Chapter 338: 338 - What If
Flames burned as far as the eye could see. Tortured souls burned and yelped, as he walked between the fiery fields of torture without any emotion. Or so it felt. Noah walked, but he couldn"t control his body, his vision, or even the emotion. He was but a prisoner inside this body, as he watched it all from the first perspective.
Far in the distance, his eyes focused ona boy yielding a long blade, impaling a ma.s.sive monster to the ground, whowas cleanly bisected in even halves. The boy landed on the ground, and slowly strode towards him,his body and face drenched in blood. "Lucifer!" he raised his voice,as he skipped happily towards him. "We"ve subdue the rebelion around here already. Mom is probably cleaning something up."
"You did well," Noah"s voice came out from his lips, although not by his will. He was shocked at how it sounded like himself, while not being him at all."
With the same energy, the boy went back, grabbing green fragments of souls from the ground, Essence, and swallowing as he went. It was then that Noah realized the sea of blood below, thousands of demons slaughtered.
"What the f.u.c.k happened here?! Is this just what they did to stop the rebelion? There"s n.o.body else here... Did he do all of this alone?" the sheer unrealness left Noah baffled. But he remined Bel had said something about "Mom". Around that time, his head turned to the right, where a humongous thing slid across the ground. It looked like a tube, but it was moving. It was taller than a skysc.r.a.per, andeveryy time it changed directions a tiny bit, the ground beneath his feet rumbled. Looking closelier, the ma.s.sive tube ha scales, each the height of a full grown human being. Noah just wondered in awe as he could do nothing to this body, and a ma.s.sive serpent head peeked from atop that tube, hundreds of times larger than himself.
In silence, the serpent slid forward over its own body, looming over him with the presence of a G.o.d. Her deep dark eyes filling him with both a sense of familiarity and awe, as if they could swallow him whole with just a look. He watched the small tongue that hissed slowly, althogh being at least a dozen times his size. And the snake slowly approached, before stopping its head just in front of him. And sudenly, a purple mist involved the whole body of the snake, as the gigantic form disappeared in a dark shadow.
"Welcome back, love. It"s all taken care of," the sweet voice of a mature woman tingled his ears. Even though it was loud to the point of being aamost deafening, her voice sounded like it was being whispered into his ears.
From the purple mist that started to disappear, emerged the figure of a woman. The sillouette soly grew clearer, the forms of herbody and long hair. Noah gulped, focusing on the imagethat was slowly beginning to appear from the mist. She had called him Love, she was a gigantic snake the size of a mountain. "Is this... Lilith?" he thought as he swallowed dry, his heart beatng faster with the antic.i.p.ation to see what this woman looked like. The form of long hair started to show as it waved, her hips moving sie to side as she walke towards him behind the purple mist his eyes could no go past. And then, as his heart raced uncontrolaby, his eyes fogged, and he recognized the voice.
"Are we going home next?" she asked, and a sense of discomfort attacked him.
Immediately, his vision clouded, and slowly, the whole world around him vanished, and Noah stood, alone, in a pitch black s.p.a.ce, a certain text box written in flames showing up at the corner of his peripheral vision filled with nothing.
[You have recovered a fragment of Lucifer"s Memory]
[During the unification of h.e.l.l, many battles were fought, spearheaded by the Generals and the Mother of All Demons, while Lucifer himself managed the punishment and reorganization of h.e.l.l. In the process, thousands of demons died, their force being absorbed by those who sided with Lucifer, widening the power gap and materializing the social hierarchy of h.e.l.l itself.]
"d.a.m.n," Noach though, realizing what he had just seen was what Lucifer himself had at some point in the past. But the shadow of the woman still made him gulp, unable to stop himself imagining what that woman, Lilith, should"ve looked like. But one thing now was certain, she used to look like a person. She wasn"t just a snake, just like said in the scriptures of Christianity. "Why am I... Oh, did I wake up?" Noah thought, as he slowly realized he was not in an empty void, he was just still half asleep.
"... I can"t open my eyes, or move. Do I have sleep paralysis?" he asked himself, as he attempted to move around, to find himself bound to the bed. "Oh... It"s her..." he rolled his closed eyes, realizing what was happening. "Lilith, Can I please see?" he asked out loud, but only after moving a little, since there was something touching his chin, stopping him from talking with freedom.
"Amnyun?" A strange mumbling could be heard, as something slid a little over his eyes.
"Lilith! Please?" he asked through telepathy this time, making sure he sounded as loud as possible in intent, so that, maybe, that would wake her up easier.
"What? My! Sorry," Lilith panicked a little, as she changed herself into a smaller form, sliding from Noah"s eyes and setting him free from her grip.
"You seriously need to find a more comfortable way to sleep without literally imprisioning me under you," Noah murmured as he sat up on the bed, looking at the snake who moved their head side to side, as if she were stretching.
"Um, you know it"s not intentional, right?" she said, her voice sounding a little guilty.
"It isn"t? Then how are you doing this?" Noah shot back, confused, still staring at her, who had now coiled herself, and was staring up at him.
"No idea. I just sleep by your side and then... But I sometimes have dreams about you leaving, so there might be something to do with those," she slid up his leg, landing her head on his lap for him to touch with his hand.
"I guess there"s nothing I can do about it for now," He shrugged, resing his hand over her head as she hissed her tongue satisfied. "Talking about weird dreams," he started, changing topics to something he felt was more urgent, "I just had a very odd one now. Rather, I dreamed about something from the past, a memory of Lucifer."
Lilith quickly escaped from under his hand, straightening herself upwards as she stared him in the eyes, inches from him. "What do you mean a memory from him?"
"So, it was like..." Noah explained her the entire dream, from the appearance of h.e.l.l itself, to Bel"s presence. But more importantly, he focused on her. How she called Lucifer, how ma.s.sive her snake for was and how oveerbearing her presence felt, leaving the most important to last, "And just before the dream ended, a purple mist started escaping from you, and the ma.s.sive snake vanished. But a second later a human form with your voice started walking towards me from the mist. Too bad it ended before I could see what you looked like," Noah said, without any intent behind it, just happy to share with her about the strange dream he just had, that just so happened to be a fragment of Lucifer"s very own memories.
"... I was his love," she repeated, baffled, as she ran over the events he narrated inside her head, "I him those things... He was probably my—" she stalled, thinking about her alledged relationship with Lucifer, which she had already felt could"ve been from the few memories she recovered from that time. But she also didn"t let it slide that, above all, she was a ma.s.sive snake that could reach the size of an entire mountain.
"I"m sorry I couldn"t see what you looked like," Noah told the nervous snake, that was now coiling herself over and over as she ruminated over what he"d told her, not knowing for certain whether something was wrong or she was just a little confused over the whole thing.
"Noah, what if you are Lucifer?" soon she asked, leaving Noah at a loss for words, thinking about what exactly she meant.
"Huh? What do you mean? Am I not his descentant?" he asked.
"No, not that. What if this whole thing is just a way for you to remember who you really are, and you have always been his return all along?" She insisted, making him thing even more about it, only to refuse it as something crazy.
"Impossible, right? Imagine if I were Lucifer, who lost all power, only able to do the bare minimum to survive for years, only to start recovering memories to become someone else again... Doesn"t really sound good. Are you not just saying this because it would be better for you somehow if that was the case?" His last question hit the snake like a point-blank bullet, hitting her very pride of realizing she had started to feel something for someone else while already technically having Lucifer.
"... Yeah, right. That wouldn"t make any sense," she agreed, slightly depressed, as she questioned herself of what this whole thing could mean, both to her, and him. "Any way, it"s late. We should get going if you actually want to eat dinner with Carlos and Meggie," she told him, prompting Noah to read his phone, and realize it was already past the usual dinner time, and the clock already marked almost 7 in the afternoon.