They Who Would Swallow God [Delta and Eden vs Einst]

{BGM: “Second Deviation”}

He wasn’t entirely certain of just how much time passed between their first meeting and the present, but it was clear the ignorant, scared little girl he remembered was no more. This Delta was an impressive monster all her own, capable of standing her ground admirably. He could see everything she did—and especially what she didn’t do, with uncanny precision. The myriad forms of training and considerable amount of time spent honing his large array of senses in the heat of battle, chaotic wars, ‘suicide’ solo-operations and more, granted him a nigh unparalleled Power of Observation. This, a skill he learned of early on in his days spent as Killiak’s protégé, was in truth that which oversaw the entirety of his awareness. Each minute detail pertaining to his surroundings, the people populating them, and of course himself were all revealed to him in full, which is to say that he was able to process the information with ease. As he grew older, more experienced and finding himself in ever increasingly dangerous situations, this skill developed so much so that it became more of a character trait. Add in the several thousand years spent fighting at mind bending speeds, and the challenges it presented to this skill, and Einst’s ability to act in relation to even the most subtle events rose to unprecedented heights… To even consider the possibility of a warrior of his caliber being short-sighted and ill-prepared to deal with virtually any enemy was foolish, and perhaps a bit sad. While he wasn’t particularly skilled in reading the minds of women, Delta’s choices—in particular the decision to remain still—told him everything he needed to know.

The torrents of earth he effectively threw at her moved at thousands of miles per hour; some may mistake someone’s act of remaining motionless as a lack of perception of events moving so quickly, but not Einst. She had acted in response to his previous game, where he exhibited tremendous speed and planted both of his swords on either side of the girl, with the added motive of gauging her senses. Delta knew exactly where he was and when at key moments during his movements, and that confirmed a great number of suspicions he harbored. As the earthen waves crashed onto her position and hurled themselves skyward, Einst was already in position, watching with scrutiny. His highly tuned senses were well aware of the field released by the girl, as he had activated one of his Vega to deal with it directly along with anything else she did. In fact, Einst was prepared for the girl to charge through his attack and fight him in close-quarters, or at the least maneuver out of the area situated between his two swords. To see that she instead chose to ‘rise to the occasion’ and demonstrate her power…Einst likewise stopped moving completely.

{BGM: “Entombed”}

The girl’s field succeeded without resistance in reducing the thousands upon thousands of tonnes of earthen debris to even smaller debris. The nature of the torrents of earth meant that they had still risen high into the sky prior to this but did not continue to climb. This was a direct result of the girl’s power stripping the energy feeding the attack clean, all in all resulting in a harmless cascade of pebbles and sand. With Einst standing motionless and observing this sequence of events, his hand was already in play.

His two swords, impaled into the ground on either side of the girl, were entirely unaffected by the massive attack unleashed by the White Swordsman. This was due to reasons that should have been obvious, not least of which was the fact that he hadn’t uprooted the ground nearest her. As a result, the swords were left to weather his attack, and this was something they were easily capable of. The two blades never moved so much as an inch as the earthen waves passed over their positions and collided as intended. When Delta chose to stand her ground, the White Swordsman formed the words in his mind within an instant, which subsequently revealed the true purpose to his previous actions and the decision to not draw even one of his swords from their sheaths…

For as skilled in swordsmanship as he was, Einst was possessed of significantly greater skill in the use of magic. His expertise in sword-slinging was born out of necessity, with his access to manipulating the limitless world of magic literally in his blood being locked down from an early age up through most of his life forcing him to pursue a different path. When the day would arrive that he managed to break free of those restrictions, what used to take considerably tremendous effort immediately became little more than child’s play for the man. Able to wield any type of magic he encountered with not just ease but noted mastery, as though he’d known the way his entire life, all thanks to the fact he was born of a race with close and ancient ties to the greatest magics ever produced. With just how lethal he was with a sword, his opponents both old and new expected him to use his swordsmanship to his advantage, never stopping to think that he might be up to something behind the scenes. Of course, whether or not he was in any given encounter was irrelevant, since he could cast severely potent spells at the drop of a hat anyway; however, Delta had the unfortunate honor of playing right into his hands. In short, he was planning to cast a particular spell from the very beginning and the girl walked right into it.

As her technique rendered the enormous volume of debris into even finer debris, Einst didn’t bother waiting to activate the spell he had intended to unleash, which came with the synchronous activity of both swords impaled into the stone on either side of her. In the Valkyrie, one jewel upon its scabbard ignited with a fierce multicolored light, the brightness of which was so intense it could be called blinding. At the same time, the sheath of the Tenrai Hibiki, smothered in ancient Zeranian runes that normally lie dormant and unknown to the world around it, found one such rune igniting its trademark neon blue hue. While it wasn’t as intensely bright as the jewel of the Valkyrie, its impact on the world was one of vastly more profound intensity in that it bore an ethereal signature not unlike a living warrior. Sure, the jewel was also possessed of an etheric signature, but its design did not yield tangible effects on the environment the way the Zeranian rune did. These two events occurred in what might as well have been truly autonomous fashion, as Einst cast the ancient spell he knew by the word imprinted on his soul:

Endekinae!

Requiring a rather huge amount of focus in multiple areas such as spatial parameters of a given target area, location of a target entity [living, dead or otherwise] and the state of said target, the release of the spell was by no means trivial. Einst’s constantly developing Ethereal Attunement granted him significantly reduced cast-times, along with the ability to manipulate vast quantities of ether in that timespan, made his ancient spell execute in nearly instantaneous fashion. Given the information he’d learned by her every response both direct and indirect—Einst knew that a single big spell was not going to work. At least, not how he wanted it to. She was far too likely to counteract a slow-moving spell, especially a direct-fire type. Just the same, if his spell was of the wrong type, she’d be able to fend it off in similar fashion. This left him with one prime option in the form of a multi-layered imprisonment spell.

Normally Einst’s spellcasting was as formidable as it got all its own; with the assistance of his Vega and one of his Zeranian Runes, Einst was able to effectively short-circuit and amplify the process several times over. The Vega in question was that of his Manaforge, a Grand tier Vega that awarded him several benefits due to being of such a high level, all aimed toward enhancing his spellcasting. Supplanting his own ether pools with that of its own was the most immediate benefit, as it thoroughly removed the tax on his body and spirit to cast the spell [and all aspects associated with the spell, more on this in a moment]. With this, the Manaforge Vega was also capable of sourcing the spell in its entirety—throughout perpetuity. Bound to his spirit, the Vega was an augment type, meaning that it simply augmented his magic upon command, and intrinsically knew the spells being cast. Should the appropriate spells be cast, the possibilities were quite literally endless, and that just so happened to be exactly what Einst was up to.

Releasing the Endekinae via his Vega housed within the Valkyrie was matched with the activation of the Zeranian Rune for “Matter”, engraved into the sheath of the Tenrai Hibiki, which pulsed an ominous dark blue. Such was Einst’s connection with this weapon that he could manipulate and control it from afar with ease. Few if any living knew of the countless runes engraved within its pitch-black surface, hidden from view until called upon, or what their purpose may be. For now, it was important only to know that this particular rune granted Einst the ability to target whatever the host of the rune is physically touching, effectively enabling him to transform that substance into the fabric of his spell. It defied traditional ‘laws’ of matter and energy, reality itself even, but this was par for the course when dealing with anything hailing from the nightmare known only as Killiak. Therefore, it was in the span of an instant that Einst’s spell was transferred throughout the entirety of the ‘earth’ [dirt, stone, etc] launched at Delta with his previous attack.
Initially his expectation was to execute his spell after Delta presumably avoided or bypassed it in some fashion. With his highly advanced, multifaced senses already keenly aware of the ‘odd’ frequency being released in the area, he suspected that she would move to act sooner rather than later. When her retort was to pulverize the thousands of tons of earth, he launched towards her after and during its skyward ascent, resulting in her being rained upon by comparatively harmless sand, dirt and tiny pebbles…Einst knew this was his moment to strike. When he did, he was unrelenting in delivering what was sure to be her defeat.

With the earth already smothering her position in every direction above and below, along with her body itself, the Endekinae transformed the totality of the Earth in several meters along every plane. What once was Earth was now the first three layers of an imprisonment spell designed to contain the true Gods of a forgotten time. When an immortal being simply cannot be killed [hence their being immortal], yet they must be defeated, an effective choice was that of imprisonment. Surrounding the God, or in this case Delta, with hyper-condensed mana set to thrive off all means of resistance, the Endekinae was extremely effective. Normally requiring the dedicated focus of no less than three High-Mages in relation to the Valkyrions, a race of beings innately aligned with magic of the highest order, Einst was able to perform the spell not only by himself, but with apparent ease. With the assistance of his equipment, he was able to direct the spell in such a way that Delta was contained in the spell in one stage, whilst offloading the burden to that of his Vega.

Considering the Endekinae was a layered spell, and Einst successfully cast the first three layers of an amount Delta surely did not want to learn, this immediately placed Delta in an extremely disadvantageous position. The first layer was that of the physical realm, ensuring that all physically based exertions were absorbed into strengthening the spell. The second layer ensured that any attempts of manipulating space to break through it by means of bypassing physical boundaries, such as teleportation or the erasure of the space occupied by the spell or other various means. Thirdly was that of mana or ether, ensuring that any and all metaphysical forces were similarly consumed as fuel [absorbed] for the prison. Hence, the traditional requirement for three High-Mages, one for each of the first layers to successfully trap a God and use their own strengths whatever they may be to further strengthen the prison against them.

Unfortunately for Delta, this spell was cast in a different means than usual, with Einst combining the use of his Zeranian Rune to use the Earthen debris as its medium/target. This changed the spell’s behavior in such a way that the woman was completely surrounded by multiple instances of the Endekinae. It was a side-effect of combining two opposing natures together as one, that of the Zeranians and his Valkyrion-based Ancient Magic. So it was, with a single cast Einst caused thousands of Endekinae to be unleashed, each one spanning a few millimeters in thickness at a time until the several dozens of meters of earth were fully replaced. Fueled by the Vega, Einst was completely freed of the burden of such a dangerous combination that could have very easily drained him to life-threatening levels, allowing him to further act as he so desired.

Considering that Delta chose to allow the earth to fall over her body, even if only for a moment, she would now suddenly find herself thoroughly surrounded in Einst’s magic. The Endekinae did not acknowledge the ground they stood upon as any meaningful boundary, especially with the manipulation of the Zeranian Rune, and so the spheres were forged in completion. Even something as simple as breathing or blinking would be seen as resistance, let alone the summoning of weapons and subsequent releases she planned. If she did somehow manage to break free of the thousands of imprisonment spells being sourced by the Manaforge, Einst had already activated his Guardian Vega, and would simply utilize it in conjunction with his bracer to fend off her intended attack. The way he saw it though, she was stuck, with the three current layers ensuring she couldn’t escape, resist, or break through via any means, as all forms of resistance were only going to make matters worse…

His spell cast, Einst kept the Ochi propped loosely on his shoulder and brought the words necessary to release yet more of the remaining layers should Delta refuse to give up.