On a remote island off the southern coast of Argus, there was a rumble that shook the heavens. A sound like a thousand thunderstorms.

The waves rose high, crashing back into the sea as raging towers of froth. The sea itself receded, pulling back, draining away.

Revealing the hillocks of salt and sand that lay in the shallower areas. Revealing the white bones of ancient beasts and the coral covered wreckages of ancient ships.

Standing as witnesses to it all was a multitude of people who were gathered on the island’s coast. Dressed in dark blue robes, with a single golden swirl drawn over the mantle.

The sea continued to recede, falling back till it had revealed a small mountain. A structure made of steel and stone, man made but not man made, covered in barnacles that made soft sucking noises as they found themselves exposed to the open air.

At the head of the crowd of robed watchers was a tall man, who wore nothing other than a single soiled loincloth. His physique was emaciated and bony.

His flesh was pale and covered in filth. Blood ran from his eyes and from the palms of his hands.  In front of the man was a dog, that could only be called a dog, if all dogs were actually just another type of spider. Many limbed and many eyed, with its thorax covered in lightning and flame.

The man bellowed and his voice was eerily, easily, carried over the howling winds, echoing across the island and over the sea. Muting the sound of the crashing waves.

“Follow me, my people. For today we meet our destiny!”

*****

Destiny was met with joy and laughter and expectation,  but soon was followed by screams and pleas for mercy.

The inside of the metal mountain was a death trap, a place of butchery. Those who were first in line, died first, their hewn into pieces before they even understood was happening.

The people further back saw what was happening and tried to flee. Only the youngest and smallest and those who’d hesitated, were able to. And even then, most of those lucky  ‘survivors’ still found themselves caught by the wide limbs of the man, and within the even wider, thresher-like maw of the dog as his back.

The few remaining survivors who’d hesitated and stayed on the shore, watched as the hapless worshipers were chopped and ground and juiced, the iron mountain drinking their life’s blood, before sending erupting from the its top like a volcano of gore.

Then the air shook and the sea still and the mountain, cracking like an egg and revealing the thing that had been growing inside. The last to die were the man and the dog.

The man was eaten as the neophytes first meal and the dog was absorbed into the newborn creature’s being to help it rapidly grow out of its larval stage.

*****

A few hours later, two individuals flew across the sky as streaks of gray and blue light. Angelo looked to his master. Peering at the young man, looking for a clue of what they were doing out here.

Unfortunately Billy was just as hard to read as usual, forcing the normally taciturn swordsman to break his silence.

“Mh….So whats the plan here, Boss?” said Angelo.

There was a five minute span where the other man gave no answer, his eyes just calmly observing world below, as it oozed through his accelerated perceptions.

“What are we doing here?” said Angelo.

“Boss?” said Angelo. Repeating himself speaking a little louder this time.

“Nh? Oh….We’re going flower picking.” said Billy.

“Flower picking? We’re flying over the ocean.”

Billy shrugged.

“....We have god-monsters and deified artifacts simply lying around Monde’s lands, skies and seas, just waiting for something or someone to wake them up. Is it so strange for the Ocean to suddenly have one or two floors that even someone simple minded like me, might find worth picking?”

Angelo’s brow furrowed.

Wondering what that said about him, if a creature like the one that flew along side him was calling itself simple.

*****

Billy snapped his fingers and from out a series of swirling dark, gray disruptions in space-time, came a flock of massive, bird-type unnumbered.

Amorphous, inky, blue-black fowl that flew as a single cohesive unit. Their turns and maneuverings, air-tight and sharp angled.

Angelo’s manner shifted, he didn’t understand what was going on, but he did understand that they were starting. Preparing to do ‘whatever’ it was that they’d come here to do.

“We’re here...isn’t she pretty?” said Billy.

Angelo took a second to realize what the man was talking about then he saw it.  He saw the flower.

There wasn’t just one, there were thousands of them, massive things each one the size of a small whale, all them, growing along the length of the a vine that seemed to be a thick as a small mountain and far longer than the eye could see.

“Devil-Paradise Ivy?!” said Angelo. His voice sharp and tight. His blood rushing, as his angelic sense of cosmic wrong and cosmic right screamed out at him. Barking like a mad dog, as it saw the aberrational existence in front of him.

This was an entity that was not meant to be in the mortal, plane, this was something that could destroy this world and all  its neighbors.

Eventually taking over a fair portion of the universe it was in if allowed to grow unabated.

“What is that thing?” said a light voice.

Both Billy and Angelo turned and they saw the dark haired girl, Billy’s young shadow, flying behind him. Having caught a ride on the end of his tail.

Angelo was startled but not surprised. Billy on the other hand was shell-shocked, because he’d not realized she was there.

Perhaps it was because she was usually there, but in that case it showed a very alarming lack of situational awareness.

“Tamra?!” said Billy.

The girl seemed to shrink, her look slightly sheepish, her tone slightly defensive.

“You didn’t say I couldn’t follow you this time…”

Billy sighed. She was right. He didn’t say that she couldn’t follow this time, and she followed him so often he’d barely made note of it. Taking her presence for granted.

A dangerous lapse in judgement, for several reasons.

“Nh...In that case you stay close. Keep a good hold on that tail of mine if you don’t want to be corrupted by this particular plant’s pollen.

Tamra nodded sitting closer to the base of Billy’s tail, while the tip of his tail wrapped around her midsection.

Billy stroked his chin as he continued to fly towards the creatures direction.

“Nh...Alright so you’re here. I didn’t expect you to be here, but you here. Okay then, in that case do us all a solid and help me get that things attention will you?” said Billy.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Tamra’s eyes brightened, as she found herself delegated with something to do. The aether in the air rushed towards her and she drew on it and the gray power within her.

Dreaming out a hole in the sky that lead to one of the hottest stars in the universe. The very planet should have gone up in smoke right then, but a quick spell by Billy and the natural magics of the planet itself kept the worse from happening.

Even then the beams was hot enough to boil away half the sea. Drilling a big wide, long, hole in the side of the Devil-Paradise Ivy.

Angelo gazed at her aghast, aware of what nearly just happened. Billy laughed nervously.

“That was a little bit ‘too’ hot there, poppit. But no matter. Next time just remember to cast effect isolation spells to keep the unforseen from happening.”

Tamra blushed, similarly aware of her near catastrophous screw up.

“I haven’t learn those yet...You never taught me.”

Billy laughed again, those his expression was just as serene and untroubled as usual.

“Hnh...  now that you mention it, I guess I didn’t...Odd. Alright, mea culpa, I’ll teach you a few of the more important one’s when we get back.”

Tamra nodded, the movement becoming a little more exaggerated as both she and Billy turned upwards their arrow path of flight becoming a loopty loop as they turned to avoid a beam of greasy purple light.

“Okay...now try again. Let’s aim for cold, instead of hot, but maybe not so cold we start an ice age, Tam.”

Tamra nodded, and she did as she was asked, a beam of blue right lancing down from the sky, striking the ivy and freezing a full ten miles of its length into brittle iced powder.

The segment shattered and fell into sea as snow green snow. Dead and harmless.

Billy chuckled, the sound making the air vibrate.

“....Excellent work.”

“Thanks…” said Tamra. Pretending that the blush creeping up her face was from trying to withstand the ultrasonic speeds that they were flying at.

“Your turn, Angelo.” said Billy.

The Angel startled,  expecting to have to fight but not expecting to be given an actual task.

“Huh?”

“You get the head and I’ll deal with the rest.”

“I…”

“Surely a big tough war-angel like yourself can handle a little overgrown weed like this? Or rather, this is a deity level entity, and one with life force beyond that of the demi-god and minor-god level creatures we’ve been fighting till now. Isn’t that power something that ‘she’ could make good use of?”

Angelo frowned, unsure whether to laugh or cry. The other man had made more than an enough good points to make it nigh-impossible for the blue-haired angel of the sword to ‘not’ attack now.

“One dead Ivy coming right up, boss.” said Angelo. His tone gruff, because he couldn’t help feeling like he was being handled.

The sky shuddered as the fallen Angel surged forwards shattering the boundaries that between the speed of sound and the speed of light.

The creature trembled as a million wide gashes appeared on the  horned-root or ‘head’ of the Devil-Paradise Ivy. Green glowing blood oozing from the wounds, healing the creature just as quick as the Angel could it.

Creatures that appearance-wise could be roughly described as massive, fire breathing, aphids poured out from its hide in response to assault.

Billy summoned a flocked of unnumbered shades to meet them. Their two sides immediately sinking into a heated battle of nothingness and acidic flame.

Growling in agitation, his determination and a very unangelic stubbornness rising within him, Angelo picked up the pace of his cuts.

His sword arm swinging the blades a million times faster. Creating a howling hurricane  of wind and energy with each of its movements.

Meanwhile Billy wasn’t idle either. Agitating this creature was like pinching a time bomb, one had to act before it went boom.

If the creature released its spores in response to threat to its life, it’d all be for naught, in either this millenia or the next, another young ivy could sprout. And in the short term a large amount of the world would be poisoned by the spores’ presence.

The sun would be blocked out and Monde and its people would be desolated by a century of poisoned snow.

“Tam, would you mind casting a barrier spell? It needs to be a grand barrier, as strong as you can make it.”

The girl immediately began, the aether gathering around her as she cast the spell.  In a few minutes time a translucent bubble of glowing gray light and ornate sigil latices,  surrounded their particular stretch of the ocean.

Billy nodded gratified and pleased, watching the barrier hold strong despite how the creature thrashed and struggled. Keeping the spillover of the battle between the Aphids and the shades from reaching them.

Then Billy closed his eyes. Or rather he made them disappear from the inside  of his head, letting eerie green light leak out from under his eyelids.

Right now, actual mundane sight was more a distraction than anything else. The heavens broke, splitting in two, from behind the parted curtain of blue emerged an entity’s whose maw was wide enough to drink the whole sea.

The hoary head of the Nidhogg, a creature many times more large and far fierce than the Jorgmandr that Billy usually used. An entity that could swallow worlds whole.

Angelo finally made the killing blow and the creature screamed its voice both wretched and beautiful, like the pained final song of an opera sing.

Its green flesh was turned into a column of green flame and its flowers were filled and dangerous light. The ivy was on the verge of exploding.

Then down came the maw of the Nidhog, biting the entire length of the creature swallowing both the ivy and the portion of space time that it had occupied.

The sea came flowing back in. Flowing lower because they had lost several millions of gallons but flowing cleanly, unpoisoned by the ivy’s influence.

Billy sighed in relief, frowning a little as he noted that he’d inadvertently altered the coastline of Argus. He imagined his Ministry friend wouldn’t much like that, but hoped she’d let him pass with only a light scolding.

“Well then...I guess, we’ve earned a nice lunch yeah?” said Billy.

A nearly faint Tamra, just sat on William’s tail, trying not to pass out. Aware that she still didn’t have enough raw power to use her abilities for any real stretch of time.

Grinning like a well-fed cat all the same, proud of what she’d managed for the day.

“I...uh...suppose so, sir.” said Tamra.