The sheathed swords came close to breaching Soran's atmosphere, only to lose aerial stability as a ravenous leech attempted to eat and simultaneously diffuse the energy that fueled them. Caitlyn was that leech, and while she did manage to accomplish the former part of her plan with little in the way of immediate consequence to herself, the insipid woman completely forgot that her power was being projected through the Mist, - through [i]Hellion[/i]. She did speak through it after all, but more importantly was the fact that there had been no anomalies, no rips or tears in the fabric of reality had formed within or around the Mist to show that it was using anything other its malignant presence to perform it's function of diffusing and consuming energies. The only logical conclusion was that just as the Void mistress _spoke_ through the Mist, so too did her power to consume the energy of others also act through it, at least in this instance. What did this mean? For starters it meant, the Mist would have to make direct physical contact with the swords in order to initiate the process of magical depletion and purification through Caitlyn's void. Secondly, Hellion had demonstrated many times that the Mist was a living, organic substance, of which the whole of his physical body was made from. This made him especially vulnerable to the effects of the runic strings, for just as it had cursed Narcissus’ body and soul to slowly fall apart inside Eden’s bark, the strings primary method of affliction was done through physical contact. Did Caitlyn ever stop to think for a moment that using Hellion as a medium to open the gateway to the Void might be endangering him? - that as she, in her hunger - tried to consume [b]decadent[/b] magic, she may have infected him with a disease even more deadly and virulent than Narcissus, who was losing himself both physically and spiritually within Eden’s bark due to the effects brought on by Singar’s runic strings? Of course not. She was too concerned with trying to satisfy her hunger, her insatiable lust for power, just as the rest of the Collective sought power through Will, which was ultimately and ironically their biggest problem. They lacked will, they lacked the resolve to get things done themselves, and blindly trusted a fool, who at the very moment of his birth [i]hallucinated[/i] his way into believing himself to be the last remnants of Idea’s will. This lack of willpower was reflected not only in their very presence on Soran, which was not a result of their will, rather of [i]”the”[/i] Will, but also in their complete inability to act with even the slightest shred of tactical cohesion. Thus as Mist [b]touched[/b] the scabbards flowing with the decadent magic comprising the runic strings, instead of serving as a convenient spoon medium for Caitlyn to commence her gluttony, the Mist burned with crimson light. The entire sky became luminous, with blood tinged smoke floating in the air as the strings seared themselves upon the Mist that was everywhere: in the sky, underground; all places the Mist occupied, so too did the curse travel far and wide to be with its newest victim. All Caitlyn had done was commit the mortal sin of combat... [i]Fratricide[/i] [i]”Do not fear the voice of evil!”[/i] The Disciple, the armies of Liaita whose wills and might he reinforced with his powerful psychic voice were steeled by his skillful manipulation of words. “She knows not how experienced you are in the ways of war!” Initially caught off guard by the sudden intrusion of Caitlyn’s voice into their heads, the dragons, the faeries, the elves, and earth tamers all felt the voice wane in fury, grow distorted, and fall apart as the medium with which the Void mistress spoke disintegrated, atomized, and decayed further down until there was nothing left but composite matter. Singar didn't even blink at this, didn't even twitch as the fool before him passively perceived his neutral expression as an attempt at hiding his real emotions. The truth of the matter was that just as the Collector had an unrestrained tendency toward acting capriciously so too did he have a way of retreating into his own mind when focusing; half-removing and half-shutting out his feelings with a computerized thought process for executing strategies, leading him to abruptly cease beleaguering foes with his ego. Kalaziel's emotional line in the sand had been drawn the moment he came within sight of Hellion, and in the ex-Herald failing to comprehend or pay the proper attention, or respect to the superior being, he had let his own own ally walk him like a [i]dog[/i] to the euthanasia clinic. And there was no comfort room. If the Cowboy had bothered to consolidate his brain along with the rest of his form before arriving on Soran, he would have realized this. Instead he tried to quickdraw on Singar, wisps of his misty body coming off like a dissolving sleeve, whilst a solid wall of the magic that he was infected with erupted from the ground at a speed to match his own. Despite appearances, the wall was mostly transparent, contrasting quite starkly as it rippled from impact from the Tyrant Gun’s first round. Those ripples rapidly changed shape to reflect not only the form of the bullet that had been imprinted on its surface, but of Hellion as well who would slowly succumb to its power, mocking his every move just as it did Narcissus’. [color=ed1c24]הבוגדים יידעו ייאוש מבעד לעיוותיהם של חבריהם.[/color] The Mist could not contain or restrain Agron and Sarach with physicality, because they were not beings that lived through conventional physical means. There was no skin with pores to fill, and veins underneath to flood with Mist, or muscles to deteriorate, or nerve signals to be blocked off. They were spirits who [i]expressed[/i] their presence through the dirt beneath the grass, through the mud caking the lakes, rivers and swamps, within the rocks composing the mountains, and the metal in the mines of the ruined passages, which in itself was a testament to their ability to resist the Vesuvian Virus. Likewise as with Caitlyn's Void, it did succeed in pulling out Agron's spiritual energy, drawing it forth in [b]endless[/b] streams of enigmatic blue aura. Enigmatic being the operative word, for even as the power radiating from towers on Sarach's back and its beam of crimson fury was swallowed into the whore's throat in an [b]endless[/b] stream of ethereal essence, so too would the fact start to fill her mind that creatures as bestial as the two earthen cousins could not be depleted using such basic drain tactics. The answer to the mystery of why such a thing could never be achieved should have been obvious, especially for a person whose own body resembled the cosmos, but she - like the Imbecile of The Mist - had clear problems understanding what it meant to have a will. The blue aura protected Agron against threats of a non-physical nature, and because its ability to guard its soul was linked to will, this aspect of endurance meant that the only way to actually restrain it, as well as Sarach was to assault their wills directly, an act already proven to be futile when Agron fissured Liaita with its wrath and flooded it with its defensive power that rose like a tidal wave toward Hellion. Lastly, until those wills were impossibly broken, nor would the two cousins auras fade, dissolve, or be broken down in [b]any[/b] capacity. When the jaws of the Void bit down on Sarach, its red aura compressed, sharpened, and went straight through the roof its mouth. The serpent thrashed, twisted, and turned, shredding tongue and cheek, shattering teeth and softening gums as its in-tact aura that was designed to assault the mind exploded inside Caitlyn’s very core, and spread out through the roof like a pillar of blood. Because Sarach compressed its aura, when it released that compression, it exploded a second time, endangering the minds of her allies who stupidly chose not to even so much as guard themselves against the volley of molten, spiritually energized boulders from Agron, the flurry of corrosive bio-force from the Toxic Conqueror, or its spines that sought to lance them through. For their astonishing inability to heed to that which sought to murder them, Singar would punish them by refusing them the possibility of any future coordination, via the one method he actually [b]did[/b] try to hide from them. Throughout all the chaos, all the carnage, throughout the grammaton hammer exploding in [i]in front of Hellion[/i] after its brief delay, threatening to slam him into the crimson wall, and send him scattering into the tsunami of Agron’s blue aura as a dismantled mess… Several thousand swords burrowed underground, gaining speed as they crossed out of one fissure created by the Essence within The Rock, and drilled into another, unimpeded by decaying Mist, straight toward the destination of the Collective. The final fissure was broken through, and the golden hilted swords unsheathed themselves from the silver scabbards, the openings of which faced the sky with their emergence. A flash of gray heralded the activation of Singar’s own voids, but unlike Caitlyn’s, his were not contained within his body--instead they were contained within the scabbards themselves. The gust of wind that the voids unleashed may very well have been enough to tug the Collective toward them, but just as the swords aerodynamic shapes--surging with runic energy--proved useful in piercing that wind, so too did it allude to the possibility that Singar had no intention of making pets out of lunatic hounds. No. He wanted them to suffer. That which the scabbards pulled in was not rotting Mist, nor was it energy emitted by Agron and Sarach, the electropsionic energy emanating from the Collective’s psi-links, and certainly not magical net dropped on their heads by the Doloran squad of dragons and faeries, which too failed to be impeded by the mutilated Voidmistress. What the scabbards sucked towards the Collective was that which impeded all things. The Midnight Fog. It pulled the Midnight Fog via wind, pulled it right onto the Collective like a Midnight blanket, before a Midnight nightmare. The Fog rushed into the Void and granted Caitlyn a long-desired respite as it slowed her cosmic energies to a halt. The Fog absorbed the minute flecks of energy from the rest of the Collective’s psi-links, suspending its effects just as it suspended the energetic net thrown over them, the spirit-energy of the rocks flying at them, and ultimately reduced the travel speed of neural impulses to a sluggish motion, and even slowed the runic decay just before it hopped through their psi-link. It did not stop the Toxic Conqueror from impaling each and every one of them on its spines, for it was not an energy being, nor did it prevent the physical aspect of the boulders Agron launched from crushing them to bloody pulps, and nor would it prevent the swords from impaling whatever remained. Because of the way the Midnight Fog stagnated a being’s perception by jamming up their brains, because of the fact that it suspended the flow of energy, just as it would soon suspend Hellion’s suffering as the Fog rose just a bit higher off the grass and consumed him, because it only delayed these things… The Collective who had all been reduced to fragments of flesh, bone, and wasted matter, would not feel the awaiting agony until the Fog drifted passed them, beyond their disembodied souls. It was a torture that had yet to even begin. It was a torture that had not even been [i]born[/i]. Finally Singar’s facial expression shifted to that of a broad smile, as the wind coming off the hilts of the swords at his hips swirled the Fog around him in an large, spinning vortex, blowing the stuff away before he too, like the Collective [i]dog shit[/i] before him faced… Their Cataclysmic Ending.