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The Avatar of the Skin God began to rot as countless diseases started infecting her patchwork body. Where Morvexis's presence touched her, flesh bubbled and turned black, releasing the putrid smell of death and decay that made the very air toxic to breathe. Her multiple faces contorted in agony as the cosmic plague spread through her stolen flesh like wildfire consuming dry wood.
Each disease was different, more terrible than anything that had ever existed on mortal worlds. Pustulent boils erupted across her skin, bursting open to reveal writhing maggots underneath. Black veins spread like spider webs beneath her surface, carrying corruption to every part of her being. Some areas of her flesh simply liquefied, dripping away in thick, yellow streams that hissed when they hit the glass below.
Morvexis, the Embodiment of Plague, continued to speak to her with casual malice, his voice carrying the weight of eons of suffering and death.
"Did you really think hiding behind borrowed skin would protect you from what I am?"
His words were punctuated by the sound of his own rotting flesh shifting and bubbling, a constant reminder of the cosmic horror he represented.
The Avatar's multiple mouths opened in screams of pain and rage, but even her voice was being consumed by the plague. Some of her stolen vocal cords dissolved entirely, leaving gaps of silence in her cries. Others became raspy and wet, choking on the infection that was eating her from within.
In desperate panic, the Avatar of the Skin God began to devour all the Skin Walkers that were still alive around her. Thousands of the creatures were pulled toward her by an invisible force, their bandaged forms unraveling as they flew through the air. She opened every mouth on her grotesque form simultaneously, creating a horrifying display of consumption.
The Skin Walkers dissolved as she absorbed them, their essence flowing into her like water into a sponge. With each one consumed, she grew larger and more grotesque, her size expanding rapidly as she tried to outpace the cosmic disease eating her alive. Her form became a writhing mass of contradictions new flesh growing even as old flesh rotted away.
But the effort was like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The Plague God simply stretched out his massive hand, and diseases began breaking down the Avatar's body faster than she could rebuild it. New plagues manifested with each gesture flesh eating bacteria that consumed muscle in seconds, viral infections that turned bones to powder, fungal growths that sprouted from her eyes and ears.
Festering wounds opened across her flesh like blooming flowers of death. The edges of each wound turned black and spread outward, creating patterns of necrosis that resembled strange artwork painted in decay. Her stolen skin began sloughing off in chunks despite her frantic attempts to maintain her form, each piece that fell carrying with it the screaming face of some long-dead victim.
The Avatar did not stop her desperate consumption. Even as the Plague God towered over her like a mountain made of disease and corruption, she continued to devour her servants with increasing desperation. The air around her became thick with the essence of dissolved Skin Walkers, creating a fog of stolen life force that she breathed in hungrily.
She grew and grew until she had matched his enormous size, her form becoming a writhing mass of stolen flesh and screaming faces, all melded together into something that defied every law of nature. Some faces were ancient, their features worn smooth by centuries of being part of her collection. Others were fresh, still wearing expressions of terror from their recent deaths.
But size meant nothing to a cosmic force like Morvexis. The Plague God simply waved his hand with casual indifference, and the Avatar's body began to rot from within at an accelerated pace. Diseases ate through her flesh faster than she could regenerate, creating cavities and holes that went all the way through her massive form.
The corruption spread like a living thing, following pathways through her body that shouldn't have existed. Where her stolen hearts beat, they began to pump infected blood that carried plague to every extremity. Her nervous system became a highway for viral infections that turned her own thoughts against her.
She found herself on the brink of death despite her massive size and desperate consumption. The thousands of Skin Walkers she had devoured were being infected and destroyed from within, their essence becoming poison instead of sustenance. She was literally eating herself to death while simultaneously being devoured by forces beyond her comprehension.
Using every survival instinct she possessed, instincts honed by millions of years of existence as a cosmic entity, the Avatar made a desperate decision. She began to dig into the ground with claws that were dissolving even as she used them, tearing through the glass plain with superhuman strength born of absolute panic.
She covered herself with chunks of the glass plain, trying to hide from the cosmic force that was destroying her very essence. The glass cut into her already damaged flesh, but she didn't care. Physical pain was nothing compared to the existential horror of being unmade by another cosmic entity.
She buried herself as deep as she could go, using her massive size to create a crater that stretched down into the foundations of the realm itself. Each layer of glass and stone she pulled over herself felt like a barrier between her and the infectious aura that surrounded Morvexis.
The darkness was a relief. Down here, away from his direct presence, the rate of decay slowed slightly. She could feel her stolen flesh beginning to stabilize, the diseases still eating at her but no longer spreading with the unstoppable force they had shown on the surface.
For a moment that felt like eternity, she lay there in the crushing darkness, listening to the sound of her own corruption. Bubbling flesh, the whisper of dissolving tissue, the distant screams of faces that were being consumed from within. It was the sound of cosmic death, and she was experiencing it firsthand.
Above her, she could still hear Morvexis moving around, his massive form causing tremors that reached even her deep hiding place. But gradually, something began to feel wrong. The overwhelming presence that had been crushing her very existence started to feel... different. Less solid. Less real.
But then, without warning, everything changed.
The oppressive weight of cosmic authority that had been pressing down on her simply vanished. The diseases that had been eating her alive stopped their relentless advance. The very air, which had been thick with infectious miasma, suddenly cleared.
[Your mana has run out]
Nox vomited a huge amount of blood as the system notification appeared in his vision. The Plague God vanished instantly, disappearing like smoke in the wind. The massive illusion that had consumed nearly all of his magical energy collapsed entirely.
The Avatar of the Skin God, half dead and covered in real wounds from the psychological trauma of the illusion, slowly crawled out of the ground. She looked around in confusion and growing rage as she realized what had happened.
"Hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE!" she screamed, her multiple voices creating a chorus of fury that shook the very air around them.
Nox ran as fast as he could across the broken glass plain, his mind racing as he tried to figure out how to defeat the half dead monster behind him. This was the first time he had ever felt a real sense of crisis, the kind that came from knowing death was hunting him and gaining ground.
"I have to kill it now," he thought desperately as he sprinted. "If it recovers, I'm as good as dead."
But to his surprise, the Avatar of the Skin God did not chase him. Instead, she began running in the opposite direction, her damaged form moving with desperate purpose across the battlefield.
Nox stopped and turned, confused by her behavior. "Where is she running to?"
Then the terrible realization hit him like a physical blow. She was running toward the corpse of the Avatar of the Obsidian God, the massive divine form that Henry had defeated at such great cost.
A terrible chill ran down Nox's spine as the implications became clear.
"No! I can't let her eat that corpse! If she combines their divinity, I'm dead!"
Every survival instinct he possessed told him to run away, to put as much distance as possible between himself and the wounded but still incredibly dangerous entity. But instead, he turned around and began chasing the monster, knowing that letting her reach that corpse would mean certain death for all of them.
Nox pulled out his revolver, the weapon that used his own blood as ammunition. He could feel his life force flowing into the weapon as he prepared to fire, each shot literally costing him years of his life.
He aimed carefully and fired at the retreating monster, the blood-infused bullets streaking through the air with supernatural speed and power.
But the Avatar was too fast even in her wounded state. She dodged all the bullets with inhuman agility, her damaged form twisting and bending in ways that should have been impossible.
"No, no, no, no! I have to kill it! Fuck!" Nox cursed as he continued running, desperation driving him forward even as his rational mind screamed at him to flee.
The race across the glass plain became a nightmare of endurance and determination. Nox pushed his already exhausted body to its limits, knowing that every second counted. Behind him lay his unconscious companions, helpless and vulnerable. Ahead of him ran a cosmic horror that was mere moments away from becoming unstoppable.