A wicked smile spread across Phobus' face as he stared down the stone colossus that was stomping in the middle of the battlefield, doing her best not to crush her own people underfoot while she used her size to her advantage.

He kept pilling the Nightmares onto her, making sure that she didn't have a chance to shrink down. If she did that, then finding her specific fear would be impossible in the mess of signals that he would get from the crowd. But when she was like this? All he had to do was pick out the one signal that was coming from her height.

It was foolproof.

As truck sized spiders climbed up the giants legs, Phobus' eyes turned black as the darkness of his pupils leaked outwards, covering his entire eyeball like an oil spill. A stream off different fears poured into his mind, from the smallest of anxieties to the most deeply held fears.

He sorted through the unusable ones. Abstract fears were always the hardest to manifest. Death, drowning, tight spaces. Those were common one's, and his usual tricks of making the person simply see their fear wasn't going to work on this one. She knew his game, after all.

No, she had to face her fear, and be slaughtered by it.

Pushing the abstract to the side, he rapidly sorted through the tangible. Bypassing simple childhood fears or the anxieties, and dove straight into the repressed fears. Those were always the best.

There was one particularly strong signal coming from the giant, and when he took a peak at what it was, he couldn't help but laugh.

"God... isn't that just pathetic. Let's see how you handle this then."

A cruel laugh escaped his lips as he stuck the needle into his neck and pressed the trigger of the injector gun, flooding his system with the golden contents. His heart started to thunder, beating wildly as if he was facing down the worst of his own Nightmares, which only hasted the spread of the solution through his veins.

The oily blackness that had spread across his eyes started to leak from them, dripping down his cheeks like ink black tears, as a vile aura surrounded Phobus, sending a shiver down the spine of those who were in the room alongside him.

He held out his hand, pointing it out of the window, as a torrent of black smoke poured from his fingers like a dam that had been burst.

***

Alexandra let out grunts of annoyance as she smacked her hands against her legs, splattering the spiders that were skittering up them, constantly nibbling at her in attempts to find a weak spot in her stone carapace, and she was not eager to let them find it. Every slap sent a deafening clap of thunder echoing throughout the battlefield, the air pressure of it alone being enough to send those still lingering around her feet flying.

Green blood splatted with every slap which quickly dissolved into black smoke, only for the spiders to be replaced by something new. A giant python curled itself around her leg, its tail digging into the ground to act as an anchor to keep her in place.

So she simply grabbed its head and squeezed, letting it pop into black smoke a moment later, although the sudden loss of the tugging force sent her stumbling back, crushing a few of the Lightbringers forces and a couple of Unkindly Guards underfoot in the process.

A plume of flames engulfed her vision as she was plunged into the midst of a blazing inferno. Alexandra quickly raised her hand, blocking the flames as they curled around her palm, the stones making up her colossal body starting to glow brightly and melt into lava.

Hovering in front of her, at head height, was a small, insect sized ball of crackling flames. At least, it was insect sized from her point of view, like a little firefly. In reality it was a human skeleton, charred black by the flames that engulfed it. The armour it wore was black and jagged, as if it was forged from obsidian instead of steel, and had lines of lava coursing through it like veins.

A jet of fire burst from the skeletons boots, keeping it suspended in the air, while the flamethrower that was melting into her hand was streaming from his own.

There was a blinding flash, followed quickly by a clap of thunder, before the inferno was cut off and the flaming skeleton fell to the side. He tumbled through the air for a few seconds before catching himself, the jet beneath his feet flaring up as he shot through the air like a rocket.

A blue streak raced through the air after him, as Astra honed in on the flaming skeleton like a bloodhound. They whizzed through the air, chasing each other around the giant and high over the battlefield.

Streams of fire roared in the skies and roars of thunder echoed as lightning tore the flames in half. The two exchanged blow after blow as they flew. Yet no matter where in the battlefield they went, neither dared to go above the veil of black clouds hanging above them.

One was a hellish inferno of a man, while the other flew with lightning constantly crackling around her. Neither one of them was keen to dive into the water filled clouds and plummet to the ground when the moisture stole their powers from them.

Still sitting atop Alexandra's shoulder, Cynthia grew herself a mouth on her blobby form just so she could pout adorably.

"He's lucky that Sparky came along. I was getting ready to blast his bony ass with some acid streams. Maybe we can see how much that skeleton can burn then. Nothing can out do the power of the slime! Wahaha-"

Her mouth curled into a cocky smile as she laughed triumphantly, despite having done nothing at all. Small arms formed either side of her blob, as she put them on what could be called her hips and continued to laugh like some over the top, moustache twirling villain. She had even started to form the moustache.

That was, until a booming voice cut through the air and overshadowed every other sound. It drowned out the chaos of battle, the roar of the flames and even the deafening claps of thunder.

"CYYYYYYNTHIAAAA!"

Cynthia's laugh cut out immediately at the sound of the voice, and her gelatinous body trembled and shuddered as if the voice was travelling through her, shaking her every molecule right down to her core.

If she still had blood, it would have drained from her body completely and turned to ice.

"WHERE ARE YOU CYNTHIA?! SHOW YOURSELF YOU SPINELESS LITTLE WORM! COME GET WHAT YOU DESERVE!"

All the colour drained from the blob of slime, turning her completely white. Her cartoonish transformations receded, and her body began to shift on its own. The blob transformed until it was a pale white reflection of her normal body, the imitation of her previous human form, although due to the size... or perhaps for another reason entirely, she resembled a childish version of herself.

She retreated backwards, pressing her back against the wall - which was the neck of Alexandra - and pulled her knees against her chest. Her body shrunk even further, pressing itself against the wall as in a pure, desperate attempt to disappear entirely.

Her face was twisted in utter terror, her gelatinous body trembling and shivering, rocking back and forth gently. Her wide eyes stared at the ground, yet there was not a hint of life behind those eyes, only fear, as she muttered to herself over and over the same six words.

"I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

Alexandra touched her shoulder gently, the tip of her finger brushing against Cynthia's foot, which only made her shuffle back and shrink more. Her muttering picking up in pace, along with her rocking, as it gained a tone of desperation, but the words never changed.

Although the voice was soft, almost like she wasn't wanting to be heard despite her desperate pleas, with her muttering just underneath Alexandra's ear it was impossible for her not to hear it even with all of the chaos and noise.

"WHERE ARE YOU, YOU LITTLE BITCH? ALL YOU EVER DO IS DISAPPOINT ME!"

The voice sounded once more, a demonic tone adding to it the more it spoke, until finally a form was given to the voice.

In front of the fort, the black smoke pouring from Phobus began to clump together, first forming feet that were red as blood. Next came the torso and arms, which ended in thin fingers with long, black talons.

A forked tail whipped behind the figure, as their head came into being. Long black hair, as black as the night itself and the face of a beautiful woman. At least, that's what it seemed.

Unlike the rest of her skin, her face was not crimson. Instead she had a smooth and flawlessly white complexion. But look closer, and you would find that this was so impossibly smooth because it was a mask carved out of porcelain and painted to look human.

It looked as if she had a small mouth with pursed, plump lips. But the mask split at the cheeks and opened up to reveal the true mouth hiding underneath. A mouth that stretched all the way back to her ears, which were crimson and pointed live an elf's. Within this mouth hid a forest of sharp, wicked teeth ready to rip the flesh off your bone.

Whenever she opened her real mouth, a long serpentine tongue would lull out, licking hungrily at the corners of her porcelain mask.

She had soft blue eyes that one could get lost in, but those too were false. Nothing but a set of eyelids that split apart vertically, to reveal glowing red iris', black sclera and pupils like that of a goat.

But the part that ruined her disguise the most, was the set of tall, black horns that tore through the surface of the mask, and rose high into the air.

"COME OUT YOU WORTHLESS BRAT! LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER AND COME GET THE PUNISHMENT YOU DESERVE!"