CHAPTER 225

[Draul St. Cross POV]

I could feel the tremors spreading all over my body. Knull was once again free. 

"It happened?" 

"It's happened." Bucky and Ororo were at my side watching the devastation taking place. The Celestials were a very strong group, all things considered, but Knull was getting stronger as he felled the third Celestial. "We need to end this quickly until he becomes too strong. I can feel goosebumps on my skin. That's as much of a grim foretell as anything could be."

"Are you sure about that? We know nothing about how the Celestials view you." Bucky's concerns were valid but we lacked the luxury of choosing our allies, so did the Celestials. 

"I'll be going. The Gods are already mobilizing, I'd suggest sticking close to the Asgardians. And try keeping an eye on Loki. He's definitely up to something." They both nodded and with that I was gone. 

Ororo could lead them towards the Asgardians by locating any of their divinity and I was sure they'd be fine on that front unless one of the variables appeared. 

I stepped through space and appeared quite a distance from where an untold level of destruction was happening. Their fight in this secluded part of the universe was causing earthquakes and other disasters to spread through every galactic system out there. 

Multitudes of information started seeping into my head as I spectated the battle for a few seconds. 

Knull was on the back foot throughout the duration of the fight but he just kept laughing and hacking at anything that came too close in wild movements. It was not hard to see that he was up to something. 

The Celestial Hargen was already wounded, along with some of the weaker Celestials at the distance which left Exitar, Arishem and Tiamut to keep Knull at bay. 

Beating Knull wasn't that hard, because they were doing it. It was killing him that was the problem. 

Knull on the other hand was getting stronger as the battle went on, either from the wounded and killed Celestials, or the multitudes of worlds his symbiotes were infecting. 

Me destroying the infected planets were not the key since he could just send more and all I'd be doing is massacring lives by the billions which was why I let the Gods earn their keep. Knull was engulfing all the planets that were in between him and the God realms so they had no other choice than to come out and battle or risk the lives of their people to the horde of symbiotes heading for them. 

"Guess it's now or never." Exchanging places with the wounded Hargen, I formed an axe of pure destruction in my hands and slashed as Knull. 

The rapid change took the Abyss God by surprise and engulfed him in an explosion that was topped over by his shriek. 

"Draul…"

"What's up, T?" I nodded at Tiamut who was the only one to acknowledge my presence while Arishem and Exitar kept giving me looks. I couldn't read them that much due to their armor-covered faces but I knew both of them were checking me out and not in a sexy way. 

"That is not enough to kill Knull." Arishem said while looking down at me which was quite irritating because they all were humongously huge. Even the small Knull was bigger than my human form. Normally I'd be increasing my size to match theirs but size meant nothing at this level of the game. 

"I'm acutely aware of that. How about we call truce and table this discussion for later?"

"Agreed." Now wasn't that nice?

With that conclusion reached, Arishem, Exitar and I rushed at Knull who was bleeding a mass of writhing black and red symbiotes as he howled at us. 

Being in my home base, I was naturally faster than any of them and with the constant feedback I was getting at every unit time, my reaction time and decision eclipsed any of the combatants here. 

I can't lie but for the past week, I've never closed my eyes for even a second moment, not even when me and my fiancé slept together. If this were to be a movie, the audience will only feel slight trepidation at the prologue of the final battle but for me it was a constant nightmare. 

Right now, my emotions were at an all time low, every single action of my body or mind that produced more than .0000076% of distraction was completely shut off. In all my life, I've only been reduced to this state twice – during my fight with the X-men when I first met them, and the second was my fight against Magneto and Von Doom on Christmas Eve. The complete apathy and euphoric urge to completely erase and destroy everything I targeted washed over me as I fully focused on Knull with an outer part of focus on every single Celestial in this battlefield. 

The concern and apprehension I felt in regards to Yelena and the others fighting alongside backstabbing Gods and Goddesses were all gone or reduced to insignificant worries. 

I doubt even storytellers could vocalize what I felt at this moment with precise exactitude. All that currently mattered was… 

"When will you stop smiling?" 

Meeting with Yog-Sothoth and focusing on my innate origin with destruction gave me a clue on how to properly wield myself. Why do you think most people with the darkness attribute or any ability related to it are stronger if they are evil, with Knull being the presently perfect example? 

It was less than an alignment and more of an assimilation. 

Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlatothep, Shub-Niggurath. 

They were more than darkness or any other definition that was aligned with that term, so inherently so that the very moment they stir from their eternal slumber, infinite planes of multiversal realities, outside the Marvel-multiverse, gets drowned in their chaos. 

It was so melded into their being that even their most benevolent actions have untold chaotic consequences. To a lesser but infinitely measured degree, that same could be said of the Abstract Entities. 

It was that spark of knowledge that made me realize a shocking fact… 

Not even The One Above All was omnipotent in the truest sense of every inch of the word. The reason he is said to be omnipotent is simply because he encompasses everything in the Marvel-multiverse, both good and bad. That was the reason why no being from this multiverse could contend with him.

He surmounted everything definable in Marvel… but not outside it. 

This theory of mine was further supported by the fact that earlier days Beyonder, pre-retcon Beyonder, easily eclipsed the Marvel-multiverse in its entirety. 

Maybe he got too used to the Marvel-verse that The One Above All completely understood his existence and then surmounted him too, but all that was theoretical at most, one that gave belief because it was what made me break free of the cocoon I was holding myself in. 

I was in front of Knull whose lips curled open and showed all his danged teeth as he swung All-black in a way that would have taken a line to my throat if I came at the same speed I was approaching him. All-black was a sword that could prove threatening to anyone it slashed, including me, as it was confirmed Celestial killer. 

Every motion came to a screeching halt, not time as everyone here had surpassed universal time, as the blade crept ever so slowly to my throat. 

CLANG!

My axe stopped Knull's weapon in his path, his eyes widening in surprise, which slowed him down for Arishem to crash and pommel into him. His momentum that would have given him a distance from us was stopped by Exitar who grabbed the motion with his hands, halting physics to moot and giving me the window to bury my axe into Knull's face and mutilating him. 

While I was on par with the heavy hitters here, the thing that wasn't up to par with them was how they all used laws; Laws of order, laws of judgment, laws of chaos and darkness, laws of perpetuity. 

Alignments such as chaotic evil, neutral chaos, neutral good, and good came a long way when it came to beings like these as it was very hard to find one that wasn't aligned to some type of law. 

Infinity, Eternity, Death, Love, Order, Chaos, Celestials, Beyonders, God's – each had a way that made them perfectly in sync with their laws and authority. 

Thor for example, being the God of Thunder made him boisterous and loud. He had no potential for subtlety. The same could be said about Gods like Ororo, Loki, Zeus and Odin. 

As long as ideas exist, for someone to go up that ladder and evolve his existence meant the same thing as becoming close to the definitions he identified with. 

The Celestials here could be said to be aligned with the definitions of good, neutral good and chaotic good while beings like Knull and me were aligned with chaotic evil. 

How can I wield destruction when I always try to stop myself from destroying anything? 

Yog-Sothoth gave me that knowledge when I met him and I also found out when I started looking more into destruction. I had been going down the wrong way for a while without even noticing it. 

I was melding with Infinity the same way I should have been melding with destruction, causing the abilities I gained from the Infinity Stones to become stronger than my destructive chaotic abilities. Doing so would have made me the next Infinity and that wouldn't have worked if I was stopped from fusing with other Infinity Stones and was made to fight Infinity and Eternity for their abstract existence. 

The only solution I could come to in such short time was to become more than the darkness I usurped from Dormammu and more than the chaos I drew from the Ultimate Gods. Rather than drawing from them, I wanted to become what darkness, destruction, chaos and reality drew from. 

Dormammu had achieved this and so had Knull but I hadn't. And I found out that the best way to achieve this was to let everything drown in them. 

My ambitions in darkness. 

My dreams in chaos. 

My being in destruction. 

My emotions in nothingness. 

The reason why most strong beings that wielded evil aspects were strong and as evil as they were was because they completely gave themselves to it, drowning everything they were in that particular aspect and elevated they existence to another plane which also made them completely reliant on it and would most times cease to exist if that aspect of reality ceased to exist. 

Rather than letting the darkness and chaos out, I let it flow through me, fusing with it in a way I had never done. 

A sense of nostalgia hit me as familiar red lines thrummed into existence as they snaked across every inch on my body like veins and my eyes gained a glistening red. 

The change was so abrupt that none had the chance to react before I rushed at Knull once again while Tiamut, the wounded Hargen, Exitar, and Arishem followed right after. 

From the peripheral of my senses, I could see the other Celestials disappearing and reappearing in different points in space, a galactic curtain of cosmic energy being formed with our location right in the middle. 

Knull swung his blade only for it to meet resistance with my axe and be battered with cosmic weapons of light created from the allied Celestials on his tail. 

"Kekekekurgh-!" 

"You came! Wonderful! Now the banquet can truly begin. KEKEKKEKKEKEKE!"

Amalgamations of darkness and death crawled out of Knull's form and moved at light speed towards the congregation of Celestials a galaxy away from us to stop the attack they were preparing. 

My senses screamed in alarm but I fully ignored it having already sensed what was happening a few moments ago. 

The shroud covering this universe was ripped to splinters as it was attacked from the outside. 

The war has begun.