The stink of scorched divinity and crumbling bubble-stone hung thick in the plaza. Shanks' defiant shout hung in the air, a pirate's challenge thrown at cosmic fury. Achlys's wounded form, a cathedral of suffering realms stitched together, pulsed with malevolent light. Her choir-voice dropped to a chilling whisper that vibrated the marrow. "Annoyance? You DARE speak of annoyance, vermin? I am the architect of eternity! And SHE—" Her starlight nebula head swiveled, fixing on Marya, who stood amidst swirling nebula-hair and the flickering tripartite halo, "—is a thief! A parasite wearing a shard of MY mantle!"
"Status?" Mihawk's voice, colder than the Cocytus leg dripping nearby ice, cut through the divine rant. He hadn't moved from where he'd embedded Yoru in the wall, but his golden eyes, sharp as his blade, flickered between Shanks and Marya.
"Still kicking!" Shanks rasped, spitting crimson onto the cracked obsidian. He flexed his grip on Gryphon, its legendary edge dulled but its spirit unbroken. "Bit winded. God-breath stinks worse than Lucky's socks after a month at sea." He offered Marya a bloody grin. "You holding together, Mist-girl? Or is eternity giving you indigestion?"
Marya didn't return the smile. Her gaze, one pupil serene Elysian fields, the other a churning Narakan hellscape, remained locked on Achlys. The void-veins beneath her cracked skin pulsed angrily. "Functional," she stated, her voice layered with the Void's echo, yet carrying her familiar, clipped stoicism. "Her bindings are strained. The Purgatory ribs... they vibrate."
Before Mihawk could demand specifics, Achlys struck. Not with the grand sweep of before, but with terrifying precision born of wounded pride. Her molten silver arms blurred. The scales of Ma'at slammed downwards towards Shanks, radiating judgment so heavy it threatened to crush his spirit. Simultaneously, the flaming Cherubim sword lashed out in a horizontal arc aimed at Mihawk, forcing him to wrench Yoru free in a shower of masonry. But the true fury was reserved for Marya. The goddess's sewn-shut void mouth contorted. From the tears of ambrosia and scorpions, a concentrated beam of pure negation lanced forth – a ray of anti-light that ate the very color from the air, aimed directly at Marya's heart. It wasn't just an attack; it was an unmaking, a command from the source to dissolve the stolen power.
Marya moved to evade, but the beam was instantaneous, a command from reality's core. Mihawk, however, was already a shadow in motion. He abandoned his defensive stance against the Cherubim sword, a calculated risk, throwing himself into the path of the negation beam. Yoru met the anti-light not with a clash, but with a terrible, silent consumption. The world's blackest blade seemed to drink the unmaking ray, but Mihawk grunted, a sound of profound strain, as the impact drove him back a step, the obsidian steel of Yoru hissing as if scalded by absolute zero. The smell of something primal and impossibly ancient–like the dust of dead legends–filled the air.
"Fool girl!" Mihawk snapped, his voice tight with uncharacteristic heat as he held back the devouring light, Yoru trembling in his grasp. "Engage your brain before your blade! That was pure essence!"
Marya, momentarily shielded, didn't flinch at the reprimand. Her dual-pupil eyes narrowed, not on the beam Mihawk struggled against, but on Achlys's lower half – the frozen Cocytus leg and the volcanic Kumbhipaka limb planted on the maw to Chaos. The chaotic energy swirling around them seemed... dissonant. A flicker of that familiar, detached curiosity sparked behind the cosmic horror in her gaze. "Her foundations are discordant," she stated, her voice cutting through the divine shriek and the sizzle of Yoru. "An idea." She didn't wait for permission or protest. While Mihawk held the negation beam and Shanks danced away from the crushing scales, Marya dropped low, slamming the Key of Thresholds point-first into the oil-slicked ground near Achlys's feet. Not a stab, but a conduit.
"Tartarus Tide: Glacial Maw!"
Hell's power surged through the Key. Not a wave this time, but a focused, concentrated eruption of primordial cold and corrosive sludge, spewing from the tip of the blade like black geyser. It didn't spread; it targeted. It slammed into Achlys's frozen Cocytus leg and the base of her volcanic Kumbhipaka limb. The effect was instantaneous and grotesque. The already icy leg screamed with the sound of fracturing glaciers, layers of supernal frost exploding outwards, encasing it in a prison of jagged, void-black ice thicker than battleship armor. The volcanic leg hissed violently as the corrosive sludge met molten rock, hardening the lava flow into brittle, crumbling obsidian, anchoring it fast. Achlys staggered, a guttural roar of surprise and outrage tearing from her not-mouth. "MY LEGS! YOU DARE—?"
"NOW, UNCLE!" Marya yelled, the strain evident in the widening cracks along her void-veins.
Shanks didn't hesitate. The moment Marya moved, he'd been gathering himself. Now, with Achlys momentarily unbalanced, he leaped. Not just a jump, but an ascension. Gryphon blazed anew, not with its full Solar Wings, but with focused, searing intensity around the blade itself. "Gryphon: Talons of Judgment!" The sword elongated, not physically, but in a projection of pure Conqueror's Haki and divine-sealing intent, forming massive, crackling talons of golden-red energy. Shanks slammed down onto Achlys's back, between the skeletal ribs of Purgatory, driving the Haki-talons deep into the paradoxical flesh where Heaven met Hell. It wasn't just a physical pin; it was a metaphysical lock, an attempt to shackle the concept of movement itself. "Stay DOWN, Goddess!" Shanks roared, muscles straining against impossible resistance. Gryphon's talons screamed under the strain, golden light flickering erratically as cracks spiderwebbed through the energy construct.
Achlys thrashed, a wounded leviathan. The frozen leg was immobilized. The volcanic leg was anchored. Shanks's Talons burned into her back, binding her power. Her choir-voice became a discordant shriek of pure fury. "RELEASE ME!"
Mihawk saw the opening. Yoru, freed as the negation beam sputtered out when Achlys focused on her legs and Shanks, was a black streak. He didn't aim for the head, the heart, or the limbs. His golden eyes, honed by a lifetime of seeing the unseen, fixed on the chaotic confluence of glowing veins beneath Achlys's Purgatorial torso – a nexus where the blue river of Styx (oaths) met the black river of Lethe (forgetting). It pulsed with sickly, conflicting energy – the binding point of memory and consequence within the god.
"Sever." Mihawk's command was whisper-soft, yet it carried the weight of finality. Yoru cut, not with brute force, but with absolute, world-ending precision. The blade passed through the chaotic nexus of veins like a shadow through smoke.
Silence. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then, Achlys convulsed. Not a roar, but a wet, horrific gurgle. From the severed nexus Mihawk had targeted, not blood, but a torrent of thick, iridescent primordial ooze erupted. It wasn't liquid; it was concentrated potential, the raw stuff of creation and entropy mixed, smelling like ozone, grave dirt, and newborn stars. It gushed over her frozen leg, hissed against her volcanic one, and splattered onto the swampy ground Shanks had created, sending up plumes of acrid smoke. The goddess's light flickered wildly, her nebulae head dimming, her skeletal ribs groaning. The sheer, shocking loss of her core essence destabilized her completely.
With a groan like continents colliding, Achlys, the Cosmic Chimera of Thresholds, toppled forward. Shanks, still clinging to the Talons of Judgment, was thrown clear as the massive form crashed down, landing face-first in the very swamp of corrosive sludge and freezing ice Marya's Tartarus Tide had created. The impact shook Nouvèl Orléon to its cursed foundations. Gryphon's Talons of Judgment shattered completely, the backlash sending Shanks skidding back, the dimmed sword now bearing hairline fractures along its legendary steel.
The trio landed roughly, breathing hard amidst the settling debris and the horrific stench of spilled divinity. Mihawk flicked ichor-like ooze from Yoru's edge, a deep chip now visible near the tip. Shanks pushed himself up, wincing as he examined Gryphon's fractures. Marya stood, the Key of Thresholds steaming where Hell's power had channeled through it, her void-veins an angry latticework of black lightning beneath her skin. She observed the fallen goddess with detached curiosity. "Maimed. Not terminated."
Achlys stirred in the foul swamp. Her movements were sluggish, agonized. The primordial ooze still seeped from her wound, weakening her. But the rage... the rage was incandescent. Her choir-voice, when it came, was no longer directed at the pirates who had wounded her. It was a low, venomous hiss that slithered through the entire Floating Quarter, reaching the ears of every terrified reveler, Krewe member, and Marine struggling in the peripheral battle.
"MORTALS..." The word dripped with infinite contempt. "YOU HIDE BEHIND THESE VERMIN? YOU REVEL IN THIS FILTH?" Her faceless head lifted slightly, dripping sludge and melting ice. "THEN REVEL IN THIS!"
She didn't attack Shanks, Mihawk, or Marya. Instead, one of her molten silver arms, the one holding the mirror of Yomi (reflecting the underworld), slammed not into the ground, but into the fractured space above the crowded section of the plaza where the Krewe du Roi musicians and masked civilians were desperately trying to flee. The mirror didn't break; it warped. A jagged portal, not into Yomi, but into a nightmarish reflection of the Forgotten Marshes filled with shrieking, half-formed spectral horrors, ripped open directly above the panicked crowd.
Simultaneously, her other arm, holding the scales of Ma'at, tilted violently. Not towards the pirates, but towards La Maison Rouge. A wave of crushing, soul-numbing judgment radiated outwards – not an attack to kill, but to induce crippling despair and paralysis. Pirates, Krewe members, Marines alike near the brothel-turned-den suddenly stumbled, their faces going slack with hopelessness, weapons dropping from nerveless fingers as the weight of their perceived sins crushed them.
Moxy-Rouge, directing her poupées from relative cover, gasped as the wave of despair hit her Houngan allies nearby. "Non! Les esprits! Shield them!" she cried, clutching her Petit Roi doll, violet eyes wide with ancestral terror not for herself, but for her people. Remy Leclerc's trumpet faltered as he saw the spectral horrors descending towards the masked dancers he'd played for just hours before. Capitaine Jolene snarled, "Damn theatric bitch!" as she saw her smuggler crew falter under the despair.
Achlys, wounded but infinitely malicious, had shifted her wrath. If the pirates protecting these insects wouldn't break, she would burn the insects themselves. Her vengeance would be petty, cruel, and devastatingly effective. The divine battle had just become a fight for the soul of a city.
The despair radiating from Achlys' tilted scales hit La Maison Rouge like a physical wave. Krewe musicians dropped their bone accordions, hands clawing at their chests as forgotten guilts and shames crashed over them. Masked revelers sank to their knees, sobbing uncontrollably. Even hardened pirates from Bayou's Reckoning staggered, their faces slack with sudden, crushing hopelessness. "I... I can't..." a Marine recruit whimpered, dropping his rifle, staring at his hands as if they were covered in blood.
"HOLD YOUR GROUND, YOU SUPERSTITIOUS IDIOTS!" Jolene Martel's metallic rasp cut through the psychic fog. She drove her harpoon, Liar's Bite, through the knee joint of a Husk Soldier advancing on a paralyzed Krewe smuggler. "It's just bad air! Breathe through it, or I'll harpoon you myself for being useless!" Her mechanical jaw clacked with fury, but her eyes darted nervously towards the brothel entrance where her hidden ledgers lay.
Above the despair-stricken crowd near the shattered fountain, the jagged portal birthed by Achlys's Yomi mirror pulsed with sickly light. Shrieking, half-formed horrors – spectral alligators with human hands, skeletal jazz players with weeping sores – began to coalesce and drip down into the plaza, their touch leaving frostburns of spiritual decay. A woman screamed as a phantom hand, trailing swamp mist, brushed her arm, leaving skin grey and numb.
Benn Beckman, perched on his crumbling fountain, saw the dual-pronged horror unfold. His rifle snapped up, not towards Husk Soldiers, but towards the descending specters. "Yasopp! Sky-rats incoming! Light 'em up! Limejuice, Spark – clear that despair fog near Maison Rouge! Now! Gab, Zéphyrine – disrupt that portal! Make it squeal!" His orders were a lifeline thrown into a drowning sea.
Yasopp, high on the townhouse balcony, didn't need telling twice. His rifle became an extension of his will. Crack! Crack! Crack! Haki-infused rounds punched through the forming spectral horrors. One, a skeletal trumpeter, dissolved into mournful blue mist with a final, discordant wail. "Keep dancin', ugly!" Yasopp yelled, already tracking the next dripping abomination. "This ain't your kind of party!"
Below, near a cluster of paralyzed Krewe members, Limejuice planted his electric staff. "Spark! Light show! Aim high!" He channeled all his power. BRRRZZZZZT! A blinding arc of raw electricity lanced upwards, not to kill, but to disrupt. It struck the edge of the despair wave radiating from the scales. The crushing weight lifted momentarily near him, gasps replacing sobs as people stumbled back to their senses. "Get up! Move!" Limejuice roared, sweat dripping down his face.
Ignace "Spark" Baptiste, catching Limejuice's cue, grinned maniacally despite the sweat beading on his brow. He aimed his Flamecaster not at the portal, but at the space beneath it. "Fire in the hole! Memory Lane Special!" He unleashed a torrent of Soul-Sugar-laced fireworks. They exploded not with heat, but with fragmented, chaotic memories – a child's laughter, a lover's betrayal, the taste of salt spray. The disorienting barrage washed over the descending specters and the despair field. The horrors hesitated, confused by the sensory overload. The despair fog near Spark thinned, its edge fraying.
Near the portal's base, Gab took a stance beside Granny Zéphyrine. The old woman jabbed her stilt-spears at the dripping horrors. "Sing 'em a lullaby, Gabby! A nasty one!"
Gab drew a breath that seemed to suck the air from around him. He unleashed a focused, guttural "Gale Howl!" Not a wide blast, but a concentrated cone of concussive force aimed directly into the pulsing portal. The air blades ripped through the forming specters and slammed into the Yomi mirror's projection. The portal shuddered, its edges flickering like a bad signal. "Paralyzing Pitch!" Gab followed, a high-frequency shriek aimed at the portal itself. The flow of horrors stuttered, some freezing mid-drop before dissolving.
Jelly Squish, bouncing erratically near a paralyzed group of street urchins, saw a spectral horror with too many mouths reaching for them. "BLOOP! Bad ghostie! No touchy!" He morphed mid-air into a giant, sticky net, splattering over the horror. It shrieked, entangled in his gelatinous form, its corrosive touch making him sizzle and jiggle violently. "Owie! Cold and ouchy!" Jelly whimpered, but he held fast, trapping the horror. "Run, tiny friends! Bloop!"
Building Snake, ever silent, saw a different threat. A Husk Soldier, its Haki-drain aura intensified, was lumbering towards the group Limejuice had just freed, drawn by their renewed vitality. Snake moved like oil between panicked civilians. His Juggling Two Sword Style became a whirlwind of precise cuts, not at the Husk's armor, but at the sparking Haki-amplifier nodules on its spine. Snick-snick-snick! Wires parted. The draining aura flickered and died. Hongo, staff whirling defensively beside him, knocked aside a Marine trying to take advantage of the chaos. "Neck's vulnerable, Snake! Keep at it!"
Moxy-Rouge, shielded somewhat by her connection to the spirit world, directed her poupées with frantic energy. "Mes petits soldats! Protect the living! Distract the dead!" Her soul-stitched dolls swarmed the legs of Husk Soldiers near the portal and latched onto descending specters with their tiny, needle-sharp fingers, buying precious seconds. Her violet eyes burned with fury. "Achlys! Vous êtes une mauvaise déesse! Une sale déesse!" (Achlys! You are a bad goddess! A filthy goddess!)
Remy "Riff" Leclerc, seeing the despair lifting near Spark, raised La Sirène again. He blew a furious, defiant jazz riff – not blues, but a martial call to arms. The notes, infused with his Soul-Sound power, bolstered wavering spirits. Pirates and Krewe members near him straightened, shaking off the last dregs of despair, their eyes hardening. "Hear that, Nouvèl Orléon? That's the sound of tellin' eternity to shove it!" he shouted, sweat staining his patchwork coat.
Sébastien "Silk" Moreau materialized like a ghost on a balcony overlooking the portal chaos. A look of utter distaste crossed his elegant features as he saw the spectral sludge dripping onto the ornate ironwork. "Disgusting." With a flick of his wrist, cursed silk scarves shot out, not to strangle, but to bind. They wrapped around the limbs of two descending specters, yanking them off course into each other with a shriek of dissolving ectoplasm. He vanished again, reappearing near a cluster of Marines about to shoot into the panicked crowd near La Maison Rouge. A paralyzing needle, tipped with Soul-Sugar toxin, found a commander's neck. The man froze mid-shout. "Mind your manners," Silk murmured, already fading back into the shadows.
Lucky Roux and Monster, having smashed the Husk push towards the Red Strings, now turned their fury on the despair field's source. "Oi! Scale-y!" Roux bellowed, hefting a chunk of broken statue. "Catch!" He hurled it with all his might at the tilted scales of Ma'at. It shattered harmlessly against the divine artifact, but the intent was clear.
Monster simply roared, a primal challenge directed at the wounded goddess herself, his axe held high. "RRRAAAAH! FIGHT US!"
Bonk Punch, holding the center near the churning pool, slammed his cestus together. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! The rhythmic, defiant sound cut through the cacophony, a grounding beat for the terrified city. "Red Hair stands! Nouvèl Orléon stands! Get up and FIGHT!"
It wasn't victory. Achlys's assault was relentless. Despair still gripped pockets of the city. Horrors still dripped from the flickering portal. Husk Soldiers pressed their advantage. But the tide of utter helplessness had been broken. Where moments before there had been only crushing defeat, now there were pockets of fierce resistance – pirates shielding civilians with their bodies, Krewe houngans chanting shaky counter-wards, musicians playing defiant notes, and ordinary people, inspired by the pirates' refusal to yield, grabbing dropped weapons and makeshift clubs. The soul of Nouvèl Orléon, though battered, was proving harder to crush than the vengeful goddess had anticipated. The insects, stung, were starting to swarm.