This is bad.

There was no other way to explain it, to explain how utterly horrible the situation was. Her belly and chest were on fire. Blood from her mouth had trickled back into her left eye, and had crusted her eyelashes together so that she couldn’t open it again. She tried to look around, but couldn’t get her right eye to move properly. All of those things were horrible by themselves, and yet, somehow, they all paled in comparison to the real thing.

She felt the stranger’s foot upon her right cheek, his toes massaging against the wound, sending jolts of agony into her face. It was nothing compared to the others, and the stranger knew that. This wasn’t torture. This was—

Humiliation.

She was being humiliated.

Toyed with. Played with.

Enraged, she tried to move her hands but they felt like frozen steel, slender and immovable. Her vision went from red to black. Her sensations were slowly beginning to recede. She could feel the Frost crawl upon her form, coating her in more rime.

The Frost was a thing of hunger. It could hack, tear, and rip things apart. It could drink another dry of their lifeforce, and it could add it to her. But healing? That was totally dependent upon her own skills.

Unfortunately for her, the Frost hadn’t been able to devour any lifeforce, no matter how many strikes she had made at this entity. And she had been doing quite a lot of striking.

Tanya knew that the entity was toying with her. She—he—did it even matter? This entity wasn’t even pretending to do otherwise anymore. It had all but broken her in half with that single blow, and could have easily torn her apart, but was instead content to watch her struggle.

Meanwhile, the static behind her eyes grew more intense.

She had the power. She could feel it rushing through her veins, empowering each and every attack she threw at the stranger. She could have made a thousand shards of Frost without running low on power, but that wasn’t what mattered. Every time she drew on its power, it made the ice within her burn. Her healing skills dulled the pain, let her keep going, but she could feel something behind it, breaking her down from within. Her vision was so coated in static she could barely see. She was frosting from within, her own weapon killing her from the inside, one cell at a time.

Was that what this entity wanted? To give her a frustrating death? See her slowly drain away her life in a pathetic attempt to strike her down?

No, she decided, slowly raising her right hand. Her right eye peered open, her expression locked in a snarl of hate. If Frost wouldn’t work, then perhaps Ezzeron would. Yes, Ezzeron was her last hope.

“Wind Shie—”

The stranger grabbed her wrist.

And all hope was extinguished.

How? Tanya wanted to yell. Dissipating the energy out of a spell mid-creation? This wasn’t lifeforce at work. Wasn’t mana either. Wasn’t absorption. Wasn’t metamorphosis. Wasn’t Alteration or Corruption. It hadn’t been from within. It hadn’t been from the outside. One moment the spell was building up within her palm, and the next moment it was—

“Do not look so surprised. It is almost embarrassing. That spell would have accomplished nothing anyway.”

Gone. Unraveled. Dissipated. One moment the energy was taking form. Becoming more. The next moment, it was dissipating. Breaking away. Energy just didn’t function like that.

Either she was missing something or someone was ignoring the Rules.

“Such a doll you are,” the stranger replied. “Almost as interesting as my mortal. You know, originally I was annoyed at having to share power without getting anything in return.” The stranger threw his head back and laughed. “Do you see it, mortal? This is the power you resist. This is the power that you refused to keep your pesky morality.”

Mortal? Resist? Tanya’s mind was running on overdrive. Had she— Was she facing the ire of a god?

Her belly went cold.

“You’re afraid. Not of death, but of this helplessness. You’re afraid of being beneath me. Afraid of what is to come. You’re so afraid that I can almost taste it. It’s ecstatic.”

The stranger lifted her chin. Tanya shivered. Something about his touch was just raw and suggestive. Carnal feelings that she had always suppressed rose to the forefront of her mind. Desires began to ebb at his supernatural, animal attraction.

For a moment, Tanya wondered how his lips would taste.

The stranger’s eyes met hers and gave her a slow, slow smile. Tanya felt her entire body thrum in response to him, to his presence, his proximity, his…everything. That smile contained something within it, something that conveyed to her in a flashing instant—an image of herself looking up at him in ecstasy, him above her, looking down at her with that expression as she screamed over and over in mindless pleasure. And with that image came a thousand others, each of them a single captured moment, the kind of moments that are the only ones to survive a frenzied dream, frozen and layered atop one another, each of them a promise, a prediction, and every one of them aimed right at the most base, most primitive parts of her brain. It wasn’t limited to visual imagery. Each layer of flash had its own round of sensual memory, every one of them only partial but intense—touch, taste, sound, scent, and vision—dozens and dozens of dreams and fantasies compressed into that single instant of dark inspiration.

A surprising sensation of dampness brought her out of that haze.

Shame, indignation, and a burning sense of disbelief rushed through her, the strength to stop him no longer present.

“Your power and existence fascinates me. This frost of yours, it’s raw, unhoned, a monster run by instincts. Like a sword, it cares not where it falls, only that it’s swung. Such a sword needs proper hands to wield it, guide it, give it direction. I will be that hand.”

Tanya felt the stranger’s face get closer to hers.

Glacial white met electric green.

“You see, neither you nor my mortal here truly understands what Power really is. So I’ll use it. To show you exactly what real Power is.”

“No! Stop!” Tanya struggled feebly against the stranger’s strength, her fingers scrabbling for purchase against the ground as she tried in vain to drag herself away from his alluring eyes.

The stranger’s eyes shifted ever so slightly. “I think it might be wise for you to indulge me.”

Another multisensory slideshow hit her head, and every single image was something that she should have known better than to find intriguing, but that she could not bring herself to entirely ignore. Tanya felt her head light up with lunatic pleasure-maybes, dizzying, electrifying, and she felt as if she were about to tear her way out of her clothes.

A final image passed through her mind, accompanied by an intense emotion—herself, looking up at the stranger as she lay at his feet. He stretched out his hand and lightly touched her head, an absently fond gesture. An overwhelming sense of well-being flooded into her like shining, liquid light, filling every empty place within her, calming every anger, every pain, every bit of suffering. She almost wept in relief, at the abrupt release from all worries. Her body trembled.

So easy. It would be so easy. To bow down before him. He could care for her, teach her, comfort her. Her place would be there, at the warmth of his feet—

Tanya’s head snapped up for a second.

Enthrallment. She was being enthralled. No, that wasn’t it. There had been absolutely no attacks upon her mental defenses. There was no emotional manipulation either. Either this person was the kind of psionicist that made Elena looked like a rookie—

Or he was something else.

She had to fight. She had to get away. Or else—

Or else she’d die. That or she would no longer be herself.

The knowledge of what was about to happen had galvanized her from within.

And Everfrost answered.

Ice erupted out of the floor, no more limited to hoarfrost but thick sheets of it. Jagged stalagmites that arose out of the floor like coffins out of a graveyard, teeth-like daggers of the element swelling and erupting with violent force. It only lasted for a handful of moments, but in those seconds, it brought with itself a scene of an ice age.

And it was still not enough.

“Quite a show!” said the stranger, utterly uncaring about it all. Tanya watched, her eyes now bulging out, fear paling her face, realizing that none of the ice shards had gotten even remotely close to the stranger, and instead, had grown around him.

Just—just what was he—what was—

“You!” Tanya snarled, “I won’t! I will KILL YOU! I WILL—I WILL KILL—”

“Your defiance is disappointing. The Supreme Queen permitted your existence, for she is unmatched in magnanimity. She mandated that your future shall be at her feet. Yet, you try to rise above that position? Though I showed you supreme mercy, you still seek to end my reign? You who sought to enthrall my Host, vermin, you dared touch what is mine?”

The stranger’s words rang across the entire chamber. Even in her state, Tanya could feel that power encompassed everything, feeling it slowly engulf her like a cocoon. A crimson shade of power began to emanate out of his body and intensify. A flame so brilliant that one might as well be looking at the sun.

“Did you believe you could just extinguish the flame I rekindled? I, who ruled over Heaven and Earth? Nothing has the right to be born without my permission. Nothing has the right to die without my permission. I have declared that this vessel shall manifest my wishes into reality and anyone that will question my resolve will—”

“Burn!!!”

The world around her cracked. All across the frigid zone encompassing the chamber, a brilliant crimson light began to exude. The ice shattered upon the slightest contact with the crimson hue, as flames spread out, burning brighter, larger, growing and connecting, passing far out of sight in every direction as the stranger stood in the center of it like an eternal juggernaut.

Even though she knew that it wouldn’t end well for her, Tanya couldn’t help but realize that this was a defining moment in their world.

The Frost within her echoed through the burning light, incoherently howling and sobbing with rage and sadness so deep that even she felt sorry for it. There were no words, but roars of defiance so honest and brutal that it spoke all on its own. It didn’t want to be suppressed. Not again. It would face death but not bow down to anyone’s will. It would reign supreme and would bring about the ██o███yp██ ██a█ █████o█ A ██—

“My will is unquestioned. My desire consumes All. Shine now, the power of Depredation. Birth a new reality in which this vermin may abide in subjugation forevermore. A penalty that lasts until the end of time.”

It was an uncaring judge looking down at the sobbing defendant from high. A swirling vortex of power flared up to touch the burning heavens, and within the black chasm of nothingness came down a shaft of pure power and then—

Darkness.