POV: Soldier of the Church of the Seven, special attack division

I tightened the last strap of my full plated armour and took my helmet. A longsword was dangling from my hip, resting in its leather sheath. After one last, deep, breath I stepped out of the tent and fell in line with all the other soldiers marching towards our destination. Some unnamed valley surrounded by cliffs. A place far, far away from civilization and the only place we could fight one of them in.

"So, you ready?" the soldier next to me asked.

I chuckled.

"You're never quite ready," I responded.

"How many missions have you been on?" he asked.

"This one's my tenth," I responded.

"You survived ten? Ten of these missions? That's crazy..." the soldier responded, his voice trailing off a little.

"What about you?" I asked.

"My first... You know, I had really hoped to find a wife before doing all this... you know, find something, someone worth fighting for but... right now I don't even care if this goes wrong," the soldier said, sounding quite sad.

"Don't jinx us all," I said as I hit him on the back. "You'll find someone."

He smiled at me. Shortly after we stopped marching and I could see our commander, a tall man dressed in leather pants, shoes and jacket and no shirt, stepping onto a heightened wooden platform. In one hand he held a little metal rod with a crystal on one end. When he spoke, he spoke into it.

"Listen here, soldiers! We are about to face an enemy so terribly strong that even high paladins run away in fear! That's why we have ten of them here! So they won't shit themselves from all the responsibility they have to carry on their lonesome shoulders!" the commander said, his voice carried across the massive camp.

It was a joke we made since one of our high paladins ran away from a battle, saying that this was too much responsibility for him to carry on his shoulders alone. We later found out from the maids that they had found his armour filled with shit. Most people there laughed.

" You've all been briefed on the target once or twice or fifty times before as well as before this mission so you should already know everything down to his favourite food... does he even eat? Why do we not know that might be important... maybe we can starve him to death...-" as the commander usually did, he began mumbling stupid things before getting back on track, "-There's not much else to say so let's just go and march towards our death!" the commander said into the device.

All of us cheered loudly, a last way to commit ourselves to this mission, which was clearly suicide. And so we began marching across the wide path towards the valley. In a few hours, we reached it, passing through a forest where we were clearly watched by someone, maybe one of his scouts if he had some. Although as far as I knew him he might very well be one of these squirrels, or one of the birds twittering somewhere. I was trembling already. And the soldier I had talked to before now looked as pale as our target.

"Don't worry. Most survive their encounters with him," I said, trying to cheer him up a little.

"Really, how come?" he asked, clearly holding back his breakfast.

"He's got better things to do usually," I said, smiling at him.

Although I did leave out the fact that it was him that challenged us this time. Or rather, it was obvious that he wanted us to find him, something just felt off about this time. It was my fourth time dealing with him but he had never made it this easy to find him. Most went as far as to say that their castle was easier to find than that guy.

We marched on without any complication. The ten high paladins walked in the front with the thirty or so paladins and the fifty callers... but if that would truly be enough was quite questionable. I had heard that the commander had tried to get a saint to join us but they just gave the usual response: "We have more important things to do!", and by that, they probably mean that they just didn't want to deal with him. Everyone knew that even the saints would need to work together if they wanted to kill him. After the Riftwalker killed three of the former saints, in some dispute that was confidential, which most likely meant that they challenged him to a duel and lost, they all got so cautious that they had not been on any mission in the past fifty years, even the new ones are cautious of everything they assumed to be capable of taking them on in a fair fight.

We finally reached the valley at noon. It was fully surrounded by trees on all sides except one where the cliff of one of the mountains surrounding the valley crept up to the open space. On all other sides, there were a good few hundred metres of forest before one would reach the cliffs.

"Oh my, already here?" a familiar voice asked loudly.

The voice could only be described as uncanny. It sounded human but not quite human, or elven or any other thing capable of speech. Everyone turned their attention to the cliff that reached the open space. Up there was someone, clad in a cloak. The only thing visible besides that were the two blue dots around the head area. His eyes.

"You showed up!" our commander yelled, using the device he had used before.

"Of course, I have a purpose after all!" the figure atop the cliff said.

Before the captain could answer the person lifted one hand and a blue flame appeared, a flame that dropped to the floor and spread in a straight line down the cliff and towards it. As it came closer it was obvious that the flame was not on the ground but in it, as if it was painted on.

"What is this?" I whispered to myself.

This was an ability he had never shown before.

"[Galaxy in a box]!" the person yelled loudly.

The blue flame that was painted on the ground split in two and went to the side, the space in between turned into something akin to the night sky. I saw stars and there was this purple and blue fog or whatever it was everywhere as well. When the blue flame reached the mountains it seemed to go up the air itself and then went across the sky until we were completely surrounded by this night sky. I looked around, behind us I could see something that looked akin to a massive tree made up out of stars and strange energy flowing around it and such. It was unbelievably beautiful but in this situation, I had no time to admire that beauty.

"What is this?!" someone yelled.

Suddenly we all stood apart, our commander in the middle of our two groups of people and next to him stood the figure, their cloak falling off. It was a skeleton, his bones held together by black hinges and chains and shackles. He put one bone hand on our commander's shoulder. I had never seen him this close. He was quite tall, if I had to guess I'd put him at around five metres tall.

"Now, mind telling me what you know about the remaining user of one of the powers of sin?" the skeleton asked with his uncanny voice.

"Even if I knew anything, I wouldn't tell you anything, Grimlock!" our captain responded.

Their voices echoed through the entire... room, or whatever it could be called.

"Really? That's a shame... if you won't tell me I'll make you talk," Grimlock said.

The flames in his empty eye sockets became larger and he raised his other bone hand, tilted slightly towards the group of about ten thousand people opposite to mine.

"[Galaxy in a box: Dead Planet]!" Grimlock yelled out.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. But then, out of nowhere, came a massive round rock or whatever. I could see hundreds, if not thousands of lava veins running across the surface of this rock... no, he said planet. Only then did I truly realize the size of that thing. Grimlock was dropping an entire world on part of our army.