Alma 84 Consequences

Slaughter. Pure, unrestrained destruction. There was no other way it could be described.

The mangled corpses of several dozen church elders lay beneath her feet. Battered and twisted into abnormal poses, they were the lucky ones of the lot. For they had died, but not in an unnatural way.

Not like the rest of their banished companions.

Some of the poor, old fools had been unimaginably unlucky. The moment they stepped out of the void, they died — or, rather they had disappeared.

Almost instantaneously, they had been forced back into their rigged spatial tears which had then been closed shut by her. Gone. In less than a second.

Her judgment was swift as she was heartless. It put the fear of death into the remaining survivors who had forgotten what it felt like to feel the embrace of the unknown…

She had forcibly torn a hole in the void behind them… and that tear lead Outside. Beyond space, time and reality, where nothing existed.

It was a terrible, unforgivable way to kill a living being, for they had been cast out of the reality into the Empty Domain, the lawless plane between multiverses where the Infested ruled supreme.

She had not given them so much as a single moment to see reality one last time before she had thrown them out. 

The Pope bitterly smiled as he surveyed the scene of carnage around him and said, "As expected of the other half of Heaven itself. Mercy, Heiress of the Moon! I ask that you punish me instead of my flock! The fault lies with me alone!"

A small smile formed her lips and the ambient Anima obediently answered her summons. She would not forgive him, nor them. Not in a billion years.

She would erase the entire city. That what she had decided upon. Such was the price Man would have to pay for trying to play God.

The reality groaned in protest and day turned into night across the world. A starless sky formed above Fourth Heaven as if the stars above the city had been snuffed out by something in the dark…

Anima condensed above the Sacred Cathedral and formed a brilliant sphere of divine radiance, unlike anything the continent had seen.

The amount of Anima that had been condensed into the sphere could have powered all of the North's cities for centuries on end. Immeasurably dense and under a near-infinite amount of pressure it calmly hovered above the Sacred Cathedral under its master's orders.

Should she release it, everything sixty kilometers in range would cease to exist. Everything all the way down to the bedrock of the continent.

Nothing would be spared.

A divine moon had descended upon Fourth Heaven to judge it for its sins.

The Pope and the remaining elders gazed at what she had created and understood. In her eyes, they were not worth her wasting a breath…

This was the will of a Goddess. Men had no say in what happened now.

There was nothing they could do. It was too late.

But it did not deter him. It only infuriated him and drove him to act even more recklessly than before.

He, the brilliant streak of blazing light, had chosen to go all out not because of his friends, the innocents of Fourth Heaven, or the consequences that'd result of the destruction of the city.

He just wanted to ruin her plan. That was it. She had pissed him off.

"LUUUUUUUU'UUUUUUUUM!"

A blinding streak of light, an unstoppable force that had been accelerated beyond its limits crashed into Lu'um at full force.

He knew that he wouldn't be able to defeat her in a fair fight. Not even remotely. She knew what his weaknesses were. That she'd take him out without a doubt in a one-on-one fight.

Fighting was pointless. She'd win. No contest.

So Reed decided that he'd just deny her of what she wanted instead. That was something he could do. He knew he would need to act fast though, or she'd figure it out and stop him.

Simple, fast, and unpredictable. He needed to do something that not even she would anticipate from him and it had to be done fast.

Faster than the speed of thought, simple enough for him to not fail in a high-stakes situation, and unpredictable enough to pull the wool over someone like her.

She thought that she had knocked him out, put enough force in her attack to have put him out considering his guard had been down. He took that blow head-on, not reinforced in the slightest by Anima.

She had made a mistake and now…

The light-speed battering ram had reached her. He was no more than a couple centimeters away from her. She could see his burning, enraged eyes stare at her head-on as he approached.

There was nothing she could do. It was too late.

The force of the impact knocked her unconscious for a brief moment as she lost control of her body. She couldn't do anything except endure as she hurtled along with Reed like a pair of bonded stars…

He had smashed into her with enough energy to have leveled more than half of Fourth Heaven.

It caused a disastrous shock-wave that traveled outward from the epicenter of their collision. The force generated was so powerful that someone of the unfortunate elders who had not reacted fast enough had been turned into a fine red mist when it passed through them.

The Sacred Cathedral exploded into pieces and the surrounding buildings shattered as if they were made of glass. For a couple of kilometers, buildings broke and the ground trembled in fear. Chaos quickly ensued.

Reed understood that it cause some fallout and accepted it'd likely kill some innocent people but he considered it a better deal than having everyone die. That was as much as he could do for the city.

The force of the impact nearly knocked Reed out too, even though he had anticipated and prepared the blow. But he persisted and charged off with his target… into the giant moon above them.

Part two of Reed's plan involved stopping the mess she had created, primarily the massive Anima attack she had created. It was likely to blow any second now that he had knocked her out of focus. He needed to act now if he was to stop her.

The pair crashed into the moon together at light-speed, much to the shock of those who survived the shock-wave down below.

And then, all of a sudden, it started shrinking. The moon continued to shrink and distort under some kind of pull until it completely vanished into nothingness.

An apocalyptic amount of Anima and two people seemingly disappeared.

Where they had gone was anyone's guess. None had been able to perceive what had happened during the final moments of the event.

The Holy Pope stared up at the sky and then said, "…Call them and tell them that we're going to have to modify the plan. Now. I must go and inform… the holy ancestor of the current situation."

He coughed and dark-green blood spilled out onto the ground. When it landed on the floor it wriggled as if alive.

"Yes, Your Holiness..."

In the future, many would consider this the beginning of the conflict that'd soon endanger the safety of the entire continent. It was the beginning of a new era — one of great danger and enormous change.

The End Times. An era unlike any other in recorded history… one that would be written at the end of the world.

…Deep in the middle of the void, a massive explosion echoed across the darkened landscape. A brilliant moon had gone supernova.

Heat and light covered the empty void and a terrifying shock-wave rumbled the empty world. The crisis had been averted but in return…

There was a consequence. The power contained within the moon had been too much for the void to handle.

It had caused torn an enormous hole in the Void. A hole in the thin barrier between it and the Outside.

Naturally, the Void would heal itself given enough time…

Time for the Outside to peer into the Void and into the Mulia itself should… they breach past the Void.

The two people stared out into the gaping hole in reality and saw the mess they had created. The problem they now had on their hands.

It wouldn't be long before they would find the hole. Before the endless horde of abominations would march on through the tear in reality.

"Why did you have to stop me?! Why?! Look at what we have to take care of now…" said Lu'um.

The distorted cacophony of laughter filled the Void from beyond the tear. They were laughing at them.

"We'll talk about that later. They're already here. Get ready…"

Chapter end