The torrent of flames seemed to unfurl in slow motion, a roiling tsunami of destruction that dwarfed the Invincible into seeming insignificance. Eleanor's vision sharpened into hyper-clarity, every detail etched into her consciousness in those endless, agonizing heartbeats.
She watched her terrified crew scrambling for any shelter that might spare them incineration. Saw the whites of their wide, disbelieving eyes as death's pyre approached inexorably. Her fingers dug uselessly into the quarterdeck railing, splinters biting into her palms.
This was the end. Vincent's twisted ambition had birthed an unholy engine of their annihilation. There would be no averting, no--
"ENOUGH!"
Amethyst's voice lashed out like a thunderclap, resonating with power enough to make Eleanor's bones vibrate. With a sweep of her arms, an iridescent barrier sprang into being just as the inferno reached them.
The primordial conflagration crashed against that shimmering bastion in a torrent of sparks and ash. The Invincible's deck bucked like a wild stallion as Amethyst locked herself into an implacable rictus, every fiber of her being channeling pure will to reinforce her defensive act.
Eleanor could only stare in awe at the forces being commanded, even as sweat streamed down the sorceress's face and coiled tendrils of smoke slithered over the deck. The sheer, incomprehensible might be required to hold back such devastation. It defied mortal comprehension.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity trapped between oblivion's jaws, the firestorm subsided. Amethyst sagged, chest heaving, as her barrier fluctuated and winked out like a snuffed candle flame. A haunting silence descended over the battered ship, shattered only by the lapping of waves and faint groans from the crew.
Eleanor slowly became aware she was trembling, unspent adrenaline leaving her muscles quivering. She cast a look of naked awe at Amethyst.
"How...what fiendish power did you command?"
The sorceress's expression was unreadable, an inscrutable mask as she turned her gaze upon the serpentine horror still coiled through that eldritch rift. Her voice came out in a ragged rasp.
"A mere sampling of the occult lore I have mastered over centuries. But a flickering candle compared to the profane acts that his majesty Vincent has beckoned through darkest means." Her fists clenched, fracture lines spreading through the deck beneath her boots.
"This great Nidhoggr, this beast from antiquity's worst dreams of the Void Between Realms...it is but the vanguard of what he would unleash upon our world."
Eleanor's throat worked as she followed Amethyst's stare out across the churning sea. The colossal worm drifted in lazy circles, regarding them with baleful sentience in those lightless pits of eyes. As if biding its time for another opportunity to strike.
"Vincent has traced the forbidden paths of immortals from realms beyond the stars' light." Amethyst's voice had taken on a grim edge that sent chills down Eleanor's spine.
"Through blasphemous allegiances and rituals dating to before this Earth's first dawn, he has...made a pact as grievous as any mortal might conceive," Amethyst continued.
She finally tore her gaze away, fixing Eleanor with a look that allowed for no delusion or uncertainty.
"He has bartered his very soul to the Undying Princes. In return for unleashing their vanguard upon Eldoria as harbinger, they have bestowed upon him the means to transcend his mortal shell."
Despite herself, despite all she had witnessed, Eleanor felt her mind rebel against such obscenities. The notion was simply too abhorrent to process.
"Immortality? No I don't think he's that powerful," she told herself inwardly.
As if sensing her disbelief, Amethyst let out a hollow, mirthless chuckle. "Of course, you cannot fathom it. What mortal mind could even glimpse such vile monumental ambition?"
She closed her eyes briefly, and when they opened again they blazed with a fell inner light that made Eleanor take an involuntary step back.
"Then let me put it in starker terms your comprehension can grasp." Amethyst's voice took on a cadence more suited to reading burial rites. "Vincent now possesses the keys to obliterate every last vestige of the world you know. To unmake reality itself into a desolate eternity ruled by neither life...nor death."
A profound silence fell over the ravaged Invincible, only the distant screams of Vincent's foiled armada piercing that void of understanding. Eleanor could only gape, struggling against the black tides of horror threatening to overwhelm her mind.
This wasn't a conquest or even destruction that her former friend unleashed. This was a hideous unraveling of existence itself, on a scale that beggared rational thought. And if Amethyst's claims were true...
Then before this night's end, Eleanor of Eldoria would bear final witness to the unmaking of everything she had ever known.
A deafening boom shattered the stillness, causing the Invincible's deck to shudder violently underfoot. Eleanor staggered as a plume of water erupted mere yards off the starboard bow. She whipped her head around to see Nidhoggr's massive coils undulating through the eldritch rift, its gaping maw opening once more.
"To your stations!" she cried to her crew, snapping them from their stupor of horror. "Return fire, demon be damned!"
Chaos erupted as sailors scrambled for the cannons, hauling bulging gunnysacks of ammunition into position. Eleanor caught Amethyst's eye, silently imploring the sorceress for aid. The look she received in return was both resolute and utterly devoid of hope.
With a cataclysmic roar that made the ocean's surface churn, Nidhoggr unleashed another torrent of obliterating flame. Amethyst's arms slashed through the air, calling upon profane energies as her eyes burned like twin suns.
Reality itself bent and warped as she channeled her cosmic will into an impenetrable bastion. The deluge of elemental devastation crashed against that mystic barrier in an apocalyptic maelstrom, the sheer force of it driving Eleanor down to one knee.
Sweat beaded on the sorceress's brow as she fought to maintain her warding, teeth grinding together in a feral snarl of effort. Eleanor could feel the heat of impossible forces swirling around them, reality straining at the seams under such profane manipulation.
Then, with an ethereal snap like reality reasserting itself, the firestorm dissipated. No sooner had the conflagration subsided than a deafening barrage erupted from the Invincible's cannons.
Solid shot and blazing chainshot arced out in disciplined volleys, punching fist-sized holes through the impervious scales of Nidhoggr's serpentine form. Acrid smoke filled the air as those projectiles impacted with bone-crunching force.
A bellow of pure, mindless rage split the air as the primordial horror recoiled from those puny stings. Its slitted gaze fixed on the ship with implacable malice.
Eleanor felt a surge of vindictive satisfaction, raising her fist in a defiant salute. Let Vincent's blasphemous ally taste their resolve and--
Her bravado turned to abject dread as Nidhoggr reared back once more, towering over the ship as it swelled to its full, staggering immensity. There was no way to dodge, no counter to what came next as it inhaled deeply.
"All hands, brace for--!" Eleanor's shout was drowned out as the colossal worm unleashed another torrent of apocalyptic energies directly upon them.
This was no mere gout of elemental flame, but a psychic barrage that seemed to scald the very soul. The piercing emerald maelstrom pummeled Amethyst's straining warding, fracture lines spreading like vast networks.
Eleanor's eardrums felt fit to burst, consciousness slipping as that eldritch onslaught threatened to unmake everything in a blinding vortex of excruciating pain. Through the disorienting haze, she became aware of her lips peeling back in a silent scream.
Then, with a thunderous finality, Amethyst's shield buckled under the strain...and dissolved entirely. The full, unimpeded brunt of Nidhoggr's cosmic fury washed over the Invincible in an unstoppable tide, warping the very substance of the ship.
Eleanor's world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of anguish as those irresistible energies scoured her nerves like a blowtorch. Inside her mind, she felt her very sense of self, her entire identity, starting to come apart at the fundamental level.
As the realization hit that this might well be the moment of her oblivion, her last thought was a strange detached calm. And a final, mute cry of denial to the uncaring cosmos.
So this was how it ended, at the twilight of reason and physics - undone by the insanity her one-time friend had unleashed upon creation itself...
Then the totality of newborn oblivion consumed Eleanor's fading consciousness in an obliterating flash of emerald annihilation.
Oblivion's maw gaped wide to receive Eleanor, the unstoppable cosmic forces overwhelming her senses entirely. She floated in that disassociated state, unraveling at the fundamental level as Nidhoggr's devastation reached its inexorable peak.
This was truly the end. Her storied reign snuffed out in a blinding emerald cataclysm, crushed beneath the weight of Vincent's nihilistic obsession. All she had fought for, all the promise of an enlightened future for Eldoria - undone in a cosmic spasm of madness.
So consumed was she by that epiphany of utter defeat, Eleanor failed to notice the air warping in a localized distortion nearby. Failed to perceive the metallic whine building in intensity with each passing heartbeat.
Until, with an earsplitting bang like the world's biggest musket firing, SOMETHING erupted from that space-time rift, trailing azure lightning.
A blur of gunmetal gray and brass fittings lanced across Eleanor's dimming vision, impacting the eldritch devastation head-on. Her eyes registered movement against the torrent of annihilation - a whirling cyclone of reinforced metal plates and piston-driven armatures, rippling with arcane energies.
As if in slow-motion, the cosmic barrage parted around that whirling dervish. The juggernaut drove an ever-deepening furrow through Nidhoggr's psychic onslaught, eating through it like some ravenous insect consuming a tapestry.
From somewhere distant, she became aware of maniacal laughter, rising above even the din of apocalypse.
"Hah! Your hellspawned tantrums are no match for the pinnacle of human ingenuity, you gargantuan glow-worm!"
That voice, tinged with the familiar Eldorian burr of an eccentric inventor...it sparked a flicker of recognition through Eleanor's addled consciousness. Impossible. It couldn't be--
As if in answer, a strobe-lit silhouette flickered into view amidst the cyclonic contraption still inexorably chewing through the cosmic barrage. Perched with one booted foot braced against a whirling armature, a wild-haired figure stood gripping the control levers in a rictus of gleeful abandon.
Shane Corverati - her royal engineer, mad genius, and perpetual thorn in the side of all conventional wisdom - cackled again in delight.
"In the name of progress, your foulness! Let principles of physics be thy ruination!"
With an insistent series of lever-actuations, the mechanical maelstrom redoubled its cyclic bombardment, coruscating energies visibly sloughing away layers of Nidhoggr's psychic devastation.
Onboard the Invincible, Eleanor felt reality reassert its primacy in a violent snap, weight and senses crashing back into her bruised psyche. She drew a shuddering breath, mouth agape in disbelieving awe as the titanic emerald fury recoiled inch-by-excruciating inch under the relentless counterforce.
Never, in all her born days, had she witnessed such a feat of bleeding-edge artifice in action. Just what new devilry had her resident madman of mechanics unleashed now? For that matter, how had he even brought it aboard, remote as they'd been from any--
Her reverie broke as Shane risked a quick salute her way, shooting her a manic grin. "Behold the bleeding edge, Majesty! Homefield advantage is so last millennium!"
With a thunder of earthquake-level percussions, the cyclic machine redoubled its frenzied barrage. Nidhoggr's cosmic devastation bent, then destabilized entirely as the aetheric harmonics reached critical dissonance.
One final flare of eye-searing energies heralded catastrophic failure of the primordial assault. The eldritch maelstrom collapsed in on itself like a ruined soufflé, winking out of existence entirely with a cosmic snap that stole the air from Eleanor's lungs.
Only then did she fully take in the scale of Shane's mechanistic monstrosity, hovering in place with a dull thrum of potential energies still cycling through its armored flanks. A literal three-story metal cyclone of pistons, condensers, and glyphed focusing arrays housed within a sculptured alloy chassis.
As the dust settled at last, Eleanor raised an incredulous gaze to the silhouetted engineer astride his mechanical behemoth. His answering grin held all the unrepentant zeal of a madman.
"You're...you're utterly insane," she managed at last, hardly daring to believe it. "Where did this...what is this thing?"
Shane's laugh rang out as he swung down into a jaunty salute, the pinnacle of roguish disregard.
"Why, Your Majesty! Feast your dazzled eyes upon the universe's first trans-spatial solenoid disruptor cannon. A very special project I've had the smithies pounding away on ever since a certain incident in the Skyfall Wastes went so conclusively tits-up last year..."