True Despair

Zaqaru did not see Rask coming.

He had been looking at the party below him --- at Haruki still at the front, at the orcs and dwarves who had started moving, at all of it with the satisfaction of something that had already decided how the evening ended. He had not looked up. He had not considered up.

Rask hit him at the base of the skull.

Piercing Flames connected --- fire and wind combined punching through the thick skin at the nape of the neck, not clean enough to behead but enough. The impact drove Zaqaru forward, his body pitching with the force of it. Two cuts opened on the sides of his neck, deep, green-black blood welling immediately.

Freyja was already moving.

She had watched Hayate's greatsword stop against one finger and filed it --- the skin was dense, reinforced in a way that cut damage would struggle against. She planted her back foot and drove her palm downward. The stone floor responded --- a pillar of earth erupting beneath her feet, launching her upward and forward, her shield coming around in front of her as she flew.

Zaqaru was still pitching forward when the shield connected with his face.

The sound was solid and total. Green blood burst from his nose, scattering across the stone floor. Zaqaru hit the ground on one knee.

Lyra had the neck cuts in her sightline before he landed.

She drew the bowstring back and channelled Light into the arrow --- not a standard shot, something more deliberate, the light magic building along the shaft and concentrating at the tip until the arrow glowed white. She loosed.

Luminary Bolt crossed the chamber and found the gap in the tough skin at Zaqaru's neck. It connected. The light detonated on contact and the damage it did was visibly different from anything else that had hit him --- deeper, the green flesh around the wound reacting to it in a way it had not reacted to the physical strikes.

Haruki grasped his rapier with both hands and combined Fire and Light --- not separately, together, the two affinities channelled simultaneously into a single concentrated point. The rapier became a focus. The energy built.

Solar Flare.

A burst of concentrated sunfire hit Zaqaru's head from the front.

The time between Rask's Piercing Flames landing and Haruki's Solar Flare was under one second.

Zaqaru took all of it --- the neck cuts, the shield to the face, the Luminary Bolt, the Solar Flare --- in a single compounded instant, and for the first time he did not look mildly interested. He looked pained.

The orcs and dwarves charged. They landed blows --- axes and swords and the orc caster's fire staff finding the demon from multiple angles. Not all of them did equal damage. The ones that didn't stuck in the skin and were shaken off. The ones empowered with light --- the glow still fading from Haruki's Solar Flare catching the edges of nearby strikes --- cut deeper.

The party was noticing it. Separately, without discussing it, all of them arriving at the same observation. Light hurt it more. Significantly more.

Hayate had not charged. He was watching Zaqaru's shadow --- the way it moved when Zaqaru moved, the way it had peeled away and closed back around him before. He was reaching for his Dark affinity and feeling along the edges of the shadows at his feet, trying to find the same seam.

Zaqaru entered his shadow and was gone.

He reappeared in the shadow of one of the pillars along the left wall --- further back, the torchlight not quite reaching him, laughing with the unhinged quality of something that had been hurt and had decided to enjoy it.

Hayate watched the transition with his full attention. Every detail of it.

"Now I'll show you true despair!"

The speed defied the eye. One moment Zaqaru was at the pillar, the next he was behind two of the orc warriors, the transition between the two positions invisible. Both hands came up. One head in each. He brought them together.

The sound carried.

Both orcs went down.

The dwarf axe-fighter directly behind him was already mid-swing. Haruki saw it --- saw the axe coming, saw the angle, saw the opening --- and channelled Light into the blade as it moved. Radiant Edge ran the metal white in the fraction of a second before it connected.

It connected.

The light damage bit. But the dwarf's strength was not enough to carry the swing through the demon's hide and the axe lodged --- buried in Zaqaru's side, the dwarf's hands still on the handle, unable to pull it free.

Zaqaru reached back. One hand closed around the dwarf's torso. The other closed around the dwarf's head.

He pulled.

The head came away from the body with the spine attached --- a single motion, the vertebrae separating from each other in sequence, the whole length of it coming free. Zaqaru held it for a moment. Then he swung it sideways.

The spine caught the nearest dwarf across the midsection and cleaved through. That dwarf went down in two pieces.

Lyra had the neck wound in her sightline again. She drew and channelled --- Luminary Bolt, the light building at the tip --- and loosed at the exposed cut.

It connected.

Zaqaru grunted. The sound was small and involuntary and it was the most honest thing he had expressed since he stepped out of the shadow.

His eyes found Lyra.

He disappeared --- not the shadow step, just speed, the movement too fast to track. Lyra had learned the pattern. Every disappearance targeted a back. She was already moving --- forward, not back, a single long step that took her past the position she had been standing in.

Zaqaru's fist hit the pillar behind where she had been.

Stone cracked and debris flew. A chunk caught Lyra on the side of the head --- not the fist, the debris, but enough. She went down. Hands and knees on the stone floor, the world tilting, blood running warm from above her ear. Conscious. Thinking. Not standing.

Freyja pulled her arm back and threw the trident --- a full-force throw, the weapon spinning across the chamber. She caught Haruki's eye mid-flight and nodded once.

Haruki read it. He channelled Light into the trident as it flew --- Radiant Edge running along all three prongs simultaneously, the weapon glowing white against the dark of the chamber.

Zaqaru moved to dodge. His body did not respond the way it had an hour ago --- the accumulated damage, the neck wounds, the lodged axe still in his side, all of it slowing the response by the fraction that mattered.

The trident hit his right shoulder and punched through.

He reached for it with his other hand --- and it vanished. A puff of displaced air where it had been. It reappeared in Freyja's hand across the room, the bangle on her wrist warm from the recall.

Zaqaru entered his shadow again.

He reappeared further back than before --- the shadow of a pillar near the far wall, the torchlight barely touching him. He looked at the room. At the bodies on the floor. At the party still standing.

"It's not as fun when you're not suffering." His voice had lost the pleasantness. "I grow tired of this. But before I make my exit --- I'll leave you with a parting gift."

A magic circle appeared beneath the last remaining dwarf. Green neon, vivid and wrong, lighting the stone floor around his feet. Then it vanished.

The dwarf looked down. Checked his armour. His arms. Found nothing. He exhaled.

Then the blood came.

Every orifice simultaneously --- eyes, nose, mouth, ears --- dark and fast, and with it something worse, something that moved through the blood as it spread across the stone. Maggots. The dwarf went down and did not get up.

Zaqaru laughed.

The shadows of the remaining pillars began to shimmer --- a subtle wrongness in each one, the darkness moving in a way darkness did not move. Grunts began to emerge. Twenty, more, stepping out of the pillar shadows with the patient inevitability of something that had been waiting for the signal.

Hayate whistled.

It was short and specific --- not loud, not a shout, the kind of signal that was meant for one person. Lyra looked up from the floor, blood on her face, still on her hands and knees.

She read it immediately.

She pushed herself upright, channelled Light and Water together --- the two affinities combining into something that was both and neither, a full-body enchantment that ran from her palms outward. Dawnbless bloomed across Hayate --- across his skin, his clothes, his greatsword, the light settling into him like heat.

Hayate moved left. Two steps, three --- putting himself between Zaqaru's sightline and the pillar shadow the demon was standing in. Blocking the view. Giving himself the angle.

He felt for the shadow beneath Zaqaru's feet and found it.

He stepped in.

The cold closed around him --- the particular lightless cold of the shadow space, no vision, only the feel of the shadows around him and the knowledge of where the exit was. He moved through it. Found the shadow at Zaqaru's feet. Felt the boundary.

He came through it swinging.

The greatsword, lit white with Dawnbless, took Zaqaru's left arm at the shoulder in a single arc.

The arm hit the floor.