Michael was pushing back with all of his strength.
The weight of the three kobolds on top of him was too much, as he gritted his teeth and let out a scream.
Neveah was yelling for help nearby.
Onyx had been cornered the last he had seen.
Leo was nearby when the kobolds ran through the remaining defense like it was a paper thin wall.
Michael was worried.
He was scared.
Who knew how bad death was going to hurt if he let everyone down.
One thing that his mentor had told him and forced into his head was a simple phrase that he gave a lot of meaning.
"You are not Chase, and you will never be Chase... He is a specimen with unknown potential and leadership, but if you follow him... He will need you, he will need all of you, and you must take on the weight that he cannot, or he will fail, you will all fail."
That saying, those words, they pained Michael.
Ever since Chase had overtaken him on the Phoenix Academy first years leaderboard, he had been angered.
He never wanted to admit it but he was mad, but he also knew that Chase would be revealed one day.
They would know of his heritage, and know of his power.
When he declared it himself and ended Sazir's endless onslaught, he made himself known.
Michael couldn't do that, he had nothing to declare, and yet he wanted to be something more
With his friends falling at his side, he couldn't be overwhelmed.
It was simply not an option.
He tried to push the kobolds back, screaming until his throat started to scrape with each noise.
But the kobolds only screamed back and pressed harder on top of him, trying to crush him with their weight.
'Of course... How could I be so foolish... They are conscious, they have souls, we all do...'
His eyes closed.
'We are the invaders, we always have been. Murdering and destroying without any reason other than the fact that we call them monsters... When all this time... We have been the real monsters...'
He growled.
'But then again... These are my friends, these are my allies, and these...'
"ARE MY PEOPLE!"
He screamed as ice shot from his skin leaving bloody gashes in its wake, as the ice ripped through the skin of several kobolds around him, but not the ones on stop of him.
These were his, and he was going to kill them with his own hands.
But he had to free his friends, which hopefully he had.
Then he pushed as he formed ice behind him, helping push him up with a newfound form of leverage.
Then it began to melt.
"No, NO NO!"
He screamed as he began to fall back under the weight of the kobolds.
'Am I out of energy!? How?! My ice doesn't just melt like that...'
But the weight stopped, and Michael was left in confusion as the kobolds began to hiss and look at each other frantically.
'Huh?'
He pushed up and threw his shoulder into one of them, as he began to rain down with punch after punch as he wildly tried to kill one of the kobolds.
But it only had a look of fear as it let Michael relentlessly beat it to death.
"W-What?"
As he sat on top of the monster's chest, he breathed heavily and looked around as kobolds began to run around screaming and hissing.
Leo was standing over the crippled and demolished body of a kobold with a petrified look on his face as he gazed at the sky.
"Michael! Look!"
Equan yelled as he crawled out from underneath a pile of kobolds.
Sure enough Michael quickly looked at the sky above, where several things were wrong.
Very wrong.
The sun had moved and was seeming to get bigger.
But a large shadow was moving quicky in front of the sun.
The giant kobold chiefs in the distance immediately stopped as the air grew extremely hot.
Michael was sweating badly as the ground started to sizzle.
"Yes! I KNEW IT!"
Gabriel screamed as he grabbed Michael's shoulders and shook them.
A dragon descended above the battlefield soaring with might as it let out a breath of extremely hot flames, incinerating the face of one of the kobolds.
The sun had turned out to not be the sun, and it was a man with ivory wings and orbs of light flowing around him as he shot a beam of radiance at one of the kobold chiefs, pushing it back hundreds of feet as it tried to block the beam.
But a single shadow fall upon the land, it was small, but carried unbelievable hope with it.
"What an entrance..."
Leo said quietly as the hisses began to grow louder, as the kobolds started falling to their knees.
Chase had jumped off of the dragon and was diving straight towards the middle kobold chief...
'The faceless man was right... I would never have the balls for that...'