He hovered above them, holding the ship over his head like it was weightless. “WITNESS THE TRUE POWER OF DARKNESS!”
Roaring, he flew over to the aircraft carrier and brought down the destroyer onto it like the sword of Damocles, ripping the carrier in half and turning the vertical destroyer in a pillar of fire. The sky now darkened by eternal smoke, Xavier hovered, breathing in the sweet aroma of chaos. It was a smell he would miss.
The final challenge came in the deserts outside of Jerusalem, where the entire Israeli army had been gathered. Every soldier, tank, and helicopter was gathered. The city itself had been evacuated.
Xavier stopped just out of their range of sight and dropped Helena off at a rocky crag to hide. “One last fight, then we shall arrive.”
She leaned against him, her heart aching. “Please, try and be quick. I don’t want to see any more bloodshed.”
“That’s up to them, not me.”
He then took flight and approached the desert army, his blood boiling with anticipation. For Helena’s sake, he decided to at least give them a chance.
“PATHETIC MORTALS! I HAVE SLAIN MORE OF YOU ON THIS DAY THAN I DARE COUNT! LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND WALK AWAY! THOSE WHO LEAVE WILL BE SPARED! THOSE WHO STAY WILL BE SLAUGHTERED! EMBRACE THE FUTURE!” From what he could see, none of them were leaving. “Very well. I shall teach all of you despair.”
He dropped down onto the dry ground and clapped his hands together. From between his hands, a massive claymore emerged. He then curled up his wings into cones like he had before and began firing jets of black fire from the folds. Propelled by these twin rocket boosters, he hurtled across the arid wasteland almost as if skating, but with the talons on his feet ripping the ground apart and a vast cloud of dust rising behind him. He could see the fear in the soldiers’ eyes before he even reached them, and that fear only grew once he began his rampage.
He pounced on the first tank, slicing it down the middle with his claymore. Nearby, soldiers opened fire with Uzis, but the small rounds merely bounced off his skin. Turning to them, he raised his hand and black light flashed from his palm, incinerating the soldiers in an instant. The ground around him became a tempest of smoke and dust, brought about by the missiles of a military helicopter. The craft’s entire payload was fired, but from the sandy cloud, black wires reached out like lunging snakes and grabbed the helicopter. Stepping out of the dust, Xavier swung his arm and sent it crashing down into a tank. With more tanks and helicopters approaching, he got down on all fours. Growing from either side of his spine, straight tusks of bone were formed and then launched, propelled by streams of fire as Xavier’s own missiles. The flying pikes shot the helicopters out of the sky and sent them crashing back to Earth in flaming heaps.
An insidious grin on his face, Xavier took off across the battlefield in a sprint. He turned into a running tornado, spinning over and over again to slaughter the sea of enemies around him. With his sword, he cut through tanks like they were made of cardboard; with his claws, he sliced open the chests of soldiers and sent their blood spraying in fountains; with his tail, he sheered down anything that got in his way like blades of grass against a lawnmower.
“More! More! GIVE ME MORE!”
He zoomed across the battlefield back and forth, carving lines of destruction through the Israeli army and leaving the ground behind him drenched in gore. Once he thinned out their numbers, he took to the sky and flew high over the battlefield. He raised his hands and a sphere of darkness began to form between his palms, growing in size and power with each second.
“WEAKLINGS! ALL OF YOU!”
He hurled the sphere down into the center of the battlefield. Upon striking the ground, it expanded to a kilometer in diameter, shoving everything back with a powerful gust of wind, then receded back into a miniscule point and pulled everything back in with the resulting vacuum, and finally erupted into an explosion of shadow energy on par with the detonation of a hydrogen bomb. Black flames surged up into the heavens, blocking out the sun and filling the sky with storm clouds and dark lighting.
The battle over, Xavier returned to Helena. The look on her face was of inner conflict. She couldn’t condone what Xavier had done, and it reminded her of what a monster he was, but she had come too far and changed too much to shut it out.
Xavier crouched down and scooped her up. “Don’t worry, there won’t be any more violence. I promise.”
From the outside, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre didn’t look like much. Aside from its size and the dome on top, it looked just like any other old building in the city. If anything, it looked a little awkward. There were signs that it had been manned by guards in preparation of Xavier’s arrival, but it seemed his battle outside the city had scared off anyone who might try to stop them. Ever since arriving at Jerusalem, Helena had been overwhelmed with a crushing power, weighing the air down on her and making it hard to breath. It was the same level of power she felt in Xavier, but it was different. It was… warm, and comforting. Was this the power of Christ still permeating the city? Was it reacting to Xavier’s presence and creating this dense atmosphere?
They stepped into the rotunda beneath the domed ceiling, facing the small Aedicule chapel. The air was so thick with power, it made it difficult for Helena just to stand. As they each stepped forward, the ground began to shake, with dust falling from the ceiling above. Xavier grabbed Helena and shielded her as the chapel exploded, unable to contain the power building within. In its place, a beam of light shone down through the ceiling, blindingly bright. It was at this very spot that Jesus died and the earth was left behind.
“So this is it? Once you step into that light, the world will be ours, right?”
Xavier turned to her, a sad smile on his face. “I’m not going to do it. You are.” She stared at him in confusion, wondering what he meant. Xavier looked up into the light and sighed with that smile still on his face. “From the moment I met you, I knew I needed you in my life. At first I simply thought of you as a challenge, someone to break, but you became so much more than that. This whole time, all my acts of cruelty were done out of desperation, because being around you made it so hard for me to be the monster that I was. I was struggling to cling to what I used to be because being around you was changing me. Helena, since the day we met, I was the one wearing the collar, not you.”
“Xavier, what are you talking about?”
“I once dreamed of ruling the world, then I dreamed of ruling the world with you as king and queen, but now, when I try to visualize the future, there is only you, without me. My desire to see you lead this world has overcome my desire to rule it myself. Don’t you understand? I’ve lost the will to fight. I’m ready to give in and admit my defeat. I see it now, the ending that the bible prophesized. I never had any chance of winning, because you won my heart from the moment I saw you.”