10,000 for Love

This is the tale of Sureda the Lioness and how she stopped an army of 10,000 souls.

Sureda was a great sorcerer warrior, the greatest in her organization of sorcerer warriors. They were a rag-tag group of outlaws at war with a grand galactic alliance and Sureda had become their trump card.

On this auspicious day her team of rag-taggers had found themselves supporting a rebel army against the galactic alliance and all its supposed grandeur. The rebels had been whittled down to but a fraction of their number. The battle was lost. All that remained was to retreat.

Yet the army of sorcerers of war who stood before them was 10,000 strong, smothering the horizon from east to west. Sureda's comrades were about ready to apologize to the rebels, explaining that this might be the end but Sureda stepped forward before a word could leave anyone's throat.

"Everyone run in the opposite direction. I'll hold them off." She said with more authority than she'd ever said anything in her short life of twenty years. "Are you fucking mad?! There's 10,000 of them!" One of her comrades, Farole, barked into her ear. "Not in the slightest." She looked at him now, an emerald glow to her eyes, an emerald aura pulsating from every pore on her body, leaving Farole and all around from rebel to rag-tagger goosebumps with a look of awe and mild fear.

Farole stood there without a word to share, eyes wide. Before he could try and form sounds in protest an elder among their team stepped forward "Are you sure about this?" he asked but he already knew the answer, they all did. You could feel it in her aura. The unwavering conviction in her words emanated from it like an unstoppable storm. She did not reply but merely looked at him, then at Farole then at everyone else at her back.

"Understood." And they all began to depart. Leaving Sureda to the army of 10,000.

What followed was a release of magical power unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Sureda's emerald aura spread and spread from her body until it devoured the hue of the very sky above, drenching it in shades of green shaped like roaring lions. She felt the army before her falter at the sight, a few gasps making the kilometer long journey between her and them.

For a second she did not know where all this power was coming from but that moment passed in a moment and she knew full well where it was coming from... it was her desire to not see those she loved die.

Sureda had been an orphan alley rat living in the shadow of the greatest city in the Milky Way galaxy. So populated yet so lonely, so cruel and unfeeling toward her plight, an orphan not only in having lost her parents but in having lost any and all opportunities to live a worthwhile life, the world's refuse. No one had cared for her, even her fellow alley rats were but fleeting friends, spending time with her more out of necessity than loving desire. It was an empty and painful life until it wasn't.

Her comrades had found her in the depths of that wretched city and given her a home, food, water... even an education. She had read many books thanks to their tutelage. Learned of the injustice under the Galactic Alliance and the mighty corporate houses at its summit. Of how there were men in this world who lived in walled paradise cities of their own within cities such as the grand capital of her birth, and in learning this she gained a sense of purpose, a purpose she set her comrades on.

Many years had passed since then and Sureda was now one of the greatest sorcerers of bloodshed the galaxy had ever seen yet even her skill could not hope to fell 10,000 sorcerer warriors, their skills vastly inferior to hers or not. Despite this she felt a surge of unbelievable confidence in her own power, as though she could take on the entire galaxy. No, as though she knew she had to.

For what retreated behind her were her precious friends she'd come to love, her friends who had saved her from the bowels of that unfeeling city, her friends who had fought and trained beside her for nigh upon a decade now. Her precious friends she would never allow even an army of 100,000 to scratch.

And with that understanding the Lioness bore her fangs at the souls before her, many of them surely bewildered by the show of emerald dancing in the sky above. She came at them swiftly like a javelin thrown by a man with the strongest arm in the galaxy, like the fastest bullet ever beheld. Crashing through their front-line like a missile, killing dozens in an instant, her emerald aura releasing a hundred arms of pure energy upon the unfortunate souls now surrounding her.

This time her assault must have killed hundreds in but a few breaths. She could hear the mangled screams of those maimed rather than killed, the air misty with their blood and those who had not been so lucky. The warriors retaliated with their own sorceries now, assailing her on all sides with their auras shaped into elongated arms, elongated giant arms, giants and all manner of weapons. Others she could see were beginning to manifest their own special powers, some flying where others controlled everything from the winds to fire to the earth beneath all their fears but it did not matter for she was the Lioness and they were all little more than prey.

Sureda the Lioness manifested her own power now, calling upon the deep green flames of the Lioness resting within the cracks and crevices of her soul. The flames spread from her body, devouring those around in all directions, their own releases of power whether mere auras or unique power proving futile before the raging flames of the Lioness.

It wasn't long before the battlefield was lit from sky to ground in shades of green, from citrine to viridian. The flames feasting on flesh upon the Earth and aura lions performing a dance for the departed in the clouds and blues of the daylight sky.

The dancing and feasting continued and continued but sooner or later even the Lioness hits her limits and Sureda's were rearing their ugly heads now. She must have sent nearly half their number to the afterlife and wounded hundreds more yet thousands, untouched by either the wild arms of her aura or the wilder bite of her flames, yet remained, vital and ready to take her own with their own barrage of magic.

Sureda was about ready to surrender to her death. Ready to unleash one last fusillade of glory, taking as many of these bastards as she could before succumbing to her own impending death.

In that moment she remembered why she fought, where her strength came from and the words the eldest among their group, Abaskul, had spoken to her years ago when she was yet a sapling sorcerer. "True strength doesn't come from one's raw life force itself or hard training and experience but with the right cause." he had piqued her then, so she prodded "And what right cause exactly?" The old man chuckled, rain pouring on them both during an uneventful day of training "There are many right causes but the greatest of all arises when one is protecting people they love." She chuckled herself then "How touching. I'll keep that in mind in a battle someday. Protect old Abaskul and you'll be stronger than ever." a smile on her face as she gave him the snide retort but Abaskul showed no annoyance at her teasing "You are amused now but watch closely someday as this cause makes you into a beast unlike any other." She chuckled some more at him but also chuckled some more now in the present because he was right. She had pulled more strength out of herself than she ever thought possible, than she ever thought was there and she knew what made this possible.

The prospect of losing her friends, the thought that she was all that stood between them and this mass of warriors gave her a resolve unlike any other and old man Abaskul was right, she was a beast unlike any other. But even a beast has its limits and hers were about to do her in before she planted her feet into the earth, held together a firm sumo stance, released a massive viridian aura to push back the foes about to beset her and let out a cry she understood to be her final one before what was to come.

She didn't know if she had it in her, if she could really do it. Not even the greatest of sages in the galaxy considered this a lightly technique. It demanded an absurd amount of control over one's own life-force, enough to concentrate deep within one's self into an absurdly dense mass of pure energy, to hold that energy for as long as one could and then release it into one final glorious blow.

It didn't matter if the Lioness did not have it in her, she knew that she had to have it in her. The few thousand who yet remained could very well catch up with her comrades and the rebels, ending them as much as she had ended the thousands strewn across the field this very instant.

Before releasing this bombardment of final glory Sureda roared at the dozens before her, letting colossal masses of hellish green flames rain down upon them. Swiftly after she surrounded herself with a circle of the hell-fires. Attacking would not be possible while performing her final technique and no one could be allowed to interfere for however long the flames could hold them back.

The greatest technique she would ever perform and no one of note to her would witness. Seemed a tragedy. "My last and greatest and for hardly an audience." She said aloud to herself, walled at all sides by blazing viridian fires. Her last for the technique, for all the destructive power it would grant, demanded a price no less lofty than the user's own life. She had heard of people unleashing this great power and surviving but they were few and far in between. Nearly all who had ever called upon its devastating force, though few in number, had overwhelmingly met their ends and, Lioness or no, Sureda saw herself as no exception, especially in the state she was already in. She had used up much of her life-force already, worrying if she even had enough power to take enough of them with her to the other side.

There was no time to think about all of that. There was only time to do. So do she did. Clapping her hands together as though in prayer, holding that firm sumo stance, she pulled all her life force into one point deep within her torso. The power span and span within into a sphere, spinning and spinning, pulsating and pulsating now as well.

Sureda remembered her friends now, remembering all the good times she had with them. She remembered the slums she was born in as well, the cold and cruelness of them and the warmth and kindness of those who saved her from it. She loved them with all her heart and soul and would embrace what was to come next with a smile on her face.

With those thoughts upon her mind she let out one last lioness's roar for the poor souls she was taking with her and released the power within.

What came next was a blaze of glory unlike any other. So many shades of green whipped out in a grand explosion. Viridian, turquoise, leek, lovat, citrine, glaucous and corbeau. A glorious green explosion that allowed not a shade of red to escape the bodies of the foes besetting Sureda in all directions now, incinerating every last one of them to dust far too quickly for a single drop of blood to be glimpsed.

When the blaze of glory was over but a few hundred must have remained among what was once a host of 10,000 souls. The hundreds who remained would not prove a true ending threat against Sureda's comrades or the rebels they now led through a retreat. She had done her work. Today she had shifted circumstances from a sure demise for all on her side to a sure victory.

She lay there on her back, her body now defined by bruises from hairline to the beginnings of her toenails. The Lioness could feel the bruises and shattered bones winning, her life retreating from her as her comrades did upon her beckoning. She closed her eyes for what she believed to be the final time, as final as that technique was said to be. She closed them with love for her friends still on her mind and hoping beyond hope that her last stand had made a difference, that the beast her will to protect them had made her did its work and did it well. And with that her eyes shut, and Sureda the Lioness surrendered herself to what was to come.

What was to come, to her bereavement, was not death however. But awakening in what looked to be a dodgy infirmary filled with the comrades she had accepted her death for. They smiled at her in unison, Farole breaking the silence "You're a goddamn monster!" He yelled with a stupid grin on his face, Isnino cutting him off before he made to open his mouth again "Keep it down, moron. She's still weak from what happened and there are other sick people here." Farole's grin began to subside now into a look of apology "You had us real worried there." It was Abaskul's voice breaking the silence now. Sureda was so happy to see him, so happy to see all of them "I see you found that power." She looked up at the old man as he made to speak again "The power of a true beast." He said, grinning like Farole did but without the air of stupidity. Tears welled up in her eyes while she grinned back at him, making to nod only for a shot of pain to run down across her body.

"Don't exert yourself. You've been through a lot." The first of her friends she had ever met spoke now, Burhan of the Rain they called him in the battlefield but to her he was Burhan the brother, someone in her life since she was a young girl, someone who'd helped save her from the cesspits of the slums. The tears welling up earlier had begun to pour down her checks like tiny rivers now "Crying, eh?" Burhan said smilingly, no longer leaning his back on the wall behind him "You did something no one's ever done. Can't believe you survived what you did, to be honest. Definitely worth crying over." He looked her in the eyes now "Those are tears of joy, I hope." The tears flowed with ever more vigor now and she smiled at him, at them all. At her friend's she thought she would never see again for want of keeping them safe. At how happy she was to be here, to be among them as it used to be.

And that was how Sureda the Lioness died and a new legend was forged. The legend of Sureda the 10,000 man killer who defeated ten thousand sorcerer warriors with a power that should have killed her if she was anyone else but she wasn't anyone else, she was the beast protecting those she loved.