by Ryan Johnson
Lusìvar raised up his hands and the clear, sunny day that Valverno brought was shallowed back to the darkness it was, with red-black clouds swarming up the clear, blue sky. Valverno also lifted only one hand and half of the clouds evaporated, and the sun showed through half of the sky.
Then Lusìvar pounded his two feet and he sent out a shockwave of his own and created a windy gush of air howling like a hurricane storm. The powerful wind carried Sora from the ground and into the air. She was pushed away from Valverno’s grip.
“Sora!” Valverno withdrew his attention from Lusìvar and darted toward his sister rising in the sky, and in doing so, the dark clouds started to take form again. But his scales lit bright across the black-red sky like the sun flying in the sky.
Valverno grabbed Sora’s legs in one arm and placed the other arm to hold her backside, and he proceeded to carry in his arms. The massive might of powerful winds carried them both high into the sky, and Valverno didn’t need to use his wings to fly back down.
However, the Thunderbird and the Hydra appeared from surrounding sides of the dark clouds and casted powerful beams of magical power and prevented the two people from escaping; the Thunderbird sparked lightning from its blue feathered wings, and the Hydra roared once again from its nine injured heads. Valverno felt himself frozen so quickly he couldn’t move his muscles.
“So, this is where we die together?”
“No, we won’t, Sora! We are not going to die!”
Valverno slung his tail like a whip whipping a wild horse, and a shockwave ignited into the air, and the Thunderbird’s thundering wings and the Hydra’s echoing roars were instantly shot backward to the black clouds they created.
The power Valverno sent out freed them both from the two winged-Titans grasped and made them fall. Beneath them, the Ushioni (the spider Titan) waited with its long scorpion-like tail and eight legs. Valverno carried his sister close to him as they fell from a tight grip and toward the Ushioni with a tail ready to snap them both in half.
“I think not,” retorted Valverno. Without flapping his wings, Valverno widened his wings and soared through the air and away from the spider Titan. With all the power he carries, he only needed to think of flying himself with the support of the wind and air around him.
Down and curving upward, Valverno flew away from the spider Titan standing by the sea and back toward the land of Isla Maeli. Valverno made strange noises in his mouth and gathered saliva from his teeth, and he spat at the Titan’s long tail that exploded by a single spit. Valverno aimed his mouth toward the sea and exhaled an icy, coldly breathe and turned the water beneath the Ushioni to ice; the Ushioni was also turned into an ice sculpture.
Sora watched as Valverno could fly again and without flapping his wings, even though he had the pair back. “Brother, you… you can use power?”
“Not just any power, Sora, Power from three artifacts, and my divine power. And this time,” Valverno paused and kissed Sora on her cheek, “I promise I won’t abandon you. Demon Prince Vaeludar did, but the Demigod Valverno will not. The Demon Prince Vaeludar is dead!”
Sora smiled happily and wrapped her arms tighter around Valverno’s neck and pressed her cheek against his. Valverno flew back to the mainland and landed back down near the destroyed throne of Lusìvar. Lusìvar had the look of being under pressure and somewhat nervous of seeing the demigod cutting down any Titan trying to kill the small divine flea.
Suddenly, a shadow covered their light spot; a massive hand reached from the sky, but Valverno lifted a hand and shot out a sparkling fireball from his palm and sparked the gigantic hand in a furious explosion.
Then he spun around and blew a powerful beam from his hand and as a breath of flames from his mouth, aiming his powers at Lusìvar. The Demon Prince was splattered by the Demigod’s power he retreated into the air and flew away toward the eastern horizon: Lusìvar retreated!
“Excuse me!” Valverno turned away from his sister and saw the hand of the humanlike Titan, the Wendigo, with its monstrous head with giant deerlike antlers roaring in pain from the pain inflicted on its hand.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to play with fire, Titan?” he asked, roaring to the Titan’s ears.
Valverno jumped from his spot near Sora and landed near the south, most western spot of Isla Maeli. He looked at two Titans standing in front of him with their legs standing from the depths of the sea.
The humanlike body Blemmyae looked down from the greatest height. Its body was massive as the Wendigo, but the Wendigo had a head that the Blemmyae didn’t have. The Blemmyae’s entire humanlike face was on the middle body: eyes on the chest and the mouth on the belly but no nose.
“So, are you two must the early ancestors of humanity?” he asked them loudly.
The two Titans remained silent.
“I’ll take that has a ‘no,’ but you guys must be the ancestors of humanity. Why not join us? No?”
Both the Blemmyae and the Wendigo spewed a loud echo from their mouths at the demigod standing on the edgy, rugged southwestern corner of Isla Maeli; his ears were suddenly bleeding from the noise it was absorbing from the Titan’s mouth.
“And survey says, ‘No!’ I might as well see these creatures as Demons of Death instead of Titans of Life. Too bad, so sad! Demons are evil, and I am a demonslaying, Titanslaying Demigod!”
He flew straight into the mouth of the Blemmyae, which meant directly into the belly of the beast and shallowed in one bite without crunching the flea-sized demigod with its teeth. But Valverno spiraled his way out of the Blemmyae’s acid belly, making a hole through the Blemmyae’s back.
Valverno had no attention of getting eating alive and dissolved in the belly of an extinct species. His power made him struck through the belly and out through the back like smashing through a stone wall. Then he would he curled his hands together and formed a small energy cosmic ball and flung it through the Blemmyae’s hole in the back.
Then he halted and dove toward the Wendigo. He pressed his wings together and spun wildly like a small tornado. His spinning attack plunged through the Wendigo’s belly and snapped the Titan in half by the waist; both halves of the Titan fell into the bellowing waves of the sea below.
For seven colossal, gigantic Titans, it was humiliating; they were easily getting beaten by one small hybrid small as a mosquito.
Soon after wounding them all with a small ounce of his supreme strength, Valverno flew into many circles and flew faster by the seconds. And in a matter of seconds, a large guzzling tornado was created from his flying. The demigod jumped out of the tornado and rose into the air. His flapping wings stopped flapping as he still flew without his wings flapping.
The tornado below him rose with him if a string was tied to the tornado’s topmost point. From the surroundings, no large wind or terrible landmass catastrophe were tearing through the ground. Everywhere was calm and absolutely still, only the Titans with grave injuries were the only ones being blown from the ground while every other mortal stayed freed from the tornado’s windy gush.
The seven wounded, beaten Titans were lifted from the ground and sucked into the tornado. All were caught in the tornado’s nasty wind and guzzled inside it, endlessly swirling them around.
Then Valverno landed to the ground and mysteriously grabbed hold of the tornado’s bottom with both his hands. He shook the tornado vigorously with his arms for many seconds. He made the Titans feel they were placed in a mixing bowl made for baking.
And after many seconds of shaking the tornado, he flung it toward the sky flew like a ball being flown from a hand. The tornado rose high from the ground and toward the west of the open ocean and descended from a sharp angle to the horizon of the sky meeting the ocean’s view.
Valverno spun around after tossing the tornado and spat out a large chunk of salvia embedded with sparks of flame toward the horizon of the open ocean, whi
ch flew faraway and in the direction of the tornado.
Valverno stopped to look at his Sora, Flavius, and surprisingly Teutates, with tens of thousands of free humans and creatures, standing behind him.
A large explosion exploded from afar!
Hundreds of miles away from the beaches a mushroom-shaped cloud exploded into the sky that was clear, with the sun shining brightly once again.
“And with that: the Titans are gone!” said Valverno.
REKINDLING FRIENDSHIP
The demigod stood at the center of attention. His crystal scales glimmered and shined ever so brightly like a nova of stars high in the night sky. Rays of light from the rising sun from a new dawn shimmered from the east on the skin of the demigod. For him, he destroyed the darkness and brought forth a bright yellow dawn. One small specimen brought down a Shadowy night and brought up the sun to shine once again.
Valverno walked toward Teutates who bent to his legs. He held out the Crystal Sword in his hands and raised his arms. Holding the hilt in one hand and part of the upper blade in the other hand, Teutates presented the Demigod the Crystal Sword he had left behind.
“I won’t deny it anymore: you are the Demigod!” Teutates admitted.
Valverno looked at the sword he tossed aside and gladly grabbed it by the hilt, and raised it up so everyone looking at him would know who the true holder of the Crystal Sword is. He kept his lips from smiling so and looked at the two White Knights standing the closet to him, even Sora with a blank face and confused eyes, and Flavius with a shocked look.
Behind Flavius were his siblings. Arron, Nerio, Eliana, Naìra, and Andrei stood behind their eldest brother to watch the demigod’s scales shining in their eyes.
Good to see my foster siblings have survived the ordeal they’ve been through for a full year, he thought calmly. Then he turned to see Sora. He went to her in a slow motion walk.
“Sora, I’m sorry that I—”
WAMP!
Sora’s hand swung and slapped Valverno’s cheek hard the slap made him slip on his feet. Sora was fast with her hand that Valverno didn’t have enough time to react.
“How dare you appear to us after all this time!” Sora roared loudly. “After all this time, you decide to appear before us. You were alive this entire time, and you never appeared in our time of need! You left us behind and rushed off to someone who says he bested you, but you came back alive!”
Sora’s face was bright red from her yelling. Her eyes gushed with heavy tears and dripped over her cheeks. Her uniform glowed dimly compared to Valverno’s crystalizing scales. Her hair was blowing in the wind.
Flavius and Teutates, who stood back to his feet, strolled away from the angered White Knight of Charity. Both men were scared beyond straight when Sora slapped her brother’s face.
“You are supposed to be the demigod, but you abandon us. We needed you when the night was darkest and coldest. We needed you when our enemies gagged us, tormented us, chained us, caged us, and laughed at us. We needed you when we lost the light of the sun. We needed you when all hope seemed lost. We needed you for everything, but you turned your back against us and left us out to die like leaving a newborn infant in the street out on rainy night. You aren’t worthy to be the demigod we needed you to be, what I needed you to be.”
“And you are so right, my sister,” said Valverno. He held the Crystal Sword in both hands. He held the blade in his left hand and the hilt in his right hand, and aimed the hilt at Sora. “And you are more worthy to be a demigod that I failed to be. Take this sword, which was given to me by the Crystal Dragon, and become of what I failed to be.”
“What? You mean?”
“Yes. While I have given up on myself, you never gave up hope. You still held onto your Light while I gave mine up. I massacred you when you stood in my way, but you still held on. You endured so much pain, but you still held on to hope and Light. Who could be more worthy than for another mortal to retain Light after spending so much time in suffering? I find you more worthy than I ever will, Sora. Take this sword and become the Demigoddess of the Moral Realm, and so you can pave the way for a new future that I failed to do.”
Sora walked up to Valverno and grasped out her hand to grab the Crystal Sword her brother was offering to her. Just as she touched the pommel with her middle finger, she stopped her grasped. Her face was shaking with a conflict and her eyes closed with a mouth opening and closing.
“No,” she said, removing her hand and looing away from the Crystal Sword. “I wasn’t asked to be a divine warrior. You were the first to have been asked and you accepted it. If you refused and I was asked, then I would accept it. But this tasked was accepted by you, Valverno. If you don’t use it, then no one else will. I need to forget what happened and just move forward with you. I’m just glad that you are back.”
A small faint smile struck Sora’s lips, as gladness was flicking on her lips as well as anger in her eyes. Valverno could only hope for a bright future if he wanted to rekindle his relationship with his half-sister.
“So, I’ll do this in stake of the Crystal Sword,” said Sora. She walked closer to Valverno and she pulled one of his wings behind her and Valverno, blocking everybody’s view of the half-siblings and what Sora was doing to Valverno. The bright glowing light from his wing blinded everyone’s eyes.
After thirty seconds, Valverno’s wing blocking everybody’s view swirled away and Sora moved back away from the Demigod with a big smile. “That was better than receiving the Crystal Sword,” she said. She walked to stand with Flavius and Teutates, and both men gave confused looks as to what just happened.
Valverno stood with a blank face. She stared at Sora who gave him a small token from her than to give her a divine sword. I’m going to pretend that never happened, because Marina will be a vengeful Siren if she finds out what Sora DID to me, Valverno thought.
Three days had passed since Valverno had destroyed the demonic Titans. The lands that were once a wasteland terrain of ashes and smoke and soot now blossomed with life. Plants and trees and flowers grew like in the valleys of Shimabellia. Valverno’s divine power alone brought plants to life during his battle with the Titans.
The land became suitable for farming and cropping. Wheat fields and rice plants blew against the wind. The people started to harvest and crop what flower they could harvest with bare hands.
Under the leadership of the divine demigod, Valverno made farming tools, baskets, and jars to store any flower powder and houses for the people to sleep and live in. He remembered the houses of Geraldus and thought of using something familiar the humans are used to living in. He thought of using houses of Pangaean-made, but humans aren’t accustomed to see buildings made of marble stone and granite like he and Sora used to live in.
On the first day, Valverno used his divine power to grow fruit trees and plants for the people to eat after a yearlong of abuse and torment. His power of Light and Shadow grazed everyone with farmland.
At first, they saw his powers as unnatural like rain pouring in a desert on a clear, sunny day. However, when they saw him taking down the Titans, they learn to come to accept the hybrid has he was. When they saw the memory shown by Lusìvar shooting the hybrid with two arrows, they only saw the hybrid as the Demon Prince Vaeludar. The Demon Prince long thought to be dead, and they now saw a Demigod walking among them.
In just a short period of time, the humans and the creatures alike have come to show the Demigod their gratitude for saving them.
Among the people, four clans were there among the people chained and caged: the Eagle Clan, the Cheetah Clan, the Tigress Clan, and the Lion Clan. And the three leaders walked about them: Orinù, Bjorg, and Kelda. Bjorg was the only leader to have a great change to his weight; he was less fat the last time Valverno looked at him.
Valverno himself was the leader of the Lizard Clan, but there was nothing to know about the cl
an. He saw the warriors hadn’t been conquered and kept their distance from the southwestern border of Isla Maeli. He learned that after he went down underwater for seven months the Lizard Clan then sailed toward the fortress, which they were freed from the brainwashing magic of the Council of Three. They were gathered by Sora to join her in a fierce confrontation with Teutates.
Both Teutates and Sora battled for the next chain of leadership; Sora was the half-sister of the demigod, but Teutates held the Crystal Sword, which responded in Teutates’s powers. Despite the fact it was meant for Valverno, Teutates managed to use is mystical power within the blade to battle against Sora.
They both fought at a standstill; Sora had the command of two other White Knights and the four clans, but Teutates had the power of the Crystal Sword and the Lion Clan, an army of about fifty thousand soldiers with another twenty thousand trainees close to nearing their training’s end.
A month into their battle, which was a month after Valverno disappeared, an army of evil creatures swarmed around them and the fortress Sora and Teutates fought at. They invaded unexpectedly and all clans found themselves fighting creatures than other humans.
The good creatures fought with the humans, but were easily succumb to the demonic power of Lusìvar, just days after sending in his army of evil creatures to the five infighting clans and the White Knights.
It was close to two months after Valverno disappeared when the evil creatures started appearing. Then days later, Lusìvar and his Titans appeared. Teutates and Sora tried to do battle against Lusìvar’s Titans, but no harm was done. After which, Lusìvar showed everyone the memory of him shooting Valverno with two spears and the wing as proof the hybrid was dead.
In a matter of minutes, Lusìvar suddenly changed the landscape and covered the sky in sheer darkness with clouds that could terrify a rabbit dead. Sora and the people and creatures that served her were captured, but Teutates and his clan escaped into nearby caves.
