End of Infinity IC

Zal-Tek was getting tired of Veriska's high and mighty attitude, but he refused to let it show, and so it didn't. That was his specialty after all. He bowed his head just slightly, more as a greeting than anything else, and said, "I personally don't have a title among mortals, but maybe that's because I usually don't make myself known."

He gave his previous introduction a moment's thought, then settled on going ahead and telling them what his own job was. "By the way, I'm not from this world, but in my home dimension I am a god. I do not suffer a power loss here, unlike most other worlds, which is why I 'vacation' here. Anyway, my specific job..." He paused for a moment, "most people think I'm the god of lies."

He chuckled slightly, letting that set in before he elaborated. That was always a good joke, provided nobody started questioning your motives too quickly. Not that that was unwarranted anyway, but people tended to distrust him a lot more if they thought his sole job was to lie to them constantly.

Zal-Tek smiled slightly, looking up at Sairei. "I'm from Arcan, and actually I'm not strictly the god of lies. I'm also the god of truth, and forethought."

He smirked, "basically I get to do whatever I want. Oh and I haven't lied to any of you," he glanced at Veriska and muttered "yet."

Veriska remained silent, her expression emotionless.

Zal-Tek found his sight suddenly obscured by darkness. He felt an icy hand grip his shoulder like a vise, and heard breath by his ear. A familiar voice spoke softly "That would be unwise..." then just as abruptly his vision returned.

Zal-Tek did not react visibly, though he was in fact somewhat startled. After his vision returned he glanced at Veriska. Oh he knew, he definitely knew. He muttered something under his breath, and his red eye glowed brighter for a moment, but other than that his expression remained the same.

He then proceeded to cast a quick defensive spell, causing his gold eye to flash a dim light. There would be no more outside spells cast on him unless he wanted them cast, otherwise they would be reflected.

Zal-Tek saw Veriska smile and blow a kiss in his direction, the others did not.

Veriska then said turning away "I think I've wasted enough time here."

"I thought you might try to stop me. Veriska scoffed. "You obviously don't know who your dealing with. Using ones dimension as a prison is the oldest trick in the book."

Shadow began to envelope her body as she said "I am everywhere that lies in the dark." With that she dissipated into nothingness.

Laughter echoed in the blackness of Sairei's dimension "You have much yet to learn."

Veriska reappeared, then spoke in a flat tone. "There is a way out." She conjured a dagger of shadow, grasping it with both hands she plunged it deep into her chest.

Black liquid dripped from her parted lips, her form slumped forward. The shadows concealing her eyes lifted allowing a brief glance at emerald irises with long lush lashes, just before her body disintegrated.

When the last part of Veriska consumed itself, all other traces of her disappeared as well.

Zal-Tek felt a sharp pain in his head for a moment, signifying that his spell had been broken. Ah well, he supposed, Veriska had died, after all, there was no way he could keep any sort of spell on her after that.

He chuckled. "Clever. I could do that too, but I would take a long time to recover, and otherwise see no reason to leave."

Zal-Tek shrugged.
"Technically, it's not my problem..." he grinned, "but who am I kidding? Sure."
He turned and looked at his tail, realizing something. Yup. The blade was gone.
"Hey, you don't happen to have any sort of armor?" He asked, "I'm better at enchanting things than I am at holding a purely magical shield..."

Zal-Tek shrugged, "anything I can wear," he said.
"Oh and if you have some sort of blade I can strap to my tail... That's more of a raptor thing, but I'm pretty good at it."
It occurred to him that she might have no idea what he was talking about, but he wasn't really worried about that. He started going over what kind of enchantments he ought to put on things. What else could give him an advantage?

...No.
That was for emergencies...
He hoped he wouldn't have to use that.

The blade was shaped somewhat like a scimitar, curving slightly away from the sharp end. There were three straps on the blade where it attached to a tail, somewhat like belts in that they were adjustable. The blade came to a point about three inches from where Zal-Tek's tail would end if he had it on.

He grinned. "That is COOL!"
He picked up the blade and chuckled quietly. "Heh, thanks."
He wondered if he even had any enchantments to augment it, then he remembered. His eyes glowed fairly brightly, and the blade-
The blade didn't glow.
Zal-Tek squinted at it for a moment, then released the spell. Unsuccessful.

"Uh, is this antimagic? I can't seem to..." he trailed off, confused. Usually he would be able to ignore things like that. This was some powerful magic.

Zal-Tek nodded. "That would make sense. Hmm..."
He lifted a paw and closed it in front of him, then when he opened it there was a small clear crystal. He smiled.
"Unfortunately I can only conjure things that fit in my paw," he stated somewhat distractedly. He messed around with the straps on the blade, then smiled. Traditionally tail blades were made to hold a small gem in each strap, simply because they were much easier to enchant than metal. He hadn't expected to need that, but apparently he had included the small holes in the design anyway, just from memory.

He fit the gem into the center strap, and then enchanted that. That time it worked. The gem glowed slightly, then the entire blade flashed with a sort of red electricity for a second.

"Perfect."
He grinned. "Just a simple debuff. Anything I hit with this will get a nasty electric shock, which hopefully will help against these machines. But besides that it has a general confusion effect, which is one of my better spells."
Anything he hit with it, assuming the Eradicators weren't immune simply because they were machines, would move just slightly slower. Not out of an actual speed related spell, but because the would have a hard time figuring out what to do next. It was barely noticeable to the target, but opened many windows to attack for someone like Zal-Tek.

Zal-Tek nodded. "I don't know a lot of spells good against machines, but it'll have to do. Let's go."
He stepped towards the portal, then paused, deciding to let Sairei go first.

He took a breath, preparing himself. He had no idea where they were going, but it would likely be instant chaos.

She arrived planet side on what once had been a civilized world with mighty cities and beautiful landscapes. Now all she could see was the fires burning where the cities had once stood, and the large swaths of glowing glass where fields and forests had once been.
Below it all, she also felt vibrations in the subatomic particles that were somehow different than the normal vibration of atoms with energy. The vibrations seemed to emanate from the Eradicators themselves...and there also seemed to be the same type of vibrations coming back from the depths of space off in one direction.

A black portal, thin like a smokey slate of glass and liquidy like water opened. It was dire and outlined in a bright, yet dark purple that glowed. The watery portal shined and made markings all over the environment similar to how moonlight reflects upon a lake and makes curvy white lines along the trees outlining the lake. From the long portal a long black hand emerged. It touched the ground, laying its black and evil palm on it. Its claws slicked across the ground and felt for any life. Detection. It detected a universe with life in it.

The hand drew back into the portal. Suddenly from the slate of black and purple a tall figure came out and swam out into the new world it had discovered. He was a tall figure shaded ebony and his body was composed of black slime and black shrieking vapors. His eyes were blazing, glowing dark purple that at times seemed to be without pupils, but at other times had long black lizard-like slits for them. He had fangs, long blackish ones with a bit of a purple luminosity to them. His head was the most eye-catching thing about him. It looked like a mix of a hood, mushroom, cobra maybe. It was an odd shape yet it seemed to fit him completely like the rest of him.

"What a perfect little piece of food" Mallis said looking around the new universe. "Now to gather magical essence and soon the Darkness will rise." He glanced at his body, noticing that since he had just entered a new world, all of his power from the previous one had vanished. He'd have to regain it.

"So weak... I'll have to make a few friends to keep myself safe from harm until I'm powerful enough to fend for myself" he added. He looked around glancing at the landscape. Then suddenly his magical sensory initiated. He closed his eyes, his face began twitching and suddenly drew back into a fateful snarl.

"Sairei's here..." he said opening his eyes. "Will that girl ever let me have something for myself? She seems to know where I go... This time... I'm desperate to find some way to kill her. I know everything about her past, same with Tharan. The Oracle showed me everything about the two of them. I just need to figure out how I can use her past to haunt her. I've tried before, when I was in disguise as Arcelis I made her have visions that scared her--but it didn't do any damage to her psyche. I need to give her haunting visions that will condemn her and drive her to insanity forever..." he added.

He sensed Sairei being fairly close-by, but he couldn't pinpoint her exact location. Long black wings shot from his back, they were glossy and dragonic.

"I'll find her..." he said and lifted off into the skies, turning into what looked like a dark looming cloud that zipped by faster than one could blink.