Frosk…
He was lost for words at the sight of Marcus, taking on a Seraphic state to fight Moyako on equal ground.
The sight of his form was as breathtakingly majestic as it was horrifying.
A being of cruelty, violence, rage, and death in human form, suffering unimaginable agony to achieve greater heights of strength.
Looking at Camilla and Nashandra, they were equally stunned and amazed by the sight of him whereas King Razel Aldia had fallen to his knees, closing his eyes and holding his hands together as if in worship.
Frosk was not certain if he should follow his example as he was too lost for words to act.
All he could do was take in the sight of his lord as he unleashed his fury.
Marcus…
The agony he felt with this power was unlike anything he had ever felt before in his life. It was like being skinned alive, having his bones repeatedly shattered, and the air forcefully pulled from his lungs.
On top of that, there were so many other forms of pain inflicting his body that he failed to find the words to describe them.
If a regular human were to attempt to bear even a fraction of it, they would surely die in mere moments.
Yet for Marcus, he drew strength from the pain.
The pain was evidence that he was still alive, that he could still fight and survive.
The pain helped him to overcome his limitations, adapt, and overpower all the obstacles set before him.
And only one more thing, one more person, stood in his way.
He stared up at that very same person, Moyako, as she floated in the air above him like an angelic destroyer.
Time to end this fight, once and for all…
Marcus bent his knees, tightened his grip on his blades, and while using Light Taker’s omnipresence, he lunged after her.
He appeared in front of her in a flash, causing her to snap to attention and face him with the same vigor as she swung her blade through the air to collide with his own.
The force from their clash was so gargantuan that atomic nuclei fused in that brief instant before causing a gamma ray burst to explode violently outwards.
Yet before he could swing his other sword, Moyako planted her foot into his chest and kicked him back into the dirt.
Upon connecting with the ground once more, a massive crater larger than a moon opened up within the battlefield as it struggled to contain the devastation caused between the two of them.
Gritting his teeth in frustration, he launched himself forward once again as he reappeared behind her, swinging both swords towards her neck and torso.
But as his blades came within inches of reaching her, she vanished and reappeared behind him.
Using the momentum of his swing, he turned his body around to block her counter attack at the last second.
Then suddenly, his head jerked back as she kicked him under his chin before slashing at his chest with her own blade.
The energy from that one slash was so powerful that it managed to crack shatter part of his torso, even while reinforced by his Seraphic state.
As he was sent crashing to the ground, he watched as she dove after him feet first and destroyed the layer of the battlefield they were fighting upon.
He continued to fall through it until he ended up in another layer, and like a meteor, fell upon the ground once more.
As he opened his eyes to look up, preparing to launch himself at her once again, he noticed her outstretched left hand form into a fist as the falling feathers all around them began to vibrate with power.
With such a vast emptiness surrounding them, there was nothing for the falling feathers to interact with to give him any idea of what they were going to do if one of them touched him.
When he noticed one of them falling towards him, he thought to himself, Whatever...I’m going to find out one way or another.
With the sword in his left hand, he reached out and tapped one of the feathers with the flat of his blade.
With just the slightest touch, the feather exploded with the force of a hyper giant star going supernova.
Present in the skies all around them were trillions of falling feathers vibrating with the same destructive power running through them all at once.
Like a domino effect, as one feather detonated with such power, all those around them collided with the exploding energy and detonated as well.
With the force of trillions of exploding stars, Moyako blanketed the infinitely expanding battlefield with fire.
Yet Marcus stood in the middle of all of it, undaunted by its might, as he howled at the sky.
His roar drowned out the sound of the supernovae around him, causing the fabric of space to quiver in its wake.
With a wipe sweeping slash of both his swords, the wall of exploding stars split apart revealing Moyako, still floating above him.
But before he could think of his next move, she had already raised her sword above her head as she said, “Inferno Dragon Flash.”
Before he could react in time to evade, he felt an invisible wave of force cleave through him before erupting into flames, threatening to blast him apart.
Yet his form was strong and withstood the blow as he thrust out his left sword and shouted, “Be crushed!”
By pouring his wrath into his words, he ordered the universe to fold upon itself into a black hole and pull her into it.
But just as a black chasm opened up behind her, warping the gravity around it and bending the light, her eyes changed color for a brief moment as she snapped the fingers of her left hand and the black hole closed up and vanished.
W-What the hell? How did she-?
He then sensed the power of one of the flowers that had materialized from her sword’s power resonate with her before her magic returned to its original nature.
So that’s it… She can use the magic of those killed and stored within the blade. How outrageous. I can’t command the universe to act against her if she has a means of countering it. I have to rely on my own strength and that alone.
He then locked eyes with her and reappeared next to her with his right sword stabbing her through the chest-
Or at least, he thought he had stabbed her but struck only the air as she had moved out of the way before he appeared there.
“I can sense your intent, I’m still much faster than you, and I am still far more powerful,” she said and he swung his sword through the air, missing her neck entirely as she effortlessly evaded him once more.
“You will not be able to land so much as a single blow against me where as I will wear you down until your mind can no longer sustain that form. You WILL lose,” she said, confident of her victory.
She then back handed him, sending him hurtling through the air until he crashed through into a lower layer of the battlefield, shattering the terrain, but managing to stop himself and got back on his feet.
Her speed and variety of abilities is so much greater than mine. Her power is only overwhelming in how far she can use it. I can clearly tell that my own soul will soon eclipse her own, but if I can’t land a hit, then it won’t matter!
While he was contemplating his next move, Moyako appeared above him, raised her left hand into the air, and all of the falling feathers began to vibrate with energy once again.
Oh shit, not again-!
“Star Fall,” she said, and in response, the feathers changed in appearance to look like a vast expanse of stars in the sky before plummeting down and slamming into him at the speed of light.
He tried to make use of Light Taker’s power to get away from them but no matter where he tried to reappear, he would be met with thousands of feathers slamming into him with the mass of stars.
If he didn’t do something drastic to even the odds, he was going to be buried into into the ground without landing even a single blow.
He knew he couldn’t stop time because to beings like them, time was irrelevant as she would simply continue her barrage in stopped time.
Rather than try to evade the falling stars, he stood still and took every blow as he thought of a way to surpass her speed and strength.
As he stood, undaunted and firm against her relentless assault, the incalculable number of impacts threatened to disrupt his train of thought, but he knew that if he didn’t use his head, he wouldn’t win.
Yet as hard as it was to hear his own thoughts, he remembered his training with Ruvick when he learned to properly use Light Taker’s omnipresence.
He was told to split the moon in half, and by doing so, he had managed to make his sword travel faster than light by accident.
His mind quickly ran the calculations of how to make use of this power until finally…
An idea formed in his head.
Something so absurd, so terrible, and so outrageously destructive that he might end up destroying the battlefield they fought within in the process.
By utilizing the properties of Light Taker’s omnipresence, that which manifests as an area of control, in which the range is dependent on the size of the user’s soul, and which the same field can be molded and stretched into different shapes in order to extend its range…
Taking that into account, by stretching Light Taker’s range to its limits, and adding my lightning magic into the mix, I can achieve a speed of 8000 radians per second.
With Light Taker being a weapon made from the concept of Death, it cannot be destroyed by the laws of physics or any discernable means. Meaning that reaching the speed of light or even exceeding it will not pose a risk to its structural integrity.
Using this information, Light Taker will be a vehicle in which to build up momentum and kinetic energy, then transferring that throughout my body to slingshot me through space. With a body made of spiritual energy consisting of the concept of wrath, neither my sword nor I will be destroyed.
I think I’ll call this form…
Moyako…
Marcus had been strangely quiet and inactive throughout her ceaseless barrage, and she had to wonder if he had already lost his sanity keeping that form going.
But then, she saw his lips move but failed to hear what he said through sounds of battle.
She halted her assault as she asked, “What was that? You will need to speak up if you want your words to reach my ears.”
He looked up at her and tilted his head as if he were confused before he said, “Hm? Oh, I wasn’t talking to you. I was just pondering over an idea I came up with…the method I intend to use to beat you, and the name for it.”
Though she assumed he was talking nonsense, she was curious to hear what kind of stupid name he came up with as she asked, “Oh really? What is it then?”
He then raised his right hand and noticed it had changed from the dual swords from before and turned into his longsword form.
He held it in front of his face as he looked at her and his body started to vibrate violently with energy.
It continued to build up more and more until the ground was struggling to hold him in place. It then shattered entirely and the air pressure released from his body eroded the ground around him and particles of air exploded all around him as his body began to blue shift.
Intense blinding light shined from all over his body and the fabric of space began to warp so violently that she could feel her body being pushed away from him.
As he clenched his fist around the handle of his sword, he said, “Light Break.”
With one slash of his sword, sweeping it through the air as he swung it towards the ground, the battlefield shattered and in an instant, Moyako was thrown into utter darkness as all the light around them was snuffed out.
She felt an intense impact slam into her from all directions but couldn’t discern where it was coming from.
But just as quickly as the light had vanished, her eyes managed to make out short bursts of particles bouncing off of her body.
Then, in the distance, she could barely make out the form of her father, standing at the center of a maelstrom of oblivion.
As she focused her perception on him, she could barely make out what she was sensing.
Rips in the fabric of space time were continuously being torn open just by his presence alone. The pressure being emitted from his body was so monstrous that gravity was being pushed back from pulling space back together. Reality itself was breaking down as it was struggling to contain his existence.
She then sensed him move as he took a fighting stance, with both his hands wrapped around the handle of his sword and as he leaned forward to lunge after her-...he vanished.
Before her mind could take the time to process what happened, she realized her left arm and three of her wings were missing.
He’s so fast! How did- she tried to think to herself just as she felt his sword stab her from behind as the tip of his sword exited from her navel. The force of his strike was so absurd that it was taking all she had just to keep herself together.
Before she could try to react, she was kicked in the back and sent flying.
She tried to spin around and face him, but then her right hand was severed, and with it, her sword flew away into the darkness.
Without contact with her sword, she lost access to its reserves of power and her Seraphic state began to dissipate. As it did, the overwhelming presence of Marcus’s ‘Light Break’ form crushed her body to death.
While dead, she focused her magic to reappear from her severed hand and reignite her Seraphic state, and release an explosion of light all around her.
It lasted for just a split second, but she was able to make out Marcus’s body, enshrouded in a chasm of warped space and blackness.
I can still win this! She thought to herself as she raised her sword into the air with both hands, preparing to unleash all of her power on him at once.
But before she could get the chance, she noticed that Marcus hadn’t moved from his spot or shifted his stance in any way, and he had changed his sword’s form into a katana once again.
It was sheathed, ready to be drawn for one final blow.
Seeing this, all hope for victory vanished from her mind as the inaudible words of the Primordial God of Wrath were uttered from his mouth and he drew his blade.
“Nayrrloth Lyssa,” he said and consciousness left her as she was cut down by his sword.
As she felt herself stir awake again, light once again shined through her eyes normally and she had to squint as it was too overwhelming for her to make out.
But when things became clear again, the sight of her father bearing down on her, with his left hand wrapped around her throat, and the point of his sword aimed at her forehead filled her vision.
He had already undone his Seraphic state and it seemed that her body would not be able to withstand forcing herself to enter one again either.
Her eyes drifted down to her chest that was barely covered by the scraps of cloth that remained from her armor and the blood covering her body.
Blood…?
A feeling of dread filled her as the sight of a scar, stretching from her right hip, in-between her breasts, and all the way to her left shoulder from where he cut her.
His final attack had managed to leave a scar on her body that still hadn’t fully healed yet even after she was brought back to life.
He shifted his weight to pin her down as his knees dug into her arms and his left hand kept her head in place.
“You are done,” he said firmly.
“But I-”
“YOU’RE DONE!” he shouted in her face and she flinched.
She couldn’t bring herself to admit defeat, not when she still hadn’t achieved her goal. She could afford to lose when she was so desperate to see her father and mother reunited after all this time.
She couldn’t…
“Now...yield,” he ordered.
“I...can’t.”
He scoffed as he said, “Take a look around you. The battlefield was destroyed and hasn’t been brought back. The judges have already declared it your loss since it took you so long to come back to life, but I won’t be satisfied until I hear it from your own lips. Now...yield to me.”
“I…,” the words failed her as her lips trembled and tears started to fall from her eyes.
She had lost so completely that there was no room for argument, but she couldn’t...she wouldn’t accept it.
Losing his patience, Marcus roared, “YIELD!”
Flinching from his anger and shaking from fear of him, she managed to say, “I...I just wanted to bring you home…”
Hearing this, he leaned forward and said to her, “There is no way home.”
Closing her eyes and through shuddered breath, she said, “I...yield.”
He slowly stood up off of her body, and with a wave of his hand, materialized a large coat out of thin air and through it onto her to cover her up.
Without another word, he turned around and walked away, leaving her to weep over her loss, and accept that she failed to bring him back to her mother.