[center][h2]Terminal Gambit[/h2]
[i]2+ years in the writing
BBeast, Cyclone, Muttonhawk, Rtron[/i][/center]

[hider=Wait, where were we again?]
Long ago, [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/3796521]Zephyrion was banished to Chronos.[/url] His isolation was interrupted by the [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/3833419]plane-destroying battle between Jvan and Vowzra,[/url] forcing Zephyrion on a desperate jaunt through the Mechanism of Change. The turbulent journey split Zephyrion into three entities: The meditatively creative Zephyrion, the enigmatically prophetic Aihtiraq, and the murderously destructive Xos/Zyus, who was the dominant personality. [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4293834]They forged the Primordial Spark,[/url] a destructive source of limitless power, which Xos used to wage war on Galbar, vowing vengeance against the gods who failed to stop Zephyrion’s banishment and to bring a new age of desolation.

First [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4293834]Xos murdered Kyre,[/url] who confronted Xos when he silently approached Galbar, and hid the remains in the Shattered Plains. Yet Aihtiraq witnessed the murder and [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4298934]warned Toun[/url], while also sharing the circumstances of Zephyrion’s "death". Toun took it as his personal quest to track down and stop Xos, preventing further divine deaths (including Xos’) at any cost.

[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4361724]Toun called Teknall into his quest[/url] and charged him with constructing a suitable prison for Xos. Toun then [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4396317]enlisted Logos[/url] for aid, who forged from himself the Pleroma Plate, armour of impossible durability. Logos was not told of the plans Toun had made with Teknall, though. [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4406275]Teknall got the specifications for the Tesseract from Chiral Phi[/url], which Teknall and Toun used to construct [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4419732]the Tomb Weaver,[/url] a hyperdimensional needle. [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4472099]Toun then set out to follow Xos’ trail,[/url] discovering Xos’ name and that Xos was influencing the djinn somehow.

Meanwhile, [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4404318]Xos confronted Ventus[/url] in the Celestial Citadel for stealing Zephyrion’s power. He destroyed Ventus, sundered the Celestial Citadel, and carried the uppermost spire (which contained a scrying mirror) to greater heights. [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4453082]Vestec,[/url] who had discovered Kyre’s remains, sought out Zephyrion in the Celestial Citadel. Xos attacked Vestec, eating his arm, and Vestec fled with mortal injuries. [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4528501]Teknall responded[/url] to Vestec’s cries for help, healing his injuries and building him a prosthetic arm. Toun, following Xos’ trail, came to Vestec. They hatched a plan: Vestec would wield the Tomb Weaver against Xos (with some conditions) to deflect Logos’ suspicions. Vestec was given the Tomb Weaver, ready to appear when called.

[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4594381]Xos called Murmur,[/url] the sound elemental, to become his new Vizier and enlist more djinn to his crusade. A vicious civil war emerged between the elementals with mortalkind caught in between. Eventually, Teknall arranged to rally more of the djinn against Xos and his lieutenant Slag, [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4670784]enlisting a benevolent fire djinn named Catharsos.[/url] [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4771676]Slag, however, was weakened by Isonymph after destroying the Sky City of Metera.[/url]

At this time, [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4594381]Xos attacked Jvan,[/url] against whom he had a special grudge. The fight ended in a stalemate, with Xos resolving to attack Metera and Oevadis instead. Jvan sent recordings of the fight to the other gods. [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4608323]Toun then tracked Xos to another planet.[/url] There Xos ambushed Toun and Toun fled. In the aftermath Aihtiraq visited Toun with three prophecies: that Xos will slay one more, that Aihtiraq will reclaim from Xos something he stole, and that Aihtiraq will extinguish himself but something new will dawn. [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4608406]Toun and Teknall then met up to exchange intelligence[/url] before resuming the hunt.

[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4616738]Xos found Lazarus.[/url] In exchange for sowing atheism among dwarven refugees, Lazarus told Xos that in order to create he must calm his mind (for Xos cannot create). Lazarus also told Xos of the weaknesses of his enemies, including that Teknall had offspring.

[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4718914]Teknall visited Ilunabar and Kinesis[/url] in Pictaraika to discuss the threat which Xos posed. He warned Kinesis to lay low. He and Ilunabar also made a device to track where the scrying mirror in the Celestial Citadel was looking.

[url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4777488]Xos, meanwhile, had returned to Caelum,[/url] Zephyrion’s planet he had taken with him from Chronos. There he used what he had learned from Lazarus to make a corporeal form for himself. He then persuaded Zephyrion to come with him to Galbar.

By sending elementals to target Kinesis, [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4777494]Xos managed to bait Teknall into the open and ambush him.[/url] Although Teknall weathered a direct blast from the Primordial Spark for record time, Xos eventually overpowered and nearly killed him. Miraculously, [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4838207]Teknall was revived[/url] by the combined efforts of Toun, Ilunabar, Kinesis, and Conata and a little assistance from Aihtiraq. (Aihtiraq also hinted that Xos may be fated to consume himself through self-loathing.) Teknall was left partially [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4838208]crippled,[/url] though. He and his daughters [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4870225]gave Goliath some substantial upgrades[/url] to compensate.

Toun had meanwhile continued the hunt, after [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4838208]a brief diversion[/url] to do a favour for Aihtiraq. As Toun closed in on Xos, Teknall created [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4885814]the Hyperspatial Barrier[/url], a mobile shield specially designed to block the Primordial Spark. He hands it to Goliath to give to Toun. He also deployed spy satellites to watch for Xos.

All parties are rapidly closing in on Xos and they have [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4725368]power to burn.[/url]
[/hider]

Against the speckled black of space above Galbar, Toun's clay robe floated heavily about him like hair under flowing water. It betrayed his stillness and hid his predatory gaze. So still he hung on the planet's gravity that he could hear – [i]smell[/i] – his quarry through the vacuum. The acrid black smoke between the stars.

Ahead, between the curving planet and a metal speck of orbital sensors crafted by Teknall, was the crumbling turret claiming the last vestiges of Zephyrion's [i]Celestial Citadel[/i]. Therein containing Ilunabar's spy mirror. Curse it. This was its lair. Toun watched, his hands creaking tight around the haft of his porcelain spear. He watched with his one blue eye and his gambit in mind.

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

Motes of dust and pulverised stone drifted in weightlessness through a desolate, floorless hallway open to the planet far below. The walls were cracked and all the more lifeless for their deathly white hue, and there was no sign of life. There wasn’t even the faintest of sounds now that the Celestial Citadel had crested Galbar’s heavens and ascended to airless heights.

A projectile arced up from the wispy clouds below and rocketed up with deadly precision, tumbling and reorienting itself once the glinting spires came within view. It was a massive stone, and it struck squarely upon a wall and half-demolished an entire room within the ruined alcazar. The stone was shattered amongst the cloud of floating dust.

The destruction was no matter, for the stone had been a mere vessel for something greater. The Vizier Murmur, djinni lord of sound, had abandoned the vessel’s medium and transferred himself into the very walls of that hallowed place while he awaited his master’s arrival.

While hosting the living explosion, the walls faintly resounded to the tune of Murmur’s rhythm and his impatience; but alas, there was only one soul – or rather, a piece of it – around to hear his song and cower. Zephyrion waited in the highest chamber of the spire, where Ilunabar’s magical seeing-mirror rested beneath the colossal gemstone that adorned the tower’s top and bestowed the fortress with flight.

From the heart of the decrepit divine, a gentle breeze spilled forth. In the days of old, the god’s very presence conjured an unyielding storm. Still, even this remnant of his power was enough to fill at least that one chamber with a thin air, windows and all, and so Murmur extended half his body out from the marbled floor and walls.

[color=Khaki]"Lord Zephyrion,"[/color] the new Vizier spoke, [color=Khaki]"I would have you know that I did not seek this station, nor turn against noble Ventus."[/color]

[b][color=Gold]"Lo! Ye, the true, the brave, ye who remain here in the orts of mine own demesne, claim no treason? When the first of mine seed was cast down and Zyus searched for a replacement, ye answered his summons and accepted this lofty station."[/color][/b]

He did not deny it. 

[color=Khaki]"Just so."[/color]

And [i]he[/i] did not stomach it.

[b][color=Gold]"Just so,"[/color][/b] the god spat back, breath tainted with vitriol.

The two of them were silent thereafter.

When it finally came, the Shadow’s sudden arrival was more subtle than Murmur’s. There was an almost imperceptible sense of dread, a surge of divine power, and then a rift from which Xos emerged.

[color=Khaki]"My lord,"[/color] the Vizier greeted him. Yet Xos had been looking to his brother, who returned the look with only baleful silence.

[color=Khaki]"I must compliment this new mien. The enemy will tremble when they behold you."[/color]

[color=00FF7F]"Hmph."[/color] The dark god looked down, sparing a moment to admire his own handiwork and simulacrum. His armor and robes, black as the void between stars, were now also like supple putty before his will and adamant against the feeble blows of any adversary. Terrible was the Shade’s look, to match his withering aura. 

Yes, he thought that Teknall [i]had[/i] trembled upon his arrival. [color=00FF7F]"My might has grown, and in more ways than you can observe. I have spent the past days tracking a precious thing, and I have found it. It will be most useful in the work to come: as things stand, I believe Teknall either dead or mortally wounded. Like Toun, I drew him out into a trap, but the crafter [i]predictably[/i] did not fare so well in a [i]real[/i] contest of strength."[/color]

Zephyrion was aghast. Teknall, this ruined citadel's creator, struck down.

Fortunately, Murmur was enthralled by his master’s words, and Xos likewise enjoyed his gloating too much to spare any notice.

[color=00FF7F]"But the others would surely be wise to such ruses by now. So I would burn the tumor that is Jvan, bit by bit, until it is small and weak enough to be torn out completely. Firstly, a direct assault on Jvan’s bastion in space…"[/color]

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

[colour=Peru][i]He's arrived, Toun, with company. Shall I strike now?[/i][/colour]

Toun's eye flashed in space and then narrowed. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"[i]You[/i] will stay put, brother. Your daughters may have revived you, but it was by small chance Xos had not obliterated you entirely. Convalesce in safety."[/b][/colour] He huffed to himself. Teknall could at least send his Goliath instead, if he was so eager to make use of his new barrier. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"I sense him. Shortly, he shall sense me in turn."[/b][/colour]

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

[b][color=Gold]"This plan is folly, nay, anathema to reason,"[/color][/b] Zephyrion at last spat, [b][color=Gold]"Teknall and even Vestec were dear to me, and I counted them among my friends and loyal…"[/color][/b]

He stammered, struggling for words.

[color=00FF7F]"Lapdogs? I inherited your memory, brother – or at least pieces of it. I remember their derision and looks well, and they shall mark as much on my countenance when I butcher them in the sight of mortals, djinn, and their peers!"[/color]

[b][color=Gold]"…[i]disciples[/i], perhaps. Errant little siblings too foolish to see my wisdom, not some twisted enemies. Do you not recall Teknall laying the divine stones of this very palace?"[/color][/b]

[color=00FF7F]"An empty gesture that means even less now than it did those aeons ago. Let his blood be the mortar of a terrible new fortress."[/color]

[b][color=Gold]"You kill them all for what, pride? Amusement?"[/color][/b]

[color=00FF7F]"I kill them because their mere existence is an affront to us. I am the God of slaying gods; these doubts of yours are unbecoming, and besides, it’s [i]far[/i] too late to stray the path. Even now, I sense that one of the wretches skulks outside."[/color]

But the skulker's voyeurism had ceased.

Zephyrion pointedly turned towards one of the balconies looking out over the planet. Easing onto its cracked tiled floor was Toun, elegantly transitioning from a weightless hover to a determined gait, heedless of the rushing gas pushing against him. He had his eye only for Xos and his spear held behind in one hand. He stopped and threw Zephyrion a brief, ambiguous glance.

[b][color=Gold]"Toun!"[/color][/b] Zephyrion started. But then further words were not forthcoming. What was there to say? How could he even begin to speak?

Toun, though usually one to castigate at every turn, was wordless. Dangerously wordless.

Xos still faced Zephyrion and did not even deign to spare the porcelain god a glance.

[color=00FF7F]"Found your courage?"[/color] Xos sneered. The words were probably addressed to Toun on that balcony behind him, but his empty gaze was transfixed onto Zephyrion. It bored into him, searching. Xos was displeased with the emotions he saw in his brother.


Toun's eye flashed. First slowly, and then speeding to a snap, his spear found both his hands and was pointed forward. Toun kicked off the floor with a shockwave behind him.

Xos turned.

A deep, echoing voice spoke in the same instant. It was neither Toun nor Xos.

[b]"I have found your end."[/b]

A bewildered spin brought Xos around just in time to witness the heavens themselves rippling through a great window. A figure emerged from the void between stars, light itself bending around to conceal his winged form. His light-eating blade swung towards Xos' helmet, and the Shade’s movement left only enough measure for the divine sword to find his torso instead of its intended target. Its insurmountable edge cleaved through armor and inky flesh alike. 

Xos was cleanly bisected from the shoulder down to the waist.

Toun’s spear struck Xos with as much effect as his diversion could have been expected to; the point of feeble porcelain had shattered upon contact with the sable metal.

Still, an otherworldly, agonized howl echoed out from somewhere within the murderer god’s helmet. Toun tsked. Xos was still very much alive. He cast off his helmet with enough force for it to strike Toun and send him stumbling backwards, then sloughed out of the rest of his shell of armor. A viscous, inky mass remained from the clattering plates. The two soupy halves of Xos, little more than black ichor, congealed within a heartbeat. They recombined. Now the Shade stood even taller, his horrific form bared, his wrathful visage all the more terrifying. He regarded his sword-slashing ambusher with an unflinching, baleful glare.


The ambusher was two white lights peering back at Xos from a divinely wrought helmet between two great, feathered wings. Their gaze had a weight of inevitability almost as heavy as the gloss-edged black Pleroma Plate cladding him, his cold gaze almost betraying his disgust. The sword of Singularity burned the very space to black at his side. Logos – the king god of order – was returned. The blade turned to slash again.

And just as soon, the wounded Xos cast him away with more force and fury than mortal eyes or minds would ever be able to grasp: As Logos closed the distance, Xos split his own flesh to produce the Primordial Spark from where it had been hidden within. From that wellspring of magic surged forth an endless tide of power that crackled in Xos' grasp. Xos threw an opened palm out to strike Logos squarely upon his breastplate. The self-proclaimed King of Gods tried to sever the shooting hand with a cut of his sword, but the humming Singularity barely moved too slowly.

In that small area before Xos’ hand, space itself expanded at a physics-breaking speed. The energy marshalled by Xos was intended not to burn or shatter as was his usual wont, but to push and expand. In an instant, Logos, the window that he’d stepped through, three balconies, and half of that entire wall of the Celestial Citadel were expelled at a speed far faster than even that of light, tiny lengths of space erupting so fast and in such unimaginable quantities that even the spaces between atoms became great enough to rip molecules apart. All that remained of the bits of air and stone hurled out was a fine trail of particles that extended for lightyears. But, some ineffable power of Logos or his armor had spared him from being torn asunder. Xos could sense that much.  

Despite his best efforts, the dark god shuddered and heaved. Black blood spilled out of his maw. Logos’ cheap blow had done more harm than appearances had first suggested. It only took a moment’s reprieve for him to recover enough to tell the vermin in his presence just what he thought. [color=00FF7F]"Hmph. The so-called King of the Gods cannot match me!"[/color] he spat, [color=00FF7F]"...I will enjoy ripping your crownless king asunder! You hear me, Toun? [i]Zephyrion?![/i] You’ll never find all of his pieces! I shall hack and tear and cleave until nothing remains of the wretch! His Natural Order will be burnt away!"[/color]

Spittle and blood flew as Xos wildly raved, the droplets burning holes through the alabaster-white floor where they landed. He held the Spark up high and drank from the fount of its power, reinvigorating himself. The thing's radiance was still blinding, almost bright enough to give substance to Xos’ shadowy mass. And yet.

Teknall’s voice commented in the back of Toun’s mind. [colour=Peru][i]The Spark is… dimmer. Perhaps he’s drained its power somehow? He’s done something amiss, anyway. I’ll run a proper analysis on the spectrum.[/i][/colour]

Toun glowered as he silently responded. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b][i]"Perhaps your analysis can explain why he still thinks he may prevail?"[/i][/b][/colour] He flicked his spear down and a new point shot from its end as if telescoping from the broken haft. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b][i]"Xos is no fool. Logos was not harmed by him and yet he believes himself capable of more."[/i][/b][/colour]


Meanwhile, Zephyrion pleaded with the shade out loud. [b][color=Gold]"Always did I contemn that Pretender’s arrogance, his claim to lord over us all; Logos deserves your scorn and wrath more than any other. Cast him down, but spare the others!"[/color][/b]

Toun glanced back at Zephyrion. His eye rounded in a shock of reality he had obscured to himself until now. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"I wished you were alive, brother,"[/b][/colour] he said with a sincerity unexpected even by himself. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Now I wish you were better than this. Have you no idea what he has done?"[/b][/colour] 

It was only then that Xos finally cast a glance towards Toun. No mockery remained in his mien now; only lethal intent. In one hand he still clutched the Spark, smoking fingers like a cage spindly around it as he drank from the fountain of might. His other black hand moved in some gesticulation so quickly that it was only a blur, and then by the dark god’s power Ilunabar’s mirror (still miraculously intact) was wrenched from its place atop a cloud of magical vapors. He flung the whole thing at Toun.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b][i]"Vestec! Must I signal you again!?"[/i][/b][/colour]

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

Spiralling, chaotic tumbling within a nimbus of seething radiation and tortured space. Unbefitting of one such as Logos. He stretched out his wings and order returned in an instant. Logos stood unmoving like an anchor in the starscape. The excess energy from Xos' attack radiated off the outside of the Pleroma plate, equilibrating with the void.

As Logos' eyes scanned the foreign starscape, he had a brief moment for reflection. This Xos, this shadow of Zephyrion, had delivered a mighty blow, but not beyond his preparations. It was power that could shatter planets. Logos was familiar with such power. But Xos wielded it crudely, immaturely. Through making an example of Xos, Logos would show the others why [i]he[/i] was the only true King.

He found a wake of stretched spacetime, the trail that had been left by Xos’ blow. With a single beat of his wings, he crossed the vast distance back to Galbar.

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

Time crystallized in the tower, stretching the moment to infinity.

[b]"Power belongs to those who know how to wield it, child."[/b]

With a wave of his hand, Logos compressed gravity and tensed space. The moment of frozen time snapped, and the pent up force struck Xos. Through some clever manipulation of the Primordial Spark he deflected some of it, and even that tiny amount of recoil was devastating to the surroundings. Ilunabar’s mirror, still in mid-flight towards its target of Toun, was shattered into a million pieces of jagged shrapnel. Only its divine nature spared it from being utterly vaporized. Toun shielded his eye with his forearm and found his form blasted back to the balcony he arrived through.

Even the bulk of Zephyrion’s halituous form was sent hurtling away. [b][color=Gold]"Woe and wanion!"[/color][/b] Zephyrion cursed at Logos, or Xos, or perhaps even the world itself. He flailed, but whatever vestiges of power that the First Storm still clung to were not enough to rebuff the explosive force, to the disappointment of none.

By some inexplicable means, Xos’ discarded armor held fastly and clung to the floor where it’d been cast even as the entire remnant of the Celestial Citadel began tumbling. And as for Xos, for all the power that had recoiled off of him and his terrible weapon, he was still flung unceremoniously down towards the great blue orb that was Galbar.

Toun slowed to a stop and reoriented to observe the aftermath. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b][i]"Teknall, is our brother Vestec an accomplice to this mayhem? WHERE IS HE!?!"[/i][/b][/colour]

[colour=Peru][i]I can’t spot him on my sensors. I’d bet he’s waiting for a time of maximum inconvenience to make his dramatic entrance. Oi, Vestec! Hurry up or you’ll miss the show![/i][/colour]

Furious, Toun's limbs grew and folded in extra joints. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b][i]"Argh! Is this the time he chooses to subvert his own promises!? When the murderer-!?!"[/i][/b][/colour]

There was a cataclysmic shining explosion, and Galbar’s sky bled and was awash in crimson light.

Toun had been still too long, he realised. He held his spear in preparation to travel down, only to find his direct path blocked by an unexpected foe. Xos' own discarded armour stood in full form.

The porcelain god's smooth face sneered. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Stand aside, elemental. My family's lives are not worth your impudence!"[/b][/colour]

The armor buckled, bent, and deformed as it shambled closer with disjointed steps. The Vizier had somehow entered it; his flicker reverberated through every bit of the ebony metal, animating it with uncanny spasms.

[color=Khaki]"You’ve thrown your lives away with this futile plot,"[/color] Murmur proclaimed. The air was sparse and too thin to breathe, but the djinni lord’s voice thundered through the stone floor. There was no further warning – in the next instant, Murmur threw himself forward, the armor itself grasping hold of the Porcelain Sire.

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Xos tore through the stratosphere at relativistic speeds, but he had been buffeted by winds far greater than this, gales more violent than the blow that had cast him out of the Citadel just then, forces more terrible than anything that the likes of Logos and his ilk could ever hope to muster. They were fleas compared to the mindless, chaotic, raging fury of the Mechanism of Change, and he had a way to show them – a portal to that place rested right there in his palm. Its burning winds spilled forth.

Zephyrion’s Shade discharged a pulse of energy downward from the Spark, levelling a few meaningless mountains and villages on the surface below in order to quickly negate most of his velocity. Once he’d finished arresting his motion and arrived at a stable float, he released the Spark from his grasp and allowed it to float in the space between his two hands. Wrenching it further open, he expanded the mote to a few thousand times its size, from a pinprick to an orb as large as his own head. It still glowed with the fury of a star, and indeed it would have scorched Galbar like a second sun were it not for Xos’ own shadowy mass incidentally shielding the planet’s surface as he put himself between the two, moving the orb to his breast and leaning back so as to point it at the distant heights of the Celestial Citadel.

Clouds all around him were suddenly transformed into raging infernos as the molecules of water vapor were split into hydrogen and oxygen, then left to violently recombine – collateral damage from what discharge was now erupting from the widened Spark.

Even through frozen time, Logos’ musings on power had reached Xos, and the dark god had spent the last few moments ruminating upon them. [color=00FF7F]"I couldn’t agree more,"[/color] he laughed across the sky and space, right into Logos’ hearing. [color=00FF7F]"Witness it!"[/color]

A ray of divine energy, twisted by Xos’ destructive aspect and malevolence, beamed towards Logos and the Celestial Citadel.

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[colour=Peru][i]Death ray incoming,[/i][/colour] announced Teknall's voice to both Toun and Logos.

Logos cast a dispassionate glance to Galbar and Xos below. He flicked Singularity and projected a spell of knotted gravity. As Xos' ray ascended from Galbar, it lensed around the concentrated lump of gravity, was deflected by a few degrees, and sailed past the Celestial Citadel, past the ring of ice and rock girding Galbar, and into the void. All the palace and its inhabitants suffered was a wave of heat from the near miss.

On Galbar below, the burst of incandescent air stopped growing, contained by a faint ring of blue light. [colour=Peru][i]Please try to keep the fight off Galbar,[/i][/colour] Teknall whimpered.

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Cast out from his own dilapidated bastion, Zephyrion flailed about. The whirling winds that made up his body had been near totally flayed away by the violence of the blast, but now his essence seized at the rarified air all around. He drew it into himself, a living squall once more, and with that mass was able to exert some drag and finally arrest his own motion. He regained his sense of orientation, and with a start, beheld the Celestial Citadel in the distance at nearly his own altitude. It was falling faster and faster as the last traces of the enchantment that had held it aloft for countless eons were broken, the magic fading not in one singular puff but more as a drawn-out sigh.

Zephyrion watched in mute shock, unable to move and scarcely able to think. He had neither eyes nor ears, but his divine perception was still sharp enough to sense the ongoing struggle even from afar.

When the armor fell upon Toun, Zephyrion could see his brother's senses were assaulted. The sable metal was deathly cold. It leeched warmth and life alike with its mere touch, and in their place it left emptiness and traces of Xos’ withering aspect. Its guest brought the indescribable tumult that resonated through the armor, into Toun’s body, and into his mind. Vibrations with a force terminal to mortals and frenzying or fainting to other beings lesser than a god rang out in a maddening din. Toun’s divinity spared him, though the insufferable noise was still distracting. That was all the Vizier could truly hope to do.


Toun brought back his spear in one hand and drove its point into the pauldron of the armor, but the brittle tip shattered feebly. Even if it had pierced the metal, what could it have done to the living explosion puppeteering it? The suit’s appendages flailed, a gauntlet striking at Toun’s face. Words of conviction cut through the deafening cacophony, [color=Khaki]"The master is invincible! His might ineffable, His triumph inevitable! By His will, Galbar will be remade!"[/color]

The words struck Toun in a place Murmur may not have been aiming for. From where his face was struck to the side, he slowly turned his unharmed head back to the helmet of Murmur's armour. The clay around his one eye crackled outward with enraged carmine fractures, and he bellowed into Murmur's consciousness. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"You speak of a [i]brother of mine![/i]"[/b][/colour] The words ended with Toun taking the haft of his broken spear up from below and bodily lifting the armour up and over his head, twisting to slam it against the remaining floor of the chamber. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Not entropy itself! He is my [i]kin![/i]"[/b][/colour]

In that moment, distant Zephyrion at last steeled his resolve. He breathed in deeply, drawing in a great bulk of air, and then exhaled it behind himself so as to rocket through the sky. The clouds, still far below, bore witness to the crashing spire and its ancient lord’s desperate pursuit.

Back within the Celestial Citadel, Xos’ animated armor suffered not so much as even a scratch from Toun’s spear; however, the blow squeezed out just an ounce of the foul magic that had gone into the plate’s making, and that was enough for a patch of the floor below to be shattered into pieces so fine as to be dust. That was no matter; the tower’s rapid descent imbued them all with weightlessness, so next they reorientated so as to make the once-ceiling their new floor and carry on the fight. Stone dust filled the air. A wave of white marble-sand struck Toun in the face, carried by the Vizier’s cackling. [color=Khaki]"And what does that matter? He’ll kill you all the same! He’d sooner die himself than suffer the thought that anyone could rival His might!"[/color]


Though it was unbreaking, the armor [i]could[/i] be deformed. Murmur’s reverberations warped one ebony metal gauntlet into a wicked spike, then plunged it toward Toun’s exposed eye. Toun grabbed the spike an inch before its target without even a shiver.

[color=Khaki]"And yet He cannot die,"[/color] the thousand-thousand year old lord of thunder insisted, screaming through the spike. [color=Khaki]"Your fate is bound to Him, your demise the only possible outcome."[/color]

Toun's blue eye grew manic. Again, his retorts ran silent for a telling time. The cracks around his eye grew to encompass his cheek, forehead, and the smoothed over place where an ear would have been.

But Murmur was no god. The eye narrowed and shone brighter. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"You are incorrect,"[/b][/colour] Toun whispered deafeningly back to Murmur's mind. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"He [i]must[/i] not die."[/b][/colour]

A porcelain foot cracked into the armor at the shoulder joint, sending the cuirass and the rest of the suit flying away from the spike-formed arm Toun held. It tumbled off without slowing and hit a wall, Murmur’s deleterious form pulverizing the structure behind as though the impact had been meteoric in its power. The suit sheared cleanly through the alabaster stone and spun wildly as it tumbled away into the vacuum of space, but Murmur remained undefeated, for the Celestial Citadel itself groaned as he moved through it.

Cracks and fissures erupted all along the ruined floor, forking like branching lightning towards Toun. Masonry and tile flexed and warped as though they were rubber, and from the growing cracks erupted stone dust fine and pale as flour. Through his feet, Toun heard the elemental’s mockery, [color=Khaki]"So what? You think He can be [i]contained?[/i]"[/color] The rhythm of the Vizier’s voice quickened with laughter. [color=Khaki]"The hubris to think that [i]you[/i] might be His [i]jailer[/i]! The mere thought of Him erodes your will and cracks your feeble shell. More seemly is the thought that [i]He[/i] would imprison you, if only that He might enjoy your droll demise for that much longer. But fear not; I doubt that His humor is so great as to deny you the grace of swift oblivion."[/color]


[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"My jailor?"[/b][/colour] Toun would have sneered if he could. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Wasted words. I should have crushed you rather-..."[/b][/colour] Toun's senses prickled above his head.

From outside, a familiar voice called out, [b][color=Gold]"He comes!"[/color][/b]

And in the very next moment, oblivion closed in.

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

Perturbations in the physics of his immediate vicinity offered Logos a heartbeat’s warning before Xos tore his way through spacetime. He, and the much-expanded Spark within his left palm, seemed to erupt out of nothingness. Once again amongst them within the Celestial Citadel, Xos immediately began a renewed assault upon Logos: he held the Primordial Spark out before his body, but did not unleash another mere beam of energy. For all his crudeness and brutality he had a murderous instinct and had seen the need to adapt. Just as a spear’s thrust could be easily sidestepped or parried, mere beams of energy had proven easy enough for Logos to deflect.

So with dizzying speed his right hand struck the Spark in scything motions. Each time his shadowy mass sliced into the blinding mote, it unleashed a pulse of energy that surged outwards in a two-dimensional plane parallel with the hand. Dozens, scores, hundreds of pulses he hurled at Logos, the planes coming to test his guard along every conceivable angle like slashing swords. Logos was a competent swordsman and parried many with Singularity, but many more of these waves of energy struck true. The resulting energy rocked the Celestial Citadel. Where Logos had set it into a lurch, the great spire was now tipping even further and threatening to come onto its side.

But the Pleroma Plate weathered each blow like a cliffside rebuffing the tide’s waves; through widening the target area of his attacks, Xos had diminished the strength behind each strike. It would take aeons to weather away the armor with such paltry splashing.

Yet Xos did not have aeons. A swing of Singularity cleaved a path through the planes of chaotic energy. With a grunt and two beats of his wings, Logos forced his way past Xos’s barrage, energy scattering off his star metal armour until he was within sword’s reach of Xos. There he lashed out at Xos with Singularity, only for the blade to cut at nothingness. The Shade vanished. Into nothingness he had slipped, and back out he returned. Now suddenly behind Logos, Xos fired a concentrated beam from the Primordial Spark before Logos could even spin about. He targeted the backside of his foe’s armor in the hopes that it would be weaker there, but the beam only flowered out over the Pleroma Plate, deflected into scattered flames of chaos. The manifestation of Order did not suffer errors or imperfections in his artifice, it seemed.

[color=00FF7F]"Your handiwork impresses,"[/color] Xos admitted. Logos answered with a slash that might have severed his foe’s head, but Xos raised the Spark; it sputtered, and from its mere hiccup erupted a shockwave potent enough to throw back Logos’ arm, and Singularity with it, mid-swing. [color=00FF7F]"But did you really think it would be enough?"[/color]

Crowning that highest room and greatest spire of the Celestial Citadel was a great gemstone that Zephyrion had imbued with his power so long ago. That crystal, enchanted with the divine wind of a god, had held an entire fortress aloft and defied gravity for thousands of years, but no longer. It took Xos a mere instant to succeed in what the late Ventus had attempted, siphoning the jewel of its power. It shattered and exploded violently. The ceiling above was torn asunder, with mortar, shattered bricks, and shards of the crystal flying everywhere as shrapnel. The floor and the surrounding rooms below, all that was left of the spire, began to tumble wildly and descend into a long freefall as Galbar’s pull inexorably dragged them down. None of that mattered in the moment, of course, for the surroundings were so laden with power that space itself seemed to shimmer golden and distort like the warm air above a great fire.

Now, in that magic-drenched place, reality itself was almost a slave to Xos’ will. He unleashed the Primordial Spark’s full fury as a concentrated ray, and Logos prepared to deflect it like he had done before, but this time was different – it did not simply travel as a straight and predictable beam, but writhed and twisted like a snake. There was nowhere to dodge as space itself bent to Xos’ will, fighting against Logos’ own command over physics, and filled every direction with the beam. With an imperious shout, Logos subjugated the space around him. The physical congruities – the very relationships from point to point to point – bent around him and connected across imperceptible dimensions. When he twisted just as the beam closed in, Logos moved in a [i]new[/i] direction and out of harm’s way.

The omnidirectional beam, free of its original target, barrelled through the Celestial Citadel towards where the porcelain god was wrestling with Murmur. Yet Xos' attention was wholly on Logos.

[color=00FF7F]"No barrier of yours can stop my coming,"[/color] Xos proclaimed, [color=00FF7F]"and no trickery will let you evade my grasp for long."[/color]

The Shade reached into the very Fabric of Being and grabbed at the threads, ripping and pulling. A fifth dimension came unfurled, and then a sixth, and in the bubble of maddening and incomprehensible space that he had created, Xos maneuvered with all the grace of a giant stomping through a marsh’s muck. He and his Spark were so energetic that they needed no agility, not when every contour or obstacle in their way was seared out of existence.

More beams shot towards Logos like lances, from unknowable directions that mere eyes could not even comprehend. That was no longer the only threat, though; in his recklessness, Xos had torn a hole in the Tapestry of Creation that the gods had wrought in the beginning of time, and through this hole peered eyes from a lower, baser place, another layer of cloth inextricably tied to the first and yet meant to be forever separate.

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]
 
While Toun had been watching Murmur echo through the floor beneath his feet, Xos was pouring immeasurable power into the surrounding space. Toun glanced up from the vexing djinni to see dark lightning from the Primordial Spark close in from every direction.

Suddenly, the furious roar of the Primordial Spark was replaced by bright blue light and a dampened crackle. Appearing with this sanctuary was a newcomer: a set of adamantine armour wrapped in distorted light with four legs and six arms, each holding a weapon. The figure pivoted at the waist to face Toun, staring at him with four glowing red eyes and revealing a circle radiating burning heat in the centre of its chest.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"The Goliath,"[/b][/colour] Toun said, distracted.

The friendly voice which issued from the robot was at complete odds with its menacing appearance. [colour=Peru][b]"The Barrier works,"[/b][/colour] said Teknall’s voice, with the robot Goliath pointing over its shoulder to the dome of blue light surrounding them. Outside, the fury of the Primordial Spark continued to arc against the Hyperspatial Barrier, which blazed white and blue but did not yield. Though Goliath’s face was expressionless, Teknall’s voice suggested a proud grin.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"So it would…seem."[/b][/colour] Some of the cracks around Toun's eye receded, but not all of them. His gaze darted around the energy ahead of them. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"But that magnitude. That…encompassing across energies."[/b][/colour] Toun's voice took on a quiet quiver. He had all but forgotten about Murmur behind him. There was disgust and fear. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"There is something there between Xos and Logos. Peering. Aching."[/b][/colour]

Goliath was silent for an uncomfortably long moment.

[color=Khaki]"You see only the ghost of a shadow; a singular facet of His incomprehensible might,"[/color] the bothersome Vizier boomed from below. He was entirely ignored.

The Spark had stopped hammering against Teknall's barrier, but that only revealed a greater horror unfolding beyond. Toun was struck out of his rumination when the blue bubble surrounding them folded up into a point in Goliath's palm.

Goliath floated forwards and pressed the blue mote into Toun's hand. [colour=Peru][b]"Go. I'll handle the elemental."[/b][/colour] Goliath's other five hands armed and aimed their weapons. 

Toun closed his spindly white hand around the barrier and spared Goliath a glance. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Mind Zephyrion. He is without and seeking ingress, despite his frailty."[/b][/colour] Toun gave a small nod, before shifting himself so suddenly into the greater fray as to cause specks of masonry dust to shoot away from his wake.

Murmur scoffed. [color=Khaki]"We have a score to settle, Artificer! You slew my lieutenant, but you’ll find me more formidable than Anshal!"[/color]

A compressional wave of energy surged through the stone floor at the speed of sound, racing for Goliath’s feet. With a small hop Goliath floated off the floor and its shimmering aura of reflective force effortlessly deflected the fraction of the shockwave which made it through the air. Goliath swung down a glaive edged with fire like the heart of a star, slicing through the floor to intercept the shockwave, but Murmur was not there.

[colour=Peru][b]"One thing I despise about you elementals is your hubris,"[/b][/colour] Teknall growled as Goliath’s weapons scanned around it. [colour=Peru][b]"Galbar will be a safer place without the likes of you."[/b][/colour] One of the railguns snapped to attention and, with a hypervelocity adamantine slug, gouged a deep furrow into the floor. The shot was answered with a vengeful barrage of broken tiles, which bounced harmlessly off Goliath’s Mirror Armour.

A great chunk of the floor was then torn away, the freshly liberated ton of masonry propelled towards Goliath. Goliath answered the projectile with Teknall’s Maul, the hammer smashing and deflecting the great chunk of stone. The shattered masonry lazily rolled upward and away.

Halfway toward Goliath, though, a smaller chunk of the mass had freed itself and broke off in an arc towards the wall. Then it was the mangled floor that rested still, and the walls that reverberated with Murmur’s presence. As the Celestial Citadel continued its tumbling descent towards Galbar’s surface, thunderclaps coursed through the stone as well as the rarified-yet-slowly-thickening air; the Vizier maintained a relentless assault by blasting torrent after torrent of debris at the bulwark that was Goliath. And each torrent was answered by a staccato of gunfire which tore masonry into dust. Yet always Murmur seemed to have moved on to a slightly different part of the wall.

[colour=Peru][i]Enough delaying. Goliath, execute sequence.[/i][/colour]

Goliath paused its counter-assault for a moment. Another blast of gravel scattered off the construct as it drew a different set of weapons. Then, in a blink of an eye, it teleported across the intervening space and struck, and again, and again. But none of these blows were aimed at Murmur. Instead, a railgun shell sheared [i]this[/i] part of the wall, a pickaxe struck a crack right [i]here[/i], a plasma sword sliced [i]there[/i] through a support column, and an explosive shell blasted [i]that[/i] fracture. In that moment, the Avatar of the Mason had isolated Murmur into a large chunk of free-floating stone. Too late had the Vizier realized his foe’s intentions, for all of his attention had gone toward maintaining his frenzied barrage, pressing the assault as the Goliath had seemingly wavered.

In the next moment, Goliath teleported into open space, caught the stone with three hooked chains, and pulled. Vibrations rippled down the chains. One of them suddenly went slack and tumbled away, its adamantine hook having been warped into a mangled mess and cast off the stone. Then the shivering scream of tortured metal sounded out as a second chain had several of its links ripped into splinters by the elemental’s furious oscillations. The third vibrated almost imperceptibly as Murmur attempted to probe his way along the links, but his advance was rebuffed as a stroke of lightning arced down the chain.

Goliath then teleported behind the stone, the final chain coming loose as it did so, and slammed the head of Teknall’s maul against the stone, shoving the chunk of masonry out of the Citadel. Murmur was truly trapped.

He might have shouted out pleading to his master, but here the rarefied air would not carry his voice, and even the Vizier suspected that there were no words to stir any semblance of passion or mercy in Xos.

In desperation he reverberated through the boulder with enough fury to sunder it, a task made easier by Teknall’s adamantine maul having cracked the stone. The would-be sarcophagus was broken, Murmur having stolen himself into one of the dozen pieces; but now he was helpless to do anything but [i]hope[/i], praying that Teknall would not thwart his escape before gravity brought him low enough for the atmosphere to be a suitable medium.

[colour=Peru][b]"Unlikely, Murmur."[/b][/colour] A speeding pellet of lead struck each marble chunk, sending them tumbling and briefly vibrating. This impromptu seismology revealed Goliath’s target. Goliath drew Teknall’s railgun, that large piece of high-tech artillery, pointed it at the stone containing Murmur, and channelled the Stellar Engine into its capacitors for a moment. [color=Peru][b]"Begone."[/b][/color]

The adamantine shell left the barrel of the railgun at stupefying velocities. It left a trail of incandescent plasma in its wake even in the rarified air. When it passed through the stone, the rock was near-instantly vaporised in a flash of blinding light. The shell continued unimpeded, trailing plasma for a short distance then continued its silent, endless flight into the void beyond. Behind it, the stone which held the djinni exploded into a rapidly-expanding burst of plasma and dust, billowing away from the Celestial Citadel due to the shell’s momentum.

Goliath stared at the explosion for a few moments. Satisfied that its quarry was no more, it turned back to the divine fray.

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

Mere moments ago the Plemora Plate had been as an impermeable citadel, but now it was dead weight. In this pocket of space where dimension after dimension had come unfurled, Logos was now exposed and vulnerable. He moved, translating through six dimensions of space to evade a deadly ray of energy, inching closer to the enemy – and then he was [i]struck.[/i] A flare of pain radiated through his being as he sustained a glancing blow from one of the Primordial Spark’s ruinous rays, just for an instant. A mountain might have been disintegrated, but the King of Gods pressed on: his purpose was inexorable, his body divine, and his will utterly unbreakable. Logos dodged and wove around another half dozen testing rays and strikes.

The flurry of rays knew no end; this adversary was proving to be infuriatingly tenacious. Grimacing, Logos stepped backward to evade another strike. He was becoming quickly cognizant as to the difficulties of battling in these conditions, and fearful of the growing Void to the Gap beyond. Logos willed space to mend itself, pouring his strength and will into the task, but then was struck [i]again[/i], some unfathomable angle allowing the Primordial Spark to scorch him. There were a vast multitude of pathways around the once all-encompassing armor; in this warped space, the Plemora Plate proved no impediment to that which found no difference between without and within.

Xos laughed and tore the dimensions free again as quickly as they could be righted by Logos’ will. It took so many more pains to defy entropy–to fix, mend, create–to submit to this pretender’s ‘Natural Order’. Such a law of reality only affirmed the axioms of Xos, and the inevitability of his triumph.


As Logos found his shoulders beginning to sag ever so slightly beneath the weight of the Plemora, he beheld Toun’s entering the fray with relief. Toun flashed in and out of perception erratically back and forth in the mess of dimensional threads, but with a true and real direction. Xos, still with his claws tearing at reality felt a porcelain spear fly through several disconnected spaces until it appeared impaling through two of his shapeless limbs, pinning the shade momentarily to conventional space.

Toun could barely speak through all the mental effort he was investing in tracking the torn fields around him. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Have you forgotten what lies beyond, Xos!?! The Codex has Gaps and you beckon them!"[/b][/colour] He boomed from behind the Hyperspatial Barrier around him.

The porcelain skewering Xos cracked and groaned, as though it were a thin veneer of ice beneath a giant’s boot. Xos seized the shaft of the spear and violently pulled Toun’s body within his grasp, within the pocket of space pinned to a mere three dimensions. Distracted momentarily from his duel with Logos, the Shade sneered at Toun with a look that betrayed [i]he hadn’t forgotten.[/i]

Toun's eye grew inflamed in its blue. For a moment, he wished Logos [i]would[/i] end the destructive shade.

Logos already circled around in search of a vulnerable angle towards the now-entangled adversary. The distorted space immediately around Xos and Toun heaved, the Shade twisting the dimensions in unfathomable ways such that Toun was forced into a position precisely between Logos–or rather, the god’s Singularity Blade–and Xos.

He would end me to do it, Toun thought. He reassured his grip on the spear and resisted.

The two continued their grappling inside their bubble of normality, Logos left wading through the shredded spacetime outside. The deleterious aura of Xos crumbled Toun’s spear into dust. Another bone-white weapon sprung into the Porcelain Sire’s grasp just as readily as the last, but close-quarter bursts and beams of the Primordial Spark’s boundless energy rapidly forced Toun onto the defensive. Though the borrowed Barrier deflected the Spark, it also hindered any counter strikes.

[color=00FF7F]"You must have forgotten how our last exchange ended. This time, you can’t escape from me,"[/color] the black god harkened back to their previous battle on Soul Aonair, the fourth planet from Galbar’s sun. Maneuvering out of their pocket and back into the hyperdimensional space that filled the rest of the room would indeed be difficult. Toun was effectively trapped right there beside Xos, in a prison of his own making.

The space all around them bent and twisted in incomprehensible ways while they could only watch, like flies glued upon some sticky facet of something grander. Something much less comprehensible. Toun could feel it clawing, pulling, like a scorpion in his retina. 

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"If you will not mend what you have broken…"[/b][/colour] Toun shuddered out the words. The Gap was almost open. He drew up a clawed, shaking bare hand. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"...And Logos cannot stop it…"[/b][/colour]

Toun's hand jolted into his eye socket with a sudden, sickening crackle of clay grit and flesh. His entire body bent in suppressed pain as he slowly, with sinewy strings snapping, pulled out his own eye. It was mixed in colours of blue, black, and carmine. The scrap of Jvan implanted there since before the universe's creation pulsed and shuddered in heart-like beats. Toun's mouth formed and contorted open as he screamed in pain, rage, grief, and despair all in one.

The first oily tendril of the Gap emerged to probe Xos' serrations in reality.

Toun had seen what to do via the construction of the Tomb Weaver. He knew that its inspiration – the insipid Chiral Phi – was more than just an empty prison. Toun had the materials to make his own tesseract. By Toun's will on his eye, the grander reality all around them crumpled and flattened and joined with their space until it no longer seemed so strange. It bent and reconformed around Toun's bloody eye. The eye shrank into an imperceptible sutured line in space.

The Gap was repelled. The gods were over Galbar once more.

All of the gilded Zephyrean power that had filled the plummeting Celestial Citadel and enabled this trickery had been either spent or thrust out into the aether. All that was left was Xos, Toun, Logos, and Zephyrion in the falling rubble.

Toun's empty eye socket dripped red. There was nothing but white clay within it and a few scraps of flesh. The red cracks around his head shrank to pure porcelain once more.

There Xos was bewildered, a fish suddenly cast out of the water. He let out a single, breathless exclamation, [color=00FF7F]"How?!"[/color]

Unobstructed, the God of Physics triumphantly strode forward, blade held back in anticipation of a thrust. Toun's injured lethargy snapped away as he broke free from an alarmed Xos just in time. Logos struck forward with a blow aimed right through the Shade's darkened breast. 

The Shade managed to lift up the Primordial Spark at the last second.

There was no shockwave or burst of power to fling back Logos or his weapon–not this time. There wasn’t even a blinding glare to muddy his aim, for the Spark’s glow had completely vanished. In the radiant mote’s place was an infinitesimal point, blacker than any void between stars.

Logos’ strike met no resistance and seemed to carry through, the god’s eyes locked with his adversary’s, but in those vacant eyes of Xos he saw only mirth. With genuine astonishment, Logos god broke his gaze and looked down to behold half of his sword simply [i]gone.[/i] The tiny mote that was the Primordial Spark had swallowed it; somehow the Shade had inverted his weapon such that it did not emanate energy, but rather drank it. He threw himself backward, trying to wrench the Singularity Blade free with all his might, but there was no release.

[colour=Peru][i]It can do that? That's… hmm. I’ve seen that before…[/i][/colour]

[color=00FF7F]"This game has gone on for long enough."[/color]

The Shade’s words dripped fury. Logos’ futile exertions produced nothing; sliver by sliver, the Singularity Blade was inexorably being dragged into the utterly black maw of the Spark, though the King of Gods pulled at its hilt with all his might.

[color=00FF7F]"How you struggle and thrash against doom! Your wills are strong, I concede that much, but witness now the desolate truth: you never stood a chance."[/color]

Logos’ unyielding grasp at last came unfurled as he abandoned his weapon. The moment that his fingers slipped away from the hilt, the Singularity Blade was completely devoured. Nothing remained of it; the Primordial Spark did not even hiccup. In this strangely inverted state, the black maw simply drank and drank, sucking in the buffeting air and dust that billowed all around inside of the falling spire.

The air was thick enough now that it screamed and whipped at them, scraped and bit at the tumbling structure’s stone facets. The friction produced flames that filled the once pristine white chamber with an infernal glow. From amidst the hellish red flames, there emerged a yellowed flame. A presence filled this godly fire; a brilliant golden glow. Spurred onward by some unknowable objective, the flame’s grasping fingers writhed and contorted through the cracks of a shattered wall and crept into the room. Toun felt the familiar warmth and turned his blind head.

Xos, meanwhile, was once more on the offensive. He advanced, oblivion in his grasp, reaching for Logos, but was halted when a hook on a cable lashed out from behind and wrapped around Xos’ torso. Goliath, who had appeared a short distance behind the Shade, hauled the cable tight; the Shade raged, seizing the cable in one hand’s deathly grip.

[colour=Peru][b]"Watch out! He has an Orb of Darkness!"[/b][/colour]


On hearing the warning, Logos backpedalled and his eyes shined, hinting anger. The Orb was an [i]anathema[/i] with which Julkofyr had scarred the universe. A deliberate spite at the King of Gods.

Simultaneously, the blinded Toun's head snapped to attention. One more murderous trick? Even wallowing in his own sacrifice he broke his temper. He did not back away from the danger, instead opening his unnatural porcelain mouth. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"VESTEC!"[/b][/colour] Toun bellowed into the near-vacuum. He did not keep the name restricted to himself and Teknall any longer. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Our deaths mark you as a traitor to your sworn word!"[/b][/colour]

Xos had meanwhile pulled at the cable to draw Goliath inexorably closer, tug by tug, to the Primordial Spark-turned-devouring-maw.

There was a disembodied giggle. Then another. Then a third.

Though for a moment he might have fancied himself a winch of doom; Xos' own deleterious power undid the plan. The cable rapidly corroded until a link frayed into dust and the whole thing snapped free of him. Even Teknall’s handiwork was evidently incapable of weathering prolonged exposure to Xos. Goliath retro-thrusted to stop itself flying back.

The background laughter distracted them all to idleness, then. A cascade of titters and laughs surrounded the fighting divinity.

Mouths of every mortal race and every creation of the gods appeared, latching onto Xos and restraining him once more. Several of them gathered around Toun and whispered in his ears. "You wound me, Toun…"

A portal opened up behind the blinded god. Its nature was strange and constantly shifting. It was a shining white doorway. It was a tear through reality, bleeding energy like a wound. It was a fleshy maw, screaming as it tore itself open. It was shattered porcelain, sending jagged shards rending through space. It was a multi-colored orb, blinding in its brightness. It was all of these and none of them. 

Through this portal the masked Vestec stepped forward and laid a hand on Toun’s shoulder. "I would never betray my word like that! You should know better! We all have our rules, don’t we?"

Xos, as quickly unfettered from Vestec’s magic as Goliath’s cable, cleaved his way through reality toward Toun and Vestec. With a swift pull Vestec yanked Toun through the portal and away from Xos and his Orb. In the instant before Xos was upon the duo, they had similarly blinked elsewhere.

Behind them, Zephyrion lurked just outside one of the Citadel’s many crumbling windows, witnessing the charade in mute fascination.

Vestec continued. "Besides, you all seemed to have it in hand up until this point!" He shrugged with a giggle, the metallic side of his mask twisting into a grin. "More or less at least!"

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Vestec…"[/b][/colour] Toun growled.

Vestec's voice suddenly raised – and if Toun had been able to he would have seen the metallic eyehole wink at him – as Vestec gestured dramatically to the gathered gods. "Don’t worry brothers! I have crafted a way to stop this fiend and ensure that our Oath of Stilldeath remains intact! Behold! The Crypt Wright!" Vestec whipped out the Tomb Weaver with a dramatic flourish. It was, in a word, ruined. Gone was the elegant form of the needle, ready to be directed at a single thought or flick; surrounding it was an ugly pipe of metal, with crude scrawlings in the imitation of Tounic Calligraphy all along it. The needle itself was at the edge of the pipe, a string of divine energy pooled around it and ready to be launched with a swing of the pipe itself. Unseen in his Workshop, Teknall cringed at the corruption of his craftsmanship.

Even the Shade’s attention had been seized. [color=00FF7F]"What is that [i]thing?[/i]"[/color] he growled, his gaze transfixed on every hyperdimensional facet.

"Zephy! Or Xosy! Or whatever you’re calling yourself in your cannibalistic madness! This is your doom!" Vestec paused, his metal half mask grinning at the monster that had wounded him so severely. Xos’ stare remained solely upon the weapon.

"But I am a generous doombringer. I will let you strike towards me in an attempt to finish the job you so [i]woefully[/i] failed to do when we fought!" He bowed, then gestured disdainfully at the inverted Spark. "With that very same little toy, that you’ve been so eagerly trying to blast my brothers with. Try again?! I mean, you missed last time and only got lucky because I came back! Surely you don’t want everyone to think that it was luck that allowed someone as…limited as you to hit me!" He clapped his hands together. "So! Let’s try again! This time with feeling!" Vestec’s hands were held out wide, waiting. "Don’t mess it up this time, yeah?"

[color=00FF7F]"Your ploy is transparent, worm,"[/color] Xos spat.

Vestec shrugged in a ‘you got me there’ motion.

The Spark that rested upon the end of Xos’ shadowy appendage glowed blindingly white once again, then was the blackest of voids, and then the brightest of lights. Effortlessly and nigh-instantly, he demonstrated his capacity to flip it between its energetic and inverted states. Goliath watched the Spark, analysing its new behaviour. Logos continued to circle at a safe distance, warily watching both the darkened Spark and the ever-unpredictable Vestec as he calculated his next move.

[color=00FF7F]"In your pathetic desperation, you thought that if I could be goaded into reverting the Spark, you might have a fighting chance. Hah! Know now that [i]thing[/i], whatever it is, will be annihilated just as easily as Logos’ sword if it should come anywhere near my grasp. Turn and flee, you wretched fool; once I have dealt with these others, I’ll see to it that your death is merciful!"[/color]

"To be fair," Vestec retorted. "Logos’ sword was built upon the idea of order and reality. Your little bauble is nearly as opposite as I am. This however," Vestec swung the Tomb Weaver around a few times as he spoke, punctuating his words, "is made by [i]me[/i]. Far more like the Darkness than Logos’ sword."

Toun clenched his fists.

A thought from Teknall whispered to Toun and Vestec. [colour=Peru][i]Hmm, I wonder if the Tomb Weaver’s field can withstand the Orb of Darkness? It might, but current data is insufficient.[/i][/colour]

[i]And how do you propose we get more data? I could just chuck it at the Orb and see what happens, but we only have one of these.[/i] Vestec replied, watching Xos. [i]You know what? No time. I’ll just try to stab him with this while keeping the orb away from it! Easy peasy![/i]  

The Tomb Weaver’s divine thread retracted until the needle was a spear head on the crude pipe. Vestec lunged forward at Xos, disappearing in a flash of multicolored light and appearing behind the cannibal. He stabbed forward, his eye carefully watching the Primordial Spark and the Darkness it contained. But then the Shade likewise translated positions. Just two paces forward and turned face-to-face with Vestec. The dreaded superweapon was directly between them. Its darkness was replaced with a blinding white, and Vestec teleported out of the way just before another lance of divine energy erupted from the mote.

The wayward beam escaped out one of the tumbling spire’s many windows directly behind where Vestec had been. The death ray traced a straight line all the way down to Galbar’s surface, where it levelled a whole hillock in an instant and left only a smoldering crater.

The Chaos god was back in an instant, the Tomb Weaver darting to and fro in attack as he searched for an opening.

Toun murmured privately to the gods against Xos. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b][i]This is useless while he holds the Orb. We must take it from his-[/i][/b][/colour]


Goliath appeared beside Toun, touched the blinded god with a metal hand and reached another open hand towards him. [colour=Peru][b]"The Barrier?"[/b][/colour]

Toun anxiously tightened his hold on the gift. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Mm. I can no longer fight without my eye."[/b][/colour] He roughly pushed the Hyperspatial Barrier back into Goliath's possession. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Go then."[/b][/colour]

[colour=Peru][b]"Keep low and stay clear,"[/b][/colour] Goliath advised before leaping into the fray.

As Xos cast out his arm towards Vestec again, this time a plane of blue flashed in front of him. The Spark's destructive energy lanced forwards, was blocked, and then was backscattered into a blinding, burning light by the Goliath's Barrier. What would have incinerated another god could hardly undo Xos – he had been born within the Mechanism of Change, that hellish realm from whence the Spark drew all its power – but little wisps of black vapor evaporated from his dark mass. He loved not the light; that searing brilliance left him agonized and disoriented.

This one moment was enough to seize upon. Goliath attacked Xos from behind, thrusting with three spears at once. Simultaneously, Vestec launched and jabbed at the thrashing cannibal from the front. One of the spears grazed the Spark and was vaporized in an instant. Not even their adamantium was capable of withstanding direct contact with so much energy. 

The second spear missed the writhing Shade.

The third struck true. Xos let out an enraged scream.

A spattering of corrosive viscera erupted from the wound, and Xos’ black gore spread up to devour the spear that impaled him as well as the mechanical arm holding it. Weightless blood erupted outward from the Shade’s breast with every frenzied analogue of a heartbeat.

Vestec darted backwards and hissed in pain from the spattering despite his agility. The Hyperspatial Barrier flitted around to interpose itself as a disk in front of Goliath. It barely shielded its sensors from the corrosive blood.

In his rage, Xos grasped and squeezed at the shaft of the spear. Spiralling cracks ran through the metal pole from [i]unnatural[/i] corrosion – for adamantium did not rust – plating its surface finer and finer until the whole spear crumbled to dust.

Zephyrion peeked up at the melee from behind some floating rubble. His brow tightened at the strange coalition against Zyus, but would it be enough? Did the god of wind desire it to be?

Goliath already had its second spear drawn back to thrust from behind the cover of the Hyperspatial Barrier like some manner of hoplite. Xos translated his position again mere inches to the side as if vibrating in place. He seized the haft of this spear as it passed by. The Spark in one of his hands emitted a surge of electricity that arced to the other like lightning, travelling through the spear’s haft with enough energy to melt the adamantium, straight into Goliath's hand. The mechanical hand spasmed, recoiled, and glowed white-hot, but Teknall's engineering spared the rest of Goliath from catastrophic damage with the lightning dancing over Goliath's Mirror Armour before arcing into the Citadel’s falling rubble, which flared and cracked as it absorbed the energy.

Goliath barked, [colour=Peru][b]"Get him, Vestec!"[/b][/colour]

Vestec, for once, did not reply with a quip. He appeared in an instant and swung the Tomb Weaver like a sword. Pure Chaos energy shone around the pipe, leaving random changes in its wake. Droplets of magma, miniscule bizarre and frankenstein flying creatures, visible notes of song and sound, poisonous flowers, and a multitude of other creations flowed from the energy as it arced towards the appendage that held the Spark.

Xos was prepared, spinning with such swiftness that droplets of blood from his still-gushing wound were hurled across the room like hailstones. Even the Lord of Chaos was too slow, [i]too[/i] predictable. The full fury of the Primordial Spark was unleashed right at Vestec’s chest.

But then Vestec suddenly was not where he had been a moment ago.

Blind Toun was the first to realize the rapid consequences. He was standing a short distance away from the mayhem. He could sense the different essences of his brethren, the strong and the weak. He could sense the blast of the Spark shooting out from the melee. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"[i]Stop![/i]"[/b][/colour] Toun reached out. It was an irrevocable instant. He could sense the Spark's essence flying through the weakest essence present – his brother Zephyrion – and to his horror, Zephyrion's essence scattered like so many flecks of hot iron struck against flint.

[colour=Peru][b]"Zephyrion!"[/b][/colour] Goliath’s gaze had followed the beam of destruction and saw, just outside the window, the sputtering remnants of the god of air. In a moment Goliath was beside Zephyrion’s remains, but for all its many weapons it had no tools which could repair such damage. All it could do was clutch futilely at the vapours as they dispersed into the thickening atmosphere.

Xos was already craning his head around, searching for the vanished Vestec, when the Shade realized the horror of his recklessness. For the first time in his existence, the Shade knew regret.

Vestec's giggles escalated into hysterics from where he had moved himself behind Logos. The chaos god's chest positively convulsed with his cackling. "Oopsie!" He mocked. "I hope you didn't have anything left to say to him before you destroyed everything!" He threw back his masked head and laughed in glee, but stole no further reaction from a stupefied Xos.

Toun stood with his fear rapidly ceding to a deep sense of hopelessness in his chest. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"An essence only for destruction…"[/b][/colour] He said as if the partial thought escaped from his many whirling and paralyzing emotions. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"This course…cannot persist."[/b][/colour]

Xos remained catatonic and still, a motionless shadow where moments before he’d been the terrible, writhing Shade. The gore no longer dripped from his still-opened wound, for his breath and heartbeat alike were arrested.

Order remained unfazed. Another Pretender had been extinguished, yet the battle here was hardly won. Without another moment’s hesitation, Logos stretched out his wings. The air stilled for a moment, then a beam of molten light screamed out from a point above Logos’ head and connected with Xos. The spell slammed into Xos with incredible force and seared the remaining stones of the Citadel. Even over the plasma’s roar, a maddened shriek pierced the room. The King of Gods advanced towards the enemy, and through force of will the entire room was jerked such that Xos’ mass would meet him all the sooner. 

The blinding ray abruptly ended as Logos fell upon his foe. A new blade, black as night and deadly-sharp, was in Logos’ hand. This was no masterpiece like Singularity, and not nearly so lethal, but it would suffice. Teeth gritting from the sound of Xos’ unending, breathless, piercing wail of rage and agony, Logos thrust forward.

But Xos' desperate temper had been smote before Logos' blade drew near.

In the next heartbeat, between Logos and Xos, there grew a volume of all-devouring oblivion. The Primordial Spark’s light had been a great flash for an instant as it had expanded so wide as to be greater than even Xos, but then its radiance was utterly extinguished. An Orb of Negation was spilling forth, warped and distorted even as it tried to snap back into a spherical shape. Space and physics trembled; a proverbial mountain was being forced through a mousehole.

Xos did not care as to what unleashing the Orb of Negation would do to Galbar, himself, or anything else around; there was no longer any brother of his to urge or demand restraint. He was at last unhinged and free and miserable and mad. This was Xos’ grand weapon, his cleverest trick, the Armageddon that would deliver all of these wretched creatures into the same torturous oblivion that filled his black heart. It only needed to be released…

This moment was what Teknall had feared, but his calculations were already in place. Combining his prior observations with two moments of spectroscopy was enough to fill in the last unknowns. It would take too long to communicate a plan. There was only one thing to do.

In the Workshop, witnessed only by Teknall, every relay in the Stellar Engine fused shut and lightning flooded everything with burning white light.

In the crumbling Celestial Citadel, Goliath rocketed away at impossible speeds. A lance of energy obliterated a spire beneath Goliath, the avatar slammed through a crumbling wall, and it retreated towards the void above, accelerating away.

Logos gave but a moment's thought to Teknall's cowardice. The King of Physics could feel his domain unravel as the Orb emerged. Julkofyr's spite radiated from it and weighed on every part of his authority. The Pleroma Plate cladding Logos, that impenetrable fortress, now dragged him like an impossible burden. He conjured white fire around him, dimmed by the deepening shadows, as he called upon every power he could to lurch forward. Xos would need a greater gambit to stop the inevitable–

[colour=Peru][i]Target velocity reached.[/i][/colour]

Goliath blinked back to the Citadel, appearing beside Xos with the shimmering blue Hyperspatial Barrier like a scoop between them. In that same moment, Goliath slammed into Xos with all its built-up speed, catching the Spark too with the Barrier. In a tiniest slither of a second, the shadows withdrew from the Citadel.

In the next few fractions of a second, Goliath grappled with the raging Xos as they continued to accelerate away from Galbar. With a flurry of blows, Xos broke free. One final concussive blow batted the metal avatar away but momentum was still carrying him and the Spark towards the empty, lifeless heavens.

Toun tried to follow the feelings of the beings shooting off with the Spark, flying blind through space. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"What in the name of Amul do you think you are doing!?!"[/b][/colour] He shouted ineffectually. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"That orb will swallow everyone on the planet!"[/b][/colour]

None other than Vestec's mechanical hand snatched Toun's arm and pulled him out of harm's way and back onto course to follow the melee. "Focus on the fun bit, Touny boy! Let that big strong Logos handle it."

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Unhand me!"[/b][/colour] Toun struggled angrily. He was powerless to escape.

A few tense heartbeats later, the Orb of Darkness finally broke free. The light of hundreds of stars in the sky was snuffed out by a darkness which dwarfed Galbar itself. The shadows enveloped the pale twin moons Vigilate and Scitis, which shattered in slow motion as their gravity was erased.

Behind the great darkness, Goliath receded into the distance as a tumbling point of red light. Beside the Orb was a brilliant white pinprick and Xos' malignant presence. The Shade turned to cast a baleful glare down to Galbar’s surface, where his divine sight discerned the Celestial Citadel’s ruined bulk as it finally united with the surface. That was good. Degradation and ruin came for all. Death and destruction and entropy were the only constants, doom the inevitable ending of all. That was the meaning of Change, the one called Zyus knew.

Smoking with rage and scorn, Xos grasped the Primordial Spark with gaunt fingers. It roared to life by his will, and even his black and incorporeal frame was aglow with blinding white light. The approaching Toun and Vestec, those wretched reminders of Zephyrion, they would watch their precious planet crumble before they, too, were Changed.

With a pulse from the Spark, the Orb was sent hurtling towards Galbar.

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

On the other side of the orb, Logos glowered between Galbar and the dark maw that reached to swallow it whole.

He felt it drag on his impenetrable Pleroma Plate. All his influence was being resisted.

The pretender that inscribed these blots on his demesne. Julkofyr. He created orbs like this in futile rebellion.

The murderous Xos shall be quelled. All rebellion shall be quelled. Julkofyr's impertinent creation was but a childish tantrum. It would take more than some warped physics to stop the King of all Gods.

Logos threw his sword aside spinning into space, showed both his palms forward to the Orb of Darkness, and drew upon raw power the likes of which went beyond time, space, all things material. His numen and his right.

The Orb halted its advance with a pressure felt like a thumb on the back of a black slug. It oozed and slipped, and failed to escape.

[b][i]"Begone,"[/i][/b] Logos willed.

The Orb began to move, repelled away from Galbar. The planet saw the darkness recede and the obscured stars reappearing. It was saved.

Logos dispassionately turned. Then was tugged. Then was held. Galbar receded from his own vision. With a sour realisation, Logos found himself drawn into the darkness by the weight of his armour, so powerful and representative of his order that Julkofyr's scorn grew hungry for it.

There was no moment to remove the armour or escape from its clutches. Logos had brought himself too far into the Orb's influence in repelling it.

Julkofyr, wherever he remained, had his last laugh.

[i]Though, I shall be here again,[/i] Logos knew. [i]I shall be here and every place beyond. This is but one moment in an infinite existence.[/i]

Only Logos knew his fate as he was devoured by the Orb of Darkness. His very essence disappeared in its clutches.

[center][h3]* * *[/h3][/center]

Toun found his words deadened. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"I can no longer sense Logos…"[/b][/colour] Overworked grief mixed with dread. Their advantages were disappearing.

Venomous laughter spilled from Xos. He guffawed as Logos struggled and was dragged into oblivion, undone by the hubris and regalia that had instilled him with that insufferable, [i]false[/i] sense of superiority.

The Shade, who now fancied himself the manifest All-Destroyer, the Dark Lord of Ruination, gazed down toward a despairing Toun. He saw also that treacherous, writhing viper, that vermin, the [i]wretch[/i] Vestec beside Toun. He would tear Vestec asunder last, and most slowly, he decided. Even as Teknall’s avatar spiralled away into the heavens somewhere far behind, Xos knew that the Craft-God would also hear his mocking and triumphant words,

[color=00FF7F]"Another pretender falls, and his death shall be for nothing. If only you could view yourselves as I see you! If you could understand how pathetic and insignificant you are, then you might thrust yourselves into doom and join with Logos! Fear not; I will usher you to him soon. But first, witness your precious rock below as I shred it from reality!"[/color]

Toun gave no satisfaction to Xos as he glared with what was left of his face. All his remaining might kept the growing hopelessness from showing through.

Xos lifted the Spark high over his head. Its radiance was like a thousand suns as he called upon its power to seize the Orb of Negation. The great darkness of that sphere, though already so far gone as to be indiscernible to mortal eyes on the planet below, was still perceptible by divine senses. The gods saw clearly the threads of energy with which Xos reached out, weaving a great net to catch the orb and then drag it inexorably back toward Galbar.

But he never succeeded, for somewhere within the blinding pinprick of light there had hidden a small golden djinni named Aihtiraq. Glowing in his triumph and focused entirely on the hapless gods below, Xos hadn’t even sensed his second brother as the wish-djinni crept up from behind him, and with a great sweeping gale, wrested away the Primordial Spark.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b][i]What!? Impossible![/i][/b][/colour] Toun thought and almost shouted.

Stupefied, Xos looked backward. He caught a glimpse of the golden djinni, who now took the shape of a golden lion’s head with a legless body of wind, as it swallowed the Primordial Spark. With a snort at this petty trick, Xos summoned his Spark back. It was [i]his[/i] tool–only a fragment of Zephyrion’s soul could control or possess it, as Toun had learned on Soul Aonair, and since Xos had smote the pretender Ventus, no wretched elemental could lay claim to such a power.

But Aihtiraq was no mere djinni, for he was the third piece of the Storm God’s shattered power, and so the Spark would not–[i]could not[/i]–be compelled to leave his grasp.

With a hideous howl, Xos willed the Spark to flare, and so flare it did. A nova of divine might erupted within Aihtiraq’s body, but he weathered it unfazed. Aihtiraq had already withstood the hellish winds on the other side of the Spark, within the Mechanism of Change. That was the place from whence Aihtiraq had emerged, and that which had birthed the golden djinni had no power to unmake him.
 
There was nothing that Xos could do besides reappear right beside the djinni and seize at it, trying to pry the Spark free with his own vaporous, black fingers. As he grabbed at Aihtiraq, the golden wind burned away at the smoke and shadow that had been wrought into Xos’ analogue of flesh; his groping fingers could find no purchase clawing at the golden lion, and Aihtiraq was bounding through space straight toward the Orb of Negation with all the speed that he could muster.

Toun broke from his shock and processed the moment. He turned and grabbed Vestec by the top of his mask, turning him to face his eyeless face. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Enough bloodshed! Enough games!"[/b][/colour] Toun threw a finger out towards the grappling brothers. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"They will both be taken by the Orb of Darkness! Fulfil your oath at once!"[/b][/colour]

Vestec cackled as he patted Toun on the shoulder. "Now now, Toun, since when have I ever let you down? I just had to let the show play out."

Vestec drifted a few paces from Toun, spooled a loop of white-blue light out of the Tomb Weaver with a twirl, then flicked it towards Xos. It flew through the space between with nothing but purpose. The Shade jerked to a halt as a lasso of twisted space wrapped and tightened around him, letting Aihtiraq escape his clutches with the Spark.

Toun suddenly reached ineffectually when the two separated.  [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Wait! The golden one too!"[/b][/colour]

But he spoke in vain. Aihtiraq, whether unwilling or unable to rise from the darkness, serenely fell in. There was no sound, no flash, no belch as the golden djinni and the font of limitless power alike were swallowed out of existence; maybe the utterly black surface of the great Orb rippled ever so slightly, like the surface of a dark lake, but in the next instant it was still once more.

Toun then understood in Aihtiraq's last moments his prophecy. He raged internally at the worth of the djinni's suicide, his fists creaking. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"There is so little Zephyrion left to save…and you would still choose to die!?"[/b][/colour]

Yet Xos was not indulged to observe it. "Get over here, you cannibalistic bastard!" Vestec pulled on the thread and yanked Xos towards himself. Vestec flew forwards to meet Xos in the face with a fist coated in explosive chaos energy. "Not so tough without your Spark!"

Xos writhed and twisted, but he was entangled by the Tomb Weaver’s inescapable thread. He tried to translate himself away, but there was no teleporting through the horribly stretched and broken space wrapped around his back. A wordless and guttural shriek erupted from the Shade, but his clawing counterattacks were now feeble.

Another of Vestec’s blows landed with a chromatic blast. Then another. Xos recoiled, gurgling.

A greater danger was the black ichor that escaped his body with his many wounds. Vestec flinched slightly from the corrosive blood splatter, conjuring a cloak of multi-coloured flames to burn some of it into less-harmful forms of entropy. Vestec had no interest in prolonging his exposure to Xos’ ruinous influence.

Vestec flicked out more loops of light to tangle Xos’ arms and keep the shade’s claws bound. "I could tear you limb from limb," Vestec growled as he grabbed and twisted the shade’s arm with an adamantine grip. "It would be fun, too. Payback for my arm." He brandished the Tomb Weaver in its crude iron casing, which flared with chaos energy. "But I have a far slower fate prepared for you."

Vestec thrust the weapon forward, and a needle of light pierced through Xos’ shadowy form. The first stitch was made, pinning the shade to space itself. The needle then flew around Xos in rapid loops, weaving a cage of folded space.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"No. He is [i]all[/i] that is left of our brother…"[/b][/colour] Toun said to himself.

He sensed the movements of Xos' thrashing form failing to defy the Tomb Weaver's bindings. He thrashed and clawed at his prison. Just as Toun thrashed and clawed in his weakest moments. But Xos had nothing left. What would he become in that prison but a pure form of everything that drove him to murder?

He had no one. 

Two long arms, black as oil, shot out from gaps in the cobweb of a cocoon that wrapped around Xos, who by now surely realized the instrument’s purpose and his impending doom. Yet he did not try to catch the needle.

Instead, his long limbs strained and stretched to seize a triumphant, smug, and surprised Vestec. Shadowy fingers grasped at the chaos god’s adamantine prosthetic with a deathly grip, clutching on with the last vestiges of strength that remained within the Shade. All the while, he still shrieked some otherworldly and breathless howl of rage. The Tomb Weaver faltered in its rapid orbit as its wielder struggled against the Shade. Yet Vestec had leverage, space, and spare stamina. He pushed off against the Tomb Weaver’s cage and wrenched himself free of Xos’ grip. The holes that the Shade’s arms reached through were tightening, constricting them, for even if the needle had slowed from his thrashing, its work hadn’t been truly stymied. The grasping limb grew ever more incorporeal, resembling a hazy, transparent smoke when moments before it had been coagulated darkness. The baleful scream broke at last into a woeful wailing.

He had no one.

With a growl, Vestec flicked his hand to direct the needle to hasten and at last finish its flight.

The barbed needle weaving Xos' prison instead clanged to a halt.

Toun had it grasped tight in one thin clay hand. His head was sunken forward, gazing at nothing. The corrupted shell of the needle crumpled and the polish of its original form peeked through between his fingers.

At this moment, Teknall’s distant presence made itself known again. [colour=Peru][i]Toun, what are you doing? Vestec’s almost got him.[/i][/colour]

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"He will destroy himself alone."[/b][/colour] Toun said, clearer than ever. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"No more death."[/b][/colour]

[colour=Peru][i]Well, we can't just let him go. Not after everything we've gone through, everything he's done.[/i][/colour]

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"We shall not. There is one last way. One last golden thread."[/b][/colour]

[colour=Peru][i]What… No, no, you can't, Toun! He'll just kill you too![/i][/colour]

Toun turned the needle's point around. [colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"He shall not."[/b][/colour]

[colour=Peru][i]No, please, I don't want to lose you too, Toun. Vestec, stop him![/i][/colour]

"What?" Vestec’s face flashed different colors in rapid succession, but his voice was not wrought with so much turmoil as Teknall’s. "Dear Toun, I have to say that this is a surprise! Perhaps my ways have been rubbing off on you… But no, Teknall, to get in the way of our brother’s noble sacrifice would be rude. I’ll miss ya, Toun-y boy, but I’ll be sure to take care of your stuff!"

For once, Toun's reflexive anger towards Vestec was completely lost in pure resignation. With his clay spear drifting from his other hand into the weightless vacuum, he raised the needle up and clutched it with both hands. His carmine-painted eye socket bled one last drop.

[colour=PaleGoldenrod][b]"Siblings, children, Amul-Sharar…Forgive me."[/b][/colour]

Toun thrust the needle through his navel. He willed it to spin its own cocoon connected to Xos' new prison. The Tomb Weaver flew in such rapid orbits as to constrict them both to complete obscurity in moments.

In a flash, the two tied gods collapsed into the Tomb Weaver’s inescapable confinement within its crowning gem. All that was left was the gently spinning artefact before Vestec.

It was the quietest moment of his life.

[hider=Summary]
Xos meets Zephyrion and Vizier Murmur in the Celestial Citadel, which is ascending into space.

Toun stakes out the tower while corresponding with Teknall (who is monitoring everything with his spy satellites from the safety of his Workshop).

Toun launches his assault with Logos as a surprise backup.

The battle is intense and breaks physics a bit. Xos is slippery and wields enormous offensive power, while Logos is impenetrably armoured and intrinsically powerful. They are closely matched. Several blasts from the Primordial Spark strike the surface of Galbar.

Murmur grapples with Toun, both physically and verbally. He is made more durable by occupying Xos’ armor, but he still poses little more than a distraction–it’s his sycophantic worship that inadvertently humanises Xos to Toun that causes a problem. Toun realizes that he does not want Xos to die, even after everything he’s done. But Goliath then arrives with the new Hyperspatial Barrier artefact, which provides protection from the Spark. Goliath defeats Murmur, leaving Toun to confront Xos directly.

The physics-breaking battle between Xos and Logos is exacerbated by Xos drawing the last power out of the jewel at the summit of the Celestial Citadel and using it to rip apart and unfold space even in defiance of Logos’ power over physics. This threatens to open up a portal to the Gap. When alerted to this by Toun, Xos does not seem to care.

In desperation, Toun tears out his own eye containing the shard of Jvan from before the beginning of the universe and fashions it into a tesseract akin to Chiral Phi. He uses this to stitch reality together again at the cost of his ability to fight. Xos has no more power in the citadel jewel to pull off a physics-ripping stunt again.

Logos closes in to kill Xos, but Xos then switches out his Primordial Spark for an Orb of Darkness he had found earlier, and it swallows Logos' artefact blade Singularity whole. Things are not looking good for Logos.

Only now does Vestec appear with the Tomb Weaver and goads Xos to fight.

In the chaos of the fight, Vestec jukes out of the way of a death ray from the Primordial Spark and it kills Zephyrion accidentally.

Xos gets truly enraged and expands the Orb of Darkness to its full size to kill everyone present and swallow Galbar. Goliath overdrives its engines to scoop Xos out of the area before the Orb fully emerges and destroys Galbar; the Orb instead swallows the twin moons of Vigilate and Scitis. Goliath is blasted away by Xos and is out of commission for the rest of the fight.

Xos pushes the Orb of Darkness towards Galbar.

Vestec pulls Toun out of harm's way.

Logos uses his raw divine might to will the Orb away from Galbar. While successful, his Pleroma Plate armour is heavy and he is unable to escape the Orb's hunger for his Order. He is swallowed by the darkness, never to be seen again.

Vestec is unable to deploy the Tomb Weaver against Xos while he still wields the Primordial Spark. Toun is unable to help due to his new blindness. Xos lines up to kill them both.

At the last moment, Airtiraq appears from hiding to snatch the Spark. He is unaffected by Xos' means of preventing its seizure, as they are both shards of Zephyrion and lay claim to the Spark's power. Aihtiraq shoots for the Orb of Darkness. Xos catches him and tries to wrestle the Spark back.

Toun demands Vestec enact the plan as he promised. Vestec uses the Tomb Weaver to grab Xos, but does not listen to Toun and does not save Aihtiraq. Aihtiraq willingly falls into the Orb of Darkness, taking the Primordial Spark with him.

With no more weapons or tricks left, Xos is wrapped in the Tomb Weaver’s ensnaring threads.

Toun has an epiphany that Xos will most likely destroy himself in the Tomb Weaver prison and does not want all this to end in just one more death. He stabs himself with the Tomb Weaver to join Xos in the prison so that Xos might live on.

Vestec is left alone in space. Logos, Zephyrion, Aihtiraq, Toun, and Xos are gone.

But Galbar is safe once again.
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