Kiriel’s fury dyed the grey skies with fire and burgundy. Splotches of blood took the place of the Sun, for no Sun rose even though it must have been dawn.
The black-haired Vakarite shunted the full force of her blood beast into the skeletal demon, her face contorted in an expression of the utmost hatred. The crimson horn of her steed splintered through Azerath’s ribs, aiming for its spine; Azerath deflected the tip by mere yards with its reaction, dropping Cantor to the earth. Yet, the demon did not expect such a wanton velocity, and momentarily lost its footing; and as a dozen tons of blood gathered by Kiriel began to crackle on its bones, its eyes went wide with surprise.
Kiriel snapped her fingers.
The blood burst like firecrackers, shattering its joints and rocketing the demon back like a pendulum striking another. Kiriel descended to Cantor as she unholstered a crystal vial of blood from her back, twirling its contents out with a deft motion of her fingers and lassoing them into Cantor’s mouth. With three swift cuts from her nails, she carved into the back of her hand the symbol of a spell, darting her eyes forth from Cantor and to the ragdolling demon.
Azerath tumbled unceremoniously for half a thousand yards, but regrew its skeletal feet and hands, clawing at the rubble to skid to a halt. Finding its footing again, it launched itself, pulverizing the earth.
“Cripple it,” remarked Kiriel under her breath, as she clapped her hands together and Cantor’s severed tongue instantly sprouted whole again.
Azerath was a mere hundred yards away.
“Akon-TAKUA!” Cantor pronounced in fury, as a giant earthen fist shot up from the ground and punched the demon sideways. “Heal Ahura then Mithra!”
“Cover my back,” said Kiriel, clapping her hands to vanish into smoke, galloping forth into speed again with her blood steed.
The earthen fist shattered in its impact against Azerath, but so too did the demon’s ribs and shoulder. It skid to a halt, its skeletal head darting back and forth between the salamander arcanist and the scent-trail of the Vakarite woman who had vanished like the first time.
“Kure! Kure! Tanpah!” Cantor shouted, as his staff flew across the sky and latched onto his sticky hands. He cracked his neck and hoicked a bloody spit onto the ground, clearing his mouth, throwing off his robes to reveal his body turning fire-red.
“YOU tear out my tongue? YOU want to FRIGGIN’ GO?”
The demon burst into a clamoring sprint towards Kiriel’s path.
Cantor immediately set fire to his back, fashioning a pair of flaming wings, blasting off towards the demon and catching up to it with sonic concussions.
“SUNFIRE METARAX!”
A hundred watermelon-sized pieces of rubble shot themselves into the air all around the advancing demon, following its path, and honed themselves into lustrous cones.
With furious signs from his fingers and a chant too fast for the human ear to hear, Cantor commanded the bullettes of rubble to rocket themselves into every single bone in Azerath’s body, leaving rays of luminescent orange in their trails. They perforated Azerath’s shinbone and femur; Cantor rose a hundred again and fired at Azerath, compelling it to stop its advance, rose a hundred again and fired at Azerath, and summoned a hundred again and again and again, spraying the bullettes into the demon’s skeletal structure so fast that their omnidirectional trails carved a radiant pattern of sunflower seeds, singing the air with their heat.
Azerath tumbled to the ground and sprouted long shields of bone from its forearm, and rotated like a cyclone, deflecting the incoming barrage of bullettes and restoring its perforated femur – it detached its shield and threw it full force at Cantor, who dodged; the demon laid out a punch to Cantor in a hundredth of a second, but Cantor had blocked it with his own shield of rubble, disintegrating it – it grabbed Cantor again, squeezing to kill him like a bursting balloon, but Cantor turned to dust – the real Cantor, appearing by the head of the demon, shot lightning full force into its skeletal head and eyes until arcs of plasma growled and licked at the clouds; Azerath, shunting its consciousness away from its head and down into its hip-bone, protruded itself in a barrage of spikes at Cantor’s body, forcing his lightning spell away.
Cantor turned to dust once again, the real one preparing to strike from just behind, but Azerath kicked Cantor away with its hind legs, and burst forth into the direction of the Vakarite woman it could see with the two brothers in the distance.
Kiriel had finished carving the blood spell, and had fished blood out of Mithra to infuse it to Ahura, but saw the titanic shadow of the skeletal beast fall in front of them, raising its feet to stomp on them all.
A distant yell from away, and an entire building’s worth of rubble landed like a meteor from the sky and into Azerath, making it lose balance.
Kaniya’s cyan eyes glowed like night-fire, advancing into Azerath with Rudra, her blood and guts issuing forth from the hole in her chest.
“CANTOR!” bellowed Kaniya, as Cantor rose huge spikes of earth and impaled Azerath in its backwards stumble, making it unable to move.
Kaniya jumped and strained her arm to swing Rudra into the demon’s neck, but before she could build up the full force of her swing, Azerath scrunched up its neck and headbutted her full force with its skull; the axe splintered the cap and fell through it towards the ground as Azerath reformed its bones around Cantor’s towering spikes. It rotated itself in a tornado of sharpened bone and blades, making Kaniya and Cantor dodge momentarily – and then grabbing both in the blink of an eye with its hands, scrunched them up, and threw them as far as it could into the mountainside behind the palace two thousand yards away.
Azerath darted its eyes to Kiriel, Ahura, and Mithra, once again bringing down its foot.
Kiriel was etching another spell of hers into her second hand so she could bind Azerath, to force him away, and Mithra had similarly made a fireball by the side of its torso to miss them in its stumble, but its feet was laden with spikes and coming down upon them before Ahura could be restored to use his Ayumastra;
CRACKLE – CRACKLE – BANG –
A colossal beam of red energy vaporized its descending leg and spiked foot in an instant, and another blew off its grasping hands. Booms thundered into their ears as a diamond-shaped monolith of sandstone smashed like a comet into Azerath, blasting it back several hundred feet.
Hexagonal shields descended upon each of their battered figures.
“Connection reestablished. I am back, friends. And now I am properly ‘angry’,” relayed Chatterbox into their minds, as it landed in front of them to crater the ground.
“Chatterbox!” Kiriel and Mithra screamed in elation, embracing their monolithic mate and rubbing their faces in its runic grooves.
Their minds once again opened to the voices of each other. “Friends, it is no time for joy. Kiriel, assistance needed for Ahura’s diaphragm and ankle, and Mithra’s right arm.”
Kiriel wasted no time in threading Mithra’s blood into Ahura’s veins, swirling it into the cavity of his diaphragm with her closed eyes, and sealed it as a weaver fixes cloth.
Ahura took a sputtering gasp as his chest heaved on his own accord once more, breathing in and out with heavy sighs, color returning to his cheeks. Kiriel continued to work on Ahura’s ankles, joining them back in their sockets; Ahura held out his forearm next without hesitation as Kiriel pierced into them and coaxed out several rivulets of blood, buttering them onto the stump of Mithra’s right shoulder and weaving the form of his arm again with new flesh.
Words found their place in Ahura’s throat once more.
“Much obliged!” conveyed Ahura instantly for Kiriel and the others, his tone infused with the utmost thanks. “Chatterbox, timeslip!”
“Acknowledged, but I will not be able to maintain it for long, friends.”
Chatterbox opened their minds to receive and engage with large volumes of speech. Time seemed to momentarily slow in their minds. Azerath’s form was smouldering, creaking up to face their direction slowly, its alien celerity seeming to be dampened by their extended experience of time.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Kiriel, Hora and Cyrus safe?”
“Safely delivered and on their way,” she nodded.
“Thank you. Kaniya, Cantor, can you hear us?”
“…..”
“Kaniya! Cantor!”
“….”
“Chatterbox, can you amplify?”
“I am experiencing some malfunctions. Shields must be lowered to have an effect. Is this acceptable?”
“Lower mine, keep others the same strength.”
“Recalibrating.”
The translucent hexagonal shields covering Ahura retracted into nothingness.
“Kaniya! Cantor! Do you hear us?”
Still nothing.
“Ahur….. we….. injuries –”
Their minds and ears pricked towards the direction of the pair.
“Kiriel,” Mithra commanded, “ride immediately to them. We shall hold our –”
“…I SAID NO INJURIES! DON’T RIDE!” boomed Kaniya’s protest. “STAY THERE!”
“Isn’t there a hole in the middle of your chest?” Kiriel relayed.
“By injuries, she means anything that will cause her to actually die. You know how she is,” Cantor clucked his tongue even in their minds.
“But at that velocity –”
“Ey, Kiriel, a piece of cake for my spells. Luckily the hyena imbecile threw us together. If it threw only Kaniya, I don’t think it’s gonna have gone well for this martial…”
“Shut up… Kiriel, receive me,” came Kaniya’s voice.
“How far behind are you?”
“Seven hundred yards…”
Azerath had fully regrown its bones and was lowering itself into the stance of a pounce. From the time Chatterbox landed in front of them, it had been less than 7 seconds.
“Chatterbox, can you fry it again?”
“Negative. It will interfere with our neural links.”
“Then this is the plan. Everyone, we now know this demon’s full capabilities. So far, two hearts are down. The final one must be hiding in the marrows of its bone, somewhere. We will need to locate it and destroy it. But two things stand in our way,” Ahura clarified, his speech flowing from his head as fast as he could think. His vision honed to a sharp focus, running through the memory of battle that he’d been observing since the beginning, even while he had been incapacitated.
“Problem one, the beast’s disgusting regeneration ability, and problem two, its ability to shunt its heart around to whichever part of its body it sees fit. The greatest threat to us is its constant regeneration ability. It allows it to regrow its arms, legs, head, and claws which it uses for physical attacks. We will hence do all in our power to cleave away all of its bones and everything that can serve as offense with frightening speed, so that it cannot regenerate enough to go on the offensive. Chatterbox will slow our perception of time in specific moments to deliver the necessary blows and put it on an extended defensive. While we are doing that, Kiriel heals Kaniya, and then joins in the fight to bind it. Kaniya, you do your thing after you’re healed. Our coordinated attacks will keep the demon stationary enough for us to continue cleaving away at its bones, find its heart, and vanquish it for good! Everyone got it?”
“Aye-aye!” They shouted in unison.
“Chatterbox, be mindful of its punches,” Mithra cautioned.
“Acknowledged, Mithra-friend.”
Kaniya and Cantor were blazing across the sky in their approach. Azerath kicked its legs. Distended rubble sprayed from its heels.
“I will send you and your lot to the Abyss, Azerath,” Ahura clenched his teeth and cracked his knuckles. “NOW!”
“AKON-TAKUA!” Cantor bellowed, his tongue flying in the wind of his advance, hurling Kaniya down to Kiriel’s embrace. Giant stone fists rose up and swung at Azerath in its sprint.
Azerath smashed itself through them, but not before Cantor relayed his cue to Ahura –
“MAIAR DUNYA-ARH!” Ahura commanded ferociously to the winds, as a thousand tons of air crashed down upon the demon’s spine and pinned it to the rubble.
“Mithra, spark!”
“Dance of the Kalpa Flame,” Mithra shouted, already gathering the energy of the world around him in a series of spiraling staccatos, freezing the rubble. “WORLD-SHAPER, FLAME OF ORIGIN!”
A brilliant point of light emerged between his gathered hands, crackling like bottled lightning. Cantor immediately leapt into the air, taking the point of light into the tip of his staff.
“SURA, KORE, YORUKITESH, MAZ-NIRKAL UNDREZAMAHAN!”
The world and all atmosphere flickered for a moment as the point of light exploded into a colossal beam of fire, hurtling towards Azerath. It struggled to break free, and shot bony quills into Ahura in the air who was keeping it down, but Chatterbox shunted the shields of others in front of him. The quills shattered on impact as Ahura clapped his hands together, squeezing the demon tighter and tighter into an invisible box for the oncoming approach of dragonbreath from Mithra and Cantor.
A tenth of a second later, and the horizontal plume of yellow-hot fire met the demon head-on, with its heat so fierce that the ice on the rubble 10 yards from the sides of the plume sublimated, and the stone underneath began to melt into lava. The hair of all of Ahura’s Six swept back from the typhoon-gale winds issued by the expansion of the air. Cantor held out his staff as long as he could, his skin beginning to blister from the radiated heat. Mithra covered for his friend, pulling the heat away from Cantor’s flesh and refeeding it into the beam of fire.
Azerath made a primal roar into their heads, prompting them to clench their teeth. But it was not over.
“Not going to be enough!” relayed Ahura into their heads, observing the bones of the demon charring and cleaving away piece by piece but not vaporizing fully under the flame relentless. “Kiriel! Kaniya! We need you as soon as the plume breaks!”
“Almost there!” said Kiriel, reweaving every broken capillary in her friend’s body, with Kaniya wrapping a loop of bloodied bandages on her hand that was gripping the broken shaft of Rudra.
Ahura felt as the demon Azerath coiled its strength up like a spring, and stood explosively, whiplashing the air and the weaves of the world into his head.
Ahura’s eardrums burst and so did his wrists that were holding the air together.
But he was going to see this through.
“NOW!” Ahura shouted, hearing his muffled voice through his head and mind, as Azerath’s tenebris skeletal form, missing its ribs and other extraneous protrusions, lunged at them.
Cantor extinguished his flame and ducked as Kiriel leapt in front of him in a somersault of bloody blades.
Kiriel sliced off the long locks of her hair and threw it into the sky, and clapped her hands; from the heavens descended chains of blood that struck Azerath once, twice, and then dozens more. The chains looped and wrapped themselves tightly around the holes and gaps in the demon’s bone, their pointed ends then hooking into the ground, yanking the demon back from its advance.
Azerath grabbed a descending chain and bit it off with its half-shapened skeletal jaw, but Kaniya descended from the sky with her poleaxe and ran a monstrous cleave through its femur, her breath and strength restored. Without wasting a second, she ran a series of cleaves so fast that her swings shattered every remaining bone in its knees, shins, and feet, prompting to crumple to the ground by the waist – it protruded a blade of bone without warning in Kaniya’s path, intending to bisect her, but Ahura was already in between them, smashing the skeletal scimitar into smithereens with his air.
The demon made a ferocious growl and then ripped off one chain with its remaining jaw, roaring a language alien to their ears that pooled all the blood of remaining corpses in a hundred yard radius and hurtled it at them in a tornado of knives, but Kiriel stopped them halfway, her left hand focused on keeping the chains bound, and her right stopping Azerath’s commanded blood – and Cantor leapt down to deliver a brutal pole of metal through its head, piledriving it with hundreds more that shredded the bone and pierced its eyes.
The demon reached back and swung its claws with a hideous snarl into Kaniya and Ahura, but Chatterbox selectively descended and retracted shields just as it was about to hit them, making the arms shatter the hexagons instead; Mithra cleaved its two arms off, saw them boil at their sockets and begin to regrow, and sliced them off as the splinters of bone exploded forth; sensing the opportunity, Ahura shouted the command for them to enter a frenzy to destroy as much of the demon as possible.
All the world seemed to break loose as Ahura, Mithra, Kaniya, and Cantor all weaved and ducked and swung their techniques of brilliant fire, crushing air, luminescent swings and pummeling metal into Azerath’s bones, flecking it off and destroy it inch by inch, feet by feet, yard by yard, overcoming the pace with which Azerath was explosively regrowing them; until at last, the swings of the Six managed to cleave the exterior of its torso and ribs, and then the middle, and then the interior, revealing within its solar plexus the visage of a pulsating, beating, tenebris heart, full of malice and oozing with drums of life taken from tens of thousands of innocent souls.
Chatterbox opened and closed his barriers to save his friends from being impaled by the heart’s corrosive cones, pulsating like a sea-urchin; Ahura blasted away the fibrous tissue surrounding the heart, exposing it wholly to the air; Mithra broke the regenerating webs of bone, Kaniya cleaved away the yet regrowing carapace of its heart-chamber, Cantor severed its spinal cord, and Kiriel bound her chains tigher and tighter, fighting back against Azerath’s last-ditch attempt at regeneration.
And at last, the heart was completely open for the final strike.
Ahura and Mithra drove down their flaming lances into Azerath’s final heart that gave it the status of the Ordo of Truth, and Kaniya swung Rudra’s thousand-ton axe-edge into it, and so did Cantor with his spikes of metal and Kiriel with the spearheads of her blood-chains –
And as the weapons pierced it to relegate it to oblivion, the heart cried out, opening a mouth and revealing a set of serrated teeth.
It shouted towards the red skies, its roiling form tumultous like a tempestuous sea:
“MY KING! I BESEECH THEE FOR THY SALVATION!”
And suddenly, all landscape around them disappeared. The rubble gave way to a darkness absolute, extending below their feet into a darkness deeper than any chasm in the earth, the cosmos dyed a black deeper than any night without stars or the moon. The cardinal directions seemed to stretch into an infinity of tenebris.
And from the heavens of wild night, a giant eye opened into existence, its irises formed of concentric rings of varying colors shifting in and out of being, colors which neither Ahura nor anyone could fathom to exist.
The eye set its pupil upon them all.
Ä̸͖̤s̵̑̌̀ͅk̴̤̩̠̽͌͒͜,̷̲͇͊̍̓ ̴̙͖̙̘͉̍̈́̿͝a̷̜̋͌̈̈́͜ͅn̶̡͖͚͓̄̍̉̿͌d̵̡̩͉̺̑͊̀ ̶̗̩̤̅͝ẙ̵̪͇̦̠̆ǫ̶̛͙̘̮̼͊̅͘ú̸̙̙͒͑ ̵̿͜s̵̗̺̀͋̚͝͝h̶̳̟̘́͐́̕͝ạ̵̛́́l̶͕̬͊͋̓l̵͔͚̍͊ͅ ̴̡̦͔͚̊̃́̅͝r̸̫̠͐̇͂͜͝e̵̛͖͕̬̓͜͝c̷̢̻͍̪̀̈́̌ḛ̵͆͐i̷͇̐v̶͇̓̓́ẻ̸̡̡̐̏͠,̵̞̫̮̰͕́͛̅̍,
M̵̦̞̒̆̀̓y̵̜̼̺͂ ̵̼͛b̸͕͋͐̀͒̚ḛ̸̤̍a̵̢̫̞̱͚͑̿ų̴̳͚̉̆͂t̸̨͔͕̺͐̂í̷͙͈͌̎̚͝f̶̱̆́̓̕͠ṵ̶̏̑̇̕l̵̝͛͑̏ ̴̣̈́͜c̴̭̎͠h̷̫̰̭̬́̏͝i̴̙̦̞̤̒̔̑̚l̴̞̖͕͙͋d̴͉̟̓͜.̴͔͓̙̳͠.̷̧͙̜̘̱̈́.̴̘̻̏̽̏̽…