Over two dozen angels stared at me, and loosely gripped bladed weapons in their hands. They were all seated and gazed at me with unearned and foolish confidence. Unsurprisingly, since they were angels, they were all beautiful or handsome and a small part of me felt insulted that they gazed at me and mentally assessed that they were capable of defeating me.
I stepped all the way into the room, and as I did I clad myself in the powerful armor I could create as a consequence of my "Enhanced Soul Aura" power.
My soul manifested externally in the form of silver armor that clung to my skin as if it were a skin-tight suit. The "armor" was light, and it was affected by a number of my powers all at once, powers that I had quietly mastered over the course of the days spent in Infernius, in my first divine realm, and in the Heart of Darkness. I quietly rose my blade, the Sword of Spring and Summer, and pointed it at the strongest angel in the room.
The angel I pointed my blade at chuckled and he was the first angel to stand up. He wore a simple suit of armor, one made of mystically tempered iron that he believed would protect him from my attacks. I studied him and realized, upon automatically absorbing his memories as I did with all other lesser beings, that he had also been corrupted by Selena.
"It's almost pitiable..." I muttered, as I pointed my blade upwards and began to ready myself to attack. The angel gazed at me, curiously.
"What's 'almost pitiable'?" He asked, prompting me to smile at him, as I shut my eyes. His voice was low and bestial, sounding much more animalistic than I would have thought it would have sounded judging from his appearance. I chuckled in response to his question, and my blade began to glow.
"That you were so easily corrupted." I told the angel, which made him scowl at me. I knew that his mind was currently not his own and thus he would attempt to attack me pretty much no matter what I did, and so I was determined to have some fun with him and his allies. I had all the time in the world to go and confront Akamal and in doing so aim for a level of power beyond what I had dreamed possible.
"If you're so ready to die... Then I'll make you like Akamal!" The angel told me, his voice lowering in volume but increasing in ferocity with every word. He lunged at me the instant that he finished speaking, but I merely laughed as he "raced" to cut me in two.
I yawned as he sped at me and instinctively sped up in response to the "threat" posed by the angel. The angel, who had thrown himself at me at the maximum possible speed that he could achieve, was in my perspective practically frozen in mid-air.
I rose a single hand, the one which supported my shield until it was between the angel and me. When it was, I smiled at the angel, who I knew was capable of seeing my motions even though I was moving too fast for him to actually stop me.
"You lose." I uttered, as I began to manifest one of my stranger and darker powers. I chuckled as null energy began to radiate out of my hand, and as it began to destroy the space between the angel and me.
Null energy was a sort of energy that was once used by ancient gods of destruction to remove their foes and those they hated from existence. I tended not to use it, but it was an amazingly powerful attack I could use on foes I was ready to utterly destroy, and I was ready to utterly destroy this particular set of angels.
The angel I had taunted had the speed needed to begin to react to the strangeness of my physical gesture even as he dashed towards me. His eyebrows rose as a physical expression of his sincere confusion, and my smile turned into a smirk. The null energy continued to seep out of me and drew closer and closer to him as he slowly, in my perception anyway, inched towards me.
The angel held an unusually enormous kukri knife in front of him and had it outstretched. The null energy I had unleashed as a devastating attack touched his knife before it could reach him and the instant it did the knife began to vanish. The tip of the knife was where the null energy first made contact and as it did the tip of the knife began to disappear, utterly destroyed by my power.
"Wha...?" The angel asked, as he forcibly stopped himself in mid-air. I began to laugh and gazed into the angel's eyes. The other angels had been silent and still while their leader and I clashed, but when they thought I wouldn't notice they hurled their weapons at me with careful and well-practiced flicks of their wrists.
When the blades began to sail through the air I merely glanced at each of them and created localized bursts of wind that reflected them back at my enemies so that they couldn't reach me. The weapons my enemies had used to attack me were instantly deflected by the enormously powerful gusts of wind that I created for each and every weapon.
This and my usage of my power over null energy as an aggressive attack aimed at the leader of the angel was enough that when my enemies reacted to the blades suddenly coming towards them their hearts were shaken. And for a split second, there were distracted. Which was all the time I needed.
"This has been... fun." I said, as I reached out with my mind and grabbed the wings of the last angel. Instead of holding him in place with my mind, or doing what I did to Technos and tearing off a wing of his, I merely hurled him back at his friends as though I were throwing out some trash. He flew unceremoniously through the air and crashed into the wall on the other end of the room with bone-destroying force.
"That said, I intend to waste no more time here." I told the assembled angels, glowing and radiating power as I smirked at them triumphantly. The force with which I telekinetically tossed the angel into the wall was enough that the angel had hit the wall hard enough to partially break into it. The angel was still, and his defeat was absolute.
He was so thoroughly beaten that when I reached into his mind to disable the blessings that he had been bestowed by Selena they fell apart nearly instantly, only shielding him from one attempt by me to manipulate his emotions and destroy his relationship with Akamal. I effortlessly severed the loyalty that the angel had once felt towards Akamal.
When that was done, I closed my eyes and created a prison in the divine realm that was now known as the Eternal Mausoleum, and created a portal to that prison in the center of the room. I had lots of uses for angels and wasn't about to effectively throw a few away.
"I have so many new friends to make, and so much more power to acquire. For now... Sleep." I uttered, speaking powerfully and putting the angels I had defeated to sleep. The angels, some of whom had blades jutting from their chests, immediately fell asleep. As they fell asleep I didn't hesitate to afflict them with unrelenting nightmares, even as I also did away with the loyalty they felt towards Akamal.
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A second later I picked up the angels with my mind and hurled them into the portal as well, thereby finalizing my victory over them. When they were inside the portal I closed it, leaving them trapped in a place where they were the only living creatures and couldn't get out unless I allowed it.
I sighed when I felt secure in my victory. As I sighed, I took pride in my success over Akamal's minions and in the fact that I had taken more of his prized servants from him. I knew now, having successfully taken down the angelic guardians of Akamal, that I was just minutes from his sanctum, the seat of what remained of his power. Which meant that I was minutes from confronting and attempting to save Ravanthan.
I closed my eyes and began to head towards the door that would lead me towards a hallway and then perhaps to the hiding place of Akamal and Ravanthan. As I did, I once again turned my mind to the outside world.
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Being stuck here, physically, didn't mean that my influence needed to be limited to this place. As a god, I could do a truly tremendous amount of work that affected the entire universe from where I stood, even if I was theoretically unable to leave. As I made my way towards my enemies I allowed my mind to focus on events elsewhere in the universe.
I began by setting events in motion rather than waiting for them to happen. I silently created more of the terrifying monstrosity that I first created in the world of Oxenos, more quasi-eldritch murderous shapeshifters. They came into existence the second I willed them too near villages created and inhabited by the Atlani people. I gifted the powerful, murderous entities with a number of deception-based powers such as invisibility and undetectability and sent them forth on missions of destruction and murder.
I also created a single murderous shapeshifter near the Terran capital and filled it with ambition. The creature knew me innately, all of the murderous shapeshifters did, and it praised me as it began to sneak towards the capital of the people I had come here to "protect". The terrifying creatures were some of my key servants, and each one of them was a monster I had created with purpose and intent, as due to their skills and innate attitudes I needed to be purposeful when creating and unleashing them.
The monsters were murderous when they began their lives, as seen with the first one I had created. Once they had murdered and eaten a humanoid they gained true intellect, but until that moment they were immensely powerful, instinctually violent beings. I had created them for the express purpose of gaining spies in a way that I particularly enjoyed.
I also knew I needed to give them a species-name. After a second of deliberation, I decided to name them "Conquistadores", which was a word from the language of the Reconquista Empire. A minor notification filled my mind's eye and I willed it away. All it said was that I had named the race of monsters I had created, and thus had become the god of the Conquistadores since I created them and named them.
I also quietly turned my mind towards my empire. So far nothing of note had happened in the day or so I had been in Ta Hendo. And a small part of me knew that the truth was that the next consequential event for the empire would be my emergence from here. When I left here, later today, I planned to have permanently changed the state of the multiverse. To have successfully brought another higher being back to life and to have therefore doubled the number of higher beings in the cosmos.
If I succeeded optimally here, it would alter the very universe itself. The most success I could possibly pull off in this temple was to come out of it with a new ally, a creature I had liberated not only from death but also from the cruel clutches of a powerful vestige. And I was keenly aware that for that to happen, I needed to make my way towards my foe.
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Akamal was fond of long hallways. I found myself in the final hallway that separated me from him, which I knew because domain sense notifications alerted me to the movements of Ravanthan, who was currently beside her captor and cruel master.
I knew from Bisi's memories what to expect when I reached Akamla's chamber. As I approached it, I gripped my blade tightly and I focused on the destruction domain. I gathered its powers into my hands and channeled them into my blade. As I did, I began to imagine myself splitting in two.
"If I want to defeat Akamal... I'm gonna need to do two things at once. Challenge Akamal to a physical confrontation, one where we face off against each other, and also move towards freeing Ravanthan." I uttered, as I continued to walk towards my final destination.
About twenty steps after I began to focus my imagination on splitting myself, I suddenly heard footsteps right behind me. I also felt my sword change, and watched as a single hand gently grabbed my blade by the bladed part of the object, and then pull my staff right out of it.
"So it really worked huh?" A voice, which belonged to the person whose hand had pulled my staff out. I didn't need to look behind me to know who was speaking. After all, I could recognize my own voice.
Behind me, stepping just a second after I did, was a perfect clone of myself. One I had created for the sake of the coming battle. He looked exactly as I did, and he clad himself in our powers over peace. There was a serene smile on his face, which I felt in his words.
"An enemy so strong that even an avatar wouldn't be able to do this task... Akamal is a real monster isn't he?" The clone asked, rhetorically. There was an edge of excitement in his voice as we made our way nearer and nearer to the final door.
Peals of laughter began to reveberate around us as we drew nearer and nearer to Akamal's private chamber. The sound of Akamal's laughter was positively haunting, and it only grew louder as I closed in on the door that would allow me to see my enemy, and Ravanthan for the first time.
It took me but a few minutes to make my way down the hallway and reach the small, ornate wooden door that kept me from beginning the next part of my destiny. When I stood in front of the door I smiled and reached my hand up to the doorknob which stood on the edge of the right side of the door. I opened the door, and my clone and I stepped into the room which was on the other side of the door.
We found ourselves inside of a medium sized room, and facing two immensely powerful beings. One of them was a radiantly beautiful woman with large, black wings jutting out of her back and an aura of sunlight that radiated out of her. The other was a tall man who held a pair of axes in his hands.
The woman wore a comfortable but elegant looking set of armor made of mystically tempered divine metal, and Akamal wore a suit of armor made from wood, and a large monster's mask that completely covered his face.
I faced Akamal and my clone stared at Ravanthan. Both of them were looking squarely at me, and I sensed bloodlust oozing out of all four of their eyes, especially since in Akamal's case his eyes were the only part of his face I could actually see.
"And so... it begins." I uttered, quietly before I lunged at Akamal, sword out and a dark grin on my face. As I sped towards my foe, I felt time slow around me, and I vaguely sensed my clone reacting to the shockwave my movement created. I also quietly studied the room I was in.
It was a library, which was a surprising thing to see in an Akamalian temple. The walls of the room were lined with books, codexes, and scrolls, and as I moved at my enemy I watched them shake in the wake of my violent movement.
Ravanthan moved to cut me off, her wing extending towards Akamal, but before it could my clone extended a hand in Ravanthan's direction and a powerful burst of fire exploded out of it, racing towards Ravanthan, whose wing froze and began to return to the rest of her body, to shield her from the burst of flames.
"Sorry, I won't let you get in their way." The clone uttered, even as he leapt into the burst of fire and towards Ravanthan to begin his mission of peace-making.
Akamal rose one of his axes to block my attempt to impale him on the Sword of Spring and Summer and began to laugh again. Our battle had begun, and it seemed of the four of us, only he was truly excited to fight this battle.