Shattered scythes and black robes in piles of scorched, smoking open graves were piled in his feet. He stood panting, exhausted, but smiling. His power was supreme, this he had proven. Every blade aimed at his neck, he had broken. At the edge of the top of the mountain, he gazed upon the visage of the capitol city. Glimmering it was, illuminated against the backdrop of the canvas that was the starless night. It was a beautiful sight, from afar it truly was.
While he stood mesmerized by this city of long towers surrounded by a forest, gently punching his own chest in respect of this organized defiance against the nature that besieged it. Everywhere outside of those stony walls, as far as the eye could see, nothing else stirred but ferocious forest predators.
He hesitated. On his short trek to the ridged edge, his step almost slipped. The blood on the ground had painted the entire ledge red. Had there been even one voice nearby speak to him, had anyone been alive in his vicinity, in that moment of fragility where the shreds of his sanity stirred for a glimpse of a moment, he may have backed off.
But they were all bloody ash under his boots. Just like everyone inhabiting the corrupt city would soon be as well.
“Don’t”, a raspy voice desperately called.
He turned his head in the direction of the noise. One lone reaper was still breathing. The sockets of his arms were bleeding, his legs were shattered. He was the final voice of reason, the rest had perished. Clinging to life, clinging to hope that this man could be reached, he spoke again, articulating his final argument:
“Most who live there are young. Most have done nothing wrong to anyone. Spare them, Sensaros. Disseminate between the guilty and the innocent!”
The man’s eyes steeled as he stared back at his bleeding opponent.
“You argue to me that there is value of life. I judged this argument cycles ago and came to different conclusions. And you’re a reaper, your very existence refutes what you say. You speak to me from a position of weakness, limbless. I perceive no purpose to listen to your dying words, let alone to abate my judgement.”
His long, unkempt black hair folded on his slumped shoulders. Under his breath, he was whispering an incantation.
“Some will choose goodness, Sensaros”, the reaper pleaded, “Let them make their choices, they’ll learn from mistakes over the generations.”
“This will sadly be the last generation of their kind”, Sensaros replied and turned away.
He spoke his incantation, and with a crackling rumble, split the mountain in half. The ocean behind was unleashed, uprooting every tree in its wake. The mountain range that had protected the valley was punctured by his words. The limbless reaper caught but a glimpse of the destruction before falling flat on his face.
The sleeping city drowned under swathes of water. novel.otakusexart.com
