The Day of Wrath (2/4)
Haalfrin's first wave of Arkin reinforcement actually arrive sooner than Fisco had predicted – arriving in 5 minutes, instead of 10.
Unfortunately, their arrival seems to have made next to no difference.
The second those soldiers fly into the battlefield, Freyya immediately makes a curling motion with her fingers, and all the Arkin are shoved together in a compacted ball by some invisible force.
With them all packed nice and neatly, the Reaper of Soldiers hurls her spear at them and obliterates them all in one strike.
Maybe it's due to Freyya's status as a Death goddess, but the Death Aura around her is many thousands of times more potent than Haalfrin's.
Thus, the Arkin all start to regenerate their bodies in a matter of seconds, rather than their revival taking around half an hour.
The next wave of Arkin to show up is much larger than the first, though before they even get to draw their weapons, Freyya shouts at them, "STOP!!"
Strangely, all the Arkin's expression go blank, and they immediately stand still.
It seems that Freyya has the ability command the dead, to a certain degree.
Freyya then pulls out a black lantern, she does a casual swipe with it. All the Arkin dissolve into silver lights, and long strands of silver threads burst out of them and weave their way over to her lantern before being sucked up completely.
With the Arkin's souls being captured by the Reaper, there's no way for them to revive and rejoin the battle.
Haalfrin looks behind him to see what's going one. "F###!" He lost nearly a thousand men in the first moments of their exchange – men who can't come back.
'I'm going to have to be more careful about bringing out my men. At least we have over half a million more soldiers to spare.'
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-The Far Future-
In the first few moments of their exchange with the angry Dragon Goddess, all the remaining gods here are quickly drowned in despair.
The dragon's rapid growth shows no signs of stopping; if they'd been on a planet, rather than an endlessly large World Tree, then Drakavar's size could've easily dwarfed a planet by now.
Dipping her head down, the mad Goddess plunges her open maw into the ground and swallows huge chunks of brown plains – swallowing millions of stray gods and Death Realm soldiers with each bite.
General Haalfrin looks on and sees large chunks of his army being eaten by the Devouring Demon, and he senses his connections with them being severed.
The Demon isn't just destroying their bodies; she's devouring them completely – souls and all.
Seeing this, the Death King's general looks down and sighs, "I was hoping to wear Drakavar out by using my soldiers' ability to revive within seconds… but I guess we won't be able to do that."
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-The Present-
Haalfrin barely has time to think, with Freyya madly charging at him over and over again. She's impossibly fast and strong, but due to her madness messing up her coordination, it's actually quite easy to predict her movements.
Even still, the mad goddess is too fast, and Haalfrin is quickly losing the energy to dodge anymore.
Das senses this growing danger too. With trembling hands, the old Reaper reaches into his pocket and pulls out a teleportation talisman. "Use it quick!" he shouts at Haalfrin over the loud, roaring wind.
Freyya notices the strong Yiir magic on the talisman, and some shred of sanity remaining in her realizes that her life will get a lot more complicated if she lets them use this thing.
So, faster than Haalfrin can react, Freyya uses a Telekinesis spell to rip the enchanted paper out of his hand in the same moment he activated the spell.
With the spell being partially activated already, Haalfrin and Das still teleport away, though they don't go to the neighboring world, like how Das was planning. Instead, they appear in a random location about a dozen miles away.
With Freyya nowhere in sight, Haalfrin suddenly has a little breathing room.
So, he summons a few of his highest ranking captains, and they go over their tactics really quickly.
"We're going to need to spread out – flee in every direction," Haalfrin commands in a low voice. "Do everything you can to stay alive for as long as possible. Bait out her attacks; get her to waste time & energy."
'She's gone completely crazy for now, so she should be quite reckless with her mana. Maybe we can get her to exhaust herself before we fight her again?'
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-The Far Future-
As General Haalfrin orders all his men to spread out as far as possible, Drakavar sees this and snarls out in hate, "WHERE ARE YOU HIDING, BUGS!?"
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-The Present-
And so, Haalfrin and all his current forces split up and do their best to hide.
With Freyya's huge, explosive attacks only killing a dozen soldiers at a time, she starts to get frustrated.
As part of the ritual, she wasn't supposed to know about the strategy Haalfrin was going to use to fight her. All she knows for sure is that her husband and the armies of the dead fight against Drakavar and fall to her.
She sees Haalfrin's cowardly behavior and she snarls in anger, "Where are you hiding!? Bugs!"
Freyya pauses in shock for a moment. In a brief moment of clarity, she thinks, 'Did I just… call by husband a bug? That's… uncharacteristically irrational of me. I'm not the type to insult people like that…'
Of course, Mantling an event as big as 'the end of the universe' is unprecedented.
Other Mantling Rituals just affect your luck, but this Mantling is so powerful that it's reaching back in time and playing Freyya like a puppet – influencing her to follow in the exact same footsteps as the one she was imitating – Drakavar herself.
And so, Freyya starts entering a strange, berserk state, and she feels the last of her consciousness slipping away.
The black scale around her neck begins resonating with Freyya's soul, and the black power contained within it starts invading her body – it's power doubling on itself again and again.
Because Freyya is touching Drakavar's Fate right now, the black scale feels the shadow of its master within the Reaper.
Naturally, the scale would faithfully give its power back to its "master".
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Down below, Das watches in horror as an unprecedented power starts welling up inside Freyya - or rather, inside that scale. Knowing that Haalfrin is too far away to hear him now, Das sends a telepathic message to the man. "RUN HAALFRIN, RUN!"
Despite being a genuine Death goddess, the power she's emitting right now is several times her peak strength.
Everything within a thousand miles of Freyya instantly turns to ashes from the hot Aura around her, and Freyya herself starts screaming in pain from the heat collecting in her body.
The black scale's of foreign power is far too much for her, and she's doing everything she can to keep it from tearing her body apart.
The pain only starts to alleviate when…
…when the her arms and legs are slowly covered in black, jagged scales, and her eyes start turning slitted and emitting a golden light. Her teeth grow sharper, and her fingers and toes start elongating into bladelike talons.
The possessed Reaper holds up her hands, and everyone in Lareen can feel the earth shaking, for the earth itself could feel the shadow of its master above its surface.
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-The Far Future-
Far, far below the trunk of the world Tree, where Imho'Reeth's palace once stood, there are endless plains which connects to the Death Realm.
Completely surrounding the base of the World Tree's trunk is a throng of countless gods and soldiers of the Dead. They're all watching as the Dragon Goddess continues to grow larger and stronger.
The entire time that she's growing, the wrathful Goddess is destroying billions of people with every step, and she's crushing countless more every time she so much as swishes her tail a little.
If Drakavar had ever used a flame breath, then she'd have killed the entire army in an instant. However, due to her Soul Stone being missing, she's actually unable to manifest much of her magic at all. The only thing she can reliably do is swing her body around.
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Several hours pass before Drakavar finally finishes growing to her full size… and by now, she stretches so high that when standing up, she's as tall as the World Tree's trunk. She's so huge and lumbering that she can't even notice the puny gods down below.
With her enemies out of sight, the mad dragoness looks around for something to destroy… but the only thing she can see is the World Tree itself…
Seeing the dragon's gaze landing on the Tree, Haalfrin roars at his soldiers, "Stop her NOW!"
Sensing their general's command, a flood of countless beings – gods, champions, heroes, and elementals – all attack the dragon's feet.
Sensing an annoying prickling on her ankles, Drakavar flaps her wings a few times out of agitation. Due to her being so massive, her wings easily break the speed limit of the universe – travelling faster than light, through from an outsider's perspective, her wings look like they're moving quite slowly.
The dragon's wings destroy the air around her body – creating massive, sweeping explosions that destroys much of Haalfrin's army. Since she's not eating them right now, his soldiers just come back to life immediately, and they continue their attack.
While her attention is mostly focused on the World Tree, the Devouring Demon opens her mouth wide and clamps it around the great Tree's trunk.
The spirit of Igdris groans in pain as it fights to hold itself together – to hold onto life.
Sensing the Tree's resistance, Drakavar's blood boils hotter in rage, and she clamps down even harder on the tree.
In fact, Drakavar is focusing so completely on biting the tree in half that she forgets to even flap her wings anymore. With the armies of the dead not being attacked
anymore, they charge forward with renewed vigor and pour all of their strength into attacking her legs.
Scale after scale is torn from the Goddess's skin, and her blood floods the ground below like an ocean. The cuts in her flesh become so deep that parts of her bone is starting to show.
Despite the immense pain she's in, the wrathful dragon has long ago stopped caring about her own injuries; the only thing on her mind is, 'How much pain and destruction can I cause before I perish?'
With her Soul Stone being missing, it almost seems like she's unable to kill the World Tree so easily.
As the spirit of Igdris is successfully keeping its trunk intact, and as the gods below hail a storm of magic at the mad dragon, some think they might pull through…
… that is, until Drakavar suddenly plants all 4 feet firmly on the ground, braces herself, and yanks up as hard as she can.
With a painful groaning, the World tree itself is slowly uprooted from the ground below. The World Tree's spirit screams and perished in complete agony as it's torn out by the roots.
The tree itself is so tall that it might literally take weeks or even years to completely hit the ground, but all the gods can feel the tragedy of what just happened.
As the great tree of worlds topples slowly to the ground, Drakavar stands atop the unearthed root and roars out in bestial rage – clearly not satisfied with what she's done.