William lay sprawled on the cold, damp rock and dark earth that made up the Underdark, his skin on his chest and face, as well as his leathery wings, all now smoldering and blistered from the devastating fireball spell he had just taken directly.
Despite what Karlach and Minthara had initially assumed, it wasn't actually the fire damage that had sent him flying backward.
Instead, it was the sheer, raw power of the explosion itself that proved to be the primary force pushing him back.
"William, get up!" Karlach roared as she pulled her axe from a Mane Demon's skull with a wet squelch.
Minthara's sword glowed with a powerful, almost thunderous energy as she swung the blade in a wide, horizontal arc, striking down multiple demons simultaneously.
CRACKOOM!
The Mane Demons were sent flying backward by a deafening sound that echoed through the air like thunder, their bodies colliding with their own kind in a shower of sparks and debris.
The impact caused them to roar in pain and rage as they collapsed into a semicirclular heap.
The sheer lack of a response from Williams seemed to be enough to completely ignite Karlach's fury, pushing her rage to an intensity she hadn't previously displayed.
It was as if the sheer power of her heart, radiating an intense heat, was slowly beginning to consume the flesh of the Mane Demons, causing them to suffer excruciating burns.
Karlach reared up and let out a roar that seemed to shake the Underdark.
A guttural scream tore from her throat as flames erupted with furious intensity from the ports on her chest and shoulders, momentarily engulfing both areas.
"AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHH!"
With an inhuman surge of power, she launched herself forward, leaving deep, noticeable footprint indents in the cold stone beneath her feet.
She crashed into the Mane Demons like a missile made of flesh, bone, and muscle and began carving a bloody path through their chaotic lines.
Karlach's axe, whose blade seemed to respond directly to her emotional state, began to glow with a blindingly intense and dangerously powerful light.
As she swung it, aimed squarely at the demon's abdomen, the attack sent the creature sprawling, its infernal guts spraying out into the air with the force of the blow.
While Karlach was engaged in her brutal, relentless slaughter of demons, Minthara rushed directly towards William's fallen body, her expression etched with a mixture of profound anguish and simmering frustration.
Minthara's hands gently rested upon the man's chest, which still held the embers of his recent injuries.
As she began to focus, she channeled the raw power of her oath into a healing spell, a spell that wasn't particularly potent but possessed enough strength to cause the burns on his body to start showing signs of healing, the rate of healing visible even without the aid of magical enhancements.
Karlach did not slow.
If anything, she became faster.
Fueled by a relentless, burning fury that consumed her, she moved with savage precision through the ranks of Mane Demons, her axe rising and falling in a brutal rhythm that left no room for escape or survival.
Each swing found its mark with deadly certainty, cleaving through flesh, shattering bone, or sending broken bodies hurtling into their kin.
A Quasit darted toward her flank, shrieking...
It didn't finish the sound.
Karlach's backhand swing caught it mid-air.
CRACK!
The creature's form shattered violently upon impact, its small body reduced to a dark, viscous ichor that sprayed out as she continued her momentum straight into the next target, leaving no moment for pause.
She was no longer fighting.
She was carving a path.
With each step forward, the crushing stone beneath her feet vibrated against her, and her breathing felt like a furnace, radiating heat that was visible in the air as the infernal engine in her chest roared louder and louder with every passing second.
The demons tried to surround her.
They failed.
They tried to overwhelm her.
They burned.
And through it all, her eyes never once left the direction of the tower.
Behind that storm of violence, Minthara remained where it mattered most.
At William's side.
Her expression was clearly set and focused, but there was a subtle tension in her jaw that betrayed the urgency she was trying to mask with her calm demeanor.
One hand was firmly pressed against his chest, while the other braced itself against the ground, providing her with stability in the midst of the shaking tremors of battle.
Radiant energy flowed steadily from her into him.
Not explosive.
Not overwhelming.
But constant.
Deliberate.
The burns that were across his chest and his face began to shift under her touch, and the blistered skin was slowly starting to knit itself back together.
Angry welts softened.
The charred flesh had begun its slow process of reforming, giving way to fresh, smooth skin.
However, there remained faint, uneven red marks where the flames had been, a testament to the damage they had inflicted.
His breathing steadied.
Not strong.
But no longer faltering.
Minthara exhaled slowly and deliberately through her nose, her focus unwavering as she seamlessly maintained the flow of radiant healing magic, her attention completely fixed on the task at hand, even as the deafening sounds of steel clashing, fire raging, and desperate demons screaming echoed just beyond her immediate grasp.
She did not look away.
Not once.
Because if Karlach was the blade holding back the tide.
Then Minthara was the hand refusing to let it take him.
Karlach did not fall all at once.
It happened in inches.
In moments stolen between swings.
A claw slipped past her guard, not deep, but enough.
A second demon slammed into her shoulder,
not hard, but enough.
Another seized the opening.
Then another.
The tide, which had once broken against her, began, slowly, inevitably, to close over her.
Her axe still rose.
Still fell.
Still killed.
But now there were too many angles.
Too many hands.
Too many teeth.
A Mane latched onto her arm.
She tore it free.
Another raked across her side.
She answered with a headbutt that shattered its skull.
But for every demon she crushed, two more surged into the space it left behind.
Even the air around her, once warped by her heat, now seemed choked by their numbers.
For the first time since the battle began, Karlach was being pushed back.
Behind the chaos, Minthara's focus snapped.
Karlach was faltering.
William wasn't waking.
That was unacceptable.
Her jaw tightened.
Her hand, still pressed to William's chest, shifted.
Not gentle now.
Not careful.
Forceful.
She drew in a breath, channeling deeper.
Brighter.
More dangerous.
Then...
SLAM!
Her palm struck his chest.
A ring of radiant energy burst outward in a perfect circle, washing over the battlefield like a shockwave of golden light.
Demons nearest to her recoiled, hissing as the divine energy licked across their flesh.
William did not move.
Minthara's eyes hardened.
Again.
SLAM!
Another wave exploded outward, stronger this time, the light brighter, sharper, like a blade sweeping low across the ground.
Still nothing.
Her voice cut through clenched teeth.
"Do not… dare…"
SLAM!
A third strike.
The ground itself seemed to hum beneath the force of it, radiant energy spilling outward in a widening halo.
William's body shifted, barely.
Not enough.
Minthara leaned closer, fury bleeding through her control.
"Wake. Up."
SLAM!
The fourth strike cracked like thunder.
The light surged violently this time, forcing even the closest Manes to stagger back, their forms blistering under the radiant pulse.
A breath.
A heartbeat.
Nothing.
Her expression fractured.
Just for a second.
Then...
SLAM!
The fifth strike hit like judgment.
Radiant energy didn't just expand, it detonated, a blinding corona erupting from the point of impact, washing the battlefield in searing gold.
And William let out a gasp as if he was drowning and had finally emerged above water.
Air tore into his lungs like he had been drowning.
His body jerked violently as his eyes snapped open, breath ragged, chest heaving under Minthara's hand.
For a split second, the world came back to him in fragments.
Fire.
Smoke.
Blood.
Screaming, and then his gaze snapped forward.
Karlach.
He saw it in the exact moment it happened.
A Mane Demon, grinning with jagged teeth, lunged through the chaos.
Its claws carved across Karlach's abdomen in a vicious, tearing slash.
RIP..!
Her body jerked.
Not from fear.
From impact.
Before she could recover...
THUD!
A brutal kick slammed into her midsection, launching her backward.
The demon laughed.
A wet, broken sound.
Karlach's body skidded, then disappeared over the jagged edge of broken stone.
Gone.
Something inside William snapped.
Not cracked.
Not shifted.
Snapped.
His breath hitched, then stopped.
His eyes burned.
Not metaphorically.
Not figuratively.
Burned.
A violent, searing red light ignited within them, glowing with a fury so raw it seemed to bleed into the air itself.
The battlefield dimmed around him.
Sound dulled.
Everything narrowed to a single, suffocating point.
Gone.
William moved.
Not forward.
Up.
The ground shattered beneath him as he launched skyward, a violent burst of force ripping outward from where he had lain moments before.
Stone cracked.
Dust erupted.
Demons staggered.
He rose above them all in an instant, suspended in the smoke-choked air, his body trembling, not from weakness, but from rage.
His arm lifted.
Slow.
Deliberate.
His hand opened toward the sky.
And the world answered.
Fire gathered.
Not a spark.
Not a flame.
A mass.
A sphere of churning, violent inferno formed above his palm, its surface writhing like a living thing, heat pouring from it in suffocating waves.
It grew.
Larger.
Brighter.
Hungrier.
Then...
It split.
The single blazing mass tore itself apart into two identical orbs, each one roaring with contained destruction as they began to circle one another in a tight, violent orbit above his hand.
The air screamed and the ground below shimmered from the heat.
Every demon beneath him looked up.
For the first time, they hesitated.
William's chest rose.
Fell.
Then he roared.
Not a shout.
Not a cry.
A cataclysmic, earthshaking roar that ripped through the battlefield like a physical force, shaking stone, rattling bone, silencing even the Abyss-born screams around him, and with that roar he brought his hand down.
The twin fireballs screamed toward the horde below.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, silence.
Then...
BOOOOOOOOM!
BOOOOOOOOM!
The twin fireballs struck.
Not gently.
Not cleanly.
But with the wrath of something that had been waiting to be unleashed.
Two suns were born on the battlefield, and died just as quickly.
Flame devoured everything at the points of impact.
The densest clusters of Manes simply ceased to exist, their twisted bodies vaporized in an instant beneath the overwhelming heat and pressure.
There were no screams.
No resistance.
Only annihilation.
The shockwaves followed.
Violent, expanding rings of force tore outward from the epicenters, ripping through the remaining horde.
Demons caught on the fringes were hurled backward like broken marionettes, limbs flailing uselessly as they were thrown through the air and slammed into stone, into each other, into the shattered remains of their kin.
The battlefield buckled.
Fire roared.
Ash surged skyward in a choking cloud.
And through it, William fell.
No hesitation.
No pause.
The moment the explosions bloomed, he was already moving.
His body cut through the smoke like a falling blade, wings snapping once to accelerate his descent as his form became a streak of motion aimed directly at what remained of the horde.
The Hellhand Prototype answered his fury.
Metal shifted.
Groaned.
Then extended.
Claws erupted from the gauntlet, long, vicious extensions of darkened steel that mirrored his own fingers, each one gleaming with a lethal edge as heat shimmered across their surface.
In his other hand, Phalar Aluve sang and shrieked.
Not softly.
Not beautifully.
But wrongly.
The blade's aura twisted, the familiar resonance warping into something harsher, sharper, its magic shifting instinctively into its scream setting, a discordant vibration that bled into the air itself.
The effect spread outward.
Not a boon.
A curse.
The very space around William seemed to recoil as the blade's aura pressed down upon the demons, dulling their movement, distorting their senses, weakening their already fragile cohesion.
Where he stood, they faltered.
Where he moved, they broke.
He hit the ground like a meteor.
CRACK!
Stone shattered beneath his boots as he landed in the heart of the remaining horde, the impact sending fractures spiderwebbing across the ground and knocking nearby Manes off their feet.
For a fraction of a second, there was nothing but a stillness.
Then...
William roared.
A sound ripped from somewhere deep, primal, and wounded, a violent, bloodcurdling eruption of rage and pain that tore through the battlefield with raw, unfiltered force.
The demons closest to him recoiled instinctively.
Too late.
His arm moved.
Phalar Aluve carved outward in a brutal horizontal arc.
SHRRRAAAK!
The blade tore through the nearest Mane Demon as if it were wet parchment, opening deep, ragged trenches across its torso.
Flesh split.
Bone gave way.
The force of the strike carried through into the next creature, shearing through limbs and leaving a spray of dark, steaming ichor in its wake.
Another step.
Another swing.
The blade did not slow.
It harvested.
Arms were severed.
Shoulders split.
Bodies opened.
Each strike was efficient.
Violent.
Unforgiving.
Behind him, a Mane lunged, its clawed hand reaching, desperate, eager to latch onto something solid, something to drag down.
It never touched him.
William moved before it could.
A blur.
A twist.
He spun in place with unnatural speed, his body pivoting on instinct alone as the Hellhand Prototype shot upward.
SKRKK!
The metal claws punched straight through the demon's palm, piercing clean through with a sickening resistance before bursting out the other side.
The creature shrieked.
William didn't stop.
His fingers curled.
Hooked.
Then pulled.
The impaled demon was yanked forward violently, dragged into his space, its body folding inward as it was forced off balance, and straight into the path of his blade.
Phalar Aluve came down in a savage diagonal arc.
SHRAKK!
The strike split it open from shoulder to opposite hip, carving through flesh and muscle in a single, devastating motion.
The wound gaped.
Wide.
Ugly.
A cascade of steaming, demonic organs spilled free, heat rising from them as they were exposed to the air.
For a brief moment, the creature remained standing.
Then it collapsed at his feet in a twitching heap.
William stood in the center of it all.
Breathing hard.
Eyes still burning.
Surrounded by the broken, burning remnants of a horde that had once thought itself unstoppable.
"You will all die here for what you did to her!" He hissed, the tears in his eyes being reduced to steam before they could even fall.