"I thought that you wanted to kill everyone. Why the change of heart?" Alex asked.

"I had the worst thoughts of humanity flooding my brain, and that left a residue that took Time to wash off. I was wallowing in the deepest of humanity's gutters, and I hadn't yet realized that the brightest thoughts come directly after the darkest. It took far too long for me to learn that lesson." Lanetli said darkly. Alex dropped the conversation and let him continue his story.

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"I was enacting a powerful siege ritual, and someone tried to stop me. They tore themselves, and the sky, apart in that attempt." I said. They all stared in shock.

"How does that help us?" a woman asked quietly, as if afraid of the answer.

"It doesn't. All we can do is wait for someone who can fix the crack in the sky." This wasn't the first time something like this has happened, though it was never on such a large scale, and it usually was spilling demons of quite that power level. There were few mages left between the demons and the destabilized ritual explosions, and closing those very specific cracks was a very niche power, so it was quite rare.

"What now? Do we hide and wait it out? Hope it fixes itself?" A man asked, rage growing on his face as his thick eyebrows knit themselves together.

"It won't, at least that's what we found out from testing smaller dimensional rifts," I said, remembering my studies from way back at the academy. "We wait, gather any living magi for protection, and hope one of your children can close that gate upon mage hood. In the meantime, we kill demons, and prevent as much damage as possible so that your kids may have something to return to." I said.

"That's it? We fuck and hope for the best?" One man yelled, his anger getting the better of him.

I stood to address the question, letting the gravity in my tone carry the importance of my words to the man. "Yes. I would be happy to train your prospect magi, but for now, all we can do is, as you said, hide, have kids, and hope for the best. It could be many years, but eventually, someone will be able to close that rift." I told the man, subtly using the ambient magic in the air to give a physical weight to my words. The man swallowed and sat back down, a look of fear on his face, though it was clearly not pointed at me, but at the reality of the situation.

I sat down, waving for the meeting to continue, knowing about, yet ignoring, the heavy feeling left in the room by my grim words.

"I think what this man proposes may be best. I say we give him a glow stone so that we can communicate with him while he is away, and we lock down the facility. This mage is the only one in or out until someone can fix that crack in the sky." says someone who seems to have decided to take charge after a while. "All in favor," he says and raises his hand. Many others do as well, though it's far from unanimous. "Motion passes," he says and pulls out a glow stone from his pocket and throws it at me. "I'll get a new one," he tells me.

I nod in thanks and wait for the meeting to be over. It doesn't last long, many preferring to end the meeting early to contemplate the recent advances in intel in private, or to cry themselves to sleep. There would be no judgment for either group. When the meeting was resolved I left the complex, receiving no questions. I was the image of absolute power to these people, the only mage that had both survived and agreed to help.

I pulled Major General Bakaw from the pyramid as companionship while I set out to find demons. Not an hour later I came across a large monstrous reptile, with massive teeth, a large tail, and the smallest forelimbs I had ever seen on such a gargantuan creature. Demons fall into five categories, the first four being little more than animals. Reptiles, flying reptiles, flightless birds, birds, and greater demons. Greater demons were the real problem because they were smart, and when they died there was nobody left, as they turned to smoke to be reborn in hell, its home realm. Luckily there was no memory of their past life, but their number would never diminish.

I summoned more chickens, feeling the conversion from ambient magic to Time magic far more sensitively than I ever had before. The chickens ripped at the tough flesh of the beast, and each wound left rivers of dark, tar-like blood. I pulled Sonsuz Kiyamet, the Final Moment from the pyramid to fight the beast alongside my chickens while my familiar took a general-like approach, guiding the other chickens to better positions.

My blade sliced through the flesh of the beast until it eventually died with my blade through its brain. I watched to see what would happen to the body of such a powerful demon, but alas, it was no greater demon, and its body lay drenched in the tar it oozed from the gashes in its body.

I moved on, finding a pack of flightless birds around half the size of a human with sharp claws and teeth. They didn't fight head-on as the larger demon did, but elusively by performing bait and switch maneuvers and disappearing into the foliage. I eventually killed a majority off and the rest fled, but I gave chase, cutting them down ruthlessly and with as much efficiency as I could get never truly knowing where exactly they are at any given moment. I killed them off and left the bodies to bury themselves with their blood.

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I continued, working to find demons, but with such a big planet and the relatively small amount of demons that got through they were too spread out for finding and killing them one by one to be an option. I considered starving them out, but that was what got us into this mess in the first place. Plus any surviving humans would be left for dead alongside the demons.

I look on and found a city, completely ravaged by demons. There didn't appear to be any demons, but as I looked at the past of each building I saw exactly which ones had families hidden inside them. I pulled them out and drew a circle of runes in the air to lead them through the pyramid. I stepped in and felt right at home, but not a single person was a mage, and they couldn't step through. Their own soul rebelled against the concept of entering the tower without a strong connection to an icon.

I stepped out and led them to safety the long way, luckily not encountering any more demons on the way back. I let them into the facility and went back on the hunt, moving closer to the rift, reasoning that I could do more there than I could so far from the main cause of the problem. I walked there through the tower. As I stepped out I saw something I knew had to be a greater demon.

It was a humanoid with six wings, one of a bat, one of an insect, and the others of different types of birds, no two the same. It was clearly female, with no clothes on that was a simple matter to settle with its human body, but it had the ears of an enlarged bat, a beak lined with sharp teeth and horns that curled up above the ears. There were no eyes, as there was a divot in the skull that made the head seem as if it were a bowl. I could see its brain made out of dark smoke floating around where its eyes would be above the divot and it shot off sparks of Corruption as it saw me. All this was topped off with her wielding a nine-foot scythe burning with dark flame and radiating Corruption with a fervor.

I drew my blade with one hand as I summoned chickens with the other. It dove at me, shrieking as it did. It was fast. Really fast. I barely dove out of the way, even knowing its speed and its direction I was still caught off guard. I finished summoning my chickens, which would take turns flying up and scratching or pecking at her, but they were rarely fast enough to catch her. I inflicted glancing wounds when she made fly-by attacks with her scythe.

She was inflicting deep wounds and leaving behind a burning necrosis with each attack. Although the step into godhood I took allowed me to fight the poison, I couldn't regenerate because of the focus I needed to activate it. I was getting nowhere, and I was going to die before this thing as it bled dark smoke. I decided to try something that would give me an edge, activating my eternal moment, which barely slowed her. It gave me the Time to try something I couldn't before. I started claiming the area for my icon. I converted the area to Time as I dodged and weaved through attacks, planning the area as big as I could before forcibly aligning the area around me with the concept.

I thought this might make it easier to cast, or make me faster. What I did not expect was that anything that wasn't aligned with Time could not exist. The Corruption that powered her ceased to exist and she fell, trying to leave, but the very thing that powered her flight with her sets of mismatched wings was no longer there, her brain was gone. Her, barely able to move, tried to leave my area of influence as I got stronger, the ambient magic leaping into the forms of my powers without any facilitation on my part. I regenerated, my future sight was jacked up to the extreme, and I could see the next fifteen minutes with perfect clarity. I sliced easily down with my blade and before it could even cut halfway through her flesh she ceased to exist. There was a failed flash of Corruption that was rapidly converted to Time as her soul tried to get back to hell before true death came, but it couldn't.

It died its final death and I felt truly unstoppable. That lasted until reality reasserted itself and my hold on the area fell. I was nearly crippled with exhaustion, I rapidly drew a circle of runes in the air, failing multiple times as my finger shook and my arm gave out. I stumbled through, in perfect health but with my soul forcing me to sleep. I got to my room within the room of Time and face planted onto the softest bed my mind had ever imagined.

Upon waking I stepped out of my room marked with my name and saw the minotaur that was my icon standing with his shield and sword, as he had when I first met him. I decided to try something, and I called my blade while I was in the pyramid. The blade dissolved in the minotaur's hand and remade itself much smaller in mine. I dismissed the blade and the inverse operation happened. I nodded, pacified for the moment.

"You are curious and insightful, perfect for a disciple of TIME," said the god.

"You chose well then," I said, drawing a circle of runes in the air to step from the pyramid. "I'll be back," I said and the icon nodded his bull head as I left.

I walked out, and luckily wasn't instantly assaulted like I had when I last left the pyramid. I decided that I could only fight a greater demon once a week so that I could kill the lesser demons as well in an effort to cull their population.

I killed a number of lesser demons. The birds and reptiles alike. None were very notable, but all had skeletal structures that made little sense, but it made enough sense to sickeningly make you think it's natural.

On the fifth day from the tower, I came across another sickening perversion of humanity in the form of a greater demon.