Originally Posted by
grampagen
As Tiamat's gaze leveled with his own, Ochazuke stared her down, and though the light cast before them all below the darkened sky hadn't changed, his eyes narrowed as he observed the luminous nature of this eternal creature.
Destruction. Creation. Focused upon the guided will of the Dragon, in an instant reality was unmade and restarted, and when the heavens quaked and thunder shattered the sky, reflexively he took a step back.
With the revelation that Grinthorn yet lived and Sakin's sinister schemes, the moment they had been illuminated a long shadow had fallen in his mind as he reflected upon the enormity of the task ahead.
"Zeno? The Lord of All Things, himself..."
A title that carried with it a great significance, this enigmatic creator of the Creator had been, every time he was mentioned, had his name spoken like a slur. At the time, he'd taken Asha'rah's words as another one of her layered, aloof riddles she used to stand apart upon a lofty perch to talk down with. With time and experience of these matters she kept hidden, the friend he had lost to this madness, and the Oni who now wandered upon this long forgotten path, as her battles became their inheritance, he had, in a matter of speaking, begun to understand the Goddess of Creation.
Perhaps she who valued the struggle, toil, marvel, and subtle genius all, had found anathema when she faced a force that represented the inevitable.
What could he want with Held...?
"So long as the time stolen from our friend has been returned to him in some fashion, it is some comfort that it will not be in vain."
Moreover, faced with that vision of a future far too near, there was one other avenue he had sought to undo it.
"The deed is done," he said to Tiamat and her Kami, "Depart for now. The time for wishes may come soon, and for that we will need as much of Tiamat's strength as she can spare."
From another death, Jack and Nunlil had been restored; doubtless, so had the Namekian Elder returned and with it the hope for his people in this universe. Right now he looked over to Arthur's Heir, this young man who had died far too many times for a man seeking to play the odds.
"There is no time to waste. Five months remain in the year, and there is much yet to be done still."
Any celebration would be short-lived.
"Sakin has infiltrated the Afterlife using a cabal of Soul Meisters to manipulate the damned and dissuade the Oni guard. Perhaps even those honour-bound been pulled to his side by his words, full of fine promises...but regardless, we've seen firsthand what happens if a wicked soul is allowed to reclaim a body. If anybody can stem this tide, it would be Hell's Hunter herself, wouldn't it?"
The collective vision, however, would remain stark in his mind, and the fatigue of the day's training replaced only with a cold burning in his heart.
"So we move to met the End of All Things, that which approaches as it had once before in the Beginning. The ancient orders had been broken, divided, and pushed toward an inevitable course. If I didn't know better, but for the garb of its ancient players, this is shaping up to be the War in Heaven all over again."
Ochazuke folded his arms before him, casting his view about taking stock of those before him, and stretching his sense sublime to the world below him, the billions of lives on the world below; and further out to the multitudes that he knew lingered in far off stars.
"Perhaps in a fashion, those who struggle hardest against providence are the ones who fly swiftest towards it, the knowledge of what will be the last figment which fixes its shape as we rush us to meet it. Yet I've never been much for prophecies, and if this is the divine plan, I have found it wanting."
Letting his hands fall to his side, he then looked over to Sarada and Totoma.
"If these are marked to be the end of our days, then we shall rewrite our destiny."