“Easier said than done,” May grumbled.
“You want to see the God I have become?” I brought my index fingers together to touch the tips and flash black eyes. “I’ll show you how powerful the ultimate being of the universe can truly be.”
Seven rays of light flashed into the sky behind me. Each one represented all the elements, and my Shadows soaked in the intense energy so they could charge up and ready themselves for the fight. Shadow people danced around me in a circle, chanting the summons for the Grim Reaper as they had when I was younger. Instead of changing into my normal Grim form, I let myself morph into my ultimate, which stood as tall as the highest skyscrapers in the world. My scythe turned to its three-blade form, and black flames licked up the back of it. The skeleton running down the back illuminated, its eyes a glistening blood red against the dark sky.
Death was humored by my attempts to intimidate him but did not fall under my efforts. He swung his massive scythe three times for each Shadow Walker he had before charging at me, nothing but lifeless slaughter in his foreboding eyes. Our weapons collided, and on that impact, the battle beneath us intensified as well. Demons swallowed and slaughteredeverything in their path, consuming the landscape in a sea of red from their bodies and the spilled blood.
The two Grim Reapers fought against a devastating battle, against devastating death and destruction. Each time we collided, my body ached from the blast, and my bones creaked and howled in pain. Death was on a level I had never experienced from any foe. He was not fazed in the slightest by my attacks; if anything, they made him angrier, and that anger fueled his need to kill me even more.
I kept throwing everything I had at him. I summoned each of my Shadows’ elements to try and deter him, to try and stop the chaos, but he swallowed each move and threw one back ten times more powerful. If I struck him with lightning, he would snatch the bolt and slam it into my chest, electrocuting my bones with my own powers. My Fire attacks, Water, Earth… nothing did a Gods damn thing to him.
He was just too powerful.
The Gods of the past and present fought valiantly against the hordes of demons that were swallowing the Life Elementals below us. Their screams were agonizing as the demons tore them to shreds, and if that weren’t enough, my friends and families’ desperate attempts to stop the chaos did nothing but make things worse.
Sebastian, Deveraux, and Calypso were summoning walls of stone to try and separate the two sides so fast that their hands were turning into the same material. Sebastian kept choking on blood from the demons trying to tear his insides out earlier but refused to go down without a fight. He eventually grew tired of trying to separate the sides and turned into the Stone Ultimate so he could start smashing demons with his massive hands. Unfortunately, his attempts only worsened the problem, as if he injured one, three more would birth from his attack because he was a being who could not kill them entirely.
Xenobia, Halcyon, and Elizabeth were summoning every ounce of Water they possibly could to stop the horrendous fires that consumed the landscape, but the flames from Gehenna were so hot, so relentless, that they couldn’t keep up. Soren, Blaine, and Constantine tried to swallow them, but they were too hot, even for a Fire God.
Griffin and Galaxy were helping Mom, Erasmus, and Odysseus with the Horsemen. Odysseus was in his ultimate form and used the chains around his face to constrict around the Horsemen’s bodies. Griffin summoned a strike of lightning so intense that half the planet lost its electricity from the amount he needed. With that strike, he electrocuted the three Horsemen so intensely that their eyes and mouths oozed blood, and they began to shrink under the weight of Odysseus’s chains. Griffin thought he had won for a moment, and went to congratulate Odysseus, but Famine had other plans.
She breathed a thick cloud of hot, noxious air at the Water Gods below us, which sucked the moisture out of the air in an instant. The lakes that the girls were using to dampen the flames shriveled instantly as the massive drought took effect. They receded away from the unrelenting cloud of despair, leaving fish to flop on dry ground. Halcyon screamed out and rushed towards the receding water to try and save them but was unable to do anything with the lack of moisture in the air.
War used his burning flames to melt the chains around the Horsemen, which in turn, was melting the eyes Odysseus used to see when in his ultimate form. He let our screams that would haunt my nightmares as he was blinded by the flames. Mom and Erasmus immediately rushed to his side to try and heal him from the attack, but that constant flow of Life energy being disrupted allowed the Horsemen to break free once again. Pestilence raised his hands and directed swarms of thoseblistering bugs towards the battling Gods, who were swallowed in the massive horde.
Praxis, Zephryine, and Esen were the first to be struck, and cried out in absolute agony from the blistering wounds left across their skin. Deveraux and Calypso used vines to create a massive net that they cascaded over the swarms, trying to trap them so Soren, Blaine, and Constantine could incinerate the bugs inside. The bugs ate right through the vines and moved to swarm more Gods, including the ones who had tried to trap them.
Seraphine and Endymion joined the efforts, both in their own Grim Reaper forms with scythes held high. They knew, besides the Life Elementals, that they were the only ones who could truly kill demons in the field, so they swung their massive scythes and started to decapitate anything and everything that was Gehenna born. Seraphine’s Shadows dragged injured Life Elementals from the field so Mom and Erasmus could rapidly heal those still alive, though the numbers were dwindling. Seraphine told Mom to stop summoning Life Elementals for slaughter, and that she and Endymion could handle the demons if they could handle the Horsemen. Seraphine had also, to my surprise, brought my twenty-five Demon Hunters with her, along with thousands more from Valyce.
My twenty-five were absolutely petrified, all except for one strong-willed leader at the front. Emmeline instructed them on who to group up with and where to bring their attacks before she slammed her scythe through the skull of her first victim, igniting a new phase of this battle. Her powerful commands boosted the kids’ confidence and made them charge the field after her. Her comrades led the Demon Hunters behind them in after Seraphine and Endymion, who were absolutely demolishing the demons crawling from Gehenna.
Knowing the field was stable for a moment, I was able to keep my concentration on Death, who was nowhere near ready to back down. He let out a powerful, horrifying screech into the air, and that scream summoned thousands upon thousands of the dead. Their souls clawed from cracks in the ground that Death split, and as they appeared, he directed them at me. I scrambled under the weight of all those souls, who sobbed and pleaded in my ear for me to end their suffering.
With a burst of rage, I threw my head back and screamed a spell that would allow me to swallow the souls and send them back to Purgatory. This would mean I would have to reorganize them later, but that was the least of my concerns. The souls swam down my throat and into the portal within my body, so rapidly that I could feel my insides contorting. Though I was bone right now, the pain was still very alive and real, and made me feel woozy.
Death was displeased by my attempt to stop his ambush. His eyes fell on the portal he could see in my ribcage, and once he saw where the souls were funneling into, a lightbulb flicked in his head. He stormed across the field and slammed his fist through my ribs, breaking and splintering them, so he could clasp the portal and smash it back together. I choked off in a violent gasp from the eruption of pain and expelled souls I had swallowed, my hands scrambling to rip him out of my body.
He held on to the portal despite my efforts until it completely sealed, and only then did he rip his hand back out, completely dislodging multiple of my rib bones from the action. The bones, cracked and broken, hit the ground below us, and made the Gods below us cry out when they saw my opened chest cavity.
I collapsed onto my knees and wheezed horrifically, trying to catch my bearings, but Death’s scythe came barreling down and against my spine. The blow was so intense that it knocked me out of my Grim form. As I shot towards the ground, mydestroyed bone body receded, and my Elemental form returned to me. My ribs were not broken, but heavily bruised, as was the rest of my body. I slammed into the ground like a comet hitting Earth, and laid there for a brief moment, as I could not feel anything from the neck down.
Death howled in victory from making me change out of my Grim form, and went to stomp me to death, but Claude and Jackson grabbed my arms and tugged me to freedom just in time. We rolled across the blood-soaked ground from the blast and came to a stop when I hit one of Calypso’s stone walls. “Nick, buddy, can you hear me? Nick? Nick!” Jackson begged as he shook my shoulders.
Blood spilled down my nose and ears from the force of the attack, but I was able to squint through swollen eyes at him. “I’m… not out, yet…”
“Where the fuck are Magnus and Geneva? We can’t do this much longer!” Alice cried as Stark rapidly ran his hands over my injuries to try and heal what he could.
“I don’t know, but someone needs to go find them!”
“I’ll go!” Bexley declared as she sprung up. “You guys can still use all the elements if I’m gone, so it won’t cripple the team!”
“WATCH OUT!” Death broke our huddle by reaching down to grab my leg and drag me backwards through the field. My Shadows screamed out and raced after me, flashing through the dry air to free me. Akira grew tired of Death beating my ass and changed into his most spectacular mythological beast yet. He became Jörmungandr, the serpent of Norse mythology, who was rumored to have a bite so venomous it could kill the Gods. It was his grand attempt to stop Death, and though we knew the consequences of a God being struck by such a beast, it was better than letting him eviscerate us all.
As this massive serpent, he scaled the legs of Death rapidly and sunk his teeth into his bone neck, injecting him withthe deadly venom to try and stop him in any way possible. Death flinched slightly from the pain of the bite, then paused dragging me to drop me like a bag of sand. He reached up and grabbed Akira by the neck, then whipped him around his hand. Akira screeched and wriggled to free himself, as even in this monstrous form, he was still like a garden snake to Death. Death chuckled lovingly and grabbed Akira by the head, dangling him before him. “Did you really think you could kill me? I am Death. I never lived, nor will never die. You cannot kill the unkillable, tick.”
“AKIRA!” I screamed bloody murder when Death took hold of his tail and, very quickly, ripped Akira right in half. Akira let out a bloodcurdling scream from the agony, both ends of him whipping and wriggling as they fought to reconnect. Death flicked the ends across the field, where they whistled through the air before smashing into a devastated building. “Gods, no, Akira! AKIRA!” I scrambled to my feet to try and go after him, but Death sent his scythe flying down towards me. The blade nearly sawed me in half, and had I not rolled out of the way, Akira and I would be in a similar state.
“I got Akira! Focus on Death!” Stark exclaimed before flashing as a beam of light towards where Akira had landed.
