The Battle Begins in Earnest!
Ruination: Return Chapter XXX
Life, Death, & Other Part III
Akshan never slows, even as the world around him devolves into complete and utter chaos.
The rat might seek to run, so the faster he finds them, the quicker he can go back to being the hero that "Lucian" believed he should be.
He can already hear the tongue wagging she will give him and her eagerness for the rune weapons that hang from his back.
The thought fills him with hope even as the world quakes and crumbles around him.
"What are you doing?" the little voice inside demands, urging him to actually take in the carnage he is ignoring, the cries and pleas for aid buffeting against his forcibly deaf ears.
He keeps running, shutting out the voice, committing to his mission. The Absolver sings as he parts the wraiths that get in their way, seeming almost eager to slay the creatures, to be given over to its original purpose, but that's probably just an iota of guilt trying to confuse him.
He easily makes it to the compound, scampering up walls and racing along roofs to avoid most of the madness.
The guards are frantic, the shrieking dead and scampering void beasts battering at their walls.
Distracted, disorganized, desperate.
All good for him.
He vaults into the courtyard and lets himself vanish into the shadows, pulling on those years on the streets, scrabbling for survival before Shadya saves him.
He had to repay her. Save her.
"And what of the people of this city?" the voice demands again, tricky that one because he swears it sounds less like him and more like her this time.
The wonders of a guilty conscience.
Yet, he perseveres.
In the chaos, he is able to slip into the interior of the compound with the greatest ease. He shifts and weaves his way through the walls, his eyes fighting not to flick toward the sobbing servants, their voices raised to half a dozen divinities.
His trigger finger meanwhile seeks to fire at every soldier that passes his gaze, their stances nervous.
It is a duel of wills, guilt, rage, and focus competing to take charge of him, but for now, the latter reigns.
He begins hearing muffled shouting and the sound of boxes being shifted. Upon reaching the bottom of a flight of stairs, he comes upon a door. Beyond, he can hear many gruffly barking orders. Testing the door, he finds it locked, and with a curious glance beneath the sill, he sees his gaze blocked by the paneling of crates.
"Right," he murmurs to himself, glancing back up the steps and down towards the Absolver, "Loud it is."
He is not sure what it must look like as the door shatters from his impact, propelled like a rocket by the grappling tether attached to his arm. Then, several of the crates collapse as he sends his reinforced boomerang spinning into the room.
The Absolver parts the first soldier from their arm in an instant, holes the next, and his boomerang brutally clubs the third, the last catching the heavy metallic end of his grapple, biting into the side of his face and wrenching him to the ground to finish with a single shot from the Absolver.
Akshan whirls, intent burning, rage roaring in his ears, bearing his teeth as he stares into the eyes of the latest of a long list of bandit lords and corrupt officials he had torn through seeking his mentor's killer.
This will be the one.
The craven was not alone in his attempted safe haven: a woman and her young child clinging to the side.
He proves himself a rat when he moves them before him and crouches. She protests, tears in her eyes, the boy crying.
He feels grief for them, but it comes from a place of pity, thinking a monster like this would value them more than himself.
He has hunted him too long, tricked him into a place he could wait and prepare. Two crying faces will not stop him.
"Not another step!" the rat yells.
He doesn't let another word pass his lips and casts his boomerang out. It ricochets off the wall to his left and cracks into the man's skin, befuddling him. Then he lashes out with his grappling hook. It wraps around the woman and the boy, yet he is careful not to wrap it to hurt them, just to move them out of the way.
"Run, hide," he states, his voice sounding alien: cold and hollow in a way that causes a sick chill to pass through him.
He can't hear the child's pleading voice; all he can hear is his own breath, his own heart, so long ago, frantic, seeking her.
Finding her lying dead on the ground, assailants fleeing, faces obscured, blades wet.
And every face since then, staring at him with the same expression.
Fear.
This will be the one.
"Wait-" and the Absolver interrupts the room, being consumed in a flash of white light.
As the light dies, the man slumps to the ground, and Akshan waits.
And waits.
And waits—the wailing of the wraiths above his only company.
She does not appear, and he hears no hint of her voice. The glow of the Absolver fades once more, and he stands on the body of a villain—just not the right one.
More time is lost, and as he grapples with the embittered and battling voices within himself, another slips on.
"You seek to bend death?" it asks, pleasingly and understandingly, but Akshan can feel the attempt at cunning, the flavor of deceit, "As do I."
"Begone, spirit." Akshan growls, "I am not so easily bent."
"So then, what is this truly a hunt for salvation or a wetting of your own bloodlust?" the voice asks, "A balm for your mistreatment at the hands of men such as this?"
"She did not deserve to die," he returns.
"A pain many feel, a pain none should." the voice states, "Aid me, and I will set it right. A reunion."
"The price?" Akshan demands.
"Something dear to me, kept by feckless thieves and traitors." the voice rasps, "Find him, and claim me my-"
The voice is silenced as a golden bolt of light carves through a tendril of Black Mist, reaching for his ear.
"Are you truly that lost?" Lucian demands as he enters the room, pistols drawn, staring down Akshan, "You are not worthy of that weapon."
Behind him, a woman walks, partially furred with tall feline ears, her golden eyes narrowed, a towering spear in her hands.
"I know." Akshan returns, rounding on Lucian, "And yet I am the one who holds it."
"That voice is not salvation; it is a tyrant, desperate for something no longer his." Lucian states, "Viego, who broke the world in his selfishness."
Akshan's eyes flick down to the basket hanging on Lucian's hip.
"I came to you as an ally; I sought your aid," Lucian warns, "You do not want me as an enemy."
"What of the people? I thought they mattered to you?" Akshan remarks, raising the Absolver.
"He has a point. You argue over an affront to the Hunters while unnatural fiends descend upon this city!" the woman snarls, glaring at Lucian, "Leave him, we must join the fight."
"We will, and the people do matter. They should matter to you, too, and I will fight you if it means I can get back to helping them and my allies sooner." Lucian states, "So what will it be? Give in to your obsession and besmirch your mentor's legacy."
Akshan bristles, light growing along the prongs of the Absolver.
The woman crouches, revealing sharpened teeth and bristling hair.
"Or will you finally help someone other than yourself and honor her?" Lucian finishes.
"I-"
Diana is angry.
No, beyond angry, enraged.
She loathes the Pantheon, she loathes Viego, and yet amongst it all is the complicated mix of love and anger that roils as her blade clashes again and again with Leona.
Not the first time, but there was no shimmer of guilt and memory in her eyes, just searing determination, every cruel aspect of the Solari rit large before her.
Not fair. Never fair, but to force this dance between them, to take away Leona's own will, to bend her to Viego's madness, unforgivable.
"You are stronger than this," she hisses, weaving to avoid the propping, mocking stabs of Pantheon's spear, who seems content to watch this forced clash more than intervene himself.
She pivots, sending Leona's blade into the sand, and sends a bolt of energy towards Pantheon, which cracks off his shield as he expertly shifts it to defend himself.
"I had thought you wanted a bit of al-" he begins to taunt, and her shoulder collides with his shield, sending it clanging against his helm and briefly dazing him. Leona charges for her, and she leaps up, spinning in the air as their shields crack together in a flair of black flame, a shield of moonlight guarding her from harm.
"I long ago tired of your voice, parasite," she growls as she lands, blade spinning in a constant dance, the runes along its length flaring with moonlight.
She lunges, silver fire igniting across her blade. The gleaming light of the moon punches free of the clouds as she lunges for them. The same light colors the edges of her vision as she turns her hateful gaze on the parasite.
There is a scream of metal against metal, a detonation, and sand swiftly crystallizes from heat and pressure as her cold flame consumes it.
Then her vision clears, and he laughs as he sees that standing before her is not the Pantheon but Leona, a bit of blood dripping from her lips, her shield chipped, her sword wavering, yet that near-familiar hate still burns in her eyes.
"Diana, why won't you just let this end?" she asks, her voice distant and detached, bereft of the passion she has always admired.
"Don't, don't you dare use her voice," Diana growls, but she can hear her own pleading undertones in her voice.
'Sun and Moon ever divided, it's funny you thought you ever had a chance." the Pantheon taunts, "They never would have allowed it."
She whirls to face him and feels his spear tear across her stomach.
"Tut, tut, you've gone and gotten yourself distracted; that won't do." he taunts.
She kicks away from Leona, dodging the swing of her blade, and swings with all her might at him.
"This will end, but not how you think and far from what you wish," she remarks, buffering herself. She feels the gentle touch of the moon already knitting her wounds back together.
Viego, the Pantheon, whoever had chosen this path, had made a mistake.
For how much they enjoyed dwelling in darkness, the night is hers, and the moon is full. All she needs is an opening. So she allows the rage to become a mask, looking for the opening she needs as her opponents begin to dance around her once more.
The moon reveals that it guards, its soft touch is a gentle guide, and it is the greatest light amongst the dark, never blinding.
Sight in darkness, illuminating paths through the shadows. Her magic alone has been carved through the Mist before, and she needs no relic weapon to funnel it.
She was a balm to Viego's corruption, as much as Gwen.
All she needs is an opening.
Graves is terrified, and his only lifeline is having the time of his life.
"Shoulda stayed in Bilgewater," he murmurs, twisting and diving away from the rabid attacks of the strange raiders that kept pouring out of the sandstorm.
Many of the elements of their armor and skin markings brought to mind the relatively small water lizards that occasionally floated down the rivers into Bilgewater. The lizards choked the rivers the further you went inland, getting bigger, too.
They all had cracked and sharpened teeth, snapping at him like he'd seen the ornery beasts do as well.
What had Tobias called them, gators?
But Destiny III sends the fools scattering as well as anything.
But they weren't, with the damned wraiths swarming all over like a bunch of kicked wharf rats, though they go for the raiders about as much as they do him and the giant, so it's no big deal.
Those giant vastaya-looking things, on the other hand, were a whole problem and a half.
The ape-looking one had unfurled a second set of blade-tipped arms, and around that point, he thought about cutting and running.
And then the laughing-dog nearly bit his head off, and he got a bit ticked.
"Back off, fido!" he shouts, sending it bouncing across the ground with a shout of Des Tres.
Olaf bellows and headbutts his opponents, a crash of thunder sending the creature to its knees. He then pummels it further to the ground with his twin axes.
He glances at Graves and smiles, revealing bloody teeth, "This is proving to be quite fun!"
"You're insane!" Graves fires back, ducking under a raider strike and crumbling his jaw using Des Tres as a bludgeon.
"When you seek a death worthy of legend, crazy you must be!" Olaf howls, lighting crackling across his form.
Both of the giant vastaya-looking creatures leap to their feet, sharing a glance and nod, and this time, the switch up, the laughing dog pulling a chain free from its body, and the monkey racing towards him, drawing yet another set of hooked blades.
"Damn," he mutters, using the power of Des Tres's shot to move him out of the way of their first strike, and reaches for the cylinder on his hip, hoping to end this fast.
A dagger slices across his wrist, blood spattering the sand, and he glances up to see a sixth pair of arms rising above the thing's shoulders, throwing daggers between its fingers.
"Friggering spider-monkey," he grunts, "That ain't right."
The creatures lets out a moaning cough, attempting to speak, but only nonsense sounds and yowls emerge.
"Ain't right at all," he continues, firing at an oncoming wraith but keeping his eyes locked on the creature, "Right, Des, let's show him what we got."
A bit of warmth passes through the weapon as he lets loose a salvo. All the while, Olaf grapples with the other creature, its great chain hooked and barbed, allowing it to stay just out of his reach. He lashed small cuts that the barbarian merely laughed at, yet his repeated failures to grab the chain clearly began to annoy him.
Des Tres continues barking happily in his hands, blinding flash after flash, sending the wraiths scattering, the "shrapnel" of the shots filling them full of daylight… literally.
The creature shrieks, lashing at him with its half dozen weapons, and he feels their bite before he can roll away.
It bolts at him, moving more like a spider than anything, and he braces to fire one more shot. Then a roar and a crash of thunder send it flying, and the laughing dog slams into it, sending both of them rolling across the sand, ending in an undignified heap.
Graves looks over and sees Olaf, barbed chain wrapped and cutting into his one arm, the other extended in a punch crackling with lightning.
"Pitiful," he spits, hocking a glob of phlegm and blood into the sand.
"Not so sure-" Graves begins, only for Olaf to cut him off by shouting toward the storm.
"Is that all?!" Olaf bellows, "I smell you, beast, old blood and rust and the stink of reptiles. Are you too afraid to fight on your own? I have bested your champions-"
He pauses, catching another charging raider by the throat and burying him in the sand with one hand, a plum shooting into the air. The raider's failing stops as Olaf squeezes, and Graves feels his mouth go dry as something, not thunder, but bestial, rumbles within the towering storm.
"Your followers would fall to the youngest of my people with ease!" Olaf taunts, "Is that why you hide? Because only weak gods appease weak mortals."
"Shut up!" Graves hisses, backing up toward the city's walls, as another snarl shakes the sands.
"What, they are a cow-" Olaf doesn't get to finish the challenges, as he is slammed into the sand with a resounding boom, blood flying and the masonry behind him cracking as a vast crescent of steel rises back into the air.
Its swing had parted the storm, and marching out of it, bigger than the largest ship Graves had ever seen, was a reptilian giant with the head of a gator dressed in warped finery, each gem glowing with the faintest bit of red light.
Graves squints, and his stomach drops slightly as he sees a flickering crown above the goliath's head.
It looks down at him with a snort, razor winds battering the city and him, nearly tearing him off his feet as it licks the blood off its blade.
"Renekton hungers," the creature booms, its voice striking him like a punch to the chest.
He glances at Olaf and nearly swallows his cigar when he sees the barbarian still breathing.
But not conscience, meaning that 'Renekton" 's attention is fully on him.
"Fuck."
Lucian races through the streets, willing himself to go faster and faster, becoming a blur. Wraiths die from his pistols before they can even notice his arrival or passing.
He skids to a halt and rolls, firing two shots clean through a pair of voidborn as they lunged for Ezreal, the younger man too stunned by the emergence of the truly eldritch serpentine entity before them.
He whirls, his eyes narrowing accusingly as he recognizes him, "Where have you been?"
Lucian taps the basket on his hip.
"Recovering the fetter, following a lead, looking for help." Lucian offers, dusting another set of voidborn as they try to escape from the set of thrashing behemoths.
"Mission accomplished?" Ezreal demands, firing several shots as Kai'sa flits around them, carving apart the creatures that writhed about them with ease.
A spear races over his head and pins a leaping voidborn to the ground.
"Not entirely." Nidalee remarks, giving Lucian a pointed side-eye, "But we are here now, let us get rid of these vermin."
"My hunt isn't over," Akshan mutters, not looking at Lucian, staring up at the floor above them, listening, eyes brimming with conflict.
"If you don't stop this singular focus, you're going to hollow yourself out; people need you here tomorrow. The dead can wait." Lucian states, "Believe me, I know."
"I know you know." Akshan notes bitterly, "Why else would you want this?"
He holds up the Absolver.
"Though I'm starting to think it's broken, or it never worked," Akshan remarks, turning the weapon over in his hand.
"If it's futile, then so be it; do what you can now for the people here!" Nidalee demands, looking between them both.
"She's right. Help us protect this place." Lucian asks.
Akshan drops his head, "What was it you said, I'd be left hollow if I kept at this? It's funny you think I haven't already gone past that point."
A smoke bomb hits the ground, and before Lucian can do anything to stop him, Akshan vanishes.
"Then lock in," Kai'sa remarks, "We've got two greater Voidborn here, Rek'sai and Nashor."
She looks up as the two titans continue to shriek and pivot around each other, neither making the first strike, but Lucian can feel the one she names as Nashor is looking at them, one of its smaller heads turned in their direction.
"Nashor has never come this far north; it is a beast of Icathia, solitary and isolated, and one could almost say placid much of the time." Kai'sa remarks, "This isn't normal."
"The other?" Lucian asks.
"Rek'sai, as far as I have learned, she's one of the eldest Voidborn in Shurima; some claim she has even acclimated to it, becoming more Runeterran, whatever that means. She's fully feral, close to an animal as they come, queen bee of her vast hive."
"So, which do we focus on?" Ezreal asks.
Nashor made the answer easy, lashing out with his half-a-dozen twitching near human hands. The Sentinel and Kai'sa opened fire, peppering his hide, to which he shrieked a mighty challenge.
Rek'sai surges forward, but not towards them, cashing directly into the base of Nashor's body and begins clawing and biting into it with a vengeance.
Kai'sa starts, "That is… new."
"The big one then," Nidalee notes with a grin, and she lunges into the air, her claws carving through one of Nashor's flailing arms. She dances out of the way of the larger creatures, trusting her claws over her fangs, not trusting what the blood and flesh of these horrid things could do to her.
"They don't usually-" Lucian begins, pausing as he is forced to dodge one of the grasping hands.
"I've learned their patterns, know their instincts, attempted to hunt them. She's territorial, but I've never seen her attack another of her kind." Kai'sa offers, spinning above a gnashing xer'sai.
Nashor shakes and pivots, trying to shake Rek'sai off of him. Even the house-sized beast is small compared to him.
Lucian narrows his eyes as something flashes in the moonlight atop Nashor's vast head.
"What is that?" he shouts, pointing towards the serpent's head.
The others glance, and Kai'sa's carapace bristles. Atop Nashor's head is another Voidborn, with hints of gold across its carapace. It is shaped vaguely like a jellyfish, its tendrils burrowing into the creature's head.
The jellyfish glows purple briefly, and Nashor shakes his head bellow and then lashes downwards, snapping his main jaws around Rek'sai and tossing her like a ragdoll. She spins through the air, managing to right herself and dive into the sand head first, purple lighting crackling out and creating dreadful spires of black glass.
Nashor rounds on them, snarling and chittering.
"I don't know, "Kai'sa remarks. "It's nothing good;… it smells wrong."
"Isn't all of the Void 'wrong'?" Ezreal demands, sliding beneath another of Nashor's failing arms.
"Yes, but this… it's like an ocean, but not, I don't understand," Kai'sa mutters.
Nashor lunges for them, and Rek'sai bursts free of the sand, headbutting the larger voidborn, only claw coming close to striking the jellyfish. It gleams brightly, and Nashor pivots suddenly, a loud pop sounding as its body moves too quickly for even its alien musculature, and her claws fid his eye instead, carving thick gashes. Nidalee leaps back, circling around the party and glancing at them uncertainly.
'It's controlling him," Lucian notes.
Ezreal blinks and gazes up at it, "Viego couldn't…"
"It's not the Ruination. The stink is wrong," Kai'sa notes.
And as if summoned, the Black Mist begins to pour in from behind them, locking the three of them between a rapidly growing swarm of wraiths and the bitterly battling titans, and the skittering mass at their feet.
"Take care of it, and this might get easier." Lucian states, "Head on a swivel; don't stop for anything!"
"Keep away from Rek'sai. She'll eat you just as eagerly as any of the others. Let her stay focused on Nashor," Kai'sa warns.
Nidalee roars and lunges forward as the others surge apart, weaving, firing, and slashing, two golden beacons and one purple radiant against the frothing dark.
Hands snatch and grab for the basket on Lucian's hip, but he is too swift, focusing most of his magic to keep him moving, slightly lessening the impact of his pistols, but it kept the wraiths mainly on his tail and not the others.
Nidalee is a blur of fury, leaving cloven carapace and tarry blood scattered across the sand as she claws her way through all comers, void born or Ruined, bee-lining for the writhing titans before them.
Ezeal and Kai'sa dart and weave, each aiming to ascend to a different portion of the partially buckled wall.
"Ready?" Ezreal shouts, the bow snapping to life on his gauntlet.
"Yes!" Kai'sa fires back. Every port on her carapace opens, and whiffs of purple fire belch from them.
"Fire!" he shouts.
A golden crescent flies free of his gauntlet, and a barrage of searing purple spheres blast free of Kai'sa.
Both strike Nashor right as Rek'sai tears off one of his arms and chomps it down. The creature shrieks as its carapace craters, and a gout of thick ichor paints the ground.
Nidalee is on it in an instant, clawing up the writhing serpent and leaping high, transforming as he goes. She stares down the jellyfish and, with a thunderous throw, sends her spear towards it.
The jellyfish forces Nashor's head to move, but she lands a glancing blow, its carapace cracking, and it begins to flash frantically.
Nashor dives, and Rek'sai gives chase, tuning the sand into a quaking mass as her brood, scenting blood and following her keen cry, joins her in mobbing the greater Voidborn.
And then it all goes eerily still. Ezreal glances over at Kai'sa, who is panting, her carapace twitching and shifting. Nidalee lands, scooping up her spear and pivoting, ears flat, searching for any sign of either behemoth.
And then, out of the corner of her eye, there is movement.
"Look out!" Kai'sa cries out, lunging for a strange, void creature as it darts towards him. Ezreal whirls to face it, distracted from the carnage.
Again, there are the flecks of gold, and they look nothing like the others that were just writhing about them. They look like fish of the deep ocean.
Ezreal fires, but it dodges out of the way, and he barely manages to weave out of the way as its fanged, eyeless jaws clamp shut.
He glances at it again and freezes, realizing the creature is not actually aiming for him.
Somehow, improbably, it has bitten a chunk out of the Mist, holding it in its jaws as easily as a bird with a seed, and shows no signs of being corrupted.
It seems to look at him even though it has no eyes, and then it is gone, squirming into a crack in the ground. Nidalee's spear cracks into the ground where it vanished a moment too late.
Kai'sa dives at the cracks, digging and clawing, attempting to reach it with near-feral abandon.
"What was-" he begins, and the words die in his throat as Nashor returns, lunging from the sands and catching her in the side of its mouth and clamping down hard, catching her by surprise even as her blades pop to life to defend herself.
"No!" he shouts, firing shot after shot into the thing, but it ignores him, his magic crackling against its roiling hide, dodging its crooked arms as it attempts to crush him into a paste. Its other jaws gnash and bite, fighting to take their own chunks out of her, and all the while, that twitching jellyfish-like Voidborn rests atop its main head.
He can't get a shot. Nidalee snarls and lunges forward but is battered back as the creature's numerous flailing arms reach for her, intent on pulling her to pieces.
Kai'sa grunts and one of her blades finds one of the creature's eyes and digs deep. In a fury, it throws her free with an audible crack that echoes horribly all around them. She hits the sand and rolls, feeling a wetness on her back and… a numbness in her legs.
Blood and viscous purple ichor paint the sands.
Rek'sai barrels into Nashor, knocking it off balance and causing it to swivel. Awful keening fills their air as she clambers up it, biting and tearing at its titanic neck. Nidalee races towards Kai'sa, and the ground boils beneath her. Xer'sai rise to chomp at her legs, causing her to shift and tear into them in turn.
Thunder booms in the distance, and nearer, Diana spins, a silver dervish against the twin figures assailing her.
Lucian opens fire on the creature, aiming expertly at the wound opened up by Kai'sa, but unlike the Ruined and Mistwalkers, his relic pistols seem to harm the creature as little as anything else.
But Ezreal is at Kai'sa's side, her faltering breathing the loudest thing in his ears.
"That… was foolish," she gasps, her mask feebly opening. The carapace's bioluminescence flickers and gutters as it tries to knit itself and her back together, but the wound is too great.
"I don't… I can't…" he stammers, fumbling with his pack even though he knows nothing on hand can fix the wound before him.
Regardless, he places pressure on the wound, fear and grief overtaking him, and he lashes out at the Mist with the other hand as it presses in around them.
"I can help her," Viego's voice murmurs, 'The fetter for her life. Have you not lost enough in your short time in this world?"
"Shut up!" Ezreal snaps and falters as he sees the confusion in Kai'sa's fading eyes.
"Not you," he murmurs, "I don't know what to do."
The battle still rages, Lucian fighting off the titanic voidborn and the surging wraiths desperate for the wicker basket hanging from his hip, and in the distance, the other Sentinels still fight their own titanic battles.
"Ez, it's okay," Kai'sa mutters, smiling slightly. "I always knew… this was how it would end. Just… not so soon."
"No, you're going to be fine, just…" he pauses, looking around—no Senna. No Gwen.
"Diana, if I can get you to Diana, she could—" he begins, but she cuts him off, squeezing his hand with her own. The carapace retracts more and more as it tries to seal the wound.
"She's fighting for her own… life." She murmurs, her eyes unfocused. "I'm not worth the distraction."
"Keeping you alive isn't a distraction!" he shouts, "It-you are so much more than that than a martyr! You-you are… I still owe you, Kai. You can't go."
She laughs, "I already told… you never owed anything," she mumbles, her eyes focusing on his for one keen moment, a tear leaking from her eye.
"I'm glad I got to know you," she states, "What little time we had together was… the best I'd had in a long time. I wish-"
And she's gone.
And the Mist snarls around his heart as it cracks apart.
"Kid!" Lucian shouts.
Nidalee yowls a warning, fighting to reach him still.
"Get. Away." he chokes out, as he grapples with himself attempting to force the Mist out of himself, his scream echoed with the fury of the feral scream of Rek'sai as she is tossed free of Nashor.
And then everything vanishes in a blinding flash of white light.
And Scene!
Next time, the battle for Vekaura reaches its conclusion, and we grow one step closer to the conclusion of this entire saga.
As always, comments, questions, and critiques are appreciated. This has been VerBeeker signing off!