-Chapter 1-

 

Imposing mountains towered over emerald valleys filled with lush vegetation, seeming as if they may finally reach the ever elusive azure sky. Verdant islands suspended in the atmosphere were drawn together by formless streams of water, which shone as if studded with sapphires under a never setting sun. 

 

Across this picturesque paradise, marched countless beings who seemed to spring forth from some great myth. Millions of warriors in shining silver armor marched among a retinue of giants as tall as the mountains themselves. Thousands of dragons with their metallic scales glittering in every color of the rainbow lorded over the skies accompanied by tens of thousands of winged, armored Valkyries.

 

It was truly an army that seemed to go on to the ends of the earth itself. At the head of this great army stood a single winged warrior, dressed in splendid shining armor, as if to put all others to shame.

 

“So you have finally come, Asheros. Did you not think we would prepare for this day, after all the havoc you have wrought on this universe?”

 

The winged man spoke in a loud, commanding tone; however, there was something else lurking underneath his bravado. No matter how hard he tried to conceal it, the winged man could not hide the tension and fear that permeated every cell of his body when he faced the man he had referred to as Asheros. After all, this was a man who had brought countless pantheons to ruin.

 

The man called Asheros merely stared up at the winged man, not saying a word. Asheros appeared to be a human man in his late 20s, with brown hair and deep brown eyes. Dressed in simple black plate armor, with an stoic, almost expressionless look on his handsome face, Asheros finally opened his mouth.

 

“I find it sickening to look up at you like this Argon, ‘come down and kneel’.”

 

With a single command from Asheros, the winged man, Argon, was dragged from the sky by an irresistible power and forced to his knees before Asheros, who now looked down on him.

 

“Now, that’s much better. You should grovel in the dirt where you belong.”

 

Asheros sneered down at Argon.

 

With a pained look on his face, Argon struggled to lift his head until he could finally look the other man in the eyes.

 

“You’ve finally lost what was left of your sanity. Even you can not fight this many without your pantheon and hope to win.”

 

As soon as he finished speaking, Argon released a burst of mana to free himself from Asheros’ spell and leaped to safety behind his soldiers. 

 

Asheros watched patiently as Argon fled, never once losing sight of him.

 

“That very statement is why you will always remain a coward and a weakling Argon, always thinking first to hide behind others.”

 

Asheros looked as if he was seeing garbage someone had thrown by the side of the street as he talked down to Argon.

 

“That is the very reason Aeyla died on my sword while you tucked tail and ran. I can’t believe someone as wise as her was willing to die for a lot of scum like you. I guess old age had finally made her senile, maybe it really was for the better that I put her down before she lost what was left of her dignity.”

 

“FUCK YOU!!! DO NOT SPEAK HER NAME YOU INSOLENT HALF-BREED!!”

 

Argon flew into a rage, hurling bolts of lightning as he cursed at Asheros.

 

“Damn you all, attack!! Kill that bastard now!!”

 

Argon shouted commands to his Celestial Army, barely containing his rage as he watched the lightning bolts Asheros had easily deflected reduce a nearby mountain to rubble.

 

“If that’s how you want to do this, then fine, Argon,” Asheros continued to speak in a calm voice, “I’ll show you what it truly means to possess the power to rule an entire pantheon.”

 

Asheros’ pupils turned to long, vertical slits, and his irises began to glow a deep crimson. As he watched the endless army encroach on him from all sides, he raised his right arm to the sky.

 

“Come Malachai, let us once more bathe in the blood of the brave and the foolish.”

 

A deafening roar, like the boom of ten thousand thunder claps, split apart the sky in a flash of crimson light. Thousands of beings were reduced to nothing in the first instant, and like that a battle that would tear apart even the land of the gods began.

***********************************

 

“Khuk…hu..hu..huuhk..”

 

Hell. That was the word this scene evoked.

 

Once green fields had been turned into an endless plain of black, desolate earth, filled with lakes of fire and lava. The majestic floating isles had been turned into flaming meteors as they were ripped from the skies and barrelled downward to blast huge craters into the land. The once gleaming sapphire streams had evaporated into nothing, and the endless blue sky glowed crimson as a sea of hellfire burned the atmosphere itself. Mountains were reduced to rubble, and corpses were stacked as high as mountains, as if to mock the grandeur they once displayed. 

 

Among this desolation stood a single man in black plate armor, covered head to toe in thick, red blood.

 

In his right hand, Asheros held a black sword as long as a fully grown man and half as thick. Impaled on the other end of this sword was what remained of the winged man, Argon.

 

“Why…khuk..why do you..hate us..so…much.”

 

Argon struggled to get the question out amongst the blood that poured from his mouth. His right arm was cut off at the shoulder, his left leg cut off below the knee, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was covered in countless other wounds.

 

He made for a very gruesome site, and even his life would be threatened from such wounds. However, given enough time he would recover from these various injuries, he was a god after all, and the king of an entire pantheon of gods at that. However, there was one wound he could never recover from, no matter how powerful he became: the hole in his chest where Asheros’ black blade was still lodged.

 

Demon Sword Malachai. Every god in the universe, no matter which pantheon they belonged to, or what world they had come from, knew of the name Malachai. It was the sword that had drowned countless worlds in a sea of blood, and grew ever more powerful as it drank in the souls of its victims. No matter which master currently wielded it, the fact that it was one of the few weapons in existence that could bring true death to a god would not change; nor would the fact that this sadistic, bloodthirsty sword would trap the souls of those it killed in a realm of eternal torment to suffer for all time. Even a god could not escape this fate, and to face the wielder of the Demon Sword of Slaughter was considered the greatest act of foolishness a god could commit. 

 

Asheros looked down at Argon with an emotionless expression drawn across his face.

 

“Are you truly so lacking in self awareness that you have to ask after all this time.”

 

Argon knew the answer, and Asheros knew that, the half-dead god was merely trying to keep his thoughts away from the eternity of agonizing torture that awaited him after death.

 

Yes. Argon knew exactly why Asheros hated the gods so much, why he spent the last 500 years after his own ascension to godhood hunting down the members of Argon’s old pantheon. He knew exactly why Asheros, a God of Fate who was destined to one day rule the universe, had chosen to bring thousands of worlds to ruin in his quest for vengeance. 

 

“How many worlds like Earth had your kind let burn in your selfish quest for power even before we became your slaves.”

 

Yes, the gods of Argon’s old pantheon had kidnapped and enslaved hundreds of thousands of Asheros’ people, and many others, to serve as unwilling soldiers in their war with the Demon Lords. And while Asheros fought every day for years to win his freedom and return home, his planet burned under the conquest of the High Demons. All while Argon and his fellow gods had done nothing but watch.

 

“If you had lent your aid to Earth even once, this could have been avoided.”

 

Argon knew this was true, but still refused to accept his kind were in the wrong.

 

“And why..huh uh..should we..khu..help a bunch of..half…demon..bastards like you.”

 

Argon’s final words were ones of spite, and just before he felt oblivion pull him under, he heard Asheros mutter.

 

“Not that it matters now, with this it should be enough to fix things.”

***********************************

 

Morgan Shaw’s eyes flew open as he bolted up in bed, drenched in sweat.

 

Another nightmare? But this one seemed different than usual.

 

Morgan was no stranger to nightmares, but they usually involved his parents, or her. Although the memory of it was already fading, he could vaguely recall a scene of hell fire, a single man in black armor facing off against an army of angels, and a conversation he couldn’t quite recall. 

 

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

 

Morgan was pulled out of his thoughts by the sudden blaring of his alarm clock.

 

“Shit, whatever. I’d better get up.”

 

Morgan groaned and rolled off the small mattress placed directly on his bedroom floor. Crossing the small walk-in closet that served as his bedroom, Morgan opened the door into his little sister's room. 

 

The room wasn’t much larger than the closet he called his bedroom, and he could already see that his sister was not in her bed. 

 

She must have slept in mom’s bed last night. Morgan thought to himself. I told her to stop doing that.

 

Morgan exited the bedroom and wandered into the cramped kitchen to search for breakfast and make his sister’s lunch for the day.

 

After making some microwave scrambled eggs, Morgan noticed that his sister still wasn’t up, and headed down the short corridor to his mother’s bedroom. Opening the door, Morgan saw a small figure asleep in the middle of the large bed.

 

Walking over to the bed, he gently pulled the cover off his sleeping sister. 

 

“Wake up, brat. I told you you're getting too old to be falling asleep in mom's bed.”

 

Although his words were harsh, the tone he used was gentle, and just loud enough to wake her up.

 

“Hmm. Morgan?”

 

Misha Shaw’s voice was still heavy with sleep, and she didn’t seem to hear a word of what her older brother had just said.

 

“Yep, it’s Morgan, the world’s greatest big brother.”

 

*yawn* “I don’t know any big brother like that. And I’m not a brat!"

 

“So you did hear me? Well then, get up and eat breakfast, your eggs are probably already cold.”

 

Ignoring his sister’s pouting face, Morgan left the room to get ready for school.

 

Fifteen minutes later, Morgan stood in front of his front door waiting for his sister to put her shoes on. 

 

“I can’t do it, tie them for me Morgan.”

 

“You haven’t even tried. We go through this every time, hurry up or I’ll be late dropping you off. I still have to get all the way to my school too.”

 

“I can’t, you have to do it for me.”

 

*sigh* “I’m going to make you practice this for hours after school, I mean it.”

 

Morgan ignored his sister’s giggling, and bent down to tie Misha’s shoes like he had done every morning for the past year, ever since she had entered elementary school.

 

Although Morgan had made this same threat while tying Misha’s shoes every morning lately, she was the one person he knew he could never bring himself to be harsh towards. Misha was Morgan’s half sister, but they both took after their mother with their dark brown eyes and heads of thick, unruly brown hair, so it was impossible to tell they didn’t have the same parents.

 

“My school is so boring~” Misha whined while she watched her brother tie her shoes. “Morgan, I wanna go to school with you.”

 

Misha knew Morgan never really got mad at her, so while she was usually always well behaved in front of others, she would oftentimes act selfish or spoiled in front of her big brother. This particular tantrum, if you could call it that, was another part of their morning routine.

 

“You know you can’t Misha, besides it’s even more boring than your school, I promise.”

 

“But I wanna.”

 

*sigh* Morgan knew there was no right answer for Misha when she got like this, so he decided to compromise.

 

“Ok, you can come with me, but only on one condition.”

 

“Yaay~, what is it, what is it?!!” Misha was excited at the positive answer she hadn’t expected.

 

“If you can age 11 years in the next..” Morgan glanced down at the nonexistent watch on his wrist, “..let's say 5 minutes, you can come to school with me.”

 

“...huh?”

 

Misha was confused for a moment before she realized she’d been tricked, and began pouting and hitting her brother as they walked out the door. 

***********************************

 

Morgan walked through the glass double doors of the Lincoln High School cafeteria, and headed towards a certain table that he met his friends at every morning before classes started. 

 

“Yo, Morgan, early again. I don’t know why you bother coming in at this time every morning.”

 

“You're the last person I want to hear that from Kyle, and why are you always here before me anyway?"

 

Despite his earlier complaints to Misha, Morgan always arrived at school a little early to read a book or scroll through his phone. It was his way of preparing himself for the day ahead.

 

The one who called out to him was Morgan's classmate and friend Kyle Myers, who somehow always managed to show up before him.

 

“I have a legitimate reason to be here at this ungodly hour every day.”

 

“...I really don’t want to hear you say that while staring at the freshman girls track team.”

 

“Hmph, plug your ears then. This is an important time for a man, I need to recharge before I have to spend an hour staring at that hag Knickerbocker first thing in the morning.”

 

Kyle was a quiet, aloof type of guy, which seemed to give the girls around him the impression that he was somehow more mature than the other boys, and made him somewhat popular among them. The cold, harsh truth of the matter, however, is that Kyle Myers was just as much of an immature pervert as any other 17 year old boy.

 

“I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m guessing Kyle is checking out the freshman girls track team again.”

 

The third addition to the conversation was Morgan and Kyle’s other friend, Jason Nguyen, who had just arrived. 

 

Morgan, who had just opened the latest sci-fi adventure novel he was engrossed in, looked up at his best friend.

 

“Your powers of intuition never fail to amaze me big guy, what is it: voodoo or Jedi mind tricks?”

 

“Actually, it's ancient Vietnamese magic, not something you Laowai would understand.”

 

“Don’t act like you’re actually Vietnamese Jay, you were born in the same backwater hospital I was.”

 

Kyle joined in the conversation to refute Jason’s claims of otherworldly sorcery, and Morgan opened his novel and began to read.

 

After a few minutes of absentmindedly listening to his two friends banter, Morgan noticed someone else approaching the table. The newest challenger was a guy about Morgan’s height, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and classic handsome-guy features. Morgan was pretty confident in his looks, but he always envied these guys and their classic good looks just a little. 

 

I bet this bastard has never had a bad hair day. Morgan thought to himself.

 

“Morning Josh, what's up?”

 

“Hey Morgan, I was wondering if you had some time to go over some stuff for the group Physics project. I got permission from Takamura to use the computer lab this morning.”

 

The challenger was none other than Morgan’s classmate, Josh Ruther. As he had said, Morgan was in a group with Josh that was supposed to present a project report for their Physics class in a week or so.

 

“Sure, I’ve got time.”

 

“Sweet, thanks.”

 

Morgan began to put his book away in his bag and stood up.

 

“Hey, how come you’re so polite to Ruther, but you’re so rude to me.”

 

Kyle seemed to have taken offense to the treatment he received earlier in the morning, and used Josh’s arrival as a chance to voice his grievances. Morgan just snorted upon hearing his friend’s words.

 

“I don’t need to be polite to the likes of you, I know you too well for that.”

 

At Morgan’s reply, without an ounce of hesitation, Jason started laughing, Kyle put on an exaggerated crestfallen expression, and Josh just gave an awkward chuckle. 

 

“Well let's go..hm”

 

Morgan turned to Josh to suggest they head towards the computer lab, but didn’t get to finish his sentence. He felt a strange buzzing sensation throughout his whole body as a pitch black shadow spread to cover the entire cafeteria, and suddenly everything went dark.

 

When Morgan opened his eyes again, he was lying on the ground staring up at the daytime sky, surrounded by a forest of absurdly tall trees. 

***********************************