Xathanael
Somewhere near the Solar system
Xathanael was bored. After being assigned this mission, she had been riding the mana currents for eternity. The mission was a simple routine, which involved traveling to the far corners of the universe and reviewing yet another planet found by the seers that would birth the one they were looking for.
‘I swear, each time they find a new one, it takes me half as long to get there,’ she thought and sighed, doing the only thing she could while speed-traveling in the cosmos - meditate and think.
Ever since she rose to the rank of a celestial after having developed her mana heart, Xathanael was allowed to see the broader cosmos. As opposed to being confined to Anjo's home planet, Uliv.
‘Sometimes I just wish someone would find this human for the seers so that we can quietly cultivate and ascend further,’ she thought, recognizing that doing the work of an emissary was not as fancy as some like to believe back home.
She was one of many, an emissary assigned to search the vast universe for a man destined to lead the Anjos to the next age. What did it mean for her? It meant countless years spent traveling to distant places in hopes of finding other scattered humans across the galaxies and testing them.
Like many of the Anjos, Xathanael was an ascended human. One that had surpassed her mortal body and became something more. A being of mana. By cultivating this mysterious energy, she could discard her physical body and attain one from mana. This stopped her aging and thus eliminated the fear of death.
The Anjos had only one mission - to find and unite any humans scattered across the universe after the Great Fall, which divided them. Babylṓn was once a proud haven, but the mistakes of her forefathers changed that.
Now Anjos and their leadership, supported by numerous seers, the best of them who could glimpse the truth of the universe, were set to change the mistakes of the past. And that involved Xathanael traveling a lot.
By the star-year 14043, she had visited countless galaxies and thus planets, though none of them had any life to speak of, not mentioning any intelligent species, let alone other humans.
‘I hope their predictions are right this time, and I am not chasing another dead-end,’ she thought, willing her mana to form a portal and exit the ride on the mana current that connected the cosmos.
Outside, she found herself in the familiar cold and empty space of the universe. Since ascending, the cold and vacuum did not bother her as such vulnerabilities were left behind her.
Observing her surroundings, she noted the pale moon next to her that loomed over the relatively small blue, green, and brown planet. According to Anjos records, this planet did not have a name and was remote, even by their standards, as Xathanael had to travel more than seventy years in a deep meditative state.
‘Hmm,’ she thought and flexed her mana hearth, teleporting to the planet's surface. The sudden displacement of empty space confused her for a second, despite having done this a hundred times before.
Then she was hit by a wave of sounds from a forest around her. It reminded her of her garden back home as tall brown trees with green needles surrounded her. They smelled like life, though she noted that the planet lacked mana. As if the mana current had missed it, thus starving it.
‘Curious. How did life survive here without access to mana?’ she thought and started walking toward a meadow, exiting the thick forest around her. ‘If there is no mana, the chances of finding another human are slim,’ she mentally sagged and blinked toward a nearby current she could see four kilometers from her.
Once there, she looked around and noticed an animal was trying to get up on one of the trees. Taking a step toward the brown furry beast, it stopped and looked at her. “Calm,” she said to the beast and hid the presence of her mana so as not to scare it away. It looked at her raised hand for a second and scurried away.
Tsk, she cursed silently and put her hand back down. ‘They always are spooked away,’ she thought, raising her head to look at the tree the beast tried to scale and was surprised. Some ten meters above the ground, her gaze was met by a human woman.
The woman had a wild look to her. She had pitch-black hair, a large nose, and reddish skin. She was dressed in furs and covered in dirt and grime, no doubt from continuous running.
The woman stared wide-eyed at Xathanael and did not move a muscle. “Can you understand me?” Xathanael asked the woman in the Anjo Anglais; that was the language they used across the universe. The woman did not answer her and continued to stare. ‘Turns out my luck is better than I thought,’ Xathanael noted, celebrating that she had found another human in the first minutes of her arrival.
Now it was a matter of not scaring the woman away and leaving a good impression, to understand the lay of the land and if others were nearby. ‘At least this time I will be able to cast the search ritual,’ she thought and smiled but then slumped, remembering. ‘Dammit! But there is no mana here! Alright, then, first things first.’
Slowly crouching down to disarm herself, Xathanael willed numerous objects out of her spatial bag to offer to the woman on the tree. Not knowing the customs of the humans on this strange little planet, she believed that the custom of being offered food and drink should not scare her away.
Laying out a white cloth and arranging two cups of plates filled with colorful fruit, bread, and meats, she sat down and looked at the woman on the tree. Gesturing with her hand, she said as honestly as possible, “Come, join me.” After a minute, she could tell that the woman was tired of sitting on the tree and decided to climb down.
Once there, she slowly walked up to the offered food and snagged a piece of meat, starting to chew quickly on it. Xathanael evaluated her but did not say anything and joined her by taking a piece of bread.
- - -
Five years later
Xathanael was sitting on a nearby hill overlooking a small village of humans she managed to find, thanks to the first friend she made on this planet. Thanks to Evie, she was introduced to her tribe of fifty-five other humans.
After long weeks of trying to communicate with her and her tribe’s folk, Xathanael learned their limited language, if you could call it that, and understood more about the planet she was on.
According to Evie, they called it Terra. After asking if they knew of any other humans, she discovered that Evie only knew her tribe and had not seen anyone else like herself until Xathanael arrived. That was primarily why she was so scared once the bear left all those years ago when they met.
After spending a few weeks with them, Xathanael learned how they lived their lives and was not impressed. By having no access to mana, the humans on Terra had everything rough.
They needed to spend all of their time to survive. To search for food, fight it, and collect it. They were constantly on the move, never settling for longer than a few weeks if nature was kind to them and fed them.
After some time, seeing she would not learn anything else from them, Xathanael decided to travel the planet some more and see to herself if she could really not find any other humans. To her disappointment, she could not.
After teleporting to the air above the ground, she found out that the planet just had one giant continent on it, with a vast ocean surrounding it. Teleporting across the continent, she could not find another human, no matter how many times she tried across the years. That was why Xathanael decided to spend time with Evie and her tribe five years ago, to learn more about them.
She did not sit idle, though, for all of these years. Xathanael recognized that to complete her mission as an emissary, she had to cast the search array across the planet, not trusting her short travels, to check if this planet indeed had the karmic ties the seers were searching across in the distant cosmos.
And to do that, she needed to seed this planet with mana and connect it to the mana current she left before arriving here. Anjos, of course, had planned for the possibility that their search would take emissaries far across the universe and that they would run into the unlikely scenario where mana was not available from their surroundings. Thus they prepared a tool to connect the nature of the planet to the mana current, thus seeding it.
Xathanael had activated the tool five years ago and waited all this time for it to complete the setup to proceed with her mission. As time had no meaning for her, she found it soothing, as opposed to the time she had spent before traveling the currents and searching for humans.
Now that she had found them, she had a lot to contemplate. Mainly their mission and why it mattered. With time she had forgotten what it meant to be vulnerable. To be mortal. Not that she was unkillable. For Xathanael to perish, it took someone stronger than her to kill her. Which was not the case for these humans before her. They perished easily.
That is why she recognized the danger she was putting this planet and this little tribe in by connecting the planet to the mana currents of the universe. She and other Anjos were not the only ones searching the cosmos for the promised one, as their nemesis, the Daemons, had a similar mission to theirs.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Where Anjos looked to spread the gift of mana to the masses, Daemons took an opposite stance after the fall of Babylṓn. They looked to further their mana cultivation and advance closer to Unity - the supreme being that supposedly governed the universe.
She learned from her teachers that it was the main reason why Babylṓn fell. The greed of the first humans, before there were Anjos and Daemons. The desire to advance, to consume, and in time to control fate and the universe itself.
So Unity recognized the threat the first humans posed and scattered them across the cosmos, nullifying the danger they could pose. At least, Anjos believed that was the reason for the fall. No one knew how or what Unity thought, as no one had met this entity.
With time, the scattered humans managed to cultivate their mana and advance further, enabling themselves to search the cosmos for their kin, thus forming the Anjos and Daemons clans. Some were taught a lesson from Unity’s actions, while others became even more bitter and swore to avenge what was done to them.
That is why connecting a new planet to the mana current was a risk Xathanael took. As Anjos monitored the karmic ties of the universe, the Daemons were constantly looking for new worlds and life to consume. Attaching a new planet would be noticeable, if ever so slightly.
So Xathanael hoped her actions would not be discovered at such a faraway place as this Terra. All alone and forgotten, as the tribe before her.
As on cue, the array beacon in her hand pulsed with mana, letting her know that the setup was done after all these long years of waiting, and all she had to do was activate the connection. She looked at the tribe for the last time and smiled, knowing that their lives would never be the same after mana came to this planet.
- - -
Two years later
Evie brushed her brow where the sweat had accumulated, and she tried to cast the spell again. Ever since two years ago, when Xathanael introduced mana to their world, Evie and her tribesmen were in training, advancing their craft.
It was hard. Hard for her to accept a gift from a stranger dressed in white robes all those years ago. It was hard to introduce the said stranger to her tribe, fearing they would attack her. Ever since looking into Xathanael's purple eyes, Evie knew that the woman before her was someone more than them.
And that became especially true when mana was introduced to them. Sure, she noticed before that Xathanael would sometimes disappear without making a sound or appearing beside her. She did not think much of it, as their hunters could also move quickly but silently.
Her perception changed when Xathanael showed them what she could do. What casting something called a spell meant. Evie was shocked that something as tedious as starting a fire was as easy as snapping fingers for Xathanael.
Seeing this for the first time, she and her tribesmen fell to their knees, recognizing a god walking among them. Their supposed god did not want to acknowledge their worship and proved them wrong. There were no gods, only men and the limits they had to surpass. Xathanael taught them all these years - how to exceed their limits and be more.
Evie shook her head to concentrate and try again. She gathered the mana from her core, passed it through her channels into her palm, and shaped what she believed would be a flame. Concentrating, the mana started to heat above her palm and lit up into a small fire.
“Good job,” Evie heard from behind her. Snuffing the flame out, she turned around to see Xathanael walking out behind a tree and up to her. “You have progressed far, Evie. I am proud of you. Especially since you are still practicing in the middle of the night.”
“Thank you, mistress,” she replied, nodding her head. “It was all thanks to your teachings. I must practice every chance I get. I would like to see this cosmos you talk about so often off. To travel where you come from - to Uliv.
“Ah, Uliv. Yes, I will need to return there one day. If you continue to work with such dedication, you will beat me to it,” Xathanael laughed, throwing back her red hair tied in a ponytail.
“Must you, mistress?”
“Return, you mean?” she asked, seeing Evie nod. “I am afraid I must. After activating the karmic search array our seers imparted to me, I will need to report my findings. But do not worry. All my teachings will stay with you and your children. For generations to come. And then my duty will fall to you. To spread the knowledge of magic and make it available to all.”
“I understand,” Evie said and nodded. “Thank you again, mistress, for coming to us. For helping me all those years ago and showing us that the world is much wider than just the forest around us.”
Xathanael opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by a ripple of mana above her. Casting her perception outward, she did not immediately notice anything out of place. She increased the range all the way up the upper atmosphere and recoiled.
Foul mana was staining the area right next to the planet. ‘Daemons!’ Xathanael thought in an alarm. “Evie, gather your people. You must get ready to run!” she said with urgency.
“Why? What is wrong, mistress?” Evie asked, not understanding why her usual calm demeanor had changed, as nothing scared the mistress.
“It seems that I could not make it in time. Damons have found us. You must run! I will hold them off for as long as possible. Remember my teachings! Spread the knowledge,” Xathanael said to Evie in her ear, giving her a goodbye hug. Releasing her, she could see that the woman was devastated but held firm. Evie nodded and ran back to their camp to wake everyone up.
Meanwhile, the sky above Xathanael had grown dark, hiding the moon she could see just a moment ago and all the stars with it. The darkness spread rapidly, causing the sleeping birds to wake up and fly away in a hectic pack, quieting the forest around her.
Next, she could see how the trees around her started to wither, newly introduced mana being sucked out of them as a dark figure descended from the heavens and said, “Well, well. Look who we have here. Xathanael. My favorite emissary. Wrah told us that you were on a special mission but could not tell us more.” The figure chuckled, sitting on the ground fifty meters away from here, putting its horned head in one hand.
“Drag'dramen,” Xathanael recognized the Daemon before her, observing his black, leathery wings curl up on his back and his shoulder-length black hair. Looking at his slender, white-skinned face, she saw the same black eyes she had come to know from their last battle. She recognized the crown he was wearing, though she noticed an additional spike was added to the six others that had decorated it before.
“I see that you gained a new rank? No doubt by consuming another world,” she spat.
“Ah, this?” he asked, pointing to the largest spike on his iron crown. “No, this was given to me for the achievements in our recent war with your lot. If you call it that. It was a slaughter,” he laughed, remembering the thousands of emissaries he wiped out at their largest contest over a newfound planet.
“Why have you come?”
“Ah, dear, as always, straight to the point…So boring!” he yelled and released a cloud of void around him, consuming the very essence from around him, air, earth, water, and mana. “It was luck on my part. I just noticed a pathway had appeared, siphoning mana away from the current. So I decided to check it out. How surprised I was to discover a newly seeded planet with all those juicy humans covering behind you.”
Xathanael glanced behind her and noticed that Evie, and a number from her tribe, had drawn weapons and pointed them toward the Daemon before her.
“Ah, how cute,” Drag'dramen said and laughed, unable to decide how to consume the humans that reeked of mana before him. A woman caught his attention, who drew on her childish core and lit the spear on fire.
“Oh,” he exclaimed. “I see you have been training these monkeys?”
“That is none of your business. I guess that being a proud duke as you are, you came alone?” Xathanael asked, delaying the inevitable fight and weaving multiple spells behind her to teleport Evie and the others away.
“Me? Alone? Always!” he laughed some more. “I would not share a juicy planet like this with any of my kin. So, what do you say? Do you want to fight me and die here like the rest of them? Or you will let me have what is mine?” he asked, licking his black lips.
Xathanael considered his question. For just a fraction of a second. Then she teleported Evie and her tribe far away from there, knowing the devastation to come, and said, “You will not consume this planet.”
Then immediately, she released the seal on her core and cast a creation spell, life storm, negating the duke’s oppressive aura that killed the nature around him for a brief moment returning the light from the moon.
“So be it,” Drag'dramen stopped smiling and jumped in the air, pulling from the environment around him and on his void core, starting to create a small ball of accelerated gravity he planned to throw at the insolent Anjo before him.
Xathanael, recognizing the danger, did not allow him to finish the spell and blinked next to him, casting a teleport. Drag'dramen could not throw the small gravity ball in time and dropped it on the ground as he winked out of the air to appear above the continent.
The ball slowly fell on the ground, touching it, and exploded, splitting the earth into the planet's crust. Looking back at the surface, Xathanael saw the devastation caused by a single attack cast by the duke of the Daemons, as the continent she came to love split up into seven distinct pieces, causing the surrounding waters to rise into a typhoon.
‘Thank the Unity, I moved Evie away to the mountains,’ she thought, seeing the waters create a tide. Recognizing that she was fighting a losing battle that would destroy this little planet, she fetched the mana current beacon and destroyed it, effectively cutting off the planet of mana yet again.
‘They will be fine,’ she thought, hoping she was right and mana would continue to grow naturally on the planet from the traces left on it over the past few years. This would allow Evie and her children to cultivate mana and live in harmony with nature, developing their cores. All to once be able to ascend to a celestial and travel the universe as she did.
“Huh?” Drag'dramen looked down and felt his pull on the mana current snap. “I cast one spell, and you decide to doom this planet and disconnect it from mana altogether? You think that will stop me?” he roared and pulled on his core, drawing on the gravity around him and creating a black hole.
Seeing that Drag'dramen did not care if the planet would be whole for him to consume, Xathanael released the seal on her core and released her mana form, causing the space to ripple around her as the black hole was snuffed out.
Meanwhile, Evie looked up to the sky and saw two gigantic forms in heaven above her. One looked like interloping wings, made of light, moving around each other as if morphing into infinity, casting bright light in the night sky. The other looked like the opposite, made of black leathery wings, casting darkness around it, like a snake eating the light above them. ‘I hope she will be alright,’ Evie thought and clenched her fist.
Meanwhile, back above the planet, Drag'dramen and Xathanael finished casting their manifestations and attacked each other. The combat between a celestial and a duke was nothing that could be compared to mages before the divine level. They did not weave complex spells or plan elaborate moves. They lived and died by Intent.
And Xathanael cast her all, not afraid to perish after all these years of searching. Searching for something she believed was a legend without ever making genuine friends. That was until Evie. So she did not care if she should die; Evie had to live. And for her to live meant that the filth before her had to vanish.
The cosmos paused for a millisecond as if recognizing the inevitable and both of their forms collided. Darkness against light, Anjo against Daemon. The clash was brief but decisive. The light wavered under the weight of the dark but did not break. Xathanael burst into white flames, tearing Drag'dramen apart, some parts of her being torn off and cast back down on Terra.
Before she knew it, he was no more. Seven pieces of her and seven of him fell to the planet, scattered around the newly formed continents. Not willing to risk it further as she had, Xathanael cast a veil, using whatever mana was left in her mana heart, hiding Terra from other Daemons and Anjos alike.
‘I hope she will forgive me,’ Xathanael thought and opened a portal to the mana current to go back to Uliv, giving up on finding the chosen one at this time. To heal and recuperate, hoping she could return one day and find the pieces that fell after their battle. And to find Terra prosperous and filled with mages that managed to ascend, sharing the great gift she had imparted to them.