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The Final Battle of Eden

We burned our children first.

At least that way, no one could exhume their fragile bones for sword fodder.

The dead were supposed to stay dead…

Unfortunately, the demons had taken to raiding old graves across Eden and slaughtering every child they found from Sebil to Azur. Adumu, Elven, Fate, Dwarf or Giant…as long as they weren’t Helhein, they were a potent necromancy ingredient. 

But of all the ingredients they coveted, it was always the Elves—with their razor-sharp claws and enhanced agility. Faster. Stronger—

Four corpses made one picney golem—named for the bushes that crowded the Dwarvin mountains to the north, barely reaching their height. Ribs made their horns and tiny faces lay scattered like rotting boils along their far to thin torsos- 

The lanky beasts twisted through the forest undergrowth on lopsided legs to charge toward me and my brethren, their scavenged corpses looking more like diseased wolves than any form of man-hewn babe.

Six-fingered hands hammered the grass, swallowed by the clash of steel and iron.There were at least sixteen for every barbarian sect, each crafted for one purpose- 

Bite and envenomate every able-bodied soul not marked with Cane’s crest.

Shame they needed jaws to bite.

Columns of jagged emerald shot from the blood-soaked earth to collide with a deafening boom, mercilessly shattering tiny bones and putrid crimson with a gruesome squelch. 

The Helheian barbarians came after them, charging into the field in expectation of an easy victory.

Armor crunched.

Skulls burst like overripe berries.

Amidst the horrific spectacle, the pillars of precious gems stood like tombstones on the field, a haunting testament to the fate that awaited any foolish enough to reclaim their brethren’s ranks.

The fire cast my helm in an eerie glow as I swiped my bracer against my brow.

The war had started six years ago, and I had joined its crusade that following summer.

Not of my volition, mind you. I had simply awoken on the field, covered in my blood and partially embedded in the earth. 

The armor I wore wasn’t even my own, but one stolen from a nearby Fate’s corpse upon my waking. The blade in my hand felt heavy as I dragged it through the blood-forged mud towards the next Helheian barbarian, trying to break through my regiment. Originally, there had been eight such groups, but now only five regiments remained, each controlled by a prominent leader in opposition to the barbaric tribes’ sudden brutality.

The five generals were Titania of the Northern Light, Oberon the Unseelie King, Balthazar the King of the Green Hills, the Nymph Mourning, and then I, the dreaded Stone Mage.

My blade sunk into the barbarian archer who was aiming for one of the Adamu swordsmen flanking me, splattering the mud below with yet another shade of rust.

This was my twenty-third battle in the five and a half years I’d existed.The armies of Eden had numbered a staggering three hundred and sixty thousand strong against the barbarian invaders that first winter, and the war should have been won then-

Instead, one hundred and twenty-five thousand souls had perished to blades and flame because of demonic tampering. 

Bone sprites descended camps, ripping into the flesh of the wounded. Their vulture brethren stole the breath from those lying on their deathbeds. Demons that had hidden, immaterial, and disillusioned by the eons had banded together to attack in droves, growing more powerful with every man, woman, and child slain. 

“STONE MAGE! BEHIND YOU!”

My feet kicked up, sliding up with the stone that had shot up from the bedrock to aid me. The blade swept down, embedding in the stone where my head had once been. The barbarian below glared venomously. “Demon!”

Demon…What an odd title. 

Perhaps I was.

But who wasn’t in this hellscape?

Metal slothed from my armor, warping and rippling to form a razor-sharp circlet in my gauntleted clutches. I leaped down and his head was cleaved through.

Sir Liam, the lieutenant under the Elvin General Balthazar, staggered to my side. His dark coal hair fell to overshadow his eyes, and he winced as he gripped an injured hip. “They’re becoming more brazen.”

My gaze trailed through the masses of screaming and dying men and women. “It’s because he’s here.”

Liam’s brown eyes flickered and fluctuated to hint at a magically disguised hue, “Who?” 

“Abel.”

“Wonderful.” Liam adjusted his fractured blade. “Perhaps I’ll get the honor of lopping that traitorous wretch’s head off myself.”

Metal sloshed around my boots, bending and warping from the felled barbarian to join the defenses I had planted below the earth. It ran in currents beneath our feet, oozing around our boots in the pitted soil sewn by arrows and the swords scattering the field like crosses. “Did you know him personally, Lieutenant?”

Liam plucked a fresh blade from the mud, tossing the shattered one to join its fallen kin. “I knew him once but by another name.” He glanced over his shoulder wearily and changed the subject, “...We lost Avalida and Nathanial.”

My jaw clenched as I crossed my hand over my breast. “May Eden keep them.”

Liam wiped the back of his hand against his jaw to rid himself of the blood and muck caking his chin. “I’m going to miss that Dwarf.”

I’d miss him too. That blond git might’ve been one of the kindest souls Eden gave this bloody war. “He’ll live on in memory and I pray he forgives my lack of want to join him.” 

My gaze snapped to the sprites swarming the dying. “We have more pressing matters.”

Molten metal slithered from the damp, pitted earth, skewering them by the hundreds. Those same spires of metal clipped into the thighs, ankles, and wrists of the opposing troops. Their screams rang through the field, voluminous and unending..

Liam adjusted his blade and leaped forward, slicing through necks, spines, and rib cages with a practiced skill born from five years of aiding the reaper. I glanced over my shoulder at our remaining forces. “Delve around the flames, horseshoe formation, and close in to reinforce the other battalions. All healers, grab the injured and retreat them to the Fate shields near the Northern front.”

Liam cursed.

My attention flickered to him, “What is it- Oh, Rakefire.”

A giant cobbled from the corpses of the field emerged from the inferno, blocking our direct advance. Six-fingered appendages warped, cracked, and stretched as it reached for the sao sword that had been lost by the giantess Avalida. The six-foot blade gleamed wickedly as it was swung by the cord at its hilt.

“Liam? Take my men around. I’m going to break through and advance to distract the demonic reinforcements hiding in the flames.” I threw my sword aside.

Liam took the hint and bowed his head respectfully. “Good luck, Mage General.”

I snorted, hinting at the fangs under my helm. “Oh, how I loathe that title.” I glanced at my sword. “Take that with you. It’ll be far more suited than that rusted piece of junk you just picked up.”

A gauntlet-adorned hand swiped out, snagging around the hilt and ripping it from the mud. Liam whistled shrilly and called in elvish. “Thatcher’s hold, two by two!”

The coded elvish was quickly taken up by my troops, and they dispersed to leave only the dead and myself amongst that quadrant of wood.

 The horned monstrosity dragging itself from the tar-fueled flames was a sight to behold. 

Clumps of multicolored hair were clinging to its clay-strewn skull, a shade from every being it had borrowed its parts from both friends and enemy. A set of slitted yellow eyes in mismatched sockets swam to the field with predatory hunger. The cracked ribs making up its horns were just as varied in size, but notably mainly those of the dwarves with their far denser bones. Red-spotted shoulders shifted as it lifted its chosen blade.

There was no shortage of golems in the war-torn forests of Eden, but this one was by far the ugliest I had fought to date.

And surprise, surprise, this one spoke.

“Mage General.” He swung the sao experimentally. 

“Corpse.” I replied cordially.

Yellow eyes glinted. “By order of my King, you shall become a part of my flesh.”

“Let me mull over that fantastic offer…” I closed my eyes as if musing the merits of becoming a permanent installation in a walking cemetery. They flickered open, hurling all the sarcasm and malice I possessed at the golem. “I’m going to decline. You’re looking short on real estate.” 

The earth trembled under me, shifting and morphing with my will. Emeralds, rubies, and sapphires jutted out in sharpened spikes, curling outward from under my heel as I swept forward. “Allow me to free up some space.” 

Molten silver flared up my arms in a burning arc — a living shield that caught the sao mid-swing and split it in recoil. A pillar of black granite shot from the caves below to throw me into the air.

I spiraled thirty feet above my adversary, and the battered and torn cloak hiding my most fragile asset spun out. It caught on the wind, clawing against it and allowing space for my wings to expand. 

The twenty-two-foot mass overshadowed the golem, and my ill-used back musculature protested horribly. The use of my wings was a delicate balance between gliding and flapping, far more strenuous than a true bird and requiring far more work to keep the massive muscles moving. I revealed them only for an instant before folding them to drop like a stone on top of the golem. My legs landed on his skull, and the metal spiraling around my arms formed a longsword in my hand. I thrust down, spiking it into the demon’s skull. 

As its soul wisped from those hollowed sockets, I informed. “Did you know bone, with enough pressure, can become stone?”

There would be no escape, and it screamed as the very flesh it had formed to find a grip in our world became its eternal prison. The earth snagged the opal statue and dragged down into its depths as I summoned his blade in hand. The liquid silver returned to the ground, slithering under the hallowed veins carved from death and years of rain.

The blade was a monster in itself, nearly an inch thick with a hallowed center for beheading or delimbing barbarian hordes. No man on his own terms would have been able to hold it, and no Fate, with all their strength, would have attempted what I did at that moment. 

Who needed strength to wield steel when one knew the element as an old friend? 

The blade lifted easily in my one hand and I quickly leaned it back against my shoulder to prevent dragging it. A Helheian scout caught sight of me and cried out as my shadow fell over his hiding place in the smoke and ash.

In hindsight, a six-foot-four man hauling a steel sword taller than most ladders might give any sane man second thoughts.

In one hand, however? That was enough to send him fleeing. 

I didn’t give chase. The whole point of this display was to call attention to me and not my battalion as they rejoined the masses. 

The sao was lifted in my hand toward the demons cowering behind the wall of flames. “I am the Mage of Eden, but to you? I am your devil.”

“It’s the Stone Mage! Fall back!” 

My eyes caught the demon who had spoken, and I smiled.

He stumbled back a step, and his hand shot out, gesturing angrily to his men. “They’re closing in behind us! Shift to cover our flanks-”

“It’s much too late for that. Long live Eden.” The swords in the fields lifted, spinning and floating like fractured gears in the reddened air around us. My free hand swept out, willing the metal to increase its speed as I lunged forward. My blade cut a path as I charged forward, easily striking General Rafael’s second in command, while the blades of my fallen comrades impaled his archers and infantry. 

A blur of brilliant white swept in from the fields behind them, stepping lightly on skulls and shoulders before leaping up and into the air above. Her white armor and its embroidered coat flapped against the smoke and ash laden wind before she came to a stop beside me.

Brilliant golden brown eyes gazed at the carnage I had incited. Titania chuckled, “Well, I suppose you do have some odd tricks, Stone Mage.”

I adjusted the sao in my hand, shifting it to block a second volley of arrows with a casual glance to the Fate. “We both seem to have a few tricks hidden amongst our sleeves though yours are far cleaner than mine.”

Her eyes flickered to her blood devoid armor but quickly swept back to me to disguise her rage at my appraisals.“You don’t trust anyone,do you Mage?”

“How can one give trust to someone they never seen prior?” I questioned back with a hint of sarcasm. The earth under our feet shook as I pushed  myself from the ground to dig deeper into the opposition. Arrows in the enemy archer’s quivers floated out and spiraled up, rocketing with harsh whistles into the air before sinking back down to pierce flesh and bone. 

Titania followed me as I fought through their ranks but stilled as I turned from her to stare at a patch of air lingering in the trees above us. “Are you intent on simply watching from the sidelines or are those pretty white adornments simply too precious for Eden’s welfare General Titania?”

The fake beside me stiffened and I smiled coldly to the Fate observing the battle from above. “I’m not the only one with secrets and I’ve suspected yours for some time. Light can be so misleading.” The sao swept out, cutting through the mirage beside me to show Titania her own deceit. 

The true Lady of the Northern Light leaped down from the burned remnants of the trees to stare at me in abject horror. “This is impossible.”

I snorted and turned from her to continue onward. “You’re a blight on your people and a coward.”

“At least I have a people.” She spat.

My hand tightened around my blade. I didn’t have time to scold an uppity adopted daughter of a long-dead Sebillian King. Heads rolled as I passed, clipped through by the blade I held and the metal flying from around the field to aid me. 

A pained roar echoed ahead of my position and I gritted my teeth seeing the silvery gleam of Lady Mourning’s metallic wings being hooked into. Goblins, orcs, and golems lifted rusted meathooks into the trees, rigging them into place around her.

I stopped a mile ahead of them and took a deep breath, feeling the earth under my feet. It trembled and shook, splintering and cracking as I stabbed my blade deep into its depths and cast my energy towards her. The rock and trees rippled, sliding and folding upwards to take her restaurants with them. They loosened and she flapped to dislodge them in the inverted earth I had woven. Scales detached and fell to land amongst the earth. 

My eyes widened before I gritted my teeth and forced yet another volley of energy into the bedrock. The scales zipped up, splintered and morphing to form silver lilies. They jutted through golem flesh, ripping it to bloody globs and spearing into the goblins and orcs with unnatural speed. As soon as the metal met their blood, it dissipated. Mourning clasped her wings close as an act of self-preservation. Large doe-like ears pinned and a dog-like snout pulled back in a pained snarl as she slithered through the trees and away, never once realizing who or what had come to her aid. 

Titania landed behind me, and drew her blade from its scabbard. The point came to rest on my spine. “What are you?!”

My ears flickered under my helm and I sneered. “An ally and one not appreciative of a blade being pressed against my spine.”

She sneered, “You are no ally of mine! What dark sorcery is this? You wield more than one of nature’s gifts mage! Who did you seek your power from? Was it the rumored demon aiding Abel and Cane? What did you receive for your treachery?!”

My eyes flashed and with a simple twitch the blade at my spine was yanked from her hand and into mine as I turned. I held the silver hilt mockingly, rubbing my blood drenched fingers over the metal. “I do hope you aren’t this dense. Why would I slaughter six hundred barbarian soldiers this very eve if I were on the opposition’s side?” The blade was turned to show her pure white reflection back at her. “If the war doesn’t conclude by sunset? I’m telling the others of your behavior. All of it.” I clarified with knowing.

Titania paled. “You wouldn’t dare…I-I’ll tell Oberon and the others what you are-“

I chuckled darkly. “Do you even hear yourself?” Her blade was tucked into my belt as I turned. “I’ll be keeping this. That way it will at least see actual use.”

Her voice rang out behind me. “You would take my blade, the one gifted by Oberon, and leave me defenseless?”

I snickered. “You’re surrounded by the dead. If you can’t fend them off then what good is your rank, illusionist?” 

I patted the blade. “As for your blade? I have never had the direct honor of speaking with the Fate King but will certainly enjoy regailing him on this weapon’s use thus far.”

Her boots hurriedly clicked through the mud and I hissed as something sharp tore through the space my wings usually sat. I whirled around, clutching to the severed flesh in shock. A knife lay in my back, its thorn adorned silver hilt just brushing into the space where muscle and bone connected. My powers pulled it but with no effect and I staggered. “What is this?!”

“Siphrel.”

What in Eden’s name was Siphrel?!

She saw my confusion and elaborated. “A metal meant to cure. This one is a human forged blade I stole from the fourth Demon General Norrin.”

I ripped it from my back with a hiss and snarled. “Why? Why would you stab one of your own? What possible good can this blade do for your comrades? I feel no healing! No alleviation for my pain!”

“I never said this one heals.” She leaped forward to snag the blade from my hand.My reflexes were slowing... 

She tapped the blade under my throat. “It’s cursed.”

My eyes narrowed, “To do what exactly?”

“To give me the most precious thing you possess.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “The most precious thing I possess? And how would it do that? Can your little cursed blade sense my value?”

Titania narrowed her gaze. “No, it can not.”

My brow rose in the shadows of my helm. “Then what gives you the gull to claim what is most precious to me as yours?” 

“The magic of this blade. On this day, Stone Mage? I’m taking away the one thing you truly care for in rebuttal for your loose tongue.” She withdrew the blade and leaped out of range. 

“And yet you have no hint at what I truly care for, otherwise I’d imagine this betrayal would incite more fear.” I focused on the stone below her, willing it to move. The most I gained for my efforts were a few trembling pebbles.

Titania frowned deeply. “There are seven sin items held by the original demon Generals and their hosts under Abel. You have just had your first brush against Envy, and true to its name? Whatever you hold most precious will be pulled towards me rather than you.”

My eyes widened subtly before narrowing. “My rank? My powers? They hold nothing to me so I do hope whatever you receive is well worth this poisoned avarice of yours.” 

The sounds of battle were becoming more desperate and I cursed before stepping away from Titania. “Whatever you took? It holds no consequence when our friends are fighting for their lives. If you wish to stab me again, do so, but keep in mind who I’m trying to protect.”

Her illusion followed me, scowling the entire time and averting her gaze from mine.

‘Coward.’

My distraction, thankfully, had scattered Abel’s forces around the field Eden’s last stand had been orchestrated to. 

The downside for that distraction? My element was useless, void and unyielding thanks to the amount of power I had used prior. I persisted, using Titania’s stolen blade as my own. 

Thorn was fighting Abel, swinging double edged swords against the barbarian King with effortless precision only to freeze as Abel uttered one particularly venomous musing. 

“You fight just as well as that pregnant Eveen.”

And then his blade clipped into Balthazar’s face and down through his neck. The Elvin King fell, a gurgling hack on his lips as he struggled to draw breath. 

The field darkened, rippling and churning in a sea of shadows as Oberon bled from the masses to kick Abel backward. The human sailed through the air and into the ground so hard a ditch formed under his battered flesh. 

Oberon was oblivious as he turned to Balthazar to hold him close, one hand desperately pressing the injury maring the elf’s flesh. “Don’t you dare leave me you stubborn bastard! You’re the only friend I’ve had in centuries!”

Balthazar pawed for his hand and with a rattling sigh, his breath began to eb. 

The Traitor General, Rafael blocked me from shielding them properly and I snarled as I was forced back on unsteady feet. He grinned, “No, I think not. This is between my King and yours.”

Titania’s sword glimmered in my hold as I blocked his blade and countered to nick into his side. “Agreeing to disagree.” 

Rafael chuckled darkly and leaned in under my nose. “What are you under that helm? A fate? An elf? Or something more?”

I withdrew my blade to sling him forward and jabbed the hilt into his nose. My foot spun out to throw him onto the ground. “A mystery you’ll take to your grave.”

“Cheeky, I like it.” Rafael wiped the blood oozing from his nostrils and grinned before shouting. “NOW, BEELZE!”

I sensed the crystal orb and the cursed contents sloshing within it as soon as it was thrown into the air behind me.

The clouds churned as Beelze, the second Demon General, began to chant.

My blade found his throat before he could finish. 

The orb dropped like a stone, no longer aided in its descent by the demon who had thrown it. It fractured twenty feet above us, splintering into billions of blood-coated pieces before falling to land amongst the dead and dying. 

Rafael swept up behind me, loathing in his eyes as he swung up to try gutting me-

Mourning swooped down and landed so her wing could shield me. A large, spike-tipped tail thwacked into the elve’s flesh, crushing his ribs and sending him skyward to land in the woods a short distance away. 

Mourning lowered her wing and flew off to shield another set of soldiers from an onslaught of arrows being fired from the eastern tree line. 

Fire bellowed and scorched the land, scattering the archers and drawing their attention just before the trees below them sank inward. The dwarves crawled out, their armor glistening like polished copper. Wide ash spot-stained grins bloomed upon their faces. Several other segments of land collapsed.

Shards of crystal continued to fall, painting the sky in red-hued flecks of refractive light. 

I spun around to find Balthazar clumsily rising to his feet, eyes wide and a hand clutching his healed neck. 

Oberon panted where he was still kneeling, face an ashen pale and sweat trickling down his brow from the effort it had taken to bring Balthazar back. His hands were still outstretched over the ditch Balthazar’s body had landed in. Then they moved.

My breath caught in my throat. 

Wings. 

He had wings as I did. 

I had heard rumors of the first Fate King’s only son, but I had never imagined them to be true.

The raven appendages were freckled in brilliant metallic silver, just like his face. They spanned outward, trembling and fluffed from over-exertion before snapping shut.

Abel swept out from the shadows and rushed forward.

“NO!” I screamed-

Balthazar turned.

Cords of rancid red energy hooked into Oberon’s wings and pulled them taunt. The King of the Fates went wide-eyed and shifted to try dislodging the grab, only to wail as the monstrous power flowing from Abel began to yank and pull. Soft blue and gray energy swirled from his injured wings and spiraled toward Abel’s breast.

I charged forward, and Eden shook around us. Titania’s sword snapped outward, and I hooked it under the stream of red. My form morphed, compacting so the armor I wore could grow a crystalline layer of diamond to shield the oncoming attack.

I was too late.

Abel gritted his teeth, and with a roar, Oberon’s wings were torn from his back in a gory display of red and silver. Skin fell to hang where muscle and bone had once connected, the bone itself having been shattered to thousands of pieces within his flesh. 

The appendages were dropped to the ground, where they immediately began to burn. Feathers curled and ashed as his sword clipped through the air with the intent of beheading Oberon. The blow was blocked as I swept between them. 

Titania’s sword pierced Abel’s shoulder, and I pushed him back with a rough kick to his stomach.

Abel hissed and adjusted his blade in hand. “You must be Titania of the Northern Light. I’ll enjoy seeing your head on a pike-” His sword smacked into my shoulder, digging hard against the diamond coating and slinging shards into the air. 

‘Ah, another pitfall to taking this form.’

Oberon trembled behind me, bloodied shoulders quaking as he dug his hands into the earth with a pained scream. The mountains shook, and I felt shadows squirming under the soil, pushing hundreds of miles of land elsewhere.

Abel leaped backward to avoid another blow from Titania’s blade. My eyes narrowed in on his armor, willing it to sloth away and towards me. Oddly, his left bracer seemed immune. Titania’s gloating words from before spurned me forward, and her blade cleaved through the gauntlet. I backed as it fell earthward and forced what remained of my energy toward Oberon’s unexpected last bit of magic.

We lit up, Oberon casting shades of silver and I in shades of brightest gold. Abel screamed as the gauntlet fully fell from his flesh, and his skin morphed and rippled. Clawed fingers swiped forward, and my wings snapped out to shield Oberon. His blackened fingertips met my flesh, digging through my weakened armor and into my torso to paint red in the sky. The blood caught the last suspended flecks of Beelze’s unnamed potion, and with an earth-shattering boom, everything bled to the darkest black. 

On that day, Eden separated from the world. 

Demons and their kin were cast to a realm in between, called Hell, and humanity was slung to the lands over the divide…

But unknown to the remaining Generals of Eden, the Stone Mage was cast to the dead and battered covering that forsaken field- lost for centuries.

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