Knull's non-gaze lingered on Doom, the mockery in his ancient consciousness solidifying into something akin to analytical curiosity. The mortal did not flinch. Doom did not posture. Doom simply stated a truth he believed to be more fundamental than the void itself. Fascinating.
"Child, you speak boldly. Bolder than Celestials." Knull's voice was a silken tide of cosmic allure, washing through the Abyss. "You speak of shaping worlds, yet the only world you have ever truly mastered is one of fleeting, fragile matter. Your throne is dirt and water, bound by laws I abandoned eons ago"
"I watched empires rise and vanish into silence." Knull continued, his voice the patient rasp of a glacier grinding mountains to dust. "Beings that mold the cosmos into their playground and rule as if they were gods and beyond it. I crushed them. Their armor split, their light extinguished. Their corpses became clay for my work"
The Abyss around them pulsed in sympathy with its master's thoughts. Images bled into their minds—not illusions, but memories from the dawn of time. Galaxies screaming as they were devoured. Celestials, beings of incalculable power, being swatted from the sky like insects, their divine armor cracking, their light extinguished. Their divine body used to make his creation, the symbiotes.
"And yours shall too. Power is a flicker." The illusions vanished. "A flicker in the Abyss. A brief warmth before the eternal cold. A fragile castle of light before the endless Black."
The Black moved as it fought the Emerald. With every word Knull spoke, the defiant green light seemed to flicker, to shrink. For a terrifying instant, it felt like Doom's will, that unstoppable force, was actually wavering. Doom's color was losing traction. Doom's color was losing ground.
He leaned forward on his throne of bone, a subtle, almost imperceptible movement that nonetheless made the very fabric of the void contract around them.
"But you... you are different." Knull's thought-voice became a conspiratorial whisper. "I have felt your touch on the threads of magic and the architecture of science. You enslave demons and gods alike. The hunger in you is not for mere conquest. It is for mastery. It is a hunger I recognize, for it mirrors my own. Your arrogance is not a flaw; it is a tool of creation." A new note came into his voice. Seduction. The temptation of a primordial devil. "You believe this Abyss is beneath you. You are right. As it is now, it is a fractured, pathetic thing."
"But what if it were not?" Knull purred almost. "What if you did not merely sit above it, but became it? Embrace it child. Embrace the Abyss. Embrace me. Let both my and the Abyss eternity become yours. Let the Abyss flow through you, and you through it. Together, we would not just rule this broken place. We would unmake it. We would forge a new reality, a new cosmos, a perfect, silent kingdom where there is no chaos, no dissent, only the absolute, beautiful order of yours. Only your will, amplified by my endless power. Your eternal empire."
The shadows in the throne room deepened, coalescing. They formed a vision, a potential future, directly before Doom. It showed Doom, not on a throne of emerald and shadow, but on one of pure, living darkness, the black spiral of the Abyss blazing on his chest, a crown of solidified nothingness upon Doom's brow. Armies of symbiote dragons, their forms sleek and perfect, knelt before him. Universes, not just worlds, bent to Doom's will.
Knull's offer was the ultimate temptation for a being like Doom: not just power, but the promise of absolute, perfect, eternal order.
Doom watched the vision of his potential apotheosis, Doom's face an impassive metal mask. Doom did not dismiss it. Doom analyzed it. Doom saw the power, the scale, the sheer, undeniable grandeur of it. Doom saw the logic.
Then Doom spoke.
"You offer Doom eternity." Doom's voice was a flat, analytical blade. "Eternity in a silent kingdom. An empire of nothingness."
"A perfect kingdom, child." Knull corrected. "One where your will is the only law. The Supreme law."
"A kingdom with two rulers is not a kingdom. It is a compromise." Doom stated, Doom's voice ringing with a contempt so profound it was almost a physical force. "And Doom does not compromise."
The Abyss shone an brighter Emerald color, an defiant one. The color of Doom once again started to gain ground.
"You offer Doom the Abyss?" Doom's voice cut like a scalpel. "A crude tool of a witless hand. You see chaos and erase it. That is not creation. That is the tantrum of a failed artist who shatters his canvas. Doom does not erase. Doom perfects."
"Child. In the game of power and control, there is no game." Knull's voice, a wave of pure psychic emotion rang through the Abyss. "There is only one thing. The one whose will over shadows everything. And the end that is nearing him."
"There is always a game." Doom retorted, utterly unfazed by the psychic assault. "And you, Knull, have already lost it. You were defeated. Imprisoned. Caged by your own creations. You are not a king. You are a prisoner, dreaming of an empire that was taken from you. You are a memory, a ghost haunting the ruins of your own failure."
The emerald latticework of Doom power spreading before him, forcing the Abyss itself to adapt the color of Doom. "In the game of Power and Control, you, the King in Black, you have already lost."
"You offer Doom the Abyss? Doom does not share. Doom does not erase. Doom perfects. Your eternity is a stagnant prison. Doom's eternity will be conquest eternal."
Doom raised a gauntlet, energy crackling around his fingertips, a perfect fusion of arcane might and hyper-advanced science.
"You speak of Doom's hunger. You are correct. Doom is hunger. All bends. All breaks. Before Doom. Doom kingdom is not that of a silent kingdom of the dead, but of a perfect, functioning universe where all things, from the lowest microbe to the highest god, recognize one undeniable, absolute truth."
Doom's eyes burned emerald as they met the Abyss.
"That they are, and always will be, beneath Doom."
The finality of Doom words hung in the void, an edict more absolute than the darkness itself. Then, Doom's gauntlet, still raised, clenched into a fist. The emerald energy around it intensified, coalescing not into a weapon of attack, but into a key. An intricate, glowing green construct of pure force and arcane geometry.
"Devourer of Light. The one chained by his own creations." Doom's voice was a low, dangerous rumble of pure, intellectual arrogance. "A pathetic excuse for a being of your alleged stature. Yet, still Doom finds your imprisonment… inconvenient."
Doom flicked his wrist. The emerald key shot forward — thought made real, desire made law. The key did not strike Knull. It struck the throne. A throne fully tainted with the color of Doom.
The throne of bone, symbiotes and the Abyss itself, the very anchor of Knull's prison, resonated with a deep, groaning hum. Ethereal chains, woven from the symbiotes that held Knull to his place, flared into blinding visibility, wrapping around Knull's form, binding him to his ancient seat of power. The chains shattered. The Abyss howled.
Knull was free.
The King in Black rose slowly from his throne, the oppressive power rolling off him in palpable world-breaking waves. The Abyss shrieked in triumph, surging, roiling, its power no longer fractured but coalescing around its true master. The very reality of the throne room began to unravel under his unrestrained presence.
The Emerald that had now tainted the Abyss was being pushed back. Tainted in the color of Knull now.
"You have freed me, child." Knull's voice, now a chorus of the trillions that had died to him, a sound of pure, cosmic entropy that echoed in the marrow of all that heard it. "A foolish act. Yet, still child, I believe I know the reason why you did so."
Knull's voice was a low rumble of dawning, terrible understanding. "You freed me not from mercy, but pride. Child, Your pride will not slay a chained god. Your pride demands the victory be absolute."
Doom's looked down from his throne. To the now free King in Black. Doom rose from his throne, regal and kingsly. The Abyss rose as if to make steps for him. Steps of the color of Emerald. Steps of the color of Doom.
Doom walked straight to Knull. Their eyes met.
"Doom doesn't hunt sickly nor chained preys. It is beneath Doom." Knull could feel the arrogance from it. The Abyss responded in kind. It boiled. The Black rushing towards Doom.
Doom did not flinch. Doom did not raise a shield. Doom merely turned his back, a gesture of profound, ultimate contempt that was more insulting than any weapon Doom could have possibly wielded.
"A king does not dirty his hands with the petty squabbles of lesser beings." Doom stated, his voice carrying with absolute, regal authority across the churning chaos. "That is a task for those beneath him."
He snapped his fingers.
From the shadows stepped a figure — not Doom, but a Doombot unlike any before. Gleaming silver, etched in emerald runes, its armor reflected the writhing Abyss. It bowed, courtly and mocking.
This was not a soldier. This was a servant.
The Silver Bot walked past Doom, its metallic feet ringing on the now crystalline floor, a sound of measured, inevitable judgment. It stopped before the now-unbound, King in Black, and with a slight, almost courtly, bow that was a mockery of respect, it spoke. Its voice was not the synthesized drone of a machine, but a perfect, chilling mimicry of Doom's own resonant, arrogant baritone.
"King in Black. Primordial of the Abyss. Devourer of Light." The Silver Bot listed the titles. "You have been deemed an error in the grand equation of this cosmos. A chaotic variable in a universe that yearns for the perfection of absolute order. The Order of Doom."
The Bot straightened, its head tilting in a gesture of analytical contempt that was pure Doom.
"My master, Victor Von Doom, has analyzed your existence. The conclusion is simple." The Bot's head tilted, mimicking Doom's analytical contempt. "You are an inefficient, chaotic system. Your methods are crude, your ambition is devoid of vision, and your eternal kingdom is a monument to failure. You are a loose thread in the tapestry of what will be and what was."
The silver servant raised a single, gleaming hand, its fingers clenching into a fist that crackled with green, arcane fire.
"Yet you still deserve praise even if for past valor. So I shall act as a judge on the order of my master for the battle to come. Win the battle to come and you shall be given a free reign."
Knull laughed, a sound that was not of mirth, but of a breaking universe. The Abyss boiled around the Silver Bot, not attacking, but writhing in agony at the sheer cosmic absurdity of the situation.
"You misunderstand, child." Knull's thought-voice was a chillingly calm poison. "You believe you are offering a battle. You are not. You are attempting to impose your small, fleeting rules upon a game that has no beginning and no end. You send a toy to lecture a concept. This is not arrogance. This is madness. And its nature for us Primordial to feast on madness."
"Your nature is irrelevant." Doom's voice rang in the Abyss.
"You are a problem. And Doom.. is the solution."