Nihilist's God

(The Narrative of Rö)

I didn't know much and I still don't. Even though my mother wasn't there for me and had the inability to talk due to all the stress and trauma she had lived through, I came to understand two things about her as I grew older.

The first was that even silent, she was able to teach me that everything has a price. That's why I had started to question the laws of the afterlife in the first place.

The second was that she left for her own reasons. It might've been abandonment, but she believed that it was better that way. She believed if she left, she would release her son of a burden of a prostitute mother.

In the end, I'm thankful for all of it.

In a weird way, I'm thankful for her. I wouldn't have been the person I am today and I wouldn't have lived this destiny if it wasn't for her wicked ways of life.

I wonder what life looked like in your eyes.

I wonder where you are now.

—

The aftermath was disastrous.

Corpses were lying around the now evacuated street of Einstudht district. Upon those very corpses, wolves would stand dominantly and boldly, looking down on the poor defeated men and claiming them as their ripped and twisted possession.

Numerous footsteps could be heard swiftly and symmetrically approaching from almost all sides, however the wolves did not seem to react much. It was as if they were waiting for an order.

It turned out that was precisely what it was.

His robe was gliding on the now bloody and somewhat ashy concrete. While slightly oversized, it was more than befitting for his standards.

He was prudently approaching the gang of his murderous wolves. The spark in his eyes revealed that he was here for the most important errand of his life.

He stood closely to his trustworthy wolves. As he looked up, he noticed a whole squad of officers running up to see what had happened.

Surprised by the ridiculous amounts of military workers, he spoke up.

"I don't remember it being so loud here. They grew in numbers, haven't they? Looks like we're going to have some more work up our sleeves."

Both he and his wolves stared bluntly into the approaching running ants. He was remarkably still and calm, which was unusually strange for the likes of Rö, the vicious Wolf.

Before he knew it, he had dozens of cold rifles pointed towards his brain.

But the whole thing was so pretentious.

Some were trembling out of fear, some gulped harder than the usual and some had the expressions on their faces like they just saw a ghost.

Who knows, maybe they have. He was entitled to one many years before, after all.

In the end, they were certain that what had stood before them and their undeceiving eyes was the third out of seven magic users and there was no doubt about it. Therefore, their fear was well justified as this was a highly rare occurrence. For all they knew, they were looking Death straight in the face.

Out of a sudden, a man started appearing from the rubble of dozens. He seemed sure of himself and well confident. He stepped right up the front and stared at Rö before making his speech.

"I can't believe what I'm present to. One of the seven is standing right before me" —

One of the wolves jousted towards the colonel in the straw hat and the jacket with mouth wide open and fangs ready to cut and devour. Rö was clearly impatient.

The wolf pushed the colonel and almost swayed him off his feet. This is what caused his hat to fall off. The surrounding officers did not shoot just yet as they were not given permission or a hand sign.

The colonel had used his rifle as defense, where it was caught between the teeth of the furious wolf. Rö then backed off the wolf and pulled it closer by his side.

He stared at the colonel's pored face and decaying, but long hair until he decided to reveal his voice before all those present officers.

"So you're the leader of this unit?"

"If you think you will be able to kills us off, you're highly" —

"You know, I was getting a little bit impatient. But this… This makes things very interesting. Nice to see you again, Walt you bastard."

Colonel Walt stared at the demonic expression of Rö, not knowing what he was on about or how he even knew his name. This is definitely what caused shivers up the colonel's spine. While drowning in fear, Walt let out screaming orders to his crew.

Dozens of bullets started sprinting towards Rö and his wolves.

Keep in mind that the whole unit was poorly pretentious, as said before. The officers barely even recognized the ground they were standing on. This only resulted in meaningless frenzied shooting.

Rö's advantage and high-ground was that he was unbelievably swift, more than the rest of the seven (Abel and Maurice would follow closely behind). He was quick to the punch and even quicker to scream out any ruling order, be it in a form of words or throat-scratching roars.

Bullets were spilled all over the street and acted as a blanket to the dusty concrete. Rifles kept spilling them until the wolves decided for things to take a drastic turn — some of them weren't as cautious so they would get hit and injured, but in all truth it didn't make much of a difference.

They marched headfirst towards the crazed officers, pushing them over to the ground and ripping them apart. Their terrorized souls would beg for mercy and another chance in life, but sounds of blasts and hopeless screams started becoming less and less frequent.

It was all over in under a minute.

Colonel Walt was the last man standing.

Was it the horror and truculence that killed Walt in the inside or the solemn morbidity of him being the last one left so he could witness all the cruel bloodshed of his people? In all truth spoken, it was probably both.

It now became clear inside his mind that the Wolf had either some unfinished business with him or a peculiar, but inquisitively sick fancy and/or fetish towards him.

He started swirling around himself with his widened eyes. It became crystal clear to him that the entirety of his unit was killed off mercilessly and that no one was left alive. All of the bodies of the men he knew represented still life and early death.

Then he turned towards the three wolves and his eyesight became muddy. Two of the three were injured and slightly bleeding, but even with injuries they were up and straight and ready to fight.

Finally, he glanced over towards where Rö was standing. Honestly, he was too afraid to look at him straight in the eyes. With teeth creaking in his mouth and hands sweating in the darkness of his leather gloves, Walt just had to crush his curiosity and find out what exactly was that drove Rö all the way to this point.

"Did you want me to witness the deaths of my men before you execute me? Do you think that this has broken me?"

"—"

Rö didn't respond. Instead he left an eerie and angrily frowned stare in exchange. Walt's heart was beating faster than ever. He stood in place – it looked like he had dug his legs deep into the ground, disabling him from moving or going anywhere.

Atop all of this, Walt was still horribly curious.

"What do you want?"

"I don't understand the question."

He replied. This rushed Walt even further.

"Reinforcements are going to be notified soon. T-They will come for you. Next thing you know, the whole land will know where you are. You should be always in motion, always moving."

"—"

"You could've done this a lot faster. Why are you still here, speaking with the likes of me? What is it that you want?"

"I want the afterlife."

Walt stared in confusion while not understanding what this meant.

Rö cracked a gentle smile upon saying this. Shortly after, he released a couple of hand signals. As he did so, the three wolves started heading in the direction that the boy was running in – it was notable that they were signed off to leave the district. Two were slightly limping, but they still obeyed their orders either way.

Rö then slowly started approaching the colonel. It looked like Walt was still too shocked to move. He was able to listen, though.

"Yeah, the afterlife. I want that. What do you imagine the afterlife to be like, say Walt?"

"Reinforcements are on their way, I don't know" —

"I asked you something, Walt."

Rö was coming disturbingly close while he was preparing his pocket knife.

Walt decided to break the question with an uncertain answer.

"I… I'd say it's a land without hate and without war. It's nothing like the land we live in."

"HA-HA-HA-HAH! You reaaaaally think so? I think that's kind of morbid for you to say. Don't act like you're a savior of some sort, disposing of the poor and innocent and releasing them from this life, all while promising them something unreal. You keep talking about the afterlife as you've been there and know all about it, but in reality, you have no clue. You're a filthy totalitarian promising a better tomorrow to the people below you just right before killing them and throwing their butchered bodies in a dump. I know what happened to the other people that were like me after I left. Do you really think they're enjoying themselves in the afterlife, you poor bastard?"

Rö was now right in front of the colonel, giving him a most serious and grim facial expression. However, the mood of the colonel seemed to have changed.

All of a sudden, Walt manically burst out in a most disgusting laughter — his yellow teeth were popping out from his dry mouth while spit was flying out from it. The empty street echoed and carried his shrieking laughter with the mild wind.

After a couple of unnerving seconds, the hysterical laughter had stopped. Rö maintained the expression he held within himself firsthand throughout the whole outburst of the colonel.

Walt then spoke up in grandness and mockery.

"What a poor soul you are! Here you are criticizing the likes of me, but what about you? Just how many people did you kill, murderous Wolf? Just how many commotion and turmoil have you caused and spread together with your teammates all across the lands? I find it hypocritical and most ironic for you to speak of justice and equality!

And my, I have no idea how a homeless rodent got their hands on real magic! I find that truly surprising! I should have executed you along with the thousands of your unclean kind! They all stopped being waste to this land the moment we shot their brains out!" —

Rö furiously grabbed Walt by the neck and started gripping him. With a swift hand movement, Walt reached out to his back pocket and pulled out a grenade.

"WELL THEN WOLF, LET'S SEE THE AFTERLIFE TOG" —

Walt's initiative was to remove the pin of the grenade using only his thumb and to blow them up together. What he had miscalculated was Rö's immense speed and observation skills.

Rö cut off Walt's arm with his pocket knife just slightly above the wrist area before Walt could bring his fantasy to life. The gloved hand which held a grenade in its grip fell down to the bloody concrete.

Walt's screams were preposterous.

"GAAAH! YOU PIG!

THE LORD WILL AVENGE ME!!!"

Blood wouldn't stop pouring down.

As a man of enormous self confidence, saturation and pride, this was the most mortified he had ever felt in all of his deceitful life as a colonel that served the Marshal Capital's (the center of Einstudht district's leaders and war veterans) military. The blooming of such a risen ego was finally subdued after its long and restless years of tyranny. Walt believed that as long as he had a high position that would back him up, his ego would always be protected and on the rise, but this was quite wrong.

You see, social position never mattered. In a time like this, they all led miserable lives, one way or another. Dignity was the only separating characteristic that would appeal slightly beyond the book.

A gap still existed, nevertheless. Destiny never cared for dignity. It also never cared for social positions, neither justice. Who was rich and who was poor, who had a mansion and who was homeless, who had bright white teeth and who had none — if destiny ever involved her hands, the deed would most surely be done, and not just done, but sealed away for eternity.

The entirety of destiny's concept foretells that once it begins, overwriting it is as good as surviving a million meter drop. This ironical occasion might be the perfect example.

Rö came closer to Walt's ear as he was wiggling in pain and cussing in jealousy and defeat. With a sickening but overly joyful smile, Rö decided to explain a thing or two.

"I love seeing people get hurt. I love killing them — throwing them where they belong. You got all of that right, Walt. See, the only difference between you and me is that I don't kill the innocent. I torture the evil souls, the traitors and the threats, but I don't touch the weak, the hungry and the poor. People like you are the real waste."

Through gasps and screams, with red covering the yellowness of his teeth, Walt spoke up once more.

"Ghh… Haha… Gh… You know, Wolf…. God sees all. Then he tells the Lord about what he saw… And be damn sure, Wolf… The Lord is on my side.

Consider… Ghh… Consider yourself a hero, for all I care — an actor of justice! Whoo-hoo! You've really outdone yourself now! But what difference… Does it make, huh? Huh?! You're a killer, after all, no matter who is it that you kill! So let's rot together in hell, shall we?! Whooo-weeeeeee!"

Walt fell down to his knees and shamelessly started crawling to the other direction. It was of no doubt that Walt's mental capacity had shattered into a thousand separate pieces and that there was no sanity within him — Rö found this to be extremely entertaining, so he made a couple of steps forward. He grabbed the colonel by the hair like he was the lowest grade prostitute there was, pulled him up and said one more crucial thing.

"And this is where the real satisfaction is. Save the words, I don't believe in God, neither in your piece of shit Lord. He's playing with all of you for what I'm concerned. But I do believe in this.

You all are the same, high and mighty on the scene, but when your time finally comes, you go crazy and plead for mercy like you deserve it. That is what brings me utmost excitement. YOUR PETRIFIED EXPRESSIONS SIMPLY FUEL ME WITH LIFE, HA-HA-HA-HA-HAH!"

Rö raised Walt's head just a little bit more while adjusting the angle of his pocket knife.

In a "get what you deserve" situation, Rö hammered the knife into Walt's throat, forcefully pushing it in that much so it could be seen sticking out from the other side, or in other words, from the back of his neck.

Rö enjoyed this more than he should have. His loud laughter that was the creation of joy mixed with Walt's hopeless screams and dead gasps.

Since, after all, Walt was the one that provided Rö with bread dipped in milk and sweet blocks of sugar that one day, Rö decided to leave the pocket knife shoved deep in his throat as an everlasting present.

Walt's damaged body fell down after Rö let go of his greasy hair. He fell down right beside his tedious straw hat that was somewhat in the center of all the other corpses.

Rö didn't stop to stare for a while. It was like all of his previous emotions got suppressed and died a vague death. He simply stepped over some of the bodies and took a turn into a back alley, thus leaving the crime scene with no emotion whatsoever.

Reinforcements came minutes after.

They were appalled to see such a sighting.

2

Gravel scattered from the bottom of his feet to the fresh grass of the frisky morning.

With heavy inhales and even heavier exhales, the boy kept running with no intention of stopping. By now, he had completely escaped the tyranny and chaos that was on the rise in Einstudht district. Even with that in mind, he was still traumatized.

Let's not lie to each other. The boy ran his soul out. He ran so much that his body started hurting – and it's not the itching wound we are talking about. It was only time that his body would give in to complete exhaustion. Not so surprisingly, his legs simply decided to cancel on him.

The boy collapsed down to the grass in the middle of nowhere.

The bag that slept on his back slid down his shoulder as he collapsed and decided to sit right next to him as his face was turning whiter by the second. Right as the bag made contact with the wet grass, Ryohu popped out.

The black cat looked all around him. He had no idea what had happened. All he knew was that the merchant's life was ended abruptly and that the boy's life was hanging on a thin thread.

True, he was happy to see the boy alive, but "alive and well" is a much better term than just "alive".

He cuddled against the boy who was lying on his back. As he looked up, Ryohu noticed the numb and lifeless expression that resided on the boy's pale face. He also noticed the numbers of smaller scratches and cuts that the boy endured throughout his marathons.

Then the boy turned to the side and started puking. He coughed a couple of times after it and returned to the previous laying position.

He was looking at the strong blue skies. He saw a couple of beautiful things, like wheat fields, the endless ocean and a soft blue haired girl. But what followed were vivid images of people screaming in pain and rifles blasting out cold bullets. The boy simply closed his eyes and decided to finally catch some breath. He began speaking to his friend.

"Ryohu… Ryohu, you're here, right?"

"Meow."

I'm here.

The boy and his cat stayed like this for a while.