Although still blocked by the tremendous hurricane of arcane energy that Ramachandra and Bloodwedthe had covered the Archipelago in, you could feel a tiny bit of warmth from beyond its clouds, a small amount of vermilion added to the raging bruise of a skyline that had been the magick they had soaked the sky with.

“Where’s your captain? The oh-so glorious loud and flaming bitch that was taunting me? She’s been run off for quite a while, you don’t think I haven’t noticed, do you? I can tell you’re just a diversion, and that you’re running on fumes, Elf. Without access to magick, you are nothing before me. That shield won’t last much longer, and when it does, Ivorhala’s favor will return to me!” Bloodwedthe cackled from across her bow at The Devil’s Grail.

Almost as if on cue, because everyone on the Magaran side had been around long enough to know that the gods all had a sense of humor, albeit sometimes clashing ones, ones unique to each of them, that they would collaborate on something that they found personally hilarious. And what could be more amusing than a perfectly timed beam of light coming from the Satapattrika Temple? The only thing to cut through the maelstrom of evil in the sky, it started small until all at once, it vomited up the incredible amount of energy, a ray of white and green with a small aura of red around it.

“Haha! No fuckin’ way! That actually worked!” Susan laughed. “Good, I don’t have to pretend I’m sharkbait anymore, ‘cause I ain’t. Never was. Now, Miss Bloodwedthe, I do believe you were threatening me, or would you rather see the last trick we got up our sleeves? Because, I’ll tell ye, I don’t have the damnedest idea what it is, I just know I want to see the magickal product of a couple of holy women rutting in the name of their respective goddesses.”

Before Bloodwedthe could return those words again, her teeth snarling around her lips in a furious grin, the beam of light blast forth at full power, and at once, the entirety of the Rissori Archipelago was engulfed in a purifying light unlike anything else. The light pierced immediately through the swirling clouds of darkness surrounding the islands and began to send violent, cleansing cracks down the rest of them, like rivers of purity, cleaning what was once dead and healing what would be dying. In a flash almost as golden as any treasure, the sunrise mixed with the beam of energy and an eruption so loud it engulfed all other noise in an incredible silence, shined down towards Ch’Daesh and The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman.

At once, the undead that slaved under Ramachandra and Bloodwedthe began to disintegrate, dissolving them into light and giving their souls and bodies a permanent and final bit of rest, able to finally pass on from this life into whatever the gods had in store for them in the afterlife after countless centuries laying underwater. The entirety of Ramachandra’s army was gone, save for herself and Bloodwedthe, and the two stared in an awe born of fury and frustration, a small glimpse of what might be a potential defeat crossing their eyes, shaking their heads as if to even remove the idea they could lose this from their brains. The beam itself was not enough to take out Bloodwedthe, Ramachandra, or The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman, but it did most of the work for the Magaran side of things.

Before Bloodwedthe and Ramachandra could properly begin to blame each other, Bloodwedthe demanding more and more money if she were to fight properly and the Maharani only able to scrape up precious few coins left from the rot and rubble that was once her kingdom, a sight even more dumbfounding than the one that just played out before them was something the whole of Rissori Archipelago was born witness to.

Just as Terreshala’s abandoning of Ramachandra enabled her great act of evil and forged what little she had left of her land together with the Of Decadence and Brutality and forming it The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman, a great alchemy happened as Terreshala gifted what she could to Magara, blessing them alongside the help of Laeshann and Fyrshala.

Castle Panahara, Satapattrika Temple, and the Innocence Lost in Eroticism began to bridge themselves together and become what would be known by historians as The Grandeur Of Hellfire And A Maharani Scorned. The Devil’s Grail immediately dropped its converted shield and got itself to the dock of what was Panahara, the whole of the combined form rising from the ground like a lost airship, giving Susan’s ship a second life before repairs as a backup engine and side cannon. The darkness in the sky above it permanently parted and let the sun shine down on The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman, making the two women left below hiss and howl.

“If I remember the old legends right, Susan, the other Captain down there isn’t terribly fond of the divine or the sunlight, right? Isn’t that how they got her in the end? Martyr Alicia’s clerics hung her with enchanted rope in a church at dawn or something?” Siofra grinned back, finally able to give off the fully confident, smug grin she knew she was going to be able to pull off in this fight.

“We ain’t got rope, but we got the rest. Just gotta somehow get you on board that cursed bastard of a ship and see if you can’t end that song. It’s the only thing they got with. I see them bickering over who’s to blame for this, now would be the time for you to board them and end this in a style we all know only we posses.” Susan laughed back. “I do believe some of me own ancestors were part of the group that cleaned up Qorre and turned it into Gryan. I wonder how she’s gonna feel being defeated by us yet again.”

“Hey Susan, you wanna pilot this thing, then? I got no idea the first thing about actually driving something like this, put your crew on your ship and trust in Durga and Millia to guard you as I go do my thing. The world’s not going to be able to wait much longer for me. There’s still women I haven’t seen! That harem door back at Panahara calls for me to unlock it with my victory!” Siofra began to cackle, her confidence bolstered to full force.

Susan walked over and put her hand in Siofra’s, each of them grinning and giving each other a hard, genuine handshake. “Let me see all the profit from our victory.”

“You’re too good to me Susan.” Siofra directed everyone in place.

Sumati stared at this whole thing as if it were a fever dream, still trying to adjust her clothing and pull her underwear back up properly. “I have no idea what’s going on here but at this point I don’t care if it’ll get us out of this mess. This is, by far, the most profoundly ridiculous thing I’ve ever experienced in my life!”

Arundhati smiled, still barely wearing anything but the chain, giving her sister Durga a bit of a pause and pointing at her as if she had committed some kind of etiquette crime. “Relax, Durga. The ritual worked. Yell at me after we’re not dead. I’m just glad the old runes and carvings on the Temple were true and that ‘a great wrath of the Mahanari’ would surface if we engaged in the ritual.”

“YOU DID…. THAT RITUAL?” Durga screamed. “Oh by Terreshala, first I find our missing sister and now I find out my other one is the temple’s…. key to ignition for this thing, so to speak. Why, oh why Terreshala, did you make me the boring one?”

While everyone else bickered and took their places, Siofra directed the bow of The Grandeur Of Hellfire And A Maharani Scorned, as The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman also took flight and matched it to cruise level. The magick pouring off both of them was now extremely alarming to the people who had originally seen and sensed the darkness swirling around the Archipelago, and a few people all the way in Tanjil grinned knowingly. The source of the counterweight, the light in the darkness, had to be their very own Siofra. No way that this wasn’t her doing. That lusty paladin was going to avert another apocalypse and give them something else to brag about their hometown heroine doing.

“So it comes down to this.” Siofra grinned wide. “You have nothing left except the shambling corpse of a woman who was already born undead, almost. A failed siren who is failing to make the world her empire yet again. Your song no longer able to bring back your seemingly endless army, us having blessed them in proper ritual to let them rest. And barely controlling her is an angry drakekin with a thirst for vengeance so strong she’s lost everything, realizing if she loses the Harp, she has nothing left to go back to. You villains really are just all or nothing, greedy, selfish bastards aren’t you?”

Ramachandra hissed and howled, her throat growing ever hoarse and bloody, little bits of flesh and claret coming up from how raw she had screamed herself. “Your death will be the most enjoyable part of this. Bloodwedthe, I promise you the world, and to rule under you, and share the wenches and mead and gold in every corner, I owe you my soul and allegiance in permanence. I make my offer non-revocable, and it shall only end in our death. I am yours. Please, by Ivorhala and Hoethmarr that protect us, we have one shot, let’s make it count!”

“I always wanted a personal slave. A willing one, that is. The ones that aren’t so willing aren’t as easy to manipulate. You’ll be a fun one. I suppose I can try one last trick to shut these loudmouths on the other end the fuck up forever.” Bloodwedthe grinned the same smarmy grin Siofra was. “Play. Put all of Hoethmarr into your fingers and play. The song that will end this cycle of Nahn and let us be reborn as its only true creators!”

Bloodwedthe called up what of Ivorhala’s magick she could and grabbed onto The Seawolf’s Fang, drawing the cutlass into a massive bayonet she could equip to the bowsprit of the devil ship, using the other hand to pour the arcane end of her magick into Ol’ Berserker, drawing it out and placing it on deck as a giant, overdecorated, elaborate looking cannon. The smell of Hoethmarr’s dark powder burns and magick both came off it, as if ready to fire shells, magick, harpoons, anything and everything at once. The remnants of Ch’Rask’s magick veins poured themselves up into the cannon and cutlass, forging the final, desperate weapon of Captain Cecily Bloodwedthe, The Fury Of The Blind Whore, so named for the ship she captained when she was first alive. The rest of the ship and magick on it could barely restrain it and not fire it, trying to spend every second they could staying afloat and charging it.

“Scared yet, you loud little shithead?” Bloodwedthe asked Siofra.

“Of what? Mine’s bigger.”

With a snap of her fingers, the combined holy rays of Laeshann and Terreshala gave form to a massive tree of life, the Effigy Of The Mother Healer, shielding them in the very green that had abandoned Ramachandra, redirecting the sunlight and Laeshann’s radiance towards Bloodwedthe’s eyes, making her squint a bit. It’d still take more than that to stop her, and if she could just ram the entirety of The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman into The Grandeur Of Hellfire And A Maharani Scorned, it would assure a mutual destruction, where Ramachandra could just play the Harp again and wake Bloodwedthe back up and keep up her end of the bargain.

From the Effigy Of The Mother Healer, Siofra stood on the bowsprit, absorbing its nurturing magic and pulling Flametongue back out. She put the glaive in her left hand, her right foot forward, in a flaming aura stronger than the one she had before, her right hand up and waving back and forth, almost as if calling Bloodwedthe over on her bluff.

“You gonna try to penetrate us with that lousy excuse for a cannon or am I going to have to teach you all a lesson about how to actually use something that long responsibly?” Siofra shouted, the last words anyone could get out at each other before one last scream filled the sky so loudly, you could swear that the heavens and embers both could hear it.

“FIRE!” Bloodwedthe bellowed as she never had before, in her last life or this one, and put the burners in the back of The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman, every ounce of magick not going to keeping them up in the air or being diverted to The Fury Of The Blind Whore rocketing them forward in a shaky, violent ride, chunks of land from the bottom of the islands dropping wildly into the oceans below. A tear in the sky let out a scream unnatural and star-rending in its sharpness as they flew forward.

The paladin stood still letting them push forward, absorbing the magick from the Effigy Of The Mother Healer, charging up Flametongue and changing it from its usual Fyrshalan form of fire and flame. It melded with Laeshann’s light and Terreshala’s desire to see the Archipelago remain thriving. In her hands, Siofra now wielded Pashupatastra, The Bow Of Crimson Sunrise, with Flametongue as its arrow. An incredible halo of the three goddesses and their colors danced around and behind The Grandeur Of Hellfire And A Maharani Scorned, a swirling halo appearing behind them and behind everyone on the Magara Chain. With the Pashupatastra in hand, Siofra’s silver eyes locked onto Bloodwedthe’s ship, her cannon, her very heart and she dared not blink.

The Grandeur Of Hellfire And A Maharani Scorned sat without sound or movement, bathed in light, fueling the life-giving energy of Siofra’s weapon as she steeled herself on the bowsprit, with Bloodwedthe and The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman screaming with all its madness and sorrow possible, the swirl of its darkness now circling around the head of the cannon Bloodwedthe was aiming.

And Siofra fired. One arrow, one life.

With the life-giving magic in it, Flametongue cut the bayonet, shot through the cannon, tore the strings of the Harp, and plunged itself right where Bloodwedthe’s heart would be, pinning her to the mast. But life-giving means destruction of an undead, a healing of their shambling soul, allowing them to ascend to the heavens above at long last.

Captain Cecily Bloodwedthe stared, her body slowly beginning to dissolve into a dust and ash in the light, with the magick of the other three goddesses flowing through her. She tried to grab Flametongue’s ephemeral form, unable to grasp it, its physical self already returned to Siofra. The paladin began nocking it again, just in case, her eyes still unblinking and shining with the sunlight. Ramachandra held the torn Harp, speechless, watching as the magick began to drain out of The Profane Throne Of The Runner’s Highwayman, chunks of it falling deep into the Talmage Ocean, with very little left of Ch’Daesh or Ch’Rask at this point.

“A captain… Always goes down with her ship… Well done, you loud shithead… So there’s still heroes in this age as mighty as Alicia and her rebels. I’ll… Not be back a third time to see if it changes again in the future, but I’ll be watching you closely form the embers. You better not disappoint me, paladin, if I watch you and you or any of your descendants die a piss-poor death…” Bloodwedthe tried to laugh, but only blood and bile came up from what was left of her innards, her soul finally healing after being originally hung hundreds of years ago. “I swear I’ll find a way back a third time and I’ll kick your sorry ass then.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t. It was fun, Cecily, but this age belongs to the curious and giving, not the selfish and rotten.” Siofra shot another one of the ephemeral arrows off Flametongue and pinned Ramachandra this time to the mast next to Bloodwedthe. “You’re the Captain too, oh great Maharani. Down you go. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your hot sorceress plenty of company.”

Ramachandra gurgled, her teeth breaking as her jaw clenched, trying her best to say Siofra’s name one last time as if to curse her, with only a fountain of thick claret and acid coming up, her eyes slowly fading as she left the mortal world, unsure of what would await her on the other side. Her last thought was simply just “There will be no next time. It wasn’t worth it.”

Siofra then motioned to Susan, and let the Elf have the last laugh, charging up her main cannons one last time and blowing the sides of the ship open, a basic shell just tearing it from one side open to the next, all of it just falling, splashing, drowning in the Talmage Ocean below.

Once every single piece of its wreckage lay deep and buried, Siofra shot off a third and final arrow down into the pile of evil below, destroying any trace of the magick inside of it, making sure any of the magitech was fried, unable to be recovered, exorcising the Harp of Aeons and thus, exorcising Captain Cecily Bloodwedthe once and for all. Once they were sure that it lay destroyed, purified, sealed for good, the rays from the Satapattrika Temple slowly ebbed away, and a clear, blue sky with the sun above them greeted them once again. The magick slowly began to bring them back down to safety, as carefully as they could bring down a war vessel made of several ships, a couple islands, a castle, and a temple.

The light that had formed Pashupatastra, The Bow Of Crimson Sunrise began to return to the Temple from Siofra’s hands. Flametongue regained its original form, and she placed it on her back, smiling. Everyone else just stood in awe at what they had witnessed, making sure no detail was spared from what they saw so they record this down later. Everyone looked at each other, smiling soft at first, then wide and big, and soon were all embracing each other in one big pile, jumping and crying happy cries of victory to the sky, to the goddesses that saved them, and to each other for figuring this out. The rest of the world that had been aware of these great magicks kicking up sighed in relief as the skies baove the Archipelago and the Talmage Ocean began to clear and settle down.

Victory had gone to Magara this day, and may it prosper forevermore.



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