Ylene

Far- far away from the eyes of mortals, deep inside the abyss of uncharted space, a planet sized metal cube lazily orbited around a white dwarf star.

The pale light illuminated the cracks and crevices that littered the cube’s surface. Each ‘blemish’ glowed bright red; the work of an incalculable number of runes designed to absorb the heat from the star and transform it into energy capable of powering the cube’s life-support system.

Those contained here rarely needed sustenance; and any food they could provide would be heavily irradiated regardless, so it was a moot point.

Deep inside the bowels of the cube, far away from the harsh temperatures of the surface, a large red skinned woman in a silver suit walked confidently down a narrow hallway. Her shimmering blue hair danced through the space around her, floating as if she were under water.

Those unlucky enough to cross her path, were quick to rectify that mistake and scurry out of her way. They would rather take the long way to their destination than cross paths with her on her best days. And if the scowl on her beautiful face was any indicator, today was not a good day.

This woman’s name was Ylene, and she was known around the silver city as the right-hand of the judges. And in a place widely regarded as the central hub of the gods and their ascended champions, being seen as the right hand of the defacto rulers was kind of a big deal.

She’d loyally served as their adjudicator for the better part of the last ten thousand years, and she would happily serve ten thousand more. Her ‘talent’ for stripping haughty gods of their divine power made her well suited to this task.

Which is probably why she enjoyed it so much.

As they say, if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in eternity.

As an adjudicator, Ylene was used to people fearing her. She didn’t quite understand why, after all- if you followed the laws, then she would have no reason to ever harm you. She saved her fangs for the criminals, and only for the criminals. But lately she’d been stationed here, inside the Sylvara holding facility- or as it’d been nicknamed: Purgatory.

Every day she was responsible for meeting with hundreds of minor God’s who were awaiting the date of their trial.

For some reason, those newly risen gods were always the rowdiest.

Personally, Ylene thought there was something wrong with this new generation of gods. Most of them lacked the respect necessary to navigate the intense political waters of the silver city and ended dying far earlier than they were supposed to.

She thought about the pantheon massacre from a while back. Over a dozen pantheons fled the silver city in a single twenty-four-hour period, and no one knew why- Though it was assumed they pissed off someone they shouldn’t and were driven from their homes.

A not uncommon outcome, considering the tempers of some of the old monsters.

The fact that so many ‘new’ gods ended up here was the main reason for why, when this name came across her desk just before she left her office the night before, Ylene hadn’t thought much of it.

That is, until she began reading through the file.

This particular God had a rap sheet two- maybe even three times longer than someone thousands of times his age.

Each file was enchanted to grow as more charges came in, and this file was, quite literally, growing by the second.

Pretty soon, Ylene would need to bring in a team of round-the-clock interns just to chronicle the damn thing in time for the trial.

She slammed the file shut and sighed, drawing it out for several seconds.

She would have to meet with the God, which was sadly unavoidable. The judges wanted all inmates to be aware of every step in their individual investigations.

Especially when they were found guilty.

This usually meant sending someone like her to have a talk with them and explain everything.

Though, Ylene thought it slightly strange that on the final verdict- which she also received last night- the judges used a name she was quite familiar with.

Orochi- Also known as Demon Serpent Orochi- was something of a living legend. Her mother even used to tell her tales of him to keep her from wandering at night.

“Be good or the demon serpent will get you.” Her mother would say in an overly exaggerated “monster’s” voice.

Ylene realized that thinking of her mother had brought a smile to her face, and she quickly dropped it. She confessed to wondering more than once why, if his file was labeled “Torga”, was the name on the final verdict that of the living nightmare; Orochi?

But she ultimately dismissed this thought. After all, the judges would not make such a mistake. Back on the subject at hand. After reading only the first thousand pages of his file, Ylene only saw one outcome befitting the Dark God.

If this Torga fellow was lucky, he might be exiled instead of executed. But from the sheer number of charges against him, even that was unlikely.

No, Ylene only saw erasure in Torga’s future.

She arrived at cell number 52-8B74H and slid her employee identification card beneath the sensor just outside the door. After a brief series of chimes and beeps, there was a whoosh of air as the vacuum sealed room flooded with artificial, but breathable, oxygen.

Ylene stepped fully into the pitch-black cell, only stopping to pull the door shut behind her. She was confident in her ability to handle a God, no matter how powerful he seemed on paper.

She gazed into the darkness, absolutely certain in her ability to take charge of the situation.

Then a pair of orange eyes opened from just beyond the edge of the light filtering in through the door; they glowed so brightly that Ylene had to squint to maintain eye contact. The brightness of the light was only offset by the all-consuming darkness of the slitted pupil at the center of them.

She made her way to a desk she knew to be near the door and plopped the file on top of it. This was done for two reasons: To give her time to prepare her opening statement, and because she really didn’t like the hungry look in those eyes.

Torga

I groggily opened my eyes at the sound of the door opening. “A perfectly good dream- ruined.” I grumbled to myself.

While dreaming, I could watch over my loving wife Reina- Though after so long apart, my ability to remember certain details were becoming spotty at best. What used to be a crystal-clear image and sound, now looked as if I was looking through a sheet of plastic with cotton in my ears.

It was annoying, but I put up with it because it was the only thing I had.

Of course, it didn’t help that I wasn’t sleeping as much as I used to, so the times when I could see her were getting fewer and farther between.

It was hard enough as it was to get any sleep in this cramped cell. I had to stay shifted into my human form and could only lay curled up on the floor.

Though it wasn’t that bad, the only furniture present in the room was a wooden table near the door. As long as I avoided that, I could sleep for long periods of time without worrying about anything.

My human form wasn’t the form I was most comfortable in, but it was one of the more useful ones. And with how dark my cell was, unless the woman had a night vision ability, I highly doubted she could see what I looked like anyway.

Probably for the best. Whether her intentions were good or bad, is always better to have at least one secret kept to yourself.

The sound of muffled sobbing wormed its way into my ears, and I rolled my eyes.

It was extremely grating that my neighbors were always screaming and begging for a mercy they would never receive.

While I’m on the subject of annoyances; the guards, when they deigned to grace me with their presence, were overly cocky and liked to run their mouths at all hours; and now I have to deal with visitors too?

What’s the world coming to when a snake can’t be left to sleep in peace?

“Your name is Torga, right?” The woman asked, drawing out the ‘or’ part of my name far longer than was necessary- or proper.

She hadn’t looked at me since that first moment when she walked through the door, and I had a decent idea why.

The guards would whisper about how ‘hungry’ I looked, and I suppose that was true. I was hungry, just not for anything they could provide. For months on end, I could see and hear my wife- but I could not touch her, could not hold her… Could not tell her I loved her.

I was hungry, but more importantly, I was angry.

The judges promised me I would only being here for a month or two, just long enough for them to complete their ‘investigation’ into Orochi. A month or two ended a long time ago.

Maybe the meant a month outside the time dilation surrounding the lock-up? If so, how many more years would I have to wait?

Realizing that the woman was still waiting for my answer, I spoke for what was probably the first time in weeks. “I haven’t seen you before.” My voice came out lower than I’d intended, no doubt a side effect of my annoyance.

“Answer the question. Is your name Torga or isn’t it?” The woman replied in a bristly tone.

“Why do you ask a question you already know the answer to?” I asked, more out of annoyance than curiosity. They didn’t make mistakes, if the woman was here, it was because she was meant to be here.

“Why won’t you answer a direct question?” She replied, speaking louder this time to emphasize her growing annoyance. She finally stopped fiddling with the papers she’d brought with her and turned to face me.

“Because you annoy me, but don’t take it personally. Most of you do.” I was growing tired of this already. I closed my eyes and laid my head back down.

Maybe if I ignored her, she would go away?

“I annoy you, huh?” She let out a low laugh. Suddenly, the room thrummed with power and a crystalline aura flowed freely from her body. “Considering that I am the one who decides whether or not you leave this place alive, I would suggest that you retract that statement.”

“No.” I called on my power for the first time in months, and it sprang into action like an overeager puppy. My aura was gluttony personified. It consumed everything, even the light it touched; even to my eyes, my aura looked like a gaseous abyss.

The moment it came into contact with her aura, her aura just vanished. It didn’t clash, or even try to resist. It just ceased to be. My aura devoured her aura within moments and then went looking for something a little more… substantial to devour.

The sound of something falling over rang in my ears and I frowned.

Though I would love nothing more than to let it loose, I made a promise that I would keep my head down until the judges fulfilled their end of the bargain. So, despite every fiber of my being telling me to consume her everything, I withdrew my aura and opened a single eye to look at her.

Her eyes were wide, and she was using the table to hold herself up. Apparently she had been the thing to fall, and even now was struggling to return to her feet.

“H-How? You’re not supposed to be able to use your powers.” To her credit, the woman didn’t scream. Though that was most likely out of a sense of professionalism, rather than a lack of fear.

And the truth was, I could use my power for the same reason I could eat hers.

My aura wasn’t a power, it was who I am. And I’d eaten the sigil’s responsible for containing my power within my first few days in the cell.

But I had no intention of telling her that.

“How about this; why don’t you tell me why you’re here then get out so I can go back to sleep.”

Her jaw muscles clenched, and for a moment I wondered if she would attack. She grabbed the papers off the table and began flipping through them.

“Counts of interfering with mortals; Twelve thousand six hundred and ninety. Counts of revealing your divine form to mortals; eighteen hundred and seventy-two. Counts of prematurely ending a mortal’s life; eighty million, seven hundred and fifty-two thousand, four hundred and one. Counts of murder in the first degree; one hundred and fifty-seven million, nine hundred and sixty-eight thousand, one hundred and seventy-seven. Counts of destruction of property; one hundred and twelve thousand. Counts of terrorism; seventeen.”

She slammed the papers down on the table while staring directly into my eyes. “And those are just our preliminary charges. Would you like to know all of your misdemeanors? Let’s get one thing straight here, Torga. I’m in charge. If I tell you to kiss my boot, you kiss them both. If I tell you to dance, then you dance until this place collapses around you. And if I ask you a question, then you better answer it.”

“No.”

The woman slowly blinked her eyes.

“What did you say?”

“No.”

“What you mean ‘no?’ Do not understand how serious this situation is? With a file like this, you’d be lucky to be exiled. You understand that, right? Erasure is the likely outcome unless you cooperate.”

“Look, lady. I don’t know about any of that, I’m just waiting on the judges to finish their investigation so I can leave.”

“Leave?” Whether it was intended or not, the woman let out a laugh. “You’re not leaving. I’m here, because the judges sent me here. They found you guilty, and I am here to decide your punishment.”

That got my attention. I opened my other eye and lifted my head, ignoring how the woman took a tentative step towards the door, and extended my neck so I could read some of the papers on the table.

For adjudicators eyes only.

Subject

Name: Orochi

Race: Demon Serpent

Classification: Dark God

Aliases: The Devourer, Torga, World Eater, Albert Robertson

Possible fate lines: Herald of Ragnarök, Father, The Lone Survivor, Hero’s Husband.

Conclusion

We, the judges of Yggdrasil, do hereby find the defendant Orochi- guilty of all charges. His punishment is to be carried out in no fewer than twenty days, and no later than a hundred and eighty days.

May the defendant find peace in eternity, and forgiveness for his crimes in his next life- wherever that may be.

I looked from the papers to the woman. “Is this a joke?

“No, it’s not a joke. I was sent here to decide your punishment.”

“They spoke to you personally?”

“No one sees the judges in person. They are far too busy; it came in on a secure branch message.”

“Is it possible it was a fake?”

The woman casually snorting in response was enough of an answer.

“I see…” I trailed off as I thought over everything that had happened.

The judges promised me. They swore that they would investigate this thoroughly, and then they would release me. That was the terms for my surrender, and the entire reason I remained here instead of by Reina’s side. If they’d planned to betray me from the beginning… The woman’s body evaporated with not a scrap of cloth remaining, or hair follicle surviving.

“I guess it’s time I paid the judges a visit and see what this is really about.” I stepped out of my dark cell and into the light of the hallway. Though, I felt no temperature change, it was nice to have light on my scales again.

I turned my head to the left and saw a pair of guards leaning against the wall, approximately a hundred feet from me. One was a burly stone man around my height, and the other was some kind of beast man; it was difficult to tell exactly what kind, but he had a scaly gray tail, and fuzzy black ears on top of his head. He was twitchy, like he was uncomfortable in his own skin and was just aching to be anywhere but here. Even now, he fiddled with the rifle dangling at his side, via a strap around his shoulders.

I smiled at the sight of him.

I knew he patrolled this area of the prison; I’d seen him walking around often enough, certainly helped that every time he passed by my cell he would smirk at me.

The little rat that shot the devourer in the face and lived to tell the tale; What a wonderful story to tell the children of Yggdrasil. He would be such a good role model, shooting bound prisoners from his high ground- both morally and physically. And then spending the next month’s antagonizing him at every turn, safe in the knowledge that he could not retaliate. Judging by the fact that neither of them were currently panicking or calling for backup, it was safe to assume they hadn’t noticed me. Probably thought it was just the adjudicator leaving the cell, after deciding my fate.

I folded the index finger on my right hand and popped the knuckle loudly and watched in mild amusement as the two guards reacted to the sound and finally looked in my direction. I took a step forward, wrapped my mana around myself, and teleported to a spot directly in front of them. They reacted to my sudden appearance as I thought they would: surprise, agitation, and more than a little fear.

"Hello fellas. What a coincidence that we should run into each other, eh?

"He knows." The rat squeaked. His began to twitch rapidly and I imagined if they had any say in the matter, they would've leapt off his head and made a run for it. "He knows! We have to tell the warden-" Before he could finish speaking, I grabbed their faces; my palm totally covering their mouths to prevent any sound from escaping and shoved them into the wall. Both men scrambled to get free. They clawed, and grabbed, and even kicked to break my hold- But once a snake has you in its grasp, you don’t escape; You can struggle, and you can fight. However, in the end the only thing you can really do is wait to be eaten.

"Now, pray tell me. What do I know, hmm?" I asked as non-threateningly as I could, but that seemed to only make them fight harder to get away.

My eyes locked onto the beast man’s, even as my aura seeped out of my palm- flowing down the stone man’s gullet. I stared at the beastman silently as his friend screamed into my palm for exactly two seconds, for that was how long it took my aura to devour him from the inside out, leaving nothing but his uniform to fall to the ground. The rock man probably didn’t feel any pain, even if he did scream. My aura devours so totally that even his atoms are consumed, and since it happened so quickly, the most he would’ve felt was some numbness as part of him just disappeared. Unless I purposefully slowed down the rate at which my aura devoured something, that’s how most things died. Usually painlessly, which is why I didn’t do the same to the beastman.

At the sound of his friends death scream, the beast man’s eyes rolled up as he fainted standing up. I allowed him to fall unceremoniously to the side and watched as he dropped like a rock. A rather loud clunk reached my ears as his head bounced off a pipe I hadn’t noticed.

I picked up the stone man’s shirt and held it against my body to check the fit.

"Too big." I grumbled sourly and tossed the shirt aside.

I didn’t bother with stone man’s boots, but I did pick up his rifle. While I didn’t need it, it wasn't worth it to use my aura all the time, each time I used it there were... Unpleasant side effects tied to my consumption. Which was ultimately why I avoided eating as much as possible.

I heard the beastman groan as consciousness returned to him, and quickly brought the rifle to bare. The first thing he saw after opening his eyes was the barrel of his friend’s rifle pointed directly at his left eye. I pulled the trigger- and nothing happened. The gun merely clicked once, then started to spark wildly. “Huh, this is usually when a hole is supposed to opening your head.” Though I was joking, and hadn't bothered aiming directly at his head, I was not smiling. Instead, I’d merely tilted my head to the side and continued to stare at him. “Mind explaining why you’re not dead yet?”

The beastman smirked at me, and I suddenly didn’t care why the rifle didn’t work.

“You do remember how your friend died, right? I don’t need this,” I shook the rifle in his face. “To kill you. Unless you prefer to be killed the other way? What do you say, tell me why the rifle doesn’t work, and what "he knows" is supposed to mean- and then get shot, dying relatively painlessly, or be agonizingly ripped apart molecule by molecule- starting from your feet. Which will it be, Bud?”

The beast man’s eyes widened comically as his options were laid out before him. He swallowed the first and began to speak. “They’re uh… The mag-rifles are enchanted to only work with the magical frequency of the person they’re bonded to.” He replied in a nasally voice.

“So, it’s useless to me?” I asked while inspecting the rifle for third time. Now that I was taking another look at, I could see the sigil’s used in the various enchantments. I couldn’t do anything about it, because I didn’t know which sigil did what, so erasing them could turn this handy tool into a paperweight in the blink of an eye.

The beastman looked as if he didn’t want to answer, and I quickly realized why. If I couldn’t shoot the gun, then there was only one other way I could kill him.

“Don’t worry, you answered my question. I’m not going to go back on my word.”

“R-Really?”

“Absolutely, I’m a snake of my word.” I tossed the rifle aside and squatted to look him in the eye. "And the other thing?"

"Erm... Well... they told us not to talk about it near you. Guess I can see why." He laughed nervously.

I didn't so much as smile while I awaited the answer to my question.

"Your, uh... Your wife is in a hospital in the silver ci-" My fist tightened around his throat, cutting him off.

"Why wasn't I told?" I hissed.

"I-I don't know!" He choked. Before he could react, I grabbed the back of his head and held him in place while I grabbed his face with the other. In the blink of an eye, I twisted his head around 180 degrees and allowed him to collapse on the spot.

I roared in anger and put my fist through the enchanted wall. My voice and the sound of metal crunching echoed throughout the halls; I could hear several voices shouting from an adjacent hallway, and I knew that my time was running out. I still didn’t know why Orochi had chosen me. Out of all of the established gods across Yggdrasil, Orochi had decided to throw the greatest of all hail marys and bring in someone entirely unrelated. Even going as far as to have me reincarnated. My entire life on Yggdrasil, was the direct consequence of Orochi’s actions. And for what, so he would have someone to blame his crimes on?

I didn’t buy it. There were plenty of other scapegoats he could’ve chosen, and why wait so long to start? He clearly had the resources to confuse even the judges; the very authorities in charge of keeping Yggdrasill running. So, the chance of him being unable to find someone to blame was minuscule at best. No, he waited for me specifically.

I focused for just a moment on directing my aura. It was actually harder to stop it from eating, then it was to spur it into action. So, getting it to target something specific took only a thought. My aura rushed forth and slammed into the wall like a wave of dark water. It faced some resistance from the insane number of enchantments built into the very foundation of the prison; a few moments after I’d begun, my aura had stripped the enchantment of its power and began working on the wall.

The sound of approaching footsteps was growing louder by the second, leaving me with no choice but to redouble my efforts. A few moments later, the wall also gave way and my aura poured forth like a tidal wave- devouring support and foundation as it carved a path forward. It would continue to advance until it hit something more powerful than I was, or I told it to stop.

I saw no reason for either to happen.

Using a relatively simple spell, I lifted myself into the air and hovered through the hole I’d just created. There was nothing but empty space beyond the wall, and for the first time in months I could see where I truly was.

The gravity of the nearby white dwarf star tugged at the edges of my senses, and I took a moment to revel in the warmth of unfiltered light.

Something moving at the edge of my vision caught my attention, and I whipped my head around to look at it. There was a small galleon heading away from the prison, no doubt controlled by a small army of armed guards.

I grinned at the sight.

I arched my back a second before diving after the ship, leaving the chaotic prison in my wake.

There were so many things I didn’t know… But the one thing I did know, was the judges better have a damn good reason for this.