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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Klokinator on 2025-05-16 19:25:12+00:00.
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…
(Part 001)
Far-Future Era. Day 2, AJR. Volgarius’s Orbit.
Space warped and deformed around Nufaris. He rushed at Mephisto not with the intent to kill, but a need to lock him down, trap him, and eventually re-imprison him. Nufaris knew from a secret discussion with Dosena that Mephisto’s body was too durable for him to break. The only way to kill Mephisto would be by destroying his much weaker unified Emperor souls. Not only were they a critical vulnerability, but doing so would give the Volgrim Empire a massive amount of Living Moldanium! This could offer them a huge buffer of powerful alloys to be used for making weapons and armor!
Just when it seemed Nufaris would collide with Mephisto, the dragon clapped his palms together, then yanked them apart, summoning his most well known and highly effective ability…
“DARK MISSST!”
A hellish wall of black fog expanded outward in a massive sphere. It instantly shut down all visual-based sensor and camera systems, countless forms of LIDAR and other highly advanced scanning systems, and so much more! The expanding wall of darkness didn’t only expand outward in a plain sphere though; Mephisto deliberately curved its trajectory in an oval shape, bending it toward the Volgrim armada.
Within seconds, countless ships at the periphery of the fleet, closer to the planet than Mephisto’s current coordinates, became engulfed by the oppressive realm of shadow. Transmissions from these ships abruptly fell silent. Their sister vessels lost contact, and their fates became uncertain.
Using only his cosmic senses, Nufaris managed to triangulate Mephisto’s general position, but he found that his other senses simply couldn’t lock on to the wiley dragon anymore. Mephisto cleverly turned his body partially intangible and reduced the ‘glow’ of his already rather pitiful Cosmic Aura, causing him to become even stealthier than before.
Nufaris charged at the spot where he sensed Mephisto, but his prepared spatial attack attack whiffed, striking the emptiness of space and flying off into the void. His void-chains, intended to begin the process of binding Mephisto, instead became like a clown’s antics. He quickly spun around, trying desperately to sense Mephisto’s movements.
“Kekekeke!” Mephisto gurgled, his shrill laughter erupting from multiple places within the fog. “What an embarrasssing disssplay, Nufarisss! Where are you aiming? We’re over here, you fool!”
Nufaris frowned. He sensed a flicker of danger from his right. He instantly pivoted to face it, only for a shadowy specter of a dragon to charge at him. It wasn’t Mephisto, but rather one of his weak shadow-clones.
[Mere tricks!] Nufaris scoffed. He sent a beam of spatial energy out and fired it into the core of the shadow dragon, bursting it like a balloon. But then, for some reason, Mephisto fell completely silent.
Nufaris tensed up. He looked around, waiting for another attack, but it didn’t come. The Dark Mist started to retreat, then it vanished completely, regurgitating Nufaris back into realspace. At that moment, a fellow Psion, one of the surviving 5th Level juniors among the fleet, finally managed to transmit a psio-burst to his lauded Executor.
[Executor Nufaris! It was a trick! He’s moving toward Volgarius! Hurry, we can’t stop him!!]
Nufaris’s heart turned cold. He realized he’d been had. Mephisto never had any intention to fight him. That son of a bitch was no Psion. He knew nothing of honor. Three of his souls belonged to Mephisto, Yama, and Zamiel. They were pure scum, even among demons. They would always fight dirty before fighting fair.
[No! NO!] Nufaris roared, as he locked on to the Cosmic energy signal racing toward Volgarius. [Don’t you DARE!]
Nufaris conjured the full power of an Executor and launched himself toward Volgarius. He was faster than Mephisto, and not by a little. Unfortunately, he could not match up to the vile dragon in one regard… Mephisto had no qualms about killing any mortals in his path!
Mephisto callously smashed through ship after ship, deliberately causing as much damage as possible while treating these previously high-and-mighty vessels as toys made of wet tissue paper. Neither shields nor formidable alloys could compare to even this bottom-level Cosmic comprised of high-level dragonbones.
But while Mephisto could completely ignore the weak, faint stings of an Akashic Backlash most pitiful, Nufaris did not have such a luxury. He had to dodge, side-slip, and teleport around many destroyed vessels, taking care not to accidentally kill any mortals while pursuing his hated foe. He did not only do this because of the Akashic Backlash, but also because… these were his fellow Volgrim! What sort of figurehead would he be if he caused his own people harm? He had to preserve as many lives as possible, especially while that filthy Demila was wreaking havoc.
Thus, Mephisto managed to keep ahead of Nufaris. He drew closer and closer to Volgarius, sometimes even slowing down a little to smash through a particularly juicy capital-class ship in his path. He sneered whenever he noticed Nufaris momentarily slowing down to dodge some debris or try not to hurt any minuscule mortals.
Another psio-burst reached Nufaris’s mind, making his body shudder upon hearing the bad news.
[Executor! Demila has appeared at Naandril I! She’s slaughtering even more Psions! What should we do?! Our souls are there! If this keeps up-]
The voice abruptly went inert. That Psion fell silent as he lost connection with his soul. Demila had struck again.
[Dammit, dammit, dammit!] Nufaris roared.
He had never experienced this level of rage, this feeling of helplessness, this pitiful level of despair. Never in all his years! His Empire was collapsing, he was the only one powerful enough to put up a fight against its dark fate, but his power… simply wasn’t enough.
Mephisto finally struck Volgarius’s upper atmosphere. His body ignited with flames as he hurtled toward the stratoscrapers below, burning up in re-entry yet suffering no physical damage. His arrival send out shockwaves that blasted apart countless windows, deafened millions of Volgrim at the ground level, and blew out the eardrums of those nearest the sky.
“It’sss time to have a little FUN!” Mephisto shouted while laughing evilly.
Unlike Mephisto, Nufaris’s atmospheric entry was much less explosive. He flitted between the air molecules, separating them with his psionic powers so as to not cause immense damage to the Volgrim below. Unfortunately, what he saw when he arrived left his heart metaphorically bleeding with pain. Mephisto had deliberately crashed his body into the largest stratoscraper. He tore it to shreds, atomizing it with nothing more than the raw weight and durability of his dragon bones. Hundreds of thousands of Low Psions, Technopaths, and Changelings inside the tower fell silent as their bodies were shredded into flecks of meat and speckles of bone. Millions of tons of glass, composited steel, and other materials collapsed into the stratoscraper’s footprint, spreading out and causing extreme damage to other adjacent towers.
This in turn weakened their foundations. Two nearby ones immediately began to topple over, which Nufaris belatedly realized could cause a horrifying domino effect. Even if Mephisto did nothing else, the Stratoscrapers would continue to fall over, slam into their neighboring towers, then force those to fall sideways as well. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of Volgrim would perish within the hour!
Naturally, Mephisto realized this too. He sent a gleaming red gaze back at his pursuer, cackling shrilly. “Kekeke! What now, Nufarisss?! Going to let all thessse pretty little mortalsss die?! Don’t worry, we’ll caussse even more havoc… over here!”
He rushed to the west and slammed his body into a different stratoscraper, this time deliberately aiming to send it toppling sideways. Nufaris tried to charge in and stop him, but the vicious demon simply lunged downward into the collapsing debris, shielding himself with the dying bodies of tens of thousands of puny mortals.
Nufaris, unable to stop the demon directly, instead tried to stabilize the situation. He reached out with his powers and slowed the fall of a hundred stratoscrapers, preventing them from toppling over into other adjacent towers… but this proved to be another mistake! Mephisto simply continued racing off into the distance, ripping apart one tower after the next, causing t…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1ko9hlv/the_cryopod_to_hell_644_mephistos_massacre/
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