Below, Sulfiqar shrieked, his excoriating features melting into a mask of pure, pathetic terror.
Although limited in movement, he kicked at the sand, fingernails clawing at the vacuum as the rift’s gravity began to claim him.
‘Why?’ he screamed at his heirs.
Idan indulged him with a snarl. ‘This is for my mother, Aeryn-Thall, the Weaver of New Life, may she rest in eternal peace. This is also for Sayonna, the courtesan, Molan’s matriarch, and for all the innocent souls you’ve stripped of life and destroyed in your quest for glory. Enjoy your immortal hell!’
From the shadows of the abyss, murky creatures crawled out; translucent, bitter streaks of pure dark energy.
They swarmed the God-King, their elongated, skeletal fingers sinking into his glowing chest to drain his divinity.
Idan and Molan eased even further back as the wraiths emptied Sulfiqar’s soul, the once-radiant king shriveling into a brittle, dried-out husk within seconds.
The last sound from the former God-Emperor was a dry, rattling whimper before the rift collapsed in a violent storm of violet lightning and black energy.
The brothers hovered for a moment, the silence of the wasteland settling over them. Molan let out a long, ragged exhale, his shoulders dropping.
They slowly descended to the ground, touching down, their faces wreathed in disbelief that their nightmare was finally over.
‘He’s gone, Idan. Realfokkin’ history this time.’
Idan nodded, his tense muscles easing, the golden fire in his eyes dimming to a steady glow. ‘Fokkyeah, and good riddance, too.’
The brothers fell into a hug, only pulling apart when Zane’s pinnace banked overhead, landing a few yards away.
He stepped onto the sand just as the final sparks of the dark energy vanished.
His face was brooding and gloomy, his eyes glowing azure with the residue of the psychic echoes lingering in the atmosphere.
‘I caught their frequency,’ Zane growled. ‘Those monsters are called theIlluminari. They’ve been waiting eons for a feast like him.’
‘And what a banquet it shall be,’ Idan muttered. ‘The evil and incarnate malice within Sulfiqar will fill their bellies for epochs to come.’
He stared at the empty patch of desert where his father had been deleted, then turned his head back toward the city and Sheba.
‘Fokkme, I’m done fighting galactic-level battles with narcissistic, malicious gods,’ he muttered, the word a heavy, exhausted punctuation mark on the end of a dynasty. ‘I’m over this. All I want is a quiet life now with my woman. On a farm. With a few sheep and goats for company.’
‘Preach,’ Molan rasped. ‘Add a tot of whiskey, and five days to sleep this shit off.’
The three men stood together in the regolith, their shadows long against the cooling sand as the first real peace in years took root in Idan’s soul.
Idan stalked through the ruined square in front of the Joint Pegasi Hospital Administration Complex.
Air ambulances rose to the sky around him, airlifting patients to the nearest hospitals, while temporary triage tents sat in the center of One Seven One Liberty Avenue.
The street crawled with paramedics, Eden guards, and traffic controllers.
He navigated a labyrinth of pulverized marble and twisted rebar, his internal compass locked onto the singular, vibrant frequency of Sheba’s essence.
He found her in one of the emergency shelters.
Her silhouette was illuminated by the irregular light of the twin suns as she helped bandage a broken femur bone on a middle-aged man.
As he drew closer, he caught the shimmering, gold-etched lattice of theSsignakhtsight radiating from her pupils.
He sensed her reach into the man’s panicked mind and soothe the edges of his pain and terror.
Idan slowed his roll, his chest expanding with pride.
