Glory of the Fall

Author's Note: We near completion of this contest. Which singular soul will return, making a mess of the world of Tauli?

Don't forget - it's your choices that inform who will survive.

---

Arina slammed her scythe into the ground, standing behind the golden fox. Looking at her with hatred and disgust, "Is this... All that there is to you, Mischief? You're the god of chaos, and nothing more? You scheme and plot, not to take any throne, but just to fuck it all up."

"I can't believe you're not watching this." The fox replied, her orange eyes glowing and wide, "How am I more interesting to you? Your cute little Liz tried to kill her elf! I mean, I always knew the woman was a little unhinged, but I expected it'd take more than that for her to try and kill the reason she has for living!"

"Enough!" Arina yelled, stepping forward and grabbing the fox's shoulder and yanking it around, "I can't let you win this. You know that. I cannot let you use the dragons, to unlock that particular door. I won't."

The fox cracked up laughing, her tails flicking out behind her in glee, "I've broken no rules, my little death goddess. Go ahead. Try and hurt me. I don't think the others will actually let you. Because... If they did... I wouldn't have any reason to follow any of the rules anymore. The treaty would be worthless. So please. Make my fucking century. Hurt me."

"I won't let you win!" Arina drew the woman up into the air by her throat. "Even if it means I fall. I won't let you bring them up. The dragons... Will. Not. Rise!"

"Not rise. No." The kitsune giggled, "Fall. Arina. I'm not going to have a bloody draconid ascend. Why would I want yet another god fucking around with me? That's boring. The dark gods were a failed experiment. They couldn't even beat a fucking cat. They can fuck around in the world, all they want. I don't care. I'm not interested. The Fall... That's... Got my attention."

"F-fall?" Arina's black eyes went wide in terror.

Mischief laughed loudly, and backflipped lightly, planting a foot in Arina's face as the kitsune tossed herself backwards. She landed on her feet, and brushed at her hair. "Yeah. I'm all in. It's for the glory of the fucking Fall."

"Oh, shit." Arina's stomach twisted as she realised it was even worse than she'd thought.

---

It had been easy for Kaden to choose a direction to go, in this endless labyrinth. Though it twisted, turned, and echoed sound in every single direction, he could hear untold destruction coming from a singular point.

As he moved lazily towards the sound of an overly confident enemy, he considered why it was that the nekan goddess had offered him a chance to return. Were he to do so, then the death of a neko would be his greatest priority.

It was possible that an enemy of Luna had backed the cat when she had cut him down. However, Kaden had declared himself to be an enemy of every god, before that moment. He had come very close to becoming one of them, himself.

The gods were myth to most who lived.

They had not been for the emperor. Though he may have been born human, the experiments he had conducted with Menes had opened so many doors, fractured his soul in so many ways, and allowed him to glimpse pieces of the inner workings of reality.

That was how he had come up with his greatest spell. A spell that was unbreakable, an unending enchantment that could only be broken by a spell that could break any spell. Kaden had created it out of his own comprehension of not magic and its workings, but the fundamental underpinnings, the forces that went together to form the illusion of reality.

Magic did not exist. Gravity did not exist. Time and space, matter and void, all of these things were merely remnants of what an observer could grasp from their small and fragile little minds. It was not a reflection of truth, in the grand scheme of things.

Yet somehow... Somehow a mere cat... A neko... Had stolen the power of a dark god... Broken the Divine Gate... And taken the last remnant of his soul and utterly shattered it.

If time had existed, then regathering the pieces of his broken spirit so that he could cross into the afterlife and his permanent punishment, had taken thousands of years.

He had been obliterated by a tiny kitten, giving in to her rage and the taint of her soul. A cursed beast.

Somehow, the God-Emperor of Mankind had come face to face with a useless nothing, and it had completely wiped him off the map. Had his life not ended as violently as it had, she had been preparing to remove him from his throne by both military effort, and political effort. Whichever was necessary.

A foul woman, who didn't even have a name, just a number, had somehow schemed out the last of his existence before he was even aware that she did.

Kaden might have stolen his strength from the demon, Dearst, but it was that nekan piece of shit who had killed that same dark god and taken the remaining strength. After she had broken the Divine Gateway, stolen the magic he had been gathering for his ascent by blowing apart the Crucible.

"By blood begun, by blood undone." Kaden repeated what had once been a promise to himself, but now rang of a sadder philosophy.

He had been destroyed by his own actions.

He remembered the moment when he had died, so painfully. The red and black salamander, thrice pierced by spears formed from the ground, as the last of Kaden's demonic magic burned out. The damn dragon smiling at him, even as her eyes closed for the last time.

Her last words something about her fucking egg.

Then came the squeal, of a broken heart. The catgirl calling out for the useless lizard. In front of his eyes she'd moulted all her fur. More demonic magic than he'd ever witnessed, burning her away and turning her into nothing but a cursed beast.

Her skin flaking off to reveal the muscle and tendon below, stained green by her curse. He remembered her tail falling away from her changing flesh. Teeth growing out of everywhere.

The cursed fuck hadn't even been symmetrical.

She pounced, he became a red smear on the ground.

There was no fight, when Kaden had died. It had been instantaneous. After a long lifetime of fighting, over and over. Surviving so many wars to rise to his position, to take the throne of the empire, and then expand her borders. Filling the Crucible with the living sacrifice of neko and orc.

He was the Immortal of the Menes. A title earned from a lifetime of corrupting magic, and endless sacrifice. He was the God-Emperor of Mankind, a title stolen from the fucking gods themselves.

And he hadn't even managed to put up a fight against a single fucked up cat.

Kaden lazily put out an arm, clotheslining the wildly sprinting elf in the throat. Her feet shot into the air and she fell backwards to the ground with a choking cough.

The neko... Had to be the emissary of one of the gods. She couldn't become a cursed beast like that and come back without the assistance of a god... Then which god had backed the cat against him?

He planted a foot between the elf's breasts and stomped down, crushing her chest with a hideous crack.

Luna had chosen to back him, to bring him back to the world of the living, at the cost of his soul. She was choosing to make him into her weapon, which meant that the one who had led to his slaughter was her enemy.

Efina had taught Kaden almost everything he knew about the gods. He had listened to their myths and tales, learning and adding it to his own personal knowledge and experience of things greater than the mortal realm.

The priestess with an obsession for dark magic, who hated the very existence of humanity, had taught him that the goddess of chaos was a kitsune. The Golden Kitsune. She forged the orcs, using a divine artefact, called the Crucible. He had proven the artefact existed, and stolen its power for himself.

She had also taught him that the Silver Neko, was the opposite of that goddess. Opposing, more than opposite. The nekan goddess wasn't the god of order, but of the moon, the stars, and the night sky. She was the goddess of peace, and freedom.

Once upon a time, Luna was the lover of the Golden Kitsune, whose true name was long forgotten. When the war of the gods had come to a head, all the Betrayer Gods, except for the Golden Kitsune, had been sealed behind the Divine Gateway. A divine construction forged by Luna's own hand.

The elf beneath him finally stopped breathing.

The Golden Kitsune had used it as an opportunity to grow her betrayer gods. Chaos was her nature. She saw a chance where others would see only defeat. However, it had been built by the goddess of the moon.

As a result, worship of chaos was banned and made illegal, whilst the temple had continued to pray to the Silver Neko. The rivalry had grown between the two.

Luna had taken Kaden as her appointed tool, if he was to survive this pathetic little arena.

The cat who had murdered him was doubtless a true servant of chaos.

His devotion to her death would be rewarded.

---

Efina recognised the disgusting light in front of her, as she flowed across the indistinct geometries of this constructed world. Along the threads that bound it together into physical space. She slipped around the weave, flowing across it for a moment, before dripping down its length, and finally swinging from the object with tentacles of broken bone.

She spread out beneath the light, prepared to engulf it, devour it, when something of the light caught her attention and stayed her lack of hands from acting.

It wasn't that she recognised this soul. She didn't care if they were Toofy, she would eat their existence. Rather, though tainted with the light of a pure life, they still had a horror to them. A self-hatred that was beautiful to behold.

The crying form before her, lying on their knees and weeping openly, whilst staring at an untarnished blade, was that of an acquaintance in her mortal life, Lady Elizabeth de Castelle. A woman of political intrigue, who had been attempting to poison and murder her husband for his cruelty.

Tendrils that might be described as tongues, though the presence of shattered finger bones within them might invite another descriptor, rose up out of the ground, and licked at the woman's ankles, tasting her.

The lady's tears stopped, and she started trembling in fear as she noticed the shadow on the ground, spread out around her. The woman's breathing becoming delightfully ragged, her heart a gorgeous drum beat.

Efina's tendrils flicked against the woman's skin again, tasting each droplet of gorgeous sweat. Even as the fear of death rose up in the woman, the overriding taste was one of self-ashamed guilt rather than one that cried for or against the darkness to swallow her up.

The lithe little branches of darkness twisted up around the woman's ankles. Neither binding her in place nor dragging her down into the endless void. A quick ending to this beauty would be a truly heretical act. This was something to be worshipped in the moment. A glory to behold.

Food, to play with.

Efina projected her voice, or something akin to one, from every corner of this space that might be considered a room within the greater labyrinth, if one was as blind to believe that any such labyrinth actually existed in the first place. If one accepted that the gods who toy with mortals might present something truthful to the senses.

"Ssh. Hush now, old friend."

Elizabeth's eyes immediately grew wide, and she clapped both hands to her mouth. Shaking and stinking delightfully of impending realisation and doom, of fear. The woman looked down at the shadows stroking her ankles, before flicking her gaze to try and perceive the limits of the shadow now encompassing her.

It was folly, of course. Efina did still have a form that could just be described as physical, but that meant she cast as many shadows as she inhabited. There was no way for such a fragile creature as this alchemist to determine whether she was present in one or not. She was a twisting, shifting mass of chaotic energy.

Yet, the temptation to present herself to those eyes that did not exist was not a small one. Her once-friend's gaze was an allure almost as great as Toofy's rebellious nature had been to Sai, upon that fateful day when the neko went from planning the seizure of her empire, to taking it.

A shadow cast, and a form slipped slowly up from the ground. A beautesque form of white skin as the darkness dripped away from the naked thing. It looked down upon the Lady Castelle with false pity carved into its features. "Oh, my dear. How is it that you ended up here? Such a cruel ending. You have no magic of your own, do you?"

The knife on the floor between them flashed through the tempting lure, and it immediately collapsed. The strings between puppet and master slashed apart from a poison that even Efina struggled to place. She had been right not to underestimate the Lady's presence in the gods' arena.

Castelle looked immediately down at the shadows still gripping her, and dropped the knife, spreading her hands. "Oh, what's the point? I attacked Xivian. The love that I died for. Kill me. Take this cursed soul from me."

She drew up across the now standing woman's back, embracing her gently from behind. Skeletal and erratic limbs giving it intrinsic force. "Oh, my dear lady. I came for curiosity. I did not come to devour you and free you from your humanity."

"You always hated us, didn't you?" Elizabeth voiced bitterly, "Well, I'm the proof, Efina. I am everything that is wrong with humanity. I guess you finally escaped all that? I'd hardly call this... Human."

"Ssh. I fell, as you did. Our pasts no longer matter, dearest Lady Castelle." Efina whispered back to her, "The game is over. Twenty Four won it for us all. Her reign has always had but one inevitable outcome. A war among the gods. Our presence... Here... Is proof that the clock turns ever onwards."

"I tried to kill Xiv!" Elizabeth wailed, delicious tears running down her cheeks, "Kill me! Please!"

"Not yet. Not yet." She whispered calmly, another physical form rising up out of the ground. This one managing to cup a cheek before the woman flicked the knife from the ground to her hand, slashing the form's throat open.

Efina discarded it, chuckling quietly, "I mean you no harm, old friend. All who come here, each death, provides this construction with power. The gods cannot even be bothered to resurrect their chosen champion without a toy. This... Labyrinth... Is a Crucible, but not for orc. For a singular lost soul. Except, of course, the game has been rigged from the outset. The... Labyrinth... Is attuned to a singular soul. Constructed for it. There is no point in killing you, my dear, because it was built for neither of us."

"Please..." Elizabeth begged her, knife hanging limply in her hand, "Kill me."

Efina gently laid the woman backwards onto the ground. Ignoring her feeble protests as she wrapped her in the softness of shadows like silk. Threads without count, rising into a billowing shape beneath them.

The gentle lie in what Efina had said, of course, was that the labyrinth had neither been constructed, nor had it been grown without the ability to change. The way to stack the deck, and keep the game from falling to chance, was simple enough.

Take these beautiful gifts granted to Efina by Eluthei, and to integrate one soul into another. To carefully graft them together until where one ended and another began would be impossible for anyone to perceive. Mortal, god, or living space of cursed energy.

A tendril kissed gently at Elizabeth's cheek, even as it guided a tear from her cheek. The knife vanished into the ever deepening folds of Efina's form. She rose up slowly, like a silken sheet falling around the woman's legs. Questing upwards with a touch unimagined of the seductress in life.

She hummed as she encapsulated the lady within herself, a childhood rhyme. Counting the steps of leaping between squares. She ticked each off with the removal of a thread, a strap. A discarded piece of clothing. Shredded and merged into the evergrowing whole.

The once-queen of the Companions allowed herself the nostalgia of delighting in her old profession. She'd never touched her old friend like this in life, though she had been more than tempted to. Yet, it had take Twenty Four mere minutes to end up with a stocking covered toe within the woman.

"I've missed you, old friend." Efina whispered, brushing her cheeks, "Let me take your hurting heart away. Not death, but peace."

"Is there a difference, priestess?" Elizabeth asked bitterly.

A cluster of tendrils grew up like vines between the woman's legs. Creeping across where leg met hip, surrounding but avoiding the woman's moistening hotbox. Tasting her, but not tasting of her.

"Of course, my dear lady. But, of course." Efina purred into her ear.

Elizabeth breathed in sharply, "I... I can't have peace. Not after what I did to her."

"It's time to forget the past." Efina whispered, a series of tendril growing up further, bursting along the woman's skin. Surrounding her bellybutton, running up her ribs, before constructing and painting a living bra across her breasts, squeezing tightly against her. "Time to forget who you were."

"S-stop." Elizabeth winced, "I don't deserve this! I deserve death for what I have done!"

A bony shadow brushed against the woman's face, tucking a strand of her fringe behind an ear with careful kindness. "Not death. An ending, but not... The ending. This I promise to you, old friend."

With those words still hovering in the air, she dipped down into the nectar of the once-titled lady. As Elizabeth's eyes burst open, Efina slid herself ever so slowly inside her friend's hungry twat, listening to the instincts of the woman whilst disregarding the actual words.

Elizabeth twisted and writhed within the blanketing shadows clinging to every pore of her flesh. Moaning weakly, biting her lip as she tried to fight against the pleasure invading her senses.

The shifting shadow questing deeper into the woman's softness flowered out open with a burst of fluid and seed. Each tiny object carried further by the force of the seminal explosion, drifting by the barrier and into her womb.

From there, each seed a piece of Efina's corrupted soul, burst again. Some seeds taking root, setting down and into the walls of Elizabeth's flesh. Others were carried even deeper, and yet even more others shifted and swam as they slipped through cell walls and into the bloodstream.

Within a few moments of the moans touch on the frigid air, Efina was spread throughout the fragile human woman's body. Carried by a frantic heart, there was no place left untouched. Deep within the overlapping and cresting folds of the brain, throughout the pulsing muscle in her chest, and stretching all the way down to her dripping snatch.

Frost began to sprout beneath the rolling blanket of shadow, as sweat appeared across Elizabeth's brow. The woman's fingers clutched and pulled at the bed of darkness, as deeper and deeper inside her Efina spread and blossomed.

Kissing gently at her soul.

---

Following the path of the salamander, Khild couldn't help but admire the sheer force that the creature was exuding. She'd fought many salamanders since her death. Some were heroic greats, and others were pitiful whelps, but all had a gift for physical destruction.

However, this particular creature didn't even seem to notice the walls of a god-built labyrinth. Walls four paces thick didn't slow it, as it flew right through them, never slowing, never hesitating. The creature was incapable of believing that it wouldn't be able to make it through.

The distant frustrated roars of the creature spoke of untold glory, as Khild followed carefully, watching and listening for the others within this arena.