He pushed the trident down with all his might, going through Typhon’s chest and pinning him to the floor of the plaza. The golden energy burned away the corruption, making it clean and making the Emperor Consort feel every bit of pain his choices had caused.
For the first ti since his corruption, Typhon’s eyes t Rick’s, displaying genuine remorse. Not feeling bad about getting caught. Not feeling sorry for yourself.
He really understood how big of a deal it was that he had destroyed it.
Typhon was able to say "I’m... sorry" through his broken jaw, and the words were no longer distorted, but they were real.
"Tell Nerissa... I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to be the husband... she needed."
Rick said in a cold voice, "Tell her yourself."
"In whatever afterlife awaits cowardly assholes who hurt the people who loved them."
He turned the trident, and Typhon’s body started to break down. The corruption burned away, revealing the man beneath.
"I’m going to take her as mine now... and I’m going to make her feel better than what you did to her." Rick smirks.
For a brief mont, the Emperor Consort looked like he did hundreds of years ago, before the lies and betrayal. Then he was gone, turning into tiny bits of light that disappeared into the ocean.
Rick pulled the Trident of New Tides free and turned to see how Nerissa was doing with Seris.
The fight between the two queens was both amazing and awful.
Nerissa had taken on her full royal form again, which was fifteen ters of pure oceanic power. But this ti, there was no cold rage or calm efficiency.
This was rage that had been building up for eight hundred years of magical mastery and fifty years of pain finally let go.
"You destroyed my family!" Nerissa scread, and hundreds of huge spears of compressed water appeared. "You made my husband fall in love with you while I was pregnant with his children...!"
"You got him to steal one of my most powerful artifacts and hide it in your kingdom...!"
The spears flew through the air, and Seris barely had ti to raise barriers of corrupted energy to stop them. The impact broke buildings, dug trenches in the seafloor, and created shock waves that penetrated the water.
"I loved him!" Seris yelled back, feeling her own power rise. "I loved Typhon before you ever t him!"
"You took him from with your crown, your perfect kingdom, and your political marriage!!!"
"NO! He chose !" Nerissa said, and her voice was full of confidence. "Whatever you thought you had before, he chose to marry !"
"He decided to make a kingdom with and to have three hundred kids with ! And you were the one who convinced a married man to cheat on his wife and family!"
Nerissa’s ocean magic got stronger, and the water itself beca her weapon. "But you know what?!"
"I won’t bla you for everything anymore...!"
"Yes, you are a howrecker who helped ruin my marriage, and then you ruined the best Guardian in my kingdom...!"
"Not only just that...! You’re working with the Archon to end the world."
"Typhon, on the other hand, made his own decisions. He made the choice to betray !"
"He decided to lie for two hundred years... he made a secret family while pretending that we both wanted the sa thing. And I choose to stop letting his decisions run my life!"
Every drop of water within ten kiloters provided Nerissa with strength. The imnse concentration of magical energy caused reality itself to tremble.
"I am Nerissa Abyssryn, the Ocean Empress for six hundred years!"
"I am a mother who left her kids because I was too broken to be what they needed!"
"I killed three thousand innocent people as part of a genocide."
"I am a monster who took the lives of seventeen innocent children simply for existing!"
"I own everything...!"
"I will spend the rest of my life trying to be better than the worst things I’ve done."
The concentrated oceanic power took shape and beca sothing that was more than just magic. This was sovereignty made real, the complete power of an empress who had finally accepted all of herself, both good and bad.
"OCEANIC AUTHORITY: EMPRESS’S FINAL JUDGNT!"
The attack wasn’t flashy. It didn’t go off with a bang or send out huge shockwaves. It was simply an unstoppable force colliding with corruptible matter, and there was only one possible outco.
Seris’s corrupted form tried to fight back, but the Archon’s power flowed through her, granting her more strength than she should have had.
However, Nerissa’s attack did not combat the corruption. It was fighting the very existence of everything that had ruined her life.
The oceanic judgnt scread as it tore through the forr Queen of the Abyssal Trenches, cleaning up the corruption, destroying the borrowed power, and turning her back into the woman she had been before the Archon found her body in the dark.
"No...!" Seris gasped, and her body started to fade away. "This can’t be how it ENDS!"
"I was going to get back at them...! I was supposed to make you suffer like you made SUFFER...!!!"
"You did," Nerissa said softly, and tears were streaming down her huge face. "You made go through more pain than you could ever know..."
’You helped break in ways that I’m still trying to fix."
"You killed people I cared about, turned Guardians I made with love into monsters, and made face all the horrible things I’ve done in my life..."
"But you also gave sothing without aning to... you made stop hiding from my pain."
"You made feel things again, even though they were anger, sadness, and guilt that were too much to handle... and because of that, you helped find soone who wouldn’t let stay broken."
Nerissa pointed to Rick, who had swum up next to her. "Thank you, Queen Seris."
"Thank you for helping see that I deserved to be saved."
"Just because I was a monster for a while doesn’t an I have to stay one forever." Nerissa smirks.
"Oh... Fuck you," Seris was able to speak, even though her body was still breaking down. "Fuck you and your story of redemption."
"So of us can’t get better... so of us only get back at others."
Nerissa said, "Then I feel sorry for you," and she ant it.
"Revenge doesn’t make things better, it only makes things worse, and I know that better than anyone else from my own experience." Nerissa shows Seris a genuine smile that only makes her even more mad.
Seris’s and Nerissa’s eyes t one last ti, and sothing in them changed.
Just a little and enough to show the woman who is behind the corruption and hate. "Tell Typhon... tell him I really loved him..."
"It wasn’t a lie."
"And now... I’m going to move on with my new partner that prioritizes feelings and honesty."
Then she was gone, vanished into nothingness, her existence erased by the Empress’s judgnt that she had sought to dismantle.
The fight between the Leviathans was also over. Rick’s four bonded partners and Myrissa’s Kraken helped the New Leviathan destroy all twenty of the corrupted Guardian’s heads one by one.
The corrupted Leviathan was now broken on the plaza floor, its body twitching as the last bits of the Archon’s power tried to keep it alive.
Rick raised his trident and shouted, "New Leviathan!"
"Finish that son of a bitch right... NOW!"
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