MAGUS INFINITE

The crystal was cold against my chest, its surface pulsing with what I knew was the trapped life force of millions. I could feel them pressing against my fingers, screaming without sound, desperate for release. I glanced away from the crystal, since it was too close to my eyes, and I did not want to be distracted by any unknown vision.

I moved again to the side, and the god’s claws carved through the air where my head had been a heartbeat before. I twisted, my feet finding purchase on the stone, and put three rows of corpses between us.

He did not follow the way I expected. His body flowed. That was the only word for it. His limbs bent in directions that had no names, his spine curved, his neck extended. He poured himself across the bodies like oil across water, his talons leaving furrows in the stone beneath.

If there had been food in my stomach, I would have thrown up at the sight of his body as it moved in this unnatural manner.

”You are fast,” he hissed. ”For a mortal.”

And at this point, I did not answer. I was too busy trying to stay alive.

∞

The god closed the distance between us and struck at my face with his claws. I was moving back to dodge when I discovered that the strike was a feint, as his tail rose up behind it.

I had not seen it before; he had kept it coiled behind him, hidden beneath the black robes. But now it whipped out, a length of scaled muscle tipped with a barb that glistened with something wet and dark, and it caught me across the shoulder before I could dodge.

The impact spun me sideways. The crystal slipped against my chest, and I had to clutch it with both hands to keep from dropping it. The barb had not pierced my skin; Adamantium held, and I heard a gasp of surprise from him, but the force behind it had been enough to send me flying through dozens of rows of corpses, and I tried not to gag at the feeling of my body tearing through hundreds of bodies.

However, I could sense that the fragile life force in the bodies destroyed by my passage was being absorbed into the crystal in my hand.

The air vibrated as the god landed in front of me, and I came up swinging. My fist connected with his jaw. It was a solid hit, and I felt the shock of it travel up my arm. The serpentine head snapped back a fraction of an inch.

Then he laughed.

”Was that supposed to hurt?”

Damn, this was so shameful... even with the body of a Sovereign, I still couldn’t throw a proper punch.

The hand of the god closed around my wrist. The talons bit into my skin, and this time they did not stop. I felt them pierce through the first layer, the second, scraping against the bone beneath.

Adamantium, the Law of Flesh, they held. After all the suffering I had endured under the spatial storm, my body could no longer be easily broken.

But the pressure was immense, and the grip strength of this god was ridiculous. I could feel my bones creaking, my channels straining, my body screaming at me to move, to escape, to do something other than stand there and take it.

I drove my knee into his chest. The impact echoed through the cavern, and I felt his balance give under the force. He staggered back a step, and I pulled my arm free, leaving strips of skin and flesh behind.

The wounds began to close before I had taken two steps.

∞

We circled each other among the dead. The bodies crunched beneath our feet, bones snapping, flesh squelching. The crystal’s green light painted everything in shades of sickness and decay.

I could see the uncertainty in the eyes of this god, and I almost smiled as I felt my heartbeat beginning to slowly accelerate.

”You cannot win,” he hissed. ”No matter what you are... you are a mortal. I am a god. The difference between us is not something you can overcome with determination. Give it back to me.”

”I have heard that before,” I replied. ”From beings much more impressive than you. You would have to do better than this to convince me.”

His eyes narrowed. The tongue flickered out again, tasting the air, tasting me.

”You speak of things you do not understand.”

”I understand more than you think.”

He lunged, but this time I was ready. I sidestepped, using his momentum against him, and drove my elbow into the back of his skull. The impact should have shattered a mountain. It only made him stumble.

But the stumble was enough. I grabbed his tail, wrapped it around my fist, and pulled.

He screamed with indignation, like a god who had never expected to be handled in such a manner. His body whipped around, and his claws came for my face, and I used the tail to swing him into a pile of bodies before slamming him into the ground multiple times, creating craters that shattered hundreds of bodies.

”Boom... Boom... Boom...”

His tail slipped from my grasp when I slammed him into the ground the eighth time, and I stepped back, looking at my palm, which was filled with many tiny cuts, before returning my gaze to the god who was rising from the crater filled with broken corpses like a serpent emerging from water.

His robes had been torn, revealing the scales beneath. They were beautiful, in a terrible way, dark green and gold, patterns that shifted like living things.

”You are stronger than you look,” he admitted. ”You have stolen the strength of a god.”

I shrugged. ”I am just full of surprises.”

”Then I shall kill you like a god.”

∞

The god hissed into the air as his body began to change.

The scales shifted. The flesh beneath them rippled. I watched as his right arm elongated, the bones cracking and reforming, the muscles swelling and twisting. The talons grew, curving into hooks the length of daggers. The skin split, and something emerged, a blade, slick with blood and other fluids, growing from his own flesh like a horn from a beast’s skull.

It was a scythe.

This was not a weapon he had been carrying, or a spell as I knew it. This mad god had grown the thing out of his own body, tearing through his own flesh to make it, and he was smiling as he did it, and when he peered at the blade I could no longer miss the sheer madness in his eyes.

”Blood is the first weapon,” he growled. ”Blood is the last weapon. Everything else is lesser.”

The scythe gleamed in the green light. It was longer than he was tall, the blade curved and wicked, and I could see veins along the weapon still pulsing inside it.

My excitement grew as I drew Dorrik’s sword and held it in my right hand, the crystal in my left.

It felt small in my hand, but it was what I wanted to fight with, and at this point... it seemed right.

I braced myself as the god exploded towards me.