Chapter 730 - Beneath the Boughs

A beam of pure destruction ripped across the atmosphere, slamming into Aja with relentless fury.  She batted it aside with contemptuous ease, but Zeke had expected as much.  That was why he was already charging toward her.

Or flying, such as it was.

In reality, he’d simply yanked on one of the nearby threads, propelling himself through the air.  With every foot he traveled, he pulled more threads, throwing himself forward with even more speed.  So, when the smoke cleared and Aja became visible, he was right on top of her.

His hammer fell with world-ending force.

She caught it in both hands, barely grimacing at the strain.  Then, she ripped it free of his hands and tossed it aside.

“Murderous child!” she screamed, the sound so loud that it cracked Zeke’s skin.  He repaired it with [Hand of Creation], though the damage he’d sustained was a hint that he was more than a little outmatched. 

Still, he pulled free, then hovered nearby.  With his feet dangling a few hundred feet above the city he had destroyed, he scarcely noticed the dead or dying below.  Instead, the whole of his focus remained on his enemy. 

She stared back with disdain and disrespect.  She was better than him, and she knew it.  Their single exchange had made that absolutely clear. 

“Run,” she growled.  “It is your only chance.”

Vines crawled free of her skin, snaking out into the air, where they writhed with need.  They were barely constrained, just like her ire. 

“I don’t run.”

“Then you are even more foolish than I thought,” she stated evenly.  Zeke could feel the anger in her voice.  “You come to my domain.  You slaughter my people.  You committed genocide against –”

“Save it,” Zeke spat.  “You have done worse.”

“That was different,” she said.

Zeke hadn’t expected her to agree.  As far as he knew, she’d never targeted an entire population.  But obviously, he didn’t know her whole history.  “Was it?” he demanded.  “How so?”

“Because I won.”

“Still not seeing the difference,” he remarked, his voice somehow carrying across the planet.  To him, their conversation seemed no louder than any normal exchange, but the entire population of Okanar could hear them.  He was certain of that much.

“Arrogance.”

“Experience.”

“You have never made an enemy like me,” she stated, the vines writhing.  Before Zeke could respond, they shot forward, wrapping around him.  In less than a second, he was encased in a cocoon of vines.  He struggled against it, but no matter how strong he could become, the vines simply would not break.  “Disappointing.  I –”

Zeke plucked a string.

The vines fell apart, dissipating into nothing even as Aja let out a blood-curdling scream that burst his eardrums and sent earthquakes rippling across the planet.  Zeke bore the discomfort with stoic determination, then pulled on another string.  Voramir came rocketing back to him, then settled into his palm. 

Before Aja’s scream faded, he swung his hammer.  As he did so, he activated two skills.  The first was [Primordial Strike].  He knew it wouldn’t do much, but as far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as overdoing it. That was why he followed it up with [Primordial Wrath]. 

The world lost its color.

The skies faded to blackness.  Visually, everything became an endless void.  Then, a white sun erupted into being, enveloping the still-screaming Aja.  Her screams disappeared, incapable of escaping the white sun’s gravitational pull.  It imploded, dragging everything into that roiling orb. 

Zeke stabilized himself by yanking on a thread in the opposite direction.  Even then, he scarcely held himself in place.  Inch by inch, he crept toward the white sun – almost in slow motion. 

And then, everything was still.  Peaceful. 

The peace was shattered a second later when the sun exploded in a cacophony of force, noise, and matter.  Aja was ripped to pieces, and a chunk of her planet broke free of the larger mass. 

Zeke’s flesh disintegrated, only to be rebuilt by [Hand of Creation].  Over and over, as he held himself in place, he was torn asunder.  Ten times.  Twenty.  The explosion continued.  He saw the treads of power that comprised the explosion, and intuitively, he knew that he only needed to pluck a single one in order to end it.

He chose not to.  Instead, he endured the pain of being repeatedly unmade. 

Because if it was doing that to him, then Aja was getting the same treatment. 

Vaguely, he could feel her rebuilding herself, though her skill was so dissimilar from [Hand of Creation] that he barely recognized it. 

Zeke lost track of passing time.  Rationally, he knew it only lasted for a few scant seconds, but it felt like an eternity.  He didn’t know how many times he was forced to rebuild himself, but when the fires finally faded, he saw that the planet below had been scoured clean of debris.  Indeed, it looked like a broken and exposed geode, glassy and jagged. 

With that one skill, he’d destroyed a third of the planet, and the remaining bits were far from untouched.  Great canyons had erupted across the surface, destroying other cities and killing untold millions. 

But his target wasn’t dead.

Aja unfurled her growing limbs as her true form was exposed.  She had become a tree, her canopy casting the entire planet it deep shadow.  Her trunk was a thousand miles across, and her roots dangled below, wrapping around what was left of Okanar and holding it together. 

Her face was the size of a continent, so Zeke had no difficulty seeing her ire.

“You dare?!”

Her voice shook the heavens, and Zeke realized that somewhere in the distance, earthquakes tore across the planet’s moons.  Assuredly, his people would be fine, but not if she turned her eyes on them.  So, not only did Zeke need to destroy her for his long-term goals, but if he failed, his army would be slaughtered by a vengeful tree goddess.

Zeke aimed another [Eye of Reckoning] at her, though this time, he plucked one of the ability’s strings.  The intensity flared as his entire face melted from the heat of it the beam.  So he didn’t even see the results until the skill faded.  He used a pulse of [Hand of Creation] to repair his face, only to see the pitiful impact of his powerful skill.

The beam had burrowed deep into the tree trunk, but the thing was so dense and so massive that the overall effect was like using a pocket knife to carve his initials into an oak tree. 

Her boughs shook, and a million enormous birds descended upon him.  They looked like simple blue jays, but they each possessed a wingspan dozens of miles wide.  The scale of it was more than intimidating.  It was apocalyptic.

But Zeke had destroyed plenty of huge and powerful creatures.  And these avian pests, despite their size, were no more than lesser gods.  He met the first with his hammer, destroying its beak as its momentum took it past him.  Its inertia wasn’t spent for a few more seconds, when it settled into a rapidly degenerating orbit around the planet. 

Zeke paid the creature no mind as he threw himself at the next.

He deftly dodged its raking talons, then slammed his hammer into its wing.  The bones crunched under the impact, and it wheeled into another bird, throwing them both off track. 

Zeke didn’t stop there, either.  As soon as he stabilized, he opened up with another [Eye of Reckoning], and to his surprise, its previously enhanced intensity remained in place.  The beam was much wider and far more destructive, so he had no issues sweeping it across the descending flock, wreaking devastation in the beam’s wake.

But he didn’t get them all.

The first to hit him left a deep gash across his back.  The next grabbed hold of one of his arms while another grasped the other.  They pulled.

And despite his immense durability, the creatures managed to rip his arms off.

His hammer tumbled into space while he let out a grunt of pain.  He used [Hand of Creation] to mend the damage, but even that took a moment.  And it was one he couldn’t spare, because even more birds fell upon him.  They tore him to pieces, one attack at a time. 

Yet, Zeke had endured much worse and more times than he could count.  He knew how to manage a destroyed body, so he held his soul in place as his body continuously regenerated. 

However, with his body in tatters, he could not fight back.

That was when he felt Aja move.

As a tree, she could not move terribly swiftly, but her movements were steady.  Inexorable.  She was unstoppable.  Her massive branches bore down on him like the herald of world’s end.  Perhaps she was.

“Insect,” she growled, her voice loud enough to be heard in another galaxy. 

Zeke had no mouth, so he could not reply.  She didn’t care.  Something erupted from her limbs, filling the air with a dense cloud of yellow.  As Zeke rebuilt his body, that yellow substance merged with his flesh.

Pain, and unlike anything he’d ever felt, came next.  It wasn’t just an infestation of his body.  It was an incursion against the very fabric of his being.  Divine in nature, that stuff attacked him on a fundamental level. 

Vaguely, Zeke tried to pluck their strings, but there were so many that he could not get them all.  And then, he exploded from within.

He tried to pull himself back together, but [Hand of Creation] was sluggish.  As much as he tried to grab hold of it and force it to react, he couldn’t make it respond. 

“Pitiful creature,” echoed Aja’s voice.  Zeke couldn’t hear it.  He had no ears.  And yet, he felt it.  “Did you truly think you could defeat me?  I have been here for tens of thousands of years!  I control the very cells in your body!  Nature is mine!”

“Not yet,” came another voice.  Zeke was just aware enough to recognize that Oberon had arrived.  He was so small, especially compared to the enormous form of Aja. 

In the moment of hesitation, Zeke managed to reform his body enough to see that Oberon stood upon the roots of his customary tree.  He carried a gnarled staff, and he looked angrier than Zeke had ever seen him. 

“I have no quarrel with you, elder,” Aja intoned.

Oberon rolled his shoulders and stepped out into nothing.  The space beneath his bare feet bloomed with flowers as he strode forward.  He blazed with a level of divine energy Zeke had never seen, and suddenly, Zeke was once again whole.

“I have a quarrel with you, though,” he stated.  His voice was nothing compared to Aja’s.  A whisper against a shout.  Yet, it felt heavy with meaning.  “You have squandered every gift I ever gave you, child.  You ignored my pleas.  You refused my invitations.  You betrayed me. 

“Until now, I have allowed that to pass, but no longer.”

“For him?” she demanded, her branches rustling in Zeke’s direction. 

“For me.  For all of reality.  For my peace of mind, child,” he said.  “You abandoned your duty, all because you were too frightened to move on and fulfill your destiny.  Now, it is too late.”

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“You believe you can?  I taught you everything.  I raised you from lesser godhood to what you have become,” he said.

“I have long since surpassed you.  You cannot even hold onto your own domain,” she scoffed. 

“There is more to power than domains,” he said.  “Surrender to  your fate, and we will spare your people.  Fight, and they will all die.”

“Them?  Do you think I care about those ridiculous elves?  They are tools.  As meaningless as they are powerless,” she said.

“That is your problem, Aja’tarisa,” Oberon said, coming to a stop.  He craned his neck to look at her miles-wide face.  “You never looked at anyone else as worthwhile.  Only yourself.  They are more than the tools you label them.  Do you feel it, yet? All those lost worshippers?  They know what you think of them.  Their faith wavers.  You failed to protect them, and now you declare them inconsequential.  Even if you survive, it will take you thousands of years to recover.”

“That is nothing.  And you will not be here to see it.  Nor will your little pet project.  Today, you both die.”

“So be it,” Oberon sighed, raising his staff.  With a flash of light, the battle continued.