With the black starting to take control of his vision, Vincent muscled as much strength as he could to resist. He clenched his teeth, flexed every muscle on his body, and widened his eyes so far that they felt as if they were going to pop out of their sockets. Slowly, his sight became more clear and the darkness that started to consume it began to make its way towards the fringes of his vision before disappearing.

Standing up, he pushed a few pieces of broken stone off of him. He then looked around at the room before him. Man, they did a number on this place, he thought.

The once-prestigious throne room was torn apart and made into something that, while still recognizable, looked like it had been abandoned and left to the elements for a number of years. The walls were cracked, with large chunks of them missing. The floor was uneven, impossibly broken and jagged in all sorts of ways. The ceiling held nothing but small holes that let down the tiniest rays of light. And above all else, the once immaculate gold that lined every aspect of the room was almost nowhere to be seen, and what little of it that was left was heavily tarnished.

Vincent began to breathe a bit quicker and his eyes began to dart all around the room. Scanning for any movement of any kind, his mind worked fast to process everything that he was taking in.

The first place that his glance took him was behind him. More than anything, he wanted to see something—he needed to see something over there. At first, there was nothing but ruined rubble, but after a closer look, he saw something slumped against the wall.

Immediately, he rushed over, cutting himself on a few sharpened rocks that stuck out of the floor. The closer he got, both the more relieved and worried he got. As soon as he made it over there, his mind confirmed what he thought it was.

Glasses broken, shirt torn, and hair frazzled to no end, sat Zander.

Vincent pushed the bits of debris that piled on top of him off and set him up in a more proper position. He then took Zander’s chin and lifted it so his head would look into his eyes. Vincent noticed that Zander’s eyes were closed and his heart rate began to rapidly increase.

“Zander…” Vincent said. “Hey, Zander,” he continued, gently slapping Zander’s cheeks, “c’mon man, wake up .This is no time to be sleepin’, we got a fight to…”

The moment that thought left his mouth, his head snapped in the direction of the ruined throne. While the platform and throne were still intact, the scarring from the cracks that snaked their way up them was really noticeable. However, the one thing missing was the demon empress that once sat upon it—she was nowhere in sight.

“Ughhhh…” Vince heard behind him. Turning around to see what the sound was, he saw the body of Zander start to slowly move. “Oohhhhhh…ohhhh,” Zander continued to moan.

“You good, dude? How are you feeling?” Vincent asked.

Zander rubbed his eyes, brushed his hair to the side, and looked up at Vincent. “Well, for being thrusted into a wall, I’d say I’m not doing terribly bad.”

“Fantastic,” Vincent relievingly said, patting Zander on the shoulder. “Well, get up and let’s finish this thing,” he commented, pulling Zander’s arm to lift him up.

“Woah, hold on, Vince,” Zander cautioned, propping himself up with his other arm against the wall, “I said I’m not bad, that doesn’t mean I’m good.”

Vincent laughed, pulling Zander to his feet. “If you’re good enough to stand, then you’re good enough to keep going.”

“I hate your logic.” Zander’s eyes were unamused, but they couldn’t help but smile a bit.

Suddenly, a voice from father back behind them, towards the left side of the entrance, spoke up. “Is that you guys?” it asked.

Recognizing the voice, Vincent replied, “El? Yeah Zander and I are over here! You good?”

With a bit more worry in his voice, Eliot shouted, “U-Umm I actually need some help! I need you to come over here, quick!”

Vincent and Zander looked at each other and then swiftly ran over to where Eliot’s voice was coming from. They made their way over some boulder-sized rubble and some cracked crevices in the floor and finally made it to Eliot.

While Eliot actually didn’t look too injured, just some bruises and shallow-to-light cuts, what laid in front of him could not be described the same way. Fang Nola was on their back, eyes closed, laying in front of kneeling Eliot, who was already covering some of the more grievous wounds on them.

Along several parts of their body were gashes and cuts that seemed deep, but not life threatening. There were several bruises marked all over their body, but none as blue or as sunken in as the ones on their forearms. Pouring down from their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth were small streams of blood. There were even spots where it seemed some of their veins even popped.

“Oh fuck,” Vincent said, his mouth hung wide open. He quickly kneeled down next to Eliot and just observed Fang’s body in awe.

The one thing he saw that relieved a bit of his worries but also confused him was the movement of their body. It seemed that they were alive and breathing, but their entire body was subtly vibrating from side to side. It was hard to notice from any decent distance away, but when Vincent got closer, he could clearly see afterimages of a body that was quickly reverberating from side to side.

Not knowing what else to do, Vincent placed a hand on them. Instantly, he felt his arm pulse back and forth to the same rhythm they were. He didn’t pay much attention to that and just looked into their closed eyes and said, “Fang, c’mon, pull through.”

“Zander, come here and help me finish with these bandages that I made from my shirt,” Eliot told Zander with a surprising amount of command.

After a few moments, Fang’s body began to move in a different way. It wasn’t much, but their head started to jostle around, as if they were waking up from a deep slumber.

“Urgh..what…” Fang started to say, eyes still closed, but twitching a bit.

Vincent put his hand behind their head and slightly lifted it and said, “It’s all good, we’re here.”

“You’re going to be alright,” Eliot added.

Fang’s eyes opened and their head turned vaguely in Vincent’s direction. Their eyes were unfocused and seemed to stare far past the realm that the rest of the group were in. “I…” Fang started to mumble.

“Yeah?” Vincent asked.

“Need you…to…become…one,” they answered before shutting their eyes.

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“Yo, hold on, don’t go yet!”

Eliot then placed his hand on Vincent’s shoulder and stated, “It’s going to be alright, Vince.”

Vincent just looked up at him.

“They’re going to be alright. They’re breathing, their body is all patched up, and nothing seems to be gravely dangerous. They just need to rest and possibly get checked on by a doctor.”

Vincent breathed a sigh of relief and slowly stood up. When he got to his feet, something started to throb on the inside of his head. Like a pulsing needle of pain, a headache started to form. As he moved around, the positioning of the headache within his skull shifted.

Oh no, he thought.

He turned his body towards the destroyed throne and realized that his headache was pointing exactly in that direction. Upon figuring out what that meant, stones began to shift on top of the throne. One after another, pieces of rubble began to lift and fall off of the raised platform.

“What’s going on?” Eliot asked, slightly grabbing at his head.

“This shit ain’t over yet,” Vincent calmly replied, his heart starting to beat a bit faster.

Emerging from that rubble was a visage of maddened death. Covered in soot and rust, rose Lucretia. She pulled herself up from the stone coffin she was under and emerged like a reanimated demon. She finally stood on her feet with her head hung down.

As she lifted her head up, face almost completely obscured by her hair, she laughed. “Oh, this is going to cost you so much,” she derangly said. “Look at how much you’ve ruined. Look at how you’ve tarnished my gold. Look at how you’ve wasted my money.”

Vincent’s headache grew more a bit as small creeks of gold began to flow out of the rubble across the room and up the stairs towards her throne, like a reverse waterfall.

“I’ve suffered so much in my life,” she continued. “I deserve everything that I have and you can’t take it from me.”

Out of her ripped suit, Lucretia’s exposed right arm began to shimmer.

“I want it all. I want to own it all. I want to have the world in the palm of my hand. I want to finally be free.”

Like an infectious disease, starting from her ring finger, her right arm began to turn into gold.

“He can’t hold me down if I have more than him. Freedom comes from power and power comes from wealth.”

That flowing gold that was on the floor began to flow upwards behind Lucretia and her throne. As it did, it transitioned to the ceiling, pooling together right above the friend group.

Zander looked at Vincent and fearfully yelled, “We have to get out of here!”

“We can't just leave Fang,” Eliot retorted.

“We die if we stay,” Zander argued. “Either they die or we die with them.”

Vincent placed a hand on both of their shoulders. “Guys,” he said with an unusually calm expression, “we can’t lose ourselves.”

For some reason, Vincent’s mind was unusually at ease. In fact, ever since Fang spoke to him, he couldn’t help but go over those words that they said. Each time they replayed in his head, he would calm down even more. His heart and head would beat at the same time, like his entire body was slowly becoming…one.

The moment his hand touched his friends, he could feel the thrumming from his mind wanting to travel down his arms and into them. However, there was a barrier that both Zander and Eliot had seemed to put up.

“What are you talking about?!” Zander urgently asked.

“Yeah, Vince, what are you deciding?” Eliot added.

Closing his eyes, Vincent replied, “We can’t run now—we have to come together and defeat her.”

The gold that was gathering on the ceiling above them formed itself into a giant hand, at least 20 feet in diameter.

“I don’t…” Eliot started to say, but his face began to relax a bit.

“You’re being…” Zander also tried to argue, but his fiery conviction began to cool.

Opening his eyes, Vincent said, “We’re all in this together, Fang included. If we run, we run as a group. If we fight, we fight as a group.”

He felt that the barrier between all of them had come down and his vibrations began to make their way into his friends. In turn, he felt the slight feelings and thoughts of his friends enter his mind. At that moment, he felt for the first time in a long time that they were like a family. That they were truly friends. That they were one cohesive group.

With her now golden arm in the air, Lucretia shouted, “I am entitled to your life and I will take what is mine!” She then brought her arm down and the massive hand above started to slam down on the group. “Feel the judgment of a god!”

The giant hand collided with the ground where the group stood with a thunderous boom. It sat still for a few seconds, just like the air in the room. There was a dead calm that permeated through everything.

CRACK

A spiderweb of cracks made their way from the bottom of the hand that was on the ground to the top of it that was connected to the ceiling. In one brilliant display, the entire hand was shattered, scattering into a lustrous shower of golden sparks.

In the middle of the handprint that was the result of the hand meeting the floor, was a black sphere, hovering just above the four friends that were huddled below it.

Vincent released the void and looked at his two conscious friends. With a smile and a nod from each of them, they each ran forward, straight towards Lucretia. Vincent had never felt more alive. His senses felt heightened to a degree that he never thought possible. He heard every small stone crack; he could see every grain of impurity on the gold flakes that floated around him; he could smell the fear emmitating from the demon that stood next to her throne; he could taste that victory was near; he felt every muscle in his body and could control them to their fullest extent; he sensed his mind taking in every nanosecond of detail that his senses were feeding him and analyzing it faster than he could even comprehend; and most of all, he felt the emotions of his closest friends, no matter how far apart they were.

In a fit of crazed rage, Lucretia wildly swung her arm, commanding the bits of gold still present on the walls to shoot out as spiked projectiles.

Without even needing to look nor think, Vincent jumped, slid, and maneuvered his way around every attack. Everything his body did was based on pure instinct. He felt the entirety of himself extend further than his body, just barely.

Every move that demon was about to make, Vincent felt himself ready for it before it even happened. For some reason, he could feel every surface thought that was radiating from her head. And because of that, he knew exactly where each attack was coming from.

Finally, he made it to the stairs. Just as he got to the base of them, Lucretia raised her hand towards the sky. In response, not slowing down for a moment, Vincent jumped, hovering over the stairs.

Just as the separated pieces of gold on the stairs started to turn into spikes, he used godspeed. A lightless, black void enveloped his body but for a second before spitting him out in a direct line towards Lucretia with immense speed.

Vincent wound back his arm and, using nothing but the force from his godspeed and the strength his friends gave him, punched Lucretia’s golden arm, pinning it to the throne. The impact of the strike shattered the arm completely and even cracked the solid throne.

He withdrew his arm and looked the demon straight in her eyes. There was not an ounce of humanity left in her gold-tinted stare. Nothing remained but her greed…that much he could tell without even needing to read her surface thoughts.

Before she could even react, Vincent, looking down on the creature that caused his friends and countless other people so much pain, lowered himself into the frigid depths of his mind. He felt his body grow numb. He felt all the anger he harbored towards her bundle up in a fiery rage and then instantly snuff out into nothingness.

Looking down at Lucretia with the darkest, most empty stare he had ever given, he unleashed a starbreaker directly in the middle of her chest. The attack crushed her against the back of her very own throne. Finally, the throne gave, and it crumbled as Vincent released his void.

Her unconscious body laid slumped against the jagged remains of her ruined throne, unmoving. The quiet that filled that room was something that the casino had not heard in a long long time. Oh how peaceful a room can be when the devil has been chased out.

Meanwhile, all Vincent did was look up at the cracked ceiling and bask in the rays of a new tomorrow.