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Various waves of Aether struck Niain all at once -- and as they did, a cacophony of overlapping voices blared into his ears.

…Greetings! You have been struck by Dirty Roads! From now on…

…Yohoho -- I'll be hanging out in your brain from now on, yoho -- please take care of…

…Despair. Repent thy sins. Nevermore has taken hold…

Three precise throwing knives took care of the abilities at the source before they could finish explaining themselves. That was often the way with powers that came with an opening message for the victim -- if you killed the user before that message could be fully communicated, you usually didn't have anything to worry about.

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Niain's arsenal was eclectic and ever-changing. Guns, swords, knives, hammers, axes… he painted the rooms the battle passed through with every implement imaginable. As a Supreme Heir, he'd gone through much weapon training in his youth -- and even with the downtime he'd spent on the Shesha all those years, his body wasn't the sort that allowed muscle memory to fade. He executed his executions with graceful expertise that his teachers would have applauded, had they lived.

Even he couldn't avoid being hit entirely, though. A cube of manifested ice slammed into him from the side, sending him flying into a nearby records room. Paper records -- backups for the data stored in the Ultraviolet's archives. Folders and files went flying in every direction as Niain crashed through the cabinets.

Still, he couldn't allow himself to stop moving for a moment.

Ahura Mazda!

A thin layer of slime sprayed out of Ahura Mazda, quickly igniting itself -- the resultant flames devouring the valuable papers in an instant and turning the room into an inferno. At first, Niain didn't really have a reason to do that, but once he considered it he supposed increasing the danger level of the battlefield would be advantageous. The degree to which he could withstand high temperatures was no doubt much higher than his enemies. The fate of the unfortunate firewood that had pursued him in here was proof of that.

And there was still the ice, of course.

Niain flipped and leapt as tendrils of ice crashed through the walls, doing their best to spear him as he dodged. Even with the heat from the flames, the ice was cold enough to remain intact for the vital few seconds it would take to land a lethal blow -- if it could land one, that is.

Well, Niain had successfully created fire. Creating ice was actually much easier.

It seemed this enemy on the other side of the wall was capable of creating three ice constructs at a time. To show respect to that fact, Niain made sure to shred her apart with six of his own black icicles. As he burst back out of the burning room, he let loose a mighty kick and sent her head flying off her corpse -- where it struck another incoming soldier's skull and resulted in spectacular mutual destruction.

Bloody fireworks, to put it simply.

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"Are you in position?" the Shepherdess asked, putting a finger to her ear.

"Ebo confirms," Ebo confirmed, their Scurrant traits making it sound like their voice was coming from underwater.

Ebo was a member of Periwinkle Squad. Ordinarily, the Shepherdess would have just sent them into the meat grinder with the rest of their team, but Ebo's particular ability made them invaluable for the strategy she had in mind. They couldn't die until the time is right.

"And the external marker is in place in the lobby?" the Shepherdess queried again.

"Ebo confirms," Ebo confirmed.

"Await my signal," the Shepherdess nodded -- then she turned to look behind her. "All of you, proceed to the designated point and prepare as instructed."

The guns that had been handed out couldn't have looked more out of place in the hands of these desk parasites. Half of them looked like they'd never touched a dumbbell in their life, let alone a weapon. Still… they'd do. They were prepared.

As they left to carry out the orders of 'Spectralon Squad' - pfft -- the Shepherdess turned back to the monitors. Even Magpie went with his people, leaving her completely alone. There, a black silhouette against the scenes of gruesome murder, the Shepherdess watched and waited…

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…and watched and waited…

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…and watched and waited…

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…and watched…

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…and waited.

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The Shepherdess put her finger to her ear.

"Now," she commanded.

Niain blocked a deadly stab from either side -- one with a manifested black shield, the other with Angra Mainyu itself.

"Stop fighting!" he joked, laughing merrily. "You guys, we don't have to do this!"

He spun -- and the curve of Angra Mainyu's path opened up two stomachs. Guts dropped to the floor as choked gasps danced into Niain's ears. Spreading his arms wide, he continued to turn on the spot.

"I never realized," he chuckled, blasting out a torrent of flies to relieve flesh from bone. "But people really can die so easily… it's unbelievable… un -- haha -- it's unforgivable!"

Branch-like tendrils speared through a man's chest.

A spider the size of a human head crawled down a woman's throat.

Wave after wave of grasping hands flowed through the hallway, crushing whatever they grabbed.

"Even if I use the rest of my life to make up for this," Niain wiped a tear from his eye. "It still won't be enough! But I have to keep trying! That's what it means to be human!"

He seized a soldier's head between his hands and squeezed, smiling wildly as blood and brains sprayed over his face.

"So I absolutely… hahahaha… I absolutely can't die here!"

His mocking performance concluded -- for no audience remained -- and he threw what remained of his last opponent down to the floor. At last, Niain took a moment to catch his breath. The wide smile that had spread across his cheeks slowly returned to its usual serene curve.

He'd gotten a little carried away there near the end, he had to admit, but it really wasn't his fault. His Aether core was joy, after all, and the gruesome results of being in sync with his Aether usually brought him even more joy. It was a brutal cycle -- not that he disliked it, but still --

"Hup!"

"Hm?" Niain glanced down.

A tiny creature -- an octopod Scurrant -- had latched onto Niain's leg, wrapping their tentacles around the limb as if never intending to let go. Niain's smile widened once more. They'd already done the tentacles once, and those had been much stronger than this. At this point, some of these people were really just asking for it.

"Ahura --"

"Beachfront!"

The world vanished.

Everything bar Niain, Smith, and his new passenger disappeared. The hallways, the corpses, the blood, the flames… all gone, replaced by a dark ocean that seemed to stretch on in every direction. No up, no down, just the water. For a moment, Niain even feared he'd soon feel the crushing pressure of the deep undersea… but no.

Before he could even try to take a breath, he was back in reality again -- but not in the same place.

Now, he was standing in the middle of Ultraviolet Tower's huge lobby, his cloak damp and dripping. Statues of past directors lined the perimeter of the great circular chamber, looking down at Niain as if they could sense his intrusion from beyond the grave. Up on the ring-shaped balcony above -- for this room had two levels -- a plethora of rifles were aimed right at Niain, clutched by workers who seemed quite unused to this level of excitement. The squid hopped off of his leg and scurried off into the shadows.

Well, no matter. He wasn't interested in them anymore. The one he was interested in was standing atop the railing itself, her arms crossed, looking down at him just as imperiously as the statues.

The Shepherdess.

"Mental fatigue," she declared, her voice echoing throughout the room. "For an enemy like you that can repair damage with your Aether, that's your biggest weakness. Our comrades fought hard to wear you down, and now…"

She spread her arms wide.

"...welcome to the kill chamber."

Niain spread his own arms wide, chuckling with his eyes closed, throwing his ragged cloak out like a pair of wings.

"This isn't your best plan," he said. "My Aether core is joy, and I'm certainly feeling it right now, haha. How is making me happy going to wear me down? Come on, now. You know better than this…"

He opened his eyes again, and those dark pits stared right up at her.

"...don't you, Shepherdess of the Supremacy?"

The Shepherdess' nostrils flared.

She had been this man's enemy for nearly a hundred years, and he hers. Thrice over that time they had fought nearly to the death, the destruction left behind devastating.

Yet theirs had been a secret war. He had never exposed her to the world at large, nor she him. The reason was obvious: mutually assured destruction. When one was pulled into the light, the other would be dragged along with them, putting their plans in peril.

The fact that Niain was trying to expose her here… meant that his plans were far enough along that secrecy didn't matter anymore.

She had to kill Niain right now.

"Fire!" she roared before anyone could register Niain's words -- and the paltry troops she'd gathered obeyed.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Whatever words Niain were about to say next were drowned out by the thunder of plasmafire, but the Shepherdess was willing to bet that at least a couple of them were 'Ahura Mazda'. A solid black dome manifested around Niain's body, shielding him from the incoming barrage. The Shepherdess had seen this before -- that barrier was extremely durable, but far from invincible. That wasn't the problem, though. The problem was that no doubt Niain was going to use Angra Mainyu to tunnel away and start wreaking havoc again.

Well, the Shepherdess had come prepared for that, too.

Moving quickly, the Shepherdess snatched four blue marbles out of her suit pocket and hurled them down towards the ground level. Courtesy of the Maker-Guild's Glassblower, these would have the combined strength needed to get Niain exactly where she needed him. Pink Aether crackled as they hit the ground.

Devil Core: Draconic Devil.

The four marbles exploded into colossal creatures -- serpentine dragons of crystal, their roars shaking the windows so much that even the plasmafire was almost drowned out. As one, they lunged in towards Niain's shield -- and, as one, their strength was enough to shatter it. Like runaway trains, they crashed into Niain's body, pushing him at blinding speeds through the reinforced windows and hurling him outside.

Anyone else would have been crushed by the jaws of the Draconic Devils. Anyone else would have been shredded by the glass of the shattered window. Anyone else would have fallen into the city below and met a gruesome end after minutes of falling.

But Niain was not just anyone.

The jaws of the four Draconic Devils shattered as a burst of almighty pressure erupted from Niain's hand. The bat-like wings were attached to his back once more, keeping him aloft as he raised that hand -- the hand bearing Ahura Mazda -- up towards the sky above him. The white singularity began to flicker… and a torrent of darkness began to pour up out of it.

The Shepherdess stepped back off the railing, seizing hold of the arm of Magpie beside her. He looked down at her in alarm, but her eyes remained fixed on the distant Niain. From this distance, she couldn't hear him, but she knew the lip movements to look out for. That one word.

The liquid darkness Ahura Mazda was releasing continued to coalesce above Niain's hand, forming a perfect jet-black sphere -- ten times Niain's size, twenty times, thirty times, fifty. He was quickly dwarfed by the product of his own creation, a shadow falling over Ultraviolet Tower. It was like he was holding an abyssal planet in his hand.

No… a dark star.

"What is it?" Magpie demanded, raising his voice to be heard over the chaos. "What's he doing?!"

She ignored him. There was no point wasting her words on a corpse.

It's time.

"Nibiru."

Niain had many ways to kill… but this was one of his favourites.

The principle behind this application of his abilities was simple. Niain's fighting style consisted of using Angra Mainyu to erase material for fuel, then recycling it using Ahura Mazda. Usually, though, Angra Mainyu was sufficient to get him through most battles -- and so he inevitably ended up with a surplus of fuel. There wasn't really a downside to that, but Nibiru took advantage of that fact -- manifesting all that stored-up fuel at once for a single almighty attack.

Niain held the darkness above him and, with the slightest effort, he tossed it forward.

The demonic sphere crashed into the side of Ultraviolet Tower -- and the second it made contact, it exploded into a viscous black mud that crawled into the building. This was no mere flood. Nibiru had a design of its own -- a design to crawl forth like a rough beast and eviscerate whatever life it could find. The mud leapt up the walls of the lobby, seeking out each and every body standing on the upper level of the room.

The plasmafire emboldened it. The fear excited it. The blood tempted it.

It indulged itself.

The first victims perhaps had it the worst -- then again, maybe the swiftness was a mercy. In its eagerness, Nibiru pulled them downwards into its black mass so fast they seemed to disappear, instantly compressing their bodies into hollow spaces centimeters thick. Blood sprayed up out of the mud like water from a whale's blowhole.

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As some of the workers turned to flee, Nibiru happily lunged forth to play. It entered their bodies through their orifices and wounds, pouring back out through their eyes and mouths before popping their bodies like balloons. The scraps of skin and meat remaining were eagerly snatched up by the hungry black ocean.

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Tendrils of the dark mass swung and struck at those who had gotten into hard-to-reach places. Each blow was precise, delivered to the spine with deadly strength… but Nibiru was a careful thing. It made sure to paralyze, not kill -- and it dragged the whimpering bodies back into itself, so it could play and produce corpses with inhuman configurations.

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Indeed, Nibiru played…

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…and played…

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…and played.

In the end, though, despite all of Nibiru's cruelty, it was a will designed with an exact duration. Its thoughts turned sluggish and indistinct, and the black mud pouring through the building in search of other victims softened into mere muck. Still, even though it was well aware it was about to disappear from this world, Nibiru felt no regret.

After all, it had lived such a fun and happy life.

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The last of the operators, a young teal-haired woman with glasses, looked up from where she'd huddled on the ground. Her rifle lay discarded. As the horror had unfolded around her, she'd collapsed and made herself as small as possible -- instinct, not strategy, but it seemed to have paid off. Nibiru preferred noisy dancing toys to the comatose ones.

Shaking, she slowly rose to her feet, looking around the demolished lobby in shock.

"I…" she breathed. "I survived…?"

"Yes, you did," said Niain. "Angra Mainyu."

Her head vanished from her shoulders, and she collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Niain stepped on her back as he strode forward, looking around with great interest at the destruction Nibiru had wrought. This place was nearly unrecognisable as the lobby of Ultraviolet Tower. With how the space had been warped and smashed and darkened, it felt more like some ancient temple, pulled up from the bottom of the sea.

As he walked, he pulled his wings and a few remaining puddles of Nibiru back into Angra Mainyu. It would be good to have some fuel in the tank. Especially since…

"I know you're there, Ruri," Niain said brightly. "Come on out, haha."

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It wasn't as if he'd spotted her hiding or anything. It would take a true idiot not to figure out where she was.

A small pink-and-red dome stood in front of Niain, like a pop-and-kitsch parody of his own shield. Niain narrowed his eyes. Yes, he'd thought so -- it seemed to be composed of tiny bits of flesh and blood, frozen in time. Some scraps of bone, too. Very nice work.

Niain only had time to appreciate it for a moment before it collapsed. The dome fell into a small pond of gore -- and standing in the centre of it was indeed the Shepherdess. She glared at Niain with those gleaming pink eyes as he stroked his chin.

"I see," he chuckled. "That whole 'mental fatigue' nonsense you were going about was just for these people, wasn't it?"

He waved a hand, indicating the corpses around them. Well… if you hadn't been told, it would have been difficult to identify them as corpses at first glance. They'd been warped and fused into odd structures like oily black stones, only occasional traces of humanity -- a stretched socket or shrunken vestigial limb -- showing that they had once been human or, indeed, alive.

"That was to convince them that there was some sort of fighting chance," he smiled. "Very nice work. I suppose you have experience with inspiring false hope, though -- don't you, Ruri?"

The Shepherdess narrowed her eyes. "I told you not to use my name."

"Oh, but I'm actually complimenting you," Niain put a hand to his heart. "Really, I do actually mean it. That whole business downstairs… using the combat teams to make me use up my fuel, so the eventual Nibiru would be weakened. It was a nice little piece of business. It's just a shame it didn't work."

The Shepherdess raised an eyebrow. "I'm still standing after that attack of yours. I would say it worked fine."

"As soon as I unleashed Nibiru," Niain noted, ignoring her retort. "You grabbed that man next to you -- the Vice-Director, I think? -- and pulped him, then froze his gore to make a shield for yourself. The teams, the workers, the Vice-Director… there's a lot of moving pieces there. Like I said, I'm complimenting your diligence… but where has it actually gotten you? You're still standing here in front of me, haha, and you're about to die all the same."

The Shepherdess snorted. "Kids like you are always so cocky."

"You think you're fast enough to kill me before I kill you," Niain smiled. "If you'd done that straight away, I'd say you had an even chance. Not anymore, though. Smith's gotten used to your speed. I'm at my peak thanks to Aether synchronization… while you're probably suffering from that 'mental fatigue' you were talking about. I'm willing to bet I can take three steps forward and let Smith cut you up before you can escape."

"I can, my lord," Smith cut in, his voice trembling with anticipation. "Allow your black blade to take this harlot's head!"

"Okay, cool, in a minute," Niain replied, his expression unchanging as he continued to stare at the Shepherdess. "Whichever way this goes, we won't have the chance to talk like this again. Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"What question?" asked the Shepherdess.

Niain looked at her seriously. "Do you believe the world can change based on the whims of just one person?"

"Yes," the Shepherdess replied instantly. "History is a great ship steered by one captain at a time. The greatest men of the age are the ones who determine the shape the next age will take. It's the strength of individual human will that guides humanity as a whole."

"I see," Niain nodded. "And as the one who decides the ship's captain, that gives you power too, doesn't it?"

"I have no desire to hold power for myself," the Shepherdess said, unblinking. "All I care about is that the ship keeps sailing."

"Whereas I would snap the oars and burn the sails and strangle the rowers in their sleep," Niain smiled. "That is my 'individual human will', Ruri. The world of man has become a corpse festering with maggots. Society devours itself. Civilization as it exists now is a failed experiment. If I were to determine the next age… well, I would erase human history up to that point, and allow us to start over fresh."

"And how would you do that?" the Shepherdess asked.

"Even now," Niain laughed. "You're trying to get information out of me. But I won't tell you, just in case. All I'll say is… in order to bring humanity under the light of a dark star, in order to bring civilization back to that first brick and start again, a crueler world is needed. At least for a little while. I won't pretend I don't enjoy that prospect… but I truly believe that it will result in a better future for all humanity." His smile widened. "Eventually," he conceded.

The Shepherdess sighed, planting a hand against her hip. "I really can't understand you at all," she said. "The ramblings of madmen like you do nothing but give me a headache."

"Whereas I understand you perfectly. I just think you're boring," Niain replied. "But you're right. I'm sick of the sound of your voice, too. So, how shall we do this?"

He took a step forward. The Shepherdess said nothing.

"Will the old hag fight back in vain?" he asked. "Or will she allow her thousand-year voyage to come to a dignified end?"

He took a step forward. The Shepherdess said nothing.

"The eternal stagnation of the Supremacy," Niain breathed, the ghost of his true grin spreading across his lips. "Or the merciful entropy that Darkstar offers. Let's see which one the world chooses, Ruri!"

He took a step forward. The Shepherdess… smiled.

And the trap was sprung.

She'd taken great care to set up this exact scenario.

Back in the security room, as subtly as she could, she'd made sure to make bodily contact with each and every operator at least once. Even Magpie when she'd grabbed his arm, although of course that had been unnecessary. It hadn't just been about establishing rapport or dominance -- she'd been planting something on them.

Test Armament Two. The Rope.

Binds lunged out from the art-pieces Nibiru had left behind -- five, six, seven, eight -- and they pierced Niain's body from every angle, locking him in place between the web of corpses.

"What?!" he gasped.

The Shepherdess smirked. He hadn't even been given good reason to gasp yet -- but that came quickly. Black Aether began to rage around Niain's body, but rather than him gathering its power, it looked more like he was being electrocuted by the sparks. His head snapped up towards the ceiling, and his limbs froze in place. Slowly -- with what was clearly extreme effort -- he managed to force his gaze down to glare at the Shepherdess from the very bottoms of his eyes.

"What…" he hissed. "Is…"

"Granba always considered the Rope a failure," the Shepherdess said conversationally, putting a hand on her hip. "The idea was to force the parties connected to it to assume the same physical state. If he'd managed to get it working the way he wanted, you'd have turned into a corpse the moment the Rope touched you. But he just couldn't get around the infusion problem."

Niain was doing his best to writhe free, but it was a futile effort. With his Aether going berserk like it was, the biggest bodily movement he could manage was an infuriated twitch. His pupils had shrunk to tiny black dots. Dots of rage.

The Shepherdess could have burst out into laughter, if not for the severity of the situation. This was probably the angriest she'd ever seen her enemy.

"It's like an Aether ping," she explained, gesturing towards Niain's suffering form. "That little flinch you get when it passes over you, only times a thousand, and happening over and over again. Your own Aether is reflexively rejecting the Rope… and it's locking you in place in the process. You'd probably adjust to that given a little time…"

She snapped her fingers.

"...but time belongs to me."

Niain's eyes widened, just fractionally, and those tiny black pupils flicked back up towards the ceiling. The Shepherdess hadn't thought it possible, but he actually grew more pale. A low groan trickled from his throat as he saw what was waiting for him.

"No…" he forced out.

A phantasmal clock was forming overhead.

Overlapping with the ceiling, thousands of interlinked gears and cogs and hands beneath the great glass face, moving in perfect harmony like a cosmic ballet. Niain had been right to fear this -- it was more than capable of destroying this entire building, should the Shepherdess have deemed it necessary. But here and now? With Niain trapped in place like this?

Destroying the lobby was more than enough.

Niain's teeth were bared as he growled. "W-Wait…"

The Shepherdess raised her hands -- and in that same moment, Niain looked at her once more.

"Goodbye, Niain," the Shepherdess smiled.

Time Crash.

Finally, Niain managed to scream.

"RUUURIII!" he howled in fury --

-- in the moment before the hands of time crashed down into him.