Chapter Eighty-Three (Suisei No Gargantia)
The screams died as soon as I stepped upon the deck. No, to be more precise they were already dead, but with my arrival they stopped twitching and moaning their last breaths. The figure was muscled, and hunched. Dark eyes shone of pitch-black Mana as dirty cursed veins spread across the frame of a bulky-looking man. A two-handed ax strapped to his back, his clothes having seen better days and froth leaving his mouth copiously like a mad beast, an animal devoid of interests if not for the desire to sate his hunger. It made a throwing motion with his right hand, no words leaving his lips, and a threatening bear weaved with darkness and things from the beyond emerged.
Its frame took one step upon the dirty, rusty halls of the ship's deck, and then stilled. It coughed, it rasped, it angrily cursed and then it bled and died as whips of fungi-like materials began to grow from the flesh of the summoned animal.
"The most ferocious hunter of them all is the flesh-eating bacteria," I pointed out calmly, eyes narrow. "And who would you be, that you come face me?"
"No...mercy," the man growled, launching himself forward as the ship we stood on cracked in half, mighty tentacles crafted from the depths of the abyss and other, unworldly powers merged together to create not a simple Kraken, but something far more dangerous and evil.
The ocean's surface trembled in fear, the icy waters forming icebergs as heat seemed to abandon this place, death looming over us as if we were the only survivors in a world filled with darkness. This was the sensation of Black Mana. Power, honest and brutal, without compromise nor desire to hide one's own greatness. Black Mana was the greatest of colors when it came to desiring more power, but also one of the weakest when it came to misdirection or lying. Black Mana was honest, and that honesty was its undoing more often than not.
The large ax sailed for my head with speed, and had one of my talons not emerged from my sides to intercept the blow, it would have proven quite nasty. The talon itself broke, more forming to immediately repair the damage wrought by the blade as death seemed to spread across the tendrils of the smaller Slivers that formed most of my body. They regenerated. They tried to, and yet they died.
Death, apparently, was absolute when it came by the hands of this Planeswalker.
I stepped back, a new level of threat rising to my mind as the man smirked, the lips dark as the cruelty behind the smile wasn't lost to me. The tongue licked the upper lip, a sign of joy and anticipation for the incoming end to the quickest duel I had ever been a part of. This wasn't Nicol Bolas, who would rather bring down the suns. This wasn't a hidden assassin in the dark, ready to lurch and strike from the back to sever a spine. This was...an altogether different threat.
One that hurt my children.
"I was enjoying my peace of mind," I said, clicking my tongue against my teeth as the ax came swinging down for my head. My tail swished on the deck of the ship, sending me backwards as my spine reinforced itself, sharp scythe-like limbs coming forth only to rot as they came in contact with the ax of the Planeswalker in question. The hardened chitin died, the bones and the marrow within began to ache and pulse as if an ongoing infection was ravenously devouring them with gluttonous want. I disliked facing Black, because sometimes there just wasn't a choice to make.
I disliked it even more when it was prepared.
"Is this all that you are?" the Planeswalker growled. "I thought you would be worthier prey."
"Sorry to disappoint you," I retorted as the monstrous' kraken's tentacles squeezed and shattered the deck of the ship, three pairs of leathery wings sprouting from my back to enable my flight, even as my talons regrew faster and slicker than before, "But I've wasted more energies than you will ever dream of, and lost too many to the Dragon. I'm enjoying my retirement, youngster. Come back in a thousand years if you want a real challenge."
"No mercy for the prey," the Planeswalker replied, extending a hand as a bolt of purple, sickly energy left it. I swung to the side with my wings, avoiding the attack which abruptly changed trajectory, homing in on my frame even as I began to pick up flight. My muscles, meanwhile, were aching fiercely as if losing cohesion. I felt it then. No, rather than feeling it, it was the lack of feeling that made it clear to me.
I was losing pieces.
I was losing parts. The Slivers which composed my body were rotting away, dying by the million and at such an accelerated rate that it was impossible for me to recover them. No, they weren't dying. They were...they were being eaten alive.
My mind pulsed. The Leylines of pure Blue mana shattered free from their confines, the seas recoiling abruptly as what made them breathe and live died out, devoured hungrily as the scales upon my frame shifted and changed color, metallic glints overtaking my muscles and fibers.
"Are we born to die, or is our purpose forged by the storms we survive?" I whispered as electricity danced and crackled across my entire frame, the plague receding, recoiling and dying as rather than face it through the might of flesh, I made it starve through the lack of it, through the replacement and the ozone that gathered and pulsed with the heat of lightning. The moment I stilled to purge my body was the moment the homing sickening light struck, sending me to spiral down as most of the Slivers that composed my body died, turning into cinders and ashes. Aetheric energies rushed across the multitude, shredding the synaptic hivemind and leaving each Sliver for itself, to scuttle about and lose cohesion with the rest of its peers.
The Planeswalker' ax impaled my rotting body through my chest, as if I were nothing more than a prize to be dangled about for the world to see. He stood upon the tentacle of the deformed Kraken as if it were solid ground, and while I still breathed and lived, yet I couldn't muster any will to fight, any strength. There was a certain tiredness claiming my limbs, my eyes, my body and everything around me felt hazy, strings of Mana shifting through my—
The Kraken screamed and died as the air changed, the smell of the sea overpowering the stench of rot that I had ignored forcefully. Tendrils of rot grew and devoured hungrily throughout the overgrown squid's frame as bright orange bubbles spread across its skin like sore pustules. My body was pulled off the ax by hundreds of fast tendrils of flesh, which even as they suffered, yet they held on steadfast and regrew. It was the principle that mattered. It was the desire, the spark of survival at all costs that made the Sliver so worrisome. Though it had taken time, the first clutch capable of surviving whatever new deadly plague had been prepared had now been born, and thus their traits were now shared with the others.
My limbs regrew quickly, my tail hitting the surface of the sea as the Kraken's tentacles exploded like countless birthing chambers for a new type of Sliver, crimson pus-like liquids swimming in the waters of the sea with purpose.
"There is no strength in you," the Planeswalker growled from the top of a whale made of deformed bones and grisly-looking flesh. "I was told the Tyrant would be the strongest beast, the ultimate monster," the man snarled, "Yet all I find...is weakness."
I looked at the Planeswalker, and then chuckled.
My chuckle turned into laughter.
My laughter became maniacal.
"I am done playing games with you people," I spoke, "I am done giving a damn about you lot. I am done with your desires for greater power, your treacheries, your deceits, your intentions! Go fuck yourself with a rusty hatchet! What do you people even want with me now? I'm done! I just want to be left alone with my creatures! Alone with my—" I stammered on my next words, I stammered, and then shut up abruptly.
I took a deep breath.
"Alone with my family," I whispered.
The ocean's surface rippled as the air itself burned. There had been something in the air. There had been something in the air that had acted to make me forget, but because Anthrax had gone away, he had regained his thoughts, and so I had in turn. "Your next words," I snarled, my eyes ignited as the sun disappeared, an eclipse ongoing. "Will be...that is no moon."
"No," the Planeswalker growled as he jumped off his beast, ax swinging with all of his strength downwards.
"In thousands of years—" I growled as new talons grew to replace those I had lost, "Not once did I manage to get someone to say it!" I flew out of the water's embrace with enough speed that they could have strapped a rocket to my back, and it would have still gone slower. My talons met his ax, and this time they did not break. "Do you know how nerve-wracking it is!? How many times do you think I summoned it forth?" The weapon was as deadly as it was slow. Though beasts appeared in their deformed selves to aid the Planeswalker, Slivers emerged from the pools of crimson pus to defy them. They couldn't near us, the Planeswalker fighting with both of his boots planted on the water's surface, my own body halfway submerged.
And meanwhile, my speed increased. The talons sharpened. The muscles increased in their strength.
A sweet symphony spread across the synapses, a chorus that was in equal parts angelic to my ears, and yet also as natural as a second set of lungs and countless hearts, all beating in a rhythm that was endearing, and homely.
The chittering grew in intensity the moment they broke through the atmosphere. Tendrils and wings, lungs expanding beyond their flesh as glowing liquids rained down with white brilliance to cleanse the world before it was too late for it.
"I am no beast," I hissed as I pushed, my tail twitching as I gained ground on the Planeswalker, who stumbled as he was pushed back. "I am no hunter, nor prey. I...I am a father," I chuckled warmly, "And it's my duty to teach my children how to live proper lives." A new tendril grew from my chest, and struck through the Planeswalker's guard. The next instant I broke free from my Sliver's battle form, my right foot hitting straight against the Planeswalker's face, stomping him backwards as I grabbed hold of a blade of Aetheric energies from thin nothingness.
My battle form's eyes burned brightly as it gained a sentience of its own, roaring in tandem with the rest of the Hive, which was descending upon this planet like raindrops during a hurricane.
The Planeswalker's roar was accompanied by a burst of green and black Mana gathering around his frame as he grew in size, his ax swinging sideways and sharpened by energies the likes of which would have killed countless lesser men. My blade impacted against his, and my teeth gritted as I held him back there.
"And because we are a family," I growled, my eyes glowing with the colors of Mana in all of its forms, "We never fight alone."
The sea's surface broke as a snake-like Sliver emerged, its hardened plates breaking free to reveal the countless Slivers attached to the skin beyond, all with eyes glowing blue, all with blades in place of claws and serrated armor-plates merged with their bodies. They jumped and flew on wings of pale, leathery skin, buzzing as they circled us, acidic spit and sharpened quills leaving their tail-like appendages.
The Planeswalker extended a hand up in the air, a blast of Black Mana shimmering into existence and dying out, fizzling as it was contained, and then harmlessly countered by other, bluer Slivers which swam beneath our feet.
My battle-form slashed at the man's face with its right talon, carving a deep scar that didn't heal, as much as rot into a scar of its own. The Planeswalker screamed, his mouth frothing and spewing a foam-like black substance. The air shimmered with fire and death, the veins of the hunter turning darker by the second.
There had been something inside his skull. Something which had shattered.
"Uh-uh," I muttered as the flames and the darkness spread and swirled, the Slivers shrieking as they pulsed as one to hold the thing at bay. "You know what," I said nonchalantly. "We're doing this the old-fashioned way."
You never change, do you?
"Queen, my darling dear! Let us use the ancient technique that our family knows since generations!" I turned on myself as I increased in altitude, the other Slivers quickly following me upwards as darkness spread across the surface of the ocean, Anthrax's one form spiraling out of the sea and lifting itself up like a balloon filled with helium. He landed with a sickening splorch against the back of my battle-form, while energies left the tips of my fingers.
The Moon that was no Moon slammed a beam of Mana through the air, shattering asunder the barrier between this world and the Blind Eternities, crafting a highway of sorts that saw us leg it faster than anyone could blink, slingshot across the Blind Eternities both in dimensions and distance.
There was no way I was sticking behind to watch a Demon Planeswalker be born.
The young ones would deal with this.
I had found a new calling, and in the little amount of time I still had before it came to an end as all dimensions split, I would do exactly that.
I had children to teach.
And squishy cheeks to pinch.
