Falling into the Abyss of Despair

It was the same island as before. Bound to its crooked stone stakes, one after another, were the bodies of trilobite men, their carapace armor cracked and rotted through, the dried husks of their organs laid bare, like so many strange strips of sun-dried meat.

Two soldiers of the Sal Domain's People of the Abyss hoisted Tito up and carried him onto the shore.

Covered in wounds from head to foot, he was thrown down and left lying there, limp and motionless.

His mouth kept murmuring words that the People of the Abyss around him could not quite catch, and would not have understood in any case.

"It doesn't matter... it doesn't matter."

"All of this is fate's own guidance."

"I will not die. I will find the paradise God had promised. I will go before the hall of the divine and stand in the presence of the Great Yinsai."

"Because... all of this was... fated, long ago."

He recited the Redlichia Covenant too, murmuring the words. It was the only way he could forget the pain in his body, forget the fact that he had lost his eyes.

"God said!"

"Because of loneliness, God created Redlichia, the King of Wisdom, and because of Redlichia's loneliness, God created the trilobite men."

"Thus, the race began, and the kingdom was established from this moment on."

"God said..."

"God said..."

Two of the People of the Abyss touched antennae and went through Tito's pack together, hoping to turn up something worth taking.

The lord of the Sal Domain had already taken the sword the Star Luo Kingdom's queen had given him, and the stone tablets carved with the Yinsai Epic had been pulled out as well. All that remained were a few blank bone tablets and odds and ends that looked worthless.

"What's this thing?" one of the People of the Abyss asked. He had picked up a cup pitted and corroded all over, and he turned it before his eyes a long moment before holding it up in front of his companion.

"It's all just junk," the other said, and waved a careless hand that knocked the cup out of his grip and onto the ground.

Bang!

The Divine Cup lay discarded on the ground.

The sharp, ringing sound reached Tito, and it went through him like a jolt.

That was the sound of the Divine Cup striking the ground, and there was no mistaking it. He could not see it, but he knew that sound intimately.

Tito lunged toward the sound with no thought for anything else, but the two soldiers held him fast.

"Give it back to me!"

"Give it back to me!"

The monster soldiers hauled Tito up and lashed him to one of the stone stakes. This was the Demon Abyss Kingdom's old way with captured trilobite men, staked out and left to bake to death beneath the sun.

"Give it back to me..."

One of the soldiers swung an arm and slammed Tito's head hard against the stone stake, and at last he fell silent.

Only when Tito was bound tight and fast did the soldiers finally leave.

The sky darkened by degrees. Tito sensed that no one was watching him any longer, and at last he began to move.

From what he remembered of the sound, Tito knew they had not taken the Divine Cup away with them.

And as it happened, the divine relic lay right beneath his own feet.

He shifted his bound feet, bending himself sideways toward the Divine Cup, straining to touch it.

Groping in the dark, he suddenly caught a faint clatter of contact.

"Found it!"

Joy leapt in him. With all his strength he drew his foot back, meaning to bring the cup around in front of him and pray.

With the divine artifact in hand there was still hope. He might yet commune with its will, might even pray to the divine through it.

But as he drew it back his foot trembled, only slightly, and the Divine Cup, never securely held to begin with, slipped suddenly free of his toes.

It struck the rock below.

It clattered and bounced and went tumbling all the way down, toward the sea.

Splash!

The Divine Cup dropped into the sea with a splash, and that small, faint sound rang in his ears like the very sound of death.

Tito went still for an instant, and then his whole body began to shake violently. In a fury he fought the ropes that bound him, desperate to tear loose and dive down after the Divine Cup.

"Ah!"

"Aaaaaah..."

He roared in fury, his whole body shaking with it, but no matter how he fought he could not break free.

He could not see it, but he could feel the Divine Cup drifting off on the waves, little by little, farther and farther from him.

It felt exactly as though he himself had been cast aside.

Only he did not know it was fate that had abandoned him.

Or perhaps God.

He wanted to roar, but his voice grew smaller and smaller, until in the end it was nothing but shuddering, hiccuping gasps.

"Heh..."

"Heh... heh..."

"Uh, uh, uh... heh, heh..."

He felt like nothing so much as a laughable clown, played with in the palm of fate's own hand, utterly powerless to do anything at all.

When true terror and despair came at last, he found how fragile he really was.

Blood seeped from his ruined eyes, mixed with his tears, and ran down his face. Never in his life had Tito known despair like this.

Even leaving his home behind to walk through all four kingdoms, even facing every hardship and danger along the way, even standing before the mockery of countless thousands.

Even losing both his eyes.

None of it had broken his spirit.

But now he had lost the divine artifact the Divine Messenger Polo had left to him.

He had lost his direction.

And worse, he had lost the very key to the kingdom of the divine.

He had been bound to the Island of the Dead for three days now.

Tito felt as though every drop of blood in his body were drying up. The fierce sun beat down on him as though it meant to boil away the very last of his moisture, the very last drop of his blood.

There was no such thing as fate or destiny. He was not some chosen one. He was only an ordinary mortal, nothing more.

He even found that he was nowhere near as resolute now as he had claimed to his father on the day he left.

He had said with his own mouth that he did not regret it.

But now, he did.

"Hahahaha!"

"Tito, you're too arrogant. You can't see yourself clearly at all."

"Who has ever climbed to the hall of the divine? Two generations of the King of Wisdom, that's who. Redlichia, the first, and the Great Yesael."

"The Mother of Life, Shelly. Divine Messenger Polo."

"Of all those who ever went searching for the God-Given Land, which one did not carry noble blood and noble standing? Which one was not a hero who shaped an age and earned a place in history?"

"Who do you think you are?"

"Even King Yesael couldn't do it. How could a bit player like you ever manage it?"

He put the question to himself, and answered it himself in the same breath.

"Is it really fate's guidance? There's no such thing as fate's guidance."

"Tito, you know perfectly well this is just the empty, self-righteous lie mortals tell themselves, and yet you dressed it up in such fine words."

"Everyone is only lying to themselves."

"Wasn't all of this... your own choice?"

Then all at once he turned and began pleading with God.

"God, if You can truly hear my plea, please save me."

"Save me."

No one answered him. Only death waited for him now.

In that moment so near to death, for some reason, a different line from the Redlichia Covenant rose suddenly in his mind,

a line he had recited countless times before, yet had never once truly understood.

"Redlichia, I am the God who created you!"

"And you..."

"You alone are their king."

Just as Tito fell into utter silence, ready to meet his end, an aged Person of the Abyss climbed onto the island, their body so old it had begun to shrink and wither away, a stone helmet crowning their head and hiding their face.

And in the net pouch at their waist, unmistakably, was the very Divine Cup that had fallen into the sea.