They died in their millions. Fighting for every last drop of life in their bodies, screaming as they dissolved into nothingness and entered the void. An entire planet cried out to the universe in pain as every living thing died a horrific slow death as every molecule split apart and dissolved.

"You...You did this!" Grand Demon Gheldon screamed as his clawed hand pointed to me.  "You killed our Race! You killed our planet!"

"I did this?" I spoke softly letting the wind carry the sound of my voice to his ear.  "This is the outcome your race created. Thousands of years of misery and suffering piled onto one another into a great chain of endless torture. You think the Masters would somehow be exempt from the repercussions? Hate breeds hate and your hate bred me. Your hate killed your world."

We paused then for a moment as we each readied our power. I felt the ash slowly falling from the sky and gently landing on my body. It was not the volcanic ash I had been used to breathing as a child, but rather the burned remains of a billion demons blotting out the sky. I could feel the cosmic winds of destruction billowing around me as they whispered their dark promise of entropy.

“Die!” Gheldon roared as he unleashed his might in a thick tidal wave of power. It rushed at me like a living thing, the sum total of power from a Grand Demon with a hundred thousand years of soul cultivation. Soul power was very much a living thing, it was power that came from the soul, but its form was dictated by the emotions that fuelled it.

Gheldon’s power that roared towards me was thick and black, so dark that it absorbed light itself as it stuck out towards me. I could feel its hunger as its intent to devour my soul washed over me as it projected a wave of fear and terror before it.

“Try and strike down this insignificant slave!”  I roared rebuffing the fear the attack projected and shaking my mind free and I unleashed the power of my Soul Realm. It rushed out of me as a deep scarlet red and formed a suit of armour over my skin. If you looked closely you could see that this was not a simple layer of energy but rather billions of tiny layers of power woven and intertwined into an indestructible mesh.   

The black force struck me head on, screeching and clawing at my armour, desperately trying to create a foothold that it could penetrate. Time stood still as our great energies collided before finally the black force dissipated letting out a long mourning howl as it disincorporated.

“Not possible!” Gheldon exclaimed. “How can a human slave practice the Demonic Soul Arts?”

I smiled as I rotated my Soul force and my red armour began to repair itself from the attack. I could feel my internal organs were damaged from the impact and my soul had been wounded greatly.

“I learned from the torture of your people Gheldon!” I gritted as I rebuilt my armour. Common sense said only a Demon could practice the Demonic Soul Arts. It was the power of these Arts that had kept humanity subjugated for millennia as the Demons fed off the souls of humanity to grow their own power.

Before Gheldon could rebuild his Soul force to attack I sprinted forward and struck out at him with a closed first hurling him to the ground. Quickly I mounted his chest and rained blows down upon him as he struggled to escape.

I could see the shock on his face as my blows began to break his bones. The Demons never fought physically, they could kill with just their Soul force so why would their ever be any need to develop a fighting system? Physical violence was seen as the providence of lesser beings.

It was different for the slaves though, fights were common amongst slaves and you learned to fight well or you died early. Over thousands of years a fighting style had developed that focused on quick strikes, grappling and fighting in small confined spaces.

Just as I was about penetrate his skull with a final blow an enormous pulse of black soul force exploded from Gheldon blowing me backwards. I hit the ground hard and rolled up to my side instantly only to gape in shock as I saw my entire right arm had been blowing off and my Soul armour was fading in wisps.

I coughed blood as pain racked through from the rebound of having my Soul armour forcibly dissipated.

“You fool, did you think because you have learned some basics of our Soul Arts that you could battle with me? You have killed our planet not through your own power but by disrupting the soul gates and causing a fatal chain reaction in this planets core. You yourself are NOTHING!” he screamed.

We both stood there our eyes locked in hatred. Both our bodies were beginning to dissolve from the entropy power that was consuming the planet. Just as the world was burning, so to would we die and in this sense I had already won. I was already a dead man. but this was a truth all slaves knew.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I flinched as my chest contracted and a greyish colour started spreading across my body and my very cells began to decay. Gheldon was no different, the entire left side of his face was slowly flaking into non existence.

“Die.” Gheldon said one last time. His words were said in a soft voice that contradicted the enormous force that sprang out of his body. This was the sum total of his life force, every part of his being would be consumed in this final attack to wipe me out.

I swayed, struggling to stand as the enormous soul force bore down towards me. Though I swayed, never would I fall. I faced my death and screamed in defiance and at last I felt the Tyrant’s will awaken deep inside of me. The Tyrant’s will was my greatest secret. It had appeared in my soul realm as a child and that seed had been nurtured throughout my life.

It was the Tyrant’s will that had absorbed a portion of the power of each Demon that fed upon me, allowing me to begin to practice their Soul Arts. It was the Tyrant’s will that had allowed me to cause the chain reaction in the Soul gates that had ripped apart the core of our planet.

The rage of the Tyrant’s will filled me, an endless burning anger that burst into my being and power flooded through me it shot through the incoming black soul force and tore it into pieces before slamming into the Grand Demon Gheldon ripping apart his body consuming his soul.

As the power coursed through me, I arched my head to the sky and screamed.

"I am the Slave Tyrant! I am the worldslayer! I defy this world! I have erased all who wronged me from existence." I staggered back to my feet once last time as a golden glow shook the skies and the gods themselves began to fall to earth, their bodies burning with looks of horror frozen on their faces.

The Tyrant’s will returned to my body as I began to dissolve and I could feel it desperately trying to repair my physical form. But the power of entropy was too immense, existence itself was disintegrating, even the will of a Tyrant could not preserve life during an apocalypse. The Tyrant’s will  turned up to the heavens and screamed in defiance at death, its form distorting into millions of different faces.

The scream penetrated my brain and I felt memories wash over me, memories of a million sufferings and humiliations, memories of a cycle of never ending death and pain.

It was only then, at the end of everything that I finally realised what the Tyrant’s will was. It was the spirit of a thousand generations of slaves that had been tortured and murdered, it was the seed of their defiance, their will to live and their hatred at the Masters. It was the slave’s will given consciousness.

I reached out my mind to the Tyrant’s will and cradled it gently. Rest dear friend for we are at our end. I send the sliver of a thought to the Tyrant’s will as it drew back into my body still desperately trying to save me.

I looked at the burning sky full of dying gods and the great red haze that spread across the horizon and felt content even as the pain ravaged me.

"I have bathed in the blood of my enemies" I whispered, my voice sounding gravelly and hoarse. "I took their lives and the lives of their families, their loves ones. I salted the earth of their ancestors and burned their creators into dust."

The last words could barely be heard as i embraced death. The planet collapsed in on itself and then exploded outwards causing ripples through time and space. 

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

As the body and soul that had nurtured it finally died the Tyrant’s will screamed at the universe and refused to die. Time and space collapsed as the planet finally disintegrated and and black hole formed that twisted time, space and reality formed. The Tyrant’s will was not a true consciousness, but rather a manifestation of one of the universes primordial instincts – the will to live. Sensing a tiny sliver of life from the core of the black hole, the Tyrant’s will gathered the last vestiges of the humans soul and flung itself into the abyss.