Chapter Fifteen: Adaptive Vengeance, The Cosmic Retaliation.
The battlefield in the Outer Verse, First Plane, was a terrifying canvas of chaos, death, and impossible power. The Totem, encased within Urca's formidable Battle Form, stood at the center of the carnage, its attention now fully seized by the two colossal figures who had materialized on the horizon.
These were the true arbiters of power in this sector: the Lord of the Sunken Spires, a towering column of shifting shadow and stone, ancient and implacable; and the Emperor of the Crystalline Host, a blinding, perfect figure of radiant light and chaotic geometry. Though eternal enemies, the threat posed by the vessel of the Totem forced them into a brief, terrified truce.
The Lord of the Spires spoke first, his voice not a sound but a grinding psychic wave that made the very atmosphere feel like sand. "It adapts too fast! Its defense is compounding! We must hit the same anchor point! Do not spread the force!"
The Emperor of the Crystalline Host countered with a flash of light so intense it should have vaporized the entire plane, a manifestation of pure, chaotic celestial energy. The blast struck the Totem's obsidian armor, making the vessel roar with a sound that was a mix of Urca's pain and the Totem's rage.
The hit was immense, scarring the thick, black armor. But the wound healed almost instantly, the obsidian flesh knitting itself back together with the dark, crystalline energy of the Totem.
"Thank you for the data," the Totem grated through the vessel, its voice a low resonance of power. "Now, your next strike must be twice as hard to matter."
The Emperor of Light responded instantly, gathering stellar cores into a blinding singularity spear. The Lord of Spires amplified the assault with crushing gravity waves. Their combined might struck Urca's chest—a cataclysm that shattered mountains of alien rock nearby.
The obsidian armor fractured, revealing swirling darkness beneath. Pain lanced through Urca's consciousness, sharp and human, but the Totem only laughed. The wound sealed instantly, the armor now shimmering with an internal, diamond-hard resilience where the blow had landed. "Predictable," the Totem snarled, already lunging.
Urca's form blurred, claws outstretched. The Emperor phased sideways, but the Totem anticipated—its free hand tore through the fabric of space itself, ripping a jagged portal that intercepted the Emperor's retreat. Claws scraped across radiant geometry, shearing off shards of pure light that screamed as they dissolved into the Totem's vortex eyes.
The Lord of Spires retaliated, summoning obsidian spikes from the ground. Urca didn't evade; he stomped down, unleashing a shockwave that pulverized the attack into harmless dust. Adaptation was instinct now: each defense evolved stronger, faster, more precise.
The Emperor gathered blinding photons into a sword of supernova heat. It descended—a vertical slash meant to bisect the vessel. Urca caught the blade bare-handed. Molten light sprayed where obsidian met energy, but the Totem funneled the searing power downward, through its legs, and into the planet's core. The ground buckled violently, swallowing lesser horrors whole.
Before the Emperor could retreat, Urca's other hand shot out, fingers elongating into obsidian spears that pierced the Emperor's chest. Light dimmed; celestial blood, like liquid starlight, dripped onto the battlefield. "Your essence tastes… bright," the Totem mused, drinking deep.
The Lord of Spires roared, collapsing spacetime itself into a crushing singularity around Urca. For a heartbeat, the vessel strained—bones groaning, armor cracking under impossible pressure. Then, with a grinding shriek, the Totem flexed.
Origin erupted outward in concentric energy rings, shredding the singularity like wet paper. Urca emerged unharmed, taller, spikes sharper, eyes burning colder. "Is that all?" The whisper carried across the silent battlefield. The two rulers recoiled, genuine dread seeping in their ancient hearts.
The Emperor retaliated, weaving constellations into chains of searing starlight. They wrapped around Urca's limbs, binding him with cosmic fire. The Totem didn't struggle. It inhaled—deep, resonant—and the chains dimmed, their power siphoned into the swirling vortexes of its helm.
The chains shattered into dying embers. Urca lunged, claws morphing into jagged drills of condensed darkness. He punched through the Emperor's radiant chestplate, twisting violently. Light screamed as it was torn free and consumed. The Emperor staggered, brilliance flickering like a dying star.
The Lord of Spires retaliated, collapsing a mountain range onto Urca with a gesture. Stone and shadow crushed downward. Urca didn't dodge. He braced, his armor flaring with reactive glyphs. The impact drove him knee-deep into bedrock, but the obsidian plates hardened instantly, absorbing the kinetic fury.
He erupted upward in an explosion of pulverized rock, his form now bristling with fractal spines. One hand seized the Lord's shadowy leg. Origin surged up his limb, freezing and cracking the ancient entity's substance. The Lord roared, tearing free, leaving fragments of itself dissolving in Urca's grip.
They coordinated now—truly coordinated. The Emperor unleashed a barrage of supernova-bright projectiles while the Lord warped gravity, bending their paths into impossible angles. Urca moved, a blur of predatory grace, but a projectile grazed his shoulder. The armor blackened, cracked… then healed smoother, denser.
The next volley came faster, harder. Urca raised a forearm. The projectiles impacted, detonating in silent, blinding fury. When the light faded, his arm was encased in a rippling shield of pure void—an adaptation forged in the heat of celestial fire. He charged through the next salvo, shield-first, scattering light like broken glass.
The rulers retreated, regrouping at a distance. Their forms pulsed with renewed intensity—no longer dismissive overlords, but generals facing annihilation. The Emperor's light condensed into a lattice of lethal geometry.
The Lord's shadows deepened, swallowing sound and light. They moved as one, a pincer of absolute finality. Urca lowered his shield, claws flexing. The Totem's vortex-eyes narrowed. Good, it thought. Finally, a challenge worth consuming.
The Emperor struck first—a fractal spear of crystallized starlight aimed at Urca's throat. Simultaneously, the Lord unleashed tendrils of crushing gravity from below. Urca pivoted, the spear grazing his helm. Where it touched, the obsidian darkened, then hardened into diamond-like facets.
Below, the gravity tendrils coiled around his legs. Instead of resisting, the Totem absorbed their pull, channeling it upward. Urca launched himself like a missile, not away, but into the Emperor's radiant core. Claws tore through layers of light, each strike adapting—scales forming where photons burned, joints reforging stronger after every impact. Celestial blood, thick as molten gold, splattered the void.
The Lord retaliated. He collapsed a pocket dimension around Urca, a crushing sphere of folded spacetime. Pressure mounted—bones creaked, armor groaned. The Totem roared, not in pain, but in ecstasy. Origin energy flared from within, etching reactive sigils across the vessel's skin.
The sphere strained… then shattered outward in a storm of spatial shrapnel. Urca emerged unscathed, taller, his armor now etched with swirling gravity-runes. He seized a fragment of the broken dimension and hurled it. It struck the Lord's shadow-form, embedding like a poisoned thorn. The ancient entity shuddered as entropy spread through its essence.
The Emperor gathered his fading light for a final, suicidal blast. The Lord, wounded and furious, amplified it with gravitational lenses. A beam of pure annihilation lanced toward Urca—a death sentence woven from two cosmic wills. The Totem didn't evade. It spread its arms wide, the vortexes in its helm whirling into voids.
The beam struck. For a heartbeat, Urca's form blazed incandescent, armor cracking, flesh scorching. Then, the Totem consumed it. The light dimmed, siphoned away, fueling a transformation. Obsidian plates thickened into jagged mountains. Claws lengthened into scythes of hungry darkness.
Urca stepped forward, reborn, the rulers' combined might nothing but fuel. Their terror was palpable. The lesson was learned: escalation only made the predator stronger.
The Emperor's radiance flickered violently—a supernova's death throes. The Lord's shadow-form trembled, shedding fragments like crumbling stone. They exchanged a glance, ancient enemies united by existential dread. Then, they ignited their very lifespans. The Emperor's light turned blindingly white, searing holes in reality itself.
The Lord's shadows deepened to absolute black, warping spacetime into crushing singularities. Power radiated from them in visible waves, scorching the air. This wasn't battle anymore; it was a funeral pyre fueled by desperation. Urca merely tilted his helm, the Totem's cold amusement echoing through the void. Burn brighter, it seemed to whisper. The feast grows richer.
The Emperor lunged first, a comet of condensed fury. His fists were novas, each strike tearing rents in the fabric of the plane. Urca met him blow-for-blow, obsidian fists clashing against stellar fire. Where the Emperor's fists landed, Urca's armor instantly crystallized—absorbing the kinetic fury and radiating it back as jagged spikes.
The Lord struck from below, summoning a black hole beneath Urca's feet. Gravity claws tore upward. Urca stomped down, not resisting, but redirecting. The crushing force flowed into his legs, reforging tendons into cables of dark energy. He pivoted, using the stolen momentum to drive an elbow into the Emperor's chest. Light fractured. Golden ichor sprayed. The Emperor reeled, his borrowed time already bleeding away.
The Lord seized the opening. He folded space, appearing behind Urca, tendrils of pure entropy lashing out to unravel the vessel's very existence. The Totem didn't turn. Its spines flared, each tip glowing with captured starlight. The entropy tendrils struck—and dissolved, their decay-energy absorbed. Urca's back-plates rippled, hardening into a shield of inverted gravity. He spun, a whirlwind of adaptive violence.
One claw, now edged with stolen entropy, tore through the Lord's shadowy flank. The ancient entity screamed as its essence unraveled into the Totem's maw. The Emperor, seeing his ally fall, gathered his dying light for a final embrace—a supernova detonation meant to erase them both. Urca merely opened his arms wide, the vortexes in his helm yawning into bottomless pits. The blinding end began.
The fight was nearing its climax. Just as the power was gathering for the finishing blow, an event occurred that shook the very fabric of the Outer Verse.
A Bolt of Cosmic Power—a streak of pure, white-hot annihilation, crackling with energy so specialized it could only originate from the highest dimensions—descended from the dizzying, unimaginable height of the 89th Plane. It was aimed with lethal accuracy, not at the leaders, but at the unsuspecting vessel of the Totem.
The blast arrived with no warning, designed for instant, quiet execution.
But Origin reacted.
The black, chaotic energy that resided at the core of Urca's essence—the true power that knew Urca as its master—flew out of the Battle Form's core. It appeared as a roaring, chaotic shield that intercepted the 89th Plane Bolt.
The clash was instantaneous and apocalyptic. Origin successfully blocked the main force of the annihilating power, protecting its master from disintegration. But in a final, defiant act of loyalty to Urca's best interests, Origin purposefully allowed a glancing strike to hit the Totem's side.
The specialized power, designed to excise entities like the Totem, connected. The obsidian armor instantly shattered at the point of impact, and the Totem roared—a sound of searing, cosmic pain.
The wound was massive and immediately threatening. The Totem, recognizing the sudden, overwhelming danger and the specialized nature of the attack, knew it could not sustain the confrontation. It was wounded, limited by the 10% power, and now under surveillance by a far superior dimension.
With a final, desperate burst of power, the Totem violently yanked itself and the vessel out of the Outer Verse, forcing an instantaneous, painful retreat back to the safe, mundane reality of Earth.
As the Battle Form vanished, an amused, resonant laugh rang out from the invisible heights of the 89th Plane. The sound, though subtle to the vastness of the cosmos, sent a terrifying, profound chill across all planes below it, a reminder of the true cosmic hierarchy.
Back in the Cult Domain, the Battle Form dissipated as violently as it had appeared. Urca was left slumped on the cold stone floor, his clothes torn, his skin ghostly pale, his entire body trembling. He was physically exhausted, but his mind was reeling from the sensory overload and the immense, terrifying knowledge of the cosmic scale.
The Totem was temporarily silenced, its power severely diminished by the wound and the retreat. It sulked in the back of Urca's mind, consumed by fury and frustration over Origin's defiance.
The little fool resists! Insufferable defiance! You owe me a new arm, Origin, and you will pay in the highest coin of Tyranny.
It finally directed a chilling, almost proud thought at Urca. "Understand this, little vessel: the real feeding is not for your weak, pathetic Universe. You have tasted true power, true conflict. You are in the game now."
Urca took several long, ragged minutes to regain control of his breathing. He sat up, his body aching. He looked at his hand—the hand that had annihilated gods.
He felt the sting of the wound and the weight of the cosmic terror, but a slow, profound realization washed over him.
A god's trial. A forced evolution. The wound is a lesson. The conflict is the path. I gained the data, the rules, and a layer of protection from a power even the Totem can't command. Thank you, Totem. And thank you, Origin. I understand the tools now.
A small, enigmatic grin stretched across Urca's pale lips. He had survived the trial. The only logical next step was mastery.