Chapter 1914: Falling With Folded Wings (Final) Vorthas could withstand the infinite deathly essence of the Beast, but not for long, but he had held on long enough for the Primordials to finally guage the power that the Beast had to offer, although they knew that this was far from the limit of Death, it was enough for them to push through, and behind Vorthas, the six Primordials suddenly split apart, and they began attacking. Although this opening salvo between Death and the Primordials seemed to have taken a relatively short time, that was only because the perception of these entities was far too powerful. It should be noted that the regions of Death were so broad that it would take an immortal trillions of years to cross it at a straight line travelling many times the speed of light, not to mention exploring more of its depths. Except for attacks at the Primordial level, any other lesser dimensional attacks would take forever to even cross a single region of Death. Every attack by the Primordials had crossed an infinite amount of space and time to reach their target, and following the general trend of time that guided all of Limbo, a century had already passed. Ninety years ago, the Primordials had felt the tethers placed inside Eosah’s Reality being suppressed before they finally snapped, but this did not concern them because their principal interest, Eos, was still being monitored. That broken Reality was given to him as a prize, and he could vent his fury on it however he liked. His part of the story was over, and if they did not fear the complications that may arise if they killed him before they were prepared, then Eos would be dead. This battle with Death would take a long time, but to the Primordials, time was meaningless. A century had passed, and it was only now that the Primordials began to attack in earnest, each of them leveraging their unique powers to attack and decimate millions of regions at a time. And among them, silent like a wraith, Nyxara stalked through the battlefield, a shadow among cataclysm, and she did not strike at their enemies; instead, she served a much important function, she was harvesting. Every time Asteroath erased a Region, she inhaled its unmaking. Every colossus Xylos corrupted and every memory Elgorath restored, she caught the excess Origin Force on black soul-wings and fed it to her siblings in thin, precise streams, knitting wounds almost as fast as they opened. Her actions were making it impossible for Death to reclaim the area taken from its domain, as Nyxara ensured there was nothing behind for it to take. She served as the healer for her siblings, processing vast amounts of deathly essence that should have broken their bodies and delayed their progress into healing rays. Her presence alone had changed the entire dynamics of the battle, and the Beast roared his rage, but its cries were silent as its fury deepened. The Beast finally spoke then, its voice arriving simultaneously in every mind that had ever died and in the seven living ones: "You waste your eternity on the shell. Come inside, little thieves, and I will show you what I have become." The Primordials looked at each other before they grinned, and their answer was to accelerate their progress, as they were no longer holding back. They punched through the first billion Regions like a bullet through paper. Behind them, the outer shell of Death’s empire folded inward, trying to seal the breach, but the seven tore onward, carving a tunnel of absolute devastation deeper into the Realm. Every layer they breached revealed worse defenders as Death was hiding its biggest aces deeper into his domain. There were legions of dead Primordial-era titans, each the height of a galaxy cluster, wielding weapons forged from the birthcries of stillborn universes. Swarms of fractal ghosts that existed in negative space, attacking the concept of location itself, even rivers of liquefied regret that drowned the mind before the body, and this was the smallest part of Death’s offering. For the first time since this war began, the Primordials were stalled as they experienced the toughest battle since their reawakening, and if not for the actions of Nyxara, they would have been pushed back. The Primordials had killed a lot of beings when they were in their maddened state and knew nothing but hunger and pain. Some of the beings they had killed were truly great abominations, many of them were older than the Primordials and were created by Enoch in the crazy period of his life when he was not holding back on utilizing the power of End. Although they were mad, the Primordials at that time had been truly unstoppable jauggernauts, and slowly but surely, they erased a majority of these great powers, and if there were any remaining, they were well hidden. Death had followed behind like a carrion, and it had harvested the souls of those he was able to lure into his kingdom. The power of these beings was so great that if they decided to rebel against the call of Death, it would have to destroy them since it could not control them. But the Beast of Final Rest had made a promise to all of them that there would come a time when the Primordials would be at their mercy, and at that time, their revenge could be had. Now, the time had arrived. The Primordials might have regained their sanity, but this had cost them the impossible power that allowed them to steamroll over the entirety of Limbo without challenge, now they were meeting forces that had the power to end their existence, and their roar of defiance could be heard all throughout the regions of Death, as the battlefield shook over the clash of these cataclysmic powers. The battle was frantic as no quarters were given or taken; a single mistake and the Primordials would be pushed back, and if they allowed these mistakes to compound, they would fall here. This crazy battle went on for a thousand years. By the passing of this millennium, the Primordials had claimed a sphere one billion Regions wide, an empire of erasure at the edge of Death’s dominion. But Asteroath’s wings were already dim, streaked with veins of black necrosis. Vorthas bled sap and spores. Elgorath’s golden feathers had begun to fall like dying stars. And Death’s army had not diminished at all. The outer legions simply stepped forward across the corpses of their predecessors, silent, endless, patient. Seven exhausted Primordials ringed by an ocean of dead that stretched to every horizon and beyond, into dimensions that had no name. Nyxara looked upon the infinite host, then at her wounded siblings, and spoke the first words uttered since the charge began: "Beautiful, I have taken its measure," she said, smiling with blood on her teeth. "It has only taken us a thousand one hundred years to gain this much ground and to make the Beast flinch. At this rate, only seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six more, and it will be on its knees." She spread her wings, still pristine black, and the war moved into its second phase. The dead advanced without sound. The Primordials met them without fear. The grinding had only just begun.