Xina looked about as the grayness began to fade away in the face of their enemy. L-sama had told her this would happen, that she would have to cross over astral realms formed by this Michael Osano-Wo person that was out to destroy the universe. She gathered shadow about her and crept through the ever more stormy terrain.
The fox girl felt naked without the behir-scale armor she had "borrowed" from her mother. If all went according to plan, as the shade next to her pointed out, she wouldn't be the one to need it, but still, had been more than a year since she had been without it.
"So where is this 'source' and how do we move it," Xina demanded quietly slipping along the barren, war torn land that was forming around her.
"Sore wa himitsu desu," her partner said simply.
"Amelia-san," Xina sighed. "You've been hanging around my father too long."
"You could be right," Amelia admitted, shrugging. The sky above them suddenly broke into great crack of thunder. Then it was as if the sky were cut open and a sea fell through, the entire manufactured terrain was innudated with rain.
"I think he's here," Xina said swallowing. She glanced about looking for motion in the sudden darkness.
Xina had never been in a darkness that she could not see through, even now, but it was not the darkness that impaired her vision. It was the constant, abrupt and powerful white flashes of lightning that glared out all features. There was nothing to smell, as usual in this world, and the thunder did a good job of ruining her hearing. She couldn't even locate the moon. There was none, and that was the most disturbing thing about this place.
"How do we know when he sees us anyway?" Xina asked.
The fox-girl's answer came in the form of a thick bolt of lightning that struck nearly on top of her. She yelped as she bounced away from the point of explosion and turned to look at Amelia who hadn't seemed to worried.
"I'd say he sees us," Amelia said. "Now we can put this monster down and see that the cause of justice is served."
"Says the woman who's already dead," Xina muttered. The fox-girl glanced about, crouched low in a bit of self-made shadow and nearly hugging the ground. At first she could discern nothing, and then the lightning let up for a brief moment and she identified the humanoid form standing several yards away.
"This is what the Angel of Death sends against me," a voice roared, seeming almost thunder itself. "A dead soul and a mortal child. The fool always was far too enamored of you pathetic little pests."
"So now what?" Xina asked.
"You're Xellos's daughter, and you're asking me what to do," Amelia said, surprised. "You need to get him to open show the Waste."
"Yeah, okay, and how do I..." Xina paused a moment, then shrugged. "Worth a try. If we're such pathetic little pests, why the flaming light show!"
"You're right, demon-spawn," a quieter, but not much quieter, voice said as the storm seemed to split around Amelia and Xina. She turned to see an impressive warrior standing at the edge of the storm's new eye. The man's silver armor was etched in a lightning design and he carried a great spear formed of some radiant yellowish material. The man's hair was an electric, gleaming blue and silver. He stood head and shoulders taller than Xina, looking down at her from a cloud-pale face.
The only thing dark about the man was his expression. He appeared to be, of all things, bored. He stood still and inactive seemingly more out of having nothing to do than because he was stoic. His lip was curled in a derisive sneer as he looked over what he considered to be a creature of darkness.
Xina's ears flicked lightly as she was distracted from Michael Osano-Wo's arrival by what she thought was the moon. The strange thing was, that it seemed to be on the same level as she was. It was moving, to, stalking in the rain. Suddenly she knew what it was she was sensing and immediately turned her thoughts away it, focusing on her enemy.
"There is no need to be afraid of you two," the warrior of light said humorlessly. "An unfettered soul might be indestructible, but you're hardly more than a talking image so that does not matter. You can simply have the privilidge of watching me destroy my enemies. For a short time at least, it might take me millennia to finish this sortie."
"This what?" Xina blinked. The shimmering man put his face into his hand and shook his head.
"He means a battle, dear," Amelia supplied.
"Oh, okay," Xina nodded. "Just who are you fighting anyway? And what's it got to do with us?" The man rose his head and smiled evilly.
"Behold!" he waved his hand and the window on the waste appeared, stuck into was the Staff of Xellos. Where the Staff hung in midair the thin layer of energy about the window was dissipating, fading away. "The Vagabond locked this gateway well, all this effort to protect the monstrosities within. I have been forced to sacrifice my own sister to finally destroy those abominations. And I STILL had to bring aid from you insects."
"That's the Waste right?" Xina asked, aware that the stalking form in the shadows was moving closer.
"If your father hadn't locked the key in that staff, I'd al..." the Michael paused. "What? Oh yes, that's the Waste." He continued with his villian monologue.
"Thanks!" Xina said cheerfully and zipped for the portal.
"I haven't finished speaking yet!" the renegade angel roared and the thunder crackled off his body, streaming toward her. It never reached her, the blast was suddenly intercepted by a red-haired fox-man in a outfit of glittering blue armor. The lightning coruscated over the armor for a moment before fading into it as the armor's shine grew brighter.
"Do what you have to do," Xalan snapped. "Light come forth!!" The blades of Xalan's claw flared to life, and continued to pull power from the ambient magic of the non-place.
"You seek to battle light with light!" the Michael declared increduously. "You are a fool!" The "man" faded into a semi-humanoid form of bluish lightning as he charged for Xalan. Xalan barely dodged out of the way as the angel charged past him.
Osano-Wo formed back into a man shortly after passing the kage-kitsune and slashed back with his spear. The claw of light reached up to black the haphazard strike and then descended again to block another. And the Michael was still just playing.
"I will carve you into bite size pieces and then send your sister into the Waste that she seems so interested in," the snarling power declared as he pushed Xalan's skill and power.
Xalan rolled to the side, and the Michael followed with his spear. As the white metal pierced through what he thought was Xalan, the kage-kitsune smirked, and passed harmlessly through the weapon.
Osano-Wo was still trying to figure it out when another Xalan slashed a line of cuts across his side. They stung fiercely, but healed quickly enough. The renegade glanced about and suddenly realized that there were two fox-boys fighting him.
"Xellos," the angel sneered. "You really are a pest." Neither of the Xalans moved to comment on the angel's discovery.
"What the hell do we do now?" Xina demanded standing by the Staff but not yet touching it.
Amelia smiled serenly and turned away from Xina. A second portal opened up and Amelia could almost feel it calling for her to join it. Of course the Source would open for any unfettered soul considering joining its populace. It would also open for any newly dead soul, which direction had lain the Vagabond's plans.
"Bring the Staff to the Source," Amelia shouted as she pulled away from the second portal. Darkness and light alike wafted from each window, or so it seemed. But as Xina considered Amelia's instructions she realized that was not the case.
The darkness and light coming from the Source had substance, and she almost thought she heard a stream of voices. The Waste instead seemed to be sucking things in, leaving empty tears of black and white. She only hesitated a moment longer before taking the Staff.
She pulled, and the Waste followed her. Had she glanced back she would have seen many great and distorted things struggling through the emptiness towards the opening window. Things that might once have had a recognizable shape, but were being pulled, stretched and torn by the vast non-existance of the Waste. Now all that remained were pain filled creatures of only semi-sentience and an incredible urge to destroy.
Amelia threw her spirit body back as Xina charged, Staff pulling the portal behind her into a cone which further distorted the shapes of the monstrosities within. The Source flickered briefly as if to say "oh well" as it seemed the one that called it changed its mind. Then it flared as the thin border on the Waste opened and approached the shimmering and swirling light and darkness.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!" Osano-Wo shouted, pausing in his futile attempt to strike the correct Xalan. The boy hadn't, couldn't cause any severe damage to him, but it was beginning to get like the stinging of an ant. Then he saw the other Metallium-Inverse child moving to pull the Waste into the Source.
The prison, fashioned so long, was about to be ruined by that little pest. The beings thrown into the nothing weren't worth returning to the Source, they were all evil, traitors and demons. And they were HIS to fight and destroy!
The angel blurred as he launched at Xina. No longer anything human, he was nothing but a surge of unidentifiable energy. The angel pulled short, however, when the ground around the girl and the portals erupted in a spray of golden liquid. The spray did not fall, forming a great liquid wall that shielded Xina from her attacker.
"Stand not in my path, Fallen One," the words were not so much a voice as a sensation. "You were allowed to escape long ago, this time I shall do as I wished then and see you destroyed for your crimes."
The mortals and spirits watched as the wall rippled in seeming amusment. Then the small eye of the storm was filled with whirling and diving ravens, on the edges could be seen the shapes and eyes of thousands of wolves staring at the lot of them.
"And what of your crimes," the combined cawing of the ravens produced the words. "Murder does not apply to you?"
"The Old Ones must be destroyed!!" the lightning spoke angrily. "Not shunted off to some place to be forgotten, or returned to the Source like anything else. That girl must be stopped!" The energy surged forward again, and surprisingly the wall gave way. The Lord of Nightmares pulling back and forming into a great pillar of liquid gold to watch the proceedings.
"It is already too late," the words seemed to smile all on there own as everyone saw the Source reach out and grab the other end of the Staff.
A stream of light and darkness of all shades and colors streamed over the Staff. It poured into the nothingness. Where Xina's hands held the Staff the Source flowed up through her as well, and passed on.
She felt voices and faces passs through her mind like a river through a valley. Memories would be shown to her and then fade away, or stay. She saw worlds born and destroyed, races and species rise to power, and fall again. She saw the number forty-two and more besides.
There was no sense of danger, but something bothered her. The Source, rolling into and filling the artificial prison of the Waste, seemed to roll over her and say "not your time" and pass on. She felt herself growing somehow.
"NO!!! Blasphemey, they shall be born again now!" The words shook everything like a roll of thunder, the mortals and dead souls were rocked back, while the other two powers seemed to wince. Almost as if they had heard a discordant note.
There was no indication in the cloud of energy that was Osano-Wo that the Michael was pressing the attack, but Xalan knew he was regardless of that. Some hunter's instinct told him, and another instinct sent him to act. The claws of light didn't seem to do anything against the Angel of War, but then, Xalan remembered how his mother had defeated Shabrinigdo.
As the kage-kitsune charged, wrapping himself in shadow and sending the power into the claws. As he neared Osano-wo his gift of empathic combat sent him a clear picture rather a mere impulse, it was the first time he could remember ever experiencing it as such. Before he had always just known what to do.
A darkness wrapped kage-kitsune leaped between a shocked Angel and his sister, and then launched himself upwards. The blackening claw blades leading as he made himself the shaft of one large spear.
There was a great wordless crack and the darkness began to bleed through the struck angel. As the angel seemed to shift in order to remove the now deadly prong in its form, the ravens and golden pillar just fell upon it. Xalan was caught in the middle holding the blades in the angel and letting the claws pull power, as two other powers through themselves about in the battle.
The essence of Osano-wo's power was spread through the Sea of Chaos like electricity, and drowned. Or else it was caught by a raven and devoured. What was left was pulled through the claws of light into Xalan as the kage-kitsune's darkness, empowered by a piece of a Great Dark Lord, spread slowly and poisonously through the renegade angel.
None of the three came away unharmed. The ground was littered with the corpses of ravens and a thin Golden mist seemed to be rising from the portion of the Sea of Chaos that L-Sama had brought to manifest in.
In the four worlds of the Lord of Nightmares, the inhabited portions of deep space saw great upheavel. In several thousand years, when the light reached them, the people of Xina's home would watch in wonder as the stars winked off and on throughout the sky and whole constellations were destroyed or created. Several thousand years after that there the destruction would reach some of the more populated systems, by then there would be ways to turn aside most of the damage from people.
The distraction of the Angel of Death and the Spirit of Storm was more immediate. It was also spread across the multiverse, if effecting no single universe as much as L-Sama's the mass effect coming to the same. Storms arose and calmed at random, people died and their spirits lingered. Worlds that had been free of undead for millenia were suddenly deluged. In other cases people who should have died, lived...on and on and on.
Xalan, being mortal was paid the least attention to, but he had been forced to the his knees and seemed to be sweating towards dehydration. A black glow, streaked with silver was growing around him, as a similar but reveresed glow grew around his sister.
As the renegade angel was brought low, Xina became aware of the misshapen things of the Waste being overwhelmed by the Source, subsumed, healed. The insanity of eons of imprisonment washed out of them. And she saw it all in flashes as each soul joined the river.
Then she became aware of something else. She felt the moon, and, somehow, it was her, and her brother. Xina's eyes popped wide as she worked for a brief moment to soothe the roiled uncontrolled waves of power that were the radiance of all moons across time and space. Then a memory flickered across her consciousness.
"Left behind all that I knew to shape and serve the universe..." She didn't know which of the endless stream of souls had said that, but didn't care, she got the gist of it. She had an image, a remembered dream of rising ever higher than Val, and realized what was happening.
"NO!!! I'm not ready to leave yet!!" Xina let go of the staff and stumbled backward as the glow about her faded. "XALAN!! LET GO OF IT!!" Already her words were on the edge of that non-voice the powers had used, but her words returned to mortal limits by the end of her shout.
Xalan hesitated only a moment before obeying the shouted plea. He pulled away and the glow about him faded away as well. He suddenly felt as if he were shrinking, but as far as he could tell his body wasn't changing.
The kage-kitsune staggered back and stared at his sister across the swirling portals, already indistinguishable from each other. She breathed a sigh of relief and watched as the wolves from the storm, already dying to nothing, swarmed over the Angel of War as he forced into humanoid form again. He screamed once and fell.
The Source reached for the dead Michael's spirit and accepted him in as the despairing spirit didn't even consider staying. All saw a feminine face form out of the vanishing portal and mouth the words goodbye, seemingly at the wolves and ravens, before the portal vanished.
The Staff of Xellos hung in mid-air a few seconds afterwards before it clattered to the ground of the non-place.
"I think its over," Xina said.