Her rage burned.

It twisted and grew and crackled and burned through her veins, pure fury in the form of liquid fire lighting her up from inside, glowing from within her skin and screaming to be set free, to unsheath her axe and draw blood, to kill and kill and kill until entire fields had been laid to waste with blood and bodies.

A force she contained behind a fierce smile and a honey-coated challenge, the front of a simple, friendly competition. The demon had no idea what was coming to it.

It had taken her friend from her, and for that, they would pay.

"Come on, buddy, afraid of a little tussle? I won't hurt you, I promiseee," Pearl said, singsongy, with a grin that caught the light and fractured it in her mouth, swallowed by the over-brightness in her eyes (her eyes were blue, blue like the sky, but they gleamed gold from within, the rage of a goddess not yet born), fierce determination alight.

Xornoth hovered out of her reach, emotions locked away behind his perpetual sneer and corruption-covered, blackened face. She didn't know what was going on inside its head, and she did not care one iota. She was going to lure them down, and she was going to destroy him, easy as that.

It laughed, a wheezing, raspy cackle. "You can't really think you can defeat me, mortal. I am the Champion of the Dark Stag."

Pearl laughed.

(She did not notice the way Xornoth's voice trembled on the word 'mortal')

"Scared to find out you're not as all-powerful as you think, Xorny?" Pearl taunted again. It would get angry enough eventually, feel some of the fire ignited in her own lungs. Rage was dependable, trustworthy. It burned you alive and it hurt, but it gave you the strength to burn others as well, to make them pay. And She was going to create a wildfire.

Eyes narrowed, fingers curled over the handle of her axe, she took careful, deliberate steps closer towards the demon, grin widening from challenging to something almost manic, closer to feral.

(Xornoth would swear, later, talking to their toy emperor about the encounter, that the Farmer Queen's eyes had flickered with flame from within as she approached him.)

"Fine."

And with that, the demon finally charged down from its unreachable perch, and the fire in Pearl's veins sang at the thought of finally attaining revenge, of freeing Sausage from this monster, of taking the demons blood for Herself and taking all its power, bathing in its blood and-

He stopped, landing lightly on a nearby roof, still well out of her reach. She jeered, the fire roaring in her heart and lungs with a furious burn.

It laughed, tremors of a hiss echoing through it. And then something hit her from behind, and she laughed then too, manic and easily mistaken for joy, if one couldn't see the bloodlust in the queen's eyes.

"Oh, you want a real fight, is that it?" She cackled. "Enjoy the show, oh great Xornoth!"

And then the bloodbath began.

Above it all, She laughed and laughed and laughed, as blood splattered and bodies collapsed and screams of pain and rage echoed from the undead minions the demon had set on her.

At one point, she was laughing still as blood sprayed from her mouth after an arrow found its way into her chest, the skeleton who had shot her long dissolved into dust.

And yet she continued to fight.

No matter what the demon, what Xornoth threw at her, She fought, and at last, when he had no more monsters left for her, she stood in a sea of corpses and blood, soaked in death and miraculously uninjured, and she smiled, slow and wicked and vicious.

(And Xornoth knew they couldn't win, that this was a battle to flee from, to refuse a goddess Her will was to forfeit yourself to their wrath–)

"What, no more minions to throw at me? Fresh out of zombies and skeletons and ravagers? Cmon, mate, that can't be all you've got!" Pearl's entire face was alight with energy, bloodlust and rage and pure divine energy shimmering around her in an unearthly aura. A Goddess, unborn and unrealized.

(They trembled under her gaze, weak in a way they had only ever been before to the God it served, and it terrified them. This Goddess, a fawn still, with enough power to destroy his Dark One with a single slow, vicious grin)

No more challenges, no more battle, and yet her blood still hummed with the need for more. War was never satiated, Death never satisfied, and she hungered for more than just both.

The demon didn't respond to her, lounging up on the rooftop like it was a throne for him to gaze down upon her, and she seethed at it.

"So? What's it gonna be, Xornoth?" She snapped up at him, impatient with the shrieking bloodlust coursing throughout her and burning her alight with the need to destroy the source of her fury.

Standing up slowly, Xornoth looked, and really looked, at Pearl, crimson-corrupted eyes fading into a soft violet as he drew nearer to her. It looked painful, the corruption tearing at their skin as it peeled away in the harsh glow of Pearl's divinity.

"I'm sorry," he rasped, voice entirely unlike the dark one it had sported earlier. "I'm sorry."

And as confusion replaced the rage, the light fading as the energy she had unwittingly summoned retreated back to that place deep within her where it lay until the right time to awaken, so did the corruption, growing back onto Xornoth and replacing the elf underneath once again with darkness.

Red eyes pierced into her soul for one eternal second, and then they were gone, teleported away by its Dark Master.

What had happened?

Pearl blinked at the bloodbath around her, already dissolving into ash, as the undead tended to do. Why had there been a mob horde so close to Helianthia? She had torches spread around to prevent this, she knew she did. It must have been some sort of fluke.

Well, it looked very well taken care of, for a fluke. Pearl shrugged off her confusion, content to let things lay. The Queen had other things to do besides ponder a bunch of dead zombies.