Death: Genesis

The Inashi fell upon the Radiant Host’s support personnel in what seemed to be an indiscriminate campaign of slaughter. However, their targets had been well-chosen, and their strikes were surgical, intentional, and most of all, effective. So, when Adara led her own contingent of former Knights of Adontis in a charge, she and her people were met with little resistance. They slashed through the soldiers who’d been tasked with guarding the higher-ups, crashing through them with ease.

And though the power of the charge wasn’t unexpected, it still surprised her how much strength she and her people had gained since joining Zeke’s force. For her part, she’d jumped nine levels in the space of the last few months, and overall, she’d crashed through the level seventy-five threshold without even slowing down.

War, after all, was good for advancement, and it seemed that the Crimson Tower was in constant conflict with one force or another. This time, they were fighting against the Radiant Host, which had finally dropped all pretense and disbanded their civilian governments in favor of direct rule. They’d dubbed their new empire the Imperium, and they were led by a man she’d never heard of.

And considering that Adontis had been one of their vassals, that was saying something. They’d tried to learn more about the man known as Ignatius, but their efforts had so far come up frustratingly empty.

Normally, Adara wouldn’t have concerned herself with such matters. She was a soldier, not a spy, after all. However, because of their humanity, her people were best suited to infiltrating the Imperium so they could discern the truth of their enemies. And it had been eye-opening indeed. If such a thing was possible, the Imperium treated non-humans even worse than Adontis had, rounding them into camps and using them as slave labor. The conditions in those camps were reportedly terrible, and the beastkin, elves, and other so-called “undesirables” were prone to disease, malnutrition, and death.

And some had even been the subject of experimentation. The goals of those experiments, neither Adara nor her people knew, but when people went into those facilities, they certainly did not come out.

Once upon a time, she had labored under the surety that the concepts of good and evil were arbitrary. One culture’s misdeeds were lauded in another society. However, ever since joining the Crimson Tower – and beginning her relationship with Zeke – she’d come to far different conclusions.

Good and evil existed. Those terms were not relative. People only pretended they were because it gave them a sense of control. After all, if those who committed evil deeds were merely misunderstood, or they were driven to those actions by environmental factors, then there was hope of fixing things.

But Adara had seen the truth.

True evil was not learned. It was not a societal creation. It went bone-deep and was an integral part of who they were. As Zeke was fond of saying, some people were simply built differently. Somewhere inside of them, things had become muddled, and evil had infected them.

That was the undeniable truth of what she’d learned concerning the Imperium. To them, humanity was the prerequisite to respect, and after that, only strength truly mattered. It was disgusting in a way Adara could scarcely quantify in her own thoughts, much less articulate.

So, when she led the charge, she did so not as a woman fighting a war. Rather, she engaged in a battle of good versus evil, and one she knew they couldn’t afford to lose.

Her horse’s hooves thundered beneath her as she lowered her lance and hit their hastily built line of soldiers. The clash of metal on metal was loud, but the screams of the dying were even louder. Beside her, centaurs and former Knights charged, and to great effect. None of their skills were flashy. Most merely augmented their natural abilities. But every now and then, an explosion would erupt, or a mana-wrought shield would encase rider and mount, shielding them from damage.

And then, a beam of sunlight punctured the centaur next to Adara, carving an enormous hole in the warrior’s chest. She crashed to the ground a moment later, dead before she completed her fall. Adara discarded her broken lance by throwing it at a soldier. It hit the man in the shoulder, spinning him around and distracting him so that another knight could run him through. Meanwhile, she drew her sword, ready to enter the melee.

Another beam of sunlight punched through the man in front of her, and suddenly, Adara’s instincts kicked in. A veteran of many battles, she knew better than to ignore those instincts, so she whipped her horse around. It reared, lashing out with its hooves to catch another soldier in the face. That move was the only thing that saved her life, but her mount wasn’t so lucky.

A third beam of sunlight lanced through the stallion, and his chest disappeared in a bloom of intense heat. Adara leaped from the saddle as the horse fell, the smell of charred meat filling the air. Then, a pillar of that same destructive light descended from above.

Adara dove away as it slammed into the ground. The impact tore a crater in the ground as the shockwave sent her flying through the air, only to collide with one of the enemy soldiers. She’d kept her wits about her, so she rammed her gauntleted fist into his chin. A second later, she slid her dagger through his chainmail shirt and between his ribs.

Even as her opponent died a gurgling death, she dashed away. It was just in time, too, because another beam of light scorched its way through the area she’d just vacated. That was enough for Adara to pinpoint the origin, and she dashed in that direction, intending to end the threat.

Over the next few minutes, the battle raged on. Adara’s path was barred by dozens of soldiers, but none were strong enough to stand in her way. She dispatched them with workmanlike efficiency, continuing forward with dogged determination. More troubling than the soldiers was the constant barrage of sunbeams, each one capable of punching a hole in her body.

To mitigate those deadly rays of light, she progressed in a zigzag pattern, randomly changing directions so that she would make for a harder target. It worked, but only barely, and more than once, she was singed by the beams’ passage. The originator was indiscriminate in their targets, killing friend and foe alike as they tried to pin Adara down.

It was disgusting, how little the Radiant Host cared about their own allies.

When Adara finally caught sight of the culprit, she was a little surprised to find herself looking a beautiful woman. At first, she thought she was looking at an elf, but the details quickly showed her the error of that judgement. No tapered ears. No ethereal grace. Just a blonde woman who’d been blessed with rare beauty.

She hefted a bow, materializing an arrow of pure light, then loosed it at Adara. They were so close together that Adara had no chance of dodging. So, she used one of her emergency skills, enveloping herself in an impenetrable shield of mana called [Righteous Bulwark]. The beam of light slammed into it, and it shattered. Her breastplate melted beneath the intense heat, and her skin began to blister. However, she had survived, which gave her the chance to reach the archer.

She swung her sword in a wide arc, and the blade whipped through the air with blazing speed. More, she’d long since used [White Blade], which would give it the lethality it would need to get through the other woman’s golden armor. However, at the last second, the archer leapt away in a backflip, and mid-air, she shot another arrow. This one didn’t have the benefit of being a beam of light, but it still slammed into the surprised Adara with enough force to punch through her armor and penetrate deep into her shoulder. More troublingly, it threw her off-balance.

“Filth,” the archer spat.

“I was going to…say the same thing,” Adara panted, yanking the arrow out of her shoulder. It dissipated into motes of mana only a moment later.

She advanced.

The other woman hefted her bow once again, but when she fired, Adara did the unthinkable and slapped the mana-based projectile out of the air. Without [White Blade] – or her constant practice as well as the leaps she’d recently made in her progression – it would have been impossible. But she was an elite. A powerful warrior who could stand toe-to-toe with anyone.

She bulled through the remaining distance, shouldering a pair of soldiers out of the way before reaching her blonde foe. She lashed out, barely grazing the woman before she felt something latch onto her ankle. Before she knew what was going on, her feet had been yanked out from under her, and she fell on her face.

“I had her,” hissed the woman.

A melodious male voice that filled Adara with fear and desire in equal measure responded, “I’m certain you did. But what are friends for if not to lend a hand from time to time.”

Then, someone kicked Adara in the ribs, rolling her over. That gave her a good view of her assailant, and he was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes upon. Delicate features, a permanent cocky smile, long, glistening hair – he was the sort of man whose mere presence elicited intense feelings of longing.

But he wasn’t a man at all.

“Demon,” she growled, trying to escape what she now knew was a whip of pure darkness. Adara knew about Zeke’s dual nature, so she was well-acquainted with the taint that came with demonic corruption. However, she’d never thought it could be so attractive.

Pushing those thoughts aside, she focused on her situation. Her legs were bound, and no matter how she tried to escape, the whip’s grip remained firm. She still had her armor and her sword, but from her position on the ground, the degree to which she could bring them to bear was close to nil.

There were two of them, too, and both were more powerful than she was. Still, she refused to give up. So, she slashed her sword at the whip, which did no good at all. The demon laughed.

“Just finish her,” the woman said. “This battle is already lost.”

“Very well,” the demon said with a dramatic sigh. Then, he focused on Adara. “If it makes any difference, I won’t enjoy this. You’re pretty enough, in a peasant-y sort of –”

Just then, something moving too fast for Adara to see hit the demon so hard that she heard the crack of his bones. A second later, black blood erupted into a storm of gore that rained down on everyone in the area. When it settled, a familiar pale figure stood over what was left of the demon.

But Talia wasn’t looking at Adara. Nor did she pay attention to the demon she’d just ripped to pieces. Instead, her hateful gaze was fixed on the golden woman.

“Betrayer,” she said, her claws extending. They dripped a mixture of gore, green energy, and biting cold, and when that combination hit the ground, it sizzled with unchecked power. “I should have known you would throw in with the likes of them. It wasn’t enough to betray us, you had to and join the enemy as well.”

“Talia,” the woman said with an inclination of her head. “Killing him is going to set me back months.”

“Is that all you have to say? Do you have no excuses?”

“That you’ll accept? No,” the woman said. Her tone was one of deep exhaustion. “You made your mind up about me the moment we met. It just took a while for you to accept your own hatred.”

“You nearly got him killed. You betrayed us!”

“That’s your perspective. From mine, I did what I thought was necessary to ensure the survival of humanity against a horde of undead,” the golden woman said, her eyes flicking to the battle. They were separated from the fighting by a few dozen yards, but it was only a matter of time before it reached them. “And I would do it again. Over and over, if it meant that we had even a miniscule chance of saving the Radiant Isles.”

“Then you are lost.”

“I suppose I am. What now? Are you going to kill me? I can tell you right now that it won’t be as easy as you think,” the woman responded.

“I don’t –”

Just then, mana swirled, and a bright light erupted from the woman. When it faded an instant later, she was gone.

Talia let out an uncharacteristic scream, then tore across the battlefield, clearly searching for the woman’s destination. For her part, Adara had no idea what to think of what had just happened. However, she did know that there was still a battle raging all around her, so she quickly untangled her legs – the whip had lost whatever binding force it had carried while the demon was alive – and she climbed to her feet to rejoin the battle.

It didn’t last much longer. With Zeke and his kobolds taking care of the demons, and the Inashi combining their might with Adara’s force of knights to take out the leadership and support personnel, the fighting quickly petered out. There were plenty of holdouts, but by that point, the army of the Crimson Tower was well accustomed to mopping up after a battle. So, after another few hours, Adara looked around and all she saw was another victory.

But then she caught sight of Talia, and the expression on the undead woman’s face told her a completely different story – one of failure and fury.