AO 6 Ch 42

"What have you all gotten yourselves into?" I clicked my tongue as my magic sprang to my demands almost as if it were eager to serve.

A swirl of light encapsulated me and flung me into the sky above as my bluesteel plate unfolded itself for me to use. The battle was intense; magic was pouring off everyone involved in torrential waves. I quickly identified the remaining chancellors as well as a host of vampyrs, none of whom were actively engaged in fighting. Instead, they had made a pit of sorts where a creepily handsome man fought all four of my anchors and, most surprisingly, Uncle Valken. 

I did a double take to see Eva to the side, in magical chains, with one of the vampyrs practically drooling over her shoulder. There were a handful of dead bodies, making me smirk in the knowledge that my anchors had put up a good fight.

The only reason King Martin was the only one in the pit with them was probably that the others were in too much danger.

I cleared my throat and floated out to be a little more obvious. "Well, well, well, what do we have here?" I shouted loud enough for my voice to boom over the area.

King Martin threw himself back, one of Maribelle's arms severed in his grasp. As he glanced up at me, scowling, "You must be the four-sphere mage. I was playing with your anchors, wondering when you'd show up." He tossed Maribelle’s arm to the side, a haughty grin on his face. "Don't worry about them. They were just the opening act." 

He gestured grandly, and I really regretted doing a similar gesture earlier because it had to look almost the same. And that just wasn't good.

I wanted to be nothing like King Martin. "Well, if the final act is here, why don't you and I settle it? We can deal with my anchors later." I was happy to drag him away from them.

"Freya has told me all about you. The little mage that has taken my original master from me. But don't worry, I found a better one." He mumbled slightly as he talked, buffing his fingernails against his shirt before checking them. He grew disinterested for a moment before his eyes lit back up and focused on me. "Right, but the most important part is, you're just like me. The two of us are on the path to godhood."

I rolled my eyes, but waited for him to keep moving away from my people. For now, I’d suffer through it.

He grinned wide, and the fangs in his mouth caught the sunlight as he floated up into the sky. "However, Freya told me a very important fact. Two gods cannot ascend at the same time." His smile was overly wide.

I didn't know if he was trying to be creepy or if he was creepy and it made his smile appear that way.

"Thus, the celestial heavens set a task before any who should ascend to godhood. A second god shall try and ascend at the same time, and there must be a victor between the two, for one to truly reach that level." His eyes held an intensity that went straight to my spine. 

"Is that what Cowtits told you? Really now," I chuckled. "From everything I've seen, she's a liar and a snake." 

King Martin waved my comment away dismissively. "Regardless, once I become a god, and I am her equal, she will fall prey to me like everyone else, including my master." He gripped his fist tight in the air as if he was strangling something with a single hand. 

"I'm sorry, but you have problems," I said, fighting back a laugh.

The arrogant king scowled at me. "I was giving you a moment to revel in our final battle before you die, and your essence becomes part of me. Then I will ascend to something even greater than I am now and you will be nothing more than my fuel."

I blinked. The megalomania was strong in him. "Right, well, you're welcome to come at me all you want, but just so you know, I just fought Freya herself and came out unscathed," I boasted, though I was fibbing a bit. 

I had only glanced at Soulgard before coming to this fight, feeling my anchors’ urgencies, but I had seen that the walls were cracked. One of the spires holding my spheres had fallen and was riddled with holes. My soul wasn't in peak condition, but I didn't have any other options. No one would take my people from me, not Freya and not King Martin.

His eyes grew serious, and he darted across the sky, two soft glowing lights under his feet.

I swerved backwards the bluesteel plate under my own was far less agile as King Martin somehow ran as fast as a light anchor and flew as fast as a light mage combined.

A pair of glowing wings expanded from his back and they didn't flap, but instead propelled him so fast he was nothing but two blurring lines of light. He appeared before me with a fist raised back, only to slam his fist into my face to a deafening crunch as his hand malformed, becoming a mangled mess, blood splattering over my shoulder.

Instead of my face being crushed, he destroyed his hand. My mind flipped back to the moment with Thor's hammer before I grinned. 

"Tough luck there." I smiled.

Two spears of darkness pierced into his chest through his shoulders and pinned his wings in place before I flung a surprised King Martin off of me. 

"Well now, if you're done gloating, allow me." I offered, growing serious and turned my hands over, making fists as those spears twisted into spirals of magic, tearing his wings off and trying to throw him down to the ground.

He fought me tooth and nail, literally clawing and biting at my magic, successfully ripping chunks off.

"Stop pretending to be above everything and go down where you belong," I said, pointing a finger.

Several shields of ice materialized and slammed into him, preventing him from regaining his bearings. He’d smash one only for another to take its place.

I bullied him down to the ground with those shields.

Even as he thrashed, shattering several, the shards cut him deeply. Each of those shields had been made of soul ice, making the cuts freeze over and preventing what I assumed was the remarkable healing that he and Carmilla shared. 

King Martin, suddenly on the back step, gawked at me as I lorded over him, keeping him on the ground while my assault continued.

I thought briefly about soul death magic, only to immediately push the idea aside, given the state of Soulgard. I was highly concerned about introducing King Martin's icky, and most likely incredibly disgusting soul into the mix. If two baby vampyrs were that bad, I could only imagine how corrosive his would be.

I continued to batter King Martin with shields of ice, freezing over patches of his skin. 

He roared in defiance, one of his arms shattering as he punched a shield of ice. All of the chancellors floating in the air coordinated an attack, shooting light magic in the same moment to try to break him free and kill me.

A tightly concentrated beam of light came from multiple directions, trying to take my head, only for a purple shield to flicker to life a dozen times over. Each flickering shield absorbed a beam and sent the magic straight to my palace in Soulgard.

Though the move weighted on my mind like Cyam had just sat on my head.

"You're going to have to try harder than that," I mocked to hide how much that had cost me.

King Martin screamed. "I don't accept useless servants. Make yourself of some use." He finished his statement, and every vampyr and chancellor present dropped dead. King Martin's magic swelled, doubling, then tripled, and continued to grow.

Strange blisters of skin bulged throughout his body, as if his physical form was unable to contain all of the magic that was suddenly packed in it. 

I didn't want to wait to see what happened next. I fired off a bead of compressed soul fire straight at his head, making it explode before he could move.

The violent explosion washed over the area, blanketing him and everything in a fiery explosion that should have killed him.

I let out a sigh of relief. That hit had been intense. Yet, as the fire dissipated, I realized the battle was not over.

King Martin had transformed. One of his arms was three times the size of the other. His head had two fleshy horns growing from it, and his rich garb had been ripped apart by dangerous-looking red spines, still bleeding from where they had ripped from his skin, glistened in the sun. The howl he let loose next was inhuman, as was his speed. 

He appeared before me with that giant arm, swiping to rip off my head. 

My Ardenium shield flickered to life to block the attack, and a pain raced through my mind and soul. I felt the cost of using my new magnificent shield. I held my now ringing head as I shot away on the bluesteel plate.

One of Zuri's arrows barely missed King Martin, though he thrashed, catching it with his smaller arm and shattering it just to prove a point.

I heard another roar as he chased me once again. My Ardenium shield flickered to life again, blocking the next attack at the cost of a splitting headache. I was running out of options quickly.

That shield wouldn’t hold up forever against whatever King Martin had become. The madness in his eyes told me that it was going to give out far before he did.

I threw one soul magic after another at him, trying to find a weakness I could exploit. Soul lightning did nothing. Bluesteel did nothing. 

The hits might cut or burn King Martin in the moment, but he would recover right after.

He sought my neck with every swing of his arm as I tried to outpace him. We were moving so quickly that my anchors were left in the dust.

This was the final battle. We both knew this only ended when one of us died.

This monster version of King Martin had regrown his wings, only this time they were made of flesh with feathers of light. The appendages looked completely out of place with his disfigured form, but he was fast, and he appeared at my side, fangs out. He tried to latch onto my neck, only for the Ardenium shield to reappear once again. 

This time, however, the price of the shield was even steeper. Soulgard became injured, and I could feel it starting to crack.

King Martin’s fangs reached through that crack and found my neck. A vortex of suction threatened to rip every cracked and fragmented piece of the city in my soul apart, sucking it out through the fangs perilously close to my neck.

I should have been scrambling, but I felt an odd sense of calm. I was barely aware of a familiar presence rousing within my soul.

While I was fairly sure Zuri would have told me the choice I was about to make was not tactically sound, yet I followed my gut. I left my body locked in the sky with King Martin and went into Soulgard.

My special space was an atrocity. One gleaming fang pierced the sky, reaching all the way to the palace and cracking the building's crown. Darkness seeped out from every edge and my calm only solidified. Nobody would take this home from me.