Consciousness returned to Nulls in a wave that washed through his newly formed body with the force of a collapsing star. The darkness of the statue's belly was gone, replaced by the familiar white glow of his cube, but everything about that glow was different now.
Nulls opened his four eyes. The cube materialized around him in overlapping layers of perception, each eye registering the space from a slightly different angle, the images merging in his mind into a composite view that revealed details no single pair of eyes could capture.
The talismans on the walls were ash now, their symbols reduced to black smears that flaked away as he watched, their power dissipated completely. The candles that had surrounded him had melted into puddles of wax that spread across the floor in irregular pools, their flames extinguished with such sudden violence that the smoke still rose in thin tendrils toward the ceiling.
His body rose to ten feet in height, the top of his head nearly brushing the cube's ceiling where before he had hung suspended by chains. Jagged antlers extended from his temples, sweeping back and up in a shape that was both organic and architectural, their surfaces jet black and membranous, catching what little light remained and absorbing it completely.
The skin stretched across his frame was crimson, deep and rich, the color of arterial blood freshly spilled, and it covered muscles that were lean and firm and utterly unlike the flesh that had once composed him.
His hair was white, the pure white of a newborn lamb's wool, properly groomed and almost absurdly soft in contrast to the nightmare of the rest of his appearance. It framed a face that had been remade into something that belonged in the oldest and darkest of myths.
Where the hair ended at his neck, the transformation continued, Across every surface of his body, new talismans glowed.
They were nothing like the ones that had covered the cube walls, the desperate work of a hundred arcanists pouring their entire beings into symbols of containment. These talismans came from older places, from deeper ages, from times before humans had learned to shape symbols at all.
Some were crimson like his skin, others burned with blue fire like Yog's touch, still others shone with colors that had no names in any human language. They shifted as he moved, rearranging themselves across his flesh like living things seeking the most advantageous positions.
His fingers had become claws, each digit ending in a point of jet black that gleamed with an inner light. The transformation extended from the first knuckle to the tip, the black material seeming to flow out of his crimson flesh like oil separating from water.
claws extended, each one curving to a point of such perfect sharpness that the air itself seemed to part around them. The ends of each finger were jet black, the color deepening from the crimson of his skin through shades of red to brown to absolute darkness at the tips.
He raised one hand to his face, curiosity overcoming the need for caution, and touched his cheek. The claw passed through his flesh as if it were not there.
His face separated along the line of the cut, the two halves sliding apart to reveal the interior: his skull, sawed cleanly in half, the brain within exposed to open air, the raw surfaces of bone and tissue gleaming wetly in the dim light.
The sensation was not pain but absence, a void where feeling should have been, an awareness of separation without the agony that should have accompanied it. His brain, bisected, continued to function. His thoughts continued to form. His consciousness remained intact and alert as his own head hung open before him.
Nexus flowed from somewhere deep within him, a vast lake of power that he could feel now as clearly as he had once felt his own heartbeat. The power surged into the wound, into the separated halves of his face, and they flowed back together like water finding its level. The cut sealed. The bone knitted. The skin reformed. Within seconds, his face was whole again, unmarked, as if the injury had never occurred. He flexed his claws, watching the black tips catch the light, and smiled.
His lips stretched from ear to ear in a line that was both smile and threat, the corners of his mouth extending further than any human face could accommodate. When he parted them, he saw teeth that were no longer teeth but needles, countless needles covering every millimeter of gum tissue from the front of his mouth to the back of his throat, each one sharp enough to pierce armor.
Thousands of them, covering every surface of his mouth, packed so densely that no space remained between them. They lined his gums, his throat, the roof of his mouth, his tongue. Each needle was sharp enough to pierce steel, and they all moved slightly as his jaw flexed, a forest of points waiting to close on whatever he chose to bite.
Four eyes blinked in sequence, each lid moving independently of the others, a constant cascade of closure and opening that would have been dizzying to observe but felt natural to him.
The eyes themselves were human in shape but wrong in every other way, their irises the same crimson as his skin, their pupils vertical slits that expanded and contracted as he scanned the cube.
Below his feet, the chains lay in pieces. Seventy links of Argus metal, each one capable of holding beings that had terrorized civilizations, lay scattered across the floor in fragments.
He had broken them simply by moving, by standing, by existing in this space with his new body and his new power. The metal had snapped like dried twigs, its legendary strength meaningless against the force he now commanded.
He stretched, the motion was casual, almost lazy, the stretch of someone waking from a long and restful sleep. His arms extended above his head, his back arched, his newly formed muscles flexing and relaxing in a wave that traveled from his neck to his feet. The talismans on his skin shifted and settled, finding new positions as his body moved.
A yawn escaped him, the motion opened his jaw wider than any human jaw could open, wider than any jaw should open, the needles of his teeth spreading apart to reveal the dark cavern of his throat beyond. He felt the stretch of muscles and ligaments that had been designed for this, that could extend enough to swallow a juvenile human whole if he chose to test that particular capability.
He closed his mouth and considered the possibility. Not now. Perhaps later. Perhaps never. The option existed, and that was enough. Through the walls of the cube, through the impossibly dense water that surrounded it, through the enhanced viscosity that should have trapped anything attempting to move through it, Nulls felt the thumping.
Two thousand Calamity class behemoths circled his prison, their bodies large enough to swallow cities, their hunger a constant pressure against the Argus metal that separated them from their prey.
Each thump transmitted through the water, through the cube walls, through the air inside, a rhythm of approaching doom that had been building since he had first broadcast his presence.
Beyond them, he felt the three leviathans in their surrounding cubes, the Archon class Morbus that had been contained for centuries, their rage and hunger magnified by long imprisonment. They too thumped against their prisons, adding deeper notes to the rhythm of the behemoths.
Nulls stood in the center of his cube, ten feet of crimson flesh and jagged antlers and needle teeth and four blinking eyes, and considered the creatures that wanted to devour him.
"This will not do," he said.
His voice was different now. It came from everywhere, from his throat and from the air around him and from somewhere deeper, somewhere that had not existed before the transformation. The words shaped themselves without the need for tongue or palate, forming directly from his will and manifesting as sound in the space around him.
He looked at the walls of the cube, at the cinders that had been talismans, at the melted wax that had been candles, at the heap of broken chains at his feet.
He looked at the thumping that continued outside, the hunger that would not stop, the creatures that saw him as a feast waiting to be consumed.
He smiled.
His talismans pulsed faster, their colors brightening, their orbits accelerating. The Nexus lake within him stirred, responding to his will, ready to be shaped into whatever form he required.
The expression stretched his lips from ear to ear, revealing the full expanse of needle teeth, and for a moment the thumping outside seemed to falter, as if the behemoths themselves sensed that something had changed inside the cube.
Nulls raised one clawed hand and placed it against the wall. The Argus metal, three meters thick, reinforced by every containment measure humanity could devise, began to glow.
Nulls raised one clawed hand and traced a sigil on the cube wall before him. The symbol formed in the air where his finger passed, lines of deep purple light hanging in the space between him and the metal surface, each stroke precise and deliberate.
The sigil grew as he drew, expanding outward from its center, its geometry more complex than anything human mathematics could describe. When the final line connected, the symbol pulsed once, twice, three times, each pulse brighter than the last.
He flicked his wrist, the sigil shot forward and embedded itself in the cube wall. For a single heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the metal began to glow along the lines of the symbol, the light spreading through the Argus alloy like fire through dry grass.
The glow intensified, moving from red to orange to white to a blue so bright it seared even his new eyes. Cracks formed along the walls, spreading from the symbol outward, fracturing the cube's surface into a web of failure points.
The cube exploded, a sphere of expanding force that shattered the remaining walls into fragments the size of buildings and hurled them outward in every direction.
The water that had surrounded the cube, the impossibly dense water with viscosity a billion times greater than pitch, was shoved back by the shockwave, compressed into a wall of liquid that raced away from the detonation point at speeds that should have been impossible in that medium.
Nulls stood at the center of the explosion, the force washing over him, his new body absorbing the explosion without damage, his four eyes tracking the expanding sphere of destruction with calm interest.
Two thousand Calamity class creatures, each one larger than any structure humans had ever built, were caught by the expanding wall of force and water. They tumbled backward, their massive bodies spinning and flipping in the current, their hungry lunges toward the cube reversed into uncontrolled retreat.
Some collided with each other, their flesh tearing on contact, black blood clouding the water. Others simply vanished into the darkness beyond the shockwave's reach, carried miles away in seconds.
As the blast expanded, it created something new. The water that had been shoved back did not immediately return. Instead, a sphere of emptiness formed around Nulls, a pocket where no water existed, where air had been pulled from the surrounding liquid to fill the void.
The sphere was three kilometers wide and one kilometer tall, its boundaries a churning wall of water that fought to return but could not penetrate the force that held it back.
The moment the explosive force dissipated, the ocean began to reclaim its territory. A wall of water three kilometers high and moving at tremendous speed slammed into Nulls, the pressure of billions of tons of liquid striking his body with force enough to crush mountains.
He staggered, his feet sliding across the bare rock of the ocean floor, his body bending under the assault. For a single step, he moved backward, the water pushing him as if he were a leaf in a storm.
The water continued to rush past him, to press against him, to attempt to move him from his position, but he held. His claws dug into the rock beneath him, his legs braced against the current, his body a fixed point in the chaos of the returning ocean. The pressure that would have turned any living thing into paste was merely an inconvenience.
Before he could fully recover his balance, a shape emerged from the darkness. It was smaller than the behemoths, no bigger than a city bus, but it moved with speed that belied its size. Its body was a mass of writhing appendages, each one ending in a cluster of eyes that stared in every direction simultaneously.
Its mouth was a vertical slit that ran the length of its torso, lined with rows of teeth that curved inward like fishhooks. It had no head, no recognizable features beyond the eyes and the mouth, just a pulsating tube of grey flesh that arrowed directly toward him.
Nulls reached out with both hands as the creature closed the distance. His claws found their targets, the upper edge of the mouth-slit and the lower edge. He gripped the flesh, felt it squirm against his palms, felt the teeth scraping at his wrists, felt the creature's confusion at being caught rather than catching. Then he pulled.
The creature's body separated along its length, the two halves parting with a sound like tearing wet canvas. The split was clean, absolute, the flesh parting along a line that followed no natural seam.
The creature's internal organs spilled out, a tangle of unfamiliar biology that steamed in the cold water. The two halves drifted apart, each one still twitching, still trying to function despite being separated from its other half.
Nulls held the upper half in one clawed hand, the lower half in the other, and considered the remains.
"Ignite."
He channeled Nexus into the corpse. The flesh ignited, burning with a light that pushed back the darkness for hundreds of meters in every direction. The fire was blue, the same blue that had filled the statue, the same blue that now flowed through his veins instead of blood. The creature's body converted to fuel, to power, to a brief flare of illumination that revealed what surrounded him.
Two thousand behemoths filled the water beyond the light's reach.
They had recovered from the shockwave and were returning, their hunger undiminished by the violence of his escape. They came in every shape that nightmare could devise, every form that evolution in absolute darkness could produce. Some were masses of tentacles with mouths at the center, their appendages stretching for hundreds of meters in every direction.
Others were armored behemoths with shells thick enough to withstand the pressure at this depth, their heads bearing horns that glowed with internal light. Still others were things that defied description, shapes that changed as he watched them, bodies that flowed and reformed, creatures that had never been intended to be seen by any eye.
Beyond them, looming in the farthest reaches of his vision, three shapes dominated the darkness. The leviathans, Each one was larger than all of the behemoths combine. Each one was older than human civilization. Each one was a horror sculpted by eons of evolution in an environment that knew no mercy.
The first leviathan was a mountain of flesh and eyes. Its body was roughly conical, widening as it rose from the ocean floor, and its surface was covered in orbs that blinked and swiveled and focused on him with terrible intelligence. Between the eyes, mouths opened and closed, each one large enough to swallow the bus-sized creature he had just killed. The thing had no limbs, no means of propulsion that he could see, yet it moved, drifting toward him with a slowness that spoke of absolute confidence.
The second leviathan was all tentacles and hunger. A central core, small compared to the mass of its appendages, pulsed at the heart of a tangle that spread for kilometers in every direction. Each tentacle was thick as a highway tunnel and covered in suckers lined with teeth that spun like drill bits. The tentacles writhed constantly, exploring the water, tasting it, searching for prey. At the core, a mouth gaped, ringed by tentacles of its own that reached inward rather than outward.
The third leviathan was the worst. It was a tower of fused bodies, thousands of smaller creatures merged into a single towering shape that rose from the ocean floor like a living skyscraper. Faces pressed outward from its surface, frozen in expressions of eternal agony, their eyes open and aware, their mouths open in screams that made no sound.
The thing had no central consciousness, no single mind controlling it, only the aggregate hunger of all the creatures that had been absorbed into its mass. And it was looking at him with all of its thousand eyes.
Nulls released the burning halves of the creature he had killed. They drifted away, their light diminishing as they floated into the darkness.
He stood on the ocean floor, ten feet tall, crimson and white and covered in talismans that glowed with their own power. Four eyes surveyed the army before him. Jagged antlers swept back from his temples. Needle-teeth filled his mouth. Claws sharp enough to cut his own face without resistance flexed at his sides.
Nulls traced sigils with his hands, the water evaporated by the sheer speed of his weaves. Three shapes tore through the fabric of the Scylla ocean, their arrival announced by pressure waves that sent the nearest behemoths tumbling backward through the water.
The creatures that emerged were larger than anything he had summoned before, their forms refined by the transformation he had undergone, their power amplified by the Nexus that now flowed through his veins instead of blood.
Eros came first. The beast of time now stood thirty feet tall, a towering figure of flowing sand that never settled into a single shape. Its body was a constantly shifting storm of grains, each one a frozen moment that could be released or accelerated at will.
Where its face should have been, a vortex spun, drawing in light and sound and the very seconds that passed around it. Its arms ended in claws that flickered between existence and non-existence, always there, never there, striking from moments that had not yet occurred.
Barbatos emerged second. The beast of dichotomy now stood forty feet tall, its body split down the center by a line that glowed with its own light. On the right side, muscles coiled beneath skin that gleamed with health and power, every fiber at its peak condition.
On the left side, the same muscles lay exposed and rotting, flesh hanging in strips from bones that showed through, eyes clouded and empty. The two sides moved in perfect synchronization, their strength equal despite the apparent decay, their claws ready to tear and rend and divide.
Marky came last, but it came differently.
Where the other beasts took form, Marky flowed into a single point of light that expanded and contracted and finally resolved into a shape that Nulls had not expected. A long shaft of dark metal materialized in the water before him, its surface absorbing light rather than reflecting it.
At each end, a massive crescent blade extended, the steel polished to a mirror finish that caught the distant glow of bioluminescent creatures and threw it back in distorted patterns. Along the inner curve of each blade, rows of jagged spikes lined the metal like fangs, some connected by thin strands that looked almost like sinew stretched between teeth.
It was a scythe. A double-ended scythe of gothic elegance and predatory grace.
The weapon floated toward him, and Nulls reached out with his left hand to grasp the shaft. The moment his fingers closed around the metal, he understood.
The weight was troublesome. His arm dropped under the load, the scythe's blade slicing through the water and gouging a trench in the ocean floor beneath him. Muscles that had been designed by cosmic power to move mountains strained against the simple act of holding the weapon level.
The scythe contained within it the entropy of worlds, the accumulated decay of civilizations, the slow dissolution of everything that had ever existed. Lifting it required strength comparable to moving supercontinents, and he did not yet possess that strength.
The behemoths surged forward. Two thousand creatures of nightmare descended upon him, their forms illuminated by the glow of his own talismans. A mass of tentacles with mouths at their centers reached for him from every direction, each tentacle lined with suckers that spun like drill bits.
An armored behemoth with a shell thick enough to withstand the pressure at this depth charged toward him, its head bearing horns that glowed with internal light. Shapes that defied description flowed and reformed as they moved, bodies that were never the same twice, creatures evolved in absolute darkness to become perfect predators.
A tentacle wrapped around his right arm. Nulls felt the suckers bite into his crimson skin, felt the teeth within them spin and try to drill through his flesh. The creature pulled, trying to drag him into the mass of its body where a hundred mouths waited to feed. He planted his feet and held, the scythe still dragging in the mud of the ocean floor.
He redirected Nexus from his right arm, from his legs, from his torso, channeling it all into his left arm and hand. The muscles there bulged, the crimson skin stretching over fibers that now carried the strength of continents.
His right arm went limp, the flesh paling as the Nexus drained away, leaving it useless but light. His left arm, empowered beyond measure, lifted the scythe from the mud.
The blade swung in a wide arc, its edge passing through the tentacle that held him.
Where the scythe touched, the tentacle changed. The flesh at the point of contact began to darken, to shrivel, to flake away into particles that dissolved in the water.
The decay spread from the wound, racing along the length of the appendage, consuming it from within. Within seconds, the entire tentacle had crumbled to dust, and the creature that owned it recoiled, a silent scream issuing from its central mouth.
Nulls stared at the scythe in his hand. The blade gleamed, untouched by the decay it had caused.
The behemoths did not pause. More tentacles reached for him. The armored creature charged. The shape-shifters flowed around his position, seeking gaps in his defense. From the darkness beyond, the three leviathans advanced, their massive forms blotting out what little light remained.
Nulls raised the scythe with his empowered left arm and pointed at the leviathans with his useless right.
"Eros. Barbatos. Those three. Keep them busy. Do not let them reach me."
The beasts moved without hesitation. Eros shot forward, its sand-form accelerating through time itself, covering the distance to the nearest leviathan in a heartbeat. Barbatos followed, its split body tearing through the water, its claws reaching for the mountain of eyes.
The leviathans responded. The mountain of eyes turned its countless orbs toward the approaching beasts, and from each eye, a beam of concentrated pressure lanced out, striking Eros and Barbatos with force enough to crack the ocean floor. The beasts staggered but did not fall, their forms reforming, their advance continuing.
The tentacled leviathan lashed out with a thousand appendages, each one thick as a highway tunnel, each one lined with spinning, toothed suckers. They wrapped around Eros, around Barbatos, trying to crush them, to tear them, to drag them into the central mouth that gaped at the heart of the tangle.
The tower of fused bodies simply opened a thousand mouths and screamed, a sound that vibrated through the water and into the bones of everything within range. The scream carried the agony of all the creatures that had been absorbed into its mass, and it struck Eros and Barbatos with the weight of millennia of suffering.
Through it all, the beasts fought. They tore at tentacles, at eyes, at fused flesh. They bled sand and paradox and the essence of what they were. They held the line.
Nulls turned to face the behemoths. Two thousand of them swarmed around him, their forms pressing in from every direction, their hunger a physical force that pushed against his skin. The armored creature reached him first, its glowing horns aimed at his chest, its charge carrying the momentum of a falling mountain.
He swung the scythe left-handed. The blade caught the creature across its flank, and where it touched, the armored shell began to darken, to crack, to flake away. The creature's charge faltered as its structural integrity dissolved, as the protection it had relied on for millennia turned to dust and drifted away in the current. Its momentum carried it past him, and he brought the scythe back in a reverse stroke that caught its exposed flesh.
The wound bleed and rotted. The creature's body began to collapse from within, its organs decaying at accelerated rates, its muscles losing cohesion, its bones turning brittle and snapping under their own weight. It floated past him, already more corpse than creature, its glowing horns dimming as the life left it.
A mass of tentacles surrounded him. They came from every angle, wrapping around his legs, his torso, his useless right arm, the shaft of the scythe. The mouths at their centers opened and closed, teeth scraping against his crimson skin, trying to find purchase, trying to draw blood. He felt the pressure of their grip, felt the suckers spin and drill, felt the first hints of pain as they began to penetrate.
He channeled more Nexus into his left arm. The muscles there swelled further, the power building to levels that approached critical. He swung the scythe in a circle, the blades passing through the mass of tentacles that held him.
Where the blades passed, tentacles crumbled. The decay spread from each wound, consuming the appendages, consuming the mouths at their ends, consuming the central body from which they sprouted. The creature that had held him dissolved into a cloud of organic debris that drifted away on the current.
More behemoths came. Nulls swung the scythe again and again, each stroke requiring effort that taxed even his empowered arm, each stroke leaving a trail of decaying flesh in its wake. He learned as he fought, adjusting his grip, finding the angles that required less strength, discovering the rhythms that made the weapon an extension of his will rather than a burden to be carried.
A shape-shifter flowed through his guard and struck him in the side.
Its body, momentarily solid, impacted with force enough to crack his ribs. He felt the bones give way, felt the pain lance through his torso, felt the Nexus within him surge to begin the repair. He spun, bringing the scythe around, and caught the creature as it began to flow into a new shape.
The blade touched it mid-transformation, and the decay spread through its shifting form, locking it in a state of perpetual flux that consumed it from within. It thrashed and twisted and finally dissolved, its atoms scattering in the water.
Another creature, this one all teeth and no other features, a maw with fins, charged toward him. He sidestepped, the motion awkward with his useless right arm, and brought the scythe down on its back. The blade sank deep, and the creature's flesh began to rot around the wound, the decay spreading outward until the entire thing was a cloud of organic matter.
They kept coming. Two thousand of them, and he had killed perhaps fifty.
The mountain of eyes screamed in the distance, its attack momentarily focused on the beasts that harried it. Eros had wrapped itself around one of the tentacled leviathan's appendages and was accelerating its personal time, causing the limb to age and wither in seconds.
Barbatos had climbed the tower of fused bodies and was tearing at its surface, each claw-stroke leaving a line of paradox that the creature could not heal.
But the leviathans were strong. Each one was equal to a fifth of his power, and they used magic. Sigils formed in the water around them, complex geometries that pulsed with ancient power.
A spatial fold appeared near Eros, trying to trap it in a pocket dimension. A wave of entropic force struck Barbatos, attempting to decay its already rotting half. Spears of concentrated pressure lanced from the mountain of eyes, each one striking with force enough to stagger the beasts. They could not kill the leviathans quickly. They could only hold them at bay.
Nulls turned back to the behemoths. The mass of creatures before him had grown thicker, the survivors pressing in, their hunger undiminished by the deaths of their fellows. He could see them now, truly see them, their forms illuminated by the glow of his talismans and the blue light of his scythe.
There were things with too many limbs, each limb ending in a cluster of eyes that stared at him with mindless hunger. There were things with no limbs at all, just bodies that undulated through the water, mouths opening along their entire length. There were things that looked almost human, almost, their forms twisted into approximations of the creatures that had built the cube that once held him.
He swung the scythe. A cluster of too-many-limbed creatures dissolved as the blade passed through them, their forms crumbling into organic debris that drifted away. A undulating mass caught the edge of the scythe's reach and began to decay from the point of contact, the rot spreading along its length until nothing remained.
Another creature struck him from behind, its mpact drove him forward, off balance, the scythe dragging in the mud as he stumbled. He felt its teeth sink into his shoulder, felt the flesh tear, felt the Nexus surge to repair the damage even as it occurred. He twisted, bringing his left arm around, and drove the butt of the scythe into the creature's mass. The entropy within the weapon transferred on contact, and the thing began to crumble from the inside.
He stood, shook off the debris, and swung again. The behemoths died by the dozens, by the hundreds, but they did not stop. They could not stop. Their hunger drove them forward, past the bodies of their fellows, past the clouds of organic debris that were all that remained of those who had already fallen. They climbed over the dying to reach him, and he killed them as they came.
His left arm ached with the effort of swinging the scythe. The muscles, empowered though they were, could not sustain this level of exertion indefinitely. He could feel them beginning to tire, beginning to slow, beginning to fail.
He channeled more Nexus into them, drawing power from his legs, from his torso, from everywhere he could spare it. His right arm hung completely useless now, the flesh pale and cold. His legs grew weaker with each transfer, his stance becoming less stable, his movements less precise.
But the scythe continued to swing. Another hundred behemoths fell. Another two hundred. The cloud of organic debris around him grew so thick that he could barely see the creatures beyond it, could only sense them through the pressure of their approach and the hunger that drove them forward.
He killed by feel now, by instinct, by the simple equation of swing and contact and decay. The scythe became an extension of his will, moving through the water in arcs that required less and less conscious thought to execute.
Five hundred behemoths remained. Then four hundred. Then three.
A tentacle wrapped around his left arm, trying to pull the scythe from his grip. He held tight, swung the weapon in a tight arc that brought the blade through the tentacle and into the body beyond. The creature crumbled, but its grip had cost him time, had allowed another creature to close.
This one was all jaws, a sphere of teeth that rolled toward him through the water. It struck him in the chest, its mouth closing around his torso, its teeth piercing his crimson skin and sinking deep. He felt them scrape against his ribs, felt the pressure of its bite as it tried to crush him.
He brought the scythe up and drove the blade through its body from the inside.
The creature convulsed as the decay spread through it, its teeth retracting as its muscles lost cohesion, its body crumbling around him. He pushed free of the dissolving mass and swung again at the next creature, and the next, and the next.
Two hundred behemoths remained.
The leviathans roared in the distance, their attention divided between the beasts that harried them and the prey that was slaughtering their children. The mountain of eyes turned its gaze toward Nulls, and a dozen beams of concentrated pressure shot toward him through the water.
He saw them coming, raised the scythe to block, and the beams struck the blade. The entropy within the weapon absorbed the attack, dissipating the pressure into harmless waves that washed over him. But the impact staggered him, drove him back a step, gave the behemoths time to close.
They swarmed over him, a mass of limbs and mouths and eyes, pressing against him from every direction. He swung the scythe in tight arcs, killing those closest, but more replaced them instantly. They were on him, on his arms, on his legs, on his torso, their teeth finding purchase, their limbs wrapping around him, their weight pressing him toward the ocean floor.
He could not swing. He could not move. He could only hold the scythe and wait.
The behemoths covered him completely, a mound of living flesh that rose from the ocean floor and continued to grow as more creatures joined the pile. Their teeth tore at his skin. Their limbs crushed his body. Their weight pressed him into the mud.
From within the mass, Nulls spoke one word.
"Marky."
The scythe responded.
Entropy exploded from the weapon in all directions, a wave of decay that passed through the mound of behemoths and turned them to dust in an instant. The creatures that had covered him crumbled, their forms dissolving into organic debris that drifted away on the current, leaving him standing alone on the ocean floor, the scythe held before him, its blades gleaming with the light of dissolution.
He looked up. One hundred behemoths remained, and they had stopped their advance. For the first time since the battle began, the creatures hesitated. They had seen their fellows die by the hundreds, by the thousands, and now they had seen a wave of decay consume those who had thought themselves safe in numbers. They hung in the water before him, their forms wavering, their hunger warring with something that might have been fear.
Nulls raised the scythe and pointed it at them.
"Eros. Barbatos. Finish the behemoths. Now."
The beasts disengaged from the leviathans, leaving the three massive creatures momentarily unopposed. They shot through the water toward the remaining behemoths, their forms accelerating, their claws reaching.
Eros moved through the cluster of creatures, its claws passing through their bodies and leaving behind the effects of accelerated time. Behemoths that were struck aged centuries in seconds, their forms withering and crumbling to dust. Barbatos tore through them, its split body dividing the creatures it touched, each claw-stroke leaving behind a paradox that unraveled its victims from within.
Within seconds, the remaining behemoths were gone. The water around Nulls cleared, the organic debris settling slowly to the ocean floor. He stood alone, the scythe in his left hand, his useless right arm hanging at his side, his crimson body covered in wounds that even now were healing as Nexus flowed through them.
Eros and Barbatos returned to his side, their forms flickering with the effort of the battle, their power diminished but not exhausted. They turned to face the leviathans, who had used the moments of their absence to prepare.
The mountain of eyes pulsed with gathered energy, sigils forming in the water around it. The tentacled leviathan had wrapped its appendages around itself, forming a defensive barrier that bristled with spinning, toothed suckers. The tower of fused bodies had opened all of its thousand mouths and was drawing in water, preparing to release a scream that would carry the force of millennia.
The three massive creatures hung in the darkness before him, their attention fixed on the being that had slaughtered their children and now stood ready to face them.
Nulls shifted his grip on the scythe, feeling the weight of it in his empowered left arm, feeling the flow of Nexus through his body, feeling the presence of his beasts at his side. His right arm hung useless. His legs were weak from the transfers. His left arm was tired beyond measure.
Nulls raised the scythe with his empowered left arm, the weight of it dragging at muscles that had already been pushed beyond their limits. His Nexus reserve sat at eighty-five percent, a comfortable margin, but the three creatures before him each carried a fifth of his power within their massive forms. This would not be a slaughter. This would be a fight.
The mountain of eyes struck first. From each of its thousand orbs, beams of concentrated Aetherion lanced through the water, each one capable of cracking the ocean floor, each one aimed directly at him. He raised the scythe and swung it in a wide arc, the blade intercepting the first wave of attacks. Where the beams struck the entropy-forged metal, they dissipated, their energy absorbed and scattered. But the second wave came before he could recover, and the third, and the fourth.
Beams slipped past the scythe's guard and struck his body. The first hit his left shoulder, spinning him sideways, the force of impact sending shockwaves through his frame. The second caught his right side, the side where his arm hung useless, and drove him backward through the water. The third struck his leg, and he felt the bone crack, felt the Nexus surge to begin repairs even as more beams found their marks.
He hit the ocean floor hard, the impact driving him deeper into the sediment.
"Eros!" he shouted through the water. "That mountain! Slow its attacks!"
The time beast shot forward, its sand-form accelerating through the moments between moments. It reached the mountain of eyes and began to weave around it, touching each orb in sequence, accelerating the time of some, slowing others. The barrage of beams became erratic, some firing too fast to aim, others too slow to reach their target.
Nulls pushed himself up from the sediment and raised his left hand. His claws traced a sigil in the water, the lines of purple light hanging in the current, the geometry completing itself in the space of a heartbeat. He flicked the sigil toward the tentacled leviathan, and it shot forward, embedding itself in the mass of writhing appendages.
The sigil was entropy, applied directly. Where it touched, tentacles began to decay, their flesh darkening and sloughing away, their spinning, toothed suckers crumbling to dust. The creature roared, a sound that vibrated through the water and into Nulls's bones, and a wave of its own magic washed back toward him.
A sigil formed in the water before the tentacled leviathan, a complex geometry of lines and curves that pulsed with dark light. From it, a beam of absolute cold shot toward him, the temperature so low that the water around it flash-froze into a tunnel of ice that extended toward his position.
He swung the scythe one-handed, the blade meeting the beam of cold. The entropy within the weapon fought the order of absolute zero, and for a moment, the two forces balanced. Then the beam broke, the cold dissipating into harmless currents, the ice tunnel shattering into fragments that drifted away.
The tower of fused bodies screamed. A thousand mouths opened and released a sound that was not sound, a wave of psychic agony that carried the suffering of every creature absorbed into its mass. The wave struck Nulls directly, and for a moment, he felt it all. The terror of being consumed. The endless pain of fusion. The loss of self. The eternity of awareness within the tower's bulk.
He staggered, the scythe dipping toward the sediment, his concentration fracturing under the assault.
"Barbatos!" he screamed, the word torn from him by force of will. "That creature! Silence it!"
The dichotomy beast turned from its position near the mountain of eyes and shot toward the tower. Its split body, living and dead, slammed into the mass of fused flesh and began to tear. Where its claws struck, paradoxes formed, and the tower's cohesion faltered. The screams became erratic, some mouths closing, others opening to release only silence.
Nulls shook off the residual agony and raised the scythe again. His Nexus reserve had dropped to eighty-two percent. The fight had barely begun.
The tentacled leviathan surged toward him, its remaining appendages reaching, its central mouth gaping. Sigils formed around it, each one a weapon, each one aimed at his position. Beams of pressure. Waves of cold. Pulses of disorientation. The creature fought with the precision of something that had spent millennia hunting in absolute darkness.
He swung the scythe in wide arcs, intercepting what he could, dodging what he could not. A beam of pressure caught his left leg, and he felt the bone shatter, felt himself fall, felt the sediment rise to meet him. He rolled, brought the scythe up, and caught a wave of cold that would have frozen him solid. The blade absorbed it, but the effort cost him. His left arm shook with the strain.
"Eros! That thing! Accelerate its eyes there!"
The time beast adjusted, its form flickering as it touched more orbs, accelerating some, slowing others, creating chaos in the mountain's targeting systems. The barrage became wild, beams shooting in every direction, some striking the tentacled leviathan, others hitting the tower.
Nulls pushed himself up again. His leg was healing, the Nexus flowing through it, the bone knitting, the flesh sealing. He could stand. He could fight.
The tentacled leviathan reached him.
A mass of appendages wrapped around his body, lifting him from the sediment, drawing him toward the central mouth that gaped below. He felt the pressure of their grip, felt the spinning, toothed suckers biting into his crimson skin, felt the creature's hunger as a physical force.
He swung the scythe.
The blade passed through the tentacles holding him, and they crumbled, their forms decaying into organic debris that drifted away. He fell toward the mouth, caught himself on a remaining tentacle, and swung again. The blade caught the edge of the central maw, and the flesh there began to rot, the decay spreading inward.
The creature roared and released him, pulling back, its mouth damaged, its hunger temporarily overwhelmed by pain.
Nulls landed on the sediment, his chest heaving, his left arm screaming with exhaustion. His Nexus reserve had dropped to seventy-eight percent.
The mountain of eyes refocused, its remaining orbs turning toward him. Beams of pressure shot forward, a concentrated volley that filled the water between them. He raised the scythe, but he knew he could not block them all.
"Eros!"
The time beast appeared before him, its sand-form expanding into a wall that caught the beams. Where they struck, time accelerated, and the beams aged into nothingness, their energy dissipating into the current. The wall held, but Eros's form flickered, the effort costing it dearly.
The tower of fused bodies screamed again, a focused wave aimed at Barbatos. The dichotomy beast staggered, its split body flickering as the psychic assault tried to force it into a single state. Living and dead warred within it, and for a moment, it faltered.
Nulls raised his left hand and traced another sigil. This one was time, a complex geometry that would slow the tower's perception, give Barbatos the opening it needed. He flicked it toward the tower, and it shot forward, embedding itself in the mass of fused flesh.
The effect was immediate. The tower's movements slowed, its screams stretching into low, drawn-out groans that lost their psychic edge. Barbatos recovered and redoubled its assault, its claws tearing deeper into the fused mass.
Seventy-five percent.
The tentacled leviathan had recovered. Its damaged mouth was healing, the decay halted by its own magic. Sigils formed around it, more complex than before, weapons that would take time to prepare but would strike with devastating force when released.
Nulls could not give it that time. He pushed off from the sediment, his healing leg holding, his left arm gripping the scythe with all the strength he could muster. He shot through the water toward the tentacled leviathan, his body a crimson blur against the darkness.
The creature saw him coming. Its remaining tentacles reached for him, a wall of appendages that blocked his path. He swung the scythe, and they crumbled. He swung again, and more fell. He swung a third time, and a path opened.
The creature's central mouth gaped before him, its edges still damaged from his earlier strike, its depths a darkness that promised consumption. He raised the scythe high, both hands on the shaft despite his useless right arm, and brought it down with all the force he could muster.
The blade sank deep into the creature's flesh. Decay exploded from the wound, spreading through the mouth, through the throat, through the body beyond. The creature convulsed, its tentacles thrashing, its magic faltering, its life unraveling as the entropy consumed it from within.
Nulls held the scythe, his arms shaking, his body screaming with exhaustion, and watched the leviathan die.
The creature's form darkened, crumbled, dissolved into organic debris that drifted away on the current. Within seconds, nothing remained but a cloud of particles and the memory of what had been.
He pulled the scythe free and turned to face the remaining two.
Seventy-two percent.
The mountain of eyes had ceased its barrage, its remaining orbs fixed on him with something that might have been fear. The tower of fused bodies had slowed its movements, its thousand mouths silent, its attention divided between Barbatos and the being that had just killed one of its own.
Nulls raised the scythe and pointed it at them.
"Two left," he said. "Its such a shame to ruin the smallest and only even, prime number."
The cloud of organic debris still drifted through the water, the last remnants of the leviathan he had killed. Nulls watched it for a moment, feeling the drain on his Nexus reserve at sixty-eight percent, feeling the weight of the scythe in his left hand, feeling the satisfaction of a kill well executed.
Then the debris stopped drifting.
The particles that had been slowly dispersing through the current froze in place, suspended as if time itself had halted for them alone. A light began to emanate from within the cloud, a deep violet glow that pulsed with a rhythm that matched nothing in the ocean around them. The pulses grew faster, brighter, more insistent, and the debris began to move.
It moved inward.
The cloud contracted, pulling itself back together, the particles reassembling into shapes that should have been impossible. Flesh reformed from dust. Bone knitted from ash. Organs rebuilt themselves from scattered molecules. Within seconds, the cloud had condensed into a form that was recognizably leviathan, but recognizably different.
The creature that emerged was white, pure white, the color of fresh snow in a world that had never seen snow. Its body was serpentine, stretching for miles through the water, its length so great that Nulls could not see where it ended. Thousands of fins ran along its spine, each one a sliver of material that caught the faint light and shattered it into rainbows, each fin the size of canyons, each edge so impossibly thin that it seemed to exist in the gaps between atoms.
The serpent's head was wider than any skyscraper was tall, its jaws longer than ocean trenches were deep. Teeth lined those jaws, black as void, sharper than obsidian, each one capable of punching through anything that existed in this reality. Its eyes opened, and within each socket, pupils the size of great lakes stared out at him with hunger that had waited eons to be satisfied.
Scales covered its body, each one colossal, each one shifting in color to match the water around it, making the creature nearly invisible except when it chose to be seen. The serpent moved, and the water at the leading edge of its dorsal fin underwent a violent transformation. A billion molecules in its path flipped and rotated in a synchronized dance, aligning themselves for the strike that would follow. Then the fin passed through them.
The blade unstitched the ocean Where the fin passed, liquid water vanished, replaced instantly by shimmering wakes of pure hydrogen and oxygen gas. The crushing pressure of the abyss fought to collapse these voids, but the serpent moved faster than the sea could heal itself.
A jagged scar of bubbles trailed behind it, a silver lightning bolt frozen in the deep, marking where the building blocks of life had been ripped into their elemental ghosts.
A school of fish, thousands strong, swam into the serpent's path. They did not bleed. They did not die. They simply fizzed away into vapor as their internal fluids flashed to gas, their bodies becoming clouds of atoms that dispersed into the current.
The serpent's mouth opened, and from it emerged a sound that was not sound, a vibration that passed through the water and into Nulls's bones, a declaration that the hunt had resumed.
Nulls looked at the two remaining leviathans behind the serpent. The mountain of eyes had repositioned, its orbs all focused on him. The tower of fused bodies had stopped screaming, its thousand mouths closed, its attention fixed on the battle ahead
He raised his left hand and traced a sigil in the water, a simple command to his beasts. Eros and Barbatos turned toward him, their forms flickering with exhaustion, their power diminished by the long fight. He looked at them, at the drain they represented, at the Nexus that flowed from him to sustain their existence.
"Eros. Barbatos. Return."
The beasts did not hesitate. Their forms dissolved, the sand of Eros scattering into the current, the split body of Barbatos fading into nothing. The Nexus drain lessened immediately, the flow redirecting back into him, filling his reserves, strengthening his body.
Sixty-eight percent became seventy. Seventy became seventy-two. Seventy-two became seventy-four.
He felt the power surge through him, felt his muscles tighten, felt his connection to the scythe deepen. The weapon that had been a burden now felt merely heavy, the equivalent of a five kilogram weight for a bodybuilder who had trained with a hundred and twenty. He could swing it freely now. He could fight.
He raised the scythe and pointed it at the three leviathans.
"No more beasts," he said. "Just me and the scythe. Come and die."
The serpent struck first.
It shot through the water with speed that defied its size, its dorsal fin leaving a trail of gas and fire in its wake. Nulls waited until the last moment, then swung the scythe in a wide arc, aiming for the creature's snout.
The blade connected.
Entropy exploded from the point of impact, spreading through the serpent's scales, gnawing at the flesh beneath. The creature recoiled, a shudder passing through its massive frame, but the wound did not stop it. Already, the decay was being pushed back, the flesh regenerating even as it rotted.
Nulls felt the scythe's poison take hold, felt the continuous entropy that would keep working even as the wound healed. The serpent would have to expend energy constantly to patch that spot, would have to divert resources from elsewhere in its body to keep the decay from spreading.
A beam of pressure shot toward him from the mountain of eyes. He spun, brought the scythe around, and caught the beam on the flat of the blade. The entropy absorbed it, dissipated it, but the impact still staggered him, still drove him sideways through the water.
Before he could recover, the tower of fused bodies opened a hundred mouths and released a focused wave of psychic agony. It struck him directly, and for a moment, he felt the suffering of every creature in that tower. He felt their terror. He felt their despair. He felt their endless, screaming awareness.
He shook it off, the Nexus within him burning through the psychic assault, but the effort cost him. Seventy-three percent.
The serpent was already circling back, its jaws opening, its black teeth gleaming. Behind it, sigils formed in the water, complex geometries that pulsed with power. The creature was preparing something, some magic that would take time to complete but would strike with devastating force when released.
He pushed off from the water, shooting toward the serpent, the scythe raised for another strike. The creature saw him coming and twisted, bringing its dorsal fin around to meet him. The edge of that fin, that impossibly thin sliver of void-glass, aimed directly for his chest.
He swung the scythe to meet it, the two weapons collided, and for a moment, the world held still. The entropy blade met the molecular edge, and the forces balanced. Decay fought dissolution. Order fought chaos. The water around them flashed to gas, then to plasma, then to something that had no name.
The serpent's fin shattered. Shards of void-glass spun away through the water, each one trailing its own wake of fire and gas. The creature screamed, a sound that vibrated through the ocean floor, and recoiled, its weapon destroyed, its face a mask of pain.
He swung the scythe again, this time aiming for the serpent's flank. The blade bit deep, and entropy flooded the wound. The flesh around it blackened, crumbled, fell away. The creature thrashed, trying to escape, but Nulls held on, dragging the scythe through its flesh, leaving a trail of decay in his wake.
A spear from the mountain of eyes caught him in the shoulder. He felt the bone shatter, felt the Nexus surge to repair it, felt his arm go weak. The scythe dipped, and the serpent pulled free, its wound already beginning to regenerate, the entropy fighting against the creature's magic in a continuous battle that would drain them both.
The tower of fused bodies released another wave, this one aimed at the scythe itself, trying to disrupt the entropy within it. Nulls felt the weapon shudder in his grip, felt the decay within it waver, felt it almost slip from his control.
He pulled the scythe close, channeled Nexus into it, reinforced its structure against the psychic assault. The weapon steadied, its hunger returning, its edge sharpening once more. The serpent circled back, its dorsal fin already regrowing, its wounds healing. The mountain of eyes prepared another barrage. The tower of fused bodies gathered its energy for another scream.
Nulls's mind raced through possibilities, through strategies, through deductions. The first leviathan had been reduced to nothing. Absolutely nothing. And yet it had returned, transformed, stronger than before. Something was keeping them from dying. Something was anchoring them to existence.
Was it their Aetherion reserves? The first leviathan had been reduced to zero, its energy completely gone, yet it had come back. So not that.
Was it the other two? Were they somehow linked, their existence tied together so that none could die while any survived? The first had died alone, with the other two watching, and it had returned. That suggested a connection. A bond. A shared existence that prevented individual death.
The second theory made sense. If they were linked, if their lives were intertwined, then killing one would not work. The others would simply pull it back from death, would share their energy, their existence, their very being to keep it alive. To kill them permanently, he would have to kill all three at once. One blow. One moment. One absolute ending.
The serpent lunged, Nulls swung the scythe, meeting its jaws with the blade. The teeth shattered on contact, black shards spinning away through the water. The creature recoiled, but its momentum carried it forward, and its body slammed into him with force enough to crack continents.
He felt his ribs break. Felt his spine compress. Felt the Nexus surge to repair the damage even as more damage was inflicted. He tumbled through the water, the scythe still in his grip, his body a ruin that refused to stop fighting.
A beam from the mountain of eyes caught him in the leg. The limb shattered below the knee, the flesh tearing, the bone splintering. He felt it go, felt the Nexus flood the wound, felt the regeneration begin even as he spun through the current.
The tower of fused bodies released another wave, this one aimed at his mind, trying to break his concentration, trying to make him lose the scythe. He felt it press against his consciousness, felt the weight of a thousand screaming souls, felt them try to pull him into their agony.
He pulled himself upright in the water, his leg already reforming, his ribs knitting, his spine realigning. The scythe pulsed in his grip, its entropy hungry, its edge waiting.
The serpent came again, faster this time, its jaws regenerated, its fins regrown. Behind it, the mountain of eyes prepared another barrage. Behind them, the tower of fused bodies gathered its energy for another scream.
Nulls raised the scythe and swung, the blade caught the serpent across the face, carving a trench through its scales, through its flesh, through the bone beneath. Entropy flooded the wound, and this time, Nulls pushed more Nexus into it, feeding the decay, making it spread faster, making it harder to heal.
The creature screamed and pulled back, its face a ruin, its regeneration struggling against the continuous poison of the scythe's touch.
A beam from the mountain caught him in the chest. He felt his sternum shatter, felt his heart stutter, felt the Nexus surge to repair the damage even as more beams followed. He swung the scythe one-handed, catching some, missing others, taking hits that would have killed anything else.
The tower's scream hit him, and for a moment, he was lost. He felt the agony of a thousand creatures, felt their terror, felt their endless suffering. He felt himself start to slip, start to fall, start to lose the thread of his own existence. Then the scythe pulsed, and he was back.
He was losing. They were wearing him down, their numbers, their regeneration, their coordination all working against him. He needed time. He needed space. He needed to think.
He raised his left hand and traced a sigil in the water. Time. The equation. He set the variable D, the distance between himself and the leviathans, to one hundred kilometers. The sigil completed, and he felt the Nexus drain, five percent gone in an instant.
The water around him blurred as the distance collapsed, as he shot through the space between moments, as he appeared a hundred kilometers away from the battle. He hung in the darkness, alone, the scythe heavy in his grip, his body a patchwork of wounds and regenerations.
He had seconds. Maybe less.
The serpent found him in less than a fraction of a second. Its head emerged from the darkness, its eyes fixed on him, its jaws opening. Behind it, the mountain of eyes materialized, its orbs already glowing with gathered energy. Behind them, the tower of fused bodies appeared, its thousand mouths opening for another scream.
They had tracked him. Somehow, impossibly, they had followed him across a hundred kilometers in less than a heartbeat. Nulls raised the scythe. He gripped it with both hands, channeled Nexus into his arms, into his shoulders, into his back. He swung it as hard as he could, not at the leviathans, but away from them, in the opposite direction.
The scythe shot from his grip, a blur of dark metal and pale steel, trailing entropy as it flew. And Nulls, still holding on, was pulled with it.
He slingshotted through the water, the scythe's momentum carrying him away from the leviathans, away from the battle, away from the death that waited for him. He flew faster than anything should have been able to move in this pressure, faster than sound, faster than thought, faster than the creatures that hunted him could follow.
The serpent lunged, but he was already gone. The mountain fired, but its beams passed through empty water. The tower screamed, but its agony found no target. Nulls flew into the darkness, the scythe leading the way, his body trailing behind it like a flag in a hurricane. He had seconds to plan. Minutes at most. The leviathans would find him again. They always found him.
But for now, he was alive. For now, he was free. For now, he could think.