All he could feel was anger.
 
There was no satisfaction from his first kill, lingering along the threshold of his veins, where moments before they’d simmered and seethed. There was no ghostly, haunting, poignant apprehension curling through his soul. It was only a rush of hellfire, a slashing, rippling, roaring blur of animosity and acrimony, bludgeoning his tongue, his mouth, his essence, and he wanted to rush, to scream, to roar, to scramble into the darkening day and unleash a torrent of his potency. He wanted the monster to cower. He wanted the world to remain.
 
This was Helovia – they were born to be strong, to endure, to persevere, or die trying.
 
And that was when the calamity finally smacked him, when Orsino became worried, thrumming through their connection, when Enyo looked to him for direction, as he stared over the waves of creatures presuming to do the same thing as him. They raced, with fury, with outrage, with conviction and determination, like it was everything they could do or dream or hope –
 
It didn’t matter.
 
His strides swept across the ground in savage contortions, in sinister machinations, as he tried to reach them, as he thought he could save someone, anyone, from the disastrous pull of shadows and blight. Hate and menace, loathing and contempt, abhorrence and barbarity cast such a vile shell across his core, and he was molten, he was fire, he was contorting, irreverent sedition – but Ode, his beloved cousin, was cast aside like nothing, head separated from his body in one sinuous, unwinding motion, and he ceased all movement. The prince couldn’t recall if he screamed out Ode’s name, if he fell apart right then and there as one more member of his family perished. There was so much yelling, so much chaos, so much disaster maligned in every direction, creatures scrambling, Gods failing, misery clinging to the very heart and lungs of the entire world.
 
He just kept staring, eyes taking in the last sight of his own flesh and blood – watching from the corner of his stare as Aithniel charged into certain death, as the scene became something out of a Greek tragedy; war torn and brutal. There was temptation, right in that very moment, to return to his father’s tomb and remain there until the end – plunge himself right into the thick of the void and let it claim him, let it simmer and seethe, let it drain him of all conviction and courage.
 
Rikyn kept directing them, like traffic, like orders. It was probably the only thing that saved him. His eyes deadened, flat and merciless, struggling to rein the overflowing emotions, the fervent sentiments, glancing back into the crowd to try and catch strangers he once knew, friends he still cherished (Enna?, Enyo brushed beside him, but he couldn’t see her in the fray).
 
It felt so stupid, so ridiculous, so inept to just give in – when all along, the boy had strived, had tried because it was the only thing he could ever truly do. Now, they had no other options. Kaos had won. Perhaps that was the most sickening part of all, because as wave after wave attempted to beat him back, it was just annihilation, it was just ruin and abomination, and Helovia was being destroyed from the inside out.
 
What about the Basin? He wanted to release in one foul pitch of damnation, spew out his venom, his toxins, trying to trace over the last memories of the ice, the snow, the mountains…then lowered his head, finally distorted and destroyed by the pinnacles of bedlam. What about father?, stuck in the tomb, lost to him even more now. He didn’t embrace anything else, but followed in his King’s stead, twisting into the portal, into nothingness, into the beyond – suddenly not caring at all about what was on the other side.