Spear in hand, Sorin flew towards Chronos, crossing storm of temporal energy that pushed and pulled different parts of Sorin’s body forward and backward through time.

  Patches of Sorin’s skin wrinkled and rotted. His left leg began to shrink down to the size of a toddler’s.

  “No one can escape the ravages of time,” said Chronos lazily. “Not even gods.” His words became a law that hastened the decline of Sorin’s body.

  Dissolving powerful laws like Chronos’s was impossible, so Sorin did the next best thing. “Time is a healer,” stated Sorin. “Time is an agent of growth. To insist that ruin is the only outcome of passing time is to assume fixed negative inputs. Your assumptions are erroneous.” His words didn’t produce a law like Chronos’s did. Instead, they twisted the laws summoned by Chronos and converted them to laws of healing.

  “Time is omnipresent,” insisted Chronos. “Time is irreversible.” The effects of his laws broadened and affected Sorin’s body infirmly.”

  “Time is localized,” countered Sorin. His words forced the Chronos’s abrasive laws of time to occupy a much smaller space on his left hand. This created a gain-loss relationship between his hand and the rest of his body. This ensured no loss of energy.

  “Time is absolute.”

  “Time is relative.”

  “Time is cyclic.”

  “Time is infinite.”

  Several lightning-quick exchanges revealed the true nature of Sorin’s abilities: No matter what laws Chronos used to attack him, Sorin could subvert them.

  This effect expanded to gradually encompass all the laws under Chronos’s control. The breadth of Sorin’s control increased, though the absolute amount of control he possessed remained fixed.

  By further twisting Chronos’s laws, Sorin was able to create an opening for Madeline and Hades to regroup. “We’ll restrain him,” shouted Hades. “Attack him with everything you have!”

  Though Sorin wasn’t eager to do Hades’s bidding, Chronos was a real threat. Moreover, dealing with Chronos would allow Sorin shore up his lacking experience when it came to authority. He didn’t hesitate in closing the gap and going on the offensive. His spear was a biting serpent that slipped between the cracks of Chronos’s mighty armor.

  Chronos quickly switched from offensive laws to defensive ones. “My body is a cycle, eternal.” The wounds Sorin left on his body quickly faded as though they were never there.

  Sorin didn’t let up his attacks, however. Support arrived via Madeline. “The beginning is not the end,” spoke Madeline. “Your Cycle is imperfect.” Her words erased a port of Chronos’s past, breaking the complete cycle. Though Chronos was able to assert his control over time once more, the gap was enough for some of the cuts Sorin inflicted to stay.

  “Time is discontinuous,” spoke Chronos. The laws of time around him warped and twisted to create an alternate path to his past.

  “No matter how much time passes, the Empire is Eternal,” countered Hades. He inflicted Chronos was a measure of permanence that prevented backward travel through time.

  At the same time, his words summoned a jade stamp above Chronos that locked down his position. His blurring figure was unable to escape the stamp’s suppression, enabling Sorin to land the first meaningful attack of their protracted battle.

  No empire is eternal, and even worlds will inevitably crumble,” said Chronos, causing the stamp to crack. Hades coughed up golden blood as Chronos regained his freedom.

  “But the faith of the people holds strong,” countered Madeline, infusing crystalline wish-water into the stamp, mending its cracks. Sorin landed a second and a third attack, allowing the concentration of corruption inside Chronos’s body to cross a threshold.

  Target anatomy confirmed. Analyzing combat patterns. Chronos’s figure blurred as Sorin flickered around, tearing through space to bridge the seemingly endless gap with his opponent.

  Time dilation detected. Desynchronizing. Adapting. Optimal temporal path computed.

  Attacking Chronos was like attacking a fish from a boat atop the water. Light and perception were distorted, making it difficult to predict his actual position.

  Sorin’s counter to this was brute force calculation. The Ophiuchus Constellation lit up and began running simulations full speed.

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  It’s not enough, thought Sorin as his attacks continued to miss. It’s fortunate that I took the chance to contaminate the Pandoran Mainland. Using the material plane as a bridge, I can now invade the celestial plane!

  The corruption on Pandora began worming its way into the celestial plane using the Ophiuchus Simulation as a springboard. Countless constellations fell under Sorin’s influence, granting additional computing power and allowing Sorin to land three more consecutive hits.

  All-purpose corruption cocktail has reached critical levels. Powerful immune response detected. Minimizing damage. Adapting. Incubating.

  Sorin’s poisons were slow, but once he sank his fangs into his target, it was only a matter of time. Time Chronos tried to gain back but failed due to the intervention of Madeline and Hades.

  Results began to pour in, further fleshing out the nature of Chronos’s body. The results surprised Sorin. Instead of flesh, Chronos’s body was a confused tangle of laws.

  “What in the…” Sorin soon realized that this confused tangle was, in fact, just his outer shell. Past this hell lay a huge amount of information that brought his entire makeshift computing system to a halt.

  “Time… waits for no one.” One second, Chronos was tens of feet away from Sorin. The next, his sickle was cutting through Sorin’s neck.

  Sorin jumped back, but it was too late to prevent the sickle from cutting through his flesh. Fortunately, Sorin had shed his mortal body. Tendrils of tarnished gold blood jumped up to catch his head and reattach it.

  “Impossible,” said Chronos. His eyes practically burned a hole through Sorin’s body. “You should have suffered from this attack. Even gods are not without weaknesses.”

  “Fortunately, my body isn’t one of them,” said Sorin, continuing his analysis of Chronos’s information. “Yours, on the other hand, is quite the interesting. Your shell belongs to Chronos and acknowledged by the laws of this realm, but on the inside... You’re not really Chronos, are you?”

  Sorin grew increasingly certain in this statement as his corruption infiltrated the life form that he called himself Chronos. His body, like Sorin’s, was not composed of flesh, blood, and bone. It was formed from laws—laws not based reality as Sorin knew it.

  They twisted and squirmed like the mop of serpents on medusa’s head, occupying over eight dimensions. Only a single serpent belonged to Chronos. The rest had their own separate identity that merged with the others at the head.

  “So what if you’ve realized it?” said Chronos, his voice suddenly changing. “The Realm Treasure is asleep, and now, only three pathetic excuses for deities stand between me and a complete victory.”

  His ‘armor’ morphed to produce chitinous plates on squirming tentacles. The illusion of time and reincarnation vanished to reveal a hungry void of matter and law.

  Sorin threw a handful of poisonous needles at the large target and frowned as they melted away before reaching the creature’s body.

  “Your powers are nothing like I imagined,” said Chronos. “I was originally cautious due to the unknown nature of your powers, but it’s clear now that your authority is a subset of negation and distortion.”

  A tentacle pierced through time and space, stabbing into Sorin and injecting him with powerful alien laws. These laws reached into Sorin’s body and attempted to rip the divine power out of his body.

  Before it could do so, a bident spear cut through the appendage, freeing Sorin. Hades appeared before him and defended against Chronos’s follow up attacks.

  “I knew there was something wrong with you,” said Hades. “You were too concerned. Too caring. Too fake.”

  “So what if you know?” asked the monstrosity, stretching out its limbs. Reality stretched with it and made to completely encircle the trio.

  “Chronos was a terrible father, but he was predictable as he was stubborn,” explained Hades. “There’s no way he’d suddenly change course and send a group of outsiders to their doom for the benefit of Pandora. That’s also no chance he’d play such a long game.”

  “More importantly, the realm hesitated in whether or not to accept him,” added Madeline. “As one of the original titans, there should be no hesitation on the realm’s part if he was still himself, since Chronos was one of its firstborn children.”

  An ocean of white chains danced beneath her feet. Originally used as defensive implements, these chains now wrapped around the monstrosity’s wriggling appendages.

  “What’s more, your story about visiting the Nexus and countless worlds was contrived. It would have been a lot easier to accept your sob story if you hadn’t taken so many detours before arriving at the Nexus.”

  Thousands of eyes with different sizes and shapes of pupils focused on Madeline. “So you’ve been to the Nexus. That should be impossible. The realm would never allow its foundational laws to escape. Laws that you, before casting aside a portion of Hope to incorporate Ocean, incarnated.”

  A foxlike grin appeared on Madeline’s face. “I couldn’t personally escape. I still can’t. But a few hopefuls were able to do so over the past four hundred years. It’s how we were able to investigate you sudden invasion and ways in which we might protect ourselves from further attacks.”

  “Don’t let this thing trick you,” said Hades to Sorin. “Your Nemesis Authority isn’t lacking. It might not give you the raw strength that our authorities do, but it’s unrivalled when it comes to corruption and infiltration.”

  Sorin hesitated as his consciousness sank deeper into the madness that made up the imposter Chronos. “I’m not sure I can do anything to harm something like this.” That said, he hefted his poisonous spear and readied himself for battle. “But I can try. I’m unwilling to trust any deals such a complex entity might make, and I still have living friends on Pandora’s material plane.”

  “You might have friends, but for how long,” said Chronos. “The more intense our battle, the quicker time passes on Mount Olympus. “Take a look if you don’t believe me. See how many of your precious friends are left.”

  Sorin’s eyes narrowed as he spared a tiny amount of his attention to scan Olympia.

  “This… this can’t be happening,” muttered Sorin as his senses combed through the populace of Olympia and picked up a huge number of non-human energy signatures.”

  “Why can’t it?” asked Chronos. “Time here doesn’t pass by at the same rate as time on the material plane. Since the beginning of our battle till now, over a century has passed for the mortals of Pandora. Millenia could easily pass before this conflict is over and done with.”