Chapter 32

Thank you, everyone who has managed to reach this final chapter! Behold, the completion of the Dominion saga!

Ragnarök

It was the snap heard around the world.

Augusta had been destroyed, crushed when Dominion’s castle fell apart, and then again due to the fiery mushroom cloud in the outskirts that Sirius caused and the mountain-sized moon that Dominion had dropped nearby. Shahti, Eric, and Eva had all narrowly avoided being pulverized. It was by some miracle, combined with a great amount of skill and telekinesis, that they were able to survive without serious injury. There was nothing but bodies and rubble as far as the eye could see. The air was unbearably hot and smoky, and the sky overhead was filled with dust and had a reddish hue.

The three warriors were scattered across the wasteland, but they were not alone. Awaiting them were their enemies.

“You were a skilled adversary. You’ve earned my respect,” said Blight.

“But unfortunately, the time has come to end this,” Adam added.

“And the Master has given us permission to teach you the true meaning of despair,” Ishtar cackled.

Shahti, Eric, and Eva raised their guard, afraid of what was about to happen, but no stance could have prepared them for the next stage of their battles. The three spawn began to expand and transform, doubling in size each second as they took on monstrous appearances. The four-legged crab, the fire-breathing basilisk, and the bone-encrusted goliath, they rose out of the sea of destruction and towered over their enemies. However, it was about to get even worse.

Across the globe, the Sect of Silver were doing their best to spread the Nexus Strain as far as possible, leading armies of freed slaves from one prison to another, but upon Dominion snapping his fingers, the world itself began to tremble, and every concentration camp was wiped off the face of the earth by violent upheavals. Everyone at first thought they were volcanic eruptions, but rather than magma and soot, these chasms were spewing jets of liquid darkness that rained down onto the landscape and burned with black flames.

Black tendrils began reaching out of the geysers and snatching people up, then dragging them into the darkness for assimilation. Sect warriors and freed slaves, they all fired spirit blasts at the darkness, but the light was snuffed out, and any tentacles they managed to destroy would just multiply like hydra heads. People began running away, but they couldn’t escape the horror. Colossal black slugs, shedding liquid death, were spawned from the darkness and moved out in all directions to collect those attempting to flee. Even Augusta and concentration camps that hadn’t been taken over were experiencing this nightmare.

Screams of terror filled the Nexus Strain, with hundreds of thousands of lives being snuffed out every minute.

“What the hell did you do?!” Sirius roared.

“I awakened Scourge. For the last twenty years, he’s been spread across the globe, existing deep underground as a network linking all of the bases together. In my prisons, where the air is rank with suffering, poltergeists are quick to form, and they, as well as a sizeable percentage of the soul harvest, are fed to him. For twenty years, he’s been absorbing all of that power, waiting for me to give the order to awaken and harvest all of mankind. Now he’s free to go out and begin feeding as he sees fit. Scourge has the ability to split himself into pieces, each one able to act independently or work as a hive mind, and they’re all supercharged but always hungry.

You people seem to have a way to share your power with everyone you come into contact with, it’s quite impressive, but your reservoir of power is going to start running dry pretty soon.”

“You’ll die long before that!” Sirius roared as he charged.

He sent his fist rocketing towards Dominion’s face, but his father blocked the attack with several tentacles growing out of his back.

“Be a sport and grab Daddy another beer, will you?” Dominion taunted.

“Sure, drink up!” Sirius opened his hand and unleashed a spirit blast, putting almost all of his power into it. The ray of light enveloped Dominion and pushed him into the sky with his tentacles being incinerated. Sirius took off after him and they continued exchanging blows high above the landscape.

Up in the clouds, Sirius spun around and let loose a rapid-fire flurry of kicks, but Dominion used more tentacles to block, and with that opening, he held out his hand behind him. The black clouds, engorged with power from the battle, crackled and roared with hissing streams of electricity. The undulating light gathered together in Dominion’s palm and he hurled it at Sirius. No time to dodge, Sirius caught the lightning with one hand and used his spirit energy to guide it through his body across the surface of his skin. Other than a nasty turn going from one hand to the other, he managed to discharge it without suffering any major damage.

In reply, he punched the air with all of the strength in his body. Imitating his father, he used the resulting shockwave to cause spontaneous combustion in the atmosphere, sending a tidal wave of fire surging towards Dominion. He teleported to dodge, but having seen that trick several times already, Sirius spun around and kicked him as he reappeared behind him. The blow ripped off Dominion’s jaw, but without missing a beat, he generated several stinger-tipped tentacles from the wound and stabbed Sirius throughout the chest and limbs.

Despite the fact that he was spitting up blood, Sirius released a roar of fury and aimed his hands at Dominion. A beam of energy was fired, a planet-killer blast of Sirius’s own, enveloping Dominion at point-blank range and shooting up into space before detonating into an explosion that lit up the entire hemisphere. Dominion burst out, his body stripped of flesh and smoldering, and kicked Sirius in the side of the head, knocking him across the sky. As his body regenerated, Dominion grew the wings he had gained from the second Guardian. From the bone feathers, millions of dense spirit blasts began shooting out with Dominion guiding them towards Sirius.

Sirius, having healed from his stab wounds, faced the oncoming barrage. Godlike, that was the speed he used, as with masterful skill, he deflected the spirit blasts with swings of his limbs. It was just like training at the Sect of Silver, when he and the other disciples would be shot at with arrows, though as Dominion increased the output, more and more blasts began slipping through his guard, each one gouging a hole in his flesh.

They were coming from all angles and his defense was slipping. He had to get out. He clapped his hands together and roared in exertion, as from his runes, millions of spirit blasts shot out and intercepted the oncoming wave. Sirius took advantage of that brief reprieve and summoned one of the Grandmaster’s wings, but rather than his back, it grew out of the palm of his hand. The wing fully stretched for six feet and became rigid, with the tissue hardening from the infusion of spirit energy and the telekinetic field wrapped around it. Sirius gripped the base, having armed himself with a sword.

When Dominion’s barrage returned, he swung the sword and launched an omnidirectional wave of energy that swept aside the oncoming assault. He then rocketed over to Dominion, who had summoned his own sword made of Dead Matter. The two blades met with a crack that threatened to tear open the sky. They swung at each other with mad bloodlust, every collision sending down bolts of energy that ripped across the surface of the earth.

“That rage, it feels good, doesn’t it? You wish to destroy everything, to overwhelm anything! Any enemy that stands in your way must be cut down, any force that seeks to hold you down must be broken, and any limit you meet must be surpassed! It is the drive for supremacy that has propelled mankind through history!”

“You’re nothing by a miserable old bastard, stealing people’s happiness because you’re too broken to feel any for yourself! Have you ever even stopped to think about all of the pain and suffering you’ve forced the people of this world to experience?”

“Why would I waste even a single neuron on such a ludicrous thought?”

“Because you’re a human being!”

“That’s funny, I thought I was a monster. Are you trying to save me? Trying to give me some hope of redemption? Trying to make me feel regret or remorse so that I can turn my life around?”

“No, I’m trying to end your madness because it’s pissing me off!”

They separated and Sirius swung his sword in an uppercut motion. A blade of solidified spirit energy extended from the sword and reached down, piercing the surface of the earth. As Sirius brought up his sword, the blade ripped through the planet’s crust, and upon breaking free, unleashed an apocalyptic debris field of bedrock and magma shooting up into the sky at Dominion, like he kicked a pile of dirt into his face to blind him, but on a near-terrestrial scale. The blast sent rubble all the way up into space and was large enough to be seen from several states away.

From within the dust cloud, Dominion swung his sword and released a field of energy in all directions. It didn’t have any effect on actual matter, but it hit Sirius with enough force to almost peel off his aura. What’s more, the air had suddenly become super-cooled, close to Absolute Zero. The volcanic eruption caused by Sirius’s attack had instantly scabbed over. It was the same ability Fenrir had!

Dominion charged across the frozen sky at Sirius and the two locked blades once more. This time, Dominion was pushing Sirius back with his rapid-fire attacks, until the two of them flew out over the ocean. Dominion released another pulse, freezing the sea for over a hundred miles in all directions, all the way down to the ocean floor, past the continental shelf.

Dominion spun around to increase the power of his swing, but rather than striking with his sword, he grew several tentacles out of the small of his back and slammed them into Sirius, knocking him out of the sky. He crashed into the frozen wasteland, riddling it with cracks and sending up jagged mountains of ice skyward.

Sirius got to his feet and began swinging his sword with mad fury, launching blades of highly-compressed energy towards Dominion. Dominion closed in, swooping from side to side to dodge, and swung at Sirius’s neck. Sirius blocked and waved his arm. A jutting iceberg around him was instantly melted, and with telekinesis, Sirius gathered the water together and fired it as a jet with enough force to cut through solid steel. The jet washed over Dominion, but seconds later, something burst out of the water near Sirius, a shapeless Eldritch abomination of black flesh with tentacles, claws, and bloodshot eyes. One of its lamprey-like mouths closed around Sirius’s arm, and though he pulled it out before the limb could be lost, most of the skin between his runes was ripped away.

Dominion charged, attacking with the massive abomination growing from his back like a tail. Sirius, upon healing his wounds, managed to sever it with his sword and locked blades with Dominion, but then knocked him back with a full-powered headbutt.

‘Grandmaster, we need to get back to Augusta. I can sense Eva and the others are at the end of their ropes.’

‘No, we need to kill Dominion here and now!’

‘I’ll kill Dominion, you go save them!’

‘If we separate, you won’t have the strength to beat him!’

‘I’ll find a way! Go!’

‘It’s too reckless! Their lives are not worth the fate of the world!’

“I SAID GO!”

An explosion of light erupted from Sirius’s back as the Grandmaster was forcefully expelled. Up in the sky over the battlefield, he returned to his physical form. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said before flapping his wings and taking off towards Augusta.

“My prize!” Dominion cackled.

Dominion took to the air to chase after him, but was immediately knocked out of the sky by Sirius, the two of them crashing back down with Sirius beating him with hundreds of punches. “You’re not going anywhere, I’m still not done with you!”

Shahti was hurling bolts of energy at Blight with all the strength she could gather, but what had originally been able to sever limbs was now just leaving paper cuts on his exterior. Having taken his crab form, he marched across the battlefield while raining dark blasts upon her. Every step he took shook the ground and challenged her balance, and the blasts he was firing were too powerful for her to deflect. Even worse, giant black slugs were swarming out of the geyser of darkness in the center of Augusta. She was forced to run from both them and Blight.

Her attacks were having no effect, she couldn’t defend herself, and the enemy numbers were increasing each second. It was truly the direst of situations. Then, a familiar voice echoed in her mind.

‘Everyone, duck for cover!’

She could sense the Grandmaster approaching from the east. He was alone, no longer sealed within Sirius. What was going on? She didn’t bother wondering and simply climbed under the biggest slab of concrete she could find. On the other side of the city, Eric and Eva, likewise overwhelmed, did the same. The Grandmaster flew over battlefield, dwarfing the spawn in even their enlarged forms, and set loose a mighty firestorm from his throat. White flames washed over the battlefield, and while it was nothing compared to the long-range attacks of the other Guardians, it did incinerate many of the Scourge slugs and set the monstrous behemoths on fire.

He then landed by the geyser of darkness and unleashed another fire blast, trying to burn it away like an oil spill. “I’ll do what I can to stem the flow of this evil, but you’ll have to finish your fights without me!”

True, the Scourge slugs had been taken care of, but it was still a bad situation for the sect warriors. However, Shahti had a plan. From one of the inner pockets of her robe, she took out a scroll and sprinted towards Blight. Seeing her approach, he began raining blasts down on her, but even though he could control their trajectory, he still failed to hit her. She reached his front right leg, wider than a subway tunnel, and rolled the scroll across it, and it stuck on with its adhesive back like a length of duct tape. The scroll was full of Dead Rune equations written in ink mixed with arquerite. She touched it with her right hand and supplied a pulse of energy to activate it. That next moment, screaming torrents of dark power were erupting from the scroll like jets of fire from a rocket.

Blight staggered, feeling his power draining. It was something that Shahti had come up with after the fight with Fenrir and had been holding onto in case she managed to get close to Dominion. The scrolls had the same effect of regular silver and arquerite, acting as a conductor of spirit energy. However, the equations used drew power from whatever they were applied to with a vacuum-like force. It was like a mechanical pump, and when Shahti activated it, she gave it power to function.

She then sprinted to the leg behind it, though it was quite a distance away and Blight was aware of the damage. He continued firing blasts, this time from his underside. They were smaller than the others, due to the sudden power imbalance that Blight was now experiencing. Shahti began swinging her urumi above her head and projecting a defensive field. The weaker blasts were deflected and she managed to arrive at the back-right leg. The next scroll was applied and Blight shuddered as he bled out power.

He released a deep roar that echoed across the battlefield. In response, Scourge slugs, those that had survived the Grandmaster’s attack, swarmed in to assist. They closed in around Shahti as she tried to make her way to the back-left leg, but with swings of her urumi, she slashed at any that got close and leaped over them to avoid coming into contact with the toxic sludge pouring off their bodies. She reached the third leg and applied the scroll. One more leg to go.

Blight was struggling to stand, on the verge of being unable to maintain his current form. He couldn’t let her reach his last leg. He began stomping and swinging it like a wild animal caught in a snare, doing everything he could to keep it out of her reach. Shahti launched her strongest spirit blast at the back of his knee, momentarily crippling the leg and letting her get close enough to apply the fourth scroll.

Immediately, Blight’s enlarged body disintegrated, no longer able to sustain itself, leaving only his regular form now falling towards the earth. Shahti aimed her right hand at him and fired a finishing blast, but in midair, he spun around and deflected it with his sword. Now that he had shed his enlarged form, he was no longer affected by the scrolls and his energy was regenerating. She had to finish him off while she was still stronger than him!

Shahti launched herself towards him and lunged with her sword once more coiled into a drill. He tried to block with his saber, but she shot a preemptive energy blast that snapped it. They collided in the air, Shahti blasting a massive hole in his chest and unleashing all her spirit energy into him. Blight began to crumble into ash, his consciousness severed from Dominion’s control and now breaking apart.

With the last of his strength, he twisted his wrist and there was a loud snap.

Shahti fell to the ground, but failed to stick the landing. She buckled over, blood pouring from her mouth and chest. When she collided with Blight, he stabbed her in the heart with his broken saber. Her chest cavity was filling with blood and she struggled to heal the wound, but her heart couldn’t function while the blade was still inside. She tried to pull out with her fingers, but Blight’s final act had been to snap the blade off the handle, leaving only a centimeter of exposed steel sticking out of the wound, not enough for her to grab onto. One last effort, she tried to remove the blade with telekinesis. It shook and began to slowly retract, but time wasn’t on her side. Her thoughts went dark, her brain no longer receiving oxygen now that her heart had stopped.

She collapsed, releasing her final breath in the form of a bloody cough.

Eric was struggling in his fight with Adam. Unlike Shahti, he didn’t have any trump cards to whip out. All he could do was dodge Adam’s stomps and shield himself from the explosions when he’d fire down a spirit blast. He tried firing blasts of his own, but at most, they’d just chip his boney exoskeleton. Considering that his opponent was over a hundred feet taller than him, his struggle was understandable. He had an idea of how he might win. The problem was that it was nothing less than an act of desperation.

‘There is a limit to the amount of power you can draw from the Nexus Strain,’ he remembered the Grandmaster telling him. ‘The soul is indestructible, but if more power is forced through than it can handle, the body will suffer the damage.’

“But what about Sirius and Dominion?” he asked.

‘Sirius is no ordinary human, you know that, and Dominion is able to go beyond his limits because of all the souls he’s devoured. He can use them to bear the strain while his body evolves into a stronger vessel.’

“Your running around is bothering me,” said Adam, shaking him from his thoughts. “Where is all of that vigor from earlier? Either face me man to man or die with dignity.”

He couldn’t run away from Adam, he couldn’t expect help from anyone else, and he couldn’t allow Adam to go off and tip the scales in anyone else’s fight. He had to deal with him here and now.

Eric swallowed the lump in his throat and stepped out from behind the mountain of rubble he had been using as cover. He walked out into the open and stared up at Adam while assuming a fighting stance.

“There you are. A worthy opponent to the very end. I will remember the fight you have given me until the end of time. Let us finish this.” Adam then pulled back his fist and launched it down at Eric like a meteor.

“Hijiri, if you can hear me, please give me all the help you can,” Eric whispered.

Adam’s fist landed on top of him, shaking the landscape and opening up a massive crater, but the dust was immediately blown away by an explosion of spirit energy. At the bottom of the crater was Eric, holding back Adam’s fist with his own. He was venting more power than ever before, so much so that the energy shooting out of his runes was creating an audible scream. All of the veins under his skin were pushed up to the surface and his muscles were quivering as they struggled to hold themselves together.

“What in the world?” Adam exclaimed.

Eric stepped out from under the fist and then launched himself at Adam like a stone from a catapult. He punched Adam square in the chest, sending ripples throughout his body that shattered his entire exoskeleton. “Ora!” he grunted as veins across the surface of his body began spurting blood.

Adam was knocked onto his back and Eric landed on top of him. Without missing a beat, he unleashed a hellish barrage of punches, each faster and more powerful than should have been humanly possible. Every impact was an Argata strike, unleashing more power than he ever could have conjured before gaining the Nexus Strain. Adam gagged in pain, unable to move as Eric carved out a crater in his chest with his punches. The power injected into him, it was like acid, burning him inside and out and robbing him of strength.

In desperation, he swung at Eric to try and squash him like a bug, but Eric turned and knocked his hand back with a single punch, unleashing enough force to break every bone down to Adam’s elbow. He turned back to Adam’s chest and continued hammering him. His speed and strength just kept on increasing, but at a price. He had gone blind due to all of the blood vessels in his eyes rupturing at once. He was also splattering blood in all directions as his skin appeared to be melting. His body was putting out so much heat that a pillar of steam was wafting from him and his hair and clothes were catching fire.

Finally, he raised both fists and delivered his final double punch, unleashing all of the power in his body into Adam. The force of the blow shook the entire area, and all of Adam’s limbs exploded from the shockwave moving through his flesh. Adam was too damaged to move a single muscle. He couldn’t even heal himself. His flow of energy had been so badly crippled that he could lie there until the end of time and never recover at all.

But Eric was no better. He was kneeling in the crater he had carved into Adam’s chest. Just a minute ago, he had been the epitome of physical stature, as buff as a professional body-builder. Now, he looked like a half-cremated corpse. His muscles had been completely destroyed, leaving just a thin layer of tissue clinging to his skeleton. He had lost more than half of his blood and his organs were barely functioning. Adam had been defeated, but he had failed to deal a finishing blow that would destroy him.

“We’ll ... call this a draw,” Adam whispered.

“Agreed,” Eric replied, before falling over and succumbing to his injuries.

Eva was doing her best against Ishtar’s released form, but the gap between them she had struggled to close had reopened like a stitched wound. Ishtar was keeping her at a distance, either by breathing jets of fire or swinging her tail. Even when she managed to get close and attack with her sword, the quivering of Ishtar’s serpent-like body made it impossible to inflict any deep damage. If her sword didn’t simply bounce off Ishtar’s scales, it would just break the skin and then be forced out.

Even worse, Eva was starting to hit the wall. She had done her best to power herself only with spiritual energy, but her physical stamina was still in the red. She had to finish this battle soon, but she was running out of options. From behind a pile of rubble, she watched Ishtar’s movements. Her surface was almost shimmering, undulating, except for one spot, the top of her skull. It was the only weakness that she could think off. The problem would be reaching it.

Eva picked up several rocks and then came out from behind her cover. She ran towards Ishtar while throwing them with telekinetic enhancement. They smashed against Ishtar’s face, failing to wound her, but at least distracting her long enough for Eva to reach the middle of her body and leap onto her back. She ran up Ishtar’s spine while using telekinesis to keep her latched on like a spider. As she ran, she dragged her sword up Ishtar’s, channeling Sirius’s power into the wound she was creating.

She reached the head, jumped into the air, and with all of her strength, plunged her sword into the stop of Ishtar’s skull. If not for her energy running along the length of the blade, Eva’s sword would have shattered, but while it managed to hold together, it only went in six inches, not even reaching Ishtar’s brain. Eva immediately tried to channel her power through the blade and send it into Ishtar, but the she-beast swung her head with a shriek. Eva couldn’t hold on and was thrown off, the end of her sword breaking off in the process and left lodged in Ishtar’s skull.

She managed to protect herself before she hit the ground, but it didn’t change how exhausted she was. She crawled across the ground towards her sword, desperate and hopeless. Not only had she failed, but her broken weapon was a testament to her failure and her worsening situation. She retrieved her sword and saw her face in its reflection. She looked just as tired as she felt. Wait a second, reflection!

With new hope inside her, Eva got up and looked around for any kind of remaining structure. She saw a huge piece of bedrock from Dominion’s fortress with a tunnel carved inside. It was perfect. She turned back to Ishtar and shot her in the face with a spirit blast.

“Come and get me, you ugly bitch!”

She then took off, running towards the tunnel as fast as she could. Ishtar tried to blast her with fire, but she made it inside without a single hair singed. She moved down the tunnel until she reached an intersection, then laid her sword on the ground and covered it with sand. The giant stone structure shook as Ishtar tried to force her head into the tunnel.

“Too big, huh? I doubt Dominion is into fat girls!”

Ishtar roared in fury and released her strongest fire blast. Eva ducked into the adjoining tunnel of the intersection and wrapped herself with a protective shield as a wave of fire surged past her location. Once it was done, Eva retrieved her sword, though she had to protect her hand due to how hot the handle was. Once it had cooled, she continued on through the tunnel, soon finding a way out. She returned the outside and saw Ishtar releasing another breath of fire. Eva climbed up onto the small mountain and looked down at Ishtar.

“Up here, you dumb cunt!”

Ishtar looked up and Eva pounced on her. She buried her sword into Ishtar’s throat and carved her way down her neck, opening her up like a zipper. As soon as the blade went in, all of the tissue around the wound exploded, severing Ishtar’s head, and as Eva dropped further down the line, the explosions ran through her entire body, splattering guts and viscera across the battlefield.

Eva stepped down onto the ground and gave a sigh of relief. Nearby, the giant serpent head, now all that remained, disintegrated, revealing Ishtar back in her original form, though much of her body was covered in burns.

“How ... I don’t understand. How could a lowly human defeat me?”

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t defeat you. You defeated yourself. See?” She held out her sword, the blade coated in a layer of glass. When Eva ducked into the tunnel, she covered her sword in sand so that when Ishtar would try to smoke her out, it would melt into glass, turning her sword into an arquerite mirror.

“A mirror? You have to be kidding.”

“You have a lot of power, but even you can’t stand having that power turned back against you.”

“You clever bitch. But while you may have beaten me, your boyfriend is doomed. Your allies around the world are getting wiped out, and without the fourth Guardian sealed within him, what can he hope to do against Lord Dominion?”

Eva looked over to the Grandmaster, fighting with fire and talons against Scourge’s tentacles. Ishtar was right. Not only was Sirius much weaker without the Grandmaster, but the Grandmaster himself was totally exposed. She had to do what she could to help him, to keep him safe until Sirius could arrive! Eva took off, not even bothering to kill Ishtar. She was already out of the fight. All that mattered now was keeping the Grandmaster safe.

Sirius was doing everything he could to keep Dominion from escaping, but having seen the fourth Guardian, he refused to halt his pursuit. Sirius was projecting a field that kept him from teleporting, but as far as technique, that was the best he could do. Now fighting alone, he was struggling to control his energy. He had no idea the Grandmaster had been doing so much to help him.

Regardless, he chased down Dominion with beast-like ferocity, beating him senseless and putting all of his strength into every attack. The Nexus Strain was getting weaker and weaker as Scourge waged his Final Solution on mankind, but by continuing to push himself beyond his limits, Sirius could raise his own power with each punch stronger than the last.