City of IF

[Phang]

Thank god for these new musics I have now. I would be even more emotionally drained without them than I am now, and that's just plain deathage.


Winger could feel the power surging through her. It concentrated in her mind, and she flexed her mental muscles. Power channelled into her hands, her fingers, she could make it pour out of her fingertips like droplets of water dancing around her palms. Her eyes changed to blue like the Master’s, but she was different. She understood the power, recognised it as a force she couldn’t ever hope to control. The Master was trying to control it, and he would keep burning away at himself until he was nothing but his soul, and then that would be consumed by the power too, leaving him to never have existed. She knew that now.


The Master himself was shocked. What had she done? She’d drained his power, stolen it, taken it as hers! But how? How? He had to know how, and then he would reclaim it, and the power that made her capable of such a feat in the first place. He was the stronger one. He’d trained all his life, suffered so much, how could this happen?

She would die tonight, and he would feel her life absorbed into his own. There would be no stopping him.


The Master struck out with all his force, delivering a blow that would cripple most Slilambra. With it he collapsed, more of his skin burning, melting, evaporating away into nothing. Such pain and then it felt like there was nothing there. But it was still there, enveloped in power. He would become nothing but the power, absorb Winger’s power, he knew this was the way it had to be. Gathering himself together, he shot the power at Winger again, so powerful it became the brilliant blue-tinged white of a mist diamond. She should be dead by now, but she wasn’t. In fact, it seemed like she absorbed it. How could he defeat such a thing…


With every insane, desperate strike he performed against her she grew stronger. This was the balance – she had come here to stop him, and now she could truly leave him with nothing, and return him to the Laron Slilambra who waited with eager lust for their long-sought justice. The end of the threat to the world.

The battle was still in Winger’s favour and constantly grew even more biased with each blow. The Master drained up reserves of energy inside him he’d never even known he had, sucking up his subconscious, instinctual reserves in mere seconds as he still clung to the hope that he could kill Winger. But she avoided the blows as if they had never been there, until he collapsed from the burning all over his body, the flesh and skin being sucked dry of all life to be converted into more power for the struggle. Still Winger stood, not fighting back, just standing there, a channel for higher powers, a reason for the Master to self-destruct. In front of her he melted away into a humanoid light, and then shrunk and swelled, pulsing and throbbing as around him mist diamonds and debris were sucked in and obliterated. Winger felt herself float above the vacuum of power, and with a gesture raised Fourteen above it as well. He was sucking in everything, he was going to try and strike her down with his biggest blow yet. Didn’t he see that she was more powerful now than anything on this earth? He was becoming more insane with every action, the power absorbing his mind and soul. And power absorbed Winger too, a power of balance. She was no longer Winger.

*~*~*

It was either years or seconds since the Master had begun the final step of his end – Winger was now blessed with the patience of immortal beings, but the roaring of the swirling vortex he had become blocked out the sounds of battle from outside, leaving her with no idea of time. Time was being dragged into him as well, she suspected, as the walls bent agonisingly slowly. He was a ball of glowing blue light now, no sign was left of the Laron Slilambra, the deformed creature he had become, nor the gibbering insanity he had descended into. There were not even his screams inside her head as he ceased to be completely, leaving only his evil, surrounded by unbelievable energy. It blinded her, but she could still see, as if the knowledge had been planted inside her. Though it was silent and calm, its rage bellowed directly into her head, thoughts and emotions that would have struck dead any normal being, human or wolf.

It was time.

With a vicious, heart-stopping curse, it flung itself forward with all its force, the force of the sky and the earth, and straight into her. It crackled through her body and she felt pain like never before, saw nightmares from people long dead or not yet born, the suffering of thousands. She experienced first-hand the Apocalypse. Then it flew back out of her again as she reacted after those few moments of sheer shock and terror. She thrust it outwards and crushed it in on itself, adding all of the power she had gained until…


From outside, the struggle continued, until all of the opposing, nightmarish mutants of the Master disintegrated into blue light, then sped away towards the Factory’s topmost tower, the most fearful lightning ever seen by wolf eyes. Then, seconds later, an explosion. The wolf army fled with all the speed they’d ever mustered, fleeing like they were lightning bolts themselves. No one saw the shape of a creature with huge, majestic wings, soaring away from the flames and blue sparks without a sign of injury or remorse for who she’d had to leave behind.

Fourteen had been obliterated, still unconscious. But Winger knew his soul, pure despite his outside twisted appearance, would be with the things that had granted her these powers. Her parents?

She perched on the farthest roof of the Factory, and looked at herself. Her skin was no longer grey leather, but knobbly red scales, like lava. Behind her true wings sprouted from beneath her shoulder blades, three or four times her size, which had almost doubled. She wasn’t Winger – Winger had been the name of the shell that had carried her towards this destiny, the body crafted at the hands of the Master, the soul always bearing the hidden spark of ultimate power that the greatest of Slilambra could only dream of in their deepest slumbers. She was one of those beings who had seen this planet through Creation, to the Apocalypse, and now she would help rebuild the earth.


Her immortal life was just ahead of her, waiting in between the highest of clouds, beyond the Scarva hawks and beyond even the purest of mist diamonds.

As she soared up into the clouds, she shed her past life, and as the memories flowed away, the last thing she heard from them was a horn.

A deep, loud horn, like the yawn of an Echoer.

But that was merely a piece of legend now.


So there it is, folks, the end of Beyond the Horn, and I have a niggling feeling I screwed it up (please prove me wrong) :unsure: .

For those of you who hung on till the end, well done, have a cookie, and I love you all to bite-sized morsels, suitable for dipping.

Oh, and to Storm - yes, I know someone died. Yes, Winger is now some immortal, all-powerful being. And yes, I haven't put what happens to the wolves. But I really don't care.

[Smee]

Well done Phang - an impressive achievement to get it finished. :clap:

Your reward will be winging its way to you soon.

:D

[Shady Stoat]

Nice ending, Phang! Your writing style has really improved since those opening chapters. I didn't find it at all a let-down, or confusing... or whatever else it was that you feared. I'm just happy the Master got what was coming to him in the end.

Congrats on finishing one. Great feeling, isn't it? :D

[LordoftheNight]

Hmm, personally I wanted the Master to win. Damn.

*claims free cookie*

[Chinaren]

Well done Phang! A nice closing chapter, and I f5 Stoat's comments all.

:cheers: :tu: :clap: :tempt: :biggrin: