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The unthinkable had occurred. Epheotus was in ruins.
Once the land of the asuras had been a marvel to steal away the breath of even the most gifted lesser artists and architects. Beautifully crafted buildings and vistas, rich with aeons of history that made even the oldest lesser monuments seem like a child’s gibberish scribblings. Now it was all ash and smoke, tossed by the wind. Less than that-- the strange, dark fire that consumed it all left nothing at all behind.
And above it all stood Kezess Indrath. The Lord of Dragons, the King of Epheotus, observed the area where his castle had once stood. Now the only thing to mark where it had been was its absence. Here, the deities of the land had once gathered to discuss the most important matters of the world. Here, had once been his father’s castle. The castle that would have, someday, gone to his descendants. Though he was old, he had grown up aware that the castle was older, the land beneath it moreso. When he became King, he was entrusted with the duty of playing caretaker to it all-- the castle, the Clans, the continents, and the lessers.
Somehow he had outlasted that which should not have been outlasted. All because of those foolish lessers, more trouble than they were worth. Well, one lesser in particular.
Perhaps, in the end, it would have been far less trouble to simply torch the whole of Alacrya the second Agrona Vritra left for it, and seeded the continents afresh. Sylvia and Myre would have been upset with him, but it would have been for their own good. Even they could agree it was better to be upset alive than ash and dust. Forevermore unfeeling.
“Kezess!” a voice snarled. The dragon slowly turned, his face a mask, devoid of emotion or recognition. There stood the lord of the Pantheons, Ademir Thyestes, all of his eyes smoldering with fury and fixated up Kezess.
“This is all your fault,” Ademir said. “Your obsession with the status quo, with saving grace. Taci wasn’t tricked at all, was he? You hid that… that… thing from us, so we wouldn’t see the monster you’d created!”
Kezess gazed down the former lord of Thyestes. “And what of it?” he asked.
“What of-- What of it!?” Ademir balked. “All of the Clans have either gone underground or are dead! The Asclepius and Avignis went to betray you and support that monster, and were the first to be felled! All the Pantheons, the frontline warriors who fought FOR YOU, are dust! Even your wife has abandoned you! And you still won’t admit that you are the single worst king in Epheotus’ long history!?”
“Do you wish to follow them?” Kezess asked.
“No, but I wish you would!”
“If that were truly your desire, then you wouldn’t have confronted me here,” Kezess said. “You come to lecture me of my ego… but truly, look in the mirror yourself.”
“Kezess you coward, you scum, slime, filthy beast--”
Ademir Thyestes fell silent. To the world, it seemed as though he had frozen mid-conversation, dozens and dozens of cuts and gashes opening across his body, eyes mysteriously replaced with gaping holes. The once-mighty leader of the Pantheons slumped to the ground in a bloody mess.
To Kezess, however, the change was nowhere near so sudden. He sighed again. “Between me and he, there was no escaping Epheotus once you chose to remain here, Ademir,” he muttered to the asura’s corpse.
The corpse, of course, gave no reply.
No more sound trembled through the air. Not even the destructive dark fires made a sound as they burned. So far as Kezess could sense, he was the last entity living in a dying world. But he knew better.
That man-- that monster was approaching. Wreathed in the dark flames that had burned down the world, with nothing but grief and rage and ash in his head. He was now more a god of destruction and fire than a flesh and blood man, wreathed in choking smoke.
The irony was not lost on Kezess. He had wanted a weapon to use against Agrona. He had gotten precisely that and more. A perfect killer of asuras-- of everything, really.
One he had long since lost the ability to control or even stop.
Still. He was an asura. He would not simply sit and twiddle his thumbs, waiting for a lowly thing that was once a lesser to end him.
Fingers scaled over and grew into claws. Horns sprouted from his head and wings erupted from his back. One pristinely scaled foot was placed upon the wrecked and ruined earth, then another, and another. A strong, whiplike tail curled around his legs, as the faint light that remained cast opalescent rainbows across his marble scales.
Kezess Indrath would not die in anything less than his true form. And would not die peacefully.
---
He could barely even walk anymore, but not even that would stop him. The fires, the sheer force of the God Rune, pushed him stubbornly on. Like a child that refused to discard its favorite puppet. His skin had long since flaked off, consumed as fuel for the inferno. So, too, had most of what lay underneath his skin been consumed. Thought, memory, most emotion, all eagerly tossed within the furnace. All fuel for the fire. Even the ecstasy and adrenaline that normally accompanied this power had long abandoned him, leaving an empty shell in its place.
There was nothing left in this world for him. So Destruction would burn, and burn, and burn. Create a hole in the universe, to match the hollowness within.
And then it would finally end.