Jed’s eyes widened. An avatar? Rafe? From any explanations of a God’s avatar, he had found them described as modest, formal and basically weapons of war. Rafe was only one of those things, and he didn’t look like the type to win in a fight against a God’s avatar, no offence to him. How could that even come to be?

“How’d you even become an avatar?” Jed asked, incredulous.

Rafe was also surprised, “You believe me? You’re not hard to trick”

“You were too serious for it to be a joke. Plus, why lie about it? No point is there?” Jed replied.

Rafe nodded, accepting this. Although, he could still have been lying; just for no reason.

“I killed the last Lord. He was weakened, obviously. I was too weak back then to have stood a chance otherwise” he thought back to when he had first become a Lord. Back then, he hadn’t even known what one was. Back then, he had thought the God’s to have been dead.

After his master had died, he was all alone. His days consisted of killing monsters, brushing against death each time, and resting. At this time, it had been around a year since she’d been killed. Still, he wasn’t exactly over her death. Honestly, he never thought he would be, considering how important she was to him. In the end, she raised him in this world; she was his safety. With her, he felt at home. But, she was gone.

He was sat around a crappy fire he barely managed to start, which he’d never gotten too good at it despite doing it everyday. In fairness, the winds in this area was extremely tough, antagonising him at every available point. As he absorbed it’s warmth, he saw a young man, a few years older than himself, covered in blood with a dark-blue aura surrounding him, though that aura was incredibly faint, threatening to dissipate at any moment. Staring at the young man, he was soon met by the other person’s gaze, one filled with danger.

Suddenly, he dashed at the boy, attempting to kill him. Why? God knows, literally. The surprised boy instantly drew his sword and slashed at the young man. Surprisingly, it cut perfectly, the young man oddly not bothering to move out the way. At that, the young man was overwhelmed with surprise.

With more blood suddenly gushing out from his body, the young man’s threatening gaze seemed to disappear, replaced with concern. Looking at the boy ahead of him, who seemed ready to kill him, he sighed.

“Look into my eyes, kid” he said, defeated. Rafe was instantly surprised by the young man’s words. Sure, he was in a pretty bad shape, but he was much bigger and looked much stronger than him. So why give up like that?

Rafe curiously looked into the young man’s eyes, a bad idea as the young man could have had a blinding ability or something and was simply tricking him. However, he did it nevertheless, not thinking about these things; he was a kid after all.

He opened his eyes.

‘What?’ he thought, incredulous at what he was seeing. Suddenly, he was in an endless plain of a strange darkness, yet it was so bright at the same time. That same dark-blue aura he had seen around the boy seemed to form this plain of existence, though it seemed rather weak.

“Confused? That makes sense” the young man started, “When I first came here, I was boggled out of my mind” he chuckled, thinking back. Though, his face soon grew solemn.

Still in shock, Rafe asked, “Where are we? What are you going to do to me?”

The young man hastily waved, “No, no. I’m not going to do anything to you”

Rafe glared at him, not buying it.

“You tried to kill me”

The young man sighed.

“Yes, and I’m sorry. I couldn’t control it. I…went berserk”

“Berserk?”

The young man’s face seemed to turn dark.

“Berserk, yes. It’s what happens to use Lords when we use too much of our God’s power. Since humans aren’t suppose to wield the power of a God. You get me?”

Hearing the word ‘Lord’, Rafe’s eyes flung wide open. A while ago, his master had actually talked of the Lords; nothing good. She had told him about their exceptional powers, yet also of the terrible things they tended to do with it. Most of them were power-hungry savages. As a final bit of advice, she told him if she ever encountered one: ‘run’.

‘Tough chance of that’ he cursed, looking around at the endless, unexplainable terrain he found himself trapped in.

Noticing the boy’s expression, the young man was intrigued.

“You know what a Lord is?”

“A little” Rafe replied.

“I see! Well, it seems you aren’t too big a fan. That makes sense though. Most of the current Lords are just sick people that killed off the old ones, in order to steal their power”

Rafe raised an eyebrow.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“And the Gods just allow that?”

The young man grimaced.

“Indeed. Ever since the last war…the gods have been rather distant with the endeavours of our world” the young man sighed, “Because of that, many of the Lords have began to identify as Gods themselves. How delusional. I was forced into becoming berserk after my fight with Arnysa”

Noticing Rafe’s look of confusion, he explained:

“Arnysa is the Lord of Flames, and we had been on good terms for a while. That was until I killed my first, well second, Lord. Then, all hell broke loose. I managed to kill a few more of the Lords, but then she found me and we fought…now here I am. That’s the basic idea. I managed to take a few Lords off the list, since you can only be the Lord of a single God at a time. But that doesn’t mean killing the Lords was meaningless. First off, they were damned psychopaths with too much power. Secondly, you may not get their powers, but you absorb them, increasing the strength of your own powers. Of course, double-edged sword, since you have more chance of falling into the pitiful hole of berserk with that increased power. Ah, forgive my rambling, however you will need to know this once we are done”

Rafe’s poor brain was doing a lot of work to keep up with what the young man was saying. So this guy was trying to fight off the other Lords? One Lord against many? And he called them psychopaths? From his condition, he seemed to have lost that battle with the Lord of Flames.

‘Wait…if they just fought, doesn’t that mean this Arnysa will be coming to finish him off? Then why is he idling around talking to me?’

“Won’t Arnysa be hunting you down now? Why are you just waiting in here? And why will I need to know any of this”

Suddenly, the young man’s friendy smile disappeared and his expression grew woeful.

“This place doesn’t flow with time, so we’ll be safe here. As for your other question…I’ll explain at the end of this. There’s a lot I need to teach you, and it’s going to take a lot of time. Luckily, we have plenty of that. But I can tell you that you will definitely want to hear this, so stay focused and ask me any questions you want” he explained.

Still, Rafe was incredibly confused.

“We were fighting a minute ago. Why are you acting so friendly now? And why should I trust you at all? You tried to kill me!”

“I was going berserk! I’ve already told you that” he yelled, “And whether you trust me or not is entirely up to you, but in the end you’ll have to listen to me”

“And why’s that?” Rafe spat.

“Because you can’t leave this place without my say” the young man threatened.

Although he wished to argue, he was right, Rafe had no idea how to leave this place. Actually, he had no idea how he even entered it; he certainly didn’t do so willingly.

“Looks like you’re getting it” the young man smiled, “Now let’s move on to introductions. I’m Askar”

“I’m Rafe” he said, sullen.

Over the next, well Rafe wasn’t quite sure how long it had been but it felt like forever. Plus, in this plain of existence, he didn’t require sleep, so it was non-stop lectures from Askar, which he dished out ruthlessly. This was taking forever.

So far, he’d learned a lot about Askar’s abilities, and the God of which he drew his powers from. Apparently he was the Lord of the Night, avatar of the Fallen God of the Night. Why was he fallen? Because he had been the one to wage war on many of the Gods, causing irreparable damage to the world they lived in because of it, as well as to the Gods themselves; they considered him a demon, or perhaps even the devil himself. When an avatar died, the God lost some of it’s power too, since it is in essence a branch of themselves being killed. And that’s only when an ordinary being is to kill a Lord. When a Lord kills another Lord, the God of the fallen avatar loses all the power bestowed upon it’s avatar, and that power is given to the Lord who killed them. Pretty handy for Askar who had killed a few Lords himself.

Since Rafe had asked him a lot of questions, many about just why he had decided to become an enemy of the other lords, he said it was simply because he had to; because it was his duty as the avatar of the Fallen. Well, hearing about that made Rafe very glad he wasn’t some crazy Lord.

‘Being forced to wage war on a bunch of god-like psychopaths has got to be anything but fun’ he thought, pitying Askar.

“When it comes to using the powers, you have to be careful. Firstly, because you could end up going berserk if you overdo it, which will make you more powerful, yes, but also could easily kill you. Basically, you could end up killing yourself. Secondly, other Lords are able to track senses of divine powers, so if you use too much, they can use it to hunt you down. Well, hunt you down quicker. As a Lord, you passively release a decent bit of divine aura, so they’d be able to slowly figure out your location over a year or so of searching” Askar explained.

Whilst Rafe was still confused as to why Askar was wanting to tell him all this, he believed Askar was telling the truth when he said that Rafe would need to know it. Though, he couldn’t help but wonder why he’d have to know anything about some Lords and their business.

“How do they track you based on your aura?” Rafe asked.

“It’s like an instinct really. As though you suddenly know for certain there is a Lord in this one direction. Sure, you don’t know exactly where, but given time you could figure it out if they stayed immobile for a decent bit of time” Askar replied.

The more Rafe learned about these Lords, the more interested he became in it. None of it seemed real; it seemed way too impossible to be true, yet he knew it was. After all, he was currently residing in a timeless plain created by the powers of one of these so-called ‘Lords’. It was almost like he was talking to the protagonist of some crazy story, who just happened to decide to share that story with some random boy.

“Alright. You can digest everything from today for a few hours” Askar said.

It was going to be awkward after that, Rafe thought. Since there was nothing to do in this place, Askar simply meditated beside Rafe whilst he waited for the boy to process all the information he’d been mercilessly firing at him. However, it was important for what was to come.

So, the Lords fancied themselves Gods of this realm, and not all of them were human. As for their alliance, it was forced only because they were under attack by Askar, and even then they barely helped each other. No part of the alliance was to benefit anyone but themselves. The only reason they would attempt to protect one another was simply so Askar couldn’t take that Lord’s powers, otherwise he’d become too big of a threat for them all to kill.

Askar was lucky that he had become the Lord of the Fallen, rather than any other God. Why? Because Gods fighting was practically the same as when their avatars fought, just on a much more intense and universe-impacting scale. And, the Fallen God had killed many Gods, absorbing all their powers. Single-handedly he managed to wage war on all the other Gods, because he was the strongest of them all by a landslide. Though, after the war, he was severely injured, and so his power dwindled for his avatar as well.

But it didn’t matter, because the other Gods had taken a hefty bit of damage as well.

As Rafe was busy absorbing all this information, Askar’s eyes suddenly shot open, directed at the boy; a very faint purple aura began to crawl onto the boy, before being quickly absorbed by him.

‘It’s starting’ Askar said, with a bit of excitement, yet also with a good bit of sadness. The end was coming.