Chapter 52 Pantheon of the Resolute

‘What the fuck?’

I was about to contact the Pantheon when Destruction’s worried voice came through the Soul-Mate bond.

“Darkness has appeared outside of my Sphere on Onnekus. I thought you should know.”

“Darkness? What does he want?”

“At present, he is merely watching me. I have shouted over to…” Her voice became panicked. “Portals from Light are opening up.”

“Shit. I was just about to warn you all that our bond had been severed. I’m teleporting through, Destruction.”

Intended Teleportation Target unavailable.

“What the hell,” I shouted at no one in particular. The effort I’d gone to, for a teleportation anchor and when I needed it, it wouldn’t work. I was about to tell her the problem, when she screamed, a mix of feral rage and fear.

“They’ve breached my Sphere. I don’t—” She cut off, but her fear still pulsed through our bond.

My mind worked fast. Death was the closest, but I had no anchor to him, which left Peace the next closest.

Intended Teleportation Target unavailable.

My temple in Far Reach next. It worked, which meant there was a problem with Onnekus, not the skill. I activated the totem to take me to Toukal, then shouted. “Aly! Get me to transfer Admin Hub One, immediately.”

Perhaps I should have stopped, gathered reinforcements. I didn’t. This was a gods only fight.

May I ask what the issue is, Clive? I can sense your distress, but that is all.

“Light’s bond to me has just been broken. A few moments later, Destruction told me that Darkness and Light are attacking her Sphere of Influence, and that they’ve breached it.”

But that is impossible.

“Yet it’s happened,” I growled. “I need to tell the others.” And then I hit the distortion field around the Admin Hub in Onnekus.

Aly’s voice reverted to our personal link. I’m trying to get some sort of reading from the planet. I will tell you what I see.

“Thank you, Aly.”

Then I was out into the open air. I tried again to teleport to Destruction... and appeared in total carnage.

Light and her Onnekan forces were laying waste to Destruction’s Sphere while Darkness alone harried Destruction. The amount of power they were both throwing was unbelievable, and while I found a new respect for Destruction, she was no match for Darkness as he pushed her back with quick-fire attacks. A few seconds after I arrived, whatever game Darkness was playing ended, and he threw out a tendril of Dark Neuma that shot towards Destruction like a lightning bolt that harpooned her through the chest. With an immortal Shell, such a thing shouldn’t have been possible, yet here we were.

She howled in what I thought was shock until I saw the power draining from her incredibly fast. A power drain that he shouldn’t have had access to.

With a desperate push of my own power, I made my non-violent introduction to the fray, cutting the harpooning tendril that held her. Or at least I tried to. It was way stronger than it had any right to be, and the instant break I expected didn’t materialize.

Darkness must have known it wouldn’t take me too long to sever the insipid syphon and threw up a void portal in front of Destruction. In almost the same movement, he yanked the helpless Destruction violently toward it.

I read the move as soon as I saw the void storage appear, and threw up my own in front of his. It was a move I doubted I could have even considered before my most recent bumper stat point haul, but I was so filled with disbelief and panic to celebrate my quick thinking as Destruction went hurtling inside of mine instead of his.

I slammed it shut, severing the bond holding her with the move, then glared at Darkness with the full force of my rage.

“You stupid motherfucker!” I roared at him, slowly closing the distance. “I should have expected another double cross from you, but why? What did you have to gain from starting this up again?”

A smirk stretched his pale face. His eyes glinted with malice. “I’ll admit to being surprised, Clive. Getting from Earth to here so quickly, through three barriers and two distortion fields. You’re stronger than I expected, and I confess, you’ve come too fast. I’m not quite ready to deal with you yet.”

“Too fucking fast? You agreed to a ceasefire, you bastard. What’s going on here? How did you drop Destruction’s Sphere?”

Light’s presence appeared behind me through a portal, but I wasn’t concerned until I was hit by a tendril of her power that immediately attempted to drain me. I severed it and pushed myself to the side so that I could create some distance and see them both clearly.

By the time I’d done that, Darkness was gone, but Light was still coming at me. “Need to fight, Aly.”

Of course you do, Clive. And fight well. Something is very wrong with this situation, and I will try to get to the bottom of it.

“You’re telling me,” I growled, desperately trying to get away from another of Light’s power draining tendrils. “They shouldn’t have these powers.”

I had to stop talking to concentrate as Light was coming at me with everything she had.

“Clive!” came Peace’s panicked voice in my mind. “War is attacking me. His Onnekan troops have breached my Sphere.”

Thrown by the sudden intrusion of her voice and what it meant, two of Light’s tendrils struck me, each of them drawing power. I almost did the obvious and severed them, but Light would be expecting that, so I left them in place and instead threw my own in return.

I’d gambled right, and she failed to dodge or dismiss either of the attacks at first. When she moved to do it, I fired a Spicy Ball at her head. Behind it, I sent a ball of Void Neuma intended to obscure her sight while I cut her attacks on me, and considered what to do next.

She dismissed the ball of light and somehow the blast of Void Neuma which must have been only inches from her face. Her most impressive feat at that moment was to scare the living shit out of me.

With her level of power, if she had the ability to dismiss my attacks, then we’d just become very evenly matched. Or not. She had centuries on me, and all I had on her were seemingly my Alo-im racial powers.

I pulled my:

Sword of the Alo-im:

Neuma-based weapon. A long sword crafted entirely from Balanced Neuma. Equally effective against all forms of Neuma. Sword’s level scales with your own.

Sword Scaling:

+3 Damage per +1 Personal Level = 2760

+1 Damage per +1 Intelligence = 1000

+1 Damage per +1 Internal Connection = 1000

Total Damage: 4760

That seemed like an incredible amount of power, and I really wanted to know what it looked like cracking against the side of Light’s smug head.

Except… as I looked at her, she wasn’t smug at all. She looked terrified. It made no sense, nor did it make any difference to my next move. I unleashed:

Vortex of Dusk and Dawn:

Use your combined Neuma to create a 40-ft-wide chaotic vortex of energy which drains the Neuma of those caught in its wake while causing up to 8% of Max health damage.

It was a distraction, nothing more. Such a trick would barely phase the goddess, but as she was buffeted in the air, her concentration flickered for a second in which I attacked.

Leading with a Spicy Ball to the small of her back as she pirouetted away from the vortex, I followed up with a sword cut to the neck. I must have really shook her up with my change of tactics because I scored a hit, which sent a flare of sizzling energy up from the impact sight.

She shot back out of a follow-up shot, looking to be in a great deal of pain. I wasn’t in the mood to give her a breather though, and despite her being a little faster than me, I teleported alongside her, already bringing the sword around to hack her in the gut.

Scoring another solid hit, she doubled over, and I thought I was winning before I ate a ball of light ejected from her palm. Temporarily blinded, I was hit with something hard and damaging to my Immortal Shell.

I added to my backward momentum to give myself a second to think, but she was on me and she’d grown. I prided myself on being a contrary bastard, so I shrunk my size and teleported up to the side of her head, easily avoiding the swishing soul blade she wielded.

Then I drove my blade into the side of her temple, full force. It buried halfway down the length of its blade. Only then did I grow. Blade and all. She let out a shriek of pain, and I’d just found my favorite new move, which I complimented with a lashing of Neuma to drain more power from her.

“Clive! It’s Darkness! He’s h—”

< Warning>

Soul Mate – Devotion has expired.

As my mind metaphorically melted from the notification, Light bitch-slapped me into next week. As I cartwheeled away, it got worse.

< Warning >

Your bond with the goddess of Devotion has been severed.

“Devotion,” I muttered desperately, trying to search her out to teleport to her, but there was nothing.

Without even another look to Light, I portaled away to Devotion’s Sphere.

There was no Sphere. Her temple lay in smoldering ruins and her people ran around in disarray, screaming and lost.

Of Darkness, there was no sign, and I had a decision to make. Go to Peace, who I knew was defending against War, or one of the others. Who would Darkness attack next between Death or Life? There was no way to know, but as I couldn’t teleport directly to Death, it was between Peace and Life.

Light’s portal opened behind me, and she came screaming out, horror on her face as she came to attack like a berserker.

I deflected her first tendril, dismissed her blast then growled at her, “You’ll get yours soon,” before teleporting to Peace.

Peace wasn’t in her Sphere. She wasn’t anywhere near it. Instead, she was hurtling across the tranquil and lush Onnekan landscape at top speed. Moving so fast that when I appeared next to her, she was already a couple of miles past me. The chasing War, however, was still approaching my position.

His eyes widened at the sight of me, a grin briefly stretching his demonic face before he let out a roar of delighted rage.

I surged forward to meet him, throwing out a Spicy Ball first, then swinging my sword towards his approaching head. With well-timed skill, his own mighty war axe appeared in his hand, sparking, and hissing with the wild intensity of Fire Neuma. He caught the slash of my sword as he maintained his speed, plowing into me like a bull.

The attack suited his half-bull, half-lion-like demonic appearance, but it caused me little pain, and gave me an opening. I let the Sword of the Alo-im drop and slapped both of my hands down on his back. With direct contact, ripping his Neuma from him was far easier.

He screamed out at my assault, attempting to extricate himself from the jumble of limbs we'd become. I held on tight to the bastard, pulling power from him as fast as I could. He finally regained some of his limited senses and began pulling power back out of me.

As concerning as that was, he hadn't picked up the skill half as well as Light had in the short time they'd had access to it, and I still had a definite edge.

“ALY! Can I drain the bastard dry?”

Given the circumstances and the obvious attempt to drain your core, I would insist that you do drain him, Clive.

I was happy to have her consent, but I would have done it anyway. Despite the niggling concern that if I killed War, Darkness would kill Devotion, which horrified me, it was time to take pieces off the chessboard permanently.

I doubled down with my focus, yanking with everything I had on his core, which elicited a roar of terror from the asshole. My hope was that I could drain him quickly.

The result was that, while I’d come close, I’d focused so much that I failed to sense Light’s portal open behind me. I sure as hell felt her sword lash across my back, though.

She'd caused real damage to me with the attack, and as I sensed her second blow coming in, I had no choice but to let go of my grip on War, teleport to where Peace was.

I found her flying back to my position almost as fast as she was flying away a few moments earlier. She'd pulled to a halt when she sensed my arrival. As did I, in order to read a new notification:

< Warning >

The Goddess of Life has expired.

< Warning >

Your bond with the Goddess of Life has been severed.

“I couldn’t hold against War. He’s too strong, but perhaps together we can,” she said, moving alongside me looking flushed.

“Light’s with War, and Darkness is elsewhere on the rampage. We need to go.”

“No, Clive. What of my people?”

“I don’t think they care about your people, Peace, but we need to go and find Death quickly. Before it’s too late.”

“What’s going on, Clive. How are they so powerful now?”

I opened a portal to Death’s home as I answered. “I don’t know exactly. But I’m certain it has something to do with Hakan. I just can’t figure out…”

Death’s home had already been trashed. Sphere down, temple gone, the followers he had here all hiding in the rubble.

"Can you contact him?" I asked Peace. It took a moment for her to answer, big, sad eyes glassy as tears streaked her smoke- and dust-covered face. “We're only able to communicate through our temples. We should try one of the others.”

My gut roiled and twisted, at her words. “They’re all gone, Peace. We need to get out of here and work out how we navigate this. I’m still fairly sure I can beat them all one on one; I just can't beat all three of them together and you’re not equipped to fight them.”

“Gone? Gone where?” she asked, her mind not making it past that bombshell.

I wouldn’t need to answer as Darkness, Light and War all appeared over Death’s home.