Mad God

Nilier's Realm was quickly reduced to nothing but a hellhole. Into the perfect image of what an apocalypse would look like. The previously verdant scenery was turned from green to crimson, and the earth cracked apart wherever they passed. Her house was long gone, and every flower simply withered away in an instant during their first exchange. Her Sky was shattered, filled with cracks, teetering on the edge of breaking apart completely as she dodged the slashes of Skoorn's weapon. Everywhere where the rust-colored energies of the weapon traveled, the world fell into ruin, and all life was extinguished. What was worse than the attacks of the bald God were the twins, who, instead of attacking her directly, they made sure she had always only one direction to escape towards, dodging their incoming attacks. If she made a mistake and stepped where the twins blocked her path, it would be easy for the two to catch her. And that would be the end of all of it.

"Hmph!" Nilier snorted, steeling her mind and coming to a decision that drew a somewhat sarcastic smile on her face. Instead of dodging, she blocked Skoorn's blade with her whip, curling it around the rusted Deathbringer. As soon as his weapon crossed with hers, Nilier saw the marks and cracks forming on it, feeling it in her own body, the destructive powers of Skoorn's sword. "It all ends here anyway…" she murmured to herself, and with the whip, using the rebounding force rampaging in her wrist, her weapon squeezed around it like a python would around its prey. After successfully obstructing Skoorn's rusty blade, she pulled on it as hard as she could, tearing it out from his hands. The move and strength she demonstrated surprised Skoorn, whose palms were now bleeding heavily as she tore his most prized possession from them alongside his own flesh.

Nilier had no plans to grab onto it. She already knew that her whip would lose to it in under a minute. The moment it coiled around its blade, it started to be ground down to pieces, and it was only a temporary solution in disarming Skoorn. But that was enough. She did not hesitate and immediately went on the attack, exchanging hand-to-hand blows with him, exploiting the fact that Skoorn had not fought without his sword since they defeated Kai. While Skoorn's battle style was much more stiff, focusing on heavy punches and kicks, Nilier's was the epitome of flexibility. She dodged past his strikes like a blade of grass dancing in the wind. Her small, piercing jabs with the end of her fingers were like sharp needles, piercing Skoorn's skin, shedding thin blood trails from him. Every blow left another deep scar on the fragile sub-realm, driving it closer and closer to complete destruction, spreading more and more cracks in reality itself around them. Even if it landed on the bald God's body, the shockwave exploded out behind him, tearing up space itself.

"Help me already!" Skoorn shouted at the twins who simply were watching their exchange with an amused look, not bothering to intervene.

"We thought you had to kill her!" Oynega shouted back.

"Yeah! So you won't blame us for failing to cultivate your sword!" Alfina agreed. "Worry not; if you would die, we will come to help!"

"Promise!" Oynega nodded with a smile.

"Bastards!" Skoorn screamed at them, his voice cutting their ears with impatience as he was being pushed back by Nilier's unending and rapid assault. In the end, she managed to coil her legs around his neck and flip him to the ground, taking him into a chokehold, to everyone's surprise. Her fair, white thighs were squeezing Skoorn's neck, turning his bald head redder and redder. It was not the result of him losing the ability to breathe but the fact that Nilier knew full well where his Godcrystal was. She was now placing such pressure on it that Skoorn almost felt like it was going to get cracked alongside his own neck, scaring him for real for the first time.

"What…?" Nilier grasped for air, doing all she could to kill him, no matter how slim a chance was there for it. "You thought I was not capable of something like this?"

He could not answer, trying with both of his hands to pull apart her thighs, grabbing onto them so forcefully his fingers sank into her flesh. Even then, she continued to squeeze it with all her might. Skoorn's eyes, looking at the twins, suddenly realized something very alarming. They just want a God's soul. If it happens to be his… they would still get what they want. But before more panic could settle in for him, he heard Nilier's whip shatter, blowing into pieces as his sword flew straight at them, hurriedly returning to his rightful owner.

"Tsk!" Nilier clicked her tongue, failing at her only chance. Alfina and Oynega moved simultaneously as Skoorn's sword. They summoned their own weapons, both of them wielding a scythe, going straight for Nilier's figure. "I'll not let you leave unharmed!" The Goddess of Purity whispered, barely audible, but Skoorn heard her next words very well. "If you love darkness so much, have fun in it!" She said, grabbing forward with both hands, sinking her fingers into Skoorn's eye sockets. No matter how resilient a God's body was, meeting against an equal force, it acted just like a mortal's body would. Her fingers sank in deep, accompanied by a squelching sound as she scraped out his eyeballs, blinding him completely. By the time Skoorn screamed out, her legs let him go, trying to kick him away so she could dodge the incoming attacks of the twins. Skoorn's sword arrived at that moment, cutting off Nilier's hands from below the elbow. "You can keep them!" She laughed loudly.

Her shout was mixed in with the same sarcastic tone that was oh-so-familiar to their ears, reminding everybody of how Athos had spoken to them most of the time. Kicking the bald head, she quickly distanced herself, rolling on the ground, splashing blood everywhere from the two stumps where her arms should be, barely escaping the swing of the two scythes. After standing up, she realized it was not a successful dodge as all her toes were missing, cut off by the duo's scythes. Skoorn was just standing up, literally tearing out her hands from his eye sockets as her fingers were still lodged into his skull. He was wielding his weapon, holding it against Nilier. Even blinded, a God's senses were still enough to 'see.'

"I'll tear you apart!" He screamed like a mad, injured animal with an 'empty' look. "And you two! We will settle this!"

"Easy there!" Alfina laughed, "We helped; if you could've slashed her in two, that would have been the best, but noooo~."

"Yeah, those are just some eyes; you can replace them easily!" Oynega agreed, "Pussy! Going for the arms instead of killing her! Hah!" He mocked Skoorn openly, and even Nilier chuckled, watching them, breathing heavily, knowing the end was approaching, and she saw no chance to escape.

The moment they appeared, she was unable to travel to the main Realm or blow her own apart and escape by that. It was clearly held together forcefully by the machinations of the twins. Even her soul felt some strange tugging coming from all directions. As death's door was opening before her, she could now feel it even stronger. Not to mention their weapons; just by holding them in their hands, Nilier felt her soul being confused and scraped against by invisible hands. Looking around, seeing her destroyed home, which was the only place where she could be genuinely herself, a long-forgotten feeling tugged at her heart. It was making her start shedding tears without realizing it. Old memories assaulted her mind, flashes of times when she was not alone in here, sharing her deepest secrets and wishes with another. Her gaze landed on the necklace that she still kept from that time, watching it broken into multiple pieces, trampled upon by Skoorn. She finally realized this was the end of it all.

"Crying won't save you now!" Skoorn flashed before her, his sword already flying forward, aiming where Nilier's Godcore was, slightly below her navel. "Neither Kai nor Athos is here now to save you!"

"You are wrong about both…." Nilier whispered, with a soft smile, still crying as the blade went through her, skewering her core through the womb that housed it. "I should've been braver to stay with him…" she said, watching Skoorn's face as she coughed up blood, infused with powers and pure essence of her soul and body, leaking from her injured Godcore. All of the flowing blood from both of him and Nilier was rapidly absorbed by the rusty sword, turning more and more orange-colored and looking like something that was dragged out from the ground in some kind of ancient ruin. Yet the flakes were rapidly falling down, starting to reveal a perfectly shiny piece of metal underneath.

"Don't mind us!" the twins laughed, swinging their scythes. They turned in the middle of their swings into a corporeal, spiritual form, going through Nilier's body, sinking into her still present soul, dragging it out like meathooks. She felt that her soul was being extracted not just out of her body but from her core. She had a strange, little smile on her face as they pulled her out, already in the process of absorbing her into their own reincarnation cycle, planning to make her a part of it.

"I told you…." Her voice echoed, as if it was coming through the wind, "I will not let you go unharmed…."

The sudden, blinding light coming from her soul was completely unexpected for the twins and for Skoorn, but it reminded them of the day when Athos opened the Sky up. In her last moment, Nilier had a quiet but to their ears a very painful, sarcastic laugh. "You were right… I was tainted by him!"

"NOOOO!" Skoorn screamed out, but it was already too late. Not just Nilier's soul but her own core went nova at that moment. The resulting explosion completely disintegrated her small pocket-realm, and it did not stop there. The world itself heard the explosion, and every inch of land was shaking from the Black Coast to the Storm Coast. No matter where people were, they saw a new 'sun' lighting up the Sky in a greenish hue in a blinding flash. What was even scarier was that the Tear, high up in the Sky, suddenly shook and became visible to everyone for all times from then on, no matter what stage of cultivation they were at.

When the apocalyptic phenomena finally died, the twins were joined into one body, gasping for air and not because of their injuries, but from simple, undiluted rage as their reincarnation circle was heavily damaged. It was used to seal off Nilier's own world, tying it down, and now they suffered for it greatly. Skoorn was even worse off. His blade was cracked in the process, halting it from pushing through that oh-so-little threshold it was left with. It would only be completed once he repaired the damage, thwarting every gain he had in the past 2000 years. Both parties were worse off than what they came with. Alfina and Oynega were not in the mood to say anything; they just reabsorbed every little energy or soul fragment belonging to them before disappearing, not even sparing a glance at Skoorn. When he finally also recollected himself, deciding to leave before something else happened, it was already too late. He had no other chance but to lean backward, raising his rusty sword up to block the arriving strike from nowhere. He did not recognize the incoming fluctuations of energy, but he was sure they carried the same patterns as those of the three Immortals.

"Who?" He flicked his wrist, diverting the buzzing spearhead off his weapon, skidding backward in the air, gaining distance between the newcomer, only to feel electricity whizz by him and tear off his left ear.

No answer came from the new arrival, who was none other than Ren. She was wearing a grim, cold look, refusing to speak, only wielding a violet spear, using her newfound strength, raining down attack after attack on Skoorn. The moment the explosion was felt all over the world was the same moment she successfully absorbed the second fragment of her core, reaching the Immortal Realm in a way nobody expected. Yet, instead of celebrating her success, resting, and consolidating her state, she immediately left. Seeing the bright light and feeling the fluctuations, she already knew what happened better than anyone else. Even before arriving, she knew it was already too late. Seeing Skoorn here and his damaged sword, Ren did not hesitate for even a moment, going after him with her full speed and strength from the start. Her style was something that horrified Skoorn to the bone, as it only took a few exchanges to realize who his enemy was.

"You! YOU! IT'S YOU!"

"Just die!" She opened her mouth for the first time, easily overwhelming the injured Skoorn, who quickly put things together after hearing Ren's voice, not questioning anything for now. With a roar he exploded out with strength, pushing Ren's weapon away, giving himself enough time to have a shot at escaping. "Escaping? The FUCK you are!" Ren thundered again, turning into pure lightning, coming at him from the same direction where the Tear was up in the Sky.

Skoorn was already slightly gone, his body occupying two spots simultaneously, yet Ren's attack tore through space and time itself, reaching him at both places at once. It came without a chance of evading, no matter what he did. He barely had enough time to raise his damaged sword, just blocking the tip of her spear. What he heard next was something he never wanted to. The cracking of metal and the loud, ringing voice of his sword exploding into millions of pieces! When everything settled, Ren was left where she was originally, and Skoorn arrived back in his own abyss, holding only the hilt of his sword. The wild roar he finally let out was shaking the ocean itself, causing giant waves at every shore in the world as even the Calm Blue turned violent and raged on for days before settling down. Ren, standing in the air, taking a deep breath, feeling what transpired here, leaving nothing behind of Nilier, she could not help but let out a long and painful sigh.

"Don't worry… None of them are going to live for long… I won't waste the chance you made for us!" She whispered, her eyes glistening with tears.