Mongul and Darkseid circled each other, walking around in the center of Mongul's throne room.
Mongul's fists were cracked, bleeding yellow blood. His knuckles were split open from the force of his own blows. His shoulders were lit on purple fire. Even though the intense exchange of blows was not affecting the flames, it seemed like nothing would be able to extinguish them.
Mongul lunged forward again, moving even faster this time. He was trying to put out the fires using his superhuman speed. But despite the supersonic speed of his leaps, the fires persisted.
Mongul was not strong magically, nor was he versed in magic. He couldn't figure out the purpose of these flames. The only way out for him was to end the fight swiftly before the fire would finish whatever it was doing. Mongul began his relentless flurry of blows. This was do or die for him.
Despite the power behind each of the opponent's strikes that was enough to crush stone and metal with ease, Darkseid parried each strike with the shaft of Noctyrn.
The sounds of metal parrying the bare hands of the enemy echoed as flesh burst against the metal. Pieces of meat and yellow blood were flung around as Mongul stubbornly continued his desperate assault.
The Warlord of Warworld kept swinging his fists in his unadulterated rage. And the Emperor of Apokolips kept parrying completely unworried. The power difference between them was too big. Disappointingly, it seemed like Mongul was nothing special.
From outside their combat looked like a tornado of limbs. The established pattern of strikes was seldomly disrupted by stray streams of Noctyrn's fire bursting out and hitting one of the columns of the throne room. The floor beneath the two planetary rulers turned into molten lava under the pressure of their unmatched power.
Darkseid caught another mindless strike against his chest armor, palming Mongul's fist with his own. The bloodied wrist bones crunched in his grip. Holding the enemy arm in an iron grip, Darkseid raised his free arm. Noctyrn swished through the heated air, slashing at the chest of the enemy.
A clang rang out in the throne room, muffled by the sounds of battle. But the New God had been waiting for it. And the golden spark of something falling to the ground confirmed his success.
A gem that was previously embedded in Mongul's chest was now rolling in the lava. Despite the immense heat of the lava, the gem remained intact and unharmed. This was a powerful artefact, known to some as the gem key that granted Mongul his control of Warworld.
Darkseid began his counterattack, now that the opponent was stripped of his weapon. The strain twisted his features as he started putting more power behind his strikes. The purple veins on his arms bulged.
Noctyrn spun in his hands, purple energy flying from it like a hurricane. Mongul dodged the burst of energy and the polearm's strikes, weaving between each of them. He was successful for the most part.
From the barrage of Darkseid's strikes, only one was able to land on the target. But it was enough. It caught the enemy across the shoulder, leaving a gash that spat golden blood.
"You think this is enough to kill me?" Mongol snarled, stopping his onslaught to clutch the wound on his shoulder.
"Perfectly." Was the simple response of Darkseid.
He twisted his weapon in his hands, channeling power through it. The crimson veins along the blade flared, full of power. Noctyrn started singing his song of greed.
The fires all around the room, left from the previous strikes of the weapon, responded in turn. They were everywhere: on the floor, columns, ceiling, and even on the body of the opponent.
Purple mist rose from the fires, as if they were magnetized. It flew high under the ceiling, forming a purple cloud, before flying back to its master.
But as the weapon of the god of tyranny and domination Noctyrn yearned for dominance and power more than it did for the rush of the battle. And those two things complemented each other well.
That is why his purple fires were not meant for destruction. Noctyrn, at his basis, was akin to a power leech. And right now he was taking Mongul's power and syphoning it to his master.
"Let's see who you are before power greater than yours". Darkseid's voice was low, his eyes flared red with energy. He spoke as if he were carrying a judgment. There were no unnecessary emotions in his words.
Two rays of crimson energy shot from his eyes, bringing god's judgment to the enemy. An ancient, inexorable force drawn not only from his own but also from the strength he had taken from Mongul himself, the Omega Beams had been fired from his eyes.
The space and time themselves twisted around the two crimson beams. They cut through the heated, lightless air of the throne room. Two jagged lances furled to the enemy, twisting in unnatural angles, snapping through the air in weird trajectories.
On the far side of the chamber, the Furies shielded their eyes. Even they, trained warriors of Apokolips, born and raised in torment and starvation, could not bear the sheer magnitude of the power hurled through the room.
The Omega Beams struck Mongul square in the chest.
They tore through layers of defenses, through armor made of living metal, through his impenetrable skin, through tough as metal bone, through the very soul of Mongul.
For an instant, he was suspended mid-breath, his enormous body frozen in disbelief. Warzoon Warlord tried to reach Warworld, his perfect weapon, his slave of a planet. As it was his place of power, his cradle.
But the Warworld remained silent. No response had come. No insurgence of newfound power had been granted to Mongul to save him from the judgment of an alien god.
The Omega energy took hold inside of him, coursing through veins and sinew like a myriad of red suns.
Every fiber of Mongul's form ignited. The golden skin of the warlord shimmered, cracked, and burst apart in flares of crimson light. The power that had once made him a god among his people now betrayed him, left him to die.
He tried to roar. Only a soundless agony had escaped his open mouth full of blood. His muscles liquefied. His organs vaporized. The flesh peeled away, layer by layer, until only the gleam of his steel circlet remained. And even that circlet's fate was death, as it flew down into the pool of lava underneath to meet its withering destiny.
What remained of Mongul fell to the ground, turning to dust and embers. The great warlord of the Warworld was no more than a fistful of ash floating in the air, falling into the open maw of molten lava underneath it.
Thunderous silence fell on the room.
Once glorious throne room, the heart of Mongul's dominion, was left in ruins. Columns crumbled to stone rubble, banners turned to rags and cinders, the ground reduced to a series of lava pools, the remains of the molted white marble floor.
Darkseid stood still amidst the ruins, his hands clasped behind his back. The crimson aura surrounding him slowly faded, the lines of the Omega symbol on his armor absorbing the remnants of the energy from the room.
"Warworld," he declared, triumph evident in his tone, "is mine."
Darkseid stood alone for a moment longer, looking upon the devastation.
The Furies approached him slowly, hesitantly triumphant. They maneuvered through the field of lava pools splattered across the place.
Their bodies carried traces of battle despite them not being part of it. Barda's armor was dented in a couple of places; Aurelie's ponytail was in a jumbled mess, her arms and cheeks carried a few scratches; and Tina's shield bore new scorch marks, reminders of the chaos they had survived.
"Is he… gone?" Tina asked quietly, astonished by how easily the enemy had lost.
Darkseid turned his gaze upon Mongul's ruined throne room, the legacy of the fallen warlord. The stone floor turned into pools of lava from the intensity of the battle. Fallen stone columns. The ceiling that was now unsupported would soon give out under its own weight. The banners and portraits on the walls were all ablaze and torn.
"His body is dead. So is his soul." Darkseid said with a serene tone.
Omega Beams flared in his eyes again, the angular rays engulfing Mongul's throne that stood at the farthest wall. The sulfuric smell of burning stone filled the room as the history of the Warworld was being rewritten.
When the fire died, nothing remained but the crater where Mongul's place of power had stood. Only the yellow gem remained floating on the surface of the lava.
Darkseid picked it up from the ground and put it into one of his pockets. The binding of the Warworld would come later, as it required a ritual. For now, he needed to gather support from local forces. There were still a lot of things to take care of before this conquest could be considered complete officially.
The battlefield fell silent as the battle came to an end. The air itself seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of what was coming next.
"We need to move. Warworld bends to my will now or dies resisting." He declared solemnly.
Looking back at his Furies, he gauged their condition. He knew that after the intense battles of this day, his warriors would need prolonged rest. But, for now, they needed to keep pushing past their limits.
He turned away from the ashes of the fallen warlord and stepped into the hallway that they had entered from.
Behind him, the Furies followed — three shapes moving through ruin and silence, their armor reflecting the dying glow of fire.
They left the chamber without a word. Not long after they had exited the Necropolis, the ancient structure fell under its own weight. A relic of ancient history that would remain forever in the past, devoid of its previous glory.