A/N: Hi y'all! Sorry, I almost completely forgot about my promise to post this chapter this week. I'm currently pretty sick (I don't think it's COVID, thank God - just a sore throat, runny nose, and the Sick Feeling™) and I have had... a Week at my summer job. But God's pulling me through it and I'm gonna be okay. Also doesn't hurt that Genshin Impact just released a new region of the game this week lol.

Morgarath is completely OOC from RA, but I had fun so I don't care lol.

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Will stepped back, another step closer to the elevator. The sudden pounding in his temples was unbearable and almost sent him to his knees. He opened his mouth, trying to remember how to speak. His lungs had almost forgotten it.

"I'm... I'm not your sacrifice."

Morgarath laughed. In his current form, he towered over Will, taller than even the Olympians' natural forms at nearly thirty feet. Every part of his body was a horrifying blend of Tartarus: his eyes blazed like the Phlegethon; his hair flowed with the Lethe. The sharp rocks of Tartarus covered him like armor, and an overwhelming stench of sulfur emanated from him.

"No? Then why did you hear me calling for you?"

"That- that wasn't- they all did, too."

"Now, now," Morgarath said patronizingly. "Don't play pretend with me. You know very well that they did not. Isn't that right?"

He directed his gaze behind Will towards the elevator. Will turned, following it. Alyss, Cassandra, Erak, and Horace were all staring at them in horror. Alyss looked an instant from bolting towards them, Erak's grip on her arm the only thing stopping her.

"See," Morgarath said, turning back to Will, "none of them have any idea what we're talking about. Are you still going to deny it? You are my sacrifice. You were fated to be. A child of light, descending into darkness to free it... how poetic."

Will took another step back, and another. He went to raise his dagger, only to find that it was gone. What? What had he been using to fight, then? Recalling his fight of only moments ago was like recalling a dream - already slipping past his grasp.

"I'm not your sacrifice. I won't free you. The gods trapped you down here for a reason - I'm not letting you get out."

Morgarath rolled his eyes - a sickening feat, given that his eyes were flowing fire. "The gods? Why would you support the gods, Will?"

"I-" Will hesitated. "It's the right thing to do."

More laughter. "Listen to you moralizing, as though the gods have ever been anything other than a force of chaos and evil into this world. Tell me, what is it you love so much about them? Is it the fact that your father, Apollo, abandoned you at birth and allowed you to be abused and live on the streets? Is it how Zeus was ready to execute you when, through no fault of your own, you were blackmailed into betraying the Ranger Corps? Oh - or, perhaps you love Styx, how she brutally tortured your mentor, Halt, for doing the same thing that gods do all the time - break their oaths."

Will's ears were ringing so loudly he could barely hear a thing. He pressed a hand to his head. "Of course not."

"Tell me, when have they ever benefitted you? Did Apollo, when he refused to let his Rangers rescue you from being tortured by Temujai?"

"So what?" Will scowled at him. "I've never pretended they're good, but letting you out is still wrong!"

Morgarath tilted his head. He was still smirking. "Oh? Why?"

"Because you and Gaea want to destroy the gods and take back the earth for yourselves! Don't lie, you'll kill millions, if not billions, of humans in the process!"

"Only because the Olympian gods will fight back. If they didn't, it would be peaceful."

Will huffed. "Liar."

"Why so hostile, Will?" Morgarath took a step forward. With his height, it was easily three of Will's. Will took a few steps back to make up for it. "I'm hurt. Don't you like my gift?"

"Gift? What gift?"

Morgarath tsk'ed. "Surely you didn't think your new ability to take others' life force was natural?"

Behind Will, he could hear Alyss' gasp from thirty feet away. He swallowed. "I- the inscription, I thought-"

"Yes, yes." Morgarath sounded patronizing again. "The inscription. You did think it was just natural - a sign of your powers growing, I take it? You may be right, but who do you think spurred the growth?"

"Apollo links light and life force together." Morgarath was right, Will had thought that his new abilities were just the next step of growth of his powers. They were two things Will had always had. "Light" - the ability to generate and manipulate light by his own strength. "Life force" - the ability to generate and manipulate life. Before Tartarus, Will had used that ability to heal others, using his own energy to feed their life force instead of using one of Apollo's hymns, like most of Apollo's children did.

It wasn't until he read that inscription that he had found another use for such power.

"You really aren't better than Ferris," Morgarath said, shaking his head. "You've been taking other people's life force to replenish your own since - oh, practically the first moment you stepped foot in my territory."

Will gritted his teeth. The time he'd healed Alyss when they'd first landed. He'd healed her, but taken her energy to replenish his. He didn't think she'd noticed. He hadn't even noticed - not until later. Not until he'd read the inscription.

"I'm not like him," Will hissed. "I don't know what you're trying to do - turn me to you, or-"

"Turn you to me?" Morgarath asked, laughing. "No, no. Your fate is already sealed as my sacrifice. You will die here. Alone, friendless, betrayed - can't you see how close they are to leaving you right now?"

Will spun towards the elevator, eyes wide. It was his fatal mistake.

The moment he took his eyes off of Morgarath, a frisson of dark power erupted behind him. He turned back, but too late - Morgarath was in front of him, dark sword raised and already descending towards him. Will threw himself to the side, but too slowly. Morgarath's sword cut his side, and Will gasped in pain, holding a hand over it as he staggered to his feet. His overuse of his powers earlier had already taken a serious toll, and the toll was only made more apparent every second. He was too tired to fight anymore, every part of his body screaming in pain, all his senses impaired at least partially.

Grunting, Will glanced back at the elevator once more. Would they... were they actually going to leave him?

"Come on, Will!" Morgarath taunted, drawing Will's attention back to him. "You have those powers - use them! I gave them to you, after all."

"'Gave them to me'?" Will spat, drawing his fingers away from his side, sticky with blood. He staggered again. "My father gave them to me, not you. How dare you pretend you're anything like a god?"

"Oh, but I am. Surely you know I am a deity, a primordial one at that? I have power far greater than any individual god, for I created so many of them myself. If the gods have the ability to grant power to mortals, how much greater must the powers be that I give!"

"My powers are not yours," Will said - nearly snarled. "I know what Apollo gave me, and it's nothing like what you are. He gave me light, the ability to heal-"

"And it was only once you were down here that you were able to twist those powers and use them for your self, was it not?" Morgarath advanced again, and Will scrambled to move back. He needed medical attention and quickly. What he wouldn't give for ambrosia right now. "So few mortals ever fall down into here - I have to amuse myself somehow, yes? I give all of you just a little bit of my power - just a little push. And it always has such lovely results."

"Will!" came Alyss' voice from behind. "We need to get going! Turn around and run!"

Will gritted his teeth. Run, in his condition? He didn't think he could manage it.

"For you, it was the ability to turn your healing ability, once an ability that healed others at your expense, into one that healed yourself at theirs. That is the link between your light and your healing - they are both just forms of energy to manipulate. But you were hardly the only one! Through the centuries, I have helped countless others - that son of Poseidon, to manipulate poison instead of just water, for instance - and most recently, even your own friends. Did you not wonder how Cassandra suddenly learned to use her magic to put others to sleep? Or how Horace suddenly learned to enrage others? Or even Alyss, fighting in a way she has never fought before."

"That- that..." Will heard his friends gasp behind him, and wondered if their horror was as great as his own. To realize that, all along, his own powers - a part of himself - had not really been his own? That they had been manipulated, and for evil, every step he'd taken through Tartarus?

Without warning, Morgarath struck again, a flash of black juxtaposed against a blood-red sky. Will seized the dregs of his power and threw a shield up against it, crying out as Morgarath's darkness blasted through, throwing Will backwards. He landed hard on the side Morgarath had hit, but as he looked up, he saw he was only a few scarce yards away from the elevator. If he just moved-

Morgarath's next blow hit him in the chest, ripping through Will's fragile shield like paper. Will screamed, a scream that cut off partway as his lungs gave out. He choked, then choked again, trying to summon up his next breath and failing. He glanced again at the elevator, at Alyss, reaching for him. The world was spinning around him; his head felt hot and cold at once. He realized in a daze that he was dying.

As Morgarath's thunderous footsteps approached him, Will took a final look at the elevator. Alyss was straining against Erak with all her strength, while his face was dark and solemn. Cassandra's face was buried in Horace's shoulder, unable to watch, and tears glistened in Horace's eyes.

With a sad, quiet resolve, Will knew what had to happen.

"Go," he gasped out with what little air he could find. His lungs had been punctured - he could barely take a breath, let alone speak. "Go... on... without me."

"WILL!"

With a violent jerk, Alyss tore off Erak's grip and ripped away from him, throwing herself out of the elevator and sprinting towards him. "No, Will!"

Erak grabbed her before she could make it far, holding her tight and dragging her back to the elevator. Alyss screamed and thrashed, scratching and biting and ripping at the Skandian with everything she had, but she was no match for the Skandian. She yelled again, "WILL!"

"They need..." Will got out, so quiet compared to Alyss' screams he wondered if they would even hear him. "...a second... sacrifice. Don't... don't let them... get it."

Erak shoved Alyss into the elevator with a brutal push. He met Will's gaze, and the two of them shared a long look. Will slowly nodded.

"Go," he said again.

Erak stayed still, and for a moment Will wondered if he would go. At last he nodded, and Will wondered with his last moments if that was a tear he saw, shining on Erak's cheek.

"May the Norns bless you," Erak said. He hit the button on the elevator and stepped in. The last thing Will saw was Alyss' stricken, tear-ridden face, her hands straining towards him.

Then the door shut.

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A/N: So... this is why I promised to bring the next few chapters on a weekly schedule. It just felt too cruel to leave you on this chapter for who knows how long.

*** FOR YOUR INFORMATION, this IS still going to have a happy ending! I'm just a very mean person who likes to take her sweet time getting there! Idk about you guys, but there's nothing I hate more than watching my favorite characters sweat and cry and bleed and it all amounts to nothing in the end, or their efforts are all in vain. This story will not be that. As a Christian, life DOES have a happy ending, and so this story does, too. After all - suffering only has meaning and purpose when the ending to a story and a life is a good one.

I'll see you all next week :)