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The Emissaries were created to protect.
The Sovereigns were created to destroy.
So the Emissaries protected. Themselves, each other, as much of their armies as they could. Even things the Sovereigns decided to destroy, watching bloodshed and death and sharing the pain of failure among each other at the sight of burning worlds.
So the Sovereigns destroyed. Themselves, each other, as much of their armies as they could. Even things the Emissaries decided to protect, causing bloodshed and death and sharing the rage of failure among each other when a world survived their attempted destruction.
It took a long time for Ashborn to understand that the rebellion of the Emissaries had been bound to happen at some point. The Emissaries were bound to protect, to shield, to nurture, to try to have each world see a new dawn. And sometimes that meant removing elements that kept them from doing so as inaction was an action in itself.
In their rebellion he had been one of these elements, wanting to protect a being that was letting worlds burn and watched it happen.
The former Emissary had grasped at straws to have it all make sense, thoughts of balance and reason and surely there had been a reason to create the Sovereigns and match their numbers?
So Ashborn fought his former brethren, in anger, sadness, rage and pain.
He chose to be a Sovereign. He chose and chose and chose and bleed for it, his <Black Heart> crying with each soul taken, each light snuffed out before their time. Scouring dead battlefields for cries of the lost, those left behind from either side.
And…
…he…
… looked .
A world under the Emissaries thrived with life. Not all sentient, but they lived. Clear water running through rivers, plants blooming and seeding and winds rushing through valleys and over oceans carrying whatever it had picked up, droplets seeds, playing with snow.
A world under the Sovereigns laid dead. Water evaporated away when the last sound faded and silence reigned over dead fields, clawed open and scorched. Dust hid the sun, dead ash carried on the wind.
The middle ground between these two was war carving it all apart, sometimes beyond recovery.
Where was balance when the pendulum couldn't swing back?
Where was balance when death had no return, eradicating species of any kind?
Where was balance when things lived, died and still continued to be under Emissaries, but couldn't under Sovereigns?
Had he been… wrong?
-oOo-
"What are you going to do when the Emissaries are gone?"
Antares stilled at the question. When Ashborn had voiced the wish to meet with him in person, he had thought it was going to be about the next attack. A new target. A new would to be drowned in fire and ashes.
"Destroy their holdings," he replied, lounging in his seat, "So nothing can crawl out of the ashes." It had never happened before as he always tended to do it, as long as he could remember. No harm done by doing it.
"And afterward? When there's nothing left to destroy?"
Red eyes focused on the former Emissary, feeling a spark of annoyance. "Why are you bothering me?"
"From Legia to Baran, when they move through worlds, what remains can sustain them if they cycle through multiple ones. Not you. Your dragons burn everything past recovery. What are you going to do, when you run out? When there is nothing left?"
"Fears of fading?" Antares purred, wondering for a moment. Maybe he wouldn't need to set Baran on Ashborn after all. Maybe he could openly dispose of him. Too much of an Emissary to commit to their mission of existence.
"I am Death and Shadows. Darkness will always be there. Even if nothing else."
A heartbeat of silence and Antares let his energies fade, disappointed. Seemed like there wouldn't be a fight after all.
"But I still found myself wondering about something."
Did the former Emissary know how annoying he was? Antares could appreciate conversations about things beyond the next battle, but he disliked these abstract discussions. Ashborn was a strong ally though and they were down a number and he couldn't have him run back to the Emissaries.
"Really? And about what?"
"Do you know what this is?"
The thing Ashborn let float over to him was a broken off tip of a dragon's tooth. Antares knew his dragons, knew the imprint of his own energies in them like a signature when he created a new breed.
He recognized his energies in the shard. And for a moment he wondered why Ashborn was showing it to him and asking this question.
Then…
…he…
…looked.
And he didn't recognize the signature.
"Where did you get this!?"
Ashborn told him.
-oOo-
The Dragon Skeleton was just as magnificent as the first time he had seen it, among the jungle of greenery.
In his search for answers of his questions Ashborn had travelled in the time between the skirmishes. All life he had known had been created by the <Absolute Being> after the creation of the Emissaries and Sovereigns and it had been recorded religiously by the Emissarys where to be found even when they themself had never gone there, unwilling to draw the Sovereigns attention to these pockets of peace.
But this spot was not recorded by them. A planet lush with life and a single gargantuan skeleton of a serpentine dragon.
"What is this?" Antares roared when he spun around to face the former Emissary. "What did you do that made them feel as if they are my- !" The Sovereign of Destruction stopped and Ashborn couldn't judge him for the outburst.
"I did nothing outside of finding this place and bringing the tooth shard of one of the smaller ones to you." he replied evenly. The big bones had been a nasty shock and the loneliness during the discovery had been welcome.
"I was wondering about our creator's actions and inactions. About how we were created and how little we deviate from our roles. How my brethren could rebel, yet I find myself wanting to shield a being that drove them to rise up. I wondered about why to shape Sovereigns and Emissarys at all. This is the answer. Life beyond the known creation."
A heartbeat of silence.
"The answer is that we aren't the first created. Just this time around. We are shaped as he wanted. Pawns with set roles we can't escape."
"And now he is dead." Antares snarled. "Yours made sure of that!"
"And yet I have a power for reaching things past Death and have the only element outlasting your Destruction and a Loyalty I should no longer be following. Death is not the End. Not as we know it."
For if the war had continued as was their creator would have his entertainment and no harm done to himself and if the Sovereigns somehow managed to win… Ashborn had found the powers inside him while being left for dead, nothing a Sovereign would allow, especially not Antares. Who would have known when he would have woken up had he died fully? In time to help his brethren? Or only after everything had faded after the last destruction?
Would he have awoken at all as he knew it?
"I want to check the body. And I want a second pair of eyes. If the Sovereigns had won… all Emissarys would have needed to be dead for you to reach the seat. He would have been the last thing destroyed. And you make sure nothing is left behind."
"As I was created," Antares agreed, turning back to stare at the bones.
It would have been a perfect trap, if it was one. If everything had continued as before, the war neither won nor lost, the <Absolute Being> on the throne of all creation, there would have never been a reason to venture this far beyond the boundaries of what he knew.
And now he was here, had seen and brought a witness with him, someone who wasn't an Emissary, someone who had already made up their mind about the <Absolute Being>. There was no way back.
Maybe there hadn't been a way back since he had awoken the darkness inside him on that battlefield, closer to death for longer than he should have ever been.
Opening his arms he summoned the casket he had put the body of his creator to rest in.
-oOo-
The power flared out like the first sun coming into existence as the power of Destruction ate away the body like a mocking pyre.
The very first Dawn of the World. The first heartbeat. The first breath. The first moment of opening your eyes, seeing the world and loving it even not knowing or understanding what was going on.
Even now it wasn't rotting or burning. Just limbs crumbling straight to ashes and dust, revealing the power hidden inside.
He had been wrong.
There was no balance.
There was no reason.
They had been lied to.
The Shadow Sovereign… wasn't needed. All Sovereigns weren't needed.
There was no need for a prolonged war, to keep suffering and killing endlessly on neverending battlefields.
No need to pile corpses up in piles reaching to the skies, for blood to replace the water soaking the dry earth.
He may not know what this trap had been intended for, but he knew that it wouldn't come to be, the Rulers were going to win. Already they had trapped the Sovereign of Giants. Whatever the trap had been supposed to trigger, they were quite far away from the original temple. And he would make sure that this power would never go to the being that had masqueraded as an omnipotent creator.
The Greatest Fragment of the Brilliant Light turned towards the Sovereign of Destruction and drew its sword in a salut, calling for its army.
The Sovereign of Destruction turned towards the Greatest Fragment of the Brilliant Light and drew his sword in a salut, calling for his army.
Illuminated by the light of all creation the two armies met as a new God was born.