This work is a piece of fiction. While inspired by real events, cultures, and practices in human history, the story blends factual history with fictional characters, dramatizations, and creative interpretation.
It is not intended to promote, glorify, or encourage any illegal activities, substance use, or harmful behavior. All depictions of sensitive topics are included solely for narrative and historical context.
For the effects of the story, all characters are to be considered above the majority age.
Reader discretion is advised.
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Earth-5H1N3, 2001.
The universe had become a realm of total darkness and an umbra that resonated deeply with the countless hidden species of the dark. In the realm of the Dark Elves, Svartalfheim, this was a cause of celebration. In Klyntar, the symbiotes shuddered with dread at the excitement of their creator, Knull.
Plenty were the beings of shadows who benefited immensely from the newly born complete darkness. However, none made a move openly for fear of being reality-warped... not yet, at least.
On Earth, where the last sources of [Light] could be found in the cocoons of roots protecting humanity, tears flowed with quiet sobs as, even without the ability to witness it, they understood that something terrible was happening.
The pulse of this terrible thing was felt throughout the roots of the Arbor Mundi on every one of Kubos' strikes on the World Tree, and this gripped humanity's heart with existential dread.
With each swipe of its hands, with each result of its will, more and more layers of the Arbor Mundi's trunk were sheared off.
The Arbor Mundi was a living entity, one so pumped with Aragorn's and Gaea's energies that it wasn't inaccurate to say that it stood somewhere between a deity and a cosmic being.
Though for a being of its level, it held little to no awareness. It had no will, or barely the beginnings of a will. It was a living being so large that it had already supplanted a considerable percentage of the planet's mantle with its roots.
Nonetheless, this being, so monumental that few could comprehend its might, was shuddering with pain each time a layer of its trunk was ripped off. And this shuddering was a thrumming pulse that spread to all of its body; in consequence, to all of humanity enjoying shelter within its embrace.
Coupled with the transhuman phobia caused by Kubos' bare presence, humanity jolted inconsciously with each pulse; they sweat cold, their heart rate spiked, and many, those too young to comprehend what was happening, fell into fright, yet the fear was such that no one could do more than tighten their hold around their loved ones and sob quietly.
Gaea, not because she knew what was to come, but because she trusted in Aragorn, began to separate from the Arbor Mundi slowly; her appearance returned to her usual chocolate complexion, leaving a single root plugged to her nape, through which she fed her divinity to the tree.
"Don't worry, child," she said to the Arbor Mundi. "The pain shall end soon, and everything done to you and us will be fixed."
With her spirit merged with Earth, Gaea sometimes spoke of Earth in the first person plural.
"My Goddess." A male raspy voice spoke from her shadow. The shadows inked upward and then returned, leaving Harry Hart in their place.
"Speak," Gaea commanded with a nod.
"I did not know of them, but Aragorn left some countermeasure in my psyche," Harry Hart spoke with a facade of professionalism that barely seemed to hide his personal distaste for Aragorn.
"I figured most of them would be left with your young ward in mind," Gaea said with a raised eyebrow of curiosity.
"I can only assume there are plenty of those; however, the ones I discovered triggered just now, after Ms. Danvers and Mr. Maximoff disappeared," Harry Hart revealed.
"Go on then, speak," Gaea nodded in understanding. In her mind, this was just like Aragorn.
If she wanted proof of his overprotectiveness, she only needed to glance outside, where a cosmic being was having to put some real effort into carving its way to her. She could see the faint outlines of the many barriers broken by Kubos with each strike, and it wasn't hard to track the effects their breaking had on the being that needed to regenerate after destroying each layer.
"The initial directive was to carry you to the Realm of Shados and hide you momentarily while keeping you connected to Earth," Harry Hart explained.
"That's a logical approach, continue," Gaea stated.
"However, given the apparent emotional state of that thing," he glanced with distaste in the direction of Kubos, "I fear it might target the planet in a fit of childish anger, which would hurt your esteemed self."
"That's a truly real concern," Gaea said. "What do you have in mind? Or more like, what do your directives allow/command you to do?"
"I need you to coat me with your divinity, my Goddess," Harry Hart said while shapeshifting to take her appearance. "I will carry that thing to the Shadow Realm and as far away as I can. I believe I will be able to gain a few seconds, at most."
His voice carried none of the anger, fear, and dejection his emotions projected.
"You'll die," Gaea pointed out. It was obvious.
"I believe that wasn't, isn't, or will be a concern for my gracious creator," he replied coldly.
"... It's not a secret Aragorn dislikes your soul," Gaea said while reaching for his face. She cupped his cheek with tender care before adding, "I'll plead for you after this is over."
"... That's more than I can hope for," Harry Hart nodded and leaned on her touch.
Outside the inner core of the Arbor Mundi's trunk, Kubos furiously carved his way to Gaea.
Kubos was a newly born Beyonder. When it merged with Odin, it became sentient and sapient for the first time. Its birth/conception/hatching was unnatural even within the unnaturalness of its species.
The cycle of life of a Beyonder born from a Cosmic Cube was not as abrupt as Kubos's. Normally, with each wish granted, after peeking into its wielder's mind, a Cosmic Cube would slowly build a [Mind] for itself. Normally, from its wielder, the lives touched, the lives taken, and countless other stimuli, a Cosmi Cube would gain the foundations to create a [Self].
Yet, Kubos' conception was different. Bolstered by the divinity channeled to it through the Destroyer Armor—an aggregation of divinity more intense than it ever had been gathered in Earth-5H1N3—the desperation in the All-Father's wish, and the lack of restrictions from Reality due to being on the void between Realities, Kubos was born.
This was not to say Kubos was lesser than other Cosmic Cubes who gained sentience, like Kubic and Cosmos; in fact, due to the circumstances of its birth, it could be said that Kubos was special.
Kubos was special in that its powers were more robust and intense than those of any other newborn Beyonder ever recorded.
Its reality-warping was not illusory, its range was Reality-side, its effects were near-instantaneous, its will was powerful, its comprehension of Reality and itself were not naive, its scope was wider.
Hence, due to these reasons, Kubos was well aware that it should be the top of the top in this doomed universe. Its senses were wide and sensitive enough that Kubos was certain all those he could reach were powerless to its might, and yet... this tree stood in its path towards she whom it hated instinctively.
It was maddening! This tree was filled with something that innately opposed its powers! How could that be?! Nothing opposed its power in the entire universe, as far as it knew, so how come this tree could nullify its warping?! Worse yet, how can it result in pain after each layer it tore through? Kubos couldn't make sense of any of this.
"WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THIS CURSED THING?!" Kubos raged in a language that any lesser being could not comprehend. Its voice alone had the effect of literally warping and tearing reality, much less said about any sentient being.
And yet, much to its escalating rage, the Arbor Mudi resisted this warping and tearing.
With the sound of breaking glass, another layer of the crystal-like inner bark of the tree was broken through, but then—now expected by Kubos—something beyond its comprehension attacked it, and he suffered damage that neared [Damage].
"AGHHHH!!!" Kubos growled not in pain, but in anger, rage, wrath, and ire.
It was maddening, but it wasn't only about the damage or pain; Kubos was beyond pain. It was the intent felt behind each attack. Conceptual attacks tend to be pure of intent; however, the attacks inscribed on the layers of protection of the Arbor Mundi were not conceptual attacks, no matter how close they got. So, as if deliberately, each attack carried a trace of mockery and contempt.
Kubos had no proof that this was deliberate; it also had no doubts.
This mockery served not only to enrage it further, but also drove its will and determination to the utmost to reach she whom it despised. Through the brown, crystal-like layers of peeled bark, Kubos was slowly making out a hazy figure of a brown woman with white hair.
After each torn-apart layer and the subsequent pain and mockery that followed, the hazy figure became more and more defined.
'It won't be long,' it told itself. 'The most hated one will have the answers I seek.'
When it reached the final layers, when the unmistakable figure of Gaea was seen clearly behind the last 'panel' of see-through brownish bark, when Kubos struck with sadistic pleasure the last barrier, something made its instinct flare up.
"-!—"
But it was too late.
There was an iridiscent brightness, which should not have existed since Reality now lacked any [Light], that hit it with something it recognized after the first fraction of a second.
Had Kubos had the mind to not consume Odin as fuel and properly process him along his knowledge, it would have known of the agony he experienced after it killed the thought construct Alduin.
Unfortunately for it, Kubos didn't have the capability for that before eating Odin. Hence, it could not predict that the strikes it used to tear open a hole to Gaea would then be returned in kind.
"What a nasty thing," Harry Hart commented with Gaea's voice. "It is just like him."
'I can't deny that on his behalf,' Gaea commented to his head.
Kubos, however, was not Odin. Thirty seconds later, after being frozen in a state of inaction due to being overwhelmed by its own attacks, Kubos broke free of its agonizing entrapment.
It looked its rageful eyes on 'Gaea' and less than an instant later it had its hand on 'her' neck, choking 'her' life out.
"—!" Kubos had many questions it wanted to roar. Who did it? How was something like that made? What's the origin of the tree? Why do I hate you so much? Why do you squirm so fiercely under my will when I am so superior? These and many other questions surfaced in its mind; nevertheless, all died down in its throat when it realized it was holding a mortal, not a goddess.
Harry Hart was not a particularly powerful umbrakinietic mutant, at least not when compared to the mutants that surrounded Aragorn's lot. On a good day, under the correct circumstances, Harry Hart could win a hard-fought fight on Magneto, and that was the peak of what he could aspire to at his current level.
By all accounts, when Aragorn remodeled him, Harry Hart was never meant to be a mutant who could drag a Cosmic Entity anywhere the being didn't allow; however, Kubos, in removing [Light] from Earth-5H1N3, boosted the power of all creatures of the shadows beyond their incomprehensible limits, Harry Hart included.
So, as if switching places, Harry Hart and Kubos disappeared, and Gaea reappeared.
Gaea waited in the silence of their wake, and before long, a pair of alabaster white arms crowned with pitch black claw-like nails wrapped around her neck.
An affectionate voice whispered to her ear from behind, "Missed me?" and planted a soft kiss on her neck that made her shudder.
"Noona," Gaea sighed in relief.
"We don't have much time," Death said and severed the tether on Gaea's neck. "The tree should last long enough with its current reserves of your divinity and My Love's energy."
"About 7 minutes," Gaea nodded, turning around to face Death. "You're different," she commented.
Although Death had pointed out the urgency of the situation, her trust and belief in her was so great that Gaea unconsciously relaxed.
"We really are in a rush," Death chided, flicking slightly her forehead.
"Ouch!" Gaea pouted like a little girl.
"Concentrate in yourself, gather to your core all that you believe is you and leave behind all that you feel is Earth," Death instructed.
"I thought you were going to kill that thing first," Gaea pointed out with obvious surprise.
"That thing can reality-warp; this body is the closest a biological being can get to the concept of [Death] within a Reality, according to My Love. I'm particularly more of a part of Reality in this body than in my Aspect, hence, a reality-warper is the bane of my current existence," Death explained patiently while drawing magical crests, circles, mandalas, and spheres with void energy she was siphoning from Aragorn's heart in her womb.
"... So we are in a rush," Gaea stated, her eyes tracing with confusion the source of Aragorn's energy to Death's womb.
"Yep," Death said nonchalantly, as if she were not placing the entire multiverse at risk by being within the reach of a hostile reality-warper. "But don't worry," Death reassured her. "Part of why Carol was made the frontliner was to force whoever was the opponent to recognize [Light] as hostile."
"... You mean that child's boost was planned?" Gaea's eye opened wide.
" I wouldn't say planned exactly, but My Love considered it a possibility," Death clarified. "Regardless, the boost Harry Hart received is more considerable than even he himself anticipated, so we should have just enough time."
In the total darkness left after [Light] disappeared, in the heart of the Arbor Mundi's trunk, under the source of bluish-white light generated by Aragorn's void energy, Death drew the necessary magical circuits to allow for the seamless casting of the conceptual [Separation] spell/ritual.
From a distance, whether impossible or possible, the shadow stars flickered in and out, as if a great battle were being wrought in the depths of outer space.
A few seconds later, the spell lit up, and under the concealment of light, Gea was separated from Earth for the first time since the purge of the Fallen Elder Gods.
The change was not felt by anyone who was not connected to the mystical arts. For those who were attuned to the universal and planetary energies, it was as if, in the middle of a snowstorm, the thermostat had gone out. The lingering heat would keep things bearable for a few hours, at best, but eventually, if the problem were not fixed, only the frigidity of winter and subzero temperatures would be left.
Just as the light summoned by the spell was eaten by the new law of Reality, Kubos appeared covered in blood. Its gaze was bloodlust, contrasting with the listlessness of his facial expressions.
Yet, upon its eyes landing on Death, there was curiosity and confusion. Sure, Reality had always seemed maleable to its eyes; it was a reality-warper after all, but Death... it was as if Reality had set aside the most maleable clay and made it take the shape of a being that represented [Death].
So maleable, ductile, warpable, influenceable, so "Perfect," it said. Reality shuddered to its voice, cracking like glass, pulsing like water.
"Naturally, as we, aspects, all are," Death replied calmly. "I'm the most pure and perfect representation of [Death] possible within Reality. Sourced from the Abstract of Death, which is myself."
"Its voice's effects remind me of our dragon," Gaea commented. She was inspecting her body. Being embodied was different than what she remembered. It was freeing, yet restrictive.
"Here, you need this," Death said and pulled a pearlescent marble from her storage.
Kubos recognized what it was as soon as it was brought out of Death's storage—which, by the way, eluded its senses—but Kubos was too focused on Death's words to stop her from floating the realm to Gaea.
"Are there others like you?" Kubos asked. Reality was segmented like a jigsaw puzzle and bent like molten glass.
"Sure, but you'll never get to meet them... well, maybe Oblivion," Death smiled prettily. When the marble touched Gaea, Death and her were absorbed into it.
Kubos tilted its head in confusion. If their purpose was protection or hiding, why would they choose to enter a pocket realm that could so easily be breached?
He appeared right in front of the floating marble and reached for it, intending to enter it, yet its instincts flared, and on pure reaction, it pulled back its arm.
CRUNCH!
Only for a clawed hand to grab it by its wrist and crunched it like styrofoam in its grasp.
"HOW/SO GREEDY/AVARICIOUS/INSATIABLE" Aragorn spoke in a language that forced its meaning across.
With just that sentence, Kubos gained understanding of not only the expression's intent but the meaning behind it.
"You!" Kubos exclaimed, maybe intending to point something out, but what followed died in its throat when it noticed the glowing ink [Script] crawling its way upward its arm.
With a lack of hesitation uncharacteristic of a newborn Beyonder, it severed its arm and jumped through space away.
"MISTAKE/ERROR/NAIVE/OVERSIGHT," Aragorn's voice reached him, no matter how far it tried to jump away.
As said multiple times before, ignoring distance, teleportation, spatial warping, and many other forms of displacement were not rare for beings at Aragorn's level.
Aragorn knew this, as if it were common sense, but Kubos, the newborn Beyonder? How could it have known this?
With the severed arm forward, Aragorn approached Kubos through an incalculable distance. Panic ensued when it lay eyes upon the [Script] spreading to the entirety of the arm. Kubos didn't know what would follow, only that it was bad.
Its suspicions were proved correct when the arm blew up into a cone of light that swallowed its lower body just as Kubos jumped away.
With a glance back, just before it reappeared in another section of the universe, Kubos understood what the monster was attempting.
It was not erasure, it was voidance. An entire volume, shaped like a cone, of the universe was transformed into a void similar to the one where Kubos was born. It didn't need to probe; it was certain it couldn't warp that which held no Reality at all, even if it was part of Reality.
"PITY/ANNOYANCE/NUISANCE/HASSLE/BOTHER/IRRITATING", Aragorn's voice reached Kubos once more, as if ignoring distance.
The fact that it could comprehend the entire load of feelings behind the message only enraged it.
So, it reached a breaking point and couldn't hold it anymore. Reality, all of it minus the insides of that monstrous tree and that cone that had been void, was within its reach, and if it had to make Reality the monster's enemy, Kubos would.
So it willed it.
Reality turned hostile, just like it had previously done for all of Odin's enemies, and layers of Aragorn began to be undone. Dust aggregated around him, dust born from his disintegration.
Yet, Aragorn showed no reaction.
Aragorn's soul and mind were found behind a fortress brought about by his type of existence. His 'insides' were isolated from Reality, and as such, isolated from Kubos' reach.
Back on Earth-199999, Thanos' snap had been more effective simply because Aragorn had to weaken himself to match that universe's level. Earth-5H1N3 was different, a Reality that had a much, much higher ceiling. Hence, Aragorn's body had more freedom and power to it, enough to make Kubos' attack seem more like a run-of-the-mill disintegration attack than the hostility of Reality.
Still, Kubos would not stop and act like the surprised Beyonder it was. No, this was its rampage; Kubos didn't stop at that.
It willed Reality to be incomprehensible, to be ever-shifting in its laws, to favor Kubos, to hinder Aragorn, for causality to be twisted until it favored only itself, for probability to become certainty when on its side, for suffering to flood Aragorn, for pain to seep into him, for pain to be the maxim that greeted Aragorn.
Kubos warped Reality like this, and furthermore, until Earth-5H1N3 had turned into an Anti-Aragorn Reality.
"GRRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLL," Aragorn growled like a wounded beast before his body shifted into that of a planet-size dragon.
The shifting didn't end there. His body elongated unnaturally, gaining the length of an eastern dragon, his limbs replicated at fixed intervals, his tail increased in numbers and length. His new form was not serpentine; it was more as if a dragon had passed when the Creator was taking a panoramic picture, and his body had been replicated over itself multiple times.
Then, his limbs increased in number, until he went from looking like a disturbing draconic milipede, to looking as if a disturbed Creator had thought it a nice idea to fuse multiple milipedes by their backs.
His body kept increasing in length and, as if it was not disturbing enough that even the Watcher pulled his gaze away in horror, red eyes surfaced over every unit of surface on his body that was not claws, horns, tail blade, or maw.
The eyes, all at once, blinked and then shifted maddeningly, as if looking with unbridled rage for the culprit of their annoyance.
Aragorn could ignore distance, so, technically, all the modifications Kubos had done could be sidestepped by Aragorn locating it and then attacking it. However, the newborn Beyoner was not that naive.
Kubos didn't warp only space; it warped Reality to twist vectors that were not in its interest. So, even when Aragorn could spot it, if he reached in its direction, Reality would twist in a way that Aragorn would be reaching in another direction, and if Aragorn corrected his trajectory, Reality would twist again. This was something Aragorn understood immediately, thanks to his eyes.
His solution? Overloading the thinking center that recognized which vectors didn't favor Kubos.
Violently, his limbs reached for Kubos; they warped through space, ignored distance, ended in distant realms, locations Aragorn had not meant, and then turned in another direction.
Aragorn didn't know how fast Kubos could process; if anything, he suspected it was at least in his league of data processing. However, he knew that if it was faster than him, it was not by a significant amount. So, he resorted to leaning on his experience.
The amount of knowledge he processed each second as part of The System was something staggering, even for Spark and Seraph; those he knew were closest to his thinking speed, so he figured Kubos, a newly born Cosmic Entity, would not be able to out-think him.
Each limb was led by its own thought stream, each eye processed data assisted by its own thinking center, and he was not growing. No, from the middle of the eldritch abomination, more length was generated, and more limbs and eyes were born.
The speed of growth was escalating exponentially, faster and faster.
In a corner of a distant galaxy, Kubos observed with terror how countless eyes fifteen galaxies away locked on him beyond an inconceivable distance.
It was both enraging and horrific. The eyes, and any surface for that matter, of Aragorn kept regenerating and disintegrating. Kubos knew how horrifying that was, yet Aragorn, instead of reducing his surface area, kept expanding and creating more surface for the hostility of Reality to strike.
Kubos' terror only grew beyond bounds when it felt something change in Aragorn. It was as if all this time, Aragorn had been fighting in energy-saving mode. He didn't know how, he couldn't observe how, but Death had returned his heart to Aragorn.
A glow of bluish-white light, one Kubos had grown to hate, spread throughout the trunk of Aragorn's body, and the glow of a charging breath shone on his chest.
'So, what?' Kubos thought, even if his breath could ignore distance, what does it matter when it moves within Reality, and that meant that it had a vector for its direction.
All that self-reassurance died like a candle flame in a storm when the properties of the breath became clear. The attack didn't move within Reality; it erased.
Somehow, Kubos felt it was becoming more of a fight of the protector of Reality (Kubos) against the eldritch terror threatening to end it all (Aragorn), and that didn't amuse him as much as it did Aragorn.
There were fifteen galaxies between them, and as populated as Marvel's outer space was, Aragorn didn't want to risk genocide, so his void barriers took the shape of a tunnel and guided his breath to serpent through the gaps between populated stars.
Space was vast, so much so that there was plenty of emptiness to choose from.
From the south pole of a ball of Cosmic Fire, Jean observed the serpentine trajectory of bluish-white drawing across the blackness of space. Inside the fiery ball, Nirn was securely protected.
She was a few seconds away from starting a one Firebird slaughter, yet, the moment the universe's light was turned off, the Shi'ar shifted away with their 'allies' in a panic and hid in one of the dimensions they had access to. They were not stupid enough to fight a Phoenix Host right after the entire electromagnetic spectrum had been changed so contrastingly like that.
Jean understood that, should she choose to shield more planets with her Cosmic Fire, she might draw the attention of Kubos, so she settled for protecting Nirn and a few of the more populated of Xandar's surviving planets.
In the pitch-black sky, where only the trajectory of Aragorn's breath could be seen, a change occurred that was soon noticed by Jean.
The continuous erratic line traced by the breath suddenly began to be cut in parts and appeared all across the blackness of space.
"Jumping through space?" Jean wondered.
Her answer came soon from her left. The cold light of Aragorn's breath illuminated her gorgeous features, her green draconic eyes opened wide, and she traced the breath that was wider than the diameter of a supergiant star.
The breath seemed to be born from a spherical hole and then swallowed by another. She immediately understood what was happening; Aragorn was opening wormholes for his breath to erase through.
The erratic path of the wormholes was caused by Reality favoring Kubos.
On the Blue Area of the Moon, inside the Luther Crater, the Watcher observed silently, mouth agape.
"Madness, isn't it?" Yao asked from his right.
"I didn't sense your return," the Watcher said.
"This is a husk, we haven't returned," Yao said. She turned back to watch the humbling show. "I could open warpholes, maybe a few hundreds at once, but that many?"
The sky was losing some of its darkness born of the absence of [Light]; it was becoming riddled with segments, lines, traces, curves, and two-dimensional shapes of bluish-white light.
"Light shouldn't travel this fast," the Watcher commented. "So, yes, this is utter madness."
"If I had to guess, it's the result of the new law of Reality warped by that thing," Yao pointed out.
"... Maybe... It's the first time a reality-warper of this power has acted in this Reality," the Watcher said. "What is your purpose in visiting?" He asked.
"Aragorn told me to inform you that we'll be taking over the Barren Lands of this Universe," Yao revealed.
"What? That inhospitable place?" The Watcher asked, disbelief written across his face.
"It serves our objectives," Yao nodded.
The Watcher turned to look down at Yao, and she returned his gaze.
"... You don't need my permission," the Watcher relented.
"I know, but Aragorn thought it civil to inform you," Yao explained.
"That monster," the Watcher pointed at the growing artwork carved by void breath, "cares about civility?"
Who knows how many countless 'lower' lifeforms are currently creating religions, changing existing ones, or claiming responsibility for returning light and drawing on the umbra.
How many empires, planetary or galactic, were shitting bricks? How many deities gave up on following Odin's madness? How big a disruption did the light show cause? It was all unthinkable to the Watcher.
Coincidentally, he could only compare it to the time when his people activated the Ultimate Nullifier and destroyed nine-tenths of the universe, creating the sealed section of the universe called the Barren Lands.
"... That's all I was here to talk about," Yao said, looking away with a blush and choosing to open a portal.
11, 784 galaxies away from Aragorn, Kubos was starting to feel boxed in.
It was the 11,769th time it had to escape before Aragorn's breath could reach it. It was beginning to think that that breath was infinite in length. Worse even, Aragorn's limbs had not stopped reaching for it across Reality.
The universe, for mortals, was infinite. For Kubos, it was starting to feel very finite. It's not that their fight had taken such a large volume of the Universe, it was that Kubos was starting to feel like Aragorn had no limits, and regardless of where it went, his limbs or breath would follow it to the end of times, and possibly beyond that.
Kubos needed no rest, but he was starting to feel restless. Aragorn kept growing in length. Kubos could measure him at, at least, five galaxies in length, and he kept growing faster. More length meant more limbs and less volume under Kubos' control, since it couldn't risk stepping closer to Aragorn.
↓Part 2━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━Part 2↓
Now, realistically speaking, the universe was so large that in no way was Kubos being cornered; it was only that which was the inevitable end that was putting pressure on it. But, for beings like it and Aragorn, beings who could and would not die under normal circumstances, inevitability was another word for tomorrow.
Kubos recognized it soon enough; it needed time. So it willed [Time] to delay his opponent; however, it didn't work.
It could understand that time didn't affect the breath that was erasing a path through Reality, but it found it inconceivable that even the source of the breath was unaffected by time. To it, to its logic, it was like the candle wax burning as hot as the flame, like a freezer being as cold on the outside as on the inside, like a knife handle being as sharp as its blade; it was illogical.
Annoyed, more like terrorized, Kubos sought another answer. It needed something, it didn't know what, but something that could stall the advance of the monster, something to make it hesitate.
It concentrated in deep focus, it went over and over Aragorn's actions, it evaluated and tried to use its comprehension over others born from what it learnt from all those within reach of its powe, which meant virtually anyone, and tried to piece together an action plan, something Aragorn could not erase through or ignore, and then, it reached the logical conclusion: a hostage.
It was the tried and tested truth found in the minds of all within its reach. No matter the race, the species, or the nature, all those who had something to care for had a weakness in their object of care.
And Aragorn, based on his actions and the fact that the monster tree was probably fed with his energy, Kubos deduced, indicated that Aragorn cared for Earth, or something within it.
The only problem? Aragron was close to the Milky Way, too close. How close? A twist of its infinitely limbed length was coiled protectively around it.
So its mind churned at speeds the most advanced processors in the universe could only envy and dream of, and deduced that maybe it was not simply Earth that held something or Aragorn's care, maybe, as found in the minds of the many, he cared about [Life].
So, it willed [Life] hostage.
If [Life] were a floating balloon, one that did not rise or sink, Kubos was a child with spiked gauntlets hovering at the sides of the balloon.
Kubos didn't know how, but it was certain Aragorn could understand the threat, even though concepts were not visual abstractions.
"STOP!" It commanded, its voice quaking Reality and reaching more than just Aragorn. The command was felt, heard, sensed, and understood by all intelligent life between it and Aragorn.
"DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!" It shrilled upon seeing Aragorn's unresponsiveness to the command. "OR [LIFE] ENDS!" It added in desperation.
Aragorn didn't reply; his voice did not carry over through Reality, ignoring all distance and breaking past lightspeed. Additionally, his voice was a cognito hazard that would end anything between him and Kubos should he utter a word loud enough. Instead, he replied with a ruthlessness that frightened Kubos.
His breath stopped serpentining around inhabitable planets and cut straight through all indiscriminately. Life or no life, intelligent life or simple life, it was all swallowed by the bluish-white light of his breath. To drive the point further, if his abrupt ruthlessness was not enough, the Eternal Flame above his crown of horns compressed, and a laser-like beam fired at the breath attack.
The breath, which had been a few supergiant stars' worth of diameter, soon took the abnormal length of half a galaxy, as wide as the Milky Way.
"Incomprehensible!" Kubos raged to itself.
If it's within your reach, and if it doesn't negatively impact you or your loved ones, you should always do good, Aragorn said. With power comes reach. Some foolishly believe this implies unconditional responsibility; Aragorn doesn't think so, but it can't be denied that the amount of freedom to act for good or evil increases the wider your reach gets.
So, after millions of years on Earth-199999 training his spell system, perfecting his [Script], training his thought process and thinking speed, and with the help of a civilization 300,000 years old, Aragorn's ease in dealing with a petulant newborn Beyonder was something even the problematic child could not comprehend.
While Kubos only saw a ruthless, uncaring monster who would switch tactics just to drive a point, all these countless 'erased' planets were being bathed in the paradox of his breath just before being switched with other prearranged paradoxes with [Paradox Liminal Permutation].
These planets would then be locked in stasis by the divinity of the Drachantheon Therion, who were expecting them, and then rearranged by the Imperium to safer locations for storage.
The Luminaegis Lattice, the shield that protects the Imperium, was wide enough to have displaced a decent portion of the nine-tenths of the Universe sealed by the Watchers, the Barrens.
Within this shield, countless "paradoxes" in the shape of storming wisps of the Eternal Flame could be found. These wisps followed no orbital path traceable by mathematics, yet, somehow, they didn't clash with each other.
Every time a new planet was suffused with the paradox of Aragorn's breath, instead of being erased, a wisp would switch positions with it, and the planet would appear within the Luminaegis Lattice.
It was an action that demanded the care of being able to perform open heart surgery 23 dimensions away while blind. It was so impossibly complex that Kubos, a Cosmic Entity, couldn't help but be ignorant about it.
With doom approaching fastly and unrelenting, Kubos had no choice but to get creative with its methods of hiding and fleeing.
It ejected itself from Reality and returned to where the last mortal hurt it, the Shadow Realm, the Underside, the Umbra Realm. It found a respite in its darkness.
Aragorn could visually track across dimensional boundaries just as easily as he could across physical layers. But that did not mean it could follow the trajectory of a newborn Beyonder focused on fleeing, not when this one jumped through dimensional walls to do so.
Hence, technically, Kubos had escaped.
Or so it would seem.
Aragorn, assisted by his energy control, cast |Oculīs persequī| with his void energy, and countless tethers of iridescent light bloomed from his infinite eyes.
These tethers wielded the property of his eyes to pierce through the truth of all. They were not unlike his eyesight, except in that the tethers locked onto the traces of a target and pierced through anything to get to it.
Back on the Moon, the Watcher stretched a hand and touched a pair of tethers that appeared near him. The iridescent light illuminated his face momentarily before sinking into space and disappearing into another dimension.
"Monster." It was not his power that terrified the Watcher. He had seen many stronger than Aragorn in his travels and observations across the multiverse; it was Aragorn's resourcefulness that made him shiver. It reminded him of the Celestial's technology.
Celestials were not omnipotent, despite predating even some Abstracts and having kick-started the cyclic nature of the multiverse's iterations, yet their technology made them so resourceful that no one doubted their might.
In the perpetual darkness of the Shadow Realm, a lone tether of iridescent light broke through the boundary that separated it from Reality. The tether swayed with the inexistent winds of the realm, carving a winding path across.
Kubos eyed this with apprehension. Yes, newborn Beyonders were curious and reckless, but Kubos had just gone through the single most terrifying experience of its life; it was not about to approach the strange structure even its nigh-omniscience couldn't peer through.
So, with an almost timid gaith, it took a step back. In doing so, it felt something touch its back, which was impossible. It was impossible for something to get past its senses, and it was sure there was nothing there previously. So when its awareness noticed it was another tether of iridescent light, it frantically teleported away.
It went about as expected; one instant, it was near a corner of the Shadow Realm, the next, it was at the diagonally opposite corner. Except... the tether of iridescent light was still glued to its back.
In a panic, it shifted its body away from the point where the tether was glued to and cut it off decisively.
It observed with rapt attention as the section of itself it cut apart slowly wilted away in dust, and the tether began to probe around curiously.
Then, heralded by the light in the otherwise lightless realm, a swarm of tethers peeked through the veil of space and dimensionality and launched at impossible speeds at Kubos.
Kubos was not so slow as not to react to the tethers' hooming "attack"; it immediately teleported away. The problem was that the tethers followed after it.
It found itself in an open field within the Shadow Realm, and that's when the terror of reality became undeniable. The realm that should have had no source of light now had a starry night sky. Iridescent 'stars' dotted the vast expanse by the trillions.
Then, a bluish-white light it was all too familiar with appeared. It took the shape of an expanding circle, and Kubos had no difficulty understanding it was not expanding; it was getting closer, homing on it.
Beyond the dimension it could easily observe and sense with its Cosmic Entity senses, Kubos only knew two dimensions. So, without a forethought, it jumped across dimensional walls to teh Light Dimension.
It was more accurate to say it fled in a frantic panic.
When it arrived, it expected to find the previous annoyance it had so easily discarded, maybe take it hostage; however, instead of Carol, what it found was an empty realm of light with a few shards of something crystal-like.
Its senses were absolute, so it was with certainty it knew the realm was emptied of anything aside from [Light] and shards of this crystal-like material.
Understanding it had a few moments to spare, and desperate for anything it could use against Aragorn or maybe even draw inspiration from, it approached the shards and eyed them curiously.
Understanding gave way to panic almost immediately; it was the same thing covering Carol that resisted its warping, and it was additionally, and pressingly, the same thing that covered Aragorn's body. Without a second thought, Kubos warped away.
This time, it ended in a realm of psions and thought, the Astral Realm.
Unfortunately for it, the Astral Realm was one Aragorn was familiar with, so the tethers of iridescent light awaited and ambushed it there.
This time, it had to cut away 156 spots where the iridescent light was attached. It jumped away just in time to catch a glimpse of the bluish-white light it abhorred.
Then came the Mirror Dimension, which was the worst of all the realms it had visited so far. The iridescent light zig-zagged like a pointer laser in a house of mirrors.
Kubos had to cut away 134,098 spots before and even while escaping to the next realm.
A dimension of kinetic energy awaited it next; the redness of it all was a reflection of the warning bells in its broken mind. It found respite three-quarters of a second longer than it did in the Shadow Realm, then it was time to flee for its life again.
Then came the Darkforce Dimension, in it, surprisingly it found life. The Shi'ar who had escaped had found shelter in this previously explored realm, where they were stationary in the Null Space, around the Tree of Shadows.
Kubos had little interest in them, and since taking hostages had proven detrimental in stopping Aragorn, it didn't bother with them; it simply took some time to catch its breath, as incorrect as the analogy was.
Nevertheless, just like in the Shadow Realm, the vast expanse was suddenly dotted with trillions of stars—Kubos could have sworn there were more—and that announced its time to flee.
After that, it found the Brimstone Dimension, populated by the Neyaphem, demonic-looking beings, but whether demonic or not, Kubos cared not for them. This dimension was almost as bad as the mirror dimension, since it was connected to all points on Reality, which meant plenty of iridescent tethers had found their way here.
A realm of colors came next; it survived three entire seconds in it.
A realm of shifting directions; two seconds, and hard-fought ones at that.
A realm of opposites; it was almost nightmarish.
A realm of forces, matter and energy held no meaning; only forces reigned supreme. It wasn't hard for Kubos to warp its body into an aggregation of forces, to hide a tree within a forest.
However, the rouse came crashing when tethers forced their way through regardless of the rules of the realm.
It was... fucked up. That was the best wording that could describe Kubos' state of mind and situation.
Its reality-warping was limited by the boundaries of Reality, hence it could reach for all dimensions orbiting Reality, it had to presently visit them to claim them with its power; Aragorn, on the other hand, had not moved from his place in Reality—somewhere close to the Milky Way—and even from there, ignoring distance, dimensional walls, boundaries, and laws, he was reaching for Kubos.
It wasn't that Aragorn was that good at playing hide and seek. Even for Aragorn's senses, it was impossible; it was simple violence in numbers.
Back in Reality, Aragorn had not stopped growing in length and spawning more eyes. Each eye bloomed at least a tether; each tether took a random path previously unexplored by all previous tethers. So, while Kubos was escaping from dimension to dimension, without a care for consequences, Aragorn was invading all dimensions he could sense, reach, or knew of at once.
So, from Kubos' POV, it was fucked up beyond measure.
Kubos fled 72 times more before all it could think was how he was living a nightmare. The concept of nightmare was foreign to it before it invaded the minds of the mortals within its reach and learned from them. And if it had understood correctly, this was it: a living nightmare.
And so, with the idea so ingrained in its declining mind, it made a mistake.
It jumped to a dimension its instincts warned it about.
The Nightmare Dimension.
It was like a horse's kick to its teeth. Like a bat to the jaw. Like a knee to the balls. One moment it was entering the Nightmare Dimension, the next it was kicked through dimensions until it rolled over and bled the momentum of the kick.
Back in the Nightmare Dimension, Nightmare, its Dimensional Lord, and Dreamqueen, his daughter, both stared with cold sweat dripping down their backs and a killer grip tightening on their hearts. Aragorn couldn't be allowed to dream, but equally so, he couldn't be allowed to step into this dimension. Doing so meant the end of what separates Reality from Dream.
So, holding their breaths, as erroneous as the comparison was, they observed the outer edges of their realm, praying to whatever form of power existed beyond theirs that could stop Aragorn's tethers from reaching their realm.
In fact, had it not been for the location where Nightmare had kicked Kubos to, it was a certainty that the tethers would have sought his dimension next.
Back in Reality, after Kubos had bled Nightnare's impossible strike, it took a glance at its surroundings and realized escape was not possible anymore.
Its body was dotted with connection points to countless tethers, to the point of appearing like a lamp of iridescent light. Even if it could technically shave off enough matter to remove all the contact points, it was a terrible move considering it was trapped within Reality with Aragorn and would soon have no time to waste on regenerating.
Aragorn was sure he was going to find Kubos. And he didn't have the patience to hunt it another time, so he prepared. A void barrier appeared the moment Kubos crashed back into Reality. It was a barrier so massive that even Reality's hostility could not stop it from forming.
Kubos could instinctively sense the barrier, since its reach was cut short by the barrier, banning it from reaching the rest of Reality.
Then it felt it, a message that traveled through gravitational waves, spoken in the common mortal tongues, "You can't escape us. Don't waste our time. Resolve yourself to die fighting. Or die without a fight. We don't care."
It was a message spoken by several voices, as if the sender was a group, not an entity. Kubos was not confused, though.
Its mindset shifted unnaturally, as if the will to fight to the bitter end had been an innate characteristic of its kind.
It understood that a large size, for this particular fight, was preferable. The more volume to survive erasure, the better.
It comprehended that reach was of utmost importance, so it copied Aragorn's multi-limbed initiative.
It was undeniable that there was no point in imitating a humanoid shape, so it found the shape that allowed for the maximum relationship between area and volume, a sphere.
Instead of limbs, it adopted the bladed-tip approach of Aragorn's tails.
And so, it teleported to Aragorn, and the two monsters clashed.
Aragorn hated close-quarters combat, but the cage woven by his void barrier made it the only reasonable approach; after all, there was only so much volume that could fit inside a cage housing two galaxy-size monsters.
↓Part 3━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━Part 3↓
As Vladarion Draconisphilius, God of War and Progress, says, war is a ravenous monster that consumes all and outputs the blood-refined miracle of progress in adversity, when properly controlled.
Naturally, what Vladarion considers acceptable oversight is himself and his family; the only ones he knows to be wise enough to guide the warmonger mortals.
His saying is based on the fact that in [Life], adversity forces adaptation or destruction.
Aragorn, as an entity outside [Life], doesn't 'naturally' follow the rule. Change, adaptation, evolution, and plenty more zoetic concepts are passing by suggestions to Aragorn. Hence, innately, Aragorn doesn't adapt. He can adapt, or adapt the environment to fit his needs, or simply ignore it.
Kubos, Beyonders for that matter, is different. No matter how foreign and unnatural a Beyonder may be, the moment they step into Reality, they are absorbed by certain Laws. For one, the linearity of [Time]. They have a past, present, and future, in that order. They also wear [Matter] as their suits.
So, in the adversity the newborn-Beyonder found itself, it had no choice but to grow.
First, it made its weakness a strength.
Aragorn was a beast modelled for combat. His claws shimmered with void energy, digging and ripping into Kubos' body like water in cotton candy. His breath erased without discretion. His tail blade severed almost conceptually. His touch, no matter how instantaneous, inscribed nocious [Script] on Kubos.
All of this combined painted a picture of utter failure and erasure to the newborn-Beyonder's eyes.
So, it realized its weakness. It needed help. But, where could it find help? Reality was already helping it, as evidenced by the constantly regenerating Aragorn and the piles upon piles of conceptually damaging curses and debuffs it had cast on Aragorn. Nevertheless, it was not enough, was it?
Aragron was tearing it apart, and even when it was obvious he was taking considerable damage, something told Kubos that it was not going to be enough.
So, it summoned help. If it was bound by the linearity of time, then that meant somewhen out there, there was another Kubos.
A Kubos from eleven seconds in the future joined the battler.
A Kubos from seven seconds after came next.
A Kubos from 1.9877690876600 seconds was next.
One from 6.987652297020002 followed after.
Again and again, just as fast as Aragorn grew in size and length, Kubos after Kubos of the future came to help.
"IDIOT/FOOL/RECKLESS/DESPERATE/THOUGHTLESS/NINCOMPOOP!" Aragorn roared in conceptual speech.
His anger was not the wails of the defeated. On the contrary, in a way, Kubos had checkmated him.
If Aragorn defeated Kubos, what would happen to the Kuboses from the future? Won't that mean that they should have never existed since Kubos was destroyed? Then, if that is the case, how were the Kuboses from the future able to manifest in the past if they never existed? Like so, Reality would fall into a paradox.
Aragorn was alright with paradoxes; he would often describe himself as a sentient paradox, but Reality was terrible with those. A paradox would unwoven Reality and then, like a virus, it would spread to the nearest Reality, and that wouldn't be allowed by the One Below All, the defense mechanisms of the Creator of this Multiverse.
Reality began to quake.
The paradox had not been set in yet, and even then, Reality was shuddering.
Kubos, the desperate thing, had not even realized what it had done, but even if it had known the risks, it would have walked the same path. After all, all it had to do was win to then actualize its future instances. Hence, if it won, then there was no problem, right?
However, the quaking of Reality spoke volumes about who it favored as the winner, even if, under Kubos' reality-warping, it was currently doing all it could to destroy Aragorn.
Maybe it was inevitability, maybe it was all the excess void energy Aragorn fed it during his four years in it, maybe it was an understanding beyond the graspable levels of conceptuality, unclear as it was, somehow, Reality was quaking as if its unraveling was a matter of when and not if.
The growing numbers of Kuboses began to overwhelm Aragorn; however, the quaking didn't stop, not even if it appeared as if Kubos was destined to win.
The Eternal Flame in Aragorn's crown of horns swayed and pulsed violently, then it contracted to a one-dimensional point before it exploded into a mist several galaxies wide. It was not a mist composed of droplets of liquid; it was a mist formed by countless tiny wisps of the Eternal Flame.
The Kuboses didn't know the purpose of the mist, but they cared not to find out. They had had enough experience with Aragorn to know that nothing he did was pointless or harmless. So, they warped space and forced the mist away from the battlefield of limbs, horns, blades, breaths, void explosions, conceptual attacks, and incomprehensibility.
Aragorn's eyes, countless of them, despite being besieged in four dimensions by the multilimbed spheres, Kuboses, revealed naught but multicolored determination. And that unsettled the Kuboses.
It learned about emotions when it touched the minds of everyone within its reach, and it didn't take a Cosmic Entity to understand how the colors in Aragorn's eyes correlated to his emotions.
Despite the siege and the most obvious disadvantage in which Aragorn was locked, his eyes kept shifting through colors with the same perseverance. That rattled the Kuboses.
Under the combined assault of all the time instances, and the conceptual curses, [Weakness], [Confusion], [Pain], [Blindness], [Deafness], [Destruction], [Annihilation], [Agony], [Obliteration], [Dementia], [Forgetfulness], [Catatonia], [Torpidity], [Erosion], [Rejection], [Decomposition], [Exhaustion], [Depletion], and many more concepts the mortals knew naught of, Aragorn was being undone.
Chunks, planetary and star-sized pieces of him, floated about in the violented vacuum of space. Torn eyes dazily blinked as they lost connection to the main body. His body was no longer a singular mass, as it had been severed conceptually more than once.
The time instances of Kubos were unrelenting. Even with their enemy cornered, they felt no respite.
That feeling of wrongness, that small tremor of alarm their instinct sent them, was not enough to stop. No, it was even more reason to continue!
Piece after piece, limb after limb, they slowly tore Aragorn apart. They dismantled him, and for good measure, cursed any floating part with just as many curses as they did the main body.
To the rest of Reality, it may have been barely four minutes since the start of this reality-sundering battle; however, for beings with an accelerated perception beyond the confines of mortal understanding, a few eras had passed. After so long, the Kuboses finally found Aragorn's conceptual core, where they felt his origin was housed.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
What they found, beyond the beauty of his heart, was horror.
A heart made of crystal with a single eye and a mouth, inscribed with so much [Script] it made all Kuboses quake just as much as Reality.
The mouth smiled, the eye shifted golden and red, and it said, "ART/CREATION/BEAUTY/IDEAS IS/DEMANDS/RUPTURE AN/SUDDEN/VOLATILE/INTO EXPLOSION/FORCE/POWER/FORM!"
It was as much an incantation as it was a declaration that, in layman's terms, was: Art is an explosion!
Within the void barrier caging Kubos and its time instances, iridiscent light bloomed with conceptual instantaneity. The mist, which had been pushed away from the fight by Kubos, barely had the time to pass through the barrier before everything that was mass belonging to Aragorn burst into iridescence.
The mist concentrated and congealed outside the void cage; it slowly took shape and form until it was shaped into a horned humanoid form of bluish-white flames. The only discernible features, aside from the horns, were its draconic eyes of iridescent irises and white slitted pupils.
The explosion was so fast, far faster than what even Aragorn could escape from, that the only reason he was able to shift his being into his flame was that it was considered a paradox by his association with Void-chan; hence, his new concept allowed him to shift it with a wisp of the Eternal Flame mist right when the explosion was triggered.
Aragorn paused to observe his new body in wonder, then he lifted his face towards the iridescent star in front of him.
Reality's quaking intensified the moment Kubos' demise was guaranteed, and Aragorn had barely a few instants before it unraveled.
He placed his incorporeal flaming hands on the surface of the void cage and pushed his will into it.
Although he called it an explosion, the iridescent light was beyond that. It was a spell fueled by his body, a body a few galaxies in size, and all the energy left in his heart. It was most obviously not a simple explosion. Even if it was true that excessive amounts of force were capable of ending Beyonders, Aragorn couldn't truly destroy Kubos without a care for repercussions.
Reality was left too fucked up for that. As things were, Reality was a few seconds, at best, from unravelling and getting a friendly visit from the One Below All; Aragorn certainly didn't want that.
'Jean, come to me,' Aragron called out.
The cage shrank slowly at first, then exponentially faster. It shifted forms beyond Euclidean geometry, until its shadow over Reality and its normal three dimensions looked no different than an icosahedron.
Its faces were transparent, but due to being a shadow over Euclidean dimensions, the insides were not visible. Each of its faces reflected the other, and it looked like a maddening house of mirrors shaped like an icosahedron.
With a burst of the Cosmic Flames, Jean appeared next to him.
'Aragorn!' She cried when she saw him. 'A-Are you alright?' she asked even while knowing the answer.
'I'm in conceptual agony, among other 'ailments', but I'm stable enough for the moment,' Aragorn replied truthfully.
Kubos' warping over reality was not illusory. Every change it made, until corrected, was permanent; logically, so were the curses laid upon Aragorn. The only reason he was not being rejected by Reality was that his flame couldn't be recognized by it due to its pure nature as a paradox.
'That's not important for the moment,' Aragorn continued. 'I need to burrow your creation aspect.'
Jean, hesitantly, approached Aragorn and carefully tried to cup his face, only for her hands to pass through him.
'Elementalize, Jean,' Aragorn ordered.
Jean turned into her elemental form, and a flaming version of herself replaced her. She was able then to touch Aragorn, and she did so with care, trying to heal him, but it was futile. For the current Jean, certain concepts were beyond her, even more so when trying to apply them to Aragorn, something that didn't 'heal' like normal lifeforms did.
Aragorn set the icosahedron on one hand and held Jean with the other. The warm colors of Jean's Cosmic Flame slowly suffused into Aragorn, mixing contrastingly with his bluish-white flame.
Lines of [Script] manifested in the darkness of space. The bands of [Script] wrapped around the icosahedron like sealing charms, a small but noticeable change was sparked in the core of the icosahedron, one that only higher beings would understand.
As the icosahedron changed in nature, Aragorn raised his head and looked towards a direction above. Jean followed his sight and asked, 'What happened?'
'Odin's echo killed Pietro,' Aragron stated.
'Is he coming?' Jean asked, ready to defend Aragorn.
'No... Pietro stalled him long enough for the reinstatement of time to catch him,' Aragorn explained.
Across the immeasurable distance, beyond the confines of Time-Space, Aragorn locked eyes with Odin for a moment before his existence began to turn illusory. Hate and powerlessness, that was all that could be seen in the Allfather's blue eyes.
Aragorn cared not for it, its hate, anger, and honor; he took his eyes away from the Allfather and turned back to the icosahedron.
Outside the timestream, alone, Odin slowly disipated, his last word was an anguished call for his wife's name.
Back within Reality, in the Barren Lands, the part of the Universe that had been so sealed that even Kubos was, apparently(?), unable to affect it, inside the Luminaegis Lattice, at the core of The Ark, Pietro's core found its body and fused back to it.
With a gasp, he woke up.
"...Fuck," he cursed after getting a hold of his surroundings.
"You tell me," Carol commented. She was slowly coming out of a pod, her body naked and anew. "I don't remember much, apparently I died enough times to warrant a temporary sealing in my memories... Did we win?"
"I don't know," Pietro shook his head. He reached for his horns, making sure they were still there. He remembered vividly the sensation of the Odinsword cutting them clean. "The timestream was being unravel from the future backwards, last I remember."
"..." Carol was lost for words. "Where's everybody else, by the way?"
She was not expecting a hero's reception, but didn't they hold back a monster beyond their limits long enough?
Pietro reached out with his telepathy and blinked in surprise for a moment. "They are outside, making sure the Imperium remains hidden and isolated from the happenings outside."
Without a doubt, the sealing on the Barrens was something found in few places in the multiverse; however, not even it was enough to contend with Kubos, so the Drachantheon Therion, a good part of them, had to actively hide the Imperium from its senses and warping.
Reality's quaking could be felt even through the Luminaegis Lattice, but all of a sudden, it lessened; as if Reality was acknowledging the passing of a crisis.
It was not over yet; Aragorn and Jean had finished their work with the Icosahedron, and now it looked like a small iridescent star had been sealed in a glass icosahedron. It no longer caused mental damage by simply gazing at it.
'What's next?' Jean asked.
'I need you to wish for all the 'material' damage to be undone, and for the upcoming paradoxes to be nullified; also, don't bother with anything touching upon [Soul], [Mind], [Space], and [Time]. It doesn't have enough juice for that,' Aragorn instructed.
'You can't do it?' Jean asked.
'I'm having a hard time doing concise thinking,' Aragorn replied. 'I need some time to fix myself.'
'What will you do about the other damage?' Jean referred to the damage in Space-Time and the Souls and Minds lost to the fight, mostly on Earth.
'I can deal with that later, the paradox is what matters,' Aragorn said.
Jean nodded and concentrated on the icosahedron; her focus was sharp enough that her Cosmic Flames lulled. And then, with a burst of incomprehensible light, the unravelling stopped and the material damage across the universe was undone.
Atomized planets turned back in time, [Light] returned, the rejection of Reality stopped, the collapsed stars returned, the newlyborn singularities were undone; Reality was healing.
Earth was slowly returning to how it was about an hour ago.
In direct correlation to Reality's healing, the icosahedron bore growing cracks, slowly being destroyed.
While Reality's healing reached its last stages, Aragorn reached for the One Above All. |Aniki, may I?| He asked.
|Go ahead.|
|Thanks.|
|Don't mention it. I enjoyed your clash. That last spell caught me off guard, even me.|
|Deadly, right?|
|As deadly as you can get in this stage.|
As Aragorn had explained, with the icosahedron created with Kubos' remnant energies, the damage related to certain concepts couldn't be fixed. For example, all the patches of Reality that had been voided or erased by Aragorn's attacks, the sections of space that were falling apart, the future that was unravelled by the paradox, the lives lost, and others.
Leaving the lives lost aside, if the other damage was not fixed, Reality would have eventually cracked. All the energy Aragorn had fed it to strengthen it had been spent after their clash, so a new source was needed ASAP. Not just a source, while reality was healing, the damage had to be sustained and kept at bay for the healthy part.
Hence, Aragorn took inspiration from Gaea and became one with Reality-5H1N3, which is why he needed the One Above All's permission.
Jean, well-versed in these matters after going through Phoenix's training, quickly understood what Aragorn was doing and solemnly observed.
Slowly, around where his navel would be found if he had one, an absence of flames was born, as if a black hole had been birthed, and it appeared to be sucking his flames in, not enough to undo him, but noticeably.
He opened his eyes and looked back at Jean in confirmation. Following his action, all around Reality, the Eternal Flames began to cordon off the sections that had been perversely damaged. The starry sky gained an aurora-like, nebula-like effect of bluish-white color.
'It's pretty,' Jean observed.
'So expensive,' Aragorn added.
'Expensive?' Jean didn't understand what he meant.
'In energy consumption,' Aragorn explained.
'... How long until you are healed?' Jean asked, worriedly.
'... I think, a week for Reality to be healed, and maybe a month for me to gain my body back, as for the healing part of all the rest that was and is being damaged... maybe another month,' Aragorn said after a moment of thought.
'Then you'll be able to get unplugged from Reality?' Jean asked.
'Hopefully,' Aragorn nodded, his flames flowing with the motion.
'Let's return then, everyone is worried,' Jean said.
'You need to deal with the Shi'ar,' Aragorn reminded her.
'I have not forgotten, but I don't know where they went, so I'll wait,' Jean replied.
Aragorn had seen where they went, but he decided to leave it on her hands; it was her responsibility after all.
Using their flames as the medium, Argaorn and Jean returned to Earth
╚═══━━━─── • ───━━━═══╝
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{A/N:
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