Nimue, the lady of the lake, Lady of Zodiac and minister of the Empires armed forces. These were her title's, her achievements and now worthless titles in the face of the one that she would soon gain. She would be the Archetype-King, the bringer of peace, the breaker of war, the everlasting goddess and the savior of the universe itself.
It would be a most glorious thing, but now was not the time to drown in her fantasies. She scanned the heart of her facility, a large pure white room with hundreds of runes engraved into the wall's and at the center in a black circle was a tall weathered grey stone tablet covered completely with dark red engravings of tongue so ancient few in existence could speak it.
It had taken her hundred's of years to fully translate it. It was her first great achievement when she was still in that child's service. This was how she discovered the theoretical power of the Archetype-King, a necessary evil for the future.
"Is everything ready girl?" she look at the Juno one of her six attendants in the room.
The girl nervously nodded as she and the others walked around the stone to place sixteen white metal bottles with large runes carved into them. They shook violently as if something was trying to break out the moment that they were placed upon the ground around the stone.
But no living creature was bound in them, Nimue knew what it was. It was power, pure concentrated life essence drawn from the thousands of kings, wizards, knights and common folk that she had been able to bind and drain before this escape attempt.
"Yes, your greatness." the girl trembled in fright and Nimue knew that wasn't just from her awesome presence, but her current visage.
Drawing Natalia and Roland into the isle of albion had taken everything that she had and it had brought out the shadow corruption that she kept at bay. She constantly found herself whipping her mouth of the black tar like substance that leaked out her lips.
She could see the Dullahan, Malath skulking in the corner of the room. She knew that the fool thought that he was playing her, tricking her into becoming a corrupted thraw to him.
"The first thing I shall do with my power is eradicate every Night Terror crawling around Jord." she thought.
She walked closer to the stone with her arms outstretched to the heavens as her ascent to godhood began.
She cleared her throat ready to call upon the ancient tongues used only by those who sit above the vail of reality. Soon she would be one of them, a goddess in the presence of the supreme council of the ancient ones, it was her destiny.
She opened her mouth and before the very first verse of the incantation could be free from her lips the room shook as if it had been struck by an earthquake.
She turned around surprised and caught her servants with weapons ready to face what was attempting to knock down the door. Nimue watched the vault door get battered five more times before it was finally rooted out of it's hinges.
Nimue very rarely felt irritated by the actions of lesser beings. But now they were threatening her rise to the halls beyond the vail and denying the great peace that she offered them from the goodness of her heart.
She felt her blood boil as from the hole where the vault door once stood came many warriors either of Avalon or of the pathetic rebels walked in bearing their swords, spears, axes, spears, bows, war hammers and one even had a metal pipe that clearly seen use from how twisted and bent it was.
At the head of this little force was that child of Natalia , Christon or whatever his name was. He lacked the false confidence that bore during their first meeting and seemed more cautious with his approach.
She looked into the eyes of this ruble and only saw anger, hatred and an itch to slay her. Nothing a thousand more fools hadn't dreamed up before and all had fallen to ruin.
"Nimue..." The boy was about to say something no doubt as his mother had done before about how what she was doing was insane and evil and Nimue had heard enough.
"A fool who only see's a few trees before the forest I seek to build. " she thought as she raised her hand halting the boys worthless vomit of words.
" If you are going to go on a tirade about my many evils then save your breath, boy. You will find no common understanding here, so knell in surrender or taste my swords."
" You have a Night Terror in the room with you, Nimue. I have no interest in trading words with someone is obviously too far gone. No, all we want before this day ends...." he pointed his sword at her face with all the contempt in the world. "....Is your head, separated from the rest of your unsightly corpse."
This might have inspired some sort of foolishness inside of them all because they all charged at her with their weapons drawn and many arrow's flying in her direction.
Nimue could have easily wiped them out with a single swing of any of her millions of swords but such power would undoubtedly disturb the runes and put her ritual at risk. She growled as she watched them run as fast they could towards her, but from Nimue's perspective they were lumbering slower than snails.
" Lesser insects! " she thought before she kicked forward, the shockwave caused by her speedy kick sent the insolent blasphemers crashing back out of the room like cardboard cutouts before the mightiest of winds.
Time around her began to return to normal as she lowered her enhanced senses and she turned to her servants ."Stay here as I deal with them."
They all pathetically bowed, even Malath, whilst saying. " Yes, my lady."
"Your goddess." she corrected them.
She walked out of the room were she found the blasphemers were rising up again from the ground with pain etched upon their face's. The moment the first one saw her, he roared and charged her with an axe, she knocked it aside with one of her swords before she summoned another and the knight lost their left arm.
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He fell screaming in pain, alerting his allies to her arrival and their incoming doom. She watched as the others came charging and she raised more sword's that shot forward and struck the knights so hard that even if some had armour that held up, it sent them flying through the air, over the stairs to the bottom floors and to the next floor.
Those with armour that was of a lesser quality than her swords, they were cut clean in two. The rest looked upon her with well deserving fear, Nimue basked in this worship but the blasphemer's proved their foolishness as a purple archer drew back her bow and fired a few arrow's.
Nimue swung another one of her swords to the left cutting down the arrow's easily. Rather than show some sense and stand down, other blasphemous archer's followed the purple archer's lead and fired a volley of arrows at her. She answered them with her own volley of swords that easily tore through the arrow's and struck the insects who were just as well scattered as the dust beneath her feet.
Nimue took a few minutes to take in the bloody and broken art that had resulted from her work. The sounds of their united screams caused by their broken bodies, the pools of blood that stained the floor made an almost red carpet for her to move upon with grace and poise. But most of all the thing that drew her joy were the looks of broken defeat on their faces, the mixture of fear and awe at how much her power superseded there own.
"Children of Avalon and the Nexus, you have been beaten, you have been broken and you have been bled to you're bone. You are ants before my magnificence, the dirt not eve worthy to cling onto my fingernails, the...".
In a split second she watched as her perception increased once more as a large war hammer coated entirely in surging bolts of lightening came swinging to her head. She watched as the orange bolts themselves moved just as slow as their master who she grabbed by his throat with one hand before she ripped the mighty hammer out of his weak grasp with another hand.
She then swung the hammer right into the boy's face, smashing him into the ground. She rather slowly raised the hammer once more to pulp his head open but that girl's spawn rushed forward and swung his sword at her face, she simply changed the trajectory of the hammer for the boy, and Christian Ddraig was downed.
From her right came a red and gold knight bearing a sword and from her left another red and black knight bearing a spear. She grabbed the spear by its shaft as the elf thrust it forward before she brought the hammer down upon the elf's chest burying her as well into the floor. She then swung the spear across the red and black knights face and he flew back right into his fellow knights.
Finally all the knight's remained down on the ground as they should have done before while she felt gracious. But as a goddess she still had the room for mercy upon these poor unfortunate souls.
"You Avalonians are such strong little things." She remembered how in awe of them she had been when she first encountered them at the peak of their glory. " You were like demigods and your first king and queen, gods near equal to me."
The spawn looked at her in confusion as if her praise of what his people once were and what they could be under her perplexed him. " Your grandparents had excellent wisdom. They saw my future as the inevitable goddess of the new world, the gift of Coros was mine to give rise to the Lunar Empire and the coming Eternal Empire."
"What the hell are you going on about." the boy asked as he staggered back to his feet.
"Can you not see my vision, child of house Ddraig." she watched the simpletons face contort and twist, clearly unable to make his brain cells spark the knowledge of her greatness to him. "When I bring peace to the universe, I shall turn Avalon back to the bastion that it once was, it shall once again be a force to pacify realities far beyond our own and give them eternal peace."
The boy looked at her wide eyed with fear etched into his very facial expressions and it disgusted Nimue. To think that this lesser stock would control a powerful empire like Avalon. It made her sick to the core of her stomach to see the once great Avalonian empire reduced to this.
She raised the hammer once more ready to bring an end to this walking embarrassment of a Ddraig. Those with no future in her great empire had no reason to keep existing, they were worthless baggage best thrown away than allowed to continue poisoning the populace.
The suddenly some fool came and swung his sword, slashing her across the jaw and drawing a splattering of black blood. Yet Nimue felt no pain, infact all she felt was a cold emptiness as she turned to face the dumbstruck blasphemer.
She grabbed ahold of him and just before killing him a thought wormed it's way into her mind. " The amount of energy collected is only seventy percent of my original plans. I.... I.... I could supplement it with blood... blood has power and all of them are potent."
She tried to fight it, but some dark voice within her spoke with honeyed words and what was needed for peace. Nimue looked at the young man in her grip and with the dark energy coursing her veins she shifted her flesh and allowed her jaws to unhinge wider than possible and she took a bite of his head, flesh, bone and all.
The crunchy iron of blood rushed her senses and though everyone in the vicinity looked upon her in horror, Nimue could only think of one thing as she chewed. "This meat, is sweet."
She looked those blasphemers who had now become food and with a fang filled mouth, she smiled and leaped at them, tearing apart all that she got ahold of and tearing chunks out of them.
"My lady, we came as fast..." from the stairs came some of her Zodiac, but they all halted as they looked at her, eating some still living child.
"Capture the others, I need their blood to feel more of the ritual." she ordered them, but Libra, Leo, Gemini and Virgo did not so much as move. "What are you all waiting for?!"
Libra then removed his helmet, showing the old elf who was battered not jus by age but also by this battle. He looked truly sorrowful and tears rolled down his cheeks before her raised his sword at her and a burst of lightning flew from it and into her.
"Treachery!" she shreaked as the others rushed her with weapons drawn and they began trying to hit her.
Nimue would not allow it, she drew on deep and potent amounts of dark energy from the shard resting within herself. She expelled that condensed amount of shadow within an explosive burst that sent her once loyal Zodiac's to the ground, twitching in pain.
She summoned a sword to finish the downed treators, but then she sensed them getting close, Roland and Natalia. This struck something in Nimue, it might have been a silent fear that she would never admit to. She could not face them both at the same time in this state.
She cast one last glance at the group of rebels all downed and defeated and she truly wanted to kill them all and feast, yet apotheosis waited for no one.
She walked back into the chamber and as soon as her right foot plus the rest of her body were through the door she began to recite the incantation to this ritual as quickly as she could without mistaking a single verse. The old tongue was a language over reality itself, it was spoken straight from the very soul itself and it bound all.
Nimues voice was deeper,more strained and more amplified as she spoke in words that very few could understand. A screeching metallic sound accompanied her voice and added weight to the unearthly language that dropped the rooms temperature and lit up the runes in a thousand colours that vibrated on the wall.
Her attendants looked around nervously but Nimue blocked her out of her mind as she continued carefully reciting each verse as she was meant to, least she tore through the tapestry of reality with some loose old words and unleash the oldest night terrors into this world.
As she continued the stone tablet and the bottles began to vibrate so fast that they became blur's. After this her arms soon followed by the rest of her body began to vibrate as a warm feeling crawled under her skin and across her entire body.
She almost stopped her incantation and screamed in pain as the warmth turned into a burning heat that boiled her from the inside out. Just to add to her already unfortunate woes the sound of her two hated foes came from the door behind her.
"Nimue stop!" She heard Natalia shout, no doubt racing towards her with the very sword that she had forged for the brat to cut her down.
But Nimue would have this day as she finished the last words of the incantation. Time itself stopped around her and reality began to wash away leaving her and the stone tablet floating within a dark and ever expanding void of nothingness.
Nimue was soon assaulted with visions of Nexus of Narratives from above. She knew its every nook and cranny, she knew its every atom and elemental composition. She was soon over the vail and she beheld the ancient ones in their council above ten little white glowing specks packed into a cluster, that she instinctively knew were universes. She blinked in suprise as she remembered the thousands of realities in their multiverse which she had witnessed in her travels and too see that only ten remained, put the great catastrophe in perspective.
But these ten weren't the only specks. Far she could clusters of other reality's far from their own multiverse. Some of these clusters numbered in the hundreds, thousands, millions or billions and the number of clusters were infinite and stretched out as far as she could see.
She looked even further and she beheld Sophia the cosmic mother who towered over the ancient ones in power and authority just as they did over the rest of reality.
Sophia was an incomprehensible sight, she was a bade, a young girl, a teenager, a adult woman, an old crone and a skeleton. All these images were projected in Nimues eyes at the same time and regardless of how contradictory they were, she knew that they were all true.
These sights and revelations wrote themselves upon her brain and had she not been using the tablet as a conduit she would no doubt have been driven mad by these higher dimensional revelations.
Finally above all these eldritch god's she saw only the briefest of glances of Leza and it was so far above anything that she could comprehend that she looked away from this sight least she be unraveled from existence and she felt herself being dragged back to the tiny speck that was the Nexus.
The last sight she saw before reality enveloped her was a lone figure floating in the void, it was not an ancient one by its almost human size. It looked at her with cold glowing purple eyes and Nimue knew fear as she knew it and it knew her.
It's fingers bore into her mind and the Lady of the lake screamed as she felt herself change and be bent into another existence as her long time passenger finally unveiled themsy.
Reality folded in around her once more and she was back into the room. Nimue could no find words to describe how she felt, she was a living fire, nature given will, she was a goddess, she was the