Chase clenched his jaw, pulling back as much as he could with his current momentum, watching in horror as a volley of arrows made their coarse towards his.
He blinked, snapping back to reality and twisting his body with a violent jerk as Apocalypse followed in suite, whirling around with a frenzy of flames that incinerated all incoming attacks.
Chase's eye twitched, drawing his seconds of attention towards his wrist... Which was burning violently, leaving behind charred and withered skin...
'Shit... I can't overdo it with Cryptis then...' He thought, bracing as he homed in on Phillip, who outstretched a gilded spear as a golden artifact glimmered above his breastplate.
Suddenly, Chase grit his teeth, sensing a terrible quaking beneath him...
He frowned, pulling his leg up earlier than anticipated as a crimson vortex began to rip itself into reality on the bottom of his boot.
That moment, a jagged golden spear tore from the ground, catching the bottom of Chase's foot as a portal pulled him into the underworld on one side...
And firing himself out of a newly summoned portal on the other side of the pillar, shooting towards Phillip with Apocalypse brimming with Axis enhancements.
Chase's hair glimmered gold, but below his overly confident smile... Sat the nest of corruption, bubbling along the multiple wounds on his neck.
Phillip deflected the incoming attack with the wave of his spear, knocking Chase to the ground and into a clash, forcing him to back up as multiple soldiers closed in on him from seemingly all sides...
'Blow it dude... What the hell?!' Chase glanced through the forest towards Gemini's direction, but quickly realized it pointless with so little time.
"Plan B then..." He grinned, his eyes quickly darting around as the archer from the battle beneath the coliseum knocked a glowing arrow from beyond a wave of soldiers.
'Duck...'
The arrow soared above his head, slaughtering several low-ranking guards in its way...
Chase pressed his fingertips against the ground and braced as he fired a wave of axis energy into the ground, immediately flipping Apocalypse towards its blunt side and hurling his entire body into a downward slam at the heart of the most populated area of soldiers... Leaving behind a deafening explosion followed by several demonic chains ripping free from lingering portals and catching the surviving soldiers in the area off guard.
A shaky breath left his lips, his hands numb as violet chaotic energy began to overtake Apocalypse, forcing his grip free from his weapon as he backed up into a soldier with wide -eyes.
'What am I doing?' Chase felt a blade piercing his side, being forced into using axis to free himself from the blade...
Rolling and Tumbling through a small crowd of vanguards and directly into a Gollumized Construct.
CRASH!
Chase broke straight through its sternum, landing with several flips through the mud as his hand began to overtake with a terribly painful amount of corruption.
He screamed, finally come to a stop as blood began to spill from his lips.
"No... No no no no, not now... Please anytime but now!" His eyes flashed, his body moving on its own as three arrows fell one by one into a willow tree behind him.
"Come on King-slayer!" Phillip's laughter echoed through the forest.
"If you are no threat to me? Then what does that make of your famous victory against that blasphemous King Rider!?" His eyes shunned with violent golden streaks as a wave of Vanguards shuffled past him with shields up.
Chase took an off-balance step back, and there it was again...
'Huh...?' His frantic eyes snuck upwards, glancing at a golden string that had been hanging above him for nearly ten seconds now.
Time began to slow...
However, it was not either of the sides doing... At least Chase assumed...
'I'd appreciate it...' He thought.
"If you wouldn't go poking into my head unwarranted..." He growled, turning his vision inward as the energetic veins in his body had begun to pulse with a strange sense of alien relief.
'I'm surprised! Really! I am... It's not every day when someone notices my presence watching them... That tells me that you have excellent intuition and awareness, but I already knew that much...' A stranger's malicious and almost cold feminine voice audibly noted in his mind.
Chase's vision lowered, his body acting on its own accord as it began to soar towards the soldiers of Seh Jenah, Apocalypse returning despite the vile vines of corruption breaking from its own catalyst.
'Wait?' Chase thought, having came to the mental conclusion of already knowing that Apocalypse had its own Catalyst...
'I never took it apart... I don't think I did at least...?' He thought, snapping back into reality as his body was suspended in the air with Apocalypse lingering on the tips of his fingers, wavering as Chase hurled straight towards the eldest brother of Vex's personal guard, with a blast of invisible energy being the ignition of his momentum.
Although confused: Chase took this chance, spinning and opening a portal before he made contact, snapping his fingers as he leaped out from behind the soldier donned in slick violet armor and brought down a devastating attack.
Chase watched in horror as his axe rippled against the back skin of the soldier's chestplate.
He tilted his head, watching as the soldier turned his own.
And what could have easily been confused for some sort of Hex, had exploded in Chase's face with the force of his own attack, launching him into the ground and...
He began to fall...
His eyes widened, putting Chase into a state of complete shock as towering buildings began to rise up from all sides around him, each built with bricks made from sandstone and granite, each reaching the very end of his vision above his shivering body.
"..." Chase was stunned, completely speechless, unable to hold even in his own screams of terror more than a second long.
And that's when he realized that the end of his vision... Was the beginning?
A paradox? Contradiction? It was impossible to tell, as a sphere of silver-ish white sat at the top of the abyss, while below sat the top, revealing an endless cycles of falling through the gap between all of these impossible structures.
"Wha-" 'What are you?' He thought, before catching a glimpse of a colossal golden shoulder-plate between two of the towers.
A handful of claws curled around the side of the tower, completely destroying the bricks that made it up.
And there she was...
Her golden eyes were filled with absolute humor as she gazed upon this poor mortal.
"I'm quite unsure... But the people- No... That isn't quite right... The laws that I surround myself with, consider my identity to be that of... Romania... The Devil of Envy..." Orange and Gold energies leaked from the corners of her grin as her words quaked the entire structure of this impossible reality...