The night sky fractured like a mirror as Northern's clones surged forward. A hundred figures blurred into motion, their movements synchronized yet chaotic, like a swarm of starlings twisting as one.
Fire erupted from their left hands—crimson tongues lashing the dark—while ice crystallized in their right, jagged shards glinting like broken diamonds. The air rebelled, groaning under the duality of scorching heat and glacial cold.
After yanking away Nebulous Lord's arms, the Abysmal Belial glared with wicked intensity. The demented grin on its face only widened as it shifted its full attention to the storm of clones flying toward it.
It lunged, its four arms splayed like the spokes of a wheel. Where its clawed fingers grazed the air, trails of blackened distortion followed, as though reality itself charred at its touch. Northern's clones struck first.
A barrage of flames engulfed the creature, roaring like an unleashed furnace. But the inferno slid harmlessly off its obsidian skin, which drank the light like a hungry void.
The Belial's grin stretched wider, jagged teeth gleaming. One clone swung an ice blade at its throat—crack. The weapon shattered. The clone barely recoiled before the Belial's hand seized its arm.
The clone's limb turned to ash in an instant, the necrosis spreading like ink in water. Northern felt phantom pain lance through his nerves via [Link]—a searing, silent annihilation. The clone dissolved into smoke, its power snapping back into him like a released spring.
A dark frown fell across his face as he witnessed this.
With the creature's affinity to something burnt, Northern had suspected it was significant to its essence.
They were called Burnt Embers, at least the Behemoth ones. The Destroyers were Burnt Slag. These Belials were Burnt Cinder.
They had strong connections to burning, or to things already burnt. Northern knew that much, just not exactly what it meant.
Seeing his clone vanish into ash, he now understood. His decision to use clones to battle the creature stemmed from these suspicions.
So while he looked slightly displeased, events unfolded within his control, exactly as predicted.
The clones shifted tactics. Fire and ice collided mid-air, steam erupting in a scalding veil.
The Belial thrashed, momentarily blinded. Northern's true body flickered behind it, fists glowing with a dark sinister aura. He struck its spine—
Thoom!
The sound of a depth charge detonating underwater. The impact reverberated, delayed, as the creature twisted away.
The air where the Belial should have been imploded. A shockwave tore outward, shredding clouds into wisps. The monster staggered, one leg buckling as the delayed force crippled its momentum.
Northern didn't relent. Clones rained down, fists and blades hammering its body in a staccato rhythm—each strike multiplied on impact by [Echo].
But the Belial's laugh gurgled through the assault, wet and jagged. Its four hands shot out, faster than thought. Two clones erupted into cinders mid-swing, their ashes scattering like fireflies. A third clone ducked, ice surging from its palms to form a shield. The Belial's claw scraped the surface, and the shield crumbled to black dust, frost evaporating with a hiss like a dying scream.
The creature's aura pulsed as a palpable force now—a dry, suffocating heat that parched throats and singed eyelashes.
Northern's lungs burned with every breath his clones took. He tasted ash through their tongues, felt the prickle of sweat freezing on their skin as they circled tighter.
One hurled a glacier-sized spear; the Belial caught it, and the ice rotted from tip to base, collapsing into a heap of soot.
Northern grinned.
'Don't underestimate my clones.'
The moment the creature caught the spear, a deafening sound exploded through the air. The clone had released a massive impact from the block, crushing the Abysmal abomination with raw force.
The Belial's body convulsed as internal concussions rippled through it, its indestructible skin quivering like a drumhead. A crack split the air, louder than thunder, and the creature screamed.
The sound echoed like glass shattering in an empty cathedral. Its legs buckled, but its grin never faltered. One hand plunged into the chest of a nearby clone, reducing it to cinders, while another arm lashed upward, raking the sky.
Another Northern materialized above, fists wrapped in intertwining helixes of undulating flames. He slammed them downward. The collision birthed a supernova of steam and cantaloupe sparks, exploding outward like a miniature sun.
The Belial's arm snapped up to block, and Northern's knuckles grazed its wrist just before the impact sent the creature hurtling downward.
Fire without heat raced up Northern's arm. His skin blackened, cells dying in a wave. He severed the connection before the necrosis reached his shoulder, watching another clone disintegrating. His real body reeled back, teeth gritted.
He watched a terrible shockwave ripple across the center of the city, demolishing several buildings, crushing them and flinging debris in a massive circular torrent that would have shredded people had they been present.
Fortunately, that part of Lithia stood vacant, and before the shockwave reached the city center, its force had somewhat diminished.
Northern squinted, clicking his tongue in visible irritation.
'Of course, that wouldn't kill you...'
The Belial surged upward, grinning dementedly, its four arms carving the air into ribbons of distortion.
Northern's clones swarmed, sacrificing themselves in bursts of wind, flame and ice to stall the creature. One detonated a glacial explosion at its feet, freezing its legs momentarily; another unleashed a firestorm to blind it. A third hovered higher, veins pulsing with power. He concentrated [Echo] into his palm until it hummed like a captive star, then dove.
The Belial sensed him. It wrenched free from the ice, one hand lunging to intercept. Northern twisted mid-fall, letting the claw graze his ribs. His flesh charred instantly—a white-hot brand searing his side—but his hand found the creature's chest.
'Echo... and Release.'
The stored impacts—dozens of strikes from the clones—erupted at once.
The sky... split.
A shockwave tore through the Belial, bending its body like a bow. Its scream pierced the clouds, raw and guttural. Cracks spiderwebbed across its chest, not in its skin, but in the air around it, as though the emptiness beneath were fracturing. The creature plummeted, cratering the earth below in a plume of dust and debris.
Northern hovered amidst his remaining clones, all breathing raggedly. His duplicates flickered, their numbers halved. Chaos knitted his scorched ribs slowly, fire dancing at his fingertips. Below, the dust cleared. The Abysmal Belial lay motionless, its grin finally slack...
...until its head twitched. One finger curled.
Northern's blood froze.
The creature's skin began to melt, not into liquid, but into a swirling vortex of black sand. It rose, reforging itself grain by grain, its laughter now a low, grinding hum. The air filled with the bitter tang of ozone and decay.