Suggested Listening

Claron watched the assembly of enemies to the empire. Of them, the only one he had any real respect for was the girl tending to Elruin. She, at least, had the mental faculties to continue trying to save the child while the others stood still. Since he needed her alive to fulfill Enge's command, they shared a tangential goal for the moment.

The rest stood there, watching him, rather than trying to overwhelm him with everything they had before he had a chance to get his bearings. It wouldn't have made a difference, nothing they could do had any hope of overcoming Enge's blessings, but even futile action deserved respect. "My apologies, did I interrupt something important?"

"Merat ne!"

Claron closed his eyes, when the series of explosive chemicals Renar relied upon went off in his face. Another might have considered the open betrayal to be more contemptuous than inaction, but Claron disagreed. At least betrayal was action, the act of a dishonorable warrior was better than the cowardice of a loyal boot-licker.

He drew upon his power, a whirlwind of flames blossomed around him and reduced the desolate landscape to ash. When his eyes opened, he stood in a circle of blackened glass. Renar, his few remaining soldiers, the undead, all gone. Only the dwarf remained to keep him company. He could have killed her with this attack as well, but that would risk destroying his prize, and with it his status as Champion of Enge.

"Still standing? I'm impressed." That she survived was little surprise; the entire dwarven bloodline was tied to forge magic. Once, he resented them for being born with the power he had to work so hard to attain. Then he pitied them, for they were lazy and ignorant of the value of training one's personal strength to its pinnacle. Now, they were irrelevant before Enge's blessing. "Are you going to fight?"

"No, I know when I'm beat." She slumped, used her overlong arms to hold herself up. Her glowing hot hands sank into the half-molten soil. "Will it disappoint you i' I don't make some speech about how I'll ne'er surrender?"

His chuckle was genuine. "That's quite alright." Meanwhile, he kept his good eye on Elruin, and the woman struggling to heal her. For all his power, he had no ability with healing magic. The Eye would restore his own flesh and magical power in the rare event that he suffered injury to begin with, but he could do nothing to stave off another's death.

More, the woman trying to save her was doing so with some exotic fundamental magics that felt rather fragile to him. Until that situation stabilized itself, he had no choice but to watch and wait. The opening salvo established his dominance, and now that none of them were likely to lead an attack that risked Elruin's death, he was content to bide his time.

Suggested Listening

"Ell, c'mon, you can make it." Lemia muttered as she made another cautious attempt to drain the excess power.

Everyone, even mages with those aspects, made the mistake of believing creation and negation were synonymous with life and death. This was not true, for life and death at the core was a fragile balance between all elements, more fundamental in nature than anything else. Treating an excess of fire aspect was not so simple as adding more water in spite of their opposing positions, no more than a man could breathe underwater if the water was boiling.

Right now, Lemia's problem was finding a way to drain off creation energies without running the risk of disrupting all other aspects of Elruin's already bizarre elemental balance. The usual solution of diluting the excess power and bleeding it off into the atmosphere was not an option, because creation magic had a nasty habit of sticking to itself, forming 'clumps' of magic. A great property if you wanted to create, but endless frustration for those trying to negate it.

At first, she tried to absorb the energy into herself, but that plan was dismissed in heartbeat. Elruin's native energy would kill any living thing, even those attuned to her. Meanwhile, the creation energy made it impossible to use any of the undead as a vent.

Then she felt it, the void in reality, bubbling just beneath the surface of this wound in the world. It couldn't be that easy, could it? In desperation, she took the other option, and began to force the creation energies in the direction which did not exist, into a place that was not.

To her surprise, it worked. The power vented... somewhere... to her perception it looked like it faded into nowhere, but without the telltale signs of dissipation into the environment.

Elruin gasped, taking her first proper breath in minutes, while Lemia continued to find the worst damaged spots and vent them out in as controlled a method as she could. It was sloppy, destructive work, but she felt confident that it would result in a full recovery.

Which, she knew, was what Claron waited for. She grabbed Elruin's violin and the dagger which served as a bow thanks to magic. "Ell, take them." She had to move Elruin's hands to the instrument. "It's time. We need you. Please."

Suggested Listening

Elruin trembled, forced herself to move with what little strength was left in her ravaged muscles. Lemia felt the distortion of her song on the fragile seams they stitched over the wound, as she undid the very thing she helped to build in the first place.

Lemia also felt it when Claron moved toward them. She cringed, knowing she was about to die. The plan had never been for her to be out on the battlefield, but she made that choice in order to save Elruin. At least she felt confident that her future zombie self would appreciate all the effort she'd been put in to maintain her figure.

Claron was uncertain of what the necromancer thought she could do in her current condition, but he knew he'd have to stop it. She seemed fond of her friends, so to him it seemed the best strategy would be one similar to his errant siblings. Capture the healer, and threaten her in order to make Elruin stop fighting.

He stumbled forward due to surprise and imbalance, more than actual harm, when a dwarf leapt on his back and tried to dig her claws into his throat. He jabbed his elbow back, hitting the hard steel scales of Ketak's stomach and sending her flying back. Her claws did draw blood, leaving six paper thin lines of crimson on his face and neck.

Ketak paid dearly for the minor damage she inflicted, her ribs broken and some internal organs bruised. The inch-thick steel plates had a dent in them. She was down, and Claron's next strike would have been enough to kill her, but he had other concerns.

The rift cracked, and the things on the other side spilled out. They had been drawn by the echoes of a reality as alien to them as their reality was to the people fighting on the other side. They had no understanding or care about the motives of these magic-rich things, they knew only their own desires, instincts built by long eons of evolution to survive within the void where starvation was the greatest of all threats.

The first three which broke through were greeted by a burst of magical flame hot enough to melt steel, but it was magic, and so to them it was pleasure and sustenance, strength which would allow them to persist for years in a realm that measured time as outcome rather than function.

Claron reacted swiftly to the realization that the things from the rift were not stopped by his magic, but he lacked the ability to explain why. He did, however, know someone who could. "How do I fight these things?"

"Top... Maj..." Uewatsu's message was broken, unclear. She felt a moment of surprise that would serve to amuse her through long years of boredom to come. She focused on the task at hand, and constructed a far more robust communication portal. "They. Eat. Magic."

"Why didn't you tell me before!" He drew back his power, in order to rely on his combat prowess. With a swipe of his sword, several of the monsters' limbs fell to the ground, twitching and leaking their ichor. Once he was granted his true status as Enge's Champion, he would need to reconsider his relationship with the rift mage. First, however, he had more pressing concerns.

They moved to engulf him, and he continued his steps backward, not falling back, but keeping his distance while he learned the strengths and weaknesses of these creatures. They were fast, and against a normal opponent they might be considered tough, but they were weaker than most chimera and possessed abysmal, swarm-like tactics more appropriate for a hive of bees than a large organism.

With each swing, step, and parry he took a limb. Blood loss caused them to slow and collapse. One fell, then another, then a third and fourth and fifth.

He was so caught up in the pressure of combat without the advantage of the Eye that he didn't spot the human threat from behind until the metal had pierced his spine, then twisted inside.

"Die!" Renar kept pushing, both the dagger and his whole body against Claron's back, to drive him into the beasts he seemed so keen on avoiding.

Claron reacted on instinct, flaring out with his magic to slay his former companion and drive the blade out. Too slow, for the thaumivore tendrils had fallen upon them both, and so his magic mutilated Renar, but failed to kill him.

Now wounded and covered in the magic-sapping creatures, it was all Claron could do to hack away at them, taking one limb at a time until they began to weaken and die around him. He stumbled from the pile of corpses, wounded and exhausted, but alive.

Elruin now stood on wobbly legs, still playing her violin, but now it was just the pair of them. He allowed the Eye's power to return to him and begin the slow, agony-wracked process of mending his wounds.

"It was a good trap, but it's over now. You lost." Claron walked toward her, knowing full well that he couldn't run without ripping his healing wounds open again, an act which was potentially fatal with a death mage so close. Even a Champion of Enge had limits. "Surrender now, and I'll have no need to continue hurting your allies."

The healer stepped in front of the girl. "How 'bout you cut off your own dick and sit on it?"

Claron said nothing. He wondered why he expected any decorum from those who would work with abominations. His flesh continued to stitch itself together, gaining in speed as the worst damage was undone and it began work upon the superficial. More confident, he began a swift march toward the two standing mages.

The ground beneath his feet erupted in an explosion of mud and stench of sulfur and tang of incense. His eyes burned, and he coughed on the poison now seeking its way into his body through his lungs. The Eye of Enge took its 'attention' away from the remaining wounds in his back, and began the process of fighting the deadliest herbal toxins the wilderness had to offer.

The mixture had been measured for the maximum possible slow and long term harm in mind. Several ivies for their contact poison, wolfsbane to disrupt regeneration, and ten times the lethal dosage of hemlock, for certainty's sake.

That Claron remained standing, that the worst side effects of this brutally lethal chemical weapon was coughing and eye irritation rather than seizures, coma and death was testament to the magic protecting him. Magic which had been severely drained by the thaumivores.

Then, finally, Calenda got her chance to act. She pounced upon the wounded, blinded, poisoned and exhausted Claron and grabbed for his face, then began to sap energy away from him, while doing her best to pull the Eye of Enge from its place in Claron's skull. If she could disrupt contact for a mere moment, the damage inflicted on him would be lethal.

Claron knew this as well as they did, and he still had power and speed to surpass Calenda. He grabbed her arm, pulled it away from his face, and tried to pull her off of him entirely.

Necromantically augmented biology, driven as far as Elruin could push her, proved inferior to the Eye of Enge. Calenda screamed when her forearm snapped like a dry twig. Grunted when an elbow smashed her ribs much like it had Ketak, but unlike Ketak Cali did not require her organs for survival.

Elruin stopped her song. "Stop hurting her!"

Claron noted the cry, but he couldn't afford to not fight back against this zombie which was sapping what precious strength he had left. He hammered her again, busted her other arm, smashed her skull, and once he got an arm free he swept the blade across her torso.

She fell to the ground in five separate pieces, her necromantic pattern flickering, then Claron brought his sword back around to deliver a final strike.

Elruin screamed with inarticulate rage, tears dropping as she ran for the only family she had in this world. This was Claron's plan from the beginning, even if he hadn't realized he could use one of the undead to achieve it until that moment.

He caught the flailing, foolish child by the arm, batted her stiletto away, and then with a short series of practiced twists, had both the necromancer's arms pinned behind her back. He didn't want to damage her any more than he had to, for fear that shock would be enough to finally kill her. "Come with me!"

Elruin stared down at the dismembered Calenda, while Claron began to drag her away. Calenda needed help, needed her help, or the necromantic structures would shatter and she would be lost forever. "Let me go!"

Claron didn't waste his time dignifying her demands with a refusal.

Then the scream changed from desperation to unforgiving rage. The solid black of her eyes spread outward, across her face, down her neck, over her clothes, every inch of her body bled necromantic power.

Frost spread across Claron's fingers moments before they shattered from the cold. He stared down at the child for the brief moment with his one good eye as half his body froze while the other half burned. All the heat of his body forced away from the necromancer until it erupted from his back. He dropped dead, not comprehending where it all went wrong.

Euwatsu, still watching the show from the privacy of her secret chambers in a hidden corner of the empire, began to giggle and clap her hands. "So soon!"

Then she stopped, remembered herself, and the lives lost this day. Claron had died doing what he believed to be right, but she knew from experience history would not remember him as such.

She bowed her head. "Claron was a good man, a hero, and his death is a tragedy. The greatest of all tragedies that he was born to this world which needs monsters, not heroes. He will be remembered longer than he can know."

She dismissed the portal, set the Eye of Enge down on her desk, and sat in her chair. Then she allowed herself to cry. She was indirectly responsible for more deaths than she could keep track of, but this was only the second time she inflicted the killing blow.

Moments later, she smiled again and jumped back to her feet. There was far, far too much work to do, and for the first time in a long time she was excited to see what came next.