Universe's End

1. Truce

This is taking too long.

Eric wasn’t blind, and while he was doing a pretty damn good job of carving up the orckalite queen, he could see Mr. Architect in the background, flickering about, desperately trying to avoid the oversized orckalite king as it bared down on him. On a pure threat level, the orckalite king was quite a bit more dangerous pound for pound than any individual Apophis serpent triplet, leaving far less room for error.

Eric still didn’t like the guy, mostly for professional reasons as Allison’s partner and Garfunk’s former friend. Still, Eric also knew they needed the guy.

Plus, it had been his idea to come down here anyway.

Alright, time to hurry up.

After using Nightfall in conjunction with the Architect’s own domain, the pseudo-domain skill was on cooldown, which was quite annoying, as if he wanted to use Nightfall: Singularity, then Nightfall,the base skill needed to be off cooldown.

Anyway, can I speed this up?

Trying to think of something, Eric mentally paused as he considered something he’d heard mentioned a few times now: the idea of parameters in their usage with magic or skills.

Not really any parameters I can mess with on the fly… Except?

He couldn’t use a time limit; Nightfall was already on a time limit, nor could he alter things such as size, as Nightfall: Singularity was Nightfall condensed into his weapons themselves.

So, what if I don’t alter the parameters of the skill, but of the cooldown?

Like something had clicked into place, the skill that had been on cooldown instantly lifted, all while it felt like someone had driven countless barbed hooks into his gut.

Uck, talk about hurting like a bitch.

The parameter was actually rather simple, something he knew many people already had experience with in various techniques or skills: burning up their own vital energy.

The glaive he held was completely enveloped in darkness, and, stepping through the shadows, Eric sprinted down the back of the orckalite ant queen as he slashed a massive, gaping wound that seemed to burn with shadowy fire.

“There we go, that’s better,” Eric nodded to himself as Singularity came online. It was the same skill, or technically speaking, skill adaptation, that had allowed him to best Apophis serpent Eia during their battle back in Ehkorrus several years prior. Well, it wasn’t technically Ehkorrus, but rather some sprawling underground cave system, but that was semantics. Hell, the only reason Eric hadn’t killed the snake outright was that the weird, oversized tree that had blocked the teleportation in and out of the cave had pulled her safely inside itself. Which still wouldn’t have been enough, as Eric had seriously been considering tearing apart the tree, until the combination of a group of people rushing out from the nearby underground complex had proclaimed that if he wanted to kill the ‘Archon,’ he would have to kill them first.

And Eric, for as much of a scoundrel as he could be, had never been a heartless killer.

That, and the fact that the Archon had raised some sort of…. Thing, an avatar meant to defend it, had finally convinced Eric it wasn’t worth it, after which he’d plopped himself on the ground and rather angrily waited, having confidence in Allison, which hadn’t been misplaced, thankfully.

But I digress.

Whatever the details of the events surrounding Nightfall: Singularity’s first use ever, since then it had only grown, given further practice and refinement. The damage he could inflict was tremendous, the full conceptual weight of a Primal Night proto-domain distilled into a weapon of pure killing intent, zero magical runoff wasted in explosions of flashy attacks. Had it not been for Allison’s and the Architect’s duel, where they’d decided to throw mother fucking nukes at each other, Eric would have comfortably believed he had the single highest attack potency of any Founder alive.

Which was important, because if he kept dawdling, the Architect was going to get himself killed, the orckalite ant king was seemingly getting closer and closer to catching him as his flicker teleports seemed to be slowing down, perhaps from overuse; it wasn’t as if the man was made of pure pneuma after all.

Stepping through the shadows again, no longer having time to waste, Eric suddenly fell from above, his shadow glaive rending open the side of the ant queen, her wound still burning with shadowy flames, the Primal Night affinity consuming the regenerative vital energies of the queen, the shadow flames nothing but the byproduct of the interaction.

Faster.

Stepping through the shadows as quickly as the just-shy-of-instantaneous cooldown would allow, Eric quite literally cut apart the orckalite ant queen, the most impressive trait of her monstrous vitality no longer useful when the Primal Night affinity prevented regeneration. In the face of Nightfall: Singularity, she may as well have been a hanging lump of meat to be dressed down at the butcher.

No longer having to overcome her healing factor, it wasn’t much longer until the ant queen sagged completely, unable to withstand the accumulation of so many catastrophic injuries, as Eric felt the anomalous energy coalesce within his metaphysical center.

Finishing up, Eric was just in time to witness the Architect flicker away, only for the orckalite ant king to instantly pivot as if knowing where he was going to appear, and slam directly into the man.

Or almost directly. Just before impact, the Architect had waved his hands in some gesture as a multi-layer shield of crystal petals bloomed into existence, giving the man just enough time to do… something, as he was yanked back. It wasn’t enough to defend himself or avoid the orckalite king completely. Still, rather than being splattered and trampled underfoot, he was merely rammed into and launched away like a bug swatted across a room, the irony not lost on Eric.

That had to hurt.

If it were anyone who wasn’t a Founder, Eric would have been certain he’d just witnessed an untimely demise. Instead, the Architect pulled himself out of a crater in the wall, his helmet vanishing as he bent over, retching a pool of blood, before snapping a red crystal down his gullet a moment later and chasing it with a brew, the man’s helmet reappearing as he flickered across the chamber, next to Eric.

“Alive?” Eric asked.

“Don’t feel very alive,” The Architect groaned, clearly in immense pain. “But I’ll survive.”

“Should we retreat?” Eric asked, offering the Architect a chance to escape.

The man was silent for a moment before shaking his head.

“We clear this guy out, then we take a break, and come back after.”

“Whatever you say, boss man,” Eric snapped a mocking salute, even if he agreed. For as powerful as they were as Founders, it was easy to forget that an equal-tier territory alpha was more than their equal, usually requiring two Founders to handle. To tackle two consecutive high-power territory alphas, especially after the Architect had taken a nasty hit, was arrogance of the highest order; these weren’t the Apophis serpents that they already had near-perfect knowledge of.

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Plus, Singularity wouldn’t last that long.

The change in the status quo was immediate as the battle resumed, with Eric joining in. With the addition of Eric, the orckalite ant king was suddenly unable to focus purely on Rory, its attention split by the presence of Eric’s Primal Night glaive; for the first time, wounds appeared on it.

Having realized the true danger, it attempted to ignore Rory, but that was the catch-22. Able to have a moment to breathe, the Architect began spinning up attacks that actually were capable of harming the oversized ant king, arrows the size of spears flying through the air, any time he was given even a split second of downtime away from its constant charges.

Two versus one wasn’t merely a doubling of effectiveness; it was a quadratic increase.

Hammered away at by two Founders, each the equivalent of an entire team of Marcie-level talents, the orckalite ant king found itself pushed back, no longer finding opportunities to hurt either of them, while freely taking damage in return. Seeing the writing on the wall, it changed tactics, curling up into a ball, or as much of a ball as a monster of its size could, its entire body trembling as the two Founders shared a look, the meaning clear.

Don’t let up.

Bug monsters were notorious for having chrysalis forms, pupating into stronger versions if given the chance, something Rory had seen for the first time many decades ago when fighting for his life against the boss monster of the Maw’s second floor, an Ash Worm.

Flickering upward into the air, Rory suddenly stood upon the Goblin Mk. 3, as the Null Glitter Lance charged itself up.

“We double-tap, you tear an opening, and I’ll hammer it,” The Architect said as Eric nodded silently for once, before stepping through the shadows. Appearing atop its quivering body, Eric raised his glaive overhead, feeling the last flickers of Nightfall beginning to fade. Taking advantage of every last moment, he drove the weapon straight down before leaping off the monster's side, the shadow glaive tearing the chitin of its exoskeleton. Torn upon a massive rend in its side, Eric didn’t have time to observe his handiwork as he immediately stepped away from the blast radius, his neck pricking with danger warnings.

And it wasn’t without reason, as a moment later, the orckalite ant king was hammered directly in the side by a beam of paradoxical particles colliding, the destructive energies scouring the monster from the inside, inflicting massive damage.

Waiting for the metaphorical dust to clear, the quivering monster had gone still, but the two remained on guard for one simple reason.

Neither of them had felt any anomalous energy coalesce within themselves.

The trepidation proved wise, as from the stilled ‘corpse’ something tore free, a far smaller monster, only about the size of a bus rather than an entire building. Gone was the over-armored behemoth of a monster; it had traded it for the lithe form of a tarantula hawk taking some form of chthonic, demonic, Cthulhu steroids, grasping tentacle antennae flailing about, and legs lined with pink and black chitin shards that looked sharp enough to rend a mountain into pieces.