“Ahahahaha, prepare to die!” The voice vaguely sounded like one of the administrators who had fled, and Telos could see the truth of the matter with Void's Gaze. The one hundred-meter-tall tyrannosaurus-looking monster with jagged Tesla spikes on its back, eyes of lightning, and very inauthentic, inappropriately sized large arms with lightning talons at the end reminded Telos of kaiju movies. Inhabiting the vast beast was one of the administrators, and he wasn’t alone. Large figures emerged from the clouds and mists at the edge of the ruined battleground. The other administrator’s seemed content to bide their time in shadows, perhaps to make a battle plan against the intruders.

“You want first dibs, Ark?” Bobbi asked as she cracked her neck.

“I’m eating that dinosaur thing. Whoever beats the most gets to cook our next meal?” Arkaziel proposed the terms for a wager, but while he spoke, he grew. The large dinosaur-looking lightning monster seemed impressive at first look, but then Arkaziel grew past it, and stopped only when he’d exceeded two hundred meters in height, and far more in length. If the thunder lizard had meant to be intimidating, it now looked like a kid’s toy compared to the monstrous Arkaziel, with his Void-touched black scales already generating pulses of black lightning around his enormous dragon-cat form.

“You’ve brought a toy to a sovereign fight. It’d better taste good, or I will be angry and take it out on you and your coworkers.” While Arkaziel took the time to warn the administrator, it unleashed a cascade of lightning breath at him. The immense blast of lightning met the tip of a claw from his right paw, which crackled with the black lightning of disaster, the manifestation of Arkaziel’s authority over destruction. As if the StarMane’s paw were a lightning rod, the blast went to his claw, and the black lightning vanished in an unnatural burst of darkness. Typically, this would be where the cat would burp, but instead, he just looked disappointed.

“That’s it? Are you an administrator? Are you sure? You must be a new hire. No? Why can’t you do better than that? Where’s the vaunted power of Oizys? Where’s the pain? The anguish? Are you going to cause me suffering by being such a worthless opponent I’ll feel guilty about eating you?” Arkaziel’s annoyance turned into a cruel, far more vicious than usual gleam in his yellow feline eyes, and the cat dragon slapped the lightning dinosaur with the back of his paw. The casual, contemptible blow sent the creature into the ruins of a skyscraper, and then Arkaziel pounced. At the zenith of his pounce, black lightning danced around his whole body, and a trail of black energy encapsulated him, giving the cat the appearance of a shooting star.

-This Syltharion hides behind too many layers of obfuscating webs for a Greater Archon. It won’t stop me from finding him, no matter how hard he tries. Yet if he bears the strength of a Greater Archon, why does he hide so? How goes your search for Oizys and the Celestial Wardens?- Kallos didn’t stand idle while Arkaziel lunged into the fray. The Soul Witch used her Soul Sight to pierce the veil of the Tower in search of the Greater Archon, who dared to claim they were in his trap. Syltharion had made it personal when he presumed to claim dominion over their fates, and Kallos enjoyed evening scores.

~Awesome work, babe. I’m still unraveling all the bullshit Oizys is throwing up to hide her central existence. She’s moving the Tower core, but I’m getting closer. I think. I should have it sorted by the time the kitties are done playing. She keeps diverting my attention with the Celestial Wardens. Siegfried seems to be doing some real work on the Archons and the constructs being thrown at them. They didn’t even separate the Wardens from Siegfried for some reason. I’ve only had to cut off a few of her traps intended for them, otherwise Siegfried seems capable of protecting them. He’s getting stronger the more he fights, in fact.~ For all that, Telos and Kallos appeared to stand still; both worked with their extrasensory powers and long-ranged magic.

-Well, Siegfried is a Sovereign, darling. His particular strength comes from his subordinates' belief in him. The more his men believe he can do a thing, the more powerfully he does it. Not separating his men from him is a grievous error by Oizys and Syltharion. Unless they fear you so much that all other threats are being treated as distractions?- Kallos’ belief in everyone else being misjudged as a threat due to Telos’ unrivaled danger seemed like it might be a sliver stuck in her thumb, but through their bond, Telos could tell that was not the case. More than anyone, Kallos knew what Telos could do and felt that their enemies still immensely misjudged Telos and her companions.

“Gotcha!” Bobbi cackled even as she grew to the size of the lightning dinosaur, and an immense, pink-furred, super strong hand grasped the lunging form of a black snake. An unpleasant liquid dribbled from its fangs when the pink hand squeezed the snake tightly. The snake's fangs and long tongue were revealed as it tried to either wrap its body around the humanoid StarMane or reach her wrist with its fangs. An acrid, noxious smoke rose from where the dribbles of the snake's toxic excretion hit the ground.

“You’re fighting me, not those ladies. Not that it can be called much of a fight.” To punctuate her insult, Slay lifted the snake’s head into the air, and the claws of her left hand cut its head off, along with several additional bits. Her claws cauterized the snake's flesh and filled the air with the smell of cooked meat, and repeated slashes produced fine mandolins of claw seared snake. Uffda. I hope she doesn’t cook that way. I suppose the heat does sanitize her claws, though.

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Arkaziel’s violent impact against the dinosaur might as well have been a meteor from the lower atmosphere. The beaten-up thunder lizard and the barely scratched Void StarMane stared at one another from within the wreckage of a newly formed crater. The thunder lizard witnessed the snake's dicing in horror despite its own dire situation.

“Vespera! Nooo! Why? We’re in the Tower; we should be all-powerful!” A very humanesque voice emerged from the thunder lizard, despair and suffering wrought large in everyone’s eardrums. Behind it all, Telos could hear Oizys' delighted laughter. The wretched Daemon not only feasted upon the suffering of her administrators but took dreadful pleasure in the pain they endured on her behalf. If she begs me for mercy later, I’ll have to remind her about this. What a bitch.

“Get it now, godling? Oizys knows you couldn’t beat us, so she throttled your power, and now she’s feeding on you to increase her chances of survival. Not that she stands a chance. We already took down Moros, and he was way more of a badass than she is.” Arkaziel’s tone started mocking but lost its steam towards the end, as if even the StarMane felt terrible for the administrator. It didn’t stop him from unleashing a large breath of Void and absence at the thunder lizard, or follow it up by ripping the dinosaur to pieces and eating the remains through Devouring Darkness.

“Work for better people next life, idiot.” Arkaziel went out of his way to release an elaborate yawn, even while his shadows feasted. The administrators who had hung back to gauge the strength of their opponents all knew terror and fear at that moment. One after another, the demi-gods and hangers-on who’d reached the apex of service to Oizys, Administrator, underwent the soul-crushing epiphany the godling who had merged with the thunder lizard reached. While many administrators reached the position by way virtue of nepotism, some mortals worked their way up through the clergy into the Tower itself. Even they now faced the harsh truth, and it dawned upon them that Oizys would not provide them with the support to truly fight these trespassers. None of the archons, their self-serving master, or the demigods could even stand up against the team of Beast Sovereigns, let alone the other forces that invaded the tower.

Their lives had been lies. In the Cosmic Song, it sounded like panes of glass being broken, and it drew Telos’ attention from hunting Oizys, so loud was the shattering of faith, the realization of abandonment, of a life wasted. In desolation, they succumbed to the power of Syltharion and the prodding of Oizys, who pushed them away from the encroachment of nihilism and towards rage.

So it went: The Administrators threw themselves at the StarMane duo using the ever-shrinking power bestowed from the Tower, while Kallos and Telos worked through the webs of deception, lies, and traps to pierce the internals of the Tower of Oizys. All the while, Telos wondered, did she have a responsibility to save people from themselves? Should she expend effort to save these people from themselves? Did they not deserve an end at the hands of the StarMane’s for aligning with Oizys in the first place? Why, then, did she feel a pang of guilt, an ache of pain in her abdomen, for ignoring their suffering? Why did she feel empathy for her enemies?

-Darling, could you help remove these last few traps the Archon laid? I believe I’ve severed all I can, but a few are woven on strands of fate and it seems a terrible waste to burn a miracle on it.-

Telos turned her attention from tracking the core of Oizys to following Kallos’ work. It was an escape from the moral quandary that made her non-existent insides hurt. Wasn’t judging people the duty of the Great Cycle? Why should she have to be involved at all? Yet in connecting even just a few of the Gates and allowing the flow of Ein Sof to reach her properly, unpleasant sensations and responsibilities had accompanied the Divine Light as unwelcome guests.

This is why I am.

True to the Soul Witch’s statement, delicate webs of fate and destiny were all that remained of the Greater Archon’s traps. Telos rewove the strands to hinder Syltharion rather than themselves, altered the specifics of what would happen when they transferred to where the Archon lay in wait, and prepared a celestial guillotine to cut the strands of power that pumped Ethereal power from the second of Ialdaboath’s heavens to the ambush site. She supposed she could use it, but her connection to the Origin vastly exceeded the meager conduit the Archons had built.

~Are they afraid Oizys would feed off their conduit, or is this truly all they can muster?~

-Its not being drawn upon at the moment, and so it does not flow. The current could be vast, with the pipeline a deception to deter thievery from Oizys. It also bears consideration that Syltharion is a test for us, to gauge how much force Ialdaboath needs to bring to bear upon us.-

Explosions, cries for mercy, and other immaterial sights and sounds filled the world around the two women as they conversed, unphased by the ultra-violence the increasingly agitated Arkaziel and Bobbi unleashed on the last ditch summons by the few surviving administrators.

~Should we hold back against him? Or just go straight out? The other Archons were manageable.~

-They are fodder on the path to their master, but extracting as much from them as possible would be wise.-

“Extract?” Telos mumbled the word.

“You and I have not finished our ascension. Their power can be bent to pushing us through the gates of the last tier, where we may awaken in truth.”

Telos laughed at the prospect of growing more powerful.