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[Commission] The Seventeen
Commission for teranticdragon
I must admit that coming back to these kinds of stories is quite comforting. Just going absolutely all out and seeing how ridiculously far you can take things has its own sort of strange pleasure. Plus Terantic basically gave me a free slate with this one, so as you can imagine I'm a big fan of the result ^^
The Seventeen
Darius chuckled as he sipped his beer. It was strange how despite his vast reach he always seemed to come back to this particular place, to this particular drink, as if his body was drawn to it. In all the wide universe he liked this particular blend of flavours, this code of taste. In a way he quite liked that, the mathematics of preference. He took another sip, relishing the slightly nutty taste spreading slowly over his tongue, and as he lost himself in the flavour he noticed the liquid in the mug was bubbling slightly, like it was being boiled. He just looked at it for a second, breathed deeply, and it stopped.
“Easy Darius. Try not to blow this one up.” he muttered to himself. All of a sudden the bar went quiet, and a shadow fell across his table. He looked up to see a bulky looking alligator with a stetson hat standing ominously in front of him, arms folded across his muscled chest. Now Darius was a well known figure around here - the blue wolf was built like a house after all, so he wasn’t exactly the most forgettable figure around. But this guy clearly didn’t know who he was, and that suspicion was affirmed when he sat at the table and wordlessly proffered his hand.
Darius laughed, but nevertheless he acquiesced, gripping the hand and setting his elbow on the table. Arm wrestling was of course a staple of every tavern around here, and the wolf knew that this bar in particular had a reputation for defeating newcomers. The regulars all knew his strength was far beyond any mortal, but every now and then some out of towner thought themselves tough enough to take him on. The crowd knew this, and they were eagerly watching as the two guys squared up.
There was no official start, but all of a sudden the gator found himself pressing against what felt like a brick wall. For the first time he noticed the arm of the wolf, the sheer mass of it. The bicep like a boulder welded to a limb that was almost as thick as his torso, so heavily muscled he could have lost a finger between the striations. An arm that showed not the faintest hint of a tremor as it held him steady.
“Nice try kid.” Darius just smiled gently before calmly pressing the hand into the table and leaning back, grabbing his drink again. He was about to take a sip when the gator’s fist slammed into his head. His chin didn’t move a millimetre, the gator’s hand just stopped the moment it met his fur. Slowly he turned to look at the gator, and as he did so the tankard in his hand melted into slop, dripping out of his hand. No words were exchanged, but in that moment the gator received the tiniest glimpse of a god, of a being so vast and powerful he was but an insect below him, nothing but an atom to him. With a whimper he left as fast as he could, leaving Darius to sigh and shake the melted wood off his hand.
“You know you don’t have teh scare em so bad Dazzer.” This came from a wizened old aardvark in the corner, grinning at him with what little teeth he had left. Darius shrugged.
“Ain’t no fun letting them off easy either, eh?” He chuckled as the barkeep brought him another tankard. On the house of course.
*
Lars grunted as yet another blast of energy scorched the ground he was standing on, sending him flying. He managed to throw up a shield of blue energy as the next one hit, but the being in front of him merely focused a bit harder and the shield shattered like glass, sending him to the ground once more. This time when he got to his knees he faltered, coughing into his hand, and when he removed it there was crimson blood splattered on his palm. He looked at it almost in shock, as if he was surprised to see it.
“That was stronger than it should be. You’re not just some Singularity, are you?” Lars got to his feet, his knees unsteady and his coat in tatters - it might have been resistant to most spells, but the coyote looking at him was in another league entirely. He’d never seen anything like it, it was power almost beyond comprehension.
“You’re quite astute, aren’t you? I’ll give you a hint - we’re not just, as you put it, some Singularity. We stretch across the heavens like a web, and sat in the centre you find the spider, pulling each of the strings.”
Comprehension slowly dawned across Lars’ face. “How many others?”
“We are the Seventeen. And you are not going to live to find out if the name rings true.” The coyote raised a hand, hideous purple energy glowing in its paw as it prepared to fire. Lars simply straightened himself out and chuckled.
“Well, guess that’ll have to do. You’ve been very helpful, but I must be going now.”
“You’re not going anywhere, keyholder!” The Seventeen snarled and fired but Lars pulled up a barrier and deflected it upwards, the explosion lighting up the sky. While it did so he opened a portal behind him and fell through it, leaving behind the singed sky and coughing as it spat him out on his familiar wooden floor.
“Ughhh.” For a couple of seconds he laid there and smouldered, wisps of smoke rising from his destroyed cloak here and there, before finally mustering the strength to get up. He knew already that this was something he couldn’t deal with by himself. This wasn’t the first time he’d found himself outnumbered, and it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d been outgunned. The problem was the sheer scale of the difference, almost insurmountable to the point that trickery wasn’t going to cut it. In short, he needed muscle. And as it so happened, he knew exactly where to get it.
*
Lars winced as reality sundered itself to let the wolf pass through. He’d always hated Darius’ portals - his own were delicate creations, like passing a needle through the seams of a cloth. Darius’ were nothing but obscene power tearing apart the walls of reality, a claw just ripping the cloth apart to let him through. Mind you considering the size of the wolf Lars wasn’t surprised he’d chosen to do them this way, for he doubted Darius would fit through his own portals.
“So what’s this about?” Darius said as he stepped into the room, already looking down at Lars, He was about 7.5ft tall and stacked with enough muscle to level a planet, and compared to the rather small dragon he looked utterly enormous. “As much as I enjoy your company I hope that isn’t all you’ve got for me.”
“Not quite. I’m calling in a favour you owe me.” He beckoned at Darius to come to his desk, where there were multiple papers spread across it. “You said to tip you off if I had any big energy sources that needed to be dealt with. Singularities, deities, things like that. Well I found one, and I need you to deal with it. This is the Seventeen.” He threw across a picture of the same coyote that had attacked him, the picture showing him glowing with malignant power.
“The Seventeen?”
“It’s a hive mind. Seventeen different Singularities all feeding into a single Core, all the power focused through one lens. It shouldn’t even be possible for them to communicate, let alone form a network like this, but those particular iterations have a few peculiarities when it comes to physics.” Lars slapped the picture with a hand. “So, you think you can do something about it?”
“Definitely.” Darius smiled as he looked at the pictures once more, as he looked at what was quite possibly the most powerful being he would encounter for a long time. Ever since he had been inflicted with a curse that had assailed him with a neverending craving for strength, Darius had done his utmost to seek out these beings, these monsters amongst mortals. He had made it his life’s mission to find them and to dominate them, to take their power and make it his own. He may have liked Lars, but their friendship had only lasted this long because the dragon was remarkably adept at finding power sources for him to feed on. Make no mistake - the wolf was out for himself at all times, but if that happened to help someone out at the same time then he wasn’t going to object. The road to godhood was a lonely one, for who was going to make the climb with you? That was why instead of just helping Lars out he hummed for a few seconds.
“That didn’t sound like a very agreeable hum.”
“I’ll help you out, but under one condition. I get to keep the Seventeen’s strength.”
Lars grimaced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask for that. This thing is multiple Singularities in one body, there’s a reason their actual forms are stretched out across that many realities. That density of power in a universe will just outright destroy it.”
“That’s my one condition. Take it or leave it.” Darius folded his arms across his mountain of a chest, well aware that Lars’ hands were tied. His only choice was to trust that Darius would not destroy his own universe if he went through with this, but it took the decision out of his hands. He knew how much Lars hated being out of control.
“Well, not like you’re giving me a choice. Guess I’m taking it.” Lars adjusted his glasses, then gave the wolf a piercing stare. “You never did answer me before. What are you aiming for? What’s the end goal?”
“I don’t have one really. Being strong just feels good, you know?” He flexed an arm and for a second was enamoured by the bicep that pumped upwards as a result, entranced by the sheer size of the muscle. He wished he had a mirror in here to appreciate himself properly, but a quiet cough from Lars forced him back to the task at hand. “I’ve only ever wanted to get stronger. And so far I’ve been successful at it.”
“This kind of power is too much to contain in one being. The Seventeen has to spread it across realities to avoid ripping the realities apart, I can’t even imagine what it’s going to do if you take all of that into one body. How much do you really want this, because you might be banished from reality as a result of it.”
“More than you know.” Darius matched the stare, and for just a second the jovial attitude dropped, his tone becoming serious. “I’m not trying to take over the world, hell I’m not even trying to damage it. But I must be able to make the choice, and for that I must ascend. Besides.” His seriousness dropped and he pulled a most muscular that almost made Lars’ nose bleed from how thick it looked. “You gotta admit size suits me.” He grinned and grunted as he flexed, pushing it until his limbs quivered and he could feel hard muscle stopping his arm from bending any further, laughing as his body popped outwards. He couldn’t help it - the feeling of strength coursing through his hefty limbs was intoxicating, and he wanted nothing more than to feel it on a greater scale.
“Well, as...impressive as you are, you’re going to need a bit more if you want to take their power.” Lars walked to the back of his study and rummaged around in the bookcase for a few seconds before pulling a book out. He opened it up to a page, flicked through them for a couple of seconds, then without warning he tore out a page. “Eat this.” He said, proffering the page.
“Are you sure I’m not supposed to -”
“Remind me who the mage is in here? Just eat the bloody page.”
Darius took it, but he made a point of emphasising the size and strength difference between them, standing up to his full height and shoving him slightly as he took it. Without a word he scrunched it up and popped it in his mouth, chewed for a couple of seconds and swallowed. Instantly he felt the difference, like the world was pressing in on him.
“The hell did you do?” The wolf flexed his fingers, as if they had moved position on his hand.
“There’s a very complicated answer to that, but if we skip the thaumic mechanics I basically made you an energy leech. Right now your body is taking in any latent energy that it makes contact with. You should be able to drain anything you can touch.”
“Interesting.” Darius looked around for a second, then held his hand up. There was a panicked squeak as a mouse levitated off the floor, floating towards Darius’ hand before he grabbed it out of the air. There was no noticeable flash of magic, nothing to indicate anything had happened, but before their eyes the mouse withered away into nothing, and Darius felt the slightest speck of energy ripple through his body.
“If you’re quite done messing with the wildlife, I’ve got an angry Singularity with your name on it.” Lars waved his hand, but nothing happened. He frowned and waved it slower, and this time he could see the world bend slightly where his hand passed over it, but again the portal didn’t open. “Looks like they’re locking me out of the Core, but I should be able to get into one of the iterations. Once you’ve dealt with one of them you should have enough power to get past their barriers.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Darius folded his arms and waited as Lars waved his hands around, weaving spells and slowly opening a rift in the air. But after half a minute of this he grew impatient, and without a word he stepped forward and simply ripped the portal open, forcing it into existence with sheer power. Then he raised an eyebrow at Lars before stepping through.
“Psh. Gods. The only thing omnipotence does is make you insufferably arrogant.” He grumbled as he stepped through the portal.
The world they found themselves on was very similar to their own, but something felt...off. Like looking at a reflection and knowing that it wasn’t quite right, that there was something behind the scenes altering it. Darius could feel it the moment he stepped through, and as he watched it seemed like Lars could feel it too. The dragon seemed to shiver as he entered.
“Feel that? They know we’re here.” Darius nodded in response, stepping forward. As he did so though something stirred the air in front of him. Dust coalesced into a form, and after a couple of seconds a coyote stepped out of thin air.
“Welcome to my humble abode. Well, one of you at least.” The coyote glared at Lars. “You on the other hand are not particularly welcome.”
Darius puffed his chest out. “You’ve got bigger things to worry about, believe me. You’re Seventeen?”
“Well yes and no. I’m certainly the one you’re looking for, but this pitiful form is not quite my full strength. You must forgive me for the deception, after all your friend is known as quite the trickster.” The coyote grinned as it held its arms out on both sides and tilted its head back. “Allow me to show you my full potential.”
The influx of energy was immense, like the entire universe was collapsing in on itself. Energy seemed to melt out of nowhere to be absorbed into the coyote, so much that by the end of it he was glowing with power, like he was a sun rather than just a being.
“This isn’t real. None of this is real.” Lars said with a start as he watched the greenery fade out of existence around them. No, actually, not fade out of existence - it had never existed in the first place. “This isn’t a universe. This is him.”
“Correct.” Seventeen’s voice reverberated around them now, it was everything at once, everywhere at once. The coyote finally finished absorbing energy and looked at them with eyes that glowed pure white, streams of energy firing off his body in every direction. He looked the same, but was now burning with so much energy that Lars couldn’t even look directly at him. Darius however had never been so excited to see such a display of power. He could almost imagine the size he would reach with this sort of energy fuelling his muscles, how much further beyond godhood he would be. He couldn’t wait.
With a mighty bellow Darius charged at the Singularity. The coyote did the same, and the two of them met in the centre with a clash that shook reality itself, existence warping around the meeting of the two titans. The moment their hands touched Darius could feel the power in Seventeen, like he’d pushed his fingers into a supernova, and immediately he felt the old craving taking over. That familiar longing, neglected but never forgotten, rekindling the fire in his limbs that had once been sated so long ago. It whispered to him, whispered dreams of power and glory and just sheer size, towering over everything. His hands gripped the coyote tighter and the sweet, sweet power began to flow into his body, at first a trickle but quickly a tidal wave of it. He felt the first delicious changes, his hands growing slightly larger so that they encompassed Seventeen’s a bit more, his chest puffing out a bit. Seventeen’s eyes widened and he immediately broke the connection with a blast of energy, putting some distance between them.
“You were draining my energy?” He looked at Darius in confusion, then glared at Lars. “The trickster. I should have known.” He tried firing an energy blast at Darius, the same kind that had blown away Lars before, but it just deflected off the brawny wolf’s chest.
“Come on, you think that’s going to work on me?” Darius squeezed his chest, making sure the pecs both popped outwards to absurd sizes. “No way around me Seventeen. The only way is through me.”
“Then I take that option.” Seventeen growled for a second before instantly exploding with muscle, doubling in height in the blink of an eye. He covered the distance between them in the blink of an eye and then delivered a punch that was apocalyptically powerful. Even Lars was blown away by just the shockwave, the planet below splitting apart as it was sliced through by nothing but air, trees and mountains ripped up and flung as if they were pebbles. When the coyote looked up though his eyes widened as he saw Darius standing there, holding his fist and grinning. The impact had blown his shirt apart but he looked unharmed; in fact he looked like he’d never been better, each muscle picked out in exquisite detail. Seventeen was twice Darius’ height and much thicker, but even so he was surprised at the wolf’s strength, at his ability to stop such an impact dead.
“You don’t know how to wield power. You should overwhelm your enemy, leave them a crushed insect in the imprint of your boot. You should dominate. But don’t worry.” Darius’ grip tightened as strength rushed into his limbs. “I’ll be happy to teach you.” The first wave of strength was immense, power flowing into Darius’ limbs and suffusing him with magic the likes of which even he had never known before. He’d thought himself powerful before but this was on another level entirely, this was in another reality. His body couldn’t even contain it all, and he grunted in pleasure as muscle swelled all over him, as he pumped up until he was even with Seventeen. The coyote looked stunned for a second before gathering more power and blasting it forth, sending energy crackling around them. It was all Lars could do to protect himself as an entire reality worth of energy was repurposed and used to blast Darius, but it wasn’t enough. The wolf was already infinitely stronger than before with just a taste of Seventeen’s power, and there was still the main course to go. He grunted again as he surpassed the Singularity, swelling with so much power it didn’t look like his body would contain it all, muscle exploding across his body just with the effort of keeping his immeasurable power contained.
“But that’s….” Seventeen snarled and broke the contact, trying to push Darius away, but this time the blue wolf didn’t budge. Instead it was Seventeen stumbling away, like he had tried to push a brick wall and failed miserably.
“And where do you think you’re going?” In a flash Darius was on him, wrapping a thick arm around his head and bringing him into a headlock. Seventeen quickly found himself struggling for air as that thick bicep began to press into his neck, only growing bigger as he scrabbled at that massive forearm, trying to get it off. “Don’t you want to watch? After all, it’s your power, isn’t it?”
Darius grinned as he cranked Seventeen’s head further, his other arm free to just flex. He was enamoured with his own body, with the size of it, the physique. Every inch was glowing with power, and every muscle was a swollen ball of fiber three times as big as it had been before, monstrous slabs of strength just bursting from him everywhere he looked. His arms looked like a series of girders wrapped around each other and pumped with a bicycle pump, his chest looked like a literal mountain jutting forward from his chest, his legs like ham hocks. Seventeen’s feet were dangling in the air now as Darius effortlessly lifted him off the floor, holding him up and continuing to drain power at an alarming rate. Seventeen struggled but the fight was already over, and he could only watch the rest of his power drain out as Darius ascended past godhood right before his eyes.
The transfer of power was devastating for the actual reality itself. Entire galaxies withered into nothing, sapped of every form of energy in existence and leaving nothing but dead atoms drifting languidly in space, lacking even the energy to connect themselves into elements. The entropy was pervasive and all-consuming as not a single droplet of power was spared - Darius squeezed it out like he was crushing a tube of toothpaste, extracting every last morsel, every last mote of energy that he could. Seventeen was all but forgotten at this point, for he had eyes only for himself - the poor coyote was drowning in a sea of muscle, still locked into the headlock but now with a bicep as thick as his chest crushing his windpipe, the arm it belonged to even thicker and heavier still. The once radiant glow he had sported had faded into nonexistence, and Darius had received that shine. His was a different colour though - where Seventeen had been a bright yellow, Darius was a more subdued cobalt with a hint of purple crackling here and there, sparking at the edges.
With one last roar of triumph Darius dropped Seventeen, the Singularity completely drained of anything useful. He tried to get up but the strength had left his body, and the muscles he had sported but minutes ago were now gone. He was naught but a stick thin coyote groaning on the ground. Darius though was something else - he’d contained his glow to get a better look at himself, and the definition across his body was astounding. He created a mirror in front of himself with just a thought, and spent the next few minutes just flexing as hard as he could in front of it, admiring the way godlike power brought out his lats and traps. He imagined a planet in the crook of his arm, and sure enough there was one there - it was flattened as he flexed a bicep and crushed it. The sheer thrill of this was an allure unlike anything else, an aphrodisiac that seized his thoughts and made him obsessed with feeling reality break against him, feeling the tide of existence break against the cliff of his power, feel it bend to his will. The contrast of his strength going up while the strength of everything else seemingly went down was just...delectable. He loved that slow buckling as he increased pressure, the crackle of resistance breaking down before him, and he continued to flex harder and harder as if to purposefully break reality, looking at his magnificent body with glee as he did so. The downside to this much power was that he was doing a very poor job of controlling it: even just standing there Lars could feel reality wobbling, like fabric being stretched too far and making weird shapes to compensate.
“What happened to being all powerful huh?” Darius finally finished admiring himself and walked up to Seventeen, picking him up by the neck with one meaty fist.
“Guh...you think I’m the strongest one? I’m one of many, and you’ll never find us all. Hah….ha….” Seventeen passed out as Darius clenched his fist and effortlessly choked him out, dropping the body with disdain. He walked back to Lars, who had to look up at the 12ft titan of muscle and magic casually bending reality wherever he walked and splintering entire galaxies with just errant movements. It was addictive, he realised, this feeling of solidity, of being the rock upon which all things broke. The more he felt it, the more he craved it, a never ending loop. One that he never wanted to end.
“Looks like there’s more to go through.” Darius rubbed his hands in glee, something Lars noted. “On to the next one?”
“Mm….seems like it.” The pause in between Lars’ words was long and thoughtful, as if he had been thinking of some sort of objection, but it was hard to object to a literal god when you were head height with his abs, and each one was larger than your head. He made to pull out the map but Darius waved him aside.
“I got this.” With just a wave of the hand he cleaved apart reality and forced open a portal back home. For the first time in a very long time, Lars felt the key around his neck shiver at the sight of the portal. That much power was never meant to be accumulated in one being. He had a feeling this was not going to go well, but he had little choice but to follow and control the damage. As Darius walked through, he shook his head and followed him in.
Their entry back to the archive was almost immediately catastrophic. The moment that Darius set foot in this reality he could feel something was wrong - it was like he was walking on jelly, the ground wobbling underneath him. Lars followed looking very worried.
“Hey, what are you gonna do about - woah. That looks…” He was referring to the odd effect around Darius, almost like a distortion of some kind except it was the world around him changing shape rather than him.
“Huh. Reality bubble. Must be an instinctual thing I guess, I wonder why?” He removed it with a flick of his wrist. The instant his footpaw touched the ground again energy exploded out of him, a raging storm of wild magic that tore not just the archive but the entire planet to shreds, energy that ripped through the fabric of reality itself. This wasn’t even his exertion either, this was just the latent energy that he hadn’t thought to manage due to it being such a pittance of his power. His eyes glazed over as he realised the true extent of his strength, of what he had already taken. Of what there was still left to take.
“That’s why.” Lars sighed as he pulled a knife out of his pocket, slicing across his palm. “I’d put that back into place if I were you.” He used the blood to draw a symbol on his chest, muttered a couple of phrases, and all of a sudden everything was back to normal, as if time had rewound a couple of seconds. Lars grimaced as he put the knife away and rolled up his sleeve, where a scar was quickly forming. It joined a few others lining up there.
“Oops.” He said it half-heartedly, still lost in thought about how much bigger he would be, how much stronger, how much greater...
Lars glared at him. “If you destroy my universe again I swear I’m gonna - ”
“Gonna what?” Darius squared up to the sorcerer, emphasising the difference in power. Lars trailed off - he knew his magic was a spark compared to the supernova of Darius, that he had not a ghost of a chance of forcing him to do anything. “You’re lucky I like this place you know.”
“I wouldn’t say lucky.” Lars sighed, coming to terms with the realisation that he now had to play host to a being capable of destroying everything if he happened to just forget to keep himself under control. “And what about the remainder of that iteration?”
“Oh I got that.” Darius held his hand up, magic swirling around his claws, and in his hand a miniature of a universe formed, tiny stars and everything. He looked at it for a second before closing his hand around it and crushing it. It was such a simple action, but it belied the truth - this was a real universe, scaled down to match the size of his hand around it. Countless trillions of suns were compressed between his fingers until entire galaxies of explosions were forced into atomic size, as planets became dust and space itself was twisted smaller. It was the complete and utter obliteration of an entire universe and everything in it, a destruction so complete that not even the gods could have matched it. And it came from the simple action of Darius clenching his fist, like he was crushing a grape between his fingers. He shuddered at the deep throb of strength that came from absorbing it completely, a joyous shiver that went right down his spine as an entire universe's worth of strength was added to his already massive store. It finished out with him panting gently, hooked on the feeling of his own power.
“Just how powerful are you?” Lars asked incredulously.
“Not powerful enough. Yet.” Darius dusted himself down. “Now, that thing said it was one of 17. I’m going to need you to find the other ones for me.”
“No.” The dragon folded his arms, magic crackling around him instinctively as Darius walked up. It was the presence of so much power so close to him, like standing in front of a roaring fire. He had an urge to get on his knees and worship that godly body, the muscles like diamond boulders. “No, this farce has gone on long enough. Just this power was already enough to do this, who knows what more will cause?”
“If you’re going to make an excuse, at least make a believable one. No, I know exactly why you won’t. You’ve seen this before haven’t you?” Darius leaned down to peer at Lars’ face, and after a couple of seconds the dragon relented.
“Alright fine, I've seen people take the power of Singularities before. Every single one of them were corrupted by it, driven insane by the strength, by the possibilities unlocked. It’s just too much for them. What’s to stop you going the same way?”
“Come on. Do I look like everyone?” Lars shook his head, prompting Darius to laugh. “You’ve known me for a long time, longer than almost anyone else, and in that time have you ever seen my motive waver? Have you ever seen me give up even in the slightest? The answer is no. My body is strong but my mind is even stronger.” Darius stood to his full height again, and attempted to lean nonchalantly against the desk. This caused it to instantly evaporate as every atom in it was fed enough energy to supercharge and vibrate into a higher state of being, in a transmutation that required almost as much power as it took to start this universe. Lars winced as his books clattered to the floor.
“Please can we figure out a way to contain you first? This filter is not doing a very good job.”
“Hmm.” Darius nodded and began to weave his hands around. Lars felt the magic shifting, but he couldn’t understand it in the way he normally did. It wasn’t just the spell itself, it was the scale of the magic involved, the grandiose complexity of it. If his magic was moving stones, this was the shifting of tectonic plates, the warping of the planet itself. He was the single horn whereas this was the orchestra - he wouldn’t even know where to start to replicate this kind of magic, and yet Darius was doing it by pure instinct, just letting power guide his hand. After a couple of seconds of concentration he put his hand forward and twisted it, and the universe twisted with him. A portal opened up but this one seemed different somehow, a little smoother around the edges.
“Well? Don’t just stand there.” Darius walked through, and somewhat reluctantly Lars followed. Inside it appeared to be just a study with an entire wall of mirrors, which Darius was already admiring himself in. The vaporised desk was here too, looking like it had always been here.
“The hell is this place?”
“Oh I made it. Should keep you from worrying about me destroying your reality.” Darius flexed and grinned at the size of him. “Man, check out these guns. Fucking massive and then some.”
“You made the room?”
“Well yes, and also the reality as well. It’s not a real one, more like a temporary thing.” The wolf waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not a big deal, let’s just get on with it.”
“It’s not a big deal? You’re telling me you created an entirely new reality, seperate from the main causality cluster, and it’s no big deal?”
Darius ignored him, focusing on blasting his muscles as high as he could, flexing harder and harder. Anywhere else he would have blown out the walls of reality long ago, but he almost felt like he was challenging his own creation, seeing which mind-blowing pose would finally burst apart this place. What got him more than anything was knowing that this was just the start, that this monstrous, muscular beast of a wolf he saw flexing back at him was but a fraction of what was to come. The size that awaited him, oh it was going to be glorious. He just had to have it, he had to get bigger, get stronger. It was his raison d'etre, his purpose, and he was growing more and more excited at the thought of it. It was only this thought that was able to drag him away from the mirror, despite how into it he was - strength above all, no matter what. Still, he thought as he pushed his muscles as hard as he could, several thousand universe’s worth of force stopping only because his body was too big to compress any further, the only thing able to stop him being his own tremendous size. No reason not to enjoy the journey to the destination.
“Yeah.” Darius gave one last flex before abandoning the mirror. “Look, there’s no danger to you, and I’m in need of more power. Now we both know I’m going to get it in the end, the difference you make is in how long it takes me.” At Lars' expression he chuckled. “Come on, you know me. You and I both know i’m not going anywhere when there’s this much power on the table. So pick up your book and let’s get going shall we?”
“Alright fine. FINE.”
“In fact let’s speed it up. You said this thing was a hive mind right? Find me the one that controls them all.”
“You can’t just - ” Lars stopped himself as he saw Darius glaring at him, and with a sigh he opened the map. He flicked through for a second before deciding on a universe and twisting his hand. Only nothing happened, and he looked at his claws in confusion.
“Allow me. This universe is a little more secure than normal.” Darius followed the magic already in the air, taking Lars’ intention and injecting magic into it until a portal ignited in the air. He walked through it without so much as a glance backwards, cracking his knuckles as he did so, and Lars followed him through.
This world was vastly different to the last. Where the other world had been a planet of lush plant life and clear skies, this one looked like something you’d see in an apocalypse movie. The ground under their feet was cracked and scorched, devoid of anything resembling life. Strange blue leylines coursed through it, like pulsing wires of magic all feeding to one central location, a spiderweb of power with the spider at the centre. And sure enough, right in front of them was what looked like a throne, and on that throne was another coyote. It looked exactly the same as Seventeen - no, that wasn’t right. It was Seventeen, down to the last detail.
“Be careful.” Lars whispered as they approached. “This reality is unstable, he’s probably the only thing holding it together. You being here is going to break it apart.”
“Relax, it’s not like it’s going to be standing after this anyway.” Darius rolled his shoulders, an action that while normally would be simple was on him like watching a landslide, muscles intertwining in great collections that defined the very shape of his body, that gave it the heft and weight he so desired. It was an action that emphasised the raw power there, the strength just burning off him.
“The trickster returns, and this time you brought a friend! How...adorable.” The coyote stood up as they approached, and even Darius could feel the power before them. He could feel the way the world pivoted around each word.
“So what, you’re the big cheese?”
“In a sense.” Seventeen walked towards them as he talked, each step leaving an imprint in the ground. For the first time Darius noticed the sky - it was a fractured mess, full of cracks through which other realities could be seen, glowing fields of magic shimmering through them. “I am the primary host, the collective through which all of our power is stored. I have broken apart the walls of this place, and rebuilt them into something wonderful.”
“You’ve made a mess of it.” Lars interrupted, pushing his glasses onto his face. “You’re streaming magic through partial wormholes and using that same magic to sustain them. This place is an aberration.”
“Beautiful, is it not?” Seventeen held his arms out. “Welcome to the kingdom of the truly strong.”
Darius laughed. “And what, you’re the king?”
“Exactly.” At Darius’ face he chuckled. “Oh dear, you don’t look too pleased about that one. How about this then - I’ll give you a chance to take it off me. And I promise by the time I’m done with you, there won’t be so much as a wisp of smoke to remember you by.”
“You talk too much for a god.” Darius said as he threw the first punch. Now by this point the wolf held the power of a Singularity on top of his own prodigious and godlike strength, but when his punch was met with Seventeen’s he found himself blasted back. The creature was so much stronger it was almost impossible, an insurmountable wall that he could only look at in despair. The blow blasted him backwards, his feet leaving twin furrows in the floor as he slid backwards, but already his broken bones were healing as stolen magic fortified his body. Just the briefest of touches had almost doubled his power instantly, and he knew he right then he had to do this. This was his opportunity, to become the overlord he had always wanted to be, to be the strongest not just in the universe, but amongst every iteration, every core, every last corner of creation.
“Is that all you’ve got?” He said, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose.
“Well if you wanted all I’ve got, then you simply had to ask.” Seventeen held his arms up, tilting his body forwards to expose his back to the sky, and grunted as a stream of magic came flying down and punctured his flesh. It was followed by another, and another, until there were thousands of cords connected to him. With each one he increased in size, muscle swelling across his body until he towered over Darius, until there was so much power flowing into him that the first movement almost shattered the reality completely. He finally stood up and stared down at Darius, having grown to almost 20ft tall and so stacked with muscle he could barely move. The wolf was practically salivating at the thought of taking it all - he could almost feel his body heaving with might, feel the power surge through his body like electricity, like fire searing him into something unstoppable, something greater than anything else.
“Let’s see if this is more to your taste.” Seventeen didn’t waste any time, flashing forward and grabbing both of Darius’ hands. If he’d thought the coyote was strong before it was nothing compared to now, like he had been wrestling with a cheap imitation the first time round. This time he could do nothing to stop the pumped up Singularity from grabbing him and forcing him down to his knees with overwhelming strength, the coyote looking almost bored as he forced a god to kneel in front of him.
“Hraaaaagh!” Darius strained but he was nowhere near strong enough to break the grip. He knew that, that wasn’t his plan - all he had to do was maintain the connection long enough to drain Seventeen of all that juicy power. He could already feel it rushing into him, and if he wasn’t so focused on getting more he would have moaned and thrown his head back from the rush. It was a feeling unlike any other, the feeling of superiority being injected into him.
“Look at you. So small and fragile, like everything else. Watch.” He transferred both of Darius’ hands into one of his own, and then held the other up. Lars yelled as he was hoisted into the air with magic and held there, blue energy crackling uselessly around his body as he tried to free himself. “Your trickster is not going to save himself this time. I’ll do you the honour of watching him die, and then we’ll see how much pressure it takes to crush your skull. Personally I hope you last a while. I want to feel you squirm like he does.” Seventeen began to close his hand and Lars yelled as his body was slowly crushed. Magic folded in on him from all angles, and his pained yells turned to panic as his bones began to flex, as limbs bent in strange angles that they were never meant to sustain.
But Seventeen had made the mistake of diverting his attention away from the task at hand. He had enjoyed crushing Lars too much to notice the rapid gain in strength of the wolf underneath him, and after just moments spent in contact Darius was worlds stronger than before. His body was even bigger than before, the muscles that had once been shapely now just obscenely large. It was all mass, any space taken by flesh as hard as diamond, his figure a paragon of unholy might.
“Hahahah - huh?” Seventeen’s laugh was cut short as the impossible happened - the wolf he was pressing down on began to push him back. He redoubled his efforts, but suddenly it was him on the back foot as Darius got to his feet, his grip growing stronger by the second as he took size and more importantly strength. He finally had it, that elusive ticket to strength, and as his hands dug into the fur he was determined to bleed it dry.
“What? You didn’t think you’d won, did you?” Darius grinned as now he began to press down on Seventeen, as the coyote’s size was drained away. In seconds he was shorter than Darius, all the musculature that he had once used to dominate being siphoned off and repurposed. He tried to break the grip but Darius was in control now, keeping the contact tight as he ascended.
“But that’s…”
Darius reached a hand behind Seventeen’s back, and with one swipe he severed the connections feeding into the Singularity. WIthout his energy source he immediately withered away back into just a regular coyote, and Darius looked down at him imperiously.
“Watch and learn, kid.” He paused for just a second, savouring the moment, for right now he held the keys to his own strength, to his own destiny. He mulled over the taste of victory, safe in the knowledge that he was unstoppable, that what was about to happen could not be prevented. He basked in it for just that brief pause, where the world held its breath. Then he spread his arms out and roared, unleashing his will upon the fragile psychokinetic barriers of this world. He didn’t need the manual connections that Seventeen had created - with nothing but his will he forced the magic from those same connections to begin funneling power into his body.
The ensuing magical explosion was all-encompassing as the last of the reality gave way, as every last version of Seventeen was forced to surrender all their power. Across the multiverse an entire branch of iterations were reduced to nothing but empty husks, every last morsel of power sucked out and forced into Darius’ body. It took only seconds but for the wolf it was an eternity of reckless abandon, of power beyond even his wildest dreams. He had imagined himself to be the great power at the centre of everything, the creator so to speak, but this was more than that. He just smiled as he felt the power at his fingertips, as he sighed and creation trembled in response. He could see it, this vast network of time connected by bright sparks - Singularities, dotted across the web. Each of them was his to take, and with each one he felt himself absorb the realities that came with them, every movement of every atom that an entire universe could muster, everything that he wanted. But really there was only ever one thing that he was going to focus on, and that was the physical prowess. To call it mere growth would have been a disservice - this was a detonation, a supernova of size being compressed into the wolf over and over again.
“More.” He said under his breath as the strength of the gods was squeezed into his body, space being replaced with muscle packed so densely that it was pushing into different realities, his form so insanely solid that he could barely move it. He was a living paradox, impossibly heavy and thick but impossibly strong to allow him to flex it, and with each flex came not just more power but more craving for it. The bigger he grew, the bigger he wanted to be, and the bigger he could be - there was no limit. As he took them he barely even noticed the increase - he was long past the point where the power of a single Singularity could make him noticeably stronger now, they were droplets of rain in the sea of his power. He consumed them like they were a bag of popcorn, with each breath taking cores, iterations, everything. As he grew his power showed itself in increasingly worrying ways: his breath alone would tremble the universe, and seeing it he would take deep gasps, draw in even more power and huff as hard as he could. Flexing his bicep put strain on the laws of physics themselves, and so he juiced himself up as hard as he could and flexed even harder, until atoms misaligned and universes inverted, until he broke the rules that stopped him from flexing harder and then broke the rules that stopped him from doing just that. Nothing gave him pause for thought, no act of destruction even made him hesitate - only strength mattered now, and his wild grab of it would not be stopped.
“MORE! MORE! MORE!” It was a mantra now, a chant that was heard throughout time and space, the echoing anthem that heralded their new creator. His tail going so fast it was almost a blur, his body even now still doubling in strength and density with every breath, every single nanometre of his body packed with muscle. Where there was no room, where his form was so tightly stuffed with muscle that it literally broke reality, he would do just that and fit more in. Why stop when there was so much to take? He had an infinite buffet opened up in front of him, and the more he took the more there was to take, the more he had to take. His body was so far ahead of anything else it was terrifying, the kind of fear you saw when looking at a meteor headed towards you, that dread that came hand in hand with the truly unstoppable. What he had considered gods were now atoms to him, they were less than nothing. Their power was so small as to be invisible.
Lars had been watching all this while he healed himself, and as he stood he was in awe of the sight before him. He could tell what was happening, but he was an observer now, and he just watched as Darius took as much power as he wanted, with not even the mechanics of creation itself to stop him anymore. Funnily enough he could still see the Darius he always knew in there - that infamous self admiration, the way he paused every now and then to flex and admire himself. This was far from just a simple movement too - this was how he empowered himself, literally flexing himself bigger, levering strength into his body. Lars would have laughed but the sheer amount of power Darius was managing to force into his body this way was almost obscene. He’d also refused to increase his size past a certain point, remaining at 15 feet and simply gaining mass and muscle, growing in density until he was too heavy for reality, until he rested amongst the multiverse like a bowling ball in a box of tissue paper. For Darius it was all about the intensity, the feeling of compressing enough might to obliterate all of creation into a form so small. He was so dense that he weighed more than several universes at this point, and he was already beginning to punch through them with just his weight alone. It only redoubled his hunger, made him flex harder as he revelled in the universes collapsing underneath him, unable to sustain anything even close to his level of strength. The grin on his face only got wider as he saw the destruction, as he was given visual confirmation of his strength increasing, and it only made him crave more, flex even harder. Flex a body that should not have even existed, that was an affront against nature but also simultaneously it’s final symphony, it’s perfect and strongest creation.
“You’re not stopping any time soon huh?” Lars sighed as Darius looked at him with eyes that glowed with power, eyes that had seen the lifetime of infinite universes, that had both birthed them to life and drained them dry.
“Nope.”
The dragon knew that this was as far as he went. He wasn’t going to be affecting the outcome of this anymore, and to stay would be pointless. It worried him, but he simply had to trust that Darius wouldn’t mess everything up, that he would simply take his power and not destroy existence as everyone knew it. It was all up to the wolf now - as the strongest being to ever exist, the choice was finally his. Lars couldn’t help but chuckle as he stood up, grimacing at the pain in his limbs.
“Well, I’ll see myself out then. Stop by for a coffee or something when you’re done.” With that he opened a portal, and with one last look back he stepped through.
*
In fact it was a while before Lars saw his omnipotent friend once again, to the point where he was almost getting worried about what kind of devastation the wolf was unleashing. It was hard to just sit there knowing that at any moment reality could just end, to know that everything was at the whim of Darius. So when reality sundered itself in that now familiar way and Darius walked through the opened portal, Lars couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.
“So you didn’t go too crazy then?” He said, standing up to inspect Darius’ body. The wolf looked bigger, sure but he was nowhere near the sizes he had been before. Now he just looked like a regular wolf, albeit if regular also meant muscular to the point of insanity.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Darius snapped his fingers and a chair materialised underneath Lars. “You might want to take a seat.” The dragon did so, leaning forwards with his hands clasped in front of him.
“Are you a god?”
Darius laughed. “No, i’m well past that now. I don’t even think there’s a word to describe what I am. A devourer perhaps? Regardless, my actual form makes the gods look like bacteria.”
Lars groaned. “Your actual form. So this is - ”
“An avatar, a reflection of a shadow of the tiniest portion of my power. If I actually set foot here, well let’s just say there wouldn’t be much left. Once you get past a certain point you tend to sort of break fundamental concepts like time. Most universes can’t take it.” Darius leaned back and raised both arms in a double bicep. “Of course, I kept all the good bits. This might be a tiny bit of power, but it does mean I can do stuff like this with it.” He grunted and swelled a foot taller, each of those muscles swelling just a bit as he pulsed with growth. It was just a fraction but it made veins flash across his skin, visible even under his fur, and his whole body heaved out in mass. The wolf growled slightly through all this, and in his excitement at the growth he forgot to keep himself in check.
“Uhh, could you. You know. Stop that?” Lars pointed out of the window, where it looked like the ground was rising up past the glass. In fact the entire archive ws sinking into the ground, due to nothing more than Darius’ raw strength being inside it. The wolf grimaced and twisted his hand, and just like that it was back to where it was. He didn’t apologise - the concept was alien to him now, something that belonged to the weak and the feeble. He didn’t need to make excuses for what he was - reality would be forced to accept it one way or the other.
“How do you even do that?” Lars was slightly in awe at the scale of the spells being casted in front of him, and the apparent lack of effort they took.
“I’m not sure how to even begin explaining it. I just...felt it, if that makes sense.” Lars looked bemused, and Darius waved a hand in the air. “Look, I think I just know these things now. Besides, this is the boring stuff, I wanna show you the cool bit.” He held out a hand, and after a fair bit of trepidation Lars grabbed it.
The journey this time was unlike any portal journey Lars had known. They didn’t even move, but rather Darius waved his hand and the world twisted around them, as if it was easier to move the very fabric of existence than it was to move Darius himself. When they stopped moving though Lars found himself in the most extraordinary universe he had seen.
“Welcome to my new home.” Darius said with a grin. Sure enough Lars could see a figure in the distance, what looked like the most muscular creature he had ever seen glowing a bright white. He was in the act of flexing, but there was so much power flowing into him that his body was expanding fast enough to counteract it - if he tried to flex a bicep, his arm grew bigger to keep him flexing. It was supposed to be a single movement, but he was caught in the middle of it, eternally growing stronger, flexing harder, the two looping into each other. He almost looked like he was savouring the moment, waiting for his strength to peak before unleashing it. What was astonishing was the sheer force being generated. If you go into a room that blocks out sound, it feels like your senses are being forced shut, like there’s cotton wool in your ears. You get a similar effect walking in the snow, where everything feels tighter, your hearing feels weaker. Here it was the same effect but with strength - there was so much power being generated that he could almost feel himself becoming weaker, compared to the being in front of him. Every second his own strength was eclipsed a billion times over, doubled the next second, tripled the next. It was a logarithmic equation for which there seemed to be no end, and at the centre of it all was Darius, a being that transcended everything now, that cared not for the laws governing those bound by such petty concepts as reality or time.
“Wh -”
“Not bad huh?” Darius gave Lars a cheeky elbow in the ribs that almost sent him sprawling. “Before you get mad, I’m not just taking power anymore. I figured out that if you stretch out a timeline you can seperate each quantum break and split apart universes into identical copies. Identical copies that each happen to have the same amount of energy in them. Of course it’s not exactly one or two anymore.”
“No kidding.” Lars couldn’t even feel the individual breaks, even though he could feel the vibration in his chest, a buttery smooth rumble comprised of countless temporal shudders, all blending into one noise. The sound of power, rolling through his body. “This is…”
“Impossible? To anyone else maybe. With this kind of strength you could make the universe clay in your hands, remake it as you saw fit. But I told you, I’m not interested in deciding things for other people. I’m just here for the strength.”
“Lars shook his head. “Do you have any idea how many laws of physics you are breaking with this little stunt? You can’t just create energy out of nothing.”
“You’re right, I can’t, at least in a single universe anyway. But we’re in a convergence of multiple realities across different dimensions, a crux of possibilities where my own decisions generate new branches. For every universe I drain, two more take it’s place. I drain those two and get four, and so on and so forth. But that means I can do things like…” Darius’ avatar grinned flexed an arm. Across an uncountable infinity of realites every single being that existed or would existed felt the strength around them, they felt the strange, mysterious force powering their world surge with power, they saw stars explode and planets crumble away to dust as all of existence was squeezed, as it tensed with him. That flex cost far in excess of a billion planets and stars their lives, and worse still it almost sucked in Darius himself. The wolf lost himself for a second, the hit of power the action lent him causing his body to swell once again with brawn, packing into his avatar. It was like a drug, the best one of all, only instead of side effects he received mind-numbing pleasure and enough strength to crush universes in the palm of his hand.
“HNNNGHHHHHHMMMMMMOOOREEEE!!!” He couldn’t stop the moan falling out of his mouth as he began to flex harder, as his eyes began to glaze over and roll back into his skull. With a herculean effort though he managed to snap himself out of it, shaking his now thicker arms out and giving a chuckle that reverberated throughout reality, one that Lars knew could be heard on the other side of existence. He couldn’t help but also chuckle at the absurdity of it all. On the one hand this was something so completely out of his control it wasn’t even funny, but on the other hand he now had a friend in a very high place. His problems didn’t really seem relevant anymore.
“You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go back to my desk, and pretend that my entire existence is not completely nullified by yours. And then I’m going to get myself a drink.” Lars dragged a hand down his face.
“Regular tavern?”
“As long as you promise not to rip anyone’s arm off if they challenge you.”
Darius grinned. “No guarantees on that one.” He said, before twisting them out of the world once more.
I must admit that coming back to these kinds of stories is quite comforting. Just going absolutely all out and seeing how ridiculously far you can take things has its own sort of strange pleasure. Plus Terantic basically gave me a free slate with this one, so as you can imagine I'm a big fan of the result ^^
The Seventeen
Darius chuckled as he sipped his beer. It was strange how despite his vast reach he always seemed to come back to this particular place, to this particular drink, as if his body was drawn to it. In all the wide universe he liked this particular blend of flavours, this code of taste. In a way he quite liked that, the mathematics of preference. He took another sip, relishing the slightly nutty taste spreading slowly over his tongue, and as he lost himself in the flavour he noticed the liquid in the mug was bubbling slightly, like it was being boiled. He just looked at it for a second, breathed deeply, and it stopped.
“Easy Darius. Try not to blow this one up.” he muttered to himself. All of a sudden the bar went quiet, and a shadow fell across his table. He looked up to see a bulky looking alligator with a stetson hat standing ominously in front of him, arms folded across his muscled chest. Now Darius was a well known figure around here - the blue wolf was built like a house after all, so he wasn’t exactly the most forgettable figure around. But this guy clearly didn’t know who he was, and that suspicion was affirmed when he sat at the table and wordlessly proffered his hand.
Darius laughed, but nevertheless he acquiesced, gripping the hand and setting his elbow on the table. Arm wrestling was of course a staple of every tavern around here, and the wolf knew that this bar in particular had a reputation for defeating newcomers. The regulars all knew his strength was far beyond any mortal, but every now and then some out of towner thought themselves tough enough to take him on. The crowd knew this, and they were eagerly watching as the two guys squared up.
There was no official start, but all of a sudden the gator found himself pressing against what felt like a brick wall. For the first time he noticed the arm of the wolf, the sheer mass of it. The bicep like a boulder welded to a limb that was almost as thick as his torso, so heavily muscled he could have lost a finger between the striations. An arm that showed not the faintest hint of a tremor as it held him steady.
“Nice try kid.” Darius just smiled gently before calmly pressing the hand into the table and leaning back, grabbing his drink again. He was about to take a sip when the gator’s fist slammed into his head. His chin didn’t move a millimetre, the gator’s hand just stopped the moment it met his fur. Slowly he turned to look at the gator, and as he did so the tankard in his hand melted into slop, dripping out of his hand. No words were exchanged, but in that moment the gator received the tiniest glimpse of a god, of a being so vast and powerful he was but an insect below him, nothing but an atom to him. With a whimper he left as fast as he could, leaving Darius to sigh and shake the melted wood off his hand.
“You know you don’t have teh scare em so bad Dazzer.” This came from a wizened old aardvark in the corner, grinning at him with what little teeth he had left. Darius shrugged.
“Ain’t no fun letting them off easy either, eh?” He chuckled as the barkeep brought him another tankard. On the house of course.
*
Lars grunted as yet another blast of energy scorched the ground he was standing on, sending him flying. He managed to throw up a shield of blue energy as the next one hit, but the being in front of him merely focused a bit harder and the shield shattered like glass, sending him to the ground once more. This time when he got to his knees he faltered, coughing into his hand, and when he removed it there was crimson blood splattered on his palm. He looked at it almost in shock, as if he was surprised to see it.
“That was stronger than it should be. You’re not just some Singularity, are you?” Lars got to his feet, his knees unsteady and his coat in tatters - it might have been resistant to most spells, but the coyote looking at him was in another league entirely. He’d never seen anything like it, it was power almost beyond comprehension.
“You’re quite astute, aren’t you? I’ll give you a hint - we’re not just, as you put it, some Singularity. We stretch across the heavens like a web, and sat in the centre you find the spider, pulling each of the strings.”
Comprehension slowly dawned across Lars’ face. “How many others?”
“We are the Seventeen. And you are not going to live to find out if the name rings true.” The coyote raised a hand, hideous purple energy glowing in its paw as it prepared to fire. Lars simply straightened himself out and chuckled.
“Well, guess that’ll have to do. You’ve been very helpful, but I must be going now.”
“You’re not going anywhere, keyholder!” The Seventeen snarled and fired but Lars pulled up a barrier and deflected it upwards, the explosion lighting up the sky. While it did so he opened a portal behind him and fell through it, leaving behind the singed sky and coughing as it spat him out on his familiar wooden floor.
“Ughhh.” For a couple of seconds he laid there and smouldered, wisps of smoke rising from his destroyed cloak here and there, before finally mustering the strength to get up. He knew already that this was something he couldn’t deal with by himself. This wasn’t the first time he’d found himself outnumbered, and it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d been outgunned. The problem was the sheer scale of the difference, almost insurmountable to the point that trickery wasn’t going to cut it. In short, he needed muscle. And as it so happened, he knew exactly where to get it.
*
Lars winced as reality sundered itself to let the wolf pass through. He’d always hated Darius’ portals - his own were delicate creations, like passing a needle through the seams of a cloth. Darius’ were nothing but obscene power tearing apart the walls of reality, a claw just ripping the cloth apart to let him through. Mind you considering the size of the wolf Lars wasn’t surprised he’d chosen to do them this way, for he doubted Darius would fit through his own portals.
“So what’s this about?” Darius said as he stepped into the room, already looking down at Lars, He was about 7.5ft tall and stacked with enough muscle to level a planet, and compared to the rather small dragon he looked utterly enormous. “As much as I enjoy your company I hope that isn’t all you’ve got for me.”
“Not quite. I’m calling in a favour you owe me.” He beckoned at Darius to come to his desk, where there were multiple papers spread across it. “You said to tip you off if I had any big energy sources that needed to be dealt with. Singularities, deities, things like that. Well I found one, and I need you to deal with it. This is the Seventeen.” He threw across a picture of the same coyote that had attacked him, the picture showing him glowing with malignant power.
“The Seventeen?”
“It’s a hive mind. Seventeen different Singularities all feeding into a single Core, all the power focused through one lens. It shouldn’t even be possible for them to communicate, let alone form a network like this, but those particular iterations have a few peculiarities when it comes to physics.” Lars slapped the picture with a hand. “So, you think you can do something about it?”
“Definitely.” Darius smiled as he looked at the pictures once more, as he looked at what was quite possibly the most powerful being he would encounter for a long time. Ever since he had been inflicted with a curse that had assailed him with a neverending craving for strength, Darius had done his utmost to seek out these beings, these monsters amongst mortals. He had made it his life’s mission to find them and to dominate them, to take their power and make it his own. He may have liked Lars, but their friendship had only lasted this long because the dragon was remarkably adept at finding power sources for him to feed on. Make no mistake - the wolf was out for himself at all times, but if that happened to help someone out at the same time then he wasn’t going to object. The road to godhood was a lonely one, for who was going to make the climb with you? That was why instead of just helping Lars out he hummed for a few seconds.
“That didn’t sound like a very agreeable hum.”
“I’ll help you out, but under one condition. I get to keep the Seventeen’s strength.”
Lars grimaced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask for that. This thing is multiple Singularities in one body, there’s a reason their actual forms are stretched out across that many realities. That density of power in a universe will just outright destroy it.”
“That’s my one condition. Take it or leave it.” Darius folded his arms across his mountain of a chest, well aware that Lars’ hands were tied. His only choice was to trust that Darius would not destroy his own universe if he went through with this, but it took the decision out of his hands. He knew how much Lars hated being out of control.
“Well, not like you’re giving me a choice. Guess I’m taking it.” Lars adjusted his glasses, then gave the wolf a piercing stare. “You never did answer me before. What are you aiming for? What’s the end goal?”
“I don’t have one really. Being strong just feels good, you know?” He flexed an arm and for a second was enamoured by the bicep that pumped upwards as a result, entranced by the sheer size of the muscle. He wished he had a mirror in here to appreciate himself properly, but a quiet cough from Lars forced him back to the task at hand. “I’ve only ever wanted to get stronger. And so far I’ve been successful at it.”
“This kind of power is too much to contain in one being. The Seventeen has to spread it across realities to avoid ripping the realities apart, I can’t even imagine what it’s going to do if you take all of that into one body. How much do you really want this, because you might be banished from reality as a result of it.”
“More than you know.” Darius matched the stare, and for just a second the jovial attitude dropped, his tone becoming serious. “I’m not trying to take over the world, hell I’m not even trying to damage it. But I must be able to make the choice, and for that I must ascend. Besides.” His seriousness dropped and he pulled a most muscular that almost made Lars’ nose bleed from how thick it looked. “You gotta admit size suits me.” He grinned and grunted as he flexed, pushing it until his limbs quivered and he could feel hard muscle stopping his arm from bending any further, laughing as his body popped outwards. He couldn’t help it - the feeling of strength coursing through his hefty limbs was intoxicating, and he wanted nothing more than to feel it on a greater scale.
“Well, as...impressive as you are, you’re going to need a bit more if you want to take their power.” Lars walked to the back of his study and rummaged around in the bookcase for a few seconds before pulling a book out. He opened it up to a page, flicked through them for a couple of seconds, then without warning he tore out a page. “Eat this.” He said, proffering the page.
“Are you sure I’m not supposed to -”
“Remind me who the mage is in here? Just eat the bloody page.”
Darius took it, but he made a point of emphasising the size and strength difference between them, standing up to his full height and shoving him slightly as he took it. Without a word he scrunched it up and popped it in his mouth, chewed for a couple of seconds and swallowed. Instantly he felt the difference, like the world was pressing in on him.
“The hell did you do?” The wolf flexed his fingers, as if they had moved position on his hand.
“There’s a very complicated answer to that, but if we skip the thaumic mechanics I basically made you an energy leech. Right now your body is taking in any latent energy that it makes contact with. You should be able to drain anything you can touch.”
“Interesting.” Darius looked around for a second, then held his hand up. There was a panicked squeak as a mouse levitated off the floor, floating towards Darius’ hand before he grabbed it out of the air. There was no noticeable flash of magic, nothing to indicate anything had happened, but before their eyes the mouse withered away into nothing, and Darius felt the slightest speck of energy ripple through his body.
“If you’re quite done messing with the wildlife, I’ve got an angry Singularity with your name on it.” Lars waved his hand, but nothing happened. He frowned and waved it slower, and this time he could see the world bend slightly where his hand passed over it, but again the portal didn’t open. “Looks like they’re locking me out of the Core, but I should be able to get into one of the iterations. Once you’ve dealt with one of them you should have enough power to get past their barriers.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Darius folded his arms and waited as Lars waved his hands around, weaving spells and slowly opening a rift in the air. But after half a minute of this he grew impatient, and without a word he stepped forward and simply ripped the portal open, forcing it into existence with sheer power. Then he raised an eyebrow at Lars before stepping through.
“Psh. Gods. The only thing omnipotence does is make you insufferably arrogant.” He grumbled as he stepped through the portal.
The world they found themselves on was very similar to their own, but something felt...off. Like looking at a reflection and knowing that it wasn’t quite right, that there was something behind the scenes altering it. Darius could feel it the moment he stepped through, and as he watched it seemed like Lars could feel it too. The dragon seemed to shiver as he entered.
“Feel that? They know we’re here.” Darius nodded in response, stepping forward. As he did so though something stirred the air in front of him. Dust coalesced into a form, and after a couple of seconds a coyote stepped out of thin air.
“Welcome to my humble abode. Well, one of you at least.” The coyote glared at Lars. “You on the other hand are not particularly welcome.”
Darius puffed his chest out. “You’ve got bigger things to worry about, believe me. You’re Seventeen?”
“Well yes and no. I’m certainly the one you’re looking for, but this pitiful form is not quite my full strength. You must forgive me for the deception, after all your friend is known as quite the trickster.” The coyote grinned as it held its arms out on both sides and tilted its head back. “Allow me to show you my full potential.”
The influx of energy was immense, like the entire universe was collapsing in on itself. Energy seemed to melt out of nowhere to be absorbed into the coyote, so much that by the end of it he was glowing with power, like he was a sun rather than just a being.
“This isn’t real. None of this is real.” Lars said with a start as he watched the greenery fade out of existence around them. No, actually, not fade out of existence - it had never existed in the first place. “This isn’t a universe. This is him.”
“Correct.” Seventeen’s voice reverberated around them now, it was everything at once, everywhere at once. The coyote finally finished absorbing energy and looked at them with eyes that glowed pure white, streams of energy firing off his body in every direction. He looked the same, but was now burning with so much energy that Lars couldn’t even look directly at him. Darius however had never been so excited to see such a display of power. He could almost imagine the size he would reach with this sort of energy fuelling his muscles, how much further beyond godhood he would be. He couldn’t wait.
With a mighty bellow Darius charged at the Singularity. The coyote did the same, and the two of them met in the centre with a clash that shook reality itself, existence warping around the meeting of the two titans. The moment their hands touched Darius could feel the power in Seventeen, like he’d pushed his fingers into a supernova, and immediately he felt the old craving taking over. That familiar longing, neglected but never forgotten, rekindling the fire in his limbs that had once been sated so long ago. It whispered to him, whispered dreams of power and glory and just sheer size, towering over everything. His hands gripped the coyote tighter and the sweet, sweet power began to flow into his body, at first a trickle but quickly a tidal wave of it. He felt the first delicious changes, his hands growing slightly larger so that they encompassed Seventeen’s a bit more, his chest puffing out a bit. Seventeen’s eyes widened and he immediately broke the connection with a blast of energy, putting some distance between them.
“You were draining my energy?” He looked at Darius in confusion, then glared at Lars. “The trickster. I should have known.” He tried firing an energy blast at Darius, the same kind that had blown away Lars before, but it just deflected off the brawny wolf’s chest.
“Come on, you think that’s going to work on me?” Darius squeezed his chest, making sure the pecs both popped outwards to absurd sizes. “No way around me Seventeen. The only way is through me.”
“Then I take that option.” Seventeen growled for a second before instantly exploding with muscle, doubling in height in the blink of an eye. He covered the distance between them in the blink of an eye and then delivered a punch that was apocalyptically powerful. Even Lars was blown away by just the shockwave, the planet below splitting apart as it was sliced through by nothing but air, trees and mountains ripped up and flung as if they were pebbles. When the coyote looked up though his eyes widened as he saw Darius standing there, holding his fist and grinning. The impact had blown his shirt apart but he looked unharmed; in fact he looked like he’d never been better, each muscle picked out in exquisite detail. Seventeen was twice Darius’ height and much thicker, but even so he was surprised at the wolf’s strength, at his ability to stop such an impact dead.
“You don’t know how to wield power. You should overwhelm your enemy, leave them a crushed insect in the imprint of your boot. You should dominate. But don’t worry.” Darius’ grip tightened as strength rushed into his limbs. “I’ll be happy to teach you.” The first wave of strength was immense, power flowing into Darius’ limbs and suffusing him with magic the likes of which even he had never known before. He’d thought himself powerful before but this was on another level entirely, this was in another reality. His body couldn’t even contain it all, and he grunted in pleasure as muscle swelled all over him, as he pumped up until he was even with Seventeen. The coyote looked stunned for a second before gathering more power and blasting it forth, sending energy crackling around them. It was all Lars could do to protect himself as an entire reality worth of energy was repurposed and used to blast Darius, but it wasn’t enough. The wolf was already infinitely stronger than before with just a taste of Seventeen’s power, and there was still the main course to go. He grunted again as he surpassed the Singularity, swelling with so much power it didn’t look like his body would contain it all, muscle exploding across his body just with the effort of keeping his immeasurable power contained.
“But that’s….” Seventeen snarled and broke the contact, trying to push Darius away, but this time the blue wolf didn’t budge. Instead it was Seventeen stumbling away, like he had tried to push a brick wall and failed miserably.
“And where do you think you’re going?” In a flash Darius was on him, wrapping a thick arm around his head and bringing him into a headlock. Seventeen quickly found himself struggling for air as that thick bicep began to press into his neck, only growing bigger as he scrabbled at that massive forearm, trying to get it off. “Don’t you want to watch? After all, it’s your power, isn’t it?”
Darius grinned as he cranked Seventeen’s head further, his other arm free to just flex. He was enamoured with his own body, with the size of it, the physique. Every inch was glowing with power, and every muscle was a swollen ball of fiber three times as big as it had been before, monstrous slabs of strength just bursting from him everywhere he looked. His arms looked like a series of girders wrapped around each other and pumped with a bicycle pump, his chest looked like a literal mountain jutting forward from his chest, his legs like ham hocks. Seventeen’s feet were dangling in the air now as Darius effortlessly lifted him off the floor, holding him up and continuing to drain power at an alarming rate. Seventeen struggled but the fight was already over, and he could only watch the rest of his power drain out as Darius ascended past godhood right before his eyes.
The transfer of power was devastating for the actual reality itself. Entire galaxies withered into nothing, sapped of every form of energy in existence and leaving nothing but dead atoms drifting languidly in space, lacking even the energy to connect themselves into elements. The entropy was pervasive and all-consuming as not a single droplet of power was spared - Darius squeezed it out like he was crushing a tube of toothpaste, extracting every last morsel, every last mote of energy that he could. Seventeen was all but forgotten at this point, for he had eyes only for himself - the poor coyote was drowning in a sea of muscle, still locked into the headlock but now with a bicep as thick as his chest crushing his windpipe, the arm it belonged to even thicker and heavier still. The once radiant glow he had sported had faded into nonexistence, and Darius had received that shine. His was a different colour though - where Seventeen had been a bright yellow, Darius was a more subdued cobalt with a hint of purple crackling here and there, sparking at the edges.
With one last roar of triumph Darius dropped Seventeen, the Singularity completely drained of anything useful. He tried to get up but the strength had left his body, and the muscles he had sported but minutes ago were now gone. He was naught but a stick thin coyote groaning on the ground. Darius though was something else - he’d contained his glow to get a better look at himself, and the definition across his body was astounding. He created a mirror in front of himself with just a thought, and spent the next few minutes just flexing as hard as he could in front of it, admiring the way godlike power brought out his lats and traps. He imagined a planet in the crook of his arm, and sure enough there was one there - it was flattened as he flexed a bicep and crushed it. The sheer thrill of this was an allure unlike anything else, an aphrodisiac that seized his thoughts and made him obsessed with feeling reality break against him, feeling the tide of existence break against the cliff of his power, feel it bend to his will. The contrast of his strength going up while the strength of everything else seemingly went down was just...delectable. He loved that slow buckling as he increased pressure, the crackle of resistance breaking down before him, and he continued to flex harder and harder as if to purposefully break reality, looking at his magnificent body with glee as he did so. The downside to this much power was that he was doing a very poor job of controlling it: even just standing there Lars could feel reality wobbling, like fabric being stretched too far and making weird shapes to compensate.
“What happened to being all powerful huh?” Darius finally finished admiring himself and walked up to Seventeen, picking him up by the neck with one meaty fist.
“Guh...you think I’m the strongest one? I’m one of many, and you’ll never find us all. Hah….ha….” Seventeen passed out as Darius clenched his fist and effortlessly choked him out, dropping the body with disdain. He walked back to Lars, who had to look up at the 12ft titan of muscle and magic casually bending reality wherever he walked and splintering entire galaxies with just errant movements. It was addictive, he realised, this feeling of solidity, of being the rock upon which all things broke. The more he felt it, the more he craved it, a never ending loop. One that he never wanted to end.
“Looks like there’s more to go through.” Darius rubbed his hands in glee, something Lars noted. “On to the next one?”
“Mm….seems like it.” The pause in between Lars’ words was long and thoughtful, as if he had been thinking of some sort of objection, but it was hard to object to a literal god when you were head height with his abs, and each one was larger than your head. He made to pull out the map but Darius waved him aside.
“I got this.” With just a wave of the hand he cleaved apart reality and forced open a portal back home. For the first time in a very long time, Lars felt the key around his neck shiver at the sight of the portal. That much power was never meant to be accumulated in one being. He had a feeling this was not going to go well, but he had little choice but to follow and control the damage. As Darius walked through, he shook his head and followed him in.
Their entry back to the archive was almost immediately catastrophic. The moment that Darius set foot in this reality he could feel something was wrong - it was like he was walking on jelly, the ground wobbling underneath him. Lars followed looking very worried.
“Hey, what are you gonna do about - woah. That looks…” He was referring to the odd effect around Darius, almost like a distortion of some kind except it was the world around him changing shape rather than him.
“Huh. Reality bubble. Must be an instinctual thing I guess, I wonder why?” He removed it with a flick of his wrist. The instant his footpaw touched the ground again energy exploded out of him, a raging storm of wild magic that tore not just the archive but the entire planet to shreds, energy that ripped through the fabric of reality itself. This wasn’t even his exertion either, this was just the latent energy that he hadn’t thought to manage due to it being such a pittance of his power. His eyes glazed over as he realised the true extent of his strength, of what he had already taken. Of what there was still left to take.
“That’s why.” Lars sighed as he pulled a knife out of his pocket, slicing across his palm. “I’d put that back into place if I were you.” He used the blood to draw a symbol on his chest, muttered a couple of phrases, and all of a sudden everything was back to normal, as if time had rewound a couple of seconds. Lars grimaced as he put the knife away and rolled up his sleeve, where a scar was quickly forming. It joined a few others lining up there.
“Oops.” He said it half-heartedly, still lost in thought about how much bigger he would be, how much stronger, how much greater...
Lars glared at him. “If you destroy my universe again I swear I’m gonna - ”
“Gonna what?” Darius squared up to the sorcerer, emphasising the difference in power. Lars trailed off - he knew his magic was a spark compared to the supernova of Darius, that he had not a ghost of a chance of forcing him to do anything. “You’re lucky I like this place you know.”
“I wouldn’t say lucky.” Lars sighed, coming to terms with the realisation that he now had to play host to a being capable of destroying everything if he happened to just forget to keep himself under control. “And what about the remainder of that iteration?”
“Oh I got that.” Darius held his hand up, magic swirling around his claws, and in his hand a miniature of a universe formed, tiny stars and everything. He looked at it for a second before closing his hand around it and crushing it. It was such a simple action, but it belied the truth - this was a real universe, scaled down to match the size of his hand around it. Countless trillions of suns were compressed between his fingers until entire galaxies of explosions were forced into atomic size, as planets became dust and space itself was twisted smaller. It was the complete and utter obliteration of an entire universe and everything in it, a destruction so complete that not even the gods could have matched it. And it came from the simple action of Darius clenching his fist, like he was crushing a grape between his fingers. He shuddered at the deep throb of strength that came from absorbing it completely, a joyous shiver that went right down his spine as an entire universe's worth of strength was added to his already massive store. It finished out with him panting gently, hooked on the feeling of his own power.
“Just how powerful are you?” Lars asked incredulously.
“Not powerful enough. Yet.” Darius dusted himself down. “Now, that thing said it was one of 17. I’m going to need you to find the other ones for me.”
“No.” The dragon folded his arms, magic crackling around him instinctively as Darius walked up. It was the presence of so much power so close to him, like standing in front of a roaring fire. He had an urge to get on his knees and worship that godly body, the muscles like diamond boulders. “No, this farce has gone on long enough. Just this power was already enough to do this, who knows what more will cause?”
“If you’re going to make an excuse, at least make a believable one. No, I know exactly why you won’t. You’ve seen this before haven’t you?” Darius leaned down to peer at Lars’ face, and after a couple of seconds the dragon relented.
“Alright fine, I've seen people take the power of Singularities before. Every single one of them were corrupted by it, driven insane by the strength, by the possibilities unlocked. It’s just too much for them. What’s to stop you going the same way?”
“Come on. Do I look like everyone?” Lars shook his head, prompting Darius to laugh. “You’ve known me for a long time, longer than almost anyone else, and in that time have you ever seen my motive waver? Have you ever seen me give up even in the slightest? The answer is no. My body is strong but my mind is even stronger.” Darius stood to his full height again, and attempted to lean nonchalantly against the desk. This caused it to instantly evaporate as every atom in it was fed enough energy to supercharge and vibrate into a higher state of being, in a transmutation that required almost as much power as it took to start this universe. Lars winced as his books clattered to the floor.
“Please can we figure out a way to contain you first? This filter is not doing a very good job.”
“Hmm.” Darius nodded and began to weave his hands around. Lars felt the magic shifting, but he couldn’t understand it in the way he normally did. It wasn’t just the spell itself, it was the scale of the magic involved, the grandiose complexity of it. If his magic was moving stones, this was the shifting of tectonic plates, the warping of the planet itself. He was the single horn whereas this was the orchestra - he wouldn’t even know where to start to replicate this kind of magic, and yet Darius was doing it by pure instinct, just letting power guide his hand. After a couple of seconds of concentration he put his hand forward and twisted it, and the universe twisted with him. A portal opened up but this one seemed different somehow, a little smoother around the edges.
“Well? Don’t just stand there.” Darius walked through, and somewhat reluctantly Lars followed. Inside it appeared to be just a study with an entire wall of mirrors, which Darius was already admiring himself in. The vaporised desk was here too, looking like it had always been here.
“The hell is this place?”
“Oh I made it. Should keep you from worrying about me destroying your reality.” Darius flexed and grinned at the size of him. “Man, check out these guns. Fucking massive and then some.”
“You made the room?”
“Well yes, and also the reality as well. It’s not a real one, more like a temporary thing.” The wolf waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not a big deal, let’s just get on with it.”
“It’s not a big deal? You’re telling me you created an entirely new reality, seperate from the main causality cluster, and it’s no big deal?”
Darius ignored him, focusing on blasting his muscles as high as he could, flexing harder and harder. Anywhere else he would have blown out the walls of reality long ago, but he almost felt like he was challenging his own creation, seeing which mind-blowing pose would finally burst apart this place. What got him more than anything was knowing that this was just the start, that this monstrous, muscular beast of a wolf he saw flexing back at him was but a fraction of what was to come. The size that awaited him, oh it was going to be glorious. He just had to have it, he had to get bigger, get stronger. It was his raison d'etre, his purpose, and he was growing more and more excited at the thought of it. It was only this thought that was able to drag him away from the mirror, despite how into it he was - strength above all, no matter what. Still, he thought as he pushed his muscles as hard as he could, several thousand universe’s worth of force stopping only because his body was too big to compress any further, the only thing able to stop him being his own tremendous size. No reason not to enjoy the journey to the destination.
“Yeah.” Darius gave one last flex before abandoning the mirror. “Look, there’s no danger to you, and I’m in need of more power. Now we both know I’m going to get it in the end, the difference you make is in how long it takes me.” At Lars' expression he chuckled. “Come on, you know me. You and I both know i’m not going anywhere when there’s this much power on the table. So pick up your book and let’s get going shall we?”
“Alright fine. FINE.”
“In fact let’s speed it up. You said this thing was a hive mind right? Find me the one that controls them all.”
“You can’t just - ” Lars stopped himself as he saw Darius glaring at him, and with a sigh he opened the map. He flicked through for a second before deciding on a universe and twisting his hand. Only nothing happened, and he looked at his claws in confusion.
“Allow me. This universe is a little more secure than normal.” Darius followed the magic already in the air, taking Lars’ intention and injecting magic into it until a portal ignited in the air. He walked through it without so much as a glance backwards, cracking his knuckles as he did so, and Lars followed him through.
This world was vastly different to the last. Where the other world had been a planet of lush plant life and clear skies, this one looked like something you’d see in an apocalypse movie. The ground under their feet was cracked and scorched, devoid of anything resembling life. Strange blue leylines coursed through it, like pulsing wires of magic all feeding to one central location, a spiderweb of power with the spider at the centre. And sure enough, right in front of them was what looked like a throne, and on that throne was another coyote. It looked exactly the same as Seventeen - no, that wasn’t right. It was Seventeen, down to the last detail.
“Be careful.” Lars whispered as they approached. “This reality is unstable, he’s probably the only thing holding it together. You being here is going to break it apart.”
“Relax, it’s not like it’s going to be standing after this anyway.” Darius rolled his shoulders, an action that while normally would be simple was on him like watching a landslide, muscles intertwining in great collections that defined the very shape of his body, that gave it the heft and weight he so desired. It was an action that emphasised the raw power there, the strength just burning off him.
“The trickster returns, and this time you brought a friend! How...adorable.” The coyote stood up as they approached, and even Darius could feel the power before them. He could feel the way the world pivoted around each word.
“So what, you’re the big cheese?”
“In a sense.” Seventeen walked towards them as he talked, each step leaving an imprint in the ground. For the first time Darius noticed the sky - it was a fractured mess, full of cracks through which other realities could be seen, glowing fields of magic shimmering through them. “I am the primary host, the collective through which all of our power is stored. I have broken apart the walls of this place, and rebuilt them into something wonderful.”
“You’ve made a mess of it.” Lars interrupted, pushing his glasses onto his face. “You’re streaming magic through partial wormholes and using that same magic to sustain them. This place is an aberration.”
“Beautiful, is it not?” Seventeen held his arms out. “Welcome to the kingdom of the truly strong.”
Darius laughed. “And what, you’re the king?”
“Exactly.” At Darius’ face he chuckled. “Oh dear, you don’t look too pleased about that one. How about this then - I’ll give you a chance to take it off me. And I promise by the time I’m done with you, there won’t be so much as a wisp of smoke to remember you by.”
“You talk too much for a god.” Darius said as he threw the first punch. Now by this point the wolf held the power of a Singularity on top of his own prodigious and godlike strength, but when his punch was met with Seventeen’s he found himself blasted back. The creature was so much stronger it was almost impossible, an insurmountable wall that he could only look at in despair. The blow blasted him backwards, his feet leaving twin furrows in the floor as he slid backwards, but already his broken bones were healing as stolen magic fortified his body. Just the briefest of touches had almost doubled his power instantly, and he knew he right then he had to do this. This was his opportunity, to become the overlord he had always wanted to be, to be the strongest not just in the universe, but amongst every iteration, every core, every last corner of creation.
“Is that all you’ve got?” He said, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose.
“Well if you wanted all I’ve got, then you simply had to ask.” Seventeen held his arms up, tilting his body forwards to expose his back to the sky, and grunted as a stream of magic came flying down and punctured his flesh. It was followed by another, and another, until there were thousands of cords connected to him. With each one he increased in size, muscle swelling across his body until he towered over Darius, until there was so much power flowing into him that the first movement almost shattered the reality completely. He finally stood up and stared down at Darius, having grown to almost 20ft tall and so stacked with muscle he could barely move. The wolf was practically salivating at the thought of taking it all - he could almost feel his body heaving with might, feel the power surge through his body like electricity, like fire searing him into something unstoppable, something greater than anything else.
“Let’s see if this is more to your taste.” Seventeen didn’t waste any time, flashing forward and grabbing both of Darius’ hands. If he’d thought the coyote was strong before it was nothing compared to now, like he had been wrestling with a cheap imitation the first time round. This time he could do nothing to stop the pumped up Singularity from grabbing him and forcing him down to his knees with overwhelming strength, the coyote looking almost bored as he forced a god to kneel in front of him.
“Hraaaaagh!” Darius strained but he was nowhere near strong enough to break the grip. He knew that, that wasn’t his plan - all he had to do was maintain the connection long enough to drain Seventeen of all that juicy power. He could already feel it rushing into him, and if he wasn’t so focused on getting more he would have moaned and thrown his head back from the rush. It was a feeling unlike any other, the feeling of superiority being injected into him.
“Look at you. So small and fragile, like everything else. Watch.” He transferred both of Darius’ hands into one of his own, and then held the other up. Lars yelled as he was hoisted into the air with magic and held there, blue energy crackling uselessly around his body as he tried to free himself. “Your trickster is not going to save himself this time. I’ll do you the honour of watching him die, and then we’ll see how much pressure it takes to crush your skull. Personally I hope you last a while. I want to feel you squirm like he does.” Seventeen began to close his hand and Lars yelled as his body was slowly crushed. Magic folded in on him from all angles, and his pained yells turned to panic as his bones began to flex, as limbs bent in strange angles that they were never meant to sustain.
But Seventeen had made the mistake of diverting his attention away from the task at hand. He had enjoyed crushing Lars too much to notice the rapid gain in strength of the wolf underneath him, and after just moments spent in contact Darius was worlds stronger than before. His body was even bigger than before, the muscles that had once been shapely now just obscenely large. It was all mass, any space taken by flesh as hard as diamond, his figure a paragon of unholy might.
“Hahahah - huh?” Seventeen’s laugh was cut short as the impossible happened - the wolf he was pressing down on began to push him back. He redoubled his efforts, but suddenly it was him on the back foot as Darius got to his feet, his grip growing stronger by the second as he took size and more importantly strength. He finally had it, that elusive ticket to strength, and as his hands dug into the fur he was determined to bleed it dry.
“What? You didn’t think you’d won, did you?” Darius grinned as now he began to press down on Seventeen, as the coyote’s size was drained away. In seconds he was shorter than Darius, all the musculature that he had once used to dominate being siphoned off and repurposed. He tried to break the grip but Darius was in control now, keeping the contact tight as he ascended.
“But that’s…”
Darius reached a hand behind Seventeen’s back, and with one swipe he severed the connections feeding into the Singularity. WIthout his energy source he immediately withered away back into just a regular coyote, and Darius looked down at him imperiously.
“Watch and learn, kid.” He paused for just a second, savouring the moment, for right now he held the keys to his own strength, to his own destiny. He mulled over the taste of victory, safe in the knowledge that he was unstoppable, that what was about to happen could not be prevented. He basked in it for just that brief pause, where the world held its breath. Then he spread his arms out and roared, unleashing his will upon the fragile psychokinetic barriers of this world. He didn’t need the manual connections that Seventeen had created - with nothing but his will he forced the magic from those same connections to begin funneling power into his body.
The ensuing magical explosion was all-encompassing as the last of the reality gave way, as every last version of Seventeen was forced to surrender all their power. Across the multiverse an entire branch of iterations were reduced to nothing but empty husks, every last morsel of power sucked out and forced into Darius’ body. It took only seconds but for the wolf it was an eternity of reckless abandon, of power beyond even his wildest dreams. He had imagined himself to be the great power at the centre of everything, the creator so to speak, but this was more than that. He just smiled as he felt the power at his fingertips, as he sighed and creation trembled in response. He could see it, this vast network of time connected by bright sparks - Singularities, dotted across the web. Each of them was his to take, and with each one he felt himself absorb the realities that came with them, every movement of every atom that an entire universe could muster, everything that he wanted. But really there was only ever one thing that he was going to focus on, and that was the physical prowess. To call it mere growth would have been a disservice - this was a detonation, a supernova of size being compressed into the wolf over and over again.
“More.” He said under his breath as the strength of the gods was squeezed into his body, space being replaced with muscle packed so densely that it was pushing into different realities, his form so insanely solid that he could barely move it. He was a living paradox, impossibly heavy and thick but impossibly strong to allow him to flex it, and with each flex came not just more power but more craving for it. The bigger he grew, the bigger he wanted to be, and the bigger he could be - there was no limit. As he took them he barely even noticed the increase - he was long past the point where the power of a single Singularity could make him noticeably stronger now, they were droplets of rain in the sea of his power. He consumed them like they were a bag of popcorn, with each breath taking cores, iterations, everything. As he grew his power showed itself in increasingly worrying ways: his breath alone would tremble the universe, and seeing it he would take deep gasps, draw in even more power and huff as hard as he could. Flexing his bicep put strain on the laws of physics themselves, and so he juiced himself up as hard as he could and flexed even harder, until atoms misaligned and universes inverted, until he broke the rules that stopped him from flexing harder and then broke the rules that stopped him from doing just that. Nothing gave him pause for thought, no act of destruction even made him hesitate - only strength mattered now, and his wild grab of it would not be stopped.
“MORE! MORE! MORE!” It was a mantra now, a chant that was heard throughout time and space, the echoing anthem that heralded their new creator. His tail going so fast it was almost a blur, his body even now still doubling in strength and density with every breath, every single nanometre of his body packed with muscle. Where there was no room, where his form was so tightly stuffed with muscle that it literally broke reality, he would do just that and fit more in. Why stop when there was so much to take? He had an infinite buffet opened up in front of him, and the more he took the more there was to take, the more he had to take. His body was so far ahead of anything else it was terrifying, the kind of fear you saw when looking at a meteor headed towards you, that dread that came hand in hand with the truly unstoppable. What he had considered gods were now atoms to him, they were less than nothing. Their power was so small as to be invisible.
Lars had been watching all this while he healed himself, and as he stood he was in awe of the sight before him. He could tell what was happening, but he was an observer now, and he just watched as Darius took as much power as he wanted, with not even the mechanics of creation itself to stop him anymore. Funnily enough he could still see the Darius he always knew in there - that infamous self admiration, the way he paused every now and then to flex and admire himself. This was far from just a simple movement too - this was how he empowered himself, literally flexing himself bigger, levering strength into his body. Lars would have laughed but the sheer amount of power Darius was managing to force into his body this way was almost obscene. He’d also refused to increase his size past a certain point, remaining at 15 feet and simply gaining mass and muscle, growing in density until he was too heavy for reality, until he rested amongst the multiverse like a bowling ball in a box of tissue paper. For Darius it was all about the intensity, the feeling of compressing enough might to obliterate all of creation into a form so small. He was so dense that he weighed more than several universes at this point, and he was already beginning to punch through them with just his weight alone. It only redoubled his hunger, made him flex harder as he revelled in the universes collapsing underneath him, unable to sustain anything even close to his level of strength. The grin on his face only got wider as he saw the destruction, as he was given visual confirmation of his strength increasing, and it only made him crave more, flex even harder. Flex a body that should not have even existed, that was an affront against nature but also simultaneously it’s final symphony, it’s perfect and strongest creation.
“You’re not stopping any time soon huh?” Lars sighed as Darius looked at him with eyes that glowed with power, eyes that had seen the lifetime of infinite universes, that had both birthed them to life and drained them dry.
“Nope.”
The dragon knew that this was as far as he went. He wasn’t going to be affecting the outcome of this anymore, and to stay would be pointless. It worried him, but he simply had to trust that Darius wouldn’t mess everything up, that he would simply take his power and not destroy existence as everyone knew it. It was all up to the wolf now - as the strongest being to ever exist, the choice was finally his. Lars couldn’t help but chuckle as he stood up, grimacing at the pain in his limbs.
“Well, I’ll see myself out then. Stop by for a coffee or something when you’re done.” With that he opened a portal, and with one last look back he stepped through.
*
In fact it was a while before Lars saw his omnipotent friend once again, to the point where he was almost getting worried about what kind of devastation the wolf was unleashing. It was hard to just sit there knowing that at any moment reality could just end, to know that everything was at the whim of Darius. So when reality sundered itself in that now familiar way and Darius walked through the opened portal, Lars couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.
“So you didn’t go too crazy then?” He said, standing up to inspect Darius’ body. The wolf looked bigger, sure but he was nowhere near the sizes he had been before. Now he just looked like a regular wolf, albeit if regular also meant muscular to the point of insanity.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Darius snapped his fingers and a chair materialised underneath Lars. “You might want to take a seat.” The dragon did so, leaning forwards with his hands clasped in front of him.
“Are you a god?”
Darius laughed. “No, i’m well past that now. I don’t even think there’s a word to describe what I am. A devourer perhaps? Regardless, my actual form makes the gods look like bacteria.”
Lars groaned. “Your actual form. So this is - ”
“An avatar, a reflection of a shadow of the tiniest portion of my power. If I actually set foot here, well let’s just say there wouldn’t be much left. Once you get past a certain point you tend to sort of break fundamental concepts like time. Most universes can’t take it.” Darius leaned back and raised both arms in a double bicep. “Of course, I kept all the good bits. This might be a tiny bit of power, but it does mean I can do stuff like this with it.” He grunted and swelled a foot taller, each of those muscles swelling just a bit as he pulsed with growth. It was just a fraction but it made veins flash across his skin, visible even under his fur, and his whole body heaved out in mass. The wolf growled slightly through all this, and in his excitement at the growth he forgot to keep himself in check.
“Uhh, could you. You know. Stop that?” Lars pointed out of the window, where it looked like the ground was rising up past the glass. In fact the entire archive ws sinking into the ground, due to nothing more than Darius’ raw strength being inside it. The wolf grimaced and twisted his hand, and just like that it was back to where it was. He didn’t apologise - the concept was alien to him now, something that belonged to the weak and the feeble. He didn’t need to make excuses for what he was - reality would be forced to accept it one way or the other.
“How do you even do that?” Lars was slightly in awe at the scale of the spells being casted in front of him, and the apparent lack of effort they took.
“I’m not sure how to even begin explaining it. I just...felt it, if that makes sense.” Lars looked bemused, and Darius waved a hand in the air. “Look, I think I just know these things now. Besides, this is the boring stuff, I wanna show you the cool bit.” He held out a hand, and after a fair bit of trepidation Lars grabbed it.
The journey this time was unlike any portal journey Lars had known. They didn’t even move, but rather Darius waved his hand and the world twisted around them, as if it was easier to move the very fabric of existence than it was to move Darius himself. When they stopped moving though Lars found himself in the most extraordinary universe he had seen.
“Welcome to my new home.” Darius said with a grin. Sure enough Lars could see a figure in the distance, what looked like the most muscular creature he had ever seen glowing a bright white. He was in the act of flexing, but there was so much power flowing into him that his body was expanding fast enough to counteract it - if he tried to flex a bicep, his arm grew bigger to keep him flexing. It was supposed to be a single movement, but he was caught in the middle of it, eternally growing stronger, flexing harder, the two looping into each other. He almost looked like he was savouring the moment, waiting for his strength to peak before unleashing it. What was astonishing was the sheer force being generated. If you go into a room that blocks out sound, it feels like your senses are being forced shut, like there’s cotton wool in your ears. You get a similar effect walking in the snow, where everything feels tighter, your hearing feels weaker. Here it was the same effect but with strength - there was so much power being generated that he could almost feel himself becoming weaker, compared to the being in front of him. Every second his own strength was eclipsed a billion times over, doubled the next second, tripled the next. It was a logarithmic equation for which there seemed to be no end, and at the centre of it all was Darius, a being that transcended everything now, that cared not for the laws governing those bound by such petty concepts as reality or time.
“Wh -”
“Not bad huh?” Darius gave Lars a cheeky elbow in the ribs that almost sent him sprawling. “Before you get mad, I’m not just taking power anymore. I figured out that if you stretch out a timeline you can seperate each quantum break and split apart universes into identical copies. Identical copies that each happen to have the same amount of energy in them. Of course it’s not exactly one or two anymore.”
“No kidding.” Lars couldn’t even feel the individual breaks, even though he could feel the vibration in his chest, a buttery smooth rumble comprised of countless temporal shudders, all blending into one noise. The sound of power, rolling through his body. “This is…”
“Impossible? To anyone else maybe. With this kind of strength you could make the universe clay in your hands, remake it as you saw fit. But I told you, I’m not interested in deciding things for other people. I’m just here for the strength.”
“Lars shook his head. “Do you have any idea how many laws of physics you are breaking with this little stunt? You can’t just create energy out of nothing.”
“You’re right, I can’t, at least in a single universe anyway. But we’re in a convergence of multiple realities across different dimensions, a crux of possibilities where my own decisions generate new branches. For every universe I drain, two more take it’s place. I drain those two and get four, and so on and so forth. But that means I can do things like…” Darius’ avatar grinned flexed an arm. Across an uncountable infinity of realites every single being that existed or would existed felt the strength around them, they felt the strange, mysterious force powering their world surge with power, they saw stars explode and planets crumble away to dust as all of existence was squeezed, as it tensed with him. That flex cost far in excess of a billion planets and stars their lives, and worse still it almost sucked in Darius himself. The wolf lost himself for a second, the hit of power the action lent him causing his body to swell once again with brawn, packing into his avatar. It was like a drug, the best one of all, only instead of side effects he received mind-numbing pleasure and enough strength to crush universes in the palm of his hand.
“HNNNGHHHHHHMMMMMMOOOREEEE!!!” He couldn’t stop the moan falling out of his mouth as he began to flex harder, as his eyes began to glaze over and roll back into his skull. With a herculean effort though he managed to snap himself out of it, shaking his now thicker arms out and giving a chuckle that reverberated throughout reality, one that Lars knew could be heard on the other side of existence. He couldn’t help but also chuckle at the absurdity of it all. On the one hand this was something so completely out of his control it wasn’t even funny, but on the other hand he now had a friend in a very high place. His problems didn’t really seem relevant anymore.
“You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go back to my desk, and pretend that my entire existence is not completely nullified by yours. And then I’m going to get myself a drink.” Lars dragged a hand down his face.
“Regular tavern?”
“As long as you promise not to rip anyone’s arm off if they challenge you.”
Darius grinned. “No guarantees on that one.” He said, before twisting them out of the world once more.
Category Story / Muscle
Species Wolf
Gender Male
Size 120 x 90px
Listed in Folders
first comment, woo
I love all the totally exaggerated god ascension stuff, it's so over the top lol
I love all the totally exaggerated god ascension stuff, it's so over the top lol
If you're not at least breaking reality you're doing it wrong
I imagine add a bit of size to the ol fox
...
Okay a lot of size
...
Okay a lot of size
This sort of stuff I really enjoy. I might have to commission something like this from ya next time you open O.O Absolutely amazing work!
Hmmm
I imagine something along the lines of finding a challenge for Darius, a difficult task but not an impossible one
I imagine something along the lines of finding a challenge for Darius, a difficult task but not an impossible one
I can't help but re-read this one every so often. It's a wonderful piece with how over-the-top it feels.
Tis a theme whenever I work with Terantic
What can I say we share the same tastes XD
What can I say we share the same tastes XD
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