The God of Fear

Everybody gathered around me as the urgency of Avie's absence grew.

"No way... no fucking way..." Illya muttered.

"What? What's wrong?!" I asked her.

Illya fell to her knees, in the first bout of true fear I've ever seen in her eyes. Again, I dreaded looking up at the sky.

Something else was coming now.

And it was making my legs feel numb.

I wasn't sure what it was... not until it entered the atmosphere of the Isle.

"Is that... a bird?" Carl asked.

The bright, pink eyes of the bird flying in were glowing in the last of the sunlight of the day. She closed in on us, with two people on her back.

A person clad in all black, and another in a flannel and jeans.

The bird landed with sharp claws on her feet that scraped the glass and created an ugly noise, sliding at the perfect momentum to stop six feet in front of me.

From there, the two people got off of her back, and in a puff of smoke, she turned into a human... how did she transform like that?

"WHY ARE YOU HERE?!" Illya screamed out.

The man, clad in all black with a distant stare, peered over at Illya.

"Shut it." He said.

He then looked at me, and his dead eyes turned gold, just like Illya's, and everybody around me collapsed, excluding Faith and me.

"Master, is this the man?" The bird-girl asked the golden-eyed man.

"That's right, Fico. This is Sky Asterio." He said to Fico.

"Wow! He's even able to withstand your Fear Gaze! He lives up to his name, doesn't he?" Fico asked her Master.

"It's to my understanding that you've had quite the journey, haven't you, Sky?" He asked me.

"I believe you've missed your opportunity for introducing yourself. Is it right to assume you sent The Isle at me?" I asked the impolite man.

"That's right. I wanted to make sure you had your power. If you deflected it, it seems like you truly are a Deity now. I see my sister had succeeded in her mission." He said.

And my heart dropped.

Sister...? Illya...?

"My name is Eirikr Asterio." He told me. (Aye-Rai-Ker)

"Eirikr... it seems you already know me. Why are you here?" I asked him.

"I headed over as soon as I saw your Vessel is beginning to prepare for my entrance." He explained to me.

Vessel? That word again... does he mean my arm?

"I'm not following," I told him. Faith started to hide behind me as Fico's weird gaze met with hers.

"I don't expect you to. It's clear what my idiot of a sister was doing to you. Breed you into a Deity without any knowledge of what it means. I'll tell you right now, my sister made a giant mistake in her plan to use one of my worlds to wipe your memory and train you." Eirikr told me.

"Oh yeah? If her plan worked, was it really a mistake?" I asked him.

"It absolutely was. The Asterio family had been wiped out for over four hundred years before she reopened that world. Everything ever kept in that world had been latent and closed off from The Real World. Now, Shike, Belle, and Alexia Asterio all have interacted with The Real World. I don't predict you know what that means, do you?" Eirikr asked me.

How did he know their names...?

"Interacting with The Real World while being a part of The First Trial? I'd assume that it would mean The First Trial would cease to exist, that, or the people stuck in there have been freed as well." I theorized.

"You were so close. It means much more than that. It should come as no secret that because of what you did to The First Trial, we are now enemies. I have full power and the right to kill you here and now, and I can do so with a wave of my hand." Eirikr said.

"I'm not stupid, and I trust you on that, but I'd have to negotiate with you. You seem powerful enough, but there's something I have that you want." I told Eirikr. He nodded and pointed to me.

"As this body finally comes to its limits, I need a body fit for The God of Fear such as myself. None other than Sky Asterio's body could fit as my Vessel. Your body is what I want, and you've already given me your left arm." He said, pointing at my arm.

"That's why I can't move it... you've completely taken it from me. That's why there are strands seared into it, just like your arms." I pointed at him, and he nodded.

"Perfectly correct. I have twenty percent of your Vessel. So, here comes negotiations." Eirikr began.

"Firstly, I want Shike, Belle, and Alexia Asterio to kill themselves willingly, or to die by my hand unwillingly," Eirikr said.

"Not happening. I will fight you here if you dare to dispute that." I told him.

"Deity of Wrath, I am an insurmountable amount of times stronger than you. You haven't even reclaimed your previous strength, so there's no way you could even come close to beating me." Eirikr told me.

"The fact you haven't killed them already means that there's an alternative. So, what is it? What can I do for you that doesn't involve hurting my friends?" I asked him.

"To bring me my brother, Genesis Asterio," Eirikr told me.

I knew it... the man who wrote the note in the statue in the forest. He was connected to both Illya and Eirikr.

"What will that grant me?" I asked Eirikr.

"That will prevent me from killing your friends. However, on top of that, I want you to go down to Earth, and ask Umbra where her sister, Avie is, and then bring Avie to me as well." Eirikr said.

I froze in my tracks, looking at him without giving my secret away.

"I'll find Avie for you, and return her to you after I ask Umbra. What will that get me?" I asked Eirikr again, and his dead eyes finally coalesced with a smile.

"That gets you nothing. You don't understand your position now, Sky. I don't have time to do things on Earth, that's what you're for. You're my errand boy, and your first errands are to return my brother to me, and to bring Avie to me." Eirikr told me.

Illya stood up and looked at her brother with hatred in her eyes.

"Why don't you tell him what you plan to do after you have those two things," Illya asked him.

"I guess I owe you that much." Eirikr waved his hand and started to talk directly to me.

"I've silenced the field around us. I'll explain to you, and you alone what my plan is, and that will get you caught up with why you should listen to me and obey me. Once I get Genesis and Avie, I will use them to revive the Trial Worlds and to put the rest of Earth's Population into each one. They will generate enough strands for me to support your Vessel after I take it, and I will become the Supreme Deity of this galaxy." Eirikr told me.