"Captain! We won't be able to take this much longer!" A voice sounded; a woman's.
"We'll be fine! Sunie, charge!" The Captain shouted at a perky blonde with short hair.
"On it, Captain Briggs!"
Sunie was a beautiful blonde woman with fists and heels of steel, one of the toughest female fighters in Akras Summoner's Hall. She's often called with masculine pronouns; she doesn't really mind. Her Unit was the mitigator, Grave Carver Aaron. She was Sheai's best friend.
Sheai was an average fighter, with soft black hair and violet eyes. She was an extreme klutz, falling over even when there wasn't anything there or even if moving at all. She wasn't exactly a gifted fighter like Sunie, but she was able to hold her own quite well with her Unit, Cavorting King Kira. But even then, the mission they were on now was extremely difficult.
Captain Briggs was a man of above-average height, with blonde hair and a 5 o' clock shadow. Sheai thought he looked good; a side effect of her massive crush on him. He was the leader of this division; Acid Deluge, and his partner was the navy man Mega. Briggs used a high powered pistol that shot acid and burned anyone it touched. Sheai admits she mishandled the gun at times and she has bandages around her hands to prove it. Ow.
Their opponent was a woman named Valer, also known as the Dark Heiress. Contrary to her name, she was more of a fire user then anything else. But don't be fooled, she is definitely dark. She always skirted around her victims before setting them aflame, making sure her soft dress was the last sensation they felt before they died. The flames she used always were a horrible, sickening black. But they burned white-hot, and never, ever, left anyone alive.
Besides the casualties, the battle was going very well, until Sunie was devoured by Valer's unquenchable flames. When she burned to death, Sheai was mortified. Her best friend was murdered before her own eyes. Normally, the trope that she would scream and turn super powerful was expected but in this case, she had no such power. She was the average klutz who could wield a sword. That was figurative, of course. She had no such weapon. Only Kira could defend her. That's exactly what he did, as Sheai's screaming caught Valer's attention. He yelled at her to stay alert but her body felt numb and empty, as if she were the soul looking out, only able to look and not act.
When the Dark Heiress was hit on the side of her face with an acid bullet, she was beyond vexed. The skin was falling off her face in burned, black waves as she charged at Briggs, her glowing red eyes looking demonic. She vowed to kill him while screaming, as Mega and Briggs fought back with all of their might. When Valer incapacitated Briggs, she made a point to slash his chest in a deep, gory X before burning him alive.
Just like that, Sheai was the only member of her division left alive. But like a miracle, reinforcements arrived. Valer knew she had a high chance of being captured. So she did something extremely logical: She self destructed, sending a massive explosion through the corridor.
But Sheai was still alive.
Paris was the one who sent the reinforcements, and she had wondered why she hadn't heard a thing from Acid Deluge and her division, so she went herself to investigate. What she found was burnt bodes, gaping wounds, and a horrible scent of viscera. But lying in the middle of the heaps of corpses was Sheai, body burnt, hair ripped and singed, skin riddled with cuts, but alive. Unable to do anything else, Paris lifted the girl and ran to safety, not even noticing the continuing burns on her gloves.
~
For the next few days, Sheai spent them tied to a bed and supplied with unlimited, clean oxygen from a mask. Bandages were all around her body, including her left eye. She couldn't understand why she was tied up, or even how she got here, but she did know how badly injured she was, and how Kira was, seeing as how when she talked to him through her link, he spoke very little. All she could think about was black fire. Black fire searing her body, burning Sunie, burning Briggs, burning her entire division. And Valer. For some reason, she couldn't get the Dark Heiress' image out of her head. Her red eyes, elegant dress and expressionless face, and how she killed her victims by slashing X's into their body and setting them ablaze.
She was soon questioned by Akras Officials, wanting to know the story from the lone survivor of Acid Deluge. When asked, she would give them the information they wanted to know, and they left. They didn't give her a chance to ask follow-up questions.
She was then given the situation by a few doctors. While they were performing surgery to save Sheai's life, she essentially exploded, killing one of the surgeons and injuring the others.
Of course she didn't remember waking up and blowing up, she just remembered a white hot pain and passing out again.
When she was left in her own mind, she wasn't alone. Standing in front of her theoretical body was a girl with brown hair and harsh red eyes with black sclera. She had sharp, red tattoos under her eyes, and a violet coat with sharp edges. She had six, black feathered wings that practically screamed 'darkness'.
"Do you know who I am, Sheai?" She asked me. After all of the business with her, she wasn't sure if there was someone didn't know who she was. The girl in question had amusement in her eyes, but she wasn't smiling.
"You're Emma." Sheai said slowly, afraid she was going to say something wrong to her. "The True Fallen God."
Emma nodded. Her appearance suddenly shifted, to the girl with a pink dress and a golden bow. Her eyes were still red, but her eyes no longer showed that unsettling black. "I suppose I won't shake that name anytime soon. But I only go by Emma now. I've quit my life of malevolence."
The Avalon War, as it was called, was the conflict of Emma's nation against the United Forces of Grand Gaia. She was defeated by a group of Summoners who were her friends, then after the battle, it was assumed she was killed by some renegade Summoner wanting pocket Zel. But here the God was, talking with Sheai. Even though the Avalon War was before her time.
"Before you ask anything, Valer was a foolish idolizer of mine who killed in my name. People using the heavens as justification for wrongdoings sickens me." So she knew of Valer. Sheai knew the Dark Heiress killed and sacrificed their bodies for Emma, but she had no idea how much the God detested it. "But I came to talk to you today for... A few reasons. So get comfortable, you aren't waking up for a while."
"How can you influence it?" Sheai asked curiously. Ever since the war, Emma had been an anomaly to the world. Her power was scattered, the Loyalists went missing, and anyone who is alive today to tell the tale of the war won't say a word.
"I am a goddess, I can do such things." She snapped her fingers, and two chairs appeared. "Please. Have a seat. Normally I don't approach people directly, but you're about to become a crucial piece in time."
Sheai was a little dumbfounded by the statement, blinking at the goddess. "Me? I'm just an average Summoner with little hope of gaining ranks in an army."
"That's where you are mistaken." Emma folded her arms neatly. "When you were fighting with Valer, you were able to endure her final attack: A self-destructive explosion of incredible magnitude. Which tell me one of two things. One: You have a secret power no one knows about, or two: You absorbed her power. The point is, you a now a powerful being that other gods see as a threat."
This was all a lot of information to take in. She didn't have any sort of secret powers, so how in Grand Gaia did she absorb the power of an over idolizing pyromaniac? "Me? A threat? So why am I not dead now? I mean, you're here."
Emma didn't say anything at first, as if she were collecting her words. "I had a quarrel with humans, I admit. But after the Avalon War I am no longer for their eradication. Other gods do, however, because they fear the humans. The gods have created this world, and they fear humans are going to destroy it. Only a handful of gods oppose humanity's destruction."
"Like whom?" Even if the topic was Sheai herself, she wanted to know who humanity's protectors are.
"Creator Maxwell, Cardes the Malevolent, Zevalhua the Supreme, Beast God Alfa Dilith..." Emma trailed off. Sheai knew she wasn't done with her list, but she obviously wasn't sure about the last god by how she spoke. "… Lucius, God of the Gate."
Now, Lucius was Karna Masta's right hand. He was an ultra-powerful god who can erase other gods without breaking a sweat. The other four gods weren't half bad either. Humanity did have a chance after all! "What has Karna Masta said?"
"His stance on the issue is still unknown." Emma looked back to Sheai with serious eyes. "Which brings me to my next point. Should Karna Masta decide in favor of the humans, the gods must not interfere and leave them in peace. But should he say nay, then you above all are in grave danger. The gods know of your power and will stop at nothing to either take control or snuff it out."
"But I don't have any power!" Sheai protested. "I'm just an average Summoner who joined the army because I can't find a job anywhere, and now I have a crush my dead superior officer! My best friend was my superior officer too, but she's dead too! Every one of my friends is dead, my parents are dead, and my brother has been missing for years!" She stopped to collect herself. "I'm pitiful. Weak. I'm not strong."
"I'll tell you a story." Emma opened, her dark wings briefly fluffing out. "You may happen to know of Ragnelle, my Loyalist of Darkness. In many ways, she was like you. Weak, pitiful, always wanting to hide from the world. She was constantly tormented by the people of her town because unlike them, she was beautiful. When she tried to fit in by wearing a grotesque mask, she was only hurt more because they thought she was mocking them. With no other way out, she committed suicide."
Sheai had no idea why Emma was telling this story. This didn't seem like any happy ending or spin to Sheai's current situation. That is when the True Fallen God continued. "That is when I found her soul. The poor girl only wanted a second chance, but not for redemption: For revenge I took away her beauty and revived her, and she turned into a ruthless killer who slaughtered every single citizen in that village."
"That's great and all, but what's the moral to this?" She was genuinely confused and shocked, such a horrible story for a now redeemed and oddly missing woman.
"I'm telling you to have a second chance for another reason. Ragnelle made bad choices, but I still loved her. She was the first soul I revived for my endless, and now failed quest of conquest." Emma had a melancholic expression on her face. "I have no idea where she lives now. I miss her dearly. But what I'm trying to say is saying your situation of being hopeless is a lie." Emma's last word was bitter, making Sheai shudder.
Sheai felt an unfamiliar warmth in her chest, and her eyelids began to feel like lead, as if she were seconds away from falling asleep. "Before you go, I have one last thing to show you. It is what will happen if you step in Ragnelle's footsteps. I'll tell you right now, it's not pretty.
Sheai closed her eyes, but when she opened them, she would have screamed, but her voice was gone.
There was the gross, rusty smell of blood everywhere. Piles upon piles of bones that were warm, as if they recently belonged to someone. The sky was black, with scarlet clouds everywhere. Standing on a prominent pile of bones was a woman with black hair, skin so pale it looked like fresh snow, and a tattered cloak with the ends soaked in dripping viscera.
Her eyes were an oddity: The sclera were pure black, and while one pupil and iris were normal, except the iris was red, the other eye was missing the iris. Her pupil instead took the shape of a star seen in magic circles.
Her laugh was evil, horrible, and unescapeable. It rung so loudly across the clearing, Sheai had to cover her ears. That is when the girl spoke.
"You pathetic mortals, did you ever think you could stand up to the power of a tyrant?!" Her voice sounded like... Sheai's.
Then Sheai screamed, until she heard Emma's voice in her mind.
"Don't walk the path of the damned. You have been warned."
Sheai then woke up, this time, to reality.