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EPISODE 18: No Pass!

"Darkness... I have failed you. The Lightbearer has pruned my ambitions once again!"

The defeated voice of Mertta, resonating from a kindling sliver of obsidian bark, croaked within the abyss. Somehow, she managed to survive again. Ricven gave her a fist full of aethric explosives and...well...boom she went, obviously; obliterated from existence-as he endeavored to do once and for all. But now, as a remnant of her drifted in the lone darkness alienated from the reality of her natural plane, she grumbled and mewled in anguish. It was all that she could do, now that she ceased to be...or so it appeared.

"Why do you wither so easily?" spoke another voice, calm, brittle, black as pitch. It filled the void as if it were its own and accompanied the pathetic spark that whined in the nothingness. "Is the gift that I have given you insufficient? Or are you truly unworthy than you once proposed, when you were just a sapling thirsty for vengeance?"

"He is far too powerful. His shears are...unbreakable...."

"Nothing is unbreakable." The voice calmly protested. "Everything is destined to ruin. Pity. The Lightbearer is far from everlasting, and you've neglected to douse his spark with the strength I have bestowed upon you."

Mertta's enkindled crust of fissures flickered a hushed jade in its tranquil, silent gripe. The other voice was right. Nothing was unbreakable. Everything was destined to ruin; such truer words. What cannot be removed, can be killed. Mertta's ego caught a moment of silence and the call that suppressed the dark breached what sanity-or insanity, given that Mertta's goal equaled the route of madness.

But what was there to discover from this? Was her hubris as critical and petty as Ricven's? Was she honestly unsuited to harness the power of nethra? New to it, she was, but she shared much with that power after all: destruction, degeneration, chaos, damnation. Mertta's end was to plague Shale with her dark shrubs, conquering the lush atmosphere of Aiakha's magnificent continent, and, one day, engulf the world in her malevolent image. A vast feat for such a singular entity. Something the elf girl would never consider.

And that was why the Spriggan Queen envied Yuka, Divindale's last Grove Mother. The Sylvelli's power stemmed from the earth spirit of Divindale and had the potential to govern all things nature. Through all these graceful years, the catastrophe of the great past did not touch her. Yuka appeared resistant to the extinction of her race and Mertta, like the belligerent hedge shrew she was, remained present for it all. As the last Syvelli had vanished, out sprung a young and bright-eyed Yuka, a cute and cuddly foil to Mertta's bristly plans, and thus their tireless battle began. Good versus evil. Night and day. Her hatred for the elf and all of her adorable looks and ways aspired her envious plot to overthrow the grove mother to be for it was the natural thing to do...for some deeper reason forged in the past. And there was nothing good to come of it. She knew this. She wanted it. The whimsical forest of Divindale pained her core and aggravated her to no end.

So, therefore, Yuka must fall; her fate was her death, and that pestering Ricven McQueen must be removed, too-an imposing force that shouldn't be in her way, to begin with.

Or perhaps that, too, played a key role in her path to world domination.

How...cliche.

That sinister intent alone shuttled her will to germinate from the last bit of husk that survived her foe's humiliating crusade.

"I must... Ascend!"

The edgy voice kicked up a beat. "Oh?"

"I must... Destroy him! I must not suffer him again! It is my destiny-the heart of the forest is mine! That repulsive, ignorant elf can NEVER appreciate the powers she holds! So please, I beg of you-give me more. I... I must ASCEND!"