Cedric’s ferocious red arm punched one of the falling golden axes with incredible strength, lobbed it right back at the figure in the sky like an oversized crossbow bolt.
The figure dodged it, splayed in a raging pulse and let rain a dozen more axes atop the dozen that were exploding on the ground already.
Cedric looked back to the scattered Hunters, watched them take the brutal explosions across their ranks.
Seeing many of them fall limp, his rage was made manifest.
—blink!
His flurry of attacks was immediate against the once-gold Hemah. Her black and violet robes fluttered as she dodged every strike with hectic, manic laughter.
“You thought me incapable of battle without a pawn? Watch what I'm capable of!”
She flew backward and Cedric got a better look: Rykaedi-Hemah was a crude mockup of the two of them. Her helmet was shattered away and gone, revealing a messy facsimile of Cassandra's long-past appearance. Her pale skin was rotten, her black hair was long and matted. Her golden armor no longer shone, but swirled with dark energy all over and through its cracks.
She exploded into black sunlight. It scalded Serkukan’s skin as she held it, pulled him in like a terrible black hole.
But he used that momentum, drew back his fist as he accelerated toward her.
He threw the strike—his entire arm evaporated in her vicinity.
Serkukan spun past her, called a shift in reality. His arm was back immediately. He flexed the hand twice to make sure it was really there. Then he barked: “Faunia!”
A set of frozen arrows exploded in the black air around the witch. A message: ‘None may touch me.’
“Rykaedi!” shouted the immortal red deity in a growl like a devil, “You really intend to waste our time like this? There's so much I've planned for this realm!”
“Wasting time is what I do best!” she replied, ending her flow of indirect energy. She framed her hands in Serkukan’s direction.
But then he was behind her. He was so fast, it felt as though the ley was slow in announcing his move.
Rykaedi-Hemah’s eyes shifted backward—
THUNK.
The sound of her skullcap exploding was all that there was for a moment. Serkukan smirked, but he knew it wasn't over. He looped his arms around hers, locked her in place.
“This is for my sister!” Marisol shrieked as she rose in her own fiery blaze.
“No!” Rykaedi-Hemah gasped.
Then came the flaming onslaught. The blows were weaker, slower, not as impactful as Serkukan’s. But her rage was immense, her sadness even greater. Those feelings shone through in every blast which rent Hemah's armor and burned Rykaedi’s flesh.
“You'll all abandon peace! Your sister has found Nirvana—bide the daemon and you reject it! You'll never reunite with your sister like this!” she protested.
Marisol pulled back for only a second, her stance like a fierce, flaming spear. “Is that true?”
Serkukan shrugged. “In part. But if it is the truth, it's far too late now for any of us.” He glanced back at Faunia floating behind him, her bow ready in her hands. “Etherians are a pox for human life. Isn't that right, Akhilesti?”
Rykaedi-Hemah’s eyes widened at the name. “You have Throkos’...? Well, then. That changes things.”
She reeled her arm forward—a spike grew from her elbow, plunged deep into Serkukan’s gut as she sprung it backward.
But the rage god didn't even flinch. He held her taut.
It was only when the gray mist poured from his nostrils that he showed any sign at all of dismay.
“Missing something?” Rykaedi-Hemah licked her fangs.
…Grivonym! She took…!
“End her—Marisol, Faunia!”
Faunia let fly her arrows, darted downward out of harm's range.
Marisol drew back her flaming fists, launched forward—
But their ears all rang out painfully in sync. Their ties to the Etherian ley all were severed at once.
Cedric was the only one who didn't plummet so severely. He reached his fast-shrinking hand out to his allies as his body grew heavier and heavier. “No!”
Faunia was limp like a corpse already. The ground was fast approaching beneath her. Marisol was some distance above her still.
Cedric tightened his grip around Rykaedi’s arms, even as his head buzzed and zapped and made all sorts of unpleasant sensations.
“Mercury—roa—gold—arsenic—belladonna—how many more will you choose to suffer?” Rykaedi chanted the names. “Hemlock—mandrake—lead—oxygen…”
“I'll suffer them all…!” he hissed as they fell together. “Your poison means nothing to me! I'm a newborn god!”
“All the better for your ego.” She struck a calm, precise elbow into his skullcap. His grasp slipped. His red skin was no more.
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Then he, too, fell where his allies had.
Is this really where it ends? Killed by gravity…?
Rykaedi-Hemah laughed above him. The sky began to blot out, all became dark.
So much I've suffered… and Akhilesti is the one that takes me. Poison. I can't even dispel it, and Jirtu… Ivalié… they're both dead.
What can I even do, now…?
“I'm not done with you.”
Cedric looked up into the murky haze that was his reality.
Of all people, Kogar was there. He had Cedric by the collar, his eyes were fixated on Rykaedi.
“Wh…”
“You promised me Serkukan. I don't get Serkukan if I let her kill you.
And besides—I've been preparing.”
Then Cedric hit the ground. Kogar was gone; perhaps he had never even been there.
Faunia’s screams broke the ringing in his ears after a long, silent moment. Only Faunia's screams.
It faded with his vision, as all succumbed to darkness.
Failure.
Because I didn't trust Serkukan?
Or did I not try hard enough?
Is this how it's always destined to go against gods?
Cedric lifted his head from the dirt some time later. It felt like his whole face was broken. Like his whole brain was scrambled. Like everything was wrong and bent out of shape.
“...You're saying I'm incapable of death?”
“Where's Rykaedi?”
“Right here.”
The length of a blade pressed against his neck, pulled his head up. He couldn't see her, but he could feel her knee pressing into his spine.
“You shattered my Dyosius. So much time prepping… and now all the original designers are dead. Jirtu, Ivalié, Throkos, Liara… You don't even know what purpose it had, do you?”
He spoke through his grit teeth: “You were going to free Evra. You're just another Algirak.”
She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Small-minded of you. But I can see the relation. Your one saving grace, Serkukan, is that I need you now. Without you, there's no opening Evra’s cage.”
“Didnt I already unlock Nihil Maxim?”
“That's unfortunately not all there is to it. You're coming with me to Calamon. We're going to see Evra.”
He hissed out his held breath when she removed the blade, removed her knee.
Then he began to stand. His legs faltered—the impact had broken them. But then they were healed. The leylines shifted powerfully.
“Faunia and Marisol, too.”
“Hmm?”
“I want to save them before we go.”
“One of them.”
“I'm not negotiating with you—”
“I'm not either.”
His eyes widened when he looked back to where they'd fallen. Faunia still shuffled with some life, some teal glow hovered over her like a mist. She babbled incoherently, tossed and turned as if trying for life.
But Marisol—Marisol wasn't moving. Her arms were bent backwards. Her foot stuck up in the wrong direction from the crater she'd implanted in the dirt. Her eyes were glazed over and dark, pointed absently in Cedric’s direction.
“...No!” Cedric whined.
Then the blade pulled his neck back again. “You may use your powers once—give Vleren some glimpse of life and we're off.”
He grit his teeth. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“Rykaedi, I…”
“Are you listening to me?”
He shuddered. Nausea overwhelmed him. He lurched past her blade and vomited into the soil.
She calmly sheathed Grivonym at her hip, watched on in annoyance.
Cedric fell, groveled in the mud. “She's dead! Marisol is…!”
“That much is plain.”
“Bring her back. Rykaedi, you need to—”
When he looked back, her face was completely different. Her skin was grayed and cracked, destroyed by the poison god Akhilesti. There was not a sliver of compassion to her stare.
“You're joking… This can't be happening…” Cedric began to sob into the ground.
“Give life to the other girl. Then we're away.”
All he could do was obey. For Faunia’s sake. For Marisol’s sake.
For his own sake.
And they were away to the sky.
If I thought I'd failed before…
I didn't yet know the definition.
“You've lost so little in life, Cedric.
We'll amend that today.”