I am haunted. Every night-cycle, I am haunted.

  Haunted by life-forms… PEOPLE.

  Grand and innocent people of which I decimated, along with their worlds.

  All with a single thought, I wiped them all from existence.

  I am haunted.

  In my sleep, they come to me.

  Sometimes, few… SOMETIMES, MANY.

  They blame me.

  They blame me for extinguishing their life-forces.

  They blame me for taking the life-cycles of their husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters… ALL OF THEM. Every single one.

  Tis breaks me.

  Tis breaks me so much knowing that I killed them all for a false purpose.

  For a lie… A terrible lie. One orchestrated by a terrible man… ALIXANDR CORVINUX VOLTAIR.

  Oh, how I wish to make him feel not the pain, but the fear… THE CRIPPLING FEAR that all of the people felt before I broke them.

  Tis my desire… My ONLY desire in my cruel, wicked, and wretched life-cycle… But alas, I cannot create violence. Not any longer…

  From violence, nothing is solved.

  From violence, nothing is settled.

  From violence, there is only pain.

  From violence, there is only suffering.

  From violence, there is only…

  _

  “RETRIBUTION,” Little Jaiya uttered as she suddenly appeared sitting directly across from the World-Breaker at the Campfire that he had constructed just before his nightly meditation practice.

  Opening his eyes, Magnus caught the ‘ghost’ (or ‘delusion’) of the young Crixan girl he killed over a cycle ago staring right back at him.

  “Jaiya,” Magnus uttered as the young Crixan girl sat across from him on the other side of the campfire.

  “Why do you continue to turn away from your purpose, World-Breaker?” Little Jaiya asked. “Your ONLY purpose.”

  “Why do you still come to me?” Magnus demanded with a broken look in his weary eyes. “Why do you CONSTANTLY keep coming to me???”

  “You know why, World-Breaker.”

  Lowering his brow, Magnus let out an angered grunt as he shot up from his place from beside the campfire.

  “Where are you going, World-Breaker?” Little Jaiya asked as Magnus turned his back to her.

  “BACK TO MY DWELLING,” Magnus huffed. “A place where I am free from you.”

  “Heh… Your dwelling? Heh, heh… You call that ‘wretched pile of raxx and sticks’ your ‘dwelling’, World-Breaker?”

  “Urgh… Stop calling me that.

  “Stop calling you what, World-Breaker???”

  “THAT!!! Stop calling me that FOUL name!”

  “Tis your title… BREAKER OF WORLDS. Your GRAND title. What you are known as all across the galaxy and the several that lie beyond it even now that you are Universally known as ‘GALACTIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE’. Marked by Emperor Voltair, himself.”

  “I FULLY KNOW THAT… And I am not thracking proud of it. Do you think that I take pleasure in being HIM? In being the infamous ‘Breaker of Worlds’? Do you? DO YOU?!?!”

  “You did once… At a time.

  “Yes… At a time… I did. ‘Twas long ago. When…”

  “You thought what you and your ‘fellow’ Galactic Deciders were doing was just?”

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  “Yes. We broke many worlds. Eradicated ENTIRE RACES all because…”

  “Of the Kren threat… A FALSE threat.”

  “A lie… A THRACKING LIE!!! The Kren were never real!”

  “No, World-Breaker. They were not.”

  “They were erroneous… Fallacious… FALSITIES!!! The Kren MYTH was engineered as a reason to ‘justify’ Voltair’s HORRIFIC actions of having us break whichever world that would not align and give itself to the Empire. Thus forth…”

  “EXPANDING THE VOLTAIRAN EMPIRE ALL ACROSS THE GALAXY,” Little Jaiya completed.

  “Power,” Magnus scoffed. “Tis all that the emperor ever wanted. What he forever desired… POWER. THRACKING POWER!”

  “‘Twas something that you desired as well, World-Breaker.”

  “What???”

  “You heard me, World-Breaker. You desired power. Not the same as Voltair’s… But power nonetheless…”

  “No. I… I never. I… I…”

  “YOU DID, WORLD-BREAKER! Do not try to deny it… FOR IT BE THE TRUTH! THE TERRIBLE TRUTH!”

  “NO!!!”

  In the aftermath of Magnus’s Roar, it had caused the burning hot flames of campfire to sift and jostle for a brief moment before returning to form.

  Little Jaiya took note of this telekinetically charged fluctuation in the fire’s flames as Magnus continued, “I did no such thing! NO SUCH THING!!! I never desired power! All that I did… All of the UNSPEAKABLE ATROCITIES that I committed in my ten cycles as a Galactic Decider were…”

  “For the Voltairan People?” Little Jaiya asked.

  “MY DUTY. I did my duty… AND FOLLOWED MY ORDERS. I never stepped out of line… NOT ONCE… But had I known what the others and I were truly doing then… Then I…”

  “Then what, World-Breaker? What would you have done differently? You would not have tried to stop Voltair… THAT I ASSURE YOU OF.”

  Narrowing his eyes at the ‘ghost-girl’, Magnus demanded, “And how do you know this?”

  “Because you do nothing now,” Jaiya snapped, hitting the Breaker of Worlds like a Pulsar Spear. “A cycle has passed since your ‘oath-breaking’ and you have traveled from planet to planet in order to stay one step ahead of the other nine Galactic Deciders. All the while they have broken THIRTEEN WORLDS all in the name of their never ending, blood-soaked search to find you.”

  Magnus’s eyes widened now as Little Jaiya continued, “‘Twas all because of you, World-Breaker. Those thirteen innocent, free worlds are now all gone because of YOU.”

  “DO NOT PLACE THE BLAME ON ME!!! I am not the one who broke them!”

  “No, you are not... But you ARE the reason why they were broken in the first place. You could have stopped them, World-Breaker. You could have prevented the unjust breakings of the thirteen worlds by rising up and fighting back against the Galactic Deciders… AND VOLTAIR, but instead… YOU DID NOTHING.”

  “And what would you have me do??? I cannot fight them! Their numbers are grander than mine… FAR GRANDER!!! They are too strong!”

  “You are stronger, World-Breaker. You always have been. You alone can access and use each and every single one of the other nine’s individual abilities.”

  “No. No, no, no,” Magnus denied whilst shaking his head from side to side. “I… I cannot… I CANNOT!!! NO!!!! I cannot do it! I cannot face them… Nor can I face Voltair! NOT AGAIN!!! Not… Not again…”

  As Magnus now hung his low in self-pity, Little Jaiya remarked, “Then trillions more shall perish due to your CONSTANT fear of the Galactic Deciders, Emperor Voltair, and the Voltairan Empire.”

  “No… I do not fear them,” Magnus uttered, confusing Little Jaiya.

  “What?”

  “I said, 'I DO NOT FEAR THEM'.”

  “If not the Deciders… Then ‘who’ do you fear, World-Breaker?”

  “Him.”

  “Who???”

  “HIM.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “THE WORLD-BREAKER,” Magnus answered as he looked towards Little Jaiya with watery eyes. “Tis ‘WHO’ I fear. Who I have ALWAYS feared… The Breaker of Worlds…. MYSELF. I fear myself and what other unspeakable horrors that I KNOW I am capable of.”

  Little Jaiya now looked at Magnus in confusion as he turned her back on her.

  “The World-Breaker… IS DEAD,” Magnus confirmed gravely as he headed back into his Hut, leaving Little Jaiya behind at the campfire. “And dead… HE SHALL REMAIN.”