Rhendal said nothing. For there was nothing left to say. Around him the fire umbraquins reverted to their humanoid forms, falling limply to the ground. Their human bodies slumping with the bone aching exhaustion that accompanied total depletion of mana.

Niana spurred Matimeo forward, giving her hive of hulks two final orders. The back of her heels bounced off Matimeo's ancient umbraquin shoulders, making him chuff at the tyrannical teenie bopper, but he advanced nonetheless. Allowing one of the hulks to drape an unconscious umbraquin across his back. The eight earth affinity umbraquins followed his example, lifting nine of the fifteen unconscious fire magi and fleeing. Accompanied by the three largest hulks, who recovered the other six magi.

Though it was practical, Rhendal mourned their loss. But understood the necessity of preserving the few fire magi and could not dare to begrudge Niana an escort. Even if they managed to exhaust Pandora’s power, the monsters who’d already been summoned would still haunt Greenwood.

Four umbraquins remained, Rhendal, Soren, Cedric, and Orion, the chief conspirators of the capital’s infiltration. Their apparent bravery wasn’t lost on Pandora, nor could their defiance of her jab continue. Enormous black wings stretched out, flapping against the air, earth, and castle with every beat. What chalk water remained within the wall was draining fast. Two holes in opposite walls, poured water as Pandora weighed her meal options, comparing a dozen cats against a single crippled Lightning Lord.

“Why pick, I have many heads after all.” Laughed Pandora, opening her sapphire maw and reaching for Liam.

Her obsidian head shimmered in the noonday sun, splitting into five spectral forms. They seemed to dance across the sky, darting forward to swallow the umbraquins. Rhendal was too old to run. He leapt forward, knowing what was required of him, the eldest of Taloc’s spies. He must guide Liam home and prepare the way for the eclipsiarchs. Thought Rhendal, recalling Taloc’s last vision to him. Obsidian fangs closed around him, shattering his Shadowshield and scissoring through his waist. Consequently dropping half of the sage at his pupil’s feet. Meanwhile Orion danced away from his pursuing specter, sending a wind blade slicing through her eye. The specter faded, disrupted by his magic.

Cedric and Soren ran forward, ducking under their pursuing heads and sprinting towards the wall, knowing they needed to close the gap between Pandora and themselves.

—

Liam groaned with pain, struggling to drag himself forward, grunting as he stubborning placed one elbow in front of the other, crawling. His vision was beginning to dim, go dark around the edges.

“Need to stop… the bleeding.” He choked.

“It won’t matter.” Said Pandora’s sapphire head, catching both his legs within her enormous maw.

Daggers penetrated his thighs from the front and back, hoisting him fifty feet into the air. He screamed, giving Pandora the pain she loved. This was her alcohol, and the diety paused to swallow his pain, yet was careful not to kill him quickly. Oh no, Pandora intended to make him suffer, she held him above the outer wall and bit down. The gut wrenching feeling of freefall was overshadowed by the incomprehensible loss of both legs. A double amputation.

Liam tried to stop the bleeding, trying to activate his [abbreviated cast] skill and failing.

“Can’t get it up? Oh, my dear, poor sweet little lightning bug. Allow me.” Said Pandora.

Her sapphire eyes glowed blue, cauterizing Liam’s back and stumps with a molten pain. As if ten thousand candles were licking his skin with their flames all at once. In response he let out a scream, a primal reflex triggered by the basal instincts of his brainstem.

She took his left arm next. By pressing her snout against Liam she was able to squish the air out of his lungs, then caught his flailing left arm and bit down. Greedily swallowing his third limb. She had hoped to claim both arms at once, but leaving him with one limb gave him delicious hope.

“Crawl away lightning bug, I’ll keep my promise to you. Nyota will die in front of your limbless eyes. Torn apart just like you have been.” Laughed Pandora.

A sound that was cut short by her trapped legs.

“Can’t carry me without arms you idiot.” Spat Liam.

Pandora’s wings beat again, staggering the approaching umbraquins as her obsidian head swallowed what remained of Rhendal. Wind blades had severed the spectral heads, but they bounced off the obsidian head. Pandora created a dozen shadowed heads, clearly intending to slay the umbraquins. Only Liam’s pain was necessary for her plans. The others were lesser creatures, closer to animals than men. They could die.

But her legs wouldn’t come free. Annoyed, Pandora flapped harder, beating her wings again and again, slowly cracking the earth encapsulating her legs. Liam smiled, the vision was coming true.

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Her wings hammered against the ground kicking up a dust storm that obscured the umbraquins, cloaking the world in a chalky after-fog. The perfect cover for their waiting ace.

The remaining insectoid hulks saw their opportunity and charged, well, more like swam and hopped across the muddy courtyard of Blackwood’s ruin. Still, their six limbs found a path to Pandora’s rear, pinning her tail and chomping into Pandora’s hide with their mighty mandibles. Many skittered off her armor but one found the venomous tip of her tail and bit through it, opening a wound it soon exploited.

Pinned by the earth umbraquin’s trap, and the insectoid hulks, Pandora could do little besides scream and flap her wings. Furiously beating at the swarm of biting fleas as they burrowed into her tail, ripping, tearing, and devouring her.

And creating an opportunity to be exploited. The being who had been watching over Liam since his arrival in this world rolled off a cloud, tucking his spines to form a meteoric dart. Lightning gathered around him, building energy and coating his slick figure as he flashed through the sky. Mana flowed across his scales, reinforcing his golden feathers as Quetzalcoatl became the sword of Taloc, descending from heaven like the divine thunderbolt he was, to impact Pandora’s spine.

Lightning flowed from divine serpent to anti-divine god, her dark wings were ripped from her back, discarded like a serpent’s shell. Quetzalcoatl’s impact shattered her ribs, driving her deeper into the chalky muck of her own making. Yet he was not enough.

Pandora lived for pain, suffering was her balm, woe her joy, and malice her ministration. She did not falter as lightning rent her flesh. All her heads twisted and lunged, biting into Quetzalcoatl’s rich feathers and soaking them in his blood. Obsidian fangs tore through platinum scales, absorbing his lightning through every bite. Quetzalcoatl bit back, shattering his serpentine fangs against Pandora’s scales, tooth fragments zipping through the air with furious whizzing sounds.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Cried Pandora, speaking between chomps of Quetzalcoatl’s midsection.

Six chomps and she found his spine, using her true obsidian teeth to deliver the final bite. Her ferocious attack split the serpent in half, causing him to fall limply around her, dwarfed by Pandora’s might. She ignored his death spasms, turning her dual sapphire eyes towards Liam’s remaining arm.

“Now, where were we?” She said, extending her head to squish Liam’s ribs again.

This time she intended to break them, make him feel exactly what her own lungs were experiencing at that moment. To finally become one with the Lightning Lord of her mortal enemy. Liam tucked his right arm under himself, kicking and flailing against Pandora’s jeweled snout, accomplishing little more than knocking the chalk free.

Pandora chuckled, summoning a figure created of inky darkness. It plopped onto the wall beside Liam, extruding upward to assume the figure of an extremely familiar form. Cat ears faced him and a familiar tail flicked behind the feminine form. A facsimile of Nyota slid her hands into Liam’s armpits, lifting him with a strength she never had. Yet he twisted his arm, concealing his hand from Pandora’s main eyes and hoping the shade couldn’t perceive his trickery.

“I just want another piece of you inside me.” Said Pandora, using the shadow puppet as a speaker.

“Oh I see, you’re stupid and perverted. At least Jenkins is intelligent enough to be funny.” Said Liam, clapping back as if he has seen this scene play out before.

Because he already had.

In that millisecond of his existence all his mortal pain vanished. His fear of the future being uncertain was replaced. And his faith in Therun Perun Taloc succumbed to the fact of his death. For he knew God.

Pandora’s temper boiled over. Liam’s pain had been a lie, a deception, a feint. He did not fear death! In truth the Lightning Lord embraced it willingly, not just for himself, but for his kin. Just as he embraced his enemies, letting the Lord Bishop survive and Blackwood go free. They, were not evil, but Pandora was.

The old god, master of human evils, and slavelord of the north lunged forward, swallowing Liam in a single toothy bite. Or she would have, instead he flew down her throat, zipping into her esophagus with one of Quetzalcoatl’s fangs in hand. Orion stood beneath their union, providing the propulsion by summoning an envelope of wind to carry the Lightning Lord. A pocket hurricane that surged into a tempest within Pandora's throat.

Quetzalcoatl was immortal, but as a phoenix and not a god. He existed in the realm of constant death and rebirth, always allowing his power to flow from his old vessel into the new, except for today. On the day of Pandora’s arrival he paused his rebirth, consecrating all his divinity into his fangs.

The larger of which now lay in Liam’s hand, slashing through Pandora’s throat, injecting her true head with an endless amount of venom. Yet Liam wasn’t satisfied. He channeled every iota of mana left within himself, firing thunderbolt after thunderbolt after thunderbolt directly into Pandora’s core. She spasmed and shook as venom clogged her arteries and locked her muscles, causing her to thrash violently enough to shatter her own legs. And to alert Rhendal of Liam’s conquest.

The sage smiled, and summoned one final portal. He had no intentions of escaping, oh no, this portal was of a different kind. Raw, experimental, and without the normal safety precautions he put in place to prevent dismemberment.

Swirling his hand in a circle, Rhendal generated a sphere, one that cost him every drop of mana within his soul.

“I plant this tree of a corpse so our family might know peace. Use it well Nyota.” He prayed.

The portal opened, and for a brief instant nothing occurred. Then the natural muscle contractions of Pandora’s throat pulled him deeper into the beast. Coincidentally severing her obsidian head, which fell to the ground, causing a miniature earthquake in its own right.

Pandora’s broken body spasmed, her tail –the only mobile limb left– thrashed through chalky mud until her blackened heart stopped beating. Then she lay still.

Slain for the dozenth time in her eternity. Her last thoughts were so simple one could potentially be forgiven for saying they were honest.

I’ll… be… resurrected… again…

—

“And an Elven Catgirl will be there to stop you once again.” Said Taloc from his prison of silver.