Page 66 of Dark Fae's Destiny

As that ear-splitting sound devours us, everyone on the battlefield screams. Because the Gold Eyes’ cry is in us, through us, and all around us as it tears the very fiber of our being with its cacophonous, most dissonant Music.

That cry rips open a rift in space—through which Revenants, black and terrible, come pouring out. I don’t know where these Revenants came from, but they are seething out everywhere as they suddenly arrive, causing a second battle to erupt all around.

Our allies and our foes are not fighting each other anymore; we’re fighting for our very lives as those Revenants stream in to claim us. A thousand, ten thousand, they devour the battlefield as everything becomes whirling, black smoke.

I see red eyes burning in every direction now as I roar and fight them, trying not to go mad. Staphylogenes doesn’t seem to see us fighting as he holds the ashes of his heart and laments.

As his horrible, cacophonous weeping of the Music goes on and on, other rents are ripped open in space; demons pour out now from some hell-dimension, as a dozen angelic creatures are tumbled out from a far more sublime one.

It’s ripping the very fabric of the cosmos apart with its laments. And suddenly I know how the first Ascendant city of Florence died.

Ripped apart by Staphylogenes’ terrible cries.

That ripping is happening to our world now, as Staphylogenes holds the ashes of his heart and weeps. It’s far more than weeping; it’s screaming, roaring, and all sounds terrible and destructive, as it tears the very fabric of the cosmos open to its awful sounds.

Sundering fills my world; rips and more rips are appearing everywhere, as creatures I can’t even describe come pouring out. Ariana, Lucca, and I fight in a hard knot now with our best people, as our allies band fast together to do the same.

We’re all beset by countless creatures, terrible and insane, as we fight with the very last of our strength. Though the Music blares inside me and my trio, and all our people in defiance to what Staphylogenes is doing, we can’t undo his tremendous might.

Because he was a god when we were nothing but swirling dust in the cosmos; without his heart now, our mortal unity is nothing compared to his vast and terrible might.

And his might is destroying our world, as we fight to stop it. Even with our unified Music, however, we cannot close these tremendous rips through time and space that Staphylogenes is creating with his laments.

Only hold back some of the tide, for now.

Until it swamps us.

I feel us losing as I desperately draw upon every revelry and siphoning I know, to bolster my power. I’m flagging hard, though, as Lucca and Ariana do the same.

I draw upon every source I can now, in my Dark Fae’s might; I drink fear, joy, heartache, lust, and rage as we battle. I rip chi in a tirade now from the creatures we fight.

Somehow, a rift was ripped open that pours water down in a waterfall to nowhere; I drink the kinetic energy of moving water from it, and drink the waning moon and starlight even as the new dawn rises and I revel in the oncoming day.

Our people are sustaining grave injuries, however, from our inability to keep going. As the Revenant horde swamps us, draining everything we are, we battle on against demons and creatures each more hellish than the last.

My furious siphoning and revelry are keeping most of us alive, particularly Lucca and Ariana, as they battle hard now beside me. But we’re all exhausted, and even I feel how we cannot hope to last.

I finally debate running—ripping open our own portal and fleeing from this fight. I cannot take all my people with me, however, if I tear open a portal and run; half of them have fallen now, gravely injured or drained nearly to death, as the other half flag hard from the fight.

Fevers roll through us, terrible shakes and bone-clenching shivers as our Fae energy exhausts and these enemies swamp us. I cannot hope to save everyone as we clash, roar, and drag from endless battle. I wonder now if it is better to abandon those who have fallen, and save the rest.

When the Gold Eyes turns to me, Lucca, and Ariana.

Terrible in its wrath.

“You!” It roars at us in a thousand unholy voices. “You did this! This is all your fault!”

I feel a million sensations of pain now as Staphylogenes’ fullest wrath turns upon us—and with it, the terrible conglomeration of his mighty, insane Music.

I can’t even scream as I fight so hard to survive in that wretched maelstrom of power. As Staphylogenes seethes towards us now, shaking his fistfuls of heart-ash at us as if all this was our doing, as if we somehow cursed his heart to fall apart in his very own hands at his touch, his vast tentacles of Night explode out everywhere.

Devouring the night.

“I will make your lives hellfire!” The Gold Eyes says now as it screeches at us in a million insane tongues, unhinged to punish us for what happened. “I will make the stars wish they had never even heard your names, lowly and damned as you are! The lowest Realms of hell will sing songs about your Fall, and the depths of despair I will send you to. For this—what you have done to me—is an unforgivable crime. And so, my retribution shall be unforgivable upon you.”

The Gold Eyes’ tentacles of whirling, roaring darkness rip through the skies now, the earth, everywhere, working a most terrible magic. It still screeches with those mind-splitting sounds of the Music, deafening our ears, but I feel like it’s tearing the entire cosmos apart now, to do something beyond blasphemous to us.

As reality shreds all around us, Lucca and I, and all our allies, are thrust into a pit of seething, roaring darkness. It’s not the Gold Eyes’ madness that swarms over us now, as millions of burning red eyes open everywhere in that shrieking dark.

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