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Out of his one good eye, Lieutenant Russel analyzed the world around him for the very last time.

Complete and utter destruction.

The millions of dollars funneled into these defense vehicles and personnel was utterly wasted and provided no aid in stopping the nightmare in front of him.

A sea of fire encompassed almost the entire base, and there were crumpled pieces of metal and mangled bodies everywhere.

The blood in the air was so thick that red liquid could have accumulated onto every wet surface in sight.

It was an unholy nightmare of a scene, right down to the core.

"We were right about you… You really were a damn monster.." Russel said weakly.

The tails biting onto his limbs increased their bite force and caused the blessed in their grasp to let out a more horrendous cry.

Venom spread through his body in an instant, turning his veins black and causing him to foam from the mouth.

"I… am what they need me to be… and what all of you have made me… There is nothing else… Never again will there be anything else."

Pulling in four different directions, the limbs of the blessed were yanked free with an unsettling twisting noise and the limbless torso immediately dropped to the ground.

With a hard stomp, Malachi crushed Lieutenant Russel\'s head into paste and even broke through the concrete lying underneath.

Although the nightmare was disgruntled to know that his venom had already stopped his heart before his foot had even crushed his skull.

When the only sound Mal could hear was the dropping of rain and the distant blaring of alarms, he brought a clawed hand to his chest.

After everything he had done… he didn\'t feel better.

Why didn\'t he feel better?

The bad guys were dead and the women he loved were avenged.

He should be good now, right?

They should be good.

But what was with this unthinkable weight in his chest?

It was so dense that he felt like he\'d swallowed a whole tray of dry ass cornbread and he was about to suffocate.

The more he tried to calm himself down, the more he felt like this tightness was accumulating in excess.

Maddened and filled with grief, he fell to both his knees and let out a roar so loud and heartbreaking that any who heard it started crying without even understanding the reason.

This seemed to be just the release that was needed, and a blinding column of red light shot up into the sky.

From the permanent mass of gray clouds and darkness, a giant demonic-looking skull formed in the middle of the sky.

-

For a year now, Aubrey hadn\'t been operating like her normal self.

Everyday, she felt like she was walking through a fog with no method to navigate her next direction or even keep in mind what her destination might be.

Living without her brother just made her feel… lost.

From the moment she had taken her first breath, her brother had been by her side.

Most siblings fight a lot and are only cordial to each other at best, but Aubrey and Mal had never been like that.

Even when they were just barely able to string sentences together, they were getting into all kinds of trouble and giving their parents no small amount of grief.

Even as they got older that never changed, and somehow they had even gotten closer.

When her brother had first disappeared, she couldn\'t have imagined anyone being more heartbroken than her.

But she had yet to see her mother back then.

As bad as Aubrey was, Nyx was even worse.

The goddess of the night was no stranger to grief or even sadness, but this was unlike anything she had ever felt before.

For all intents and purposes, she was inconsolable.

For the first six months, she lived every day in her domain fending off the attacks of the sun and day gods who were trying to bring the light back to the earth.

After she killed some of them and fed the rest to another of her darling sons for imprisonment, they finally left her alone and let her grieve in peace.

She spent her days either crying or trying to inebriate herself on the wine made by Dionysus, or in bed trying to use her body to forget her loss.

A number of Nyx\'s children had been called to her realm, each of them being propositioned into her bed in one method or another.

Apate, the Keres, the Erinyes, Geras, Nemesis, Oizys, Moros, she used all of them to temporarily unburden herself from thought or reason as she focused solely on achieving temporary numbness.

To her, this was not only a way to pass the time, but it also helped her to feel like she was keeping all of her children safe.

As long as they were touching her, as long as they did not leave the confines of her bed or her body, she could keep them safe.

They couldn\'t be taken away from her if they just stayed like this.

And as a goddess, she had inexhaustible stamina which meant that this could all go on forever.

The only occasion where Nyx let her body rest was when she felt a familiar prescence pop into her realm through magic.

Then it didn\'t matter what she was doing, Nyx would crawl out of bed and try to make herself look decent.

Opening the door, she found Aubrey standing outside looking fairly different from a year ago.

She\'d gotten a bit taller, leaner, and undoubtedly just a bit less cheerful due to her managing her grief, relationships, helping out with the faction, and taking care of her mother.

When Aubrey\'s eyes landed on Nyx, she felt her heart break when she saw that she was getting worse again.

The smell of sweat and body fluids coming from their room was so strong that the daughter of the night goddess felt like she was going to be knocked on her butt.

Briefly, she saw the sweaty and exhausted bodies of several of her older siblings lying on the floor, the bed, or even a desk.

She didn\'t really have time to count them all, but she knew that they numbered at least thirty or forty.

Their chests were rising and falling heavily as if they were humans who had just run a 10k marathon.

"Ah, it\'s my sweet girl..! How are you darling?"

Nyx hurriedly closed the door behind her so that Aubrey\'s gaze did not linger.

However, she still did not bother to put on clothes and let her daughter stare at her uncovered body if she so desired.

Nyx was hoping it would get her to stay this time so that she could keep her safe as well.

But Aubrey was in no way interested in staring at anything other than her mother\'s eyes.

Beautiful though they might have been… they were so sad and empty that Aubrey felt like crying.

"Oh mom… why are you doing this?"

"D-Doing what, dear..? Your siblings and I are just-"

"You have exhausted them, Mom..! You\'re worse than Aphrodite!"

"Well that just feels hurtful.."

"O-Okay, maybe it was too much. I\'m sorry."

Nyx deflated like a hot air balloon and Aubrey immediately sighed as she took her mother\'s hands in hers.

"This isn\'t healthy… You are being so self destructive and I hate that I ever enabled this even once..! I know that you are hurting but-"

Roughly, Nyx pulled away and crossed her arms in a stern demeanor.

"I am a goddess, Aubrey! This is all that I know, all that I am! Your human concepts of health do not apply to me and I am not in any way bound by them!"

Aubrey\'s heart only broke further under her mother\'s outburst but she continued to keep her voice steady.

"I know that you aren\'t… but can you imagine how he would feel if he saw you like this..? Do you know how badly his heart would be broken?"

"That\'s not fair, Aubrey.."

"How is it not..? Can you imagine just how much he would hate himself if he saw what his absence had done to you? How much guilt he would feel?"

"I-It\'s not his fault..! All I\'m doing is keeping them all alive and-"

"Mom… this is not living. I know that you have been alive for longer than I can even imagine, but you need to let me help you. What is the use of keeping us safe if we don\'t ever get to live our lives beyond your bed..?

But this doesn\'t have anything to do with our safety in the first place. You just still haven\'t gotten over the fact that he is gone. "

Nyx slowly let her body fall to the floor, and her whole body took on a sort of broken and empty demeanor as tears began to fall from her eyes.

"I don\'t know what to do anymore, darling… I miss your brother so much that I can\'t even stop to think about him or else I just.."

Though Nyx was outwardly broken, her entire realm began to tremble as if it were responding to her suppressed emotions.

Aubrey kneeled in front of her mother and pulled her into her arms before she finally let her own tears fall from her face.

"You don\'t have to avoid those feelings… let yourself feel them. It is the only proof we have left that we got to have someone as amazing as him in our lives… When is the last time you\'ve been above ground?"

"A.. while… after… I just couldn\'t go back."

"I get that. But will you come with me now? I think it may be good for you."

"I…" Nyx started to respond, but before she could her whole body tensed up as if she had just suffered an electric shock.

"What..? What\'s the matter now, Ma?"

Aubrey gingerly wiped away her mother\'s tears that were beginning to flow even harder for some reason.