The game had changed.

  With Arden learning how to use soul attacks, he was finally able to put up a semblance of a fight. He wasn't going to just die without any resistance anymore. For the longest time, he wasn't able to put up any resistance.

  Now he would go down swinging.

  Arden charged forward.

  After his declaration announcing that he was the Archon of Evolution, Domah went strangely quiet. Rage still painted her face, but she didn't say anything.

  She did however make a movement.

  She extended her hand towards Arden who was charging straight for her. With her index and middle finger raised straight up, she spoke two words.

  “Infinite Mass.”

  She would do anything to make him kneel. Even laying the infinite weight of the universe on his back.

  A black mass appeared high in the sky above them. It was high above the skeletal ribcage and blotted out her symbol. Upon closer inspection, Arden realized that it wasn’t black, just absent of light and color.

  A black hole.

  Arden smiled as the black hole fell towards him with a speed that he could barely register with his human eyes. Even the strongest Starborn wouldn’t be able to avoid this attack.

  But he wasn’t an ordinary Starborn.

  He was an Archon in sync with his soul.

  Arden didn’t know much about black holes. But he did know that they were incredibly heavy. They had enough mass to draw in outside objects with its own gravitational pull so strong that not even light could escape it.

  Arden saw through the attack.

  Domah was still trying to make him kneel. She was still adhering to the unique properties of her soul.

  So Arden adhered to his own properties. He evolved.

  The cosmic mass phased through the giant rib cage as if it wasn’t even there. In the instant before the black hole crushed him, power collected in every part of his body. Life energy in the form of Biomass surrounded his body like a set of armor. His bones were strengthened. His muscles tore and were reformed.

  His arms reached above his head with the aim to catch the black hole. Arden grit his teeth when the black hole landed, blasting apart his arms with an explosive tearing sound. He didn't need to see the result or feel the pain to know that his arms were gone.

  But with a simple command to his soul, they were back and stronger than before. But he knew. One pair of arms wouldn't be enough to stop the black hole.

  His pair of arms were quickly joined by another. And then another. And then another. In the span of a second, thousands of arms sprout from his shoulders to hold up infinity.

  “It’s impossible to hold it up. It’s a black hole containing the weight of my soul. Nothing can resist infinity.”

  Hundreds of Arden’s arms shattered and were blown apart, as the black hole continued to journey to the ground. But Arden wouldn't let it. For every arm that was destroyed, ten more took its place, like some horrific hydra.

  Arden strained out words as sweat poured off his face.

  “Then it's a good thing it's not infinite then.”

  A sound like glass shattering reverberated through the soul cluster. Both Domah and Arden looked up to the black hole, the source of the sound.

  Numerous cracks ran through the bottom of the black hole. It looked like reality was shattering, just like what Arden saw at the end of his trial.

  Domah’s soul was infinite outside. But here, Arden had only let a tiny amount of it in. Just enough to make it a fair fight.

  Domah leapt forward towards Arden, enraged that her attack was beginning to fail. She moved her hand, now glowing silver, in the shape of a crescent.

  Far off beyond the horizon, Arden could see a silver light peeking out from between the tangled web of stars and viscera. And it was approaching fast with an incredibly sharp energy.

  Doma was attempting to sever all of his arms at once.

  “Not happening!” Arden yelled.

  During a fight, time passed not in seconds, but in moments. And whoever dominated the moment would win the fight.

  Every moment that passed was a fraction of a nanosecond.

  Every moment, Arden lost more and more arms to the black hole. They would be replaced almost as soon as they were, but the broken arms still continued to fall.

  But they weren’t out of play just yet.

  With a mental command, thousands of his severed arms flew towards the incoming arc of silver energy.

  Physics was only a mere suggestion within the soul. Creativity and flexible thinking were the make or break rules for a soul attack.

  Even so, Arden borrowed a little knowledge of physics.

  When the arms flew towards Domah’s second attack at an incomprehensible speed, the flesh and muscle covering the bone burnt away, leaving only jagged bones to fly towards the attack.

  Arden wasn’t trying to catch it. He already quite literally had his hands full blocking one attack.

  He just needed to create an impact strong enough to divert the attack.

  All of his bones hit roughly the same spot on the arc at the same time, sending the attack off to the left, resulting in only a few arms being cut.

  “More!” Arden yelled.

  He didn't want to admit it, but so far this fight was a blast. He knew he wouldn't be able to use these powers outside of his soul, and it saddened him. This level of power would be hard to walk away from.

  Thousands of tendrils burst from Arden’s back, all of them ending in sharp tooth-like appendages at the tip. He commanded them upwards, and they bore through the black hole, twisting around themselves like a drill.

  The sound of shattering glass resonated again, and the black void fell to the ground in pieces.

  Arden didn't hesitate to use his tendrils to grab the shards of the black hole and throw them towards his opponent.

  Domah didn’t have to dodge any of the attacks. As the shards of void arced through the air, they suddenly fell to the ground right in front of her.

  Even gravity knelt before a supreme being.

  Using his tentacles, Arden propelled himself off the ground towards her. Gravity might bow, but he wouldn’t.

  Just as he felt himself being forced closer to the ground with Domah’s domineering presence, he changed the form of his many countless hands. They were no longer arms. They were just a collection of biomass. Bone fused with muscle, supercharged with Arden’s soul to become many times stronger than either alone.

  The increased weight of the bone-muscle alloy forced Arden down even faster. With a grin on his face, he made an impact against the ground, shaking the soul cluster once more. Hopefully it was enough to create an opening.

  He clicked his tongue seeing Domah already jumping back, unphased.

  But his attack wasn't done.

  He controlled the blood that created the floor. Blood was biomass too, after all.

  Enormous spikes of blood jutted from the floor directly under Domah, but she disappeared before she could be impaled.

  Arden's instincts screamed at him to move, but before he could, he felt the heat of a thousand suns on his back. He quickly erected another barrier, this time it was made of the bone-muscle alloy to block Domah’s beam attack.

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  Arden gritted his teeth as he constantly fed biomass to the barrier to outlast the attack.

  He coughed up blood, feeling a hand reach into his chest from behind. He felt her cold hand on his heart.

  “Got you, insect.”

  “Think again.”

  A shadow fell on Domah’s back, and she teleported away before Arden’s blood clone could sever her arm like she had done to several of his.

  Domah clicked her tongue as the blood clone dissolved into blood and into Arden’s body, healing him of his damage.

  An enormous bone shot out of the ground beneath Arden, launching him heavenward. Reaching the apex of the ribcage, he held onto it and yelled down towards Domah.

  “Give up, Domah. Evolution is my domain. I will always get stronger. My power is Devour. It won’t be long before I devour you as well.”

  “How laughable! A human dares to make me submit?”

  It was difficult to land an attack on Domah. She had a lot more experience than he did, and she could teleport.

  ‘This is my soul. I can teleport too.’

  Arden was caked in blood. He leapt off the now bloodstained rib cage toward Domah and willed the blood to fall from him. Moments before he reached Domah, the blood that fell from him created a circle that he fell into.

  It was a portal made of blood.

  Domah’s eyes widened in surprise when Arden disappeared right in front of her eyes. With her mind racing, she teleported away from the ground, expecting him to emerge from there.

  Her theory was proven right.

  He carried the momentum from falling as he re-emerged from the bloody floor at terminal velocity, now heading upward.

  Each of his arms and tentacles extended towards Domah, hungry for more blood to be spilt.

  Silver thread snaked out from Domah’s hands to intercept all of Arden’s extra appendages. In no time flat, all but two of his arms were torn apart by the Blighted thread, spewing more flesh and more blood.

  The mangled flesh quickly turned into floating platforms and the blood turned into blood clones that stood atop them, all holding various makeshift bone weapons in their hands.

  All of the Ardens leapt up higher, trying to reach Domah who seemed so close, but still out of reach.

  “Enough with your childish antics! Cease your resistance at once!”

  Domah’s thread cut all of the clones to pieces at once before any of them could land an attack. As their bodies fell apart, Arden commanded tentacles of blood to form from their bodies reaching ever higher.

  Another beam of silver light fell on them, completely evaporating any blood from which to teleport to or make more makeshift weapons from. Domah knew slicing the blood apart would be futile. Blood was a liquid. It would only temporarily part from a sharp attack.

  Both Arden and Domah fell and landed on separate floating macabre platforms of flesh. Most of them were destroyed by Domah’s previous attack, but not all of them.

  No sign of the cold, doll-like demeanor remained on Domah’s face as she looked across the vast chasm to Arden, defiant spirit still blazing within. When she spoke, it was with the ire of a betrayed lover.

  “You will bow to me yet, RedShift!”

  Domah clapped, creating a silver shockwave that destroyed every platform that was still suspended in midair.

  Arden covered his body in the alloy, hoping that it would absorb the damage of the attack. The armor did not hold. Fresh blood leaked from his mouth as his armor fell to pieces around, and the attack damaged most, if not all of his organs.

  Arden began falling to the floor again. He was joined by Domah this time, though, with her own platform destroyed. They were still quite a distance away from each other, but she still poured out attack after attack towards Arden.

  He needed to restrategize.

  Two pairs of bone wings sprouted from Arden’s back. A larger pair from his shoulder blades, and a smaller pair from his lower back.

  It didn't take long at all for him to learn how to fly. It was his own body, his own soul, and the jagged bone wings with red webbing moved on instinct, as if he had been born with them.

  He pulled his wings in, allowing him to fall even faster towards the ground, all the while nimbly avoiding the silver waves of sharp energy that Domah threw at him.

  When Arden was just above the ocean of blood, he extended his hands into it as he flew just above the surface. Behind him, spikes of blood were promptly erected and aimed towards Domah who hovered in the sky above him.

  More and more blood was drained from the ocean as they formed spikes to take the fight to Domah.

  “You’re running out of options, RedShift!”

  Explosions that came from nowhere rocked the ocean of blood beneath and behind Arden, destroying his spikes, and obscuring each other’s vision.

  For a moment, Domah couldn't see Arden through the chaos. Her own attacks had been used against her, and she could only blame herself for it. She looked around waiting for the dust to settle, when she saw movement.

  Flying across the surface of the ocean of blood, Arden turned his head towards Domah and towards her sigil still hovering in the air bound by the golden thread.

  Her emblem seemed to have lost some of its light.

  Keeping his joy to himself, Arden quickly flew upward towards Domah at supersonic speeds.

  His fingers extended several centimeters and became the steely grey of his alloy. They were now claws, much more fierce and much more gruesome than the Satellite variation of them.

  Arden extended his hands forward, aiming to rip Domah out of the sky and bring her back to the ground.

  She caught his attack with her bare hands. She spoke again while holding him in place. Silver thread wrapped around his wings, cutting them to pieces.

  “It’s the end for you.”

  Arden wrenched himself free of Domah’s grasp at the expense of everything below his elbows.

  Clenching his teeth in pain, Arden brought both his elbows down on Domah’s head in a way that was reminiscent of a caveman clubbing someone.

  Domah and Arden both were sent careening to the ground after Arden landed his first real blow. With a thud against the solid surface of blood, they both gasped in pain and exhaustion.

  Domah had never experienced such humiliation before. And from a human no less. Fury burned within her, and silver threads wrapped around Arden’s ankles, who was still struggling to get back to his feet.

  With a slight manipulation of her wrists, Arden was sent flying back into the air while still attached to the strings. Domah controlled her threads to slam him into everything at maximum force. The ground, the rib cage, and even the soul core.

  She knew that this wouldn’t keep him down. She was only venting her fury. A taunting voice came from the piece of meat still attached to her strings.

  “You really do seem human at times. I thought human emotions were beneath you.”

  “Shut up!”

  Domah slammed him one more time into the ground right in front of his soul core. Arden coughed up more blood and smiled at Domah.

  “As you can see, hostility can be challenging. It's a very human emotion, and if you experience it too much, you become more and more human.”

  The silver threads coiled around every nook and cranny of Arden’s body. All of his limbs were wrapped several over.

  Domah brought her hands up in a quick motion with a frenzied expression, tightening the hold on Arden as blood began to seep from his many cuts from the thread.

  With a sneer, Arden continued to talk.

  “Anger blinds you. It gives strength to hurt others but it also prevents you from seeing what is right in front of you.”

  The threads cut deeper.

  “You want to hurt someone? Do it in a way that won’t turn you stupid.”

  One of Arden’s arms was severed, but he made no noise that signified he was hurt by it at all. He continued.

  “Hurt them in a way that is antithetical to their existence.”

  Arden smiled cruelly with his eyes.

  “Make the tyrant bow.”

  Domah struck the strings with her other hand, and Arden was torn apart. Even when his head was removed from his body it was still smiling at her.

  She held the decapitated head of her brother in her hand and looked at it like a trophy.

  A second later, she realized what was wrong when he did not regenerate like he had previously.

  Instead it melted into blood and seeped down into the floor.

  It was a blood clone. It wasn’t the real Arden.

  “Where!?”

  The words of the clone reentered her mind. They were thinly veiled references to turning around. She quickly turned around and looked up towards the top of the ribcage, where Arden had yelled down to her before, and where he must have placed a blood portal.

  Halfway in between the ground and the top of the cluster, Arden was falling again, this time coated head to toe in armor made of his biotic alloy.

  She reached up with her strings to intercept him.

  But as soon as they got close to him, they flickered out of existence.

  “What?”

  She looked past Arden and saw what had gone wrong with her attack.

  Her symbol in the sky had gone dark. She was out of power.

  The blood clone wasn’t telling her to look back at the real Arden, but rather telling her to look at her power supply.

  Her power wasn’t infinite inside of Arden’s soul. He had only allowed her to use a fragment of it.

  And it had run dry.

  Arden brought his hands above his head and infused ungodly amounts of biotic alloy into them. They swelled up to be several times bigger than before, and with their gray appearance, they looked closer to hammers than fists.

  Domah could do nothing with her human body but watch as he fell towards her with the speed and power of a shooting star.

  She had no more power. Her strength was now less than that of a mundane human.

  She had the strength of a Blight Walker.

  With her powers sealed, she effectively was a Blight Walker, a pitiful human.

  Domah’s legs buckled under the sheer pressure of the man she had no choice but to recognize as one of their own.

  She could no longer fight back.

  How could a human resist the will of an Archon?

  Moments before the Archon of Evolution reached Domah, she spoke two words with her human voice that went against her entire existence.

  They were antithetical, even.

  “...I surrender.”

  For the first time in her eons long existence, Domah submitted.

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