My soul burst—or at least it felt like it had—and my body warped, my skin hardening like stone and soft scales bristling out of my forearms, shoulders, knees, and legs.
My fingernails and toenails lengthened and hardened, curving out like the talons of some beast. My left eye burned like the sun, and patches of my twin wings turned purple.
Then, my chest burst, yellowish soul matter mixed with flashes of blue, red, and purple spilling out and twisting into unstable streams.
Error—Soul integrity compromised.
-Red Orb or Soul Containment rupture has accelerated to 10,000 lost/minute out of (800,525,682)
Soul Collapse at 34%
Soul Collapse at 36%
My vision flashed white, and I hoped, prayed that I was dead or at the very least unconscious, if only so that I could escape the torture—but there was no relief.
I heard Lauren cackling.
"Look at what you've done to yourself!" She raised her blade. "I almost wish I'd devoted more of myself to fighting your apprentice. He's doing so much better than you."
Soul Collapse at 39%
"I'd offer you a way out of this, but honestly, I want you to suffer a lot more."
She blurred, and I tried to move, but it was too late.
Her blade split my scales, taking off a hand, and shattered my hips. My legs barely held on, and my muscles bubbled with eldritch energy. Then she punched me, gathering darkness around her fist, hurling me into the fast-approaching hurricane of radiation and star plasma.
I let out a gargled scream as the energy cut through me, draining into my armor at prodigious speeds, but not nearly fast enough to spare my body—and ultimately my soul.
Soul Collapse at 42%
And just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, two massive streams of red and gold crashed into the dense soul knot outside my chest.
You've killed Vulcan: 2,568,000 Red Orbs
You've killed Psylocke: 2,466,000 Red Orbs
Soul Collapse at 49%
Red orbs collided with my bleeding soul, and it was like dragging a nail across exposed muscle.
My insides screamed, rattling violently as I continued to unravel. Lauren chose that exact moment to rematerialize, burying her heel into my spine and snapping it in half. She spun around, laughter on her lips, fingers arcing out to take my eyes—but I stopped her, finally, parrying her with my blade and Phantom Riposte.
She tried closing in again, but I drove her back with a massive flash of Anathema fire drawn from the near-plasma stream still screaming around us.
I clenched and, with a massive flex of will, teleported outside the system into chaotic space, far away from any celestial body.
Soul Collapse at 51%.
I teleported again, and again, and again, and again, each one a fresh agony, but I needed to buy myself time to think, to plot.
Soul Collapse at 62%.
But it didn't do me much good, as I quickly discovered I had no good options.
I could go after the Soul Stone in this universe. If anything could fix me, it'd be it.
But that'd mean going to Vormir—a planet I could not find—and entering a soul barter with the guardian for a soul I didn't have, if he even existed here at all.
Asgard was also an option. Surely Odin, or whoever was running Asgard, could help—or at least direct me to someone who could.
But considering the state I was in, that would mean putting myself at the mercy of whatever monarch I found there.
And even if I did meet someone willing to help, there was no guarantee they even could. I was an interdimensional entity with the soul of a demigod and hundreds of billions of trapped souls inside me—what could they realistically do?
My only real hope was the Phoenix, but I knew that if she could reach me, she already would have.
Still, I was desperate and tired, and so I tried, teleporting again, tearing an even wider hole in my soul, appearing in a massive asteroid belt not too far from the cluster where we found Thanos's army, and meditated.
I knew I had minutes at most until Lauren found me, but I took the risk, drifting off into Astral Space.
It was shockingly empty—an endless landscape washed in white, with flecks of darkness that hinted at distant shadows on the horizon.
Jean. Phoenix Force? I called out mentally into the void and got no response.
Not having the time to be careful, I shot forward, racing into the vast whiteness, propelling myself with pure mental force. Even here, my soul hurt. Everything hurt. But it hurt less.
I covered what must have been the breadth of Earth in seconds, screaming into the void nonstop.
I pushed further and further, projecting my mind and calling out.
There was no answer. Not from the Phoenix or anyone else.
After what felt like an eternity, I finally found someone.
And it was the last person I expected.
A clone of Lauren, sitting in a meditative pose, her mind untethered even here in the Astral plane.
A clone of her was here for some reason, likely serving as a sort of mental bridge between her clones here in this reality and the ones back on my original earth. Or maybe this was how she'd always communicated with herself, using a clone as a sort of astral group chat for her various selves.
A reckless thought occurred to me as I gathered a clump of Astral energy and ignited it with Anathema fire.
Soul Collapse 75%
"It'd be what she fucking deserved."
"And it'll push you right over 80% soul collapse. Trust me, you don't want that. Seen it a couple of times. The stays with you."
Shin's voice came from behind me, and I whipped around, nearly throwing the psychic fireball in my hand at him.
He was still wearing his childish mask, but here, in the Astral Plane, I caught a glimpse beneath the hood.
I didn't like what I saw.
Clashing structures, aberrant realities, and mismatched body parts. It set me on edge.
I swallowed, my mind and body shivering. With a metaphysical clench of my fist, I steadied myself.
"The people you're talking about. You collapsed their souls, didn't you?"
Shin chuffed. "You know me so well."
I suppose I did, to the extent I knew a Greed God. I knew Shin wasn't one to waste words. Even when he'd dragged me to his personal dimension, it'd been to separate me from my weapons, armor, and dimension, exploiting the fading connection between us.
He was either genuinely concerned for Lauren, or there was something massive that I was missing.
"You never said what would happen to her if I hit her with the fireball. She'd die, wouldn't she? Or at least part of her mind would."
Shin's eyes revealed nothing, but that impassivity in and of itself told me I was onto something.
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