Skyfire Avenue

The Terminator knew it’d come to the end, he’d prepared for it. If he hesitated any longer it would be too late. At least he wouldn’t let his failure become the end for his allies. He could die proud of that fact.

“Your Majesty, wait a moment.” Lan Jue pleaded.

From the outbreak of war they’d lost Satan, Xiuxiu, and most recently the Pontiff. There were so few of them left. If the Terminator… The realization was like a dagger to the heart, but he couldn’t think of a good excuse to give the Paragon.

“Take care of Chu Cheng, he is the North’s last hope. If you defeat the aliens, help him do what he must.” The Terminator’s voice was calm, with little emotion. It was Lan Jue who felt his heart sink with these final wishes.

He couldn’t summon the words to ask him to stop. Now was the time for action, or the chance to make the Terminator’s death mean something would pass.

The Conclave’s leader took a deep breath. Suddenly his body surged, and a crackling light like electricity radiated from his dark gold skin. The strange and unexpected scene caused the Queen’s avatar to shiver. She flicked her wrist and the threads of purple light she wielded gathered together to protect her. Chu Cheng’s attacks could not get through, and she hoped it would be the same for whatever Terminator was planning.

Golden light shone from the convert’s eyes. All of a sudden his aura burst out like a torrent and a burning shell of golden light sprang up. In horror they watched as his protogenia consumed him. The Terminator was his own Domain, and as it turned in on him his skin and muscles melted away. In the same moment the bones beneath grew, and in a few short breaths the Terminator had become an enormous golden skeleton.

“This is…” The Keeper, so wise and learned, gasped when he saw what was happening. He vaguely remembered seeing something like this in an ancient text.

“Undead Sorcery!” The Bookworm blurted out, completing the Keeper’s thought.

Yes, undeath! The Keeper recalled learning about it. But to his knowledge it was an ancient Discipline from the West. They were called Necromancer, and their goal was to understand life through death. When a Necromancer reached the end of their natural lifespan they sought to become undead, and thus live forever to continue their dark studies.

A necromancer might also choose undeath if, in the course of their experiments, they suffered grave injuries. The process was irreversible, and the moment the Necromancer shed their body they were no longer human. They belonged to the ranks of the dead.

But in all his research the Keeper had never heard of someone becoming undead in the middle of a fight – much less seen it.

Relying on what he could sense the Keeper realized the Terminator was filtering all the energy of his body into his skeleton. It made the Terminator stronger, though beyond that the old researcher couldn’t tell how else it affected him. It went without saying this process made the Terminator a terrifying force on the battlefield. He now commanded the power of the Infinite.

Boom--! With one punch the shield Queen had created broke apart into a thousand pieces. The Terminator’s eyes were the only flesh of his to remain, and in their depths burned the indomitable force of his soul. He reached forth with his bony hands to try and snatch up the avatar, and where they passed great fissured appeared in the fabric of space-time.

The Terminator also kicked a foot, but this was aimed at Chu Cheng. He knocked the young Paragon away from him and toward where the Pharmacist was fighting.

Queen’s avatar whipped the threads of purple to create another barrier. She channeled her Creation and Destruction Domain around her in total defense.

But to her shock and horror, the Terminator’s bony hands suffered nothing when they reached into her Domain. Neither the powers of creation nor destruction seemed to apply to this golden skeleton on any level.

Boom! Queen was flung away with the force of the punch leaving behind a caustic purple mist. He’d wounded her badly. However the Terminator also paused. He couldn’t maintain this unnatural form for long.

“AGGHH!!” The North’s ultimate Paragon, leader of the Great Conclave, heaved with a roar that threatened to deafen everyone nearby. Once more his skeletal form blazed with golden light and became a thousand ghostly copies. All at once they swarmed Queen, cutting off any means of escape.

No one could have guessed the Terminator possessed such a ghastly and potent ability, not the aliens nor the other humans. It was a skill that would cost the man his life, but might also turn the tide of battle. The Queen’s avatar was currently lost beneath the myriad copies of Terminator assailing her.

Lan Jue was the only one who could sense that the Terminator’s life force was gone. It was the power of his spirit that sustained him, but only for this final onslaught.

If it could be said that the Pontiff’s sacrifice galvanized their fighting spirit, the Terminator’s downfall set their blood to boiling. The Keeper and Bookworm exchanged a silent look, and each saw the determination in the other’s eyes. The Avenue’s old scientist extended his right hand, and the Bookworm took it with his left.

“You old queer, what are you grabbing my hand for?!” [2. Queer seemed the least offensive. In China the term for homosexual is ‘glass people’ – I’m not sure why.] His words were harsh, but he gripped his friend’s hand tightly.

Their bodies began to shine brightly – a clear and brilliant light like the sun shining through crystal.

Humanity couldn’t be allowed to lose this fight. If they did all of mankind would be lost. If the Terminator was willing to kill himself to slaughter his enemies, the other Paragons were unfaltering in their will to do the same.

ξ

“We ourselves are an ultimate weapon. I must admit, it feels good.” The Bookworm mused.

The Keeper chortled. “What’s this ‘we’, eh? I. You can’t do the sort of damage I can if you turn yourself into a weapon.”

The Bookworm’s famous temper flared. “You old coot. What’s the point in being so competitive at your age. I’ve already made up my mind, either we succeed or I’m going down fighting. I’ve lived long enough, I’ve experienced all I want to. To be as old as us and not die in stealing from the young! What say you to that?”

The Keeper proudly answered. “I hope it does come to this, then we’ll see who dies in front of whom, eh?!”

Scornfully the Bookworm spat back. “How can you be such a coward? So afraid of death!”

He replied with a chilly laugh. “Fear of death, laughable. The youth of Skyfire Avenue have grown wise and strong. When the old hands like me die they’ll be around to support what we’ve built. Dying to give them an opportunity is a worthy cause. I just want to make sure I take at least a couple of those bastard aliens with me.”

The Bookworm waggled his hands together in front of the Keeper’s face, held together like a turtle. “Well the first one to chicken out is one of these!” [3. If you call someone a turtle it’s sort of like ‘bastard’, but used more specifically it can mean cuckold – ones wife is cheating on him. I guess ‘cuck’ is the modern Western equivalent, though I feel gross just writing it since it’s used largely by e-peen waving trolls and morons.]

ξ

“No!” Lan Jue screamed at them to stop but couldn’t free himself from his own fight.

The Keeper shot his young friend a look, paired with a haughty smirk. With a brazen wave of goodbye he took a step forward. Both he and the Bookworm were suddenly positioned above their section of the battlefield.

The three Nirvana-levels aliens they fought against had begun to win. However they stopped their attack in surprise once the two elder scientists appeared overhead. They had seen what was happening to the Queen’s avatar. Evidently these humans were capable of mad feats of destruction when on the brink of death, and it frightened them.

But these avatars were different from the Prince and Princess. They were copies of Monarch, Queen and Consort who demanded those Banishing Blades captured. They would not flee, not when their mission went unfulfilled.

Their Creation and Destruction Domain flared and swallowed up a portion of the space around them. They launched forward full bore, attacking the Pharmacist and her allies with abandon.

The eyes of every Avenue Paragon were wet. The Keeper and Bookworm were old, but no one could replace what they meant to Skyfire and the East as a whole. They were the top minds of their Alliance, who had given selflessly and enormously to all mankind. Insights into Middle Heaven’s molinite core were due to them. There was a long time they didn’t work together, but that didn’t mean either ever ceased working to uncover the secrets of the universe.

Now war had come to claim them, and no one could stop it.

The two mad scientists cackled as they embraced, despite a lifetime of bitter rivalry. The white light around them rose until it was too intense to look upon.

Two white dots appeared within two of the monsters below. The aliens felt themselves go numb, when suddenly a staggering sense of danger overwhelmed their senses. IT was so frightening they felt the urge to flee despite Monarch’s directive.

But the Pharmacist and other would not allow it. Thousands of copies of Occisus appeared in the space around them, coming in on all sides and preventing the aliens from going anywhere.