The sky seemed to hesitate.
As if the atmosphere itself didn't know if it wanted to watch what was coming.
The clouds churned like wild animals trapped in a cage, swirling in black spirals. The sunlight disappeared completely. An oppressive aura descended over the battlefield - not like an eclipse, but like the end of all things.
[New Skill Created: Flaming Ray of Emptiness - Rank S]
The electricity surrounding Seth's body was no longer just lightning. It was flame. It was shadow. It was pure destruction. The air around him crackled and melted in unstable waves. The Flames of the Void had merged with the thunder, creating something... unnameable.
Seth rose into the air with an energy-assisted leap, hovering briefly over the battlefield like a doomsday herald.
The Silent Mother saw him.
Her eyes snapped open, the black beams flashing in primal fury.
The smaller spiders stopped for a second, as if their queen was ordering them to watch.
"Take a good look at that, you bug bastards," Seth muttered, his eyes glowing with vivid lightning, "and learn what fear is."
He raised his axes, now crossed in the air, and shouted:
"FLAMING LIGHTNING FROM THE VOID!!!"
The thunder roared like an ancient dragon being released from the bowels of the world. A column of black and purple light tore through the heavens, connecting Seth's axes directly to the celestial vault. From the center of this cataclysm, a single flaming bolt of lightning - thick as a tower, wrapped in black flames and electric coals - fell with the force of a god dying in rage.
It struck the Silent Mother's head with an impact so brutal that the explosion consumed everything around it. Dark clarity enveloped the trees, the orcs, the earth, the sky, and for a second... the world disappeared.
Silence.
A silence so pure that it seemed to have swallowed the sound.
And then came the impact.
The creature's head cracked open, chitinous fragments flying like shards of obsidian. One of its eyes instantly dissolved into boiling goo. An ancient roar - not physical, but mental - echoed in the minds of everyone there. It was as if an entire civilization was being destroyed in that scream.
Kerissa held onto a branch as the shockwave washed over her. "I... I HAVE NO WORDS!"
"THEN STOP TALKING AND SHOOT!" replied Gor'Magh, his eyes watering from the explosion.
The living mass of spiders began to disorganize. Many of them collapsed, as if psychically connected to the entity's mother consciousness. The collective spell faltered.
The Silent Mother staggered. Her head burned. Black flames still danced in the wounds. One of her eyes hung by a grotesque thread. The queen was still alive - but barely.
Seth fell to his knees, exhausted, panting as if he had shouted at the universe itself.
"Kerissa..." he muttered, barely able to stand. "Finish it."
She smiled, eyes shining with emotion, sweat and blood.
"With great pleasure."
She picked up the last arrow of the kind she swore she would never use - made from the thorn of an ancient demon, dipped in forbidden potions and sealed with a forgotten prayer.
She took aim at the last remaining eye.
And with an almost gentle whisper:
"Good night, you eight-legged bitch."
She released the arrow.
A dark green line tore through the air.
And the world stopped once again.
Kerissa's arrow cut through the sky like a final sentence.
It pierced the Silent Mother's remaining eye - with precision, hatred and a hint of magical sarcasm. The explosion was smaller this time, more contained, but still devastating. The creature gave one last soundless roar, staggered... and stopped.
Everything stopped.
The little spiders began to squirm and tumble like broken dolls, letting out squeals that sounded like childish wails. A nauseating silence fell over the field - the kind of silence that comes after the death of something that shouldn't exist.
Seth tried to get up. Kerissa staggered down from the tree. Gor'Magh fell to his knees, laughing and crying at the same time.
But then...
The corpse of the Silent Mother moved.
Her gigantic body began to vibrate, as if it were about to inflate or explode. The legs bent at the wrong angles, then retracted into the torso like the arms of a hellish doll. The carapace cracked - and a vertical crack ran down from the top of the head to the abdomen.
A sickly purple light escaped through the gaps.
And then it came out of itself.
With a wet, horrible sound, a humanoid figure emerged - first the arms, long, thin and with too many fingers. Then the legs, which ended in claws of liquid obsidian. The face was almost beautiful, of a dreadful and impossible beauty. Four vertical eyes shone on skin as pale as marble. Her hair moved like strands of living shadow.
She was naked, shrouded only in veils of darkness that seemed woven with silence.
When she spoke, her voice reverberated within the bones of everyone present.
"You think... you've hurt the Mother? You only freed the Daughter."
Kerissa fell backwards, panting. "Ah, that's it. Now she talks."
Seth looked up, exhausted and incredulous. "Oh, great. Final form. Fuck." He staggered to his feet, blood dripping from a wound in his side.
And then he shouted, "WHERE ARE YOU, YOU PREGNANT FUCK! FUCKING HELP ME!"
Nothing.
The newborn creature floated towards him, fingers elongating into needles.
Kerissa tried to get up, but she had no arrows. Gor'Magh had collapsed on his feet.
Seth spread his arms, shouting, "I'M GOING TO DIE MAKING A JOKE THEN-"
-SHLACK.
A sudden, wet sound cut through the air.
The creature's head tilted to the side, its eyes wide in surprise.
Behind it, stepping out of its own shadow as if it had only been dozing inside all along, Bastet emerged.
Her lithe, feline body shrouded in ethereal veils, her eyes blazing with restrained hatred.
Her teeth were embedded in the creature's throat.
She whispered, her voice muffled by her flesh, "Shut up, you idiot. I needed an opening." And then she bit down with full force.
The creature screamed.
Not with the monstrous voice of before, not with the cosmic pride of one who has mastered fear - but with a human sound. Raw. Genuinely terrified.
It was the cry of something that felt pain... and fear for the first time.
"Fuckin' die, you little bitch!" growled Bastet between her teeth, her voice muffled by the heavenly flesh as she shook her head like a possessed beast. Each jerk was a brutal attempt to tear out the throat of the Daughter of the Silent Mother, but the wretch resisted.
Even with its neck partially torn open and thick blood pouring out like black mist, the creature was still fighting.
One of the deformed arms dug its claws into Bastet's back and pulled hard, opening deep grooves and sparking purple energy. Bastet grunted, but didn't let go. On the contrary - it dug its teeth in even deeper, like a lioness facing prey that has dared to survive too long.
The creature arched its body, struggling, its four vertical eyes blinking out of rhythm, spitting out beams of light that exploded the surrounding trees. The battlefield became an inferno - splinters of rock, sparks, tentacles of shadow coming out of the ground, orcs running and stumbling trying not to be torn apart by random magic.
Kerissa, clinging to the trunk of a half-burnt tree, shouted:
"She won't last long! Seth, it's now or never!"
Seth was already running.
Or rather - flying with the momentum of the Void Flames, his feet barely touching the ground. His weapons seemed lighter than air, heavier than guilt. One in each hand, shrouded in darkness and sparks that made reality tremble around him.
"BASTET, HOLD THAT BASTARD!"
"I'M HOLDING IT, FUCK!" she roared, blood dripping from her mouth, feline eyes burning with pain and hatred.
Seth jumped. He spun in the air. The axes came together in a wide spin, forming an ellipse of pure destruction.
And then - he drove them both in from above, exactly in the middle of the creature's chest.
[FLAMING RAY FROM THE EMPTY - Rank S]
The world shook.
A black, purple and white explosion consumed everything around it in absolute silence. Light was swallowed up, sound was stolen. For an instant, time seemed to stop - as if the universe was deciding whether it still wanted to keep that place in existence.
The Spider's Daughter squirmed violently, every muscle trying to hold on to the life that slipped through her fingers like sand.
And then... her body collapsed.
First the torso, then the arms. The eyes burned from the inside out, bursting into lilac flames. Bastet rolled onto her side, gasping, her face, chest and hands covered in viscous blood.
The silence returned. Real silence this time. No tension, no screams.
Just the dust... and the smell of burnt cosmic flesh.
Kerissa limped down from the tree and looked at the two of them. "So... That was the plan all along, huh?"
Seth spat on the ground. "Of course. All calculated."
Bastet rolled her eyes, coughing up blood and shadow. "Idiots. I almost died."
"You were late," Seth replied, holding out his hand.
"I was taking the shot, you ass."
She accepted his hand anyway, and he pulled her along.
Kerissa looked around. The orcs were starting to get up. Some were shouting victory. Others were just crying.
Gor'Magh was vomiting next to a rock. "I saw... hell... he was wearing high heels..."
The trio looked at each other. Bastet wiped her face with the back of her hand. Seth rolled his shoulders. Kerissa lit a weed cigarette.
"Right," she said, taking a deep drag. "Anyone want to bet how long before another freak shows up?"
Bastet arched an eyebrow. "Don't joke about it."