Word Soul: DARKSEID Chapter 4.

Chapter 4: The War Hammer Duel.

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He didn’t want to go back to the Terrorspire.

But he had to.

The Motherbox was still hopefully in Granny’s chamber. It had to be. She wouldn't trust It in anyone else’s hands. And without it, he wasn’t leaving this planet. Ever.

So he floated through the old slave tunnels, past the fanning areas, moving closer to the Terrorspire, past the Parademon guards at the gates, until he phased into the massive tower.

The deeper and higher he went, the more the walls looked clean. Not just in design — in purpose. No graffiti like the lower floors of the Terrorspire. No scarring from energy weapons. No signs of the frequent rebellions that always failed.

Only control.

He passed holding cells. Empty now. Some still stained with old blood.

He passed numerous security programs like the machines bolted to walls, humming low, scanning everything they could see. He stayed out of sight. No reflections. No interaction. But still — his form tightened every time a red light passed over him.

He didn’t trust Apokalips not to evolve and start detecting ghosts.

The closer he got to Granny’s chamber, the more he had to be careful.

Finally, he reached the hallway he knew. The same one they’d dragged him down. The air still carried that scorched metallic sting. The door to her chamber was closed — sealed by a glowing symbol in the shape of an inverted cross.

He tried to phase in but there was field of energy around the entrance and walls that repulsed his soul form. The energy field was attached and maintained by the unknown symbol.

-Locking Rune. New God magic-

A memory trickled into his mind, identifying it.

Now that he knew it's purpose, the rune no longer posed a problem. New God magic or not.

He raised a hand, focused, and hissed through vibrating soul matter:

[Open]

The rune flickered. Resisted. Then unraveled, as if even the code itself obeyed the command.

The door hissed open.

The room looked almost untouched.

The slab he’d died on still sat in the center. Tools hung in their usual rows. The Motherbox rested on its pedestal near the wall, its surface pulsing with faint light — like it was breathing.

But he didn’t move yet.

Something felt wrong.

The silence wasn’t dead.

It was waiting.

He floated closer, careful.

When he was within arm’s reach of the box, he whispered:

[Come]

It lifted from the pedestal and hovered toward him.

Then he heard the shift.

Metal sliding. Energy charging.

He spun.

Granny Goodness stepped out of the shadows.

She stood in the far corner of the chamber, her Nth metal War Hammers in both hands. Red lightning crackledat the edges of the grey weapons.

Maybe it was the fact that he was standing close to pure Nth Metal, but the frequency coming from the War Hammers disrupted his soul wavelength, turning his spiritual mass into...visible ectoplasm.

Granny didn’t look surprised by the appearance of a white ghost.

“You came back,” she said, walking around him as he tried to control his suddenly physical form. “I was hoping you would. You can fool my eyes, but not HIS. Not while you're inside HIM.”

She held up the hammers.

"Granted you managed to hide and scurry around like a rat but I knew you'd come back for the only thing that could give you way out."

He tried to vibrate. To speak, but her first swing was faster.

The hammer hit him mid-chest.

It shouldn’t have. He was non-physical. Untouchable.

But the hammer was Nth Metal— and it blew away his ghost the instant it touched him.

He splattered against the far wall and dripped down to the floor in a gooey mess.

He felt pain.

Real physical pain. Fortunately he was able to pull himself back together albeit his ectoplasmic mass visibly drooped like sagging flesh.

Granny grinned.

“Not as fragile anymore. Good.”

She struck again, aiming for the head. He reshaped himself around the Hammer's path just in time, but his arm was slow to respond and got torn off his body.

"Do you know how many sorry brats, luck out and stumble into undeserved and unearned power?"

She asked, trampling down on his squirming hand. "A lot. That's how I'm here. I gained this power. This station. These hammers through blood. And that's also why I'm here, to ensure I'm the first and last of my kind. A slave should know It's place."

Losing almost a quarter of his soul made him weak and unable to maintain his mass. He couldn't run let alone attack. Using Word Soul in this state was a pipe dream too.

She stopped talking and the swings came faster. He was able to dodge by manipulating his form while trying to move away from the Nth Metal but Granny kept advancing, relentless.

This wasn’t like before. She wasn’t tormenting him for fun now.

She was trying to end him.

He backed toward the wall, still holding the Motherbox, and forced the words out, regardless of what would happen:

[mPushh bbbackkkk!]

The words came out garbled but understandable. And that was enough.

A shockwave erupted from him. Granny staggered, just enough for him to float high and out of reach. He didn't even consider phasing out through the ceiling as it would mean leaving behind the Motherbox.

Below him, Granny wasn’t done.

She slammed her hammers together. The air rippled with vibrations that hit him and disrupted his floating, pulling him back to the floor. Her eyes locked onto him, and for the first time, she didn’t mock.

She hunted.

He’d never been in a real fight.

Not in this life. Not in the last.

This wasn’t like stopping a cart or lifting rubble. Granny Goodness wasn’t steel or stone. She fought back. Thought faster. Hit harder.

Her War Hammers moved like they weighed nothing, but every swing bent gravity. Each strike made his soul form harder to control and heavier to move, like the metal didn’t just touch him — it forced him to exist within her laws

She threw one at him.

He ducked.

Too slow.

The handle clipped his shoulder and blew off a soul fragment. The pain lanced through him, deep and echoing.

He spun mid-air, gasping.

She caught the returning hammer with one hand.

“Welcome back.” she cackled. “The walls missed your screams. Yours were especially loud.”

Recalling the torture he'd suffered, anger replaced the terror. If he had teeth, they’d be gritting.

Think. React. Speak. Fight. Change.

He deformed his shape back to a spherical form. With new ease, his surface rippled.

[Fall]

The word dropped like a weight.

Granny stumbled. One knee hit the floor. A grunt escaped her throat.

But she didn’t stay down.

She braced, grinned, and whispered something to her hammer. It shimmered granting her more strength to overcome his Word Soul.

She surged forward again — one leap, two strikes. He dodged the first, got clipped by the second and lost more ectoplasm.

He couldn’t survive another direct hit.

So he stopped waiting for chances and took initiative.

He dropped low, and manuevered behind her.

[Freeze]

It almost worked. Her movement stalled for half a second. Enough to see fear in her eyes.

But she resisted.

“Your words are weak,” she spat. “You barely exist. And soon you will be kindling for HIS Omega.”

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t have time to argue.

He went higher. She followed. The hammers smashed pipes, sparks rained down, alarms tried to start but failed — she must’ve overridden the system.

Of course she had.

This was her domain.

He needed a better word. A sharper edge.

He hovered behind a broken ceiling strut, waited until she stepped into view — then rasped:

[Collapse]

The entire section of ceiling dropped like a blade.

Granny raised both hammers, blocked most of it, but the impact buried her to her knees.

She didn’t scream. She laughed.

Dust filled the air.

She rose through it.

Half her armor cracked. One eye bloodshot. But still standing.

Still fighting.

“You’re improving,” she said. “But you’ll run out of words before I run out of bloodlust.”

His vibrations were shaky now. He could feel how thin he’d stretched. See how dim he was. Each word drained more than the last.

If she hit him again, he wouldn’t recover.

So he focused everything on one final move. Let the magic wind up behind it. But not as a single word or a sentence.

When she charged, both hammers raised for the final blow, he said it:

[Crush]+[your]+[own]+[strength]

He vibrated the attack not as a stringed sentence but as one conjoined word, using his intent to encode the plus as a link gap so that it still retained the meaning.

Her arms locked mid-swing, then trembled and buckled under the suddenly heavy War Hammers.

She screamed as the heads came tumbling down.

The force behind her hammers turned inward — bones snapped, muscles shredded under their own weight. She dropped to her knees, gasping, then to her side.

Broken.

Still alive.

But not a threat.

He lowered to the ground, hovering just inches above the floor. The ectoplasm slowly turned back to soul mass, which trembled, lines of energy cracking through it like ice ready to shatter but holding on.

He looked at her broken form- the bone of her spine jutting out of pulped flesh, abdomen torn open and guts leaking out. She was unconscious — dying.

He didn’t care.

He turned to the Motherbox, still floating nearby, waiting.

He reached for it.

Time to leave.