Chapter 158 The Prince Of Darkness
Chapter 158 The Prince Of Darkness
Creatures crawled out of every corner of the realm — in their millions.
Dragons, wraiths, wyrms, things that had once been sworn to guard the cosmic phage, now corrupted past recognition by the Primordial Darkness. Dark mist rolled off their bodies in heavy, rotting sheets, snarling, teeth bared to the dark.
"Zuri?" Yuna's face flared brighter, wary.
"Mm." He hummed low in his throat. "He's here."
A shockwave rippled from the center of the phage, loud enough to shake the void itself. The creatures shrieked at the disturbance, and then, as if on a single signal, surged forward as one toward the protective orb.
"This should be easy enough." Night-bringer pulsed with light in Yuna's grip. "Let them come."
But the horde vanished the instant she raised the staff, and the empty space where they'd been erupted into chaos, the creatures tearing into each other in their absence.
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"THE THEATRICS WEREN'T NECESSARY."
Erebus's voice reached them before they saw him. He had already warped them into his presence.
Zuri and Yuna stood now at the heart of the cosmic phage, where Erebus sat upon a throne built like an orrery — a power source in its own right, veins of light running through it and stretching off into the distance, feeding into a furnace where molten earth churned and hissed, radiating a heat that had no business existing in a place like this.
"Were you afraid I'd swat your minions like flies, Erebus?" Zuri struck his staff once against the ground.
"Of course not, Darkmoon." Erebus's came normal, no longer sounding like the world itself speaking. He rose from the throne, harnessed chains running along both arms. "I only meant to spare you the inconvenience. I pulled my army back before your wrath. It'll be a waste of good numbers otherwise. Besides." A soft, wrong little laugh. "They were never truly mine. The Draugr and the rest, they simply bend to whatever will suits them best."
His form was wrong too. Not radiant, not the towering menace either of them had braced for.
To put it plainly, Erebus looked sick. His eyes carried veins of light like molten rock, coarse and cracked. His body was crumbling at the edges even as he stood.
"Is this the price of infinite power, Erebus?" Zuri stepped closer, slow. "Rotting from the inside, corrupted by the very Darkness you serve?"
"It is emancipation, Darkmoon." He stopped short, held back by the chain harness binding him to the throne. "This is the only thing I have ever truly wanted. Not power. Not some golden seat, some glittering pantheon and a realm to call my own. I wanted an end, to usher in what came before, and what will come after. To burn down a system built crooked from the start."
"By unmaking all of reality." Yuna's voice was quiet, cutting. "That's your idea of a solution?"
"IT IS HOW YOU ATTAIN EQUALITY!"
Erebus's scream echoed through the chamber, broken, panicked, raw. The heart of the phage pulsed with him, shuddering so violently that both of them had to plant their feet to stay upright.
When the tremor passed, he spoke again, quieter.
"This is my idea of balance, Darkmoon. All of it, returned to the nothing it came from."
"I understand how you feel, Erebus." Yuna said it softly.
"Do you?" His attention swung to her fully now. "You sit in your gilded realm of thrones and marble statues, rivers of milk and honey, worshippers kneeling to feed your essence, while beings like us were left to rot at the bottom of the food chain you never had to climb. Your precious Hands of Creation, biased, corrupt little concepts, wove this reality however suited them, then had the nerve to call one half of it divine and the other evil. What could you possibly understand about that, Trivia? You are far too young to know the first thing about existence."
"Unraveling what's just because you feel cheated and abandoned, that isn't a solution, Erebus. It's madness." Zuri closed the distance and struck an invisible wall, a shield holding fast around the throne. "There are other ways to settle grievances like yours. Demand an audience with the Creators. Call on the other custodians of the cosmic order. We would stand beside you, make certain your voice was heard. This isn't the answer."
"I am past diplomacy now, Darkmoon. Your words carry no weight with me anymore." Erebus's smile turned thin. "Where were you custodians when we were cast into ruin? You all drank from the same river of luxury and comfortable ignorance. You are no different from the Hands yourselves. But it hardly matters now, the wheel is already turning, and I intend to be the one who keeps it moving until everything ever made is wiped clean. The Primordial Darkness agrees with me. It isn't a friend, it doesn't know what friendship is, but our purpose aligns well enough: the unmaking of all things. Whether it costs me my existence changes nothing. I died a thousand years ago in every way that mattered. This is simply the dream finishing what it started. Tell your Creators — once this reality is gone, I am coming for theirs next. Let them watch their own unmaking by the very weapon they built with their own hands." He paused, eyes flashing with a dying crimson light. "But that isn't why I called you here."
"Then why summon us at all," Yuna asked, "when you knew full well we were coming to stop you?"
"This was always the plan." The chains along his arms rattled as he spoke. "The annihilation of the world was only ever the distraction. What I truly wanted was this — to see you both. The prince of darkness, and the one being I believed might actually understand this pain, because you've lived a version of it yourself. Not only you, Darkmoon. You as well, Trivia."
"Me?" Yuna's voice caught.
"Yes, you." He let the words settle before continuing. "Do you remember how Mene was chosen over you as the moon goddess? The pain of that. The malice you carried before you swore war and ruin just to take back what you believed was yours. And you, Darkmoon." His head tilted toward Zuri. "Don't pretend you don't understand exactly what I mean. A lesser god, a nobody, chosen over you. Khonshu. The one deity who was ever truly beyond your reach. His rise, his usurpation of your seat, was that not simply the sentence you passed on him yourself?"
Neither of them answered.
"Guilt. Beings like us don't let something so small drive us, do we?" Erebus went on. "If anything, I admire what you did, Darkmoon. The Darkmoon endures. I'm rooting for you, in truth. Take what belongs to you, by force, if it comes to that. That is no different from what I am doing now. Only mine is done on a wider, more honest scale: return everything to the Primordial Darkness from which it first came. A necessary cruelty."
"Don't you dare compare what you're doing to us." Zuri's voice dropped, sharpened. "We are not saints, Erebus, but we are not unmaking reality to soothe our own wounds. This is madness. You've been swallowed by delusion, the Primordial Darkness has its leash on you now, whether you can feel it or not. You were never its master, Erebus. You are its slave, always have. And I intend to see you ended."
His grip tightened on the scepter, and power answered the motion, rolling off him in a slow wave. "The Darkmoon will be your end, Erebus."
Erebus laughed, loud, unguarded, delighted.
"My end?" His expression twisted into something closer to hunger. "Then come and get me, Darkmoon."
His eyes burned a deeper crimson, and the protective shield around the throne dropped away without a sound.