Chapter 631 End of Chaos

The silence that followed lasted a very long time.

"Well," said Frost, in a small voice. "That was a lot."

Arthur let out a long breath and lifted his hand, and the Abyss loosened its grip.

The darkness began to thin. It happened slowly, like a tide receding, black draining out of the air in long, curling threads until the broken sky of the World of Chaos showed through, its colors bruised and strange and quiet. The ground underfoot cracked and crumbled back into ordinary earth. The eight small heaps of white robes dissolved into dust.

Arthur turned to the others, and extended one hand toward Raven. A thread of shadow unspooled from his fingers and bent away across the horizon, pointing toward something very far away. "This is where Ivy is," he said. "The Rulers kept her there. Bring her back with you, and then return to Earth. I’ll join you shortly."

"Alright," Raven said.

"And Raven." He hesitated. "The drawback of the power I lent you will reach all of you soon. It’ll hit hard. Be careful. And I’m sorry." He looked at the five of them in turn, and his voice softened. "I’m sorry for dragging you into this mess."

"Don’t," said Clark.

He crossed the broken ground and put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. His face was lined with exhaustion, and his cape was long gone, but there was a warmth in his eyes. "I’d do it again. Any day. Don’t you dare apologize for that, we were fighting for our world and loved ones."

"I got to be a stag," said Beast Boy. He was grinning, although his eyes were suspiciously bright. "A stag, Arthur. A giant magical stag. I’m never going to get over this. Also, I’ve earned tacos. I’d like that on the record."

"Noted," said Arthur, smiling.

"John’s going to be unbearable when he hears about this," Zatanna said. She shook her head, but she was smiling too. "I’m going to let him ask forty questions before I tell him a single answer."

"Remind me," said Frost, "to never be the person who has to throw the ice spear on a being like you again." She shuddered theatrically. Then she looked at him, and her bravado faltered as she pointed a finger at Raven and Kara "I’m really glad you didn’t actually die, otherwise those two would actually kill me."

"So am I," said Arthur.

They went one at a time, stepping through portals of their own into the long, darkening dusk. Clark went first, nodding once. Beast Boy followed, whooping. Zatanna and Frost vanished together.

Only Kara and Raven were left.

Kara crossed to him without a word and wrapped her arms around his neck, and held on. She was still shaking. Arthur held her carefully, one hand against her back.

"Don’t you ever," she said into his shoulder, "do that to me again."

"I’ll try."

"That isn’t a promise."

"No," said Arthur. "It isn’t."

She laughed, a wet, ragged sound, and pulled away. She wiped her face with the back of one hand and stepped backward into her own portal, her eyes lingering on his until the light closed over her.

Raven lingered a moment longer.

"We’re going to talk," she said, "about that person later."

"I know."

"It’s going to be a very long talk."

"I expect so." Arthur smiled.

She shook her head and looked, for an instant, as though she might say something more. Then she turned and was gone, a flicker of dark flame folding shut behind her.

Arthur stood alone in the middle of the ruined World of Chaos.

The silence settled around him, vast and quiet. He let out a long, slow breath, and the last of his strength went out of him with it. He rolled his shoulders. He looked up at the broken sky.

Deep inside him, something stirred, it was an enormous, ancient and furious sound, a roar that rolled up through the foundations of his mind and shook the walls of the place it was trapped in. Nidhogg had been quiet through the battle. It was quiet no longer.

Arthur smiled.

"Sorry," he said, to the empty air. "Michael had to ruin your meal, I was going to let you eat the Rulers, too. Such a shame. You would have loved them." He tapped two fingers against his temple. "Enjoy your prison for now."

The roar rose, rattling against the edges of his thoughts, and subsided into a long, sullen growl.

’How cruel of you,’ said a warm and amused voice in his mind.

"Didi," Arthur said.

’I’m only saying.’ She sounded delighted. ’Poor thing. All that hunger, and no dinner.’

"It’ll live."

’I’m sure it will.’

Arthur smiled as he stood alone on the cracked ground and looked out across what remained of the World of Chaos. Nothing moved. The armies were gone, and so were the heavenly soldiers, the Rulers, and the Monarchs who had bled on this earth for seven days. The sky had faded to a tired, bruised grey, and a cold wind carried ash across plains of broken and scorched stone. Somewhere in the far distance a ruined spire leaned against the horizon like a gravestone.

He turned slowly in place, taking it in.

"Not a single living thing left," he said quietly. "A world with a history made entirely of pain and suffering. Born in it, fed on it, and used to breed monsters for a few old beings who thought they were gods." His eyes narrowed. "A world like this should be put to rest as well."

"It does seem only fitting," said Didi.

Her voice came softly, from the edge of his mind. There was no mockery in it, and no teasing.

"But you are tired, Monarch of Shadows. You have not rested in seven days. You have just lent half your strength to six other people, and you have just been a trap. Are you sure you wish to do this now?"

"What do you mean?" Arthur said. "I’m perfectly fine."

"You are swaying."

"I’m not swaying."

"You are very slightly swaying."

He didn’t answer. He straightened, rolled his shoulders back, and looked up at the sky. His hand, hanging at his side, trembled once, and he closed it into a fist until it stopped.

Then he rose.

He climbed through the grey air in a slow, steady ascent, the wind tugging at the ragged remains of his armor and his ashen hair. The ground shrank beneath him. The plains and the dark ruined towers dwindled into a wide, flat map, and the horizon curved away on every side until he could see the whole curve of the world laid out beneath his feet, wounded and silent and very small.

He stopped.

He hung there for a moment in the cold, thin air, and closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were burning a clear, steady violet, and the shadows of the World of Chaos began to move.

They came slowly at first. They gathered in thin black threads along the cracks in the earth, drawn upward like iron filings toward a magnet, curling through the air toward his outstretched palm. The wind died. The ash stopped falling. The whole dead world’s darkness poured into his hand, deeper and denser and blacker, until it hummed at a note so low that it was felt in the bones.

He lowered his arm, pointing his palm at the ground far below.

The pillar fell.

It was a single column of pure darkness, a hundred miles across, and it struck the crust of the World of Chaos and the ground simply opened, a perfect round wound in the earth, and the pillar plunged through it without slowing. It drove down through the stone, through the old bones of the world and it kept going.

Then it began to spread.

Black veins ran out from the point of impact in every direction, racing across the planet’s face faster than any wind. They split. They branched. They tore through the crust like roots through soil, and wherever they touched, the world went dark. A mountain range crumbled and sank into them. A frozen sea drained away into a widening crack. A thousand ruined spires toppled one after another, each folding quietly into the spreading black. In a handful of heartbeats the darkness had crossed an entire continent. In a handful more it had crossed the world.

Arthur hung in the sky and watched it with a calm look.

The World of Chaos was a black sphere now, then it suddenly exploded.

The planet went up in a silent, expanding bloom of violet and black, a vast rolling wave of shadow that tore outward through the sky and swallowed the clouds. Light and darkness poured out in every direction at once. The shockwave rippled across the void and faded into the stars.

When it was over, Arthur drifted alone in the dust.

Fine, glittering fragments of what had been a world floated slowly around him in the vacuum, tumbling like snow. His hair stirred, weightless. The last of the violet light faded from the air, and the stars came out one by one across the vast, black silence.

He floated there for a while, and watched them.

"That’s that," he said.

’You did it,’ said Didi. Her voice was soft. ’Even though you were tired.’

"I told you I was fine."

/-\