Topher staggered, disbelieving. "That's the weakest?! Just one of those things can do..." -- he gestured in despair -- "...all of this?!"

Zanasha nodded solemnly. "We have seen them before, at great distance. We stand no chance against them."

Hana gaped, shocked. "But... we have to do something! All those people...!"

"What the hell do you want us to do?" Topher growled. Checking his Status, he found that his MP was already down to 45/108. "I don't even think I could get us back there, let alone do anything if we made it in time. We should just..."

We should just run, is what he wanted to say. But for some reason, his mouth wouldn't form the words; he wanted to turn and start escaping, but his feet wouldn't move. An icy feeling was dropping through him, and with disbelief he realized that he was saying, "The only thing we could do is distract it. Maybe lead it away from the city."

Hana turned to him, aghast; but Zanasha nodded tersely in approval. "We have no hope of defeating the creature, but with our lives we might buy time for others to evacuate. It is the honorable thing to do." She unlimbered her shield and drew her sword, squinting across the distance at the tiny figure of the rampaging demon, even now bashing a temple spire into sawdust.

"You can't be serious!" Hana ran in front of Zanasha, gesticulating with dismay. "We should just run! We're so ignorant of what's happening!"

"We know people are dying," Topher said, fighting every word of it. But it was no use; something hurt and sick inside him had rebelled at the idea of leaving innocent people to a death he had caused, and he was as powerless against it as a man trying to push back a landslide. "I might be able to hit the thing from here with a Magic Dart -- it's got long range, and it can't miss. It'll probably just piss it off, and drain most of my remaining MP besides. But it might get its attention."

"You should run away, Hana-chan," Zanasha murmured. "There is no need for all of us to die."

Hana clenched her fists, furious; tears ran down her cheeks. "I'm not leaving you, Zee. You're my friend."

Zanasha's grim expression softened slightly; she reached out with her sword hand and gently stroked a tear from the young woman's cheek. "And you are mine. It has been an honor." Then, almost gently, she reached out and pushed Hana hard in the chest.

Hana's mouth formed a surprised O as she tumbled backwards; behind her, the hill sloped gently downwards, and she was quickly gone from sight in a rapid tumble down the hillside. Topher noted with interest that Zanasha had pushed her backwards, away from the city; if there was sufficient devastation, the hill's blast shadow might provide her some protection.

Zanasha turned back to the demon, flourishing her blade and raising her shield. "Elch'ka, Friend Topher. Let us make a good account of ourselves."

Topher grinned crazily. "Has to be the stupidest thing I've ever done to impress a girl, but okay." Closing his eyes, he summoned his Stylus and began spinning it; he'd need at least ten full spins to get enough power to even have a shot. Forming his visualizations, he cobbled together the runes for his most powerful Magic Dart formulation; then, with every ounce of what feeble determination he possessed, he snapped the wand down and bellowed, "BWIN ZOM ZEFEKK NEIFOD XYM KORPU!" as he snapped his Stylus down to point at the distant figure of the demon. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a red flare going up from one of the buildings into the city and streaking high into the sky. Oh good, they're calling for help. Too bad we'll be dead by the time anything arrives.

Almost instantly, he was blinded by the blast of light which bloomed; from the tip of the Magic Gem glued to his Stylus came not a dart, or even a sun-shard like the one he'd produced in the dungeon under Wanbourne, but a solid beam of continuous power. It streaked across the sky, carving a white-hot furrow through the air, and struck the leaping demon with the power of a thunderbolt; it twisted, avoiding the worst of the blast, but he could see that he had blasted a solid hole through its upper shoulder and severed its left arm. Heh. Not bad for an old man.

Then, abruptly, the beam winked out; a sensation of tremendous weariness flooded through him, and he sank to his knees, dazed. He'd felt this before, and knew exactly what it was. "I'm... out of MP," he managed, drawing upon every erg of willpower he had left to keep from flopping over into the dirt. "Sorry. Best I could do." Through bleary vision, he could see the hurtling form of the demon bearing down on them; its hulking frame was growing larger by the second as it streaked across the sky with a leap that defied the imagination.

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Zanasha shook her head, then glanced back at him; he was astonished to see her half-shy, sweet smile, and the shimmer of unshed tears in her eyes. "You were magnificent," she whispered. Then she turned back, watching the demon approach.

As it rocketed across the sky towards them, Topher was surprised to see a golden mote appear on the horizon; it moved almost lazily, seeming to drift with aimless grace across sunbeams and between clouds. Then, with a suddenness that shocked him, it shot around the demon and parked itself with a noticeable primness directly above them, and began to expand.

In less than a quarter of a second, the mote had transformed itself into a shimmering throne of golden light; and seated upon the throne was a slender man with long blonde hair and pointed ears. He was robed in a flowing garment which was also gold, and upon his brow sat a delicate golden circlet. As Topher and Zanasha watched in disbelief, he stood up, with a slowness and care that Topher recognized intimately. He's old, Topher thought to himself in fascination. Really old, despite looking so young.

As the man -- no, elf, Topher noticed suddenly as the light surrounding the figure cast its pointed ears into shadow -- arose, the golden throne sank and flowed into a flat plane of golden light, which smoothly inserted itself under the elf's feet as he stood. When he took a placid, unhurried step forward, the light flowed forward to place itself under his foot, creating a pathway as he walked.

The demon roared, and conjured another arc of hellflame that it hurled at the elf; but the elf merely rotated himself around a central axis, shifting his path in a perfect helix as he became sideways, then upside-down, and stepped to one side with supreme indifference as the bolts sailed past him to explode in the distance. Throughout each movement, the golden path beneath his feet flowed -- now beneath him, now above him, and now in a perfect spiral, like a rail upon which the elf traveled.

To Topher's shock, he understood what was happening. It was akasha -- the same energy he'd channeled whenever he'd gone into his trance -- but harnessed and rotated around Vil and Ghan with a spiraling Palz transform around Oretu such that it approached, but never reached, the state of fluidity which would have caused its dissolution. From Ghan it drew the force of gravity, and through Vil it channeled the force of the akasha's raging extropic influence into a form -- light -- that could safely touch and support the caster while retaining enough solidity to act as a shield against attack should it be necessary.

The demon bleated -- a noise of scorn and rage -- and then swept its remaining arm before it. A cloud of inky blackness exploded out from around it, with tendrils which reached out to sap the light from around the elf; but the elf merely snorted and gestured carelessly, and a huge cone of golden light exploded from his fingertips and expanded forward, swallowing the tendrils and washing away the dark cloud like a deluge of water.

As the cloud dissolved, the demon emerged once more -- its eyes fixed and staring, its mouth hanging open slackly -- and rocketed towards the elf with a dead ballistic force like it had shot itself from a cannon. The elf frowned, then snapped his fingers.

A thunderous column of light -- red, this time -- emerged from the sky and pinned the demon to earth with hammer-like force; Topher gaped. What the fuck was that, an orbital strike? But this time it seemed to have done the job; even as he watched, the demon broke apart into chunks, its staring eyes lifeless, and dissolved into the energy in the brief instant before the shockwave hit them.

Dust, wind, earth, and branches cascaded over the both of them; Zanasha managed to keep her feet, but Topher was blasted backwards and would have fallen off the hill like Hana if he hadn't struck a large tree with incredible force. He slumped to the ground, stunned; he couldn't feel anything. Probably broke my spine. Welp. He sagged forwards, but his hands came up on their own to catch him as he ended up on all fours; with a shock, he realized the hard ground hadn't hurt his hands either. The fuck?

Then, the debris cloud blew past them; and the light from the elf was approaching, as the figure sauntered down towards them with severity. Topher sighed. And now comes the part where we get chewed out.

As the elf alighted on the hilltop, Topher was astonished to see Zanasha step protectively in front of him; his mouth worked, but he couldn't find any words. Slowly, the light dimmed, until the elf standing before them was fully revealed.

The first thing that Topher noticed was that the elf was tired -- he looked as though he hadn't slept in days, and his golden hair hung limply from his head with a languor that bespoke more than a lack of care. The elf's face, creased and lined in subtle ways which denoted his age without detracting from his ethereal beauty, was haggard, and bore an expression of exhaustion and despair titanically at odds with his evident power. He flapped his hand at Zanasha irritatedly. "You may sheathe your blade, greenskin. If I wished to destroy you and your little round-eared friend, I could have done so a half-minute past."

Abruptly, Topher bristled; a pulse of rage-fueled energy shot through him, and he managed to scramble to his feet with a surprising amount of alacrity. "Hey, asshole, thanks for saving us, but what's with the attitude?" He pointed at Zanasha furiously. "She was trying to sacrifice her life to protect the jerks in that town!"

The elf turned his gaze upon Topher, and Topher's mouth dropped open in shock. He'd seen the features of that face -- the arched eyebrows, the aristocratic and bladelike nose, the particular twist of disdain in the mouth -- almost since his first arrival in this world. But the body that surrounded them -- old, elegant, golden -- was nothing like either Cailu or Varissian. Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, "Kelfir? Kelfir Leafwind?"

The elf, whose brows had been drawing together in a furious rage, shot upward. "Christopher Bailey?"