Magnus spat blood. He had been taken down by three of the gang and he honestly couldn’t blame them.

He has made his final poor reaction to the insubordination in the group and it had undone him. He had used too much power in a rock fist special attack and killed one of his own men that had insisted they stop.

It had taken half a day after leaving his body in the dust for the others to effect a mutiny. They came for him softly at first, calling him out to see his reaction then telling him he was done. He hadn’t wanted to give up without a fight so he made a speech about everything he has done for them, every sacrifice he has made, when they partied he planned, when they counted spoils he looked for the next job. When it was clear they weren’t going to listen to that he spoke more forcefully, commanding them to listen and back off and keep running. Then they had come for him.

He was proud of them in a way. Their skills and coordination has come a long way since they first came together. He thought it over while he was too beaten to move, having been thrown against a large rock. The rest of the gang keeping an eye on him while they bunched up whispering conspiratorially in hushed tones he couldn’t hear.

He wasn’t thinking his best when he saw a flickering shadow in the twilight. His head was pounding from the beating and he wasn’t sure he hasn’t just imagined it. That’s when the smoke started rolling out of the shadows of the group.

Thick mist billowed out. The group noticed it fast and called out in alarm. They went back to back and drew weapons and readied powers looking around for the source.

Magnus had been left against a pile of rocks, he could just about see the rest of the gang covering each others backs from where he lay.

The thick mist permeating the air blocked any natural sound and dimmed the light, placing them into a dulled sense of isolation. Like a heavy blanket it filled their senses.

It was even more eerie then to hear the wild animalistic cackling sporadically coming from around them. Low coughs, whoops and groans came from here and there. Every now and then they saw they shadow of a beast, slinking low to the ground prowling and this one was growling, never close enough to make out more than a shadow in the mist. Even more concerning than that was another shadow that was almost twice the height of a man, lumbering with a terrifying rumbling low growl. Some of the gang launched ranged attacks against them but they couldn’t tell if any of them hit and no one had the courage to step into the mist.

Magnus was terrified, he felt sick, really sick and discombobulated like he couldn’t tell which way was really up, he could see some of the gang sway on their feet just from the effect.

Members of the gang were starting to panic.

“Crap, what’s going on?”

“Lucille what shall we do?!”

“I think there’s dozens of them!”

“It was a mistake to do in Magnus he’d know what to do!”

A murder of crows softly swooped in from the gloom, the gang flinched but they did nothing more than watch as the birds flew down and perched on the shoulders of half the gang, one girl held her hand out to the bird and it weightlessly alighted on her arm. The chaos happened suddenly the moment before any of the gang made a decision about what to do about the birds, every person’s throat the birds settled on erupted in a fountain of blood. Spraying all over those who hadn’t. Those producing the blood panicked and grasped their necks but it did nothing to stop the flow, the blood coming straight through their hands. Those who weren’t bleeding were covered in blood and frantically wiping at it but they couldn’t shift it.

One of the quicker gang members worked it out and had stopped panicking, they barely opened their mouth to get a word out about it being an illusion before they hit the ground with their knees, a silent scream couldn’t escape their open mouth as they clutched their head with both hands.

[You should run!] an unwelcome voice sounded in Magnus’s head and he looked around for where it came from from and saw a few others doing the same.

Before they could work out that it was all an illusion a blazing sun appeared in the middle, everyone reacted by shading their eyes against it.

The moment that it snapped off the blood and crow illusion stopped. From being blinded to suddenly back to the muted mist around them they were struggling to see. From one side a swirling portal of void energy appeared, a twisting winding terrifying tunnel disappearing into it. It gave off an unnatural energy that unsettled them more than the animalistic noises they had heard stalking them from the mist. A dark shrouded man appeared in front of the void as if from nowhere, it was as if their senses had missed registering someone standing there and had just caught up. He had a hood over his head and his long mottled black robe covered any combat clothing underneath. The narrow opening at the front showed a double row of belts going from one shoulder to the opposite hip with huge glinting daggers with stripes of matte black on the swirling patina steel blades. He held a literal blade of nothing, it hurt the eyes to look at it as he casually had it extend from his hand towards the ground,. As he moved he seemed to flicker as if he was under a strobe light, being hard to distinguish in the darkness. Twin black lanterns orbited around the man, flickering in and out of his shadow and doing unnatural things with the shadows. The stranger appeared to be more than a man. He was a force of darkness, an absolute force of physics that had a habit of annihilating what ever it came in contact with.

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The voice that came out was chilling. A language none of the gang recognised, they had no idea what it said by the tone was mean and resolute. Then the figure took a deep breath and spoke again in their language.

“I have not come to take prisoners. I have come to finish you and your stain on this land. I see you are the people that cannot be redeemed, I will murder every single one of you where you stand.” The figure rolled its shoulders and the portal energy behind him leaked some more evil potent. “You are not worth my time. You try and take what is precious to me and you will be punished.”

Whilst the gang was pinned by the spectre of the grim reaper in front of them suddenly there flashed a pure gold light behind them. They turned in time to see a beautiful figure in dark steel, stunning white ceramic and blue diamond armour step on thin air on her way to the ground, as she did the ground formed up into a solid platform so her armoured boots weren’t sullied by the dust and dirt. Plants and flowers rapidly sprouted around her feet. She waved a hand, as she did her beautiful blonde hair stirred and they all saw the touch of divinity in it. As she motioned the sickness that gripped them disappeared and they felt more grounded.

“Peace. There is a way out of this without the wanton slaughter of these who stand here. Lay down your arms and surrender and you can yet walk away.”

Magnus wasn’t sure what to think. They were both terrifying. The man looked like he was on the edge of exploding into a murderous rampage that could kill an army. The woman, beautiful even by adventurer standards, was offering mercy on the other side but looked armoured and as resolute as the man. The power radiating off both was overbearing to the cowardly gang ethos.

He saw Lucille in the middle, she had taken the lead in ousting him just before this started, they hadn’t listened to when he said they needed to keep running. She was nervously looking from one to the other but was still conjuring her weapon. He had seen her use it countless times, he had tactically deployed her himself on numerous occasions. The bladed whip was extremely powerful but took a long time to power, time they now had while they were contemplating the power of darkness on one side and light on the other.

One of the gang bottled it. They dropped their conjured green spear and ran. Lucille’s whip lashed out and opened his throat for real this time. It broke the spell of being frozen in place.

“It’s all just been illusions! They’re just bronze rankers! GET THEM!” She screamed shrilly.

The direction was all the gang needed, simple individuals that needed ordering about which for the most part was how they ended up in various gangs.

Magnus heard the strange language from the dark clad man again, but this time it sounded sad. The portal behind him spewed forth unimaginable creatures, so twisted and unnatural Magnus couldn’t even describe them. They flowed past the man at the gang.

The woman on the other side formed a diamond sword and buckler shield that matched her armour. Both her and the man walked slowly, purposefully towards the gang.

The gang weren’t fresh grass. They’d had plenty of fights, normally ones they choose themselves when there’s no real danger and they had overwhelming numbers. But they had a flow to fights. Magnus kept an eye on an elf on the outside of the middle between the two mystery adventurers. He was their designated spell caster and he was working on his big damage spell.

He wasn’t the only one watching the elf rapidly casting his long spell. A huge man the size of a big Leonid came in fast, he was grey from head to foot except for a metal arm and chest and the huge marble staff with green capped ends that smashed through the elf. It didn’t cut him in half as much as blow him in half. Some high end bronze and most silver rankers could reattach limbs and heal big wounds that lower rankers couldn’t. There was a rumour at high end silver you could survive decapitation. There was no healing the catastrophic damage suffered by the lightly armoured elf.

The combat devolved so fast that Magnus couldn’t keep his eyes on any one part. The shadowy man was a blur as he clinically dissected one gang member than another. The blonde woman took a man behind the knee then smashed his face with the edge of her shield with shocking force enough to kill. A second woman with stark black lines down her face had appeared and stabbed a woman in the chest, finding the seam of where the chest plate met the abdomen and she fired something from her sword which blew a hole out the back of the skewered gang member. A dog arrived and savaged the outliers and a huge bear joined the fray.

It came down to Lucille, she had been whipping from the centre whilst all her gang around her fell. She flicked out at the big man and he caught the whip on his staff and almost casually; with his metalled hand clamping it in place and held her firm. Magnus knew she could dismiss the conjured weapon but there was a considerable charging time to summon it again. She activated a power which caused the whip to burst into flames and that kept the big man occupied and she drew a sword with her other hand, she ran sideways on the circumference of the whip length to attack the blonde. She was casually blocked by the blonde as she turned the inexpert, panicked swing with a shield and pointed the tip of her sword under Lucille’s chin. She rapidly backed off, reorienting onto the brunette adventurer with what Magnus could only describe as the ‘boom sword’. There was an exchange of blows which actually resulted in Lucille getting the upper hand and the other woman backing off looking frustrated, she took her moment and looked around in a panic before looking Magnus’s way. Her eyes lit up and she lunged towards him. She flew through the air in a special attack, the section of her whip that had been trapped by the big man exploded but she still had a reduced length of it in her hand, Magnus noted that she must have withheld this feature of the power from him all the time he had known her. He cowered, in his state he had no defence against what was his most competent attacker in the gang and he knew this was his end.

He turned from her final lunge just as two earth spikes shot from the ground through Lucille pinning her from both sides. This may have been quickly healed if it hadn’t been for the black hole hand grenade that ripped her in half from the wounds and the magic missile that landed like a mortar on her.

The man stepped forward and checked that the attack had killed Lucille. He walked away and Magnus could just see the sad look of disgust on his face.

The blonde woman was now walking towards Magnus, he only thought of fighting for a moment then running but realised he was in no condition for either. He couldn’t take them all, maybe not even any of them even at his best. He was surprised when the blonde just stuck a boot under his ass and tipped him out the way. She went to the boulder behind him which turned out to be the adventurer they had snatched, Magnus was too dazed to realise. He was impressed that the iddy-biddy woman helped the big man to his feet and carried the beaten giant to a vehicle that the other lady had just pulled out of storage.

The two men silently stood over him and he started to pray to any god he thought might listen.