My world-tree system-Chapter 103 - 102: merging

For a moment, the world seemed to suspend its breath.

Lying side by side in the battered earth of Vollua, Foster and his dragon closed their eyes. Their bodies bled, their magic was almost entirely exhausted, and yet... in this shared agony, a last fire glowed.

A fire older than their pain.

A fire that came from before the world.

Their breaths, synchronized, were drawn out.

And in the deafening silence that preceded the end, their spirits rose together.

-

They floated.

No more pain.

No more flesh.

Just the two of them.

Two orbs of consciousness, two incandescent souls, drifting through the white void of their mental space.

Foster as himself. Proud, broken, resolute.

The dragon, vast, ancient, incandescent.

They drifted slowly, towards each other.

But the moment they touched... everything flickered.

A mental detonation.

Rejected from each other.

Their consciences imploded with contradictions.

Foster shouted into the void:

- I am me! I’m not you!

And the dragon’s voice roared back:

- You still refuse to lose yourself!

They whirled again, thrown into a black sea.

Breath. Emptiness.

Then... a glimmer.

Foster remembered his gaze.

Of the first connection.

Of that moment when he’d seen her blossom.

- You chose me," he murmured.

- And you... you guided me," replied the dragon.

Then, gently... the two orbs of light began to draw closer again.

This time without resistance.

This time with perfect understanding.

They were not two beings annihilating each other.

They were two halves of a forgotten whole.

-

And when their souls merged...

The whole world realized it.

-

In the ruined battlefield, the Lords of the Apocalypse stopped.

One by one.

Requiem frowned.

Lûnara took a step back, her senses twitching with alertness.

Even Joker... stopped smiling.

- But... what the...?

A golden glow slowly rose from the crater. Thin at first. Flickering.

Then it exploded.

A wave of draconic light swept through the air, raising titanic gusts, uprooting trees, sweeping away the living and the dead. The Hell Generals retreated, some falling to their knees, crushed by a pressure that had never existed before.

The ground began to tremble. The air itself vibrated with a low, supernatural song, a harmonic note from the heart of the world. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

-

And then he appeared.

Where there was only death... a new being stood.

A humanoid body, tall and slender like an elf, but entirely reconstructed.

Its skin, in places, seemed woven with draconic light. Deep green scales veined with gold covered its torso, forearms, shoulders and legs. They pulsated slowly, as if alive.

Two massive wings sprang from his back, but instead of membranes of flesh, they seemed made of condensed light, streaked with veins of emerald flame. With each beat, the ground crackled under their vibrations.

Twisted horns, similar to those of ancient celestial dragons, protruded from his head, elegant and terrifying. His white mane floated behind him, fueled by the pure energy oozing from his flesh.

His eyes... were no longer Foster’s eyes.

Two reptilian slits, vertical, golden, burning, stared at the horizon with an almost divine intensity.

And all over his body, the Avatar’s golden tattoos danced. They were no longer frozen. They moved, snaked, coiled on his skin, as if communicating with his breathing.

Even his katana had changed.

In his hand, a massive blade, half-metal half-organic, deep black with pulsating golden engravings. The handle seemed to breathe. The dragon’s breath, mingled with elven magic, circulated freely.

He looked up.

The Lords of the Apocalypse remained frozen, their auras instinctively reduced, their bodies tense.

Requiem gritted his teeth. Elsha stepped back. Joker... smiled, but his eye twitched.

And the new being spoke, his voice a mixture.

Foster’s... and the dragon’s.

- You destroyed my forest... you hurt my children...

He took a step.

The ground cracked beneath his heel.

- So now... I, the Draconic Avatar of the World Tree...

He opened his wings with a crash of light, the leaves of the trees burning in the heat.

- I will destroy you. All of you.

And the air... screamed.

The world was turned upside down.

As soon as the Draconic Avatar of the World Tree spread his wings in a crash of light and fire, the face of war changed. It was no longer a desperate defense. No longer a flight. It was judgment.

And the Lords of the Apocalypse, so powerful, so arrogant, immediately felt the weight of it.

- We’ve got to stop him now!" shouted Varhiel, master of frozen Time, raising his arms to cast his most powerful spell.

But the Avatar had already moved.

It disappeared.

A flutter of wings, a wave of light.

Varhiel had no time to scream. A draconic fist, clawed and charged with raw mana, struck him in the plexus. The impact was such that a shockwave exploded in the air, throwing all the other Lords backwards.

Varhiel crumpled to the ground, his mouth open in a gasp of pain, his ribs pulverized. He didn’t get up again.

- Varhiel!" cried Lûnara, leaping up to counter-attack, her magic of suffering ready to be unleashed.

But this time, suffering could not be reflected.

Foster - or whatever he had become - seized her spell in his hands.

He crushed it.

Literally.

A black spiral of pain broke apart in his palm, reduced to nothing.

Then he raised his hand, and [Roots of the World Tree] burst forth, amplified by his new power.

Colossal tendrils of draconic and vegetal energy sprang from the ground, like raging snakes, and wrapped themselves around Lûnara. She screamed, her legs crushed, her arms pinned, unable to move.

A snap of wings. He was already elsewhere.

Joker, his face decomposed by panic-tinged excitement, raised his hands to call his shadow.

- Hehe, you really think that...!

He didn’t finish.

The Avatar backhanded him with his blade.

Joker was thrown through three Generals of Hell, disemboweling them in his wake. He rolled several meters, his mask cracked, half his face exposed, covered in blood, his teeth planted in the earth.

- Aïe... Aïe aïe... he groaned, spitting out blood, nervous bursts of laughter in his throat. This isn’t a game...

But already, the sky was ablaze.

The dragon - for in him, the consciousness of the ancient dragon still lived - opened its mouth, and a column of pure, incandescent emerald fire swept across the battlefield.

Requiem raised his massive arms to protect himself. He managed to stay on his feet, his boots digging into the earth, but even he was forced to bend a knee.

- He’s not an elf anymore," he spat. It’s not even a dragon...

- It’s equilibrium incarnate," whispered Mirelith, terrified.

For a full minute, the Lords merely dodged.

Their most powerful magics bounced off the Avatar’s golden aura.

Their attacks, their tricks, their illusions... everything was absorbed, sliced up, annihilated.

Elsha tried one last desperate maneuver: she created a total illusion, a world of death, fear and oblivion. But the Avatar merely held out his hand.

A heartbeat.

A whisper.

- Return to oblivion.

And the illusion evaporated. Elsha fell to her knees, vomiting blood, her eyes empty.

There were seven of them against him.

But they were losing. One by one. Slowly. Relentlessly.

Their faces were no longer arrogant.

They were... afraid.

And in the midst of this carnage, Foster - the Draconic Avatar - remained calm.

Cool.

Unstoppable.

He embodied the will of the Mother Tree, the wrath of the World Woods, the thousand-year-old power of dragons.

And he had come to demand justice.

The ground cracked.

Not as it had done under the Draconic Avatar’s blows, nor as it had done during the rise of the Obscurus. No. This time, it bled. He was bleeding an ancient, corrupted magic, thick and viscous as tar. The air became heavier, more toxic. Each breath seemed to steal years of life.

The Lords of the Apocalypse, battered, out of breath, wounded but still standing, regrouped.

Their eyes no longer held contempt.

Only certainty: this was their last card.

- We no longer have a choice," Requiem grumbled. He’ll destroy us, one by one.

- Hey... I was gonna save that for later," Joker huffed, his face cracking with laughter and blood dripping from his lips. But... we’re going to have fun anyway.

- Prepare the invocation," Lûnara said coldly, her inert arm hanging down her bloodied side. We’re freeing him.

- You know what that means," added Mirelith, her voice flat, her pupils dilated. He won’t obey. He only understands hunger.

- Perfect," gasped Thaegron. We want him to devour.

They formed a circle, hands outstretched towards the ground, chanting in a language forgotten since the fall of the old continent.

Black symbols rose from the ground, burning through the earth like fireworms.

And in the epicenter...

A rift opened.

A bottomless pit, pulsing with energy that seemed to scream.

The world turned gray. The wind died.

Even the surrounding Obscurus recoiled, growling instinctively.

And from the abyss... something rose.

-

A black mass. Shapeless at first.

Then it began to grow.

A torso. Immense. Covered with sewn-together skins, some elven, some human, some draconic, some animal. Frozen faces, ripped from centuries of victims, were embedded like twisted trophies.

Arms. Four arms. Then six. Some covered in scales, others in silver claws. Still others ended in gaping, screaming, endless mouths.

Its legs resembled those of an ancient god, draped in chains, each beating the ground like a war bell.

And at the top... a head.

Or rather, three.

An elven head, with pupil-less eyes, stared at the horizon like a blind man at prayer.

A dragon’s head, putrefied, breathing black ash.

And a third head... human. Crying blood and laughing in the same breath.

-

The whole thing pulsed.

A visible heart beat in its chest. A living heart.

- Here’s our latest," breathed Lûnara, her legs bent under the strain of the ritual.

- The Chimeric Obscurus," breathed Joker, arms spread like a proud father.

- Forged from centuries of suffering, condemned souls and forbidden magic," growled Requiem.

- It has no name, no pity. Only one function: to annihilate.

The Draconic Avatar, still standing in the midst of the carnage, slowly looked up at the horror that had just been unleashed.

The ground vibrated under the beast’s footsteps, its chains trailing behind it like a funeral melody.

He inhaled slowly. The tattoos on his skin twitched.

- Here it was... their ultimate nightmare.

Around him, the forest burned, the sky turned to ash.

And in the midst of this apocalypse...

Two monsters faced each other.

One, born of will, of fusion, of protection.

The other, born of destruction, hatred and pain accumulated over millennia.

Absolute silence fell, just before the two moved.

And in that silence...

The real war began.