The fight centered in the firmament. I was now directly supporting Elise against that entity, though the scales had not yet tipped in our favor.
A god, even one in a precarious state, possesses divine power of a quality and density that eclipses a demigod. Even weakened, he remained dangerous. We had to be especially careful of his stranger attacks—those that did not follow normal rules.
Elise was using an avatar, so she didn't face the same risk as a real body. I, for my part, had several methods to resist or avoid critical damage. However, this was much more complex than our fight with the Yakuruna; it wasn't a physical clash, and the disparity in the nature of our energy made my attacks frustratingly ineffective.
My options for wounding him were limited. The power combined with the Jarjacha wands was formidable, but they were still demigod-level objects facing a divine-caliber defense. Most of my high-caliber abilities had a semi-physical component that forced me into suicidal proximity. Therefore, I resorted to [Envy] to mimic the capabilities of the sphere or Elise as needed. It was an inefficient process; I could replicate the technique, but I lacked the essence and everything that sustained it, resulting in an inferior imitation. Sure, there were some cases where I achieved interesting synergies with my own skills… but they were few at this level.
As such, I became a harasser—a secondary attacker dedicated exclusively to hindering his movements.
Meanwhile, down on the ground, Helena and Hannah continued to deal with the hordes of ghouls. Helena carried the weight of the combat, moving like a whirlwind of frost while protecting her companion. Hannah, at this point, offered almost zero help; this battle had transcended her level and her methods. Only under Helena's constant cover could she cast any effective magic, though her efforts felt like drops of water in a wildfire.
"Why do you resist death? Even gods are destined to fall..."
The sphere spoke once more. His intent was clearly directed at Elise. He had noticed she was not a fully consolidated god. His words were not just sound; they were vectors of coercive power trying to stifle her morale with his superior might. It wouldn't be as effective as it would be against mortals—he couldn't subdue her immediately—but he could wear down her will. Weaken her. Prepare her for the final blow. He knew that murdering and devouring the essence of another divine being would consolidate his authority over death in this era—a feast that would make him invincible.
"Then die yourself!" Elise roared, charging with her horn wrapped in blinding light.
She could feel that pressure… but it wasn't working. The sphere's mental corrosion hadn't stopped her. What that being ignored was that Elise's will possessed an immovable anchor standing before her: me. As long as I remained on the battlefield, any desire for surrender or death was non-existent in her.
After several exchanges, the sphere seemed to understand this and turned its omnidirectional attention to me.
"Mortals are destined to perish... it is an indelible rule of the cosmos. Not even gods can save you from your end."
And, once again… he failed.
The great sphere failed for the second time, being struck from both flanks once more as it tried to subjugate me. Its voice, laden with a sentence of absolute death, crashed against an infinite void when it reached my mind. My nature could not be considered "normal" by any standard; I possessed too many passive abilities defending a sanity that was, in itself, already immune to such threats.
Furthermore, just as Elise anchored herself in me, I anchored myself in her, in my insatiable desire to enjoy this life, in my women, and in the future of my children. Against an imperturbable mind and my will cemented in the pleasure of living, the discourse of death was nothing more than white noise.
The God of Death was furious. He couldn't believe his bad fortune: his recovery had been sabotaged and now he found himself dragged into a battle of attrition—a humiliating situation for someone of his level.
Seeing no results, his gaze, laden with an icy malevolence, finally settled on the ground, where Helena and Hannah continued annihilating his minions. Every ghoul destroyed was a tiny portion of sacrifice that vanished, diminishing his banquet slowly but steadily.
Then, he traced a plan: a domino effect of despair. He intended to annihilate the weakest to break my will, thereby succeeding in killing me to sink Elise and, finally, devour the goddess's essence. It was a logical strategy in which every death would strengthen him, just as all the deaths in the nearby regions were doing... but it was doomed to failure from its conception.
The instant that mortal gaze fixed on them, Helena felt it. So did I. I launched a mental [Message] that cracked like a whip:
[RUN!!]
Despite being an ethereal entity, Helena reacted with astonishing readiness. She wrapped Hannah in her icy illusory arms and took desperate flight away from the epicenter. I had wanted Hannah to witness the end of this adventure—she had earned it—but I wasn't going to allow her to become a collateral casualty.
The great sphere saw this, but although it tried to act, it had "two very annoying flies" interrupting it. Still, one must not underestimate the power of a god. We blocked and diverted every flash of its power we could, and yet, the residual force of a god is terrifying: the vegetation for a kilometer around withered instantly, and the earth cracked, forming furrows that in the future would be canyons. If Helena hadn't deployed an absolute spectral shield over both of them, Hannah would have been reduced to meat paste by the mere residual shockwave.
Frustrated, the sphere began to vibrate with violent intensity while the sky flickered in bursts of bloody light. The deity was moving from fed-up to fearful. He felt how, with every passing second, the advantage was slipping through his fingers.
And it was logical. Elise had her real body safe in the Fief, from where she could continue sending divine power. Furthermore, I had already given her permission to spend her entire reserve, as her state would reset after the end of the campaign. She had no reason to hold back.
For my part, I was an arithmetic anomaly. Thanks to [Wrath], my power grew indefinitely; slower and slower, yes… but constantly and infinitely. I only needed to feed emotions like hate, fury… rage. And I could do it. I generated artificial fury through my [Blood Control], and my magic reserve was constantly replenished by my clones and [Sloth] from the Fief.
At first, we hadn't been true threats to this god. But that was no longer true. The tables were turning. And he knew it.
Understanding that his time was running out, the great cloud sphere made a desperate decision. It forced a transition that should have occurred only after its full recovery, precipitating a metamorphosis that wasn't ready to happen.
The temple, already wounded by the heat of combat, began to exude a luminescence that traveled across every relief and every ancient stone. Then, the air exploded.
An expansive wave of oppressive aura hit Elise and me, followed immediately by a gravitational and mystical suction force that seemed to want to devour the vacuum itself. We didn't understand what was happening, but it was something massive.
While we resisted thanks to our magnitude, in the distance, Helena and Hannah felt the blow. Their magic reserves were violently tugged; for a legendary specter like Helena, it was only a nuisance, but Hannah felt the oxygen turn to lead—a magical asphyxiation that robbed her of her strength.
It had been an oversight on my part: beneath the zigurat lay a runic matrix of colossal magnitude, so well-mimicked with the geology that I only perceived it now, when the god infused his divine power into it and it seemed to have "completed" itself. The great sphere returned to its position above the temple and the "Siphon" was activated on a continental scale. The entire Amazon jungle trembled; the air grew heavy, laden with the lament of the earth being stripped of its magical energy.
The blood liquid I fought to keep away escaped my control, flying toward the temple like a reverse river. But it wasn't just blood. I could feel how the ambient magic, the effluvia of the jungle, and the energy of every living being were dragged toward the vortex.
It was a massive absorption. A disaster. Although the epicenter was with us, the phenomenon affected the entire jungle.
In Amazonian towns and cities—those we saw and many others—all mages felt something trying to tear away their power. The weakest could not resist and were left in a state close to "magical anemia." The strongest or those furthest away managed to offer some resistance.
But the most affected were not the living. It was the lifeless things.
Magical objects lost their energy, becoming useless or weakened… except for those protected by a sorcerer. And the worst was for the great constructions. All those palaces and temples of Aztec-like architecture that I complained so much about began to tremble… and then to crumble, crack… or even roll back in time until they disappeared. Everything created through magic—or sustained by it—started to degenerate.
If someone could have perceived it, they would have noticed something even worse: space and time in the entire affected zone were becoming unstable. Using a Time-Turner or trying to Apparate there would have had unpredictable—likely atrocious—consequences.
That was a colossal spell that should never have been activated. But it was.
And what the great sphere didn't know… was that it was condemning itself.
This world no longer possesses the stability or the energies of old, when this ancient magical siphon was created. If it had been activated in another era—before or after this drought of primordial energies—there would have been no problem. But this was not that time.
While Elise and I covered the retreat of Hannah and Helena—who were seeking the necessary distance to enter the Fief—we perceived a pang of fear. But it was a confused fear, emanating from the deity itself.
He seemed to have recovered his ancestral power, nearing once again being a full divinity… but something didn't fit. Elise was the one who perceived it best. The oppressive aura that was previously suffocating was now more terrifying, but strangely more... bearable.
Although the alicorn was new as a goddess, she managed to notice the difference.
"That… is not pure divine power," she murmured, confused.
I nodded. I too felt the discrepancy between before and now.
We stopped to watch as the great sphere completed its transformation. It had gone from being a reddish cluster to an immense mass with sky-blue hues; its voice was more thunderous, but it lacked the penetrating frequency that wounds the soul.
The God, intoxicated by the euphoria of feeling his strength restored, had not noticed the flaw in his plan. He had filled his cup with dirty water to quench his thirst, and although his power was now greater in volume, the quality of his divinity had been corrupted with the "mortal" and degraded energy of the present.