Beacon from Beyond (Book 1 Complete)

To Dei's mundane sight, Okrin's desiccated arm swung wildly, causing the incinerating flames of The Champion to be deflected away, while the Dragon's form was obscured in the inferno spreading throughout the area.

Truthfully, despite only seeing half the battle, Dei could scarcely fathom a way to get closer.

The Champion moved fast enough to only ever be seen as an after-image, thousands of white gaseous darts flew from his orange light, moving at odd angles and bending space as they went.

The fire moved of its own volition, bending like a living creature around the coffin, continuously striking at countless points. While he knew The Champion sat somewhere within, controlling the entire structure, he could only imagine the flames themselves as some kind of phoenix with a life of their own, its entire existence dedicated solely to conquering this one enemy.

As he watched it move, he found the glow emanating ripple and reflect in a way that told him how The Champion moved the mass of heat three times as large as the original planet as it bounced off the very fabric within which they stood.

The Champion held mastery over physical space, and it seemed that this plane was included. Within the Dragon's mind, a dimension existed that Dei could scarcely understand, a direction he couldn't move but The Champion calculated in his attacks.

The moment each flame left The Champion's body, he no longer held active control over it. The curve of each blast was a result of them ricocheting off reality, forcing a cascading effect where each arrow bounced off the ripples of all others.

It was an attack from countless angles, most of which Dei couldn't process, and each fed into the next, boosting off one another like a tuned clockwork.

It was only now that Dei was able to see the underlying attacks on the coffin as well- the ripples beneath.

Though the fire was deflected, the shaking reality was not so easy for Okrin to push back, causing several waves of force converged on his flesh; for the first time, Dei processed Okrin was taking damage.

Each earth-shattering snap of broken reality chipped pieces off Okrin's arm. The decaying state of Okrin's flesh hid the damage partially, but The Champion was pulling him apart, layer by layer.

Yet, despite that, Perumah's vision told him something else of the battle as a blue sea filled his mind.

To Perumah, Okrin was not only "Slightly" free, nor was it his arm. Though the fleshy appendage was the only part with any solidity, an echo of a form revealed itself in the glow, showing a humanoid body composed entirely of mana.

Okrin's arm served as the spine for the top-half of a flailing body, cut off from the waist down as it still tried to pry itself from the coffin. To Perumah's sight, Okrin's entire upper body was free, attempting to leave his flesh behind, and Dei finally lay eyes on the source of chaos, the creator of Desperation, and the destroyer of Earth's once-living System.

The atrophied state of his arm was indicative of his true self, as Okrin looked little more than skin on bones. He was so skinny Dei could see the organs within his gut, his lower intestines sagging in the skin. His ribs were so pronounced, Dei could count them from his current spot, even so far away; even his face was thin enough for Dei to trace the shape of his skull.

Yet, there was no weakness in his movements.

Every finger bent with intent, every twitch calculated as Okrin manipulated pure, true chaos to his will.

Okrin's body seemed like it'd waited the eons in silence, but not slumber. He'd starved since the beginning of time, and it showed in his figure, yet he was anything but desperate. Okrin's shoulder-long puffy hair flipped in the wind as he dodged the attacks intent on ending him, and his hands blurred as he poured his all into simply surviving, but his eyes told a different story.

Glancing around, tracking everything, taking it all in. A wide, unnerving smile blessed his face, and Dei didn't see even a hint of fear or hesitation. More, Perumah's senses picked up meaning imbued in the mana leaking away from their clash- an incessant babbling she couldn't tune out telling of Okrin's emotions, and she heard laughter.

Okrin was pushed to the limit, he was being chipped away and destroyed- not even his soul would be left when The Champion was done, and his loss was a foregone conclusion. He was insane, starved, and dying, but at this moment, he was having fun.

There was nothing only an eternal madness in his gaze, and Dei knew what Separation meant when she said Titans weren't malicious, just uncaring disasters.

Okrin had ended a number of lives so large when he'd directed Desperation to kill the System that Dei couldn't even comprehend its vastness yet, despite that, he didn't believe he'd done so out of hatred; no… Edit, Okrin, whichever, likely told Toki to kill everything because he thought it would be funny.

A shiver went down his spine as he finally understood the scale of a disaster that Okrin's escape would spell for… everything.

'This THING cannot be allowed to roam free.'

He was about to draw himself from Perumah's vision when she brought his attention to something else as well- a focus on the pieces that broke away.

To his mundane vision, these small bits quickly fell into The Champion's Incineration, getting deleted moments after, but Perumah saw something else within each.

Once they emerged from Okrin's form, they began to take forms of their own, swirling torrents of chaos that took on faceless shapes, each attacking the second it could yet contributing less-than-minimal results to the battle.

Hundreds of miniscule pieces broke from Okrin every second, and Dei now saw that each birthed its own independent Titan.

The Champion's ricocheting off the walls of existence broke Okrin apart, but the flames themselves also served to contain the hundreds of thousands of Titans born over the course of the clash so far.

When he was brought out of Perumah's memory, he glanced over to Thadria and saw her embracing Jacob as she cried silently, and felt the twists of space as Madness tried- and failed- to bring her into a vision.

'We shouldn't have brought her here, ugh, that was stupid of me.'

Perumah laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed him gently in an attempt to comfort him. He felt she was about to say something as well, but was cut off as Vigilance activated.

Over the next second, before he could act, everything happened at once.

The Champion appeared in front of them, and Dei saw in his eyes something he'd never witnessed in any others- nothing. No heart. No emotion. No hope nor despair. This was a Champion dedicated to a single task, and it now clocked him as an asset.

Dei felt something reach inside him and grasp at his Contract with the other Champion, dismantling it in a way Dei didn't know was possible. The Champion broke the construct down for parts, and read its contents, filing them away in a mental folder in his head.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Then, a path was seared into something within his soul, Incinerate deleting a portion yet leaving him untouched.

Dei felt his Null mana, his Personal affinity, be forced along this pathway. The Champion could not touch mana, he couldn't manipulate it directly, but that didn't stop him.

Dei had saved up an absolutely monstrous level of Null mana, hundreds of thousands, all in preparation for his sealing of Okrin. Even when he'd perished, the mana hadn't been used or disappeared, but even such a quantity vanished immediately, flowing into The Champion.

Then, he felt a squeeze.

The Champion now Incinerated a vital aspect of himself- Dei's limitation on how much Null he could produce.

From his core, torrents of Null mana, all carrying his message, spilled free and into The Champion. He didn't have time to process the pain before millions of points were pulled from him, and before he even could, The Champion burned that away as well.

Dei's soul was destroyed, yet his death was Incinerated. His end was obliterated, and he was forced to continue.

When his role was served, the changes done to him were Incinerated as well, and only the ghost of a memory was left as The Champion vanished.

Okrin's arm twitched one more time, locked up, then fell off. A dull gray glow filled the cracks of Edit, and everything went silent.

Dei hadn't even blinked, and it was over.

He couldn't move. He was afraid that if he did, all the pain would catch up to him, and he'd explode or… something.

But Perumah nudged him gently, and nothing happened, so he found the courage to shakily feel about his face and look over his body, finding himself to be whole and healthy.

"Your mental state has worsened," Perumah said with clear displeasure in her voice.

He said nothing as she began to poke around within him, but before she could, The Champion appeared again, and Dei processed that the arm had already been destroyed.

Dei looked into his reptilian eyes and saw a foreign entity, a being he'd never known. It was spelled out so perfectly in every aspect of his body language.

A new consciousness, a new manner of thinking and feeling.

He wasn't collected enough to speak, but Perumah was in his head. She knew what he was thinking, and saw the differences Dei did.

"You're not The Champion," she brought the Dragon's attention to herself. Thadria dragged Jacob away, putting distance between themselves and the supposed hostile.

"Wrong," the Dragon said mentally, not as a God, but a mortal. It wasn't the way The Champion spoke either.

"You act different from The Champion we know. From all The Champion's we've met," she said, though he could sense the quiver in her voice.

She was afraid, but he knew what she was doing- buying time and collecting information to think up some kind of extraction plan, maybe long enough for him to come to and think up something on his own.

They were not protected by The Champion's contract any longer, this one undid it.

"I am not a Champion you've ever met."

"Why are you hostile?"

"I am not."

"Why did you fix everything about Dei except his mind?"

"I never touched his soul, it would've rejected me immediately. I worked around it, and it filled the void itself. To change his memories of the event, I would need access to his soul, which I doubt he will allow."

"Can we… leave?"

"Not yet."

"Why?"

"I'm waiting to see if both of you are able to handle his influence."

"...What?"

Dei experienced his first real notifications as Ashvorn informed him of a change within himself.

[INCURSION DETECTED]

[THEORIZED MARK OF "THE ONE" CORRUPTED BY THEORIZED FIRST TITAN]

"Perumah, Look inward!" he mentally shouted, then drew his attention to the presence expanding from within himself as faint maniacal laughter could be heard from a section of his soul.

"Move it pops!"

Dread filled Dei as he heard Okrin from within, and he found himself within the memory he had of The Primordial Slayer, the one whose name he was forbidden to speak, and the one who wasn't here anymore.

A man-shaped hole showed Dei the view from beyond- a purple flurry of chaos and destruction making itself known, with pinpricks of light showing windows into the souls of others, other people who held memories of Lox.

A gargantuan eye suddenly covered the hole, impossibly larger than it but seeming just the right size to squeeze into the opening- something it tried immediately.

Leaving his structured form behind, Dei saw Okrin's body liquify and slither through, his mind filling with visions of countless eyes and a world consumed by senseless impulse as Okrin spoke his truth, even as Dei worked in tandem with Ashvorn to patch the supposed hole in himself.

"A wonderful entity! One with definition and reality, just as the carvers of old! How beautiful the sight of the glimpse and of the pioneer! A wounder and blooddrinker, and a rain of terror red! A pair of suitable selves to withstand the wails of dead! To break and kill and eat and live, to know of one true end! A slaughter of all that lies between and a puppet to pretend!"

Dei's face contorted in concentration as he drew upon his own meaning- his Personal affinity. Okrin controlled the chaos of the memory Lox once was, and Ashvorn served as his opposite- entropy.

The System extended its grasp around the opening and began to eat. This was Dei's soul, and he'd given it permission to consume the Mark for Potential. If Lox were here, that would be a suicidal endeavor, but Okrin had shoved him to the side to make room for himself.

Waves of power and chaos blasted forward, slamming into Ashvorn, but it absorbed it all and expelled it into a more harmless shape, decaying into MP.

Waves of True Mana emanated from Dei as Ashvorn burned Okrin's influence, the tendrils he'd extended getting clipped and disintegrating to reveal how hollow they were, not even pieces of Okrin's true self. None of them gave any Potential whatsoever.

Ashvorn's efficiency rose immensely as the seconds passed and Okrin's screaming voice could be heard over the pops and sizzles of his supposed flesh, but there was no pain in his undertone as he simply continued to recite his senseless speech. Dei did everything he could to form a solid, crude construct to assist Ashvorn, pulling together all the experience he'd gained from creating its body and the tinges of Knowledge on his mind until, at last, he was complete.

Together with Ashvorn, he constructed his first true spell by demanding it act in a certain way in accordance to his will; though it could only do one thing consistently, that singular task was to push Okrin back long enough for Ashvorn to delete that section of his soul.

Wherever Ashvorn passed, the entropy within it pushed Okrin enough and, with an immense force of will from both Dei and his System, it reached the open wound and consumed the section of the memory where Lox should've been.

The babbling cut off abruptly, but Ashvorn wasn't done either, shooting through his memories to all other instances when he'd thought of the Primordial Slayer, and for good reason.

Right as it arrived at another instance, Okrin began to peek through again, only for that section to be cut off and surgically removed to leave the memory intact but nothing of…

'Huh. I can't remember the name of… that… being.

'Yea, I'm fine with this.

'WAIT, PERUMAH!'

He opened his eyes again and saw her floating, unmoving, next to him. Though her avatar had its eyes open, he could tell she was focused somewhere else.

He moved forward and was about to leap down their connection to help her, but The Champion said "Hold," and he paused.

"She will be fine," he said, "She has made a deal with Okrin, and he will administer her a trial."

"A trial?"

"One of old to grant her access to spells, to unlock a path for her chaos. Do not worry, the barrier most suffered was only a lack of knowledge. This one in particular was well known, and despite how effective its results were it was rather…"

Perumah's body glowed the impossible color of raw chaos and she woke back up, looking around the space.

"...Easy. For a trial, that is."

She scowled at The Champion. "That was easy?"

"For a trial, yes."

"I gained a connection with Fortitude for bearing it!" indignation clear in her voice.

"Yet death was never an option. Now, collect the two fleeing mortals and follow behind. Once we are within the physical plane, escape from this broken section of the multiverse will be easier."

Then, he turned and started to fly back to the broken fragments of the anchor world.

"Easy, or easier?" Perumah asked in his head.

"I don't like this version of The Champion."

"Yes. He is an asshole."

Still, Dei wasn't in the mood to venture for days across the sea of razor blades that was the space between worlds, so he retrieved Jacob and Thadria, then followed the Dragon.