Micheal lunged through a space bend, barely avoiding a blurring claw swipe, only to be met with a gout of sinful flames, brimming with intent to destroy so strong they left a black streak of shattered space in their wake.

Acting on instinct, Micheal used his newfound understanding to summon his mantle for a split second, issuing a command the second the azure-gold cloth adorned him.

“Cease”

The flame vanished like a snuffed campfire, instantly ceasing to be under the weight of Micheal’s command. Micheal spun away from a group of conjured flame dragons, desperately trying to figure out what was going on.

When issued commands with his mantle, they stood on the line between command and something else. Something much mightier than a mere command.

And they were powerful, far more powerful than they should be for the weight of intent and will he put into them. Like the world was eager to heed his orders.

He snapped back from his musings as a space started to catch fire, burning with black flames the radiated pressure that threatened to force Micheal to the ground. He was once forced to summon his mantle and issue one of those strange commands.

“Extinguish”

And the fire was extinguished once more.

Dargonth roared in frustration, unable to understand where Micheal’s power was coming from. Micheal, for his part, used it sparingly. Summoning his mantle was a strain on his newfound comprehension, and he wasn't sure how many more times he could leverage its power.

They dueled in the sky for what seemed to Micheal like hours. Micheal was forced to summon his mantle five more times, and each time it increased his understanding of it, even as it drained him dry.

Finally, after slipping around another of Dargonth’s attacks, Micheal decided to test its power directly. He took a deep breath and summoned his mantle once more, feeling his strength drain into it. Then he fed it even more power.

His crown shone in tandem, and for a second, he outshone Adam and Sol both.

He extended a hand towards Dargonth, feeling the power building within him.

“Break” he commanded.

There was a sense of resistance, Dargonth’s spirit and path protecting his body, but Micheal pushed against it with all his might.

And it broke before him.

Dargonth roared in agony as his scales broke before Micheal’s command, spurting golden ichor in all directions. It fell down like rain, pausing the battle below for a second before it resumed.

Micheal swayed in the air, almost falling out of the sky. Attacking Dargonth’s body directly had been foolhardy, but the results were undeniable. Micheal was lucky that Dargonth was too distracted to take advantage of his weakened state, and he recovered just in time to meet the now-furious Dargonth in a series of blistering exchanges.

It was a race to see if Micheal mastered his mantle before he ran out of energy. And slowly, the battle became less and less desperate, as his commands gained more and more authority, although they refused to cross that final line, staying in that strange hybrid form.

However, the battle below was becoming increasingly desperate as the more war focused of Micheal’s siblings were forced to take on more and more, fighting both on the ground and in the air below him. He nearly cried out as he felt Astra and Erebo and cast aside their mortal shells, becoming a swirling galaxy of stars to rip massive holes in the enemy ranks, buying the rest time to regroup. When the last of their power ran out, there was nothing left.

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There was no time to mourn as the beasts rushed in with renewed ferocity.

One by one, his siblings finally begin to fall as the toll of hours of battle begins to take their toll. The least-warlike began to fall first. With Ceres and Dio falling as their forest unraveled, taking half a dozen princes with them. With their deaths, Frey waded further into the fray than ever, radiating golden light and leaving a trail of flowers in his wake. Micheal had seen his end come later, as he consumed the last of his path to transmute a monstrous prince of poison and decay into a golden flower. Venti became the wind, summoning a massive whirlwind that tore through the beasts like a knife through air. Thoth came next, the entirety of his knowledge lost in the belly of world warping python, who was immediately slain in turn by a roaring strike of Thar’s crackling hammer. Even Sol could not endure, detonating in a supernova that slew thousands of beasts, even with a dozen princes trying to contain as much as possible. Nut followed her husband in death, summoning the pressure of the vast skies to crush and asphyxiate thousands more.

As for their descendants, barely two-thirds still reminded, urged on by an increasingly desperate Gilded.

Tens of thousands of normal beasts had already perished, beasts so powerful that even the weakest of them could have taken on entire mortal kingdoms. Dozens of princes had perished, powerful beings capable of warping the world with their mere presence, capable of destroying mountains and cracking space.

And yet they kept coming, like a never ending flood.

Micheal watched it all helplessly, even as he became increasingly adept at fending off Dargonth.

Finally, the battle reached a tipping point as Thar, Hercules and Serceno were surrounded by a few dozen princes and thousands of awakened beasts. They fought with unyielding violence, Hercules fists creating a symphony of gore with Thars crackling hammer and Serceno’s whirling blade. All that approached them were crushed, fried, and cut.

Still, the princes matched them, and the awakened beasts stuck where they were vulnerable. Micheal saw the wounds accumulating, saw how much of their remaining forces the beasts and thrown into downing the trio, and he knew this was the tipping point.

If he could break free for a second…

The iridescent bracelet on his wrist vibrated in response, and finding a momentary lull, Micheal summoned his mantle to its fullest extent, becoming the brightest object in the sky. He threw out the bracelet Hephas had died forging, and threw it at Dargonth.

It flew towards the dragon at lightning speeds, expanding from a single small chain to a massive iridescent net that bloated out the sky. Dargonth, seeing no way to avoid it, prepared to ward it off the second before it struck, but Micheal extended his hand once more.

“Bind” he commanded.

He pushed through the now familiar pressure and felt weakness cover him as Dargonth froze. With a slight wobble, he turned to his surrounded siblings and prepared to strike down the beasts surrounding them as soon as the weakness passed.

As for what happened next, I am perhaps the only one that truly saw it.

Micheal’s binding sank into Dargonth’s spirit like a law, halting all movement, be it mental, physical or spiritual. The net rushed towards him, about to bind him completely in his moment of weakness. But Dargonth wasn’t completely helpless. He had seen the net and Micheals mantle, and managed to preserve a small part of himself, wrapped in the rest of himself.

Leaving it unbound.

Without hesitation, he detonated that aspect of his path, shivering as the wild power rushed through him, shattering Micheals working and allowing him to regain movement just in time to fend off the net with another burst of pure power. Hephas had not predicted Dargonths true power, and as a result Dargonth was able to divert the net. The process had permanently weakened him, but now he had a clear shot at a weakened and distracted Micheal.

Micheal started to turn around, but, in his weakened state, he was too slow. It was all he could do to reinforce his body to its fullest extent before Dargonth’s full power crashed into his exposed back.

Immediately, Micheal was neatly bisected, just as Hercules had been not so long ago. Shock rippled through him as he cemented his consciousness through sheer will, but he was quickly slipping as Dargonth unleashed vicious spiritual attacks on his now-untethered consciousness

His sibling reacted desperately, going as far as to burn their paths and souls to try and reach him. The beasts matched them, burning their bloodlines and blocking the way. Only Hestia’s desperate working made it through, but it was immediately ground to nothing by Dargonth.

Desperation filled Micheal as he realized there was nobody here to save him. And if he fell, all of them fell. I felt him reach out to me with a desperate plea, but I could not interfere.

Such was the burden of divinity.

I felt his resolve harden, preparing to detonate himself, only for his scattered will to be crushed by Dargonth’s gleeful will.

Desperate, he reached out for something I could not sense, something that stirred hints of memory deep within me.

Then he was gone.

Then he was back.

And his aura crushed all else underfoot.