Lowly Ascent

In the City of Bells, a small black tentacle moved unperturbed by the chaos around it.

"I'm the king of 7th Street! Bow before me, I am the Bell's chosen!" As the tendril passed alley after alley, it found many "kings" ruling over small groups of people.

'This is nothing more than gangs and their wars for power. Is the fruit here? It's too soon to know.'

Moving about, Nihil's limbs made sure to split off into smaller and smaller pieces, squirming around like worms. After a day in this state searching the City, Nihil was about to mark it off his list however he encountered a roadblock in his search.

As one of the smaller limbs searched the inside of a trash can, a voice echoed in the alley, causing the rats to scurry.

"What and who are you? You're the one who killed the fire....right?"

'It's a follower of the Bell...' Nihil went on high alert.

A young man with black hair wearing a yellow cloak, and bells wrapped around him stood before the tendril. Strangely enough, Nihil didn't hear the bells ringing as the stranger approached.

"Who are you?" Nihil's soul energy projected his eerie voice.

The stranger deflected, "I asked first."

"Well, I don't think I'll answer."

"Then die...."

Three other people appeared covered in bells, they each looked at Nihil and studied him a moment before charging at him.

"Damn cultists, you are all so annoying."

The four replied at the same time, "We are no mere cultists, strange being!"

In Nihil's senses, he felt the sound around him change and discharge. It caused damage to his soul and a weird feeling he couldn't put his finger on.

Not wasting any time, he gathered all his soul to where he was under attack.

Almost immediately, a body formed and he used his powers to silence the sound around him. The dream core hummed, eliminating all vibrations.

The world turned strangely still.

Knowing they couldn't speak, the four grouped up and began to ring their bells, yet no sound came of it. However, their eyes glowed, and little by little, sound began to return.

'How?!' Nihil was surprised, but he now understood who his opponent was.

"You are the Bell Shaped Throne! But, why are there multiple of you?!"

The four didn't respond, they only continued to glow as rhythm remerged to the world and all things moved again.

Unlike the other gods, the Bell-Shaped Throne had higher intelligence than most, this became even more prevalent in the last few weeks it spent in the human world, living in a mortal body. Not only that, its powers were not based on sound, but vibration. The point was not the sound of a bell but the actual ringing of its body.

Sound once again apparent, and Nihil had no way to stop it, instead, he felt the need to leave.

'I don't know the powers of this god, I thought it was just sound but this is different. I need to learn more before I attempt anything...'

Nihil wasn't a coward, but it was pointless to continue a fight where both parties knew nothing about the other.

"Well, bye." In his decisiveness, he vanished without a trace.

"There's been a change in the air east of here, he's leaving..." One of the four spoke.

"It's fine, let him go." Another said.

It seemed God also didn't want to fight. Instead, the four looked around, they were curious about why the strange being would take such a risk like entering its city. There was something strange about it, but they found no clues.

...

"The Bureau is no more! This city now belongs to Hysteria, and the Blood Draped Orphans!" Cromwell stood atop the Bureau's headquarters, lining the streets below were the last remnants of the Bureau, all dead with their tongues cut off.

Cromwell had done it, he had taken down his toughest enemy while they were at their weakest, and with this achievement, he took the largest city in the world.

"Stop laughing, come here and tell me what you found out." Behind him was a beautiful woman eluding a gray fog, the fog originated from her mouth.

"Of course God, I shall tell you everything I learned at once!"

In the streets below, women and children screamed as their tongues were removed and replaced with ones of God. In the future, perhaps they would've created a new subspecies of humans. Alas, Nihil existed, and he was to be the bane of the Gods and their rule.

...

The Kaiser sat on his throne, replaying what he saw from Nihil. He wasn't pleased in the slightest.

'He grew this much, but how? There isn't any logic in it.'

Stars whirled around the giant of a man, silently buzzing as his thoughts drifted from his head and walked among the stars. There, he verified what he did not know and hoped to realize truths in the falsehoods.

'Both of them appeared out of nowhere, it's obvious they do not belong to this world, their very souls differ from those without celestial ones. Strangely, they are both the same person, well, not anymore, but they were. From what can be deduced, they shared a body and ended up here, but how does that connect to why one became so powerful?'

God was reminded of what his follower, Kain had said.

"Lord, his only weakness is that he's a madman. He doesn't think how people should and that can be used, he only sees his gains and not just from an apathetic standpoint but an emotional one. Using this, we can kill him."

The Kaiser lingered on the word madman, 'If he's a madman, then he would certainly take risks for power. I need to find out what risk he took and what reward he earned. From what I saw, he was staying in a deep part of the planet, that hole went on forever and there was some strong pressure. Was there a secret on that place he received after surviving the pressure?'

The Chancellor entered the chamber, he was haggard. "Lord, something has happened again...."

"Oh?" The Kaiser became curious.