The next day, Michael prepared to head for the ash field. When Michael returned to the tribe from meditating on the hilltop he first arrived at, he saw the wood elves snoring loudly and sleeping like babies. Last night, they feasted on all kinds of meat after Michael and Tazkin brought enough meat to serve them all. Michael himself barbequed the meat and served his devotees. He enjoyed taking a break from all the pressure of being the Dark Lord and enjoyed the feast with the wood elves. The meat from the game in Itonys tasted way better than the game back in his world. Apparently, the deer-like animal with a glowing belly infested the forest and grazed the vegetation without control. Their natural predators ran deeper into the forest, and many fell victim to the red forest and were eaten by the lizard-like beast. If he hunted them down, he would be doing a favor to the forest and the wood elves. He did plan to hunt them down after he opened up Hades again using another name.
"Wake up," Michael landed beside his throne to see Ayag drooling on his throne. He tapped all three heads and woke them up.
"Juicy meat…want….more," Ayag mumbled for a moment before falling back to deep slumber. She reminded Michael of Gaya as he smiled. Michael lost count of the times he had to carry her to the bed from the top of the mountain they trained often. Waking up Gaya without getting his face bruised was the toughest challenge he faced every day. The first few times she anciently punched him in the face, she woke up and apologized. But later on, she would just laugh and say he deserved it for waking her up early.
Now Ayag acted just like her, minus the getting punched in the face.
"My lord," Kirat strolled toward Michael, navigating through the sleeping wood elves. Instead of returning to their homes, all the elves fell asleep on the spacious wooden platform. This village was an architectural marvel. They managed to build numerous wooden homes, bridges, lift systems, and a large wood platform in the center anchored to several trees.
Every time he saw the village, he remembered the dark elven village. They almost looked the same, but the magical forest and the wood elves' kindness added charm and beauty to this village.
"I should wake these good-for-nothing elves," Kirat scowled. He felt offended to see them sleeping while their god was long awake.
"It's okay. Let them sleep. I know how it feels to sleep without worry in the world. I almost miss that feeling," Michael said while keeping a straight face.
"Where is the breakfast?" Ayag asked, yawning. Her jaw opened wide, making Michael worried that it would get stuck.
"You are not in the castle," said Michael as Ayag rubbed the sleep off her eyes. She heaved a sigh of disappointment when the realization hit her.
? "I should fetch you something to eat right this instance, Lady Ayag,"
"No," Michael stopped Kirat with a wave of his hand.
"I'll get them something on the way to the mother tree," said Michael. He avoided telling Kirat the full truth that he was on his way to the ash field. To the wood elves, the ash field was a forbidden land. No one alive in the tribe had visited or even seen the place. According to Tazkin, the ash field was far north of the mother tree and relatively closer to some orc tribes. He didn't think the orcs would step onto the ash field or anyone for that matter. Simply put, Michael learned nothing about the ash field from the elves, and it seemed like no one knew about the place, which made Michael more curious.
"I'll be back when I can," said Michael before slowly ascending into the air.
"We will wait for your arrival, my lord," Kirat bowed as Michael shot through the canopy and disappeared from Kirat's sight. After leaving the tribe, Michael cast the lightning dash. Kirat vaguely saw a streak of black lightning in the sky and stared at the sky until the lightning faded away. In the sky, Michael was on his way to the mother tree at full speed. Vedora wrapped their tail tightly around Michael's neck and tried not to fall down. Everything around them seemed blurry due to Michael's speed. When things cleared up, they reached the mother tree.
Even when Michael was way higher from the ground, the top of the tree seemed far away. The tree spanned as far as one could see. A sparkling canopy overshadowed the blue sky itself. It would take a couple of the tallest buildings on earth to be stacked on top of each other to reach the mother tree's height. Michaell wanted to see the tree at night, where it would radiate like a giant neon tube light.
"How did Tazkin climb to the top, and how the hell does anyone climb to the top?' Ayag's neck ached just by looking up at the tree. The mere thought of climbing the tree without using energy seemed absurd to her.
"Resilience," said Michael.
"You can do almost anything if you put your mind to it,"
Michael slowly hovered toward the tree while noticing the empty castle ground and campsite around the mother tree. As Michael expected, the old woman kept her word. The Skyhall soldiers finally vacated the once the holy ground of the wood elves.
"We should take over the castle," Ayag suggested after looking at the empty castle. However, Michael firmly shook his head.
"No. This place used to be holy, and I will keep it that way. The moment we build a portal connecting this world to ours, I am raising everything the SKyhall made to the ground,"
For now, Michael didn't want to start a wildfire that would engulf everything, including the mother tree itself. Besides, there might be something inside the castle he could use against the Skyhall, even though Michael doubted the old woman would have left something. She didn't seem like someone who would make such a careless mistake.
Michael increased his speed to reach the top faster but didn't fly at his full speed because he didn't want to miss any clues. As he was flying toward the top of the tree, Michael noticed several birds with strange designs on their body and colorful eyes that glowed like jewels. He had never seen such exotic birds before. They all scattered away and flew into the holes in the mother tree's branches as wide as a typical big tree. The tree was home to unknown species and had its own unique ecosystem. His love for Itonys surged to the point he realized why the past Dark Lord had taken such interest in Itonys.
What Michae didn't know was the past Dark Lord did not only simply take an interest in this world but protected the world from Andohr and his schemings. He had to kill someone he cared dearly to save this world from getting destroyed. Almost after thirty minutes, Michael reached the top, where eleven branches branched out from the center that looked like an elegant garden. These branches looked like pillars that held the canopy on their backs. Michael felt a pleasant chill on his feet when he landed on the grass field. Birds chirped in the distance as Michael strolled toward something that looked man-made. To be precise, it was a giant stone pillar entangled by veins and moths.
It didn't feel like he was on top of a tree. Instead, it felt like he was walking in a hall made of mother nature herself. Everything around him was untouched by death and destruction caused by the Skyhall. He didn't think the Skyhall soldiers ever managed to reach this place. They would have if they could use arch energy. Thank the gods, they couldn't. Otherwise, the Skyhall soldiers would have hunted down the bright blue feathered birds watching him just for their feathers.
Michael's full focus was on the stone pillar. The closer he got to the pillar, the more he felt a strange energy coming from it. When Michael reached the almost seven feet tall pillar, he grabbed the veins coiling around and pulled them apart. It took him a few seconds to completely get rid of the veins. Finally, Michael was able to see the stone pillar clearly. What he saw engraved in the stone pillar rendered him speechless. His heart almost skipped a beat. For a brief moment, Michael's mind just went blank.
The reason for Michael's complete shock was the engraving of a man with two swords fighting a three-headed hydra hundreds of times the size of him. That was only a part of the mural. Below that, they saw the fallen hydra and the man kneeling before its body, presumably exhausted after a battle.
"It can't be real… it's not…it must be Mugashuku," Ayag muttered as Cain slowly shook his head.
"Mugashuku is a four-headed hydra. That would be us unless there was another three-headed hydra in existence," said Cain.
"Then that's not Ghost. It must be someone else," Ayag's eyes watered.
"Look at the swords he was holding," Cain pointed at the swords. Although the swords seemed small, they could see the three dragons in the hilt, looking exactly the same as Michael's dark swords. Michael had no words as he was in utter shock. If the mural was something that happened in the past, to be precise, happened to the past Dark lord, it meant the past Dark Lord fought and killed Vedora. But why? That was the question that drilled his brain to the core.
He knew the past Dark Lord's life was kind of fucked up, yet Michael never imagined it would be fucked to the point he had to fight and kill Vedora. Vedora was family to him.
"There must be more to this," Sarba stuttered. He would never hurt Ghost, and he knew his siblings wouldn't too.
"We don't have to freak out. I said this is Ghost, but I didn't say it's our Ghost," Cain's words somehow managed to calm down Ayag and Sarba.
"But what happened between us that made us fight to the death?" asked Sarba.
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