Liora and I hadn’t dared to venture out into the courtyard before the ruins of Fort Duality. There were dozens and dozens of Revenants infesting the area, circling and snarling around the Lich and his captive. Tlazo and Nerexxa may have their attention for now, but neither one of us wanted to test that.

We’d be torn to shreds in an instant.

But they seemed wary of the Lich and the Vampire, even as helpless as Nerexxa seemed right now. They were demonstrating a level of intelligence in keeping their distance that told me they might be evolving mentally, as well as physically.

However, one of the most important reasons I didn’t want to go out there, was that the titanic legs of the Godbound were visible on either side of the door. They were bent at the knee from its position far above, presiding over these events like the very pillars of Heaven itself.

Perhaps Hell would be more appropriate.

I had seen one of them shift ever so slightly at the cacophony occurring below it, while at the same time, I felt the ever-present awareness to the surrounding Aether focus upon the duo.

The Godbound was aware of Nerexxa’s plight. Only…it hadn’t acted in any way to save her.

Tlazo was unfazed by either the circling Revenants or the attention of the Calamity that had befallen the twin cities. Instead, I saw the glowing green coals of his eye sockets examine the Vampire clutched in his bony fist. “What a pitiful existence,” I heard him say, disgust tinging this hollow voice. “This is your true form? I expected…more from the creature that nearly caused the downfall of this Kingdom.”

I don’t know what Tlazo had done to her before bringing the Vampire crashing back to the firmament. But it had clearly been something, as Nerexxa was far more injured than any of us had managed to do to her, including what Scintillant Blade had done. One of her arms had flat out been torn out of its socket, while she had been reduced to only one wing from the three that had been left after I’d removed one. Numerous other injuries dotted her monstrous form, but it was her face that drew my attention.

It looked like her jaw had nearly been ripped right off of her face, but had been stopped at the last moment. Instead, the skin had been torn away instead, leaving the bone exposed to the air. Right now, that jaw was grinning madly up at the Lich holding her captive, inhuman canines displayed prominently. “I would hardly say nearly,” Nerexxa said hoarsely.

Tlazo’s fiery eyes glanced around for a moment, his gaze lingering ever so slightly on the gargantuan scaled legs of the Godbound. But, I think he was taking in the sight of the chaos that had engulfed both Elderwyck and Tlatec. “Point,” He acquiesced, before looking back down at her in almost…disappointment. “However, that doesn’t change my own. Like most good children of Vereden, I grew up on horror stories about the Vampiric Sanguifera. How the children of the long-banished Goddess of Rot were the doom of nations. Only…I see you for what you are.”

Nerexxa snorted in disdain, even though she was apparently at the mercy of the Lich. “And what am I, you impudent bag of bones?”

“An imitation,” Tlazo answered, unphased by her provocation. “And a poor one, at that. I see the bindings upon your being for what they are, beast. You are an attempt by an unskilled hand to purpose create a Lich.”

I tensed in surprise at his words, exchanging a surprised glance with Liora. The two of us were crouched just inside of the ruined gates of Fort Duality. I don’t know what either of us were expecting, but it hadn’t for Tlazo to essentially call Nerexxa a knockoff.

Neither did the Vampire herself. The amusement and disdain that had colored her ruined features were wiped away in an instant, instead replaced by a growing fury.

“I didn’t see it at our last meeting, considering you were hiding the majority of your being from my sight. But…” Tlazo continued, gazing down at the increasingly livid bloodsucker he held captive. “There is none of the purity or the sacrifice that is inherent to the transformation I willingly undertook. I look at you, and I see the shoddy work of a poorly done spiritual phylactery. I was mistaken. You’re not a leech. You’re little better than a parasite, aren’t you? A spiritual existence, you ape the qualities of both a true Spirit and a Lich, in a crudely crafted attempt to combine them. You infest the parent soul of your host and consume it gradually, using it as fuel to sustain your existence, all the while puppeting the body of your victim. Only that soul doesn’t last forever, does it? The Aether is consumed eventually, and you must flee the host body for another to survive. The suckling of blood is an attempt to prolong your existence in a flesh puppet, siphoning the vital Aether inherent to lifesblood. And this one is nearly spent. The girl you inhabit only has the barest amount of Aether left to her spirit, and if you hadn’t seized your chance to summon your goddess, you would have had to seek a new host soon.” Tlazo laughed. “What agony it must have been, to be forced to linger in a spent host for millenia as you did. I wager you wouldn’t have been capable of awareness for a handful of times in all those years.”

Nerexxa sneered up at Tlazo. “And what of it, human? You call me pathetic, but you are more so. You knew the danger I must have posed to your far more pathetic collection of hovels you call a Kingdom, and yet you did nothing to stop me. What does it matter, that you are more ‘pure’ than I?”

Tlazo shrugged, jostling the bloodsucker in an uncaring manner. “The affairs of the living are for the living,” He said callously. “I only treat with them when I am forced to. But to answer your question…I have to wonder. If your pathetic self is the evidence of your mistress's power…she must be truly incompetent. Perhaps we need no longer fear the might of the ‘gods’.”

That sent Nerexxa into a greater rage than I had ever seen from the Vampire. She started to struggle against the bony first that restrained her, scratching and biting uselessly at him. But she was seemingly too weak to actually do anything against the Necromancer, in the same way that she had dominated those of us who had tried to kill, to prevent…all of this.

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It was vindicating to see her brought as low as we had been. I couldn’t stop a vicious smile from creeping across my lips at the sight.

“You…” Nerexxa seethed, squirming and writhing like the parasite she apparently was. “YOU…how dare you speak of Lady Ixiah in such a manner! You know NOTHING! My mistress is the supreme architect of all that is mystical, in ALL worlds! In all of EXISTENCE!”

Tlazo just gazed down at the Vampire in disdain. “I sincerely doubt that.”

Nerexxa completely abandoned her facsimile of humanity then, as the stolen body of Rhiannon grew more and more batlike by the second. In only seconds, her features had transformed from that of a monstrous woman, into that of a full-on monster. She only resembled humanity in basic body plan by now, with no unscaled flesh or hair left on the whole of her self. Once she was finished with her transformation, she screeched wordlessly up at Tlazo.

“And so the façade falls,” He said, almost sounding amused. “The beast beneath is revealed. We all know what to do with rabid beasts, though, don’t we?” Seemingly tired of the parasite he had almost effortlessly caught, the bones that held Nerexxa so tightly began to glow a deathly green in color.

Thus, Nerexxa slowly started to wither in his fist, in a manner that seemed as if all the vitality left in her stolen host began to be siphoned away. That appeared to shock her out of her bestial fury, as she stopped struggling.

Instead, she threw her head back to gaze into the sky.

And spoke.

“Mighty…Rhazal!” She choked out through rapidly withering vocal cords. “Save…me! It was I…who woke you…from your slumber! It is…I…who desired our Mother’s return…to this…backwater! Save me…so we can bask…in her glory once more!”

For a moment, nothing happened.

But then…I heard something.

The grinding of massive scales against stone, as if a gargantuan form shifted in place from far above us.

And then…

A voice. But not a physical one.

No…

This spoke straight to the soul.

WORM.

THE WEAK PERISH.

THE STRONG SURVIVE.

DUST…TO DUST.

I nearly wasn’t able to withstand it. Some inherent quality to the wordless voice was nearly able to shake my very soul loose from its foundations. I felt my spirit quake within the depths of my being, and I think new cracks formed in the bark of my crystalline tree.

To my side, Liora wasn’t able to take the force of the voice.

For some reason, her consciousness fled her, while I was able to retain mine. Bleeding from her remaining eye and her furred ears, she slumped in place, gone to the world. I was able to catch her before she impacted the stone floor of Fort Duality, but she still seemed to be among the living, from the faint breaths exiting her snout. I was alarmed for a moment, thinking the thundering voice had outright killed the Gnoll. Thankfully, though, she was still breathing, if not in a labored manner. However, she couldn’t help me anymore.

I was alone now.

That was okay. You’d…done enough, Liora.

Rest now. And hopefully, I would finish this before you awoke.

Carefully, I laid her against the stone wall we had just been peaking against which I noticed had gained new cracks. When I was done, I looked around the corner. To my surprise, I was just in time to watch something I had wanted deeply.

The final death of Nerexxa.

“Nooooooo!” The monstrous Vampire wailed into the darkened world around her, as her stolen flesh withered to the point of nothingness. From the feet upwards, she began to dissolve into the dust that the Godbound had seemingly foreseen. It only took moments for her entire lower half to blow away into the wind, unable to retain cohesion. Somehow, she turned her head to face the keep as Tlazo’s disintegration began to creep up past her chest.

Her eyes met mine.

“I…” Nerexxa whimpered, seemingly to me, almost pleading from in between monstrous, scaled, stolen lips. “I only wanted…to see my mother again…”

That…

That didn’t excuse a thing you did, monster.

Die, and let us be free of you.

Those were the last words that she was able to utter before the process was complete. Her head finished crumbling into ash that blew away to join the rest of the murk that had fallen over Elderwyck, from the Godbound’s might.

Rhiannon of Clan Calonawr had been avenged.

Silence fell over the courtyard as Tlazo dusted off his black silk robe, almost disdainfully. “And so my debt is fulfilled,” He said, sounding satisfied with himself. When he was done, he looked upwards in much the same way that Nerexxa had, and had the temerity to talk to the Godbound. “Well? Are we done here, then, ‘Rhazal’?” He said, almost sounding relaxed. “Will you attempt to take revenge for my slaying of one of your mistress's creatures?”

I goggled at the form of the Lich, floating almost casually in front of a living, breathing Calamity and trying to negotiate with it.

I think the Godbound itself was a little surprised because it took a moment for that booming spiritual voice to echo out once more. This time, I knew it was coming, and so I was able to somehow…brace myself. I don’t even think I could describe how I did it in words. It was like…I was somehow shielding my soul with my core ring, of all things.

SUBMIT.

“Never,” Tlazo immediately replied, seemingly not even considering it for a moment. “True freedom is the goal of Necromancy, and I have achieved that. I will not allow myself to be bound by the yoke of a distant, and incompetent, deity. Not when I have escaped the grasp of something as far beyond her as you are to me. Death itself.”

THEN…PERISH.

As a monstrous column of Aether dense murk spiraled down from the sky like a finger from God, Tlazo turned his head to face the keep. Locking his glowing green eyes to my own flesh ones, one of them blinked out for a moment, almost like he was winking at me. “I’ll be back,” I heard him say in a relaxed manner, just barely audible over the rushing winds. “Eventually…”

That was the last thing he was able to say before a nearly solid-looking tornado of pure, Aether-filled smoke impacted him.

In seconds, Tlazo’s entire physical form was scoured from existence. When the murk passed, nothing remained of the Lich that I had threatened into helping us. Not even the Revenants that had been lurking in the vicinity of the Lich were spared. They, too, were erased from this world, leaving not a trace behind.

I could only gape at the instant annihilation of someone who was supposed to be on the level of Grey.

What…what could I possibly do to something that could do that?

I was frozen in fear for a moment, before something even more terrifying happened.

The voice addressed me.

APPROACH, CHILD OF TERRA.

WE MUST SPEAK.

I…I…couldn’t move. How could I? I felt the full attention of the Godbound upon me then, and it was suffocating. I was nothing to this thing.

I was the grain of dust before the mountain, the shadow beneath the blazing sun.

An existence as far below it as one was possible to go.

I threatened to come undone from the pressure alone, where before I had withstood its voice. My core ring felt like it was pounding and cracking from withstanding it.

And yet…

Yet…somehow…

I stepped forward.