Celestia couldn’t even watch.
Technically, she had no physical form now. Her body had been dissolved into nothingness as her soul had been locked within the burning heart of the Sun. There was no literal prison bars for her to rail against, no cell to pace. She had no eyes to see out from her prison with.
Nevertheless, she at the same time had all those things. Even her mind was not quite equipped to handle a complete lack of a body while still being conscious and alive, and so it rationalized a surface for the sun made of solid gold, and a great cage, almost like a bird’s, within which she was captured. She envisioned a body, her body, within that cage, and she paced around within it as she would have were she actually, physically there.
Celestia’s hooves clinked upon the metal floor of her prison. The fires of the Sun would reach out and through her cage, trying to soothe her. Anger, she knew, would not help with matters, and so she forced herself to not get angry, and instead to think.
Antithesis was young, impetuous, and impatient. She could not possibly have thrown together an effective banishment spell, certainly not one that could keep Celestia trapped for a thousand years. Part of Celestia’s mind was already examining the spell, looking for weaknesses. She had a few promising leads, but with all her power bound into the Sun, it was likely she would need some kind of outside help – an alignment of the planets, perhaps, though Celestia did not believe such an alignment would happen for a good five or six hundred years. Even something as simple as utilizing the powers of the unicorn tribe when they attempted to move the Sun, as they would soon have to, would probably be enough.
For now, however, Celestia was trapped within the Sun – and worse, she was trapped on the other side of the planet. Glancing up at the world showed her only open ocean, with some land far to the east. She was suspended here, the heat from the Sun already bringing unusual warmth to the world below, heating up the ocean that was supposed to be in the middle of winter. If something wasn’t done in the next few days, the heat would create a hurricane of impressive proportions.
Celestia chose not to consider what would happen if her Sun remained in place for longer than a few days. Not yet – the consequences were too horrible to contemplate, and she had faith in her little ponies to figure out how to move the Sun anyway.
But as long as Celestia was here, suspended in the skies over the wrong hemisphere, she couldn’t watch a single thing that was happening on the world below. She didn’t know how her student nor her erstwhile companions were doing against Antithesis, if her sister had managed to escape or had been banished along with the interloping Luna, nothing.
It was maddening. She was Celestia the Undimmed, the Daystar, the Sun Incarnate. And she was powerless.
---
It should have been dawn, and the weather schedule had even called for a relatively warm day. Instead, the moon and the stars yet hung in the sky, and the cold winter night lingered. Across Equestria and beyond, ponies and other beings wondered if this heralded the return of Nightmare Moon, after yesterday morning’s abortive start – but if that were the case, then why was the Mare in the Moon so prominent upon the lunar surface?
The affairs of the outside world, however, mattered little to four unicorns and one abomination guised as an alicorn that lay within the Everfree Forest. Or at least they didn’t matter to Antithesis; she could frankly have not cared less about what the Trixies and Twilights thought. They had been spoiling her fun all night, them and the Princesses Three, but at least that latter problem had been taken care of.
Antithesis came to a landing in the center of a forest clearing, her hooves kicking up ice, snow, and dirt as she skidded to a halt, horn glowing an incandescent violet as she once again stowed her wings, lips pulled back to expose barred teeth as her head whipped around, looking for the source of all her problems and finding herself wishing that she could spare the time to figure out how to move the Sun and Moon and make it daylight.
She found her target surprisingly quickly – one of the Twilights suddenly came rushing from the forest, horn glowing brightly as she fired a beam of light at Antithesis. She ducked low, growling aloud and striking out with her own magic, a beam of pure force that struck Twilight and sent her sprawling away with a cry of pain.
Antithesis smiled a little, shuffling her front hooves and feeling a little better for a moment, then galloping towards Twilight, who was groaning and picking herself up. Antithesis’ horn glowed again, and she lashed out with lightning. Twilight crumpled in pain, screaming.
Antithesis would have smiled, but she saw a moving blur beside her, and spun quickly, barely avoiding as a blob, like a clear liquid in a vague pony shape, tried to buck her. She deftly avoided the blow and lashed out with a hoof of her own, but the blob moved – though the poorly-constructed illusion fell then, revealing one of the Trixie underneath it, eyes wide at having been found out. She turned to gallop away.
“Wrong!” Antithesis cried, reaching out telekinetically for the Trixie. She didn’t have time to actually establish a hold, however, as quite suddenly from her right, an entire tree came flying, wrapped in lavender effervescence. Antithesis gasped and leaped high, barely avoiding it, and she found herself confronted by the other Twilight – the first one was still picking herself up. This Twilight pawed at the ground a few times, before conjuring up lightning of her own and lashing out. Antithesis created a shield and blocked it, though she wasn’t sure why she bothered – the lightning didn’t feel like it had much force behind it, though that was unsurprising given that the Twilights weren’t exactly used to combat.
Antithesis snorted, dropping her shield and picking the tree up. She spun it around over her head a few times, then threw it forward. The Twilight’s eyes widened – then her horn glowed, and she popped out of existence – but re-appeared a moment later once the tree had passed, exactly where she had been. Grinning at Antithesis, she popped in and out of existence a few times, appearing here and there with little effort – rather than being hurled by the roil in a random direction at random speed.
Antithesis’ eyes went wide. “What?!” she demanded, looking up. The magic of the roil was still in-place. Antithesis looked back to Twilight, but found her gone – as was the other Twilight, and the Trixie.
“Mwahahahahaha!” Trixie’s voice came from everywhere as Antithesis looked around. “That’s right, Antithesis! We’ve learned how to counter your tricks!”
Antithesis’ head whipped around, looking for the source of the voice, but finding none. “That’s impossible!” she screamed.
“So are you!” Trixie’s voice countered. With a flash and pink pop, Trixie appeared, cape and all, in front of Antithesis. “Trixie’s talents are immense! She has discovered magic sight, and teleportation! She is – waagh!”
Antithesis screamed and opened a null-pocket right on top of Trixie, pushing back reality and pouring in all of her hate. She held the pocket for a good minute, but at length finally let it drop – and was greeted by the sight of Trixie, on her stomach with her front hooves over her head. She opened one eye after a second, then stood suddenly, looking no worse for wear. “Wasn’t sure that would work,” she noted, “but the Great and All-Powerful Trixie has even become immune to your null-pockets!”
Antithesis took a step back at that, eyes widening and jaw dropping. “Wh…what?!”
There were a series of two lavender pops and one blue one, and suddenly Antithesis found herself staring at both Twilights, and both Trixies. “Now then…” one Twilight said, horn glowing with magical energy. “Time to end this!” She lashed out with magic.
For the briefest instant, Antithesis thought that this was somehow a trick, maybe an illusion of Trixie’s. But the magical beam that struck her was most certainly not fake – she felt herself flying backwards, head spinning and in pain as she landed on the ground, then quickly scrambled to her hooves. The four ponies she hated most in all the world had disappeared again in a series of pops.
“This is the part where you scream,” Trixie’s voice said from everywhere.
Antithesis knew that it was what Trixie wanted, that doing it would only be playing into the blue unicorn’s hooves. Even with that knowledge, though, she still found herself stomping her hooves, shaking her mane, and screaming as loud as she could.
“I! HATE! YOU!”
---
Lulamoon’s horn stopped glowing, and she took in a few deep breaths. Trixie eyed her, but Lulamoon only waved her hoof. “Give…give me a few moments,” she said, as Sparkle returned, dispelling the invisibility spell around her herself and putting a hoof to Lulamoon. The four of them were ducked down in a blind they had hastily constructed on the edge of the clearing, a blind supplemented by an illusion spell that actually hid magical auras rather than affecting any of the physical senses. It wasn’t perfectly constructed – Lulamoon had shown Twilight how to do it rather than casting it herself, as she had needed to hold onto her magic for the current performance – but it would hold up as long as it wasn’t scrutinized closely, something Antithesis wasn’t likely to do.
The plan had been thought up by Trixie, but they hinged on Lulamoon’s proficiency with illusion magic. From their blind, they could see out into the clearing, but Antithesis couldn’t see them. Trixie was providing the amplified voice and taunting, but Lulamoon was providing the figments and ghost sounds that Antithesis was being lead to believe were the ponies themselves. She was also occasionally casting invisibility spells on Twilight and Sparkle, the latter two tasked with dashing out from the blind on occasion and providing some actual spell-work to sell the figments.
But Lulamoon couldn’t keep it up for long, not with the number and the complexity of glamors she was crafting.
“You’re doing good,” Twilight provided, patting Lulamoon on withers. Lulamoon steadied herself, then cast an invisibility spell over Twilight as she grit her teeth.
“Can’t keep this up…” Lulamoon noted. “We’ll…we’ll have to wrap things up quickly.”
Trixie had to admit that she was impressed. She would have to learn illusions of this quality in time for her next show. Focusing her mind back on task, she looked back out at Antithesis, who was bucking around like a bronco in rage, and started speaking again. She had to get Antithesis furious – enough that the alicorn wouldn’t be focused on what she was doing, what was happening, wouldn’t notice the tiny imperfections in the illusions – and wouldn’t double-check when the show’s climax occurred.
---
Antithesis watched as one of Twilight’s horns glowed, and a fireball came from nowhere and struck her in her side, sending her flying. She hadn’t known that Twilight could conjure fireballs from nowhere – but then, apparently the mares had just developed about a thousand new spellcasting powers from nowhere. It was patently impossible, but then, so was Antithesis.
That didn’t mean she liked it.
Antithesis magically reached out to Twilight, but the purple unicorn disappeared in a flash and pop. She tried to follow the teleportation to its destination, but didn’t have time as she saw hooves coming for her face. She ducked, and lashed out, but the Trixie that had bucked at her avoided her blow. Then a Twilight was all but on top of her, once again telekinetically lifting up a tree, then a second, and sending them both flying at Antithesis. She caught one in her own telekinesis and avoided the other, sending it flying back, but the Twilight simply teleported away. The one Antithesis had caught, she hurled at a Trixie, but that Trixie, too, disappeared in a flash and pop of her own.
“GRAAAAAH!” Antithesis screamed, running her vocal chords ragged.
“Graaaah!” A Trixie, this one with a pink glowing horn, mocked, waving her hooves in the air. “That’s you! That’s how dumb you sound!”
Antithesis launched as large a fireball as she had ever made at that one. She eeped and popped out of existence as the fireball connected with the ground, rolled a few hundred feet, and then exploded somewhere in the forest, sending dirt and wood everywhere.
Antithesis’ horn glowed brighter, but she didn’t lash out with her magic this time. Instead, she charged, horn down, right at the nearest Twilight. Just as that Twilight was about to teleport away, Antithesis reached out with magic and held her in place. Had Antithesis been more focused, she might have noticed that her grip didn’t feel quite real – but she was anything but focused right now, except on taking her horn and ramming it straight into Twilight Sparkle’s chest.
The Twilight managed, at the last possible moment, to twist out of the way. Antithesis went shooting past, but instantly adjusted herself, bending her forelegs and hindlegs. She couldn’t impale Twilight, but she did manage a buck with all the powers of an alicorn right into Twilight’s chest. The unicorn’s scream of pain mixed with a rather satisfying wet crunch, and she went flying away, tumbling on the ground and landing on her side, still screaming. Instantly, the other Twilight and the two Trixies teleported to her side, eyes wide in shock.
Antithesis grinned brightly as she reached out again, holding all four in place magically. They struggled and fought, but none of them could teleport as Antithesis telekinetically lifted up the ground behind her, a circular section twenty feet wide and six feet thick, hovering it in place over the four of them as they looked on in horror.
“NOW DIE!” she screamed, letting the earth fall on them. There was a scream of fright and shock, then an earth-shaking thud that kicked up dust and snow and dirt.
Antithesis stared, eyes wide as the dust began to settle, breathing heavily. “It’s…” she intoned, staring at the pile of dirt and stones that she had crushed the four ponies underneath. “It’s…is it over…?”
The alicorn took a step forward, then another, blinking rapidly. No ponies teleported in suddenly to ruin her day. No more did Trixie torment her and challenge her and make fun of her. There was only the silence of the forest, and the sound of her own heavy breathing. “It’s over,” she said, a wide smile breaking out on her lips. “It’s over…it’s over! They’re dead! They’re dead! I WIN! I WIN! I WIN!”
“Now!”
Antithesis’ eyes widened at the sound of the voice. She turned around quickly, just in time to see a flash of lavender, pink, and blue light completely cloud her vision.
---
The four of them had closed in, invisible thanks to Trixie, to within just a few paces of Antithesis before making their move. The not-pony had only just had the chance to turn around when beams of pure magic lashed out from the horns of Twilight, Trixie, Lulamoon, and Sparkle.
Antithesis screamed, not in rage, but pain – real, actual pain, the first such cries that the four unicorns had heard her ever utter. She tried to stand at first, but buckled quickly. She tried to set her horn glowing – to cast a spell or open a null-pocket, none of the unicorns knew, and she failed in any event. Her very form seemed to shift and twist and bend oddly. Her wings appeared, but even though she flapped them as hard as she could, she couldn’t rise.
The attack hurt the ponies executing it just as much, however. They had no idea how much magic was needed to take down Antithesis, and so each of the four of them were giving it their all – pouring their everything at the not-pony, the alicorn whose body housed the shattered Element of Magic. The force of their magic was enough that the beams of arcane force eventually lost any color or definition, becoming simply rays of pure white light as the eyes of each of the four unicorns glowed a similar color. The Everfree Forest was bathed in a light brighter than that of the missing Sun.
Lulamoon buckled first, exhausted, a she was, from the illusionary show she had just helped put on. She fell to her knees and hocks, felt her concentration slipping. She felt a hoof on her withers, though, and a glance found her looking at Sparkle. The other unicorn smiled just a little, but then she, too, buckled, losing her ability to stand – but not her ability to keep the magic going. Lulamoon felt herself growing determined to equal Sparkle’s efforts – not as a rival trying to compete or show off, but as a pony trying to make sure that if others were going to give it their all, she would, too. Looking at Sparkle, she knew that the other unicorn felt the same way.
Trixie was on her knees and hocks too, simply not having the magic output of the other three. For once, though, she didn’t care about showing off. She wasn’t here to show off. Antithesis had attacked her, and attacked one of the few ponies she’d ever known who had offered her an honest helping hoof. Twilight had forgiven her, and Trixie owed it to Twilight to put forward all she could.
Twilight lost her ability to simply pour out magic last. She kept thinking of Celestia, her mentor, trapped in the Sun, placed there by Antithesis. The pony’s name was truly fitting, for she was the complete opposite of Celestia – impatient, cruel, violent, savage, the perfect opposite of everything that Celestia was. Twilight was going to make sure that Antithesis couldn’t hurt anypony ever again, no matter what it cost.
Antithesis had fallen to the ground by now as well, screaming incoherently, gnashing her teeth and bucking her legs and flapping her wings in pain. Her body was distending and contracting, expanding and collapsing randomly – she looked less like a pony, and more like a doll that had been filled with something moving and writhing.
Then there was a flash – Antithesis’ screaming suddenly stopped, and the magic of the four unicorns’ magical assaults ended. The four of them gasped for breath, each of them sweating buckets and trembling uncontrollably, fighting to stay awake – they were each of them but a second away from overchanneling, their bodies fighting desperately to hold on to what little magical power they still possessed inside of them. Antithesis, meanwhile, didn’t move at all – she lay still and unmoving on her side, eyes wide and unseeing, mouth open, face frozen in a scream of rage.
Twilight tried to stand, but couldn’t – she could barely summon the effort to keep her head off of the ground. She turned to look at the other unicorns. “I…I th-think…think w…we did it…” she said.
Sparkle nodded. “Th…thank the Stars…” she gasped. “I don’t think – ”
Antithesis twitched. The four ponies jumped, or tried to, but each still lacked the strength to rise. Like a slow-moving motion picture, Antithesis’ wings curled around herself, and she drew her hooves and head down and towards her barrel. Her eyes were still unfocused as she, too, began to gasp for air.
“Ah…ahhh…aaaaaahhhhh…aaaaahhhhh…AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH…!”
Antithesis screamed as she scrambled to her hooves, twitching and shaking. Her body convulsed still as bright pink, glowing veins began to trace their way along her form, looking almost like cracks. She kept screaming even as she stumbled around, hitting the ground with her hooves, flapping her wings, her head kept down and eyes closed the whole time as the four unicorns struggled to rise.
Eventually, Antithesis stopped screaming and thrashing around. The pink veins didn’t disappear as she turned around, eyeing the four unicorns, and began to stumble forward. Each step was made on shaking, unsure legs, like those of a foal still figuring out how to walk.
“I…I am A-Antithesis…” she hissed in a trembling, pain-wracked voice. “I am…I am an a-alicorn! I am the h-hatred and loathing-g that sh-shattered Element of M-M-Magic! I…I will NOT d-die in such an ASININE way as being filled f-full of magic and EXPLODING!”
Antithesis spread her wings wide as the four ponies managed to struggle to their hooves, and took to the sky, spreading her hooves wide as her horn glowed deep black. “This ends! NOW!” she declared.
As the four ponies watched, the sky and horizon seemed to be blotted out. A massive null-pocket was beginning to form, starting at the edges of their vision and rushing forwards towards an epicenter focused on them – and from the looks of things, the null-pocket was the size of the entire Everfree Forest, or a goodly portion thereof.
Lulamoon looked at the null-pocket, and realized, at last, in spite of everything, they were doomed. Maybe if she’d had more power, or if Trixie had, or Twilight or Sparkle. Maybe if they’d been able to last for just a little longer against Antithesis – but they hadn’t. They were doomed.
She looked to Sparkle. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry for goading you into making yourself look like a tribalist. I’m sorry that I wasn’t the Element of Magic you wanted me to be.”
Sparkle nodded, reaching the same conclusion that Lulamoon had. “I’m sorry I said you were horrible at magic,” she said. “You’re not. You’re great.”
“You’re amazing,” Trixie put in quickly. The edges of the null-pocket were closing in rapidly now. “Trixie wishes – I wish I could do magic like you.”
“I wish I could stay and learn some stage tricks from you,” Lulamoon said. “I’m sorry I – “ she looked at the closing null-pocket and realized that there wasn’t time to make a list. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“Me too,” Sparkle said, looking to her counterpart and to Trixie.
“Me three,” Trixie said.
“And me,” Twilight confirmed, leaning in to the other four, pulling them into a hug that they didn’t refuse. “But mostly I’m sorry that it took ‘til now for us to say it. I wish we could have been friends sooner. But we’re friends now…right?”
“Right,” Lulamoon agreed.
“Right,” Trixie said.
“Right,” Sparkle confirmed, leaning into the hug and closing her eyes tightly, bracing herself for…
…nothing.
And not nothing in the sense of the null-pocket’s nothingness that tried to swallow and consume them, reduce them to nothing as well, pull them apart atom by atom and grind those atoms down to utter entropy. No, this was the nothing of simply nothing happening at all; nothing bad, in any event. Sparkle opened one eye, glancing around, and found that she and the other three unicorns were standing in a patch of grass and snow and dirt just like what they had been standing on. Just beyond its limits was the utter nothingness, the blackness that Antithesis conjured up – but it was held back, stopped from falling inwards somehow.
The ground beneath them began to glow, a combination of blue and purple. The four unicorns broke from their hug in confusion and surprise as a symbol began to trace itself onto the ground – a pale blue, crescent-shaped nebula set with shimmering stars, framing a six-pointed, lavender starburst. It was identical to the cutie mark on Antithesis’ flank in shape, but the colors were brighter.
The four stared in incomprehension, before Twilight stomped one hoof and let out a long groan. “We four,” she said, as a bright glow suddenly manifested in her chest, over her heart, “We’re the biggest idiots in two Equestrias.”
Lulamoon raised an eyebrow for a moment, then enlightenment struck. She groaned as well. “Yeah we are,” she confirmed.
---
The null-pocket collapsed, nature not liking a vacuum. Even Antithesis couldn’t maintain it forever, at least, not yet. She planned to work on that, once she got over the massive amount of pain she felt in her everywhere. At least now she had time to do that, seeing as the Trixies and Twilights were…
…standing four in a row, upright, white glows in their chests and staring up at Antithesis.
“WHAT?!” Antithesis demanded, letting herself fall from the sky as she glared at the four unicorns. “What is this bu – GAH!”
The last came at a sudden shooting pain in Antithesis’ chest that overrode the lines of pain that stilled etched their way across her body in the form of pink, glowing veins. She put a hoof to her chest and steadied herself with her wings and three other hooves, and it was several moments before she could look back to the four unicorns. Her vision was blurry, however – she couldn’t tell them apart. “How?” she demanded.
One of the unicorns stepped forward. “You’re right, Antithesis,” she said. It felt like there was cotton in Antithesis’ ears – she couldn’t tell if it was a Twilight or a Trixie speaking. “We were foals for thinking that the solution to stopping you was just filling you full of power, just attacking you head-on. That’s what you’ve been doing. That’s what we did. Because we didn’t realize what made us different from you.”
“Phenomenal cosmic power?” Antithesis asked, or began to. The pain shot forward again, and she stumbled, nearly falling over. She breathed in deeply, trying to fight her way past the pain. It wasn’t working.
“You were created because the Element of Magic broke,” one of the other unicorns said. “And we were so focused on the fact that you existed, on all the power that you had, that we didn’t stop and realize what that meant.”
“The Element of Magic didn’t break because it couldn’t tell us apart,” a third unicorn said. “Or it did…but that’s not the whole story. The Element of Magic broke because we couldn’t get along.”
“Because magic isn’t just power. Magic isn’t about who’s most deserving or least deserving. Magic is about connections…about reaching out and affecting others…it’s not power. It’s Friendship. Friendship is Magic.”
“We all could have born the Element, but none of us were friends. For a few minutes we even hated each other, and that was enough to break the Element, to create you. But we’ve figured things out now.”
“We’ve forgiven each other. We’ve learned to get along, to work together.”
“We’ve learned that we’ve got flaws, but we’ve got strengths, too.”
“We’re not perfect. But we don’t have to be. We just have to be there for each other when it matters most. Help each other out.”
“We’re friends. It took almost dying to make it happen…but it happened. And that means that the Element is starting to repair itself.”
Antithesis felt shooting pain once more. She fell to the ground again, wings spread wide. She looked up, but her vision had gotten even worse. She couldn’t even see separate unicorns anymore, just one – Twilight, Trixie, she didn’t know. She couldn’t tell.
But she hated her. She began crawling forward, wings wide. “I…I don’t care…” she gasped. “I don’t – I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna kill you. No matter what! You’re going…you’re going to die! I’m going to kill you!”
The unicorn trotted forward. Gold and silver seemed to surround her body in a halo of light. “No you’re not.”
“Hate!”
“Antithesis…I don’t know if you’re going to actually live through – ”
Pain shot from Antithesis’ chest again. She put one hoof to it, trying to keep whatever was in there in place even as she kept crawling forward. “I don’t…I don’t care!” She screamed. “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill everything you love! I hate you! I hate you! I HATE EVERYTHING –”
---
The Element of Magic was not torn bodily from Antithesis. The alicorn simply convulsed, there was a flash, and then quite suddenly it was there, the gemstone floating in front of her chest, over her heart. Antithesis’ hooves reached out, trying to grab it, but it drifted out of reach, floating to just before the four unicorns who were arranged in a semi-circle before Antithesis. The gem was a simple hexagon, looking like neither Twilight’s nor Trixie’s cutie mark, and indeed it floated equidistant between the four of them, even as the entire forest became lost in the appearance of a sudden, seemingly endless field of white that stretched in every direction, occupied only by the four unicorns and one dying alicorn.
Antithesis stared at the four of them, and at the Element of Magic. As the unicorns watched, her wings began to dissolve into dust, as did the tips of her hooves, her tail, her mane. She looked to her hooves in shock as they disappeared, mouth moving a few times without sound coming out.
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. More than half her body had disappeared. “I thought it would hurt…”
Twilight grimaced, taking a step forward in spite of herself, in spite of everything. Antithesis’ existance was ending – she was dying, if indeed she had ever been alive in the first place. “Antithesis…” she said. “I’m – I’m sorry that – ”
“I’m not,” Antithesis said, looking at Twilight as she continued to disappear. Almost all of her body had dissolved into dust by now, as the disappearance began tracing its way up her neck and to her head, even as it began claiming her horn. “I’m not sorry. And if I ever come back – I’ll do it all again.” Her eyes narrowed as she regarded Twilight cruelly. “My biggest regret is not taking one of you with me.”
“I don’t think I hate you, though,” Twilight said. “Not now. I just…pity you. You could never have really grown beyond what you were. I’d change that if I could.”
Antithesis was little more than her face, and even that was disappearing now. “I don’t want to change,” she said, as she was nothing more than narrow, hate-filled eyes and a mouth with clenched teeth. At last, even those dissolved into nothingness - and Antithesis was gone.