last battle text

In the place the mimic you killed fell, it’s body has become a door; it is shaped from pure black material that seems to absorb all light, adorned with gold for the hinges and doorhandles. The door is in the floor, it seems. When pulled open, the door reveals a swirling portal beyond, looking like a spinning galaxy. This must lead to the lair of Thuben herself, hidden away in the depths of her otherworldly maze. Now is your last chance to prepare, and there is no turning back now; you are standing at the maw of the void, and nowhere to go but in, to death or to glory.

As you step into the portal, you find yourselves pulled into the swirling void and deposited somewhere strange and unreal; the chamber you’re in when you feel yourselves again is vast and shifting, with floors and walls bent and impossible angles and bits of structures and terrain hanging in the air, untethered by gravity. The area as a whole is a mishmash of climes and locations, from a forest clearing to a city square, all mashed together with no coherency or consistency. The air of the place is just slightly unreal, like waking in the middle of the night and nobody’s around, and it is almost utterly silent; no insects or birds, or the wind. Just whatever sounds you yourselves produce.

A large, squat, but elaborate building is the centerpiece of the strange lair, taller than anything else but also quite wide, more like a plateau than a building. There is no door or other way inside, but the top houses what looks like a massive, elaborate throne.

The marks on that backs of your hands suddenly ache, a spike of pain gone as fast as it came as they flare bright for a second. The pain comes just a moment before a sound that breaks the utter silence; wingbeats in the soundless air, great and terrible. Not one of her weaker avatars this time, there is a ground-shaking thud as the timeless beast lands on the squat building in all her horrible splendour. Her starry body glimmers with the spectral light of long-dead stars, and wisps of tenebrous nothing leak from her whip-thin body, as if the void begs to escape from the hole in creation embodied in this ancient, blasphemous thing.

The curling horns that crown her head cradle a tiny black hole at their points, sucking in even the light itself like a hungry mouth, the royal jewel in a crown of madness. Her eyes lock on the lot of you, twin baleful orbs of radiance, like two cyan suns over some alien world. Each movement of her body produces the echo of a planet screaming through the void, and her unfurled wings provide a glimpse into what once was and what will be once the stars burn out.

“So good of you to come,” she whispers, voice like ice breaking. The marks on your hands throb like a heartbeat with each word.

“You have been thorns in my side for far too long. My grand work is nearly complete, and I will not allow you to interfere any further. I stand on the edge of glorious perfection, and will cut you down myself to ensure that.”

“All you know and love will abandon you, that I vow. I shall give you a taste of that.”

A swipe of her claws and a swirl of magic allows her to summon minions to assist her, crafted in a glittering simulacrum of faces familiar to you; the large form of a silver dragon in a mockery of Emiline, and the smaller builds of humanoids mimicking Calla and Prince Raja appear in formation around the void-beast. The clones have blank expressions on their faces, and hold themselves in a hostile stance, ready to attack at their master’s bidding.

“I give you one last chance to surrender and perhaps you shall live.”

“No? Then there shall be no mercy, no escape. I shall give you no quarter. Fight and die like the fools you are.”

----

As yet another blow lands on the beast’s scales, it seems she can take no more; Thuben falls to the earth in a mighty crash, sending up dust and debris into the air. Her wings slice air but do not lift her, and the stars dotting her body dim, just slightly. She lifts her slender neck, horn-crowned head appearing heavy and bowed.

Despite this, however, she appears to be… laughing. Her tail thrashes along the ground as her body jerks and dances like a puppet on a string, wracked with madness.

“You are but foolish children,” she breathes out, voice low and crackly. “I will have the last laugh here. My body may crumble, but my soul will live on. You, on the other hand, are linked to me, for I have marked you as such. You will die here, in the glorious cascade of stellar destruction that my mortal shell falling away will unleash.”

Indeed, her body is beginning to crumble away at the edges; black scales shedding to expose a blazing light within. The air swirls around you, icy cold and boiling hot both, and rushes toward the dragon’s crumbling shell as if to fill a sucking void.

“Goodbye, heroes,” she rasps, wings flaring out and cyan eyes blazing like two supernovas.

As you hold up your hands, however, the air shifts. The marks glow a bright purple for a moment, lighting up the area starkly for a millisecond, followed by a feeling somewhere between pain and exhilaration. The orb hovering between the monster’s horns swells and trembles, and then burns a glorious orange as it spins, throwing off a low hum and throbbing with light and darkness.

There is a terrible cracking noise, and Thuben’s body splits apart, but the expected swathe of destruction does not follow; instead, the black shadow of her essence is drawn into the pulsating orb, which crashes down to the ground, inert. It dims to a matte black, about the size of an orc’s fist and slightly warm to the touch. You can feel a dark presences within, but part of you knows that it is sealed away, no longer a threat to your world.

The strange lair around you, too, is no longer a threat; the alien geometries are melting away, dissolving into the void and leaving you all standing at the peak of the great mountain. Wind whistles, cold and bleak, but you know in your heart of hearts that you did the undoable, and that will always keep you warm.