893 - Holy Symbol
It was worth it.
That was what Lex decided as he stumbled back from the entrance to his pocket dimension, barely noticing as its boundaries continued to erode, mere seconds away from complete collapse. But Lex couldn’t bring himself to be concerned about that, certain that he’d fulfilled the Night Mare’s design by driving Belligerence into the creature.
Instead, he looked at his left foreleg.
Or rather, where his left foreleg had been.
Now, however, there was nothing there except an open wound where his shoulder should have been, the entirety of his leg sacrificed to drive the goddess-enhanced quill into his enemy’s body.
It wouldn’t be coming back, Lex knew. He had a regeneration spell now; it was one of the divine spells that the Night Mare had given him after he’d become a titan, the magic able to restore a limb even from nothing. But unlike when Sissel had chopped off one of his limbs, this time there would be no bringing it back; a simple look into an immediate future where he cast that spell, only to see it fail, made that very clear.
But Lex couldn’t bring himself to be upset, and for once the monster within him – which had similarly torn off one of its own legs when it had confronted him in Darkest Night – agreed.
The sacrifice was worth it. More than worth it. To trade a single one of his legs to defeat an enemy of such incredible power, and even greater danger, was a small price to pay.
Except...
That had been the leg the Night Mare had wrapped her barbed wire around, the physical manifestation of the Night Mare’s blessing. With it gone, the monster had absorbed not only a portion of the divinity housed within him, it had also taken the Charismata. And without that-
He couldn’t feel his connection to Solvei and Nenet anymore.
His pocket dimension collapsed in the same moment that he realized that.
Lex barely managed to stay upright as he hit the ground, his scant possessions clattering as they dropped to the blasted landscape and scattered in every direction.
Forcing himself to put Solvei and Nenet aside – though it tore at him to do so – Lex looked around the battlefield, searching for the ebony monster. Although his foresight had told him that he’d emerge into what was left of the valley, as far as he knew he still couldn’t tell what had happened to his enemy, and while he had faith in the Night Mare, it would have been an insult to use that as an excuse for being incautious.
Fortunately, the void creature hadn’t gone very far.
Across the valley, the thing was thrashing again, twisting and writhing as it drifted away from him. Instead of rising into the air, it had sunk halfway into the ground, uncaringly forming deep trenches as it flailed about. But this time it wasn’t spasming in a wild spurt of growth and emergence, the way it had been whenever it had managed to absorb a piece of Kryonex’s godhood.
Now, the thing seemed to be in pain.
Even as Lex watched, its shape rippled and contorted, limbs stretching out rigidly and jerking as though agonized. Only when the seizure passed did it move again, long black tendrils curling around as the digits at the end dug into...itself.
The thing was clawing – for lack of a better word – at its own body.
No, that’s not correct, realized Lex, watching the creature tear at its own jet-black form. Belligerence! It’s trying to dig it out!
A moment later he saw why.
From within the lightless mass, a tendril of blue fire erupted, whipping out from inside of the void monster’s black substance in a long line of azure flames. Swinging in a wide arc, the cerulean glow seemed to take on a sharper substance, and Lex’s eyes widened as he saw that the fire was taking on the shape of barbed wire as it wound around the monster. Nor was it alone, as three more lines of wire-shaped flames – then a dozen, then a score – burst out of its body and curled around it.
Like a fly caught in a spider’s web, the monster struggled, trying to escape its bindings. Digits scraped and scratched at the blue fire, the godly power somehow refusing to disintegrate under its touch. If anything, the attack only seemed to invigorate the blazing wire, and it glowed brighter as if in response to the assault.
Then the flames began to constrict.
Slowly but inexorably, the ebony creature’s limbs were pulled inward, until they were pressed against its central mass. The only reason Lex could distinguish them from the thing’s body was that the blue flames were still wrapped around them, highlighting them as they relentlessly forced the creature to curl in on itself. Nor did the blue wires stop once they’d bound all of its limbs, continuing to pull tighter.
All at once, the thing’s form gave a pulse, which Lex recognized as its attempt to bring its negation power to bear.
Except this time, nothing happened. The blue flames remained undiminished, not even flickering in response to the power of unmaking being levelled against them. Nor did they when the thing pulsed a second time, and then a third, seeming almost frantic in its attempts to shut down the power binding it.
A sudden flash of insight came to Lex as he watched the struggle.
It can’t negate it because it’s already absorbed it into itself!
He had no way to prove his hypothesis, no means to affirm it as anything other than a guess, but it was the only thing he could think of. That thing destroys whatever it touches. Magic, matter; it eradicates it all. Only divinity has any effect on it, somehow making it grow stronger. The Night Mare knew that, and so she filled Belligerence with her own divine power, using that to set a trap.
Exactly what she’d done to the energy she’d imbued the quill with, Lex couldn’t begin to fathom. But somehow she’d altered it so that, once taken into itself, it would work against the creature rather than for it. Like someone who had unknowingly eaten a poisoned meal, it had expected to be nourished by what it had ingested, only to find itself being injured by it instead.
And its negation power wasn’t all that was useless now that the trap had been sprung. For the briefest instant the thing flickered, vanishing from sight for a fraction of a second and then reappearing in the same spot, and Lex recognized that it had just tried to teleport away. No sooner had he comprehended that than a powerful vortex manifested around the thing, only to immediately cease as the jagged cables seemed to squeeze it even tighter.
It had no way out.
The most the ebony monster could do was try to wriggle free, straining against the wires as it floated – its motions unsteady – further across the shattered valley. But even that ceased after a few moments, as though simply moving through space required more effort than it could exert.
And the glowing coils continued to tighten, pulling inward with greater force.
Which was when Lex realized that the thing was shrinking.
Slowly, in fits and starts, the ebony thing’s size was decreasing, being pulled in on itself by the wires formed by the Night Mare’s power. The void creature was still fighting it; he could see it pulling at its bindings, but the conclusion seemed to be foregone now, the flames so bright that they were hard to look upon. More than that, the smaller the thing grew, the more the luminous wires seemed to envelope it, their own size remaining constant even as their captive’s diminished.
In a matter of seconds, the void creature had shrunk down to the size of the shattered mountains.
Then it was no larger than one of his astral constructs.
A few moments later, it was no larger than himself, its form all but completely hidden beneath the blue flames.
Finally, the wires were all that were visible, completely cocooning the creature beneath their blazing light.
It was only once they’d fully enveloped the thing that the coils began to swirl around it, speeding up until they were whirling as rapidly as the wires that had been his body a few minutes prior. But even the jagged lengths of metal that had made up his transformed state had never moved as fast as these were now. Their speed was already increasing to the point where the individual strands were impossible to distinguish, the entire length seeming to become a single solid glow, one that was changing shape again, becoming oblong...then narrowing...then one end growing pointed...
Which was when the entire array shattered.
But not into pieces.
Instead, the individual strands of wire broke apart, twisting in midair as they formed themselves into a familiar set of runes, set along a pitch-black length that was tapered to a barbed head at one end.
Belligerence.
For a moment Lex could only stare, taking in the sight of the weapon with both his mundane and supernatural senses.
It was the same quill he’d driven into the creature’s lightless substance, except it wasn’t. Now, it was as though the creature had become Belligerence itself, its ebony substance perfectly mimicking the weapon’s shape. The runes he’d carved into its body and filled in with his own blood were now composed of blue fire, their glow shining brilliantly.
Even the single remaining ring around the head of the weapon – signifying that he had one use left of its ability to expand a spell over a huge area – was still there. Except the ring was no longer composed of the black crystals that he could call forth. Instead, it was a length of blue flames twisted in the shape of barbed wire, glowing with the same intensity as the runes.
Silent and unmoving, the transformed weapon hung in the air, as though waiting for something to happen.
Lex simply stared at it, idly noting that the corrosive aura that the monster had given off was gone. Already, he could feel his wounds closing, skin and muscles restoring themselves from where the void creature’s destructive aura had worn them away. Only his foreleg remained missing, the end closing over with flesh and fur as though nothing had ever been there.
A thought was all it took for Lex to build himself a new pocket dimension, his belongings picking themselves up and rushing toward the entrance as he willed them back into storage.
It was only after they’d all been put away that he turned his telekinesis toward Belligerence, judging that to be the safest way to try interacting with it.
To his mild surprise, he could already see what was going to happen before his aura took hold of it, his foresight correctly telling him that he could move the weapon just as easily as he’d been able to before it had become...whatever it had become. Despite how it was clearly brimming with divine energy, the quill – which should have been almost impossible to move – no longer presented any difficulties to his using it in any way.
Frowning, Lex swung it around in his aura, letting it scrape the edge of the trench. Sure enough, the head of the quill moved through the ground as though it wasn’t even there, consuming the dirt and leaving nothing behind. That confirms it, Lex decided. It’s not just a cosmetic change. Belligerence has gained the same annihilating properties as that creature.
If anything, it seemed as though Belligerence was that creature now, its substance shaped to match the quill’s form.
Much like what had happened to himself and that eight-legged creature when he’d returned from Darkest Night.
It was enough to leave Lex awed. By the Night Mare’s grace, that creature and his weapon were now one and the same. And given how Belligerence had been linked to himself, that would explain why the thing was so easily to wield now. All the more so if some traces of his own divinity had been intermixed with the power the Night Mare had poured into the quill. If that was the case, then losing his leg had been more than just a sacrifice; it had been a necessary component in what had just happened, making it so that he – and likely he alone, in another recreation of Belligerence’s original design – could use the creature-turned-weapon now.
The Night Mare had bound his enemy to servitude rather than destroying them, and in so doing, given him ownership of their power.
The goddess had perfectly demonstrated the central tenet of her faith.
But there was still one thing that needed to be confirmed. One more test that Lex knew he needed to conduct.
Slowly, he brought Belligerence closer to him, the weapon again hovering in the air of its own accord as he released it. Standing upright, Lex reached out with his remaining foreleg, talons outstretched-
A beam of gelid energy slammed into him before he could take hold of it.
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Of course Kyronex had stuck around to see the outcome and the reason why he's decided to struck at that very moment. I mean who wouldn't want a weapon that could annihilate anything it touches, including divinity though it is obviously still linked to Lex so the demigod might realize that claiming Belligerence for himself would be impossible, not with Lex still alive at least.
Still, I have to wonder if slaying Lex might unleash the antigod sealed/assimilated into Belligerence...
Now the meaning of his weapons name, belligerence, has taken on a whole new meaning.
Also, c'mon Lex, I know you're a tripod now, but that's no excuse to lower your guard!
Lex admires the new shiny so much he forgets the first rule of war?
Nightmare watched Lexs Tulpa and ajusted her designs accordingly?
Maybe starting with the premise, nice planet, Id hate to lose it, I keep all my favourite toys there.
11765656 It's perhaps no surprise that Kryonex was waiting in the wings, looking for an opportune moment to strike. Lex did the hard part, after all, and now that he's not only won, but turned that creature into a powerful weapon, it's an ideal time to strike. That, and I suspect that at this point Kryonex is unwilling to just slink away after having lost so much. That's a dangerous gamble, of course (and a "sunk costs" fallacy, if that's his thinking), but given the sheer magnitude of the losses that he's sustained, it's perhaps understandable.
Though how he'd use that thing even if he took possession of it, as you note, might be a problem.
11765730 Belligerence has indeed become a truly fearsome weapon, at least from how it seems to have taken on the annihilating qualities of the bound creature. But that won't help Lex very much if Kryonex takes possession of it.
11765766 I doubt the Night Mare is watching much of anything at the moment.
Still, she did give Lex what he needed in order to not just win, but come out of it with a powerful new weapon, even if he lost a leg acquiring it. Hopefully he'll be able to put it to good use now that Kryonex seems intent on finishing their fight.
Honestly surprised the demi-god has the nerve to try to bush wack Lex at this point in the game. Bro, go home and take "L" before it gets worse for you.
11766901 Some people don't want to cut their losses; they have to have something to show for what they've expended.
11766928
Yeah, but they prolly shoulda....Kryonex is on verge of a meta stomp down on par with the high evolutionary.