My attack was devastating. Perhaps not immediately lethal, but it was the first to inflict a wound of such magnitude that reality itself seemed to bleed. I could feel the magic leaking from the God, returning to the environment violently, but it was no time to celebrate; the job had to be finished.
Though exhausted, Elise charged beside me once more. We threw ourselves against the sphere without giving it a moment's rest. It responded with a renewed brutality… or so it seemed. The truth was different. It had lost control of its own power. Every action it took was erratic and excessive. It used more energy than necessary and, worse still, further destabilized the enormous wound I had opened. Magic overflowed in chaotic waves. And that made it more dangerous.
Facing something so unstable was like fighting a lawless storm. Magic, in that volatile state, produced random and wild effects. At one point, while my claws tried to tear into the cracks of its surface, I took a direct hit. Immediately, I felt chicken feathers sprouting all over my body, and an incessant clucking escaped my throat. It was... strange, to say the least.
It wasn't a mortal danger, as my mutated body could attempt to expel that chaotic energy, but I decided not to waste time healing. We had to annihilate it now. I knew the survival capacity of gods all too well. I would let Elise purify me with her divine power later… or simply wait for the campaign reset to restore my health.
Elise, for her part, was much less affected. Her semi-divine nature gave her a certain resistance to magical chaos. But she was exhausted. She was not yet a fully realized goddess, and this avatar had a low limit. Moreover, she had spent a large part of her power in the previous fight.
We fought frantically. Wild magic wreaked havoc on my flesh: glacial cold, internal combustion, partial metamorphosis, decomposition, and instant recreation. At times, I felt as if the God were throwing Hannah's "Pixie Dust" at me. I nearly lost consciousness several times, but my mind—that unalterable void—kept me sane while my body fell apart and put itself back together.
However, in the midst of that chaos, something new emerged. An essence that took root in my system, adapting me to the madness surrounding me.
[New Essence Acquired: "Wild Mage" (Lv 1)]
["Wild Mage" (Lv 1) → "Wild Mage" (Lv 3)]
[Essence of "Wild Mage" (Level 3)]
-You can attempt to channel chaotic energies to perform magic. When doing so, the spell receives a power boost of 2x to 10x, but with a high probability of altered or completely random results.
-There is a small probability that any magic performed—intentional or not—turns into wild magic.
-Wild magic can break the limits of conventional magic.
Meanwhile, the sphere lost altitude and color as we continued our assault. We no longer heard grandiloquent proclamations—only muffled groans. Perhaps pain. Perhaps attempts to curse us… without enough strength to utter a word. I could feel it preparing something desperate. A last attack. An escape. A final sacrifice.
But we both knew it. This was its end. Even if we stopped attacking, it would die from its own wounds. Magic is not a suitable substitute for a being whose divinity is not based upon it. Trying to sustain oneself solely on magical energy was like filling a heart with smoke.
If we weren't here, perhaps that state would have been its best option: let the magic drain almost completely, preserve the little divine power it had left, and enter a long lethargy to recover slowly. But it wouldn't have that chance. It was ironic. A god of death… was about to die.
Elise and I hovered in the void while the sphere descended in an agonizing fall. We didn't attack, but our senses were tense, ready to react to any last trick.
"You shall die..." filtered from the core of the sphere, but the voice no longer possessed any oppression; it was the sibilant trace of a dying being. "I will devour your souls when that day comes..."
The clouds forming its body had become translucent, vanishing into the air like an echo losing strength. But, just as Elise and I suspected, the God didn't plan to go quietly. The temple, rebuilt by its own arrogance, absorbed the magic leaking from its body and began to glow with alarming intensity.
This time it wasn't a siphon. During the heat of combat, we hadn't noticed that the deity was deliberately overloading the pressure points of the runic matrix. It planned to detonate the entire zigurat—an explosion of catastrophic magnitude that would sweep us off the map while it used the momentum to project what remained of its essence far away from us. In its degraded state, it might end up wandering as a mortal or a minor spirit, but any fate was better than total annihilation at our hands.
However, its calculation failed.
Just as the temple reached the critical ignition point, a colossal figure silhouetted against the sky above the sphere. With a small but lethal four-fingered claw, the creature squeezed the upper part of the cloudy orb. The sound of breaking glass echoed through the area; under the pressure of that simple grip, the sphere cracked and shattered into pieces, opening a definitive breach where its energy poured into the void.
"Nooooo..." was its last lament, a sigh lost to the wind.
An Occamy of titanic proportions, its plumage shimmering in tones of turquoise and silver, let out a resounding screech that shook the heavens. Beneath its claws, the sphere flickered and disintegrated, dissolving into currents of energy that dispersed throughout the Amazon jungle like snakes of light fleeing into the dark.
Neither Elise nor I tried to pursue them. We were exhausted, our reserves spent, and we lacked a method to eradicate those volatile residues. I knew exactly what they represented: those remnants of residual divine power were the same ones that, centuries later, I would feel in the cult leaders who dared to attack the dragon's cave in my present. The circle had closed.
"It counts as us killing him," Elise grumbled, looking at the giant Occamy with a mix of exhaustion and wounded pride.
I could only laugh, admiring the majesty of the feathered dragon watching us from above. Its ancient eyes met mine, recognizing the role we had played in purging this divine intruder.
...
Inside the Fief, Hannah was a bundle of nerves. Helena kept her company, but uncertainty was a slow poison. They had managed to escape the epicenter and reach safety in my domain, but the silence from the outside was unbearable. They didn't know if we were triumphing or if the God had reduced us to ashes. Every second of waiting was torture.
"This place exists thanks to Red's magic, if I'm not mistaken," the ghost commented with a melancholy smile. "If he were to die, most likely this world would vanish with us inside. Well... at least we'd accompany him to the end. I'd die a second time; I wonder what that feels like. I hope it's not as boring as the first." She laughed softly.
Hannah didn't like that idea, but she couldn't reject it either. Since she had accepted being my woman, she understood that her fate was, in a way, tied to mine. Dying with me… It wasn't something she desired. But it wasn't something she could deny. She was willing to accept it.
Silent tears began to roll down her cheeks. They weren't from physical pain, but from that accumulated tension. However, just when the fear threatened to break her, a [Message] arrived, putting an end to the agony.
[Come out, there's someone interesting here you might like to meet :)]
That message reached not only Hannah and Helena but also other important people within the Fief, like Tonks and her mother. Hannah and Helena were the first to react, stepping out almost instantly.
What they found was a scene of absolute devastation. The temple had lost its upper section following the God's death; its base remained a smoking ruin. The forest the deity tried to restore had withered once again. Deep craters and cracks scarred the earth, and the air was so saturated with concentrated magic that it would be a long time before the Amazon regained its balance. But that didn't matter now.
Hannah ran toward me with blind desperation, jumping into my arms and clinging to my neck while sobbing in pure relief.
"Easy... everything is fine. The monster is gone," I comforted her in a low voice, stroking her hair as if she were a little girl, which was exactly what she needed. She sank into my embrace, her trembling body gradually calming down.
Once she caught her breath, Hannah pulled back enough to observe her surroundings, and that was when she saw our colossal, feathered ally.
The Occamy was an imposing creature, but up close, its advanced age was evident in the matte tone of some feathers and the tired wisdom in its eyes. It wasn't intimidating; that aura of crushing power it had used against the sphere had dissipated, giving way to the presence of a kind and serene elder. It seemed its capacity to deploy full combat power was somewhat limited.
Hannah gazed at the dragon-like beast in wonder, fascinated by its ancestral elegance. She wasn't the only one; soon, the rest of the Fief's inhabitants began to emerge from the portal, torn between admiration for the jungle guardian and awe at the magnitude of the battle we had just won.
We spent a good while in the ruins of the zigurat, recovering our strength and studying the surroundings. A god had fallen, but unlike my victory against the Yakuruna, I gained no major immediate benefits beyond completing the campaign's main quest. However, the mood was one of relief, not defeat.
Hannah went from being a sea of tears to the happiest young woman in the world. Knowing it was all over and having the chance to meet a creature as magnificent as this Occamy was her greatest reward. The others were equally ecstatic. Tonks, showing her usual lack of fear, had already earned the beast's trust and was sitting on its neck, riding it as if she were a rider from myth.
The Occamy seemed genuinely pleased to amuse these "little creatures," showing a gentle expression on its millenary face. Although its intelligence was clearly human or higher, it preferred to let itself be carried by a friendly and protective instinct; it was, in essence, like a friendly, majestic, gigantic dog.