The Prince of The Eternal Night. Fragment V.

- You've walked far, daughter of time. Too far indeed

The air was tense. The way Lord and Creature looked at each other was the statement that one of them would not come out from that encounter alive. 

- We have covered land and water for a millennium. We were crawling in misery under your watch, waiting for clemency from heaven but not a single word were heard from you gods. Thunderbolts and fire were the only things that came down from the skies.  

Rabelo could feel the hate and pain growing in the voice of the mortal in front of them, emanating from within each word coming out of her mouth, but he could not feel pity of her. Not after the loss of all the stars and their guardians. 

- Such a nonsense! You speak as it was our fault that humanity reached such a state!

-And it is your fault! Every attempt we made of going out of this failed and empty planet were violently blocked by you! 

- You were the ones that consumed the world.

For the first time the Lord spoke directly to the woman. His voice wasn't like any other voice that the mortal had heard in her entire life. It was like every word he spoke was an absolute truth. Actually, the moment the god opened his mouth, nature itself seemed like had become mute. 

And he continued, without any visible change in his semblance.

- We could not risk the future of other planets unleashing humanity's bottomless greed into the universe.

-So you waited for us to starve, looking down on us from your golden thrones, pleasuring yourself with the view and luxurious feasts!

Without warning the female warrior lifted her spear in the air and trowed it with incredible speed  towards the Lord but, before it could hit the intended target, the divine adviser quickly moved and blocked the weapon with an energy shield that resembled a six pointed star. 

Without breaking the flow of the battle the woman quickly covered the distance between she and the base of the spear and with the palm of her right hand she hit the desired spot, putting an enormous pressure over Rabelo's Shield. 

The moment the human hit the back of the spear cracks started to appear on the force shield and increase in number. The adviser knew that he had only a few seconds left. Even being unable to deflect, at that short distance, the spear he could easily dodge it but he wouldn't do so until his Lord were out of the weapon's path. 

When the shield was in the point of breaking the prince spoke again:

- Let it come Rabelo.

Without questioning orders, the adviser moved aside just in time to avoid the spear's tip, that had moments before drilled through the energy shield. But the Lord did not moved a inch and welcomed the weapon with opened arms, for Rabelo's panic and the woman's joy.

- No! 

-Yes!

Both of them screamed at the same time the simple words that were the carriers of their emotion;  Despair and Glory, respectively.

The woman smiled the moment she saw the spear drilling deeper and deeper the enemy's torso but soon her smile faltered. The body of the lord, that was right there a second ago, gave space to a copy of it made of shadows and disappeared a second later. Just to reappear right behind the trembling woman whom the face was now the portrait of fear.  She quickly turned her body to look at the enemy and jump backwards but the lord was faster than her and grabbed her face with his right hand. She  escaped  the lord's grapple hitting his arm with her left fist and put distance between them. But the moment she released herself from the enemy's domain the prince of dawn and dusk said:  

- It is too late.

And then she took a look around and noticed that it was already night. The trees were dancing with the wind in an unnatural way and both lords had disappeared. No animal or any other living being could be seem or heard near. And the only sound in the air was her breathing. She was alone. The thing she feared the most.

She was alone in the dark.

The Prince of The Eternal Night. Fragment IV.

After his Lord have spoken, Rabelo looked to the same point the Night's Ruler was directing his attention. He saw a black figure, way up in the sky, that was evidently getting closer to the ground. The adviser calculated that the enemy would take less than one minute to arrive at their location.

- My Lord, the enemy is moving fast at our direction. At this speed he will arrive in fifty seconds.

-She can move faster. Stated the the prince.

- What? But that is insan-

Suddenly, an incredible loud noise teared the air and the spear that were stuck in the old tree cut off it's way back to the graveyard. While the adviser was following the extremely fast movement of the weapon to it's final destination another explosion-like sound were heard and in the exactly moment the war artifact stopped in front the prince, with it's edge pointing towards the Lord's heart, a armored, black and green colored being appeared as of nowhere and grabbed the weapon's body in the half.

Everything happened in less than ten seconds and Rabelo didn't understand how the enemy moved from his initial location in the sky to the graveyard so fast. Before the minor lord could move an inch to try protect his Lord, the prince moved faster than both the spear and the false star.

The same way Rabelo wasn't able to see the ridiculous fast movements of the enemy he did not see the much faster movements of his Lord. It was almost like he wasn't moving at all. The moment the false star held the spear with it's right hand the prince had already rotated his body in way his chest would be parallel to the weapon's body. The armored being, moving fast as it was, could not stop his motion and would mostly like pierce the adviser's heart instead of the prince's. But, the instant the spear edge crossed the point where it's original target was, the prince grabbed the weapon's shaft with it's right hand and dealt a fast but firm blow with the other to the armor's right side.

As a result of the prince's hit the false star were threw many meters away from the lord and he's spear were now at the hands of the Night's Ruler. When the armored being stopped rolling on the ground it slowly started to get up, making machine-like sounds with every move.

- It seems like you broke the armor my Lord! Your movements are astonishing. It is like you were never deprived of your powers. 

The adviser was amazed by the prowess of the prince that wasn't satisfied with the outcome of the battle. 

- This isn't over yet Rabelo. The False Star isn't defeated. The spear is clearly showing that it still has a will to fight, the same way it's master.  

After saying that, the Lord loosened it's grip and the spear easily broke out his control, quickly moving towards the fallen armor only to stop into another one's hand. Pieces of armor had fall from an outstretched arm in a green suit with yellowish details. Than, as if nothing had happened, a woman with a short and red colored hair walked out of the armor.

- You are different from anyone I have fought until now! You can even move faster than my  Air Fortress!

The moment the woman stopped walking the adviser, without believing in what he was seeing, said:

- Impossible! There is no way in a millennium that this could be happening! 

The Lord of Dawn and Dusk was rather amused by the true identity of the enemy that survived his first attack. 

- Rabelo, you never told me that our enemies were the very weaklings we used to step on and that I decided to live among.

- My Lord, we never discovered the identities of those we were fighting with. Be it because no remains were left of the defeated ones or because no survivor have ever saw their faces. But to believe they were-

- You better stop underestimating us. Said the mysterious figure, abruptly interrupting the adviser. And continued.

- The Age of the Lords has come to an end. Now we are the Rulers of Earth and soon none of you will remain alive or whatever your existence is called.  

Neither Rabelo or the prince tried to interrupt her speech, be it by the shock or for being too delighted with the surprise. So she continued.

- Yes, I am the personification of all you despised, since the dawn of the world, and from now on I am the incarnation of all your fears! I am...

And at the same time Creature and Creator spoke:

- Human. 

  

The Prince of The Eternal Night. Fragment III.

The prince looked to his left side and asked the trembling Lord about his generals:

- Tell me Rabelo, are my Stars all dead?

Quickly, Answered the adviser:

- No my Lord, but we have suffered a tremendous loss in matter of numbers. Many guardians died protecting the Stars. having each one an amount of five guardians, more or less, I calculated that the number of fallen guardians is around eighty.

- So, you are saying that fifteen from twenty six of my Stars stopped shining in my absence? The unbeatable ones were defeated?

The adviser could feel the anger building up inside his Lord. He was still sitting in his coffin and without moving, but the air around him started to tremble and distort as if the temperature had elevated. But anger did not become wrath. This moment passed as fast as the echo of his awakening in the world have before. And without waiting for Rabelo to compose himself the Lord of Night spoke:

- It hard to me, as you can see and feel, control my own power. I would say that we're lucky that I am not in my best condition, or we would not be in the same scenario for this long. But the hardest part of all this is to believe that those that have been around since before I was born, and this was a long time ago , were murdered by a mysterious force which none of the true sages knew about.

- I see, my Lord. I know we are in a nightmarish situation but I have faith that, now that you're once more with us, we can overcome all the hardships ahead. You can count on me to serve you with everything this body and mind has to offer.

The prince received with satisfaction the unofficially renewed vows of loyalty from Rabelo. The adviser would be an indispensable asset in the battles to come and, even if the prince never had said before, the Night's Ruler considers him as one of his true friends. However, in the middle of his thoughts an strange and growing noise started to distress the  Lord of Night that almost too late recognized the origin of the sound.

Rabelo without noticing the noise started to resume his report on military losses...

- But I couldn't confirm the death of any Pillars and their-

Only to abruptly stop talking, shocked by the fast movement of his Lord that was now standing a few meters diagonally behind him; levitating in the air. With the back of his left hand he had intercepted a silver spear, with yellow details and greenish inscriptions, that would have otherwise pierced through the adviser's cranium.

The mysterious looking war artifact, hit by the prince in its half, was hurled in the direction of the woods and after destroying some trees with it's weight the spear stopped when it hit a greater tree, carving a hole that fitted to it's form. Almost like a pencil in it's own case.

A few seconds after, Rabelo looked his Lord. He didn't have moved a inch from the place in the air where he intercepted the weapon and was looking up without blinking. The minor lord took courage and asked:

- My Lord, what are you looking at?

The prince answered without deviate his eyes from a specific point in the sky:

- To the first false star that I am going to bring down and shred to pieces.

(To be continued)

The Prince of The Eternal Night. Fragment II.

There were light. He could feel it during the first moments of his awakening, but the world felt his presence and quickly all the things that shine, from the fireflies at the woods near the cemetery to the two suns in the sky, hid themselves. But that too, as all things before his eyes, ended in matter of moments.

He slowly raised his chest. Now, sitting on the mortuary bed he had been sleeping on for so long, he began to breathe a little. Breathe was one of the things he learned with the friends he made between the mortals.

The very air entering his body had given a completely new meaning to his awakening. He started thinking on all his actions along the centuries after they found him for the first time and decided: He would do things in a different way this time. He would not rule with tyranny, instead  he would rule with justice and heart. But never again he would run from his responsibilities, whatever they were; the atrocities of war or the passing of judgement. And never again would he be deceived.

This time he would finally wear the Crown of the Night and would be truly a Lord of Dawn and Dusk.

The Prince of the Eternal Night, Prelude of a New Reign. I

"Will you rise now that everyone around have fallen? 

You, son of  Immortals, that have chose to live among the small. 

You denied your powers and responsibilities.

You thought that by slowly camouflaging with the weak those that seek your throne would be kept at bay, unknowing your whereabouts... but you were miserably wrong my boy.

During this slumber of yours the universe changed.  

Those once known as gods  are falling by their hands, faster than I pour tears. Our brothers and sisters are dying, while you are here, in this graveyard, mourning the death of the one responsible for all this.

I beg you, Lord of the Lords, rule the world once more and bring justice upon our enemies.

Command us in this war and forever, my Lord. 

And she shall be yours again.

Because she is alive."

And the Prince of The Eternal Night opened his eyes for another day.