Thousands of flaming meteors, upon him, only to all of a sudden be divided into two smooth halves.
He expected an explosion, but there was nothing.
Even when the meteors rained upon the skyscraper beneath, they simply became ashes of gold that dispersed into the wind.
Taking a single step forward, Ryuk appeared right before Aizelran, his claws reaching for his face.
But they never reached him.
An ever-changing loop of golden prisms appeared in their path, and all he noticed was Aizelran becoming smaller and smaller.
"No, I’m the one being sent back,"
It occurred to Ryuk, and immediately, his abyssal claws changed to draconic claws.
Upon their surface, Aetheris energy ran, and in the next moment, cracks spread across the space of the prism that held him.
SHATTER!
The prism shattered like glass as Ryuk stepped out.
He looked forward, and there was Eilerith, still in the same position as before.
"Tell me," Eilerith suddenly said as he pointed his hand down to Ryuk.
Two of them were stretched, held by their ends, while the remaining three curled in.
"Have you ever fallen before?"
He asked, yet that question became an instant reality.
The skyscrapers faded away as if they never existed, and what appeared instead was an unending dark chasm, which Ryuk immediately found himself rapidly descending into.
His eyes flashed in confusion as he turned up, finding Eilerith slowly folding the third finger.
As he did, he asked another question,
"Have shadows ever clawed at you, wishing to drag you down to the depths of despair?
In the next moment, the darkness from the chasm immediately all shifted, as massive shadow claws swam out, each reaching towards Ryuk.
Their numbers were enough to completely bury Ryuk from view, making the world descend into a deeper darkness.
But not for long, as a hole was blasted straight through the claws, revealing Ryuk, who found Eilerith folding his fourth finger.
"Have you ever watched a world burn?"
BUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRN!
Raging dark flames burst through the world in the next moment as Ryuk’s body immediately became as black as ashes.
Yet in the next moment, the ashes cracked apart from the center of his heart like fine glass, and in the next moment, Ryuk shot out of the remnant of ashes.
Eilerith folded his last finger.
"Have you ever..."
BA-DUUMP!
’No.’
The thought echoed in Ryuk’s head, and he tried to soar toward Eilerith, yet the word was completed.
"Lost it all?"
’What is this?’ Ryuk mused to himself, looking silently at Aizelran, who had his fist clenched, all fingers folded.
’What is this bizarre power?’
Right then, after his words, it began to sink into him.
He felt sluggish, a sign of his own strength leaving, and when Ryuk raised his hands to his face, he found them slowly turning into golden ashes.
’I am indeed losing it all,’ he thought silently as half of his body soon faded away.
But instead of despair, a smile curled upon Ryuk’s lips, and in the next moment, he whispered,
"What if I am whole?"
When he uttered those words, Aizelren visibly glitched as if affected, and in the next moment, Ryuk’s fading body immediately halted.
He watched as the ashes dispersed in the air suddenly reversed under an absolute force, as though existence itself had chosen to rewind.
All of it coalesced back into Ryuk, who instantly regained the sensation of his power surging through him.
A moment after he did—
FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!
A massive amount of Aetheris energy flooded out of his draconic form as the entire abyss around him rapidly unfurled like an illusion.
One moment, he was falling through the unending abyss, yet in the next moment, he found himself back, standing where he was in the beginning, the various skyscrapers still hanging from the sky and beneath him.
And turning his gaze up, he found Eilerith silently standing there still.
"Did you have a nice dream?" he asked him, and Ryuk stared silently for a while before he turned to his hands, clenching and unclenching his claws.
"I understand a bit now..." he mused.
"Your power works like a dream of some sort. In fact, this place we’re in..." he said, looking around the unnatural landscape, "
It’s like a base dreamscape."
"There are deeper layers of the dream; the deeper the layer, the more control you have over it, but also the more imaginative it is, and the lesser your control of it," Ryuk said.
In another moment, his claw reached past his hand, and he cut open a mark before he whispered,
"What if I never bled?"
But even though he said that, the blood that dripped from his arm did not flow back into his arm, and his wound healed at the normal pace.
"This base dreamscape of yours is the original, and in a way, the most real."
"You’re indeed right. I am in a dream," Ryuk mused to himself.
As much as it seemed confusing even to him, he understood how this power worked, and naturally, the way to counter it.
"In a way, it’s just like an illusion, unreal and imaginative."
In the next moment, a blue flame silently began burning around Ryuk’s scales.
It was his Aetheris energy burning gently over his skin, and right after, they flared out with incredible force as Ryuk surrounded even his own heart with Aetheris, giving his mind absolute clarity.
He saw as some of the sky scarpers began glitching, cracks appearing in the space, and within them were the images of a broken, ashy world.
In the end, this dreamscape had truly been overlapped with the real world of Gione.
"Many are erased without ever even admitting that they’re in a dream, but you already have it all figured out,"
Devilish Dream Lord Aizelren said, his voice once more reverberating through Ryuk’s bloodstream.
He had the feeling that once he broke through this landscape, this battle would be over.
But Auzelren didn’t just stand by and wait for him to break his dreamscape.
In the next instant, he watched as from his garments, a total of four more arms merged.
He gathered all six together, and each formed a runic seal with his fingers.
"Dream Expansion..."
_____
A/N:
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In and Out_SnowySmoos