The scent of coppery blood mixing with sweat-drenched fur began to fill the courtyard as the werewolf who was bleeding roared in pain. The sound was much more guttural than the howl had been and filled with fear as well as rage.
The werewolf's head became a blur in the eyes of my minions as the creature turned to look for the source of the axe that had buried itself moderately deeply into his shoulder. He was a talented hunter and possessed the best of both worlds as far as being a humanoid and a beast, but he could not see Hakon. Hakon was simply too good a rogue to be seen by an enemy who only had the werewolf's level of skill.
My roguish general was behind some of my orc-like minions and was able to effortlessly hide from our foes. I didn't begrudge him either, avoiding unnecessary danger and waiting for an opportune time to strike was a valid and intelligent strategy. I knew that if I were in a disadvantageous spot Hakon would have my back from the shadows and thus be more than capable of turning the tide with a single well-placed thrown axe.
The other werewolf, the injured one's brother, continued to glare at me. He was still fully under the mind-disrupting effects of my earlier taunt and he was determined to take me down now. I simply smirked at him, visually but silently inviting him to try his very best. I turned my blade towards him and waited for the creature to make his move.
The werewolf opted to oblige me, and I had to commend him for his courage even though I could just as easily condemn him for his stupidity. The beast was fast, able to move at a speed that would have allowed him to seemingly teleport in the eyes of a human, but to me he was only barely capable of any movement at all, moving at a pace that made a snail seem fast. My smirk turned cruel, and I snapped my head in the direction of the werewolf.
In my speedy eyes, my truest and most natural perception taking a hold of my body, a few moments passed before I watched the werewolf begin to react to my sudden actions. As he began to react to me I activated a handy perk entitled "Hyper Signing", which nullified the greatest weakness of "Styles"; their need to be uttered aloud. With "Hyper Signing" I could utilize any "Style" or any other sort of vocal power silently and I began to do so with ease and impunity.
"Styles", power sets that drew their might from language, were among the many abilities I possessed and they were also incredibly easy to abuse. I targeted the werewolf who was in the process of lunging at me and began to mentally and quietly utter, narrating its movements inside of my head. This activated a style known as "Big Little", which allowed me to modify the impact of any of the beast's actions including how fast it was moving.
The creature visibly slowed down, its speed greatly impacted by my mental whispers. The sheer power of even my thoughts and words filled me with awe for my own power, and even a certain amount of joy at the raw brilliance of my own abilities. But even for me, slowing it down wasn't enough. I surged forward and lashed out with my sword, almost roaring with delight as I danced towards my enemy, death on my mind.
The god almost danced towards the slowed werewolf, and as he surged forth his blade was extended towards the lycanthrope. The figure epitomized grace and agility as he raced towards the werewolf, doing so at such a speed that he was almost invisible to his servants.
The lightning-fast figure was a beautiful blur as he gracefully stepped and then leaped towards his enemies. The werewolves didn't even have a chance to actually see their foe before one of them felt the being's blade slash at him. The werewolf couldn't dodge the slash, but the instant that he felt the cold metal of the god's blade he impressively managed to twist out of the way and blunted some of the force of the blow even as he yelped in pain.
The divine being began to cackle evilly as he watched the werewolf twist and contort to take a bit less damage. The poison of the blade was not evaded, and almost immediately began to spread through the werewolf's circulatory system. Fohion smiled cruelly as the werewolf began to sweat even faster now. And that wasn't the only reason he began to smile; his mind was filling with advanced knowledge of the contents of the treasure trove lurking deep within the castle's subterranean makeup.
Psychometry, mixed with a few other knowledge-based abilities and perks was putting in the work as one of the "Mental Theaters" in my mind's eye sifted through the room inside of the castle that contained the portal. The underground level was a veritable treasure trove but there were only a few things of note to my psychometry-empowered mind.
The first thing of note was the portal that led to Mareth. It took me a lot of willpower to not just manifest a body and step through it but there were other things I wanted to do that mattered just as much to me which was a sign of how remarkable a find the contents of the treasure trove were.
The main treasure in the portal room was the remote control. The thing radiated an incredible amount of cosmic power and was practically begging for me to go ahead and claim it. I could, in a very real sense, feel it calling out to me. The object was alluring in its own way and as knowledge of it filled my mind I felt the temptation to claim it rising in equal measure. But there was something else for me to do first; become stronger.
The artifact was a universe connecting object that allowed those who wielded it to connect with famous and powerful creatures from other universes. With it, the humans on the Earth of my birth had been able to temporarily connect to other, distant universes in their dreams and use that knowledge to create stories set in other universes! They had done just that and become famous, creating "television shows" which depicted the other universes, all while pretending that the stories and universes were fictional. They were not.
That was not the remote control's true function, though mere humans had never been able to fully wield the remote anyway. The powerful object yearned to be in the hands of a divinity since in the hands of a creature like myself it could be used to conjure creatures even if the distance between us were larger than universes in length which was its true and original purpose. That said, I was able to resist the temptation to seize the remote because even visually studying it was filling me with knowledge.
By studying the remote I was able to learn things about Earth. I was able to greedily gain knowledge of the planet's continents, its oceans, its inhabitants, and relevantly, for my purposes anyway, its internet. The remote wasn't just connected to things called "Televisions" but also to something called "Netflix" which was a "Streaming service" on the internet. An internet existed on the Earth where "Specials" came from, and on the one where "Blacklight" originated, but the internet of the Earth of my birth was... fuller. Unlike either of the other two, my birth Earth's internet contained stories and "Video games" clearly depicting the lives of "Specials" and where Blacklight came from.
By merely staring at the remote I was able to peer across the internet and study it with a keen, impossibly fast eye. This allowed me to immediately and intimately familiarize myself with the breadth of created, fictional media and that in and of itself was already powerful enough but there was one final wrinkle that was only possible due to my nature as a Living God; I had "Power Architect".
"Power Architect", or the "Power Creation" superpower I possessed was able to allow me to weaponize things like human creativity and Earth's incredibly extensive array of fiction. I silently began to create and give myself an alarmingly vast array of powers, and as I did I felt myself beginning to grow in might even as I allowed time to slow to a crawl around me.
For an amount of time that struggled to be quantified by even my mind, I allowed myself to do nothing but grow. I grew, and grew, and continued to grow.
Even as events on the courtyard slowed around my physical body, I was very, very rapidly growing in power. By fusing the remarkable freedom of the power that I wielded in the form of "Power Architect" with the enormous breadth of Earth's fiction, folklore, and more, I was able to do everything from giving myself every power in hundreds of fantasy and god-based Choose Your Own Adventures to giving myself the sort of world-breaking abilities present in anime, fantasy, and movies.
I granted myself the best parts of the physiologies of hundreds of species, from ascendant beings like dragon lords and sanguinarchs to lesser but still mighty races such as Kryptonians and even the vastly powerful New Gods. And time still continued to pass by at an incredibly slow rate, as I was a powerful time manipulator who was determined to greedily and selfishly grow and grow without consideration for others so I had forced time to crawl forward all while I fiendishly gave myself more and more power.
When I finally stopped feeding myself new powers and physiologies, only the slightest fraction of a second had passed from the moment that I started to do so. And so I quickly came up with a plan that would allow me to even further dominate the battle against the werewolves and for the castle that I had come here to conquer.
I began my plan by creating a new body for myself in the depths of the castle's subterranean region. A body that came into being right in front of the portal.
In the depths of the castle's deepest chamber, a single body abruptly appeared. The body was of a darkly handsome human-looking creature who wore no upper body armor and had on metal pants. He had dark, muscular skin and his powerful, masculine body was unscarred by battle or marred by scars.
The figure gazed at the multihued portal that separated him from the alien world of Mareth for a moment. His eyes were onyx pools and he seemed to embody a sort of dark, hedonistic envisionment of a conceptually handsome man. He was silent as he studied the portal, before boldly venturing forward and stepping into it. When he stepped into the portal he immediately appeared on the other side of the thing, in a shaded forest inside of Mareth's rugged and untamed countryside.
The very instant he took more than two steps beyond the portal he let out an explosive, catlike hiss as he felt his mind inexplicably fill with something very weird... alien knowledge! The god's brain was filling with fake memories, cultural knowledge regarding the various "societies" left on Mareth, and even knowledge relating to the perks and items he had just acquired were suddenly intruding on his mind.
The young god was learning a variety of things, ranging from ways to be an even better warrior to ways to dominate those who either were beaten by him or had willingly surrendered themselves to him. He was also filled with knowledge related to Mareth, such as the location of a city that was "destined" to be controlled by him, a supernatural awareness of both an abandoned factory and a long deserted mountain fortress, and even a firm certainty that new items were suddenly inside of his inventory.
"So... This is what happens when I travel to a new universe?" He asked, mostly rhetorically. This was the first time he had traveled to a new universe organically rather than being warped there by the voice that lurked inside of his subconscious. He knew this was nothing like what happened to Tamani and to the others who had fled through this portal into Northos. That said, even these new changes weren't all of the changes that were occurring.
His mind was filling with the knowledge that in the worlds of Northos and in the world created by Evernoor there were cities, fortresses, and more appearing that were rewriting history around themselves as if they had always existed and hadn't sprung up literally moments ago. These reality-warping changes were taking place swiftly and Fohion was incredibly aware of them, smiling incredibly proudly as they occurred and his influence spread faster and faster.
The young godling did two things at once. The first thing he did was spread his senses across the planet of Mareth. This allowed him to instantly see the entire depraved planet with ease, to personally lay his eyes on every lustful, twisted act, and every lust-craved inhabitant of the world, as well as those of more noble temperaments. The second thing he did was create a third body, one back in the room with the remote control.
This new body immediately went and grabbed the remote, pulling the thing out of a pile of rubbish with ease. A split second after the divine spirit did that the remote control began to vibrate in his palm and he felt the thing's remarkable joy even before it somehow uttered a single word. Nevertheless, the remote did speak, and it spoke quite eagerly at that.
"Hello, new owner! I am ever so delighted to meet you." The object began, and the god could practically hear the overjoyed smile that the object would have shown him, had it had a face.
"I am T-20-001, though you may call me Tee-Two." The remote continued, and as it spoke this time it began to emit a holographic image into the air above itself. The image was a collage of a number of worlds that the divinity could now recognize as belonging to various cartoon series and franchises from the Earth of his birth.
"I am well and truly delighted to pledge my services to you, new owner. And the range of services I can offer you, especially due to your potent, divine nature are not to be underestimated." The thing promised the divinity which caused him to begin to smile as widely as the remote itself would have if it could only do so.
Meanwhile, in the courtyard, the battle raged on. Fohion's primary body, in Northos anyway, focused on the fight before him and prepared a fierce display of his powers to bring the fight to an end. Off in the distance, the dark god could hear the scattered footsteps of reinforcements running towards him to help the two werewolves who had sprinted ahead to try and assassinate him before his identity was actually known.
'Time to stop playing with my food I suppose..." He whispered, even as he observed events in Mareth and in the depths of the castle through his seamless, instantaneous connection to his other bodies.
