Chương 138: 137: Cosmos

Sylvia's fingers curled.

"You will not take me from this world." All six eyes stared directly at Oblivion's Maw. The abilities activated at once. BOOOOOOOOOOM! The sky detonated. Cobalt light collided with oblivion. Space folded. Mountains shattered. The atmosphere rippled. Concepts themselves began screaming beneath the pressure of the conflicting powers. Oblivion's Maw pushed forward through all of it. Sylvia screamed and poured everything she had into the six attacks.

"BUTTER!" The creature answered with another roar. It was the sound of space being devoured. Sylvia's body was driven backward through the sky, her tentacles trailing behind her as she fought to maintain her position. Another torrent of oblivion slammed into her defenses.

"You said you loved me!" Her beams flared brighter.

"And this is how you show me?!" Oblivion's Maw lunged. Sylvia's eyes widened. She fired all six abilities again. The collision swallowed the horizon. The sky became a battlefield between creation and oblivion, between the girl who had once wanted only to understand Butter and the nightmare Butter had drawn to stop her. Sylvia gritted her teeth.

"I will not lose to something you made." Her voice trembled with rage.

"I will not lose you." Oblivion's Maw opened its jaws. The abyss inside it widened. Sylvia stared into the bottomless darkness. And just then, she realized that Butter had not drawn a creature designed to kill her. She had drawn something designed to make certain that Sylvia could never reach her again.... Sylvia's palms burned brighter. Six sets of eyes stared directly at the creature. Ellipsis activated.

A gap appeared, an absence in the sequence of events itself, a missing interval in which Sylvia's next action could occur without the intervening moments ever existing. Everything stopped. The violet torrents froze in the air, mountains hung motionless above the ruined landscape, dust remained suspended around them, and even the wind ceased to exist. Sylvia stepped forward. Reality had no opportunity to respond. She raised one hand toward the Maw. The creature moved. Sylvia stopped.

Oblivion's Maw continued advancing through the frozen world. The violet torrents surrounding it remained motionless, yet the creature itself passed through them as though the laws Sylvia had suspended were irrelevant. Its colossal wings shifted, its claws descended, and its enormous jaws opened. Sylvia's expression changed.

"By the one who bore the lamb…" The Maw ignored the frozen phenomenon around it. It did not resist Ellipsis. It simply had no reason to acknowledge it. Its purpose was singular: consume. Everything else was irrelevant. The missing interval meant nothing to something that existed only to fulfil its own nature. Sylvia released Ellipsis, and reality crashed back into motion. The Maw's attack resumed immediately.

Sylvia twisted aside as a torrent of oblivion tore past her shoulder, its edge erasing an entire section of the mountain behind her. She retaliated with Irony, Oxymoron, Metaphor, Hyperbole, and Paradox, each literary principle manifesting across her hands as she desperately attempted to impose meaning upon something that seemed to exist beyond meaning itself. Nothing worked. Her cobalt beams struck the Maw's body and disappeared into the starless darkness of its hide. The creature did not even seem to notice.

Sylvia continued backing through the sky until she finally understood the truth. She could not defeat it. Her gaze settled upon its hide, which resembled the night sky given flesh, an endless field of distant stars trapped beneath impossible skin. Absolute. That was what Butter had created, and Butter had created it for a reason. She had not possessed the heart to kill Sylvia, so she had released something Sylvia could not overcome. Sylvia's expression softened.

"Of course…" Her gaze drifted downward toward Butter, who stood far below amid the devastation, still clutching the Aria. The Maw was consuming an enormous amount of Gloom simply by existing, and Sylvia could feel the connection between them, the constant flow of energy required to keep such a monstrous creation anchored to reality. Butter could not fight at full strength while maintaining it. That was the weakness. Sylvia stopped trying to overpower the Maw and looked directly at Butter.

"You made something absolute," she said almost affectionately.

"But you are not absolute, my love." Butter sensed Sylvia's next move before she made it. She did not know what was coming, but the music moving through her body warned her, every rhythm and vibration tightening into an instinctive alarm. Maintaining Oblivion's Maw was already consuming an immense amount of Gloom, yet she kept forcing Crescendo through her exhausted system, refusing to let her reserves fall below ten percent.

"Fermata." The word became a pause, a breath held within the sequence of events itself. Sylvia slowed for the smallest fraction of a second, and Butter moved. Moth Step. She appeared before her. Sylvia was leagues beyond her in power and speed now, so Butter could not afford even the slightest mistake. She had to anticipate rather than react.

"Arpeggio." Butter's fist drove into Sylvia's chest. BOOOOOOOOOOM! Light erupted across the atmosphere as Sylvia became a streak of cobalt, hurled upward like a comet moving against the direction of the world. Butter had supplied no number, only intent, and Gloom had supplied the rest, producing enough conceptual force to displace a being capable of powering a universe. The backlash nearly tore Butter's arm from its socket. Her reserves plunged from ten percent to 0.

5% in an instant, and she staggered as pain raced through her nerves. She winced and immediately forced Crescendo Cheat through herself again. Her hand seized her damaged arm and shoved it back into place while Melody absorbed the remaining force. She could not attempt Arpeggio like that again. The attack had nearly made her lose consciousness. Its force had never been physical. Physical force, even infinite or absolute, would have been meaningless against an Apis possessing its own sovereignty.

Melody had transformed the impact into a conceptual law, something with no loopholes, exceptions, or appeal. The Nonagon could not argue with it, edit it, or rewrite it. The verdict was simple. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. You will be elsewhere. Butter clamped onto Oblivion's Maw as Sylvia continued rising beyond the atmosphere. The colossal creature followed, carrying Butter with it as the Earth gradually fell away beneath them.

The mountains became distant shapes, the bloodstained landscape faded into a dark patchwork, and the curvature of the planet slowly appeared beneath the thinning atmosphere. Butter looked down once. The world was still there. So was the memory of Nathan. She tightened her grip. The Maw carried her farther. The Sun became a distant coin, the Moon a pale scar, and Earth became a blue sphere suspended against the endless black. Butter had spent her life trying to protect that world.

Now she was leaving it behind because she had decided this battle had to end somewhere beyond it. Sylvia was already waiting. Butter emerged into the void between stars, her prosthetic leg swinging as she closed the distance. THOOOOM! The kick struck Sylvia with devastating force, folding her backward and sending her hurtling through space. Her body became a cobalt streak against the stars as she tried to counter with her literary abilities, but Butter's attack had already imposed its conceptual momentum.

Sylvia disappeared into the darkness. Butter followed.... The solar system receded behind them as they crossed the Milky Way, passing through clusters and nebulae whose light stretched into luminous trails around them. They crossed the vast spaces between stellar systems until another galaxy gradually filled the horizon. Andromeda. Its ancient core burned ahead of them, surrounded by immense spiral arms crowded with stars, dust, and stellar nurseries.

Sylvia tore through its outer regions, scattering clouds of gas and ploughing through newborn stellar systems before finally slowing. Butter arrived moments later, still gripping Oblivion's Maw. For several seconds, neither attacked. The silence of space surrounded them. Yet neither of them was truly silent. Gloom did not care about physics. Apis did not care about physics. Their voices did not travel through ordinary air.

Their words passed through the phenomena surrounding them and entered directly into one another's minds, carried by the same impossible principles that allowed their powers to function where sound should have been incapable of existing. Sylvia's voice reached Butter clearly.

"You hit me with that thing." Butter's breathing was ragged.

"You want me dead, Sugarbear. Why are you doing this to us?" Butter said nothing. Sylvia's voice sharpened.

"You said you loved me!" Her body blurred. Cobalt tentacles erupted from her back, extending through the darkness with terrifying speed. Each one carried the conceptual weight of a planet crashing into a single point. Butter sensed them before they arrived. The music across her body screamed its warning. Oblivion's Maw moved with her. A tentacle struck. BOOOOOOM! The Maw twisted between them and absorbed the impact across its starless hide.

The colossal limb sank into the abyss within its body and disappeared, swallowed by something deeper than space itself.

"You little traitor!" Sylvia screamed directly into Butter's mind.

"You made that thing for me!" Another tentacle swept toward Butter. She ducked beneath it. A second came from above. Butter twisted aside, still holding onto the Maw, and the attack passed close enough to distort the space around her.

"You're actually trying to kill me!" Butter raised her fist. She punched clockwise. A circular distortion erupted from her knuckles and tore through the vacuum, shredding the approaching tentacle despite there being no air for the attack to travel through. Cadenza did not require air. It imposed its rhythm directly upon the surrounding phenomenon. SHRRRRAAAK! Her opposite fist followed in the reverse direction. Another wave carved through the darkness, destroying a second tentacle before it could reach her.

Sylvia screamed again.

"Stop fighting me!" Butter clenched her teeth.

"I can't." Her voice reached Sylvia through the void.

"I made a promise." A dozen tentacles erupted simultaneously. Oblivion's Maw spread its enormous wings, placing its entire body between Butter and the attack, and violent violet torrents of oblivion erupted from its jaws, colliding with Sylvia's tendrils and swallowing several completely while the rest slammed into its hide with enough force to distort the surrounding void. Butter kept moving. Cadenza followed Cadenza, each alternating strike creating a destructive rhythm that shredded anything approaching her.

She was no longer merely attacking Sylvia; she was carving a constantly shifting perimeter around herself while Oblivion's Maw guarded everything beyond it.

"You drew a monster because you couldn't face me!" Butter clenched her teeth as another tentacle came from behind. The Maw twisted and took the impact across its body. KRAAAAAAAM! Stars disappeared behind the collision.

"You are betraying our love!"

"I'm trying to save you!"

"You are trying to kill me!"

"I'm trying to stop you!"

"You ungrateful little thing!" Sylvia accelerated, crossing the distance almost instantly as her fist descended with enough force to crush a galaxy. Oblivion's Maw intercepted her again, its wing sweeping across Butter and absorbing the blow before the impact produced a gravitational shockwave that distorted an enormous region of space. KRAK - KOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Butter remained untouched.

She countered immediately, one fist striking clockwise while the other followed anticlockwise, the alternating conceptual waves tearing through Sylvia's incoming tentacles and forcing her backward.

"Stop destroying my attacks!" Butter barely heard her. Her arms were beginning to feel numb, Crescendo Cheat burning through her nervous system while every forced increase in Gloom felt like dragging power through exposed nerves. Her reserves flickered between one percent, 0. 9 percent, and 0. 8 percent, yet she forced more through her body anyway. The Maw roared beside her. Sylvia's tentacles multiplied. Butter's fists accelerated. Every approaching tendril was shredded before it could touch her.

"You're hurting yourself!" Sylvia screamed.

"You're burning through your own life for those insects, those disgusting humans!" Another tentacle struck, and the Maw intercepted it.

"You'll die before you ever defeat me!" Butter punched through another.

"I don't care!"

"You should!" Sylvia screamed.

"I don't want you to die. I love you!"

"If you loved me, you wouldn't kill people against my wishes!"

"Your wishes are wrong!" Sylvia snapped.

"I know what's best for you!" The two tore deeper into the void. Earth was now impossibly distant, the Moon reduced to a pale scar while the Sun faded behind them into a distant point of light. Butter clung to Oblivion's Maw as it carried her farther into the darkness, while Sylvia pursued them, her cobalt tentacles stretching across impossible distances.

"I thought you loved me!" Butter looked back, tears floating from her face in the vacuum.

"I did." For the briefest moment, Sylvia faltered. Butter turned forward again.

"That's why I'm fighting you." Her fist struck. Cadenza detonated, tearing another wave of Sylvia's tentacles apart.

"You're wrong!" Sylvia screamed. Butter kept moving.

"You're wrong about me!" Sylvia surged after her.

"You belong with me!" Butter's fist moved clockwise, followed immediately by the other in an anticlockwise arc. The two conceptual waves collided with Sylvia's attacks and shredded them apart while Oblivion's Maw continued shielding Butter from the devastation.

"You are mine!" Butter stared into the darkness ahead.

"Not anymore." Oblivion's Maw opened its enormous jaws, and a violent torrent of oblivion erupted into the void. Sylvia raised all six of her hands, her six eyes igniting as her literary abilities manifested simultaneously. The darkness, the cobalt light, Oblivion's Maw, and the six principles of Sylvia's power collided across the stars, and the space between them became a battlefield. — She landed on a planet at the edge of the galaxy.

It was a world of salt and silence, its surface a desert of crystalline white stretching toward horizons that did not curve, continuing beyond sight in every direction like the exposed bones of an ocean that had dried before the first fish ever learned to walk. The sky was a deep violet, the color of a bruise that had been healing for a billion years, while ancient stars hung above it like lanterns in a cathedral, their light distant and their warmth long since forgotten.

Sylvia's impact carved a crater nearly a kilometer wide. Salt erupted into the air, hung there for a moment, then descended around her like pale snow. Her form flickered once, dimmed, and steadied as she slowly rose from the crater. Butter landed several meters away, her boots crunching against the crystalline surface. Oblivion's Maw remained behind them.

Butter could feel the immense drain of Gloom every time it moved, every wingbeat and every attack consuming more of her already dwindling reserves, so she had ordered it to stay back. Sylvia noticed. She glanced over her shoulder at the enormous creature before looking back at Butter, a small laugh escaping her lips.

"You're shaking, my love. We don't have to keep doing this. Come here and let me take care of you." Butter lunged. Sylvia's hand lashed outward. A beam of cobalt light erupted from her palm, carrying enough force to turn Butter into a memory, a rumor, a thing that had once existed and no longer did. Butter was already gone. She moved before the beam formed, before the light gathered, before the attack had even finished becoming an attack.

The cobalt ray tore across the salt desert, crossed the horizon that refused to curve, and struck a planet at the edge of the system. The planet ceased to exist. There was no explosion, no eruption of debris, no dying flash of atmosphere. The stars behind it became visible. The space where the planet had been remained perfectly empty, as though the universe itself had forgotten that anything had ever occupied it. Butter stopped. Her hands lowered slightly. She stared at the empty space. Sylvia did not.

Her gaze remained fixed on Butter.

"Stop." Butter looked back at her. Sylvia's voice carried no anger yet, only the same cold certainty with which she might have described the movement of a star.

"Stop fighting me, Butter. I have no desire to erase you as well." Butter's expression hardened.

"You couldn't if you tried." Something changed in Sylvia's face. Cold, precise anger.

"You continue to misunderstand what I am telling you." Her hands opened.

"All right." Cobalt light gathered across her palms.

"Let us see how long you can continue." She fired. The beam crossed the distance faster than causality itself could account for. Its path seemed to exist before the decision to fire it, the attack arriving at its destination before the motion that produced it had finished occurring. Butter lowered her center of gravity. Her hands began to move. Flowing. Circular.

One palm turned upward while the other swept across her body, her fingers tracing patterns that seemed less like martial movements and more like musical notation written through space. Melody activated. The concept of sequence fractured around her. The beam arrived before it was fired. Butter arrived at the correct moment anyway. Her hand closed around the cobalt stream. The impact should have expurgated her. Instead, the beam flowed around her palm like water caught in the current of a river.

Butter spun with it, allowing its momentum to circle around her body before guiding the entire torrent beneath one arm and out through the other. She redirected it. The cobalt beam curved across the battlefield and came screaming back toward Sylvia. Sylvia simply moved her hand. The beam struck her palm. She knocked it aside. The redirected energy tore through the sky and disappeared into the distance, tearing a gash in space. Sylvia looked at Butter. Then she clapped. All six of her hands came together at once.

CLAP. The sound carried across the salt plains. CLAP. Her expression remained perfectly composed. CLAP. Sylvia's tentacles unfolded behind her, her palms glowing with six different principles, and her body shifted forward with the cold precision of something that did not need emotion to possess devotion. Butter was not merely someone Sylvia loved. Love was part of Sylvia now.

When Expurgation had destroyed her body, the Nonagon had rebuilt her from memory, reconstructing flesh from everything it had retained about her existence. Butter had occupied an enormous portion of that memory. The result was not a woman who chose to love Butter. It was a woman for whom loving Butter had become structural. The way lungs breathed. The way a heart maintained circulation. The way existence itself continued without asking permission.

Sylvia could lose her emotions and still love Butter because, to whatever she had become, Butter was no longer merely an object of affection. Butter was part of the definition of Sylvia. And anything that threatened that definition had to be corrected. Sylvia vanished. Butter's hands began to move again. The battlefield erupted.