He didn't think about it for long. Sure, he'd thought about dying to spare himself the pain, but really what was a little pain. Or a little more pain in any case.

He didn't have enough time to come up with expectations, but the fact that his pain seemed to vanish into thin air was a wonderful result. His vision was no longer blocked by blood, and the vision in front of him was surprising.

There was a man, a boy really, a bit younger than him even. The boy was in a state, a state perhaps similar to what he himself was pretty sure he was in right now. The boy was covered in blood, his own and an enemy's. An enemy whom he'd left behind him dead and cut to pieces.

The boy was dying, after having fought what looked like a giant rat. Rafe watched something separate itself from the beast, something that seemed both spiritual and physical. How he knew it was spiritual, he couldn't tell.

All he knew was that it oozed out among the beast's blood, but there was an ethereal quality to it that he would never have confused with blood. It oozed toward the crawling boy. All but one of the boy's limbs were the wrong angle, but he still had the desire to survive, to live.

When the ooze made contact with him, he screamed. Then the scene in front of him changed, and instead there were two boys. It took him a second to recognize the second figure, with it's head caved in on one side, even a bit of brain matter licking out. Blood flowed over it, like he'd been wrung out like a rug, his poor body.

Rafe Kingsley gulped. His clothes had been cut up by something, and…it was sickening. His poor ‘beautiful’ face, his painstakingly developed physique. He was almost dead. But then the ethereal ooze made contact with his body, and then they screamed in tandem.

All his pains came back, but it almost seemed like he'd miraculously received an increased pain capacity. He could feel it all, and so much more. He could feel every little break in his smallest bones, every painful twitch of every muscle, the blood and sweat flowing on his skin. He could feel his cracked skull, he could feel his brain going into shock even though he knew he had somehow survived death.

He knew his brain was shutting down, and maybe that was why he paid so much attention to the new visions playing out before him now.

The first was of a very familiar young man, now a few years older. He held a sword in his hands, and he swung it with the most beautiful form, but it was the colour he shorn, the light he gave off that was his true power.

It was magic, violent light. His brown hair shorn a vibrant stellar silver, and his eyes twinkled like a night sky. His skin seemed to have a sun under it, and when he ran towards his enemy the ground cracked.

The first Skyholm, aspect of the transcendent light,the sword, the lost weapon, and four others. But his path had been mostly built on an innate ability he'd been born with. One that made him a genius.

In the scene he saw, the boy fought a man who was definitely stronger than him. Still, he made the first move, a streak of light attacking a staff wielding juggernaut. The weapons clashed, and the boy was thrown back. The man also took a step back.

The older man smirked in self confidence, then covered his body in a layer of electricity as he attempted to take the boy down. He might have been weaker, but Rafe couldn't make sense of his battle instincts. They clashed for a few minutes, too fast for Rafe to follow, but then he could almost follow them for a few seconds.

The staff wielder feinted right, making the boy dodge toward the left where his fist waited with a coating of electricity. It was a very good feint, but the boy, the first Skyholm, bent his body impossibly without even seeing what was coming, the fist only taking a piece of his robe. The staff made a comeback immediately on his right, but the boy was already jumping into close range with what looked like electricity on his own fist, albeit it was weaker than the man's.

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It connected, and didn't do much, but it enraged the man. And the few seconds he was able to follow flowed like that. It almost seemed like the boy was trying to close his eyes even, like his eyes were getting in the way. And that electricity, Rafe thought, the weaker one the boy was wielding. It was from his aspect of the lost weapon, the ooze that had bound his soul.

He did not know how he knew these things, or even what an aspect was.

Seeing another scene begin before his eyes had him sighing in relief, although he didn't know why.

The second Skyholm. The best thief the universe ever saw. She was a lowly adventurer on her world early on, and only joined a few parties because she had a rare storage ability. Her affinity with shadows though, was so high. High enough that she was able to combine her soul with her shadow, and with her storage ability to build an inner world. According to the information he had, even after her death, her personal shadow verse should still exist.

In the scene he saw, the woman tried to escape from a world sized city. The building she was in was apparently the central palace. She seemed to be trapped, surrounded in a building of violet sand crystals that must have absorbed light during the day so they could shine perpetually through the night. There were lots of shadows, but there was much more light. And it seemed she had been expected.

She sighed and grabbed two tiny knives from sheathes hidden somewhere on her body. A golden armoured man stepped forward from among all the surrounding men.

She smiled seductively, her black hair neatly knotted behind her head. The trash talk was blocked out, although Rafe wasn't sure by whom. When the two combatants met, it was obvious the man was stronger. But the smile never left the woman's face, even when a wickedly sharp gladius came for her neck after not even thirty seconds of battle.

He cut her down. And as the blood flew into the air, it turned dark, and the falling corpse turned black too. They all turned into shadows.

“A shadow clone? But… she wasn't robbing the central palace then?” the leader asked no one in particular.

“But, the information said she was going to steal the most important thing in our possession. What could she…?”

And Rafe watched the minute the man realized something. He had only turned to shout instructions when the alarms started to blare.

And then a giant shadow appeared at the closest window. The window the shadow clone had been retreating to since she had been first sighted. The remnants of the shadow clone withdrew into the shadow cloud. Then a small window towards it's top opened and out came what looked like the giant barrel of a gun.

It shone with power, and all this had taken the fraction of a second in which the gold armoured man would have spoken. The beam of cosmic power struck behind the man, and men and pillars fell.

A laugh sounded out from the shadows.

“Endrick you fool. What is more important to a kingdom than it's king? I am the greatest thief, I always steal what I said I would. Destroying your ugly ass palace will just be a bonus. An impregnable fortress,” she scoffed.

And then multiple windows opened, and the shadow cloud swelled. There were blusters, and there were oddly shaped tools and even simple clothes with odd symbols shining with power. And they fell upon the palace, and destroyed it and everyone and everything in it with not even a speck of dust left to see.

“Oops! Maybe I went a bit overboard. Destroying half the planet was not part of the contract… Ah, well, at least I have learnt that mixing too many destructive magics like this is not advisable for small scale jobs, for wide spread destruction however…” and she laughed.

And the scene shifted again.

The third skyholm. He too was humanoid, but this time there were differences from the other two. Sure, the queen of shadows had a lot of her face hidden in her shadows, and her dark hair normally covered up what was left, but he was reasonably sure she was a human woman.

This man was taller than normal. What's more, he had wings. Wings not of anything physical like feathers, but of something ethereal. The people Rafe saw in the background seemed to have wings of fire, or lightning, or ice.

In the time when the rest of the guardians became most active, the third Skyholm tried to unite the others in keeping peace in the multiverse.

Too bad his own planet was in the middle of an interspecies war. One in which the other guardians seemed intent on meddling.

And so at one meeting of the multiverse elite, Skyholm complained.

“This iteration of the war has taken much longer than it was supposed to. If it goes on too much, one of the races shall be extinct.”

“And what do you expect from us then, Skyholm?”

“Stop meddling. People of our power should not mess with the lives of mortals.”

“But yours is an interesting world. The people, of all races are born with innate affinities, and your species can even use elemental energy to fly. Maybe we might find someone with a rare affinity like yours to pass our mantles to as well.”

“Ah, so that is what this is about. The fact that the Skyholm mantle has already been passed down twice and none of you old bastards want yours to be handed down.”

Skyholm surveyed the others arrayed before him. All Rafe could see though, when he surveyed the other six, were colours, just like he'd seen when he first stared at Skyholm’s wings.

Skyholm snorted. “You selfish bastards. I always thought my rise to this mantle was easier than any of the others. Maybe putting you old coots in line was always meant to be my biggest contribution to the universe. Even gods need rules.”

And in a burst of transcendent aura that hurt Rafe to look at, a battle broke out. Six against one, and with every fist thrown, every breath of fire, every clash of words of power, galaxies were razed. This then, was what was possible at the highest level.

Rafe still didn't get to find out what this magical being's path was about. Apparently it was not suitable for him. There were more scenes to see though.