Written By: Epicstu Wyyvernwriter

Edward awoke dazed. Placing a paw-like hand over his chest he found a scar down its center within a hole through his breastplate plate. He stood up and a layer of teal-hued black snow crunched under the weight of his foot. Everything around him was covered in black frost illuminating the otherwise pitch black environment with a teal-hue. He made a sphere from the cold wet powder, crushed it, and let it melt through his fingers, “this is not my snow.” Gathering himself, Edward removed his broken breastplate, pauldrons, and bracers. He kept the armored leather wrap around his waist to protect his thrice wrapped tail, a now vital asset of personal climate control. Taking a deep breath he tried to locate the foreign snow’s source, but could not feel, smell, or hear anything. The frozen black powder crunched loudly under his every step leaving clear footprints behind him as he explored the ships icy depths in search of the creature who had been born of his own flesh.

*          *

“How is he?” Aleister asked Ember.

“Ah!” Ember screamed and then she caught her breath, “don’t do that.” Aleister raised an eyebrow in response. “A superior version of himself now hunts him,” Ember replied to Aleister’s initial question.

“Good,” Aleister smiled. “Let us use this situation and break him.”

“Why?” Ember snapped. “Has he not gone through enough?”

“No!” Aleister’s voice shook all around Ember and frightened her. “There is no future where you exist without that hood, so if you do not like my methods you may remove it yourself, Warpriestess.” Then his tone lessened. “You will understand my reasons in time, my Agent.” Ember reached for her hood, “please don’t,” said Aleister. Ember could not tell if he actually cared or not. “I do not need you, but you do not deserve such a fate as that either.”

Ember pulled the hood down over her face, “he can not beat that thing. It will kill him.”

“Ye of little faith,” Aleister replied. “Watch my brother and know who he is.”

*          *

Edward punched the black ice shattering it before prying the thick and heavy sliding doorway open by hand. The cold metal of the door creaked and scraped loudly as Edward forced each side through its slit in the walls. Then he stopped. A single print in the snow before him. It was like his own only bigger and more talon than paw-like. Kneeling down for a closer look, “why would there be only one?” Edward thought to himself. 

Suddenly, a sharp pain pierced through Edward from behind, “an obvious trap,” a slender fur covered tail with a spear like tip emerged from Edward’s chest. His still beating heart skewered and held before him by the tail as it lifted him up. Slowly turning Edward around so they were face to face, the fennec creature grinned with large grotesque teeth as it clung upside down from the ceiling, “pathetic,” a second tail pierced through Edward’s still beating heart, “I expected more of a challenge,” and then a third. “But I suppose this is the way of things. Isn’t it? Father,” its three tails coiling through and around Edward’s, struggling to beat, heart, “survival of the fittest,” before violently ripping it asunder. Edward dropped to the floor as the slender, fur covered, creature let loose a screeching roar of triumph. Then its fennec ears twitched and the creature turned back. Edward was gone and teal-hued white snow had begun to fall blanketing its teal-hued black snow. Its ear twitched again, it was a heartbeat recurring from different directions. “How?” the creature could not pinpoint the heartbeat’s location, “I tore your heart out! You are Dead! I killed you!”

One last time the creature turned and this time saw Edward standing before it. In his eyes, as teal as the hue of his white snow, it saw nothing. Edward’s mercy, remorse, and empathy were no longer there. Through the still remaining hole in his chest the creature saw a new heart forged of ice and snow, a will to survive the only thing driving its beat, “I am Heaven’s and I will die when she says I can die.” The creature struck at Edward’s new frozen heart with its tails, but they could not pierce through his chest as it healed over. Edward grabbed a tail in each hand holding its third to the ground with his foot so he could tear the two in his hands from the creature’s body. Slipping its last tail from the grasp of Edward’s foot the creature wound up and pounced at Edward who smacked it down through the floor into another section of the ship. Returning to its feet, the creature dodged Edward’s next attack managing to grab hold of his right arm, twisting and breaking it from behind. Nothing but an annoyance to Edward now, he flipped over the creature who still held his arm as it twisted and dislocated around its neck. Then, grabbing hold of his dislocated arm, Edward flipped the creature over his back and brought his arm back around. Forcing his bones back into place with only his Will, he cocked back and unleashed his fist upon the creatures face. “What’s the matter, Son? I was under the impression you desired a challenge,” Edward pulled the creatures face to his own by its collar bone and headbutted it back down. Then, returning to his feet, Edward picked the creature up with his fully recovered right arm and paused.

“Do it,” the creature coughed up tar-like blood. “Survival of the fittest, right Father?”

Edward dropped the creature, “not how I see it.”

Struggling to stand, “your loss,” the creature suddenly and violently pounced at Edward.

After a headbutt that reduced the creature’s head to splattered blood, Edward sighed and took a moment of silence. Then he turned and began walking away until he heard the crackling of embers followed by the heat of, “Hellfire.” Running towards the wall, he bashed through, out into the Void, with an, “Iron! Ram!” just as the ship was swallowed in black flame. 

Sliding back, Edward could feel solid ground between his six-inch retractable claws though there was nothing there. “Yes,” the Devourer smiled from his Undead puzzle box in Hell. Until this moment nothing but him could do this. Edward stood in the midst of the Void upon ground that did not exist. He could not see it, but he could feel it and it was wherever he wanted it to be.

Upon fiery wings the creature rose in a Hell-form equivalent to Edward’s, “How do you like me now, Father?!” exploding like a supernova it tackled Edward, who countered by smacking it into a wall that wasn’t there. The creature could feel its head punch through the nonexistent wall and then get pulled back out only to be slammed into a ground that it could not see.

“Hell is mine,” Edward pinned the Hell creature to another nonexistent wall. “This Multiverse is mine,” he growled. “Heaven is mine. My Zesrial needs me and I will not fail her. You!” he placed his paw-like hands upon the creature’s head, “you are in my way,” and snapped its neck. Hell’s fires extinguished and Edward took a moment to mourn for the one born of his own flesh. He breathed life back into it and placed it, unconscious, in the Realm within his chainmail scarf. Then a ship entered the Void off in the distance, “Searl,” Edward growled, unable to sense Zesrial’s presence. Worried and enraged, he created a black hole and threw it at his rival’s Inter-dimensional Battle Cruiser.