A massive column of pulverized dust erupted into the air. Soft rock and ancient marble sheared off the surrounding pillars. Pilt shielded his bleeding eyes from the violent debris using his forearm. He wore a briefly hopeful look as the shockwave washed over him. He lowered his arm and looked back toward the central pedestal.
A large section of Mercyros's head had been completely blown away. The missing portion was currently composed entirely of swirling, exposed yellow energy.
His other physical half remained standing firmly on the side of the platform.
A long shaft of pulsing purple and red blood protruded cleanly from the deity's abdomen.
Pilt wore an expression of profound, exhausted relief. He suddenly felt his left leg go entirely numb. He collapsed hard against the cracked stone floor.
He stood utterly toothless in the grand scheme of cosmic power, yet he had managed to facilitate the severe wounding of a supreme Monolith.
He accomplished this impossible feat not as an enlightened being, but as a mere awakened mortal manipulating the market of fate.
Sudden, overwhelming panic overtook his exhausted mind. It was entirely possible to win a single moment against a supreme being.
The true terror resided in what happened immediately afterward.
The remaining glowing eye of Mercyros slid slowly backward. The deity focused his terrifying gaze directly onto Arthur, who currently stood slightly behind him recovering from the attack.
Mercyros turned his broken, energy-leaking body to look at the red spear like blade protruding out his spine.
"Very well," Mercyros stated, his voice devoid of pain or concern. "I will simply send you to join your lost friend."
Mercyros lifted his dark hand toward Arthur's current position. Pilt felt an impossible force violently rip the atmosphere apart.
An absolute inventory of nihility itself opened directly behind the swordsman.
A massive, terrifying vacuum formed in the air. The surrounding oxygen rushed blindly into the dark gateway like an offering being instantly digested by a starving beast.
Ayame reached her hands out desperately. She attempted to form a massive blood barrier against the pulling force of the dark gate.
Her thick, crimson shields crystallized in the air, but the raw void simply consumed the magic. The blood slates shattered and were sucked instantly into the endless vacuum.
Mercyros gave the struggling woman a brief, dismissive glance.
Ayame stood planted like a solid rock. Her body pulsated rapidly. The terrifying symptoms of the withering began to manifest across her skin.
A sickly, glowing light trapped her within a painful trance. She struggled violently against the temporal decay. Her physical form continued growing bigger and more monstrous by the minute as the uncontrolled magic warped her biology.
Pilt struggled to breathe against the damp floor. He tried frantically to search the timelines for viable solutions.
He needed a new branch of probability. However, executing anything else would immediately trigger a massive thread over-resonance.
The sheer metaphysical weight would cause his heart to stop completely. He existed at the absolute limits of his mortal capacity.
He poked his perception toward the darkest corners of the future. He searched for a slight anomaly. He needed an oversight.
His desperate gaze fell upon the scattered remains of the vile, wretched woman.
The purple-haired cultist had been reduced to a pile of twitching limbs and bloody paste during the previous explosion.
Pilt looked directly toward her ruined remains.
He started pulling hard for a highly unlikely future timeline.
He sought a specific reality where she would successfully rebuild herself into a whole entity once again. It was an incredibly risky, highly calculated move to revive an enemy combatant during a crisis.
It was a worthy investment nonetheless.
If he could just force the universe to resurrect her, the resulting corrosive fate essence like anomaly might generate enough distraction to close the gateway before Arthur was consumed entirely.
Arthur held onto the nearby ledge with nothing but his sheer physical strength.
His heavy armor dragged him downward, threatening to pull his armored fingers right off the crumbling stone.
The raw gravity of the domain intensified with every passing second. Ayame remained completely locked in her sudden temporal stasis just a few yards away.
She stood frozen upon her crystallized blood platforms, her glowing red eyes entirely unresponsive.
Directly above them, the results of Pilt's desperate temporal investment manifested in grotesque fashion.
A massive, purple barricade of twitching flesh erupted into the empty air.
The organic wall possessed its own living, breathing pulse. It surrounded the floating Monolith completely, forming a protective, fleshy cocoon between Mercyros and the rest of the ruined chamber.
The disturbing mass expanded rapidly, leaking dark fluids and emitting a foul stench of rotting copper.
The organic barricade did not last long against the supreme authority of the deity. The pulsing wall suddenly exploded outward into a million wet, useless pieces.
The violent detonation revealed a frail, pale girl kneeling in the center of the shattered air. It was the fully reconstructed cultist.
She supported her weak body on thin, shaking arms. She looked up at Mercyros with an expression of absolute, unmasked contempt.
She had been ripped from death and forced back into the mortal coil simply to serve as a momentary, biological shield.
Mercyros did not speak a single word to the resurrected woman. The deity simply increased the local gravitational pressure to an impossible degree.
The pale girl was instantly blown to bits by the crushing gravitational force. Her newly formed skeleton shattered into dust.
Her flesh liquefied completely. The sheer kinetic impact of the invisible crush hit the surrounding environment with terrifying power.
The shockwave slammed into the central column where Arthur hung, shaking the entire architectural structure down to its foundational bedrock.
The violent tremor shattered the stone beneath Arthur's hands. He completely lost his desperate grip.
Arthur fell backward into the open abyss. The terrifying vacuum of nihility waited below, a gateway of pure, churning darkness ready to consume him entirely.
The cold air rushed violently past his ears.
The physical sensation of weightlessness gripped his stomach. He looked down at the endless, dark sky swirling beneath the foundations of the divine vault.
He refused to die falling helplessly into the dark.
Arthur twitched his broad shoulders mid-air, forcing his falling body to twist against the rushing wind.
He brought his heavy blade up in a massive, sweeping arc. He slashed his weapon directly toward Mercyros in the hopes of landing one final, desperate act of vengeance.
The ethereal blue energy blade traveled upward, striking the invisible barriers surrounding the Monolith.
The attack proved itself entirely useless against the divine shielding. The raw energy simply dispersed into harmless blue sparks.
However, dealing direct damage to the deity was never the actual goal of his mid-air strike.
The kinetic dispersal of his heavy slash caused a massive chain reaction across the unstable architecture. The resulting domino effect shifted the broken masonry above. A massive, shattered marble pillar broke loose from the ceiling and tumbled downward.
The heavy stone cylinder moved directly into the empty space between Arthur and the consuming gateway of nihility.
Arthur timed his movement with absolute, veteran precision. He slammed his heavy boots directly against the surface of the falling pillar. He bent his knees and jumped off the descending stone with explosive force.
The maneuver successfully altered his downward trajectory, but he was still falling over the endless void.
A sudden, sharp thread of condensed red blood shot downward from the upper platforms. The crimson line whipped through the air and wrapped securely around Arthur's thick wrist.
Ayame had managed to break through a fraction of her temporal stasis. She controlled the thick blood thread with the very tips of her fingers, bleeding profusely from her own exertion. Her blunt, sharp focus anchored the line.
She dug her boots into her floating platforms and held the heavy swordsman suspended above the void. She prevented Arthur from falling endlessly and helplessly toward the churning sky below.
Arthur swung in a wide arc at the end of the blood thread. He looked up at Ayame. He saw the intense, dark withering magic actively creeping up her arms. He needed to break the remaining temporal locks binding her physical form.
With a brief, authoritative voice, Arthur announced his next maneuver. "Tempest Cleave."
He channeled a massive surge of blue energy directly up the connecting blood thread. The violent magical attack traveled upward and hit Ayame squarely in the chest.
The blast completely shattered the remaining chrono stasis holding her in place. The energetic strike hit her dense, protective blood armor, but it did absolutely nothing to harm her physical body.
The maneuver freed her entirely, allowing her to move her limbs with her usual, terrifying speed.
On the far edge of the shattered floor, Pilt threw up another thick mouthful of dark blood. The corporate executive was entirely spent. His expensive coat was soaked in his own vital fluids. The severe biological blowback of altering the timelines ravaged his internal organs.
"Future investment," Pilt yelled, his voice cracking painfully. "I call forward the final-"
Pilt could not finish the invocation. He staggered blindly, his knees buckling under the immense metaphysical weight. He fell heavily to the ground, his face striking the cold stone. He exhaled faintly, his glowing yellow eyes finally dimming into absolute darkness. The wealthiest mortal in the scattered realms had completely exhausted his capital.