Angel Monarch

Her voice sounded still and even, but the cohort felt the underlying message... She will kill most of them, their job is eliminating the few that will remain!

There was no shouts or war cries. The twenty evolved silently slipped away and went towards the camp while making a large detour.

Sera on the other hand went with a more direct route. Without much care she walked towards the ten ascended who were about to attack Melinda and Percy. Slowly she held out her hand, then made a bright ball of light.

Immediately all of the ascended looked in her direction, but still she just walked without increasing her pace.

Eventually her body began to get absorbed by a golden armor. At first only a pair of boots appeared, then her whole leg changed, next followed her waist, stomach, chest and finally her arms. Her head was left unprotected.

She was still about thirty meters away, when she held out her arm and pure white flames came out. They elongated in both directions and slowly became corporeal. After a few seconds she was holding a large two and a half meter long golden glaive.

It was a magnificent weapon, with loads of embellishment and ornamentation. For some reason the weapon held pictures of her previous accomplishments and triumphs. She didn't make it like that, but she did think it looked better this way.

When she was only ten meters away, she stopped. Looking at the ten ascended a cruel and malevolent smile appeared on her face, which made half of them take a step back.

"Who are you? Why did you attack us?..." Asked a man whom seemed to be the leader of this camp. He was in full armor with nothing showing, which made it harder to judge his character.

Unlike what he expected Sera didn't answer. She just placed down her glaive with the blade towards the sky, and leaned on it a bit.

"I give all of you one chance to surrender, if not you will be executed right here!" The man sounded a bit distressed. He didn't like it one bit, how comfortable Sera looked in this situation. Her face didn't let any emotion show other than pure confidence.

From the camp a few screams and shouts sounded, which was the indicator that the massacre had begun. This was exactly what Sera had been waiting for. Without a word or exclamation, she moved swiftly like the wind.

The ten ascended stood in a half circle around the three of them. Sera went straight into the middle, not at the leader since he seemed to pay the most attention out of them.

Her glaive moved and split the air with the sound of crackling flames. The woman she had aimed for tried to bring her sword up in time, but it made no difference. While she managed to successfully block the weapon, it carried so much power that she fell to her knees.

That would've been fine as well, but what she didn't expect was the shower of holy white flames which followed the initial attack. Her armor melted and the woman screamed as she was cooked alive.

It took less than a second and only one move for an ascended to die. Melinda and Percy each attacked another with their summoned weapons. Melinda's weapon of choices were a specially made set of throwing daggers. Back in New Athens there was an ascended blacksmiths who could make and even customize soul items.

This was a very rare talent, but not unheard of. Sera payed an especially high salary to him, since the whole 1200 evolved in her army needed weapons and armor of the highest quality.

Percy on the other hand, in a true magician fashion, used a large staff for a weapon. He enveloped both sides with his purple energy, then made all kinds of strange magics with it that Sera never cared to learn about.

While the two of them fought their duels, Sera got seven really angry ascended to deal with. Three of them instantly transformed.

There was one that looked like a five meter tall gargoyle, he took flight nearly instantly. Another changed into a giant twelve meter long worm, which burrowed itself into the ground. She could feel the rumbling below.

The third one was different, she became a majestic deer with large antlers growing out of her head. She head small bells on each of them and when she moved they made small clinking sounds. It gave Sera a large headache, but she shown no sign of caring.

The other four didn't show any obvious signs of transformation, but all of them were hidden in their personal armors, so she could've misjudged that. Two of them summoned katana's, another a spear and the last a crossbow.

With everyone ready the first volley of attacks came at Sera. With swift movement she brought up her glaive and parried the spear, then made a cut towards one of the katana user's. The move was deflected, but she gained momentum from that and hit the second katana user in the helmet with the end of her glaive.

From behind she heard the sound of a bow string releasing. Her glaive changed shape and soon a shield blocked the incoming projectile.

Below her feet the ground rumbled which meant the large worm was approaching her position. The other enemies backed away a few steps, but unlike what they expected Sera didn't move.

From the ground a large mouth appeared and tried to swallow her whole, at which she had only laughed madly and shouted, "An advice for the future! Never try to eat a phoenix!"

While Sera was still in the mouth of the creature, behind her four breathtakingly beautiful wings appeared. Two made of feathers and another two made of whitish-gold flames. Instantly the flames spread and her whole body got absorbed by them.

The transformed ascended's whole head melted within a second. With very little effort Sera flew out of the creature and into the sky.

Within the next moment the large gargoyle appeared and tried to behead her with a giant stone halberd. In the air she was much more agile than most creatures. With a tiny calculated wingbeat, she not only dodged the weapon, but was able to deliver a blow to its wings.

Her glaive passed through the stone structure without any effort. While plummeting towards the ground the man changed back into human form. The wound Sera made wasn't there anymore, but the pain definitely remained.

Slowly and gently she moved towards the ground. When she was finally back on the muddy plain, her wings disappeared from behind her back. A bit farther away the tinkling of bells could still be heard, which was actually slowly killing Sera.

With a very slight shake in her hand she reached and touched her nose. It came away bloody.

Her face was fully emotionless as she changed the shape of her glaive again and threw it towards the large deer. Her head got impaled by a spear in less than a second and she fell over dead.

The other five ascended just looked at her with despair and terror. Before they had no idea who she was, but after calling herself phoenix and seeing her wings there was no denying it...

The Deathless Phoenix had come for them...

They heard the stories about her. A woman who can resurrect with ease and even gain power from it. A person who broke countless armies and took many cities. The strongest ascended to ever walk the Earth.

People like to exaggerate to explain their defeats. Saying that the enemy is really powerful was easier, then admitting that a 22 year old is a better tactician, then a person who trained for leading armies.

But of course these five ascended, were weak and gullible. They believed those stories, and thought that the woman in front of them was a demigod of sorts.

Just her presence brought fear to the five ascended's hearts. Even the leader was looking around, trying to find a way to run away, but there was no escape from her.

She didn't even re-summon her weapon. With a few large bounds she arrived in front of the weakest of the group. He was the one with the gargoyle transformation. There was still a lot of persisting pain all over his body, when Sera moved her fist he didn't even have a chance to defend against it.

Her fist connected with the helmet and it bent from her power. The man wasn't dead, but he did flew for meter or so, then hit the ground hard. With a quick move Sera broke the helmet into pieces and stomped the man's head in.

The other four watched all of this with horror, but they quickly realized that they needed to fight to be able to survive this encounter. The woman with the crossbow swiftly shot another bolt while Sera was still distracted.

Suddenly the pair of pristine white angelic wings appeared and covered her whole back. The bolt didn't even make a scratch on it.

Sera turned around and with a mad laughter jumped at the next person she saw. The katana wielding man tried to impale her, but she used her wing as a shield then grabbed the man by the throat. She lifted him with ease, and in the next moment he was flying through the air.

He hit the woman with the crossbow, just in time for the next bolt to go astray. Another katana user attacked Sera from the left, while the group's leader using his spear attacked from the right.

To their dismay, Sera didn't even use her wings. She held out both of her hands and caught both weapons with zero effort. They stayed like that for a full second. In that time the pair of golden flame wings appeared behind her back, and soon both weapons were melted in her holy fire.

While the two of them screamed from the burning pain, Sera's hands got enveloped by said fire. With two quick moves she punched through each of their breastplates, melting all their internal organs from the inside.

From the ground the other two were about to get up, but Sera was there in the next moment. There was a bright explosion of white flames and when she left, only two molten metal puddles remained.

The battle lasted a few minutes at most. In that time she had killed eight ascended alone. Yeah, they were the lowest tier of ascended, but it was still something few could accomplish.