Potential of the Children

The Creature took some time to contemplate its mistakes. It was supposed to be a child of Perfection and Beauty yet it had created such imperfect and downright ugly results in its first cleansing. The Creature began to travel again as it contemplated what the Sky had intended with its design. What made it different from other Children of the Sky? Why did it have emotions but not the self-control to make something Beautiful out of them? Why did it not have the desire to die after deviating so much from Perfection and Beauty? Was it not true that the Children of the Sky could not let themselves be stained?

As it traveled through the decrepit landscape created by the Earth, it formed more and more questions about its own existence. It wanted to understand itself. To make sure that the Perfection the Sky had gifted to this body and mind would not go to waste. The Sky sought Perfection, so it stood to reason, that the Creature was also Perfect. Yet the Creature had so far only faced its own imperfections. It struggled to eradicate to kill a single magician of a farming village. It had failed to restrain its emotions. It spent time trying to figure out what part of its existence had been perfected by the Sky.

During its travels it found a few more of these villages. Each one reinforced the beliefs of the Creature. It wiped each village out but took time to witness the different reactions of the Ezlix. It needed to understand its enemy, to kill it. Sometimes it thought that these creatures were able of Beauty, but each time it was thrown into a mud of disgusting plagiarism and vile thoughts. There were times it found so called artists, but they showed works that either imitated the works of the Sky without understanding them or these artists put their soul into their works. This should have created at least some Beauty, no matter how disturbed these creatures were in their mind. But it always ended in a showcase of vileness put out into the world.

The Creature even tried to converse with one of the Ezlix. To its dismay, the Ezlix claimed that the Sky made those who looked mad and delusional. The Ezlix even tried to convince something as vile as the notion that the Creature should abandon its mission. The reasons, if they could even be called reason as they were as far removed from logic, as the Earth was from the Sky, were that the mission had been forced upon the Creature and that its hatred was conditioned by the Sky.

The Creature put its thoughts into the Sky gifted language to help the Ezlix understand the flaws in its rationing and let it experience what actual Perfection and Beauty was like. The Ezlix wanted to kill the rest of the village as it understood the filth that they represented. But it killed itself before it could do it, since it had been to disgusted by its own existence. The Creature after the conversation never talked to the Ezlix again, as it saw that their minds were far too corrupted by the filth of the Earth to be reasoned with.

Thus, its journey continued. It still didn’t understand where its own perfection lied. It, someday, spotted a peculiar scene under the glory of the nightly Sky. It was a fortress surrounded by other Children of the Sky.

The fortress was gigantic. Its walls made of a dark grey stone that tried to reach the Sky with countless holes in the wall to allow archers and magicians to shoot outwards. The wall was fully staffed, with not a single hole missing a single Ezlix. Inside the wall were structures that must have sprung out of the mind of a madman imitating the golden lines of the Sky. These structures looked like houses that iron blocks that had been molten, filling out every free space on the ground, while at the same time stretching themselves upwards.

But not a single one of these structures came even close to the height of the wall, instead they began twisting themselves into each other, creating a labyrinth of steel and stone that spanned across the entirety of the free air space of the fortress. The Creature perceived 364,187 Ezlix crawling around in the inside of the fortress with three Ezlix that had the majority of the energy of the fortress compressed into their forms. One of the Ezlix turned its head into the direction of the Creature when the gaze of the Creature wandered over it, before continuing to converse with the other special Ezlixs.

The Creature then observed the other Children of the Sky instead of this fortress that showcased the best of the imitation abilities of the Ezlix. In each of the other Children, could the Creature clearly see the intent and genius of the Sky. It saw spiraling beings, made of small light grey and vibrant green metal threats that were woven into each other, that could compress and accelerate energy to the utmost limits of the natural laws. The Creature saw a swarm of microscopic beings, that changed its form and color with each passing moment. It could feel how matter and energy just disappeared when it touched the body of these microscopic beings.

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Before it could spend more time witnessing the pure creativity and Beauty of the craftsmanship of the Sky, the assault began. The Creature had seen how a Ezlix out of the nervousness and exhaustion of its mind let a single spell fly towards the Children of the Sky. This caused the Children to begin their attack. Each of the Children expressed their own specialties to their limits. For the first time in its short life, did the Creature witness how weak it truly was. Even if it could ignore the other Children, who each showed abilities far out of the possibilities of the Creature, even the Ezlix were beyond what the Creature could handle.

A single archer that had filled one of these countless holes could have killed hundreds of the Creature with the speed of their arrows alone. The magicians were the opposite of the archers, they had let go of all precision and instead flung spells that destroyed everything in a hundred-meter radius. The worst part was that both the archers and magicians could attack at rates that the Creature could never even hope to replicate.

While these Ezlix seemed insane in their strength, they still died all the same against the Children of the Sky. Not a single Child even got so much as a scratch by the time the first damage was done to the wall. It took until the first wall fell, to draw a single drop of blood from one of the Children. The Creature did not move from its spot, as it watched the battle rage on and move into the fortress itself, since it knew that it would just die if it went. It observed, as the three special Ezlix moved towards the southern wall. It watched as more and more of its brethren were inflicted with wounds.

The fortress was slowly being coated with the internal liquids of the Children and Ezlix. The Creature than slowly began to realize an imperfection as it watched the first of the Children to be killed in battle. It was not an imperfection in the design of the Children, nor was it an imperfection with their individual battles. The imperfection was in the coordination and lack of cooperation of the Children. The Children of the Sky were individual fighters by design. Each was designed with the purpose of eradicating their corner of the Earth on their own. It was only now, that the defenders were on their last legs, that so many Children gathered in one place.

The Creature wanted to verify a guess regarding its nature, so it began to communicate with the Children that were near the three special Ezlix. It only managed to contact two Children by the time the three had reached the southern edge of the fortress. The two Children specialized in pure physical power and fire control respectively. The Creature understood that it was not possible to keep all three of the Ezlix here today. It created a battle plan, that would if executed perfectly manage to kill one and injure another one. Of course, this was only if the three Ezlix could cooperate perfectly with each other and focused only on escaping.

The two groups met each other thirty meters outside of the wall. The Children were thanks to the guidance of the Creature already battle ready, while the Ezlix were surprised. Although, they managed to catch themselves before anything could happen. The Creature then began to guide its two brethren through the fight. At first it needed to rely on its predictive abilities to give the best options to the two Children, but as the fight raged on its thinking got faster. It began to be able to react to the opponent’s attacks. This allowed the fight to lean in favor of the Children more and more.

The Creature convinced a few Children to join the fight. Although, these Children would not impact the fight themselves, they would force the Ezlix to abandon one of their own. By this point the Children had managed to hurt all of the Ezlix to differing degrees. The Ezlix that had managed to perceive the gaze of the Creature, noticed the approaching reinforcements of the Children and shouted a few words to its companions.

The most injured Ezlix was left behind to stall the Children.

The strategy of the Creature had managed to kill one of the three special Ezlix, remove an eye from one of the surviving ones and inflict deep wounds on the other. The outcome was better than the Creature first predicted, it seemed that the Ezlix could not think as logical and fast as the Creature. The Creature then began to guide the rest of the Children in the fortress, to remove any unnecessary risk from this battle. There were no more casualties among the Children after the Creature took command, although some were still injured. These injuries happened, because the Creature was still not familiar enough with splitting its focus among so many fights at once.

The battles ended at around midnight with the fortress innards molten and destroyed and the walls cracked open at various entrances. During the battle the Creature had taken note of the specialties of each individual Child, to improve its plans and strategies in the future. The Creature had seen a glimpse of Beauty during the fight. The Beauty of perfectly synchronized members of a large scale battle. The Beauty of completely predicting and outmaneuvering the enemy forces. The Creature barley took note of the changes that had happened to its body during the fight, as it felt a new kind of excitement coursing through its body.

It gathered the Children and proposed the idea, that they would together take down the last few fortresses of the Ezlix. Unsurprisingly every single Child of the Sky agreed, as they had witnessed the beautiful efficiency of the Creature. This was the first coordinated group of Children since they had come into existence. They began to move throughout the lands, removing any gathering of Ezlix and growing their numbers. They took down three more fortresses, all of similar design, until they reached the final bastion of the defenders. The Creature had gotten closer to Perfection with each battle it directed. In the beginning, it just coordinated the Children into this perfect dance of a fight, but it had begun to learn that it could also manipulate the actions of the Ezlix, by giving their degenerate minds hints of terror, bliss or other emotions.

The army of 124,289 Children of the Sky gathered in front of the last bastion. Inside the bastion were 89,653,531 Ezlix. The last of their kind. The cleansing of the Earth had almost ended. They just needed to remove these defenders and then they would have free reign to remove the Earth from existence. The Creature would show the Sky that it had grown into Perfection; it would show that it understood the Beauty of a perfect strategy; the Beauty of calculating every single detail of a battle.