Bloodlines of the Ancient Pantheons

"Let Gridd go, and then we'll talk. You need our information. You can't demand it by force," Karl said, knowing that the Xis would break his grip on his friend.

With a quick hand gesture, limiting himself to carrying it along his hips, the Overseer left Gridd, who fell to the ground on her knees, dropping one of her swords and grabbing it soon after.

"You still don't understand how important Dag is to us, Xis. He is the perfect hybrid, more like us than you," the Xis said, walking forward over Karl, who watched him pass by, looking at him in fear.

"Dag is a human being like us, in all things. Stop talking like that about something you don't know. Although you have observed him since his arrival here on Skjold, you have never lived by his side. I won't let you talk like that about him! Karl and I don't know where he is. None of us knows where she is!" Gridd angrily exclaimed, stretching her sore legs because of the spell that had kept her stuck in mid-air.

"My time here is running out, and I haven't found the answers I'm looking for yet. I found only hostility, anger towards my race, and zero collaboration on the part of you human beings. You ungrateful... venerate the Gods of the past without focusing on your race's present and future. We are more powerful than the Gods you worship, we are more powerful than anything and anyone else, and we have allowed you to live despite the impurity that stains your soul! You are sons of sin, but you continue to act as if you have the right to choose!" the Overseer exclaimed, evidently troubled by the irreverence of Karl and Gridd, beginning to lose patience.

"Do you really think we're foolish enough not to know that it was you who caused our end?" 

"Uh?!"

While the black-haired Xis' gaze was pointed at Gridd, Karl's words struck him deeply, inevitably drawing his eye.

Even the Shieldmaiden was amazed at her young friend's courage and fearfully looked up at him, fearing the worst.

"What did you say, human?" the Overseer asked, turning to Karl and opening wide his piercing purple eyes.

Karl clenched his fists and swallowed empty. "You heard what I said. Don't believe that we humans don't know the truth about you. You believe that the danger is only Dag, but you are blind! You can't realize we're one in the same! You should kill us all so that you can continue to act in the dark, no one excluded! But you can't do that, right? You can't exterminate us!" Karl replied aloud, whose speech was also heard by Eirik and Asa, still standing behind the window.

Karl stopped talking, breathing hard due to cold and nervousness. Just as he looked his interlocutor in the eye, pretending not to feel any fear, the Overseer disappeared from his position and suddenly appeared in front of the young healer, grabbing him by the throat and lifting him off the ground.

"Aaargh!" 

"Karl! Let him go!" Gridd shouted, unleashing a celestial aura around her, as two wings of the same colour popped up from behind her back and shone in the darkness of the night.

After slamming the blades of his swords on each other and causing a loud metallic noise to distract the Xis, Gridd leapt forward, flapping her large celestial wings and rising into the air, pointing at her enemy.

The farmhouse's door suddenly opened, and Eirik stopped at the threshold, shouting his sister's name, fearing that that mysterious being with superhuman powers might hurt her.

Gridd, without listening to Eirik's screams, swooped toward the Overseer, pointing both blades of her swords forward, ready to hit him.

*puff*

Before the Shieldmaiden's swords reached their target, both Xis and Karl disappeared into thin air: Gridd, who did not expect such a breakthrough, failed to stop in time and crashed into the ground, rolling forward for a few meters, twisting into her own wings.

"Gridd! Sister!" Eirik yelled again, running towards her, as Asa watched the scene from behind the window, afraid.

"Where are they?! Where did they go?! Karl! Kaaarl! Where are you?!" Gridd shouted, returning back on her feet and refusing her brother's help, looking around frantically, unable to find her friend anywhere.

...

"Aaargh! Help! What... where...?! Aaargh!" Karl screamed desperately, clinging forcefully to Frostsinner's arm and begging him not to leave his grip, looking down and noticing that his feet were floating in the air, a hundred feet high.

"You are aware of the truth, yet you continue to cling so desperately to life! Why?! What drives you to live on, if you know that your masters are actually the architects of your end?!" the Xis asked, as the wind moved his long hair swirling and the cold emanating from his body grew more and more, expanding on Karl's arm, which never stopped shaking. 

"I... I... I don't want to die! You... you do not have the right to choose who lives and who dies! Dag told me lots of things about you! He told me what you were doing to the children who weren't chosen by your machine! He was just a child, and you forced him to abandon his friends and his childhood, throwing him into an unknown planet and forcing him to get by with his own strength! Try to imagine if you were in his place! You wouldn't have survived for a second!" Karl yelled, whose hand clutching the Xis' robe stopped moving, freezing.

"Me?! How dare you speak to me with such disrespect and compare me to a filthy human being?! When my civilization conquered worlds, the first single-celled aquatic life was beginning to be born on your planet! It is evident that this planet has begun to rot, and it is all the fault of 813666, who put these stupid concepts in your mind, altering the balance of things!" the Xis exclaimed, opening his eyes as if he had finally decided what to do with the young healer, whose hands were frozen and were slowly giving up his grip, the grip that kept him alive.

At one point, as the wind continued to blow strongly, the Overseer took a deep breath, calming the tone of his voice and looking Karl back in the eye. "The balance must be restored. That is my mission. If I can't reach 813666, then he'll reach me."