The End Before The Beginning…
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The land is filled with an otherworldly glow. Golden ichor rained heavily on the battle-worn soil. Powerful slashes of celestial power tear apart the very fabric of reality and the flesh of angels torn asunder like tissue paper. Mountains split in half, and deep canyons gouged into the ground. The battlefield, a once bustling city, was now nothing but a wasteland stained with ash and blood. This wasteland spanned thousands and thousands of leagues. A never-ending flood of angels try to assault the being causing this, only to be torn apart like flies by the hundreds of thousands, their armies and numbers dwindling rapidly, falling apart as they attempt to hold back their enemy in all but their flickering hope.
Hope…
Such a bright word to be used in a world shadowed by the unrelenting darkness of war. Eons of endless battles and bloodshed. Needless battles that never should have been waged in the first place. Yet even after all this time, those who have remained, the brave few who continue to march into battle—knowing it will end in their victory or absolute death—can still muster up the courage to find even the smallest iota of hope.
"I have waited aeons for this day..." A dark figure's voice booms across the land like a shockwave. His seemingly insignificant words infect the very air itself with potent poison, causing those who have been wounded and those close enough to drop lifelessly to the ground, "The day I would obtain true omnipotent power. Complete dominion over the worlds-"
This figure walks unhurriedly toward his destination. A massive, blinding, pulsing orb of pure energy surrounded by untold amounts of rotating and ever-changing runes. A spell, no doubt. Buffeting winds blow from all angles and directions due to the sheer brilliance of the spell. An existence that can only be described as:
Magic…
A figure stops in his tracks and looks down towards his feet. An angel, a cherubim to be exact, missing half his upper body, all but one of his heads, and a leg. The cherub's veins beat with a deep black color as whatever afflicts his body spreads within him by the second. The figure leans down, grabs the wounded angel by his last remaining neck, and lifts him off the ground. The cherub groans in pain as the figure's hand tightens slowly around his neck.
"-And you unsightly, insignificant hymenopterans keep getting in my damned way." The figure speaks, staring down the cherub with a gaze that promises death, "Y-you're... an abomination!" The cherub spits through gritted teeth, though missing half of them. The dark figure only grins wickedly in response. "What's the point child? What's the point standing in the way of one of your masters... So ignorant, weak, and fragile. So mortal."
A glob of spit is the only reply the figure gets before the figure can continue his monologue. "Do you truly trust in your creators? Do you truly believe those fools can stop me? He who ignores the Covenant?" Blood drips down the angel's neck as the figure tightens his grip. "You won't... y-you'll never win..." The angel begins to choke from a lack of air, "You-. H-How f-far you have fallen from g-grace, Apollyon..."
The cherub's head leaves the security of his neck in an instant. The named Apollyon drops the lifeless, now headless body of the cherub, staring into the corpse with deep hatred.
"That... is no longer my name, lest your unworthy tongue utter it aloud." Apollyon states in disgust before he begins to grin, his sinister aura wafting about. "My name is Apothylon."
Directly after his words are uttered, a pulse of energy mightier than any nuclear blast wave blows by, obliterating the surrounding landscape more so than it already is. Apothylon stood where he was, unaffected by the pulse. Still, his attention immediately turned toward the radiance in the not-so-far-off distance. Hence, he resumed his trek toward the blinding magic light. Soon enough, those who are performing the ritual come into his sight. Twelve individuals—eleven of the figures surrounding a twelfth, all seemingly locked in place, deep in concentration as they flood the ever-brightening ritual construct with their energy. At first, Apothylon merely stares, grinning a devilish grin as he watches them power the spell before him. A useless endeavor considering his existence.
Though he can't help but feel as if something is off.
Regardless of this, his grin turns to a slight scowl as he walks forward. The twelfth individual stands up in the presence of Apothylon's approach. Turning around, he begins to walk towards Apothylon. A pitch-black sword manifests in the hand of Apothylon, his blade causing the fabric of the very universe to ripple with every movement; its mere existence is enough to destroy this world and the next ten. The other figure stops and stands meters away, glaring at Apothylon.
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"Elix." His words call out to the other figure, laced with venom. But his words have no visible effect on him.
"..." Elix does not respond and continues to glare. Apothylon scoffs at him.
"The Primordials and Ancients are gone, my generals have slain your own, and The Seed-given rights of Behemoth are mine to wield as I see fit." He levels his gaze with Elix, who stands fifteen meters away.
"You have no chance at winning, Elix. So give up your hope and surrender!"
Elix's head drops towards the ground, hands clenched in fists, still silent and unmoving, "..."
Apothylon laughs, his eyes gleaming with insanity, "Have nothing to say, brother?" A divine stillness saturates the atmosphere, the only sound being the rushing of magic-produced winds. The imposing image of Elix stands fast, his form just as unmoving as his words, "Even if it costs us our everlasting lives, we will end this war one way or another." Elix states calmly, his voice level and imposing, though one could tell a bubbling rage was contained just underneath.
"I didn't know you could make jokes." Apothylon laughs, "You fools are still bound by the Divine Covenant; it is impossible for you to harm me. I will be the one to end this war and it will end on my terms!"
A pulse of energy from the ritual booms across them. Elix's body begins to glow a multitude of colors as his body begins to turn transparent, its physical form wisping away gently. "You... You fools aren't genuinely considering sacrificing yourselves in a measly spell, are you?" Apothylon questions, a fake but mild concern made its way onto his face.
Elix merely grunts gently and glances behind him as the other 11 figures start fading away in wafts of multicolored dust and particles of magic, one by one. An exponentially increasing energy is emitted from the epicenter of the ritual, the sheer radiance beginning to tingle at Apothylon's skin. "In accordance with the Divine Covenant; that which exist below the divine cannot affect the divine. You are he who no longer abides by the Divine Admonition Principium, and therefore can influence and be influenced by that which is not divine." Elix states,
"You are still an existence which surpasses all others, still Celestial in nature; far beyond the divine." He drones off, an honest look of shock donning the face of Apothylon, "N-No..."
The last of the 11 figures behind Elix fade away, their insurmountable power and souls feeding directly into the ritual as the exponentially increasing energy starts to burn at Apothylon's corrupted flesh, "That ritual is..."
"You may still carry the power of a Celestial, but you are flesh and bone now. You are no longer pure as your former brethren; you have thrown away your birthright for mortal power and threatened all that we have created. Your corruption has consumed you, so we will treat you as if you are corruption itself."
"I'LL KILL YOU! I WILL KILL YOU ALL JUST AS I KILLED HELIOS!" Apothylon shouts in fury, his voice reverberating as if multiple voices overlap as his rage seeps into the world, "REALITY WILL BE MINE TO RULE! NO ONE ELSE!" He slashes his sword at the massive magical ritual construct. Said slashes cut through the fabrics of reality, destroying even energy itself as the slashes travel at immeasurable speeds toward the magical construct, only for the slashes to instantaneously dissolve before they even reach its inner barrier of runes.
"On the accounts of your corruption, all forms of blasphemy, divine treason, mortal genocide, murdering multiple divines, and rejecting the Divine Admonition Principium... we hereby sentence you to infinite damnation!" Elix fades away, his being swirling into the orb of magic and divine essence before it starts to spin and shrink, collapsing in on itself. The energy being released magnifies itself multiple times over, afflicting Apothylon's body with a poisoning that is Celestial, divine, and also mortal in nature, causing Apothylon's non-temporal, physical form to decay right before his eyes, "NOOOO!"
Both matter and energy begin to decay completely, reality being destroyed at the epicenter of the spell before this tiny epicenter expands rapidly. As the spell starts collapsing like a dying star, shrinking smaller and smaller, Apothylon drops limp as the bubble of decaying reality engulfs his husk of a body, only alive due to his nature as a Celestial. In Apothylon's last-ditch effort to stop the spell, he unleashes nearly all his remaining energy, exposing his soul to the Celestial decay. His energy clashes with the magic luster of the spell for only a split second before he is overpowered, and the spell collapses back in on itself.
It all happens in an instant: the ritual spell-turned-singularity disappears beyond the dimensional veil, sucking in all of its priorly released energy and restoring reality to its previous state. At the same time, Apothylon crashed heavily into the realm's spatial fabric, his body and soul decaying faster than they could regenerate when the spell reappeared in a flash of overwhelming power, detonating outward with the force of a million hypernovas directly in his face. Entirely annihilating his physical form and the threads of reality surrounding him. The spell then crumples back in on itself for the final time, grabbing Apothylon's dismembered soul with it as the spell-wrought singularity disappears, erasing all traces of the spell from reality...
...Trapping Apothylon's eternally decaying soul in everlasting darkness for all eternity.