Power Thief's Revenge [BL]-Chapter 203: Viator

"Sulphur, mercury, and salt... What do these words mean to you?"

Hermes did not expect the sudden question. He was already reeling from the initial one, still thinking of what to say.

It was like Dante was giving him riddle after riddle, bombarding his mind. First he asked if he was willing to see through a veil, and now he’s talking about sulphur, mercury and salt?

"What do they mean to me? I... I don’t know. They’re common elements, if you mean sodium for salt. Sulphur from volcanic eruptions, mercury from the earth’s crust, salt from the water.... What else is there?"

Dante shook his head. "And I thought you were the top of your class. How about gold and silver?"

"Gold and silver.... Precious metals... First place and second place...." Hermes pulled on his hair from frustration. "What answer do you expect from me!? How did you know what I was about to do!? What do you know!?"

The old man chuckled. "Seeing you emotional is always a delight. That is what you truly are, you know? That is why when you asked me to separate your cold, beastial self from this... I was interested. But what I fear more than the beast is... The empty light."

"Empty light?"

"The perfect being, bathed in gold and free from desires and emotions." Dante walked towards him. "Think, my boy. What am I trying to say?"

Hermes racked his brain. Sulphur, salt and mercury.... Silver and gold....

"Alchemy." Hermes then realized. "Sulphur, salt and mercury are the tria prima. Sulphur represents the soul and combustion. Mercury represents the mind or spirit, and its volatility. How it easily changes. And salt represents the body, the opposite of sulphur and mercury. Gold is perfection and the highest state... Silver is the second highest."

Dante nodded. "Gold represents the sun and enlightenment. Silver is the moon, the transitional stage, mystery and wisdom. In order for gold to be reached... You must go through silver first."

As he said that, the wind blew his silver hair that glow faintly in the dark. Like moonlight.

"People have the mistaken assumption that alchemy is like science. But science deals with the physical realm, my boy. The world around us, and the rules it follows. Alchemy is simply a metaphor... A metaphor for the rules that we beings live by. How we are created and destroyed."

Hermes stiffened at the word create. Dante had a knowing look, and reached out his hands.

"May I?"

Hermes hesitated. But eventually, he moved closer and rested his face against those aged hands. They started to knead him with care for every feature.

"Very good." He said, like an artist appreciating his own work, his own masterpiece.

Hermes looked into the two silver moons gazing back at him, reflecting his face to him. Then... That face slowly turned into foam, bubbles dissipating and vaporizing. Like how mercury evaporates upon body temperature.

And that invisible gas entered the consciousness of Dante Quasar...

***

However.... Hermes was not seeing things from Dante’s perspective. Unlike with Raphael where it was like he was possessing the body, experiencing what he experienced.

Instead, he was floating, watching Earth from above. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

And beside him...

Was the young man from his vision. Both of them naked and glowing, like ghosts or spectral deities.

"I’ve never seen it from this perspective, you know." He said to Hermes, a twinkle in his eyes. "It feels less scary now, like I’m watching a movie. I could hold your hand when it gets to that part."

Hermes frowns. "Which part?"

Then...

Faster that he could blink, a star fell out of nowhere...

And slammed into the blue planet!

Hermes’ eyes widened. Was he really... Watching the moment that the asteroid hit and changed the Earth forever?

"Not just Earth." Dante chuckled, floating closer to the planet and beckoning him. "Come. I would like you to meet the love of my life."

Hermes blinked. The love of his...

They slowly approached the atmosphere. Hermes could fathom the carnage. All the smoke, the death, the blood... It was beyond words. There was screaming and...

Screaming?

His eyes widened. Because he recognized this place, even though it was destroyed. Dinosaurs and other bizarre and gigantic plants were there, just as described in the Cretaceous period. But then there were also...

People. Civilizations. Entire societies decimated by the inferno caused by this impact.

"We’re in the Void..." Hermes muttered.

Dante sighed. "The Void implies an empty space. A lack of something. But does it mean that the space itself is empty? No... It is called the Void, because it is what’s left of the world that died when he came to us."

Hermes tried his best to understand what he’s saying. "Who..."

"Everyone! Enter the Veil! It will protect you!"

Hermes’ eyes widened. It was Nott, the Primordial Goddess of the Night. He even saw Skadi, and several more of what he assumed to be other Void gods, ushering their children inside this invisible ’Veil’ with openings...

That looked just like the Rifts.

Eventually, he saw all the living beings that survived vanished. The Earth then became barren and empty. Nothing but rocks, water, erupting volcanoes and dead bodies.

And on a familiar beach....

A crater was formed by the falling star. It sizzled, boiling the water around it.

Out came a creature of coal. It was like a mannequin made of the dying embers of a pyre. Vaguely humanoid with no features, and dark wings that were chipping and breaking as it continued to soak in water.

The creature clawed its way to soil, coughing and wheezing.

In the blink of an eye, something appeared before it. A little boy with silver hair, riding a serpent the size of a horse, with the head of a lion.

"Who are you?"

The creature looked up, and tried to mimic the sounds coming out of the boy’s mouth. He perfectly imitated his voice.

"Who..."

The boy tilted his head. Then...

As if Hermes was seeing double, the boy multiplied. There were now 3 silver haired people surrounding the coal creature. One a young boy, one an adult, and one an old man.

"Who are you, Traveller?" They asked again in

Only then did Hermes realize they were not actually speaking in a language he knew. Because his mind seemed to glitch for a moment, as if it was trying to translate the language starting from the oldest languages on Earth, then Proto-Indo-European, then Latin, then Old English, and then modern English.

He could not pronounce the older languages besides Latin, so he repeated the words in that language.

"Viator."

Dante smiled. "I do prefer the sound of his name in Latin. Sounds very sexy and regal. Let’s call him Viator from now on."

"Viator.... This creature is... The love of your life?" Hermes gestured. "A Plero—"

"Shh." Dante pressed a finger to his lips. "No spoilers. Just watch."

This ’traveller’... This Viator.... slowly stood up. Then, it suddenly spoke perfectly in the little boy’s language just from a few seconds of being exposed to it.

"I am... from another world. A world where everything is gold and fire. This world... It’s a different world, isn’t it?"

He turned to the corpse of a Velociraptor. The bones of the ribcage were exposed and the flesh was scorched.

Viator approached the body. "What is wrong with this creature? I feel that it must be alive and it has the structure meant for movement. But why..."

The silver-haired young man on the lion-serpent tilted his head. "It is dead. Can’t you see?"

The one beside Hermes who was watching this chuckled. "I admit, I’m a bit rude when I was younger. You’ll have to forgive me, I didn’t have much social training growing up."

"Dead..."

The silver-haired old man then explained: "This creature died. It lost its life. It can no longer move, breathe, or function as it once had. It changed."

"Change..."

Viator turned to all three of them. "You changed too. How did you do that? Can all creatures in this world do that?"

"No." The three silver-haired men answered in unison.

"Why?"

The little boy furrowed his brow. "That is how mother and I designed the world. The gods would hate it if every creature could multiply themselves at will. But in a way, they do multiply by copulating."

"Copulating?"

"Making children. Giving birth."

Viator muttered the words again in amazement. "Birth...."

"Yes." The young man said. "Creating a new life. A new being. Not like what I did, where I simply divided myself. But instead forming a new identity, something that uniquely exists for itself."

"New..."

Viator seemed to have come into an epiphany. There was joy in his voice, even when the silver-haired man never spoke with that tone.

No, that emotion was within him all along.

"This world is truly different from mine. My world does not create new life or destroy it in death. My world remains as it is, always, for eternity. Nothing new ever happens."

He then started...

Crying.

Tears made of water, not fire. He did not have eyes, and yet he cried and cried...

As if he wanted to flood the world with those tears.

He cried at the realization that he lived in a world that was not as beautiful as this.

"They... They call me defective. Because I am different. Because my emotions change, because I do not follow the path that we are expected to walk. I feel fear and wonder for what is beyond our skies. I think.... I think! They despised me because I think!"

He punched the sand.

"I called out all the other defectives... We tried to change the world, to fight... But we lost. We were thrown into the sky. So that we may... Die. Yes, that is what happens when we leave our world! I feel so angry just thinking about it. I didn’t know at the time that I was sent to die, yet I felt afraid. So afraid... But now I feel so happy! So happy that I am alive, that I am here in a place that is not there!"

The silver-haired man in three forms then furrowed his brows at this. Eventually, he shifted into one person only. The adult man, the one in between.

He got off his lion-serpent, and reached to touch Viator’s face. Or at least, where it should have been.

"You... You are so emotional. But you do not have the face to express it. Do you want me to create one for you?"