Evil Siphoned

Terran moved first.

No words. No call to arms. Just pure motion – clean and military trained, aimed to kill.

His twin blades sang through the air in the form of lightning strikes, one aimed for Orion’s throat, the other for his knee. Orion blocked the high strike with his shield and twisted, letting the lower blade scrape sparks against his greaves. He retaliated with a low sweep of his mace – square and heavy, humming with ancient energy.

Terran jumped back just in time, landing with the grace of a dancer. Dust exploded beneath his feet.

For a moment, they circled.

Then the sky ruptured.

When their weapons met again, the sound tore through space. Not merely air, but the rippling of an echo that adventured across the cosmos. A generation of force that shattered an asteroid belt halfway across the star system. The clouds above them were blown apart into rings, like a supernova’s echo.

Orion struck again, the mace expanding mid-swing with a magnetic growl, arcs of blue and black fire spiraling from it. The sheer force cracked the marble beneath them, sending a fissure spidering down the steps, out into all of Gigas.

Terran ducked and rolled, planting one blade into the ground to pivot himself into a sweeping slash aimed for Orion’s waist. Immediately, Orion’s mace retreated, making way for his bare hands to extend forward with an invisible force field, pushing back the attack.

Terran’s offense was not slowed, however, as metal met metal – the blade scraping against the surface of the shield.

Orion’s lightning eyes lit, and from that, the gravity of the Starheart expanded like an invasion force. With runes and symbols now forming at the bottom of his feet, glowing of magicks that he now finally had access to once more.

Strange fires spread like snakes, which Terran was forced to defend himself, slicing at the ethereal invisible flames with skilled precision. Under normal circumstances, the fire should’ve consumed its target at a subatomic level.

But Terran was different – a mortal with nothing but skill and steel, wielding two blades that were both somehow soaked with blood of gods and giants.

With a whirl of the swords, he slammed onto the ground, slicing the earth with enough force to erupt multiple volcanoes on the other side of this massive planet. The shockwaves of this mortal somehow continued to travel farther and farther into space. Instantly smashing a distant solar system into primal dust.

To protect himself, Orion weaved together magical hand signs the moment Terran stepped up to him and stabbed him straight through his torso, shattering his ribs inside. Black blood splattered everywhere, but the temporal magick Orion had set up was the perfect defense against injuries, rewinding time just a few seconds as the space dragged his body back to a previous position, far away from harm, healing himself of the damage.

The two men’s eyes locked onto each other once more, with Terran spitting a mouthful to the side before charging in, further powered by an infinitely growing strength.

Orion stood his ground. One hand raising up to create an invisible barrier in front of him, the other reaching for the stars, dragging them out of orbit in order to sear the entire battlefield with mystical heavenly fire. With another flick of his finger, Orion summoned a green pool of energy, spiraling beneath an intricate rune.

From this, an army of skeleton soldiers came forth with green spirit weapons. Hurling their spears and daggers at the elf, and roaring with a renewed life after death.

But Terran was a son of the earth. The soil, the nutrients, all that fed him after all these years, these things were his source of strength. A warlock’s army of minions was a spit in his face. So with relentless fury, he slashed them all, crashing through bones and ghostly shields, all while accumulating cuts and bruises on his own body as well.

All across the world, birds scattered from trees. Oceans pulled themselves into unnatural tides. Far beyond Gigas, in realms not meant for mortal eyes, higher spatial dimensions blinked in and out like dying stars, their equations panicking of their own existence.

And even the multiverse itself began to groan. Fearing for their destruction.

Terran’s chest rose and fell. His hands bled from the force of the deflection. But his grip tightened. His eyes never left Orion.

A storm of steel and sorcery. Terran’s blades moved faster than thought, the cuts precise, all designed to dismantle a god piece by piece. But Orion – though not fully restored – was still posing as an impossible challenge. With every blow, the Starheart flared inside his chest. Runes traced across his skin, glowing like veins of magma.

He snapped his fingers once – a space in front of them collapsed inward.

Terran barely dodged in time, the singularity grazing his shoulder and tearing a chunk from the earth behind him, as well as a whole piece of his shoulder armor, reducing it to glittering dust.

Planets in nearby systems continued to shatter. Suns pulsed erratically, caught in the ripples of their fury. Entire mathematical formulas began to shift from the weight of what was happening.

And still they screamed and fought like stories – stories unfolding into something people can believe in. Whether through fear, or through faith.

And far away, Emi continued running.

The cracks widened behind her. The vortex in the sky spiraled wider. The end approached.

But her eyes were locked forward, even as she tripped over the uneven rocks, bruising herself in the process. Even with the sweat soaking her forehead.

She was not stopping for anything now.

At the battle of the two giants, Terran took a step back from the chaos, spitting a mouthful to the side before he said:

“What kind of a king are you?” his voice sharper than his swords. “To bring destruction to another world… only to hide back home?”

Orion wiped the sweat and blood off his forehead, raising his mace toward the elf.

“What are you babbling about?”

Terran’s eyes narrowed into further fury.

“You don’t know?” His voice broke just a little. “Bastard!”

Orion said nothing. The wind now swirling behind them.

“You came back here…” Terran began pacing, circling the edge of the fractured courtyard. “But your very essence of Evil is spreading to Earth as we speak.”

Orion’s eyes shot wide open, not knowing how that was possible. But quickly reflecting – he realized that if a small drop of water from an infinite ocean were to go missing, would that ocean even notice? And if that drop was the size of a planet? Similarly, if his Evil was infinite in size…

Terran continued:

“It is leaking out of you, I’ve seen it. That’s how I knew you left Earth. A trail of frost and rot stretching from the stars down to that planet.”

“Frost?” Orion wondered, thinking about how specific that was.

Until he was able to deduce how this was the case – for only one person he knew had that level of freezing power. Only one could combine the ice and the dead to make a diplomat from the Wasteland. Or rather, this was less a diplomat and more of a herald of war.

This could only be the work of Vizio.

He must be somehow abusing the Starheart’s connection between the two planets. Using its reach, its bridges between worlds. The Starheart was tied to Orion’s very being, so by opening the right valve – his Evil essence could very well leak.

Immediately, Orion utilized his far reaching eyes to look into the black of the cosmos, looking further and further beyond until he could find Earth floating in a galaxy centillions of light years away.

To shock – what Terran said was true.

The planet was slowly being consumed by the growing frost.

Thousands of miles of snow raining down from above, covering the streets, the buildings, the trees, the desert, even the rivers and seas. Local news broadcasts had urged everyone to stay inside for their own safety, while numerous sirens had gone off, signaling a growing danger that these humans had now realized they were absolutely not equipped to deal with.

All places felt the crawling poisonous ice, even the snowy mountains themselves felt the unnatural pull toward this growing decay that would not stop. A rot that cackled with a fiery voice.

His own voice – the voice of the Dark Lord.

“This must be why…” Orion said, “why I felt lighter. Like something’s been siphoning out of me.”

Terran chuckled, pointing his sword at him:

“Well then, I think it’s time we fix all that, don’t you think? With your final death, I will have finally rid this universe of the plague you have cursed upon it after all these years. God’s will shall finally be done.”

“You don’t know that!” Orion snapped back. “You do not know what will happen.”

“And you do?”

And so, once again – they collided.

Terran’s swords blazed in arcs of white-hot steel, unrelenting. Orion met him with calculated force, his mace swinging wide with the weight of planets behind it. The ground quaked, and somewhere far above, the clouds peeled back like curtains, revealing an eye-shaped storm watching from beyond the atmosphere.