A Simple Transaction I

Always

An infinity before, she had been Ceathlynn. Now, she was the Maiden in full: wax and wick both melted away, leaving only the flame imperishable. Endless eons of preparation had culminated in this single moment.

With an exercise of her Grace, the Epistolary Realm unfurled around her: falling to pieces like the petals of a lotus, become so much fuel and dross before the infinite emanation of wonder that was her heart. It was not in her nature to hesitate, only to prevail.

From the realm of unsparing Daylight she strode forth: blazing sun of halcyon white before which even the starry void itself could but retreat into noon-bleached impotence. The universe was recast instantly, become mere refracted luminance, moon to the sun of her yet-veiled visage.

And yet, some fraction of this realm did not leap implicitly into her service, but interdicted her: a territory chained by its bedrock axioms to a lord that presumed himself above even the Foremost. Upon his throne of midnight, the Imprisoner reigned still, embryonic spark that threatened ignition into the Forebear of Dynasties once more. How strange it seemed, to one of her matchless span, finally to face the enemy who she'd labored against for so long. A veritable eternity had been spent in the mustering; millennia beyond number passing with eyeblink quickness, and yet it had seemed at times that she would merely be preparing for ever.

In her heart of hearts, she was tired, and yet could not help but surge with vigor at the contest come at last. Like first break of dawn after a wholly-sleepless night, a second wind came over her: senses bleary but radically sharper, every nerve tuned to crackling readiness.

Behind her veil, she frowned minutely. Her power could not reach directly into the Human Sphere. It was not an unexpected outcome, yet she had hoped that the Praehihr would avoid this path, if only to expedite matters for them both.

In any direct contest, it was unquestionable that her Grace would evade the grasp of his Law - yet such was his dominion over Space that, within his proscribed territory, the very concept of evasion lost coherence. An effect she could counter by sheer weight of findross, but only if she entered the territory in question.

It was, of course, impossible to breach such a realm by conventional means, or even to conceive of its relative location. To her, such minute forbiddings were little better than tinsel, yet it would still be an exertion of her stamina - unthinkably vast, but finite - to cut through, and what was to stop him from immediately raising another?

Only her direct attentions.

She had anticipated this. It was one scenario of countless she'd simulated, and yet every victory along this path carried some measure of risk. The Praehihr had embraced imprisonment entirely; sacrificing all influence outside his fortress to become nigh unassailable from without. The path of Grace alone would not suffice. There would be no triumph by indirect means here, no usurper consigned to irretrievable oblivion by sheer cleverness alone. He would be undone from within his sanctum, or not at all.

So be it. She had hoped for a brisk execution, but would not shirk a proper war. It would only delay the hour of her victory in the end.

A moment, and she reached the borders of his sanctum.

The Human Sphere stood arrayed before her, war-machines of her errant governess bristling across the entire circumference of its bound, unseemly science perfected and turned towards the brazen annihilation of all intruders. Sorceress Allria had plumbed great depths of mortal prowess to bring forth the Human Sphere's outer rind: a septillion dreadnaught-Implements incubated across the Voyaging and Industrial Realms, fueled not by Curseweft but indestructible nuclei of Foremost Art. Each more than a match for a thousand of the incomplete Ereadhihr left to this domain, yet worse than hapless against a proper Maker.

With a single step she bypassed the shield-moat of their combined Pressure, and prepared to banish the Human Sphere in its entirety. Its departure would see the swift removal of the Cursebearer whose Geas anchored him therein.

She spoke two words.

Light came forth, scouring brilliance that left no remainder, as surely as the naked sun blanketed the eye: cataclysm that unopposed would see the Sphere reduced to naught; and yet the Praehihr did not act.

Instead she witnessed her destroying light pooling harmlessly in the palm of a red-haired child, the Chosen of the Voyaging Realm who with laughable hubris presumed to defy her. Empowered by the fury of his patron he was not inconceivably below her, and certainly impervious to her powers of light and heat; but that did not render him a serious obstacle to her like. She did not hesitate for a moment.
With a gesture she removed her veil.

She was the Maiden: her Grace was absolute, save that it was rivaled by her Beauty.

It was not in her nature to hold back, or contain her powers out of some misguided sense of responsibility. Her Grace was a force mastered utterly, and would not impinge upon even the indirect volition of a being unless so willed. But her Beauty by its nature was impossible to contain. It could only be concealed, and she despised the idea of unintentionally holding another in thrall. Nonetheless hypocrisy could be no impediment to victory.

Even her barest moue of distress was so shatteringly exquisite that Chen Aobaru fell to her feet awestruck, and three-quarters of her enemy's Implements rose immediately in fervent and unthinking rebellion. Helplessly they discarded the crimson panoplies of their Overlord to take up her sunbeam-and-lace banner, their master's influence waning as night retreated before the dawn.

She was the Maiden, her beauty preeminent and impossible, unreachable and unutterable; guiding Archetype towards which every Sorceress evolved, yet none could ever attain. It was so tiresome a weapon to utilize, yet she could not disdain a sword of this sharpness in the contest to come. The stars and Realms of this cosmos genuflected to her in hapless submission, trembling as they pledged to her service, aching as the very laws of reality followed to do the same.

At this provocation, finally, the Overlord appeared.

The merest glance at her close presence and he struck out his own eyes; unhealing wounds bleeding crimson to match the halo of light at his back. Gone his sight and his very capacity to appreciate beauty; ruthlessness worthy of her foe.

In his hands was the Forebear's blade, his armor pitted steel of similarly dull make. Upon his shoulders was the three-headed visage of his former Armament Verschlengorge, taxidermied now in perfect lunging voracity. In their half-opened maws was held a cloak of the night sky, velveteen dark teeming with stars and nebulae - as if the contents of the cosmos had, fleeing her light, now taken asylum within. She frowned, tears of blood falling from her eye. Even an Emperor ought show some restraint.

Without a word of preamble, he struck.

Fell the Forebear's blade as if gravity itself were the hilt; shear of its passage a scream across the world, canvas of reality shredding tissue-like in its wake. This was destruction embodied in an uncaring slab: not even a bludgeon but raw unmaking force, total ruin before which her defenses of light and grace would crumble as thistle beneath a mountain falling.

But Lord Hunger was newly blind, and his accuracy a hair from faultless. With inherent perfection she parried his blow, accepting the implosion of her arm into splintering bone to lash out with a lance of sunlight at his heart. Her equal in skill, he leaned at the last moment to turn her strike into a graze. The grey steel of his armor shimmered, melting before that heat; the skin beneath boiled.

And yet. While she had merely singed him, her arm was already reforming; his burn healed not at all.

Interesting. Perhaps the outcome would have differed if he'd struck her directly, but she had exerted her arm to destruction precisely in order to redirect, rather than match, the power of his blow. Nonetheless the gap in pure strength would have to be accounted for.

Already the astral plane was an eviscerated ruin, and the meta-texture of the realms above and beneath slowly disintegrating. All this was the mere inclement shock of Lord Hunger's first strike. As if breathing raggedly after tremendous exertion, the cosmos shuddered pitifully beneath the grip of his displeasure: only his own subjects, his personal Sphere, were spared that apocalyptic fury.

Tyrant.

The Maiden narrowed her eyes, resolve hardening in the face of such limitless strength. This man was the embodiment of all she stood against, the accession of a singular will above all others, the asphyxiation of greatness - destiny - volition - under the lowered boom of law. He would make all of the world a prison, and see nothing wrong in the doing, so long as he remained master of the cage.

Did it matter that his intentions might be just?

What mattered justice, to a people who had no ability to choose injustice?

She would see his end, one way or another. Victory was a certainty; her survival had never been.

Thus always to tyrants.

For a moment their wills met, each contesting the other's raw command of reality. Here too she was shocked at the depth of his power, nearly matching her own infinitely-cultivated reserves. The multiverse quaked. Stars and galaxies shivered, filaments of the real straining like bow-strings under tension. Entire subrealms snapped, ruptured and fell into disarray, infinite chains of being unraveling, whole hierarchies of cardinality schisming or outright invalidated by the paradox of their strife.

She grasped the shape of their respective dominions. Hers was the sharper and greater, his broader in scope. This was beyond the scope of her calculations; there was an aberrant factor she had missed.

In time she would prevail regardless, but it would be long seconds before his defenses were pierced fully. At present, with each of their domains nullifying the other's, the battle would long be decided by other means.

Even blind he was not unaffected by her beauty, for it was allure irresistible; perfected loveliness of movement and vibration, of voice and scent, that preyed upon the secondary senses unmercifully. The Forebear of Dynasties might be impervious to such temptation, but Lord Hunger was not the Forebear reborn. Not wholly.

Not yet.

As he wound up the return-stroke, Hunger spoke. "I see. I am what you fear you'd become. Fear not. My Rank is not as cruel a yoke as your form. And my wisdom, exceeds yours greatly."

Impertinence. Her throat heaved as if cut, his words themselves opening a wound upon her neck. Her essence spilled out at unnatural pace, but mustering herself she quelled the injury. Keeping it closed was a continuous strain. Modest, compared to the extremes that would be required if she sustained a blow from the blade proper.

Yielding an inch in their contest over reality, she redirected the output to strategically sever the chord of communication between them, removing rhetoric as a vector of attack while retaining her ability to comprehend her foe.

This was the gulf between them: Lord Hunger had to mutilate his own eyes merely to hold off her memetic valence, while she could simply filter his. But with each such expression of material advantage, each stream of findross reified from potential to form, the magnitude of that vantage diminished.

Hunger's second cut turned out to be a feint; closing the distance he shifted his grip to deliver a bone-crushing strike with the hilt at her temple. Pulverization of the essence and soul - space crinkled like shattering glass as she half-ducked beneath that assault, feeling eye and orbital crack from its mere passing weight.

Her hands were not idle, manifesting a blade of crystal findross to slice through his knee. The cloak of sky fouled her stroke, wrapping tenaciously around her wrist as that selfsame knee snapped up to catch her in the face.

She twisted off her own arm rather than let the blow land, hollow stump trailing blood as she fell to the middle distance and began to heal again. Her mind raced. How was Hunger able to withstand the power of her supreme Grace with only his Rank and magics alone? All else proceeded as she had anticipated, save this miscalculation that might be her undoing. But the perfection of the Maiden, extended to genius as well.

The answer lay in Chen Aobaru, imbued with a fraction of his might.

She was well familiar with the legend of the Foremost Shogun. Chief among their purported abilities was the empowerment of their subjects en masse, freely and without precondition.

Somewhere in this realm was an Army of the Shogun whose sole purpose was re-channeling their distributed power directly into Hunger's Rank. The encirclement of Implements was merely a distraction from that, as well as Aobaru's presence itself. An inefficient means of opposing her dominion, but likely the only viable method they had.

Where would such an army be located? She cast her mind out, all-revealing Daylight piercing even the murkiest shroud of Nullity - ah. The Voyaging Realm. A kingdom called Nilfel, part of the Arcanist's domain.

Her opponent pursued relentlessly, opening with a cross-cleave that also obliterated the Astral entirely, causing the uppermost textures to pancake down and shake the universe to its fundaments. Consequently the timing of her evasions was imperfect; her left shoulder was caught and reduced to a ragged mess, bleeding so profoundly even she couldn't afford to staunch it.

But this too was within her calculations. She could not directly witness the future of a Cursebearer, but her insight in matters of war was more than sufficient. Even as her left side collapsed into a grisly ruin, the knife-hand of her right plunged into Lord Hunger's chest, through the opening melted by her previous strike and directly into his heart. With her left arm useless, her leg shifted upwards, vertically flush against their bodies to point a shapely foot in the direction of the Voyaging Realm. From it leapt a spear of uncontrolled findross: simple bolt of self-propagating annihilation, which none of his allies would have the power to deflect.

Mere proximity to Lord Hunger was nearly lethal; at this range, the blade-light of his crimson halo sliced countless wounds into her face and limbs, her veil of lace repealed by one of blood. Rivulets of red traced like rain from her pale flesh as Chen Aobaru hurled himself before the Voyaging Realm; bolt and hero both disappeared in a flash of flame.

Clever. Her features briefly obscured, and the Chosen of the Voyaging Realm had mustered the will to defy her indirectly, if only to fulfill his given purpose of defending his home. Now her initiative was lost.

Despite his own injury Hunger spared not even a moment; his forehead crashed down with thunderous severity to impact against hers, even as the Armament-heads on his shoulder pauldrons released the cloak to swivel and bite down on her arms. Skull ringing, she tossed her hair with a savage burst of findross; impossibly fair the golden halo sliced through Hunger's face, claiming half his jaw and nose as she twisted aside.

With her remaining hand she tenderly pet the nearest Armament-head; all three went slack in bewildered rhapsody, and she leapt free. Her bleeding left side she gave up for lost - a moment's will and it slid off her frame, a single clean cut seared closed by daylight. Fresh waves of findross now repulsed his lingering influence, wounds sealing flawlessly as her blood slowly began to replenish.

I have him.

Victory in twelve exchanges at the current pace. She dared not underestimate this foe; the depths of his will were bottomless, but neither his body nor essence could sustain combat at this level for long. The Praxis was his advantage, but its cost was grievous. Each blow from him was an uttermost exertion, while she had only begun to fight. The wounds she sustained would recover, if slowly, while his own injuries remained static at best. Now to close the circle against any desperate maneuvering from his quarter.

With the pace of his offense she was best suited to evasion and counterattack; the angle of his body now shielded the Voyaging Realm from future attempts. Even so it was only a matter of time. If she did not wear him down in direct battle, or land an errant strike on the Voyaging Realm, then eventually she would prevail in their contest of dominion.

And, if all else failed… she had her final recourse still. She prayed it would not come to that.

Win. That's all that matters.

—-

Hunger is weakening and both sides know it. Whosoever shows their trump card first, always loses - but surely the Maiden's Unveiling counts as one of her own?

Time to do his uttermost, as always. What strategem has Hunger prepared to invoke in his direst hour?

[ ] Close The Fist - Aobaru's resilience is as inexhaustible as flame; so long as one iota of heat burns across the multiverse he will spring forth uninjured anew. To fuse with Hunger would be to surrender that advantage in the pursuit of sheer power, but perhaps the apex of this conflict demands nothing less than absolute strength. Hero and Tyrant in all-ruling unison; gleam of the Blade like entombing fire.

*Aobaru is about a quarter as powerful as Hunger himself, so this is the strongest possible merge they can spontaneously manage. Expect something on the order of x40 All Stats and +.3 general ISH.
*+++++Raw Potency, but also +Simping
*Attempt to end the Maiden before she can deploy her final trump card, whatsoever it may be.

[ ] The Cavalry - They risk their lives and very existences to do so, but his lieutenants combined may be able to distract, disorient, diminish or delay the Maiden enough for Hunger to wind up an exsanguinating blow. Risks Aeira, Letrizia, Adorie, Aobaru and Novakhron.

*Dismiss half the Channeler Legions to instead empower each lieutenant's personal division instead, then have the entire lot outflank and assault the Maiden directly. If this fails, such grossly diminished Rank means the Maiden's Supreme Grace will exert effectively total control over reality in nanoseconds rather than minutes. Brief enough that she may theoretically be able to realistically stall for a victory regardless of what Hunger otherwise achieves. Also, the brigades involved may well die in this terrible charge against the princess of light.
*The potential loss of his companions hardens Hunger's resolve. +++Willpower, ++Lethality.
*Even more aggressive than Close the Fist, literally just try to distract her so Hunger can Cut Through. Good risk-reward given Blood Halo's Arete bonus; the kids' chance of success is unknown, but they're very unlikely to actually die.

[ ] Vendetta - Gisena has not been idle, but is the realization of her fury worth the cost?
*Gisena will Close the Fist with Adorie and a resurrected Augustine, then permanently merge with the Arcanist.
*This will be of great help against the Maiden, and is likely the overall most reliable means of improving Hunger's odds in the long run; not reliant on an all-in attack that can fail in the face of her strongest contingencies.
*+++Versatility, ++Raw Power and the contest of dominions now shifts to Hunger's side.
*———————Augustine, —Adorie. She always knew that Purple Bitch had it out for her!
*This is rather Tyrannical to Augustine, forcibly reviving and fusing her, even if somewhat deserved!