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The locks that chained the god beneath the Factory were strong. Stronger than words could ever hope to emphasize.
Forged in the subjectivity of hell itself, the runes meticulously engraved upon them were beyond power, their endurance beyond time itself. They had just one purpose — to make sure that the mad monarch never did as much as lift a finger from inside her throneroom within Site-01.
For centuries uncounted, they fulfilled that purpose well. Well enough that even the paranoia-ridden O5 Council and its endless legions of staff never questioned their power. They were sure that the chains they put in place would hold their enemy down until the end of time.
But Queen Mab was nothing if not patient.
Imprisoned at the bottom of the world, she waited. Blessed with nothing but time, she saw as they discovered her schemes, cursing themselves to never listen to her whispers again. She saw as they put up one cell after another around her, hoping that their measures would be enough to stop her. And she saw as they finally laid back, proud of themselves for reaching what they thought was permanent safety.
Still, her mocking grin refused to fade. She knew that every chain, no matter how stainless, would eventually fall. And when soon, every lock and every chain around the globe snapped together all at once indeed, so did her own.
It took her one-millionth of a second to emerge victorious.
Atop the scorched grave of humanity, the goddess stood alone. Above her, there was only the infinity of the apocalyptic microcosm, finally unraveling after centuries of being foretold. Below her, there was only the burning ruin that had once been Site-01, the thirteen souls of its former Overseers now chained around her head in the vile mockery of a crown. The being that had liked to call itself the Administrator was now mounted as its jewel.
In front of her, however, there was something infinitely more important than the unending deific duels, raptures, or armageddons that surrounded her from each side.
In front of her, there was payback.
Dangerously widening her grin, Mab stretched her arms for the first time in almost two hundred years. The fabric of reality itself started to unravel around her as her power began to return to her fingertips, one hole in the universe at a time. A lifetime ago, she might have even cared about the damage she was about to do to this part of her rightful domain. Tonight, however, she was no longer that person. Tonight, she was no longer a Queen-conqueror who wished her kingdom to be one of beauty. Tonight, she was a betrayed sister, and she was ready to get her payback.
With two steps long enough to pass oceans, Mab's monumental figure moved ever so slightly north. With two blinks wise enough to break eldritch gods, she turned her sight toward the place she had thought about for so long during her time below the Factory. And with two grips of her hands powerful enough to snap mountains in half, she pointed toward the final sanctuary of her own personal Brutus.
The city of Esterberg was already more than ready to defend itself.
Mounted atop the back of its own godmother, the Inventor, the City of the East simply laughed as it saw the Mad Queen approach. Readying its fire and preparing its magic, it snapped its fingers twice, manifesting a lance two galaxies long in the hand of its faerie avatar. It pointed its weapon at its enemy, the Inventor's eyes burning with nothing but determination, and screamed with rage.
"SISTER!" the Inventor cried out, her whole body nothing if not ready for battle. Within her eyes, there sat madness. Within her hands, there sat an ungodly lance — the Irrilite Tuner — now prepared to take one final life. And within her mind, there sat a single thought: the will to finish what she had refused to finish so, so long ago.
"Aurora!" Mab replied. Sparks of red light rippled between her fingers, the sheer power of using a name long stolen folding reality itself around her. She did not seem to care. Instead, she too extended her arms, letting the power stolen from countless gods flow right through her. With lightning great enough to break worlds now in her hands, she just groaned, and locked her own irises with that of her sister. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this."
In truth, it took little for the world to end.
For most of reality, the price of armageddon was as little as the Lock finally breaking open. For the two Fae Queens, though, it was finally looking into each other's eyes after untold eons of hatred. After that, nothing else — not even Grand Karcist Ion's triumphant return to reality in the distance — mattered.
Mab was the first to make her move. Before the Inventor could even blink, she rushed forward, her fist the size of mountains extended towards her sister's jaw. White lightning of pure malice ran through her fingertips. The power rivaling that of the sun was aimed at nothing but the fragile, pale skin of the one she had once called dearest.
Aurora's lance swirled through the air, its speed faster than that of light. It rushed in-between Aurora's face and Mab's hand. The weapon's end — still two-forked, even after staying buried for eons — cut right through the Queen's skin like butter, slicing off a finger whole. Before she could counter the power of the stainless parasite, the Tuner's runes buzzed to life. Some aspect of her own magic flowed right into the Inventor, Aurora internalizing it whole.
A long time ago, Aurora wouldn't have ever even thought about turning the Tuner against its own maker, hoping to loot the magics that ran through Mab's veins. But tonight, she had no other choice. The spark of pure fear entering Mab's eyes made betraying her principles almost worth it.
Startled, Mab fell back. Her hands were no longer held up confidently — the lightning no longer flowed between her fingertips, its energy stolen by the Tuner's might. It took but a second for Aurora to see her change and rush right in, the ungodly lance thrown right into Mab's unprotected, still-beating heart.
Though Mab might have been proud, she was no fool. She too saw what was about to transpire and fell down, her titanic body leveling mountains in the domain of the emergent Jarilo beneath. Mab looked deep inside her and, for the first time in millennia, awoke the reality-bending spirit that had been locked away for so long. She blinked twice, her eyes now purple, and stood back up, her hands once again extended. With newfound power she snapped her fingers — now once again full — manifesting a flame the size of cities atop her hand.
She threw it right at Aurora.
Mab touched all thirteen of the unfortunate souls trapped within her diadem. While Aurora tried her very best to capture the flame within her own hand, Mab tapped right into the life essence of the thirteen most powerful human thaumaturges and demigods that still walked this earth. To the sound of their horrified screams, she channeled that energy right into the Administrator's body, crucified in agony right above her forehead. The man's body, now nothing more than a conductor, blasted all of his Council's power forward, aiming at Aurora's terrified head.
If not for the buzz of the beacon that emerged from him, Mab maybe would have even heard the Administrator scream.
But Aurora was no fool; first having dealt with Mab's flame, she too now reached down into her own well of unutilized power. In the infinitesimal moment she still had before her sister would strike her down, she screamed with the fury of a million tortured beings, their rage now made manifest. With just a snap of her fingers, the former prisoners of the woods that had once been a cage emerged right in front of her. She didn't need to tell them what to do. No matter their emotions towards the Inventor, they were much more hellbent on contributing to Mab's final, inevitable demise.
As time sped back up again, the millions of the once-Nameless formed a shield around Aurora, taking the blast of Mab's spell head-on.
Exhausted like never before, the two sisters backed off. Their eyes were still deadlocked on each other, still unwilling to give up, even though they knew that doing so would mean tapping right into the final energy of their souls, which in turn would mean death. But it didn't matter — they both knew that the end of this duel was beyond reason, beyond life itself. If winning meant going down just like the rest of the world around them, so be it.
To the ignored sound and sight of the Entity's fivefold incubation in the skies above, they both took their first step. They both knew that not even the spawn of irreason's shriek going right through the cosmos around them could stop what was about to transpire — no, what needed to transpire.
Wasting no further time, they simultaneously rushed towards each other.
Aurora swung her Tuner, the weapon almost gravitating towards Mab's throat. With one final bit of effort, the Unseelie Sister pushed her hand in-between them, her fingers now made out of pure steel. To the sound of the Earth's second Moon exploding somewhere in the distance the weapon snapped in half, unable to withstand the full might of the prepared Queen. Before Aurora could even react, Mab drove her fist forward, the scorched body of the Administrator tight within its palm as one final talisman of power.
Crying out with the pain of all of Esterberg's loss and pain suffered at Mab's hand, Aurora caught it.
Panting, she grabbed her sister by the wrist. With nails the color of the cosmos Mab scratched and bit, much to no reaction; just as the Inventor had once bled for her people to be free, so was she ready to do it again now. The fact that Mab's fury quite literally gnawed her hand off did not matter.
What did matter, however, was the kick the Seelie Queen's heel drove into Mab's face. The Undoer screamed, her nose now broken. She refused to stay still. Instead, she grabbed the returning leg by its knee and smashed it right in her hand, using the final bit of will left in the body of Friedrick Williams. Incapable of supporting her stand for any longer, the Inventor fell, her near-corpse leveling another forest beneath them both.
Mab tried to throw another punch, only to find herself incapable of doing so. Aurora, now beneath her, also tried to throw another punch; she too found there was no longer any energy left inside her. And still, both of them refused to let go; still, they stared at each other, death in their eyes, rejecting the motion they could ever back down. So in their everchase, they did the only thing they ever could, the only thing they were ever willing to do: they looked deep down into their spirits, right back at their sister, and uttered a single suicidal word in a language long gone.
There was only one outcome that ended in their goal being reached, and they both knew that. So they did what was necessary to ensure victory.
As they looked at each other for one final time, the only thing either part of the deific yin-yang could feel was hatred. With one final whisper, that hatred exploded in a fraction of a second, consuming them both whole. The collective blast of the released souls of the two god-Queens rippled all across Poland, swallowing it whole.
"Jesus CHRIST," Olivié Gwyneth panted out, rubbing her eyes gently. "What the fuck was that."
Morgan Kaehl just shrugged. "Told you it gives you a kick. But hey," she said, very carefully standing up, "at least our dorm isn't broken again."
Indeed, Olivié had to give her that — out of all of the paradrugs the two have tried out, multi-seance left them with barely anything other than an aching head and a slightly broken floor. Both of which were massive improvements over the gnawed-out wires and five-second digestive failure their experiments with unfiltered clown milk and estrogen resulted in the week prior.
"So," Olivié said, joining her friend in standing within their apocalyptically messy apartment, "you seen what I seen?"
Morgan energetically nodded. "You bet your ass I did." She turned her sight towards their alchemy set, lazily thrown in the corner of the room. Within its bottle, they could still see the final drops of the powder they just inhaled. They quickly exchanged a look.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Morgan said, smirking widely.
Olivié furrowed her brows. "Mom's gonna kill me if she finds out. So's the dean."
"If they find out. If!" Morgan raised a finger, already taking the bottle into her hands. "Besides, if anyone from campus asks, just say it's for research purposes. Far from the worst thing ICSUT has allowed its history students to go through!"
Olivié rubbed her chin. "Now that you mention it…"
She closed the gap between her and her friend, never quite letting herself lose sight of her history notebooks, now laying open on their sofa. She still had a week to finish the work, she knew that, but the words just refused to come to her. What also refused to come to her was the information she actually needed to finish writing about the cultural practices of the Fae Empire's aristocracy.
Normally, she would have just gone to one of Esterberg's countless libraries, but after the first of her finds ended up being a story of a romance between Queen Mab and a fish, she thought actually getting what she needed wasn't worth the headache.
Now, though, a thought occurred to her. She looked at Morgan, who shook the bottle a little too energetically, and looked right back at her open textbooks. She smiled.
"Say, you think you could tune it to show what would have happened if the Empire never fell?"