Bucky was not having a good time at all and it all started after that freaky thing with the sky splitting and those things arriving. Upon seeing Satannish, he was about to forget everything and rush towards the fucking Hell Lord who had the fucking balls to show his damned dual face after they fucked his ass over when he came to Earth, only for him to come across a man, human, amongst the modest of the dark demons he was having a sweet time slaughtering. 

Bucky was outright cautious of the appearance of the man floating among the demons but that didn’t stop him from laying utmost demolition towards any demonic spawn that made their way near him. 

He had been in the middle of doing what he had tasked himself with when he heard the man speak for the first time. “Why stand against my great Lord Chthon when it’ll all amount to futility?”

-!! 

The voice sounded directly behind him that he felt the hotness of the man’s breath but his heart didn’t miss a beat as he moved in fluid motion and turned to punch at the man only for his hand to hit thin air and unleash destruction on vacant land. 

He flashes himself to a respectful distance to keep the man who had appeared a few distance from him in his eyesight. 

“I seriously want to know. It intrigues me because your very actions screams vanity. It’s like a mortal fighting death, completely useless and inane.” He said. 

Bucky looked at the man with long white hair and wearing a red cloak with a few accessories that he was sure were magical because of the feel he was getting from them. 

“It’s because I hate it when shitty things happen without rhyme or reason. Just a personal tick.” He decided to engage in useless talk while still wiping out the unending hordes of demons. 

They were on a very small but technologically advanced planet that functioned as a hub for the other neighboring planets and even a major intergalactic trading hub in this part of the universe. 

The once beautiful planet that had been a source of immense pride for its indigenes had now turned to a desolate land of death and despair. 

The demons of Chthon had razed more than a few cities before Bucky arrived and he had to circle around multiple cities in order to curb the slaughter as much as he could and find a point where he could intercept the majority of them and find out where they were spawning from, which he was sure he had found. 

“Rhyme or Reason? I’m afraid all those things are mere building blocks in front of my master. Reality and whatever laws it governs are rendered naught and obsolete in his presence.” He proclaimed. “I’m afraid your reason doesn’t stand to par to how he visions your reality.”

Bucky nearly chortled at the words of the fanatic but his senses were working overtime as they analyzed everything they could about the man. 

“It doesn’t matter what the difference is. As long as I don’t like it, all I need to remedy it is fight it until it buckles over.”

“Fight? You would put up a resistance against impossibility?” The man sounded genuinely curious but all Bucky got were crazy alerts. 

“Trust me man, there’s nothing like impossibility. I know a guy as proof of that.” Bucky squeezed a demon’s head until it went splat. 

“But what if I show you…”

The air changed which alerted Bucky of something happening but he still continued killing off the stragglers. 

“… What if I show you that everything you’ve ever known is futile?” His eyes turned full white as a red hue came over him.

“Your struggles. Futile.”

“Your strength. Mediocre.”

“Your determination. Worthless.”

Bucky slashed at a huge demon faraway, dissecting it and everything between them into two. 

“Will you finally succumb to his glory, or will you resist persistently?” He questioned Bucky who had all his hair on their end but he didn’t stop slaughtering as much as he could as all he could see was the man in his focus. 

“You already know the answer so stop pestering me…” The distance between them decreased in an instant as Bucky appeared behind him and punched forward. “Dude.”

The hastily erected barrier crumbled as Bucky’s fist disregarded it for taking a spot on the man’s face with a direct hit that created a very deep trench as he was punched underground. 

Despite landing the first punch, Bucky didn’t feel reassured and flickered quite the distance away from where he was which turned out to be a good choice the very next second as everything was engulfed in a dark red explosion from underground. 

“Nice punch.”

With his senses peeled in case of any teleporting the guy had shown before, Bucky was immediately alerted as the guy materialized himself right before his face with a hand outstretched towards him.

Bucky’s body released a repulsive shockwave that did nothing but ruffled his clothing while his hand went a few millimeters from Bucky’s face. 

The soldier tried retreating but he was aware that there were quite a few invisible precautions in place should he try moving around so he did what was the only option available to him. 

He caught the man’s hands and held it in a vice grip while releasing an energy blast from his occupied hand while his other hand went for the man’s face in reciprocation only for it to miss as the man teleported to a safe distance from Bucky. 

“That was-!” His next words died as he saw Bucky a few steps before him slashing a sword in a bid to skewer him before he did something that both surprised and sent severe warning signals through Bucky’s head. 

The world around them changed to somewhere else that just seemed wrong that it made Bucky uncomfortable. 

“Welcome, to my domain. I am Modred, Emissary to the Dark God Chthon.” Bucky looked down towards where the voice was coming from only to see himself standing on Modred’s feet in this void space, or it could be said that Modred was standing on his feet since both of them were standing upright from their perspective. 

“Shit.” Bucky needed no one to tell him how fucked up he was because he more than anyone knew what would happen if a magician or a mystic pulled you inside their domain. 

“All the laws of conventionality and physics are judged by my whims here.. I wonder how you will struggle when faced with this.” Modred spoke, showing no reaction as Bucky separated from him. To him, Bucky was no more than a rat trapped in a burning house. It was just a matter of time before he died. 

He waved his hands and Bucky felt a telekinetic pull which made him disperse his body to avoid it only for something to slam his intangible form and revert it. 

“I said it right? Everything here is as I judge.” Nonchalance bled through his words showing just how he regarded Bucky. 

Seeing as how he just kept reverting back to his human form from his ethereal state, Bucky cursed under his breath and ducked as a wave of energy passed over him. 

He dashed towards the man because he knew just how futile it was to run away when he was on this guy’s turf. 

Modred traced a finger in a circular motion and magical chains started shooting out from everywhere and trying to bind Bucky who was managing to escape them by the skin of his teeth. 

One of the chains grazed Bucky on the side of his torso without any evident damage but the little deceleration in motion caused a few more to bound his limbs before he could react and held him there. 

“If only you listened.” Modred appeared out of the bound chains and brought his hands to Bucky’s head. “I wonder how your allies will triumph against you when you turn against them.”

His words caused Bucky’s eyes to bulge as he tried exerting all his strength and breaking through the chains but Modred just reinforced them and held him tighter. 

His hands touched Bucky’s forehead as pages of mental enslavement from the Darkhold appeared in his mind as he sift through the numerous spells available before finding the one he needed. 

He focused on corrupting everything about Bucky only for him to hit a mental wall that formed the face of a man before he was blasted out. 

His vision swayed as his senses were frazzled by the attack he received. If not for the fact that he was inside his domain and he had memorized spells from the Darkhold that warped his mental faculties, his entire mind would have been melted to pink paste. 

“Thanks Draul. Who knew those things would come in handy?” Bucky freed himself from his chains and immediately took another form that was the amalgamation of different properties he’s reacted to which made him look like a mosaic humanoid figurine of different elements and materials. 

His hands enlarged as spatial energy and his watered down version of Draul’s destruction flowed through it as he brought it down on the unfocused Modred and punched him through the displaced sky of his domain. 

Forcibly recovering himself from the attacks, he tapped into the powers of his dimension and increased the gravity over a hundredfold only to be met with another punch that he blocked with his shield as that amount of gravity had no effect on Bucky. 

All his spells could be powered to untold proportions when in his domain and that was what he did. 

A single flick of a finger vaporized everything it pointed at while another flipped physics on its head. Direction became meaningless as up down, front and back randomly interchanged at every second. 

As if that was not enough, he changed all the distance between him and Bucky to a loop, meaning that no matter how the soldier ran towards him, he’ll always be going in circles 

Bucky tried forcing his way through with what little he could do with spatial energy manipulation but it resulted to nothing as it was clear that Modred was manipulating this domain’s reality. 

Deciding not to dwell on it, he started firing his attacks at every corner of the place, hoping one would hit or reach near him, but he didn’t have any success. 

Modred fired his spells each hit Bucky with increased lethality that it even started damaging against the impossibility of it only for him to realize it was probably reality manipulation at play. 

“You might be impervious to physical and energy attacks, but is that the same for a concept? Can you shrug off the shredding of reality’s fabric.” Magic thrummed in the domain as Modred’s eyes shone white as the phantom image of a book flipping through its pages appeared before him. 

Knowing he was but a sitting duck, Bucky started adapting the forms of his strongest power combination just for him to increase the chance of him surviving the incoming attack. 

“Death’s deluge.” 

The attack came from all cardinal directions at the same time with the same intensity. 

It was an unavoidable attack that reverted everything back to their most basic form before delivering ‘death’ to everything that made it up, from something as small as cells to something as elusive as emotions. It was truly a wave of death to everything it washed over. 

Feeling the greatest sense of danger he’s ever felt since he was born, Bucky used all the energy he’s stored up in his cells for years now to push everything into his defense and anything else that could increase his chance of survival. 

He could feel his hand disintegrating and washing away as the deathly wave made contact with his flesh. 

He felt it at that moment – an unfeeling embrace that didn’t judge him for anything, welcoming him with the equal care a harlot would her customers; Death. 

He had never felt it this close before but at this moment he knew why Draul seemed frivolous at the idea of dying, nonchalant even. 

She wasn’t a fateful lover at all.