Metatron?

Whatever he was about to say was cut off as he staggered several steps back, a hole larger than his head appearing in the center of his chest. The circle was perfectly carved, its edges smooth, and at the exact center of it all was Malkuth’s portal, hanging suspended in the emptiness. Already, matter was flowing from that hole to replace what was lost, but it glimmered around the edges with sparks of white light.

Malkuth looked down at the hole in his chest and then traced a path to the finger I’d pointed at him absently.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean to interrupt; please, continue. I just wanted to check on something.”

It was true, in a way—I’d felt the shift, but I wanted to confirm it. The Arcana had changed the moment I adopted this shape, which was inevitable; I’d reunited my split haves, found what I was looking for, and I’d accomplished one of my major goals. I felt strong now, whole, and at ease in a way that was hard to describe or define.

The Arcana had taken shape accordingly.

Judgement: The Arcana of Judgement—the representation of the self, of what remains and shines through when all else is gone. It is an understanding of past mistakes and an acceptance of them; the ability to learn from them and face the future. At the same time, it is a point of choices and decisions, of loss and rebirth, as one reaches their own Judgement Day and decides the path of their lives. When the user is within this state of being, nothing may stand in their way—all attacks receive 100% defense penetration and ignore inherent immunities. At the same time, the user must be wary, lest they falter in this moment; active defenses may not be used in this state.

I rolled my wrist, closing my hand and then opening it. Three small spheres, each no larger than a marble, rotated in a quick circle above my hand. I looked at them curiously for a moment, trying to determine their nature. The Arcana was a skill I understood only in part and this was the first time I could see with any certainty how it manifested and confirm several of my own theories. It wasn’t something that drew greater power from above like Ohr Ein Sof or the Brahmastra; instead, it drew from something just as important.

Me. It was the point of connection between who I’d been and who I was—not so much as dividing line between Keter and Jaune as a bridge. It was what remained, what my soul had taken with it when it passed on and was reborn. The way it manifested…it wasn’t like my former Semblance, wasn’t as broad or easy to control. I couldn’t just assign myself a role, either, so instead it arose from my role. But the touches, the influences, they were obvious and clear. It wasn’t the same, but it was still mine; the remains of a soul that had gone through life and the cycle of reincarnation. Something that didn’t translate well into thoughts or memories, into something held by a human mind, but which was still there, even after all those things were gone.

It might even have had something to do with why souls were reincarnated in the first place, but that was nothing more than a guess.

Still, the way it manifested…it was an obvious alteration to who I was, to the nature of my soul. Not on the level of a Semblance but close. Strength and the Chariot, in and of themselves, changed spiritual and mental force into physical ones. The Lovers blurred lines between individuals along paths of connection. The Magician…widening the connection that the Aura drew on for power?

But this…Judgement. At first glance, it seemed similar to Longinus as it accomplished the same ends…but no. It was something else. Longinus pierced defenses by cutting through space—by severing the most basic forms of connection and ignoring anything to do with the material. What a target was made of or blocked with was irrelevant, because those that seemed to be hit by it weren’t actually touched at all, they merely suffered from the fact that the volume space they’d inhabited had been shredded with them inside of it. That was probably why it interfered with portals the way it did, too; if a portal twisted space to connect one point to another and Longinus tore a hole through space as it passed…

Judgement was something else. The power I’d gathered like this, the very Aura I was channeling—its nature had changed. It seemed both less physical and more certain, as if the power I was channeling was built from simple fact. The attacks created did not hit hard enough to do, say, a hundred damage to the target. They simply imposed a hundred damage on the target, as if it were a natural law. Reducing the effect or defending against them did nothing, because however one tried to block, that damage could not be reduced.

The strike that had hit Malkuth hadn’t damaged him directly, hadn’t shorn through his armor. Instead, it had simply touched him and taken effect, with that effect being ‘take this defined amount of damage’, erased parts of him to meet that criteria.

It was interesting, in no small part because it seemed like something that would belong to Malkuth. A limited application of his power, perhaps, an overly specific and defined one that was reached in a different way…but there were traces, similarities.

And it seemed as though I wasn’t the only one to draw that connection.

“Tch,” Malkuth said, touching his chest. “Keter, you bastard. Pulling out your old tricks again—“

The spheres rotating above my hand stopped in place for an instant and flashed forward, hitting and erasing most of his head. Pointless, perhaps, given the obvious lack of anything vital in there—but it was well worth it to shut him up.

Malkuth’s body rocked for a moment and then began to run even without a head—straight towards Raven, who’d slowed after the Lovers had vanished. Even so, I could see a blade humming in her hands, trying to make up the difference with Dust.

I didn’t chase after him. I didn’t bother. Instead, I simply held out a hand to my side—and his fist made contact with it, stopping just short of Raven. On contact with his skin, the flesh of my hand seemed to dissolve, revealing nothing but pure white light in its stead, and flecks of burning flesh began to rise from Malkuth’s hand.

“Don’t,” I said and we were twenty meters away from Raven. “I’m not the same as I was back then—I won’t let you touch the people I care about again.”

“Bastard,” Malkuth said again, a note of muted effort in his voice as he tried to push me back or pull away.

Instead, I let him go, moving my hand to his chest. As it did, it seemed to leave wavering after images behind—but they weren’t of my arm. One was made of fire, another of air. Earth, water, steel, lightning, ice, distorted space, and countless others, each a different shape and size.

Each still a part of me.

I fired.

What came forth from my hands was less a focused assault or barrage and more a breaking of reality. Gravity went haywire, points in space rippling and then being sucked towards the center. Space itself followed suit, parts of the area warping and lengthening whilst others shrunk or even disappeared, shunted or drawn oddly into empty places. What could only be described as sparks of time fluttered out from my skin, expanding into roughly spherical bursts wherever they touched Malkuth, and those parts that were encompassed by the sphere were abruptly covered in horrific wounds, the evidence of injuries that had yet to happen imposed upon the present. Light flooded over and through all of it, making and unmaking what it touched in a way that was both interconnected and distinct.

And all of it was followed by everything I could throw at him. One arm shattered and spun into a growing whirlwind of glass, with individual shards sticking and seeming to melt into the surrounding landscape, transforming what it touched into glass and adding it to the cyclone. Fire burst from everything around me and then sank, the heat drawing into the affected surfaces to burn hotter, charring things without any sign of the source even as the damage crept deeper. Beside the living heat were growing patches of ice, left behind in the defiance of Thermodynamics and then given life in its own right. Shapes began to rise from it, as well as the earth and water nearby, the more physical elements struggling to take shape. The ground fractured violently, massive fissures opening up from which poured all manner of things, and the ground continued to shake in a steadily growing earthquake even as the wind began to whip into a storm and lava began to flood up from the ground.

The sound of it all was distorted oddly, carrying in strange ways and intermingling into a rising cacophony that altered itself every few seconds. Stone, glass, and crystal began to shatter, inevitably exploding into clouds of wicked shrapnel. The pressure in the area skyrocketed, the very air seeming unspeakably heavy, and the effects of inertia followed, causing things to move oddly—things that should have shaken or scattered remained stock still, things that should have remained immobile as steady as a mountain. Friction shifted with it, things stopping in midair, flying strangely, or even growing faster with no source. At the same time, I saw things melt, some of them simply coming apart while others were covered in growing pools of strange acids.

There were other things, as well—every element I could access, which was all of them, showing up in force. They turned upon Malkuth, upon the world around him, and blasted it with everything. Every vector of assault was followed through with, each attack piercing his defenses as if they didn’t exist. Malkuth’s existence, his very being, was stripped away, sometimes in chunks while other times in pieces, until nothing remained but the tiny insignificant portal that allowed him to exist here and now.

I lifted a hand, pointing at it—and space rippled outwards from it as if something had crashed into it with unspeakable force. That done, I clinched my hand into a fist and everything around us, the chaos I’d made of our surroundings, leapt from the ground around us and flooded into that opening, drawn to and gathering around a narrow orb of light.

Malkuth screamed in a way that didn’t translate very well into sound—it was a noise like a rise in frequency, a slowing of natural processes, and overlay over the background of the world spinning. Even so, the ‘sound’ was loud and it carried, echoing until I dropped my hand.

The hole in space bled black, a small stream of fluid stripping down from it in a strange way, as if dripping down an invisible surface rather than empty space. More of it flowed upwards and then to the sides, stretching into the shape of something like a stick figure as he healed.

I didn’t move, but figures stepped out of me. Suryasta, Xihai, Levant, Ereb, Vulturnus—even Crocea Mors, now physical instead of a reflection. They were followed, impossibly, by figures that were mutually exclusive in existence; my Ice Elemental, Steam, Pressure, Inertia, Plasma, Gravity, Glass, Vibration, my Dimensional, and more. Everything I could create, that could spring forth from my existence, was present.

Malkuth threw everything at me and I threw everything right back. Waves of light with bursts of strange energy, consuming and pacifying them. Oddly colored sparks dancing with searing lightning across the surface of empty space and ionized air. Spikes and storms of violent matter took hits and bore through them, piercing blasts of power flashing through whatever was in their way, and everything between Malkuth and I began to fall apart.

At the same time, my Elementals—the parts of me I had encompassed and now manifested in their familiar shapes—marched forward through it all like a small army. They were different now, the change a spiritual one instead of anything physical, because they were perfected in unity with both me and each other. Though the battlefield was rendered into chaos, they pushed forward.

The moment they were close enough to touch him, however, Malkuth exploded into a mass of what I could only describe as probability clones—the odds of him trying to escape in a given direction granted not-quite physical form. They’d shatter, I could tell, falling to zero the moment they were caught, but if even one escaped, they’d turn out to be the real Malkuth. My Elementals immediately leapt into action, shifting and dividing as needed to reach their targets, but I stayed back, expecting a trick.

Because of that, I noticed the subtle movement of space as one of the probability clones took a less conventional path, slipping through something I would have thought a portal had it not clung to his skin. I followed suit all the same, willing myself to be more of a constant than any of the principles that governed space, tying myself to Malkuth and remaining equidistant from him even as he moved. I recognized his target before he even appeared and reacted as he materialized above Autumn, pulling instead of allowing myself to be pulled.

He swept a hand through her, but we were already in the wrong state, a shifted area of space that was disconnected from hers. His claws didn’t reach her, even as they swept cleanly through her body, and I reached out to grab him.

We came apart, vanishing and reversing as I returned us to a previous position in space, drawing us back to the battlefield in an instant.

Malkuth released a growl of frustration that rose into a scream as he unfolded, mass shifting away to reveal more mass, covering an impossible volume. I felt something activate, something shift, and figured it was probably a bomb.Malkuth threw everything at me and I threw everything right back. Waves of light with bursts of strange energy, consuming and pacifying them. Oddly colored sparks dancing with searing lightning across the surface of empty space and ionized air. Spikes and storms of violent matter took hits and bore through them, piercing blasts of power flashing through whatever was in their way, and everything between Malkuth and I began to fall apart.

At the same time, my Elementals—the parts of me I had encompassed and now manifested in their familiar shapes—marched forward through it all like a small army. They were different now, the change a spiritual one instead of anything physical, because they were perfected in unity with both me and each other. Though the battlefield was rendered into chaos, they pushed forward.

The moment they were close enough to touch him, however, Malkuth exploded into a mass of what I could only describe as probability clones—the odds of him trying to escape in a given direction granted not-quite physical form. They’d shatter, I could tell, falling to zero the moment they were caught, but if even one escaped, they’d turn out to be the real Malkuth. My Elementals immediately leapt into action, shifting and dividing as needed to reach their targets, but I stayed back, expecting a trick.

Because of that, I noticed the subtle movement of space as one of the probability clones took a less conventional path, slipping through something I would have thought a portal had it not clung to his skin. I followed suit all the same, willing myself to be more of a constant than any of the principles that governed space, tying myself to Malkuth and remaining equidistant from him even as he moved. I recognized his target before he even appeared and reacted as he materialized above Autumn, pulling instead of allowing myself to be pulled.

He swept a hand through her, but we were already in the wrong state, a shifted area of space that was disconnected from hers. His claws didn’t reach her, even as they swept cleanly through her body, and I reached out to grab him.

We came apart, vanishing and reversing as I returned us to a previous position in space, drawing us back to the battlefield in an instant.

Malkuth released a growl of frustration that rose into a scream as he unfolded, mass shifting away to reveal more mass, covering an impossible volume. I felt something activate, something shift, and figured it was probably a bomb.