Round 58.5 - Year 5, Month 0
So the forum has come to this. Against Corrosion, an entity suspected to host some rather divine powers stood up those who up to this point would call eachother rivals, if not enemies; Together came the long-brewed alliance of species, here represented by their gods, The Covenant. But not just them, for ten other powerful entities made their way to this place about to host a significant event: Nine of them were not originally native to this forum, though being born from material made in it - The Outsiders these were. One entity stood out of the gathering, for it was alone in representing it’s camp - Darkblur that was. Being the heir of the Mist, Mistworm and Mistorb now all long gone, this entity and it’s maker had a long history of conflict with the forum species, and yet today it stands alongside them.
Before the species gods, the nine and the blur stood one more entity, this one being the product of Covenant’s leader work. Deus may not truly fight in this battle on it’s own, but if there is one entity it controls, that’d be the Empiricator. Born just a few days ago, which is a sliver of time when compared with the ages of other major forum entities, it knows that it’s death may await just before itself.
For Corrosion was coming for Empiricator. This mass of ever-morphing blades and brown-ish plates may not appear all that dangerous at the first glance, but it seems like all the amassed know what’s up with it.
Corrosion stopped it’s march just two or three posts before the creation of Deuses and said in a rather mechanical voice:
With this last word, Corrosion rushed forward, and so did Empiricator. Battle was unavoidable at this point…
(6/6)
Deus made sure that Empriricator would be ready to challenge and perhaps even slay this entity that now was about to leap at it, standing at the same post as the creation was hovering just above in it’s soul-soaked and cyber-weaved form. As Corrosion jumped forward, seemingly hoping to catch Empiricator into it’s razors, the construct rapidly moved above it and attached to a spot where no blades were present at the moment and some plates were seen moving, which could be moved apart to give a glance at what lies inside the being. Empiricator of course knew what had to be done, and descended upon this spot as Corrosion hasn’t yet recognized where it’s foe went. When the weaved landed upon the newcomer, it found a weak spot between two plates and broke the two apart rather easily. Within the machine it found a whole clockwork of moving parts, but no central core of any kind - where was the mind of this entity located at?
(6/6)
As Empiricator was busy finding a path of safely escaping from the surface of Corrosion and transmitting the data it has collected to Deus before giving a try to infesting the entity, the one whose insides were viewed suddenly rotated 180 degrees , landing upside down and trapping Empiricator under increasingly aggresive blades.
Being constantly stabbed by razors of Corrosion’s, Empiricator suddenly started to melt away, as if it’s body started to decay, rot and pester at the same time. Within a dozen seconds there was no more life to be found within the puddle that used to be a fighter of Deus.
(5/6)
Corrosion would now however find itself in much more trouble, as other beings that came to confront it finally moved forward when Empiricator found itself trapped under the metal. Despite that, some like The Devourer stayed more to the back, perhaps hoping that others would take care of this mechanical terror.
The nine outsiders were initially leading the charge on the enemy of the forum, but suddenly Stumpspawn, one of the three of the most powerful outsiders, put a halt to the advance of this group. At first that might’ve seemed confusing to the other groups, but very soon the reason for this stoppage revealed itself: The four root-limbs of this outsider, each located between the legs of tree-like texture, suddenly waved upward - a motion never seen before even by members of TOR. As they were moving upward, an energy shield of sorts formed around the nine,
and once the limbs touched the petal sitting atop Stumpspawn, the shield formed a barrier from high up down to the forumsoil. At the same time, Stumpspawn opened it’s petal somewhat, and from it flew up something one could best describe as a plant-like bee: a few letters across, it was much smaller than all other forum “gods”, not to mention Corrosion, but it would also end up becoming the first entity after Empiricator to confront the terror of metal. It didn’t even slow down - the bee thing slammed right into Corrosion, generating an explosion that would rip off a razor or two. But not only it was coming for the entity that descended from the lands beyond - most of the species gods were too en route to Corrosion, just a post or two away from it. First attacked the God of Water, the representative of the Wall Crab kin. Powerful streams of highly pressurized water were shot at Corrosion, and just like with the bee a few blades fell victim to these attacks.
As the remaining outsiders and gods were rapidly preparing to follow in steps of Stumpspawn and Water-God respectively, Darkblur came the closest to Corrosion. It would get to look down at the rather mundane foe, and the foe would seemingly take it’s focus solely to this being, for it said:
Darkblur was distracted for a second or two by this entity speaking to it, seemingly as it (or rather a part of it’s soul) didn’t hear human voices for quite some time now. But it quickly regained focus. Very quickly after this speech of sorts, the three pairs of hands, at the ends of their respective arms, all of which are a part of the bizarre and frightening chimera Darkblur is would start emanating some sort of “dark light”, which quickly grew stronger. As Corrosion leaped forward for the life of this entity just like how it did with Empiricator, the anti-light was released from the hands of the blur’s in form of dark lines, very fast just like Darkblur, which hit Corrosion as it was just about to hit the dark bubble surrounding the Mistdom’s leader, with a dozen or so blades being ripped off the body of Corrosion from all the six beams hitting it. The blast of the explosions also pushed Corrosion back, all the way to the edge of the post.
(4/6)
The protective dark bubble around Darkblur suddenly withered away, with the body of the dark entity exposed. Seemingly frightened by this occurrence, the blur was frozen for a second, whilst Corrosion tried leaping on it with it’s blades once more. But just before it made the jump, an another bee of Stumpspawn’s hit the soil next to the mechanical being. This took Corrosion attention, with it now changing focus to the shielded nine. Seeing what happened to the powerful blur, the species’ gods halted to form a better plan of attacking the divine foe, while Darkblur reverted to observing the rest of the battle.
Meanwhile Sharpwing left the protective shielding by a hole apparently created by Stumpspawn’s will and moved above Corrosion. Very soon it would find out what these spears hanging from the flying outsider were for - as one after another launched themselves at the enemy of the entire forum, piercing the plates in a dozen or so places and causing a few more razor-blades to fall off.
(6/6)
This time Corrosion didn’t say anything about it’s foe having an advantage over it. Sharpwing was seemingly trying to launch a new barrage of spear-rockets when it’s wings started to bleed and melt, leading to the powerful outsider falling to the group below in matter of seconds after the symptoms occurred. It was at edge of life and death in that moment, and Corrosion moved forward for the kill.
(4/6)
But just as Corrosion was to cut into Sharpwing with a blade, three weaker-end outsiders, that being Spadebug, Shieldsword and Sonar, too left the protective bubble like the dying “alien” did. Just as a razor of Corrosion’s was “forum-centimeters” from piercing the surface of Sharpwing, some sort of a shockwave coming from Sonar hit the entity, temporarily stunning it. It might’ve not lasted all that long on such a powerful being, but it was long enough for Spadebug and Shieldsword to start attacking Corrosion with a storm of slashes and punctures, while Speeder and Sanitizer came in to rescue their mate which fell from the sky. The two bug-like outsiders did a good job at damaging Corrosion, whose physical form started to show signs of rather significant damage. Still, it managed to shake off the two in a matter of a dozen seconds, but by the time that happened Sharpwing was already close by the bubble, and the species gods were charging yet again.
(5/6)
Just as Corrosion started to move towards the group of species-gods rushing upon it, a storm of rockets, bullets and whatnot hit it - those came from the weaponry of the God of Warfare. These hits not only caused even more damage to Corrosion, but they also made it’s advance slower and the view - obstructed. Meanwhile the Warrior God used it’s spear to try and stun Corrosion just like how Sonar did. Managing to shoot it’s spear through two layers of plating and deep into the soil, Corrosion would be immobilized, if just for a few seconds. Of course the impaled tried to free itself, but soon it saw a priority much more important in this very moment - for the Metal God and a swarm of Thralls belonging to The Devourer were about to hit it. Not just that, Corrosion seemingly experienced hallucinations in that very moment, making it harder for them to make decisions - these likely were the result of the mentioned Devourer’s and it’s cultists’ spells targetting Corrosion.
Suddenly Corrosion would find itself being steadily attacked by the Warrior God, Metal God and the Thralls, with the Water God waiting for a window to open to release a powerful water stream upon the terror. It’s plates started to get stabbed by the very razors that made this being up, after they were ripped by the attacking forces. The structure of this mechanical being could no longer take on the damage.
A shockwave pushed all the beings next to Corrosion away from it. Once the dust cleared, all could see that, besides the spear that anchored Corrosion, only some rapidly corroding fragments of the entity remained where it was slain. Or so did the “slayers” think…
Everyone present at the site was shocked by the voice of the “dead” divine speaking up. Was this just a decoy used to make the true strength of this entity seem weaker?
All the entities which gathered at this place were left to think about what just happened for a while, in which no more speeches happened, most likely meaning that Corrosion has indeed left the forum, but slowly and surely all of the “godslayers” left off for their own sites - there were losses to be accounted for and information in need of being better understood.
Very soon after the battle Sapiepods sent Deus some news - it seems that Divine Energy can no longer be observed anyhow. All technology relating to it can no longer be developed due to this. As Deus knows, Corrosion is most likely the one behind this change.
(You may now submit regular mutation votes)