Alyss’s pulse was racing.
Goose-pimples stood on end all up and down her body, peppering her arms and legs like the buds of little fleshy flowers. Her gut had twisted itself into tight, nauseating knots and her psyche was in an uproar. She was overcome by a chaotic melange of seething self-hatred and crippling fear.
Alyss had run out of time.
She’d spent the better part of two days here, by now.
Two days.
Here.
Alone.
Just her.
And Vox.
Stuck in this gods-forsaken too-small too-white fucking room.
She hated this fucking room. She hated this fucking Dungeon. But, most of all, she hated her own miserable life.
Why?
Why couldn’t anything ever go well for her? Why couldn’t she ever just be lucky? Was but a morsel of happiness truly such a monumental thing to ask? She bit down hard on her own lip, and tasted the irony-salt flavor of blood, but the fear, and the anger refused to leave her be.
Vox was getting impatient.
She spared a moment to glance anxiously over towards the man himself, currently reclined outside the lavish pavilion granted to her by Father, a good ten feet away. Precisely ten feet, in fact. He’d ordered her to keep watch at just such a distance.
Vox was perusing a number of thick ledgers, as the well-dressed Devoted was wont to do. Pen in hand, he pored over and annotated the many sheets of fine parchment with a furrowed brow and a serious expression.
That was how their days went, in the white room. Every minute, every hour. He would work, and she’d keep watch.
Except, his demeanor had taken a turn for the worse of late.
It was a subtle and erratic thing, her Master’s temper, particularly for Alyss, who was anything but adept in the many nuances of social interaction. Still, having spent over half a week sequestered in grisly isolation with the man allowed even her to pick up some hints as to his disposition.
The tiny twitches in his fingers, the eclectic jerking of his muscles, and the way his every discourse with her had become sharper, crosser, more irascible. The manner in which his shade seemed on-edge, the grotesque, gangly, siren-headed monster pacing ever-more anxiously, ever-more urgently in circles around him.
Vox was growing desperate, and she needn’t guess why.
Despite the days elapsed since they’d arrived, naught had changed in the bright-green pedestal that rose from the white room’s center. The symbols chiseled into it, and their corresponding colors, were just the same as they’d ever been.
The scythe and loudspeaker, solid green. The crossed arrows and half-moon, solid red. The swirling maelstrom and burning sun, green and blinking.
Alyss knew not what precisely they meant–save of course for the fact that they, in some way, represented her colleagues’ progress through the second floor–but she knew they hadn’t changed. Not even a bit. Not since she and Vox arrived.
And she knew, or at least she could confidently assume, at this point, that her captor-companion had expected them to change. He’d expected them to change some time ago. But they hadn’t. And so, for the both of them, an awful reality was swiftly becoming all too clear.
That she, and Vox, were trapped inside this white fucking room.
That there was no way out. Not even for him. All that prophetic wisdom, all that secret knowledge, wouldn’t mean a damned thing so long as her companions failed to materialize. With every day that passed by, their prospects of escape grew slimmer and slimmer.
No doubt, nor hope, remained in Alyss’s mind. She knew now that she could expect no savior. This was no fairy tale. No one of her companions, nor even the Priest himself, was coming to rescue her at the eleventh hour. Vox was going to snap soon, very soon, and who knows what he’d do to her when that happened.
As always, in the end Alyss could count on no one but herself.
Which led her neatly to the present situation; her all-consuming malaise, and her burning stare directly at her ever-near Nightmare.
The many sickening greyish shadows within its revolting form churned unpleasantly as the spectre returned her gaze. The creature, to its credit perhaps, hadn’t once left her side, no matter the circumstances. It watched her ceaselessly and tirelessly from afar, loyal apparently to the bitter end.
She’d tried over and over to commune with it mentally, but to no avail. And she dared not order it directly; exercising her Blessing as means of escape had to remain a last resort, for doing so would absolutely draw Vox’s notice and thereby eliminate her greatest, possibly only, trump card.
But, now, she had no more time. No other options. She wouldn’t wait for Vox’s psyche to disintegrate, nor was she eager to take her chances at the hands of his fanatic cult.
If ever there was a time for last resorts, it was surely now.
Alyss licked her lips nervously, doing her best to wipe away the blood. She’d no idea if her current plan would work. Shadow Form allowed her to merge beings with one of her servants, assuming many of their properties, but she’d never tried it with a Nightmare before, and never under the Mastery of another. Would it be sufficient to break the orders that controlled her? She simply couldn’t know.
She drew breath shakily, in and out. She felt sick to her stomach, but tried hard to steel her nerves. It was now or never. She’d spent days planning the words she was about to speak, and could only hope that they’d be enough to distract the madman’s attention for but a moment.
The compulsion fought against her as she opened her mouth, but this wasn’t directly against its rules.
After all, she was only asking a simple question.
I’m not trying to escape.
I’m not trying to escape.
I’m not trying to escape.
I’m not trying to escape. I’m not trying to escape. I’m not trying to escape. I’m not trying to escape. I’m not trying to escape. I’m not trying to esca–
“Lord Vox,” Alyss called, turning towards her Master.
Tersely, Vox extricated his attention from the mountain of papers in which he’d been immersed, glaring at her from ten feet away. The way they were currently positioned, his back was to the pedestal at the room’s center, whilst she faced both it and him.
Alyss smiled sweetly at the man, her heart pounding in her chest. Despite her upbringing, she’d always been atrocious at masking her own emotions.
From the corner of her eye, she thought she barely noticed a flash of green, but was too focused to pay it any heed.
“I was wondering…” she began. “Do you–URKK!”
Alyss gasped and froze, her whole body tensing up in shock as a young man dressed in tight, black clothing suddenly appeared right beside the Master who’d enslaved her, his silvery blade fixed in the air, vibrating just a hand’s breadth above Vox’s head.
Her eyes widened as she recognized him.
Hero.
For a moment, she stared in silence.
Then the world exploded into motion.
KRAKK–THOOM.
An awesome flash of brilliant, terrifying lightning scorched her retinas.
Alyss was immediately thrown back, violently unseated by countless shockwaves of displaced air that threatened to rupture her eardrums.
She scrabbled to her hands and feet desperately the moment she struck ground, choking and heaving from having the breath knocked out of her. Her neck whipped up so quickly it almost snapped in two, as she fought to witness the scene taking place before her eyes.
Hero had returned, but he was not the man she’d once known. Where before it had been nebulous, amorphous, now the young Aristocrat’s shade was clear as day.
But…that…that’s impossible!
Her eyes widened.
For Hero didn’t have a shade, any more. Or rather, he didn’t have just one.
He had three.
On Hero’s right, a savage silver wolf stalked angrily, wearing a coat of glimmering, glittering steel. On his left, a pitch-black volcano belched vengefully, scattering scorching-hot lava all about the air. And just above his back, thick-muscled arms crossed superciliously, hovered an antlered humanoid made of pure red lightning.
Alyss was suddenly finding it quite difficult to breathe.
Vox was on his knees, shaking arms outstretched above him, holding up something she couldn’t see. His face was eggshell-white, his teeth were bared and grit, and his brows had drawn together in dire concentration.
By contrast, his adversary couldn’t have been more at ease.
“Well, isn’t that something?” Hero muttered, lowering his blade a measure, his bright white hair tousled by sparking strands of rippling red lightning. “A sonic barrier…”
He rapped thoughtfully upon the empty air separating him from the well-dressed Master. “You definitely didn’t see me coming,” he commented idly. “Impressive, then. Keeping something like this up and running, constantly?”
He whistled.
“Must take quite the toll.”
Vox just ventilated shallowly, shaking with exertion whilst staring up at his attacker, his shade frozen in place at his side.
Incredibly, the Master actually seemed unsure of what to do. Hero looked to the side, noticed her, nodded, and grinned.
All at once, an exhilarating swell of…something swept across Alyss’s chest, routing the remnants of misery and despair so swiftly and powerfully it made her head spin. It was joy. Happiness. Euphoria. But something even more than that, too.
Ah, she thought, as she recognized it.
This is how it feels to be saved.
For a brief but wondrous moment, the world felt just and right. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to jump for joy, but she dared not disrupt Hero’s concentration, dared not distract him from his task, nor remind Vox unduly of her presence.
“What a shame. Should’ve known there’d be something,” her savior tsked mockingly, still wearing that easy smile. “Wouldn’t have killed you, then, even back on the first floor.”
He bent down, towering over the trembling Master.
“Well, let’s just see how much current this thing can take, shall we?” he snarled, palms overflowing with blistering, brilliant, blood-red lightning–
“SLEEP!” Vox screamed, his voice thick with hate, and his shade shrieked a wave of ethereal force directly at her would-be savior.
“NO!” Alyss cried out, as the invisible, intangible, memetic pulse washed over Hero, who succumbed to the concentrated Mastery instantly, eyelids fluttering as he stumbled, teetered, staggered back, and–
And snapped right back up.
Alyss’s mouth grew even wider.
He…resisted it?
Indeed, Hero’s spine was straight as a rod of solid iron, his eyes bereft any trace of stupor. His expression, however, had changed. Brutal vengeance had evaporated in favor of something, impossibly, even more shocking.
Delight.
“Impossi–,” Vox breathed.
“I KNEW IT!” Hero bellowed with gleaming eyes, his abrupt shout making Vox flinch reflexively back. Hero stabbed a finger towards the still-kneeling Master, apparently no longer concerned with the destruction of the barrier that still separated them.
“You can hear it, can’t you?” he grinned, excitedly. “You can!”
Vox stared at him in disbelief, confusion writ plainly across his features, overwhelming even the rage.
“I knew it!” Hero exclaimed, continuing. “Ever since we first met, I just–I knew it! I could see it in you!”
“Oh,” he murmured, gaze locked on the Master with a sort of fascination that didn’t seem very heroic to her. More…hungry.
“The things you’ll be able to tell me,”
He leaned in as close to Vox as the barrier separating them would allow, and whispered.
“About the Shardso–”
Hero froze mid-speech.
He jerked, twitched robotically, muscles fibers firing frantically in bizarre directions. Then, his head whipped back, his mouth opened in a silent wail, and he was suddenly absolutely still.
For a few moments, the white room was uncomfortably quiet, save for the panicked panting of Alyss and her captor.
After precious seconds passed with no change in Hero’s appearance, Vox tentatively lowered his trembling arms, and clambered shakily to his feet. Rivers of sweat coursed down his brow.
“Eden’s bones,” the Master wheezed. His voice was small and soft, featuring a considerable quiver to it that seemed wholly out of place on him. “What the fuck was that?”
His question wasn’t directed at her, precisely, so Alyss didn’t answer it. She just stared hollowly at her would-be savior, numb and hunched over, rescue torn mercilessly away from her for the thousandth time.
“Look alive, girl,” Vox growled at her. “Attend me.” Like the clockwork puppet she was, Alyss’s posture straightened, and she turned to face him.
Vox glanced nervously at Hero’s paralyzed frame. “I…I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think he’s under my control, he…”
Vox’s expression abruptly fouled with rage.
“He…how did he do that?” the Master seethed. “My Blessing landed, I know it did, I know it did, I had my hooks in him and he…and he…” Vox snarled, whipping an arm to the side and letting loose a thunderclap of condensed sound that left a dent in the nearby wall.
“He ripped them out,” He hissed. With a visible expenditure of effort, Vox reigned his temper back under control.
“No matter,” he muttered, shooting another errant glance in the frozen Blessed’s direction. “He’ll not trouble us again. I’ve dealt with Brutes before.” He waved an arm in her direction. “Summon your servants, miss Nycta.”
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Vox gestured rapidly towards multiple different points on Hero’s body.
“I want continuous laceration of the primary tendons in the shoulders and the heels, a three-inch spike inserted in-between the first and second cervical vertebrae, a–”
But before he could finish his command, Vox’s words were interrupted by a truly, soul-rendingly horrific shriek of pain, a shrill, screeching, agonized wail that clawed its way forth savagely from the depths of her savior’s throat.
Hero’s spine snapped concave, doubling him over, and both Vox and Alyss took a sudden step back.
The shriek died down.
But then Hero started to shake.
His limbs squirmed and shuddered, his joints clicked nauseatingly, his body convulsed erratically. His hands clawed desperately at his chest and neck.
Alyss watched with rapid, fearful breaths as the man who represented her best, and perhaps last, chance at survival transformed.
The young Blessed’s eyes wept tears of aqueous humor as they dissolved wholesale, the skin falling in great, bloody chunks from his lips and cheeks, leaving his face frozen in a rictus, sanguine grin. Her friend flexed rippling biceps which bunched smoothly yet artificially, as if directed by a creature not quite accustomed to human locomotion.
And as Hero’s body warped and mutated, deformed and corrupted, his shades were changing, too.
They were somehow…joining with him, merging into him, becoming one with the young Blessed in a manner Alyss had never borne witness to before.
The silver wolf howled feverishly and shot towards Hero’s arms, its body twisting in midair to form a pair of sleek, bone-white gauntlets that covered his hands and wrists. The antlered figure behind his back grasped both of Hero’s shoulders tightly in each palm and pulled itself into a long, rippling blood-red cape woven of living lightning. The volcano erupted one last time before flowing up and around his head, forming a gaudy, five-pointed crown wrought of magma and obsidian.
It felt wrong…
And yet right.
It felt perverse, and yet like the completion of some unholy whole. It was a unity of Blessed and Blessing she’d never have imagined possible, and yet, simultaneously felt wicked. Inhumane. As if the shades, previously creatures in their own right, had been turned into mere tools. Into trophies.
Into slaves.
Vox sputtered, taking another astonished step backwards, and she realized that, now, he could see them too.
A deep and terrifying roar rumbled forth from Hero’s chest.
The young man reached up and tore off his tunic, physical strength alone shredding the no doubt enchanted fabric like soft tissue paper to reveal a skin marred by countless, weeping runes carved deep into flesh and bone.
Hero flexed his arms, shrugged his shoulders, and rose high into the air, borne aloft by exotic means. From all up and down his spine, countless golden insectoid tentacles emerged to form an endlessly, furiously writhing tail that spun out and curled around the entire breadth of the room like some occult leviathan.
Some cosmic worm.
Within his now empty orbits, twin pools of whirling blood and crackling lightning fixed upon her Master.
“Little Host.”
Alyss retched.
Hero spoke, but his voice was no longer the one she knew. It had become something vile. Something horrifying. A moaning, groaning, keening choir of one thousand souls speaking discordantly, a brutal miasma of screeching, scuttling, deafening noise.
Alyss fell to her hands and knees, emptying her stomach uncontrollably onto the metal ground as fluid leaked freely from her ears, painting little crimson petals upon the all-white floor. Vox apparently suffered a similarly adverse reaction, though to a lesser extent, recoiling with a moan whilst clutching his own.
But Hero didn’t care. He eyed the Master with that gruesome, lipless grin, the corners of his mutilated mouth curling upwards in savage glee.
“A direct spiritual attack,” he sighed, happily. “You actually managed to land one. Why, I could kiss you, vermin.”
Vox, still moaning, clutched his head wretchedly whilst he struggled to remain upright. Drunkenly, he called upon his power once more.
“STOP!” he ordered.
Once more, the Master’s shade shrieked out. Once more, the wave of eldritch pressure washed over Hero.
But this time, he didn’t flinch.
He just sneered.
He looked behind Vox, staring somehow directly at the shade that there was no way he could have seen, and narrowed his eyes.
Vox’s shade, despite possessing no facial features whatsoever, seemed to blanch.
“Miserable runt.” Hero snarled. “Insubordinate wretch. You dare lay hands upon me?”
He raised a single arm lazily in Vox’s direction, pointed imperiously, and spoke.
BE SILENT.
One of the million golden arms that writhed behind his back whipped out faster than Alyss’s eyes could follow.
It passed by Vox and struck the Master’s shade square in its ethereal chest, punching a hole right through it. For a split second, the alien creature looked stunned, as if it couldn’t have imagined that something would ever possibly be capable of doing it harm.
Then it shuddered, flickered, and disappeared.
A great shiver ran up and down Alyss’s spine as the compulsions placed upon her vanished.
She choked in disbelief.
“W–what…what are…,” Vox choked as well, spluttering and stammering, finger shaking as it pointed Hero’s way.
“No…that’s not…you can’t…you are…,” he squeaked, his eyes widening with an emotion Alyss saw in him for the very first time. Not nerves. Not anxiety. Not mere fear.
But pure, abject terror.
“Your repulsive form,” Hero rumbled, “is fouled by the stench of foreign influence, little Host. An unripe Word I sense in you, but not your own.” He grimaced as he sniffed at the air. “I smell chaos. I smell anarchy.”
His blood-filled orbs narrowed.
“I smell Oblivion.”
They narrowed further.
“Whom of my kindred do you serve?”
Vox’s mouth worked emptily, hollowly, open and closed.
“SPEAK,” Hero commanded.
“A–a thousand apologies, Great One,” Vox whispered, shivering with what seemed equal parts awesome rapture and formidable fear. He fell to his knees in a desperate genuflection, clasping his shaking hands together as he prayed to the creature floating silently above.
“Had I known…” Vox panted, hyperventilating as he struggled to formulate complete sentences, eyes darting madly every which way, the Devoted’s already-fragile mind on the brink of collapse. “I would have never…never!”
Hero frowned.
He stretched out an open palm towards the shivering, gibbering Master, and beckoned.
Vox’s body started to rise into the air.
“Stop!” Vox called out, his limbs writhing about, trying and failing to clutch onto anything that might anchor him to the ground.
Hero just licked his bloody, ruined lips, scarlet tongue running across rows of too-white, too-sharp teeth, something nightmarish taking shape behind his empty eyes.
Vox’s body drifted closer.
“STOP!” the Master cried again. “STOP, STO-ARRGCK!”
Hero’s outstretched claw clenched slightly, and the flesh around Vox’s open neck constricted, choking the Master alive even as he drew closer and closer.
“PLEGEASE!” Vox gargled, fighting desperately for breath.
As his face purpled and the veins on his neck bulged horribly, Vox shut his eyes, closed his mouth, drew himself together, and forced out one final, plaintive, wail.
“WE WANT THE SAME THING!”
Hero blinked, and the bloodlust brimming beneath his eyes drained away. He raised an eyebrow at the asphyxiating Master, and reluctantly released his grip.
“Do we, now?” he asked.
Even as Vox drew greedy, weeping breaths, his eyes were still racing about, darting from place to place, his expression morphing with each passing second.
“Yes! Yes, yes, I…Lady Crow will–,” he gasped, “the Red Queen will–you…you must meet with my Master!”
“Oh?”
Hero’s expression soured.
His voice was suddenly quiet. All traces of emotion drained from his face. He leaned in slightly, and whispered towards the Master held tight in his grasp.
“Must I?”
Alyss shuddered, tensed, and emotionally shut down.
Her reaction was subconscious, automatic, a defense mechanism learned from near-decades of experience. She recognized this voice, this tone. The dripping contempt hidden behind mild words, the promise of hideous violence beneath a calm, composed, exterior. She knew it all too well.
But Vox didn’t.
Vox was still shaking, but no longer trembling from fear or some lack of sufficient oxygen. He was consumed by excitement, overtaken by deranged glee. He noticed none of his captor’s shifting mood. For someone so thoroughly attuned to the thoughts and feelings of others, Alyss thought, perhaps the man truly had gone mad.
“Yes, oh–oh YES!” he cackled, insanity cracking the edges of his well-constructed facade. “Oh, you’ve no idea, I…the plan!”
Vox looked up at Hero euphorically, whispering his last, exultant phrase.
“The Warrior’s freedom draws near!”
Alyss held her breath, her whole body still tensed rigid, as Hero’s sneer met Vox’s grin, all panting throats, and heaving chests. But a moment of calm allowed a measure of reason to return to the poor, doomed Master, who finally noticed his enemy’s disdain.
Realization rippled across Vox’s features.
Hero’s changed in turn, his horribly flayed face contorting again into that sickly, savage, too-wide smile, a rictus grin of pain and suffering, a gruesome death’s-head that had no place on what once seemed a noble frame.
“The Warrior,” he whispered, “is no God of mine.”
Vox froze.
A weak, croaking voice emerged from his brutalized throat.
“…what?”
“Primitives are all alike, in the end,” Hero sang happily, flicking his wrist to close the remaining distance, drawing the Master’s paralyzed frame right up to his own. “Cowardly. Ignorant. Unfit for life. My Host has yet to learn this, but I will teach him well.”
The burning, seething inhumanity returned to his bubbling, bloody eyes as Hero pressed his weeping face into Vox’s.
“Oh, my little, stinking swine,” he whispered, stroking Vox’s sculpted, onyx cheek gently.
“My sweet vermin. Your offensive, no matter how pathetic or ineffectual,” Hero crooned at him, “allowed me to catch him unawares. And I do appreciate that. I do appreciate your deliverance.”
Then he drew back slightly, and frowned.
“Unfortunately, despite how I detest the fool,” he spat, venomously.
“He does exhibit a measure of barbaric prowess in spiritual combat,” Hero grudgingly admitted. “I sincerely doubt that such an opportunity as this will avail itself to me a second time.”
Then his attention returned to Vox, and so too did his horrific smile.
“So I’ll just have to make this one count,” he grinned.
The wretched Master whimpered, shivering in Hero’s telekinetic grasp.
“You have my condolences, little Host,” his tormentor chuckled, “But then, I’m sure you understand. After all,”
His grin spread so wide that Alyss could see the corners of his exposed jawbone crack. Her stomach shuddered.
“You are no stranger to such simple pleasures, yes?” Hero asked, eyes dancing with delight.
Hero raised a hand up high, and blood sprouted gruesomely from his fingertips, forming into a set of razor-sharp claws. Hero turned towards them, quirked his head, and nodded distantly. Then he turned back to Vox.
And, wearing a pleasant smile, shoved his hand into the Master’s gut.
SKLISH.
Almost immediately, the screams began.
Distantly, Alyss found herself surprised. The lieutenant of the Mandibles spoke highly of his capabilities, after all. For some reason, she’d have thought being a torturer would innoculate oneself somewhat to the effects of such torment.
Evidently not.
SKRISH.
But she was no more immune to the horror than him.
Alyss found herself sick again and again, on the metal floor, until nothing more came out. And after each dreadful retching, she forced herself back up.
She forced herself to watch.
SPLATCH.
Alyss watched Hero giggle as he snapped bones, one by one.
She watched him snicker as he squeezed organs until they burst.
She watched him sigh dreamily as he peeled his victim’s skin off, piece by bloody piece.
SCRLATCH.
Her body was numb. Her mouth was dry. She’d seen torture before, but nothing like this. Vox pleaded and pleaded as he screamed, but it was no use. For this creature, whatever it was, did not desire information.
Its goals were unknown, its humanity nonexistent. It wanted nothing from him, nothing at all, save perhaps for his horrific suffering.
“Warrior” Vox gurgled wetly, his wails heavily distorted through lungs that were doubtless drowned in blood by now. “Pro…protect me, I beg–I beg you! Help me!”
“Help me, PleASE!”
The creature that could not, was not, would never be Hero for Hero would never, NEVER do something so horrible, so terrible as this paused its relentless torture to grip its victim’s head tight, forcing him to meet its empty eyes.
“Your God,” it whispered, “is not here.”
Its razor sharp fingers caressed Vox’s handsome face, drawing deep ruby-red lines across the Master’s perfect onyx features.
“The Warrior,” Vox sobbed, tears streaming from his face, “Is…is with…ALL HIS CHO–CHOSEN!”
“He…He alwAYS-UHRGCK!!”
The monster clenched its fist tight, choking the Master once more.
“Your God is not with you,” it laughed cruelly. The lines it drew in Vox’s handsome face grew deeper, bloodier, more brutal.
“He does not love you.”
They gouged into eyes, and dipped into white bone.
“He cannot save you.”
Vox shrieked in pure, plaintive, maddened agony, his mind torn to shreds, his face a bloody massacre, his struggle against the creature’s iron grip reduced to that of the damned against their inexorable fate.
From her place on hands and knees, prostrate and retching hollowly upon the ground, Alyss actually felt sorry for him.
“Little Host,” it sang, with savage glee. “There is but one respite, but one mercy, but one peace your repugnant kind deserves.”
Its hand snapped round, gripping the back of Vox’s scalp so hard parts of it were pulled off the bone. The Master’s ever-heightening screams, had devolved into a wretched, hollow moan. The creature’s mouth opened wide, wider than should possible, jaw cracking and splintering at the edges.
From within its abyssal depths, a brilliant crimson light began to glow.
DEATH.
A great, awesome, terrible beam of red plasma erupted from the thing that was once Hero’s split-open maw.
It bathed the room in crimson furor, incinerating Vox’s head so quickly that it seemed to disappear outright, the Master’s Marble-stage flesh and bone offering up no resistance at all.
Vox’s lifeless, headless body dropped bonelessly to the ground–
SPLUT.
–whereupon it immediately splattered, hitting with such force, and in such a state of disrepair, that near enough half the all-white room was ruined, stained with thick, dark blood and strewn about with bits of shattered bone and pulped innards.
The…thing’s split head snapped shut, horrendous damage disappearing in an instant.
This dreadful creature, this king of monsters that was once her friend regarded its handiwork curiously, nodding whilst emitting a thoroughly satisfied sigh, as it worked its newly-healed jaw back and forth. Slowly, lazily, robotically, its sanguine orbs perused the empty, all-white room.
And, inevitably, noticed her.
Alyss froze in place.
She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She was rooted to the spot, a mouse in the face of an apex predator. Her heart beat so quickly she thought it might explode.
The monster raised an eyebrow, and nodded at her professionally.
“Well met, sibling,” it said.
Then the light in its eyes winked out, and Hero followed in his victim’s footsteps, lapsing from consciousness in midair and falling to metallic earth with a wet, resounding thump.
“H–hahhh…” Alyss gasped, releasing her held breath all at once.
“Huhhh…huhhghhh” She continued to rasp, eking out respirations as she convulsed limply upon the ground, shaken every now and then by a hysterical giggle that inappropriately escaped from her chest. She felt a strange warmth in her nethers.
Apparently, at some point, she’d wet herself.
Emptily, she stared at the unconscious body of her savior–turned monstrosity–from afar. Try as she might, her mind simply couldn’t process what she’d seen.
“Guhhhhh…,” she shuddered, “Gods above and belo–”
A green light flashed in the corner of her vision.
“VOOOOOOOX!!” A voice bellowed, followed immediately by a burning, scorching, scouring radiant white-yellow that overwhelmed her sight.
“I’M HERE, YOU MONSTER!” Glare howled as he rocketed into her field of view at a ludicrous speed, his whole body exploding with an incandescence that seared her flesh and melted the edges of her cloak, even from far away.
“PREPARE YOURSELF, KNAVE, FOR…For…for…”
Glare’s–golden? That’s new–eyes suddenly fixed upon the headless, brutalized, macerated corpse of her former Master, drenched in its own guts and gore, and his face paled. Alyss’s brow raised as she observed him.
Huh, She thought idly. Core Stage.
Good for him.
“He…he…he…,” the newly-minted Immortal stammered, head flipping from Vox’s mutilated remains to Hero’s scarred and deadened body to Alyss, herself, her clothes burnt and melted, sat within a great and brackish pool of her own blood and sick and urine.
Alyss pointed at the Immolator, and giggled shakily.
“You’re naked,” she said.
And he was.
Glare stared at her.
“He…,” he murmured, faintly. “He-uurrkk!”
Glare, Light of Remembrance, turned and vomited onto the very much no longer in any way white or pristine metal ground.
Alyss collapsed into peals of shaky laughter, desperately clutching at her belly as she rolled about in puddles of bloody vomit.
She felt lightheaded. The room was starting to spin.
The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was that Glare’s vomit wasn’t golden at all, and there was something hilarious about that.