The void—the unreal, as most would prefer to call it, was a realm dark and without matter. It was a place of everlasting dark, void of light, sound, and every other bit that made reality what it was. And even amongst the great powers of the cosmos, very few dared to thread its depths. But today... Today all those facts were being put on hold.
Tsaria careened to the side, panicked, just as her previous position erupted in a great conflagration of light and sound, an explosion even she, a Transcendent of no small power, found overwhelming and deadly.
Despite not having breathed for eons now, she couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. That had been very close.
She was a being of untold power, having reached heights very few had even dared come close to, but still she turned fearful eyes, her attention shifting toward the origin of the attack, who hovered a distance from her and all her compatriots, radiating power so utterly unimaginable it was with the help of another of its kind that they were able to exist in its presence.
"Careful, Tsa, you're threading too close to sundering," Juke tsked as he drifted over to her side.
She turned and involuntarily met the eyes of her friend, and despite the fact that they were roughly equal in power, she couldn't help the subtle shiver that ran through her eyes when she met his. The Watchers were an eerie sort, and Juke was no exception.
A smile tugged at his lips, so subtle that she wouldn't have noticed had she not been paying close attention to basically everything around her, and she knew he'd taken notice of her brief period of unease. Ughh, three eyes and their endless smugness.
"You don't need to tell me twice," she replied, maturely choosing not to comment on his expression.
She turned her eyes to the battle taking place in the distance, between a humanoid behemoth of unimaginable size, even by transcendent standards. The entity clashed with another, also roughly humanoid in form, except where the former sprouted only two arms, the latter sported four thickly muscled limbs, all wielding weapons so ancient and archaic she'd scarcely believe there was another in the entirety of the multiverse.
Essence erupted from the four-armed being, crimson power so great she felt it strongly far away, far beyond any known distance measurement. Thankfully she also wielded the power of Destruction, else she would have perished the instant the backwash hit her.
Beside her, Juke could only grunt as the power swept past them, sparing him. They were allies, after all.
The void rippled in response to the return attack unleashed by the two armed entity, a shocking reaction considering it never reacted.
"If they go on like this, we'll all be reduced to nothing in a matter of minutes," she said, spurring Juke to a grunt of agreement. It was no exaggeration. Transcendent she might be. All powerful and endless power she might wield, but the might of a Grand Celestial was not something she could withstand, not in a billion eons.
Crimson light struck and the realm rumbled so hard it sent every being reeling. Blinking out black spots from her vision, Tsaria looked up into the distance, watching the Aspect of Chaos stagger backward from Destruction's attack. And yet, despite taking head-on an attack that would have smited a great part of reality to nothing but ash, it stood and, a moment later, returned in kind.
"That's my cue," Tsaria said, to which Juke only replied with a nod. With nothing else to say, she jumped back into the battle.
To the side, a great power, one of the Primal Celestials, blitzed past her in a tornado of howling air, throwing aside all the Transcendents in its vicinity. It was in the form of an avian creature, but this time scaled to obscene size and power that no flesh nor elemental creature could hope to match. Watching the battle between the Grand Celestials, Tsaria spared a little of her attention to the Primal Celestial, whose form seemed to expand, enlarging till it almost blotted out the view of the Titans battling in the distance. And then Kazrael's attack struck.
A great ripple spread through the unreal, like a turmoiled ocean. And like a boat trying to keep from keeling over, she fought tooth and nail for her life, holding on dearly as waves of power washed over her.
Despite the protection of the Primal Celestial, a part of the attack still landed, splashing all over, and Tsaria watched as all around her, most of her peers released silent cries of horror, their faces morphing into a rictus of unimaginable terror. And then they were sundered.
Terror tore at her mind when a smidgen of Chaos Essence splashed onto the back of her left palm. In slow motion, she watched as it began eating up her arm, erasing her being bit by bit.
Tsaria didn't wait to see how far it would go .
With a fierce determination to survive, she brought down destruction on herself, tearing off her arm, including the soul representation of that arm.
Her scream of agony would have torn apart galaxies had she been within the bounds of reality, but in here, all it caused was a tiny ripple that went barely a few inches.
UNSEE
She felt the command before she heard it, and then Juke appeared at her side. Tsaria couldn't open her eyes to see him, but she could still imagine the grimace that was marring his features at the moment.
"That was daring, Tsa," her friend said, "very daring. The Primal is already near sundering as it is, a follow-up attack would have swiftly done you both in."
"Why do you keep saying the obvious?" Tsaria gritted out as she rose back to her feet, baring her teeth to keep from screaming her guts out.
"Because you tend to forget the obvious, which would lead to a very stupid death if I don't keep reminding you."
Tsaria grunted. He had a point, so she chose not to pursue it further. Instead, she looked into the distance, at the titanic form of the Chaos Celestial, whose form stood alone against a tide of attackers.
"I still fail to understand why it chose not to unleash its armies," she said. "Its authority over Creation and Oblivion should still be firm enough to unleash their Wielders."
Compared to the armies of Creation and Oblivion, the three different cults swarming Kazrael would have been like flies, with the exception of Order. It left her greatly stumped as to why the Celestial would choose to curb itself so.
With a nod of thanks to Juke, she took off once again, this time carefully navigating past the scattering of sundered transcendents, errant energies, and all the other whatnots that could either slow down her approach or sunder her like the vast majority of her compatriots.
Like Juke had said, The Primal Celestial of Air hadn't gotten out of that attack unscathed. Its previously vibrant glow—both in power and size—looked greatly diminished. But even so, it still radiated enough power to tear any Transcendent to shreds if they so much as looked sideways at the entity.
In the distance, both the Grand Celestials of Chaos and Destruction remained lock against each other, exchanging workings of unimaginable power against each other, but now it seemed like Chaos was on the back foot. It wasn't a physical tell, just something that anyone versed in the flow of essences could identify. It didn't help that a great eye kept dashing around it—Chaos—unleashing great workings that sent invisible ripples through the void.
Tsaria couldn't see it but she felt it. Felt as The Watcher closed off all paths to victory from Chaos, erasing future paths that could be taken to eke out a victory while it blinded Chaos to incoming attacks from Destruction.
She didn't need the mind of the backfooted Celestial to know how it felt. The sense that every step she could take, both future and present, had been seen and removed, voided into a place she could never reach. And knowing that no matter how she tried she couldn't get it back unless she somehow managed to defeat the cause of the dilemma.
For Chaos, she imagined it would be worse, given that what it was up against wasn't some run-of-the-mill random Transcendent or even a lesser Celestial. This was The Watcher, a peer in all rights to the Celestial it was stifling.
But, of course, this was Chaos. Kazrael. There was a reason two Grand Celestials, A Primal, and hundreds of Transcendents, had been needed to bring it down, a task that was getting increasingly difficult the longer they battled.
A wave of Chaos essence erupted from the Celestial, gouting out like flame and ash from a volcano. it spread, covering the vast distance between it and them nigh instantaneously. And where it touched, it went to work, eating through Transcendents with sickening ease.
That should not be possible.
Right in front of her eyes, Tsaria watched as dozens of her peers, beings with the capacity to rend asunder a great portion of a universe without breaking a sweat, were reduced to nothing. In the distance, The Primal Celestial of Air rose with a flap of its great wings, and where its Essence manifested, the unreal seemed to shy away from it. It released an energy blast, a blend of black and emerald, with such intensity that for a brief moment, Tsaria was certain it would do what it was meant to do and hold back the tide of Chaos essence. But of course, that was too much to hope for. Chaos could not be stopped. Like a small river against a raging ocean, the death wind was smothered and swallowed up, consumed alongside the tide. And then the source itself, The Primal Celestial, Seal of Air, was sundered. Taken out with barely a sign of defiance against its attacker.
A universe out there was going to pay for that.
It seemed her luck was still up and running because, for some reason, the essence had already lost a great deal of power by the time it got to her. Grand Celestial or not, taking out a Primal was not an easy task.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
A flash of silvery-white brought her attention back to the Titans, and she watched as, with a sharp blink, Chaos disappeared, taking alongside it The Watcher.
She didn't need her eyes to know where it went. Everyone here could probably feel the great deal of dimensional energy that went into that working. Tsaria had only ever used it at a small scale compared to this, and that had been in the creation of her dimensional vault and abode.
It didn't take Destruction long to tear it apart, but by then it was too late.
Tsaria watched as all the Transcendents beholden to the Throne of Divination flinched back like they'd been slapped. To a lesser extent, she felt it too; like something had been snatched from her, something inherent to all beings of infinite years.
When the dimensional realm was finally torn apart, it could only spurt out Kazrael, alongside the echo of an oblivion working. There was no sign of The Watcher.
WHAT DID YOU THINK TO ACCOMPLISH BY SUNDERING DIVINATION? IT WAS THE WEAKEST OF US ALL. The word wasn't spoken so much as it appeared into existence, erupting like the tide of an astral ocean. The eruption of a world volcano. The explosion of a star. A world. All forms of disaster. It all culminated into a sound so mighty it brought her to her knees. And she wasn't the only one.
The sundering of The Watcher must have taken a great deal from Kazrael, because the battle from then on seemed to go downhill. Azkrael tore into it, shredding apart the Celestial of Chaos despite the Authority of two other Great Elements at its beck and call.
The battle came to an end when Destruction finally landed a decisive blow, knocking its counterpart long enough to destroy parts of it, enough to cripple the Celestial but not sunder it.
The imprisonment of the Grand Celestial sent a great rush of air out of her form, even though it wasn't needed. All around her, the cheers of the surviving Transcendents echoed out through the void, loud enough that it probably scared off any of the natives roaming close by. But Tsaria couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't the last they'd be hearing from Kazrael. One did not simply put down a Grand Celestial and expect it to stay down.
* * *
PROLOGUE 2
At the edge of a star system, space split, warping into the form of a swirling portal of Gold, purple, and yellow. And from the portal stepped out a figure. Her waist length hair was the color of darkness. Her eyes were of the same color, only with tiny, nonexistent yellow dust swirling around the pupils. Their piercing intensity, added with the glass over her nose, which somewhat dampened their burning glow, gave her a very scholastic look.
Her skin was the color of midnight, dark beyond mortal imagination. Added with the yellow filling her body, she resembled a dark forest filled with a sea of burning yellow fireflies. Her body frame, despite the simple brown garment concealing its full figure, would not be so easily cowed; it subtly tightened in places, enough to give someone a very imaginative guess of its true shape.
Overall, she was the image of a scholar who wasn't shy of showing her bodily features.
Kairen slowly emerged into the star system, a look of boredom on her face, a look that was instantly washed away as she fully took in the system.
"Nar," She called, snapping her fingers. "Confirm I'm not seeing this wrong."
Over her shoulders, a figure appeared, a tiny figure. The figure was made of a golden-yellow color, with waist length hair and a dress that reached just below her knee, dancing to a non existent breeze.
"You are not, Adjudicator Kairen." Nar said, and then paused an instant before she continued. "There seems to have bee—"
"I know that," Kairen smoothly interrupted. "I can obviously see."
Adjusting her glasses, she took in the star system again. As usual, a sun burned at the center, its illumination nearly lightening up the entire system. But it wasn't the sun that had snatched her attention. No, not that. Around it, where there should have been a planet— no, planets— orbiting around, there was nothing.
"Was I wrong, or wasn't there supposed to be planets in this system?" She asked just to confirm.
"You are correct, Adjudicator." Nar responded, instantly coughing out a hurried "Yes, there are supposed to be planets in this system," when Kairen turned a raised eyebrow on her.
Kairen nodded, gesturing at the planet-less star system. "Then why are there none?"
This time, Nar's answer came out clear, yet, perplexed. "of that, I do not know."
Kairen audibly sighed. This was going to be serious work. Slow and cautious, she drifted deeper into the system, letting her portal vanish behind. Immediately, she began a scan of the star system, her will unfurling to cover the cold, dark environment.
"There isn't even a moon," she murmured. Now, that was disturbing.
World Spirits could move. Certainly. It would take time and a massive amount of Cosmo, which was probably why they all hated doing it, but they could move.
However, taking their moons, an extra weight which they didn't need, was something no World Spirit would ever do.
"Nar, please read this system and tell me how many planets and moons are supposed to be here."
"As you command," her assistant said, and an instant later, an answer came. "Three planets and six moons, Adjudicator."
Kairen's eyes immediately narrowed. This was extremely serious. A single planet relocating was rare but not unheard of. But three? That was impossible.
"Give me the report again," she said.
"A total numb—" Nar began.
"No, not that one," Kairen cut her of. "I meant the report the regional command sent to us."
"Oh," Nar blinked. "Well, an anomaly was detected in this area and regional command flagged it as important, sending the nearest division to investigate."
Not important enough, apparently, Kairen thought, if they were so rushed as to send her, someone not of serious importance, they must have been truly desperate to know what it was.
"Did they say what the anomaly was?"
"No, Adjudicator." Nar replied.
Since there were no visible evidence lying around as to the possibility of how three planets and twice that amount of moons managed to disappear, she decided to find one of her own.
Her will spread out in a wave, enveloping a quarter of the system in a few short moments. Though it didn't cover as much range as she would have liked, it was enough.
With her intent, she tapped into an inherent skill every Ascendant had. Instantly, lines of innumerable colors appeared, clouding her view of the system.
She shifted her glasses, and then began sifting through them, searching for the ones which connected to the missing planets.
What she saw completely stunned her.
The lines, instead of twisting as they pierced back into deep space, leading to the location of the relocated planets, only drifted down, hanging over what no doubt were the locations those missing Celestial bodies once occupied.
And worse: they were cut, their connection severed.
That could only mean one thing.
"It would appear that our missing planets aren't missing but were destroyed." Nar said, voicing the conclusion in Kairen's mind.
Agitation growing, Kairen dove back into the curtain of karmic webs, this time employing more of her Ascendant abilities.
As an Ascendant Adjudicator, she tapped into one of the facets of her affinity, making use of her command of time. Reality warped as Kairen dove into the past, determined to uncover the truth.
She watched as, like a loose string being pulled, time reversed. Minuites went by and nothing happened. The sun continued to hover in its position, bringing light to an empty space. Likewise, the karmic lines didn't change. They continued to hover there, like a loose thread. Kairen went back seconds, minuites, hours, days. She was determined to go back as far as her authority allowed when something changed and she hit a wall.
Involuntarily, she flinched backwards, startled at the abrupt block. Steadying herself, she took in the metaphysical wall, her eyes widening a moment later as she understood what she'd just encountered.
"Time was severed." She concluded.
"Yes," Nar confirmed.
"But how?" She said, perplexed. To completely annihilate planets without a single pebble remaining is one thing, but to precisely erase the timeline of when it had occurred? That was a whole other thing. And sure enough, as she checked, she confirmed that after a few short moments, time resumed. She stepped over the metaphysical potholes of time, landing back in re-materialised time, and this time, she was met with the view of multiple planets —three to be exact, hovering calmly and undisturbed.
"This... Is very serious," Nar said, once again voicing Kairen's thoughts.
Her mind whirled with speculations as she snapped back into the present. She could have continued observing for a few more minutes, but she wanted to be hale and prepared just Incase whoever did this was still lurking nearby.
"I've concluded that only two ways could have led to this..." Nar offered, and Kairen waved for her to continue.
"Due to the impossibility of this being carried out by a single Ascendant, it could only mean that either a group of Ascendants did this, which is unlikely.
"Two..." Nar trailed off, giving Kairen a knowing look.
Kairen shook her head, "That's impossible, Nar." She already knew the type of beings Nar was referring to, and Kairen knew how unlikely that was. The absurdity of figures like that appearing would have immediately alerted the temple, and they wouldn't have sent her unless it was to an early grave.
"Let's stick with one." She said. "Two is an absurdity that would have awoken the system guardian, itself. And since it seems to still be slumbering..." Kairen finished, her eyes slowly moving towards the large flaming orb radiating pyromantic light.
Firming herself, Kairen slowly drifted closer to the sun, making sure to reign in her aura down to a level that didn't come off as threatening.
She slowed down as she arrived at the threshold of its passive presence, keeping her distance.
If World Spirits were apocalyptic when pushed to anger, then Sun Spirits made them look tame.
"I greet the system guardian," Kairen called, making sure to remove all forms of authority from her voice, keeping it respectful.
It took three more calls, the third time requiring a bit of boldly intent-infused words before she felt it awoke.
Like a mighty beast of myth, one which seldom acted but was known for its power, the Sun Spirits awoke.
Kairen felt an shudder go through her avatar as a powerful will landed on her.
Quickly, she got herself under control, pushing out the words before terror stole her tongue. "I Greet The Sun Spirit. My name is Kairen Kord, I am a—"
"I Know What You Are, Servant Of The Celestial, Order." The Spirit cut her off. "Speak."
Kairen swallowed as beads of sweat began trailing down her brows. She ignored the oddity.
"I don't intend to take much of your time. I am tasked with investigating an anomaly that was detected in this star system," she said, making sure to emphasize that she'd been sent, and should her presence be missed, someone else would come calling. Although she didn't see any chance of getting attacked, it wouldn't hurt to put down some safety precautions. "I appeal to you, and I assure you that the Cult of Order would be very appreciative if you could tell me the reason why three Planets seem to have been completely annihilated in this star system—Your star system?" When she was done, she waited, tense, for the Sun Spirit's reply.
Like World Spirits, Sun Spirits were known for their patience. Unless they were forced to anger, such spirits seldom acted with haste. Kairen was already prepared to wait for hours just for a reply, but was surprised when it answered immediately.
"I Do Not Have The Answer You Seek."
Kairen stood, dumbfounded. And it was that dumbfoundedness that led her to blurt out her next words, "But you're the Sun spirit! How can you not know?" Her mouth snapped shut so hard it sent ripples across space, and she looked at the flaming being with terror.
Luckily, it seemed not to have taken offense. Instead, it rewarded her with another quick response. "Does A Phoenix Still Shields Its Spawns After They Have Reached Maturity?"
Kairen wondered why the Spirit had to bring the prideful mythical beings into this, even though she understood what it implied. Those World Spirits were all Ascendant level beings, so they were basically adults by Celestial standards.
Kairen opened her mouth to speak, but was immediately rolled over. "I Tire Of You." The Sun Spirit rumbled. "Go Away Before My Patience Dwindles."
Not willing to push her already strained luck, Kairen nodded and then began heading away towards where the beginning of a portal was starting to swirl.
As she approached the portal, she turned to her assistant. "There are only two things that could force a Sun spirit to look away from an attack on its territory, and I don't think the first one counts."
"Adjudicator Kairen?" Nar said. "You detected them, right? The primal cults..."
"And the sub division of the Life Cult," Kairen completed. Only a suicidal person would dare attack a cult, and beings at her level were not suicidal. Something foul was going on, and as an Adjudicator of the Cult of Order, it was her Celestial given task to bring them to light.
I just took a 6hrs journey back to school, only to find out that the school dorms admins have fucked us (returning students) sideways in 7 different styles; and now I have to start hunting for a new place to stay.
Hopefully, it won't take time, but for this week and probably the next, my upload schedule might be a little wonky.
