Henry could feel the quiet pulsing of the void. It wasn’t quite like summer sunshine, but it radiated from everywhere not covered by sand and walls to provide a sweet summer’s warmth to his skin in this place of darkness. Even below him Henry could feel it permeate the walls and ground. The sensation of warmth was less on his bare ankles, but pinpricks of warmth still came well enough to acknowledge.
He did not hear Zi-Lor announce the start of combat. It wasn’t relevant when this facsimile of a battle would begin. It wasn’t relevant who the opponent was, even if Ni was hard to ignore. Grotesque purple eczema peeled off with every flutter of the nearly-still angelic wings of this fetus strangled at birth and blood oozed from its skin as though the entire entire body was an open wound. The existence of this creature must have been torment, and any just god would have long since put it out of its misery, but Henry would not be taking such a role. Ni would continue to suffer for just a while longer— perhaps however long such an unnatural entity had left to live.
Ni took a gnarled fingernail and slit his right wrist. A tiny trickle of blood began to flow as though his heart pumped nearly nothing in his veins. He flung it at Henry and a cloud of boiling red mist exploded into existence.
Henry’s skin dissolved, itself boiling away into nothingness, but it didn’t hurt. He even kept his eyes open to watch the small rippling boils echo across his skin. It was distracting to watch and feel in place of the soft warmth he had begun to appreciate in the arena, unsurrounded by the protection of a barrier. Above him was nothing; combatants could fly up as high as they liked, though there was of course no point in this when one opponent was terrestrially-bound, at least for now.
Ni began to hiss like a snake in the voice of an old man. As the red mist fell out of suspension in the air and stained the sand Henry could make out a snake-like umbilical-cord that was working its way out of Ni’s navel. The dead fetus began to laugh, but Henry was focused on his bulging neck that looked like he had swallowed a frog and begun to choke.
Soon enough the snake of his umbilical cord worked its way up to his neck and gripped it tightly like an anaconda. His eyes bulged almost out of their sockets and though the child had stopped breathing the laughter continued, more and more shrill and snakelike, yet retaining the basal rumblings of a dying old geezer more than the tones of a crying child.
Suddenly the sand fell out.
Henry’s feet did not move.
Ni continued to laugh.
His wings continued to flutter.
The umbilical cord stayed in place, but the sand was gone.
Then the barriers surrounding the spectators and protecting them from the combatants shattered like oh so much intangible glass. Pieces of the once-impenetrable barriers scattered, detectable only by their shimmering refraction as they flew toward and beyond where the sand once was. Many of the spectators began to fall, but were soon caught by another pane of the barrier swiftly erected by Zi-Lor, who immediately began expanding its circumference to retreat all those intended to watch far away from the rapidly-expanding scope of this so-far one-sided battle.
The stone walls that once surrounded the contestants, too, fell away, leaving Henry and the floating corpse of a cherub and its angelic wings to stare at each other. Only, Henry wasn’t staring at the fetus, but at a point far, far past it. There was a pin-prick tear in the fabric of reality. He couldn’t see it, but it was easy enough to feel with nothing between him and it.
The fetus tore the air from Henry’s lungs.
All the warmth that had once flowed from all points now came from one. He could tell this was the source of his power and in this moment understood that they were in a pocket world outside Yaldabaoth’s protection— a cancerous growth with no connection to the body it rose above the skin of. Henry could see the knife that so badly wished to cut it open, and the infection that would follow once the body was finally open to air and all the infectious particles therein. All it needed was for him to help, just a little bit.
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Ni slung his wrist like throwing a frisbee or a playing-card, and ten-thousand needles of blood shot out and pierced Henry’s flesh.
The pinprick in the distance commanded him to do nothing more than graze his hand against the cherub. It wouldn’t open the tear completely, but with Ni’s power Henry would be ever-more increasingly capable of taking the actions necessary to open up that pinprick just a little bit more. It didn’t need to be opened all the way today, it only needed a tiny finger pushed inside and wiggled just a bit.
Ni hissed, and acid burned away the top layer of Henry’s skin. Henry flinched.
David almost laughed, but Henry choked on it mid-attempt, accidentally swallowing spit into his lungs and beginning to cough violently. Ni looked triumphant, but did not stop his onslaught. Soon a bolt of plasma tore through the vacuum of space and tore a hole in Henry’s chest.
Henry didn’t notice because the hole began to close as quickly as it formed, and it didn’t seem he strictly needed oxygen or a pulse to begin with.
Despite having no air, Henry spoke,
“Stop. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Ni’s voice was not like the skull or mass of leeches. It came from one defined point in the sound of a dying old man.
“But I do want to hurt you.”
This time Ni shot acid, then a fireball. The former was ignited, then Ni shot oil and Henry was engulfed in an explosion. His head flew into the distance, but the scattered pieces of flesh began to drift towards each other as quickly as they had been torn apart.
Ni tried to fire a bolt of lighting at Henry’s head, but Henry slightly sped it up and avoided the attack. Within sixty seconds he was whole again, reaction speed much faster than necessary to predict and avoid all of Ni’s attacks, save one.
A red beam of light fired from Ni’s umbilical-cord pierced Henry’s mouth and spinal cord. He did not die.
“Why do you continue this? You know you can’t win.” Henry taunted.
Ni was not amused, “In every word you insult me. Do you think I’m not worth your time?”
“Can you sense i—” Henry began, but Ni had noticed that lasers were fast enough to strike, so shot blue ones in an effort to deliver higher-energy attacks that were actually able to land.
Henry’s tongue was pierced. He began to fly erratically in an effort to avoid the new onslaught and continue speaking.
“—it? The energy off in the distance?”
Thousands of lasers shot out, lower and lower energy as Ni tried to find a winning strategy for aim before delivering power. Henry continued to speak, feet always facing towards Ni in an effort to avoid having his tongue damaged beyond capability to do so.
“I don’t want to make it worse.”
Ni hissed, and finally found a way to chain lighting with a cloud of dust such that Henry’s vocal cords could be continuously destroyed, but Henry decided enough was enough and began to speak anyway.
The disembodied voice of a god echoed through reality and penetrated Ni’s ears directly.
“Why are you doing this? I don’t want to fight you and I don’t want to bring the world to the brink of ruin. You’re not my enemy; I have no enemies.”
“But I do, and you already have. You have no enemies you say? No, you have me and everyone else you’ve wronged.”
“But you have no reason to do this, I haven’t wronged you.”
“You took my rightful position. Look at me. Look at this. Look at yourself. I’m a once in a lifetime talent and you’ve taken my spot in the sun while refusing to acknowledge I ever had a chance to be in your place. How could we not come to blows?”
…
“What’s your plan here dear Henry? Continue to die again and again? I’ll gladly allow you to satisfy my rage, but be warned, it has no end.”
A disembodied hand gripped Ni’s neck.
He didn’t disappear, but immediately surrendered.
The pointer-finger twitched, then middle, ring, and pinky. Two seconds later and under the immense and trembling effort required to restrain himself, the hand’s grip loosened and Henry and Ni returned through portals opened for them by Zi-Lor, who peaked through one of her own, though did not step outside it, to chastise them.
Or so Henry thought.
“Excellent job, both of you, but it’s better to keep collateral damage to a minimum when fighting an exhibition match, yes? At this rate we’ll need assistance to open a stronger pocket world.”
She paused, face engulfed in the satisfaction of a world-class researcher basking in the knowledge that these students were worth her time. “Return to your studies. We’ll be back shortly, time flows faster in this outgrowth of the world.”
Ni and Henry did not speak. The cherub’s snake-like umbilical cord unwound its way from around the dead baby’s neck as its wings slowed to a halt and the tiny body found its way into a highchair prepared for it at one of the desks.
Then they waited.