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OBSERVATORY INNER DOME

SECOND RING

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“Beard puns are horrible, they just never grew on me”, said Tharia with a chuckle. She eyed her love and enjoyed the short-lived wince with a bit of glee.

“Oh shave it off”, came Annie’s reply. The goddess was busy cutting a path with her Scythe. Tharia leaned forward until her head was on the same level as Annabelle. The motions paused long enough for Tharia to whisper in a sultry tone.

“You’d like to watch me do that? Kinky girl”

“What are you talking about?” started Annabelle. The tone significantly changed the meaning, until her love finally got just what exactly she was referring to.

“Oh, for fucks sake, Fairy!”

Maybe it was time to let go for a bit. Tharia suppressed her chuckle in an attempt to not antagonize Annabelle further and fell back to give her breathing room. The human girl felt a pair of beautiful eyes burn holes into her and shrugged her shoulders with a disarming grin.

“I love you, honey.”

“When this is done”, Annabelle said while turning around, “the world is gonna have a new moon.”

The goddess lifted the Scythe and cut into the next layer of thick beard hair. It took a surprisingly short time for her to continue her sentence.

“That moon is going to be striped red and glow for all the world to see. And then, each morning, I’d spank your ass some more, so it can continue glowing the next night over.”

Tharia blinked and sorted the image in her mind when it finally dawned on her what that moon would be made off, she squealed once and recoiled in mock horror.

“Damn girl, that’s graphic”, Tharia said with a grin before that facial expression died off. Several sentences - no stuttering. Annie had prepared for this. Her innocent, beautiful, doll-like goddess had fantasized enough about to form coherent sentences. The small woman’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

“Oh... uhm...”

“Yes, fairy? Want to add anything?” Annabelle said with a happy tone that belied the expressionless face.

“No Madam, I’m good”, Tharia said and perhaps for the first time in all their travels, she finally shut up. Annabelle turned around while winking at her, then resumed cutting a way through the beard. It was difficult to get any bearings in the endless curtain of gray hair. The only hint was a red glow that permeated from up front, still, they had already spent much longer than seemed possible just trying to get closer.

She checked on Sisi. The small elemental was fast asleep in one of the shirt pockets. It was odd for Tharia to see the sadistic sprite so vulnerable. Her first instinct was to blame Ravid for the sorry state of her friend. He had spent with Sisi and now the little thing was extra cynical and exhausted. Tharia’s second guess was to blame herself for it. In the end, she had to accept that Sisi too had been scarred by the state of the world. Annie’s voice roused Tharia from her contemplation.

“Fairy, can you check ahead? I’ve got a weird feeling.”

Instead of an answer, she reached out her mind’s eye. She felt the presence indicating Annie’s flame right next to her and off to the not that far distance, there was another presence. Several of them. She locked concentration on them and suddenly felt sharp pain pierce through her temple. With confusion she felt something in her throat, gagging, she spit out black blood. It swirled and clawed into the ground, then looked at her with comically large eyes. Her special sense still reached out and dove deeper towards the weird presence.

Next, she woke up on the ground, her body was convulsing while Annabelle shook her shoulders, screaming at her to wake up. Tharia reached her hand up and saw scratch marks on them. The one to inflict those injuries was herself, her own fingers were blood red.

“What is it I saw” she whispered with a broken voice, “But echoes of obsidian skies pregnant with the fortress of concepts in a forlorn age, shapes untold in seven cosmic waves, mirrors to blot out the suns and drink the wisdom of the first touch.”

“It is nothing to be scared of”, Tharia added, her mind reeling from the memories she could no longer put into words.

“We will have gotten over the shock”, her voice took on a slightly different intonation. Before she could utter the third of the sentences, the human girl pressed a hand against her mouth. She put a hand against Annabelle’s shoulder to indicate she was fine and then forced herself back on her feet.

“Fuck”, she said and then repeated it, only a whole bloody lot louder.

“Yeah, something bad is up ahead. Definitely. My mind has just been used as a chewing toy.”

“Viktor?” inquired Annie, but Tharia shook her head. This hadn’t felt like a Godbeast. At the corner of her mind, she remembered a similar instance. Back when they had gone to confront the Dreamreaper.

“Sisi would call it void. Let’s kill it, Annie. No more live and let live. Kill it. If this thing takes root, it won’t matter if we can steer this world away from collapse, it’ll be fucked ten ways to new dawn’s day.”

Tharia was suddenly pulled into a tight embrace that robbed her of the ability to breathe. Annabelle had wrapped her hands around her body and she felt fingers painfully dig into her skin. When she felt the touch of tears raining down on her, she reached up to softly brush over Annie’s head. With some strength, she pushed her away enough to breathe.

“I’m sorry”, Tharia said, “Let it out. No need to remain bottled up all the time, trust me, I know. I’m happy to know you care for me. That feeling you have, are you ready to unleash it on those that did this to us?”

She looked up at Annie and showed her a smile. The taller woman appeared fragile like a filigree porcelain doll. With a soft smile, Tharia brushed a hand over the cheeks, collecting the tears from her otherwise so invincible lover. It might have been a wee bit more romantic if her fingers didn’t look like she had just murdered someone. At least the scratch marks had been healed off by the spark.

“Did I really scratch myself?” she asked in a curious tone.

“You shouted gibberish and tried to get something out of you”, answered Annabelle.

“Great. Just another day in the apocalypse”, mused Tharia and refocussed her attention on Annabelle, “I’d caress you more but I need a bath first. Well, let’s get going. Not sure we’ll have time to plan with whatever it is that awaits us. We improvise. Against the void, there’s just no way to scout ahead.”

She watched Annabelle snuffle one last time. Then, her love seemed to grow as she straightened her shoulders. Arrogance and pride found their way onto that beautiful face, followed by a grim determination as the goddess spun around and resummoned the Scythe for a quick slash through the beard curtains. They accelerated their pace. Annabelle in the lead and Tharia in the back.

Up front, the red light increased in intensity, as did the feeling of walking into the wrong place. Voices reached her ear, they spoke gibberish in hushed tones. The ground under her feet shuddered in a dissonant rhythm. Tharia narrowed her eyes as a ghostly specter phased through the layers of white hair that surrounded them. The creature made of nothing but clothes and a skull stared at the girls.

Tharia took aim with the crossbow, but Annabelle was already in engagement range. The goddess whirled into an elegant arc with the Scythe following after her. Sharp metal cut off swathes of white hair and then effortlessly split the specter in two. Cackling laughter rang out, the rest of the clothes dropped to the ground and revealed a creature, not unlike Sisi at the core of it all. The hostile sprite bared black teeth and stared at them with scratched out eye sockets. On wings of blood, it let go of the shell.

Her mind couldn’t help but acknowledge the thing. Using that connection as an anchor, the sprite suddenly started shuddering. It popped open like a ripe fruit with fleshy tendrils rapidly rearranging the body into a grotesque shape. She noticed two front legs and a third leg in the back. There were also fleshy sleeves that looked like two more legs – only the thing had run out of bones to fill them with. It was another one of those void things.

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Annabelle stepped forward and made a horizontal cut with her weapon. It went straight through the shivering mess and cut off the lower half. Yet undeterred, a black carapace sprouted in response to the assault. Thick bones poked out of it and gestated into knives right in front of their eyes. Annie’s motion continued, the other hand struck downwards and with golden glitter, the war-fan manifested just as she was about to hit the creature. It vanished in a rain of half-changed flesh.

“Just once I’d like to keep my last meal when facing new monsters”, said Tharia. Annabelle just smirked as a reply. Together, they continued towards the center. By now it was glaringly obvious that some fuckery was afoot with the way distance worked within the beard. So when they finally cut the last layer of it and found what they were looking for, it came as a surprise.

The place looked like an unholy grove of sorts. At the center was a beating living heart the size of a small house. It had melded with a tree made out of a bone structure that sprouted from a pile of dead creatures that all had wings of sorts. The thing that spelled grove to Tharia was the collection of bloodred flowers that sprouted from the equally colored grass on the ground. There were hedges that could look beautiful if they didn’t glisten in the strange light. A flock of void-sprites danced around the central premise. They hadn’t noticed the girls yet and Tharia averted her gaze in an attempt to not acknowledge them.

“We could shoot the heart from here”, said Annabelle and Tharia nodded. It meant looking at the sprites but given the distance, she could easily make the shot. Maybe they could avoid that confrontation. Just be a cheeky bint and snipe out the core from under their thumbs.

She plonked down the rucksack to use it as a foundation for the crossbow. Resting the full weight of the weapon on something, made it easier for her to aim. It took her a moment to wind up the loading mechanism while Annabelle took up a defensive position.

“Ready?”

“Kill it, Fairy”

Tharia took a deep breath and then concentrated on the weapon in her hands. Keeping the breath in her lungs, she swiveled the weapon around and took aim. Hold steady, fire. She flicked the firing mechanism and watched the bolt drive into the heart. A loud scream pierced through the canopy above. Viktor’s scream gurgled as the giant thrashed about in mindless rage. Bits and pieces of observatory showered down through the thick layers of hair that had created this microcosm.

“That was easy”, said Tharia and immediately put a hand in front of her mouth, “Nope I didn’t just jinx it.”

They waited a few more minutes for the shudders to fade but that had really been the end of the Godbeast Viktor. Tharia stood up and blinked.

“That can’t have been it, right? This has to be a trick of sorts”, Tharia said while scratching her nose, a moment later, she laughed, “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”

The heart was dead and so was the Godbeast. From its dead body rolled a golden sphere the size of a small hand. It pulsed with divine energy. Annabelle stepped forward but stopped immediately when the tiny void lights suddenly all took interest in it. The dozen hostile sprites zoomed for the sphere and before either of the girls could do anything, they penetrated the outer shell. It instantly changed color to pitch-black but the process didn’t stop there. Black ink dripped out of the sphere and where it hit the ground, reality began to unravel.

Hushed voices echoed out of rifts in the floor, pieces of the observatory ground twisted and turned, before breaking loose. They floated around the sphere, building a makeshift barrier from any further ranged assaults. Nausea took hold of Tharia and by the looks of it Annie as well. The blink ink reached the beard and with the power of a conflagration, it burst into black fire until nothing of it was left – yet the fire continued, eating up the corpse of Viktor in less than five seconds.

Annabelle grabbed the Scythe while Tharia was loading up another bolt. This was bad. Just looking at it intensified the urge to empty her stomach – and it wasn’t even done bringing out the ugly stuff. Soon, all that remained was a large black sphere, pulsing with energy in a broken observatory. Without further warning, a strand of flesh emanated from the sphere and shot out as the mimicry of a massive human arm. Tharia felt Annie’s strong hands grab her and a moment later, the goddess had thrown her to the ground a distance away. The massive hand slammed down where she had been a moment before.

“The crossbow... the supplies!”

Tharia couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh as yet another of her weapons was smashed to pieces. The moment of levity died when the hand split apart, gestating right in front of their eyes. Lesser arms sprouted from the fingers and further split into even more arms at the fingertips. A wall of hundred hands reached for them. Tharia scrambled back on her feet and together with Annabelle, she decided to gain more distance it. A massive human head split from the sphere itself, it had the face of Viktor. The eyes were wide open in terror.

“Drink from the chalice of unsung tears”, the large mouth screamed, “embrace the pillars of unending finality. I fly on wings of broken dreams.”

“We’re not getting anywhere. Get behind me”, said Annabelle. In one fluent motion, the goddess switched directions from running away towards directly running into the hands. Both hands spun war-fans in frenzied circles, they cut the strange hands with ease – splatters of black ink were proof of that. The black sphere changed its approach instantly. The large arm snapped back inside and the face of Viktor was pulled along with it.

“Dance with the stars ablaze, embrace me my dear mistress of the comet” were his last words before the void had swallowed him up whole again. In a momentary lull, Annabelle dashed directly for the sphere while Tharia tried to keep up. In a direct confrontation, she was useless. Her only abilities were scouting, which this thing blocked, healing, which wasn’t of much use right now and whatever weapon she had.

The human girl glimpsed at the short-sword and sighed. Alternatively, there was the barrier-staff but with Sisi out of commision, it wasn’t an option either. That left her brain, filled to the brim with stupid plans that usually ended in calamities. She fell back and allowed Annabelle to take over the brunt of fighting for a bit, while she tried to come up with a half-cocked idea.

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Once Annabelle had reached within five meters of the sphere, the battle resumed proper. Two shapes protruded out of the sphere. They looked like the eyeless sprites, only their bodies were stretched beyond reason. The bones cracked audibly when the sphere melded them into a horrible facsimile of her war-fans, made of flesh and broken bones. Annabelle accelerated her assault to strike twice in quick succession, the first sunk into the sphere and peeled away several layers of black ink.

The other, however, was deflected by the facsimile fan. It flung away her weapon and forced her body into a turning motion. Using the best of the situation, she let go of the second weapon and summoned the large scythe mid-turn. At the apex of it, the blade of the weapon cut straight into the sphere. Once the weapon got stuck, she forcefully disengaged from the enemy. Her feet danced back a couple of steps and she brought her breathing back under control. Safe your stamina. Watch it, learn. With a flick of her wrist, the scythe reappeared in her hand and she began circling around the enemy. A ripple in the surface announced another attack. She instinctively brought up her weapon to block the coming onslaught. A giant shadow crashed against her weapon and flicked her off the ground like a lousy flea.

While she was mid-air, she saw the giant body of Viktor collapse out of the sphere. Thick hands shot up and swatted after Annabelle. She could do little but bring the weapon up for another feeble block. Not even her god-weapon could survive the impact. It broke like a toy as Annabelle was smacked into the ground with enough force to skitter her over the ground for several more meters.

“The second coming has been brought by the fourth day of the lesser known calendar”, the giant screamed. It struggled to get out of the sphere, but the black mass pulled it back inside with little effort. Annabelle, on the other hand, got back on her feet. She hurt in places she didn’t even know could hurt. Her vision was cloudy and she noticed the taste of blood on her lips. It was a miracle she was even standing at all.

“Annie!” pierced a loud scream that immediately brought her mind back to focus. Her vision sharpened instantly, only to see the last hand of Viktor disappear into the sphere. In his hands, he held the frail body of Tharia. The girl’s screams were cut off as she disappeared into the sphere.

Annabelle let her shoulders sag. She stared in disbelief. Her mind was unable to process what she had seen, but her body reacted already. In full sprint, her feet carried her towards the sphere. A feral scream filled the remnants of the observatory – it was hers. Where her feet touched the ground, wooden paneling spread out in all directions. Her domain forced the world to adhere to her whims. From one moment to another, the observatory disappeared and made way for the entrance hall of a cozy mansion. Six statues marked her way to the sphere, they all showed Tharia in various tasteful nudes. Pictures hung from the walls, hundreds of them, all of her love in everyday moments.

The domain had even taken on the characteristic scent of her. Annabelle locked her eyes on the shivering sphere and bared her teeth.

“The goddess of obsession invites you to her realm”, she said with an animalistic growl. Her eyes locked with the sphere again. Shudders and ripples wandered over it. With an unceremonious plop, a humanoid body fell out of it. The body soon crawled out from under the enemy and stood up. It coughed and then beamed a smile in Annie’s direction.

“You’ve convinced it”, she said, “It let me go. Come let us leave from here in peace.”

Instead of a verbal answer, Annabelle snarled. With a flick of her hand, one of the war-fans flew towards Tharia and directly struck her head.

“That wasn’t nice”, Tharia said while her head dangled on a string of black ink, “Not nice. It will make me fight you if you don’t leave. You couldn’t stand to hurt...”

Before the sentence was finished, Annabelle had chucked a second war-fan. It cut off the rest of the string. There was a time when this would have tricked her. Not anymore. It only served to piss her off. She clutched the Scythe until her finger hurt. Her steps were unusually calm. There was no turmoil in her mind. These images she had seen in her dreams since the Dreamreaper, they had come back and taken shape in front of her.

Her face no longer showed any emotion when her Scythe jerked up in a vertical slash, splitting the rest of the fake body in two. When Annabelle looked up again, the sphere shuddered. A storm raged within it and with disgusting sounds, seven more bodies popped out of it. Seven times, Tharia lay on the floor. Seven bodies stirred simultaneously. Only one of them was cussing like a drunk sailor that had found a thesaurus for insults. With a grin on her lips, Annabelle went for the other six. She didn’t know how Tharia had gotten out – and now wasn’t the time. The sphere was angry and so was she.

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End: Enter the beard | Coming up: Full Circle