Twilight of a Hybrid

by Ryan Johnson

  Then the fight was about to happen: Valverno stood where he was until Sora and Geraldus ran between him and he ran with them. Both opposing enemies charged right to each other on the newly, rugged terrain. In front of them, Belverda raised her Dragon from the incoming armies and withdrew, flying away from sight.

  And in a matter of seconds, both armies clashed right into each other. Soldier upon soldier, weapons had met their melee and spears struck toward the quickest weak spot any soldier could find in someone’s armor.

  Valverno, who didn’t have the Crystal Sword with him, drew out a long spear with a short axe from his smoking wings and slashed it at two soldiers. Both the White Knights behind him slashed their weapons at the enemy ahead of them at soon as they clash with the infantry’s front.

  Both the White Knights and Valverno struck down many enemies as they came to contact with them. The united army behind them charged into the ranks of the enemy army with long purple tinted spears and silver swords and lightly bronze armor.

  Both armies had enhancements done to their weapon and weapons and both seemed to have the desire to win.

  Each soldier felt himself or herself getting squished between other soldiers. There was no room to maneuver and hard to tell which was friend-or-foe.

  But as the time that rolled on, every soldier could tell friend-from-foe: black armor was Uragiru’s army and bronze armor was the united army.

  As far as the eye could see, the army for Light and the army of Shadow had met on a long and bloody battlefield. Soldier fighting another soldier and they were fighting to the death. Each army was fighting for one single, particular reason: the future of the Living Life. Was it going to be the Shadow and kill the life or was it going to be the Light and preserve life?

  Only the power have fate was each soldier’s hand, no matter how many numbers there could be.

  For Valverno, he couldn’t keep track of how many soldiers he had slain. He and Geraldus stood side-by-side on the battlefield, leaving a big open space for them to move and run around. Sora left them to help the war-maidens in their eagerness to fight lesser enemies.

  “Who would have thought this would have happen?” said Geraldus. “I’d never thought I would be in one of the biggest battles of my life. And I’d never thought I would be fighting with the most important person on Shimabellia.”

  “Keep dreaming, Geraldus. Soon enough, if we do survive, you may end up facing one of the Shadow Men next.”

  “Even if I die, Flavius would be the one to carry on the torch of the White Knight of Loyalty. He still does trust you, and he hides it behind a false appearance.”

  “I just hope his false appearance won’t become a true appearance.”

  W

  The battle seemed had raged far by account and Valverno had lost track of time that may have went by. He couldn’t tell how much time when the two armies collided. He spent all his time on the battlefield he couldn’t tell what time it was. And with the sky above them showing off a purple haze and clouds covering majority of the sky, it was hard to tell where the sun could be.

  It felt like they had been at the fighting for hours. There was no telling how many hours or minutes have gone by when the battle had begun.

  For Valverno, the battle seemed to going ill in his favor. The enemy forces just seemed so large they began to fortify around the smaller forces and march toward them. Things were not working out the way he thought it would. He thought he killed enough soldiers while taking out the catapults or changing the terrain that left the enemy soldiers stumbling into the changing dirt.

  Apparently, it wasn’t enough. On the left side of the united army, there was a large crowd of calvary of men dressed in black armor coming their way. In the lead was Uragiru. The king led his calvary toward the surrounding army; this seemed to have been a sneak attack.

  However, on another side of a hill, Valverno saw Teutates leading another wave of calvary behind him. They head straight for Uragiru’s calvary of men. A sneak attack going to fend off another sneak attack. It seemed Teutates had the greatest desire to kill Uragiru, as the desire Valverno had.

  But if he had to choice, it would have to be Belverda; she was the one who experimented on him instead of being a mother figure and nursing the young demigod.

  And the looks of it Teutates’s calvary didn’t charge with Wasso’s or Monico’s calvarias, and stayed behind. And when Teutates saw his eyes on Uragiru, he decided to counterattack against King Uragiru’s sneak attack.

  Then, on another side of the battlefield and on other hills Valverno created from his exploding black scales, another swarm of black armored horsemen came on the right flank. Valverno could think there were ten thousand horsemen coming from the other flank, of the opposite flank Uragiru was attacking from.

  “Hey, Geraldus, won’t you mind taking command while I take care of the other calvary that is coming this way?” Valverno turned back to see the face of Belverda over Geraldus’ shoulder. She was smiling big while looking down: a small blade had stabbed Geraldus.

  “No!” shouted Valverno.

  Belverda withdrew the blade she plunged into Geraldus’s chest plate; the blade was the dagger which Geraldus was given to him by Valverno to investigate. Somehow she managed to get her hands on it and her power alone was rivaling against Geraldus’s White Knight power, and he had stabbed down.

  “Valverno… I belief you are… the one… and bring balance to the… Living… Life…”

  Geraldus gave no more sign of breathing air as he just stared blankly; he was dead.

  Valverno growled as he saw the White Knight of Loyalty be dead by the hands of the witch he so desperately wanted to kill. From the moment, Belverda pushed Geraldus away from her and his dead body fell before Valverno’s feet.

  “Face it, Vaeludar,” said Belverda. “You have lost.”

  Valverno didn’t want to give up the need to fight back, and he didn’t want lose to the two people he hated even higher than Lusìvar.

  He saw Sora coming from the fighting soldiers and launching an attack against Belverda, and Teutates maintaining his own struggle with his distant relative and the two calvarias facing each other. Geraldus had been struck down. Monico, who had no idea had to active the power of the White Knight, could only fight on horseback, and his calvary seemed to be getting tossed down by the enemy soldiers.

  The White Knights had the reputation of being powerful individuals, but they were being subdued by two other individuals with magic thought to be a lesser power than the great power each White Knight possess.

  The three clan leaders and their clan soldiers were being overwhelmed by the sheer forces of the soldiers surrounding them. The united army was being surrounded and overwhelmed by the massive force by Uragiru’s forces.

  No matter how Valverno could overlook the events, this army was being torn down. The hopes the demigod he thought he had was being demolished before his eyes.

  This can’t be over! Not here, not now! Valverno crunched his eyebrows at the disadvantages he was having. He could feel the great despair clinging to his spine and paralyzing his head. His thought processing in his mind was beginning to overwhelm him and everything he thought in his battle planning had turned against him. It seemed he was at the end.

  “This is not going to end for me!”

  He gave out a loud roar and the Crystal Sword, which he left behind for someone else to hold, came flying to his hand. When he grabbed it, he immediately plunged the blade into the earth.

  Suddenly, there was a sudden quake that pounded the battlefield. Large cracks and trenches were formed when Valverno impounded his sword into the ground. The smoke blistering from his wings sheered his entire body; his eyes shined brightly through the engulfing smoke. With a loud voice, he gave a loud cry:

  Against all obstacles and their odds

  I have power given to me from the gods

  From beneath these dead, cold meadows

  Answer my call, God of Shadows


  Then his smoke rose very sharply and spread away from his body. He still had his corrupted body form of his human form but his wings became the blue-glowing wings as with his legs. The smoke that was smoldering from his body exploded away and formed into a large figure.

  And from the cracks and crevices he made, more black suddenly puffed from beneath the rock. Large piles of smoke and cloud formed from Valverno’s sudden quake he alone had created. And in doing so, a very large, humanlike figure rose from the smoke rising smoke rising behind Valverno.

  Black hair twirled in a high wind from a darkened, red-orange tanned head with dark blue tattoos imprinted near yellow-orange eyes. Two long arms stretch out wide and fists ready to break large mountains to flatlands. It wore a long cloak around its neck and behind the waving cloud was a black robe.

  This large black figure appeared behind Valverno and it was a large human larger than the tallest mountain, comparing it to the size of the Leviathan. The mere sight of it brought the battle to a sudden halt. All the soldiers everywhere saw the black figure rise from beneath the ground and gaze upon this mountain-sized giant.

  “It can’t… it can’t be!” said Belverda, sparked with sudden fright. Both she and Sora had stopped fighting. “I know this being, but I can’t believe it. It’s such an impossible thing no one, no one in the entire Mortal Realm can summon such a powerful deity. But it just happened so suddenly I can’t belief it. But it’s… it’s… Origenes, the God of Shadows!”

  “One of the Three Gods!? That’s impossible?” shouted Wasso. “They’re supposed to be in the Realm of the Gods. They are forbidden to come into the Mortal Realm.”

  Both Teutates and Uragiru halted their attacks and saw the large giant being summoned from the ground and above the battlefield and behind the demigod, the one who summoned the god.

  “That-that’s not possible,” said Uragiru, who was developing his own fear by the mere sight of the god. “The Three Gods made sacred laws that forbade themselves from ever stepping foot in the Mortal Realm. How could have this happen so suddenly? How could have one specimen unleash so much power and bring forth one of the ancient creators?”

  It was no joke to Belverda or Uragiru. Teutates and Marina had stopped and gazed upon the god that was suddenly summoned by one specimen, whom goes by the name Valverno.

  The large god standing before the eyes of everyone looking at the god gazed back at everyone standing around him. His yellow eyes had sparked as he was showing he’s an evil god, which seemed to be waiting to do something. Uragiru’s’ forces gazed in great fear as well as Valverno’s allied forces. Both people on both sides had shown great fear upon the large form the god as taken.

  Valverno looked at the god, which he had summoned and looked at everyone else’s reactions. The fighting had stopped, as he brought one of the three ancient deities that created life. He heard Uragiru mentioning the rules the Three Gods had placed long before life was created; the gods were not supposed to step foot on any of the two islands. However, Valverno manage to bend the rule of his own power.

  “Now that I have brought forth one of the sacred gods, I get to do what I can command the god to do: get rid of all the unnatural abilities from this world and send those into the Pool of Shadows.”

  “Are you kidding me? That is nothing but an illusion.” shouted Uragiru.

  “That is right,” said Belverda. “This hybrid has only casted an illusion spell to trick our brains. It is a false image made from illusion.”

  Valverno could see the fear on Belverda’s and Uragiru’s faces. For a while, he thought they knew nothing of knowing fear, but driving fear into the hearts of their enemies. In his case, Valverno was the now one pulling the frightful strings instead of the king and the witch Lusìvar would see as traitors.

  “On the contrary, witch and king, this is no illusion; he is indeed the real God of Shadows!”

  Belverda and Uragiru gasped in fear.

  Then Valverno lifted his hand and pointed at everyone around him, including his allies. “Now, Origenes; wipe out all magic and all other unnatural abilities from the Mortal Realm and send those to the Pool of Shadows! Magic must no longer be a human need.”

  Then, without a moment’s notice, Origenes made a fist that reached into the sky. His fist gathered blue-purple clouds of energy and his fist burst into a fire-shaped power. After charging up energy into his hand, Origenes punched his fist into the ground.

  A cloud looking like a water-like wave spurred from Origenes’s punch and stretched out across the entire battlefield and waved past the soldiers like an ocean wave rising high enough to drown people by the shoreline and nearby villages.

  From the bursting punch, the cloud was a circle that went flying across the battlefield and to all the humans in its path.

  As quickly as it was burst from the hands of a god, the circling cloud went from the direction it was impounded from back to the fist of Origenes. The god standing before everybody lifted up his hand, and the cloud spiraled all the way to his rising hand.

  Then the cloud evaporating back to the god’s hand formed into a spear. And not just the one cloud was waving back to its summoner, but other cloud waves from across the horizon were suddenly being cast into the hand of Origenes.

  The power he placed deep into the earth he called to him all the black magic, regular magic, and any unnatural magic power spurring from the deepest of the earth and coming to the hand of Origenes, the God of Shadows. There were endless views of rising black clouds coming to Origenes, and those happened to be his power he sent into the ground.

  In a matter of minutes, the rising clouds had faded and evaporated into the hand of the God of Shadows. The many clouds that rose to Origenes’s hand formed into a foggy spear, swelling with the intense black magic.

  In soft toss, Origenes threw the spear like a small dart. The spear flew off into the distant horizon. When the spear disappeared into the distant horizon, there was a loud thunder in the air, all the magic (considered the evil unnatural magic to the human body) had flew into the spear and toward the Pool of Shadows would be buried at.

  Then the god nodded at his work and burst into bright sparks, leaving the Mortal Realm and going back to the Realm of the Gods.

  Valverno signed, but he somehow felt different. He gave a look at his body; his dragon tail, wings, and legs were the red color they were used to, and his body had reverted back into his original form. Not only has Origenes to banish all forms of magic, but the evilness he had from the Pool of Shadows went back as well.

  Then he changed his eye view from his originally, reverted body to the battlefield where Origenes sent out a shockwave of a cloud to gather all magic from all the soldiers.

  The soldiers in black armor didn’t have the black color; the armor became rusted, old metal if it was buried in dirt for a thousand years. And their weapons looked tarnished as well.

  Valverno rose to the air and as far as his eyes could see, Uragiru’s and Belverda’s entire army had been striped by the black magic the armor and weapons had been doused in and sent back to the Pool of Shadows. Even the form he had had been purged from the evilness he has gotten from the Pool had been sent back.

  Then the horses of Uragiru’s calvary began to hilt and mellow down. Valverno couldn’t believe his own eyes, but he gazed at the horses falling to the ground were already dead corpses. At only did the enemy army have armor and weapon enhancements, but they had used dead horses as the calvary.

  And the power the god had sent out had no effect on the united army’s armor or weapons. The power of the White Knights had been not touched by the god’s power he sent out, which meant their power was a natural ability. And Valverno’s power wasn’t magic at all, it was a pure earthly natural thing like a river flowing down from the mountains or raining from the sky.

  The enemy army knew they had now fallen, and they had dropped their weapons and removed their helmets to reveal human faces behind the monstrous helmets.

  “This
isn’t over yet!” shouted Uragiru’s voice.

  Valverno he saw the king standing by Belverda’s Dragon landing upon the king’s dead calvary. He didn’t see the Dragon land at first, and he did see the staff Belverda was holding in her hand had not been affected by the god’s banishing power.

  Valverno gave a glare at the witch and the king as Belverda waved her staff and a small portal appeared beside the king. From the portal, an image appeared of the buried city. The image was the buried city Valverno found the second army artifact and where the Pool of Shadows lingers.

  Valverno realized they both were going to the Pool of Shadows and bring back the black magic that was banished to there by one god.

  And during this backup plan, Belverda pointed her staff to the far off range and Marina suddenly rose from the farthest crowd and brought the floating Siren to be held captive once again by Uragiru.

  “No,” shouted Valverno and flew to help Marina. The demigod wasn’t to let his wife get taken again by two monsters.

  Then Belverda unleashed a magic blast from her to the flying demigod. Valverno slashed through the blast and Belverda waved her staff in a circle. This slash sent out an electric beam of a bolt directly at the dragon, shocking some harm to it.

  Belverda placed her staff on the Dragon, which seemed to have suddenly stopped welling in pain. It flapped its wings, but it didn’t take off. The bolt must have paralyzed it and making it unable to fly.

  But, with it paralyzed, Uragiru’s dragged Marina to the mortal while Belverda was dragging her limping Dragon away from the battlefield. Valverno was conflicted who to go after first.

  “Go save your wife and my sister-in-law, brother; I got the witch. Let me average the good man and a good comrade,” said Sora. Without a moment’s notice, Sora took mounted a horse without a rider and ran after the witch with her wounded dragon running away.

  And then, after Sora rode off after the dragon, Flavius rode on his horse and followed after the witch. “Kill that witch! That woman killed Geraldus. My father, and the man you all loved and respected, was slain by her! Kill her! The rest stay behind and tend to the wounded!” Flavius and his horsemen rode after the limping Dragon and the witch the Dragon carried.