Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Turn of the Tide

Apollyon was silent.

The architect was silent.

The entire world around them was silent, despite the chaos. The black hole churned behind Kazna, backlighting her warped form with an outline of glittering orange rim light. Streaks of bright gold arced across the sky in bursts and chaotic eruptions as the architect did his best to hold back the tide of nothingness that was Apollyon.

A golden phoenix cut across the sky like a comet and burst into sparks as one of Apollyon's tentacles snuffed it, only to appear as its namesake a moment later, in a burst of golden light that seared Apollyon's tendril.

"There is still time," Lanus said, taking a step forward towards his once battle partner. As he stepped, a pool of golden light spread from his feet dancing around his body like the hem of a cloak, "Please, Kazna, come back to us.... We can end this here and now, we can take it all back."

It was a lie, but it was a beautiful one at that.

In truth the things she had done could never be atoned for, all the lives she had ruined, all the people she would have condemned never to exist. The architect had never established a permanent hell, but for Kazna... he might have made an exception. But still, the lie was convincing: convincing because Lanus hoped it to be true, wanted to believe it just as much as he wanted her to believe it.

His attempt to convince her had not worked during their meeting on the derelict, but perhaps it could work now when they were only minutes away from annihilation. Off in the darkness, the golden phoenix was snuffed, but this time.... It was snuffed permanently, leaving behind nothing but an impression of light in the darkness.

The tide was turning.

Apollyon was stronger than the architect and despite his valiant efforts, the architect was losing.

On their other side, a pack of glowing golden wolves vanished in a single swipe of Apollyon's tendril, and they did not reappear. One by one, the sky around them grew darker.

Around her, Apollyon's borrowed tendrils sheathed, and Kazna sneered, "You fight a lost battle Lanus. Kneel, and your death will be swift, your pain will be gone, and the fight will be over. I promise you a swift end."

Lanus straightened, the fingers of his upper right hand tightening slowly around the shaft of his spear. For a moment he stood as a glowing golden beacon against the darkness, a bastion of the architect's light even as the architect himself was beaten back.

Before them, a Jeffery snake burst into sparks, the light streaming back toward a central point. Black tendrils persued. More glowing creatures burst into clouds of light, spinning backward and merging together in an immense vortex of light and color that rapidly resolved itself into a shape.

The architect's last shape.

It was telling that the last shape the architect chose in his final moments was.... human.

He towered at an incredible, and impossible size thousands of AUs across, and thousands more tall, growing in size to match the power of the black hole before them. The light he shed was immense, impossible to look past without high-yield light filters. Past the incredible and terrible light that he shed, the architect's body morphed and undulated, never keeping the same shape, his face and the proportions of his body always changing, never settling on a specific human form.

The architect shook himself, like a prize fighter who had just taken a nasty hit to the face, and then he lunged forward, grabbing Apollyon's tendrils in grasping handfuls before ripping them open and burning them to ash.

Kazna laughed, "See your god now, fighting for his life. Apollyon is the future, set aside your fear and BOW!"

Silence pervaded the ring despite the carnage.