PreCursive

  Liora and I hadn’t dared to ve into the courtyard before the ruins of Fort Duality. There were dozens and dozens of Revenants iing the area, cirg and snarling around the Lid his captive. Tzo and Nerexxa may have their attention for now, but her one of us wao test that.

  We’d be torn to shreds in an instant.

  But they seemed wary of the Lid the Vampire, even as helpless as Nerexxa seemed right now. They were demonstrating a level of intelligen keeping their distahat told me they might be evolvially, as well as physically.

  However, one of the most important reasons I didn’t want to go out there, was that the titanic legs of the Godbound were visible oher side of the door. They were bent at the knee from its position far above, presiding over these events like the very pilrs of heaven itself.

  Or perhaps…hell, would be more accurate.

  I had seen one of them shift ever so slightly at the cacophony below it, while at the same time, I felt the ever-present awareo the surroundiher focus upon the duo.

  The Godbound was aware of Nerexxa’s plight. Only…it hadn’t acted in any way to save her yet.

  Tzo was unphased by either the cirg Revenants or the attention of the Camity that had befallewin cities. Instead, I saw the glowing green coals of his eye sockets examihe Vampire clutched in his bony fist. “What a pitiful existence,” I heard him say, disgust tinging this hollow voice. “This is your true form? I expected…more from the creature that nearly caused the downfall of the Kingdom.”

  I don’t know what Tzo had doo her, before bringing the Vampire crashing back to the firmament. But it had clearly been something, as Nerexxa was far more ihan any of us had mao do to her, including what Stilnt Bde had done. One of her arms had ft out been torn out of its socket, while she had been reduced to only two wings from the three that had bee after I’d removed one. Numerous other injuries dotted her monstrous form, but it was her face that drew my attention.

  It looked like her jaw had nearly been ripped right off of her face, but had been stopped at the st moment. Instead, the skin had been torn away instead, leaving the bone exposed to the air. Right now, that jaw was grinning madly up at the Lich holding her captive, inhuman es dispyed promily. “I would hardly say nearly,” Nerexxa said hoarsely.

  Tzo’s fiery eyes gnced around for a moment, his gaze lingering ever so slightly on the gargantuan scaled legs of the Godbound. But, I think he was taking in the sight of the chaos that had engulfed both Elderwyd Ttec. “Point,” He acquiesced, before looking back down at her in almost…disappoi. “However, that doesn’t ge my own. Like most good children of Vereden, I grew up on horror stories about the Vampiriguifera. How the children of the long-banished Goddess of Rot were the doom of nations. Only…I see you for what you are.”

  Nerexxa snorted in disdain, even though she arently at the mercy of the Lich. “And what am I, you impudent bag of bones?”

  “An imitation,” Tzo answered, unphased by her provocation. “And a poor o that. I see the bindings upon your being for what they are, beast. You are an attempt by an unskilled hand to purpose create a Lich.”

  I tensed in surprise at his words, exging a shocked gh Liora. The two of us were crouched just inside of the ruined gates of Fort Duality. I don’t know what either of us were expeg, but it hadn’t for Tzo to essentially call Vampires knockoffs of Liches.

  her did Nerexxa. The amusement and disdain that had colored her ruined features was wiped away in an instant, instead repced by a growing fury.

  “I didn’t see it at our st meeting, sidering you were hiding the your majority of your being from my sight. But…” Tzo tinued, gazing down at the increasingly livid bloodsucker he held captive. “There is none of the purity or the sacrifice that is io the transformation I willingly uook. I look at you, and I see the shoddy work of a poorly done spiritual phyctery. I was mistaken. You’re not a leech. You’re little better than a parasite, aren’t you? A spiritual existence, you ape the qualities of both a true Spirit and a Lich, in a crudely crafted attempt to bihem. You ihe parent soul of your host and e it gradually, using it as fuel to sustain your existence, all the while puppeting the body of your victim. Only that soul doesn’t st forever, does it? The Aether is ed eventually, and you must flee the host body for another, in order to survive. The sug of blood is an attempt to prolong your existen a flesh puppet, siphoning the vital Aether io lifesblood. And this one is nearly spent, isn’t it? The girl you inhabit only has the barest amount of Aether left to her spirit, and if you hadn’t seized your mon yoddess, you would have had to seek a new host soon.” Tzo ughed. “What agony it must have been, to be forced to linger in a spent host for millenia as you did. I wager you wouldn’t have been capable of awareness for a handful of times in all those years.”

  Nerexxa sneered up at Tzo. “And what of it, human? You call me pathetic, but you are more so. You khe danger I must have posed to your far more pathetic colle of hovels you call a Kingdom, a you did nothing to stop me. What does it matter, that you are more ‘pure’ than I?”

  Tzed, jostling the bloodsucker in an ung manner. “The affairs of the living are for the living,” He said callously. “I only treat with them when I am forced to. But to answer your question…I have to wonder. If your pathetic self is the evidence of your mistress's power…she must be truly inpetent. Perhaps we need no longer fear the might of the ‘gods’.”

  That sent Nerexxa into a greater rage than I had ever seen from the Vampire. She started tle against the bony first that restrained her, scratg and biting uselessly at him. But she was seemingly too weak to actually do anything against the Neancer, in the same way that she had domihose of us who had tried to kill, to prevent…all of this.

  It was vindig to see her brought as low as we had been. I couldn’t stop a vicious smile from creeping ay lips at the sight.

  “You…” Nerexxa seethed, squirming and writhing like the parasite she apparently was. “YOU…how dare you speak of Lady Ixiah in such a manner! You know NOTHING! My mistress is the supreme architect of all that is mystical, in ALL worlds! In all of EXISTENCE!”

  Tzo just gazed down at the Vampire in disdain. “I sincerely doubt that.”

  Nerexxa pletely abandoned her facsimile of humanity then, as the stolen body of Rhiannon grew more and more batlike by the sed. In only seds, her features had transformed from that of a monstrous woman, into that of a full-on monster. She only resembled humanity in basic body pn by now, with no unscaled flesh or hair left on the whole of her self. Once she was finished with her transformation, she screeched wordlessly up at Tzo.

  “And so the fa?ade falls,” He said, almost sounding amused. “The beast beh is revealed. We all know what to do with rabid beasts, though, don’t we?” Seemingly tired of the parasite he had almost effortlessly caught, the bohat held Nerexxa so tightly began to glow a deathly green in color.

  Thus, Nerexxa slowly started to wither in his fist, in a mahat seemed as if all the vitality left iolen host began to be siphoned away. That appeared to shock her out of her bestial fury, as she stopped struggling.

  Instead, she threw her head back to gaze into the sky.

  And spoke.

  “Mighty…Rhazal!” She choked out through rapidly withering vocal cords. “Save…me! It was I…who woke you…from your slumber! It is…I…who desired our Mother’s return…to this…backwater! Save me…so we bask…in her glory once more!”

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  But then…I heard something.

  The grinding of massive scales against stone, as if a gargantuan form shifted in pce from far above us.

  And then…

  A voice. But not a physical one.

  No…

  This spoke straight to the soul.

  WORM.

  THE ERISH.

  THE STRONG SURVIVE.

  DUST…TO DUST.

  I nearly wasn’t able to withstand it. Some i quality to the wordless voice was nearly able to shake my very soul loose from its foundations. I felt my spirit quake within the depths of my being, and I think new cracks formed in the bark of my crystalliree.

  To my side, Liora wasn’t able to take the force of the voice.

  For some reason, her sciousness fled her, while I was able to retain mine. Bleeding from her remaining eye and her furred ears, she slumped in pce, dead to the world. I was able to catch her before she impacted the stone floor of Fort Duality, but she still seemed to be among the living, from the faint breaths exiting her snout. But…she couldn’t help me, anymore.

  I was alone, now.

  That was okay. You’d…done enough, Liora.

  Rest now. And hopefully, I would finish this before you awoke.

  Carefully, I id her against the stone wall we had just been peaking against, which I noticed had gained new cracks. When I was done, I looked around the er. To my surprise, I was just in time to watething I had wanted deeply.

  The final death of Nerexxa.

  “NoOoOoOoO!” The monstrous Vampire wailed into the darkened world around her, as her stolen flesh withered to the point of nothingness. From the feet upwards, she began to dissolve into the dust that the Godbound had seemingly foreseen. It only took moments for her entire lower half to blow away into the wind, uo retain cohesion. Somehow, she turned her head to face the keep as Tzo’s disiion began to creep up past her chest.

  Her eyes met mine.

  “I…” Nerexxa whimpered, seemingly to me, almost pleading from iween monstrous, scaled, stolen lips. “I only wao see my main…”

  That…

  That didn’t excuse a thing you did, monster.

  Die, a us be free of you.

  Those were the st words that she was able to utter before the process was plete. Her head finished crumbling into ash that blew away to join the rest of the murk that had fallen over Elderwyck, from the Godbound’s might.

  Rhiannon of awr had been avenged.

  Silence fell over the courtyard as Tzo dusted off his bck silk robe, almost disdainfully. “And so my debt is fulfilled,” He said, sounding satisfied with himself. When he was done, he looked upwards in much the same way that Nerexxa had, and had the temerity to talk to the Godbound. “Well? Are we done here, then, ‘Rhazal’?” He said, almost sounding rexed. “Will you attempt to take revenge for my sying of one of your mistress's creatures?”

  I goggled at the form of the Lich, floating almost casually in front of a living, breathing Camity and trying to iate with it.

  I think the Godbound itself was a little surprised, because it took a moment for that booming spiritual voice to echo out once more. This time, I k was ing, and so I was able to somehow…brace myself. I don’t even think I could describe how I did it in words. It was like…I was somehow shielding my soul with my c, of all things.

  SUBMIT.

  “Never,” Tzo immediately replied, seemingly not even sidering it for a moment. “True freedom is the goal of all Liches. I will not allow myself to be bound by the yoke of a distant, and inpetent, deity. Not when I have escaped the grasp of something as far beyond her as you are to me. Death itself.”

  THEN…PERISH.

  As a monstrous n of Aether dense murk spiraled down from the sky like a finger from God, Tzo turned his head to face the keep. Log his glowing greeo my own flesh ones, one of them blinked out for a moment, almost like he was winking at me. “I’ll be back,” I heard him say in a rexed manner, just barely audible over the rushing winds. “Eventually…”

  That was the st thing he was able to say before a nearly solid-looking tornado of pure, Aether-filled smoke impacted him.

  In seds, Tzo’s entire physical form was scoured from existence. When the murk passed, nothing remained of the Lich that I had threatened into helping us. Not even the Revenants that had been lurking in the viity of the Lich were spared. They, too, were erased from this world, leaving not a trace behind.

  I could only gape at the instant annihition of someone who was supposed to be on the level of Grey.

  What…what could I possibly do to something that could do that?

  I was frozen in fear for a moment, before something even more terrifying happened.

  The voice addressed me.

  APPROACH, CHILD OF TERRA.

  WE MUST SPEAK.

  I…I…couldn’t move. How could I? I felt the full attention of the Godbound upohen, and it was suffog. I was nothing to this thing.

  I was the grain of dust before the mountain, the shadow beh the bzing sun.

  Aence as far below it as one ossible to go.

  I threateo e undone from the pressure alone, where before I had withstood its voice. My c felt like it ounding and crag from withstanding it.

  A…

  Yet…somehow…

  I stepped forward.