“Enough!” A roar rose up from the ground, and for a mile in every direction, the earth vanished, a glistening dome of Order and Chaos rising from the dust.
Everyone there was sent rocketing back, away from the emergence point of the two mages, both of whom were covered in blood, expressions of pure rage on their faces.
Their hands rose in unison, and a flame of dancing crystal fused with a rainbow colored bolt of energy, curling in on itself into an infinity sign. Then it hurtled down, a wave of pressure traveling before it.
Rax leaped up, taking the brunt of the blow. His body cracked before it, veins of corruption racing across his scales, before exploding, sending scales flying. Beneath his scales, he had pallid flesh, soft and smooth. Not for long, however, as wounds soon piled up upon it. He let out a cry of pain, and was slammed into the ground like a ragdoll, a crater forming beneath him.
Pyotr grimaced, and started to pump as much of his remaining power into his ax as he could. Despite everything, the battle was coming to a close.
A sonic boom rattled through the air behind him, and he turned to see Talnor and Eduardo hurtling out of the tunnel leading to the main city, followed by a dozen other captains. The two leaders were like streaks of lightning, literally so in Talnor’s case. They weaved in and out of one another’s flight paths, and as they neared, Pyotr made out how they were flying. Talnor’s body had become one with a bolt of golden lightning, arcing across the sky, while Eduardo surfed on a blade of ethereal white light.
Like two stars ascending into the heavens, they arced over the city, before slamming down before the two invaders. Rax got to his feet slowly, shaking a bit.
“You’ve really grown,” Eduardo declared happily, looking at the herpetopede. “What are you now, E Rank?”
“I am, but it isn’t helping all that much,” the monster replied. “I thought I was powerful, but apparently not enough.”
“You are all fools,” the Chaos mage said in a bitter voice. “The Athari Sect is finished with this farce! We are Andovar and Zytal Athari, scions of the sect! We shall not lose to this… this rabble!”
Eduardo looked at the man, and something in his gaze startled the E Ranker, who took a tiny step back. “This is what you call a rabble? What is your own sect then, a pigsty?”
“You bastard!” Andovar roared, his hands weaving a complicated pattern in the air. “Regardless of your earlier rebellions, you shall die for that!”
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Eduardo snarled. “You would kill somebody for insulting your sect? What a piece of scum you are.”
“Strength is all that matters in this world,” the other mage, Zytal said in a measured tone. “We are the law to those beneath us.”
“So when we stand over your corpses, will we be the law?” Talnor asked, a grim smile on his face.
Andovar snorted. “That will not happen.”
He raked his hands across the air before him, and claws of chaotic flame streaked through the sky, clouds torn in half and rips appearing into reality. Through those rifts, strange beings stared down, eyes the size of towns gazing from an unfathomable distance. From those rifts, things fell, twisted amalgamations of flesh that writhed disconcertingly and moved in ways that defied the laws of physics.
Zytal mirrored his twin’s actions, creating a mirrored set of portals to a completely different plane, one of rigid lines and crystalline perfection, where beings in the shapes of absolute polygons rotated, not a hair’s width of imperfection in their bodies. Three of those descended from the rifts, showing their true sizes to be immense, that of small skyscrapers. Coronas of diamond orbited them in measured cycles, before shooting down to pepper the ground.
The other monsters charged behind the covering fire, covering the ground in ways that were an insult of reality. Strange pops sounded out as limbs shifted through space before their owners, before they caught up. Looking at the creatures Andovar had summoned was a recipe for madness, so most simply looked away, focusing on the far more pleasing forms of the massive constructs of gemstones that floated up above, without realizing that those were just as dangerous.
Eduardo and Talnor streaked towards Andovar, while Rax and Pyotr attacked Zytal. The other defenders assaulted the legions of twisted monstrosities and crystalline golems, sending the entirety of their comparatively meager arsenals at them. Streaks of light, balls of rampant flame, even arrows of lightning impacted their foes. The flesh of the Chaos infused monsters came apart under the barrage, the fragments landing on the ground, spreading their corruption into the earth. Zones of chaotic energy tore at reality around them, transmuting into all manner of substances, energies, or illusions. More portals opened up to strange lands, disgorging tides of vermin, minerals, or in one case, dozens of wheels of cheese. It was an absurd sight, but a terrifying testament to the power of Chaos.
That was not to say that Zytal’s magic was any less impressive. The crystal golems that hovered over the battlefield, avatars of unchanging perfection, gathered vast streams of elemental power around themselves, before sending them streaking down to the ground. Everything they touched turned to transparent blue tinged rock, from flesh, to earth, to even elemental attacks.
The Order infused attacks overwhelmed everything around them, save for the powers of the true elites of the battlefield. Rax was forced to use his body to shield his allies from the attacks, his body rippling as his inherent conceptual power rebelled against the Order elemental energy. Momentum gathered within him, and he let out a bellow as he pushed off the ground, the raw force of the E Rank attacks he had taken channeled into his muscles and bones. There was a sharp crack as he snapped the sound barrier in half before his massive form, and then another as a canyon formed where he had stood. His vast head impacted Zytal’s gut, and piledrived him down into the ground.
