Chapter 6: Solos
The air thickened, heavy and oppressive, as though the sky itself bled. A violent spiral of wind erupted across the Plains of Vabos, whipping up a storm of crimson petals billions upon billions until the entire landscape drowned in a churning sea of red. Each petal glistened wetly, carrying the metallic tang of fresh blood.
With eerie, unnatural grace, the petals converged around Vabon's towering stone pillar. They wove together, layering and fusing, until they formed a, blood soaked tree towering meter high its bark slick and pulsing, veins of crimson throbbing beneath the surface like living arteries.
From the pillar's surface, the petrified golem figures stirred as their stone bodied began to crack and bleed, shedding rocky husks in wet chunks. They rose into the sky, transforming into mocking likenesses of Solos himself perfect in form and blasphemous to the eyes.
Each bore three tormented faces,one weeping endless tears of blood while another stretched out in a grotesque lip less smile and the last contorted in pure, animal rage.
Their combined aura detonated outward, climbing at a terrifying pace suffocating in presence.
Solos lifted his hands as glowing threads of crimson energy tore from his back, anchoring him to the bloody tree and to his newly birthed clones. The threads hummed with power, binding master to creation.
Reality shuddered as the distant roars of beasts fell silent. The wind died mid gust. Even the insects ceased their chirping, as if the world itself held its breath in terror.
Solos spread his vast, blood-drenched wings apart.
"I welcome thee, to my domain. As my lord commands… so shall I act." He declared, voice resonant with ancient authority.
Behind him, the three clones dropped to their knees in perfect synchronization, heads bowed in solemn prayer.
Dax remained utterly still, calculating his very next move.
He stroked the flat of Cil's blade with slow, reverent fingers, studying Solos the way a surgeon studies a rare and exquisite specimen laid bare on the operating table.
"You're strong…. Please let me cut into you let me understand you you majestic creature."His lips twitched, his madness had begun to surface, his eyes gleamed bright and sharp.
"Oh, let me study you…" He licked his lips unconsciously. "How you'll look under my scalpel… I must find out. I've never dissected a high dimensional being before."
Dax wasn't called the Black Doctor for nothing.In the next heartbeat he was gone.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The world blurred as thousands of blows collided in mere seconds each impact a detonation that threatened to tear open space itself. Shock waves rippled outward, flattening trees and carving furrows into the earth.
Dax paused mid-motion, staring at the blood trickling down his knuckles, no pain registered only exhilaration, electric and intoxicating. Deep inside him, something cruel stirred, uncoiling like a predator scenting prey.
"Killing Series First Form: Covered in Blood." like nothing killing intent erupted from him like a dam tangible in form, carrying the image of dead souls struggling.
His aura flooded the plains, twisting the air into a suffocating miasma. Phantom corpses materialized in the haze wailing, drifting and reaching with skeletal hands around his silhouette. He was like the embodiment of death, true to himself.
Solos hesitated only for a fraction of a second, but it was there.
"Thee… thee cannot be human… What art thou?" His voice waddled slightly, the formal cadence cracking.
Dax moved as the air detonated in his wake.He reappeared directly before Solos, brandishing Cil in a vicious arc.
The angel reacted with godlike swiftness. His wings hardened instantly,the flowing blood feathers condensed fusing into sheets of crimson metal. He parried the strike with a resonant clang that shook the ground.
Behind him, the three summons mobilized in perfect unison, the archer soared high above the clouds, bow drawn aiming at Dax while the other which was now a mage fell back behind Solos, lips moving in rapid, arcane chant and the warrior charged forward without fear, with a colossal blood sword raised.
What is this? Is he that useless that he has to hide behind lifeless things. But I cant overlook them.
Dax flickered again appearing before the blood warrior but the massive winged warrior matched his speed, closing the gap with impossible speed.
"Just because you cant feel pain doesn't mean you can't be destroyed."
Dax squeezed his palm as an invisible force clamped down the golem froze mid exchange. The warrior release no sound instead what followed was a loud cracking sound, buckled under invisible pressure then the flow of blood.
Solos watched, transfixed.
This ability… this is not magic. Not blood art nor divine law what is this man? And why did lord god request for his eyes.
Dax opened his palm he compressed golem sniping stone and blood in a beautiful dance he launched forward like a cannonball, hurtling toward Solos.
The angel tilted his head a casual dodging I like it was nothing but the mage behind him was not so fortunate…. like a stardust it exploded spraying out stone and blood from it's nothingness.
Before Dax could capitalize, a scream tore through the sky above.
Thunk!
An arrow as thick as a spear, forged of condensed blood speared straight into his chest, then another and another.
A storm of them followed.. hundreds raining down in an endless barrage, tearing through flesh, lifting and tossing his body like a broken puppet on strings.
"Combust."
Solos clenched his fist as every arrow embedded in Dax's body detonated simultaneously. The shock wave hurled him skyward his blood sprayed beautifully as it arced fountains.
Yet only hysterical, joyous, laughter escaped his lips.
"Hahaaaahhahhhhh! I can't control my body!" he shouted gleefully, his voice echoing across the plains. Solos appeared beside him mid-flight, blade already descending in a killing arc.
BOOM!
Dax cratered into the earth, landing upright in the smoking depression…. a grin continued his bloodied face. Muscles bulged unnaturally power from the depths rippled across his skin like
lightning.
Cil hummed in his grip eager, insistent, in a language only her master understood. With a nod, Dax pressed the dull spine of the katana against his own neck.
"Dominion over blood I'm starting to understand that is your power. I felt it I really felt… your presence in my blood all because of an arrow you did not touch" He raised the blade high and ready. Solos moved on sight.
"I am the Slaughterer. The one who will slaughter blood itself."
Killing intent surged into Cil, pouring from him very being. The blade devoured greedily, reshaping as the air vibrated violently, followed by the sound of a cosmic scream rolled. Terrifying in its true deadly grace.
"A sonar?" Solos glanced upward, confused but nothing visible marred the sky.
That was when he saw it. Hovering behind Dax silent yet immense. A whale.
A colossal phantom whale, cosmic and abyssal, its outline etched into the void. Its presence alone bent light and crushed the air beneath it.
Solos's wings trembled involuntarily.
"Thy does not understand? What is this creature? What is that human? Nothing is right about this situation."
The pressure did not come from Dax but from the blade he held.
Divine weapon? Solo couldn't believe his eyes.
Cil's form melted, elongating softly as her katana form dissolved and reformed into a sleek black rod etched with glowing runes the mark of the World-Devouring Whale. At its tip, a crescent scythe blade bloomed, crimson as arterial blood.
Dax exhaled sharply, eyes wide with awe. "You are too beautiful, Cil."
Above, the archer summon mocked more shots waves upon waves of blood arrows forming in the sky.
"You lack respect," Dax murmured.
He raised the scythe… and drew a single, perfect arc.
Silence followed for several long seconds.. nothing moved even the wind obeyed in silence to the presence of the attack Even the blood tree stood didn't dare.
Then the world convulsed.
The massive blood tree parted cleanly down the middle it'strunk sliding apart with surgical precision before collapsing in two perfect halves, roots still clutching the earth.
Cracks spidered across the crimson sky like fractures in glass. The "Blood pardise" shattered instantly dissolving into nothingness its glorious presence gone like it never existed, returning the plains to ordinary reality beneath a clear, indifferent sun.
Solos stared, stunned into rare silence.
Since the battle began, this "human" had broken very rules he understood every law of blood, and existence, he came to a conclusion.
"He must die."
If this human grows any stronger, he might bare his fangs at the blood god….. I would never!
Solos clenched his fist, wings flaring.
While Dax, he glanced at cil, momentarily speechless at its raw power but there was no time to marvel. An angel still needed to be killed.
He moved once again.
The two collided once more faster, fiercer, more violent than ever before. Trees uprooted in their wake stones crushed under the pressure of the battle to the point space itself rippled and tore.
Without realizing it, they shredded the barrier between realms and reappeared atop a volcanic peak, steam and sulfur choked the air.
They had arrived at a place called Mount Gahena.