He was prettier when he bled, so much prettier. In fact, she wanted him covered in blood. That would be the prettiest. Her eyes swept down over him, and slashes appeared over his body.
He howled in pain and fell to his knees while she stood in silence, watching him bleed even as his wounds healed and he stared up at her in terrible realisation. She was not death anymore; she was not the queen of Faerie. She was in control of reality. She could blink them all out of existence on a whim should she choose to. She wasn't just a Creator; she was The Creator, and she didn't care one shred if he lived or died.
He seemed to realise it then, and he fled, diving out of the human world, and she felt him as he burst through to Faerie.
With a clinical detachment, she felt around Faerie until she found those whom she decided belonged in the human world and she pulled them through, their forms bursting into being with a very pretty sparkling, and an odd tickle at the back of her mind.
Before anyone could speak, Epharis threw out his arm to silence them. His movement drew her attention back to him, something he looked very sorry for.
Shuffling through her memories of the lich, she lingered on the abuse and his cruel amusement at her suffering, and she contemplated what it might be like if he suffered just as she had done.
He screamed as his chest burst open with a spray of blood and gore, his flesh peeling back to reveal his organs. He dropped to his knees, his arms outstretched as though bound by chains.
She could taste the fear of those around her as she considered him, imagining herself in his place and knowing he was feeling only a part of what she had felt. He needed to know more pain.
A loud snap was his leg bones breaking and his screams returned, the rest of the field entirely silent in their terrified fascination of the lich being tortured by seemingly nothing.
Something moved, and her eyes turned to Kai as he stepped between her and the lich. He was trembling, and she couldn't help but wonder why.
"Etani, you need to stop, please," he said in a small voice, but his eyes went to her hand, and he frowned at the stone clutched there. "What's that?"
Her eyes lowered to the stone in her grip, and she lifted it slowly, examining it.
A sudden pang of pain ripped through her white peace, and her breath froze in her lungs.
"Uzo," she said simply, and Kai gave a strangled gasp, along with several other sounds from others amid the group she had pulled from Faerie.
Her eyes went to them, Jaia and Alaric, Versalis and Jagum, Catherine and Aelen. Even Sobek was standing there, though she didn't recall bringing him over.
He felt her eyes on her and met them with eyes wet with tears, and she felt her own eyes welling with tears.
Lifting her free hand, she touched her cheek and looked down at the spot of black.
"Uzo's dead," she breathed, that slash of pain tearing at her once more though she struggled to contain it. She wanted it gone, but it refused to leave. Why could she not make it go away?
Maybe she needed to make herself go away.
The thought lingered in her mind even as tears tickled her cheeks and her eyes were drawn back to the stone. Yes, that was what would make the pain go away. She would go away.
Something tugged at her wings, and she felt herself adjusting to the loss of weight, though she paid no attention to what was happening behind her, her mind going over what it would take to make herself go away.
She was holding too many. They would go away with her, and what was the point of trying to save them if she just made them vanish?
She reached out for those she had destroyed and with merciless movements, she unceremoniously shoved each of those she held into a corpse. She felt oddly light once she was alone in her mind, the red slash across her peaceful whiteness throbbing like an open wound.
A scream came from a tiny woman, and the figure streaked for her, throwing Kai out of the way. Etani looked down at the tiny creature, five foot nothing and thin enough that a stiff breeze might have knocked her over.
"Etani, you snap out of it right now!" she yelled, and the tone took her aback. That accent and that stance.
"Letari?" Epharis demanded. The tiny woman turned on him, picking up a chunk of someone and throwing it at him.
It bounced off his face with an unpleasant squelching sound and blood sprayed as she crushed his nose and busted his lips. He was howling, but she ignored him, instead focusing on the tiny waif of a woman.
"Lee?" Etani asked, not understanding as she flicked through her mind, but found that her twin had, in fact, vanished.
"Stop right now!" Letari demanded.
Her wings had faded into nothing, and she felt that same odd tugging sensation at her feet, ignoring it as she had done with her wings.
Kai had gotten to his feet and was staring at the ground where her feet had been only a second before, hidden by her dress. His face was pale in his terror, but she had eyes only for her twin.
Extending her hand, she brushed her fingers over the woman's cheek and Letari stuck out her tongue, a gesture she had seen a million times before.
"You need to stop E, you can't make yourself disappear," Letari said. A gasp came from those around her, but she ignored them, glad that her sister had a new chance at life.
Not responding to the accusation, or her demands, she brushed her fingers through the long violet hair, smooth as silk.
"Letari, you're alive," she whispered.
Letari nodded, impatient as ever. "E, you need to stop, I know you're sad, but you have to stop," Letari said, but the words had no meaning.
Her pain ached and bled into her soul, a pulsing, bloody sore that wouldn't return to the darkness.
Letari's eyes left her and they went wide for a second and she turned to see what had caught her attention, a firm hand gripping her jaw and the back of her head. A suddenly snapping sensation had her world going black.