"Your diet is revealed by your clothing," Elder Rujik muttered, his voice filled with veiled wisdom. He often spoke in riddles, especially when the subject weighed heavily on his heart. "That which is closest to you exposes your ways to the world."
His words lingered in the air, resonating with the deep-seated pain of the cleric class—a class all too familiar with betrayal.
During the Great Boundary War, Koron, the homeland of humans, was destroyed and sacrificed to fuel the dragon's array. The winged deity had acted swiftly, rescuing the humans from the crumbling world and guiding them to safety.
The winged deity led the humans to Shamba, a world rich in magic, the deity's true home. The inhabitants of Shamba worshiped the winged deity and had created a society devoid of crime, corruption, or darkness. They were a peaceful, advanced civilization.
The people of Shamba had golden-brown skin, standing tall at two and a half meters. When they first encountered humans, they saw them as mere children in comparison to their own size and knowledge. Still, they welcomed the humans as their own, teaching them magic, nature's beauty, and the art of harmony.
Under the winged deity's guidance, Shamba thrived, blending science and magic into a seamless marvel. Towering cities stretched to the sky, while nature's bounty thrived in every corner. The seas were as accessible as land, and distance was irrelevant.
But the human heart, dark and unfathomable, harbored fear. As they learned more about Shamba's advanced magic and resources, their initial joy turned to unease. The more they gained, the more they coveted, and the seeds of envy sprouted into greed.
Despite Shamba's teachings, humans yearned to return to Koron and rebuild their homeland. With every piece of knowledge they acquired, their desire for power grew. Secretly, they began developing weapons, believing they could subdue the dragon's armies and reclaim their planet. The Shamba, recognizing the futility of such endeavors, refused to aid the humans' military efforts. Nonetheless, they trusted the humans, confident that their connection through the winged deity would keep them aligned.
However, everything unraveled with alarming speed. Within two centuries, the human population outnumbered the Shamba six to one. The humans, emboldened by their numbers, demanded autonomy and self-governance. The tipping point came when they sought equal representation in the highest levels of government.
What began as peaceful protests soon spiraled into armed conflict. The weapons that the humans had secretly crafted were now turned against their former teachers. The war was brutal. Millions of humans fell, while Shamba, with its superior magic, suffered far fewer casualties. The winged deity, torn between the warring sides, found itself powerless to choose between the two.
Desperate to win the war, the humans struck an unthinkable bargain. They opened dimensional rifts and sent scouts into the expanse of the universe. The details of their mission remained secret until the day the dragon's army arrived. In exchange for the location of the winged deity, the humans secured their bid for self-rule.
General Glimus, the dragon's top general with a soul count of over fifty million, entered Shamba through a dimensional portal. His laughter shook the heavens as he arrived. Towering at fifteen meters, Glimus was a monstrous humanoid with a cubed head, each face of the cube sporting a single eye. His reverse-jointed wings, covered in pale black skin, gave him an eerie, menacing presence.
As Glimus stepped onto Shamba's sacred ground, the land withered beneath him. Dark clouds erupted from the earth, forming shadowy armies of the undead. He soared hundreds of meters into the air and, with a deafening roar, declared, "Bring me your god."
The force of his words sent shockwaves through the land, creating a vast arena five hundred meters wide. Dust and debris swirled, but within moments, the alarms of Shamba rang from every direction. A sinister grin spread across Glimus' cuboid face, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.
Suddenly, particles of shimmering light materialized around him, transforming into Shamba's elite armored warriors, armed with spears and war-hammers. Despite being surrounded, Glimus' grin only widened. The eyes on his cube head began glowing with different elemental colors.
At the top of his flat, cube-shaped head, an eyeball began to emerge, crackling with electricity at every point. The eye - three meters in diameter, now floating above Glimus' massive form, had six segmented pupils that were once part of the sides of his cube head. In truth, Glimus was the giant eye—his towering body merely a vessel he controlled. Now, ready to unleash his full power, he prepared to go all out against the Shamba army.
The battle began in a flash. A warrior clad in golden armor launched himself toward Glimus, spear in hand. Others followed, launching a coordinated attack while archers aimed at the undead rising from the shadows.
But Glimus was prepared. Twin blades appeared in his hands, and in one swift motion, he intercepted the incoming warriors, sparks flying as his blades collided with their weapons. Each strike from Glimus carried the force of a moving train, his blades slicing through the air with afterimages left in their wake. His pupils rotated across the surface of the giant eyeball, countering each elemental attack with ease.
Within minutes, only a handful of the golden-armored warriors remained. But they were faltering. The cursed blades of Glimus left wounds that refused to heal, emitting a black smoke that drained their energy and filled them with pain.
The warriors' defeat seemed imminent, their lives hanging by a thread. But as they prayed for salvation, a thunderous boom echoed through the sky. The earth trembled as the heavens parted, revealing a figure bathed in brilliant light. The brilliance of this new arrival was so intense that Glimus retreated into his cube head form, shielding himself from the radiant glow. The eyes of the cuboid head remained closed but a tornado of earth charged with electricity and fire spun around Glimus, forming a protective shield.
The winged deity had arrived.
The warriors quickly retreated from the battlefield, they had been ordered to evacuate with the civilians of the towns bordering the dimensional fissure. The shamba warriors witnessed mushroom clouds of fire forming on the horizon as they fled. Each more powerful than the last.
General Glimus had consumed the life force of over fifty million beings, he knew the soul titration technique and had used it to boost his battle experience by multiples. Yet his skills were pale in comparison to the being standing before him.
The winged deity was no longer glowing. The being appeared like a man in his late forties, the deity's sharp features and warrior's build radiated power. His presence alone was enough to shift the tides of battle. With a short sword in hand, the deity rained ice shards down upon Glimus.
The battle between light and darkness raged, and for a moment, it seemed the winged deity had the upper hand. General Glimus kept his giant eye form hidden in the cuboid head.
Once in a while, he would open one or two eyes to get his beatings as he counter-attacked. At one such moment, his water elemental eye flew open to block a rain of ice shards when out of nowhere.
A short sword sunk it's edge into the open eye socket. Glimus screamed as the sword unleashed a surge of electricity enough to power a small town.
As Glimus gritted his teeth, he clutched the winged deity into his grasp and bellowed, "NOW!"
Dimensional rifts tore open, and six other generals stormed through, each wielding a weapon in hand. A loud trumpet sounded, signaling the activation of the time-sealing trumpet—one of the winged deity's own creations, now used against him. The artifact would slow down time everywhere the sound was heard.
This artifact was special to the deity, it was one of his gifts to the human race. It came with a promise that he would come to their aid in the blink of an eye as if time would stop.
As the deity struggled against chains of earth and electricity, his time slowed, and the battle became one-sided. Glimus grinned as the deity attempted to overload his brilliance and blow up but as time was now slow, his counter-attack was met with a slash to his neck.
The deity had a strong vitality therefore the wound closed immediately, but a black smoke emanated from where the wound was supposed to be. A shallow cut appeared from the healed region and extended the length of the neck. The cut widening by the second.
'I need time to heal, but time is literally what I lack', the deity thought.
"Well played General, but my soul is not that easy to tame"
Instead of surrendering his soul to the dragon's army, the winged deity made one final sacrifice. Using the cut running along his neck, he pulled his head off in one quick motion. With his head in his hand, he released a massive explosion of fire and electricity, disintegrating his head. Ending his life in a blaze of glory.
The winged deity performed a final act of benevolence. He teleported all souls that believed in him to the sanctuary. Members of all races all around Shamba disappeared only to reappear in the throne room of the winged deity. The only thing they had in common was their devotion to the slain god.
A great cry of pain filled the air. A deity had fallen. His realm now subject to decay and the slow but assured erosion of magic would come. All those attuned to magic felt the sudden disconnection.
General Glimus kept on screaming in frustration, he had lost an eye and his chance of consuming the soul of a god therefore breaking through the void realm.