The falling stars shrieked with glee as they plummeted from the celestial realm, their blazing forms cutting through the darkness like triumphant heralds. Each flame roared with the voice of fallen angels, eager to claim what had been denied them in the heavens above.
What worth was power if it could not be wielded over others?
The Stars craved Oros' throne. They yearned to become Gods themselves, to rule over the weak and feeble mortals below.
Yet Gorn's ambitious dreams wavered as he fixed his gaze upon the metal knight standing before him. Dozens of his numerous eyes remained transfixed on the machine called Pyre.
The name had echoed throughout the cosmos, a being who rejected their divine presence, who waited at the horizon for their descent, ready to extinguish their ancient flames.
Is this what fear feels like? Gorn whispered the thought, as if the knight might somehow hear.
He watched countless shards of himself race toward the steel-clad figure. Their claws scraped stone, their hooves thundered against earth, their voices screeched with murderous intent as they surged forward to destroy the knight.
Their shadow-black forms moved like wraiths through the inferno, dark masses weaving between pillars of flame. Gorn turned his attention to the larger fragments of his being.
A massive bear-like beast with six powerful legs and three lashing tails bellowed its rage, its fury echoing across the battlefield as Pyre methodically slaughtered the approaching shards. Six burning eyes, nestled deep within the creature's throat behind its skull, vibrated with pure hatred. The beast's gravitational aura poured into the streets, crushing the corpses of the dead beneath its immense force.
The shard opened its cavernous maw, revealing rows of crocodilian teeth along its long snout ready to snap shut on its prey. From its skull sprouted twisted antlers that curved back through its own flesh, erupting from its spine to form a defensive shell of bone along its massive frame.
Gorn observed as smaller fragments of himself leaped onto the beast's flanks, riding it toward the knight like warriors charging into battle. Their ape-like bodies bore the same distinctive patterns that marked Gorn's true form, symbols that defined his cosmic identity.
Despite watching dozens of versions of himself surge forward, doubt gnawed at Gorn's consciousness. He glanced behind him, noting more shards falling from the sky to join his assault.
"I need more," Gorn hissed, disgusted by his own uncertainty.
The beast surveyed the burning kingdom, watching hundreds of homes crumble to ash. A once-mighty castle lay in ruins, its people slaughtered by his hand. The screams had died away; the sounds of life had been silenced. There was no more sustenance to devour, no energy left to heal and replenish his form.
Should I flee? The thought flickered through Gorn's mind as he turned back toward the knight.
It was a revolting notion. Gorn snarled, black ooze bubbling from his throat as he roared with indignation. His scream pierced the night, a hideous shriek like an eagle struck down in flight.
Gorn cast his gaze skyward, watching as a star plummeted directly toward the knight.
"I do not hide," Gorn growled, the corners of his mouth curling in savage anticipation.
The star fell with devastating force, its impact splitting the earth apart. The ground convulsed as an expanding ball of fire bloomed like a newborn sun, eager to consume everything within its reach. Streaks of flame shot through the air as burning debris rained down from the celestial impact.
The shards erupted in triumphant laughter, believing victory was theirs. Their opponent was surely vanquished, and their prize, a planet teeming with life and minds to consume, lay before them. Gorn looked forward to the day he could ascend to the next phase of stellar evolution. Ascension was what all Stars desired. To become an Elder Star was to achieve the pinnacle of existence.
Gorn rallied his fragments, boasting of his apparent triumph.
"The death of the guardian leaves the land defenseless!" Gorn declared, joy lifting his words.
Bang!
The sharp report cut through the air. Suddenly, the shard Gorn had been observing through collapsed to the ground, its eyes fading to black. Yet in his final moment before the void claimed him, he glimpsed something that chilled his essence.
From the fire-engulfed crater rose a crimson knight, emerging like a demon ascending from the depths of hell. His metal armor gleamed with brilliant intensity, and his eyes pierced through the flames with razor-sharp clarity. Was Gorn the demon? Or was Pyre?
"Your overconfidence is your weakness," Pyre announced in a flat, emotionless tone. "Do not assume so easily that you could strike me down."
Pyre held the smoking weapon with one hand, its barrel aimed at the fallen shard. Then he smoothly returned it to his back, the weapon attaching seamlessly to his armor.
"To think a Star could be felled by a mere gun," Pyre observed, studying the corpse of the distant shard. "Even a newborn could deflect dozens of rounds. Yet your pride blinds you, revealing a fatal weakness."
The metal knight drew his shield from his chest. Within seconds, his flail and shield were in hand, striking down enemies with single, devastating blows.
The flail's head carved through skull and sinew with surgical precision. His shield deflected barbs and bone, shattering them against its unyielding surface. With ease, he could use either shield or flail to kill those who drew near. His punches carried the might of falling boulders.
The shards quickly realized their physical prowess was lacking. Gorn halted his approach, watching the knight from a distance like a predator reassessing dangerous prey. The massive bearish beast stalked beside the others, its matted fur glistening with viscous black ichor.
"Afraid?" Pyre asked, his voice dripping with cold mockery that cut through the crackling flames.
He wiped the steaming blood and putrid ooze from his scarred metal armor, turning his head in a slow, mechanical sweep to observe the shards forming a tightening noose around him. Then another fog descended upon the land as the shards expelled their athood in a sheet of dense force. Pyre's body was compressed as the power held his body.
In the swirling fog, tongues of fire still danced, casting writhing shadows and illuminating twisted glimpses through the murk. There, Pyre watched the shards descend into savage cannibalism, tearing at each other with desperate claws and gnashing fangs, black blood spraying in arterial arcs as they consumed their own kind to grow stronger.
Their desperation reeked like rotting meat as fratricidal battle commenced among themselves. Gorn was attempting to rejoin his scattered pieces—to become a complete nightmare once more.
However, Pyre had little patience for such grotesque theatrics.
The metal knight forced his hand, iron fingers closing around the dial on the obsidian device at his side. A crystal shattered with a sound like breaking starlight, followed by another as he continued turning the knob with methodical precision.
A hurricane burst of air rushed through the area, pushing back the choking black fog like a tidal wave crashing against crumbling sea walls.
In mere heartbeats, Pyre had exploded forward, his massive frame covering impossible distance in three earth-shaking strides. Gorn's multitude of eyes widened in shock at the metal knight's lightning speed.
The towering size and crushing density of the armored figure had created the illusion of lumbering movement. He was catastrophically wrong.
As a writhing pile of shards fought to merge, a grotesque mass of midnight skin and matted fur began taking hideous shape. Bones snapped and popped like breaking kindling, seeking their proper places in the reforming abomination. Flesh tore open in wet, sucking sounds as jagged bone shards erupted outward, weaving through the air like serpentine spines piercing through its back.
It howled with the voice of the damned, eager to take shape—to become a complete horror once more.
Crack!
Pyre's flail split its skull like a war hammer pulverizing a rotten melon. Black ichor exploded outward in a geyser of death. The body convulsed once, then slumped like a marionette with severed strings, crumbling to the blood-soaked ground.
Gorn shrieked in bone-deep agony as the searing pain of death reverberated through every fragment of his scattered consciousness.
Pyre stalked toward another writhing mass of Gorn, but before he could reach it, the strangling fog billowed back to life. Gorn knew it wouldn't last long—the knight would shatter another crystal soon.
Before Pyre could grasp the dial, a thunderous bellow of athood erupted from the bearish beast's throat like the roar of a collapsing mountain. Its massive crocodilian maw yawned open, revealing rows of serrated teeth slick with putrid saliva, releasing a crushing wave of force that sent Pyre's armored form skidding backward.
The roar continued in endless, bone-rattling echoes, as if the beast's lungs were bottomless caverns of fury, expelling thunderous waves of gravitational force that warped the very air around them.
Pyre dug his heels against the relentless tide, his armored boots carving furrows in the stone as the invisible power sought to crush him. His feet slid against the ground, his immense weight the only thing preventing him from being hurled like a child's toy.
The metal knight raised his battle-scarred shield, the surface dented and blackened from countless wars, struggling to maintain his stance as the athood hammered against it like the fists of an angry god. Pyre's voice box sputtered with electrical static, mechanical irritation crackling through his words.
His massive metal boots received a neural signal from his consciousness. Razor-sharp metal rods erupted from his soles, boring deep into the earth with the force of pile drivers. Reinforcing clamps burst outward from his feet like mechanical talons, anchoring him to the very bedrock.
Pyre stood immovable against the cosmic storm battering his frame. As the force intensified, he watched the inferno around him die in a perfect cone, flames snuffed out as if by the breath of winter itself. The ground beneath his feet was scoured clean, rubble and burning timber torn away like autumn leaves in a hurricane.
Then, against the athood that sought to deny his very existence, he took one deliberate step forward. His armored body fought against the divine force Oros had blessed the Stars with, each movement a defiant act against the cosmos itself.
His blood-red armor showed no signs of buckling as he took another grinding step into the maelstrom of cosmic fury. Gorn's eyes bulged with primal terror, his twisted heart stuttering to a halt. Glacial dread swept through his being like liquid nitrogen in his veins.
"What are you?" Gorn whispered, his voice barely audible above the cosmic storm.
Pyre continued his inexorable advance, each step a thunderclap of determination. Yet it was not without monumental struggle as the force intensified to crushing levels. Gorn's boundless wrath poured forth in tidal waves of hatred, pressing against the machine with the weight of dying stars.
Still, Pyre would not yield. He drew closer, his crimson-armored frame swelling to titanic proportions in Gorn's terror-widened vision. The beast's bellow became a reality-tearing roar, drawing upon every ounce of cosmic power it possessed.
Lungs and muscles contracted with desperate fury. The athood accumulated into a swirling maelstrom of darkness within its throat. The sound was apocalyptic—a deafening boom that shattered windows for miles and sent lesser creatures fleeing in mindless panic.
Krshh!
A crystal exploded into glittering fragments. A sudden lightning burst of energy coursed through the beast's nervous system like molten silver. The athood dissipated instantly, swept away like smoke from a snuffed candle.
The beast staggered drunkenly, its seven irises spinning in their shared socket as vertigo seized its consciousness. For one crystalline moment it focused, locking its gaze with Pyre's burning orange eyes, whose gauntleted hand rested on the dial like the hand of fate itself.
"I will end—"
A deeper, more final crack split the air like the breaking of the world itself. Before the beast could complete its threat, darkness claimed its vision and its massive bulk crashed to the earth with the finality of a falling mountain.
Pyre's flail was buried to the hilt in the creature's shattered skull, black ichor still dripping from the twisted metal. The once-mighty form lay crumpled in absolute defeat, steam rising from its rapidly cooling corpse.