slifer274

Demonic Devourer ch. 126

Added 2023-11-09 02:44:03 +0000 UTC

Reality, collapsing

The world, Adrian knows, is a very large place.

At least, it was. He’s visited more countries than he can count, including four of the five major continents. Though many places are uninhabitable, the planet is so large and civilization so plentiful that he could have never hoped to visit the entirety of the world within the span of a natural human life.

He wonders how much of it is still intact now.

They don’t spend much time in Root, which is just as well, because in the short few moments they’re there, the ruins start to collapse. Cracks form through the ground, which turns from solid, packed earth into dry, ephemeral sand.

Sersui is near, the fae tell him, and so they flee. As powerful as they are, they can only fend off a Titan’s direct influence for a few minutes. They are not ancient enough to take on a god in single combat, even a neutered one.

So they flee, and they flee. The fae move at breakneck speeds, transporting Adrian so fast that he barely has instants to see the land change beneath them.

All his life, he’s wanted to see what the corners of the world held, but not like this. Everywhere he looks, it’s breaking.

The fabric-tears grow more frequent as they travel, and there is no place that lays untouched.

The Crowned Islands, recognizable only by the familiar sea around it, are entirely gone, replaced by a massive rift where there used to be hundreds of thousands. They’re only there for an instant before the sea around them starts to churn, spitting out building-sized monsters.

Scintilla’s influence.

They continue to flee. Most of the places they pass are unfamiliar to Adrian, but he mourns their loss.

There is a temple to not-quite-dead gods that he would dearly like to have visited, but it is split in half by an entrance to the void.

Novarath is nothing but ashes. As they pass it, Adrian actualy glimpses Ardael, Titan of the Burning Sky. It looks like a phoenix of legend, he thinks, feathered royalty with a wingspan measured in miles.

They teleport away before any of them can be burned.

City after city after city, landscape after monument after wonder—it’s all dead or dying. Adrian witnesses the deaths of millions happen in front of his eyes when he looks down from their location high, high in the sky only to see a red ocean overtake an island and drown it all.

Piece by piece, Adrian watches the burial of a world he will never get to know.

And all the while, Sapphire follows.

Elsewhere

Sapphire can feel the weapon. Its presence tries to hide itself, but she knows better than anyone else how to hide from existence, which means she knows better than anyone how to find that which wishes not to be found.

It’s not entirely clear, but she knows it is on this plane. She knows a group of fae have it.

Angel 1’s corpse decorates her half of the weapon. Though Sapphire may be able to activate it as it is, she won’t have the full effect without the full weapon—and besides, she still has a Titan to merge with.

And one to kill.

Whether Sierra or Evelyn lives is of no consequence to her. Both will surface from the hells, which are far beyond saving, and she or the angels will kill one. The other will accompany her a thousand years into the past.

She closes her eyes, drawing on the insidious system’s power to provide this body with Sight Beyond Sight, and she finds her target.

Adrian Stahr. Category 3. Friend of Titans. Tool of fae.

He runs, but he cannot hide.

And if she knows where one of them is, she knows where all of them are.

Sapphire bides her time.

Her victory will come to fruition. It must.

No matter who gets in her way.

???

Breaking through the layers of reality is harder the further we take it. Until now, the hells have acted as jumping-off points, working as anchors in their own right.

Difficulty is a hilariously useless metric, though. Of course we’ll make it.

When my existence makes the impossible not just possible but probable and Sierra’s understanding of magic outstrips damn near anyone not named Sapphire Clearwater.

When nothing makes sense, we will force it back into order.

Reality is a yawning chasm before us, and we dive towards it.

I wonder if Sapphire saw this coming. Her gambit to send us to the hells has raised our power to truly unimaginable levels. Titans excluded, I believe we may be the most powerful beings on this planet, and I’m not so sure about those exclusions.

When she sent us in, the world was intact. The only one affected by her schemes was me. Together, we forced Sierra in, too.

Now, we leave the hells in collapsing shambles. We have awakened the Titans.

We have begun to end the world.

I hope you’re ready, Sapphire, I think. Because we are.

We’re coming for you.

T-17 and -18

[Clearance class requirements have been eliminated. All surviving Coalition personnel are recommended to follow the steps enumerated in this file].

Alternate Designations: Evelyn Carnelian; The Titan of Paradox; the Titan of the Broken Hell | Sierra Jade; The Titan of Balance; The Titan of the Primordial Chaos; Probability Project 447-7

Category: Esoteric (2, presenting as 6) | Esoteric (3, presenting as 6)

Alignment: None | None

Containment Status: Uncontained | Uncontained

Description: Evelyn Carnelian and Sierra Jade are uncontained Coalition experiments. Their capabilities are currently unknown. T-17 and T-18 are true Titans; as such, all observers cease to exist within ~1,000 feet of one of the targets (see Incident T-17-1).

If you are under Category 5, do not attempt to contain the Titans.

Surviving personnel report that the paired Titans are capable of eliminating any being of Category 4 or lower within 0.0001 seconds.

All non-combatant personnel, evacuate immediately. Due to the destabilization of the baseline (see Incident T-17-1 and T-00), evacuation is not possible within the mortal realm. Any personnel with access to an anomalous fragment is advised to shelter within.

Any personnel without access to a fragment are considered to be lost.

Addenda

Incident T-17-1

Due to the ongoing nature of this event as well as the tendency of observing operators to expire, this is a tentative document.

Event Witness: [contributor list collapsed]

Time of Event: [REMOVED], 00:18:27

00:18:27.05

An entrance to the hells is formed in the Seven Kingdoms, enveloping the entirety of the nation of Tsubera. T-03 (Ardael, Titan of the Burning Sky) attacks this entrance immediately. T-06 (Scintilla, Titan of the Nameless Sea) redirects itself.

00:18:27.10

T-00, tentatively referred to as the Titan of the Forgotten Realm, reveals its existence in an the Aqus continent. Reality anchors record the loss of the continent.

Note: there are no records of the Aqus continent.

Observation tools note that T-00 carries mana signatures that places it as the oldest of the Titans.

T-00 disappears.

00:18:27.15

Nullspace: The Nameless Sea activation confirmed.

Nullspace: The Burning Sky activation confirmed.

00:18:27.20

Nullspace: The Broken Hell activation confirmed. This nullspace has not previously been observed. Capabilities unconfirmed. Ability to nullify opposing nullspace hypothesized. Ability to conceptually destroy items within the space hypothesized.

Nullspace: The Primordial Chaos activation confirmed. This nullspace has not previously been observed. Capabilities unconfirmed. Ability to nullify opposing nullspace hypothesized. Ability to forcibly dematerialize objects within the nullspace confirmed. Ability to “balance” magic within the nullspace confirmed.

[00:18:27.25 to 00:18:45.00 removed due to the immediate expiration of all observers within 1,000 miles.]

00:18:45.00

Nullspace: The Burning Sky deactivation confirmed.

T-03 flees.

I had thought we would leave the slipping reality behind in the hells, but it takes onlya few instants in the baseline reality to realize that this is very much not the case.

The first seconds are as gratifying as they are hectic.

Sapphire’s plan, whatever it is, isn’t going off without a hitch.

The Titans require power to exist, and awakening has taken a lot of it. If they had more time—days, maybe—then perhaps they would have grown too powerful for us to handle.

But unlike the Titans, which are bound by the system as much as we are because their true bodies are the system, I can Devour that which I destroy.

In those first few instants, I witness the Titans around us, and our nullspaces clash.

Once again, our wills face each other. The first time this happened, way back on the boat to the Sunken Kingdom—which I’m pretty sure we just accidentally destroyed—Scintilla’s mere presence overwhelmed me, even hundreds of miles away.

Now, we wield the power of Titans. Now, we are the breakers of hell.

Now, we are more.

If it were just raw will against raw will, the existing Titans would trounce us, but they are slow to wake. With their power comes restrictions, losses that they were forced to take when they abandoned their divine shells for these clunky, city-sized bodies.

It takes time, but we get an inch.

And when we get an inch, we can take a mile.

Ardael’s nullspace collapses first, and it flees.

A Titan flees before us.

Then Scintilla’s nullspace falters. It doesn’t cancel, not entirely, but we win the battle of dominion.

The Titan of the Nameless Sea does not run. It faces us arrogantly, still the same monster that believes that I am nothing more than a pathetic insect to be squashed.

Overconfidence is a killer. Nobody knows that more than me. All my life, I have been underestimated.

You are witnessed, it tells me.

As are you, I reply.

The Titans of the Broken Hell and the Primordial Chaos redirect our nullspaces at the same time.

So die, all three of us say together.

Ardael no longer controls its nullspace, and I Devour it hungrily alongside the burning reality it has wrought upon the city I once struggled to defeat a fragment of a lost deity within.

I am so much more than I once was. We are more. We are greater.

Scintilla is ancient, yes, but it is restricted. It awakened less than two months ago, and though time may have passed at a different rate while we were deep inside the hells, it has not been long enough since it last expended its energy to regain it.

I know that, given the time, we will not be on even ground. Once the other Titans recover their full power—or at least, what fraction of the gods’ power they can wield—they will be able to crush us once more.

Simply put, we need to do as much as we can right now.

Scintilla, bless its stupid, egoistic existence, has provided us a perfect opportunity.

The Nameless Sea crashes into Tsubera, obliterating whatever remnants of the kingdom remained. The landmass begins to sink, the antimemetic element of it retroactively flooding the Sunken Kingdom from memory.

My resistances, propped up by the insane amounts of authority Sierra and I now handle, make Scintilla’s rampage mean nothing to me.

The Titan is the size of a city. While Inome was still discovering what it was, Scintilla is a fully formed being, resembling a sea serpent with fins broad enough to smash a city to shreds just by swimming over it. Waves of monsters flow out from under it, populating its extant nullspace.

Everywhere we go, the Nameless Sea shies away.

Sierra and I hit the ground, then approach the Titan.

At the speed of our perception, the monsters pouring into the sea are practically frozen.

Not that I care. I don’t even need to Eviscerate them to kill them.

Sierra and I part the seas. Everything that enters our overlapping nullspaces dies.

Everything.

00:18:45.25

Nullspace: The Nameless Sea deactivation confirmed.

T-06 expires.

This is the first recorded Titan killing.

00:18:45.50

Skill: Crimson Storm activation confirmed. This skill has not previously been observed. Ability to near-instantaneously transport T-17 and T-18 confirmed.

00:18:46.0

T-17 and T-18 reappear roughly 5 miles above the ground.

With Locate at Sapphire tier, I find Adrian in instants.

He’s not alone.

There’s a group of fae around him, and I can sense that it is only because they allowed my skill to work that it was capable of finding him.

Crimson Storm brings us to them in instants. They’re sheltering in a broken skyfolk settlement, I see. The shattered corpses of dead skyfolk are scattered around the ruins of the solid cloud we stand on.

“Adrian,” I say.

“Holy fucking shit,” he replies. “You’re alive. You’re… broken gods, what are you?”

“Numbers eighteen and nineteen,” I say. “We don’t have much time, do we?”

“None,” he says. “I—it’s a long story.”

“We need more power,” one of the fae interrupts.

“Fantastic,” Sierra says. “I think we may be able to help.”

“Not now,” I say.

In the real world, my senses stretch so much further. The Titan network, active as always, is no longer as rigid to me as it once was. I can navigate it myself, speak back, influence others.

And I see that there is a Titan hundreds of miles above us. One that is rapidly approaching.

A dead Titan has been witnessed before, but until now, nobody has successfully killed one.

Today, we will make history twice. Thrice. As many times as we need to.

“Take cover,” I warn them. “However you can.”

A Titan pursues us, and we rise to meet the challenge.