Meanwhile...
Walking down the abandoned road littered with piles of dust and ownerless cars, Alora raised her head, looking up at the sky. She sighed, stopping her movement. Lily and Aella halted behind her.
"Hey." Lil poked her. "Why'd you stop?" She held the ax over her shoulder.
Turning around, she pointed at them. "I'm gonna find Apollo and kill him. You two deal with everyone else."
"Didn't Tal say to stick to the assignments and deal with the Three Gate Families first?" Lily asked
"Yeah, but this time, I'm not listening. Moloch made Tony a puppet and used him to resurrect Monstrum. I won't let him get away with that scot-free." Alora faced away from them, conjuring a sword in her hand. "Good luck."
She vanished. Aella groaned, then invoked her Fate, looking back once at Lily.
"Sorry, but I have to save my brother! Good luck with the Families!"
Then, she vanished too, leaving the Celestial by herself on the street with an ax on her shoulder.
"Wow," she said. "At least now I don't have to wear this tiresome skin anymore."
Shedding the tan-skinned exterior serving as her shell, the Celestial's nebulous being took prominence over the flesh, shining as bright as a star down the abandoned city street. Advancing with the ax on her shoulder glowing with her figure, Liliana's true form pressed footprints into the road that released steam into the air.
"Now, where are you… Talen?"
On the other side of the City, the Progenitor stepped from the crater his battle with the Celestial made. He didn't even bother looking back as King Barron and his sister the Princess emerged from the shadows at the end of the street.
Atlas grinned. "Niece. Nephew. Nice to see you two again."
"Ugh!" Marie exclaimed. "The feeling's not mutual!"
Uriel's left hand opened. "Kneel and surrender." The King manifested a golden lance between his fingers. "This is your final warning."
"I refuse."
Extending wings from his back, Uriel flew down the road at the Progenitor. Swinging the spear at his head, Atlas leaned back, letting the King fly into the crater behind him. Amit's fingers clenched around Barron's ankle, throwing him down the road at his sister standing there.
Marie ducked under her brother, summoning the required pen between her fingers. The way she scribbled on the air with the tip of the pen was unusually smooth. As the written description exploded into white light, the Progenitor rushed at Barron, raising the Sword so it could smash into the road below her.
As she jumped back, Atlas cleaved at the side of her head. Spotting his strike from her peripheral, the boxer's neck was reinforced with golden Fate. Then, Amit stomped, piercing the air with his fist and allowing the knuckles he dipped in Fate to stab the boxer's throat.
She choked on her blood, hacking profusely. Glaring through bloodshot vision at the approaching Progenitor after stepping back, Atlas pulled back his arm and with it, the Sword. After falling forward, he cut the air with the blade, letting a projectile blast into Marie's chest.
The burst turned into a black beam that shot her down the abandoned street. Lowering the Sword and tilting his head, he admired his face reflected in the steel. Then, he looked up, spotting numerous silhouettes falling from the sky with wings attached to their backs. After they inevitably crashed into the ground, the platform was enveloped by smoke, making Atlas jump back with the Sword still drawn as he stared at the smoke cloud.
From within the mist, a golden ax came flying out at his face. Atlas caught it. Raising a brow, he looked up, spotting another ax above him and with it, its owner manifesting as well. The Progenitor leaned back as the Angel sliced at his head after catching its weapon and flew after him once he jumped back.
The Angel unleashed a relentless barrage of attacks from the edge of his axes. The repeated spark of their colliding weapons filled the battlefield and served as a distraction, allowing another Angel to sprint from within the smoke cloud.
Cocking back its fist covered in Fate, the Angel slid across the ground and prepared to strike the Progenitor in the chest. Looking back to the Angel with its two axes, Atlas vanished once their arm was raised. Cutting Amit's afterimage after dropping the ax, the Progenitor appeared in the air behind his enemy and kicked its head clean off.
Once the decapitated Angel fell to its knees and began disintegrating, Atlas landed on the ground. His eyes widened at the shadow of the other Angel appearing behind him, quickly turning his head. Though its fist was already flying at Atlas, the Progenitor was quicker, and the Sword was drawn.
Atlas materialized behind it after the Angel's arm split off, spraying blood from the stump his clean slice left. Another slash was released from the Sword's steel once Amit revealed the slightest amount from the sheathing. The Progenitor sighed, watching the two halves of the Angel's corpse hit the ground and begin to fade.
Marie fell from the clouds with her leg drawn back. Locked into place above Atlas with her foot dug into the crown of his skull, she tilted her head. He'd blocked the kick with the sheathe of the Sword. Laid dormant in the cover was the blade itself--drawn by the hilt by the Progenitor's left hand.
Marie flinched back, covering her face with both arms. In one clean cut, the vicinity of the battlefield was consumed by the edge of the Sword. Though she'd luckily jumped back in time to dodge a lethal wound, two fingers flew off the boxer's dark-skinned hand.
After sliding back on the ground behind her, Marie leaped into the air and spun, kicking at the side of Atlas's head. Tightening his grip over the Sword's end, a globular domain materialized around him. The subsequent force from the Princess's attack flowed through the fiber of her leggings to reach her skin and flesh like an electrical current, launching the girl back through the air.
"MONSTER!!!"
The divine claymore in the Supreme King's hand smashed open the ground. As the Progenitor rolled away, he watched Uriel fall to his knees and summon two more golden portals around both hands. Pulling back a heavenly bow and arrow with a large arrow between the string, Barron shot it, letting God's flames perpetually waver around the projectile while piercing through the air.
Atlas cut the arrow in two once it got close enough to his eye. Watching the split pieces gradually fall to the ground, he noticed two gates begin to swirl into existence beneath them and, wary of his nephew's technique, jumped back. Blessed arms with open palms sprawled from within the holy portals, towering over the Progenitor's speck of a body. As the expanding limbs reached an enormous height, they squashed where Atlas stood, imprinting a handprint in the crater.
Instead of attacking one by one only to be cut apart by a single swing from the Progenitor's Sword, it conjoined above Atlas, reshaping the properties of its angelic skin to make the hand into a spiked hammer. It didn't even begin falling before Marie reappeared behind Amit and went to sweep his feet. His widened eyes led to the Progenitor turning around and cutting at his rear, making the Sword's edge slice clean through the illusion Marie abandoned there.
'A ploy...'
Atlas looked back before him, where numerous copies of the Princess fell from the sky—all of their fists collectively cocked back. As one pair of knuckles came for his head, he slid under, rolling between another's legs and landing on his knees. It took less than a second for the Progenitor to detonate the aura on his soles and erratically bounce around the premises of the crater.
Atlas cut one in the shoulder, then another in half, before leaning all the way to dodge the cleanest possible punch thrown at his face. He fell all the way forward with his face first to headbutt the copy directly in the skull with a wide smirk, grab their shoulder, and jump over them while cutting the others behind her to pieces.
Leaping into the air, he drew the Sword back, cutting open the first one he saw upon landing on the ground and then going for another, leaving the smoky crater behind him as the blade's edge sliced the copy in the side. Blood tainting the end of the Sword, Atlas cackled loudly, digging the ends of his fingertips into the whiteness on his face so blood could draw from within the skin.
"AWAKEN...!" Atlas unhinged his jaw and screamed as loud as possible. "UNBRIDLED CHAOS!"
Environmental attacks are only possible through the deployment of a domain via Area Empowerment. For less than half of a second, the Progenitor materialized a barrier wide enough to ensnare Marie and her brother within his technique. To their eyes, the sky turned black for less than a microsecond.
Atlas unleashed an instantaneous slashing attack in the voided domain. In a row of exploding smoke and bursting blood, both Marie and her doppelgängers were undeniably cut. The only capable of forming a defense was, expectedly, the Supreme King.
The moment the sky turned black to Uriel's azure eyes, his middle and index fingers raised. "Crown."
A beam of Fate destroyed the barrier from within before the blades of Unbridled Chaos' could slice him to shreds, scattering its black shards scattered around the crater. Barron looked down at Atlas—still floating over him. The Progenitor's unusual angered glare the Barron siblings were enjoying earlier was replaced. By something dreadful.
"Didn't you sense it?" Atlas grinned. "Your sister's wavering soul." The Progenitor moved aside.
At his wretched excuse of a relative's legs was none other than his dear sister. Mutilated beyond belief—missing an arm and one of her ears. Uriel was holding back. The instant his irises glimpsed Marie's injured body, he moved from the sky, and Atlas vanished from the ground.
But as the fight between King Uriel and the Progenitor continued in the skies on the right side of the City, Alora was searching for Apollo Moloch.
Each new step she took down the long and bloodied road devoid by man and woman alike was one inch closer to the vengeance she sought. Eventually, everything came to a close, as she finished making the trek and finally reached the desired terminus.
Lora's short grey hair wavered before her azure-colored gaze. At the far end of the road she stood upon—there he was. Oddly enough, he was sitting atop the ledge of a fountain, leaning forward with all fingers interlocked and both eyes closed.
Then, when Lora stepped forward, Apollo opened his right eye, staring at her. From this distance, she looked like nothing but a speck to him. But he knew better. The comfort he enjoyed because of the interval between them could be instantly closed in less than a second. That's why he was waiting for her; to have the chance to take the lead. Albeit however briefly.
"I don't want to fight you!" Apollo said. "I wish I could say I'm sorry a hundred thousand times and make sure you know I mean it. But that's never enough. You don't want an apology. You want blood. I don't blame you."
Moloch's emerald Fate shimmered around his build like pure energy waiting to be commanded. He stared down with glowing green eyes at Alora as she slowly approached with her own blue aura blazing around her like an inferno.
She extended her right arm and opened the hand, making a sword pop out from the palm so it could slide between her fingers. If it were up to either of them, none would be fighting against one another.
But he was a sinner. A murderer. The Displacement took the man she loved and despite whatever Aella could say, that was irrefutable. Anthony was gone. He could never come back. And who else could she blame but the man who orchestrated the Disastrous Monstrum's resurrection under the Progenitor's orders?
She knew not the altercation occurring in Apollo's mind. Previously a puppet dancing on Atlas Amit's devious strings, the Displacement received his human memories and remembered his past self. His dear sister Aella and the brother he killed, Samael. He had to make things right.
In a way, they were the same. Neither would admit it to the other. But they felt sorry for each other. Sorry they had to fight in a pitiful world with nothing but the blood and flesh of the other to satiate their desires.
Nevertheless, they begun the battle.
Rushing at each other from opposite ends of the street, Apollo shattered the sound barrier, ignoring the green streaks of lightning flying off his body. Alora's feet perpetually sprinted across the road, tightly holding the claymore conjuration over her shoulder. Until they converged.
Cocking back her sword in addition with unleashing a bloodcurdling scream from her unhinged jaw, Alora slashed at Apollo's waist as he ran at her. The width her swing encompassed was enough for Moloch to panic right then and there. It was all over. If he couldn't defend with enough Fate in time to deflect the slash, he was dead.
Then, Alora's eyes widened, cutting through the transparent afterimage Apollo abandoned after spontaneously vanishing from the battlefield. She knew exactly what happened. Looking back over her shoulder, Aella's hand slid from her brother's arm as they rematerialized on a rooftop overlooking the Enforcer.
Apollo stepped back. "A-Aella. You're… you're here," he said.
Raven nodded, looking down at Alora. "I am."
"What are you doing, Raven?" Alora held the claymore in one hand and beckoned her close with the other. "Give him to me."
"I refuse."
"Fine then. I don't mind killing you both." Alora threw the sword aside and interlocked her fingers. "Area Empowerment."