The Bright was the first to react, erupting a light that cancelled the sun from the sky. The most powerful heat vitrified the ground. Innumerable collapsed, still living but defeated, their skin and flesh ablated by the rays. Only The Purple remained standing, his severely burnt skin recovering in moments.
The cloud of dust fell to the ground as a trickle of glass shards. The small child still stood, his skin unscathed by the light and his eyes just slightly squinting. He still held the same mischievous smile as before, but coldness was hidden behind it.
“It itches!” he shouted annoyed. The ensuing shockwave broke the vitrified ground and detached fragments flew at high speed.
“A young Legion…” The Purple commented. He held a pensive look in his eyes.
The expression of The Bright turned savage.
“You, wretched thing!” she shouted, running at the child.
Her fist flew at unbelievable speed and generated an explosion of ionized air. The child avoided the attack. It happened in a fraction of a second. He kicked his leg to his left and his body moved to the right just for the few inches needed to avoid the punch. At his left, a crater formed.
“You don’t punch like that! You punch like this!” he exclaimed with a frown.
He closed his small hand. He angled his arm slightly downwards and neared it to The Bright. The fist couldn’t be followed. One instant it was to the child’s side, the next instant The Bright had disappeared from the battleground.
A tunnel had suddenly manifested. It dug deep into the earth. In an instant, The Bright had been buried deep into the Earth’s crust. A column of light broke the land in two and The Bright climbed out of her prison of stones. She was vomiting copious blood and her thorax had caved in.
“What is that thing?!” she cried out in anguish.
The child responded with a chuckle.
“We must eliminate him. He is a danger to Mother,” The Purple locked eyes with The Bright.
“Mother?! Who cares about her! This world is mine, we must destroy him for my sake!” she bellowed, still bleeding from her eyes.
“Yes yes. As you wish,” The Purple responded visibly annoyed by her narcissism.
“Arise and fight,” he added, raising his mist once again.
The collapsed archs raised themselves and ran against the child. The smile on his face disappeared.
“It’s wrong,” he spoke. His demeanour was completely different from before.
He disappeared and reappeared in front of The Purple, leaving only craters behind. He reached out his hands and pierced his leg from side to side, milliseconds before ripping them out. The two enemy Legions gazed shocked at what had just happened.
The Purple fell to the ground, his body no longer supported by anything. Once he was low enough, the child headbutted him in the face, compressing his head to half its original length and sending him flying beyond the horizon.
He then turned his crimson eyes to The Bright. She held his gaze.
“Don’t think you have won, child. Me and him are not the same,” she said through gritted teeth.
Light covered her as a mantle and she flew towards the child. He raised his little hands to protect his face, intercepting her kick at the last possible moment. The light grew stronger and the ground boiled. The child began to shine like a hot piece of metal, his temperature greatly increased by the heat source.
He was propelled away towards the far horizon by the great strength of the attack, yet he showed no sign of damage. Nevertheless, he appeared displeased.
“It’s hot!” he cried out angrily.
He planted his feet into the earth, ploughing the land for kilometres before stopping. The Bright immediately appeared by his side, attacking once again. The child's fist appeared from nowhere and met her jaw before her attack could connect.
Her neck turned almost full circle and she plopped down to the ground limply. Her head returned into position in an instant, but not quickly enough as the child was already on top of her.
“You are naughty!” he cried out, frowning.
He grabbed her shoulder, his fingers digging into her flesh, and then proceeded to stomp down on her face. Every hit broke the land and raised winds strong enough to sweep away an entire region. Earthquakes travelled the plates and were heard everywhere. The Bright barely clung to her life.
Her strength should have endowed her with nigh-immortality, but her regeneration continued to slow down. While initially she healed up immediately, now she required a fraction of a second to return to a natural state. For her kind, it was an unbelievably long time.
She tried to free herself from the child, releasing light so focused it could have been solid, but he held on to her. Her attacks were barely able to make him bleed and he healed so quickly not a drop could leave his body.
The child suddenly let go of her and blocked the slash The Purple aimed at him. The obsidian blade was an old artefact of The Black, an unbreakable weapon forged from archuman bones, the strongest material found in all the worlds visited in the past millennia. Wrought by none other than the line of the Forgers of Miracles, it was the ultimate weapon.
And indeed, it managed to cut through the skin of the child, reaching down to his bones. And yet, it chipped against those very same bones.
“Ouch. That hurt,” the child moaned, his wounds already closed.
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The Purple laughed at the unbelievable sight. He looked at The Bright, who had raised herself up. She still wanted to fight, her zealotism towards herself stopping her from accepting reality. The Purple slashed at the child again in a last-ditch effort, but he caught the blade with his hands and reduced it into smithereens.
He let the sword stump fall to the ground and kicked himself towards the horizon, leaving The Bright to fight alone. Her head soon enough fell near him and the child appeared behind him. The Purple stopped trying to run away and sat on the ground, waiting for his moment.
“You are too strong, child” he said.
“My friends told me so!” the child cheered.
“You have smart friends. Who are they?” The Purple initiated the small talk.
“It’s not important. They are dead,” the child showed a sad face.
“How did it happen?”
“It was your fault”
“Pardon me?” The Purple was taken aback.
“Naughty people with the purple aura. I followed the scent and found you and the bad woman. It’s your fault”
The Purple raised an eyebrow.
“My fault you say, child?”
“Yes! You brainwash them and make them do things!”
“Child, I don’t brainwash, I’m higher than that. Even if forced to do so, ultimately my servants willingly declared their allegiance to me. Those who do, I can guide,” he told with a certain degree of solemnity.
The expression of the child turned sharp, his demeanour changing dramatically.
“Understood,” he said briefly.
He turned, looking at the archs in the distance. They were showing their hostility at him.
“They chose to follow you?” his head snapped back to The Purple.
“Yes,” he nodded.
“You, who are just a fake?”
“Why do you call me fake?” The Purple asked inquisitively.
“I don’t know well, but you are not right. You are not like me”
“I doubt there is anyone like you, young child! Anyway, yes, they chose to follow me”
“Understood,” the child said, putting his hand on the head of The Purple.
“There has been this big war for a long time. It’s strange. Can you tell me?” the child asked.
The Purple didn’t answer.
“Understood,” the child muttered, closing his fingers. The lifeless, headless body of The Purple plopped to the ground.
“I’ll find out on my own. But first, I’ll stop all the naughty ones!” the child declared his intentions and met the wave of archumans head-on.
Slaughter ensued and the Legion of The Crimson was revealed to the world. For the next few months the world turned red, as a sea of blood was poured. The young child appeared on every battlefield, bringing havoc and mayhem wherever he went. He alone ravaged entire armies, causing more victims than during the rest of the centuries-old conflict.
The Legion of the Crimson primarily aimed at the genais and their allies, a new species of evolved humans who wielded powers similar and yet dissimilar to his own brethren, but he also destroyed entire Perimeters, distracting their inhabitants from the war effort. The child had come to know the aim of the Genai King and acted accordingly, drowning in fear the fear of him and the hostility towards the genai.
One day he met in battle with The Green. The two weren’t hostile to each other but found themselves on opposing fronts. And so they fought. The Green wasn’t like the “fakes” The Crimson had fought. He was strong and cunning, strong of the education received by the Guardian of his Garden and the authority he held within himself.
The Green represented life itself. He could make it bloom even in a world ravaged by mana and could nourish himself. The line of The Green couldn’t forge miracles like the line of The Black, but they could nurture living prodigies. The ancient blade of The Green was known to all as the most powerful weapon on the planet, sharper than any other blade and capable of unlimited growth and self-restoration.
And yet, after a few days and a disappeared continent, the battle came to an end. The Green’s authority failed him. The strength of The Crimson was unfathomable. He was a unique being and there was nothing he couldn’t win. It hadn’t been a year since his descent to the battlefield and yet the world had never experienced so much destruction.
Finally there came the day when the Genai King confronted The Crimson. The former had her customary sombre expression while the latter kept his playful but sharp gaze. The Genai King was floating high above the ground, supported by a coat of winds. The Crimson looked up at her from the surface, his eyes not restricted by the distance.
The Genai King bit her lips. She had heard of the great strength of her opponent. She knew well she wasn’t his peer. No one was and no one would ever be. The Crimson was an incomprehensible anomaly. She knew, as her eyes were unmatched, capable of peering into the deepest of realities. The Crimson should have already been consumed by the strength he held in his tiny body, yet that very same unreasonable strength enabled him to go against that simple rule.
The Crimson cupped his hands around his mouth and raised his voice, raising storm winds.
“Come down!” he shouted with no hint of hostility.
The two didn’t hate each other. They simply found themselves on opposite sides of necessity and desire. The Genai King heeded his words and reached the surface. Nevertheless, she kept her distance. She had sacrificed everything she had, she would struggle until the end. Nevertheless, she first tried to reason with her opponent.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, young child. I’ve heard great things about you,” she spoke without lies.
“Hello! It’s nice to meet you too! I was looking for you! Do you know why?” The Crimson responded gleefully.
“I do know, child. You came to ask me to stop my endeavours”
“Yes! Are you going to?”
The Genai King sighed.
“I’m afraid I can’t, child. I have a duty to perform”
The Crimson’s expression turned sadder.
“Oh, understood”
The next instant he appeared in front of the Genai King. She barely managed to raise her mana and shift herself to the sky. The area where she had just been had disappeared, annihilated by the sphere of fire sprung by the child’s hand.
She swept her hand and the surface opened up, devouring The Crimson and trapping him in the bowels of the earth. She began to fall down, her body cleaved in half. The Crimson had jumped through the earth’s crust and reached her position. His hands had grabbed her body and ripped it into pieces. Everything had happened so quickly that the Genai King hadn’t even noticed what was coming.
The Crimson had moved ruthlessly and efficiently. He sat on a nearby rock and looked at the Genai King. He appeared displeased.
“I don’t like this ending,” the child muttered sadly.
The Genai King smiled at him. Archs usually reached mental and physical maturity at the same time, but The Crimson hadn’t. His development had been different from his kin, becoming a Legion while still a juvenile.
“Don’t be saddened child. You did no wrong, as there was no right here. Only choices. I made mine. I expected this could have been one of the outcomes,” the Genai King consoled him. She had caused so much pain, the least she could do was to try and settle the pangs of guilt the child may be suffering through.
“I hurt many many people to stop you”
“You shan’t hurt more. You did well”
The Genai King breathed her last. The wind moved, stopping her head from hard-hitting the ground. They gently supported her body and softly rested it on the earth. Her mana diffused into the surrounding. It permeated the terrain, while colourful flowers and grass grew around and under her. The winds died down and a peaceful stillness engulfed the moment. The child stood up and walked away, moving towards the horizon, while the body of the Genai King glistened and became one with the world.