It began with the fall of the champions.
The champion of sand and lighting fell first, the champion of water last.
They fought and fought but couldn't hold off the taint, the malice.
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She fought with blade and shield, fierce as she had always been. But the champion of Lightning couldn't, win she fell to the strike of the malice and felt it wrap around her dragging her into its depths as she screamed in fury and pain and hatehateragepainHATE .
But the malice held strong and the champions screamed with the loss of one.
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The second to fall was the champion of Stone and fire.
He was strong and fierce but the champions felt the fall of the first felt her screams and cries and the champion of stone and fire faltered.
He faltered, stumbled, winced with the sudden all consuming loss of one of his siblings in arms. The sudden howling where she should have been in his mind.
His strength was legendary his resolve known through all the kingdom. But he could not stand up to the malice that swept through, that wrapped around him and trapped him in it.
Could not free himself from the same fate, could not escape the all consuming tide.
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The third to fall was the champion of Wind.
He rose on steady wings and vowed to protect his village his people. He let go of the anger and pain he had hidden inside of him of the mask he had worn and flew high above to his Divine Beast and knew as the others fought as he felt their minds wrapped around his that the foreboding feeling that had followed him would strike.
He hated when he was correct when the connection to Lightning shuddered and screamed and was quickly followed by the connection to Stone but his sight did not lie like his mind might and his village was in danger.
In saving it he knew the malice would take him but hopefully his beast would be free of the malice would escape.
He dove through cloud and empty sky, rose on powerful wings, and struck.
His aim was true, but he knew even that would not save him.
For a moment he hung in the sky, for a moment he watched his people.
And then he fell, malice matted in his wings.
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The last to fall was the champion of Water.
But was she the last?
She fell with a cry of despairsorrowgrief she fought with her trident biting into the malice but she could not hold out alone not with the pain of her brothers and sisters in arms wrapped around her mind the screaming of the princess in her head.
She danced, but even water could only dance for so long, even she could only fight for so long.
Her powers had come finallyFINALLY but too late for the knight had fallen.
And she vowed to take as many as she could with her, the Princess grief aching through her mind, the screaming of her fellow champions, the pain bleeding through her every thought.
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The champion of Water was a healer, the only reason she'd survived so long, but she closed her eyes and ground her sharp teeth and cried out in the ancient tongue of her people and when the malice took hold of her body and she fell she told herself that she had done what was necessary one day the hero, the knight would walk again and she had bought them the time to ensure it. She could die now, her purpose, their purpose was fulfilled.
And after that there was only the malice left. The blights that tormented their people.
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And then it stops.
The very land seems to shudder, to scream with the loss of its champions, its Knight, the grief of the sole defender that remains, the one that traps the Calamity.
The air fills with the smoke of the burning homes and villages and lives.
They prepared for months, months.
But they lost everything in only 1 day.
The people mourned. Their champions dead their lives irreparably broken the very place they lived now broken and unrecognizable the people forced into lives of fear.
The malice, the blights that had taken the place of their champions where the first thing they tried to stop.
They refused to consider them as anything but a thing, the malice that had taken their champions from them, their peace, their lives.
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It wasn't what they'd wanted but they were nothing if not survivors and they refused to bow down. To bow meant failure and no matter the strength of their enemy no matter the destruction he wrought.
Their champions did not bow therefore neither would they.
The villages grew and spread, carefully, slowly, over time. Many people chose to travel. They would not remain in the ruins of their homes they would leave.
And the people fell into a nomadic life, a life of fighting and fear. The people banded together, they no longer had to fear each other because there was something much larger to fear.
Something they had no chance of escaping, and no chance of defeating.
And as time passed and slowly the people adapted to this new life of theirs with villages dotting the land, hidden as they were and the knowledge of the danger of traveling, myths were forgotten legends became myths and the champions, ever so slowly became another legend.
A legend mourned by some and disbelieved by others.
A legend forgotten in time replaced by the blights that had claimed them.
And the Calamity was held trapped unable to break free.
But prepared, when it broke the last defender, it would destroy this world.
As it had always prepared to do.
As change swept through the lands.
Something had awoken, something had come.
Or had it returned?
And for a single moment the air shuddered as the blights as one froze.
And the champions seemed to stop, to shudder, and then as one they screamed .
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