The sky was black, but there were no stars. The only light that littered the land was the glow of sundered earth and melted stone. Columns of smoke filtered into the sky, so thick and still that they looked like pillars within a vast, broken hall. Eerily, there was no wind, as if the world itself were holding its breath, and the sounds of shifting earth had long since faded to a stony stillness.
However, there was a gasp.
Within a hollow of woven light, a shallow rasp cut into the quiet. The chill touch of pooled shadow sizzled against the golden light, bubbling through broken threads until a broken hand thrust through. It scrabbled for purchase as the light and shadow ate away at one another, pushing up against crumbling ground to raise an emaciated torso up on hips that had been twisted askew. Once glorious hair was burnt away, and her skin was charred despite her protections. Her breath was labored, a wheeze that sounded like a hurricane in her ears. She touched her hand to her chest, where a gaping wound had split her open, clavicle to sternum. Only hazy, flickering threads held her closed.
Ocala Marzul was alive. Barely.
Moonfall…
She lay within a crater beside the shadow of the only structure even remotely still standing: En’Cridhe. The foundations rose up thirty paces at her side. The stones were knocked askew, the mortar blasted free, and their inward-facing walls coated in streaks of hoarfrost. That ice caught what little light there was from the molten earth, stark against the blackened skies, giving her beleaguered eyes enough information to confirm what she already knew in her heart.
Her Territory was gone. The Seat and Seal she’d built up over centuries was all but eradicated, leaving her with only the faintest of Authority still echoing within her. It told her that if she could rise up and look down at the impact crater from above, she would see that the moon had punched a hole through the center of her Territory. To lose the city was a blow that tore at Ocalla’s heart, but she had long ago resolved herself to its inevitability.
It was the price she must pay.
Those shockwaves should have torn even farther than her borders, but her precautions had made that impossible. Over the course of a glass, she pressed herself to her feet, hauling on the stone remnants of En’Cridhe to shore up the strength that flagged in her limbs. Slowly, she picked her way across the debris field. Wavering patches of rogue power still twisted the terrain. Already, nightmares were peering through the edges of the deepest cracks, where the molten lava did not percolate. One didn't call down a moon without consequences.
The Realm had split open here, at the center of things. A textureless darkness sat behind the riven earth, pressed close to the skin of the Realm. She could feel creatures shifting there, drawn to the immense Mana that ran rampant around her. In a small amount of time, her ancient Seat would be swarming with voidbeasts. Once that happened, there wouldn’t be much time left at all.
The ground rumbled, shaking beneath her so violently that Ocalla was cast back down to her knees. The crater, the deepest point of impact, burst upward, cracking like thunder as a wave of stone rose upon the back of a vast creature. A mountain given twisted flesh and empty limbs like smoky glass spun around abscessed bone. It rose up, molten earth raining from it, pouring like rivers off of its back as the shattered remnants of Amaranth tumbled free of bent arms. Too many joints anointed them, and several gave way as it rose up, but a dozen more limbs reached out, steadying its ascent. A face lifted upon a thin neck, one that was nothing but a hole through the world, punched back through slick flesh and into a distant, shadowed horizon.
Noctis.
The goddess keened and a thousand wailing spirits rose around her in a maelstrom of tortured Will. The earth groaned as if protesting her very existence. Chains dangled from each of her many wrists, their shattered ends trailing through lava. Her gargantuan Spirit radiated pain…and confusion.
Ocalla smiled through bloodied teeth and began to sing.
Harmony swelled from within her, stabbing at her chest like frozen knives. She pushed beyond the pain, reaching through her physical form to something else. A song echoed across her core space and into the world itself. Sweeping melodies reached up beyond the clouded skies and the stars that glimmered behind them. Through the dark, at the end of all things, she pulled those rarified strains, funneling them through her broken flesh as light gathered once more upon the blasted plain.
Hierophant. Noctis turned her empty face toward the woman. Pieces of her godflesh flickered and jolted as if she weren't quite real. You Dare Sing The Harmony In Front Of Me After Doing This?Fool! Careless And Faithless! Noctis stilled. Yet You Have Freed Me. For This, I Will Not Crush Your Flesh And Use Your Soul For Kindling Mine Own.
Ocalla only answer was to Chant even harder.
Cease Your Inane Song! It Irks Me!
But Ocalla did not stop. Her song gathered momentum, pouring through her now like the rising sun onto those shadowed lands, too bright for even Noctis to gaze upon.
The goddess flinched back, a triple-jointed forearm lifted before her empty eyes. You Defy Me Again. You Remain Our Servant! As All Mortals Must Be. It Is The Natural Order, But It Seems You Must Be Reminded Of Your True Place.
You Have Called Me Down, And The Burden Of That Choice Is On Your Shoulders. You Have Forfeited Your Power!
Noctis’ immensity fell forward, a mountainous tidal wave careening toward the miniscule Hierophant. Yet Ocalla had neither fear nor hesitation in her voice. She sang. She sang of dawns yet to come and of the shattering of a moon. Darkening the night, but strengthening the sun. It blazed from her, burning through the shadows that made Noctis what she was, tearing through her flickering flesh like a torch through butter. It bubbled, pain searing through the goddess and forcing her back.
“The Divine and their Moons should never be parted.” The Hierophant’s voice rose and fell with the voiceless Chant.
Noctis drew back, pressing her limbs into the earth even as it crumbled beneath her, avoiding the tiny, glowing woman. Cease Your Prattle!
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Ocalla knew one thing above all else, a piece of her plan that everything hinged upon. The shattering of a moon harms its Divinity. It interrupts their power.
It made them vulnerable.
“You are compromised, Noctis. You have no power here."
No Power!? Noctis screeched into the sky. My Power Is As Enduring And Encompassing As The Night Itself! I Am The Void Made Manifest, And You Lie Within The Nadir’s Grip!
Ocalla felt the Realm shudder, twisting beneath the goddess’ monstrous Will as it spat forth her puppets. Abominations swarmed from the debris, pieces of shadowflesh wrapped around molten chunks of moon, rising up by the thousands. Insects, serpents, and furry ape-like horrors all bound together into a mishmash of nightmare proportions. They raged, screeching out a cold frost into the air.
Kill The Usurper!
They charged the Hierophant where she knelt.
"Light begets light. Begone shadow."
The words radiated from Ocalla, a wave of light that sliced through the shadowbeasts in a single, perfect moment, burning them apart so that the pieces of moon were all that remained. Those clattered to the earth, their momentum stolen by the expanding ring that spun outward into arcing ripples before slicing into Noctis herself.
The goddess cried out.
Pieces of her limbs sundered, driving her shadow-slick flesh to the earth with a crash so loud it defied hearing. It was felt in the bones of creatures thousands of leagues away, and Ocalla felt the warm trickle of blood as it poured out of her ears.
“I hate you,” Ocalla said through the glow of light as she rose once more to her feet. "My hatred for your ilk is undying. Only the Pathless ever came close to earning my respect, and he failed in the end.”
New chains seized the ends of her sundered bindings, bands of golden light that snagged Noctis’ failing limbs against the earth. Ice snapped across them and burst into steam before it could form, and all the weakened goddess could do was scream.
Ocalla took a single step.
“Do you think breaking your moon was an accident? That I evacuated my people from the city just as a precaution? That the structures I led them to were nothing more than fortresses beneath the earth?” Golden radiance hung around Ocalla like a fallen star, streaming across the landscape just inches above the cold shadows. “You and your ilk are fools. The Divine…” She barked a laugh. “You are unworthy of your power. It belongs to someone better."
Noctis howled wordlessly, shadow rising beneath her Will, which, for all of her injuries, was still that of a god. The light was beaten back as moon stone flared.
My Will Is Eternal. You Are No Cardinal Beast. Your Light Cannot Best My Dark.
Power surged. The battlefield roared with a rush of shadow and textureless dark, as if the Void itself speared through the goddess’ limbs. The Realm shook, split above her empty face as a splintered crown imposed itself upon the world.
Eventide Sunder!
A hurricane roar announced Noctis’ descent, as all of her physical force was brought to bear upon Ocalla’s glowing form. An ocean sent to drown a gnat.
It landed, crashing into the blasted terrain and sending mountains of hoarfrost erupting to the west. The sky broke open, the black clouds revealing a bloody sunset pierced by spires of incalculable cold.
And a woman, untouched.
What?
The ground, flattened by a moon, was unbroken. Blue Mana flickered, the last bits of force fading into crevices that now glowed with the same golden radiance as Ocalla.
“You failed.” She could already feel the power diverting into the earth, channeled deep below Amaranth. Hundreds of strides beneath the sewers of the city, where the bunkers had been built to her exacting standards, sigaldry began to ignite.
Noctis struck again.
Shadow and cold surged, filling the empty crater with washes of endless ice—yet Ocalla remained.
Sigaldry filled the stone now, refracted through melting ice as something rose up from beneath. Ocalla's words were not hollow. The bunkers she had evacuated her people to were more than just fortresses. They were the pieces of an array, one that glowed beneath the Territory, layered through hundreds of strides of solid earth, undaunted by the impact of a moon.
The array activated and Noctis’ shadow drained away, replaced by a burgeoning light. The mountainous goddess screamed, but not in anger. Horror threaded her Spirit, fueled by a bone-quaking terror as pieces of her shadowflesh were pulled down into the molten earth, into the array that had been improved upon a thousand times since she'd stolen it from idiot Nevarre.
Pieces of the goddess vanished, pulled free, even as she rose back up onto her feet. Her twisted flesh revealed empty bones, innards of thick shadow whose opacity faded by the moment.
You Dare To Put Your Teeth To My Neck! You Cannot Stomach This Meal, Marzul!
"I don’t need to, Noctis." Ocalla lifted her head, her chin, the skin across her chin and jaw healing rapidly as a flux of dark light poured through her gold. “I simply need to take it away from you.”
With a resounding, thunderous crash, the goddess’ empty face collapsed inward, falling as its power was pulled into the earth…and into Ocalla Marzul. It flared around her into a gleaming dark light. Gold shot through with black flourished across her shoulders—a mantle and a splintering crown of shadow.
Noctis’ burst, the last bit of her form sundering into a shower of purple-black sparks, revealing the gleaming remains of a strange star. A stone the size of a house, shaped into dozens of faceted spikes, each casting off a different light. It floated down from where the center of Noctis’ chest once loomed, until it floated into the Hierophant’s hands.
Ocalla reached out her Will and the dark light that clad her limbs. The star core shrank until it was no bigger than a bauble. With deft hands, she took the core and tucked it away into the folds of a gleaming white cloth stitched with golden sigils. Power flared between them, a call and answer, before it faded entirely.
She panted, swallowing hard against the blood that had welled up between her teeth. Already her flesh was repairing itself, but it would take time to be whole again. Ocalla looked up, to the west. The sun was setting and the clouds were moving in once again, but worst of all was the dark speck far above it all.
It burned. Cold and bright.
Headed for them.
Ocalla Marzul turned east and began to walk. There was work to be done, and little time to do it.
A stolen corpse watched through melted eyes as the Hierophant strode away, her bloodied robes billowing. He watched the dark radiance that rolled off her shoulders in gelid waves. Most of all, he eyed the core she’d wrapped up in an empowered rag.
Interesting.
The corpse leaned back. Hidden beneath molten earth and the arc of durable inscribed stone, it had survived moonfall mostly intact, though its original owner had not. Even now, as the deep fires underground rose to the surface, its flesh and bones were disintegrating swiftly. His threads of crimson and gold power could only hold onto it for so long.
It had lasted long enough to witness history repeating itself, to see, once more, mantles stolen from on high.
It Begins Anew.
Where would it end this time?
Avet couldn't wait to find out.