Triumphantly Charigris turned to where the mages had been huddled, the only true threat to him lying broken at his feet.

Only Erebus and Lana remained, but the sheer hate in the necromancer’s stare made Charigris revise his threat assessment. “That.” The archmage informed him coldly, voice echoing off the mountains, “Was a mistake.”

The bright burst of lurid green entropomancy carved a furrow in the elemental’s chest, criss-crossing the wound Alice had left. Erebus practically glowed as he drew in the mana the elemental had, so very unwisely, put into the air by its very presence, a second ray of purest disorder drilled a hole into Charigris’ shoulder.

For all that he had pierced the best part of a metre with that strike the wound was still a shallow one, the would-be King of the Ashes was simply that immense.

With another bestial declaration of “BURN!” Charigris threw a fireball at him. Admittedly a fireball the size of a house but still just a fireball, and Erebus’ thin lance of entropy easily unravelled it before it even left his hand, blowing away one of his fingers.

Erebus had never seen anyone look quite so confused, though he would concede the sheer size of Charigris’ face lent a magnifying glass to his confounded expression. As Alice had noted the elemental was a genuinely awful fighter, he simply had no idea what to do when confronted by anyone who could fight back.

But as Alice had also noted, he learned fast. First he focused on his maimed hand, a hearth elemental wailing in agony as he called upon its power to make himself whole once more. Charigris healing not just the hand but the wounds on his chest that Erebus had bestowed him, though it did little for the venomous gouges that Alice had left.

Erebus scowled, hitting him with another blast of entropy as he backed away, mostly for spite rather than effect. He might not be able to harm the elemental but he certainly could hurt it.

Though perhaps he could harm it. The necromancer’s gaze settled on the hearth elemental that had screamed, the poor creature meeting his gaze, hope shining brightly in its eyes. Not a hope born of any expectation he could actually put it out of its misery but just desperation, naked and terrible in its sincerity.

Normally teleporting the semi-substantial body of an elemental would be a monumental challenge, but Charigris’ very presence was putting mana enough into the air to make it almost easy, especially as, callous it was, the target didn’t need to survive for this to be effective.

Wordlessly Erebus cast his spell, the hearth elemental vanishing from its spot on Charigris arm. The necromancer didn’t know if it had survived or not, and likely never would, having sent it far far away to ensure the mammoth form of Charigris didn’t simply reabsorb it.

The great wildfire roared his refrain in outrage, raising a hand as it tried to send a volley of frozen spikes raining down on Erebus’ position only to stare dumbly as the blizzard elemental also disappeared, the scream of pain letting Erebus target it almost instantly.

“Borrowed power isn’t power.” Erebus informed him, a teacher to a particular dumb pupil. Magic empowering his voice so that it was almost an attack in its own right. Even as he spoke he stole an iceberg elemental, depositing it somewhere deep in Aegis Borealis.

It was perhaps a touch hypocritical given the mana he was using for the spells was coming from Charigris, but the Council of Mages had always taken the position that mana belonged to everyone, and Erebus was, at least in this moment, inclined to agree with them.

The colossal monster stepped forwards, closing the distance to bring his hands down in a double fisted smash. Erebus might have been able to stop most of his magical attacks but there really was nothing the mage could do to prevent Charigris simply hitting him.

Of course that didn’t mean he would just stand there and take the blow, if there was mana enough in the air to teleport an elemental then there was mana enough for him and Lana too, and though site to site teleportation was usually a terrible risk, the heat of Charigris had long killed any bugs that might have been in the air.

Appearing several hundred metres from where he’d been standing, though still face to face with his foe, Erebus managed to teleport out close to a dozen elementals of various flavours before Charigris could close the distance for another strike. Both of them could see the shape of the fight now. For all that hundreds of elementals yet remained entombed in the wildfire elemental’s body it was just a matter of time until the necromancer whittled that number down to zero.

Charigris didn’t bother with a physical blow this time, nor with any of his medley of borrowed powers, just flame, endless, impossible flame pouring off his body in all directions. The very essence of wildfire, undirected, hungry and savage.

There would be no teleporting away from this, not without fleeing the fight entirely. While there was more than enough mana in the air to leave, there was no guarantee there would be enough to get back.

Lana laughed as she stepped between Erebus and the wave of fire, unleashing her own assault, the hellfire burning away fire itself, leaving them both unscathed.

She stopped laughing as Charigris' punch, hidden by the bright flames, caught her and sent her flying. She would survive and return, but given the blow was sending her towards the horizon it was unlikely she’d return before the fight was over.

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Erebus stared him down, “You’re going to lose you know? Qrilotesh has slain hundreds of challengers, and I mean slain, not stitched onto herself like the world’s creepiest patchwork quilt. You can barely even control your own power.”

Charigris’ eyes narrowed as he forced himself to speak, the words making the ground shake, “I will make a new cult. I will grow stronger. I will crush the volcano queen. I will rule the ashes of this world.”

“You can’t though. The gig is up, everyone will know what you did here. You will be hunted down and slaughtered like a rabid animal.”

The elemental gave this some thought. “I will kill the hunters. I will seek out their places of power, their safe places. I will burn them. Burn their forests. Burn their farms.”

Erebus shook his head, unable to keep the chuckle from his voice, “You can’t even kill me little Charigris. Do you honestly think I am the worst thing that they’ll send for you? I’m not. They’ll send immortals, they’ll send a lich choir, they’ll send dragons. If you think you know fire then you have never felt dragonfire. Hellfire might be laced with chaos. Amara’s flames with hunger. Dragonfire uses annihilation.”

Again Charigris pondered, Erebus letting him have the time to think. “I will entomb the immortals in molten rock. I will burn the liches. I shall learn the secrets of dragonfire and devour them.”

“Very creative.” The necromancer mocked, “Truly you are one of the great thinkers of the age.”

“You are stalling little mage. Too proud to flee. You are going to die here. Now BURN!”

Erebus shrugged his shoulders, staring at a spot behind the elemental as Charigris prepared another omnidirectional torrent of wildfire that would finally scour the archmage from the face of Reath. “Well you’re half right there. I was stalling. A smarter person might have questioned why.”

The elemental ignored his words, but stopped as something cast a shadow over him. With the terrible slowness of one who knows what they’re going to see but has to look anyway, Charigris turned to stare up at Alice.

“Did I say we were done?” The warshifter snarled.

Her punch lifted Charigris off his feet, sending him toppling to the floor from which a quick thinking Erebus managed to teleport away from.

The warshifter, now a full head taller than the elemental grinned viciously. Her current body was quadrupedal, the elephantine legs attached to a massive torso. She’d gone with the torso so she could make best use of her new claws, the tips of each one dripping with basilisk venom, but they were just the distraction.

Hovering over each shoulder was a tail, each tipped with a stinger that had far more in common with a lance, if a lance had ever been made long enough spitroast a whale.

Charigris leapt to his feet, breathing in deeply for another bellow’s breath. Erebus managed to teleport out a couple of the elementals, but the King of the Ashes was calling upon all of them this time.

It didn’t matter, Alice was no longer the plucky underdog. Outmassed and outreached. One of her arms reached out, morphing into a long and muscley tentacle that wrapped around Charigris throat and redirect his breath high up into the air. She’d probably just put a hole in Reath’s ozone layer but the two of them were, for now, fine.

The tentacle squeezed tighter, the suckers developing razor sharp edges, of course coated in basilisk venom. Charigris howled, burning hotter and brighter until the tentacle fell away as flecks of ash, a tattoo of cuts across his throat.

With a hateful glare at Erebus the elemental retreated, boiling the flesh of another tentacular assault as he did so.

The trapped elementals inside him gave a final scream, their faces vanishing from his flesh as he absorbed them once and for all. Erebus could not rescue what did not exist, and though he could no longer call upon the dozens of different powers his prisoners had bestowed him, the necromancer could no longer teleport chunks of his body out of him either, reduced to just a bystander once more beyond blasts of entropy that Charagris amounted to little more than pinpricks.

The wildfire elemental let loose with fire in all directions. He knew he’d never outduel Alice in close quarters, his own hope now was to simply raise the temperature so far that the warshifter was incinerated by the very air, the infuriating mage alongside her.

He never got the chance. Alice charged him, there was a flash of stinger and the flames stopped.

Charigris stared down in disbelief at the two stings buried deep in his chest, visibly pumping venom into him. They weren’t melting.

“You have no idea how hard it is to create ceramics in a liver.” Alice informed him curtly.

Charigris kept staring, venom beginning to bubble out of his chest as it ate through him.

“I feel… cold.” The elemental said slowly, collapsing to his knees. The crown of flames flickered out, the rest of him fading fast. “All I wanted to do was burn things…?”

As last words went both of them had certainly heard worse, the King of the Ashes fading into the late morning air.

Erebus regarded the immense form of his friend, “You okay Al?”

“It was a good fight.” She said simply, sitting down with some difficulty.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you can just stay like that?” He suggested, patting a leg larger than the Necropolis tower he’d grown up in.

Alice laughed, the sound rolling like thunder cross the landscape, “Not a prayer. This is a pure warform. No stomach. No kidneys. No spleen. No… honestly it would be quicker to name the organs it does have. Lungs, hearts, brains, liver. That’s it. And about a dozen adrenal glands.”

Slowly she began to shrink. “It’s okay Ere. Everyone knows the hero dies at the end right?” She let out a weak laugh.

“Yeah.” He agreed. Tears weren’t falling yet, but it was a matter of when, not if. “Why is it never my turn?”

“It will be. One day.” She promised him, finally down to a human size. The body she’d worn in Arcadia, her true body, well mostly. It wasn’t right. For one there was no hair, and her tongue was forked. One of her eyes was simply missing and scales covered half of her face. “Now hush, this is meant to be my pity party, not yours.”

Her old friend snorted out a laugh, “How long do you think you have?”

“Oh… a couple of minutes at a guess. I’ve never shifted like that before. I’m not sure anyone has.” She put her arm around his shoulders, “I want you to know… it’s been fun.”

“It has, indeed, been fun.” He agreed, unable to hold back the tears anymore.

“Don’t fight it ya big softie, no one else is going to see and I won’t tell a soul. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

They didn’t say any more for a while after that. Just staring down the mountain at the ruined landscape in front of them.

“Hell of a view.” Erebus said finally, turning his head to smile at his friend.

Alice didn’t respond, she’d already left.

With an exhausted sigh Erebus lay her down and closed her eyes. “I’ll see you again, beyond the Veil.” He promised her, then slowly forced himself to his feet to go find his friends.