Chapter 28: The Infinite

Standing at the banks of the river, Anna slammed her hands against the ground and harnessed every spark of energy she had. She cast her telekinesis upon all of the water and launched it in the form of massive jets at Fenrir flying overhead. He swung his arm and unleashed a wave of his energy that enveloped the jets and turned them into massive pillars of ice, but that was the plan all along. Eric and the other masters ran up the pillars towards him, using telekinesis to pull on the ice and stick to it as if through magnetism.

Gunter made the first attempt, raising his bow and firing three arquerite arrows at once. Fenrir saw them approach and dodged to the side, only to be attacked from behind by Leon. Despite the man’s speed, Fenrir stopped his attack by grabbing the hilt of the sword. Even he wasn’t arrogant enough to try and grab it by the blade. He pulled back his hand to punch Leon, but was stopped when Eric came rocketing over with his own fist outstretched. Fenrir caught the blow but was separated from Leon. Eric tried to inject his energy into Fenrir through the brass knuckles, but it simply splashed off his palm like a blowtorch spraying a rock.

Fenrir knocked him back with an elbow to the stomach and managed to regain his posture just in time to keep from crashing into one of the pillars. He leaned back, avoiding an arrow from Gunter, who was sliding down the pillar towards him. Fenrir fired a blast straight up and Gunter leaped to the side while continuing to fire arrows. Fenrir chased after him and drove his clawed hand straight through his enemy’s gut. Gunter coughed up blood and fell freely towards the rainforest below, but Leon jumped across the open sky and caught him.

With inhuman reaction speed, he dodged yet another sneak attack, this time from Shahti. She had fired a blade-like spirit blast, but all it did was draw his attention to her. Clinging to one of the pillars like a spider, she tried to slide around to the back to avoid being spotted, but he shot over and smashed through it. The pillar began to fall while knocking over the others, bombarding the rainforest with massive chunks of ice.

Powdered ice filled the air, and with that cover, Shahti lashed out with her urumi. He dodged every swing and closed in, managing to slip right by her defenses. She countered with a spirit blast at point-blank range, but he knocked her hand away with her tail and delivered the same blow to her as he had to Gunter. She coughed up blood as he drove his hand through her stomach, then pushed her off the top of the pillar.

“You son of a bitch!”

Realizing he was standing in a shadow, Fenrir looked up just as Eric delivered a dropkick from directly above. Fenrir blocked with his crossed arms, but the blow ended up completely shattering the pillar under his feet, sending the two of them plummeting to the ground, though Fenrir swerved out from under Eric at the last second and returned to the sky. About to hit the ground, Eric created a cushion of spirit energy, similar to an airbag, that broke his fall.

From above, Fenrir began firing blasts of his own dark power that rained down upon the riverbed. To counter, they channeled their spirit energy into their weapons and deflected them, trying to send them back at Fenrir. Shahti, still healing the huge hole in her gut, had to hide behind Anna. However, the blasts that missed and hit the ground exploded, and the power released expelled all the thermal energy from the air. Around him, Eric could feel moving drafts crackling as the humidity in the air was turned into diamond dust and the water of the river froze solid. Just a slight breeze was enough to push the air towards him and give any unguarded spots frostbite.

This battle was going badly. Fenrir was possibly the second-worst possible enemy they could have faced. Not only were his spiritual abilities overpowered, his physical prowess and reflexes made him impossible to wound. No matter what angle they attacked from, he’d dodge or counter. They had yet to draw a single drop of blood. If they, five seasoned masters, were so weak in comparison, what could Sirius, even with a full body initiation, do?

He fled the area and the other masters followed suit, gathering in the rainforest where Fenrir couldn’t see them.

“I have a plan.” Shahti called out. “Anna and Eric, stand in front and guard me. Gunter, bring him down here. Leon, get ready to make the kill when I say so.”

She, Eric, and Anna returned to the riverbed, while Gunter and Leon remained in the rainforest. The air was near arctic temperatures and their breath fogged in front of their faces. Gunter took aim at Fenrir’s head and launched an arrow. The demon sensed its approach and leaned back, but at the last moment, Gunter took control of the shaft with telekinesis and changed its trajectory, managing to leave a deep cut across his forehead. Fenrir jerked in pain and surprise, having never received such an injury before. Normally, not even steel could wound him.

More arrows were launched with Gunter controlling their trajectory. Due to their speed, he could only adjust where they’d strike by a few feet or so, but Fenrir wasn’t willing to risk it and dodged them with a large area of open space. Gunter managed to force him down towards the ground, where his eyes fell on Shahti, Eric, and Anna. His instincts were telling him that this was a trap, but he was too interested not to indulge them.

He swooped down like a falcon, pulling up just before he could hit the ground and zooming towards the three masters. He held out his arms to his sides, ready to rip out their throats. Yet when he reached Eric and Anna, they both grabbed his arms and used all of their strength to stop them. The ground underneath them had frozen solid after being permeated by Fenrir’s energy, and they used it to brace themselves. As in the Boro style, they transferred all of the energy to the ground and reinforced their stances, allowing them to bring Fenrir to a halt.

Shahti, with her runes on her palm, grabbed Fenrir by the forehead. Eric pressed his face to Fenrir’s left arm, and Anna, wearing her runes on her forearm, pressed it Fenrir’s right. They all held out their free hands behind them and lowered their own power levels as far as they could go. Instantly, a roaring surge of demonic power erupted from their palms like flamethrowers launching black flames. Fenrir stumbled and touched down onto the ground, feeling his power draining away before he could stop it. He could barely move, unaccustomed to having so little power in his body.

It was entropy, energy naturally spreading from spaces of high density to low density to encompass all areas with equal concentration. In this case, it was spirit energy. Shahti, Eric, and Anna had all dropped their levels as far as they could go, and with their arquerite runes acting as the breach point, Fenrir’s spirit energy was leaving his body and flowing into theirs to achieve equilibrium. From there, they immediately ejected it before it could destroy their own bodies, though their hands were blackening by the second as it corrupted their flesh.

“Now!” Shahti called.

Leon appeared behind Fenrir and swung at him with his katana. Fenrir tried to interrupt the attack with his tail, but it was struck down by one of Gunter’s arrows. Leon’s sword sliced through Fenrir’s neck, severing his head with Shahti stepping back with it in her grip. For the briefest moment, hope overtook training and instinct, and the five masters lowered their guard to actually feel joy in their success, but that was a mistake. Fenrir, now just a severed head, opened his eyes and released two narrow lasers of his dark power. They pierced Shahti’s chest, one going through her heart. True, his energy couldn’t cause bodily harm when released in this way, but when it moved through Shahti’s flesh, it expelled all of the thermal energy. In the single instant, it was like she had been speared through the chest by two icicles.

At the same time, his headless body, now held with a much lighter grip, grabbed Eric and Anna by the throats, spun around, and hurled them both at Leon and Gunther. Tendrils of black tissue stretched from the ends of his neck wound and connected in midair, pulling his head back to his body and regenerating. He made one more rotation while hurling blades of energy from his hands. They struck the five masters like sword slashes, cutting through their auras and leaving slivers of their bodies frozen solid.

For Eric, both his right hand and right foot were turned to blocks of ice. Shahti had been clipped horizontally across the thighs, creating two slices of ice in her flesh with her legs left to die from oxygen deprivation from the cut off blood flow. Leon was slashed from shoulder to hip, just barely missing his heart but leaving him with only one lung and the upper right portion of his torso. Anna had been shot through the gut, turning all of her innards and stomach muscles into ice. Gunther, unfortunately, had been struck in the face and his whole head was frozen solid.

One dead, the other four incapacitated with two inching towards death. It was their total defeat, yet Fenrir gave them a round of applause. “Well done, very impressive. To actually bedhead me is a worthy feat, and the way you did it was brilliant! You have earned my recognition, and for that, I will grant last requests.”

Trying not to scream from the agony of his frozen arm and hand, Eric sat up. “Leave our souls alone. I’d rather burn in Hell than be swallowed by Dominion!”

Fenrir assaulted him with a wave of bloodlust. “You would really deny me my prize for victory? Don’t take advantage of my good nature! Besides, it would be sinful to let your souls go to waste. Every soul brings my Master one step closer to his goal.”

Eric gave a strained laugh. “But if he gets our souls, he’ll also get our memories. He’ll find out we managed to behead you. For the son of Dominion, receiving such an injury is disgraceful! You’ll be labeled a failure by your father and everyone else!”

Fenrir’s bloodlust intensified, making Eric feel like his soul really would be ripped from his body, but he continued to grin, knowing that it was brought on by his frustration. The demon bit his lip so hard that it drew blood and his body trembled with rage, but he eventually relaxed.

“You humans are clever. Take pride in it. It’s the only thing that allowed your species to last this long. Very well, I’ll spare you, and let you enjoy your slow deaths. Just know that you ruined my good mood. I’m sure you can imagine the repercussions that will have on anyone who crosses my path.”

He rose into the sky and took off towards the mountain. While gagging in pain, Eric managed to stand up. If he used telekinesis, he might be able to keep his frozen foot from shattering or ripping off, meaning that he could still move, maybe even fight.

“Anna, you have to heal Shahti and Leon! I’m going on ahead! Sirius and the Grandmaster have to be warned!”

Despite the depth of the initiation chamber and the high amounts of silver and arquerite in the walls, the Grandmaster could still sense the effects of the battle outside. He could feel the deaths, the explosions, and the horrible bloodlust of the enemy leader. The Sect of Silver was losing and Sirius wasn’t even close to finished with his initiation. It was not a matter of buying time, it would take a full day at most to get it done. He had no choice but to act on his own and hope he had the strength to neutralize this threat. He dispatched his human puppet, splitting his focus in two. While racing up the stairs in human form, he used his dragon form to continue the procedure with telekinesis.

He raced up the stairs with superhuman speed and entered the prayer hall, closing the secret doors behind him. Now topside, he could sense everything much more clearly. The rainforest was filled with slain disciples, their corpses hanging from trees in pieces and being fed on by the Occisors, with the strongest students struggling to stay alive. Above, the mountain was being painted red with the blood of masters as spawn reinforcements arrived. It was a dire situation in every sense of the word.

The Grandmaster perked up as the mountain began to shake. Outside, anyone not busy fighting watched as the mountain seemed to disintegrate. Just as Dominion would disassemble entire cities brick by brick, Fenrir was pulverizing stone into dust and whisking it away, carving an expanding cavity into the side of the mountain. From inside, the Grandmaster watched as the ceiling and walls were sucked away like a house being ripped apart by a tornado. The sun shined upon what was now a giant stone bowl where a mountain used to be.

Floating overhead was Fenrir, who dropped down and stood before the Grandmaster. The two of them stared each other down, and the mountain, or what remained of it, once more began to shake, as spirit energy filled the air.

“You’re no ordinary human, are you? I can sense something about you, something ancient. It feels like I’m looking at a mask.”

“I am the Grandmaster of the Sect of Silver, that is all you need to know. You managed to fight your way through my students, but now you face me. You’ll come to realize what a mistake that is.”

“He’s close, isn’t he? The other child of Lord Dominion, my kin.”

The Grandmaster took a fighting stance. “I’m going to give you just one warning: keep your hands off my disciple.”

Fenrir assumed a stance of his own. “Let’s have some fun!”

The two enemies locked eyes, and then an instant later, they disappeared and reappeared in another corner of the room, Fenrir blocking an Argata strike from the Grandmaster. Once more, they seemingly teleported across the room, this time with the Grandmaster deflecting a tail jab from Fenrir. They bounced around back and forth through the room, exchanging blows at speeds no human could match. Just like in the fight between Sirius and Eric, every attack, whether blocked, parried, or received, produced violent shockwaves.

In terms of offensive power, the Grandmaster was at a major disadvantage, but he made up for it with endless millennia of experience and training. He had spent more time piloting this human body than his actual main body and had mastery over every function and ability. His martial arts were perfect, better than perfect, and were fully utilized to kill this invader. He was landing far more strikes than Fenrir, with every point of contact turned into an Argata strike. His spirit energy, injected into Fenrir like a toxin, was disrupting his own energy flow and throwing off the natural rhythm of his body.

Fenrir was countering as best as he could, using his own strikes and power to peel away the Grandmaster’s aura and expose him to the deathly chill now filling the air. Just like the Grandmaster, he used every moment of contact as a chance to attack, and the effects were adding up.

They momentarily split up to collect themselves and develop a strategy. Fenrir was coated in burn marks from where his body was trying to reject the Grandmaster’s invading energy. The Grandmaster was similarly injured, with the light frostbite that had originally formed on his limbs beginning to tunnel into his muscles.

“I can see why you’re the Grandmaster. When it comes to pure skill, not even my father can compare. Real geniuses, your students. You did very well in teaching them. Want me to show you a trick they used against me?”

Fenrir charged and tried for a forearm strike with his arm coated in aura. The Grandmaster blocked, and for a moment, their auras cut through each other and they made physical contact. A single moment was all they needed, as the Grandmaster hurriedly jumped back. His arm had been frozen solid, same Fenrir’s.

“What kind of trick is this?”

“It’s entropy. My power allows me to remove all thermal energy from an area, making it colder than even you could possibly imagine. In a single moment, I expelled all of the thermal energy from my arm, freezing it, and since we were making contact, that caused all the thermal energy in your arm to be siphoned away, drawn to the space with the lower concentration. It’s rather reckless, as it causes us to both lose an arm, but that’s where our differences become important.

I’ve seen the healing ability you people possess, how you can regrow a limb in a matter of minutes. It’s quite amazing for a human. However...” He then smashed his frozen arm into pieces and clawed at the frozen flesh clinging to the stump. A branch of bone shot out of the stump with muscle and flesh seemingly materializing out of thin air. It took only a few seconds for his arm to be completely restored. “As you can see, my healing ability is far superior, and I’m sure you can imagine whose body will last longer in a war of attrition.”

The room was covered in mirrors, but most of them were either broken or splattered with blood. It was illuminated by braziers in the corners, with human bones used as fuel. Bodies lay strewn about before Sirius, the men butchered and half-eaten and the women raped and brutalized. He recognized his fellow disciples all locked in Medieval torture devices, as well as several masters hanging from the ceiling on meat hooks. Up on the far wall, Hijiri and Cho hung naked from shackles, and between them was Eva. Below them, on a blood-soaked bed, a man was raping a half-dead woman while tearing into her throat and drinking her blood.

The man looked up and stared at Sirius with sadistic eyes, making him shiver. The man on the bed was himself. No, wait, it was Dominion. He couldn’t tell which. Eric and his Grandfather often reminded him that he looked just like his father, so whenever he imagined fighting him, he’d just plaster his own appearance onto his enemy.

“Like what you see?” he asked with a bloody smirk.

“Who the hell are you?”

He got up off the bed and approached. “A ghost. I am Sirius. I am Dominion. I am the link between you. The Dominion bloodline is the ink of the story that fate has written, and I am that story given a voice.”

They stood before each other, Sirius trying to keep from trembling in fear and revulsion. “You’re just a figment of my imagination.”

“You say that like it means I don’t exist. Everything you think, everything you believe, they originate from seeds planted in your subconscious. Fear, desire, memory, anatomy. I exist within you because something allows me to exist. So what is it, what created me? It is blood, just as you have always known it to be. You and Dominion are one and the same. You inherited his evil, it permeates every cell of your body. It is who you are!”

Sirius winced with every word spoken. Just the sound of his voice hurt, like venomous centipedes crawling around in his ears. He had to stop the pain! “Enough!” He grabbed the ghost by the shoulders and threw him as hard as he could at the wall. However, rather than smashing against one of the mirrors, he disappeared within it, like he was diving into water. He reappeared, this time in every single mirror, a hundred wicked eyes glaring at him from all angles.

“Your lust towards Eva, your hatred for the Sect of Silver, you’ve spent your whole life suppressing them, and for you to suppress something, that means it exists! They thought they were turning you into the perfect weapon, they thought guilt could purge you of your desires, but all they did was show you the path to becoming what you were always meant to be! You know what he has done, so that’ll make it even easier to do it yourself! Even if you kill Dominion, he will live on within you, the new generation carrying out his will!”

Sirius’s vision was blurring, the pain in his ears more than he could bear. “I said that’s enough!”

Sirius began moving around the room, smashing the mirrors with rabid fury. Anything that got in his way, even the corpses of the people he knew, were thrown aside without a second thought, but every mirror he broke just turned into shards, all with the ghost still bound in their reflection.

“Fight all you want, it’s what you’re best at. You were born to slay and destroy. You were born to take what you wanted and burn everything else! That is the will of Dominion! That is your will!”

Then the room began to violently shake, and Sirius was forced to duck as the walls and ceiling were ripped away. He looked out, the floor of the room now just a raft floating on an ocean of souls and demons, wailing in misery and wrath. Upon the horizon, four towering figures stood, eclipsed in shadow, each with a single glowing eye. The Old Gods.

“And even if you should kill Dominion, your fate will inevitably lead you here,” said the ghost. “No matter how many people you save, no matter how you change the world, this is the final destination of all mankind. Will you become just another heartless wretch, floating in an eternity of horror while the Old Gods drink up your power? Or will you embrace that power, and let your desires lead you to your rightful place?”

A fifth figure appeared on the horizon, and Sirius watched as it began slaying the Old Gods, ripping them apart limb by limb and feeding upon them until only it remained, the ghost. “The righteous anger they drilled into your skull may have gotten you this far, but the only way you’ll survive is with the power of desire. Through desire, Dominion was able to reshape the world and bend reality to his will. You must kill and devour everyone in your way, so that you may reign supreme.”

Sirius kneeled there on the floor, not moving, trying not to even think, for every single thought that entered his mind decayed into some twisted horror. When he thought of Eva, tried to block out the evil with her smile, that smile turned into a look of agony as he violently took her, just as Dominion had taken his mother. He thought of Eric and his grandfather, how they raised and trained him, but then the memories of his early childhood flooded back, of Eric telling him to get back on his feet and continue fighting him, no matter how much he didn’t want to, and Misato standing back and watching with a blank expression. He thought of the Sect of silver, his home, the only home he had ever known. In reality, it was just a bunch of caves filled with people who hated him, who he hated.

Sirius kneeled there on the floor, not moving, not even thinking. He was possessed by the desire to continue destroying, to kill the voices whispering in his ear. He almost wanted to leap into the Sea of the Dead and began beating the souls into submission so that they’d shut up and let him think. But he was also paralyzed with fear, staring up at the ghost with its insidious grin.

What was he supposed to do? He had so much anger inside him, but his limbs were bound with the weights of pointlessness. No matter what he did, no matter how much he fought, all that awaited him was blood and horror. Only through desire could he defeat his enemies, so what did he desire?

The Grandmaster’s human puppet hung limp and lifeless off Fenrir’s arm, with the heart crushed in the demon’s grip. “Only human,” said Fenrir.

“You son of a bitch!” he turned around and deflected a spirit blast from Eric. He had limped straight from the scene of their battle to the exposed prayer hall.

“You actually made it all the way here on a frozen foot? I am impressed.”

“Let go of him!” Eric fired another blast, but Fenrir jumped to the side and then threw the corpse at him, knocking him to the ground. As a master, Eric had been informed of the Grandmaster’s true identity. He had seen his dragon form. But for twenty years, he had trained under this human puppet. To him, this was the Grandmaster’s true form, and to see it so wounded broke his heart.

“Feel free to bury him. I’m going to meet with my sibling.” Fenrir turned to the back wall of the prayer hall, but frowned in annoyance. There, standing in front of the stone doors leading into the caves, was Eva. She was covered in dried blood and trembling from exhaustion, but her eyes were resolute and she maintained her grip on her sword. “You must be joking. I just killed the master of your master, and you dare stand before me in such a disgraceful appearance? Please tell me you are delirious from blood loss or a concussion, because at least I could understand that.”

“Nope, nothing like that. To me, this is just common sense. It is a woman’s duty to protect her man. Even if it takes you a single second to kill me, that’s one more second to live that I’ve given him.” She pointed her sword at him. “The only way to him is through me, and I’m going to make you work for every step.”

Fenrir looked back at Eric. “Is this it? Is this the best defense you can conjure? A wounded girl? I find myself disappointed.”

Upon those words, the ground began to violently shake, with everyone, even Fenrir, unnerved by it. Instinct saved Eva’s life and she jumped to the side as the stone doors exploded behind her. Shooting out like a rocket was Sirius, wrapped in a mantle of spirit energy that was blinding in its intensity. Fenrir blocked a thrown punch, but he wasn’t able to overcome Sirius’s momentum and the two of them were sent flying over the rainforest, with Fenrir struggling to hold back his brother’s fist.

“Was that ... was that really the power of a full initiation?” Eva asked in shock.

“No, I saw it!” said Eric. “That was just one arm!”

True to his words, only Sirius’s right hand and forearm had been finished, but so much power was shooting out of those runes that it looked like a white firestorm. The two siblings soon landed in the rainforest, but before they touched down, Sirius grabbed Fenrir’s arms, spun around in the air, and slammed him into the ground with enough force to rip the earth open and create a mushroom cloud of dust. Down in the bottom of the resulting crater, Sirius and Fenrir faced each other. Even when they separated, the power shooting out of Sirius’s runes didn’t settle and continued to roar at full strength like flames from a rocket.

“So, you’re the other son of Lord Dominion! You have no idea what it’s like to meet you! And as that punch shows, our father’s blood is just as strong in you as it is in me.”

“You’re also a son of Dominion?”

“My mother is Lady Ishtar, the High Priestess and Chief Consort. It seems fate decided that we should meet on this day. Lord Dominion will be overjoyed when I bring you home to take your place under his command.”

“I have no intention of ever serving that bastard. I will kill him, I swear that on my life.”

“Now, now, let’s not be dramatic. You have an obligation to—”

Fenrir was cut off by Sirius’s fist connecting with his face. He was tossed into the sky faster than the speed of sound, but Sirius still somehow appeared above him in midair. “My only obligation is to end his reign and free the world!” A second blow once more sent Fenrir crashing into the ground with enough force to make the landscape rip open, but from out of the cloud of dust, flew over the canopy. He turned over in the air and fired a barrage of dark blasts at Sirius.

“That power belongs to our father! You have no right to use it for anything other than fulfilling his ambition!”

Sirius swung his arm and a tidal wave of spirit energy swept across the sky, erasing not just the dark blasts, but all of the hulks flying in the air. Just like the hulks under Cho’s command, the spirits of these spawn didn’t return to Dominion after they were slain. His control over them was severed.

“This is my power, and I’ll use it however I see fit! Dominion is a plague on this world, and I’m going to erase him!”

He shot off towards Fenrir, flying through the sky with a mix of telekinesis and energy propulsion. This was his first time using spirit energy outside of his body, but he found it to be as easy as breathing. He caught up to Fenrir and the two of them began exchanging blows with lightning speed, faster than any warrior of the Sect of Silver could hope to achieve. Unlike with his fight with the Grandmaster, Fenrir was unable to cut through Sirius’s aura with his own. Despite all of his power only coming out of the runes on his arm, it enveloped him like a suit of armor.

They tore through the rainforest, not even aware of their surroundings and just throwing punches and kicks as fast as they could. Every rock and tree around them was pulverized simply by the power they were unleashing.

“It’s foolish to turn against our father! You may have a little fight in you, but you can never hope to defeat him! He is a god!”

“He got to where he was through force of will, so I’ll surpass him the same way! If reality tries to stop me, I’ll crush reality! If logic and reason say I’m not strong enough, I’ll destroy them too!”

Fenrir extended his tail and wrapped it around Sirius’s ankle. Before he could respond, Fenrir shot up into the sky, spun around, and launched Sirius at a nearby mountain. He struck the mountain head on and the stone goliath was split cleanly in half by the force of impact. Yet moments later, the sky darkened and a blast of spirit energy, hundreds of feet wide, erupted from between the two halves of the mountain, obliterating Fenrir’s left arm and wing and shooting into the atmosphere.

Fenrir regenerated in seconds and countered with his own blast of equal power, but Sirius created a massive barrier that deflected it. “To be a son of Lord Dominion means more than just inheriting his blood! You inherit the destiny of his goals! He will overthrow the Old Gods and seize the entire universe! As his son, your purpose for living it to ensure that comes to fruition!”