Editing Dantega:Volume 1 Chapter 3

Chapter 3: First Contact 


(PART 2)



It’s now around midnight, the streets are empty and the group including Rage and Ubica are fast asleep. There are no sounds reverberating through the town when suddenly Ubica awakens in shock, he looks at Rage who has also awaken “Did you feel that?”

Rage looks at Ubica with an intense frown ".....”

The two get up, grab their weapons and proceed out of the door of the hostel room. Before they can get out of the doorway the voice of Napoleon is heard “I assume an enemy has appeared… let me accompany you.”

“Once again, your assumption is correct.”

The sound of footsteps is heard in the hallway outside of Niomyo and Trojia’s room. Trojia wakes up to the noise and glances out the door in curiosity; she sees Napoleon, Rage and Ubica hurry down the stairs and out the hostel's front entrance. Trojia immediately knows something is wrong and wakes Niomyo, with dreary eyes the half asleep bodyguard says “What’s wrong?”

Trojia gives a worried face and says “ Let’s go!”

The three are running through the moonlit streets of the Italian like city at a fast pace. Most of the city’s inhabits are all inside their homes, the occasional light through a window can be seen with the silhouette of a person gazing through in curiosity. Napoleon sees this and while running he says to the two leaders of the pack

“Is it just me or are those people looking at us in an odd way?”

Rage has noticed the same thing and replies “ It seems like they know what’s going on.”

“ Who cares about that! We’re almost there!” Yells Ubica.

After a couple more minutes of running, the three arrive at a bridge that leads over water and into the center of the city which holds the more metropolitan area, including the two massive buildings that were seen earlier from the hill. The two towers are completely lighted in green, yellow, and blue. The difference between the towns on one side of the bridge from the other is insurmountable.

The three cross the bridge and look around; there are dozens of smaller buildings surrounding the two towers, a large statue of a man dressed in a robe and wearing a crown of leaves on his head sits in the middle of it all.

“That is a statue of myself when I once ruled Rome.”

This is an unfamiliar voice and it catches the surprise of the three, shifting their attention from the statue towards the source of the voice, they find a man standing there with a cynical smile on his face. He is wearing a tattered black trench coat that stretches down to the silver of the metal guards on his boots. His face is fairly wrinkled but it doesn’t seem like it’s from old age, it’s more like someone who lacks sleep or is extremely stressed. On his slightly curly dark brown hair sits a leaf crown.

Trojia and Niomyo arrive at the base of the bridge, both are in amazement at the sight of the lights all the buildings cast. In Troy, electricity is very rare and can only be used in small quantities, but here the lights are so bright it’s like looking into an intense starry sky. She shows a face of determination and proceeds to run to the center of the buildings.

Trojia and Niomyo can to see Ubica and the others standing in front of an unknown man, they quickly hide behind a corner of a small building, easily being able to hear the voices of the men, they stand back quietly and wait.

“Nero!?” exclaims Ubica.

The man’s eyes grow large and through a wide grin he yells in excitement “ LEADER!!? YOU HAVE COME BACK FOR ME!!? THEY SAID YOU WERE THROWN INTO AN ETERNAL LAKE OF FIRE! HAHAH! I KNEW IT WAS ALL A LIE!”

“What are you doing here Nero?”

“After a thousand years my punishment has finally ended, not only that, I have been rewarded with my own city! Isn’t it grand? Hahaha this is worth the pain I have endured!” 

Nero raises his arms, his trench coat rises up and reveals his body. It’s completely wrapped in barbed wire that stretches to his forearms. His torso, down to his legs are drenched in blood.

“Who is this guy Rage?” Asks a disgusted Napoleon,

“His name is Nero… He once was the emperor of the World’s most powerful country, Rome. Nero was also one of the first emperors to persecute the Christians, the executions of a large amount of his people angered God, so he set fire to Rome and burned down a third of the city… Naturally with Rome in such a weakened state, its enemies rebelled, Nero was exiled and in fear of assassination until he committed suicide.”

“Interesting, why is someone like him calling Ubica ‘Leader’?”

Before Rage could speak, Nero loudly says “What!? You don’t know who he is!?”

Ubica draws his sword and with a flash appears in front of Nero, the blade is pressed against his neck “Shut your mouth Nero.”

“Leader? What is this?”

“I am no longer your leader.”

Nero’s facial expression drops, toward the end of his reign as the emperor of Rome, some of his closest friends and allies betrayed him and plotted assassinations against the disgraced ruler.

“ No… I was told that you betrayed us… It’s not true right!? If you help me kill the humans and the reaper, I’m sure he will forgive you!” says the shaky voice of Nero.

Ubica’s face turns cold “ I refuse… My job now is to protect those humans, and to destroy you all.”

Nero clinches his teeth violently as his eyes grow larger, he lets out a ghastly scream “GRAAAAHHH! BETRAYED AGAIN!! I HAD FAITH IN YOU LEADER! WE ALL DID!!”

Nero grabs Ubica’s sword with his bare hands ‘SHING!’ Ubica's sword is pushed violently toward the ground, from the corner of his left eye he sees a silver flash. With the sound of a butcher knife cutting through meat, Ubica’s left temple becomes very hot, he jumps a few yards and grabs his head which is now covered in blood.

The attention of Ubica switches from his bloody hand to Nero, who is holding out his arms once again revealing the barbed wire that writhes his body. But this time the scene is different, the barbed wire is now circling his body like a snake.

“Do you know what my punishment was after Armageddon? HUH LEADER!?”

Ubica clicks his tongue as Nero continues to speak “ One thousand years of having barbed wire inserted into me.. Through my eyes, through my nose, ears, mouth! Everywhere! Because of you! Because I followed you! But I believed that you would come back and that you would lead our army to victory once again! So after a thousand years I have harnessed my punishment and turned it into power, a power to help you! Now, I guess I have no choice but to use it against you Leader!”

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“What in the world are they talking about?” asks a stunned Niomyo.

“HMMMMHMM!”

“Oh sorry princess!”

Trojia lets out a slight gasp at the release of Niomyo’s hand from her mouth “What did you do that for Niomyo!?”

“Sshh, you were about to yell out Ubica’s name when he got hurt correct? You heard that Nero guy, he wants us dead so I think it’s best to stay quiet…”

Trojia’s eyes look at the bloodied Ubica as she thinks to herself ‘Does this have something to do with that secret you don’t want me to know about?’

------------------------

“So be it… Let me be the one to handle this Rage. It is my responsibility to rid myself of my past in order to obtain true repentance. Sit back and watch as I show you my resolve!!!”

Ubica charges at Nero with incredible speed, as a reaction, Nero leaps back a few feet. He points both of his open hands in Ubica’s direction and out of his palms spews out barbed wire that is flying toward Ubica’s head and body.

He jumps over the wires at a height parallel to the smaller buildings and shoots downwards as if he pushed off an invisible wall in the air. The loud sound of metal slamming against metal is heard, Ubica is holding his sword only a few inches from Nero’s face, but it is entangled in the barbed wire that is protruding from dozens of different holes in the Nero's body.

“!?”

“Oh? You look surprised at how I do this Leader, don’t you know that there is ferrum in both blood and metal? It’s amazing what one can learn after a thousand years of feeling the same barbed wire rip through your body, I learned how to carbonize the ferrum (iron) in my blood to form an infinite amount of this steel wire once it leaves my bloodstream!”

‘KSSSSHHHHH!’

The sound of dozens of wires slicing through skin is reflected off the glass of the buildings like an amphitheater. A spider-web of barbed wire is zig zagging through the air at Ubica’s body in dozens of different angles. Ubica is dodging them in mid air by jumping off and through the wires. There is seemingly no escape when he becomes more and more entrapped by the metal strings of death.

“PULSUS!”

With a loud crash, the wires disperse in different directions and Nero’s body slams into the ground. 

“Guuhhhhh!?”

Nero looks up in shock only to see Ubica standing impossibly on the vertical side of one of the two towers’ windows about thirty stories up.

“HAHA I’D EXPECT NOTHING LESS FROM YOU LEADER!” 

Nero’s face turns distorted as he lifts his body out of the marble hole he was half buried in. He spreads his body as if he is doing a jumping jack and every line of barbed wire flings at incredible speeds upwards in Ubica’s direction.

Ubica is running quickly on the side of the tower as the wires pursuing him in hot haste explode each of the large lighted windows in its wake. The yellow, green and blue lighting of the surrounding buildings shine through the large falling shards of glass hurling toward the marble ground. It gives off the impression of hundreds of shooting stars falling to Earth, one can’t look at this pretty spectacle for too long however, because the seemingly meteor shower scene is actually the form of numerous large razor sharp objects that could cut a man in half in an instant.

Rage and Napoleon fled to escape the falling car sized shards of glass, the area they are now in is just a few feet from Niomyo and Trojia but the corner of the building is between the two groups blocking their view from each other. The sound of Nero’s ear tearing laugh and the uncountable amount of glass shards shattering on the marble floor is almost deafening.

“ How is any of this even possible!?” Yells a rarely surprised Napoleon,

Rage calmly answers back “In our world… Just about anything is possible.”

Napoleon composes himself after a few seconds of deep breathing, Rage continues to speak “This is nothing compared to what you will see in the future Napoleon, so watch closely.”

Napoleon looks at the scene of the two scaling freakishly on the sides of exploding buildings “That Nero man called Ubica Leader… What exactly is their relationship?” asks Napoleon.

Trojia, who is standing quietly behind the corner, has her interest peaked at an extreme level and begins to eavesdrop on the conversation that is about to ensue.

Rage shows a dead serious face “Since you’re not too familiar with the bible, you might not know the truth of the past… I’ll make this short.”

Trojia’s heart is beating at a fast rate as the sound of Ubica’s battle, and the revealing of Ubica’s past is being heard at the same time.

“A thousand years ago, a third of the human population was destroyed during the battle of Armageddon. Hundreds of thousands of angels in God’s army squared off against the hundreds of millions of demons and humans that allied with the army of Satan.”

Trojia, Napoleon and Niomyo are all thinking ‘How does Ubica have anything to do with that?’ because of three reasons: God, Satan, and a thousand years ago. They stay silent as Rage continues to speak,

“Naturally, just like you there were leaders of each army… The Son of God, who led the army of Heaven…The Anti-Christ, who led the army of Hell. Each side had its lieutenants, knights, pawns. Nero was simply one of the thousands of past lieutenants of the army of Hell.”

By now, a cold sweat begins to fall down Trojia’s temple. Rage’s face turns cold as if he is a judge that is sentencing a man to death for his crimes “That’s right… The one who is responsible for intentionally misguiding millions of people to their deaths... The only person who can lead Satan’s army of Hell, the one who is the centerpiece of sin, and the human embodiment of true evil… Is Ubica the Anti-Christ.”

Trojia’s legs buckle due to shock, her falling body is caught by Niomyo who is also taken aback by Rage’s words. Both of them know the bible quite well, most places in Aires have many different religions but Troy is mostly influenced by catholic beliefs. In the third and newest testament of the new holy bible, the story of the first apocalypse ended with the battle of Armageddon where the side of God was victorious. As a result, the Anti-Christ was cast into an endless lake of eternal hell fire by the Son of God. But supposedly, the one banished into the eternal burning is fighting right before them, risking his life to protect them. Trojia is thinking this in denial as she searches through the memory banks of her brain that contain the teachings of the bible.

Napoleon is staring into Rage’s eyes as if checking for any form of him lying, but to no avail, Napoleon sees nothing but truth in the eyes of death. But he still feels the need to ask questions to secure absolute validity “If that is the case, why is he helping us? Why is he betraying his own comrades and trying to kill that Damien fellow? Shouldn’t they be allies?”

“They probably still would be, if Damien wasn’t the one who betrayed Ubica first.”

There’s a momentary pause between the two until Rage speaks again “In the bible it is said that the Son of God cast Ubica into a bottomless lake of eternal hellfire, but that was not the case. In actuality God’s army was on the brink of defeat, Ubica became so powerful that even God’s son himself couldn’t put a stop to his tyranny. To Damien and Satan, they felt that Ubica’s use was over and that they could handle the rest. With that in mind they also decided that if Ubica were to betray them, the rest of the army would follow Ubica and work to destroy the two. If he succeeded, that would christen him the true ruler of Hell. The one who stabbed Ubica in the back and sent him to an eternity of burning was Damien himself. History speaks for itself however, and their plan somewhat backfired. Hell’s army was like a colony of ants without its queen which made it quite easy for the army of Heaven to demolish the soldiers in disarray.”

Napoleon replies with a voice full of closure “I take it that Damien escaped and blamed the loss on Ubica’s betrayal… I can see why Ubica wants to take revenge so badly.”

Rage looks upward to where Ubica is fighting Nero; even from the ground he can see the true determination on Ubica’s face as he is fighting with all of his heart “ That’s only half of the reason why he is fighting.”

Napoleon shows a look as if he was silently asking ‘why?’ but before Rage could continue

‘BOOOOOOOOOSHH!!!’

A huge explosion of green flames is seen at the top of one of the towers. Large green fire balls containing huge chunks of the tower slam on the ground with thunderous roars. Through a plume of smoke, Nero crashes to the marble floor with a large ‘thud’ 

“Guuaaahhhh!!!”

Ubica is flying downwards in a green haze, his light green eyes are glowing brightly and can be seen shining through the night sky, he lands with force and mercilessly thrusts his diamond red sword into the stomach of Nero.

Blood is spraying form Nero’s gut like a geyser, but seemingly unfazed, Nero’s face turned cock eyed “ I’M SO DISAPPOINTED! YOU WERE SO MUCH STRONGER BACK THEN!”

With both hands Nero grips Ubica’s sword with all of his might, slicing open his own hands in the process “HAHAHA YOU WEREN'T SO FOOLISH!”

Nero flicks his hands sending blood spatter towards Ubica.

“!?”

Ubica attempts to jolt backwards, but with the sudden movement of his legs, a sharp, horrid feeling is felt in his two arms. 

“Kkkggah!?”

The burning sensation is the result of having hundreds of razor like barbs penetrating his flesh and tearing into his muscles. The wires holding the barbs are squeezing tightly on Ubica’s forearms like a snake constructing its prey. Pain reverberates in Ubica’s body as he is starting to feel the razor sharp metal rubbing against his bone.

Trojia and Niomyo have backed away to a different building in order to not be found by Rage and Napoleon and they now have clear view point of the gruesome battle. Trojia’s eyes turn large at the extremity of Ubica’s wounds “Ubica is getting hurt Niomyo! We have to help him!”

Trojia’s tone is becoming increasingly frantic with each breath, Niomyo gives off the ‘There’s nothing we can do’ vibe and turns away.

Ubica is trying to escape but with each move the barbed wire sinks deeper into his arms.

“Kraaaah!”

The geyser of blood spewing from Nero’s stomach is beginning to harden and take the shape of something thin. 

‘More wires!?’ Ubica struggles to think as the pain makes his vision blurry.

As if having his mind read, Nero brings an answer to his thoughts. In a mocking tone Nero says “Oh? You think the only weapon I can shape my blood into is this? YOU’RE WRONG LEADER!”

The geyser of blood takes the shape of a spear and is pointed directly at the heart of Ubica.

“ I wish I could’ve seen the old you just once more... SOMEONE LIKE YOU IS BETTER OFF BEING DEAD THAN BEING WEAK!!! HAHAHA GOODBYE LEADER!!”

The spear rips through Ubica’s torso into his heart, the spear is shot like a projectile out of his back and smashes violently into a window of one of the surrounding buildings.

“N-no way…” says Trojia, she is so stunned her body is as stiff as a board, she has just witnessed Ubica’s chest exploding but refuses to believe her eyes.

Ubica grits his teeth for a moment then slumps over his sword. 

He’s dead. 

Her savior has died right in front of her, and she couldn’t do anything. The feeling of helplessness gathers in her heart as tears begin to flow down her face. Trojia in a panic is once again about to shout out his name but she is grabbed tightly by Niomyo.

Napoleon shows a rare expression of surprise “He was defeated!?”

Rage readies his weapon and begins to back away “This is bad. Run!”

“What?”

Rage runs down an alley way with Napoleon not too far behind, but before they make it out of the view of Nero and a slain Ubica

“WHY DIDN’T YOU HELP HIM!!?”

The voice comes from a petite blonde teenager who's wearing a large frown while crying in distraught.

“You stupid little girl! Why did you come here!?” shouts Rage.

Trojia’s fists are clasped tightly, she is in such an emotionally broken state that she is about to attempt to strike death incarnate with all her might.

Napoleon asks “Were you both here this entire time?”

Niomyo steps in front of Trojia, and with a cracked voice says “I-I’m so sorry, we heard your footsteps at the hotel and got worried…”

“Forget about that! RUN!” shouts Rage, his tone has turned into that of one the others have never heard, nor would ever expect.

Niomyo and Napoleon follow his directions and begin running, but Trojia hasn’t and is standing there like a statue.

Niomyo stops and shouts “Let’s go! It’s dangerous!” but her words fall on deaf ears, she is frozen stiff.

“I’ll go get her.” Napoleon runs back and puts his hand on Trojia’s shoulder, after she ignores this action he readies to carry her.

“It’s too late…” says Rage in a monotone voice “This is not what he wanted…”

Suddenly, a sickening feeling reaches the bodies of the three, so nauseating that it makes them instantly want to throw up, and from within this, comes a maddening voice.

“It looks like your wish will be granted... Nero...”

These words are heard clearly in the heads of Napoleon, Trojia and Niomyo. The words simultaneously arrive occupied by the effect of a painful migraine. 

“ This voice! It’s Ubica!” shouts Trojia while she is struggling to even stand.

Ubica is still bloodied and is now laying motionlessly on his back, an ominous green light coming from underneath the silver hair that is covering his eyes shoots out like a burst of flame. His hands begin to move upwards and points to the night sky.

He’s still alive, against all odds the bloody mess of a man he is, is still moving. But it is different this time, he gives off a feel like he is still dead. From all the wounds of his body comes a black smoke excreting upwards; the mere sight of this smoke strikes fear into the hearts of the three. Even Napoleon, who has seen almost every horror known to man has his knees shaking at what’s before him. The evil spewing from Ubica can even torment the worst of man.

It’s becoming completely unbearable for the innocent Trojia. She is quickly losing consciousness but she is willing herself through the horrid feeling in order to have conformation of Ubica’s survival.

The black smoke has now wrapped around Ubica and is lifting him gently to his feet, Nero is stiff with amazement, even he is shaken in fear.

“HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE!? I STABBED YOU IN THE FUCKING HEART!!!”

Ubica’s head hangs down and his body is still limp “ You know, I’m cold blooded. Do you want to know why?” asks Ubica, these words pierce the heart of the three humans. It is a truly terrifying experience that will last in their minds for the rest of their lives.

Under Ubica’s hanging hair a large grin is seen revealing his two long canines, and with a quick lift of his head he shows two flaming green eyes that are now surrounded by a maddening black sclera; there are two black lines that seemingly melt from his eyes down his face. 

He spreads his arms as he declares “That's because I don't have a heart...”

The final straw that broke the camel’s back for Trojia is the look of Ubica’s new face and the weight of his declaration. Her knees buckle and she falls to the ground and is about to lose consciousness. The last thing she thinks to herself is ‘He’s alive…thank goodness…' with a smile she falls asleep on the marble ground.

However, her thoughts contradict the situation at hand, there is nothing to thank, there is no such thing as goodness here, only the purest of evil.