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Coming to Patrevia was a mistake.
That was the only thought running through Welt Yang’s mind as his sight was filled with a being who represented nothing short of their complete doom.
The Lord Ravager Zephyro.
The haphazardly floating strips of white cloth falling down his torso, the white hood obscuring his features, that terrifying black sword, and the quad rectangles of pure white light hovering like a singular wing much too similar to a Herrscher were unmistakable. The area of the glassed asteroid upon which he had descended had been utterly decimated. The glass surface of this and all the surrounding asteroids itself was already a demonstration of Zephyro’s destructive power as a Lord Ravager. Further behind him, ready to tear the entire asteroid belt apart, was the blinding light of a white hole.
Welt found himself with little choice. Zephyro knew this, the Emanator of Destruction waiting to savour the final moment that was approaching. The former Herrscher of Reason allowed his gaze to dart to the terrified figures behind him. The Astral Express Crew. His family among these strange stars.
He could see the fear in the lines on Himeko’s face, yet her expression remained set in a steely determination to defend this family of theirs. Himeko... the one he sought to protect if he could. Truly the universe must have decided to test his dedication to this goal.
Despite her (some would say unwarranted) confidence, Stelle bore a look of apprehension at the oppressive presence of a being such as this Lord Ravager. A problem that would not be so easily undone with a single swing of her bat or a thrust of her lance.
Dan Heng knew far too well this was a losing battle. Brows pinched, sweat dripping down his face even as he adjusted his grip on his spear to allow the quickest strike he was capable of.
March 7th was quite literally shaking in her boots, yet her bow appeared in her hands all the same, Stelle and Dan Heng at her side ready to support each other ‘till the end. He was proud of them.
And yet all this was wiped away and their expressions all morphed into shock as Welt gestured at them to stay back. It didn’t take them long to register the look in his eyes as he told Himeko to keep the kids safe. They yelled at him to stop, begged him that they could do this together, but even they could not make the words sound completely convincing in the face of this danger. Welt turned from his family, from Himeko reluctantly pulling the three younger ones back- for she knew there was no time for words- and fixed his gaze on Zephyro. The Herrscher of Reason’s power had never been one made for slugging it out. This had been true even when he had still had the Herrscher Core within his own body. His was a power of intellect, of planning, of understanding. Yet here on this desolate asteroid, staring his death in the face, what could he plan? This was not someone he could trick into the event horizon of a black hole like Sirin. This was not the Serpent who could be outmanoeuvred and kept trapped within the Sea of Quanta. This was a being who could shatter entire solar systems just to savour the moment civilisations crumbled under the might of a white hole.
Welt smiled ruefully to himself. At the very least, this wouldn’t be the first time he’s fought something capable of destroying civilisations.
Would Tesla and Einstein still hold out hope for his return decades more into their immortal lives? He couldn’t help but mutter a silent apology to Joey as he raised the cane that held the Star of Eden. How would Anti-Entropy fare as time went on, he wondered? Earth was in good hands regardless. This he knew well. Perhaps Bronya would put a dedication to him in one of her next games. And Kiana... Welt’s lips twitched upwards once more as he chuckled softly. He would be doing the Goddess of Earth and Herrscher of Finality a disservice if he didn’t give his absolute greatest effort as the former Herrscher of Reason. If he didn’t have time to outmanoeuvre Zephyro, then he’d just have to stall him for as long as possible. Regardless of the outcome for himself.
The tip of Welt’s cane came alight with that familiar dark power as the Star of Eden came to life. In nearly the same instant Zephyro launched himself forwards at superhuman speed. The air of the inhabited asteroid itself seemed to part in fear before the blade singing towards his neck. A burst of purple and deep black and the blade was trapped within the gravitational grip of a black hole the size of Welt’s head. Another swing, another black hole, another and another and another. Welt hardly had time to think as the Emanator moved at a speed he would have found difficult even as a Herrscher. As the swordsman readjusted for another attack Welt would sling his black holes to detonate against Zephyro’s body, something that would disintegrate any ordinary human, as well as most normal pathstriders.
Zephyro barely flinched as his sword pierced through the final black hole and impaled Welt’s left shoulder. In desperation he slammed the head of his cane against Zephyro’s chest and generated a much more massive black hole at point blank range. The resulting blast successfully flung Zephyro back a dozen metres, tearing his blade from Welt’s flesh in the process.
This was his chance.
“Hear me, creature of Destruction,” Welt panted as his cane surged with power. The pain of his wound pulsed down his arm and across his chest yet still he forced himself to stand tall, “I am Welt of humanity! And I stand against you, Lord Ravager, as a warrior guardian of the human race!”
Zephyro said nothing. If anything he seemed to be studying the human before him as he floated in place several metres above the shattered ground.
Welt did not intend to give the Lord Ravager time to do anything more, “Law and Reason will fight the chaos of Destruction until its very last breath!”
With that he drew on every last reserve of his strength and thrust his cane towards the Lord Ravager. Two things happened at the same instant: First, A black hole larger than any the Astral Express had seen Welt create before manifested directly around Zephyro. Second, the day itself seemed to dim as the harsh light of the white hole began to be eclipsed by the purple rimmed darkness of the Star of Eden’s power. Welt grunted in pain as the power he was pouring into corrupting Zephyro’s blinding white was halted halfway and slowly began losing ground to the sheer power the Emanator held within him. The white hole ate away at Welt’s black, the harsh light blazing back at full force as Welt’s strength began to give way. Yet still he persisted. The air around him cracked like glass as the opposing powers roiled and writhed against reality itself. If he could not kill Zephyro... then surely shattering the veil between dimensions and throwing him into Imaginary Space would at least slow him down long enough for the Astral Express to escape. The black hole around Zephyro trembled as burst of white light shot forth, a single alarmed swing of his sword cutting its way through the storm of gravity. The beam of white light travelled along the ground, straight towards Welt, the man granting himself one last sad smile as his exhausted body refused to move.
He closed his eyes.
There was a rush of wind, an explosion that peppered him with shards of glass that cut at his exposed skin. His body stung. And yet as his eyes fluttered back open with the calming of this intense pressure... was he still alive? His aging eyes focused on what surely must have been a hallucination brought on by his death. Three figures of white, purple, and grey hair, the steely grey eyes smiling back at him, the brilliant amethyst wings of Honkai energy, the electrified katana... it was too good to be true. It was improbable. Impossible.
Yet Bronya’s chuckle sounded all too real. The ever confident smile of Kiana Kaslana shining back at him and the elegant stance of Raiden Mei too familiar.
“You know, rehashing the speech you gave Sirin is a little cheesy, Mr. Yang,” Kiana shot over her shoulder.
“We’ll take it from here,” Mei assured him.
“Rest, Welt,” Bronya nodded.
The Honkai wings at Kiana’s side flared bright with power as she spun her sword and levelled its point at the Lord Ravager, now completely free from the dissipated black hole, “I don’t know who this creep is, but nobody hurts my friends and gets away with it.”
Without hesitation all three charged the Lord Ravager.
The power of the man in front of them shone like a beacon of pure destruction within Kiana’s senses. That Welt was ready to sacrifice himself in one last interdimensional gambit said it all. The Honkai energy streaming from between the shafts of her wings ignited in a brilliant fire and the woman shot forth like a living missile.
Within the blink of an eye their swords met in a clash that further shattered the glass beneath them and sent fragments scattering at speed in all directions almost as fast as Kiana and their foe were moving. Mei cut the most dangerous out of the air, while Bronya deployed a hard-light shield that kept them at bay. Blasts from Bronya’s weapon were already arcing towards the Lord Ravager before the shockwave had even calmed. Kiana disengaged and floated back only to dash forwards for another forceful clash. With his sword busy, Mei darted around the flank, body and katana wreathed in lightning as she leapt for his exposed back. Her katana struck the instant Kiana locked their blades in a bind, only to dig into the hovering rectangular wings instead of flesh. Moving as one, almost like the shape of a large paper fan as they moved in rapid unison, the wings shook her blade free and spun to deflect Bronya’s projectiles even as he continued to duel Kiana.
Mei moved to strike again only for the Ravager to push Kiana’s sword up and kick her away before spinning towards Mei before she could even think of interrupting her own movements. The sword splitting the air rang out clear and deadly as Kiana appeared within an instant to ferociously and completely halt the blade in its tracks with her own. The air rippled as her pink-starred eyes glowed bright with power and the collision failed to move her a single inch. Not one to waste an opportunity, Mei’s body tensed as she followed through the motion and thrust her katana into the Lord Ravager’s body. The limited Honkai energy within her Valkyrie stigmata surged as she channelled her strength into a blast of lightning down her blade that would have completely disintegrated even an Emperor-class Honkai beast.
Zephyro swung his wings around to bat away the Valkyrie, releasing an inhuman hiss of pain. Reality in its entirety seemed to jump like a video glitching and Kiana was suddenly on the other side of Mei, her sword cutting right through the first rectangular wing of light as it spun towards them. A strange split-second of déjà vu washed over all present that same instant Kiana had disappeared. Zephyro did not hesitate, turning and speeding faster than the eye could blink. A single strike shattered Bronya’s hard-light shield like it was paper.
That same flash of déjà vu rippled through the two Valkyries as Kiana blinked into existence next to the grey-haired woman. Zephyro’s next blindingly fast swing found itself parried by the sword of Finality, Kiana’s Honkai pistol now gripped tight in her off-hand as she raised it to his chest and pulled the trigger. With Zephyro once again at distance and having tested the enemy’s mettle, Kiana yelled for her companions to keep Welt safe. A quick vocalisation, a glance, and the Valkyrie’s retreated. Zephyro did not hesitate to leap back into battle, his back and forth with the Herrscher carried them into the upper atmosphere of the asteroid. There was a new energy to each tense of his muscles, each swing, each white hole he began creating in an attempt to tear Kiana apart only for her to slice straight through them. It was almost like the Lord Ravager was... excited. His wings flew forth like hawks locking onto their target. Past the glassy ground Welt had ground to dust, past the Herrscher of Finality, and towards the turned back of her two companions.
The world shimmered as Kiana drew upon the power of Finality and time itself ground to a halt under her will. The Herrscher of Finality flew between the winged slabs like a bolt of pink lightning, leaving the structures of pure white light sliced to ribbons in her wake as time’s gears resumed its course.
For the first time Zephyro seemed to hesitate as Kiana’s wings ignited and launched her back towards her foe. Her expression was a picture of focused fury at one who would try to harm her loved ones. But this was not simply the surging but ultimately pointless anger of a human. No, this was the mighty, all encompassing divine fury that only a Herrscher- only the Goddess of Earth- could muster. A fury that burned bright throughout dimensions as the woman who had become one with the Honkai burned through the sky like an amethyst comet.
She smiled to herself as the next strike met his blade and launched Zephyro into the upper atmosphere with such force that reality once again cracked under the weight of the blow. She trusted Bronya and Mei to take Welt back to whatever he’d used to travel here and get away. No longer would she rely only on short bursts of stopped time (playing with time was dangerous, even for her, after all). Pink-starred cerulean eyes locked onto this being that had attacked Welt, attacked Bronya, attacked Mei, silhouetted against the blinding white hole. Her Herrscher Core pulsed in response. Kiana turned and slashed her sword towards the darkened, star-lit sky opposite of the white hole. Her slash reached across space and into the void between dimensions. Hundreds of thousands of kilometres away the sky broke like glass, those starry eyes flaring with a terrifying power as reality itself buckled and groaned under the weight of the Cocoon of Finality. It’s bright eye pressed against this window into dimensions, the flood of Honkai energy from its mere presence was like a tidal wave of destruction crashing into these glimmering, shining asteroids hanging in space. Zephyro spared but a glance to this display of raw power and charged forth once more.
Kiana flew forwards like light itself, body wreathed in amethyst lightning as she called upon her authority as the Queen of Honkai. Zephyro’s power surged in return, the two otherworldly beings meeting hundreds of metres above ground in an explosion of power who’s shockwave still rumbled the asteroid below. The two were a blur now, their motions only able to be tracked by the white and pink streaks they were leaving behind as each blow knocked the other back only for them to dart back into the fray and return the blow. Anyone still attempting to observe the battle from the surface would have seen Kiana’s authorities on full display as she darted between purple void rifts and knocked Zephyro lower back towards the asteroid’s surface. Lightning leapt across her blade, her afterimages became solid illusions of Sentience and threw themselves into the fray, Ice combined with Fire to blast the Lord Ravager’s face with boiling hot steam before she teleported again to bat away his blade and latch onto his leg to spin and launch him into the asteroid at Mach speed.
Blasts of Honkai from her pistol slammed into his body and riddled him with holes as the intense radiation of the Honkai bullets burned through the Emanator’s empowered body. Kiana herself was sporting several deep gashes from their exchanges. Ones that were rapidly closing under the authority of Death. On Zephyro’s left side, where his wings had once hovered behind him, his body had been burned from a stark white to a slate grey under the constant assault of the amethyst Honkai fires of Finality.
Brows furrowed in determination and no small amount of lingering fury, the Herrscher of Finality raised her hand towards the distant white hole. Ribbons of ethereal pink energy swirled around the symbol of the Emanator’s destructive power, the Herrscher’s fingers flexing into a claw-shape preceding a black hole fully eclipsing this sanitisation of life’s colour. The Herrscher clenched her fist before her eyes, as if imagining grasping the black hole itself despite its distance. Yet this imagination became reality as the hole in space vanished and reappeared within the width of her palm in an instant. Zephyro raced into the sky towards her one last time, only to be met by Kiana’s yell of triumph as her body seemed to blink and shift to the side ever so slightly. Just enough to miss the thrust of the black blade. She slammed the corrupted former white hole into the Lord Ravager’s chest. The man was ravaged by this gravitational energy, before the release of its power once again slammed him into the planetoid with enough force to dig a crater dozens of feet in diameter into the glassed surface.
Kiana allowed herself to gracefully set her feet upon the asteroid’s surface, wings still alight with their ribbons of Honkai energy and the Herrscher still a font of never ending power.
Zephyro’s sword had finally fallen from his hands, its blade sunk halfway into the crumbled glass surface. Though Kiana’s body still coursed with enough Honkai energy to destroy Earth ten times over with a twitch of her pinky, she allowed reality to piece its shards back together. Now the sky stood empty. No destructive white hole. No piercing eye of the Cocoon of Finality. There was just Kiana, and the man who’s sword she pulled from the rubble and tossed at his feet.
“You fought well,” Kiana said, voice shimmering with the otherworldly power of a Goddess, “Now surrender, and leave this place. This is your only chance.”
Zephyro did not glorify the woman with a response. The power of Destruction surged once more and his wings flashed back into existence. Within that same blink he had grasped his sword and rushed to Kiana’s side just as quickly as the white light he commanded.
The stars of Finality within her cerulean eyes flashed as the entire solar system froze within the hands of time. Zephyro still moved, such was his power, though severely slowed. Kiana simply stood in place and raised her hand. Her fingers curled into a mimicry of a firearm, a finger gun, and a single syllable fell from her lips.
“Bang.”
At the moment of her utterance time abruptly resumed its movement and Honkai energy exploded from her fingertip in a concentrated beam of pure power that cut a line straight through the Lord Ravager and into the outer edges of the planetary system for several long seconds before finally fading away. The ground around her was scorched black, a cylindrical crater carved out of the ground where the blast had vaporised the glassy asteroid. Zephyro himself now sported a gaping hole in the left side of his body. His arm was detached and mostly gone, his lungs had been evaporated, even his neck was only hanging on by remnants of muscle and sinew as he collapsed to the floor and disintegrated into the ether.
Kiana let out a soft sigh, and the otherworldly light faded from her eyes as she finally calmed the ever chaotic waves of the Honkai. It was over.