Feeling a presence on the other side, The First One opened a portal and the two young gods flopped out of it and onto the sands.
Their forms had been almost completely corrupted. Dark tentacles emerged from violet runes across their bodies, and even with her own defenses, she could hear the whispers of chaos rolling off them in waves, trying to break down her own form.
They were lost.
Yet even in their current state, they held each other, true soulmates even to the end. It was as beautiful as it was tragic. Another light extinguished by the Old Ones.
Just beside their broken bodies, a giant pearl had slid out of Gi's arms, its iridescent shimmer somehow perfect despite the horrific state of the gods. The First One picked it up, feeling its readiness to absorb her power before returning her attention to the gods at her feet.
"I know my thanks means little to losing oneself, but you've both done a great service to all of our people. You will be remembered."
The First One felt like she should say or do more, but they'd already run out of time and she couldn't afford to waste even one more second. With a final look, she opened a portal and passed into her heaven, leaving their corrupted bodies behind.
Just inside her heaven, the other gods were already arrayed in front of her ivy manor. The Old Ones' children were like gods in their own right and many of those who'd followed her here would likely die with nothing left for them to reincarnate from. Such was the way of gods. They traded reincarnation for a potential connected thread of immortality.
The gods who'd followed her had all seen the same horrors she had and there was no hesitancy on any face arrayed before her. For the briefest moment, she grieved for those that would be lost - just as Danna had. Just as Gi had.
Plutus approached her, surprisingly serious for once, with a brown sack slung over his back. He pinned her with his eyes.
"I will hold them back as long as I'm able. I have faith that you can get us through this, but I... have one request."
"And what's that?"
"If you get a chance to hurt them or take something from them during all this, do it. I know there's no hope of killing them, but after my family..." He paused, lingering on what he wanted to say, but thought better of it. "Just if you get the opportunity, take it."
The First One smiled a wicked smile and she could feel her largest dog Apocalypse, mirroring it behind her. "I think I can handle that."
The First One turned her attention to the rest of the gods. "As soon as I open this portal, our fight finally begins. All of us have lost followers, friends, and worlds to the careless existence of the Old Ones.
"But that ends today."
The First One raised the pearl above her head. "Two of our number gave their lives to give us this opportunity. We can not waste their sacrifice. Once we are in there, I will use the artifacts to push the Old Ones back, but I will be helpless against their children. If they reach me, we all die."
The weight of their actions weren't unknown to them. Every single one of the gods gathered were ready to do what was necessary for the cause. Everything that could be said already had. Now, it was time for action.
Flinging her hands wide, a portal ripped open in front of them like a dog had grabbed space and tore it apart to reveal the remains of their former camp.
Plutus, hefting his satchel, was the first one through. As soon as he entered the camp, the Yithians started to swarm against the barrier, surrounding the broken pillar. The remains of the camp outside the barrier was completely shrouded by their foes.
Plutus pulled out a giant ring and tossed it on the ground. "Minotaur of Crete." An enormous bull that stood on two feet like a man rose up from the ring and charged towards the Yithians without hesitation. Plutus barely even noticed as he pulled more items from his bag and tossed them on the ground.
"Cyclops. Hydra. Pegasus."
Beasts of legends from his world rose up as item after item was removed from his satchel each one of them pilfered from a dead pantheon. He pulled out two last items - a pair of wings that stuck to his back and a stylized steel lightning bolt.
The wings appeared to be made of wax, but when they beat, a gust of wind flattened the grass and he rose up into the air. The steel bolt lit up with blinding electricity before he flung it. The steel bolt stayed in his hand, but lightning followed the path and turned one of the Yithians to ash.
All of the gods in her heaven followed Plutus's lead. A hundred different Truths manifested in the small barrier inside the camp, destroying the gathered children of the Old Ones.
But as far into the Old Ones' influence as they were, the Yithians' deaths only brought more.
A veritable tide of flesh and tentacles crashed against the barrier. Its defense not able to withstand such a combined host against it.
Finally, all the gods were through and The First One followed in after them, letting her portal wink closed behind her. Without hesitating, she activated [Apocalypse].
Her first and longest avatar landed on the ground behind her. The creature was ostensibly a dog, but one the size of an elephant. Darkness shifted along his coat, making it look like it was slicked in oil. A growl erupted from his lips, shaking the entire camp.
"Apocalypse, kill." Her avatar took a single bound and landed out amongst the swarms of Yithians approaching. Her Skill should last long enough to disrupt their enemies, but with the barrier already cracking, that was the only help she could give.
All she could do is trust the army of gods that she'd cultivated over millennia.
The First One tossed the pearl over the broken pillar and it hovered in place just above it - the latter to amplify her power and former to transform it.
She couldn't hesitate.
With a thought, every prayer, curse, or worship that she'd received since ascending to godhood flew out of her. It housed everything. Monsters who'd used her guiding Will as the pinnacle of their existence and every human who told stories of her to threaten their children. Each of the worlds she'd crafted had all led to this moment and it was a colossal river of power that funneled through the Great Filter.
Truth wove into Chaos as her mind joined the stream as well. Her very form threatening to burst apart in an explosion of stars, but her consciousness was released onto existence,and for the first time, she could truly see.
And she despaired.
The millennia of power built from countless worlds and civilizations all released at the same time and her existence was still trivial to that of the Old Ones like a mosquito trying to defeat a herd of elephants.
The miniscule nature of her resistance caused her to stumble for only a moment, but then she caught herself.
I knew they were far more vast than I. Just because I can now tell exactly how far apart we are doesn't change anything.
Her vast power shifted out into a web, shrouding itself in a layer of Chaos and reality to be as unnoticeable as possible. This gave her enough time to take stock of the situation.
The Old Ones had charged into their section of existence, shooting forward in a way that she'd never seen them move before. Her original plan of gently drifting them away would be impossible now. They had too much momentum.
But why did they speed up to begin with?
She needed more options and understanding that might be her best hope. The web of herself spread out, further and further across the territory available to her. She had to avoid getting too close to the Old Ones, but away from them into the space they were corrupting was entirely possible.
Her senses were mostly removed from her body, but she could hear that the barrier had finally cracked and her gods had taken to the fight in earnest. Some of them had already fallen.
There!
Her mind focused back on her web and a strange light that shone so bright it cast a shadow of chaos upon it. That light was... coming from Pangaea. Gi's world. How?
She spun her Divinity forcing it through the pearl and using a layer of reality to defend her divination from the corruption that had washed over that world and a scene slowly unfolded.
A young God called The Father had placed a seed of focused Divinity there. It was embedded within a tendril of corruption and had been completely hidden to anyone that wasn't either specifically looking for it or had access to all of the fundamental forces of existence.
But why?
Her divination pulled backward, following the path this god had taken and it landed upon him with the pearl. Somehow, this young god had used the Filter to pull most of the corruption within himself and turn it into that seed.
It was impossible to completely control the corruption, but the fact that he'd used it as successfully as he had spoke to an unprecedented Will. Looking for more clues, she followed this god both forward and back from the time he planted the seed.
It was this god that had left Gi and Danna in their state. He'd constantly turned to foil or kill Gi while on Pangaea and... for what? She followed back to his creation even pausing for a moment as she realized that she'd met him shortly after his creation. He'd had a Truth related to Power that had intrigued her.
Yet... the only answer she could find was that the man with a Will so strong that he could command the corruption as a nascent god had simply... fallen to his own myth? Gi's belief in his villainy had been strong enough to birth him, but the god had been a megalomaniac obsessed with his own creation to the point of ruin.
The god had been both impossibly strong and pathetically weak. A paradox.
A scream cut through her research, reminding her that she didn't have time to understand the history of this one and the destruction he'd wrought with his foolishness. No, that Divine seed was the key.
It was difficult to check trajectory against the eldritch gods of chaos, but as best she could tell, that Divinity was drawing them in. She couldn't understand it, but anything that pathetic god could do with the pearl alone, she could easily best with two artifacts and her own substantial power.
First, she shifted her Divinity into a mix of Truth and Chaos, forming reality, and scooped the existing seed up before flinging it to some far forgotten corner of existence.
Chaos corrupted reality, making the distance much closer between its origin and where she'd flung it and then Truth anchored it to the new location.
I hate it for whatever poor bastards live out there, but better them than us.
And it worked. The Old Ones had stopped their wild charge towards the seed and paused almost as if confused. But they weren't moving.
Why aren't they going after it?
She funneled more Truth into it - Truth of Beacons, Truth of Guiding Rods, Truth of Destiny's Path. Everything that she could think of to pull them towards it, but none of it worked. Why?
Every second that went by the Old Ones' children killed more and more of her army. Her Skill [Apocalypse] had already broken apart some time ago and the thought of seeing how close her enemies were terrified even her.
I need a solution now.
Her thoughts were frantic as she tried to think of anything that was different between the seed in one place and the seed in another, but she had nothing. The only difference was that it was closer, but that barely had any meaning to The Old Ones. They followed no order nor...
Then she understood. The chaotic nature of her thoughts seemed to align with the Chaos of the world, something she'd never been able to see before and she finally understood.
In that shifting sea of Chaos, there were patterns - little pockets of Truth that existed within that vast ocean. Prior to spreading her awareness, it would have made no sense. Chaos was anathema to Truth so shouldn't it be the reverse as well.
But no, that was a poor assumption.
Chaos by its very nature required it to be uncategorical. There was no label or explanation that you could put on it that could explain what Chaos is; otherwise, it wouldn't be Chaos.
However, that included the label of Chaos itself. If there was no Truth in it, then Chaos itself became a Truth. The logic was circular and finicky and the First One herself would have scoffed at it if someone had tried to explain it to her before, but...
Now she could see.
The reason they'd been chasing that Truth had nothing to do with any grand design or Chaos looking to destroy Truth. For them, it was simply food. Both the Old Ones and their children were the embodiments of that pattern in the Chaos.
The Old Ones were functionally cosmic, eldritch space whales absorbing the bits of Truth across existence as if it was little more than plankton.
Again, the First One funneled Divinity into the seed that she'd thrust off to one corner of reality, but this time, she fed it with much simpler Truths - Sustenance and Structure.
And it worked.
As quick as they'd been moving towards Pangaea before, they charged away as though she'd revealed to them the tastiest shrimp in existence.
She didn't know how much more time she had before the Yithians fought to her person, but her power still felt infinite and she had a few more things to take care of.
First, she did what she'd planned originally, creating a big sweeping river that shielded their planets from the Old Ones' influence and guided them along the path.
Even with both her plans working in tandem, it would take some time for their worlds to be completely out of their influence. As the storm of Chaos left, the Filter's power would attenuate but at the moment she could do anything.
Plutus's words came back to her and she smiled. "I think there is at least one thing I can still snatch from their clutches."