Alias watched the earth fracture across the surface in the same hauntingly familiar fashion it had when humanity had ceased to be, because whatever his people had become, they were far from human. He knew it as he felt his magyk swirl inside him, tumble and bunch in preparation as he saw the gaps widen, saw the dark masses rising out of it. The monsters from hell streamed out into the dark, desolate world. Some immediately moved passed them, stretching to other locations where they had another purpose to serve out, but a great number remained, kept building and building as they grew surrounded.

The earth shook and shuddered under their force, yet he did not tremble, nor did Acacia. They held each others' hands as they solemnly watched the foreboding creatures arrive, noted the tentacles and the snake heads and the spears and the fangs the protruded out of a great majority of them. Some were recognizable to him as they shared common characteristics with the Masters he had encountered, held the same evil sneer and famished look in their eyes – the ones that had eyes and mouths.

Dark magyk swarmed around them, threatened to latch on and poison them, but Acacia's light was strong and steady, never wavering as she called on something deep and divine within her that outmatched these creatures' abilities. In the shadows that surrounded them, struggled to engulf them, her light prevailed and kept them in a small but warm bubble, but it would burst at any moment. Her efforts would have to be concentrated on the battle that stood before them.

She turned her head from the beasts to meet his eyes, and their gazes interlocked. They stared at each other for a brief, fleeting moment before she nodded her head to him once and then looked back out at the Masters. Ready?

He met her eyes once more and returned the nod. Ready.

They took a step forward, outside of their bright veil of protection, and into the dark and terrifying world. The monsters rumbled and roared beyond them, came soaring at them, and this time they did not have a chance to fight them two on one, it was each one of them fending for themselves, their efforts having to be spread.

She cried out as she launched herself at one that was triple the size of her with spikes protruding out of its body. She hurtled herself as a tumbling ball of fire at it. He could only note her brilliance for a beat as his first foe was upon him, leaping out at him.

Their power was of the same sinister force. He found himself evenly matched with the creature that terrifyingly resembled Beast, with its snake heads and fangs for limbs that lashed out at him, attempted to poison and murder him once more. But Alias was quick and swift. His body soared through the air as he perched himself on top of the beast, held his rune blade in two bands, and jabbed it straight down into the creature's neck, knowing it was a fatal blow for most. The creature shrieked and flailed, fanged heads lurching out to bite him, but he was fast, slicing them off one by one in a quick succession before launching himself off of the beast.

Two more lurched at him at once, one with the head of a lion but the body of snake, hissing with its long jagged teeth bared. The second was gruesome, horns jutting out of the sides of its black head and pits for eyes yet no mouth, with a grey shroud of mist covering its tentacles. He curled his lips in disgust at their ghastly appearances, and as they both hurtled at him, he was hasty to dodge the tentacles that reached out to grip him, slicing them and reveling in the creatures' shriek as they went to retract, and jumping when the lion head neared him. Black blood burst from the open limbs of the tentacle-monster, splattered down the front of his neck and shirt as he approached it, twisting its head back to stab it in the eye as it continued to wail in pain at its gaping wounds. Its excretes seared his skin, and he hissed through grit teeth as he drove home the final blow; felt satisfaction as it fell to the ground in a burst of dark energy.

But it was short lived as the last one roared and leapt, faster than his eyes could comprehend, and pinned him to the ground, raking its claws down its chest. He groaned out a few expletives and grappled with the beast as he struggled to get his blade. He summoned his energy, his strength, felt it hum through his veins as he shot a burst of fire towards the monster, causing it to flinch back briefly enough for him to grab his knife and aim it at its head, but the beast was quick and flared dark magyk right back at him, faster than Alias could react to, and it penetrated his being, caused his muscles to strain and the wind to be knocked out of him as if a mound of rocks had been piled on his chest.

Panting, he gripped his blade, and jerked up, pushing past the pain and pressure, and drove it into the scull of the monster, hearing the sickening crunch as the bone fractured, staring at the black substance streaming out of the wound as the monster collapsed before him.

The strain lightened, and he scrambled to his feet, flashing a glance to Acacia as she was a lethal machine of energy and light. Her divine glow surrounded her as she moved, and fire erupted from the palms of her hands, engulfing every beast that lurched to her, and there were lots, five at a time in some cases, yet she fended them all off with poise and grace.

But as a large Master approached her, its power thickening the air, it caused Alias' skin to crawl, he felt himself tense.

There was something edgier about this one, something the caused it to reek of much more strength than the rest, and the smirk that twisted on its black face of charred peeling skin caused Alias' stomach to bunch. Spikes jutted out of its skin, welts puckered out over its body. It was shape as a human, but much larger and muscular. It had no hair, just flaking skin across the top of its head. Its eyes were too slits with black cat-like pupils, and just glancing at it he shuddered.

Alias didn't have time to ponder it further as he was attacked from behind, something cutting into his back. He groaned out in shock, and gripped it before it could cut deeper than skin, before it could reach muscle and bone. He twisted around and looked up to meet the face of a bull, its nostrils flaring and rotted breath streaming across his face with the most putrid of odors. His face scrunched into a scowl and he gripped his knife, jerking it across its jagged hand. The shards fell off but its fist still jerked forward, knocking him in the gut, causing him to nearly keel over. He pooled his magyk, forced a wall of black smog between the creature and him and used the small window to back away and creep around the stunted thing, lashing out towards it as soon as the smoke cleared and he could pierce its skin with his blade, running it down and through its back, flinching as its high pitched shrieked echoed against the rocks and caused his ears to ring.

He drew back, facing the creature as it whirled around and cried out as it ran at him, knocking him to the ground as it moved too fast. He gritted his teeth and coiled his strength, unleashing it in full force as he brought his legs up and kicked the creature off of him, swerving around to position his body, ground his feet, and drive the knife in to the hilt of the creatures chest where its power emanated, through its source that was the closest thing to a heart that it would ever possess.

He jerked his blade out and the creature screeched into the air and tumbled over. He was waiting to see if it was truly dead when something struck his head, causing him too to be knocked to the ground. He blinked as black dots danced across his vision, and kept his hand fisted around his blade. Before he could move to react to what had hit him, the creature that he had thought to be silenced jabbed its other still functioning spiked hand across his face. Alias yelled out as the pain tore through him, and he felt the blood slick down his forehead, nose and cheek. With renewed fury he got to his knees and slammed into the creature, using his powers as a ram. The creature hiss and he grunted, stabbing his knife into its face blindly; striking it again and again until its shrieks ceased to be.

Alias panted and fell back, struggling to catch his breath still, when the same invisible force that had thrown him to the grown wrapped its long clawed hands around his throat and squeezed.

He writhed and hit back at it, but its grip was solid and as Alias choked, the black grew from dots to clouds swarming around him. He felt knees dig against his back, felt it throw its total weight on top of him, intending to crush him. He clasped his knife, aiming it at the arms that he could feel against his shoulders, trying to push and pin him down. The thing yelled out as the knife sliced its skin, its blood dripping onto Alias' back and scorching his skin.

Alias used the diversion to roll the creature over so that he pinned it and sneered down at its black face of fangs and twisted flesh. He used his knife to cut open its throat and left it to spasm on the ground as he stood and went to relocateAcacia, having lost sense of her through the haze of the fight, through his own agony and terror, and as he focused on the bond a choking fear seized him.

She was in trouble.

She was in pain.

He was less graceful than before, quick but unsteady as bloody spilled down his face, chest, and back. His shirt was torn and ragged, barely hanging on to him in the shredded pieces, and caked in mud and blood. His pants were less torn but covered in black and red filth, clad to his legs as he marched through the piles of dead Masters and towards Acacia, sensing her through the bond.

As he heard a screech that caused his blood to freeze in his veins as he recognized its feminine pitch, he began to run, to sprint, to hurtle himself towards her. What he reached caused him to halt in his tracks and his body to boil, his magyk to sear the inside of his skin.

She was lying on her back, light blinding as it poured out of cuts in her skin where blood should've left. The light emanated from cuts in her face, to the torn skin of her arms and the ripped section of her dress where her pale stomach was slashed. The Master that he had sensed earlier, the bizarre humanoid beast that had worried him, now stood above Acacia, leaning over her and grinning as it jeered all of the horrid, twisted things it would do to her.

He felt something snap.

The next thing Alias became aware of was the skin of his hands burning as the thick black blood of the monster covered his hands as his knife had sliced the skin of its back. Acacia screamed something at him far away, but he ignored her, and glared up to the slit eyes of the Master. It heckled something at him in another language, something indecipherable to him yet still fed his wrath.

Alias sought to shut it up as he slashed his knife across its face, but a force knocked the wind out of him, threw him onto his back and pinned him. He struggled to fight past it, to understand that the beast had conjured up such power without even the twist of its hand.

"Foolish boy," it hissed in a dialect that Alias finally comprehended. "I will slay you. I will decorate this field with your entrails and feast on your blood, but first I will torture her, construe your love's pretty little face, and you will watch, and you will listen, completely powerless to what is happening."

Alias growled out at it, fighting and thrashing against the magyk that held him down and biting out at the creature's blurry face that swam above him. His chest felt heavy and his lungs felt constricted. It was suffocating him from the inside out, slowly squeezing the life out of him, he realized. It was making him weak and immobile so that he stood no chance to save her, but its words rang through his head, filled him with a terror so quaking that his energy burst, and snapped at the power; giving him just enough of a chance to slip past the barrier — all as images of his dead sister, killed in such a way, were the only things he could see.

He yelled out and flung his newfound power at the beast, and realized that he was channeling her, channeling Acacia's blinding power of light. He flew to his feet, hands raised as the flames shot out of his hands, burned him, seared him from the inside out in the most loveliest of ways. He felt no pain, only exquisite power as it radiated to him through the bond and filled him, drowned every cell in his body and then ripped away from him and at the beast. It drained and abused parts of him, filled and nourished others. He could barely stand, yet he was locked in position as he watched the creature ignite, watched pieces of it begin to flake off and disappear.

There were footsteps behind him, and he sought to guard Acacia, but he was immobile, rendered helpless as the power gripped his; his mortal body unaccustomed to such strength. But he did not have to fear as Acacia appeared next to him, her dress tattered and sullied, her hair a wild tumble of white curls, and her translucent eyes illuminated with light, as did all the holes and slices of her body as she approached him. Her hair glowed, and began to lift from her shoulders, flowing in the air as her power reached a fever pitch and she launched it all at the monster, as her magyk continued to thrum through Alias and explode from him too at the beast.

Alias' eyes locked on her otherworldly form, ears deaf to the shrieks and wails of the monster igniting in a heavenly flame and charring to ashes before him. He was entrance by ethereal beauty, and knew that this was what a goddess must look like. Something so full of light and love and passion, but containing a deadly grace that could be summoned at any time.

She was insurmountable, a fierce force that was incapable of being defeated, of being subdued, and he saw for the first time the power behind her tender looks and vulnerability. He saw the strength that her light gave her, a power that smother the darkness and brought hope to his heart and the world.

But a troubling thought gripped him as he noticed that the cuts in her body were spreading, forming cracks all across her skin as her hair and dress flowed. The light that was causing her to fragment was overwhelming her human body, and as he began to grow aware of her undoing, he realized that he was burning, his skin was on fire like the monster's, but he didn't turn to ash, didn't cry out in pain. He was rendered immobile as it coursed through him.

As the Master was reduced to a pile of smoking ash, he was finally permitted to collapse to the ground. The flames died from Alias' body, but the fire continued to ravage his insides, caused his eyes to go blind and his ears to grow deaf. He lost all sense of the world, of himself and he feared that he would fall, descend into madness at last, but he felt the most peculiar sensation of arms wrapping around him, of someone dragging him up, of himself ascending.

Maybe he was now truly insane, decimated as the Master by the light because he too was something dark and evil, but something in his heart cried out in protest, screamed that he was so much more and always had been and would be.

Light erupted through his charred eyes, was light and sweeping and encased him. It warmed him gently and rushed life and movement into his being, his body. His heart expanded, threatened to burst as he was filled with such wholeness, such completeness that he had lost in his tragic life and had never been capable of recapturing, and as he was reborn, the warmth began to wash out of him, left him standing on his own.

He felt lips brush across his forehead, heard words caress his ears, but couldn't make sense out of anything. Signaled by the contact, a small flicker of the flame waved to life inside of his heart, and there it remained, and always would.

His eyes were slow to open, and when they did the world looked somehow brighter, as if now drenched in potential and possibility, as if he were truly seeing it for the first time.

He took in the small body that lied next to him, their hand still wrapped around his.

He gingerly picked them up, and draped them across his legs, leaning their torso against his chest so that he could look down at their exquisite face, their unearthly magnificence. She was beyond beautiful with her white glowing hair and skin, her long delicate frame. He desired for her eyes to open, and they did, peeking from behind her lids and long lashes.

She felt frail, weak for the first time. Her body was almost limp in his arms, and he could see the haze that clouded her eyes, knew that this little body had become too small for his daughter of the gods.

Her lips parted, struggled to form words, and in a low raspy voice, they did. "Alias... You're of me now... You're..."

He smiled affectionately down at his entire world. "I'm bright," he finished for her.

Her long pink lips perked up ever so slightly in the corners, too depleted to do much more. Her distant eyes of white glowing light swirled as they held his. He felt her grip try to tighten, but barely moved, and so he gathered up both of her hands in his and encased them; beaming down at his miracle.

A breeze rustled from far within the forest of abundantly green tress and vibrant wild flowers, blew through the whole homes and caressed the grassy rolling hills. It crooned an enchanting melody through the world as it reached around them, caused Acacia's hair to wave around her face as her eyes held his, and then it swept away into the distance.