Lux Locus: Fractured Family
The Administrator

A loud voice resonated across several blocks of the city, deafening those in its range.

"Let me join. Ysmo wants to fight. Protect his friend!"

A small window had been created underneath rubble where a demon of blood was using cultists in a circle to keep the window open. The only light being from the window itself as well as the occasional red flicker coming from the amorphous mass of the sentient liquid.

"We do not have the mana nor the sacrifices to bring you over, Ysmo!" the demon explained with mounting irritation.

"Bring me through! Kormsin will be killed! Cannot be brought back."

"I do not appreciate you interrupting my conversation with Gragantu, either."

Ysmo started stomping angrily, the force somehow passing through the window and affecting the world with a few tremors. The demon of blood rolled its 'eyes' and pulled the window back, allowing it to see the entirety of the mountain-sized demon. Each crust covered hand capable of crushing a city with a single, open palm. Each foot creating chasms with its three nails; The two forward nails boring into the ground and the rear one pulling out whatever was loosened. His face, with jagged lips serving as a first row of teeth, sparked with every closing and muffled the vocal brouhaha of Ysmo.

The demon's muscles flexed and stretched with every movement it made, letting the rest of its body pummel away as it saw fit. The horns on its head numbered six. Two came from the forehead and grew outwards then up into a spiral. Two more in the middle grew straight up, but the left curved left instead. The last two twirled, but towards his back. All six of them glowed a bright, calcium yellow and disturbed the eyes of those who looked upon the horns.

One of the cultists looked up from their concentration to see the titan stomping around angrily.

"Is he...having a tantrum?" she asked. "That brown and red titan is having a temper tantrum?!"

"Yes, now keep focusing." The demon watched the titan stomp around angrily, narrowly missing the figure the blood demon had been talking to prior. "Why is he so agitated?" the demon wondered. "Kormsin is a favored of Blumarak. Even death won't limit his recovery." The demon shrugged it off and looked away. "Already a surprise that he's talking to me. He never talks."

Meanwhile, CQ was continuing her bloody swath through the factory and the cultists that were fighting with the law enforcers and a few of Zenith's regimentaries that stayed behind as reinforcement. The afol anda bashed in the head of a demon of marrow and, once it was on the floor, stomped it dead. Her displays of apathy in her wanton acts of extreme violence, such as with her tearing a cultist in half with her hands, started terrifying the followers more and more.

When a common enemy shows itself, many enemies tend to put aside their issues momentarily just to combat. The cultists of Mumbass and Blumarak started to direct their fire against the former pillar. Screams of terror and nonsensical acts such as charging at CQ were performed. This left the enforcers to take easier shots at the scared cultists.

"Even when an afol anda does not fight," CQ began. "It still disposes of anything by the forbidden gods."

The woman's hulking form accentuated by her mace and armor dripping red accentuated her face during her calm speech, prompting the more cowardly to flee past their respective demons. Five cultists, to CQ's left, peered through a gaping hole in one of the boilers exposed by the long fighting and took the opportunity to shoot at the former pillar. While the shots could not penetrate her mana shield, the woman was still affected by the kinetic strength of the bullets. A demon of marrow, its body callused and a dry brown, used its hulking figure to pry a bit of wall from above and jump down the pipelines, hoping to crush the pillar with its weapon.

The sanctified one tossed her mace to her right hand and rotated to the side, avoiding the thunderous weapon and leaving the demon open. With one punch to the gut, the creature was paralyzed, allowing CQ to pick it up and use it as a shield to better approach the cultists firing at her. CQ's determination was so great that her charge into the boiler tore it from its foundations and crushed the humans hiding behind it. The pipes connected to the rest of the building network were also removed from their place up high, freeing the steam that had been trapped there still.

Despite being in the rather cramped boiler room, with five others still active and creating a heat wave that could cause a regular human to slow and collapse, the former pillar could not rest. She had trouble finding her way back to the person of her mission, and the cloth embedded within her skull fluttered anxiously in the searing heat wave. What could she do? The directions she knew that led to the depot below were either blocked off by too much fighting, or had been blocked off by rubble and collapses paths.

Before CQ could try to formulate a plan, she found herself floating within a realm of various blues. Streams of bright and dark blues snaked around the realm while colder blues slowly moved in the background like sea foam. The hotter blues stayed behind these shades and thrashed back and forth, up and down, forward and back, like a raging ocean during a tempest.

Any attempts to right herself 'up' were met with the human rotating in place and becoming even more confused. The currents of blue ebbed and flowed. Ceased movement for a calm horizon, then became a torrential whirlpool throwing the former pillar into a flesh-tearing spin. During one such venture, the woman found all to suddenly freeze, and her form to be straightened and moved forward.

"Is this the realm of Mana Magis?" she asked aloud.

There was no answer for a few minutes, then a voice broke the silence.

"Tis the realm, and I am its will: The will of Mana Magis."

CQ's eyes widened. "Are you the one known as the Administrator?"

"I am, and through my will and mine alone will you be able to find your destination and rid your world of the influence of the lone gods who possess neither hearth nor kith and kin."

"How, and why, am I here?"

"Have I not spoken clearly? If you will it, I shall bestow upon you but a meager hundreth of my power, and with it, you shall chase far and away those whom you deem of ill intent. The reasons of my machinations are not of importance."

"Then why ask me?"

The booming voice became more doubtful. "The mana within you shall work in overabundance, but your body might not be able to resist it. You might perish or lose any cognitive capacity."

"But the power you will lend me will let me accomplish my goal?"

"Yes."

"Then I accept."

The Administrator voiced his surprise. "You did not ask for a moment to ponder the after? You are aware of what I have said?"

CQ remained unflinching, surprising the 'god' who hummed with interest.

"An interesting force of will from one who does not have emotions. VERY WELL! Upon you I shall end a percentage of my power. Use it wisely, for its life will be as fleeting as a mortal's."

"Before you act, might I ask a question?"

The deity paused a moment and calmed the mana around. "What would this query be?"

"Why do you appear only now?"

"Because you should be more than capable of disposing of the entities of the lone gods on your own. I will lend power when called upon, but it is you who must do the work."

"And what if a god enters our realm?"

"Then I shall enter as well."

A few of the law enforcers were watching the three fight for their own end goal. Kormsin withered a downwards strike by Tzinma's staff and swatted Zenith's hand away so as to shoot the magus away. This left the warrior and prosecutor to exchange blows a few times before Tzinma returned with a spell increasing the weight of his fist a hundredfold. While Kormsin managed to absorb the strike, Zenith was not so fortunate.

Being mostly machine in this day and age had the advantage of not having to worry about any loss of one's physical self. Zenith, however, still worried. The attack dented his torso deeply and pushed out some vital gears and blocks. He kept going, as was his need, but he had no way of properly fighting his brothers swelled up with the energy of forbidden gods.

The prosecutor attempted to stand, but found his perceptions returning to the ground.

"I can't...stand." He looked up to see his brothers exchanging blows and mentally bared his teeth in frustration.

A blow between Tzinma's magic and Kormsin's sword created a shockwave that threw Zenith back a few feet, making him feel still powerless. His mechanical hands trembled as he reached to the pouch in his body and pulled out a vial filled with the toxic substance coursing through his pipes and circuitry.

"If my calculations were correct, and Killigan properly reforged this weapon to take outside mana, then I should be able to place a few drops of this liquid in it and create a toxified mana shot."

The receiver of the gun glowed a bright, steady, humming blue when its owner opened it, but the introduction of the toxins turned it a rusty, pulsating, orange-brown.

"Good."

He aimed it at his brothers and struggled to keep the gun on point, his mind attempting to let him collapse.

"N-not now..." he mumbled.

Back in the rubble, Ysmo became increasingly anxious until he felt a disturbance with Kormsin.

"Calm yourself!" the blood demon shouted to him.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!" the mountain demon bellowed.

He slammed both fists against the window, shattering and creating a vicious shockwave that threw debris in a two kilometer radius far away whilst still shattering and nigh destroying every building around. His rage and worry did not stop there, for it traveled even further in a focused line and reached the factory.

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