Chapter 14: Taming the Eternal Night
The blanket of new night draped the skies, the silhouette of the winter monstrosity merging in its darkness with it. A colossal shadow amidst the night. Its gray eyes, the picturesque of moons, rested on the tiny silhouette standing in the air before it.
The figure seemed to bear an armor woven from the essence of this new night, laden with stars, its face shrouded in an iridescent swirling nebula. The entity gazed at the colossal titan before it.
Then, before heaven and earth, he declared to the towering monster... "Small."
His hands loosened the hold on the unholy sword of Death. He wouldn't be needing it anymore. The sword dissolved into the ethereal, retreating out of reality itself. Yet still, the death of time persisted, now not as a result of the Death, but simply because...
He wished it so.
His helm tilted to the spot where the monster had stood, now an empty desolate spot, birthing behind him simultaneously a colossal silhouette of a fist, swamps of dark ichor surging with it.
Meters before his silhouette, still his visage stood in place. His now white hair was a dancing beacon in the still darkness.
For it was futile.
The gigantic force collided against his visage, birthing in a force of greater magnitude a cataclysm that ripped the crater down into oblivion, laying the planet's tectonic plates on full view under the dark skies.
Then, an explosive burst of ichor and a spray of iridescent bone—the entirety of the harbinger's arm was gone. Even the creature's eyes bore a hint of apprehension as it tilted its head, gazing at the unharmed helmed figure.
Another of its fists tore the air, unmaking it in ice fractals. When it finally collided with the force of a meteor, it birthed another world-shaping cataclysm not only to the world before them, but to its own arm.
Another explosion of iridescent bone and ichor that now carved a corrosive chasm on the ground below, before simultaneously the colossal arm re-existed, like it was never unmade.
Then it swung another, then another, in all known directions, all physical dimensions, materializing each before his form with forces deforming and reshaping the barren remains of land and releasing a pressure that crushed the floating boulders to the ground below, reducing them to their subatomic form.
He sighed.
Just how short-sighted was this creature, this pawn of his? His eyes wandered to the end of the barrier. He tilted his helm.
It seemed someone was watching...
A mortal, perhaps.
Then his voice moved as if addressing the one beyond the veil, this fragile mortal artifact.
"Watch well then,little one....
This is how you tame chaos."
This monstrosity, as derailed as it was and eroded by the stench of a fallen god—perhaps one of the Nethers of the Archangel of the End—possessed a will, a wish to kill him, to devour the puny being before it. That itself was its greatest flaw.
For the function of this Domain of Night itself was the substrata of all wishes, and thus its very wish for devouring him, made a force of nature by its attack, was being reversed back well to it.
A frail reflection of what the true Domain of Night was.
His body birthed little cracks across his wrist as he could see.
He sighed.
So this was the highest amount of essence he could use—quite much compared to his previous disposition. How substandard of that little weaver.
Then he'd better put an end to this.
"Vortagem... is it ready?" His voice tore at Vortagem subconsciously. After a brief while, she materialized beside his visage.
"It seems it was successful, My Lord."
His gauntleted hand wandered to his hair, which had now lost its serenity, becoming pristine like those feathered pawns of the so-called Creator.
Curse that cunning weaver.
"Retreat to the Dreaming, Vortagem. You have done enough; your essence is diminished." His voice lauded. His hands retreated from his hair, amidst the barrages of colossal attacks. His body phased through them as it ascended above the creature, ignoring its concept of stasis, towards the pinnacle of the dark skies.
"But... Lord... I can still..."
His voice trailed hers off, a spark of white igniting from his now outstretched hands.
"It's alright, Vortagem. I can manage this much."
His eyes traveled to the colossal monstrosity, now ascending towards him—not levitating, but by rendering the very space between the earth and the heavens frozen. It ascended it in huge steps, a truly terrifying enigma ascending the ruined hell that had been birthed below.
Now this was better. He was tired of gazing above something so far beneath him. He was now looking down at it, as all things should be.
A god and a gnat.
His voice pierced the still air, the realm losing all its color in a blink before returning to their exact state. His hands outstretched as if accepting its reverence.
The stars in the skies disappeared, leaving the skies barren.
"Fall..."
And so it became. The monster, as if crushed by some colossal pressure, hurled down into the earth, its feet digging craters spanning miles into the ichor-wretched earth, sending detonated rings of impacts that rippled across the entire plains like seismic waves shattering the frozen crust, upheaving jagged fissures that spewed plumes of dark vapor into the void, the ground trembling in violent convulsions as if the planet itself recoiled in agony. Its figure submerged further into the earth, its gigantic form being swallowed into the depths, its body being wrecked in a splash of ichor followed by a respawn—a continuous cycle as the monster battled against the tremendous force.
A harrowing spectacle.
It was quite formidable. Cracks formed on his horned helm,not only was it withstanding partly the weight of a mirror realm,it was motioning to defy it..
Truly intriguing..
He would have tested its fortitude further, but this frail mortal body would offer no compromise...
He gazed at the monster, which now, with a counter-spin of its halos, was slowly gaining resistance, rising defiantly against the heavens.
"We shall meet again, Monster of Dread. Perhaps in more... favorable conditions."
His visage thundered, dissolving into ethereal darkness, out of the wrecked landscape, to its own battle of attrition.
His form swirled back into reality, in an untouched landscape plagued by blizzards of snow and a dull sky—the True West Arctics.
His dark figure now above an iridescent dome laden with cracks, a testament to his essence, housing another concurrent dome of night slowly encroaching the iridescence to darkness, crowned by a golden halo which occasionally rotated, aligning itself with the rotation of the world itself, making it ever-expanding.
A mortal artifact. A sealing one, to be more specific, which he was quite grateful for. Now he could use it to his advantage. It was just as Vortagem had said.
She truly was reliable.
He constricted his gauntleted hands. The dome of night swirled violently, its essence of the Night violently rupturing through the fixtures of the iridescent dome, drowning it in a fog of great darkness. He folded his fists further; the fog swirled, devouring first the halo, now rotating clockwise as the planet's spin.
Which meant, he deduced... then... he wafted his hands anti-clockwise. The corrupted now-dark halo obeyed, briefly with a pause before defying the planet's rotation to the opposite.
It was supposed to now constrict itself...
And so it did. With each concurrent complete counter-rotation, the corrupted dome reduced itself in sheer size, the swirling shadows contracting like a living vortex drawing inward, compressing the iridescent barriers with a low, resonant hum that echoed through the frozen air, the golden halo fracturing into shards of captured light before merging into the encroaching night, the entire structure shrinking inexorably until it stabilized as no more than the size of his fist—a multidimensional-shaped orb, with his swirling miniature domain of night holding the monstrosity captive within, along with the now-still dark halo.
His figure descended down towards the snowy plain, his white hair dancing rhythmically as the tempest of snow and violent gale.
His gauntlet reached towards the mortal artifact, cradling it upon his hands.
His fingers wafted around it as Vortagem swirled into existence beside his horned form, her voice carrying a mixture of elation and relief.
"You did it, Lord. You've enshrouded the pawn."
His eyes laid transfixed upon the artifact. In that moment, though hidden behind his helm, a beautiful smile spanned across his features.
He really had succeeded.
Perhaps now was the time to bring the pawn into the chessboard.
His goal would soon be in sight.
And once again...
The Dream... smiled.