I felt like a whirlpool of emotions struggled to break free of the cage of my flesh and bone. Anger, rage, sadness, loss, love, hate, all the powerful, primitive emotions coursed through my veins with each beat of my hearts. I lifted my head and screamed. Sparkling chaos, arcing black lightning, howling dark winds, blasted through the ceiling and shot into the sky. The top half of the house went with the pillar of dark powers and emotions, where it formed an ominous black orb that pulsed once, twice, and then expanded to the size of a city block.

Katrina, my beautiful storm of annihilation, grew by the second. A city block. Three city blocks. All of my pain flowed into the abomination against reality, and when half of Havenstone lay under her dark clouds an immense crash of black lightning hit the center of town, the Castle of Havenstone. Bolt after bolt of lightning crashed down on the bastion of order, and the roofless house endured the rapid-fire percussion of thunder. Windows shattered, foundations cracked, and this was only the beginning, an echo of our fury.

The others screamed at one another, but no one could hear anything over the din of the apocalypse. Long finger like appendages drifted down from Katrina in the sky, and like the hands of an angry god, they smashed houses, buildings, and streets mercilessly.

I was Katrina. I picked up the Adventurer’s Guild and ripped it in half, where it then got caught in my winds and disintegrated to nothing. The Alchemist’s Guild went next, then the barracks of the Horizon Guardian’s.

None of it slackened my hurt. There were no people in Havenstone, beyond the idiot followers of Mithras, the Horizon Guardians. Or was there? A hand of black wind obliterated the exterior of the Castle, and I plucked from its center an orange core of crystal. A soul lay trapped there.

“Why did you let this happen?” I asked, and the words boomed from Katrina.

The crystal took so long in answering that I sucked the knights on the wall into the sky where I devoured them. They were a disappointment, they tasted of nothing, provided me with nothing. One moment they were there, the next, gone. Their wills were too weak to endure the punishment of Katrina. The crystal still hadn’t said anything.

A powerful hand touched my shoulder.

“They are slaves, thralls shackled in crystal, forced to obey. There is no spark of life, no light of thought, left in that husk of a soul. Destroy it, its existence is pain.” Xian spoke with utter confidence, and part of me knew that from the start.

I glanced around. Remy had gathered my fathers remains, while the others had dispatched the Horizon Guardians that sought to attack us for Mithras’s redemption.

I threw a bolt of lightning at the crystal, and it wrapped around the orange diamond like fingers when I yanked the bolt of lightning back to me. The crystal fell into my hand, surprisingly tiny. I had expected it to be human size, but it was only the size of my fist. I crushed it to dust, and the winds picked up the dust and dispersed the remnants of the soul of Gareth Stormrider, Hero and Champion who had established Havenstone’s Castle. There wasn’t much left of it, but perhaps the last moments of riding a storm once more would provide some comfort to Gareth.

I felt cold, and empty. Katrina had grown to the size of Havenstone, but didn’t look to be getting any larger.

“What now?” I asked, and the storm stole my words.

A celestial shield shaped in a dome appeared over us, blocking out the roar of the storm. Miyuki maintained the shield without even the appearance of being burdened by it, but her eyes did flick towards the atrocity that was Katrina repeatedly.

“What now?” I asked again.

“I have Marius’s body. The surrounding houses are empty. The knight we captured says they performed the rituals of Cleansing Flame. The only survivors were those the clergy took. A group of adventurers managed to fight their way out of the city gates, too, but the Knight couldn’t tell me who.” Remy answered, looking pained.

“Mom?” I asked.

“No sign,” Remy shook his head.

I activated the Belt of Diana. Tracks, then drag marks, then nothing. She’d either been carried, tossed through a portal, or otherwise transported.

“They took her,” I growled.

“What now?” Remy asked me.

I looked to Amaranthine, to Arx Maxima, and Corvusol.

“Can we kill Mithras?” I asked.

“We will,” Corvusol promised me. I knew I’d always liked him.

“I stand with you to whatever end, my betrothed. Let us forge a story for the ages,” Amaranthine said with an intensity that made me strangely proud. Her hard eyes conveyed that yes, it would happen.

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“Not yet,” Arx Maxima answered. It felt like she was going to say more, but I didn’t want to hear it. Arx Maxima’s answer hurt me. It felt like a dagger in the heart. I saw Claire’s face, filled with tears. I recalled hearing her scream the names of her family into Katrina’s winds.

“We can’t just leave,” I said. It was little more than a whisper. If we just turned around and left, nothing accomplished, only losses to be had, I wouldn’t be able to cope. I’d never find my feet again.

“Chrys, Xian. Use the sympathetic link of Emery’s blood to find the links to his family. Remy, grasp those links and pull them here. Miyuki, help him, merge your fire with his own. Mithras will pay.” Amaranthine gave orders that, at first, everyone seemed reluctant to obey. Reluctant, or perhaps surprised?

I saw something, I heard it, when Amaranthine spoke. Her decree echoed through the world, binding itself to the stardust that made up everything. It spread like an invisible disease. It was the second of her abilities under Destruction, one of her conceptual bindings of Corvusol. Which explained why I heard the black diamond chuckle quietly. He spoke into my mind alone.

“I do love a good Cataclysmic Decree. You’d better up your game, if you wish to be worthy of Amaranthine.” Corvusol’s laughter, like a crow’s, echoed in my mind.

I didn’t hesitate. I sliced a wound along my hand with one of my talons, spilling blood into a copper goblet Chrys held out. Xian stabbed Viper a few feet into the ground and touched the cup with one of his hands. Both peered into the blood, or at the blood, or into the nether.

“Here,” Chrys said and plucked a strand of blood from the cup. Its orange-silver flickering sparks made me suspect that was Etienne.

“Mmm,” Xian grunted when he lifted up a dull orange thread.

Remy looked dubiously at both threads of blood, but he took ahold of both of them, and a large spell circle formed above and below him. Miyuki grasped ahold of the strands too, and her blue-white flames merged with Remy’s. I couldn’t properly gauge how much it might increase his power, but it made the light show jump by almost double.

“Alright, here we go. Blood to Blood,” Remy murmured, and as he yanked, Xian’s hand wrapped around the mage’s hand on the pale orange strand of blood and helped the mage and Miyuki heave.

The air shattered like glass, an excellent backdrop to the laughter of Xian.

Mom hit the ground, ivory white, naked, and hairless for some reason

Etienne hit the ground, garbed in white and silver vestments. Silver fire burned around him like an aura. A cube of cupper struck Etienne in the forehead, and the silver aura died, appearing around Chrys instead.

A sick squelching sound filled the air, one of Claire’s arrows jutted out of Etienne’s left eye. Even Mithras seemed to be wounded by that, as Etienne held one hand to his face and grasped the shaft with the other, and attempted to pull it out.

“Act now! I am canceling his power as much as possible,” Arx Maxima commanded.

I activated Galvanize.

Amaranthine slashed at Etienne’s chest while he attempted to rip the arrow out of his skull. Her attack seemed almost artisanal, as she carved the Sigil of Destruction into Etienne’s flesh. The harsh, angular lines radiated outward like shattered fragments, and at its core, a swirl of dark blood. It was an old symbol, one that belonged to Corvusol.

I opened a window, and with Galvanize up, I summoned the dagger Arx Maxima had given me and stabbed Etienne in the back. Not once, not twice, but again, and again, until my hands were slick with blood and Etienne had fallen to the ground. There he groaned, sobbing.

Was that my brother? Had Mithras abandoned ship?

I looked at his concepts. I reached out to erase them. That was like trying to erase a livestock brand with a feather duster. Impossible. I mentally tried to cover them with a white wash and a paint over. The whitewash boiled away. I imagined my dragon’s talons, ripping the lines of Mithras’s hideous markings out of my brother’s soul.

Etienne and Mithras cried out, both in distinctive, separate voices. I slashed the silver flame over his essence to ribbons, each cut eliciting cries of pain and horror from my brother and Mithras both, but it didn’t deactivate the link. I tried to cut the enkindled concept with the dagger, only to realize I had moved over Etienne’s huddled form and stabbed him in the chest.

“Too late!” Mithras screamed through blood curdling laughter. His skin threatened to break apart with silver fire barely contained inside the fleshy vessel.

“Etienne, come back to me.” I pleaded, even as an EternaStone doorway appeared behind me.

“He’s already destroyed your brother, it’s too late,” Amaranthine said from behind me.

In the stories Mom and Dad told me as a kid, heroes overcame the impossible odds. They looked certain death in the eye, did the impossible, and walked away. Most of the stories glossed over the cost that the impossible carried. When I’d gotten older, Dad liked to point those bits out. Maybe he saw how much I wanted to be a hero, and before I’d been confirmed as a blank, there was always that chance I might want to be one of those heroic idiots, as he called them.

Actions, Marius had made clear, had consequences.

In those stories, I, the hero, was supposed to dedicate myself to expelling Mithras from Etienne at any cost, despite the wise council from my allies. The world seemed to click into place in a familiar way. There hadn’t been two screams, but one. One physical, one mental. Both Mithras. Etienne had been ground down into nothing more than a flesh-suit for Mithras to wear, and even if he left it, that’s all Etienne would stay. A suit of flesh waiting to be worn by someone.

“Through the doorway,” I commanded everyone, even as I opened it to the network, and Monados. I pulled the dagger out of Mithras’s stomach. Then I cut him from crotch to sternum, stabbed him through the heart, and kicked him out of the ruins of my house.

Silver flames leaked from Mithras’s wounds, spluttering.

“Quit being dramatic, we both know you’ll survive this. But when I come back again, you won’t.” I promised.

Katrina raged in the sky.

Destroy. I commanded. I could always summon another storm. Maybe it would devour more than Mithras had gained before the god figured out a way to get rid of it.

Etienne’s body exploded in a pillar of silver fire that bathed me in painful sparks.

Amaranthine left through the portal, and I pulled down a black hand of destruction from Katrina. I stepped through, and back to Monados. I didn’t even need to disconnect the other end of the portal, as Katrina destroyed it for me.

On the Command Deck of Arx Maxima the lot of us stared in silence. What was there to say?

“Fuck Mithras,” Claire sobbed.