Post by Helix Crust on Jan 7, 2017 22:55:01 GMT
Carved into the time wearied stone of the tournament asteroid were intricate designs detailing battles from long ago. Although the hunk of rock was worn and ancient, the beauty of the carvings was admired from the deepest depths of hell and the highest highs of heaven.
Helix Crust had fought contests of wit and magic here, and through his haphazard fights, begun to harbor an inkling of inclination to the art and sport of combat. He had spoken to countless valuable allies between his battles. His brother, Xylo, the legendary Kaioshin, King Kai, and the almighty Grand Elder Guru, Nai, whose consciousness now resided in Helix himself.
Souls bustled left and right, some possessing bodies and some not, all departing from the beautiful tournament grounds. Helix strolled outside of the asteroid's carved colosseum into the surrounding perimeter and then leapt down, allowing himself to gracefully drift towards the heavenly plains below, the weak gravity doing little to pull him.
"Porunga," muttered the namekian out loud to himself, looking down at his hands. He reminisced upon the great magical energy which had been channeled through their palms in the fights of the previous days. Muttering to himself for a few more minutes, Helix's age was showing. Fusion with Xirula had brought the namekian to a state of lessened weakness, but when left alone, the namek could still tend to ramble.
His feet touched ground with a soft thud and he took a few steps before allowing his legs to fold down under him in a criss cross. The growing interest in battle had been festering inside Helix for quite some time and could not be ignored. Closing his eyes, Helix took a deep breath in and began to meditate on the subject.
The dragon caste's breath oozed in… and out… and in… —Helix's ears twitched as he heard the rustle of grass behind him… And out…
Behind the unwitting dragon caste had landed a small ogre boy, no taller than 3 feet. He had scruffy bush of hair on his head, a small wooden whistle hanging around his neck and two tiny horns poking out of his mop innocently. The child's eyes widened and his mouth formed into a small o shape as he poked the namekian on the shoulder.
Helix nearly jumped four feet in the air with surprise! Landing comically on his rear end, Helix scratched the back of his head and scolded whoever had disturbed him. "Excuse me, do you not know better than to disturb a—" the dragon caste's eyes set on the tiny blue ogre, and his tone softened immediately upon witnessing tears welling up in the boy's eyes. "Er…" Helix immediately felt the desire to comfort the child. "Well, come on now… I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to yell like that…" Helix sat down so he was at eye level with the child and tentatively picked him up and sat him on his lap. The little boy seemed to enjoy this, and immediately cozied up to Helix, trying to hold back his tears.
"It's okay," Helix comforted, patting the child's head, "I'm not angry with you…" The dragon caste was longing to return to his meditation, but the child hadn't deserved such a scolding and he felt quite bad. The ogre rested his head against Helix's chest and finally began to speak. His voice was an endearing boyish squeak, and the formal song of ogre inflection came out quite comically from the child's mouth.
"I'm s-sorry Mr. Crust…" the child whimpered meagerly, sliding off of Helix's lap and into his own sitting position, looking up at the namek with fearful but adoring eyes. "I just s-saw you in the tournament and y-your magic was s-so admirable," the child was slurring with the speech that would typically come from a toddler, but using the vocabulary of his older ogre counterparts, resulting in an effect which Helix had to hold himself back from laughing at.
"It's quite alright!" Helix's face softened now at the child's mention of his admiration. "Don't worry about it at all… I was just meditating for a bit, and, well, it's easy to get startled when you're meditating… Do you do any magic yourself?" The mystic asked the blue toddler gently. The boy replied that he didn't know one single thing about doing magic but he always admired the ogres who could… And he especially admired Helix.
"What's your name, my son?" The dragon caste considered himself a complete equal with the child, and although the word son was typically reserved for namekian children, something about this toddler's ambition had deeply endeared Helix to him. At the request of his name, the toddler immediately stood up to his full hight of 2 feet and 10 inches and saluted, eyes focused on an invisible person standing above him. "My name is Mr. Yan! I am a blue ogre from King Yemma's palace, and my father is a junior assistant associate! Pleased to meet you!" The child returned his gaze to Helix and plopped back down onto his butt with a smile.
"And you know my name from.. The tournament, huh?" Helix shook the child's tiny hand with a grin and continued, "Well, If you really want," The namekian chimed, "I could teach you some magic!"
The ogre's shout of delight could likely be heard all the way up on the tournament grounds. Yan's tiny hands immediately slapped over his mouth and his eyes widened. "Oh gosh," the boy gulped, obviously embarrassed of his outburst "That was inconsiderate wasn't it!?"
"Let's get out of here then, huh?" Helix grinned and picked up the boy, putting him on top of his shoulders. With a sudden whirr of wind, the two disappeared into thin air, the last afterimage of their presence being Helix grinning paternally and the child's mouth wide with a youthful awe.
Later that evening, (not that there were exactly evenings in the afterlife,) Helix and Yan had taken up a small residence in Hell. The prophet had teleported down to the Western plains of the home for infinite losers, and done a little bit of showing off.
Telekinetically leveling out the sharp rocks around them, the mystic had flattened the crag into soft soil before magically springing namekian trees up around the two. Handing the child an axe, the two began to chop down the trees and talk about their experiences in the tournament.
Soon, the Helix began to show Yan how crushing the logs and mixing them with water turned them into a thick pearly putty. From their giant cauldron of namekian cement, the prophet and the magician hopeful began crafting a dome of white glistening clay, Helix demonstrated his powers of telekinesis to the boy, and attempted and failed to teach Yan how to follow suit.
Helix did most of the work, mentally bending the clay into a hollow sphere, but Yan tried his best to help, smacking globs of clay on with his tiny hands happily. Soon enough, the majority of the namekian style house was solid and dried, thanks to the help of Helix's conjured winds and a dash of flame. The namekian placed his sharp nailed fingertip on the surface of the hut and carved out a doorway and two windows, and although there was no access to Asijja glass here, the hut looked pretty well crafted and authentic.
Who said dragon castes couldn't be craftsmen!
Finally, with the hut's major architecture complete, Helix tapped on the floor and watched it transform into soft assija leaves, prime for sleeping. He was quite tired, and the rest of the hut would just have to be done inauthentically. A tossed pebble burst into the shape of a desk, and a small draft of wind was shaped into a lamp. With that, Helix was exhausted.
"Oh my goodness gracious gosh!" Yan was still squealing with delight at every magical feat of the mystic's, even after two hours of work together. Helix smiled softly and put a fingertip over his lips. "Come now, by my judgement it's time for to rest. We can begin your magic training tomorrow." Helix husked with exhaustion.
"Mr. Crust, may I please stay?" Yan looked up at Helix pleadingly, not even thinking of how badly his father would punish him for going out on his own. Helix didn't take much convincing. Helix was tired, and the boy had an air of happiness about him that invigorated up the prophet's weary bones. "Certainly, I suppose that would be all right. But now is time for sleep." Helix flopped backwards onto his back, spreading out on the soft floor and sighing with relief. "Sleep well my son." He mumbled with closed eyes. The prophet wasn't normally this irresponsible, but lack of sleep during the tournament had taken its toll.
"Yes Mr. Crust," Yan whispered in reply and sat down on the ground, staring at the sleeping namek. After a few minutes of gazing around at the house with admiration, the boy sprawled himself out on the ground and went to sleep as well. By the time he awoke, he would be curled up next to Helix with contentment.
Less than four hours into the rest of the two magicians, a massive blast of thunder woke Yan from his light rest. Upon first hearing it, the boy simply squeezed his eyes tighter and curled up closer to Helix, but eventually the blast traveled across the landscape and shook the house itself.
Yan jumped up as the walls around him quivered, and stumbled towards the window, lifting himself up on his tippy toes so he could see outside. What had formerly been a mountain on the near horizon had now been shattered, and all that remained was a massive heap of rubble. The boy's eyes widened with fear as he pushed himself out through the window and fell on his head. Another shock of thunder boomed and Yan watched the colossal mountain of rubble shudder visibly. Something was not right!
The house seemed to be taking a bit of damage itself, Yan noted as he ran around to the front door and leapt back in, tapping Helix on the shoulder for the second time that day and hoping he wouldn't be too mad.
Helix's eyes opened slightly and he grunted, "W-What is it? I'm sleeping, can't you…" Helix muttered and began to drift back off into his dreams before Yan poked him once more and spoke. "Please Mr. Helix Crust, something is happening…" the boy whimpered fearfully.
Hearing the genuine terror in his new apprentice's voice, Helix lifted his back off the floor and rubbed his eyes. "Something happening?" grogged the namekian with exhaustion, looking around the newly built house. Everything seemed fine to him… The boy was probably just being finicky due to being away from the other ogres for a prolonged period of time.
Yan attempted to explain the thunder to Helix and failed, his eyes tearing up with frustration before suddenly Helix snapped to full alertness. "Wait," warned the prophet in a whisper, and Yan fell into silence. Helix suddenly felt a massive oppressive energy swell over his body. His forehead marking slightly glew white as he utilized his mystic senses.
It was as if the darkest soul of Hell was everywhere around him at once, as if they were all engulfed in it. The dragon caste got to his feat, as quickly he could, his limbs still stiff from the previous day. "W-What on Namek…" began the prophet, eyes shaking with fear, "What on namek is that presence?"
Yan looked up at Helix with fear swelling in his chest, and Helix quickly paced towards the window and looked out. A thick black mist was now spiraling outwards in a shockwave from an unknown source, covering miles and miles of hell. As the mist approached Helix and Yan's home, it suddenly burst into a wave of black crystals, as if it was a machine that had sensed the presence of living creatures.
"LET'S GO!" Shouted Helix with urgency, but no response from Yan could be heard. Helix looked around the house, and the boy was nowhere to be found. Suddenly, sweat began to drench Helix's palms. If he had access to the little ogre, teleporting away would be a breeze. But the child had disappeared… and if he ended up in the crystal, who knew what could happen?
Helix thrust his palms out to either side of his body, with white light engulfing both of his hands. The small carefully crafted shack suddenly burst into slabs of rubble as Helix released his shockwave with a shout, "YAN! WHERE ARE YOU!?"
The namekian's incredible hearing could pick up on no responce besides the deafening roar of the approaching crystal wall. But there was no way in heaven or hell that Helix was leaving without the ogre child! There was no running from this dark magic, Helix had to reverse it in it's tracks!
Throwing out his hands in front of him in a diamond shape, Helix began to charge up as much magical energy as he could for a reversal spell, and he could only hope to Porunga that the boy hadn't already gotten caught up in the avalanche.
Just as Helix was about to launch his attack, a sudden whirr of ki struck his eardrums. The prophet stumbled backwards, releasing the magical energy all around him and transforming the small patch of landscape into countless crows, which flocked off frantically into the sky.
Helix closed his eyes, engulfed in the storm of birds before he suddenly realized that he wasn't frozen in some crystal cave. The birds began to clear and revealed that the crystal had been stopped in it's tracks and completely shattered by something. In the sky, a silhouette was slightly obscured by the flight of the crows, but after a moment they disperesed and revealed an incredible sight.
A lean but powerful looking Heran descended from above and landed in front of Helix, tossing a frightened Yan towards him, who Helix caught with relief. "This yours?" Grunted the Heran, running his hands through his hair.
The warrior was shorter than Helix by a good foot, but was incredibly built. His skin was a worn in dark teal, and his long vibrant orange hair was pushed upwards, exploding with volume all the way down his back. He cracked his knuckles and gave Helix an chuckle, revealing a spirit of aloof heroics.
Helix gasped with relief as Yan landed safely in his arms, and then put him down on the ground. "T-Thank you so much," Helix gushed to the warrior, before looking down at the small ogre child, who clearly had tears in his eyes. "What in Porunga's name were you doing leaving my side during an emergency like that, Yan?" The prophet revised his tone slightly, "Who knows what that crystal would've done to you?"
"Freeze ya solid." Grunted the Heran, cracking his neck to the right. "Happened to my man. We were closer to the shockwave then y'all were, and," The man shrugged, looking down and then shaking it off, "I had to go further down the line and stop the mist from taking as many victims as I could." He looked off onto the horizon, trying to gauge if there was more mist coming. "It looks like it's about tapered out now though. Weird coincidence."
Helix nodded obscurely and tried to figure out the man. It seemed he had lost a friend, and then immediately set out to prevent others from being caught up in the wave of death mist. "In any case, you have our sincerest thanks, Mr—" Helix left a blank for the man to fill in his name.
"Akun," grunted the Heran. "I'm from Hera. Been down here a couple thousand years, and I haven't seen shit like this in a long while." Akun began to grind his teeth slightly, as if anxiously recalling something from his past.
Helix was careful to intrude, but desperate for information on a dark magic like this. "So— You've seen something like this before then?" As Helix spoke gently, Yan clung to Helix's leg in silence, looking up at Akun with a twinge of fright but a wall of respect.
"Yeah." Replied the Heran shortly, turning off to look towards the source of the mist's shockwave. He swallowed slightly, his mouth dry with bad memories. "The only fucker who's ever tried a spell like that is the self proclaimed king of Hell…" he closed his eyes tightly as he spat the name with disgust.
Helix Crust had fought contests of wit and magic here, and through his haphazard fights, begun to harbor an inkling of inclination to the art and sport of combat. He had spoken to countless valuable allies between his battles. His brother, Xylo, the legendary Kaioshin, King Kai, and the almighty Grand Elder Guru, Nai, whose consciousness now resided in Helix himself.
Souls bustled left and right, some possessing bodies and some not, all departing from the beautiful tournament grounds. Helix strolled outside of the asteroid's carved colosseum into the surrounding perimeter and then leapt down, allowing himself to gracefully drift towards the heavenly plains below, the weak gravity doing little to pull him.
"Porunga," muttered the namekian out loud to himself, looking down at his hands. He reminisced upon the great magical energy which had been channeled through their palms in the fights of the previous days. Muttering to himself for a few more minutes, Helix's age was showing. Fusion with Xirula had brought the namekian to a state of lessened weakness, but when left alone, the namek could still tend to ramble.
His feet touched ground with a soft thud and he took a few steps before allowing his legs to fold down under him in a criss cross. The growing interest in battle had been festering inside Helix for quite some time and could not be ignored. Closing his eyes, Helix took a deep breath in and began to meditate on the subject.
The dragon caste's breath oozed in… and out… and in… —Helix's ears twitched as he heard the rustle of grass behind him… And out…
Behind the unwitting dragon caste had landed a small ogre boy, no taller than 3 feet. He had scruffy bush of hair on his head, a small wooden whistle hanging around his neck and two tiny horns poking out of his mop innocently. The child's eyes widened and his mouth formed into a small o shape as he poked the namekian on the shoulder.
Helix nearly jumped four feet in the air with surprise! Landing comically on his rear end, Helix scratched the back of his head and scolded whoever had disturbed him. "Excuse me, do you not know better than to disturb a—" the dragon caste's eyes set on the tiny blue ogre, and his tone softened immediately upon witnessing tears welling up in the boy's eyes. "Er…" Helix immediately felt the desire to comfort the child. "Well, come on now… I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to yell like that…" Helix sat down so he was at eye level with the child and tentatively picked him up and sat him on his lap. The little boy seemed to enjoy this, and immediately cozied up to Helix, trying to hold back his tears.
"It's okay," Helix comforted, patting the child's head, "I'm not angry with you…" The dragon caste was longing to return to his meditation, but the child hadn't deserved such a scolding and he felt quite bad. The ogre rested his head against Helix's chest and finally began to speak. His voice was an endearing boyish squeak, and the formal song of ogre inflection came out quite comically from the child's mouth.
"I'm s-sorry Mr. Crust…" the child whimpered meagerly, sliding off of Helix's lap and into his own sitting position, looking up at the namek with fearful but adoring eyes. "I just s-saw you in the tournament and y-your magic was s-so admirable," the child was slurring with the speech that would typically come from a toddler, but using the vocabulary of his older ogre counterparts, resulting in an effect which Helix had to hold himself back from laughing at.
"It's quite alright!" Helix's face softened now at the child's mention of his admiration. "Don't worry about it at all… I was just meditating for a bit, and, well, it's easy to get startled when you're meditating… Do you do any magic yourself?" The mystic asked the blue toddler gently. The boy replied that he didn't know one single thing about doing magic but he always admired the ogres who could… And he especially admired Helix.
"What's your name, my son?" The dragon caste considered himself a complete equal with the child, and although the word son was typically reserved for namekian children, something about this toddler's ambition had deeply endeared Helix to him. At the request of his name, the toddler immediately stood up to his full hight of 2 feet and 10 inches and saluted, eyes focused on an invisible person standing above him. "My name is Mr. Yan! I am a blue ogre from King Yemma's palace, and my father is a junior assistant associate! Pleased to meet you!" The child returned his gaze to Helix and plopped back down onto his butt with a smile.
"And you know my name from.. The tournament, huh?" Helix shook the child's tiny hand with a grin and continued, "Well, If you really want," The namekian chimed, "I could teach you some magic!"
The ogre's shout of delight could likely be heard all the way up on the tournament grounds. Yan's tiny hands immediately slapped over his mouth and his eyes widened. "Oh gosh," the boy gulped, obviously embarrassed of his outburst "That was inconsiderate wasn't it!?"
"Let's get out of here then, huh?" Helix grinned and picked up the boy, putting him on top of his shoulders. With a sudden whirr of wind, the two disappeared into thin air, the last afterimage of their presence being Helix grinning paternally and the child's mouth wide with a youthful awe.
Later that evening, (not that there were exactly evenings in the afterlife,) Helix and Yan had taken up a small residence in Hell. The prophet had teleported down to the Western plains of the home for infinite losers, and done a little bit of showing off.
Telekinetically leveling out the sharp rocks around them, the mystic had flattened the crag into soft soil before magically springing namekian trees up around the two. Handing the child an axe, the two began to chop down the trees and talk about their experiences in the tournament.
Soon, the Helix began to show Yan how crushing the logs and mixing them with water turned them into a thick pearly putty. From their giant cauldron of namekian cement, the prophet and the magician hopeful began crafting a dome of white glistening clay, Helix demonstrated his powers of telekinesis to the boy, and attempted and failed to teach Yan how to follow suit.
Helix did most of the work, mentally bending the clay into a hollow sphere, but Yan tried his best to help, smacking globs of clay on with his tiny hands happily. Soon enough, the majority of the namekian style house was solid and dried, thanks to the help of Helix's conjured winds and a dash of flame. The namekian placed his sharp nailed fingertip on the surface of the hut and carved out a doorway and two windows, and although there was no access to Asijja glass here, the hut looked pretty well crafted and authentic.
Who said dragon castes couldn't be craftsmen!
Finally, with the hut's major architecture complete, Helix tapped on the floor and watched it transform into soft assija leaves, prime for sleeping. He was quite tired, and the rest of the hut would just have to be done inauthentically. A tossed pebble burst into the shape of a desk, and a small draft of wind was shaped into a lamp. With that, Helix was exhausted.
"Oh my goodness gracious gosh!" Yan was still squealing with delight at every magical feat of the mystic's, even after two hours of work together. Helix smiled softly and put a fingertip over his lips. "Come now, by my judgement it's time for to rest. We can begin your magic training tomorrow." Helix husked with exhaustion.
"Mr. Crust, may I please stay?" Yan looked up at Helix pleadingly, not even thinking of how badly his father would punish him for going out on his own. Helix didn't take much convincing. Helix was tired, and the boy had an air of happiness about him that invigorated up the prophet's weary bones. "Certainly, I suppose that would be all right. But now is time for sleep." Helix flopped backwards onto his back, spreading out on the soft floor and sighing with relief. "Sleep well my son." He mumbled with closed eyes. The prophet wasn't normally this irresponsible, but lack of sleep during the tournament had taken its toll.
"Yes Mr. Crust," Yan whispered in reply and sat down on the ground, staring at the sleeping namek. After a few minutes of gazing around at the house with admiration, the boy sprawled himself out on the ground and went to sleep as well. By the time he awoke, he would be curled up next to Helix with contentment.
Less than four hours into the rest of the two magicians, a massive blast of thunder woke Yan from his light rest. Upon first hearing it, the boy simply squeezed his eyes tighter and curled up closer to Helix, but eventually the blast traveled across the landscape and shook the house itself.
Yan jumped up as the walls around him quivered, and stumbled towards the window, lifting himself up on his tippy toes so he could see outside. What had formerly been a mountain on the near horizon had now been shattered, and all that remained was a massive heap of rubble. The boy's eyes widened with fear as he pushed himself out through the window and fell on his head. Another shock of thunder boomed and Yan watched the colossal mountain of rubble shudder visibly. Something was not right!
The house seemed to be taking a bit of damage itself, Yan noted as he ran around to the front door and leapt back in, tapping Helix on the shoulder for the second time that day and hoping he wouldn't be too mad.
Helix's eyes opened slightly and he grunted, "W-What is it? I'm sleeping, can't you…" Helix muttered and began to drift back off into his dreams before Yan poked him once more and spoke. "Please Mr. Helix Crust, something is happening…" the boy whimpered fearfully.
Hearing the genuine terror in his new apprentice's voice, Helix lifted his back off the floor and rubbed his eyes. "Something happening?" grogged the namekian with exhaustion, looking around the newly built house. Everything seemed fine to him… The boy was probably just being finicky due to being away from the other ogres for a prolonged period of time.
Yan attempted to explain the thunder to Helix and failed, his eyes tearing up with frustration before suddenly Helix snapped to full alertness. "Wait," warned the prophet in a whisper, and Yan fell into silence. Helix suddenly felt a massive oppressive energy swell over his body. His forehead marking slightly glew white as he utilized his mystic senses.
It was as if the darkest soul of Hell was everywhere around him at once, as if they were all engulfed in it. The dragon caste got to his feat, as quickly he could, his limbs still stiff from the previous day. "W-What on Namek…" began the prophet, eyes shaking with fear, "What on namek is that presence?"
Yan looked up at Helix with fear swelling in his chest, and Helix quickly paced towards the window and looked out. A thick black mist was now spiraling outwards in a shockwave from an unknown source, covering miles and miles of hell. As the mist approached Helix and Yan's home, it suddenly burst into a wave of black crystals, as if it was a machine that had sensed the presence of living creatures.
"LET'S GO!" Shouted Helix with urgency, but no response from Yan could be heard. Helix looked around the house, and the boy was nowhere to be found. Suddenly, sweat began to drench Helix's palms. If he had access to the little ogre, teleporting away would be a breeze. But the child had disappeared… and if he ended up in the crystal, who knew what could happen?
Helix thrust his palms out to either side of his body, with white light engulfing both of his hands. The small carefully crafted shack suddenly burst into slabs of rubble as Helix released his shockwave with a shout, "YAN! WHERE ARE YOU!?"
The namekian's incredible hearing could pick up on no responce besides the deafening roar of the approaching crystal wall. But there was no way in heaven or hell that Helix was leaving without the ogre child! There was no running from this dark magic, Helix had to reverse it in it's tracks!
Throwing out his hands in front of him in a diamond shape, Helix began to charge up as much magical energy as he could for a reversal spell, and he could only hope to Porunga that the boy hadn't already gotten caught up in the avalanche.
Just as Helix was about to launch his attack, a sudden whirr of ki struck his eardrums. The prophet stumbled backwards, releasing the magical energy all around him and transforming the small patch of landscape into countless crows, which flocked off frantically into the sky.
Helix closed his eyes, engulfed in the storm of birds before he suddenly realized that he wasn't frozen in some crystal cave. The birds began to clear and revealed that the crystal had been stopped in it's tracks and completely shattered by something. In the sky, a silhouette was slightly obscured by the flight of the crows, but after a moment they disperesed and revealed an incredible sight.
A lean but powerful looking Heran descended from above and landed in front of Helix, tossing a frightened Yan towards him, who Helix caught with relief. "This yours?" Grunted the Heran, running his hands through his hair.
The warrior was shorter than Helix by a good foot, but was incredibly built. His skin was a worn in dark teal, and his long vibrant orange hair was pushed upwards, exploding with volume all the way down his back. He cracked his knuckles and gave Helix an chuckle, revealing a spirit of aloof heroics.
Helix gasped with relief as Yan landed safely in his arms, and then put him down on the ground. "T-Thank you so much," Helix gushed to the warrior, before looking down at the small ogre child, who clearly had tears in his eyes. "What in Porunga's name were you doing leaving my side during an emergency like that, Yan?" The prophet revised his tone slightly, "Who knows what that crystal would've done to you?"
"Freeze ya solid." Grunted the Heran, cracking his neck to the right. "Happened to my man. We were closer to the shockwave then y'all were, and," The man shrugged, looking down and then shaking it off, "I had to go further down the line and stop the mist from taking as many victims as I could." He looked off onto the horizon, trying to gauge if there was more mist coming. "It looks like it's about tapered out now though. Weird coincidence."
Helix nodded obscurely and tried to figure out the man. It seemed he had lost a friend, and then immediately set out to prevent others from being caught up in the wave of death mist. "In any case, you have our sincerest thanks, Mr—" Helix left a blank for the man to fill in his name.
"Akun," grunted the Heran. "I'm from Hera. Been down here a couple thousand years, and I haven't seen shit like this in a long while." Akun began to grind his teeth slightly, as if anxiously recalling something from his past.
Helix was careful to intrude, but desperate for information on a dark magic like this. "So— You've seen something like this before then?" As Helix spoke gently, Yan clung to Helix's leg in silence, looking up at Akun with a twinge of fright but a wall of respect.
"Yeah." Replied the Heran shortly, turning off to look towards the source of the mist's shockwave. He swallowed slightly, his mouth dry with bad memories. "The only fucker who's ever tried a spell like that is the self proclaimed king of Hell…" he closed his eyes tightly as he spat the name with disgust.
"…Didger."
Helix's eyes widened at the strange name. Something about it seemed vaguely unforeign to him. "Didger?" the prophet questioned, "What do you know about him?" Akun shrugged at the question and turned back to face Helix, now over his moment of anxious tension. "Not much," said Akun flatly, "I know he's got some powerful magic, and has used black crystals like this before and failed. I've got a lot of ogres in the know, and even they haven't heard much more."
Akun looked over at the rubble of the hut which Helix had worked so hard to construct. "He's notorious as hell though, for someone who's so obscure."
The prophet's head dipped ever so slightly in a nod. "Do you know where the who—" Helix stuttered mid sentence as he looked down and realized that Yan had disappeared again. Not wanting to risk a second disaster, Helix immediately shouted, "YAN! Where are y—" but his shout was interrupted by happy laughter from not too far away. Helix's ears twitched, and he followed the sound, with Akun levitating behind him.
A bit down the hellish red hill was the small ogre child and a dinosaur, slightly taller than Helix. The creature resembled a tyrannosaurus with a fin on it's head and ridiculously tiny devil wings on it's back, which would prompt doubt at the creature's ability to fly from any passerby. However, on the creature's lower and middle half, black crystals partially engulfed his right leg and chest, up to about where his heart would be.
The dinosaur was licking Yan happily, but was visible struggling. As Helix paced towards it, the creature collapsed slightly, and then fell on it's side with weakness. The affectation was taking its toll.
"Look what I found Mr. Crust, It's—" Yan began happily, but then turned back towards the dinosaur and realized the pain it was evidently in. Helix's eyes softened with empathy for the creature, when suddenly the namekian and ogre's heads turned around at the whistle of ki.
Akun's arm was pointed straight out at the dinosaur with an orb of yellow ki formed in his palm. Immediately, Yan shouted in protest but it was too late. The Heran mercilessly launched the orb from his palm at the suffering creature, hoping to put it out of it's misery, but the blast was intercepted by the young ogre.
Helix immediately shot at the orb with a mystic finger beam, transforming it into a frog which landed on Yan's face and caused him to fall over in shock.
"What are you doing!?" Yelled Helix, before moderating his tone slightly. "You could've killed an innocent child!" Helix jabbed in controlled anger, forgetting that it was likely impossible to die in the afterlife.
"That thing needs to be put out of it's misery. It's hopeless." the Heran's response was flat and manicured. There was no room for frivolity in his harsh sneers. Helix shook his head and furrowed his brows upwards with pity for the creature. "No," retorted Helix, "I can save it."
Bending down next to the dinosaur, Helix allowed his hands to be engulfed in a warm white light as Yan stumbled around like a drunken saiyan comically trying to yank the frightened namekian frog off of his face. Akun watched Helix work his magic with folded arms. If this worked… Then he had a very important job for this namekian.
Helix's white mystic energy began to glow so bright that it was hard to look in it's general direction. The dragon clansman skillfully welded away at the crystal, every tap of reversal energy melting and then evaporating a twinge of black rock. By the time ten minutes had passed, Akun and Yan sat side by side, legs crossed, trying their best to watch Helix's work.
Finally, the prophet sighed and slumped his shoulders. The ogre and heran both looked up from their distractions in childish anticipation. Had the mystic failed?
Helix formed one last new spell in his palms, a warm pink energy and released it in a wave over the entire body of the dinosaur, resulting in it rolling over and standing up on it's hind legs. The creature had been entirely healed!
Yan jumped with joy and ran towards his friend, hugging its leg while Helix stood up, soon after collapsing into a weakened position with his hands on his knees, visibly exhausted. Not only was the elderly namekian deprived of his sleep, he had gone through so much stress and magical work in the past hours that he was practically ready to pass out once more.
Akun paid no mind to Helix's state, simply walking over to the dinosaur with wonder and placing a hand on it's healed flesh. "This… is—" The Heran's grim declaration of impression was cut off by the gleeful shout of the tiny ogre. "INCREDIBLE!"
Yan ran to the hunched over prophet and hugged his leg happily. "Thank you so much! Please teach me the magic you've done!?" The boy was practically boiling over with excitement as Akun stood, watching the dragon move with awe. If this namekian, Helix, had performed such a miraculous recovery on the dinosaur… Then he could certainly—
"Mr. Crust! Can we please keep him! I bet he's quite good at fighting, please Mr. Crust?" Yan pulled away from Helix's leg and opened his eyes from his gleeful grin to realize that Helix was visibly drained from his endeavor. "Oh goodness," he whispered, before running over to Akun.
"Please Mr. Akun," he asked, with a slight quiver of fear in his voice, "Could you carry Mr. Crust to a safe place?"
This was the Heran's moment of truth. Although he had never seen himself siding with a queer old namekian and a little ogre boy before, they had something that he needed. His allies for thousands of years were now frozen in this black crystal, and these two misfits were a silver bullet for the unsolvable problem. He needed them… And they certainly needed him. "It'd be my pleasure."
So exhausted was Helix Crust that he didn't even feel capable of rasping out a single sentence. And so, Akun effortlessly lifted up the namekian prophet and levitated into the air, searching for a suitable cave nearby. Upon spotting a small indent in the earth on the horizon, He looked down at the ogre, who suddenly had flown into the air on the back of the gleefully healed dragon.
"You are not bringing that thing." Said Akun with finality, "Not anywhere I'm going." But Yan wasn't going to give up so easily. "But look, Mr. Akun!" Pleaded the ogre toddler as the dragon began to rapidly whirr its wings like a hummingbird, levitating next to the unimpressed Heran. "He can carry me so you don't have to!"
Akun sighed with irritated displeasure and reluctantly obliged. "Fine. But once we get there, he's out." With that short reply, the Heran blasted off towards the cavern indifferently, allowing the dragon riding child to follow in his dust.
The cave had a wide, extremely visible entrance, but a surprisingly shallow interior. It was impossible to be inside the cave and not be visible to most passerby's on the outside. Akun noted this, but decided it would have to do. He helped Helix down with as much gentleness as he could muster and turned out towards the sky, watching the boy approach on his mount. "I think we should all rest now," Akun dictated, leaving no room for his denial of entry to their party.
"I think I'm going to name him Gadreel," grinned the toddler as he hopped off the back of the dinosaur and affectionately patted his snout. The creature blinked with happiness and nuzzled the boys hand before dropping onto his knees and lying on the ground sleepily. "He's pretty tired… And I am too," Yan chimed to Akun, who nodded and replied with the slightest hint of affection towards the boy.
"So sleep."
While East Hell was home to some of the most vile creatures in the galaxy, West Hell tended to be less occupied by high level threats to the peace of the universe. However, the red plains of the western hemisphere were dotted with sharp mountain ranges, and no area was more inaccessible than the Frypan mountains.
Perhaps it was the very inaccessibility of the dark far off cliffs that gave them their allure to a particularly notorious name in the home for infinite losers, or perhaps it was their menacing aura, or their distance from any ogre settlements. Whatever the reason, a genuinely wicked force had taken up residence in the dark peaks.
In the highest mountain of the Frypan sierra, the Black Crag peak, a network of tunnels was laid out, creating a small city of space. However, most of the tunnels were painfully unoccupied. Each one would twist and turn throughout the mountain, leading to various rooms where various artifacts were stored, but every tunnel would eventually lead back to the main cavern, a large echoing chamber partially filled with water with an island of rock in the middle. Although droplets of liquid constantly fell from the roof of the cave, it was impossible to tell how high up the cavern went, as the majority of it was shrouded completely in darkness.
A single droplet of water blipped down on the very head of a darkened monsterous silhouette. The creature shifted slightly, and stepped into the light revealing his full bulking frame. "There's no way Fiddle has that kind of magical power," growled the creature in a low bassy tone to an invisible figure standing in the shadows.
The other creature stepped forwards and scoffed at the larger one's declaration. "Shut up, Rombo. Who the fuck asked you?" hissed the shorter but muscular figure in a shriller tone. "You know better than to talk badly of King Didger's plans." He continued with a hushed wrath in his tone, "You're a disposable piece of—"
Footsteps suddenly disturbed the conversation and both of the quarreling silhouettes stood at attention. Now, an even less muscular figure appeared, and cleared its throat. "Blessed be you, Lord Fiddle!" The two fighting brutes shouted in unison, kneeling to the newly entered scrawny fin headed silhouette.
"Yes yes," croaked the creature, pulling out his staff and releasing a slight glow of purple. It seemed that the new figure hadn't any time for frivolities. He looked over pointedly at the muscular but non-monsterous shadow. "Bazooka. Where is the King? This is getting important."
"Haven't the slightest clue," the guard riffed, with only hint of the spite he held inside for Fiddle. Fiddle tsked in response, and then barked an order at the two shadow shrouded creatures, demanding that they depart so he could have a private audience with their King. Fiddle allowed his staff to glow slightly, showing a flash of his dark green skin as he sent out a signal towards his superior.
Within moments, the whirr of wind being displaced echoed throughout the chamber, and a massive namekian appeared, the first fully visible figure in the cavern yet. His visibility lied in his armor, a glowing red and yellow winding mass of plates, covering from his knees to his antenna. Hanging out of the headpiece framing his ears was an intimidating mane of white hair, although it didn't appear to be his own. The only fully armored parts of his body were the red coated knee pads, crotch piece, gauntlets and shoulder pads. The rest of the armor simply crawled in between, forming a web of thick yellow steel cords. Even the King's antenna were armored, directed upwards by the golden frame which accented his deep yellow green eyes.
This namekian was broad and tall, not in the monstrous way which Rombo was, but clad in imposing and well built muscles. "What have you summoned me for, Fiddle?" Demanded the taller figure, both audibly in a powerful bass tone and telepathically at once, causing Fiddle to drop to his knees and bow.
"King Didger…" Fiddle looked reverently up at the King, his own namekian features now visible slightly in the light of Didger's armor. "I have located a powerful source of Namekian magic in Hell… A power so great that it could be worthy of your own consumption."
"A power great enough," boomed the namekian god, "That you disturb me from my meditation before I cast the most powerful spell this realm has ever seen?" The sickly yellow eyes of the namekian narrowed, his green skin moistening from the drops of water now drizzling from the roof.
The scrawny fin headed namekian nodded, "Yes my King," he stood up slightly and projected purple energy from the mouth of his dragon staff, which formed into a holographic image of no other namek than Helix Crust. The prophet appeared tired and anxious about something, as if he knew he was being watched. The purple image radiated with the magical power he possessed and Didger groaned in a low tone.
"You may be right, slave," Didger responded with a lick of his lips. "Bring this namekian to me. It's been a while since i've encountered one of his caliber." The massive armored namekian sighed under his breath. The taste of conquest was almost at the tip of his lips. "We will begin the incantation in six hours. Do not disturb my rest until then." With that short order, the god flicked his wrist, sending Fiddle flying backwards into the wall of the cave and collapsing down into the water surrounding the center island.
Didger disappeared in a flash of purple energy as Fiddle crawled back onto the rocky landmass in the massive cave, the echoes of his impact with the wall still resonating. He immediately brought his staff into the air and summoned Bazooka and Rombo. The two creatures entered now darkened chamber and dropped to their knees as Fiddle addressed them quickly. "Bring the King the namekian. He and I will commence the ritual very shortly."
He grinned slightly in the darkness. "Victory is upon us."
Back in the prophet's own cave, Yan had fallen asleep almost instantly in the lap of his new dinosaur companion, and Akun, without the energy to contest this, had begun to prepare for his own sleep. Helix had now recovered from his exhaustion of using such powerful magic and was tense with some sort of unknown anxiety.
"You doing alright there, bud?" Asked Akun, slapping Helix on the back comfortingly and startling him to the point of almost falling over. Helix looked like he had just seen a ghost. His eyes were bagged and his pupils were small, and he was kneading his knuckles anxiously. "Yes, I'm quite alright," acknowledged the prophet, evidently not quite alright. "You just go to sleep now. I'm going to stay on the look out for a while." Helix's mind was racing with tension, but he couldn't focus enough to figure out what was going on.
Akun obliged him, knowing that if anything were to happen, his Heran instincts would wake him up first. "Alright then." grunted the teal skinned warrior, "You get some rest though, alright?" The namekian had to be well rested if he were going to salvage Akun's comrades from the black crystal. Helix nodded almost imperceptibly, which was good enough for the Heran. Akun walked a few paces away and began shaving away some of the rock below him by rubbing his powerful palms against it, making a relatively soft surface to sleep on. He was out within minutes.
Helix's anxiety was well founded, but it wasn't quite enough to keep him awake. "Got to… Who has that kind of power… Didger… Didger didger didger…" Something about the name was so native to him…
Within an hour of anxious pacing, Helix had joined the other two on the ground, exhausted and in well need of a rest. He wouldn't remember when exactly he fell asleep, only the disaster which caused him to wake back up.
Fiddle paced anxiously for a few moments in the black main chamber of the Black Cragg. He didn't want to disturb his King too early, but the clock was ticking. Fiddle was anxious for power. After pacing thrice more around the perimeter of the rock island, he decided that it was time to speak to the King.
He levitated into the air, his wickedly lean form exposed in the light of his purple magic. The namekian looked skeleton thin, clad in baggy dragon caste garbs and scarves, and his long fingers clutched his sinister dragon shaped staff for dear life. His head was disproportionately bulky at the top, and sprouting from it's apex was a long thick crescent fin. His eyes constantly shifted from left to right anxiously, and one could tell just by his appearance that he had a froggish croak of a voice.
Fiddle drifted towards the leftmost tunnel of the cavern and entered, lighting the way with the glow of his dragon's throat. He followed the winding path up and over the main chamber, and the yellow light of Didger's armor let him know when he was close. Landing on his feet and lowering his staff, Didger walked into the chamber reverently. Sitting on a massive throne, adorned in a similar manner as his armor, was King Didger.
The giant super namekian opened his eyes from meditating, his hands lifting from the rests on either side of the throne to form a pyramid in front of his face. For the first time in decades, a slight smile danced across his lips. "Let us begin."
The namekian god hoisted himself up out of the throne and stood to his full hight of eight feet, and placed a massive hand on the finned head of his servant. "Come, slave," commanded Didger, now using only his mental voice rather than his physical as well. With that, the two disappeared into a flash of purple light, and appeared outside of the mountain.
Fiddle gasped with shock and put his hands over his eyes with a groan. This was the first time Didger had permitted him to see the light outside of the Black Crag in years. Eventually, the scrawny namekian's pupils adjusted, and he gazed out across the mountain ranges of hell.
"I've begun trials," Boomed Didger, "But this is my masterpiece." He gazed out across the horizon alongside his servant, the white hair sprouting from his armor blowing in the wind. "Do you understand me?" thundered the King, "Do not fail."
Fiddle, levitating on his own bowed his head in the wind and nodded, his cloak billowing left and right from the shifting air currents of the mountain range. "I am ready to serve you," trembled Fiddle, prompting a smile from the namekian god.
King Didger repeated his earlier sentiment with a hint of anticipation. "Then let us begin."
The massive king stretched his hands into the sky in a v shape and sighed as tension released from his body. All of his meditation had been in preparation of this moment. Purple wind began spiraling from the King's elbows to his outstretched hands, and soon all of the powerful wind of the mountaintops was swept up in the current.
Within minutes, a vortex had formed around the super namekian, with his attendant barely able to stay afloat in the waves of blackened gusts. Didger's eyes were engulfed entirely in the dark energy, and thick aura began oozing from his fingernails, mouth, and nostrils. Small bolts of black lightning began to leap between his two upstretched arms, before dancing outwards into the sky and beginning to physically create cracks in the air.
The god began chanting an incantation in the native namekian tongue, his voice now booming with such physical and mental energy that it surpassed that of an eternal dragon. "Darkened heart of Poporonko, blacken the sky and freeze time!" The echoes of his voice shook the very mountain itself, and the caverns resonated with the magic chant, blasting the eardrums of Rombo and Bazooka deep in the tunnels.
Didger repeated the incantation once more, now having triggered the reaction, but this time Fiddle threw his hands to the sky and joined in, and with their combined magical power the sky began to crack, the physical fabric of reality shattering. With every chant, the crack was pulled wider and wider open until suddenly, all at once a torrent of black crystal poured out and began to engulf the sky. Within instants, a growing portion of west Hell's sky was overtaken by complete darkness.
The closest nearby ogre settlement would suddenly find itself frozen in space-time itself, with black crystal engulfing every one of it's inhabitants before they had the chance to call for help.
The sky above the Frypan mountains had turned to pure obsidian crystal!
Nearly six hours had passed since Helix's descent into sleep, and the group of unlikely companions all lied rather uncomfortably on the floor of the cave, naturally huddling together in the night. Akun was sprawled out on his back, taking up the most space, while Helix and Yan were huddled together on their sides, despite the weather being quite hot in hell.
One key member, however, was missing from the dog pile of resting vagabonds. Gadreel, the lumbering tiny winged dinosaur was jarringly absent. The creature had been disturbed in his rest by a high pitched noise, a whir of wind that the others couldn't pick up on in their resting states. The creature moseyed down the side of the mountain, hoping that such a shriek meant prey.
But what the creature saw was surprising to say the least. Gazing up a the sky, Gadreel's wide eyes couldn't begin to comprehend what the strange rocks growing on the tip of the horizon could mean, but he knew that they were rather frightening. Barreling back across the landscape towards the cave, the dinosaur stopped to yank a small mouse up between it's jaws and swallow it whole, before hurrying back to warn it's master.
Yan was curled in a tight cosy ball, visibly sucking on his thumb and enjoying the first bit of rest he had in days. But his dreams would soon be disturbed by the gentle nudging of his new prehistoric companion. "Mhhhmm," groaned Yan in a whisper as Gadreel nuzzled his massive snout against the boy's face, "Not now… My shift doesn't start until…"
The child rolled over onto his other side, away from the dinosaur who began to whimper viscerally. Gently biting down on Yan's shirt and lifting him up into the air, the child remained entirely asleep while hanging from the mouth of the creature. Finally, after a moment's prompting, Yan's eyes opened to see his companion. "Gadreel, what is it?" Yawned the half awake boy, "Leave me alone, will you? I'm trying to sleep."
The boy's fretting and shoving away the dragon's snout was more than enough to let the creature know he wasn't wanted, and so he huffed for a few moments before sitting down with a thud and pouting.
Luckily for the group, Helix's senses were finely attuned to the mystic, and the energy brewing in the sky was so potent that it could not be ignored. Helix jolted awake, clutching his skull and groaning. "Oh Porunga," groaned the dragon caste, looking around frantically, "What's that presence?" Suddenly, Helix's eyes flashed wide open. This was the same oppressive energy that had overwhelmed him before. "Akun, Yan!" Shouted Helix, picking up his staff from the ground. "Let's move! Now!"
Yan got to his feet pretty quickly, wondering if something really was going on, and feeling bad for scolding Gadreel. Akun took a few moments longer, rolling over onto his side and then sitting up, cracking his shoulders and neck from their stiff dormancy. "This better be good," groaned the Heran as he turned around and looked up outside the cave. Suddenly, Akun leapt to his feet with alert urgency. "Look!"
Helix and Yan quickly focused their vision up outside of the cave and both shared a moment of complete paralyzing shock. "It's like before," Began Yan fearfully, before Helix finished his sentence gravely, "But worse."
Helix was the first to sprint outside and run down the hill from the cavern, followed by a tripping Yan and a cautious Akun. The namekian shook his head faintly as he stared up at the growing spell on the horizon with despair.
Akun gaped in grave terror. "How many people could that thing take?" .
"People?" Helix replied, with a hopeless laugh at the irony of the question, "This spell has the power to freeze over an entire dimension."
"It's starting… Fucking amazing." marveled Bazooka, stepping out into the light of Hell for the first time in decades. "Just feel that wind! The King's power is… incredible." The namekian named Bazooka reveled in the light, breathing it in like lifeblood.
His eyes opened wide and stared up at the red sky of Hell, now being eaten alive by black crystal. His right eye in particular had three pupils in a triangle shape, and both orbs were a sickly yellow. His antenna, unlike that of typical namekians, shot up rigidly in a v shape with no indication of typical namekian shape.
Although he possessed the typical green skin and yellow plates of his kind, his body was disproportionately bulky on the upper half, and his broad shoulders gave him the aura of an admiral or merciless prison warden.
"Don't you try to tell me," countered Rombo, stepping out alongside his partner, "That Fiddle could've done this on his own. He's a weakling. The King is just using him until the spell is underway" The monster's deep bass turned giddy. "And then it's bye bye."
Rombo, unlike Bazooka, was a colossal monster of a Namekian. Seemingly crafted off of porunga himself, Rombo's massive upper body was covered in sinister green skin and padded with giant patches of yellow. His defining features included a thick powerful draconic jaw, blank red eyes, and a heavy, constantly swaying tail.
Bazooka replied with short spite. "We'll see about that, Oaf." The smaller and more nimble warrior leapt up into the air and gazed up at the two specks in the sky at the epicenter of the black hurricane. "Don't forget that we have our own mission."
The massive monster lumbered out down the side of the mountain slightly. "Our mission is bullshit. By the time the King is done he won't need some useless dragon caste." Rombo leapt into the air, levitating with seeming ease despite his massive weight. "That is, if Fiddle doesn't—"
"What could Fiddle possibly fuck up?" Interrupted Bazooka, turning towards his comrade with anger. He was growing tired of these games. Just because Fiddle wasn't a direct descendant of the King like Rombo and himself didn't mean every move of his should be questioned. Especially not when he was technically… Superior.
"There's nothing to ruin." Continued Bazooka with a building excitement, "The King will finish off the spell, with or without Fiddle, sealing off Hell from heaven. Once the dimension is blocked off, then all the bad souls will be forced up to heaven and wreak chaos, leaving the ogres completely distracted and unable to get in or out of our playground."
Bazooka grinned slightly, as his three pupils began to rotate. "Then, with Hell all sealed off to ourselves, we can pillage this shithole and steal all the Ensenji fruit we want. Once we've gained that kind of power…" The smaller namekian smirked, "The universe is our plaything."
"Let's just hope Fiddle doesn't ruin the spell," Rombo responded, prompting a hard slap upside his head. "Ow!"
"Come on, imbecile," commanded Bazooka, "Let's just go get the fucking dragon caste."
Akun looked at Helix with shock, and put a hand on his shoulder, turning the namek around to face him. "What do you mean, a whole dimension?" Akun was determined. He would not be swallowed whole by these crystals like his comrades had. Helix sighed and clenched his teeth, carefully choosing his words before he spoke.
"Those crystals weren't just trapping people on the physical plane," Began the prophet, as the ogre child and Heran looked on with anticipation, "If they were, I could've just turned them into paper, or melted them altogether." Helix shook his head solemnly. "No. Those crystals freeze things on all plains of existence. Spirit. Space. Time…"
The prophet bit his lower lip for a moment and then continued. "If a barrier like that were to swallow the sky entirely, Hell wouldn't just be sealed off physically, it would be trapped in space-time itself."
Yan was sitting on the ground, anxiously listening to Helix's words before he finally couldn't take it anymore and jumped up, running and hugging Helix's leg. "P-Please Mr. Crust, let us go tell the ogres! They will know what to do!" The child was terrified and wanted to appeal to the only authority he knew.
"No." Akun spoke with an uncanny resolve that captured the attention of all those around him, including Gadreel, who poked his large head out from behind a rock. "We're going to destroy this barrier right here and now. I've smashed it before and I can do it again." He turned to Helix. "And you can do better than just shatter. You can reverse the magic itself. We'll set out across towards the west edge of Hell and crack the crystal as we go, and if we find any victims, you can revive them."
Akun looked at Helix challengingly, as if daring him to say no to saving the souls of innocents. In reality, Akun knew very well where he was going to take Helix; They were going to head straight towards Akun's own frozen comrades.
"Please Mr. Crust I really think that—" Helix shook his head softly, causing the boy to stop mid sentence. "No, Akun is right. I'm going to go with him and help him minimize the damage if we can." The prophet turned down towards the ogre boy who locked eyes with Helix and formed an unspoken trust. "I don't want to leave you alone out here… So you should come with me." Helix let out a tiny smile in light of the dire situation. "Maybe you'll learn a bit of magic on the way, huh?"
Yan bit his lip and held back the tears welling up in his eyes before nodding genuinely and smiling back at Helix, taking his hand. Helix looked up at Akun. "Well then," said the prophet with a nervous laugh, "Lead the way."
As Akun and Yan prepared themselves to set off, Helix conjured up servings of Asijja soup for the both of them. While Yan ended up sticking his tongue out and feeding his to Gadreel, Akun wolfed his down, and smiled as he asked for a second bowl.
Helix, meanwhile, was trying to forge a friendship with the dragon, who was at first somewhat reluctant. "Come on then, let's be friends!" Helix half pleaded the creature, attempting to pet it on the snout as he'd seen Yan do. After several lost and regenerated hands, and a few bucks off of the back of the creature, Helix had finally gained enough trust with Gadreel to ride on it's back.
Akun finished his third bowl of Asijja soup and wiped his mouth before levitating into the air. "Hey! Wait up for me, Mr. Akun!" Yan's relationship with the muscular warrior had grown considerably in the past two days, and he was now hoisted up into the air by the heran and placed on his shoulders. With both of the non flying members of the party successfully airborne, the group began to set off onto the horizon, albeit not at the most desirable pace.
Akun had to travel relatively slow to keep the tiny ogre from hurtling down to his doom, and Gadreel's tiny wings could only flutter so fast. But nevertheless, the group made pace, and the black death on the horizon grew larger and larger in their view.
By the time Helix could make out the individual crystals in the shroud, it had expanded far beyond the Frypan mountains, now covering a significant portion of the sky. It almost seemed as if the spell was growing to meet the group half way.
Once they were close enough, Akun began to fly up towards Hell's newly formed obsidian roof, and Gadreel followed the scent of his tiny blue owner.
"Give it a shot!" Helix called out over the wind towards his warrior comrade, who nodded without looking over at the namekian. Akun placed a hand on the stone above him, causing Yan to slip off his shoulder but be immediately caught by the Heran's outstretched free arm. Descending slightly, Akun focused ki energy in his open palm and closed his eyes. This one was for his frozen allies. Clenching his fist and then flaring his fingers out, a powerful bolt of yellow ki began to swell in his palm.
"Haaaaaaa…" Akun groaned and energy flared around him. Tossing the child in his other arm haphazardly to the left, Helix and Gadreel swooped in to catch the frightened boy, and then continued watching their ally in silence.
"YAAAAAHHH!" Joining both hands by his side, the orb of yellow ki flared violently and was hurled up in a single fluid swing by both of the Heran's muscular arms. The blast whipped upwards, surmounting the space between the warrior and the crystal in a mere instant, and the detonation released such a high pitched screech that it nearly knocked Gadreel out of the air.
Black dust had suddenly surrounded all of the airborne adventurers, and Helix coughed loudly, advising Yan to cover his mouth as he put his elbow across his face. But his eyes were still intently focused on the spot where Akun had used to be.
The strong wind quickly dispersed the dust, and revealed that the Heran's attack had been… Completely ineffective. Akun was standing mid air with his fists clenched, looking down at the ground in frustration. Helix carefully picked his words, making sure not to trigger the warrior's pride.
"It's too strong all the way out here… I…" Helix closed his eyes and shook his head, shuddering at the overwhelming feeling of dark energy. "I can feel it. There's no way we can crack it from this distance." He turned up to face the Heran. "Come on. We have to keep moving."
Levitating with a cold prideless aura, Akun nodded his head almost imperceptibly and floated down next to Helix. "Right." acknowledged the Heran bluntly, before immersing himself in a yellow aura and blasting off further towards the horizon. Helix considered asking him to wait up, but ultimately decided to let him go. He needed to realize that he wouldn't be able to solve this with brute force.
But soon, brute force would be exactly what the Heran would need... and desperately.
The combined weight of Helix and Yan on the back of the tiny winged dragon meant that the time that elapsed between Akun's exit and their reunion was even greater than was to be expected. Even the short five minute gap would prove disastrous for the boisterous Heran.
Blasting forwards towards the source of the crystal, Akun had forgotten all about his comrades that needed healing. They could wait. What couldn't wait was the massive seal encompassing the entirety of HFIL… If the warrior played a large enough role in it's destruction, the ogres would owe him quite a few favors. And in a bureaucracy like the underworld, favors could get you far.
It wasn't long into his flight that Akun immediately realized something was wrong. The sky around him had gotten even darker, which was to be expected as he moved further from the light and deeper into the umbrella of crystal. But the aura around him had changed too. Now the Heran was approaching the mountainous region of west hell, an area rarely explored by him or any other vaguely social member of the afterlife. Only hermits lived in these cliffs, and there was a strange eeriness in the silence.
A single word could bounce from mountain to mountain for hours, and the echoes could bring a tortured soul like Akun to insanity. But even beyond the looming darkness, and the simple eeriness of the terrain, something further nagged at the warrior's psyche. Something… Was coming.
Immediately, Akun's ki sense sprang alive, but it was too late. The heran took a heavy blow to the side of the head from a massive creature who had appeared out of seemingly nowhere.
"GRAH!" bellowed Rombo with a sadistic chuckle, smashing the side of Akun's skull and sending him hurtling straight towards the earth below faster then a bullet. Sure, the porunga-esque mutant had only been instructed to capture the dragon caste named Helix from the tournament, but this whelp of a Heran was trodding just a few steps too close to the King's base of operations.
Akun grunted in pain as he was rocketed straight downwards into a pile of rubble, immediately getting back to his feet, relatively uninjured but filled with sudden rage. The Heran's nostrils flared as he threw his fists out to his sides, causing an explosion of aura to burst from his body. Hurt his pride once, and he would search for revenge. But hurt his pride twice… And the nearest possible receptacle for his rage would be beaten to a pulp.
"You fucked up." Grunted the Heran under his breath, before suddenly disappearing into thin air. Almost instantly, the warrior would appear behind the bulky draconic namekian in a whir of wind and deliver a powerful two handed downward fist to his back. Akun hoped to do with his attack what the dragon had just done to him. Slam him into the ground.
The massive beast cried out in gargled agony, meteoring towards the earth and colliding like a bowling ball, sending ripples of cracked stone into the air all around him. "What do you want from me?" Shouted the Heran to monster buried in the crater he had just created, "Are you the one doing this?" Something about the situation told Akun that this brute of a namekian was not the conjurer of such powerful magic.
"Good question," the response was hissed right over Akun's shoulder, and the Heran whipped around to face the new adversary, a muscular but far more namekian figure, lean in build with three pupils in his right eye. "Too bad you won't live to hear the answer." With that, Bazooka flashed a sharp toothed smirk and suddenly transformed his eyeball into a gatling gun.
As each of the three pupils rotated in a triangle shape, they blasted out a short but explosive beam of purple energy, seemingly thin and feeble but creating massive domes of energy at their points of impact. Akun was fast enough to dodge the first couple, shifting to the left and then blasting straight towards the ground at maximum speed.
When Helix and Yan finally caught up to the headstrong Akun, it had been five minutes at least. They were making better time than they had hoped, but nowhere near fast enough to save him entirely from his retribution.
"Do you see anything, Mr Crust?" asked Yan eagerly, tracing the horizon with his eyes. Helix hadn't seen anything, but he had felt something. The presence of soul energy in the air was blackening, which meant they were getting close.
"I hope Akun hasn't run into any trou-" Just as Helix began to speak softly, almost to himself, he had been startled mid sentence. Ears twitching, the auditory hypersensitive namek was startled by something off in the distance. "I think I just heard…" Helix's eyes shut as he attempted to hone in on the noise, or on a soul signature. "I think I just heard Akun shouting."
Yan turned around on Gadreel's back, and looked at Helix with shock. "What happened!? Is he breaking the spell then?" The boy stuttered out his words in his typical singsong childish slur, but was clearly tense.
Helix shook his head, and put a finger over his mouth as if to hush the child. "I- I can't quite tell…" Helix rubbed his temples, furrowing his brow and trying to discern the noise, "But I think it came from that direction," confirmed the namekian, pointing off further into the depths of the black sky. Yan nodded, and just as he was about to reply, Helix's eyes shot open. "We're close! Too close, we need to get down, fast!"
Suddenly the energy signatures of the adversaries had become incredibly clear. There were two opposing forces to Akun, each one with a significant level of power which was rapidly fluctuating up and down, rendering Helix unable to get a firm grasp on their strength. Yan grabbed onto Gadreel's back tightly as the dragon lurched downwards, taking to the ground just as blasts of Ki lit up the sky where they had formerly been.
"What's going on," whimpered the ogre child in a whisper, looking around for signs of the enemies. Just as he asked the question, Helix silently motioned towards the sky, and witnessed blasts of purple energy erupting down from the sky as Akun was chased across the planes of Hell. Firing them was…
No, could it be?
A namekian! Helix's eyes widened, and he almost stood up right there and then to go talk to the fellow namek. Helix's entire journey to hell had been centered around finding and communicating with other namekians! But as the prophet noticed, so did Yan, who wisely grabbed Helix's arm, reminding him of the situation at hand. Although Helix wanted desperately to talk to these kinsmen, he had to remember the issue at hand. They were evidently trying to destroy Akun, and likely were doing so for the purpose of defending the Black Sky.
Helix bit his lower lip and hummed in a sigh under his breath, before nodding his head solemnly. "We have to help him, immediately. But I don't… I don't want excessive violence." The prophet was conflicted. How could he help is ally without hurting his fellow namekians? But as Helix was in the midst of an internal conflict, the young ogre saw an opportunity to be useful, and eagerly tapped on Helix's arm.
Holding up a small wooden whistle, Yan grinned at the prophet. "This is a special regulation ogre whistle for keeping order… It can only be used three times, and I've already used it once… But I think we could help Akun if we used it right now!"
Helix immediately broke into a grin and ruffled the youngster's hair affectionately. "Perfect, that's marvelous!" He almost shouted, but remembered their requirement of stealth. The prophet hushed his voice significantly before instructing the ogre. Pointing with his finger to a cliff top above the current battleground, Helix looked Yan in the eye. "Do you see that cliff?" the boy nodded. "That's where you're going to blow the whistle from, and then you can retreat quickly." The mystic was desperately trying to minimize the risk of harm for the child.
"I'll fly in on Gadreel and then jump off, and try to freeze that namekian in his tracks. I'll signal you, and you blow the whistle, and then Akun can turn the tides. Alright?" Helix looked at the nodding ogre boy, almost regretful to instill such a responsibility on the child, but… That was why Yan was with him in the first place, to learn and grow… Although the prophet respected that, he felt a sharp twinge of fear and affection for the child. "Be careful."
As the boy scurried off carefully and stealthy down the side of the hill, Helix mounted Gadreel and gave the dragon an affectionate rub on the neck. "Let's hope this works."
As the comet of a Heran blasted along the ground, explosions of purple ki sprung up behind him at every turn. Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks as his earlier adversary burst out from the earth and pulled back his right fist heavily, slamming an open palm into Akun's face and thrashing his skull into the ground.
The Heran's hands immediately clawed at Rombo's much larger arm, but he was entirely ineffective when faced with the mighty inertia of the hulking brute. The monster lifted Akun from the ground by the skull, his meaty hand encompassing the Heran's head entirely. Swinging back his arm and then hurling it forwards, the rubble coated warrior was catapulted up towards Rombo's comrade in the sky.
Bazooka hissed with delight, and his right eye flashed, sending a rapid fire three bolts of thin ki towards the incoming body hoping to obliterate the issue in it's entirety. But just as the beams of energy were about to impact Akun's helpless corpse, a piercing whistle shattered the eardrums of both namekians and stopped the ki streaks in mid air.
Standing on a nearby ledge was none other than the oni toddler himself, Yan! In his hand was a magical ogre whistle, evidently with the ability to freeze ki blasts in mid air. "Now Mr. Crust!" Shouted the child excitedly.
Suddenly swooping from the black shrouded sky was Gadreel the dragon mounted by Helix Crust. The namekian threw his hands forwards, leaping off of his companion's back and flying through the air towards the paralyzed Bazooka. With bright white energy formed in the palms of his hands, Helix released a burst of light at the dark namekian.
Akun took any chance he could for an advantage in this fight, and within an instant he had reengaged with Rombo, now battling the colossuses blow for blow. Each seemingly weak and short punch from the much smaller fighter caused a crack of thunder and considerable strain to counter for the namekian monster. The heran's signature left-left-right hook had Rombo on the defensive, as his massive arms easily blocked the first two blows but left his stomach open for the third.
As the beast was being tossed around like a rag doll, Helix had skillfully conjured wind to facilitate his airborne advances on the smaller villain. As the mystic held out his flash of white energy, each second of exposure added another layer of frost to the coating surrounding Bazooka. However, within moments the games were done, and with a single flex of his muscles the ice surrounding the namekian warrior shattered.
"Nice try, fuckass," snarled the dark namekian, "But it's not going to be that easy. Not by a long shot." With that, Bazooka flashed his teeth and slammed a fist into Helix's gut, causing green blood to spew from his lips all over the mazoku's cloak. "You're fucking lucky the King wants you alive," continued Bazooka, delivering two quick but powerful punches across Helix's jaw. "Because if he didn't," the brutal admiral grinned, finishing off his punches and yanking the dragon caste by the throat, whose eyes had completely glossed over in pain, "You'd be a splatter of Asijja-plasm on the side of this mountain."
Staked firmly into the ground inside the now abandoned black crag was the staff of the apprentice magician, Fiddle. Constantly emanating from it's dragon toothed mouth was a beam of purple energy, which formed a stark angle directly into the ground. Where the beam of light touched the rock floor, a holographic projection of a particular namekian was in constant view.
King Didger stood, in all his glory, staring at the moving image of Helix Crust. He clenched his fist, and his namekian ears shifted slightly at the sound of the howling wind outside. Although Didger had begun and provided most of the magical energy for the sealing spell of Hell, Fiddle was able to maintain and direct the storm… For now.
Helix took blow after blow from the spitefully vicious Bazooka, and Didger growled slightly under his breath, the slightest noise from his mouth shaking the entire main cavern of the mountain. Drops of condensation began to fall from the ceiling in a rapid drizzle, but the purple image of the namekian prophet was undiluted.
There was no almost reason to keep this cheap mystic around. The King had witnessed the full extent of his magic just a few moments earlier, and it was hardly impressive. Although the dragon caste likely had more in him when pushed to the brink, it was no power that Didger couldn't obtain just as easily through other means, which were quickly becoming accessible.
But still. Didger would be gentle with that Helix Crust, for now. But if he was resistant much longer… the king would snap him like a twig. First though, it remained to be seen: would the wimpish mystic survive an encounter with a seasoned dark namekian like Bazooka?
As Helix's corpse was tossed around further by the sadistic mazoku, Akun was preoccupied in his own battle. By this point, Rombo was off balance and taking blow after blow from the vicious Heran. Although he had required assistance, he was making a comeback, and would not allow another disrespect of his pride. Each kick knocked the porugnian mutant further back before finally Akun threw his open palm back, forming an orb of yellow ki in his hand and thrusting it forwards, intimating a massive crater inducing explosion.
Rombo was blasted back, with the right half of his colossal body smoking with a gaping hole. "G-Grah… You… Little…" The porungian beast groaned in pain, barely able to contain his agony before suddenly writhing and shouting out loud, sending a shockwave out around him as his body began to pulse with green ooze. Blasting out from the hole in the side of the namekian's torso came new formed muscle, heavy flesh viciously forming tendrils into the shape of the mutant's right shoulder and arm.
The new muscle was fresh and embedded with cruel power, but Rombo was clearly weakened. Akun smirked slightly; he had the advantage.
As Akun was waging a new war upon Rombo, Helix was about to turn the tides against Bazooka.
"P-Please," stuttered the somewhat battered dragon caste when he finally kicked away from the brutal blows of the dark namekian, "Can we talk for a second?" Helix was desperate to reason with his fellow brothers, but Bazooka's pompous chuckle put down any ideas of reconciliation. The dark namek reeled back an arm and formed a small orb of flaming vicious ki in his palm before swiping forwards.
Helix immediately teleported out of the way, his body vanishing in a burst of wind, but the blast continued on. As Bazooka tossed it, he swiped his arm in an arc which sent the energy flying forwards in the shape of a slash. The sharp blade of magical ki sliced forwards at blinding speeds and immediately decapitated a nearby mountain effortlessly. Bazooka smirked with a deadly amusement. "Well then, looks like i've revealed my special technique…" He grinned and chuckled to himself darkly as he threw both arms into the air, ready to strike. "Now is the time to end you."
Immediately, a barrage of razor sharp ki blades went raining down on the prophet. While Helix was able to teleport out of the way of the first few, he couldn't muster up enough magical energy to continuously blink around like that, and was forced to resort to conventional dodging. Ducking and weaving through the rocks on foot, the planes of Hell were sliced to bits by the magical onslaught. As a purple blade narrowly missed his shoulder, the prophet suddenly realized his peril and kicked forwards, unleashing a torrent of telekinetically generated wind behind him, hoping to dilute the cutting power of the blades.
Little did the mystic know, a far more sinister presence had taken to the scene. After Yan had unleashed the blow of his mighty ogre whistle, he had sprinted down the side of the cliff and ducked for cover, watching as the fantastic battles of his elder comrades waged on. But suddenly, the boy had realized… Where was Gadreel? Scanning the landscape for his dragon companion, the ogre child became more and more worried.
"Gadreel?" called out the boy timidly, "Are you there?" Wondering further and further away from the fight, the child was convinced that he heard the calls of his dragon off in the distance. Eventually, the child had toddled off to the point where the fight behind him was barely even audible, deep in a particular trench of Hell. "Gadreel?" The whimpers of the dragon were getting louder. "Gadreel where are y—" Suddenly, the boy's sentence was cut short as a massive armored hand appeared out of thin air and grabbed him by the collar, lifting him into the air.
The arm would've been considered giant to any regular ogre, but for the tiny child, it was colossal. He struggled urgently, in extreme panic at his sudden apprehension, before he looked up and took in the full terrifying splendor of his kidnapper. Armored in gleaming gold and sinister maroon was a massive namekian with a mane of artificial white hair bursting from his armor. The colossal namekian slowly looked down at the squirming boy and allowed the slightest hint of a smirk to gross his massive lips, bearing his sharply bladed teeth. The god's yellow eyes narrowed ever so slightly with determination.
"You travel with notable company," boomed the namekian, both audibly in a powerful bass and telepathically, shaking the child's very thoughts, "I wonder… Why they keep you around..?" The King looked down at the boy and threw him forwards mightily, but the child slammed into a telekinetic wall of the god's own creation before he could get two feet away, prompting a cry of pain as he fell to the ground.
Yan whimpered loudly before shouting out as loudly as he could, hoping to attract the attention of Mr. Crust, but unfortunately, it would do him no good. Immediately as the boy shouted out, white lines of energy formed around the child, creating a magical echo chamber which simply turned his shout into physical energy, shaking the boy with pain to his very core. Yan collapsed on the ground and looked up with tears in his eyes at his captor. "W-Who… What are you doing to me?" For the first time in years the boy's eyes were filled with helpless tears.
"I am Didger," the King's voice caused cracks in the landscape around him to physically form, and rocks levitated into the air slightly. "King of this Black Sky, and all of Hell!"
Looking around frantically for any way out of this certain death, Yan knew that even his whistle would be of no use against an unholy mystic of this power. The boy stood up from his broken position on all fours, but gazing up at the ten foot tall namekian, he knew there was no escape. Akun's words haunted the child. Didger was the one sealing off Hell, and there was no way Yan would be able to do a single thing to stop him. "P-Please," begged Yan, eyes filled with tears, "Please let me go!"
The King's gaze turned cold as he considered ending the existence of the child right then and there. But that would be rather inappropriate, especially before he had gotten what he wanted from the child. "You're going to help me," the King's cold but full voice echoed into incomprehensibility in the mind of the child, "You will lead me to the Ensenji, Ogre." With every moment that the god tortured the boy, the black sky crept forwards and forwards off into the horizon, and the scene became darker and darker.
Yan's eyes glossed over with fear and regret. Somehow, his entire body had been filled with lead, and turned into pure terror. But he could never lead such a horrifying monstrosity to a massive source of power like that… He could never, as an ogre, betray his people like that…
The ogre child, at age 6, had accepted his mortality, and was ready to die for his duty. In the boy's final cry for help, he unleashed one last scream into the sky, which the King didn't act fast enough to suppress: "GAAADREEL!"
That was the last straw. Didger immediately lifted the child up into the air telekinetically and threw back his arm, about to snap the ogre's neck in one fluid motion. But just as the King was about to end Yan's life, he suddenly felt sharp teeth cradle his bicep. Instantly, Gadreel chomped down on Didger's arm, causing Yan to drop from the telekinetic control and scramble for his life.
The King was not amused. Viciously, he grabbed the dragon with his free arm by the head and hurled it downwards, thrashing it face first into the ground with all the force he could muster. The creature's bones surely shattered, and it let out a final whimper of agony, before fading into silence.
Throwing his armored hand forwards, Didger's yellow eyes widened with rage. "You are mine now." He boomed, a powerful black ki surrounding the boy and forming into a dark aura. "Kill your friends."
The dark aura crept further and further into Yan's soul, turning his eyes purple and causing the energy to burst outwards, consuming him entirely in a primal scream, overlaid infinite times over itself to form a haunting echo. But the child's transformation was not complete. With a flick of his wrist, Didger activated further magic, and the tiny ogre child began to grow. Bursting out of his clothes, the blue ogre's muscle consumed him, and his hight increased exponentially. Even at every reasonable stopping point, the child continued to grow and grow into a disproportionately massive beast of an ogre. His teeth sharpened, his horns lengthened into terrifying blades, and his hair grew down to his now skyscraper sized shoulders.
Yan had become a beast
Helix looked on with regret at what he had done. What was once a perfectly intelligent, if corrupted namekian, was now a frog in a jar hanging from the mystic's pocket. Although Helix had tried for so long and so hard to reason with the namekian, he was simply too enraged to have a conversation with, and was deadly intent on ending Helix's afterlife. After dodging his deadly slicing attacks for several minutes, the prophet had finally gathered enough magical energy to fire a transformation spell, turning the vicious admiral into a helpless namekian frog. Carefully caging the creature in a magical jar, Helix had suddenly realized that his comrades were completely missing.
The prophet had been so caught up in his own attempts at reconciliation with the enemy that he had completely failed to notice the disappearance of Yan and Akun. As Helix wiggled his ears, listening for signs of their battles, Bazooka jumped around frantically in Helix's jar, as if he knew something the prophet didn't. Looking up at the sky, Helix immediately understood what the former dark namek was so concerned about.
Didger had decided to use the ogre to test just how powerful Helix's magic really ran. The dragon caste's near effortless magical overpowering of Bazooka was incredible to say the least… And the King had sparked a new interest in the prophet's abilities. Helix narrowly leapt out of the way of the massive blue foot, ducking and rolling before being flung into the air by the sheer force of the colossal stomp. The namekian landed on his feet, sliding backwards with dust flying into the air around him. That couldn't be… Yan?
Meanwhile, Didger was watching from afar, high in the sky as the prophet immediately accepted this mountain to climb. It seemed as though the dragon caste had suddenly cultivated a powerful will, and became determined to stop the rampaging ogre.
Massive fists began to furiously pound the ground as Yan's pupilless eyes opened wide with rage. The unadulterated power of the ogre monster had enough force to shake the realm of Hell on its own. There was no way Helix would beat this kind of force head on. The prophet nimbly teleported to a cliff, roughly a sixteenth of a mile away but elevated to eye level with the colossal creature.
The deeply ingrained black markings on the prophet's forehead began to glow white with anticipation, and the namekian delved into the mind of the child, pushing deep inside. Yan's familiar soul presence left an evident stench on everything in the mental plane, but the tiny child was surrounded by thick jungle and underbrush, constantly moving and breathing as if the vines were snakes and the leaves were bugs. The abstract psychic plane was clouded and dense, but Helix felt his telepathy having sway over the realm. His only chance would be to push with all of his might, compressing the jungle back in one fell blast of pressure.
Helix prepared to rid the child of his mental gunk, but paused for a moment. What if a push like this cracked the gentle psyche of the boy? The thought terrified Helix into paralysis. If he was responsible for the destruction of Yan's mind, he would never forgive himself, in life or in death. The prophet's hands clenched and he began wringing his knuckles frantically, losing his focus on the ogre's mind momentarily.
In that moment, the creature leapt forwards in a fit of rage and brought down its massive fist on the cliff the prophet was perched upon, causing the mountain to shatter into giant fragments of rock. There was no longer any time for contemplation: This was Helix's only chance, it was do or die! And so, as the prophet leapt into the air alongside the giant mountain rubble, he pushed deep back into the mind of the beast and tore through the vines surrounding the child's psyche, ripping them out like knotted hair.
In that moment, the creature began to scream in pain. The Helix was unable to teleport while focused on the mind of the boy, and narrowly avoided being crushed by rubble as he tumbled to the ground. But his efforts had been rewarded. Once again, Yan narrowly missed death as his body suddenly began to disintegrate around him, atrophying the massive muscles grotesquely the ogre stood naked, three feet tall once more, and fell to the ground.
Filled with relief, Helix ran over to the child and lifted him in his arms, hugging Yan close to his chest with paternal care. He would never let the boy be in danger like that again… Never again… Instantly, the prophet realized something felt different. As if a weight that had previously been hanging from his body had disappeared. The namekians hand shot to his waist only to find that the jar containing Bazooka had disappeared entirely. It had likely shattered in the fall, and now the dark warrior was at large once more.
But none of that mattered. Bazooka was free, Akun was missing, but for one pristine moment, all that mattered was Helix holding Yan close to his chest and hugging the limp boy tightly, letting pink energy wash over his body to restore him.
If the ogre could survive, everything would be okay.
But there would be no such luck for the grieving prophet. Although Yan appeared to be healing at an average rate, a sudden shift in the atmosphere would indicate that new trouble was just on the horizon.
While Helix enveloped the tiny ogre in pink light, the silhouette of a brutal draconic namekian appeared on the horizon, and stepped into the light, holding a corpse. Revealing himself was none other than Rombo, Didger's brutal henchman, having defeated his opponent. In the right palm of the mutant's hand was Akun's skull, with the rest of his body hanging out and dragging on the ground. The Heran didn't appear to be dead yet, but he was close enough.
"Bazooka may have fucked up," growled the creature in a deep bass, "But I won't be a failure like he was." The porungian mazoku hurled Akun's body towards Helix by the head, which the prophet caught with a lurch and gently lowered onto the ground. Helix's eyes shot up and locked with the dark namekian's, filled with fear.
Suddenly, the brute burst into action! "I'LL SHOW HIM!"
Within an instant, the bulky looking namekian had appeared in front of Helix and lifted a powerful fist into the air. Helix just barely managed to duck to the side as the fist, the size of the prophet's entire upper torso, slammed into the ground sending cracks outwards in a flaring perimeter.
"P-Please!" Lamented Helix with a shout, "Let's talk about this! We don't have to be enemies!" But the prophet's words of peace fell on deaf ears as the brute continued to launch blow after blow at the nimble elder.
Helix may have been a pacifist, but he was no fool. As he dodged blow after blow from Didger's enraged minion, he began to form an orb of pure pink mystic energy in his palm. Rombo was far too caught up in his own motivations to keep an eye on the dragon caste's plot, and soon it paid off.
Releasing all of the energy in one final burst, Helix pitched the orb of pink healing life force at the unconscious heran lying some six meters away. Rombo moved to deflect the burst, having assessed it's value, but he was too late. The restorative life force clashed into the incapacitated warrior, and encompassed his body immediately in a fine coating of warm strength.
Akun's eyes took less than thirty seconds to shoot open. Rombo looked on in fear. He had just won a hard fought battle, and been worn down to the bone. The mazoku knew he could take a runt like Helix, but he had already been forced to regenerate twice in the fight against the heran warrior. He couldn't survive another fight with him—
Just as the draconic namekian began to fill his heart fill with fear, he suddenly found his stomach filled with a fist. Lurching backwards, Rombo's pot belly had been smashed in completely by an instantaneous and powerful blow from the newly revived Akun.
The heran was smoking with pink energy, and suddenly his skin had flared to a sharp green. What had used to be a teal was now a piercing emerald, and his formerly orange hair had exploded into an even more menacing crimson. There was no room for flashiness in this transformation. As soon as it had been revealed, the warrior moved into another powerful blow, leaving no observers any room to digest the drastic increase in power.
Joining both hands above his head, Akun moved faster than the eye could detect, suddenly appearing above Rombo and smashing his brain in with a final downwards blow. The namekian mutant's thick bestial skull exploded in a gush of green, and the headless beast lumbered to his knees and collapsed on the ground.
The brutality of the Heran forced Helix to look away in shame and disgust. He had saved Yan, and himself, but at what cost? To see a brother of his, even a mutant bent on destruction, completely pulverized… It was sickening.
Akun's brutal assault on Rombo had unfortunately served to distract Helix from the true looming danger. The prophet suddenly dropped to his knees, overwhelmed by a dark psychic force. When he looked up, he was faced with the most terrifying sight of his life and death.
Hovering just a few feet away was the lord of the dark namekians, the bane of Hell, King Didger. Helix's entire spirit was crushed with the overwhelming force of the origin of all the shadows. Immediately after looking upon him, Helix knew that this namekian god was the creator of the darkness. "W-Who…" Helix gasped, his vision completely distorted by the psychic energy of his adversary, "Who are you?"
Helix's terror prompted a mighty booming laugh from the now power intoxicated King, who instantly appeared in front of Helix and smashed a foot down on his face, bashing the dragon caste's skull into the ground. "I am your King, namekian," spoke the voice, the echoes stunning Akun into silence and reverberating into agony in Helix's mind, "And you will beg for my mercy."
Didger's foot would suddenly smash onto empty ground as Helix teleported out of the path of the King, and appeared behind him, determined to fight him magically. "You're the one doing this then…" murmured Helix, his brain suddenly flooding with memories from Grand Elder Nai. Upon seeing the face of the King, he suddenly realized the full extent of Didger's abhorrence.
Didger was responsible for it all. The lack of namekians in heaven. The emptiness of west Hell. Didger had swept over the namekian souls in the afterlife one by one, forcefully absorbing them and conglomerating himself into a monster of a god. Didger was the culmination of the spirit of pure evil combined with the ultimate namekian. He was a Super Demon Namek.
The white mane of hair pluming from the namekian's armor whistled in the wind of the dark spell, still emanating from the horizon. "I am born of your brothers. This armor is crafted from the bones of arcose, this mane is woven from the skulls of Kaioshin." The King boomed out with wicked cruelty, seemingly complacent in his victory. "And now, you will be added to my list of slaves."
Didger suddenly appeared in front of Helix, his massive fist landing deep in the prophet's gut. "FUSE WITH ME, WORM," shouted the god suddenly, his voice exploding the land around them into the air, fragmenting the air itself, "OR FACE AN ETERNITY IN MY CRYSTAL."
Helix coughed up blood all over the namekians arm as he took the blow, evidently broken physically, but not mentally. The powerful boom of Didger's voice was enough to destroy all semblance of sanity in the namekian's mind, but remaining, unbreakable, was his resolve of spirit. He refused to speak. Even as the King's hand forced itself on his chest, the god's fingers wrapping around either side of Helix's neck in preparation for fusion. Helix stayed silent, shut his eyes and prepared to teleport far far away, to run for his life, to bring the ogres. This had all been a mistake. He should have gotten help, he shouldn't have risked Yan, and he shouldn't have—
Didger's skull cracked to the side, his body following the momentum of his his head as Akun's foot slammed into it, punting the namekian god across the landscape and smashing him firmly into a mountain of rock, causing it to collapse in on him. The Heran immediately grabbed Helix and steadied him.
"You good?" asked the warrior shortly, knowing he could trust an honest reply from the namekian. Helix staggered for a bit but held on tight to the Heran, and soon his elastic stomach had reformed where the indent had been lain from the King's fist. "Y-Yeah," Helix replied with conviction, looking up and locking eyes with his partner. "I don't know if that was a sneak attack or what, but," the prophet let out a slight smile of hope. "I have a feeling this guy isn't as strong as he comes off."
Just then, an explosion of green burst forwards from the pile of rubble that was formerly the mountain, and locked fists with Akun. Both thew an instantaneous punch, and Akun's much smaller fist sent out a shockwave as it collided with Didger's. The heran flashed a brief grin. "Yep."
Although the King was much more powerful physically and magically, Akun's new form was far faster than the bulky god, and he knew it. Soon, the King was overwhelmed in a flurry of green blows, one after another, smashing Didger back. Delivering a powerful kick, Akun bashed Didger far off on the horizon, and grabbed Helix by the back of his tunic, chasing after him and delivering a series of blows, each one blasting a shockwave outwards and knocking the King further back to the source of the dark energy.
With every blow from the transformed Heran, Helix would release a burst of light energy, blinding the King and leaving him unable to counter the brutal pummeling. The Heran was covering ground quickly, and Didger was clearly on the defensive, and unable to do much about it besides occasionally dodge or divert a blow.
Soon enough, the combat had brought the adversaries close to the largest mountain both Akun and Helix had ever seen. And sure enough, at the peak of the mountain was a powerful purple energy source, black wind whipping out in all directions and overwhelming everyone within range with malevolent aura.
The black wind suddenly brushing past him was enough to take Akun off guard for a brief second, and that was all that the King needed. As the emerald Heran threw his sloppy kick, Didger suddenly swept to the side and caught the quick warrior's leg, whipping him downwards aggressively with an enraged dictation. "Enough."
Just those words were enough to send a shockwave of magical energy outwards, blasting Helix's mind into a frenzy of psychic defense. Suddenly, the sky released a shrill shriek of a lock, as if it had heard Didger's command and was sealing itself off and stopping its progress, hardening into a powerful wall.
"Fiddle," commanded the god, his yellow eyes narrow speaking only at a murmur, yet somehow loud enough to rattle the eardrums of the writhing Heran below, "Take care of them, now."
No longer casting the spell above, the wind had stopped and out of thin air appeared a dastardly silhouette. Suddenly levitating next to didger was a skeletally thin namekian with a sharp forehead fin, holding a draconic staff. "You boys are due for a beating," croaked Fiddle, descending to the ground with a grin.
The King was clearly damaged in pride, having been put on the defensive by a weak Heran and Dragon Caste, and clenched his fists in rage at having to enlist his pathetic apprentice to take care of the two whelps. But soon, the joke would be on them. Didger's massive body instantly burst into purple lightning, and wickedly cackled off onto the horizon, headed to some unknown point.
Obviously the King's retreat didn't escape Helix's perception, but he suddenly had a much more dire issue to take care of. Standing in the middle of the rocky field was a cackling Fiddle, his head down but a wicked grin visible on his lips, his staff poised and thick grey mist pouring out around him in the fashion of a typical mazoku mystic.
Akun scoffed. "You'll go quicker than the last one," the Heran taunted the demon namek, and suddenly allowed his green aura to burst into full flare. Within a blink of an eye, Akun had surmounted the gap between him and his opponent, and delivered a powerful kick to the jaw, causing Fiddle to skid back across the rocky plains.
"Bad moves!" giggled the dark mystic, physically twisting his head back into place with a vile cracking noise, "You're going to regret it." Fiddle suddenly thrust his staff forwards, and from it's mouth came incredible purple lightning, tearing up the ground in front of him and barely giving the dragon caste time to leap out of the way.
What came next was much worse. From the newly carved crevices in the ground emerged steel arms, frantically clawing at the earth and lifting themselves up. Emerging from the lightning scars were terrifying creatures, glistening wickedly in the low light of the battleground. Each one eventually stretched itself to it's full hight in a uniform cluster, and revealed their true extent.
Silver namekians had been ripped from the rocks of Hell! Each one was muscular but lean, seven feet tall and possessing draconic wings. Fiddle couldn't help but cackle quietly before he shouted out viscously. "Kill!"
Helix was completely overtaken with shock as to what these creatures could be, and of the incredible dark magic his opponent must've possessed. Akun was far more concerned with not getting his ass kicked.
All of the silver demons rushed at once, leaving no time for strategizing. Akun immediately refreshed his incredible transformed aura, shouting loudly as his mane flared a fiery red. The first metal monster came to his left with a slash of the claw, which the Heran warrior was narrowly able to dodge.
These creatures were faster than they appeared. Sidestepping the swipe, Akun grabbed onto the demon's arm and batted away an incoming monster, sending them both flying off with a satisfying metal clank. Just as the Heran finished launching away two of the creatures came two more, one grabbing him by the left arm and the other by the right, both stretching him out and pulling on either end, digging their steel claws into his forearms.
As the two monsters held Akun in place, a third dashed forwards, streaking towards him on spread wings. The silver namekian's outstretched arms reached out towards the Heran, feverish to rip him open; Akun abruptly kicked both feet into the air and wrapped his legs around the approaching demon, flipping backwards while still being held on either side and slamming the offensive creature into the ground head first.
Shifting his grip, it was now the Heran who was holding onto both of the silver demons, and he lifted his arms up into the air with a flare of powerful aura, smashing the two together above his head and then bringing down their bodies upon another approaching adversary. Leaping into the air, Akun now found himself standing above a pile of writhing metal monsters and lifted his arms up above his head.
Between his palms, a powerful yellow orb began to form, growing in size with every moment until… A claw tore past his face, narrowly missing his throat and slicing his cheek open. Furiously, Akun turned to the new steel demon and pulled the orb down from above him to his side, hurling it forwards at the creature and vaporizing the very life out of it's body, leaving only an empty husk of metal.
While Akun's speed was doing him well in the battle with the silver namekians, Helix was engaged in a combat of his own with their creator, the black mystic Fiddle.
Although Helix was a capable mystic of great potential, it was hard to keep up with a trained fighter like Fiddle, and his lack of flight was a severe disadvantage. Although Helix tried to keep the fight on the ground, sooner or later the dark namekian was going to realize why Helix wasn't following him into the air and use it against him.
Fiddle leapt into the air with a gleeful shout and slashed his staff back and forth thrice. "Give up already!" chimed the demon happily, hoping in fact that Helix didn't give up, and provided a fun game of a fight. From the mouth of his dragon staff emerged three fireballs, furiously bolting through the air towards the prophet.
Helix reached his hands out and caught the fireballs in shrouds of telekinetic energy one after the other, before conglomerating them all in one orb and throwing it back at his adversary.
Fiddle giggled gleefully and merely swept his dragon rod across the front of his body, the mouth of the dragon re absorbing the fire it had just generated. "You're going to have to do better than that," teased Fiddle as he suddenly appeared behind Helix and swung his staff at his head like a bat. The prophet only barely ducked and managed to blast the dark namek back, and the black mystic would suddenly find himself covered in snakes from Helix's magic.
"If you don't make this more fun for me," warned Fiddle, "I might just make you fight more of my silver gargoyles. And you certainly wouldn't fare as well as your friend." As if on cue, Akun grunted as he took the blow from a steel warrior, and kicked it back, knocking over two of the creatures.
Although Helix was able to match his opponent blow for blow in the realm of magic, he was losing energy fast, and Fiddle evidently had far greater battle experience and stamina. A bolt of purple lightning scathed past the prophet, tearing open the side of his tunic, and although he caught and redirected the following strike, the sting of the lightning was enough to bring him to his knees.
Meanwhile, Akun was having his own problems. Although he had managed to stave off gargoyle after gargoyle, he hadn't had a chance to finish off any of them. These demons were not creatures that accepted defeat lying down, or were out of the fight after being knocked back just once. Soon, the army of silver monsters had become too much for him, and Akun was on the defensive, darting across the landscape between occasionally surprise kicks and bursts of ki to hold them back.
But even a supercharged Heran like Akun was bound to slip up. The emerald warrior fatefully failed to notice an approaching demon from behind, who suddenly grabbed the warrior by the neck and got him in a chokehold. Instantly, the Heran began pounding back against the incoming vultures with blasts of ki, but it was too late. One slipped through, and sliced out it's namekian claw, hoping to tear a delicious little rip in the red haired battler's stomach!
"TPHFWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The gargoyle's grip on Akun lessened, and he easily slipped out. The approaching silver demon continued forwards because of it's momentum, but it's body was now a lifeless husk, and the heran caught it by the head as it approached and collapsed into scrap metal.
Eyes that were formerly purple were now blank, and one after another the demons broke down into clanking piles of parts, their life forces completely removed.
Flying in from above was a worn out but valiant looking Gadreel, and on his back, a naked but proud Yan! "Hello!!!! I hope you are defeated now!" Shouted the boy down to the confused Fiddle, who's magic spell had fizzled out in his hands. The tiny child chucked his now useless whistle down as far as he could, and it clunked the dark mystic on the forehead comically.
There wasn't a moment to lose!
Immediately, Akun was in front of Fiddle and delivering blow after blow to his jaw grinning with vengeance, pounding back and forth with one fist after another. Helix stepped back and whipped his hands up in front of him in a diamond shape. "Akun! Watch out!"
"Ryabbitoho!" shouted Helix with immediate decision, doing anything to stop the brutal fate that Fiddle would likely be destined to if Akun continued his vicious beating. The beam emerged forwards from the prophet's diamond like an gliding bolt of lightning, and it only grew more potent as it picked up speed slowly. The green energy sparked through the dark mystic's body like a conductor, and suddenly, his limbs would shrivel and shrink, before his body followed suit, transforming the formerly fearsome magician into a mere namekian frog!
"Yan!" Helix shouted out with relief to the young boy as Gadreel landed and the child hopped off, sprinting into the embrace of the elderly namekian. Helix scooped up the boy and immediately waved his hand over the child's body, reclothing him with some simple garbs. "Thank Porunga you came when you did!" the prophet raved gratefully.
Akun landed next to the two, his ascended state fading into inactivity quietly as he gave the child a slight smile. "Saved my ass," grinned the normally stubborn warrior, now shaking the pebbles and debris from his long orange mane.
Helix set the boy down, who walked over to the absently croaking namekian frog, it's teal skin sticking out like a sore thumb against the red mountains of hell. "Poor fellow…" Lamented Yan quietly, and Helix nodded. "I… Can likely turn him back later. Let's just keep an eye on him for now."
At that very moment, the freshly transformed frog leapt comically up onto Yan's face, prompting a childish screech as the boy ran around in a circle before falling flat on his back. "Mr. Cruuuuuussst!"
Yanking the frog off with one hand, the prophet couldn't help but laugh as he dropped the creature to the side. "We're not in the clear yet though. Who knows how many more of these super mazoku there are… And Didger is still out there." Helix's voice was grave and the longer he spoke the more intense his speech became, as he walked over and allowed his pink healing energy to wash over Gadreel.
Suddenly, Fiddle croaked quite loudly, causing all of the members of the group to look over at the frog immediately. The little creature had hopped off just out of reach, but seemed quite scared—
The massive golden boot appeared from thin air, squishing the creature entirely. Fiddle squeaked weakly in agony as the life was forcefully squeezed from his body. After the boot materialized the rest of the killer, revealing a complete set of crimson and gold armor, and a beautiful mane of white hair, now stained with blood. Didger's sickly yellow eyes swelled with reptilian brutality, and his left hand clenched roughly around an object.
Immediately, Akun launched into a battle stance, his green aura flaring up as his body shifted to emerald and his hair burned a bright crimson. Helix conjured a staff out of thin air, and Yan frantically looked around on the ground for his lost whistle, knowing very well that it had reached the full extent of it's use. But surprisingly, there was no psychic attack, no instantaneous assault to be seen.
The King stood coldly at his gargantuan full hight, simply watching the ragtag group of Hell defenders squirm. And that was when he lifted it into the light. Raising his left arm, he revealed the ultimate weapon of the underworld. There was little light under the black sky, but the golden fruit glistened all on it's old. The legendary fruit of the Yemma tree, the Ensenji.
Helix's eyes widened in terror. He had used Ensenji bark to reconstruct a new body for a friend, and knew of the incredible mystical properties of it's fruit. Akun was far more disgusted then terrified.
"So this is your plan? Pillaging Hell like a scavenger?"
Didger completely ignored him and simply chuckled lowly, his booming voice sending chills down Helix's spine. "All of this… belongs to me now." The King couldn't help but bear his razor sharp teeth, "And you," he continued, looking at the prophet suddenly, "Will be a perfect final meal."
Akun burst forwards, reeling back a punch towards the super demon's head. At the last second, the Heran skillfully pivoted, attempting to snatch the fruit from the god's hand. But Didger was prepared. Immediately, Akun was snatched by the neck, and with a single flick of his wrist, the King send a searing pain through the warriors body, giving him whiplash. As Akun's body was tossed carelessly to the ground, he stood up and suddenly locked eyes with Didger, filled with resolve. "You aren't going to take Helix."
The Heran had lost too many friends in the past days to this monstrosity. He wasn't about to lose another. To Didger's surprise, Akun seemed completely unshaped by the cruel thrashing he had just taken.
Throwing a hand into the air, Helix pointed his open palm at Didger, who seemed to be taking his time and toying with his prey. Delving deep into the mind of the King, the mystic pushed against him with all of the psychic energy he could muster. But it was useless, the god had fortified his thoughts, sealing himself off into blind totalitarianism.
"Now," thundered Didger, "Meet your god."
The King lifted the golden fruit to his mouth, taking a bite out of it and completely pulping the fruit with his fingers, swallowing it whole. He gulped loudly, and for a moment it seemed as if nothing was going to happen... And then it did.
Over the course of a millisecond, the namekian god's muscles swelled grotesquely to the point of obscenity, before snapping back onto his frame as his eyes began to resonate with a glowing yellow light. Completely overtaken by the energy, the god opened his mouth and let loose a uncharacteristic shout, beams of light glowing and reverberating off of the nearby rocks until the formerly pitch black landscape had become fully illuminated by the echoes of his release. The god grew to even greater hights, pushing into the territory of ridiculousness as he towered over the two warriors and the whimpering child.
And that was when the onslaught began. With each punch, Didger's arm blasted forwards, moving so quickly that it became nothing more than a streak of light, extending all the way across the landscape with explosive force before snapping back elastically in the span of an instant. Firing off each punch like a gatling gun, the landscape erupted into shattered rock as the blasts of white energy tore through the air.
Helix immediately tried to leap out of the way but was hit several times in the span of a second, causing his body to contort, each blow leaving an indent of flesh before they all snapped back at once, sending writhing agony through his body.
Carefully scurrying out of the way and darting between floating chunks of rock, Yan barely managed to escape the first wave of destructive force.
Akun however, took a more conventional route; blasting out of the line of sight of the blows, Didger's enraged elastic blasts trailed the heran as he careened horizontally across the fields of hell. Wherever the warrior flew, the terrain behind him would burst into chunks of stone from the punches hot on his trail. The chase, however dangerous, gave Akun crucial knowledge. Didger had sacrificed his mind for power.
Soon, Didger ceased pummeling the landscape and allowed his fists to return to his sides. His eyes however, were still completely overcome with yellow light, and the same glow emanated from his mouth, drifting up like thick vapor whenever his mouth opened.
"Foolish…" Thundered the god incoherently, allowing his muscles to blast into full form for a brief moment before retracting them again," FOOLISH!"
By this time, the entire surrounding area had been reduced to a smoking wasteland, but Didger was far from done. Akun glanced over at Helix lying down on the ground. If the mazoku god noticed the mystic lying there, he would be pummeled into nonexistence, or worse, his soul would be permanently melded into the disgusting monster aggregate of the King himself.
Soon, the King's wicked eyes were surveying the land once more for victims of his new might. Akun needed to act fast… He needed to act now!
"You're not the only one who can eat Ensenji," bluffed Akun trying to suppress the anxiety in his tone. "I'm next."
The god lashed his head over to the Heran, eyes narrowed with furious rage. "You would not… Would not DARE!" On the last word, the air around Didger began to erupt into wicked black winds, coating the ravaged ground below in fourth dimensional black crystal. Akun's throat closed up. If he was taken in that crystal, he was fucking done for.
And then, Akun did the absolutely unthinkable for one of his culture, a completely dishonest and abhorrent act of prideless surrender.
He ran.
Didger rumbled in laughter as the blip of emerald light was effortlessly swatted from the air like a fly. Bearing the brunt of the blow in his shoulder, Akun was dunked straight down into the ground below. Of course he wasn't trying to actually get to the Ensenji fruit. That would be impossible. But what he desperately needed right now was to distract the King. Helix would find a way to pull through… He would have to.
But things were looking bleak. Immediately after smashing into the ground like a bowling ball, Akun found himself in the palm of Didger's hand, literally, as the god held him up, tossed him into the air, and slammed him back down into the ground with a fist as he fell.
"GRHNGh!" Akun couldn't help but let out a grunt as he was beaten senseless. The King could've neutralized him long ago by trapping him in crystal, or shattered his bones, torn his flesh into pieces. But still, he toyed with him. Lifting Akun off the ground, Didger reeled back his arm and hurled the battered Heran into the air, juggling him with a hefty uppercut as he fell back down, and launching him once more up into the atmosphere, causing him to splatter with the cold crystal sky.
But as Akun's body tumbled back down to earth, he suddenly turned around, pulling back his good arm and releasing a flash of light at his observing adversary. Quickly tumbling to the ground, Akun pulled back his arm behind his waist and clenched his fingers as if he was grabbing a ball. A vicious sporadic red aura began to blaze around his technique.
"F-Fuck…" Akun grinned slightly. "…You."
Dashing forward with his last ounce of strength, Akun moved with surprising speed and power. As his curled finger attack made contact with the King's armor… It pierced right through! Each finger punched a hole through his golden chest plate like paper, and the heran's hand continued on through the King's flesh effortlessly, reaching deep inside of his body!
And when Akun wrapped his fingers around it… He knew what he had to do. This was it. This was for his friends, this was for Helix, this was for dying for his cause instead of his pride.
The emerald forearm tore out of Didger's body, revealing semi digested golden pulp in the palm of his hand, beating like a heart. And Akun ate it like it was the last meat on earth.
Although he was still injured, and clearly broken both physically and emotionally, Akun afforded himself a cocky grin and a vicious glance at his adversary. "Game over."
Soon, the two were locking blows on even footing, even with Akun's incredible disadvantage. The two glistening green forces erupted with energy with each exchanged below. Sidestepping a kick, Didger whipped his elastic arm forewords, its mace-like forearm smashing through a mountain as Akun traded him for several shotgun kicks to the jaw.
The King caught the final leg and hurled Akun to the left mercilessly, but the Heran used the spacing to his own advantage, firing off a series of powerful red ki blasts at his foe, the hole in his chest still gaping.
Suddenly, there was symbiosis. For a single fleeting moment, the heran and the namekian were in perfect harmony, battling to their maximum potential, overwhelmed with hatred for each other but engaged in combat to the point of exhilaration. Was this what they wanted? A battle of battles?
The answer was decidedly 'no.'
As Akun ran in for a final blow on Didger's weak spot, he manifested an orb of red ki in his palm and thrust it forwards with all of his might. The heran's eyes flared with the final exertion of one determined for victory. But as Akun's palm thrust entered Didger's wound… It closed up around his fist, regenerated completely.
The King savored the look of absolute childish terror on the proud warrior's face. The image of the helpless heran would remain frozen in his memories for eternity. The hopeless eyes, the agony in his brow. It would be the last expression of his life.
In one brutal blow, Didger swept back his arm and delivered an a backhanded smash, knocking the heran away violently, with his arm still lodged in Didger's unmovable torso, tearing the emerald warrior in two.
The arm trapped in Didger's body faded to a weak teal, and the god ripped it out before appearing immediately behind the limping Akun. "Please, PLEASE DON'T—" but it was too late. Within the span of a second, Akun had been thrashed back and forth thrice with his own arm, before the king ruthlessly snapped it in half over his leg and flash stepped in front of his victim, slamming his open palm down on the heran's head and driving it into the ground, his massive fingers curling around his skull and squeezing ever so slightly before—
"Game…" …Crunch. "…Over."
Didger stood up. The silence on the plains was present now more than ever. His hand was completely drenched in the pulp of the fallen warrior's skull, and to add insult to injury, he released a wave of wicked winds from that same palm, washing over the land and perpetually burying the fallen heran under eternal black frost, never to be found or remembered.
There would be no miraculous victory. There would be no triumphant turnaround. It was over.
Looking down at the ravaged body buried below the semi translucent black crystal, Didger suddenly clenched his fist, and in one mighty punch, pounded down on the space-time glass, smashing his own creation and watching the cracks in the substance tear open the body below.
Having left one final token of his rage, Didger immediately evaporated into a feverish arc of black lightning, shifting up and to the left sporadically before careening off towards the Ensenji fruit once more.
Didger's armored feet touched ground, sending a slight rumble through the ground below, causing the teal grass to rustle out in ripples. He stood before the second Yemma tree in Hell, having already torn the fruit from the first, and gazed on in anticipation. The King was about to become so much more powerful. But… He could feel himself slipping, ever so slightly, as if he was watching his own actions from afar.
It was too late now to turn back. He had already eaten one of the Ensenji fruit and become a god. One more would push him past the realm of any adversary. One more and he could easily seal off hell without the help of any of his useless underlings.
But as the namekian god gazed at the massive tree, the sky in front of him suddenly became… Less dark? A crack began to form in the formerly impenetrable barrier of crystal, and light trickled in gloriously, shining a blade of heaven down into the plains of hell in front of the king.
Immediately, Didger paused, looking out at the crack with clenched fists. And within seconds, what had been a single crack exploded into a web of leaks.
And that was when the noise began. Erupting from what was previously almost a complete silence, indistinguishable shouts soon began to fill the air, growing into a massive uproar of clamor. Soon, individual distinguishable voices began to stick out, and silhouettes began to pour through the cracks, their shapes suddenly taking form and revealing… Ogres!
Dozens of ogres had begun to pour through the cracks, and they were only widening by the moment. Suddenly, musclebound red and blue Oni crashed down on all sides of the Yemma trees, and a powerful unexpected punch to the face knocked Didger's head peace off, causing his antennae armor to crash to the ground, bringing his mane of stolen kaioshin hair with it.
"No…" Didger mumbled, his eyes widened as his power numb brain tried to comprehend the situation, "How… NO!" With a single shout, Didger managed to blast back several of the ogres, and darted towards the Yemma tree, his hand reaching up for an Ensenji. But a powerful fist landed in the namekian's exposed stomach, sending him stumbling backwards before another massive blue kick knocked him in the skull, staggering the god a few more steps away.
The king boomed in rage, shouting out incoherently as he unleashed a burst of bludgeon strikes, his arms disappearing in streaks of light as he smashed back several of the oni in a 360 sphere radius around him. But it was nowhere near enough. What had been dozens of ogres had turned into hundreds, and the King was overwhelmed on all sides.
Any attempts at magic by the god were immediately stifled by powerful ogre antimagics, but his brute strength was significant enough to effortlessly swipe back the oncoming force. Crouching down before leaping up into the air, sending a shockwave out around him, Didger would soar into the sky and begin pounding at the ogres who followed him.
There was no turning around this situation. He would have to go back into hiding, to find entirely new allies… The King was ready to make his escape.
But there would be no such luck for the brutal demon namek. Suddenly, the cracks in his carefully constructed barrier began to swell into cavities, and then engorge into massive gaps.
As the god slaughtered ogre after ogre, he looked up at the growing light pouring into the underworld, watching his plan crumble. And standing at the crux of it, on the top of a nearby mountain covered almost entirely in light, was Helix Crust. The prophet had both hands pointed skyward, his energy absorbing the barrier of obsidian and bursting out cracks through the black ceiling every minute.
"You…" Didger projected his voice mentally into Helix's head, shaking his consciousness as the prophet stood, eyes locked on the god, "Worm."
The King blasted towards the prophet at top speed, soaring at the mystic ready to obliterate him in a single blow; his attack would prove far more difficult than he intended as a massive blue ogre leapt up from the ground below and delivered a powerful punch into Didger's neck, sending the god hurtling backwards.
Levitating in the air was a beautiful, masterfully sculpted blue ogre. And sitting on his shoulder… Was a delighted Yan! "Get him father! Punch him again!"
Meanwhile, Helix's magical might was only growing. But he couldn't reverse this entire barrier himself. He needed more power. Didger could only be held back for so long, and even the combined power of the ogres was doing little to delay him, let alone damage him.
Helix clenched his teeth, his eyes gazing out at the brutal namekian not fifty meters away. Each blow simply enraged the god further, but slowly his armor chipped away, revealing his true namekian form. His large thick antennae swayed slightly with each hit, his sickly yellow eyes, flashing occasionally with white energy, stared into the souls of the surrounding ogres.
The prophet felt the powerful burden of dark energy coursing through him as he rerouted and photosynthesized it, transforming the frozen sky into holy light. It wasn't going quickly enough, and Didger would soon be able to effortlessly wipe out everyone here. He needed to speed up this process, and quickly. He needed help, he needed a powerful mystic, he needed…
Grand Elder Nai!
In a brief moment that felt like an enternity, Helix's mind was inundated with the powerful presence of his former mentor, and he hallucinated the silhouette of the grand elder's smiling face in front of him. The gentle wrinkles of the grand elder manifested in front of Helix's very eyes, and Nai's benevolent smile spoke to him spiritually. "I'm here with you," smiled the elder, with the reassuring whisper that only a true leader can conjure, "my son."
It was in that moment that Helix's body suddenly began to swell. Age rapidly crept over Helix's bones, and his skin began to melt into wrinkles, folding over themselves and pouring out of him expansively as the namekian's elastic skin stretched to compensate for the weight of his new age. The wisdom of the grand elder began to suddenly flow over him, as if a dam had been opened in his mind, and he could feel his consciousness intermingling with his mentor's.
When the transformation was complete, what had once been a scrawny middle aged dragon caste had become a giant heavyset elder. Helix's eyes shut as the signature marking on his forehead gradiented into a bright white, his energy radiating out benevolently around him. The elder was no longer Helix Crust nor Nai. He was a some greater than his two parts.
Didger's sickly yellow eyes suddenly shot up from their positions locked on the furious ogres underneath him. The extreme magnitude of magical energy which had suddenly burst forth from Helix clearly was startling to him, but there was something even more deeply unsettling to the god.
The energy emanating from the fat namekian… Was absolutely unmistakably the aura of the young dragon caste, Nai, who had originally sealed Didger away. Could this namekian be the older version of that boy? Or a reincarnation?
Helix pushed his hands upwards once more, now exerting far more mystic force on the barrier. Cracks were completely gone, the wall was now completely inverting on itself, and slowly the dark matter began to swirl inwards like a vortex, centered on Helix's chubby upstretched palms.
Sensing the direness of the situation, Didger threw his palms down towards the ogres below and released a flash of black light. The blast of darkness overwhelmed the ogres below, vaporizing many on the spot. Yan's father tumbled down, narrowly avoiding the wave while Yan himself gazed up hopefully at Helix from the ground. "Mr. Crust! You can do it!"
Didger soon changed his target to Helix. If he couldn't have his way with Hell.. He would have his way with Nai…By freezing him in space time itself. Darkness began to swim around the hands of the armorless, ravaged namekian god. When he returned… He would release this dragon caste worm and absorb him, taking his power for himself.
Helix looked down from the incredible sinkhole swirling above him to see the black winds forming in Didger's palms, but it was too late. Everything began to move in slow motion as the King viciously thrust his hands forwards from his chest, sending streaks of black wind slicing across the sky.
The transformed prophet's formerly closed eyes suddenly opened wide, revealing pure white energy where his pupils would have been. The light flickered brilliantly as he watched the incoming wave of dark energy, knowing the wind to be the main vehicle of creation for the dark crystal.
Whipping through the air, the black wind approached Helix, closer and closer, but there was one thing that the god didn't know: Didger's own eyes had begun to glow in perfect harmony with the prophet's.
Trickling out light as one, Helix suddenly linked the brutal namekian's soul with his own, and activated his final trump card. The mirror technique.
Pulling the vortex down from above his head, the fat namekian found himself holding an orb of pure black energy in his palms, the vortex still sucking darkness into it every moment. By using his mirror technique… He could use the energy of Didger's own barrier against him!
Helix thrust the orb forwards, his own consciousness syncing up with the King's and enabling him to perfectly mimic the black wind sealing spell, converting the sphere of dark energy into a reservoir for a powerful pushback.
Within an instant, the orb in Helix's palm exploded forwards into darts of shadows, sweeping forwards towards Didger's own wind and easily overpowering it! Helix's wall of black energy smashed through Didger's like a wave absorbing a splash, and the prophet's holy white from his forehead mixed with the winds, creating an equilibrium that surrounded the King for a moment, before…
Completely enveloping him! The yin yang of darkness and light enclosed on Didger, swallowing him whole in his own magic. Each individual blade of wind curled up and sprayed outwards into a series of tiny black crystals, building up on each other and forming a sizable cocoon around the helpless Didger.
"YOU…" Didger boomed out mentally, his force weakening in every moment. The ogres below watched with awe as the king was completely consumed by the force. "Y-You…" Didger weakly projected telepathically, before speaking out loud in a rasping, barely audible gravely voice, "You…"
He was unable to finish his statement. The black wind frosted over his head, freezing the formerly glorious namekian god in an expression of utter defeat and incomprehension. With the wind dispersing, the crystal wasn't held by any magic any longer, and the newly fossilized King plummeted to the ground, to be caught by several ogres who quickly began reinforcing his sealing with their own magic, and speaking quickly and incomprehensibly into headsets.
Helix felt his age evaporate from his skin as he shed hundreds years and hundreds of pounds. Nai's consciousness fused back into the depths of his mind, and Helix was reduced to a scrawny skeleton of his former self. Dropping to his knees, the prophet exhaled wearily but with a profound relief.
"You did it! You positively did it!" Running up the side of the cliff was the small blue ogre boy, who embraced the fallen namekian with overwhelming jubilance. The prophet couldn't help but smile as Yan clung to his side, and put an arm around the boy reassuringly. "Y-Yes…" Helix rasped out, weakened from his ordeal, "We did it."
The child helped Helix to his feet as best as he could, and the prophet stood up, looking out at the clear horizon for the first time in days. The clear reddish yellow sky of Hell was actually quite beautiful from this view. Down below the cliff, countless oni employees shuffled back and forth, trying to decide what to do with Didger's frozen corpse.
"We have to thank you so sincerely," came a mature but distinctly bureaucratic voice from Helix's left, "for all of the assistance you've provided."
His eyes quickly widening and looking up, Helix was faced with a tall blue ogre wearing tiny wireframe glasses and a headset. Yan ran over to the oni, who picked up his son and placed him on his shoulder. "Father!" Yan shouted happily.
Something in Helix felt off. "Y-You're quite welcome… Yan here was the greatest help, he successfully completed what I s-should have done from the start." The prophet chuckled weakly, putting his hands on his knees and bending over slightly to support himself.
"We could not have completed this test without you," spoke the tall muscular ogre with a calculated air of positivity. "Your assistance has been invaluable!"
Helix froze immediately, a cold darkness suddenly washing over his body. "…Test?"
"O-Of course!" Yan's father said with a false smile, "This was a test of ogre magic… In case anyone in Hell ever needed to be sealed down here for a prolonged amount of time!"
"You don't really expect anyone to believe—" Helix began, now standing up straight, eyes wide with shock as his voice cracked, completely appalled.
"Everything is being taken care of by the oni. We work very hard to be the custodians of this dimension, and your cooperation is valued!"
The prophet couldn't believe his own ears. "There's no way you're going to be able to cover up the frozen souls, or the giant namekian sitting in a hunk of crystal right there."
"Right… where?"
When Helix looked down, to his shock, the entire scene had dissolved. All of the dozens of ogres had dissipated, and Didger's remains were nowhere to be found. "You can't— You have to be careful… It's not…" Helix was sputtering for words, and Yan looked down at him with empathy in his eyes, unsure of what was going on.
"Yan—" Helix spoke the young ogre's name, prompting surprise from his father. "You know what went on here… It's simply not safe to pretend… It's not fair to ignore the lost souls…" The prophet looked up at his companion desperately, and suddenly, things made sense to the boy. "Father, there was an evil namekian. There were lots of evil namekians, and Mr. Crust—"
But Yan's father silenced him, pulling him off his shoulder and putting him on the ground. "We'll talk about this later, Yan. There's no need to make up fairy tails."
Yan wouldn't be satiated so easily. Tears began to well up in the little boy's eyes. "F-Father-!" he cried out in protest, but the larger ogre simply hushed his son, before turning back to Helix. "Thank you very much for your assistance. But I think it's time for you to go—"
As the tall ogre was dictating his cold order to the prophet, Yan suddenly burst into a run, dashing over to Helix and hugging his leg, prompting the namekian to affectionately rustle his hair. "Y-Yan," the prophet couldn't help but smile softly.
"M-Mr. Crust taught me magic!" Yan smiled, wiping away his tears. "A-And now I'm going to go with him to learn more!"
The tall blue ogre suddenly froze in his tracks. "No. You cannot abandon your oni duties, Yan. And I won't have you associating with this namekian— namekian paranoid." Rage suddenly grew in the timid looking ogre. "I will not have you— Yan, you come back this instant or I will beat the living Hell out of you!"
But Helix held the young boy close, each moment simply confirming his decision to take the boy with him. "Come on Yan, let's go look for Akun and Gadreel," Helix reassured his pupil gently.
"YAN! YOU COME BACK HERE RIGHT THIS INSTANT OR I SWEAR TO YEMMA I WILL— NAMEKIAN, IF YOU TAKE MY BOY YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY—"
"I'm sorry, sir." Helix said with a slight smile, "What boy?"
And in that moment, the tiny ogre clung close to his namekian mentor's leg, and came full circle. Looking up at his father, the boy waved goodbye happily and without regret, before turning to Helix and smiling with a playful mischief. "Yes! Let us go!"
With that, Yan used his first bit of magic, turning the himself and his mentor into a vibrating blur, before… Disappearing in a whir of wind.
And so, Yan's father stood alone on the tall cliff top, his own ogres commanded away in a frenzy to cover up the incident, his own son gone with a lousy namekian, one of the same species who made this whole mess in the first place.
Yan and Helix would never find Akun, and would go on to mourn him for days, eventually constructing a shrine on the very clifftop where Didger had fallen.
Carved with solemn perfectionism by the young ogre, the tombstone was engraved with a single message, written by Helix in memory of his comrade and in hopes of his return.
"Akun—
To strive without pride,
and to fight without glory."
He would be remembered.
Helix's eyes widened at the strange name. Something about it seemed vaguely unforeign to him. "Didger?" the prophet questioned, "What do you know about him?" Akun shrugged at the question and turned back to face Helix, now over his moment of anxious tension. "Not much," said Akun flatly, "I know he's got some powerful magic, and has used black crystals like this before and failed. I've got a lot of ogres in the know, and even they haven't heard much more."
Akun looked over at the rubble of the hut which Helix had worked so hard to construct. "He's notorious as hell though, for someone who's so obscure."
The prophet's head dipped ever so slightly in a nod. "Do you know where the who—" Helix stuttered mid sentence as he looked down and realized that Yan had disappeared again. Not wanting to risk a second disaster, Helix immediately shouted, "YAN! Where are y—" but his shout was interrupted by happy laughter from not too far away. Helix's ears twitched, and he followed the sound, with Akun levitating behind him.
A bit down the hellish red hill was the small ogre child and a dinosaur, slightly taller than Helix. The creature resembled a tyrannosaurus with a fin on it's head and ridiculously tiny devil wings on it's back, which would prompt doubt at the creature's ability to fly from any passerby. However, on the creature's lower and middle half, black crystals partially engulfed his right leg and chest, up to about where his heart would be.
The dinosaur was licking Yan happily, but was visible struggling. As Helix paced towards it, the creature collapsed slightly, and then fell on it's side with weakness. The affectation was taking its toll.
"Look what I found Mr. Crust, It's—" Yan began happily, but then turned back towards the dinosaur and realized the pain it was evidently in. Helix's eyes softened with empathy for the creature, when suddenly the namekian and ogre's heads turned around at the whistle of ki.
Akun's arm was pointed straight out at the dinosaur with an orb of yellow ki formed in his palm. Immediately, Yan shouted in protest but it was too late. The Heran mercilessly launched the orb from his palm at the suffering creature, hoping to put it out of it's misery, but the blast was intercepted by the young ogre.
Helix immediately shot at the orb with a mystic finger beam, transforming it into a frog which landed on Yan's face and caused him to fall over in shock.
"What are you doing!?" Yelled Helix, before moderating his tone slightly. "You could've killed an innocent child!" Helix jabbed in controlled anger, forgetting that it was likely impossible to die in the afterlife.
"That thing needs to be put out of it's misery. It's hopeless." the Heran's response was flat and manicured. There was no room for frivolity in his harsh sneers. Helix shook his head and furrowed his brows upwards with pity for the creature. "No," retorted Helix, "I can save it."
Bending down next to the dinosaur, Helix allowed his hands to be engulfed in a warm white light as Yan stumbled around like a drunken saiyan comically trying to yank the frightened namekian frog off of his face. Akun watched Helix work his magic with folded arms. If this worked… Then he had a very important job for this namekian.
Helix's white mystic energy began to glow so bright that it was hard to look in it's general direction. The dragon clansman skillfully welded away at the crystal, every tap of reversal energy melting and then evaporating a twinge of black rock. By the time ten minutes had passed, Akun and Yan sat side by side, legs crossed, trying their best to watch Helix's work.
Finally, the prophet sighed and slumped his shoulders. The ogre and heran both looked up from their distractions in childish anticipation. Had the mystic failed?
Helix formed one last new spell in his palms, a warm pink energy and released it in a wave over the entire body of the dinosaur, resulting in it rolling over and standing up on it's hind legs. The creature had been entirely healed!
Yan jumped with joy and ran towards his friend, hugging its leg while Helix stood up, soon after collapsing into a weakened position with his hands on his knees, visibly exhausted. Not only was the elderly namekian deprived of his sleep, he had gone through so much stress and magical work in the past hours that he was practically ready to pass out once more.
Akun paid no mind to Helix's state, simply walking over to the dinosaur with wonder and placing a hand on it's healed flesh. "This… is—" The Heran's grim declaration of impression was cut off by the gleeful shout of the tiny ogre. "INCREDIBLE!"
Yan ran to the hunched over prophet and hugged his leg happily. "Thank you so much! Please teach me the magic you've done!?" The boy was practically boiling over with excitement as Akun stood, watching the dragon move with awe. If this namekian, Helix, had performed such a miraculous recovery on the dinosaur… Then he could certainly—
"Mr. Crust! Can we please keep him! I bet he's quite good at fighting, please Mr. Crust?" Yan pulled away from Helix's leg and opened his eyes from his gleeful grin to realize that Helix was visibly drained from his endeavor. "Oh goodness," he whispered, before running over to Akun.
"Please Mr. Akun," he asked, with a slight quiver of fear in his voice, "Could you carry Mr. Crust to a safe place?"
This was the Heran's moment of truth. Although he had never seen himself siding with a queer old namekian and a little ogre boy before, they had something that he needed. His allies for thousands of years were now frozen in this black crystal, and these two misfits were a silver bullet for the unsolvable problem. He needed them… And they certainly needed him. "It'd be my pleasure."
So exhausted was Helix Crust that he didn't even feel capable of rasping out a single sentence. And so, Akun effortlessly lifted up the namekian prophet and levitated into the air, searching for a suitable cave nearby. Upon spotting a small indent in the earth on the horizon, He looked down at the ogre, who suddenly had flown into the air on the back of the gleefully healed dragon.
"You are not bringing that thing." Said Akun with finality, "Not anywhere I'm going." But Yan wasn't going to give up so easily. "But look, Mr. Akun!" Pleaded the ogre toddler as the dragon began to rapidly whirr its wings like a hummingbird, levitating next to the unimpressed Heran. "He can carry me so you don't have to!"
Akun sighed with irritated displeasure and reluctantly obliged. "Fine. But once we get there, he's out." With that short reply, the Heran blasted off towards the cavern indifferently, allowing the dragon riding child to follow in his dust.
The cave had a wide, extremely visible entrance, but a surprisingly shallow interior. It was impossible to be inside the cave and not be visible to most passerby's on the outside. Akun noted this, but decided it would have to do. He helped Helix down with as much gentleness as he could muster and turned out towards the sky, watching the boy approach on his mount. "I think we should all rest now," Akun dictated, leaving no room for his denial of entry to their party.
"I think I'm going to name him Gadreel," grinned the toddler as he hopped off the back of the dinosaur and affectionately patted his snout. The creature blinked with happiness and nuzzled the boys hand before dropping onto his knees and lying on the ground sleepily. "He's pretty tired… And I am too," Yan chimed to Akun, who nodded and replied with the slightest hint of affection towards the boy.
"So sleep."
While East Hell was home to some of the most vile creatures in the galaxy, West Hell tended to be less occupied by high level threats to the peace of the universe. However, the red plains of the western hemisphere were dotted with sharp mountain ranges, and no area was more inaccessible than the Frypan mountains.
Perhaps it was the very inaccessibility of the dark far off cliffs that gave them their allure to a particularly notorious name in the home for infinite losers, or perhaps it was their menacing aura, or their distance from any ogre settlements. Whatever the reason, a genuinely wicked force had taken up residence in the dark peaks.
In the highest mountain of the Frypan sierra, the Black Crag peak, a network of tunnels was laid out, creating a small city of space. However, most of the tunnels were painfully unoccupied. Each one would twist and turn throughout the mountain, leading to various rooms where various artifacts were stored, but every tunnel would eventually lead back to the main cavern, a large echoing chamber partially filled with water with an island of rock in the middle. Although droplets of liquid constantly fell from the roof of the cave, it was impossible to tell how high up the cavern went, as the majority of it was shrouded completely in darkness.
A single droplet of water blipped down on the very head of a darkened monsterous silhouette. The creature shifted slightly, and stepped into the light revealing his full bulking frame. "There's no way Fiddle has that kind of magical power," growled the creature in a low bassy tone to an invisible figure standing in the shadows.
The other creature stepped forwards and scoffed at the larger one's declaration. "Shut up, Rombo. Who the fuck asked you?" hissed the shorter but muscular figure in a shriller tone. "You know better than to talk badly of King Didger's plans." He continued with a hushed wrath in his tone, "You're a disposable piece of—"
Footsteps suddenly disturbed the conversation and both of the quarreling silhouettes stood at attention. Now, an even less muscular figure appeared, and cleared its throat. "Blessed be you, Lord Fiddle!" The two fighting brutes shouted in unison, kneeling to the newly entered scrawny fin headed silhouette.
"Yes yes," croaked the creature, pulling out his staff and releasing a slight glow of purple. It seemed that the new figure hadn't any time for frivolities. He looked over pointedly at the muscular but non-monsterous shadow. "Bazooka. Where is the King? This is getting important."
"Haven't the slightest clue," the guard riffed, with only hint of the spite he held inside for Fiddle. Fiddle tsked in response, and then barked an order at the two shadow shrouded creatures, demanding that they depart so he could have a private audience with their King. Fiddle allowed his staff to glow slightly, showing a flash of his dark green skin as he sent out a signal towards his superior.
Within moments, the whirr of wind being displaced echoed throughout the chamber, and a massive namekian appeared, the first fully visible figure in the cavern yet. His visibility lied in his armor, a glowing red and yellow winding mass of plates, covering from his knees to his antenna. Hanging out of the headpiece framing his ears was an intimidating mane of white hair, although it didn't appear to be his own. The only fully armored parts of his body were the red coated knee pads, crotch piece, gauntlets and shoulder pads. The rest of the armor simply crawled in between, forming a web of thick yellow steel cords. Even the King's antenna were armored, directed upwards by the golden frame which accented his deep yellow green eyes.
This namekian was broad and tall, not in the monstrous way which Rombo was, but clad in imposing and well built muscles. "What have you summoned me for, Fiddle?" Demanded the taller figure, both audibly in a powerful bass tone and telepathically at once, causing Fiddle to drop to his knees and bow.
"King Didger…" Fiddle looked reverently up at the King, his own namekian features now visible slightly in the light of Didger's armor. "I have located a powerful source of Namekian magic in Hell… A power so great that it could be worthy of your own consumption."
"A power great enough," boomed the namekian god, "That you disturb me from my meditation before I cast the most powerful spell this realm has ever seen?" The sickly yellow eyes of the namekian narrowed, his green skin moistening from the drops of water now drizzling from the roof.
The scrawny fin headed namekian nodded, "Yes my King," he stood up slightly and projected purple energy from the mouth of his dragon staff, which formed into a holographic image of no other namek than Helix Crust. The prophet appeared tired and anxious about something, as if he knew he was being watched. The purple image radiated with the magical power he possessed and Didger groaned in a low tone.
"You may be right, slave," Didger responded with a lick of his lips. "Bring this namekian to me. It's been a while since i've encountered one of his caliber." The massive armored namekian sighed under his breath. The taste of conquest was almost at the tip of his lips. "We will begin the incantation in six hours. Do not disturb my rest until then." With that short order, the god flicked his wrist, sending Fiddle flying backwards into the wall of the cave and collapsing down into the water surrounding the center island.
Didger disappeared in a flash of purple energy as Fiddle crawled back onto the rocky landmass in the massive cave, the echoes of his impact with the wall still resonating. He immediately brought his staff into the air and summoned Bazooka and Rombo. The two creatures entered now darkened chamber and dropped to their knees as Fiddle addressed them quickly. "Bring the King the namekian. He and I will commence the ritual very shortly."
He grinned slightly in the darkness. "Victory is upon us."
Back in the prophet's own cave, Yan had fallen asleep almost instantly in the lap of his new dinosaur companion, and Akun, without the energy to contest this, had begun to prepare for his own sleep. Helix had now recovered from his exhaustion of using such powerful magic and was tense with some sort of unknown anxiety.
"You doing alright there, bud?" Asked Akun, slapping Helix on the back comfortingly and startling him to the point of almost falling over. Helix looked like he had just seen a ghost. His eyes were bagged and his pupils were small, and he was kneading his knuckles anxiously. "Yes, I'm quite alright," acknowledged the prophet, evidently not quite alright. "You just go to sleep now. I'm going to stay on the look out for a while." Helix's mind was racing with tension, but he couldn't focus enough to figure out what was going on.
Akun obliged him, knowing that if anything were to happen, his Heran instincts would wake him up first. "Alright then." grunted the teal skinned warrior, "You get some rest though, alright?" The namekian had to be well rested if he were going to salvage Akun's comrades from the black crystal. Helix nodded almost imperceptibly, which was good enough for the Heran. Akun walked a few paces away and began shaving away some of the rock below him by rubbing his powerful palms against it, making a relatively soft surface to sleep on. He was out within minutes.
Helix's anxiety was well founded, but it wasn't quite enough to keep him awake. "Got to… Who has that kind of power… Didger… Didger didger didger…" Something about the name was so native to him…
Within an hour of anxious pacing, Helix had joined the other two on the ground, exhausted and in well need of a rest. He wouldn't remember when exactly he fell asleep, only the disaster which caused him to wake back up.
Fiddle paced anxiously for a few moments in the black main chamber of the Black Cragg. He didn't want to disturb his King too early, but the clock was ticking. Fiddle was anxious for power. After pacing thrice more around the perimeter of the rock island, he decided that it was time to speak to the King.
He levitated into the air, his wickedly lean form exposed in the light of his purple magic. The namekian looked skeleton thin, clad in baggy dragon caste garbs and scarves, and his long fingers clutched his sinister dragon shaped staff for dear life. His head was disproportionately bulky at the top, and sprouting from it's apex was a long thick crescent fin. His eyes constantly shifted from left to right anxiously, and one could tell just by his appearance that he had a froggish croak of a voice.
Fiddle drifted towards the leftmost tunnel of the cavern and entered, lighting the way with the glow of his dragon's throat. He followed the winding path up and over the main chamber, and the yellow light of Didger's armor let him know when he was close. Landing on his feet and lowering his staff, Didger walked into the chamber reverently. Sitting on a massive throne, adorned in a similar manner as his armor, was King Didger.
The giant super namekian opened his eyes from meditating, his hands lifting from the rests on either side of the throne to form a pyramid in front of his face. For the first time in decades, a slight smile danced across his lips. "Let us begin."
The namekian god hoisted himself up out of the throne and stood to his full hight of eight feet, and placed a massive hand on the finned head of his servant. "Come, slave," commanded Didger, now using only his mental voice rather than his physical as well. With that, the two disappeared into a flash of purple light, and appeared outside of the mountain.
Fiddle gasped with shock and put his hands over his eyes with a groan. This was the first time Didger had permitted him to see the light outside of the Black Crag in years. Eventually, the scrawny namekian's pupils adjusted, and he gazed out across the mountain ranges of hell.
"I've begun trials," Boomed Didger, "But this is my masterpiece." He gazed out across the horizon alongside his servant, the white hair sprouting from his armor blowing in the wind. "Do you understand me?" thundered the King, "Do not fail."
Fiddle, levitating on his own bowed his head in the wind and nodded, his cloak billowing left and right from the shifting air currents of the mountain range. "I am ready to serve you," trembled Fiddle, prompting a smile from the namekian god.
King Didger repeated his earlier sentiment with a hint of anticipation. "Then let us begin."
The massive king stretched his hands into the sky in a v shape and sighed as tension released from his body. All of his meditation had been in preparation of this moment. Purple wind began spiraling from the King's elbows to his outstretched hands, and soon all of the powerful wind of the mountaintops was swept up in the current.
Within minutes, a vortex had formed around the super namekian, with his attendant barely able to stay afloat in the waves of blackened gusts. Didger's eyes were engulfed entirely in the dark energy, and thick aura began oozing from his fingernails, mouth, and nostrils. Small bolts of black lightning began to leap between his two upstretched arms, before dancing outwards into the sky and beginning to physically create cracks in the air.
The god began chanting an incantation in the native namekian tongue, his voice now booming with such physical and mental energy that it surpassed that of an eternal dragon. "Darkened heart of Poporonko, blacken the sky and freeze time!" The echoes of his voice shook the very mountain itself, and the caverns resonated with the magic chant, blasting the eardrums of Rombo and Bazooka deep in the tunnels.
Didger repeated the incantation once more, now having triggered the reaction, but this time Fiddle threw his hands to the sky and joined in, and with their combined magical power the sky began to crack, the physical fabric of reality shattering. With every chant, the crack was pulled wider and wider open until suddenly, all at once a torrent of black crystal poured out and began to engulf the sky. Within instants, a growing portion of west Hell's sky was overtaken by complete darkness.
The closest nearby ogre settlement would suddenly find itself frozen in space-time itself, with black crystal engulfing every one of it's inhabitants before they had the chance to call for help.
The sky above the Frypan mountains had turned to pure obsidian crystal!
Nearly six hours had passed since Helix's descent into sleep, and the group of unlikely companions all lied rather uncomfortably on the floor of the cave, naturally huddling together in the night. Akun was sprawled out on his back, taking up the most space, while Helix and Yan were huddled together on their sides, despite the weather being quite hot in hell.
One key member, however, was missing from the dog pile of resting vagabonds. Gadreel, the lumbering tiny winged dinosaur was jarringly absent. The creature had been disturbed in his rest by a high pitched noise, a whir of wind that the others couldn't pick up on in their resting states. The creature moseyed down the side of the mountain, hoping that such a shriek meant prey.
But what the creature saw was surprising to say the least. Gazing up a the sky, Gadreel's wide eyes couldn't begin to comprehend what the strange rocks growing on the tip of the horizon could mean, but he knew that they were rather frightening. Barreling back across the landscape towards the cave, the dinosaur stopped to yank a small mouse up between it's jaws and swallow it whole, before hurrying back to warn it's master.
Yan was curled in a tight cosy ball, visibly sucking on his thumb and enjoying the first bit of rest he had in days. But his dreams would soon be disturbed by the gentle nudging of his new prehistoric companion. "Mhhhmm," groaned Yan in a whisper as Gadreel nuzzled his massive snout against the boy's face, "Not now… My shift doesn't start until…"
The child rolled over onto his other side, away from the dinosaur who began to whimper viscerally. Gently biting down on Yan's shirt and lifting him up into the air, the child remained entirely asleep while hanging from the mouth of the creature. Finally, after a moment's prompting, Yan's eyes opened to see his companion. "Gadreel, what is it?" Yawned the half awake boy, "Leave me alone, will you? I'm trying to sleep."
The boy's fretting and shoving away the dragon's snout was more than enough to let the creature know he wasn't wanted, and so he huffed for a few moments before sitting down with a thud and pouting.
Luckily for the group, Helix's senses were finely attuned to the mystic, and the energy brewing in the sky was so potent that it could not be ignored. Helix jolted awake, clutching his skull and groaning. "Oh Porunga," groaned the dragon caste, looking around frantically, "What's that presence?" Suddenly, Helix's eyes flashed wide open. This was the same oppressive energy that had overwhelmed him before. "Akun, Yan!" Shouted Helix, picking up his staff from the ground. "Let's move! Now!"
Yan got to his feet pretty quickly, wondering if something really was going on, and feeling bad for scolding Gadreel. Akun took a few moments longer, rolling over onto his side and then sitting up, cracking his shoulders and neck from their stiff dormancy. "This better be good," groaned the Heran as he turned around and looked up outside the cave. Suddenly, Akun leapt to his feet with alert urgency. "Look!"
Helix and Yan quickly focused their vision up outside of the cave and both shared a moment of complete paralyzing shock. "It's like before," Began Yan fearfully, before Helix finished his sentence gravely, "But worse."
Helix was the first to sprint outside and run down the hill from the cavern, followed by a tripping Yan and a cautious Akun. The namekian shook his head faintly as he stared up at the growing spell on the horizon with despair.
Akun gaped in grave terror. "How many people could that thing take?" .
"People?" Helix replied, with a hopeless laugh at the irony of the question, "This spell has the power to freeze over an entire dimension."
"It's starting… Fucking amazing." marveled Bazooka, stepping out into the light of Hell for the first time in decades. "Just feel that wind! The King's power is… incredible." The namekian named Bazooka reveled in the light, breathing it in like lifeblood.
His eyes opened wide and stared up at the red sky of Hell, now being eaten alive by black crystal. His right eye in particular had three pupils in a triangle shape, and both orbs were a sickly yellow. His antenna, unlike that of typical namekians, shot up rigidly in a v shape with no indication of typical namekian shape.
Although he possessed the typical green skin and yellow plates of his kind, his body was disproportionately bulky on the upper half, and his broad shoulders gave him the aura of an admiral or merciless prison warden.
"Don't you try to tell me," countered Rombo, stepping out alongside his partner, "That Fiddle could've done this on his own. He's a weakling. The King is just using him until the spell is underway" The monster's deep bass turned giddy. "And then it's bye bye."
Rombo, unlike Bazooka, was a colossal monster of a Namekian. Seemingly crafted off of porunga himself, Rombo's massive upper body was covered in sinister green skin and padded with giant patches of yellow. His defining features included a thick powerful draconic jaw, blank red eyes, and a heavy, constantly swaying tail.
Bazooka replied with short spite. "We'll see about that, Oaf." The smaller and more nimble warrior leapt up into the air and gazed up at the two specks in the sky at the epicenter of the black hurricane. "Don't forget that we have our own mission."
The massive monster lumbered out down the side of the mountain slightly. "Our mission is bullshit. By the time the King is done he won't need some useless dragon caste." Rombo leapt into the air, levitating with seeming ease despite his massive weight. "That is, if Fiddle doesn't—"
"What could Fiddle possibly fuck up?" Interrupted Bazooka, turning towards his comrade with anger. He was growing tired of these games. Just because Fiddle wasn't a direct descendant of the King like Rombo and himself didn't mean every move of his should be questioned. Especially not when he was technically… Superior.
"There's nothing to ruin." Continued Bazooka with a building excitement, "The King will finish off the spell, with or without Fiddle, sealing off Hell from heaven. Once the dimension is blocked off, then all the bad souls will be forced up to heaven and wreak chaos, leaving the ogres completely distracted and unable to get in or out of our playground."
Bazooka grinned slightly, as his three pupils began to rotate. "Then, with Hell all sealed off to ourselves, we can pillage this shithole and steal all the Ensenji fruit we want. Once we've gained that kind of power…" The smaller namekian smirked, "The universe is our plaything."
"Let's just hope Fiddle doesn't ruin the spell," Rombo responded, prompting a hard slap upside his head. "Ow!"
"Come on, imbecile," commanded Bazooka, "Let's just go get the fucking dragon caste."
Akun looked at Helix with shock, and put a hand on his shoulder, turning the namek around to face him. "What do you mean, a whole dimension?" Akun was determined. He would not be swallowed whole by these crystals like his comrades had. Helix sighed and clenched his teeth, carefully choosing his words before he spoke.
"Those crystals weren't just trapping people on the physical plane," Began the prophet, as the ogre child and Heran looked on with anticipation, "If they were, I could've just turned them into paper, or melted them altogether." Helix shook his head solemnly. "No. Those crystals freeze things on all plains of existence. Spirit. Space. Time…"
The prophet bit his lower lip for a moment and then continued. "If a barrier like that were to swallow the sky entirely, Hell wouldn't just be sealed off physically, it would be trapped in space-time itself."
Yan was sitting on the ground, anxiously listening to Helix's words before he finally couldn't take it anymore and jumped up, running and hugging Helix's leg. "P-Please Mr. Crust, let us go tell the ogres! They will know what to do!" The child was terrified and wanted to appeal to the only authority he knew.
"No." Akun spoke with an uncanny resolve that captured the attention of all those around him, including Gadreel, who poked his large head out from behind a rock. "We're going to destroy this barrier right here and now. I've smashed it before and I can do it again." He turned to Helix. "And you can do better than just shatter. You can reverse the magic itself. We'll set out across towards the west edge of Hell and crack the crystal as we go, and if we find any victims, you can revive them."
Akun looked at Helix challengingly, as if daring him to say no to saving the souls of innocents. In reality, Akun knew very well where he was going to take Helix; They were going to head straight towards Akun's own frozen comrades.
"Please Mr. Crust I really think that—" Helix shook his head softly, causing the boy to stop mid sentence. "No, Akun is right. I'm going to go with him and help him minimize the damage if we can." The prophet turned down towards the ogre boy who locked eyes with Helix and formed an unspoken trust. "I don't want to leave you alone out here… So you should come with me." Helix let out a tiny smile in light of the dire situation. "Maybe you'll learn a bit of magic on the way, huh?"
Yan bit his lip and held back the tears welling up in his eyes before nodding genuinely and smiling back at Helix, taking his hand. Helix looked up at Akun. "Well then," said the prophet with a nervous laugh, "Lead the way."
As Akun and Yan prepared themselves to set off, Helix conjured up servings of Asijja soup for the both of them. While Yan ended up sticking his tongue out and feeding his to Gadreel, Akun wolfed his down, and smiled as he asked for a second bowl.
Helix, meanwhile, was trying to forge a friendship with the dragon, who was at first somewhat reluctant. "Come on then, let's be friends!" Helix half pleaded the creature, attempting to pet it on the snout as he'd seen Yan do. After several lost and regenerated hands, and a few bucks off of the back of the creature, Helix had finally gained enough trust with Gadreel to ride on it's back.
Akun finished his third bowl of Asijja soup and wiped his mouth before levitating into the air. "Hey! Wait up for me, Mr. Akun!" Yan's relationship with the muscular warrior had grown considerably in the past two days, and he was now hoisted up into the air by the heran and placed on his shoulders. With both of the non flying members of the party successfully airborne, the group began to set off onto the horizon, albeit not at the most desirable pace.
Akun had to travel relatively slow to keep the tiny ogre from hurtling down to his doom, and Gadreel's tiny wings could only flutter so fast. But nevertheless, the group made pace, and the black death on the horizon grew larger and larger in their view.
By the time Helix could make out the individual crystals in the shroud, it had expanded far beyond the Frypan mountains, now covering a significant portion of the sky. It almost seemed as if the spell was growing to meet the group half way.
Once they were close enough, Akun began to fly up towards Hell's newly formed obsidian roof, and Gadreel followed the scent of his tiny blue owner.
"Give it a shot!" Helix called out over the wind towards his warrior comrade, who nodded without looking over at the namekian. Akun placed a hand on the stone above him, causing Yan to slip off his shoulder but be immediately caught by the Heran's outstretched free arm. Descending slightly, Akun focused ki energy in his open palm and closed his eyes. This one was for his frozen allies. Clenching his fist and then flaring his fingers out, a powerful bolt of yellow ki began to swell in his palm.
"Haaaaaaa…" Akun groaned and energy flared around him. Tossing the child in his other arm haphazardly to the left, Helix and Gadreel swooped in to catch the frightened boy, and then continued watching their ally in silence.
"YAAAAAHHH!" Joining both hands by his side, the orb of yellow ki flared violently and was hurled up in a single fluid swing by both of the Heran's muscular arms. The blast whipped upwards, surmounting the space between the warrior and the crystal in a mere instant, and the detonation released such a high pitched screech that it nearly knocked Gadreel out of the air.
Black dust had suddenly surrounded all of the airborne adventurers, and Helix coughed loudly, advising Yan to cover his mouth as he put his elbow across his face. But his eyes were still intently focused on the spot where Akun had used to be.
The strong wind quickly dispersed the dust, and revealed that the Heran's attack had been… Completely ineffective. Akun was standing mid air with his fists clenched, looking down at the ground in frustration. Helix carefully picked his words, making sure not to trigger the warrior's pride.
"It's too strong all the way out here… I…" Helix closed his eyes and shook his head, shuddering at the overwhelming feeling of dark energy. "I can feel it. There's no way we can crack it from this distance." He turned up to face the Heran. "Come on. We have to keep moving."
Levitating with a cold prideless aura, Akun nodded his head almost imperceptibly and floated down next to Helix. "Right." acknowledged the Heran bluntly, before immersing himself in a yellow aura and blasting off further towards the horizon. Helix considered asking him to wait up, but ultimately decided to let him go. He needed to realize that he wouldn't be able to solve this with brute force.
But soon, brute force would be exactly what the Heran would need... and desperately.
The combined weight of Helix and Yan on the back of the tiny winged dragon meant that the time that elapsed between Akun's exit and their reunion was even greater than was to be expected. Even the short five minute gap would prove disastrous for the boisterous Heran.
Blasting forwards towards the source of the crystal, Akun had forgotten all about his comrades that needed healing. They could wait. What couldn't wait was the massive seal encompassing the entirety of HFIL… If the warrior played a large enough role in it's destruction, the ogres would owe him quite a few favors. And in a bureaucracy like the underworld, favors could get you far.
It wasn't long into his flight that Akun immediately realized something was wrong. The sky around him had gotten even darker, which was to be expected as he moved further from the light and deeper into the umbrella of crystal. But the aura around him had changed too. Now the Heran was approaching the mountainous region of west hell, an area rarely explored by him or any other vaguely social member of the afterlife. Only hermits lived in these cliffs, and there was a strange eeriness in the silence.
A single word could bounce from mountain to mountain for hours, and the echoes could bring a tortured soul like Akun to insanity. But even beyond the looming darkness, and the simple eeriness of the terrain, something further nagged at the warrior's psyche. Something… Was coming.
Immediately, Akun's ki sense sprang alive, but it was too late. The heran took a heavy blow to the side of the head from a massive creature who had appeared out of seemingly nowhere.
"GRAH!" bellowed Rombo with a sadistic chuckle, smashing the side of Akun's skull and sending him hurtling straight towards the earth below faster then a bullet. Sure, the porunga-esque mutant had only been instructed to capture the dragon caste named Helix from the tournament, but this whelp of a Heran was trodding just a few steps too close to the King's base of operations.
Akun grunted in pain as he was rocketed straight downwards into a pile of rubble, immediately getting back to his feet, relatively uninjured but filled with sudden rage. The Heran's nostrils flared as he threw his fists out to his sides, causing an explosion of aura to burst from his body. Hurt his pride once, and he would search for revenge. But hurt his pride twice… And the nearest possible receptacle for his rage would be beaten to a pulp.
"You fucked up." Grunted the Heran under his breath, before suddenly disappearing into thin air. Almost instantly, the warrior would appear behind the bulky draconic namekian in a whir of wind and deliver a powerful two handed downward fist to his back. Akun hoped to do with his attack what the dragon had just done to him. Slam him into the ground.
The massive beast cried out in gargled agony, meteoring towards the earth and colliding like a bowling ball, sending ripples of cracked stone into the air all around him. "What do you want from me?" Shouted the Heran to monster buried in the crater he had just created, "Are you the one doing this?" Something about the situation told Akun that this brute of a namekian was not the conjurer of such powerful magic.
"Good question," the response was hissed right over Akun's shoulder, and the Heran whipped around to face the new adversary, a muscular but far more namekian figure, lean in build with three pupils in his right eye. "Too bad you won't live to hear the answer." With that, Bazooka flashed a sharp toothed smirk and suddenly transformed his eyeball into a gatling gun.
As each of the three pupils rotated in a triangle shape, they blasted out a short but explosive beam of purple energy, seemingly thin and feeble but creating massive domes of energy at their points of impact. Akun was fast enough to dodge the first couple, shifting to the left and then blasting straight towards the ground at maximum speed.
When Helix and Yan finally caught up to the headstrong Akun, it had been five minutes at least. They were making better time than they had hoped, but nowhere near fast enough to save him entirely from his retribution.
"Do you see anything, Mr Crust?" asked Yan eagerly, tracing the horizon with his eyes. Helix hadn't seen anything, but he had felt something. The presence of soul energy in the air was blackening, which meant they were getting close.
"I hope Akun hasn't run into any trou-" Just as Helix began to speak softly, almost to himself, he had been startled mid sentence. Ears twitching, the auditory hypersensitive namek was startled by something off in the distance. "I think I just heard…" Helix's eyes shut as he attempted to hone in on the noise, or on a soul signature. "I think I just heard Akun shouting."
Yan turned around on Gadreel's back, and looked at Helix with shock. "What happened!? Is he breaking the spell then?" The boy stuttered out his words in his typical singsong childish slur, but was clearly tense.
Helix shook his head, and put a finger over his mouth as if to hush the child. "I- I can't quite tell…" Helix rubbed his temples, furrowing his brow and trying to discern the noise, "But I think it came from that direction," confirmed the namekian, pointing off further into the depths of the black sky. Yan nodded, and just as he was about to reply, Helix's eyes shot open. "We're close! Too close, we need to get down, fast!"
Suddenly the energy signatures of the adversaries had become incredibly clear. There were two opposing forces to Akun, each one with a significant level of power which was rapidly fluctuating up and down, rendering Helix unable to get a firm grasp on their strength. Yan grabbed onto Gadreel's back tightly as the dragon lurched downwards, taking to the ground just as blasts of Ki lit up the sky where they had formerly been.
"What's going on," whimpered the ogre child in a whisper, looking around for signs of the enemies. Just as he asked the question, Helix silently motioned towards the sky, and witnessed blasts of purple energy erupting down from the sky as Akun was chased across the planes of Hell. Firing them was…
No, could it be?
A namekian! Helix's eyes widened, and he almost stood up right there and then to go talk to the fellow namek. Helix's entire journey to hell had been centered around finding and communicating with other namekians! But as the prophet noticed, so did Yan, who wisely grabbed Helix's arm, reminding him of the situation at hand. Although Helix wanted desperately to talk to these kinsmen, he had to remember the issue at hand. They were evidently trying to destroy Akun, and likely were doing so for the purpose of defending the Black Sky.
Helix bit his lower lip and hummed in a sigh under his breath, before nodding his head solemnly. "We have to help him, immediately. But I don't… I don't want excessive violence." The prophet was conflicted. How could he help is ally without hurting his fellow namekians? But as Helix was in the midst of an internal conflict, the young ogre saw an opportunity to be useful, and eagerly tapped on Helix's arm.
Holding up a small wooden whistle, Yan grinned at the prophet. "This is a special regulation ogre whistle for keeping order… It can only be used three times, and I've already used it once… But I think we could help Akun if we used it right now!"
Helix immediately broke into a grin and ruffled the youngster's hair affectionately. "Perfect, that's marvelous!" He almost shouted, but remembered their requirement of stealth. The prophet hushed his voice significantly before instructing the ogre. Pointing with his finger to a cliff top above the current battleground, Helix looked Yan in the eye. "Do you see that cliff?" the boy nodded. "That's where you're going to blow the whistle from, and then you can retreat quickly." The mystic was desperately trying to minimize the risk of harm for the child.
"I'll fly in on Gadreel and then jump off, and try to freeze that namekian in his tracks. I'll signal you, and you blow the whistle, and then Akun can turn the tides. Alright?" Helix looked at the nodding ogre boy, almost regretful to instill such a responsibility on the child, but… That was why Yan was with him in the first place, to learn and grow… Although the prophet respected that, he felt a sharp twinge of fear and affection for the child. "Be careful."
As the boy scurried off carefully and stealthy down the side of the hill, Helix mounted Gadreel and gave the dragon an affectionate rub on the neck. "Let's hope this works."
As the comet of a Heran blasted along the ground, explosions of purple ki sprung up behind him at every turn. Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks as his earlier adversary burst out from the earth and pulled back his right fist heavily, slamming an open palm into Akun's face and thrashing his skull into the ground.
The Heran's hands immediately clawed at Rombo's much larger arm, but he was entirely ineffective when faced with the mighty inertia of the hulking brute. The monster lifted Akun from the ground by the skull, his meaty hand encompassing the Heran's head entirely. Swinging back his arm and then hurling it forwards, the rubble coated warrior was catapulted up towards Rombo's comrade in the sky.
Bazooka hissed with delight, and his right eye flashed, sending a rapid fire three bolts of thin ki towards the incoming body hoping to obliterate the issue in it's entirety. But just as the beams of energy were about to impact Akun's helpless corpse, a piercing whistle shattered the eardrums of both namekians and stopped the ki streaks in mid air.
Standing on a nearby ledge was none other than the oni toddler himself, Yan! In his hand was a magical ogre whistle, evidently with the ability to freeze ki blasts in mid air. "Now Mr. Crust!" Shouted the child excitedly.
Suddenly swooping from the black shrouded sky was Gadreel the dragon mounted by Helix Crust. The namekian threw his hands forwards, leaping off of his companion's back and flying through the air towards the paralyzed Bazooka. With bright white energy formed in the palms of his hands, Helix released a burst of light at the dark namekian.
Akun took any chance he could for an advantage in this fight, and within an instant he had reengaged with Rombo, now battling the colossuses blow for blow. Each seemingly weak and short punch from the much smaller fighter caused a crack of thunder and considerable strain to counter for the namekian monster. The heran's signature left-left-right hook had Rombo on the defensive, as his massive arms easily blocked the first two blows but left his stomach open for the third.
As the beast was being tossed around like a rag doll, Helix had skillfully conjured wind to facilitate his airborne advances on the smaller villain. As the mystic held out his flash of white energy, each second of exposure added another layer of frost to the coating surrounding Bazooka. However, within moments the games were done, and with a single flex of his muscles the ice surrounding the namekian warrior shattered.
"Nice try, fuckass," snarled the dark namekian, "But it's not going to be that easy. Not by a long shot." With that, Bazooka flashed his teeth and slammed a fist into Helix's gut, causing green blood to spew from his lips all over the mazoku's cloak. "You're fucking lucky the King wants you alive," continued Bazooka, delivering two quick but powerful punches across Helix's jaw. "Because if he didn't," the brutal admiral grinned, finishing off his punches and yanking the dragon caste by the throat, whose eyes had completely glossed over in pain, "You'd be a splatter of Asijja-plasm on the side of this mountain."
Staked firmly into the ground inside the now abandoned black crag was the staff of the apprentice magician, Fiddle. Constantly emanating from it's dragon toothed mouth was a beam of purple energy, which formed a stark angle directly into the ground. Where the beam of light touched the rock floor, a holographic projection of a particular namekian was in constant view.
King Didger stood, in all his glory, staring at the moving image of Helix Crust. He clenched his fist, and his namekian ears shifted slightly at the sound of the howling wind outside. Although Didger had begun and provided most of the magical energy for the sealing spell of Hell, Fiddle was able to maintain and direct the storm… For now.
Helix took blow after blow from the spitefully vicious Bazooka, and Didger growled slightly under his breath, the slightest noise from his mouth shaking the entire main cavern of the mountain. Drops of condensation began to fall from the ceiling in a rapid drizzle, but the purple image of the namekian prophet was undiluted.
There was no almost reason to keep this cheap mystic around. The King had witnessed the full extent of his magic just a few moments earlier, and it was hardly impressive. Although the dragon caste likely had more in him when pushed to the brink, it was no power that Didger couldn't obtain just as easily through other means, which were quickly becoming accessible.
But still. Didger would be gentle with that Helix Crust, for now. But if he was resistant much longer… the king would snap him like a twig. First though, it remained to be seen: would the wimpish mystic survive an encounter with a seasoned dark namekian like Bazooka?
As Helix's corpse was tossed around further by the sadistic mazoku, Akun was preoccupied in his own battle. By this point, Rombo was off balance and taking blow after blow from the vicious Heran. Although he had required assistance, he was making a comeback, and would not allow another disrespect of his pride. Each kick knocked the porugnian mutant further back before finally Akun threw his open palm back, forming an orb of yellow ki in his hand and thrusting it forwards, intimating a massive crater inducing explosion.
Rombo was blasted back, with the right half of his colossal body smoking with a gaping hole. "G-Grah… You… Little…" The porungian beast groaned in pain, barely able to contain his agony before suddenly writhing and shouting out loud, sending a shockwave out around him as his body began to pulse with green ooze. Blasting out from the hole in the side of the namekian's torso came new formed muscle, heavy flesh viciously forming tendrils into the shape of the mutant's right shoulder and arm.
The new muscle was fresh and embedded with cruel power, but Rombo was clearly weakened. Akun smirked slightly; he had the advantage.
As Akun was waging a new war upon Rombo, Helix was about to turn the tides against Bazooka.
"P-Please," stuttered the somewhat battered dragon caste when he finally kicked away from the brutal blows of the dark namekian, "Can we talk for a second?" Helix was desperate to reason with his fellow brothers, but Bazooka's pompous chuckle put down any ideas of reconciliation. The dark namek reeled back an arm and formed a small orb of flaming vicious ki in his palm before swiping forwards.
Helix immediately teleported out of the way, his body vanishing in a burst of wind, but the blast continued on. As Bazooka tossed it, he swiped his arm in an arc which sent the energy flying forwards in the shape of a slash. The sharp blade of magical ki sliced forwards at blinding speeds and immediately decapitated a nearby mountain effortlessly. Bazooka smirked with a deadly amusement. "Well then, looks like i've revealed my special technique…" He grinned and chuckled to himself darkly as he threw both arms into the air, ready to strike. "Now is the time to end you."
Immediately, a barrage of razor sharp ki blades went raining down on the prophet. While Helix was able to teleport out of the way of the first few, he couldn't muster up enough magical energy to continuously blink around like that, and was forced to resort to conventional dodging. Ducking and weaving through the rocks on foot, the planes of Hell were sliced to bits by the magical onslaught. As a purple blade narrowly missed his shoulder, the prophet suddenly realized his peril and kicked forwards, unleashing a torrent of telekinetically generated wind behind him, hoping to dilute the cutting power of the blades.
Little did the mystic know, a far more sinister presence had taken to the scene. After Yan had unleashed the blow of his mighty ogre whistle, he had sprinted down the side of the cliff and ducked for cover, watching as the fantastic battles of his elder comrades waged on. But suddenly, the boy had realized… Where was Gadreel? Scanning the landscape for his dragon companion, the ogre child became more and more worried.
"Gadreel?" called out the boy timidly, "Are you there?" Wondering further and further away from the fight, the child was convinced that he heard the calls of his dragon off in the distance. Eventually, the child had toddled off to the point where the fight behind him was barely even audible, deep in a particular trench of Hell. "Gadreel?" The whimpers of the dragon were getting louder. "Gadreel where are y—" Suddenly, the boy's sentence was cut short as a massive armored hand appeared out of thin air and grabbed him by the collar, lifting him into the air.
The arm would've been considered giant to any regular ogre, but for the tiny child, it was colossal. He struggled urgently, in extreme panic at his sudden apprehension, before he looked up and took in the full terrifying splendor of his kidnapper. Armored in gleaming gold and sinister maroon was a massive namekian with a mane of artificial white hair bursting from his armor. The colossal namekian slowly looked down at the squirming boy and allowed the slightest hint of a smirk to gross his massive lips, bearing his sharply bladed teeth. The god's yellow eyes narrowed ever so slightly with determination.
"You travel with notable company," boomed the namekian, both audibly in a powerful bass and telepathically, shaking the child's very thoughts, "I wonder… Why they keep you around..?" The King looked down at the boy and threw him forwards mightily, but the child slammed into a telekinetic wall of the god's own creation before he could get two feet away, prompting a cry of pain as he fell to the ground.
Yan whimpered loudly before shouting out as loudly as he could, hoping to attract the attention of Mr. Crust, but unfortunately, it would do him no good. Immediately as the boy shouted out, white lines of energy formed around the child, creating a magical echo chamber which simply turned his shout into physical energy, shaking the boy with pain to his very core. Yan collapsed on the ground and looked up with tears in his eyes at his captor. "W-Who… What are you doing to me?" For the first time in years the boy's eyes were filled with helpless tears.
"I am Didger," the King's voice caused cracks in the landscape around him to physically form, and rocks levitated into the air slightly. "King of this Black Sky, and all of Hell!"
Looking around frantically for any way out of this certain death, Yan knew that even his whistle would be of no use against an unholy mystic of this power. The boy stood up from his broken position on all fours, but gazing up at the ten foot tall namekian, he knew there was no escape. Akun's words haunted the child. Didger was the one sealing off Hell, and there was no way Yan would be able to do a single thing to stop him. "P-Please," begged Yan, eyes filled with tears, "Please let me go!"
The King's gaze turned cold as he considered ending the existence of the child right then and there. But that would be rather inappropriate, especially before he had gotten what he wanted from the child. "You're going to help me," the King's cold but full voice echoed into incomprehensibility in the mind of the child, "You will lead me to the Ensenji, Ogre." With every moment that the god tortured the boy, the black sky crept forwards and forwards off into the horizon, and the scene became darker and darker.
Yan's eyes glossed over with fear and regret. Somehow, his entire body had been filled with lead, and turned into pure terror. But he could never lead such a horrifying monstrosity to a massive source of power like that… He could never, as an ogre, betray his people like that…
The ogre child, at age 6, had accepted his mortality, and was ready to die for his duty. In the boy's final cry for help, he unleashed one last scream into the sky, which the King didn't act fast enough to suppress: "GAAADREEL!"
That was the last straw. Didger immediately lifted the child up into the air telekinetically and threw back his arm, about to snap the ogre's neck in one fluid motion. But just as the King was about to end Yan's life, he suddenly felt sharp teeth cradle his bicep. Instantly, Gadreel chomped down on Didger's arm, causing Yan to drop from the telekinetic control and scramble for his life.
The King was not amused. Viciously, he grabbed the dragon with his free arm by the head and hurled it downwards, thrashing it face first into the ground with all the force he could muster. The creature's bones surely shattered, and it let out a final whimper of agony, before fading into silence.
Throwing his armored hand forwards, Didger's yellow eyes widened with rage. "You are mine now." He boomed, a powerful black ki surrounding the boy and forming into a dark aura. "Kill your friends."
The dark aura crept further and further into Yan's soul, turning his eyes purple and causing the energy to burst outwards, consuming him entirely in a primal scream, overlaid infinite times over itself to form a haunting echo. But the child's transformation was not complete. With a flick of his wrist, Didger activated further magic, and the tiny ogre child began to grow. Bursting out of his clothes, the blue ogre's muscle consumed him, and his hight increased exponentially. Even at every reasonable stopping point, the child continued to grow and grow into a disproportionately massive beast of an ogre. His teeth sharpened, his horns lengthened into terrifying blades, and his hair grew down to his now skyscraper sized shoulders.
Yan had become a beast
Helix looked on with regret at what he had done. What was once a perfectly intelligent, if corrupted namekian, was now a frog in a jar hanging from the mystic's pocket. Although Helix had tried for so long and so hard to reason with the namekian, he was simply too enraged to have a conversation with, and was deadly intent on ending Helix's afterlife. After dodging his deadly slicing attacks for several minutes, the prophet had finally gathered enough magical energy to fire a transformation spell, turning the vicious admiral into a helpless namekian frog. Carefully caging the creature in a magical jar, Helix had suddenly realized that his comrades were completely missing.
The prophet had been so caught up in his own attempts at reconciliation with the enemy that he had completely failed to notice the disappearance of Yan and Akun. As Helix wiggled his ears, listening for signs of their battles, Bazooka jumped around frantically in Helix's jar, as if he knew something the prophet didn't. Looking up at the sky, Helix immediately understood what the former dark namek was so concerned about.
Didger had decided to use the ogre to test just how powerful Helix's magic really ran. The dragon caste's near effortless magical overpowering of Bazooka was incredible to say the least… And the King had sparked a new interest in the prophet's abilities. Helix narrowly leapt out of the way of the massive blue foot, ducking and rolling before being flung into the air by the sheer force of the colossal stomp. The namekian landed on his feet, sliding backwards with dust flying into the air around him. That couldn't be… Yan?
Meanwhile, Didger was watching from afar, high in the sky as the prophet immediately accepted this mountain to climb. It seemed as though the dragon caste had suddenly cultivated a powerful will, and became determined to stop the rampaging ogre.
Massive fists began to furiously pound the ground as Yan's pupilless eyes opened wide with rage. The unadulterated power of the ogre monster had enough force to shake the realm of Hell on its own. There was no way Helix would beat this kind of force head on. The prophet nimbly teleported to a cliff, roughly a sixteenth of a mile away but elevated to eye level with the colossal creature.
The deeply ingrained black markings on the prophet's forehead began to glow white with anticipation, and the namekian delved into the mind of the child, pushing deep inside. Yan's familiar soul presence left an evident stench on everything in the mental plane, but the tiny child was surrounded by thick jungle and underbrush, constantly moving and breathing as if the vines were snakes and the leaves were bugs. The abstract psychic plane was clouded and dense, but Helix felt his telepathy having sway over the realm. His only chance would be to push with all of his might, compressing the jungle back in one fell blast of pressure.
Helix prepared to rid the child of his mental gunk, but paused for a moment. What if a push like this cracked the gentle psyche of the boy? The thought terrified Helix into paralysis. If he was responsible for the destruction of Yan's mind, he would never forgive himself, in life or in death. The prophet's hands clenched and he began wringing his knuckles frantically, losing his focus on the ogre's mind momentarily.
In that moment, the creature leapt forwards in a fit of rage and brought down its massive fist on the cliff the prophet was perched upon, causing the mountain to shatter into giant fragments of rock. There was no longer any time for contemplation: This was Helix's only chance, it was do or die! And so, as the prophet leapt into the air alongside the giant mountain rubble, he pushed deep back into the mind of the beast and tore through the vines surrounding the child's psyche, ripping them out like knotted hair.
In that moment, the creature began to scream in pain. The Helix was unable to teleport while focused on the mind of the boy, and narrowly avoided being crushed by rubble as he tumbled to the ground. But his efforts had been rewarded. Once again, Yan narrowly missed death as his body suddenly began to disintegrate around him, atrophying the massive muscles grotesquely the ogre stood naked, three feet tall once more, and fell to the ground.
Filled with relief, Helix ran over to the child and lifted him in his arms, hugging Yan close to his chest with paternal care. He would never let the boy be in danger like that again… Never again… Instantly, the prophet realized something felt different. As if a weight that had previously been hanging from his body had disappeared. The namekians hand shot to his waist only to find that the jar containing Bazooka had disappeared entirely. It had likely shattered in the fall, and now the dark warrior was at large once more.
But none of that mattered. Bazooka was free, Akun was missing, but for one pristine moment, all that mattered was Helix holding Yan close to his chest and hugging the limp boy tightly, letting pink energy wash over his body to restore him.
If the ogre could survive, everything would be okay.
But there would be no such luck for the grieving prophet. Although Yan appeared to be healing at an average rate, a sudden shift in the atmosphere would indicate that new trouble was just on the horizon.
While Helix enveloped the tiny ogre in pink light, the silhouette of a brutal draconic namekian appeared on the horizon, and stepped into the light, holding a corpse. Revealing himself was none other than Rombo, Didger's brutal henchman, having defeated his opponent. In the right palm of the mutant's hand was Akun's skull, with the rest of his body hanging out and dragging on the ground. The Heran didn't appear to be dead yet, but he was close enough.
"Bazooka may have fucked up," growled the creature in a deep bass, "But I won't be a failure like he was." The porungian mazoku hurled Akun's body towards Helix by the head, which the prophet caught with a lurch and gently lowered onto the ground. Helix's eyes shot up and locked with the dark namekian's, filled with fear.
Suddenly, the brute burst into action! "I'LL SHOW HIM!"
Within an instant, the bulky looking namekian had appeared in front of Helix and lifted a powerful fist into the air. Helix just barely managed to duck to the side as the fist, the size of the prophet's entire upper torso, slammed into the ground sending cracks outwards in a flaring perimeter.
"P-Please!" Lamented Helix with a shout, "Let's talk about this! We don't have to be enemies!" But the prophet's words of peace fell on deaf ears as the brute continued to launch blow after blow at the nimble elder.
Helix may have been a pacifist, but he was no fool. As he dodged blow after blow from Didger's enraged minion, he began to form an orb of pure pink mystic energy in his palm. Rombo was far too caught up in his own motivations to keep an eye on the dragon caste's plot, and soon it paid off.
Releasing all of the energy in one final burst, Helix pitched the orb of pink healing life force at the unconscious heran lying some six meters away. Rombo moved to deflect the burst, having assessed it's value, but he was too late. The restorative life force clashed into the incapacitated warrior, and encompassed his body immediately in a fine coating of warm strength.
Akun's eyes took less than thirty seconds to shoot open. Rombo looked on in fear. He had just won a hard fought battle, and been worn down to the bone. The mazoku knew he could take a runt like Helix, but he had already been forced to regenerate twice in the fight against the heran warrior. He couldn't survive another fight with him—
Just as the draconic namekian began to fill his heart fill with fear, he suddenly found his stomach filled with a fist. Lurching backwards, Rombo's pot belly had been smashed in completely by an instantaneous and powerful blow from the newly revived Akun.
The heran was smoking with pink energy, and suddenly his skin had flared to a sharp green. What had used to be a teal was now a piercing emerald, and his formerly orange hair had exploded into an even more menacing crimson. There was no room for flashiness in this transformation. As soon as it had been revealed, the warrior moved into another powerful blow, leaving no observers any room to digest the drastic increase in power.
Joining both hands above his head, Akun moved faster than the eye could detect, suddenly appearing above Rombo and smashing his brain in with a final downwards blow. The namekian mutant's thick bestial skull exploded in a gush of green, and the headless beast lumbered to his knees and collapsed on the ground.
The brutality of the Heran forced Helix to look away in shame and disgust. He had saved Yan, and himself, but at what cost? To see a brother of his, even a mutant bent on destruction, completely pulverized… It was sickening.
Akun's brutal assault on Rombo had unfortunately served to distract Helix from the true looming danger. The prophet suddenly dropped to his knees, overwhelmed by a dark psychic force. When he looked up, he was faced with the most terrifying sight of his life and death.
Hovering just a few feet away was the lord of the dark namekians, the bane of Hell, King Didger. Helix's entire spirit was crushed with the overwhelming force of the origin of all the shadows. Immediately after looking upon him, Helix knew that this namekian god was the creator of the darkness. "W-Who…" Helix gasped, his vision completely distorted by the psychic energy of his adversary, "Who are you?"
Helix's terror prompted a mighty booming laugh from the now power intoxicated King, who instantly appeared in front of Helix and smashed a foot down on his face, bashing the dragon caste's skull into the ground. "I am your King, namekian," spoke the voice, the echoes stunning Akun into silence and reverberating into agony in Helix's mind, "And you will beg for my mercy."
Didger's foot would suddenly smash onto empty ground as Helix teleported out of the path of the King, and appeared behind him, determined to fight him magically. "You're the one doing this then…" murmured Helix, his brain suddenly flooding with memories from Grand Elder Nai. Upon seeing the face of the King, he suddenly realized the full extent of Didger's abhorrence.
Didger was responsible for it all. The lack of namekians in heaven. The emptiness of west Hell. Didger had swept over the namekian souls in the afterlife one by one, forcefully absorbing them and conglomerating himself into a monster of a god. Didger was the culmination of the spirit of pure evil combined with the ultimate namekian. He was a Super Demon Namek.
The white mane of hair pluming from the namekian's armor whistled in the wind of the dark spell, still emanating from the horizon. "I am born of your brothers. This armor is crafted from the bones of arcose, this mane is woven from the skulls of Kaioshin." The King boomed out with wicked cruelty, seemingly complacent in his victory. "And now, you will be added to my list of slaves."
Didger suddenly appeared in front of Helix, his massive fist landing deep in the prophet's gut. "FUSE WITH ME, WORM," shouted the god suddenly, his voice exploding the land around them into the air, fragmenting the air itself, "OR FACE AN ETERNITY IN MY CRYSTAL."
Helix coughed up blood all over the namekians arm as he took the blow, evidently broken physically, but not mentally. The powerful boom of Didger's voice was enough to destroy all semblance of sanity in the namekian's mind, but remaining, unbreakable, was his resolve of spirit. He refused to speak. Even as the King's hand forced itself on his chest, the god's fingers wrapping around either side of Helix's neck in preparation for fusion. Helix stayed silent, shut his eyes and prepared to teleport far far away, to run for his life, to bring the ogres. This had all been a mistake. He should have gotten help, he shouldn't have risked Yan, and he shouldn't have—
Didger's skull cracked to the side, his body following the momentum of his his head as Akun's foot slammed into it, punting the namekian god across the landscape and smashing him firmly into a mountain of rock, causing it to collapse in on him. The Heran immediately grabbed Helix and steadied him.
"You good?" asked the warrior shortly, knowing he could trust an honest reply from the namekian. Helix staggered for a bit but held on tight to the Heran, and soon his elastic stomach had reformed where the indent had been lain from the King's fist. "Y-Yeah," Helix replied with conviction, looking up and locking eyes with his partner. "I don't know if that was a sneak attack or what, but," the prophet let out a slight smile of hope. "I have a feeling this guy isn't as strong as he comes off."
Just then, an explosion of green burst forwards from the pile of rubble that was formerly the mountain, and locked fists with Akun. Both thew an instantaneous punch, and Akun's much smaller fist sent out a shockwave as it collided with Didger's. The heran flashed a brief grin. "Yep."
Although the King was much more powerful physically and magically, Akun's new form was far faster than the bulky god, and he knew it. Soon, the King was overwhelmed in a flurry of green blows, one after another, smashing Didger back. Delivering a powerful kick, Akun bashed Didger far off on the horizon, and grabbed Helix by the back of his tunic, chasing after him and delivering a series of blows, each one blasting a shockwave outwards and knocking the King further back to the source of the dark energy.
With every blow from the transformed Heran, Helix would release a burst of light energy, blinding the King and leaving him unable to counter the brutal pummeling. The Heran was covering ground quickly, and Didger was clearly on the defensive, and unable to do much about it besides occasionally dodge or divert a blow.
Soon enough, the combat had brought the adversaries close to the largest mountain both Akun and Helix had ever seen. And sure enough, at the peak of the mountain was a powerful purple energy source, black wind whipping out in all directions and overwhelming everyone within range with malevolent aura.
The black wind suddenly brushing past him was enough to take Akun off guard for a brief second, and that was all that the King needed. As the emerald Heran threw his sloppy kick, Didger suddenly swept to the side and caught the quick warrior's leg, whipping him downwards aggressively with an enraged dictation. "Enough."
Just those words were enough to send a shockwave of magical energy outwards, blasting Helix's mind into a frenzy of psychic defense. Suddenly, the sky released a shrill shriek of a lock, as if it had heard Didger's command and was sealing itself off and stopping its progress, hardening into a powerful wall.
"Fiddle," commanded the god, his yellow eyes narrow speaking only at a murmur, yet somehow loud enough to rattle the eardrums of the writhing Heran below, "Take care of them, now."
No longer casting the spell above, the wind had stopped and out of thin air appeared a dastardly silhouette. Suddenly levitating next to didger was a skeletally thin namekian with a sharp forehead fin, holding a draconic staff. "You boys are due for a beating," croaked Fiddle, descending to the ground with a grin.
The King was clearly damaged in pride, having been put on the defensive by a weak Heran and Dragon Caste, and clenched his fists in rage at having to enlist his pathetic apprentice to take care of the two whelps. But soon, the joke would be on them. Didger's massive body instantly burst into purple lightning, and wickedly cackled off onto the horizon, headed to some unknown point.
Obviously the King's retreat didn't escape Helix's perception, but he suddenly had a much more dire issue to take care of. Standing in the middle of the rocky field was a cackling Fiddle, his head down but a wicked grin visible on his lips, his staff poised and thick grey mist pouring out around him in the fashion of a typical mazoku mystic.
Akun scoffed. "You'll go quicker than the last one," the Heran taunted the demon namek, and suddenly allowed his green aura to burst into full flare. Within a blink of an eye, Akun had surmounted the gap between him and his opponent, and delivered a powerful kick to the jaw, causing Fiddle to skid back across the rocky plains.
"Bad moves!" giggled the dark mystic, physically twisting his head back into place with a vile cracking noise, "You're going to regret it." Fiddle suddenly thrust his staff forwards, and from it's mouth came incredible purple lightning, tearing up the ground in front of him and barely giving the dragon caste time to leap out of the way.
What came next was much worse. From the newly carved crevices in the ground emerged steel arms, frantically clawing at the earth and lifting themselves up. Emerging from the lightning scars were terrifying creatures, glistening wickedly in the low light of the battleground. Each one eventually stretched itself to it's full hight in a uniform cluster, and revealed their true extent.
Silver namekians had been ripped from the rocks of Hell! Each one was muscular but lean, seven feet tall and possessing draconic wings. Fiddle couldn't help but cackle quietly before he shouted out viscously. "Kill!"
Helix was completely overtaken with shock as to what these creatures could be, and of the incredible dark magic his opponent must've possessed. Akun was far more concerned with not getting his ass kicked.
All of the silver demons rushed at once, leaving no time for strategizing. Akun immediately refreshed his incredible transformed aura, shouting loudly as his mane flared a fiery red. The first metal monster came to his left with a slash of the claw, which the Heran warrior was narrowly able to dodge.
These creatures were faster than they appeared. Sidestepping the swipe, Akun grabbed onto the demon's arm and batted away an incoming monster, sending them both flying off with a satisfying metal clank. Just as the Heran finished launching away two of the creatures came two more, one grabbing him by the left arm and the other by the right, both stretching him out and pulling on either end, digging their steel claws into his forearms.
As the two monsters held Akun in place, a third dashed forwards, streaking towards him on spread wings. The silver namekian's outstretched arms reached out towards the Heran, feverish to rip him open; Akun abruptly kicked both feet into the air and wrapped his legs around the approaching demon, flipping backwards while still being held on either side and slamming the offensive creature into the ground head first.
Shifting his grip, it was now the Heran who was holding onto both of the silver demons, and he lifted his arms up into the air with a flare of powerful aura, smashing the two together above his head and then bringing down their bodies upon another approaching adversary. Leaping into the air, Akun now found himself standing above a pile of writhing metal monsters and lifted his arms up above his head.
Between his palms, a powerful yellow orb began to form, growing in size with every moment until… A claw tore past his face, narrowly missing his throat and slicing his cheek open. Furiously, Akun turned to the new steel demon and pulled the orb down from above him to his side, hurling it forwards at the creature and vaporizing the very life out of it's body, leaving only an empty husk of metal.
While Akun's speed was doing him well in the battle with the silver namekians, Helix was engaged in a combat of his own with their creator, the black mystic Fiddle.
Although Helix was a capable mystic of great potential, it was hard to keep up with a trained fighter like Fiddle, and his lack of flight was a severe disadvantage. Although Helix tried to keep the fight on the ground, sooner or later the dark namekian was going to realize why Helix wasn't following him into the air and use it against him.
Fiddle leapt into the air with a gleeful shout and slashed his staff back and forth thrice. "Give up already!" chimed the demon happily, hoping in fact that Helix didn't give up, and provided a fun game of a fight. From the mouth of his dragon staff emerged three fireballs, furiously bolting through the air towards the prophet.
Helix reached his hands out and caught the fireballs in shrouds of telekinetic energy one after the other, before conglomerating them all in one orb and throwing it back at his adversary.
Fiddle giggled gleefully and merely swept his dragon rod across the front of his body, the mouth of the dragon re absorbing the fire it had just generated. "You're going to have to do better than that," teased Fiddle as he suddenly appeared behind Helix and swung his staff at his head like a bat. The prophet only barely ducked and managed to blast the dark namek back, and the black mystic would suddenly find himself covered in snakes from Helix's magic.
"If you don't make this more fun for me," warned Fiddle, "I might just make you fight more of my silver gargoyles. And you certainly wouldn't fare as well as your friend." As if on cue, Akun grunted as he took the blow from a steel warrior, and kicked it back, knocking over two of the creatures.
Although Helix was able to match his opponent blow for blow in the realm of magic, he was losing energy fast, and Fiddle evidently had far greater battle experience and stamina. A bolt of purple lightning scathed past the prophet, tearing open the side of his tunic, and although he caught and redirected the following strike, the sting of the lightning was enough to bring him to his knees.
Meanwhile, Akun was having his own problems. Although he had managed to stave off gargoyle after gargoyle, he hadn't had a chance to finish off any of them. These demons were not creatures that accepted defeat lying down, or were out of the fight after being knocked back just once. Soon, the army of silver monsters had become too much for him, and Akun was on the defensive, darting across the landscape between occasionally surprise kicks and bursts of ki to hold them back.
But even a supercharged Heran like Akun was bound to slip up. The emerald warrior fatefully failed to notice an approaching demon from behind, who suddenly grabbed the warrior by the neck and got him in a chokehold. Instantly, the Heran began pounding back against the incoming vultures with blasts of ki, but it was too late. One slipped through, and sliced out it's namekian claw, hoping to tear a delicious little rip in the red haired battler's stomach!
"TPHFWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The gargoyle's grip on Akun lessened, and he easily slipped out. The approaching silver demon continued forwards because of it's momentum, but it's body was now a lifeless husk, and the heran caught it by the head as it approached and collapsed into scrap metal.
Eyes that were formerly purple were now blank, and one after another the demons broke down into clanking piles of parts, their life forces completely removed.
Flying in from above was a worn out but valiant looking Gadreel, and on his back, a naked but proud Yan! "Hello!!!! I hope you are defeated now!" Shouted the boy down to the confused Fiddle, who's magic spell had fizzled out in his hands. The tiny child chucked his now useless whistle down as far as he could, and it clunked the dark mystic on the forehead comically.
There wasn't a moment to lose!
Immediately, Akun was in front of Fiddle and delivering blow after blow to his jaw grinning with vengeance, pounding back and forth with one fist after another. Helix stepped back and whipped his hands up in front of him in a diamond shape. "Akun! Watch out!"
"Ryabbitoho!" shouted Helix with immediate decision, doing anything to stop the brutal fate that Fiddle would likely be destined to if Akun continued his vicious beating. The beam emerged forwards from the prophet's diamond like an gliding bolt of lightning, and it only grew more potent as it picked up speed slowly. The green energy sparked through the dark mystic's body like a conductor, and suddenly, his limbs would shrivel and shrink, before his body followed suit, transforming the formerly fearsome magician into a mere namekian frog!
"Yan!" Helix shouted out with relief to the young boy as Gadreel landed and the child hopped off, sprinting into the embrace of the elderly namekian. Helix scooped up the boy and immediately waved his hand over the child's body, reclothing him with some simple garbs. "Thank Porunga you came when you did!" the prophet raved gratefully.
Akun landed next to the two, his ascended state fading into inactivity quietly as he gave the child a slight smile. "Saved my ass," grinned the normally stubborn warrior, now shaking the pebbles and debris from his long orange mane.
Helix set the boy down, who walked over to the absently croaking namekian frog, it's teal skin sticking out like a sore thumb against the red mountains of hell. "Poor fellow…" Lamented Yan quietly, and Helix nodded. "I… Can likely turn him back later. Let's just keep an eye on him for now."
At that very moment, the freshly transformed frog leapt comically up onto Yan's face, prompting a childish screech as the boy ran around in a circle before falling flat on his back. "Mr. Cruuuuuussst!"
Yanking the frog off with one hand, the prophet couldn't help but laugh as he dropped the creature to the side. "We're not in the clear yet though. Who knows how many more of these super mazoku there are… And Didger is still out there." Helix's voice was grave and the longer he spoke the more intense his speech became, as he walked over and allowed his pink healing energy to wash over Gadreel.
Suddenly, Fiddle croaked quite loudly, causing all of the members of the group to look over at the frog immediately. The little creature had hopped off just out of reach, but seemed quite scared—
The massive golden boot appeared from thin air, squishing the creature entirely. Fiddle squeaked weakly in agony as the life was forcefully squeezed from his body. After the boot materialized the rest of the killer, revealing a complete set of crimson and gold armor, and a beautiful mane of white hair, now stained with blood. Didger's sickly yellow eyes swelled with reptilian brutality, and his left hand clenched roughly around an object.
Immediately, Akun launched into a battle stance, his green aura flaring up as his body shifted to emerald and his hair burned a bright crimson. Helix conjured a staff out of thin air, and Yan frantically looked around on the ground for his lost whistle, knowing very well that it had reached the full extent of it's use. But surprisingly, there was no psychic attack, no instantaneous assault to be seen.
The King stood coldly at his gargantuan full hight, simply watching the ragtag group of Hell defenders squirm. And that was when he lifted it into the light. Raising his left arm, he revealed the ultimate weapon of the underworld. There was little light under the black sky, but the golden fruit glistened all on it's old. The legendary fruit of the Yemma tree, the Ensenji.
Helix's eyes widened in terror. He had used Ensenji bark to reconstruct a new body for a friend, and knew of the incredible mystical properties of it's fruit. Akun was far more disgusted then terrified.
"So this is your plan? Pillaging Hell like a scavenger?"
Didger completely ignored him and simply chuckled lowly, his booming voice sending chills down Helix's spine. "All of this… belongs to me now." The King couldn't help but bear his razor sharp teeth, "And you," he continued, looking at the prophet suddenly, "Will be a perfect final meal."
Akun burst forwards, reeling back a punch towards the super demon's head. At the last second, the Heran skillfully pivoted, attempting to snatch the fruit from the god's hand. But Didger was prepared. Immediately, Akun was snatched by the neck, and with a single flick of his wrist, the King send a searing pain through the warriors body, giving him whiplash. As Akun's body was tossed carelessly to the ground, he stood up and suddenly locked eyes with Didger, filled with resolve. "You aren't going to take Helix."
The Heran had lost too many friends in the past days to this monstrosity. He wasn't about to lose another. To Didger's surprise, Akun seemed completely unshaped by the cruel thrashing he had just taken.
Throwing a hand into the air, Helix pointed his open palm at Didger, who seemed to be taking his time and toying with his prey. Delving deep into the mind of the King, the mystic pushed against him with all of the psychic energy he could muster. But it was useless, the god had fortified his thoughts, sealing himself off into blind totalitarianism.
"Now," thundered Didger, "Meet your god."
The King lifted the golden fruit to his mouth, taking a bite out of it and completely pulping the fruit with his fingers, swallowing it whole. He gulped loudly, and for a moment it seemed as if nothing was going to happen... And then it did.
Over the course of a millisecond, the namekian god's muscles swelled grotesquely to the point of obscenity, before snapping back onto his frame as his eyes began to resonate with a glowing yellow light. Completely overtaken by the energy, the god opened his mouth and let loose a uncharacteristic shout, beams of light glowing and reverberating off of the nearby rocks until the formerly pitch black landscape had become fully illuminated by the echoes of his release. The god grew to even greater hights, pushing into the territory of ridiculousness as he towered over the two warriors and the whimpering child.
And that was when the onslaught began. With each punch, Didger's arm blasted forwards, moving so quickly that it became nothing more than a streak of light, extending all the way across the landscape with explosive force before snapping back elastically in the span of an instant. Firing off each punch like a gatling gun, the landscape erupted into shattered rock as the blasts of white energy tore through the air.
Helix immediately tried to leap out of the way but was hit several times in the span of a second, causing his body to contort, each blow leaving an indent of flesh before they all snapped back at once, sending writhing agony through his body.
Carefully scurrying out of the way and darting between floating chunks of rock, Yan barely managed to escape the first wave of destructive force.
Akun however, took a more conventional route; blasting out of the line of sight of the blows, Didger's enraged elastic blasts trailed the heran as he careened horizontally across the fields of hell. Wherever the warrior flew, the terrain behind him would burst into chunks of stone from the punches hot on his trail. The chase, however dangerous, gave Akun crucial knowledge. Didger had sacrificed his mind for power.
Soon, Didger ceased pummeling the landscape and allowed his fists to return to his sides. His eyes however, were still completely overcome with yellow light, and the same glow emanated from his mouth, drifting up like thick vapor whenever his mouth opened.
"Foolish…" Thundered the god incoherently, allowing his muscles to blast into full form for a brief moment before retracting them again," FOOLISH!"
By this time, the entire surrounding area had been reduced to a smoking wasteland, but Didger was far from done. Akun glanced over at Helix lying down on the ground. If the mazoku god noticed the mystic lying there, he would be pummeled into nonexistence, or worse, his soul would be permanently melded into the disgusting monster aggregate of the King himself.
Soon, the King's wicked eyes were surveying the land once more for victims of his new might. Akun needed to act fast… He needed to act now!
"You're not the only one who can eat Ensenji," bluffed Akun trying to suppress the anxiety in his tone. "I'm next."
The god lashed his head over to the Heran, eyes narrowed with furious rage. "You would not… Would not DARE!" On the last word, the air around Didger began to erupt into wicked black winds, coating the ravaged ground below in fourth dimensional black crystal. Akun's throat closed up. If he was taken in that crystal, he was fucking done for.
And then, Akun did the absolutely unthinkable for one of his culture, a completely dishonest and abhorrent act of prideless surrender.
He ran.
Didger rumbled in laughter as the blip of emerald light was effortlessly swatted from the air like a fly. Bearing the brunt of the blow in his shoulder, Akun was dunked straight down into the ground below. Of course he wasn't trying to actually get to the Ensenji fruit. That would be impossible. But what he desperately needed right now was to distract the King. Helix would find a way to pull through… He would have to.
But things were looking bleak. Immediately after smashing into the ground like a bowling ball, Akun found himself in the palm of Didger's hand, literally, as the god held him up, tossed him into the air, and slammed him back down into the ground with a fist as he fell.
"GRHNGh!" Akun couldn't help but let out a grunt as he was beaten senseless. The King could've neutralized him long ago by trapping him in crystal, or shattered his bones, torn his flesh into pieces. But still, he toyed with him. Lifting Akun off the ground, Didger reeled back his arm and hurled the battered Heran into the air, juggling him with a hefty uppercut as he fell back down, and launching him once more up into the atmosphere, causing him to splatter with the cold crystal sky.
But as Akun's body tumbled back down to earth, he suddenly turned around, pulling back his good arm and releasing a flash of light at his observing adversary. Quickly tumbling to the ground, Akun pulled back his arm behind his waist and clenched his fingers as if he was grabbing a ball. A vicious sporadic red aura began to blaze around his technique.
"F-Fuck…" Akun grinned slightly. "…You."
Dashing forward with his last ounce of strength, Akun moved with surprising speed and power. As his curled finger attack made contact with the King's armor… It pierced right through! Each finger punched a hole through his golden chest plate like paper, and the heran's hand continued on through the King's flesh effortlessly, reaching deep inside of his body!
And when Akun wrapped his fingers around it… He knew what he had to do. This was it. This was for his friends, this was for Helix, this was for dying for his cause instead of his pride.
The emerald forearm tore out of Didger's body, revealing semi digested golden pulp in the palm of his hand, beating like a heart. And Akun ate it like it was the last meat on earth.
Although he was still injured, and clearly broken both physically and emotionally, Akun afforded himself a cocky grin and a vicious glance at his adversary. "Game over."
Soon, the two were locking blows on even footing, even with Akun's incredible disadvantage. The two glistening green forces erupted with energy with each exchanged below. Sidestepping a kick, Didger whipped his elastic arm forewords, its mace-like forearm smashing through a mountain as Akun traded him for several shotgun kicks to the jaw.
The King caught the final leg and hurled Akun to the left mercilessly, but the Heran used the spacing to his own advantage, firing off a series of powerful red ki blasts at his foe, the hole in his chest still gaping.
Suddenly, there was symbiosis. For a single fleeting moment, the heran and the namekian were in perfect harmony, battling to their maximum potential, overwhelmed with hatred for each other but engaged in combat to the point of exhilaration. Was this what they wanted? A battle of battles?
The answer was decidedly 'no.'
As Akun ran in for a final blow on Didger's weak spot, he manifested an orb of red ki in his palm and thrust it forwards with all of his might. The heran's eyes flared with the final exertion of one determined for victory. But as Akun's palm thrust entered Didger's wound… It closed up around his fist, regenerated completely.
The King savored the look of absolute childish terror on the proud warrior's face. The image of the helpless heran would remain frozen in his memories for eternity. The hopeless eyes, the agony in his brow. It would be the last expression of his life.
In one brutal blow, Didger swept back his arm and delivered an a backhanded smash, knocking the heran away violently, with his arm still lodged in Didger's unmovable torso, tearing the emerald warrior in two.
The arm trapped in Didger's body faded to a weak teal, and the god ripped it out before appearing immediately behind the limping Akun. "Please, PLEASE DON'T—" but it was too late. Within the span of a second, Akun had been thrashed back and forth thrice with his own arm, before the king ruthlessly snapped it in half over his leg and flash stepped in front of his victim, slamming his open palm down on the heran's head and driving it into the ground, his massive fingers curling around his skull and squeezing ever so slightly before—
"Game…" …Crunch. "…Over."
Didger stood up. The silence on the plains was present now more than ever. His hand was completely drenched in the pulp of the fallen warrior's skull, and to add insult to injury, he released a wave of wicked winds from that same palm, washing over the land and perpetually burying the fallen heran under eternal black frost, never to be found or remembered.
There would be no miraculous victory. There would be no triumphant turnaround. It was over.
Looking down at the ravaged body buried below the semi translucent black crystal, Didger suddenly clenched his fist, and in one mighty punch, pounded down on the space-time glass, smashing his own creation and watching the cracks in the substance tear open the body below.
Having left one final token of his rage, Didger immediately evaporated into a feverish arc of black lightning, shifting up and to the left sporadically before careening off towards the Ensenji fruit once more.
Didger's armored feet touched ground, sending a slight rumble through the ground below, causing the teal grass to rustle out in ripples. He stood before the second Yemma tree in Hell, having already torn the fruit from the first, and gazed on in anticipation. The King was about to become so much more powerful. But… He could feel himself slipping, ever so slightly, as if he was watching his own actions from afar.
It was too late now to turn back. He had already eaten one of the Ensenji fruit and become a god. One more would push him past the realm of any adversary. One more and he could easily seal off hell without the help of any of his useless underlings.
But as the namekian god gazed at the massive tree, the sky in front of him suddenly became… Less dark? A crack began to form in the formerly impenetrable barrier of crystal, and light trickled in gloriously, shining a blade of heaven down into the plains of hell in front of the king.
Immediately, Didger paused, looking out at the crack with clenched fists. And within seconds, what had been a single crack exploded into a web of leaks.
And that was when the noise began. Erupting from what was previously almost a complete silence, indistinguishable shouts soon began to fill the air, growing into a massive uproar of clamor. Soon, individual distinguishable voices began to stick out, and silhouettes began to pour through the cracks, their shapes suddenly taking form and revealing… Ogres!
Dozens of ogres had begun to pour through the cracks, and they were only widening by the moment. Suddenly, musclebound red and blue Oni crashed down on all sides of the Yemma trees, and a powerful unexpected punch to the face knocked Didger's head peace off, causing his antennae armor to crash to the ground, bringing his mane of stolen kaioshin hair with it.
"No…" Didger mumbled, his eyes widened as his power numb brain tried to comprehend the situation, "How… NO!" With a single shout, Didger managed to blast back several of the ogres, and darted towards the Yemma tree, his hand reaching up for an Ensenji. But a powerful fist landed in the namekian's exposed stomach, sending him stumbling backwards before another massive blue kick knocked him in the skull, staggering the god a few more steps away.
The king boomed in rage, shouting out incoherently as he unleashed a burst of bludgeon strikes, his arms disappearing in streaks of light as he smashed back several of the oni in a 360 sphere radius around him. But it was nowhere near enough. What had been dozens of ogres had turned into hundreds, and the King was overwhelmed on all sides.
Any attempts at magic by the god were immediately stifled by powerful ogre antimagics, but his brute strength was significant enough to effortlessly swipe back the oncoming force. Crouching down before leaping up into the air, sending a shockwave out around him, Didger would soar into the sky and begin pounding at the ogres who followed him.
There was no turning around this situation. He would have to go back into hiding, to find entirely new allies… The King was ready to make his escape.
But there would be no such luck for the brutal demon namek. Suddenly, the cracks in his carefully constructed barrier began to swell into cavities, and then engorge into massive gaps.
As the god slaughtered ogre after ogre, he looked up at the growing light pouring into the underworld, watching his plan crumble. And standing at the crux of it, on the top of a nearby mountain covered almost entirely in light, was Helix Crust. The prophet had both hands pointed skyward, his energy absorbing the barrier of obsidian and bursting out cracks through the black ceiling every minute.
"You…" Didger projected his voice mentally into Helix's head, shaking his consciousness as the prophet stood, eyes locked on the god, "Worm."
The King blasted towards the prophet at top speed, soaring at the mystic ready to obliterate him in a single blow; his attack would prove far more difficult than he intended as a massive blue ogre leapt up from the ground below and delivered a powerful punch into Didger's neck, sending the god hurtling backwards.
Levitating in the air was a beautiful, masterfully sculpted blue ogre. And sitting on his shoulder… Was a delighted Yan! "Get him father! Punch him again!"
Meanwhile, Helix's magical might was only growing. But he couldn't reverse this entire barrier himself. He needed more power. Didger could only be held back for so long, and even the combined power of the ogres was doing little to delay him, let alone damage him.
Helix clenched his teeth, his eyes gazing out at the brutal namekian not fifty meters away. Each blow simply enraged the god further, but slowly his armor chipped away, revealing his true namekian form. His large thick antennae swayed slightly with each hit, his sickly yellow eyes, flashing occasionally with white energy, stared into the souls of the surrounding ogres.
The prophet felt the powerful burden of dark energy coursing through him as he rerouted and photosynthesized it, transforming the frozen sky into holy light. It wasn't going quickly enough, and Didger would soon be able to effortlessly wipe out everyone here. He needed to speed up this process, and quickly. He needed help, he needed a powerful mystic, he needed…
Grand Elder Nai!
In a brief moment that felt like an enternity, Helix's mind was inundated with the powerful presence of his former mentor, and he hallucinated the silhouette of the grand elder's smiling face in front of him. The gentle wrinkles of the grand elder manifested in front of Helix's very eyes, and Nai's benevolent smile spoke to him spiritually. "I'm here with you," smiled the elder, with the reassuring whisper that only a true leader can conjure, "my son."
It was in that moment that Helix's body suddenly began to swell. Age rapidly crept over Helix's bones, and his skin began to melt into wrinkles, folding over themselves and pouring out of him expansively as the namekian's elastic skin stretched to compensate for the weight of his new age. The wisdom of the grand elder began to suddenly flow over him, as if a dam had been opened in his mind, and he could feel his consciousness intermingling with his mentor's.
When the transformation was complete, what had once been a scrawny middle aged dragon caste had become a giant heavyset elder. Helix's eyes shut as the signature marking on his forehead gradiented into a bright white, his energy radiating out benevolently around him. The elder was no longer Helix Crust nor Nai. He was a some greater than his two parts.
Didger's sickly yellow eyes suddenly shot up from their positions locked on the furious ogres underneath him. The extreme magnitude of magical energy which had suddenly burst forth from Helix clearly was startling to him, but there was something even more deeply unsettling to the god.
The energy emanating from the fat namekian… Was absolutely unmistakably the aura of the young dragon caste, Nai, who had originally sealed Didger away. Could this namekian be the older version of that boy? Or a reincarnation?
Helix pushed his hands upwards once more, now exerting far more mystic force on the barrier. Cracks were completely gone, the wall was now completely inverting on itself, and slowly the dark matter began to swirl inwards like a vortex, centered on Helix's chubby upstretched palms.
Sensing the direness of the situation, Didger threw his palms down towards the ogres below and released a flash of black light. The blast of darkness overwhelmed the ogres below, vaporizing many on the spot. Yan's father tumbled down, narrowly avoiding the wave while Yan himself gazed up hopefully at Helix from the ground. "Mr. Crust! You can do it!"
Didger soon changed his target to Helix. If he couldn't have his way with Hell.. He would have his way with Nai…By freezing him in space time itself. Darkness began to swim around the hands of the armorless, ravaged namekian god. When he returned… He would release this dragon caste worm and absorb him, taking his power for himself.
Helix looked down from the incredible sinkhole swirling above him to see the black winds forming in Didger's palms, but it was too late. Everything began to move in slow motion as the King viciously thrust his hands forwards from his chest, sending streaks of black wind slicing across the sky.
The transformed prophet's formerly closed eyes suddenly opened wide, revealing pure white energy where his pupils would have been. The light flickered brilliantly as he watched the incoming wave of dark energy, knowing the wind to be the main vehicle of creation for the dark crystal.
Whipping through the air, the black wind approached Helix, closer and closer, but there was one thing that the god didn't know: Didger's own eyes had begun to glow in perfect harmony with the prophet's.
Trickling out light as one, Helix suddenly linked the brutal namekian's soul with his own, and activated his final trump card. The mirror technique.
Pulling the vortex down from above his head, the fat namekian found himself holding an orb of pure black energy in his palms, the vortex still sucking darkness into it every moment. By using his mirror technique… He could use the energy of Didger's own barrier against him!
Helix thrust the orb forwards, his own consciousness syncing up with the King's and enabling him to perfectly mimic the black wind sealing spell, converting the sphere of dark energy into a reservoir for a powerful pushback.
Within an instant, the orb in Helix's palm exploded forwards into darts of shadows, sweeping forwards towards Didger's own wind and easily overpowering it! Helix's wall of black energy smashed through Didger's like a wave absorbing a splash, and the prophet's holy white from his forehead mixed with the winds, creating an equilibrium that surrounded the King for a moment, before…
Completely enveloping him! The yin yang of darkness and light enclosed on Didger, swallowing him whole in his own magic. Each individual blade of wind curled up and sprayed outwards into a series of tiny black crystals, building up on each other and forming a sizable cocoon around the helpless Didger.
"YOU…" Didger boomed out mentally, his force weakening in every moment. The ogres below watched with awe as the king was completely consumed by the force. "Y-You…" Didger weakly projected telepathically, before speaking out loud in a rasping, barely audible gravely voice, "You…"
He was unable to finish his statement. The black wind frosted over his head, freezing the formerly glorious namekian god in an expression of utter defeat and incomprehension. With the wind dispersing, the crystal wasn't held by any magic any longer, and the newly fossilized King plummeted to the ground, to be caught by several ogres who quickly began reinforcing his sealing with their own magic, and speaking quickly and incomprehensibly into headsets.
Helix felt his age evaporate from his skin as he shed hundreds years and hundreds of pounds. Nai's consciousness fused back into the depths of his mind, and Helix was reduced to a scrawny skeleton of his former self. Dropping to his knees, the prophet exhaled wearily but with a profound relief.
"You did it! You positively did it!" Running up the side of the cliff was the small blue ogre boy, who embraced the fallen namekian with overwhelming jubilance. The prophet couldn't help but smile as Yan clung to his side, and put an arm around the boy reassuringly. "Y-Yes…" Helix rasped out, weakened from his ordeal, "We did it."
The child helped Helix to his feet as best as he could, and the prophet stood up, looking out at the clear horizon for the first time in days. The clear reddish yellow sky of Hell was actually quite beautiful from this view. Down below the cliff, countless oni employees shuffled back and forth, trying to decide what to do with Didger's frozen corpse.
"We have to thank you so sincerely," came a mature but distinctly bureaucratic voice from Helix's left, "for all of the assistance you've provided."
His eyes quickly widening and looking up, Helix was faced with a tall blue ogre wearing tiny wireframe glasses and a headset. Yan ran over to the oni, who picked up his son and placed him on his shoulder. "Father!" Yan shouted happily.
Something in Helix felt off. "Y-You're quite welcome… Yan here was the greatest help, he successfully completed what I s-should have done from the start." The prophet chuckled weakly, putting his hands on his knees and bending over slightly to support himself.
"We could not have completed this test without you," spoke the tall muscular ogre with a calculated air of positivity. "Your assistance has been invaluable!"
Helix froze immediately, a cold darkness suddenly washing over his body. "…Test?"
"O-Of course!" Yan's father said with a false smile, "This was a test of ogre magic… In case anyone in Hell ever needed to be sealed down here for a prolonged amount of time!"
"You don't really expect anyone to believe—" Helix began, now standing up straight, eyes wide with shock as his voice cracked, completely appalled.
"Everything is being taken care of by the oni. We work very hard to be the custodians of this dimension, and your cooperation is valued!"
The prophet couldn't believe his own ears. "There's no way you're going to be able to cover up the frozen souls, or the giant namekian sitting in a hunk of crystal right there."
"Right… where?"
When Helix looked down, to his shock, the entire scene had dissolved. All of the dozens of ogres had dissipated, and Didger's remains were nowhere to be found. "You can't— You have to be careful… It's not…" Helix was sputtering for words, and Yan looked down at him with empathy in his eyes, unsure of what was going on.
"Yan—" Helix spoke the young ogre's name, prompting surprise from his father. "You know what went on here… It's simply not safe to pretend… It's not fair to ignore the lost souls…" The prophet looked up at his companion desperately, and suddenly, things made sense to the boy. "Father, there was an evil namekian. There were lots of evil namekians, and Mr. Crust—"
But Yan's father silenced him, pulling him off his shoulder and putting him on the ground. "We'll talk about this later, Yan. There's no need to make up fairy tails."
Yan wouldn't be satiated so easily. Tears began to well up in the little boy's eyes. "F-Father-!" he cried out in protest, but the larger ogre simply hushed his son, before turning back to Helix. "Thank you very much for your assistance. But I think it's time for you to go—"
As the tall ogre was dictating his cold order to the prophet, Yan suddenly burst into a run, dashing over to Helix and hugging his leg, prompting the namekian to affectionately rustle his hair. "Y-Yan," the prophet couldn't help but smile softly.
"M-Mr. Crust taught me magic!" Yan smiled, wiping away his tears. "A-And now I'm going to go with him to learn more!"
The tall blue ogre suddenly froze in his tracks. "No. You cannot abandon your oni duties, Yan. And I won't have you associating with this namekian— namekian paranoid." Rage suddenly grew in the timid looking ogre. "I will not have you— Yan, you come back this instant or I will beat the living Hell out of you!"
But Helix held the young boy close, each moment simply confirming his decision to take the boy with him. "Come on Yan, let's go look for Akun and Gadreel," Helix reassured his pupil gently.
"YAN! YOU COME BACK HERE RIGHT THIS INSTANT OR I SWEAR TO YEMMA I WILL— NAMEKIAN, IF YOU TAKE MY BOY YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY—"
"I'm sorry, sir." Helix said with a slight smile, "What boy?"
And in that moment, the tiny ogre clung close to his namekian mentor's leg, and came full circle. Looking up at his father, the boy waved goodbye happily and without regret, before turning to Helix and smiling with a playful mischief. "Yes! Let us go!"
With that, Yan used his first bit of magic, turning the himself and his mentor into a vibrating blur, before… Disappearing in a whir of wind.
And so, Yan's father stood alone on the tall cliff top, his own ogres commanded away in a frenzy to cover up the incident, his own son gone with a lousy namekian, one of the same species who made this whole mess in the first place.
Yan and Helix would never find Akun, and would go on to mourn him for days, eventually constructing a shrine on the very clifftop where Didger had fallen.
Carved with solemn perfectionism by the young ogre, the tombstone was engraved with a single message, written by Helix in memory of his comrade and in hopes of his return.
"Akun—
To strive without pride,
and to fight without glory."
He would be remembered.
The End.
