They froze.

“Hello, children. I see you’ve made it back here. You’re clever, y’know, but you should have stayed where you were.”

He chuckled like a sicko.“The instabilities really weren’t that bad, and if you knew what was good for you, it would’ve been tolerable.”

He reached behind his back, allowing his energy to flow betwixt his fingers and into the weapon he grasped.

“Instead,” he sighed, “you had to crawl back here, and try to take out one of my best guards. I’m sorely sorry about.. I’m not. You deserve this one, since you just couldn’t keep away.”

With a slicing sound through the air, the swift movement of the sword as it skimmed Amity’s sleeve and stabbed the sand instead stung to Cornet, but he kept it hidden. It lifted out, swung sideways and again, barely missed the two on that side.

Raleigh darted behind him, but his kick was like that of a horse, sending him doubled over on the ground. Kaiya also happened to be able to run around him, attempting to take him by surprise as he swung, the sharp, electrified blade managing to finally strike Himiko, tumbling her over.

The leg he had hit was bleeding, and although she knew it would be a terrible idea, Katie tried to pull her over, to heal.

Himiko stared into Katie’s eyes as Cornet forced the blade through her left arm, entirely severing it, and rending the flesh from the bone just to keep certain it would never be returned.

Knowing they were near death, he walked away, forming into the sand before their eyes to traverse faster towards the others.

Himiko dragged herself to be free from beneath Katie, as well as to grab the arm that had split from her.

She had her bend as best as she could to meet the arm where it once was, before grabbing the rock from her pocket. Himiko healed the wound, hoping they would reattach, but…

When Himiko moved her hand, seeing if the arm was attached to Katie, nothing had happened. The wound was sealed, on both ends, but the arm was split.

“Shit…”

“It’s fine, I can mourn my arm later. Come back over here.”

Katie sat up on the chunk of rock behind her, and dug out a blood-stained slip of paper. She grabbed the green rock unintentionally kept with her, chipping it by slamming it on the rock behind, and prepared a glyph. It functioned just enough to stop the pretty major bleeding from Himiko’s end, and seal it enough to let her stand.

On the other side of the island, Amity was barely fending him off. Cornet had gotten a good stab in on Raleigh, and Kaiya was healing him while she fought. The ice that Amity had formed into a shield kept splintering, but it near immediately rejoined as she put all of her energy into it. Lightning from Himiko sprawled across the land, giving Amity just enough hope to try a daring split, diving to the side and having ice lock his wrists together and embed in the sand as he bent backwards, surprised at the electricity coursing through his veins.

Cornet shook around, trying to writhe free from the ice as Himiko darted to the rest of them, Katie following.

“Jesus- did he tear your arm off?”

Before she could reply to Amity, the sand that Cornet abandoned when he, in a last-ditch attempt to exit the ice sunk into the sand and fled for the moment, covered Katie and got into her eyes. She forced a cough and rubbed her eyes. Before Cornet, appearing behind her, was able to plunge the blade into her neck, Amity was able to skim another bolt of lightning into him, forcing him to step back and nearly stumble on a rock.

The other girl, standing vaguely near Katie, jumped up and bashed into him with another lightning bolt, which managed to just barely put him off balance. At least, just off-balanced enough to make him drop the sword, lodging in the sand.

The added sting of the sword in the sand managed to finally knock Cornet down, and everyone essentially dog-piled him. The blade was ripped from the sand as everyone launched specifically damaging magic towards him.

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Katie, overrun with adrenaline still, ran to grab her arm while the rest of them did their dirty work, and returned holding one hand in the other. She used it not as a weapon, but as a way to get everyone’s attention.

“Guys!”

Nobody really spoke. They kept inflicting shock after burn after strike.

“Everyone!” Waving her arm in-front of Amity’s face.

Her voice did stop them this time.

“Can we stop, please? He’s incapacitated. We can just go.”

Everyone retracted their weapons, magical or otherwise, and started away from him. With their one threat more-or-less eliminated, they just had a short walk to finally make it home.

The portal frame, constructed from rocks seemingly stood there for centuries and worn on this planet for even longer, appeared radiant to the group as they finally took their first steps onto the solid base.

While Katie and Raleigh were staring into the distance to keep watch on Cornet, making sure he wasn’t standing, Amity bolted through the process of putting together a solution to activate the portal. She formed some water in the air, and put the powdered medium into it. The familiar glow had her excited, and she splashed it onto the corner of the rocky rectangle.

Nobody noticed that the portal had again activated, because they saw something else ready itself for activity.

Cornet traveled along the grain of the sand, sending himself directly into Amity.

He fired unreasonable quantities of lightning bolts towards her, which for being nearly point-blank shots, Amity set up an ice shield to block them fairly well.

“You’re not getting out of here!”

Cornet switched his strategy up, going for melting her shield rather than firing in vain into it. The burn against his skin as a result of the close ranged fire didn’t bother him immediately, but it did force Amity to put as much energy as she could into repairing the quickly waning shield.

The rest of the group, as a result of turning away from the swiftly launched sand from his mad dash over here, spotted the portal.

Katie and Raleigh, being definitively the weakest of the few, were instructed to go back home while the two people who could actually use magic went to back up the primary fighter.

Grabbing the rocks from her pocket, it took effort to figure out which one was which. Even though it didn’t feel like a big deal then, the magic they provided felt weaker now. She noticed this majorly when, on her sole attempt to actually use any of them, the magic seemed to sputter, coming to a halt and refusing to flow.

Nothing could be done, as far as she knew. When Kaiya tried what she could do, it stopped too. Despite her seemingly native natural magic - ever since her death, she hadn’t needed to use any external mediums - the flow around her simply halted.

Against her better judgement, she took tentative steps into the portal with Himiko. While they got to enjoy those free moments of familiarity, the one person who couldn’t quite yet was fighting the sole thing stopping it.

She felt a few jabs prod the thinning shield, which she reasonably keep up being repaired.

Shit… They all went. And, he’s gonna bust through soon enough.

There was no real solution in her mind - no dodges seemed possible, all of her energy was going into holding the heavy chunk of ice and keeping it from getting destroyed, and her sole way out of death if something happened just made it back home - but that’s better than the rest of them getting killed with her. One is less bad than five.

With a crack, the ice broke. Her shield made it so long, but it finally let out.

As per usual, the sword ran through the air and towards a target, and this time it struck gold.

Even though it might have been something she thought she’d be used to by this point, that terrible sound of flesh splitting from flesh and bone ripping itself apart never sat right. It was such a moist sound, every time sealing the deal that someone’s life was forever changed, or worse.

She fell to her knees clutching her gut, and hit her side as she curled up.

Blood dripped from the blade, carrying that sickly sweet feeling in Cornet’s mind that he had finally triumphed over the biggest threat of that group of humans, so he may someday finally actually fulfill his divine purpose, and the feeling of pain coursing through that of Amity.

He wiped the pale gray blood from the otherwise red-stained blade with a quick spray of water, and vanished into the distance.

***

“Is she okay out there?”

Sitting on Himiko’s bed, while Kaiya tried to use magic to reattach Katie’s arm, they worried about their friend. Nothing seemed to be working for her arm, but the pain and shock you’d expect from that severe of an injury wasn’t quite there. Maybe the healing power had helped wean the body off of the adrenaline rush, or maybe it just hadn’t ended yet. Both options were prevalent in the healer’s mind, but she didn’t let any doubts out about why the expectant symptoms weren’t there.

“Are you feeling decent enough with your… lack of an arm, to go back out there and check on her?”

“Yeah, whatever, we just need to go and make sure she’s not dead.”

It was a pretty important decision, but there was no dawdling, her running out there, back through the portal. The rest of the group followed, stumbling over boxes and blankets as they chased her down.

Entering back into the ever sandy place, they noticed the body of their friend just sitting there. And, they saw Cornet, smug, not even turning back for the ruckus behind him.

Readying her magic, Kaiya went over to inspect the damage, while Himiko ran towards Cornet, preparing to fight and clearly not ready to stop.

It was worse than anything she could’ve imagined.

She healed it as best she could, but it left her unsettled. Beyond just being her friend, and leading them finally home, ripped apart and left to die, the wound itself felt… unnatural.

Nothing about how it split was like how a normal weapon would split flesh. She had seen the blade too - it wasn’t barbed or spiraled, it was a normal smooth blade - which just made the fact it produced that rough gash even less understandable. The sheer atoms looked like they were themselves ripped apart.

Kaiya’s train of thought she went on distracted her from looking at the actual wound, and when she came back to paying attention, it looked a lot better. Not nearly fully healed - that would take a bit - but good enough for the girl to not die.

Now, him.

The portal behind her was still going strong, so she figured she would have just enough time to take action.

Hopefully, she would be able to properly avenge what he did to Amity.