Thank you so much for the numbers! 💙 Well, it was a lovely combination of two IQRUS song, Goodbye by Ramyes (from Arcane) and Doom by Imagine Music. So, since I already planned to write this scene in the near future, I've lived with the opportunity now.
Context: The cult experimented on making a specimen of the mix of a human and a zaphrin (angel/lesser god-like creatures) that can erase other zaphrins. Adran happened to be the best candidate to this role, so they made him insane and turned him into an eldritch monster, then went to the Everocean to destroy Auva and kill Dane. It's almost the end of the book.
Adran’s jaw – that nauseating, deformed piece of his face where his sharp, shark-like teeth slumbered – clenched together with an ear-shattering crunch. His Evolved hand closed over Dane’s neck with ease. It seemed so tiny compared to his clawed arms that Dane tried to draw blood from with his weak fingers. To no avail, however. The scales that grew over Adran’s translucent, slithery skin could stop lasers from slicing them through. A mere scratch of a human being was not near to harming him.
Adran’s neck twitched as he saw his brother’s tears escaping from the side of his face.
“Ad…ran…” he forced out the letters with the air that rushed out from his lungs but couldn’t get back anymore. His face slowly turned into the purple of the sunset behind him. “Fight… it…”
ɪᴛ ɪs ᴛɪᴍᴇ, ɪɴsᴇᴄᴛ.
He watched Dane struggle, desperation and terror pooling into his ocean-blue eyes. No. ʏᴇs. His brother let out a gutwrenching cry as Adran’s claws tightened, his neck bruising visibly. No! NO!
ʏᴇs, ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ᴍɪɴᴇ. ɪᴛ ɪs ᴛɪᴍᴇ.
Electric shockwaves ran down across his skin, right into his bones, the little sparkles popping up here and there in the ooze that dripped from his whole body. His mind had been out of his reach, thick fog and froth washing Adran farther away from himself. Numbness sunken him deeper and deeper locking him into a dark corner of his existence. He’d seen his grotesque, eight feet tall self lifting Dane higher through an old screen, not his eyes. He was lost. He was doing what was best.
It was the best for Her. And so it could be the best for the world as well.
Adran saw what he was doing. Through a screen. Through… he saw his arms and a scar on the sensitive skin between two lines of scales.
A scar.
ɴᴏɴsᴇɴsɪᴄᴀʟ.
His scar.
ᴀsɪɴɪɴᴇ.
The scar he got when he saved Dane. From falling. From dying. He stirred in his numbness. Adran looked down at Dane’s remnant of his mechanic leg. He ripped it out of their fitting. He trashed in the shadows of his mind, trashed for air and freedom.
He was choking Dane. The one he saved and has scarred himself for. Dane lost his leg that day, the day he got his scar. When they were kids. He saved him. From falling. From dying. His Dane.
Adran looked at his gagging, deepening red face.
At his little brother.
NO!
Adran’s mind buzzed and whirled, it melted and bled as he screamed his throat raw when he finally forcefully took the control back over his body. He immediately let Dane go, then with his eyes jumping everywhere at an insane speed, he turned around to look at the source of this bone-crushing unease, this madness.
At Icharo Astin, The Golden Prophet.
He couldn’t describe the guttural loathing that his form presented under the golden robe, and he didn’t try to. With the thin thread he could grab of his sanity, Adran charged towards The Golden. The vessel’s floor thumped under his large, oily feet, the air around him resonating and tearing apart. The Golden did not move as if he was sculpted from stone-cold confidence. He stood there as the grand statue of lunatics. He was indestructible. Death couldn’t lay a hand on him.
Adran, however, was worse than death.
And so he broke through the invisible, yet crushing resistance that this man’s, this monster’s cosmic protection had lifted before him. There was a slight hint of surprise in The Golden’s unreadable, faceless expression when Adran soundlessly roared at him and began to rip him out of existence. He surprised a God, after all. ᴅᴇsᴛʀᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴ. ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ᴅᴇsᴛʀᴏʏ. ʏᴏᴜʀsᴇʟꜰ. Adran felt an endless shock of pain in his core, in his bones, in his mind. He started bleeding from everywhere as he sucked the skin, the bone, the life out of The Golden before him.
What he was consuming, was a part of him already. And he couldn’t bear it. It was too much for his body.
Jarring gurgling exploded from The Golden’s mouth. Deafening agony resonated in the air, as both he and Adran shrieked.
Vibrant red and sparkling gold blood bled onto the floor, pooling under them.
Yet, Adran had only one thing stuck in his mind. One thing he was holding onto; that last thread of sanity. Golden-red blood oozed from his face as tears, when he looked at the terrified Dane from the corner of his eyes.
“Save them,” he… forced his mouth to form the words.
Then, with the thought of his little brother, Adran howled in sync with The Golden one last time, before he tore every part of him out of the worlds and destroyed himself in the process.
