204. Cosmic Comprehension
The feathers twirled, hundreds of them fading into black smoke. The legendary beast Ventiff was dismissed, absorbed into the gigantic black wings on Aurora’s back. Her Excellency appeared unscathed. Slowly, she flew down in elegance and majesty.
A faint, echoing clank sounded as her boot touched the metal floor. The primary feathers of her wings shifted and transformed, becoming the Ventiff cape that adorned her shoulders, its fabric cascading down her back. The empress had returned to her war armour once more.
Aurora swept her cautious eyes across the quiet chamber.
“Tch!” She clicked her tongue. It was too quiet for her liking. Supplies, Armatus spare parts, and workshop bots were scattered across the floor, evidence of a crew that had left in a hurry.
"They must be abandoning the ship," Aurora thought to herself, hearing the faint footsteps and metallic clanking in the distance.
Ominousness crept in.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up as a sudden coldness seeped into her blood. She turned to her left, then snapped her gaze to her right. She gulped, Thanatos's blade readied in her hand, its purple flame still roaring with power.
Clap!
Clap!
Clap!
Three slow claps reverberated through the chamber. “Where is it!?” Aurora could not pinpoint their source.
Sounds without a source.
“Impossible!” she grumbled in disbelief.
Then, the black mist coiled and solidified, birthing a figure from its depths. She stood a titan, her form draped in ancient, obsidian plates of armour bound by thick, linen ropes. Her face was a contradiction of severe, statuesque beauty and cold, martial sternness. Her presence was commanding, a physical weight, a crushing gravity that buckled the will and demanded subservience.
“My, my… This is the greatest twist of fate, to meet with my mightiest child,” a velvety voice uttered from her lips — divine, powerful, yet menacing.
“A portal?” Aurora gasped, resisting the primal urge to flee. But that was never an option to begin with.
“Do not be afraid, my child.” The voice was a silken caress, yet it carried the weight of mountains. The divine figure glided forward, her movements unnervingly smooth. As she drew nearer, Aurora was captivated by her eyes. The ancients would have called them Boopis, ox-eyed, a mark of supreme divinity. Vast and dark, her pupils were so large they nearly eclipsed the whites, giving her the serene, yet unsettling gaze of a gentle cow, an ancient symbol of life and power.
Aurora touched her nose, trying to check her sensory.
“I can’t sense any mana at all. Could this be a being preceeding the age of mortals?” Aurora muttered, steadying her voice. Throughout centuries, she had read all of her mother's research; countless tales of mythos scribbled in ancient tomes, yet none pointed to any evidence of living divinity. This was truly scepticism.
Naturally, Aurora fell into a guard stance, her sword held ready.
“This is I, Gaia. The Goddess of Life, Allmother of Earth,” the goddess smiled and extended her hands outward in a motherly gesture. She gazed down her nose, her diadem glittering against the light.
“Gaia? That’s ridiculous! Weren’t all gods vanished after the Divine Desonance?” Aurora argued, taking a step back.
“Of what use are eyes, child, when the mind itself is blind?” Gaia’s voice was a low murmur, yet it filled the chamber. Her ageless, ox-eyed gaze fell upon the weapon in Aurora’s hands. “How curious. You carry the echo of an old contemporary. The unmistakable essence of Thanatos, the great reaper, is woven into that very steel.”
Then she chuckled at Aurora’s offensive stance.
“Fine, I’ll entertain you. Why are you here, Allmother?” Aurora muttered.
“I’m your saviour. It’s only in my great interest to stop you from killing each other,” Gaia replied.
“Spare me the twisted tongue. You led their attack on my castle!” Aurora argued, her voice hardening.
“Such aggression. It is in your nature, after all,” condescension laced her tone.
“Why decide to show up now? After all this time? After all the despair and desolation, generation after generation. Why?” Aurora questioned. Her fingers gripped tightly on the handle. None of this made sense to her.
“Why have you colluded with Ignius?” She repeated.
“Because he is the only one who understands the need for a higher power. The need for salvation.”
“Nonsense. You corrupted him with forbidden magic!”
The goddess chuckled, materialising a peacock feather and watching it dance between her fingers. “D’Arcane is forbidden because you mortals deem it unlawful. It is never against the law of nature.”
Aurora’s jaw tightened, a low growl catching in her throat. The stories spoke of Gaia, the benevolent Allmother who cherished all life. But the being before her was a chilling mockery of those tales. The divine warmth of a creator was absent, replaced by the cold, hard glint of a tyrant.
This was not the mother of mortals; this was something else entirely, a corruption wearing a goddess's face.
Something primal and raw stirred within her, a feeling that constituted her belief that this was not the true goddess Gaia. “This must be related to the sixth apocalypse somehow,” Aurora pondered.
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“I do not condone the act of consuming life. D’Arcane shall never be practised, whether it is the will of heaven or not!” Aurora demanded, her words cutting.
“Oh, is that so?” Gaia exclaimed in surprise. The strongest arcanist appeared unfazed by the unprecedented divinity.
Aurora quickly swept her eyes around. There was no sign of Ignius. “Tell me! Where is Ignius?”
“Do not mind his absence. He is doing my bidding. We are fixing the world, if you must know. Let’s call it a divine intervention,” Gaia responded, her posture relaxed.
“Absurd. First, Ignius shattered the moon with the Light of Punishment. Millions of lives perished in your name! For all I know, the next D’Arcane spell could shatter the Earth.” Aurora argued. “There is no salvation in this vile magic.”
“Huh?” The goddess tilted her head back, her finger pointing toward the split moon. “Did you reach such a conclusion already?”
“Say what?” Aurora blinked, her lips parted slightly in utter confusion.
“My, my… Judging from the look on your face, you’re clueless after all.” She giggled to herself, enjoying this useless repartee. “I’m your saviour, Aurora Vere Borealis,” Gaia announced, her lips spreading wide into a devious smile.
"Ha?! What about the lives of the innocent children?!"
"What about them?" The goddess locked eyes with pure malice.
"Are you willing to sacrifice them for your divine intervention, too?!"
"Especially the children, I hate their annoying cry for ages."
“YAAAAA!” Aurora shouted.
With a hazy motion, she launched her blade.
The weapon collided and bounced off a stasis shield.
“Mortals are flawed; you need my guidance,” Gaia continued.
“You are not Goddess Gaia, you murderer!” Aurora denied, sweeping her sword upward. The sword struck empty air.
Gaia drifted backward, her motion frictionless.
“She’s even faster than I anticipated,” Aurora internalised. Her legs bent, and she shot forward, her form blurring into a hazy figure.
Her blade arched from below, spraying purple flame.
The goddess raised her hands, and a barrier blocked the assault.
The shockwave erupted, releasing condensed energy into the surroundings. The ship's hull started to distort.
Heavy, subsequent blows were exchanged. A thick wall was ripped apart by a stray slash. The floor caved in as Aurora launched herself over and over in a non-stop, relentless assault.
Aurora shifted her weight, pivoting on one leg and spinning. The blade became a whirlwind, slamming squarely into Gaia’s barrier.
A loud, shattering noise burst through the air.
For the first time, Gaia’s calm eyes widened in alarm as she saw her impenetrable defence crumble.
The empress placed two fingers on the pointed end of her blade and smashed the pommel down on Gaia’s face — the blow connected, causing the goddess to stagger backward. After retreating, she winced, touching her cheek. Her eyes dilated at a small smear of blood on her fingers.
“So a divine being can bleed after all,” Aurora spoke, a light smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “I can win.”
“Insolence!” Eyes twitching with fury, Gaia extended her arm and summoned a golden sceptre. “All of you will be unmade by time itself!” the goddess declared, her voice thundering.
Charged with full power, the strongest arcanist in mortal history launched a high-speed assault, her Thanatos-spatha a blur of aggression. The speed was incomprehensible to human eyes. The goddess could barely maintain her defence as her back crashed through floor after floor.
Each impact plunged her onto the deck below.
At the apex of the conflict, Aurora became the eye of the storm. She raised the Thanatos-spatha high, a mortal empress passing judgment on a false god. The blade's violet flame screamed, a spire of defiance so immense it pierced the very clouds above.
“BEGONE, VILE CREATURE!” she roared, bringing the reaper's edge down with all the finality of an executioner's axe.
“Gaaaaah!” The goddess grunted, raising her sceptre to fence.
The blade cleaved through the sceptre, its tip grazing not just her armour, but her flesh. Blood spattered.
“AHHH!” A raw, guttural shriek tore from her lips as her divine form convulsed, her limbs flailing with an unnatural violence.r.
The floor beneath them crumbled, revealing the dark sea and the rocky landscape below.
The howling wind rushed in as the ground grew closer and closer.
Both combatants fell into the night sky.
“HOW?! YOU ARROGANT MORTAL!” Gaia screamed, spiralling downward — only to be stunned by the sight of fiery butterflies, thousands of them, encircling her formidable foe.
The air grew thick with the heat of a thousand tiny wings, their collective flutter a silent, searing chorus for the spirit of war.
“Empyrion—!” Aurora chanted in an absolute tone, extending two fingers. A massive orb formed at her fingertips. “FIRE!”
"You dare challenge divinity with such a simple spell?" The shriek that tore from her throat was a thunderclap of pure indignation, her hands extending to cast the defensive barrier.
The colossal blast shook the very firmament of the Earth. Converging on Gaia’s location, the temperature spiked to that of a star’s core, and her hastily erected barrier dissolved into a supernova of glittering dust.
The beam of pure flame pierced through her, its destructive slivers plunging into the sea below.
A violent, alchemical reaction erupted as the water itself was plasmatised.
The ocean flash-boiled, a churning cauldron that sent a world-sized plume of steam screaming into the heavens, instantly shrouding Aurora’s vision in a wall of white.
“Ventiff!” she commanded. A thunderous flap of her immense black wings ripped through the vapour, carving a path through the artificial storm.
Immediately, she scanned the dark abyss.
Nothing.
No sign of her enemy anywhere.
“Hades’ hell… the goddess is gone. She must have used some sort of dark teleportation,” she analysed, hissing air through her nostrils in exasperation. A moment later, the battlecruiser capsized and collapsed into the water, creating enormous waves.
High above, the thunder of the retreating Umbral fleet dwindled, the final echo of war swallowed by the vast, empty sky.
Silence reclaimed its realm. Aurora levitated in the air, the world muted around her as the adrenaline of battle fled, leaving a hollow void. As the Thanatos-spatha dissolved into a final spark of light, the true cost of her power made itself known. A violent tremor began in her hands, and she stared down at her trembling gauntlets. A moment later, she was gasping for air, her lungs burning as the first wave of mana exhaustion crashed over her.
“Empress! Are you okay? We saw the sea of flame. Was that you?” Cartier’s voice came through the communicator, her tone tinged with concern.
“Cartier? Is that you?”
“Yes, Empress. General Matthew managed to fend off the battlecruiser. They all ran with tails between their legs at that moment!” she answered promptly.
“That’s great news, Cartier.”
“Empress, are you safe?!” Mirai’s voice reverberated from the background.
Aurora found herself relieved to hear they were both safe and sound. She continued, “I’m okay, more or less. But the enemy—”
“I told you not to freak out!” Mirai interjected, directing her comment at Cartier.
“I wasn’t freaked out! I was just worried!” Cartier countered, “Empress! We’ll be awaiting your return at the front of the main tower!“
“Please come home safely, Astral Excellency!“ Mirai added.
Aurora giggled, cupping her lips. “I will, I will… You wouldn’t believe what I just fought.”
With that, she began her return to Borealis Castle.