Without movement he was behind her and shoved his hand into the back of her head, pressing her face to an imperceivable floor. “I was hoping you'd do something stupid, like almost destroy reality." Before her eyes, beyond the floor, she saw herself on a small island beach dispatching GOC agents in a sporadic dance of carnage. The look on her face, pure joy and relish in her own power, a joy she had been quite distant from. "This is what you were, look at you!" In a second visions filled her mind, each way she had been degraded to date stole nostalgia from her and filled her with shame. "You have become a sacrilege unto yourself!" He grabbed her arm and pulled it back, forcing her face down harder. "But what else could you have been!”
Lifetimes flowed between her senses, individual lives lived and lost in instants. She felt the loss of children, death as a failure, inexistence. She perceived a reality where her entire story was a whim of depraved narrators for their own joy. All her emotions and experiences: nothing more than a passing fantasy in fragile consciousness.
"You are nothing before an infinite cosmos, but you choose your path in this reality." He released her and stood up, She saw the damage on his body, she saw sweat boiling around him like a miasma. The blackness shrouding them dissipated Slowly. The giant man reached down and grabbed the scepter, and crushed it in his mangled hand. Casting it aside he reached down again and between two granite like fingernails snapped off a piece of her hair. He brought it up to one of his locks and fixed it in his hair with an emerald clasp. It danced before curling itself with his. The whole lock moved experimentally then fell limp. "Should you ever find yourself again, find me. Til then I will borrow this piece of your power" He glanced around the test chamber, seeing the devastation their exchanges caused. To no one in particular he shouted, "She is broken, do with her as you please!''
As he limped to the blast door he chuckled to himself. "Broken enough to become something greater, or to be folded into nothing".
Agnes sprawled on the ground, glassy-eyed and still but for her lips that silently mouthed the word 'nothing'. Over and over and over until it exploded into a scream of raw despair. She tried to crawl after her tormentor, but tripped over her hair and collapsed once more. She pleaded with him through a mouthful of blood, wanting him to end her, to least give her that much mercy. But he only grew smaller in her field of vision until disappearing completely, disregarding her like he would a piece of filth that fell off his shoe. Continuing to wail, she pressed both hands to her head and tried to incinerate herself. Not even a single spark came. Her thaum was well-depleted.
No one came to her aid as she began to weep loudly and openly, without a care for the many observing eyes. The visions crushed what little remained of her hopes, cruelly snatching away any delusion that she might be freed and returned to power. Her mind slowly broke under every failure that her life ended in, every glimpse of eternity where her arrogant, laughable existence was a mere speck on the world. Her fragile form writhed on the floor in her torn robes, dragging her bloodied flesh over the remnants of the marvellous weapon she had so lovingly crafted. Her desecrated crown slipped off her head and rolled away into the debris. A worthless, minuscule organism all along, with no dignity, no love, and now, no power. Not even the ability to end her pain when she chooses. Touching once more the empty well within her, she didn't even feel the faintest stir of recovering thaum. Her blood ran cold with sudden, sinking horror. A small part of her had dreaded that this would happen. Another nightmare realised among many. Perhaps it was due to damage by her recklessly hasty summoning spell, or some effect of the entity, or even the complete destruction of her pride in her own powers... she had the notion that they would never recover to what they were.
A lifetime's work and dreams, the talent that was her pride and the envy of millions, gone. The fallen Karcist entered the arena as a living god, and emerged no more powerful than the common anomalous whore that can perform a few tricks to amuse their client. Weaker, even, as a helpless eldritch thing that any human can tear in half without the shield she had relied on all her life. She screamed and clawed at the ground and bawled out prayers to any god who'd listen to end her existence, and none answered.
