The Clash of Absolute Wills

It wasn't peace; it was abandonment.

(BWAAAAAA-HROOOOOMMM-GZZZZT!!!!)

In the center of the cataclysm, where reality twisted under the heat of artificial suns, there existed a point of absolute stillness that defied all logic.

(Why...?)

For Lethe, the world had always been an excessively noisy place.

(vrr-GHROOOOAAAMMM!!!)

At that moment, a psionic explosion from Raina swept across the horizon, turning the air into crimson plasma that incinerated every trace of oxygen in its path.

(... Why can’t they just... be quiet?)

The roar was enough to tear the eardrums of thousands, but for the Lady of Sloth, it was nothing more than a distant hum, an irritating vibration that tried, without success, to rouse her from her lethargy.

(SHRRRRRR-VROOOOM-KRRRR-SHHHHH-ST!!)

In response, Lethe's rusted sapphire vines rose with a terrifying languor.

(KRRRR-WHOOOOOOOOOOO-SHHHHHHH!!!)

They did not strike with the intent to destroy; they simply expanded to occupy space, reclaiming matter like a necrotic shroud that absorbed the color and energy of Raina's attacks.

(S-shhh-st... clink... clink-st!)

Where the nuclear fire of the halberd {KATA-STROPHÉ EUDOKIA} slammed against the thorns, there was no conventional explosion, but rather a hiss of existential evaporation.

"You really are irritating..."

Raina was perpetual motion.

"Your very presence frustrates me more and more!"

Each of her attacks was a declaration of war, an explosion of will seeking to force the universe to recognize her pain.

"Are you even capable of feeling anything?"

The vehemence with which the Lady of Wrath wielded her weapon caused space itself to bleed violet and orange flashes, in a frenetic dance of destruction that sought an ending.

"... No, I feel nothing."

On the contrary, Lethe was Inertia.

(It’s exhausting... watching you struggle so much...)

Lethe watched through her hollow eyes, like lightless pits that once belonged to a compassionate princess.

"... For that reason... You are a nuisance..."

To her, Raina was a despicable anomaly; comparable to a heat stain on a canvas she wished to keep in an eternal gray.

"... Just disappear... Once... and for all..."

Every time the psionic energy of Wrath caused the ground to explode into fragments of crystal and asphalt, Lethe felt a prickle of annoyance beneath her skin, which she once again buried.

(FRRRR-BOOOOOMSHHH!!)

But in response to those words, Raina counterattacked...

"I feel the same way about you... So if anything should disappear, it's you!"

Unleashing an upward slash of the halberd, Raina generated a shockwave that split the sky in two, sending a blast of thermonuclear heat directly toward Lethe's chest, creating a monumental impact that swept away the surrounding clouds.

(CLINK-CLINK-KRAAAA-STCHHHHH!!)

Nevertheless, from the heart of the steam and sparks, Lethe's voice emerged, icy and devoid of effort.

"... Noisy."

And immediately after those words, the tsunami of ivy reacted.

(WUUUUOOOOMMM—...—...—!!!)

Thus, the thorns lunged, not merely content to block Raina's fire; instead, they began to drain it.

(Sh-sh-sshhhrrrr-st-st-st!!)

As a result, the intense crimson psychic energy that should have vaporized Lethe began to lose its luster, turning dull as the vines absorbed the vibration of the atoms, forcing them to a halt.

(VRRRRRRRRRR-ZZZZZZZZ-KKK-KRAAAAAAAA!!)

It was the clash of two absolutes: the force that refuses to stop against the vacuum that refuses to move.

"What did you call me?"

However, Lethe's contempt was the spark that finally set Raina's patience ablaze.

"For an unattractive, unpleasant person like you to say something like that to me..."

Taking it extremely personally in response...

(GRRRRR-RUMBLE-RUMBLE-VROOOOOM!!!)

Raina projected her will not only toward Lethe, but toward the very depths of the planet.

(KRA-KOOOOM!! KRA-KOOOOM!!)

Thanks to that, her telekinesis, now saturated with liquid rage, sank like invisible claws kilometers beneath the Earth's crust, dragging up columns of incandescent magma from the depths. Freed from tectonic pressure by Raina's mental force, they erupted toward the sky like glowing spears of fire.

(BWAAAAAA-HROOOOOMMM-GZZZZT!!!!)

Thus, the red of the magma mingled with the crimson of her aura, creating a spectacle of viscous destruction that began to orbit the Lady of Wrath.

"Are you perhaps spiteful because you were abandoned for being so static?"

Promptly, Raina manipulated the flow of molten rock with fluid hand movements, in sharp contrast to her biting words.

(WWUUUUOOOMMM—SSSS-SHHHHIIII—KRRR-VRAAAA!)

In this way, the magma intertwined with her psionic energy, forming floating shields that hissed upon contact with the cold air and, simultaneously, she fired lava projectiles that shot toward Lethe's sapphire tsunami.

"... Take it back."

However, at those words, Lethe, elevated upon her throne of thorns...

(SHHHHHIIIIIIIII-UUUU-VRRRRR-BOOOOM!-STCHHHHH!!)

Blocked the attack, fixing her hollow gaze as she narrowed her eyes, showing a spark of genuine irritation.

"Or what do you plan to do?"

But without backing down from that, Raina smiled provocatively, readying her weapon in hand.

"... Shut up... ugly... Probably... nobody likes you..."

To which Lethe responded with feigned indifference as a form of mockery, braiding her thorns.

(FRRRR-BOOOOOMSHHH!!)

... As a result, without another word, both clashed.

(CLINK-CLINK-KRAAAA-STCHHHHH!!)

Because of that, the collision was a cacophony of insults and cataclysms.

"You look like a corpse they forgot to bury."

While they shouted nonsense at each other worthy of a playground, reality around them crumbled.

(VROOOOOOO-GZZZZZZZT-TCH-TCH-TCH!!!)

Raina used her telekinesis to pull more and more magma from the subsoil, turning the battlefield into an ocean of liquid fire that sought to drown Lethe's inertia.

"Why don't you shut your mouth and keep quiet... You little troublemaker?"

In response, the ivy took the form of a dome, blocking the attack only to immediately shoot forward, piercing the spot where Raina had been standing moments before.

(SHRRRRRR-VROOOOM-KRRRR-SHHHHH!!!)

In this way, the existential steam born from the clash between the psionic/magmatic fire and the degradation of the rusted sapphire covered the entire area, hiding the two combatants who, amidst nuclear-proportioned explosions, continued to trade blows at a level that, without them realizing it, had become personal.

"Annoying."

Thus, the conflict reached a point of no return where words became sharp and attacks became absolute.

"Unpleasant."

The atmosphere, already saturated with existential steam, became a canvas of pure destruction as both traded short epithets that cut through the air with more malice than their own weapons.

(GRRRRR-RUMBLE-VROOOOOM!!!)

Inspired by a fury that knew no physical limits, the Lady of Wrath manipulated the veins of magma she had extracted from the ground, giving them grotesque and lethal shapes.

(BWAAAAAA-HROOOOOMMM-GZZZZT!!!!)

And with a simple gesture of her right hand, a colossal mass of molten rock molded itself in the air, taking the form of a titanic fang of liquid fire that shot toward Lethe, leaving a trail of sulfur and ash in its wake.

(KRRRR-WHOOOOOOOOOOO-SHHHHHHH!!!)

Simultaneously, with her left hand, Raina compressed the air and magma into the figure of an incandescent phoenix, whose lava wings flapped at supersonic speeds, slicing through clouds and steel with equal ease.

(WWUUUUOOOMMM—SSSS-SHHHHIIII—VRAAAA!)

Nevertheless, Raina did not stop there; instead, applying her influence over the environment, she began to tear away entire sectors of the city still clinging to the floating island, compressing fifty-story buildings into spheres of debris and magma that orbited her like kinetic projectiles, accelerated by her will until the very air began to ignite from friction.

"Boring."

In parallel, Lethe, unfazed by the sun of lava bearing down on her....

(Sh-sh-sshhhrrrr-st-st-st!!)

She intertwined the infinite tide of vines around her, forming colossal braids of necrotic wood that possessed the hardness of diamond and the flexibility of a whip.

(KRRRR-SHHHHH-ST-ST-ST!!!)

Promptly, they shot up from the ground like biological spears, piercing Raina's magma cores before they could impact.

(CLINK-CLINK-KRAAAA-STCHHHHH!!)

After which Lethe's ivy expanded geometrically, reclaiming the air.

"Noisy."

And immediately, from the sides of those braided structures, thousands of pores opened simultaneously.

(SHRRRRRR-VROOOOM-KRRRR-SHHHHH!!!)

In a paroxysm of active defense, Lethe fired a rain of sapphire thorns from the surface of her ivy like projectiles, leaving a trail of bluish static in their wake.

(FRRRR-BOOOOOMSHHH!!)

Because of this, the thorns intercepted Raina’s blocks of debris in mid-air, disintegrating them not by impact, but by exhausting the molecular cohesion of the matter until reducing them to inert dust before they could touch her.

(SHHHHHIIIIIIIII-UUUU-VRRRRR-BOOOOM!!!!)

Nevertheless, the clash, like a symphony of opposites, only amplified.

"Ugly."

Raina, floating in the eye of a storm of molten debris, launched volleys of meteors with the simple flick of her fingers.

"Stupid."

Meanwhile, Lethe, shrouded in her sapphire cocoon, responded with a tide of ivy that devoured light, firing incessant bursts of thorns that saturated space.

(VROOOOOOO-GZZZZZZZT-TCH-TCH-TCH!!!)

Finally, the steam born from the magma cooling abruptly and the ivy incinerating covered everything, leaving only their auras clashing over and over in a cycle of hatred and indifference.

"Look at the sky! Those aren't clouds... they’re... unravelling? The blue is disappearing!"

However...

"Honey, don't look directly. Get in the house! Dad, put down the newspaper and run to the basement!"

As their clash continued at an atmospheric level, the sky became a chromatic and physical battlefield.

(GRRRRR-RR-NNNNGG-FWAAAAA!!!)

The constant friction between Raina's thermonuclear heat and Lethe's necrotic cold generated a low-pressure zone so extreme that winds reached hypersonic speeds, tearing away the upper atmosphere of the Virtual Dimension.

(WWUUUUOOOMMM—...—KR-KR-KRRIIIIIIIIII!!!)

The clouds did not move; they evaporated instantly, replaced by an "existential vapor" composed of dissociated atoms that no longer remembered whether they should be solid matter or pure energy.

"I don't feel the wind anymore. I feel like the air... is asking me for permission to exist."

But the collateral damage was not limited to what the eye could see.

"Hey! My phone is boiling! The screen turned to liquid!"

"Look at the horizon! The city is being erased as if someone had run an eraser over the world!"

"I don't want to die like this! I don't even know what that thing coming toward us is!"

The continuous clash caused a fracture in the structural coherence of reality.

"Central, respond! The asphalt is... it's levitating! Gravity makes no sense here anymore! Requesting orders!"

The space around the epicenter began to show "vanishing points": jagged black cracks where sound fell silent and light vanished, indicating that the fabric of reality was tearing under the stress of processing two Calamity-level wills.

(BWAAAAAA-HROOOOOMMM-GZZZZT!!!!)

Thousands of kilometers away, the planet's tectonic plates reacted to Raina's massive manipulation of magma, triggering earthquakes of incalculable magnitude that shook continents, while Lethe's degrading influence seeped through the planet's ley lines, causing entire jungles to turn into bluish ash in a matter of seconds.

(VROOOOOOO-GZZZZZZZT-TCH-TCH-TCH!!!)

Thus, the world could only groan—not from fire or ice, but from the paradox of harboring two forces that, by their very nature, were incompatible with the continuity of life.

(VRRRRRRRRRR-ZZZZZZZZ-KKK-KRAAAAAAAA!!)

While the chaos only grew.