This is what she had come back for? This is what awaited her when she crossed the borders with her wayward daughter found once more?

Destruction. Terror. Hopelessness.

They are corralled into the marshes, grouped together in the largest sea of bodies she has ever seen. The altar is black and rotten, and the demand comes. Enter by will, or be forced. Hotaru grits her teeth against the hate spewing across her tongue, mindful of the child protectively sandwiched between herself and her mate. She cannot risk him, cannot leave even a hair on his head defenseless. No matter how she wants to dig her fingers into the raw power of her magic, to tear up the earth and sky with the force of her anger, her disbelieving mockery of this false god. Had they not defeated all his children, rotting and sickened as they had been? Had they not proven themselves indomitable? No matter how many they had lost in the fray, it didn't matter. They had won, and they would win again.

Or so she had thought.

In the span of a heartbeat, those lifting their voices in rebellion are gripped by Kaos, shredded and destroyed in the barest exertion of terrifying power. Blood rains down, lost in the dark of the muck and mud, and Hotaru stares in horror. It's a massacre, it's senseless, it's even more hopelessly unfair than the first time mortals had placed the axe at the nape of a god.

Her shoulder blocks out Galahad's sight, instinctively shielding him from the horrors this day will bring. Her heart pounds in her chest, Alice snarling nervously at her side. Is this their fate? To be cornered, trapped, as Kaos gleefully ripped them to pieces one by one? Was there no escape? She expected no mercy from the devil on high, but adrenaline burned in her twisted veins at the idea that she would be helpless to fight this. That she would lose everyone and everything without even being able to strike back at what sought to kill her.

And then Ru'in steps forth. Her son, gargantuan and yet still so small in her eyes. Proud and stoic, a guardian. A defender. And she is so proud of him, this boy who is so independent, so simplistic.

Smoke lashes out to grab onto him, and Hotaru does not even have the chance to summon words, to even feel the hitch of her breath as shock and trepidation strike between her ribs straight into her heart.

His body is light up like fireworks, exploding outwards in a shower of gore, snuffing out his existence in the space between one breath and the next.

For a long minute, she simply stares. Uncomprehending. Disbelieving. Hysterically in denial.

No.

No, no.

This isn't...no. No.

Ru'in. Ru'in. Ru. My son. My child. My baby.

My baby boy.

The grief slams down into her chest, driving a stake into the writhing creature her soul has become. It screams from her vocal chords, echoes across the marshes like the mournful winds of the north. Shattered and despaired. All at once her mind caves in on her., too weak to face a reality like this

"NO! MY SON! RU'IN! NO!" the Valkyrie shrieks, until she can taste blood on her tongue like the herald of her own impending death as her legs move to throw herself into the fray. There is no thought to her actions. She knows only that she will avenge her son or join him in death. She will cast away this sham of a life that has taken so much from her already. Rend, tear, kill. Exact revenge in pounds of flesh, or die trying.

No, please Gods no, not him. Not her baby. Her only son. It was a cruel enough torture to have her children disappear unseen, never to return, their fates as lost to the winds as they were. In that way she could pray and deceive herself, pretend they were living happy lives somewhere in the great beyond past Helovia's borders. But this? To watch the light of her life, the foal she'd raised and loved, cherished and supported...killed? Carelessly, heartlessly murdered? Before her very eyes?

Her only son. Her precious boy. Her unique, beautiful, perfect son. The last reminder of an old love, a pure love. The fruit of her happiest days.

Gone. Murdered. Nonexistent. Leaving her with nothing more than the last image of his corpse seared into her eyes and the memories of his life that would no longer bring her joy.

Everything turns into a slew of color and emotion, and she slams into Thranduil with full force as he moves to block her. It does nothing to stop her wild fury, the sharp kicking of her legs and the howling of her voice above the sound of dying souls and grieving survivors. The rending of her teeth as she weathers against him, her hatred so strong for him in that moment that she'd sooner leave him to the wolves than spare him a second glance. Because he's trapping her, keeping her from exacting her due revenge. A mother's revenge. The one thing she deserved as a mother, to receive penance for the loss of her child.

"MOVE! THRANDUIL! LET ME GO! MY SON! I'LL KILL YOU YOU BASTARD!" Hotaru screams, a wild thing as she bites and yanks at any piece of Thranduil she can find, everything shapeless with the force of her tears. But still she can see her daughter, walking peacefully towards the monster, as serene as if she were waltzing through a flower patch in the meadows of Hotaru's homeland. Like the world is not going to pieces around her, like Romina has one goal and one goal only. And she will face it calmly, without a shred of doubt or regret. And Hotaru knows. With the weight of a thousand worlds on her shoulders, the knowledge comes to her with stunning, crippling clarity. She knows exactly what is about to transpire. She knows because she would do the exact same fucking thing if that was Raeden caught in Kaos' clutches, if that was her twin who was so thoughtlessly destroyed before her eyes. But she can't let Romina do it, she can't, she can't lose her too.

"ROMINA, NO! ROMINA! ROMINA PLEASE!"

Her daughter had never listened to her anyway. Why would she start now?

The Banshee goes to meet her brother, peaceful and unafraid of the fate she embraces with open arms. Preferring death to a cursed life without her other half. And Hotaru freezes, stares over Thranduil's wounded back as her daughter is consumed by the devil, as her blood rains down to the earth below. Destroyed. Defiled. Lost.

"NOOOOOO!" she screams, knees buckling as the tears come hard and heavy. I'd rather be blind. Please gods, take my sight. Take this from me. I can't live with seeing my children die over and over and over. Her chest heaves with the weight of her loss, blurred vision starbursting as her Goddess dissolves into nothing but beautiful lost matter. The last nail in Hotaru's coffin, destroying all hope of redemption and healing.

"THEY WERE MY BABIES!" She screams to this cruel, mocking world that does not care about her. That has never cared about her, never given a single fucking thought to the way she breaks so prettily. Hotaru is a veritable demon of grief, throwing her curses to the skies. Bloodying her teeth on her beloved's hide, because the iron taste chases away the acrid loss that burns down her throat into her lungs. It will never heal. It will scar over, thick and wounded, and it will remind her of her loss with every single breath she takes that her children will now never get to take. Every beat of her heart will remind her that Romina's and Ru'in's no longer do so. That she lives while they are gone.

But this is not the end. It cannot be the end, no matter how she begs for death in the shambles of her mind. She is still a mother, no matter how many children she may have lost on this day. And a mother sacrifices for her children. A mother keeps moving forward even when there is no earth to steady her beneath her feet. Even when she would rather stab herself in the heart and die here, where all her children were born - where all of them died - than go on another day. If she could not make the ultimate sacrifice, the one every mother would make, and save her children...what good was she? Was she a mere bystander to the erasing of her greatest joys in life? Useless, powerless.

You are no mother, Hotaru. You are a blight, a curse. Your womb creates life only to gleefully destroy it, and yet you never learn. This is the curse passed down from your mother. This is all. Your. Fault.

"Please," she begs senselessly, voice broken from her screaming. It is the weakest she has ever sounded. No matter her pride, Hotaru would crawl on broken bloodied knees to beg Kaos himself to return her children to her. Take her instead, no matter how worthless and tattered and stained her soul must be. Why them? Why her babies? They had so much to live for, so much to give. Why couldn't it have been her? It was her duty, her right as their mother to take their place. To die in their stead. Not to witness their deaths and have to live to remember every detail instead of meeting them in the afterlife. "Please. Please, bring them back, please," sobs from her bloodied teeth, blinded by her own tears. "Take me instead, please, not like this," Hotaru begs of Gods that are slain, whose ears do not listen and whose powers cannot bring them back any longer.

But Thranduil is shoving her, and she lets him push her onward. She hates him, she loves him, she hates him, she loves him. Hotaru wonders to the dead gods why he didn't let her go. Why he doomed her to this life she must live, facing the nightmare of her children's corpses, the reality of her own failure to protect them. It wasn't his decision to make. He was not the judge of her life, of how she used it or threw it away. But...it had spared her life. She cannot leave their twins motherless. And she loves him, she loves him, and she clings to him as the portal drags them inward. Hotaru can't lose him, not now. She would break completely, if she is not broken now.

There are claws in her back that clear her broken mind the slightest bit - Galahad? What? - and the portal is sucking her in even as she howls and wails her devastation to this land she has loved and served for so long. Cursing it with the last of her strength, the last of her willpower. Vowing to befoul the earth here, so that no life would ever grow in the wake of such devastation.

She is no Valkyrie, blessing those who pass bravely in battle. There is no honor here, on the deathbed of her children. There is only pain.

OOC thingies here