The world shook as the titanic air pressure of Slothari’s horns ripped apart the skies, sending tornadoes that quickly burst into flame as they sucked up lakes of lava into the sky. A hurricane grew in the middle of the sky, centered around the demon. A rumbling laugh burst out through the veil of storms, and Slothari suddenly stood before Jonathan, flickering with the aftereffects of some teleportation ability.
Jonathan raised his hands to block, but it was too late. Slothari’s horned fist struck his gut, and blades of wind carved into his skin beneath his armor, wriggling in through the joints. Spurting blood, he was shot backwards, an immense force sending him into the lava with a mighty crash. A wave of lava ten feet high hurtled out from his impact point, and he was driven deep into the molten rock, almost a mile down. The ocean of lava was shockingly deep, and he found himself without any indication of his position, given how dense the lava was. He floated in limbo, unable to sense which way was up, and which was down. At least, with his mortal senses.
His elemental power surged outwards, carving out a sphere of empty space around him. Before the lava could collapse inward, he swept out of his elemental perception, searching for any other elemental presences. Tendrils of the Void slid out, stretching to minute diameters in search of the ongoing battle. Before long, one found it, and he kicked off, his stamina surging through his legs. The lava exploded around him as his true strength was brought to bear, and with five strokes, he was out of the lava, and back into the fight.
Slothari was slowly beating Arkanon back, but to Jonathan’s surprise, the man was doing quite well against the circle lord. Although it was clearly a losing battle, as shown by the hundreds of deep cuts littering his body, he had landed a few hits of his own. Most of them had targeted the hole in Slothari’s shoulder, widening the wound and weakening the arm. Although the form she had picked seemed mostly immune to physiological detriments, having an arm attached by two strips of flesh still affected her.
Jonathan summoned the Void beneath him, creating a surfboard of purple energy. Then he sliced off into the sky, his fists leading the way. Cataclysmic amounts of elemental energy condensed down into his gauntlets, making them blaze like purple stars. That only served to conceal the true danger, the field of nothingness that surrounded them. Ten thousand points of mana joined the conglomeration, along with his Domain. His fists were as devastating as low yield nuclear bombs at this point, and the battle was only getting started. Anything past this in terms of mana would start to damage him as well.
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Slothari turned towards him, tanking a hit from Arkanon in exchange for the ability to react to Jonathan’s incoming attacks. One arm snapped up, a bulwark of wind forming before it. A grin flashed across Jonathan’s face, and he struck with both fists. The wind was smashed apart, and a wave of magical unbinding cut apart the elemental energy, leaving Slothari vulnerable. Before the circle lord could react, Jonathan drove his fists into her face. Horns broke beneath the strike, and a crater was blasted into her head. In return, he took a devastating kick to his ribs that caved in an entire side of his torso. The pain was blinding, but he pushed through it. It was better than death. This was the final battle, for better or for worse. Now that he could actually match Slothari to some degree, there was no way she would let him escape like before.
As the battle continued, punches and kicks sending shockwaves through the air, Slothari spoke.
“So the ant has become a hornet,” Slothari ground out, between broken teeth. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“What am I then?” Arkanon asked. “To the being who stole everything I loved?”
Slothari sneered. “I don’t even know who you are. Just another Uthraki, getting ideas above his station.”
She caught an incoming strike from Arkanon and drove an elbow into his stomach, a boom rattling the air as he was blasted backwards, skipping along the surface of the lava ocean. Smite had run out by this point, and Jonathan was scrounging for every scrap of Divinity he could find, trying to muster enough to even the odds. His Blessing was also offline, on its own cooldown period.
As a result, he was slowly being pushed back by Slothari, his bones taking the brunt of the force. Even his prodigious regeneration had its limits, and when a bone was shattered a dozen times over, healing began to take longer and longer. Meanwhile, Slothari’s demonic form was wracked with wounds, but so far, the strongest form of the circle lord Jonathan had ever seen was undoubtedly still in the fight. Compared to the battle of magic that his duel with Granath had been, this fight was far more physical in nature.
Eventually, his Divinity recovered, along with his Blessing. Triggering the third Eye of Exal’drin first, he weaved around a barrage of supersonic punches, and then used Greater Smite. As power filled his form, he punched straight into Slothari’s chest. Strength beyond his stats was brought to bear as he used up a full half of his various energy pools, using Ephemeral Trifecta to make such a thing possible. His own flesh burnt beneath the power of his strike, crisping as he channeled the might of the Void into the world. Slothari’s eyes widened, but it was too late. An entire third of her upper chest vanished, and a beam of purple light shot off into the sky, striking the cavern ceiling high above. A massive chunk of rock fell, a few dozen miles away. Jonathan paid it no heed, after realizing that it was well away from any cities.