"Use your weapons and channel your magic directly through them! It will sustain the energy," Father commanded with certainty. "Do not use your raw mana to cast external spells. The mist will eagerly corrupt it."
He immediately spun back toward the threat, wielding his massive broadsword. He relentlessly slashed and hacked away at the incoming torrent of muscular vines and thick roots. Every sweeping strike from his blade left a trail of devastating fire in its wake, turning the hostile flora into falling ash.
I hastily summoned my gladius to my open hand. Remembering his vital instructions, I carefully channelled a concentrated burst of internal mana directly into the cold steel, casting a permanent featherweight charm upon the heavy blade. The weapon instantly felt incredibly light, and I eagerly joined the chaotic fray.
We fought side by side against the relentless onslaught of corrupted nature. I swung my blade in wide, desperate arcs, cleanly severing the thick, writhing roots that continually attempted to snap at my ankles. Father remained an unstoppable force of destruction, stepping smoothly through the chaos and burning everything that dared cross his path.
As I paused briefly to catch a fleeting breath, I finally noticed the true nature of his roaring flames. The fire wreathing his broadsword was not ordinary elemental magic; the flames took the horrifying, shifting shapes of roaring serpents and screaming beasts.
He was actively channelling raw Fiendfyre.
The magnitude of his magical control became violently apparent to me. He was somehow limiting the most volatile, all-consuming fire in existence strictly to the thin edge of his blade, actively preventing it from spreading and attempting to devour the entire cursed forest. Though it seemed unlikely it would sustain within the mist.
We battled fiercely for several long minutes, systematically butchering the animated flora until the immediate area was littered entirely with smoking, severed vines. Just as I felt my exhausted arms begin to painfully spasm from the relentless swinging and hacking, a new terror emerged from the gloom.
"Hermione, Stone Men! Be careful!" Father yelled, his commanding voice slicing through the lingering smoke.
I whipped my head around in absolute horror. Pouring out from the deep shadows surrounding the ruined temple were dozens of infected Stone Men, their milky white eyes fixed hungrily upon our forms.
The stone men began to swarm.
They surged forward like a rabid, mindless tide. Scrambling over the smoking, severed roots, their milky white eyes wide with a horrific, feral hunger. Their cracked, petrified jaws snapped wildly, completely unbothered by the jagged edges of their own diseased flesh. They did not care for their own safety, only for the fresh meat standing before them.
I could see almost twenty of them emerging from the oppressive gloom.
I tightened my grip on the gladius, forcing my shaking muscles to obey. I resolved myself to kill every last one of them.
The vanguard hit me with frightening speed. I parried a heavy, rocky fist and drove my blade into the creature's chest, but two more were already lunging from the flank. They began to overwhelm me, pressing in with suffocating closeness. Their foul breath washed over my face as rotting, crusted fingers clawed frantically at my clothes.
A jagged, petrified nail swiped across my cheek.
The skin tore. Warm blood immediately leaked down my jaw, but it was swiftly followed by a searing, explosive pain. It was not the sharp sting of a normal wound; it felt as though someone had injected molten iron directly into my veins. The burning agony ripped through my nerves, stealing the breath from my lungs.
I screamed, an agonised shriek that tore from my throat. It was utterly unbearable.
"Hermione!" Father's voice echoed as I felt his boiling anger.
I fell to my knees, clutching my burning cheek. I looked up through blurred vision to see Father drop his broadsword. His emerald eyes were blazing with unholy light. He did not care about the mist's corruption anymore. He raised his hands, and the air itself seemed to crackle and die.
"Protego Diabolica!" A towering ring of blinding blue flames manifested instantly around him. For a fraction of a second, the fire roared in place—and then it violently expanded outward.
It was a tidal wave of unadulterated destruction. The bright blue inferno swept through the dead forest, moving with predatory sentience. The roaring flames safely passed directly over me, leaving me entirely unharmed, before crashing into the horde of stone men. The rabid creatures did not even have time to scream; the cursed fire instantly reduced their petrified bodies, the dead trees, and the smoking roots to naught but swirling ash.
The blue inferno continued its devastating expansion, rushing like a hungry beast toward the damaged temple.
Suddenly, Hazkar leapt directly into the path of the roaring flames.
He did not cast a spell. He raised his leg high into the air and slammed his boot down onto the damp earth with unimaginable force.
A massive, reverberating shockwave exploded outward, rippling through the bedrock like a violent earthquake. The force of the impact slammed into the blue flames as they stopped dead in their tracks, crashing against a massive dam that humbled their might.
The air was instantly sucked from the forest. I gasped, choking as a massive, suffocating wave of pure mana was projected directly from Hazkar's stoic form. It was a pressure so vast and heavy it felt like the being submerged within the sea as it pressed down upon my chest.
I looked back at Father. He was still holding the raging blue flames at bay, but his jaw was clenched tight. Beads of sweat had formed upon his brow, and his expression tense but focussed. I had never seen him strain against another being.
"Father," I gasped out, my vision swimming from the agonizing pain in my cheek and the crushing pressure of the air. "Who... who is he?"
Father did not break his glowing gaze from the elder. He held the inferno steady, his voice low.
"The Old Man of the River."