Then, the colossus of living obsidian, the Guardian of the planet, the ecosystem's maximum response to a threat…
Began to go mad, to rage.
Launching another tentacle at Dorian, this time there was no fear or worry. He simply remained standing in the same spot.
The Primordial Guardian's tentacle fell. The air became a wall. Dorian, immobilized, saw the shadow engulf him.
Then the tentacle, mere centimeters from crushing his skull, stopped.
Not because the Guardian wanted to stop it. It was because it couldn't advance further.
The air between Dorian and the tentacle had crystallized. A barrier of pure blue energy, solid as diamond, invisible except for the light it refracted. The tentacle pressed against it, the plates of living obsidian creaking with tension, but not a single millimeter gave way.
Dorian breathed again. His breath once more came out as blue vapor.
He raised his right arm, the one previously dislocated. Beneath the skin, the blue light traced along the bones and tendons like a scanner.
He moved. The "crystal" around him shattered with the sound of a thousand ice bells breaking. The fragments of energy didn't fall. They dissolved into the air, increasing the blue field now enveloping him.
—"Now," said Dorian, and his voice had a quiet, non-noisy echo. "Let's play."
He prepared a punch.
The Guardian, stepping back, lashed out a tentacle like a whip at supersonic speed. Dorian didn't dodge it.
He clenched his fist.
The blue light around his arm condensed. Not like a glove. It was like a structure. Layer upon layer of blue geometry superimposed around his fist, forming something that wasn't a weapon, but the physical idea of an impact.
He struck.
He didn't strike the tentacle. He struck the air in front of him.
Space shattered.
Not metaphorically. Visually. Like struck glass, a web of white and blue vortices appeared in the air, propagating from his fist to the approaching tentacle.
The tentacle disintegrated upon contact.
It didn't explode. It wasn't cut. It ceased to exist within a three-meter radius. The living obsidian turned to black dust, then that dust dissolved into particles of light.
The Guardian roared, this time with a note of real pain. The stump of the tentacle smoldered with residual blue energy.
Dorian looked at his fist. The geometric structure around it faded. There was no heat. No recoil. Only the certainty that he had nullified a part of the guardian's tentacles that had threatened him.
—"See?" he said to the colossus, advancing. "It's not just power. It's authority."
The other tentacles attacked en masse. A dozen. A storm of obsidian and fury.
Dorian didn't move from the spot.
Instead, he opened his palms, pointing upward.
From his hands, blue light erupted like two silent geysers. But they didn't shoot forward. They curved, forming a perfect dome around him. A dome made of thousands of glowing blue hexagons, each rotating slowly.
The tentacles impacted the dome.
And rebounded.
Not like hitting metal. Like hitting the concept of "no." Each impact caused the touched hexagon to glow intensely, and the tentacle was repelled with equal, sometimes double, force. One struck the Guardian's own head, making it stagger.
Inside the dome, Dorian felt no vibrations. He was in the eye of the hurricane. In the absolute silence of his own power.
—"Omega," he said, his voice clear within the bubble. "Are you recording the defense pattern?"
—"Yes, sir. It's… beautiful. And terrifying."
—"It's just physics. Helion physics."
He concentrated his will. The dome contracted violently, shrinking from covering 10 meters to compressing around his body like a second skin of dense blue light.
Then he jumped.
Not just with his legs. Propelled by a jet of blue energy that burst beneath his feet, which didn't burn the ground but left behind a flash of light in a perfect circle like crystalline frost.
He flew directly toward the Guardian's chest. Toward the fragment.
The beast tried to catch him in mid-air with its remaining tentacles. Dorian spun in the air. The blue light around him spun with him, becoming a drill of pure energy. Tentacles that touched it were pulverized on contact, undone into particles that the blue spiral absorbed.
It wasn't an attack. It was a process. A systematic nullification.
He arrived in front of the fragment. He saw it pulse, sick, corrupt. He extended his hand, closing his fist to strike.
His entire arm, wrapped in the densest blue, made contact with the black-iridescent surface.
The universe held its breath.
The fragment shrieked. A sound existing outside of audio. The blackish-blue corruption fought against Dorian's icy blue. It was a struggle between a cancer and a scalpel of cold light.
Dorian's light invaded the fragment embedded in the guardian's chest. Not just destroying it. Rewriting it. Line by line, atom by atom, the corrupt pattern was overwritten by the ordered, icy pattern of Helion. The black turned gray. The corrupt blue turned icy blue. The violent pulsation calmed, became regular, then… ceased.
The sonic blow that also impacted the guardian, piercing its chest. The blue energy passed through the hole in its chest, exiting out the back.
The fragment was gone. It no longer existed.
Not in an explosion. In a slow, dignified, and terrible gravitational collapse inward. The obsidian plates flaked away, turning to black dust.
The tentacles writhed and dissolved like smoke. The forty meters of primordial terror shrank, compacted, became nothing, absorbed by the very soil that had created them.
In a matter of seconds, nothing remained. Just a mound of black dust.
He was exhausted. And the blue light enveloping Dorian flickered. The geometric patterns on his skin faded. He fell to his knees on the mound of fresh earth that was all that remained of the colossus.
The light withdrew inward, like a receding tide. It seeped back through his skin, leaving it normal, sweaty, and human. The blue in his eyes extinguished, leaving behind his usual, exhausted green.
The price hit him all at once. Every cell screamed. Every muscle was fire. Breathing was knives. But all the healed wounds remained healed. The pain, however, was unbearable.
—"Helion State: deactivated," said Omega. "Duration: 4 minutes, 17 seconds. Biological collateral damage: severe."
To be expected, since I used it creatively, hahaha.—Dorian replied to Omega.
Before losing consciousness, he saw the first green shoots emerging from the earth that had once been the Guardian.
The blue light had healed more than it had destroyed.
It had balanced the scales.
—"Pro… tocol Cradle… re-engaging. Suppression… restarting. Helion signature… contained." A long pause, full of white noise. "Vital readings… critical. Sir… can you… hear me?"
Yes, I hear you, but let me rest a bit.—Dorian replied to him.
As you wish, sir.—added Omega.
As the planet's sunlight began to set, leaving the sky increasingly darkened.