~ In the air, above The Sea of Blades ~

  [The Year 9840 in the Age of Heroes]

  TWO BATTLES raged.

  The One Army had committed all forces at its disposal by now. While The Five battled the Devourer in the sky, the hordes were subjected to a mighty cavalry charge from both sides.

  And yet, the horde was like a never ending tide. There was no stopping it. Their advance could only be delayed, step by step. The forefront endured the unrelenting onslaught. Gaps, created by the enemy, were continuously filled by new soldiers. The One Army desperately fought on. Its discipline and the soldiers rigorous training in advance were the only things preventing the mayhem that would surely erupt if the forefront collapsed.

  If the battle on the ground was a stage for untold savagery and desperate survival, then the skies bore witness to an elemental conflict of epic proportions. The low-hanging clouds had been torn apart - mighty magic dispersing them in every direction. Streaks of energy flashed through the sky and four figures could be seen zipping around at an unbelievable pace. They unleashed relentless attacks upon a lone figure, shrouded in darkness, without pause. Each attack was immensely powerful, able to crush mountains and level the seas.

  The soldier and his squad had slowly began the inevitable march towards the forefront. An oppressive silence had enveloped them, nobody daring to voice their disheartening thoughts. The battlefront, a far away spectacle in mind and place, was much too close now. The soldier marched on unsteady steps, his whole body shaking.

  A reassuring hand was placed upon his shoulder and the squad leader’s gazed upon him - a resolute, tight-lipped grimace etched upon his face.

  “Boy, you will forget everything. Forget the stories about glorious battles, forget the boisterous tales of the survivors. Instead, look for the beast hidden within you and awaken it. There is only one thing now - for all of us. Fight and survive, vanquishing the foes in our way. Remember these words on the battlefield and bring honour to us all…” The squad leader squeezed his shoulder one last time and proceeded to the front of their unit.

  The young soldier watched him go, his resolute march toward the carnage growing slightly steadier.

  Flashes of lightning, swirling winds and condensed earth projectiles descended upon the cocoon of darkness.

  The air was visibly straining under the elemental onslaught. However, the enemy’s shield didn’t look damaged at all.

  The four Monarchs had surrounded the Devourer after its first attack and had unleashed a barrage of elemental magic on it. Though, they kept moving around from that point onwards. The enemy’s beam of darkness had been a close call, only the hastily created light barrier of the old man had been enough to sufficiently deflect the attack. The Monarchs defences, in contrast, had succumbed to the barrage in moments.

  Surprisingly, the old man was still rooted in place - his gaze locked onto the eyeless visage of his foe. A battle of will and soul taking place.

  Suddenly, the darkness wavered for a minuscule moment.

  But this, it seemed, was all Alvar Sotaris needed.

  He moved fast. Faster than even the Monarchs could accurately follow. One moment, the old man had been hovering a small distance away. The next, he had suddenly appeared right in front of the Devourers defences. A strike with his stave followed right after.

  The stave connected with the darkness and a blinding light erupted. The Monarchs watched as the darkness was seared away by the blinding strike, and at that moment, they heard the old man’s voice echo in their minds.

  “Now…”

  His voice barely a whisper due to the strain of controlling such a powerful attack.

  The Monarchs nodded and summoned their elements—just as they had strategised with Alvar Sotaris in the preceding years—channeling them directly through their newly acquired shards.

  As a result, the air began to visibly glow around them. Each individual unleashed a pure beam of elemental might, striking at the now-exposed enemy.

  The beams shattered through the remaining defences of the enemy, plunging into the enshrouded form and, for the first time, connected to something tangible. The writhing form of the Devourer visibly flinched and staggered upon impact - four distinct punctures, each radiating a chaotic signature, still etched onto its being.

  Shortly after, the darkness surged outward, cleansing the holes and closing the wounds. Jagged tendrils of writhing shadow lashed out through the air, furiously attacking the four monarchs. They, in turn, evaded or fortified themselves as best as they could when the attack couldn’t be avoided.

  The Fire’s Monarch shot sideways in a burst of fire, his body a streak of burning light against the sky. Instinctively, he hurled a blazing lance toward the following tendrils, but the Devourer simply dissolved them into a billowing mass of black smoke, letting the attack pass through harmlessly. A new tendril reformed behind him out of the blue and tried to impale him.

  An immense burst of air slammed into the monarch, throwing him clear just in time. The shadowy lance sliced through the space where he had been a moment before, the air itself warping by its passing. In retaliation, the Air’s Monarch fixed the enemy with a withering gaze and sent a vortex of compressed wind howling towards it.

  The attack struck true, carving through the concentrated darkness.

  Yet this time, the result was not the same again - the foe simply reformed, its shape endlessly shifting.

  Alvar Sotaris watched as the Water’s Monarch appeared right next to them, a spear of solid ice materialising in her grasp. She threw it with tremendous force, the ice turning into a spinning storm of jagged shards before closing in. In response, he saw how the Devourer swiftly reformed its protective shell - the ice shards uselessly shattering upon it.

  His earlier attack had been the only one to overcome that defence. But it had come at a cost that not everyone would be willing to bear.

  While silently clashing with the Devourer in a battle of wills, the old man quickly realised that their previously conceived approach would be futile, serving only to drain their mana reserves. While keeping the enemy barely in check, a frightening thought came to be. What if they weren’t enough for this task?

  All the power-ups from the past years had been nothing more than a means to keep the creature contained and focused on them. As of now, no definitive outcome, let alone a victory, could be seen. Something else needed to be done.

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  The old man’s thoughts turned to his first musings when they were approaching the Sea of Blades over the clouds. The knowledge that common soldiers - even regular citizens had volunteered - were fighting a desperate battle of attrition, sacrificing themselves to buy the Five and the worlds more time, had granted him a newfound clarity on what would be required if worst came to worst.

  That was why he had done something unexpected after reaching said conclusion. The enemy had clearly sensed that something was wrong, the old man unable to conceal everything during the clash of wills - but by then, it was already too late.

  Alvar Sotaris had invoked his previous technique again, summoning the divine light to its call. He had suffused his light-attuned mana into his stave and had barrelled towards his enemy in a burst of empowerment. Just before closing in, he had done the unexpected. The infused stave, already filled to the extreme with energy, had been further supplemented by a precious drop of life energy scooped out of his energy core. At the cultivation stage he was in, the small amount had already been immense. Loosing the equivalent in his life expectancy was, in his opinion, an acceptable outcome.

  His theory had worked out, further solidifying his unspoken decision.

  The respective battles continued, becoming more desperate by the minute.

  The Earth’s Monarch had lifted massive chunks of stone and debris into the sky, creating a platform on which he was standing while wielding even more energy.

  “Enough of this farce! I will gladly follow your example old man. This abomination won’t shrug off my attacks, no more! Even if I have to raise the stakes, I will not be ignored any longer!”

  ‘Of all the people here, he is the first to recognise my doing.’ The old man thought surprisingly. However, he didn’t show it outwards. Instead, he just nodded at the giant of a man approvingly.

  In response, the man rose his arms towards the scattered clouds and the empty sky above them.

  All of a sudden, an immense pressure materialised and the enemy glanced upwards. Out of the blue, a mountain-sized spike of rock had formed. It had hovered for only a second when the Earth Monarch jerked his arms downward, his gaze locking menacingly onto the foe - the mountain plummeting downwards.

  The pressure coming off of the mountain drastically increased and didn’t stop. The shadows around the Devourer swirledin response and an uncountable mass of tendrils exploded outwards. They rose up into the skies and created layer upon layer of tightly condensed black energy.

  A moment later, the monumental spike struck the layers, creating a shockwave, though it failed to penetrate further.

  The effect on the enemy, though, was more profound.

  It reeled back, and for the first time, it let out an abhorrent scream that overlapped with itself manyfold. It seemed that, for once, the enemy had to expend a great deal of energy to deflect the looming impact above it.

  Noticing the opening, the Fire’s Monarchs seized the moment immediately and dived straight at it, his entire body igniting with the power of various enhancements. He crashed into the foe like a falling star, the explosion of fire and force enveloping both of them. For a brief moment, the remaining form flickered under the barrage, its concentration thinning as though struggling to hold itself together.

  Then the darkness intensified again and surged back, the assailant hurtling backward, crashing into the platform of the Earth’s Monarch. The two tumbled through the air before the Air’s Monarch caught them both with a construct of wind. At the same time, a massive surge of darkness rushed up from the hordes - droves of Souleaten falling lifeless to the ground - engulfing the Devourer. Visibly empowered, the enemy unleashed a concentrated beam of darkness, hurling it toward the still-locked mountain above.

  The beam struck the tip of the mountain, shattering it completely. The debris was hurled outward, spiralling down toward the momentarily stunned battle below.

  The Devourer shifted its attention back to the Five, the darkness swirling much more chaotically. The sky around them darkened, clouds reappearing above them and twisting in circular motion around it.

  Its previously humanoid form began to stretch and deform, shifting into a monstrous storm of darkness.

  In the midst of this terror, streaks of chaotic energy began to flash erratically. Five projectiles of darkness and intermingled chaos energy formed instantaneously around it, spinning wildly in place.

  “There is no return from this…” The old man whispered to himself. Yet, the Monarchs could clearly hear him.

  “Somehow a chaos shard is being formed somewhere inside of that storm of darkness, I can sense its formation!”

  The old man appeared in a flash between them.

  “How it came by this power I can’t fathom, this isn’t power that can be wielded within this worlds fabric without consequences. Everything will be for naught if we don’t unleash everything at our disposal!

  The Monarchs looked at the rapidly swirling storm in bewilderment. A chaos shard was a thing of archaic myths and legends, predating this age and the previous one for sure.

  “I will pour everything I have and more into the centre of that storm. You, in turn, must unleash the elemental shards within you. There will be no more chances after this and I won’t be able to support you… If that storm erupts, everything will be lost!” the old man exclaimed.

  The storm's pressure had rapidly intensified as he addressed the Monarchs.

  Then, all of a sudden, the storm convulsed and the spinning projectiles streaked towards the Five.

  In response, Alvar Sotaris unleashed his ultimate strike.

  The projectiles impacted all five individuals simultaneously.

  The Monarchs imbued a portion of their life energy into their defensive constructs, enabling them to just barely counteract the life-threatening assault of dark energy which was further intensified by chaos.

  The old man had been able to unleash his strike in the nick of time. He paid the price, however, in not being able to properly erect his protective barriers. The projectile smashed through them instantly and skewered the old man.

  He was sent careening off into the distance.

  Despite this, an ear piercing shriek erupted from inside the storm as the ultimate strike had struck true.

  A jagged hole in the middle of the storm was left in its wake. The Monarchs could see tendrils of darkness and chaos dripping from the gaping wound. The chaos further corrupted or destroyed everything it touched on that side, as if the entity had lost its control on that part of its form.

  Furthermore, the jagged hole exposed the inner parts within the writhing darkness - a pulsing, black and mutagenic core, erratically beating as the now twisted heart of its bearer.

  An unspoken thought coursed through the four spectators and their whole beings exploded with energy at the same time. Each of them had a sparkling, crystallised shard spinning above their hands.

  With a final act of defiance and self-sacrifice, the four Elemental Monarchs poured every last drop of their remaining life energy into the shards and launched them toward their target as one.

  Fire, wind, water and earth converged in a blinding cascade of destruction.

  Replacing the chaotic storm of darkness, a vacuum tore open in the fabric of reality itself. In its centre two objects were steadily getting closer while rotating around each other.

  When they met, it was as if the universe itself recoiled.

  A silence deeper than the void swallowed all sound for a single, breathless moment.

  Then …

  Detonation.

  A blinding light bursted outward in a torrent of unfiltered power, swallowing the continent and parts of the upper hemisphere in an instant.

  The lands ruptured like brittle glass, tectonic plates screaming as they shattered apart.

  The mountains on the horizon disappeared, their forms obliterated before they could even fall. Mountain ranges which were farther away split apart, getting enveloped in the cataclysmic shock wave and hurtled into the skies - never to return to the ground.

  The seas, far away, recoiled like a living thing, surging onwards in tidal waves that reached for the sky - the water infused with both elemental purity and chaos.

  Storms of impossible hues raged through the sky, their winds carrying whispers of unborn worlds.

  The air itself became a weapon, flaying stone from the earth and flesh from bone.

  Reality got twisted at the epicentre, as the forces of Creation and Chaos warred against one another in the blink of an eye. The explosion did not burn. It did not simply destroy. It unmade and remade.

  The shockwave tore across the whole world, its force beyond imagination. Those who stood at the edge of the cataclysm saw their own bodies flicker - caught in the conflict of existence and oblivion.

  Then came the sound. A sound that had been held at bay in that brief, terrible silence in the beginning. It had caught up to the cataclysmic destruction it had preceded.

  It was like the thunder after existence had been unravelled. It reached beyond the physical, hammering into the souls of every living thing.

  The survivors, those who had been distant enough to escape total annihilation, spoke of the event in hushed voices for millennia to come; their minds forever scarred by what they had witnessed: The Ending of an Age.

  The events were written down, becoming history.

  History became legends and legends became myths.

  Left in the aftermath was a silent, forever-scarred witness - The Shattered Lands.

  On a further note: