Akamal's laughter continued to reverberate throughout the room, as he used his ax to block my first blow. That said, though he laughed I was the one who smiled. I silently activated an aura of pain, and I watched as my power filled the air around me. As it touched my foe, Akamal's laughter came to a sudden halt and I watched his eyes twitch.
"I... see that you're a god of pain." The vestige remarked, his eyes filling with fury. We were close to each other, and the instant he stopped talking he retracted his ax, even as I heard his nostrils flared in rage. I watched a thin line jut from his leg into my chest and my smile widened as I moved right on time to avoid what would have been a powerful kick, had it connected.
"Too... Slow." I replied, hauntingly, even as I began to move in circles around my enemy. My legs vanished beneath me and my bottom half became a vaporous mist as I encircled the powerful vestige. Akamal roared in fury, due to my taunting as well as the pain he was in, and turned to face me, while swinging one of his weapons at my head.
I sighed and moved to deflect the blow using my blade. When our weapons connected in mid-air, I immediately heard Akamal's furious roar come to a halt and felt the vestige's muscles tighten as he worked to overpower me. It was a fool's errand, but he wasn't thinking rationally. He had been enjoying himself originally, but now that pain was clouding his judgment it seemed like he was forgetting about a basic aspect of even lesser godhood: absolute physical strength. His mistake was my gain, and I intended to make the most of it.
"Eat this!" I roared as I used my absolute strength to disarm my enemy with my sword. I used my sword to force Akamal's axe out of his hand, and though I knew that that wouldn't disarm him for long there was a split second when he was frozen in shock. I quickly aimed a slashing blow at my enemy's neck, but even as my blade dashed and danced towards him he was able to recover enough of his senses to step back and narrowly dodge the blow. That didn't mean I was done though.
"I am not just a swordsman." I muttered as I used my mind's power to shatter the floor beneath my enemy. To do that, I launched a telekinetic blow at the floor, which quickly connected with the floor the marble-like stone I was floating over and cracked it. The cracks began to spread throughout the area around Akamal and me. The vestige gritted his teeth, and as I heard the sound of the impact of his teeth colliding I momentarily de-summoned my sword and launched my arm at my enemy.
As my arm sailed towards Akamal, I glanced at him and aimed at his mask. I was grinning triumphantly and roaring in delight, as he struggled to find a way to dodge my attack. Cracks on the floor were all around him and he sensed the elemental power I was radiating, he knew that to take his eyes off of me was to risk an early disaster.
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My clone was also busying himself by distracting Ravanthan. The undead spirit queen was a powerful foe and the best thing my clone could do at the moment was keep her away from Akamal and I.
"Ravanthan! I know you're in there. I can feel a small fragment of your mind still reeling against Akamal, even now." The clone shouted. He was telling the truth, my "Absolute empathy" power was now so powerful that even in Ravanthan's pitiable state I could sense the fragment of her soul crying out for release.
"Akamal isn't as strong as he thinks. For over half a million years you've been in your body, resisting and pushing back against him." The clone roared. This was something he and I knew even without absolute empathy.
"Years ago you let some humans who had invaded the temple leave with their lives. I know that. I know their memories, and that they didn't encounter you. If they had, they would not have survived." The clone stated, even as Ravanthan began to glare at him, and anger began to radiate out of the creature.
"Ravanthan, a long time ago you invaded this temple to put an end to the schemes and evil enacted by Akamal's vestige. Today I have come here to free you, and to help you finish your mission. Join me!" The clone shouted, even as he unleashed beams of freedom that began to surge towards the undead spirit queen.
"Ravanthan! Crush that creature and come help me!" Akamal's vestige roared, even as my arm closed in on his mask. The vestige's enormous wings wrapped around her and when the "freedom beams" collided with the wings nothing happened, much to the annoyance of my clone.
"Aim for the creature's heart or brain!" I roared, even as my thrust reached my enemy.
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My hand, spinning through the air, reached Akamal's mask and began to viciously tear through it. The mask was made of something solid, I suspect that it must have been something divinely tempered as it didn't just fall apart at my touch as any mundane item would have. The mask was solid enough to slow my strike down just enough for Akamal to leap back and avoid taking any damage from my strike.
The vestige nimbly stepped around cracks and distanced himself from me, and in doing so revealing his face to me. I laughed as I studied him. His face was lined with scars, and the look on his face was darkening before my very eyes. I sensed that now he knew he needed to take this more seriously than he had originally anticipated.
"I see... So you possess some power." Akamal said, his voice filling with anger as he spoke. I sensed the room's temperature change as he finished speaking and hissed in annoyance when I saw a portal begin to form in a corner of the room behind Akamal. I used my power over biology and my own body to grant me a third arm, which sprouted in the middle of my chest and proceeded to hurl a burst of anti-matter at the portal.
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"Do you think I'll just let you do as you please?" I asked, crudely. The antimatter sped through the air, prevented from destroying it by a quiet usage of abjuration magic. When it hit the portal, I destroyed the tiny barriers surrounding the anti-matter, and Akamal roared, as he sensed the destruction of his portal. Behind him, I got to physically see the portal dissipate in an explosion of temporal energy, which manifested by causing the wall and floor behind and around it to age spontaneously.
"You don't get to use your abilities as you please anymore. Instead, I'll be taking them from you." I uttered, as I resummoned my sword and chuckled. Akamal scowled at me, and as he swung his axe, full-force in an attempt to dissuade me and punish me for my successful efforts so far.
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Ravanthan's wings unfurled and the creature began to move towards my clone. My clone merely rose his staff and created a shield of abjurative energy around himself. He was quickly encased in a bubble of protective, magical energy and as it surrounded him like a body-length skin-tight suit he gazed at Ravanthan.
"You are not my enemy! I know you can hear me. Allow me to bestow upon you the power of freedom. And in doing so the power we need to bring an end to Akamal's darkness." He said as the creature took steps that brought her closer and closer to him. He felt her heart waver, begin to hear the truth in his words, but her body showed no signs of slowing down.
"I... do what I must." She uttered, her voice strained with emotions, with inner turmoil, and yet still earnestly beautiful. My clone pointed one of his hands at her, but her wing began to close in to "protect" her from any trickery the clone might have up his sleeve.
"I will... crush you. And then the other you, the true you, will die at my hand." She uttered, against her will. Her words didn't shake the will of my clone, who possessed a stoic outlook, and instead silently watched as Ravanthan continued to approach her.
He focused on her, to a greater extent than I had ever focused on something, and he targeted her. As she drew nearer and nearer my clone clearly envisioned her long-dead heart. He pictured it in his mind's eye and began to draw on the powers of diligence. Of tenacity.
"You will be freed." He uttered, as she continued her unrelenting approach.
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One of Akamal's axes sped towards my head, coming at me as the weapon he used in an upward swing. He was intent on cleaving through me, aiming to decapitate me in one clean, powerful swing of the weapon. It was a beautiful thing, made from powerful looking and masterfully handled metal. As I gazed at it I realized that it was in all likelihood his true artifact, which had once been the subject of the quest to acquire the second tier of influence over the domain of time.
"A weapon-type artifact huh? Neat." I uttered, in the instant before I sped up to my true speed. As I did, Akamal's eyes flared in fury, and his blade began to slow its approach towards my neck. My eyes widened in satisfaction, gleaming with joy as I challenged him.
I neatly backed out of the way of the axe, merely by floating backward a touch. The weapon fully missed me, and as it whizzed past my head Akamal roared at me, animalistic fury evident in his voice. Akamal stepped forward and charged at me, but in my perception he was slow and his charge was ineffectual, even as he lifted both of his axes and barred them at me.
"Is that really all you have?" I asked him, even as he, in what felt like slow-motion lifted one of his axes to bring it down on my neck. When he was nearly upon me, I merely laughed in his face and hurled him back with telekinesis. He was hit by a psychic wave of force that was so powerful it made the one I used against Technos look weak.
In the wake of my mental blow Akamal was sent hurtling through the air, and the display of my power was great enough that it distracted Ravanthan, who turned to see her hated master being made to look weak by my powers. Her heart now truly and dramatically began to waver, and a small amount of hope blossomed to life within her.
"You are... weaker than I expected. Weaker than I remembered." I uttered, as Akamal hit a wall. He collided with it hard, but as I studied him I knew that he wasn't truly hurt. None of my attacks had actually seemed to have done any meaningful damage to the strange creature, even if it felt like I was the one in control. I wondered if there was something holding him back.
"Could it be Ravanthan? After all his voodoo powers weren't unlimited since he was a vestige... It's possible that using Voodoo's own form of reanimation was taking a toll on him." I mused, internally. It would explain the apparent ease I was having fighting this battle so far. It shouldn't be this easy, but at least he hadn't inflicted any real damage to me yet either. That said, Akamal was not a quiet monster.
"Am I weaker, or am I just not taking you seriously?" Akamal asked, in rebuttal to my words. Even as he fell from the wall, there was a wide smirk on his face. That said, I sensed the false bravado in his words. I knew he was lying, at least partially.
When he landed on the floor he was radiating an aura of malice, one that wasn't supernatural in origin but was just a reflection of his inner spite and wickedness. He was smiling, but there was no heart behind it. He knew that I presented a danger to him, the second one he had ever encountered.
"You think you can just waltz in here and undo all of my work? I... won't let you!" Akamal roared, before pointing a hand at my clone and creating a time portal behind him. My clone froze in confusion and fear for a split second, just long enough for a copy of Ravanthan, but when she was still alive, to step through it, her eyes filled with confusion as she took in the scene in front of her. Even the actual Ravanthan froze in confusion for a moment, as she took in the scene. But my clone quickly regained his senses and stepped forward to build some distance between himself and the copy of Ravanthan. As he stepped forward he leaped and flipped in the air to kick the copy in the face.
His foot collided with her, and the force of the blow was enough that the copy was sent back through the portal and the clone did what it had seen me do to destroy such portals. As he acted he was quick to speak.
"I won't let you interrupt my work!" He roared, annoyed at Akamal's first serious attempt to disrupt the fight. The energy from the portal touched him and caused him to physical age, which he then fixed by simply bestowing himself with more youth.
"No copies will distract me!" The clone shouted, annoyed at Akamal's attempted distraction. He was still in mid-air when he turned to Ravanthan and spoke again.
"Ravanthan! Do you see how this monster mocks your suffering? How he would use a copy of you from some parallel past to distract us? He makes light of what you were before you became his plaything! Show him the folly of his ways! Use your rage... Use your pride, and break free! Show him that no one can control you!" The clone roared, as he began to appeal to more negative, but still powerful emotions to free the spirit queen from the shackles placed on her by their shared enemy.