Crystal, part 3

It gets epic here.

It pulsed, a throb that I felt inside my heart, in my veins, and to my very soul. Touching it was like feeling my salvation, all the answers to my problems inside a stone. I never thought this might have been dangerous, or stupid, or destructive—I had no reason to at the time. As I held it in my hand, staring intently, I lost myself completely in its beauty. Only when I closed my eyes did I realize I couldn’t feel it, and panicked, opening them again and seeing it sitting serenely in my palm, always pulsing.
What was it made of, anyway? I thought it was just a rare stone, but it wasn’t like anything this world had ever seen. I closed my eyes and focused on that pulse, rhythmic and calm. Then I saw fire in my mind’s eye, immense structures made of it and by it. I saw darkness in sheets, and saw the power this crystal had. A dangerous beauty, I thought it. One I could love easily, one I could master, control. So I tried to control it. I saw the fire, and began to mold it inside my mind, and place it in the world around me. Nothing happened, until I relaxed my grip on the crystal, and then it started throbbing faster, turning darker as it did. The field in front of me burned itself down to nothing before the crystal’s presence. At the end, though, the crystal turned back to its previous state with the calm pulse and the bright red.
I realized something: this was humanity’s salvation! With this, I could destroy the cause of the destruction that had wiped out most of Earth’s population! With the crystal, my power was limitless! No longer was I some poor soul who had lost all means of survival, but instead the savior of an entire species. I walked slowly back to Denver, basking in the crystal’s strength.
Getting there in due course, I saw buildings toppled and debris in the streets. Oddly enough, I also saw people out and about, probably afraid of another one of those events that seemed to have happened. Going up to one man, I asked, “What happened here?”
“A giant man came here and cut buildings in half with a sword made of darkness,” he said in a rush. I had to think for a few moments to comprehend what he had said.
“I can destroy this man!” I shouted. “I have this.” I raised the crystal high, and for a moment in shone purple as the land seemed to rip itself apart and was then made right. The ground quaked, shuddered for some reason. Maybe an aftereffect of the crystal being used? Regardless, the clouds turned into a gray, almost black, that I hadn’t seen for over two years. Rain, real rain, poured down. I was the savior of this land. I was the bringer of a new age. I was godlike.
The earth ripped itself open again, didn’t close. I heard another scream, saw a silhouette giant against a skyscraper. The sword’s shadow took up three more buildings in width. A crystal, glowing red, was lodged in his forehead.