He introduced himself to the Knight.
"My name is Soo. I have been going out of my way to help the darkness, and somehow, every step of the way you managed to hinder me. I have been patient, and finally, now you come forth."
…
The Knight had no reason to engage in this conversation.
He lowered his head and spoke. "What is it that you do not understand? There is no stopping the darkness, we might as well join it."
He then pulled his sword out.
He wore a violet set of armour, a ragged hood flowing behind him, and a matching sword. His hair dark brown, eyes black, and dark skin. He also had a blue banner on a long pole that read.
{Embrace the darkness – Accept the futility of your struggle – Find peace.}
It swayed in the wind.
His hair was a dark black – shortly cut. His eyes black and smile casual. He had scars on his face – he had faced his fair share of permanent damage purveyors – and the Knight was another one. His skin was dark grey – with black veins on it – one could only hope what flowed through them was blood.
A spirit blade pieced his heart. He looked at the spirit blade, then it vanished. He smiled. "I take it these are your friends?"
There was an instant shift in the area, as all of them were consumed by darkness – elemental darkness. Not the void that people associate with the darkness.
He possessed the power over elemental darkness. This allows him to taint anything he wants, unlike the purifying power over light. It was day so, all of this stood out – a massive sphere of darkness – smooth and less cloudy than the void usually is.
The Knight just stood there, unphased – fists ready to pummel.
Soo smiled, then he bowed, down to his knees.
The Knight looked at him, on his knees. Even in this position, the Knight could tell that he could still counter the Knights hits. But that's not why the Knight did not engage him. For he bore such a straightforward, and strong desire in his heart at this moment.
"You are of the darkness, aren't you? At first, I didn't think it could be, but repeatedly, you have managed to single handedly drive back the darkness on countless nights. I couldn't be sure, so I tried watching you through the darkness in your soul, but I couldn't sense any… and only the destroyers possess no form of darkness within them, so I could not watch, but I didn't have to – I was sure you were of the darkness.
All I had to do was wait patiently. Destroyers lack what people describe as goodness and badness. This is why the power over light and darkness elemental does not affect them as predicted. In fact, I am not even sure what you are. There is no way you are monsters – even if monsters themselves are an enigma."
Watching a former knight grovel at the feet of one of the void did not sit right with the Knight. Despite his words, he still trembled, trying not to show it – but the Knight knew what being afraid smelled like, that's how most of its opponents smells during battle.
"Please! Let me serve you."
This was a rather tempting offer, but the Knight wanted nothing with it – and it had already spent six months preparing – stopping now would be a letdown – [Greed] did not even interfere, it was fine either way.
Soo represented the absolute epitome of the failures of the knights. Those that do not cower in the face of the void, instead pushing to stop it at every turn, to such the point, even those of the void have come to acknowledge their existence.
He was the just a waste of soul – all dark knights were.
The Knight would rather not face him; it had already wasted half a year preparing. Too bad for him, the knights mission was to wipe all of them out, and it had been looking forward to this.
He jumped back, and looked at the spot he was bowing at, the Knight had crushed that spot deep. 'I guess I'm not worthy. I'd rather not face the darkness, but if I have to…'
Then his sword swung, and the Knights soul became unusable. He had made the Knight an impurity, and this made its body reject the souls influence.
He smiled and looked at the Knight; he was not done. Unlike all the Knights opponents, he had not ran from the darkness, he was a full knight bachelor, who just thought it pointless to oppose the darkness, making him extremely fitted to facing the Knight.
The darkness (not void) that Soo had summoned was spreading and making everything tainted. The dirt began to move, and corpses began to rise from below the ground, an entire army of the undead. The air turned into dark miasma, which would kill the weak in an instance. Strange figured began stepping out of his mind – these were his deepest darkest thoughts.
Outside the main set of undead bones and corpses, was the darkest thoughts manifested. And amongst these figures, three of them stood out.
Automiun: This was a humanoid without a face. His skin cracked and falling off. Over his shoulders he wielded a massive cleaver, twice his size.
Doiun: He had these ethereal tentacles flowing out of his, feeling for things. Dark set of teeth and moulded fingers releasing a dizzying green fume.
Oiun: He was a floating set of putrid teeth, an oversized eye. Not connected to each other, the teeth didn't even have gum connecting them. Then the miasma summoned earlier swirled around him.
They made a circle around their master. Soo's sword then turned a sickening shade of purple; his armour darkened till no silhouette could be drawn around him and his darkness. He pointed his sword forward. Oiun screeched, letting out a loud noise, reaching further than the most visible area in sight.
The army then sprang forward at the Knights still body.
The entire front row was immediately wiped out as a massive dragon reared its snaking head from behind the Knight. Sending waves of pure destruction. The rest of his body came into view as he stepped closer. His scales burned so brights that the darkness receded, the ground and soil itself was straight up evaporating. For the Knight had just sicced his dragon on its first hunt.
In the void, dragons are vulnerable mostly because if the main elemental dragon dies, so does any being possessing their DNA, but against this foe, the dragon could let loose.
The corpses kept coming, as the darkness spread, reaching deeper, in search of more bodies. Massive ancient skeletons kept emerging, one after the other. Some with crystallised bones. Massive ancient true beasts, each melting away as soon as they tried to take a bite out of the dragon. The darkness further receded as its edges began to burn. So, the fighting was happening outside the darkness field.
The Knight could still not move.
The undead then all began to drop as the souls placed in them began to come out, all of them clumped up, and formed an even bigger spirit. Heavy roots emerged from the grounds and formed an impervious armour around the spirit. The spirit wielded a war scythe with a blade as big as one of true Red Scorch. It swung it widely, instantly wiping out the entire swath of titans that had emerged – Forg came out and smiled.
A gremlin kept teleporting around, storing the souls inside it. Trying to stop them from looking for more corpses.
That did not matter, the undead army was still growing.
Cathina then instantly froze the water deep in the ground, preventing the darkness from going to fetch even more corpses.
On the seventh day, Doiun, the one with the fuming fingers and dark rotten smile, stepped forward. His ethereal dark tentacles spread out and reached deep into the dirt. At first, they froze and shattered even before they reached deep enough to see the ice. Even the ethereal could not escape the cold grasp of whatever was near Cathina's Ice.
The dark thought manifest was not done. It then made more tentacles, and shy of touching the ice, they turned the sand a nauseating green. This green even reached the ice and corroded a hole through. The hole did not grow, could not grow. The ice was freezing this revolting sludge at the same rate it was devitalising the ice.
This hole was small, but it was enough to let more corpses crawl out.
Right before Cathina tried to freeze the hole and corpses nearby, the ethereal tentacles held and lifted her hands high into the sky, pointing them away from the ground. The dark thought then froze and shattered turning into snow.
Thin black and green sludge collected and he reformed again. Cathina had this snaking vein pattern on her hands, she had been infected. She froze all of it, and it left her through the pores of her skin as a chilling blue mist. The mist turned green, collected on the floor and inched closer to her before she froze it and the ground. Doiun's entire right arm was frozen solid just from that, and even after shattering, it did not return.
On the other side of the field, the darkest of the thoughts stepped forward, as the corpses swarming the dragon stepped back. There was not much resistance to be had. He then gripped his heavy cleaver tighter and jumped, slicing right through red scorches right arm. The Knight would have been frustrated considering how much it took it to just break a single scale.
The arm flowed into lava and reconnected. This would have given the Knight some comfort. The blade had not done permanent damage as someone like the Knight and disaster class beings were capable of. The queen, Mugaw, and Keiper alike, even Cath.
The dragon flapped its massive wings to keep itself balanced, but the winds from this burnt most of the corpses nearby to ashes.
The heavy cleaver had been melted off. The cracked skin from Automiun's face fell off like a moulting eagle, and those flakes gathered on the hilt and blade repairing it. The blade became slightly smaller, but it then became thicker, condensing so thin that its side profile was invisible.
The then swung his blade, but this time it did not cut through anything, merely making a clash, and rebounding off the scales. It might have not done any damage, but the swing had been so powerful, the dragon turned its head and finally faced Automiun as more flakes formed on his blank face, his inky hair blowing in the heat.
The dragon then breathed a simple sigh, of which it cut in two, but was sent hurdling as a massive swipe from the dragons side came, slicing him into pieces. His body then collected into a full body and picked up the blade which had not been damaged, just flung.
On the upper left side of the blank face, a line appeared. This line then protruded, and split, and an eye peeked out. This eye was black with a red pupil.
Just as it appeared, the dragons claws stopped burning and crumbled into askes. The black eye also burned away leaving an empty open eye socket. From deep within, rolled another black eye, this one's pupil grey.
From behind, it got stabbed by a silver blade. The blade came out and crumbled.
Forg had stabbed it trying to figure out what exactly had it done to the dragon.
The grey eye also crumbled, and another eye rolled in, just black and no pupil. Even after that stab, he had not looked away from Red Scorch who was now glaring at him. The ashes that had fallen off turned into corpses of dragons, each a hundred metres huge.
Red scorch faced Automiun.
Before it even tried what it was about to do. It felt a chain lock around its jaw. This was not because of the Knight – this was the bind that all of the six true elemental dragons had placed on each other.
Then from deeper within Red Scorch, an utterly vile hand, this one the Knights, came out. Its hand held the chains, the same chains that had bound his true strength, for all elemental dragons knew, the true power of an elemental disaster such as they should never be unleashed.
The chain turned into nothing, collecting into the Knights void.
Then a cloud of smoke bellowed from inside the dragons nose.
A light visible from space glowed – and Red Scorch Opened its mouth – this alone immediately made Automiun run – and Kitrino teleported Forg and Cathina far away.
The entire planets temperature rose by five whole degrees.
Thus came the breath of permanent fire.