They weren't far now. Just at the end of the staircase was where the tidal thunder emanated from. As Perfuma turned the corner, she finally saw Mermista, surrounded by a small honour guard, an aura of amber-coloured water and many dead or dying Sprikha. While their carapaces were still intact, something grimy seemed to leak out of fallen insect people.
'Mermista!' Perfuma was relieved beyond belief to see her friend alive and, mostly well. Her face had received a couple of shallow scars and something viscous had desperately tried to bite her greaves off, but failed, leaving only deep marks to show for it.
Mermista turned around, her face grimly exhausted. She slowly lowered the mass of liquids she was carrying in the air, but took care not to let it spill. 'Finally decided to help out huh?' She wanted to sound angry, but it was clear that she was still happy to see Perfuma.
'Mermista, I'm so sorry, I didn't think it would be this bad and-' Perfuma was cut off by the sickeningly slimy noise of a nearby Sprikha corpse falling apart. The flesh of the ravenous creature had been dissolved to sludge, pushing apart its own chitinous plating. There was an uneasy silence between the two noblewomen as they both took in the destruction that surrounded them.
'Look Perfuma, it's alright okay? We'll talk about this another time.' She looked past Perfuma for a moment to eye up the reinforcements she brought along, before returning her gaze to the monarch of Plumeria. 'Right now we need to focus our energies into stopping whatever weird ritual those bugs were planning for us.'
Perfuma nodded silently. She knew it would be foolish to retreat, now that they were so close to taking out the ritual. Just as they were about to move out, the head of the nearby dissolving Sprikha unceremoniously fell off with a sloughy thud. The timing would have been comical, if it weren't so gruesome. Mermista looked at the head, then at Perfuma and finally at the water she was carrying.
'Oh by the way, don't drink the water here. I like, have no idea what's in it, but it seems to dissolve anything softer than metal. So yeah…'
Without another word did they press on. The spire's interior was chaotic, and clearly not made with the Etherian ideals of architectural beauty in mind. Most of the walls were earthen, held aloft by industrial metal beams and reinforced by heavy granite plating. Even so, the princesses couldn't deny there was some sort of admirable savage brutality in the style. Closer inspection even belied solid craftsmanship and artistic expression.
Resistance was minimal, worryingly so. There was the occasional roving band of Sprikha that tried their best to end the Etherians, but they were simply no match for the combined destructive force two princesses can bring to bear. While Perfuma still tried to only knock out the attackers, Mermista had no such patience. She would bring down the ruinous tides of flesh-eating liquid to whatever opposed her. Something had snapped inside Salineas' sovereign, but Perfuma couldn't blame her. The death of her troops, the tangy chemical stench that was omnipresent, the cannibalistic Sprikha, all of it was enough to drive most people to anger or desperation.
Their path eventually led them to a pair of gigantic steel doors, on which an eerily familiar symbol was etched. There was a moment of seething silence, as the Etherians looked at the coal black, jagged batwings of Horde Prime's fallen empire. It wasn't the first time they had encountered a civilization that had some remnant Horde iconography while on interstellar expedition, but it was always an unwelcome sight.
The princess of Salineas groaned with annoyance at the mere sight of the accursed icon. 'Not this again.' There was another second of loathing before both princesses tore the gates down with their respective powers. What laid beyond was beyond their expectations. It was a large, circular room, littered with half-withered corpses and covered on all sides in inky black runes. They even reached all the way up to the sealing, forming constellations of madness. A breeze of foul rot blew out of the chamber and into the already agitated nostrils of the Etherians.
The room was like an occult nightmare, with the runes calling forth fears of existential loneliness. Overlooking the ritual pit was a cold, authoritative statue of Horde Prime, surrounded by five of the Sprikha elders. They were clad in in grimy, blood-soaked robes that were supposed to be bright white a long time ago.
Etherians
A wave of malign energy washed over the princesses and their retinues that sent most of them to their knees. The two sovereigns managed to keep their balance, but their troops had all but lost their will to move. Some were sent into fits of hysterical screaming, while others rolled up in foetal balls and started crying.
The Sprikha magi broke off their occult circle and faced the princesses in a horizontal row. They were malformed and corrupted beings. The lush of the burgundy carapace had disappeared, leaving it cracked and pale, with sickening threads of blackish hair gently floating from the many cuts in their natural armour.
'Eminent silencers, we welcome your colours into the death painting of the universe.' It wasn't clear which of the five spoke, or if they all did in perfect synchrony. Whatever the case would be, their voice was filled to the brim with venom and hatred. There also put an emphasis on every s sound they made, making their speech strangely hypnotic.
The princesses were paralyzed, overwhelmed by the sheer number of horrible things that happened at once. Their warriors had been taken out in one fell blast, and now the gore covered creatures wanted to converse.
'The Great Voice spoke through us once, many of your millennia ago.' As they said the name of their deity, they folded their claws together so they would resemble the wings of a bat. 'His words flowed from us to our people, guiding them and banishing the art of magic. It was a unity unlike any other in the universe. Then came the visions of a world far away: Etheria. We could see it all, the faces of our silencers, the face of Voice Slayer She-Ra.'
Mermista was the first one to break out of her stupor. 'Look, I don't want to interrupt this fascinating monologue you're having, but can you like, surrender or at least shut the hell up?' It wasn't typical for her to throw around words like hell, but any patience of dealing with these critters was lost a long time ago when she first set foot inside this fortress.
'Moronic silencer, we have consorted with powers far greater than you!' The twisted creatures seemed to wither slightly with each spoken word, gradually turning from flesh to vaporous shadows. 'When silenced ruled, so too did chaos. Yet with the advent of magic, new voices, greater voices started to flow through us.'
The room seemed to darken, as if light itself was somehow malfunctioning. Shadowy limbs, detached from any recognizable humanoid frames, started dancing on the ceiling and a low thrum started to permeate in the air. Perfuma could swear she could taste ash on the edges of her tongue.
'Their words paint death, the universe itself shall run red with blood!' With those words did the elders wither away into shadow bound abominations. Each had become a writhing mass of half-corporeal limbs that flailed chaotically.
'Fuck that. Perfuma,' Mermista gave Plumeria's monarch a serious, almost intense look. 'You ready?'
Perfuma just nodded stoically and Mermista responded in kind. Whatever darkness was creeping up on them, they would banish it with their combined might. A mixed halo of ocean-and-deep green shrouded the two as they charged the ever-mutable figures.
A volley of amethystine bolts as dense as rain hailed from the dark sorcerers, who drew magic runes similar to that of prince Micah or the deceased Shadow Weaver. Perfuma, with only a single moment to react, managed to block most of the bolts with her arcane roots. As the plant matter was hit however, it startled to shrivel and die, cursed as it were by the malign energies trapped within the bolts. Emerging from the shield of dying plants, was Mermista, carrying with her a flood of chemically imbued water. The elders scattered at the charging monarch, but two were still caught in her raging tide. They uttered cursed profanities as their flesh sizzled away and their vaporous forms dissipated.
While scattering, one of the elders managed to retaliate with force. A slashing whip of ambiguous matter struck Mermista, discolouring the skin it impacted and leaving her screaming in pain. The ocean green aura that surrounded her weakened, and Perfuma could feel her own powers waning as well. Whatever curse that whip slash possessed, seemed to be spreading, withering away skin as it went.
Perfuma wanted to rush to her friend's aid, but was halted by one of the aberrations. They belched forth a swarm of mucus covered, blood drinking flies that homed in on the princess of vegetation. She swatted away the critters before they could do any serious damage, but in the corners of her eyes, she saw how the other elders were moving in to finish off Mermista. She couldn't allow that to happen.
She wouldn't allow that to happen.
An unseen power rippled through her back-bound roots, regenerating them and more. Sharp, spiteful thorns grew out of the vegetation, turning them into ruinous flails. It was Perfuma's last resort, the sheer, unbound rage she held supressed for the entirety of this campaign.
With impunity did she slash apart the elder that dared to stay in her way. Bits of shadow infested flesh and splatters of oily blood rained down in her destructive wake, as she made her way to save Mermista once more.
The raw, unforgiving power that radiated from Plumeria's sovereign awakened something in Mermista too. It was a desperate rage to combat whatever blight had taken hold of her, no matter the consequences. A fell, jagged blade was raised high above her head by one of the elders and struck down with inhuman force. With no other option left, Mermista parried the blade with her own arm, damaging it horribly, but leaving her alive for the time being.
Just as the elder moved in for their next attack, were they torn apart by Perfuma's many blood-seeking roots, showering Mermista partly in oleaginous gore. There was now only one Sprikha mage left standing against the unforgiving tides of the ocean, and the bloody wrath of spring. The princesses gave each other one last approving nod, before utterly obliterating their opponent.