"That's not it. . ." says Lanetli as he stared death at a rock that seemed inconsequential, but had likely experienced more than anything living had.
"You seriously just trail off at the most interesting and intense moment in your entire story?" asks Alex.
"Do you have any idea how many times you have interrupted me during incredibly intense and interesting moments in the last few hours we've been talking?" Lanetli responds distractedly.
"Carry on," says Alex after a moment of silence.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Why do I feel like helping this kid?" says Lanetli under his breath.
"What?" Alex asks before being promptly ignored.
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The demon looked like it wanted to draw out my final moments as long as it could. I felt like a bug under a microscope, being picked apart and studied.
"This was very interesting indeed." said the demon as it raised its arm to kill me with his claws of Corruption made from stolen magic. I looked up, vision going blurry and barely able to stay on my knees, leaning on Sonsuz Kiyamet, the Final Moment in an attempt to face death with my head held high. It brings its hand down, swiping for a decapitation. I dismiss my blade, falling face-first into the blood-churned mud. The claws swiped over my head, missing me by bare inches. I tasted the mud, earth and filled with iron as it was, but I happily left it in my mouth, because it had gained me a few seconds to live. I push myself back to my knees, arms moments from giving out. The demon allows me to sit up again, looking amused. "That was clever, a way to gain moments to live. I believe I will learn much from all of you." says the demon as he moves his hand back up. I'm too slow to fall again, as my weight isn't put entirely on my blade now.
This was it. My final moment. My last thoughts. I thought of Elysia, attempting to make my last thoughts of her so I could see her in our eternal hell of reliving our last moments. We would be together. I see the ground cracking and breaking twenty feet from the demon. It noticed me and turned to face it with confusion plain on its face. This was not the demon's work, evidently.
The ground continued breaking, and as the surface broke and started swelling, magic erupted from the fractured area. I was smothered in it and started choking on an icon so far above my own, so far above everything, the very building blocks of my world and the pyramid combined. The area shouted REALITY louder than any magic I had ever seen, stronger than the force I had attempted to channel when I was conducting the siege ritual that made a half incarnate. The demon didn't seem to be doing any better, seemingly choking on the air, eyes wide. This one power slowly breaking through the ground had power greater than that of every icon combined. This was far more than magic, this was the fundamental existence of everything, worlds upon worlds upon worlds represented in one physical manifestation so dense magic orbited it with fear like planets around a great star.
A great war hammer finally broke through the ground and the intensity doubled, then reigned itself in, pulling back, but still present. A man stepped from the hole as if through a doorway, and then he was instantly righted. He turned his gaze to the two of us standing there, and the Light mage crumbled off to the side, unconscious and bloody. I stared at him, unwilling to give up. The demon saw him and I felt him try to pull at the man's magic but it didn't budge, instead pulling some of the magic from the demon into orbit around him like one of Saturn's rings.
"What's going on here?" asked the man in a deadpan tone, seemingly conversational in nature.
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"I ask that you leave us be, this is a noble duel and I will take my win." said the demon, clearly trying to finish me off before running for the hills from this man.
"Backwater sons of bitches. The guy clearly lost dude, just let him go." said the man with the war hammer that could break worlds.
"I. . . I can't. My honor would be questioned." it responded.
"That's how I know you're not human," he said back and heavily swung his hammer at the demon faster than I could see. I felt the demon's soul try to return to its world, but it was stomped out under the power of the world that just crushed it into nothing. "Now I have to take care of what I actually came here for," he said.
He turns back to the crack in the world and slams his hammer forward and hits an invisible wall. The crack snaps out of existence, and the man then rams his hammer into the wall again and a smaller rift appears, and her steps through before it closes behind him.
"What the fuck did I just witness?" I asked no one in particular before finally submitting to exhaustion and falling on my face, covered in blood and mud.
I wake up, breaking myself from the dried mud that kept me captured. I stand, feeling pain all over from infections in cuts that had festered over my recovery. I use my instant regeneration and wander over to where the Light mage had passed out. I kneel down and check her pulse, knowing that some injuries are a bigger deal if you move the victim.
Her pulse was gone. I knew I shouldn't have let her come, she didn't know what she was getting into, and I dragged her into a fight I couldn't win myself or with her. The god-like being was the only one that could kill the demon with such ease. I know that there is a ceiling to power, but fuck that man was galaxies above that ceiling and I have no idea how he got there.
All I knew was that I fucked up, and I owe that man more than just my own life. He closed the rift that no one could close, potentially ever. I fucked up, I got people killed, I killed personally, I drew the ire of demons more powerful than anything else I had seen to this point, and I owed what was left of my life to him, even as I intend to advance and save Elysia's soul. It was selfish, I knew, but this was what I had become.
A lesser demon comes crashing through, a large reptile with spikes along its back and tail running at me on all fours. I draw my blade and dance around the creature, setting deep cuts into its skin and spraying thick tar all over the clearing of dried mud and the hard rock that the blood of the lesser demons had turned into. I finish off the demon, now used to fighting demons at this point.
During my battle, I realize something that I hadn't considered. Just because the rift is closed, doesn't mean the demons are gone. They still spread like a plague on this world. The greater demons will find a way back, with the low amounts of Corruption in the ambient magic they can't sustain themselves on this world. The lesser demons will own this world if they can't be eradicated.
I start walking back to the cave, killing any demons that dare get close enough to be perceived by my mage senses. When I reach the camp I am immediately greeted with cheering and teary gratitude. I had been gone longer than I had thought, trying to stay awake and fight for so long after I lost control of an area of this layer of reality had made my recovery time much longer, it seemed.
"You did it!"
"I thought that would never go away!"
"I love you!"
I wasn't sure where that last one came from, with the large group yelling to give me their thanks all at once. "Shut up! I need to talk to your leader. There are still problems we need to discuss." I yelled out over the crowd. They got quiet quickly and I moved forward to enter the cave, taking turns until I reach the office.
I'm greeted by a man sporting greying hair and wrinkles across his flesh. This was different, though nothing a year or two couldn't have caused. "You're back. I see you kept your promises. I appreciate it, I do. Even if I spent my remaining life dealing with the consequences." he said as he watched me return.
"You might need to do more. The lesser demons are still here. They are deadly to anyone not a mage, and they are willing to eat anything to get a meal." I told him, feeling bad about forcing him to do more at his advanced age.
"What is it? Do you need battalions? Weapons?" he asked, ready to give me whatever I needed.
"I need. . . I don't know." I said. Then I had an idea. A bad one, to be sure, but it would kill off all of the lesser demons. "I can kill off all of the resources of the world. I can starve out the lesser demons."