After running for a little while I noticed that the trees became denser and denser. I could barely see the path a few meters in front of me. I realized that I had should’ve stopped a ways back and headed back to the academy.

I turned around and proceeded to run back to the campus. I ran for around 5 minutes before a fell into a hole not there before.

I was completely shocked for I had not seen a hole of any sort on the way in. As I fell, I realized that this hole that seemingly appeared from nowhere was far, far deeper than I ever imagined.

I thought that I would most certainly die if a hit any solid ground, but in the moment I remembered that I had wings. I tried to flap them, but to my dismay, they remained completely still as a fell to the ground.

I saw something glisten on the ground and within seconds I hit the ground. Or so I thought. The “ground” was in fact water. Luckily for me the water was quite rough so I did not die upon contact. I would die if I drowned and with no ground in sight that was a very likely possibility.

I was trying to keep calm but it was quite hard to do as I sat there with no escape. Then in the that darkness surrounded me, a bright flash appeared on one part of the hole. It looked as if it was blocked by something so swam in that direction. It turns out the light came from behind a wall situated on a platform. The platform was made of a hard rock that, even amidst all the water, remained completely dry.

I then lifted myself up. It was quite difficult because it seemed by already heavy wings retained some water. I managed to do it after some tries though. As soon as I was completely out of the water I immediately sat down. Spending time in the water while trying to keep myself afloat took quite a toll on my body. The light was no longer there, so I sat there shivering in silence until the light once again appeared from the wall I sat against. Accompanying the light was the soft muttering of voices. Words to low to understand.

I got up and walked toward the light. I turned the corner to see a two people a distance away. It occurred to me that if I could hear their voices over here that they must be talking quite loudly. I also could barely make out the object which light was emanating from.

It was spherical in shape, but aside from that I could not make out anything. The sphere had varying degrees of light intensity, occasionally bright occasionally dim.

The people, at least from what I made out, were seated at a small table talking. I could not see any distinguishing features from the distance I was at, but it seemed that one was female and the other male. The female seemed to be wearing a long robe, dark in color. The male similarly dressed except in pants and shirt.

I was going to ask them for help and as I took one step towards the people, I felt an enormous pressure ascend on my body. My entire being seemed to be compressed under this pressure to the point that I could barely move. My body was entirely on the ground and I even had trouble lifting my head. I only found enough strength to say one word.

“Help.” I could barely hear myself say it, but the people at the table immediately turned around to see me on the ground. They got up and slowly walked to my defenceless body lying on the ground.

They soon were right in front of me and I could only see their feet because my head would not look up.

“How did this little cockroach get in here?” The woman spoke as the words softly rolled off her tongue. For some reason when she said those words the pressure seemed to react to them. It increased my a lot.

“Truly quite strange. Let’s see how long it lasts against the pressure. I doubt the weakling will last 5 minutes before he is passed out cold.” The man said with a sneer. They obviously thought themselves above me at the time, as shown by referring to me as an it.

“5 minutes. You give it too much credit. 2 minutes, tops.” The woman said, cackling. At this point I had gathered enough strength to say another word. The effort this took me was tremendous and after I said this I was in a terrible amount of pain.

“W-who?”

“It seems the cockroach can still speak. It does need to learn some manners though.” The man said with a small laugh. “Well since he’s going to die anyway, might as well tell him. It’ll be funny to see his reaction.”

The woman gave a grunt of agreement to the man’s words.

“Cockroach, you really should learn to respect those better than you. But I suppose you mortals are stupid enough not to even know that we are the gods of your puny little realms.”

The gods. What? This made no sense. Why do they exist? Why are they here? Did that mean I was wrong about there not being any gods. How did I know they weren’t lying to me? That’s right they had to be lying.

“Before you think that we’re lying,” she said disrupting my train of thought, “the pressure you feel pulling against your body is mana that does not fit in our bodies. Meaning that we can control it any way we wish. These puny mortal bodies are only temporary so we can only use a fraction of our true power. I do wonder why that one made you all so weak.”

At the time I was curious as to why gods would be near the academy and on this continent. It didn’t make any sense. They were beings of supreme power, yet they were here. I felt like I was missing a vital clue as to the reason and much later, much, much later, would I finally learn what the final piece to the puzzle was.

“You must be stunned beyond belief, little cockroach, and you are probably wondering why we, of all beings, would come to your puny little realm. Well, don’t think I’m going to tell you.” The woman said with a cackle. “Make sure you don’t die soon, that would be terrible.”

The pressure then increased causing me to be in even more pain. I was going to try to see if I could use some of my magic to resist the mana in the air, but the moment I tried to do that, the man started to cackle along with the woman.

“The little cockroach wants to try resisting us. Gods. It’s even stupider than I thought.” The woman said. It was hard to understand her because her laugh was getting in the way.

“I have a wonderful. I just realized that we can’t hear the cockroach scream. Why don’t we remove all pressure from his vocal cords? He should be able to sing us a lovely little song.” She said, continuing.

“You’re right. What a wonderful idea.” The man said in response. As soon as he said that the pressure around my body increased everywhere except my throat. I began to gasp for air and while I did so, they continued to cackle.

“I…. will…. kill….you....both.” I could only speak in between. My gasps for air. At that point, I didn’t really care that they were gods, I just hated the way that they treated me. How they referred to mortals as weak. I hated both of them.

“The little cockroach can still speak. What a surprise. Here I thought you would only be able to scream for mercy and forgiveness for intruding.” The woman said.

“Maybe he needs some encouragement.” The man suggested.

“Whatever do you mean?” The woman said, playing ignorant.

The man simply chuckled and said, “Let’s go into his head and cause damage. Lots and lots of damage.”

“Of course. This mortal won’t be able to resist even one of our advances.” The woman said.

Then one of the two “gods” placed their hand on top of my head and within a few seconds a searing pain felt like it was splitting open my skull. This pain seemed to go on for a few minutes before they took their hand off of my head.

“What’s wrong, Amon?” The woman said in a strange voice.

“Hahaha. That’s impossible. That can’t be. No, no, no, no, no.” Judging from Amon’s feet, he was staggering.

“What’s wrong? Did the little cockroach scare you?” The note of panic high in her voice.

“It should be in hell. Why is it here?” Amon continued to ramble on and on

“Who is it?” The woman asked, the panic was still high in her voice.

“Nyx, we have to kill it now. Before it gets too strong. It's still weak.” Amon was beginning to sound like a madman. Amon then started laughing. The pressure from the air began to weaken, but only because it was gathering in the palm of his hand.

The magic was a light gold color with streaks of silver running throughout it. Nyx also gathered her magic together. Nyx than sent the ball of magic hurtling towards Amon.

The magic formed a prison containing Amon in addition to dispersing the magic he was gathering.

“Nyx, we need to kill it now, before it gets too strong. It’s going to kill all of us. All of us.” Amon was huddled in one of the corners of the prison muttering something to himself.

Nyx quickly turned to me and but her hand against my throat. She tightened her grip and lifted from the ground. Her eyes were a deep black, almost the same color as her skin.

“What did you do to him?” She said. Glimpses of white could be seen each time she moved her mouth.

“N-n-not-nothing.” I could barely speak. She was so strong.

“Then why is he acting like this.” She said looking into my eyes. “So you’re saying that Amon, who was acting fine before you touched him, just happened to become like this after he looked in your head. Tell me the truth or I will force it out of you, cockroach.”

“I do-don’t k-know.” I said, struggling to breath.

“You don’t know? You don’t know!!!” She said loudly before throwing me towards a nearby wall. As soon as I touched the wall, I crumpled down to the floor with soul shattering pain. It felt like she had broken several of my bones.

I could see the anger on her face, in her voice. It was intense. Little wisps of black began to surround her. Circling her.

“Do not lie to me, angel. I will force it out of you even if it is the last thing a do with this pathetic body.”

She then walked toward my figure huddled over by the wall and touched my forehead with a long, dark finger.

“Impetro in notitia.” After she said that one of the black wisps circling her began to travel down her arm and into the exact place her finger was located at. Her face was the perfect example of intense concentration, her eyes squinted, her mouth at a downward point.

It didn’t hurt at first, but within several seconds, my mind has what seemed to be a worm crawling throughout it. The pain came from the worm moving and slithering around in the inside of my brain. I wanted to scream out and cry, but I knew that if I did that she would receive a sense of satisfaction from it.

The pain hurt a lot a first and only got worse from there on. It felt like the worm was growing and I could feel it searching throughout my head. I tried resisting, but that intensified the pain by twofold. I could only bite my lip and hope no sound could escape from my lips.

The pain continued to grow and it got to a point where I thought I was going to pass out. My teeth had cut through my lip and was now spilling blood into my mouth.

Nyx then muttered something under her breath and the black worm-like thing was crawling back up her arm. This worm then traveled to her head and disappeared. She let out a small gasp before the fear made her eyes grow large. She quickly backed away, stumbling over her feet.

“That can’t be. It should be gone.” I could see her eyes glisten as the tears welled up and her breath grew ragged. “It should be in HELL!!!!”

She practically screamed the last sentence.

“No, no, no. It followed me. It’s going to kill me,” I could still see the fear in her eyes has she continued to stumble. A grin appeared on her face as the tears came rolling down her cheeks. “But not if I kill it first.”

I barely heard her say those words, yet my throat tightened up and my heartbeat grew faster.

She then stopped all movement and raised her hand out in front of her. The magi began to gather in the center of her palm. It had streaks of gold and blue and red an black. Her lips moved at an astounding rate, yet the smile I saw before was still there. Her eyes were still wide. The tears still falling, but the power gathering around her was strong. Strong enough to dread what was going to happen to me. I could barely move.

She continued to gather the magic but I saw drops of blood leaking from her mouth. She continually grew paler and paler. Her original ebony skin tone and a dark brown. Her lips lost color as well.

My guess was that the body could not withstand the god’s presence anymore and was beginning to fail. I did feel that sh would be able to last this one more spell as her smile grew larger and her mouth moved at a slower pace.

Her mouth then stopped all movement and she began to speak.

“I can kill it before this wretched body is done. Its vessel is so weak. This should kill both it and him. Slowly and painfully. That’s right slowly and painfully.” Her eyes now contained a hint of insanity alongside the fear and the blood continued to run out of her mouth.

She laughed a little and then threw the ball of magic toward me. It collided with my chest and disappeared. I then felt a searing pain erupt from inside my chest, making me cry out in agony. It felt as though my blood began to boil and the worm thing that had been inside my head now crawled throughout my body causing immense pain. I didn’t have the strength to hold my body up, so I feel to the ground.

The pain felt as though I had a migraine at the same time someone was boiling me alive times two. I could barely open my eyes and it felt like I could hear my blood boiling.

“The curse should kill you painfully. Just like it deserves. The curse of the heavens. The God’s Curse.” That was the last thing Nyx said before walking over to Amon.

She then said something I could not hear, but within a few seconds the place felt void of mana and I heard two loud thumps.

Their mortal bodies. I thought as I tried to keep the massive amount of pain racking through my body at bay.

My throat felt parched. I opened my eyes and saw my sight clouded with blood. The pain grew increasingly worse and it eventually got to the point where I could not think of anything except the worms crawling through my body. The migraine beating at my brain and my blood boiling me alive as I sat there.

I could not use magic and every time I tried to go into my mind the pain increased several fold.

This pain continued for several hours, keeping me awake during all of it. The pain steadily got worse and began to affect my wings within those long hours.

At that point I just wanted it all to end. The pain to dissipate. To leave me in the sweet embrace of death.

I saw the darkness cloud my eyes. The body numb to the pain. And a finally closed my eyes with a smile, happy this could all be over….

Sorry about the late release, and don't worry this is not the final chapter.