The girl behind the man whimpered. Bast didn't flinch.
"Oh, how the mighty gods crawl now," Nyarlathotep cooed. "Did you purr for them, Bastet? Rub against their ankles when the last temple fell? Was it hunger or shame that made you beg for scraps?"
The air itself recoiled at that.
That cat, no, that goddess, hold the line against a cosmic tumor. And despite everything Nyarlathotep said, she didn't back down.
"You fell with your kingdom," he sneered. "And now you prostrate yourself before man. You were feared once, Bast. Worshipped. Now you lick boots."
The cackling started again. Louder this time. The walls groaned.
Just opened my mouth and spat fire.
The glands flared first, belcher and venom fusing.
the Rune of Death, lit up like a sun behind my ribs. And deep beneath it, Zarathos stirred.
He liked what he saw.
So I let him bleed in.
The flames that tore from my mouth weren't red. They weren't orange. They were black at the core, rimmed in white. A line of pure annihilation streaked across the museum, shattering tile and air, aimed straight at the Crawling Chaos.
It hit him square in the chest.
The grin on his face didn't even have time to fall.
The janitor's body convulsed, arms twisting up like broken antennae. Smoke and shadow peeled away from his skin in curling sheets, hissing with every inch lost to the flame.
He stumbled.
"Ah—AHAHA—!"
The laughter came back, but it was different now. Wild.
He dropped to one knee, face flickering between human and not, tongue twitching behind those too-many teeth.
"Wh… what is that?" he gasped, eyes rolling back. "That… that—alien feeling—"
He dragged a hand across his scorched chest. Skin peeled back like burnt paper.
His other hand twitched in the air, grasping at nothing.
"Is this… pain?" he whispered, voice trembling.
Then he laughed again.
"Ohh, what an intoxicating experience."
His fingers clenched.
"I've never— I didn't— HA!"
He looked at me now. Really looked.
"You're not just a god's mongrel. There's something deeper inside you, boy… what a wonderful thing."
"I want more."
Nyarlathotep stood. His shape twisted, limbs lengthening into impossible vectors. The skin of the janitor peeled away like wet cloth, revealing no muscle, no bone, writhing and reforming.
One foot stretched into shadow, the other coiled like a Möbius strip of tendons. Wings erupted from his spine and dragged along the ceiling.
"I'm ready!" the man at the Rosetta Stone shouted, voice tight and shining with command. His bleeding hands pulsed with magic. "The ritual is complete!"
Bast roared.
No longer a lynx.
She was a leopardess. She swelled with divine essence, her shoulders towering, fangs gleaming like obsidian daggers. Golden light shone in her fur, flickering hieroglyphs racing along her flanks. Her eyes blazed with anger.
She launched herself at Nyarlathotep's changing form, tackling a tendril-thin limb of spiraling teeth.
I was already moving.
Fire burned in my gut. The Rune of Death seared across my chest, lines crawling like molten lead under my skin.
"RAAAAHHH—!"
I jumped.
My crocs cracked the floor as I slammed into the fray, claws dragging across flesh. It parted under me like silk, twitching with alien blood.
I ripped.
Black and red flame poured from my mouth like divine napalm. Zarathos screamed his glee in my soul.
Nyarlathotep howled.
His formless body jerked under the weight of claw and the goddess.
Nyarlathotep didn't shrink from our assault.
He grew.
He loved it.
Every slash of claw and burst of hellfire seemed to excite him, to feed him. His shape surged outward, spiraling up through the broken ceiling and beyond, tearing through steel beams and concrete like they were parchment.
The British Museum didn't stand a chance.
Marble cracked. Skylights exploded. The roof and the walls collapsed as his form burst through, a writhing storm of black limbs and bone now towering over central London.
The sky darkened.
From the streets below, I heard screams that gurgled, that stopped.
We rushed to the shattered gap, skidding to the fractured edge of the Egyptian wing.
The magicians were forming glowing shields in the street, flicking their canes and staffs to carve sigils midair. Those standing behind the barriers were holding on, clinging to reason.
But those outside the protection...
Gods.
Their eyes.
The further ones froze, gazes blank and foggy, as if their thoughts had been pulled from their heads. Some just… stopped. Staring into the sky, mouths hanging open like sleepwalkers without dreams.
The closer ones weren't so lucky.
I saw a man stumble, then collapse, blood pouring from his ears. His face hit the ground with a dull slap. When he rolled over, there was nothing behind his eyes, red sludge running down his cheeks and nose.
My stomach clenched.
"Lucas," Rhea screamed. "This is—this is getting out of hand."
No argument there.
And then—
Shapes in the clouds.
To the west, high above, something moved like a tide of silver fire. A swarm, slow but vast, wings glinting as if made of sunlight. I couldn't see them clearly.
On the opposite horizon, thunder cracked.
And in the far corner of the sky, where the storm clouds coiled thickest, he formed.
A man made of thunderheads. Ten stories tall. Bare-chested, draped in a toga of stormlight, beard like coiled smoke, eyes twin arcs of lightning.
Zeus.
And he looked pissed.
CP Bank:1000cp
Perks earned this chapter: None.
Milestones: Quest end - It's the end of the world as we know it: 1000cp251Magus exploratorJun 28, 2025View discussionThreadmarks Chapter 44- The coolest god you know.View contentMagus exploratorJun 30, 2025#2,717The air tore open above us.
A beam of pure light screamed from the ritual circle and launched into the sky, a column of power, lined with hieroglyphs that danced and bled into the clouds. The bleeding magician was on his knees now, arms raised, voice trembling as he shouted the last words of whatever spell he had locked into that stone.
The Rosetta Stone shattered behind him.
From the sky, I felt it.
Power.
Dozens of divine presences screamed down from the heavens like spears of sunlight. I watched them fall, golden comets aimed at hosts.
One flew toward me.
My soul buckled under the pressure. It felt like a planet slamming into my spine. I staggered back, teeth bared, instincts flaring.
"Nope," I hissed.
Then Zarathos moved.
He rose like a dragon out of my bones. He slammed his presence outward in a fiery pulse, and the god trying to take root in me was cast away, howling into the sky like a beaten animal.
My soul was already full.
The divine didn't try again.
Others weren't so lucky, or maybe they were. I saw one golden comet smash into the girl behind Julius. Her scream twisted into a roar, her hair lifting in strands of fire. Another crashed into the man's own body, and for a second, I saw his eyes flash with the sun.
But I couldn't watch.
Because the clouds were parting.
The Heavenly Host had arrived.
Monstrous and beautiful.
Wheels of burning eyes and spinning wings drifted into place across the skyline, each one larger than buildings, their cores singing. Some had faces. Golden and serene. They looked at us, at the chaos, at Nyarlathotep's towering form—
And one spoke.
"Be not afraid."
Light speared from their centers. They blasted Nyarlathotep, melting through his limbs and warping tissue. One of his arms, made of teeth, simply disintegrated.
From the other side, Zeus struck.
Thunderbolts the size of subway trains slammed into the god of madness, each one detonating like divine artillery. The sky itself warped with every impact, rippling like water from the blows.
But the Stalker of the Stars wasn't going down quietly.
He roared.
It burst out in an arc of eldritch force, a wave of not-sound that cracked the shields of the magicians, shattered stone, and sent one of the angels spinning back like a falling comet.
I didn't stop to think.
I reached deep.
I felt the notes rise.
Then I raised my hand.
The flame that burst from me wasn't rage.
It was purpose. It sang in chords that bent the air.
The Rune of Death at my chest flared. My claws blazed. My fire turned from red to black.
I fired it all at Nyarlathotep's core.
And for once—
He flinched.
The tendrils shrieked. One wing flickered out. His form glitched, for lack of a better word.
A pulse of pure wrongness lanced from his torso, green and violet, screaming through the air.
It came for me.
I braced, singing another note in defense.
Reality twisted around it. Every part of my soul screamed at me to dodge, to run, to pray.
But I didn't move.
Instead, I reached behind me.
Unhooked the strap.
And threw the bag.
It sailed through the broken air and landed with a heavy thud on the cracked floor of the museum. The flap snapped open mid-roll.
Snarls thundered through the rubble.
Claws the size of swords slammed against tile. The ceiling trembled under the pressure of two titanic bodies surging free of impossible space.
Sif landed first, her coat shimmering like moonlit, Her mouth peeled open in a snarl that shook the glass in the distant buildings.
Fenrir followed, eyes molten gold. His jaw opened wide enough to snap a tank in two. He didn't bark.
He just growled.
Both wolves lunged into the chaos, aiming straight for Nyarlathotep's limbs.
I turned back to the oncoming beam.
It was close now. A streak of unlight tearing through the air like an executioner's blade.
I just crossed my arms, fire pooling at my feet, magic notes pulsing up my spine in a final, defiant crescendo.
Then it hit.
The world shattered around me.
Colors turned inside out. Sound reversed. Pain rippled across my skin. My vision went white, then black. For a moment, I felt myself peel, not my skin, but my being.
But I held.
I held.
The Elden rune burned bright. Zarathos howled inside me, anchoring me to the present with sheer hatred and holy rage. The Rune of Death flared so hot it scorched the floor around me into ash.
And when the light faded—
I was still standing.
Smoke coiled off my shoulders.
My arms trembled.
But I looked up…
…and smiled.
"My turn."
My feet left the ground.
The air cracked behind me as I launched, claws igniting mid-leap. Fire trailed from my fingertips, orange-black hellfire roaring into focus like comet tails. Runes across my chest flared. My whole body was a furnace.
I slammed into Nyarlathotep's body like a falling star.
Every time my claws sank into him, they came back soaked in black sludge and twitching pieces of flesh. I was cutting into fractal skin, shapes that twisted and bent even as I ripped through them. One second it was like hitting stone, the next like gelatin.
Nyarlathotep screamed. High-pitched. Too many voices layered together. It made the air feel like it was tearing apart.
Then he reached up.
The sky peeled, like old paint from a wall. A black hole opened overhead.
I saw the shift in his body.
And right there, inside the mess of writhing limbs and pulsing tissue and eyeballs, I saw him.
The janitor.
His skin was gray. Blood dried around his empty eye sockets. His body was cradled inside Nyarlathotep's chest like a puppet on strings.
I cursed under my breath.
He wasn't just escaping. He was trying to bring that poor bastard with him, as his anchor, his ticket, maybe even his new permanent shell.
Above us, the gods kept hitting him.
Zeus slammed another bolt down, blasting a chunk off his shoulder.
One of the angels fired a beam through his leg, turning it to ash.
Didn't matter.
He kept climbing toward the portal.
"I WILL BE BORN," he shrieked, the air warping with every word. "YOUR EARTH WILL KNEEL. I WILL TASTE YOUR SKIES AND YOUR BLOOD."
I snarled.
I climbed up his side, claws sinking into muscle. Fire poured from my mouth. My body burned hot. Every rune lit up like I was about to explode.
"No," I hissed.
I dropped my weight down, slamming both claws deep into the core of his chest, right near the janitor's limp frame.
"You're not going anywhere."
He tried to shake me off.
I held on tighter.
The sky kept breaking open.
Every second I held on, another chunk of Nyarlathotep burned away. Fire poured from my mouth, from my claws, from the cracks in my arms where runes glowed like magma. He tried to shake me off again, no good. I was buried in his chest like a tick.
The gods were hitting harder too.
Zeus hurled another bolt, so big it lit up the whole sky. One of the angels dove like a meteor, wings wide, a blade of light screaming from its core. Bast lunged again, fangs glowing white-hot. Fenrir clamped down on one leg and ripped a chunk off the size of a car.
And then...
More.
From the smoke and rubble, people I didn't know were getting up. Regular civilians. But when I focused, my Sharingan flickered, and I saw it.
A glow.
Something under the skin. Divine sparks. Vessels.
They ran toward the fight. A man with a burning sword. A woman whose shadow moved on its own. A teenager chanting words that twisted the air.
And they were pissed.
Nyarlathotep screamed, limbs flailing in every direction. His body was coming apart now, literally melting, chunks of fractal flesh falling like rain, beams of alien energy firing in all directions. One sliced through the ground near one of the vessels. Another hit a statue, turning it into dust.
I ducked lower and burrowed deeper.
I was halfway inside him now, face pressed against the skin where the janitor's soul flickered like a dying match.
"Almost there," I muttered.
He jumped.
Straight into the portal.
And he took me with him.
Reality didn't follow.
It folded in behind us like crumpled paper. Space peeled off my shoulders like ash. There was no gravity here just directionless motion, like falling up and down at the same time.
Colors twisted. Everything glowed in the wrong spectrum. I saw a shade of red I'd never seen before and never wanted to see again. The sky blinked.
I should've been vomiting.
Crying.
Bleeding from every pore.
Instead… I just floated.
Burning quietly.
But the janitor wasn't.
He was right in front of me, still cradled inside Nyarlathotep's chest cavity. His limbs twitched. His neck bent at a sick angle, bones cracking. His skin started to bubble, then stretch and split. Something pushed from underneath, like new muscles growing over old ones, twisted and shiny and wet.
"No," I said.
I tried to move.
The air pulled against me like molasses. Nyarlathotep surged forward, dragging the man deeper into this thing, this non-place, toward the throbbing black sphere ahead.
Abbith.
The heart of the void.
The janitor screamed, and it wasn't his voice. His spine cracked again. His arms split open into too many joints. His eye sockets glowed like forge holes.
"Come on," I whispered, eyes locking on the man's half-mutated face. "I'm not letting you go that easy."
I was almost there.
I could see the janitor's soul, flickering like a candle in a storm, buried beneath the bone and rot and mutation. I reached forward, fire burning along my arms, claws igniting with hellfire. Just a few more inches—
That's when the tentacle hit me.
Crack.
It slammed into my side like a tree trunk. I didn't even have time to block. One second I was clawing my way through layers of meat—
And the next, I was flying.
Falling fast.
The world flipped. I caught a glimpse of Nyarlathotep's form growing distant, still laughing, still dragging that poor bastard deeper into Abbith's orbit. His body was already half-energy now.
And me?
I was a meteor.
I crashed through the clouds of this place, like breathing vapor, like every part of the sky was alive and hating me personally. The wind shrieked. The ground rushed up.
I barely had time to cross my arms.
Then—
BOOM.
The impact was brutal.
I hit what passed for a planet, the crust split, molten cracks spiraled out around me. Shockwaves tore through the atmosphere. For a moment, everything was just pain.
Then stillness.
I coughed, smoke pouring from my mouth, and peeled myself out of the crater.
My ribs were bruised.
But I was still breathing.
Still pissed.
Above me, far in the sky, Nyarlathotep continued toward the heart of his domain, dragging the half-melted janitor behind him like a trophy.
This wasn't over.
Not even close.
The desert stretched out forever.
Or maybe just until my mind gave up trying to measure it.
The sand crunched under my boots, fine and bone-dry, but left no footprints behind. The sky was a mess of dead stars and twitching auroras, they were changing in real time.
I sat down. My breath came in slow, smoky puffs. I wasn't sure how long it had been since Nyarlathotep threw me off his back. Hours? Days? I didn't feel hungry. I didn't feel much of anything, really, except for the low, grinding ache of something being wrong in the fabric of the universe.
Something nudged my boot.
I looked down.
A lizard.
No face. Just a slick, pale body and stubby little limbs.
"…Yeah," I muttered. "Real helpful, thanks."
But in my hand, the plastic figure I'd been half-clutching in my jacket pocket swayed slightly. My Hatsune Miku figurine.
"Don't give up, Lucas~!"
I blinked.
"You're doing your best," she said gently. "You've come so far. Your friends are counting on you~!"
I stared at her.
"…I might be going insane."
A small pause. Then, "Sometimes people need a little cheer. Even when they don't ask for it~!"
The lizard climbed onto a nearby rock and settled in.
I dragged a hand down my face and looked up at the sky. A smear of red stars swirled overhead. Far off, a mountain pulsed with green light.
"I don't even know where I'm going," I muttered.
"You'll figure it out~!" Miku chirped. "You're kind. You're strong. And you never stop trying, even when your heart isn't in it."
"You know," she said, voice soft but steady, "after all this, you could probably retire."
I blinked at her. "Retire?"
"Mhmm! Get some money, move somewhere quiet, maybe even visit me in Japan~" Her tone lifted like she was describing a holiday,
I huffed a dry laugh. "What, just hop on a plane, take a weekend off?"
She didn't miss a beat. "You could stay for a whole week. I'd show you around Tokyo. We'd go to shrines, and karaoke, and a really nice ramen place I heard about from another figure. You'd love it~"
The idea sat with me for a moment.
"I don't even know if I'm making it back," I said eventually, voice low. "Or what I'll be when I do."
"You'll still be you," Miku replied simply. "Tired, maybe a little scorched, but still you. That's enough."
The lizard near me scratched at the dirt, faceless and silent.
"After this," I said quietly, "if there's still a world to go back to… maybe I will."
"That's the spirit!" she beamed. "Ganbatte, Lucas~!"
Eventually, I stood.
My legs were stiff, but they held. The lizard blinked up at me, or didn't. I brushed the dust off my coat. The heatless sky crackled faintly above me, like it was chewing on distant stars.
I reached into my coat and pulled out the compass. The needle spun for a second, jittery and uncertain, before locking into place.
West.
I looked that way. Endless yellow waste. Just a stretch of cursed silence and dust that shimmered.
I sighed.
Then a thought hit me.
"…Well. Worth a shot."
I reached over my shoulder and pulled the axe-bass free. The weight was familiar. I planted my feet, let my fingers drift across the strings, and played it.
Epona's Song.
The tune echoed across the desert, soft and hopeful.
When I finished, I waited.
Nothing happened.
"Alright," I muttered, slinging the bass back. "Was worth a try."
Then, hoofbeats.
I turned around slowly.
There she was.
A big brown horse. Sturdy legs. Kind eyes. Dusty coat.
She snorted once.
I smiled, stepping closer, running a hand down her side. "Hey, girl… you really saved my bacon."
But then I paused.
I looked down at myself.
Eight feet tall. Heavier than I'd ever been. Muscles layered over metal bones.
"Wait," I said, raising an eyebrow. "Can you even carry me?"
The horse let out a short, proud neigh and gave a firm nod.
Alright then.
I gave her a grateful pat and reached for the reins.
"…You're a damn miracle, you know that?"
Another snort.
I stood beside her for a moment longer, hand resting just behind her ears. Epona breathed steadily, patient as a saint, waiting on me.
I looked down at the saddle.
Then at my hands.
"…Right. There's just one problem."
I scratched the back of my head and exhaled through my teeth. "Zarathos," I muttered, "you ever ridden a horse?"
I felt my chest tighten. Heat stirred in my gut like coals waking up.
"Alright," I whispered. "You take the wheel."
The change came slow.
Not the violent snap of bones and chains I'd felt back in the highway. This time… it was quieter. Like slipping on a glove that already knew the shape of my fingers.
My eyes dimmed, then burned brighter with hellfire.
Epona didn't flinch.
If anything, she looked taller now. Stronger. Her hooves gleamed like obsidian. Her eyes gleamed gold. The saddle reshaped itself, metal sprouting from worn leather, transforming into blackened plates and bone-studded grips.
One hand gripped the reins. The other reached back, bony fingers curling around the haft of my axe-bass, which now shimmered with a faint red glow.
When I pulled myself onto her back, the world reacted.
The ground trembled. The sky blinked.
And the Ghost rider scorched the sands.
At some point, the yellow waste had shifted into a cracked saltpan, glistening faintly beneath a sky that refused to blink. Epona's hooves left burning prints.
Then I saw it.
Far ahead, maybe ten miles out, rising like a scar against the horizon, a castle.
Its walls were dark green, almost black, made of stone that looked like sea rock pulled straight from the ocean floor. Wet. Not just glossy. Dripping. The whole structure gleamed under the dead sky as if a storm had just passed.
Epona slowed.
The landscape ahead of us, leading up to the castle, was alive in the worst possible way. Things moved between the dunes and outcroppings, scuttling shadows with too many legs, gliding shapes that didn't touch the ground. Mi-Go, mostly. Fungal things with wings, gibbering and twitching, whispering in languages I didn't want to understand. But they weren't alone. I saw other shapes too. Stretched. Broken. Crawling.
They hadn't seen us yet.
Which was lucky.
Epona came to a full stop at the edge of a shallow ridge. She huffed once, ears flicking back.
I sat up straight in the saddle.
And Zarathos… let go.
The fire peeled back.
My skin returned, though it still steamed faintly. My coat re-stitched itself over my ribs. My claws dulled, retreating back beneath scarred knuckles. The skull-face of vengeance faded, and I was Lucas again.
I reached out and gave Epona a grateful pat behind the ears.
"Good girl," I said under my breath. "Knew you had my back, but you might want to go the other way for a little while."
The castle was still far, but not far enough. I could hear the gibbering if I strained. Could smell rust and fungus in the air.
And I knew I was supposed to go there.
I reached behind me and pulled the axe-bass free. The weight settled into my grip like an old friend.
Across the valley of monsters, the path to the castle wound like a broken river, narrow gaps between swarms of Mi-Go and worse things, spaces where I might slip through if I moved fast and hit hard enough.
My claws extended with a dry snap, long as short swords. Fire licked along my arms. I crouched low, vision narrowing.
The Sharingan spun to life in my eyes, two tomoe in each.
I saw everything, the gaps between the monsters, the rhythm of their patrols, the weak points in their formations.
I exhaled.
Then the sky shifted.
A sun appeared.
This one was new.
And red.
It didn't rise, it manifested, blooming open like an eye above the castle. No warmth came from it. My ears popped. My knees buckled slightly. The monsters below stopped. All of them.
Every.
Single.
One.
"What the hell is that?" I muttered.
The red sun turned toward me.
It didn't move like a star. It moved like a thing, which was staring straight into my soul.
I staggered.
My skin itched.
That shouldn't be possible.
Not with this body. I was a Primarch, a monster forged in the gene labs of Luna, made to be perfect.
But my skin still itched.
I fell to one knee.
My stomach clenched. My throat tightened. Then it all came up, hot and hissing. A stream of black-red venom that hit the salt-cracked ground and melted it, glassing it on contact. Steam rose in waves.
I wiped my mouth and looked up.
The monsters were screaming.
Mi-Go and others rushed toward me, mouths open, speaking in a language that made my molars ache just hearing it.
I tried to stand, but my vision blurred.
My ears rang.
No...
Zarathos was roaring in the back of my head, loud and furious. His voice was ragged.
"GET UP—GET UP—WHAT IS THAT THING—"
Something hot pulsed in my forehead.
I felt it burn, flaring through my skull, It pulsed once.
Then again.
Then everything went red.
Tendrils burst from the earth, slick and steaming. They wrapped around me, pulling me off my feet.
I screamed once.
Something hot burst from my forehead.
Then they pulled me under.
It was like being swallowed by a flower made of flesh. Red petals and flying butterflies, curling around my frame and dragging me out of this place.
The air split behind me.
And the desert, for the second time in its cursed existence, rotted.
Reality broke again.
Just like that.
The scarlet flower bloomed once more.
In the pit, near the house of Nyx herself.
One of the Nosoi, the Phthisis screamed.
Not in pain.
In ecstasy.
Her sickly form writhed in plesure, every cancerous limb twitching, her sickly eye wide. Red spread through their veins like fire, veins that hadn't pumped blood in eons. They convulsed. They shrieked. They changed.
Because their god had arrived.
CP Bank:900cp
Perks earned this chapter: 600cp Scarlet Aeonia (Elden Ring - Caelid Wilds) [Destruction] You are no mere acolyte, your form changed through the Scarlet Rot. No, you are one born of this divine Rot, capable of drawing upon its power unlike many others. Not only can you call upon a scarlet aeonia in a similar manner to the Blade of Miquella, but with each strike you leech some of your opponent's vitality and stamina, replenishing your own. While your foes lie exhausted and rotting from the inside, you shall be at your strongest.
Boosted: And so the Scarlet Aeonia blooms once more, and a Goddess of Rot is born anew. It would be child's play for you to spread the Rot to new lands, your scarlet explosion capable of easily engulfing an entire city, and possibly more should you put effort into it. Those that do not die, or you wish to avoid killing, will be changed and influenced by the divine Rot you have unleashed. Those changed by the Rot will see you as their true god, and will follow you until their final hours.
Boost Requires Shardbearer to Activate
Milestones: Reach godhood: 200 cp
Exalt: Hail Exalted of the sun: 300cp217Magus exploratorJun 30, 2025View discussionThreadmarks Chapter 45 - twilight of a God.View contentMagus exploratorJul 1, 2025#2,775The first thing I noticed was the silence.
No wind. No grinding bones or whispering monsters. Just a vast, weightless emptiness that stretched in all directions, a void. Not quite black. Not quite anything.
I was floating, but not falling.
Around me, butterflies drifted.
Their wings shimmering, some metallic, some translucent, some pulsing softly with inner light. Crimson, gold, violet, the soft green of new sprouts, and the deep blue of skies. They circled like I was some kind of holy tree.
Or a corpse.
I didn't feel dead.
But I didn't feel alive either.
It was more like… being a concept. A glowing, cursed idea held together by sheer force of personality.
One of the butterflies fluttered close, wings trailing motes of scarlet light. It landed delicately on my finger, flexing as if trying to get comfortable. I stared at it for a long second.
"God, I hope I don't pass the rot like an STD," I muttered.
The butterfly didn't respond.
But it didn't die either. Good sign.
I looked down, if down meant anything in this place, and willed the rot to move.
Orange tendrils of energy stirred in the air around me. They coiled like mist, slow and smooth, each one pulsing faintly with power. My power. I didn't know what they were made of. Rot? Divine will? Probably. But when I thought about them, they moved.
They obeyed.
That was new.
Nice.
I flexed again, letting one arc around my arm like a whip, another swirl out in a spiraling ribbon. The butterflies gave me space.
I could feel my body now. Sort of.
It was holding together. My regeneration, whatever insane cocktail of Olympian ichor, X-gene, and Primarch engineering made up my insides was keeping the rot from breaking me down. Not immune, maybe. But stable.
At least for now.
"Good," I muttered to no one. "Not ending up like Melina."
That thought lingered.
Malenia.
Scarlet rot.
Gods. Fire.
I wasn't sure where I stood on the divine food chain anymore. Some kind of chosen avatar? Cursed vessel? Living torch for some god out in the stars to get its kicks?
Puppet? Maybe.
If something tried to pull me?
I'd pull back harder.
The butterflies parted ahead, just slightly.
The void stirred.
I felt it before I saw it, like gravity realigning, pulling me in.
Above the darkness pinpricked with stars. Tiny lights shimmered into being, scattered across the black like constellations forming for the first time. Then those lights moved and they coalesced Into a man.
A man the size of a mountain, clad in armor made from the stars themselves. Actual nebulae swirled across the pauldrons, each plate radiating light. His face was hidden beneath a smooth helm, radiant and unknowable.
He had four arms.
One carried a lance, longer than most towers, tip burning like a sun.
One held a shield etched with runes I couldn't read.
The third gripped a laurel branch, green and gold.
The fourth held a great horn, black as the void, rimmed with starlight.
And then he spoke.
His voice was like solar wind each word warming my face.
"Lucas Walker. Son of Phoebus Apollo... You are Exalted."
The words burned themselves into reality.
A searing warmth flared across my forehead. I reached up on instinct, then hissed.
There was a brand. Glowing gold. A perfect sunburst, ringed with gentle points. Light. Absolute, celestial light.
The butterflies around me went berserk. Hundreds, no, thousands, appeared out of nowhere, swarming and spiraling in frantic, ecstatic motion. Their wings sparked colors I didn't have words for. It felt like they were celebrating. Like they knew.
Inside me, something shifted.
A sound.
Music.
Something perfect began to solidify in my soul, like a symphony being born out of molten gold.
I opened my mouth. No words came.
The being didn't move. Didn't speak again. Just watched, like a constellation judging its chosen.
I was… Exalted.
The void collapsed.
A blink. A breath. Then impact.
I was back in Ibbith.
Same cursed sky. Same grotesque castle in the distance. And the same swarm of monsters, Mi-Go and worse, charging straight toward me, their forms writhing with impossible limbs, faceless mouths gibbering words that made the air wrong.
My feet hit the sand hard enough to crack it.
They didn't stop.
There was something inside me now. I could feel it. This was heavier. Thicker.
Essence.
I exhaled once and stepped forward.
One of the red tendrils of Scarlet Rot pulsed from my back. I didn't recoil. I reached out and entered it, let my will pour into it, gold leaking into red like a sun boiling into blood.
It responded.
The tentacle glowed radiant. It pulsed once, then lifted into the air, trembling like a bowstring drawn tight.
Then I brought it down hard.
The ground shattered.
From the blast crater bloomed something massive. A flower. No, an Aeonia.
It rose from the earth like a divine tumor, petals thick and closed tight, brimming with power too dense to comprehend. Scarlet light poured from it in waves, the air turning viscous as the curse pulsed outward.
The sand blackened.
The wind went silent.
Then the rot spread.
Faster than wildfire. It washed over the first wave of monsters like a tsunami. I saw Mi-Go dissolve mid-scream, their insect-like frames melting into slag, while others twisted grotesquely, gaining too many arms, too many mouths, then falling silent in twitching heaps.
Some grew thorns.
Some bloomed, turning on their companions in frenzy.
The cursed earth expanded with every heartbeat. Scarlet tendrils coiled outward like a divine cancer, devouring stone and whatever passed for biology in these abominations. The whole plain, acres, then miles, mutated under the weight of my will.
I stood there, breathing, arms still raised. The Exaltation burned through me, gold light dancing along my skin, fused into the rot like veins of magma inside corrupted flesh.
My plague.
And nothing in this cursed world would stand against it.
The Aeonia flower opened.
A slow, wet bloom. Each petal unfurled with a sound like bone breaking. From within, not pollen or light, but butterflies. Dozens. Hundreds. Millions.
Rot-colored wings, shimmering with gold-flecked edges, took to the sky in a rising tide. And where they flew, the land followed. The rot spread not as corruption, but as conversion. The cursed sands cracked, warped, pulsed. The monsters that hadn't fled melted where they stood, their flesh overtaken mid-roar, transformed into still, grotesque statues of flayed bone and latticework muscle.
I watched it for a second.
Then I started walking.
Each step sank into earth that hadn't been like this minutes ago. The sand had solidified into a reddish-black mulch, soft but firm, like stepping across the back of something rotting. The rot didn't hinder me.
It parted for me.
Up ahead, the castle loomed. That dark green stone that once looked wet now bled rust. The walls had begun to blister, the organic matter embedded in their eldritch design reacting violently with the rot. Veins burst. Slime boiled. Geometry folded.
It was beautiful in a terrible way.
Nyarlathotep's realm, his little throne of power in this empty plane, was being overwritten.
By me.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
Being an eldritch horror and having someone else kick down your metaphysical door with a boot? That had to suck. The other shoe had dropped. Just not the one he expected.
The castle gates towered in front of me, ten meters high, carved with runes I couldn't read and faces that screamed silently.
I didn't bother knocking.
I reached forward and gave a weak push.
The wood cracked. Then sagged. Then crumbled.
Dust poured down like old flour. I didn't stop walking.
Behind me, butterflies still circled the dead air like a plague given wings. The sky bled red. The rot moved ahead of me, not wildly but intentionally, like it knew where its master was headed.
Two suns appeared in my vision.
Then as fast as they came they left.
But they left me changed.
My body burned, not in pain, but in power. I felt everything in me shift. I had been a demigod embodying a god. Now? Something deeper. Older. The laws around me began to scream. Reality gurgled in protest, wet and uneven, like a rotted lung trying to draw breath.
Even my Exalted brand flared, golden and bright against the sick-red sky.
I breathed once.
And the ground cracked.
Not from force. From presence. The air didn't know how to carry me anymore. The rules didn't know how to contain me.
My skin felt like it hummed with potential. Deep within, I could feel it. The Sea of Life, thick, black and fertile, roiling beneath the surface of my soul. With a thought, I knew I could raise it. Shape it. Populate the earth with my own creations.
And that wasn't all.
There was something else… buried deeper. The birthright of usurpers. The myth etched into my bloodline.
Like Zeus had done to Kronos.
Like Kronos had done to Uranus.
The second gift.
If I kill it... I own it.
True, god-born usurpation. If I destroy something utterly, if I break it past the point of return, what was theirs becomes mine. Their power, their domain, their everything.
I exhaled.
The air warped.
The butterflies around me paused, wings fluttering in reverence or fear. I didn't know which.
I was something else now.
No longer just Lucas, son of Apollo.
I was Lucas, Primordial of Life and Rot. Big E must be rolling in his grave, while Papa Nurgle is happy that another has seen the light.
I held out my hand.
From the space between reality, a black bud formed in my palm, slick and pulsing with unnatural life. It quivered with promise. With hunger. With potential. I let a strand of scarlet rot coil through it, watching as the textures tangled, sick-red veins threading through the oily bloom.
I extended my claws and dragged them lightly across my neck. Not enough to wound. Just enough to open. Divine ichor, thick and gold-tinged, beaded up, then dripped down my fingers. Primarch blood, Gene-seed.
I fed it to the soil.
The bud dropped.
It pulsed once.
Then again.
The ground cracked.
And from the rotted earth, they rose.
One by one, in the tens of thousands every second, and that number continued to rise.
Astartes, but twisted and uplifted, perfected by my touch. Their muscle mass defied nature, their eyes glowed red with a single tome, and jagged bone claws erupted from their fists like spears. The scarlet rot bled through their veins, not consuming but fueling. They weren't diseased. They were evolution.
They stood, wordless, waiting.
Each one a vector.
My Legion.
I looked across the blighted battlefield. The castle still loomed ahead, decaying under the weight of my arrival.
I exhaled once, and my warriors stepped in time with the breath.
"March. Purge this place," I said.
I walked.
The green stone beneath my boots cracked, then bubbled, then wept. Not metaphorically, literally. The walls were alive, or had been once. Faces shifted in the stone, watching me with hollow eyes, mouthing silent warnings that meant nothing anymore. They rotted the second my shadow touched them.
My sons were ahead and behind, ripping through the castle like a wildfire.
I didn't need to rush.
Screams echoed down the corridors, wet, gurgling, alien. Monsters. Abominations.
They died all the same. Torn apart by claws and fire.
Astartes not by the Emperor's will, but mine. My humanity, dragged out of the mud, remade in my image, and now washing the filth from this place.
I moved at a steady pace.
Took in the sights.
A hallway of spiraled bone collapsed the second I stepped into it. Decorative columns shaped like ribs twisted and snapped. Whatever meaning they once held vanished in the face of what I was. The air here didn't carry sound the right way. Didn't smell right. Too thick. Too old.
Didn't matter.
I was walking to the throne room. That much I could feel. Every pulse of this place led there. A nest for the Old One. His seat of power. His home.
Godhood. Right. No better way to get comfortable with the title than kicking the door down and taking someone else's seat.
Trial by fire.
The green stone sweated rot beneath my boots. Every step I took melted through another layer of alien carvings and hieroglyphs no sane eye could trace. The walls sighed and warped, unable to hold their shape in my presence. Whatever ancient geometry had once built this place now crumbled under a more primal logic.
My sons were behind me, their bone claws still slick, their maws sending fire against the abominations, purging whatever filth still skittered in the upper halls. I could hear monsters screaming in the distance. They didn't last long. Humanity was washing through this tomb like a tide.
And there he was.
Nyarlathotep.
The Crawling Chaos. The Old Shadow.
He was sitting on his throne.
And on it sat him.
His form was... unstable. Too many limbs, none of them in the right place. A face that kept changing, sometimes jackal, sometimes man, sometimes screaming child, but the eyes remained the same. Infinite, grinning, hateful.
"So," he said, voice like dying stars. "The little sunspawn comes to bark at the old dog."
I didn't answer. I kept walking.
He leaned forward, the throne twisting with him.
"You don't belong here. You are a larva dreaming of kingship, child. This is my realm. I ruled this place when your grandfather still suckled milk from titans, and will rule long after all of reality dies."
He grinned.
"And now you bring rot to my home. How quaint, here I thought you Greeks were masters of hospitality."
I stopped at the base of the dais.
The Sea of Life answered. A wave of black mud rose behind me, tinged with scarlet. Tendrils thick with divine filth writhed at my side, the butterflies circled overhead. I stepped up.
"Get off the throne," I said.
Nyarlathotep laughed. Then lunged.
The air cracked.
A beam of absolute nothingness tore through the space between us, no light, no sound, no warmth, just absence. It wasn't destruction. It was removal. A clean erasure of anything foolish enough to exist in its path.
I threw up a wall of mud laced with scarlet rot. It didn't matter.
The beam punched through it like it wasn't even there.
It was coming for me.
And then… time bent.
No, slowed.
The world stretched. My thoughts didn't race, but I could feel something stir inside me for a slit second. A heat. A rhythm.
Essence.
It swelled from my bones, rushed to my heels like liquid gold, and I moved.
My body jumped, not away, but onto the beam.
I rode it.
The beam of oblivion screamed beneath me, and somehow my feet found purchase and sent sparks through the air. Essence surged through every joint, stabilizing my stance. My hair caught fire from the friction. My claws were ready.
And I was surfing a laser beam straight into the face of a god.
Nyarlathotep reared back in fury, his shape flickering to horror.
"Ho—HOW?!" he howled, voice split across every direction.
I didn't answer.
I leapt.
I crashed into him like a comet.
My claws met his flesh, if you could call that writhing mess of tendrils and shrieking mouths flesh, and tore through it. The hellfire ignited the air around us. Zarathos' wrath burned in my veins. The Rune of Death pulsed behind my eyes like a war drum. Every strike I landed spread more of the rot, slick and red, burrowing deep into him.
He changed form with every blow. A dozen faces. A spiral of teeth. A crown made of eyes. I didn't care. I tore through all of it.
Then the Essence called to me again. Hot and golden. I didn't think. I let it move me.
My grip shifted. My stance widened. My body remembered something I'd never learned.
The claws began to shine. My breath hitched.
I slashed.
He dodged.
And still, I saw it. A wound. Clean and impossible. A perfect gash pulsing with my rot, black veins crawling outward from the edges, even as he writhed away.
He hadn't even touched me when I swung.
And yet, I'd cut him.
My claws hadn't just struck his body.
They'd struck the idea of him.
And from the way he shrieked, like I'd violated something sacred, I knew he felt it too.
I grinned, teeth gleaming.
"I'm starting to see why you're afraid."
His form rippled in rage and confusion. The throne room buckled around us, stone liquefying into globs of green decay, gravity forgetting how to function. Reality moaned with each twitch of his form.
And I saw it.
At first, it was just a flicker, like a glitch in an old VHS tape. A pulse. A twitch of red.
Then more.
Where there had been the absence of form, where the nothingness of Nyarlathotep's body twisted and reknit itself like mocking silk, there were now patches. Flesh. Diseased, bloated, mortal flesh. Red and cracked. Pulsing with veins like a spiderweb.
Rotting.
I blinked. My Sharingan spun. I could see the progression clearer than anyone else. The scarlet rot had taken hold and it was eating him alive. Not just decomposing him but forcing him to have a body, to be something, so it could rot that something down.
His form twisted, warping inwards to avoid the infection, but it was spreading. Every movement only made it worse. The rot latched onto his essence, not just his body.
"You… thing... you dare infect me you worm?"
I smiled wide.
"You're the one who invited me in." I raised my clawed hand and let the red rot drip, sizzling, to the floor. "Don't act surprised that I left a gift that keeps on giving."
He was crumbling.
The rot was working. Scarlet corruption coiled through the air like fog. He was trying to keep it out, shoving it away with reality-breaking pulses and screams, but it didn't matter anymore.
He was real now.
And that means that he was fucked.
I stepped forward. The floor squelched beneath my boots.
"What's wrong?" I asked, voice low, distorted by the lingering flame and venom in my throat. "Not so scary when you're fighting for your life, huh?"
Nyarlathotep's eyes snapped toward me. One of his arms, more bone than flesh, lashed out. I caught it mid-swing with my claws. They were smoking with hellfire, wet with divine blood, and crackling with Essence. The moment they touched, I felt it. A reaction. Flesh tore. Black ichor hissed and boiled away under my rot-coated grip.
He screeched. Just... pain.
"You weren't supposed to be like this," he snarled, shape twitching, peeling, reforming. "You're a child of Apollo. You should be weak. Predictable. Singing hymns and dying in quests."
I spat a stream of fire at his feet. The scarlet rot rode the flames like oil, spreading with glee.
"You dare—" he began.
I didn't let him finish.
With Essence flaring through my bones, I launched forward, claws first. We crashed like titans. My mind almost blacked out from the pressure of it, but I held on, dragging my claws through him again and again, leaving burning, infected wounds behind.
He screamed. His flesh was turning patchy, diseased. Where once there was nothing, now there was meat. Red and wrong.
Nyarlathotep feinted with one tentacle, lazy, wide, telegraphed. I ducked without thinking.
The real strike came from the opposite side.
A bone-tipped limb, jagged like a serrated spear, shot through the air and punched straight into my gut. It tore through muscle, metal bones, and burst out my back with a wet snap. My breath hitched.
My feet skidded back a few steps as the god leaned in, eyes glimmering with smug triumph.
His mistake.
I didn't scream. I didn't falter.
I gripped the tentacle with both hands, the claws of one hand digging in first, then the other. Essence surged into my fingers, black and gold. The flesh beneath me cracked with pressure.
"You're not the first thing to stab me," I growled, voice bubbling with venom.
Then I heaved.
The world bent for a second. My fingers locked like a hydraulic press, and I threw him.
The entire throne room shook as the Crawling Chaos was flipped.
Nyarlathotep, god of nightmares and lies, sailed through the air like a sack of rotten shit and crashed through a warped pillar. The green walls trembled. The faces carved into the rock wailed.
Before he could even begin to rise, something landed on him with a crack like thunder.
Me.
A burning comet of rot, I came down claws-first, crashing into his malformed chest. Fire spilled from my mouth. The Rune of Death pulsed bright. My essence coiled into shapes I didn't recognize.
Just burning violence, as I began tearing into him again, before me a God sobbed, as mortality finally caught up to him.
CP Bank:100cp
Perks earned this chapter: 400cp Universal Usurping (Greek Mythology) [Control] Greek legend talks about the usurping of one's father and claiming all that they had as yours (Oedipus complex?) like Kronos did to his father Uranus, and Zeus to Kronos. You now inbody a similar concept when you slay and/or defeat someone beyond recovery you can claim all that was theirs for yourself their kingdom, people, family, items everything is yours and can't be kept from you by any means because you won the right to have it when you beat them. (picked by me)
400cp Mother Of All (Fate/Tale Of The Beasts) [Control] It seems Tiamat is not the only Great Goddess of life anymore, as you have become a similar existence to Tiamat.
Firstly, as a Primordial Deity you have a strength that is matched by only the strongest of beings in this universe. If you wished, you could bring a shockwave with every step you took. Take blows from the gods themselves and not be affected in the slightest. Even falling all the way to the underworld won't be enough to kill you, but your impressive body is just the beginning of your incredible might.
Secondly, you now have access to your own Sea Of Life. With ease you can create and manipulate a black mud that corrupts any and all it touches. You have enough control over your Sea Of Life to easily drown a city or two, you could certainly flood the world given enough time. Most importantly though, Anything your Sea Of Life touches is reborn at the cellular level and turns into one of your children.
All beings corrupted by the Sea Of Life are forever loyal to you, as they are your children. Should you corrupt a strong warrior you can make clones of them using the Sea Of Life, each as strong as the original was. You can also design your own children using the Sea Of Life, you can make a wide variety of creatures, though it would take longer to make something stronger. You could make tens of thousands of humans in seconds, while making a great monster could take you a couple of minutes.
Lastly, you're immortal. As a deity of life, you cannot die as you lack the very concept of death. It doesn't matter if you are turned into a stain on the wall or completely obliterated until nothing is left. You'll be completely fine in a couple of hours, as you were never hurt in the first place.
However, be warned that there are two ways to remove this immortality. Firstly, there are a couple beings who can introduce the concept of death onto those who lack it. And if this happens to you, then you will find your immortality will disappear until you can find a way to remove your own concept of death.
The second way you can die if all other life ceases to be. If you find yourself the last living thing in existence, your immortality will also be removed.