DMAW Chapter 100: What Remains (Patreon)

Yasaka watched Ibaraki-dōji fall through the fading radiance of her attack, his enormous body smoking as he tumbled towards the ground. The white robes had burned away almost entirely, leaving strips of his blue haori clinging to charred flesh, and the foul clouds that had surrounded him now trailed behind his limbs in thin, ragged wisps. She followed him with her sword held loosely at her side, but then quickly backed off as her golden eyes narrowing when those wisps suddenly thickened beneath his falling body.

Black clouds caught him just before he struck the earth, their churning depths spreading beneath his back as he arrested his descent. For a moment, the ancient Oni remained hunched amongst them, his shoulders heaving while smoke slipped between his jagged teeth, but then he lifted his head and glared up at her.

“I will wear your pelt for this, little vixen,” he growled.

Yasaka said nothing as she pointed Tenkō Hōgai towards him, the blade’s golden sheen brightening beneath her fingers. If the creature had enough breath to threaten her, then she had evidently been too accommodating with her previous attack, and she was quite prepared to correct that oversight.

But before she could descend, his youki surged so violently that the air between them began to shudder.

Her gaze sharpened as the clouds climbed around his body, swallowing his legs and waist while his immense frame began drawing inward. The great breadth of his shoulders narrowed, his thick arms becoming slimmer as his blackened skin darkened to brick red, and through the gathering storm Yasaka watched his coarse features settle into something almost elegantly human. His injuries remained, the burns drawing tight across his changing flesh, but the power gathering within that smaller body grew far beyond what she had felt before.

And when he straightened, his eyes were a deep and dreadful purple, concentric hexagons turning within them as his mouth curved into a bloody smile.

Yasaka regarded him coldly as his dark youki spilled across the night, coiling into enormous banks of black cloud that swallowed the sky for miles around. Beneath her, the formations guarding Kyoto answered with a low tremor, and she felt the attention of several minor deities settle more firmly over the region. Their power threaded through the local shrines and reinforced the land, tightening the boundaries around the mortal city even as the Oni’s presence pressed against them.

Her lips curved faintly at the reassurance. It seemed she would not need to be quite so restrained after all, and if this ancient thug believed a change of face would make her reconsider sending him to his grave, then she would happily disappoint him.

She descended with a sharp sweep of her sword, golden fire opening a broad path through the clouds, but Ibaraki-dōji surged up to meet her before she could reach the place where he had been standing. A black blade formed within his hand and struck Tenkō Hōgai with enough force to send a painful jolt through her wrists, while his other fist drove beneath her guard. Yasaka twisted aside, catching his forearm with one of her tails, but the clouds around his knuckles lengthened into crooked spikes that scraped across her armor and opened a shallow wound beneath her ribs. Her eyes hardened at the sting, and she drove her free palm into his chest, releasing a concentrated burst of sunfire that hurled him backward through the dark.

However, the Oni’s laughter followed him through the flames, and before she could pursue, an enormous crescent of black cloud swept towards her neck. Yasaka caught it upon her sword, its edge breaking into a swarm of smaller blades that curled around her guard, forcing her to draw her tails close and burn them away with a fresh mantle of holy fire. Ibaraki-dōji came through the resulting glare with a spear aimed at her heart, and she turned its point aside just in time to feel it tear across her upper arm. Warm blood slipped beneath her armor, but she pressed forward rather than withdraw, her sword biting into his shoulder and carrying a long spray of blood through the clouds as he recoiled.

He answered with a furious roar, his darkness folding around them until Yasaka could scarcely see beyond the gold of her own blade. Nevertheless, she felt the weight gathering above her and stepped aside as a massive hammer descended through the shroud, its head dragging the air into a shrieking spiral. The blow passed close enough to tug at her hair, and she struck its haft with Tenkō Hōgai before carrying the motion towards his exposed side. Her sunfire opened a fresh wound across his ribs, but Ibaraki-dōji abandoned the dissolving weapon and caught her wrist, his fingers tightening painfully before he swung her through the clouds. Yasaka snarled as she found purchase upon the air, her tails lashing forward to wrench his arm aside, and she drove her knee into his face hard enough to break his grip.

Blood spilled from his mouth as he pulled away, although the sight of her own bleeding arm seemed to delight him more than the injury troubled him. He came at her laughing, a hooked sword in each hand, and Yasaka was forced to give ground beneath the speed of his assault, catching one edge while the other carved a thin line across her thigh. Her jaw tightened as she turned his next strike outward, then brought Tenkō Hōgai down upon his forearm with a burst of golden fire. His laughter broke into a snarl, and she followed with a sharp kick that sent him skidding backward through the air, his black clouds gathering hurriedly beneath his feet.

Yasaka drew a steady breath as she watched him recover, her fingers tightening around her sword. The wounds were hardly serious, but the ache beneath her ribs and the blood warming her sleeve had done little to improve her patience. She had entertained this creature for quite long enough, and every moment spent indulging his violence was another moment stolen from the war she ought to have been directing.

And judging by the hatred twisting his face, Ibaraki-dōji had also tired of their exchanges.

His shoulders shifted, and fresh limbs emerged from his sides, unfolding through the dark until eight pairs of arms spread around him. Black clouds gathered within his many hands, becoming swords and spears, hooked axes and heavy hammers, each weapon thickening beneath the foul power pouring through his body. Their edges dragged long furrows through the surrounding air as he lifted them towards her, and Yasaka felt the formations below tighten once more beneath the mounting pressure.

But she merely raised two fingers to Tenkō Hōgai and drew them along its blade.

Golden light followed the movement, spreading from the steel into her hand and up her arm as she poured her chakra through its divine enchantments. The warmth settled deep within her chest before flowing outward, and the dark around her filled with the shapes of her other selves, each bearing the same cold gaze and a sword bright with sunfire.

Eight figures faced the ancient Oni, and Yasaka felt every golden blade as readily as the one resting within her own grasp.

Ibaraki-dōji bared his teeth and lunged, his many weapons sweeping outward to meet her as she and her other selves converged upon him. The first collision filled the sky with a blinding surge of power, and those that followed drove it outward in a vast explosion that shook the clouds apart and sent a heavy tremor rolling through the land beneath them.

Yasaka braced as the force swept over her, Tenkō Hōgai caught against a crossed sword and spear while the Oni leaned into the struggle. Through her other selves she felt the same fierce resistance, his additional arms covering every approach as black weapons ground against golden steel, their mingled energies shrieking through the air. His grin widened as he pressed harder, and she felt one of her manifestations falter beneath the weight of a descending hammer.

Her lips peeled back in an angry snarl. This miserable bandit would not hold her here.

She reached more deeply through her soul, drawing upon the holy and divine power that answered from within, and fed it into the fire blazing along her sword. Its radiance grew fierce enough to swallow the Oni’s grin, golden seams spreading through the weapons braced against her as she forced her blade forward. And around him, her other selves answered with the same resolve, their swords burning brighter until every arm he raised was caught within the fury of the Sun.

The spear before her shattered, and she drove through the sword behind it before Ibaraki-dōji could withdraw. His eyes widened as Tenkō Hōgai found his flesh, but by then the other weapons were breaking around him, and all eight golden blades passed through his guard.

Yasaka streaked beyond him with her sword extended, its edge trailing fire as her other selves dissolved into the surrounding light.

Behind her, blood erupted from the Oni’s body in numerous sweeping arcs, and his scream tore through the night as the sunfire took hold within his wounds.

She turned slowly to watch him fall, his many arms reaching uselessly through the clouds that broke apart beneath him. He struck the ground at the edge of a bamboo forest, the impact opening a small crater and scattering broken stalks across the surrounding earth, while the last of his gathered darkness writhed above him before burning away.

And Yasaka descended through the settling dust, her tails moving behind her as she landed upon the crater’s edge.

Ibaraki-dōji lay prone amongst the shattered stone, his additional limbs collapsing into black vapor while blood spread beneath his ruined body. Holy fire still clung to the cuts across his back and shoulders, and when he attempted to lift himself, one arm buckled beneath his weight.

But even then, the creature found enough breath to cough out a laugh.

“So fierce,” he rasped, turning his bloodied face towards her. “But you and your line cannot protect Heian-kyō forever, little vixen. One day, your precious capital will—”

Yasaka’s sword swept through his neck before he could finish, its golden edge silencing him as his head fell from his shoulders and rolled across the broken ground.

She watched it with a vicious sneer, then flicked the blood from Tenkō Hōgai. The creature had already taken far more of her evening than he deserved, and she had no intention of allowing him to spend his final moments pretending his threats held any weight.

“As if I care for a mere bandit’s words,” she said coldly.

And with that, Yasaka turned from the fallen Oni and disappeared in a streak of gold, returning towards the waiting lights of her palace.

=======

Ibaraki-dōji’s severed head rolled from the edge of the crater, its weight crushing the fallen bamboo beneath it before coming to rest amongst the broken stalks. Blood seeped into the disturbed earth, and above the forest, the last traces of Yasaka’s golden radiance faded into the night.

Only when her presence had withdrawn towards the palace did Akihiko emerge from the shadows.

His expression was troubled as he surveyed the ruined clearing, his gaze passing over the Oni’s discarded body before settling upon its head. He had watched enough of the battle to recognize how poorly it had served his intentions, and more than that… he glared hatefully at the decapitated Oni.

“You weren’t supposed to hurt her,” he snarled angrily.

And amongst the shattered bamboo, Ibaraki-dōji began to laugh.

“She is stronger than the one who came before,” the severed head said, its purple eyes turning towards the approaching fox. “You will need something even stronger if you wish to drag her farther from the leylines.”

Akihiko stopped a short distance away, his lips pressing together as the Oni’s grin widened. He offered no answer, although the darkening of his face was gratifying enough for the ancient creature. Defeat had done little to diminish Ibaraki-dōji’s appetite for another’s discomfort, and this scheming little fox had provided such a splendid opportunity.

“Littlest fox, whatever shall you do?” His laughter deepened, blood bubbling between his teeth as he watched Akihiko’s tails grow still. “The human Heroes you intended to employ have now been so wonderfully slaughtered by the husband of the woman you lust for.”

Akihiko’s jaw tightened, and the clearing stirred beneath a sudden pulse of his youki. The original plan had been for members of the Hero faction to help him rescue Yasaka and Kunou from Kyoto and use the Moon’s power to break the two free from Amaterasu’s divine ensnarement. But those stupid humans had went and gotten themselves blown up in battle against that monster that Yasaka was chained too!

And Kyoto now was a under numerous protections, not just of youki and chakra, but even divine barriers by the local land deities who could exercise just enough of their authority to avoid the Heavenly Suppression.

When the severed head laughed and opened its mouth again, Akihiko snarled and lashed out with one of his tails.

The blow smashed through the Oni’s face, scattering blood and broken bone across the clearing, but the satisfaction lasted barely a moment before the gore began darkening. Flesh softened into an inky black substance that steamed against the earth, and the shattered pieces evaporated amongst the bamboo while laughter echoed from every shadow around him.

“Scheming fox in the dark, I have seen through you.”

Akihiko turned sharply towards the voice, his tails spreading as the remaining darkness slipped between the trees. Yet there was nothing left upon which to vent his anger, and Ibaraki-dōji savored that frustration as readily as he had the one that prompted the blow.

“But no matter. It concerns me naught,” the Oni continued, his voice growing distant even as it whispered close beside Akihiko’s ear. “Tell the Moon I have done his bidding and my debt is half paid. I shall grant him one more request ere I demand payment due.”

The last words lingered through the forest, their ghostly echoes fading as the ancient Oni’s essence withdrew into the night. Akihiko remained amongst the wreckage, his hands clenched and his face twisted with an anger.

And beyond the broken bamboo, the lights of Kyoto shone beneath the clearing clouds, drawing his hateful gaze towards the palace to which continued to imprison his family.

=======

The first thing Ichigo noticed was the taste of the air.

It was thin and bitter, carrying a dry, metallic foulness that settled upon his tongue as his feet touched the ground. He frowned and glanced down at the powdery earth beneath his shoes, its pale surface breaking into flakes around the impressions they left, before lifting his gaze towards the ruins stretching across the horizon.

A city had stood here once, although he would have been hard-pressed to guess what city it was as the architecture was unlike anything he had ever seen. The buildings curved around one another in enormous, hollow spirals, their broken lengths joined by suspended roads that now ended in empty air. Farther away, something resembling a tower had collapsed across several neighboring structures, its exposed interior gleaming faintly beneath the sickly light above.

And beyond it all, the sky was a dusky and toxic hue of browns and greens.

There was no familiar scattering of stars, nor any suggestion of dawn waiting beyond the horizon. Only a murky brown moon hung above the dead city, its uneven surface surrounded by a greenish glow that made the ruins beneath it seem faintly diseased.

Ichigo’s frown deepened as he extended his senses.

There was barely anything alive here, and what little he found made him wish he hadn’t bothered looking. Small things moved deep beneath the ground, their life forces twisted into unpleasant shapes, while something larger stirred within a distant ruin before retreating from the touch of his awareness. Even the remnants of vegetation seemed wrong; their inherent energy warped into something that only vaguely resembled life energy. It was like a dead world that was trying to remember how to be alive…

It oddly reminded him of recorded writings of what happened to worlds that had been devoured by the Demons during the Great War.

How eerie, Ichigo thought.

“Where are we?”

Set stood beside him with his masked face tilted towards the brown moon, seemingly untroubled by either the air or the desolation surrounding them. For a moment, Ichigo wondered whether he had heard the question, but then the Immortal spoke without lowering his gaze.

“Do you know which Pole Star followed when the Dragon constellation relinquished its watch over the north?”

Ichigo blinked at him, then looked around the ruined city again before returning his attention to his friend. A part of him felt a touch exasperated… did Set secretly hold the domain of astronomy?

But at the same time, Ichigo trusted his friend’s wisdom and good intentions.

“Polaris?” he answered uncertainly.

“Not immediately, no. First came Kochab, and then Polaris. Both belonging to the Cub.”

The Cub… the Little Dipper, Ichigo translated into his mind. He then followed Set’s gaze towards the moon, wondering what any of that had to do with this miserable place, but his confusion must have been obvious because the Immortal turned his head towards him.

“Tell me Ichigo,” Set said softly, “What attribute are bears oft associated with?”

Ichigo considered the question for a moment, his brows drawing together.

“Resilience?”

“Indeed,” Set replied with an encouraging dip of his head. “A resilient constellation for a resilient humanity building its civilizations and striving to grow beyond the doubtful mercies of the supernatural. But as with all things, even that is subject to change.”

Ichigo’s gaze sharpened as he began following the direction of the conversation and realization settled on him.

“Humans will end up being guided by a new Pole Star someday.”

Set nodded, even as he continued to gaze up at the alien moon.

“More than a thousand years from your mortal birth, Errai the Shepherd will take its place as the Pole Star of Earth.”

“A shepherd?” Ichigo repeated, glancing towards the barren landscape. “A shepherd to what?”

“To the stars.” Set spread his arms, and despite the dead world surrounding them, there was such warmth within his voice that Ichigo found himself looking at him rather than the sky. “Humans will spread beyond the Earth and travel the cosmos as Errai guides their ambitions. And Errai itself belongs to Cepheus the King.”

His hands lowered slowly as he continued, “An new empire of Humanity, stretching far across the firmament.”

For a few seconds, Ichigo could only stare at him.

There was affection in the way Set said it, a quiet pride that reminded him of their earlier conversations about humanity and the place it held within the hearts of the Divine. He had known Set cared for them, but hearing that feeling directed towards a future in which humans had finally reached beyond their own world was –

Ichigo abruptly cut off that train of thought as he realized what Set was actually saying.

“Wait, hold up! We’re a thousand years into the future!” he asked incredulously.

“Thirteen hundred and seventy-two years from your mortal birth, to be exact,” Set answered cheerfully.

Ichigo looked back towards the ruined city, his mouth falling slightly open before he closed it and drew a slow breath.

Of course they fucking were. Ichigo sighed to himself

Apparently, when someone who lived beyond Time decided to take him somewhere, asking when was going to become just as important as asking where.

Nevertheless, the knowledge gave the desolation around him an entirely different weight, and he extended his senses farther, letting them sweep across the world until its shape began settling within his mind. Ruined cities marked the surfaces of dead continents, their coasts overlooking seas that had retreated into broad, poisoned basins, and the few remaining concentrations of life seemed to gather in places where the surrounding reality felt particularly unpleasant.

But for one brief instant, as he gazed the whole of the world, something seemed to gaze back.

Ichigo stiffened, his attention immediately following the impression, only to find nothing there. He frowned heavily before glancing towards Set.

“This isn’t Earth,” he said slowly. “Some other world?”

“A world belonging to another species whose name I am happy to leave forgotten,” Set said with a touch of amusement.

Ichigo turned towards Set as the Red Lord folded his hands behind his back. “When Humans came to this star system, the inhabitants responded with extreme prejudice. A war of seventeen years followed, from which Humanity emerged triumphant. Unfortunately, their enemies, even in defeat, remained steadfast in their desire to exterminate and render Humanity extinct.”

Set’s voice remained calm as his gaze passed over the broken structures.

“And so Humanity chose to respond in kind; their new found neighbors were wiped out to the very last..”

Ichigo stared at the ruins for a long moment, amazement and horror settling rather uncomfortably beside one another.

He wasn’t particularly surprised that humans were capable of wiping out another sapient species. He knew enough about their history to understand how readily fear could become a justification for doing something monstrous, especially when the people on the other side were apparently just as determined to kill them.

But standing upon a world where they had actually done it was another matter.

An entire civilization had lived here, built these strange cities and looked up at whatever sky had existed before that foul moon settled over it. And somewhere in the centuries beyond his own birth, humans had crossed the distances between stars and reduced all of it to… nothing.

It was a weird thought. Demons had done so more times than he could count, and there were plenty of other Pantheons who had wiped out other species and worlds with little remorse. But Humanity… to think mortal humans would eventually get to the point where they could decide the fate of entire alien civilizations. A part of him felt… pride?

Huh, what a strange thing to feel. Perhaps it was his Demon mind and soul applauding his human origins. Though he filed the emotion away for now, it was something to dwell upon at a later date when he was feeling particularly introspective.

His lips pressed together before he gave Set a wary look.

“Why do I get the feeling there’s more to this story?”

The Immortal regarded him for a moment, and Ichigo could hear the faint smile in his answer.

“Rooted as they are within our hearts, how could we Undying True forsake their ambitions? Thus, even as they extinguished mortal breath upon this world, we did the same within the Golden World Beyond Time. As above, so below.”

Ichigo’s head turned sharply. “You all annihilated the Divines of an alien race?”

“Nearly all.”

“Nearly all?” His voice rose despite himself. “What is that even supposed to mea –”

Ichigo froze and closed his eyes in a silent groan. He then opened them and slowly followed Set’s gaze back to the unnerving looking moon.

The same moon which Set had been staring at the whole time they had been here.

The brown sphere hung motionless above the city, its greenish radiance staining the broken rooftops, and for several moments, nothing happened, but then the space surrounding it folded.

Ichigo’s eyes widened.

The moon contracted with a violent shudder that seemed to drag and pulled the sky inward, its vast surface collapsing towards a black point buried within its center. However, before that point could swallow the last of its light, the gathered power recoiled, bursting outward in enormous waves of sickly green radiance.

The world shrieked.

And not physically either, but Ichigo felt it through every part of himself as psychic power crashed across the ruined landscape. Pain, hatred and a misery so immense that he could scarcely distinguish where one grief ended and another began poured from the thing above them, carrying the impressions of countless minds screaming in unison.

Cosmic rays of green energy fell onto the world, crushing everything around them and flattening what was left of the city and extinguishing what little, twisted life was on the planet in violent throes.

His hand twitched towards the sword within his soul before he looked at Set, who remained standing percectly with his hands behind his back.

“That’s a corpse,” Ichigo said flatly. “A Divine corpse.”

“Partially true,” Set replied. “An amalgamation of sundered Immortal energy that fell into the mortal plane after we destroyed their Origin Existence. Their lingering Wills and Regrets came searching for remnants of their beloved mortals.”

A fresh wave of anguish swept across them, and entire mountains were lifted from their roots and savagely torn apart. Ichigo frowned as he realized this world wouldn’t last much longer under such uncontrolled energies.

“Instead, they found naught but despair and madness.”

Ichigo’s mouth tightened as he looked up at the churning light. “Like Ba’al…”

“Yes. But there was no Lucifer here to push them into the First Flame and cut them anew.” Set tilted his head slightly. “And so they dream away in keening misery.”

The ground lurched beneath Ichigo’s feet as another psychic eruption tore through the world. The crater that was ruined city was ripped apart and the earth rose in titanic slabs of rock, breaking apart as the crust of the planet itself was cracked.

Set chuckled with mirth. “I do believe they have recognized me.”

Ichigo eyed him carefully, then glanced down at how the earth fell away from their feet into a miles of dark chasm that then lit up with roiling magma from the mantle.

“You planning on saying hi?” he asked skeptically.

“Oh, no.”

And before Ichigo could respond, Set turned and gave his shoulder a cheerful pat as he glided past him.

“A hive mind of dreaming dead deities should serve wonderfully for exercising your nascent Immortality. Far be it from me to deny you such an opportunity.”

Ichigo stared after him for a moment, then looked up as the brown sphere opened around something that resembled an enormous, wounded eye.

“Gee, thanks,” he said dryly.

Set laughed again. “What are friends for?”

Ichigo rose into the burning sky just as the planet cracked apart, his power gathering around his body while the thin atmosphere shrieked against his ascent. The green radiance followed, pressing through his awareness with a force that made his teeth clench, and by the time he cleared the world’s upper atmosphere, the thing’s attention had settled fully upon him.

There were so many minds within it, he couldn’t even begin to count them.

Ichigo could feel them turning through one another, their separate agonies tangled into a mass of hatred that marked him as something other, and he could feel the intent to harm and maim all to readily. Whatever remained of their reason had drowned beneath their misery, and as he approached, their collective Will reached for him.

His shoulder split open.

Ichigo jerked with a startled curse, blood scattering from a wound he had felt no attack inflict, and before his regeneration could close it, something struck through his chest. He thrust his own Will against the pressure, forcing it away as the world below buckled beneath the collision, its dead continents breaking along lines of green and burning black.

But even as he pushed the attack back, the pain returned.

His eyes narrowed, and this time he followed it beyond the place where he stood.

The wound had been opened before he raised his defense.

For a moment, Ichigo’s thoughts stumbled over the realization, and the hesitation cost him a fresh tear across his side. He snarled and reached more deeply into his nascent Divinity, following the impression of that injury into the moment in which it had been inflicted, where he forced his Will against the alien power waiting there.

The flesh beneath his torn shirt became whole. And through the sudden clarity that followed, he understood enough to be thoroughly fucking annoyed.

They were attacking him in the past.

“Fucking bullshit,” he muttered, even as the space around him cracked beneath a fresh assault.

He answered with his own Power, black lightning erupting around his body as he drove himself towards the Dead Divine Star. The bolt that struck it tore through layers of brown, congealed radiance, and hundreds of voices cried out through his mind before the wound closed beneath a tide of mutated Divinity.

He could feel the dead Divines reaching through the moments surrounding him, seeking the possibilities in which his defense faltered, but he caught the temporal incursions before they could actualize, and he quickly nullified them with his Will. And as their powers continued to collide above the ruined world, the planet far below was further torn asunder, entire continents were overturned and oceans of burning magma erupted over solid surface.

Though Ichigo scarcely had time to pay attention to the breaking world as the Dead Divine Star struck again, its hatred descending upon another possible moment of Time where Ichigo had been vulnerable. He answered immediately, denying it that opening, and black lightning seized that moment of Time and tore it apart.

Their continued collisions tore through space-time, and the planet finally broke apart beneath them, it’s gravitational forces no longer capable of holding it together. One instant it was there, broken and bleeding molten earth, the next instant it was blasted into cosmic dust, scattered across millions of miles of cold space.

And the thing before him went utterly fucking mad.

Hundreds of voices shrieked through his awareness, their mingled anguish becoming so fierce that Ichigo felt it press against the foundations of his soul. Through that anguish came impressions of the world he had just watched die: living cities beneath unfamiliar skies, strange hands raised in worship, children whose shapes he could barely comprehend gathered beneath the watchful attention of their Divines. Whatever remained of those memories had survived within the dead thing long after its mortals had perished, and now even the ground upon which they had lived was gone.

But its grief gave him little opportunity for consideration, because the next assault came through a dozen contradictory moments at once. Ichigo snarled as pain opened along his ribs, then forced his Will through the wounds until the possibilities that sustained them broke beneath his refusal. The Star recoiled from his answering thunder, its brown radiance twisting around its black core, and the scattered remains of the world streamed past them as their struggle carried them deeper into space.

Or so he initially thought.

Ichigo’s brows drew together as distant lights shifted around him, whole constellations drawing across his vision while the distance separating him from the Dead Divine Star remained strangely unchanged. He had felt no acceleration, nor had he willed himself towards any destination, yet the cosmos was folding around their conflict as readily as the moments through which they fought.

And as he pushed against another surge of alien power, he felt the distinction settle through his awareness: they were imposing their positions upon the universe, and the universe was moving to accommodate them.

A vast golden light swept between them.

Ichigo’s eyes caught the light of the system’s star, millions of miles of burning plasma drawn into the narrowing distance between their Wills, and for one impossible instant its entire immensity occupied the few meters separating them. Its blazing surface pressed against his power while its farthest edge struck the Dead Divine Star’s, and the contradiction became unbearable.

The sun went supernova between them, its death erupting in a brilliance that swallowed every visible thing, but Ichigo was already forcing back the amalgamated Wills reaching through its light. He could feel the dead Divines trying to make that destruction part of him, imposing it upon his very existence, and his expression twisted as he denied them and drove another black bolt into their churning depths.

And beyond the glare of the nova, more lights began passing between them.

He caught them at the edges of his vision as their struggle continued, distant suns drawn into impossible proximity before breaking beneath the clash of their auras. There were millions of them, perhaps billions; Ichigo could no longer tell, and attempting to count became meaningless when the same star sometimes died before him more than once. Whole stretches of the cosmos flashed into brilliance and vanished, only for the fluctuations of Time around their battle to restore what had been destroyed and then be destroyed again.

Creation and Destruction danced mad between him and the Dead Divine Star as their Immortality and Wills clashed.

And as Ichigo reached beyond another collapsing sequence, he felt their powers pressing against something deeper than the universe reshaping itself around them. Time and Space had been stretched to its limit in the physical universe, and it all began to crack apart, entire sections of physical reality breaking and collapsing and giving way to the other planes of existence.

Vast currents of higher-dimensional energy twisted around him, purples and dark-blues, their impossible shapes opening upon Upper Realms that shuddered beneath the intrusion of their Wills. He felt the mortal world breaking somewhere below, its remaining structure torn apart as their struggle carried through the spaces surrounding it, but keeping track of that destruction became increasingly difficult when his enemy was reaching through moments he had not yet entered.

He forced one attack aside before it could become the wound across his throat, then seized another where it had already buried itself within his heart. These new possibilities were beyond the normal, linear flow of Time of physics – there were the Upper Realms ruled entirely by Psionics and Magics – and Time itself behaved differently here. No longer looking with his eyes, Ichigo peered with his very existence, and he perceived angles of Time, things that shouldn’t exist, that turned hostile and sought to trap him in paradoxes and impossibilities.

But with each absurdity Ichigo began to recognize the flow of power, the one that existed beyond all spatial dimensions and any flow of Time. He saw how the golden eddies of Timelessness embedded itself within reality – he began to see the acausal whims of the Divine – that thing called destiny.

All the infinite branches of Time – all that could and could be, all that will and won’t be – Ichigo saw it play out in his mind’s eye. And burned him, it seared into his very soul as for an impossible second, a non-existent second, Ichigo touched upon nigh-omniscience.

And he saw the Dead Divine Star – he saw them for what they were, what they used be. Golden, Proud and Eternal… but that eternity had been shattered by the ferocity of the Pantheons of Earth.

This thing was nothing more than memory… no, even less than that. And echo of a memory of what once reigned proudly over all of Time itself.

For one brief moment, everything stood still, and the Dead Divine Star seemed to latch onto the vision in Ichigo’s soul – his perception of their history. It tried to draw on the very image of their memory to make itself real, to Will themselves back into existence and full reality.

But as ever, Satan denied the Divine.

And they screamed at him in renewed furor as they assailed him once more through what power they still possessed in the echoes of their heavenly madness.

But the next wave that was unleashed broke against him, and his black lightning followed the strings of their power and struck against their phantom existence.

And an immense fracture opened within the sphere in response.

Ichigo felt a sharp satisfaction as the voices within it rose together, their fury growing more coherent beneath the pain, but then he caught the impression of something vast unfolding beyond his left shoulder and turned his attention towards it.

Though he had denied them their return, the fragment of what they used to be gave them an iota of clarity, and mixed with their furor, it was enough for them to land a genuine blow against him.

His right arm vanished.

For an instant, he stared at the empty space beside him before agony burned through the ruined shoulder, and his expression twisted into a vicious scowl.

“Oh, you fucking—”

Wrath burned dark, giving his Golden Immortality a shadow that crept over the edges of Eternity, and instantly his arm regenerated. But something remained within the newly formed flesh. A sickly green current wound through his power, burrowing deep like a hungering parasite, and he felt the alien Divinity reaching for the foundations of his soul.

Zangetsu immediately surged against it, the familiar weight of his blade rising alongside the furious hunger of his Sin.

Ichigo almost let them tear the corruption apart, but then Set’s words returned to him, and he clenched his new hand as he pressed both powers down.

He had come here to learn how to use Divinity, not just his old powers.

Black lightning gathered within his soul, its branching paths opening through his awareness as he followed the green contamination into himself. He could feel it trying to settle into his personal timelines – trying to undo his past while preventing all of his futures. And as the divine madness attempted to consume his existence, his anger cut through his ownelf as he drove the thunder through those points of contact.

Because this was his power – his Immortal, Eternal power. The past and the future did not matter, it would always be his.

With a roar, the Black Lightning raced through the whole of Kurosaki, reshaping and renewing and fortifying his existence – and coloring his Mythic Throne with flecks of gold. More than that, a shade of what he would become, of what he always would have been, descended – Satan: vile and gold.

The madness of the Dead Divine Star howled, its phantom reality unable to withstand the affirmation and assertion of Ichigo’s existence and unassailable power.

Ichigo then followed every retreating fragment, his lightning passing through the reach of their Will until the last sickly trace broke beneath it. Then he lifted his gaze towards the enormous thing trying to consume him, and the black radiance within his soul answered the motion of his hand.

He struck again, carrying the idea of his thunder through the folds of reality between them, and this time he reached beyond the rotting surface towards mutated divine amalgam.

Ichigo then saw its history, its personal timeline – everything it was and everything it would be.

Countless black threads stretched from its core, their tangled lengths winding through the broken impressions of Time surrounding them.

And it reminded him of months ago, when he fought Zangetsu after Tiamat’s training and he had seens the threads of possibility blossom in his semi-divine gaze. But now, as he followed those threads of timelines, they began to unfold in an entirely different way.

There were so many that Ichigo could scarcely comprehend their number, yet the longer he looked, the more obvious their condition became.

The rotten lines hung in ragged strands, others curled around themselves in knots that ended nowhere, and through them he felt the remnants of possibilities that could no longer become anything at all. Worlds that had not survived, prayers that would never be spoken, futures reaching towards worshippers whose descendants had already been extinguished.

Dead futures. Impossibilities and never-will-bes, still clutched within Wills that could not bear to release them.

They were all rotten to the core – there was no hope of a better future for them. It was then Ichigo had realized what the Pantheons of Earth had done. They hadn’t just annihilated the alien mythos – they had rewritten all Eternity so that enemy’s very existence became synonymous with doom and despair.

It was a direct emulation of Hell itself…

But he pushed that epiphany away, focusing instead on the thread themselves as what they meant for his battle. Because amidst all that black, one spark of green remained, surrounded by rot and paradox.

Ichigo looked down at the lightning winding between his fingers, and the thought came with such familiarity that his hand had already begun moving before he fully understood it.

Mugetsu – the Final Getsuga Tensho.

The crooked branches drew together, their darkness lengthening into a blade as he wrapped both hands around the power taking shape before him. He remembered the certainty with which he had faced Aizen – but that was then. He was different now, and much more powerful.

He focused on that memory, of the finality of the moment, and he inverted. Back then, it was the end of his story, now? Now he would wield finality as his blade and unleash it upon all his foes.

And so, Satan reached to inflict Finality upon Eternity itself.

He poured it into his thunder, giving the black edge an ending that would leave nothing upon which the dead Wills could fasten themselves again, and as the sphere convulsed before him, Ichigo brought his arm down.

Mugetsu Eigō

Eternity went Black.

And every thread of the Dead Divine Star cut.

Through all the impossible angles of Time surrounding them, through every rotten possibility and every Destined Doom that had been bound around the amalgam of dead divinity... all of it moved before the black blade that descended from Beyond Time… and it was all destroyed.

Hundreds of voices rose together, their cries reaching into a silence that swallowed them whole, wiping them out of existence and from eternity itself.

And then everything folded and Time and Space seemed to compress and melt all around him.Suddenly, his feet struck dusty stone, and he staggered half a step before catching himself, his hands still raised before his chest.

The ruined alien city stood around him once more and Ichigo blinked confused.

He looked sharply across the broken towers, then down at the pale ground beneath his shoes as he felt a considerable emptiness within himself from the power he had just expended. He could still move, could still think clearly, but he had consumed a great deal of his nascent Divinity in that final stroke. A minor frowned crossed his expression; this new Mugetsu of his was not something he should use in his unreleased state. He would have to reserve it for only when he was at full power.

With a slow breath, he drew upon Zangetsu and his Sin, letting their familiar strength begin replenishing what he had spent before looking towards Set.

The Immortal stood beside him with his hands folded behind his back, precisely as he had before the world began to break.

And rather glaringly, the sky above was empty.

Ichigo stared at the place where the brown moon had hung, his brows drawing together as his senses swept across the renewed planet and the cold empty space beyond. As far as he could tell, the Dead Divine Star was gone, and no trace of its previous power remained anywhere on the equally dead world.

“What happened?” he asked, a touch of confusion entering his voice.

“You severed the lingering remnants from all possibility and reality,” Set answered, a quiet pride warming his voice. “So that they were never there and never will be.”

Ichigo turned towards him, then slowly looked back at the empty sky.

It all seemed to have happened so quickly... their entire rampage through the cosmos and then into the higher-dimensions beyond until finally Ichigo managed to reach fully into Timelessnes. And yet... it was all gone now? Like it never happened? It was a jarring thought, but at the same time, the paradox of it made sense to him. If anything, it felt right. He supposed he was getting more and more comfortable with stepping outside of causality all together then.

His stared quietly at the void in the sky where the remnant Wills had illuminated this dead world, and slowly, his fingers curled tightly as the weight of what he had actually managed to pull off settled entrenched itself in his mind. He hadn’t simply destroyed it, he had erased the Dead Divine Star from Time itself.

And beside him, Set chuckled warmly.

“Well done, Ichigo. You slew the Moon.”

=======

Cao Cao screamed until his throat tore, his body thrashing against a surface he could neither see nor recognize as something moved within the ruined hollows of his eyes. He could feel it crawling through the remnants, feel the delicate scrape of things feeding where sight had once been, and every frantic attempt to raise his hands ended with another convulsion wrenching through his chest.

But the agony within his skull was scarcely worse than the wound across his torso, where Satan’s power still clung to the flesh it had torn apart. The True Longinus answered from within his soul, its Holy Might burning through the insidious darkness, yet every fragment it purged seemed determined to take another piece of him with it. Black and golden energies fought through his blood, turning his own body into a battlefield upon which neither force would yield.

And he burned through all of it, through every healing breath that became another scream. His flesh was on fire, his soul was on fire, and somewhere beneath the agony he could feel the struggle reaching deeper, until his very Existence seemed caught between the merciless opposition of Heaven and Hell.

He wanted it to stop, wanted anything that would make it stop, and when something cool finally brushed against his mind, Cao Cao reached for it with a desperation that left no room for suspicion.

Scales slithered around his thoughts, their soothing pressure gathering the pieces that pain had begun pulling apart, while something venomous dripped slowly into his heart. He welcomed that too, clinging to the cold as it settled amongst the memories of dead friends and the unbearable knowledge of his own helplessness.

And though he was breaking, though he was unraveling, a voice found him through the fire, its hiss colder than anything he had ever known.

Shed thy skin, O broken Hero, for an ascendant Villain.

=======

“Mom, I’m going to play in the backyard!”

Elissa looked up from the simmering pot just in time to see her son Cayyed racing past the kitchen doorway, his shoes thumping against the floorboards as he made for the back of the house.

“Okay, but don’t go past the fence!”

“I won’t!”

The door banged shut before she could remind him to close it gently, and Elissa shook her head with a fond smile as she returned to stirring their supper. He had given her that same promise yesterday, of course, and she had still found him halfway down the lane, earnestly explaining to a neighbor why the strange tracks behind her shed absolutely needed investigating. Her son had an unfortunate habit of deciding that an adventure was considerably more important than making his mother happy.

Honestly, little boys…

One of these days, she would have to do something about that. For now, however, she was content to hear his footsteps pattering across the yard while she lowered the heat beneath the pot.

Their home stood near the edge of town, where the paved road gave way to a narrow dirt lane and the houses grew farther apart. It was hardly the sort of place anyone important would trouble themselves to visit, but Elissa liked it well enough. Out here, in the fringes of the Empire, there were opportunities for her husband to hold steady employment, room for Cayyed to play, and friendly neighbors who worked together to form a tight knit community. And the local market was close enough that she could walk there without having to spend ludicrous fees on magical transportation that was so common in the megalopolises of the Devil Empire.

And whatever troubles occupied the grand cities and the palaces of the Pillar Lords, they seldom reached this far into the frontier.

And anything regarding the Satans came from the local monk tending their little town shrine, whose sermons offered considerably more certainty than the gossip exchanged beside the market stalls. That had been especially true these last few days, with everyone inventing some new explanation for the strange weather and the quakes that had rattled dishes from cupboards all over town.

Apparently, the Satans had been wrestling Dragons in the sky.

Elissa snorted softly as she lifted the spoon to taste the broth. Honestly, the things some people would believe! As though the Dark Lords had nothing better to do than chase enormous lizards around the Underworld! She could just imagine their monk’s expression when someone inevitably asked him about it after the next service.

As for whatever really caused the disturbances, she just hoped it was over. Cayyed had woken frightened during one of the tremors, and it had taken quite some time for her and her husband to convince him that the house wasn’t going to fall down on top of them all.

Suddenly, a crash came from the back hallway.

Elissa flinched, the spoon knocking against the rim of the pot, and the sharp sound of breaking glass immediately drew her towards the doorway.

“Cayyed?”

She hurried around the corner and found him just inside the back door, hunched beside the small table where her vase had stood. Broken pieces lay around his shoes, water spreading across the floorboards, but whatever admonishment she might have offered disappeared when she noticed the way he was holding his stomach.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” She crouched beside him, reaching for his shoulder. “What happened?”

“Mom, I don’t feel so good.”

He lifted his face towards her, and Elissa’s hand stopped halfway to his cheek.

Dark veins showed beneath his skin, greenish-black lines branching from his throat and creeping towards his eyes. His face was damp, his breathing coming in small, uneven gulps, and as she stared, another faint line spread beneath his jaw.

“Oh, Satan… Cayyed, honey, what’s wrong?”

She drew him towards her, one hand pressing against his forehead while the other settled around his back. He was so hot that she instinctively pulled her fingers away before touching him again, trying to make sense of how he could have become this ill in the few minutes since he left the kitchen.

“Mom, my tummy hurts.” His voice trembled as he clutched at her sleeve. “It hurts so much!”

“All right, sweetheart. All right, I’ve got you.”

Elissa slid an arm beneath him to lift him, already turning towards the front of the house, but he suddenly heaved against her. She barely managed to support him as dark bile spilled onto the floor in massive globs, his whole body shaking beneath her hands.

“Cayyed!” Her voice rose sharply, and she tightened her hold as his knees began to give way. “Sweetie, we’re going to the healer right now!”

But he was crying too hard to respond, his fingers twisting within her sleeve as she tried to gather him into her arms.

“Mommy! It hurts! It hurts so much, I can’t –” He dragged in a frightened breath, his eyes searching hers. “Mom, it hurts, I can’t –”

And then suddenly, his head jerked abruptly to one side, an audible crack announcing the snapping of his neck.

“CAYYED!”

She caught his face between her hands, trying to turn him back towards her, but his right arm suddenly rose above his head. Elissa stared as it grew beneath the fabric of his sleeve, his hand changing shape while a strange green sheen spread across his fingers.

“No,” she whispered, pulling him closer even as his shoulder pushed against her grasp. “No, no, sweetheart, look at me. Look at Mommy.”

He tried to answer, and the sound that emerged made her heart lurch.

His clothes tightened as his body changed within them, forcing her hands apart despite every desperate effort to hold him still. Green scales caught the hallway light, their metallic surfaces spreading across the places where those dreadful veins had appeared, and Elissa stumbled backward as his weight became too much for her to support.

“SOMEONE HELP!” she screamed towards the open door. “DEAR SATAN, SOMEONE HELP! CAYYED! CAYYED!”

But she couldn’t leave him, couldn’t make herself turn away while her little boy was still reaching towards her.

She caught his hand again, searching the changing face before her for his eyes, for anything that would tell her he could still hear her. Only moments ago he had been running through this same hallway, promising to stay inside the fence, and she had supper waiting upon the stove, and none of this could possibly be happening.

Then the table overturned beside them, and she scrambled back as something heavy struck the wall.

A deafening roar filled the house.

Elissa froze upon the floor, staring up at the dragon-like creature looming where her son had stood. It was taller than she was, its green-scaled shoulders crowding the narrow hallway while its claws pressed into the scattered pieces of her broken vase.

And still she searched its face.

“Cayyed?” she pleaded through a sob.

Its head turned towards her voice, and for one desperate moment she reached out.

Then it pounced, and Elissa’s scream caught in her throat as the opening jaws filled her sight.

=======

A/N: Sorry for the slight delay in releasing this chapter, work has been riding me this week.

100 CHAPTERS!!! THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR STICKING WITH ME ALL THESE YEARS! I genuinely never thought I'd write this much for one story. It's been a blast and I'm looking forward to sharing the rest of the story with you all!Mugetsu Eigō (無月永劫) Moonless Eternity