Podë howled in pain and clutched the gaping wound with the only hand still free. Globs of blood ruptured forth from Alyssa’s mouth, but her stern gaze never left the witch. This time, Pode’s wounds did not close by mystic haze.
“What have you done?!” Podë painfully shrieked, her own blood wet on her hands.
Spilling red from her wound like a river, Alyssa thrust her fist inside the witch’s chest. Podë pulled at Alyssa’s arm but to her shock, the homunculus would not be moved. The teen’s hand delved deep inside, upward, and grazed against a thorned, beating surface. Podë coughed up a spray of red, eyes wide.
“I take my fate…” Alyssa choked through wet, labored breaths.
Her fingers wrapped around the witch’s heart.
“Don’t!” Podë begged.
Alyssa squeezed, the thorns digging into her flesh and heart beating faster. She looked down upon the woman some may call a god and felt Podë’s power drain through her grip like a siphon. Unlike those that sought to harness the woman’s power, Alyssa felt it drawn in, destroyed, and scattered to the wind. The more her grasp denied the Forgotten's might, the more Podë’s heart yielded in her fingers.
“And in these hands... I'll make it my own,” Alyssa coughed.
“Stop! Please!”
And the battered martyr’s fist clasped shut.
Alyssa struggled to understand the next few moments. Podë, one of the legendary five to shatter the Eternal Tap, ended in the palm of her hands. Outward, the manifestation - the raw essence - of the Forgotten One ruptured in a flash, flurry, and explosion of scarlet power. The roaring pyroclasm around them extinguished into darkness and banished its thick, choking smoke from existence. Locked doors splintered and burst open down the Tarot’s halls. Podë’s violent shrieking dominated over all as piece by piece, her body broke off to the spiraling gale like ash. Her arm cracked like glass and shattered. From her suspension, Alyssa crumpled to the blackened earth yet managed to keep her eyes on the witch. Just a head, her blonde wisps turned black as the void, her eyes hollowed, and the harrowing screams broke into an echo on the wind.
Podë, The Red Witch, was no more.
A long deserved silence fell on the scorched grove. The homunculus laid amongst the char, eyes upward, and she gurgled a long sigh of relief. The mysterious power no longer animated her limbs and gave her strength. Alyssa struggled, but managed to raise her hand to cover the gaping wounds in her chest and abdomen.
A faint attempt at a laugh escaped her pale lips.
“It’s over…”
Then, her crystalline eyes glossed over and welled with tears. She knew what was next.
“Vince… Blue…”
The girl choked and sputtered on her own visceral fluids before calming herself in short, shallow breaths.
“Tobias…”
Alyssa winced, her body coiling upon its self. Her mouth gaped for air, but only scarlet spilled forth. Her muscles relaxed and granted her reprieve. A sense of peace possessed her, and Alyssa’s head fell to the side. She closed her eyes and let a final tear fall from her youthful lashes.
She too, joined the silence of the grove.
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