The Red Storm strikes.
I learned my lesson about headbutting Primarchs and lead with my saber again. Like an arrow, I shoot in from the side and stab into Primarch Piety's ribs, hoping I'm angled properly to hit the blue-silver titanic dragon's heart.
Instead of latching on, I rip my tail free and slip away as Haunt races in and follows up with a devastating jab of his horn through her middle, the thunderous force of which knocks her over as his weight barrels into her. In the same heartbeat, Alabaster bodyslams Primarch Charity with a ferocious roar and starts smashing her cryomancy augmented axetail into him over and over. Likewise, Graves inflicts a virulent curse on Primarch Hope that withers away at her strength and magic, then follows up with a tempest of black cryomancy that shreds flesh like paper.
The war rages around us. In every direction, daconids slash and crush and cleave and roar and gnash and tear and kill and struggle and die. The void is thick with magic, noxious with fumes and death, rife with floating blood and body parts, hazy with elemental fields of fire, ice, and electricity all mixed together, and saturated with a frenzied desperation that infects every heart within it. We're all dead already. We're just fighting to take our lives back.
Except for me. I cannot die.
I'm not desperate to survive.
I'm desperate to kill.
To the Hells with them all.
Without a second thought, I race into the worst of it and start swinging my tail. The only things in my mind are killing as many of them as possible and avoiding hitting any of my own people. The rose vines are saving lives right now. At least, from me. They're the only indicators I have to go off of, and I'm leaning on them heavily. Too much is happening all at once to process.
I kill someone with a sideswipe. An explosion of pyromancy knocks me sideways. I regain my balance and strike with lightning. Someone rams into me with a lowered shoulder. My breath escapes me but I bury my fangs in their throat. A flash of white darts in and Bast decapitates them. I switch with her, burying my tailblade into Primarch Charity's knee. Her jaws snap shut on me but I eject electric charge before she can hurt me. Graves seizes the opportunity and stabs her in the back, tossing me off her with a claw. Yellow lightning bursts and crackles and hums. Something swipes at my head and I narrowly dodge it. Before I can react, another Wretched dragon slams the fucker with his ramhorns. I sprint in to help, slashing the enemy's throat and leaving him the kill. Arrows of solid ice whistle and whip past. A sharp pain stings in my back and side. Fuck, they hit me. At half speed, I try to slip away but an amphithere comes after me. I bash her with a spear of red energy and she goes limp. Alabaster splits her in half with her axetail, then snatches me in her jaws and retreats.
I never thought I'd feel safe in someone's teeth.
It's a jarring contrast from being chomped earlier.
"I've got you!" She gets some distance and switches forms, landing on my back in her humanoid shape. In a hurry, she races across me to where the ice spikes are embedded, then uses her cryomancy to get them all out. "What the fuck are these?"
I spare a glance, surprised too. "Graves' quills. Medicine. So that's why it hardly hurts. Damn, when did she…"
"Hells if I know! You good?"
"Better. Thanks. Those Primarchs need to die."
"Yep! Right behind you!"
With her on my back, I rush right back in, going directly for Primarch Piety, whose cryomancy nearly took me out of commission. I thought Haunt had her but I can't exactly expect anyone to have control of anything in this carnage. She sees me coming and lashes out preemptively, but my approach was a simple feint. I plume my wings and cut downward on the spot.
Alabaster leaps off my back and shifts forms.
Piety expected a little wyvern but got a massive titan.
The Raging Blizzard smashes into her with the force of planets colliding and brings down her axe blade so hard it nearly cleaves the Primarch in half at the torso. Distracted by the unstoppable force bearing down on her, Piety hardly notices that I've slipped behind her. In a bolt of red, I stab my saber into her spine at full speed, and a brutal eruption of lightning and thunder splits the air.
She's done for.
With a sharp twist, Bast takes her head off.
Then she laughs. "Next!"
Hells. I love her.
The two of us hunt down Charity, since Haunt is already fighting Hope. Again, Bast takes the center stage with a ferocious tackle, and I go wide for the flank. Drawing upon my catalyzed magic, I prepare to unleash a furious storm of red with all my might. I'm a mere second away from dashing in when everything goes wrong.
Primarch Retribution arrives in flames.
The meteoric force beams directly for Alabaster. Its calamitous impact knocks me to the side, twisting and turning horns over tail. When I regain my balance, I look on in horror as all three Primarchs prepare the killing blow. The explosion interrupted my spellcasting and disrupted my charge. I can't get there in time.
I can't do anything to stop it.
"Live," Haunt grunts, shielding Alabaster. "For me…"
"Wait," she gasps.
"No!" I scream. "Graves! Graves! Where–"
The words die in my throat. She's keeping another trio of Primarchs away from me, along with twelve other nearly identical black-gray waspwing dracofae. The enemy is swarming in from every direction, closing us into a suffocating kill zone that's shrinking by the second.
Bast is kicked away to relative safety and the Primarchs bring down fire, lightning, and ice upon the Fifth Thorn, Lumos, Haunt. The scorched kirin's body breaks under the strain, collapsing limp as the enemy's arcane power crushes him.
Haunt is dead on impact.
Something in me snaps.
The next second, my saber is buried into Piety's eye. Evil words I hardly know the meaning of silently hiss across my white forked tongue, yet I can feel every splinter of their frigid and overwhelming hatred. All I know is that I've inflicted a curse most foul, of the kind that has no right being awoken from its ancient dormancy.
Roses bloom from her sundered eye socket. Thorn vines twist and knot and entangle and devour and expand, piercing her flesh and digging in deeper to make a feast out of her living corpse. Like an insect caught in a spider's web, Primarch Piety is wound up in a rigid and unbreakable cocoon.
The roses take her. All of her.
Now she belongs to me.
I know nothing of what I've done.
This horrific spell is an enigma to me.
Yet I know precisely how to use it.
What does a spider do with a fly?
She consumes it.
Obeying my will, the vines constrict tighter to the sound of snaps, pops, and cracks. Blood oozes between the gaps but the roses drink it all with greed and gluttony. An invigorating rush bleeds through me as my magic overpowers, breaks, and consumes hers. Thus, making it all mine.
All of it. All of her. She is mine.
My arcane might has accumulated tenfold.
In a blink, I puncture Charity's skull as well, making her suffer the exact same fate. My power expands. Retribution attempts to flee but my vines have him by the ankles. I slam myself against his face, looking him in the eyes as I bare my fangs and growl at this worthless filth who just killed my friend.
"You…" he wheezes, struggling to breathe as my vines crush his ribcage. "What… are you?"
"Crimson," I snarl in three different voices. "The Rose Queen. The Goddess's chosen. The tyrant deceiver's end. I am ruination. I am vengeance. I am bloody murder. And I will devour you whole."
My vines stab into his chest, then his neck, then his skull.
Primarch Retribution is nothing more than blood and bones.
I take flight and free him from my constricting death.
My first puppet goes forth to murder my enemies.
The battle's tide shifts with a surge of blood and thunder.
The Red Storm rages. The enemy dies in my wake.
A cataclysmic shudder echoes across existence.
Two leviathans appear from the void and clash.
They dwarf the Solaris like it's merely a marble.
The gods have returned to the fray.