‘Not going to lie, I kind of love this.’ The thought occurred because the armour was, for all of its stupidity, pretty cool. John couldn’t help liking it. Even though he wasn’t a mecha fan, he could appreciate a giant death robot.

It helped that Xipe-Totec was sent flying by the two beams. The monstrous god-warrior was sent flying straight to the ground. At John’s side, Nahua began to hiss. Not with her mouth, she was too busy laughing, but with her skin. Noxious purple rose from her skin as mucus dripped from her fingernails. Step by step, she approached the crater the god-warrior had landed in.

“The conditions for this battle are universal combat? Then universal combat shall be delivered! Deploying the good ordnance!” Norahnon announced. The back of the power armour opened up, letting a singular missile rise up. Whatever Innate Ability the scientist of the triumvirate of the Illuminati had, it must have helped with storing so many gadgets.

“TO WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!” the red Horseman screamed.

Liakan’s flat face parted into a jagged maw, gathering energy between her metal teeth.

John began to charge three Arc Lances, one in each hand and one with the Companion Cube by his shoulder.

Xipe-Totec rose from the ground, clad in an aura of screaming faces.

A first spurt of crimson bubbled up from the centre of the Blood Fountain. All was silent for a singular moment. The final calm before the storm.

Then all hell broke loose.

John ran as the laser breath of Liakan cut a burning trench through the battlefield. It swerved left to right with no specific target, breaking against War’s armour, Xipe-Totec’s claws, John’s Particle Skin, and finally stopping after having sliced apart Nahua.

The axolotl woman collapsed to the ground, much to the amusement of Xipe-Totec. “BLOODLE-“ he began to shout, only to spot the gooey mass of purple that reconnected the two halves of the woman before she could do as much as lose her step. “That is new,” he remarked in a moment of cruel calm.

“Many new things are under the sun.” Nahua’ malicious smirk was gradually swallowed up by the cloud that enveloped her.

John’s attention was split three ways. Zelos thrust at him, Xipe-Totec charged at him, and up above Norahnon launched his missile. Zelos was intercepted by Gnome and Salamander. Sylph took to the sky again, to try to destroy the ordnance. That left John (and Undine, theoretically) with the Flayer Lord.

The volley of Ego Blades was swept aside not by the claws of the god-warrior, but various disembodied arms that emerged from his baleful aura. John launched his three Arc Lances next. To dodge, Xipe-Totec contorted as if there wasn’t a single bone in his body. The exposed spine made that ironic, but John did not have time to appreciate the humour.

John had never been fast. Xipe-Totec moved rapidly. The level difference between them was well over a hundred and it showed. White fat formed glyphs on the exposed muscles of the arm that swiped upwards.

Particle Skin prevented John from being sliced open hip to collar. The attack was so fast that Magus Step only activated after it had been concluded. Taking the Skitterstep right after, John dipped into invisibility.

Xipe-Totec looked at his claws with lidless eyes. Hate filled them, hate and disappointment for the lack of blood drawn. His head ripped around at the cloud of purple streaming in his direction, Nahua’s noxious cloud appeared like the wobbling form of a massive axolotl head, about to close its jaws around the god-warrior.

A monster the undead man may have been, but he was not stupid. He jumped aside, where he was swiftly attacked by Liakan with her halberd. War entered that theatre as well, putting the three into a brawl that temporarily removed that headache from John for the time being.

“A true child of Krieg! Which is always weird to say!” Zelos complimented Salamander.

“Maybe you should be more fucking creative!” the fire spirit retorted.

The two of them were locked in a match of thrusting spears. Even with six arms and six spears, Salamander was outclassed by the rider. Not only was Zelos faster, his steed granted him additional manoeuvrability. The way the Horseman moved in the saddle was plainly awe-inspiring. Even with supernatural grace, many of the motions felt like gravity should have at least unbalanced him, but he always moved at the edge of physics.

Without the metaphorical boulder in his way, Salamander would have gotten trampled down. As it was, whenever Glory attempted an assault that was too direct, Gnome’s body or magic was always in the way. Even working together, the elementals did not stand a chance, though. All they did was keep the rider occupied.

Occupied was good enough to John for now. ‘How quick does that fill up?’ he asked himself and glanced over to the Blood Fountain. It was bubbling and frothing, the latter made accurately estimating the flow near impossible. Neither did John know how much of the basin was required to satisfy the conditions. ‘Probably filled to the brim, which means I should be careful with using any cooldowns. There’s still the post-trial brawl to consider.’

The Gamer decided to seek refuge in Nahua’s cloud. Even if she didn’t necessarily think of him as an ally, the fact that she currently was his familiar made him immune to the effects of her poison. He found the axolotl woman crouching within. ‘What’s your plan?’ she asked him mentally.

‘The trial is harm, so I don’t see a reason to exhaust myself unnecessarily,’ he answered. ‘For now I am countering the attacks coming our way.’

‘The Flayer Lord won’t let that strategy stand. He wants slaughter.’

‘Well, he’ll have to come in here to try and force me.’

Nahua grinned. ‘In this moment, invader, I love you.’

The Gamer chuckled at her words. He realized he sounded half-mad with passion himself. His heart was beating in his chest. Adrenaline surged in his brain. For a moment he wondered if there was a mental effect going on, but there was nothing of the like. ‘I missed this. I missed the threat. The chaos. This is so much better than the average fight!’

Sylph bolted after the missile. She would have reached it thrice over by now, had it not been for the constant machine gun fire from the sidearms on the sides of the arms of the GUNDAMN. “I AM THE PIONEER ON BATTLE ROBOTS!” Norahnon spoke over the speakers. “I WILL NOT BE OUTDONE BY A HACKING-TYPE TECHNOMANCER! NO, I WILL NOT! RATATATATATATA!”

There was something so humorous about a man as old as the Enlightenment making machine gun noises with his mouth that John could not help but laugh. Sylph shared the laughter, her giggling filling the air as the aerial clash continued. ‘Salamander, help her.’

‘But Glory-‘

‘Let Glory be Singed’s worry.’

Salamander took to the sky just as the second member of the Azure Tribe joined the fight with a cataclysmic crash. The air rippled where the animated armour of sand and arcane metal landed. “YOU WANNA FIGHT?!” Singed screamed.

“DO I?!” Zelos answered in kind. “FOR DEATH! FOR PRIDE! FOR GLORY!”

The front hooves of the golden steed slammed repeatedly against Singed’s great sword. The two fighters jumped apart, just as a spike of rock rose up between them. “Uhm, hope that wasn’t too rude or anything?” Gnome asked, fingers pushed together.

“FIGHT!” War bellowed, taking a swing at Gnome as his bulky horse galloped past, chasing Liakan.

“And who do you think you are to hide, invader?!”

Just as Nahua had predicted, Xipe-Totec charged into the mist. John just grinned, ready to take the attack head on. He had the mana to take a few hits and force the god-warrior to linger the noxious fumes. The axolotl demigoddess herself attempted to hit the Flayer Lord with a blotch of disease. It was dodged easily, but the valiant effort could be repeated for as long as-

“I FLAY!”

The incantation was spoken in an instant. John activated Magus Step as soon as he could, but again the speed of the Flayer Lord outpaced even his mental reactions. Claws gripped John. Silver, Particle Skin flashed. The Gamer was teleported ten metres away. He felt the tearing from his surface. It was like every inch of his skin was simultaneously scratched with a rusty knife.

‘I hate defence circumvention! Fuck, does he steal Gamer’s Body if I don’t have Particle Skin up?!’

Xipe-totec laughed maniacally, holding an empty sleeve of sparkling silver mana in his hand. It hung like unworn skin from his claws. The god-warrior draped it over himself. Immediately, the new set of skin began to flare up all over. His head twisted sideways like that of an owl. The lidless eyes opened a little wider as he stared at the damage from the air around, prevented by the newly acquired hide. Then, he turned around and fled.

‘So eager to enter, yet even more eager to leave,’ Nahua mused.

John bit his cheek on his theories why that was. He was now one defence down and the missile was all the way up. Salamander and Sylph together had not been capable of reaching it with Norahnon and all the other chaos in the way.

“ACTIVATING ARCANA STRIKE PROTOCOL!” Norahnon announced.

For all to see, the missile was instantly consumed by some kind of procedure that turned the materials into pure mana. Left behind was a sphere of blue and purple that John was intimately familiar with. It swelled with every passing moment, ready to turn the entirety of the battlezone into a crater.

“DO NOT WORRY, FELLOW ARCHEOLOGISTS, I HAVE PERFECTLY CALCULATED THE IMPACT ZONE FOR MAXIMUM DAMAGE TO YOU AND MINIMUM DAMAGE TO THE SURROU- NIA?!”

“Norahnon,” the pariah answered, suddenly standing amongst the fuzzy hair of the power armour. “How are the kids?”

“GREAT… PLEASE DO NOT DELETE MY ORDNANCE.”

“I have to refuse that.” The blank pulled off her eyepatch. One moment the Arcana Strike existed, the next the pariah turned intangible and the mass of mana into nothing.

Oddity swept over the battlefield. John resisted it. He reached out to Nahua to shelter her from it. The elementals were used to it. Norahnon at least knew the woman. Everyone else suddenly snapped towards the pariah in a moment of unified, absolute disgust.

Nia held onto the hair and jumped, putting the chest of the power armour between herself and the volley of attacks coming her way. Zelos threw a spear, War launched a wave of bloody energy from his sword, and Liakan let loose another laser breath attack. All of them clashed against the hexagonal shields that surrounded Norahnon’s tank-sized mecha.

“I FLAY!”

The words echoed, Xipe-Totec’s claws scratched, but the shield remained up. Something like surprise showed on the god-warrior’s face. ‘So, it requires an actual casting entity to work?’ John wondered. ‘Or is the limitation on beings of flesh and blood?’

The Flayer Lord landed a moment later, just as Nia pushed herself off the floating armour of her countryman. Dangerously translucent, she landed down below. Eye patch back in place, she waved once at John, then bolted to the trees. Everyone followed her with quiet confusion for one moment.

It was Xipe-Totec who resumed motion first. While all were reeling from their sense of disgust, the Flayer Lord charged at Zelos. “I FLAY!” The Babel Phrase accompanied the rapid swipe of his claws. The golden horse began to turn, but much too slow. The claws ripped into the stomach of the wraith.

The swing ripped all radiance off Glory. In one swing the shine of the ornaments was replaced with tarnished dull. The gold of the horse was replaced with a mundane yellowy-brown colour. Most striking was the change of Zelos himself. Always, the rider had been unmistakably a wraith. A being of translucent, ghostly energy around a skeleton. The spectral embodiment of his living form had been gorgeous and gold.

The colour he now had was the necromantic green one expected from the undead. Surface layers swirled like unsteady mist atop yellow bones. Old battle scars and puncture wounds showed Glory as he was in the moment of what should have been his death. Chinks in his skeleton betrayed a thousand battles since that day.

War suddenly pulled on the leash of his horse, galloping down the red road. ‘That can’t be good,’ John thought and had the elementals consolidate around him. ‘Something bad is about to happen.’

“An illusion spell?” Xipe-Totec wondered out loud, then draped it over himself. Living skin appeared on top of the exposed muscles, showing the undead god-warrior as he likely would have looked in life: a hunched over creature of a man, with a tremendous overbite, bug-eyes, and strawy hair. “Time reversal?” he laughed. “The rarest of magics, used to show yourself in your prime? What a vanity.”

Glory calmly and quietly unsaddled from his horse. The steed was nervously awaiting the moment its rider stood on his own, then bolted in the same direction War had disappeared in. There stood Zelos, a Horseman without allies, and his presence spelled death.

“Do you think yourself important, Flayer Lord?” The voice of Glory was creaking and deep, like an ancient oak swaying in the wind.

“I’m the servant of the greatest of gods.” Xipe-Totec peeled the spell off his skin. “And I have no use for your cosmetics. You can have them back.” The flayed magic dispersed into the air, like decaying shreds of fibre. The gesture may have been genuine appeasement. Everyone sensed that a line had been crossed.

The Abyss had few time mages. John knew why, or at least he partially knew. If Gaia was the dreamer and had always been in charge of reality, then she plainly did not want it to be common. If Gaia had become the World Soul by the machinations of Remus, then she had outlawed it the moment she gained control. In either case, time magic was exceptionally rare and even rarer was it powerful. Time travel was never possible. Hardly the only dangerous application of control of a fundamental force of reality.

“There is only one Lord worth serving and his name is Death.” Zelos gripped the air with both hands. “In life I was a man without renown. Under Death, I am Glory! You wish for me to shed my vanity?! Then your wish shall be granted!” The Horseman gripped the air in front of him.

Where all times before, his conjured weapons had been a flaming spear or banner, this weapon was grey. It was dull, fuzzy around the edges, and shaped like a sword without a crossguard. Just looking at it gave John that same dreadful feeling in his stomach as the encounter with the Grim Reaper had created.

“Look upon the first knight of Death.” Zelos pointed his blade at Xipe-Totec. “I am the final herald of the apocalypse, the chosen instrument of the Grim Reaper, the Grand-Marshal of DEATH, CREATURE! CALL YOURSELF GOD-WARRIOR, IT MATTERS NOT, BEFORE THE VOICE THAT BELLOWS OUT THE LAST ORDER OF THE FINAL ARMY!” Zelos inhaled deeply, then shouted. “ASHES TO ASHES AND DUST TO DUST!”

And the stones themselves began to wither.