Lady Ciara's shadow elongated, swallowing the light as her form dissolved into a swirl of petals and smoke. The transformation did not rush itself. Each petal peeled away as if reluctant to leave her, each ribbon of smoke lingering just long enough to resemble fingers reaching back toward the world she was abandoning. Her voice echoed from everywhere at once, not louder than before, but a bit heavier—weighted with the promise of a of some sort.
"Then you'll never find the next Anarchy Beryl shard," she said, the words threading themselves into the stone, the bones, and the roots beneath their feet, "and whatever's left of your dignity will be buried here with the rest of the fools who thought they could ever hope to begin to outplay me."
The vines around them twitched. Not all at once, not dramatically—just a subtle, collective shudder, like a living thing suppressing a laugh. Their thorns glistened with something too thick to be dew, too slow to drip, clinging instead as if savoring the vile moment itself.
For a single heartbeat, no one moved.
Ooma Arachnis' mandibles clicked in quiet alarm, a sound so soft it barely carried beyond her own ears. Her many eyes tracked the retreating petals, then the smoke, then the empty space Lady Ciara had vacated, as if expecting her to reassemble herself out of spite alone. The ossuary grove seemed to lean inward, ribs of ancient beasts arching overhead like a cathedral built by something that did not believe in mercy.
Wally Naugus' fingers tightened around the squirming letter. The parchment resisted him, curling at the edges as though alive, its seal pulsing faintly against his palm. His chimeric pupils dilated into vertical slits, catching the low, sickly light and refracting it into fractured color. In his lobster like claw, the Anarchy Beryl throbbed, its low hum climbing from a low vibration to a fevered whine that rattled his halfway warped chimeric bones.
He exhaled through jagged teeth. Steam curled from his nostrils, white and furious, hanging in the air like a challenge. His tail lashed beneath his robes, knocking loose pebbles and snapping brittle roots. With a sharp, decisive motion, he snapped the letter against his palm. The crack echoed, sharp as a single gunshot in a long dead battlefield, and spiderlings burst from the undergrowth, skittering away in all directions.
"Fine then," he growled. The word scraped out of him like it had teeth of its own. "But if this parchment so much as whispers treason against me, I'll feed you to your own roses branch by using my Crystalline Magic using the Augur of Apollous himself to do it."
The threat hung between them, jagged and visceral, vibrating with the kind of sincerity that did not require any type of elaboration to anyone.
Lady Ciara's laughter did not answer him.
Instead, her smile only lingered—disembodied, carved into the air by the memory of her presence. Her shadow, the only thing she left behind, slithered across the fractured ground like spilled ink, coiling briefly around Wally Naugus's boots before retreating, satisfied.
Her thorns trembled in anticipation, their hooked tips dripping something that smelled suspiciously like honeyed venom—sweet enough to invite curiosity, sharp enough to punish it.
Then, with the soft crackle of the displaced magic used by the Augur of Apollous, she was gone.
That very same magic of the Augur of Apollous folded reality inward on itself, petals and smoke collapsing into a point that winked out like a dying star. The strange mixed scent of roses and venom dissolved into ambient static, leaving the air thin and brittle in its absence.
It was almost like the loss of a toxic lover, of one truly thought about it.
For several long seconds, the ossuary grove remained silent except for the low hum of the Anarchy Beryl and the distant, nervous scuttle of spiderlings retreating into shadow. Ooma Arachnis slowly relaxed her stance, though her limbs remained coiled, ready. She did not look at Wally. She did not need to. The corruption pulsing around him was impossible to ignore.
But not so very far away, in a place layered over this one like a reflection in cracked glass, Lady Ciara watched from her throne room.
Her throne room shimmered with static, the walls laced with veins of purple light that crawled and shifted like living circuitry. The throne itself was grown, not built—a grotesque bloom of bone, thorn, and polished obsidian, its armrests curved into clawed crescents. The ossuary's skeletal motifs echoed here, but refined, intentional, as if death itself had been curated.
Beside her stood the Augur of Apollous.
After all these years she still didn't know if he was an alligator or crocodile or both or neither somehow, if she was being honest with herself.
And she was infact the only person she was honest to.
The Augur of Apollous was still as a statue as always, his golden eyes reflecting the static laced chamber in flawless detail. Tendrils of Anarchy Beryl corruption pulsed within the vision suspended before them, showing Wally Naugus, Ooma Arachnis, and the brood clustered behind her. Their jagged silhouettes twisted against the ossuary's skeletal backdrop, elongated and warped by the interference of magic and distance.
Lady Ciara's fingers drummed against the armrest of her throne. With each idle tap, her nails sharpened, lengthening into hooked thorns that caught the light and refracted it into wicked curves. The rhythm was unhurried, patient, like someone passing time before an inevitable appointment.
"Tell me, Augur of Apollous," she purred. Her voice was a velvet wrapped blade, soft enough to invite closeness, sharp enough to punish it. "Do you think he will bite?"
The scent of ozone and crushed roses thickened the air, mingling into something heady and electric. Her shadow stretched unnaturally long, peeling itself from her feet and slithering across the floor until it curled around the Augur of Apollous' golden wrist like a possessive vine.
He did not flinch.
He was far too powerful to do that.
His expression remained serene, polished marble to her rusted dagger grin. But his pulse betrayed him—a single, traitorous heartbeat, fluttering against her shadow thorns before he forced it still.
"He will indeed bite Lady Ciara," the Augur murmured at last. His voice was calm, measured, like someone describing the weather. "But he will not at your hand."
His golden gaze slid sideways, tracking something only he could see. The vision before them shifted, the ossuary's ribs peeling back, the roots of Ciara's garden warping and stretching as the perspective tunneled outward—past thorns and bone, past corrupted ley lines and fractured realities—until it settled on a modest structure in Sector 7.
There, he saw Sonic the Hedgehog crouched in the dim light of his bumker home.
The room was a tad bit cluttered but well lived in, walls lined with mismatched shelves and half finished inventions. Sonic himself was hunched over a low table, his quills drooping slightly, his claws buried wrist deep in a thick journal. The book looked older than the room around it, its cover scarred and patched, its pages yellowed and dense with cramped handwriting, diagrams, and symbols that pulsed faintly when his claws brushed them.
He did not look up. He did not smile. The usual restless energy that clung to him like static was muted, coiled inward, focused.
Lady Ciara's lips parted in some kind of interest, despite being unable to see what the Augur of Apollous was seeing.
Even if the glow in his eyes made sure she knew she had to be seeing something.
"Tell me, Augur of Apollous," she purred again, withdrawing her shadow just enough to let him breathe, "have you heard about the return of Prince Elijah Alexis Acorn?"
She leaned forward on her throne, the motion slow and deliberate. The thorns woven into her gown shifted, scraping softly against bone and obsidian. Curiosity sharpened her features, turning amusement into something keener.
"Indeed I have, Lady Ciara," the Augur replied. His golden eyes flickered with something resembling amusement, a rare crack in his marble composure. "He returned just yesterday to Castle Acorn—his armor still reeking of ozone and ancient Anarchy Titan forged steel."
As he spoke, the air seemed to remember the scent he described: scorched metal, storm wracked battlefields, the faint bitterness of charred flesh. The Augur traced that phantom aroma with an idle motion of his hand, as though following a memory through smoke.
"King Maxx Acorn welcomed him with open arms," he continued smoothly, "and a dagger at his ribs, no doubt."
Lady Ciara laughed then, a low, rich sound that bounced off the throne room's walls and came back sharper. "Perhaps I should do the same as King Maxx Acorn has with the disappointments I must call my children."
Her gaze drifted back to the vision of the ossuary grove, to the tangled silhouettes of Wally and Ooma and the brood. "It has indeed been a long while," she mused. "Perhaps when they come home they can actually be useful to me. They never seemed to listen to me before."
Her shadow stretched across the throne room's cracked tiles like spilled ink, creeping up pillars and curling around the edges of ancient runes. Her thorns trembled, not with impatience, but with anticipation of something unsaid, something already in motion.
The Augur of Apollous remained silent as he always did. He watched her closely, not with fear, but with the careful attention of someone observing a complex machine at the moment before it engages. Ciara drummed her claws against the armrest again—tap, tap, tap—each sound like a blade sinking into flesh.
Static crackled between them, thick with the scent of roses and ozone, until he inclined his head.
"Yes, Lady Ciara," he said. "I will bring them to you at once."
He did not wait for acknowledgment. He knew her well enough to know she already approved of the action. And so, with a gesture precise enough to be ritual, the Augur of Apollous stepped backward and vanished. Purple smoke bloomed where he had stood, curling upward in lazy spirals before dissipating into nothing.
Lady Ciara leaned back in her throne, alone with her thoughts and the hum of power that saturated her domain.
She watched the vision one last time as Wally Naugus tucked the letter into his robes, jaw clenched, and turned away from the ossuary grove. Ooma Arachnis followed, her brood closing ranks around them like a living shield. The Anarchy Beryl's pulse faded into the distance, but its echo lingered, reverberating through the cracks in reality like a tuning fork struck too hard.
Ciara's smile widened.
For soon her own children would be home, like King Maxx Acorn and Prince Elijah Alexis Acorn before them.
Lady Ciara did not move for a very long time.
The throne room breathed around her, a slow inhale and exhale of static and power, as though the structure itself were alive and waiting for instruction. Veins of violet light pulsed through the walls, brightening and dimming in no discernible rhythm, responding not to time but to thought. Somewhere deep beneath the obsidian floor, something old shifted its weight and settled again, disturbed only briefly by the Augur of Apollous' departure.
Lady Ciara let it settle, if only for a while.
She reclined deeper into her throne again for comfort, the bone beneath her back adjusting with a soft, organic creak. The petals that composed portions of her gown folded inward and outward in a lazy, almost affectionate motion, as if responding to her mood. Her shadow—never quite obedient—continued to roam the chamber, stretching and recoiling like a cat that refused to be ignored.
The magic conjuring by the Augur of Apollous would fade soon enough.
Wally Naugus' image flickered once more in the suspended vision before dissolving entirely.
The last thing to vanish was the Anarchy Beryl's pulse, its hum thinning until it became memory rather than sound.
"Still so fucking dramatic," Ciara murmured to no one at all.
Her fingers rose, idly inspecting the thorns that had grown from her nails. They were sharp, perfect, each one a mirror of the next. She smiled faintly and let them retract, smoothing her hand over the armrest as if calming a skittish animal.
Time, in her domain, was an indulgence rather than a constraint with the help of magic after all.
She thought, then, not of Wally, nor of Ooma Arachnis and her scuttling brood, nor even of the Anarchy Beryl shards scattered like cursed breadcrumbs across reality.
She thought of Sonic.
Not as a hero. Not as a symbol. Not even as a nuisance.
She thought of him as a key to power.
No.
Not just a key to power.
He was far too important for that.
He was THE key to her achieving power.
She still hated Jules the Hedgehog (Anarchy Below damn his long dead soul)for having another woman, thus stealing away her fate of birthing an Anarchy Titan and he guaranteed destiny of ruling all of Mobius.
She wasn't sure if she hated Jules more for this or for being born an idiot.
Ciara's claws tapped against the throne's armrest, each click echoing like a gun cocking in an empty hallway. She remembered the exact moment when she first heard the prophecy of the Synod Quartet from the Augur of Apollous: that Ciara and her children would rule Mobius beneath the Titan's heel. She had been younger then—still sharpening her thorns, still learning how to bleed others without staining her own hands. The scent of crushed petals and burning parchment clung to that memory, mixed with the metallic tang of her first assassination—a rival noble whose throat she slit with a rose stem dipped in nightshade.
Back then, she had laughed at the messiness of it, at how his blood bubbled like cheap champagne against her claws—how his eyes widened in betrayal before dulling into glass. The Augur had watched from the shadows, silent as ever, but she remembered the approving tilt of his head.
Ciara exhaled, flexing her fingers against the throne's armrest. The memory dissolved like sugar in tea, replaced by the scent of damp earth and gunpowder—the night she'd first seen Jules the Hedgehog. He'd been a silhouette against riot flames, his grin sharper than the knives strapped to his thighs, his laughter louder than the collapsing buildings.
She had already learned the prophecy enough at that point to know he was supposed to father her three children—the ones who would forge the Anarchy Titan Crown.
But Jules had not told her that he was with another woman; a Miss Bernadette the Hedgehog, whose name tasted like cloying honey and weak tea on Ciara's tongue. The first time she'd seen them together, Jules' arm slung over Bernadette's shoulders like a prize, Ciara had felt something cold and jagged lodge itself between her ribs—not heartbreak, no, she didn't believe in such fragile things—but the fury of a gambler watching her winning hand snatched away by cheating fingers.
Of course by the time that happened she and Bernadette were already both pregnant with his children—Ciara's womb heavy with only twin, not triplets as it was supposed to be, Bernadette's swollen with the *wrong* offspring—the one that should've been hers. The one that would've made *her* the Titan Mother. The night Jules laughed in her face when she confronted him about it still burned in her memory like acid in an open wound.
The scent of smoke and cheap whiskey clung to that moment, the way he'd leaned against the barricade like it was a throne, his smirk a challenge sharper than the broken glass underfoot. Jules had been all jagged edges and calculated chaos, the kind of man who'd grin while setting a city block ablaze just to watch the shadows dance and call it all progress if it it fueled his ego from the attention of others.
Ciara had been even more enraged when she heard that Jules the Hedgehog was murdered.
Or rather, how he was murdered.
By his week old son: Sonic the Hedgehog—barely weaned off Bernadette's corpse-streaked milk—who had detonated Diamond Heights' sterilization grid with Jules' own sabotaged infrastructure. The irony had been exquisite, even for her. Ciara's claws twitched against the throne, phantom scents of charred metal and ionized blood curling in her nostrils. She remembered how the explosion had painted the sky in hues of molten gold and necrosis-green, how the shockwave had rattled her teacup three sectors away.
She'd toasted to it.
Jules' bones had been found fused to the reactor core, his signature grin still etched into his fractured skull—a final, grotesque mockery of the man who'd stolen her destiny.
And yet.
And yet.
The child—Sonic—had survived.
Not just survived.
He fully thrived over the past five, almost six now, years.
Twisted the corpse of Jules' legacy into something far more potent.
Ciara exhaled through her teeth, her shadow coiling tight around the throne's spine like a noose. She'd watched Sonic's ascent with the clinical detachment of a surgeon observing a metastasizing tumor.
And again, she lost the one child that was rightfully hers that could actually be useful to her.
But still, she was nothing but resourceful, and Mobius was nothing if not full of loopholes. Ciara's claws drummed a slow, deliberate rhythm against the throne's armrest as she calculated her next move—her shadow twisting into thorned serpents that slithered across the floor, tasting the air for weakness. There were other ways to claim Sonic as hers, even now. The child was already more weapon than boy, forged in betrayal and bathed in the afterbirth of Diamond Heights' collapse.
She could use that.
Mold it.
*"Simple,"* Ciara mused, her claws tracing a slow, predatory circle in the air—as if carving sigils into reality itself. The motion left faint trails of violet light, shimmering like poisoned honey before dissolving.
Sonic couldn't know everything about her, but Ciara knew everything about him—how his trauma pulsed like a second heartbeat beneath that cocky grin, how his claws twitched whenever someone mentioned Bernadette the Hedgehog.
And she would be there to comfort him.
Soon enough...
Yes, it would be soon enough...
And he would be ever so thankful for her 'help'.
And then everything would fall oh so perfectly into place for her...