The demon nad Balthaz eyed them with a faint tilt of the head, as if picking apart a puzzle.
"You…" His clawed finger singled out Orlin. "You belong to this realm, yet… you don't. You have no original life force. Necromancy?"
"Of sorts," Orlin replied, his tone dry. "More curse than craft, but it functions the sa."
Balthaz's lips curved into a smile that looked carved with a knife.
"Well then… I'll be taking all of you. My lord will want to see what kind of refuse washes up in his territory."
With a lazy flick of his wrist, shimring spheres, like oil-slick bubbles, blood in the air, snapping into place around each of them. The air inside was thick, sticky, and constricting.
Kai turned his head toward Seyren. The elf's eyes were wide with panic.
"I can use magic now, right?"
Seyren's face twisted. "Of course!"
"Thought so!"
Kai clenched his fist, and spears of shadow shot outward in all directions. They shredded through his prison in a spray of dark shards.
The mont he was free, he dropped a black sigil beneath his feet. The shadows rippled and bubbled, disgorging the Grave Maw, a seething amalgamation of corpses fused with tar-like ooze. The air soured as its gaping maws opened, and its dozens of arms began casting overlapping spells in a deafening barrage.
Kai's mana sight flared.
The demon wasn't using elental magic or raw mana, it was sothing else. Sothing chaotic, unstable, yet perfectly under his control. Every blast he fired was pure annihilation, warping the air as it streaked past.
'If I could learn that…'
His thought was cut short when Balthaz's wings snapped open. A single beat sent a gust strong enough to stagger Kai, and the demon rose high above the Grave Maw's reach.
Kai didn't hesitate. His hand dipped into his shadow space, and Mari erged in a swirl of white-blue fla. His divine lich raised both arms, manifesting javelins of condensed holy light. With a sharp gesture, she hurled them, both spears tearing through the mbranes of Balthaz's wings.
The demon roared as he plumted.
He landed hard, dirt spraying in all directions. His clawed hand ca up, crackling with destructive power, and he loosed it straight at Kai.
Kai's own hand shot forward, and from the shadows before him, Joe erupted, shield already raised. The blow struck like a thunderclap. Joe's shield dissolved into ash, but it had done its job.
The Grave Maw surged forward, rolling over the demon in a writhing tide. A scream ripped the air, brief but sharp.
Silence filled the air.
A system prompt flashed before Kai's eyes.
[Grave Maw has beco corrupted. Purge corrupted corpse?]
"...So I can't even feed it to the Grave Maw? Bullshit," Kai muttered.
'Purge it.'
[Purging corrupted demon corpse.]
The Grave Maw gagged before spitting out what remained, a dry, shriveled husk. With a thought, Kai recalled the Grave Maw into his shadow space.
The shimring prisons around his companions popped. Vepice lunged forward, nearly knocking him over.
"My blades! They wouldn't pierce it! And you couldn't hear !"
"I know, Vep. It's over now."
Her grip was trembling, but before Kai could say more, Seyren's voice cut in from ahead.
"We have to move! That much magic will draw them like flies!"
They didn't argue.
The four of them pressed on, following Seyren through the plains and forests.
The next three days blurred into a relentless cycle of marching, fighting, and snatching brief monts of rest.
Muderan's beauty was deceptive. Rolling plains of violet grass shimred under a sky the colour of molten gold, its horizon punctuated by jagged obsidian cliffs. Arcane flowers blood along the path in colours that defied reason, their petals refracting light like prisms. But behind that beauty lurked a constant, oppressive awareness.
This realm was alive, and it was watching.
The plants released poisonous fus and sotis tried to eat them. The beasts could almost all use magic, and were a danger to just encounter.
The first night, they were set upon by a pack of chittering, quadrupedal demons with segnted, insectoid bodies and mouths that split open far too wide. They had no language, only the shrill, tallic screeches of killing intent.
Seyren's lightning scorched the grass in jagged lines, Orlin's skeletal hand reached into the ground, and a larger skeletal hand appeared in the distance through the ground to drag one creature under, and Kai's undead tore into the rest. When the last of them fell, Vepice sat on a boulder, catching her breath, her swords dripping with blood.
Seyren ntioned that the enemies they faced were drones. Demons had bred with an insect queen that spawned their scouts.
By the second day, the enemies had grown stranger. They passed through a grove of crystalline trees, their branches humming faintly with magical resonance. Within the grove lurked an arcane predator.
Sothing that shimred in and out of sight, stalking them by bending light around its body. Kai could barely track it with mana sight, but once it struck, its form flickered.
A sleek, many-limbed beast with too many eyes and a hide like rippling glass.
It nearly took Mari's head before she countered with a burst of divine light that shattered its camouflage. The thing howled, its body fracturing into shards before dissolving into nothingness.
But it hadn't been killed. It just... Retreated.
That night, as they made camp near a stream of silver water, they spotted winged silhouettes against the starless sky. Bigger than scouts. But too far to engage. Seyren insisted they douse the fire and move before dawn.
On the third day, the land grew harsher. The violet grass gave way to cracked basalt and rivers of slow-moving, molten stone that gave off intense heat.
Lesser demons prowled the ridges, wolf-sized things with bony plates along their spines and glowing red throats that pulsed when they readied their breath attacks.
Kai dispatched most of them from a distance, his shadow spears pinning them before they could close in and his undead rats eating them alive before they could even register what was happening.
One managed to get through, only to be impaled by Orlin's spears of bone.
By late afternoon, they crested a ridge, and there it was.
The portal gates to Iria stood like titanic spires of black tal, etched with runes that pulsed in a slow rhythm. Around the base, the air shimred with protective wards, and the faint pull of planar magic made Kai's skin prickle. Beyond those gates lay their escape from Muderan's predatory skies.
But even from here, they could see shadows moving at the periter. The portal was not unguarded.
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