Immediately, Zaki unleashed a column of light that shot through the hole and crashed into Abraxus’s core, generating a blast of overpowering energy that radiated shockwaves, expelling gushes of light and dark matter to the very outskirts of the tangled dimension.

Abraxus’s entire form vibrated and rippled until finally, the vibrations slowed. Tangled masses of blues and greens melded with smoky shadows, but once the realm was clear, Abraxus still brimmed with pain and wrath; a wave of pitch-black energy traveled throughout the darkness’s entire structure.

Now, all traces of Abraxus’s disdain were gone, replaced by a burning hatred. Do they mean to wipe me out? To obliterate me simply because I will not yield to the Infinite One? If I had not shielded my core what would have happened? Well, if I have evolved so quickly, I must be a threat to them; that must be a reason for their haste to eradicate my existence.

With this thought, Abraxus abandoned what was left of its prior hesitation. The darkness no longer resisted the light but embraced it, inviting it into its constantly churning structure and allowing its shadowy particles to consume millions of these scattered fragments. Simultaneously, Abraxus consolidated the particles to form a dense cloud and attached it to its own structure, caging these glittering fragments within layers upon layers of blackness until they completely lost their shine. With this process, the darkness felt its form stiffening, transforming into a hardened, crystalline structure of pitch-black plasma, a previously unknown material that covered its smoky, shadowy interior and, most importantly, reinforcing its core.

Flickering with confidence, Avar summoned another beam of light and shot it toward Abraxus, who did not attempt to resist it this time. The instant it contacted Abraxus’s crystallized form, the light exploded into harmless slivers of golden and green stardust. Zaki attempted to strengthen Avar’s second beam with a light of his own, but it met the same fate, bursting into torqouise-silvery nebulas of residual particles.

“You say He is infinite?” Abraxus mocked. “Look how I have overcome your energy in a matter of moments. But I shall not stop here–you cannot comprehend the full extent of my resistance.”

“Nor have you seen the full extent of ours,” Avar countered, and they both continued to advance.

A particle of light detached from Avar’s outer rim, drifting in front of the light entity and condensing into a huge, spherical structure. It sizzled with intense heat, vibrating with a quiet yet massive attraction. The reddish orb continued to expand, growing larger, brighter, and radiating more heat than the light entities themselves. Once it had reached an impossibly enormous size, it began to slowly rotate, with a layer of burning energy emerging around this fiery ball. As if it was the most natural thing he had ever done, Avar directed this massive supergiant toward Abraxus’s form at a dazzling speed, sending the blazing comet hurtling toward Abraxus and preparing to deliver ultimate destruction.

As the orb careened toward the right side of the outer portion of its dark, crystallized dimension, Abraxus’s specks filled with energy and began to hum and vibrate rapidly. The closer the orb came to the murky, dark form, the more violently the particles sizzled, until light and darkness, heat and cold collided with an echoing boom.

The fiery sphere shattered, bombarding Abraxus with wave upon wave of internal energy that blasted through each layer of the black, crystallized substance. The light’s energy shot down the structure, forging a line that split the very fibers of the darkness, crackling and splintering it into Fragments of various shapes and sizes.

Abraxus burst into a fury of hatred as it witnessed its precious self being consumed by the spasms of searing light. Millions of particles were smoldering away and, with each one, Abraxus felt an excruciating jab that coursed through each layer of its consciousness. The darkness’s entire form was being incinerated, and all Abraxus could do was twist and writhe in anger.

As the overwhelming sensations consumed the darkness, it sensed a swarm of Avar’s red spheres hurtling toward it from the right side, bending the space around them just as Avar had done. Astronomical distances away from Avar, on the left side of Abraxus’s dark dominion, Zaki expelled smaller, bluish-green orbs that spun even faster–so fast, in fact, that they seemed to generate a different force that surpassed that of the spheres fueling them. They flew toward the shadowy mass, orbiting each other with such intensity that Abraxus dreaded the impact before they had even hit.

The orbs made contact, and this sensation was more incapacitating than anything Abraxus had felt before. The darkness’s entire structure reeled as the smoky particles were replaced with flames and struck with raw, burning energy, producing a heat of such intensity that not even Abraxus’s cold nature, combined with the frigid environment of the realm, could alleviate it. Blistering fragments detached from Abraxus’s burning form, and flying specks of ash disappeared into the depths of the realm.

Abraxus’s entire structure shuddered as the spheres embedded themselves deeply within the mass of shadows, exploding its very essence and shrinking its form relatively faster than The light beams. A new feeling started growing from its core, a sense of everlasting dread–a dread of being vaporized into the tiny speck it had been all those millennia ago. Abraxus had never before felt the sudden surge of hopelessness and desperation that emerged now. Already, the darkness was shrinking and inverting from the light's attacks.

Abraxus’s consciousness swept a black wave of eternal despair across its body, nudging the darkness’s determination once more. It paused, momentarily stunned when it realized that its consciousness was still very much intact. With its core undamaged, the darkness could remain.

I am as conscious as ever, Abraxus thought fiendishly. The darkness remembered what it had seen in the reflection of the barrier: a limitless form stretching out into the endless depths of the void. All of it was formed from the darkness’s precious core, which had remained intact throughout the entire confrontation, despite Avar and Zaki’s attempt to destroy it. My core is the asset over which I have the most control. What would happen, then, if I were to mimic the nature of light, which is to diverge and spread? What if I detached a piece of my consciousness and extended it?

Abraxus delved into its consciousness, determined to engulf these self-proclaimed beings of light once and for all. Slowly, a small, dense fragment of the core detached from the center of the darkness’s structure. Abraxus hissed, summoning this fragment, and embedded it deeply among the particles of a black, mega extension. The darkness split this extension to form two long tendrils of thickened, black plasma, which began to twist and whirl rapidly.

The darkness summoned a wave of shadow and hissed authoritatively, commanding the extensions to move in the directions it desired. Instantly, they obeyed, and Abraxus snarled gleefully, overcome with power until the sense of self it was experiencing since its origin, reached to a dangerous level.

“I have enforced my forms to follow me,” Abraxus declared ecstatically. “If I have achieved this, then you should yield to me... For I am also a creator! And these are my followers!”