Perseverance is simply the most vital nature of victory. Alone it is an endeavor against the odds, the fate and the way that circumstances determine. But together with the ideals of the human heart it becomes the single standing virtue while others lay fallen. Anything can be achieved as perseverance partners with time and patience. Time defeats anything.

"I am growing impatient" Kelsov told the two women kneeling before him. He waved the carbine in the air like a baton, composing the destruction this last settlement of Pradesia. Screams and gunshots made a constant orchestra of horror.

"I won't help you. You are nothing but a warlord." Vespa dared to speak to his back and as he turned, to meet his inhumane gaze with her own eyes.

"You have the Serum here. I know it. Look at your neoteny features." Kelsov grunted. He looked older than the two women, despite being half their age. Five centuries of life had caught up with him quickly.

"If I tell you where we have hidden it, you will spare my mother and I?" Adinett had tears running down her cheeks. She was tied to an unlit pyre nearby and broke first. She was still quite young compared to those around her. She wasn't even a hundred years old yet.

"I was going to burn you alive." Kelsov grinned with madness. "Which one is your mother? Let me guess." He aimed the weapon and shot Timira in her right eye and twice in her collarbone with three quick shots. Timira fell over dead. "Did I guess right?"

"Yes." Adinett opened her eyes and sobbed as she saw Vespa still kneeling. Vespa didn't look at her daughter. She stared in a broken way at the ground.

Before long the massacre was over and only two survivors of Pradesia were surrounded by the Finalists. Kelsov stood between his small army of marauders and the two women.

"This war did not have to happen. You people could have shared with your neighbors willingly." Kelsov spoke loudly. "Now do as you agreed and so shall I. No more killing."

"The Serum. We have it hidden in the cemetery in Jerome's Tomb." Adinett was weeping bitterly. All of her people were dead over this and now she had nothing but this killer's word. "As we agreed?"

"As we agreed." Kelsov nodded. All of his centuries had made him a strange creature. A scholar, a lover and now a warrior. All of his Finalists were strange creatures, to go from the role of immortals to that of savages. But they had determined it was their right to survive, should they choose to do whatever was necessary.

"I agreed to nothing." Vespa spoke up. Her enemies were about to leave them there alive, but her words halted them and they turned.

"That is too bad." Kelsov frowned. Then he shot her dead and she fell next to Timira.

"No! Mother, no!" Adinett screamed in anguish.

They left her tied there among the dead.

The darkness came and then the morning. Some birds came to feast. Adinett was still tied there, her head hung in bitter bereavement. She woke up and looked at all the carnage. She had no more tears left and so she just stared.

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Something about her energy was changing, twisting, darkening. It started where she could feel it inside her and then she could see it. She was looking at part of the sky and it was there. A dark hole in the blue sky. It was slowly growing, gray and white streaks forming jaggedly around its edges. She gasped at the sight, the blackness reflecting in her eyes.

All day it grew and grew until it was as though a portion of the sky was night-without-stars. Like part of the world was being eaten by some unseen and impossibly massive force of destruction. There was a distant rumbling and the ground was trembling. By the time the sun was setting its colors were spiraling into the darkness, absorbed somehow. It was as the physics of the most terrifying dream, but lingering in awfulness as she watched and stared.

Adinett drifted from the present to the past. Painting by the creek with her mother many decades ago. A lifetime and another and another and she was still a mere child compared to those around her who had lived for many centuries already. Adinett was their joy and they all adored her. In her newness she was sought after for her wonder and creativity. Now she was all that was left of those people. The broken world of Ruin had left one more orphan unburned by the flames of a razed utopia.

The ground was thudding with heavy footfalls as two great and towering shadows stood over her. A one-armed giant robot and another smaller one. She recognized the second, smaller empathical. This giant robot was Silver Swordsman.

"You alright?" Silver Swordsman took to her bonds with a caress from its blade and freed her.

"Apostate." Adinett glowered. She went to her mother's body and knelt beside it.

"We are Apostate." A man's voice spoke from behind her. She got up and turned around. He stood there off a sled he had flown on. He looked compassionate towards her.

"No, no you are not." Adinett gestured to the remains of those she had known her whole life.

"I assure you this is nothing compared to what births yonder. That is Umbraeon." The man pointed to the hole in the sky she had watched grow.

"Who are you?" Adinett trembled in her voice, ready to fall into his arms.

"I am Aidan. These are my friends, Silver Swordsman and Telamon." Aidan reached out and she did accept the stranger's embrace. He held her as she wept scalding fresh tears.

"Avenge." She cried into his shoulder.

"No. We must stop Umbraeon. More suffering will only weaken my empathicals and make Umbraeon stronger." Aidan sounded like he was apologizing as he softly denied her a vengeance. He held her away and stared deep into her eyes.

Both of them had the same spark of madness that permeated the anxious giant robots with anima energies. In their ember-eyes there was a light that could also be hope.

"How?" Adinett asked.

"You understand. All will be lost if we do nothing. Silver Swordsman is hope. It might represent all that is now Ruin, but it is also hope." Aidan explained.

"I mean, how can I have hope?" Adinett had a brief moment where she felt and sounded like she would have before she had lost everything.

"Because you are still alive and this is your world. I don't belong here and neither do they, but we have nowhere else. There is nowhere else. That thing, Umbraeon, destroyed the last GAIA and now this is all that is left. Ruin." Aidan told her the truth. It wasn't good to hear.

"If I have hope, then that is all that is needed." Adinett knew enough about the emotitronics of the two giant robots.

"Then learn to have hope and come with us. What is there, besides to do this?" Aidan asked.

"I will come with you. If I am to live then I must do so for those who have died." Adinett felt another tear. She followed him to the sled and sat behind him.

"I can work with that. I live much the same way." Aidan had the softness of mercy in his tone. Someone had rescued him from despair, not long ago.

Together with the aliens she went with him. They began a long and fatal journey towards the ultimate source of destruction. A vast and world devouring force of pure evil. Along the way she drifted again into the past, in her mind.

Sitting with her mother as they painted by the creek.