“You are all fools.” X shouted, a hoarse growl to his voice. Celeste pulled free from Kriss then and rose, looking out at Morkad locked in battle with Gardinal. “The Chaos seeks your soul child, and I have promised its delivery.” He laughed then, a disturbing cackle that echoed into the night as he beat against Gardinal’s bulwark. Kriss stepped up in front of her, the half of his spear once more in hand, staring out at X himself. “With but your sacrifice, it has promised me the power to burn your kingdom to ash.” X continued to shout.

Grasping Gardinal’s shield, X ripped the shield from him as his hands burned where it met metal. “I will dance in the ashes of your children girl.” X howled, battering Gardinal down with his own shield. “Only then will I know justice.” With a sudden kick to the head, X knocked Gardinal sprawling to the ground.

Dropping the shield, X stared out at Celeste, cool gaze digging into her. With his beastlike hand X slashed across his chest, blood staining the black claws. With a backhanded wave, droplets of blood flew through towards her, bursting into flame as they arched through the air.

Arabella and Valleresa leapt before her, fire flickering over their skin. Hitting Arabella’s cheek it wrapped around her face, blackening her entire jaw. Valleresa hit the earth with hand wide burns all over her chest and stomach.

A single droplet of flame reached Celeste. She gasped as it spread from her left cheek back to her ear. She howled in pain as her flesh seared, the pungent scent of burning hair and flesh filling her nostrils. Stumbling to her hands and knees she breathed heavily, trying desperately to regain focus.

“Where is your Ethinia child?” Looking up, Celeste saw X striding toward her with a twisted grin on his face. “Where is She to stop me?” X shook his head and laughed. “Here on your hallowed ground, you are as helpless as a…”

X was cut off as Gardinal tackled him to the ground, shield and hammer left behind.

“You!” Gardinal shouted, slamming his fist into the man’s face. “Dare strike Her Radiance!” Slamming fist after fist into the man, Gardinal crushed bone. X simply laughed. As flesh tore and bone cracked, chitin and tight leathery red skin replaced it. Reaching down Gardinal grabbed one of the pointed red pieces of chitin, ripped it free, and stabbed it down into X’s eye. The eye burst and was replaced by a yellow one with slit irises in seconds. Gardinal didn’t stop, his shouts replaced with bestial roars as he grasped a chunk of broken marble and began bashing it into X’s face. Gardinal sat atop the man, trying to crush his skull. To crush Morkad’s skull. The grandson of her friend. A child of Ethinia.

“Gardinal!” Celeste shouted in panic. “You’re killing him!”

Gardinal turned to her and snarled, looking more daemon than priest. Celeste shied back instinctively, stumbling away from the brutality. Gardinal froze, his eyes focusing on her.

In that split second of delay, X reached up and slashed across Gardinal’s face. Five sharp claws ripping from forehead to chin across the left side of his face. Gardinal stumbled back for a moment, and X scrambled free.

Celeste’s heart stopped as the twisted man that had been a Korek looked at her. His one normal eye and one daemonic yellow burrowing into her. In that moment, looking at him, she saw a spark of a soul behind those eyes. Like a dying candle, it was being consumed by darkness.

“Do you see me girl?” He sneered, his voice coming out different now, like a forge fire it crackled. “This is the true face of the Korek. What we are meant to be.”

“No.” Celeste gasped, stumbling back. “Your people denied this. They turned to the Mother and found salvation.”

“We found only servitude.” He sneered, stepping toward her. “But I will free us from the shackles of your Pantheon.”

Charlotte cawed as she fell from the sky, her claws digging into X’s scalp. Waving his hand frantically at the bird he stumbled back, batting her away. An arrow burst through his shoulder, then another through his left leg, then a third through the right. The arrows cut clean through him, and X fell to his knees. Then, from behind X, Kriss appeared thrusting the top half of his spear through the man’s leg and into the earth below. With his other hand, Kriss tossed a hammer over the man’s head that was caught by Gardinal who stepped up between X and Celeste.

“Your time is over heretic.” Gardinal growled as he backhanded the man. Gardinal hefted the weapon in two hands, wielding it like a smith ready to strike steel.

“Gardinal no.” Celeste cried out, but as she moved to approach him, Valleresa and Arabella held her back.

Gardinal swung the hammer down at the man with a roar. The heavy weapon stopped above X, his outstretched claw grasping its shaft. In a flash X pulled Gardinal into him, flipping the stout man over his shoulder and into Kriss. Both men went tumbling to the earth as X rose, locking his eyes back to Celeste. “You are all so weak.” He sneered, then twisting his still normal hand, he revealed a tattoo on his wrist of an X. “And you shall die as the vermin you are.” X slammed his clawed hand into the tattoo.

Power unlike anything Celeste had ever experienced exploded out of the man. Like a tidal wave of black smoke it burst out of X, throwing Gardinal bodily aside, Kriss went skittering across the cobblestones at the force of the blast, his fingers desperately scrambling for some sort of hold on the cobblestones.

Celeste fell to her knees, the presence of the Chaos pressing down against her as though a mountain had been dropped atop her. The smokey darkness seeped into her ears, her mouth, the rotten darkness pressing against her soul. It filled her veins, causing them all to burn. It was all consuming, all destroying. It was the cruel march of time, bringing kingdoms to rubble, and empires to ash. It was the ageing of a loved one, marked with pain and suffering. The disease of an infant, gone before their time. It was the sickness that took whole villages made manifest, and it seeped out of this man like an unending fount of darkness. There was no mercy here, no salvation. Time had no mercy, death their only solace from the Chaos.

Celeste looked up as X rose, his whole body wrapped in the twisting darkness that left her stunned.

“Do you finally see it girl?” He laughed, any vestiges of mortality gone from his voice. “The Chaos consumes all, ends all.” He smiled once more, a wide toothy grin, crisp and white against the smokey black that enveloped him. “And I, am the harbinger of Chaos.”