The Godsfall Chronicles-Book 8, Chapter 4 - Crisis Strikes Anew

Cloudhawk led his troop of demons from Gehenna. Meanwhile, the surface of the moon had gradually returned to calm. Of course this was the calm before the storm.

The mental energy of a thousand gods was condensed and contained within the Abyssal God’s body. Enough to shear off huge chunks of the planet. It was beyond the physical limitations of most living things.

The Marshal’s power was simple; devour and release. The Abyssal God gathered energy, then released it as needed during combat. It was also able to use mental energy to spawn an all-consuming black hole.

Its power was nearly enough to rip a planet apart, a living calamity that would spell the end to anything it encountered.

It was time. “Begin the invasion.”

After giving the order, the Abyssal God’s blazing form slowly rose and headed toward its target. Behind it were thousands of soldiers, creatures from Sumeru and devastating weapons. The entire vanguard was mobilized.

Thousands of figures floated through the darkness of space, picking up speed as they headed for Earth. Out here they all looked the same – like robots built off an assembly line. Their race actively destroyed individuality.

Highly uniform. Highly organized.

Every god operated with the confidence that theirs was the greatest race in the universe. Under the God King’s ministrations, every star system they conquered enjoyed decades of peace. Gods looked at other races the same way humans looked at lesser beasts of their own planet. As the peak of the evolutionary chain, other beings were fundamentally below them.

Humans were no exception. There was only one very special individual that earned Sumeru’s direct attention.

Although the gods didn’t understand why they were expending so much effort in pursuing this man, the God King’s will assured them it was a worthy cause. As the greatest being in this universe, the God King’s will was absolute. It stated their purpose, and they obeyed.

No one questioned the God King. They were fingers, bound to obey the brain.

Gods were fast. In less than six hours they had reached Earth’s atmosphere. Like shooting stars they streaked through the sky and impacted with earth-shaking force. The Marshal, however, rapidly slowed to a stop before impact. It hovered in the air while energy poured off its body. It was so intense that the air ignited for hundreds of meters all around. A world of fire surrounded the vanguard’s leader, portions of it hotter than the surface of the sun.

No living thing could survive such a blaze.

Incredible, frightening power continued to pour from the Abyssal God. If it’d just struck the ground like the others it would have spawned an explosion equal to a few large-sized bombs. But this power set the atmosphere ablaze.

Moments later the explosive quality shifted. Everything started to shrink back toward the god. All the fires were sucked in by its inexplicable power.

Together with the gods, many other creatures made landfall. Among them were octopus-like things whose bodies were a fluid collection of a mercury-like substance. Hundreds of them milled around, all roughly the size of a small hill. Odd light hung around them.

Under commands from their masters, the metallic creatures led the way toward Greenland. When they reached the boundary these creatures unfurled their tentacles and pressed them against the barrier.

Every could feel the suction force coming from the creatures. Their tentacles were like straws, hungrily slurping power from Greenland’s shields. At the same time lunar weapons were taking aim. When they fired, streaks of blinding energy came crashing down from thousands of kilometers away. The earth shook and the sky trembled when they impacted the shields – shields which had not yet fully recovered from the fury of Chaos.

In such a weakened state, an attack like this was crushing. However it was the liquid octopuses that were most frightening. They stuck to the boundary like leeches, drawing out energy and using it to replicate. One became two, two became four and so on.

With the power of the barrier they multiplied rapidly. Newly formed creatures immediately attached themselves to the boundaries and continued the process. In less than ten minutes there were thousands of them, covering a vast swath of Greenland’s defenses.

It was all part of the calculated plan of the gods. Chaos forced half of the humans’ defenses to fail and damaged their mountain of Source. Their precious boundary was rendered unstable. From above, they barraged the shields with their weapons to force a quicker decline of its energy. At the same time the octopus creatures siphoned what remained, thinning it until a breach appeared.

Their plan was proving effective. As the seconds ticked by the boundary began to fade.

The Southern Capital was in disarray. Alarms wailed from the moment the gods pierced the atmosphere. But what were they supposed to do to stop them? There were too many, more than they were prepared for. If the Abyssal God and his forces broke through, the consequences would be too terrible to contemplate.