The air in the Land of Gods curdled, the sweet scent of ozone replaced by the acrid stench of Black Magic. Civilar stood at the epicenter of the rot, his blue pupils pulsing like a dying star.
Morvath didn't wait for a signal. He dropped into a blur of motion, his dual fanged swords shrieking as they left their sheaths. He collided with Civilar in a shower of sparks that lit up the darkening grassland. The sound was like a rhythmic tectonic shift—crack, ring, hiss—as Morvath's dark, serrated steel met Civilar's obsidian blade. Morvath fought with a primal, calculated ferocity, his red eyes tracking every micro-movement, his fangs bared in a silent snarl as he pushed Civilar back through the blackened grass.
"Too slow, Shadow-Walker," Civilar hissed, his blade moving in a hypnotic, fluid arc.
Behind the clash, Larry moved. He didn't run; he ceased to exist in one location and manifested in another. A Flash-Step so precise it left a vacuum in the air. He appeared directly behind Civilar's shoulder. With a calm, terrifying grace, Larry extended a single finger, glowing with a concentrated, vibrant emerald energy.
The moment his tip grazed Civilar's cloak, the intruder's body didn't just break—it atomized. A violent, green-and-black explosion turned the immediate area into a crater of scorched earth.
"Got you," Larry growled.
But the victory lasted a heartbeat.
From the swirling smoke behind Larry, a glowing obsidian blade materialized out of thin air. It didn't swing; it simply existed, driving straight through Larry's muscular chest from behind. The tip erupted from his sternum, coated in divine ichor.
Larry's eyes went wide, but his feline resilience took over. He didn't scream. Instead, he gritted his teeth, brought his knees up to his chest, and slammed his boots into Civilar's shin with the force of a falling moon. The leverage popped him off the blade like a gruesome projectile. As he spun through the air, Larry's hands became blurs of destructive green magic, unleashing a barrage of emerald spheres that leveled the surrounding hills.
Civilar vanished into a flicker of shadow, the magic passing through a hollow illusion.
"I am everywhere," Civilar's voice echoed, seemingly coming from the very grass beneath them.
The battlefield fractured. Morvath swung at a figure that dissolved into crows; Larry fired at a specter that turned out to be Gavran. The illusions were thick, playing on their divine senses, turning their own power against them.
Then, the sky cracked.
Gavran folded his massive white wings inward, streamlining his body into a spear of pure, white divine light. He tapped into a reservoir of speed he had long kept dormant, becoming a literal bolt of lightning. He slammed into the real Civilar before the intruder could raise a defense.
BOOM.
Gavran's fist connected with Civilar's jaw, followed by a flurry of punches so fast they created sonic booms that flattened the grass for miles. Civilar was a ragdoll, hurtling across the field, only to be caught by the next strike. Gavran ended the sequence with a spinning roundhouse kick, the impact sounding like a thunderclap, sending Civilar skipping across the terrain and into a mountain of dust.
As the debris rose, Gavran didn't let up. He sensed a shift and spun mid-air, dashing backward just as Civilar's blade sliced downward. The edge missed Gavran's chest by a fraction of an inch, cutting a silver hair from his head.
The fight devolved into a chaotic, high-stakes slaughter. Civilar was no longer playing; his Black Magic began to seep into their wounds, preventing their divine healing.
Minutes—or perhaps hours—later, the golden grass was a graveyard of shadows.
The three Gods lay broken on the floor of their own paradise. Morvath was slumped over his broken blades, a jagged gash running from his shoulder to his hip, his pale grey skin turning a deathly translucent. Larry lay on his side, the hole in his chest weeping emerald light that grew dimmer with every ragged breath. Gavran tried to spread his wings, but they were shredded, pinned to the earth by obsidian spikes of magic.
They struggled, fingers clawing at the dirt, trying to find the strength to stand, to protect the Sages, to protect Eiden's legacy. But the wounds were too deep. The divine essence was draining out of them, staining the black grass gold. They were dying in the very land they were meant to rule forever.
Civilar stood over them, his cloak pristine, his blue eyes cold and triumphant. "The Land of Gods," he whispered, "makes for a beautiful tomb."