Chapter 145: End of an Era
5th June 2006, New York City
(Jasmine Sayre POV)
The man waved his hand and a portal opened. Hell no, I’m not going quietly. I don’t care that he’s a cosmic entity. I have defied Death itself. I will do so again with him.
I raised my hand and my outfit changed. I was wearing my Morrigan armor now, with Death’s cloak of invisibility and my staff in my hand. This wasn’t going to be an easy fight and I knew it. I was probably going to lose, but I had to try. I point my staff at him and exclaim, “I’m not going anywhere!”
The man smiled at me, “I never expected you to go down without a fight, Morrigan. Let’s see what you can do without using Death’s power.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds before running at each other at blinding speeds. It seems we’ll start with physical combat. Entropy tried to punch me, but I was able to redirect it with my staff. I still felt the impact rattling my skeleton. Damn, he’s a lot stronger than me physically. Of course, he is; he’s a fucking cosmic entity, after all.
I tried to hit him with my staff, but the man kept dodging while he looked like he wasn’t even breaking a sweat. He’s purely on the defensive, but I could tell that he’s the one dictating the pace of the fight. I attack him with a full powered swing of my staff, but the bastard just stopped it with his hand. What the hell? This was a fully empowered attack. I look at him and I could sense the smugness rolling off him.
I snarl in anger and kick him in the chest. He looked like he barely moved by the attack, and I was able to get my staff into another swing, this time pressurizing the air behind it to give it more power. The act seemed to have surprised him, considering the slight widening of his eyes. The attack hit him dead on and sent him flying a couple of feet back before he righted himself and landed on his feet.
Damn, the only thing that the last attack did, was just surprise him. The man clapped at me, “Impressive, very impressive. That was a nice trick. I never saw that coming. Dare I say against another opponent it would have been devastating. You always were very inventive.”
I snark back at him, “Well, you’re going to love this!”
Suddenly, my staff was enveloped by darkness that went up until the top and started to materialize a blade. My staff was basically a scythe of darkness.
The man was still smirking at me. I so wanted to wipe that thing off his face. I swung my staff horizontally and the blade extended, becoming a truly giant scythe. Entropy seemed to realize its danger and quickly moved out of the way. I telekinetically push myself forward and punch him, sending him flying back. I, then, grabbed him from the air with my telekinesis and pulled him towards the ground. I swing my staff at him once more and the giant scythe blade races towards him without giving him a chance to get away. And to my surprise, the attack actually connected, the impact creating a powerful gust of air. I look at the result only to be scared out of my mind when I realize that Entropy had just raised his hand and grabbed the blade of darkness.
What the fuck, this was pure destruction given form, how the hell is he doing that?
The man looked at me and grinned, “My turn!”
I was barely able to register when the man practically flew towards me, punching me in the face. I could feel my jaw break and then slowly heal afterwards. Before I could even register the pain, I was once again punched in the chest, breaking a couple of ribs. I was thankfully able to see the last attack coming because I made the ground underneath me rise up and send me flying in the air, where I righted myself and was able to land successfully.
I’m actually being pummeled, right now. I haven’t been this outclassed in a fight since Atlantis. Sure, I lost a few fights, but most of them were because I was caught off guard or I was being negligent. I knew that if I went back, I could have easily won these fights. But now, I was genuinely lacking in front of my opponent, and it showed.
I can’t beat him in a straight fight. In terms of physical power, he was stronger, faster, more agile. In terms of cosmic powers, I knew that my magic wouldn’t be able to hold up. I need to trick him somehow. Get him into position and put everything into a single attack.
Alright, my only trump card are the celestial runes. They could actually end up very useful in this scenario. Alright, I had a plan formed in my head, and how to execute it. I first need to distract him, somehow, while I set everything up.
Funnily enough, the man was the one who started talking to me, “It’s always fun to fight you, Morrigan. For a mortal, you’re very impressive, even without using any cosmic energy.”
“I wish I could say the same thing.”
The man snorted at me, “Why don’t you just give up? You must know by now that your victory is impossible. I’m even doing you a favor; I’m planning on sending you to a world where no one would have any powers. You could reign there, supreme. You could be worshipped as a Goddess. That is until I destroy the universe when I succeed. But at least, you would have had a nice few years before dying with the rest of the multiverse.”
Entropy seems serious about this, and I while I had no delusions that I would be able to change his mind, I needed to buy some time until I’m ready, “Why are you doing this? Are you really that selfish that you would kill every single person in the multiverse, just for your satisfaction? Think about the other cosmic entities, how that would affect them. What would happen to Life, if there was no one alive in the multiverse? What would happen to fate, when nothing would ever change? What would happen to Death, when nothing and no one will ever die?”
The man stiffened, and I knew that my words hit home. He snarled at me, “It would be exactly what they deserved. They always dismissed me, ignored my pain, my suffering. They did nothing to help, they didn’t care enough to even try. They will get what they deserve. It’s time for someone else to be in my place.”
The cosmic entity was really angry now and he leapt to attack me once more. And lucky for me, I was done with my plan. I had been slowly carving a runic array in the ground. The second before he hit me, I teleported back a couple of meters and activated the array. It took a lot out of me to activate something as inefficient and power intensive, but I was in a hurry, and I never saw this fight coming.
The array was the most complicated and powerful binding spell that has probably ever existed. It worked by locking the space around the captive, making sure that the victim wouldn’t move. I had used the space rune as a base while creating the array and it worked.
The cosmic entity had run towards me and was ready to pummel me and was caught by the trap. He looked frozen in space, as if he was a three dimensional picture. I needed to hurry and attack him, because I knew that Entropy was a fucking cosmic entity and could use celestial runes as if it was his native tongue. It probably was, to be fair. What do cosmic entities use to communicate, I wonder?
This wasn’t the time for this. I needed to get rid of Entropy first. I materialized the power rune in front of the end of my staff and started charging up. This was going to be one of my strongest attacks. After a minute or so, the spell was charged, and I let go of the pressure.
This attack was basically a beam of power and darkness rolled into one. I used my strongest and most destructive elements and combined it with the power rune. It was a beam of pure destruction, that destroys anything it touches, It could vaporize cities, flatten mountains, destroy continents. I would never dare to actually use it on Earth. I had theorized it, of course, and had tested it once in the mirror dimension, but this was one of my trump cards, annihilation given form.
The beam travelled at practically light speed at my enemy, hitting his frozen form dead on. The attack didn’t even stop there, it kept going past him, vaporizing the mountain that was behind him and probably the one after that.
I screamed in exertion as I stopped the attack. The air was full of ash, and I could barely see straight. Did my attack kill my opponent? Did I slay a cosmic entity?
I freeze as I hear a slow clapping in front of me. Suddenly, the ash around me disappears and in front of me is an intact Entropy grinning at me, “That was one of the best attacks I have ever seen. The planning, from start to finish was excellent. Is this what you’re capable of when you don’t hold back? And this is without any cosmic energy as well; I couldn’t feel a hint of Death’s power in that beam.”
I was still gaping at him, “How? How the hell did you survive that?”
The man looked at me with pity, “Oh, honey, I’m a cosmic entity. You can’t kill me. I am an idea given form, the living representation of a physical phenomenon. So long as entropy was applied in the world, I cannot die. We can be weakened of course, but you used an attack that destroys everything, that removes the atomic bonds between molecules and disintegrates it. Your attack doesn’t remove things from existence. It had to conform to Entropy, to me. You tried to kill me using something that uses my power. While your attack could have weakened a few cosmic entities, mostly the weaker ones. It just didn’t affect me.”
Shit, I didn’t think of that. I always thought that Darkness was Death’s element and that I could use it however I wanted. I was starting to get desperate now. This had been one of my strongest attacks, and he just shrugged it off. How outmatched am I?
I sent a bolt of lightning at him, but it came out weak, like it was barely there. The attack hit him and did absolutely nothing. What was happening to me? I look at my opponent who was grinning at me, “You didn’t notice, did you? This is a dead planet, and I don’t mean that lightly. There is no magic being generated here, none that you could use to replenish your own reserves. Why do you think Odin imprisoned Hela here? She wouldn’t be able to use any magic while she’s on this planet, and thus cannot escape. As for you, your last attack pretty much emptied them. You’re powerless now!”
Shit, he had me from the start, didn’t he? He was always planning for this, to wait for me to exhaust myself while my magic reserves start to slowly wither away, destroying my last power.
The man slowly walked towards me and punched me. He kept hitting me, again and again, taking out his frustration at my weakened form. He grabbed me by the neck and walked towards the portal he had created before. I grab his hand trying to breathe. I couldn’t even heal myself without any magic left.
Wait a minute, didn’t he say that he was still bound by time. That he needed to experience it linearly. I needed to take advantage of this. I had one last trump card. I had one shot at this. I couldn’t just make him time travel, with the timeline being in flux, explicit time travel was impossible. But what was possible was time dilation. I could trap him in a time bubble, make a second for him, last years in real life. The timeline wouldn’t be disrupted since there are no explicit exit from the universe.
I coughed some blood from my last attack, hitting him in the arm. I use my blood as a medium to write a rune underneath his arm, where he wouldn’t notice me actually fight him. The funny thing about blood is that it allows people to channel their own life force, into powering the spell. It would take a couple of decades off my lifespan for something like this, but I didn’t care, it was a fragment of a moment for someone like me. It wasn’t as efficient as magic, but it would do the job.
I was almost finished, and the man looked at me with regret in his eyes, “I’m really sorry about this. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t even expect you to understand, but I want you to know that I don’t have a choice in this. This the only way for the pain to stop, for me to exist. Goodbye, Morrigan, you were a worthy opponent.”
I grin at him, “Goodbye you son of a bitch”
Before he could voice his confusion, I channel my life force to the rune and activate it. He must have realized what was happening because I could feel his cosmic energy trying to stop the spell, but it was too late; the spell had activated and the time it would take for him to break it would take him at least a few decades.
The cosmic entity yelled in fury as he realized what was happening and while he was trying to stop it, he destabilized the spell somehow, creating a blast that sent us both flying. However, while I was flying back, I could see that my spell worked, that my enemy was frozen in time. I knew that he would be back but I would be ready for him, this time.
These were my last thoughts as flew back towards the portal. I had no idea where I was going or how I was going back, but at the very least, I felt some satisfaction at my enemy’s temporary defeat. However, I swore to myself that I would be back and that I wouldn’t just let the multiverse be destroyed. Just as I made that vow to myself, I felt myself slip away, falling unconscious in exertion.
Chapter 145: End of an Era
5th June 2006, New York City
(Jasmine Sayre POV)
The man waved his hand and a portal opened. Hell no, I’m not going quietly. I don’t care that he’s a cosmic entity. I have defied Death itself. I will do so again with him.
I raised my hand and my outfit changed. I was wearing my Morrigan armor now, with Death’s cloak of invisibility and my staff in my hand. This wasn’t going to be an easy fight and I knew it. I was probably going to lose, but I had to try. I point my staff at him and exclaim, “I’m not going anywhere!”
The man smiled at me, “I never expected you to go down without a fight, Morrigan. Let’s see what you can do without using Death’s power.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds before running at each other at blinding speeds. It seems we’ll start with physical combat. Entropy tried to punch me, but I was able to redirect it with my staff. I still felt the impact rattling my skeleton. Damn, he’s a lot stronger than me physically. Of course, he is; he’s a fucking cosmic entity, after all.
I tried to hit him with my staff, but the man kept dodging while he looked like he wasn’t even breaking a sweat. He’s purely on the defensive, but I could tell that he’s the one dictating the pace of the fight. I attack him with a full powered swing of my staff, but the bastard just stopped it with his hand. What the hell? This was a fully empowered attack. I look at him and I could sense the smugness rolling off him.
I snarl in anger and kick him in the chest. He looked like he barely moved by the attack, and I was able to get my staff into another swing, this time pressurizing the air behind it to give it more power. The act seemed to have surprised him, considering the slight widening of his eyes. The attack hit him dead on and sent him flying a couple of feet back before he righted himself and landed on his feet.
Damn, the only thing that the last attack did, was just surprise him. The man clapped at me, “Impressive, very impressive. That was a nice trick. I never saw that coming. Dare I say against another opponent it would have been devastating. You always were very inventive.”
I snark back at him, “Well, you’re going to love this!”
Suddenly, my staff was enveloped by darkness that went up until the top and started to materialize a blade. My staff was basically a scythe of darkness.
The man was still smirking at me. I so wanted to wipe that thing off his face. I swung my staff horizontally and the blade extended, becoming a truly giant scythe. Entropy seemed to realize its danger and quickly moved out of the way. I telekinetically push myself forward and punch him, sending him flying back. I, then, grabbed him from the air with my telekinesis and pulled him towards the ground. I swing my staff at him once more and the giant scythe blade races towards him without giving him a chance to get away. And to my surprise, the attack actually connected, the impact creating a powerful gust of air. I look at the result only to be scared out of my mind when I realize that Entropy had just raised his hand and grabbed the blade of darkness.
What the fuck, this was pure destruction given form, how the hell is he doing that?
The man looked at me and grinned, “My turn!”
I was barely able to register when the man practically flew towards me, punching me in the face. I could feel my jaw break and then slowly heal afterwards. Before I could even register the pain, I was once again punched in the chest, breaking a couple of ribs. I was thankfully able to see the last attack coming because I made the ground underneath me rise up and send me flying in the air, where I righted myself and was able to land successfully.
I’m actually being pummeled, right now. I haven’t been this outclassed in a fight since Atlantis. Sure, I lost a few fights, but most of them were because I was caught off guard or I was being negligent. I knew that if I went back, I could have easily won these fights. But now, I was genuinely lacking in front of my opponent, and it showed.
I can’t beat him in a straight fight. In terms of physical power, he was stronger, faster, more agile. In terms of cosmic powers, I knew that my magic wouldn’t be able to hold up. I need to trick him somehow. Get him into position and put everything into a single attack.
Alright, my only trump card are the celestial runes. They could actually end up very useful in this scenario. Alright, I had a plan formed in my head, and how to execute it. I first need to distract him, somehow, while I set everything up.
Funnily enough, the man was the one who started talking to me, “It’s always fun to fight you, Morrigan. For a mortal, you’re very impressive, even without using any cosmic energy.”
“I wish I could say the same thing.”
The man snorted at me, “Why don’t you just give up? You must know by now that your victory is impossible. I’m even doing you a favor; I’m planning on sending you to a world where no one would have any powers. You could reign there, supreme. You could be worshipped as a Goddess. That is until I destroy the universe when I succeed. But at least, you would have had a nice few years before dying with the rest of the multiverse.”
Entropy seems serious about this, and I while I had no delusions that I would be able to change his mind, I needed to buy some time until I’m ready, “Why are you doing this? Are you really that selfish that you would kill every single person in the multiverse, just for your satisfaction? Think about the other cosmic entities, how that would affect them. What would happen to Life, if there was no one alive in the multiverse? What would happen to fate, when nothing would ever change? What would happen to Death, when nothing and no one will ever die?”
The man stiffened, and I knew that my words hit home. He snarled at me, “It would be exactly what they deserved. They always dismissed me, ignored my pain, my suffering. They did nothing to help, they didn’t care enough to even try. They will get what they deserve. It’s time for someone else to be in my place.”
The cosmic entity was really angry now and he leapt to attack me once more. And lucky for me, I was done with my plan. I had been slowly carving a runic array in the ground. The second before he hit me, I teleported back a couple of meters and activated the array. It took a lot out of me to activate something as inefficient and power intensive, but I was in a hurry, and I never saw this fight coming.
The array was the most complicated and powerful binding spell that has probably ever existed. It worked by locking the space around the captive, making sure that the victim wouldn’t move. I had used the space rune as a base while creating the array and it worked.
The cosmic entity had run towards me and was ready to pummel me and was caught by the trap. He looked frozen in space, as if he was a three dimensional picture. I needed to hurry and attack him, because I knew that Entropy was a fucking cosmic entity and could use celestial runes as if it was his native tongue. It probably was, to be fair. What do cosmic entities use to communicate, I wonder?
This wasn’t the time for this. I needed to get rid of Entropy first. I materialized the power rune in front of the end of my staff and started charging up. This was going to be one of my strongest attacks. After a minute or so, the spell was charged, and I let go of the pressure.
This attack was basically a beam of power and darkness rolled into one. I used my strongest and most destructive elements and combined it with the power rune. It was a beam of pure destruction, that destroys anything it touches, It could vaporize cities, flatten mountains, destroy continents. I would never dare to actually use it on Earth. I had theorized it, of course, and had tested it once in the mirror dimension, but this was one of my trump cards, annihilation given form.
The beam travelled at practically light speed at my enemy, hitting his frozen form dead on. The attack didn’t even stop there, it kept going past him, vaporizing the mountain that was behind him and probably the one after that.
I screamed in exertion as I stopped the attack. The air was full of ash, and I could barely see straight. Did my attack kill my opponent? Did I slay a cosmic entity?
I freeze as I hear a slow clapping in front of me. Suddenly, the ash around me disappears and in front of me is an intact Entropy grinning at me, “That was one of the best attacks I have ever seen. The planning, from start to finish was excellent. Is this what you’re capable of when you don’t hold back? And this is without any cosmic energy as well; I couldn’t feel a hint of Death’s power in that beam.”
I was still gaping at him, “How? How the hell did you survive that?”
The man looked at me with pity, “Oh, honey, I’m a cosmic entity. You can’t kill me. I am an idea given form, the living representation of a physical phenomenon. So long as entropy was applied in the world, I cannot die. We can be weakened of course, but you used an attack that destroys everything, that removes the atomic bonds between molecules and disintegrates it. Your attack doesn’t remove things from existence. It had to conform to Entropy, to me. You tried to kill me using something that uses my power. While your attack could have weakened a few cosmic entities, mostly the weaker ones. It just didn’t affect me.”
Shit, I didn’t think of that. I always thought that Darkness was Death’s element and that I could use it however I wanted. I was starting to get desperate now. This had been one of my strongest attacks, and he just shrugged it off. How outmatched am I?
I sent a bolt of lightning at him, but it came out weak, like it was barely there. The attack hit him and did absolutely nothing. What was happening to me? I look at my opponent who was grinning at me, “You didn’t notice, did you? This is a dead planet, and I don’t mean that lightly. There is no magic being generated here, none that you could use to replenish your own reserves. Why do you think Odin imprisoned Hela here? She wouldn’t be able to use any magic while she’s on this planet, and thus cannot escape. As for you, your last attack pretty much emptied them. You’re powerless now!”
Shit, he had me from the start, didn’t he? He was always planning for this, to wait for me to exhaust myself while my magic reserves start to slowly wither away, destroying my last power.
The man slowly walked towards me and punched me. He kept hitting me, again and again, taking out his frustration at my weakened form. He grabbed me by the neck and walked towards the portal he had created before. I grab his hand trying to breathe. I couldn’t even heal myself without any magic left.
Wait a minute, didn’t he say that he was still bound by time. That he needed to experience it linearly. I needed to take advantage of this. I had one last trump card. I had one shot at this. I couldn’t just make him time travel, with the timeline being in flux, explicit time travel was impossible. But what was possible was time dilation. I could trap him in a time bubble, make a second for him, last years in real life. The timeline wouldn’t be disrupted since there are no explicit exit from the universe.
I coughed some blood from my last attack, hitting him in the arm. I use my blood as a medium to write a rune underneath his arm, where he wouldn’t notice me actually fight him. The funny thing about blood is that it allows people to channel their own life force, into powering the spell. It would take a couple of decades off my lifespan for something like this, but I didn’t care, it was a fragment of a moment for someone like me. It wasn’t as efficient as magic, but it would do the job.
I was almost finished, and the man looked at me with regret in his eyes, “I’m really sorry about this. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t even expect you to understand, but I want you to know that I don’t have a choice in this. This the only way for the pain to stop, for me to exist. Goodbye, Morrigan, you were a worthy opponent.”
I grin at him, “Goodbye you son of a bitch”
Before he could voice his confusion, I channel my life force to the rune and activate it. He must have realized what was happening because I could feel his cosmic energy trying to stop the spell, but it was too late; the spell had activated and the time it would take for him to break it would take him at least a few decades.
The cosmic entity yelled in fury as he realized what was happening and while he was trying to stop it, he destabilized the spell somehow, creating a blast that sent us both flying. However, while I was flying back, I could see that my spell worked, that my enemy was frozen in time. I knew that he would be back but I would be ready for him, this time.
These were my last thoughts as flew back towards the portal. I had no idea where I was going or how I was going back, but at the very least, I felt some satisfaction at my enemy’s temporary defeat. However, I swore to myself that I would be back and that I wouldn’t just let the multiverse be destroyed. Just as I made that vow to myself, I felt myself slip away, falling unconscious in exertion.
