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Density! Ooh…

It must’ve been an hour of this nonsense, Endellion repeating herself over and over. On and on and⁠—

“One would think, Moth, that if someone was told something repeatedly, they might actually start to listen.” She spoke slowly, as if Lunara was Bordoroth’s biggest nincompoop.

The only thing you’ve said more than once is that you cannot say anything!

“It’s really not.”

Endellion had the nerve to sound irritated.

Can you tell me everything you’ve said more than once that’s still relevant now.

“I could, actually, but it won’t help you.”

Lunara was going to lose her mind.

Endellion’s voice changed ever so slightly, the tone more bruising. “Madness could help, if one dared to take heed. Moths cannot hear, but have eyes that can see.”

“Not hearing would be incredible right about now,” Lunara grumbled to herself.

“It really would.”

The fact that Endellion said it as if Lunara was the one being annoying was too much.

Fine! I’ll play along, ignore every bleeding time I’ve heard you and focus only on when I’ve seen you.

Endellion hadn’t shown herself in Lunara’s dreams of the past, so those probably didn’t count. Same for the most recent vision Lunara had just before waking, only Endellion’s voice with her as she stood at the fork in that glittering pathway.

Which left her own mind during the trial for Illamiata, and in the library when⁠—

The vision. You were in the vision.

“Was I? How lovely.”

Stars and arses. Not that, then.

Wait. Shite! Endellion triggered the vision when they were reading the damned book.

Curse Sokar for convincing her to leave it behind. She should’ve thought to at least scribble down the last few, relevant lines. Unless…

Can you tell me what I read? What I saw that matters now?

The pressure in her head intensified, more layers in Endellion’s voice. “It is not light that combats Night, but flames both cosmic and cleansing.”

That same sentiment had been ‘repeated’ to Lunara in varying ways. She looked down at the Forgotten, still trapped and writhing beneath her moonlit cage on the chasm floor.

What else?

“What if midnight radiance deigned to hold the nightmare in her hands?”

Hold the nightmare…

Fuck.

Lunara fell to her knees and pressed both palms to the creature. Except instead of flooding it with power, instead of pushing, she used her magic to grab and pull.

Prismatic hands formed, their fingers clawing. Lunara swore she heard the faintest wails beneath the darkness in her grasp. It lashed and snapped like an angry snake but she held on, just as vicious in her fighting.