“I suspected you’d be watching that conflict, if you existed. Tracking down this realm was difficult, so I made sure I’d get your attention and draw this place close enough to Zenith.”
Bagan spoke in a disturbing calm. He’d gambled from the beginning there might be some sort of celestial or magical higher ups in this realm as there had been on Terra. An overseer much like he’d been once. True, Enjin’s deployment had mostly been an endeavor to acquire the kaiser energy. But, as Bagan had correctly guessed, the Aspect’s arrival would cause enough logistical trouble in that realm that it would require someone he suspected existed to draw in closer. Close enough that her realm got near enough to Zenith that Bagan could open a second portal without burning too much energy. With them both connected to the human realm, all he needed to do was patch the tethers together. With eons of experience, Bagan never was one to just have one plan at a time.
Harmony tilted her head up and let her radiance shine, pushing back the wayward energy and cold emanating off of Bagan. She brokered a stoic expression and retained all of her focus without a hint of faltering. Bagan wasn’t the only experienced immortal in the realm. “So, I presume you are the one who brought the kaiju here?”
“The apes were the ones who begot that folly, I needed only take the reins away from them. Their slight will be corrected in time when I return to Terra.” As it spoke, Harmony detected a spike in its energy output. It was mana, much like Mothra Lea’s or the Shobijin, but in a far purer form that was magnitudes more potent than even the former’s. Even without a direct, active comparison she could tell the entity before her was easily four times stronger than the guardian moth; and this was just its passive output. That monstrosity in the human realm was easily one of the most powerful forces there, but it was merely a fraction of the whole. And, something told her this wasn’t even the full extent of itself.
“And allow me to guess that you chose to invade this dimension and its accompanying realms to regain your strength?”
Bagan turned its head away from Harmony, casually looking back over at the standoff between his hunter and its quarry. “Invaded is a misnomer. But, I do plan to grant this place and the realms tied to it a gift as I restore myself, before I return to Terra. It has worked thus far and I am not without gratitude.”
“And, what might that gift entail?”
An eerie silence passed over them for a short while. One by one, each of Bagan’s sets of eyes looked back at Harmony as he stood still, the action done in a disturbingly unnatural manner that wasn’t helped by Bagan never raising his voices above a tranquil stoicism. “The inhabitants of these realms have souls, do they not? I shall unbind them.”
The horrific realization slowly dawned on Harmony, granting Bagan the first genuine reaction he could get out of her as her eyes widened and jaw dropped slightly. In an instant her brow furrowed and the avatar’s glow intensified. The white and bright purple light overtook her eyes and she spoke with a shaking tone that would make the royal Canterlot voice seem like a whisper.
“You. Will. Not!”
Her declaration shook the nexus realm with a gust of wind that was soon chased by a wave of energy flying free from Harmony’s pronged horn. The white wave crashed into Bagan, who turned and dug his hand into its forefront. Brilliance crackling along the invader’s arm, he physically grasped the crescent of magical energy and stopped its forward advance. He then shifted his stance and tossed it into the space off to the side of and below the walkway. The blurred visage of multi-rowed fangs with liquid shadow drooling out from between them snarled, Bagan advancing forward to stampede towards Harmony.