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I Summon the All-Seeing Eye	By : all_possible_worlds Category: +S through Z > Star vs. The Forces of Evil Views: 29523 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Vs. the Forces of Evil or its characters. I made no money from writing this story.

Chapter List
- 25
- 26
- 27
Chapter 26: And then Oblivion?
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Sam's azure fiery glow illuminated the entirety of the visible world beyond Star's magic barrier. In the presence of his unearthly fire, midnight was as bright as dawn. Not with the life giving light of the sun, but with the cruel brightness of a much less hospitable celestial body, one with a malevolent will of its own. There was something about the way Sam looked, surrounded by this bright blue otherworldly light, that made Star's mind recoil in instinctive terror. She perceived something, just below the threshold of comprehension, that reminded her of the frailty of all living things.
To say Star was afraid would have been an understatement, and yet, in the face of inevitability, she was not cowed. She knew she would never match the devil's might, and he had repeatedly proved that he could outsmart any of them. But maybe, just maybe, she could still take him by surprise, strike him before he expected her to do so. There was always the possibility of being underestimated. In any case, she won nothing by waiting for him to attack first. She was not playing this defensively! She was not waiting for death to come her way!
She jumped and rolled out of her protective magical bubble as fast as she could, leaving her friends safe behind the shimmering shield. The floor reflected the horrific blue light of their host back at her stinging eyes.
"GLOWING DARKNESS HELLBLAST!" cried Star, as she sprung back on her feet. She pointed her wand directly at Sam's face, summoning forth the cutting blast of focused violet light she had used against Princess Nephafel. She targeted her foe with a destructive brightness much like his very own.
Sam was not surprised. He moved his right arm fast, so fast that Star couldn't see it, fast enough to hit the incoming beam with the back of his hand. He literally slapped the spell. The magical ray broke into pieces, as if it were made, not of pure light, but of solid and rather fragile glass. After shattering so, no more energy flowed from Star's wand, the spell fully negated and, perhaps, forever undone. It made no sense, not according to the laws of physics she had learned on Earth, not according to those of magic which she read from Eclipsa's notebook. Yet it was so.
The devil stared at the princess, fixing on her a gaze so intense that it literally burned like fire. Star jumped away just as the air around her ignited in an explosion of blue flames. No beams, no incantation, no need for movements or gestures, Sam had but to direct his attention to cause the empty air to catch fire. He trailed her with his sight, and as she ran from it, blaze and lightning followed in pursuit. Bits and pieces of the ancient mosaic under her feet flew through the air as his sight slid through the floor. The roof was long gone, and the remains of the walls simply crumbled as Sam's gaze touched them. She was scrambling for dear life and the being in front of her hadn't so much as taken a step in her direction. He simply glared towards her. His eyes alone brought destruction.
"DEVOURING HORRORS HELL SWARM!!" Star shouted. A mass of black inchoate tentacles launched themselves at the Endless Shadow. They burned to ashes before they could touch his skin.
"DOBHAR-CHU BLAST!!"
"THESTRAL CHARGE!!"
The darker versions of her old favorite spells suffered the same fate. Monstrous lutrinae and demonic horses cried in agony as they burned to death. The Lord of Dis hardly seemed to notice her efforts.
Star tried a few more spells, while still evading their host's sight. But she knew it was but an act of desperation. Beams dissolved before touching him, summoned weapons melted, creatures burst into flames under the azure light. Her older rainbows, cupcakes, and inexplicable explosions fizzled out before she could even finish casting them, going against a tremendous magical pressure that far exceeded the power of such paltry spells. After her first attempt, the devil hadn't so much as deigned to lift a hand to defend himself. Instead, the infernal power slowly radiating from his eyes and body undid most anything she could throw at him.
"This is beyond disappointing, princess," boomed Sam, his voice the unfeeling fury of brass bells. "I must say, I was still hoping for so much more than this sorry collection of third rate parlor tricks..."
He pointed his open palm at Star, then closed it violently. A mass of portals, not unlike those formerly created by the now inert dimensional scissors, if perhaps smaller, opened all around the mewman. Out of each portal emerged an intense beam of cerulean light. They formed into a swarm of blindingly bright spectral twisting claws. They seemed to grab, not at her, but at her layers of magical protection, tearing them down one by one. She felt her unshielded skin crawl with searing pain under their host's burning light, as soon as her defenses were removed. Star fell down to her knees, weakened and hurt.
The portals vanished. Sam stood, immobile, expectant. His brightness dimmed ever so slightly, just below the point at which Star herself, now unprotected, would have soon burst into flames. It still hurt her eyes, and slowly blistered her skin.
"W...why?" she asked, struggling to regain her breath. "If you are truly going to kill me, you could have done it already! What the hell are you waiting for?!"
"For you to show me something new, anything that proves you can already do what I need you to do," he replied. "It would avoid us both the inconvenience of your death, and grant me the satisfaction of one rare surprise. Alas, I fear I might be prolonging this in vain."
Right, he was toying with her, testing her for something. The problem was, Star didn't know for what. On the one hand, it was beyond humiliating. On the other, it meant there was a way out! She didn't need to defeat Sam, she just needed to find a way to solve yet another of his cruel mind games, to figure out what he wanted to see. But how? Maybe, maybe if she had a moment to think... wait, that was it!
"From darkness deep and fires far, I call on time to flow like tar!" she recited.
She didn't see what she could do that would pacify the powerful being, but perhaps this would buy her some time. She only hoped he wouldn't be able to follow her into slowed time, like Toffee's phantasm had. She was beginning to suspect that, fortunately for her now, the only reason that had happened back then, was because there was some connection between "will, unbending" and the wand. Perhaps a connection to herself. Maybe, just maybe, Sam would simply freeze. Then she could figure out, at worst, an escape plan.
"No, that won't do," he said simply, raising his left hand. He extended three fingers, from middle to thumb, keeping the others closed upon his palm. A twisted gesture of benediction.
The princess felt something other than her own magic tug at the flow of time, canceling her own pull on it. She glanced back at Marco, Jackie, Janna and Tom, none of them seemed frozen. As they looked at the scene in front of them through the bubble, they were paralyzed by terror and held back by her own barrier, but not fundamentally immobile. In the sky above them, the maelstrom of souls continued to turn.
"It wouldn't have worked the way you wished for, either way," Sam explained, "But I am afraid I want them to see this. For what is worth, that was indeed an improvement."
An improvement? Why? Because time manipulation was a harder feat to accomplish? Because it was a more powerful spell? Or maybe, he meant it was cleverer than her approach so far? No, none of that sounded like the kind of thing the Lord of Dis cared about. But there was another difference, between that spell and the previous two. The later was dark magic. It was a spell based on the principles of Eclipsa's notes, it called on powers beyond those Star could directly command, and thus, it was what her mom and the high commission would have termed dark magic. Of course that was what Sam wanted to see her do! He wanted to see her cast dark magic! It made sense for a demon from hell to want her to do that. Fine, she would happily oblige!
"I call the darkness unto me, from deepest depths of earth and sea..." she begun.
Star was almost expecting the devil to stop her, again. Instead, he simply lowered his arms and waited. A dark mist formed around the mewman princess.
"... from ancient evils unawoken, to break the one who can't be broken..."
He smiled at her as she said that, a smug knowing smile, like she had accidentally told a joke only Sam got. Her arms burned, as the scorched black veins surfaced once more, breaking through her usual glamour.
"To blackest night I pledge my soul, and crush my heart to burning coal, to summon forth the deathly power..."
She made sure to point at his heart this time. The half-star of her wand turned pitch black. Her own eyes glowed green.
"... to see my HATED. FOE. DEVOURED!!"
The ink-like blast emerged from the magic wand. Although a beam as well, this was of a very different nature than her opening attack. This was not her own magic, this was her calling unto the powers of death itself to annihilate her foe. It was a power designed to kill that which was immortal, and the being in front of her seemed likely to qualify for that title, particularly if Toffee, now clearly quite dead, had. But, then again, there was immortal and then there was immortal. So, would this be enough? Sam certainly didn't seem all that concerned.
In fact, the ancient devil made no movement to stop her spell, or to block it. He let it hit his chest, right where his heart should have been. For a moment, tendrils of darkness crisscrossed his loathsome azure light, a black shadow forming over his torso and projecting all around them as it blocked the light flowing from the marble skin. His eyes grew wider with mild surprise, the air in front of them once more catching fire. But then, the shadow began shrinking, the tendrils withering, and an eternal burning brightness returned to his unharmed form.
For a supposedly infallible spell, that particular bit of magic had so far helped Star a total of zero times.
"Well, that was so much better!" Sam commented cheerfully. "Now we are finally starting to get somewhere. What else have you got?"
Star let herself collapse onto the ground. That had been it. That was the deadliest and darkest spell she knew, and it hadn't been enough to either hurt or please the devil. She could use her other spell, the one powered by anger. But it was strictly a downgrade compared to Eclipsa's original spell. Besides, right now, she didn't feel anger, she felt despair.
She looked back at her friends behind the barrier. Marco was slamming his bare fists against the shielding bubble, trying to get out. Jackie just looked, well, she looked broken. Tom was horrified, but didn't dare move against Sam. Janna was unreadable behind her cowl. Star held the human boy's eyes and mouthed: 'I am so sorry'.
She didn't expect this to work, and also didn't expect it to impress Sam enough to let her go. But if she was going to die here, then she would come out swinging. She pointed the wand at him one last time, closed her eyes, and dipped down.
When she opened her eyes once more, they glowed bright green, and a huge ball of emerald flames burst out of the half-star crystal, then another, and another. Raw meteors of destructive magic. As they got near the creature that claimed the title of the Final Cold, the fireballs seemed to veer off course, to go around his body, rather than through it. At first Star was confused, it hurt to watch him now, her mind yelling at her that something was wrong. Then she realized that it was not that her spells were being diverted, the green flame comets flew in perfect straight lines, but space itself was curving around her foe. His look was one of contemptuous disappointment.
"I see," he sighed. "So that was all? That's unfortunate. No, I don't think that will do... it won't do at all. I am afraid we are back to the original plan. Oh well, it makes little difference, I suppose."
He glared at Star, and blue fire exploded all around her, she felt a jolt of electricity course through her body as lightning struck her. Vulnerable and weak without her protective spells, she was thrown back, crashing on the floor a few steps further away from Sam. The wand flew out of her hands, gracefully floating towards the devil's open palm.
"Ah, yes, Mewni's royal magic wand: a remarkable tool, even in its cleaved condition," he spoke appreciatively, inspecting the royal heirloom, passed onto Star by her mother. "Yet it can be easily destroyed, by a simple verse, whispered into it. You know? I could just lift that spell from your mind, were I so inclined. But, then again, where is the fun in that? Let's see if we can think of more clever ways..."
Star tried to get up, but her muscles didn't seem to be done spasming. The wand. He was going to destroy the wand! Her mother's wand!
"In the absence of that spell, few forces can damage it. It was built to last a million years!" he announced. There was a cold tinge of sarcasm to his awed pronouncement. "Perhaps more. But how much more?"
He held the wand by its head, not its handle, and Star felt, more than saw, something horrifying. Time seemed to bend just around Sam's fist. It seemed to flow, not slow as tar, but quick and irresistible, like a river through a broken dam, the crack widening more the more water passed through it in an accelerating vicious cycle. The half-star grew ever dimmer, the handle began to corrode, the wings to crack and break.
"Here is an old lesson, princess: time is an irresistible force, even in the face of magic," he grinned. "Ten million. Twenty. A hundred million years. And then, just dust."
He closed his palm and a stream of fine shimmering powder, like sand, crashed onto the floor. The wand had been turned to nothing by the unnaturally induced passage of time. Star wouldn't have felt worse if the devil had burned her right arm to ashes instead. The wand was as much a piece of her as any part of her body.
"Given time, things break, worlds crumble," Sam noted, "and people?..." He extended his hand once more towards the princess, snapping his fingers at her. "People die."
She was vaguely aware of the bubble spell behind her collapsing as the wand dissolved. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Marco's look of fury as he began some strange motions with his hands. Tom's eyes glowed red. Janna rushed past where the barrier had been, unexpectedly, running towards Sam with her left hand raised in front of her. Tom seemed to overtake the witch just a second later.
But it was hard for Star to understand what was going on, because at that moment, she stopped breathing. She felt air leaving her and not coming back. She brought her hands to her throat. She tried to inhale. She grasped for air, but none was to be found. She was suffocating, unable to breathe. It was not that the air wasn't around her, it was that she couldn't touch it. For some reason, air and her were no longer in the same world. Her lungs burned. She felt dizzy.
It all went black.
----
Seven minutes, Marco thought to himself. It takes as many as seven minutes for the human body to die from lack of oxygen. If that was indeed what was happening to Star.
He had seen the wand crumble to dust, the barrier fall, and his best friend, his girlfriend, the girl he loved, lie helpless on the marble floor, convulsing. He begun the Fierceness Ritual the very moment the protective shield was gone. Even with the added strength, he knew he couldn't win this fight. If Star's magic couldn't harm Sam, then what hope had he? But there was no way he would let her fight alone, not now that the bubble keeping him from her side was not there anymore.
This was all his fault! If he had been able to protect Jackie a few minutes ago, none of this would have happened. She wouldn't have faced Sam's cruel test, and Star wouldn't be fighting for her life now. Oh god, Marco had failed both of them! All because he screwed up, all because he held back, because he didn't use the ritual as soon as the stupid costume party started! He had been such a coward, and now they all had to pay for his mistake!
When he saw Star gasping for air, motioning to her throat, he felt a sick cold terror, an overwhelming sense of dread. It almost broke his concentration entirely, causing the ritual to misfire. But he suddenly remembered his first aid training. Star wasn't dead, not yet, the Safe Kid thought, just unconscious. He only needed to find a way to get her breathing again in the next seven minutes. Maybe more for a mewman. Mewmans were tougher than humans in almost every way, after all.
This meant that he had to maintain control, to keep a clear mind. Unfortunately, that was about to become ten times harder.
He finished the last word, the last gesture. Immediately, he felt his entire body tense, his muscles ache, his bones compress under inhuman pressure, his heart race faster than it had ever been designed to, and his mind cloud with an overpowering thirst for violence. It seemed that the effects of Sam's costume did add up with those of the ritual, just as he had feared. It didn't help that Marco had every reason in the multiverse to want to do violence right now.
He had remembered all about the ritual from last night's dream. He figured that was the point of him dreaming about it. Maybe the Finding Ritual had worked, and he had indeed found strength. But strength had been the wrong thing to ask for! It would not be enough. Sam was far beyond any mortal strength. Marco needed smarts. He had to think, now, while he still somewhat could. He had to find a way, any way, to save Star. He didn't care to die here, as long as she survived. Wait, not only Star, Jackie too!
In a moment of clarity, before rushing towards Star, Marco stomped on Jackie's lower chains, cutting them in two. He also crushed the ones tying her arms together with his right hand. It took most of his newfound might, but the magical chains did break under the strength of a hundred men. For a moment, Marco had been worried that even that would not be enough to affect Sam's magical costume props. But apparently, those were not meant to be real restraints, not by the devil's standards.
Marco's little pause meant that Janna and Tom had gotten ahead of him.
Tom was the first to reach the damn bastard. Sam smiled at him. His eyes dimmed. The extreme heat that had permeated the air from the moment Star's barrier fell was suddenly gone as well.
"What's up, bro? Hope you enjoyed the party! Shame you all couldn't hold your end of the deal. But, oh well, better luck next time? You, bro, are free to go... the rest stay, of course..."
"Leave! Star! ALONE!!" growled Tom. His eyes burned red, streams of fire burst out of his hands, he flew up high into the air.
The devil's eyes burned blue, a blisteringly hot wind blew all around them once more. Sam's voice boomed, "Do you truly believe you can threaten me, Thomas Lucitor?"
Tom floated back to the ground, his eyes back to normal, his teeth gritting in anger, his entire body shaking, and yet he hesitated to fight a fight he knew he couldn't win. Janna rushed past him.
Meanwhile, Marco, head pounding, turned his attention towards Star's unconscious body. The Fierceness Ritual had been a mistake. He didn't need this much strength for what he was about to do, what he needed was to be careful. He leaned on top of the princess, put a single palm over her chest, and pressed his lips to her own. He begun the compressions, and tried, carefully at first, to breath air directly into her mouth. His clouded mind fought against him, telling him that he should be out there, ripping Sam limb by limb rather than clumsily trying to administer CPR.
It didn't work, anyway. The air seemed to refuse to go inside Star's body. Even blowing with all his strength, he couldn't get the mewman to inhale. In his desperation, he tried harder and harder, his thoughts falling behind a red mist of anger and confusion. He heard a sickening crack. One of Star's ribs had broken under his superhuman strength.
Janna held a hand up in front of herself. Around her ring finger, a double-coiled spiral tattoo began to glow blue. It was too far for Marco to see it clearly, even if he were paying full attention, but the mark shook and slithered like a living thing. The girl's eyes glowed blue as well. It was the same shade of blue light of Sam's own blinding eyes, although far less intense: a candle-flame to his inferno. A mass of shadowy tendrils appeared all around the witch.
"Shall I let you burn today, J-flame, then? Waste your fire in vain against powers far beyond your comprehension? No, I think not," Sam declared. He pointed his hand at Janna and clicked his fingers. Her skin begun turning an unearthly shade of gray. She opened her mouth to scream in pain, but froze before any sound could come out. In an instant she had been turned to stone. "I do wonder if you simply felt you had to do this. A matter of pride perhaps? I would have thought that, deep down, you'd be happy to see the princess gone."
"You... you..." Tom flew at the ancient being, eyes glowing, his entire body covered in bright red flames, muttering something that sounded to Marco like the demon prince's version of a ritual. This time, he was not deterred by his own fear, or by the known futility of the assault. Guided by Tom's magic, dark chains and slabs of stone appeared all around Sam, trying to contain him. They immediately exploded into a thousand pieces, then fell uselessly to the floor. A marble white hand seized a charging Tom by the neck.
"Whoa, way to grow a pair, 'bro'!" he spoke. His eyes still glowing this time, the timbre of his voice still inhuman, the pretense of fake amiableness more transparent than ever before. "You know very well who it is you face and yet... yet you are willing to throw your long existence away? For them, who live lives short as a candle's wick? For your human pet?"
"For my ex-girlfriend!" Tom corrected him.
"Well, what can I say? It touches my heart!" Then, with a cruel smile, he added, "...shall I return the favor?"
He placed his free remaining hand atop Tom's chest, raised two fingers up, and, with a swift movement, plunged them into the demon prince's skin, piercing muscle and bone like it was wet tissue paper. Marco heard the Lucitor child yell in agony, as the older fiend scrapped a large piece of his heart out of his chest, throwing the rest of the eviscerated body to the ground. A pressurized fountain of blood gushed out of the wound. Tom seemed alive, or whatever it was that demons were as opposed to dead, but he twisted and howled in pain, seemingly completely beyond conscious thought.
"By the way, that reminds me," Sam turned around towards Marco, who was still desperately trying to bring Star back to life. "You are wasting your time."
The devil glared at the princess inert form, his eyes narrowing suddenly. Marco felt his own skin blister under the heat and jumped away by reflex. What he saw then was more horrifying than any sight in the last few days, than any other of the horrors of hell.
Star's hair caught flames, burning from blond to coal black, turning slowly to ashes. The Countess costume caught fire as well, quickly burning into nothing. Then, her naked body began graying and shrinking, not turning into stone like Janna's, but sort of desiccating. Her flesh turned coal-like first, and then ignited, leaving only her bones. Finally, those too cracked and broke, until nothing remained of the mewman but dust and a scorched silhouette on the marble and obsidian floor.
It wasn't possible. It couldn't be. Star was... no...
Marco sprung up to his feet, looked at Sam's smug smiling face, and there was no longer an ounce of human thought in the boy's mind. He roared like a savage beast, and charged straight at the devil. In the back of his mind, he knew the most important person in his life had just died, that he had seen her body being literally cremated in front of him. But there was no grief yet, not even anger, at least not anger of a kind he had ever known before. All that was Marco was silent, dead just as much as Star was. What remained was a single minded instinct, a need to see the being in front of him destroyed.
He punched Sam directly in the face, and the devil made no move to avoid him or block his strike. It was yet again the familiar sound of cracking bones when his right hand broke. He tried the left, with equal results. He kicked, and broke one foot as well. A hand lifted him from his chin, and threw him back hard against the floor, three out of four limbs were bending in entirely the wrong way.
It all went black.
----
Jackie looked at the carnage around her through wide glazed out eyes. This was all her fault. She had failed to do the right thing. She had mistook what she was supposed to do. She had been willing to endure an inhuman act of violation to avoid this fate, to suffer torture to spare her friends. Yet that surrender itself had caused their demise. It had led to Star's death, possibly Marco's as well. Her turn was probably next, and that was, in a way, the least of her sorrows.
The azure brightness burned her flesh. She didn't feel it. The pain inside made the one outside superfluous. She walked towards Sam, a step at a time. She could have collapsed into the floor, just as easily. It made no difference to her either way. But for some reason she kept marching towards the cruel devil.
He said something. She didn't understand what it was. She was barely aware of Tom's screams of agony. Marco and Janna were both silent and unmoving, one unconscious, the other stone. Star had burned to ashes before her very eyes. What words could even have meaning after that? Did Sam taunt her? Ask her a question? Threaten that she was next? Either way, she did not care. There was nothing she could care about anymore.
She saw the devil raise a hand and point towards her, she did not flinch. She wondered how he was going to kill her, with the detached curiosity of one who knows such matters to be quite trivial, all things considered. Sam was right, he was absolutely right, it was all a charade, and then came oblivion.
But the marble white hand shifted ever so slightly, pointing to the empty space in front of her. Before Jackie, a black sword appeared, buried into the broken mosaic under their feet. The hilt had once more the twelve spiked circle, and the sigil of the flaming sword: Sam's seal.
The human girl put her hand on the hilt. It scorched her skin. It didn't matter. She lifted the sword, pulling it from the ground. She charged hopelessly against the refulgent devil with the weapon he himself gave her, she stroke with fury and determination born of futility.
She felt the blade break into a dozen shards on impact. She felt her own body fly through the air before hitting the hard floor. She felt the blunt pain of the impact.
Jackie briefly considered staying down and simply waiting for the final blow. When she got up, it wasn't that she cared enough to fight, it was that she didn't care enough to surrender. Another sword, identical to the first, appeared before her. She pulled it, and charged.
"... you think, perhaps, that you can defeat me?" she finally heard the words, as the sword once again broke on impact and she was thrown through the air a second time. It was not arrogance, but a quiet tone of amused curiosity coming from her tormentor.
"No," she answered as she stood up. Another sword appeared before her.
"Do you expect this will help your friends?"
Metal exploded.
"No."
A fourth sword was brought forth into the world.
"Then... Why?"
A shrug. A shower of steel shards.
----
If Sam palace had been bright with a blue hateful dawn, this place was a blackness beyond that of a moonless night. Worse than that, since no stars shone inside the infinite expanse of the void. None until she opened her eyes. Once she did, her own pale magical glow was the only source of light in the nothingness. There was no up, and no down, no forward or backwards, there was only her, and not a speck more.
"Where am I?" she questioned the emptiness.
"Think of it as the threshold," spoke a voice in the darkness. Sam's voice. Not booming brass bells, but the cruel amused tone she had heard him use in her dream. "It is the place after where 'place' has lost meaning, and the last moment that exists in time. At least, for you."
He appeared before her, not as a glowing god of destruction, but as a bleak and macabre figure. His eyes were not bright with burning azure light. They weren't even the human blue irises he sometimes pretended to have. Instead, they were empty sockets, filled only with darkness. His marble skin was still statuesque, but now it looked muted gray, dirty, and full of cracks, it reminded her of gravestones. Golden hair had turned to rusted lead. There was no brightness coming from the Endless Shadow, just the same grimness that seemed to suffuse this whole place. There was an instant in which Star wondered if this form was weaker than the one she had just faced. It didn't quite seem that way, just an insurmountable mightiness of a different kind. But maybe, just maybe, she could chance to try again, to continue her fight in this place, to unleash righteous vengeance upon the being who... who killed her.
"Oh... I am dead..." she realized. "I am dead, aren't I?"
"Mostly," Sam replied, smirking. At least, his lips curved. A smile in a face with no eyes was a particularly unsettling expression to behold.
"So," Star speculated, "dead and in hell and you are the corresponding devil to torture me? Because that'd be great, really great..." she spat, sarcastically.
Disturbing as Sam's new form was, Star was not afraid of it. If nothing else, being already dead tended to remove fear of death as a factor in her decision making.
"Not so," replied Sam. "I am just holding you here for but a moment, Princess Butterfly. Soon enough I'll have to let go, and you will drift beyond..."
"You mean to heaven?" Frankly, she was surprised she still qualified for that.
"Oh no, you don't. Not in the least!" Sam assured her, with a laugh as dark as the world around them.
So, that confirmed what she already suspected: he could read her thoughts. Because, of course he could. They never had a chance, had they?
"No. And, well, it is somewhat more complicated than that, anyways, in your particular case," Sam continued. "Dissolution, probably. Maybe reincarnation. The City of Dis wouldn't be a final enough prison for a soul like yours, and make no mistake, once I let go, if you are still here, the result will be very final..."
"Good," said Star, defiantly. She had lost, she had died, but she would not give the devil the satisfaction of seeing her break.
Honestly, she was not sure if it was a good thing. To die, that is. Although she couldn't imagine how it could be worse than what she had just left behind. On the other hand, if she was dead, then there was nobody left to avenge her mother.
"Well, you could still do that..." Sam chuckled. It was a laugh that sucked out joy from the void itself, an anti-laugh. "It would be a miracle, of course. But you are doomed by prophecy, after all, Princess Star, and a proper destiny begets many miracles..."
"Doomed?" Star asked, uncertain.
"It is another way to say: fated, destined," the devil explained, clearly aware of which meaning Star had first understood. Then, solemnly, he intoned: "'Behold the dark queen ascending, her will the thread of fate unraveling. Behold the force of evil incarnate, borne of deepest heart's desire...' ... sounds familiar?"
Indeed, those were familiar words, from Cass' prophecy. But Star couldn't see what that had to do with anything right now. Clearly, if she was dead, and about to be dissolved, or whatever, she could no longer become a dark queen. Unless she was supposed to have been one already. The case could be made for that one, she realized, although she had never really done anything quite that evil...
"You are missing the second part, Princess Star. Your will has unraveled, or will unravel fate. Maybe both. Maybe you continuously unravel it. Or maybe your will is made of the thread of fate unraveling. Words are tricky slithering things, after all," he mussed. "But the point is that you have a destiny, one I think you haven't yet fulfilled, even if I perceive only the broadest contours of what it might be. What is death against the tides of fate? No, Star, I do not think I have destroyed you, although I would be amused to find otherwise. In any case, as a matter of preference, I do not desire your tale to end today. I expect not dissolution or reincarnation, but rather... resurrection."
"Resurrection?" Star repeated in confusion. "You will revive me? Then why kill me in the first place?!" she asked, exasperated.
"I will do nothing of the sort!" Sam stated, pointedly. "In fact, I cannot. It goes beyond my attributions. It might be more accurate to say it goes against them. I destroy, I devour, I corrode, I kill. I do not create life. Holding you in place is one thing. Pulling you towards life would be quite another. But you, however, can do it. I have seen you do it, in a future that no longer exists. All you need is sufficient motivation, I think. Something 'borne of deepest heart's desire', perhaps? So, what do you desire?"
To avenge her mom, Star thought. That was the desire that had brought her to the deepest depths of hell, that had pushed her to learn the dark arts, that had made her drag all her friends into damnation with her. That was her wish, to kill the thing that killed her mom! It was a want that she was willing to undo death to fulfill.
Star closed her eyes and dipped down. The void was deep, deeper than any other place she had dipped into before. There were no magical chunks of reality to grasp at, not anywhere near enough for her to sense. Sam wasn't there, either, not when she looked at the energies of the place he had called the threshold. If he was here with her at all, it was inside her head. There was nothing besides her in the realm of magic, same as there wasn't anything in the visible void.
Until, after a while, Star became vaguely aware of something so distant as to defy comprehension, a magical layer that laid even below that which she could usually access while dipping down. It was dark, and bright, and incomprehensibly powerful, and it called to her with a siren's song. If she grasped at that power, she was certain that getting back to Sam's palace would be easy. As her mind honed into it, the power pulsed violet and black. It told her that she could do it, that she would have her revenge, that her mom would be proud when the creature of green flames was extinguished under a darkness so deep that it would swallow worlds, and a terrible violet brightness that could turn the night into a life-ending dawn.
Star opened her eyes, terrified. "No, no, no, no..."
It was not what she wanted. Not at that cost! If that was where her quest for revenge was leading her, if that was what the prophecy truly meant, then she didn't want vengeance anymore! Her mom would never have wanted Star to do it, anyways, especially not like that. She had been willing to delve into dark magics to avenge Moon, but this was not the kind of evil she was willing to embrace. Eclipsa's notes were wrong... not all knowledge was good knowledge.
Her wish, the wish of her deepest heart's desire, was to never become what she had just glimpsed. She remembered the rest of the prophecy: 'Only surrender may undo the shadow, but the price shall be too high to pay. In the end the world itself must shatter, and death shall be the one to claim her'. She thought she finally understood what it meant.
"I won't do it," she said. Death was preferable to a destiny like that. "Sam, let me go! Let me die."
The devil seemed to think it through for a moment.
"No. That's not it. That's not what it means... I would know it if you got it right," he declared. "I am afraid you must still ascend back to the world of the living, until we both find out what those words truly conceal."
Sam waved a hand. It was a slow ponderous movement. He didn't seem weak, on the contrary, there was an infinitely deep force to this version of him. But at the same time, he certainly seemed less energetic than his shining visage from earlier.
Below them, in a ghostly play made of blue light against the infinite black vastness, the scene back at Sam's Palace unfolded before the mewman's eyes. Star saw Marco's unconscious body on the floor, Janna's literally petrified look of terror, Jackie stumbling back to her feet amidst a sea of broken metal shards.
"Now, how is that for motivation?"
----
"Why?" asked Sam.
Jackie had no answer. She hadn't had one the first time, not the tenth, not the twentieth. She had lost count after that. But she got up on her feet, grabbed the black sword that appeared that very instant in front of her, and charged.
Well, she didn't charge. Not anymore. Her muscles were too sore, her body too heavy. She walked. She dragged herself, step by step, towards the Lord of Dis. Her skin was red now, insolated by the harsh blue light of the ancient devil.
It was hopeless. It had been hopeless from the beginning. This sword had no more a chance of hurting Sam than any of the others. They said that the definition of insanity was to try the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. But, in this case, it was not like there was anything else she could do that would work any better. It had been hopeless since the fight begun, and she had known it even then. She could no more win against Sam than she could bring Star back to life or wish Marco safely back to Echo Creek.
In fact, Jackie realized, it had been hopeless even before that. At some point in her mad repetition, she had realized that they had been given no chance to outsmart the devil at his game. She understood that, had she taken the dagger back during the last minutes of the party, Sam would have claimed that defending herself broke her role, and violated his hospitality. Her role was to rebel, but only after she had chosen not to. If she had indeed rebelled, if she had fought, her role would have been to bow down. She hadn't failed a test, she had been placed in an unwinnable scenario. Just like the one she was in now.
Another broken sword, another rain of shards, another painful halting act of standing up.
Maybe that ought to make her feel better, to know that she had not really made a mistake back then, that either way the outcome was the same. It didn't. It just meant Sam had been playing them for fools since far earlier than she thought. She walked again towards her invincible foe.
"Why?" he questioned. No more bothered or more tiredly than the first, or tenth, or twentieth, time.
Jackie wondered. She knew this was useless. She could not hurt him. Star was gone. Marco was unconscious and she couldn't help him escape. Nor could she help Janna or Tom. She had no illusions that begging or bargaining would allow her to save any of them. Maybe, if she kept doing this, Sam would take longer to kill them all. Maybe he was waiting for some other unfathomable reason, and Jackie herself was just meant to be his entertainment while he waited. Either way, he could kill them all in an instant, and nothing she did would stop him. Her valor didn't matter. Her stubbornness didn't matter. Her love for Marco didn't matter. He would kill her, and him, and them all, and nothing she did one way or the other could affect that.
She had her answer.
"Why not?" she said, and she charged yet again.
Sam looked puzzled for a second, just a second. It was not an expression she could ever recall seeing on him. Then, he smiled, and she knew he understood her answer.
If it doesn't matter either way, if nothing she could do mattered, if life was a charade, and the only possible end was oblivion, then why not? Why not fight to the last breath? And why not keep charging? And why not stand up every time until you couldn't stand anymore? If it was all meaningless, then how was surrender any better than defiance? If nothing she did made any difference, then all that made a difference, to herself, is what she did. She would die, but she would die not as a slave, but as a fighter. Even Sam, with all his power, couldn't take that away from her anymore.
And so they continued, more broken swords, more hailing shards. Each time it was harder and harder to get up. Eventually, she couldn't do it anymore. She lied on the floor, in the opposite condition of that in which she had begun this fight: an unbreakable spirit in a broken body.
It was defeat, but inside that there was a small victory, the only left to achieve. Sam never asked her 'why' again.
----
Star saw Jackie's body stop moving. She saw all of her friends lying there on the remains of the marble and obsidian floor, defeated. She saw Sam raise a hand and bring his fingers together in a familiar gesture. His expression one of careless boredom. She knew he was about to do to them what he had done to her, to end a game of which he had finally gotten tired.
She had no choice. She dipped down. If she had to burn worlds to the ground to protect her friends, then so be it.
She reached for the magic deep below the void.
When she found it, she was surprised. It was different than before. There was darkness and harsh consuming violet light, but also streams of golden brightness, warm and inviting, and a rainbow shimmer over it all. It was no less terrible than before, no less dangerous, but it was even more beautiful. It was whole. The wish of her heart was not only vengeance upon her mother's killer, and vengeance upon Sam, but also to help her friends, to heal them, to protect them. She went into the depths with enough hate and pain for a dozen dark queens ascending, but also, with just as great an amount of love.
Both emotions coursed intertwined through Star's mind as she brought herself back into the world of the living. It felt a little bit like pushing through the surface of an opaque ocean. She arrived with a flash of purple light, her body unfolding in mid air in the center of the destroyed ballroom, right between Sam's glowing form and Jackie's barely stirring body.
She had all of her six arms extended. Her hair shone golden, suddenly formed into a set of miraculously levitating pigtails. The borders of her wings were bright gold as well, tinted by the reflected blue and purple light around her. The inside of the wings, however, the greater part of their surface, was pitch black, black like the void had been. Her cheekmarks were pink hearts once again, tinted mauve. Her eyes were closed.
She came into the world as most do: naked. A second later, however, she manifested a dress for herself. It was black, with long golden trims in the shape of flames along the neck and the hem of the skirt. In the middle, there was an embroidered blooming rose with a heart symbol in its center. The entire pattern was in dark violet thread and almost invisible against the light radiating from her. A golden diadem with long devil horns appeared atop her head, and black boots around her feet.
A stream of dust floated up from the ground, and gathered by Star's uppermost right hand. It formed into a new, yet familiar, shape. First there was a scepter of night-black steel, adorned with dragon wings, demon horns, and twelve small spikes along the edge of its circular head. Inside the head there was a hole, and a sphere of sun-bright golden flame. It was not a depiction of a star, nor a gem shaped like a star. It was a star; a real burning star, albeit of an impossibly small volume and mass. Slowly, it transmuted itself into a crystal like that of Star's old wand, if still visibly brighter with its own golden light. It was whole once more, not split in half, with each of the five points touching the inner border of the hollow wand. A small crack in the shape of a crescent moon formed inside the crystal, in the middle of the star. Violet light shone from inside the fracture, bright enough to be seen even against the solar brightness of the rest of the wand's core.
Star opened her eyes then. They glowed with a bright violet light that nearly outshone Sam's own. She was love, and she was hate.
For now, love took priority.
----
Marco inhaled suddenly, and felt a soothing warmth over his arms and legs, and on the inside of his chest, and in every corner of his battered body. He felt himself healing and mending, and opened his eyes to see the mewman's floating body through a new protective purple bubble all of his own.
"Star?!" he exclaimed, tears of joy running down his eyes.
He looked around, and saw Jackie getting back up, looking down at her hands as deep burns seemed to recede in an instant. She was surrounded by her own shielding bubble. Her hair flowed all around her in magical wind. Tom, whose chest wound had now been closed, and Janna, who was no longer stone, had their own protective spheres surround them as well.
They all stared at each other in surprise, and then at the gold and black shape of Star, framed against intense violet light. She looked unearthly. She looked powerful. She looked beautiful. She looked... amazing.
----
"Alright, now, this is exciting," Sam spoke. Star's attention converged towards the evil fiend like an avalanche. If looks could kill, Star's would have murdered her foe. Had it been anyone other than Sam, perhaps she could, and would, have. But he barely seemed to notice. "It's been a rather long while since I last witnessed an apotheosis."
He smirked as the mewman held his gaze. The air sparked and burned in between their aligning line of sight. This time, she had no need to run from his deathly brightness, from the burning power of his glare, she stared the devil down. Her destructive will opposed his own.
He lifted a hand, and a swarm of tiny portals opened all around the princess, leaving no escape path. She stirred the magic below the world, bending space itself to create an opening, and gracefully glided out of the ambush. The topology of the cosmos restored itself as she passed through. Behind her, many bright claws of light grasped uselessly at the empty air. The resurrected princess glared at the devil with murderous intent. Sam was grinning.
He floated slowly up into the air, and Star followed, cautiously. Below them, she could see the City of Dis, ever burning, and to their sides the twelve claw-like towers that surrounded it. Above them, the maelstrom of ghostly blue souls, and the black hole in the middle to which they all flowed, encompassed the entirety of the heavenly vault.
This was good, she thought, he was leading them away from her friends, where she wouldn't need to worry about hurting them by accident with her new powers. Up here, she could let go, hit him with everything she had, and hope it would be enough. She had been in butterfly form before, back when she first went through mewberty, and she had seen her mom do it as a battle technique as well. This was different somehow, however. She felt like she was still dipping down, every second, not going up and down like when she cast wordless and wandless spells before, but rather as if she were constantly submerged in the chunkier stuff of reality's stew, and slowly diving lower and lower.
She raised her wand towards the devil and simply willed him undone. A twisting stream of gold and black fire shot out from the crystal core. Sam sidestepped it with ease.
"Well... it is a start," he declared.
'I'll show you a start!' thought Star, furiously. Her mind tugged at the fabric of reality itself around them, and a thousand lances of bright violet light appeared out of nowhere, converging on Sam's floating form from every possible direction. They impacted the fiend's marble body, creating ripples of blackness like stones thrown on the surface of a lake. He seemed quite unbothered by this. She groaned and the ground seemed to shake in response.
He swiped at the air with one hand. A dozen of the spheres above them, the ones that were supposedly made out of souls, fell towards were Star was, like bright blue comets. Flapping her wings furiously, she managed to dance around them through the empty air. A single meteor graced her left boot, sending a jolt of pain through her body, piercing through the magical power that protected her. Somehow, even in this form, Sam remained well beyond her.
"So, what now?!" growled Star. Her voice was lower and it echoed with two different tones. "You kill me again? Is that it? Then why coax me into reviving? What's the point?! Why are you doing this?!"
"There is no point, Star Butterfly, never mistake that lesson, there is never any point," he replied, a tint of annoyance in his voice. "As for why I am doing this? To amuse myself... and to save me an unpleasant bit of work further down the line. In terms of the second matter, actually, I am done. We can head back down the moment you wish. I will let you and your friends go. I am throughly satisfied with how this all has turned out..." He held both hands up, then smirked. "But, well, I believe it is you who isn't done, Princess Star. You still wish to hurt me, and it amuses me to see you try."
He was, she realized, entirely right. She wanted him dead. She wanted to destroy him. She wanted to hurt him more than anything in the world right now, except perhaps for making sure Marco, and Jackie, and Tom, were all alright. Star had the odd sensation that she had struck some sort of bargain by coming back. If nothing else, her resurrection had surely increased the chances of her fulfilling that awful prophecy. She felt that she was being cheated out of something if that deal did not include enough power to wipe that smug grin of Sam's face, preferably against a bunch of jagged rocks.
Actually, that gave her an idea. Out of somewhere inside her mind, a word rose to her lips. It was an old childish spell, one she hadn't even bothered to consider or learn before now. But sometimes magnitude and raw power could outshine magical complexity. She understood this now. The version of her that knew a spell she never learned, the version of her that was continuously tapping into the magic below the void the way her old self would tap into the air she breathed, that version understood.
"Levitato!" she yelled, pointing her wand at one of the huge black towers.
The tower broke right in half. The upper part floated slowly in mid air towards them, a veritable flying mountain. It then exploded into a million fragments of stone, sharp edged projectiles of hard solid igneous rocks. She flung them like a titanic hailstorm towards the devil.
"What the hell do you mean an unpleasant bit of work?!" she shouted at him as she released her attack. Despite her fury, she processed every word he said. Her mind burst with raw emotion and held itself in detached attention, all simultaneously. This was not the first time the being had hinted at wanting Star to accomplish something for his own benefit. She wanted to know what, probably so she could do the opposite. Good fucking luck getting her to do any favors for him!
Sam waved both hands around and the stone fragments sizzled and burned. They turned to liquid magma and then evaporated, becoming a black cloud of noxious smoke, enveloping the two of them. Star coughed, and adjusted her magical shields to protect her from the inhospitable air as well as the burning heat of vaporized rock.
"I mean the creature, the one you seek," he replied calmly. "It is something that should never have been, called forth by an unknowing pact that never should have been made. It is an abomination to the natural order of the cosmos..."
"SHADOW BEAST SWARM!" was her first reply. Her second was: "So?! It sounds like you would be happy about that! Might even throw a costume party for it as well!"
Under her magic, the smoke around them began to form into fearsome winged beings: dragons, thestrals, and huge phoenixes, all made of translucent smoke and darkness, with bright pulsating hearts of violet light at their core. They cried and growled and fell upon the marble-skinned devil from all directions. Star could feel their hunger, it mirrored her own hate.
"Every creature at that party, from the meanest zombie to the proudest god has a place in the order of the cosmos," Sam shrugged, taking on the tone of a bored teacher repeating a standard lecture to a dull child. It was clear to the mewman it was an idea he himself didn't believe in, not entirely. "Or so goes that particular bit of nonsense."
He zoomed through the air, fast as lightning, tearing the summoned creatures apart with his bare hands. He briefly smiled as he strangled shadowy phoenixes and ripped the beating violet light out of conjured dragons. He was having fun, the infernal bastard! Star could follow his movements easily, but to lesser eyes he would have been an unseen flash, destroying a thousand beasts in less than a second, one by one, with a craftsman's fastidiousness and zeal.
"I have a role of my own too, unfortunately," the devil added. "One I'd rather not have to play, not in that way, not on their terms. But alas, there is only so much my leash extends, after all. I can't avoid all of my own lines in the script of our grand shared farce. If you don't destroy it first, then I'll eventually be compelled to do so myself. It is a law I cannot break anymore than I can return life..."
'Not if I find a way to kill you first', thought Star. She closed her eyes. Suddenly, she was aware of, well, of everything. She felt the energies of her friends down there, the tangle of strange magics that had somehow found themselves mixed with Marco, without the princess even noticing, the twisted inside-out thing that was now Janna's soul, as well as Tom's familiar fire. She felt the legions of demons below, the chorus of souls above. And she felt Sam. She felt Sam's power, all around her, some in front of her, but, mainly, raining down from above. It was then that she realized her mistake.
Maybe Eclipsa's spell truly was not strong enough to hurt Sam either way, but that was not the only reason it had failed. The older Butterfly had said so herself: 'aim it directly at his heart'. Star wasn't aiming anywhere near Sam's heart, when she pointed her wand at the marble skin chest.
"And you seriously expect me to do you a favor?!" she shouted at the devil. "After all of this! Why would I not simply wait for you and that blighted thing to kill each other instead?!"
It was worth considering. As much as she wanted to be the one to avenge her mother, if the creature was going to die either way, why not wait? Especially if that inconvenienced Sam.
"Because of the same reason your worlds have a Magical High Commission, Princess Star," he begun. "For the same reason all worlds have their own guardians, and heroes, and failsafes for this sort of thing, and don't simply all wait for my intervention..."
Star took her chance then. She closed her eyes, she dipped lower than she ever thought she could, and at the same time she begun to improvise. A dark poem of her own, a version of Eclipsa's spell fitting of her new powers. A call for the powers she had bargained with, to destroy her enemy. She didn't need to chant it, just think it clearly enough.
'I call the darkness within me,
from deepest depths I set you free,
Prophetic evil now awoken,
dark queen ascending oft forespoken,'
Was that allowed? To invoke yourself as the entity that a dark spell called forth? Well, Star was ready to find that out!
"... because when I am called to deal with the blights of reality, when I absolutely must be bound to my role, despite my best efforts to postpone it," Sam continued, seemly oblivious to Star's silent invocations. "Well, when things get to that point, the only choice is for me to, well... sterilize the area around the infection, cauterize the wound so to speak..."
For visual aids, he summoned blue light representations of Mewni, of Earth, of Tom's underworld, and a number of other worlds that the mewman realized probably included Hekapoo's domain. The latter seemed to be comprised of three major spheres and dozens of smaller dimensions in between. The maps made of light and smoke soon burned in blue flames, as Sam made a graphic display of what his intervention would entail. The term 'Apocalyptic' fell somewhat short, in that the word implied the end of only one single world...
"... such is my role," he finished.
All the more reason why Star wanted Sam gone from his supposed place in the cosmos if she had any say in that.
'I seize my fate without remorse,
I wish revenge and stay my course,
for just one spark of divine might,
that sets the skies themselves alight!'
She pointed upwards. Right at his heart. His real heart. A huge explosion of blackness surrounded her, as all light around the two of them, including their own blue and violet glows, seemed to be devoured in an instant by the crystal star in the middle of her new wand. A blinding blast of violet light emerged from the gem a moment after. It headed towards the center of the sky, towards the black hole in the maelstrom of souls, towards Sam's true heart.
The figure that she had come to associate with the Endless Shadow, his anthropomorphic avatar, the marble-skinned devil of glowing blue eyes, launched itself up that instant, at an impossible speed. It chased the beam of glowing death.
He extended a hand out, and something even brighter than Star's spell seemed to appear inside his palm. It was hard to see from where she was flying, far below Sam and the spell he pursued, but it looked a bit like a stream of fire, and a bit like a weapon, and a bit like a bright cut in the tapestry that was reality.
Star saw the Lord of Dis catch up to her own darkest spell, and cut through the fore of it with this mighty blade. He descended towards her, cutting through the middle of her spell as if it were a tree being carved in two by a lightning strike. Except it was light itself that which now split and splintered. When Sam finally approached the origin of the beam, and Star could see his face, she found that his eyes were glowing more intensely than ever, and that he was, for once, neither bored nor smiling. A moment before his blade reached her wand, he managed to somehow rotate his body to elbow her in the face instead, interrupting the spell and sending her flying down towards the ground.
Star crashed into what was left of the marble and obsidian mosaic of Sam's ballroom floor, and pulverized the remaining design. She felt her strength leave her. Her wings shrunk into their usual tiny pink shapes. Four of her arms were absorbed back into her torso. The black and golden clothes vanished. Only the wand remained, in the hand of an exhausted naked Star.
Sam descended gently, right in front of her. For a moment, Star flinched in anticipation of the burning blue light, which her normal unshielded body was quite vulnerable to. But the devil's glow was gone, or, at least, it was back to that which he showed them when they first met. He was clapping his hands, slowly.
"Well, today has been an exciting day!" Sam declared. "You were right J-flame! Inviting all of you to my party really did made things so much less dull!"
Star saw Janna clench her fists and pointedly stare down at the floor.
The princess also noticed that the mosaic seemed to be reconstructing itself, bit by bit, as were the walls around them.
"And Tom! You were great as well, bro!" he continued. "Standing up to me, for the sake of your loved ones? Knowing what you know I can do? That takes guts, you brave brave fool! I would know, I pulled out a bit of those too..."
Tom flinched and rubbed his chest, still looking nervous.
"Then there is Marco, of course," he added. "Such a dedication to healing others while every fiber of your being is telling you to kill! Admirable! Shame you weren't very good at either, of course, but such is life. To think you were actually so much more powerful, back when you were older... so much forgotten, so much wasted. Well, is not like it would have made a difference, but I would love to have seen that nonetheless..."
The walls were back up now, and the dome ceiling of the ballroom begun reforming atop them, covering the view of the empty wound in the heavens that was Sam's true form.
"And what can I say about Jackie? Our unstoppable girl!" the devil grinned. "'Why not'? 'Why not' indeed! In fact, well, since I am in such a generous mood, here is one last one, as a souvenir. Nothing shall break it as long as you have the will to continue to wield it..."
A rapier made entirely of clear glass, except for its golden basket-hilted pommel, appeared in mid air in front of Jackie. It fell to the ground, clattering loudly, yet the glass blade did not break or chip in the slightest. The girl herself looked at the sword as if she was afraid it might bite. This being one of Sam's creations, it well could.
"Finally there is our little supernova, back from the death and ready to embrace the call of destiny, no matter how many shall fall in her way!" he smiled broadly at Star. "You wouldn't believe how many beings with pretty strong claims at godhood fail to see what you saw. And even fewer have gotten anywhere near as close as you did to actually hurting me! Congratulations!"
"Wait!" Star finally interrupted Sam's monologue. "So, what now? Is that it? You beat us, and tortured us, and toyed with us, and you are just letting us go? I almost destroyed you and you are just... pleased? happy? entertained!?"
She knew she shouldn't be looking at a gift warnicorn in the mouth, but it all seemed kind of, well, anti-climactic. The princess felt like there had to be a reason for all their suffering, for all the fear and despair, something beyond forcing her resurrection and amusing the devil.
"You tried to destroy me, Star. Tried. There is no guarantee you would have succeeded even if that spell had hit its intended target. But I'll admit it was more than I was comfortable risking, which is something you should be quite proud about," he said neutrally. To Star it still felt condescending somehow. "I see no reason to believe you will attempt it again, however, and I think I have exhausted the value of each and every one of you to relieve my boredom. You all still broke our deal, of course. But you are welcome to stay another night in here, no tricks this time, and no promises. All I care to suggest is that I likely won't harm you anymore if you don't go out of your way to upset me," he declared, magnanimously.
Then, as if suddenly noticing something, he added, "in fact, I haven't actually harmed any of you, all things considered. Few are the mortals that have met me and walked away whole. If anything, each of you is now stronger than they were last night when you arrived, and better prepared for the challenges ahead. The way I see it, I did you a favor. Speaking of favors, I also warned you," he looked at Star, "about why your mission is so much more important than a simple act of revenge. You truly got my best deal, all of you. If anything, you should all be grateful about how good of a friend I have been to you!"
"A friend?! A friend?!" Star shouted. The faces around her seemed equally shocked by Sam's casual tone. "You murdered me! By suffocation!"
"Turned me to stone!" added Janna.
"Ripped my beating heart out!" noted Tom.
"Would it make any difference if I apologized?" he offered, shrugging.
"Of course not!" Star remarked, furious.
"Then, I shall not bother trying," Sam laughed.
Somewhat like a fading shadow, he disappeared, leaving them in an elegant brightly lit ballroom. It gleamed impeccably, as if no one had so much as set a foot on it that night.
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I Summon the All-Seeing Eye