Expurgation
to purge from a story elements found offensives
or blasphemous.
Yharim pulled tight the straps on Yharon's barding, tending to his companion on the eve of battle. It had served little purpose for a long time, but it was an old ritual so perhaps it had some power still. If nothing else, it served to calm his nerves. It was time. Nurgle's probes and attacks and defeats had been leading to this. One of its greatest servants, assaulting them in their final redoubt. They had all been preparing in their own way.
Gatta had been fiddling with her guns,
Faust had been wrapping itself around the worried, Zahak had retreated to her chambers, her herald in tow, and Yharim was here, making ready his oldest companion.
The fortress groaned under the approach of Qaramar. It's mere presence strained the battlements and speckled the adamantine walls with rust. They had expected an army, one of Nurgle's lesser Exalted, hungry for praise leading its court in a final battle. Instead, they would face a single foe, a single monster so mighty it had no need of an army.
"It's ready."
He turned, she was in the doorway, armored in obsidian scales. It was fitting he mused, that his greatest rival took on draconic features for battle.
"It will stand his presence?" he asked.
She nodded. "Cegorach does good work when he thinks it would be funny."
No pretense, no clever allusions to the god he suspected was backing her. She was as worried as he was.
"Was this his doing?" It would change little, but if he would die in someone's schemes he had to
know.
She nodded. Offering no defense for the god that could well have killed them all.
"Catch." She casually tossed a package, one smelling deeply of might , and Yharim snatched it from the air. Unrolling it he found two simple lumps of dark meat that vibrated with power.
"I suggest you spend it all in one place." Then she was gone, leaving Yharim and his steed to their meal.
Outside the fortress, the plague winds blew. A silent hurricane of foul plagues around a single massive, rotting figure. Bunkers and the servitor guarding them rotted to nothing. Their deaths unfortunate, but providing vital information.
Qaramar was not here to corrupt, he was here to destroy. It approached formless, a wild story, a roiling mass of entropy. It was the Lost Second and the Last Watcher of the Last Moment, come to steal their future and watch them rot. To fight it as such was folly, for its story dwarfed that of the Concordat. The jester box was opened, and reality
shifted. The warp solidified in a parody of realspace, becoming a place of solidity, where tactics and cunning may yet overcome the narrative. A joke from the Laughing God, the gods fighting their pivotal battle as mortals. One instant Yharim was a collection of stories and power and deeds, the next he was riding atop Yharon, surveying the ground from dragon back, his court atop lesser steeds all around him.
Such was the might of his grand jest that even Qaramar, 5th most favored servant of Nurgle, was forced to take a shape. It appeared as a twisted rotted parody of a dragon. A long serpentine body, with curled withered arms held close to its chest as it crawled along the ground on rotted bony wings. A vast horse's skull, fleshless and decayed, served as its head. Its tail was a mismatched collection of bones, half covered in putrid flesh, and its was belly open and trailed a carpet of bloody offal.
If it was troubled by its sudden incarnation, it showed it not. Rearing back before the gleaming walls of Bulwark's final fastness, it unleashed a vast plume of rot and decay. The walls began to pit and rust, the vile plume of noxious gases and entropic ending seeming to envelope the entire edifice. Yharim smiled and the burning flames of the daemon's eyes flared in surprise as the trap was sprung. The thin layer of admat rotted, and the sorcerer's trap beneath stood revealed. Arcane siphons drank deeply of the demons power, forcing its blow to become a draining one as zahhak drunk greedily of its might. The small line of bunkers at the edifices base a fraction of the false fortress size.
"NOW!" Yharim bellowed, kicking his mount into a dive.
The barren rock turned liquid, flowing through clever drains as the final trap of the Concordat was revealed: a vast plain of sanctified True silver from Zuntîram. Wards and runes of purity from every god were etched onto its surface by divine hands. Qaramar roared in rage as the very ground it stood upon turned against it. The air turned sweet as
Ruick poured his might into purifying the air, the daemon burned under the furious rays of
Ilfeliare's Sun,
Hagals runic wards clawed at its soul, a dozen of
Auralvics laws slammed into existence proscribing every aspect of nurgles worship, more and more wards and decrees and benedictions rose up in defiance, as decades of divine labor revealed itself.
An army would have dissolved. A lesser Exalted would have been crippled. Qaramar was enraged. It burned under dozens of holy flames, yet its flesh was not consumed.
Then Yharon unleashed his fury, a fury echoed by the members of his court an enhanced by Yharims mystic might. As a mortal Yharon's flames had reduced fortresses and cities to molten slag and cinders. As a god he had melted mountains off the face of worlds and burned deep valleys with a single pass. Qaramar was in an instant reduced to a charred skeleton, burning in the wake of the gods and his court, and for a single heartbeat, Yharim allowed himself the belief it might be that easy. Then the moment passed and the demon stood restored, laughing at the futility of the blow. He could feel it, it had not spent a drop of power. Against the domains of over a dozen gods, in their shared place of power, it had restored itself with less effort than it took for Yharon to scratch his hide. A considered eventuality.
A mental command carried by his role as a general brought a line of marksmen to the battlements, each armed with a different weapon. Dozens of weapons, blessed by dozens of different gods tore into it. Arrows, sling stones, spears, plasma, melta, gravity, flame, and pure fury and a dozen dozen forms of harm. Nothing. Not a single one did real damage, simply blasted apart flesh and bone to be effortlessly replaced. There was a catch, there was
always a catch with tricks like this. They just needed to find it before it killed them all. A desperate dive evaded a blast of the beast's rotting breath, the slowest of his court falling to the ground as diseased meat.
Seconds later the daemon's focus was punished, a long shadow darted forth, only to desperately wheel around as the demons withered arms shot out covered in corrosive pus. The darkness became a forest of tendrils attacking from every direction. The fleshless mouth came down, biting at the shadows. The teeth met draconic hide as Zahak shifted forms, becoming A great obsidian dragon, whose three heads where each crowned in flame. The bite on her flank was slowly radiating rot, but her scales held. For an instant the two dragons grappled, seeking advantage as their long necks whirled and waved, then a head dipped low and Zahak's form collapsed into its snout, a woman, tumbling down inside her foe's reach. Qaramar's flesh erupted in corpulent veins and Zahak dissolved into a cutting web of shadow, slicing through this last line of defense and severing his forelimb before dancing away with her prize, specks of rot eating through her form as a new arm erupted from the stump.
For a second Yharim was almost fooled. The daemon had undone the damage yet again, but its arm was truly
new. New flesh created at a significant cost to replace the old. She could hurt him if barely. Watching the shadows flicker and dart as his rival desperately dodged away from Qaramar's retaliation, it was clear she could not win. Were this day less desperate, he would consider leaving her to her fate, but rival or no, he needed her strength to triumph. An exertion of will and a signal was sent. Sally ports opened and his first card entered play. A great force of chimeric beasts of a hundred stripes thundered out. The Colonel was at its center, borne atop a massive draconic lion, his hated foe beside him, a half dozen gods riding alongside him.
Qaramar whirled, only for its neck to snap back as Zahak darted close. He warded off the devouring shadows with blasts of scouring fumes, buying the charge precious seconds to close. The beast's tail whipped around, the sinew holding the bones in place, snapped and hurled seven corrupt bones towards the incoming charge like mortars. A frantic dive saw a trio consumed in a blast of Yharon's flames, but the four remaining continued on towards the oncoming gods. Custom-made chimera darted upwards, dying to save their master. The severed tail began excreting bones anew, but a frantic charge from Zahak saw the daemon distracted once more. The exchange was brief, and her pool of shadows was noticeably smaller after, but the gods had closed the distance.
Qaramar swiped his bony wings and a dozen chimera rotted to nothing at his touch, but a dozen more burst into entangling unaging strands, trapping the wings for vital seconds; its curled forelimb fired out like a cannon, only for a figure in ebon armor to appear and deflect the shot with a shield of purifying light; the head came round, belching forth its noxious fumes, the
Lionsmith himself came forth, melting to goo to shield his rival. Then
the Colonel reached the beast, and his sword became a blur, and Qaramar
screamed. Each blow healing a hair slower, each blow scarring and damaging its healing.
Its own guts burst from its flank, striking out at the attacking god, who ignored them to continue his work. At the same time an ebon figure popped into existence and her snarling shield devoured the reaching viscera. It was a whirlwind of motion, the Colonel lost in his work, his arms a blur seeking only to strike as well and as quickly as he could. Qaramar struck again and again, and the Black steel figure of the
shield maiden was in constant motion, catching each blow on a new shield. Not a one stood for a single blow. It lasted seconds, half a minute at most, and then the Shieldmaiden's final shield shattered, and the next blow sent her flying. Her gauntlets flaked away. the flesh beneath sloughing off. The next blow dissolved the Colonel's arm, sending him tumbling to the ground. Both vanished as Faust's contribution whisked them away to the infirmary. Casualties or fatalities, he would see which at the battle's end.
With a roar the Lionsmith struck, his hammer pulping the dragon's leg and staggering it, and Yharim smiled beneath his helmet as the damage remained. A desperate tail sweep reduced him to mush, only for him to burst renewed from one of his creations and shatter one of Qaramar's bony wings. A forelimb blow reduced him to melting chunks, and once more he burst forth raining blows atop the daemon's back, before melting from the sections of an erupting boil. His third reemergence was met with a swift burst of the daemon's breath, an act that was mirrored seconds later as Yharon once more unleashed his fury.
Were they in the Materium, this would have been the battle's end, the daemon's form burned and broken, its impossible healing scarred and ruined. But they were not in the Materium. For all that Cegorach's jest had forced a semblance of reality upon them, they were still in the Warp, where Qaramar had access to the full store of its power. The charred form cracked, shuddered, and shattered as the daemon burst forth from its ashen chrysalis, its form remade at a heavy cost. It had not even roared in challenge before it came under attack from the servitors on the wall, the guns of Gatta and black arrows of Zahhak rained down upon it. Not a one finding purchase, it had hardened itself against lesser beings it seemed.
A horn blew, and the ground shook, as the two gods of knights thundered forth, their iron steeds racing forth to bring burning lances to bear upon their foe. Glory Seeker struck first, driving deep into the daemon's chest, only for the return blow to send the god bleeding to the ground. Before Qaramar could deliver another blow, Deliverance lived up to its name shattering in a blinding burst of holy flame to drive back the daemon. As it whirled upon the ivory knight, Zahak pounced and fell upon it in a tearing mass of shadows that seemed to swell with each blow. A desperate tail sweep was met with crushing jaws as she once more solidified into her draconic form, her two unoccupied heads belching forth twin streams of black flame. A vicious jab of bony wings saw a trio of deep festering wounds upon Zahhaks chest, driving her back once more, even as a clumsy forelimb strike saw both knights downed, their prone forms vanishing to fates unknown.
Yharim wheeled around once more, only for hidden vents upon Qaramar's back to open and fire forth another blast of noxious fumes, scything through his court and forcing him into a desperate corkscrew turn. Yharon roaring in pain as a near miss melted the tip of his tail. Bereft of distractions, Qaramar pursed the retreating goddess. Her wounds were sealing and healing, but slower than they were being made. A vicious bite to Qaramar's neck was repaid with a venting of fumes through the new hole, reducing one of her three heads to a screaming skull, a forelimb blow saw a foot reduced to a sodden rotting stump. Yharim would be able to come around again in mere seconds, but Zahak did not have seconds, not with the way Qaramar was pouring so much of itself into its blows!
BANG
The daemon's chest burst in a brilliant blast of rainbow light. Its forelimbs went flying and were greedily snapped up by the reeling goddess. Yharim's gaze turned to the battlements and the lone figure atop them; Gatta stood alone, a massive rifle in her hands. Her gun spoke again, and Qaramar's right wing vanishes. The daemon's neck whipped around, and his putrid blast sent Gatta tumbling from the battlements in a blood heap, the gun still cradled in her hands. Zahak pounced, 3 maws clamping down on Qaramar's sinuous neck and
pulled. With an indescribably vile sound its neck came apart and Zahak retreated with its rotting skull. Trusting her instincts Yharim urged his steed into a desperate climb, caution that proved well warranted, as the daemon's broken shape erupted into a cloying cloud of putrid miasma.
The daemon abandoned much of its draconic form, becoming a bastardized rotting hydra. Its barrel shaped body was dragged about by four stumpy legs, its flesh so thickly covered with rot and weeping sores it scarcely seemed to have skin. Seven great pustules ringed its rotund form, and from its top sprouted a tangled forest of seven rotting necks. Then the hives pressed themselves out of its skin and a thick cloud of daemonic insects bursts forth. Frantic bursts of dragon fire burned back the swarm as Yharim and his court frantically built distance, Zahak retreating from the onslaught of biting bursting flies.
Yharim cursed as he retreated, his magics proving barely sufficient to ward the insects from his remaining court. The amount of power Qaramar must be feeding the swarm to survive on this field is insane, Yharim thought, yet from the daemon's perspective it was worth it. None of the gods present could hope to brave the swarm; the bastard had found a way to turn this into a contest of power after all. Then the sky grew dark, and rumbles of thunder split the Warp, even as a sweet wind blew. With a thunderous roar the storm broke and a torrential rain smelling of a dozen powers fell from the sky, sweeping away the empowered swarm. Yharim looked up at the battlements. He could see
Qhaysh floating serenely in the eye of the storm while
Karzarot raced through the clouds above. Then a bullet-fast blast of corrosive phlegm obliterated one of his last followers and he turned his mind back to the battle.
The ritual had stripped Qaramar of his cover, but the new shape was far from helpless. The seven heads spewed a constant stream of vile projectiles, weaker, but more rapid, forcing him to swerve and dive, and Zahak to dodge desperately, each attempt at approach driven back with an intense volley of fire. A burst of brilliant rainbow light seared off a trio of heads, and a second blew a chunk into its body. Several of the beasts remaining heads whipped around firing upon the battlements, striking down zaeed and rotting to sludge the masterwork he'd taken from Gattas rotted hands. New heads began growing, but for a scant few seconds the maze of projectiles had a weakness.
Zahak was on him in an instant, forsaking the solidarity of her draconic form she struck as a tide of shadows, ripping and tearing at its flesh, even as toxic bits and blasts rotted gaping holes into her form. Yharim kicked Yharon into a dive, adding his steed's breath to the assault, counting on the daemon's bulk to shield his ally as he struck. The the last of his court fell shielding him from its corrosive blasts, but his attack struck true. As Yharim wheeled about once more, as the daemon's barrel-like body shuddered, swelled, and burst. A sea of bladed and barbed intestines erupted to duel the attacking shadow, as countless more began firing unclean excretions into the air to ward him away.
The trick smelled of desperation, and Yharim could feel the daemon's power wane with its self-destructive ploy. Once more he reached with his will, calling forth their final gambit. A flaming meteor split the rain, as
Zaghâsh, god of death and fire, slammed into the ground, his form-concealing robes fluttering in the wind. With a deafening boom of thunder seven bolts of lightning struck the ground, revealing seven iron crosses, each bearing the charred and rune-inscribed skeleton of a Great Unclean One. Qaramar fumbled, shocked by the sheer heresy of the display, and then the bones ignited and the skeletons writhed in phantom pain. A single
Absortis Crucifix could stall an army of daemons. Seven? Seven could hobble even Qaramar it seemed. Yet this was only half of the ploy he had prepared with the death god.
As thunder roared Zaghâsh thrust his flaming sword into the ground, unleashing a billowing cloud of burning ash, and a charging horde of risen dead. Countless millions of skeletons, human and alien, mortal and daemon, charged forth. Every last one had followed the Plague God in life, he had made sure of it. Qaramar would die at the hands of his bound kin, a fitting fate for such a foe! Yharim laughed cruelly as Yharon dived once more, his claws outstretched. An honor guard of burning, hateful dead formed before him, clearing the path of the viscera with self immolation His gifted army struck at the daemon like a raging flood against a cliff. A thousand were reduced to ash, but a thousand more pressed onward, ten thousand corpses fell for an opening, and ten thousand more in the shock wave of Yharons charge, yet it mattered not!
The daemon rocked back from the force of his impact. Yharim's loyal steed tore long gouges in his foe, and his long burning lance struck deep. All the while the charcoal black sea of bones pressed onward. What had once been a Herald of Nurgle plunged its ashen blade into the flesh of its brother, a chitterlings pack of burned exoskeletons tore at the being they once worshiped, a hundred hundreds of plaguebearers marched against that which they had called master! The burning crucifixes cast a mad dance of shadows as the devouring goddess danced between them, biting deep into the overwhelmed daemon, ensuring its death would be final. Yharim's laughter boomed over the crackling of the flame, over the screams of the dying daemon, even over the rumbling thunder! This was victory! This was survival! He could taste the beast's despair! Feel it weakening with every blow! A trap of
his design! An army under
his command had felled a beast as far beyond them as they were beyond simpering mortals!
"Papa! Help me!"
The only thing that saved him was Yharon's long honed instincts, and Zaghâsh's stubbornness. The dragon flung them away as Zaghâsh poured his might deeply into his workings, seeking to hold back what was coming.
For an instant, the sky above parted under a distant gaze.
Qaramar swelled explosively, a wave of foul miasma exploding from his twisting form scouring Yharons armor as he shielded his rider, and being barely held back by the crucifixes, the army of bound dead reduced to less than rot. Qaramars flesh flowed like liquid, rising in a vast twisting pillar. Rising far into the sky before seeming to sag and bend under its own weight. Bone spears jutted forth at random, sprouting like bare branches only for putrefied flesh following seconds later like creeping mold. Its necks shriveled to nothing's as its head bursts like puffballs.entrails spilled from its form like a thousand writhing vines, its legs swelled, lengthened , and split into a vast lattice of bone and chitin. Its flesh grew rough and rigid. The vast tubular growths swelled and sprouted a forest of writhing hands. Great fanged maws ripped open across its titanic bulk, revealing nests of putrid eyes and lashing tongues. half formed fetus sprouted from the hand covered growths, hanging like overripe fruit from pestilent cords of flesh.
The great demon that had once been Qaramar, wailed and wept. It's tree like form dwarfing the bulwark it had come to destroy. With a final defiant bust of flame, the crucifixes that had contained the eruption of its birth failed, and it began to move. Vast roots of bone tore at sanctified wards, rotting away their careful preparation, and the vast tree was dragged froward. A bone spear burst from its trunk, liquid flesh trailing behind the point, seeking to Skewer the exhausted Zaghâsh. The blow was as fast as any mortal spear thrust, but slow by the standards of a god. Even drained as he was, Zaghâsh danced nimbly away, only for the lashing filth filled intestine vines to erupt from it to snare the god in unclean binds. The vile tendrils beginning to eat away at the god's form. Yharon took to the air, as Zahhak emerged from wherever crack she'd hidden in. for an instant it seemed the delay may cost Zaghâsh his life, before sleek glowing form seared through the tendrils with rainbow fire. Yharim felt his heart freeze, as Faust entered the fray.
Yharon wheeled around without needing to be told, as the brave fool stood alone against the beast. Bands of rainbow light warding its grasping tendrils away from the prone form of Zaghâsh. Yharims domain bore commands to flee, to abandon the death god and save herself were ignored, and Yharim cursed her nature as he desperately looked for an opening, a task a piercing scream distracted him from. The beast had struck at Zaghâsh with a spearing branch, a blow Faust could not deflect. Shed shielded him with her own body. With a flash of rainbow light Faust gathered the last of her might, sending Zaghâsh to safety, even as he tried desperately to rise to her aid. Zahhak bellowed in rage, throwing herself heedlessly against the beast, tearing through the maze of roots and ignoring the blows it rained upon her. Yharim hesitated, too close was death, but his friend needed him.
With the roar of an eviscerator, the decision was taking from his hands, as a new figure entered the fray. The oversized chainblade tearing through the branch, felling it as as the engine melted and the blade shattered.
The Doomed One had arrived. The light suite of green power armor stained with gore, an arsenal strapped to its form. The glass faceplate opaque. In an instant he was at Faust's side, pouring a tincture upon her wounds, as she vanished into one of her portals to safety. The Beast roared, shaking the very ether, its rage at being denied worthy of the greatest bloodthirster. The Doomed one simply pulled a shotgun from his back, and charged.
Blasts of shot and flame shattered roots, and obliterated vines, as the doomed one danced between killing blows. Streams of black flame played across its trunk as Zahhak deflected a barrage with draconic might. The canopy burned under the fires that had ended worlds as Yahron unleashed his might. The hands made dark symbols, as lipless mouths whispered words without understanding, conjuring a vast barrage of plaguefire. Yharon dived and twisted, corrosives bolts of fire scoring his already damaged armor. A barrage of rockets belched from the Doomed One's new weapon as he raced away from his spent shotgun, and the trunk of the tree twisted to bring its might ot bear upon the elusive figure. A decision the devouring goddess was swift to capitalize on, daring with a shows speed towards the beasts gargatuan trunk, and spiraling up its trunk like a massive serpent. Leaving a great bleeding wound behind her like a wake.
The best screamed again, and spikes of bone and putired bark erupted from its fleshy trunk. Zahhak leaping clear scant instants before they struck, pirouetting through the air as a woman, her arms reduced to rotting masses of bone from some unseen blow. Yarhim made a dangerously close pass, burning line up its trunk to buy his ally time to fall. The tree twisted, and the canopy writhed, a new forest of branches erupting in his path. Yharim frantically charting a path through the closing maze for his steed to slip though, batting away the rancid fetal fruit as it swung at them like heavy maces. Branches left bublings lines in their armor, fetal maces crushed god wrought plate, but his armor held and they where were though. Power gathered behind him as his mount leveled its flight, only for the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder to remind him that Karzarots storm still raged. A dozen bolts fell from the sky, blasting chunks of charred flesh-bark from the monster, each blast smelling of a different god, it seemed the back line had found a way to contribute.
The tree swayed under the assault. Countless mouths murmuring idiot incantations while its foliage of writhing hands churned the warp, and a vast dome of solidified rot formed above it. As the beast strained to keep up its sorcerous defenses, the doomed one paused, pulling a great plasma cannon from his back, Zahhaks shadows coiling around him as she fed power into his weapon. The recoil shook the ground, and melted the silver floor for meters in every direction, a green sun the size of a rhino tore into the rotting behemoth, detonating with a moment of utter silence and a flash of emerald furry, tearing open a vast hole in the bony roots of their foe. A hundred mouths moaned in pain, and the leaves shook loose their rancid bounty.
A rain of stillborn rot fell upon the ground bound gods. Some bursting into pools of bugling corrosive bile, others crawling around the ground leaving a wake of bubbling ooze. Their rancid malformed limbs propelling them at great speed despite all sense. A trio of black infernos tore into their ranks as Zahhak charged, the doomed on atop her back, a triple barreled assault cannon array tearing apart the falling fetuses, as his steed bore him forwards. Another shudder, and another harvest of horror fell, malformed wings taking flight as a vast swarm took to the air, every bit as impossibly fast with malformed wings as they were with malformed limbs. The swarm spread out to cut of escape, and Yharim smiled. They were fools indeed to think he would seek to
escape. Guiding Yharon into a serendipitous tailwind they charged into the mass of rotting imps. With burning lance and flaming breath they sent the abominations smoldering corpses to the ground.
Over half the swarm burned on the first pass without even touching him, on the second a quarter of the remainder where incinerated for minor wounds, on the third scarcely a handful where felled and their newly grown claws drew blood. The handful of survivors were growing rapidly, bulging and bloating, even as they kept their infantile proportions. A glance towards the ground revealed a similar same story. Zahhak grappled with a vast wurm like abomination, formed for the fused and bloating forms of the beasts get. The doomed one peppering it with railgun fire as he danced across the bulk of the clashing giants. Worse, as the bloated spawn stalled them, another wave fell from the writhing canopy. Yharon dived and danced through the air as he dueled the massive imps, as Yharim sought an answer to their predicament. Every second spent slaying the newborns meant time for the grown to attack, and every second spent fighting the grown gave the newborns time to grow.
An instant of thought was all he needed. An exertion of will saw his power flow into his mount as Yharon narrowed his mighty wings for a lethal dive. They struck the wurm beast as a blazing meteor of divine wrath, Yahrons claws tearing deep rents into its flesh, and Yharim's power ripping at it's rotten soul. The beast was no helpless prey, boils burst and entrails shot out, cracking one of Yharons wings even as the creature staggered back. The beast rounded on its new attacker, giving Zahhak a second of breathing room. Darkness flicked in the seam between the bloated stillborn making up its form, and it fell to pieces. Yharims smile turned to a frown, as he felt a presence trespass on his mount. The Doomed One, stood atop Yahrons back, deposited by a shadowy tendril. With a force of will he swallowed his affront and gave the god a nod.
There were no word, none where needed, they were out of tricks and the beast still stood. As one they charged. The ground shook under Yharons claws, Yharim feeding every ounce of his power to his steed as he raced across the ground. At his back a flood of shadows surged, striking down any who approached with obsidian spears, beside him the Doomed one fed clip after clip into a sleek plasm rile, the weapons heat scorching his hands as it burned away any obstacle. Unclean flesh rained from the sky, burned and skewed as the gods pressed home their desperate charge. The cage of roots at the trees base still had the burned hole the Doomed one had blasted into it, his nature ensuring his blow would not be rendered moot so easily.
They were almost upon it when their foe pulled out, one, last trick. The Tree shuddered, shook, and then slowly toppled. The bark cracking and bursting as the trunk bent and twisted. The roots wove themselves into a bleeding maw, and a great wurm roared in mindless defiance. Yharim for a heartbeat, hesitated, despair clawing at his mind. Then the omnipresent storm above,
broke and the world exploded into light. Above them hovered the luminous form of Ilfeliare, and in her grasp stood a massive
SUN of a hundred colors, smelling of the powers of countless gods. Qhaysh's doing he realized, the calm at the center of the storm, somehow she'd used it as ritual to feed their power to Ilfeliare. But his thoughts were interrupted as the sun began to change, slowly swelling and beginning to spin, growing ever brighter. The Wurm backed away warily, and Zahhak fled in terror. Yharon soon followed suit, racing away in the opposite direction, trusting the goddess survival instincts above all else. The doomed one however, stayed behind. Pulling from his armor an orb that smelled of rage and sacrifice.
The story terrain shifted, distance simplifying as the mere
presence of so potent an inferno ate away at their anchor. Distance became a concept, and reaching "enough" became a matter of power and will. Behind the fleeing gods, the doomed one stood alone, at the height of his power. Crimson flames licked at his form as he
lept though crumbling distance to land upon the wurms back. Bladed grappling lines acting as cruel reins as he pulled back its head, and held open its jaws. The impossibility of doing so to so vast a beast rendered meaningless by the weight of the doomed ones dying narrative. Above, the rainbow star spun on, swelling massively as Ilfeliare visibly strained to maintain it. Then
Collapse
To call it an explosion is to do it a grave disservice. It was the death of sectors, the annihilation of worlds, the grand majesty of the galaxy reminding even the gods that they to are but specks of dust before the cosmos. It was but the backblast of the true blow. Yharim knew not what searing enigma Ilfeliare had used for her strike, but when it landed it came as a raging pillar of annihilation whose raw fury dwarfed even the cataclysm that spawned it. Light so intense it had become something else, searing in ways beyond mere heat. It was the story of sudden annihilation, an apocalypse with no warning, the day the world burned under a mad sky. All was light and furry and pain and then it was over.
A black orb hung in the sky, ringed with the swirling debris of the cataclysm, a luminous figure fell to earth, dead or unconscious. The ground was molten from one horizon to the next, clouds of searing plasma drifted across the newly molten plains, and Yharim felt his shape start to unravel. Their imitation of reality unable to contain the sheer magnitude of the blast. Yet, for all the cataclysmic destruction, it lived. At the center of a glowing liquid crater, stood a fetid mass of charred flesh, a rotten heart, slowly starting to beat.
Yharim charged, his steed to wounded to follow. His great strides kicking up vast sprays of molten metal, his magic lending speed to his desperate sprint, even as the world crumbled around him and he slowly became a story once more. Opposite him, Zahhak emerged from whatever shelter she'd found, making herself an arrow of darkness as she shot across the realm, kicking up a glistening wake of molten silver. The heart beat a second time, and then a third. Yharims legs swelled with power as Yharon poured his might into him in desperation, vast claws of shadow tore at the ground as Zahhak sought to desperately edge out yet more speed. The heart beat a fourth time, and char began to fall away, a fifth and rotten flesh began to well up. The distance vanished and Yharim drew his sword drawing deeply on reserves that had been built carefully over centuries, Zahhak reared up like a tidal wave of jet black maws. The heart beat for a sixth time, and a fungal skeleton began to take shape. Yharims sword came down burning with power spent with mad desperation, Zahaaks myard jaws began to close and the heart began its seventh beat.
3 forces clashed, and the battle ended.
@Durin an omake for the pile
many thanks to @Andres110, and @Doomed Wombat, for helping me beta this monster. and thanks for @Argidoll for helping me name it. 
