by Luis Robles
“Bliss must really think I’m still young or that I’ve grown in power. That is too close for comfort,” Pah thought to himself as he turned around to see the behemoth twister rage on all around as far as his eyes can see. “Bliss, please do not overdo it…”
Bliss was at the center of the twister, safely out of harm’s way. The powerful twister engulfed the entire battle area; it was almost double the size. No Rot and no Disgrace would be left after the powerful twister of magic Bliss had dealt with them all. However, it was at a steep cost. And no matter how hard the twister hit the deity, it only managed to damage a small portion of it. When Bliss saw that the twister was having very little effect on the mountain, she knew that she had to act quickly, and it was only a matter of seconds before it struck back.
“Stop,” Bliss chanted in midair as she lowered her arms.
In that moment, the twister came to an instant stop, causing a thunderous sound that made the ground tremble. Pah had to cover his ears, as he could not withstand the continuous thunder caused by the twister. Hundreds of thousands of tons of earth, stone, rubble, and pieces of Rot and Disgrace were floating still in midair, motionless.
The mountain began to run towards Bliss, reaching out at her with the intent to crush her. But simultaneously Bliss moved her right hand back and made a throwing movement, much like a fisherman catching fish with a spear. Suddenly, the hundreds of thousands of tons of debris retracted rapidly with a thunderous sound and speared towards it just as the mountain was a few meters away from reaching Bliss. The debris struck the mountain in an earth shattering way and penetrated every aperture, every crevice, and every joint that the mountain had, stopping the mountain’s movements instantly. After a few seconds, the mountain was motionless and began to fall apart. First one of the mountain’s arms, then one of its legs causing the body to fall, and finally its head. After the great deity mountain fell to the ground, there was complete silence. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound, and then Bliss began to fall from the sky.
“This is it; this is the end of everything. Finally, I can rest. I am so glad it all ended. I am so tired. I cannot even move a single finger to save myself from the fall. Pah, if you are listening, that is if my magic is still strong enough to give you the message, I just want to tell you that I love you. You have been a great friend and father to me. I’ve lived a nice life despite everything that happened. You made sure I was happy,” Bliss thought, pouring out the last grain of magic she had in her body as she fell lifelessly to the ground.
“I did not think things would end up like this. Everything is dark and mute, and there is no smell in the air. At least I feel calm, knowing that I did everything I could. There is not a single breath of fight left in me…The ground is so soft, it reminds me a lot of Pah’s tail, the way he used to embrace me with it to pick me up as I fell, the way he held me with love and care each time. I am going to miss you, Pah… Wait! This can’t possibly be the ground. If only I can open my eyes,” Bliss thought. She fell towards the ground, but Pah caught her midway.
“Bliss, open your eyes, don’t give up yet. I’m here with you,” Pah said with a mere whisper, scared to startle the now fragile and weakened Bliss.
“Pah?” Bliss asked, with a painful smile.
“We’ll be landing soon; I’ll try my best to land softly. Oh, Bliss…what happened to you,” Pah said, holding a soft voice as he targeted a debris-free area below them.
Just instants before landing, Pah was tackled with great force by Gavril, causing Pah to lose a hold on Bliss.
“Bliss!” Pah cried out as he hit the ground at a much greater speed.
Pah immediately got back on his feet and turned towards Bliss. To his surprise, she was safe and unharmed, being held in the air by two winged Gargoyles. Gavril was standing in-between Bliss and Pah, breathing heavily. Gavril’s face and body were covered with deep gashes and lacerations caused by the twister. His clothes were almost completely gone and the little that he had on looked like it would fall off at any time. However, Gavril did not seem bothered at all by his present condition. He seemed to be enjoying it—rejoicing in the moment as if he lived for the pain and suffering.
“Monster,” Pah whispered as rage ran across his body, as his ultimate power as the last guardian of the last magical being rose.
The rest of the awoken Gargoyles joined the winged Gargoyles as they landed on the ground, forming a formidable wall in front of Bliss, with the warriors holding the stone mallets on the front line. There was not a single drop of fear amongst the Gargoyles. They knew they had to protect Bliss at all cost, and they each were ready to give their life for Bliss.
“This night has turned out to be quite fantastic, right?” Gavril asked with an arrogant tone as he gestured his emotion with his arms.
Instead of responding to him, Pah and the Gargoyles holding the stone mallets began walking towards him. They were sick of his games and determined to put a stop to him. Particles of electricity flew all around Pah, causing electric discharges with each step he took. The Gargoyles’ Emorees began to glow bright orange around their arms as they held the stone mallet in position, ready to swing.
“That’s it, come closer. I can promise you that I will bite. Nothing makes me happier than taking the life of any Nulian that gets in my way,” Gavril said as he began to guard himself.
In that same moment, the Gargoyles launched against Gavril, swinging their mallets with all their might. However, no matter how coordinated their attacks were, Gavril easily moved out of the way and up in the air. When Gavril fought, he did not perceive time in the same manner that everyone else did. He had casted multiple spells on himself throughout the years that would make him an extraordinary fighter, allowing him to slow down time, to not feel pain, and to speed up his body movements. As Gavril finished dodging the last of the stone mallets swinging at him in midair, Pah managed to grab a hold of him through his upper back, burying his huge paws in his chest.
“How can you?... I made sure that you were no match for me. I made sure of that,” Gavril desperately cried for the first time in his long life as he felt every bit of pain that the giant paws inflicted in his chest.
As Bliss felt Gavril spinning around in the twister, she also felt all the spells that he wore. Once she felt the spells, she concentrated a great deal of magic towards Pah in order to protect him against Gavril. She knew that without his spells he would be no match for Pah, despite all the Nulians he had ever consumed, despite the burning star within him. Pah, after all, was the ultimate guardian, the ultimate Nulian, and the last of the Watchers.
“I’m not going to let you hurt Bliss, no matter how strong you think you are!” Pah yelled with a ferocious voice as he dug his paw even deeper into Gavril’s chest.
Gavril screamed in agony and tried to get free of Pah but without any avail. With all his spells nullified, getting loose from Pah’s hold would equal trying to move an oak tree with bare hands.
“The originator of magic… Remember who you are fighting against,” Pah said as he felt Bliss’ spells intensifying inside of him.
“Stay back!” Bramma yelled as Pah and Gavril landed back on the ground.
“Move back, this is the end!” Nimbus yelled as he gestured the Gargoyles to move back away from where Gavril and Pah.
“Lightning tempest!” Pah yelled with the full strength of his lungs.
Gigantic lightning bolts struck them, each time more violent and longer lasting than the last. The lightning’s thunder was loud and almost unbearable for the nearby Gargoyles, causing them to cover their ears in pain. The thunder made the ground quake each time the lightning struck. After a few seconds of lightning strikes, Pah finally let go of Gavril, and the lightning stopped. Gavril remained on the ground while Pah stood up on all fours.
Gavril’s body was unrecognizable; it was tortured and burnt to the highest degree. It stood lifeless in front of Pah. Once the Gargoyles saw that Gavril’s body was no longer moving, they began to cheer
loudly as Pah sat down a few meters away from the body.
“He did it.”
“It’s finally over.”
“We won!” the Gargoyles roared.
Just when they started rejoicing for triumph, an evil, dark laugh sounded throughout the air, and it was without a doubt Gavril’s laugh. The Gargoyles’ cheers immediately stopped, and Pah swiftly stood back on his feet. They all turned to face Gavril, but the body seemed dead; there was no sign of life.
“Do you think this is over? Do you think that I would let you walk away from my defeat unharmed? Do you really think things would be so easy? Do not be fools. I will bring forth the destruction of earth, the other darker half of the magic you now have, the granter of wishes, the demise of this world. I will bring forth, Oblivion's Gates!”
Gavril’s lifeless body contorted up from the ground, making its chest point towards the sky at a 45-degree angle. Reverberating, glowing red rings appeared on his chest, sending a beam of condensed light up towards the sky. Once the beam of light reached the other side of the sky, a sonic boom erupted across the world and, behind it, an aperture of fire. Through the fire aperture, two enormous gates began to fall towards them. The Gates were on fire and not slowing down as they fell from the sky.
Thanks to his gifted eyes, Pah was able to see the calamity that was falling towards them and immediately ran towards Bliss’ side and grabbed her with his tail.
“We have to move, it is coming straight towards us. Go, go, go!” Pah yelled at the top of his lungs.
Not stopping to ask questions and without doubting Pah, the Gargoyles began to run away as fast as they could. The winged Gargoyles picked up all the non-fighting Gargoyles and began to fly away.
“Pah, please put me down, there’s no way that we’ll get as far as we need to go,” Bliss said with a mere whisper that only he could hear.
With great pain in his heart, Pah listened to Bliss and let her down softly on the ground. Bliss was still weak and fragile and fell on her knees the moment she touched the ground. However, she was determined to stop the falling gates—this was something that only she and she alone could do. In pain and with the last bit of will she had left, she aimed the palms of her hands towards the incoming gates.
“Push!” she screamed in pain, exhausting every bit of will, magic, and strength her recovering body had left.
Her body had not fully recovered from her last battle but it was enough and it was more than they had ever hoped for. She pushed as the ground underneath her fissured, causing the nearby floor to sink a few meters. Debris floated for a few seconds and then violently shot up towards the incoming gate. Bliss screamed in agony as she exhausted her body and pushed it beyond its own limits. Every muscle strand, every inch of her body screamed in pain. Bliss gave everything she could to push the gate back. However, her inexperienced body, her uncut body gave up on her. She was too inexperienced and too young to handle the amount of magic flowing through her, even after she had given her all once before. Bliss fainted as she slowed down the gate to less than half its original speed.
The gates still burned and headed towards them at an incredible speed. They would have all been pulverized by the impact if it were not for Bliss’ efforts to stop them. The partial slowing down of the gates gave Pah enough time to form a plan that would save all of them except for him. And for Pah, this kind of plan was good enough—his main purpose in life was to keep Bliss safe no matter the cost. In many ways, Pah always thought that this was his battle, that everyone else that was in it was a victim of circumstance. He finally would get a chance to, for once, make things a little better for everyone caught in the middle of it all.
So then Pah did the only thing he could do—he made a portal back to his safe place. “Pass through the portal, hurry!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Every Gargoyle that had not already flown away ran into the portal and appeared just outside Pah’s cave. They all managed to get through the wide portal before it was too late. The last one through the portal was Bliss, carried through by Pah’s long tail; he laid her down softly on the ground as gentle as ever.
“Come through, Pah! There is no time!” Bramma said with urgency, and he reached out for Pah through the portal.
“I’m afraid I can’t go through; this sort of magic is limited, and if I go through, it will undo itself. This is the end for me, friend. Thank you for all your effort. Now, please take care of Bliss and help her find her brothers and sisters. My final thoughts will be with her when she awakens,” Pah said as he looked through the portal and shut it just before the Gate reached him.
13
Dust
Bliss began to awaken from her long sleep two days after the Gates had fallen from the sky. As her mind began to regain consciousness, she heard some Gargoyles whispering to one another, trying not to wake her up, and she began to hear Pah’s voice play in her head.
“Bliss… Bliss, can you hear me?”
“Yes… I’m here, Pah. But I feel so tired; there is no strength in my muscles. Where are you?” Bliss asked as she continued to lie on the floor of Pah’s cave.
“Gavril is finally gone from the world. We did it. Now, there is nothing in the world that can harm you; now, you can live on without fear,” Pah said. His voice began to sound weaker in Bliss’ head.
“What do you mean, now ‘you’ can live on?” Bliss asked as tears appeared underneath her still closed eyelids.
“There are still a million things I wish I could show you. There are things I would have loved to experience next to you. But sometimes, someone has to stay behind and protect those who can’t protect themselves.”
“No, what are you saying?” Bliss said, cringing, fearing what she would hear next.
“It was my own wish to protect you; it was my only will in life. Now that you are safe from Gavril, I can finally rest. I will miss all the times you freeloaded from walking by floating on my back, and I will miss teaching you new things. I will miss having you, Bliss. You were my life, and I am glad that it remained that way until the very end. However, part of life is being able to detach from the things we love the most. Part of life is having those things become memories. And that’s what I will become to you now, a memory. Please enjoy the rest of your life, knowing that I would have no other way for you. Please do not be reckless with your magic. If you ever need to, I will always be in your memories. Protect the world and your legacy of magic for as long as you can. It really was a beautiful sight before I left. Goodbye, Bliss, keep me in your thoughts. Ever since you were a baby, you’ve been the biggest part of my heart, always have and always will,” Pah said as his voice faded away.
Bliss wept in agony over the loss of Pah. He was her only companion in the world and the only thing that held her world up for her. Bliss’ heart felt thousands of stabs from the thousands of memories she had of Pah. The pain she felt when depleting her vast magic was nothing compared to what she felt now. The pain that she felt touched her heart and soul, tearing them apart. Bliss felt as if she had no rest when it came to feeling pain. The only thing that was able to comfort her was memories of him, which was also the very thing that was causing her so much pain— because it was a memory. Yet memories of Pah playing in her head began to give her strength. Looking at him smile through a foggy cloud was better than never being able to look at him at all, she realized.
“We’ll be outside if you need us,” Bramma said as he motioned for the rest of the Gargoyles to leave the cave.
Hours passed by before Bliss was finally able to get up from the pain of her loss. Bliss got up slowly and still felt fragile. She felt that in any second she could trip and fall back to the floor. Bliss walked towards the cave entrance, taking a good look at the cave walls. As she walked, she imagined Pah living there. She imagined him sleeping on the floor, finally resting from his eighteen-year long battle with the other side of magic. When Bliss walked outside and the warm rays of the sun blanketed her, she felt a sense of peace in her
. She felt calmed and realized that the world would no longer have to deal with Gavril. She was grateful to the Watcher who gave his life to save the world. She was grateful for her friend who taught her everything she knew. Above all else, she was grateful that with Pah, she was able to find her family. And because of Pah, she would be able to see the world with different eyes; she would be able to see all the good and beauty remaining in the world. She would be able to see the world through the eyes of a Watcher.
14
Face to Face with the Gates
The Gargoyles refused to leave Bliss alone and offered to have a couple of Gargoyles with her at all times in case she needed anything. Being the originator of magic, meaning that all magic begins from her, Bliss would hardly need anything from the Gargoyles. However, she did value company and decided that having someone with her was not a bad idea. Bliss did feel alone in the world, and she felt that a great part of her was missing.
Bliss wanted to go back and look for the burning Gates that fell from the sky, so when she and a couple of Gargoyles left to look for them, the remaining Gargoyles stayed near Pah’s cave, where they set up a temporary camp. The Gargoyles could not return to the place that was once their village; the destruction left behind by Gavril and his deity was too great to make that place habitable again. Earth was shattered and mountains of debris scattered everywhere. More than that, what they feared the most was that the enormous Gates that had fallen from the sky would still be there. No one had seen what kind of destruction the Gates caused after they fell from the sky.
It took Bliss one whole day flying at a winged Gargoyle’s speed to reach the location where the stone village once was. They got there as the sun set, and the sky burned red. She and the two winged Gargoyles that accompanied her noticed from afar that the land in which the stone village had once been was a different place. High, jagged mountains rose all around now. The atmosphere in the area seemed dark and cold, and the land was mute. There was no sound or sign of animals all around the area; it was a desolated, ugly place.
