Nothing could have prepared them all for what came next – not the Stars, Troops, and Void users aboard Amanas, or the sentries gearing up every offensive and defensive tool at their disposal against the incoming Null Devil King.
Skullius didn't give the latter time to respond. Even if, by some bizarre grace, the sentries were capable of reacting faster than Skullius could attack, they wouldn't have been able to see the nature of his offense.
In and Mu, the conduits for Skullius' [Circuit of Impunity] were hidden by his ability to shroud anything he wanted in darkness, masking it from most eyes. Thus, when the two creatures – one, a mutinous devil, and the other, a warm-faced angel – began revolving around the Hybrid Warmoth in a radius that kept growing wider and wider until it was over seven thousand kilometers, the sentries saw nothing.
When Skullius grabbed ahold of every photon available within that range – which wasn't much given where he was – and forced their integral foundation into matter he could lord over, the sentries didn't notice it either. His precision and subtlety had risen to a startling degree, and half of the accolade for that belonged to In and Mu.
The basic purpose of the conduits was to grant Skullius complete control of non-living signatures within the range of their rotation. In a way, they were akin to a super-inflated version of the Preeminent Attegoth (or the Stolen Angel).
With access to most of Skullius' arsenal, they could imbue whatever he desired with anything he wanted faster than Skullius could process the command into a coherent thought.
…Hence why all 354 trillion photons were suddenly suffused with a hefty dose of puce and turquoise – Maximum Jaqquezjaqqz. But the prompt the Parlous Nature induced on the photons had less to do with its current, unique powers and more to do with its roots – what Skullius had initially created it for.
'Split…' the Hybrid Warmoth thought, and there was no lag between his command and the execution.
His new slashing Andori, [True Severance: Emphatic Dissonance], was applied to every seized photon. The Sage Tier Andori was not simply an enhanced version of its predecessor. Instead of sending slashes flying, it extinguished the need for the user to send a projectile altogether and honed in on a singular focus: to split all things instantaneously.
No one within the area had so much as twitched when the magnitude of the attack of an Authority was unleashed on the wider Reality.
Splitting photons and inverting them…
'There are many ways to create that thing, but violent instability is the key factor,' thought Skullius.
…And when the Retucent emerged, he was proven right.
Trillions of photons forced into an atom-like state of matter, split, and then inverted into particles that didn't technically exist…
It was as though Reality rejected the result by flashing rapidly, as though tiny explosions were set off, and then darkening beyond black. A shockwave rolled through the great void as a ripple, faster to the perception of everyone there except Skullius'. In the darkness, only he saw the tiny point of throbbing, dull light only about as large as a fingernail before it took its final form.
Yet, even for him, who'd conjured it, it was horrifying. He lingered no more than was needed.
The blinding darkness around the tiny horror was the first victim. It was pulled like a carpet, elongated beyond comprehension, and shredded as the point of dull light induced a vexing whirl around itself.
The sentry station was next. It was pulled and shredded into tiny strings that whirled around the Retucent, along with the sentries themselves. For all of twenty attoseconds, the two Deities were drawn as large as worlds before being shredded to thin strands that the Retucent then devoured.
...And yet the Retucent was still emerging, establishing its footing.
Before it took a crack at Skullius, it violently tugged away the unseen defenses that the sentry station had been built within – the defenses of the Obscurosphere – leaving a neat gap.
Skullius reacted as soon as that happened. With In and Mu about, his precision and perception were absolute. Faster than a Divine had any right to be, he slung Amanas with a chain of Ju`wtte and sped through the gap in the Obscurosphere before the Retucent's influence engulfed it completely.
…
'That was interesting…' Skullius thought, exhaling a tense breath. 'A working theory executed fleshing right.'
In his haste, he had 'forgotten' to appreciate the full magnificent view of the Obscurosphere before crossing into the first swath of land beyond it – the actual Breaking Chasm.
Amanas was nose-deep in the Quadrosphere's reddish-brown sands. Skullius hadn't been able to decelerate quickly enough. His precision had dwindled sharply; as, for their own safety's sake, he'd deactivated In and Mu right before narrowly avoiding the Retucent's influence.
Looking up, he saw the ample purple sky, devoid of clouds, spitting ash-coloured snow. The flakes were cool to the touch, and when they met the warm sands, they melted instantly, leaving dark patches. Many hills of varying heights lined Skullius' periphery, hiding many things, but most importantly, the source of the decent lighting.
Indeed, the Quadrosphere was eerily bright, and faint prongs citing the source poked from somewhere East – far, far, far East. Eerier than that was the intense gravity. It must have been at least a thousand times greater than on Aigas, a fact Skullius knew spelled several significant threats to him and his subordinates.
…But for now, what Skullius was more concerned about was the incoming disaster above.
The growing influence of the fledgling Retucent, still far from its fever pitch, twisted the purple sky, creating a black whirl that grew by the nanosecond.
'A double-edged sword, but it was necessary. Someone important will be coming to clear the mess, I assume.'
In exchange for breaching the defenses of the Obscurosphere without risking direct contact, Skullius had brought on a calamity on Breaking Chasm #59. He would be labelled an enemy no matter what. Perhaps the Primeval Deities would regret sending him in as a spy under those circumsta—
A flash of verdant green blasted across the sky, humming deeply.
…!!!
It encircled the Retucent and then punted it off into the distant void at considerable magnitudes of speed beyond light!
Just like that, the space the horror had been tormenting was back to normal.
No lasting damage. No sign that it was ever eaten through at all.
Skullius… frowned.
'That was Conste…'
From Boron's memories, he'd learned that Retucents, even ones as small as a pinhead, were cause for evacuation rather than confrontation. Boron's own Commanders had once abandoned entire platoons because of Retucents of meager size.
…But someone here on Breaking Chasm #59 was capable of blasting them away? Fledgling or not. Maximum output or not. That was a frightening feat.
Skullius had barely finished processing the idea of someone that powerful when he snapped behind him.
Reinforcements had arrived.
---
[Author's Note]
Maximum Jaqquezjaqqz was created by the [Entropy's Harmonising Nimbus], Skullius' cloak, which is imbued with many low-level Parlous Natures, most of which are based on Maximum Catalyst. Maximum Catalyst was a concept Skullius created during the battle across the Boundary. It gave him the ability to Revert and Progress.
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