The Dominions were aware they rarely had this kind of chance, a moment where the System would be too slow to react. 4 incredibly powerful auras, well above the Dominions, slammed down on Zenthia. Four experts directly working for the System had been called from planets around Zenthia to “quell the rebellion”.
Their fight didn’t just involve the fate of three races. It involved all of Zenthia now. The Transcendents below and the mortals of the Brightheart Covenant were all panicking, believing the apocalypse itself was coming, dozens of gods descending, their warcries shaking the skies, hundreds of Transcendents moving around, trying to keep the situation contained while wondering what the hell was happening and what kind of happen could cut a continent in half other than a Dominion.
As for the two culprits, their flesh was starting to fuse together, their spirits fusing together. No. Not fusing, they were fighting for dominance of their new body. Each agreed they needed to become one to survive, but neither wished to lose the mental battle.
So now the battle had turned into one of spirit. Akhenamen, Hierarch of the Cygilites, Herald of the Unseen Truth against Damocles, The Fallen God, The Forgotten. Two representatives of their races fighting for dominion.
Their bodies have turned into a weird glob of flesh and machine. The two immortal fleshes seemingly refusing to yield to the other, the more they clashed, the more they destroyed each other, yet got more compatible.
Inside his mind, Akhenamen was fighting a mental battle with Damocles, both fighting with their true form. Akhenamen looked like he did as a human, yet some parts of his body had been replaced by his Living Silver body; he even had four arms, his Gauss antlers, and tail.
Damocles was… an agglomeration of souls. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of souls, all fused together in a huge towering sphere. For once in thousands of years, their voices, which had always been in constant infighting, were united under their god's voice, reassuring his children. They would not lose! Together, they would not be forgotten once more!
Akhenamen was fighting millions alone, his skill and Aspect flying left and right, shattering thousands of souls that tried to control this new body, but the sheer number was overwhelming him.
His Living Silver flesh outside was starting to lose, having used its last reserves, while the Orphan’s flesh was still not done. Akhenamen got pinned down under thousands of souls, all starting to tear him apart.
“It seems fighting a Fallen… even for ten minutes was just too much… I’m sorry, everyone. I simply cannot do it.”
“Duty…”
“Duty.”
“Duty… beyond… “
The gods had reached the strange, horrifying fusion of flesh and machine, if it had once looked like a ball of mechanic body horror, now… it was a beating heart with some machine-like parts coming from it, pumping blood. The flesh was slowly but surely overtaking the body.
They had no wish to wait for the monster that would be born to finish its transformation, the Cygilites hating gods saw one of them lifting his sword, ready to finish off this abomination in a single strike.
The blade descended, ready to eliminate a Fallen and even the Cygilite upstart; they couldn’t be happier. They knew they were a minority, but on the other hand, no god would lay his life for a Cygilite, even if they did not hate them as they did.
As the blade tried to pierce the heart, a shockwave blew back the dozen Dominions, and all saw a scene that came right from their most forgotten nightmares.
The legion was rising.
The millions of silver bodies that had lain behind Akhenamen during his fight with the Orphan were rising. No one understood how this was possible. It shouldn’t. It was as if the Universe itself had decided to bring them back.
The Cygilite’s 17th legion, the one which had once fought the Twin Goddesses and slain one of them, was rising once more. Authority Hyperfaunas rising to their full height, three wolves of silver and gold, Cygiteks bringing order and unity back in their legion.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
They had heard their Hierarch’s call from beyond. They had seen his fight. They believed in his promises. A single roar came from the legion.
“Unity. Beyond. Death!”
Akhenamen’s mind, which had once been filled exclusively with the millions of Lapinids' souls overtaking him, their sheer number beating even his Aspect’s destruction. A roar came from Akhenamen’s mouth, his human face distorting into the one of Akhenamen, a huge maw seemingly filled with pure Gauss energy roared. A distorted binaric screech that shattered the closest souls and pushed them back.
Akhenamen held his head, he could feel millions more entering but this time instead of attacking him, they were rushing to his main frame, his AI mind which had until now been mostly working as an adapter, trying to keep Akhenamen’s mind sane from his vision of The Color’s true shape he had observed as a soul, being brought to Zenthia, felt its computing power multiplying by thousands of folds.
It was not just Akhenamen’s mind anymore. It was now the Cygilites. Not just the seventeenth legion… but every Cygilites felt their mind unite under their Hierarch. A pyramidal structure. Akhenamen commanded and controlled, and they would obey and show their absolute trust in their Hierarch.
Akhenamen now understood what the Cygilites truly were. All could be summarized in this single sentence. United beyond death.
[A major world event has been located.]
[Law of Collective Continuance has been birthed]
[Creator and wielder: Akhenamen, Hierarch of the Cygilites.]
He understood so much about himself and his people now… the Cygilites had never been individuals. Not in a mortal sense at least. They were fragments of a greater whole. Able to separate and rejoin each other as they wished without loss. While even one of them survived, their race’s knowledge and memories would never collapse.
Akhenamen was the Cygilites. The Cygilites were Akhenamen. He ruled over them not as a tyrant but as a guide. Not controlling them but aligning them for the whole to function with greater efficiency.
Akhenamen had become a nod, a focal point for his entire kind. As he rose to his height inside his mind, once he had looked up at Lapinids agglomeration of souls, now, he towered above them. They towered above them.
His legions rose behind him, millions of Cygilites of all shapes and sizes, looking like beings of pure Data summoned by the mainframe, the main control node. Him. A clash between two races and their collective consciousness.
But Damocles and his children would lose. How could they not? They were united not by a common cause but by fear and loss. Grief and wish for revenge. The Cygilites, however, would show them what true Unity meant.
Both races started their advances, Damocles leading his people into a frenzied run, roaring for revenge against the System, while the Cygilites advanced slowly, calm and collected, knowing that every step, every battle, no matter how slow, or how much loss they would suffer… would be toward a single goal. Peace.
The battle was not just one of mind and spirits, the Cygilites' bodies outside fought hard against the dozen gods, they had no hope of winning against so many Dominions. But they had already died once; what did they have to fear?
Their only goal was to give their Hierarch enough time. To be his shield while the System’s envoys rushed toward the rebelling gods. Akhenamen would be punished undoubtedly for his blatant disregard of the System’s warning.
However, they knew that everything depended on the successful fusion, if they won the mental battle, if they could rise against all odds… The System would favor them, and despite the danger they could pose, the System would consider them “worth the trouble”.
This was how it had always functioned, even if you represented a direct threat to the System’s well-being; if you could be reasoned with and could be “used” by the System, then it would not consider you an active danger.
This was the goal of both Damocles and Akhenamen. This was why neither could afford to lose their mental battle. This was why the seventeenth legion could not let their Hierarch’s battle be interrupted.
Anti-Matter Canons fired at the Dominions, doing untold amounts of damage, the likes they had only known during the forgotten war. To some, it felt almost nostalgic to fight their ancient enemies once more.
No matter how many Cygilites were slain, they kept coming back, they kept rising up once more, their Liquid Silver surviving all injuries. The three wolf-shaped Hyperfauna Machines were tearing into a Dominion each, making them curse that they had to deal with the most troublesome enemies.
The Hyperfauna might only be Authorities, but their physical stats were those of a Dominion; their lack of Divine Bodies or the possibility to create one kept them as Authorities.
The gods were starting to sweat; they could feel the looming Providences rushing to Zenthia, and their strength was starting to suffocate the continent. The System rarely sent its “Administrators,” but when it did, they didn’t joke around.
Agamemnon, God of Minotaur's and Labyrinth, blew steam out of his nostrils, his roar blowing back the hundreds of Ancestors that were surrounding him, his hooves crushing them and turning them to a puddle of Liquid Silver, using the great axe that he wielded with both hands.
He charged forward, his humongous weapon swinging toward the pumping heart, which now seemed more mechanical than made of flesh. His hate for the Cygilites fueled his strike, his axe slamming down toward the beating heart.
Only to be stopped by two fingers holding his blade. Every god and even the Cygilite froze immediately, not out of fear, but because time itself had been stopped. In front of Agamemnon stood Sylandros. The Dragon god of time.
He looked like an anthropomorphic blue dragon with immense curved horns, wearing a light yet very sturdy-looking armor, one of his hands had a strange mechanical sphere around which gears softly circled.
Waves of entropic energy came from the sphere, slowing down time to a standstill. But Sylandros did not look at any of the rebels; they were not worth his time. No. What he was curious about was how the two minds within this strange heart could still function at a speed that seemed untouched by his time-slowing ability.
His Divine Law of Time Entropy allowed him to use time as he pleased. At least to slow it down, shatter it, or even use it like a cloak. It slowed down everything. Bodies or minds. Yet the two beings within this heart kept the fight going at a very impressive speed despite being slowed down.
“How strange and intriguing. They could be suitable disciples. Their minds are especially suited to study my Divine Law. And they are both unaffected by life-span, even better… a Cygilite Hierarch and… Lapinids… didn’t those guys disappear back during the first Era? I’ll let them finish their fight. The winner takes all, I suppose.”
Sylandros pulled out a pipe, put some tobacco within, and started to smoke, letting out a puff of smoke of a strange blue color. Sitting down cross-legged, happy to have been the first of the Administrators to have arrived. He knew his fellow Quadrants would try to steal those potential disciples from under his nose.
He could already feel his fellow Quadrants appear, three more anthropomorphic dragons, shaped like an almost carbon copy of him, each ruling over a different aspect of time.
Entropy, Time Sight, Causality, and Chrono-Flow sat around a beating heart, each with its own way to pass time, drinking, smoking, or snacking, and a few bets even started to fly. However, all had one goal in mind…. find an inheritor for their Divine Law, and when a perfect candidate presented themselves, it was gonna be a fierce betting game.