CHAPTER 548

SAVIOR (II)

“Pull back! Pull back to the Inner Sanctum!” a hurried, panicked voice broke past the sounds of repeated explosions that rippled throughout a fantastically-constructed city of high-rising spires, glassed mausoleums, high-towers of spectacular make and design whose once-breathing grandeur was now reduced to ruin and ash.

Hundreds of thousands of people ran over the well-paved streets, occasionally besieged by a falling ball of flame, eradicated to ash within a flash of an eye. Those realizing they wouldn’t make it would root themselves in place, spin around, crouch and shoot at the sky. Though they didn’t know whether their bullets hit anyone, it was the only option they had.

Rammraght watched as the City of Wisdom, the last sanctum of Ivulits burned. The cradle of the civilization that broke past the ordinary, that had seen, touched and conquered the stars, was burning as though it was an ordinary city. Yet, Rammraght hardly found it surprising. After all, he had been a soldier in this war for well over a year, battling all over the planet, witnessing their most prided weapons keel over in front of the larger-than-life powers that had besieged them. He wasn't even quite certain as to how they held out for so long in the first place; partly a miracle and partly the unconditional sacrifices billions have made in vain hopes of preserving their little paradise.

Bit by bit, the Inner Sanctum found itself entirely full, dripping with life seemingly drawing its last breath. The streets that once stood beyond wide and spacious were now packed to the brim with young and old alike. Rammraght watched from the Vivilian Spire, the remarkable achievement before a purposeful building, standing at eleven kilometers in height. The encirclement was closing – the flying men and women orbiting their little sanctum inching ever so closer.

He, too, much like many of his brethren, would have given up if it were not for a single rumor of sorts that he had heard just a week ago. Though he didn’t know whether it was true, or even if it was just a voice in his head kindled out of desperation, but a melodic voice of a woman told him of a human figure, not unlike himself and the rest, currently saving the worlds like his own. He just had to hold out – and he’d be rescued.

“… hey.” He turned to the side and saw Antvvara walk out of the elevator, draped in the ordinary, military outfit that was unable to block a single arrow from the bowmen that they had fought. Tight-fitting, clad in the latest nano technology, costing immeasurable wealth to produce even a single one… yet utterly worthless. She had a depleted expression on her face, her full, pink lips drawn back and under, forming a deep frown of sadness. Her red-gleaming eyes glanced past him and out into the sky, shimmering in anger. “The last leg, huh?”

“… yeah.” Rammraght replied simply, sighing, looking out himself. It was a terrible sight to see – a terraformed planet of green and blue now dyed in red of blood and gray of ash and soot. “Do you regret it? Fighting until the end?”

“… why would I?” she shrugged, stepping up next to him. “I wasn’t made a Commander for the lack of desire to fight. Quite the opposite, I’d like to claim.”

“…”

“Did you hear the voice again?” Antvvara was the only one he had ever told of the voice, as even he realized how insane it sounded. However, she was someone he could trust beyond reason and knew that even if she didn't trust him, she'd at least keep it to herself.

“Can you really blame a dying man for hanging onto the last straw instead of watching his home burn and his people die violent and needless deaths?” Rammraght chuckled bitterly, noticing the faint sarcasm in her tone.

“… no,” she said after a short silence. “I suppose I cannot.”

“What about you? Why are you here instead of with your mom?” he asked.

“My mom’s fine,” she shrugged. “She’s off praying, since for the first time in her life nobody’s condemning her for it.”

“… in a way, it seems, she was always right.”

“I hardly think so,” Antvvara objected. “She spoke of benevolent creatures who harkened life into us. I don’t know what you are seeing, but I’m certainly not seeing that ilk of creatures. Quite the opposite, again.”

“… people flying,” Rammraght mumbled. “Shooting fire and lightning and earth and water from their palms… conjuring storms the likes of which we haven’t seen in eons… augmenting matter better than any of our machines could even come close to… for however much we knew, Antvvara, we were a hundredfold more times ignorant, it seems.”

“…” she said nothing, merely sighing. Magic, after all, was a thing of imagination, a device used by creative minds to entertain. How could they have possibly known it was a reality waiting for them in the black void?

“—you’re finally here…” a cold, indifferent voice that sent shivers down both their spines bored through the spacetime, seemingly like a pair of cold hands stretching out to grab them and squash them. Yet, before they could, space before them rippled out gently and bounced the voice back, squashing it instead.

From the ripple, a single figure walked out; he seemed ordinary – too ordinary, as a matter of fact. The sort of person Rammraght might have seen in the low-end coffee shops and never paid much attention to. Topless, wearing tattered trousers, a single sword strapped to a worse-for-wear belt, long, black-and-gray hair tied into a ponytail… much like the magic itself, he seemed a figure of those stories more than a living and breathing person. He had a faint smile on his face as he met their questioning eyes.

“—sorry it took me so long,” he spoke to them softly, patting their heads as though they were children. “I’ve caused you to suffer too much. Go back down now,” he said, turning around and facing the sky. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

Before the two could process what had just happened, he vanished, appearing beyond the shield of the Inner Sanctum, floating in the sky with the rest.

“… did… did he just pat our heads?” Antvvara questioned, her eyebrows twitching.

“Let’s go down.” Rammraght said; he, for one reason or another, held unquestionable faith in the strange newcomer. If he could save the last of his people, Rammraght would serve his head on the platter, let alone a pat or two.

Lino’s lips curled up in a grin as four figures stepped out of the void. Thus far, the most he fought at the same time was two – but it seems they had finally wizened up. Two men and two women, clad in the same, incandescent armor of gold and silver, hovered before him, behind them a staggering set of souls, counting in high millions, bloating the sky as they finally materialized.

“A trap?” Lino mumbled, a warm wind caressing his cheeks. “Boy, quite clever. Though, I gotta say, you’re gonna need a whole lot more than what you’re showing.”

“… arrogant, despondent, cruel, bloodthirsty,” one of the men stepped out from the pack, looking at him with a glooming and angered gaze. “You will suffer the consequence of your sins today, Destroyer.”

“… I’m sure to suffer them eventually,” Lino chuckled. “But, today is not the day for me to suffer the consequences of my sins – but for you and yours, I’m afraid. And, by the way, Destroyer? What the hell? How did that nickname get spread around? I haven’t destroyed anything. I’ve mostly killed and saved, you know? If you want to give me a nickname, at least make it an appropriate one, geez. I didn’t think Agents of the Creator himself were this moronic. I weep for the guy. No wonder he felt so alarmed over me, seeing as his top-guns are as incompetent as two-year-old children are at making lumber.”

“… tongue as vile as your actions. Fitting.” The man said with a scoff, turning toward his army. “Attack.”

His tone was low, yet it reached every ear it was designed to in a flash. The sky lit up a breath later, as though all the fireworks this universe produced since its inception were fired off at the same time at Lino. Colors, those known and beyond, blended together in an onslaught of flashing energies, some reaching him quickly, others biding their time. Agents themselves rushed into the melee immediately, striking him from all four corners.

In Lino's eyes, however, the speedy attack that should have caught him unaware was as slow as a snail trailing along the wet, rained-on earth. Over the past month or so, he'd gotten more and more accustomed to using his new body and the new strength, slowly creating an equilibrium between the two. Were he to redo his fight against Ella and the other two again, he would hardly have to resort to actually exerting some of his strength at the expense of his body.

He shook, drifting sideways in a manner that appeared painstakingly slow, yet the one which caused him to immediately appear in front of the Agent that had just spoken. The latter's eyes grew into massive arcs, widening like saucers, as an ordinary-looking sword spiked through his heart, sucking out every last ounce of his life from him within a nanosecond. In the same motion, Lino spun in a cleaving curve and shuddered the Protector, causing a crimson glimmer to explode off of the blade's surface and transform into a phasmantal light of absolute destruction.

The light grew rapidly, encompassing the trembling sky in a flash, causing the entire planet to temporarily appear coated in a scarlet hue. It flew off like a sharpened knife, boring through the spacetime as though it was a folding piece of paper, wreaking destruction, sowing the embryo of chaos in its path. Bolts of crimson lightning shifted off of its surface and, like weaving tendrils and self-realized pythons, shot off to the sides, exploding in the rippling sensations that lit up the world in a light so blinding those who hadn’t closed their eyes in time had their eyeballs scorched.

Millions of screams blew out before those watching down below could process what was happening. All they saw was the briefest of red flashes, and a breath later, millions cried out in pain, fountains of blood blooming like flowers mid-sky, falling like rain upon the world. Along with the cries, and the rain of blood, bodies, one by one, numbering in tens of millions, began falling, as though picked out from the canvas of the sky and thrown onto the ground. None were whole, at least missing a limb or two, while most were disemboweled beyond recognition. Carnage the likes of which they had not only never seen, but couldn't even possibly fathom, unfolded before their eyes. A single swing of a seemingly ordinary blade outpaced all the millions of attacks that were headed toward the man, obliterating them all without exception.

In the following aftermath, a massive gash appeared on the earth, splitting the massive supercontinent into two, cleaving off one side and sending it spiraling outwardly on the ensuing, massive waves. In Rammraght’s eyes, this was no longer the matter of magic – as this attack had completely shot past the concept. This was something that shouldn’t be possible – the strength that no single soul should have the capacity of procuring. Yet, all the same, it was so.