Nearly a hundred Chosen lay dead on the ground, their blood seeping into the snow and coloring it red. Hordes of undead lay similarly devastated, neither side having been able to cinch victory from the other. As the bells of the church tolled, the remaining entities on the field, both mortal and undead, slowly crumbled with the weight of time. Bones turned to dust and floated away in the wind, eyes melted from extreme heat, blood froze in veins from extreme cold.

  Vice Admiral Bruenor Flos was impaled. Skewered on a massive spike of bone that had taken him an unknown distance into the air, he was still blinded from the earlier spell and disoriented. His spiritual perception was giving off warning signs, alarm bells in his soul and head, but he couldn’t do anything to act. It was all he could do to keep his breathing in check. It wasn’t the first time he had been in the field against a Partial Divine Form, but this was far from his most pleasant of experiences.

  Steeling himself, he focused on simply breathing and staying conscious. The rest of the fight was out of his control now. Even if he had his eyesight and wasn’t skewered in place, his capacity to intervene in a fight at this scale was negligible at best.

  Below him, as the undead turned to dust, the Red Oni tensed. Like a blur, it flew up to the top of the dome where a large, eldritch creature was dangling. It was a mass of sinew and tendons, some five meters tall. Flesh and skin sloughed on its form like living waves, and its spine was made of dozens of skulls. At the tips of each tendril was an eye- large, bulbous and either deep black or milky white.

  The Red Oni didn’t stop. As the dome raised higher and higher into the sky, it sped towards the Composer. Fleshy tendrils reached out in a blinding flash, only to be cut in a hundred different places as the Cherubim continued its ascent.

  Geysers of yellow, pus-filled water shot out of milky white eyes in piercing jets towards the Oni, which deftly twisted in midair, not losing its speed. Waves of an inky darkness shot out of pitch-black eyes, but the Oni was unaffected. Not needing its sight, it continued to ascend at a rapid pace.

  Outside the domed structure, Bruenor Flos’s breathing was labored. Slowly, his arm was moving towards the pocket he kept his various mystical materials in.

  Emperor Vendos Aurelius opened his eyes from his meditation and looked to the sky.

  …

  Adam watched as Sequence shot up away from the ground and into the air to meet the Emaciated Seraph. The Seraph twisted itself, buffeting Sequence with its wings. But the air served only to bring Sequence closer to it. With a palm outstretched, Sequence grabbed onto the right wing of the Seraph and harshly twisted, plucking a single feather.

  The Cherubim fell from the air. A gush of blood poured out of the stump that was now present where its right wing should have been. In Sequence’s hand, he held a single feather.

  A single feather plucked… That’s all it took...?

  Adam was in shock. He knew the two beings were unlikely to be on the same level, but he had hoped that they were at least in the same league.

  He glanced behind him, spotting Juhend kneeling on the ground and panting inside of a spiritual barrier about to shatter. Hellig’s hair had turned dark black, his shining armor was now dark, steely and rough, having now been covered in spikes tainted with blood. Hrime had seemed to gain new vitality, with her lips becoming redder, her hair lightening into a dirty blonde, and her cheeks and face gaining color. The two halberds were entirely gone. Instead, a faint fog seemed to be melding together with the two Chosen, turning them slightly translucent.

  He looked to Gusto, who was lying in a pool of his own blood. Barely breathing, his friend only had so much time left.

  He looked down at himself, realizing he felt no real pain. Perhaps it was simply the shock. His arms were both broken in multiple places, as was his leg. Multiple ribs were fractured, and his ankle was twisted in an unnatural angle that caused his left foot to extend backwards. He could feel the blood slowly pooling in his mouth from his broken nose and lacerated throat. He had lost multiple teeth, and he couldn’t move his hips or lower body. It was all he could do to raise his head and look at the battle before him. If it could be called that.

  The Emaciated Seraph had distanced itself from Sequence, its stump still flowing with blood. Screaming out in a thousand different voices, a series of massive shockwaves rippled towards Sequence. Sequence merely laughed as he walked through them all, the snow and ground beneath him weathering away in a massive stream of energy.

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  Suddenly, the shockwaves stopped as a massive CRACK could be heard. The Seraph was sent flying as if by the force of a wrecking ball. Sequence took out a piece of paper from a pocket and snapped his fingers despite his gloves, and the Cherubim’s left wing crumbled at the same time that the paper in the demigod’s hand was crushed.

  Then, the barrier broke and Sequence turned his head.

  Adam felt two massive waves of spiritual energy, similar to the presence of the Cherubim’s entrance. In a fraction of a second, he saw Hellig standing between him and Sequence. As Hellig stood there, he radiated a dim twilight that caused Adam and Gusto to glow with orange light. Holding a dark black halberd that was almost translucent, he gestured with one arm behind him.

  Swiftly, Adam could feel himself breathing normally again, and he found that he was even able to move his arms and even his legs. In less than a second, he felt refreshed and able to stand, and could see Gusto regaining consciousness as well.

  Hrime blipped in between Sequence and the Emaciated Seraph at the same time. With an unspoken understanding, the Cherubim Shifted itself away with the sound of air popping back into place. Sequence didn’t attempt to stop it.

  She was holding a bright golden halberd that was almost translucent, she stood tall and proud before the demigod with a smile on her face.

  “I’ve been waiting for this, Sequence.”

  …

  Hannah struggled against the dark oily waters, finally feeling them grow still and tranquil once again. Her spiritual energy nearly depleted, she frantically twirled her senses about, finally finding her Anchor. Instead of following it back to the bastion, she used it as a guide to her true destination.

  …

  Hrime lunged towards Sequence, the halberd in her hand becoming physical and corporeal as she did so. No longer simply dark black or golden steel, it seemed to be an intertwining of the deep black and golden resplendence. Where the two colors met at the tip, a bronze-colored pitchfork materialized.

  Coasting on the momentum of her lunge, she burst towards Sequence, who was forced to dodge an empty strike.

  Behind him, Hellig dashed forwards, materializing the same Instrument, the bronze pitchfork, and stabbed it straight into Sequence’s back.

  With a loud POP, Sequence blipped away to a safer distance, a scratch of blood visible on his otherwise blank head.

  Hellig and Hrime, now both holding translucent images of each other’s respective weapons, stood side by side as Adam and Gusto stood up from the ground and Juhend Sureb slowly walked forward to join them.

  …

  Vendos Aurelius could see the dust drifting on the wind. His keen eyes picked out each slash of the sword the Red Oni made. Each swing cut deeply into a multitude of fleshy tendrils that seemed to heal as fast as they were damaged. In his eyes, the process of events was slower. He had willed it to be so with his authority.

  He glanced up at one of the boney towers. Atop it, skewered and bleeding, lay the only Chosen left alive on the battlefield. Vice Admiral Bruenor Flos was still struggling to fight. Despite blindness, blood loss and the spiritual pressure of a Partial Divine Form looming over his mortal soul.

  Vendos wished to the Angels that he could do more here. But his powers revolved around his authority, and authority took time to demonstrate. If he wanted authority over speed and time, he needed to patiently wait until it was already too late. And wait, he had done. In a desperate bargain with the power of his Realm, Vendos Aurelius allowed the Composer to activate his Partial Divine Form and manifest a Nascent Divine Kingdom. Only then could Vendos “ride” on the spike of energy given off to manifest the full extent of his own abilities.

  Though it seemed slow for him, it was nearly instant for the other combatants. Bruenor merely had the time to register a flicker of energy emanating from Vendos’s direction. The Red Oni had the time to glance over and dodge. The Composer, too large to fully disengage, too focused on the Cherubim’s assault to notice in time, and directly attached to his Nascent Divine Kingdom, was unable to get out of the way.

  Vendos broke into a jog. Then a run. Then a sprint. In less than one half of a percent of a second, he had broken the sound barrier. As he sped through, the air in front of him ionized into plasma. Each foot fall caused a crater behind him. The snow melted around him, and the skin and flesh of the Composer, Oni and Bruenor all crisped in a painful flash heat event. Then, in a fifth of a second, he turned around and got up to top speed.

  Going over 125 times the speed of sound, Vendos Aurelius was using all of his stored authority in one burst. He struggled to raise his arm and clench his fist around his golden scaled staff, pummeling straight into the Nascent Divine Kingdom, shattering its spiritual pressure and sending a shockwave of ionized air rippling outwards. The Composer’s flesh boiled in pain, whilst the Red Oni narrowly managed to shield Bruenor’s now burnt form from the worst of the energy. Still, the Chosen was on death’s door.

  Vendos Aurelius, the demigod Emperor of the Diell Empire, stood inside the now collapsing bones of the Nascent Divine Kingdom. Staring down the squirming burnt tendrils of the Composer, he was joined by the Red Oni, who had set Bruenor down.

  Together, a Cherubim and a Demigod stared down a Partial Divine Form.