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He told them, of course. He told those idiots everything, the whole damn story, including the blunder he'd made, and its consequences. Looking back on it later, he realized he had probably been in shock the whole time. It made sense, anyone would have been.

Soph was about twenty years old, and he'd been that way for a couple of years already, ever since the Hoarde had started attacking humanity from the past. Every day that passed, they ate at another day in the past. It sickened him. Those creatures had absolutely no regard for proper time and causality protocols.

It didn't seem to affect anyone else that way, though.

The Hoarde was the result of a human creation, of course, like everything bad in the world, though no one else knew about them. Then again, no one else had undiluted access to the power of creation. Even he didn't know much about the Hoarde, only that they appeared through some tear in The Fabric of The World and started killing people off. They appeared at some point in the future and started working their way pastwards.

Just at around the point that they arrived, Soph was granted this ability to harness the power of creation. He found that he could sense them, though no one else could. He soon realized that if nothing was done, this would mean the end of humanity. He also quickly figured that humanity wasn't all that bad, and that its end wouldn't be that great for anyone, really.

He started fighting the Hoarde using his powers, with great success at first, though they kept growing steadily stronger. Then, a few years ago, just as he had turned twenty, the Hoarde started attacking from the past. Soph suspected that by the time he found out, they had already eaten through a large amount of history.

He was right. He met them in battle at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and he could see that everything earlier than then had been destroyed. Man, that battle was a bust. For some reason, the Hoarde now attacked with far greater strength and numbers, and Soph found himself retreating before the attack faster than he could think.

Soon enough the battle was raging on the day he was born. It took him up till then to devise a way to slow them, and from the day he was born their advance was slowed down to a day each day. The status quo was kept, at least.

Once the Hoarde started attacking from the past, Soph had to explain everything to his girlfriend Noa, since she would obviously notice that he wasn't growing older. Surprisingly enough, she actually believed him. She was the most wonderful person he ever knew - always so understanding and supportive.

Yesterday, disaster struck. It was their fault, of course.

Just like every morning in the past few years, Soph prepared to fight a battle in the past. The Hoarde's forces had already fought their way up to somewhere near his sixth birthday.

Arriving at the battleground in the past, he could already sense them concentrating somewhere in the city. He also noticed that the police forces were already very active, and were trying to get some control over panicking crowds. It seems The Hoarde hadn't waited for him today. He sighed.

The way The Hoarde had managed to attack with such great strength was something to do with some sort of link they created between the main army and a specific, very powerful Leader. Soph didn't understand it completely, but he could feel it. He knew that if you managed to kill the Leader, and the rest will lose their strength and fall back.

Every time there was an attack, Soph had to find this leader and duel him in order to win the battle. This was becoming increasingly difficult as the Leaders sent by The Hoarde became more clever and devious.

And so, at yesterday's battle, just like all the previous ones, Soph started out by trying to sense where the leader of the battle was. Unless he masked himself, which they often did, said leader would be easy to find – all one had to do is find the strongest power source around.

This Leader didn’t mask himself, and Soph immediately set for the place where he could sense the most power. It was somewhere outside the city.

Using his power to teleport to the location, he found a green field with no houses or people anywhere in sight. Except for the Leader, that is.

He was wearing the shape of a tall, well dressed business man.

"Don’t you creatures ever get tired of dying?" Soph called to the Leader, who was standing around five meters in front of him.

"Of course we do, son of the earth." That's what they called humans. Go figure.

"Our races are not that much different, you know. For the soldiers, those who are linked to me, that are now harvesting your world's energy back there, coming here is a punishment. They know they will die. But for us, The Leaders, it is different.

"We contest amongst ourselves over who will come to face you. Yes, you might not fully grasp what it means, but your reputation as a warrior has traveled across the battlefield and back to our world. For any of us, the greatest dream is to go to battle against you and bring back your head."

That was new. Quite the soliloquy, too- usually they just attack. Anyhow, Soph was rather attached to his head, figuratively as well as literally, and he decided he wanted to keep it that way.

"So, you believe you can succeed where so many before you have failed. Why?"

Soph was stalling, buying himself more time while he built his attacks and got ready for the duel. Of course, if the Leader had any sense in him, he would be doing the same.

"I am smarter, more powerful than any before me. Each and every Leader you have faced, I had already defeated."

"In that case, how come they came before you? You said you contest over who will come to face me."

It seemed that Soph had hit a sore subject. The Leader sighed like he regretted something.

"Ah, yes. Well, unfortunately, that contest has much more to do with politics than with anything else, and that, I cannot explain to you, for in politics, our people are nothing like each other."

Soph got the feeling that this Leader didn't know anything about human politics. Somehow, everything always boiled down to politics. Stupid humans. Stupid Hoarde, too, apparently.

Soph was finished preparing; he was ready. It was time to end this little chat.

"Well, you've proven to be delightful conversation, but, unfortunately, I will have to kill you. Shall we?"

And with that, Soph attacked.

The Leader was quite skilled, but his power was nothing against what Soph could muster. Still, he proved to be quite the tricky opponent. Shields went up, and were brought back down. Flashes of fire and other forms of energy passed between them, each one trying to get past the other's defenses.

Every so often, the Leader would disappear, reappearing somewhere else, and Soph would follow, walking into the Leader's trap. It never made a difference; Soph was just too powerful, and the battle would continue.

One of those times, the Leader disappeared, and Soph followed, attack ready and shield up. When he arrived, he realized with a jolt that this was the place where he had lived with his mother until he was ten. It couldn’t have been coincidence, but he didn’t see how The Leader would have found out where his childhood home was.

Someone had apparently informed the police that something was going on here, because the front yard was full of officers creeping silently toward the house. Soph walked past them to the front door, cloaking himself with an invisibility spell so they wouldn’t notice him.

The leader was waiting inside, with an attack ready, trying to ambush him again. Soph was ready for him again. He cast another shield and flowed into a double attack, trying to break the leader's mind while trying to burn him to cinders where he stood.

The Leader cast a shield too, and engaged in the mental battle with Soph. Only then did Soph notice his mother, just behind the Hoarde leader, unconscious, tied to a chair. Clever, he thought, but not clever enough.

Soph didn't let his mother distract him and fought back furiously on the mental level. That was only a distraction- meanwhile he prepared another physical attack and got ready to throw it at the leader and finish this duel. But just as he was about to attack, a door opened behind him.

Two police officers stormed in, weapons raised. "Freeze!" they called together, "Police!"

"Don't!" Soph cried, struggling to destroy the Leader. "You don't know what you're doing. This is a matter beyond you."

Well, if humans in general don't like hearing that kind of thing, cops downright hate it. Looking around, they saw Soph's mother.

"You're both under arrest!" One of them said, "Put your hands behind your head. You have the right to remain-" The rest of the sentence was cut off as the Leader sent a blazing bolt of white fire at him. Not even his ashes were left. Apparently the Leader wasn't interested in knowing his rights. Or maybe he already knew them.

Soph launched his attack at the Leader, followed with another one, and a particularly strong mental shove. At the same time, the remaining officer fired at the Leader. The leader smiled slightly, and disappeared.

Soph immediately started to follow, and as he disappeared too, he could see a red stain blooming on his mother's chest. The bullet fired at the leader passed through the air where the leader had been standing and hit his mother right in the chest.

If the Leader had thought that injuring Soph's mother would confuse him, or somehow make his attacks weaker, he was wrong. It did the opposite.

Soph appeared next to the Leader, bellowing with rage, and summoned up so much energy that he burnt the place where the leader was standing straight out of existence. The world lurched as it hurried to patch up the hole that was left.

Soph had never done anything like this before, and suspected it wasn't very healthy to the world. For the first time since he got his powers, he actually felt tired.

He returned immediately to his mother, to see how she was.

She was dead.

That stupid officer immediately jumped on Soph and hand-cuffed him, telling him he was arrested. Soph let him take him, though he could have destroyed him on the spot, because he had a strict no-killing-humans policy. At this point he started wondering why he cared so much about this race of idiots.

At the station, in the interrogation room, they asked him what had happened.

He told them, of course. He told those idiots everything, the whole damn story, including the blunder he'd made, and its consequences. He should have realized this would happen. He should have been able to stop it. To late now, he thought, and then, it's all their fault. Always assuming they know everything better then everyone else.

Soph realized how much he hated these stupid humans. He made his decision.

The police station exploded, and he returned to the present, to Noa. He explained what had happened, and his decision. She agreed with him, no arguments. Soph had stopped being surprised by that a long time ago.

He took them both and transported them to a completely new world, with no Hoarde, or tear in the Fabric. He had created his own new world, and let humanity face its destruction by its own stupid self.

Soph named the place he arrived in Age, for it was a new age for humanity, and there he created a perfect world for him and Noa.

He married Noa, and when they had children, he warned them not to be curious, to stay away from knowledge and discovery. He would not let the same happen to his world that had happened in the old one. If his race would not have science and research, they will not open any tears in the fabric and no disaster will come to them. They will live in ignorant bliss in a utopian world.

His children, however, did not obey him. They couldn't. They were human, too, after all. They ate from the inevitable fruit of knowledge, and so he exiled them, to go live on their own, outside of the beauty he had created.

And when the end came for him, as it comes for everyone, Soph realized that what he had made was not an end to suffering and stupidity - just a new beginning.