The Strength to Defy
Sienna
Something is wrong... Where am I?
The sudden stillness that has enveloped me feels wrong.
I was doing something, something important, but every time I reach for the memory, it slips away from me.
There’s a pressure building inside my head, a dull ache that rapidly intensifies until I press my hands against my temples, trying to force my thoughts into place.
But it’s not working. I slowly look around, unease settling deeper into my stomach.
Where am I?
There is nothing here… Wasn’t I- where was I?
All around me, there’s just endless darkness stretching in every direction, so vast and empty that it makes me feel insignificant within it. The silence is somehow worse. It’s unnatural, as if the entire world has stopped breathing.
The pressure in my head is growing; it’s intensifying into pain. Something tells me to stop fighting it, to give in to that feeling.
Submit.
The power in that voice is soothing, and I want to listen – I should.
The pain is getting unbearable. I grip my head, my vision blurring.
Submit.
Then I hear another voice.
Sienna. The sound is faint at first, barely more than a whisper, but it instantly cuts through the fog and pain clouding my mind.
My breath catches.
Jayce.
Relief floods through me so suddenly that it almost hurts.
“Jayce?” I call out, turning towards the sound, my eyes watering from the pain.
The darkness remains unchanged, but I hear him again.
This time louder.
Closer.
More urgent.
Sienna. Can you hear me? I’m right here; I got you.
Got me? What is…
Where are we? I ask, my entire body convulsing from the pain that’s become unbearable.
Then I feel his presence beside me, his arms wrapping around me, his hand ghosting along my forehead, and the pain begins to subside. I suck in a deep breath as I feel his mind open up to me.
The moment he does, memories begin crashing back into place. The dome. The Will. The cocoons. The battle. Velasara. The portal.
The Will!
I touched the Will!
The very moment the realisation hits me, the darkness shatters. Power slams into me from every direction.
I gasp as the world reforms around me, only to realise I’m suspended inside something I can’t fully comprehend.
Energy surrounds me on all sides, vast currents of power flowing endlessly around a space that feels both impossibly small and infinitely large at the same time.
It pulses like a living thing, each beat carrying enough power to make my entire body tremble.
The Will.
I’m inside it somehow.
Or connected to it.
The distinction suddenly doesn’t feel important; what matters is the overwhelming amount of power pouring through me.
I can feel everything.
The dome.
The cocoons.
The drakaths sleeping within them.
Thousands of connections stretching endlessly outwards like veins running through a living body. The sheer scale of it is suffocating, and for a moment, I struggle beneath the weight of it.
Submit.
The voice doesn’t come from a particular direction. It exists everywhere at once, ancient and impossibly powerful.
Submit.
The pressure increases immediately, and through it all, Jayce’s touch remains like a shield wrapped around me, anchoring me to my sanity.
You are in control. You do not bend to anyone.
His voice is like a soothing stream passing through the chaos.
I am in control…
The power surrounding me pushes against my mind, against my will, against the very core of who I am. It isn’t attacking me; it isn’t trying to hurt me; it’s trying to absorb me.
To make me part of it.
But with it, it’s promising peace, serenity…
Submit.
The command rolls through me again, stronger this time, and I feel myself beginning to slip.
Life is hard… right? But there are reasons to live, reasons to get through it…
Sienna!
Jayce’s voice cuts through everything, and I feel something snap.
I cling to the sound of his voice instinctively; he isn’t here physically, but he’s grounding me, holding onto me, refusing to let me disappear.
The voice grows stronger, demanding my submission.
Submit.
No.
The word leaves my lips quietly.
The energy around me ripples.
Submit.
The Will pushes against me again, its power flooding through every part of my being, ancient and vast and so impossibly old that for a moment I understand why so many would simply surrender to it.
It would be easier. Easier to let go. Easier to allow myself to disappear into the endless sea of connections stretching around me, to become another voice amongst thousands and let the Will decide everything for me.
The pressure intensifies, pushing harder against my mind, against my soul, against every barrier I have left.
Then suddenly warmth spreads through the darkness. Something that instantly makes my chest tighten.
The endless darkness surrounding me brightens, and I turn towards it, shielding my eyes against the intensity of the dazzling light. For a moment, I can barely look at it; the intensity is almost painful, until the figure within it begins to take shape.
My breath catches.
Jayce.
He’s standing several feet away from me, dressed exactly as he was in the Realm of the Gods, his armour gleaming with golden light, his helmet tucked beneath one arm.
Lightning dances magnificently across his skin, and the power radiating from him is immense, so immense that it feels as though an entire storm has been compressed into a single person.
For a moment, I simply stare. Not because he looks like a god, but because despite everything surrounding us, despite the Will and the power and the endless connections stretching through the darkness, seeing him somehow makes all of it feel manageable.
His eyes meet mine, and the tension that’s been building inside me finally eases.
“I’m right here, Darling.”
The words are simple, but this time I hear them – not from within my mind; it’s as if he’s here.
They ground me more effectively than anything else could. I don’t even realise I’ve moved until his arms wrap around me.
The moment they do, the pressure surrounding me seems to lessen. Not disappear, but become bearable. His warmth seeps into me, steady and reassuring, and I close my eyes briefly, allowing myself to simply exist within his embrace as reality and my sanity return with full force.
Gods.
I needed this.
For all my confidence, for all my determination, a small part of me had been terrified.
Terrified that I would lose myself.
Terrified that touching the Will had been a mistake.
Terrified that I wasn’t strong enough.
Jayce pulls back slightly, one hand coming up to cup my cheek as he studies me.
“You know what to do.”
Not a question.
Not an order.
Trust.
Pure and absolute trust.
The kind that makes my throat tighten.
I look past him towards the endless currents of power flowing through the darkness, feeling the Will watching us, waiting.
“What if I lose control?” I ask quietly.
His thumb brushes across my cheek.
“You won’t.”
The certainty in his voice makes me believe him.
Not because he’s blindly optimistic, but because he knows me. Because he has seen every version of me and somehow still believes I can do this.
His forehead rests briefly against mine, and I close my eyes.
“Do what you need to do,” he murmurs. “And I’ll be right beside you.”
I take a slow breath.
Then another.
And when I turn back towards the Will, something inside me settles.
The fear doesn’t vanish, nor does the uncertainty.
But neither controls me anymore.
I reach forward, and this time, instead of resisting the connection or allowing it to overwhelm me, I take hold of it.
The effect is immediate.
Power surges through me with such force that the darkness around us erupts into light.
Every connection becomes visible at once, stretching endlessly through the dome, through the cocoons, through every drakath waiting within them.
The sheer scale of it is staggering, enough to make my knees weak, yet somehow it no longer feels impossible.
The Will pushes against me one final time, testing me, measuring me, attempting to force me into the same role every previous master must have occupied.
Submission.
Control.
Domination.
I understand now.
The Will was never looking for someone to command it.
It was looking for someone capable of carrying it.
The realisation settles through me as naturally as breathing.
“I don’t belong to you,” I whisper softly. “You belong to me.”
The connection ignites, and the entire network responds; every single thing connected to the Will is now mine.
My power surges around me, pure chaotic energy that is controlled. Becoming far deadlier than something out of control. It races through every vein connected to the Will, spreading across the dome faster than the eye can keep up. I feel as if the Will itself is being consumed by my powers.
Then the ground trembles and cracks spread across the vast dome. Within seconds, the entire structure begins to fracture; light bursts through the first crack, then another, then thousands more, and then the dome shatters as snow begins falling down upon us.
Power tears through every part of my body as the ground beneath me cannot handle the power that enters me; shadows and darkness swirl around me, whilst the remnants of the dome dissolve into the sky.
And then I feel them.
Tens of thousands of them.
Every drakath upon these lands.
Every creature sleeping within the cocoons.
Every monster already awakened.
Every single one is now connected to me; the sensation is staggering.
I can feel their hunger, their instincts, their power.
Then I sense their recognition, and then as one, they bend the knee.
The movement spreads endlessly across the landscape at the terrifying sight of thousands and thousands of drakaths surrounding us– the very sign of nightmares.
All of them kneeling is more than shocking because these are not soldiers; they are monsters.
A familiar presence calms my thoughts, and I turn towards him – Jayce.
He’s several metres away, having been thrown back when the connection formed.
I can see the way his feet are digging into the earth, and yet through the bond, it feels as though he’s standing right beside me.
Lightning dances across his armour as he stares up at me, pride, relief, and admiration swirling through our connection.
You’ve done it.
And hearing that approval, that praise from him – my mate, my king, the man who never once stopped believing I could do this.
Emotion tightens in my chest.
We did it. Together, I respond through the mind-link.
Slowly, I look back across the endless sea of kneeling drakaths stretching towards the horizon.
“We bow before the Daughter of Darkness. We bend the knee to the Chaos Queen. We yield to the Bearer of the Will. We obey our Master,” they chant in their ancient tongue, the words reverberating through every connection until they seem to echo from all around.
Titles I never wanted.
Titles I never sought.
Yet standing here, before an army powerful enough to end mankind, with the connection of the Will thrumming through every fibre of my being, I finally understand what the visions were trying to show me.
Not what I would become.
But what I was always meant to be.
And as the ground around us settles, the rumbling fading into nothingness, the army of drakaths raises their heads as one.
Waiting for their Queen’s first command.