117 A tale about two girls III (1/2)
[What happened here??]
Many years had passed and Angela had now returned to Hana's world. It was finally time to check the progress of this place as part of the fire girl's job. She was looking forward to maybe seeing her old friend again and finding out how she was doing. But what she discovered was completely different from what she imagined.
Hana ended up failing in her mission of keeping the power Angela gifted her with as a secret and in a short span of time, the whole world was now aware of the existence of a mysterious tree that would grant energy and power to anyone who could find it.
[Hana, what did you do??]
The energy tree continued to be planted and replanted so much that Angela's power started to leak all over the air, reaching the point that the energy of her green fire was now engulfing the whole world.
What was once supposed to be her personal gift for her special friend was now being distributed like water to anyone who could get their hands on it.
What was even more curious was that the people of this world had managed to unlock the deeper forms of her energy and found out how to evolve them to higher levels of power.
Some had managed to unlock the white form of the energy and became beings with the power of becoming stronger from the support and good thoughts of those around them.
Others managed to unlock the red form of the energy and found a way to gain more power from the suffering of the people.
The inhabitants started to call these powers with names such as ”blessings” and ”curses”. While those who couldn't unlock anything besides the base form of the energy simply called it ”magic”.
Angela started to fly all over the world and tried to make sense of the situation. All of those who had gained the power of her flames were now on war against each other trying to gain even more energy for themselves from the other side with three armies marching towards battle.
After digging deeper into the whole story, the fire girl found out who were the individuals leading this war. Twenty-four total. Each army was being commanded by eight leaders. Angela realized that it was some kind of three-sided war between all of the three forms of energy.
Representing the white energy, four individuals calling themselves the gods of the north, south, west, and east. And fighting by their side, four more individuals that were being recognized as their champions using powers received from the gods themselves.
On the side of the green energy, a group of people who were fighting under the name of magicians. Once again, working under the command of eight leaders, each one ruling over one of the elements of nature. Fire, water, air, earth, lightning, metal, light, and darkness. Each mage commanded his own smaller army that shared a similar elemental power.
And finally, the last side of the war. Those who were fighting with the power of the red energy. It appeared that the red energy had caused a lot of deformations over their bodies, and thus, they decided to call themselves ”The Creatures”.
The creatures appeared to have some kind of hierarchy as well, similar to those who fought with white energy. At the very bottom, there were the monsters, beings that were still in the process of converting their green energy into red energy. Next there were the spirits, beings that had lost their physical bodies and had somehow merged the red energy with their souls to remain on the living world. And finally, the demons, those who had completely mastered the power of the red energy and had unlocked the ability to feed on the weakness and suffering inside a human heart.
Just like before, there were eight leaders, all named after the greatest weakness of humanity that they would feed on. Wrath, lust, greed, envy, gluttony, pride, and also sloth, who appeared to be the weakest among them since it was pretty hard to find lazy individuals in the middle of a war.
There was one last demon leading the army thought, a female demon warrior who had a very familiar face that Angela recognized.
[Hana!!!]
Angela screamed in terror at the sight of her old friend charging into battle looking like some kind of mistake of nature. Her usual brown hair was now catching fire, her eyes that once had a beautiful tone of blue were completely red, and her entire skin had lost all color making her look like a pale corpse. On top of all that, she was wearing some kind of red armor and holding a weird sword that was completely black surrounded by clouds of darkness.
Angela continued to watch as all three sides of the war kept trying to kill each other. The mages, the gods and their champions, and the creatures. All charged from head to toe with one variation of the energy Angela had left to her friend. The fire girl couldn't stop thinking about what could have caused things to go so wrong in such a colossal way, and she finally arrived at one answer, herself.
[What have I done!!?? This is all my fault!!!]
Her gift to Hana caused all this. A small tree that was meant to symbolize the friendship they shared together had now become a tool to turn most of humanity into living-weapons of mass destruction. Angela's small gamble turned out to be the greatest mistake of her life. She needed to find a way to fix this.
[Hana!!! Hana, stop!!!!]
”Huh!!??”
The leader of the demon army halted at the sight of her old friend flying at her with an absurd speed.
”Is that...? Angie?? Angie, you're back!!!!”
Angela landed in the middle of the warzone and the three armies stopped at the presence of a fire girl bursting with all the colors of their energies. Hana watched the scene and released a wide laugh.
”Angie! This is perfect!! You're just what we needed to turn this battle in our favor!!”
[Hana, what are you talking about? What's going on?? How did things end up this way?? Why didn't you follow my rules??]
”Your rules??”
[Yes!! They were supposed to keep this from happening! Look around you! Look at what happened to your world!!]
Hana proceeded to do so and much to Angela's surprise, she simply smiled.
”I know... It's beautiful!!”
[Beutifull?? Hana, this is chaos!!]
”This is freedom!! Thanks to you, we now live in a world without weakness!! Anyone can be strong!! Anyone can have power!! We don't need to fear death anymore, we die when we decide!!”
[Hana, please listen to yourself. What you're doing is going to tear this world apart. Your people are not ready to handle this kind of power! This energy was meant to only exist at the final stage of your progress!]
”And how long should we wait before we can handle this kind of power, huh!? A year? A decade? Ten thousand centuries?? We are here now!! We want to taste the power now!! Why should only the generation of the future get a taste of such greatness??”
[Because you are all still immature... I leave you alone with my power for a couple of years and next thing I know you all found a way to divide yourselves more than ever!!]
”This is just the way things are... People find ways to divide themselves no matter the situation. Wouldn't matter if you waited a week or a millennia, we still would end up like this!”
The fire girl continued to look at her old friend and finally understood that there was no changing her mind by that point.
[... I see...]
”...?”
[I now realize my mistake... It wasn't that I trusted my power too early with your world...]
”...”
[It was that I trusted my power at all...]
”What are you saying...?”