Blood Shaper-Chapter 51Book 6:

Kay charged the monster. A massive outline formed in the air, following his sword, a giant’s blade to strike down a giant foe. One of the avatar’s two stingers lashed out to intercept it, but the sharpened blood sliced deeply into it and removed a chunk of the matter that made up the shape. The eldritch monstrosity screamed again and lashed out with the other stinger at Kay. He ignored it and swung his blade back around, guiding the gigantic blade as it followed his sword. The second slice carved off the entire tip of the stinger. It fell from the sky, the green fire in the eye at the bottom of it dying. The spray of blood Kay was still unleashing from behind him turned in midair and impacted with the sliced off piece. The force of the spray drove it into the ground hard enough to shatter the remaining buildings where it landed and leaving a crater that quickly filled with blood as the cascade of liquid continued until the stinger had completely melted away.

The second stinger continued on it’s course unimpeded and pierced directly through Kay’s abdomen. A sharpened point that narrowed down smaller than a micrometer across led the rest of the weapon into piercing through Kay’s entire torso. Foul liquid dripped from the tip and seeped into Kay’s form through the length of the stinger impaled into him. The venom the avatar extruded was a concoction born of countless realities, designed to warp flesh, destroy matter, unmake stars, tear apart minds, and more horrendous extinctions beyond that.

The piece of Hungering Void siphoned into this reality to serve as Hungering Void’s avatar screamed out in triumph as it ended the puny mortal that had been defying it. It started to reach out with thought, will, and it’s physical being, seeking the fragment of the System so that it could continue with it’s horrible plans, but it was forced to stop as a gargantuan halberd tore through the air at it. The spiked end slammed into the other stinger and pulled upward even as the avatar retracted it’s limb. A chunk of steaming, anomalous flesh was pulled free and engulfed in blood to destroy it, but the stinger remained partially intact.

Baleful eyes twisted and locked on Kay, who was floating above where he had just been impaled, looking completely unharmed. The floating contours of a swords blade had become a halberd hundreds of feet long. The spiked hammer on one end bulged out and then shrunk back down into a spike as the twisted meat ripped from the stinger was destroyed. The halberd suddenly spun in place and began stabbing forward, the spear tip lancing through tentacles tendrils, and the remaining stinger.

The broken and ripped appendage extending from the other side of the abomination’s massive floating head warped and transformed, the brittle, stone-like exterior becoming spongy and riddled with small holes. Where it’s piercing tip had once been grew three flailing mouth parts that meshed together to form a blunt head. It looked like a worm monster from a science fiction B movie. The mouth opened and began moaning with hundreds of deep, sonorous voices that rang in perfect, discordant harmony with the piercing shrieks from the lamprey mouths. The rear of it ripped it’s way free from the hovering head, spilling puss, bile, and gore form where it emerged, and began chasing after Kay.

The gushing fountain of blood stopped flowing all at once and solidified into a club that slammed into the worm. Another crater was formed as it impacted. The club divided into dozens of blades that rained down, pinning it to the ground like a butterfly on display. It groaned and wiggled, thrashing as it tried to escape.

The blood coating the monster’s body and dripping onto the ground began to shift in place. Sections of it solidified and rose up, becoming red-coated, armored forms identical to Kay’s. Previously, he had only been able to create imperfect copies with his simulacra, even of himself. But with the power flowing through him and the upgrades he had received each form that rose was equal to him in every way. They all began attacking the closest piece of the avatar in concert, supporting and defending each other as they expanded the scope of the battle once again.

The worm stretched itself out like a piece of taffy and the tripart mouth open and slammed shut on Kay. Blood gushed out in a spray as his physical form popped like an overripe fruit in a car compactor. That blood instantly became a flurry of knives that dove into the mouth and began shredding the inside of the worm like a blender. It groaned again as it resumed thrashing and the blades pining it down began to lift up and stab back down into it.

One of the many clones of Kay floated into the air and formed giant punch daggers over it’s fists, which looked more like katar blades than the normal daggers he used. They floated an inch from his fists, two identical triangular blades that narrowed into razor sharp points. He dove at the remaining stinger and start threshing it with stabs and slices. He cut open a section of the avatar’s limb and slammed a bundle of blood into it that detonated, ripping eldritch altered flesh apart. The pieces that were tossed about by the explosion and didn’t get vaporized became unseemly drips of color that landed on the ground below them. The bounced off the ground and transformed into terrifying, mutated beasts that clamored and thundered forward. They began ripping at the pieces of the worm that were being pinned down and savaged by the many giant blades, attempting to free it.

Other bits of the avatar began swelling or shrinking and forming more minions like it had been using to battle Kay’s simulacra before. But where the battle had been a stalemate or perhaps slightly in Kay’s favor before this, the minions made of eldritch energy and warped matter were nothing but chaff before the many clones of Kay, Origin Vampire. The grotesque puppets were slashed, ripped, torn, diced, severed, engulfed, crushed, melted, vaporized, and destroyed in hundreds of different ways. Some ceased to be for simply being in the presence of Kay and his domain.

The avatar’s head twisted and began to curl into itself, forming a spiral that curved down toward the gaping, tooth filled maw it spoke from. Bit’s of it cracked and broke as it transformed. Materials changed what substance they were, flesh became stone, stone became flesh, the made became unmade and the unmade, made. The avatar curled inward and became a massive inverted cone with the spiral inside of the negative space.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Unacceptable!” It screamed out. Pulses of energy began rhythmically racing down towards it’s center, where the dark hole that was the center of it’s mouth began to grow. The mouth didn’t change size but the opening, filled with impenetrable gloom expanded and expanded. A fell wind began blowing past Kay and his cones as the air was sucked into the growing simulation of a black hole. Bits of the ground, the water in the air, even the avatar’s own created minions began flying up and into the growing event horizon located inside it’s mouth.

Kay was unable to withstand it for long. He, his blood, and the clones made of it were drawn into the spiraling mass of the avatar’s newest form as space itself around them began being pulled in. No matter how hard Kay tried to anchor himself or how much mana he pumped into the blood that made up his armor he was dragged along as the very concept of his location was vacuumed up by the impossible suction. Every of the innumerable gallons of blood he was controlling was focused onto him as he was compressed down by the black hole arising from within the beast. He flooded it into his Folded Veins, unwilling to let a single drop be rendered unusable.

There was no spaghettification and time did not slow as he was dragged beyond the edge of the quasi-black hole created through eldritch means. Kay found himself floating in an empty void of darkness, but he could feel time still passing. Within a few seconds something impossible for him to comprehend began pressing on him from all directions. Concepts, existences, realities, experiences, and beings from universes above and below his own hammered on him like he was a blacksmith’s piece to be finished. Thoughts and experiences that were unsustainable and impossible to accomplish stabbed at him while achievements and goals both mundane and unfeasible became ties that tried to drag him down. A full assault commenced on him as the avatar tried to use it’s very existence of a piece of something greater into a weapon. Laws beyond gravity, dimensions past time, and thoughts out of reach of conception were shells aimed at his position.

Kay weathered it all without a trace of damage or an iota of fear. Every single bit that was superior to Torotia’s universe, less than it, or simply impossible in that form of reality melted away as they tried to touch him. At the level he had reached and with the energy that had empowered him he had become more than just a small source of stability for that reality, he had become a beacon dragging it with him. Even in the pseudo-realm created by the avatar he brought the laws of his universe with him, and that which could not exist in that universe did not.

“Is that all?” Kay asked. “Weren’t you watching? I’ve done this before.”

He became the center of an eruption of blood. It spilled out of his every pore in an explosive tsunami. Red floated the dark, lightless space around him and boundaries of infinite, unending non-reality. Anyone watching from the outside saw the twisted spiraling form of the avatar go completely still. There was a moment of total silence, the calm before the storm, the moment before the nuclear weapon detonates. Then the massive floating avatar simply ceased to be as a red sphere burst out from inside it. Every bit of eldritch corruption was erased as Origin Blood and Lord of the Night rendered it impossible. It could not exist, and thus it did not.

When the explosion of blood subsided there was only Kay standing in midair, staring at the space in front of him. The blood that began to rain down on the ground around him, untouched by it’s own power stopped and angled inward toward him. He didn’t move, he simply stared at a spot across from where he stood.

A putrid green flame erupted from nothing in that spot. The second and third dimensions peeled back, revealing a formless space beneath that Kay couldn’t see into. Out from it stepped a pitch black form. Humanoid and featureless, it was made of lightless dark matter from dead realities and consumed universes. An outline of green energy floated around it and tiny pinpricks of light the same color burst into life within the darkness that made it up, creating a tapestry of foul eldritch energy that mocked the night sky in it’s glory. A single flame at the center of it’s completely smooth head began to grow and grow, until it filled that dark canvas entirely.

The flame flickered as the avatar spoke. “This has gone on long enough. I cannot believe I am actually being pushed to try against something like you.” The fulgurating green flame gathered around it’s head adn circled it’s brow. Points sprang up from that circle, forming a shifting crown of flame. “I am more than you. I am greater than you. I am better than you!”

It thrust out a hand and green fire erupted forward. It splashed against Kay for a moment before he batted it aside without looking away. The burst of power faded as Kay struck it, leaving only a translucent green greatsword in the avatar’s hand with a blade made of the same darkness that made up it’s body.

“I will end you, take back what I need, and have my feast!” It bellowed as it pointed the sword’s point at Kay. “A worm like you will not stop me!”

Kay scoffed. “You’re more affected by folding yourself down into this reality and the host you needed to do it than you want to admit, even to yourself.” He pointed at the circlet floating above it’s head. “A crown? I thought you were here to eat, not to rule.”

The flame twisted and Kay could feel the avatar scowling at him. “I am Hungering Void. I do as I please, and I shall not be questioned by the likes of you!”

“No you aren’t. Or well,” He shook his head in mock pity. “Perhaps you are. I doubt the actual being out there that wants to consume all that the System touches would call itself that. I doubt it even thinks about a name for itself, since it’s so beyond me and the concepts I can think of. Either way, you aren’t it. You’re a tiny fragment of energy with whatever bits of it’s objectives it could shrink and mold into a shape that could exist down here. You’re as much a tool to it as the vampyr were.”

“I am the hunger from beyond realities! I am the void that consumes! I am the omnivore! I am eternal and always have been! I cannot die, you cannot defeat me!”

Kay shrugged. Blood swirled around then, the edges of the explosive wave turning into a cage that surrounded them. A piece of it floated over and shaped itself into a sword that Kay grabbed and held up, mimicking the pose the avatar was holding. “Look at you, you aren’t any of those things. You’ve shaped yourself like me, are talking in a language I understand, and are even posing at me while you harangue me for daring to stand up to you. And maybe you can’t die, since there’s nothing about you that’s alive. But.” Kay let the front of his helmet pull back so that the avatar could see his condescending smile. “You can cease to be, can’t you?”

The avatar roared with rage, the crown above it’s head burst into a conflagration that rose high enough to scorch the walls around them and it charged directly at Kay.