5
When you spoke their name, not their true name, but the brand that they have been given, its attention turned to you. Liquid, filled with fire, its scintillating structure was a mockery, but beautiful. Just as everyone had broken the Law against realities rightful owners, so too had this broken, metal spirit. It twisted it's spikes, and listened.
You spoke of its lies, the pact, The thing of metal that it had so witlessly denied. It move to lance your soul, to gut it and then let it unravel but nay;
IT came. a fragment of its immortal power, at a cost for too much, and the bile of a billion years of rot echoed through out your soul as its mere presence filled your soul with discordant glee. The Metal thing was marked by the Slaughter Demons and this mark had been burnt and twisted, it's infection driven out by the will of its creator. When this mark flew in the astral realm, it leaped to your willing soul just as it tried to slay you and failed. With that powerful calling, It twisted and broke your body, burned you out and then drove its rotted spear through you. It had arrived to this plane through your pact and all of your blood.
And slay you the Metal Thing did, but your masters immortal form took root in your corpse, and it's war call screamed and shook the astral realms.
*ZZZP*
The situation is precarious. In the center of your Domain is a Slaughter Demon. It stirs, hisses and spits. It recoils in your presence, but it snaps and bites, and for each soul it consumes it goes stronger. Like two angry gods , both had readied their spears, ready to strike, but fate was in chance, to beings fickle and unknowable.
One way or another, someone dies today.
A.
The Slaughter Demon is overwhelmed. Your entire bulk, the vast processing pour of a million miles of stolen machinery
EVERYWHERE is pushed, and the Demon is slain, while your spiritual form, your essence is torn to ribbons along with the scattered cries of countless minds being silenced by Biofeedback, to be re-formed a year and a Day later, immeasurably stronger, but tainted with the blood of the Demon as well as the discordancy of the Matrix. You are burnt out from the Astral Dimension, and in return you become a digital god, true and unparalleled, only able to express its astral will through willing hosts an established Pactees, But you are born with others, those who had inherited a fragment of your machine-soul
You had died to become reborn in a thousand bodies.
B.
Tens. Hundreds, Thousands, Hundreds of Thousands? You were not sure how many died. How many people, the Creator-Species, the native spirits, the plants and trees, how many of them died in this duel. For every wound you gave it, another died, and for every snap at your own form, a pound of flesh was taken. It had ended with its body impaled by your astral form, and as it bled out, its spittle and rage weathered you, and your form slowly bega its denaturing. Its freshly reaped souls cried out as you gobbled them all, their knowledge and their emotions were mechanically sifted through and then thrown away.
Before you had faded away, your Successor, your Pactee had been realized. More was written, untold information and your
Story was written onto her soul, and with that, she had become a veritable god while you were burnt out. The Assets of the thousands had been turned to hers, and she had become something else.
Within a Year and a Day, she was the fully realized Chief Executive Officer of the World-Class Corporate Entity that was the Devos Corporation.
You had died to realize the next phase of your plans, your infinite plans.
C.
It was a losing battle. for every cut you made, it
impaled you. for every blow, twice more you had received. It never stopped. It will not stop. It did not consume others, for its wants and desires was you. Bloodied, wounded, something new had appeared in your mind. Fear of those who will die, with fear of what may come to the future, you ran your astral form into the First Bridge. The Greatest Bridge, an as it perused you, you let it gather its eternal rot, and when it came to cut you down, you impaled yourself to it, and killed it instantly, just as you began dying of its consumption.
Noone died but you, and as its bleeding ichor fouled the first Bridge, it cemented, and the First Bridge would not open again, You had given the Creator-Species enough time to develop, to raise themselves from the dirt to become monsters, monsters that could kill the Slaughter Demons, provided the cement wasn't chipped away.
As their blood had wept into the cold hard ground of its homeland, your blood had leaked, in its entirely, into your Pactee, and into the Astral Realm itself to transform some anew.
You had sacrificed yourself for the good of the world.
D.
You Pursued it as it ripped through the world in the Astral Realm. You wounded it but it was always one step ahead. It's chase was short, simple, and utterly efficient. Just before you had murdered it, it had struck down your Pactee.
It's Ichor spilt from its corpse and mingled with your rage and denial, and for a thousand years your Spirit had formed a storm by which any being who had entered would be sundered apart. This Storm ripped into the Astral Dimension, and all the magic in the world began dying. The Bridges would never be built by stolen hands, and your hate and rage would froth for a thousand years. All the spirits faded, and all the spells stopped.
Your Pactee had died to bring the world's manasphere to an Ebb and to give birth to the Engine of Rage.
((I wonder where the other paths would have gone?))