Nova’s brain was splitting in half.
Pathetic. The voice boomed in his head, each syllable a shockwave to the system. And I really thought you were my most adept pawn?
Nova twisted and turned, the labyrinth around him showing no end. For days, he must have been walking in circles, the training arenas of Great Oasis his chosen place of solitude.
Now, he was starting to liken it to more of a prison.
I could kill you, you know? Nova’s own brain seemed to scream at him. Suddenly, like strings pulling up his hand for him, five monstrous claws plunged into his chest. His Unbounded form was fully suited now — there was no point in hiding anymore, his rodent of a daughter had done an ample job of exposing his true form to the world.
Nova's own hand rebelled against him. It dug through flesh, gripped around his heart, and refused to let go. He felt every rush of monstrous blood circulate through his body, no traces of Ichor in his more divine form.
With your own hand, with your own strength, I could end you. I could wash you away in an explosion of gore with one touch of my power.
Who are you? He asked, hating how squeamish his voice sounded. Something told Nova he already knew the answer to that question, but he refused to believe it.
Oh . . . I think you know, don’t you, my little mouse?
Nova screeched, his body barging into wall after wall. As the detritus flaked over his shoulders, Nova really did have a chip on his soldier.
Finally, he freed his hand from his chest, dropped to his knees, and could do nothing but breathe as the blood poured out.
I have . . . no idea . . . who you are!
But that’s not true. Not true at all. Come now-
Gaining a life of its own, Nova’s hand grasped his throat with lethal conviction. Think, Nova, really think for me. You obviously weren't thinking when you threw our plans into the fire!
Nova retched blood, but refused to believe what he was hearing. His master would never do this. The Originator, the Unbounded that would bring their species to fruition, who granted him his Divine Right, would never abandon him like this.
Or would he? With his claws to his neck, and staring at his reflection through a shimmering puddle of his own blood, Nova’s belief system started to crack.
If this is about my identity getting out, I assure you . . . that rat of a daughter of mine will pay duly. I would topple armies in your-
Agony seized Nova’s body.
You would what in my name? What was that?
Some spark in Nova died. He didn’t say a word.
Nova, the last of the Right-bearers, the King of Unbounded, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The tiger in cotton. Look at you now. Kneeling to nobody, dripping in your own lifeforce.
Enos. Tears sprang in Nova’s eyes. His own master had betrayed him — no, he had failed Enos. This was his responsibility.
Please. He grovelled at the ground, imagining Eno’s feet looming before him. What can I do? What can I do to make it up to you, my liege?
Normally, Nova would have felt nothing but the most visceral disgust to have to lower himself like this, in front of anyone. But Enos was an exception. If there was any omnipotent being in this universe, Enos would be the closest thing to it. Maybe you could have made a case for Infinity itself, but Enos was Infinity. The resource’s greatest masterpiece.
Nova was a disgrace by comparison. Enos was the highest order, the upper pinnacle of existence. And if someone like that couldn’t bear to look at him, then what good was Nova?
You’re unfixable.
Nova heard the words for what they were: a death sentence.
But . . .
He raised his head, tears leaking out of blurry eyes and blood dripping down his chin.
I do have one last purpose for you. You are a sore on this world, but maybe you’re not utterly irredeemable. You had served me well Nova, but you burnt that all down. Now that I think of it, perhaps leaving you here to die in agony might be much more favourable.
No! Nova’s brain felt split into a hundred different parts, but they all unanimously agreed: they couldn't give up just yet. If there was even a touch of salvation yet to be acquired, Nova would split the Earth in order to retrieve it.
After that last war, things have been a little shaky. I like Chaos, however. If humanity were able to take a moment to breathe, I think I would find nothing more disgusting. We need to keep things going. Don’t let them clutch on to even a moment’s respite.
These next words resonated in Nova’s head, like the whisperings of Infinity itself.
I want you to relay a little message for me. Nothing big, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Some kind of telepathic link with Enos transmitted Nova a message. He heard it, blinked, opened his mouth to speak, closed it, swallowed. He did several more actions just like these, his body trying to compensate for the bucket-load of emotions it couldn’t possibly express in one gesture.
The words seared through his psyche. Entire sections of brain matter sizzling away under the weight of creation.
It was an invitation to brawl, engraved not by words, but by universal impressions of Infinity. It was not something to be decoded; it was life itself compelling you with perfect clarity.
Send this message to every God-Graced in the Anarchy Syndicate. Enos roared, his voice rising, like his words formed a dam against a flood of laughter. Let’s see just how messy this battle gets, shall we?
Nova bowed his head, feeling the weight of an executioner's axe press against his nape. No matter how powerful Nova was, he was never going to survive such an encounter. It was Enos’ next words that made this absolute truth sting all the more painfully.
If you survive, each word was interceded with explosions of cackling mirth, I’ll let you off the hook. Fish you out of the proverbial meat grinder. But whatever the case, you should be thanking me!
His body pressed into the ground, Nova felt as the will of Enos contorted his body. There he lay, bowing.
“T-thank you.” He huffed, suddenly very out of breath. “I cannot thank you enough.”
Nova hadn’t spoken verbally this entire exchange, save for that one utterance. He figured, from an outsider’s perspective, the image would have been most absurd.
Suddenly, like all the colour from the world had been bled out, save for a certain shade of violet, nothing but a deep mauve filled Nova’s vision. As a parent would treat a misbehaving child, Enos had activated Nova’s Chaotic power for him. Nova blinked, found himself in a destroyed building, the desolate sands of a desert stretching out, and immediately recognised where he was.
Hell’s Floor — the charred remnants of the Chaos Clan’s previous mansion; a grave on the earth. Nova paced around in a brief circle, taking the scene in, and trying to keep his guts from spilling out of the hole in his chest. He didn’t dare request for Enos to heal him in preparation for the upcoming brawl. Nova knew full well the insidious nature of the fiend. Enos would pass an injured puppy in the street and shout at the thing for not being able to walk.
At one time, Nova would have shared the same attitude, the same dog-eat-dog indifference to the cruel nature of reality. Now, however, on the receiving end of that misfortune, Nova found it very hard to stomach.
Absent-mindedly, Nova took a step forward. And someone was intent on making it the last he ever took.
All he saw was a stream of grey, and the aftermath of an explosion. Gas expanded in the remains of the mansion, obscuring his surroundings all around. Sawdust from the above layers of the building, the few upper sections that hadn’t yet caved in, rained down on his shoulders, and despite how fast he could normally call on his Mark, Nova found his space-bending powers failing him. Travelling across the world to another city tended to do a number on your energy reserves.
And Enos knew it.
The smoke around him seemed to take on a life of its own. Like a misty poltergeist was drifting around the scene, enclosing in on him as a predator does to its prey.
It entered through his mouth, the wounds spurting Ichor out of his gaping stomach, through his eyes and the holes of his nostrils. There, laying waste to his innards, the fog seemed intent on tearing him apart, from the inside out. Nova barely had enough sense of mind left to recognise this as a technique of the Rage Clan. A very adept one, no doubt conjured into life by none other than the lunatic God-Graced herself, Hilda.
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Under any other circumstances, a challenge from her would have been laughable. But Enos had drained him of everything. He couldn’t win here. Nova thought he would at least get to die valiantly, in a bloody storm of mass destruction. But no, he was to be executed by a madwoman who wouldn’t even make the history books.
As the gas seeped into every cell of his alien body, all Nova felt was hate.
Thunderously, with the knowledge that absolutely everything was going according to plan, Enos laughed; the devil whispering into his ear.
It is quite futile, child.
White light exploded in and out of Nova, leaking out from his eyes like water from a facet.
The will of Enos blasted out of him, taking his body whole.
It was time for Nova to take the backseat.
----------------------------------------
Violet was scrambling.
“We should have known he would have changed locations sooner or later.” It was awfully enticing to slap herself. “If we weren’t so lucky that I could teleport us in range, that would have been our opportunity gone.”
Veida frowned, the two of them barreling forwards, faster than rain falls out of the sky. They were both exhausted, but more so Violet. Travelling that far in one wharp usually meant taking the rest of the day easy, or two days. But no — she had been immediately forced to sprint as fast as possible towards her father. That crazed, idiot of an Unbounded.
Blasts of chaotic energy, and drifts of Infinity formed a cyclone for miles all around, and Violet found it just as suffocating as any sandstorm. The pressure of the air itself dragged her back, each step forcing her muscles to tighten as she pushed through.
At this rate, she would be exhausted before even reaching her father.
But, as luck would have it, Violet was sure they were close. The streaks of energy making an abstract art piece out of the sky, like buckets of paint thrown on a canvas, couldn’t have been too far away now.
As much as she hated giving into the ravenous, Unbounded side of her, Violet feasted on the Infinity all around. Her body instantly put it to use as energy. Violet at least had an infinite power supply to keep her going — Veida was relying solely on her own personal power, and as much Infinity as she could circulate through herself. That was the difference between an Unbounded suffusing themselves with Infinity, and a mortal clutching onto the same divine essence. Where Veida perhaps had the space of a cup to fill with Infinity, using her Boundless Chamber conceived at Warden, Violet had a chalice. In fact, in that analogy, her body was the chalice. Her every cell worked in perfect coordination to consume, to devour the world one wisp of Infinity at a time.
Nevertheless, Veida somehow pushed through long enough to see the battle close up. At any moment, Violet was acutely aware that one stay attack from a God-Graced could reduce her to a pile of oil, but the sight before her stopped Violet in her tracks.
Suffering and Disease were just two vile flavours in the chaotic mix, and Violet felt the pain flood through her body in one breath. The patches of grass were dead, grey, and surely not going to sprout a flower in the next hundred years. The air hummed with a certain violence, the sound of bones rattling pricking at Violet’s skin. She felt like her entire body had sprained, though the source of the agony was impossible to pin down.
She endured this, raised her head, and wasn’t too surprised to see a screaming woman smash into the ground. Smoke enveloped their body, an armour of gas flooding out of her.
Violet took about one second to recognise her as leader of the Fury Clan, Hilda. With one frantic jolt, she leaped back into the action.
The earth where she had landed was shifted, forming an unnatural hill. Violet wondered how much of the terrain of Descent was how nature willed it or, or was simply the collateral damage of feuding mortals. It was an intriguing thought, but not intriguing enough to distract her from her key objective: survival.
“Where are Eshika, and the others?” Violet didn’t bother to keep her voice low, shouting over the roar of the wind. She suspected that the God-Graced duking it out had hardly noticed her. Nevertheless, she was acutely aware of just how dangerous her position here was. Whether or not the beacons of power here intended to kill her or not, they could just as easily do so, like how lesser beings would squash an ant.
Perhaps in their rush to arrive at the scene in time, she and Veida had forsaken their own safety.
“I suspect they arrived before us.” Veida grimaced, exaggerating the few wrinkles she had acquired from old age. “We’re just reaching the outskirts of the battle, but if you open up your internal senses . . .”
Violet knew that doing so would feel like bathing in the light of five stars, but did so anyway. She winced, felt the spiritual equivalent of being blinded, and pushed on. It was hard, nigh impossible to distinguish the strands of energy — let alone identify their sources. Violet did her best, brushing amongst the different varieties of power like a kid in a sweet shop. She felt the corrosive crimson of the Suffering Clan, the misty choke-hold of the Fury Sect, the glimmering sparkle of the Envy Clan.
Then, digging deeper, like a mirror image reflecting back at her, there laid Chaos.
Violet took a deep breath, like she had just risen out of murky water.
Nova stomped into view, grasping Hilda by the neck. She was foaming at the mouth, her eyes swerving from side to side as if she was taking the glory of the moment in. There was a certain aura to her that was not her own, as if invisible thorns were digging into her body. The effects of the Suffering Clan were relentless.
Violet gulped. She had known the possibility of sect leaders dying here, had been counting on it in Nova’s case . . . but the sight before her was far too strange.
Mist swept out of Hilda, forming clumps of concentrated steam. A set of orbs hovered around her body, smashing into Nova’s chest like they were solid boulders.
They struck into his chest and back, both orbs dissolving back into smoke as, evidently, no damage was done. Nothing worth noting, anyway.
Violet looked into Nova’s eyes, only to find a simmering white in their place. Not the simmering embers that mirrored her own, when he was in this Unbounded form, but someone else entirely. Enos’ will.
Hilda swatted at Nova’s bulging arms to no avail, her neck looking like it was going to cast the scene in Ichor with how hard the Unbounded must have been squeezing it. Violet felt the urge to jolt into the fray, but there were too many God-Graced about. One-on-one, Violet would have to fight for her life against Nova, but she was certain she had a real shot against the fiend. With virtually the full power of the Anarchy Syndicate being thrown around though, things were far more complicated.
It was supposed to be the job of Eshika, Maris, and some other God-Graced to deal with the rest of the Syndicate, providing Violet with the breathing room to face her father alone. Where they were, perhaps dealing with the rest of the warring sect leaders not too far from here, she couldn’t tell you.
Suddenly, right when Hilda finally seemed to accept her ill-handed fate, ecstasy widening her eyes — Violet would never understand what went through the mind of that crazed woman — Violet saw Nova’s fingers twitch.
She too began to feel sleepy, the ground at her feet, despite all the layers of weeds and scattered blood, looking like a perfect resting spot. Only Veida literally slapping her, and herself pushing Infinity through her body as fast as she could, kept Violet awake.
The passive effects of so many God-Graced was doing a number on her body. Suffering, Disease, and now Fatigue were a horrid concoction.
But the brunt of the attacks were centred on Nova. Anyone else being affected, like the Suffering Clan bearing down on Hilda, was just a side-act of the main show.
Boils littered Nova’s skin, terrible illness covering his dishevelled form from head to toe. He swayed slightly where he stood, almost to the point where it was imperceivable. But Violet could tell he was tiring out.
Then, for whatever reason, that white streak left his eyes.
As the will of Enos left his body, apparently leaving a wounded Nova to fend for himself, Violet fully comprehended what a dog-eat-dog world this was.
Nova blinked, regaining full consciousness. Within that split second, he took in the moment, and reacted amply.
Hilda’s head erupted with one eardrum-popping slap.
One clap of the hands was all it took, and a headless God-Graced dropped to the ground.
Violet too blinked, and found herself transported. The stench of chaotic energy filled the air.
She spun around, examined the new scene, and tried to identify where Nova had transported her. It seemed as if everyone had been moved. Thank the gods she hadn’t been sent right into the centre of battle; Violet would have been lucky to survive the first ten seconds. She appeared to be in the middle of a crater, where the fight had once taken place, but had since moved on from. It seemed like the perfect place to take a breather, and try to reconcile with what she had just seen. For approximately five seconds, that was.
In the scariest instance of her life, Violet flinched as hand touched her shoulder.
Had she not noticed it was Eshika so quickly, she very well may have sucker-punched the silver haired woman.
“Eshika!” Violet squealed, and immediately hated herself for it. She cleared her throat, trying to take on a formal tone. “I mean, Eshika. I’m glad I found you, how are things?”
Eshika smiled, but it was like one happy passage in a book of despair. “The fight is getting bloody, but there’s no way Nova’s getting out of this.” She leered seriously into the distance, where a sonic boom resounded. “I heard you want first dibs on your father?”
“If it wouldn’t be any trouble . . .”
“Right. I’m gonna scout out the area and regroup our men. We’ll take care of the other members of the Anarchy Syndicate. That leaves Nova to you. I trust you’ll put an end to that fiend, but if things get out of hand, we’ll deal with it. Just don’t die, if you can help it.”
Without another word, Eshika leaped into the air, transforming into a shot arrow.
Violet took the deepest breath of her life, wiped the sweat off her brow, and called on her Unbounded form. Her shoulders hunched over as if she had horrible posture, her body immersed with a pearly white coverage. Her eyes blazed brighter than ever, the pinricks of ember that had once hinted at her fiendish side a fiery inferno.
Arrows rained down from above, seemingly at random. Though Violet found that despite her initial flinching, the barrage would never quite reach her. Tilting away if she did so much as stretch a hand out. Wondrous it was: such delicate control over your abilities. Violet wished to reach that level of combat one day.
Like a wild animal let out of its pen, Violet cannoned ahead on all fours. Visages fit for a dark lord’s nightmares turned into blurs of colour and motion as she pressed on, forgoing her bodily sight to read the world for what it really was: twisting drifts of energy. Her internal senses appeared to Violet like one thread leading to her father.
The path of a poisoned dart, swooshing through the air to put to rest a villain.
Eshika’s arrows, she realised, were forming a funnel-like path around her. At all angles, the weapons formed a peculiar shielding. Through the little she could make out of the scene, the jagged edges were doing a magnificent job at protecting her. Violet smiled a monstrous grin at the God-Graced’s blessing.
Then her eyes settled on her target, and Violet found a frown sitting in its place.
Blood leaked across Nova’s skin, staining it a murky grey. Violet was moving at an impossible speed, the momentum of the arrowheads washing off on her, but in that one instance, when sheer hate stared at sheer hate, Violet had never felt a moment drag by so slowly.
Then time continued as if it had never stopped. Violet crashed into Nova’s chest. Her father was sent flying, the colony of arrows at Violet’s aid making a dart board out of his barrel-like upper body.
Violet hung both claws above her head, and in the most satisfying sight of her life, saw Nova actually looked taken aback at the image of her. Scared, as some would put it.
“I’m going to kill you.” She put simply. There was no ferocity behind it. Violet spoke in the same monotone someone would use to say they were taking out the trash, or making a cup of tea.
After all of these years, after so much emotional turmoil, nights where she would twist and turn in bed waiting for answers, not able to confide in the ones who should have protected her the most, Violet was going to end it all.
His blood on her hands, and she would write his obituary with it.
Violet’s claws dived for her father’s heart.