Apollyon was silent.

The architect was silent.

The entire world around them was silent, despite the chaos. The black hole churned behind Kazna, backlighting her warped form with an outline of glittering orange rim light. Streaks of bright gold arced across the sky in bursts and chaotic eruptions as the architect did his best to hold back the tide of nothingness that was Apollyon.

A golden phoenix cut across the sky like a comet and burst into sparks as one of Apollyon's tentacles snuffed it, only to appear as its namesake a moment later, in a burst of golden light that seared Apollyon's tendril.

"There is still time," Lanus said, taking a step forward towards his once battle partner. As he stepped, a pool of golden light spread from his feet dancing around his body like the hem of a cloak, "Please, Kazna, come back to us.... We can end this here and now, we can take it all back."

It was a lie, but it was a beautiful one at that.

In truth the things she had done could never be atoned for, all the lives she had ruined, all the people she would have condemned never to exist. The architect had never established a permanent hell, but for Kazna... he might have made an exception. But still, the lie was convincing: convincing because Lanus hoped it to be true, wanted to believe it just as much as he wanted her to believe it.

His attempt to convince her had not worked during their meeting on the derelict, but perhaps it could work now when they were only minutes away from annihilation. Off in the darkness, the golden phoenix was snuffed, but this time.... It was snuffed permanently, leaving behind nothing but an impression of light in the darkness.

The tide was turning.

Apollyon was stronger than the architect and despite his valiant efforts, the architect was losing.

On their other side, a pack of glowing golden wolves vanished in a single swipe of Apollyon's tendril, and they did not reappear. One by one, the sky around them grew darker.

Around her, Apollyon's borrowed tendrils sheathed, and Kazna sneered, "You fight a lost battle Lanus. Kneel, and your death will be swift, your pain will be gone, and the fight will be over. I promise you a swift end."

Lanus straightened, the fingers of his upper right hand tightening slowly around the shaft of his spear. For a moment he stood as a glowing golden beacon against the darkness, a bastion of the architect's light even as the architect himself was beaten back.

Before them, a Jeffery snake burst into sparks, the light streaming back toward a central point. Black tendrils persued. More glowing creatures burst into clouds of light, spinning backward and merging together in an immense vortex of light and color that rapidly resolved itself into a shape.

The architect's last shape.

It was telling that the last shape the architect chose in his final moments was.... human.

He towered at an incredible, and impossible size thousands of AUs across, and thousands more tall, growing in size to match the power of the black hole before them. The light he shed was immense, impossible to look past without high-yield light filters. Past the incredible and terrible light that he shed, the architect's body morphed and undulated, never keeping the same shape, his face and the proportions of his body always changing, never settling on a specific human form.

The architect shook himself, like a prize fighter who had just taken a nasty hit to the face, and then he lunged forward, grabbing Apollyon's tendrils in grasping handfuls before ripping them open and burning them to ash.

Kazna laughed, "See your god now, fighting for his life. Apollyon is the future, set aside your fear and BOW!"

Silence pervaded the ring despite the carnage.

Lights flashed, in shades of orange and gold around them.

Their shadows cut across the metal in bright contrast, shifting and churning as the architect moved. Their armor was thrown into sharp contrast with the brightness of the light, all five of them standing in a loose row against Kazna. Light danced and sparked off their bodies, torn, and ragged.

Kazna's blood glowed like a beacon against the metal.

Slowly, Sunny stepped forward, the riges of her char-blackened armor burning in sharp contrast.

She held out her hand.

Adam did not need to read her thoughts to to know what she wanted. Reaching down, he withdrew the backup spear from his armor. The first weapon Sunny had ever made him, and deposited it in her palm. Armor stil lit by golden light, Sunny flicked her wrist, allowing the collapsable weapon to errupt outward and snap into place, the head of the leaf blade glittering with a sinister sheen.

She stared across the open space at her mother.

"No!"

The word broke the stillness like a damn.

Without agreement or forethought, the five of them charged forward in unison all thoughts of fairness forgotten, discarded at the door to armageddon.

And then their little bubble was filled with noise.

Sunny let out a war cry that reverberated off the metal and shook the very bolts that held the station together, her anger so great as to propel her across the catwalk and be the first to strike at the woman who had made her life a living hell for nearly three decades.

Sunny thrust forward, but the tendrils that surrounded Kazna spirited her back, swiping at Sunny from two directions. Sunny ducked right under one swing and came up to sever the other tendril. Adam cut around to the side, severing a secondary blow coming in from her right.

Lanus maneuvered himself to the rear, while Ramirez cut to the other side and emptied his remaining ammunition into the mass of tendrils. When that didn't work, he dropped the weapon to the deck and pulled out the energy weapon, which he cycled with such rapidity, it was practically a continual beam of light.

Lanus stabbed down at Kazna aiming for the junction between her neck and shoulder.

He was battered away by a tendril.

Adam thrust his arm forward and summoned his shield, severing several tendrils in the process, and then drew his sidearm and fired the remainder of his ammunition directly into Kazna's chest.

Behind them, the architect flickered.

And kazna laughed.

The light behind them noticeably dimmed, and Kazna..... Grew noticeably stronger.

Bullets rattled to the ground as her body pushed them out, none the worse for ware.

She batted Sunny to the side, throwing her across the deck and into Ramirez, knocking them both over.

Adam ducked a swarm of tendrils, and dove to the side, rolling across the deck to swipe at her legs as he had once done so many years ago. His blade severed through the tendons on her ankle, but almost immediately, they regenerated almost as fast as the cut had been made, and then she kicked him, hard.

Were it not for the railing surrounding the circular catwalk, Adam would have been sent careening back into the black hole, but even so, he hit hard, twisting the metal with a screech of protest as his body slammed into the metal bars leaving them warped beyond repair.

Lanus was the last one standing, but even his skills were to match, his offence had turned into desperate defence as all her attention turned to him.

He cut in great arcs, severing tendrils left and right, but it was no use backing his way toward the railing.

It was clear, she intended to throw him over the side, to destroy him permanently.

She had him backed against the railing, tendrils straining to wrap themselves around his body to gain more leverage.

He sliced one in half, but another grabbed him by the arm, while yet another wrapped itself around his leg.

Lanus slipped.

Kazna lifted him upward over the rail.

Sunny screamed in rage.

And then.

A body appeared from nowhere, leaping from the blackness to land on Kazna's shoulders, latching itself onto her back and wrapping its arms around her neck. Kazna jerked violently to the side dropping Lanus, who spun and managed to grab the rail before pitching over the edge.

She spun like a bull at a rodeo clawing at the silhouette that had attached itself like a barnacle to her back.

Adam pulled himself to his feet staggering to the side.

Kazna spun past, and in that brief flash, Adam recognized her attacker.

Krill

WIth no combat training, and no weapon krill had jumped in to save Lanus.

Adam took a step forward to help, having maintained a hold on his spear, but what happened next was too fast for him to comprehend. Kazna reached up with a tendril, grabbed Krill by the back of the armor, and slung him to the ground, breaking his grip.

He hit the deck hard, hard enough to dent the metal, then she drew back her arm.

"KRILL, NO!"

The shout tore his throat raw.

He dove forward, but he was too late, as the blades of Kazna's trident erupted from the pass of tendrils and pierced through Krill's chest.

"NOOOOOOOO!"

Adam slammed into Kazna from the side, knocking her over, but his momentum was too much, and her grip was too strong. The trident was torn from the krill's body with a geyser of red.

Somewhere someone was screaming.

And it was only after a long moment did he realize... it was him.

Adam pulled back his spear and rammed it, once, twice, three times into kazna.

Sunny appeared on his other side, her spear moving in tandem with his.

Kazna screamed.

Somewhere, an energy weapon burst repeatedly to life with glowing golden light.

The architect flickered again.

Kazna's screams turned to laughter, and then Adam was hauled bodily from his feet. He screamed as her tendrils buried themselves into the cracks in his armor, ripping them apart like an eggshell, and exposing him to the stale air of the bubble. Chunks of his armor were pitched to the ground.

Fealty screamed

And then one tendril struck, grabbing him by the back of the neck, piercing through his skin, beneath the SE exoskeleton, and hooking around the other side.

He squirmed.

And then.

She pulled

Adam screamed.

Screamed and Screamed as the SE exoskeleton was ripped from his body pulverizing the nerves to which they connected as he was ripped apart. In a single terrible moment, he lost all the feeling to his human leg and the entire left side of his body.

And then she discarded him throwing him like a broken doll to the catwalk unable to move as blood welled into the open creases of his armor.

His helmet flickered.

Fealty whimpered softly inside his head, but even as his suit flickered towards death, fealty made one last attempt to save him injecting his body with another dose of the narcotic cocktail and filling the suit with a coagulating agent.

And then, the suit died, and Fealty with it.

Beyond him, Sunny roared in rage, thrusting her spear forward in the perfect arc, right through kazna's throat.

It would have been perfect.

The architect flickered again.

Kazna grabbed Sunny by the throat, hauled her into the air, and slammed her to the ground.

Adam's vision flickered.

Again and again and again, kazna threw Sunny against the metal, over and over until her body was limp, and did not move again.

Seconds.

The seconds it took For Lanus to haul himself up over the edge of the railing.

But it was enough.

Just enough for kazna to destroy everything.

Still firing his weapon, Ramirez tried to leap out of the way as her tendrils shot toward him, but she was too fast.

One tendril caught him around the ankle, and she was more than strong enough.

Strong enough to pitch him over the edge.

Ramirez screamed once and vanished over the edge.