ENTER THE GUARDIANS

Back in the palace of the Third King of Malaikin, Gaea’s guardians had finally settled on a plan for dispatching Teros.

“This is very risky.” Nikolai sighed heavily. “In the past, if the guardians failed to kill Teros—they could at least pass their powers on to the next generation.”

“Yeah, and that’s why they’ve never been able to kill Teros completely.” Xavier retorted. “Your theory makes sense and if it’s true, the Itami should be able to confirm it.”

“Yeah, I’m with X on this one.” Roun chimed in, having long since finished fixing Jayce. “This is our best chance.”

“Alright, enough of this back and forth—the longer we debate this the more we put the legends’ lives at risk.” Jayce interjected.

“You’re right.” Roun nodded. “So, are we all doing this or what?”

~~**~~**~~**~~

The arrival of the guardians in Avalon was marked by an eruption of blue light through the centre of the black sphere launched by Teros. The legendary Destroyer’s eyes widened as he spun, barely dodging the attack that pierced the sky, disrupting reality as it did. Back on the ground Kyasho found himself and the other two encapsulated by his zeta energy field, surrounded by the four young men that had been chosen to save their world.

“Roun, Jayce, your fathers—I don’t know what happened to them.” Kyasho explained as he allowed his barrier to dissipated and his exhaustion to get the better of him.

Roun just nodded.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get you three out of here and then find them.” He stated, before expanding his own energy field and vanishing.

In an instant, he was back on the battlefield at Avalon, watching as Xavier traded blasts with Teros above. Unlike previously, the prodigious Lehomik manipulator seemed better equipped to keep up with Teros’ energy output, and his ability to tap into the true power of Khaaos allowed him to properly fight back against the effects of Teros’ anomalous energy.

“I’m gonna go find my dad and Mr. Demar.” Roun explained.

Nikolai and Jayce just nodded, before they both unleashed the full extents of their power and joined the fray. As they did this, Roun vanished from sight. No longer bound by the limits of his silhouette slide, Roun could traverse the wasteland that had served as a battlefield for the most powerful men on the planet and the destroyer that threatened to end all life on it. Previously, his traversal was limited to briefly riding the lines of energy that made up the grid-like distribution system of zeta, with his range limited by how long he could hold his energetic form together—but with Synchros reinforcing those bonds at a fundamental level—Roun could exist in this state indefinitely. This allowed the youngster to zip around Avalon at the speed of light.

In seconds, he’s picked up Rayad, whose body was deposited kilometres away. Luckily it, it was still within the confines of the fallout of their battle preventing anything weaker than these legends from even getting near him.

His father’s body seemed to have been blasted much further away, however. Beyond the confines of Maika’s Universal Sanctum and even outside of the blast zone of most of their attacks, he found the body of his father at the centre of a crater. As he approached, he could not just sense the haima’sa, but traces of Teros’ remnants. Roun growled lightly as he accelerated. Thankfully, when he located Shin in the crater, it was still alight with the black flames of Teros; so despite being surrounded by the ravenous hordes of battling revenants and haima’sa, he was so far untouched.

Roun could take no chances, however.

A light growl escaped his ethereal lips, as he slipped from the corporeal realm and dipped into the Annals, before erupting from that extra-dimensional place with a flood of code to wash these feral entities away. The entire thing happened in an instant, allowing him to grab his father’s body and hurl himself seven thousand kilometres across the planet.

The youngster arrived in Malaikin to deposit Shin and Rayad, simply nodding to Kyasho and the others before he hurried back to Avalon.

As he materialised back onto the battlefield, the almost godlike scope of his abilities now that he was fully bonded to Synchros was not lost on him; and it seemed that this was also the case for the others. He watched as Nikolai reached out and summoned Aegis above Teros. Despite being occupied trading blasts with Xavier, Teros managed to spin and guard the attack from the armoured construct. However, the force of the attack knocked him from the sky, sending him hurtling towards the ground at break-neck speeds.

Jayce wasted no time rushing off to meet him at the point of impact, but he would be disappointed to find that Teros had managed to cancel his momentum before he hit the ground, dissipating the force of the strike outwards into the environment to blast Jayce away as he approached under the influence of his stealth abilities. Roun growled at the sight, vanishing from his location to intercept Teros before he could get his bearings. The youngster appeared with Synchros’ blade in his hand, delivering a quick slash that opened up Teros’ chest before he could dodge the follow-up attack. Roun slid back to avoid the expected spray of black energy that erupted, but before the flames could even approach him, he found the spray interacting with Khaaos. Roun smirked as they were destabilized and dissipated into the environment.

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With this, he dissipated his blade and charged energy into his palms, before unleashing two weak blasts towards Teros. He watched expectantly as the monster scoffed and erased the attacks, distracting him long enough for Nikolai to launch his follow-up. Having already dissipated Aegis from the sky, Nikolai replicated what he had seen Marshack do, recapturing the energy and transferring it into an alternate ability. This time, he used the energy to erect a field of Geon around his target. The stabilising effects of the energy solidified not just the space occupied by Teros, but stopped the flow of time in the area briefly. This gave Jayce just enough time to close the distance and pierce this congealed prison with the power of his Dias.

To Teros, it was as if Jayce had simply teleported towards his location, and he now found the youngsters claws planted deeply in his back. Just as he had done with Xavier, Jayce now tried to separate Teros’ channeling ability from the form that he currently occupied. Teros struggled as aspects of him were being torn asunder, forcing him to flood his body with his dark energy and force Jayce off. Roun slid backwards to avoid the eruption of dark energy, while Jayce faded from sight and retreated, leaving Xavier to attempt to control the fallout. Even Nikolai’s reality stasis attack was dispelled by Teros’ eruption, which preceded the monster making a beeline for him.

“Roun, stop him.” Xavier commanded, causing Roun to appear just in front of Teros, before he could attack Nikolai.

Unlike Xavier, Roun’s power output was nowhere near powerful enough to stop Teros in his tracks, so instead he had to be creative. As he emerged from his silhouette slide, this time he used the power of Synchros to bridge the gap between the Font and the corporeal realm. The result was a geyser of raw and unrestrained energy flowing directly into their world, impacting Teros’ chest and pinning him to the ground.

As Nikolai once again tried to bind Teros, Roun fell back, trying to see if Nikolai’s theory about the nature of this beast was indeed true. While Jayce and Xavier moved in to engage him once more, Roun peered deeply into the energies that comprised this entity.

At first glance, Teros appeared very much like the natural evolution of the channeler. His physical body was malleable beyond measure, making it impossible to damage him without the use of vast quantities of direct force. His mastery over the energies the permeated Gaea also seemed to be without limit. Beyond his trademark ability, that allowed him to destroy energy with impunity, the strange entity also seemed to have a limitless connection to the realms that fed their channelling abilities. His remnants—despite being short-lived—had been the perfection of the haima’sa, showing his competence when it came to manipulating energy and not simply destroying it.

Roun growled lightly. He would need to look deeper.

As he peered past Teros’ humanoid visage, he searched for the core of the demon’s channelling—the analogous structure to his Aesis core, orbited by Veranos and Synchros rings. Unfortunately, his task was interrupted as Jayce was sent flying by a swift kick from Teros and entity made a mad dash for Xavier. Once again Roun threw himself through the ether stream, but this time he emerged to find Teros’ hands around his neck once again.

The lunge towards Xavier was a feint, and Roun had played right into it. Luckily, Xavier had seen it coming, unleashing a blast of his Levin at Teros’ feet then detonating the lingering energy with Khaaos as he dodged. The resulting explosion was cataclysmic, throwing Roun from Teros’ grasp as he was hurled through the air and forcing the young Synchros host to dissolve into the flows of energy once more.

Clearly Teros would need more subduing before he could properly analyse him.

Accepting this, he redirected his movement. A quick detour allowed him to materialise next to Jayce before sucking him into his silhouette slide and vanishing again. Once again, he emerged to launch an attack at Teros, but the entity had long since righted himself and easily deflected Roun’s summoned blade with his bare hand. Roun smirked at the action, however. Teros’ eyes widened as he realised that Roun’s attack had been infused with Synchros, forcing the blade to bind forcefully with his hand. Next, he realised that Roun had energized himself once more and this time bonded himself to the powerful flows of Ki that encircled the planet. Not to be left out, Jayce also emerged from Roun’s silhouette slide and thrust his Dias infused claw Teros.

While Roun tried to drag the Destroyer through the ether stream in one direction, Jayce pulled in the other, exercising the power of his Dias in the hopes that he would manage to sever something in the process. Xavier quickly chimed in, unleashing a concentrated beam of pure Khaaos to split Teros’ attention, and prevent him from launching surgical counter to either attack.

Teros growled at the tactic’s effectiveness, as he instead shifted his focus to simply neutralising the effectiveness of each attack. His black energy leaked into Roun’s blade to destroy its bonds, while some also leaked into Jayce’s claws to rupture them and free them from his body. The last of his energy expanded outwards to form a shield, protecting him from Xavier’s blast.

This splitting of Teros’ faculties gave Nikolai just enough of an opening to once again encapsulate him in the space-time stasis field that he’d managed to conjure earlier, but even with time stopped and his efforts halted, the power of this destroyer was still too much to facilitate even the severing of a limb. A loud growl began to rumble from within the field before space itself began to quake under the influence of Teros’ power.

Roun growled heavily himself before he released his blade and pulled himself into a tight spin, using his angular momentum to axe-kick Teros downwards as Nikolai’s stasis field was shattered. Teros emerged from the field just in time to feel the blow that blasted him into the ground below and precipitated Roun’s follow up attack.

The impact with the earth was hardly powerful enough to stun him at this point.

Teros instead landed with little fanfare and looked up just in time to erect a barrier between himself and Roun, who was exiting a portal from the Font. Roun, and the incalculable energy from this realm crashed against Teros’ barrier, before the demon simply redirected the vast quantities of energy radially to further obliterate the battlefield.

This time Roun was unable to avoid the follow-up, instead being blasted away by the attack that expanded to encapsulate Jayce, Nikolai and even Xavier. When the energy dissipated, it revealed Teros at the epicentre and the bodies of Gaea’s guardians strewn about.