Tread Lightly

The old memory of reading the grim books with Ma fades quickly, along with a still image of what young me imagined when reading through the story.

A man sticking out from the snow in the middle of a neverending winter, one whose chill is so piercing that none can escape it unless deep within a warm home and surrounded by fire. A man who slowly gave up on life simply because he did not believe.

At the time, I thought the story was weird and odd, much like many of the other books Ma had me read, but only now do I realize something else deep within it. It was a lesson. Somehow, everything I've ever remembered from Ma has turned into a lesson that can be applied to life.

This one is both obvious and redundant at the same time. Sometimes the difference between survival is merely a single moment. That it's always worth it to last just a moment longer before letting the cold grasp of Death herself take you to the underworld.

But after this memory fades with the still image, I return to the present. I return to the sure-death situation I am in. I can feel the cold fingers of the old lady wrapped around my throat, but something is lacking. An absent presence that gives me the utmost confidence.

The Mother Below is not here.

Her will and presence are not baring down on me to ensure my death. And maybe that just means that my death is guaranteed, but I'd beg to differ.

I think it means that she's unwilling to leverage her power when she is unconfident. She's more careful than before, after my first denial. And the most potent God's doubt bestows me with the exact thing she's missing.

I open my bloody eyes with eyelids I can vaguely see turning to sludge and melting off my face, blocking out a large portion of my vision. Without the profound presence of Ether in my body, everything is collapsing. I am turning to a pile of flesh and puddy made of the deadly substance.

But through my blood-laced eyes, I can see something just before me. Law's Light. The woman's head that is no longer chaining down Rebecca because I slammed into it while I was sent flying is less than a foot from my face.

That's not all that is near me, though. Oliver, the man with foresight, seemingly unbreakable skin, and the power of Vigor, is standing just before me. While he looks down at me, he speaks, but I cannot hear anything he says. The ears that could do so have already fallen like skin-colored mud.

So instead of responding to whatever he has to say, I give him a gaze filled with hate as I move my arm toward Law's Light, attempting to use the artifact to advance like Virgil advised me to. The memory of reading the book with Ma helped me answer my Metaphor, allowing me to do so without certain death. Maybe I didn't answer it in the best way, I accept that, but I did so in a way that fits me.

My right arm flails weakly toward Law's light, but it moves far more sluggish than it should because of my weakness. That is because the entire arm is being melted apart by itself, skin falling off, then muscles, tendons, nerves, then bones; at this point, even the Bloody Palm can't do anything to help. All I hear from the palm is tormented screams that make me think of the cries of the damned.

But just as my arm is turned into the limb of a skeleton, the tip of my boney middle finger on my right-hand touches Law's Light, right on the nose of the woman's head that encompasses the artifact.

Through incredibly blurred and red-tinted eyes, I see Oliver's face curl up in surprise before I force my mind straight into the artifact, abandoning all focus within my body and hauling everything I have toward the artifact. As fast as possible with my dying mind and body, I reach deep within the head and find the Sigil that lies resonant within.

I quickly find it for one simple reason: the Sigil is in my exact location. The back of the skull. With the extreme swiftness, one can only manage on the brink of death, the doors to the underworld opening for your soul, I push my mind straight into the Sigil, ignoring all of its whispers, resistance, and feelings.

Then, I rip the Sigil straight out of the head, taking the whole triple-edged Sigil with me, unknowing how to separate them, let alone quickly. The second I do, I open my eyes to meet the bottom of a boot to my skull.

But just as I return to darkness. I see a figure appear behind Oliver, a man wrapped in many layers of dark clothes, standing like a reaper coming to claim a soul for their diety. I cannot do any more than just see the man's appearance as I quickly enter the deep darkness of my mind from the breakdown of my mind and body. I simply float in the dark for several moments, unable to think or move.

But eventually, I regain my mental faculties and look around the dark. This time the void is different; the night isn't all-devouring and lonely. Deep within behind me, I hear sounds. Sounds that make me uncomfortable, but sounds nonetheless. They resemble someone getting beat with a cane, and I force myself to ignore them for now in favor of what's beyond me.

Far in front of me, though, is silent with a shimmering object far, far away in the dark. It must be my Sigil. For a moment, I hesitate with what to do, not because I do not know what I should do; that's obvious. But I hesitate instead because of the period of peace I am given and where it is given.

Virgil mentioned this place a while ago after the fight with the progenitor Bakwa. He called it the Center of Self or something like that. It's supposed to represent who you are in your core, and it's where Sigils go when you take them into your body but before they attach to your current Sigil. A place made for reflection and choices, I believe, is what he said.

He didn't tell me what his looked like, but I could get a sense that he was embarrassed about it for some reason. There is one thing that I know, though, that having a dark, cold void without any semblance of reality anywhere in sight is not a good Center of Self.

While I stand here pondering why this is my Center of Self, the sounds of someone getting beat grow louder. So, I turn around to the sound and see a scenario of hazy colors, like an illusion created by emotions.

Instantly I recognize both the scenario and the people inside of it. This is the memories and emotions of Law's Light, the woman in the scenario looking identical to the disembodied head I've been lugging around for a while.

I take a moment to look at the scene despite my disgust. Every man, woman, and child deserves someone to remember them. Especially those who suffered as severely as the girl in the memories. Over time my brief respect grows into genuine interest.

Hazy flashes of scenes go by rapidly before my eyes of a terrible life. One of a woman who grew up within a slave colony, one that was owned by demons. And for the first time ever, I see an actual demon, not a lesser one, few in Sigils, but instead, a full demon born hundreds of years ago.

Only one demon is ever shown in the lady's memories, but the demon within it looks strikingly similar to a human, with only two noticeable differences. The first was that the back of its head had another face, one that moved, saw, and even spoke as well. The second was that its limbs were incredibly lanky and unnatural for the creature's height of about six feet.

For what seems like the girl's entire life, which plays out before me from her early childhood all the way to her young adult life, I see her get tortured, maimed, and toyed with like all the other humans around her by the inhuman and monstrous things that followed the demon along with the lesser demons. Their lives were not worth living, and they could not die on their own terms. They were forced to fight as fodder or entertain the other creatures but were never given a choice in their short lives.

They were chained to walls almost constantly, and her whole life she spent in the darkness of a cave until a single moment changed it all. The two-faced demon found her fascinating. It took the malnourished young woman out of the cave and threw her into an arena. An arena with a man on the other side and many inhuman creatures that watched from the sides.

She was forced to fight this man but wasn't unwilling to, for the demon offered a reward. A chance to be elevated from the other cattle and stand beside him as a Sigiled. Her only trial was to take the Sigil from the starved Hunter before her, who came into the demon's lands.

Unknowing what Hunters even are, she attacked the man with feral madness. And after a lengthy, feeble, and drawn-out battle that looked more similar to two children fighting each other, the lady won. The Hunter had probably the only Sigil that grants zero combat prowess at the first step.

The Philosopher.

And so from there, the woman followed the demon, killing any whom it asked her to. Over many years of relative survival and doing everything the demon ever asked of her, she gained her third Sigil.

It was at this time, though, that something occurred that made the demon that lorded over her incredibly temperamental. The man who kept him from invading the human lands was found to be gone and not just retired or taking a break from battle. This was discovered from a lesser demon being told of his wife dying without the man's presence on their ranch.

Additionally, for some reason, the demon with two faces believed that his rival, the human that kept him from invading, had a child to continue his legacy. And the demon wants to kill the child, his hate for the man overflowing to the next of kin now that he cannot deliver it unto the man himself.

I start putting the pieces together. This woman and the demon who controlled her are not some faraway things but something very close.

After this conclusion, I watch the following scenes with even greater interest.

The woman does what she can to help the demon, even as it removes the face on the back of its head, selling it to another demon so that it can divine the child's location. And upon the failure of the Augur, she goes out with the beasts, monsters, and lesser demons that don't truly have intelligence and spends time razing villages, killing all resistance, and looking for the demon's target.

A target that may or may not even exist. A target that if she does not deliver, she will pay the price.

She stalks the edges of the wilds without sleep for weeks until she comes across a town under attack with an old man defending it. One that she can just tell with her bestial intuition holds the key to finding her prey.

The lady joins the attack against the town, a town with a sign over a tavern that says "Elderfield's Finest Brew". While she goes about murdering dozens, if not hundreds, of people with her Ether and finesse in combat, she comes across the man and engages him in battle.

And now that the vision reaches an up-close image of the old man, I recognize him. He's a man I'd never forget so long as I live. Edmund Dudley meets the feral woman in combat, alone, bruised, and battered. The old man stands his ground against an entire army of monsters led by a woman puppeted by a demon with hundreds of innocents behind him.

Only now do I see just how powerful the old man is. All the other fights I had seen him in were when he was exhausted from many battles, constant threats, and days without sleep. But this Edmund? The Bloodhound unfettered by exhaustion? He's a true monster. More so than any I've ever met. And I mean that as a complement.

I understand how he was seen as a legend despite only being a 3rd Sigil Hunter. The old man tore through legions of monsters, most of which were at or just below his Sigil, all the while dealing with the demonic woman trained by an actual demon and her ruthless life.

I watch Edmund fight through the demonic woman's eye. I can feel her anxiety, doubt, and want to escape the bloody death that approaches her, but she cannot. The old man greyed by age and battle will only likely kill her, but the demon back home will certainly kill her, painfully.

So, she fights. The woman lands several would-be fatal blows on Edmund throughout the long and drawn-out battle using the monsters as distractions to create openings. Edmund, however, is a hard man to kill, using his control over blood to keep all his wounds sealed and pick up any blood he may lose and put it back within him.

The old man fights against her and the horde for hours until he's the only human standing except for the woman, all the townsmen, and standby Hunters dead in mangled heaps of flesh. Tired, bloody, and covered in wounds, the Bloodhound looks around him, the horde that surrounds him but is unwilling to come close.

For every man, woman, or child slain by the monsters and the woman, the inexhaustible legend killed ten or more of the beasts or lesser demons, even those of comparable Sigils. His actions blow my mind, showing me the prowess I thought impossible.

The difference is so astronomical that even the woman is unwilling to attack, resorting to just watching the old man from amidst the horde. A legion of monsters that, if they all were to strike, would surely kill the old man.

But they do not. For some reason unknown to me, the legion of monsters, at least a thousand or so deep, does not attack.

Edmund looks around at the beasts baring their teeth, lesser demons wielding their odd weapons, and the other countless types of monsters that are incomprehensible in their ways, and the old man simply spits out a mouthful of blood and walks.

He calmly walks toward the horde, heading south, and the wall of death parts like a mundane patch of brush. The Bloodhound makes an army, one that outnumbers him at least a thousand to one, cower.

I see what makes Edmund the Bloodhound as he bares his pearly whites covered in sanguine fluid at the horde and walks through them without hesitation toward his cabin south. His feat makes me further consolidate my answer to my Metaphor.

After he leaves, walking into a nearby forest, the woman freaks out with a colossal temper tantrum. It takes many minutes, but after breaking from her fear, she realizes the opportunity she lost and follows the man through the woods, hunting him down the whole while.

Once a full day of tracking him passes, she comes across Edmund's tiny cabin and attempts to tear it apart, looking for him and her target, which I assume is me. But she cannot find anything. The house is too resilient to her endeavors, taking a beating and reconstructing itself after minutes. Even the vault is nowhere to be seen, as the trapdoor that leads downward, not being present. The absence of the vault throws me for a loop, but I suppose it makes sense. If it was quickly found, it would be easily broken into.

She grows increasingly desperate and follows the tracks of two pairs of feet through the forest for multiple days, finding many dead monsters and men across her path. But eventually, she comes across a grave. A grave of a fallen man that within she can sense is the old man she was hunting for using her Sigil skills.

The woman becomes filled with rage and defiles the grave, pulling out the corpse of the man that was peacefully buried and destroying the grave.

I'm filled with just as much rage as she is while I watch this disrespect happening to the man I admire most, whose greatness grows every time I witness it. Tightening my hands to the point of drawing blood, I watch the scenes play out.

After defiling the grave, the woman searches Edmund's corpse for any sign of where I might have gone. She finds nothing of the sort, but she does find something else.

She finds an artifact.

One made from the Bloodhound himself.

It was not made from his flesh but instead from one of his vials of blood, the Sigil flowing into and possessing the tempered glass of the container. The red blood within appears so bright red that it burns my eyes just through the vision.

Full of anger and unwillingness to fail her demonic lord but at the same time with no other option now that her only lead is gone, she pops open the vial and imbibes the contents, hoping that it will aid her in finding me. The idea is a solid one; I cannot lie. After all, the Bloodhound was an expert in tracking, so it would make sense if his artifact aided in that field of expertise, but one should never dabble with artifacts so lightly. This I've learned.

After she drinks the blood within and empties the vial, the woman falls to her knees and howls to the sky, blood streaming down her eyes. Then, with the vial still lodged in her clenched fists, she bursts through the forest on all fours toward the nearest presence of blood.

Unfortunately for her, the nearest creature was the very demon she sought to please.

Through the blood-tinted vision and haze of madness, I see the demon notice her insanity and create a bolt of lightning in his hands from a slight cloud of storm. Then with that bolt of electricity, he cuts off her head, instantly cauterizing the wound and preventing the woman's blood from touching the nicely dressed demon.

From here on out, the vision continues from the ground using the decapitated head's point of view, slowly fading into darkness. The demon quickly orders a new human to come and take the woman's place. The new human who comes is a captured townsman in a suit, the man who was carrying her head.

Then, just as the man, full of disgust but unable to express it, picks up the woman's decapitated head, my point of view changes. It changes as the head is lifted up, which lets me see the demon pick up Edmund's vial of blood. And then immediately afterward, the vision goes black and disappears along with the sounds.

I take a deep breath after the vision ends, seeking to stabilize my emotions. That bitch defiled Edmund's grave. I need to get his artifact. Then, I will bury him. Someplace that is safe and cannot be desecrated.

This needs to happen as soon as possible but to do so, I will likely have to kill the two-faced demon or help someone kill it. I guess Johnny is probably my best bet in killing a creature so powerful.

With this motivation, I turn toward the Sigil floating in the air. The object that has been waiting patiently this whole time. Walking over to the floating trio of Sigils, I ruminate over the answer to my Metaphor.

If dreams and hopes are not real, then what is to be done with them?

My answer is both evident and idiotic, but I know it's what I would do when confronted with the reality of my dream being impossible and fictional. After all, it has happened multiple times.

And what did I do? What did Edmund do when an entire army of monsters bore down on him? He fought despite knowing he couldn't save a single person. That's just who we are. He may not have been my father, but I feel as though we are kin.

When we are shown that our hopes and dreams are not real, we fight anyway, regardless of the result.

Because just as that old story showed, there is always a chance, a chance for the situation to turn if you simply live long enough. And perhaps… perhaps the Bloody Palm's hunger isn't all that bad. Sometimes survival is all that matters.