The Fateful Meeting

We needed to gain some distance between the monster before we could assess the situation.

Thankfully, the huge shadow monster roared, and we all went flying into the air.

After what was a terrible landing.

Lucius started to look at the monster. It was very far away from us, so we could finally see its shape to a certain extent. His body was not humanoid. It was like half of its body was still inside the shadows.

Lucius then raised his hand, and a glowing ring appeared in the sky. It had a neon red glow to it, almost like it was made of a very pure fire.

A gigantic sword came flying down from the sky. It past right in the middle of the giant circle. It landed behind him, and I could easily see just how humongous this sword was.

It was the size of a big building, if you were looking at it from a distance. The hilt was black, decorated with gold rims, and the sword itself was black with purple. The handle was a reddish color, almost as if blood had been sprayed on it for far too long.

"Idiot you should have summoned it on top of him" said a voice I did not recognize.

The man who said that was dressed very strangely for someone in Epsilon. I was immediately on the defensive, but Lucius simply looked at him and said, "The sun king".

My eyes widened. The government had tried to hide the news of the sun king, but something that big was impossible to hide. This was the man who, without any powers, had staged a rebellion against a monarchy. He was pretty much a God to everyone I knew. The hope of all humanity.

And here he was.

Lucius looked at him very carefully, as if deciding whether he was a friend or a foe. He was cautiously eying him. But Louis simply ignored him and looked at the huge monster.

“Seeing as my coin is not tingling, you guys are not enemies. How about we make focus for now on stopping that thing, and later we can discuss whether you want to kill me” said the sun king.

Lucius sword started to rise. The shadows had absorbed the impact of the falling sword, because it left no scar in the earth nor did it produce a shockwave. B

"Where is your assistant, mister king?" Lucius asked mockingly. He did not particularly hate the king. He respected him. He was someone who would do anything for his goals. A man prompted to action. Lucius knew that the sun king would be a good addition to his team.

"Sadly, I have come alone" the sun king answered.

Lucius noted that he would have to ask again later. Right now, was not the time for stories.

I was unsure whether to kneel or to profess my unwaivering love for him, until I noticed a small wound on his forearm. I instinctively touched it and healed it. He, at first, instinctively pulled back, but then he let me heal him.

We all knew, as we quite recently left our previous world, that he was powerless. He was human, as far as we had known, and he intended to keep it that way.

"That power of yours gave me an idea, but let's see if this sword of his works or not. I would rather not have to use such a thing here" the sun king told me.

The sword was already a blob in the sky, and it was slowly moving towards the shadow monster. When it finally was positioned directly above it, it came down.

The sword was used as a nuke by its previous owners. They would look at a battlefield from a great distance, drop the sword, and wipe out both enemies and allies. It was not a very convenient power, but the floor was covered in shadows. Ones that could absorb the shock.

That meant that he would not nuke himself or his allies.

The sword pierced the shadow monster in two. Even if it was small in comparison, this sword was extremely powerful. Was it not for the shadows on the floor, the four of them would have been dead.

But it was not enough. The monster simply stitched itself together. As long as the monster was not destroyed, this would happen over and over.

"I think that these shadows are not made of matter. If they are proper shadows, a physical blade would not do any damage" said the sun king, examining the ground.

The sun king was right. Shadows are not matter; they are not a physical object one can simply destroy.

"But Lucius fought a shadow before," I said, remembering the shadow soldier the little girl had.

Louis ignored this and kept examining the floor. He then looked at the huge monster, and then looked at me.

"Just exactly how much can you heal with those powers of yours?" He asked me.

I told him how my powers worked. He nodded and told us he had a plan.

Lucius stood on guard, to protect our backside. The sun king looked at the monster and began his chant.

The sun king had, by a stroke of luck many years ago, stumbled upon a dragon's lair. The events that occurred; he would tell us later, but he gained a book which contained a power of the heavens.

He could not use it, because he would die before he could even finish its incantation, but with my healing powers, he said it could work.

And so, the sun king started his incantation.

Something felt terribly wrong. The landscape lost its color. Everything became white and black. Everything except the sun king. His hair changed from jet black to a brilliant yellow. A halo started to form on top of his head.

And his skin started to burn.

In an instant, I could see the muscle joints that were supposed to be covered in skin. I started healing him, as more and more patches of his skin burned by an unregistered flame. Monsters started to head towards him, trying to destroy the source of the unnatural feeling that he was letting out.

Then, I felt the same thing the monsters did. My ears started bleeding. I could not fight back against the revulsion I was feeling. I wanted to kill him. Ana then took over and continued to heal him.

Lucius’ job was to protect us from the monsters. But instead of doing in a calm fashion, as to when he fought us, he and the monster near him went on a rampage. They started killing each other mercilessly. It was a massacre. Luckily, Lucius was stronger than all of them. As the sun king continued, Lucius body parts began to bleed. His ears, mouth, eyes, and nose all had blood flowing out of them.

He finally lost it and started to head towards the sun king.

The sun king was almost finished, but Lucius was getting scarily close to us. Was it not for the monsters, he would have reached us in an instant, but he was killing the beasts while approaching us.

Ana kept healing the sun king, even as our hands started to need healing themselves.

Lucius was now breathing down my neck. He went for a hit, but Ana moved my body, and I took it for the sun king. Thankfully, he was done.

No noise followed. Were it not for the beam of light that came from the heavens, I would not have noticed anything different. This was something that broke the rules of nature.

You would expect that when lightning strikes, thunder would follow. This attack had nothing. For such a powerful force, it had absolutely no reaction to such an action.

That was because it was a strike from heaven, something that would break the laws of nature.

The beam of light scared all the now conscient monsters, which now ran away. Lucius sat down, terrified. He was still bleeding, and I had to heal him.

The sun king felt even worse than both of us. He decided that absolutely nothing was worse than this. He also had blood flowing from his eyes, and his yellowish hair was very slowly turning black again. The halo had disappeared, and with it, the pain he felt.

It was as if he was Atlas, holding the entire world together at a single point. As if every single building, person, animal, mineral, plant, object, living entity, nonliving entity, everything, was suddenly inside his body, and were trying to get out. His body would have, quite literally, exploded had he not been healed so closely.

Even though he had won this power, even though he had paid its price in full, with the insane amount of pain he felt in that moment. Even though it was the only power he could use while maintaining his humanity. He promised never to use it again. Death, he thought, for him and everyone around him was a better option.

But that was not the only price for using such strength.

The shadow monster disappeared, and the witch suddenly was falling from a great height.