Nothing But Pain Remains Part IV: Skybreaker

Cold. Everything felt cold.

Her familiar was silent as he lay crumpled at her feet. Shivers of shock caused Izhari’s face to spasm as she tried to deny what she was feeling. She was alive, so he wasn’t dead. But something was wrong.

“W-what did you do?” she pleaded to Mathael, who was buckled over in exhaustion.

The great maji laughed a hateful, violent laugh as he coughed blood.

“I silenced him. I’m shocked it didn’t kill him. But go on. Try and think of a memory with him,” Mathael taunted.

To her terror, Izhari’s mind went blank when she tried to recall something of Tomita. Anything. His voice. His scent. A laugh. A gentle embrace. A phrase. Nothing.

She knew that she knew all of those things, but none of it was being recalled.

“I broke his mind, and thus I broke whatever was of him in your mind. I wanted you to know that you had forgotten him!” Mathael spat.

Convulsions and hysteria began to seize Izhari as the blue glow in her eyes sputtered then faded away.

“Why? Why would you do that?” she cried out in shock.

Mathael stood and balanced himself in defiant success as he looked down at the broken bodies beneath him.

“Because I wanted you to suffer. May you curse the day you ever dreamt of challenging me,” he said as he raised a single hand to the heavens.

Twitches shook Izhari’s small body as something in her psyche broke for good. Mathael could not see it, but the black glow of her eyes began to spread from her eye sockets and out onto her face. It crept in silence like a horde of ants, moving outward across her brows, cheeks, and snout, then down her neck.

Behind her, a white vortex of light gathered in Mathael’s palm as he charged his mind for a final blow.

Tremors shook the small creature as the black spread and reached her back. Spikes of unstable energy leapt across her shoulders. Shaky, weak breaths began to build into grunts of rage.

Mathael’s hand lowered with the energy now condensed into a sphere of swirling energy. Without a word, he released the charge straight at Izhari’s back.

It ripped across the sky with murderous intent, but when it reached its target, the beam merely disappeared into her body as though passing through a portal.

Mathael flinched in surprise and snarled as he fired another charge of energy that was also absorbed by the spreading darkness that had now covered nearly all of Izhari’s body.

Shaking, haunting voices echoed from her mouth as she turned, dead-eyed, to face Mathael.

“Suffffffffeeeerrrrrr? Suffer?...” it asked as it hunched forward to stand.

Upon seeing the abomination, Mathael realized what was happening.

The Void had consumed Izhari.

“I have only ever suffered. Ihaveonlyeversuffered. That man thatman waswas the only good thing theonlygoodthing to ever exist toeverexist in this world…” the darkness growled as blood red tears ran from its eyes like open faucets.

Smoke drifted from its body as it forced itself to stand. Mathael took a step back in fear as he fired off more bursts of energy but nothing happened. Above them, the thunder stopped. There was no more energy pulsing in the clouds. Everything had gone still, save for a haunting drone that was building in the sky.

The beast began to tremble as it wept and clawed at its face. Bursts of pure Void exploded out with every sob. As the concussions spread, they left lines of emptiness in their wake, as though all of space, time, and reality had been wiped away with a darkened eraser. It took all of Mathael’s power to block the Void bursts from tearing into him.

Izhari’s claws tore into her flesh with uncontrollable hate, and she let out a blood-curdling scream of pain. Bursts of Void stopped their ravenous expansion and instead began to swirl around Izhari like atoms. Her gaze settled on Mathael, and her claws cracked with fury.

“If you want me to suffer, I SHALL SUFFER. ISHALLSUFFER. AND YOU WILL ALL JOIN ME FOR ETERNITY AS I SCREAM IN HATE! SCREAMINHATE!!!!”

Above them, the sky began to crack. The structure of reality began to rupture, and waterfalls of The Void fell from the openings. Mathael screamed out in agony as the hidden machina began to shake. Cracks on hidden light mixed in with the Void breaks, and millions of screaming voices began to cry out from the clouds.

Izhari closed her eyes and screamed into the heavens. The Void listened and responded.

A single fissure snapped in the sky, then ripped and exploded across the horizon. Thousands of memory stars began to cascade out from their hidden vault.

“No!!” Mathael screamed as the black veins streaked across his entire form.

Izhari stopped her sobbing long enough to face him.

“I WILL SALT THE SOIL OF THIS REALM IN A PITCH-BLACK BLAZE! YOUR SOULS WILL BURN AWAY ALONG WITH MY REMAINING GRACE. I WILL UNSHACKLE EVERY MEMORY OF SORROW YOU HAVE HIDDEN AWAY IN THE HEAVENS UNTIL THEY RAIN DOWN FROM THE SKY AND DROWN YOU IN A TORRENT OF HATE!!!!!” screamed Izhari as her paws locked at her sides.

Across the sky, thousands of memory orbs began to fall like mortar and hail.

“HATE! SUFFERING! RAGE! LOSS! WRATH! DESPAIR! TORMENT! SORROW! DARKNESS!!! COME TO ME!!!!!!!!!!” Izhari roared as the sky broke and millions of darkened orbs exploded out.

“No! No!!!!” Mathael screamed as the crown cracked on his head.

Izhari’s paws pulled into her chest as she drew the multitude of suffering to her like an arsenal of chaos.

“I am not the harbinger of your end, I AM THE END! VOID!!!!!”

Her cry echoed across the broken sky, and the deluge began. Darkness fell like a curtain. Everything that was began to fade away as the emptiness consumed all that it touched. There on the tower, Izhari’s eyes flickered red one last time, and the millions of orbs shot forward into Mathael as he screamed out in absolute suffering.

Explosions sounded out like wicked fireworks until his screams of agony were drowned away. With every strike, his body glowed brighter and brighter. Painful memory after painful memory burned itself into his soul.

Blades of The Void fell from the sky like columns and crushed his body into pieces. Each strike severed a piece of him until he was diced into hundreds of segments.

Millions of screams scorched his mind until the light consumed his shaking body and exploded.

Izhari could not see, but she never looked away from what was before her until she could sense that it was over. Echoes of the screams faded and she felt nothing remained.

Mathael was destroyed.