The giant cocoon hanging from the ceiling started to glow in response to Helios’ destruction of its minions, filling the room with its emerald glow.

The light coalesced, gathering at the bottom tip of the cocoon. It flowed like water, forming a single shining orb, which hung from the cocoon as if it were a drop of water. As the light left the cocoon it shrivelled up and granted all of its vitality to that single drop, drying out in the process. Only when the entire cocoon had turned ashen did the drop finally descend, falling the tiled floor without a sound. A puddle spread where it had landed, turning the floor into a shimmering mirror that carried only the barest hint of that emerald light.

Helios took a step back, yet a determined glint shone in his eyes. He relaxed his body, but remained ready to attack at any moment. He scanned his surroundings furtively, searching for something. Searching for someone, rather.

He needn’t have, because the cocoon’s theatrical transformation was just about to end. The puddle-like mirror rippled where the drop had landed earlier. The ripple was followed by a rumble, as the water rose up and smoothened out, revealing a mature woman with… ‘attractive’ features. I had a hard time prying my eyes away, in fact. It wasn’t until Emeri gave me a furious kick to the shins that I woke from my reverie.

At that moment, I realised that the women before us lacked any distinctive features, reminiscent of a manakin. Apart from a mouth, that was.

Helios’ eyes became transfixed on the new arrival, but they lacked any of the hypnotic obsession that I had been caught by. He was well aware that she… was his enemy. Yet, he wasn’t attacking her…

He seemed to be waiting for something… but what?

The corners of the woman’s lips turned upwards. Then, she started speaking, her voice ethereal and light. Despite her quiet tone it carried across the chamber, the puddle rippling as a result of the vibrations.

“Why are you here, lost child?” she said, taking a step toward Helios as he stood transfixed. “Why cause such wanton death and destruction?” she continued, taking another. “What plagues you, haunts your every moment?” she asked, now standing right in front of Helios.

“Is it guilt? Or perhaps… grief…”

She pushed his sword aside with slow, deliberate movements, before closing in on him, wrapping her arms around Helios’ neck as his breath became unsteady.

“Allow me to carry your burdens… I can give you the sweetest dreams to chase away your most bitter nightmares…” she whispered in his ear.

Just as I was fearing for the worst, Helios subverted our expectations… by summoning a dagger behind his back and stabbing the woman in the gut, using only a single fluid motion.

The woman stumbled back, gurgling obscenities as she stared Helios down hatefully. Her body collapsed back into the puddle moments later, shattering the mirror as if it had been glass since the beginning. The shards dissolved moments later, leaving no evidence of ever having existed in the first place. It seemed that Helios’ battle wasn’t over yet, though. The cocoon, which I had previously considered a dead husk because of its outward appearance tore open and revealed a monstrosity. A half-moth half-human dropped to the floor below with a wet squelch, flattening the remains of its smaller pods under its sheer weight.

The moth was fully formed, but had a female human torso sticking out of its head like a horn. On its own, the sight would have been odd, but not horrific. The feature that contributed to that specific trait was the fact that the moth’s body was rotting, with large chunks visibly missing. The human torso shared this trait, many of its internal organs being visible from a distance. Nonetheless, the creature was alive… Even the woman seated atop the giant moth was sentient. Perhaps, they were one and the same! I lacked the time to speculate, because the battle was about to start.

“You consider yourself above bliss? Above the hopes and dreams of my children, which you so brutally murdered?! All of them came here seeking my healing, seeking my love! You won’t take that away from any of them anymore!” the half-woman shouted, her voice hoarse and gargling. The moth followed her speech up with an ear-piercing screech, making Emeri and I recoil.

We recovered moments later and noticed that Helios was unfazed by the sight. He spared the creature in front of him no words, perhaps because he couldn’t. Either that, or because he didn’t feel the need to, since he rushed at the moth instead. His sword became covered in a golden storm of mana, his body shining with white light.

The moth reacted with her own mana, a sickly green glow that reminded me of… wait a minute! That mana was an exact match to the mana from the ruins! That… how?

The clash created a violent gale of wind which sent the remainder of the other cocoons flying and tore them apart at the same time. If it wasn’t for Emeri and I being in an intangible state while we watched this battle unfold, the sheer pressure of their mana would have been enough to knock us out, if not kill us.

Unfortunately, sounds and light sources weren’t muted and were just as harsh as they would have been, had we been here in the flesh. We had to cover our eyes at the climax of each clash to maintain our sight and the battle was only starting to intensify with each blow.

I had a hard time following their skill usage, though. Helios seemed to use a rather straightforward tactic of using overpowering strength to defeat his opponent, reminiscent of Peter Arcellus and my own fighting style.

The moth hybrid, on the other hand, was weaving spell matrices into her skills somehow. The thing about spells was that you were able to see what your opponent was doing as they formed them. That was a major downside, which countered spells’ inherent advantage that they could be learned and taught directly, unlike skills that were assigned by the system for the most part.

This… person, however, was negating that disadvantage by layering illusions on her spell matrices, making them appear and disappear when it suited her. Whenever Helios got too close, she would make half a dozen matrices appear. They weren’t necessarily real, though. Similarly, she could hide all of her matrices whenever she was getting ready for a big attack, catching Helios off guard a few times.

Unfortunately for her, her tactics weren’t proving to be enough. Helios’ raw power and endurance were slowly pushing her into a figurative corner. Eventually, even she couldn’t deny that her loss was impending. Helios concluded the battle with a giant rush of mana that shook the entire ziggurat and destroyed whatever remained in the chamber, turning it to ash. His presence flared with power, allowing me to get a glimpse of his essence… the sun. Of course it was…

By the end, Helios held his sword at the woman’s throat, keeping a foot atop the rotting moth collapsed below him. Even now, she seemed to be in disbelief, crying and sobbing as she begged for mercy. Helios answered her please with a dead stare, reigniting her helpless fury.

“Why? Why do this? I gave my children what they wanted… What I wanted! Is that so wrong?! Who are you to decide our fate?!” she roared.

Still, Helios didn’t respond. Still, he waited. Listened.

“Ah… that’s it, isn’t it…” she whispered, her sob turning into a gleeful, intense laugh. “You resent them… The dreams I promised you. The hope of meeting the people you lost. You resent them, because you have died, on the inside.”

She had another burst of laughter. From her grin, it was apparent that while she knew she was about to die, she hadn’t lost.

“You want to continue along this path? Until there are no gods left? Hah! You can’t replace us… You’re no better than us! In fact, you’re worse! You have nothing left to give, after all. While we gave so much… Know this, child. The gods are only a reflection of the hearts of men. I gave them what they wanted, as will you.”

Finally, she fell silent.

The room remained deathly still for a moment, as Emeri and I expected to hear the final strike. The execution… Instead, a new voice filled the silence. One that had, until now, remained unused.

“You are right. You and I are the same… except for one thing. I listen to the voices and the cries of all those whom I kill. I will carry their burdens beyond their death. ALL of them… including yours.”

With that single statement, Helios finished the deed, cutting the entire beast in half with a single cleave. The woman seemed oddly as piece as she died.

The vision shimmered and before we knew it, Emeri and I were thrown out. Left to stare at a statue of a beautiful butterfly stretching its wings, I couldn’t help but feel insignificant.