Gusto lay prone on the ground, unconscious.

  Adam, incapable of moving his body, could only just barely look forwards. A thick film of a strange oily, spiritual substance oozed around his psyche. Whether it was protecting him or harming him was irrelevant at this point. He was unable to take any action.

  Hellig and Hrime each attempted to manifest their respective weapons. They failed in unison.

  Juhend Sureb, kneeling on the ground, had blood running from his tear ducts. His eyes, now turned into a mushy liquid substance, slowly oozed down his cheeks. His nose bled profusely, and brain matter could be seen leaking from his ears. The demigod’s breathing was haggard.

  In front of them, stood Sequence. Arms outstretched, His face bore a number of small, bloodied scratches. His clothes were partially burnt and slightly torn. In his right hand, he held the Diell Instrument.

  Ripples of spiritual energy began to pour out from the newfound True Divinity. Like dropping a boulder into a pond, the balance of the Realm was irrevocably changed. For now, Sequence was the Realm. Having stolen the authority of the Diell Instrument, which was the authority of this Realm made manifest, it was none other than Sequence Himself that held sway here.

  The first to change was the sky. The air, which had been windy enough to billow falling snow into a white-out, became entirely still across the entire Realm. Like a blank canvas, the sky became utterly devoid of all texture, depth and feature. A void of a canvas like, off-white expanse now filled what used to be the sky.

  A split second later, the ground changed. Once, ice and snow lay over top dirt here. Now, the entire Realm was filled with a white, quicksand-like substance. It was featureless and blank, shifting to match the mass and gravity of the items within it, unwilling to let prey go. A void of off-white quicksand now filled what used to be the ground.

  Against such a backdrop, Sequence laughed. For He had won. It had taken Him centuries, but He had finally achieved True Divinity.

  “I should thank you, father. It is with your sacrifice, that I shall usher in the advent of God into this pitiful cosmos. Mother shall be reborn, and together, Her and I, we shall welcome in the holiness of the ultimate divinity!”

  Sequence’s form soon solidified back into its more stable state. No longer needing His divine essence on display to deal with His father, He relaxed into a state of ease.

  Gripping the Diell Instrument, Sequence placed it under His father’s chin, forcing the demigod to upturn his face. Without eyes to perceive, nor ears to hear, nor a nose to breathe, Juhend Sureb no longer had the sensory data necessary to maintain his own Partial Divine Form. Though of course, such a thing would have been futile regardless.

  Faced with the son he wished he never had, unable to sense beyond his immediate surroundings, Juhend Sureb knew what was about to happen. A grim smile played upon his lips, nearly mocking the Angel in front of him.

  “Do what you feel you must, Sangar.”

  Sequence clicked His tongue.

  “My name is Sequence.”

  A slight resistance of partially divine flesh being pierced. A faint sound of blood pattering to the ground as if the ichor of heaven were descending on the expanseless Earth. A cessation of the breathing of a being.

  Juhend Sureb was dead. Unable to maintain additional illusionary realities once his abilities were compromised in such a severe way, the chief exorcist of the Accepted Pantheon could not stop the Diell Instrument from plunging down into his neck, chest and stomach. Going straight through his mouth, the fork wielded by his son skewered him like a pig.

  As the Instrument which had slain his wife, the Mother of Monsters, ended his own life, Juhend Sureb felt nothing. For there was no emotional stimulation that he could sense.

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  With divine blood splattering down in heaps from the severance of life before Him, Sequence removed the Diell Instrument from His father’s still warm corpse. Soon, the blood of the demigod pooled under its own gravity, swirling around the Diell Instrument. With a triumphant strike, Sequence pierced the sky, causing it to crack in a complex pattern.

  Hellig attempted to flee. Not a simple abandonment of post, this was pure survival, spiritual instinct and nothing more. However, the Chosen was unable to detect his Anchor- it was as if the sequence of events that had led him to fashioning the Anchor to begin with had been severed from the true reality of the cosmos.

  Hrime attempted to run. Unfortunately for her, she was no longer able to utilize her lower body. She had forgotten how. The very concept of utilizing such a sequence of thoughts was foreign to her.

  …

  A choir of angelic voices emanated from the crack in the sky. A spiritual presence, vast, nearly unending, poured through. A deep crimson light shown through the sky, ladening everything in a deep blood red hue. The sky began to drip, not rain so much as tears. Sequence’s face, once nearly unmarred, was now bleeding profusely from deep gashes. The Angel simply laughed.

  Adam felt the presence beyond the sky thicken. Like a myriad of eyes landing on the entire Realm at once, the pressure would have been unbearable had he not had the oily sensation permeating his mind.

  The faint voice of a choral being sung echoed through the crack in the sky. Whispering in a thousand languages and singing in a thousand more, it was akin to a mother singing a lullaby for Her child.

  A feminine form entered through the crack in the sky. Her unclothed form, at once both striking and repulsive to all onlookers, was a living juxtaposition. Her skin was pristine and smooth, but behind her stretched out vast wings of umbilical cords and sinew. These cords squirmed in the air of their own accord, crying like babes fresh from the womb. Her lower region, obscured by a worming mass of flesh covered hairs, sizzled as acidic ichor bled down. Where it hit the ground, plants, animals and monsters sprouted up, born from the Maiden as She manifested in the Realm.

  She gently floated down on an invisible current, taking a leisurely pace. Time seemed to stretch and shrink, becoming a malleable concept in the face of a True Divinity.

  Petals, like those of a cherry blossom tree, peeled off of Her vast wingspan. Taking on lives of their own, they soon squirmed and enlarged, becoming living monsters.

  As Her feet gently touched the blank expanse of the ground, its blank white character morphed instantly into a maternal, bloodied hue. Bubbling and hissing, chrysalises of embryonic monstrous forms were birthed from the Realm as it became more and more unstable.

  In a clash of harmonization, some Realms naturally countered others. As an Angel is an extension of its Realm, some divinities are thus naturally capable of overpowering another.

  Sequence did not resist, for this was in His plan. His divinity stemmed from both His own Realm, of which He was a demigod, and now the Diell Instrument, which held authority over this Realm. A normal Angel would be hard pressed to survive directly inviting the Whispering Maiden into Their Realm, but Sequence’s split divinity worked in His favor.

  Still, His head was bleeding profusely. His clothes shed off of Him like a snake shedding its skin, exposing a now rotund stomach large with pregnancy. His featureless body, incapable of holding reproductive organs, began to split open with the sound of dozens of infant children emanating from His continually deteriorating form.

  Adam, Hellig and Hrime all held their collective breath. It didn’t matter.

  The Maiden’s eyes opened for the first time, portraying a stunning kaleidoscope of colors. Pain shot through Adam’s skull, and he saw Hellig and Hrime both collapse to the ground.

  The Whispering Maiden of Seduction and Envy took a light and graceful step forwards, and Hellig screamed, his form convulsing with the terrible pain of forced childbirth. Panting and sweating, his body was gripped with tremors as his naval forcefully split open. Out squirmed a roiling mass of fleshy tendrils, lined with hair, eyes and mouths.

  The creature began to feed. Adam watched, helpless, as the sounds of Hellig’s lifeforce being drunk away filled the air.

  The Whispering Maiden of Seduction and Envy took another graceful step forwards, and Hrime convulsed. Her body, previously incapable of relaying sensory information to her brain thanks to Sequence’s powers, now exploded with every conceivable experience. Her muscles contracted forcefully, cramping up without release as if an electric shock was coursing through her. Her brain grew warm, then hot, then failed entirely. With a sickening popping sound, her body ceased its struggling. Her brain had forcefully expanded to the point of cracking her skull.

  Adam was terrified. The oily darkness that surrounded his psyche buckled and bent, like the fabric of a tarp in the wind. In the presence of powerful monsters, Cherubim, demigods and Partial Divine Forms, the oily sensation had always found a way to shield his soul from the worst of the danger. This time, Adam could keenly sense the impending apocalypse.

  Adam was terrified.