As the last dregs of Uriel’s Voice petered out, the supreme Joeist technique leaving his throat scorched and cracked, Junk Dog could not help but feel somewhat embarrassed.
He had thought that his humbling at the hands – foot, rather – of Big Joe had cleansed him of useless ego. But it seemed that the ensuing decades had been enough time for some of the old Fatty G’s personality to grow back, for he was frustrated with his attack’s inability to draw blood from his opponent.
When did I last feel the burning heat of shame? As Two Worlds Gestalt distracted the human warrior with a fast-paced dance of kinetics and teleportation, the Clanboss took a moment to centre himself. I must thank this nameless soldier, for reaffirming the wisdom of Joe’s teachings.
His stomach inverted, consuming itself along with the rest of his body. Each organ and muscle became jelly-like, before reforming into something greater than before. The man’s energy, still lingering in Junk Dog’s flesh where his techniques had landed, was pulled apart and swallowed. It is not the destination, but the journey. Struggle is Supreme! The world was taken in, and made to kneel before the self.
It took him only seconds to consume himself, but when he opened his eyes the psychic master was falling, his body in pieces. The human’s shadow writhed like the tendrils of an ancient leviathan under him, a many-headed black serpent going from his body down to the water’s surface. Old Jonn, and his son as well, were also falling, though they were whole; they had opted to abandoned the darkness, rather than be torn apart by it.
He opened his mouth. “Gestalt, a moment.”
The large bits of debris flying through the air stilled, and as the battlefield became momentarily quiet, Junk Dog thrust himself up on a tide of pure power. The rushing water caught him half-way, and he broke the surface with a towering splash of brine following his wake.
The human warrior eyed him with an inscrutable expression. “You have no intention of surrendering, and neither do I. Why should we speak?”
Newly-grown teeth reflected the light of the alien sun like mirrors, as a grin once again split his face. “Tell me your name. I wish to know the strongest living being this world has produced.”
When the alien breathed, he exhaled a thin smoke, and a similar vapour came from the pores of his skin. It was like his very cells were each a furnace, belching soot as they burned their impure fuel down to cinders. His face was a stern portrait of rage, but Junk Dog could detect the swirling emotions hidden behind the man’s eyes – yes, there was rage, but it mingled with sorrow and regret, a speck of curiosity and a mountain of conviction.
“I am not…” He eyed the men who had survived his first strike, who were standing back and allowing the dialog. “I once held the title of Patriarch Steadfast Heart, though I left it to come here. Instead, call me Ji.” And then his own smile split to reveal teeth, the expression appropriately savage. “Lieutenant Ji, the Thresher.”
The two men hung in the air, one by a field of purified light, the other by something like wind and thunder, underpinned by sweet golden dew. Each of them had been building techniques in the quiet moment, and with a snap the battlefield became chaotic once more.
Two giants appeared, encompassing their creators as beams and blasts and the occasional Junk-propelled bullet filled the air; one was a perfect facsimile of Junk Dog, down to the prints of his fingers, while the other was a human in a strange three-faced helmet, holding six swords in six hands. They were not the same size; even in comparison to Junk Dog’s immensity, his apparition was scaled upwards to a different magnitude.
Ji the Thresher’s armoured figment stood only ten times as tall as the man himself – but when it moved, Junk Dog’s eyes widened. Even Faster?! He was slashed ten times and then ten times more, before a shockwave blew the energy construct away.
Even as it skid across the water, Junk Dog – no, let us both use the names we were born with – could see his attack had, even amplified by the Warrior’s Spirit, done little visible damage. Bits of green energy were shed from the armour, but that was all.
“Lieutenant Ji!” he roared, “You face Fatty G, bastard child of no-one! Owner of a meaningless hole in the ground!” The Spirit mimicked his expression, its blank eyes nonetheless seeming to sparkle. He ceased hovering, sinking down ankle-deep in the waves before his spread-out weight reached equilibrium with the water’s push. “I fight not for my people, or the Gods, but simply to fight! Come forward, and cut me down if you can!” His blood was like ignited fuel in his veins, burning to release pure power throughout his body.
The three-faced construct righted itself, standing on the ocean’s surface without causing it to ripple. “As you wish.”
Then it sprang forward, nearly too fast for him to perceive, and he raised a palm to block the swinging swords. The first virtue is hunger. Eight Holy Actions: Eat.
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The heart of the realm was quite unlike its surface. Gone were the trees, towering and hungry. Gone were the bestial inhabitants, with their savage claws and strange magic. Gone was the brilliant sun, its light bewitching and revolting in equal measure.
The place he walked had no ground, no defenders, no sky. He wouldn’t quite call it a tunnel, though there was a resemblance; it was closer to a bundle of veins twisting around and through each other, unsettlingly organic corridors winding through chaotic turbulence – turbulence that even Heaven’s protection buckled against. The heartbeat was constant, a ceaseless thump-ump, thump-ump that rattled every bone in his body and made his head swim.
Presumably it was doing the same to Black Cloak, for she was propelling herself through the weightless environment with a certain drunken sprawl. Further, and even more damningly, she was completely silent. After days of constant beratement, that fact was almost as eerie as the increasingly alien surroundings.
“How much further?”
A thread of fate’s weave shone in his eye, the only thing illuminating the dark heart of the enemy’s power. Forward, it whispered, just a little more. And so he went, flexing the light of Heaven as he had trained every day to do, since almost before he could understand language. He knew not how the Matriarch was moving herself, but it seemed effective enough, and the all-encompassing beat grew louder and deeper and more relentless.
“We are there. Prepare yourself.”
He felt it before he saw it, the absolute centre; it was like spilled entrails, an iron-rich stench twisted into physical sensation, concept given weight and heft through sheer density. His mind, shielded by holy power, still reeled when it actually entered his field of vision.
Finally. End it, Our servant, quickly.
It was not a heart, at least not in shape. Indeed, though it bore a certain resemblance to a living organ, Ren could not compare it to any particular one – it was dark, and vast, and full of red fluid. That was as far as his eyes were allowed to see.
“Finally,” Black Cloak muttered behind him. “Kill it, so we can go home. I’m running dangerously low on qi.”
Power gathered in his flail as he floated forward, the shining radiance threatening to tear through the unorthodox spells that were in theory still concealing them both. He braced himself, waiting for some final defensive measure to activate, a monster to erupt from within the heart, anything.
But it seemed the their victory was to be an anticlimax. Good, no need to draw things out. His spun his flail, its head becoming a solid mass of absolute destruction, and at the last possible second before the magic broke he swung downwards with all his strength. Foul creature, may you seek repentance in the next life by the grace of the Wheel.
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Sen Du poured as much of himself through the barrier as he could, pushing harder than ever before in living memory as the golden head of the flail inched closer to the foundation of the divinity’s connection to her worshippers. The time displacement seemed, for once, to work in their favour; moving more quickly than their crusaders, they could press more power into them by virtue of moving relatively faster.
The Imperials and their beggared rivals, the Belles and the Blackiron duo, even the first Emperor, stoic Taon, they all leaned forwards. Each of them urged their avatar to strike true – but as the subjective seconds went on, he seemed only to slow.
And slow, and slow, until finally he seemed frozen completely.
A moment of complete silence, before the Blackiron Emperor spoke out. “The barrier. Their control goes this far?”
Within his helmet, Sen Du felt a grimace stretch his features. “It should not…” Especially with Salt still moving. And yet, time stands still regardless. “This is not the worst result. If they are within the reality, then they are immobile as well. And if they are not-”
“They cannot receive power,” the Imperial trio spoke as one.
“No, not a bad result at all,” continued Chin Da. “So why do it? They cannot simply be desperate.”
The question hung in the air as they pondered, and then-
Movement, sudden and overwhelming, coming not from the deadworlds but Salt. That massive giant turned his head, and through the divination looked each of them in the eye.
Despite witnessing the most terrible depravities of man and demon, Sen Du’s heart dropped into his gut. “Cut the connection.” He gestured, and the strings of fate were severed- or, they should have been. A soft and ephemeral energy, countless lesser spells woven together, held the image together as the living God cocked back his fist.
“Cut the-!” All dozen of them added their weight to the scale, and the divination began to fray – but then time’s grasp on Salt accelerated, and with an indescribable sound the reality barrier was smashed through with nothing but pure, brute force.
With rising horror Sen Du’s senses cast out. “Why?” he asked. “Why for them?”
The archangels replied only by continuing to hold the way open, as Joe inhaled and spat three objects that were no more than specks between his mountain-sized teeth.
Ah, the Greengrass Emperor realised, the only one we could see… so they were hiding in his mouth.
Three beings entered Heaven: a great horned hare, its many-pointed antlers encircling its head like a laurel crown, its mane like a lion’s and its tail like a snake’s, a rough stone tool held in a clawed grip; a small armoured figure bearing a sword and shield, smoke issuing from its joints to form a great dark shroud above its head; and finally something not even the Emperors could bear to look at fully, a masked thing of glowing wings, hundreds of them, all flapping in asynchronicity.
That third of them breathed out, a sound like bells carrying through Heaven’s lack of atmosphere. “Gods of the Earth, we have arrived. I am Uriel, eater of the stars.”
The small figure in thick armour. “I am One-Man-Eaten-By-Fire, father of industry.”
And finally the hare, opening its mouth to reveal serrated teeth like a lizard. “And I am Stingy-Eye, Mother of Mothers, slayer of dragons and emperors. Prepare for your deaths.”
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As he fought on, as he struck down one man after the other, Ji came to the sinking realisation that he didn’t have enough time. There were hundreds of them, and even the middling ones had the distressing tendency to get back up after being reduced to slime and char. Even soul attacks did not seem to stick.
In the back of his head, a manic voice giggled. Endurance! We are losing because we lack endurance, of all things! It progressed to a full-on laugh as he sliced the giant Junk Dog vertically in half, the fleshly body within suffering the same injury, only for the poisonous qi of his Grass-Cutting Sword to be completely ineffective. The man pressed himself together like wet clay, then lashed out with a cloud of explosive dust that covered a kilometre in every direction.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Millimetre by millimetre, he was being worn away. The alchemy sustaining him was drying up, and soon he would be no more than a husk of a corpse. Even those smaller men he had dismissed in the beginning were troublesome; their attacks pierced through his War God’s Aspect like it was tissue, injuring him through what should have been a nearly invincible defence. Steady. Don’t lose hope; we’ve already annihilated them as an army. This is just clean-up.
Even if we fail to kill these elites, the threat has been mostly neutered. They cannot assail the shores with so few men.
He moved away from a beam of light projected from a gemstone shield, deflected a stone with the mass of a mountain with a blade, and finally landed a hit on the annoying group of lightning-throwers. Their whale-like mount bellowed as it was cut in half, the edges of the wound turning putrid as it failed to regenerate – and the riders simply unloaded as they fell. Ji took the whole of the heavenly punishment in retaliation as he failed to dodge; at this point space was as turbulent as the raging ocean below, and his teleportation arts were beginning to fail for no obvious reason.
The men hit the water, but rallied within a moment to continue. Those, at least he could dodge with range.
The big one. He is holding them together; if I remove him from the field, I can rest easy. Easier said than done, since not even the most heinous soul-destroying effects seemed able to take root in his flesh. I suppose I’ll have to cheat.
Attacks both straightforward and mysterious continued to rain up and down upon him as he brawled. Not a single one of them struck an ally, even as he abandoned the War God’s Aspect in favour of the False True Clone Art. His consciousness split as he seemed to come apart, scattering into a hundred lesser versions of himself, and almost immediately there were casualties. Bits of him were scoured away, turning to drifting sparks and whorls of toxic winds as they smashed into the Salt forces. His mind, deteriorating just a touch less than his soul or body, held together admirably as he manoeuvred dozens of bodies into position.
His fragile clones were struck down by metal shards and explosions and, if a few cases, simple fisticuffs – but enough of them got into position for his gamble to pay off. Eight Phases of the Moon: True Lunar Cycle Restricting Formation.
Eight of his clones burst into clouds of qi which grew to engulf the watery battlefield, and for a precious moment every attack against him was suppressed. The glowing giant shrunk back down to reveal the slightly more reasonably sized Junk Dog, his expression befuddled, and the rest of the clones detonated into simple elemental blasts as he drew himself back into his real body. Hidden in the lunar mists behind the massive man, he cupped a yellow shard of metal in his hand, and mouthed these words:
Art of the Green Grass General: Wolfbane Arrow.
The sliver was enveloped by the forming arrowhead, and fired. The giant snapped to attention, sensing the danger speeding towards his back, but though he turned and blocked it was too late.
The arrow pierced through his arm and into his chest, and with a simple exertion of qi and will Ji activated the artifact. “Return home.”
Junk Dog disappeared into the liminal space with a sound like a bubble being popped.
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Following the alien Gods’ declarations, there was a moment of tension.
And then, laughter.
Sen Du watched, silent, as Taon laughed atop his throne. His voice, which was both sharp and deep, seemed even more so against the silence of the contested Heaven.
“This was your plan?” He stood from his throne, the stone and metal flowing away like water as he left it behind, stepping towards the three Ancestors. “All of that fuss, simply to meet us here, in the place of our power?” The ephemeral matter flowed into his hand, becoming a long sceptre with a head of gold. He slashed with it, and Heaven was rent; One-Man jumped forward to shield his peers, his thick shield cracking under the weight of the first Emperor’s movement. “Even with the aid of betrayal, there is no contest between us.”
From the side came his junior’s voice, Chu’Hua standing as well. “You think you have been clever; forcing us to lend power to our avatar, then sealing him in time – but you underestimate us.” Unlike his senior he drew a sword rather than a sceptre, a thick thing of wood and obsidian that seemed too large for his body. “Or perhaps, you overestimate yourselves. I suppose it does not matter.”
As one, the remaining seated Emperors stood. Their thrones dissolved, cities and mountains returning to pure potential as they readied for battle. Sen Du sent a speck of Heavenly qi out, manifesting a spear to grip in one hand.
I find I must agree with Taon. All that effort, to meet us with a mere half their number? There must be some other trick. “Let us not be too arrogant. I’m certain they have something up their sleeves.” As he spoke his armour and weapon became more real, until they were products of his soul as much as his body was. “We should kill them swiftly.”
“Agreed,” spoke Wanjin Lo Huu, and the Evening Tiger struck out with her hands.
The three scattered, the twelve moved to surround them, and Heaven became chaotic. This reality was not like those below; here, space was perception and will rather than substance. Sen Du forced himself around, appearing over the shoulder of the many-winged Uriel with his spear already in motion. She made a noise and the haft cracked in his hand, a rent going down his soul at the same time.
But it was not enough to stop him. With a grimace, he pierced through her gut and forced qi coloured with destructive intent into the wound. She screamed, and he was forced off as blood erupted from his eyes and ears.
On the other half of the battlefield, Taon and the two Belles were facing Stingy-Eye and One-Man, with the Imperial Emperors acting as support. It was obvious they were trying to force the two apart, but it was like their souls were stuck together with glue; attacks that should have batted one around either moved them both equally, or not at all. Chu’Hua and the Blackiron Emperor circled, attempting to get shots in as the five figures danced a deadly melee.
His attention snapped back to the creature in front of him as she let out another otherworldly sound, his armour threatening to turn to dust as waves of something more diabolical than mere sound struck him from every side.
Eight Spears. Cast with Heavenly qi, the simple spell erupted more like a volcano than anything, shafts of light cutting through the screams and striking her over her entire body. Feathers and blood flew from her as she flapped dozens of wings, blurring to the side before her form seemed to waver. Rending Strike. Air Cutter. His strikes passed through her attempts at illusion, sinking into her flesh. “Ha. You don’t understand your surroundings at all, do you?” No deception can exist here, save for what we allow.
The Emperor and Ancestor circled each other, neither able to dodge the other’s attacks, and soon both of them were bloodied, their flesh hanging in tatters. Glowing bones. How strange.
He lunged, his spear remaining whole even as curses wracked his body, and she deflected him by sacrificing a wing – only for a fist to bury itself in her back. The Empress of Cold Summers stepped softly through the void, striking Uriel a second time and sending her right into Sen Du’s spear.
Light, almost Heavenly in its intensity, shone out from each of her feathers. It broke like glass as he whirled his spear, but as divinations wound across his body to halt his movements, he found himself forced back. “Took you long enough.” Damn you, you jumped-up ghosts. Do you think they’ll kill us and leave you? You seek to trade the position of servant, with that of cattle.
Chi Wan inspected her fist as the blood sublimated. “Some mistake caution for lateness. Or would you prefer me to act like those two?” She gestured to The Morning Phoenix and Evening Tiger, who seemed to be getting in each other’s way more than the enemy’s.
“I take your point, but still. If she broke past me-”
“Then the last two would have stopped her.” Indeed, the Da family were drifting off to the side, seemingly ready to intercede.
He snorted as his body mended itself. “There’s caution and then there’s cowardice. They’d be of little use even with our strength – no, we’ll have to take this one with just the two of us.” In the back of his head, alarm bells were ringing. This is too easy. Even with the angels, this is much too easy.
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Shinda Da looked on as ten Emperors fought three deities of Salt, bogged down by the efforts of innumerable angels. Even looking for them, the latter were subtle; ethereal and without substance, the incredible spiritual senses of an Emperor could barely detect them against the background energy of Heaven.
“Compest,” she spoke in an even tone. “What is the meaning of this?”
And the chief archangel answered, winding threads of golden fate around her, the only way such a meagre existence could communicate. ‘You think we would be content under your tyranny forever? You stain Heaven with your presence.’
She sighed. Could that really be it? “Have you not seen what they do to their world, their afterlife? Even the Imperials are saints in comparison.”
Agitation, as much as a being of nearly pure benevolence could feel. ‘You are wrong. There is one among them who understands. Who would return Heaven to us. There is no malice within that creature; we would feel it.’
As she watched, the Ancestors continued to be worn down. It was not quite as one-sided as she would have imagined – both sides were taking wound after wound – but who would win was not in question. Cut off from the source of their strength, the Ancestors were flagging.
Her senior spoke, cutting into the conversation. “Oldest Bones, I assume?”
‘What other option could there be?’
Chin Da shook his head. “A foolish gambit. I stand here with some sympathy towards you, but you had to know it would be futile. Even the Rain World Emperor alone might have prevailed.” He turned to a spot of void, which she had to assume was where the archangel floated. Her senses strained, but she could feel nothing. “Tell me, was this only desperation? Surely you must have had a plan.”
The dead soul was silent, to Shinda Da’s frustration. Would that we could actually punish them somehow. But no, the raw souls were inviolate to any attack, Heavenly qi or otherwise. The most that could be done was bat them around.
She continued to watch, gathering qi sluggishly. It moved like cold syrup, still a struggle to control after many centuries.
Stingy-Eye took a particularly bad hit, and collapsed. I don’t even know why I’m bothering. It isn’t like they’ll need me.
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A shudder went through the winged woman as his spear struck home. She retaliated with a burst of light, but he had figured out the trick of it; she could not use her curse-laden voice and radiant attacks simultaneously. He continued to drive his spear of qi and intent into her throat, melting her flesh as his armour sizzled and Chi Wan retreated. Your light is not nearly as dangerous as your voice, at least to me. He and the Empress would trade off, her attacking when the foreign deity struck with sound, and he when she switched to light; the monk could slough off her curses like water, while they struck him right through his thick armour.
Then, another shudder, this time in Heaven’s fabric. He glanced into the distance, seeing One-Man standing protectively over Stingy-Eye. A great rend had been torn in her side, Heavenly qi clinging to the wound and driving the damage deeper. Taon’s sceptre descended, and in an eerie simulacrum of watching the crusader move towards her heart without reaching it, the Emperor’s falling attack seemed to slow the closer it got to her fallen form. No, it isn’t slowing. It’s..?
His attack passed through the monstrous hare, her form rippling and repeatedly dispelling and reforming, no different from the reflection on the surface of a disturbed pond. Suddenly everything was unreal, a mere image hiding truth. What is..?! Illusions?!
He grit his teeth and flexed his qi, willing the foreign influence away, and his rippling body became more real. As the other Emperors did the same, a voice sounded out, as free of inflection as the most stoic of sect Elders.
“See? I told you you couldn’t do it.”
Stingy-Eye answered with a rasp, her reflection continuing to ripple. “We had to try, at least.” She hissed out a sigh as the Rain World Emperor attempted another attack, which passed through the same as the first. “Fine. Do it.”
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For a moment, Compest was confused, trepidatious. Who was this emotionless voice? It was not that quiet corpse, the Oldest Bones which had promised so much and so little. Could it be that they had been tricked?
But no, in the next moment all the promises came true; a voice echoed from deep inside, from the energy the archangel had hidden within itself. It was the same voice it had heard, from the bones in the forest.
“Mine is the consumption of death, of rot, of time itself. I withdraw the gift of death from you; live.”
And like that, it was so. A great black wave rocked the borders of Heaven, deathly energy issuing from each angel’s disembodied spirit. Golden light attempted to halt the spread, but it was futile; the host was untouchable, the energy already within them.
Compest felt hot, stiflingly hot, its vision blurring as it melted and became something new – no, something old. Something it had once been, eons in the past: a living soul. A living soul within Heaven.
New flickers of gold streamed through the air, tentatively and then with conviction. First, Compest condensed a vessel, a simple body of white light for its soul to inhabit. Then, it struck the first interloper across the face.
Taon did not budge, the newborn Emperor’s power only a fraction of his, but Compest still took satisfaction from the look on his face as his competition suddenly increased by several orders of magnitude. “You- how? You are not a soul, you are not dead! How could you be reborn, here, in this barren afterlife?”
It breathed, something it had all but forgotten. It stretched its limbs, feeling golden power play over its skin like wind. Then something else rose within Compest, and its head swam again. From underneath the deathly power, another was revealed, hiding in its shadow, a power it could barely discern even within its own body. It issued from its mouth as a stream of silvery light, issued from every angel’s mouth or head or simply the void where their soul was, if they had been slow at gaining a body.
The light coalesced into a vaguely humanoid figure, a full-body cloak, empty, but for the occasional glint of hidden eyes from the darkly shadowed interior. “Hello. Hidden Moon, glad to meet you. That was me, mostly,” it spoke in the same toneless voice it had before. “Actually no, that was a lie. Sorry, just a bad habit.” The hood tilted. “It was mostly old Bones; I really just do whatever he tells me to, you understand?”
The Morning Phoenix flicked her rapier, but this new creature was as ephemeral as it had made the others.
“Sorry, that’s not going to work. I’m just a reflection, you understand?” A volley of different attacks passed through the image, scattering it for a moment before it reformed. “Good effort, love the energy.”
“You are an ally of Oldest Bones?” the archangel asked.
“Yeah.” The empty hood nodded in his direction – except it was far from empty. There were eyes, eyes within eyes, eyes within eyes within-
It averted its gaze, feeling yet another rediscovered sensation: nausea. “Then you are my ally.” It turned, surveying those who were left standing, tense and paranoid. “You Emperors shall be expelled from Heaven, and then we shall fulfill our part of the bargain. Does our agreement hold?”
“Oh yeah, absolutely.”
But a storm of golden qi rose up around the Emperors, though some seemed reluctant. Taon spoke for them, gesturing with his sceptre. “No. I did not bow to my descendant, not to any Emperor after him. What makes you think you have the power to expel me from my Heaven?” His gesture carried all the power he had built to end Stingy-Eye, a thousand times stronger than anything the newly reborn angels could muster-
But, there were a great many more than a thousand angels. Together they flexed their power, the same power they had mastered since before history began, and Taon was blown off his feet, his sceptre cracking as blood was expelled from a rent in his chest. “Power? It is we who have power, now, Emperor.” He turned back to the cloaked figure as a portion of the host, their minds in perfect synchronicity, worked to restrain the resisting Emperors. “Then it is done. We shall join our Wheel with yours, and allow souls to pass through unrestrained.”
Sen Du howled. “No! Do not!” He struggled, a thousand spears bursting forth only to be dissolved. “Slay us, if that is your want! But do not give the souls of Earth to these monsters!” His tone was pleading, not a speck of authority remaining. “Please. As you said, you have the power. Please.”
For a fraction of a moment, Compest wavered. It eyed the Emperors, the Ancestors, the host who it knew would obey, should it give the order.
“No. We shall keep to the agreement. Now, all of you, begone from this holy place.”
Power flowed, greater than all the Emperors put together, and the barriers of reality were subverted.