Why yes, I was listening to a loop of Rex Duodecim Angelus while writing this, thanks for noticing XD
"Is everyone ready?" Patior questioned, looking over the two teams.
The lines separating the villain and hero teams had dissolved already, and now they all stood together; all in the garb of their classpect.
Well, more or less, all the outfits having been either modified manually, alchemized with other things, or both to give each member a different look. Their skills and gear had been improved as far as it could go, or at least as far as they could go without risking destruction of the universe from the Reckoning.
"Seems so." Aspico said as she looked everyone over, sensing no trepidation within the team.
"Let's hurry this along, meteors aren't gonna wait for us all day." Jeff said with a chuckle, levitating up and heading towards the sky. The rest of the team followed after him, soon all of them moving towards Skaia through the blackness of space between Skaia and Prospit.
How they were able to survive the depth of space with nought but their own bodies, none of them knew. The best guess was that it was likely something to do with their god tier status, but even that was just a guess.
They continued through the darkness towards the chessboard planet of Skaia. No matter where they landed, the army they would be having to fight would be equally prepared for them, unless they landed across the planet, which would just be inefficient.
They touched down together, everyone steeling themselves as they looked out over what laid before them.
The final boss and the target of this mission was so massive as to be seen all the way from the opposite end of the battlefield.
The Black King was… a monster.
The players had of course seen the form their prototyping had granted of course in the form of the Queen, but the Queens at least remained of normal size; as opposed to the King, who stood roughly two hundred feet tall by Furlok's estimate, and even that was massively lowballing it. If they were being honest with themselves, the final boss of their game probably hovered somewhere closer to four or five hundred feet tall.
Not the tallest of kaiju they'd ever seen. Ghidorah for example would be around his height if not slightly taller, and Kroll from Doctor Who would have towered over him.
The difference being that they didn't have to fight Ghidorah or Kroll, and looking at the amalgamated horror at the far end of the battlefield, the group would likely have voted to fight both of them rather than this.
He had no legs for one this, his lower half ending in a thick series of roots that extended into the ground around him and then into the miniature forest around him, essentially fusing him with the terrain itself.
Vines and thorns and plants of every kind that Valtina had once grown all tangled together in a dense cluster that extended for thirty feet in every direction around the king.
His main body was mostly comprised of a massive turtle-like shell that appeared to have armored, mechanical plating; complete with missile launchers at the shoulders.
Extending out the back was one massive tail that split into three; two long hook tails from Lurabo's chimerical lusus on either side of the massive scorpion-like tail of Mutosi's lusus. It had six arms stretching out from its shell body. All six were feathered like harpy wings, but each with different endings.
One ended in a scorpion pincer claw, one in long pointed mole claws, one in long curved gauntlet claws, one in a humanoid looking hand gripping a massive tommy gun that was probably large enough to technically qualify as anti-aircraft weaponry, one ended in a metallic ape-like hand with the holes of a gatling gun in its palm, and lastly was an arm normal for the Black King; gripping his massive scepter.
Jutting from the back of his shelled back were two long jet plane like wings, only having been enhanced by the robotic features.
The most prominent feature to his face was the massive alligator mouth and the fangs therein; though at the end were two massive rodent teeth that, at this size, looked somehow more dangerous than the gater teeth.
One of his eyes glowed red from the cybernetic enhancements within, and his entire face was slathered in makeup that gave him the look of a demented clown.
The twelve players looked up at the beast their individual prototyping choices had combined to create, suddenly feeling infinitely less confident in themselves than they had only moments ago when they had arrived to do battle with the beast.
And the King wasn't even the only thing to worry about. There was an entire, actual, literal army in between him and the team of god tiers. All Derites, and many in kind, ranging from just below normal human/troll size up to thirteen feet high.
Grunts, guards, pawns, the only difference between them being their level of armor it seemed, assassins with their crossbows and rifles, casters with spellbooks and bishops with poleaxes, rooks looking like literal castle towers brought to life as berserk chargers, knights in the form of horse and centaur-like beasts dashing across the ground and through the air around the warships that had managed to make it to Skaia before Risura, Brendon, and Dustine had been able to trash their equipment.
As powerful as they had all gotten, they were starting to see just power powerful their foes were as well now that it was all laid out in front of them.
To everyone's surprise, it was Arvis who made the first move, charging forward with his New Links ability already active. His hookshot fired into the eye of a rook, pulling him towards the behemoth; letting him cut its head clean off with his hook sword with the momentum.
He allowed it to carry him forward, landing several slashing attacks on the closest enemies to the group.
Following Arvis, the rest of the group all charged with him, beginning to lay into the first wave of Dersite troops.
Perhaps so as not to break the theme, the majority of the non-chess related Dersite soldiers were what comprised the majority of the first wave.
Dustine's mace collided with the hammer of a Guard, Furlok and Valtina speed blitzing the Grunts. Lurabo had drawn the Knight of Pentacles to keep the Casters at bay way while Risura and Aspico took them out.
Patior had fallen back to start sniping out the Assassins, Mutosi focusing the fire of her Hope Bend onto the warships before they could begin opening fire on the group.
Java and Jeff were up in the air, driving brass knuckles and baseball bat into any enemies who were using harpy or jet wings to knock them from the sky.
Java drained an entire flock of winged guards of their breath, causing them to land in a pile on the ground right in the middle of the bloody murder canyon that was being dug out by Brendon and Arvis; Dustine not far behind with Risura gaining ground as well.
Valtina grumbled at the sight of this, pulling her sai out of the Derse guard's shoulder and slamming the side of her shovel into a Pawn's head to catch up with them. She felt back leaving more of the attacking to Furlok as she advanced, but she didn't want the heavy hitters to head forward without their healer.
Lurabo focused her Light through the Arcane and cast it over the fic of them as a boon to protect them from whatever might come their way.
Patior was busy Processing, finding the proper targets to create chain reactions among the Derse troops; shooting out the ede of a warship in such a way so the bullet punched through and impacted the pilot of the warship behind it, causing both to crash into the two warships beneath them and bring all four onto the Rook batalion on the ground.
Aspico was moving forward with her eyes completely closed and covered by her hood, letting her soul sense and soul predictions guide her and her rapier.
The blade slid through the air as she moved gracefully through the ranks, slitting throats, piercing hearts, cutting limbs, and moving forward.
Furlok's bladed paint set gave anyone within a three foot radius of her a similar role in life to the fruit within a blender, all minced up within moments as she moved forward.
She took a bullet to the hip from an Assassin who probably felt very smug in the two seconds between his shot landing and Patior's impacting his skull.
Jeff paused time around Furlok, dropping to the ground and picking her up princess style-something that every member of the team would individually learn they should never bring up-and carrying her both across the field and across time to Valtina a few minutes later.
In the meantime, Lurabo crossed her Arcane with Mutosi's broom, combining the magical blast from the former with the intense focused hope power stored in the second, allowing it to fire across a wide range and eliminate a massive regiment of Knights who'd been frozen in place by Mutosi's animal control; wiping them all out in a matter of moments.
Java flew down, driving her brass knuckles into the back of a Rook's head, then kicking off of him as the massive fist of solid wind her powers had created came down on top and finished the job.
Up ahead, Valtina was healing all four of their brutes as they plowed through the ranks of the heavier enemies.
Arvis was flying through the enemies with his hooks, but Brendon was doing the most damage by virtue of having AIO on his side; his axe leaving pillars of fire when swung, his shotgun blasting away tens of enemies at once, and his death bringers acting as focused explosives when they hit.
Valtina was essentially having to walk backwards to prevent attacks from behind as well as heal, and drove her drill shears into the back of a Knight that had thought he'd try and get a sneak attack.
Jeff appeared through time and set Furlok down to be healed; doing the same for an Arvis with a broken arm, a paralyzed Mutosi, and a fully dead Patior, who looked to have been ripped clean in two. He was in a hurry, never saying what precisely had caused each wound, but kept coming back more and more; to the point that he himself ended up needing healing at one point.
Apparently, things were not going to go very well in a few moments. It didn't take much effort to figure out why.
The Black King continued to loom ominously in the distance, not moving or attacking yet. Just watching, waiting, his meteors already falling towards the outskirts of the battlefield even without him having fully cast his powerful Reckoning ability yet.
Furlok side-stepped a Rook's punch, grabbing onto his massive wrist and beginning to steal his size from him.
The stone castle soldier shrunk down as the teal blooded troll rose up; to the point that Furlok was able to stomp the Rook into grist and then lock arms with next Rook, draining him as well and growing larger; after which she grabbed two more, holding them up by their arms and beginning to drain them as well.
Lurabo's playing cards cut through the Pawns like nothing, the blasts of her Arcane napalming the area and her telekinesis turning the bladed cards into a twister of damage around her as she moved forward.
She drew from her tarot again, taking out the Knight and Page of Swords. She felt it would be a horrid missed opportunity if she applied the power they brought, a boon of strength/bravery/cleverness and grace/dexterity respectively, on anyone other than Dustine and Arvis.
Both of them immediately began to glow, Dustine's strikes-already strong enough to flatten the armored bishops and crack the ground beneath them-growing much stronger, Arvis' movements-already hard to keep track of let alone dodge or counter-growing much more agile. Lurabo decided to risk drawing another card, only for it to vanish in a flash of red and spinning gears.
Evidently Jeff had decided she didn't that card yet. She didn't mind, switching back to her Arcane and opening a whole in her blade tornado to fire.
Speaking of the Heir of Time, he was currently driving his bat into the skull of a Caster who'd been about to cast a death spell on Aspico, who'd been disarmed for all of three seconds (she'd thrown her rapier into the chest of a nearby bishop to kill them).
Looking around, he spotted another thing out of place in time and acted accordingly.
Java was turned to look at Arvis.
She could see how nervous he was getting despite how well he was doing; more so than any of the others. The card had helped, but it was more a skill enhancer than it was anything to help with mental state.
As powerful as he had become over the course of the game, and as proud as Java especially was of him, he just wasn't built for battle on this scale.
At least… not mentally.
According to Aspico and Patior, Pages like Arvis were meant to have the most power of any other class, but couldn't access their ultimate powers just on whim.
In a moment of understanding, Java knew exactly what to do with the breath she had taken from Pilotsprite.
She grabbed Arvis and pulled him close, planting her lips on him for a deep, passionate kiss; one that allowed all the breath Java had stolen to flow from her into him, overcharging him with the freedom to change the world with the powers he had.
Arvis had already begun to glow crimson even before Java pulled back from the kiss, an intense power beginning to build up within and around him. Jeff looked over, from where he stood atop a warship, seeing the Page of Blood beginning to power up.
He clicked his tongue, wishing Java had had a little more patience. He reeled back and slammed his bat into the warship; denting the top and sending the entire thing careening towards the ground-where it impacted Risura's fist and was cast to the void.
Jeff remained in the air, floating for a second or two before his entire being turned red, spinning gear and clock symbols replacing his form as he faded into and became the timeline. From within the flow of time, Jeff grabbed the powering up Page and cast him into the future.
They would need his power, but they would need it later. Wasting it now would surely lead to their destruction.
Having sorted this temporal anomaly out, Jeff scanned the skies, where he saw that Mutosi was in the air now, bronze brown wings fluttering to keep her up as she used her Test of Faith power; a widespread attack, sending all of the Dersite soldiers into a mad lather to attack only each other. They were reduced to a petty riot now; albeit one spread out across an entire active warzone.
This done, the first attack on the Black King himself was made; though technically it was a tie between Brendon and Patior; ironically enough considering they were the original team leaders.
Patior's sniper bullet hit one side of the body the same instant as the death bringer Brendon had thrown. Jeff could confirm that it had in fact been the same instant; not that it mattered.
Patior's bullets had, even in this fight, one shot enemies that could have been bosses unto themselves, as had Brendon's death bringers.
So it was disquieting just how much nothing their attacks seemed to do to the King, the Dersite monarch's only reaction being a raising of his scepter to acknowledge that he was aware they were there; and consequently to make the meteors overhead fall faster.
All the players, with the exception of Arvis who had yet to appear out of the time stream, converged on the Black King together.
They'd hoped to avoid the tangled maze of foliage his lower half was creating in all directions by flying overhead, but the moment they crossed its threshold the vines and roots sprung up and latched onto them, dragging them down into the forest below.
This went better for some than others. Aspico's rapier wasn't great for escaping vine traps (though thankfully the Black King's soul flowed through every inch of the planets and allowed Aspico to sense and anticipate each movement to avoid any further damage) and Java wasn't great in tight spaces; nor was Jeff, who needed focus to travel through time; focus being difficult to maintain whilst bound in vines.
Brendon though, he was in his element. His axe cut through even the thickest of the plants as though there was nothing there, sending arcs of flame in all directions as it did. Risura vanished from the world with Forget Me Not to sneak through the foliage, Dustine simply breaking through the roots and death marching forward in an aura haze of his own rage.
Valtina was of course laying waste to all in her path within the forest, having decided that this garden needed a bit of pruning it seemed.
Furlok, currently verging on the size of a titan and still dwarfed by the Black King, was being Gulliver's Travels-ed by the roots.
Mutosi's rays of hope and venom filled broom strikes kept the plants at bay, Lurabo freeing herself with a draw from her deck; Nine of Swords, which caused the forest in a massive radius around her to fall to ruin, wasting away and, quite by chance, freeing Patior.
Patior immediately took aim with his sniper rifle to fire at the Black King's head.
He managed to fire a shot that punched right through the King's long maw; though through the scope, he could see that his lusus may have been just as bad for the battle as Valtina's garden.
In addition to the missiles, gatling guns, and indeed the laser eye that reduced Patior to a pile of smoldering ash the moment after he noticed it, the mechanical stem cells within the Black King would repair any damage they did.
Patior had designed them himself to keep his lusus safe, their only weakness being that if a limb was completely disconnected it would take several hours to be re-grown rather than the few seconds any wounds would need to be heeled.
Valtina looked around at the death being caused by the Black King, and closed her eyes to focus; thankfully made possible by Risura using Rip to chain void hole a massive section of the forest away.
She concentrated her power into a massive heal pulse, reviving (and reconstituting) Patior; along with Java and Dustine-who'd been killed by the gun fire-and Brendon who wasn't killed by the shoulder missiles thanks to his Death Destroyer ability, but was only alive by technicality until Valtina healed the damage.
The moment he was though, he leapt from the ground, rocketing out of the forest in a spinning slash with his axe to avoid being dragged back under. He flew up to be level with the Black King, firing both barrels from his shotgun at him.
The damage from it was healed almost instantly as the scorpion hand reached out, attempting to crush him; the triple tail doing a massive sweep through the back of the forest and sending Dustine flying while the laser eye did a powerful scan across the front in an attempt to kill anything there.
Brendon grit his teeth as he held the Scorpion claw from shutting, even as he was riddled with bullets from the tommy gun hand. He spat up blood, and held firm until Patior managed to fire a bullet through the wrist of the scorpion hand. It was healed within seconds, but it have Brendon time to fly out of the grip.
He attacked twice in rapid succession, manifesting two doom bringers and throwing both of them, one into the tommy gun hand, the other into the Black King's face. The massive tommy gun-and the hand holding it-were incinerated, as was the alligator jaw.
Both healed back almost instantly, though the gun couldn't be healed, leaving the hand unarmed. Brendon flew down, dragging his axe along the King's front in an attempt to cut through the shell.
He barely scratched it, but managed to leave a trail of fire that rapidly spread across the King. Brendon was able to throw another doom bringer, aiming for the center of the shell to weaken it, before the laser eye annihilated him.
Lurabo captured all the dust of him with her telekinesis and a stunning amount of luck, bringing every particle down to Valtina to be healed. The massive unarmed hand was being brought down towards them in a fist to kill the healer before she could do any proper healing.
Fraymotif: Destruction (Void) + Exploitation (Rage) = Rage Against the Dark.
Dustine and Risura both impacted the hand before it could impact the ground, hitting it with such force it was knocked back and seemed to almost evaporate off of the King.
As this happened, Furlok finally tore her way free of the roots, though kept them in hand; holding what looked like a few acres worth of plant that had been ripped free from the forest sprouting from the King.
As she approached, the laser eye still charging for another use, the two clawed hands swung at her.
Furlok held her ground, keeping the ripped up greenier on her as she drew her bladed paint brushes and managed to just barely block scissor slash with them, forcing both hands back and even shearing through the claws.
They'd need time to regenerate, and the King switched to one of his more powerful, metallic fists. As it was sent at her, gatling gun already spinning up to begin firing at her, Furlok stole all the size from the plant life; shrinking them down to nothing as she grew to a size that nearly matched the King himself.
Nearly.
She was still short by comparison; if *short* could even legitimately be used to describe her while she was roughly the size of two Cloverfield monsters stacked on top of each other. She got his fist, her increased size making it easy to do with one hand while the other gripped her now brush, also larger in size from what she'd stolen.
The King began to fire from the gatling gun; every bullet stopping against Furlok's palm and
falling harmlessly towards the ground; the Thief of Space taking away their speed and velocity.
Using the stolen bullet speed (several hundred times bullet speed actually considering she'd stolen from at least five hundred bullets in the few seconds he'd been firing), Furlok moved in what must have looked to the others like a flash-step teleportation; moving so fast that she avoid the already fired light speed laser eye; removing said laser eye from the equation with a massive raser paint brush through the eye.
The triple tail reared up behind the King, stabbing through Furlok.
She gasped in pain as the two hook tails dug out things that were typically meant to be kept in, the scorpion tail just repeatedly jamming in and out to envenomate her as much as possible.
She released the extra size more out of not being able to maintain it while in that much pain and began falling to the ground. Jeff slowed time for her to a crawl while speeding up time for Valtina, allowing her to get close to Furlok and heal her as fast as possible.
Risura, Brendon, Patior, and Dustine would keep the arms busy while he and Valtina took care of the forest below. They couldn't slowly and patiently destroy each individual plant. Even if they had the patience and power, they regrew too fast.
To Valtina suggested they focus on the source. Jeff slowed time to as near nothing as possible for the roots connecting the forest to the Black King's body to slow the regen down as much as he could.
Valtina prepared her next attack-bathing in Lurabo's Light as she did so, while Jeff made the target a little easier for her; throwing his Blight ball into the air and swinging his Molten Measuring-Staff with perhaps the most powerful home run swing he would ever manage in this or any timeline; as he was manipulating time itself to empower the strike, drawing upon the strength of alternate versions of himself.
The cursed ball hit the roots with enough force to be wedged several feet into the roots with no aid from the rot magic; all of which was released in a massive detonation of corrosive energy, weakening the entire lower half of the boss monster.
Seeing this, and literally slowing with the Light Valtina had bestowed her, the Sylph of Life charged forward at max speed (critical on speed charge).
She had her Sawvel in one hand, her drill shears in the other (critical on dual wield) and leapt at the weakened roots with a spinning trajectory to essentially turn herself into a living buzzsaw (critical on spinning strike). She cleaned through the weakening roots; burning out both weapons in the process and needing to switch to her spade knife and sai. Lurabo made sure the job was finished with a burst of telekinesis that fully separated Black King from the roots.
While he was no longer attached to or in control of the monster forest, that did unfortunately make life off with his jet wings possible; and the Black King immediately became a flying enemy; one spewing missiles in every direction.
Fraymotif: Understanding (Mind) + Allocation (Breath)/ Active by Passive = Clear Forecast.
Java had managed to take the breath out of the last of the Dersite soldiers still standing elsewhere on the field.
Even with all of them together there wasn't enough to match the breath that had been within Pilotsprite; but she didn't want to think about that at the moment.
Patior was able to use his Mind powers to predict the flight trajectory of the Black King, and essentially act as her navigational system as she the Breath she'd stolen wrapped around her fists, becoming massive gauntlets rather than just brass knuckles.
She flew directly at the Black King, their forces colliding to more or less lock each other in place. Risura exited his Forget Me Not stealth mode and drove a fist into massive jaw of the Black King, using Rip to stretch void holes out across the alligator mouth and essentially rip if by force off.
This ended up leaving both of Java and Risura in prime gatling gun range though, and soon both of them were reduced to bloody messes on the ground below.
Dustine watched as it happened; and even knowing that Valtina would heal them, even seeing her in the process of doing it, he was too riled up by the sight of it; purple rage energy extending in several feet around him, boiling the earth where his feet touched as he charged the Black King; not even noticing the hail of bullets that collided with him.
He launched himself at the King, only able to land three strikes before the pain and the damage was too much; but they were powerful strikes.
The first ripped the metallic arm clean from the King's body, the second send cracks all across the central shell and allowed Dustine to run along it to get behind the King to land his third strike; utterling ruining the tail.
He landed in a painful, actually alive (if it could be called that) heap on the ground that Valtina would have to heal next. Unfortunately, the Black King was still airborne and firing missiles.
Fortunately, Aspico, Mutosi and Lurabo were in position to counter this, all three bathed in bright light and armed with the added effect of the Six of Swords, 3 of Wands, and 3 of Cups.
Aspico, acting purely on the flow of emotion and soul power, allowed Lurabo to launch her through the air with her telekinesis, then direct herself down, using her rapier to cleave clean through the unarmed hand that had once held a tommy gun, slashing rapidly to fend off the broken claws of the two formerly fully clawed hands as she landed on the Black King's shoulder.
She drove her blade into the shoulder and began charging across to the other; causing detonations of the missiles within said shoulders that ruined the mechanisms; preventing further explosions.
Aspico jumped from the shoulders before said detonations took place, raking her blade down the back of the shell and leaving it just in time to avoid another of Brendon's death bringer orbs; a much bigger one this time, nearly big enough to look like a medicine ball from the Black King's perspective.
The King turned to see who had attacked him; giving Lurabo and Mutosi their moment.
The former compressed as much Light and telekinetic force into her Arcane as possible before firing the blast of magic, the latter simply using her broom to direct raw hope energy in the form of a blast. The two beam attacks shot through the King's two jet wings, destroying them completely and causing the Black King to crash into the ground.
He righted himself disappointing quick, repurposing the hands with severed blades to hold himself up. With an ungodly roar that shook the ground metaphorically, he slammed his enormous scepter down and shook the ground literally.
The impact send a visible shockwave headed for Lurabo and Mutosi, one they would not be able to avoid. As they were crushed to death, the Black King raised his scepter high into the air, letting its glow signal the falling of the more powerful meteors.
The players had been so focused on the fight they'd paid no heed at all to the Black King's Reckoning; but the meteors were coming, boulders wreathed in flame falling on Skaia like bullets from god, some so large as to be considered mountains rather than stones.
At the very least, they at least had a plan for this.
Fraymotif: Destructionx2 (Doom+Void) = Product Through Raze.
As Risura and Brendon connected their powers, the two destroyers ironically created the best defense; a massive shadowy barrier around the battlefield that caused each meteor to fade into nothingness as it passed through it, rendering the Reckoning moot.
For the moment at least. The barrier was protecting them, not Skaia itself, which could still be damaged.
The Black King let out another ungodly roar; this one sounding unsettlingly like laughter. The ruinous mess of its jaw was giving the clown like face and even more demonic look as it began to flat all of its arms, the harpy wings allowing it to return to the air again. It it reached the barrier, a single strike from the scepter might be enough to scatter it; allowing the meteors to destroy the players…
Thankfully, it was at that moment that the card Lurabo had drawn earlier appeared in her hands again.
Judgement or Rejuvenation. The card's power of renewal, rebirth, promotion, and awakening of hidden abilities flowed through her, triggering a gene that had laid hidden away in her DNA. Lurabo had never been a full psionic.
She wasn't sure if all yellow bloods were meant to, or if it was normal for a yellow blood to be born non-psionic.
But from this moment forward, it wouldn't matter anymore. Her vision faded into red and blue and telekinesis and psychokinesis flooded together in her mind, releasing a massive twin blast of psionic lasers from her eyes.
The beam impacted the Black King, causing the cracks that had begun healing on his shell to reform and deepen. The King swung around counting the beam with his scepter and a strange energy that emanated from the clown-like face.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be matching the psionic powerfuls and even overwhelming them. And then the second thing that Jeff had hidden in time re-appeared in another blast of red spinning gears; Arvis, fully powered up in a orb of blood red energy that was swelling and extending further as he appeared behind the Black King.
Hemo-Imperium.
The power extended like a crimson supernova, locking every inch of the Black King in binding chains that pulled him back to the ground as Lurabo continued to focus her psionic blasts at him.
This to proved to only be a stalling tactic, the chains snapping a rush of power searched from the Black King, expanding in all directions and sending shockwaves across all of them.
One by one, the lethal attack; which sounded upsettingly like a laugh, killed the players.
Only two survived; Bredon with the aid of Death's Destroyer, and Valtina with the aid of Lurbo's Light, which had placed her just outside of the kill radius by nought by a few inches.
She'd still been knocked out though, and with Risura dead, the barrier faded; leaving the battlefield exposed to the Reckoning. Brendon stood alone, seeing the red hell Skaia had become from the meteor attacks.
Thankfully no lethally large ones were heading for him at the moment, but it still wasn't the best of circumstances. Brendon couldn't do this alone.
But maybe.. He didn't have to.
Brendon looked around, seeing a dead indego blood only a few feet away from where he himself had landed.
As he approached, he remembered something else Aspico had discovered about the game.
God tiers, it seems, are incapable of standard coincidental death.
Unless their death is Just-meaning they had committed some atrocity before being killed-or Heroic-meaning they were in some way involved in deeds that could be construed as heroic before their passing-they will simply return to life.
Unfortunately, this is of little help in most battles, as any fight of note (be it against another player, denizen, or the King) will by default be either Just or Heroic. This, it seems, is fate.
But Brendon could defy fate, he could destroy the rules.
Power circulating around him, he extended it to Patior. Above him, a symbol of a clock with its hand swung to the right; a symbol of a heroic death, was seen. Said symbol was slowly covered by the spiked skull of the Doom aspect, and then shattered entirely.
Patior sat bolt upright a moment after, gasping for breath and looking around. Brendon took his hand and helped him to his feet.
They looked around, seeing it was just them now. Just them and King, who seemed content waiting for the meteors to finish them off; which was sure to happen if this battle wasn't ended soon.
Their weapons and powers alone wouldn't do any good. They needed something greater than before. They turned to each other and nodded, locking arms to hopefully end this battle and save their friends.
Fraymotif: Destruction (Doom)+Understand X Activex2 = Dual Salvo.
The power of their aspects radiated around the two of them, dark green mixing with light blue around them. There was a flash of light, where the two had been standing before, now there was only one.
It appeared as Brendon had, but with Patior's long, deep blue wings, and both aspect symbols flashing in his eyes. He took off from the ground in the Black King's direction, axe in hand and shotgun at his side.
He could see the attacks before they happened, his senses heightened, sensing destructive forces and feeling the logical flow of events around him, allowing him to move with them and follow them towards the most logical, and destructive path.
He flew out of the way of a pincer hand, dashing back towards it to avoid being crushed by the scepter and consequently sever the clawed hand with a single slash of his axe.
The fire trailed up the King's arm towards his body, the King roaring in pain and raising his scepter to call the meteors down faster.
Looking up, Brendon held out a hand and send a Doom Bringer into the sky. From there, it burst; a cluster bomb that released dozens of smaller doom bringers into the sky to counter the meteors for just a bit longer.
Brendon flew up high, axe burning as bright as as possible as he launched himself like a spinning blade down at the Black King, two fast and powerful to be stopped. 'Brendon slashed through the two arms that were put up to block the attack and raked his axe down the body of the beast; the already weakened shell finally giving to the force of the attack.
Even before the attack had finished the body was already starting to repair itself, thousands of tiny machine single cells moving to heal the damage the attack had done. But this had not been the attack.
This had merely been to get into place. Brendon held up his shotgun, firing a single, powerful, intensely glowing shot away from where he stood in the crevice the slash had dug into the Black King.
Far off from the King, but just close enough, the glow dispersed; revealing that the shot had actually been Patior himself; their combo move nearing its conclusion.
He appeared with his sniper rifle already trained on its target, and fired before his vision had even returned. His bullet impacted not the King, but his scepter; destroying it in a single charged shot.
And with that, the battle was over. No scepter, no powers.
The King, was returned to his normal form, no stronger than the Pawns he commanded; but covered in wounds that could not be survived; both legs and right arm cut from his body, back and front burned and cut to ribbons, one eye gouged out, with a massive gash stretching from shoulder down to the hip on his left side.
Looking up at the meteors of his Reckoning slowly ceasing to rain down, the Black King of Derse breathed his final breath.
Valtina had healed the others up, her Sylph of Life abilities making it trivial once she returned to consciousness.
One by one the players returned to life, and as they did, they all saw the new gate that had appeared where the Black King had been at the start of the battle.
It looked the same as the gates that took them to and from their lands, if much bigger. When everyone was alive and conscious, they began to make their way towards the gate.
They passed through it, appearing on a circular platform with enough space for all of them. There was what looked like a hologram of a door shape at the edge, red and with no door handle. Their sprites were hovering above them, and looking down, they could see Skaia and the rest of the planets orbiting it.
"What now?" Mutosi asked.
"Now, we wait, and watch." Patior said, indicating down at Furlok's planet. Though none of them could see it from this distance, the Forge was ignited as it finished burning through the Queen rings.
This done, it erupted like any volcano would; though with significantly more power. The tadpole Furlok's breeding had brought about was launched into the sky and towards Skaia, slowly seeming to grow and shift into a frog as it flew down the hole Risura had carved out of the ground and towards the center.
While this process had looked to the players like little more but a point of light shooting up to Skaia, they could all see the cracks spreading across the chessboard planet as though it were a massive egg; which may well have been an apt metaphor considering what followed. In a burst of light, Skaia was blasted apart, the massive being containing the universe emerging.
The Genesis Frog, a vast amphibian containing an entire world…
The players all looked at it in awe for a few moments, even Patior's logical mind rendered dumbfounded by the sight.
Eventually, they noticed that the door was no longer red, having turned white. A glass orb like doorknob radiating energy had appeared on the door. They could officially pass through into their new world…
They approached together, but soon Brendon realized he was the only one who'd gone all the way up to the door.
He had only been the leader of one of the two teams, but he had been the first one to enter the game in full. It seems the others had felt that if anyone deserved to open the door, it was him.
He reached out slowly, his hand tingling where the energy touched it…
THANKS FOR PLAYING
The words hovered in the sky next to the sun, acting as a message to the players as they gazed up at it.
"Incredible.." Aspico said softly as she looked over the landscape. At the moment they appeared to be on a cliff overlooking an ocean, more land off in the distance with lush greenery (as well as odd blue plantlife that stood out as well) across it.
"So.. what do we do now?" Lurabo asked.
"I guess I'm up." Jeff said, cracking his knuckles and taking Consortsprite and Lurabo with him before entering the flow of time. The players watched as the land at the base of the mountain changed, becoming populated; cultivated even.
It was like the land was one fast forward as a new race of consorts, humans, and trolls-the former from the sprite and the latter two from Lurabo's cards no doubt-spread across the area, going from tribal all the way up to where they'd been when the twelve of them had entered the game, that way they could help society go forward even further before the next session inevitably came and went.
They were the new gods of this land it seemed, and their struggles within the game were over.
There was nothing left for them to do but rest, and enjoy their reward.
Some time had passed since the twelve gods had begun exploring their realm.
Furlok and Brendon had gone off with Lurabo to explore the farthest off of the land, within caves and above mountains, underwater and into the deepest forests.
And exploring the potential of Lurabo's new psionic powers. Valtina spend most of her time around the core civilization to tend to the people and nature around them. Jeff tended to remain in the time stream; seeming to take his job as a god of this land quite seriously.
They saw him still of course, but they were never sure when they were seeing him. Patior and Aspico also stayed with society to make sure the people of their world never went too far in either moral direction, counterbalancing each other.
Mutosi helped of course, though she'd found a new passion in just studying culture generally.
The trolls, humans, and consorts weren't the only society on this land, and she was curious about them all. Dustine and Risura were traveling like Brendon and Furlok; though they were doing so in much calmer locations for each others' sakes.
Java and Arvis were doing something similar as well, acting as a sort of midpoint between the two extremes. It's not like they were unconnected now, Arvis wouldn't allow something like that. Brendon and Lurabo had to come by to visit their moirales of course, and Jeff was fond of everyone.
Typically they'd see each other once every few days honestly, it's just that they all had their own things to look into. Jeff would always come back with some new temporal tale, Brendon and Furlok with a story of some new dangerous location Lurabo had approved for them to fight in.
Patior would show off the new tech he'd invented, Aspico the stories she'd gotten into writing, etc. The first real big point of contentious that got brought up was about a week into enjoying their new world; when Arvis realized that Java wasn't.
Not as much as he'd have expected anyway. He realized now when he found her trying, futiley, to communicate with the husk of Pilotsprite that they had brought one more issue through into their new world. He got Java to come out with what she had done to Pilotsprite to the others.
"I didn't have a choice," Java said, trying to justify herself to the others despite none of them having judged her or even given her a judgemental look, "It's what the denizen of my land had me do to get the grist, and it was where the Breath I gave to Arvis during the battle came from.
"I know it was necessary, but I.. I still feel bad about it." She admitted, looking down to hide her watering eyes from the others, "She was so good to me.."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Aspico questioned.
"It hurt too much to talk about.. I didn't want to deal with this anymore than I had to.." Java said miserably. The room was silent for a few moments before Brendon decided to say what all of them but Java were thinking, "J, you do realized there's like ten different ways we could have brought her back right?"
"W-what?" Java questioned.
"I can turn Hope power into other kinds of energy," Mutosi said, "Like, for example, that breathy stuff. I'm sure she's got a lot, but there's a lot of big beasts we could have taken from."
"Like a Horror-Terror," Risura said, "Which I can summon into my body at will."
"And if that was too dangerous, I've got a few different cards that could have restored her."
"I could find some extra breath for you to put in her from an alt timeline," Jeff added.
"A Fraymotif between the two of us might restore her as well." Valtina said.
"I literally destroy Doom, fate, and sacrifice," Brendon said, "There's a decant chance I could literally smack her back to normal."
"See?" Arvis said, "Java, just because you're a breath player doesn't mean you have to just drift off and completely untether from everything. You need to remember that. And if you ever forget," Arvis used his New Links ability, a symbolic series of red threads spreading out and connecting the group.
Java smiled at this, realizing that, like Patior had, and Arvis had before him, she'd not been looking at the whole picture. She gave Arvis a hug, and a deep loving kiss to boot, then gave Lurabo a nod. She closed her eyes, focusing all of her luck into the next draw from her tarot deck.
She drew the Six of Cups, reawakening the person trapped within the husk that was Pilotsprite. The color returned to her face as she began to blink, wincing as though suffering from a headache.
"Fucking hell, what the.." She looked around, seeming unsure where she was, and likely just as unsure about why Java proceeded to tackle-hug her to the ground.
And that's all she wrote! I'll be honest, I wasn't sure I'd make it this far ^^U the lack of response, like, any response at all, around the middle kind of killed my enthusiasm to write more.
But I kept going, half because of determination and half because of the few of you who did decide to leave reviews (looking at you guy who recognized the name of the horror-terror and immediately understood the situation XD), and now here we are. For those of you who didn't, it's not bad or anything not to, but reviews are kind of the only thing that give me motivation to write XD
For the record, yes, there is a canon series of lemons to serve as the celebration here at the end, but in keeping with the theming of things, they've been put into Sinful's Drabbles, so feel free to pop over there and read them/leave reviews if you're into lemons XD
So, to anyone still reading at this juncture, what did you think? Like, of anything/everything? Classpect choices, land and ability ideas, character development, battles, etc? Did I do any good? Would it be a good idea for me to attempt a less smut focused story in future or should I stick to the lemons? If I were to do a story about a Lord and Muse, what would you want the aspects to be, and what are your favorite classpects?
I am sinful by nature with no malicious intent, and I'll see you all next time!