The Beginning
If shehad the ability to bleed, Destruction’s feet would have been scraped raw.
The forest floor dipped under every brutal and frantic footfall, twigs and rocks slashing at her bare feet. There was no recognizable path and she was left to push through the trees and flora, feeling them scratch at her—knowing they would leave no mark.
Even with the greenery acting as camouflage, the environment blurring past at a speed that should easily have separated her from her assailants, Destruction felt them. Encroaching. Fueled by an unnatural force that she knew all too well.
Despite her relatively newfound autonomy as an independent entity in the universe, a twin sensation flowed through her veins.
Destruction reached for the lowest hanging branch of a nearby tree. Using the momentum of her sprint, she swung herself upwards, ignoring the way the rough bark slid against her palms. It was a simple feat, tucking her legs beneath her and jumping from one branch to another, only settling once she’d covered a substantial distance from the ground.
It was then, her back against the trunk of the tree and both legs hanging on either side of her chosen branch, that Destruction let herself relax for the first time since they’d begun chasing her hours ago.
At least relaxing was what she wanted to do.
A spike of magical energy rushed through the trees, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand. Destruction leapt to her feet and balanced on the branch with ease. That sickening mix of Chaos’ magic and the mortals’ essence was growing stronger. They’d been following Destruction’s scent since her escape from Yorkton. She needed to keep running, perhaps scale the trees. Mortals couldn’t fly, as far as she knew, and if she kept high enough, their limited sight could prevent them from even—
An arrow embedded itself into the trunk barely an inch from Destruction’s face.
She turned, drawn to it by instinct, just in time to see the arrow evaporate in a puff of pink smoke. Before Destruction could inspect the projectile Chaos had no doubt touched, another arrow impaled her through the gut. Destruction was sent free-falling to the forest floor and taking more than one branch out with her on the way down.
Pain. Her ribs shattered against a limb, the arrow freed of her stomach as another branch ripped through her. Destruction felt every wound, superficial and fatal, mend itself and shift back into place with sparks of magic and surges of adrenaline. The moment she hit the ground, nearly fifty feet below her, she was already bouncing back onto her feet and into a sprint.
Pain lingered, but her body relished in the destruction, singing despite near-death, with a power that no other entity could command.
She stretched her magic around her, sent its tendrils out into the trees, sensing not two, but five mortals, all carrying the same heavy burden of Chaos’ influence. And all were right on her tail. The one with the arrow had caught her off guard; Chaos’ reach was now expanding to their weaponry. But she wouldn’t let it happen again.
She wouldn’t give Chaos the chance to lure her back in.
Determined, she dug in her heels, spinning in place. Until they died of exhaustion or from Chaos’ magic tearing them apart, the poor mortals would chase her to the ends of the world. The best she could do was offer them a swift, clean death. Yet while that mercy also carried the fringe benefit of ending this foolhardy chase, Destruction’s motivation waned the moment her assailants burst through the branches.
Her stomach churned as a human child emerged. A boy, with eyes sunken and black and his skin turned ashen. There was no telling when Chaos had gotten her hands on him, but he was more like a mortal shell left to do Chaos’s bidding than anything resembling a human.
“You can’t escape what you are. Whatweare!”the boy cooed, a familiar sound more painful than the gaping wound in her middle trying to mend itself.
“Why do you run from me,darling?”an old man said as he emerged from the branches to stand by the child. Black veins crawled up his arms and neck. His voice was raspy, though the inflection caused Destruction to shudder as if nails were running down her spine. She knew its true speaker.
When Destruction laid her eyes on these mortals—from the ashen boy to the walking corpse that was the archer who was the last to emerge and face off against her—she did not see humanity. Destruction saw the magic of her other half.
No,it ran deeper than that.
Dripping from their blackened eyes was the echo of a familiar force that she, too, had once possessed—what now felt like long ago, when she was still one with Chaos as the ancient goddess Oblivion. Destruction’s memories were hazy of her time as Oblivion (being torn asunder into two demigods would do that) but she recognized that raw power.
“Join with me again,” the woman hissed with words that were not her own.
For the briefest of moments, with a visceral, involuntary pang, Destruction thought of giving in. Cease this endless fight for control, for autonomy, and rejoin as one. Yet, something wouldn’t let her. A voice all her own screamed in objection and those screams were tearing her apart.
“No, I won’t. I won’t!”
Destruction collapsed in on herself, gripping her dark hair with both hands. Her bare feet dug into the forest floor, her magic crackling down her legs and into the earth. The ground shattered like glass and rose to hover mid-air before imploding with sparks of raw energy. Destruction felt more than saw the shockwaves extending from her and toward each mortal, obliterating tree and rock alike.
Sinkholes as black as cosmos opened in the fissures around them and swallowed them whole. She had never forced her magic into existence in such a way, but she couldn’t deny how natural, howintoxicating, it felt. She was quickly sobered, however, in watching the child’s final agonizing moments before he too blinked out of existence.
Then, the forest was quiet for the first time in what must have been hours. Days, possibly.Mortal time was such a slippery thing. The mortal races seemed to live a whole life in the span of a divine breath.
Her first steps were shaky, her feet digging deeper into the cracked and softened earth for purchase, but she was soon running again. She ran until she no longer heard the animals deep within the forest panicking at the attack. She ran until the essence of tainted humans began to fade. She ran until every trace of Chaos had begun to dissipate out of her system, leaving her truly alone once more.
She ran until she could barely breathe, her feet stumbling into a clearing that stretched in a wide arc around her. Destruction collapsed onto her back at the center of the glade, amidst the tall grasses, and let the sense of solitude wash over her.Solitude, and the still ever-present adrenaline from such a catastrophic release of her magic.
