Enki flew across half the room and landed on his tallic side, scratching a path into the stone as he slid further. Running up to the edge of the Starkiln, John jumped away with such strength that the stone caved behind him. Enki encapsulated himself with a Mana Barrier and threw several dozen spells at John. The latter were taken care of by the re-activated Particle Skin. The attacks broke on the mana, layered on his skin.
Once he was in range, he teleported through the barrier again. Enki had wizened up to that strategy already and created a second barrier between himself and the Gar. John tried to teleport past that as well, but Enki was one step ahead.
Another surge of Strength and Agility rushed through him, but his arsenal was truly limited to the barest of tools now. ‘I’m falling behind,’ the Gar thought and changed strategies. Tearing through the protective spells with his bare hands was still possible, Purgatory had the necessary enchantnt, but it would be a lot harder. Rather than continuing his frontal assaults, he now ran circles around the dragon. Even with his long neck, the god had a hard ti to keep his one eye on John. Purgatory cut through the renewed protective spells.
Protection wasn’t the only thing Enki cast. A flurry of chains, Arc Lances and target-seeking projectiles sought to end his continuous circling around the truck sized Starforger. “You’re quite the impressive little pest,” Enki hissed. As much as his arrogance remained strong, he clearly was hurt. Purple blood ran over the previously pristine half of his body, while the right side seed distorted, as if his skin had slouched off. “I’ve had enough of you.”
Pulling his head back, the dragon inhaled deeply. John didn’t know exactly what would co next, but he knew that he was given two choices – run from it or try to muddle through it. ‘I have to take the gamble,’ he thought and switched back to his aggressive strategy.
With a scream befit for a dragon, Enki spewed out his fire. It was of a silver white and, aid directly at the floor, spread out over the sandstone like a living carpet of arcane destruction. It rushed around John’s legs, but the Gar shrugged off the pain and ignored the damage. Enki must have been operating under the idea that John had a regular body and that his legs would give in within monts. Instead, John cut through the last layer of defence and jumped.
Punching the first thing that ca into range, John’s fist slamd into the neck of the beast, about a tre before the head. Sothing cracked under the impact this ti, sothing more than scales. The torrent of fire stopped as Enki toppled over and slamd down on the ground hard. John followed up as quickly as he could. He landed and ran. Ran faster than most people could think. The god was far above most people, but even he could only put up one barrier. John, through a mixture of luck and combat experience, read just where it would appear and slamd Purgatory into it the mont it spawned. His sprint continued right after and his foot slamd into the torso of the god.
Enki just rolled over several tis, John chasing after him. It was only a matter of ti until the Gar could finish the job. The realization was written into the god’s dimming eye. John would have expected hatred there, but the Starforger only looked annoyed, as if death was more a bother than a threat to him.
John didn’t care either way. Victory was all he was after. Raising his fist, he readied himself to shatter the skull of the sluggishly moving god and put him out of his millennia of misery. Then the look in Enki’s eyes changed suddenly. Horror, realization, and confusion, his body convulsed, vibrated at a speed it looked fast even to John at that mont.
The skull of the god broke before John arrived. With a squelching sound, the Astrotium right split from the battered left. Soft, mouldy tissue beca semi-liquid, peeling back into two maw segnts lined completely with teeth. Tendrils, teeth and stalks burst out along a myriad wings between the gaps of armour. Enki scread in rage and disgust, while John suddenly felt his power sapped away from him.
John’s fist clashed with the head, but all of the Strength he had possessed a mont ago had been converted into Endurance. His Agility was similarly gone, rolled over into Intellect. The sudden burst of insight about the nature of the world helped him little when the Lorylim infestation sprouted an additional arm and grabbed him with it. John Observed the continuously mutating right half of the Starforger. Calling it his wasn’t quite accurate. ‘And so she finally reveals herself,’ the Gar thought.
“Son… Son, my dear son.” The sickening sweet tone of Mother Chaos was underlined by the cracking of reordering muscles and the ebb and flow of the ocean. Saltwater gushed from the open flesh, reeking of tang and filled with Lorylim spores.
In the distance, fighting ceased. John didn’t have the luxury to pay attention to it, but he knew that Rave, tra and Nia had been keeping the tracanas occupied the entire ti. It was a fight in their favour, so he had never been worried. Their combat roles had been assigned long before they even entered the Death Zone.
“Tia…mat…?” The voice of Enki was tornted. Even though Tiamat spoke through the countless mouths that opened on her skin, the god of stars had little control over his vocal cords. Visibly, the corruption of the goddess of chaos expanded beyond the Astrotium armour, gnawing at the radiant scales of her son.
“Yes, Son, it is your mother, your beloved mother.” The carefully crafted copies of Enki’s beautiful horns spread out, as the Lorylim matter swelled and turned the protrusions into its individual segnts. The tentacles wrapped around Enki’s head. It started as a disgusting but tender caress, but turned ugly within monts. Invading the ear and the eye socket of Enki, they slithered deep inside him. “I’m sorry I left you alone and confused for so long. I need your body. I demand my flesh back – the flesh we crafted you from.” Her tone switched to greed, while mouths progressively burst out from underneath the shining scales, laughing endlessly. “I would have taken you earlier, Enki, if you hadn’t been so weak. Your body rotted at my re touch. Leaving you to reinforce it, that was the only true way to get a body. My flesh… MY FLESH! YOU ALMOST SQUANDERED IT!”
John was struggling against the bindings, waiting for his Stats to roll back into a favourable configuration. The teeth were biting into him, as Tiamat’s eye opened in the previously empty right socket. It wasn’t like the typical Lorylim eye, a mycelium structure with an iris, but instead a proper dragon eye with a slit pupil. It started as sulfuric yellow, but gradually changed colour in its entirety, never settling on a definitive one.
“Do not worry, Son, it will be alright. Mother Chaos will take care of everything. The sa goes for you, John.” A long, slimy tongue, slling like brackish water, reached out to John and licked him across the face. “Don’t worry, you will serve too.”
‘That doesn’t sound so ba- STOP IT!’ he thought. Sothing about Tiamat’s voice was deeply enticing. It sang to his brain, to his open wounds, with the elegance of a harp and the intensity of a drum. He felt his Strength surge back and burst out of the arm holding him without issue. Imdiately, he hurled his fist at Tiamat, but his Agility had not followed suit. The dragon, if it could still be called that, skittered on hundreds of legs, while Enki’s regular ones were dragged along.
“You won’t have the strength to resist much longer,” Tiamat humd.
‘My king, I…’ tra reached out to him, almost hesitatingly. She had to overco sothing, her rage was restrained and her loyalty torn. Inside her mind, he could hear that sa song.
‘Stay – away!’ John commanded her and hoped desperately that Rave and Nia obeyed the sa. ‘Not yet…’ he told himself, clutching the object in his right. He wanted to do sothing, anything at all, no matter how effective. ‘Nothing rash. Bide your ti.’ He charged at the goddess of chaos, attempting to land another hit. A mont before his fist connected, a window opened up.
The mana surge was incredible, bringing his Max MP to over one hundred million, but his Stats collapsed in the sa mont and his fist sunk into the parasitic mould that was Tiamat’s flesh. “It all has purpose,” Mother Chaos whispered sweetly. “Nothing. The purpose of it all is ultimately nothing. Validation is found in our monts of desire. Follow the impulse. Cut off your arm, scream your lungs out, laugh with , be the entropy and eat all you wish to.”
“I’m a bigger friend of the long path,” John growled through clenched teeth, casting the last arcane spell he still had access to. 117’781’699 MP were claid in an instant by Arcana Strike. John grinned victoriously. “You are a disgusting thing,” he monologued, ignoring the teeth pulling his right arm deeper into Tiamat’s avatar. “I despise everything you are. Nihilistic, corrupting, worming your way into the lives and minds of people and ripping everything away from them just so you can keep existing. The only virtue you have is your inability to think ahead. Because of that inability, I win.”
“Chaos is opportunity,” Tiamat scolded him, like a disappointed mother. Simultaneously, the Arcana Strike disappeared, sealed away like all other of John’s combat spells. All of them save one.
“Chaos is what tears things down. Where you are unpredictable, you win. Where you are predictable, you are the weakest force I’ve ever faced,” John’s grin never wavered. The Arcana Strike wasn’t his victory condition. It was rely the best spell to enable it. He extended his right hand and presented a golden egg to the eye of the goddess of chaos. He basked in the window that appeared next.
“For the sake of all that died to get here, for Mark, I hope this hurts,” the Gar growled. The egg in his hand cracked open and…
…a roar to tear the heavens hailed the awakening of the true Celestial Devourer.
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