Imp to Demon King: A Journey of Conquest
Chapter 437: Deicide

Chapter 437: Deicide

Maxwell’s breathing came in ragged gasps, each exhale a cloud of golden mist that dissipated into the scorched air. His divine radiance flickered like a dying candle, the once-brilliant rings of light behind him cracked and fading.

The six stood before him in a semicircle, their weapons lowered but ready. They had learned patience in their ascension—the virtue of waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

"You’re finished," Zane said, his twin blades still humming with inverted energy. "Can you feel it? Your light guttering out like a spent torch?"

Maxwell tried to straighten, to summon the authority that had once commanded legions. But his wings trembled, golden scales drifting to the ground like autumn leaves. "I... I am the heir of Bahamut. I cannot... will not..."

"Die?" Victoria’s spear point pressed against his throat, drawing a thin line of ichor. "Everything dies, pretender. Even gods."

Above them, Bahamut’s death scream split the heavens. The great dragon king’s massive form plummeted from the sky, his golden scales dulled to bronze, his eyes empty of their cosmic fire. The impact when he struck the earth sent tremors through the battlefield, a earthquake that marked the end of an era.

Maxwell’s knees buckled as he felt the connection sever—the divine contract that had made him more than mortal snapping like a severed chain. "No... no, this isn’t how it ends. This isn’t..."

"How what ends?" Sarah’s vortex contracted around his head, darkness pressing in from all sides. "Your reign of terror?" She leaned closer, her voice a whisper that cut deeper than any blade. "This is exactly how it ends. With you on your knees, begging mortals for mercy."

Morwen’s lyre sang a single, perfect note—not of anguish this time, but of finality. The sound resonated through Maxwell’s bones, through his fading divine essence, unmaking the very foundations of what he was.

"The song ends," she said simply. "As all songs must."

Maxwell looked up at them, these creatures he had dismissed as evolved insects. In their eyes, he saw no hatred—only the cold satisfaction of justice finally served.

"You... you think this changes anything?" His voice was barely a whisper now. "There are others. Greater powers than Bahamut, than me, all allied to destroy you. Tiamat herself can’t contest them. She will—"

Silas’s hammer came down with finality.

CRACK

The sound echoed across the battlefield, followed by perfect silence. Maxwell’s form began to dissolve, golden light scattering like dust in the wind. His last breath carried no words, no curses—only the quiet surprise of one who had never truly believed he could fall.

The six stood in the aftermath, their weapons lowered, their breathing heavy. Around them, the battlefield was littered with the debris of a war that had reshaped the realm.

"It’s over," Zephyr said, his whip coiling at his side. "The war is over."

But even as the words left his lips, they knew it wasn’t entirely true. Wars this vast, this fundamental, never truly ended. They only changed form.

The silence that followed Bahamut’s fall was absolute—a crystalline moment where even the wind held its breath. Then, like a dam bursting, the roar of victory erupted across the battlefield.

"WITNESS!" Mimi’s voice thundered above them all, her immaculate skin gleaming with sweat and glory as she shot a fireball that burst into celebratory fireworks. "WITNESS HOW MORTALS SLAY GODS!"

Her amazons took up the cry, their shields beating in rhythm, their voices weaving together into a war song that had never been sung before—because no mortal army had ever needed words for deicide.

Beside her, Karna’s solar flames danced around his form like jubilant spirits. The great hero’s usual stoicism cracked, revealing a grin that could have lit the darkest abyss. "The sun remembers this day," he declared, his voice carrying the weight of cosmic approval. "Let every star bear witness—the age of divine tyranny ends here, on this field, by these hands!"

Above them, still perched on Bahamut’s cooling corpse, Ifrit threw back his fiery head and laughed—a sound like wildfire consuming a dry forest. "Did you see that final strike?" he bellowed, gesturing with theatrical grandeur at the massive wound that had felled the dragon king. "Clean through the skull! Like cracking an egg!" His flames danced higher with each word. "Our words aren’t mere words anymore, my friends—we truly are god slayers! Let every divine fool and lord in every realm tremble at our names!"

The battlefield erupted in answering roars. Djinns howled their triumph to the winds, their elemental forms shifting between pure energy and ecstatic flesh. Dark elves raised their bows in salute, their usually impassive faces split by fierce grins. Minotaurs stamped the earth until it shook, their war cries mixing with the triumphant shouts of human mages who had lived to see magic overcome divinity itself.

Garduck wiped golden ichor from his blade, his scarred face wearing an expression of profound satisfaction. "Bahamut, the great order-bringer," he said, his voice carrying across the celebration. "Reduced to carrion by the very chaos he despised. How fitting."

Achilles raised his spear, divine light still flickering along its edge. "For every hero who died believing gods were untouchable—for every mortal who bent the knee in fear—this victory stands eternal!"

Hippolyta struck her shield with her spear, the bronze ring cutting through the cheers like a bell. "Sisters! Let this day be carved in adamant and sung until the stars grow cold! We have done what Herakles could not, what Theseus dared not dream—we have brought down a god with mortal hands!"

Deep within the swirling portal that connected realms, where space folded upon itself like origami made of starlight and shadow, Tiamat watched the celebration with eyes that held the depth of primordial oceans. The great dragon goddess—mother of monsters, grandmother of chaos—allowed herself a smile that would have frozen the blood of lesser beings.

"Order," she hissed, her voice a symphony of scales scraping against cosmic stone. "Perfect, unchanging, eternal order." She raised her hand, in which Bahamut’s divinity pulsed a soft golden glow. "How’s that working for you now, dear brother?"

Her gaze fell upon Bahamut’s corpse, already growing cold beneath the celebrating mortals who danced upon his scales like children on a fallen giant. "You who proclaimed yourself the embodiment of divine law, the keeper of cosmic balance—felled by the very chaos you sought to eradicate. How... predictable."

Tiamat’s laughter was the sound of tsunamis being born. "Did you think your precious contractor would save you? That pathetic Maxwell, so desperate to prove himself worthy of your light?" Her eyes gleamed with malicious delight. "He couldn’t even handle six evolved lesser imps. Six! What does that say about the quality of your divine blessing?"

She leaned on her throne’s armrest. "You spent eons preaching about the necessity of order, the danger of unbridled change. Yet here you lie, brought low not by another god, not by some cosmic catastrophe, but by mortals. Mortals who dared to dream beyond the limitations you tried to impose upon them."

Her voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried more menace than her loudest roar. "I didn’t even have to lift a claw. They did it themselves—these beautiful, chaotic, impossible creatures that grow and change and evolve beyond every boundary. They are what you never understood. They are what you feared most."

"Chaos is not destruction, you fool. Chaos is possibility. It is the chance for an ant to become a hero, for a slave to become a king, for mortals to become..." She gestured toward the celebrating army. "This."

The portal pulsed around her, responding to her growing excitement. "Do you know what delights me most? It’s not that you’re dead—death comes to all things, even gods, eventually. No, what fills my ancient heart with joy is that you died still believing in your own supremacy. You fell thinking you were losing to mere insects, never understanding that these ’insects’ had become something greater than gods."

She turned her attention to the wider battlefield, where Maxwell’s light was finally beginning to dim. "And your last champion falls as we speak, still clinging to the delusion that divine blood makes him superior to those who forged their own divinity through will and suffering."

Tiamat’s smile widened, revealing teeth like crystallised starlight. "The age of imposed order dies with you, brother. What comes next?" Her laughter shook the very foundations of reality. "That’s the beautiful chaos of it all—nobody knows. Perhaps another god will join you in the grave tomorrow, perhaps twenty."

The portal began to shift, responding to her will, showing glimpses of other realms, other possibilities. "Your death is not an ending, dear brother. It’s a beginning. The first note in a symphony of chaos that will reshape every realm, every reality, every assumption about what is possible."

Tiamat’s form began to fade, her purpose here complete. But her voice lingered, carrying the weight of prophecy and promise.

"Sleep well in your perfect order, Bahamut. The rest of us have worlds to change."

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