This work is a piece of fiction. While inspired by real events, cultures, and practices in human history, the story blends factual history with fictional characters, dramatizations, and creative interpretation.
It is not intended to promote, glorify, or encourage any illegal activities, substance use, or harmful behavior. All depictions of sensitive topics are included solely for narrative and historical context.
For the effects of the story, all characters are to be considered above the majority age.
Reader discretion is advised.
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Earth-5H1N3, USA, New York, Hell's Kitchen, Year 2001.
Imagine waking up one day to find the world was ending.
Last night, you went to bed after winning in your mind eleven arguments you had in the past, maybe you defeated your mother, father, sister, brother, coworker, boss, or lover in a fake argument, and then you peacefully fell asleep.
Maybe you were enjoying fresh sheets, and the temperature was so comfortable you could burrito yourself in your blanket.
Or maybe you had a terrible night...
Regardless, you woke up and instead of being greeted by the same everyday Reality, you realized there's a purple alert, and you need to run your ass off to the nearest shelter—assuming you live near a shelter.
Anyway, your world is ending, but not everything is lost.
There's Goddess Gaea, who became a thing recently. There's a massive dragon coiled around a gargantuan tree. There's an order of sorcerers, apparently. There are the super-powers of the world with their nuclear arsenal, which they insist on wasting. And, you realize that, maybe, the chances of your species are not so bad.
Turns out you were right, the end of the world ends, again, and you can return to your daily life.
Maybe the dragon coiled around the tree died and fused with one of the multibillionaires of your country, but who cares? It's not like that would affect you, would it?
Or maybe, after being reminded so viscerally of your mortality, you decide to make a change and finally sign up to your local gym and visit the nutritionist!
But what if you, instead of being a mob, an NPC, or a regular Joe/Jane, are a lowlife?
Would you make changes and leave behind the life of a scum that you've always known?
It doesn't sound likely, does it?
If any lowlife would do a 180 after they are reminded of their mortality, then it would all be too easy.
The most likely outcome is that, while chaos abounds, you would try to take advantage of the situation, right?...
When the Yellowstone Super-caldera exploded, bound by the sense of unity born from the tragedy, the Americans set aside their minute difference and worked as one to help those in need.
Before this, certain special individuals had been hiding from their government after witnessing what it did to the mutants in the open. It was a risk to come out and try to do good, or simply live, with your powers when it was impossible to even tell if you were a mutant or if your power source was something more exotic.
Because it's not like you could drop by your local clinic and request bloodwork upon the manifestation of your powers, right?
First of all, not every facility can determine if you carry the X-Gene or not. Second of all, assuming they can, would you risk becoming a lab rat in the off chance that you are one of the most exotic options?
Is your drive to wield your powers in public strong enough to take that risk?
Naturally, not many would risk it.
So, many 'heroes' lay dorman for years in the shadows of anonymity.
But then Daybreak came. An organization manned by mutants saving their kind all around the globe. An organization not bound by borders. An organization that made many proud of calling themselves mutants.
And when Krakoa became public... Well, coming out as a mutant became a growing trend, or as a powered individual—for those who had powers but were not sure if they were mutants or not.
Like so, when Amara Aquilla, enthralled by Mephistopheles, blew up Yellowstone, it became easy for those shy heroes to come out.
The brother of the unbreakable skin and superhuman strength, Power Man, became one of the favorites of the black community.
Watching him work alongside his partner, the Iron Fist, rescuing civilians trapped under fallen buildings, did something to the hearts of the witnesses.
It wasn't long before others came out too and began to operate publicly.
Social Media, which was now a thing after N-Tek and Stark Industries brought forth the era of telecommunications to Earth-5H1N3, did its trick, and it wasn't strange to find videos of mutants with low-level mutations coming out all around the world, especially after they began helping during the months of extreme Jovian storms caused by the aftereffects of the Goblin Force's rampage.
While under their hero identities, these special individuals did their best, but some did not shy away under a mask and cape.
There was the girl whose mutation was to change the color of her eyes; she was harmless, pretty enough, and had big breasts; she became one of the leading public faces of the mutant kind.
The hunk whose power was making any part of his body vibrate became a sensation, too.
The finance wiz, known for their almost 80% accurate market predictions, came out and proudly declared he was a mutant who used his analytical powers for his job.
The girl with cat whiskers was the darling of a certain group.
Society began to change, and while it couldn't be claimed to have become safe for mutants to roam in the open, the governments were too busy with everything happening around the Sappling of Discord, Re-Nazca, Krakoa, Wakanda, and, recently, North Korea, that mutants became almost an afterthought.
There were deities, magicians, dragons, and demons for fuck's sake! Who had the time for mutants?!
If the mutant were strong enough to become an asset, 'securing' them was nearly impossible when they resisted. If they were not, then it wasn't worth the effort and funds to study their mutation.
Additionally, after Aragorn removed Essex from the board, after Daybreak destroyed countless mutant concentration camps, and after Krakoa became one of the strongest nations, mutants were not that hot of a 'commodity' anymore. And less said after Hydra's disappearance.
This, naturally, didn't sit well with a certain sentient bacterium, but after his partner in crime and all of his clones had been forcibly relocated to the afterlife—he suspected—he was lying low.
It wasn't only the 'regular' and 'heroic' mutants who became more comfortable with being out in the open, as mentioned before, the low-life were emboldened too.
And not only mutants...
During one of the chilly nights in Hell's Kitchen, which made many wonder if winter was coming sooner or if Hell was frigid instead of smoldering, at the rhythm of "Confusion" by New Order, hundreds of New Yorkers danced in a very well-known 'clandestine' nightclub.
They would have never dared to be out so openly like that. Normally, that is.
The bodies danced to the beat of Synth-pop, Electro, and Techno. Their bodies, dressed as if ready for an orgy, vibed and pulsed with carnal desire.
The mood was peaking, one of the coordinators gave a signal to another, and soon the fire sprinklers came live... with blood, instead of water.
A shower of blood is a clear red flag to any thinking mortal, given that it's nigh-impossible to imagine a scenario in which this would be a mainstream occurrence; however, to the enebriated and drugged-up crowd of sheeple, this was nothing more than worthy of cries of elation.
Canines turned into protruding fangs, and something between an orgy and a massacre started.
The alcohol, the drugs, or maybe the mood, made it difficult for the humans in the crowd to recognize even the pain after the first 'love bites' were taken.
Some were not so out of their mind to ignore their impending death and screamed with everything they had. Maybe it was bad luck that the music's volume drowned any hopes of that shrill making it out of the nightclub.
And then he came, the Daywalker. A shotgun loaded with ammunition with silver shot, a katana whose edge was coated in silver, enough reusable silver stakes to turn an unlucky vampire into a silver purcopine, clad in a black leather trench coat, and wearing bulletproof black armor.
When Fury saw his profile, he nodded in approval. Some Therions say that SHIELD doesn't go after Blade only because Fury approved of his drip and aura.
The vampires, as if recognizing their natural predator, stopped and warily evaluated the dhampir.
No words, as much as hisses and snarls, were exchanged before Blade started his one-man slaughter of minorities.
He singled out the first vampire to charge forward with a shotgun blast to his center of gravity. The modified weapon's shot was powerful enough to cut through a regular mortal, but these were vampires. Instead, the vampire was launched back as if he had taken a hit from a wooden log, but, upon falling, his body caught fire, and he burned like flash paper; the visage of his bones was the last seen of his disgusting self.
Blade didn't wait for the body to hit the ground before singling out another vampire eager to meet their demonic—he assumed—creator.
There were enough panicking humans amidst the vampiric crowd for Blade to know he couldn't go Rambo on their asses and unload a few crates of silver ammunition on them. But for the skilled dhampir, it was not nearly as complicated as it seemed to be.
He weaved between the crowd, staking vampire after vampire right in their hearts, and when the occasional overeager vampire rushed at him, he would snap a picture of their ugly mugs with his shotgun.
Still... Vampires had grown more accustomed to being out in the open after the governments of the world stopped persecuting anyone with powers, and they focused on WWII, the demonic invasion, the divine incursion, and the multiple apocalypses. Hence, there were more vampires in this nest than Blade expected.
Vampires were not wizards or magi; they had no problem in taking advantage of the savagery of modernity: guns. Additionally, no matter how much bulletproof armor Blade was wearing, there was a limit to everything, and he wasn ot wearing a helmet.
So, he had to run around the nightclub, hiding behind support pillars and walls, trying to steer the bullet barrage from the innocents, and shoot down as many vampires as he could with his shotgun, Uzis, and handguns—and, obviously, the occasional silver stake.
"Come out! COME OUT, DAYWALKER!" A vampire roared while trying to pelt the dhampir with his AR-15.
"THERE'S NO ESCAPE!" Another pulled the pin of a fragmentation grenade and threw it around a corner while shouting.
Boom! The grenade exploded.
"WE WERE EXPECTING YOU!" Another claimed.
The truth was that the vampires were annoyed by Blade; they had always been, but after most of the world focused on the foreign problems, they felt a sense of pressure lift from their shoulders, and seeing as only a certain dhampiric annoyance remained, they decided to get rid of it for good.
This was a setup.
"Are we truly the same kind?" a tired, clear voice cut through the crack of the automatic fire.
The clear wet steps over the pooling blood echoed through the nightclub from all directions.
The vampires warily glanced around; the gunfire ceased. Something was not right.
"SHOW YOURSELF!" A vampire demanded, one of the leaders. He, along with the others, pointed their guns at every shadow that squirmed and light that flashed.
Blade didn't know what made them stop, but he had been wounded and had run out of ammo; he was left only with his trusty katana and stakes. He appreciated the respite.
"I have nothing against guns, but... How are you so weak, feral, and... stupid?" The voice asked, they could almost swear it was whispering from behind them.
"KILL HIM!" Another of the vampire leaders roared.
He fired his automatic rifle at every corner like a panicked boy.
"You're this old, and you have yet to master any form of casting, how can that be?" The voice asked with disappointment dripping from his words.
The sound of the wet steps was getting closer, yet they could see nothing!
A few nervous vampires joined their panicking leaders and unloaded everything they had in any possible random direction. When they ran out of bullets, they hurriedly tried to recharge or change magazines.
"Cease this foolishness," the voice commanded from among their numbers.
They turned with almost a gasp and aimed at the center of their formation.
Casually standing while reading a grimoire was a man of sharp features and pale skin. His nose was sharp, with a tall bridge; his irises were red, almost as crimson as the blood surrounding them; his hair was long and grey, tied back in a tall ponytail. It was a man of a hard-to-determine age, maybe older than 35 but certainly younger than 50.
He slayed in a black suit with a white undershirt, no tie or bowtie. His overall appearance screamed old money, style, and pureblood. Yet, what caught the vampires' attention—and the dhampir peaking from behind the corner—were the sharp protruding fangs.
"My mistress demands your attendance at the upcoming gathering of Covens and Nest of North America. It will be held in 2 days, during the witching hour at this address," the man declared while a few small papers flew out of his storage to the surprised vampires.
One of the papers flew around a corner to Blade.
"Mistress?" one of the leaders asked. "I don't know any mistress."
"That's what the meeting is for," the man replied curtly. "She is to take over the vampires of the world, as is her right, starting here. In the New World."
For Blade, hearing a vampire refer to America as the 'New World' was concerning. It meant that he was alive during the time that such terminology was commonplace, or somewhere not far from the discovery of America.
For the other vampires, though...
"Hahahahahahahah!"
"This fool! HAHAHAHAHA!"
"Hehahahahaah! A vampire jester!"
To them, the man's words were nothing if not laughable.
"Who does this fool's owner believe she is, Dracula?"
They cackled like hyenas.
"Does their behavior represent your stance?" The man asked the other smirking and chuckling vampires.
Three seconds passed, and then...
The laughter stopped.
Blade peeked from behind the corner, and his blood turned cold.
Hoisted in the air, held by thorned blood chains wrapped around their heads, were the shrivelled bodies of over 90% of the vampires. The remaining ten, a few mobs, and one of the leaders, the oldest one, stood unmoving, as if their blood refused to move.
Under their frozen eyes, the bloody chains gathered the shrivelled vampires in a corner before flowing towards the man. He opened his mouth wide and ate the chains. Then, lazily, he pointed a finger at the pile of shriveled corpses and cast, "Flamma argentea."
A small flame, the size of a candle, silver in color, shot towards the bodies. Like setting a spark on ethanol, the bodies caught fire and burned in the silvery flame in a second or two.
A couple of the surviving vampires pissed themselves at the visage of that fire.
"Go, spread word," the man commanded. "I hope my following visits will go smoother."
Like bugs from under a rock exposed to the light, they scrambled and scattered away.
When the last one scurried away, the man turned to Blade, who had fully come out of his cover.
"Who are you?" Blade asked, keeping a respectable distance.
"You can call me Newton," the man introduced himself. "I assume your question is about my Mistress's affiliation, correct?"
Blade nodded.
"Would the name Drachantheon Therion mean anything to you, Mr. Brooks?" Newton asked.
"It's the first time I hear it," Blade replied.
"Then, would it be simpler if you could think of my Mistress as being affiliated with Lord Aragorn and Goddess Gaea?" Newton's reply stunned the dhampir.
━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━
Souls are strange constructs.
Study enough biology, chemistry, and a dab of physics, and you could, eventually, comprehend and uncover the secrets of the [Body].
Study biology, chemistry, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, sociology, phenomenology, epistemology, noetics, neurolinguistics, neurophysiology, connectomics, and psionics, and maybe you'll understand the [Mind].
If you want to uncover the [Soul's] mysteries... What the fuck are you supposed to do?
Maybe soul magic? But that's the result of the effect of the will of a soul, not the same.
Maybe you could start from the mind and peer into the abyss of the soul? But would a mind survive that?
To be fair, while most masters of the mind have a vague understanding of the soul, the most common example of a being knowledgeable in the matters of the soul would be a demon.
Even so, given that these beings can only use the soul as food for their corrupt essence, it isn't even worth it to acknowledge their understanding of the soul.
The next example of beings who know of the soul, although rare, would be deities. Not all of them, mind you, only those related to the aspects of the beyonds.
To find a real expert in souls, one would need either an eldritch terror, like Aragorn, or settle down for a Deity of Souls, like Madelyne.
Fixing a soul could be considered the epitome of what an expert in souls could achieve. The creation of one, although often alluded to as the perfect exemplar of mastery of the souls, is not it exactly.
"Ehmm... I'm over 300,000 years old now?" Amara Aquilla asked her grandma? ancestor? progenitor? Selene Galio.
"Since you spent most of your unconscious time in Abeyance, and that realm's timeflow is strange, probably much, much... much more than that," Selene revealed.
"... And after I... ... ... After I-I," Amara tried to say it, but she failed.
Selene placed a comforting hand over the girl's head and pushed her psionic energy softly into her. In an attempt to provide solace to the only being, aside from Hestia—and somewhat Aragorn—that she loved from the bottom of her heart.
"After Mephistopheles puppetted you through Duke Blaze to blow up Yellowstone," Selene supplemented.
"... Yes... That," Amara said in a quivering tone. "After that, and the blue woman knocked me out, I spent that long asleep(?) in another world... Is that it?"
"Technically, your mind was disconnected from your Trinity of Self, so you were not really asleep," Another voice interrupted.
Selene, calmly, turned to the voice to find a small, serpentine, psionic projection of an eastern dragon floating about in the middle of the room.
"A-Aragorn?!" Amara exclaimed.
"Just a psionic projection, though," Selene added while pulling the projection to her. She lifted her hands and cupped the psionic projection to her eye level. "Is it time?"
"Soon," Aragorn replied. "I'll send a construct to accompany you. Will Newton be there?"
"Are you going to torment my vampire again?" Selene narrowed her eyes and chided. "Have you not tormented him enough for inventing calculus?"
"Hey, I was not going to torment him," Aragorn replied unconvincingly. "I was just asking because I left him some homework he has not submitted."
"Homework?" Selene tilted her head.
"A few Projections of Lucian I needed him to solve," Aragorn replied nonchalantly.
"Projections of Lucian?" Selene was not the most knowledgeable in the world, but she knew enough to know those were not a thing. "Wasn't Lucian another of your names?"
"Well, naturally," Aragorn nodded. "I'm the creator of said mathematical projections. I based them on a few attempts I made for predictions of the transitory phases of Void-chan."
"... Are you trying to academically bully my vampire?" Selene asked with her mouth agape.
"... Didn't he do the same to generations of humans who had to learn his bullshit after him?" Aragorn asked after a moment of thought. He even had the gall to appear befuddled at Selene's befuddlement.
As if pacting they would not be able to see eye-to-eye, they both turned to Amara, who flinched in response.
"Madelyne did an excellent job," Aragorn commented. "Make sure you offer your faith to her and not only your..." he turned to Selene and tilted his head in confusion before asking, "What even are you to each other?"
"Family?" Selene replied. "Isn't that what matters?"
"Yeah, sure, but... aren't you, like, her great—to the power of twenty—grandmother?" Aragorn asked. "She carries in her blood about as much 'family' to you as my Therions carry in theirs to me."
"You're being rude," Selene half-glared. Amara, seeing this, didn't know if to shiver or try to forcibly shut her great-to-the-power-of-twenty grandmother up.
Her eyes seemed to say, 'How reckless and brave you are, but please don't get us all killed!'
"Fine, fine fine," Aragorn relented. "I'll ignore my curiosity. That aside, be ready for a confrontation."
"... If you're saying that," Selene's words drawled on.
"Either demons or deities, we'll encounter them, most likely," Aragorn said.
"Aside from succubi?" Selene asked.
"In some form or another, they'll be present," Aragorn nodded.
"Uhm," Amara interjected, raising her hand like a kid in school.
Selene shared a glance with Aragorn that said, 'See? Isn't she adorable?'
"Yes?" Aragorn asked.
"What are you talking about?" She asked.
"There's this meeting of vampires and vampire-adjacent people that Selene is to preside over in less than an hour," Aragorn explained briefly.
"Vampires," Amara turned to Selene. "Is that what you are? I thought you mentioned you were a mutant?"
"I was, before," Selene replied.
"Wanna come?" Aragorn asked, nonchalantly.
"No," Selene succintly replied.
"... I don't think I should," Amara added. "Goddess Madelyne said I'm still in observation."
"Okay," Aragorn replied flatly before turning to Selene. "It's time." Then the projection ended.
"... Was he projecting all the way from Re-Nazca?" Amara asked.
"Don't think too much about it, girl," Selene said before waving her hand and opening a portal. "As far as I know, he doesn't have a range, not exactly. I'll be back tomorrow. If you need anything, just ask."
She wore black, as she has always. The bodice allowed plenty of her breasts' pale skin to be exposed to the moonlight. The silken black dress appeared to be woven from the shadows that followed her.
She walked through the portal, and what greeted her on the other side was Monster Metropolis. Her portal closed, and next to her, another portal opened.
Aragorn's psionic construct walked through. The construct was similar to one of his old personas, when used to roam as the Rider of Death. The main difference was that his long, crystalline hair fell over his shoulders and back, and he was wearing a mask that merged with a black crown.
"What do you think?" Aragorn asked, twirling like showing off his new get-up.
"I like the crown," Selene approved.
Aragorn nodded before assuming a position behind her, as if he were a knight escorting his mistress.
Monster Metropolis was a mess of a city; however, for having been built so deep under New York, it was actually quite the marvel.
The city was built around a main fountain. In this fountain, because it was that large, many merpeople could be found, and when Aragorn focused his draconic eyes on it, he discovered that it connected to the ocean a few tens of miles off the coast of New York.
The light came from enchanted street lights and a few well-placed torches. And the walls and dome of the city may have been, at one point, enchanted to protect the city and keep it standing; however, it was hard to tell now after the roots of the Arbor Mundi had covered the entire dome.
"Was this your doing?" Selene asked.
"Gaea has a soft spot for some of their kind," Aragorn replied.
"I see," Selene commented absentmindedly.
Almost every building followed its own architectural style, and it gave a sense of dissonance to the underground urban landscape.
Although it may not appear to be the case, this metropolis had the facilities that could be found in any regular city. One of them, a high-end hotel, was the destination of the pair.
Along the way, all manner of 'creature' made way for them. It was not exactly a sign of respect; mostly, they were in tune with their 'wild' instincts. And they shouted 'DANGER!!!' in a bold crimson font.
After the pair made it to the reception of the hotel, Aragorn stepped forward and said, "For Selene, and Lucian."
The staff, which was a weird mix of goblin and imp, hurriedly flowed magic through a summoning rune, and a small imp dressed like a bellhop guided them to an open platform that worked like an elevator.
The small imp was visibly nervous to Aragorn's empathy, but outwardly, he was the epitome of professionalism.
"Are you paid in souls?" Aragorn asked, curious.
"My Lord?" The imp asked in infernal speech, his eyes wide in surprise.
"I have something like Allspeak," Aragorn explained.
As was to be imagined, very few could speak infernal, hence the imp's surprise.
"I'm paid in mana, my lord," the imp replied. "It's been over five centuries since the use of souls for currency was banned."
"I see," Aragorn nodded.
With a soft bell-like sound, the platform reached the topmost floor.
The pair stepped down, the imp leading them to a grand set of doors. He cleared his throat, pushed open the doors, and announced in a loud, clear voice, "Entering, Mistress of the Night, Lady Selene, and Lord Aragorn."
With the confidence of a queen, Selene walked forward, followed by Aragorn.
Their performance was perfect. Aragorn's disguise was flawless. Yet, before Selene could get a good read on the room, an annoying voice said, "As I live and die! If it isn't the Cuckragon?"
The whole room was shrouded in a heavy silence, but this silence was not because of the one who spoke, but because of the 'knight' behind Selene.
The construct made a reaching motion, and instantly, Deadpool was held by the neck, his feet leaving the ground.
"What did you call me, Wade Wilson?"
"Let my man go!" A succubus demanded, her words punctuated with her charm and anger.
Aragorn ignored her and simply stared with his crimson eyes visible behind his mask at Deadpool's deranged eyes.
"If-f yo-ou-u're cgonna choke m-me," Deadpool spoke as his crushed windpipe healed. "D-DO it in-n ta-that babe- form of y-yours! O-or nNot, I-I Cacan do bOth!"
"Disgusting shit," Argorn spat before burning his body from his neck down and throwing his head to the fuming succubus.
↓Part 2━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━Part 2↓
Deep Within The Shi'ar Galactic Territory...
Jean Grey looked different from her usual mortal coil appearance. She was currently elementalized into her fire form, and surrounding her flames of warm colors, the Cosmic Flames shrouded her in their whiteness.
Normally, the Cosmic Flames of Phoenix were a warm orange, but currently, she was burning with such brightness that, like stars, the color appeared white instead of orange or red.
Beyond the shroud of the Cosmic Fire, assisted by the correct vision, a storm of psions mived with her as she flew unimpeded by the speed of light.
As the True Avatar of the Phoenix Force, she was capable of interstellar flight, and the limits imposed by physics, like lightspeed, were mostly suggestions.
Additionally, she was also capable of Cosmic Teleportation. Meaning, she should have been able to teleport to her destination instead of bodily moving to it, right?
Here's where she encountered her first problem. The Shi'ar were so against Phoenix's Hosts that their star systems were filled to the brim with psionic disruptors, scramblers, and blockers that could not expand her psionic senses and get a hold of their planet's locations.
Worst of all, they were incredibly good at tracking her...
Firebird: ⌈Sigh... I honestly don't know how they are doing it.⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈And you've gone through the basic concealing Scripts?⌋
Firebird: ⌈Yes, I inscribed all that I could, twice. Any other concealmnet script, I'm not proficient.⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈Uhmm, maybe I do have a few spells for that, but... Have you considered that maybe you're within a domain?⌋
Firebird: ⌈But Aragorn said the deities of the Shi'ar were turtling in their throne world, Chandilar. I'm more than three-quarters away from that corner of their galaxy.⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈But what if their divinity is over the Shi'ar, like mine is over Therions?⌋
Firebird: ⌈What? Do you have a domain over anything Therion-related? Even our territories?⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈It has only taken root after we arrived in this Reality, and we found more space to grow. I can now have a vague sense of the Therions' locations and even a semblance of awareness of the Imperium's Barrens and Halo.⌋
Firebird: ⌈So... They might know my locations at all times simply because I'm inside the Shi'ar Galaxy? Is that why I can't even find data in their servers alluding to a Star Chart? Have they been instructing their followers to purge everything before I arrive?⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈It's possible. You said that you could not even reach us with your telepathy and had to use The System, no? Maybe they have set certain rules within their domain.⌋
Jean, flying at speeds beyond light, came to a sudden halt right next to a dwarf black hole.
SKREEEEEEEEEE!
She cursed, her flames engulfed all matter around her, even the dwarf black hole, and burned it all to ashes.
'Huh?' Then, her tantrum was interrupted by a sudden spike in her Cosmic Flame consumption. She turned toward it, and her flaming green eyes went wide in panic.The singularity inside the black hole, the paradox, had been exposed due to her carelessness.
'Fuck!' She panicked, wrapping the singularity in a cocoon of her flames and teleporting it to one of the black holes found in the Barrens; Aragorn had insisted that she memorize the location of a few supermassive black holes in case she ever needed to dispose of something and a cosmic trashcan was not available.
'Crisis averted.' Her shoulders slumped; mostly because she was mad with herself due to her carelessness, but also because she had been playing in the sandbox of the Shi'ar, all the while under their patronizing oversight.
'What to do?' A galaxy was large, so large it was beyond the scope of true comprehension of a regular mortal. So, at the current pace, it would take her decades to finish her task. 'That can't be! I want to be there for Aragorn's first boy! I can't be an aunt from this distance!'
Her main concern was the lack of information. She could, technically, expand her form and grow until she dwarfed the Shi'ar Galaxy and then erased it under her Cosmic Flames. The problem was that there were credible rumors and speculative evidence that the M'Kraan Crystal was in Shi'ar hands, and if she destroyed it accidentally... Well, she would rather not think about it.
She could also soak the Shi'ar Galaxy in her and Phoenix's psionic energy and get an immediate understanding of it, to later destroy what needed to be destroyed. The problem was, again, that the Shi'ar had massive psionic disruptors all around, and if her psionic energy was suddenly scrambled and it went wild... 'Stupid M'Kraan Crystal!
So, she needed to do something different. She could not keep playing in their sandbox following their rules. She needed to gain an edge on them.
Rubbing the P-link hanging from her neck—even in her current fire elemental form—she complained in her mind, 'But I can't hack them if they torch the servers before I arrive... And their heads explode immediately after I try to reach into their minds... Maybe Xandar has an idea?'
Firebird: ⌈Master, have the ambassadors of Nova arrived?⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈Fury is giving them a guided tour around the 'new' Halo, given that everything changed drastically.⌋
Firebird: ⌈Fury? But the changes in the Halo should be as new to him as to them.⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈You know how he is. He wanted to establish a channel outside of Earth that didn't run through Aragorn or us. While we were ending that demon, he was cramming all updates in the Learning Room.⌋
Firebird: ⌈... Fury needs to learn to relax a little.⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈Who will tell him? Why were you asking?⌋
Firebird: ⌈Ah, Master, could you reach out and ask them for all intel they have on the Shi'ar and their territory and upload it to The Grand Repository so that I can access it from here?⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈They'll most likely sell you the intel. What will you pay with?⌋
Firebird: ⌈I don't have that many credits right now. I sold them to Kitty...⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈The cat was saving to buy a moon for Nirn. Do you want to burrow from me? Beware that I also don't have too many credits.⌋
Firebird: ⌈Yeah, Favors are worth more, and their value is increasing now that the Imperium moved to the Barrens, that's why I got rid of my credits... Tell them I could relocate a few planets for them.⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈Alright, give me a few minutes.⌋
Firebird: ⌈Thanks you, Master.⌋
While Yao was visiting some soon-to-be very surprised Xandarian ambassadors, Jean returned to her bodily form and assumed a meditative lotus position. She sank into her inner world and arrived at a world in flames.
Within that world of flames, she located a small area that was instead lit in an iridescent light. She reached out to the light with familiarity, and soon her astral form appeared in an ocean of stars.
'Aragorn,' she called out.
'Firebird,' Aragorn materialized in front of her as a long, serpentine dragon and coiled around her possessively.
Jean allowed the faux sense of gravity to take hold of her and hugged the thick scaly torso, leaning her weight on him. 'I'm annoyed,' she pouted.
'Looks like things have not been easy for you,' Aragorn commented. His head rested over Jean's, squishing her between his long torso and his head. 'What problems dare to besiege our dear Firebird?' Aragorn asked theatrically.
'It took me five days to realize I was inside a domain,' Jean explained. There was something about being wrapped in Aragorn and restricted under him that calmed her, like how a hug calmed a child.
'I'm uncertain if it's because of the parts of my mind I haven't fixed, but I also didn't consider that possibility until Yao informed me of her recent findings,' Aragorn confessed. 'Is the possibility of the stupid crystal's existence restricting you?'
'Yeah,' Jean grumbled. 'Also, I'm trying not to underestimate them, so I don't want to carelessly reach with my mind and then become a vegetable.'
'I can't look down on that mindset, this Reality is treacherous,' Aragorn supported her caution.
'Did something happen?' Jean sensed there was something else to Aragorn's comment.
'I discovered someone, or failed to, who could run away from sight. Someone who was lending a hand to the demon,' Aragorn whined like Jean.
'They could move faster than your perception?' Jean was surprised.
Assuming Aragorn's sight was absolute—as it had been so far—then to escape from his sight meant to move faster than his perception, and Jean, who knew how much faster he thought and processed information, understood how outrageous that was.
'The thing is that I don't even know if that's what happened,' Aragorn confessed. 'It felt like when the Aniki hides from me through his omnipresence.'
'Omnipresence?' Jean's eyes opened wide.
Jean, through the Phoenix Force, was one of the few beings who had a semblance of understanding of what one of the three big Omnis entailed.
'I think whoever they were, shadows were their domain,' Aragorn explained.
After a moment of hesitation, Jean asked, 'Do you think Harry was involved?... Do you think he betrayed me?'
'Uhmm... I don't think so,' Aragorn replied after a moment of thought.
'But he... Shadows was his thing,' Jean said.
'Yeah, but I planted so many restrictions and directives in his mind that, combined with the personality I created for him, I truly doubt he betrayed you,' Aragorn reassured her.
'... Thank you, Aragorn.' Jean hugged his serpentine torso tightly.
'He might have betrayed me, though,' Aragorn added.
'What?!' Jean exclaimed.
'I told you, it would have felt disgusting to create a personality for him that liked me,' Aragorn shrugged before adding, 'But, don't worry,' he flashed her a thumbs up, 'I'll only kill him if he really betrayed me.'
'... How reassuring,' Jean deadpanned. 'I've got to go, Master texted me back.'
'If anything goes to shit, escape to The White Hot Room or my psionic nexus, Jean,' Aragorn said before uncoiling from her and allowing her astral form to return to her mind.
'I will,' Jean nodded before disappearing.
She opened her eyes before reaching into The System's message inbox.
FoxSorcerer: ⌈Jean, I got a counteroffer that I think you'll like. It also inspired me for a business idea, for a percentage, I will let you know.⌋
Firebird: ⌈Ehh? Why did the conversation's mood change so abruptly? What's the counteroffer?⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈They'll give you all that they have on the Shi'ar for three of their mining planets. Preferably with their mining facilities intact, they stated.⌋
Firebird: ⌈That's... actually better, no? I'm just wasting away planets anyway. What's the business idea? I agree to a reasonable percentage.⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈I'll give a spell for evaluating the potential worth of a target, use it on their planets and/or stars, and if you find something valuable, warp it to the Imperium. The Queen and Princess expressed their interest in purchasing celestial objects.⌋
After the instant it took her to process the business idea Yao was suggesting, Jean's green slitted eyes changed into the symbol of the Favor (ƒ).
Firebird: ⌈Master, what's the cut you had in mind?⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈If you want to take care of the logistics after you warp them, I'll take 19,99%.⌋
Firebird: ⌈If you can relocate them after I warp them and prepare a warp point, and also deal with the Queen and Princess, I'll agree to 23,99%.⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈Deal!⌋
Firebird: ⌈ƒuƒuƒuƒuƒuƒuƒu!⌋
FoxSorcerer: ⌈ƒuƒuƒuƒuƒuƒuƒu!⌋
Jean, somehow, found her motivation to lock into this war of extermination. All the doubts that had been clouding her mind, the guilt, the regret, could all be dealt with later while swimming in a metaphorical pool of Favors (ƒ).
Money might not buy happiness, but isn't it more comfortable to be miserable in luxury?
About half an hour later, she received Yao's signal that the info was ready. Normally, she would use her P-Link to reach into the Grand Repository of Knowledge, but since the Shi'ar had her isolated from the common ways of communication, she used The System.
Her absurd mind processed the tonnes of raw data in a second, and she soon concocted a vicious plan.
Far away from the branch of the Shi'ar Galaxy where Jean floated, two beings of light and divinity observed with confused gazes through their divine awareness as Jean simply... sat in a lotus position.
These were the deities of the Shi'ar: Sharra and K'ythri.
Billions of years ago, before the Shi'ar left their first homeworld, Sharra and K'ythri were enemies. Circumstances forced them to marry, and from their union, they came out stronger. Or so their myth says.
This forceful union shaped the Shi'ar into what they are today.
If a god says to forgive your enemies and they show it through their actions or rituals, their believers would imitate them.
It is not unlike Earth. If Yahweh sent his son to die for humanity, then his son's way of life was meant to educate his believers. And this goes down the ladder to whatever religious representative any religion has.
If they see their prophets and apostles living a life of virtue, won't the believers imitate those they admire?
The same goes the other way around...
So, to the Shi'ar, given that their deities were forced to marry and they became more than the aggregation of their numbers, they sought to marry other species to become more, to grow stronger... even if done by force.
So, with that mentality, after the Shi'ar stepped out of the gravity well of their homeworld, their first action was not diplomacy after meeting their first aliens... Naturally, their first action was to enslave these aliens and to marry them by force, all in an attempt to imitate their beloved deities.
Slavery was not uncommon in the grand scheme of the intergalactic scene.
In fact, Aragorn had once supported slavery as a form of forcing the useless to be useful; he had said that otherwise it was better to kill them if they were going to be a pit of resources.
Now, Aragorn, who could allow millions to die because of his mood and purposes, did not have the best moral compass.
Still, from his perspective, he did not condemn the Shi'ar for their belligerent nature and enslaver culture; he did not care.
His problem, or more like Phoenix's problem with them, was stagnation.
The Shi'ar were set in their ways in an almost ritualistic and zealous manner.
If one traveled to the Shi'ar Empire from a few million years ago, the only difference would be the size of their empire. Even their technology was almost stagnant.
After conquering so many species, a galaxy-worth of species, how come their culture and empire have not significantly changed?
If humans found it hard to change once they had reached a certain age, then the entirety of the Shi'ar were like that as a culture.
The Phoenix Force did not tolerate stagnation; the Cosmological Compass doesn't either. Change was part of the life and death cycle; even the entire multiverse changed from iteration to iteration. If that were the case, then who were the Shi'ar to believe themselves absolved from this law?
Everything must change, whether for good or bad; it didn't matter. Change was part of life, and if a society refused to do so, then they would find themselves more comfortable being part of death. That was the judgment of the Phoenic Force...
"Did she give up?" Sharra asked.
"Doubtful," K'ythri replied.
"Is she trying to lure us in?" Sharra pondered out loud.
"She's been running around within our planning for days; she doesn't know she isn't trapped within our domain," K'ythri said.
"This one is different," Sharra pointed out. "You saw what she did to the black hole. That was spatial translocation; she didn't destroy the singularity within."
"... That is true," K'ythri acknowledged. "But she is young and naive. Erik the Red and Gladiator captured her once. If it had not been for the intervention of a wielder of the Time Stone, she would have been in our grasp now."
"..." Sharra didn't reply; she silently stared at the unmoving Jean with a look of concern.
"Is this about the Shine Dragon's display of power?" K'ythri asked.
"If the Shine Dragon is such a... monster, why have the Phoenix Force's host been so... underwhelming?" Sharra shared her thoughts.
The truth was that they had experience dealing with Phoenix's hosts. The fact that their entire galaxy, one bigger than the Milky Way, was a telepath's worst nightmare was not for show.
However, after Odin shared his memories of Aragorn's clash with the Goblin Force, and then they later witnessed Aragorn hunting Kubos, they began to wonder if there were levels to Cosmic Entities.
"We know Galactus stands within the same category," Sharra continued, "and we have yet to repel him once one of his heralds successfully leads him to one of our planets."
"The Phoenix Force may be one of the weake—"
The words died in his throat when they saw Jean teleport to one of the planets they had yet to evacuate or prepare for her arrival. It was a mining planet.
"What?!" They both exclaimed.
No one in their right mind would teleport without destination coordinates; this was common sense, like how no one who was not fireproof would jump into a lava lake.
Which meant that Jean had somehow obtained the coordinates to this mining planet.
"How?" Sharra asked.
Jean aimed a hand towards the mining world and then pulled. The atmosphere was immediately ripped away, and those who did not succumb to the coldness of the vacuum, the abruptness of the pressure differential, or the secondary disasters caused by the sudden absence of an atmosphere, suffocated after a few minutes.
If by some miracle some survived, they did not overcome Jean's second attack when she created a planetary psionic storm. Their minds were sheared and ripped apart.
This tragedy, massacre, genocide, or whatever it could be called, was a small, tiny, insignificant concern for the deities. What they wanted to know was how she found the planet.
Then Jean did something different from the wanton destruction she had been wielding. She warped the planet away.
Before the deities could question what she was doing or why, Jean created 43 astral projections and bodies for them. Normally, she would send her projections away on a task like Aragorn does with his, but given the hostile environment of the Shi'ar Galaxy for anything psionic, she used her Phoenix-given creation powers to create bodies for them that acted like shells or armor.
Then, the 43 Jeans teleported away.
Immediately after, the deities' perception was split into 43, and rage set in.
Deities that had lived as long as they had were, all things considered, wise. Enough experience would make even a sandworm a sage. So, they connected the dots easily and found out what had happened.
"Xandarians!" Sharra hissed.
"The Nova Empire will pay for their hubris," K'ythri spat.
"We are forced to stop her," Sharra declared.
43 planets disappeared in less than a minute. A loss greater than anything their enemies have ever dealt them.
Their bodies flashed, and somewhere around the Shi'ar Galaxy, several other beings flashed before reappearing, besieging Jean's original body.
"Finally, the cat and mouse game is over."
In the vacuum space, sound could not travel, yet, somehow, empowered by the Phoenic Force, Jean's word carried through with a bass that made the listener's bones tremble.
Her voice was inorganic, like an echo that sounded over itself like a choir.
"Host of the Phoenix Force, fight," K'ythri commanded. K'ythri did not want her to surrender; he wanted her to fight, to struggle.
"Make this interesting," Sharra seconded the motion.
Within their domain, a deity's words could not be tuned out.
"Really? What if I don't want to?" The mockery in Jean's words could not be hidden, but no one scowled because of the terror brought by her next words, "What if I just summon my beloved dragon instead?"
"..."
"..."
And then, there was light...
No, Jean did not summon Aragorn. She was not that shameless. Had it been Kitty, just for the shits and giggles, she would have done it.
A long time ago, from Jean's perspective, a woman she loved dearly gifted her a 'gun'.
It was not a literal gun; it was a metaphorical one. She remembered her words, "Jean, it's easier to kill with a gun than with your hands, I mean it beyond the physical realm."
Sharra and K'ythri were confident in their strength... or at least they were until Aragorn almost undid the world while fighting Kubos. So, they came prepared.
Before that fight of cosmic proportions, maybe they would have confronted Jean by themselves.
Although some of their most powerful assets had been killed during the last attempt at kidnapping Jean, they still had plenty of Strontians in their imperial guard, and they had summoned their deadliest vessels along with billions of their fleet.
The psions had gone wild as soon as they warped. Space had been locked, as it was standard procedure when facing a Phoenix Host. And the connection to nearby dimensions had been pushed away momentarily. The point was that they were ready for anything psionically inclined that Jean could throw at them.
The problem was that Emma Fulgebunt Draconis was queen of possibly one of the richest empires, and pulsars were cheap. She was also overprotective of her people.
So, Jean dropped two pulsars, to her zenith and nadir, and four magnetars, to her South, North, West, and East around her without concern for anything. She was like a rich lady, except her riches were in specie of neutron stars.
The magnetic nightmare literally tore electrons apart from their atoms. Matter was spoiled before it was stripped away.
It was an insurmountable hell that, only due to Sharra and K'ythri's efforts, some managed to escape in the instant before the point of no return.
In the center of this electromagnetic hell, shrouded in her Cosmic Cloak and in her fire elemental form, Jean observed it all with patient eyes.
Then, she heard a whisper in her mind, 'Well done, Firebird,' and she smiled sweetly before neutron stars collapsed onto her and she stored them away.
This magnetic hell lasted less than a fraction of a second, but that was normal at the level of the ensuing fight.
↓Part 3━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━Part 3↓
Immediately after the magnetic hell ended, since she managed to store the neutron stars back into her storage, she assumed the space lock had been lifted, but she failed.
Coincidentally, she felt that she could exit Reality and reappear in another one, but she had been warned multiple times not to do so by Aragorn, at least not while jumping from a doomed Reality.
'They say disruption is one of the keys in a fight,' Jean thought to herself. 'I can't fully control this yet, but it should do.'
The haze of the magnetic destruction was clearing rapidly without the neutron stars feeding it. Jean concentrated deeply for a beat before extending her arms from the core of her chest outward.
Something had changed; it wasn't visible, like summoning a swarm of neutron stars. It was more... fundamental?
Sharra and K'ythri could sense something strange within their domain, but the fight had started, and it was moving so fast that they could only make their move before thinking deeply.
Ages ago, the Shi'ar were at war with the Heptarchy—another interplanetary race. As greedy for power, resources, slaves, and conquest as they were, the Shi'ar wanted to end the war with as little devastation as possible, but with maximum casualties.
Around that time, they had already started their research in psionics. Their curiosity was endless, and their preparations and grasp of the impact of their action were as lacking as they are even to this day.
Centuries later, the Hecatomb was born.
Think of a planetary-level vacuum, except, instead of matter, it greedily absorbed minds.
After absorbing the minds of over eighteen billion sentient and sapient beings, it Frankensteined them together.
It was an aberration. To the point that it made the crimes against the Geneva Convention shiver in terror.
So, simultaneously, while Jean opened her arms wide, Sharra teleported the Hecatomb weapon to her vicinity and set it off... or free.
The weapon wouldn't function if the process of absorption was gradual, which meant it was as instantaneous as Jean's pulsars unpacking.
"UAAAAAAGGHHHHH!"
The surface of her mind, the finite part that was her, not the infinite monstrosity that was Phoenix, was ripped away forcibly, like tearing skin off a human.
Sharra and K'ythri rejoiced in her anguished wails, the Hecatomb, with 18 billion voices speaking one over the other, expressed their joy with a garbled moan of delight, or whatever its equivalent was for the aberration.
"A̟̤̖̗͈̦͔̮̼̟͈̹̙͔̟͐̒̇ͩ͋̃̾̇̏̉̽̅͛̕H̬͈̩͔̜͔̝͎̩̼̟͈̹̙͔̟̋̂̂͂͌̏̉̽̅͛͝H̬͈̩͔̜͔̝͎̩̼̟͈̹̙͔̟̋̂̂͂͌̏̉̽̅͛͝H̬͈̩͔̜͔̝͎̩̼̟͈̹̙͔̟̋̂̂͂͌̏̉̽̅͛͝H̬͈̩͔̜͔̝͎̩̼̟͈̹̙͔̟̋̂̂͂͌̏̉̽̅͛͝H̬͈̩͔̜͔̝͎̩̼̟͈̹̙͔̟̋̂̂͂͌̏̉̽̅͛͝H̬͈̩͔̜͔̝͎̩̋̂̂͂͌͝!"
Its moan was not conceptual speech, but it was loaded with a vacuum of corrupted psions.
When it appeared as if Jean's mind was going to be torn apart, the Hecatomb slowed down to a crawl.
"What's happening?" K'ythri asked while trying to sense the cause of the Hecatomb's abnormal behavior.
"AAGGGGHH—" Jean's wails died in her throat, and then, while unseen, her mind regenerated. Her fingers, which had been clawing at her flaming head, relaxed, and her green slitted eyes became cold—no, they became enraged.
She felt the all-consuming incandescent rage of her patron and her own boil below the surface of her control.
"The stupid crystal is the problem."
Her words reached Sharra and K'ythri, and they understood that, for some reason, Jean was limiting herself due to the M'Kraan that was housed in their galaxy, and this only confused them.
Sharra and K'ythri were still under the misunderstanding that Jean's powers were comparable to the other hosts they had dealt with, so they couldn't understand why Jean was worrying about a thing that wasn't even in her vicinity for tens of thousands of light-years in every direction.
Jean didn't give them much time to ponder on her words; the same feeling of wrongness as before began to permeate their domain. This time, however, Jean was doing it so recklessly that they were able to identify the nature of the disaster-to-come.
"FOOL!" K'ythri roared.
"You'll kill everyone!" Sharra warned.
"No, I think I will trust myself." Jean's voice was almost frigid, but the rage within tainted it.
As a host of the Phoenix Force, and one who had trained for so long and whose body had been modified to fully accept Phoenix, Jean had access to a variety of empowerments.
The ones she was ragefully wielding now were Cosmic Atmokinesis and Temporal Manipulation.
Cosmic Atmokinesis allowed Jean to create cosmic storms, solar flares, geomagnetic storms, cosmic rays, coronal mass ejections, even black holes, and more. And Temporal Manipulation was self-explanatory.
The thing was that Jean was not wielding the powers separately; she was combining them, and the result...
First, there was a pulse, followed by a beam of something that extended for countless light-years. It was akin to a gamma-ray burst, but one so large it drew a line across one of the Shi'ar Galaxy's arms.
Then, the same magnetic disaster that had happened a few seconds ago was reenacted, and some of the survivors Sharra and K'ythri had managed to save were back where they had been just a moment ago.
Then there were flames, photonic flames that lighted the world and ate everything, then there was Cosmic Fire—but it was not coming from Jean, it was coming from somewhere in the future.
Then a second, third, fourth, and fifth Hecatombs appeared before being consumed by the fatal chaos.
Sharra and K'ythri, while not omnipresent within their domain, were also not far from it and could only escape from whatever it was that Jean brought forth.
Their anger was palpable; this was not something they could hope to fix or even wait until it was over. They felt it, that part of their domain, where chaos was now running rampant, had been ripped away from them. Whatever it was, it was no longer part of their domain. It was no longer considered part of the Shi'ar Galaxy.
"We need to fight fire with fire." K'ythri's statement was what Sharra had been thinking, so she only nodded.
Before them, genuflecting respectfully, a tall, muscular Shi'ar of black hair and blue eyes appeared.
"I await your commands," the man said in a flat, almost lifeless, voice. His eyes were equally lifeless, bereft of all sapience.
Like trillions of others, this man was a slave. There was something peculiar about him, though, his lineage.
Long ago, as shameful as it was for them, one of the Shi'ar became the host of the Phoenix Force, Rook'shir.
This man wreaked havoc across the Shi'ar Empire, killing the majestor and countless others, a shame so great for which the Shi'ar ended his bloodline. Or so they claimed.
The one in front of the deities was Korvus Rook'shir, his one and only descendant.
For ages, the Shi'ar had ensured that at all times there was only one member of the cursed lineage, all because of a certain weapon: the large tipless sword strapped to Korvus' back.
This was the Phoenix Blade, a blade that had somehow absorbed and adapted to the Phoenix Force, one of a kind in Reality. The Phoenix Blade only responded to the cursed lineage, and it was the mage-killer of the psionically inclined.
Sharra and K'ythri didn't answer to the almost willess man. They raised their palms at him, and his body shone with divine light.
"Kill her."
"Whatever it takes."
They commanded his mind, soul, and body.
The man stood up, reaching his full height of 6′4″ (1.93 m) before crouching to a low squat. He stepped on space, and this one cracked before he shot at the core of the chaos storm.
Distance became meaningless, and an instant later, he was about to crash into the chaos storm. He pulled the Phoenix Blade into an overhead stance before bringing it down with the apparent weight of galaxies.
Like cutting paper, like Moses splitting the sea, like Aragorn slicing Reality with his breath, Korvus' slash carved a path to Jean, and he moved just behind it, sword ready for a horizontal slash.
The overhead slash reached Jean without stopping and sliced her vertically. Korvus didn't hesitate to follow with his preloaded horizontal slash, and Jean was bisected by the waist.
The Phoenix Blade, blessed by the Phoenix Force and the deities' divinity, ignored Jean's immaterial flame body and cut deep into her soul and mind.
Jean let out a soft sob before closing her eyes and splitting in four, then she lit up, each piece, in an incandescent light of Cosmic Fire.
Korvus' eyes, with what little consciousness he had left, widened in fear.
Sharra and K'ythri pulled further back, and about a sixth of the Shi'ar Galaxy was eaten by the explosion of Cosmic Fire.
"The loss was worth it," K'ythri declared.
The light began to subside, the glare dimmed, and at the center of the explosion, where it could still not be considered part of the Shi'ar Galaxy, given the repercussions of the chaos storm, the Phoenix Blade, burning in white and blue fire, was the only thing remaining.
"So it survived even that," Sharra commented before casting a spell to bring the sword into their domain and then into her reach.
The sword appeared in front of the deities, and they soon noticed how it felt heavier.
"We'll have to hatch a clone to test its upgrade," K'ythri said while evaluating the sword with his divine sight.
Then his eyes opened wide, he moved impossibly fast, but even for a deity, he was too slow to react.
The blade moved on its own and speared through Sharra's face.
There was a flash of fire, and from the flames cloaking the blade, Jean resurrected herself.
K'ythri didn't act; he reacted and threw himself at Jean. Jean grabbed the blade's handle and slashed at his neck.
Maybe it was Jean's speed combined with the countless hours of practical experience she had fighting her family, maybe it was K'ythri losing his will to live without Sharra in his life, maybe it was Jean's control over probability, maybe it was the simple inevitability of when a deity sins and in their hubris they think they can take on a Phoenix Host, whatever the reason, K'ythri was done for.
... Or he should have been.
The darkness of the vacuum of space, its infinite shadow, moved faster than the two, at a speed only comparable to Aragorn's, and swallowed the god whole before disappearing.
Right after, Aragorn appeared with his clawed hands, clutching the shadows right before they disappeared; however, the shadows slipped through his grasp before fully disappearing.
'... Fuck,' Aragorn cursed.
Jean's blade reached from the side and severed his head. Everything happened too fast for the redhead to stop her swing.
'ARAGORN!' She cried.
'Chill, Firebird,' the severed head said before floating to the flaming body and reattaching itself. 'That was a good fight, by the way.'
'What happened at the end? There was something dark, and then you appeared in the path of my swing,' Jean asked before disengaging her battle mode.
'The fucking shadows happened!' Aragorn grumbled before pointing a hand at the remnants and repercussions of the chaos storm and undoing the damage.
'The shadowy guy?' Jean asked.
'Or girl, genderless being, multigendered entity, or thing,' Aragorn said.
Jean nodded before taking a glance at her surroundings and asking, 'What now?'
'Now?' Aragorn chuckled. 'I doubt they'll return. Make sure to raze this galaxy to the ground.'
'I still have to locate the stupid crystal, though,' Jean complained. 'I'll raze it afterward.'
'Yep,' Aragorn said before opening a portal to Re-Nazca. 'Don't take long.'
Jean smiled before waving him goodbye. Then her shoulder slumped after the portal closed. Her upcoming task was gargantuan.
╚═══━━━─── • ───━━━═══╝
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{A/N:
Please check out my P@treon account! There are already 10 chapters ahead for premium members, which is at least 100,000 words. Premium members also gain access to a new chapter every week.
[email protected]/ExistentialVoid
Free Members get access to all free chapters, and I upload free chapters about 12 hours earlier on P@atreon.}
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