The Godsfall Chronicles

“Call for a retreat of all standard troops. We can’t overwhelm this enemy with numbers. Legion, call everyone together and prepare to follow me against Chaos. Belil, Dawn, Selene, Janus, Phain – protect the rear. Evacuate everyone we can.”

The moment Chaos attacked it revealed its location. Although it could teleport, it was only able to do so within short distances. Cloudhawk could move much farther, so he had a chance to keep the monster locked down.

“I’ll go with you.” Selene would not be left behind. “Chaos is too strong, you need more people with you.”

“No need.” Cloudhawk shook his head. “Your mission is to protect the Source. The Eye of Time can see the future and gives you warning of incoming danger. You know that if Chaos gets too close to the mountain we’re all doomed.”

“Then promise you’ll be careful.”

“I will.”

Cloudhawk left behind two spares. One was responsible for keeping order in the city and the other would leave with Selene for the Source mountain. The original called thirty key warriors and teleported to the front where Chaos attacked.

By the time they arrived the beast was gone.

Before them was a crater one thousand meters from end to end. One attack from Chaos obliterated everything and the shock wave it produced spread ten times farther. Nothing was left standing. [1]

Cloudhawk and his team looked around at the devastation in shock and fear. It was hard to believe what was right in front of them, the scale of destruction from a single creature.

Abaddon released a ragged sigh. “Against Sumeru and Chaos, our chance of survival is not encouraging. This monster has more destructive power than the Demon King. Defeating it will not be easy.”

He was not exaggerating. This monster was horrifyingly strong. Chaos could destroy their whole world.

By comparison, ten or even twenty Supremes were nothing. However the trickiest part of defeating the monster was its nature. Chaos’ quantum-state body ignored Greenland’s defenses, could teleport at will and separate into many pieces.

Chaos, under the control of the gods, had killed its way into the southern wilds. Every minute counted. Judging by it’s track the beast was nod headed for Southern Capital but for the Source mountain, but both were near one another. If they let it continue its journey, the threat to both was high.

“Chaos can teleport, so there is only one to know its location,” Legion reported. “Use your Eye of Time.”

They were caught in a race against the clock and Cloudhawk couldn’t afford to be careless. Now that Chaos was here, the Eye would help them peer into the future and know where it would be. He had to use all his tools to stop this monster before it was too late.

His left eye began to gleam with silver light. He peered into the past and saw exactly what happened. Chaos wiped out their defensive zone with one attack then unceremoniously vanished. He followed the flows of time forward to another location, and then another, until he could see Chaos hanging over the landscape like herald of destruction.

It was as big as an island. The power within it had reached terrifying proportions.

Thirty people appeared near the beast, minuscule by comparison. As they arrived Chaos had started to disappear once more. Cloudhawk knew it was preparing to teleport.

They were dangerously close to his home. If Chaos continued unimpeded it would soon appear in the heart of Greenland. Fighting this monster there would cause untold damage.

“Bruno, lock down the area!” Cloudhawk shouted the order.

Bruno was ready. He deployed the seal on local space. For fifty kilometers in every direction the rippling air froze. The enormous octopus-like creature above them solidified. Its teleportation had failed.

Cloudhawk breathed a sigh of relief. “We stopped it.”

But even as he spoke Chaos’ tentacles began to squirm. One after the other, dazzling rays of energy were fired in all directions. However the humans Chaos faced now were not ordinary soldiers. They dodged and moved out of harm’s way.

Bruno focused on keeping the beast from escaping. He was joined by two Masters focused on defense, tasked with keeping him safe.

Abaddon dissolved into a gust of sand and headed toward Chaos. He focused on a single tentacle and unleashed his attack. Frost de Winter tread upon air with Ashfall held high. He released a volley of strikes on the same tentacle. Together they managed to hack it off.

As it fell away the limb broke apart, becoming a cloud of smoke. A thousand screaming souls poured from the wound, humanoid in shape. They flailed madly in every direction like someone had kicked a hornet’s nest.

Boom-boom-boom, boom-boom! After traveling a short distance the spirits detonated.

The attackers were dodging Chaos’ attacks and deflecting the spiritual bombs, struggling to keep steady. A portion of the spirits were reabsorbed by Chaos and used to reform the severed limb. If this kept up, there would be no end to the fight. They had to find a way to wipe it from existence.

With a curt motion Legion sent Oblivion cutting through another tentacle, dragging his weapon from tip to root. The Blade of Oblivion possessed the power to annihilate everything within range, physical and energetic. Its light devoured a large portion of the tentacle, completely erasing the quantum fragments within.

It worked!

Legion followed up with several more blows. The tentacles he destroyed did not hemorrhage souls like the first, nor did it regrow. His attacks were effective but it was still one creature against a creature the size of an island. A few lost tentacles were of no concern.

If this was all they could muster, there was no saying how long this fight would last. Besides Legion, the other attackers were feeling the pressure.

Chaos wasn’t a physical monster, nor was it strictly energetic. As a mass of quantum-entangled creatures, most attacks passed harmlessly through it. So far, very little damage had been done.

Chaos continued to fight back. Every tentacle released a blast strong enough to level a mountain. There was enough accumulated power inside of it to keep the beast fighting until the sun went out. It was humans who would eventually tire.

Cloudhawk was evaluating their options when Chaos began wrapping its tentacles together again. Not just one group, but a collection of several hundred. Seven or eight thick limbs were formed and one half of Chaos came alive with a sinister glow.

This terrible energy was filtered through the tentacles. Gathering together toward the slithering tip it was released in a crackling beam.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! Several mushroom clouds arose, crawling toward the sky as though someone had carpet-bombed the landscape with nuclear bombs. A storm of shock waves and swells of fire scoured the area. Even Master Demonhunters were in danger of serious injury.

Everyone fell back, fleeing for their lives. Two were lost in the explosions and it was unclear whether they survived.

Meanwhile Chaos never let up. Several more blasts from its tentacles chased the humans as they ran. Cloudhawk engaged his reflective shield, fending off a series of devastating blows. The force of it was too much for even him, sending Cloudhawk reeling backwards.

He scowled. “Son of a bitch, I can’t find it’s weak spot. We’re only able to fight back. Chaos is too strong, if we don’t change things up we won’t be able to hold it.”

“Everything has a weak point. Look closely.” Legion fell back to Cloudhawk’s side. He appeared unscathed. “The creature is not intelligent enough to fight on its own and cannot be controlled remotely. If you want to stop then, then strike down the ones who hold its reins. Look, in its center.”

The area was a no-man’s-land of smoke, fire and darkness. However Cloudhawk’s eyes were keen, so peering across the battlefield he saw what Legion indicated. There within Chaos was another presence, strong. A god hiding within the monster, controlling it.

“Do you see? We must attack the hand that points the way.”

“I’ll handle it.” Godslayer flashed into Cloudhawk’s grip. A grim look took his features and he vanished from view.

1. For anyone who isn’t aware of how horrifying nuclear weapons are, here’s some info: The largest man-made crater in the US was made by a bomb 8 times stronger than the one they dropped on Hiroshima. It created a crater 390 meters in diameter. The largest nuclear explosion ever recorded was the Tsar Bomba made by the Soviet Union, which was equivalent to 1,500 Hiroshima bombs. It’s a little nebulous how strong Chaos is, but let’s say a crater 1000 meters deep was equivalent to 20 Hiroshima bombs. One tentacle was noted as roughly one percent of its power, and this blast was created by twelve tentacles = 12%. Someone with better math help me out here, but it seems the Tsar Bomba would be stronger than Chaos.