Chapter Text
The brilliant white castle sat in the direct centre of the Moon Kingdom. Its surface imbued with light from the layers of moon dust that had decorated it over the years. It was so bright, and so pure, that it was almost invisible in the sun's reflective light.
Faceless guards stood at every entrance, with large weapons fashioned to their belts and larger weapons held by their sides. Yet the place remained the pure embodiment of serenity.
The Moon people scattered themselves around the kingdom as they pleased; playing, laughing, and living as they each saw fit. Most gathered around the tiered fountain in the centre of the courtyard; its crescent-shaped stature forever pouring out beautiful and pure crystal water from its spout into the round pool at the bottom.
A woman in white stood atop the castle balcony. Her mouth turned up in a caring smile as she looked down below at the plains laid out before her. Her pearlescent dress lifted about her in the lack of atmosphere, twisting and turning with the ribbons of shining hair that cascaded down from twin orbs sitting atop either side of her head.
She carried about herself a sense of calm authority. She was a queen, perhaps, looking over the kingdom she had built, and the people whom she governed.
Though there was no atmosphere to change; the woman in white was struck with a sense of dread.
She lifted her gaze to the starry skies above just in time as everything she had known was lost in an instant.
Tendrils of deep purple shot downwards, twisting around each other in a violent and disorderly array, each crashing into the ground in a plume of lavender moon dust. The Moon people barely had time to scream as the ground about them shook and threw them about like rag dolls. As more tendrils slammed into the land, so did more people become skewered and crushed beneath them, splashing brilliant shades of red that only spread further and further along the land's pristine canvas.
The woman in white cried and reached out for her people beyond the balcony. Her hand began to glow with blinding mystical power. However, when she went to spend it on the enemies before her, a sharpened tendril pierced her outstretched hand, shooting through the flesh entirely.
Her cries were drowned out by a familiar laughter that echoed over from above.
The woman in white gasped and fell to one knee. Falling back, she went to grab a hold of the balcony fence in a feeble attempt to balance herself. The spiked tendril in her hand, however, refused to let her free, embedding itself further through her skin. At the sudden movement, it climbed up and around her arm in quick, haphazard movements until it ultimately slithered around her neck.
Another woman, one with a head full of fiery red hair and a skin-tight dress of royal purple death, rode down towards the Moon's surface on a wave of entangled violet snakes; her voice still ringing out in a laughter that crawled involuntarily into the ears of everyone unfortunate enough to bear its witness. With a wave of her arm, she lifted the wisp of power that entrapped the woman in white up to level with her own line of sight, locking her into an intense gaze.
"Berel!" the woman in white hissed through gritted teeth. The blackness tightened around her throat as she spoke.
"Serenity," purred the other in a much happier tone. Berel wore a wolfish grin on her face, framed by a thin line of glossy black lipstick, "How strange it is to see you so decomposed in front of your guests. Though I must say it's a good look for you; you should try it out more often."
"We had...a...truce," choked out Serenity, clawing at the tendril that held her. The white power that had been emitting from her skewered hand turned a darker lavender with each pulse. Its long nails deepened to black as her desperate grips grew weaker and weaker.
Berel laughed again, louder and crueller than before. "We did! And how I do so love the concept of a truce. All you have to do is agree to it, and suddenly your enemy lets their entire guard down! It really is a fantastic battle strategy.
“You have to stop believing everything anyone tells you, Serenity. You and your little Moon shitlings are just too easy targets,” she said. “Laughing and playing and dancing all of the time, without a care in the world."
Berel tossed her head to one side thoughtfully. "It's like pummelling craters into a crater pummelled planet, with an arsenal of meteors at my disposals. And cannons for arms."
Serenity relaxed herself in Berel's grip, locking eyes with her scantily dressed enemy in a calm stare
"You're wrong..." she breathed.
Berel threw back her head and laughed long and loud into the starry abyss above her.
"Wrong? I know this kingdom. I've watched this kingdom. Literally seconds ago, I watched from above as you all laughed and played and danced."
"No, you're...wrong about...something else..."
"And what is that? "
Despite her struggle to get the words out; a small smile appeared on Serenity's face.
"I never...believed you."
A thunderous mechanical CRUNCH erupted from below. The tips of the castle towers stood just behind the two woman suspended high above the ground. Berel's eyes widened, having a clear view of the tiled roofs as they split open. Each of the towers broke apart and fell away from each other, grinding loudly as they folded back with mechanical precision. The moon dust bricks shifted and folded themselves into order, the fissures between them revealing cogs and gears that shone bright with moonlight power.
Inside the towers, giant, inset cannons burst upwards, pushing the walls apart further just as they sank into the ground.
"What?!" shrieked Berel, baring her teeth at the furnished weapons before turning back to Serenity.
"No matter," she growled, lifting her hand beside her in a furious claw; tightening it about an invisible ball just as the tendril about Serenity's neck squeezed tighter as well. The woman in white's eyes widened, and she thrashed about in desperation.
"Cut off the head," Berel said, her voice growing louder as she competed against the whirring sounds of the cannons powering up from within, "and the body will die. No matter how many weapons it has attached to itself!"
"My queen!"
Berel lifted her head at the sound, just in time to see two creatures leap from the end of the cannon barrel closest to them. One creature was as black as the sky above, whilst the other camouflaged in its whiteness. Both shot towards the two women. A flourish of white attached itself to Berel's face, sinking its claws into her skin and tearing away at whatever it could reach.
Berel shrieked and flailed, breaking her concentration. Another, darker flourish landed by Serenity, attacking the tendril; which, in the midst of commotion, had begun to loosen.
Serenity fell like a feather sucked into a jet engine.
The first full breath of air she was able to take in, she used to scream as she crashed into the fifth tier of the fountain below, her back arching as it slammed against the tip of the crescent moon stature. Bouncing painfully, she hit each subsequent tier on the way down, feeling less and less with every collision until a crash of bubbles burst about her ears.
Serenity lay in the pool at the bottom of the fountain, staring up at the water's surface that felt miles above her face. Every part of her body felt numb, her chest the only exception, with her lungs burning for air.
Serenity thrust an arm upward and with a delicate limpness, grabbed the edge of the fountain with her wounded hand, which had turned a shade of violet as dark as black. She tried to shift her lower half to help herself into a sitting position, but found that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't move her legs.
With strength she was sure she couldn't have possessed, she reached her better hand up to meet its splintered sibling on the fountain's edge, and managed to drag herself upwards. It felt like an eternity, but eventually she burst through the crystal water's surface.
She drew in greedy amounts of air; the screaming pain in her chest dying down to a dull ache with each one. Her senses returned to her all at once.
The first thing she noticed was the sounds of screaming about her. There were shrieks of terror and innocence that broke her heart, angry battle cries that attempted to bind it back together with pride, and disembodied shrieks of beings from another world that brought tears behind her closed eyes.
The second thing she noticed was the numbness; and that no matter how many times she breathed in, nor how long she remained sitting in the fountain, she could not feel her legs.
The third thing was something she noticed only once she had opened her eyes. After clearing the crystal water out of them; she saw that it was not, in fact, crystal water she had blinked out, nor was it what she was sitting in.
Staring deep at her dress and into the pool around her, Serenity's eyes widened with renewed horror at the sickening deep redness that was staining her skin.
The woman in red closed her eyes and lifted her head, taking in a deep breath and regaining her composure. When she opened them, she found herself facing the stump of a comrade's neck, collapsed over the edge of the fountain just inches from her fingertips, whose corpse was pouring an impossible amount of blood further into the fountain.
"No," she whispered.
She tried to find the strength to pull herself out of the tainted fountain and towards the people who needed her, however, without her legs to carry her, she failed again and again to lift herself out of the nightmare fountain.
Around her, she could see more bodies of fallen comrades. Those of knights and guards, as well as those of innocent families and faces that were smiling so soon before. Their blood painted the courtyard.
Not a speck of white remained within the entire kingdom.