CHAPTER 445

ORIGIN WAR (II)

An ear-splitting sound temporarily deafened the world as a single blade sliced the heaven and the earth apart. Darkness emboldened by corporeal shadows cleaved through the reality, binding the void itself to it, forming a gash the size of the horizon vertically across the world. Two barely managed to fling herself backward to avoid it, the torrential backlash of innumerable strays battering her body. Hole after a hole opened up, blood spraying out as though pincered by a pair of fingers, as a cry of anguish broke the temporal silence.

The gash across the sky exploded with a beastly roar, shadows blended with light in a shower of bolts that splintered like broken wood. Pressing forward, Lino cut through the void itself and arrived in front of Two once more who recovered rapidly, moving her right arm in front of her chest in a straight manner; just as Lino appeared in front of her, a world-quaking blast shook him from the side, blasting him for nearly a mile before he spun in place and counteracted the momentum, fluttering his wings once more as he drew the Slayer backhandedly.

Shadows folded over his body like curtains, forming long-winding trails like branches behind him. A pair of black-and-white eyes stared from the darkened visage that was his body, cutting through the bends and breaks of reality.

“TO WAR!!!” the world around him exploded as flames surged through, burning away like the molten mountains.

Hundreds of thousands of arrays blasted through his body accompanied by a shower of enchanted arrows. Shrugging them off with a bedeviled grin, he locked onto Two once more, bounding the spacetime that seemed to hold no value in his eyes once more. On his back, the Sigil of Chaos lit up like noon's sun, burning in lurid crimson, blending into the dancing shadows. The Sigil he beheld by absorbing the Chaotic Miasma from every Dragon strong enough to endure it; the Sigil that became the monument of his will the moment it was imprinted on his back.

The wings had long since lost their angelic, holy luster; one end remained wholly wrapped in dimmed, bastardized, almost silver light, while the other remained entirely ensconced in perpetual darkness, shadows lingering off like smoke from the tips and edges. There was no feather to be seen, just a mirage of colors and elements beyond this world.

His body cut through everything and appeared by Two’s side, whereupon a hammer the size of a colossal mountain came crashing down from the far atmosphere above. He spun temporarily, swinging the Slayer upwardly, splitting the hammer into two as needle-sized points of light pierced him clean through, bounding for the sea down below. All around him, chaos sang in tune with the crimson cries of death; he had but a moment to reflect on the war itself, yet it was more than enough to beckon the grief to his heart.

The Dragons fearlessly stormed his flanks, preventing the surge of millions to collapse upon him. The winged creatures shot flames, pillars of the earth, sprays of frigid water, nets of light and dark, repeatedly battered and beaten like animals. Some fell rather rapidly at the frontal onslaught, their bodies crashing into the turbid waters below, forever making their nameless graves.

He reached out with his left arm suddenly, grabbing Two’s wrist before she had a chance to draw back; he jerked her forward, pulling her toward him as she cried out, her eyes turning frigidly cyan. Lino ducked, avoiding the slicing maelstrom of time before spinning in a half-circle, trouncing Two with a leg sweep at her rib, caving her side into the center. Two counteracting forces caused her arm to dissever from her body as the latter crashed through the mass surging at him, bringing with her over a thousand souls, killing them all.

Four and Five appeared right around him at that point, the latter being the culprit behind the hammer, preventing him from giving chase. Amadeel joined him right then, drifting the sea of time backward for a moment, allowing Lino to jostle slightly back and avoid the molten rock emboldened by piercing swords of light from crashing into him. Right after, he grabbed Amadeel’s arm and, unbeknownst to the old man, flung him backward out of the collapsing encirclement from around, above and beneath.

Lino rapidly folded the eight pairs of wings unto himself, creating an impregnable sphere around him that absorbed the collapse of the world. Pillars of elements shot from above and beyond, crashing into the sphere, yet failing to crack it.

Inside the sphere, Lino gnashed his teeth till his gums began to bleed, his heart beating rapidly; they could not win this fight. Not only were they outnumbered, they were also outmatched. He specifically told Ella not to come out – no matter what – which meant that he was effectively the strongest person on their end. And even though he would be able to hold back all members of Descent for a little while, all around his forces were collapsing. Though he couldn’t calculate nearly as well as Hannah, he wasn’t blind; the Dragons would at most last a few more minutes, and the only other way to prolong the battle was to expose Y’nn, which he didn’t wish to do unless there was absolutely no other way.

Who else was there? The Cult? Hardly. They had all already collectively hidden away, biding their time, observing – doing what they have been doing since the time immemorial.

The only other remaining hope was that the fortress would make it over here in time, that is before the Dragons fall. However, was it worth sacrificing a rather important ally in the name of vanity? No, it wasn’t. He knew it.

Drawing a deep breath, he cried out lowly as the wings unfurled, complex magical array lighting up beneath his feet as innumerable shards of light and dark shot outwardly, streaking through the air and cutting away at reality before lodging themselves in thousands of skulls, the preyed bodies beholden of death falling to their perennial doom into the ever-raging ocean down below.

Just as he exited the defensive sphere, however, he was welcomed by the onslaught of the attacks he could not block – Two caught him off-guard, freezing the bends of Time around him for a moment. She did not slow him, but rather everything around him, effectively distorting his perception; right then, two flaming blades, one from each side, shattered against his sides, with a gaping maw of darkness swallowing him whole and spitting him out right after.

He could feel his Vitality rapidly falling as he lay sprawled in the sky, unable to control his crashing momentum.

The ocean down below suddenly exploded into a ringed rise as he crashed into it, displacing countless corpses and sending them flying in arches once more. Due to the immense energy behind the impact, he crashed into the seabed itself, cracking it as the otherwise cold and dark bottom lit up; from in-between the cracks, like the ebb and flow of life, molten lava exploded into shards that cut through the ocean itself and gave rise to the paradoxical form – the ring of fire and water remained gaping for but a moment, yet in that moment, it seemed like a gateway to both heaven and hell.

Lino screamed out angrily, Qi surging toward him en masse, collapsing into the Slayer. The blade lit up in horrid black and deep crimson as Lino’s feet surged with bleeding lightning and fire. He exploded upward, expanding the cracks along the seabed for miles on end, extending the gaping hole in the earth, the wound that would take decades to heal.

Rather than going after the Descent, he vanished temporarily from everyone's sight and radar, confusing them; just then, he appeared on the western end of the battlefield, right by the Dragon named Lux who had long since lost her silver luster, her scales covered in drying, brownish blood. Without saying a word, he sped past her colossal body and crashed into the army of Shades numbering over two hundred thousand.

A breathtaking moment unfolded as the streams of spacetime collapsed unto the central point, pulling all the creatures ensconced in shadows toward it before suddenly exploding into a lotus-shaped cloud. Though hot, the flame was hardly the ilk of fire; it was black and acidic, washing over the unlucky ones, thrusting them into the pangs of death from which they could not escape. Amidst the countless sounds procured by the battle, the cries and screams of absolute pain and anguish by the Shades overwhelmed all others, temporarily causing the battle itself to cease.

From within the raging fire in the shape of a beautiful flower, the figure sauntered before vanishing once more, alongside the fire. In its wake, nothing remained. Not the corpses. Not the cries. Not the sounds of the souls carved out from their core, sent spiraling to the eternal doom.

He appeared once more, on the other end of the battlefield, the Sigil of Chaos on his back gaining a tint of gray alongside the crimson traces. There, the Dragon called Deathbringer suddenly pulled back in fear of what he had just witnessed as he sensed the space next to him rip open, a figure cast in nature of Chaos breaking through.

In front of him flew the Winged Lions, though he paid no heed who it was; the Slayer cried terribly, its grating voice burning through the souls of those who stood in its wake. The gaps of reality closed as the creatures felt the world around them change; from the bleeding skies that were horrible enough, they found themselves in the swarm of darkness. Yet, not darkness. A blend of nothing and everything. A reality like no other.

Suddenly, within the sordid breakaway, juxtaposed spheres appeared, birthed into reality by a whisper they could not understand. One black, one white. They grew and grew in size, yet they never grew larger than the figure standing upfront, holding them both in the palm of his hands. The creatures saw neither of the spheres, for they could not see beyond the pair of eyes that they could not rectify. The High Lords who had weathered the storms most could not comprehend froze. And with the whisper, they fell, their hearts stopping to beat. Dead.

On the outside, hundreds of thousands of bodies feel, seemingly for no reason. The Empyrean merely glanced at them and, a mere moment later, they fell like the swarm of flies collapsing under the weight of invisible hands of death. The sea was the sepulcher for the countless, yet at least most knew the wound of their death; yet many lay there wordless, thoughtless, unaware they lay cold and breathless. Beneath those eyes, it seemed, souls and hearts shriveled up, dying.

The Deathbringer stared at the human-yet-not-human in front of him, at last believing the words that the Empyrean had spoken to him when they met on the island. I am both the end and the beginning; I will win, without a doubt. Win over all and everything. And end it all as it had begun.