Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

With every step the Devourer took, realms shuddered, life vanished and reality disrupted. After each stride came a thunderous thud announcing his arriving and the carnage that came with it.

It shouldn't have gotten this deep into the realm this fast. Gotten so much more powerful this quick. All preparations for it's coming are behind schedule and our forces are weakened from the last confrontation.

We are not ready for this, ready for it. We need more time.

I laughed. It was short, raspy and bitter. So very bitter.

Time. The concept that I -and perhaps every other Asura that walked the realm of Alhala- had dismissed as a nuisance that only held power over those still trapped in the snare that was mortality's grasp. It nudged and pulled, stringing them to it's whims as a puppeteer would his marionette. We had believed ourselves above it's tyranny when we ascended the mortal bounds, regardless of how incomplete or Imperfect said ascension was. Clearly, we were wrong, as we had been on so...many other matters and now we paid for them-

"My king" called a firm feminine voice from my side.

Exypnos, I noted idling. Pulled from my musings I turned to meet her. The moment my glances fell on her, she dropped to her knees. Head bowed in reverence to my power and status as king. Donned on her currently kneeling form was a sliver armour covered in glowing emerald runes, each possessing the power of a hundred mages.

Leaning back, I answered.

"What is it?"

Taking my words as me giving her the permission to stand before me, she rose, blonde curls whipping slightly.

Exypnos was a tall woman, standing several inches higher than most men, myself included, and possessed a beauty capable of matching that of the love gods. Yet it wasn't her height or her beauty that drew me toward her, no, it was her wits.

Something that she had repeatedly proven to worth my attention and thus her place in my council.

I knew something was wrong the moment I saw her visage. Anyone who had met Exypnos would describe her as calm, stoic, always in control of herself. Now she looked visibly shaken. Eyebrows once held high were knotted downward in worry.

"My king..." She paused, voice dwindling to a whisper "It's here."

I froze. The chilling hand of fear grasped at my heart as I noticed the presence of something that had eluded us for weeks and the absence of the thing that has become a constant in our lives.

Gone were the thuds of the All Consuming's feet pounding down on the earth or the blood curdling screams of those it devoured on the way.

Now.

It was quiet.

Now.

All was silent.

Whatever delight or peace I would have gotten from this newly found quiet was buried under the growing mass of dread pooling in my bowels.

I wanted to scream and shout for the fates, the gods to bring back the thuds and take the Devourer off our gate but I couldn't, wouldn't.

This was what I wished for, what we asked for. Now we had it and with it - I thought bitterly - the All Consuming at our doorstep. No amount of pleading or demanding would change that. Yet, I couldn't help but wonder how things would have been if we had made different choices, hadn't meddled with things above our understanding and had never taken this path.

The same path you lead them down, a dark voice whispered from the depths of my mind. Shaking my head, I returned my glance to Exypnos, who was sending me worried looks.

"I see. Let's move on to other matters then, how goes the gate?"

Exypnos's form twitched, it was so small and had disappeared so quickly few would have noticed it and many of the ones who did would have thought themselves delusional, but to me who knew all her little tells it was as clear as the morning sky.

It seemed the works on the gate were not forthcoming. Sighing, I resisted the urge to slump into my throne, for a king could not slouch or at the least never in front of his subjects. Locking my fingers underneath my chin, I spoke.

"The weapon then?"

This time she answered, stepping forward as she did.

"Prince Kramedl said he's close to a breakthrough and that he just needs a little more time-

"How long?" I cut in.

She hesitated.

"182 years"

"Time we don't have." It always seemed to circle back to that didn't it?

"Tell Prince Kramedl to gather all his research and wait at one of the evacuation centres, the evacuation units to start doing their jobs and the army to stand down. No one should attack if it doesn't or I'm not there.

Exypnos bowed and made to do just that.

"And Exypnos?"

She paused.

"Make sure my son does as his told"

She nodded, and turned to leave. The second she left the throne room I slouched in my throne, far too mentally exhausted to care, principles be damned, a string of obscenities leaving my lips.

Massaging my temple, I harden my mind for what was to come, knowing fully well I could die tonight.

Rising to my feet, I flared my mana, calling for the Armour and Crown. They answered, engulfing my form and settling on my head in a golden flash with more power than any man had any right to. Breath hitched, eyes flared wide from the immense spike in power, I made the teleporting sigil and disappeared with a flicker of mana.

I reappeared in front of the only thing keeping us from total annihilation. The wall of Gunda. It was created two hundred years ago by one of the greatest craftsman to ever walk the realm, Gunda The Great. It was at two thousand foot tall, five hundred foot thick wall of pure arcane magic, it spanned over two thousand miles. The wall was engraved with a powerful runic symbol capable of rendering any magic known to the realm invalid. It is also the only thing in the realm that has faced the Consumer and won. The Devourer was weaker, lesser than what it is now.

Hopefully, it's protects us once more.

I thought, turning to face the remnants of a once great army. An army that had once numbered in hundred of thousands reduced to barely a thousand. The army was stationed in layered semi-circles of mages, archers, lancers and of course the front-liners.

I sweep through forms of the solider's in search for the one I seek.

There!

At the center of the formation surrounded by the war council, engulfed from head to toe in an armour so dark it swallowed the light around it, was General Burchard. Contrary to the tales of him in the realms, he was not a nine foot tall golem of a man, barely standing over five foot tall as he was but that didn't mean he was lesser, far from it. For what he lacked in raw strength he more than made up for with the swiftness of his blade and years of accumulated skills and experience in battle. Some of which he fought at my side, others at my father's.

Currently, the General was in a heated debate with a council member, one that after a moment of inspection I realized, I've never met. The councillor was a tall, rail thin man with slick black hair dressed in bulky highly styled purple armour that looked like it was suited more for the day decoration than battle.

It probably was...

The fact that I have never meet him left only one conclusion...

His an inheritor then and from the looks of it, an ambitious one.

The General, instincts as sharp as always, snaps toward me the second I came within his proximity, completely ignoring the councilman's roar of outrage and bowed, setting off a chain of bows as my presence became known.

I waved an arm for them to rise

"What is the matter?"

The councillor partially dash forward a welcoming smile gracing his lips, arms clapped tight behind his back, his body positioned in manner that kept my glance on him. It was a novel tactic nobles used to control the narrative, to change the flow of information into one of their liking. I should know, I am one of them. Only for him to pause at my raised hand.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Not you, the General"

The councillor scowled. For a moment I had thought he was going to protest and in truth, I wanted him to. His attempts to curry political favor at a time such as this one annoyed me a great deed but alas he was a smarter man than I believed because while hesitant he nodded and slinked back into the small crowd of war council members. The price of directly opposing the king was not one he was willing to pay.

The general strode forward at the mention of his name barely sparing his would-be rival a glance. He stopped a feet from me, Hardened grey eyes staring at me from behind their metallic confine. With a grunt, gauntlet engulf fists leached onto the sides of an obsidian black helmet and pulled, revealing the heavily scared face of a bald man far past his prime.

Some of the councilors looked repulsed.

Placing his helm under his arm, he kneeled.

"Honestly, my king…" He began. "I do not know. The intel and past encounters we had denounced it as mindless beast with far too much power in it to grasp but now… it's different. It's not screaming or attacking, just standing there... staring at nothing" The General's eyes roamed to the wall for moment before he continued.

"Riben here" He gestures at the councilman who was trying and failing horrendously if I may add, to turn himself invisible. Perhaps his attempts would have bore fruit if he wasn't wearing an armour with a shade of purple so bright one see him a mile away.

"...thinks we should attack it before it's done with whatever it is doing out there and while his suggestion has merit. I did not think it is was wise to attack or provoke a monster we have no confirmed means of defeating nor do we know if attacking would actually hinder what it was doing out there and not aid it. Lastly, your highness had issued an order for all army officers to stand down."

Riben went so still he could be mistaken for a statue. Fortunately for him, he was the last thing on my mind.

For years the Devourer had acted as Burchard had finely put it 'a mindless beast with far too much power on its hands.' It was like an animal with commands, instincts wired into it's mind telling it to satisfy it's hunger or die. Except the instincts never told it how, so using its limited intellect it made do with a terrifying amount of power and perhaps the most primitive tactics in the realm -if one could call hitting something till it broke, strategic thinking.

Until now.

For the first time since its appearance the Devourer was faced with a problem and it had not to attempted to rectify it with it's fists. This opened a channel of two possibilities.

The first unlikely possibility was, somehow... the Consumer overcame the pull of its hunger and took on the pacifist way of life. The second, however, painted a much grimmer and realistic picture. In it, the Devourer's intelligence exceeded by far what it led us to believe. It hid behind the facade of a brute while devising a plan to break past the wall's defenses. A plan, I realized, it had already began.

But how? It would take an absurd amount of power and entirely new sorts of magic to dent it, much less break it. The All Consuming was powerful but as the first battle had shown, he did not possess that kind of power, not even close.

Depths! The only time the devourer showed the slightest of interest in magic was when he devoured our mages-

I paused at that thought and ran it through my mind again. Then again and again, goosebumps bubbling out of my skin as the implications it presented became evident.

No...it can be. That's impossible! It can't-

I clamped down hard on that thought and tossed it down the depths of my psyche, never to be heard of again. When the All Consuming was involved, anything was possible, his rapid rise to power and near complete annihilation of our race proved that.

I have to warn them, to warn everyone-

An earsplitting roar of triumph echoed from the other side of the wall as the runes engraved on it flare into life and die down nearly instantly; the magic that powered it taken. With a deafening thud the wall crumbled, revealing the Devourer's otherworldly form.

The All Consuming towered over us, it's colossal bulk casting a large humanoid shadow. His flesh warped and stretched into maws filled with round after round of needle sharp teeth and blade edge tentacles, each of which were as thick as a grown human and over ten times as long. Darting across his pitch black skin like the countless stars in the night sky were bulging clear white eyes, all of which were focused on us with the intensity of a predator that had finally found it's prey.

Nightmare's incarnate stepped forward, the world trembled and everyone burst into action.

I jerked out of my musing at the General's roar to release and the whistling of hundreds of spells, arrows and spears flying through the air. Every single one them struck true -the All Consuming was a hard figure to miss- but did very little in damage. Spells fizzle out of existence the moment they entered it's proximity, absorbed. Arrows heads shattered against steel hard skin, spears bounced off to land at the side while the Devourer stood at the center of it all unharmed, unshaken.

Then it stuck back and the world screamed.

Men fell by the drones, struck down and devoured by whips of black flesh that moved swifter than they could react and hit harder than they could defend. In mere seconds it'd halved our numbers and crushed what little remained of our morale. From the cruel gleam in it's many eyes, it would be coming for the other half soon enough, then civilians afterwards.

And that would not do.

Slapping the chest piece of The Armour and reaching into spatial storage that lay within, I pulled out the third and most destructive of the set in one fluid motion. The Blade. I made the sigil to activate the Crown with my free hand.

While the Blade had raw devastating power but the Crown more dangerous general. For the Armour protected, The blade granted all it touched the power to destroy, but the Crown? It granted control. All but one of it's arsenal was efficient in this situation but it would have to do. It was a powerful spell but one with a cost too great, a cost I would have to pay up if I wanted to save what remained of my people, if I wanted to protect my son.

"Siphon mana and life"

Soldiers fell, dead before they hit the ground. Drained of their life force to empower mine. A symbol of golden crown burning hot on their cooling corpse.

And then came the power.

A sea of mana and life force flooded my form, soaking into it, changing it. Then the Armour hummed and the sea surged and submerged me completely.

It almost broke me.

A pained grunt left my lips as the weight of the power swelling within me nearly became too great to carry. My body was withering, becoming lesser by the second. Inky black lined chaos mana, spread across my flesh like the cancer they were and killed everything that crossed their path. Depths! I was only alive because of the Crown and Armour's combined efforts and even than...

. ..I don't have much time.

With gritted teeth, I shouldered the pain, focused the entirety of my mind on my core and reached for sea that raged within.

...And what a sea it was.

I stared in awe, realizing just how powerful the spell was. lt had temporarily elevated me to a state I'd never dream of.

Tier 8.

Beings of unimaginable power, people capable of bringing about the rise of nations and the fall of kingdoms. Demi- deities who stood among the elites of the realms and only bowed before the elder dragons and the gods themselves. And I, temporarily or not was one of them.

I called for the mana in the pool and marveled at how quickly it answered, at how smoothly it moved. With a snap of my hand, I brought the Tier 7 spells I knew to memory. Spells I learned when I was a younger lad who had just ascended to Tier 6 and had aspirations to reach Tier 7 but alas not all wishes were granted. They were Fortification spells, something I was thankful for, because Conjuration spells have been showed to have no effect on the Devourer.

Exhaling deeply I casted the spell.

"Devil's sense"

Something shifted in me and I felt myself...stretch. it was like my senses had evolved beyond me and imposed themselves on the world around me. I could hear, smell and see everything within a hundred miles like they were done before me, done to me and everything within that range was my domain.

Adjusting to the increase of sensory information, I moved through a sequence of sigils and activated the second spell.

"Grand enhance ability"

Power surged through my form and for a short second my body's degradation paused. Life returned to ashy grey skin and more power than I've felt in my entire lifespan combined filled my muscles. I could feel the mana merging my body and augmenting its properties. Strength, speed, constitution, endurance, perception...all of it. The Armour sang, the strength raised by a hundred fold.

With a sigh, I tightened my hold on The Blade. It too flared to life and stretched a twisted hand into my mind and ...sharpened it. It granted me focus for violence, for battle. Burning black wisps of  fire creep up at the Blade edges, cloaking it with flames that warped the flow of space and time by simply existing. It was known fact that where chaos lived, order died, there was no in between and the Blade…It was chaos born.

Holding the Blade at the ready, I shifted into a runner's pose and altered the final spell.

"Burst step"

I lurched forward, the Blade thrust out in front of me, twin craters laying at my feet. The All consuming lunged right back with far more speed than any being it's size had any right to, colossal fist reared back for a blow.

Human sized blade clashed with enormous fist. Enormous fist lost.

The All consuming recoiled, black flames eating away at it's flesh and roared in challenge. With a vicious sneer on my face, I drove after it and began our battle anew.

                             ------|------

Pain! Pain!

Maddening pain!

I convulsed on the floor in a pool of my own blood. One eye weeping tears of blood, lips peeled wide in a silent scream, my throat clogged by the blood rising from my bowels and vocals too damaged to make a sound.

I couldn't move. My legs were reduced to gory stumps that ended just below my groin. My arms to thin rods of flayed skin and shattered bone, at my center a gaping hole that leaked what little remained of my essence to the ground. None, however, could compare to the pain I felt in my core. It was like an entire colony of giant ants had creeped into my core, each armed with  iron mandibles cloaked with flames and covered with frost which they proceeded drive into my core, all at once.

Again...

And again...

...Again!

It was mind-bending torment! A torturous sensation that became harder and harder to endure as the moments past by. Yet, even with all this torment, all this pain, I was at peace. I couldn't kill the Devourer but I had wounded it, weakened it. As powerful as the All Consuming was it still needed to recover from an injury like every other organism that has existed on the realms and considering the fact that it was wounded by the Blade, It would be weakened for a while

I was slowly sinking into the embrace of death when I heard it. It sounded like something big, heavy was being repeatedly pounded on the ground. At first I didn't understand but the longer it sounded, the louder was, the more familiar it became. Slowly, I realized what they were. Feet steps, foot steps of a being of unmeasurable mass, foot steps of the All Consuming.

No, no, no, no...

As if it was mocking me the Devourer stepped into view in perhaps the worse state it has ever been. It's entire upper right side was gone, burning red lines mauling what little remained of it's flesh. It stared right at me eyes leaking black ichor. It was a sight that would have brought delight to my heart if it wasn't for how quickly it was regenerating.

The Consumer took a step forward and it's wounds reduced by a tenth. It took another step and its eyes stopped bleeding. By the time it was in front of me, it was healed, whole.

I stared up at the Devourer with my one good eye in disbelief and...

This? This was what I sacrificed over four hundred of my men for? What I had sacrificed myself for? This? Pfff... hahahaha...

...laughed.

It was all for nothing! Nothing! Hahahahahaha! Not a single scratch on its body, none! Hahahahahaha...

When the devourer, perplexed by my behavior stretched its bladed whips at my Form, I laughed.

Hahahahahaha!

When the tendrils latched onto my broken body and effortlessly pulled me towards the gaping maw of the devourer, I laughed.

Even when the All Consuming jaw began to close around me, and its teeth tore into my flesh, I laughed.

...and laughed.

...and laughed.

...and laug-