Dimensional Descent

The skies rumbled, and the battleships suddenly began to charge up. Aina collapsed onto Leonel’s chest, her mournful sobs still soft, but the shaking of her body couldn’t be hidden. The eyes of Joel and the others turned red. James clenched his fist hard, remembering the night of their last football game. ~Why couldn’t you just lose this one time?!~ He remembered roaring those words, feeling every syllable of them. He had been tired of Leonel’s antics, knowing that he needed to lose that game, and yet he still insisted on winning it anyway. Leonel had always been obsessed with victory, with winning, with coming out on top. He hated it when others got one over on him, and he was certainly the last person who would run headfirst into a trap that he could see coming. But this time… Tears rolled down James’ cheeks. Why couldn’t he be selfish just one more time? He had saved them enough times. They had experienced death before; they could just do it again. So what if they were in the Ninth Dimension now? The Life Tablet could revive them. It didn’t have the same limits as the others. “Why…” His voice cracked. They all stood there in silence as the Force in the skies roared and rumbled. It was as though they couldn’t sense that the world was bearing down on them once again. In the end, even after all the promises, they were still too weak once again. They said that the tears of men didn’t fall so easily, but staring at the light smile on Leonel’s face, even though he didn’t have the strength to look at them, they couldn’t even begin to control theirs. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The four battleships roared, and beams of light descended. They crossed light years of space in a blink, appearing before them with nothing more than a flash of light. James and the others took a breath, their gazes turning malevolent. “Respect the game. Persist to the end.” They whispered these words at the same time, clutching their weapons. Their hearts roared with life as they faced off against the world. “WHO DARES TOUCH MY SON?!” The furious howl of a mother echoed through the skies. It came with so much force that the air rippled in waves. The call seemed too weak to even shatter space, and yet when the soundwaves came in contact with the four beams of light, they crumbled. The sight was unlike anything that they had ever seen before. The concentrated beams of Force shattered from the inside out, crumbling as though they were truly made of glass and falling apart. It looked entirely fake until the bits and pieces crumbled to the earth, wreaking devastation everywhere they landed. At that moment, as the dust cleared and the volatile Force weakened, a woman wearing green draconic armor appeared. Fury burned so brightly in her green eyes that they seemed more like a pair of flickering flames. Her golden hair flowed like a river, whipping about wildly, and tears had practically soaked her cheeks through. She looked down to see the state of Leonel. Her own heart shattered, and her world felt as though it was crumbling right before her eyes. She had lost her husband… and now, her son had breathed his last. The grief of a mother soared through the clouds above, her will becoming so tangible that winds of green spiraled, forming several eastern dragons with scales like shimmering emeralds. Alienor unleashed a shriek that shattered the skies. “All of you… deserve death.” She had tried so hard to make it through. Everything had been so perfectly planned. They should have appeared days ago, just in time for this battle. But it felt like they ran into one roadblock after another, like someone was pulling their puppet strings from behind the scene. She had already felt like this twice in her life before. The first time she was forced to watch her husband die, and now her own flesh and blood, before she could even get to know her son like she wanted to, had died just the same. At that moment, Cynthia realized what the problem was, and further than that, recognizing Alienor, her battle intent soared to the skies. “I will stop her! The rest of you make sure that he is dead!” Her own roar raised up into the skies to Alienor’s, and there was a clash of green and silver in the air. Cynthia suddenly appeared before Alienor. … The skies overturned, and to the astonishment of the Owlans, the Four Great Families, and the Fallen God Beasts, one monstrous battleship after another began to appear. Each one carried the mark of the Ascension Empire on their vessels, but to the people of the world, this marking meant something completely different… The Fawkes Family! Their hearts leapt into their throats. Hadn’t the Fawkes family been wiped out already? How could they be… That was when their eyes all landed on the man that stood at the helm of the largest ship. He wore dragon imperial robes. His should white-gold hair barely shifted in the wind, and his piercing green eyes seemed to carry slits in them that faded into and out of existence. That was the only sign there was that this man had any sort of fluctuating emotions at all. This man… Their hearts shook once again. It was said that many generations ago, there was a genius of the Fawkes family born. It was said that the Fawkes had always been a thorn in the side of the Gods as they were too powerful, but it wasn’t until the birth of this young boy that everyone realized that it was no longer possible to contain this. This young boy, at just the age of seven years, managed to do something entirely unprecedented… Not only did he comprehend the three strongest techniques of the Fawkes by that age, but… He combined them into a single phrase with the help of [Emperor’s Edict] to form an unprecedented Idol. At just seven years old, he became a True God simply by speaking it into existence. And now, that young boy had grown up. If they remembered correctly, his name had been… Gervaise Fawkes.