Chapter 445: Celestial Being
After the Emperor deflected the axe, the stone blocks hurled into the air fell heavily back to the ground, raising a cloud of dust. It was at that precise moment that Iris emerged from the rubble, shaking her head to dislodge the gravel stuck in her hair. A long red streak banded her left forearm; yet she showed no pain, because the adrenaline burning in her veins erased every sensation other than the fury of battle. She clenched her jaws, her muscles tensing under her skin, while she bent down with a swift movement to pick up her double axe, still embedded in a pile of debris.
"You thought you had me so easily?" she called out in a hoarse voice. She planted her eyes in those of the Emperor. "I am Iris Pendragon! Damn it! And it won’t be an old veteran like you who will make me bend my knees!"
The Emperor, for his part, rose with slowness. He brought his hand to his lower lip, where a thin red trickle was oozing, and wiped it with the back of his glove. No emotion crossed his face, but his eyes sparkled with a dangerous gleam. "Your power is impressive, Iris, I do not deny it." His voice, low and composed, contrasted with the tumult of the battlefield. "But it destroys everything that my empire has patiently built. This destructive madness must stop, and I am ready to do anything to stop it."
Rather than answering, Iris gritted her teeth and charged once again, her boots pounding the scorched ground and raising swirls of ash. She spun her double axe in a wide and brutal arc, tracing a deadly curve in the air.
< Gravity Magic: Celestial Hammer >
Immediately, the mass of the weapon grew enormously heavy, bending the atmosphere around the blade and creating an oppressive whistle, as if space itself was tearing under the effect of the pressure.
The Emperor, however, did not flinch. He raised his sword with a sharp gesture and activated a new temporal alteration, which slowed the flow of time for him alone. In that stolen interval, he slid to the side, narrowly avoiding the axe that plowed the ground where he had stood a fraction of a second earlier. Then, in a flash, he struck three times at the same point, each of his blows falling in the same interval, as if the seconds were overlapping.
"Not bad for an old man!" shouted Iris, bursting into a nervous laugh, although her fingers trembled slightly on the handle of her axe. She suddenly struck the ground with her foot, triggering a gravitational shockwave that spread in concentric circles.
The Emperor had already leaped vertically, rising more than ten meters high to dodge the impact. The dust fell slowly around them, and in the sudden silence that followed the crash, only the wind whistling through the ruins and the dull beating of the soldiers’ hearts could be heard, holding their breath for the rest of the duel.
< Temporal Alteration: Infinite Loop >
Versions of himself appeared for a fraction of a second, each delivering a different blow. Iris blocked most of them with her axe, but one blow got through and deeply gashed her thigh. Blood flowed down her muscular leg.
"You’re starting to annoy me!" growled Iris. She concentrated all her power. Her entire body radiated a dark purple aura. She raised both hands toward the sky. The gravity around the Emperor increased brutally. He felt his body become heavy as lead. His movements slowed despite his temporal magics.
The Emperor gritted his teeth. He reversed the temporal flow around him to regain speed. "You will not destroy Alexandria as long as I breathe."
The two titans clashed in close combat. The blows resonated like thunder. Iris used her brute strength and her mastery of gravity to crush. The Emperor responded with his precision and his time alterations. Buildings already fragile collapsed around them. Cries of civilians fleeing the area rose intermittently.
"Why are you doing all this, Iris?" asked the Emperor between two exchanges, his voice betraying a weariness mixed with incomprehension. "Your power could protect the empire instead of reducing it to ruins. Why do you persist in destroying what you once swore to defend?"
Iris blocked a thrust with a sharp movement, then pushed the Emperor back with a blow from her axe that sent stone shards flying. "Protect?" she sneered, her eyes shining with a wild gleam. "Why would I do such a thing, when this empire has never known how to protect those who really mattered? You speak of ruins, but look around you: these ruins are the work of your own lies, not of my anger."
The combat resumed with redoubled intensity, each assault resonating like a thunderclap on the empty square. Iris jumped to a prodigious height, hovered for a moment in the air, then fell back aiming at the Emperor’s head with a backswing of her blade. He parried the attack with a circular movement, his own sword tracing a sparkling arc, before counterattacking with a quick thrust toward her flank. Successive shockwaves shook the cobblestones and rattled the facades of the surrounding buildings, raising clouds of dust that veiled the light of day. Fatigue was beginning to weigh on the shoulders of both fighters. Yet neither of them considered yielding, because they both knew that this confrontation would decide the fate of the capital.
As their blades crossed once more, a beam of blinding white light suddenly pierced the sky. It split the black and heavy clouds that streaked the horizon, and illuminated the entire capital with a clarity so pure that the shadows themselves seemed to fade. At the same moment, in the Holy Cathedral, His Holiness Siel and Julius observed the phenomenon through the large windows, their faces reflecting the celestial glow. The Paradel Julius, hands joined, murmured in a voice full of emotion: "The long-awaited person is finally here. After so many prayers and vigils, she answers our call."
His Holiness nodded gravely, her fingers brushing the sacred symbol hanging from her neck. "Yes," she replied in a solemn tone that resonated under the vaults of the nave. "The archangel has descended straight from paradise to establish the peace that we have not known how to build by ourselves. It is time for the divine will to decide this conflict, before the blood definitively drowns our streets."
At these words, the sky opened in a perfect circle, as if an invisible hand had torn the fabric of darkness to draw a door of light there. A being of majestic proportions emerged slowly from this celestial orifice: eight wings of immaculate white unfolded on its back, each quivering with a supernatural grace. Its golden hair floated in a wind that seemed to blow only for it, and its deep gaze embraced the entire city with an icy serenity. In its right hand, it held a spear whose tip radiated a palpable energy, as if it contained the very gleam of the stars. It did not speak, but its mere presence imposed an absolute silence on the square, abruptly interrupting the combat of the two adversaries who raised their eyes, frozen by disbelief and terror.
