The spike struck true and dug deep into the dark one's flank, not too far from the shoulder. Unfortunately a last moment twist by the creature jerked the trajectory sideways, so that the weapon didn't quite reach its very core as planned.

  Then the being was rocked back and had to take a knee, as the dark one kicked off of its body and landed some distance away, immediately straightening up again. For a moment the being was truly convinced that it had failed after all, and that even this last, desperate attempt had been for naught.

  And then the dark one slouched and took a step back... which segued into a stumble and more steps back, and then even more stumbling, while the being watched on, astounded. Even through the exhaustion and strain, it didn't take long to realize the dark one's true state: even if the spike hadn't quite gone in as planned, and thus hadn't been immediately lethal, it was still jabbed almost entirely inside the creature's chest, only a little part at the bottom still hanging outside. That couldn't be good for its foe's health.

  In its seemingly inexorable stumbling, the dark one reached a boulder and tried to lean on it for support, but even that didn't help any: it kept sliding onto the surface, unable to stay upright. One slip in particular rotated its chest in an unfortunate way, and the small part of the spike still outside caught onto a jutting rock, jostling the rest.

  The dark one spasmed - even the being recoiled in a second-hand shiver - and dropped down like a rock, coming to stand in an uncomfortable, almost sitting position, sideways against the boulder, with a leg bent awkwardly so that the creature couldn't truly lay down properly, and its head bent forward bonelessly. Only a feeble, but clearly intentional twitch of its hands and feet showed that it was still alive.

  It looked so incredibly weak, so very different from what it had always been... The being could only stare.

  It had really, truly won.

  Even now, seeing proof with its own eyes, it still couldn't believe it.

  There had been many doubts before, and throughout the fight it had always been intensely aware that only one mistake separated it from death. Part of its mind had been convinced that it was only a matter of time. Especially that last struggle... in hindsight, the being had tried more out of sheer stubbornness and defiance, but deep inside it had expected failure.

  The dark one had understood immediately its strengths and limitations and was baiting the dashes out, only striking while the being needed to recover. So it was a natural plan to use its power over the essence to tug its body forward, simulating a weak dash, and only dashing for real after the dark one had taken the being's own bait.

  And since it was so obvious, it would only be natural that the dark one would see through it and react in time.

  Yet, in the end, it had been enough. And now the dark one was helpless. Only its own stubbornness made it refuse to acknowledge the undeniable truth that it was done for.

  Its very body was giving up, chest bulging in a strange, morbid way, as if something were trying to make its way out - the being had a really good idea of what that something might be - and that wasn't even the end: its extremities were... fraying. Like a cracked rock under a heavy weight, finally surrendering to the fact that it was supposed to have crumbled long ago. This one, the being had no idea what was the cause. At least until it took a quick look around.

  Starting from the edges of the epicenter but drawing ever closer, everything - pebbles, rocks, boulders... even the currents themselves - were degrading, losing coherence, pulled by the rift. Only the being was stable. The being, and the thing inside its foe's chest.

  And now, they would be reunited.

  When it started approaching, the dark one's struggles renewed, but they were still such a pitiful thing that if the being hadn't been staring straight there, it wouldn't even have been able to notice. It was not a ruse, not this time: its foe was just that weakened.

  The being unhurriedly avoided one last lunge, as desperate as it was ineffective, and caught the dark one before it could crash onto the rocky ground, carried by the momentum of its own attack.

  It stared straight into the eyes of its truest rival, and felt pity for the creature's fall from grace. But mostly respect at its defiance in the face of everything. At its determination to keep fighting, no matter how hopeless the situation looked.

  The being could sympathize with that.

  Finally, it touched the dark one's chest, and immediately the caged thing appeared in its mind, clear as any part of its body, eager to come forth and rejoin back as it was fated to. The being couldn't wait for it, but... there was a small conundrum.

  Somehow, in a way that should never have been possible, the dark one had twisted the extremities of the caged thing, and partly fused with it. Evidently, it had been well on the way of corrupting it, usurping it, uncaring of how impossible that was. The being would need to thoroughly excise its rival's presence from the thing and purify it.

  The world around was rapidly receding, the void visibly closing in on the rift and on the two of them. It wouldn't last much longer. Still, the being knew that there would be more than enough time to 'clean' the caged off completely. And yet...

  Wouldn't that be a real pity?

  The dreg had lost, and it was finding that it didn't like this predicament at all.

  Its saner, better, but rebellious side had gone silent now that it had 'triumphed'. Now there was only the dark one's crudest and maybe truest self. The one that didn't want to lose no matter what, that didn't want to die. The one that had still tried to rebel when the monkey had come closer.

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  Not that its wishes mattered any, now.

  The monkey had easily sidestepped and even caught the dreg before it fell, with something that approached... gentleness. But its very proximity was agony, the anomaly inside trying to claw its way out.

  It had been an enormous struggle keeping the thing down ever since stealing it, much worse since the true claimant had arrived at the rift. And a titanic, impossible effort during their fight.

  The dreg should have just took its chances and dove into the unknown. It should have left when it could. It was too late now.

  When the monkey finally did something intentional - with an ironically familiar touch onto the dreg's chest - and actually exerted its claim, the dreg felt as if its entire chest and insides were rebelling and trying to desert, ribs creaking under the effort. There would be no fighting back, for it had already joined its pitiful presence too deeply with the anomaly. It would die the very moment the thing was severed, and the monkey wouldn't be so careless as to allow any leftover to remain. Not that the dreg was even remotely powerful enough for that to be relevant in its condition. Perhaps it hadn't ever been, not even before its fall.

  As its very bones were giving, chest literally peeling itself apart for the thing to come out, even the dreg's unshakable will was cracking, under the sheer, simple, cruel reality that it wasn't coherent enough to care anymore.

  It was over. The dreg had fought and won many battles.

  It had lost the war.

  But such was life. And truthfully, knowing what little it knew...

  such was justice.

  Yet it was the very moment that the dreg had finally started coming to terms, reconciling with the better part of itself under duress, and admitting that maybe it was better this way for everything and everybody, perhaps even for itself... it was that very moment that the pull expanded.

  The monkey wasn't cutting its presence off the nucleus. It was pulling the dreg along with it.

  The being relished contact with the caged thing like nothing else in the world, and couldn't wait to drop the 'caged' part and finally become one, become whole. But there was one chance here that gave it pause. It had waited so very long already, so what were a few moments more in the face of this?

  For the first time, its foe's body could be examined directly, with new perception granted by the sheer intimacy the caged thing still had with it.

  The being had always admired the dark one on every front, since the very moment it first laid eyes on the creature, yearned to be more and more like it, in every possible way. So, now that it had the source at hand, why not turn its desire into reality?

  The one, last transformation that it had missed.

  And truthfully, despite all that had happened, it had come to care for this creature. It would really be a terrible pity to leave it to die here.

  Of course it wouldn't be easy: just as expected, inspecting its chest through the caged thing, the dark one had no gem inside but was rather filled with... all sorts of peculiar stuff, none of which seemed remotely similar to a gem. Not even a diffused cluster or some kind of strange sludge of it, like the crystals had contained. There weren't even filaments!

  It simply couldn't be done. It was impossible.

  But why should the being let what was and was not possible affect it? In this very moment of triumph, when it had already achieved the impossible multiple times, what was one more?

  After all, there was one obvious solution: with nothing to hold onto and when it was impossible to determine what part of the dark one was really important and what wasn't... then the being only had to take the entirety of the creature. Alive.

  So this was how the dreg's victims felt like? But no... that couldn't be.

  This was much worse, and it was much better. Whatever the monkey was doing was thorough in a way that nothing the former dreg had been capable of could ever hope to be. Which was only to be expected, as their kind only wanted to pillage and usurp, and one usually got rid of the victim they'd stolen from. They left their broken, hopeless forms behind, never looking back. Certainly not... this.

  Before the dreg even had the chance to clear its mind and to decide what to expect, the process was basically over, its body changed in a manner abstruse and unrecognizable and, most important of all, a mind touching its own.

  The dreg, again... didn't know what to expect nor what kind of being it was feeling the edges of. It was clearly something sapient, smart and powerful, and capable of so much... and yet not quite. It was something that the dreg... something that it didn't quite understand.

  It only knew that what was about to happen wasn't going to be anything as simple as subjugation or integration, or even cohabitation.

  It was going to be complely unique, and totally absurd.

  Completely and totally uniquely absurd, maybe! And in fact, as soon as the dark one's 'essence' was completely inside...

  there was nothing. No transformation or anything. Not even a vague feeling of possibilities, or impending whatever.

  Rather, the dark one's physical body - what remained of it - crumbled into flakes like anything else.

  And the dreg should hurry along if it wanted to avoid a similar destiny, because a quick... look? What even was this 'sight'? showed a world completely collapsed. To actual, conventional sight, it looked like a nauseating maelstrom of myriad colors was swirling around, bubbling in and out, but steadily advancing forward and consuming all there remained. The dreg knew what this was and the being could have intuited it regardless.

  There was only a thin bridge left between the being and the rift, and no knowing how long that would last. The cage was broken, the thing inside circulating throughout its body and its everything, adhering everywhere. The dark one was similarly... 'dark one'? Well, an imposing name if nothing else... It was all so deep and confusing and immense, the being wouldn't be able to parse it in the best of circumstances. Let alone with annihilation looming!

  There was no time now, and the Divine Forge would surely smooth over whatever this was. So the dreg took one step forward... and immediately noticed that the ground where its foot had just been was no more.

  ...The being did the only thing it could in such a situation: it broke into a run.

  Dodging around dead flakes of a dead realm, wrestling with an absurdity it had caused in itself with no knowing where it would end up, the dreg rushed forward to the mass of void in its percept- to the swirling portal of receding yellowness and distant forests looming ahead, like death was chasing it.

  Which it kind of was.

  Pieces of the narrow, crumbling platform and other remnants of the world swirled around in a storm, like dead leaves caught in an autumn wind, but with none of the beauty and a whole lot of pain, since they hurt worse than an hailstorm.

  But all things considered, it wasn't that bad: the being only got a few see-through holes in its flesh for the effort. With everything that had gone absurdly, unbelievably, comically wrong throughout its journey, it had expected far worse!

  It almost couldn't believe when it finally dove through... and everything stopped in the inbetween.