"It's hopeless," Itoshiki-sensei said, looking up at the tall, lean figure of the Mage of the Beginning, or rather the host body she had taken, rise above the Mahora grounds. The host's hood, pulled all the way back, hovered in the charged air, and Negi, supported on Chisame while Konoka healed him, winced at the sight of his face.
"F-Father...!"
"He can't hear you," Urd said grimly, unable to do anything but watching as, with a mere gesture of a hand, Ialda Baoth pulled up on the World Tree, its branches sprouting thin silver lines that turned black as they shot into the sky. "He's linking Midgard to Asgard, effectively turning the Tree into an extension of Yggdrasil itself. Once he's completed the code and downloaded it, he'll be able to just rewrite this reality however he pleases."
"Not him," Negi said, pulling back to his feet and gripping tightly on the bandaged staff. "That's not him doing that! If only I'd managed, to go all the way...!"
"It... It wouldn't help you any better than my own condition has helped me, Boya," Evangeline admitted, helped up by Karin. "For once Despair is correct. I cannot see any way out of this situation..."
"I can," Skuld said, crouched onto the ground and using her thermal knife to carve a complicated diagram on a big enough piece of pavement that hadn't been shattered yet. "I won't give up just yet! Not after going so far!"
"What... What are you trying to do, Sku-chan?" Keiichi asked, still holding Belldandy's unconscious body in his arms.
Skuld chanted, gruffly, on a hoarse throat. Ancient words that nobody present but her eldest sister and that sister's other half-sister recognized. The back of Urd's neck crawled. "Skuld! Surely you aren't going to...!"
"Is she... going to call on Mother, poyo?" Zazie asked warily, approaching to hear better over the thunder of reality coming apart around the Tree.
"Worse!" Urd said, pushing Zazie back with herself. "Skuld, you insensate! She's not going to listen!"
Skuld ignored her, finishing the chant and then slamming her mallet at the middle of the glowing diagram. "She'll have to!" the youngest Norn roared, and then an explosion of light came from the carving, pushing Ala Alba and their allies back.
When the light subsided a few moments after, a young woman with short pink hair and pink eyes stood before Skuld, staring in contempt at her.
"Why are you bothering me?" the stranger asked, making Urd and Zazie recoil in shock. Tohru, Kanna, Fafnir, Tamaki and Elma all reacted instinctively, stepping back and shielding their loved ones, squinting at the newly arrived female. "You of all people shouldn't obstruct the judgement on mortals. The offenses brought to your sister-"
"Don't give me that, Gaia," Skuld coldly told her. "I have no time for your bull right now. And you only care about what they did to you."
"I have every right to," the other entity replied, and Urd began gesturing frantically at Skuld to shut up. "Are you going to try and convince me to act on their behalf, right after pulling me from my throne, and my enjoyment of their final fate?"
"No. I'm going to force you," Skuld said, holding a cellphone up. "I've just texted Alaya, he says he's going to allow Protocol 7,7777777, and as soon as you provide the mana flux, we'll be all set."
Gaia, in the young human body wearng gym clothes that she had chosen for herself, raised an eyebrow. "And I will do that, because...?"
Then she took a hand to her throat and gasped for air, loudly. She shook, shaking, even as so did the ground under her, shockwaves of growing intensity rippling past Mahora.
Skuld smirked. Her cellphone glowed with the same combination of silver and black present in the lines pulling Yggdrasil towards Earth at Ialda's command. "You always were bad at figuring advanced logistics out, old timer. With that witch breaking the barriers, anyone with an access can connect to our codes, including yours, and hack them out. I've rigged your programming, Gaia. It'll be deactivated as soon as the last human body on either Earth is decomposed and assimilated."
"You... You insane wreck...! Y-You are worse than Aqua...!"
"What, what is she even saying?" Misa asked Urd. "I don't understand anything!"
"If the Lifemaker succeeds and mankind is pulled into her Cosmo Entelecheia, a failsafe will be triggered and Gaia's body will collapse from the inside. That will, most likely, make Earth explode," Urd answered out a corner of her mouth.
Misa and the others paled. "Oh," she said in a very low voice. "I, I see..."
"F-Fine," Gaia said, crouching and slamming a hand on Skuld's carvings. "Fine! H-Have it your way! But this will go into your records...!"
"Yeah, well, let's see if you guys can make it without the Future," Skuld huffed, also crouching and barely docking one of the many chunks of ground flying from the immediate surroundings of the Tree. "The sooner we're done, the sooner you can leave to badmouth me before the Council!"
Gaia seethed, and then chanted reluctantly, joined by Skuld. "Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Let each be turned over five times, simply breaking asunder the fulfilled time..."
Shirou blinked, staggering close. "W-Wait a sec! Are you...?!"
Rin tightly grabbed him by a sleeve and pulled him back. "Shhhhhh!"
These two rivals, the ancient Will of the natural world and the presence of a realm yet there to come, kept on talking in synchrony. "Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation. Let black be the color I pay tribute to. Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall. Let the four cardinal gates close..."
Negi then shook in pain, a pain that rippled from the back of his right hand and whipped through his already battered body. So did Chisame and Konoka, actually, and while he couldn't realize it right then, so did almost everyone else present. Shirou closed his eyes and breathed tumultuosly, hearing a faint encouraging voice in his mind.
The Lifemaker lifted his head from his work, almost finished, and paused at it to project his hand towards their direction. He shot a massive surging pillar of darkness from his palm, one that grew in size instantly to be as large as a building, but even as it flew to obliterate them, Asuna, who had not been incapacitated by pain nor had the red silhouettes appearing on her hand, dashed to meet the incoming attack.
Once it had almost reached ground level, she hefted Ensis Exorcizans and blocked it, the wave immediately exploding it place, forcing her to her knees but not making her collapse completely. Obstinately, she held her ground, fighting the force back as it dissipated into small black shreds falling like contaminated snow around the others before disappearing.
"Let it be declared now; your flesh shall serve under me, and my fate shall be with your sword!" Skuld and Gaia shouted, bringing their hands together, fingers intertwined. "Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail! Answer, if you would submit to this will and this truth!"
Makie let out a sharp cry, arching back where she stood. Saeki whimpered several times, grabbing her hand as if it was going to burst at any moment. Shiguma Rika, with shiny eyes and a fascinated smile, stared at hers and ignored the crippling burning sensation.
"An oath shall be sworn here! I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven; I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell!"
Urd took Belldandy from Keiichi's arms, as he was breathing laboriously and about to stumble down in a daze. "You're a good man, Kei," she told him. "Just a bit more, please. One way or another, you'll be done with this soon..."
Skuld and the living terminal of the Earth glared angrily at each other's eyes. "From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power, come forth from the ring of restraint, protector of the holy balance!" they screamed together, all but spitting on each other's face, and then everyone was bombarded several steps back, bowling over across the ground and bathed by an overwhelming white light.
