What was she even doing here?

Penny saw the Messiah launch a barrage of tendrils out of its hand at her and the wind from Caelea's abstraction shuffled her out of harm's way as if it was on autopilot. She'd only come to Florida to search for answers about the vision she had been shown and find Saul, and now she was throwing her life away for bunch of witches and feds with so much left unanswered. Penny lifted her hand and chunks of ceiling shot towards her, whipped around her back, and threw themselves at the Messiah. Throwing her life away? Bullshit. As if she could live with herself if she'd just ran. 

The best she could hope for was to buy time for the others. Penny knew she wasn't winning this one. Still, that didn't mean she was going to be the only loser. She remembered one frustrating game night with her family years ago. Her older brother Billy was absolutely dominating and everyone else but her had called it quits. Every move she made just prolonged the match from reaching its inevitable end where her brother would gloat and lord over her for the rest of the week. So she kicked the leg of the card table. It bent inward and caused the table to tilt as gravity did the rest and sent the pieces scattering all over the floor. She didn't win, but neither did Billy—and watching him rage and scream when she called it a draw was more satisfying anyway. 

She just had no clue how the fuck to replicate that here as she continued to circle the Messiah and launch fallen debris at them. With every piece of debris launched at them, the Messiah waved their hand and it disappeared into a mass of sparks. Penny would know it was consumed by the Glutton, but the Messiah stood still.

"Thanks to the actions of your friends," They raised their hand into a fist and around Penny, similar clouds of orange embers and sparks appeared. "My bond with Mother is far stronger, we have unlocked more power than ever before."

Out of them came, brutal, vicious-looking, orange crystal spikes that launched themselves at Penny at high speeds. The spikes got within arms reach of Penny before her sigil glowed and they projected themselves back at the Messiah. Penny grimaced as the use of her abstraction caused a spike of pain inside of her head but kept a strong face. Her attacks had done nothing against the Messiah, but maybe she could give off the same illusion of being untouchable. Penny couldn't put on air for too long, but maybe long enough to frustrate the Messiah into acting sloppy.

[color=goldenrod]"And yet you lost again, even with your lame little rebranding. Does [i]Mommy[/i] realize how much of a useless little shit you are yet?"[/color] growled Penny as she kept stepping around the Messiah, readied for the next attack. 

The Messiah merely raised a hand and the spikes went around them... except for one that graced their cheek. It left an oozing, glowing, wound, but the Messiah was otherwise nonplussed. Even as Penny taunted them.

The Messiah smirked and Penny stopped dead in her tracks, one hand held out with the other behind her back.

"You call this [i]losing?[/i]" The Messiah chuckled. "Are you aware that Mother is free from that dreaded mountain - the timeline that the False Light was so adamant on hiding? That she's growing stronger every day? That your [i]God[/i] won't be strong enough to stop the Promised Day?"

They laughed.

[color=goldenrod]"That's fine,"[/color] said Penny quietly as the laughter echoed throughout the chamber. As the Messiah had ranted, she'd unlocked the device behind her back and had started to film. Now Penny stood her ground with a defiant smirk of her own, her phone now held forth like a crucifix trying to ward off a demon as she sent the video of the Messiah off to Kimberly, Justin, Tuyen, and the others. The phone dropped from her hand and flew into her hip pouch as she stared down the Messiah. 

[color=goldenrod]"You think that we need help from the Child or God or fucking anyone else either than each other to stop you or the Glutton? Please. You had every goddamn advantage the last time—surprise, numbers, the home field, everything—and y'all still got your asses whooped by a couple of kids holding hands and singing kumbayah. This time my friends are prepared, are stronger, and want nothing more than to shut your stupid, mommy issues ass up."

"And oh no, our [i]God[/i] won't be strong enough to stop the Promised Day?"[/color] repeated Penny in mockery, her voice wet with venom as it erupted into a feral roar. [color=goldenrod]"You stupid bitch, I kill gods!"[/color]

Penny pulled her hand back and attracted the orange crystal shards that had bent around the Messiah straight towards its back.

The spike penetrated the Messiah and then they smiled as it disappeared. The Messiah was absolutely silent as they shrugged.

"... Then do it again."

The roof rumbled and shook above them... and then what was left of the ceiling suddenly broke and then came crashing down on top of Penny. She looked up and shouted; the gusts of wind wouldn't knock her far enough away from the collape. Penny reflexively protected her head with her hands and hunched down as she let her abstraction blast the debris away. She felt herself connect with hundreds if not thousands of bits of stone  as she rocketed them away. She grunted lowly and tears began fall from her eyes as her head began to explode with pain from the overuse of her abstraction. Her ears rang. Her vision flashed white, red, and then black as she felt a sharp pain at the back of her retinas. She was about to blackout.

Penny dropped her abstraction and braced for the worst. She screamed and jerked to the side as a rock smashed against her upper back, her feet tumbling over a rock and sending her crashing down upon her rear. Two more chunks of ceiling hit her from above, one cracking against her forearm wrapped around her skull and another on her leg. She sucked in the cry of pain and coughed out the dust from the collapse. The alive burial she'd anticipated didn't follow. The rumbling from above had quieted. She had survived.

But for how long? Penny tried to open her eyes. It proved to be challenging. She heard a wet, viscous suctioning noise as she finally peeled them open and saw a dark, reddish haze and nothing else. She inhaled deeply, fought back the urge to cough, and calmed her breathing. She slowly pulled herself up off of the ground, certain that the Messiah wasn't done with her yet. The pain screamed at her that it would not be ignored, but Penny held it back.

[color=goldenrod]"You can't beat me, Speaker. How about we call it a draw?"[/color] said Penny, blood dripping from her mouth as she smiled, damp hair tangled and matted to the side of her battered face, her blinded eyes a ruby spiderweb of burst capillaries. She stood with her shoulders relaxed and her chin up as she waited and listened, her beating heart nearly deafening. 

"Well," The Messiah stuck their hand out at Penny, as a small, wry grin forms on their face. "We'll see." 

They launched a barrage of orange tendrils tipped with brutal looking crystal daggers. Penny, with her eyes still blinded and her lips still smiling, threw her hands down at the ground as the Messiah spoke. A blast of wind shot out from her palms and propelled her upwards into the air as she attempted a blind dodge at whatever the Messiah had just thrown at her. There was a moment as she flipped in the air that she thought she had actually pulled it off. 

Penny landed with a rough three point landing then cried out in pain as the tendrils pierced through her stomach. The red haze flashed white before being bathed in an orange light as she felt a searing pain spread throughout her body. Her mind and heart raced one another as blood gurgled out of her mouth between sharp, ragged breaths. Then everything stilled and Penny started to laugh. The laughter grew louder, a horrific, wet cackle as her hand lashed out and wrapped itself around the tendrils.

[color=goldenrod]"I told ya, you can't beat me,"[/color] roared Penny, practically feral. She pulled on the tendrils and with a blast of wind launched herself towards the Messiah, throwing a wild haymaker with her left.  [color=goldenrod]"I'm un-fucking-stoppable!"[/color]

The Messiah was punched across the cheek and... it didn't feel like Penny punched flesh. More like a slow crystal-like substance... and it cracked and sent shards of the Messiah's face all over the place. They grit their teeth as they floated up into the air, wordlessly this time as the ground shook and cracked. A large hunk of the ground was ripped from the ground and floated in the air... before it was launched at Penny.

A noise like a stuck boot being yanked free from a muddy bank rang throughout the chamber as Penny's howling laughter stopped echoing off of the walls. There was no sound of the rock impacting the ground, and as the dirt and the dust cleared the Messiah would be able to see Penny's clutched fist shaking as her abstraction kept the boulder locked in a stasis just inches away from completely crushing her. Teeth gritted, body broken, and choking on her own blood, the blinded girl felt her abstraction slowly lift the massive boulder away from her. Inch by inch, it slowly began to rise.

Penny had repulsed the boulder maybe a foot above her before she felt the warm glow of her sigil fade. She had surprised herself by being able to reactivate it at all. The fight hadn't been a total loss. The others would now know what they were up against, and she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had gotten in one good punch. Perhaps not the draw she was aiming for, but she didn't want a draw anyway. She wanted to win, and she knew she would—eventualy. But a break first would be nice. Maybe she'd see her friends. Penny smiled at that final thought as the rock dropped and her fist went limp.

Seemingly moments after Penny's death... the entire Forgiven compound collapsed in on itself. Reducing itself to ash, and leaving only traces of the horrors that went on there for people to dig through the rubble.