The effect was instantaneous and horrifying. The chaotic, pitch-black lightning streaking across the metal channelled directly into her divine core. Mother Rhoyne gasped, her golden aura violently flickering as her physical form began to crack. Deep, jagged fissures spread across her skin as if she were made of dry, sun-baked mud.
Sensing the death of its host, the Taint lashed out. The black ooze erupted from her lower body like a nest of vipers, whipping through the air in a desperate search for a new vessel. Its blind, ravenous attention snapped immediately toward Father.
I raised my wand, my heart pounding against my ribs, and summoned every ounce of my happiest memories. "Expecto Patronum!"
A blinding burst of silver light exploded from my wand, rapidly taking the magnificent form of a deer. The deer materialized and charged without hesitation, intercepting the detached Taint before it could strike my father. Its silver hooves stomped aggressively onto the black mass, pinning the slithering corruption to the stone floor.
The clash of pure, positive energy and primordial decay. The deer was quickly overwhelmed; I watched as the abhorrent taint crawled up its silver legs, violently corrupting the brilliant light into a sickly, dying grey. But it had done its job. With a forceful push of my will, I commanded the corrupted patronus to flee. It bolted out of the temple, sprinting away into the ruins and dragging the attached Taint far away from us before finally dissolving into the damp air.
At the center of the dais, Father maintained his iron grip on the broadsword, his jaw clenched as he forced the lethal spell to wreak havoc throughout the goddess's failing body. Mother Rhoyne was turning into ash and pale flakes, her form unravelling from existence piece by piece.
As her face began to dissolve into the wind, she turned her sky-blue eyes toward me. She smiled—a warm, radiant expression entirely free of the agony that had plagued her.
A heavy wave of sadness washed over me, burning the back of my throat. I lowered my wand. I would grieve for her, but as I watched her fade into nothingness, I knew there was no other acceptable outcome. Death was not a punishment for her; it was her final, hard-won peace.
The moment her presence completely vanished from the world, the atmosphere shattered.
The mist surrounding the temple, which had previously been an eerie, creeping fog, suddenly snapped into a frenzied, violent state. Without Mother Rhoyne's divine mana to contain it, the fog began to thrash, howling like a wounded beast as it aggressively poured into the ruins of the inner sanctum.
"It's breaking!" I shouted over the roaring wind.
I dropped to my knees, slamming my left hand and the tip of my wand directly onto the primary node of our blood-laced runic circle. I poured my magic into the stone and chanted, "Duc me ad Lucem!"
The runic circle activated with a thunderous hum. Pure, blinding white light erupted from the carved geometric arrays, reaching upward and forcefully pushing the encroaching mist back.
Father stepped into the center of the array beside me. His right arm was horrifyingly shrivelled, the black veins standing out starkly against bone-tight skin, but he did not falter. He dismissed his broadsword and summoned the Elder Wand, raising it high above his head to guide the growing light.
The moment his immense mana connected with the array, the barrier propelled with brilliance. The light instantly magnified a hundredfold, becoming so piercingly bright that I was forced to squeeze my eyes shut and throw my arm over my face.
Father directed the blinding wave of magic violently outward. The radiant shockwave tore through the courtyard, and as the purifying light collided with the corrupted mist and the feral horde beyond, a chorus of thousand-fold, agonizing shrieks echoed through the ruined city.
…
Third Person POV
The roaring currents of the Rhoyne answered their master's call, erupting from the riverbed to coalesce into a towering, monstrous elemental. This avatar of surging, pressurized water was heavily armoured by thick, crushing roots torn from the petrified banks. Hazkar, wielding the full fury of his domain, commanded the leviathan forward. He raised his remaining physical arm, and the elemental mirrored the movement, bringing a colossal fist of dark, heavy water crashing down upon the Shrouded Lord.
The impact struck with the force of a falling mountain. Ancient cobblestones shattered into jagged shrapnel, cratering the earth and violently pinning the millennium-old entity to the ground.
Garin refused to yield. Pinned beneath tons of crushing river water, the Shrouded Lord thrashed. He unleashed a furious torrent of the Taint—thick, necrotic tendrils that whipped through the water like ink. The corruption hissed as it boiled the elemental's pristine currents, rotting the protective roots and threatening to infect Hazkar's very core.
But the river god was relentless. Ignoring the sickening spread of the Taint, Hazkar drove his avatar forward. With his singular arm, he battered the Shrouded Lord deeper into the ruined mud. Every strike landed with an earth-shattering shockwave, a display of divine rage. Hazkar's golden divine ichor, bleeding freely from his old wounds, poured into the crater. The radiant blood hissed fiercely as it met the corrupted soil, aggressively purifying the dark mud beneath them as he hammered his foe into submission.