IN THE SKIES

Earth quaked gently as the sound of marching footsteps echoed out through the rising dawn. The beams of sun painted the land surreal, with gentle, golden sheen reflecting off the surface of nearby river, causing it to seemingly glisten. The nature appeared bejeweled, yet eerily silent, as no morning chirps could be heard.

Lynne hovered forth, roughly ten meters above the ground, with the group of five thousand soldiers clad in iron armor marched beneath him. Some faces were stern, some relaxed, and some fearful, yet the steps were even, and no person faltered. They would arrive at the designated place of the battle in a few hours, but those hours seemed to have slowly turned to days.

Lynne knew that enemies’ scouts have already reported them to the main army, and that the chances of something going off script would increase, but he still had to press on. Even if lain directly in a trap, behind his back were the walls that could not fall, and a city that cannot burn. It drove him forward, with each passing second elating his heart, causing his eyes to grow ever so determined.

The hill in the distance rose like a wall in and of itself, and beyond it was uncertainty, one he had to fight through. Yet, despite all odds stacked against him, Lynne felt relaxed. It was a sort of a feeling one had after a good night’s rest, where the morning deemed the day impossible to be ruined. With that passion he marched alongside others, with seconds ticking away as did the dawn.

When High Lord received the report of the five-thousand strong group marching directly at them, he was left momentarily stunned. Even if they somehow knew about the attack, any logic and reason dictates that most of their forces should remain guarding the city walls, and just some scouting should be done outside of it.

The number itself didn’t worry him much, but the reasoning behind it did; he doubted them suicidal, so it only meant that there were some other plans at play, ones he missed thus far.

“… High Lord,” a man riding a horse next to him spoke out; he was seemingly in his mid-thirties, donning a set of plate armor with a giant warhammer strapped to his back. “What do you think their plan is?”

“… I suspect they want to avoid the frontal battle at the gates,” the High Lord said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the direction of the city. “My best guess is that the five thousand army is comprised of most of their strongest force.”

“Should we then divide ours and attack the other gates instead?” the man asked.

“No need,” the High Lord shook his head, lips curling up in a gentle smile. “We’ll proceed as planned. If they think they can stand in our way, we’ll just stampede over their corpses. Are all the preparations for the Ceremony complete?”

“Yes,” the man nodded. “All we need is to take over the city now.”

“Good. The day has finally come.”

Lynne stopped atop the hill, behind him an army of five thousand sitting down and resting. In the distance he saw the black swarm, seeming indistinguishable from the horizon itself. The wind blew by, causing him to narrow his eyes, as he clenched his fists.

“… so many.” he muttered as his eyes focused on the leading twelve. At the far front was a middle-aged man with skin similarly pale to Fen’er’s, adorned in wholly black armor, riding a black-maned steed. “How to make sure everyone knows who you are? Just wear the most obscure shit out of all of your men.” Lynne added as he chuckled, stepping forward.

He walked slowly as the others came to a halt at a distance of roughly half a mile, while the leading man leapt off his horse and began walking towards Lynne. He was followed by another two men, and the four of them quickly closed the distance between one another, leaving them standing in the middle of the open field.

“A mighty army you’ve got there, black widow,” Lynne jeered, pointing towards the back. “You look more like you’re ready to conquer the world rather than a small city.”

“… who are you?” the High Lord asked; Lynne had changed both his features and his aura prior to departing from the city, making himself look like a man in his early thirties, battle hardened to a boot.

“Does it matter?” Lynne asked back. “Your goal is to trample over me and proceed onward. What would knowing my name change in that scenario? Could it be that you have a name fetish? That’s a bad one. I imagine your wife wasn’t all to happy when you’d suddenly exclaim some exotic name you’ve heard while you were doing her.”

“… is this your idea of mind games?” the High Lord said, chuckling lightly. “You’re a hundred years too young for that lad.”

“I’ve heard about you, you know?” Lynne said in a rather passive tone, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the middle-aged man standing before him. “A man devoid of heart, yet of devotion unparalleled. Your supposed God is but an accidental failure on the part of nature, yet your devote yourself whole to it? Surely, someone dumb enough to do that shouldn’t go around commanding armies, lest your bury your men indefinitely.”

“Blasphemous!!!” one of the man standing next to the High Lord shouted, drawing out his giant sword from the scabbard and pointing it at Lynne. “I dare you to insult the High Lord again!!”

“Look, even your men are more concerned that I insulted you rather than your supposed deity,” Lynne chuckled lightly. “But alas, I’m not one to judge. After all, at one point in my life, I believed belly buttons were the most erotic places on human body. Took me to find a really filthy one to realize how wrong I was.”

“…”

“Why have you invited me here?” the High Lord asked, ignoring Lynne’s provocations completely. “To annoy me? To beg me? To waste my time?”

“To ask you,” Lynne said, smiling. “Was it worth it?”

“What?” the High Lord asked, his brows furrowing as a strange foreboding crossed through his heart.

“To devote yourself to the cause so much, you’d had lost the devotion and trust of your only child.” Lynne said slowly, as if to emphasize every single word, as he observed the High Lord’s reaction.

“… Fen’er.” the High Lord said, his eyes flashing with a glint of pain. “She wouldn’t…”

“You know,” Lynne’s tone suddenly turned cold as he spoke. “You and your ideologies have cost me greatly. Part of the reasons I’m standing here is because you set in motion a chain of events that led me down a rabbit’s hole, and I found this place to be the only exit. You will lose this battle,” Lynne proclaimed boldly. “And this war. Your God will die, and return back to where he was supposed to go in the first place. By the end of this ‘small scuffle’ in your eyes, you’ll have realized your whole life was wasted, and everything you did was pointless. So, take these few minutes before your men start falling down like flees to remember this beautiful scenery surrounding us. It ought to be the last pretty thing you’ll see.”

“Ha ha,” the High Lord suddenly burst out laughing, turning around as he began walking away. “I’ll acknowledge you can spin the words like a woman can spin the knitting wheel. Alas, words are weaker even than poison, young lad. See you in hell.”

Like the High Lord and two other men, who glanced at him coldly, Lynne turned and walked back to the hill. His eyes were doused in slight disappointment as he sighed lowly, shaking his head.

“I guess you don’t become the top-head of a group condoning massacre without losing last shred of humanity,” he muttered lowly, glancing at the distant figure of the High Lord. “If words can’t sway you, perhaps your God’s death will.” he then suddenly turned around, looking over the five thousand people currently sitting on the ground.

“ARISE!!” he shouted atop his lungs, breaking the heavy silence among the five thousand like glass; one by one, soldiers stood up and brandished their weapons as their eyes burned fervently with determination. “The black cloud stands before us, and it is up to us to breach it in the wake of a new day; beyond it is a sun and scent of victory. Should your heart ever falter, remember what stands behind you; remember the walls that must not crumble, and people that should not get entangled. Ready your shields and raise your swords!! Trust in brothers and sisters standing beside you!! Don’t ever look back!! Let each of your swings carry the hopes of those behind us!! And let us shatter their delusions of grandeur in one, fell swoop of dominance!!”

“ROAR!!!” voices echoed out in unison as their throats sung the warcry; shields and swords clashed and the earth beneath quaked. Suddenly, far up in the sky, an explosion tore a tole in the azure beauty, causing eruption of firework-like colors to appear.

“… and so, it has begun,” Lynne glanced at the direction briefly before his gazes shifted back onto the open field. In the distance, the black swarm had already begun marching forward towards them, coated in delirium of their glory. “ONWARD!!!”

Five thousand crossed the tip of the hill and descended onto the open field, while Lynne took to the skies above them to protect them from the incoming barrage of Spell Arts. Fireballs rained from above, with boulders the size of a small hill hurled over in a beautiful arc through the sky.

In the skies before him, three figures appeared; two were the men that he met beside the High Lord, while the third was a man clad in plate armor, holding a giant, flaming warhammer. Lynne glanced downwards and spotted the High Lord leisurely relaxing in a chair as he observed the battle.

Smirking lightly, Lynne averted his gaze back onto the incoming projectiles. The sky appeared coated in celestial light, as arrays of entire color spectrum assailed from above. Water roared as it coiled around the lightning bolts, with space itself being torn apart as spearheads were flung through the holes at speeds far surpassing the normal limit.

Five hundred meters… three hundred meters… beneath him, armies inched closer to one another, as the group of five thousand finally entered the four-division formation, turtling in mass. Ignoring them for the time being, Lynne took in a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment as he gathered his thoughts.

His right arm then reached out as he flicked his finger, whereupon Emperor’s Scythe appeared in his hand. As soon as it did, its aura of complete domination spread throughout the sky, seemingly suffocating all those affected. Without delaying any moment further, Lynne coated his feet in blue flames as his entire body suddenly turned ablaze and he appeared like a golden statue in the sky.

The space around him tore apart and collapsed like glass, revealing nothing but darkness which laid beyond. His azure-colored eyes suddenly lost their hue, turning pitch black.

“Seething,” Lynne whispered softly, grasping his scythe tightly as he elevated it at the side, arm stretched completely. “Divinity – Divine Collapse.”

His scythe suddenly vibrated and screeched as if alive as Lynne bolted towards the incoming projectiles as well as the three distant figures in the sky. His whole body ablaze, space around him a distant voice, and a scythe that seemingly blurred out of existence; he suddenly spun around in a circle – his scythe like a whirlwind – as thousands upon thousands of small singularities bolting off through the space. Divinity – fifth technique of the second stance – got its name not because of its destructive power, but rather the sheer burden it places upon the world surrounding it.

Half the Spell Arts raining from the sky immediately imploded, as Lynne cast Pyre once against, flames wreathing around him as they mangled outwardly like a shockwave, burying the sky golden.

In response, one of the three men suddenly raised both his hands, causing the sky above to lose its luster as a terrifyingly large hole opened; suddenly, it began shooting pitch-black bolts towards Lynne, causing the entire sky to become completely dark, while two armies beneath finally clashed. Screams echoed out only to be buried underneath the destruction of nature itself, as thunder blasted off through the heavens, deafening anything that lived near, while Lynne’s scythe screeched as if tortured for all eternity causing coiling shadows to appear from its shaft while Lynne’s body suddenly melded into the darkness surrounding him, the luster of his eyes turning crimson.

“… Shadows,” a faint whisper echoed out throughout the sky. “Obey.” thousands of arm-shaped shadows suddenly erupted from the darkness, some descending down from the sky like hands of gods, while others bolting towards the three figures in the sky.

“… interesting,” one of the three figures snickered as he took the hood off from his face; it was a youthful-looking man with no discernible features outside of symmetric tattoos covering his entire face, exuding golden sheen. “Crimson Light!!” the man shouted, causing the golden sheen to disappear in the wake of the crimson luster. “Devour!!”

A gigantic maw – made entirely out of bloody light – appeared behind the man as it gaped towards the incoming hands, swallowing them whole instantly, whereupon it exploded into brilliant glints of light – all blade shaped – and fired off towards Lynne.

The figure next to the youthful man also acted, revealing the stack of coiling snakes running through hiss body. As he released them, the snakes grew to the size of a sentry tower, their eyes burning crimson as they rounded towards Lynne, their maws agape as sprinkles of scarlet poison shot out, blending in with the crimson blades.

“Reaping!” Lynne shouted, the scythe in his hand disappearing and reappearing behind him, immediately growing to hundred meters in size. “Agony – Heaven’s Fall!”

As the gigantic blade of the scythe cut through the blackened sky, it revealed the sun behind it, causing golden beams to illuminate the world beneath. As the scythe’s arc inched to the end, a boom resounded through the world, causing it to shake as if pushed from within; the sky tore open once again, but instead of darkness, beyond the hole was a cluster of celestial lights and, as if wriggled out by hand, more and more fell through the hole like stars, their luster burning more brightly than the sun, as they joined in with the scythe’s trajectory, clashing against the incoming blades and snakes.

A brief moment of silence was followed by a collapsing sound, as shockwave blasted off for dozens of miles, destroying all clouds in its wake. Explosion was followed by the sounds of coarse cries, stifling any and all sounds coming from the battle on the ground, or the battles surrounding the main one in the skies. The world seemingly collapsed unto itself as Lynne appeared from the darkness and stepped into the light, his middle-aged appearance washed away. In the sky stood a heroic youth, his hazelnut hair fluttering in the wind, with the braid of azure contrasting it; the white robes’ rhythm was guided by the wind, his eyes peerless, looking down onto the world.

“Come,” his voice, although seemingly a whisper, reached the High Lord who was standing with expression of shock, staring at the sky and the distant, faint figure of Lynne. “The day is young… and death hungers.”