Gaea’s guardians arrived on the outskirts of Odessa to find the small province of Avalon, run by the Council of Xelots, engulfed in war. Apart from Jayce, this was the first time that any of them had seen this army of holy knights engaged in combat and they had to admit that the army fought more ferociously than they would have imagined.

Jayce’s eyes traced the battlefield before locking onto Deacon DeSaint, the older brother of Raen and Dana DeSaint, Exalted High Knight and Commander of the Xelot’s field forces. As expected of a man with so many accolades, the leader of the army’s ground forces stood out quite naturally, even amidst the sea of violence that had engulfed the area. This was because while he commanded the channeler forces of the Xelot army, Deacon also commanded a small army of his own personal making.

Jayce smirked at the sight, having identified the twelve knights immediately surrounding Deacon as his own personal summons and not actual channelers, despite their effectiveness and savagery rivalling that of any other knight in the army. While these summoned constructs tore through the remnants of the haima’sa ground forces that now served Teros, a massive griffin tore through their aerial forces, severing limbs and rending the smaller units asunder.

The battle was far from one-sided, however. With each creature that Deacon and his personal army dispatched, one of his own soldiers fell to the ravenous remnant hordes. And unfortunately, while these remnants, much like the haima’sa from which they were made, tended to reform after being dispatched, not all of his charges could be so lucky.

Roun grimaced at the sight as he looked over the battlefield, before his eyes finally drifted over the location of the Stone Henge gate. It was the first time that he had laid his eyes on such a structure. The massive spatial disruption appeared as a tear in the very fabric of space and time itself, looming ominously over the battle that was fought on with it as the price. There, he fixed his gaze on a battle between Teros and the only Xelot powerful enough to stand between him and the massive gate, the legendary Lord Marshack Almed III.

“Xavier!” He yelled, drawing the attention of the guardian field commander now. “By the gate, we need to assist Marshack.”

“You three go ahead.” Xavier nodded in response. “I’m gonna hang back and see if I can’t level the playing field for the Xelots a bit.”

Xavier’s response preceded him dumping his Khaaos infused energies into the battlefield, charging the air with the wispy azure sparks that tended to precede his pièce de résistance. Roun just smirked, nodding in response before vanishing from his location with Nikolai and Jayce in tow.

The three emerged from his silhouette slide just in time to see a massive blue and white dragon dispel one of Teros’ tar-like black discharges, with a powerful breath attack of its own. Nikolai’s eyes widened at the display of power, as the shockwave from the collision washed over him. He knew that without Geon’s augmentation, the mere fallout from the attacks colliding would have been able to dispatch him. Instead however, the dispersing energy washed over his heavily reinforced form harmlessly before dissipating back into the environment.

The young man’s gaze turned to the knight standing in front of him, before drifting past the armoured blue-haired man and towards the pale wraith-like opponent that he faced.

“I’ll admit, you’re vaguely impressive for one of your kind.” Teros chuckled, rotating his shoulders in their sockets as he geared up for another salvo. “I’ve so far enjoyed our little back and forth to a genuinely surprising level, Lord Paladin. When I wipe your kind from existence and resurrect my kin, I will speak fondly of our battle… brief as it was.”

Teros’ words were sinister as always and laced with the confidence befitting a being with the energy output of a god.

“You flatter me demon.” Marshack replied between deep breaths, already exhausted from their exchange up to that point. “Unfortunately, I cannot allow you to achieve your ends, even if it requires that I give my life on this battlefield.”

Teros’ laughter spread ominously, echoing throughout Avalon’s open air.

“This battlefield or the next, Lord Paladin, the death of your race is inevitable.” He retorted.

Teros’ statement preceded his own energy signature flaring to a level that dwarfed that of his opponent’s. Unlike Nikolai, being in the presence of the most powerful channelers on the planet was a much more common occurrence for Roun and Jayce—but even this level of power was something that they had never seen before. The three guardian hosts were paralysed by the potency of the energy surging out of Teros’ form. The difference between this energy and Marshack’s own power was similar to the difference between Marshack’s power and theirs in their unaugmented states—revealing a tier of channeler previously unquantified by their current ranking system.

Deity-tier, they thought.

What followed this revelation was a tsunami of black energy erupting from Teros’ back and hurtling towards the four that stood between him and the gate. The three youngsters hesitated at the sight, but Marshack’s gaze just narrowed as he quickly tried to gauge the true scope of the attack. It didn’t take long for him to realise that this demon’s power output outstripped his capabilities in every way imaginable. Luckily, facing such opponents had become the norm for him and his knights. Rayad Demar’s R.E.D. program made every single face-off between the elite Demai and Xelots forces a battle of vastly different energy generation capacities, and his Paladins had specifically trained to counter such tactics. A powerful shockwave shook the air as Marshack dissipated the gargantuan dragon that served as his binding summon in the battle up to this point, before he reformed that massive reservoir of energy into a physical shield that resembled the ones wielded by his Paladins. While those shields however were sized for humanoid personnel, this shield was massive, towering countless storeys above them as it stood between Teros’ attack, the three guardian hosts and one of Terra’s legends.

Towering almost as high as the gate behind them, the energy contained within this construct was specifically engineered to divide the potency of incoming attacks. Within seconds, Teros’ overwhelming attack crashed violently against Marshack’s shield and began to corrode it, forcing the Lord Paladin to do his best to reinforce the defensive structure.

“If you boys are going to make your move, now would be the time.” He grimaced, struggling to maintain his focus as he turned his attention towards the paralysed young men.

“Right.” Roun shook his head, snapping out of his fear. “Cover me.”

With a grunt, the flames of Synchros erupted around him, causing his own energy output to skyrocket under the influence of the Guardian’s power. Marshack could feel as the young man’s energy climbed pass the braver tier and through that of the heroic, before surging to legendary and beyond. A faint grin broke across his lips as he poured the last of his energy into his shield, while Roun vanished from behind him. Interestingly, his departure wasn’t met with the same powerful shockwave and explosion of force that tended to herald it. Instead, his movement was silent, allowing him to materialise above Teros without the faintest indication and deliver his counterattack.

“Hah, you’re a fast one.” Teros grinned as he pulled his own arm upwards to guard the swinging axe-kick that came his way.

The result was a clashing of Roun’s Synchros and Teros’ namesake energy, before powerful explosions rippled outwards as the energies interacted and violently cancelled each other out of existence. Luckily, Roun’s attack weakened the power of his black energy torrent, just as Marshack’s shield failed, allowing those two forces to cancel each other out as well.

“Lord Almed, I’ll guard the gate.” Nikolai now stated, noting that the battle with Teros before they arrived seemed to have sapped much of Marshack’s preternatural stamina. “Go recharge your energy and leave the rest to us.”

Marshack just nodded.

“Very well child—I’ll leave the rest to you.” With this he vanished, retreating into Odessa under the influence of his own unique teleportation ability, while Jayce joined Roun in the fray.

Before Teros could mount a follow-up, Jayce—now transformed into his feral state—was already lunging at him with claws extended. Their Dias coating threatened to sever Teros’ fundamental faculties one from another. Much like Roun’s attack however, Jayce’s lunging strike was easily intercepted, being met with Teros’ other arm as it swung around to slap the attack away and send Jayce stumbling to the side. Both Roun and Jayce growled as their attacks were easily countered, before they each spun and launched a follow-up in synchronous. This time Roun spun and unleashed a powerful high kick, while Jayce sunk into a predator stance and performed a lunging slash at Teros’ Achilles tendon. Teros smiled at the follow-ups, pulling his head downwards and kicking off the ground simultaneously before pulling himself into a spin parallel to the ground while Roun’s attack passed above and Jayce’s attack passed below. Teros landed as his two attackers were completing their spins and took the opportunity to counterattack with a radial discharge of his energy. Roun’s eyes widened as he sensed the attack, forcing him to energize his body and allow it to be washed away by the ambient streams of energy, dragging Jayce along with him in the process. Before he could even notice what was happening, Jayce was metres away from the attack and watching as the ground beneath his previous location corroded away completely.

Roun’s gaze narrowed at the effects of Teros’ attack.

“Nikolai.” Roun muttered over their encrypted comm link as he watched the ground beneath where they previously were dissolve. “Am I mistaken or does Teros’ energy literally erase energy from existence?” He inquired, much to the shock of Jayce and Xavier as they listened in.

“That’s the legend.” Nikolai replied slowly. “But that’s also entirely impossible.”

Roun’s eyebrow tipped upward slowly.

“Right…” Roun agreed reluctantly, vanishing from his location once more.

As he appeared before Teros yet again, he now wielded the blade that had been gifted to him by Synchros. With blinding speed, he swung it, attempting to sever Teros’ head from his shoulders, but instead he just watched as the blade impacted an almost solid barrier of Teros’ energy. The demon grinned broadly as Roun’s blade hovered mere inches from his through. The young Synchros host growled loudly as he tried to push through this potent shield, but before he could muster the force to overcome it, he found his blade being consumed and dissipated by the same energy that he struggled against. Once again, he vanished to avoid the inevitable counterattack, while Jayce took the opportunity to follow-up and keep Teros engaged.

“Okay, so, I can peer into this realm, the annals, the font and the cache… trust me when I tell you that I can’t track where the energy that his black goop corrodes actually ends up.” Roun growled over the link as he rematerialized some distance away.

“Well then, you’re useless over there.” Xavier barked. “Come help me instead.”

“What?” Roun snarled in response.

“I’ve been dispatching these… things… and they just keep coming back.” Xavier expounded. “You said that you’ve killed haima’sa before. Come show me!”

“Go Roun.” Nikolai affirmed. “Jayce and I will hold Teros off. Remember, we don’t need to beat him right now, just keep him away from that gate.”

Roun growled lightly before he finally conceded and vanished from his location once more. This time, rather than his usual route through the zeta streams that encircled the planet, Roun used his connection to Synchros to skim the thin fabric the separated the garden from its sister dimensions. When he rematerialized, just in front of Xavier, the young man used the legendary energy to draw the raw code housed in the annals to tear through one of Teros’ remnant soldiers. Just as it had done with Shade some months ago, this torrent of junk data washed away the core of coded instructions that animated that soldier, erasing it completely from the battlefield.

Roun smirked as his body fully materialised and his target was washed away. “Did you catch all that?”