The Truth of War

One of the figures was a man of stone, elegant and regal with a look of determination on his face. The other figure was more octopus than man but you could tell there was once a man there. It was an abomination of horror with its skin like body but with an octopus shape. If you looked closely you could see the fingers at the end of the tentacle.

"Crap," Silk said.

The tentacled horror had the stone man in its grip.

The stone man plucked a katana out of thin air and cut itself free.

The tentacled man didn't even flinch as they grew back.

The tentacles shot out at the stone man.

The stone man cut the tentacles but the tentacles grew back more quickly then he could slice.

A tentacle pierced.

The stone man makes a move to remove the tentacle but the life suddenly drains from him. The stone man turned into nothing more than rubble.

"The immortals are fighting among themselves," the soldier said with glee.

"Not quite," Silk said. "That's a demon."

The tentacled horror turned to the new voices and groaned with every movement.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't help, I really couldn't though." Silk said kneeling down.

"Sir, don't kneel to the enemy." The soldier said alarmed.

"That's no enemy. That's Dr Stoneheart, or what's left of him." Silk sighed sadly. "Don't get close."

Dr Stoneheart was standing on a particularly large magical circle which anyone with half a brain would wager was the main transportation magic circle. Silk didn't particularly like enchanting in circles but because of the beautiful nature it caught on in a lot of worlds and even he admitted there was power in a circle.

Silk turned his back to the Dr so he could look the soldier right in the eyes. "I'll need backing fire, keep your distance and fire, it won't be able to reach you."

A tentacle sprung out to grab Silk.

Silk dug into the space he kept his weapons to take out his knives. With a swift strike he cut the end of the tentacle cleanly off.

The tentacled horror screamed and the tentacles retreated.

Taking the initiative he ran forward but heard gunfire behind him.

A tentacle striking from above was hit by the soldier, the bullet didn't do much but did dig in and the horror flinched expecting more pain than it felt.

Silk remembered this demon, one of the dukes of the new kingdom he was a powerful foe. Luckily he hadn't fully grasped his new form or Silk would just be a bloody stain in the ground.

A tentacle came crashing forward to stop his advance but Silk activated an enchantment and jumped over it and started condensing air into steps.

The creature roared making Silk lose concentration, he fell.

The tentacled picked Silk up and pulled him to his large eye.

There was furious gunfire from the soldier but it was only a futile attempt that the monstrosity barely noticed.

The tentacled horror threw Silk to the side with disdain and clambered down the broken elevator shaft.

"Damn," Silk spat getting up slowly.

The soldier ran up to Silk and helped him up. "Sir, we have to activate the enchantment now while we have a chance."

Silk smiled, "You are an awfully good soldier but I can't with a good conscience teleport this place to safety. I should just let this place burn in the immortal's fury."

"We can never admit defeat in the face of the enemy," the soldier barked back.

"It's not so simple," Silk said shaking his head. "If these demons escape with us then the demonic war starts, immortals will create angelic warriors and so many universes will be destroyed in the fire of this new war."

The soldier sighed and leaned on the wall of one of the ventilation pipes. "My names Andrew. I don't know about this whole other universes things but you've shown me just maybe that's possible. I may just be a soldier but my brother hated it when people talked about the consequences. He always said, 'who gives a damn? They need help and while I can help I will.' I say that without kindness for the innocent we are just monsters."

Silk looked at his hands. "Worlds will suffer if I do this."

The soldier grunted annoyed. "I don't like you, you keep thinking about the bigger picture. From the sounds of it you seem to run about trying to save as many people as possible. You need a dose of reality. From my perspective you should just help everyone and damn the consequences. They are tomorrows problem."

"So you think I should activate the enchantment and just keep on fighting. I'm already tired, this will kill me."

"Eventually we will all die. How about we just try our best until then." The soldier nodded, "I really sound like my old brother."

Silk smiled, "I'll give your philosophy a try. If this all descends into madness may our heads roll in disgrace." He paused, "did you know that demons have a fault?"

"A fault you say. Why didn't you use it to beat that so called demon earlier?" the soldier retorted.

Silk snorted, "they can't activate enchantments. I mean most can't, those made from the man in blue are an exception. The demonic energy is too vicious to restrain into the magic circles."

"The man in blue?" the soldier raised an eyebrow.

"Don't worry about it. That's far in the future." Silk said.

"Of course it is." The soldier sighed. "I'm not even going to ask why you talk about the future."

Silk walked up to the enchantment on the roof and by channelling the magic through his feet he activated the enchantment. Without missing a step, he walked to the edge of the roof.

"We need to get to the last enchantment outside, what are you doing?" The soldier asked puzzled.

"The quickest way possible of course." Without missing a beat Silk threw his key on the enchantment and jumped. It would be nice if it was a stylish jump but it wasn't, he flipped and turned uncontrollably.

Silk activated buffers of air underneath him to slow the fall but this made him flail uncontrollably.

He landed face down in the mud. Nothing new was broken but his body ached from the amount of beatings he had taken. Standing up slowly dazed he was met with the sight of soldiers like the one on the roof being slaughtered by the immortals.

Looking more closely Silk could work out the Patchwork Man's plan. It was definitely brilliant but also cruel. The immortals were trying to exterminate all with access to technology with any ability to kill them. The only reason the immortals hadn't all gotten inside was they were taking special care to kill all the soldier.

The immortals are not a war force and only work together when threatened. Even then it's all for themselves, they didn't work together. This was what the Patchwork man was exploiting by keeping the soldiers together so the immortals were tripping over themselves and there even seemed to be some mutiny within their ranks.

Feeling the magic Silk could see that the magic the immortals were using reacting with themselves to ultimately confuse the magic into something it shouldn't be. The soldiers were still dying though. One immortal may have died here and there but the soldiers were dying left right and centre.

Taking out the pen he started constructing an enchantment. Every line and symbol represented a number and letter in the old script of magic. This is how he wrote enchantment rather than a pretentious circle. No one knew why but magic energy obeys what is written or said in the old tongue, Silk could guess that this was a true a true masters doing.

While Silk was an extremely fast writer out of necessity he wasn't just standing still asking to die but activating enchantments to make his presence hard to notice. He was doing this by redirecting the magic detection the immortals were using to avoid him. In seconds they would notice but that didn't matter.

Silk finished the enchantment with a flick and whistled loudly. The enchantment powered up the whistle so everyone heard the deafening sound. The whistle layered with magic mixed with the already confused magic energy rife within the battlefield and dispersed it out with the control of the immortals.

Silk's magic condensed within the confused dispersed magic into threads and wrapped around the immortal's magic.

"I'll show you something brilliant." Silk smiled.

Taking the energy from the immortals he used himself as an intermediary and powered the enchantment on the front pillar of the hospital.

Silk may be able to control magic with masterful precision but it burned. This magic was foreign from his body, it wasn't supposed to be there. The magic was literally burning the magical circulatory system within his body, it was destroying one hundred years of development which had made him the threat he was.

"Damn the consequences," he spat blood. His body was rejecting the foreign element, trying to make it leave through blood by rupturing veins and making him sweat it out but Silk wouldn't let it.

The magical circle on the pillar wasn't activating. Had Strocker lied, had he not activated the enchantment in the office. He was a demon, maybe he wasn't an exception and couldn't use the enchantment.

Thinking back on it that explanation didn't hold out. Strocker was a demon in the broadest sense of the word, a genetically engineered beast. He had been merged with the shadow kind of Oak so that wasn't likely, he hadn't been infected with the demonic energy. Also, he had made the enchantments so he could definitely use them.

The circle started rotating and energy pulsed through it. Sensing the magic throughout the hospital he could see the energy pulse throughout it connecting all parts of the hospital.

Silk couldn't let the hospital be transported though, the demons were inside so the safe haven this place would be transported to would become the start of the demonic empire. He would help everyone he could, even those not in immediate danger.

Turning around he some of the immortals recognise what was happening and charging past the troops to get at Silk. They were shot down by the mutation bullets which they had taken as no threat before. The smarter immortals turned there attention to the soldiers and started feverishly killing them to get to Silk.

Silk with his other hand split the magic he had gathered from the immortals and directed at the original owners. They were repelled by the sheer energy.

The magical energy reached the roof and started interacting with the key. No longer was the hospital going to be transported but instead something was going to be teleported here.

Silk looked to the sky and the second moon appeared a new dark circle in the sky. The immortals looked up at this new entrée and fear entered their eyes. This sphere in the sky was hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth but it emitted a powerful aura of pure magical energy.

The magic was too pure and too great, the immortals felt dwarfed by this great power and one by one they fled. Whatever could make something like that was far more than any one of them.

Silk looked back up at this floating sphere and smiled, this was the workshop's biggest accomplishment, it was the workshop. Inside was the finest forge in all the universes, the finest tailoring facility and carpentry equipment to make anyone jealous.

Oak may have been the one to get it into the sky, Bronze may have made it habitable in space and Atom may have worked out how to manoeuvre it through the gaps in the universes but the energy that it was emitting was Silk's finest work. The whole thing was powered by a direct link to supernovae all throughout the universes. An engineering masterpiece.

It had travelled through time and space to reach Silk