The Seventh Spirit

by Adam-Clay Webb

  “After much consideration and analysis, Kizer decided it would be more advantageous for him to be able to command the elements around him and become the god of nature… god of the elements. While Oga ruled as god over the world, Kizer secretly trained in the sealed ruins, mastering the power of the elements.

  “Oga dragged the world into a state of turmoil, into the first ‘Dark Age’. His castle was mounted on a place now known as Mount Oga, where statues of him and his children remain until this very day.

  “Finally, Kizer was ready to launch an attack against Oga. He campaigned secretly, and every man and woman who was ready to fight against the god of magic stood by him. As Kizer and his sons struck the shrine of Oga, the greatest war in this world’s history began, the war that caused the maps to be redrawn. As sorcerers and elementalists wielded the most powerful attacks known to mankind, mountains and valleys were dismantled, seas were displaced, and the great land was divided, creating what are now the continents of the world. Many men died with each passing second in this great war. Oga had finally met the man who could challenge him. Oga’s numbers were greater than Kizer’s, but Kizer’s force seemed stronger still. With his children, and with the elemental army of metal, stone, sand and wood giants he created and controlled, he tore through Oga’s defences. While the massive armies fought with each other, Oga and his children battled Kizer and his.”

  Lex watched in awe as he saw the most powerful men and women in history, their undiluted bloodlines of power at work. Devastating and catastrophic powers were handled and commanded and countered with little effort. Oga’s children used their most powerful spells, unveiling their black magic, using techniques now classified as forbidden. Oga used the even more awful eight grade mana, using techniques now classed as impossible, even mythical, beyond legendary.

  “The details of this war are more interesting than any rare history book you will ever encounter, but I cannot show you now. In this state, my mind isn’t stable enough to process and reflect the truly dreadful attacks both men wielded against each other.”

  “Attacks more dreadful than these I see now?” Lex asked in marvel, watching the gods of history use techniques he himself had never imagined to be possible.

  “The earth was a small place for these godlike men to manoeuvre. They fought over thousands of miles, over land and sea, and in the skies, the effects of each attack taking with it hundreds of casualties. By the time we seven reached the earth, the war was already at its climax, and a third of the world’s population had been erased. In two days, a billion had perished in the dreadful war. When we arrived, Oga and Kizer were battling on this very continent, at the place now called Magma Town. This was their final battle ground.

  “Only two of Oga’s children were still standing, and only two of Kizer’s were fallen; Appa, the Windwaker, and Jeereeka, the Waterstreamer. Both godlike men were near their limits, fighting nonstop with earth-shaking techniques for hours, for days without cease. We surrounded the two, who looked to be at the brink of collapse. Still, it was clear that Kizer was much closer to victory than his opponent.

  “‘So The Seven exists,’ Oga greeted us, looking about at us not with fear, but with discovery and almost excitement. We told them straightaway that we had come to protect the world from them. Before reaching the battleground of Kizer and Oga, with my powerful telepathy, I had ministered to all the world, and it dawned on them that these men they fought with and for were both villains, whose powers would eventually consume the world if left unimpeded and if fed with their support.

  “The gods of magic and the elements had sensed our high power levels and knew what their only chance of survival was. Without words, both men joined forces to battle us. We seven used our strongest techniques against the two, and the battle was moved to another place, which now fails to exist because of the scale of fighting that happened there. We fought the exhausted men for days without rest, but they were too much even for us dark spirits of the infamous Zaga. They destroyed three of us in the great battle, later known throughout history as Trinity, and Oga managed to seal away one of us with his powerful sealing techniques, using eighth grade mana. The three of us that remained, who would be known and feared as Trium, seeing victory was impossible, promised to return to earth with greater power and destroy Kizer and Oga, and also recover our captured brother… and we fled.”

  Lex and Maximo stood on the battleground and watched as the three spirits flew up past the visible skies, leaving behind the two gods of history, the men with impossible strengths.

  “Could this… be truth, brother?” Maximo asked, shaking, looking straight ahead at Juventus before him.

  “So all this time… Trium was a hero who lost their brothers defending earth?” Lex asked in disbelief. “And these men worshipped as the saviours of the world…”

  “They are the true villains,” Juventus confirmed.

  “But… This is impossible… Why am I here? Did destiny itself get it all wrong? Who am I? Am I a descendant of Kizer and his son, the Ice Sage?”

  “Let me answer you with the rest of the story,” Juventus said.

  “Kizer and Oga had won the physical battle against us, but the tables had yet turned against them. The whole world saw these men as villains, and would no longer support them, many of them losing loved ones in the cruel war. The two men knew that continuing the war would have been fruitless. Knowing he couldn’t defeat Kizer at the time, Oga offered him a truce in exchange for his spared life, a half of the spirit he had captured.” Maximo folded his fists tightly, his spirit burning up with indescribable emotions. Lex felt his own body vibrate as Maximo’s anger became more pronounced.

  “The two men went their separate ways, each training diligently in controlling the spirit’s power. Kizer’s power never allowed him to fully control his half, but Oga’s magic allowed him to administer full control. Even though magic wasn’t as strong as elementalism in battle, it was much niftier. The newfound power in hand, Oga sought out the training Kizer and challenged him again, wanting to get him out of the way so he could again dominate the world in tyranny.

  “The two battled, and Kizer, who had absorbed his half of the spirit from the zarium vessel, used the darkened elements, like black ice, black fire and black lightning, to defeat Oga. Instead of killing Oga, though, Kizer offered him an irresistible deal. Kizer, though technically no longer a sorcerer, knew most of the powerful spells Oga could cast, and needed the power of such an advanced magician for his plans to be realized. Kizer had knowledge of the eighth grade mana technique known as ‘Soul Suspension’. It could pause one’s life, in essence, and have it resumed at some time in the future. It doesn’t lengthen one’s lifespan, but simply puts a gap within it.

  “Kizer told Oga that he wasn’t interested in ruling the world as it was, as the people saw him as an overpowered villain. He needed to rule a people who had a different perception of him. He told Oga to suspend their souls that the sealing technique would respond to a large amount of dark energy; therefore, it would be broken when Trium was at the brink of returning. Their plan seemed perfect; it was certainly elaborate and well thought out.

  “They would first set the stage by writing what are now studied to be history and prophecy, painting Trium as a villain who tried to conquer the world and rule over mankind, and who slew ‘Trinity’, which didn’t even exist as a single entity. They sat together over years and wrote scrolls and books of lies, and commanded their children and the remaining of their followers to pass them down through generations. As centuries passed, the line between truth and falsehood virtually disappeared. The stories that these men sat and wrote were the new truth, and they were worshipped as the men who saved the world from the villainous Trium. Oga and Kizer had presumed that by the time Trium would return and they awaken from the Soul Suspension, the world would see history as they had written it.

  “The grand plan of these two masterminds has been going quite smoothly so far. As I and my two brothers return
ed to finish the battle we had started, the gods of history were resurrected. You would think that simply staying away from earth would make impossible their revival, but Oga had factored even that into his plan, and put a definite time limit on the suspension, just in case we never returned. I am unsure of the date of the limit, but it’s not far from now anyway. I calculated that the real catastrophe would occur if my brothers and I were to somehow die before returning to earth, leaving the earth defenceless against these so-called gods. There was one part of the plan that I didn’t quite consider, and that has now caused the calamity that has befallen the whole world. They had honed their hypnotic skills while controlling you, Maximo, to fight each other. They used these skills of manipulation to control me and my other two brothers to fulfil their prophecy.

  “Now, before Kizer ‘died’, six of his sons remained alive, the eldest being Yuki, the Ice Sage. Only the bloodlines of Kizer and Oga enabled control of the spirits of darkness. Knowing this, Kizer devised another plan to secure the power of the seventh spirit until he returned. If some random man had found you, Maximo and released you, you would simply possess them and act on your own will, which would hardly be in Kizer’s favour. Kizer took Yuki’s young son from him to make possible his plan. He took the boy to Oga; his name was Y’suha. Kizer instructed Oga to seal the boy into the future with an even more advanced Soul Suspension technique than the one they would use on themselves. Eighth grade mana allowed the casting of spells that disobeyed the laws of time and space, and these principles and constructs of reality were mere tools at Oga’s disposal. When one thinks of it deeply enough… these men really earned their title of gods. Not even we Zagans had the power to so manipulate time and space. With Oga’s spell, Y’suha was to appear exactly two years before Kizer and Oga would be revived. This boy would keep the power of Maximo until Kizer and Oga returned. I doubt it was by chance that this same boy was delivered into the hands of an oracle of prophecy and history – even that might have been Kizer and Oga’s decision.

  “This Icemaker would serve more than just to safeguard Maximo’s power. Now, they had created a prophecy that Trium would return to slay the earth in judgement, and the gods of old, who defended the earth against this beast before in ancient times, would be resurrected by fate to face and defeat Trium again. Oga would be Kizer’s right hand, and their empire would last forever, uniting the world in an endless age of peace and stability. Indeed, these men easily negate age and sickness, and death does not come to them naturally. As long as there would be no power great enough to defeat theirs, they would bask in immortality.

  Just in case the main prophecy, which was of their resurrection, became lost in time somehow, they created another, one of an Icemaker finding the power of the seventh spirit and using it to stand against Trium.

  “Oga also warped your mind, Maximo, into believing these lies that he and his accomplice wrote before he sealed you away for thousands of years. As Kizer had thought possible, the main prophecy did not quite survive throughout the ages. His false history had survived, but the prophecy that people began paying attention to was the one the race of the Ice Sage preserved. Now Oga didn’t quite sit well with this boy, Y’suha, inheriting Maximo’s power. He wanted the power to remain hidden so he could acquire it as soon as he woke, probably to use it against Kizer again. To prevent the secondary prophecy from coming through, he sealed the boy into the future, but in a random dimension, which happened to be that which you, Lex Leo, who now host my brother, remember as home. Y’suha’s soul was embodied into a boy child, who grew up in his world until age eleven. Then, as Oga did not anticipate, he returned to his original dimension when he reached the age he was when he was sealed, age eleven, and this happened two years before the revival of these powerful men, as was Kizer’s plan.

  “Kizer planned that if the prophecy of the Icemaker survived, and he did manage to face Trium, he, Kizer, would use Trium to destroy the boy, the world’s only ray of hope against the millennia old villain that had returned to wreak havoc. Then, as the world is about to sink in destruction, the gods of history would rise from the ashes and destroy Trium, and earn their place as rulers of the world. No one would object them, and the world would be united to face another tyrannous age of darkness, where all who opposed Kizer would suffer the way those who opposed Oga suffered in the first Dark Age. Together, Kizer and Oga would be an unstoppable force with Trium, the story’s villain, out of the way. Probably, in such a timeline, another war would break out between the two gods, and no one would be there to even attempt to subdue them, and the world would be at the mercy of their destructive power.”

  For a long moment, Maximo and his host stood silenced by this sudden twist in the tale. Somehow, Maximo was certain that his brother was telling the truth, and as he thought back, the gaps in his memory were closed, filled by this absurd truth. He could now remember even living with his brothers back home in Zaga, but the memories were vague, like a dream one tries so hard to remember.

  “Could I really be the grandson of the god of elements? Am I really… just a pawn in his game? No… This cannot be…” the shaking boy contemplated as the world of illusion finally vanished from around him. “I can’t be… the grandson of that monster… My mother… Who am I?!” He stood in the crater his body had just created, Juventus right before him.

  “My resistance is at its limit,” Juventus said. “Brother… Icemaker… You must defeat me. If you lose here, Kizer and Oga will use me to bring sure destruction to the world, and they will set up an eternal empire with no one to oppose them.”

  “But even if we defeat you, how do we beat the men who were powerful enough to take on all seven of you and come out the victors?! How will we--”

  “Get ready!” Juventus warned, his twelve wings stretching out behind him.

  Chapter 40: Endgame

  Lex and Maximo defended themselves skilfully in close combat against Juventus, but they could find no opening to land a blow. As Lex’s mind wandered off for an immeasurably short span of time, three heavy strikes struck him rapidly. As blood escaped the boy’s lips, Juventus thrust his palm upon Lex’s chest, and a great force rippled through Lex’s body, pushing him back. As his body moved back through the air with much speed, Juventus took off toward him, grabbing his collar, staring again deep into the boy’s eyes, looking at his long lost brother.

  I love you, brother, Maximo heard Juventus say. The man of darkness struck Lex again with a will that wasn’t his. Lex landed nearly half a mile off, bashing hard into the ground and rolling for meters on already bloody, broken up ground. Brother… Maximo heard Juventus’ voice faintly as he used the last strength of his will in telepathy, you must redeem our brothers and defend this feeble world at all costs… The men these humans worship as gods have demolished our honour. Avenge us, brother, and use this child of the Ice Sage to save the world… Kill me, brother… or all is lost…

  Lex stood up quickly with a new vigour given to him by Maximo. Two more wings appeared on him, making them twelve – like Juventus’. The darkness in his eyes grew darker, richer, deeper. A black teardrop ran down Lex’s face and his fists tightened with a new spirit. He opened his hands briskly, and two long black swords appeared in them. Then, the black-eyed boy jetted off toward Juventus in flight. Hundreds of snake-like streaks shot out from Juventus’ cloak to pierce the twelve-winged angel. With the speed and skill of the fusion of Lex and Maximo, man and demon, Lex sliced each of the streaks with swiftness, turning them to mist, heading straightway to Juventus.

  I’m sorry, brother. Lex and Maximo swung mightily at the man of darkness upon reaching him. The earth shook and cracked as Juventus made a sudden leap, avoiding what seemed an unavoidable strike. Lex landed where Juventus had stood a moment before, then moved off toward him with even greater speed. Juventus swiftly defended with newly materialized swords of his own. As the swords clashed forcefully, earth-ripping pulses of black energy tore through the air rapidly.

  ***
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br />   Kizer watched keenly as two unequal forces of darkness clashed as equals. The Supreme Elemental Sage wondered if somehow the will and emotion of Maximo and his host had combined wholly, empowering them to stand against such an enemy. “Oga, can you handle the spirit’s transformation?” Kizer asked. “It seems the battle mode is necessary to get this done properly.”

  “It’s best we first wait and see,” the god of magic answered, “such a form is really a last resort.” Kizer knew Oga was worried he might not be able to control the transformed Juventus perfectly.

  ***

  For quite some time, the two battled at seemingly equal strengths. Shadowballs and heavy punches didn’t seem to tire either of them. Lex was finally getting in some hits, blasting Juventus away every now and again, but he had a hard time focusing on the battle – Juventus wasn’t the one he or Maximo wanted to fight, and punish, but seeing it the only way to stay alive to face the true villains, they had to fight him. Lex flew up toward Juventus, hurling at him dense spheres of black ice. Unable to deflect the ice, Juventus skilfully dodged the spheres, bending even his wings to get away completely, returning fire with an army of shadowballs. Lex blasted the incoming spheres rapidly with his sword with skill he didn’t know was inside him. He moved up to his opponent in quick flight. Juventus blasted Lex with a massive shadowball that was quicker and heavier than any of the others. Lex’s grip on his sword was lost as he shot down to the earth. Even before the swords could turn into black mist, Lex plummeted into hard rock.