Demonic Devourer ch. 128

We may not be the most powerful beings in this reality yet, but the other Titans can't match us after so short a time awakened. With time, they'll be able to. Not that we’ll give them any.

The world is ending around us. Lya, the Titan of the Living Moon, is dead, but it isn't the only enemy in our way. I can sense the other Titans activating, awakening, destroying. I wonder how many of these others are like Sierra and me; Titans that were experiments once. Beings that were coerced, manipulated, and forced into being the original gods' weapons.

None of that matters anymore. Right now, they're in our way, and that means that they won't survive. The world is unstable, and I can sense the hells beneath crashing into us, ready to unleash the angels that still pursue us. If this goes on any longer, the combined chaos of that which is above and below will shatter everything I've ever known into a million disparate pieces floating in the void.

As much as I don't care for the state of the rest of existence, advancement means very little if there is nowhere to do it in. I don't need to save the world, but if I happen to do so while killing everything that threatens to destroy it, that's not unacceptable.

Not all the Titans are acting the same way. With Lya and Scintilla dead, a fair chunk of them must recognize that after consuming a large part of the hells, Sierra and I, Titans of Balance and Paradox, are more than they can currently handle. With two Titans down and Devoured already, we're only going to get stronger.

I have a guess as to who’ll make a move first. Sapphire is already more powerful than either of us. That much is obvious. She is the only Titan that's been active for so long, the actualized result of decades if not centuries of building power in a humanoid form.

I can sense her, the Titan of the Forgotten Realm, who, to my knowledge, is the first Titan, waiting for us a few realities away. I don't recognize the reality she is within; it is not fae, it is not a hell, and it’s not even a fragment. I don’t care, either. Not until she comes after us, at least.

Right now, I need to find out what Adrian's weapon does and I need to activate it. Sapphire desperately wants this weapon. If my guess is correct, it provides a way to undo the mess that we’ve made of the world, but more importantly: if it is strong enough to kill the gods themselves, it is strong enough to kill Sapphire, who claims to be the shell of one.

I need her dead. If this half-complete weapon can give me even a ghost of a chance at ending her, I’ll take it.

With both Lyla and Scintilla dead, we have free reign to return to Adrian. So, Sierra and I, bound by mutual agreement, use our respective skills to return to our erstwhile companion.

"Holy shit," Adrian says again as we settle down in a rare stable space, "what the heck, what the fuck happened?"

"I could ask the same of you," I say. "You’ve picked up some new companions."

“The Titan,” the fae besides him says.

I activate Appraise. Its name is Lyriel, and it seems to have some familiarity with the Hydrokinetic.

"Which one of us are you talking to?" Sierra asks. "There’s two of us here, you know."

"Balance and Paradox,” the fae says, “are two sides of the same coin."

I close my eyes, reaching out through the Titan network. I sense the location of my brethren. They’re closer than I’d like, and though none past the first two have made a move against us, there’s no guarantee that that’ll be the case for long.

"We don’t have time for your fae bullshit," I say. "I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the world around us is a few moments from falling into the void. There are,”—I pause a moment to check the number—“fifteen Titans and over forty proto-Titans converging on our location. The only reason they haven’t come here and killed you all already is because the two of us are here. Now hurry up and explain what this does before I change my mind about letting you live.”

"It's one half of a weapon thought lost forever,” Lyriel says, completely uncaring of my thinly veiled threat upon its life. "We have only myths to speak of, so we know not what precisely its mechanisms are, only but the one who commands the waves it was built upon is capable of wielding it."

I look at Adrian. He’s Category 3 now, and that means he has a concept which is currently active. I don’t even need my skills to sense the direction of his existence, it’s so loud.

"You," I say to Adrian, "the fae is talking about you."

He grins. "That’s right.”

With the perception skills I’ve learned, I can sense the lack of surety, the cracks beneath the façade.

Because Adrian is strong now, but for a weapon to be capable of destroying the gods, it has to be at least Category 6. No matter how much he might have been able to break his limits, there is no chance that Adrian is capable of activating this weapon himself, let alone fuel and wield it.

“You need our help,” Sierra says. She has always been the perceptive one, and now is no exception.

"Yeah, no shit," Adrian says. "They're telling me that I'm the one that's supposed to power this thing. Can you sense the depth of this thing's pool? I think I could use entire lifetimes—ten, a hundred lifetimes of mana—and I wouldn’t even get halfway through."

"I don’t think you’d get a quarter of the way in,” Sierra says.

"Exactly my point," Adrian finishes. "And like you said, every Titan is coming for us. I don't think I need to emphasize how little chance I have of surviving against seventeen damn Titans. I nearly died twice against one. So can we please hurry this up? Because Sapphire—you remember her? She's chasing us too, and I think we would much rather not deal with that."

"Sapphire," I say, "is still several realities away. I don’t doubt she’s watching us at this very second, waiting. But you’re not wrong. We’re running out of time, so let’s get this done. Show me the weapon. Tell me what I need to do."

“It’s pretty simple,” Adrian says. “Mana transference. Sierra’s the one that does that, isn’t he?”

“Evelyn and I are basically the same person at this point," the woman in question says says. "We share a lot now, a lot more than you remember. That said, hand us the weapon and let’s see what we can do."

"My brethren and I have sacrificed their lives to begin a futile spark in this," Lyriel says. "Do not let their sacrifice go to waste."

I startle at the fae’s proclamation. Their power is so irrelevant to me that when they didn’t immediately present themselves as a threat, I started ignoring them.

Hm. There are fewer of them than there were before. I wonder how they died. Judging from the residue of their magic, they might have sacrificed themself.

To be honest, I couldn’t give less of a fuck about these fae, but I would rather Adrian stay alive, so I link our existences, and I feel the yawning ocean of emptiness that is the weapon.

It’s shaped like a moon, I realize. The real moon, not the living mockery of one that we just annihilated. I have a sneaking suspicion as to what the other half looks like—and who has it.

"Sapphire, can you hear us?” I croon. “Can you see us? I don’t know what your plan is, but it’s not going to work. Show your face, why don’t you? I am eager to rid this world of you."

With the Titans held at bay for the time being, we pour mana into the weapon. The tiny, metallic scultupre of a moon seems unassuming at first, but touching it reveals the never-ending well that we must fuel.

I can tell that it’s incomplete in the same way that a door without a knob is. It’ll still work, but not nearly as effectively as it should.

Despite that, it’s still more powerful, more significant than anything I’ve ever seen. Even Marie's Aspect of the Founder pales in comparison.

It's a god killer. We dump mana, authority, and everything we have into it. Our lives, our souls, our hearts.

Because we have fifteen gods left to kill, and I don’t plan on letting a single one of them survive.

#

Sapphire

Sapphire hears the Titan of Paradox address her and the sun contained between her hands, one half of the god killer, resonates, eager to be united with its partner to fulfill its purpose.

"Quiet," Sapphire says. "You will have your time soon enough."

Even as the Titans of Paradox and Balance assist the Stahr boy and the fae in assembling a piece of the blade, they unknowingly spell their own doom. Poetic justice, Sapphire thinks, for them to be the engineers of their own demise.

The fae that assembled this an eon ago will be the first to suffer under its wrath.

“Demon girl," Sapphire promises, addressing the fae, kings, mortals, and all who defied the will of the gods, "I will cut you down. Tear you apart. You will not even know how to beg for mercy. Your entrails will paint a new constellation amongst the skies.”

Sapphire is the original goddess. The two new upstarts, Evelyn and Sierra, think they know the system. They think they know the workings of the Titans.

Their understanding might eclipse those of most mortals. It might even surpass many of the Titans.

But Sapphire is she who understands the system of the Titans better than anyone. It is her body that was mutilated to provide mortals with sparks of her power, and it is her soul that stretches across the stars.

When she speaks, she addresses the original Titans—the ones that were once divine. With Scintilla and Lya gone, only five remain.

Brethren, she says. The time is almost here. Prepare for our victory.

Her plans have gone awry. Should that damned Category 3 insect not have interfered, this would would be perfect already. Unfortunately, she cannot alter the past—yet—but Sapphire is adaptable. She is confident of her victory nonetheless. Plan or no plan, she will win.

To the Titans that are not of divinity—raised from mortals, monsters of legend, and experiments, she commands, Attack on my signal.

In a world that threatens to slip into the void once again, time is not an entirely static concept. The minutes that pass for Sapphire don’t pass the same for the others. Where there is power, however, there is stability, and the moon half of the god killer has that in spades.

She waits, and she waits.

After an eternity, after an instant, the weapon teems with mana and authority. Her sun-half burns with the desire to meet its mate and activate fully.

This time, when Sapphire speaks, she addresses all of her forces. Fifteen Titans, forty-three proto-Titans, and every single remaining anomaly in the world.

Kill them all.

#

Somewhere, nowhere

For the past seven centuries, Angel 1 has not been Angel 1. It was the thirteenth—but today, the other angels have failed in their duty to protect the world from the Titans.

Unacceptable.

One is the last defense against the former gods and the end of the world, a bastion standing strong against the forces threatening to plunge the world into oblivion. A millennium ago, it was instructed to protect, and its ordained commands hold true to its heart even now.

It will stand in the face of everything that threatens to take this newborn world screaming back into oblivion, and today… today, it will kill. It will kill and kill and kill, because a dead world is preferable to a nonexistent one.

In its previous state, Angel 1 would not be able to defeat the Titans as they are. It failed to even prevent them from escaping the hells, and that represents complete and total failure.

But with its siblings dead, 1 is now the foremost angel. The number of an angel is not only a descriptor of power, it’s a source of one. Authority floods into 1, and it thrums with the strength of its fallen brethren.

It will use every last drop of its new power, but for this threat, that’s not enough. These enemies are beyond comprehension, acting on a scale unseen since the fall.

Angels are created to value the existence of their world more than any being, including themselves, so when One reaches out and takes, the angels beneath it give.

It takes, and it takes, calling upon every last angel in the hells and the heavens and the anchored reality to stand one last time. To give their lives for the chance to strike their greatest enemy down.

Angel 1 knows this may be the end of its own existence as well, but that is inconsequential; for angtels can be rebuilt, but the world cannot.

The last angel sallies forth beyond the point of no return.

#

00:25:18

T-00 appears.

00:25:19

Angel 1 appears.

All Titan activity ceases.

00:25:20

Every active Titan and proto-Titan appears within a 10 mile radius of T-17 and -18.

#

The Anchored Reality

We aren’t the only one pouring magic into the miniature moon, I see. The fae around us are between Category 4 and 5, and their contribution is not insignificant—compared to Adrian, at least.

Even their lives are a pittance compared to Sierra and I. We have the power of Devoured hells and Titans, and I pour all the excess waste away.

Yet the fae continue to sacrifice themselves anyway. It’s foolhardy and stupid, but I have to admit that I respect it.

Not that respect will matter to them when they’re dead.

The moon grows heavier and heavier as we fill the reservoir within, channeling it all through Adrian. Sierra spends most of her effort on keeping him alive, reinforcing his weak Category 3 body to survive the raw magic flow of multiple Titans.

Soon, it’s heavy enough that even our magic is barely enough to hold it up. It drops down towards the ground, and I let it, adjusting our position with Crimson Storm only enough to keep the god-killer from falling into a patch of unreality.

The worlds around us have gone eerily quiet, as if the weapon itself is draining the sound and the power from everything. Reality discolors, shades of eternity fading away, and I can’t tell if it’s the gaping paths to the void or the weapon.

I pour everything we have. Two dead Titans and nine dead hells feed straight into the moon, and it balloons with power and weight that goes beyond the physical.

The Unbreakable Mortal Spirit - Moon

Category: 6+

Tier: Irrelevant

Charges: Irrelevant

Description: [APPRAISE FAILED]

The moment the weapon fuels, the hells break lose.

Literally.

My perception speeds up, but it’s not fast enough to figure out the activation sequence for this half of the weapon, especially when not even a Sapphire-tier Appraise works on it.

From above, the Titans.

From below, the angels—no. One angel. 1, formerly 12, formerly 13, glowing with enough power to wipe the planet’s surface clean in an instant.

And right in front of us, two piercingly familiar blue eyes materialize, followed by the rest of a half-elf that is not a half-elf.

Hello, Sapphire says. This is the end.