Universe's End

Phosphorus was growing irritated.

They were gnats.

Gnats.

And yet, they’d managed not just to shatter some of his shields, but even to get a gnat on his back, persistently stabbing at him and inflicting minor, albeit annoying, injuries. It didn’t matter if they were barely adding up; it was the fact that she was even there.

Soon.

But they didn’t know the shape of this game.

Time was on his side.

Oh, certainly, the Eternal had placed specific… restrictions upon how it could use the power it had been granted. At first, the energy was reserved only for defensive purposes. Over time, however, he could draw that energy inward, fueling himself directly even if ninety percent of it was still primarily for natural regeneration or as a reserve; that still left ten percent for violence.

And it is about that time.

Feeling a threshold crossed, Phosphorus began to breathe in deeply, only to be thrown back through the air as another one of those damnable explosions shattered one of his barriers in a single strike.

How irksome.

That was the fourth barrier they’d managed to destroy, but it wouldn’t stop Phosphorus, who continued to breathe in, feeling a barrier fade into an energy stream that filled his maw.

Power. Oh, such power.

The gnats were irksome, but as that first wave of power filled Phosphorus, any worries, as misshapen and underdeveloped as they were, were drowned out by the sheer power he felt in the moment.

Oh, how good it feels to be a King.

Watching, the Architect couldn’t help but feel concern after watching Phosphorus lose not one shield, but two after being struck by the fourth Big Momma warhead.

It would have been great had it been a two-for-one, but that wasn’t the case based on what he’d seen.

“Did it… did it just absorb one of his shields?” The Rogue asked over the comm system.

“Looks that way,” The Vanguard responded from her spot atop the SFAH. “Probably bad news.”

It wasn’t a great situation; the Architect could guess that much. It didn't exactly make any sense for the Kaiser to suddenly weaken itself, after all.

And as if to prove the point, from the spined segments that ran down its back, bursts of blue lightning erupted, arching overhead only to slam downward, tearing into the ground far below within Phosphorus’s inner sanctum.

“Whoa!” The Spear shouted, dodging and weaving around its back as lightning was exploding outward like a burst water main. “Energy levels are definitely rising, and drastically as well. Probably… Double?”

“Wonderful,” The Architect sighed. A single absorbed shield was enough to double its energy capacity.

So, what would happen if it absorbed more?

Please don’t be ten shields. Please don’t be ten shields.

They had managed to smash through four shields, and Phosphorus had absorbed one. If there were five more in the wings, well, the Architect was beginning to lose track of any potential avenue for victory.

Eight. No more than eight. Please.

Mostly because the SFAH only had eight of the magical promethium nukes. After that, they’d have to tear apart the monster through whatever they could personally manage, and against a monster that had the sort of energy levels one would expect from a tier ten, that was a significant gulf to cross through sheer gumption.

Trying to energize one of said magical warheads, the Architect was forced to abort as a fast-moving electrical beam slashed through the air like a falling blade, clipping the SFAH from the sheer speed as red lights pulsed within.

“Whoops,” The Vanguard said from atop the SFAH. “Wasn’t ready to intercept that one.”

In retaliation, an extra-large black tracer ripped through the air before slamming into the Kaiser’s barrier, leaving a small crack that healed a moment later.

“Tsk,” The Rogue muttered into the comms. “Was hoping that one would have a little more punching power.”

For all their combined power, the Kaiser was simply that powerful.

And as if to prove the point, a ball of blue lightning shot upward from between the Kaiser's antlers, floating into the sky like a strange blue star.

“Can you muster the strength to defy the Heavenly Envoy?”

That’s not alarming.

From the blue lightning star, spears of blue light rained down, forcing the SFAH into evasive maneuvers; the shadow glider in the distance zipped around as well.

The attacks were fast, faster than most of the Kaiser’s slow-moving lightning, trading power for speed. That said, there were so many falling spears of blue lightning that the Architect knew evading them was his best bet.

Firepower. We’re still lacking firepower somehow.

Even with the Spear being armed with Aberrant-grade armor. Even with the addition of the magical promethium warheads, even with the titanic sky fortress, they were lacking.

They needed more.

Eon truly expected them to be able to overcome the Kaiser, and this was a Kaiser that had been reduced through the slaying of his many generals.

Something to be learned from this.

Trying to understand the situation —there was something more to be understood than what he was seeing— his thoughts were interrupted by his comm, which buzzed as a voice chimed in.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Yo, so can we deal with the lightning orb raining death down on us?” The Rogue buzzed through the intercom, a sort of strained hurry in his voice. “Mr. Freeze here is already slowing them as much as he can, but there are a LOT of them, and we aren’t armored up like the rest of you.”

The Architect frowned, running the variables before sighing.

Yeah, can’t be helped.

Halting the SFAH's movement and angling toward the floating heavenly-energy star, eight black beams began to manifest in reality as every Null Glitter Lance focused on the orb.

“Fuck,” the Architect heard the Vanguard mutter from atop the SFAH, spoken aloud rather than through the comms. “Asking a lot from me.”

The blue spears descending toward them all angled toward her as she drew them in with metaphysical gravity, the blue lightning slamming into her massive promethium tower shield, taller than she was.

He was asking a lot from her, but charging the Null Glitter Lance’s was neither fast nor easy, and they couldn’t afford to waste a Big Momma warhead on the blue star ‘envoy’ as Phosphorus had referred to it.

Atop the Kaiser, the Spear was still doing her best, repeatedly drawing in as much excess energy as she could from the Kaiser to empower the Silvermere Grace effect of her armor as she drove the spearpoint of her weapon down again and again and again into the vast monster. Yet after absorbing one of its shields, the wounds were healing nearly as fast as she could inflict them; the devastating damage she inflicted, which would have brought even the Kaiser’s generals into perilous states, was all but ignored.

More.

The Architect saw only one idea working at this point. He needed to deliver several of the Big Momma warheads simultaneously.

The issue was how? The SFAH wasn’t equipped to mult-fire. The system load of that much raw energy and pneuma was too much; it was only a series 1 iteration after all.

Well… there is one way.

He’d joked about it before, but technically the SFAH could itself become a single massive warhead.

But there aren’t any actual methods to initiate that.

Well, there was, but it would require two people to destabilize the energization systems that primed the warheads.

No, toss it out; find another option.

Burn down the shields and hammer away at the Kaiser with traditional armaments, even better if they could punch through a shield or two on their own and save one of the Big Momma warheads for Phosphorus directly.

Thanks to parallel-processing mental threads, the entire internal dialogue and contemplation occurred without Rory missing a beat; the Null Glitter Lances finally charged as eight beams of paradox energy ripped through the air, the heavenly star envoy hidden behind a veil of null light.

A very big veil, the surrounding explosion at least a mile across, even with the energy relatively contained.

“Can’t… hold…. Much… more!” The Vanguard grunted from atop the SFAH, her shield warped under the barrage it had suffered.

Not looking to force her to, the Architect slammed the drive handles to the side, the SFAH rolling out of the way as the Vanguard at last dropped her ‘gravity’ field.

As the null light faded, the comms crackled to life once more.

“Fuckin’ took long enough,” The Rogue grunted, unable to simply say thank you.

But before any of them could get too carried away with destroying the heavenly star envoy, the sight that had played out earlier in the fight replayed once more. Barrier flaring to life, Phosphorus opened his mouth as it seemed to turn into a stream of energy that was instead sucked in by the miles-long serpent.

“Fuck,” The Architect cursed.

“Bad news, energy levels-”

“Tripled,” The Architect said, cutting off the Spear. It didn’t take a genius to-

“No, actually, doubled again. So, even worse.”

“Now that’s just bullshit,” The Vanguard huffed directly into the comms.

“I’m literally tearing into it as fast as I can, but it's now healing faster than I can dish out damage. Without focused fire, I can’t do much more to it.”

“With one less shield, perhaps victory grows nearer even when the horizon remains dark?” The Monk offered, sounding sagely even with the distinct sound of the Rogue cursing just beneath him.

“Perhaps,” The Architect said, aura leaking into his voice as he contemplated, all the while performing feats of aviation that would have won him medals back on Earth.

Perhaps.

What if that was the test? Eon was all about integrity and ‘balance.’ It wasn’t so much a battle of overwhelming each shield as it was of dealing with them as fast as possible. Phosphorus’s power would grow over time, but its defenses would wither in return.

Give and take.

Exactly like Eon’s M.O.

Regeneration wasn’t the same thing as outright durability, as with enough focused firepower, regeneration could be outright ignored.

Alright, yeah, that sounds about right.

They’d smashed through four shields; it had absorbed two.

A crack of black light slammed forward, a green barrier shimmering into existence, a simple testing shot from the Rogue more than an actual effort.

Right, so, eight?

The likelihood of more than eight felt…. Low. One, because of how insane the scaling already was, and two, because while Phosphorus was a ‘fake’ tier ten, it was still a tier eight challenge, given that all of them were tier eight and were expected to prevail.

So, tier eight, eight shields. Seemed reasonable enough, based on just about absolutely nothing.

“Game plan, people. I think it’s down to the second-to-last shield. So, we hammer it as much as possible to deplete it. Once these shields are gone, either by being destroyed or absorbed, we can hurt Phosphorus directly.”

“Yeah, but can we inflict that much damage?” The Rogue said, asking the obvious question.

The Architect was silent for a moment.

Could they?

No. A voice in the back of his head was whispering. Not if its power increased any higher than it already was, with an accompanying level of regeneration. It already felt like they were barely hanging on.

“Yes,” The Architect said, sort of lying, “I’ve got four of the Big Mommas left. It’s got two shields.”

“So, hammer the shield. On it.”

“I know you were lying,” The Vanguard said. Even spoken quietly, her aura made her words audible to the Architect.

“Not lying. Withholding details.”

“Semantics.”

The Architect didn’t bother refuting her. Instead, he kept focusing on unleashing hell on Phosphorus: hard light cannons firing nonstop, the Null Glitter Lances taking their sweet time before firing null rays.

Accompanying them were the hard shadow cannons from the Rogue’s shadow-infused glider, as well as the high-powered attacks from his shadow rifle. The Monk continued to play the role of intercepting defense, defending the glider against the now-endless swarm of scale shards that shot out of the Kaiser’s body, as well as splitting bolts of heavenly energy as they shot toward the glider, his frozen aura freezing the bolts enough that they could be physically split down the middle.

They were in an impasse, trying to do as much as they could before the inevitable occurred as the next shield was either absorbed or-

Ahh, there it is.

After what felt like hours of continuous exchange, though in reality couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, the Kaiser began to draw a breath inward.

I'd hoped to have this ready a little faster, but oh well.

The third-to-last Big Momma warhead was just a tad slower to charge up than Phosphorus’s internal timer was. It was okay, though, because-

“Divine Breath of the Empyrion.”

There were moments when the Architect knew that things had suddenly spiraled far faster than he’d anticipated.

This was one such moment.

“Behind us, now!” The Architect shouted into the comms, processing things just a bit faster than everyone else.

The Rogue, for once, did not bite out a remark or snarky comment. Hearing the sudden panic in the Architect’s voice, he simply did as he was told, the glider moving so fast it looked almost like it were skipping frames in a video game.

“Zoey!”

“On it!”

Slamming the confirmation on the fifth Big Momma warhead just as it finished charging, the Architect didn’t even have time to see the outcome, as chasing just behind the shadow glider was a wall of light, the sheer scope of the attack a matter of the manipulation of inevitability; as long as they remained within Phosphorus’s inner sanctum, there would be no dodging that.

Bracing for impact, the SFAH threw up every defense it had available, as did the Vanguard, the two combining their strengths.

It was… adequate.

Barely.

As the light faded, the Architect momentarily ignored the countless blaring warning messages and flashing red lights inside the sky fortress.

“Everyone alright?” He asked, worried that perhaps being behind them hadn’t been enough.

“Fuckin’ somehow,” The Rogue answered, relief filling the Architect at hearing his voice. “What the fuck was that?”

“The final phase, if I had to guess,” The Architect answered.

Alright, last phase. At least, I hope so. Let’s do this.

Visible for just a moment as the blinding light faded, he noted the last shield crumbling after being struck by the fifth magical warhead.

Good. We’ve still got three missiles left. Meaning, we just need to initiate three more rounds of priming and-huh?

Having initiated the priming of the next warhead, the Architect suddenly froze as she saw a single message pulsing on the dash, a message he chose to pretend wasn’t there.

Ignoring it, he pressed the initiation start-up of the next magical warhead.

And.

And nothing.