He was gone. Just like that, the door and the scholar were gone, and Ike didn’t have time to think about how horrible that was

Black smoke filled the basement. Marcus’s fire didn’t just blow a hole in the wall where the door had been, but then it arced to the bath and scorched the demon there, leaving ash in the air and everyone still standing stumbling to recover.

Ike got hit the hardest. He checked himself over for flame, finding nothing thankfully, but the shockwave still knocked him all the way back to the opposing wall. He was too stunned to do anything but stare at the scorch mark for far too long. His ears were ringing, his body was shaking…

And Marcus was dead.

He tried wrapping his head around it, but there was nothing to think about. He was gone. Just like that, to clear the path and keep Donnahais from getting what he wanted.

Once Ike got back most of his senses, it struck him that he was running out of time. Nerinai was in the basement with the Martial and Arcani. She wasn’t exactly weak, but he doubted she would last much longer on her own if they hadn’t done something horrible already. He pushed Marcus’s sacrifice down deep in his gut and pushed back to his feet.

By the time he was getting back to the door, Isibeil and the Crows were approaching too. Apparently Marcus’s spell cleared everything, which he didn’t doubt.

Isibeil grabbed him by the collar and jerked him back from the door. “What happened?” she growled.

Ike stuttered, realizing that he wasn’t the real victim here. He looked dead into Isibeil’s eyes and saw pain there. Deep pain. He didn’t honestly think it would have been possible, but then he tried to imagine what he would have done if it was Nerinai who died there, and suddenly he was on the brink of tears too.

“He- he- blood magic,” Ike finally muttered. “The door was shut. Marcus blew it open.”

Isibeil didn’t let go of him. She kind of just froze there, staring through Ike at the black mark and what little was left of her charge. The scholar she would have given her life to save.

“He said it wasn’t your fault.”

She was silent for a moment.

“He called you wonderful.”

For the first time, Ike saw the woman’s facade of perfect compsore shatter. Then it was back again, hard as steel. She nodded and let go of his collar.

“We need to get to the gate,” she said.

Just like that, Isibeil shut herself up again. Ice in her voice and steel in her gut. The Crows were standing behind them, Rosa injured and leaning on Syphe, everyone covered from head to toe in ichor and soot. Ike wanted to tell Isibeil something, take Marcus’s sacrifice back, but he couldn’t. The only thing left to do now was to finish the work and not waste their chance.

He grabbed his shovel and ran through the opening.

The remnants of the seals were tearing and blowing around the room like cobwebs as they pushed through. Ike got to the end of the room before another tremor in the earth sent him face first into the slimy metal floor.

He shoved off, standing with Isibeil’s help, and the group ran into the laboratory surrounding the gate. The room was, perhaps expectedly, full of demons.

“Shit,” Ike muttered, before a bird shaped horror nosedived him from the top of the room. He swatted it down and stomped it out with his boot, then started scanning the room for Nerinai.

The Crows and Isibeil burst out from behind him and threw themselves right into the fight, arcs of black ichor magic roping demons and fighting back the horde tearing everything apart. Isibeil stayed on the landing and with her knives became a flurry of steel and carnage. Ike turned his eyes down to the bottom level, where the Arcani were busy defending their master, slashing with their swords and fighting for control of the gate.

Donnahais, meanwhile, was locked in battle with Nerinai.

Ike felt a split second burst of relief that she was still alive, then reminded himself that she wouldn’t stay like that if he didn’t do something. So he ran, jumping past the few steps to the bottom level, shoving his way through a pack of scattered and vicious demons hissing and growling at him. He counted well over twenty of them altogether, but most were focused on the Arcani.

Ike got stuck with one of the beasts in his way, and rammed his shovel through its stomach. Unfortunately it’s stomach was just a well disguised pit of flesh. The Demon Laughed at him, which he found more disturbing than anything else happening in the room, and reached out with four of its clubbed fists forcing him to lean back and out of its range.

Him and the demon danced between the tables, Ike holding him back and trying to yank the shovel out at the same time making for a very dangerous game of tug of war. Eventually he pressed the evil thing against a table, leaned in enough for leverage and yanked back. He took a hit to the back of the head as he did so but came back with a strike from the metal’s edge, cutting a raw gash in its face.

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Two ichor-filled holes that might’ve been eyes gushed, and the thing crumpled.

Ike turned his attention back on the duel at the gate. It wasn’t going well.

“Donnahais!” he shouted, catching the Martial as his blade met another strip of black magic in the air.

The Raveness was not built for hand to hand duels. She was on her backfoot now, and running out of options, but Ike made eye contact with her and nodded. As he rushed up behind Donnahais- forcing him to turn- Nerinai turned her attention back to clearing out the room and burning through the demons.

“You’re fighting the wrong side!” Martial Donnahais declared, sounding just as critically insane as he had when he tried killing them in the main room. His face was contorted with tension, his eyes staring, his teeth gritting. “My armies are waiting just outside of the Palace doors. As soon as I kill your black magic whore, my soldiers will put an end to everything!”

Ike didn’t have time to wonder what the hell he was talking about. Before he could say anything more, the martial lashed out with his blade, and it took everything Ike had not to crumple under the attack.

Donnahais might have been old and crazed from his hatred of the shamans, but one thing he still had was his skills. With one sword, he cut and jabbed out like a snake. Elegance and fire enthroned in his arms from decades of killing.

Ike met the strikes each time, the metal clang loud enough not to be drowned by the sounds of war around them. He missed one parry and the sword sliced up his arm, forcing him back.

In the corner of Ike’s eye, he could see the gate growing. More demons were coming through by the second, replacing all of their fallen comrades almost as fast as they fell. Nerinai was right. They were running out of time.

Well aware that he couldn’t win one on one, Ike tried diplomacy again. He was already exhausted, panting, sweat mixing with the blood from his cut and trickling down his arm. He didn’t want to risk pushing himself too far and letting Donnahais turn his attention back to Nerinai, who was currently pouring all of her magic into trying to keep the gate from growing any bigger.

“Martial! Please, would you listen to reason? We’re trying to help you! Both of us are human. They. Aren't.”

Donnahais shook his head and spun his sword. “Do you actually think I’m falling for that horse shit now? Now? As I stand right in front of the glorious victory for all of humankind!”

A demon burst through the gate with claws outstretched, reaching for Donnahais’s throat. The commander of the Arcani didn’t even turn to look as he swiped up with the blade and sent two writhing halves of the horrible little shit spiraling across the room.

One half lumped into Ike’s stomach and sent him stumbling back another step.

The Martial licked his lips. “Today is the day you die, Guardian.”

The Guardian was beginning to think that was very, very likely.

He ducked a swing meant for his neck and actually managed to make the Martial step back by jabbing out with his shovel head. Ike grinned, a little more excited than he should have been, and waved his shovel up to try the same thing again.

Donnahais was ready. When Ike went up, the Martials sword caught it right in the corner and sent him falling back to keep the shovel in his hands. Leaving him wide open.

The Martial closed the distance between them frighteningly fast, grabbing Ike by the back of his neck and holding the tip of his sword to the boy’s heart. This was it. He was going to die right here and now, just minutes away from the ending. After everything Nerinai did to keep him from dying he was going to get skewered anyway.

Ike saw his life flash before his eyes, and found that he was at least a little happy he spent the last of it fighting for her.

Then before the Martial could stab him, a knife appeared in throat.

Ike made a sound in between shock and relief, embarrassingly loud, and had to hold up the dying Martial’s body as he collapsed forward. Blood gurgled out of his throat, soaking the front of Ike’s robes and drenching him in its sickly warmth. The man’s eyes were wide, staring straight at Ike, incapable of saying just how eternally angry he was.

Ike shoved the corpse to the side and the sword clattered on the ground.

Isibeil pulled her knife out of it and looked up at Ike. They nodded to each other. Isibeil ran back to help the others, using the tables like jumping boards and stabbing a demon that hovered in the air, while Ike ran back to Nerinai’s side and crouched down.

The Raveness had her palms spread out on the floor and her entire body was trembling. Web’s of her ichor spread from her fingertips to the gate, shivering, but it wasn’t enough.

“We were too late,” she said.

Ike shook his head. “No we weren’t. We can still do something. Right? Tell me there’s something we can do.”

Nerinai groaned from the effort. Ike cast a look back at the room hoping the Crows could help, but they were surrounded. Even the two Arcani who’d been hell bent on supporting their leader were backed up to the landing and fighting right next to them.

At least they weren’t insane, he thought, then turned his attention back to Nerinai.

“I have to go through.”

“Nerinai-”

“There’s no more time, Ike.” She smacked the floor once, sending a heavy throb of black ichor around the gateway. The green swirling edges of the rift constricted, ever so slightly, and for just a moment they held in place.

The Abyssal Gate was close to triple the size it had been the first time Ike saw it. If they didn’t do something and do it quickly the gate would keep growing until it consumed the whole Black Palace, and Ike didn’t want to know what happened after that. Hell on earth. Somehow even worse than the blight, worse than anything his very lucid imagination could imagine.

Nerinai caught his eye and nodded. “I have to,” she said, then leapt for the gate.

Ike had a blink, barely a second, to pick his next move.

Stupid, foolish little Ike, the Guardian who never was, grabbed Nerinai’s hand at the last second and leapt through after her.

He was vaguely aware of a scream, but as soon as he crossed the portal it was like having his head shoved into the sea. Everything swam in his vision, sound became nothing more than a harsh muffle, and the air felt thick enough to swim through as he began falling. Falling, that much he understood.

He twisted in the ‘air’, just enough to see the green blur above shrinking until it was nothing but a blip. Then the Abyssal Gate was gone, and Ike was trapped in hell.