Dimensional Descent

The world fell into an eerie lull. Silence clung to its edges and pooled into its core, like sunlight retreating beneath the hues of dusk. The darkness raced against the light, pushing it back and then swallowing it whole.

The only point of brightness that remained at all was a single young woman staring into the void. The world vanished from her sight and her thoughts became a

contradictory vacant mess. Her emotions spiraled akin to static confusion, before, in a suppressed hush, it too was vanquished.

And then there was nothing at all.

Nothing but an unbridled fury.

BOOM!

A pillar wrapped in blood red and demonic blacks shot into the skies, splitting the clouds into a winding cyclone that sparked with ruby lightning.

The wings on the small of Aina’s back flared outward, scythes of wind energy splicing space into shards and splitting them into ribbons.

Force accumulated in the skies, and for a moment, it didn’t feel like it was a young, vulnerable woman standing before them at all. Instead, it was a towering mass, a natural phenomena, a Matriarch that stood even above a woman that would deign to call herself Imperatress.

Aina moved.

Space folded before her like layers of fabric, trying to fight back beneath her power and maintain its hold and control over the world.

It failed.

The folds shattered, sending mirror-like pieces of space cutting against the wind. The ruby lightning sparked at its edges, grabbing onto the laws of the world and suffocating them into obedience.

Aina reached out a hand just as she appeared before the Thronebearer once again. Loryth’s eyes trembled and an overwhelming sense of danger blossomed from her heart like another one of her treasured plants. The world faded from her senses and all she could feel was the death looming before her right this moment.

Suffocating, oppressive, a deathly sort of blankness that encapsulated not torture or the fear of pain, but rather the vast nothingness of what death truly was...

An endless abyss, lacking in time and unknown to space.

She was dead. She felt it even before it came. Like there was nothing she could do with her own power at all to change things.

Anselma’s gaze sharpened and her grip on her battle ax tightened. She stomped a foot and accelerated forward. The Domain of the Founder’s Ax surged and the laws of the world twisted around both herself and Aina.

BANG!

Anselma was sent rocketing back, but Loryth had firmly landed in her palms.

The two skidded across the earth, the city that had once been their own splintering at the seams and being swallowed up by the vacant depths that Aina had become.

The world fell into a silent lull once more, the discharge of lightning snaking across the ground echoing as the only sign of life.

Loryth coughed up a mouthful of blood as they skidded to a stop, her eyes bulging with fear. The moment that acceptance of death disappeared, it was like all the dread, once forced back by the depths that was Aina’s presence, came flooding forth all at

once.

She began to hyperventilate, her Force almost spiraling out of control. SLAP.

Anselma’s palm struck against the Thronebearer’s face.

”Pull yourself together or get the hell out of my sight.”

The imposing air of an empress stretched across the skies, clashing against the black and red of Aina’s aura with a fierce violet and red of her own.

The pride of this Imperatress rose into the skies with a dominating posture as she stood to her feet, tossing Loryth to the side.

Her gaze shifted, landing to the location Miel had died and then upward toward Aina’s Manifestation.

An indifferent sneer spread across her face.

”To think that an incarnation of this Imperatress fell in love with such a pathetic excuse for a man. Weakness of the body can be fixed. Weakness of the heart will rot and fester, destroying the roots of even the strongest trees.

”You... will be no different.”

Anselma’s arm swept to the side, a strong scythe of energy emitting from the

Founder’s Ax and shattering much of Aina’s aura.

Her power began to climb as a Myxor and Eryvon drenched in cold sweat rose to her

sides, appearing like shadowy warriors in obedience to their empress.

The clouds above rumbled. In the midst of the battle, it was almost soft, akin to the final groan of a wounded beast.

And soon came the pitter patter of rain, falling in a melodic rhythm.

Four auras rose up from them. A crimson Imperatress. A golden Dreadarch. An

emerald Thronebearer. A silvery-blue Regentrix.

Aina stood like a lone tree in a vast desert, buffeted by the winds and the hail of sand. Her hair became drenched beneath the rain, her wings growing heavy.

But then they suddenly flared out.

Her wings, arched elegantly and layered in carefully sculpted gem-like red feathers trembled just a single time and the rain on it was flicked off.

For a moment, the rain around Aina seemed to freeze in place, unable to fall.

”Prepare yourself.” Anselma said coldly.

She raised the Founder’s Ax as Eryvon, Loryth, and Myxor all called out with their senses at once.

At that moment, from across worlds, the Founding Treasures of the Four Great Families heeded the call of their masters.

Whether it was Leonel or Little Nana, they felt their treasures once in their

possessions vanish.

Crossing time and space, the Laevis Bow, the Crudus Armor, the Adurna Shield...

All made their presence known to face against a single woman without even a weapon

in hand.

But then Aina reached toward the skies, her Weapon Forces rotating around her as dragons of ruby lightning descended to her palm.

She was the Berserk War Goddess.

She had no need for a weapon.

Anything, everything, and nothing at all would heed her call.

BOOM!

Lightning-wreathed fist and Founding Ax met in a clash akin to a herald’s cry.