Titan King: Ascension of the Giant

In that instant, the Acid Torrent spattered across the Deathly Soul-Reaper. Its shadowy form sizzled and steamed, the writhing tendrils that composed it dissolving into nothing. Jynara saw her opening. With a triumphant roar, the great-toothed broodmother's jaws gaped wide, and she swallowed the trapped, weakened Deathly Soul-Reaper whole.

Inside the stomach, Orion was immediately submerged in an endless sea of corrosive fluid. He knew instantly, This is a losing battle. This was a specialized digestive space, an internal dimension designed for one purpose: to dissolve foreign matter.

Matriarch Jynara was terrifyingly clever. Through their continuous clashes, she had found his avatar's weakness. The Deathly Soul-Reaper, augmented by Phantasmal Echo, was nearly immune to physical attacks; he could let her shatter his form all day. But this was different. This was an attack of attrition. While her stomach acid lacked the obliterating power of true divine power or holy fire, being trapped here was a death sentence. It was only a matter of time.

Worse, if Jynara were free to attack the undead armies, their entire invasion would end in failure.

Left with no other choice, Orion played another card.

Outside, having swallowed her foe, Jynara didn't immediately turn on the undead armies. She watched, her senses focused inward. Seeing her digestive fluids effectively corroding the Deathly Soul-Reaper, a wave of relief washed over her. Fighting this thing had been an exhausting, nerve-wracking ordeal, even for a warrior as confident as herself.

Just as a smile touched her lips, it froze.

SHING!

A sound like a singing sword split the air. Arthas's demigod phantom, wielding its white bone-forged sword, appeared from nowhere. With a single, elegant slash, it sliced open Jynara's digestive dimension from the outside, the same blow effortlessly extinguishing every last spark of her broodmother form's life force.

The Matriarch of the Gnasher Race was dead.

Or so I thought, Orion mused, noting the conspicuous absence of a body of faith.

High in the heavens, Arthas sensed that Orion had deployed his emergency trump card. He immediately exerted his will, recalling the phantom to finish the battle before him.

"Be careful," the demigod phantom said to Orion, its voice a whisper on the wind before it shot skyward to rejoin the war of gods.

Within the pocket reality of warring laws, the phantom emerged and merged with Arthas's true form. His avatar solidified, its aura growing until it surpassed the stone statue's.

"Withdraw now and cede this Godforsaken Land," Arthas commanded, a white flame erupting along his bone-forged sword. "Do this, and I may spare your life today."

"Never!" the statue roared, refusing to be intimidated. The clash of their divine powers resumed, more violent and desperate than before.

Back on the battlefield, the moment Arthas's phantom vanished, a brilliant golden light erupted from the main nest in the heart of the Gnasher territory. A figure bathed in that light, wearing a crown and carrying nine severed heads upon its shoulders, rose into the air. It was a body of faith, and it strode through the void toward the Deathly Soul-Reaper.

"Imprison," the golden figure commanded. With a single word, the Deathly Soul-Reaper was frozen in place once more. This was no Voidlock; this was a cage woven from pure faith energy.

Jynara was nothing if not a cunning opportunist. The moment Arthas's demigod phantom had appeared, her true body of faith had remained perfectly still, hidden. The second she was certain the phantom had rejoined the divine war, she made her move, intent on crushing Orion once and for all.

Faith energy was, in essence, a protomorphic form of divine power. By expending a massive amount of it, a user could mimic some of its traits. That was what Jynara was doing now: burning through the faith her race had accumulated over countless years for one overwhelming, decisive strike.

"Die!" Jynara bellowed as her body of faith closed the distance. She reached out an arm, which instantly transformed into a wickedly sharp, serrated blade, and brought it down in a killing blow.

The blade stopped, hovering less than half an inch from Orion's body.

"You shouldn't have come so close," Orion's voice sneered from within the paralyzed form.

Suddenly, the world slowed to a crawl. The blade froze, the air grew still. The Deathly Soul-Reaper, breaking its bonds through an unseen power, moved with impossible speed. Its scythe became a blur, unleashing a storm of countless phantom blades.

The scythes fell, and Jynara's body of faith was instantly diced into a thousand pieces.

Even so, she was not dead. So long as the faith energy she controlled still existed, her body of faith could not be truly destroyed. But she knew she couldn't stay. A pillar of teleportation magic erupted behind the scattered fragments of her form. Before Orion could even think to disrupt it, the portal was stable.

With a final, piercing shriek of hatred, Jynara fled, taking a fraction of her remaining faith energy with her as she teleported out of the Godforsaken Land entirely.

Jynara was gone. Orion stood motionless for a long moment before finally lowering his scythe. He took out a small, humanoid statue—a Faith Locus—and used it to absorb the ambient faith energy left scattered in the void.

She had escaped with roughly a third of her power. Another third had been annihilated by his attack. The final third was now his.

"A pity," Orion said to the empty air. "I couldn't finish her." It was no surprise that a broodmother like Jynara had an escape plan. The duel between arch lords had ended in his narrow victory.

Now, everything depended on the outcome of the battle between Arthas and the statue.

Orion looked down at the battlefield below. While his front lines were advancing steadily, the undead tower and the sand scorpions' main nest were being besieged by a sea of Gnasher beasts.

ROAR!

A dragon's cry echoed across the field. Dirtclaw, the Hell-Drake Hound, was a walking inferno. A trail of unquenchable hellfire burned in his wake, turning the ground he trod into a vision of hell. Gnasher beasts that charged him were either torn apart by his jaws or incinerated by the flames. The few that slipped past were immediately swarmed and annihilated by the undead and small scorpions guarding the nests.

Hahahaha... This feels AMAZING! I've never felt so alive! Is this supernatural power?

Slaughter... fire... what a beautiful symphony!

ROAR!

The Hell-Drake Hound opened his jaws and swallowed a charging Gnasher beast whole.

He was really starting to love this battlefield.