"That has always been true, young man, but even more so for the children of Emotion," the pink-haired man explained affectionately. "Which is perhaps why the people of Venlanz hate us. They are jealous of our richer, more meaningful emotions. But back to the matter at hand. You've come far, young Avatar, but I'm afraid this is where your story ends."
The pink-haired man thrust his hands in Fate's direction, a ripple spreading through his robes and ruffling his hair. He smiled, the smile of a father watching his child's first steps, his eyes glimmering with triumph.
And he waited.
He frowned when nothing happened. Fate glanced around, patting his body to make sure he was still there. He turned to the pink-haired man. "I'm sorry, was something supposed to happen?
"What is your name, young man?" the man said coldly, skipping over Fate's question.
"You can call me Null, I guess," Fate responded. "For the few minutes you have left alive."
The red-robed man's eyes widened. "Null…" he whispered. When he spoke again, his voice was of normal volume. "So, you are the 'Destroyer' that those prattling twits have been screaming the name of for the past hundred thousand years. You don't look like much," the man said, looking Fate up and down.
His eyes lingered on the Miao Dao in Fate's hand. "I am Micheil, and my feminine companion here is named Hedra. We will be the ones to put an end to the tale of the Savior today."
"A shame," Hedra said quietly. "You seemed like a nice person."
"I should've guessed that my Manifest Power would not work on you, Null," Micheil said. "I did not miss the ease with which you killed our army's Morale Inquisitors."
"Morale Inquisitors?" Fate cringed, his face scrunching up into a grimace. "That's one of the worst names I've ever heard."
"Their names are not as important as their skill," Micheil said dismissively.
"But you're wrong anyway, Micheil. It does work. Right now, you two look like some friends of mine, even your voices are the same," Fate said.
It was true, Micheil currently looked and sounded like Nikolas, and Hedra was now Cait.
"If it worked as it should, I would've gained knowledge on the person I now resemble," Micheil told Fate in Nikolas' voice. "And you should be completely unable to tell that it is us. How are you hiding your mind from me?"
"Trade secret." 'Like hell I'm gonna tell you about my intangibility. It's times like these that I'm glad I appear solid even like this.'
Fate hadn't dropped his Manifest Power since the talk began, and was constantly looking behind him with his psychic senses to check for sneak attacks from the army to his back.
By now, the rear of the army had moved about a hundred feet forward toward the Venlanz forces, each side stepping over their dead to continue the fight. Fate was able to monitor the battle in the middle as well, with the five thousand miles that his Divine Grasp and psychic senses now had.
It was going poorly for both sides. Fate's aura removing Divine Energy from the surroundings had allowed the mostly mortal Venlanz to reap a few thousand lives during the twenty minutes he had been there. With his absence, though, the Fractured were quickly turning the tables, their access to Divine Energy now restored.
Since each of the Fractured was a psychic or stronger, each one could take out a whole squad of mortals on their own. It was only the Venlanz Embodiments, with much more offensive-oriented Manifest Powers, for the most part, that kept the death toll skewed in Venlanz's favor. General Ferdind continued to massacre the enemy troops, his kill count now breaching three thousand.
'They keep this up and we might have a chance,' Fate thought. 'They'll need to step it up if they want to win this though.'
"Don't tell us, then," Micheil sneered. "We'll kill you just the same."
"Wow, you dropped that lovey-dovey stuff fast. Was it really just an act?" Fate turned to Hedra, waiting for her to start sneering like an arrogant noble as well. Instead, her gaze grew even more somber, a tear rolling down her cheek as she returned Fate's gaze.
"Hedra always was sentimental," Micheil explained. "But she still does her job. Now, prepare to—"
"Now, wait a second," Fate interrupted. "Before we start, I just want to know something. Why are you killing innocent people?" he gestured to the city of Frendnann, full of burning buildings and smoldering corpses.
"They would do the same to us without hesitation," Micheil snapped, angry at being interrupted. "They ran us out of our homes, our own families disowned us and called us scum. And they think they can give us a small patch of land, shunt us out of their 'perfect kingdom,' and everything will be fine. But it won't be.
"They treated us like outcasts, murdered those of us who simply wanted our homes back, and then have the gall to make a prophecy about a 'Savior' destined to save THEM from US!" Micheil was shouting by now, his voice carrying across the battlefield. The Fractured soldiers in the rear turned around, trying to find the man that gave voice to their feelings.
"The sheer audacity of it astounds me! For thousands of years, they've been able to crush us like the bugs they believe us to be, and yet they still decided to rub our noses in their perceived moral superiority by insinuating that WE are the ones that are killing their own families, casting away the familial bonds they've spent years nurturing as if they were worth no more than a rock one finds on the roadside!"
Micheil met Fate's eyes. To the side, Hedra's cheeks were stained with tears as she listened. "My own mother threw me away like a cheap rag soiled beyond use. So, tell me, 'Savior,' how are we the monsters?"
"I think I miss the other you, to be honest. This one is too talkative. But anyway, you two are going to kill me? With what, exactly?" Fate asked, tilting his head to the sky. The other two looked up, Micheil's face still simmering with rage. When they saw what Fate was looking at, their expressions froze.
The storm conjured by Hedra was slowly receding, the clouds lightening from black to light gray, and then to white, before disappearing entirely. The entire process took about a minute.
"You see," Fate said when the two turned their attention back to him, "now that you're both in range, I can cut off your Divine Energy. All this talking? It was just to stall for time so I could take every drop you have. You probably would've noticed if you weren't so… Emotional."
'Ugh, that was horrible,' Fate admonished himself.