Using the Wretcher as a shield, Goro danced around the Hellions, dashing, flying and flipping to evade claws and weapons.
Marcus was somewhere in the mix, white burning fists breaking Hellion bones at the joints with perfectly coordinated hits, charged feet kicking spiky armor into demonic flesh.
More fire, more Hellions teleporting in.
Goro had beaten Fno’Xhaan’s face to a pulp, black blood splattering on stained glass as his fists flew.
The demonic lord of the palace was not used to fighting for his life but that left his attacks erratic and difficult to predict. Goro didn’t like being on the defensive. A claw swipe landed, severing the demigod’s main leg artery.
The blood spurt and sudden loss of feeling in his right leg forced Goro on the retreat. His fundoshi was torn and gone, crotch a flashlight. He hammered his elbow into a Hellion who teleported in behind him while his leg sowed itself back together.
Human thralls stormed into the throne room — naked, well-built men with pentagrams on their foreheads. They swarmed Goro but were no match. A mere distraction. Each swing broke a neck or a skull.
The dead humans vanished seconds after getting killed. Illusions? The impacts felt real.
Fno’Xhaan flapped his wings and his massive body raced to the ceiling. The demon tore at his robe while he glided back down. He produced a blue stone from a pocket.
A wooden door burst off its hinges and the two missing pantheon members walked in, the room behind them on fire. Human thralls threw themselves in their path.
A cloud of darkness exploded into tendrils at the flap of a fan and Chay started yelling orders.
Xane sent a butterfly fast as an arrow at the pale, bloodied demon.
Fno’Xhaan caught it before it reached his head and his arm was enveloped in an explosion of thundering annihilation. It didn’t fully delete the limb — even a minor demon was too powerful to be simply magicked away like a mere imp. Tattered, semitransparent bits remained in position, unconnected to anything, resisting the snapping lightning that crackled along the remains.
Fno’Xhaan crushed the blue stone in his other hand. A stormy breeze emerged from the shards as they fell to the ground. Goro braced himself.
Chay was shouting again but difficult to hear — giving instructions to Marcus on where the Hellion armor was weakest.
Xane sent his second butterfly. Fno’Xhaan turned away, swiping it with his huge wings. The mote burst into a dozen sparks, ripping through the wings like razor blades.
Fno’Xhaan went down.
But the wind had picked up. Goro jumped toward the demon but didn’t make it any closer. The storm was turning into an indoor tornado.
“It’s alive,” Chay shouted. “Air phantasm. It’s got some kind of brain somewhere in-” He became unintelligible.
Goro grabbed onto the throne. His feet were losing traction.
Hellions clawed on the ground as the phantasm dragged them along the walls. The remaining human thralls were flung around and dragged across the walls, bursting apart as they died.
Xane was in flight, putting every bit of thaum into resisting the storm.
Chay and Marcus hugged a pillar. The umbralist sent out puffs of cloud to check something in the rapid currents. It was impossible to communicate.
Furniture was the biggest hazard. From mugs to tomes to end tables, it all turned into projectiles racing around the room.
Goro didn’t know how to beat up air but that wasn’t the mission. Fno’Xhaan was on the ground but not as affected by the storm. The demon had to be in the eye of the phantasm.
The hunk let go and flung himself into the current, a beautiful slab of naked muscle and rage with a radiant nub. His hair tie became undone, the iron spike zipping through a stained glass panel. His hair tail hit his face before dissolving into strands.
He was flung into a pillar – ribs shattering – spiraled along a wall – shin breaking – and burst through a window. Big shards exploded around Goro as the indoor tornado shot him out of the throne room.
He used the momentum to round much of the room on the outside with levitation power and slammed himself into a different window feet-first just as his ribs were back in one piece.
With his lit crotch tearing through Chay’s tendrils, Goro rammed straight through the tempest and dropped on Fno’Xhaan’s position.
With his knees in the demon’s back, he hammered down. Marcus’ chakram had made it into the eye of the phantasm, constantly buzz-sawing into the Wretcher’s hand, splitting it in two, spraying Goro with more black blood.
With his wings in tatters, one hand in ghostly bits and one sliced apart, Fno’Xhaan had no way of fighting back. Goro let the mania flow from his shoulders down his arms into the demon in thumps that cracked the floor beneath.
The darkness around him lit up. Chay’s tendrils were retracting.
Something exploded and the air went erratic. The tornado turned to chaos as air currents intersected randomly, creating a dozen local maelstroms around the room.
Goro and his victim were flung up and to opposite sides.
“Yes,” Chay shouted. “Good job, Xee, that was the master current. Now go for- Uh, Fno is dead. Holy shit. Wow, good job, Goro. Uh, Goro?”
The berserker looked around the room where furniture came crashing down. The demon was face down in a puddle of black. Was it really over?