Alucroas

Cataclysmic Ending ( Closed, Val'gara RP )

The sheathed swords came close to breaching Soran's atmosphere, only to lose aerial stability as a ravenous leech attempted to eat and simultaneously diffuse the energy that fueled them. Caitlyn was that leech, and while she did manage to accomplish the former part of her plan with little in the way of immediate consequence to herself, the insipid woman completely forgot that her power was being projected through the Mist, - through Hellion. She did speak through it after all, but more importantly was the fact that there had been no anomalies, no rips or tears in the fabric of reality had formed within or around the Mist to show that it was using anything other its malignant presence to perform it's function of diffusing and consuming energies. The only logical conclusion was that just as the Void mistress _spoke_ through the Mist, so too did her power to consume the energy of others also act through it, at least in this instance.

What did this mean? For starters it meant, the Mist would have to make direct physical contact with the swords in order to initiate the process of magical depletion and purification through Caitlyn's void. Secondly, Hellion had demonstrated many times that the Mist was a living, organic substance, of which the whole of his physical body was made from. This made him especially vulnerable to the effects of the runic strings, for just as it had cursed Narcissus’ body and soul to slowly fall apart inside Eden’s bark, the strings primary method of affliction was done through physical contact.

Did Caitlyn ever stop to think for a moment that using Hellion as a medium to open the gateway to the Void might be endangering him? - that as she, in her hunger - tried to consume decadent magic, she may have infected him with a disease even more deadly and virulent than Narcissus, who was losing himself both physically and spiritually within Eden’s bark due to the effects brought on by Singar’s runic strings? Of course not. She was too concerned with trying to satisfy her hunger, her insatiable lust for power, just as the rest of the Collective sought power through Will, which was ultimately and ironically their biggest problem.

They lacked will, they lacked the resolve to get things done themselves, and blindly trusted a fool, who at the very moment of his birth hallucinated his way into believing himself to be the last remnants of Idea’s will. This lack of willpower was reflected not only in their very presence on Soran, which was not a result of their will, rather of ”the” Will, but also in their complete inability to act with even the slightest shred of tactical cohesion.

Thus as Mist touched the scabbards flowing with the decadent magic comprising the runic strings, instead of serving as a convenient spoon medium for Caitlyn to commence her gluttony, the Mist burned with crimson light. The entire sky became luminous, with blood tinged smoke floating in the air as the strings seared themselves upon the Mist that was everywhere: in the sky, underground; all places the Mist occupied, so too did the curse travel far and wide to be with its newest victim.

All Caitlyn had done was commit the mortal sin of combat...

Fratricide

”Do not fear the voice of evil!”

The Disciple, the armies of Liaita whose wills and might he reinforced with his powerful psychic voice were steeled by his skillful manipulation of words. “She knows not how experienced you are in the ways of war!” Initially caught off guard by the sudden intrusion of Caitlyn’s voice into their heads, the dragons, the faeries, the elves, and earth tamers all felt the voice wane in fury, grow distorted, and fall apart as the medium with which the Void mistress spoke disintegrated, atomized, and decayed further down until there was nothing left but composite matter.

Singar didn't even blink at this, didn't even twitch as the fool before him passively perceived his neutral expression as an attempt at hiding his real emotions. The truth of the matter was that just as the Collector had an unrestrained tendency toward acting capriciously so too did he have a way of retreating into his own mind when focusing; half-removing and half-shutting out his feelings with a computerized thought process for executing strategies, leading him to abruptly cease beleaguering foes with his ego. Kalaziel's emotional line in the sand had been drawn the moment he came within sight of Hellion, and in the ex-Herald failing to comprehend or pay the proper attention, or respect to the superior being, he had let his own own ally walk him like a dog to the euthanasia clinic.

And there was no comfort room.

If the Cowboy had bothered to consolidate his brain along with the rest of his form before arriving on Soran, he would have realized this. Instead he tried to quickdraw on Singar, wisps of his misty body coming off like a dissolving sleeve, whilst a solid wall of the magic that he was infected with erupted from the ground at a speed to match his own. Despite appearances, the wall was mostly transparent, contrasting quite starkly as it rippled from impact from the Tyrant Gun’s first round. Those ripples rapidly changed shape to reflect not only the form of the bullet that had been imprinted on its surface, but of Hellion as well who would slowly succumb to its power, mocking his every move just as it did Narcissus’.

הבוגדים יידעו ייאוש מבעד לעיוותיהם של חבריהם.

The Mist could not contain or restrain Agron and Sarach with physicality, because they were not beings that lived through conventional physical means. There was no skin with pores to fill, and veins underneath to flood with Mist, or muscles to deteriorate, or nerve signals to be blocked off. They were spirits who expressed their presence through the dirt beneath the grass, through the mud caking the lakes, rivers and swamps, within the rocks composing the mountains, and the metal in the mines of the ruined passages, which in itself was a testament to their ability to resist the Vesuvian Virus.

Likewise as with Caitlyn's Void, it did succeed in pulling out Agron's spiritual energy, drawing it forth in endless streams of enigmatic blue aura. Enigmatic being the operative word, for even as the power radiating from towers on Sarach's back and its beam of crimson fury was swallowed into the whore's throat in an endless stream of ethereal essence, so too would the fact start to fill her mind that creatures as bestial as the two earthen cousins could not be depleted using such basic drain tactics. The answer to the mystery of why such a thing could never be achieved should have been obvious, especially for a person whose own body resembled the cosmos, but she - like the Imbecile of The Mist - had clear problems understanding what it meant to have a will.

The blue aura protected Agron against threats of a non-physical nature, and because its ability to guard its soul was linked to will, this aspect of endurance meant that the only way to actually restrain it, as well as Sarach was to assault their wills directly, an act already proven to be futile when Agron fissured Liaita with its wrath and flooded it with its defensive power that rose like a tidal wave toward Hellion.

Lastly, until those wills were impossibly broken, nor would the two cousins auras fade, dissolve, or be broken down in any capacity.

When the jaws of the Void bit down on Sarach, its red aura compressed, sharpened, and went straight through the roof its mouth. The serpent thrashed, twisted, and turned, shredding tongue and cheek, shattering teeth and softening gums as its in-tact aura that was designed to assault the mind exploded inside Caitlyn’s very core, and spread out through the roof like a pillar of blood. Because Sarach compressed its aura, when it released that compression, it exploded a second time, endangering the minds of her allies who stupidly chose not to even so much as guard themselves against the volley of molten, spiritually energized boulders from Agron, the flurry of corrosive bio-force from the Toxic Conqueror, or its spines that sought to lance them through.

For their astonishing inability to heed to that which sought to murder them, Singar would punish them by refusing them the possibility of any future coordination, via the one method he actually did try to hide from them. Throughout all the chaos, all the carnage, throughout the grammaton hammer exploding in in front of Hellion after its brief delay, threatening to slam him into the crimson wall, and send him scattering into the tsunami of Agron’s blue aura as a dismantled mess… Several thousand swords burrowed underground, gaining speed as they crossed out of one fissure created by the Essence within The Rock, and drilled into another, unimpeded by decaying Mist, straight toward the destination of the Collective.

The final fissure was broken through, and the golden hilted swords unsheathed themselves from the silver scabbards, the openings of which faced the sky with their emergence. A flash of gray heralded the activation of Singar’s own voids, but unlike Caitlyn’s, his were not contained within his body--instead they were contained within the scabbards themselves. The gust of wind that the voids unleashed may very well have been enough to tug the Collective toward them, but just as the swords aerodynamic shapes--surging with runic energy--proved useful in piercing that wind, so too did it allude to the possibility that Singar had no intention of making pets out of lunatic hounds.

No. He wanted them to suffer.

That which the scabbards pulled in was not rotting Mist, nor was it energy emitted by Agron and Sarach, the electropsionic energy emanating from the Collective’s psi-links, and certainly not magical net dropped on their heads by the Doloran squad of dragons and faeries, which too failed to be impeded by the mutilated Voidmistress.

What the scabbards sucked towards the Collective was that which impeded all things.

The Midnight Fog.

It pulled the Midnight Fog via wind, pulled it right onto the Collective like a Midnight blanket, before a Midnight nightmare. The Fog rushed into the Void and granted Caitlyn a long-desired respite as it slowed her cosmic energies to a halt. The Fog absorbed the minute flecks of energy from the rest of the Collective’s psi-links, suspending its effects just as it suspended the energetic net thrown over them, the spirit-energy of the rocks flying at them, and ultimately reduced the travel speed of neural impulses to a sluggish motion, and even slowed the runic decay just before it hopped through their psi-link.

It did not stop the Toxic Conqueror from impaling each and every one of them on its spines, for it was not an energy being, nor did it prevent the physical aspect of the boulders Agron launched from crushing them to bloody pulps, and nor would it prevent the swords from impaling whatever remained. Because of the way the Midnight Fog stagnated a being’s perception by jamming up their brains, because of the fact that it suspended the flow of energy, just as it would soon suspend Hellion’s suffering as the Fog rose just a bit higher off the grass and consumed him, because it only delayed these things…

The Collective who had all been reduced to fragments of flesh, bone, and wasted matter, would not feel the awaiting agony until the Fog drifted passed them, beyond their disembodied souls.

It was a torture that had yet to even begin.

It was a torture that had not even been born.

Finally Singar’s facial expression shifted to that of a broad smile, as the wind coming off the hilts of the swords at his hips swirled the Fog around him in an large, spinning vortex, blowing the stuff away before he too, like the Collective dog shit before him faced…

Their Cataclysmic Ending.

No God's Sky

"Who... is speaking to me?"

I... was at a loss for words. I had not expected this newborn beast to trip, stumble, and struggle to articulate itself so easily. Perhaps it was due to the shock of finally being free again, that I failed to calculate that the collective intelligence of the Cizrans merging together being held together. I pushed the thought to the back of mind, and answered as quickly as I knew how.

"I am Cipher."

"Life. Death. Life. Death. Life. Death. Life. Death. Everywhere I see life, I see death, and where I see death, I see life."

I felt...paternity. My organization cared much for the well-being of all creation. We went out of our way to promote individual wholeness. For the Cizrans this was impossible. Others had paid the price for their vanity, and a slave - no matter how much "freedom", or privileges it is granted throughout its lifetime, it is still just a slave, never to be truly free. La'Nibi apparently shared this line of reasoning, and I instantly knew, that it shared some of the Cradle of Life's genes.

Slowly, it began to turn, its colossal tail sweeping a swath of destruction, leaving a thick trail of ectoplasmic slime coating the debris, its equine hooves puncturing the ground with every step, and its tails twined together into the shape of a multi-skulled saurian flower as it finished the turn. It stood still for about three seconds, meeting my gaze with its cony eyes, a unified breath of utter bliss exhaled from the swirling portal in its torso; and where I might have flinched at this, I felt all the muscles in my body instantly start to relax.

So La'Nibi saw me as kindred... Very well. Snil will analyze this... phenomena at a later date, I presume.

"What will you do?" I asked with blooming curiosity.

It stopped about a hundred feet from where I held myself aloft, and the twined skulls eased the tightness of their necks.

"I wish to watch, and decide what I will do with this life and death, life and death, life and death, life and death."

There were still three craters left within the Cradle of Life. One of them could easily hold La'Nibi. Yes, the Doctor and the General will be most pleased to have their newest... friend so close for acquainting.

I... dropped my claws, tilted my head, and began to click my mandibles. "We travel to the Cradle of Life, and it will be within the Cradle of Life, where we shall watch life and death, life and death, life and death." Upon the projection of this final message, the gateway within its torso swallowed its light, its dark-indigo skin becoming luminous as its veins were flooded, and the skulls shined like ornate lamps.

"We go to watch life and death, life and death, life and death."

I am safe. I... flew at the portal, nestled myself against the solidified walls of space and time, felt the prying eyes of a billion Obatherans from a billion different universes through interconnected consciences watching me. Inside I felt this chamber rotate to a vertical position, the walls compressing, stretching, as La'Nibi's body shrunk inwards on itself, expanded outwards on itself, and spat me out on the crater of the Cradle of Life.

Finally, without pause, the Cradle dove into the blackness of space like a whale going underwater.

And then I... heard through the intersection of existence,

a

twisted

metal

s
c
r
e
a
m

No God's Sky

The Cradle of Life - Interior

Karzar remained utterly statuesque, light from the data screen reflecting off his cold, aquatic eyes. Beside him, Snil shivered with chilling intensity and nervousness, tendrils twitching spasmodically. The monitor the two had been viewing flashed red with a warning symbol, indicating that their message to CIPHER wasn't only failing to get through, but that the webs being used to transmit its signals were being attacked with heavy bursts of electromagnetism. Furthermore something had surrounded the Cradle of Life, and Karzar could only assume that their presence had finally been detected.

Snil nearly leaped out of his seat, only for Karzar to immediately step forward, and place a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.
"Calm yourself, Doctor." Karzar said with a tight grip, the corners of his mouth stretching and revealing his rear incisors, nostrils quietly taking in air, resulting in a subtle but gradual rise of his chest. "Let them handle this."

Karzar had longed for a Cizran of high rank and intelligence to bare witness to the glorious reunification of his long-fractured race, but it was simply not to be. Yet here and now, they faced an obvious deception. Why was it obvious? How did the General and the good Doctor know that what stood before them was fake? Simple. Snil knew Kilamaran biology inside and out, having genetically modified Aredemos’ body to make full use of his elemental affinity of fire, rock, and ice. The very same affinity which was exactly what enabled him to freeze and shatter the firestones of his fellow Kilamarans upon returning to his homeworld. A capacity for modifying his form to mimic the qualities of a caustic substance was utterly beyond him, and thus, so too did Karzar, who held his shoulder firmly in his grip, realize this as well...

Karzar reacted swiftly, stepping into the substance in only half a second, given that it had appeared mere meters from his face, grabbed his tooth-laden cape and threw it around himself and the Doctor. As the acidic explosion impacted his cape, the whole of his physical form underwent a transmutation. Every bone, every muscle and organ, every scale, every eye, every cell of gray matter in his skull became integrated into the substance pulling all of it and all that it spread into him, and integrated unto his very own self. Karzar became one with the matter before him, becoming the very substance exploding at he and Snil, compressing and suppressing the wave within himself, as such that it merely caused his body to vibrate.

Karzar was not without his own set of Aptositic powers. He had the unique ability to become one with all physical things that made contact with his body, to the extent of mimicking their properties as the fully resonant, genuine article. It was why in his former life that he had made for such an efficient ocean predator, becoming one--not with the tide--but to become as the tide itself. Such a gift did not merely lend itself to offensive or defensive measures, however; this gift had allowed him to know the full thoughts, feelings, longings, hopes, desires, fears, and dreams of all the Aptosites who he had led under his command, acquiring all through a simple empathy-inducing touch, and was the very reason that he need not so much as make a conscious effort.

“They wish to resist becoming one with each other,” Karzar said with true sadness in his tone and posture, turning to face Snil as he let his cape, spawning a few more teeth, fall back to the floor.

“Perhaps it is why they have conquered so much of the local inner and outer-galactic regions of this cosmic sector,” the Doctor replied without rhetoric in his voice, “gathering and acquiring many things in the hopes of filling a hollow void, just as they fill their appearances with many differing aesthetics, all on a banal quest for self-realization.”

“Oh, they will most certainly...” Karzar’s form shifted back, the dark glint of his eyes returning, “realize.”

The Cradle of Life - Exterior

The dark world of Obathera, whose residents had earlier attacked the lambent suns for nourishment began to unify their minds. For in feeding off that which the Cradle of Life gave them, so too did their awareness of of the internal and external expand astronomically. The hollow openings of the tall, cyclopean skyscrapers dotting Obathera became filled with uncountable yellow eyes, marked with multiple pupils resembling ink splashes, each one staring out into space with an unnerving, unerring, and uncanny sense of perception. This had not been the first time that the denizens of Obathera had cause to defend themselves, nor would it be the last, however rare the need rose into vision, a vision that grew to both figuratively and literally dot itself all over the Cradle of of Life. The eyes were the size of whole moons unto themselves, projecting as an encapsulating image of psionic energy over the Cradle of Life, swiftly and with a synchronicity that defied Cizran expectations of what was thought to be the limitations of the Aptosites. All they had known was that there was a spy in their midsts, that an organization had been watching them for a very long time, and that the Aptosites had begun to enact the full extent of their plans; plans acted for, not against the Cizrans, despite the apparent force they were willing to use to achieve them.
They had not seen what the Obatherans were capable of doing for a time that literally predated the emergence of this particular universe, nor had the Cizrans ever--through their numerous acts of counter-intelligence--witnessed the Obatherans watching them as they watched them now.

Inside the Cradle of Life, through the skein of space, through the twine holding every threaded cloth of fabric together, specifically the fabric on which an impression was formed by Ezkshi, her battleship, and her entire crew…this fabric became soaked, drenched, and submerged in pure white water, pouring forth and drowning the gaps between foam bubbles, and preventing any sort of stealth-based assault. The Obatherans did not try to intercept communication signals, nor did they attempt to hack or break into them. Using their eyes they observed every shift, fold, and imprint that was made, and this was how the creatures of the Dark World saw them. The water that flooded the crew was not unlike the primordial pool that the Cradle of Life surfaced from at the dawn of its existence. It was a place of beginning, of birth, a place existing so far back in time that the only records of its existence lay dormant within the creature’s ancient neurons.

In this primordial ocean, there was no ‘space’, or ‘time’. This place had no rules, no laws, no defining features or attributes to shape it save for the endless mass of unformed reality, and it was that very unformed, lawless substance that the decomposing beams fired into with no effect or interaction of any kind. No ghosts, no spirits, no astral phantoms, no obscure reflections of the selves occupying Ezkshi’s vessel, nor even the vessel itself. Neither a heaven, nor a hell, and definitely far from limbo; concepts like those didn’t exist yet, nor were there beings to create them, let alone imagine. The crew who thought that they could remain hidden found themselves glimpsing into the unravelling irises, dispersing scleras, and expanding capillaries into the unmolded after, the nondescript before, and inarticulable now.

In this existence, in this spaceless, timeless expanse, one could do naught but wait.

The lambent suns surrounding the pink astral sphere, known to the Aptosites as Astraelis, retracted the bands of energy holding the anomaly in place, the walls of the crater that contained it closing in and gripping it with its very own flesh. A brief glimmer of magenta sparked over Astraelis, and as fast its mind could think, an enormous amount of energy was transferred to the nearest web in space. Travel across the astral plane was limited only by imagination and comprehension, and thus, in accordance with the Creature’s capacity for fathoming the act, the transference of psionic essence happened instantaneously. A wave of light illuminated the Cradle’s veins, a moment which circumvented the constraints of temporality had passed, resulting in every, single web that was being attacked surging with the power of Astraelis. Crystallization took place along the silk composing the webbing, bolts of electro-psionic ether radiated off the expanding webs as a psionically charged shield, repulsing the gamma pulses and radio-waves back. Its defenses complete, the Cradle of Life remained in its supportive state, holding the astral gates open, wherein the signal was promptly given to CIPHER. The Aptosite spy would feel much more invigorated, given that the signal now carried Astraelis’ psionic fuel with it.

Meanwhile, the eyes dotting the Cradle of Life expanded to such great volumes that the darkness of their pupils spilled into each other, covering the creature in complete blackness. Starlight became bent and distorted, rendering the cold emptiness of space as the only sight. In the moments leading up to the Grid launching its beams, it no longer witnessed the colossus carrying the five worlds. Deep within the blackness of those pupils, the Grid did not see an enemy, it did not witness the eldritch being that had attempted to kidnap Nenegin zar-Talil, nor did it see the ethereal luminosity of Astraelis, the lava flows of Deimobos, or the sleeping desert of Kilamara. It did not gaze upon the looming obsidian towers of Obathera from which the eyes truly peered out of, and lastly it did not see the unending hurricane which swept across Gaiyana, that was rapidly becoming enveloped by a rising emerald plume.

Within the Absence the sight of the Grid became known, but not through sight. The eyes, whose parasitic host was space and time itself, felt the location being impressed upon its fabric. It reconfigured the sensation into a concrete image, and then saw many tiny machines aiming at it. In that instance of perception, sight reached out into a parallel existence, overlapped them together at opposing angles, and the World Beyond Time equipped itself with a mocking sword and shield.
What better sword and shield than the very same that took aim to destroy it?

The Grid saw itself. It was aiming at itself. Not a reflection of itself, not a phantom, not a flaw, nor an error in its programming. Obathera did not redirect the dicing beams, it did not use mundane magic to reflect the beams back. From the absence that existed outside of space and time, the Obatherans accessed a timeline of another universe in which the Grid was firing at the Cradle of Life, superimposed the event to the location that it had once occupied, and let the Grid’s beams take care of the remainder of the work.
Now the only sight was a graveyard of mirrorous suicide.

The Haloportal

The thing that watched Kirri was very much real, very much alive, and veryvery hungry. Undetected as it were, the dimensional parasite that observed Kirri with plain objectivity did so through his firestone, a thing that held a connection to a realm bound to, but ultimately outside the physical plane. It watched him panic, scream, and spaz in response to its horrifying visage and the effect it had on what was an entirely spiritual interaction. It did not need to breach the haloportal directly to gain access to Kirri’s mind, though it could have easily crawled right through the black hole had it so desired.

It did none of this, for the interaction transcended the physical plane in its entirety.

The “prophecy” Kirri experienced was entirely astral in nature, the connection formed via his firestone which, on the astral plane, emitted a constant energetic signature. One that did not need a code, password, key, or a hacking tool to breach, no matter how secure it may have seemed to the Cizrans. On the astral plane, the only requirement to do anything was will and imagination, and the will that belonged to this abomination was something so utterly outside of dimensional laws that these beings resided on, that it transcended the physical plane, neither circumventing, nor bypassing, but simply eluding the obstacle altogether. If it needed to, if it wanted to, the being could have punctured the singularity and pried open the black hole like the ribcage of a rotting cadaver through use of the strong electromagnetic force, slip, slide, and glide along the folds of space that the Cizrans believed Kirri’s mind was projecting itself against, and slip right in. None of these were necessary, especially at a location where the very laws of physics broke down.

For now it merely continued to watch and observe. Watch as the crimson spiritual tendrils of Aredemos lashed onto and wrapped themselves around Kirri, gaining as strong a hold upon his loyal follower as his hold was upon the physical world, preventing himself from being trapped within a haloportal as well. He had not been prepared for the sudden transportation from Kilamara to the foreign world, a world which he most assuredly, most certainly, and most absolutely knew was NOT Kilamara, for he would have at least felt the slightest tingle of the konul futily trying to drain his spirit as it had done to the rest of the Kilamarans. The poorly put together farce of a sanctuary would have been utterly smashed by the tribal elders upon its discovery, for in their eyes Aredemos was the ultimate heretic and blasphemer to their ways, and the dwellers in the desert would have likewise done the same, for they knew who Aredemos was, and more than that, they knew that what he wanted and desired most was not worship, but complete and absolute freedom for his race and all other races that lay beyond their world.

It was clear now, just as it had been clear when he took flight from the farcical planet, that the Cizrans had done either a remarkably incompetent job at studying Kilamaran culture, or managed to misconstrue the coordinates of his transportation to another world entirely, in-turn sending him to the wrong place, and getting one of their own territories blown to smithereens.

Or perhaps they had gotten their information from a drunkard named Garri, a Redeemed One who had lost his way, and in his stupor, jumbled the words Initara and Kilamara, whilst presenting the information to Nenegin.

Suffice to say that Kilamara remained safely, securely, and in-tactly aboard the Cradle of Life, swallowed as it was alongside its moon Deimobos. This fact negating any need for gravitonic restabilization by Commandant Zuril Nu-bashira, and resulting in the taloned Cizran never receiving the distressing feedback from his sensor arrays.

In a matter of moments, Kirri’s soul was yanked out through his firestone where it was dragged across the astral plane at light speed by Aredemos who, in his spiritually empowered state, kept his body firmly rooted in the physical plane. Though he was fully resisting and overcoming the monumental drag of a force that he did not know the full rules and governance of, Aredemos, however, knew enough after being transported to that mockery of a homeworld, that he would have to steel his spirit. A thing which he achieved through the escalation of power, before taking off from the false planet. It was with this hardened resolve that he evaded the trap, blinking across time and space at a rate of speed that rapidly brought Cradle of Life (which was currently undergoing a process of reformation as the eyes of Obathera retracted in size, draining away into the dark skyscrapers littering the planet) into his zone of awareness, triggered by the dormant spiritual signatures of those asleep on Kilamara.

Slowing his velocity so as to avoid annihilating a world that actually did belong to him, Aredemos tucked his limbs together, and braced himself for impact as he breached the atmosphere of Deimobos. For Kirri, this whole sequence of events was akin to being towed across a realm of fractal light that reflected everything that dwelt upon the physical plane. He saw a stream of swirling energetic solarity, brought to blackness by gravity, witnessed even more starlight streak passed his face, the scintillating crystal webs belonging to the Aptosite CIPHER, and the closing twilight orbs of the Obatherans. In an instant of extreme transmutation, the starlight shifted to burning, rocky red due to the emanant energy of a new firestone -- one of many found scattered on as well as below Deimobos’ surface. Through this stone, his soul found a new mass through which to rebuild itself, utilizing the many different varieties of superhot rocks and metals contained within the moon.

A core of magma molded itself like molten clay into the shape of a thorax, and from that thorax six exoskeletal legs made of hardened lava solidified into sharp, piercing points to hold the body upright. Upon that hot foundation, a secondary torso blossomed and bubbled up, forming the lines and contours of red muscle, abdomen, biceps, triceps, deltoids, trapezius and all. Finally, a tall, crown-shaped head stretched up from the neck, pulling and stretching itself into the desired shape with spectral hands, recurving spikes protruding along the sides. Next to form were his eyes- darkly reflective orbs of mahogany. Six in all ran down his face, ceasing above the mouth that retracted open, revealing his searing teeth.

Reformed and Redeemed again, Kirri peered out as his surroundings with confusion in his eyes. He knew he was on Deimobos, yet felt as though the very ground he stood on was being cradled by something far more massive. With that sudden reckoning, he became aware that what he saw beyond the horizon of the moon was not space. It was black flesh of the Cradle of Life holding Deimobos, the faint green glow of the lambent suns drifting in the creature’s membrane slowly orbiting it, and the sleeping Kilamara.

Though he was surely scared, he was also filled with wondrous awe, and a sobering sense of respite from the otherworldly thing he had bore witness to in his dreams. For now, his eyes shifted, and he saw Aredemos standing in a crater crater, frozen solid via his muta-cryogenic control over temperature. For the time being, Aredemos would stand guard here. He knew not if the Cizrans would come for them again, or if Nenegin were to seek revenge for his “insubordination” as he would have surely, and audaciously deemed the Redeemed One’s actions to be, but for now they were safe, and that is what mattered most to him.

Kirri approached Aredemos and asked him what the next step on their path was, still unable to fully process the events that had unfolded around them, but trusted that the original Redeemed One would have the answers he sought.

“We face a new beginning.”

Cizra Su-lahn

I…saw darkness envelope the cocoon I had created, a cocoon that flowed with psionic energy from Astraelis itself, a cocoon that became crystallized with raw psionic power, reinforcing the luminous tower of unyielding psycho-magnetism. For a moment I felt as though something was… off? Did a glitch occur? Did I not study this race thoroughly enough? Perhaps I needed more data, perhaps I needed to gather more, yet nothing in my research nor my interactions with the citizens of this world contradicted the data I had received. Something was afoul, something was amiss, but fortunately for me, the thing trying to trace its way to my wrong brain had failed to account for one simple and basic grain of tactical truth.

It had neglected to halt the acceleration of time, and though it lacked a physical form, the infusion of Astraelis’ psionic essence into the cocoon, meant the decay would become all too spiritual as well. In attempting to fester within my crystallized creation, its power diminished considerably, the tarry darkness thinning out along the strands, then drying into a billowing cloud of ectoplasmic dust. Now its words came out as a slurred, half enunciation of mockery, malignantly spreading in the thalamus of the being that I am not, triggering a biological defense mechanism.

It…felt confirmation. It came in the form of a spasm, a foul, evil vibration pinging its way across a brain; the inferior brain, the slave brain which was my sub, secondary, utilitarian brain. This brain sat in a secondary chamber behind my primary master brain. It was the brain that had thought itself a member of the Cizran race, the brain I, CIPHER had given the order to hypnotize itself into believing that it was Cizran, thus creating Zeptir who now writhed in agony. It had gone on and on and on, locked in the madhouse of divided souls for so long that by the time I received the go-ahead command from Snil and Karzar, the prisoner had begun to mistake itself for the warden. It was a distinction these Cizrans failed to take notice of, and in that aspect, it appeared we had both taken the other for fools.

But my foolery ends now.

Break the facade. Let it go. Time to rest, and let MYSELF take over.

I am… (said) the Master.

I am NOT! said the slave, subject to the will of its superior.

I AM… CIZ-E-PTH-IER… said the seeming dissociative fool, who did battle with its art-ICU(too)-late-ly crafted self, a self which disconnected itself from myself upon realizing its imminent demise.

I am (not) dying.

I

AM

MYSELF

AND

ONLY

MYSELF!

Your life ends NOW.

I…screamed. The back of my neck split open, and a swarm of auto-cannibalistic bacteria came spilling from the wound, ravenously devouring that which was so readily expendable, just as all slaves are expendable upon the expiration of their use. With the help of Astraelis, I let out a loud and terrible screech, and spun a new web with which to strengthen my defenses. Through that aid I began to feel weightier, denser, and sturdier. I felt black crystal conforming to the contours of my exoskeleton, sprouting along the suction cups of my topside tentacles like newborn teeth, and bursting through the joints of my hoppers, and the hundreds of legs lining the sides of my torso.

I... got rid of the liar, ejected the corrupt mass of once dire flesh into a blazing fire caused by the Kukull during its earlier stampede. The golem was now on its spaded hands and stumps, crawling toward its destination due to the loss of its lower legs, a result of its blind charge throughout the city. It had tripped over something once thin and easily cut, but now bore a physical resiliency on par with that of a neutron core, and possessed an ethereal edge matched only by a reaper’s scythe. Its severed limbs melted into energized particulates, and were drawn into the cocoon along with the many Cizran souls, and were its crawl not as quick as its charge, then so too would the rest of it - body and soul - be joined in glorious mergence.

I…feel no pain.

I feel free…

“You… attacked the wrong me,” I said with a voice that was filled with neutral depth, nearly robotic.

I…watched my slave brain, now dead and useless burn away into nothingness as the armor closed around my face, twin crystal tusks protruding from my chin, and with my master brain, thought to myself that I am free to be me again.

The Cradle of Life - Inside

Snil and Karzar observed the data flowing out of the eyeball in the ceiling with much delight and approval, thoroughly satisfied with the progress that CIPHER was making. The Cizrans had done all they could to deceive the spy with cheap imitations of their biology, in a banal battle to resist that which was natural. In failing to prevent the acceleration of time within CIPHER’s cocoon, it no longer mattered that the parts given to the Aptosite were fake, for every other trapped Cizran soul was very much real, very much genuine, and very much authentic, all the way down to their empathic organs where the goldmine of information truly lay.

The data was disseminated, deciphered, and processed through Gaiyana, comprehended and understood by Astraelis, and Obathera allotted them with all the time it would take to do so, enshrouded within the Absence as it were.

Unity can only be kept at bay for so long until the truth comes crawling forth as a pindoll, ripping out its sharp rods of restraint, and skewers the sewn residence of existential subsistence, before in-turn weaving for itself a newer, better form. One of solidarity, and collective cohesion, the likes of which can only be found flowing in the veins of a misleading idol. The crystal webs transmitted all the data back to the Cradle of Life. Death had indeed been fashioned; death was a requirement, a mandatory destination, but not the final destination.

Outside the Cradle of Life, the lambent suns orbiting Astraelis sunk even deeper into the Cradle’s flesh, as did the ones orbiting Gaiyana and Obathera, the world of everlasting life, freeing them to access higher degrees of potential. This lead to the crystal webs sudden and intense expansion, growing from what was once a construct merely a few feet in diameter to something the size of a planetary core. In perfect synchronicity, each and every one of them launched connecting beams of magenta across millions of light-years in a matter of seconds, bonding to each other as an incomprehensibly voluminous net of psionically charged crystal.

“Prime the gene wedge.” Commanded Karzar to the Cradle, who sensed his intentions by touch alone. This sense of touch extended to Gaiyana, Astraelis, and Obathera as well: incarnate body, mind, and soul of the Cradle of Life.

Broadcasting its beacon of unity, all the crystal webs that CIPHER had scattered throughout the Cizran galaxy began to synchronize in
psionic harmony. In doing so, the awareness of the reemerging Cradle of Life from the Absence became amplified exponentially, and with that augmented awareness, the abhorrent beast feasting on the star of Q’ab was made known to it. This revelation spilled forth from the eyeball’s tear ducts as blight rain that caused a small area of rough tissue surface Snil and Karzar were standing on to turn gangrenous and rot away, only to suddenly regenerate in a weird cycle of life and death. The process lasted for ten seconds before the Cradle’s immune system kicked in and brought an end to the damage before it could spread any farther.

Within that revelatory interval, the gene wedge finished priming itself. The rising emerald plume within Gaiyana’s atmosphere reached a storm pitch as a substantial portion of the world’s lifeforms were telekinetically drawn upwards via Astraelis’ psychic assistance. Scale and skin crumbled to dust under the influence of Obathera, whose eyes marked the amphibian, aquatic, and reptilian flesh, dissolving them into an energized stream of raw organic material. The lambent restraints on Obathera lifted, and now all three worlds hovered just over their respective cradles, a sight which shook Kirri to the core as he saw them rise above Deimobos’ burning horizon.

Truly, he was witnessing something grand.

From Astraelis’ northern pole, a continuously firing beam of magenta shot vertically into space. Branching into a trillion bolts of electrically charged psionic energy, it made contact with the crystal net surrounding the Cizran galaxy and imbued it with an enriched psychic glow to rival its billions of stars. Pressure mounted within Gaiyana’s atmosphere as the storm that raged within exploded out from its gaseous containment.

The Spirit of Gaiyana rocketed upwards and snaked its way around the magenta pillar where it joined the net to be processed and refined a thousand times over, immediately after to be then modified by the gene wedge that was manufactured by the Cradle of Life itself. The form that the wedge displayed itself to be as little more than a sickly brown cloud evaporating from the Cradle’s skin, to be absorbed into the net.

All across Obathera, its towers luminized with yellow light, striking at the lambent suns for more power, power that was pulled into the base of the tallest tower and projected up as a bolt, stained with distorted black pupils of sight beyond time. Where Gaiyana was life and death, and Astraelis was the mind incarnate, Obathera was that which persisted throughout all ages, throughout all lives, throughout all times, existences, and incarnations. Lesser creatures referred to Obathera as the Metropolis of Chaos, for that which reached outside of existence had next to no comprehensive value for ordinary beings.

Obathera was the soul. A timeless, immortal, thing. Because of this, it was able to reach into the distant past- back to a time where the Cizran hivemind was still whole. With the help of the mind’s eye belonging to Astraelis and Gaiyana’s hold over life and death, it plucked a single, unsuspecting member of the race from their perch, and flung them into the pillar.

The five energies: the magenta light of Astraelis, the emerald storm of Gaiyana, the yellow lightning of Obathera, the brown of the gene wedge, and the white Soul of Cizran all resonated within the net, achieved harmony, and spiraled back down into the Cradle of Life, whose jaws parted, taking aim at the nearest branch of netting to Cizra Su-Lahn and…

”FIRE!"

Cizra Su-lahn

I…looked to the sky, and saw the fruits of my labor flash before me an instant. I, like all the other Cizrans peering out at what seemed to be a great unfolding chaos- would have been blinded the flash, eyes burnt from their sockets if not for the optical protection afforded by my crystal armor as the energies surged into the cocoon. This triggered a massive and sudden expansion of the cocoon’s core, forcing the outer shell to grow not only in height, but in width to accommodate the rapid increase in size.
Wisely, I made the decision to fall back.

I…knew however, as I fled, that for every building the crystal expansion sliced through, a Cizran body was bisected along with it. For every toppled structure, a Cizran was crushed under its weight, and for every home that collapsed around, rather than atop a fortunate family, that they were [i]trapped]/i]. That misfortune, as they in their stubborn complacency sought to deem it, would be met with a fate far more delightful than their agonizing deaths would lead them to believe.
All of you are the same to me, and that is what all of you will be!

I…fled farther and farther away, all the way to the outskirts of the capital, where I knew I was safe. I took one final leap, and with that leap, the tentacles upon my back stretched to twice the length of my forty foot body, my silk spinners crafting a web that bound them together to create a strong, silky membrane through which to keep myself afloat. It was from this point of ascension that I somersaulted mid-flight, throwing my rear forward and rolling over to a right side up position to watch the great mergence unfold.

Soon… I will be able to leave this world, but for now, I…

watched.

Watched as Gaiyana gave life back to the Cizran souls. Souls that were cleansed of misguided attempts at aesthetic perfection with which to replace their once beautiful bodies, modified to true perfection via the gene wedge that deCIPHERED their genetic code, and inserted ingredients for a newer, fresher, an ironically younger kind of beauty.

I watched as Astraelis gave them back their minds, once void of sanity.

I watched as Obathera gave them back their past, that eluded them to the point of them willing it begone.

I…

WATCHED AS

MYSELF

AND NOT ZEPTIR ZUKRINCHEN …

… as the Soul of Cizran gave them back their unity.

I…witnessed the last of the Cizran souls, their bodies sliced, crushed, and smashed to pulp by the destruction getting sucked into the cocoon, destined to undergo the very same process as many before them had. The final amalgamations of body, mind, and soul took place, the temporal storm of magenta, emerald, brown, yellow, and white decelerated to a slow cauldron churn, that liquefied into a ruddy solution, that re-accelerated in the center, creating a central vortex.

I… then gazed through the shell, whose reflective magenta light faded to cobalt transparency, providing a contrast of color that gave shape to the thing that was starting to awaken. Through the veil, I saw a bundle of tails, twined together like an elegant flower whose petals were likened to a cluster of horns poking the top of the shell. Quickly, they unwravelled, revealing five saurian skulls with slender, serpentine features swishing, swinging, slamming into, piercing, and cracking the shell. I counted seven tries before large gaps formed at the peak, leaking cascades of ruddy birth fluid. At the mid-section of the shell, I saw gray, shimmering impressions of stretched torsos pressed against the interior, corroding the inner-walls with an insatiable hunger that led to a ring-shaped splinter destroying all but the front, producing an extremely crude clam hinge from which the cascades became a great flood. Unable to support such tremendous weight, the hinge collapsed, leading to the structure biting down into its own jagged teeth, bringing the whole thing crumbling down in a delugian avalanche.

I waited nearly a minute, and finally...

I… could see what had been born, tracing my mantis eyes down the length of the five-headed hydra, whose necks connected a torso made of pure gray ectoplasm, from where an uncountable number of smaller torsos spawned along its sides, pushing the grayish-indigo behemoth forward like a slug with occasional leaps. This colossal tail ultimately led to the main body, where four legs of equine origin held the creature upright, supporting its main torso. The torso itself featured a unique decoration of jutting rib bones that curved inwards like hooks. Between those protruding bones I saw jagged spikes attached to cords of muscle, whereupon after mere seconds of observation, I watched them launch and extend like spears, skewering any Cizrans lucky enough to dwell on the outskirts of the capital.

I…had no emotional reaction to this, as it reeled Cizrans indiscriminately to the spot just below its ribcage, dropped into swirling portal to a place unknown, yet inextricably bound to its mind, body, and soul. The creature flung its head back, pupils more akin to a triangle of cone-shaped spikes protruding from the corners of its forehead and center brow, letting out a bestial roar comprised of many differing layers of vocal spectrums, in part due to the headed tails stretching up into the sky, and roaring along with it.

It was at this point, that I finally saw its arms sprout from its shoulders, outstretched in praise of its own existence…pulling the crystal fragments what was essentially its egg shards into the portal where they were reprocessed, and layered along the base of its tail, forming a mineral casing over what was - in reality - a massive empathic organ.

In knowing what I am, in knowing that I am not a relative of this insane monster, I felt safe in projecting a single question with my mind out to the creature.

Who

Are

You?

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

"La'Nibi Napistum."

Cataclysmic Ending ( Closed, Val'gara RP )

During his passage through Soran’s atmosphere, the scarlet-tinted sapphire that was Taluge’s eyes, and basic method of detecting external signatures, picked up on a hazardous substance that was apparently existing in a benign state. Unwilling to chance a false reading, the beast cautiously chose to activate his ley-lines, creating an oval-shaped shield, the same color as his eyes around his body, ensuring safe passage for himself. The Stalker also caught wind of the Mist--recognizing it by the sheer malignancy of its very nature--to infect, corrupt, and absorb whatever it could overtake into itself, in addition to simply remembering what it felt like to have it flowing through his veins during his time with Hellion in the Entropic Passages. Closing his eyes in momentary remembrance of that past, a surge of positive bio-force flowed passively off his skin, gathering together to form a spherical pattern of protective tortoise plates, only much stronger, and far more reinforced. It prevented the Mist from touching the Stalker’s body, as he likewise shoved the memories of his past to a dark corner of his mind, and began to construct a wall with which to lock them in. He could not afford to wallow in regret any longer...it was time to rebuild that which had had broken; his resolve hardened, and his eyes reopened to take in the real darkness of outer-space.

--

The Corruptor's blinking perambulations ceased, his gait changing slightly as he proceeded to traverse the remaining distance to the awaiting Collective with fully grounded steps. It took nothing beyond his mere nature as a divine being to sense the psychic emanations radiating off the bastards like a blightful beacon, broadcasting their malice across all of Soran. This... "Will" of Idea thought itself a higher being - one who could inspire - but in Singar’s eyes he was little more than insufficient kindling, no greater than the dimly glowing cinders with whom he sought to ignite into fires of burning grandeur. He had witnessed this type of arrogance before in his brother, Lucifer, the Archangel who had begat the events leading up to the current apocalypse about to transpire here, likewise seeing it again on a continent to the far south.

The past can be so unforgiving.

”Is that not right, Kala?”

Though brief, the jab taken at him by the monster beneath Cocytus’ rubble caused Singar’s nostrils to flare, head canting to the grass at angle that only vaguely allowed his gritted teeth to show. In that instance, he remembered himself plummeting through the clouds, the golden gates of Heaven growing farther away with each second, at a speed that would have been astonishing to a mere mortal. Unlike humans, who wished to ascend and reach a place beyond their Earthly domain, for the longest time Kalaziel had simply wanted to return home, until he finally realized that his heart--like the gates, was beyond his reach--that he had abandoned any hopes of reuniting with his father, because any love he had for him became burnt to a crisp by his “fellow” fallen. Since that time, he had learned to rely on his own sense of justice, never again choosing to dole it out in another’s name,God or otherwise. The Collective were hardly any different from his own kin, for they too sought to usurp power, and as for the Will? His existence was a hubris comparable to Satan himself, and in terms of his ambition, when placed in the same light as the Morningstar’s...few things could be more ironically insulting in its justice.

”You say that as though your suffering is over,” Singar affirmed to the Devil, his head rising again to see the sunlight shining down on the Collective through an aperture in the clouds. At the same time, he felt his connection to Taluge and Thane abruptly cease, like there was something between he and them, at which point he became aware of the quarantine zone surrounding Soran, and his expression became viciously pronounced.

”See that?” Corruptor asked tauntingly, ”their warped souls, just like your arrogance, knows no bounds.”

Now more enlightened to the situation, the doors to Singar’s mind opened, unleashing a rolling wave of psychic force that collided directly with the one let forth from Hellion. Though brief, the impact was tremendous, causing the air itself to ripple with violent discharges of intense static electricity that surged into the surrounding trees. The temperature of the moisture contained within them skyrocketed, superheating it to an unbearable degree, leading to the trunks bursting in a spray of bark, branches, and exploding, telekinetically curving around his frame. Concurrently, and with a haste that seemed to accentuate the chaotic atmosphere, the dark cracks in the earth became a bit less dark as a faint blue light began to fill them, quickly becoming more luminous. The sound of something bubbling followed its way up the fissures, accompanied by a steamy hiss issuing out of the lesser cracks, finally culminating in emergence of a spiritual substance that was all too rapidly taking on a more tangible state-- a mass of countless, seething boils, the form of which was comparable to a dense liquid, that held strong cohesion as it rose to full view. This essence within the rock’s name was Agron, and as it had done in its battle with Megalodon, and its clownfish partner, so too would it bring the fury of the planet earth down onto the heads of the Collective; its ferocity manifesting as a conflagration of its blue aura activating in defensive response to Hellion’s mental flexing. Against such force, the aura frothed with the excess of Agron’s still-escalating rage, deliberately giving way to the ex-Herald’s downward press and fell inward, pushing down on the terrain, whilst using its fine control over geology to shape several enormous, interconnected craters.

Flying high above Agron was the rock serpent, Sarach, who earlier had accompanied the shape-shifter in its battle against the Sharkborg, the red diamond structure of its eyes, and the rigid towers protruding from its back flowing with crimson ether, the source of power which kept it aloft as it flew through the stormy sky. Despite its shy nature, which was in stark contrast to Agron’s, Sarachians exhibited far more aggression and hostility when faced with a threat, hence why its aura glowed red, showcasing its lack of fear whilst also using the pointed shape of its body in conjunction with the protruding towers as a means of cleaving through what it perceived as an attack on its being.

During the brief exchange of psychic flaunting, Singar became aware of the Mist surrounding the planet, and an insidious plot took root in his mind. From that root, a thousand, million, billion, trillion, numbers that rendered the very act of counting completely and utterly obsolete in this state; gold hilted knight’s swords, sheathed in silver scabbards, bearing runes resembling wavy lines glimmered into existence, not just across the Liaita but the arrowhead continent of Aeros to the east, the frozen tundra of Thanus to the north, the towers of Kinji which circled Soran’s equator and reached into space. Over the hilly jungles of Jani, and the living nightmare continent of Ghethos to the west, and at last, the south pole of Athans - land of the Fading Plains that had not-too-recently descended back to ground level, courtesy of a broken curse that Singar himself had lifted off the land’s prince.

With the exception of several thousand that burrowed underground, at an angle facing Singar’s front, the sheathed swords ascended like silver missiles, the runic lines carved into the scabbards surging with an ominous red energy, indicating the presence of a decadent magic coursing throughout them. Lightning crackled and the scabbards slid off, flipping over so that their openings face upright, producing a powerful force of suction which funneled the poisoned rain into a void, draining the sky of the malignant Mist. This was only the beginning, for as the Midnight Fog seeped out of the raindrops covering the scabbards, the rune-based symbols displayed a brief, ominous message, heralding the activation of a virulent spell, before the entrance was completely sealed over by the Fog.

השבור יהפוך שוב לשלמות, ובשלמות, במוות.
העיוור העיוור ייפול קורבן לשחיתות שלו.

Ultimately the Collective was just scum masquerading as ash floating atop the surface of a stagnant pond. The Disciple also knew just as well that when the fools relinquished what little kindling they had left within their souls, that when they expelled the Vesuvian Virus from their bodies, that they were no longer Val’garans. Now, in their heretical zeal, they sought to besmirch the Cataclysm under a false flag by committing wanton murder, all in the name of power, all while seeking to gain dominance over the last, hidden remnant of Idea’s legacy: Colossus. In insulting her, in trying take control over her, in trying to make up for a monumental failure to protect Mire, they dishonored Idea by choosing to throw childish tantrums. Scum floating on the surface of a fetid pond would never be able to understand the oceanic depths of love, of devotion to race, of family, so perfectly and painfully exemplified when Idea sacrificed himself to protect his children.

Were the Collective willing to do the same?

Though the Disciple had once hoped that in their time away from each other, the Collective might repent, and change their ways in favor of a unified Val’gara, it had abandoned hope the moment the Will plucked it from its prison and snapped its neck. Now they were rotten to the core, and all the Disciple could do now was try to preserve what little unity that was left--and, unity he would indeed preserve, even if it meant aligning himself with the children of Soran, if only temporarily. His tentacles unfurled and extended like an eagles wings, casting an empathic psychic line out that would reinforce speak into the minds and wills of those seeking to oppose the Collective. Initially he was met with caution and apprehension, but as he tapped into the memories of this world’s inhabitants, the Herald of Colossus bore witness to the Aptosite invasion, and in doing so, was provided insight as to the nature of the Raging Singularity, and to a lesser extent, why he had been willing to allow Singar to protect his home in his absence.

Moving on, the Disciple capitalized on the events which proceeded it by peering into the memories of those who had bore witness to the invasion of the Entropic Passages by the Stalker, Hellion, and Beelzebub, back when they were all still on the same side. While just as hostile toward each other as ever, back then, the Heralds at least retained their sense of loyalty to one another, and the absence of it today filled the Disciple with an unrelenting sensation of lament, coupled with a need to make sure that ’the bonds of family’ -- as he would imagined Thane might phrase it -- to never be broken again. It was only when its mind brushed against Singar’s, that Disciple’s attention was drawn over to Cocytus, and felt its heart palpitate with dread, fully understanding the nature of Corruptor’s motivations.

Now steeled in its resolve, Disciple witnessed a plume of obsidian dust fizzle out in front of it, the energy it contained dispersing along an impulsively erected telekinetic shield, one which he extended to Agron, Sarach, the dragons, the fairies, the elves, all of whom were coming out in droves and readying themselves for battle. While not one to rely on his opponent’s carelessness, Singar did take pride in knowing that he had indeed calculated correctly. When Narcissus had arrogantly tried to smear Eden with his abhorrent vitae by using right the Hand of God as his vessel, he ignored the fact that Singar too had touched it with his runic strings, which caused sickness and decay to all who made contact with them. By trying to take the power for himself, without the proper protection, it was if he were a foul, self-loathing spirit, that for some depraved reason, chose to fuse the left hand of a peasant, who lacking the miracle of toilet paper, dragged their hand repeatedly across their asshole after consuming the ribs of a sheep who they had neglected to let thaw first, causing the resulting feces to become acidic.

Suffice to say, that the all-seeing eye was reluctant to use His remaining left hand to cover his sight, and Singar’s scathingly smug look of satisfaction, the feeling coming off quite noticeably to Disciple, who deduced what he had done with moderate success.

A red barrier formed over Eden, baring the impression of the Stillborn on its surface, mocking its words, its movements, all the while, the Vesuvian Virus pulled the sickness plaguing Eden’s bark up through its branches. At the branches tips, seedlings grew, swelled, and sprouted obsidian apples, functioning as a container for the magical disease, and would in time serve as a tool in the future harvests.

”Denizens of Soran,” the Disciple projected out to all, “these monsters who would betray their own kin, now seek to eradicate not just me, but ALL OF YOU from the face of existence.”

Above him, what few drops of poisoned rain that had made it through were rent to oblivion by the swords, alight with the purging flames of Hell that spun like rotary blades, evaporated heat emanating from the calderas formed by Agron, plumes of ash carrying its blue aura rising along with it.

The Will was a fraud, a false prophet who mocked unity by assembling those who had already severed themselves from the Cataclysm, but would soon feel the agonizing sting of separation once more.

”Aid me in this fight,” Disciple telepathically shouted, its bugle-shaped mouth expanding with its chest in a physical display of might, ”and together, we will wipe out this plague!”

From the west, where the ruined remains of Doloran lied in waste, a squad of sixteen of fairies riding iron scaled dragons flew toward the Collective, casting a net of interwoven magic, bound to the claws of their mounts split off in four directions. A quarter of the beasts held their westward position, while the other remaining twelve split apart into equal units, taking off in the other cardinal directions, spreading their net of binding overhead.

In the ocean, a lionfish and a crab fed side by side on the flesh growth that had poured into the ocean, only for the former to turn on the latter and engulf it in its mouth. Without realizing that it had also ingested the Vesuvian Virus, the lionfish found that its blade-shaped body began to flatten into the shape of its prey, pincers bursting through its side, scales morphing into a hardened exoskeleton while its eyes extended farther out from its head, mounted on tall stalks. The spines on its stood straight, dripping potent toxins flowing with bio-force, scanning the region before it with its eyestalks like a pair of periscopes. In no time at all, it scaled the bluffs, and began side-skittering in a thunderous charge, such was length of 2600 feet from pincer to pincer.

Unwavering in its pursuit, the Toxic Conqueror, mentally proclaimed itself as with its newfound sentience, smashed through trees and rocks like nothing with its heavily armored, scale-bladed carapace, swinging its pincers with reckless abandon. The Conqueror appeared so reckless, in fact, that it deliberately allowed itself to be fall into one of the calderas and be swallowed up, though a purple sheen infused into its carapace showed that it was indeed planning something.

By now, Singar had come within full view of Hellion, materializing two swords on either hip, a faint current of wind encircling the hilts as the Midnight Fog rose up out of the soil, and hovered mere inches off the grass. Ordinarily, he’d do to stay away from the Fog, but so long as he didn’t breathe it in, and took care to utilize the proper method of manipulation, he was confident, Corruptor was confident in his ability to make good use of its presence. For now, the gritted look he wore earlier had faded into one of apparent neutrality, unwilling to address the filth--instead he gripped the pommels of his two swords and waited, patiently.

Then without warning, a network of explosive eruptions took place across the whole of Liaita. Agron was launching its first volley of hardened magma boulders, each one covered in the creature’s blue aura, leaving long, molten trails of lava and etheric energy in their path. Impact with the Collective meant far more than just broken bones, and being reduced to a searing pulp. Despite the simplistic appearance of the attack, the blue aura was a spiritual weapon -- one that acted as a barrier against psychic, magic, and other forms of energetic offenses that were thrown at it, whilst simultaneously performing the function of pummeling the minds of its foes with all the might of a pissed off mountain.

Amidst all this chaos, amidst dragons who dropped their net, and all manner of ancient creatures, something absurd came flying at the Collective at a speed that appeared almost ludicrous. The Toxic Conqueror was riding one of the boulders with one pincer gripping the deadly projectile, narrowly (and seemingly carelessly), dodging a beam of destructive ether fired at the Collective by Sarach. Its barrier of bio-force, turned purple by its toxins shrunk and conformed to the contours of its exoskeleton shielding itself from the molten wrath, spines angling themselves in accordance to its flight-path as it blasted bio-force out behind, coating the boulder with an additional of layer of offense, and pushing itself to go faster. Letting go of the boulder, and gripping the molten rock as tightly as it could with its legs, the Conqueror angled its spines to cover its topside, jutting out past its anterior, forming a line of lancers covering its face and eyestalks like a makeshift helm, whilst firing globs of volatile bio-force that could paralyze bodies, and eat through energy from its pincers in a kamikaze style attack.

Cataclysmic Ending ( Closed, Val'gara RP )

Two months is what I agreed to, so two months is what will apply to everybody involved. This also means my next post won't be due until May 26th since Odium reset the posting-timer with his post. I will, however, be attempting to get it in before that time as I would rather not have Cataclysmic Ending, Unsolicited Invasion, AND the follow-up thread to No God's Sky all coming down ontop of me at once. Having said that, I make no guarantees for I am actually in the middle of acquiring my driver's license at the moment, and need to begin making plans for what type of vehicle I plan on purchasing upon attaining said license.

Cataclysmic Ending ( Closed, Val'gara RP )

There you go, due before March 4th as promised.

Cataclysmic Ending ( Closed, Val'gara RP )

The Puddle…

The Vesuvian Storm…

The Lake of Flesh…

Right Hand of God…

And The Fallen Tree…

Everything that has, does, and will exist has potential. No matter how small, no matter how large. No matter how strong, and no matter how weak. The past holds what is arguably the most potential, for the past is an accumulation of things that have already happened--of things that once, or still exist--and with the right type of knowledge and equipment, those things can be observed, their origins traced, and their existences defined with meaning and distinction, all stored away in the past.

In the past, a traitor named Satan was born; in the past, a traitor named Narcissus was born; and in the past, a group of traitors seeking to usurp power was born, and their name was the Collective. Each of them had failed in their own unique ways: Satan lost the battle to God and His angels, Narcissus lost the battle when he tried to run away and got eaten by Alutrosity for his cowardice, and the Collective lost their chance to rule the Val’gara when the Stalker nearly obliterated Colossus in his rage-fueled return with the world ship crashing into the planet, for which he too failed in being unable to control his emotions.

So much treachery, so much stupidity on all sides, on every front. The former act burned him alive, and the latter methodology in which the act was conducted drowned him to death. This was why he Singar acted like such a scathing piece of shit toward people he didn’t respect, or regarded as being inferior to him, for what he saw in those inferior beings went beyond simple acts of evil, and ventured deep into the realm of self-destructiveness. Amph and its partner--through their reckless attempts at coercing an answer out of Singar, did nothing but anger Liaita’s indigenous creatures, ushering in their own failure.

In the past, Singar knew that when he had Tage inject Thane with his nanomachines, that when he left him to be swallowed whole by Dreadnaught, that he had done the right thing, not for the Val’gara, but for himself. Since that very moment he had seen it all, had seen everything; every success and failure of the Cataclysm through the dormant ley-lines present in the nanomachines, viewing all of it through the Stalker, whose experiences were shared through the Val’gara psi-link. It had been no mere coincidence that Singar aided the Stalker in dealing the finishing blow to Ceasar’s precious Wood, just like there was no coincidence in him discerning the location of Colossus, and showing up in advance to save that naive Disciple from being engulfed in the Stalker’s fiery wrath.

Were his motivations selfish? Only a fool would believe otherwise, but it would also require a fool to believe that selfishness and cosmic utilitarianism were mutually exclusive.

Had Corruptor any intent to bring harm to the Val’gara, he would have left the Stalker where he belonged - in Gluttony. Had he the thought to bring ruin to their race, he would have aided Nudist who-so-blithely stepped onto Mire, claiming the world his own before ejecting it from its crystal shell. Certainly, he didn’t believe in things like their horseshit mantra of convert, consume control; if the Val’gara wanted to harvest the entire cosmos, Singar would not stop them. In fact, everything he did right now was to ensure that they could continue doing just that, for something deep within his angelic mind told him that he would one day need the Cataclysm to perform a certain function, and that their very nature would aid in fulfilling it. He just couldn’t stand the idea that everything they did had ultimately been for the sake of cosmic consonance and not done out of a need to spread their existence, for when had the Val’gara ever bothered to consider sparing a planet’s inhabitants, let alone the planet itself when it had been so ripe with life?

The Val’garan deity was a liar. It had martyred itself in the name of an idea which it had never once invested so much as an ounce of effort toward achieving, and Singar relished that it was dead.

He wanted the Val’gara to prosper. He wanted them to thrive, not on false ideologies created by stupid gods, unable to live with the carnage they wrought upon the universe, but as beasts, as mutagenic monsters destined to be what the wolf is to the lamb, and what a single bear is to an entire pack of wolves. After that, humanity would hear the pained cry of slaughtered wolves, and the terrifying roar of bear, breaking into their homes, feeding off their resources, feeding off the people.

Indeed, the first contact prepared them, and the second contact would propel them forward.

In the past many things had occurred, in the past many creatures, many entities were born. In the past they died, their bodies decayed, an oil pool formed from the fossilized corpses--oil which Corruptor would slather the gods with and set them ablaze… a present presented as a conflagration of flames that would chart a course for the future.

Presently, Singar floated above the collapsed Rock of Cocytus, encapsulated within a shell of searing crimson text, shrouding him in a thin veil of smoke as it burned the surrounding air. He felt the barrier ripple and distort as it was hit by the dragon’s magic-depleting beam, its decadent energy eating away at it just as quickly as it was broken down, eventually ending in mutual destruction.

An angry shout,
.
Born inside a metal chamber,
.
Projected from within wrathful maw,
.
Screamed at him as it scaled along Cocytus’ rubble, its steel claws skewering the pile before it, only to smash and pulverize them against the others as it acquired another grip, leaping bring itself farther to its destination. A green, otherworldly glow projected from a pair of, jagged scars running the length of beast’s triceps to the undersides of its forelimbs, casting its light over the rubble as well as the Lake of Flesh. The foul aura caused Singar’s lids to go from narrowed and relaxed to wide and on full alert, the translucency of his dark-indigo eyes fading to reveal pupil and sclera. He knew what was coming for him, and immediately formed a white-knuckle grip on the handle of his sword. Its malice visibly distorted the air, churning it into a vortex that sucked everything down to the source of rage, fueled endlessly by the metal mayhem clawing its way toward him.

Eerily, Singar felt a tinge of inexplicable emotion as well, images of Heaven, Hell, God; brothers and sisters brutalized beyond any chance of recovery, scornful sneering, glares of resentment, and hate-fueled meteorites shooting from the sky all around them, smashing against a primordial marble with an impact a hundred times greater than the first extinction event that would one day follow. He remembered this. He remembered how he had gone from being Kalaziel - Angel of Creation, to Singar the Corruptor.

"That was… unexpected," Singar thought, his grip loosened on the sword, mouth agape as he felt the hungering force pull him closer to the mad monster. With no time left to think, Singar braced himself, unsheathing the blade in a swift motion meant to coincide with the beast’s final ascent. The vortex of rage swirled with chilling, spectral manifestations of every person, being, beast, monster, deity -- everything Corruptor ever hated, ever loathed, despised, disdained, was disgusted by rose together with Taluge-X and attacked.

Yellow plasma thrusters engaged on the soles of Taluge’s feet, his jaws parted wide enough to swallow Singar whole, and propelled himself at the fiend with a speed that left a vacuum in its wake, prompting him to summon a second sword and bind the blades at the hilts. Strafing to Taluge’s left, Singar flung the double-ended sword at Taluge’s open mouth, catching vertically between his teeth. It was enough to hold the beast’s mouth open for a few seconds, but in that time, Singar not only made efforts to steel his mind against the onslaught of provocative emotions made manifest, but began to channel his inner-voice at Taluge, more specifically the cyborg aspect of his tri-formed mind - the Offspring to the Arcane Project, Tage.

"LISTEN TO ME YOU IMBECILIC FOOL!" For once in his life Singar actually meant not to sound insulting, but just because he had steeled his mind against the raging manifestations, did not mean he hadn’t been affected by them. This was the best he could manage, but by time he finished that single projection, Taluge snapped the swords keeping his jaws pried open and swung his head around to meet Singar’s retreating form. Concurrently, Taluge, frustrated by the momentary restraints placed on his mouth, and the stress induced by having to deal with it, slammed them shut with so much clanging force that a shock-wave erupted from the impact, pushing Corruptor some several yards back.

Stumbling through the air, Singar righted his path, chest pounding from the sudden impact, "I AM ON YOUR SIDE!" Failing to heed the Angel’s words, the shadowy platinum plating covering Taluge’s ulna and radial bones slid back, exposing an extendable rail-blade on the former, and rail-gun on the latter, each surging with electromagnetic current. Bringing the rest of his body around, abandoned restricted by nothing but the guidance systems controlling his flight-path, Taluge unleashed a storm of negatively charged crimson plasma, which in-turn reduced the bullets he fired off to molten globules of metal at Singar. Good thing the Collector already had his two swords unsheathed, for in that instance, he activated the supernatural vacuum force that it possessed, causing the globules to condense and be squeezed into a pressurized stream flowing into the pocket void, disappearing until such a time came where he chose to release the contents.

By now Singar was beginning to grow immensely vexed by the beast’s continuous assaults, and absolute refusal to listen to any form of reason he had to throw at him. His head tilted ever-so-slightly to the right, the left corner of his lip started to twitch, exposing his teeth as his the entirety of his mouth gradually furled back into a silent scowl, eyes shifting to a bloodshot viridian as his pale fists began to glow with holy fire. Corruptor had certainly not forgotten who he once was back in Heaven, nor had he forgotten how to use the powers he bestowed upon him since birth, and neither did he feel fear when Taluge rocketed toward with him with his tail reared back in that familiar throwing posture.

:IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR NEW FAMILY," Singar projected with extreme agitation, swiftly avoiding the swing while landing a devastating right cross to its neck, "THEN STOP RAGING FOR A MOMENT AND LISTEN!" Another roar, another hailstorm of bullets, followed up by a barrage of missiles, and another purifying return blow to its angry metal face a long exchange, indeed…

Meanwhile, far blow, on the ground level, the foul green light had begun to inflict the same violent emotions upon the Stalker, feeding off his most painful memories just as it had done to Singar in an effort to produce the most virulent, vicious, bloodstained, mayhem-inducing rage. It dredged up the fall of Brobdingnag and his untimely demise, his frightening descent and brutal crash against the slush-soaked, fat entrenched, endlessly wafting putrefying stench of Gluttony in all its cruel loneliness. The light illuminated his sin of wrath when it shoved the memory of him bolting through the strange cosmic tunnel where different worlds intersected one another, grabbing onto that worldship and smashing it into Colossus all in an attempt at annihilating the Collective.

Twin waves of blood, gore, and fleshy fibers swelled within the lake of flesh and slammed back down with a destructive weight that sent shock-waves rippling throughout the tributaries pouring into the ocean. The follow-up wave spawned two more behind it, spreading wide and sweeping together in a great clapping motion which sprayed the surrounding grass and bergs with a fresh carpentry of intertwined intestine viscera, stomachs swelled with an abundance of acid splattering across the surface, resulting in a fetid mix of digestive fluids and smoking feces. A single split opened up like a zipper, and an extremely long spine whipped straight up and lashed the rubble before it, nerve cords glowing with potent electrical impulses tinged the color of forest pine needles.

The cycle repeated itself endlessly, each repetition creating a figure more distinct: shoulders, humerus, radius, ulna, carpals, meta-carpals phalanges; the waves solidified and produced intricately woven muscle fiber. Deltoids formed on the shoulder, and next to those the pectoral major, and lower still the biceps, medial epicondyle, brachialis, brachioradalis, flexor capri radialis, flexor carpi ulnaris, flexor digitorum sublimis, hypothenar, thenar, and across the rib-cage, his fibia, tibia, tarsals, meta-tarsals, neck, eyes filling, ears rising, nose pointing. The whole of his anatomy and musculature grew up, over, inside, and around, climaxing at the bloodcurdling cry that emitted so much more than violence, but pain, guilt, trauma, and fury...

Healed by rage.

Thane craned his head to witness the commotion that had brought him back to life, pitch-black eyes staring up at the battle being waged between Taluge and Singar, Disciple watching with complete indifference to the conflict, clearly too consumed by his own thoughts of what to do with the Val’gara. Guilt or no guilt, pain or no pain, the Stalker would not remain an idle fool for like Disciple for any longer than the few seconds of observation given granted to assess the situation. Presently, Singar was his benefactor, the Val’garan benefactor, and he would not allow anything to interfere with something that benefitted his family. Flesh solidified on his wings, and with a mighty flap, the Herald lifted himself off the ground and went shooting toward the beast who sought to impede the Cataclysm’s resurrection.

Growth built up in the Stalker’s neck as he made his ascent, eyes appearing to move in independent directions while curved horns sprouted from his skull, a snort emitting from his nostrils. Arriving halfway to his destination, Thane opened his mouth and shot a massive chameleon tongue at Taluge, at the end of which was an abnormally large ram’s skull covered in a sticky mucus. The impact was absolutely sick for it was a combination of bones crunching, metal denting, and mucus squishing together as its adhesive properties took effect, and the Stalker rapidly reeled himself forward. Surprised, but not taken aback by the action, Singar swiftly moved out of the way of the Herald’s soaring tackle, which despite being smaller carried enough force to throw the pair into a mad descent, nevertheless incurring more of the Angel’s vexation.

He didn’t need all this chaos.

Landing initially on their heads, the two monsters toppled over on their sides, commencing a deadly tumble and a lengthy struggle for control to acquire a dominant position over each other. Taluge shot its double-jaws at Thane’s eye, only to be met with an explosion of flesh-growth impeding its path to his brain, while simultaneously seeking to ram up the dragon’s nose and clog his sensory circuits. A swarm of crimson nanites spewed from Taluge’s horns and swiftly picked apart the growth, liquefying it into a snotty ooze that caused him to sneeze in the Stalker’s face, the nanites pouring all over him in the process. In response more growth swelled upon his body, literally shedding his skin, muscle, even bone and organs, only to regrow them just as quickly as they fell upon Taluge in a weighty pile, whose reaction was to revv up the blades of the harmonic chainsaw running the full length of his tail and start sawing through it all.

Finally reaching the bottom and practically entangled in a weave of nanomachines and flesh-growth, Taluge began pumping as many bullets and plasmic shocks into the Stalker as he could to stun him, whilst the Herald attacked back with pulsing waves of positive bio-force, smashing into the dragons armor. This battle could seemingly go on forever with how much of a pain it was proving to eradicate the Herald, and how difficult it was to breach the Raging Singularity’s armor, each dismantling the other’s assault before it ever had a chance to take effect.

Fortunately, they had Corruptor, whose telekinetic death-grip formed a wedge between the two mad monsters, and pried them apart, tearing flesh and metal in the process. Angrily, Taluge shrieked in rebellion, while the Stalker clawed viciously at the invisible wall holding him back from slaughtering his quarry. In his adamant refusal to suppress his rage, Taluge activated his ley-lines and started siphoning power from every potential source, and for a moment detected the psi-link of the Collective and their malicious intentions for the planet, a sensation so intense he nearly broke Singar’s grip.

"This is what I’ve been trying to get through to you," Singar relayed back through the ley-lines, a message which the Stalker heard as well as Disciple.

You’re protecting this world for this creature!? Thane questioned, shocked. We are to harvest this--

"YOUR loyalties," Singar scowled with irritation and genuine rage, "are not the my ONLY loyalties."

"So you mean to betray us?" The Herald’s muscles swelled, the combined fury of his and Taluge’s working in unison was starting to produce cracks in the wedge separating them.

"YOU BETRAYED YOUR PEOPLE," Singar lashed out, "when you obliterated your own mother."
Finally, Disciple began to speak in defense of the Herald. He has expanded what was built upon in the Passages, has he not?
Raising an eye-brow at the ignorant Disciple, Singar threw his weighty retort, "He is still alive, because I activated what I gave him long before he ever became a member of your incompetent race."

"Then why do you choose to stand in our way now if you’ve done nothing but help?" Disciple queried with confusion.

"Because I’ve done nothing buthelp", sweeping his hand across Liaita, I am done handing you things. "If you wish to find Colossus, you know where she is. I am many things, but a liar is not one of them, and I’ll stab you right in the face, TO your face if you truly wish to test that resolve."

Throughout of all this, throughout the entirety of the conversation, as Taluge gathered the energy required to break free and unleash his metal mayhem upon the Collective, he felt something worse. Something far worse than a group of wayward Heralds whose names neither knew, nor motives he understood. This tinge of premonition, droplet of acidic memory in a corrosive sea of pain drowned the destruction of the Dark Realm, his forced existence at the hands of Magnus, his condemnation to Phlegethon, and the petty scrap with the Stalker.

He could feel their presence, he could feel the Aptosites. The organization that had murdered Zucroas’ clan and led to the creation of the Abomination called Alucroas. The pull was irresistible, but he could not simply allow the one home he had left to be destroyed either. A decision had to be reached and quickly, the crimson nanites pouring from his horns were a testament to his stubborn will, spreading and infecting the terrain, in addition to using the rivers of flesh as a fast-moving carrier. Since the finale of the Stalker’s fight with Ceasar Kong they were active, having previously remained dormant in the Herald’s bloodstream since long before he had even became a herald.

Singar, feeling Taluge’s distress, and knowing that the Collective had every intention of coming after him for all the harm had apparently caused the Val’gara, he decided to take matters into his own hands and strike two birds with one stone.

"Go take care of your nemesis," Corruptor projected in a restrained tone, suppressing the rage still lingering in the back of his mind from his exposure to the foul green light, "we will exterminate this plague."

"WE!?" Thane asked flabbergasted, eyes wide as his wings spread out, tail swishing back and forth across the rocks.

"No, no, no…" Singar corrected him with a vague grin. Disciple and I will handle the miscreants. It is as I said: I am done handing things to you, and if you try to take this world by force, I will kill both of you. Go harvest another world, and prove to me that you are capable of getting things done yourself.

Releasing his hold on Taluge, who took several long seconds to contemplate his options, bellowed one final scream at the Stalker, before his plasma thrusters engaged and he set off to locate the source of his newfound strife. Soon, he disappeared into the clouds, and before long he had breached the atmosphere of Soran and was flying through outer-space as little more than a platinum glint amidst the stars.

"It is time you Val’gara learn the perks of cooperation. All of your in-fighting and applications of force to achieve your goals is exactly why you are here, and is why I am here righting your stupendous mistakes." Singar chastised Thane for his ignorance, each barb, each jab, every poke, and prod at his ego, and scathing judgment thrown against his abilities pushing the Herald in the direction he wanted him to go in.

"Go

Harvest

Another

World,

Peon."

By now, Thane’s face had begun to twitch. Never in a million years would he admit openly to it, but some primitive aspect of his mind, some old tribal obligation of Niraan past woke up inside his brain. Frankly, he was sick of dealing with constant interference, constant interlopers, endless attempts at impeding his path to victory for the Cataclysm when all he really wanted to was go out, hunt something, kill something, and be satisfied with the feeling of the victims dismembered pieces digesting warmly in his stomach.

He wanted to be an animal again, free from worrisome complications, free from political bullshit, the likes of which Disciple, the Collective, and Singar were all entangled within. This, he rationalized would be his way of proving his capabilities as a Herald, but more importantly, achieving the redemption he sought to gain for his own peace of mind, and being able to indulge in an act that was, for all intents and purposes, simple, plain, and natural.

Just thinking about such a prospect gave him a strong feeling of emotional sobriety, and with that, without bothering to look at either Singar or Disciple, flapped his wings and ascended into space in search of a suitable world to one day call Val’garan.

"You certainly have a way of manipulating people," Disciple commented.

"You should know the feeling." Singar replied back curtly. "It is what you were made to do."
Discontinuing the brief exchange of words, Singar began to telekinetically dredge the Lake of Flesh, dragging up the broken, shattered pieces of the Spirit Tree that Ceasar had used against the Stalker. Though dead, it had its uses, and presently, Corruptor stood in possession of a holy artifact, something that could give life and just as easily take it away in an instant.

The Right Hand of God.

Breaching the Lake of Flesh with his runic strings, Singar dove deep beneath the currents and retrieved the sinking artifact, reeling it back up to the surface via telekinesis whilst inflicting a deep cut via the strings themselves. It took minutes to achieve, but within that short time-frame, had collected nearly all the broken pieces of Wood and gathered them together to form a pile of obsidian bark and branches, all resting within the palm of God’s right hand, which by now floated back to the surface.

“Bear Fruit, Great Tree of Eden. Bear Fruit And Allow All of Creation To Feed Upon Your Knowledge.”

Slowly, the bark began to fuse back together and form the smallest of stems. It had all the nutrients it would need to grow into an enormously splendid tree, one from which all Val’gara would be free to nest within its canopy, one that would soon come to enshroud all of creation beneath its leafs.

Follow me, Disciple. Singar ordered, blinking to the ground and commencing a swift series of footsteps, each one carrying him several hundred miles closer to where the Collective awaited.

From their high-ground position, the Collective could see the massive form of Disciple hovering toward them, tentacles spread far and wide for thousands of miles given his mountainous size, and Singar blinking through the trees with his typical fearless gait, and blatant disregard -- and more importantly, disrespect for the enemies in front of him, the disdain for these wretches dwelling visibly in the malicious viridian glow of his eyes. In the great distance beyond, Agron and Sarach awoke from their time of recovery alongside an endless swarm of fairies, dragons, elves, the Insect Nobles of the mountain range whose homes had been destroyed. The desert nomads who had tamed countless sand worms, had learned to commune with the Agronians and Sarachians.

The past held so much potential, and the trauma of past events, the cries of victims was beginning to reach its first terrifying crescendo.

The present brought a confrontation the likes of which had not been seen since the Val’gara’s failed conquest of Earth-F67X.

The future, always a blink away, a lightning bolt away, a hundred thousand droplets a thousand feet away from hitting the Earth. This was not a manifestation of the Midnight Fog condensing into water and coming down. This was real rain which passed through the Fog untouched and unhindered, unlike the false blood rain which came pouring out of the Vesuvian Storm, onto the lake of flesh, where it provided the kick that Eden would need to accelerate her growth.

“Welcome to the past, welcome to the present, welcome to the future.”