Her blood bubbled in her veins, forcing her conscious to manually beat the thumping organ in her chest.
"Sydra is with me. Holy be–holy is she." Hera's ears had failed, hours passed of constant, never ending mana overload tugged her mind into her throat. The walls of the cave around her were littered with eyeless copies of her own face.
Her eyes bulged, blood pooling behind the crystallized scabs tracing her unblinking, bone dry eyes. Sydra... Vision had left her, light was foreign to her eyes so long in the vast expanse of darkness consuming her that she couldn't even fathom the difference.
Sydra... Her thoughts, no, her very soul was owned by the dead Goddess her species worshipped for millions of years.
The faces laughed, red saliva spitting from their devilish, half built mouths.
The world itself had reached inside her, tugging at her eyes, veins and throat. Her voice couldn't leave her nor could it even be fathomed in her own mind. Thought was luxury of the mundane, of which she couldn't compare to anymore.
Sydra The only word that remained. Sydra.
As far as she could tell she was on her knees surrounded by dogs. Dead, gutted dogs soaked in a mix of her icy blood and their own matter.
Hundreds of them. A maw of the dead dogs had bitten into her mangled left hand. In the right hand, a small blue orb that had left its host, her staff. Sydra
Her pupils expanded, grasping no light. Her chest grew in electric purple light. Sydra...
Thousands of orbs of microscopic size erupted in a stream around her, shaking violently as they scanned the world itself for a target.
"The Eye of Metis." The words left her mouth without consent from her soul. "I love you, O' Sydra the Holy Mother of Life, Love, and Helios. Venrala is your servant." Her arms opened, allowing in the metaphysical spirit of her All Mother.
Click*
Her neck snapped down, pupils constricted, eyes shifting to red and black.
"Heathen." She croaked, blood leaking from her mouth.
Two red slits met hers from the vast expanse of endless midnight.
"Am I with you, Mother?" She asked, her voice pleading.
.
.
.
"You are with me, my beautiful daughter." Hera's voice echoed in response to her question.
The slits narrowed, then formed into perfectly spherical objects separated down the center with convincing pupils.
"Goddess." It whispered.
Hera's eyes widened, her weak heart slowing, then forcing itself to fire on all cylinders.
"Hera. Hera. Hera. Hera." It repeated her name like a mantra, the voice of this entity shifting from demonic at its start to soft and maternal at its end.
It approached.
The small spheres of light around Hera jittered anxiously before popping out of the universe itself. Her skin crawled, muscles taut, blood frozen.
"Am I with you?" It whispered.
"No. Sydra is with me. The Leviathan is with me. My holy mother, my divine father. They are with me." Hera replied, hugging herself.
The orbs of mana returned, swarming the entity's voice.
"Holy are the Helios. Holy are the Helios." It repeated, a wet sound of tongue sliding over skin attacking Hera's ears.
She screamed.
***
"HERA!" Ryker shouted into the darkness.
No reply. Ten shouts met with ten empty, nearly soundless caverns.
Yuri's hand clutched his, her skin cold and hard. He turned to her, stopping.
"Yuri." Tears leaked down his face with a faint streak of blood present in them. "I can't focus..."
"I know." She held back a sob. "Nothing feels right. Like I'm not even real." Her voice was scratchy from screaming out to Hera. "Please hold me..."
She leaned in–then–
Ryker closed his arms.
"Yuri?" He opened his arms, confused by his hands meeting his own chest. "Yuri!? Yuri!!!" He shrieked, groping the air frantically.
God is here.
Ryker dropped to his knees, sweeping the floor for his lover. He cried out for her in desperation, pleading to the universe itself. Dad...DAD! His voice screamed, deforming into phlegm and blood spitting sobs.
God is here. His mind started to give. DAD! Cassian! Somebody! Yuri!
He fell limp against the floor. His voice refused to leave his throat, instead screaming into his own brain.
A voice, not his own, spoke into his inner world.
"Delkasin." It sounded eerily similar to his father's with a slightly older pace to it. Like an old man spoke, impossibly old, an age his father never lived to.
"Delkasin. My son." The voice placed itself aside his right ear. A gentle warmth caressed his left ear as the voice played twice over, delaying itself before reaching his right ear. "Delkasin, My son."
I am not your son.
"You are not my son." Ryker said, his face rushing with warmth. "I am not your son."
You are not my son.
He crawled across the dry, frigid cave floor toward nothing in particular.
Forward. God is there...
***
Yuri's hand clutched her beloved, no phenomenon but that comforting her.
"Hera!" He yelled, seemingly careful not to let it echo. His voice was firm, but calm. Loud, but never too loud. Perfect.
"I don't know what to think. Something isn't right. Like this isn't even real..." She collapsed to her knees. Her eyes met his, barely managing to focus on them through the everlasting midnight. "Hold on..."
She murmured, the cave itself leaving her. My lovemylovemylove. Her own voice had lost its shape and feel, existing as a broken form of Hera's. Ryker?
She turned around.
He was gone.
"Honey–" her bones liquified, flowing in with the geode rocks that had formulated around her. The cave was riddled with beautiful eyes, cycloptic but clearly her own. I am you.
She crawled away from them, running up against the opposite wall. There, she found another infinite collage of all-seeing cycloptic eyes. They had no iris, yet she knew them to be hers.
"RYKER!" She shrieked and sobbed. "RYKER! PLEASE! I'M SCARED!" Her demonic claws extended, digging into the rocks and crystals beneath her. Sydra has left you, Devil. Demon. Demon. Demon.
Like the center of her vision had collapsed into a singularity, the caves warped around it, never escaping her peripheral vision. She cried and cried and cried.
Nobody came.
"I'm sorryI'msorryI'msorry." She shook back and forth, sobbing.
At the very last instant before her soul escaped the horrors tormenting her, she heard a guttural scream from only a few feet away.
She turned–darkness.
And yet a voice glided into her ears...
"Holy are the Helios. Holy are the Helios." An intimate, maternal voice said from the endless expanse.