“Who are you? And what happened to the Guardians?!” The Elder said roughly.

There was no response. Instead one of the figures started moving, a large amount of black hands bursting out of his body.

“Eldrich!”

The onlooking soldiers were shocked. They were informed that the current Guardians might be imposters but they didn’t expect the imposters to be monsters. There was nothing human about their current form. It looked more like a mangled pile of flash with numerous dark hands.

“Soldiers! Kill that abomination!” yelled out the captain of the force who stood right in the front and ordered the soldiers.

The soldiers were charging at the figures. From behind they were supported by mages who used healing magic whenever a soldier was injured but there wasn’t much chance to use it. However the problem was that none of the soldiers could withstand even a blow from the dark hands! All of the soldiers in the front who charged first were almost immediately killed. None of them remained standing and those that didn’t outright die were on the ground, swaying in agony. The dark energy invaded their bodies and was consuming them from within, rampaging through their organs.

“Soldiers pull back, use fire magic on them!” the captain ordered.

The mages, who stood a bit in the back, then casted fireball spells and threw them at the 2 figures. Mostly they were aiming at the figure of Eldrich as it seemed to be a greater threat.

“Die!”

Eldrich’s figure started burning, however beside a few of the hands falling off there was no greater injury. A lot of the hands also started rapidly recovering.

The soldiers were shocked and scared as they saw the hands recovering. Even the captain broke in cold sweat as he was trying to come up with a tactic to take down the figure.

“Dammit, the figure’s recovery ability can’t be endless. Bombard him with spells!”

All of the mages in the back heard the orders and were casting numerous kinds of spells and showering the bodies of their former Guardians.

Eldrich’s body suddenly started violently shuddering and started charging to the city gate, closely followed by the Karyn’s figure.

There was a lot of soldiers standing in their way and even though the figures were strong they were on the verge of collapsing. Especially Eldrich’s figure as it took much more damage and partially even shielded Karyn’s figure who was carrying the bag.

“Don’t let them escape!” the figures could hear as they ran as fast as they could towards the city gate, killing or throwing away every soldier who stood in their way.

After a short moment they were at the city gate. However the figures had to stop since the city gate was actually closed!

The captain, who was chasing with the soldiers, laughed. “You thought that we wouldn’t lock the whole city? There is no way out unless you grow wings!”

The figures were immediately ordered to run up on the city gates. However the staircase wasn’t near so the figures used to dark hands to climb the city walls.

The soldiers didn’t expect such development. “Dammit! Go up the damn walls!” The captain yelled as his soldiers were moving to the staircase while the soldiers who were already staying on the walls bombarded the figures with spells.

The figures were taking heavy damage. Especially Eldrich’s figure. That figure was already collapsing and let off the city wall as it fell several meters down, dying upon impact.

The Karyn’s figure however climbed up the wall and got rid of the soldiers there. Then jumped down the wall on the other side. When the figure fell down there was a loud cracking sound. The bones in the legs cracked into several pieces.

However the figure then had few more hands burst out of its body to use it instead of legs. The figure then ran fast, looking like a spider from the distance.

On the walls the captain loudly cursed “Dammit! One escaped!”

After a moment, there was an older man standing right next to him. He put his hand on the captain’s arm.

“Don’t worry, we will get them.”

“Elder?” The captain looked at the older man.

“I underestimated them. I didn’t know the intruders were actually this powerful…” The elder then left the wall and went to the emergency council meeting that was being held.

…

After a while the Karyn’s figure finally arrived at the farmer’s house Aleir was in.

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“You did well.” Aleir slowly said and approached the figure.

“I brought what you asked for.” The figure simply stated. It seemed to not care about its injuries and instead focused on fulfilling its task despite it being on the verge of collapse.

“Good. Now I need one more thing from you.” Aleir then seriously looked at the figure.

In a split of a second dark spikes shot out of the ground, completely piercing through the figure’s body, completely obliterating it.

“The soldiers will come looking for you. You outlived your usefulness.” The figure then fell on the ground as the spikes dissolved and were turned into dark energy that went back into Aleir’s body.

Aleir then looked at the back and picked it up.

“I need to find some safe space where I can go through it.” Said Aleir as he was leaving the ran down farmer village.

“But before that there is one more thing I have to do.” He started circulating the dark energy and formed a figure out of his body. He also minimized the amount of energy put in the figure. In a minute there was a figure of him staying right in front of him.

“Perfect. This should throw them off.” Aleir smirked as he killed his figure. It was laying on the ground. No one buy someone stronger than him would be able to tell the difference.

“Time to finally leave this place…” He then went in the direction of the mountains. Although for normal people it sounds as stupid decision it was one of the safest places for him. It was a natural barrier between 2 kingdoms and the soldiers wouldn’t dare to chase him there even if they somehow managed to figure out that his corpse was a substitute. Going with a large force on the borders could be seen as an act of war for the other kingdom. They wouldn’t dare to do it no matter how much they wanted to kill him. It just wasn’t worth it.

Hundreds of soldiers dispersed around the area, searching for any traces of the invaders. When they reached the farmers village they were surprised. They saw the corpse of Karyn which everyone expected as she was very heavily wounded during the escape. What they didn’t expect though was the other corpse. It was the prisoner the Guardians brought.

“Let’s call the captain. I think we are done here.” One of the soldiers said and went to fetch the captain.

After a few minutes, the captain came along with Elder Peare.

“So it seems that they are all dead.” The captain murmured to himself.

The Elder Peare was a bit shocked and pondered for a bit. He didn’t know what exactly happened here. This matter confused him as he expected the prisoner to have controlled the Guardians. But it was strange, why was he dead then?

“Did you check if that corpse is real?” Elder Peare then asked one of the soldiers who found the corpse.

“Yes sir! He must’ve been killed by something. We don’t know by exactly what. It seems as if a sword stabbed him right into his heart.” The soldier reported.

“Elder Peare, I think that the monstrosity Karyn had become died due to the injuries and the prisoner’s body could’ve had died to the Guardians.”

Elder Peare looked at the captain. “Maybe. But I think there was something bigger in play. The church archives were plundered. For what reason? Someone was looking for something and we don’t know what. Either way, one thing we can say for sure now is that the Guardians had all died. Maybe this was all a scheme made by the neighboring empire? We can’t say. And I don’t think we can do anything at this point. Continue the search, but if you don’t find something within the next 5 hours just cancel it.”

The captain and the surrounding soldiers had grim faces. If it was really all a scheme by the Fang empire then a war was upon them. They knew that if the war was to happen their city would be the first to perish. There was no way the reinforcements would get here fast enough.

“If it’s the neighboring empire then we have big problems. This matter must be reported to the Royal Capital.” The captain said.

The Elder simply nodded and made his way back to the city. Full of thoughts.

After all of the regular citizens heard that their Guardians died they were full of sorrow. Guardians were their heroes. Everyone loved and looked up to them. It was a heavy blow to the morale of the city. However, people tend to forget quite fast. The information about the possible invasion of the neighboring empire was kept secret. The city officials didn’t feel the need to deal with mass panic and decided that not telling the citizens was for the best.

…

Somewhere in the mountains

“Goddammit, these scriptures don’t hold anything concrete!” Aleir was reading through the countless books he so painstakingly obtained but couldn’t find anything that would point him in the right direction.

In a few hours he found himself out of books to read and the information still wasn’t there.

“I thought about the possibility of there not being anything but I didn’t think it would actually happen. What do I do now?…” Aleir was deep in thoughts, trying to figure out his next course of action.

Suddenly, he started laughing. It sounded like a laugh filled with madness, devoid of any sense of morality, conscience or remorse.

“If I can’t find them I will make sure they come to me! But I need to get stronger. Much stronger! Devour much more!” Aleir’s eyes were filled with madness. The thing he wanted the most was to know who was his enemy. He didn’t know, even after deflecting from the path of his duty he still felt as if his fate was in the palm of someone else. Every Holy Lord felt that there was someone controlling them. However, they didn’t know who that was or how strong that person was. To them it felt as a transcended existence having control over their fate.

“In order to get stronger I will need to devour large amounts of magical energy. Much more than I already did. It needs to be equal to the life force of a Holy Lord at least. Back then I didn’t manage to devour much from the Holy Lord of One. That woman made me detonate his life force along with mine. But this time It will be different.” Aleir unconsciously grinned.

He crossed the mountains and went in the direction of the Fang empire. The rival of the kingdom of Alura. Both kingdoms came to a very fragile peace after a long time of war. However everyone knew that behind the fragile peace both countries were preparing for war. That was why the city on the borders had so many measures in place. They were very alert against the opposing kingdom. One of the reasons why the war hadn’t happened already was the mountains. It took a large amount of preparation and resources to cross them with a whole army along with supplies.

But at this time Aleir had a plan on how to escalate their conflict. If there was a large scale conflict no one would find it weird to have a whole city annihilated. He would have an access to countless supply of life force without being discovered by the woman or the one above him. It was the perfect scenario.