Phillip bit his lip, his chin clattering against his own fist as her nervously awaited news upon his golden throne...
"Vex said it wouldn't happen..." He frantically switched to biting his nails, his eyes glancing at the windows in the halls...
"So... Why do I feel this awful presence...?" Phillip asked, worried for his own life as he began to mentally prepare readying his armies...
"My Lord... I can promise you... Jack will not be a problem?" A vestige form of Veximus yawned as he tried to pluck a grape from a nearby golden table, only for his vestige hand to sadly phase straight through the delicacies.
...
Jack struggled, trying his hardest to breath as metal began to fill his body from inside out...
It was horrifying... Being mangled alive and unable to do anything about it.
But this was Jack... Who while under the slow torture of a maddened Callahan... Could only await the perfect moment... Using the disabling of his flames to convince Callahan to lower his guard.
But it seemed that would be of no use...
Callahan chuckled, slashing at Jack's body with a gleeful look behind his opened helmet.
"You don't understand any of this!" Callahan roared, ripping Jack's arm from his shoulder in a tangled mess of flesh and blood.
He tossed it aside, laughing down at Jack as his eyes gazed with fixation upon the titan.
Suddenly, as if completely struck with newfound ideas... Callahan drew forth a smaller blade... And tore open his own chest... Ripping his mutilated Catalyst free from his flesh, and dangling it above Jack like some sort of sick trophy.
"En... Enlighten me..." Jack managed, his voice crackled and distraught under the pain.
"Well... What makes a Paladin a Paladin..." Callahan bore a sinister smile... Peering down at Jack with almost inhumane eyes...
"No." Natalia croaked, crawling over the debris and outstretching a hand to Callahan.
"Oh?" Callahan chuckled, ignoring the girl.
"Well... We Paladins come from that of the gods of course! Where do you think all of them went!" Callahan boomed with laughter, outstretching his arms as the flames dispersed around him.
"You cannot! The oath!" Natalia cried out, clutching her own sternum out of fear of being punished along with Callahan...
Jack's eyes widened, looking up Callahan with the eyes of hatred...
"Where do you think Rider got the idea to try and eat that dead god of yours..." Natalia let her head fall in despair, as Callahan continued to openly reveal the secrets of The Grand Paladin and his Grand Soldiers...
"Our Catalysts... Are mutations... Using high potential Catalysts stolen from their original owners... Zen gives them life by imbuing the essence of slain Lesser gods into whats left of the original Catalysts... Essentially..."
"Making you a god..." Rayan grinned, slashing at Callahan's throat and missing by a mere inch, with the corner of Callahan's small blade narrowly nicking the side of Rayan's own attack.
Suddenly Jack's body erupted into flames, shattering the ground around them and bringing forth a terrible inferno laying twice the destruction as the first...
Callahan growled, turning and parrying another attack from Rayan... Who had clearly already been taken over by his corruption...
'A shame...' Callahan thought, parrying Jack's attack only to realize that it was merely an illusion of flame... Breaking the titan's concentration... But Rayan had backed off... Standing back as Jack began to hurl over in the fire...
"What?" Callahan asked, confusion meeting his face as the sound of a heartbeat began to resound throughout the crater...
"I get it now!" Jack cried out, his shattering Catalyst resting in the palm of his hand.
"No..." Callahan froze... A fleeting moment of dread donning the thought to be unshakeable knight of House Durangor...
Jack's body snapped, flames began to rip from his mangled shoulder socket... They burned brightly, taking shape and charring over with what looked to be black flames... And suddenly... Jack had been healed of his gruesome wounds... Although Callahan wouldn't have counted that much as healed... Considering he was a walking figure of ashes...
Jack gazed down at his Catalyst... His hands trembling as a vision played forth in his mind... The remnants of the past... Taking shape and form in the present...
Fate...
Had been tampered with...
Callahan felt a cold shiver run down his back... As the sun itself began to rise in the horizon...
Jack roared with laughter... Holding his Catalyst above his head with vibrant flames devouring the entire crater... With him at its center...
His eyes glistened with embers as all who stood present... Were forced to watch...
To witness...
Jack let out a smokey breath, letting his Catalyst hover between his hands as it appeared nothing more than a star in the sky for Jack.
A sudden flow of cryptic energy began to escape the shattered sphere... Slowly tangling themselves around Jack's fingers and tightening.
"Behold... THE AUTHORITY OF A LESSER GOD!" Jack roared, straining his entire body and will to rip apart his own Catalyst...
And in doing so...
Sending a powerful blast of black flames throughout the crater... Announcing this officially...
As the final battle...
Standing perplexed in the mess of his own making... Jack felt nothing at first... Causing him to simply take in the sight of his Catalyst's shards scattering away with the strange wind...
Vanishing into the storm of fire around him...
...
Chase hit the ground, falling from the crater's wall as his body began to litterly disintegrate.
Poppy lie nearby coughing and hacking as the flames grew worse...
Hans tried to shield them, forming giant walls of rocks that only shattered under Vex's blade...
"I didn't think he'd actually do that..." Vex muttered, turning and deflecting an attack from Hans as if in a trance...
"Chase!" Poppy yelled, trying to get his attention, probably assuming that his completely still gaze meant he had reached death...
However...
He couldn't help but stare in awe at Jack's battle against Callahan... Two forces on the same level as the gods...
Poppy met his gaze as well, her eyes showing naught but dread as she watched a mighty clash beyond the flames...
...
Jack vanished, hurling a powerful attack into Callahan and following up with a flaming laser that pierced the storm of fire... Devouring the titan in a beam of black flames...
His flames grew hotter... Melting away at Callahan's armor as they clashed again, showing that Callahan indeed... Was a match for godhood...
Jack flipped, slamming the back of his foot down into Callahan's shoulder, before turning and blasting back with a piercing spike of flames that shot straight through Callahan's ribs.
But the Paladin threw his metallic fist into the spike, shattering it and darting straight back into battle... Descending with the might of all of his machinery, Callahan sent forth countless attacks that soared through the flames, targeting Jack at all costs... While the titan himself surged, hurling his greatsword at Jack's head, only for him to slam the sword's flat with a blazing fist... Shattering it and using a strange source of energy to launch him at Callahan with a devastating shockwave destroying the ground where he once stood.
Flying straight through countless hopeless attacks, Jack used a soaring metal plate to launch himself into the tornado metallic attacks... Striking its heart with a terrifying blow that shook all of Seh Jenah...
Only for the titan to not be at the crater's center...
Jack looked up, his eyes widening as the convergence of Callahan's weaponry began... Forming a barrel the size of the crater... Hovering in the sky above as Callahan stood below it... His finger signaling the firing of this mass machine...
Jack growled, forming a hex and using both hands to fire an absurd amount of flames from said hex...
BOOM!
A rythmatic humming resounded as two powerful beams of energy met each other in madness... Their might met, two unshakable forces of energy destroying everything under the clash at its center...
Jack roared, bracing his body as the full extent of Prometheus's flames left his body.
...
Chase's eyes widened, watching in horror as the dread of Callahan's attack sank in.
"Poppy!" He yelled, slamming his fist into the ground and refusing to let this be the end of his fight.
"FEED IT...." Chase growled violently, as his skin began to rip itself apart... Allowing neon green flames to leave his body in bursts...
"I'm out of Primis..." She sighed, her legs trembling as she tried to stand.
"THAT'S JUST IT!" Chase roared, a joyous grin burning to life along his lips as Poppy's crimson eyes lit up with ivory sparks.
"It's not Primis..." Chase boomed with laughter as the storm of fire began to burn white and green...
...
"They figured it out..." Vex scoffed, kicking Hans to the ground and turning his back on the Panda.
"I gotta get out of here..." He mumbled with a shrug while Hans tried to stand back up, destroying the very ground below him.
"You fought well, I commend it... But... I made a promise to the king... And I'm afraid Jack has broken that promise... Perhaps I had too much fun...?" Vex sighed, vanishing before Hans could drill his fist into the skull of the Paladin.
...
Jack struggled, looking up as his flames began to lose to Callahan's weaponry...
That's when he felt a new sense... As if he could hear from within his flames...
'Not Primis?' He thought, feeling the sensation of how his black flames devoured his body differently from his normal flames...
'Primis... Plus Axis... Plus... Whatever this new Energy is...?' Jack began to think as his flames were slowly overpowered by a laughing Callahan.
'Three... So then... Trinity... Ah...' Jack's face lit up with a sinister infernal smile... His mouth slowly opening as his gaze fixated on Callahan beyond the clashing powers.
"I..." He began... But his voice trailed off, having been drowned out by the flames anyway... However, it was Prometheus who wished to name this Trinity Art...
After all... It would have been impossible without his aid...
Jack allowed it... Letting the flames echo with voice...
"I DECLARE... INFERNAL PUNISHMENT!" Jack's voice roared throughout the crater, his eyes burning into the morning sky itself as energy radiated throughout the crater... Leaving Callahan paralyzed as his laser instantly lost all hope of winning, being drowned out a beam twice the size and made from those same horrible black flames...
Callahan's body fell to the ground, crashing with a loud and echoless thud...
Jack's knees hit the ground, his growl both animalistic and monstrous...
Yet he persisted, forcing himself towards Callahan... In order to land the fatal blow... He couldn't give in yet... He had to make sure of it...
He crawled over the remnants of Callahan's machines, seeing Callahan and instantly charging forth with a burst of energy.
Callahan dodged, turning his fist into Jack's side, as Rayan appeared, slashing at Callahan's throat and cutting his ankle with swift strides.
That was before Jack launched a barrage of attacks at Rayan, sending him soaring away from the battle.
Jack hurled several different incarnations of fire at Callahan, who blocked and blocked with panicked eyes.
Jack vanished, appearing from embers beside Callahan and kicking the titan in the face, only Callahan to turn and slam Jack into the ground.
Then he used a burst of metallic energy to launch Jack back about ten meters, causing him to come to a crashing stop.
Looking up, Jack watched as Callahan made his last stand... His decrepit figure refusing to lose just yet...
Jack began forward, but before he could make it...
SLASH!
Natalia's blade... Pierced the skull of Callahan from behind... Leaving Jack in a fit of slowly building rage...
He launched forward, reeling back as hundreds of flaming blades formed in the air around him.
SLAM!
Vex's shoulder drove straight into Jack, launching him at the ground with immense force.
"He forsake his Oath... It was only right a fellow Paladin took his life... However... I must take my leave... I suggest you do as well..." Vex grimaced, looking over at Rayan's mangled and corrupted form among the debris...
With a look of disgust... He vanished, and all that was left... Was Natalia dropping her blade, letting Callahan's corpse fall with it...