Purity and Corruption

15 minutes to arrival.

The message played from the microspeaker of the traveling-pod, indicating the approach to the alien planet. In 15 minutes, he would break through the atmosphere of the world, burning through the sky as he descended to the surface. He had thought over the plans thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands, of times in his head, remembering the last words of his peers. He could feel the pod shaking as it broke through another asteroid, easily fracturing the stone at the faster-than-light velocity the vessel had reached.

10 minutes to arrival.

A small screen flipped out from the blank casing he had been gazing into. How long had it been since he had started the journey? A day? A month? A year? He pulled his arm up slightly, poking at the time indicator on the flat glowing pane of glass. From the time he had left home to the time now, it had been a mere six hours. He sighed, pressing the timer again as the distant planet slowly grew in the screen. Closer, closer, closer, inch by inch, it came.

5 minutes to arrival.

The planet now filled up a good third of the screen. He could now see clearly the details of the alien world; in essence, it was not too different from his own. A world nearly covered in water, continents covered in bands of colors as the biomes varied between the off-center arctic poles. He chuckled slightly, thinking of the few relative differences between his world and this one. The screen rotated back into place.

30 seconds to arrival.

He reached for the straps of the pod, ensuring they were of the proper tightness as he secured the buckles and tested the suspension of the bed-like object he had spent his journey in.

15 seconds to arrival.

Another asteroid crash.

10 seconds to arrival.

Several asteroid crashes.

9.

He closed his eyes as the pod slowed itself.

8.

A faint glow could be seen around the pod as it heated in the planet’s atmosphere.

7.

The heat inside the pod grew as it plunged further.

6.

He broke into sweat as the pod’s heat escalated beyond the conditioning of his suit.

5.

The pod rattled as the friction of the atmosphere was counteracted by the hull’s plating.

4.

Gas seeped into the chamber of the pod as it matched the internal pressure with that of the alien world’s atmosphere.

3.

Interference knocked out the navigation equipment, the pod’s path destabilizing.

2.

Afterburners pushed to slow the vessel, expending the last of its fuel.

1.

Collision.

As the pod rest, lodged partway into the soft ground of the alien world, intense heat radiated from the steel of the vessel, burning the nearby vegetation and melting the surrounding stone. On the inside of the pod, the gas had ceased with the depressurization, and he deactivated the buckles on his seat’s belts, releasing him from the cushioned hold he had been in for the six hour journey. Collecting the items of his trade from their magnetic hold on the opposite end of the pod, dressing in his uniform and equipping himself with his tools; one ceremonial pixane, one pair of blue tinted goggles, two steel-clawed gloves, one platinum capped ironwood wand, and a sickle-ended swordbreaker. Strapping the weapons to his belt, he pressed a series of buttons on the pod wall to the right, releasing the locks on the pod’s transfer hatch as he pushed it open. A crowd of the alien beings native to the planet had formed around the crash site of the pod, curious as to the strange asteroid that had fallen from the sky, forged of a smooth metal rather than the usual chaotic rock formation. As the traveler exited the pod, the aliens backed away, unsure of what the being who stood before them was; it was tall, much taller than any of them, and its skin was a pale shade of blue. Its hair was black, with a single white stripe down the middle, and it had dark grey horns emerging from the side of its head.The traveler looked down upon the short crowd that had formed around him; their own skin was a pale, almost pink color, and they lacked the horns native to his race.

Shaking his head, almost as if to force the thought out, he walked out of the pod, through the crowd and towards a nearby cliff face that had been his true target. Lodged into the base of the cliff was a luminescent golden throne, a single being seated upon it; it was covered in a metallic blue-grey armor, wielding a different weapon in each of its four hands, the weapons also formed of the odd blue-grey metal. The traveler approached, drawing his wand in his right hand and his blade in his left; as the seated figure noted his presence, it stood from its throne, taking a few steps forward to meet the traveler. His mouth, partially exposed underneath the armor, took on the shape of a wild grin as he spoke, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t one of the Adricans. I should have known that one of you would show up on my planet’s doorstep one day or another.” He looked at the Adrican’s hands, inspecting the weapons it wielded, his grin only growing as he laughed. “Oh, an assassin? Hah. Do you really believe you can kill me? Well, I suppose it would be good form to give you a chance, wouldn’t it?” He turned around, taking a few steps back before turning to face him once more. “Well, I’m ready, Adrican. Take as many shots as you wish, and once you’ve successfully tired yourself out, I’ll kill you.”

The Adrican lifted his dagger above his head, taking a powerful leap forward and swinging the blade through his target; though the edge sliced through both armor and flesh effortlessly, the throned one simply regenerated almost immediately afterwards. Putting away his blade, he channeled various elemental energies through his wand, firing a flurry of magical attacks at the armored figure; however, the magic simply dissipated against the surface of the being’s armor, leaving him completely unscathed. “Hah. Hah hah. As you can see, you can’t even do any damage to me. After all, you’re in my domain, on my planet. Neither sword nor spell can affect me. So, are you ready to give up, or do you want to continue in your quest of futility?” The Adrican slid his wand into its place on his belt, tightening his clawed gloves. “Do you really think those gloves will do anything your blade didn’t? You should just give up now, Adrican. Nothing can harm me. Everything is in perfect order, as it should be, assassin.” The Adrican held out his hands, the gloves gaining a dark purple aura that seemed to dissipate into the nearby vicinity as bolts of shadowy energy, arcing between the gloves and the ground nearby. The Adrican spoke, declaring, “Disrupting Order is my specialty.” He leaped once more, slashing at the armored figure. Once more, the blades tore effortlessly through the throned one’s armor and flesh.

This time, however, the wounds did not regenerate. As the throned one realized what had happened, his grin turned to grimace, and he lept back, tightening his grasp on his weapons. “Now you’ve done it, Adrican. You could’ve died a quick and painless death, but now I’m going to have to make it as drawn out and tortuous as possible.” The chaotic energy continued to flow through the Adrican’s gloves and he drew his dagger once more, the blade elongating and gaining a wave-like shape as the chaos was infused within. The two fought, the sharp sound of steel against steel ringing throughout the region as the Adrican parried the throned one’s attacks, slashing further away at him whenever the opportunity arose; as the throned one took more and more damage while the Adrican had been left nearly unscathed, he grew ever more infuriated, energy bleeding out from him as he warped back towards the throne. “Enough!” he exclaimed, dropping his weapons as his armor shed, falling to the ground beneath him. “I’ve had enough of this, Adrican! You think you can make a fool of me?! THE GOD OF HUMANITY!?! *I THINK NOT!***” As his voice boomed throughout the valley, his body seemed to burn with a bright blue energy, the flames growing as the being within scaled as well.

As the flames dissipated, all that was left was a hideous form, a mass of flesh and unknown elements only capable of partially resembling its previous form by analogy; long, thick tentacles writhed from where the beast’s arms would have been, and it seemed to twist and turn in ways that no being, living or dead, should have been able to take on. A voice emanated from it, but there was no obvious source for the sound; “Now, Adrican, you will die.” The being’s tentacles homed in on the Adrican, coming from what seemed like every direction; as the tentacles approached, the Adrican cast a blink spell, instantaneously transferring his entire form from the place he previously stood and on top of the beast. The Adrican held his blade with both hands, stabbing down into one of the beast’s many eyes; it hissed with burning energy, forcing the Adrican off.

As a group of the beast’s tentacles tended to the eye, those remaining resumed their focus on the Adrican, thrusting themselves towards him. The blade, as it had before, sliced effortlessly through flesh, the burning hiss emitting from each tentacle as he cut through it. It was not long before the Adrican had hacked his way through all the tentacles the beast had thrown at him, reaching the core once more. A nearby eye looked down at him, the Adrican slashing away at it as the beast writhed in agony. He cut through the entirety of the beast, the parts he cut off hissing as they dissipated into nothingness, and soon, nothing but a single eye remained. It looked up at the Adrican, the voice returning for a final time as it hissed, “You think I’ll plead for you to keep me alive? No. No, I won’t plead for you to let me live any more than I would plead to a wasp to not sting me. You’re nothing more than an insect, and you can’t kill me any more than any other insect can. Do your worst.” The Adrican plunged the blade into the eye, the final part of the beast dissipating as the chaos energy tore it apart.

The Adrican dropped his blade, exhausted from the exertion of the battle. A crowd of the humans had formed around him, and he looked between them, speaking once more. “Your god is dead. You are free.” A sound arose from the crowd; not that of cheers, but one of rage and fury. The humans cursed the Adrican, overwhelming the drained being as their mages tore open a portal as quickly as possible, disregarding its instability; as long as the one who killed their god was gone, it didn’t matter. They flung him into the portal, sealing it behind him.