again that morning, intent on reaching Sansata as quickly as they could. His mind still swarming with doubts and questions, impulses he had to suppress, Manny had tagged along as uncertainly as before, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade the entire time. When they had been ambushed once again by bandits just as they left the forest, Manny had seen such horrors that his mind had firmly been made up. Not enough of the three humans would be left to so much as identify them, and the forest would swallow up their remains like the sea swallows up a shipwreck. Soon after, Manny had drawn his sword and made an attempt on Darkmark’s life… to put an end to the supposed sixth saviour, to terminate a horrid being of evil, to remove a servant of Klashkna from the mortal world… but it had gone so horridly wrong.

As though he expected it coming, Darkmark had whipped out his flail and deftly dodged the slash of the sword aimed at the back of his neck. Rolling out of the way, he had sprung to his feet and attacked, striking steel as a valiant and furious Manny leapt forward too, hoping to keep Darkmark occupied enough to prevent his own gruesome end. Thrusting, parrying, countering, Manny had employed all of the skills he knew to try and maintain the upper hand, all the while dodging the swipe of Darkmark’s flail and fully aware of the buzz of psionic energy around the brown Yoshi’s hands, sufficient power to rend the flesh from his bones…

Manny tired eventually, amazed at the psionic-enhanced stamina of Darkmark, and took a hard flail swipe to his chest, gashing open a large wound in his chest. Following up on the strike, Darkmark swung many times for Manny and opened several more cuts, before kicking out hard enough to knock Manny off his feet and backwards by a foot or two. As Manny sat up, he saw the psionic energy flux and charge around Darkmark’s hands, and in desperation, grabbed his sword, remembering at this crucial point the basis of magic… that it required any long, solid object to focus the energy, and that he had seen Karin do it before. Calling out the only useful words that came to mind, he shouted the incantation as loudly as he could.

“Olasta Physica!”

It was as though everything had gone into slow motion. A shimmering half-shield took form around him, drawing from an ethereal force to focus its energy into the barrier. At the same time, Darkmark threw a bolt of psionic energy, and it hit the shield with considerable force, knocking Manny onto his back. The energy rebounded off the shield, now a bright green instead of purple, and struck Darkmark squarely on the chest, apparently a raw blast of magic.

What happened next was something that Manny never forgot. The psionic energy about Darkmark’s hands leapt away from his body and hovered in midair as purple balls of light, before fading to green, then suddenly flying back towards the stunned Darkmark. They struck his body with a bright flash of light, and he gave a terrible, agonised cry of pain before falling silent and collapsing to the floor with blood oozing out of his mouth at a considerable rate. Getting slowly to his feet, Manny took Darkmark’s pulse, and found he was barely clinging on to his life… but Manny’s next decision changed the fate of the world forever.

Instead of taking his sword and putting an end to Darkmark, Manny saw his old friend in the tears, the pain, and the hot, red blood running out from Darkmark’s mouth. His partially open, red-outlined eyes so clearly showed the pain he had felt that Manny didn’t want to cause even more, to hurt someone who needed help…

He couldn’t bring himself to kill Darkmark, still believing him to be Marcus at heart, and rolled him over onto his back, before picking him up and sprinting onwards, intent only on finding a medic for both him and the Yoshi that could only be his friend…

 

“Uh… ugh… w-where am I…”

Darkmark slowly raised himself up from the cold, stone floor. How was it that Manny had beaten him? He had used magic… not hard to learn, but still, how could a complete novice have defeated someone as adept at psionics as him? And that particular spell was not supposed to guard against the ethereal, only the physical…

He suspected, though, that it was not Manny who was to blame, but the magic itself. It had interfered with his psionic energy, changing it to magic with devastating consequences. He knew he was not dead, for he was neither in the afterlife nor the underworld, but once more in the strange plane of existence where the gods resided…

Unlike his previous visits, the strange plane was completely illuminated this time. He was standing on a small section of stone about twelve feet in each direction, and beyond that was a void…

It was something that Darkmark was not prepared for. Chaos itself, manifested into the most bizarre, surreal shapes and forms, colours and intensities, was twisting, breaking, exploding, reforming, and swirling into the distance no matter where he looked. It went by so fast that he could not pick out any details, but the mere sight of it chilled him to the bone and made him feel infinitesimally small…

“That is what there was before the Universe was created.” A voice said, coming from all around him. “Nothing but Chaos, a force almost as great as the gods themselves, if not greater. What there is beyond Chaos is not known, but it is where I came from with my sword, though I remember nothing of it…”

In a flash of light, all eight of the Octotheist Deities appeared and surrounded him in a circle, trapping him between them, not that he had anywhere to run. Eirsir continued, “This panel you are standing on… do you think it really exists? It is but an illusion we used to help your mind to cope…”

The stone disappeared, and Darkmark felt himself floating. The feeling of floating combined with the awesome vision of chaos began to positively frighten him, and his mind began to almost shout in protest at what it was seeing, something that could not possibly be true…

Eirsir’s voice was cold, unlike the amiable tone he had used previously. “Do you prefer this to the world you inhabit? Is this better than reality? Are no true dimensions better than four? If Klashkna has his way, this is what all will be reduced to!”

Darkmark could not answer, such was the fear and panic that flowed through him. Turning around, he could see the other six deities watching him, as well as Klashkna, though he appeared to be behind a barrier of some kind that stifled any sound he was making.

“We know you have suffered greatly, and we know that you wish to pay back the humans for what they have done.” Sorsoy called out. “But to take the path of evil is to take the path of destruction! If you yourself are not completely destroyed, then the universe and all its contents will be, reduced back to the chaos from whence they came!”

“It is not too late to turn back and change your ways, to become the next saviour and fulfil your destiny…” Came the voice of Karshina.

“If you wish to see the humans destroyed, you must fulfil the prophecy and allow Sévar to return by producing offspring to carry on your bloodline. Without Sévar, nothing you achieve will be enough to wipe out the humans!” Vizorvy said, his voice ringing through Darkmark’s head.

“Stop! Enough!” Darkmark shouted, holding his hands to his head just as Tivaro began to speak. His deep voice was beginning to fade back into the higher-pitched voice of Marcus as he cried, “I cannot take this anymore, I cannot! I never wanted to be the saviour, I never wanted to fulfil any destiny or prophecy. All I wanted was to be happy, to live a life without pain and suffering! And pain and suffering was all that I got! I wanted my revenge, I wanted to pay back what those humans did to me, to my family, to my friends, to everyone I ever cared for…”

“And it is he who is to blame!” Laryshka called out, pointing to Klashkna. “You are but his pawn! Do you see? He has won; he caused you such pain that you went to his side in an attempt to gain power. But if it wasn’t for him, you would never have felt that pain! By taking sides with evil, you are submitting yourself to the one who has caused you all your hurt!”

“Stop!” Darkmark shouted again, taking a small knife from his saddlebags and placing it against his throat. “I have had enough. It is not worth living to be a saviour or not, to live with the pain I have suffered. To continue to live bearing the burden of all that I have seen and felt is too much…”

With that, Darkmark dragged the knife across his throat, but Darkmark felt no pain or any blood coming from the wound. “You cannot die if you do not exist…” Tivaro murmured. “But if that is what you wish to do, let us show you what it will be like…”

They disappeared again, leaving Darkmark alone in the void of chaos. A terrifying noise began to fill the void, the sound of chaos, a strange, sanity-breaking cacophony that made Darkmark’s body twitch and shudder. He felt himself begin to fall, faster and faster, flying through the void with no end in sight, the powerful discord making his head pound, slowly losing all conscious thought…

 

Just as Manny reached the city and found himself inside of it, he felt his strength weakening, fading away like a flash of light. Desperate, he headed for the first large building he saw – a Yoshian church – with all of his remaining, fast-disappearing energy.

Before he could get there, though, Darkmark suddenly coughed and vomited blood, before going limp again in Manny’s arms. The blue Yoshi felt a greater sense of urgency, but could not run any faster through the mostly empty streets, his own injuries sapping at his stamina…

Ramming his back into the doors of the church, the flung them open with his last ounce of strength, before collapsing onto the floor and feeling Darkmark slip from his clutches. He heard many footsteps approaching, and looked with blurred vision to see Yoshies running toward them, some of them wearing the black scarves of the clergy, a comforting sight that made Manny relax before he lapsed into unconsciousness…

 

To be continued…