“Let them know the wrath of absence.”

All trace of darkness drained from the conjured shadow sprite, replaced with something far more empty as the Necropolis of Archaeum trembled.

Cira thought summoning a dark sprite would be the end of it. Even if he turned it into an umbra, she had ideas on how to respond. Never in a million years did she think he would convert it into a void sprite. While void was most commonly known as the absence of space, it had another, far more archaic meaning. Void was the absence of all.

Of course, it wasn’t an element in that sense. Thus far, conceptual sprites existed only in theoretical musings deep within Gazen’s notes. While this was something Cira could not help but be excited to witness, she was starting to wish she hadn’t asked to see a trump card.

The entire mountain shook as the creature took shape, only settling down as its form completed. Following the cracks it formed in the shadows, it kept branching out. The void sprite looked like someone’s nervous system if you ripped it out of them, but of the purest black. It was hardly perceptible against the thinning shadows, but impossible to look away from.

The necromancer’s laughter echoed before fading away as Cira’s summoned light wisps started to dim as their food source dissipated.

That thing isn’t just consuming the darkness, is it? While the wisps grew weaker, they all started to gently float inward.

“This is bad, guys.” Cira wasted no time in letting her crew know the situation. “That abomination is even eating the space around it. This barrier will only sustain for so long.”

The holy-infused light wisp seemed to be able to resist the voidling’s pull, but its mana still slowly escaped. Even Cira’s barrier couldn’t hold onto all the darkness she worked so hard to accumulate. It didn’t look like the spirit moved at all but grew closer with each pocket of space it consumed.

“Is… is it time to run?” Jimbo had one foot out the door already and Cira had to pull him back.

“Not so fast. What do you think happens if that thing gets any bigger? It’s worse than a black hole. We can’t exactly just leave it like this.” Despite really wanting to, it would be highly irresponsible. The entire island could be gone by morning.

It took a lot of mana, but I don’t think he’s running low down here. What good would defeating it do if he can just create another? I didn’t get the impression there were any restrictions, but converting a spirit’s nature shouldn’t be so simple. Can he really unleash calamity so flippantly?

The first wisp flickered out and its essence completely disappeared, quickly followed by another few. The necromancer’s laughter returned and circled them like a storm.

“Now do you get it?” His form appeared briefly all around them, disappearing between words as if on the wind. “From the moment life first buds to far beyond the day flesh turns to dust, souls are no more than clay in my hand. The very second you set your eyes on this place, you already belonged to me. This is your fate, foolish girl.”

Options here were limited. It took them hours to get this far, and the rate at which the void sprite grew, Cira wasn’t sure they could return fast enough to outpace it. Were they driven away, it was unclear if he would let them escape or even stop the destruction of this place. Letting his sprite run wild would spell the end of Lost Cloud. Countless would die, but what could she do? What should she do?

That’s right. Am I forgetting I’m on vacation from sorcery? I’m deluding myself with the fate of this island. While Cira did care about its fate… I am not qualified to save it, even if it is my fault this great evil was unleashed upon it. I’m simply too weak to save it right now.

I don’t need to think about any of that though. If I don’t defeat this void and its master, I’ll never reach the soul forge. I’ll be dead in weeks. No time to go back and prepare. He won’t let me. It isn’t a matter of if or how… I must do this.

Cira had learned a great many things from the master sorcerer Gazen over woefully few years, but somewhere in there must exist a solution. Not that she wanted to, but this was the first time in her life she was uncertain curses would even work. With the damage to her soul, it was far too risky to try.

Like flowers crumpled in an unseen fist, light wisps disappeared one after the other until only one remained. Holy light uselessly surged through it, refusing to give in, but its resilience gave Cira an idea.

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“What do you know of fate, paltry necromancer? Caller of the void? Harbinger of nothing?” It took an aura to call upon holy mana, but Cira had an aura in Shadow Quill, while her withering holy champion had a source in her paladins. This was effectively a loophole which certainly broke some rules, but it wasn’t the time to care.

“Nothing heeds your call.” Cira freely wove holy mana while her calmed voice rang gently through the dark. “Nothing molds freely in your hands, and nothing bends to your will. Fate is but a delicate vase before me, to be smashed and reformed at my whim. Stand against me and your own fate can only shatter.”

The sprite grew brighter without impedance, blaring rainbows across the room as every color on the spectrum appeared. ‘Holy’ could be considered a foreign entity in these skies—in this world—but it still held domain over reality. It was a gamble, but Cira thought there was a reason it resisted so well. Likewise, her paladins were the only ones without a trail of mana seeping out.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” A beam of darkness, like a negative of Cira’s previous attack, shot out and cleanly pierced through the barrier to destroy the tumultuous spirit, only to congeal upon its surface and become mere nutrients to feed its transformation.

Her mind seared like it was on fire from the prohibited use of holy. It was a pain she would simply bear.

“I thought it was all nonsense, but thanks to you I’ve figured it out.” Cira grinned. The only way to fight an abomination was with another, better abomination.

Life itself was a concept which often escaped Cira, but fate was one she often sidestepped. Reality should not be determined ahead of time, in her opinion. Unfortunately, fate was still something which constantly nagged at her from the corners of her mind, wishing to burn a curse into existence at any moment. Many clues led back to the point where Cira’s relationship with curses and fate intersected, but it never felt like they were one in the same. More that one was a path to the other.

Each and every curse Cira laid in the past had tangible recoil, but it was a feeling she couldn’t quite place until recently. In the past she forcefully pressed fate into a mold using the only tool she knew, but now, on the cusp of having her existence erased entirely, fate felt like water running through her fingers.

Undina has given me more than she knows. To think fate were such a thing… Like the rivers through Fount Salt, time yields to conform with the path fate chooses. As erosion takes form in predictable ways, so too does the flow of destiny take its course. When I plotted that island’s fate from spring to sky, it was no feat of sorcery.

All I wanted was that pearl on the horizon. The spring and I became one, but what of the salt? Beyond my apparent self but within reach—what is that?

“Would you like to know your fate, necromancer?” The form of a blanched flame sprite had already devolved into something else, beyond gold and infinite palettes into imperceptible colors which translated to waves which shook the tomb in defiance. Now her chosen sprite ascended beyond the bounds of cold reality to assume the silhouette of a girl wielding a staff, comprised of rainbows which burned the eyes. “It belongs to me.”

A dull thud sounded to her left and Oliver had fallen to the ground. Her remaining three paladins were pale and approaching their limit, but their duty had been fulfilled. The abominable fate wisp no longer needed holy mana, though it flowed into its staff all the same along with everything else.

The crew struggled under its weight. Jimbo was passed out next to Marko, followed quickly by the brothers desperately cradling their unconscious captain and the rest didn’t seem well off. They had terror in their eyes and seemed resigned to accept whatever outcome Cira could muster. Even Tawny was on her knees, clutching Jimbo’s hand in vain.

“Stupid girl! Do you not understand the situation you’re in?” The necromancer appeared for a moment to show Cira his glowering face. “These skies will be gone tomorrow. Relinquish your life and I may spare them!”

In this time the voidling had become much larger, but it was only due to the destruction of the space between them. Now its unnerving tendrils stretched towards Cira’s creation. Only visible against the absolute darkness around her shadow lens around it and its lack thereof. The barrier splintered as a sound like ice cracking echoed as the two entities met. One by one, the dark branches were sucked in.

As the void was slowly consumed by the sprite’s staff, a spiderweb of violent lights spread throughout its form, cutting off sections which dissipated in short order. Within seconds, the embodiment of primordial nothingness was reduced to an amorphous display of radiance which paled in comparison to the years of blood, sweat, and tears that produced Heron Village’s burning tribute to fate’s wake.

“One who disrupts the order,” Cira’s mouth moved but the voice came from her sprite, “Covet death and I shall guide you to such a fate.”

Like the path a string of vines may take over decades, the necromancer’s arms and legs started to stretch out on a predetermined path to the effulgent gem which adorned the sprite’s staff. His pain came in the form of countless screams of torment.

“H-how?! Impossible!” Agony reverberated through the chamber as it gradually fell to the distance. “Don’t think this is over, you wretch! I will find you—”

Pieces of his formless body were left behind and faded away as shadows filled in the space around Cira’s barrier again. She didn’t know how long that encounter took, but it ended in a matter of seconds. Just a couple more and she would have been erased forever. The cracks in her barrier slowly grew darker and faded away as the pressure rapidly dropped, only pulsing periodically from Cira’s abomination.

She clenched her fist, “Dammit… To think this is over… What a joke.” It wouldn’t be today, but someone like that couldn’t be left alone.

Precious few seconds in the dark passed as Cira fumed before Tawny broke the silence with an uncharacteristic whimper, “I-is it gone…?”

Kuja was on the ground, all color drained from her face and panting as she swayed to and fro, “Child… please…. d-dismiss it.” She collapsed on the bare dirt with lights strobing over her and the others wherever they lay.