Camilla…
She blinked once and already Artemis had vanished, but not before attempting to attack her once again after stopping time to escape.
She pulled her spear out of the wet dirt, watching Artemis cough blood as her wound began to close up.
“Destroying and resetting timelines won’t save you from annihilation. From what your memories tell me, severing that timeline took a considerable amount of spiritual energy. I’ll be willing to bet that its not something you can do repeatedly. If that’s the case then I’ll just continue backing you into an inescapable corner until you exhaust yourself,” she said, egging her on.
Artemis looked far more lethargic now than after emerging from the erased timeline, yet she managed to maintain a somewhat regal attitude.
“Your arrogance will be your defeat if you continue this fight with me for much longer. Regardless of how powerful you think you are, you are fated to lose regardless,” she replied as her breathing normalized and her injuries were fully healed.
“Then I will have to shatter fate along with you,” Camilla spat back as she unfurled her platinum wings once more.
Seeing this, Artemis quickly pulled out her sword and held it firm in front of her, waiting to see what would happen next.
“I’ll show you the full might of Ichor Doru’s power,” Camilla said as she snapped the fingers of her left hand, and although not visible underneath her Nøkkra armor, hundreds of small cuts had been inflicted on herself, of which she began to bleed from profusely as it dripped from her body.
Artemis blinked in surprise and confusion at the act of attacking herself.
“Ichor Doru is not too dissimilar from the fabled sword of King Dagon in the nature of its power. Like the Bloodletter, this spear ties itself to its user through their blood, but as molten iron traveling through the user’s veins. It makes me stronger and tougher, it can heal my wounds, and no power is strong enough to separate it from my being short of a fatal blow. However, the real show is what happens when I use that blood in battle,” she explained as the molten iron seeped out of every cut and slowly dripped onto the ground.
Then, with a single flap of her platinum wings and through distorting the space around her, she crossed the distance between them in a near instant and swept her spear through the air.
Artemis took a step back in an attempt to escape its reach, but was hit by the arc of iron blood that leapt from the spearhead.
The slash of iron blood managed to cut deep into Artemis’s chest and bounced off of her arm bracers as she blocked the blow, but that was not the aim of her attack.
The iron blood coating her chest still glowed with heat and energy and would not disappear until that energy was used up.
As Artemis tried to create distance between them once again, Camilla reached out her left hand and formed it into a fist, and twisted her wrist.
In the next moment, a spear formed from the blood on the goddess’s chest and stabbed her through her heart.
“The spear is my blood, but so too does my blood act as my spear,” Camilla said as Artemis struggled to pull the blood spear from her chest.
“That won’t be nearly enough to put me down, not compared to that little stunt you pulled in the previous world,” she said as she spat blood from her mouth with an annoyed sneer.
“Oh I’m sure, but it may end up being more than you can handle,” Camilla replied with a smirk as she lunged towards her once again, spraying blood from her body as she thrust her spear at her once again.
This time Artemis decided to go on the offensive as she deftly evaded her strikes, but even as she dodged having the blood splashed onto her own body, the blood that fell on the ground around her was also a hazard to deal with. The puddles of iron blood around her formed spears that flew towards her, attempting to pierce through her and keeping her on her toes at every moment.
Rather than simply rely on her reflection field, Camilla chose to deflect the strike with the butt of her spear, and as she did, she felt the weight of the moon collide with it.
Is she manifesting the weight of the moon onto her sword at the point of impact?
The collision of their weapons created shockwaves so large in scale that the land around the fractured and became more unstable as they continued on like that.
Through their clashes, Camilla refused to allow Artemis to aim the edge of her blade at anything vital as she was well aware of the infinite flash of moonlight that would come if she decided to use that against her.
Dealing with a blade that weighed as much as a moon was simple enough for her to withstand, but an energy attack with no limitation to its speed was something else altogether.
There was no evading something with infinite speed and an undetermined level of power behind it.
In spite of her concerns, she was still maintaining dominance in the fight as Artemis was being pressured at every step, struggling to avoid being sprayed with her iron blood and end up skewered from it.
However, there was something bothering her about the fight.
If Artemis was able to manifest a projectile based attack that could bypass Camilla’s reflection field, with infinite speed, as well as being able to stop time, why doesn’t she attempt to do both at the same time and end the fight in one move?
In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she realized that throughout their fight, even in the previous world, Artemis never attempted to do both at the same time. Even when she had every opportunity to do so, she didn’t.
“I wonder about something,” Camilla muttered as she pressed the attack and slammed her spear into Artemis’s sword, the latter of which barely budged.
“Oh yeah?”
“Why is it that you cannot manifest your will in stopped time? Why are you limited to exerting your will on the present alone? It couldn’t be your way of taking it easy on me or being fair, is it? I would be immensely insulted if that were the case.”
Artemis suddenly appeared nervous from such a question and replied, “That is not the domain of mere gods or mortals. To exert one’s will across the dominion of all manner of time and space is the realm of the primordials, not one such as myself.”
Interesting…
“Death, Nothingness, Chaos, Sin, Virtue, Idea, Wrath, Rebirth, and even Humanity. All of these concepts transcend the boundaries of time and space and exist as fundamental constants of existence. Compared to them, Moon is a fleeting thing. My will cannot invade such boundaries and claim a seat of power among the Primordials. I would be annihilated in an instant if I tried something like that.”
“How fascinating…but if that is indeed the truth, then you are out of options. You have already released every limiter that you have while I have still only released thirty percent of my own. If you continue on like this, you really will exhaust yourself out of the fight and it will be my victory...unless you have something else up your sleeve?” she asked, prodding her to do something more.
Artemis seemed to understand the situation as she lowered her sword in gesture of defeat, but Camilla was not satisfied.
“Are you about to...No! I know that this cannot be all you are capable of. What of those sickles? What of the power that Raum told me he tried to use on you? If this is all you are willing to use against me, then victory will mean nothing to me if I do not defeat you at your strongest!” Camilla said angrily as she aimed the head of her spear at her.
Artemis raised her head in surprise at the mention of Raum’s form that had been used in their previous fight. She appeared terrified at the mere mention of using it that her eyes widened and she shook her head.
“Do you even realize what it is that you are asking? Do you know what you would be facing against if I unleashed such a thing against you?”
Camilla smiled wildly as she said, “I do not care. Show me that strength so that I can crush it underneath my heel along with you! This is a fight to the DEATH after all. Do not show mercy to your enemies lest they spit in your eyes.”
After seeing the look in her eyes, Artemis’s sense of defeat appeared to have vanished as she let out a laugh and said, “Are you well and prepared to die permanently if I fight with all my strength? Are you willing to risk being erased from existence entirely if I go through with this?”
“I will not yield to you, or anyone in this world save for one, and I have yet to prove myself to him. Now, show me your strength!” she shouted back at her.
“Very well. You will be the first in a very long time to witness this power,” Artemis said as her voice changed in such a way as if it were overlapping itself hundreds of times in perfect unison, not unlike the voice of the God of Wrath.
In the next moment, she felt a change in the fabric of space as it started to warp around Artemis’s body.
As this happened, her skin started to glow with energy and her bones became visible, but instead of the normal milky white appearance, they looked more like stone.
Camilla squinted her eyes as she realized that the appearance of Artemis’s skeleton resembled the surface of the moon while moonlight gleamed around it as her flesh.
In the next moment, strange orbs appeared behind her, floating only a few inches away from her back.
There were a total of eight of these orbs, and based on their appearance, they seemed to reflect the different phases of the moon.
Yet this was not the most incredible part of this new transformation.
The output of power coming off of her seemed to increase exponentially until Camilla could no longer comprehend its limitation.
After sensing the full scale of her soul, she figured that there was no way she could release any more spiritual energy than what she currently was, but she was wrong.
Rather, it felt like she was releasing the full extent of her spiritual energy that she was capable of all at once, at a constant rate.
To do that would be impossible if she did not have a source of power to draw from and refuel it endlessly.
As the enormous power flowed from her, the fabric of space began to tear and even shatter. Suddenly, the moonlight that Camilla was snuffing out erupted from Artemis’s body once more as it was no longer feasible to manipulate space time in the same manner.
Or rather, it was as if she was warping reality just by existing in such a state. The environment all around her seemed to freeze, burn, crystallize, emit light, and otherwise run through a randomized state of flux.
Even Camilla’s reflection field was having trouble trying to keep up with just being near her.
Finally understanding the potential danger that doing battle against this state could have against her, she decided to stop holding back as well.
“The Almighty: Full release.”
“It seems that you do understand the true strength of this form. This is the Seraphic Form, that which all the angels of God exist in normally. It distorts reality and threatens the stability of creation. I can access this form by manifesting the spiritual energy of all the moons that exist within the universe. As there are many more moons than there are stars in the sky, I am at no risk of running out of energy to continue this fight. Now, I will ask you once more. Are you sure you want to continue this fight, even after witnessing this power?” she asked, with a mild hint of concern in her voice.
“Are you kidding?! This is the first time in my life that I have ever been pushed to release my full power against anyone! Now COME AT ME!”
Artemis’s blade came flying towards her at absurd speeds, and with it, the weight of a billion moons as it clashed with Ichor Doru and shattered it along its shaft as Camilla attempted to block the blow.
She did her best to reflect as much of the kinetic energy away from her, but miscalculated how much strength she would need to defend against it as was sent hurtling down into battlefield.
The impact alone sent her crashing through three layers before she had even processed that she had been sent flying.
She actually managed to destroy Ichor Doru…
No matter. I can form another from my blood, she thought as another spear was shaped into being in her hands and she kicked off the ground to return to the fight.
But just as she was about to break through the layers of the battlefield and face Artemis once more, she appeared in mid air next to her with one of the moon phases from behind her floating in front of her.
“Full Moon,” she said as she slashed her sword through the glowing orb and a wave of light more devastating than the infinite light slash slammed into her.
In an attempt to defend against it, she bent the fabric of space time so it would travel along the path she set for it and avoid her entirely.
Yet the might of the Seraphic Form was so great that even the fabric of space time was shattered as her attack cleaved through Camilla’s lower left side.
Artemis looked surprised as she said, “You managed to survive that? That is impressive indeed!”
Camilla then grit her teeth as she planted her right boot in Artemis’s chest and the force of a star exploded from it, sending Artemis crashing down to the battlefield.
Laughing manically as her body quickly repaired itself, Camilla shouted at her, “YOU CAN MANIFEST THE WEIGHT OF A TRILLION MOONS IF YOU WANT! I WILL HIT YOU WITH THE FORCE OF A BILLION STARS IN RETURN!”
Though as much as she wanted to back up her bravado with such a feat, she was unsure if she could really manage something so absurd.
From what she could tell, Artemis had just hit her with forty solar masses of force in that one attack, and it had been enough to get through her reflection field on top of that.
Though she was plenty capable of reinforcing her body to withstand the majority of the impact of Artemis’s blows, she could not escape all of the damage.
As bold as my claim to defeat her at her strongest was, how am I supposed to put her down for good? Right now, her body is a mass of absurd levels of spiritual energy, which means she no longer has any flesh to wound. I bet that even if I cut off her head, it wouldn’t be enough to kill her.
She shook her head and decided that she needed to figure out the limitations of her Seraphic Form before deciding on a winning strategy.
She then dived back towards the ground where Artemis was patiently waiting for her and landed in front of her.
“Can you still dance with me?” Artemis asked with a smile.
With the metallic taste of blood sticking to her teeth, she licked it away with her tongue as she said, “I can do this all day.”
With a flash of light, the two threw themselves at each other with reckless abandon as the swing of Artemis’s sword shattered the space it traveled through, carrying with it the enormous weight of a billion moons, while Camilla commanded the entirety of space all around her to her whim, expanding space to push herself out of danger rather than bending the space around her.
Their clashes shattered innumerable layers of the battlefield and left scars in space time that erupted with energy briefly before collapsing and returning to their normal state.
Through every clash, Artemis’s sword seemed to crack more and more as it could hardly manage to withstand the immense toll of her own power for much longer.
They slammed their weapons against one another once more and sent each other flying back.
Yet before Camilla could reach her, a black orb appeared in front of Artemis as she took it in her right hand and closed her fingers around it.
“New Moon,” she said as a wave of darkness swept over everything and swallowed Camilla up along with it.
This was not unlike Frosk’s own manipulation of the shadow realm, but it was far far denser, and she knew that no meager amount of light would be enough to break free from it.
With a roar of defiance, Camilla erupted with light so intense that it might outshine every star in the universe and tore away the shadow realm that Artemis pulled her into.
Yet the instant it was peeled away, the goddess of the moon was already lunging towards her with her sword pulled back, ready to cleave her in two.
With her bare hand, Camilla released the power of a gamma ray burst from her left hand and shattered Artemis’s sword to mere fragments before it could reach the apex of its swing.
The force of her parry was enough to destroy her arm and peel away the light over her entire right side.
With her right arm, Camilla plunged her spear through Artemis’s skull, and with her right foot, she slammed it into her chest and ripped her head free from her shoulders.
Breathing heavily, she wondered if maybe removing her head would indeed be enough to finish things after all.
That hopeful thought quickly came to an end as Artemis’s body snapped her fingers and shattered the universe.
Camilla’s eyes opened in the third universe as Artemis’s memories filled her mind and she quickly released her full strength once again to face her.
“Why would you bother resetting things? You weren’t really in any danger there, were you?” she asked her as Artemis stood there with a disappointed expression on her face.
“No no. That’s not it…I was only hoping that maybe by resetting things, I could repair my sword after you destroyed it, but unfortunately that didn’t work,” she answered with an annoyed tone.
Well, at least she did me a service by giving me my reserves back, Camilla thought.
“Oh well…it held up quite well, all things considered, but I think its time I brought out my winning hand,” she said as she reached behind her and pulled out two wooden handles which started to emit two beams of light as she held them in her hands until the beams curved and became sickles.
“This is your final chance to yield to me Camilla, and avoid being erased from existence entirely,” she said with a doubtful expression that knew that no matter what she said, she knew Camilla’s stubbornness would not falter.
“I refuse.”
Before she could react, Artemis appeared directly in front of her and slammed her foot into Camilla’s chest, sending her flying into the air and erupting from the ground in the layer above.
Before she could stabilize herself in the air, Artemis’s sickle cut through her left leg below the knee and she had to watch, horrified as it would not regenerate even with Ichor Doru’s power.
She then felt her wings get severed from her back as Artemis used the pointed ends to stab them from behind while kicking at the small of her back and sending her back to the ground below.
W-what…?
How is she…?
I cannot reflect any of it, I cannot even sense what to control.
While she struggled to prop herself up with her arms, she felt her mind start to falter as the power of Artemis’s sickles did not just erase her body, but even some of her memories.
She tried to recall her mother’s voice, the smell of Brunhildt’s fields, and even her godmother’s voice…
But all of it became like a fog in her mind that grew thicker and thicker until she could hardly remember her own name.
She managed to prop herself up on her knees as she looked up at Artemis standing over her, with both of her arms pulled back, as if preparing to sever her head from her body and erase her entirely.
“You are a most impressive warrior Camilla, but this is the end. The damage you’ve suffered from my sickles cannot be undone, so it would be a cruelty not to finish you off right here and now. However, if you still want to live, say the word. Yield to me now and I will spare your life.”
The appearance of this goddess, with her full might and majesty displayed before her, struck a deep terror into Camilla’s heart and soul that she could not easily quell, especially with a fractured mind.
Yet at the back of her mind, a force even greater than hers pulsated within her.
It told her to never lose heart, even in the face of death, even in the face of her greatest fears. To continue to fight until victory is assured and to never yield to anyone.
Though her mind was leaving her, she smiled up at the goddess and said, “I will never yield.”
“Then you will die,” she replied as her sickles cut through air to end her life.