While the fighting, or rather, the one-sided beatdown continued in space, the forces of the Angelus Holy Union on the ground and otherwise in atmosphere were also getting bodied horribly. As Arkhan had directed, Gihren and Revil had fallen in the initial attack, sacrificing themselves before everyone to stop a group of angelic soldiers from cutting the dignitaries apart. They had both pushed their bodies to their limits, even going so far as to prevent their own power core from going critical as they fought side by side and back to back.

When the both of them finally fell, they did so having had extinguished the lives of a dozen heavily armed and armored spec ops soldiers of the Angelus Holy Union. They were forever lost, and Arkhan would never be able to replace them. Named units, once dead, could never come back and no unit could ever have their name again.

Arkhan was both happy and sad that they had fallen. He was glad that they, his creations that he had instilled power and authority in, had not been tried as the war criminals that they were. He was upset that they had to die to begin with, but it was better that they go down as martyrs than to be executed for their actions. As these thoughts passed through his mind, Arkhan failed to realize just how twisted they were. He was slowly being twisted by his own creations, the authority he had and the power he could wield. He effectively held the power of life and death for countless beings and many of them were not only his supporters but were also war machines that shared his consciousness with him and that revered him as their god.

The very existence of the Mobile Suit Golems and Mobile Armor Golems was slowly turning the naïve teen with the mind of a 30+ year old man-child into someone who could be more accurately described as an egomaniac. He was slowly starting to like the worship heaped on him constantly and the power he wielded with near impunity. To this budding dictator, the act of keeping his creations free of the blemish of war crimes was preferable to taking a hit to his credibility.

The faith that worshippers heaped on him only increased as time went on and the Church of Arkhan spread with a speed similar to a pandemic. As more people flocked to the faith, more people prayed to him and more people stroked his growing ego. He may have been 30+ years old inside, but the mind within was still that of a man-child and otaku. Even if it wasn’t, it would take a very special kind of person to not let all that praise and devotion go to their head and while Arkhan was indeed special he was not that kind of special.

What Arkhan did not know was that the sacrifice of Gihren and Revil did not convince the leaders of the Beastman, Dwarven and Elven lands. Instead, it merely convinced them further that Arkhan was getting too big for his britches. That he was willing to circumvent any form of judicial procedure and prevent justice from being done did not make Arkhan look any better in their eyes.

They had been forced to deal with the ever growing and ever spreading cancer that was the Church of Arkhan. It eroded every tradition in their nations and even corrupted some of those in the highest levels of government. The tendrils of the Church of the Creator had wormed their way into everything, and they were not sure that they could even gain the support of their own people if they were to try and fight back. Although, even if they did fight against the Commonwealth there would be no way in hell for them to win against the overwhelming numerical and technological advantage held by Arcadia.

Arkhan was oblivious to their concern, or perhaps he just did not care. At this point he had already gotten pretty far down the path of a ‘benevolent despot’. It could be said that the utter joy and celebratory prayers and chanting that arose from his subjects when it was announced that they had dropped a Sky Fort on the capital of the Theocracy was the point at which Arkhan began to morph into what he was now becoming. That one act had elicited such a positive outcry from his people, both metal and flesh, that it could not be helped that he had changed. His creations were him, and he was them; their thoughts were his own and vice versa, and yet somehow, they had managed to keep it a secret from him.

But perhaps it was not actually a secret. Perhaps a part of him, some small and twisted part of his mind, knew exactly what was going on and had been responsible. The greater part of his active consciousness might have been ignorant of it, but it may very well have been that a small, insidious part of him wanted to commit such an act. After all, one of the hallmarks of a God was the ability to cause massive natural disasters and show utter callousness and sadism to unbelievers. This was the theory put forward by those against the spreading power of Arcadia, and it fit perfectly with all of the other acts he and his nation had committed.

Using Nuke-spam, the utter mercilessness of the Mobile Suit Golems and the dropping of the Sky Fortress all fit together. Add in the Dragon-woman he took as a wife and the fact that he knew ahead of time that there was an invasion and it seemed to those who were not followers of the new faith that Arkhan was not and had never been good, merely an evil person orchestrating events to suit his twisted fancy.

Now that Arkhan was alone with them while the battle against the Angelus Holy union raged outside, there was no better time to strike down the mad God King than now. Sure, they would definitely get killed and it was very likely that the Church would have their families murdered, but there was no point in waiting for the eventual takeover to occur. Their nations were already beyond any hope of recovery; the Church and the Commonwealth had dug its talons in far too deep to remove without doing irrevocable damage to everything and everyone.

Arkhan seemed to sense this mass consensus that spread without a word. He did not even bother summoning a guard to defend him. After all, they could not kill him with his ability to switch places with one of his creations to save his life at their expense. His creations and his worshippers had long whispered in his ear about the treachery of his ‘allies’ and how they would never truly support him. In the beginning he paid them no mind but by now his mind had shifted almost impossibly into one totally different than before. The war, the worship, the adoration, the power. All of it had finally forced itself through his façade of the benevolent, unwilling god king. Somewhere along the line he had broken; maybe it was before the war, and maybe it was during or after it, but at some point in his life he had begun to change into what stood in that spot right now.

Even he was unsure of when he stopped being what he was and had started playing the persona that he had put up. But that did not matter now.

“Et tu, Brute? Then so falls noble Caesar.”

With that one line, he let the former allies fall upon him. They could not kill him, so it did not matter if this body died. He would endure and they would fall.

…

Neither Arkhan nor anyone else had any idea of the power of the weapons of the Angelus Holy Union. They had pioneered the summoning of beings from other realities and had created weapons tailor made to deal with them. With each one of his creations shot down by their weapons, Arkhan’s mind fractured just a little bit more. Each time his mind fractured, it would settle and repair the damage, but his mind itself would slowly change in the process. He was Legion and being without number meant it was nigh impossible to break his mind like so many others that came before him. Instead, all these weapons did was twist him further into a person who viewed himself as his supporters did.

Having let his creations test the relics secured from all over the world on themselves during the build up to and events of the war had been the impetus to alter his consciousness. the faith in him, combined with the mind-altering effects of the AHU’s weapons that had been left behind as sacred/ ancient relics found by both the Humans and Non-Humans had changed Arkhan irrevocably. He was no longer just a mortal in his own eyes.

He was a God and deserved to be worshipped as such. The age of individual nations was over, now was the time for the world to unite under him and let him lead them in a battle for survival. Soon, all those living on the world and in orbit would call out his name in praise. The Ancestors of the Dwarves, the Mother Goddess of the Elves, the Kami of the Beastmen, Lugus of the Humans, they would all be swept aside by the One True God.

There were no other gods, there was only Arkhan Aesir Arcadia, and all of creation would follow him or fall by the wayside. Arkhan’s mind finally snapped into his new state of mind completely as the last bolt of energy from a AHU soldier’s firearm tore one of his creations apart, and as dust settled the chanting of billions of worshippers shook the world to its foundations as their deity finally fully accepted the role they wished for him to take.

“SEIG ARKHAN! SEIG ARKHAN! SEIG ARKHAN! SEIG ARKHAN! SEIG ARKHAN!”

…

Arkhan reappeared in the capitol of Arcadia and took a single step before his head erupted with a migraine powerful enough to send shockwaves through both himself and his creations. His mind had finally begun to show the middle stages of the effects of his ever increasing psychological damage, with the first being his slow decline into becoming what he was. Now the last vestiges of who he could have and should have been made one last desperate gamble to try and take control again. This had the effect of effectively turning his soul and mind into a battleground of apocalyptic proportions, where the damage done by both sides only further fractured his mind until…

“I… I am… God…? No, I’m not! What is? Who? Something isn’t right! My head! I am not a God, I’m just a man! NO! I AM A GOD AND ALL ARE MY…! NO! Stop it! You, I mean I am just-!”

Arkhan’s mind fractured further as it fought itself, but the side that wanted him to announce that he was God and assume the role of Divinity was winning by a small margin. It would only be a short time before…

Asharia Ophedein Draconis slinked up from behind him and used a large amount of both restraint and force to hold Arkhan still as his mind fought itself. His more human-like side had one final desperate tactic to play and the God-King of Arcadia fell into a coma.

Asharia kept the body of her husband from falling to the ground and carried him to the infirmary in the capital of their nation.

“The cycle is repeating itself… I pray that he does not become a being just like those that came before him. Maybe, with a little luck, I might at least delay his transformation and at the very least postpone the turning of the wheel for another few decades…”