Chapter 1956: Breaking The Cradle (Final) The Beast of inevitability roared in pain and distress. Its resilience and healing were powerful enough to cleanse the corruption in its system, and its fundamental nature meant that it did not matter how much corruption was poured into its body; it would always recover given time, but during that time, a lot of its powers would be focused inward instead of outward to fight against the source of corruption. Eos hesitated. At this point, he could not help the Beast even if he wanted; the Archai monitoring the battle were powerful, but these were Watchers, and they were never meant to battle an evil like Enoch, but he trusted that the Beast could not fall so easily. More Abominations were flooding into the body of the turtle, whose striking tail was beginning to move more slowly, and Eos could see that some of the Realities being protected beneath the turtle were being slowly snatched by roving Abominations. Suddenly, hundreds of Abominations began to fuse once more, and before long, a gigantic Abomination arose before the face of the turtle, and its billion arms slowly reached for the face of the roaring Beast, and it slowly caressed it, as if admiring a work of art. Despite the pain it was experiencing, the eyes of the massive turtle slowly opened as it felt the alien touch on its skin, and found the gigantic skull-like visage of the Abomination grinning. The face of the Abomination descended, and it almost gently kissed the snout of the turtle before a long tongue filled with screaming faces shot from the mouth of the Abomination and dug into the right eyes of the turtle, penetrating deep into its brain. The turtle shuddered as a sickening slurping sound emerged from the tongue as it began to drink the essence of the Beast. The turtle was about to fight back, even if it was to disengage from the tongue that was rapidly draining its essence, but suddenly its mind was flooded with memories. The Beast remembers every Reality it failed to save, every dead, their lives, and end rushing into its mind. Mothers forming mountains with their bodies. Children opening arms to corruption because they had never learned fear and crying in pain as their flesh was liquified before their eyes, and arms grew out of their throats. A cry of pain emerged from the chest of the Beast, and it froze, lost in grief. Its cries were not for itself, but from all that it had lost and was still losing. The Abomination’s maw opens wider, and more tongues lashed out from its mouths like harpoons. One pierces the Beast’s shell, anchoring itself to the thrashing turtle, and multiple tongues begin to wrap around its legs. With a mighty heave that sent cracks across existence, the tongues began to pull, but the Beast was unconsciously resisting as its legs dug trenches in the void, and the corruption inside spread more quickly as it exerted itself, and the memories of dying Realities were keeping what was left of its conscious mind in a cover of grief and pain. The white veins of corruption spreading across the shell of the turtle had reached the fading runes, and they began to shatter like glass. Power began draining out of the Beast of Inevitability like a flood as the Abomination’s body pressed closer and its flesh began to rub against the body of the turtle; the contact was intimate and obscene. Where they touch, the Beast’s shell softens, turning white and pulpy, and the Abomination’s skin splits open in sympathy, revealing internal organs, which were fused Realities that resembled forests of arms in the shape of livers and hearts that beat with stolen lullabies. Eos could no longer watch; he could not physically help this Beast, but he could remind it that there were those it needed to protect, and despite the losses it had endured, the job was not yet done. The question here was how he was going to do that without alerting the Abomination, but as it turned out, he did not need to make a move, because the turtle surprised everyone again. Eos did not know where the Beast drew its strength from, but as the Abomination was as close to it as a lover, the turtle did not need to do much; it opened its mouth, and it bites down. The jaws of the turtle, like celestial mountains, clamped on the Abominati on’s flank and flesh tears in wet sheets. White blood sprays, freezing into sculptures of screaming faces, and the Abomination shrieked in what resembled a merger of pain and enjoyment, and it did not pull back; instead, it pushed closer to the Beast as it began to enfold it, like a python swallowing its prey. Billions of its arms wrap around the shell, flow around its legs, around the serpent tail. Trillions of mouths kissed every crack in the Beast’s body, and at first the kisses were almost gentle, before it became hungry, as it drew upon the essence of the Beast, but as if it knew that this was its final chance to fight for its survival, the thrashing of the turtle became more violent as it pushed agsinst the influnce of the unrelenting tides of grief. Its serpent tail spears through the Abomination’s body again and again, carving canyons of white meat; however, each wound births new arms. Above the struggling Beast, the head of the Abomination began to expand to accommodate its mouth opening wider and then from that unholy maw that seemed to lead to the depths of evil, the Abomination inhales causing a fierce wind to pour across the turtle and reach the Realities huddled beneath the shell, and when that wind touched all of these Realities, it began to pull. Reality after Reality was dragged from safety, and they did not cry out for help; instead, their cries were ones of defiance, and Eos could see in the eyes of the Abomination at this moment pure rage. Its maw drank the cries of these Realities, and it vomited a white flood filled with its corruption over them, and they began to transform, their cries of defiance turning into one of hunger. These losses were almost too much for the turtle to bear as it roars one last time, and this roar could only be described as loss made manifest, and it was powerful, exceeding any form of struggle that the Beast had made from the beginning. Spiderwebs of cracks erupted to the depths of existence as the Abomination was shaken away from the Beast, and for a moment, the turtle broke free. With this opportunity, the Beast could have fled, but it did not. Eos watched it roar its defiance, echoing those of the Realities that had been stolen from its protection, and its serpent tail coils around the Abomination’s neck, or what passes for a neck in the mutated wasteland that its body had become. All of its venom was shot out in one explosive release, and the Abomination began to choke as oceans of venom that could erase existence were pouring down its body, and its sickly white flesh began to bubble and melt. It did not take long before a rain of falling arms and melting heads began to pour out from the breaking body of the Abomination, whose howl of pain no longer held any amusement. For a heartbeat, hope flickers, perhaps if the Beast could continue its onslaught, then it would erase this Abomination, but then the melting flesh of the Abomination that was pouring down the throat of the serpents reforms into new mouths inside the tail, and they kissed it from inside, pouring a potent flood of corruption into it. The tail began to turn white, and the eyes of the turtle went dim with regret because it knew that it was losing. The potency of its venom was weakening, while the corruption of the Abomination was growing, but it refused to let go, and despite the transformation of its tail, it continued pouring venom into the body of the Abomination. However, it was too late. One of the functions of the body of the Abomination was rapid evolution and adaptability. With every challenge this body was facing, Enoch was refining its capabilities, and finally, it had crossed a certain threshold, and from its spine, the Abomination began to split open. From within unfolds a second body, a humanoid silhouette made of fused children, arms linked, faces melted together, eyes weeping upward. This shape was madness and horror given form, and Eos could feel the minds of his Archai stuttering as they saw this form. The new body of the Abomination pushed aside its old shell as if it were discarding trash and reached out to the struggling beast with a hand made of a thousand smaller hands. It touches the Beast’s cracked shell. The touch was gentle, but the shell of the Beast shattered into pieces.