Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 400: ‘Supreme’ Duel

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The vacuum of space between universes could best be described in a single line.

A sea of cosmic energy where bubbles, the universes themselves, floated within.

Universes were unimaginably vast, and the space separating each one was even more so.

Just as deserts existed on planetary surfaces, barren lands where no greenery could be found for miles, so too did regions of emptiness lie between universes.

These were areas saturated with immense concentrations of cosmic energy, places prone to spatial and cosmic storms that made them unfit for universes housing life to exist.

At a certain point in time, one such region was unusually calm, with no storms stirring or disturbances in the flow of energy.

That calm was broken by the sudden convergence of two immensely powerful Authorities, the fabric of spacetime trembling under the weight of the opposing commands over reality.

From that meeting point, a brilliant red flash tore through the expanse, a burst of energy so dense that for an instant, a universe seed was born.

That seed glimmered intensely, a swirling sphere of potential existence on the verge of erupting into a big bang, but it shattered under the reality-warping power of the next collision, scattering into fragments of failed creation as waves of cosmic energy rippled outward in every direction.

Miranda shot through the vacuum, wreathed in a corona of violet fire that bent and folded the surrounding space, each motion leaving trails of refracted energy spinning away like ribbons of heat.

Her purple flames shimmered as the bindings of strong and weak forces intertwined within the blaze.

When she lifted her hand, the flames condensed into the shape of a simple longsword, which she swung immediately, cutting through the endless streams of ambient cosmic energy.

Sarina countered instantly, cosmic energy rapidly gathering in her left hand and weaving itself into a grey spear wrapped with a black and a white rope of energy that spiralled to its tip.

It carved an arc through space as it met Miranda’s sword, and upon collision, a shockwave rippled outward, spirals of opposing power radiating through the sea of cosmic energy, causing zones of growth and decay to form and collapse in rapid succession.

Around them, strands of light and shadow intertwined, flickering with unstable frequency before dissolving back into the background vacuum.

Miranda disappeared in a burst of fire and reappeared behind Sarina, dissolving her flaming blade into molten light before reshaping it into a long scythe, its curved edge burning with plasma-like brilliance.

She swung it with full force, merging electromagnetic influence with thermal discharge to create a wave that bent the fabric of space.

Despite the speed of her strike, Sarina easily spun around to intercept it, her spear erupting with strands of darkness that clashed with Miranda’s scythe, the impact generating a distortion node where everything compressed and expanded simultaneously, alternating cycles of electromagnetically charged flames and darkness colliding until the construct gave way under its own instability.

Miranda pulled back her weapon before the implosion reached critical density and reappeared several strata higher along the dimensional fold, the blade in her grasp morphing into a great sword whose edge shimmered with rotating fields of strong nuclear interaction.

|Bloodfire Descent.|

The flames along her blade were stained with crimson light as it came down in a sweeping vertical arc, the strike altering the local force constant and dragging the sea of cosmic energy into patterns resembling gravitational collapse.

Sarina ascended to meet her, her spear wrapped in alternating layers of light and darkness, thrusting it upward to confront Miranda’s gravitational burst with an equal balance of luminous expansion and dark contraction.

|Luminous Darkness.| 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

One of the Nephalem’s main Dictums activated, coating her weapon with the power of her combined Authorities, which were no weaker than Miranda’s, and the moment their weapons met, fractures spread through the fabric of space, sealing themselves almost as quickly as they appeared.

Purple fire burst outward from Miranda’s body, every motion she made sending spirals of plasma spinning across dimensions, serving both offensive and defensive purposes.

Sarina’s spear cut through one of them, piercing the spiral and releasing a pulse of death energy that broke down the atomic cohesion within the purple blaze, scattering it into radiant motes of light that dissolved into nothing.

She continued cutting through the dozen more spirals that rushed toward her while still being able to block Miranda’s great sword with ease.

However, when she cleaved the thirteenth spiral, the radiant motes of light didn’t vanish but instead gathered again under Miranda’s will.

Sarina noticed this immediately and frowned, leaping back before dashing through the fourth dimension to strike Miranda from behind.

’She’s improving. Guess I have to raise the intensity.’

That thought passed through her mind as her spear thrust toward Miranda’s back faster than Miranda could swing her great sword around. Miranda considered teleporting, but the thought vanished the moment she felt tendrils of darkness wrapping around her, constraining her movements through spacetime.

In the split-second before impact, she twisted her upper body and formed two short swords crossed before her, blocking and redirecting the spear upward, then unleashed a burst of fire that burned away the restrictive darkness before teleporting to Sarina’s side by the end of the second, her blades cutting through space to meet Sarina’s right palm in an impact that disrupted the equilibrium of the fundamental forces in a localized explosion.

Sarina’s skin tore apart, fragments of flesh scattering through space as blood spilt, but Miranda’s short sword couldn’t break through her bones, and the wounds that did appear healed faster than Sarina’s spear, gripped in her left hand, thrust toward the side of Miranda’s head and forced her to retreat.

The Nephalem vanished and reappeared behind Miranda, her spear once more piercing toward the back of Miranda’s head, but just as Miranda moved to block, the weapon’s trajectory shifted at the final split-second, redirecting toward her neck instead.

’!’

Miranda nearly snapped her own neck trying to evade the faster-than-light strike, but even so, she couldn’t avoid the graze of the spear, and the instant contact was made, Sarina’s Sub-Edict, Vital Decay, activated.

Miranda’s skin turned a dull grey, withering as though all vitality had been drained from it before decomposing entirely, the blight spreading from her neck upward to the side of her head and downward to her shoulder within a second.

’Shit!’

She cursed inwardly as her right hand flew to her neck, clutching the afflicted spot while igniting it with her purple flames to scorch away the spreading blight.

At the same time, her left arm bulged, fur sprouting across it as she reached forward and caught Sarina’s spear before it could be withdrawn, while her right leg swung toward Sarina’s side in a wide whip kick.

However, Sarina easily reached out with her left hand to catch Miranda’s foot, and after releasing her grip on her spear, she seized Miranda’s leg with both hands and spun around, hurling Miranda’s body far into the distance.

As she tumbled through space, Miranda drew in a deep breath, and the moment Sarina closed in for a follow-up strike, she screamed with all her might.

|HAAAAATT!!!!|

|!!|

Her scream unleashed a vibrational pulse that tore through the fabric of space, and although Sarina, caught at point-blank range, had almost no time to respond, she still managed to cross her arms before her chest in a desperate attempt to shield herself.

Naturally, the hastily raised cosmic barriers shattered like brittle glass, and her body was struck by the overwhelming energy, her flesh rippling and bulging as the vibrational force destabilised the atomic structure of her physical body.

Her skin tore open, eardrums burst, eyes ruptured, and other fragile tissues suffered similar destruction as she was thrown backwards through the vacuum.

In the moment Miranda had before Sarina’s regeneration kicked in, she completely burned away the lingering traces of Vital Decay with her flames, then instantly morphed into her full wolf form, her purple-silver fur gleaming as she opened her mouth and released a laser stream of purple fire.

The attack reached Sarina instantly, and though her eyes were too damaged for sight, she still seemed to sense that Miranda had assumed her full wolf form.

"We’re doing that now?"

She spoke casually as a pair of grey, feathered wings burst from her back, folding forward to shield her body from the laser breath at the cost of a few burned feathers.

’The heck is with that durability?!’

Miranda couldn’t help but feel stunned as she saw how little harm Sarina’s wings had taken from such a focused attack, and even when she concentrated the beam to enhance its penetrative force, she only managed to pierce one wing before the second halted its advance.

Realising further effort was pointless, she returned to her humanoid state and forged a bow from purple flames, drawing it and releasing a volley of blazing arrows, each one moving faster than light and fracturing spacetime along its path.

Sarina spread her wings wide, her eyes fully restored with no trace of the earlier damage except for a faint bloodstain on her shirt, and as the feathers scorched by Miranda’s laser began to regrow, she swept her wings forward, launching feathers like bullets, each one striking Miranda’s arrows and cloaking them in darkness that consumed their energy.

Miranda immediately dissolved the bow and teleported behind Sarina, her weapon now a spear, thrusting forward with momentum amplified by overlapping force fields, each layer compounding the strength of impact.

Sarina spun around, reforging her own spear and meeting Miranda’s in a clash of light and flame, torrents of dual-coloured energy rippling outward, distorting the surrounding reality under the strain of intersecting cosmic energies.