She didn't pause, cutting down the first Creator as though he were a flower, and had moved on before his body even had time to hit the ground.
Shivering at the flicker of smoke that followed after her, his soul was drawn to her and she accepted him in silence, ignoring the rush of his energy.
None of the others seemed to care about or even notice the death of the comrade.
An explosion of green flames announced the arrival of Epharis, eyes alight with malicious glee as he cut them down one after another, their deaths silent even as they burned in unholy fire.
She swathed a path through the throng, bodies hitting the ground as their blood sprayed and her scythe became slick with it.
She slowed down, stopping several metres in to the mass, looking around. Why did they just stand there, motionless, looking up? They were splattered with blood.
Whistling to Epharis, she motioned to her ears, and he immediately headed away from her as fast as possible. She waited for him to be clear of her before she sucked in a lungful of air and the haunting wail was released from her throat.
She thought of Mebd in that moment: her sadness when people had come to fear banshee, while she knew then why people had come to fear them. It wasn't for the banshee themselves; it was for those who possessed the scream. It was for those like her who used it to kill.
The mass of bodies dropped around her and still they didn't move. A perfect circle of bodies around her with those just out of her range remained standing there, staring at the sky.
She tilted her head back to look up at the warping effect, not seeing anything at all that might be affecting them.
"This is wrong…" she breathed.
She turned and her mind warped suddenly, sending her staggering sideways into a young fairy. The man didn't so much as flinch at the impact.
Looking up, she saw the most terrible thing she had ever seen in her life. The sky had torn in two, leaving nothing but a vivid expanse of blackness and stars.
She turned to Epharis, their eyes meeting. His lips parted and she flinched as he called to the dead around him to join them in their fight.
She wanted to go to him desperately, to scream her battle cry at his call to arms, but she forced herself to remain where she was, looking down at a nameless fairy.
She was pretty, with soft blue hair and a pointy chin, a delicate frame and large eyes that stared up blankly, white as though she were blind.
The dead answered the call, and they began to claw at those still alive, skeletons and half burnt people ripping and shredding those who were defenceless.
It was then that she realised the problem: why would the Creators simply allow themselves to be slaughtered?
It clicked then on why there were so many. They were throwing the sheer number of Creators at them, hoping to drown them.
"They are decoys!" she screamed her revelation to Epharis, and he bared his teeth in fury, trying to comprehend the situation as she tried to come up with a solution.
Etani had never tried it before, but she found herself sending out a tentative finger to the spirit world and another into Faerie. Down into the underworld where Hades was lounging, unaware of her slender finger dipping slowly into the river of death. She sucked in a breath through her teeth as they came rushing into her. Those who did not want to be nothing in the spirit world, they came screaming into her to leave her humming with the power.
Her body changed, and she felt herself growing weirdly taller, her clothing shifting to a deep black gown. She could feel her boots changing to metal, wisping fabric drifting lazily in the breeze.
Her head felt heavy under the headdress, and her scythe had grown to match her new size. She was easily ten feet fall, perhaps twelve, and she moved with a feline grace as her scythe swung and took out eight at once, all dropping like so much wheat.
It wasn't going to help them though; she knew there wasn't enough time for them to take all of the Creators down. She felt the dread at the laughter of that new voice in her mind, even as she paced forward and cut down more and more. No matter how many she cut down, more arrived.
They were being overrun, and she didn't even know if these creatures were responsible. What if they were only the decoy?
She had no way of knowing, and so she cut them down and hoped for the best. Their best wasn't enough.
Turning slowly, she looked to the gateway, considered it, even as more fell. She sucked their energy in, high on it. Could she bring down a gate someone else had created?
Deciding it was a perfectly good time to go find out, she set her course for the gateway.
Epharis seemed to have been watching her, or to have come to the same conclusion, as his direction seemed to be following hers, and it happened again. The sky tore, and she staggered to her knees, panting as pain and confusion struck her mind and body.
Epharis joined her. She looked at him, his hand heavy on her shoulder, but he would not meet her eyes. He was staring skyward, and she followed his gaze.
With a feeling like her stomach had dropped out, she saw that the tear was enormous. They were out of time.
Meeting his eyes, she struggled with the words as she tried to tell him they had failed, but just as her mouth opened to speak the words, a mass of screams came from all around them.
Looking up, she saw a flood of people forcing their way into reality.
Standing slowly, she turned to see dozens of figures appearing and immediately attacking the closest form to them, teeth flashing and swords flying.
They were everywhere, and she recognised many of them as being those she had met before in Faerie.
Her eyes found him, the crocodile head red with blood. Sobek gave her a little salute just as she realised what was happening.
The Gods had come to help. They had come to defend the human world.