“What did Werylin say this place was called again?” Arkaziel beheld the vast plains of sulfur vents, lava, and volcanic rock, all interspersed with signs of ancient ruins. Whatever people had lived here once had met a cataclysmic end, as was the expectation on a world called Grief.

“The Obsidian Tears of Skadur, he said. Apparently, this Skadur person decided he was ready to ascend to the heights of godhood and challenged Oizys to best him if she dared. So, she brought lava and sulfur, and trapped the entire nation within the flows of molten lava. She made each citizen’s suffering last for ages, granting the relief of death only once a year to a single citizen, and the pain and suffering each felt was directed to Skadur upon their death, so that he would learn the folly of mocking gods.” Telos couldn’t help but wince at the hardcore punishment as she told the tale.

“The lingering pain and suffering steep this ground. Are there still souls trapped in the depths of lava? I do not sense any, but if a demi-plane is hidden within, it could open anytime.” Kallos’ golden eyes glowed much brighter than normal as she sought signs of souls within the fields of suffering.

“This world is such a shithole,” Bobbi grumbled. “Why don’t we travel to a world without all the tragic awful backstories to every single bit of land across the whole damned planet?”

“You wanted to catch up to Arkaziel; maybe this Skadur was powerful enough to help that?” Telos offered optimistically as the seal of Ananke formed in the ground. “Besides, I like to think my offer of absolution to the suffering they’ve endured will call them, and another one of Oizys’ cruelties can finally be ended if nothing else.”

“I’m hungry, and someone’s getting eaten, lava ghost or forces of fate, I’ll eat them all.” Arkaziel stretched energetically, but Telos recognized it was the cat’s way of approving.

“Why are we doing Ananke first?” Bobbi wondered.

“There’s something to do before we finish Phanes, and we may have to run after the first one. I’m fairly certain the trial with Phanes’ legacy can be done anywhere. Alright, I’m starting. You two, destroy everything that tries to interfere with Kallos and I. Love, if these two need help, go ahead; if it comes down to it, I can brute force my way through the ritual alone if I absolutely have to.” Telos leaned in to peck Kallos on the lips with a light kiss.

“By starlit bonds and decrees of fate, Ananke, serpent of destiny, I call you to the end you prescribed in the flows of fate. Step through the Gate!” Telos’ chants and the raw power of the initial opening of the Celestial Gate had grown exponentially in strength since they summoned the first god this way. A mote of the essence of Ananke, a gift from Chronos, called it's like from across the universe to join together.

Ananke had once been human or something like a human. She, like Chronos and Khaos, had triggered the formation of this reality with their fellow transcendent Phanes. The sheer power of the first mote that flowed through the gate to join the orb of Ananke’s essence staggered Telos. She had expected the power differential between gods and Primordials to be significant, and it had been. Still, the difference between transcendents and Primordials was a gulf far vaster than between gods and Primordials. She could not even quantify the difference; beyond that, whatever scale mortals, demigods, gods, primordials, and transcendence were on was exponential. Telos had never been quite so aware of the staggering, insurmountable cliffs that mortals faced in this existence before because she realized something else.

Ananke was a tier below Telos herself. For all the sheer, unmitigated power of her essence, for all the power of being the ultimate arbiter of necessity and fate of a whole existence, Ananke was less than Telos, her power and authorities nestled inside of Telos as if Ananke had been a much smaller nesting doll waiting to go inside of her this whole time.

“Magic,” Arkaziel called lazily. Despite his calmness, he grew into a thirty-meter-long dragon, and when humanoid forms of lava rose from the depths of magma chambers tied to a previously hidden demi-plane, the first to rise got blasted in the face with dark lasers that leached all heat from the first figure, which then shattered.

“This whole cold light thing does have some potential, blue!” Arkaziel cackled and swept his dark beams of cold light across figures as they emerged.

“Don’t steal all the kills, twerp,” Bobbi growled at Arkaziel. “And what’s so groundbreaking about heat dissipation? Is your clan lacking basic science knowledge that you can’t imagine the efficacy of cold?”

Bobbi didn’t bother with turning into a dragon. Instead, she drew Moros’s bow, and dark arrows hit the rising figure's center mass. The arrows promptly exploded, destroying the lava people. Yet for all the ease of killing, for each one they killed, three more would rise. It wasn’t long before Arkaziel swept his breath attack in a wide arc to clear a burgeoning horde.

From the depths of the previously hidden demi-plane, an immensely powerful source of magic appeared that each party member couldn’t help but notice. Accompanied by a tide of lesser minions much stronger than the lava people came a being of obsidian, lava, and petrified flesh. Telos had no doubt it was the self-damned once-king Skadur, whose eons of misery had concentrated into a palpable aura of anguish, and when she turned her mind to Da’at momentarily to touch all the Sefirot, she knew she was right.

Stolen story; please report.

Talking to her party happened in a far more complicated way than usual. Telos found the strain of Ananke pressed so hard upon her that it took her what felt like minutes to communicate with the party.

~That’s Skadur, the Once-King. He can imbue his anguish into attacks; don’t underestimate him.~

-Rock people are the worst to eat.- Arkaziel’s response made Telos realize what had happened; her sense of time had dilated as if she were employing the highest peaks of her superhuman speed, and the world slowed to a relatively snail's pace.

Then Telos stood in an eternal Void, where only an immense serpent and herself existed.

“It’s been a long time since anyone has sought to visit me. Why have you, of all people, come? Do you strive to murder me once more?” The serpent, which possessed startlingly perceptive eyes, asked.

“Who do you think I am?” Telos let her aura flare with all her authority and her Transformative Flame of Eternal Becoming rather than the barest emanations she usually let out.

“You aren’t a mortal, but you aren’t a god, despite the ridiculous amount of authorities. Yet you possess the Divine Light outside of Pleroma, how flashy.” Ananke frowned. “You’re just a Monarch? Not even a Sovereign yet…”

“You’re supposed to be dead. The tale I was told is that you gave up physical form after the decision to build the Towers and the death of Phanes. I’m guessing that’s not what happened?” Telos barely finished while Ananke laughed at her.

“Of course, it isn’t. Someone killed me, replaced me, and fabricated the idea that I would do such an idiotic thing as discorporate. Chronos fell for it, then?” Ananke sighed, the weary sigh of a woman who hoped for the best out of their spouse but was disappointed once again.

“You know the answer, it seems. I could summon him here?” Telos offered.

“I’m already here,” a black-clad figure emerged from nothing, yet Telos instinctively knew he’d used the essence or Flame, which he had imbued into the Astrum Nexus to travel here. How long had he hidden an avatar within the weapon? Since it was first forged? “I’ve never had the chance to breach the barrier here without tipping off its creator. I’m so, so sorry, Rose.”

“What meaning does time have to either of us, David?” The serpent cackled. Telos couldn’t help but remark upon the oddity of watching two people stare lovingly at one another when one was the form of living darkness and the other a giant serpent.

“Anyone care to fill me in here? It’s rude to leave your guest in the dark,” Telos reminded the star-crossed lovers of her presence.

“You’ll figure it out soon enough. Until then, you shouldn’t fully understand the mess you’ve entered. You aren’t prepared to defend yourself yet. I have left a husk of a shell, barely more than an animation of my pitiful remains, in control of my domain, watching over an empire of dust. It will fail when you trigger the failsafe I imbued in your gloves. Activate it to assume my power fully. I will leave this existence with Ananke. We should have never crossed the Origin, never helped Phanes, and certainly not joined those obnoxious children in Dreamland, or followed them to this place.”

“In my defense, I was killed before the exodus from Dreamland,” Ananke pointed out.

“You are consuming my power, my existence, but also unweaving me in a way to give me another try in the Great Cycle. None of those things should be possible, but thank you, Monarch.”

“Her name is Aet—”

“My name is Telos Metanoia, now. As the literal personification of ti—oh. You were making fun of me.” Telos grumbled under her breath, when she realized Chronos misidentified her to get a rise out of her.

“Yes, it’s a thing I do sometimes. Enjoy your adventures with two StarManes. I bred them to right the wrongs of a Universe, but I have begun to suspect I may have over-done it, slightly.” Chronos shrugged in a dismissive way, as if that was all in the past now.

“So that’s it, you’re not going to tell me who my enemy is; you’re just going to bequeath me your power on a time delay and ride off into the sunset with your girlfriend?”

“Exactly right,” Chronos laughed openly.

“Be nice to the lady. She’s genuine in her concern. Such that I won’t hit her with the curse I’ve been weaving since my death, you may take that too, with my powers. It should be enough to stun even your enemy.” With Ananke’s words, a curse-form drifted down for Telos to assume command of the spell. The seemingly infinite layers of an impossibly powerful curse linked together made Telos blanche. Such a curse could vaporize three or four galaxies.

“You’d expect a bearer of Ohr Ein Sof to be more than an ordinary human,” Ananke laughed.

“There’s no such thing as an ordinary human,” Chronos said, shaking his head. “The Cycle calls, let’s leave this existence and its painful lessons behind.”

“Good luck,” Telos whispered to the two as she consumed them, cast them into the Great Cycle of rebirth once more, with a blessing of fortune upon them this time.

The realm of darkness vanished, and her awareness of the world around her came back to focus. The StarMane duo still fought Skadur and his minions. Bobbi had become a two-hundred-meter-long dragon, and Arkaziel seemed as large as the ship Nidhogg’s Bane from so long ago, significantly larger than even Bobbi. Despite the immense strength of Arkaziel, who bound Skadur, he and Bobbi couldn’t finish off Skadur.

Kallos, meanwhile, fought against a five-meter-tall greater Archon, whose corrupted powers of reality defilement threatened to breach the powerful counter-spell she had raised to block it.

“You can’t win,” Telos declared a new inevitability to the universe, and the Archon’s attempt to breach Kallos’ blocking spells completely failed and rebounded, destroying one of the enhanced carbon arms of the archon.

“Welcome back, darling; I wondered when you’d wake up again,” Kallos blew Telos a kiss before she lifted a hand and unleashed a powerful judgment on the archon. Even with Telos’ proclamation, the archon resisted destruction and sealing. “Believe it or not, I might need your help with a greater Archon.”

“Ask and you shall receive,” Telos laughed and cracked her knuckles.