From dawn to dusk

Watching as their plan of attack collapsed was almost comical. With the desert hares out of the picture, the assault had already failed. The leader had already been repelled once and was now attacking one of the gate look-alikes in a last-ditch effort.

With his club that was once again bursting with flames, he was bashing wildly against the sandstone. His movements became more and more erratic as he poured every last bit of magic power he had into his swings.

As if rewarding his efforts the wall crumbled after his last swing and gave free the way into the oasis. Before the buns present could even cheer a cactus grew rapidly where the wall had been breached and perfectly filled the gap restoring the wall.

A featureless face appeared on the cactus wall and warned the baffled bunny people in a monotone voice.

"Leave now or feel my wrath. I am home, the protector of this place."

Before the face could say anything more a lance of fire shot over at blinding speed and pierced through it. The featureless face burned and contorted onto a silent cry of agony.

Now, this certainly wasn't good. Home hadn't actually been injured, all that happened was that she felt the pain of her creations dying. However, Rose had witnessed this and she wasn't one for detail when someone she liked got hurt.

A terrifying aura erupted from within the oasis. All the people fighting below fell unconscious. Their feeble minds couldn't take such pressure while remaining conscious. Rose was slowly floating up from the treehouse. Her eyes were filled with endless, berserk violence and only a semblance of sanity remained present.

"How dare you hurt Home!"

Her voice blasted across the expanse of desert as if someone had hooked up a thousand speakers firing them simultaneously. Scorch who had thrown the lance was stunned a moment before he became flustered at the fear he had felt if only for a moment.

"You think I'm scared of you? I'll kill you and then I'll kill the other one. How dare you, lowly creatures, resist us gods-" *splat*

Before he could react Rose had arrived before him and swatted him out of the air like one would a fly. Under the immense force of her hit, the body's integrity gave out and Scorch became a mess of blood, flesh, bones, and the shattered pieces of a god gem. As that pitiable excuse of a corpse fell out of the sky the other gods present felt like a hand had gripped their throats.

They turned the flying ship around and wanted to use the ship's ability to evade detection and flee. It was my time to shine.

My body shifts again from the form of a dawn of souls to that of a dusk of souls.

Similar to the dawn of souls that is based on the dawns of despair the dusk of souls is based on a species called the dusks of despair. While the dawn variant is a near-invisible existence that brings no harm whatsoever the dusk variant is its mate and wherever it goes death follows.

The dusk variant releases a death aura and kills everything in its path. However, it isn't an evil creature. After a soul is killed by a dusk variant all despair is extracted from that soul to serve as food for both mates. The soul is then released, free of despair ready to be reborn.

My dusk of souls form didn't have that nice benefit exchange or the death aura. I'd restricted the power to the touch of my body. Once a living being made direct contact with me in this form its soul would immediately be consumed.

This form was also more visible as the silvery translucent shimmering that made up my body turned into dark red glimmering. The gods could see me now but I was already upon them. I swept through them like a phantom wind leaving behind only empty husks. Shells robbed of their former glory as the divine spark in their god gems faded.

Not letting my darkness devour them whole was probably a waste but if they all fled into different directions I wouldn't get a full harvest either.

After the gods had been taken care of I returned to my human form and landed on the flying ship. Immediately a flood of divine power rushed towards me as the ship recognized me as an intruder.

I let divine power hit me as my own power shot out to destroy all the runes meant to ward against non-gods entering the ship. The runes were wiped away and the currents of divine power receded. The attack had barely fazed me but was quite impressive for a world where archmages weren't yet a common sight. I thought about it for a moment and decided to bring the ship back for our own use instead of dismantling it for materials.

Next up came the not so fun thing I had been trying to avoid by dealing with the ship first. Not too far away continuous dull thuds could be heard. I walked over to the source of this sound. Scorch's remains were strewn across the desert and Rose was angrily punching the ground, pounding those remains further into the sand.

Thankfully she hadn't fully entered her berserk state or the oasis might have been in danger. Calming her down in this state was still well within my capabilities even if I didn't like doing it.

As I got closer I started to focus. Time around me seemed to slow down to a crawl as my mind began to shift into a higher gear.

"Rose, I think he's had enough. Beating a dead body won't be of any help."

In an immediate reaction to my comment, she spun around and punched towards me. Her movement was still incredibly fast but at least I could somewhat follow her fist. The air around her punch released a shrill whistle as it was cut apart by her fist.

Blocking her fist normally would be suicidal. I deactivated fatality X and met her fist with my open palm while channeling my innate understanding of void to create a thin coating above my skin.