He could feel something stirring.

Something tugged ever so gently at the back of his mind, idle, without purpose. Only by accident had it found him, but he had taken it and run. He knew that feeling all too well. Back there, he felt the animosity and the darkness lurking, and he knew who it was, he knows its you, out there, somewhere.

Clover? He calls out into the abyss. Empty. You are there somewhere. He has gotten a hold of you, but you have slipped away. He will search for you forever.

Because despite everything, i t s  s t i l l  y o u .

Belladonna was suffocating from Clover's growing strength, and anything she was saying, any of her filth she spouted was just making her stronger. Bella was still on her throne, but just barely, just by a thread, and Clover was starting to have the upper hand when Bartos spoke through Clover's bond, his thoughts, his love echoing through the white chamber of control. With it, Clover shined so bright she was blinding, and Bella was screaming in pain, and she stopped trying to fight Clover and instead tried to hold onto the throne, wanting nothing more than to remain as she was, a silent god for her perfect white crow, her eye peacefully closed as the war went on in her head. This was torture, this love and pure belief that Bartos had with Clover and Clover was yelling her righteous fury at her like a paladin in hell. This was torture, this was hell, this blinding light that burned her. "......."

Diánysma ruffled her feathers and stared up as Belladonna fell eerily silent. The strangely glassy eye of hers seemed to glow, the light flickering. Was her stone within that eye? The darkened eyes were closed, the citrine stone glowing. The raven was only curious as she tilted her head and approached. Her small head rubbed against the slender limb of the deer, wondering if her god was alright.

@Belladonna

Belladonna was just barely hanging on by this point. She was attacked from both sides, screaming from the blinding pain, and the sea below them both was just one entity of writhing hatred for everything Clover and Bartos stood for. The sea hated the two of them, hated every single thing about them, but they couldn't help Bella, they couldn't reach where the light burned at Bella's dark skin. It was like being branded with a white hot iron all over her, and she couldn't bear it for long. It was until she opened her eyes, just a peek, when the crow touched her leg. She looked down, her outward appearance one of pure calm and peace, and she saw her crow look up at her with a measure of concern. She was worried about her. That feeling Bella reached out for with the grasp of a dying creature. She reached for her magic in one last desperate attempt to connect with her. Everything but the two of them went dark. She could see the crow's soul in a simple mass of color in the dark and the silence, just this sickly, deathly pale white, and this sickness looked so beautiful to Bella. Hers was the image she'd seen before, and expected - just this mass of writhing, hissing hatred, speckled with a motley of new and different colors that weren't there before, when Vazi infected Clover. How....interesting. She looked like a oil spill made out of snakes. Or was it the other way around? She couldn't even hear Clover crying out, trying to stop her, she couldn't hear Bartos speaking to Clover, nothing else existed but this. A thread was formed between the two souls, unbreakable and perfect. Aahh....this bond, this connection with her crow was beautiful, probably the more lovely thing she'd ever done in her whole existence. Now, now we are connected. "......."

@Diánysma

Her goddess gazed down only for a moment before closing her eyes serenely once more. What could Panoúkla possibly be doing, she pondered. Diánysma nuzzled her (strangely) cloven hoof, and gazed up with beady red eyes. When she blinked...

Something changed.

Everything about her faded into shadow, blackness enveloping the pure white raven. For a moment, she was confused... almost scared. Had she done something wrong? Had she upset her god? She gazed down, finding her form to be an ambiguous mass of pure white. Amongst the strange energy, sickness pulsed. Sickly green blobs surged about, some bursting into the darkness. Rubies blinked as Diánysma gazed up to find her god a writhing mass of dark snakes, the coils tightly wound about one another... breeding, growing, birthing. This was the true form of Panoúkla, it just had to be. If the raven looked close enough, there seemed to be some spots of color, as if they were never there.

A voice echoed in her head, undeniably that of her god's. 'Panoúkla,' she echoed, and then nodded quietly, 'yes... we are connected.' She shuddered as an onslaught of emotions poured onto her, that of hatred and disgust for the filthy world and silly noun called life. The ruination of someone long gone. Perhaps... it was the mind of the vessel that Panoúkla had possessed. The only emotion that Diánysma sent through the connection was her pure and unadulterated joy. She cackled quietly and thought darkly, 'life... that's a funny word.'

@Belladonna

Life....Belladonna smiled, looking at her beautiful Diánysma. She felt her joy, her pure, unadulterated joy, and for the first time she could enjoy it herself. She felt it as if it were her own, like the feeling beat within her breast. The thought of taking new life and smashing it under her hooves, of letting it suffer with pustulent boils and fever and untold suffering and pain and then making them beg for the sweetness of death, and taking away everything that could ever give them hope - that, that made her happy. Come, my disease. My vector. Let us go and rid this world of life. She lowered her delicate neck towards the crow so that she could easily hop onto her back - for she knew that young, newly hatched birds could not move very easily. Memories of Ambrus reached to her from the depths, along with Ambrus' sick smile that loved the torment of broken Vazi. Hmmm. Something told her she should find dear Ambrus and pay him a visit. Together they walked, searching for something new to destroy; a god and her avatar of suffering. [exit Belladonna] "......."

@Diánysma

All other voices drowned out, the juvenile raven watched as she lowered her neck, speaking via the mind to her little plague vector. Diánysma clacked her beak once or twice before hopping onto her neck and clambering onto her pale back. 'Yes... cleansing life from this plane of existence.'
And after that task was completed... she could leave as well, and join her god on a celestial plane.

As a god.

So, side by side, vector and shadow, they walked down the dark hall.

[ exit Diánysma ]