"Gabby, stop!" His sister ripped her axis free and looked up at him. Her eyes were wild, gleaming gold like an animal caught in headlights.

"Felix?"

A flailing, shadowy tendril slapped her off the echo's face. She flailed her left arm, sinking its weapon into Noctis's neck as she was dragged across her collarbone and nearly collided with Felix. The echo screamed and glitched, its pieces trembling away from her attack. Below, more of those golden threads snapped, loosing a whole moonshard from its mount in the echo's chest. It fell with a crash and the Omen Door flickered.

“Watch out!” Felix grabbed his sister but shadowflesh gave way beneath his feet.

He barely made it ten feet before a withered hand slapped him out of the sky.

Pain lanced through Felix’s significance and he was hurtled through the cyclone—but he never let go of Gabby. She screamed something that was swallowed by the wind, and the two of them shot out and crashed into the ground, tearing a deep furrow before fetching up against a massive moonshard.

Gabby was the first to stand, and her dual axes had morphed into a single heavy blade. “Round two, bitch!”

Felix got up, pushing at the shard with a curse. "You gotta stop, Gabby!"

She wasn’t listening. She bent her knees, clearly intent on jumping again—so Felix kicked her in the back of the leg. She gave an indignant squawk and fell, one hand clutching her thigh. “What was that for?!”

“For being stupid!” He stomped over until he loomed above her. “Listen for a single second you enormous idiot! Stop. Attacking. The Goddess.”

"But I can kill it," she said, pushing up onto her side.

"You think I couldn’t? It's not Noctis.”

She went still. “What?”

“Feel it. Do you sense your Bargain? Did you feel it burn you when you attacked?"

That drew her up short. She looked between Felix and the creature. It was hard to make out details through the whirlwind, but it was writhing in clear pain from its wound and two hands had reached up to clasp its split clavicle.

"No. I can't.” She cursed. “And why can't we kill it?"

"Because of that." Felix pointed. "It's an Omen Door.”

“What? Why—”

“You were out. Long story short, my friend is behind that Door.”

She grunted, staring at the cyclone. “Do they usually show up in not-goddesses I want to kill?"

Felix bared his teeth. "No. It was placed there.”

“By who?”

“Look at the shards around it…and the threads holding them."

Gabby sneered. "The Hierophant."

"That's my thought, yeah.”

Still kneeling, Gabby resummoned her greatsword. It spat into existence against the rainsoaked mud, its golden edge boiling the rain as it hit. “Why?”

“To piss me off, I have to assume. The point is, we're keeping it locked down. Ondine has this whirlwind keeping her in place, but we need to open it up.”

“To get your friend out?”

“No, to get my friends in.” Felix smiled. “You're going in, too."

Gabby lifted her eyebrows. “You can do that?”

Felix put out his hand. "You wanna get out of your Bargain, right?"

"...Yes."

He reached out, lifting his sister up from the ground. "Then you need to get stronger. And this is how you do it."

"Fine.” She stared up at the whirlwind, her greatsword morphing into a long spear. “How?"

Felix looked up. "Ondine!"

The Sylphaean Unbound descended from the sky, her wings not even flapping, only stretched wide as wind Mana poured from her into the cyclone.

"What is it, Felix? I'm tearing this creature apart."

"Well, you gotta stop."

Ondine's head snapped to him, her face twisted into incredulity. "Excuse me?”

“I need you to get closer to its chest. I'll hold it in place.” Felix rolled his shoulders, loosening them. “We've got a door to open."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The Echo knew something was amiss.

The moment it rose from the twitching depths of the crater, a nagging sense of unreality assaulted its senses. It remembered…pain and disbelief. Emotions that were so dull now, but had been sharp as knives once before. It remembered a figure of gold…and it remembered her words.

When the wind ceased its howling and the cyclone dropped around it, the Echo did not pause. It surged forward, flesh already reconstituting beneath its potent Will. New limbs, varied as her children, sprang from her emaciated sides, clawing into the earth with skeletal savagery that could not be sated. It knew that it had been hurt—torn free of some promise, it was aware of its unending agony. Words drove it, giving reason to its torment. Words of unassailable Truth, whispered by the clarion voice of the golden one.

Destroy He Who Brought You Low, she had said. Destroy The Fiend.

Crackling stone appeared around it, but the Echo was heedless of their threat. Even when the opalescent rock stabbed through its newgrown limbs, the pain couldn’t take root in its Mind. There was only room for the Words, and they thrummed within it as the Enemy stepped into the air.

He blazed with blue-white and red-gold, his Body a pillar of radiance that extended backwards along paths only the Echo could witness. Its eyes widened as its thick blood ran rampant. The Fiend stood there, balanced atop swirling winds, and that radiance focused.

It roared, its scream shaking the very foundations of reality as the world flexed and rippled. In a rush, the sky turned liquid and the land crackled like broken glaze. Heedless, the Echo tore its arms free of the stone bindings and surged for the Fiend—only to be met by more of the same. A wall thrust upward into its neck, driving its empty chasm partially shut and choking off its dual-toned howl. Stone split, new peaks spearing outward and into the Echo’s throat and back, through the empty face and into its thick skull.

"That should hold her for now."

Felix flexed his scaled hands. They were starting to ache from all of the Mana he was throwing around, but he was ready to do it again. Already his forest of spikes had torn through the Echo’s skull, transforming her entire torso now into a pincushion of opalescent Fiendstone. He grunted, turning his hands up toward the sky. His Will and Intent blazed, tense as iron muscle as he spent the entirety of his Mana stores to shove the Echo upward, exposing its narrow chest.

And the Door.

"Ondine, now!"

She flew in, reaching out with a slender hand. "Corporeal Breach!"

The Skill hit just to the side of the Omen Door, in the space where the moonshards left a narrow gap. There, across shadowflesh, Ondine ripped open reality. Warm light flooded out of it, bright and steady, revealing a corridor tiled with stone, lit by lanterns, and filled with a strident song.

Ondine stared, Spirit quivering. “It worked.”

The Echo screamed through its crowded face and flexed. Spikes of Fiendstone tore free of the earth.

“Beef!” Felix let his Skills sing and more elements congealed into opalescent pillars. “Bring the bug!”

“Hell yeah! Hallow Call!” Behind them, his friend’s laugh rose above the din before being drowned by the thunderous footsteps of a thousand massive legs.

“Jesus wept,” Gabby muttered. “What the heck is that?”

Felix grinned. “Your ride.”

“All aboard the Multipede Express!” Beef sat atop the enormous Risen centipede, plated with copious amounts of chitin armor. Archie, Evie, Kevin, and Shadow were seated behind him, and only Evie looked remotely comfortable. Elowen flew just above them, limned by her purple power. “Next stop, uh…?”

Felix pointed and another slab of Fiendstone dropped into the Echo’s back. It reared up, throwing pieces off as its shadowflesh congealed without the cyclone running. The Omen Door and breach gleamed, impossible to miss.

“…A goddess… Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately.”

Do Not Dare To Cage Me, Fiend! New hands had spawned from its sides, skeletal and malformed, but long enough to thrust their fingers into the ground. They detached, melting down into a wash of liquid black. Shadows rolled across the ground, ankle deep and cold, until the earth began to split.

Face My Children, Born Anew!

Moonshard monstrosities lifted up all around them, their forms almost random. Insect, ape, and serpents mixed without purpose or pattern, filled with heavy plates of moonshards that layered over their chests and backs like armor.

They immediately exploded.

“Precision Mines!” Wendell shouted, landing among the monstrosities like an adult among children. He held his massive dual swords in hand and started laying waste around himself. “Go! We have this!”

Beef and Hallow leaned forward and the Multipede shot ahead, thundering through the shadowy opposition. They splattered before its advance, though a few tried to leap aboard—only to find themselves met with explosive arrows, poisonous vines, and a cold, deadly chain.

Felix didn’t bother to fight. His focus was entirely on the Echo as it tried again to glitch through his Fiendstone. Ondine’s cyclone had been able to contain it, but

He looked to his sister, who was ripping through the battlefield with her greatsword. Each strike loosed a wave of golden light that eradicated a handful of monstrosities, but wherever the moonshards dropped they summoned new horrors to congeal around them.

“Go, Gabby!”

“I’m not leaving you again,” she shouted, tearing through a particularly large ape-scorpion hybrid.

“I appreciate the help but,” Felix grunted and flicked his hand just beyond her. “This might be the only chance you get!”

She grimaced as a new wave of creatures raced for her, only to be met by Felix’s summoned fire. They burned to ash, their rocks careening down into the liquid shadow. She looked back at the Echo, struggling but still trapped. “You have this?”

“I will help him,” Wendell said, landing atop a wriggling shadow serpent. It exploded beneath his massive weight and his swords lopped the heads off of two others. “My Path is complete already.”

Gabby banished her sword and bent her knees. “Fine!”

In an explosion of pure Strength, the Titan launched herself up into the sky. She arced over the battlefield, soaring through thrusting Fiendstone pillars and the glitching flesh of the Echo as it tried to grab her. She was the last to reach the breach, but the Multipede still stood there, stretched upward toward the Echo’s chest, and she landed atop its armored head with an audible crash.

The Risen teetered, but Beef’s outflung hand sent blackened-green Mana surging through its Body. It righted itself, and Gabby stood up.

Hands helped her inside, squeezing through the edges of the breach that even now looked to be shrinking. Then, all of them were in.

It sealed itself, and they were gone.

“Now what?” Wendell asked.

The Echo of Noctis screamed, and a dozen new limbs rose from its shadow slick back. Ichor poured out as it tore at its flesh to be free of his Fiendstone spikes, and a wave of new monstrosities rose up.

“Now we keep it busy.”