The battle weighed heavily on Grovalt’s tired, bloodsoaked body. He heaved and panted underneath the desolate sky. Blood rain had begun its downpour upon the colorless land. Though it turned pale and vanished as it hit the white ground, it landed true upon the warrior’s shoulders and added to the buckets of red building upon them.

  Frostburnt remains of plaguefiends littered the pallid plateau, their arms outstretched towards their mother and goddess. The battleworn knights who remained, all but a dozen and their captain, stood in a crescent shape alongside the Ravens. They had all done battle with the putrid demons, cleaving them into endless stinking pieces. Gore and filth covered them from head to toe. It seemed the foul beasts, despite their horrific number, had come to an end after all.

  Crimson lightning struck every now and then in a circle around the viscera-covered men and women, but never struck them. Thunder roared and startled them, even when they knew it was coming. The ground shook with it. The heavens cried and the clouds burst. It was so terribly horrific and beautiful that it sent some of the knights, who were already in a very unstable state of mind, into a drained sobbing. They cried out for their families, for their wives, for their children. Memories of their lives back in Altruin, which seemed so very, very far away now burned brightly beneath their corneas. They so desperately wanted to go home, but could not until the terrible tide of blood dissipated, if it ever would.

  “Was that…?” Grovalt could barely speak, and could barely be heard amidst the storm.

  Zenzi nodded slowly, her movements full of gloom. “Over there… that black mass far off. Nakir lies there. I… cannot hear his thoughts. His body… is empty of them. I’m sorry, Grovalt.”

  “Did he…” Grovalt couldn’t finish his sentence. His mind did, however.

  “Yes,” Zenzi replied. “He gave his life for the girl. That is her, flying with perfectly jade wings up to where our creator floats.”

  The Goddess was indeed floating above the chaos, draining the massive amount of blood from all of the fallen knights and the pilgrims who had wandered off that had been culled in one way or another. The same endless river of sanguinity flowed from every corpse and into her open maw. She quietly laughed with delight.

  “Believe in her. That’s all we can do now. Nothing can carry us up to where she flies,” Zenzi added. “I have given her an important message. Though her mind is clouded by grief and rage, I know she heard it. She must have.”

  Grovalt rubbed his frost-scorched arms. Worry pulled at his heart incessantly. Zenzi’s right, he thought. There’s really nothing we can do to help her now. A feeling of utter helplessness and uselessness flooded over him. He sank and fell to his knees, his arms dangling at his side. He peered up at Ceres through weary eyes. Still, I know she can do it. She’s stronger than me… stronger than anyone.

  Thunder and lightning stabbed through black clouds again.

  “What is this?” Ymiris spied Ceres, the green dragon, rushing towards her as fast as a fighter jet. Her wings gleamed beautifully under the cataclysmic atmosphere. “Ah, thy Goddess sees. My kin has granted you his power in full. At the cost of his own life, no less. Such a wonderful power forged through years of exposure to my bountiful magic. It would seem mortals and immortals alike have done well with it throughout the years. My condolences, my dear. Such a woeful event must-”

  A verdant dragon claw pierced through the misty dark, cleaving three slashes across the Goddess’s chest. Following it, a virulent fire bellowed from the new drake and burned Ymiris’s wings slightly.

  “Rudeness. If thou shall not kneel upon hearing my words, I shall make it so.” Ymiris flapped her many angelic wings up to the verdant drake through its peerless fire, grabbed her head with one hand and threw it down with the speed of a bullet train.

  A sonic boom let out as Ceres plunged back down into the muddy lake and blew a building-sized crater into the ground. The culminating liquid fell into the crater and began to fill it, soaking the dragon in a literal blood bath.

  “Stay there, if you will. The ground is where you shall rest. You are but a worm when compared to an archon. Your tired attempts to harm me do nothing but harm yourself, girl-turned-dragon. As I made clear before your misadventure, one cannot seek to harm the world without a blade powerful enough to rend it. The red dragonkin was the closest thou will ever reach. Though, it was nothing more than a knife to a being such as I… No, nothing more than a toothpick.”

  Ceres did not reply. She dragged herself from the blood bath and spread her illustrious wings. Crimson ichor dripped and dropped from them. She groaned a dragon’s groan. It shook the ground nearly as much as the unceasing thunder tore at the land. She stared at the archon’s head. It would seem, in her arrogance, she had forgotten the silver dagger sticking out of her forehead. Along with the mortal blade, it had made the only wound that the Goddess couldn’t immediately mend.

  “Let my grace pummel you to the world’s core. Perhaps then you will understand the futility of it all.” Dozens, hundreds, hundreds of thousands of blades made of pure light came into being across the sky around Ymiris. Daggers, swords, spears, greatswords, axes, arrows, weapons of all kinds aimed at Ceres. The frightening sky was nearly blotted out by the infinite holiness summoned to her side. They shone almost as bright as the sun that Ceres so dearly missed. Now, there was naught but the shadow-wreathed moon watching enigmatically.

  She wasn’t quick enough. Ceres knew she couldn’t dodge them all. And even if she dodged some, she would be hit by others, and that would lead to her death anyway. Moving her wings to shield herself, she prepared for the worst.

  The endless weapons of blinding light shot at the verdant dragon like bullets, pummeling the earth with the wrath of a god. The Outlands, which was once filled with mostly flat plains and a crag here and there, was now a broken, battered mess. A certified wasteland, and not a flat wasteland. A broken, war-torn land riddled with holes, jagged edges, and painted a mostly alien white color. It was surreal even to gaze upon it, before and after Ymiris’s onslaught.

  But Ceres felt no pain. Her wings had not been shredded apart, but were whole and healthy. Bringing her shield down slightly, she saw the answer as to why such a thing was true.

  The Angel of Death, an enigma born of the Black Moon’s influence but freed from it, flew before her. She had cast a bubble similar to Eloise’s all that time ago around the two. Though it had broken in many places, it protected them almost completely from the Goddess. Almost, however, as though it had saved Ceres, a couple holy armaments had made it through and struck Nia. They faded away as the others had, leaving great bloody holes in the black angel’s body. Still, she flew with resolve. The pain did not deter her from her newfound path. She would give her life to kill the Goddess, she decided, and finally she would be free of everything. And finally, she would be able to join her sister beyond the known world.

  “Foolishness…!” The Goddess began to screech in a strange, manic way once more.

  “Sorceress…” Ceres gasped. The plummet to the lake of blood had taken a larger toll than she’d previously thought.

  The angel flapped its tattered wings and looked back at the green dragon with the same focused, vermilion eyes. She clenched her mortal blade tightly.

  “Nia… I have a plan.” Ceres explained it briefly to Nia. Her wrathful look of steely determination gave way to a somewhat sinister grin as she heard it. She nodded.

  “Thouest are both fools, simply. No different than that servant. The Pastoress. She was sacrificed as she lacked true faith. She and her sheep tried to understand me and my words with certainty. But faith is not found in understanding nor certainty; it is the opposite. Faith is in wisdom, the absolute belief in something without the ability to put it into words. Dost thou understand? She simply paraded around the idea of faith when she did not have it. It is no different than thy faith in kinship. This star thou clings to…” She gazed at Ceres. “And this flower of thine eye,” she said gazing at Nia. “They are nothing but false icons. They will give no providence.”

  “The only falsity here,” Nia screamed through the rumbling thunder and the pouring rain, “is YOU!” She flew and lashed out with the same scarlet slashes. It was very similar to the duel they had had not long ago.

  Now was the time. Ceres took her chance. Lumbering back to her feet, she launched with mighty wings and flew towards the horizon. Towards trees as tall as skyscrapers.

  After grueling time passed, Nia was still fighting the Goddess. She finally lost the rest of her strength and her struggle ceased. Noticing this, Ymiris deflected her mortal blade for the last time and ripped it from her hands. With another, she wrapped her tactile fingers around her throat and crushed her trachea with ease. With her blade-arm, she plunged the mortal blade deep into Nia’s chest. Then, again. Then again. Over and over, the blade seared with red and black malice Nia’s chest and body. Rivers of blood fell from her, and unimaginable pain lit up her brain like fireworks until it was all too much. Until she truly felt nothing at all. Nothing but the release… the pain drifting away… and the fragrance flooding back to her senses. The Goddess dropped her nearly lifeless, winged form down to the blasphemous ground below, the mortal blade still embedded in her. Then, she turned to see the verdant drake fleeing across the Outlands, and followed.

  Back down on the whitened ground, Arkiel had crawled to her brother’s side. The wound she had suffered at the hands of the Goddess had not been so fatal. “Brother… I warned you of this. I warned you, and still you left the link tethered to that girl. Why…? Why would-” But Nakir had already explained everything back at the tower. Arkiel knew that. She knew such an act was born of selfish, inexplicable love. Such an act that she herself would not hesitate doing for the Sorceress. That was the truth. A truth she had tried to smother in order to make her brother an enemy and her dearest’s dream a reality. “The Aspect…” Her words fell to no one, and following them, she, too, took flight and flew. Flew to the Greatwoods, Nia’s body in hand. Only she could have found her mangled body among the rippling sea of death. Only she could carry her to those great waning obelisks of pine green and brown.

  The multicolored moth flew, radiating above the towering Greatwoods. She was gaining on her target, the green drake flying as fast as it could across the equally verdant spires.

  Nakir’s words came to Ceres’s mind at that instant. About how he could not fly through the Greatwoods without being snagged by boughs pointing this and that way. About how if set aflame, the Greatwoods would forever burn and light the world. Those times seemed like fiction now. A fallacy born out of her inability to accept her mentor’s sudden and tragic death. But they were true memories. So, so long ago she and he had trekked through the woods, talking about this and that. Ceres’s knowledge of the world had grown every second. Nakir’s knowledge of humans, too, grew with every passing conversation, no matter how trivial. Those times so long ago. They would never happen again. And, as that realization grew to another, she began to choke on her own sorrow. Not just Nakir, but Asteria, too. She would never be able to speak with her again. The two would never be able to truly meet. That fact laid bare to her shattered her heart into millions of jagged pieces. There was nothing she could do to change it. Nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Now the girl understands,” Ymiris said, her piercing words cutting into Ceres. She had caught up to her. There was no escaping her now. “Now thou must see the futility of nature. Thy heart is broken because you cannot accept nature in its entirety. All life feeds. All life dies. All comes to an end. We, the archons, have accepted this in its entirety. We have accepted the sorrow rooted in every atom of the universe’s creation, young one. The endless cycle of woe and parasitism. Death is within all things. There is no escaping it. Though one cannot see their end, it cometh on black wings on their fateful day. This flow cannot be stemmed. Not by you, nor by I. So, we must consume. Create, consume, create, consume. Unto eternity. That is our role in all of this. That is our role as archons, child.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “No,” Ceres replied, her voice hoarse and deep. “No, that isn’t it at all. You claimed that the Sorceress and I see our sisters as no more than false idols of worship. That is where your thinking is flawed. You can only think of worship and saving, and so you force your way of thinking upon us. But that isn’t it at all. Put simply, Asteria is no icon. She is not just a star in my eyes. She is not just a guiding light. She is love. The love I had for her is the love she could not have for herself, and the love she had for me is the love I could not find for myself. The same, I believe, was true of Nia and Lily. And so, we could not part with it. We would sooner rend this world to its core than give up on them. There is no sense in it. But, really, what sense is there in the world? There is none. There is no clear future and no clear outline. So we must make it make sense. And we must claim the future. We must forge our paths ourselves and lay claim to the wonderful world around us before it’s too late. That is what I’ve decided.”

  Ymiris could only gaze expressionlessly at Ceres, for she had no answer to give. Black blood still poured out of her wounded eye and levitated deftly in the torrential wind, completely unaffected. For once, the Goddess had fallen into a deep silence. No echoing chimes rang out in her wake. No musical notes akin to her spoken voice. Nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Well said, girl.” A voice, not the Goddess’s, came from above.

  Ymiris cocked her head backward and saw Arkiel. She was wielding her mortal blade, as she normally did. Her prized weapon had finally come back to her after serving her mistress well.

  “Too slow.” Arkiel, with dying, comatose Nia in tow, plunged the fateful katana directly downward onto the silent goddess, the blade piercing her other black eye and coming out through the back of her head. Due to her being in dragon form as well, her weight managed to send them all plunging into the Greatwoods at a miraculous speed. They drove straight down, down, down through the trees, leaves, and bark until they bored through the very ground. And still, with flapping wings, Arkiel drove them all deeper and deeper, and deeper still. To the center of the world. To its core.

  But Ceres did not follow. In fact, at that moment, on the far side of the woods in the Outlands, a certain goggles-wearing fellow was finally making his move.

  “Raum?” Grovalt eyed his Sirithisian friend with unease.

  “It is time. My time. My time, at last, has finally come. My purpose shall be fulfilled.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Recall what I and the others had gone through in that fake world imitating the desert. What we told you. And now listen well Grovalt: Archizend made me his agent, as I had no other recourse. But I am content. The purpose in my mission is to aid Ceres in this one, singular moment. As well as drive various events to this cumulative junction.”

  Grovalt continued to eye his friend, this time with extreme fatigue and confusion. “Start making sense or I’ll brain you.”

  “This action I am to perform may very well claim my life, but it will allow Ceres to steer the future to one of bliss and warmth. Do you trust me?”

  Grovalt was speechless, but upon seeing the man hold up his staff in one hand and the archontic tome he carried in the other, he could plainly see that he was serious. Raum never made such jokes, after all. “I…” He sighed. “Yeah, I trust you Raum.”

  Raum smiled more warmly and truly than he could before. Again, this moment was one he had never seen before. It already gave him the bliss he sought after for the others. “Then,” he said, and the archontic tome flipped from page to page, eventually landing at the very end. The final page and the final spell in the book. “As a spellcaster and dune rider of Sirithis, lost city of the sands, I invoke the power that doomed my people… to save these people.” He closed his eyes, focused all of his magical power, and spoke two words effortlessly and fluidly. “Finis Temporis.”

  A chime so deafening and so powerful it managed to pull at the Greatwoods rang out across the land. And everything stopped. Time stopped. For nearly everyone and everything, the hands of time were stopped in their tracks and kept there by some unseen force. The world was coated in a hazy opaque color to reflect this. Birds halted their flight. The clouds ceased moving. Even the crimson lightning jolting down from the heavens stopped in huge, spidering arcs raveled in chaotic energy.

  Everyone but Ceres was locked in this state. She could not at the moment understand its cause, but she guessed that someone, somewhere had given her yet another chance. She flew down in pursuit of the Goddess and her foes, who had nearly reached the planet’s core.

  And there, she saw Arkiel plunging her vicious sword deep into the archon’s eye. And she saw there was only one eye left. Her third eye, the one wreathed in colors beyond her chromatic understanding. Even in the opaque color of stopped time, the colors of her third eye were unaffected. The Goddess, however, was. She too was stopped frozen in time, and Ceres made use of this, as she had no idea how long such a boon would last.

  So she climbed onto the mass, straddled Ymiris in human form, took out her father’s dagger, and made use of the time given to her. The silver dagger forged from all of her strongest kin plunged deep into her cranium, destroying her incandescent third eye for good. Now she was completely blind and weakened ever more. Transforming back into her dragon form, Ceres grabbed hold of the Goddess with all of her might and threw her upward. Of course, she halted from the stopped time. But momentum would carry on when it resumed. She hoped that was how it worked, anyway. It had to.

  As color returned to the world untainted by Ymiris’s pale eminence, so too did the flow of time. As it did, the archontic tome and staff once raised up by the man known as Raum vanished from existence. Raum, too, faded away as if pulled from reality into the oblivion that lay in the fabric there within. Grovalt could only stare in wild bewilderment and in grief of losing yet another whom he could call a friend.

  Time resumed. The Goddess flew upwards from Ceres’s draconic might, through rock and stone, and came out the other side in a place similar yet slightly different than the common Greatwoods. There, the trees arched and came together in claw-like patterns as if trying to catch prey. A horror lived there. Ymiris could not see where she was, and so she lingered too long. Right after she had realized her total loss of otherworldly sight, it was far too late.

  Zzzwooom.

  A lens flicked into place. Ymiris was in a desolate land, filled only with dead, ominous trees. Haunting twilight fell upon it. The only thing of note was a towering clock tower in the middle of it all. Its hands did not move. The glass behind the hands had been broken at some point. Like the Imperium, it stood like an onyx monolith, casting a great shadow across its wretched dominion.

  After quite a while, a horrible laughter rang out. It sounded like a dying animal or the death rattle of a corpse long thought silent. It hacked and sputtered akin to a breaking down automobile. “Hehehahahehehehehe… ahahahahahahahahaha!” It breathed and sighed deeply.

  “Who is there? Answer me or thou shalt feel the rage of an awakened archon. Who dared to sever this archon’s vision? Whomever it was, they will suffer for eons. Millenia. Answer me at once!” The archon scrambled about like a de-winged insect on all sixes, digging through the ashen dirt to no avail.

  “Greetings, my lesser half. Or should I say… my lesser third…?” Archizend laughed menacingly some more, hacking and sputtering again. “It seems you have fallen into my web, just as I ordained.”

  “Trifling nonsense. It could not be… the cat? No. The cat I stored away the…” The Goddess lost herself in painful ruminations.

  “The very same. Splitting oneself is a painful process, though it is an archon’s specialty, isn’t it? Evil comes in many forms, as they say.” The cat enunciated every syllable in a truly sinister tone. An unnatural smile tore across its face.

  Ymiris, at last, realized just how trapped and defeated she was. No amount of vanity could keep her from it. “I see. Thy moon sought to kill me, and now thou wishest to do the same.”

  “Yes… it is so dreadfully unfortunate. For you, might I add.”

  “Is that all? Do you not desire anything more? Know that I hold more power than all of the Scions combined. My death could very well scatter that power to reaches unknown, never to be grasped by the likes of you.”

  Archizend thought on this a moment, but let out more raucous, sadistic laughter in response. “You are vain, as they said. It would seem you hold all of our vanity. Vanity is an emotion that has not served you well, I see. I am glad that we were not granted it. For you see, dear archon, power is not at all what I seek. I need not brute strength and a vicious appetite to achieve what I desire. No, no, not at all. All I need is control, something which I very much have already.”

  Ymiris chuckled. “Foolishness. Utter foolishness. Power is what gives one reign over the world. How else could we have conquered worlds and drained them of their splendor? Have you forgotten such a simple fact?”

  The cat smiled wider, grinning as a spider would, if it could grin, when returning to its home only to find a mountain of squirming flies to consume. “Power, as you can clearly see… Oops. I apologize! You cannot see! Let me start again. Power, as you have proven, has paled in comparison to total control. Trickery and deceit move mountains, deary, without the user having to lift a single finger. Isn’t it grand? So very grand it is. But you were right when you said I desired to kill you. That is a great desire of mine. One that will be fulfilled right at this moment. Tata, old bird. Perhaps you will spring up again, but only if I am to deem it so.”

  Ymiris attempted to claw her way up to the cat sitting atop the clock tower, but seemingly out of nowhere a replica of the very same clock tower fell out of the umbral sky and onto the Goddess. Unwavering, Ymiris continued her struggle. Again and again, and again, a clock tower fell onto the Goddess, mulching her already disheveled body to pieces. Each one shattered her bones to dust and mangled her limbs, which was a feat in and of itself, and even then they came one after another, faster than Ymiris could rebuild her broken body.

  Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong! Crash! Bang! Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong! Crash! Bang! Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong! Crash! Bang!

  Over and over and over and over again, until finally, Ymiris could not rise to her feet nor float above the hallowed ground. She laid there like a squashed bug, unable to die yet unable to live. Even in this mangled, disgusting state, she could still speak. It was true that she used some sort of magic to intone her thoughts rather than actually use physical means such as the vocal cords and tongue. “Thissss… issss… futile, worm…” She continued. “I… sssshall… never… die…”

  Archizend stared at her with abyssal eyes. “No, you shall. And you shall rot beneath the twilight evermore. To be punished for your sins against the creatures of Aeos. Against the wills of the many.”

  Ymiris’s mangled arms twitched in astonishment as she connected the dots laid out for her. “Ahhh… that… issss… it… The… emotion…” She continued, very faintly this time. “My… empathy… my… ssssympathy… wasted… on… you…”

  “Quell your ceaseless chatter. Those Who Are Lost have found you, my dear. Eat, children. Feast upon your Goddess with smiles, if you would.”

  Little boys and girls, half human and half spider, crawled upon the Goddess with wicked fervor. They twitched like puppets on strings, and their abdomens opened to large maws and fangs that moved up and down like piano keys. All together, they ate and ate at the Goddess’s rejuvenating flesh almost endlessly. But even she could not regenerate forever. Eventually, the Goddess was devoured completely. Wholly. And Aeos, at last, was free of her divine influence for the rest of its days.

  Upon the surface, Ceres laid Nia, near death, and Arkiel, badly wounded, on the ground. With no sign of Ymiris, she could finally relax. She knew Archizend had taken care of the rest. She breathed deeply and exhaled. Tired, she morphed back into her human form. Incredibly, if she so wished it, she could look fully human again. No claws, no scaly legs, and no dragon eye. Though, she did quite enjoy having superior vision. That one wasn’t so bad, after all.

  With soft hands, she held the Aspect aloft. Nia, with the last of her life, touched it with her pointer finger. Arkiel, too, placed her palm upon the cerulean glass. It was warm to the touch, and filled them all with a serenity unfound anywhere else in the world. Dreamy tears fell from their eyes and mixed with the expanding pool of blood below them. It swirled and coagulated, creating what one could see as a masterwork of artistry. The paint, despite its source, represented the endless sorrow, the wrathful despair and the flowing hope between the trio. Their innermost desires burned true.

  The Goddess was dead. That was the beginning of the end. For that, too, had doomed the world. The archon’s death gave way to further calamity. Upon her erasure from existence, the archdemons and the Black Moon pulsed and appeared in the ruined sky, as if they had always been there. Watching. Observing. Like thousands of eyes devoid of light and grace, they made themselves known to the planet and all who lived upon it. And so, they ate.

  Time lost its meaning. The trees of that once sacred now disgusting place lost their green leaves, their brown bark. The sky and the clouds were erased. All was made white. All was made pale. All gave way to the ravenous orbs that could not be understood nor bargained with. All was painted monochromatic, drained of its magic. Drained of its life and soul.

  A barren husk, like a bone dried out in the desert sands. Like a pale moon above a forest of flames. Like a white sheet left to dry, only to be forgotten, abandoned to flap endlessly in wind stinking of iron.

  The world died, and so too did everything that once roamed its quiet, pallid, globular corpse.