Valverno looked at four different ghosts as they were ready to do battle with the witch. He has come face-to-face with the oldest, elite bodyguards of the Shadow King: the Shadow Men. They were armed with weapons and concealed their faces beneath the animal shaped helmets.
“You might as well give up the fight. The Shadow Men are here, and they were the ones who striped you of your divinity. You are in no match for five fighters.”
Valverno smiled. “You are sadly, gravely mistaken!” Valverno pulled heaved the Crystal Sword with both hands.
With a single swipe, he pulled the one into two matching swords. He was armed with two swords, and not willing to stand down; he was going to fight the witch and the four ghosts that ripped away three artifacts from Valverno’s body.
“So be it. Shadow Men, do what you want to him. I’ve have to go back and tell King Uragiru our plans for the Northern Region has been put on a hiatus.” The witch was backing away from the altar and a Dragon landed on the ground when she began to depart.
“Cowering your way out?”
“No, I’m just retreating so I can live to fight another day. I can’t way the same for you though. You do have experience fighting the living, but no experience of dealing with Spirits of the Dead. The Shadow Men will surely make short work for you, once they kill you this time when they tried to do to you ten thousand years ago.”
Belverda ascended onto the Dragon’s head and the Dragon took to the sky. Swiftly, the Dragon quickly departed as soon as it came. Belverda gave Valverno one sinister smile before the Dragon going through a dark fog. Belverda and her Dragon flew into the black cloud and suddenly faded without a trace left.
Now Valverno was left with the Shadow Men, the ghostly minions and eternal servants of the Shadow King Lusìvar.
“Now you fight as you always do: alone,” said the Shadow Men in unison.
“What makes you think I fight alone?”
A metal screeching sound banged to the left of the Shadow Men; Sora arrived with her two knives in both hands. “My brother is done being alone!” she said with a fierce warrior voice.
“Well, well. If it is the White Knight of Charity!” said the Shadow Men. “It is time for the both of you to cross over to the next realm and leave the Mortal Realm to Lusìvar.”
“On the contrary, you ghosts should have the first ones to cross over before us mortals were born!” Valverno was the first flesh-and-blood mortal to place his foot forward while waving the two swords in hand.
Then the evil ghosts in ghostly armor and carrying ghostly weapons split into two teams of two: two went to Sora and two went to Valverno. Valverno easily bowled heavy waves of two flaming blades from his hands when he clashed against his two ghostly opponents.
Sora turned one of her kukri knives into a long white made from pure, white energy while her second kukri knife grew six inches longer. She whipped her whip of pure energy at the two ghosts and saw them being blown away.
Seconds later, the Shadow Men disappeared and then reappeared after being blown away. Valverno and Sora quickly rescued their attacking movements. They fought all four ghosts at once, swinging and whipping their weapons of godlike power against the faded images of the Shadow Men’s weapons. Valverno used his wings and tail and attack with his swords simultaneously against any evil ghost coming around him.
Both he and Sora were fighting so close together their bodies had little room to maneuver, but both rolled under or hovered over each other when they were too close to trip each other’s footing and switch battling places.
They did this every three-to-six seconds: rolling, hovering, and dodging. They kept moving around and not stay in the same place twice. They moved from the ground, to climbing onto the altar, and to climbing to the top of one of the pillars.
Then it was back down to the ground, fighting and blowing metal against a humanlike fog so thick it could have been cut with a kitchen knife.
No matter how many blows they gave to the Shadow Men, they just kept coming back to try to slice-and-dice the half-siblings.
But Sora and Valverno past kept the Shadow Men at bay from trying to pierce any skin Valverno and Sora have on, as they spent so much time doing some hard combat training in the land of Pangaea.
Valverno and Sora stopped their fighting as they stood breathing heavily on the altar; the four ghosts surrounded them.
“Don’t try to get too energetic of this fight: they are testing our strength,” said Valverno.
“I already knew about that,” said Sora. “And at this point, they have an infinite power of magic. They could fight forever and not cease to be beaten. And yet they can hurt our skin. I don’t know what their plan is, but I wouldn’t want to go back into a crystal prison they placed me in, just as they found the cave we were supposed to be hibernating in and awake when Lusìvar was supposed to reappear.”
“So, you have remembered what happened?” said the Shadow Men. “What we tried to do but ended up failing? Of how we tried to kill you but somehow couldn’t so we ended up doing away with what we could and try to alter your memories and/or try to keep you imprisoned.”
“I was imprisoned there for a long time, until the power of the
