She has ascended. Bahumet said reverently. There hasn’t been a Nemesis since the last Divine War.

Akamori blocked an engine block sized fist, but its follow through shoved him back, anyway. His boots lost traction against the smooth tile flooring, slick with congealed blood and rotten meat. He was moving on autopilot. Mentally? He was still trying to process the past couple of minutes.

“She’s back.” He muttered, ducking under a strike that gusted a small breeze through his hair.

Yes. And Ascended. No doubt this is Death’s doing.

“Death? She did this?”

I would suspect so. Some gods are not just hyper powerful mages. Some gods represent conceptual domains. Death is one such entity. While I was a powerful void dragon flush with magic on par with a god. I was not the god of death, life, or heroism or deception or corruption.

Akamori frowned. This wasn’t helping. Bahumet was giving him more to think about than he began with. He swept the legs out from under an abomination and watched as it ignited with soul fire.

A horde of specters flooded the corridor from the lift. The screaming wail of a Banshee announced them. Akamori clutched his ears as white hot pain stabbed into his ears. He channeled some of his soul magic to blunt her attack. Like repelling like. Behind her, a quartet of female demons. Dark lavender skin, curved ram shaped horns protruding from the forehead, bat-like wings, and a tail. They kind of reminded him of dragons in human form.

Each was armed with a wicked spell blade that made Thanaton quiver in anticipation. The spell blade snapped to his hands eagerly. Akamori gave himself up to the work of carving through the spirits. Each one burst in a hushed spiritual cry and puff of pallid green smoke.

The demons did not wait, taking up his invitation. They blurred forward, using short range teleports to cross the expanse quickly. As they closed, he could see hazy soul runes stamped into their souls.

“They’re shackled?”

It would explain their presence here. Thralls to the necromancer, no doubt.

He ducked under the attack, a high horizontal slash, and leaned out of an arcing slash by the demon behind the lead. A quick burst of air put Akamori into a controlled spin that avoided a stabbing lunge. The blade twisted horizontally and slashed, forcing him to lean into a back handspring.

The Demons held back, allowing more specters to rush him, but they burned to ash against his aura as soul fire torched them in spectral soul cries. The demons exchanged looks.

“You have a pact with the god of death?”

“I do.”

“Fascinating.”

The lead demon advanced, and the quartet attacked as a unit. The action pushed him to the limit, forcing him to commit more of his magic to enhancing his body. He needed to be stronger and faster. There was no room for error as he blocked, parried, and evaded.

The brutality of the onslaught forced him purely defensive, and he knew he was in a losing scenario unless something changed. He had no way of fending them off without something intervening or a circumstance being altered. Unfortunately for him, the demons were all still alive, so his soul fire aura did nothing to them.

We must break through our limitations and go beyond, Bahumet said.

Mentally running through his options brought him up short. The Void Shroud wasn’t enough. And he couldn’t unlock his seal again as it was still on the 24 hr. cooldown. He was about to respond when a vicious kick in the stomach pressed him against a wall so hard left an outline in the steel wall. Then came the torrent of fists and feet. They wreaked of brimstone and hate. Riddling the wall and his body with blows.

“How!?” he grunted.

Reach out to your worshippers. Ask them for power.

Akamori’s voice rang out across the void. Distance was no factor where a god and his followers were concerned. They may as well have stood right next to him for as little as it mattered.

“My people. We face an existential threat. One I face on your behalf. But I can’t do it alone. I need your help. Pray. Believe in my strength. Know me to be powerful, and I will be so!”

The worship slammed into him like a flood. Not just from the Katatska, but he also felt prayers from the Saphron too. Somehow, word had spread from the fire beast tribe to the astral beast tribe. The power slammed into him like a tsunami through a keyhole.

Each prayer whispered, a mote of golden light that sank into his body. It began as a trickle and increased intensity. Soon he felt like he was standing in a monsoon of power, absorbing it all. The divine fire within him responded. A small element of Vulcan awakened.

It smoldered with red hot fury and fire. That’s right, he wasn’t just here to protect the humans. He had his own followers to protect. He channeled that power in raw aether and unlocked the first gate of his seal. He spent a quarter of his total AP instantly.

Power blasted through his body, pushing him to his limits and beyond. The eruption was so strong he wasn’t able to contain the complete release of it. A blast wave shoved everything around his back, even the grimy blood on the ground.

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Divine fire wreathed his form, and his eyes glowed red like Vulcan’s used to. His hair writhed in currents of energy like snakes poised to strike.

System Info: You have used the ability Seal Release, 1rst Gate, Gate of Unleashed: Costs Moderate AP. Moderate melee damage boost, Small spellcasting damage boost and reduces damage taken from physical attacks by a small amount. Activates a small AP recovery when landing physical attacks.

His body ached with the power, trembling on such a scale that he felt like he was vibrating out of his skin. He flexed his hand a few times, trying to get a handle on it. He’d never imagined what having this much power might feel like. The experience was akin to being awash in the sea of power that was a god’s mind. Except instead of being a visitor then, now it was his own body.

Akamori?

“Yeah?” he replied quickly.

Are you ok?

“Oh yeah! I’m good!”

You’re acting like you’ve just eaten aether mushrooms.

“Sounds like something you shouldn’t have.” Akamori rattled off like a machine gun.

Indeed.

“Can’t talk. Gotta dodge.”

A massive engine block sized fist crashed down into the tile he’d been standing on just a moment. Akamori simply vanished from the abomination’s perspective. For Akamori he merely hopped out of the way and circled behind the brute. It studied the ground and inspected its hand, looking for any sign it smashed him.

Akamori put a palm on the creature’s back, and put his fingertips on the creature’s back, and made a fist a few inches away. When he punched the beast in the back, the impact shattered its spine, pulped meat and blasted it across the corridor. It bounced off the wall, leaving a large splat stain.

He leaned out of the path of an incoming lunge and punched up into the elbow joint. Bone and tissue exploded upwards out of the arm as the joint shattered and hyper extended. The Abominations now felt slow enough and weak enough to deal with easily. So he did.

As he ripped and tore his way through the necromancer’s minions, the Brotherhood recorded his work via small camera drones. They recorded the action as their savior carved his way through the horde. Proof positive that humanity was under the protection of a god once more. With each abomination he felled, more indirect worship flowed.

Word of his deeds spread across the Brotherhood like a divine wildfire, leaving only one word in its wake. Change. It was due for so long and had finally come. The people of the Brotherhood would suffer no longer. And Akamori was the one who’d finally upset that power imbalance for humanity.

As the last abomination stopped struggling, he dropped its still body to the floor with a wet slap. He turned a weary gaze to the blast doors protecting his people and the survivors. The small camera drones hovered in the air, flanking him. Their camera lenses whirred as he stopped at the doorway, waiting for them to let him in.

Light cast a thin stream that widened as the doors peeled apart with a pneumatic hiss. When his eyes adjusted, he stared down the barrels of everyone’s weapons. Behind those? Relieved expressions. Several of the soldiers in the back began clapping and soon all the brotherhood staff joined in.

The commanding officer strode up and offered his hand to shake.

“Well done, son. Thanks to you, we’ve got a fighting chance in this war.”

“We’re in the endgame now. Whatever the Sauridius have planned, it’s happening now.”

General Zhang gripped Akamori’s hand firmly and nodded. He had a mix of brotherhood features, being a blend of two of old humanity’s biggest nations. Zhang was a no-nonsense leader. The man who brought everyone he could to the safest and most defensible position to hold out for help.

“All the more reason for you to take the fight to them.” Zhang said.

Akamori nodded. “I’m going to finish securing the site. Keep your people here for now.”

“Sir.” Sirsir said. “You, uh…you good?”

“Yeah Traze. I’m good. I understand now, I think.” He glanced around, looking at everything with a newfound appreciation. Perspective, he supposed. Or maybe it was just growing into the understanding that often the path we want to walk, and the path we need to walk, don’t always align, and that’s ok. If he’d had his way, would he ever have been able to protect his friends and allies like this? Not likely.

For all his bluster about hating fate and destiny, he couldn’t deny that he needed the power it had placed in his path. That didn’t mean he still had to like it, but at he at least understood the why.

He clapped his friend and former mentor on the shoulder, giving him a thankful nod. Then strode out of the bunker and gestured for the doors to shut. One tech in the bunker threw the switch and the blast doors sealed again. Everyone’s weapons came back up, ready to throw fire down range if they had to. Sure enough the soul chilling cry of specters and revenants could be heard spilling down the elevator shaft.

Akamori took a seat as the doors closed behind him. His friends’ safety buoyed his soul. He would become whatever he had to in order to protect them. But his drive went beyond that. He fought not just for them, but for the system, too. Because ultimately they would all return to it. It was the way of things.

He closed his eyes and let his aura spread out. In his current state, with the first gate opened, it gave him even greater reach. He could feel everyone within it like a protective bubble. Shelter in the storm. He couldn’t be here to save them all when it first began. But he was here to draw the line in the sand. No one else. No farther.

All the senseless murder and corruption it ended here. He found the Soul Fire ability that Death had gifted him and he triggered it. Like a lit match to kindling, the Soul Fire spread out, igniting all the undead souls that flooded down after him. His eyes opened, and he focused with an intensity that drove fear into the undead for the first time since they’d reached this rock.

For all their hunger for the living and uncorrupted souls, the undead discovered there was something they feared. Akamori. He was a mere sliver of something older . Something more powerful. And he was still growing.

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