Alice King

Void.

It was the only thing I could think of as I watched the blazing mass of black scales and colorless pale white feathers crash against every living being in the sky.

Every swing of his chipped and weathered sword, sucked every ounce of life force from even the most vigorous of us.

His every movement, from the flap of his triple set of wings to the beating of his heart, produced spells the legion of mages at his every corner couldn't stop.

The seven differently colored eyes moved independently, glowing with power, somehow using them to turn every mage's spell against them.

The jet black horns on his head warping the space around them, pulsing with a power to tear reality and force itself into existence. Though I doubted it was something so complicated.

Flames of every color and property seeping from under his scales, the bodies it touched each left in a different but equally fatal condition.

"You fucker!? Just stop already! Cmon! Can't we just talk this out?! What you've done here is enough destruction for a day!" Yelled out a beautiful women with bronze skin and dark hair. The hypocrisy in her words lost to instinct.

She was panting, sweat and blood lining every inch of her shapely body. Her back was slouched and the dazzlingly large white flame-infused wings on her back drooped down in exhaustion. The dull brilliance of her once shining armor and her missing right arm told the world of her desperate situation.

Told the world through the ever decreasing number of cameras following the fight since the beginning.

"We can't stop here! He's slowing down and his every strike grows lighter! Victory is ours as long as we keep fighting!" said a different women's voice.

At what cost? I thought to myself.

The hulking women, nearly as tall as our adversary's towering frame, had a crazed looked on her face. She was riddled with bruises and deep and shallow cuts covered her body. Yet she was the only one of two combatants daring enough to approach the black scaled humanoid in close combat.

Burdened and by his lonesome, he aggressively opened his maw, but the only sound he produced was the high pitched whistling of a concentrated beam of sickly white flames. The flames traveled across the sky like a ray of light, decaying and rotting every piece of flesh and every chunk of metal it came across.

The blinding flames somehow adding to the darkness, with only five of us bearing through it. The two arguing women, along with two others and I stood as a beacon of light against the encroaching Void.

Each of us launching spells of equal power at the opponent. Though even when outnumbered, our opponent could overpower us and somehow wrestle out the control of our own spells from under the very tips of our fingers.

As if dominating every ounce of mana and iota of willpower.

Combined, nearly inexhaustible life force pouring out from each of us yet fading against the resilience of a single life. Helping to heal the unfortunate few who survived after his passing was difficult but quick. But it mattered little when the dead and injured multiplied by the second.

It didn't make sense. At least not to the others.

In theory, the six of us were created as equals, the pinnacles of power in the new world. Each of us responsible for a duty to help keep the world in balance.

While we had all blamed the difference in fighting strength on the planet's bias, I was slowly realizing the blatant gap in our abilities was something harder to accept.

It was simple.

He hadn't been distracted.

Each Guardian represented a different aspect of the Earth's will, yet He had been the only one to demonstrate his will through action.

While we paraded around the world, from global peace meetings to local talk shows, He spent that time discovering and accepting himself. Creating and exploring new branches of magic, making his own advancements.

While we talked, he moved.

While the Guardian of Wisdom propagated his own mindless words, He pooled the brightest minds towards advancement.

While the Guardian of War incited innumerable conflicts, He brought people together and gave them hope.

While the Guardian of Might flaunted her power, He accepted his weakness.

While the Guardian of Mana pushed away the sky, He pulled up the earth.

While I feared the future, He embraced it.

He embraced The Demon.

He had accepted his non-human state. Fully welcoming the appearance and power of his new form.

Demon.

"Demon" was simply the name of the species Mother Earth had granted him, yet if fit him so well. An unstoppable tide of perceived malice and destruction. An unstoppable tide of change.

In comparison, even in the face of insurmountable pressure, I didn't have the courage to sprout my wings or use my mismatched limbs despite knowing how useful it would be in controlling my more nuanced abilities.

I knew the others hardly had it better.

I wish I knew how he had done it. How could he have come back to the people waiting for him, without acting different? When we've been given near godly abilities, is it even possible to act as the same people we once were? We were explicitly tasked to stand above and be the leading lights in the new world, yet at the same time we had to be like everyone else?

How does that make sense?

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What could we possibly have in common with the average person?

When could I-

My thoughts are disrupted by a bright light coming from The Demon. He clenched his chest. To some his actions were from pain, but the four Guardians and I could feel he was straining his body to control something.

For an opponent who had been effortlessly weaving complex spells left to right, to suddenly feel him lose control was bone chilling.

The battered metal armor sparsely covering his body quickly condensed near his hand, mimicking the movement of water rushing downstream. When he pulled his hand away from his chest, he gripped a hockey puck shaped metal disc. Its edges had multi colored crystals jutting out, roughly cut and placed into the uneven surface of the metal.

Such a marvel of magic and engineering the armor is. Yet just like with many aspects of the demon, I had no idea how he achieved it.

Before the surprise of such a well made artifact being ripped off his body could hit me, he threw the puck at the five of us. It was only as I watched the shapely metal burst into flames from the raw friction with the air did I realize that we had been herded together into a single corner of the sky like common cattle.

As if reading each others minds, we all simultaneously casted the best defensive spell we knew.

"Omni Spirit!"

Naive. Presumptuous.

We yelled out as one, too stressed to perfectly cast the spell silently.

Yet we should have known. The Demon had created this spell. Although we had each given it our own touch, believing it to be enough to change it into different spells, it was fundamentally the same 'Spirit Shield' spell we had been taught.

We put up our emerald green barriers, each one tinged a different color representing the variety of elemental affinities among us.

As if mocking our efforts, the metal puck tore apart our spells with spine crawling efficacy, leaving the mana in its base elemental forms. Without wasting a beat, the puck absorbed the residual mana as it moved between our makeshift formation.

My heart squeezed while every blood vessel in my body seem to pop. The core of unfathomable power nestled at the center of my body seemed to creak in fear of the inevitable. The metal puck hadn't changed but as it approached the center of our positions, I could do nothing but grit my teeth as time seemed to come to a halt.

The sound of shrieking metal.

With a deafening boom, my vision blanked out. Though I infused my body in darkness magic in an attempted to numb the pain, no magic in the world could stop the feeling of my body being torn apart.

I had already lost a foot, but it paled in comparison to the next minute of my life.

The magical explosion burned away at my very bone marrow. Every cell in my body shriveled up and died, popping in death. For creatures like us whose physical forms were imbued, infused and powered by mana having it burned away was agonizing.

The explosion dug out my very soul, infused with the desire to remove any remnant of myself from the world.

Barely conscious, I tried to feel myself out realizing in drowsy thought that little of me was left. A brilliant white core of indiscernible size and power with half a skull of leaking grey matter was what remained of the Guardian of Prosperity.

With a thought, I called out to the mana in the atmosphere and immediately it responded. Waiting for my command. In a matter of seconds, my bald head had been reformed along with a complete skeleton and an assortment of vital organs.

In another minute, I had eyes to open, only to wish I had kept them closed forever.

I was finally back on solid ground on what seemed to be a small island. If I guess correctly, I was mostly likely atop one of the Hawaiian Islands. Though, if I hadn't know fight had started above the Pacific Ocean, I would have never realized it.

The ocean was dyed red. The mangled, dismembered bodies of countless humans and beast alike laid for as far as my enhanced eyes could see. On the shoreline, corpses hung from blood dripping coconut tress or buried deep in the glassed sand. Each one barely distinguishable from the next.

Near the horizon, I could see water rushing to the epicenter of the explosion, creating hungry waves that swallowed the lingering remains. The now cloudless sky shined it normal pale blue.

As beautiful as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow.

I felt tears welling in my eyes only to realize the other four were next me as well. All of us bound by a golden chain of mystical origin plunged deep into each of our chests, tightly wrapped around our cores, our very souls.

We were all kneeling with our backs to the ocean, finally lifting my head to stare at the man in front of us.

Though standing here in front of me, scales dented, wings chipped and with a slight limp, he didn't seem as otherworldly as before. But I would be a fool to abandon the the fear infused into my every cell.

"This isn't fucking fair! You're technically not even a real Guardian! So how? How is it that you managed to subdue all five of us!?" Said the Guardian of War struggling against the weightless chains, grasping at them in reckless abandon.

"Hey Demon! How about we make a deal ehh?" The massive build of the Guardian of Might squirmed around a bit in an attempt to properly display her assets. "Let me go and I'll bear your child!" She grinned, believing her offer had any real leverage on the.... man in front of her.

The Demon's seven eyes briefly focused on her chest, until the Guardian of Might began to cough and wheeze in pain. Her body gave out as she face planted into the sharp sand.

"You knocked her out? How'd you managed that? Strictly speaking, it should be nearly impossible! You'd have an easier time killing her than achieving such a thing!" The curious words from the Guardian of Wisdom contained not an ounce of shame or stress. He truly expected his question to be answered, as if this was nothing more than a social gathering.

The Guardian of Mana and I remained silent. My fellow Guardian, gripped from soul-wrenching fear, and I, overwhelmed from near-bottomless regret.

I couldn't understand how it had come to this. We were all friends stuck in a similar situation. Although love was scarce, mutual respect kept us bound.

But looking up at the lonely eyes of the Guardian of Destruction, I couldn't help but feel I had made a grave mistake. A mistake I wouldn't have the chance to fix.

One side would die here today. The Guardians of Earth, or The Demon. Us or him.

Though it made little sense, I couldn't shake off this foreboding feeling of dread.

In a brief flash of light, The Demon shifted from his original form down to the image of the human he used to be.

A tall, tanned man with medium length black hair. His once dark brown eyes now revealed a right red eye and a left black eye. A slight outline of dense muscle covered his body. He looked so... ordinary. As if someone had plucked a random man from a crowded street.

Well in a way, that's exactly what happened.

"All of you here, are the most intelligent, capable people I have ever met, " He said in a flat, controlled voice. For the first time since the fight started, he chose to speak.

The Guardians of War, Might and Wisdom seemed to slowly realize the game they were playing was quickly running turning into reality.

Before they could speak, The Demon silenced them with a tug of the chains causing them soul crushing pain.

He gave us all a dismissive glance, his few words of compliment coming to an end.

"Yet your actions having led to all of this," He gestures out towards the blood stained waters, "makes me doubt the planet's judgement in approving your ascensions."

"Don't you fucking dare place your pathetic doubt on Mother Ear-Argghh!!" Without even a twitch of a muscle, the Demon sent the Guardian of War into a fit of wheezes and gasps.

"At the beginning of this farce, I asked you all to state your final words." The Demon said as he looked at each of us, lingering on me for a second longer. "Yet you all refused..."

He took a pause, "However, while none of you shall die here today, I shall enforce my punishment."

We all tensed up, shaking off clumps of sand. I, as well as the others, knew him well enough to understand he took no joy in torture.

He destroys.

He doesn't purify or experiment.

He cleanses.

Disinfects

And to him, we are the grimiest stains in sight. A stain only removable by the most thorough of cleanings.

More than just argue and deny him, we raised and trained armies for the sole purpose of his erasure.

Armies whose absence would forever weigh down on my conscious.

For a split second, I hoped that he'd kill me.

"As the Guardians of Earth, my punishment shall fall upon the planet and every living being she houses."

He seemed to hesitate, but nothing in his expression or body language gave it away. For something reason, I just knew.

"For your collective attempt to bring mindless order and birth abominations upon this world, your punishment..."

As I felt the chain in my body fade away, I sprinted towards him. With wavering steps and faltering control, I pour my mana towards him trying to do what he had done, taking the control of his spell for myself.

Yet, I had no idea how to do it.

"...Will be my death."