Emotions raged within his heart as he trudged up the slope. Duty bound him in adamantium chains, shackling his footsteps to the path he must take. Today he would meet his destiny. Today he would claim victory or he would burn in hell.
The boiling clouds spread out across the horizon, jet black, streaked with silver. Too long a glance at them revealed horrid images. The tormented faces of men, women and children, mouths stretched in soundless screams that went on and on.
Yet he marched on beneath the sky like lead.
He crested the rise just as the sun, hardly visible behind the unnatural clouds, touched the horizon, its dying light giving the firmament a ghastly tinge. A deeper shadow stretched across the Earth towards him. The darkness seemed to gloat now that he was nearly within its reach. He crested the rise…
…and faced himself. The howling wind ceased, the bloodstained visages in the clouds seemed to stop their screaming and the very world seemed to stand still, waiting. The time had come.
They faced each other, the two sides of a single entity, black and white. His flowing white robe shone, flouting the darkness that crowded around him. His ebony cloak undulated despite the lack of any wind, exuding darkness as the sun would light. Their auras crashed into each other, light against dark, fire against ice. The moment passed but slowly, seconds stretched into minutes by anticipation. Then in one fluid motion they drew their weapons.
The twin blades of light shimmered throwing lancets of liquid heat into the gloom. The swords, one long, one short, sang as they sliced the air as he took his guard.
The coupled swords of Stygian iron swung through the air, radiating waves of frigidity that turned the air to ice. The midnight metal seemed to suck the light out of its surroundings as he settled into his stance.
In a movement no mortal eye could follow they struck. Where the blades came together blue lightning sheeted and thunder pealed. He swung low with one radiant sword, parrying with the other. He sidestepped to avoid the deadly arc of light and launched into an attack of his own, the black blade cleaving the air.
They fought, moving from one stance to another with inhuman fluidity and speed, pirouetting across the hilltop locked in a deadly dance. And all the while lightning sheeted and the sound of their blades colliding resonated across the land like a blacksmith's hammer on his anvil.
The winds raged and the clouds clustered around them, roiling with the rancor and regret of centuries, and in the eye of the storm, they battled on.
The ground beneath their feet fissured and heaved; the searing heat of their conflict had already scoured away any traces of vegetation that had survived the blight. Time seemed to stretch as metal clashed against metal and their strokes grew weaker, their motion slower, as weary muscles screamed for reprieve. Gasping for breath they called on the Source, the force that ran the universe, the energy that had no beginning and no end. They drew upon the power that had created time itself.
The power flowed into them, in a trickle that grew into a deluge of energy scouring away the weariness from their muscles and filling them with new vigor. The sky parted and lightning crashed down around them in a pillar of light that vaporized the rocks beneath their feet. The very earth turned fluid and began to boil as they tussled for supremacy with their minds and bodies.
They fought for the Source, each trying to wrest the infinite power from the other. Images of death and those of birth swirled around in a vortex of jagged emotions as they remained locked in their morbid dance.
...
A desert stretched from horizon to horizon bisected by a river, red with the blood of millions. The banks lay heaped with corpses bleeding into the river, feeding it, nourishing it, until it roared across the landscape a crimson juggernaut drowning everything in its path.
...
A lush rain-forest resounded with the cacophony of life. A primate swung from tree to giant tree in the giddy heights of the canopy, disturbing a flock of myriad birds that took to the air and flew into the rising sun. The dew trail they left in their panicked flight caught the morning sunbeams, splitting them into rainbows that bathed the arboreal world in a surreal radiance.
...
The massive chunks of black ice crashed into each other upon the choppy sea with a sound that made thunderclaps pale in comparison. Frigid winds raged across the expanse of icy water whipping it up into mammoth waves that broke upon the icebound shore. Gaunt caribou foraged for lichen in the packed snow; their anguished groans when they found none rent the air.
...
Deep below the surface, in the calm womb of the sea mother, a school of whales had just completed a journey of a thousand miles. But for their newest member the journey of life had just begun. The seas resonated with the joyous songs of the gentle leviathans.
...
The sun beat down on the village cutting through the morning mist just as the bazaar burst into life. People thronged the marketplace for their daily groceries. In an alley yet untouched by the sun a child awoke to dead hunger, a hunger that had cried out again and again spending itself when denied reprieve. He stood painfully, swaying on his feet as the blood rushed away from his head. Staggering steps carried him into the midst of the throng of customers. His lackluster eyes fell upon a fruit seller's wares, a tantalizing array of apples, oranges, pears and strawberries filled his vision awakening the slumbering beast in his stomach. His mouth watered, his stomach rumbled and his hand reached out for the sorriest looking apple in the pile, a wrinkled, desiccated specimen. Surely no one would miss it, right?
A brawny hand wrapped his wrist in a grip of steel, he looked up and his eyes met the dead eyes of the shopkeeper...
...Later when the river of humanity had dwindled into a trickle and the sun beat down from the zenith the shopkeeper was seen to leave his shop with a tarpaulin sack slung over his shoulder. He made his way to the butcher's shop across the street and entered through the back door where he laid the sack upon the slaughter table and pulled the drawstring. The butcher inspected the dismembered child and quoted a price whereby haggling ensued and coin changed hands.
That night the meat in the broth at the inn did not taste like livestock, it seldom did and the diners couldn't be bothered as long as the food came cheap.
...
He screamed out his challenge, this was the world that would come to pass if he were to win. A world without mercy, a world devoid of compassion, a world without conscience.
His denial rang through the Source as he fought back with all his might, his twin sabers blurring into scythes of light. The nightmare vision fragmented under his ire and another image took its place…
...
Spring had arrived early and the town was full of the music of revelry. The trees groaned under the weight of fruit and bud and the air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers. The doors and windows of every house was thrown open to let in the sun and breeze. People left their dwellings unattended for it had been eons since theft had been a problem. The populace mingled in the streets without fear of cut purses and children played in the streets without their parents worrying about their disappearing. Crime did not exist and no one could remember the last time they had ever told a lie. There were laws and people adhered to them without the need of any enforcement.
Hunger was a myth and rich and poor were obsolete concepts as society took care of those who could not care for themselves and resources were shared by all. Sloth and vice had long since departed the world and people had realized that violence was never the answer.
It was a world of peace and concord. Yet, it was an incomplete one. People were content but they were not happy. Acts of kindness had become so commonplace that they failed to evoke any emotion and society behaved the way it did because it did not know how else to function. In eradicating evil he had eradicated choice.
...
The vision fissured as his will wavered and a foul stench permeated the air as deep gashes of darkness appeared in the ground. The trees withered and the scene imploded into formless darkness.
He had failed to see the truth of human nature. Evil was as entrenched into it as was the capacity for Good. Either of them could destroy the other and it would still leave humanity incomplete. Evil was the shadow that let people value light. He had not recognized this as he reveled in the incompleteness, the gaping hole in the human psyche that he would leave when he cauterized Good out of the collective consciousness. It was then that he realized that to win he must loose.
He slowly relinquished his hold on the Source till both of them were wielding roughly equal portions of the limitless power. Sensing the weakness of his opponent he redoubled his offensive.
They drew apart, circling each other, their robes billowing out behind them. Black and white, light and dark, good and evil, a struggle that had begun with Time itself and that would be resolved when Time came to an end. It was a battle for dominance and it was a battle for balance.
The noises of the storm faded and the silence built till it was deafening. The air and the land quivered with anticipation and the strings of Fate resonated with the melody of Destiny.
Lightning struck and so did they. Sound rushed back to the world to find both combatants with their opponent's swords through their hearts. He drew upon the Source and sent its power cascading through the blade in his chest. He sent the energy doubling back on itself and through their connection he attacked his mind. The unimaginable forces leaked out of their bodies, exploding outwards to vanquish the raging storm and scorching away the abominable clouds that spanned the globe.
The light around the two waxed and waned until it erupted out in a ring of pure energy with them at its center. The winds rushed back to fill the vacuum left by the blast and amidst the chaos where there had been two there stood one.
He straightened up and looked to the horizon with his mismatched eyes, one with a white iris in a field of black, one black in a field of white. His mantle was white dappled with black and in his hands he held two swords one of Stygian iron, one as radiant as the sun.
He had meant to destroy himself, both sides of him with that last onslaught but it seemed that Fate had other plans for him. He sighed wearily as he sheathed his swords and set out to restore balance to the world.