"Elara! My love! I'm here! Hold on!" Caius's voice, though strained and echoing eerily in the vast, suffocating darkness of the void, was undeniably real, a vibrant, desperate beacon of hope piercing through the crushing weight of Elara's despair. A faint, warm light, the familiar, reassuring combination of red and yellow that was the very essence of their combined, chaotic powers, flared into existence far beneath her plummeting shape, shining with an impossible, frantic speed as she plummeted through the seemingly infinite, darkless expanse.
A wave of overwhelming relief, so powerful it almost buckled her knees even as she continued on her ghastly plummet, washed over Elara's shattered heart. He was alive. He was here, fighting against the encroaching darkness. The desperate, fragile hope that had glowed like a dying ember within her burst into a fierce, unyielding flame, burning away some of the suffocating chill of the void.
She opened her tear-rimmed eyes, the spreading, enfolded light revealing a whirlpool, a random blend of their merged energies, a warm, comfortable whirl of red and gold against the entire, overwhelming blackness. And there, right in the middle of the turmoil raging around him, battered and battered, his face contorted in pain but unerringly there and real, was Caius, his tough hand out to her, his eyes no longer hollow and coldly empty but brimming with a desperate, yearning love that equalled the raw, gnawing pain in her own heart.
"Caius!" she cried out, her voice echoing in the vast emptiness, a joyous sound of reunion that momentarily banished some of the oppressive darkness, a cry of hope against the encroaching oblivion.
"Hold on, Elara! I've got you, my love! I'm here!" His voice, though weak and strained from some unseen struggle, held a familiar, unwavering strength, a promise he had always, without fail, kept, a lifeline in the abyss.
As she fell closer, the comforting heat of their combined energies intensified, a physical, loving embrace in the cold, desolate space. She stretched out her trembling fingers, her hand reaching out futilely to his outstretched hand, the hopeless need to touch him again, to feel the comforting heat of his flesh, an almost unbearable, physical ache that resonated throughout her very being.
But even as the flower of hope bloomed in her breast, a cold, insidious strand of fear insinuated its way through Elara's overwhelming joy. Behind Caius, slowly and forebodingly taking shape out of the very essence of the surrounding darkness, a massive, dark form began to emerge, its colossal shape coalescing with torturous slowness. Its unblinking gaze, even in the soft, whirling light, pressed heavily and evilly, looking fixedly at them both, a threat unsaid of their being very close to destruction. The ancient power had followed her into the deep.
"Caius! Behind you! Be careful!" Elara shrieked out a frantic warning, her joyful reunion turning to another wave of paralysing terror.
Caius's eyes widened in horror, his eyes snapping rapidly past his battered shoulder, a look of strict understanding, a dawning realisation flashing in his eyes of the irrevocable destruction, blotting out the wistful longing from them. The black shape loomed impossibly gigantic behind him, its shape gigantic and titanic, a deadly, overwhelming hush of their impending destruction.
No moment for sorrowful reunions, no moment for soft-spoken apologies. The ancient, malevolent power was upon them, its cold silence a weight in the desolation.
"Grasp my hand, Elara! Now, my love! Hurry!" Caius bellowed, his hand already reaching out, already outstretched, his eyes blazing intensely into hers, a wordless, anguished vow of eternity protecting spanning their souls.
Elara caught up with him, her shaking hand seizing his with agonised strength, their fingers together locked in an indomitable, unshakeable hold, a physical evidence of their stubborn love. Their mutually comforting energy of chaos fuelled a warmth radiating outwards, a raging, fiery rebuke to the spreading, absorbing night.
But the old power was enormous, its shadow stifling, its icy presence likely to strangle their faltering flame. The maelstrom of their common anarchic energy began to lose its brightness and perish, threatened by the overwhelming, complete cold of the void and the stifling, malevolent presence of their relentless pursuer.
"You cannot outstrip what is predestined, little sparks of revolt," the ancient voice read through the hollowness, cold and absolute, vibrating from the giant, darkening form, a pronouncement of their unavoidable fate.
Caius's hand closed over Elara's with furious resolve, his knuckles white as stone, his jaw set in rebellious silence. "We'll see about that, you old beast," he growled, his eyes blazing with fierce, protective fury that mirrored the unyielding fire in her own heart.
As one, their wild energy met and exploded outward in a frenzied group wave, a golden flood of colour crashing into the advancing, choking shadow. For an instant, the darkness recoiled, a momentary gleam in the unbroken blackness, but the strength of ages remained, an unyielding, unbending power.
"We can't fight it here, Elara! It's too strong on its own turf!" Caius roared over the thunderous din of their intertwined powers fighting against the abyssal night. "We must get out of this accursed hellhole, back to our own world!"
Where would they even try to go? The lightless darkness stretched out and out in all directions, an endless, desolate nothing that offered no escape, no sanctuary.
Abruptly, a despairing memory flashed into being in Elara's thoughts – the whirlpool rift, the rip in the texture of reality the ancient power had burst so menacingly out of. Could they try to pass through it the other way around? Was it still open, a fragile lifeline back to their shattered reality?
"The rift, Caius! We must return through the rift! It's all we have to cling to!" she exclaimed, her voice shaking with desperate urgency.
Caius nodded curtly, his eyes blazing with a desperate, unbreakable resolve. "Follow me, Elara, my love. I'll go anywhere with you."
Hand in hand, their palms clamped together, they faced and burst upward through the heavy, seething chaotic energy, away from the threatening, terrifying presence of the ancient power, toward the far-off, shaking memory of the rent in reality far above.
But the vacuum itself seemed to struggle against their desperate flight, its malevolent will an energetic force. Shadows of pure shadow reached out of the darkness from around it, grasping and rending, trying to haul them back towards the nothingness of the abyss. Their aggregated disordered power flared to defend, scorching the crawling shadows with fierce heat, but the abyss was vast and infinite, its shadowy arms relentless and boundless.
Behind them, the ancient power followed with a grim, unspoken persistence, its immense, dark form growing, its unseen weight a constant, crushing pressure, a chill reminder of its claimant hold on Elara.
And as they struggled upwards through the claustrophobic blackness, the faint, whirling light of the rift far above was glimpsed, a thin, kaleidoscopic flash of impossible colours against the unbroken night. A fleeting spasm of desperate hope, thin and tenacious, bloomed in Elara's heart, a small flame amidst the crushing blackness.
But the old power was bearing down upon them with an awful speed. Its massive, dark form loomed over them, increasing greater and greater, its invisible presence a suffocating, icy wave of remorseless cold. Fibres of cold, distilled darkness lashed out at them, more quickly and more violently than ever, their touch holding the promise of oblivion.
One of the black tentacles curled around Caius's leg with sickening speed, its cold, malevolent touch sending him howling in sharp, burning agony. His tight grip on Elara's hand began to slip precariously.
"Caius!" Elara shrieked in terror, her heart racing frantically within her chest.
"Go, Elara! Go! Don't look back, my love! I'll catch up to you! Just go!" He yelled, his voice strained with pain and a desperate urgency, his grip weakening.
But Elara would not let him go, her hand holding his with desperate, unbreakable grip forged by raw love and fear. She tore loose with all the force she could muster, her disorganised energy blasting outwards, burning the crawling tendril to ash, and freeing Caius from its frozen grip.
Hand still locked tightly in the other's, they erupted upwards again with greater desperation, rift colours whirling angrily close, a wafer-thin hope of liberty. Behind them, though, the ancient power had not been far behind, its shape hulking, dark, taking up the vacant space, its cold killing.
As they drew near the whirling, maddening hues of the rift, a tremendous tendril of pure, intense blackness erupted with terrifying speed, charging directly for Elara, a final, fatal blow.
Caius moved without thought, his love an impassable barrier against whatever power the void might wield. His raw howl of outraged defence, he threw himself bodily between her and the void's deadly strike, his battered and bruised body a weak defence against the killing blow.
The massive tendril struck him with a sickening, booming crunch, and he howled in unbearable pain, his tight grip on Elara's hand losing its tension, his body falling limp.
"Caius! No!" Elara cried, her own heart shattering into a million irreparable pieces, the fire of her hope extinguished in the blink of an eye.
With one final, frantic, anguished surge of her wild energy, fuelled by raw fear and grief, Elara pushed through the churning, kaleidoscopic colours of the rift, the wild energies swirling about her as the tear in reality closed quickly behind her, leaving Caius in the strangling clutches of the ancient, evil power, his sacrifice a silent scream in the echoing emptiness.
Elara reappears through the now quickly closing rift into the dense, red-painted alien landscape, the malevolent sheen of the obsidian buildings blinding her tear-streamed vision. She trips and falls to her knees on the cold obsidian ground, frantically looking back towards the swirling tear in existence, but it still shrinks with horrific speed, the massive, dark form of the old power briefly seen in its depths before the tear slams shut for all time, leaving her utterly alone, trapped once more in this damned universe, to the freezing whisper of Caius's horrible pain and the weighty, suffocating sense of her disastrous failure. But then there is a low, familiar voice, a whispered ghost from years she thought would come and go without her ever hearing it again, drifting on the heavy, crimson-coloured air, an ectoplasmic memory: "Elara… my Elara…"