The semi-sphere of vein-coated muscle at the end of the alleyway bubbled for a moment as inside, a wave of plasma was fired from the mass of machinery that had unraveled from Andromeda's arms, blasting against the walls of the cyborgs fleshy imprisonment. The energy bolt struck hard, exploding against the muscle and piercing straight through to the outside world, dosing Andromeda in a splash of innards and a thick column of light that was dulled from the steam rising from the burnt opening. Howls of pain cried out from the numerous mouths that drooped off of the fleshy mass as roughly a quarter of the creature had been destroyed in the attack. Its eyes bared down on the girl, furious as it prepared to attack once more, only for her arms to retract and be replaced by flamethrowers. "Eat Napalm and burp." She grinned at the blob of biomass as fire burst from her arms, causing the creatures skin to crackle, rupture and blacken.
On the other side of the alley, the upper-half of the possessed body of Winston Sharpe lashed its remaining clawed hand down Michael Frosts back, causing a small spurt of blood to seep from the wound. The young sorcerer had rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the full blow, and seeing the slight pain in his face, the possessed creature rose high to strike down at him again, a violent hiss emanating from its mouth as a single droplet of drool slipped past the eye in the middle of its elongated tongue. Slashing downwards, its claw struck the cracked concrete as the Sorcerer summoned a heavy wind to launch himself out of the way, down the alley towards the cyborg. Glaring at the scene, the creature watched as Michael got to his feet beside the girl, it's lower-half screeching in pain as it burnt, bubbling and growing larger to try and overcome the assault. Raising a hand, Michael shouted out at the flaming creature, "“Ignes Dissipare et Vallum!" and suddenly the flames were reinvigorated with energy, hitting the blob harder, spreading further over it, its screams dulled in comparison to the sound of flesh popping under the intense heat of the wall of flame that had engulfed it.
Winston Sharpe had no recollection of how much time had passed. A day? A year? A decade? He didn't know how old he was and for a second, he didn't know why. There was nothing but darkness, no sight, no smell, no taste, no touch, only glimpses of memories, and then it came rushing back to him. He was one of hundreds, sent to discover the answers to every question the universe possessed. At a young age he had gained the ability to replicate his cells at will, an interesting ability that allowed him to heal, grow and replicate himself, something that a group of space-travelling super-heroes had taken an invested interest in. They had him join them and they adventured happily across the cosmos, then one day he sent all his replicates off exploring, and all the clones never saw their makeshift family again and had no way of contacting them. Some returned to Earth, some continued to explore, but they all met up to reabsorb into one on an annually basis, to share their gained knowledge. Winston, as in, this Winston, had been exploring the dreamscape of an alien race in the midst of a world-wide war that had been ongoing for hundreds of years and taken trillions of lives. He'd gone in the hopes of observing pure unadulterated rage and hate as the species had no concept of hope, they lacked a word for it, and in their dreams he had encountered nothing but nightmares. That was the last thing he remembered, but he remembered so little. Why? It dawned on him slowly, he was the back-up brain, and even the back-up brain had been possessed. Each Winston had at least two brains to store as much memory and knowledge as was possible, and even then they often had to cybernetically enhance them. Anger began to boil up inside as Winston realised he had been a prisoner in his own head, the nightmares had possessed him, locked him so deep within his own subconscious that he had been lost to existence. But something had changed and he was going to use this to his advantage, he existed again.
As the flames enveloped the blob that was at one point Winstons lower half, the two members of the Champions pouring their power onto the creature that was being forced backwards with weak and pained flails of tendrils, several lumps began to bulb on its back before they merged. Barely escaping the licks of flame, the excess ball of flesh dropped to the cracked and broken concrete floor. The brain sat on the ground for a second before a web of bone began to weave around it, lifting it off the ground as a cocoon of skin formed around the skeletal frame. In but a further second, Winston Sharpe stood naked at the back of the burning beast, his skin taught against his ribcage, malnourished from years without the need for food, his back was hunched over from years of brooding without the need for company, his hair a black mess over his eyes that were encircled with black rings from years without the need for sleep, all combining to make his already petite frame seem even more fragile and pathetic. His naked form was, for the first time in an age, at its normal state, only his mind was not what it normally was, his gall and animosity was so fragrant that his entire body shook from rage. From behind the weeping curtain of hair, his eyes glared at the wall of fire that was the monster that had possessed him. The creature was attempting to fight the flames that were lashing out at it by growing larger, a thick wall of burning meat that stretched to each side of the alley and was nearly twice as high. On the other side of the wall, Winston could hear a scream of, "And I mean now!" and so it dawned on him that someone had been fighting his possessed body, attacking it the point it was so weak as to let loose its grip on his mind. He made a note to thank them, if they survived.
The creature would pay though. Taking a step forward, a tendril emerged from Winston's shoulder-blade, tipped with sharpened bone and in an instant it stabbed forth into the center of the thick wall that was the creatures unburnt back. Surprised by a new source of pain, an eye formed from the vein coated muscle to glare at Winston, rapidly followed by a toothy maw that screeched hatefully at him. Winston's own tendril retracted, spurting blood from the wound, before whipping down into the beasts mouth where it replicated furiously, tendril upon tendril formed along the length of muscle that had been shot into the creature's mouth, each one piercing its innards and replicating further to explore and stab even further. It took two seconds for bone shards to begin to burst out of the other side of the still flaming beast and with a final squeal, succumbing to the extensive effort of fire and having the majority of its veins and what few organs remained cut and forced apart, a red mist evaporated from its eye and drifted towards the sky.
Winston didn't bother to stare upwards in contempt as the red mist hit the magical barrier that had kept the dark-quaking mass of magical energy sealed at in at its peak. The first symbol was thus joined by a second that shone against it. Winston was curious to see who was on the other side of the meaty wall, not even noting what was happening behind him, and so with his tendrils still deeply embedded in the still-flaming colossal corpse, Winston imbued them with further muscular mass and stretched them out to the point the cracks in the beast's skin where the burns had blackened it ruptured and the creature was torn in half, both sides pressed up against the walls before collapsing backwards in a cloud of fleshy embers. Winston smiled awkwardly at the two strangers as he retracted his tendrils, he hadn't had much need to thank anyone for well over a year now, and out of the two people he had, he'd killed one and the other had attempted to kill him twice. "Hey," Winston said as he swept his hair from his eyes, a bone-like attempt at basic clothing covering his naked form, "I'm guessing I should be tha-" Something touched his leg that caused his voice to waver, as instantly, thoughts came to mind, namely, what had happened to the main brain of his original body.
In the meantime, the upper-half of Winstons possessed body had taken root in the concrete. Its spider-like appendages that supported its largely limbless torso had dug deep into the ground, winding and snaking their way through the floor, pushing past concrete and wires like deep roots as the body itself had expanded. There was no time for the exploration the demonic entities inhabiting Wintsons body had hoped for, they were under siege and the time was now to initiate the beginning of what they saw as something fantastic. Twisting inhumanely upwards, the possessed body had elongated and spun itself up into the heavens like a great spire of pulsating biomass, throbbing thick with blood as it stretched and grew in absolute silence, taking up the entirety of the latter-half of the alley it continued to careen upwards, further tendrils growing from the nape of the neck and shoulders into a canopy of interwoven veins and bones like a great, rotting, animalistic tree of life from the center of which, Winstons head sat, the tongue looking down at its fallen and burning comrade as it was torn in half, its final sight before bone shields enveloped its one weak point. As the red mist touched the tip of the magical shield, flaring the symbol across the trapped fragment of sky, the pinnacle of the warped tree touched it as well and mouths began to appear along its branches. The sky, still filled with a pulsating blackness muddled with confused voices had started to scream in fear and panic as the mouths latched onto the Sorcerers magical shield and began to suckle. The mouths pulsated as they swelled with excess cell growth which lingered for a second before dissolving.
Winston's power was, in a sense, that he was a source of infinite life, but nothing like a graceful deity that whimsically wished beings into existence, he was potentially the greatest cancer in the known universe. He could create life infinitely and virtually at will with his ability to force cells to undergo mitosis, and it was that which was accessible as a never-ending source of magical power, Winston Sharpes body held a soul that could be used over and over indefinitely, and that was the source of the possessed demons increased magical capabilities, having fought wars with such powers on their own world, their firepower had advanced dramatically. This was what had drawn the nightmares to Winston so thoroughly, he could make their dreams of genocide a blissful reality.
Winston turned to look up at the monstrosity in silence. A tree made of his own flesh and blood that was already roughly four stories tall. One of its roots, thick and engorged with muscle, had snaked its way over and was presently brushing against his feet, the words "anking you tw-" barely escaped his lips before it wrapped around his ankle and slammed him into the wall of the alleyway. The impact caused further cracks to appear across what remained of the wall and left Winston slightly embedded in it. The half-naked boy half-coughed-half-sighed as his body remained stuck to the wall for a second before the root tore him back out and slammed him headfirst into the opposite wall where several teeth were shattered out of his mouth, before it whipped him high into the air in order to slam him back down. At the peak of the uncomfortable journey upwards, during the brief second of stillness before he was to be brought to the ground, Winston was high enough for him to glimpse through bloodied eyes, the mouths that were sucking in the dark gunk pressed against Michael's invisible magical shield. As the root began to slam him down, dozens of carbon knives emerged from Winstons shin, carving neatly through the muscle that had ensnared him, letting fall several chunks of blood-splattered meat as tendrils shot out from Winstons shoulder blades, wrapping around one of the 'canopy branches' and pulling him towards it like a pair of grappling hooks. Small daggers appeared on the palms of Winstons hands as he swiftly pulled himself close, grabbing onto the thick branch with his spiked hands to steady himself. Clinging onto the branch, Winston glared up its length to the numerous mouths pressed against the darkness, the branch itself continued to swell and shrink, making him bob up and down for the brief moment he sat there. A moment later, cracks spread across Micheal's shield as the last of the blackness was sucked away into the trees many maws, the red symbols along with it. From the alley-way below it would look like the sky itself was breaking apart. The shield finally gave way, breaking apart in silence, the cracks disappearing from the sky, and as it did, the tree rapidly continued to grow. Five stories, six stories, seven. It began to tower over the buildings on either side of it, which were already being torn apart by its roots.
From high up in the 'tree' Winston stared down at the damage his possessed body was causing and a look of absolute disgust crossed his face as his teeth healed back to normal. Pulling himself closer to one of the mouths, Winston prepared to launch a tendril down into it, to tear the creature apart from the inside, when the maw suddenly belched up a large pulsating orb. The ball was fleshy, not unlike the tree, but it was paler and seemed unaffected by gravity as it floated upwards, connected only by an umbilical chord like tendril that stretched down the creatures throat. Turning around, Winston saw orbs float up from the many mouths all over the tree and despair began to tug at his innards. He felt sick.
The creature was using Winstons power to bring life to creatures that existed in the nightmarish dreamscape of an alien race. This tree was bearing fruit. Returning his attention to the orb before him, Winston prepared to continue his assault, he might have a chance of finishing this. As he leaned a little closer, tendril tips glistening sharp and at the ready, an eye appeared between his legs and a series of bone spikes burst out of the branch beneath him. Simultaneously, two spears burst through each leg, one in each knee, one in each thigh, two traveled up his entire body on either side so as to burst out each shoulder-blade, the seventh and final spike shot through his head, piecing his jaw and protruding out at the bridge of his nose so the bone shard could have been inside his mouth, were it open. The shards retracted and Winston's body sat still for second before gravity slid him off the branch and his body began its twenty-seven meter plummet towards the ground.
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