Edit: Merry Christmas everyone!

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Emily POV:

For the remaining time, we planned our offensive, and the plan we came up with, were as full-proof as plans could get.

In fact, I could already say victory was secure, but that doesn’t mean that victory will be easy.

The plan is simple.

After we visit Anna and Damien, we’ll take direct control of all our powers and attack them, with me focusing on Death and Acedia focusing on the Devil.

Since we can’t kill them outright, because their powers sustain their existence, we’ll need to use our powers to push them around a bit and, when the opportunity presents itself, cut off a small proportion of their power, allowing us to analyse it and create a power that is capable of destroying theirs.

And no matter what they do, the will always lose in the end.

If they go on full offensive – most likely Death’s tactic, since he is not the brightest and rather rash –trying to cut through our realm and forcefully acquire the power of Creation, they’ll be severely weakened and so allow us to easily cut off a thread of their power.

If they go full defensive – most likely the Devil’s choice, since he’s smart and sly enough to not attack and wait until opportunity presents itself – they’ll be able to hold out against us because of the differing volume of power.

However, we are constantly being supplied with Energy and Souls by both the Furnace of Creation and by Acedia’s pillars on our previous planet, allowing us to, in time, completely envelop their realm in our power and forcefully tear of a thread of their power.

There is nothing they could do.

Even if they are somehow able to push through to the Furnace of Creation without us being able to destroy them, we could, with but a simple thought, make the Furnace and the Core of Creation disappear.

There is even no reason to care about what their power actually is, since the only way to kill one of us would be to destroy the other’s power completely.

And there is no way one of them has a power even remotely similar to that, since they would have been able to use it on Acedia ages ago and already have the power of Creation.

Victory is assured.

It is merely matter of time.

“Shall we go back?”

Acedia asked.

An hour should have passed by now.

“Let’s.”

Simultaneously, we transported ourselves away from the Furnace and back towards the deserted planet, appearing right in front of Damien and Anna.

They jumped to their feet at our sudden appearance, but sat down again as soon as they saw it was us.

I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, Acedia spoke.

“So? What have you decided?”

Their faces twisted slightly at the question.

It was obvious they were still unsure of what to do and very uncertain about the future.

But although they were uncertain about their decision, I could feel they had reached at least reached one.

As is always the case, Anna took the word.

I crossed my fingers and wished their choice is what I hoped it was.

“W-we want to become like you.”

She said slightly awkwardly, which was understandable, since, after all, this was like a mortal asking to become a God.

Damien, too, was awkwardly looking down at the ground.

I sighed with relief while beside me, Acedia laughed with joy.

“Hahaha! Great! With this we can enjoy eternity together! I can already imagine it!”

Spending eternity together with my little angel and demon, ruling over this realm together forever!

What a wonderful future!

But first we need to make a rip-off of Death’s and the Devil’s power and get them out of the way before we could give it to them.

And then, the Angel of Death and Demon of Destruction will exist beside us.

When Damien and Anna heard Acedia laughing and saw me smiling, their worries seemed to melt away and happy smiles appeared on their faces.

Acedia demanded attention once again.

“Great, but we’ll need to get your powers first. This might take a while, so…”

He waved his hand a little and I felt the Energy around us beginning to gather around Damien and Anna, making a sort of aura around them constantly providing them with everything needed to life, even if it was for a long amount of time.

“…With this you should be able to hold out for a while. We’ll come back as soon as we can, okay?”

However, Damien and Anna still looked worried.

Thanks to Acedia’s Mind Magic, they knew they were to get the powers of Death and the Devil, and also knew we needed to fight them.

Before they could say anything, I answered their silent question.

“Don’t worry, we have a perfect plan. They can’t do anything against us! So you don’t have to worry now, alright?.”

I said confidently and standing in an overly dramatic heroic pose.

I saw their worries fade and trust replaced it.

“Okay!”

Anna said seriously, confident that we would succeed.

Damien nodded in conformation with the same look.

“See you soon!”

Acedia said, his body and Soul disappearing into the ether.

I did the same and the both of us entered our God-like state, grabbing control over our powers and our realm, ready to fight for our freedom and take our revenge!

“Re-“ady?

Before Acedia could finish, we were interrupted.

“So, you’ve finally come, huh? Let’s get to it then!”

“I’ll send all of you to oblivion!”

They’d been awaiting us and immediately made their move.

Death began his offenive immediately and gathered his power to cleave through our realm.

The Devil as well began pushing the boundaries of his realm further, however he kept himself spread out, taking a much more defensive approach.

Although the sudden cooperation of our enemies and the need to switch my mind-set into combat mode caught me off guard a little, it was thanks to our planning I recovered just as quick.

Without sparing a word to each other, Acedia took the power over Souls to halt the Devil’s slow-yet-oppressive advance, while I took the Energy to focus on the blitzkrieg of Death.

While he was busy spearheading his way towards the Furnace, I gathered around y power and made the network of Energy thicker and thicker making the entire Energy barricade turn black.

Gradually, his advance began to slow down.

However, I could not completely stop it.

“Ha! Thanks to the Darkvoid bastard I know what you’re planning to do, and you won’t stop me!”

With increased effort Death forced his way through the thick Energy like cavalry would through lines of infantry.

However, even though I could not strengthen it enough to stop him completely, it would take a long time before Death would actually reach the Furnace

While he was racing towards it, I kept my head cool and began gathering more Energy and transformed them into harpoons behind him.

Although he was not entirely inside our realm, which was impossible with the vast difference between our size in accumulated, he was dug in well enough in to use his surface area against him.

With enormous force I launched the ten-thousand strong, thick black harpoons at the sides of the wedge-shape of Death’s realm.

It hit him squarely from all sides, but they were not powerful enough, causing it to bounce off of it like it was made out of rubber.

“It’s useless! Your strength is just too little!”

He taunted.

He kept pushing forward, yet was still much too far away from the Furnace for me to panic.

I tried again.

This time, I gathered I gathered billions of small, needle-like arrows and began surrounding Death with them.

Very slowly I began to try forcefully push them inside Death’s being, yet he simple made small gaps to allow them to pass through.

“Hahahaha! Is this all you can do with your power?! You do need DESERVE to have it! Only I. AM. WORTHY! HAHAHAHA!”

He began to become full of himself, not knowing it was my intention for him to ‘swallow’ the needles.

Really, how stupid can one be to allow something outside of his control into his body?

Even if they’re small needles, they’re still made out of a large amount of Energy.

It was almost too easy.

The billions of black needles made out of compressed Energy now spread out everywhere inside him, I simply allowed them to expand.

“What is this?!”

He sensed it like one would sense a stomach filling up.

Everywhere inside of him Energy began to rapidly expand, giving him but two option.

Let them truly inside his realm, or create larger holes to cover for the rapid expansion.

Either way, I had already won.

He chose option two, trying to evade the growing Energy, forcing him to split the part of him inside our realm up in many tiny pieces.

The Energy was now fully expanded and Death’s wedge had been divided into hundreds of thousands of little pieces, all trying to find their way back to each other.

But, I didn’t allow it.

Concentrating on the area around these little bubbles, I created spheres of Energy to surround a couple of them and thus, separate them from the entirety of Death’s realm, although not his control.

Focusing on these dozen or so now-isolated little bubbles, I created a hundred drill-like constructs around each of them and began drilling through my own shields and afterwards, through the little bubbles.

“YOU BITCH!!”

He tried to make his separated powers evade the drills and gather them to make himself whole, but my should were too strong to force through and my drills to any.

I decreased the size of my shields, pressuring the bubbles of Death together so they could not escape.

Death began attacking the isolated spheres with all his powers, but only managed to pop three of them while the drills began to inch ever closer.

“No…!”

The drills began to inch ever closer to the power of Death and tried to forcefully break into Death’s realm, until one finally managed to break into it.

I expanded it and grabbed one of the threads inside Death’s realm.

Immediately, I created a power allowing me to analyse it, placed it inside a strand, connecting it to some strand of Energy and send it towards the thread of Death’s power.

“NOOOOOO!!!”

Death futilely began to attack and destroy the Energy, but his power could only absorb Souls.

It arrived and I analysed it with the newly created power.

His power was that of a parasite.

Created during the beginning of existence, it had been placed outside of the realm yet connected to every Soul, forcing the owner’s mind to slowly wither over time and allow them to die.

When they died, he pulled undetectable string connected to the Soul, made it collapse inward which created a sort of ‘wormhole’ to his own realm, where Death could devour it and grow stronger.

However, not only does it allow for life to end, it also gave him a connection to the mind locked inside a Soul, allowing him to influence them in many ways, for example making everyone hate Acedia and I.

I felt my anger rise and immediately created a thread containing a power only able to devour Death’s power, almost like a key that could fit in only one lock.

With the power of Creation, I made many spheres of them and forced them to multiply a thousand times every millisecond, soon having a giant arsenal of power capable of killing Death.

“W-wait, we could talk! Please, we ca-”

Before allowing him to finish, I threw the spheres towards every bit of his power, forcing them to explode and infect many areas.

A horrifying scream resounded as it ate away at every bit of him while he tried to escape, but it was useless.

It was too many, ate to quickly and the more it was fed, the quicker it grew.

It took three seconds – just three seconds! – to make the horrific screams end and thus, end Death’s existence.

What a fool he had been.

“I’m done here, I’m joining you!”

I said, shifting my focus on the fight between Acedia and the Devil.

Acedia POV:

The entirety of Emily’s fight, nothing had happened.

The Devil kept his power spread out, fiercely pushing forward from every direction while also allowing nothing to penetrate his defences, hardening when attacked with a more piercing attack-style and softening when attacked with a more blunt attack.

Even when I attacked with both blunt and piercing attacks along with everything in between, while also switching between big, medium and small amounts of Soul, he kept track of it all.

“How is it going?!”

Emily said, joining the attack with pressure-based piercing and almost explosive-like attacks, forcing the Devil to defend against an increasing variety of attacks.

However, he kept holding up.

“Indefinite stalemate!”

I said back, unnecessarily shouting because of exertion.

Although I say indefinite, there was definitely an end to it.

While we are firmly pressuring, we keep his source of food away from him while our powers were constantly being fed.

In time, we would have enough power to force even him to collapse under the pressure.

However, the Devil knew that, yet still continued prolonging this futile battle.

“Just give up, Devil! Your struggle is in vain and your Era has come to an end! Why persist when you’ve already lost?!”

I’ve been saying similar things all throughout this battle, yet he never responded.

Until now.

“Good, Good! Both of you are present now! Let us end this here and now! Hahahahahaha!”

His voice resounded throughout the battlefront, the content of it sending shivers down my non-existent spine.

Unless he’s surrendering, there is no way he could end this battle.

Then why?

Why do I shiver in fear by his words?

“You are right, my struggle is in vain and my life is forfeit. There is no way to defeat you and claim all of Creation for my own. My dreams are ruined, all thanks to you two.”

His voice sounded eerily quiet, much too quiet for such a battle.

Even though he just admitted his ambitions are done for, there was a strange glee to his voice.

Truly worthy of the Devil himself.

“Then surrender now and I might kill you softly!”

Emily shouted.

But, he ignored her.

“I had realised this the moment you attained its power. Once one person has power over Creation, only by his or her will are others able to acquire it. So, naturally, I shifted my desires… elsewhere.”

He laughed softly and the same disgusting smile as I had during our first talk popped up in my mind.

He was certain of something.

Certain that his plan had already succeeded.

But, what was this new ambition of his?

“Now, imagine it: a knife at the throat and the enemy out for blood, slowly pushing the edge deeper and deeper into the flesh to savour the moment. Or perhaps more like this: the enemy invading your castle and unable to escape, the besieged lord’s life is as good as gone. What would you do?”

The Devil said playfully.

An easy question.

Do as much harm as possible.

At least take something of their with them to the grave.

“Hahahahaha! You two suit each other, coming up with the same answer. Indeed, hurt your enemy any way you could, since your life’s over anyway. However, as you’ve seen the moron from the Whitevoid do, when you have a knife at your throat, there is little you can do.”

Even outside his realm, he’s able to read minds?!

What power does he have?

And is Death the man with the knife at his throat?

So logically, he is the castle lord?

“But the man with the knife at his throat was a moron! An idiot beyond reprieve!”

He spat these words out with such hostility, it was a wonder they had even been allies just moments ago.

“However, the castle lord is much, much more intelligent. He has long watched his future enemy slowly growing in power and knew that, one day, the enemy will be at their doorstep, either as potential ally, or greatest foe.”

He giggled slightly as he arrogantly praised himself.

“So naturally, the lord prepared for BOTH!”

These words gave a pressure unable to be described into words.

“Oh, I can already picture you sweating Acedia, but let me finish the story first. Then one day, when the castle lord was watching the potential threat’s every move, he suddenly appeared in front of the lord’s very own castle.”

This was obviously refereeing to our first proper meeting.

But where is he going with this?

“And funnily enough, with him, he brought… his family!”

He shouted the last words with a mad joy, as if a psychopath just killed his hardest prey and laughed with insanity.

“With…

My…

Family?”

I could only stutter these words, knowing precisely what he meant.

Damien and Anna were with me the first time we met.

“YOU BASTARD, WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

Emily, having shared my memories of the event with her, caught on as quickly as me and was filled with rage.

“AHAHAHAHAHA! WHAT ANY GOOD LORD WOULD DO, OF COURSE! SLIP A SMALL DOSE OF POISON IN THE CHILDREN’S MINDS!! AHAHAHAHA!”

An indescribable fear went through me, conjuring up hundreds of thousands of scenes of Anna and Damien dying in the most horrible ways.

“NOOOOOOOOOO!”

Emily shrieked in despair as her mind, too, was filled with dread at the sight.

“YES! IT IS ALREADY DONE, HAHAHAHA!”

Both Emily and I immediately began scouring through the net of Energy, going as quickly towards the planet with Anna and Damien as possible.

Yet as our focus shifted, with only myself still keeping the barrier protecting against the Devil’s advance active, we saw we were too late.

On the blood-soaked sand they lay there silently, eyes widened in fear and pain as their hand, undoubtedly beyond their control, had slit their own throats with knifes conjured up by their own Energy.

Even their Souls were already missing, meaning they died even before Death was killed.

There was no chance for us to resurrect them, even with this omnipotent power of Creation.

If we tried, they simply wouldn’t be the same.

They would merely be a hollow shell mirroring our memories, only a reminder of what could have been.

Why did they have to die?

Why didn’t we protect them?

We could have easily given them shared Godhood over a power we didn’t use, like Mind Magic.

Then they wouldn’t have been killed even if it was by their own hands.

But no, we were to certain of our plans

To certain of our victory.

So sure that the freedom and revenge I sought for 257 billion years would be solved as easily as that, without any price to pay except the pain already suffered.

And now, because of our own negligence they are dead.

Dead by a foe we thought easily defeated.

“HAHAHAHA! THIS IS THE GREATEST! MUCH BETTER THAN ALL CREATION COULD HAVE GIVEN ME!”

The Devil’s words resounded, echoing my mind closer and closer towards insanity.

“TELL ME, HOW DOES VICTORY FEEL?! DOES IT TASTE SWEET?! IS THE TASTE AS SWEET AS THE TASTE OF MY DEFEAT?!”

As he was taunting, memories flashed through my mind.

Everything, from the first meeting, towards the day with the nightmares, to the trap laid by Emily and their consoling afterwards, steering me away from stasis.

Their laugh, their smiles, their happiness and their sorrow, all flooded through my mind in an unending stream of conflicting emotions.

And beside me, ruling over this realm along with me, was someone who took it much, much harder.

Her anger send tremors through the entire network of Energy and into every Soul, even by those inhabited with the living.

Everything was breaking apart, every galaxy, every sun and every living being.

All was dying as incomparable sorrow took over Emily’s mind.

I felt I should do something.

Something to console her, something to cheer her up.

But, I was frozen.

There was nothing I could do, even if I tried.

Suddenly, deep within, in the middle of our realm, the Furnace of Creation trembled.

Inside of it, I felt a power unlike any I’ve ever felt before consuming the Core from within.

I quickly captured a thread before the power would be too strong to easily do so, and, with some effort, attached it to my being like I did with the others.

It was a very simple power.

There was no law behind it, no reasoning for what it did, no special conditions or effects and not aimed at particularly anything.

It merely did what it was created to do: devour everything that was not its master.

If I hadn’t quickly captured it, I would’ve been swallowed as well undoubtedly.

“THIS IS GREAT! DESTROY IT ALL! BURN IT DOWN! NOTHING MATTERS ANYMORE! YOUR FREEDOM, NOW WITHOUT REASON! YOUR REVENGE, WITHOUT MEANING! MY DEATH, A HOLLOW VICTORY! HAHAHA! HAHAHA! AAAHAHAAHAA! AAAAAAAAAH!”

As the power swallowed everything indiscriminately, his howling laughter filled with madness quickly changed into screams of agony.

Within minutes, everything was gone.

Nothing living, nothing dead, nothing lifeless, nothing existed anymore.

Only we existed, carrying with us the power of Creation and the power to Devour.

The Energy, the Souls and even the Mind Magic was gone.

There was only the vast blackness of vacuum present wherever we looked.

It was hard to tell, but we must have been ‘looking’ at each other for hours, until Emily finally decided to say just one word.

“Goodbye.”

There was no power behind it.

No emotion.

No life.

The words felt just as hallow as everything else around us.

I could have tried stopping her.

Said we can get through this together.

Saying we could recreate the world together and let it be everything we dreamed off.

But it wouldn’t mean anything.

Just empty words, like everything else around me.

For a second, she stayed behind to see if I would say anything.

But I felt just as dead as she was inside.

Without saying another word, she disappeared far, far into the vacuum, taking her part of Creation with her and leaving me with my own.

We won’t meet again.

It would just conjure up the past.

Separation is the right choice.

How does your victory feel?

Does it taste sweet?

Is the taste as sweet,

as the taste of my defeat?

No.

It’s bitter.

It’s not even bittersweet.

It’s just… bitter.

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Alright, the end of the first... what do you call it?

Book? Series? Volume? Overarching story line? End of the first Act?

Well, it's the end of the fifth arc and the first whateveryouwannacallit.

If you have any comments, criticisms, thoughts, questions, threats, blackmail or anything else, please leave it all in the comments below.

They are very much appreciated.

Especially concerning readability, I want to hear your thoughts.

As a non-native English speaker, I want to know if my story was readable enough for people who always read in English.

So, yeah...

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed and looking forward to see you again in the future!