In the wake of the destruction, Kal struggled to keep his focus intact. He could feel the remembrance stone assisting him but almost everything threatened to overwhelm him. His Eyes of the Slayer showed him only countless threads so densely packed in Fyborh's body that he appeared only as marbled red, white, and black light. But now as he gasped for breath looking over the destruction and death he had just delivered the lights had faded.
Fyborh turned away from the place that once held hundreds of billions of people. The guilt had returned but he didn’t wallow in it. Instead, he took a breath and stepped.
Once more Kal was wrenched through space, propelled by the column of infused soul mana this time through the darkness of the place between worlds. He soared between the stars in the inky black. The darkness around him changed as he moved faster, the stars stretched out around him dividing the darkness into lines of void black and searing white.
Ahead the void changed, where once only the light of stars hung in his vision a whirling mass of titanic power surged in its place. Kal didn’t need his mana sight to know what it was. Abyssal Mana. So much of it that even after the destruction he had just witnessed his heart sped up.
What was happening?
The swirling chaos grew closer until a flickering yellow sun emerged. Around it hung several more worlds in various states of corruption. Fyborh appeared above the flickering star and passed his gaze over the chaos. Countless demons surge through tears in space over each world to fall upon scores of waiting Karthian warriors.
Demons died in the thousands as pillars of light scoured the air behind volleys of deadly bolts and project strikes. The sheer scale of the fighting boggles Kal’s mind. Millions of Karthians fought for their lives across a dozen worlds and moons.
It didn't even look like a contest, the demons died faster than they could arrive but their strength was growing. Each new demon entering the fray was stronger than the last. New flying spawn fast enough to avoid the volleys of bolts and pillars of light and brutes strong enough to shrug off even the strongest strike from Karthian warriors began to appear.
Something was wrong. Kal’s vision was wrenched back and forth across hundreds of locations, he struggled to keep his perception coherent as black pillars flashed before his eyes. Each was cracked, shattered, or scarred. Kal could see threads of countless mana affinities severed with the black stones but what made his heart sink was the runes he saw on the face of the stone.
He had seen them once before. At the entrance of Mira’s bunker. They were absorption runes, and they were all broken. Kal forced his vision back to the tears and allowed his mana sight to take over again and once the abyssal mana revealed itself to his eyes.
It was everywhere. It surges from the tears to wash over the earth of each and every world and as more flowed in the stronger the enemy became, while the Karthians only grew weaker. Kal could see it with his Eyes of the Slayer every moment that passed their skills grew weaker as abyssal mana burrowed through their channels. Even the might of the karthians meant nothing to the sinister foreign mana.
Kal knew that Fyborh saw it too.
His face darkened, “Dhinir! Canmis! The cleaning stones have been broken!”
Confusion flickered over Fyborh's face before it hardened and he drew his sword. The light in Fyborh’s chest struggled back to life but immediately began to fade.
Then he was gone and the skies above each world ran dark red with the blood demonkind. Time seemed to slow as all the visual information was crammed into Kal’s mind Fyborh danced between hordes, every motion killing hundreds while nimbly avoiding harming the seemingly motionless karthians.
The carnage continued and the abyssal mana slowed, tears slowly began to close and the karthians cores began to recover. Time accelerated again and Fyborh staggered to a stop, this time on the dull gray surface of Kartha’s moon.
He gasped for breath and all the light that remained in his body barely managed to shine enough to be seen even with Kal’s Eyes of the Slayer. Fyborh looked into the swirling abyssal mana still oozing into the worlds, “Dhinir! Ca-”
Before he could yell the second name the air around him flashed, searing Kal’s eyes even without actually being there and Fyborh let out a roar of pain and confusion as the flash became a pillar of gold-black power. Fyborh fell as the pillar bored down on him the moon shattering under the power of the attack.
Fyborh fell through the crumbling world, his body shattering debris, and glowing red blood sprayed from his mouth and chest. An instant later another stream of deadly power arced between the worlds to tear him from the core of the moon. This time Fyborh managed to raise his arm in response but he was still propelled with such speed and power that he slammed into the surface of one of Kartha’s sibling worlds.
His body slammed into the ground and a ripple of destruction rushed across the world, cities crumbled and mountains cracked. Thousands died in an instant as the building fell on the unascended and low-tiered.
Fyborh staggered to his feet, his face pale and his left arm gone at the shoulder where only blackened destroyed flesh remained, “What are you doing!? His voice was full of confused anguish and none of the power Kal had felt in it during his destruction of the other worlds remained.
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Dhinir appeared in front of Fyborh, “What we must brother…” Dhinir’s voice remained neutral, his face an emotionless mask.
“What!? What about the ritual? Quotz! Dhoerin!”
“Quiet brother… They cannot hear you. As for the ritual, well…” Dhinir waved one hand another pillar of light slammed down onto Fyborh. The strike carved a canyon of desolation across the edge of the world sending cracks across its entire surface, what cities hadn’t fallen already were torn apart by the following wave of cataclysm. Volcanoes erupted filling the once clean sky with superheated ash.
Fyborh hung in the space above Kartha, his body barely held together by charred tendons and bones. The light of his core and channels had faded even further and his eyes flickered as he tried to hold them open.
Dhinir appeared next to him, “We have priorities, dear brother, we must ensure our continued existence, not scurry after mortals,” He gestured dismissively towards the world he had just destroyed, “They are not worth the effort but they have their uses.”
“Why?... Why betray me, Brother?”
The two gods moved closer, “You would not allow us to do what needs to be done…”
Behind Dhinir the space warped, abyssal mana began to flood the area and sink into the remaining worlds. Suddenly a white blade appeared in Dhinir's hand and its light twisted the air directly around it.
Dhinir looked up from the blade, “The ritual was never going to work… It was designed to isolate a single world, not all of them!” Dhinir’s neutral tone became a growl, “We have been doomed from the start, the fallen of the 1st have won. They won before our universe existed and they will continue to win until the end of time!”
“We can no longer lower ourselves to protect the rabble. But at least they can have a purpose when I am done here.”
Fyborh tried to gather himself but his wounds were too great, “Stop brother, we can win! The cleansing stones-”
“Will crack as they have done for countless other universes. No, it is not enough….”
Before Fyborh could speak again Dhinir had already moved, and the white blade pierced Fyborh’s chest, “Your will shall guide the dead and the dead will conceal us from the enemy… Good-bye, brother.”
Fyborh fell.
As the wounded god fell through the sky the abyssal mana surged between the worlds. Kal’s vision was dragged away further than he could truly comprehend. Stars came together to form a sea of lights and empty voids. As Fyborh fell the sea died, silver light flashed and surged from across the sea of light to condense at a single point.
Kal’s barely-in-control mind quaked as the blur of silver bombarded him with images, no faces. Men, women, children, beasts, elementals, and everything else died in an instant and arced across the universe, only those closest to Fyborh and the already corrupted space were spared.
The sea of light changed, whites, and blues darkened and others winked out altogether before an unstoppable wave of dark purple surged over them. Abyssal mana replaced everything.
Fyborh shattered a now desolate plateau and overhead tears immediately began to reopen. Fyborh’s eyes opened but he didn’t stand, instead, he began to weep, “No… What have you done…”
Reality shattered around Kal’s awareness before he suddenly found himself standing in a small hut. Sunlight beamed through a small window above a bench top covered in the remains of what looked like freshly cut carrots but they were the wrong color. Instead of the orange he was used to, they were a deep blue. Kal’s mind spun from both the sudden change in scenery and because of what he had just seen, “So many people…”
Kal’s soul was roiling in his core strangely. Switching between furious rage and a strange calm in rapid succession. Kal felt the same, “Why? What was there to gain from killing so many people…everyone.” No, it wasn’t everyone, one world had survived.
“Why? Well, I believe at first he wished to save his own skin.”
Kal jumped and spun around to face the source of the voice. Standing framed by sunlight in the doorway of the hut stood Fyborh. His face looked drawn but what took Kal aback was his clothes. The god wore dirty hide trousers and a frayed linen shirt, over his shoulder was a large elk of some kind that he threw down to the ground before fully stepping into the hut.
“Fyborh!”
Fyborh frowned, “I’m surprised you know me,” his gaze dropped to Exterminator’s Regards and his eyes widened slightly, “Interesting, apparently I liked you a decent amount… I’m sorry I don’t know if you know how these things work but we don’t have time to chat.”
Kal frowned but nodded, “Ok, can you just tell me what the fuck actually happened there?”
Fyborh’s gaze moved back to the elk which he dragged on the bench, there was absolutely no humor in his eyes. It didn’t even really feel like Fyborh.
“If you were able to locate this remembrance stone you are either about to die or are going to die but I assume that you are from Va’nir? The last world?” Fyborh asked without turning his head from the elk as a knife appeared in his hand.
“I haven’t heard it called anything really but I think so.”
“My traitor brothers and sisters threw away everything we were supposed to protect to save themselves. The souls of millions were torn apart to form the firmament that surrounds your world. Va’nir is cut off and floats in a sea of death and destruction.”
“So many people for one world? Why?... Why Va’nir?”
Fyborh turned from his work to look into Kal’s eyes, “They did not save your world for the people who resided there. They did so for only one reason. Because Van'nir is the beginning, Va’nir contains the core forge and the source of their strength.”
“Dhinir and Uton did good work at least, their grotesque ritual should have protected Va’nir for millennia.”
Kal frowned, “Should have?”
Fyborh’s face darkened, “The soul mana of a universe of people is more power than even I can easily comprehend and it would have easily been enough but a coward god is a greedy god. The firmament will fail.”
“And there is nothing you can do to stop it…”