Chapter 729: A battle of epic proportions

Snow tore from their summits in vast white torrents, descending upon the valleys below as cliffs split apart beneath the force of that singular cry. Elion instinctively raised an arm, only to remember that he possessed no flesh for the shockwave to strike.

’What in the world...?’

The other figure answered with a blow of his own.

A spear of incandescent light crossed the distance between them, striking the raised hand of its opponent with a detonation that consumed the sky.

Clouds vanished. The nearest peak disintegrated beneath the expanding radiance, its shattered remains hurled across the land in a storm of burning stone.

Elion stared in stunned awe.

These could not be Saints! At least, they could not be anything like the Saints he knew.

Kali’s oppressive presence was commendable, overwhelming even... but even she seemed terribly distant from the beings before him.

They struck one another with a power that made the world itself appear fragile, their movements leaving wounds across the heavens.

The vision carried him closer without any sensation of traveling.

He saw a fist descend through a gathering of luminous symbols, breaking them apart before striking its target. The impact bent the surrounding air into a vast, translucent hollow, and a moment later, the earth beneath them ruptured.

A fissure raced across the continent.

It tore through mountains, forests, and cities, widening as the distant ground heaved upward on either side.

Towers collapsed into its depths. Rivers vanished beneath clouds of steam, and entire settlements disappeared before their inhabitants could understand what was happening.

The vision suddenly changed again, and he was standing among those inhabitants.

A woman reached for a child beneath a falling archway. Somewhere else, people crowded the steps of a temple, their prayers lost beneath the thunder rolling across the sky.

Farther away, an army abandoned its formation and fled, though there was nowhere upon that trembling plain beyond the reach of what was coming.

The images flowed seamlessly through one another without interruption, and he could only watch in horror, stepping around in a circle while looking from side to side, sight to sight.

A city beneath a golden dome endured the first shockwave. Its protective barrier shimmered, held, and then shattered when the second arrived.

A harbor emptied as the sea withdrew from its shores. Moments later, a wall of water returned, carrying ships over rooftops before swallowing the streets beneath a churning expanse of white.

Elion saw kingdoms die without ever learning their names. And above it all, the two beings continued to battle.

Their weapons changed shape within their hands, becoming lengths of celestial fire, enormous blades, and blinding arcs of power that seemed to divide the firmament itself.

Each exchange eclipsed the last, their furious brilliance illuminating the devastation spreading beneath them.

One was driven through a mountain and emerged from the other side before its summit had finished falling.

The other raised both arms, drawing a ring of burning symbols across the sky. When it descended, a vast stretch of land folded inward beneath it, crumbling into an abyss whose depths glowed red.

The tremors never ceased.

Earthquakes passed through the world in overlapping waves, shattering what earlier blows had merely damaged. Continents fractured. Seas poured into wounds in the earth, and the air became thick with ash and the dust of things that had stood for thousands of years.

Elion could feel the passage of time without understanding how much had elapsed.

Hours might have passed. Days, months, years, perhaps longer.

The vision gave him glimpses of distant places between the blows, showing him the terrible reach of a conflict that no mortal army could hope to stop.

Billions of lives were extinguished beneath its aftermath, so many that the number became almost meaningless beside the individual faces he kept seeing.

He saw a man get crushed beneath a collapsed doorway like many others.

He saw a sobbing child holding an empty sleeve.

People huddled beneath the remnants of a barrier as the light above them failed.

Then even those images disappeared, and Elion found himself before the two combatants again.

Both were terribly wounded.

Their radiance had dimmed, though the power gathering around them was still plenty enough to make the surrounding landscape tremble.

One advanced through the falling ash, dragging a weapon whose broken edge carved a luminous furrow across the stone.

The other gathered everything it had left.

Their final collision brought with it an eerie silence... And, for a brief, impossible moment, all color vanished from the world, engulfed by impossible power.

When it returned, only one figure remained standing.

He stood amid the ruins with his head bowed, blood tracing slow paths down his battered body. Before him lay the godly remains of his foe, still emanating enough power to distort the air around them.

He had won.

The man lifted his face.

There was no one left to celebrate his victory with.

Far beyond him, the world burned beneath a suffocating pall of ash. The mountains had become broken stumps, the seas were discolored with drifting debris, and vast portions of the land had fallen away into glowing depths.

Elion watched the victor turn slowly, searching the horizon for any signs of life.

Whatever fury had sustained him through the battle began to leave him. In its place came a hollow and disbelieving grief, followed by an anguish so profound that Elion felt it even within his spectral existence.

"What have we done...?"

The man fell to his knees.

He remained there for an unknown amount of time, surrounded by the destruction his victory had accomplished. Then distant figures began emerging from the haze.

There were so few.

Some staggered beneath their injuries. Others carried those who could no longer walk. They approached cautiously, their faces drawn with a horror that the wounded being seemed unable to bear.

He looked upon them, then toward the remains of his fallen enemy. Hope was not lost, so... he began to work, and the vision flowed onward.