“Cedric—”
Rykaedi’s hollow voice cut his soul like ice.
“—you're purely human, now, here in this moment. You would give it all up?”
The ley spun around him, opened a gateway in his mind. A way out.
“Come through—the Deadworld set for you is a peaceable place, you've felt it. Pure serenity. Some have called it Nirvana.”
The peace itched into his mind. Total release was but a step away.
“If you step back into wielding your Etherian… you'd forsake your last chance at reaching this heaven.”
The orange flowers bloomed. His deathbed sat just out of view, in the haze beyond her oblivion chamber.
Then brushed Faunia's gentle floral scent against his nostrils, just a few paces ahead, where his marble coffin lay. Rykaedi’s vision of peace began to fade.
Her voice had become a snarl by then: “...You just can't leave the bitch alone, can you?”
“Sorry, Rykaedi…” Cedric shook his head.
His allies all looked at him, alert.
His eyes landed longingly on his pale-haired companion. “I'm already two steps away from my humanity.”
The twice-ley whipped around him in visibly in the span of a single rushed heartbeat. The gateway zipped shut, spun around so it was beneath them all…
And Elos was suddenly in the air between them, Grivonym in his hand, aimed right for Cedric’s throat.
“Look out!” bellowed Faunia.
Cedric didn't flinch—he raised his hand to the attack and the blade slipped all the way through the flesh of his palm. But unbeknownst to Elos was the fact that Grivonym was unable to pierce mortal flesh.
Cedric grabbed the hilt, took the impact into his arm. He swung his other arm as hard as he could as his body twisted, laid a devastating fist across Elos’ face, twisted both of their necks painfully around.
“Lok ta, nil!” Cedric howled.
BRRRRRRRRRR!
Elos gasped at the sudden implementation of Antithesis as he struck the ground and skidded painfully across it: “Y-you've sel to your employ!”
Cedric didn't bother to answer. He threw himself atop Elos with no inhibition. The sel man knocked precise, desperate blows into Cedric’s skull with his bloody fists, knocked him left and right. Cedric barked like a barbarian, "What good is your damn Ahkilesti now?"
Then Cedric had Grivonym’s hilt in his hands. He pushed with all of his shuddering strength against the man.
“You know… the difference between me and you…?”
Elos’ energy was concentrated into their stalemate—he couldn't respond for fear of losing. His muscles were tense, tightly constricted.
“When Evra designed you… she neglected to give your kind human willpower!”
His hands shone with the prismatic energy of Dyosius. Then the fight was his, and his blade penetrated deep into Elos’ flesh. Three colored energies took to the air: crimson, azure, teal…
Cedric took a deep breath, commanded them to his mind.
“Men are capable of the Deadworld, the cessation of their energy! But Etherians, those who wield them… they're damned to eternity! Suffering, envy, spite, forever!” Cedric didn't even know they were his words anymore—his enlightenment was sharp as a knife, too devastating to comprehend the damage. An epiphany.
Elos drew a crude dagger as if in answer to Cedric's own mental metaphor. Cedric grabbed his arm and twisted, shattered the bone. He took Elos by the throat—
And then it felt like everything melted away. The world became a haze of colors, like Etheria itself. Like the Pit.
He was as the bulging red demon Serkukan, stood on a huge rock structure which overlooked miles of bloody land. It looked like a war had been raging for eons.
“So, you've figured it out?” Ahead of him rose the slithering bone goddess, centipedal and inhuman, a thousand-legged serpent. She snaked her whole body around the stone pillar and rose up to let the sinews and muscles droop down like fabric, let Elos’ body in the center ragdoll around like a hellish centaur. “Humans are capable of transcending this world. But Etherians…”
The one in the shape of Serkukan answered, “You want to consume Evra. To be able to leave. Just as Algirak wanted to with Azafel.”
“I'd hoped Kogar would make a beautiful final piece… but we fucked that all up, didn't we?”
“Then you tried to persuade me. You showed me Nirvana. The peace that comes with giving up.”
“Not giving up. Giving in. These wars will never end, strife will never end. That's the life your kind are born into. Humanity is stricken to eternal conflict by virtue of their desires.”
“The sel and alisars are animals. They can't reach the Deadworld.”
“I've taken the most command of that place which a deity can have. That's all that's allowed. And to some, I am allowed to grant reprieve.”
“You're so desperate to end your suffering. Do you make Kogar suffer to distance him further from attaining that peace?”
“Of course.” Her million legs splayed. “He isn't deserving of that secret. He'll be reborn as an alisar, or lower.”
“I see.”
“But I can still grant you peace.”
The demon shook his head. “Not anymore. I'm no longer just a demi-being. Dyosius has become my whole heart. I feel the scales of my counterparts engulfing my soul.”
“I wish, for once, you would have bought into a single one of my blissful lies.”
“We had our moment. Didn't we?”
Another chuckle. “And yet, I could show you so much more…”
Then the demon was forward. He threw his fists up—
THOOM!
Oversized skeletal hands came from behind Rykaedi and caught his blows, held him in place, shaking with his pressure. Elos’ body hung down. It suddenly came to some undead life, grasped at Serkukan’s flesh and tried to pull it apart.
Serkukan thrust his figure forward and dug his goring horns into Elos. What became of him wasn't pretty.
Then Rykaedi reeled back.
Serkukan kicked off the platform and his onslaught was relentless through Tirolith’s slowed time. With each strike, entire sections of Rykaedi’s bone body exploded into white shrapnel. She began to rot and decay with every attack. Pieces which fell past the crimson demon were caught by his writhing tentacles, shunted back at her like crippling ballista shots.
Her voice still boomed: “I'm powerless to stop you here, Cedric. But you don't really want to end me, do you?”
He rushed up her body with a swing of his hand. Immediately her form was bisected down the center, Elos’ dead body was dropped free.
“I do.”
But then that vision was gone—Cedric was back in the chamber.
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Faunia was before him. She shouted something he couldn't hear, her expression was strained, panicked…
Oh... Poison...?
Then came the violet trident.
BANG!
He barely caught it in time, his corporeal form had become crimson and huge to match the visage he'd been lost in. Elos' limp form lay on the floor beneath the giant weapon, using his last throes of life in a desperate attempt to end Cedric's.
Ivalié, Jirtu, and Faunia all raised their stances up to the looming Rykaedi, a bubbling mass of flesh which writhed like a dozen oversized corpses melted into one ever-changing, ever-shifting tumor.
“Your true form finally shines through—” said all of Cedric’s voices in unison. “—the cancerous mass you are.”
“Ilume!” shouted Ivalié as he leapt. A blinding light shone from his scepter, melted her flesh away where it reached. Rykaedi wailed.
“Seven hexes!” Jirtu howled, his rings all glowing together. “The binding unmade and reforged in sacred flame! How I've long awaited this, Rykaedi!”
Faunia threw herself into the air, took herself unto shimmering iridescent wings. “Dyosius disallows your continued interference! Begone to your own damnable plane!”
Rykaedi swept a great hand through the air between them. Ivalié drew a glowing scimitar from within himself, cleaved the hand in half.
“Akvum!” the demon shrieked. Then her growl became fierce: “But you've forgotten something else!”
Down from the sky dropped Tirolith Stabilis, that black-ringed angel. A massive glaive of ice was locked within her hands.
Faunia swept into place beneath her. She floated defenseless for a moment, almost tempting to see if the Etherian girl would really kill her.
Tirolith’s poise faltered, her weapon shuddered near imperceptibly. That was enough to convince Faunia. “Crush!”
The entirety of the black palace imploded inward. Vines ripped through the exterior walls and pierced the overarching dome.
Cedric recognized the ability immediately—Tyverius’ Etherian. The sunlight ripped through the ceiling, illuminated the scattered soldiers, the rising demons, the Etherian knights…
Ivalié shrieked suddenly, gazing skyward.
Cedric and Faunia followed his gaze through the crumbling stones.
Shwick!
A golden palm axe struck against his crossed scimitar and staff. Ivalié and Akvum both pressed back with all of their combined strength.
“Akvum!” shouted Faunia.
“Ivalié!” Cedric doubled.
Jirtu’s hands were in a fluttering debate between saving the two duos. To save Akvum and Ivalié, or to save Cedric and Faunia?
No. He steeled himself. Cedric and Faunia can save themselves.
Then Tirolith dropped behind him.
Thump.
The sound of her glaive piercing his stomach was dull and somber, overshadowed by his final gasp.
“Tir!” Faunia cried.
BOOM!
The palm axe exploded. Ivalié’s face was turned to a bloody smattering across the ground. His body was dropped unceremoniously limp.
“Gods…!” Cedric gasped. Then he turned his attention to the trident still locked in his fists, gnashed his teeth and pushed back with inhuman, barbaric strength. “Hrrraaaaaaaagh!”
Rykaedi snickered an echoing, horrible laugh, like a heartbeat through the entire chamber.
“You're weak, Rykaedi! You're pitiful—you're nothing without your pawns!”
“The same could be said of any Etherian, could it not? By your reality's rules?”
“Fuck your rules! Fuck you!”
He pushed the trident back. With a single warp of reality, it was spun around, pushed into her flesh. Rykaedi gasped out once, a deep, horrible sound…
…And they were together, in Evra’s chamber. The iridescent chamber where he'd conferred with Dyosius.
Rykaedi sat there ahead of him, in the familiar skin of Cassandra, the same way she had sat across from him in Akvum’s Deadworld. She crossed her legs and smiled a smug grin at him, folded her hands in her lap.
Cedric approached. He looked down—human again. The last time his heart would ever be human, he figured. He wiped his hand across his sweaty face, held his breath as though testing his heartbeat.
“Cedric, dear—are you going to kill me?” asked Rykaedi in her familiarly sultry voice. “Absorb me into one of your scales?”
Cedric considered that for a long moment. The power Rykaedi wielded was not to be scoffed at; control of the Deadworld. Control over life and death. I could subvert any of Kogar’s defenses, kill him like that.
But after a deep breath, he was sure. “No,” he said.
Rykaedi’s expression softened into surprise. Then it became a gentle smile. “I see.”
He approached closer, until her lavender aroma washed over him.
“Thank you, Cedric.”
And he called upon Dyosius once again.
Faunia slammed against Cedric’s back, dragged him up from the dream by knocking him down to the ground. “It's not over yet!”
Her shining rapier ripped sidelong through an imp, cast his two halves down to the growing abyss beyond their crumbling platform.
The Hunters were evacuating by someone's orders—Cedric looked over his shoulder to see a stoic Marisol still staring at where Rykaedi had once been.
“I didn't even get a chance…” the girl mumbled. Then she turned and followed her soldiers out of the room.
Cedric looked down to his pale hands. They were doused in sweat, his whole body was. He felt sick to his stomach, felt the horrible disembodiment he'd felt every time the Rings of Fate had collapsed. He struggled not to puke.
Faunia landed some distance away. She spun three successive attacks into the imps which rushed her. More and more were amassing beyond the floors edge, climbing up and dogpiling where the collapsed ones had been. Then those she'd slain began to stick their cut ends against each other, their stone flesh melded together until their size began to grow.
Faunia’s confident stance did not relent. She summoned a shimmering bow.
But it was Tirolith who landed behind the imps, struck her glaive through them with an impact which shattered that edge of the platform, dropped them all into the abyss. Then she hovered there, her concealed gaze locked on Faunia.
“Is this it then, Tir? You're part of Rykaedi’s machine now?”
Tirolith didn't answer. The rumbling throes of the palace continued around them.
Tears ran down Faunia’s cheeks. “Ivalié and Jirtu sacrificed themselves for this victory… They were once our enemies. You, too, can defeat this.”
Tirolith cocked her head to the black ring spinning around her back.
“Tirolith…!”
Then Cedric passed by Faunia’s side. They both locked their gazed upon him. Tirolith brandished her glaive.
Cedric thrust his hand upward, leapt with spectacular speed at the floating girl. Even as she swept the rapier, he phased right through it, rammed his hand all the way through her chest and into Stabilis.
The black stone cracked in half at the impact. Just a second later, it was falling into the abyss. The ring lost its momentum, fell with the rest of itself.
Cedric gently hovered back down to the remaining platform with Tirolith in his arms, held her tightly as she wept.
Okella’s tendrils stretched out above them and held back the stones falling overhead.
“Let's go,” he muttered to Faunia.
They were outside before she could even respond. Faunia grasped her chest at the startling tightness of the twice-ley.
Cedric spun around in the glowing daylight. The rest of the palace finished its descent into the abyss with a rattling quake which shook them all, the Hunters included. Many covered their ears. Cedric and Faunia did not.
Then that boyish king fell to his knees beside the two materialized bodies of Jirtu and Ivalié. He pressed repeatedly into Ivalié’s chest, mimicking some poor facsimile of resuscitation. “Serkukan! Serkukan, bring him back!”
Faunia’s mouth fell open in horror.
“Don't resist me! SERKUKAN!”
But the return growl was piercing:
Cedric grit his teeth. He dropped a limp fist into the dead man’s chest.
“Serkukan… you fucking bastard…!”
Marisol, Faunia, and Tirolith all stood side by side, watching with bated breath. Faunia murmured, “I shouldn't be surprised…”
“Serkukan!” Cedric wailed again.
I am a Blood God, after all. And now, you are too.> That vision of him brawling against Rykaedi returned. Not a vision—a memory. An eternity, locked behind his mind. A war that had been going on forever… And the howling of a black-gold visage in the sky soaked into his mind that the battle was far from over. Marisol braced herself skyward. Faunia wiped her tears away, summoned an icy rapier to her grasp. Cedric stood, let out a low growl. "Hemah's back... But now she faces the true God of Blood... Serkukan!" Down came the golden axes...