Evelyn McAlister stood at a distance, a far distance, and he meant a far distance from the active battle zone. Yet even here, he could feel the battle like a heartbeat under his feet.
The earth quaked violently, the air churned with magical force, and the sky itself warped, a black vortex twisting overhead as two titans clashed. The sound was like thunder, a roar of power.
When Grindelwald had escaped, it wasn't just the Winx who had been worried, the Mage Associations had been thrown into continent-wide turmoil, too. This was a man who had brought fear and death to both wizards and mages alike, with the ideals of magic users above all.
His escape had shaken the world to its core. Was he trying to revive a war that nearly fractured Europe sixty years prior. Many still bore the scars, physical and political, from his last campaign of terror, and the thought of his return was enough to send diplomatic and magical markets crashing.
When intelligence reached them that he was gathering his old followers, panic swept through the old guard of the Association. But when they discovered the reason why, panic turned to existential dread, summoning a heretic god. The sheer hubris was astounding even for him.
Even Evelyn, hardened by decades of seeing rogue gods and Campiones tear up the world around them, had felt his heart stop at the thought of the Dark Lord becoming a Campione, no matter how low the chances of success were. It was the ultimate nightmare.
No one had ever succeeded in killing a rogue god intentionally(non campione that is,) during its summoning to claim its power, not as far as he knew.
Those fools always died, leaving the catastrophic mess they created for others to clean up.
When they pinpointed the location, they immediately called Harry. He had been the closest Campione, he and Lord Salvatore Doni, but his Association had a working relationship with Harry, which made him the preferred, if not the safer, option. He was unpredictable, more cooperative than the other.
Another tremor nearly knocked Evelyn off his feet, rocking him violently. He steadied himself, sighing and adjusting his robes. "They really are going at it," he muttered, the sheer, casual destructive power on display still baffling him. After all these years, he still couldn't understand how beings like this could exist and function without tearing the world apart every time they sneezed. His worry deepened; if this battle moved even slightly closer to civilization, the ensuing collateral damage would be biblical.
He glanced at the armored figure beside him, a young woman whose face was obscured by a knight's helm. She was one of their most promising rising stars, a powerful Mage-Knight in the Association.
"Are you sure about this, Anya?" he asked.
"Yes," came the simple, firm reply, her voice muffled slightly by the helm. "Lord Potter is fighting, but the miko had given a vision that he would need assistance if he is to win."
Evelyn lit a cigarette and took a slow drag, the ember glowing in the dim, oppressive light. He exhaled a plume of smoke, watching it dissolve instantly in the warped air. "Just… be careful," he said, his voice laced with the heavy weight of concern for the girl and the fear of what she was rushing toward. "And don't die. This is not a battle you can just intervine in, you are only to assist when needed."
The armored figure broke into a sprint, rushing toward the apocalyptic battle.
Harry raised his left hand out as a shield formed in front of him, blocking the goddess's sword with a jarring metallic shriek that vibrated down to his teeth. In his right, a massive broadsword took shape—wide, brutal, like a butcher's cleaver.
Anyone familiar with Naruto might have recognized it as the Executioner's Blade.
Harry, somewhere in the midst of the escalating battle, had just started letting his imagination run wild, calling forth anything that he could. He wouldn't lie, he had been getting a little pressed and realized he wasn't even having the time to think strategically, so he just decided to let his mind run on its own and use the power of his Oneirothrone to instantly manifest anything that came to him.
He didn't even expect these constructs, these dreams made reality, to last, they were inherently unstable, lasting only seconds before dissolving, but they gave him an edge, a constant barrage of ephemeral, unpredictable threats.
He swung the massive cleaver at her. She blocked easily, her own sword clashing with it and smashing the dream-blade into a thousand shimmering fragments of light.
He hadn't even had the slightest notion that it would have held up. It was a mere dream construct, but it did what it was summoned for, redirecting her sword and disrupting her flow. He pushed forward, leveraging the momentum as he slashed her with his claws, cutting her across the shoulder.
She brought her sword closer to her and spun it, hitting his hand enough to make his next attack just graze her. Then, with a swift motion, she stabbed the sword into the ground and dragged it through the dirt, slashing at him and sending a blinding screen of dirt and rocks flinging at him to block his view.
But Harry was already ready, as his claws lashed out and clashed with the blade, a perfect sonic boom marking the meeting.
Claws versus sword. Man versus goddess.
They struggled, pushing against each other, trying to gain ground, their feet tearing trenches in the battered earth. Her pitch-black eyes stared at him with chilling amusement as they locked eyes.
"Good, good. I've not had this much fun in centuries," she said as she let out a mad laugh, a sound like gravel rolling down a mountain. "You really were worth the wait, Harry Potter."
His brow furrowed in frustration and confusion at that statement, but he wasn't about to get into a verbal spat when his life was on the line and he seemed to be on the losing side.
"From the hidden realm of slumber and the deep weave of the earth, I decree the shadow to be the substance! The world shall bend to the lie that I have witnessed! Let the fleeting image of my desire be born, solid and undeniable! Manifest! Oneirothrone!" he called forth the full power of his Authority.
Chains of shadow, thick as pythons and dark as a sunless abyss, appeared and lashed out, wrapping around both her arms, chaining her and yanking her backward, briefly lifting her off her feet.
She laughed again, a sound of genuine mirth, as black mist flowed out of her body like ink dissolving in water. The chains melted away instantly, collapsing back into mere dreams, but the precious few seconds it gave him were not wasted.
He waved his arms and slammed his hands on the ground as she rushed at him, jumping up, bringing her blade down on him, impaling him right through the chest onto the ground.
His form suddenly wavered like smoke and vanished as the entire area started to shift, then in an instant, the world ceased to be, turning into an endless black void.
She turned around, looking around her, but it was completely black. She couldn't even see just a few steps in front of her, it was like the very concept of light didn't exist in this endless void, only the sense of an absolute nothingness.
She suddenly felt her instinct scream at her, a primal warning that. She raised her sword to block, but she was not fast enough as a large, raw gash appeared on her chest. She looked at the cut, her grin widening in a dangerous, almost ecstatic manner. "Not bad, not bad. But if you think this can stop me, you've mistaken."
Cute, but this won't stop her.
She raised her sword to her left side as she blocked a scythe coming at her. She pushed back and raised the sword in front of her and blocked another strike. Above, right leg, left shoulder, the strikes kept coming faster and faster, relentless.
She kept blocking every strike, her body moving in rhythms in the pitch black, before raising her sword and blocking an overhead strike, then twisting her sword and striking back, she felt a bit of flesh right there.
Harry was starting to feel annoyed and deeply frustrated. Could she sense him even when he forced his form into darkness. He shook his head, not the time.
He focused and sent out an ocean of flames, as he followed close behind the flames, ready to strike. He knew that wouldn't do much, after all, and he was proven right when she raised her sword and brought it down in a slow, deliberate swing, black mist clinging to the blade.
The moment the mist touched the flames, it was like it devoured them, black eating red, erasing them from existence as if they had never been kindled.
She had 'Killed' The flames.
The magic didn't just extinguish, it was unmade. Harry shuddered violently, the image seared into his mind. 'She literally wiped them from existence, negated the Law that created them.'
That was scary.
He channeled his Rend Authority into a new blade he created, and the weapon glowed white-hot as he swung it at her. Just like before, she blocked, but... he smirked as his blade shattered her weapon, the divine sword fragmenting like glass under the weight of the World-Eater's power.
For the first time since the fight started, she stopped smiling as her eyes widened a bit, and his sword continued towards her unprotected chest.
Just before it made contact, her body exploded into black mist, forcing him to jump back as mad laughter resounded everywhere. "You destroyed my sword? My divine blade, Commendable. But…"
It may have seemed like just a normal sword, but it wasn't, it was part of her, part of her legend, and he broke it. She couldn't help the crazed smile.
She seemed to know where he was as she appeared in front of him, just a bit over him, coming down at him as her left hand twisted and shifted and turned into a massive, obsidian-black spear. She plunged downward.
He dodged, but it seemed he wasn't really the target as the spear slammed into the ground. Black flames erupted, spreading violently, and the darkness faded, and the surrounding environment snapped back into view, the scarred battlefield that they started in once more.
He shouldn't have been surprised that she removed the black void, he didn't really think he had truly trapped her there, even from the beginning.
No, she had been entertaining him, and he had hoped to finish her off before she got serious, but that seemed to be over now.
And worst of all, his hunch was correct after all, he thought to himself as he looked at her transformed, weaponized arm.
After seeing it was a god related to death that had been called, he had started calling all the female death gods in his mind and going over which one matched. The crows helped a lot, and the way she fought showed she was skilled in battle up front, which helped in narrowing down the options, given that a lot of death gods don't fight head-on.
He had already somewhat figured it out, but the arm spear of hers confirmed who he was fighting, and it really lessened his confidence even more.
Morrígan. The Great Queen, The Phantom Queen, The Fury, The Battle Crow. The Goddess of War, Fate, Sovereignty, and Death.
She is, in myths, a Goddess of Fate but also death, who specifically oversees the transition between life and death on the battlefield. She appears before great battles, either to inspire warriors or, more often, to foretell doom and claim the souls of the slain. She is usually associated with the concepts of the triple goddess, sometimes appearing as a trinity of sisters: Badb (Vulture/Crow), Macha (Goddess of Sovereignty), and Nemain (Battle-frenzy/Terror).
She was known as a powerful Celtic goddess and was frightening to all who saw her. As he himself has already seen, she was a very skilled fighter, but her legend always said she was a trickster, preferring to use cunning and psychological warfare.
With her prophecy domain, she could manipulate events to her outcome. The way the match had been going, he really hoped her legend was corrupted or at least this was just an aspect of her, like Athena's limited form with Godou, because if not, then he really was in deep, serious trouble.
She stood up and looked him right in the eyes. It was like she already knew he knew. "Prepare yourself."
That was the only thing he got before she appeared in front of him and thrust her spear at him. He summoned a broadsword to block, but her spear shattered it, stabbing into his shoulder and lifting him like a skewer, the point digging deep into the joint.
She raised him on her spear and slammed him down on the ground, as she started to drag him while she ran forward, tearing a massive furrow in the earth. She then spun and flung him high into the air.
He shifted mid-flight to adjust himself, only to not see her on the ground as she appeared instantly at his back and blasted him back down, black mist coming out of her and rushing at him, who was in the crater below.
Without even thinking, he desperately summoned Rho Aias, the seven-fold shield, but it was useless. The imitation of the legendary shield tore apart like wet paper, and the mist slammed into him.
The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt before, like acid eating away at his soul, like his magic, his very core, was being stretched and violently ripped from him.
'I'm going to die. I'm going to die. Those thoughts just kept popping into his head.
His body shriveled under the devastating mist, his skin blistering, his life feeling like it was pouring out of him.
Then something slammed into Morrígan. It didn't truly hurt her, she barely registered the impact, but it was just enough to shift the mist away from him, breaking the deadly connection.
Harry rolled out of the crater, gasping, jumping back several yards, his body still smoking and scorched from the corrosive attack. His skin looked like crispy chicken
'That was... I can't let that thing touch me again,' he thought to himself.
He turned toward the source of the distraction. Morrígan's gaze had shifted as well, her pitch-black eyes narrowing in annoyance and focused on the interloper.
Not too far away stood what looked like a person in gleaming knight's armor, sword in hand. Wearing the unmistakable sigil of the Association, standing defiantly against the Heretic God.
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