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The Raging Singularity
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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.”
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.”
Mobius Base Outside of Allure City
The veins in Arthur's eyes filled to blood-shot crimson, his windpipe swelling in a banal attempt at barricading his lungs from further infiltration against the genuinely disturbing smell. Every syllable the glutton spat at him felt like a stink-bullet that was aimed directly up his nostrils, set to drill its way up through his nasal cavity and bury itself inside his brain, putrefying it to the point that it dissolved and transformed his skull into a toxic soup bowl that not even plague rats would drink from.
It was the worst kind of decadence. The Gluttons of Hell reeked less than Philippe!
He inhaled, about sling another flurry of insults at Philippe when--
Unable to continue his train of thought, Arthur began to gag uncontrollably, and that uncontrollable gagging escalated led a violent coughing fit. "Ahagh! Ahagh, ahagh, ahagh... hagh...!" Breathing in had doomed him to a disorienting dose of Philippe's malodorous emissions. He had to get it out of his system, somehow, anyhow! Scrambling his failing brain for an answer, Arthur thought: Water... He needed WATER! The Cannibal desperately scanned his surroundings. First he looked over to Allure City, thinking he could find a street-fountain or outdoor vendor selling bottled water, only to realize it was at least several miles from the Mobius camp. Furthermore, he was low on energy, and hadn't gotten the chance to consume a single good meal since getting out of Gluttony--no thanks to Philippe charging into the tent like an obese grizzly bear, chowing down on Heinzmann and all the other soldiers, and effectively jacking all the food in the refrigerator. Lastly, the billowing plume of smoke and fire rising up through the clouds did not bode well for his quest within the city.
"Ahagh! Ahagh, ahagh!-hagh!-HAAAAAAAAGH!" Tears welled up in his eyes as he looked over to the nearby ocean and briefly considered drinking the water. The salt in the air stung his nostrils, and burned his already irritated tear-ducts, and it was precisely that sensation which alerted Arthur to how dumb that plan was. If he drank the sea-water he'd dehydrate himself, becoming that much thirstier, and the last thing he needed right now was to suffer another hallucination like the one that bastard golem had given him.
It was at this point, when all hope for a stench-cleansing refreshment drink seemed lost, that Arthur turned around and saw the light lying just beyond the base's perimeter fence. A fat Frenchman with a curly mustache, dressed in a black-striped shirt, long dark pants, and leather shoes manned a vending stand which served reporters, tourists, and residential locals looking to get a glimpse at that which had replaced their neighbor to the southwest. The vendor had a particularly satisfied look on his face, clearly proud of himself for being able to take advantage of the atrocity wrought by Merse Granstrum, nodding with wholehearted agreement to the message being broadcast by Margaret through the radio on the edge of his stand.
Despite being over two-hundred feet away from the fence, Arthur's supernatural hearing enabled him to hear all of Margaret's words. Not that he cared, though. The only thing concerning the Cannibal was purging his nose, mouth, and stomach of Philippe's deadly odor.
"Wasser..." Arthur groaned haggardly, stumbling across the base like a victim of one of Mobius' top interrogators.
Progressing back passed the tent where that damnable count was surely feeding on something--probably one of the K9s who had rushed into the tent to aid their masters, Arthur instantly clenched his nose between his thumb and index as tight as he could without breaking it, terrified of what another whiff from Philippe might do to him.
"AHAG...EEEEEHUUUHNNNNGGG!" Out came another cough, this one making him honk like a goose with a bass violin stuffed halfway down its throat.
HONK HONK HONK!
Exhausted, but nearing the fence, Arthur's coughing fits somehow paid off. The Frenchman both heard and saw his distress, and was twirling his mustache with predatory greed. He knew that if he could serve this desperate man, who stood on the right side of the fence, surely full of information about Allure City, that he would have all the reporters trampling each other to get to his cart. Like the self-proclaimed genius he thought himself to be, he devised that he would feed this one man for free all day, in exchange for him keeping silent about any Intel he may have possessed.
And the cost for an interview with the hungry man demanded a purchase from his stand!
"Je suis un génie!" The Frenchman proclaimed quietly.
Fast as lightning, the Frenchman practically blinked in front of the fence, and in doing so nearly made Arthur, who was merely three feet from the fence at this point, flinch and stumble backwards.
"Bon après-midi monsieur!" came the thick accent, cracking ever-so-slightly at the end, "Prendre soin d'une aquafina? Bratwurst et souerkraut?"
While relieved at the sight of food and drink, Arthur couldn't help but arc a brow at the vendor, whose demoniacal grin nearly rivaled Philippe's smell in its disturbing nature. The way his cheeks were raised to make the bags on his eyes rest upwards, his teeth glinting like they had just been brushed with white polish... For a moment, he wondered if he didn't remember the man standing in line before King Minos... I'm not still in Hell am I? With help from the delectable scent of sauerkraut, he snapped his mind out the delirium, shoved the thought out of his conscience, and stepped forward to grab the fence in a prying position.
Tearing the wires apart like poorly sewn sheet fabric, Arthur stepped forward, causing the Frenchman as well as the rest of the crowd of onlookers to leap back, but not too far back for Frenchy. "Oh mon! Un client affamé en effet!"
Gleeful as all hell, the man quickly overcame his fear, stepping forward again to present the man his meal. A brief delay in service occurred when the Frenchman noticed just how much farther the crowd had leaped away from Arthur than he had, to which his neck head seemed to unrealistically twist and stretch around, a scowl marking his expression whilst taking a very deep breath.
"Si vulgaire!" The Frenchman shouted scornfully, "Est-ce ainsi que vous traitez un homme qui a toutes les informations dont vous rêvez?"
Though the majority of the crowd remained stiff with terror, a few particularly parasitic reporters did step forth and brave the hungry customer alongside the Frenchman, emboldened by the tongue-lashing he had given them.
Nodding like a satisfied parent, the Frenchman turned his head back to its normal position, emitting a string of pops along the way.
"Mes excuses les plus sincères, monsieur," he said with a humble bow, extending his arms out serve his customer, ignoring the massive explosion sounding in the background not fifty feet away in favor of his ticket to riches... "Amusez-vous."
"Vielen Dank." Arthur replied gratefully, almost thankful for the delay in service as it enabled him to catch finally catch his breath.
Reaching out to take his hard-earned drink, the Cannibal also ignored the loud creaking sound which only seemed to get louder and louder, until he was reluctantly forced to look up with the bottle held between his lips. His face darkened with dread, shoulders dropping to a sag as a colossal shadow cast over the crowd and the French savior before him. Realizing what was about to happen within a matter of nanoseconds, Arthur began to scream frantically, realizing one drink wasn't enough. "NEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!" All the while the Frenchman also screamed frantically, not because he was about to lose his life to a falling skyscraper, shaken loose from its foundation and was so tall that, in its descent it fell over the border separating France from Allure City.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!"
Ignoring the two men's pleas of denial, Arthur who was standing few inches out of the skyscraper's path of descent, instead had his bottle of aquafina sliced in half by a splinter of support beam, depriving him of half his drink that went spilling onto his sweater and pants. A pico-second later, and the onlookers, reporters, the Frenchman, and his vending stand were all crushed, creating an explosion of blood, gore, shards of bone, bratwurst, sauerkrat, aquafina, twirly mustache hair, mic and camera lens, blowing against his face with a fine helping of dust.
"AHAGH!"
"SCHEISSE!" The Cannibal bitched with vocally strained fury. "SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE!"
This was the worst day of his life. The absolute worst. He hadn't gotten enough fucking water. He didn't even get to savor a single bite of the goddamn hot dog before Frenchy went splat. The only way he was going to get water now as if he walked back over to that tent where Stinky sat stuffing his fatass.
“Ugh… Ich mochte zuruck in die Holle gehen….” Came the words of a defeated man dragging himself back to the tent, following the scent of blood, horrifying body odor, and… food!?
Hesitating whilst looking dreadfully at the plume, Arthur knew, deep down in his putrefying lungs, gut, and stomach, deep down he knew that his journey was not over yet, that he had but one more trial to endure. He could practically see the darkness of Philippe’s stench swirling around the tent like an evil vortex of doom, threatening to swallow him whole if he got too close, just like those poor soldiers had been ravenously consumed minutes earlier.
Poor bastards, Arthur thought, they had to smell his insides.
Coughing his way through dust and stench, blood and cracked pavement, Arthur somehow made it back inside the tent, where an unfazed Philippe sat gorging on treats from General Heinzmann’s personal mini-fridge. The Cannibal nearly gagged when he took in the mixed scent of food and hellish body odor, falling forward only to catch himself on the Count’s shoulder, where he unleashed yet another violent fit, saliva churning about in his throat as he struggled onward. Pushing off the French fuck, Arthur slammed against a shelf housing a Mobius Corp gas mask, almost toppling the thing over as he struggled to grab the thing and pull it over his face.
Turning around, Arthur gave Philippe a heaving sideways glance, wondering how the overweight Count couldn’t smell his own hazardous odor. It seemed he was too busy chowing down to really care, let alone notice the Cannibal’s bewildering gaze. Deciding it was best to wave it off, Arthur moved over to the refrigerator, acquiring a carton of milk along with some of Heinzmann’s favorite gourmet chocolate chip cookies and sat down directly across from Philippe.
Lifting the mask very carefully so as only to expose his mouth, Arthur bit into his cookie, staring cautiously at Philippe and back down at his snack protectively.
“Guten Tag.”
Allure City
Eddie’s reply came rather short. “It is an attack on my business, Samurai!” The hulking alien backhanded a skyscraper behind him on the vampire’s mental command, shattering the glass and crushing the inhabitants inside. “Are you going to reimburse me for my losses?” The Allure citizens whose bodies had been transformed to servants of the dead growled with a dreadful hunger that could not be abated.
Unwilling to await his response, as he knew the Warrior was just hurling veiled threats at him, and not quite expecting either him or Merse to pay him what they owed, Eddie commenced his assault on the army below. It began with the roots he had spawned earlier, drinking up sewer water which was toxified by the spreading of tainted energy throughout them, spraying the metallic soldiers in a deluge of highly corrosive water that crackled with blightful energy. Meanwhile, the much larger roots rose like a great thousand-digit hand and slammed itself down atop the warriors, crushing some whilst smearing itself across the streets, crashing through the beams of yet more buildings, and causing just that much more destruction.
Throughout his wretched act of wanton carnage, Eddie kept his vampiric gaze fixed on Claine, and an eerie aura began to emanate from them, one capable of bringing even the strongest of men and women under his control.
***
The Golden boy was very close to Granstrum now. His golden body could feel the electricity in the air, his fist slamming into a support beam of the building Merse was standing on, and whom he so conveniently decided to ignore running straight at him. Goldman went on a rampage, golden knuckles caving in the skulls of every employee who got in his way, or just so happened to be in his line of sight, splattering the walls with blood and bone fragments as the roof collapsed ontop of him. This was all fine and good for Goldman though, for he just powered through the destruction as he always did, exploding out through one of the windows.
Landing in the streets, Goldman drove his fingers through the pavement, curling them around a manhole cover and tearing it free, meanwhile using a strong electromagnetic current to uproot another manhole cover at the opposite end of the street. Without a moment’s pause or hesitation Goldman spun the covers in both hands, charging them with lining whilst sharpening their edges. Then he flung the two destructo discs up through the building at curving angles, one threatening to cut Merse off at the point right above his knees, while the other was aimed at his torso, both attacks aimed to chop the Catman down to size.
Lastly, if that attack didn’t work, well let’s just say Goldman’s body could hold a massive charge, and right now he was being pulled via magnetic attraction, set on a crash course Merse at an angle that would set him to emerge through the building directly below his feet, the whole of his body compacted tightly to give him the striking force of a golden cannon ball.
***
Thomas watched in a combination of shock and adrenaline-suppressed horror as Jacknathema survived both the heat and concussive force behind the colossal pipe-bomb explosion. This thing was proving itself to be one helluva monster, but just like the Dreadnaught that had attacked Monterrey, this mutant abomination would also perish. Remembering his time inside the whale, and recalling the devastating aftermath that left the entire Sahara Desert a radioactive wasteland, Thomas contacted Alice through his psi-emitter.
“Summerson!” Came the first contact. The lieutenant and Agron’s minds were in perfect synchronization with each other, so when Merse activated his magical matter-deletion spell, the purple energy powering the circle rushed directly into the earth spirit’s runes, a surge of ethereal blue flames representing its will to live flared out from within, shielding them both from the threat of annihilation while containing the energy powering that threat. “I need you to call in an anti-matter strike on my exact location!” Without the slightest degree of hesitation, Thomas separated his right hand from his USP and reached for his riot baton, firing the gun with at Jacknathema several times on direct subconscious orders from Agron, trusting the golem not to lead him astray. Thus when the Val’gara belched fire at Thomas, so too did he unleash a concentrated barrage of Merse’s magic, eradicating the flames in his path whilst slinging the baton he had just grabbed down toward the planet’s core.
“What, are you cra--!” Alice screamed, flabbergasted, only to be cut off by Thomas.
“Just shut the fuck up and do it!” He snapped angrily he felt the core temperature around him suddenly sky-rocket, only to suddenly, and seemingly inexplicably plummet back down to survivable levels. When Thomas flung his baton, containing Agron’s essence, the Earthen shape-shifter not only expanded the area around the Operative, lessening his exposure to the deadly heat, but it slowed the movement of molecules to such a degree that it induced a chill. Like a swollen vein losing its supply of oxygen, the tunnel leading to Earth’s core paled to an icy blue as the vaporized moisture contained within the earth condensed and precipitated along the walls, forming a crystalline outline.
“Lastly,” He was cut off by his own roar of pain as Jacknathema impaled him through the rib-cages, their bones fusing together as he listened to the ex-Herald’s wrathful shouting, rage starting to overwhelm his own mind. “USE THE PSI-EMITTER SATELLITES TO REINFORCE BOTH MINE” the Red Aura, Agron’s offensive spiritual essence flooded the entirety of his exoskeleton, invading Jacknathema’s body where it held him in a vice-grip, taking advantage of the gravity well to ensure its grip remained solid, “AND THIS MOTHERFUCKER’S SOULS!” He was practically frothing at the mouth, eyes rolling into the back of his skull as the strain of Agron’s runes containing Merse’s magic and the physical pain of being skewered melted into a volatile cocktail of agony, the Operative slamming his head furiously against Jacknathema’s own, cracking both their reinforced skulls wide open. The blow he delivered was not just a physical one though, not by a longshot, given that this was a spiritually based attack, it very much served to give the monster an extreme migraine, whilst the vice-grip Agron held on Jacknathema’s body tightened as it spread its essence farther out, increasing the strength of its Red Aura. This had a secondary effect of straining Jacknathema’s q-cells, or at least restricting their ability to adapt to the follow-up headbutt containing Merse’s matter-destroying magic, literally oversaturating them by way of an overbearing assault. Without realizing it, Thomas Balvice was pushing the boundaries of Anathema’s reactive adaptation, but it came at a cost, for he was also pushing the boundaries of Agron’s ability to withstand a power made to destroy matter by tightly syncing their minds together.
The satellites hovering over Allure City aligned together in a triangular formation. “Alice I want you to get out of Allure City now CALL IN A BEACON, DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO, BUT GET OUT!”
“YOU’RE RIGHT!” Thomas roared back, frothy spit hurling against Jacknathema’s face. “WE ARE GOING TO ATONE FOR OUR SINS! BOTH OF US!”
In that instance, a beam of invisible psionic energy penetrated the atmosphere at the speed of light, the electromagnetic phenomenon causing the clouds in the sky to briefly darken as a faint outline of transparent cobalt breached the earth. With both Thomas and Jacknathema nearing their physical limitations, and with the latter so hellbent on consuming the Operative in its fiery wrath, it seemed only natural albeit eerily so that his resolve would seem to multiply tenfold. Such was the consequences of the psi-emitter reinforcing the Val’gara’s willpower, the same effect occurring within Thomas’ head, infecting their very souls with the raw, unbridled desire to dominate each other, and so it would be that the sui generis of what made the two combatants was preserved.
Twenty years ago, the Red Technocracy dropped anti-matter bombs on Dreadnaught in a desperate attempt at wiping the beast out, and most of North Africa now paid the price; living in a hideous state of genetic mutation spurred by both cancer as well as the Vesuvian Virus. Tribal warfare was fueled, using weapons man was never meant to possess, let alone by bushmen of all people. To drop a bomb yielding this amount of destructive force was not just to invite a radioactive fallout, it was to invite a political one, but goddamnit if Thomas wasn’t willing to be placed in prison or potentially even executed if it meant he could take out the Val’gara scum. Fortunately, Mobius Corps had developed irradiation technology that could clean scrub away the radioactive fallout in a matter of hours, possibly even minutes if they reacted quickly enough. Now that weapon was to be used again, called in by the ex-cop turned black ops agent and international criminal investigator.
Despite his hatred of the creature before him, something in the back of his mind told him to listen to its words, to do what he was best at, and that was to investigate and uncover the truth behind them. Thus when the anti-matter capsule was launched from an orbital rail-gun via satellite, exploded through the atmosphere in a storm of fire, breached the electro-psionically charged clouds, and powered through the noxious plume of smoke, dust, ash, and soot that Thomas failed to fear for his life.
Thomas was going to a better place.
Jack and Anathema were both going to go to a better place.
They were all going to a better place of closure.
The capsule opened as entered several miles into the planet’s core, catching up with the Thomas and Jacknathema, triggering a chain reaction of protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, atoms, molecules, cells, and more matter that was considered to be more tangible like the dirt sitting atop Allure City’s bedrock. The grass which grew from that dirt and the skyscrapers which sat atop the pavement that had been laid over all of it. Everything erupted in an explosion which annihilated everything in its path, Thomas made sure that the Val’garan would be unable to resist it, at least on a physical scale, not by overpowering him, but by narrowing his the adaptive range of his q-cells, forcing them to divide their attention. Using the psi-emitters to empower Jacknathema’s will served hyper-focus his aggression on Thomas and Thomas only, distracting him from the threat looming above.
Goldman got flung for miles by the resulting shock-wave, Eddie who was farther out felt the fabric of matter itself disintegrating and annihilating from a distance. Who knew what would possibly happen to Merse who was right before the blast.
In the meantime however, Thomas, Agron, Jack, and Anathema, whose bodies were completely obliterated now dwelt in a plane beyond the physical. Gradually an ocean of light coalesced around the four souls, the light bending and refracting until a room with a one-way mirror framed by the bones of a human skeleton sat behind Thomas who was now seated in a chair across from Jacknathema, his hands cuffed to the underside of a table made of the very same material. The whole room was like one big skeletal interrogation room with two clocks on the walls above each person's head, the clock itself having metacarpals in place of standard hour and minute hands.
Presently, the clock showed 11:55pm, and Thomas knew that he was short on time. This stunt he had just pulled would not hold up for long. Somehow, without seeing how he had resisted the process of creation and destruction, he knew this beast would break free, for its anger, its rage, was not all that dissimilar from Thomas’ own, thus making him an insurmountable threat.
“It’s time you and I have ourselves a talk.” Thomas said bluntly and directly.
“Who the hell are you, and WHY do you keep calling me a murderer!?”
Truthfully, Thomas didn’t fully understand why he was even asking these questions, but he was determined to uncover the answer.All he knew that was this thing knew something about him, something very secret, something only he should know.
“Tu ne vois pas que je profite d'un repas, paysan?!” He shrieked, his jowls wagged like the mediterranean tide, and spittle flew like a sea mist spray.
“Votre présence ici est une insulte pour tous. Va-t'en en train de japper Chihuahua!” Count Bourgeois flicked his wrist, shooing off Arthur dismissively with his ham-sized hands.
The veins in Arthur's eyes filled to blood-shot crimson, his windpipe swelling in a banal attempt at barricading his lungs from further infiltration against the genuinely disturbing smell. Every syllable the glutton spat at him felt like a stink-bullet that was aimed directly up his nostrils, set to drill its way up through his nasal cavity and bury itself inside his brain, putrefying it to the point that it dissolved and transformed his skull into a toxic soup bowl that not even plague rats would drink from.
It was the worst kind of decadence. The Gluttons of Hell reeked less than Philippe!
He inhaled, about sling another flurry of insults at Philippe when--
Unable to continue his train of thought, Arthur began to gag uncontrollably, and that uncontrollable gagging escalated led a violent coughing fit. "Ahagh! Ahagh, ahagh, ahagh... hagh...!" Breathing in had doomed him to a disorienting dose of Philippe's malodorous emissions. He had to get it out of his system, somehow, anyhow! Scrambling his failing brain for an answer, Arthur thought: Water... He needed WATER! The Cannibal desperately scanned his surroundings. First he looked over to Allure City, thinking he could find a street-fountain or outdoor vendor selling bottled water, only to realize it was at least several miles from the Mobius camp. Furthermore, he was low on energy, and hadn't gotten the chance to consume a single good meal since getting out of Gluttony--no thanks to Philippe charging into the tent like an obese grizzly bear, chowing down on Heinzmann and all the other soldiers, and effectively jacking all the food in the refrigerator. Lastly, the billowing plume of smoke and fire rising up through the clouds did not bode well for his quest within the city.
"Ahagh! Ahagh, ahagh!-hagh!-HAAAAAAAAGH!" Tears welled up in his eyes as he looked over to the nearby ocean and briefly considered drinking the water. The salt in the air stung his nostrils, and burned his already irritated tear-ducts, and it was precisely that sensation which alerted Arthur to how dumb that plan was. If he drank the sea-water he'd dehydrate himself, becoming that much thirstier, and the last thing he needed right now was to suffer another hallucination like the one that bastard golem had given him.
It was at this point, when all hope for a stench-cleansing refreshment drink seemed lost, that Arthur turned around and saw the light lying just beyond the base's perimeter fence. A fat Frenchman with a curly mustache, dressed in a black-striped shirt, long dark pants, and leather shoes manned a vending stand which served reporters, tourists, and residential locals looking to get a glimpse at that which had replaced their neighbor to the southwest. The vendor had a particularly satisfied look on his face, clearly proud of himself for being able to take advantage of the atrocity wrought by Merse Granstrum, nodding with wholehearted agreement to the message being broadcast by Margaret through the radio on the edge of his stand.
Despite being over two-hundred feet away from the fence, Arthur's supernatural hearing enabled him to hear all of Margaret's words. Not that he cared, though. The only thing concerning the Cannibal was purging his nose, mouth, and stomach of Philippe's deadly odor.
"Wasser..." Arthur groaned haggardly, stumbling across the base like a victim of one of Mobius' top interrogators.
Progressing back passed the tent where that damnable count was surely feeding on something--probably one of the K9s who had rushed into the tent to aid their masters, Arthur instantly clenched his nose between his thumb and index as tight as he could without breaking it, terrified of what another whiff from Philippe might do to him.
"AHAG...EEEEEHUUUHNNNNGGG!" Out came another cough, this one making him honk like a goose with a bass violin stuffed halfway down its throat.
HONK HONK HONK!
Exhausted, but nearing the fence, Arthur's coughing fits somehow paid off. The Frenchman both heard and saw his distress, and was twirling his mustache with predatory greed. He knew that if he could serve this desperate man, who stood on the right side of the fence, surely full of information about Allure City, that he would have all the reporters trampling each other to get to his cart. Like the self-proclaimed genius he thought himself to be, he devised that he would feed this one man for free all day, in exchange for him keeping silent about any Intel he may have possessed.
And the cost for an interview with the hungry man demanded a purchase from his stand!
"Je suis un génie!" The Frenchman proclaimed quietly.
Fast as lightning, the Frenchman practically blinked in front of the fence, and in doing so nearly made Arthur, who was merely three feet from the fence at this point, flinch and stumble backwards.
"Bon après-midi monsieur!" came the thick accent, cracking ever-so-slightly at the end, "Prendre soin d'une aquafina? Bratwurst et souerkraut?"
While relieved at the sight of food and drink, Arthur couldn't help but arc a brow at the vendor, whose demoniacal grin nearly rivaled Philippe's smell in its disturbing nature. The way his cheeks were raised to make the bags on his eyes rest upwards, his teeth glinting like they had just been brushed with white polish... For a moment, he wondered if he didn't remember the man standing in line before King Minos... I'm not still in Hell am I? With help from the delectable scent of sauerkraut, he snapped his mind out the delirium, shoved the thought out of his conscience, and stepped forward to grab the fence in a prying position.
Tearing the wires apart like poorly sewn sheet fabric, Arthur stepped forward, causing the Frenchman as well as the rest of the crowd of onlookers to leap back, but not too far back for Frenchy. "Oh mon! Un client affamé en effet!"
Gleeful as all hell, the man quickly overcame his fear, stepping forward again to present the man his meal. A brief delay in service occurred when the Frenchman noticed just how much farther the crowd had leaped away from Arthur than he had, to which his neck head seemed to unrealistically twist and stretch around, a scowl marking his expression whilst taking a very deep breath.
"Si vulgaire!" The Frenchman shouted scornfully, "Est-ce ainsi que vous traitez un homme qui a toutes les informations dont vous rêvez?"
Though the majority of the crowd remained stiff with terror, a few particularly parasitic reporters did step forth and brave the hungry customer alongside the Frenchman, emboldened by the tongue-lashing he had given them.
Nodding like a satisfied parent, the Frenchman turned his head back to its normal position, emitting a string of pops along the way.
"Mes excuses les plus sincères, monsieur," he said with a humble bow, extending his arms out serve his customer, ignoring the massive explosion sounding in the background not fifty feet away in favor of his ticket to riches... "Amusez-vous."
"Vielen Dank." Arthur replied gratefully, almost thankful for the delay in service as it enabled him to catch finally catch his breath.
Reaching out to take his hard-earned drink, the Cannibal also ignored the loud creaking sound which only seemed to get louder and louder, until he was reluctantly forced to look up with the bottle held between his lips. His face darkened with dread, shoulders dropping to a sag as a colossal shadow cast over the crowd and the French savior before him. Realizing what was about to happen within a matter of nanoseconds, Arthur began to scream frantically, realizing one drink wasn't enough. "NEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!" All the while the Frenchman also screamed frantically, not because he was about to lose his life to a falling skyscraper, shaken loose from its foundation and was so tall that, in its descent it fell over the border separating France from Allure City.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!"
Ignoring the two men's pleas of denial, Arthur who was standing few inches out of the skyscraper's path of descent, instead had his bottle of aquafina sliced in half by a splinter of support beam, depriving him of half his drink that went spilling onto his sweater and pants. A pico-second later, and the onlookers, reporters, the Frenchman, and his vending stand were all crushed, creating an explosion of blood, gore, shards of bone, bratwurst, sauerkrat, aquafina, twirly mustache hair, mic and camera lens, blowing against his face with a fine helping of dust.
"AHAGH!"
"SCHEISSE!" The Cannibal bitched with vocally strained fury. "SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE, SCHEISSE!"
This was the worst day of his life. The absolute worst. He hadn't gotten enough fucking water. He didn't even get to savor a single bite of the goddamn hot dog before Frenchy went splat. The only way he was going to get water now as if he walked back over to that tent where Stinky sat stuffing his fatass.
“Ugh… Ich mochte zuruck in die Holle gehen….” Came the words of a defeated man dragging himself back to the tent, following the scent of blood, horrifying body odor, and… food!?
Hesitating whilst looking dreadfully at the plume, Arthur knew, deep down in his putrefying lungs, gut, and stomach, deep down he knew that his journey was not over yet, that he had but one more trial to endure. He could practically see the darkness of Philippe’s stench swirling around the tent like an evil vortex of doom, threatening to swallow him whole if he got too close, just like those poor soldiers had been ravenously consumed minutes earlier.
Poor bastards, Arthur thought, they had to smell his insides.
Coughing his way through dust and stench, blood and cracked pavement, Arthur somehow made it back inside the tent, where an unfazed Philippe sat gorging on treats from General Heinzmann’s personal mini-fridge. The Cannibal nearly gagged when he took in the mixed scent of food and hellish body odor, falling forward only to catch himself on the Count’s shoulder, where he unleashed yet another violent fit, saliva churning about in his throat as he struggled onward. Pushing off the French fuck, Arthur slammed against a shelf housing a Mobius Corp gas mask, almost toppling the thing over as he struggled to grab the thing and pull it over his face.
Turning around, Arthur gave Philippe a heaving sideways glance, wondering how the overweight Count couldn’t smell his own hazardous odor. It seemed he was too busy chowing down to really care, let alone notice the Cannibal’s bewildering gaze. Deciding it was best to wave it off, Arthur moved over to the refrigerator, acquiring a carton of milk along with some of Heinzmann’s favorite gourmet chocolate chip cookies and sat down directly across from Philippe.
Lifting the mask very carefully so as only to expose his mouth, Arthur bit into his cookie, staring cautiously at Philippe and back down at his snack protectively.
“Guten Tag.”
Allure City
Eddie’s reply came rather short. “It is an attack on my business, Samurai!” The hulking alien backhanded a skyscraper behind him on the vampire’s mental command, shattering the glass and crushing the inhabitants inside. “Are you going to reimburse me for my losses?” The Allure citizens whose bodies had been transformed to servants of the dead growled with a dreadful hunger that could not be abated.
Unwilling to await his response, as he knew the Warrior was just hurling veiled threats at him, and not quite expecting either him or Merse to pay him what they owed, Eddie commenced his assault on the army below. It began with the roots he had spawned earlier, drinking up sewer water which was toxified by the spreading of tainted energy throughout them, spraying the metallic soldiers in a deluge of highly corrosive water that crackled with blightful energy. Meanwhile, the much larger roots rose like a great thousand-digit hand and slammed itself down atop the warriors, crushing some whilst smearing itself across the streets, crashing through the beams of yet more buildings, and causing just that much more destruction.
Throughout his wretched act of wanton carnage, Eddie kept his vampiric gaze fixed on Claine, and an eerie aura began to emanate from them, one capable of bringing even the strongest of men and women under his control.
***
The Golden boy was very close to Granstrum now. His golden body could feel the electricity in the air, his fist slamming into a support beam of the building Merse was standing on, and whom he so conveniently decided to ignore running straight at him. Goldman went on a rampage, golden knuckles caving in the skulls of every employee who got in his way, or just so happened to be in his line of sight, splattering the walls with blood and bone fragments as the roof collapsed ontop of him. This was all fine and good for Goldman though, for he just powered through the destruction as he always did, exploding out through one of the windows.
Landing in the streets, Goldman drove his fingers through the pavement, curling them around a manhole cover and tearing it free, meanwhile using a strong electromagnetic current to uproot another manhole cover at the opposite end of the street. Without a moment’s pause or hesitation Goldman spun the covers in both hands, charging them with lining whilst sharpening their edges. Then he flung the two destructo discs up through the building at curving angles, one threatening to cut Merse off at the point right above his knees, while the other was aimed at his torso, both attacks aimed to chop the Catman down to size.
Lastly, if that attack didn’t work, well let’s just say Goldman’s body could hold a massive charge, and right now he was being pulled via magnetic attraction, set on a crash course Merse at an angle that would set him to emerge through the building directly below his feet, the whole of his body compacted tightly to give him the striking force of a golden cannon ball.
***
Thomas watched in a combination of shock and adrenaline-suppressed horror as Jacknathema survived both the heat and concussive force behind the colossal pipe-bomb explosion. This thing was proving itself to be one helluva monster, but just like the Dreadnaught that had attacked Monterrey, this mutant abomination would also perish. Remembering his time inside the whale, and recalling the devastating aftermath that left the entire Sahara Desert a radioactive wasteland, Thomas contacted Alice through his psi-emitter.
“Summerson!” Came the first contact. The lieutenant and Agron’s minds were in perfect synchronization with each other, so when Merse activated his magical matter-deletion spell, the purple energy powering the circle rushed directly into the earth spirit’s runes, a surge of ethereal blue flames representing its will to live flared out from within, shielding them both from the threat of annihilation while containing the energy powering that threat. “I need you to call in an anti-matter strike on my exact location!” Without the slightest degree of hesitation, Thomas separated his right hand from his USP and reached for his riot baton, firing the gun with at Jacknathema several times on direct subconscious orders from Agron, trusting the golem not to lead him astray. Thus when the Val’gara belched fire at Thomas, so too did he unleash a concentrated barrage of Merse’s magic, eradicating the flames in his path whilst slinging the baton he had just grabbed down toward the planet’s core.
“What, are you cra--!” Alice screamed, flabbergasted, only to be cut off by Thomas.
“Just shut the fuck up and do it!” He snapped angrily he felt the core temperature around him suddenly sky-rocket, only to suddenly, and seemingly inexplicably plummet back down to survivable levels. When Thomas flung his baton, containing Agron’s essence, the Earthen shape-shifter not only expanded the area around the Operative, lessening his exposure to the deadly heat, but it slowed the movement of molecules to such a degree that it induced a chill. Like a swollen vein losing its supply of oxygen, the tunnel leading to Earth’s core paled to an icy blue as the vaporized moisture contained within the earth condensed and precipitated along the walls, forming a crystalline outline.
“Lastly,” He was cut off by his own roar of pain as Jacknathema impaled him through the rib-cages, their bones fusing together as he listened to the ex-Herald’s wrathful shouting, rage starting to overwhelm his own mind. “USE THE PSI-EMITTER SATELLITES TO REINFORCE BOTH MINE” the Red Aura, Agron’s offensive spiritual essence flooded the entirety of his exoskeleton, invading Jacknathema’s body where it held him in a vice-grip, taking advantage of the gravity well to ensure its grip remained solid, “AND THIS MOTHERFUCKER’S SOULS!” He was practically frothing at the mouth, eyes rolling into the back of his skull as the strain of Agron’s runes containing Merse’s magic and the physical pain of being skewered melted into a volatile cocktail of agony, the Operative slamming his head furiously against Jacknathema’s own, cracking both their reinforced skulls wide open. The blow he delivered was not just a physical one though, not by a longshot, given that this was a spiritually based attack, it very much served to give the monster an extreme migraine, whilst the vice-grip Agron held on Jacknathema’s body tightened as it spread its essence farther out, increasing the strength of its Red Aura. This had a secondary effect of straining Jacknathema’s q-cells, or at least restricting their ability to adapt to the follow-up headbutt containing Merse’s matter-destroying magic, literally oversaturating them by way of an overbearing assault. Without realizing it, Thomas Balvice was pushing the boundaries of Anathema’s reactive adaptation, but it came at a cost, for he was also pushing the boundaries of Agron’s ability to withstand a power made to destroy matter by tightly syncing their minds together.
The satellites hovering over Allure City aligned together in a triangular formation. “Alice I want you to get out of Allure City now CALL IN A BEACON, DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO, BUT GET OUT!”
“YOU’RE RIGHT!” Thomas roared back, frothy spit hurling against Jacknathema’s face. “WE ARE GOING TO ATONE FOR OUR SINS! BOTH OF US!”
In that instance, a beam of invisible psionic energy penetrated the atmosphere at the speed of light, the electromagnetic phenomenon causing the clouds in the sky to briefly darken as a faint outline of transparent cobalt breached the earth. With both Thomas and Jacknathema nearing their physical limitations, and with the latter so hellbent on consuming the Operative in its fiery wrath, it seemed only natural albeit eerily so that his resolve would seem to multiply tenfold. Such was the consequences of the psi-emitter reinforcing the Val’gara’s willpower, the same effect occurring within Thomas’ head, infecting their very souls with the raw, unbridled desire to dominate each other, and so it would be that the sui generis of what made the two combatants was preserved.
Twenty years ago, the Red Technocracy dropped anti-matter bombs on Dreadnaught in a desperate attempt at wiping the beast out, and most of North Africa now paid the price; living in a hideous state of genetic mutation spurred by both cancer as well as the Vesuvian Virus. Tribal warfare was fueled, using weapons man was never meant to possess, let alone by bushmen of all people. To drop a bomb yielding this amount of destructive force was not just to invite a radioactive fallout, it was to invite a political one, but goddamnit if Thomas wasn’t willing to be placed in prison or potentially even executed if it meant he could take out the Val’gara scum. Fortunately, Mobius Corps had developed irradiation technology that could clean scrub away the radioactive fallout in a matter of hours, possibly even minutes if they reacted quickly enough. Now that weapon was to be used again, called in by the ex-cop turned black ops agent and international criminal investigator.
Despite his hatred of the creature before him, something in the back of his mind told him to listen to its words, to do what he was best at, and that was to investigate and uncover the truth behind them. Thus when the anti-matter capsule was launched from an orbital rail-gun via satellite, exploded through the atmosphere in a storm of fire, breached the electro-psionically charged clouds, and powered through the noxious plume of smoke, dust, ash, and soot that Thomas failed to fear for his life.
Thomas was going to a better place.
Jack and Anathema were both going to go to a better place.
They were all going to a better place of closure.
The capsule opened as entered several miles into the planet’s core, catching up with the Thomas and Jacknathema, triggering a chain reaction of protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, atoms, molecules, cells, and more matter that was considered to be more tangible like the dirt sitting atop Allure City’s bedrock. The grass which grew from that dirt and the skyscrapers which sat atop the pavement that had been laid over all of it. Everything erupted in an explosion which annihilated everything in its path, Thomas made sure that the Val’garan would be unable to resist it, at least on a physical scale, not by overpowering him, but by narrowing his the adaptive range of his q-cells, forcing them to divide their attention. Using the psi-emitters to empower Jacknathema’s will served hyper-focus his aggression on Thomas and Thomas only, distracting him from the threat looming above.
Goldman got flung for miles by the resulting shock-wave, Eddie who was farther out felt the fabric of matter itself disintegrating and annihilating from a distance. Who knew what would possibly happen to Merse who was right before the blast.
In the meantime however, Thomas, Agron, Jack, and Anathema, whose bodies were completely obliterated now dwelt in a plane beyond the physical. Gradually an ocean of light coalesced around the four souls, the light bending and refracting until a room with a one-way mirror framed by the bones of a human skeleton sat behind Thomas who was now seated in a chair across from Jacknathema, his hands cuffed to the underside of a table made of the very same material. The whole room was like one big skeletal interrogation room with two clocks on the walls above each person's head, the clock itself having metacarpals in place of standard hour and minute hands.
Presently, the clock showed 11:55pm, and Thomas knew that he was short on time. This stunt he had just pulled would not hold up for long. Somehow, without seeing how he had resisted the process of creation and destruction, he knew this beast would break free, for its anger, its rage, was not all that dissimilar from Thomas’ own, thus making him an insurmountable threat.
“It’s time you and I have ourselves a talk.” Thomas said bluntly and directly.
“Who the hell are you, and WHY do you keep calling me a murderer!?”
Truthfully, Thomas didn’t fully understand why he was even asking these questions, but he was determined to uncover the answer.All he knew that was this thing knew something about him, something very secret, something only he should know.
The Stalker
Name: Thane
Val'Garan Name: The Stalker
Height: 23ft
Weight: 5,000lbs
Allegiance: The Val'Gara
Race: Former Niraan Shape-shifter, now Val'Garan Herald.
Sign: Cancer
Tier:High
Character-Type:Stand Alone
Other Statistics: Arm-Reach Is 11.5 Feet.
Tail-Length Is 23 Feet.
Wingspan Is 46 Feet.
Former half-brother to Morbid, you would expect Thane to be similar, correct? Wrong. Thane was, in fact, similar in very minor ways, but overall is very different, almost to the extreme, as well as a few minor differences in his physical appearance. Whereas Morbid was incredibly violent, aggressive, and would shatter a person's face for so much as breathing on him, Thane has the patience of a saint, a heart of gold, is a very pleasant person to be around. Where Morbid is straight-forward with physical means, Thane is diplomatic. He's always looking towards the path with the least bloodshed, and will go out of his way to ensure that he doesn't have to engage anyone in combat, simply because he's just that damn nice.
Description: With Thane's conversion into a Val'Garan Herald, he still has the same face, body-type and everything else, he has large wings and a lengthy tail, both of which mark him out as a type of gargoyle. Stoney in appearance, bulky in shape, and definitely a force to be reckoned with. His skin is that of a dirt-gray, and his eyes are completely black, leaving all of the other features completely indistinguishable from each other. This is his primary form, and while he can use it for combat purposes, he much prefers to use his ability to shape-shift as it gives him more to work with.
Personality: Patience of a saint, a heart of gold, kindness towards others, including prey, diplomatic approach towards things, open-minded, overly creative, and a vivid imagination. All these things represent the emotional chemistry, that is Thane. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it, Thane truly is the opposite of his brother; at least on the inside.
That's what he used to be like.
Now, he has become The Stalker: Mother Nature's bastard child, and Idea's... ideal child. He is obsessed with the hunt like the Val'Gara are obsessed with harvesting bio-force. The hunt keeps him focused, motivated - determined to carry out the will of Idea no matter what the cost to himself, or anyone who accompanies him. Maybe they should've thought of that before they volunteered to go with him? His selfishness aside, Thane has a natural tendency (perhaps from his former life) to act as an older sibling, or father to other Heralds; keeping one eye on his opponent, and the other (or others depending on his chosen form) on his comrades -- stepping right in the way of an overwhelming attack in hopes of not only finding worthy game, but, to ensure the Cataclysm's victory on the battlefield as well.
Though these two aspects of his personality may seem to clash, they truly do mesh well together when looked at from the perspective of a pragmatist like Thane.
Racial Traits:
Shape-Shifting (8): The common abilities of his people ranged anywhere from being able to cause earthquakes in the ground to cutting the very sky in pieces with silver blades, spawned from their own bodies. Thane is no different, for his abilities ranged on the rather extraordinary, even with his own people, whereas normal Niraans would have abilities such as the ones listed earlier, for he was a shape-shifter; most rare of all of his kind. The reason for this being, he could shift his entire form, not limited to simple parts as some others were. This made him greatly respected among his own race.
He could mimic the exoskeletal design of an ankylosaurus' hide, drastically increasing his ability to take hits as well as dish them out, bite into his enemy's neck, and deliver a paralyzing shock in the same way an electric eel would, vomit the corrosive juices of a hyena's stomach onto the skin of his adversary, generate crippling poisons, and even give birth to some of mankind's most-feared parasites. What makes this ability truly threatening is that Thane is able to not only augment these naturally occurring traits, but to mix and combine them into something even more deadly than what they already were.
Super Predator: (8) As co-leader of the Niraans, it was part of Thane's job to not only know how to hunt, but, to be able to teach the art to other members of his clan. This included stalking, chasing, setting traps, learning how to overpower much stronger opponents, and even how to avoid becoming a prey-item themselves, as well as how to defend themselves, should they end up on someone else's menu. It is for this reason that Thane is as smart, fast, and strong as he is; knowing the ins and outs of living the life of a hunter, and as such he is an expert and a specialist.
Val'Garan Traits
Dominant Trait You Are What You Eat: (8) Anything that lives in any way, shape, or form, should Thane manage consume a solid chunk of flesh/bone of his enemy, he gradually begins to integrate it into his genetic make-up, with the process of mimicry happening the moment his stomach starts digesting. This does not apply strictly to conventional opponents, he could just as very well consume a type of plant, and cause his body to become photosynthetic, produce seeds on his skin, roots from his digits. In essence, this is merely an extension of Thane's pre-existing power to shape-shift, only maximized to its full potential thanks to the Val'Gara.
Flesh & Bone Growth: (8) Ever observe a tumor growing in someone's brain? Ever watch a bird burst into a rain... from gorging like a glutton... on far too much grain? Ever see a dead body... floating in the pool... just sitting there bloating until it finally goes fucking boom? Well, if you haven't then, I'm sure Thane would be more than willing to show you by doing it himself. Thane is capable of producing massive amounts of fleshy growth all over his body in some of the most disgusting ways imaginable, reaching sizes that are just outright ridiculous. However, should the amount of mass he accumulates serve to become a burden, he can easily detach the growths from his body, leaving it to become larger and larger as time goes on.
This can benefit Thane twice over, for he can just as easily reattach himself should the need arise, or consume large portions of it for the purpose of healing injuries. While the growths that he detach from his body aren't particularly mobile, they are still capable of gradually spreading themselves to other areas of a certain location, closing off narrow passages, or waiting for an unfortunate victim to first venture in, before closing off both the entrance and exit ways.
Environmental Resistance: (8) When Thane uses flesh growth in conjunction with his ability to shape-shift, he can begin to generate his own supply of oxygen, and regulate his body heat to avoid freezing to death in space. This also works for high-temperature environments as well, for he could simply mimic the DNA of something adapted to survive such extreme conditions.
[i]Bio-Force:[/] Bio-Force is the the supernatural life-force which flows through all living creatures, comparable in nature to ki/qui/chi
History: Soran: a planet of extremes in every category, ranging from the biological, to the magical, to the chaotic weather patterns, and several moons that govern the planet's oceanic tides. In a world where Darwin's principles on predation, natural selection, and survival of the fittest reign supreme, few creatures are able to survive the harsh reality that is the world of Soran. In appearance, Soran resembles what Earth was like before humans inhabited it, and the creatures that make the planet their home embody what it was like to make a living on such a cruel world.
What races did manage to survive on Soran however, thrived, truly thrived: imagine plants that sustained themselves more from feeding on giant insects, and mammals than on water, the sun, and the soil. Parasites like the toxoplasma gondii, only the size of baseballs, able to latch onto large mammals, and manipulate them into getting themselves devoured by an even larger organism, for the sole purpose of finding a suitable breeding-ground. Cave-dwelling insects that ranged in size from infants to school buses, and the occasional building sized arachnids capable of spewing silk that rivaled the strength of most-known metals.
It was a biologist's dream, and a camper's worst nightmare.
To Thane, this was home-sweet-home. That all changed however, when Thane, and his brother Morbid found themselves kidnapped, and taken aboard an unknown space-ship, where a not-so-natural, not-to-mention malevolent entity managed to force Thane into participating in a war he had no business nor interest in, 'less his brother be executed using the arcane magics that the being possessed at his disposal. He had been tossed out of the ship with a few extra abilities given to him, and was immediately ordered to defend the ship from what appeared to be patrol cruisers sent in from the Red Technocracy.
While Thane had been successful in defeating the enemy, he was also successful in attracting one of the lesser known Sons of Idea: Dreadnaught. It was here, that Thane engaged in a truly epic battle against hordes of drones, and various other Val'Garan abominations. Though they weren't much of a threat individually, with their combined numbers they were able to subdue Thane, and take him into the fold, converting him into a member of the Val'Gara after Idea had finished reviewing both of his fights. Why the entity that had kidnapped Thane and his brother Morbid did nothing to stop this is currently unknown, but what is known is that the chances of Thane ever going back to his old life are slim to none.
He is The Stalker, the Val'Gara's ultimate predator.
Thread will be conducted under Hybrid-style rulings, as well as with a one month limitation between posts. The first break of this month time constraint will result in the non-offending party being given a crit post against the offending party. And so on, until the third time in which a kill post will be made. And all rewards given to the non-offending party.
To add further clarity to our agreement I am making an alteration to the time-limit which I did not agree to. Since this is a hybrid-style fight, and moreover since this is MY planet that's at stake, I am extending our time-limit to 2 months.
My first post (intro) will likely take less than 2 months, but once the actual fighting begins, expect the entirety of the two months to be consumed in full.
Just so you know, I will not be posting in this thread until Sea of Ignominy has concluded, as I do not engage in threads that take place in the future. It's bad form.
Distance decreased with every swish, slash, and sawing swing of the beast's tail--flesh, rock, and dirt rent apart as a mist that was sprayed across the edges of the gash left in its wake. The crimson particulates which spewed from his horns gathered, accumulated, and churned into a monstrous cloud of nanomachines, forming a stark contrast of color between it and the Fog which hovered above, foretelling the source of the violence which swam beneath the Lake of Flesh. Gradually, the cloud--guided along the air-currents by will alone, shaped itself a pair of wings, a lengthy tail appendage, horns, and a pair of crimson and sapphire eyes, creating a metal specter that roared at everything and discriminated against nothing.
It was angry. Far angrier than Megalodon and Amphriprioninae who, in their self-righteous fury, released a swarm of Brainscramblers through which they sought to cripple their foes minds. It was far more vindictive than Singar, whose face became a sneer as the runic strings he had erected as a barrier against psychic assault not only stood strong, but expanded and pushed back against the psionic shock-wave, the red text which composed it merging to form a solid wall of impenetrable red ether. Its insufferable rage far exceeded the petty paroxysm bellowed forth by the Will of Idea, whose presence was on Soran it tracked, chased, and encircled through not only its ley-lines, but the viridian scars which ran along his forelimbs.
Meanwhile, Disciple, as everyone else who had been too caught up in their personal vendettas answered the Herald and his Clownfish companion. "What I know is that he preserved what little was left of Colossus after the Stalker smashed our mother to pieces."
He said with mourning as he looked upon the rumbling Lake of Flesh. "I also know that you failed to prevent Mire from delivering the finishing blow when she crashed into our mother as well." He spoke again with a tone that betrayed his disappointment. "I know that I too have failed, for I was unable to anticipate these catastrophes, and therefore the burden of rectification falls upon my shoulders." The last words came out with a distinct aura of shame which ironically seemed to reinforce the Disciple's resolve.
It was with those last words, that the rock of Cocytus cracked, splintered, and collapsed in on itself, and the Vesuvian Storm thundered and struck at the debris, its viral lightning breaching the boulders depths, where it began to infect the Original Sinner who had been buried beneath the rubble.
The chaos had finally reached its climax point. During the time it took for the Heralds to plead with Disciple to change his mind, for the army of Brainscramblers to arise, and for Singar to defend himself against their psionic attack, the Raging Singularity had come to within a mile of the carnage, and was preparing to attack. With its head fully submerged within the rivers leading to the Lake of Flesh, the crackling sphere of magically empowered protons was utterly invisible within its jaws, the sheer amount of radiation it contained causing a cancerous onset to suddenly and malignantly afflict the area around it with mutagenic disease.
Without hesitation, Taluge-X careened his head in a vicious arc, rose its upper-body up out of the lake and fired a proton-wrapped beam of radioactive ether, that toxified the air as it was incinerated, vaporize all matter in its path, and drain all the electro-psionic energy emitted from the Brainscramblers into its own mass via mass via simple electromagnetic and electromagenetic attraction.
It was angry. Far angrier than Megalodon and Amphriprioninae who, in their self-righteous fury, released a swarm of Brainscramblers through which they sought to cripple their foes minds. It was far more vindictive than Singar, whose face became a sneer as the runic strings he had erected as a barrier against psychic assault not only stood strong, but expanded and pushed back against the psionic shock-wave, the red text which composed it merging to form a solid wall of impenetrable red ether. Its insufferable rage far exceeded the petty paroxysm bellowed forth by the Will of Idea, whose presence was on Soran it tracked, chased, and encircled through not only its ley-lines, but the viridian scars which ran along his forelimbs.
Meanwhile, Disciple, as everyone else who had been too caught up in their personal vendettas answered the Herald and his Clownfish companion. "What I know is that he preserved what little was left of Colossus after the Stalker smashed our mother to pieces."
He said with mourning as he looked upon the rumbling Lake of Flesh. "I also know that you failed to prevent Mire from delivering the finishing blow when she crashed into our mother as well." He spoke again with a tone that betrayed his disappointment. "I know that I too have failed, for I was unable to anticipate these catastrophes, and therefore the burden of rectification falls upon my shoulders." The last words came out with a distinct aura of shame which ironically seemed to reinforce the Disciple's resolve.
It was with those last words, that the rock of Cocytus cracked, splintered, and collapsed in on itself, and the Vesuvian Storm thundered and struck at the debris, its viral lightning breaching the boulders depths, where it began to infect the Original Sinner who had been buried beneath the rubble.
The chaos had finally reached its climax point. During the time it took for the Heralds to plead with Disciple to change his mind, for the army of Brainscramblers to arise, and for Singar to defend himself against their psionic attack, the Raging Singularity had come to within a mile of the carnage, and was preparing to attack. With its head fully submerged within the rivers leading to the Lake of Flesh, the crackling sphere of magically empowered protons was utterly invisible within its jaws, the sheer amount of radiation it contained causing a cancerous onset to suddenly and malignantly afflict the area around it with mutagenic disease.
Without hesitation, Taluge-X careened his head in a vicious arc, rose its upper-body up out of the lake and fired a proton-wrapped beam of radioactive ether, that toxified the air as it was incinerated, vaporize all matter in its path, and drain all the electro-psionic energy emitted from the Brainscramblers into its own mass via mass via simple electromagnetic and electromagenetic attraction.
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