Part 255: Epilogue
Syrupleaf's fall was the death rattle of the planet. The Spawn, now able to reach a Demon Pit with no resistance, descended into the very bowels of the earth, to retrieve their unholy matron from her prison. Holistic Detective, the Unholy Maw, had returned to the land of mortals, and with her she brought 333 legions of Greater Spawn. Spawn from all over the planet gathered at the shattered husk of Syrupleaf, Daeren's beacon unable to hold them back with Holistic Detective present. The endless tide of Spawn, headed by the unholy matron, swept across the entire planet in a matter of weeks. Mountainhomes, Human capitals, Elven tree-villages, all fell to the ravening hordes, not knowing them for what they were, and thus helpless to their depraved rampage. All research on the Spawn had been done at Syrupleaf, and thus it had all been lost. Only a pair of battered, half-mad Dwarves even knew of the fall of Syrupleaf before the final invasion, and they had long since fled to the world of the gods.
The invincible wave of teeth and claws soon covered the whole world, and Holistic Detective made her way to the Cave of Color, the home of the first Dwarves. With her she brought her Greater Spawn, and summoned the two infernal lords who had aided her: Ostësh the Sadnesses of Silence, who had driven men mad in her name, and Tithleth the Nightmares of Twilight, who had fueled her ascension and given her the raw matter to make the Greater Spawn. Tithleth had aided her so he could conquer the world that had been denied to him, and Ostësh had wanted one single thing her entire life. With her blessing, Holistic Detective and her Spawn went to the very first Demon Pit, where Litast once dwelled, and began to dig. They dug for eleven years until they broke into the very womb of the planet, the Magma Heart, and Ostësh cast a vile spell. The Magma Heart erupted like a great volcano, spewing its super-condensed stores of magma up through the excavated pit and out of the Mountainhome.
The Spawn were not spared the wrath of the deluge, for even their flesh melted beneath the punishing heat after enough exposure. Only the three infernal avatars and the Greater Spawn would survive. The magma flowed over hill and valley, evaporating the seas, and soon covered most of the planet in a fiery glow as Ostësh danced in celebration. The few living things that had escaped the wrath of the Spawn were caught in the tides, and reduced to naught but ashes and added to the waves. Soon, only one place was unmolested by magma by a quirk of geography and the glaciers around it: Syrupleaf's ruins. The magma was eternal and relentless, though, and soon it began to lap at the great sacrificial ziggurat. The final soul left on the planet was finally released from its duty into the heavens as the magma enveloped its statue prison, the last offering it had to the world being an obscene gesture sinking beneath the lava.
The gods, seeing the world completely barren of life and worth, withdrew their divine power from the planet's rotting husk, separating themselves from the physical world to let their failed Creation burn. The gods would break themselves into their base concepts in penance, let their followers rejoin with the force of the Divine after one final gathering, and they would reform in new shapes, to start a new universe, unburdened by the failures of their predecessors. Without the power of the Divine, the Magma Heart guttered and burnt out, the magma encompassing the planet cooled into obsidian. The once flowering world of infinite possibility and life was now a barren hunk of solid rock, with a hole bored in it to the core, where the last survivors of Creation sat.
Holistic Detective sat on her throne of obsidian, the Greater Spawn arrayed at her feet. Soon, Holistic Detective, Ostësh, and Tithleth began to bicker about how to divvy up the remains of the world, just as the gods had done at the beginning of Creation. Words soon turned to blows, and Holistic and Tithleth turned on Ostësh, for she now did not see the world burning to be enough - she wanted to see the tattered remnants of Creation itself burn. They struck her down like a mad dog, losing half of the Greater Spawn to her berserk fury. With Ostësh, his final obstacle, out of his way, Tithleth revealed his ultimate plot. He had warped the Greater Spawn into her servants specifically for this moment. Holistic Detective was quickly reminded that Tithleth was the god of Treachery as the Greater Spawn turned on her. Her demonic power was enough to let her slay every last one of the traitors, but she was gravely wounded in the battle, and perished with a curse on her lips.
Tithleth took his place on her throne and looked over Creation, but soon came to a horrible realization. The gods had left Creation behind, and thus there was no spark of Divinity for him to form, no way for him to change the fact that he was stranded on a lifeless rock of obsidian. The gods had gotten the better of him at the very end, and as he watched the stars wink out, leaving him utterly alone in an eternal prison of his own design, Tithleth the Nightmares of Twilight wept bitter tears.