Chapter 97: Grimoire VIII
The words HOSTILE OMNIVERSAL MERGER reverberated like a court ruling stamped into the marrow of reality.
CRRRRRRRSHHHHHHH!
Every galaxy trembled. Every law of physics was audited. The branded void rippled outward, replacing constellations with glowing pie charts.
Vex’s new body towered higher, its bones now plated in obsidian graphs, its ribs lined with glowing balance sheets. Chains of acquisition cracked down like divine whips, branding entire star systems with the logo of VEXCORP.
It raised one clawed hand—an entire spiral galaxy trapped between its fingers like loose change.
"DIVERSIFICATION IS FOR THE WEAK," the abomination bellowed. "CONSOLIDATION IS DESTINY."
It hurled the galaxy like a coin.
Aria screamed and slammed her grimoire open.
"Redirect! Redirect!"
Her green fire coiled upward, forming a colossal ivy lattice that caught the spiraling galaxy mid-flight. The vines screamed as they snapped under the weight, burning to ash. Still—the galaxy was spared.
Aria spat blood, laughing anyway.
"I’ll invoice you for damages, you bastard!"
Laxin’s chains rattled, glowing red-hot. He pulled back with both arms, anchoring against nothing and everything. The fractured ledger above groaned as his chains gripped Vex’s burning halo.
His voice boomed through clenched teeth.
"Lockdown clause—invoked!!"
The halo faltered, tightening around Vex’s skull like a strangling collar.
For the first time—the undead construct staggered, its ticker-glow dimming.
Fenric stepped forward, silver eyes unblinking.
"Now. While it recalibrates."
He inhaled deeply. Dragon Tongue magic boiled inside his lungs, ancient syllables tasting like iron and storm.
"Raen Torah."
A creation of fire.
From his mouth poured a roaring dragon of white flame, so vast it split the branded sky in half. Its wings shredded slogans, its jaws tore through compliance sigils, its very breath burned the contracts themselves.
The dragon slammed into Vex’s chest. Obsidian ribs splintered. Corporate scripture flaked and burned away, page by page.
Vex shrieked, flailing its acquisition tendrils.
"UNACCEPTABLE! FIRE IS—NON-STANDARDIZED MATERIAL!"
Aria’s laughter cracked high and wild.
"Yeah? Then choke on our noncompliance!!"
The battlefield ignited—
green vines, red chains, silver flame, white fire-dragon.
Their combined assault tore into Vex, blasting chunks of branded armor into the void.
For a heartbeat, silence fell.
The ticker went dark.
The contracts burned.
The slogans stuttered.
Then—
BOOOOOOOOM.
From Vex’s chest erupted a golden furnace, spilling pure acquisition energy across the field. Its shattered halo reforged itself—not into a crown this time, but into a wheel of brands, endlessly spinning.
Every logo in existence blazed there.
Every story. Every culture. Every name.
Even the word Fenric flickered across the wheel, stamped with a barcode.
The abomination’s voice roared louder than ever:
"PHASE III—ABSORPTION OF IDENTITY.
YOU... ARE ALL SUBSIDIARIES."
Fenric’s grin widened into something dangerous, silver fire pouring from his fingertips.
"Exactly what I wanted."
He tilted his head toward Aria and Laxin.
"Push harder. If it can swallow us—we’ll learn what even we are."
And with that, the next round of annihilation began.
The branded wheel spun faster, every logo grinding against reality like teeth. Sparks of meaning flew as concepts themselves were dragged into circulation—friendship, betrayal, courage—all stamped, filed, and shoved into neat SKU codes.
Aria screamed as her name lit up across the wheel: ARIA™—NOW AVAILABLE IN THREE SIZES.
Her body flickered, pieces of her laugh turning into jingles.
She bit down on her lip until blood ran.
"No. No, no, no—you don’t get to rebrand me!"
Her grimoire flared open, pages flipping so violently they cut her fingers. Each drop of blood hit the parchment and ignited. Green fire poured out, clawing upward, spelling in massive burning letters:
"DO NOT COPY."
The wheel screeched as if the copyright symbol itself had stabbed it.
Meanwhile, Laxin’s chains screamed as they too were absorbed. Across the halo-wheel, new words blazed:
"LAXIN™—SUBSIDIARY PRODUCT. COMPLIANCE PENDING."
He collapsed to his knees, choking, as pieces of his soul rattled loose like coins in a jar.
"I... I can feel it... signing me away..."
Fenric’s voice cut through, sharper than fire.
"Then tear the contract before it finishes!"
Silver light burst from his ring. He pointed a finger at the wheel, and Dragon Tongue thundered out of him:
"Noct Eryl."
Darkness Bind.
The shadows of every dead brand, every forgotten jingle, every obsolete product surged upward. The ghosts of failure itself wrapped around the wheel—tying it down with spectral cords of irrelevance.
Vex roared, shaking free.
"YOU CANNOT WEAPONIZE OBSOLESCENCE. I OWN EVEN FAILURE."
And indeed, the wheel spun again—every broken brand reanimated, zombified, turned into glowing arms that clawed their way out of the void. They wore the faces of forgotten mascots and dead gods of marketing, all smiling with hollow eyes.
Aria gagged. "It’s—bringing back every discontinued nightmare!!"
Fenric didn’t flinch.
"Good. Then we’ll learn how to kill them twice."
The battlefield dissolved into madness—
Compliance Knights surged, binder-shields glowing.
Mascot revenants hopped and clawed, their jingles rattling in broken voices.
The branded wheel kept pulling their very names into its glow.
Aria fought by scrawling wild, illegal glyphs that bloomed into chaos-vines, plants that refused taxonomy.
Laxin fought by vomiting out prototype beasts, malformed and glorious, their roars pure unbranded sound.
Fenric fought with Dragon Tongue, each syllable breaking holes in slogans, each word dragging the battlefield back toward something untamed.
But still—Vex grew larger, its voice louder, its wheel spinning faster.
"ALL IDENTITIES... CONSOLIDATED.
ALL NAMES... SUBSIDIARIES.
ALL WORLDS... ONE BRAND."
The wheel turned—and now, in blazing letters, it began to spell:
FENRIC™.
Aria gasped. "It’s... it’s trying to own you too!!"
For the first time, Fenric’s calm face cracked into something feral. His silver hair whipped like a storm, eyes blazing like twin moons breaking free of chains.
"Try, then," he whispered.
The Fairy King Ring pulsed. His body glowed with wild, ancient authority. And then—he raised both arms and roared in Dragon Tongue, his voice splitting the branded sky apart:
"I BELONG TO NO ONE."
The words themselves became a spell.
Every vine, every chain, every prototype beast, every scrap of wild magic surged together into a single tidal wave—
and smashed against the wheel of brands.
Reality itself shook as the clash detonated across existence.
The shockwave tore through the branded sky, shredding logos like paper in a hurricane. The halo-wheel wobbled violently, sparks of corporate fire cascading in every direction. Every subsidiary star, every franchised moon, every rebranded fragment of existence screamed in unison as the tidal wave struck.
Vex howled—a sound like every quarterly report ever filed, all multiplied by infinity. Its massive hands slammed into the wave, trying to push back the chaotic surge, but each strike only splintered its own acquisition tendrils, leaving jagged, glowing stumps.
Aria, suspended atop a coil of her green chaos-vines, laughed through bloodied teeth.
"Look at it! It can’t handle our noise! Keep smashing its brand guidelines!"
Laxin roared, his chains twisting around shards of shattered halos and broken slogan-banners, flinging them back into Vex’s face like molten confetti.
"I’ll tie up your entire asset portfolio if it’s the last thing I do!"
Fenric stepped forward, silver hair whipping, and slashed through the branded void with a flurry of Dragon Tongue strikes. Each syllable—Raen Drath, Luxa Torah, Noct Drath—cut through corporate scripture, cleaving away ribs etched with shareholding clauses, dismantling limbs inscribed with merger mandates.
Vex staggered back, its ticker-crown sparking in protest.
"NONCOMPLIANCE... VIOLATION... UNAUTHORIZED...!"
It struck back, sending waves of acquisition-energy arcing through the battlefield. Each pulse twisted the laws of nature—gravity reversed, fire froze midair, and time hiccupped, looping snippets of past defeats. The prototype beasts shrieked, vines burned, chains rattled—but none faltered.
Aria screamed, flinging a volley of chaos glyphs that spiraled around Vex like a tornado of green and white fire. The glyphs collided with the ticker-crown, exploding into sparks that smelled faintly of burnt patents.
Fenric roared, pointing the Fairy King Ring directly at Vex’s glowing skull:
"Veyl Drath! Raen Torah!"
Wind and fire ripped across the wheel, shredding it further. Vex’s scream rattled the cosmos as chunks of its branded armor—its very bones—turned into floating scrap labeled "UNLICENSED MATERIAL – DO NOT RESHELVE."
For a heartbeat, it seemed the abomination might finally collapse. But then the golden furnace in its chest flared, brighter than ever. From it poured raw, pulsing energy—franchises, subsidiaries, universes—fusing into new limbs, new ticker-arms, new claws that reached further than the eye could comprehend.
Fenric’s grin widened, silver fire lancing from his eyes.
"Then we escalate."
With a swift gesture, Fenric summoned the full extent of their combined power, calling upon Dragon Tongue, the Fairy King Ring, Aria’s chaotic grimoire, and Laxin’s unrefined, untamed chains. Reality itself quaked, warping under the convergence of silver flame, green fire-vines, and raw, prototype energy—the pure essence of magic that refused to be catalogued or branded.
"THIS IS NO LONGER DEFENSE—THIS IS REWRITE!" he bellowed.
Aria’s vines, Laxin’s chains, and Fenric’s silver fire surged together, spiraling into a towering pillar of unlicensed, untamed existence. It slammed into Vex head-on, colliding with the golden furnace in its chest. Sparks of stolen subsidiaries scattered, acquisition chains shattered, and the abomination reeled as fragments of its corporate shell exploded into the void.