A Look In The Mirror

A stalemate was the best way to describe the situation. No one knew who was on who's side. It could be everyone on their own for all they knew. Everyone was staying quiet, waiting for an explanation, but the silence only grew longer.

The two royal guards assessed what was happening but were left even more confused. Standing in front of them was a demon, their natural enemy, and the one who brought the dragon to wreak havoc, nevertheless. Rui and Lentis have yet to find out this fact but were treating the demoness with disdain anyway.

Far in front of them was Kies' doppelganger, and it did not take a genius to figure out that something was going on between them.

The doppelganger was the first to break the long silence. "We have unwanted visitors… I don't suppose you are going to leave any time soon are you?" he passive-aggressively asked, his eyes glancing over at the royal guards.

"We can decide after we hear from you what you are doing out here," Lentis told them, firmly holding his ground. The royal guards knew that they were outpowered here, having come straight out of a tough battle against the dragon. But this problem was solved when yet another person entered the standoff.

Plunging from the sky like a shooting star, a blur of green hit the sands rolling. Like a tumbleweed spiraling across the sands, it didn't look like the person would stop rolling, but the newcomer did and stopped, revealing the identity of the tumbleweed to be Nyana. If a standoff between five people wasn't enough, now it was six. However, with the newest addition, the balance of power shifted fairly to the other side, more or less equalizing things.

In the case that the demoness and the doppelganger are on the same side and choose to fight, the outcome will be in neither party's favor, with the survivor likely mortally wounded.

Messa finally turned around and saw who it was that was standing behind her. Her eyes grew wide with loathing as she blasted the two guards with magic. Lentis jumped in front and screamed, "Rui, stand behind me!" He kicked up a slab of stone and blocked the attack. The dark magic exploded against the stone and shards were sent flying left and right.

"Dark magic!?" Nyana wasted no time and shot a barrage of arrows at the demon, marking her as her immediate enemy. With a wave of Messa's hand, the arrows were grounded into nothingness by her magic.

Together the two royal guards and the elf advanced on the demon. Lentis took the lead while Rui and Nyana supported him. In a matter of seconds, the terrain was destroyed. Kies and his doppelganger had to move out of the way to not get caught up in the fight. "So a fight was unavoidable..." he quietly said to himself.

Kies anticipated since the beginning that this would happen, but for Messa to be this riled up, did she know the royal guards? Lentis and Rui were from Silverfield, the place where she had been held captive. It was the place where she had her wings ripped off from her body and her horns smashed, and seeing two people from Silverfield would bring back some unwanted memories of that.

With the two of them alone now, they could finally speak with each other. The doppelganger took the initiative and said, "I guess it would be best if I showed you my true appearance first." Smoke rose from the doppelganger's body and with it, the facade. As the smoke cleared away, it was a completely different person standing in front of Kies.

As expected, he was an Aeos as well. They share the same grey eyes, with a slight distinction. Kies' eyes were stormy grey and the other Aeos' were clear grey. Aside from that one similarity, their features were very distinguishable from one another. The other Aeos had long black hair and looked twice Kies' age, though it is very probable that he was a lot older than he looked. Using his magic power as a form of measurement, the long-haired Aeos was in his hundreds, or maybe even thousands of years old.

The person in front of Kies was ancient. If he wanted to, he could have killed the dragon that attacked Otane away with a snap of his fingers. The person in front of him is what people worshipped. A God.

"Someone as powerful as you should have no reason to go around, wearing someone else's face," Kies pointed out. He wanted to know why the Aeos did it, and how he knew what he looked like when they have never met before. Or maybe they did, but the Aeos had been disguised as another person during the time of the encounter.

"It wasn't my idea. It was this thing's suggestion." The Aeos held up his hand and slid back his sleeve. A jet-black bracelet wrapped tightly around his wrist. As if prompted to speak, the bracelet greeted a face that it hadn't seen in a long time.

"You have grown considerably since the last time I have seen you," Arc's voice came out of the bracelet. The voice hadn't changed one bit, but hearing it after so long felt so foreign.

"So, you've joined forces with him?" Kies asked Arc, not particularly shocked by the news. He had a hunch since the beginning. It was when he saw his doppelganger that his suspicions took root, and here was Arc.

"It was the best choice," Arc confessed to Kies, showing no traces of remorse as it spoke those words. "You were still far too weak to take revenge. That, and also that you were showing signs of sympathy for the humans. You lived them for too long. It was a miscalculation on our part."

Revenge... That was all it boiled down to. What a lame reason for Arc to leave him, but the thing had no feelings. It tried to kill his feelings and turn him into a killing machine but that failed since Kies noticed the moment that it happened. Arc must have planned to abandon him when that happened, but waited to see if it could find a more suitable person to enact its plans of revenge, and it did.

The puzzle pieces fell together. Kies saw now that Arc had been playing him since the start. It used his interests to try to tie him to its goal. Clever, if not deceptive.

"So, all this talk about revenge. You could have done it without the dragon. Why did you have to rely on that beast when you have enough strength to wipe the kingdom off the face of the map?' Kies asked. The older Aeos was in the literal sense, a God capable of raining terror on anyone and everyone.

"That's a good question," the other Aeos said. He took a second to think of the quickest and simplest way to explain things and then told Kies the reason why. "I don't know if you know about the history of our race-"

"We're Gods," Kies butted him and said. The Stormcaller told him this and everything else that was important.

The older Aeos nodded his head, approving of Kies' answer, and continued, "Yes, we are Gods. You should also know that we aren't the only Gods. Gods... I don't like that word. We're more so one of the first species of this world. We're not Gods." The older Aeos didn't sound fond of calling the ancient races, Gods and pondered over the right term to describe them. The taste of the word in his mouth didn't sit right with him.

He shook his head after a second and returned to the main topic and Kies listened keenly. "But I digress. What I am saying is that so-called Gods have reins on one another. If I take action then so will the other ancient races, and I don't think I need to tell you what will happen."

Kies tilted his head. "That isn't what I heard." The Stormcaller told him that aside from the Aeos, the other Ancients have gone to rest.

The older Aeos smiled. Somehow reading Kies' mind, he clarified what was confusing him. "If you're talking about the Ancients all going into hibernation or eternal slumber, I will tell you now that it is a complete lie."

"...They're not sleeping?"

"Of course not. I mean, it's not entirely false. Most, I correct myself, of the Gods are in slumber. There are two ancients, not including us, that are still active, quietly watching the war play out and still scheming behind all the other Ancients' backs." The older Aeos passed and held out his hand, handing it over to Kies. "You should know which two I am talking about."

Oh, Kies did. Two Ancients that constantly bickered with each other. Two names popped up in his mind. "The Wardens and the Drathos," Kies mouthed their names.

"Yes. So, to answer your question from start to finish, I cannot do anything rash. The other Ancients aren't aware of what I am doing, and as long as I keep a low profile, they will never know. If I decided to blast this kingdom off the map, not only will the Wardens know who did it, but the amount of magic required to do so would wake all the other Ancients. Need I tell you what will happen after that?"

"…"

There is no need to say it. The answer is obvious. War. A war between the Ancients, followed by the destruction of this world.

Furthermore, Kies was still insignificant in the eyes of the Ancients. The older Aeos didn't mention it, but he knew that it was true. He had the power to destroy Otane alone and had caused a lot of damage with his battles but it didn't trigger a reaction from the Wardens. He was still far too weak to face any of them.

World peace, the last task that the Stormcaller gave him, just how daunting was it?

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