i am the vanguard of your destruction

It's how a world dies.

It's how it breaks; it wasn't just an end. It was destruction.

Annihilation.

The point wasn't to tear the lands asunder, and leave them a desolate wasteland; the point was to drive it deep, deep into their heads and souls. Brand them. Leave scars so deep they could never heal, only fill up. He didn't want them to die.

He wanted them to suffer.

But enough of that.

Mauja was just one of many sheep in the flock, marched along by a force that would not be denied. His bones groaned, his joints ached, his flimsy muscles shrieked every step of the way—the owls rode on his spine, attention turned inwards.

They quivered. They felt things, deep in the earth, smelled it in the wind. They were afraid.

He tried to soothe them, but how could he? How could he wrap them in his love and tell them everything would be alright, when the strongest presence he had ever felt herded all of them to the place sacred to it? How could he possibly lie to those he loved the most? We'll get through this together he told them. He had stopped counting how many times he'd promised it, feeble and broken, during their death march. It had been well over fifty when he gave up.

Step by aching step he made it to the Marsh, a speckled, sweat-soaked body at the back of the pack. With him, he wore what little he had; the moon's scythe, and d'Artagnan's bags, packed with odds and ends.

He didn't want to leave what he loved behind.

He swallowed.

d'Artagnan...

And when his flock came to where they had been brought, where they were not hounded on by the wall of shadows, he knew what it was.

Slaughter.

Sweat and screams and fear and stress. The air reeked of panic and burnt fur, the bitter, metallic aftertaste of blood and magic; voices rose together in screams of loss and fury, grief and hatred. It pushed at his senses, crowded in with the bodies, made him stumble.

There was a pattern to it. They were gripped by terror and denial, frozen, but those who were to die, they moved. Raised a head. Charged. Flared their wings. And a black void swallowed them. A flash of teal burnt their graves onto his retina.

And then they were just gone.

Some, he vaguely recognized. Some, he placed by the shouts that came after. He heard Erthë's voice. Knew the blue-marked unicorn who had died to be Vadim, her father, son of Paladin, brother of Ophelia and Varath. He watched, as if from afar. Swung his head, his searching blue eyes.

He saw so many. And he saw death pass across their eyes. Sweep across their souls. Touch their heads, and consider.

His heart was slow. (It was racing, but time had slowed. Seemed to stop.) The amalgam of dead gods killed and killed and killed and told them all to stop.

But they wouldn't stop.

They were Helovia, and they would break before they bent; Ampere died, followed by Mesec's shrill voice. Sialia died, went down fighting. Glacia. He couldn't see her in the throng.

And then—

And then—

—his world ended. Mercilessly. Suddenly. Time ground to a halt. Voices grew distant. In a flash of darkness, Sacre—Sacre, fuck's sake, the only thing he had left of d'Artagnan, the one thing he had tried to keep safe, and failed, so utterly, so completely. Sacre disappeared, his foxes too—there one moment, gone the next. A flash of teal, a crack of darkness, and they were gone, just memories. Just fucking memories. Mauja threw his head up, stared the other way. Stared into the oncoming darkness.

Looked for the shape of the red bay, looked for the mad doctor, the nightshade.

He saw only shadows, broken dreams, lost hopes.

There's no fighting this.

He looked back to the God of Death. He looked back just in time to see Ophelia—the one he had loved, the one he had lost, the one he had let down and watched turn to another man's embrace for comfort—charge. She was pearly white, pristine, a spear of goodness and light arcing through the miasma of teal-and-black death. She was fierce. Her dragon glittered silver. She was Ophelia, and something complicated in his heart surged, fierce and free and flying. It ached, as if it might burst, and in those slow, agonized moments, he actually believed she could do it. That she could somehow get close enough, sink her long horn into the sick creature and bleed the power from it like blood. She was Ophelia—she was strong and beautiful and intelligent and lovable and so, so dead.

She disappeared, just like the others. There, then gone. Alive, then dead.

He didn't have words for it. He didn't have time, or resource, to process it. He just stared at the spot where she had been, unable to comprehend what had just happened. Unwilling, maybe; everything drained from his soul.

All he felt was fear.

It trembled somewhere deep within, echoed by the owl hearts riding his back and mind—bleak with hopelessness and a dead dream, he saw the world grow dark as the Sun died for them.

He saw the gods arrive. He saw the lightning flashes from Spark. He looked for Roskuld, but couldn't find her.

They all turned to bright light, but he barely saw them.

Stop, he wanted to say. Leave us and save yourselves. Build a better world for what is to come. But they didn't. Wouldn't. He willed himself to hope, to believe, as if their faith could somehow turn the tide, and push back the blackness—but it couldn't, could it?

And maybe that was why they died.

They crumbled. He felt something sear across his heart, a presence that lingered only a moment—like soothing balm, a cool touch to a feverish head. It was her, saying goodbye, and he didn't have time for hatred and bitterness anymore.

Goodbye Moon, he thought. His ears were ringing. The darkness crowded in. He thought it was quiet, then he realized it wasn't—he was just too stunned to comprehend what he was hearing.

Helovia had taken the last few pieces of his smashed heart, and died.

He turned to watch the Portal. Some went willingly. Some were pulled in. Some, were pushed. He blinked, eyes burning. He wasn't sure he wanted to go. He wasn't sure he wanted to try again.

He wasn't sure life was worth it.

He considered calling out to the Deceiver, but did not; if the Moon's gift was still with him, there was nothing he could do anyway. There had been no way out. There had been no one way to make him unable to rise again.

Rise again. His gaze flamed as he raised his head. The scythe's blade whispered back and forth. He didn't feel like drinking tea with Kisamoa and laying out his problems and understanding his reasons—he didn't want to stand broken over a dead body, screaming why, not understanding.

He wanted some good old-fashioned hunting. Killing. A crusade. He wanted to lose himself in the bliss of mindless stupidity, of not thinking, of only caring about the next trial—the next throat to lay open with the scythe's blade. Never question. Never absolve. No mercy.

But how do you kill a God?

Like this, he thought as he stared at the wasteland.

The pull of the Portal was too strong now. He buckled his knees, but before he hit the ground, it pulled him in.

He looked at the shadowy Marsh a last time—a desperate glimpse of the last place to know Sacre and Ophelia.

Then it was gone.