With the gang having assembled and the bullshit now out of the way, it was finally time to kick some tree-ass. Kain moved forwards, closing the distance and standing in the air exactly where he had stood more than a year ago, facing down the now incredibly delusional Great Tree for the second and last time.

“It’s been a while, huh?”

The Great Tree gave no response that could be heard, though if you could peek into his mind you would see that he was locked in a logic loop that had no beginning, middle, or end. Well, perhaps calling it a ‘logic’ loop is improper, as there was nothing logical about the parts of the loop itself. After all, the mind of the Great Tree was no longer bound by the puny, pathetic bonds of sanity and reason. No, it had ‘ascended’ in its thinking, and now thought in a way unbound by the rules of reality, causality, probability, and nature.

That did not mean that he himself didn’t obey those laws, only that he didn’t think in ways where those laws applied. Simple, perfectly normal things such as ‘If A leads to B, and B leads to C, then A can lead to C’ had been replaced with things like ‘If A leads to B, then White is equal to the smell of Cinnamon and Potato is the Sky.’. All in all, the ‘logic loop’ was gradually deteriorating into more and more nonsensical idiocy, and as silence reigned, Kain unknowingly made a move that forced the ever-maddening Tree out of its own head.

“If you won’t talk, then die.”

Kain fired a cinderblock-sized ball of flame at the Great Tree, which somehow forced it to react which, in turn, kicked it out of its endless deteriorating mental loop.

“CHOCOLATE BANJO HAMBURGERS!” the Great Tree screamed as it lashed out with tendrils formed from its own body.

Kain dodged well enough, expressing his surprise with a simple “The fuck?!”

“WINNEBAGO CONTROL MODULE CATARACT FEMBOYS!”

Kain made some distance as the Great Tree began to scream out line after line of utter nonsense.

“Well, there goes the whole ‘cinematic back and forth dialogue’ thing….” grumbled Zero Noir as he shook his mechanical head. “Kinda hard to make a decent video if one of the actors is madder than a March Hare.”

“Then we make the best with what we have.” Replied Raziel, unfolding the scroll he always kept with himself for any fights.

“I’ve seen insanity, and then there is this...” said Zalga with a small sense of amazement. She did speak the truth, though. More than a few people had become nuttier than a fruitcake just by being near her, and the Great Tree was even crazier than they were.

“Less talking, more killing.” Alexis spat as she unleashed a barrage of magical blasts that slammed into the Great Tree. The Great Tree howled in… pain? Pleasure? Confusion? Well, regardless of why it howled, it did, and Alexis took that as a sign that she was at least making a bit of progress. “Well?! Are your ears non-functional?! Get to it!”

At this point, everyone had given up on the initial plan of getting a good recording. A decent live stream would have to do, and if things changed then they would deal with that if and when it happened. Of course, among all those present there was at least one being there that was making things somewhat interesting.

“POTATO BACON BONOBO ENCHILLADA!”

Whether or not that was intentional, though, was anyone’s guess at this point.

…

A mass of thunderhead clouds formed all around the current battlefield, the roar of thunder signaling the beginning of a powerful spell.

“Take this! [Heart of the Storm]!”

As soon as Zalga finished uttering those words, thousands of individual bolts of lightning erupted from the mass of clouds, impacting the Great Tree and shattering pieces of his bark. For the next few seconds, the barrage kept up, with hundreds of thousands of thunderbolts flooding in towards the Great Tree from nearly every angle.

“Did that do it?” Zalga muttered, only to have proven the cliché accurate as a large wooden tendril lashed out towards her and nearly cut off one of her tentacles.

“Fuck!” she spat, swimming through the mass of water that she could more easily move in so that she could take a different position. Maybe she just needed to close her big mouth and let the silence speak for itself…

…

“Sis, anytime would be fine, you know.” Raziel said with a hint of anxiety in his voice. His scroll was a weapon that really only had a certain method of use. He needed to be relatively close to his target to use it for the most part, though it did have some small ranged ability.

“Just lining up a somewhat decent shot.” Replied Elizabeth. Her bow was special, just like Raziel’s scroll, but unlike his weapon, hers was pure ranged focused. In exchange for that, though, she could use it in a way that no regular bow could. Why use a full doomstack of archers to make an enemy fight in the shade when a single bow could do it on its own?

“I can’t get in close enough unless you draw the attention away from me!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Elizabeth pulled the string taught as a single arrow formed in her archer’s grip. “Eat shit and die, asshole!”

One arrow became five, which became three hundred, which became ten thousand, which became a million. A near-literal deluge of half-meter long cursed arrows descended on the Great Tree, spreading out as they did like an endlessly expanding number of flechette darts fried from the world's craziest shotgun. This caught the Great Tree’s attention for long enough for Raziel to get in decently close. He unfurled his scroll and, from seemingly nowhere and nothing, thousands of ethereal and mostly intangible warriors appeared and charged through the air towards the Great Tree.

The warriors made contact and began to hack and cleave at the Great Tree’s bark with axes that would normally weigh about as much as a full-grown man. This diverted the Great Tree’s attention back to Raziel, but he had already escaped the danger zone.

“See, sis? Teamwork makes the dream work.”

Raziel got a finger flick to the side of his head from his sister.

“Say that again and I’ll tell what I did my last boss when she said that for the eightieth time in a three-day period back when I worked at Generic Office Company.”

“Hush! We don’t want mom and dad to know about stuff like that yet!”