Three horns burst out of his head, piercing into the skies as if defiant of the fact that anything existed above them. His horns grew into their full form, curving just the slightest bit backwards, giving Val the air of royalty, a crown of horns sitting atop his head. His skin started to glow with an otherworldly presence as a gorgeous armor of white, black and blue wove itself into existence. Only his horns remained uncovered, untouched and untamed. Not because they were weaker than his armor, but to let the world see exactly what to fear.
And still, he wasn't finished.
Wind had already appeared before him, but his wind blades seemed to go directly through Val; his entire body had temporarily been separated from any interactions in existence. A hint of what looked like amusement appeared on Wind's eerily placid humanoid face. He seemed to think for a fraction of a second, as Val had wanted.
Val's hand, once again drenched in green, seemed to pierce into reality as the bright green shine of his soul pierced through his forehead, and then he pulled.
Another Val stepped out beside him.
Then they both reached forward.
Foreheads ablaze with green.
And pulled.
Two become four.
Four become sixteen.
Then thirty-two. Sixty-four. One hundred and twenty-eight.
Until the world held one thousand and twenty-four Vals.
They dispersed into various pockets in the Void, as they all chanted:
"Ignite" Flames sparked into life across their armours. "Consume." The flames blew upwards again, seemingly wanting to pierce through the veil of the Void. "Flames that burn the night."
"Burn with endless might."
Val's chanted technique seemed to speak to the world itself as the orchestra intensified.
The black fire spreading across their armours transformed, burning brighter with the colours of white and blue added onto them. And simultaneously, the flames of the Void converged into their hands, and a ray of flames seemed to teleport onto Wind. One thousand and twenty-four rays of light pierced into Wind from all directions as Val's Lu finally ran out. Similar to a rubber that had been stretched far too much, all extra Vals seemed to snap back into the original, his superpositions fading into their proper probabilistic realities.
Val watched the aftermath of his attack with a glimmer of hope, to see a slight cut, to see some smoke at the least, to see something. Alas, a strong burst of wind revealed Wind standing in the center of a sphere of air, untouched.
Wind moved so fast, it may as well have been teleportation–its arm morphing into a blade and carving clean through his own.
In the instant that followed, Val bent the Void to its limit, flashing billions of kilometers away.
It wasn't enough.
He felt Wind closing in–slicing through spacetime itself, moving faster than the world was ever meant to permit.
Val was spent, but he couldn't die yet. T would arrive soon–he just had to hold on. With the last of his willpower, he fused with another superposition, his wounds flickering out of existence as Wind burst into view.
In a flash, Val lunged, drawing his final sabre straight for its head–only to be met with a wall of wind that killed his momentum, snapping the bones in his wrist and forearm.
'This isn't gonna work.'
'What the hell do I d–'
Val's vision swam for a fraction of a second as the new scenery in front of him cleared.
Below him stood a river that seemed as if it could stretch on endlessly, its silver currents stretching further with each passing moment. The silver waters shimmered like molten moonlight, flowing with an ancient stillness neither hurried nor idle, the quiet pulse of existence itself. This river did not merely flow—it was being woven, lengthening strand by strand in each passing moment.
This was the River of Time. This was the Time Plane.
…but could have only meant one thing.
"My river's much more beautiful, isn't it?" T pretended to ask as he gazed into the river with a smirk that made Val's lips twitch.
"...T, why the fuck am I here….why the FUCK ARE WE HERE?" Val spat, his voice growing louder.
T's smile grew wider. "Because we were fucked, why else? As soon as we exchanged the first couple of moves, I realised we'd die without any shred of honour or victory. Thaaaat's why I've been cooking this… Plan B. Did you really think it'd take me so long to" T brought his hands up into air quotes "'un-pierce' myself from a mountain? Or even end up there in the first place? I knew you were fighting, so I took the opportunity you granted us for Plan B."
"THE FUCK YOU MEAN COOKING THIS SHIT ON THE SIDE!?" Val spat, finally losing his tempered calm. T waved his hand, reversing the time flow of the spit that would have gone into his eyes, as he intently listened, "THIS WAS IT. I SAID, NO WE SAID, "DO OR DIE" WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT SOME BULLSHIT PLAN B WHILE I WAS FIGHTING FOR EVERYTHING WE STOOD FOR?"
"MAAAAYBE, JUST MAYBE, IF YOU HAD FOUGHT PROPERLY, WE COULD HAVE WON."
T waited a few seconds for the horns on Val's head to stop pulsating before he spoke again.
And when he finally retorted, all traces of a smile disappeared from T's face as his voice became as factual and flat as it could be. "Val. You know we'd lost. That was only one of them. And not even one with the same affinity as one of us."
Val paused for a second, evaluating T's words.
A moment after, a floor of darkness appeared below Val as he sat down and slouched just the tiniest bit; anyone other than T would never have noticed. "You… are right. Then T, what now? We already tried everything… your ass wouldn't fight until we did. So now what? We die a little later?… Everyone else dies a little later?"
….
Silence pervaded their little refuge, the weight of failure pressing down like an unshakable presence. The river below wove itself endlessly through the Time Plane, an eternal current indifferent to their struggles as it seemed to drown them out, making their worries insignificant.