“Please save my city!” A man bows himself down before me. His name is Melchizedek. He claims to be a seer and to have foreseen a coming calamity that would destroy a nearby city and perhaps spread to end many more. “I beg you! Please help!”

“It is not lightly that I act. I have long since resigned myself to an eternity among the common man. To expose myself now would bring me no end of trouble. I would be chased and hunted.” I explain to him. “So, I ask again; are the citizenry truly so imperilled?”

“Yes, I stand by my word and once more beg you for your help.”

“Very well. Your ability must be a true indeed to have found me.” I close my eyes and face the sun. Its warm rays bring serenity to my heart. I open my eyes and put the full weight of my gaze upon him. “Know this, should you lie, it is your life that I will require.”

“I understand!” The man lowers himself to the ground as he bangs his forehead against the grass violently as is customary among my people when requesting something ridiculous. This man knows too much about me. It’s…. Uncomfortable. If I see evil within him then I will end his existence. “Thank you for your kindness!”

“Your thanks is unneeded, it is the warrior’s duty to defend the peasantry.” I grab his shoulder and step forward as I jump into the air and cleave away the miles ahead of us. We’re in the city now. “Though their lives be fleeting they are not without meaning. I will not let some unnatural abomination desecrate and trample upon my fellow man.”

I close my eyes and expand my senses. Feet, yards, all the way up to miles my senses continue to expand outward as I search for the threat. I see it.

As expected, it is a false god. To see such an abomination persist into the present era is disheartening. Long ago they’d ruled a large portion of the world being defeated a little over two millennia ago. It was long before I was born but I remember talks of a great battle against these devils.

They’d been mostly finished off about six hundred years ago during a crusade. It was before magecraft had been banned and Yuria had fallen. I’d met the emperor’s distinguished ancestor during and had the pleasure of fighting alongside him at that time.

It still hasn’t molded itself a new form. I was right to invoke the fifth magic in my haste. If I had given it too long, then it’s likely I would not have won. I release the man, I’ve already verified the truthfulness of his words, and jump. I harden the air under my feet and jump in the monster’s direction. I sever the distance between us and I’m above him. I turn and kick off the air to send myself directly at him. It’s gathering his power in response, but I slow the tick of time.

I cut his body into twain with my hand before it can respond. Down the middle a perfect cut is made as each part falls away. Muscle threads and pulls itself back together at a speed that would see it whole in under a second. It does not take me a second to act. I draw my blade from the folded space I’d used to fashion its sheathe and release a million blades onto its existence.

A wave of gray rushes from off my blade. Within this wave are a million tiny blades that tear my foe into naught but dust. The surrounding crowds turn towards me as their eyes glow an eerie soulless green.

“You wretch.” I feel a seething fury unlike anything I’d felt in centuries. The dull apathy that had layered itself upon my life is melted away in the fires of my rage. “Nothing but a beast but yet you dare to draw breath after having tasted my blade? Inside stolen bodies no less; this mockery I cannot stand.”

How dare it kill those who I’d stood to protect. How dare it defile their bodies with its putrid existence. How dare it. How dare it. How dare it. How dare it make me kill my fellow man.

“Die and this time don’t come back.” I sever the earth and separate this city from the rest of the world. Memories fade. “Goodbye, I won’t be remembering you.”

It is a shame I couldn’t narrow down the area to exclude the rest of the city but to do so would risk my hands becoming stained in the blood of its inhabitants. It is a cruel thing I’ve done to risk all for the lives of some.

The enchantments on my blade are not enough to kill such a creature so I imbue it with this rage dwelling within me and feel my heart sink into apathetic depression. The spirit of rage is cut down by a lazy swing before it can realize its existence.

A beam of gray light fires upwards and shoots down in a swirl to envelop this area in a mist of blades. The creature had the cunning and foresight to flee the instant it saw me move. Most of the bodies it occupies are vaporized but, thanks to its swift action, I feel thousands of blood droplets make it out.

I cut most of them down, but I’ve still failed to contain it. Thousands of people’s bodies are converted into blood as it uses them as the sacrifice it needs to form a wave of green blood. Rushing through the city and devouring everything in its path the wave moves with such swiftness that most likely hadn’t even realized they’d died when their end came. I laugh. Five seconds after I’ve separated the city and already everyone’s perished. My foolishness truly is without measure.

I stab into the beast and try drawing its form into my sword point but the souls it contains are too numerous for that to succeed. The worm wiggles free at the cost of only a hundred souls. Pathetic. I’m out of practice.

I feel orbs of the monster’s blood forming. It’s dividing itself to buy time. I run through the falling debris created by the beast’s passing. The shockwaves made by its passage had toppled much of the city’s infrastructure and much of the building material had yet to hit the ground. I cut down a green sphere of green blood and go to the next. They try to run evade me and fly into the sky but even the sky has limits here in this small world that had become our arena.

I cut another sphere and Melchizedek from it falls. The blood had started to coagulate at this point and he was covered in chunks of the jelly-like substance. It seems he was tougher than I’d thought to remain undigested in the belly of the beast.

I don’t bother with him and continue to the next one before he has the chance to glimpse me. The newest ball of blood has formed into a ball of green flesh. A slit appears on the orb and shows an eye within. The eye has the same outline as a human but there are some noticeable differences outside of the raw size of the organ on this beast.

That seems to contain silver magma within its iris. Slowly, from my perspective but to anyone other than me it would appear to be to just look like an odd pattern rather than movement due to its immense speed, the silver lava circles the pupil in an awe-inspiring display. The eye grows a mouth and smiles at me as I bring my blade down on it.

The space it occupies distorts as it seems to phase out of existence. I stab the space and pierce into the pocket dimension it had escaped to. My blade slows as time speeds up within. The creature tries to vomit its essence onto me, but my blade still retains enough swiftness to eradicate such halfhearted attacks from existence with ease. Still, my distraction had allowed the abomination to escape.

I can’t allow this to go on much longer. My mana pool hadn’t been refilled in decades and its contents, while still immense, had shrunk considerably from my glory days. After cutting down the newborn spirit, I let the false god gather itself back together as I focus on my blade. For a single instant the world ceases to matter as I empty myself. I infuse this love held within my heart into my blade and have it further consume the resulting spirit.

The monster has taken a form possessing the semblance of a man. The eyes are the same as they’d been earlier and its body is that of a human without a sex. There is no hair and the skin is the color of a rainbow; all the colors lit in a luminescent glow. There is no mouth, there are no ears, there is no nose; this thing is nothing but a pathetic facsimile of a man.

I cut the distance between us and appear in front of it with my sword swing in motion. My blade cuts the monster’s chest and severs the heavens too. Reality is rent as a three-foot-long slit is opened upon its chest. The void that I had made a portal into sucks and pulls the city and the monster into itself. Outside of time everything as space is where they’re destined to find themselves.

Or they would be if the creature weren’t resisting so vehemently. It stitches the tears in reality closed with the patchwork that functions as its soul. Even as it’s form inverts and its insides out brought to the outside it persists. Even as I cut and cut it continues; splitting itself again and again to avoid destruction as I kill dozens and then hundreds of the splinters it had made from its soul.

I form a net out of the maimed spirit residing within my blade. I gather the bits of the being together and seal it all into one whole. The seal I place immobilizes the abomination and renders it unable to resist the pull of the void. I force the surrounding spirits to follow it before finishing the monster’s work and knitting the rest of my portal closed.

Naturally I don’t need to match its expenditure. I can make threads at a thousandth of the cost of that beast. I look down at the devastation wrought by our battle. The city has been reduced to a heap of rubbish in the aftermath of our fight, but my heart is still. I frown at my indifference. I feel a sadness that at the very least lets me know my humanity is not entirely lost.

The ground is bleached of color as a white shadow starts spreading across the ground. From it rises dozens of arms reaching out and grasping at the position I’d occupied but a moment ago. I’ve slashed the distance to my right and directed a wave of energy out of my blade. It passes through the shadow and cleaves a gouge in the earth. I’m unable to harm it.

Our battle turns into a game of cat and mouse. I evade its grasp while sending attacks to the test the new form my adversary had taken. So far they’ve all ended in futility. I try to sense it for a weakness, but I cannot feel anything in the area it’s occupying. It’s as if it weren’t there at all.

My flesh has begun to rot from my use of the fourth curse. I use the first curse to stop the corrupted tissue’s growth and isolate it from the rest of my body. Even with this I cannot continue much longer.

“Right and wrong fade.” I chant as I focus my will for the next spell. A lapse in concentration will bring failure. If for even a moment I were to doubt, then I would fail. “I sever the law of heaven.”

I cut down this small world I’d separated off and collapse it. Ripples distort the city as reality blanks out into a sea of gray; buildings fade into nothingness as the darkness that had enshrouded the city becomes undone. Darkness and light vanish as color is torn away from the land.

“One final attack to end you.”

Its demise has been set. My determination has steeled itself. I bring my blade down and put the full weight of my heart behind it. Everything I have is behind this strike.

“All I am is a blade.”

That’s right. For my beliefs I have allowed myself to be wielded and have scarcely faltered. I had long ago set aside myself. To be just, to be righteous, to protect the people, and be the blade the wards away the enemy at night. For this there is no price I am unwilling to pay.

I burn away. Memories vanish from my mind, my emotions fade, my beliefs lose meaning, my perception vanishes, and I see nothing; I am this sword strike. I know nothing, I feel nothing, I am not alive, and I have not died.

With the final spark of my determination I bring my blade down as it glows with the light of all that I had believed. The beast shatters a thousand times as I sever a thousand iterations. Space refracts my blade through it again and again as my one strike multiplies infinitely.

My final spark fades.

…

I blink my eyes as I’m in a familiar pink fog. I stare at the worm that had curled into a ball and begun whimpering in pain.

‘What was that?’ I ask as I try to make sense of what had just happened. ‘What’s wrong with you anyways Voice?’

“Hurts, hurts, hurts.” The worm complains as it unfurls itself. “My belly is all cut up. Chop, chop, chop; my belly is bleeding.”

‘I pick option one.’

“Nope, can’t eat, pain, tummy bleeding, wait. Need sleep.” The worm’s mouths close and into a singular line of white floating within this space.

‘Hey! What’s going on?!’ I get no response. ‘You’re just leaving me here? Stuck?’

I take that as a yes. I remain isolated here for, what feels like, a long time. I’m stifled by my inability to move and more than a little bored. I’ve tried singing to myself, but it just doesn’t feel the same when I can’t hear my own voice.

“AH! I feel better!” The worm’s mouths reopen as it does a little spin in the air. “Is this what you humans feel like after taking a nap? I should do this more often!”

‘No!’ I let out a mental cough. ‘I mean, isn’t that a wasteful way to spend our time together? Wouldn’t you much rather we get to know each other better’

“Isn’t sleeping together a sign of intimacy?” The worm’s mouths bulge as to give them enough space to smile at me. “Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.”

‘I can’t sleep in here.’

“I can!” The warm’s beautiful voice bubbles with excitement as it gives a couple happy wiggles. “Sleepy time; yes, yes yes.”

‘Option one, option one, option one.’

The worm swallows me again.