“You cannot win!” The thing let down a fist, its frustration, an earthquake.

“I don’t want to win… I want vengeance... I will paint your skies with my pain… pervert your fields with my hate… uproot all that points to rhyme or reason… make up down, left, right… air, rot… and you’ll watch me do it… and you’ll try to stop me… and you’ll fail… because no amount of ‘power’… that you have… will ever equal the love your kind stole from me…!” From those demented crimson eyes, blood flowed, tears an impossible feat still.

“Then have it your way…!” The giant attempted to swat the man like a fly, breaking the ground like a great cataclysm, a ravine opened.

The thing would check for a corpse, but the man was long gone. It did not need eyes to see still, and on its shoulder stood the enemy. It would make one flap of its wings, blowing away August and its allies all in one fell swoop, a hurricane, but August was human. He stood against the winds still, suspended by nothing but a singular thought, the Abstract then, about to become the painting he promised.

He spread his arms wide as if to embrace a long lost friend, but the only thing he embraced, was his lust for destruction.

A gamma ray burst, said to be the most powerful release of energy in the entire universe, born from the death of star, or the union thereof. In truth, then and there, a star did die for those ideas, for those inhabitants of the Abstract, the star of their hope.

A blinding light would wash over the entire plain of existence, lasting no more than ten milliseconds, but that’s all it took. The vegetation, all of it, charred black, and those that hid in the dirt, holding on to hopes and dreams, burnt to a crisp.

There were barely any of them left really, anything less than a reality manipulator became ash instantaneously, or, what was left of them was not fit for sight.

If one was to take a look at the skies, a black void, the logic left dictating that a sky wouldn’t be left if such an event were to occur. The stars beyond the veil persisted still and provided light to the place lacking in air, thankfully no one there needed to breathe.

“Eeeeaaaaaahhhhhhh!” The thing would emerge from the ground like a great eruption, skin burnt and falling off, wings akin to old rotting rags. “Puppet of Fate! You have made your last mistake! I will bathe in your blood! Bask in your flesh! And play scores with your rattling bones! Ahhhhhhhh!”

The thing would remove its hands from its broken but recovering face, flesh stretched thin, eyes a bloody cataract grey and skin blowing in the wind. If it wasn’t ugly before, surely, it was uglier then.

The eldritch horror would posture itself, slumping forward like a rolling hill, or rather, a flaming mountain, a volcano, but like a rolling hill, it barreled forward. As for its target, August, nothing is free, not even imagination.

As such, what would be the cost of bending cosmic forces to one’s will, especially one that is human. A mind enhanced, a reality fickle, and a body made, yes, but the mind was still human, and humans have limits.

He stayed on his knees, hands to the floor, blood pouring from all orifices of his body, though made to be perfect.

All efforts made to preserve the fleeting humanity he clung onto was gone in a presumptuous instant, no more heart beat, no more lungs, and no more heat.

All that was left of him in those few moments, was the brain he kept, and even that was in danger. If he wasn’t in the realm of imagination then, he would have already been dead. He wasn’t though, dead, not yet.

Even as the sky was left bare, clouds manifested from the ether, a favor fulfilled, two fleeting white dots dancing in the overcast as rain descended.

The god of madness seemed to reduce all in its path to dust as its comrade in a burned corpse held August in place with its command over tides and gravity. It was not as amazing as August, but it was just a dangerous.

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Thus, the silver man was forced to bear witness to his end, and though he never intended to live, death was still, well, death.

He looked at the thing but he didn’t see it, for he saw something far more significant in those droplets. He saw the face of his sister, felt the loving embrace of his parents, recalled his first steps, his first words, and he remembered the warmth in his chest seeing those flaming yellow eyes.

It wasn’t yet, that feeling, but it was, it hadn’t happened yet, but it had, he hadn’t come to love her yet, but he would, as he always had, as he always would.

She was there, author of the events, of fate, watching from the fracture, so perhaps he expected to be saved, a deus ex machina, a pipe dream.

He was the perfect machine of war, but even that could be broken. He’d be hit so hard, I need not explain nor describe an elaborate scene, for all he saw, was black, the abyss, his displaced soul sinking into the afterlife, he was dead.

He had died so fast in fact, he did not realize he was dead, and maybe he never would have had she allowed him natural passage.

He sunk in the dark, content, his eyes weary from a lifetime of adversity, but finally, it was over. He knew not why he was content, not why he was okay with it ending that way, but he was.

There was something, a feeling he could not explain, but I can, peace, apathy perhaps. It was no longer his problem, and what could he do, do about what?

It didn’t matter then. His eyes would weigh shut, and so his time was done. It, whatever it was, his part of the collective human unconscious, his claim, would sink alongside him.

As such, it was gone, gone from the Abstract, gone from the rules of the human mind, gone from logic, from reason, so to some extent, it was freed, and that silver body was completely void.

In that same abyss though, as he slept, a light, that same welcoming deceitful light, pierced the dark and pried his eyelids open, thus, he remembered why.

He’d also remember what. The fight for his world, for the future of his sister, of his most prized possession. The thing, whatever it was—the true from of Fate—took hold of him in tight embrace, hugged him.

It had a humanoid figure, woman like. It had no clothes, but none of its features were visible, like a statue being sculpted, yet somehow, her beauty was still visible, tantalizing. She was shrouded in light, beautiful, warm, light, but it was kind of blinding.

As for the reason such a being had followed him into the first stage of the afterlife, well, to retrieve her handiwork of course. There was still more to be dealt with though, after all, it was her fault. Well, I suppose fault is not the right word, since it was intentional.

“You let me die— no, you lead me to my death… so let me rest in peace…” The man attempted to pry free of the woman, but there was no strength enough to move her.

“I had to… so that you’d truly shed your humanity… to become a vessel, you had to die… but now I’ll fulfil my side of our agreement… their bodies, you’ll find them with a thought, your body… it will be made as you intended… and my power… at your disposal…” She had a proposal.

“You lie…? Again…?! You lie…!? You’d never give me such power… now would you…?! The power to sculpt destiny, to shatter reality into a million pieces… you’d be mad…?” He didn’t want it himself.

“All you had to do, was ask… you won’t get that power… but reality will be your plaything, anything you can imagine… anything…” Her grip tightened.

“And the cost…?” He knew a good deal, and that one was too good to be true.

“We become one in the same… and I get to take the humanity you lost becoming the perfect organism of war…”

The dealings in the dark recesses of the afterlife continued, but what about the other side of the conflict. The eldritch visionary had done it, wiped out the last chance Fate had of subverting her own restrictions.

He was sure, she no longer had a choice but to listen, or they’d abandon plans of an amicable split, and they’d wreak havoc tearing back into the human world once more with help from the Convergence.

It pained him, all those lost, but waiting, they’d eventually come back, as long as the invasion didn’t start yet. As long as they had time to figure themselves out, as long as they found a way to contain immaterial infinity in a material and finite vessel. Lest they disappeared in the new world to come.

The mad god sat in the passing rain, healing from searing flesh and bloody eyes, but he’d still notice through the fog of that pain. The silver corpse, his trophy, and bargaining chip, was gone.

It’d spring to its feet, butchered heart in its mouth and head on a swivel. It saw not a dead body, in fact, it saw nothing.

An ability beyond eyes would find the body though, and it was not an empty corpse, not anymore.

It’d raise its head to look to the sky, a swirling weight in its gut, heavier by the second, and for good reason. There he was, in all his glory, a being larger than life and death, inhabiting the bounds beyond the Abstract, beyond infinity.

There were no longer clouds, no longer a sky, because if there was, he was the sky, and as for the stars in his domain, they’d be painted.

He cried, still, lamenting all that he had lost to become what he was, but power changed nothing. Tears, still an impossible feat for such a body, and so, his eyes bled, and the gems of the sky, shining so bright, amethyst, emerald, aquamarine, all became like shinning drops of blood in the night’s sky.

It would not be spared, the closest star, the faux moon, all of it, red, and even then, he hid the star, an eclipse. Thus, he was a step closer to the image he had promised, and he was about to take another.