//------------------------------// // Chapter 10: Destruction, Ascendent // Story: Visitor from Another World // by Novus Ordo Seclorum //------------------------------// Chapter 10 Destruction, Ascendent The huge draconequus charged up over the edge of the pit. He had been bested by a puny mortal, and he intended to show said mortal what happened to those who bested him. “You little piece of nothing, I’ll--!” he shouted, then stopped dead in his tracks. There was no sign of the human or the five equines. However, there was a figure lying in the center of the pit, glowing with energy discharge. Without pause, Destruction rushed to his younger brother’s side. “No…no no no no, what’s happening to you?” Destruction pleaded. The smaller draconequus looked up at Destruction. “Brother…I am dying.” “No!” Destruction said, clasping Despair’s lion paw in his own. “Don’t say that…you can’t die…Father told me to protect you….” Despair chuckled slightly. “You could not have done a better job, Brother. That human…it is not of this world. It used technology from some foreign dimension…something against which I had no chance.” “There must be something, anything!” “No, nothing can save me now,” Despair said calmly. “Do you remember the day Father appointed us as commanders in his army?” Destruction nodded, tears beginning to flow. “That day, we swore to always be at each other’s back, and that, should one of us fall, the other would find the bastard who did it, and make him wish he were never born.” “I remember, Brother,” Destruction whispered. “Don’t let me die in vain, Brother,” Despair replied, his voice hoarse. “Take my power. Find the human. Tear its soul asunder. Avenge me….” At that point, Despair’s eyes rolled up, and his body went limp, the glow slowly fading. Without hesitation, Destruction ripped into his brother’s body, searching for Despair’s seat of power. He found it, and held it up, the object’s fierce glow rivaling that of the sun. His heart. Not wasting a second, Destruction opened his maw wide and swallowed the organ whole. He gagged, not from what he had just swallowed, but from the sudden influx of raw energy. He held his talon in front of him and watched in morbid fascination as it doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size. His head ballooned out, causing him to cry out in pain. He loosed a skyward scream, followed by a massive explosion. The now-gargantuan draconequus stood at the epicenter of the energy release. He looked around, seeing what he had been able to accomplish with just a minor drain on his power, and he laughed. We are not Destruction. We are not Despair. We are not even Discord. We are Death, and we will avenge our brother.