Emotions

**BIG CHAPTER ALERT**

....

COUGH

Ashok coughed, his lungs burning as blood poured from his mouth, staining the ground beneath him. His legs buckled beneath the overwhelming pull of the Abyss.

[I WILL MAKE SURE NOBODY EXCEPT ME TOUCHES YOU WHEN WE'RE INSIDE!] Adlet screamed, his voice laced with an unsettling, perverse madness. He aided the Abyss by inflicting wounds upon Ashok to accelerate its grasp and draw him in more swiftly.

Ashok's body was pulled from the mortal plane and sucked inside the gates of Abyss but in his final moments of desperation, he made a last-ditch effort, he grabbed one of the ring handles of the gate. Ashok's injured body now dangled, suspended between life and death, his fingers tightly gripping the cold metal of the ring handles. The gates did not heed his desperate grasp. Simply holding their cold, iron handles was not enough to sway their Goddess Order. Slowly, the enormous gate began to close.

[Your struggle ends now. Did you think clinging to the handle for just one extra second would make a difference? How pitiful,] mocked Adlet's soul.

CLANG

The chain from Ashok's heart, which had been loose and extending until now, suddenly snapped taut its pull sharp and unyielding as though it had finally found its counterpart on the other side. Seeing the chain finally connected, a smirk came on Ashok's face as he said, "You are not a gamer; you will never understand the difference, that a single second can make."

Before Adlet could fully process what, Ashok said, a cold voice shouted from the outside" NO! IT CAN'T BE" and then a change occurred in both the Body of Ashok and Goddess. The different colored aura leaking from their bodies solidified in an instant and let out a shine.

The gates of the Abyss, which had been closing around him with relentless certainty, vanished as if they were nothing more than a mirage in the shine and Ashok was back in the mortal plane with all his wounds healed.

But the transformation did not end there. As the light continued to pulse and resonate around them, two distinct stigmata began to form on Ashok's and the Goddess's bodies. Each stigma reflects and complements the other as if their fates had been bound together at this moment.

"THIS WILL NEVER END THE WAY, YOU WANT. MORTAL" declared the Goddess. She knew that since the chains were connected, she could no longer harm his soul. Yet in that fleeting moment, she saw it—the stigma that was meant to mark his body was not fully engraved acting on desperate speed, she said "I CURSE YOU".

"YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO WIELD ANY WEAPONS"

"YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO USE ANY KIND OF MAGIC"

"YOU WILL BE FORSAKEN BY THE ATTRIBUTES OF NATURE"

Before the Goddess could utter another word the stigmas were fully completed. Ashok gazed at the completed stigma which represented him on the body of the Goddess before the veil covered it. 'So that's what my stigma looked like. It looks beautiful on her body,' he thought with a faint smile tugging at his lips, not caring about the three curses, that were now being engraved on his back.

As for the Goddess, when she looked at the stigma on Ashok's body, she thought with anger 'Don't think you have won mortal, that stigma will only serve to amuse me as I watch you struggle to survive with the weight of those three curses on your body.' With nothing more to do, she decided to leave, not wanting to stay a second longer but her connection to the plane was still not restored.

'Why is the World still restricting the connection? Didn't the ritual complete just now?'

"Hmmm! It seems you still can't leave, My Darling ~ Morrathis," Ashok's voice echoed with a teasing lilt, his words dripping with mock affection as he observed the Goddess's struggle.

"DON'T YOU DARE TAKE MY NAME OUT OF THAT FILTHY MOUTH?" shouted Morrathis in anger, unable to use her true voice on him because of the Stigma.

"Hmmm! Are you angry? Did I do something wrong?" Ashok asked, his voice laced with feigned innocence.

"YOU WILL DIE BY MY HANDS, MORTAL!" Morrathis's fury had shattered all bounds. Were it not for the stigma that restrained her, she would have ended Ashok's life a million times over.

"Looks like the Stigma has started showing its effect, look at you—your voice doesn't sound as cold as before. It's almost... softer. I'm sure it will sound even more sweet and beautiful in the future."

"WHAT DOES MY VOICE HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU, MORTAL?!" Morrathis screamed, her voice cracking through the air with explosive fury. The sheer force of her words should have been enough to shake the very ground beneath them.

"You will hurt my feelings if you say that," Ashok responded playfully, his voice light with feigned innocence. He tilted his head with a coy smile, clearly enjoying the moment. "I just fulfilled one of my wife's greatest desires, and now she's asking, 'What does it have to do with me?'" His tone was teasing, almost affectionate.

Morrathis's fury faltered for a brief instant, her words dying on her lips. She was in confusion as if she were trying to make sense of what Ashok had just said. Her gaze sharpened, her thoughts racing. She examined herself within a moment using her divine energy, feeling no significant shift in her body, yet she felt something was off. "What desire did you fulfill?" Morrathis asked her voice now tinged with genuine confusion. No longer the tone filled with venom.

"Your confused voice is giving you away and yet, you still can't understand."

"Speak clearly!" ordered Morrathis, though she didn't shout. For some reason, Ashok's words were affecting her without her noticing.

"Okay then! I will speak clearly. What do you think Emotions are? Some kinds of Authority or Power. They are nothing like that. You just feel them and didn't you feel 'anger' when you were shouting 'YOU WILL DIE BY MY HANDS, MORTAL' seconds ago?

You were feeling so much 'anger' that you failed to even notice that the coldness in your voice was diminishing with each passing second.

And now, right here, right now... you're feeling 'confusion', aren't you? That, too, is an emotion." Explained Ashok.

Morrathis looked down at her hands, cloaked in the corrupted veil, a strange, unsettling sensation stirring within her. For the first time in a millennium, she felt something she had long forgotten—the soft, unfamiliar pulse of joy. Her heart, once cold and indifferent, now beat with an emotion that she couldn't fully comprehend. She understood the meaning behind Ashok's words: she could feel emotions now. But even then, she did not understand what joy meant, even though she felt it. This led to her rejecting the feeling and forgetting the emotion.

"Y-You are lying," said Morrathis still not believing his words.

"I never once lied to you, Darling, from the very beginning. Now, you don't even need to use your divine powers to confirm that. I'm sure you can tell, through the Stigma etched on my body, whether I'm telling the truth or a lie. The reason why you're able to feel emotions, too, is because of that same Stigma. Though, I'm sure you can't fully understand them just yet."

Morrathis could not reply anything to that.

"If you still don't believe me, just ask Hell. I am sure he would explain emotions better than me, his children are sins after all.

Oh! Talking with you nearly made me forget, the reason you are not able to leave is because of these" said Ashok taking a deliberate step backward, revealing two gleaming symbols etched into the ground.

Ashok's last form of precaution, 'The Ancient Dragonic and Spirit Tongue.'

"Well, I have nothing to hide from you since we are one from now. You see, the first one here means 'Mutual' in Dragonic and the second one is 'Exchange' in spirit. Coming together, in this case, they would make 'Every Exchange within the ritual shall be mutual and equal'."

"It doesn't matter. The ritual is already over" said Morrathis.

"It matters. The ritual was mutual till the moment when you became my soul partner and I agreed to fulfill your desires, but didn't you curse me right after even three times at that."

SILENCE

"Well, if we're to restore balance and make this truly mutual again, it seems I must now curse you three times, just as you did to me."

"YOU DARE-"Before Morrathis could shout Ashok interrupted.

"Sheesh! Just stop speaking to your partner in a God's tone by now. Am I not speaking to you naturally? You really need to drop that pompous way of talking. And as for the curse, I was joking, of course. How could I curse my new wife, I'm not as cold-hearted as you." Though Ashok's words carried the warmth of a loving husband, his thoughts betrayed him. I'm also not strong enough to even cast a single curse, let alone three."

"So, what you're saying is," Ashok said, his finger pointed squarely at Morrathis, "that my wife here"—he emphasized the word with a teasing grin—"needs to compensate for the three curses she placed upon me. And, of course, it must be equal in nature, as the ritual demands."

Morrathis was silent hearing that 'Just look at his audacity. How shamelessly is he asking for a blessing? Moments ago, he was groveling, calling me 'Your Highness this' and 'Your Highness that,' bowing at every turn. And now? Now he dares to call me his w-w-wi… nothing.

I have to give a blessing to the very person I just cursed, or I'm stuck here, bound by this ridiculous ritual. To think those ancient languages were encrypted from the start of the ritual. Which also meant he predicted everything till now.'

The more Morrathis reflected on how she had been manipulated from the very beginning of the ritual, a shiver ran through her, though she couldn't quite pinpoint the emotion stirring within her.

'I have to leave now, I can't stay here any longer. Who knows what he's planning next?' Though she hadn't consciously noticed, she had already stopped addressing Ashok as "Mortal" or "Foreigner." Those labels, once so firmly attached to him, had slipped away without her realizing.

"DON'T BOW TO ANYONE AND GET LOST" shouted Morrathis and Ashok disappeared from the place the moment he heard that.

As soon as Ashok departed, the veil that had shrouded Morrathis lifted, revealing her true, divine form — that of the Ancient Goddess herself. Her long, lustrous black hair cascaded down to her waist, as dark as the night itself, perfectly complementing her strikingly beautiful fair complexion. Her black eyes were deep and infinite, like the abyss itself, while her sharp nose and plump, red lips added to her ethereal allure. The elegant dress she wore hugged her figure, accentuating her curves, with the sides of her breasts and shoulders exposed, showcasing her divine proportions.

With a graceful wave of her hand, the intricate mark that had rested at the center of her chest disappeared, hidden once more as she settled back onto her throne. The moment was serene, yet undeniably powerful. Had Ashok been there to witness this divine beauty in all its splendor, it was said that he would have died of sheer ecstasy, overwhelmed by the sight of such unparalleled grace.

'Why of all, did I even give him 'that' blessing?' she thought as she returned to her main body as well.

...

The Illustration of the Goddess is added on the Main page. Please support me with some power stones and tickets. If you liked my work till now, please leave an honest review and ask questions in comments. I will reply to every single question. Thank You