A single thrust of the spear is had to cleave an old king’s head off his shoulders. A dozen protectors find themselves defeated and without purpose, but resign themselves to death for their failure even as Quorus mocks them for their futile resolve. They cannot oppose a god. Why bother? Even if they were to strike him down another fleshen sock-puppet would take this one’s place. He, she, it, they. The vessel doesn’t matter. The Hidden Emperor is and always has been above it all, and with the donning of a crown bestowed upon him by her most loyal commander of the knights once defending the old king, Quorus finds his head with the crown it had deserved most of all for so long. His eyes continue to watch the other protectors fall, slain at his own hands, but the scene quickly grows disinteresting. There is a battle in the sky to be had, after all.
David rips himself apart and controls the two halves simultaneously, but it isn’t enough. Aphelion is, like David and like Quorus, a being without organs. A god that cannot be destroyed when his flesh is ripped apart. There is nothing to be done but die, and yet David kicks off the jeweled metal god with one side and flies up and over with the other in a silent coordination with the mad and frenzied Zorvilon still lucid enough to understand the necessity of trading matchups.
But Xevis makes this no easy task, tearing a hole in space to block David wherever he would try to close the gap, tearing holes in space to close David into an ever-smaller box with voids that are no longer closed by air pressure. Aphelion watches the holes form and cannot help but question the lucidity of it, but fire being a weakness is forced to direct his energies to cooling himself lest his body deform.
Xevis makes no such reservations. David rips the fingers off his hand on the left body with half the teeth available to him, but the thrown projectiles find themselves blocked. With the other side they are scattered behind and to the ground, but Xevis does not allow them to fall. Wall after wall opens up, and yet he cannot help but feel pressured. Why? His opponent is trapped in an ever-smaller box never shown to be escapable. It isn’t possible, and yet he cannot help but question.
It isn’t possible, and yet when David is at last enclosed there is laughter. Xevis twirls to look behind him, but sees nothing but the empty sky and vast empty pit below. He looks back at the void in space and sees no stars. Why, then, does David laugh?
An immortal demon king clad in orange monk robes and a circular halo distracts Quorus just enough to render him unable to focus on the action happening up above. Why? Why must the weak always struggle against their betters? Do they not understand the futility of it? This demon has no place in hell for having escaped it, surely, then, it must understand earth will reject it from the material plane. But the demon doesn’t care. He strikes with a wooden staff at scores of Quorus’ legion. Body after body is thrown into his wooden blades, rendered giblets though controlled by The Hidden Emperor’s strings. Fifty thousand souls in an afternoon and counting, but this one proves so troublesome to collect? It’s meaningless, just as meaningless as the act of putting on his own crown at a coronation held for no one with no witnesses but the dead and soon to die, but he cannot help but feel contempt and rage at this man who simply refuses to die. Just die already. Die! Die! Die! Die!
Quorus reaches into his soul and strips it bare. The halo falls and the body is damned to death by a thousand cuts. Quorus laughs at the soul claimed by its own hubris. This is the natural consequence of opposing a god your better— loss of immortality and final death. And yet as a final mockery Quorus will give this demonic body one more task— to rule this place as a puppet for all eternity. A fitting place for one so stubborn as to refuse the rule of his better.
Behind him a woman falls from the sky on fairy wings, apparently distraught at the loss. A healer, it seemed, and the possible cause of the monk’s survival and massacre of so many bodies. Quorus reached into her spine and gave it an adjustment, but did not break it all the way. Now she would be well-formed for her place on the ground to writhe in agony, perhaps to die over the next few days. But unfortunate the fact may be, this distraction was not worth his time. Such anger builds but finds itself released on meaningless targets. It didn’t suit the place of an all-terrestrial ruler.
So he put a hole through her stomach with his steel toe and used the blood to draw a little circle. In a puff of red smoke four hundred bodies found themselves in the sky with Xevis and Aphelion. Two hundred were instantly disintegrated for their lack of adequate protection against fire, but it didn’t matter. Xevis began spacing himself from the void in which David was trapped, and Aphelion, too, took the hint to draw fire away from the main battle.
Zorvilon, however, did not allow this to happen, instead changing targets to Xevis and the flesh puppets. While armor did protect many from the worst of his flames, it also trapped their heat and made the fate far less instant. Many of the suits began to char and melt and the fire continued to grow and grow more precise. It had been so long since Zorvilon had been able to stretch out like this. It had been so many centuries since his power had been allowed to let itself run wild. And with it the sky found its clouds blown apart for dozens of miles as air buffeted upwards from the pit below.
But as string after string of the flesh puppet was cut Quorus simply summoned more. There was no limit to the bodies he could acquire, and no limit to the bloodletting so easily possible with an army active in conquest. Fresh fodder found itself ever closer to Zorvilon’s core, not that it mattered for some vulnerability or another. An incorporeal being could not be killed simply by destroying its organs. The only objective these bodies had was to distract and blow the fire god apart. As he felt the disturbances from within he would naturally concentrate himself, and with it Xevis released the concentrated technique he had silently prepared from behind the tear in space.
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But David’s laughter continued as he stepped out from behind the curtain and brushed Zorvilon’s aside.
“Did you hope to contain us?”
Xevis tried again to rip David apart, and Aphelion joined once again with a teleported blow to quell his regeneration, but Zorvilon countered as before with heat to the jeweled metal man. Quorus, however, intercepted the flames with a hundred bodies and David found himself torn again and again apart. Unable to concentrate himself, throwing fingers to void walls torn in space within an inch to stop them.
Zorvilon came closer in an effort to surround the two regenerating gods on all sides and prevent Quorus from interfering. Xevis was once again ready to wall the trio in, but this time with Aphelion there to constantly tear David apart and Quorus able to teleport fresh bodies into the flaming meat-grinder each itself capable of casting cooling techniques there was no ability to escape. Fire burned David’s flesh as Aphelion tore it apart. Quorus laughed in a thousand fresh voices and smiled on as many individual burning faces.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.”
Each word came from a different voice.
“You can’t contain me forever.” David mused.
“Oh but you see we can,” Quorus gestured to Aphelion, “None of us need to eat or sleep, and you can’t harm him.”
“So?”
“So you’re going to run out of strength, and then I can take his place with a never-ending stream of fresh bodies.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm indeed. But I’ll make this easy for you. You don’t have to be caught there forever. Join me, serve under me, and I will grant you infinite power.”
“Do you think I can’t escape?”
“You already tried.”
“And succeeded.”
“But we caught you again, and it will go on this way. Time isn’t on your side, I hope you know. Even now as we speak I grow more powerful. Can you say the same for yourself?”
David could feel the radiant and already infinite power he had taken from Yaldabaoth in her belated decision to leave fading. It was almost imperceptible, but Quorus was right in this matter. He needed to act quickly or the moment would pass.
“I don’t want your weakness.”
“Weakness?” Quorus scoffed.
“The weakness to send a thousand bodies incapable of damaging me as if they would amount to anything more than fodder. You can’t kill me.”
“But we don’t have to. All we have to do is trap you here. Why are you making this hard on yourself? I’ll give you an empire that spans from sea to sea, what mor—”
But David interrupted the offer. “I don’t want one empire.”
“Then I’ll grant you power and territory second only to myself.”
Aphelion scoffed, “You can’t just—”
“I can and I will. You’ll have your way of the empire, but—”
“I don’t want to be second,” David once again interrupted.
“Then there are no more words to be had.” Quorus finished bluntly.
Quorus was sure his offer to put David above Xevis and Aphelion would cause him a headache later, but perhaps they could be made to understand his present strength given some time here restraining him. But it was fine, Quorus didn’t need anything in particular. They were mindless words without any required outcome. David would understand them and eventually relent, or perhaps Quorus would grow so strong he would be able to restrain David on bodies and their shared power within a year or so. It would be easier if David couldn’t consume them, but still possible if Quorus released control just before teleporting in and launching a close-range technique.
The hours passed as David waited, eventually deciding to break his bonds, but the same set of events played out, and a third time, and a fourth. So many bodies. What was it thirty thousand now? All spent on trying to keep him contained. All failing, and yet recapturing him so quickly as Zorvilon flagged. His strength burned David’s flesh, and yet his weakness allowed for the Triumvirate’s focus.
But at last David had enough. He threw the curtain torn in space aside and let torn fingers fly loose. More holes of absent space were opened precisely in their path to stop them, but David consumed and reformed himself on the farthest finger down to tear through the attempt made only to stop his single finger. He would escape and that would be it.
Quorus began teleporting bodies and conjuring techniques of fire and ice; earth and acid and lighting and energy and darkness and death and all the other specialties an immortal could acquire over a thousand years of contemplation and study.
But the effort wasn’t enough. For all their success in capturing David, it had been by his will. He could have escaped at any point, even if only to be recaptured. The problem was that he couldn’t approach them. Xevis could wall him off and create space faster than David could brush the holes aside. Aphelion was… perhaps not a perfect counter but challenging to oppose. And Quorus was a being of ten thousand bodies. What good was it to kill one when six more came after? They had so little power individually, and it was clear Quorus had begun removing himself and killing the bodies before he could come into contact some time back.
So David made his way to the lip of the near bottomless pit that stood before him, carved into the earth and unable to regenerate in the wake of his great and glorious battle with Yaldabaoth. He contemplated the thought of being second, but it wasn’t enough. What good was godhood if you had to settle for less? What good was strength if there was someone stronger?
What good was his infinite and overflowing power if others could impose their will on it? Nothing. It was good for nothing. So many people had led him to this point through their own hubris and shortsightedness. So many bodies had fallen to create this moment and opportunity that David would not forsake. He did not know what would come next, but, as the saying he had once mulled over goes,
“When the time for words has passed, only action remains.”
Henry placed his palm on the soil, and it all crumbled to less than dust.
[END]