Chapter 262: Horrid
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(General P.O.V)
Everything changed the second Aden called 'him' out.
White eyes opened to a world that was on the brink of collapse. He blinked, surveying the scene with a critical eye. There was no aura or a display of his considerable power, yet the minute his eyes landed on Empty Hand, the latter froze like a dear caught in headlights.
'what is this feeling?'
Empty Hand asked himself, lifting up a single palm only to see it shaking. His eyes widened.
"Get ready."
A bored voice said from the side. Empty Hand slowly turned his head and established eye contact with him. Order stared back, unflinchingly and unimpressed. Empty Hand felt his spirit waver under such a look.
How?!
Empty Hand tried to jump away only to feel his neck grasped in a vice grip. He choked, beginning to pry off the hold in panic. What was happening! Why was it happening?!
He stopped trying to overpower the palm holding his neck and instead begun to power up, bringing more of himself through the link Aden still had with the Great Darkness. The realm begun to shake more and more as darkness spilled out of Empty Hand in considerable amounts.
Empty Hand's eyes blazed with black flames as he looked down at Order.
"You..."
No matter how much he tried, he still couldn't escape the hold! Order begun squeezing his fingers.
"That won't work anymore."
He told the panicking villain. Voice full of quiet confidence that one could have mistaken for arrogance.
"What...ack! What are you?!"
The world overturned under Empty Hand's vision. His back smacked onto the grey ground, completely rupturing his veins, shredding his back muscles and breaking his spinal column.
Order lifted what was left of the servant of the One Below and scrunched up his nose in distaste.
"Gross."
Silver fire poured out of his mouth and eyes, completely drowning the remains of Empty Hand under a torrent of flame. Nothing remained.
Order floated in the air calmly, waiting.
A few seconds later, as if remade from the sand itself, Empty Hand reformed himself.
"Ha ha ha...you cannot hope to defeat me."
He sneered as his limbs formed, whole again.
Instead of the fear and worry he was expecting, Order looked at him with the same blank expression. Then something shifted and a maniacal smile appeared on Aden's face. Order craned his neck.
"I WAS COUNTING ON IT."
BOOM!
The first fist that was thrown by Order completely turned Empty Hand into dust. A pressure blast that was so strong, the webs of energy covering Aden's space of being groaned to hold back the torrent of power.
Empty Hand came back again with a gasp. What...
Then a hundred strikes landed on his body before he could react.
"Aarrgh!"
A blast of Darkness devoured the surroundings from him. Only for an explosion of light to completely submerge the darkness, destroy it and then go ahead to disintegrate Empty Hand.
What was...he wasn't the one...
Once more he appeared. This time Aden's face took over his whole vision. He was 50 meters tall now, holding onto Empty Hand by the torso. The latter could not budge, only tremble in fear while shaking his head.
"No...no. How did you do this! It's impossible! I was in...aaargh."
The giant fingers around him begun to squeeze.
"You finally caught on."
The Order State said. An out of character smile on it's face.
"I am supposed to be his logic. But the prospect of endlessly killing you...brings a smile to my face."
Order then opened his mouth, showing nothing but a chaotic swirl of power inside. Order particles clashing against each other to give rise to chaos and vice versa.
Empty Hand strained in futility.
"Master!!! Master help Me!"
"Call for him as much as you want...I have severed your connection with his domain. You're in my world now."
Empty Hand found this death to be even worse than before. He was shredded to nothing but the violent opposing forces when he was swallowed by the giant.
Then when he came back, his eyes exploded in his skull, following that, his organs one by one met the same fate. The culmination was an explosion of energy the equivalent of a star.
He still came back. A meteor shower burned him up to nothing.
Each death was worse than the other and this went on for over a billion times.
Time had effectively lost meaning. Order had cut the connection between the Great Darkness and his chaos side, effectively trapping Empty Hand in a cycle of death and rebirth... endlessly.
A nigh omnipotent being was imprisoned in the same mind he tried to raid. The tables were turned so drastically it was crazy. This was not a fight. Neither was it a beatdown. This was simply torture of the highest degree. And it went on and on and on and on.
Order found himself loving the pained and tortured expression Empty Hand continuously displayed and after so long, the next instant Empty Hand died, he respawned as a shallow copy of his former being. Gone was the regal dark form standing at more than 8 feet tall. Gone was the casual power he wielded almost contemptuously.
The creature before Order was sickly and weak. It couldn't move it's body or do much of anything. It wheezed in exertion at simply existing.
"What...what did you do..."
It managed to ask, on the verge of death.
Order floated down slowly, touching on the ground before gliding across it, only to stop before the servant of the dark one.
"You seem... surprised."
Aden's voice sounded out, layered with an undercurrent of power.
"My power..."
"Without your connection to the Great Darkness, you are nothing."
The Order State was feeling particularly chatty today. He bent down.
"Where is the powerful leader of the Gentry? where is the right hand of the natural opposite to everything? Where is the being that waved away Darkseid's attack with the crack of the universe as if it was nothing? Where is all your arrogance?"
Order held out a hand to the side and the despair in Empty Hand increased a thousand fold. The essence of his abilities, pure darkness roiled around in Order's hand.
"Yes. Whatever your mind is trying so hard to refuse is true!"
"No...give it... give it BAAACK!!"
Empty Hand weakly reached out towards Order's palm.
"Nope." Order shook his head.
"You wanted this, remember?"
Then he got up.
"Be comforted with the knowledge that I shall send your master into the nothingness after you."
Order smiled.
"Now die."
Order did something impossible.
Equity was a chaos attuned weapon. It held the whole mass of Aden's Chaos State. But Order had learned something from Aden's memory. At high levels, due to the weighty realm of a concept or aspect of reality, a balance was needed to keep everything in check. That balance was maintained by a counterforce to naturally oppose an abstract or concept.
Water to quench fire.
The Great Darkness to counter The Presence.
There were exceptions to this rule but almost all things followed it in some form or other.
That meant...Equity could theoretically have it's own opposite. The only thing left to do was call it out. Order energy, mystical and elemental in nature begun to twist and clash in Order's hand. Then with an ease that was highly deceptive of the difficulty in the task, a long white calligraphy brush appeared in his palm.
"Mmmh... fitting. A brush to write in structure to the world, order and to disapprove that which we do not want." Order laughed, twirling the heaven defying artifact in the air. Equity appeared in his other hand.
Empty Hand felt a pressure unlike any from both artifacts. The power they held was enough to make someone a menace for an entire universe.
Order held both opposing artifacts in the air. One meant to bring about massive change but used to mostly cause havoc,and the other to give form, beauty and purpose to raw energy. Order and Chaos.
"I wonder what would happen if I brought them both together? Fused in perfect harmony. Who could stand in my way? Lucifer? The presence? The Great Darkness?"
'We both know that is not our purpose. You are meant to be his reasoning, yet...in here where the walls separating us are thinner than paper...we are corrupting each other. My passion is eliciting true emotions in you. Emotions that you cannot learn to control in such a short time. So pause and think before you do something you might come to regret later.'
The Chaos State informed Order, voice projected mentally.
Order smirked.
"Whatever do you mean? I am he and he is me. You are us. So anything we think of doing...is something that he has already considered."
He slowly brought both hands together. The sky darkened and became bright at the same time. The clash of both energies expressing themselves in his space of being through a separation in the sky. One side was dark and ominous, the other was blindingly bright. Order had ignored Chaos' words. His reasoning was that maybe emotions were good for him. They made him feel. He didn't feel before.
Tremors soon after begun to rock the world. The white and purple energy webs holding the whole realm together struggling to heal and preserve Aden's self.
'Stop this madness."
Chaos spoke up. This time his earlier bored tone was nowhere to be heard. In its place was a stern command. One that promised consequences if it were not followed.
"Or what?...I have complete control here. What do you hope to achieve by ordering me to cease my actions? Actions that will serve him for the best. We both know of Aden's track record. Maybe someone else needs to start making the decision around here." The distance between both artifacts grew smaller and smaller. Space splintered apart as the shockwaves produced by Order's actions hit Empty Hand and with one last despairing attack completely destroyed him, essence and all.
The Servant of The Great Darkness perished.
"Imagine having enough power to never be afraid again. To never lose a fight. To never lose anything. We could be truly Eternal!"
Order begun to chuckle, getting animated while Chaos stayed silent.
"Imagine having any woman we want. I know his thoughts, they're mine as well. His heart yearns for Her. But his body...his body seeks out fulfilment that she alone cannot grant."
'To what end? Power is all well and good but that is such a shallow goal. He wouldn't be happy. I wouldn't be happy and now that you're influenced by my emotions, you know that sometimes no amount of power or prosperity can fill a hole that needs love and care."
Chaos countered.
Order did not relent. His face scrunched up in disgust.
"Love and care? Who needs that pile of shit?!" His face changed again. This time into a crafty expression. His tone took on a softer note.
"And besides, who says we cannot have it all?! Power then love. I know he will thank me for it. He needs me!"
'Just like he needed you when you decided to expell all chaos energy from the realm causing rifts across the mortal plane. Or the time you decided killing a galactic warlord was better than keeping the world safe. Following that choice, the planet was destroyed and now we're saddled with over a billion lives to think about.'
Chaos took a dig at him.
Order paused.
"I prioritized our realm! What the fuck do you think would have happened had I not done what I did! I created the realm in the first place! Me! It wasn't you or Aden! IT WAS ALL ME!!"
He went silent, letting out a sigh.
The weapons inched closer, both energies fighting each other while Order used his authority to bring about a stable fusion.
"In any case, we are all on the same team...I am doing this for us. Why can't you see that, you parasite?"
He softly asked, straining with exertion as he tried to bond the two artifacts.
'STOP! If you do this, you will destroy us all!"
"You know nothing! So shut the fuck up or do something to try and stop me!"
The world begun to actually crack apart. The overload of energy became too much to contain and Aden's Space of Being was paying the price.
Chaos' attempts to stop the Order State all ended up in failure. Veins appeared on Aden's face as he yelled. The ground below cracked apart like an egg shell, the grains of sand making up the floor begun spilling through.
More cracks spread like spider webs above the sky.
"Come ooonnn!! Aaahhhhhh!!!! Why won't. You. Just...WOOOOORK!!!!!?"
With a sudden click, both artifacts touched each other.
The whole realm exploded.
(Elsewhere)
Gaea shook. Security fail safes activated with Gaea trying her best to stabilize the world on the brink of splitting apart.
Everyone felt it...
Something Horrid Had Happened.
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