“You would raise a hand against Your own child?” the Shadow asked, baring its fangs even as sadness crept into its tone. I smiled thinly, keeping my posture relaxed and sword at the ready, held loosely in my grip as it was. The blade seemed to vibrate in my hand, as if sensing my intentions. “They truly have corrupted You, haven’t they? Great One, I will remind You of Your true self.”

  I did not verbally respond, stepping forward and swinging in the same motion, space warping around me to make the strike connect. The Shadow yelped and tried to leap away but was too slow, my blade slipping into it and reverberating off of something held tight, deep in the Shadow’s core. With a grunt I stumbled backward, caught off guard by the fierce backlash, and inability to cut through the Shadow’s core. Was my resolve not strong enough? I narrowed my eyes at the Shadow, whose eight eyes were wide as it inspected itself for an injury that was not there, the blade having seemingly harmlessly entered its body, then back out again.

  No, my resolve was fine. As much as I wanted to talk to the Shadow, to understand it, this had to end now. It was the Shadow’s fate that was stronger than expected.

  “What was that?!” it howled, scrabbling away from me, limbs flailing. I glanced to the side, at Elvira and Keilan, who were hastily mending the barriers between Realms. They needed more time before they could leave. That was fine. I would handle this.

  “The Sword that Does Not Cut.” I said simply, stepping forward once more. Space warped, the Shadow attempting to flee, to dart around me and aim for the Realm Sun once more, but found I was always in front of it. It howled, power it had kept in reserve for my entrance surging outward and upward, dwarfing the power of its siblings by threefold yet still not reaching my height. Dark miasma rushed toward me, flowing off of my skin like mist – seeking to enter my body, but unable to.

  The sword flashed, the Void that comprised its edge, twisted with my intent and purpose, soaking up the rays of light from the Sun. Once, twice more I struck, the first time once again rebuffed with an echoing clang like metal upon metal, while the second swing finally cut through. I grunted as a weight unlike anything I had ever felt launched itself at me, the Shadow’s fate severed at its core. The shield on the sword’s hilt rung like a bell, vibrating terribly as I was sent skidding backward through the faux void, toward the primordial chaos, the Shadow howling in confusion and surprise.

  “What have you done?!” it roared as I steadied myself, gripping the sword with both hands and gritting my teeth. This was far, far heavier than I expected.

  “Severed your fate,” I ground out, feeling out the Shadow’s fate. At a quick glance I couldn’t tell exactly what it was beyond destruction, and an intense connection to the Sun. A wolf, devouring the sun? That sounded familiar. “The blade to sever, the shield to block the backlash and catch the strings, and a brush to rewrite it all. I saw the truth of what you are, Shadow, in the depths of my meditations. Not even you know it, I suspect. This will give you something…else,” I muttered. Disconnecting the Shadow from the fate of the Sun was a tactical move, and the first step to truly defeating it. Just capturing and imprisoning the Shadow, or even wiping away its soul, would not solve the problem. The fundamental cause of the Shadow ran far deeper than that.

  “What I am?! No, I know what you are, Great One!” it snapped. I took a deep breath and flipped the sword around, so the brush on the pommel was held outward like a knife. The weight of the Shadow’s severed fate hung as heavy as the cosmos, from the shield. “I need to remind you-“ I gave it no further time to speak, darting forward and grabbing it by the scruff of the neck, shocking it with my speed. It yelped and struggled – odd, I expected more resistance from it – limbs flailing; its snarl deepened into a foul growl, four remaining spidery legs stabbing forward and sinking inches into my chest.

  A burst of power silenced all of its protests, its limbs remaining in me. It was not painful, the wounds largely superficial, but that was not the point. It was the principle of the matter.

  “Child,” I ground out, glaring at it and readying the brush. “That is enough. Now sit still and let me work.” Two quick strokes was all it took, to seal the ends of the Shadow’s severed fate. I pressed no purpose onto the Shadow, not replacing it with anything else. That was not the point of this. Its crimes could not go unpunished, but neither could it be erased, either. The weight of what it had been still sat heavy in my hands, the sword vibrating from the pressure, but…I stilled.

  Something was wrong. I looked down at the Shadow’s face to see it grinning, and found I could not move my limbs. What?

  “I know who and what you are, Great One. I saw those memories you keep locked away, hidden from the Others. They, just like my siblings, have tainted your greatness with imaginings of what was. I will free you of your bondage,” the Shadow promised. My eyes widened as I peered into the Shadow’s being, peeling back its layers, forcibly hidden from my eyes. Seven drops of my blood swirled beside the Shadow’s soul, tainted and twisted to its own purposes, alongside a few void shards. That was not what was surprising; upon seeing how it had empowered the dark gods with my blood, I had expected this much.

  I did not expect to see threads of power linking said droplets to me, binding my limbs with chains of my own power. It was not a seal that would hold me for long, a few seconds at most, but I dreaded what the Shadow could do in those few seconds – were I not still holding it by the scruff of the neck, and therefore containing it. Oh, we were going to have words.

  “FOOL!” The Shadow yelped. “NOW!” Fool? I wondered. What…?

  And the Sun exploded. Fire and heat washed over the two of us, singing my robes and searing the Shadow’s fur. It cackled madly despite the pain it had to be feeling – and suddenly the fires of the Sun began to recede, sucked into a single point, almost as if a vacuum had sucked it up. Light beamed off of the being that stood where the Sun had been, no less radiant than when it had been a giant, celestial object, its power now concentrated into a single person.

  “Sol! What are you doing?!” I demanded, straining against my chains. The Shadow continued to cackle as the Sun God stepped away from the primordial chaos, sparing me only a single, furious glance before descending upon the Realms. Heat rolled from him in waves, distorting the air and searing all of creation. Alexander rose into the sky weakly, a bit of his power returning as he charged heedlessly at Sol – the Sun god spared him barely a glance, dodging around him in a flash of light.

  I turned my gaze upon the Shadow, fury writ across my features as it looked up at me smugly, still held by the scruff of its neck, even as it retracted its spidery limbs from my chest.

  Such an expression would not last.

  Sol stopped before Elvira, who bared her teeth in a feral snarl. His mere presence so close to the realms burned away energy and land alike, threatening to boil oceans and burn away the Tree. The miniature suns in the physical realm flickered, reacting to his presence, their flames seeking to reach up to join him.

  “I should have been emperor.” He told her, raising a hand. A miniature sun appeared in his palm as he glared at her, beams of white light shooting off of her. “None of you know what it’s like, to be told you have been found wanting, that your purpose is inadequate, to have your authority infringed upon by your own parent! The skies are mine! As the Four Realms should have been!” Keilan’s karmic strings leapt up, trying to reach out to snag Sol, but he was too far away, his heat too intense.

  “You’re a damn fool,” Elvira ground out, fingers twitching as she prepared to release the Realms and leap out of the way. “As soon as I let go, I’m going to crush your head like a grape!” Sol snorted out a half-laugh, and I jerked my limbs forward, one leg breaking free of the Shadow’s binding seal.

  “Quit stalling, fool! Finish it!” The Shadow roared, frothing at the mouth for destruction. “I can only bind the Great One for so long!” I flexed my arm, the hand holding my sword breaking free as I smote the Shadow across the back of the head, effectively silencing it for a brief moment.

  “You have a place in my future kingdom.” Sol said to Elvira, lowering his hand and turning to the Physical Realm and his brother, Gilles. Said god was racing up toward him, shadows curling about his form, the chaotic goddess he had been fighting standing back and watching with a small frown.

  “Brother, no! What are you doing?!” he shouted, desperation filling his chest as he tried to reach Elvira and his brother, torn between who to tackle away. And Sol hesitated. I saw it in him, upon seeing his brother, the other half to his light. Another flex of my power and another shackle was broken, allowing my movement of my other arm. All of this had happened in less than three seconds.

  “Shadows do not have a place. All will know my Light,” Sol promised, and unleashed the sun in his palm. It raced toward Gilles, who could do nothing but blink in surprise at the betrayal of his own brother. It was a powerful strike, meant to wipe out something completely and utterly. And many things happened at once.

  The sun struck Gilles.

  “GILLES!” Elvira screamed in horror and pain.

  Randus snagged him away at the last second, reaching the god of shadows just in time to protect him and pull him into the land of dreams, saved from annihilation.

  And power rippled through the primordial chaos as the Will was awoken.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I thought I was already mad. Mere anger did nothing to justify the absolute rage that pounded through my veins now.

  “SOL!” I boomed, the weight of control freely taken from my shoulders as the Will of the Four Realms activated. The constant, mighty power that flowed through me, strong enough to break reality even without the added weight of the Lunar Star, stored though it was, given an extra set of hands to keep it precise as punishment descended. The bonds that bound me shattered, lightning crackling all through the primordial chaos as it writhed, a face forming in it.

  My face.

  Sol paled as I stepped forward and reached out a hand, the primordial chaos matching my movements, a hand half the size of the Four Realms itself surging from the chaos to reach toward him.

  “YOU HAVE COMMITED A CARDINAL SIN, ATTEMPTING TO DESTROY THE TRUESOUL OF ANOTHER DENIZEN OF THE REALMS.” I boomed. My voice echoed through the chaos, through all of creation. Even the Shadow was pacified, eyes wide as it stared up at me. I had expected you to try this. Not Sol. I thought to myself.

  “No!” Sol shrieked, backpedaling. Fire surged from his form, his bronze skin melting as the power within him sought to change his body back to that of a sun – and he surged downward, toward the physical realm and away from my hand. I grit my teeth and reached for him, waves of fire lashing out to bath the Realms in flames and heat in some last-ditch effort to do something – only for arrows of pure light to strike him, sinking into his chest. It did little more than startle him, backing him off, away from the realm as he stared down at the spiritual objects in his chest – for it being spiritual was how it bypassed the sheer heat he radiated – in surprise.

  Fang Xu stood above the tree, firing arrow after arrow as Sol descended; one archer, trying to shoot down the Sun. Formations sprang to life around him and from the arrows he launched, a small cage forming around Sol in an attempt to mitigate the damage.

  In that next split-second the Hand reached Sol, shrinking in size but not in strength as it closed around him and tore his body from his power; the light of the Sun separated from his soul.

  “No! You can’t do this to me!” Sol raged, struggling against the fate he brought upon himself.

  “PUNISHMENT COMES FOR YOU NOW. I STRIP YOU OF YOUR POWER, YOUR TITLES, YOUR DIVINITY, YOUR IMMORTALITY! I STRIP YOU OF ALL THAT YOU WERE, DOWN TO THE VERY LAST INCH!” Each statement was punctuated by another piece of his being, being wiped away, until all that remained was his truesoul. That last piece I would leave alive, though I would lessen it greatly. It was a truesoul that decided whether a being would reincarnate as a mortal, like a Fae, or an insect or a plant. It was a truesoul that contained one’s dao, one’s path to becoming greater. When I said that the truesoul contained all that which most important, I did not lie. Personality, memories, all those could be built up again, and remembered. Losing the core of one’s self, letting it die, that could not be.

  Even that, I lessened in Sol.

  He would rejoin the Realms, starting as the lowest of the low. In time, he might rise up again, with new lessons learned, and new purpose. I didn’t much care, though I would be watching for him. It is a punishment I wish I could give to the Shadow. I thought icily, almost begging it to cross one of those lines, to give me that final reason. The Shadow squirmed in my grip, trying to break free of me and reach the energy of the Sun, contained though it was. It was in that moment the Shadow tried to do something stupid.

  Power surged within its gut as it ignited my blood, pooling within it. I scowled and turned my full attention to it, the explosion building within itself as it tried to self-destruct, clearly hoping to do some final amount of damage, perhaps even make me lose control over the Sun –

  “Enough out of you!” I snarled, letting go of the sword – which floated beside me all the same – and grabbing its forehead with my now-free hand. The raging explosion stilled for a moment as I wrapped my power around my blood, the void shards, and the other thing that made the Shadow what it was. It took a moment. We wrestled with each other for a moment longer than I wanted it to, the Shadow resisting me with all its might. But eventually the Shadow’s grip slipped, and I yanked that which was mine to begin with free of its grasp, loosened as it was by the severance of fate.

  The Shadow sagged as I hauled this chunk of power and being free, the thing that made its fate what it had been shifting in my grip like a ball of smoke and darkness. I bared my teeth at it, hissing in momentary indecision what to do with it. In an instant I cooled the explosion threatening to rip through those droplets of blood, separating out the void shards. A bit of primordial chaos floated up to me, forming a cage in which I stuffed the now-defeated Shadow into, then promptly sealed away the power I had taken in a glass jar, to be dealt with later.

  I turned back to the Realms, and what I saw surprised me.

  The Shadow’s final gambit had made me lose a bit of focus, even with the Will of the Realms aiding me. Some of the Sun’s power had slipped through the grip of my hand of primordial chaos, rays of fire and heat shooting off through the realms – most not hitting anything important, but a few coming dangerously close to certain objects. Alexander batted away two with his tail, his scales now blackened from the heat. The gods of fire and water contained another, directing it away from Keilan, injured though they were. Elvira took one to the face with gritted teeth. It was Fang Xu who surprised me the most, however, standing before the Tree with arms spread.

  Five streaks of fire and light flowing into his chest as he channeled it into his soul, the power burning him inside and out. Celene screamed from below, the immortal woman too far away to reach him as he stood before the Tree, absorbing all the rays that had threatened to hurt it further. His soul shuddered under the strain, another ray of light curling around to sink into him. I narrowed my eyes.

  Wait…all the rays were flowing to him now.

  Alexander blinked in surprise as residual energy clinging to his scales, heat and light from the Sun seeping out of his form to rejoin the rest of itself in Fang Xu. My eyes narrowed further as the other rays of light, such as the one which was contained by Fire and Water, for example, gently turned and flowed to Fang Xu as well. The man’s face was red in pain and frustration, his soul shaking – and I realized what was happening.

  The Sun was seeking its core, the power that manifested it trying to remake itself and return once more to being that great big ball of fire in the sky. And Fang Xu, in his brave stupidity, in his attempt to protect the Realm and his loved ones in the only way he knew how, had thrown himself in the way and unwittingly offered up himself as the core. There was just one issue.

  Sol’s destructive intent still lingered in the Sun’s essence, fading though it was. It burned Fang Xu not just because it was too much for his immortal body to maintain, but also because it sought to destroy him inside and out. And destroy him it would try, right down to his truesoul.

  I scowled and made a grasping motion with one hand, Fang Xu hurtling out of the Realms to float before me – I had to get him out of there before the power imploded to become the Realm Sun once more.

  “You idiot,” I hissed, looking the man over as he struggled before me, sweat beading his brow – only to be evaporated an instant later. “You bloody idiot. You’re killing yourself again – when will you learn your lesson, damn it?!” I barked, though the man couldn’t hear me. Already pieces of himself had burned away into free energy; his immortality was gone, as was his qi and a large chunk of his soul. His will, however, remained, and kept him from collapsing.

  Then I stilled, staring at him, mind working in overtime, fully aware of the Shadow’s eyes upon us, greatly weakened though it was. Fang Xu’s soul was whispering to me, begging me not to save him, but to simply end the threat of the Sun exploding and destroying everything, unaware as he was that I already had. The corners of my lips tugged into a frown as I grabbed him by the chin, unable to control my unrestrained aura and uncaring that it put even further pressure on him. And something tickled the back of my mind. Visions and dreams came to me as I studied Fang Xu for what felt like an eternity, but was in fact mere nanoseconds.

  Eight pillars. And the Sun does need a guide…

  “Damn fool. Fang Xu, you foolish, brave mortal, I have a proposition for you. It’s going to suck, but it will give your soul a chance for survival.” I promised, touching his soul and easing its pain for but a moment. I put a hand upon the power of the Realm Sun, slowing its eager flow. There were no words of comfort here. It was either this, or watch his soul burn away under the pressure of the Sun – in fact, the pressure was the only thing keeping what little remained of his soul together; stopping the process could even shatter him. I could maybe protect his truesoul, but that would mean the Red String that connected him and Celene would instantly shatter, as well. Even this was likely to sever it…unless. The orb of the Lunar Star burned cold in my pocket.

  Do it. Fang Xu’s soul beseeched me, clutching tightly to that red string. I stood and held out my hand, the Sword that Does Not Cut flying back into my palm. In one smooth motion I swung it down upon the man, severing the burned pieces of his soul. He screamed in pain and anguish – for there was no pain like having your soul injured – and held out my other hand, what remained of Sol’s divinity flying into the other. This, too, I cut in half before stuffing it into Fang Xu. Immediately his expression slackened and relaxed, red hair igniting in flames, eyes glowing gold…then rolling up into the back of his skull as he passed out.

  “It’s up to you now. It will take tens of thousands, if not millions of years to assimilate the divinity and the power of the Realm Sun – it will not be comfortable, that I promise, as it burns away your mortality. But you may yet survive to find Celene again.” I whispered, before shoving him away and letting the rest of the Realm Sun’s energy go.

  It flowed to him instantly, igniting in a burst of power and flash of light – and then the Realm Sun floated once more outside the Realms, its light no longer harsh and burning, but soft and warming. Immediately I felt the Realms sigh in relief as it was returned to some semblance of normalcy; even the hand of primordial chaos started to fade, though I directed that raw stuff of creation into the cracks in the Realms to act as glue and begin the mending process. Elvira and Keilan sighed in relief as a weight was taken off their shoulders; even Reika pulled herself out of her Tree, green light radiating from her as she began to heal the Realms.

  I, however, turned my attention back to the Shadow, who stared at me despondently.

  “What…” it rasped weakly. “Did you take from me…?”

  “What was originally mine.” I said bluntly, retrieving the jar I had sealed that dark power in. I cast a critical eye over it, knowing what I had to do. But not yet. My children deserved an explanation as well. “And I don’t mean just the blood. This was my weakness.”

  “…weakness?” The Shadow asked.

  “Yes. Becoming a god is hard enough, but becoming a creator god? That is another matter entirely. Parts of my soul had to be removed - weakness in my being, that could not stand up to the unfiltered power of creation - so the right, stronger parts could grow to the required levels. That weakness of mine clung to you. Empowering you, growing in strength just as I did.” I explained, twisting it back and forth. I hadn’t taken it all away from the Shadow, because it had been born of that weakness. As one of those first, weak little souls I made, that weakness had latched onto the Shadow and twisted its growth. But I couldn’t let it be controlled by my own weakness, given purpose by some foul machination of fate and the nature of creation.

  “What…are you going…to do with it?” The Shadow asked.

  “For now, nothing,” I said, turning away from the Shadow, leaving it in the cage I had made for it. It wouldn’t last forever, but it would do for now. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have your mess to clean up. Then we’ll decide what to do with you.”

  This decision, however, would not be mine alone to make. The severed fate was far too heavy for that.

  Shadow: Not quite as shadowy anymore.

  Sol: Former sun god. Foolish. Might come back as a bumblebee.

  Gilles: God of Shadows. Just shy of crispy.

  Fang Xu: One of the Two Lovers. Baking in the oven.

  The Sword that Does Not Cut: Cut something. Is proud of this.