In the barren wasteland, scarred by desperate battles and countless struggles, the ground was littered with corpses and streams of blood soaked into the land, dying it black.
Two figures stood amidst the devastation. One, barely upright, swayed with the wind, his body riddled with grievous wounds, looking as though he'd collapse at any moment. Above him, an incandescent figure hovered in the sky, its three pairs of majestic wings unfurled, surrounded by a beautiful halo of light that bathed the scene below in an almost divine glow.
For a moment, the world held its breath.
Then, Alaric spoke. His voice was hoarse, raw from pain, but eerily calm.
"So… you're the mastermind behind all this, I presume?"
The Angel regarded him with disdain, a mocking smile playing on its beautiful face.
In a voice that boomed with authority, it replied:
"So what if I am?"
A pause lingered in the air before the Angel continued with self-righteousness in its voice:
"Everything I've done was for the good of the world. A purpose despicable wretches like you could never comprehend."
"... Is that so….."
Alaric's reply was quiet, almost contemplative.
His remaining eye gleamed with something quiet. Not rage. Not vengeance. Peace.
Freedom.
The Angel frowned slightly, as if sensing something unsettling in Alaric's demeanor. Raising its right arm toward the sky, it seemed to grasp at something unseen. In the next instant, the incandescent light surrounding it flared to unheard of levels, and the air grew scorching hot, making it difficult to even breathe.
Within moments, the ground began to flow with lava, and the blood littering it began to boil with the heat, producing a foul, putrid smell.
Alaric did not flinch. Pale gray flames licked his mangled skin as he wrapped himself in a miasma of corruption, struggling to push back the inferno.
The stalemate went on.
The temperature soared relentlessly, and soon, flames erupted across the land, consuming everything in their path. The barren land transformed into an inferno, a radiant sun of destruction that left nothing in its wake. Corpses, the blood, even the very ground itself. Everything was incinerated, erased as though it never existed.
Alaric stood at the epicenter of this hellish storm, his eerie flames flickering feebly as they shielded him from the devastation surrounding him. His dark eye, the last remnant of his vision, locked onto the source of it all. The radiant sun, the Angel at the heart of the destruction.
He glared defiantly at the Angel, a malevolent glint in his eye betraying his unwavering perseverance and tenacity. Though his body was broken and on the verge of collapse, his spirit remained unyielding.
This only deepened the Angel's frown, an unsettling feeling creeping over him.
As if ready to embrace whatever fate awaited him. His body—half-destroyed, ribcage exposed, entrails trailing behind—rocketed toward the heavens in a final, desperate act. With a maniacal laughter escaping his lips as if madness had overtaken him.
The Angel's expression twisted. Gone was the arrogance.
Increasing the intensity of the flames and summoning a huge ray of divine light from the sky. It threw it down with such immense force that it could carve a deep chasm into the earth.
What followed was nothing short of phenomenal.
A bloody, pathetic figure of a man…no, a monster with one arm and pale flames clinging to his body ruthlessly shot upward in a world bathed in orange-white light. He ascended towards a magnificent figure draped in a golden halo and huge wings that seemed large enough to encompass the entire sky.
The ray of divine light streaked across the vast sky and slammed into Alaric. He barely managed to dodge aside, allowing it to pass through the area where his already severed arm was and his torso, disintegrating them into dust.
But even on the verge of death, he didn't stop.
He closed the distance with unimaginable speed, his face etched with unbridled resolve mixed with insanity.
The Angel's once nonchalant expression was gone, replaced by one of solemnity. He finally acknowledged the threat before him, summoning thousands of radiant spears in an instant. All aimed at Alaric.
But Alaric had already gotten close enough, mere inches separating them.
In that moment, Alaric suddenly opened his mouth wide, releasing a torrent of black, insidious flames, thick and viscous, towards the Angel. The Miasma roared to life one last time and violently hurtled upward with a fury that defied the heavens.
The spears of light tore into him, piercing flesh and bone with more still incoming every fraction of a second, but he didn't stop. He refused to give up!
He forged a blade from pure darkness, pale and menacing, blacker than the darkest night.
In a split second, he suddenly put his all, every ounce of power his half destroyed body could ever muster for one final attack, an attack which could cost his own death.
He didn't care if this senseless final attack did any damage.
He didn't care about the radiant flames and spears of light inflicting upon him.
He only cared about giving it his all.
Attacking his enemy with reckless abandon.
And he did just that.
With a roar that tore at his shredded lungs, Alaric raised the obsidian blade high. His body, barely held together by sheer will, twisted with the force of the swing. And as he brought the blade up, a jagged line of obsidian carved itself across the heavens, severing clouds, fire, and radiance alike. The world blinked.
And in that instant—
Silence.
The inferno paused.
The flames recoiled.
Even the light faltered, shrinking away from the growing scar in the sky.
Then came the detonation.
A shockwave of black erupted from the wound in space, devouring color and sound alike. Darkness spilled across the world like ink, blotting out the sun, and turning day into twilight. A pulse of eclipsed energy radiated in every direction, smothering flame and drowning hope beneath its weight.
The heavens were no longer whole.
A dark sun now hung overhead, a twisted eclipse born from his strike, its corona flickering with traces of corrupted fire and destruction.
And beneath it, Alaric, the architect behind it all, didn't even watch it happen.
A heartbeat passed, and that was when he felt it.
Something inside him flickered… and died.
A spark that had long been on the verge of collapse finally snuffed out.
The monstrous blade of darkness in his hand unraveled like mist, and breaths which were already ragged, ceased entirely. And whatever sensation remained in his broken body vanished into nothingness.
He began to plummet towards the ground as the world reshaped itself in the wake of his wrath.
But soon, a loud, deafening scream echoed through the world. Dying the already eclipsed sky into a world of blinding white once more and sending shock waves across the entire sea of flames.
It was not a scream of agony or pain. Hell, it wasn't even human at all.
Alaric felt his ear drums burst as blood dripped out, completely deafening him.
The angel reappeared, its pristine face unmarred. Yet, its cold, ruthless eyes filled with contempt told a different story. With malice dripping from its words, it spoke one final line:
"Disappear forever with the rest of these accursed!"
Pale white flames engulfed Alaric once again, drowning and extinguishing whatever pale black flames of chaos he had left, his body disintegrating rapidly into nothingness.
'Still didn't do anything, huh…'
In his final moments, Alaric wore a tranquil expression, his deep, dark eye still glistening with the light of unrestrained freedom and peace as he embraced death's cold grasp.
The same triumphant, heaven defying smile remained etched on his disfigured face.
He had tried his best.
He had fought with everything he had until the bitter end.
Now, all that welcomed him was the embrace of darkness.
As his thoughts drifted away, the image of two dear faces lingered in his mind.
"I wonder how they're doing…" he mused, his voice a whisper lost to the wind.
Just as the last vestiges of Alaric were about to be erased from existence, an old worn out pendant at his neck glowed gold. Once… twice… seven pulses.
And with that, the legend of a generation, Alaric Benjamin Sullivan, was gone.
*******
Once the inferno maelstrom subsided, the lone figure of the Angel floating silently in the air, the only sound was the soft flapping of its wings and the gentle whisper of the wind.
The vast battlefield, once a realm of unspeakable carnage, now stretched out in eerie silence in a world stripped bare.
Nothing remained but sand.
Not even echoes remained.
Yet the Angel's thoughts churned. That look—the look in Alaric's eyes—still haunted him. Not rage. Not sorrow.
Something more.
Something strangely divine.
"That monster actually discovered its own nature?" it murmured, a heavy sigh slipping from its lips, weighed with both relief and apprehension.
"Thank the heavens we identified the threat early. Who knows what horrors might have followed if he'd been allowed to mature?" The Angel's voice was calm, yet a faint shiver of dread whispered through its words. The very thought was disturbing, a specter it quickly forced aside.
As it prepared to depart, something caught its attention. A glint on its otherwise flawless skin.
A thin, golden trail of blood traced down its side, the only reminder of the battle's toll. The Angel frowned, wiping it away with a finger; the golden liquid shimmered briefly in the air before dissipating, leaving nothing behind.
The Angel's expression darkened, its eyes narrowing in outrage. The thought that such an inferior being had managed to wound it sparked a surge of wrath within. The encounter, despite ending in victory, left a bitter sting of insult.
With a last scowl at the desolate land, the Angel turned and vanished into the night.