The Worldeater Saga, Part XLV: The World’s Last Light

Upon the final day of the Creators’ Triomachy, despair gnawed at the crust of reality, the spool of existence set loose from its tight-wound loom to descend a spiral of chaos and take the world itself hostage to unravelling anarchy all about. Inexorably it feasted on hope and devoured dreams of salvation, order frayed, and Creation entered its waning hours. The cock crowed for dawn’s last day and the world’s desperate swan song resonated across and through the thinning fabric of time, the hour of twilight ushered in on tides of despondent woe. Wracked with the scars of unending tumult it could no longer bear, Sapience and its unwilling host turned loose a sickened, agonised wheeze of protest amidst the throes of their unmaking.

Appearing sans fanfare, the slender figure of Lady Memory formed in the darkness of the mountainside, a harp of alder wood and unicorn hair clasped in Her dainty hands. Lexadhra settled Herself into Iyosin’s abandoned throne and began to play the ornate instrument She bore, producing a sorrowful dirge whose amplified notes carried across the world for all to hear. Dispassionate and cold, the Indelible gave no sign that She acted as witness to the end of yet another realm as even Her funereal aria rang somehow hollow, bitter, and untrue.

In a chilling mirror of the recent past, Varyan Celestine’s pantheon gathered atop Mount Memonaransa once more. Their collective presence asserted order upon a reality otherwise blurred and smeared to near-dissolution, a stoic aegis against whatever would come. Together, in a display of unprecedented unity shot through with a maudlin air of hopeless despondence, the assembled Gods looked above to Their Father’s unending duel – single combat now a Triomachy of triple combatants – and made a solemn plea for aid.

A plea that went unanswered.

Blessed with the experience of three worlds, Varian worked the tattered existential loom with an artisan’s grace and ineffable poise. Calm dispassion ruled upon the Silver Maker’s nondescript visage as He revised reality’s constituent pieces, bathing His treacherous Son in endless waves of concussive force. Severn reeled as He continued to adjust to His burgeoning might, His form narrowing into a wisp of darkness that imposed Immortal eventide upon Sapience in an effort to elude His Father’s assault. Even as the Betrayer escaped His Father’s wrath, however, the Eschaton exerted Its own unutterable influence. Its hand reached across the sky in defiance of conventional space, Its nebulaic darkness ceding to the rosy glory of joyous dawn as It stretched out to capture this new opponent. His gloamy deception banished, forsaken Severn flitted away from the brilliant radiance of Eschatonic morningtide as He scrambled to regather His might in the face of ageless expertise.

“Umbrael fails Him,” the Unbound observed from His place beside His throne, His steely gaze held upon the distant battle. “Whatever it has accumulated, He struggles to direct it, let alone hold on to it.

“But there is something more, as I had suspected. His theft runs deep. The essence of the prisons, the essence We were meant to regain – it is under His sway,” Damariel continued on, His teeth grit. The shining aura outlining His shell flared alike to a sweltering sun, hinting at the fury simmering within Him. “We have no choice. If We hope to overcome this treachery and put a stop to the Monomachy, We must open the remaining prisons while He is too distracted to lay claim to that essence as well.”

“Unthinkable!” Bamathis soon objected. “You might trust in flaming abominations to rescue Us from this madness, Damariel, but I will not abide by such a plan. They must remain chained until Father claims victory.”

The Argent Warlord then beared Caelestis’ killing edge to the icy air of Mount Memonaransa as He strode forward towards Damariel, the horror-wrought ceasefire shattered in an instant of suggested heresy.

The Inferno’s Ogrish features twisted with rage then as She lumbered forward, Her hammer casting fast-fading sparks across the court with each eager heft. “Let this be done, then!” She roared.

“All this arguing gets us nowhere,” Haern snarled above the din as He loped across Memonaransa’s smooth marble, His wargauntlet-clad hands limned in verdant fire. “There is a simple solution to this, Brothers.”

The Wild God bellowed out a predatory warcry before pouncing forward akin to a hunting tiger, both of His burly arms swinging in a wide arc that collided with the unguarded flank of the Inferno’s Ogrish skull. As fiery Mebrene toppled to the floor, stunned and reeling from the unexpected assault, Haern wasted no time in pressing the advantage. His fist snapped out to thud against His Sister’s head in a third strike, accelerating Her descent to the hardened surface underfoot.

One last two-fisted blow is all Haern required to finish His brief, bloody hunt.

A loud crack desecrated the sacred peace of the Mountain of the Gods as Ethne’s battered shell collapsed to the ground, Her Ogrish form broken beyond repair by the savage brutality of the Lord of the Wilds. With a feral cry, Haern raked His ursine claws through what remained of Sapient Fire’s vessel, revealing the seething essence ensconced within. Immortal ichor sizzled and spurted, branding indelible evidence of His fateful fratricide into the marble underneath His unfortunate victim.

Her skull broken and Her vessel devastated beyond survival, Ethne, the Rekindled Goddess perished then and there, murdered in cold blood by Haern, the Hunter. The sun died in the west. The common folk of Sapience cried out in terror as a pall of cold darkness consumed them, its impenetrable shade evoking the horrifying recollection of an ancient force of misery only so recently turned away from the Prime.

All the light that remained within Sapience blazed at the top of Mount Memonaransa, an obdurate torch kindled by the violent convergence of Divine power.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 18th of Omeian, in the year 0 AC.