𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒 ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

⁰⁸vengeance is mine

The halls of Hecate's blasphemous citadel echoed with an unearthly silence as Artemis made her way inward, vengeance manifest in every thunderous step. Her aura preceded like the harbinger of storms, imbuing mortal hearts with primal terrors no exorcism could assuage.

Within the yawning sanctum, Hecate waited enthroned amid roiling shadows and sulfurous stench. Her eyes blazed with inhuman malice, relishing the grieving goddess's approach.

"You dare profane my realm with treachery, crone," Artemis hissed, drawing an arrow flethed with raven feathers symbolic of her wrath's holy purpose. "Confess your part in murdering what was most sacred to me."

Hecate cackled ominously, throwing wide claws dripping necrotic slime so noxious mists swept forth. “Jealousy proves the simplest weapon against frigid purity, moonchild. I merely guided your lost lamb as fate commanded."

Artemis loosed her shaft with a battlecry that quaked the blackened walls. It sheared Hecate's grasping talons, pinning her form alight with anguished screams. But more fell things were unleashed in response.

From smoke-shrouded alcoves flooded a tide of unspeakable abominations—shambling corpses crawling with maggots, worm-eaten specters keening bloody incantations. They surged as one seething mass towards the silver deity bellowing blasphemies, talons raking the fetid air.

Undeterred, Artemis drew a finely-wrought hunting knife and her silver longbow, gifts from her divine father at the world's gray dawn. She moved with preternatural grace, each strike spilling foul ichor while arrows flew singing their merciless dirge.

Corpses collapsed mewling, ghosts dispelled beneath storms of celestial rage. Yet ever more crawled from pores in the dank walls as if birthed straight from the architecture's corrupt essence, Hecate directing her necromantic sorcery through anguished shrieking.

Artemis fought on relentlessly against the pressing tide, empowered by righteous purpose greater than any decay's terminal grasp. Marble shattered beneath her silvered hooves as she charged, trampling the oncoming flood into pulpy viscera.

All the while, Hecate's cursed laughter echoed amid defiled rafters, goading further horror with every gasping incantation. From a yawning stairwell emerged hulking abominations that towered above even the huntress' immortal stature.

Their skins sloughed in peeling rents to reveal pulsating masses of worms and swollen blue veins. Jaws unhinged impossibly wide to unleash guttural roars shaking dust from niches long abandoned to shadow. These were Hecate's foul guardians summoned from the deepest Abyss to break the celestial intruder.

Artemis met their charge undaunted, darting between grasping talons swifter than thought. Her knives flickered silver-bright, severing appendages that thrashed squirming upon flagstones staining black. Arrows flew straight and true, piercing bulbous eyes unleashing glutinous fluids.

Yet ever did the Witch Queen's sorceries multiply her monstrosities amid the swelling cacophony of screams and ogrish howling. Artemis fought on relentlessly through mounting weariness, divine ichor streaming down alabaster flesh. The citadel shuddered under unholy energies brought to fever-pitch.

In that dark moment as the huntress battled alone against a writhing tide, destiny intervened through an unexpected channel. From stone crevices crept slender forms radiating pale starlight—Artemis' hunter maidens guided by their mistress' distress.

They fell upon the encroaching shadows with deathly grace, launching arrows imbued with holy moon energies. Specters shrieked their final laments, corpses crumbled into lifeless piles of chitin and sloughing skin.

Heartened, Artemis fought with renewed ferocity beside her blessed Sisterhood. Marble collapsed into choking dust as her final arrow found its mark, pinning the screaming Hecate impaled and broken upon blackened obsidian.

The fell citadel rent asunder, its profane foundations sundered by unleashed divinity casting out every last harbinger of shadow. Dusk fell upon smoking ruins where Artemis stood victorious amid her faithful huntresses, vengeance achieved through violence purging all blasphemy.

Yet scars of loss remained etched eternally upon her divine soul, no victory able to restore what was denied. Dark days had dawned for the highest mount and sacred woodlands below, changed forever by betrayals' bitterness. None would forget the cataclysmic struggle wrought that grim eve in honor of a love carrying immortality's heaviest scars. The wheel of fates had turned, setting new patterns in celestial motion under the avenging moon goddess' watchful eyes.