Rebuilding my body was something I had done before, even if only an arm, and wasn’t going to be hard. The issue was that this was another thing entirely, not just the rebuilding of a body. The moment I had let Sehuyun's flames burn my physical form to cinders, I was accepting that as I had been, I was not able to defeat her. No, that wasn't right. I was casting off what I had been clinging to so stubbornly, in order to ensure a future for my children. It had been time to evolve, to protect what was mine. To take a page after Sehuyun and fully accept what I was, who I am, and what I was becoming.
Despite becoming less than ash, my body didn't die. Not like Sehuyun had intended. It had merely changed. I am a god of balance. I had the domains of creation and destruction. I am the Heavens.
My will was not something so easily broken, nor overcome, by a mere dragon.
Thunder roared and the heavens screamed as my claws found purchase in the empty Void. The form I had chosen, the form that had come forth in the time of direst need, was one of raw power.
It was a being that spoke the language Sehuyun understood best.
A roar split the sky, my own roar, my own sky, as I emerged from the storm of Primordial Chaos I had summoned – and the Heavens wept.
Teeth gnashed as they formed, bone sprouting from gum and jaw in a deadly, razor-sharp array. Lightning of deep violet purple cracked the Void around me, snaking around my long, sinuous form. Eight draconic arms flexed, fingers tipped with grey claws covered with power of Black and White, Yin and Yang, tearing through the Void and slaughtering the minor Paradoxes that emerged from the disturbance. Scales of purple and gold gleamed along my body, grinding against each other as they settled into place. My bones shuddered as great, white spines erupted along my back, holy energy pouring from them in waves. My lips pulled back into a snarl, eyes blinking rapidly, eight massive, feathered wings spreading from my sides.
Horns erupted from my head, great branching things that sang with elemental energy. I sucked in a deep breath with lungs that had never worked before, and The shockwave split the Void, shook the One World, and set Sehuyun to laughing gaily.
"YES!" She shouted back, a tiny, insignificantly sized being to the current me, hardly the size of a single scale. The great primordial dragon sucked in a deep breath, absorbing the aftershocks of our previous clash, bits of her own universe, and shattered pieces of the Void, growing in power as she launched herself toward me, trailing smoke and fire.
Thunder boomed as I curled up around myself, wings flaring, purple lightning streaking toward her with enough force to shatter universes and sunder the Void. She ducked and dodged the seeking lightning, streaking forward like a comet of fire, my Will guiding the lightning to branch and shift, creating nets of lightning she narrowly avoided, the element seeking her total obliteration.
My wings flapped once, neck craning imperiously to glare down upon the savage beast that was the Primordial Dragon, the full weight of the Heavens slamming down upon her. Her wings crumpled, bones snapping, lightning converging and blasting her with all the wrath of the Heavens. My lightning’s usual weight – Know Thyself – was moot against a being such as her. So this was raw power only, no metaphysical weight, just as she wanted. She shrieked in pain, the sound cut by peals of unhinged glee as her body grew faster, doubling, tripling, quintupling in size in mere nanoseconds.
I uncoiled, eight arms digging into the Void, launching myself forward faster even than the lightning that I controlled. Sehuyun turned to me, maw open wide, and I crashed into her before she could finish growing.
The great dragon was half my size now, teeth gnawing and biting into my scales, drawing golden blood, claws ripping at my sides and wings - I roared in pain, and sunk my teeth into her throat. Eight arms bound her, sinking into flesh and scale. Fire tore out of her sides in great gouts, blackening my claws, the orange beneath her scales deepening as her savagery grew to clash against my Wrath. I wrenched my head back, taking a great chunk of her neck with me, and was rewarded with more hellfire to the face as it burst from the wound.
"More tricks," I spat, her blood dripping from my teeth as I wrapped my snake-like body around her despite the heat, crushing her.
"Tricks?" She rumbled, digging the bone-spurs along her joints into chinks in my scales. I rewarded the injuries by electrifying my entire body, even as her size continued to grow, claws digging into my arms. My jaws snapped around the back of her head, biting at what should be a fatal blow - but we were divinities, and such mundane tactics would not stop us, no matter how desperately I wanted it to. "You are the one employing tricks!" She bellowed, surging in strength and size, nearly tossing me off. The heat from her body seared my flesh, as she unleashed her Primordial side.
Her scales deepened further, Primordial Chaos pouring from her body, saturating the Void around us. Each clash we caused battered the Void, creating more Chaos that she built into a stronger body for herself, juicing herself up, crushing it down around me in an attempt to tear herself free of my crushing grasp.
Yet.
YET.
"NO." I boomed, and her entire body seized, Concepts wrapping around us, my head raring back, lightning building in my throat. Her eyes grew wide, then her teeth bared in a satisfied grin as we began what all battles, all true battles between Origin Deities, were meant to be.
I rammed my soul against hers, and she against mine, and let the best one win.
Of all things, despite everything that had happened, in the end it came down to a battle of arguments.
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She was a dragon, and did not care what the Heavens thought. Her claws ripped scales off of my side.
I am the Heavens, and I similarly do not care what she thinks. She is the one who challenged me, expecting the skies to bend to her whim. I am the skies in which she flies. My coils tightened around her, lightning building up in my throat.
She is a Primordial. She has no need of skies!
I am the Heavens, and I am more than just Sky.
She was death and fire and destruction. Her nature is to fight, her nature is to rage, and to claim that which is her own! The skies are hers, and the Heavens demand she be satisfied with being something she is not! She will not accept it. No! She is a Dragon! She is an existence to shake the Heavens! Fire built up in her throat, as she turned to look at me, seeking to meet my own Breath with her own.
Indeed, she is an existence to shake the heavens.
My eyes met hers, unblinking, unflinching, black and white, yin and yang, condensing in a swirling arc behind my head.
To shake the Heavens. Not defeat it. Not topple it. Shake it. She succeeded.
She roared her defiance, and I roared my judgement.
Fire and flame surged forth, washing over my face, my horns, igniting my very soul. I let it. I let it burn, let it build, let the yin within my chest absorb its raw aggression and feel the desperation, the rage there. And something else. A taste of something sadder. Resignation. Fear. Acceptance. Determination. She’d known her death was coming, and…ran from it?
Ah, that’s right. I remember now.
Thunder boomed, and the Void flashed purple. The power I built up within my chest expanded, bursting forth in a lance of death, obliterating all before it, piercing through the fire and flames, through Sehuyun's argument, through every single ounce of being she had.
The great Primordial Dragon roared no more, time stuttering, buffering at the raw power at play here, giving her and I enough time to watch once more. To see each other one last time. There was no bitterness there. No desperation to win or defeat me - only gratefulness, for this last good fight. Her fires split before the lightning, draconic face illuminated in orange and purple.
Then Heaven's Lightning struck, and she saw no more.
Silence echoed as I unwound myself from her, eight arms still clutching her still form, body dead and soul scattered. And worst of all, I felt her Authority, just a shard of it, cling to me. One percent, as the rest scattered into the Void, or was sent back to her Nest. The last gift from her, the last gift of her Will, attaching that to me.
"You," I began, voice choked up with disbelief and frustration.
This foolish, foolish dragon. I had made offer after offer, given her chance after chance to surrender, so we could find another way, but in her own words; "If I am to die, I will die in a manner of my choosing." My teeth ground together as my gaze shifted toward her den, her universe, her Treasure Hoard, floating out there in the distance, away from all the explosions and danger. Beings of great power lived there. Beings I had not met or seen since they were but thoughts in the aether.
Beings that would know Alexander, and had been inspired by him, the dragon who met and challenged their own Creator.
One in particular watched with a blank expression.
They were a bipedal lizard, of sorts. Something like a mix between a crocodile, tortoise, and a toad, with the long, toothy jaw of a crocodile, the hunched back of a toad, and a shell of tortoise. Yet the shell was a gleaming silver color, its teeth as white as the purest of light, and its yellow eyes stared unblinking at me.
That was it, then. That was the one I would have to speak to, eventually. The one who, eventually, would have slain Sehuyun, and she, in all her dragon-ness, would not have been able to slay him back for one simple reason.
Her entire universe and everything in it was her hoard. She, in all her dragon-ness, would not have been able to bring herself to destroy her treasure. So when that one inevitably rose up to slay her in all its ambition, and use her body to finish her unfinished universe, she would have fallen not for lack of power, but because she let her pride and ego and draconic nature rule her soul.
"And now, you leave me with your mess to clean up," I growled out, glaring at her corpse, still filled with so much power, so much pain and anger and the frustrated inability to overcome herself. I leaned forward and nudged it, and - suddenly, the Authority she had gifted me grabbed my attention, holding tight and tugging insistently. Sehuyun's Authority. My eyes narrowed further, and I gave it a shard of my attention.
Scenes began to play in my mind's eye.
Her, sitting in her universe, surrounded by nothing but chaos, watching it grow. Content with the way things were. Meeting the other origin deities and finding them...lacking, except for me. For I was a being like her, who had conquered their Shadow...
Except she hadn't conquered hers.
She came to know this, the longer she lived, and the more she interacted with Alexander. I watched through her eyes as she tried and failed to make more beings like her, a universe of dragons. Every single being that was created was somehow off. Somehow, not her, yet equally her. I closed my eyes and heaved a sigh, already knowing how this was going to go.
She came to love them as her treasure, despite her disappointment. But her nature as a dragon warred against her; she was not a wise being, like Alexander. She was far more the furious, raging "western" style of dragon - and the Shadow she had swallowed only served to enhance that. That was simply who she was, and to avoid the fate she saw coming, she chose this.
She chose to attack the greatest being and rival she knew, to either rise above herself and become an even greater being, or fall. She chose me, because she knew that even if she fell to me, I would respect her treasure. But, more importantly, she had attacked because that was who she was, and if she was to die, she wanted ot die in a manner of her choosing.
Forget other paths. She was unrepentantly herself, and that was both her greatest asset, and greatest liability. My form shimmered and shifted, the Wrath no longer the primary driving force, the storm fading into nothingness. Ripples still echoed through the Void, minor Paradoxes starting to shift and form, roaring their displeasure as they shot toward the One World and the hoard that was Sehuyun's old universe.
Slowly, the draconic body that was mine shifted back to my usual form, flowing purple robes and all. But I was different. I could feel it. This was less my body at the moment, more a projection. It would take time for my body to be rebuilt...no. My body was the universe. It would take time for me to rebuild an avatar like the one I had been inhabiting. In the meantime? I had paradoxes to hunt. Then I would check on my children.
And only then would I decide on what to do with Sehuyun's body, and the universe she had left behind.
At least I knew exactly what to do with Sehuyun's body. It may be disrespectful to desecrate a corpse, but - she had made it plenty clear to me she was satisfied, no matter the outcome. There were pieces missing in the body my children were making - something I was very much still coming to terms with.
A lot had been going on. I hadn't had time to process yet. And her body, plus her universe, assuming they agreed to what I would propose because as much as Sehuyun had expected me to outright claim her "Treasure Hoard," I would still present the options to her people, would be able to fill in some gaps if they agreed.
I sighed heavily, even this body fading away like dust on the wind. Maybe I’d get Randus or the Rival to help me out. Send one of them over to Sehuyun’s - now my - universe, while the Big Four finished their tasks…
Chapter 167: 41 Through the Fire and Flames
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