Collide Gamer

Ehtra barely managed to get her sword up.

The claws of treacherous Mother Chaos wrapped around both her and Metra. Needles the size of lances emerged from within her palms, stabbing at the Astrotium armour of the Metracanas. The plates took the attacks, but they continued mercilessly. Ehtra could feel the damage on the armour accumulate, saw her HP drop faster than it regenerated. At some point, something would make it through.

“Children, be reasonable,” Tiamat cooed, a sickly mockery of a motherly tone. “It took Gilgamesh and the aid of your new king to take down my imperfect avatar. I am returned now, goddess of chaos, incarnation of the first empire of humanity and the first empire of Earth. What chance do you two think you have? Daughters do not outgrow their mothers.”

“I’ll remember that, to know what not to say to mine,” Metra growled.

Tiamat just laughed, at the statement and the struggles of her daughters. Ehtra kept squirming, sinking her blade into Tiamat’s flesh. The weapon slowly cut through. It was like pushing a knife through thick honey. Fumes of unborn stars and black spores emerged from the flesh before it melded around her weapon.

Ehtra’s weapon stopped against something firmer. Revving, then screaming, a toothed edge of mana whirled around her blade. Harmoniously healed flesh was ripped asunder again. Black ichor and nebulas sprayed into the air. The sinew of Tiamat’s thumb was cut. The grip on the First of Hatred loosened.

Wings spread wide open. Ehtra freed herself in a flash of grey light, launching it at Tiamat’s face. The sheer depth of her sins made what should have been a harmless attack powerful enough that the Dragon of Chaos reeled back.

A beat of her wings and a swing of her sword was all the support Ehtra needed to give. Metra forced the fingers open around herself, dropping through a portal before the hand of Tiamat could clasp around her again.

Tiamat roared. She laughed. The maw beneath the four-split, teethed segments opened wide. Entropic energy flowed out, setting the air on fire, flash-freezing the moisture within, and giving birth to chaotic nebulas.

Ehtra rolled in mid-air, launching her sword at a creature of chaos, born from the spores within Tiamat’s breath. The entity collapsed back into the galactic cloud. Pulling the gun from its holster on her leg, the First of Hatred focused on dodging for 4 seconds, then pulled the trigger. No Pity turned the next bullet into a miniaturized warhead, cutting through the nebula.

Ehtra dove after it, waiting for the moment of impact and the Stat increase that would come with it. She would slice off Mother’s Chaos head herself.

200% increase to Strength, Agility and Endurance. The sudden spike made her feathers whistle as she dove straight for the side of Tiamat. There was nothing that could have stopped Lady Vengeance. Her blade would-

Ehtra’s rapid advance came to a swift end. The tail of the Dragon of Chaos slammed into the grey angel. Astrotium met Astrotium, denting the armour of the First of Hatred before she was sent hard to the ground. The false garden bent under the impact like rubber. Vines and tendrils surfaced all around, the trees turning into grasping, eye-covered hands.

Hacking and slashing, Ehtra attempted to free herself. Tiamat strolled closer, all wounds taken long since healed. “I am the goddess of the new era, the Mother Chaos, the spawn bed of history,” the dragon pontificated. “Your tricks amuse me. In the end-“ Tiamat stopped for a moment to swat away a leaping Metra like she was an annoying fly, “-you prove you did not listen. Silly child, clouded child, your judgement self-serving and fleeting. You will complete me and I shall bring about the golden age of entropy. Let chaos take the world.”

Tiamat grasped Ehtra again. This time, she lost no time trying to crack open her victim’s armour. Managing to free her left arm, Ehtra aimed the gun at Tiamat’s head and pulled the trigger all the way back. The aggressive hammering of the bullets filled the air with overlapping BLAM! sounds. Dust and smoke filled the air.

Ehtra kept the trigger pulled until the barrel was red hot and started to deform. The dust of the explosion drifted away in the unnatural winds, revealing Tiama’s unmarred face. Thickened scales returned to their natural hardness, her closed maw parted, the flexible segments stretching in anticipation of the rising hand.

Wings like needles, spirit brimming with hatred, Ehtra struggled as intensely as she could as she was brought closer to the devouring mother. Teeth scraped over her armour, a noise that reverberated through her helmet. Undulating flesh pulled her inside, the constricting digits replaced with the altogether worse, universal pressure of Tiamat’s jaws. The internal mouth was parted wide, describing a ring of uneven teeth.

Beyond it lay darkness and grey hands, reaching for her. ‘Brothers… sisters…’ Ehtra felt the presences of other sinners within Tiamat. The other Metracanas were still in there, still alive, still fully conscious of the twisted creature that they formed the foundation for. Did they reach out to Ehtra for salvation or to have one more share this misery?

A part of Ehtra did yearn to join them once again.

‘Everything besides the total purge of this corruption is unacceptable!’ the First of Hatred yelled at herself. Her feathers spread out even further, a thousand needles that had to be dragged through Mother Chaos’ flesh. Her fingers closed around whatever she could grab, desperately slowing her descent into the abyss of entropy.

A blast, then a retch, then Ehtra was spat out, covered in sticky, slimy mould on her path towards the ground. She spread her wings, took control of her descent, and immediately gained altitude. She tried her best to comprehend the situation. An attempt to connect to Metra’s mind was suppressed by Izha’s overbearing presence. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩⁂𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾⁂𝔫𝔢𝔱

She saw what had happened soon enough. Her feet surrounded by a weave of grey, counter-infesting the false garden, Lyndell stood and held her gaze firmly on Tiamat. The Dragon of Chaos twisted and turned, retched and spat, as if she had just tasted something utterly vile.

“You alone deserve to die,” Tiamat hissed. “Isolationist. Sole remnant. You will die alone, unloved and in failure.”

“A death like the life after my success,” Lyndell declared and launched another wave of magic at Tiamat. Runes shaped into a vacuum, a null of magic that hit Tiamat with dissolving might. The bindings between the Lorylim matter that made up her flesh loosened, causing the dragon to bloat outwards. “That will not last for long. We should run.”

“I hate that!” Metra declared, landing next to the primordial entity. “But you are right!”

Tiamat’s bloating was already starting to reverse. In a hurry, the First of Wrath sliced through the floor. A singular cut of the earth-splitting weapon was enough to rend the ground open. Freezing cold rushed on through. Lyndell and Metra jumped through the gap, Ehtra diving after them.

“WE COULD BE WHOLE!” Tiamat roared and gave chase. Her maw nearly caught the grey angel’s foot, only for the dragon’s enormous body to get stuck. Her false garden was rent open without a second thought. On endless wings, the Dragon of Chaos descended after them.

“How did you know how to find us?” Ehtra asked.

“Up is a simple path to follow,” Lyndell answered.

“Better question is what you did to her!” Metra asked, just as she hit an outcropping of the tower. A massive tendril beset with hands reached for her, grasping the empty spot where she had been before leaping.

“I teleported some of my own flesh, drenched in Delicia’s potion, into her maw. It did less than I hoped.”

Tiamat roared full of rage and disdain from above. The Dragon of Chaos gained on them rapidly. Ehtra could fly, Lyndell and Metra had to navigate the complicated surface of the tower. Even if all of them could have moved on their own wings, the dragon would have caught up to them before long. Their only hope lay on what was below.

Fusion’s allies were fighting the dead gods of the Sumerian pantheon. Attacks that could have wiped out entire villages were thrown around without a thought. The ground, hard from the permafrost, had been turned into a landscape of craters. All snow had been melted, replaced with streams of freshwater and lava.

“I command this world to break… and re-order itself in my image…” Words of power rang out, words that had become common since the magical realignment that Tiamat’s actions had caused. The Babel Phrase reverberated despite the kilometres between the speaker and the listener. Ehtra saw the Apex beneath a false eclipse, drawing light from it into a white sphere. “…Nova.”

The commanding word sent the sphere towards Tiamat at an incredible speed. Upon arrival, it expanded into a small sun. It expanded with such heat that Ehtra felt her back begin to melt, despite being over a hundred metres away.

Tiamat had none of it.

Entropy reigned where Mother Chaos willed it. Closing claws and wings around the sun, she held her position in midair for a moment, before opening back up and revealing a sphere of horribly bright blue. What had been the source of unbearable heat before now pulsed with absolute coldness.

“YOUR TIME WILL BE SOON ENOUGH, GILGAMESH!” Tiamat hurled the frozen sun back at its sender. As it flew, even its state of matter changed. Unstable, it collapsed into a small solid sphere, expanded again into all liquid, then gas, and plasma again, only to repeat this process endlessly in unsteady intervals.

Ehtra was incapable of noticing exactly when the sphere exploded. She only noticed that she had been hit when her back slammed against the side of the tower. Shaking her head, she immediately ripped herself off the wall, ice crystals shattering as she went. Below her was a deep mist, a second ocean of clouds, within which the two factions continued to fight. Her gaze turned upwards.

“METRA!” she yelled.

The First of Wrath was tumbling through the air, Tiamat right above her. Jaws parted, she was about to devour the wolf-eared woman whole.

“TWIST!” The body of the Dragon of Chaos suddenly contorted. It gave Metra enough time to rip open a portal. She emerged a moment later by her sister’s side. Ehtra grabbed her hand and together they flew off to the side.

Tiamat screamed in a thousand voices. A multitude of portals opened up around her, attempting to cage her in. The claws of Mother Chaos rent the spell asunder before it could finish forming. Her eyes stayed focused on her two daughters, even as the cold below consolidated into a new dragon entirely. The dragon of frost and fog screamed with primal rage and rammed into Tiamat from below.

‘Remus’ doing?’ Ehtra theorized.

“This way!” Even shouting, Lyndell’s voice had a sorrowful timbre. Ehtra located the gothic woman quickly and turned her flight back towards the tower.

“Are you certain we should flee into her domain?” Ehtra asked.

“I dreamed of destroying her with my own hands. This path is barred from me. Tiamat has become too strong.” Lyndell gazed hatefully at Tiamat, now involved in a midair fight against both this newborn dragon and the Horned Rat.

“Wordy way to put that, but fuck it – where is John?”

There was a shift in the fabric of reality in that moment. Ehtra felt it and Tiamat certainly felt it as well. Everyone paused in their fighting for an instant, sensing that the entire world had suddenly re-aligned around a new axis.

“What… is that…?” Lyndell muttered, turning towards the inside of the tower. “It feels like… completion…?”

“The peak of Gamer bullshit,” Metra stated.

“It’s our signal!” Ehtra added.

The two Metracanas began to run into the tower. The re-aligning power was like a beacon. Tiamat was behind them, still to take them out or to find the source of that power – well, the answer to that hardly mattered. The Dragon of Chaos was perfectly capable of doing both.

“Meddling…” Tiamat hissed, her body elongating and liquifying to fit through the tighter corridors that the group of three took. A god’s control over a Sanctum was what gave them that moniker in the first place.

“We need to shower Lee with compliments when we get out of this!” Ehtra declared.

“Definitely!” Metra agreed.

“Always kiss Lee,” Lyndell stated.

A somewhat confusing statement coming from a non-haremette, but Lyndell’s status was a question for the time after they were done being chased by a dragon made of sludge and hatred. Tiamat flowed after them. Had it not been for the god-lock, Tiamat would have caught up to them instantly.

Instead, they were on a wicked chase through the insides of the nonsensical tower. Corridors massive and tiny led into chambers of the same description. Metra was the front of the group, the point of their triangle formation, dispatching the Lorylim creatures that spawned from the walls before them. Ehtra and Lyndell were at the back, shooting gun and magic at Tiamat.

Although they weren’t going to have the building’s shape changed on them any further, they did have to contend with the path forwards rarely making sense. Worse, Tiamat was a fractured, insane creature, which only aided her in pushing down multiple corridors at once. Often, the route that they wished to take was blocked by another segment of the liquid state Tiamat had put herself in. The scent of brine and algae permeated everything.

They made it to the nexus point just as that power ebbed away. Specifically, they made it to above the next point. They were cornered there, Tiamat flowing towards them from every direction. The three women did not even look at each other as they raised weapons and magic, then bombarded the floor. They fell through the Cyclostone ceiling.

Tiamat rushed after them.