“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?” The panicked scream of Oizys sounded like music to Arkaziel’s ears. The sweet desperation might as well be appetizers to this meal, and Telos had clearly succeeded in shoving a wrench into Oizys’ plans to get an immediate reaction like that. Always trust Blue to slap someone so hard they’re shocked a slap can hurt so much.

Oizys shock left her open, and the forty meter tall Daemon took the impact of a sixty meter long Apocalyptic Void Dragon head on. Arkaziel’s vicious claws, wreathed in black lightning, pierced into the manifest flesh of the Daemon, and he pushed her down hard to the stony ground, where she functioned like a brake to stop both of their momentum. He’d over done it, a little bit, in his drawing from Telos’ super-speed. Yet when he flared his wings to catch air, he let go of the Daemon and let the last of momentum carry her forward. The giant, road-rash ridden titaness, wreathed in the black lightning of Destruction, crashed into one of the large rocky outcrops and exploded in a nova of electricity.

A glowing golden orb quickly descended from the sky, and struck the already staggered Oizys. Golden flames spread out as if the area had been covered in napalm, and the Daemon screamed in hatred at the world.

-Mom always wondered, can you make Pain feel Pain? Looks like the answer is yes.- Arkaziel chatted telepathically with his party, while physically he inhaled a vast quantity of air.

“Taste despair!” Oizys screamed, and the intent behind her hatred focused. Bobbi’s golden flames vanished, obliterated by a shockwave of hate. Behind the shockwave came a thick mist that shone with anguish and Nether to Arkaziel’s Void Gaze. The wisps of power hit him first, but failed to have any effect on him. StarMane’s, like most dragons, were immune to fear. The dark fog didn’t slow him down at all, as he exhaled a beam of light with two spirals of darkness circling it.

The dark fog had a much more noticeable effect upon the Celestial Wardens. Siegfried, who stood at the front leading the charges towards Oizys and Arkaziel, his white and blue armor a beacon for his men, passed through the oncoming shockwave and its mists without incidence. As a Sovereign, a seventh tier cultivator, Siegfried had no problem ignoring even the mental tampering of a goddess, even one of the primordial incarnations, or Daemons, like Oizys. His men, on the other hand, couldn’t. Around him dullness took over their eyes, confusion afflicted their minds, and agony engulfed the souls of those who couldn’t mount an adequate defense.

A glimmering sphere appeared over the battlefield, and benevolent radiance rained upon the combatants. The eyes of Celestial Wardens cleared, their minds purged of Oizys’ taint, but the luminescent energy that fell didn’t stop there. Wounds healed, spirits lifted, and the soft chimes of the Aeons encouraged men to stand up and cast off their shackles. Arkaziel didn’t need the healing rain of light, but it did feel pleasant. Kallos should start a spa with a spell like this, I’d pay for a nice warm place to bask in the sun and nap under this spell.

Arkaziel’s breath attack hit Oizys middle mass. The powerful center of the attack, the beam of light, pierced her titaness flesh and came out the back side. The light seared a hole straight through her abdomen, and any rock and other environmental debris behind her. The twin spirals of darkness then seeped into the wounds. The authority of Pestilence and Destruction pulsed ominously from the dark energy before it leaped at Oizys, like a starving lion onto a gazelle. Only lions didn’t crawl inside of a gazelle and kill it from the inside, but Arkaziel chuckled in glee as the Void energies flowed into Oizys. The Daemon’s body convulsed as if electricity flowed inside of her, but after a pulse of a different source of Void powers within Oizys, a power greater than Arkaziel’s own, she ceased convulsing and her veins turned black.

“I won’t be killed by the likes of you!” Oizys screamed, but a single massive ball of fire the size of the goddess struck her in the face, even as darkness crept out of her body and restored her missing abdomen with oozy flesh filled with dozens of eyes.

“Oizys is being taken over by Nyarlathotep, beware the Void!” Kallos yelled over the din of combat. The forward moment of the Celestial Wardens, eager to join combat ceased, save for Siegfried who strode forward with his blade in hand.

“We must slay her before the corruption takes root! How do we do that?” Siegfried’s first words held agitation, but by the end he had regained his composure, and his answer resonated with the men and women of the Celestial Wardens.

““From Mortal Will, Immortal Change!”” The chorus of human, demon, and other races voices drowned out the sickening sound of Oizys being rearranged from the inside out, before their voices joined together with Siegfried’s to make an even louder exclamation.

“””Guardians of Balance, Keepers of Freedom! We are the Celestial Wardens!”””

The entire scene built to a crescendo when Siegfried blasted forward in a charge that most of his men could only see the after-images of. The Sovereign launched himself at the quickly corrupting Daemon with the speed of a cruise missile, his blade flickered through the air creating glyphs, his lips forming incantations. Immense pulses of Aether formed an explosive blast that struck Oizys mere nano-seconds before he himself did. A twelve stage Aether technique attack based on Wind, augmented by the faith of the Celestial Warden’s in Siegfried followed.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Both of Oizys’ arms were severed from her shoulders, and one of her legs hit the ground as well. Dark blood that burned like acid rained around Siegfried, but a thin blue-white Domain flickered around the Sovereign, and prevented any of the corrupted blood from touching him. But he wasn’t done yet. Siegfried launched himself upward, over Oizys, and landed almost fifty meters away from her, his sword slid into his scabbard as he skid to a halt.

Oizys fell in two pieces, neatly cut in half.

“Yeaaaah!”

“You did it, boss!”

The Wardens cried in joy, but Siegfried’s eyes narrowed in displeasure, his spirits diminished, even as Arkaziel’s spirits lifted higher.

“Is there a specific name for Primordials afflicted by the Void? I want the ballads to be clear on just how amazing I am,” Arkaziel quipped to Bobbi before he joined the melee.

The formerly Primordial flesh of Oizys rotted and decayed before their eyes, but two explosions courtesy of Bobbi prevented a rain of flesh and more fell blood from reaching the Celestial Wardens. Arkaziel danced between the explosions, and in the form of a five headed dragon, Arkaziel towered over the disgusting thing that oozed upward from Oizys’ remains. While it rose and took shape, Arkaziel inhaled through four heads, two black and two white, while the gray colored head glared at the abomination.

Light and darkness fled the field of battle, leaving a world of grayscale. Mana wisped away in torrents, Aether and Nether were devoured into the inescapable maw of the Tiamat-blooded Beast Sovereign. The Ethereal tides, too, succumbed to the draw of Arkaziel, and even thick inky tendrils of the Void were ripped from the abomination rising from the corpse of Oizys to Arkaziel’s voracious maw. All of which didn’t count at all the power he drew from his connection to Telos, Kallos, and Bobbi.

“They say misery loves company, but me? I love an audience. Don’t disappoint me, the whole universe has been waiting for your comeuppance.” Arkaziel’s voice boomed from the gray head, with the full power and presence to be expected of a nightmare god-eater created by Chronos.

The quivering, oozing mass that had once been Oizys rose into a shape not entirely dissimilar from earlier. She had a tail now, and her arms were covered in mouths, while the rest of her body was a mixture of eyes and maws, and thousands of small lamprey like tentacles. Small in that they extended ten meters from her body, so much larger than a human. The mouths released a wail that built up in the ear like the high frequency of power lines.

“Die, bitch,” Arkaziel roared, and unleashed his attack. Arcing beams of light blasted out of his light head, Void streams blasted from the dark heads, and an unholy abomination of discordant energies that chaos was far too weak of a word for, flowed from his gray head. The grayscale nature of the world made each aspect of his attack stand out like a neon sign, and Arkaziel knew he’d get head pets from Telos for being the best damn StarMane in the universe.

#NOT. DONE. YET.#

The mass that composed the corrupted Oizys burned away under Arkaziel’s epic assault, and color started to return to the world, even as the desperate cry of the eldritch being ripped at the minds of the Wardens. Then the rifts appeared. Weirdly gray rifts in space time, where reality itself had frayed under the incredible power unleashed by Arkaziel.

“I. Said. DIE!” Arkaziel’s roar opened each rift, which spilled coruscating beams of Ethereal power, into the resurgent flesh of Oizys. All of Arkaziel’s authorities rampaged through the eldritch Daemon, along with Bobbi’s, who remained next to Kallos, her eyes half lidded as she used her full power in synch with Arkaziel. Why she was content to be on the sideline? She doesn’t care about glory that isn’t in the kitchen, she’s crazy.

The reality disintegrating beams obliterated even the Nyarlathotep corrupted Oizys with relative ease, but the churning mass of the eldritch Daemon struggled to regenerate and defy the attacks upon it.

#Know my pain!#

The screech ripped at the minds of the shock troops of the Celestial Wardens, and even Arkaziel had to brace his mind, slightly, against the psychic distortion of a dying abomination. The psychic build up ended though, when Siegfried threw a stone sword into the sky, and then a massive two hundred meter stone monolith appeared above Oizys and dropped down to impale her. Or at least, that’s what Arkaziel assumed Siegfried tried to do. Instead, he missed Oizys by meters.

“Thank you, Siegfried. I’ll finish this.”

Kallos, somehow, stood atop the hilt of the stone sword. Telos stood behind the blonde, supporting the Nephilim.

“Oizys Daimona, the Hour of Judgement has arrived,” Kallos intoned with a ringing call that over-rode the still active disintegration beams from the rifts, the multitude of attacks from the individuals of the Wardens, and even Siegfried’s pulse attacks from his blade. Two chains unwound from the stone hilt and shot out to ensnare the struggling demon.

A crippled and beaten spiritual form, half corrupted by Void, half simply miserable, got ensnared and raised up for all to view. A pillar of light illuminated the spirit, and subatomic particle by subatomic particle split apart, turning even the spirit of Oizys into flakes of nothing. Blood poured out of the eyes of Siegfried and the Celestial Wardens, who had no protection from the Glory of the power that Kallos wielded. Arkaziel had to admit, his eyes stung a little too, but surely it was because he heard a whispered thank you from a water goddess, and not the divine radiance blasting his Void aspected eyes to hell.

Two thirds of the Celestial Wardens had fallen unconscious before the last flake of Oizys vanished, and then a flash of anti-existence and existence warred, but a warm presence gently cupped everyone in its hand. The Tower vanished, and the uncaring abyss of space surrounded everyone without warning, but that warm presence plucked everyone into a vessel made of ice and light. Arkaziel yawned, exertion mixed with exhiliration as energy surged through his body as if he’d just eaten Oizys, instead of her being destroyed. Even before a hand touched him, he transformed into a kitten, and took his place on Telos’ shoulder, where he nuzzled her neck and closed his eyes.

“You did good, Ark,” Telos kissed the black fur of his forehead as he drifted to sleep.

+Damn right I did,+ Arkaziel agreed.