The startling rattle of the skyfallen chains also drew Jillian’s attention to the heavens above where Diego fought to the bitter end against overwhelming odds. The Zerulic observed the spectacle with a mix of fascination and fear – fear because she was not used to seeing creatures as numerous and dreadful as wyverns, as well as Demonspawn, let alone one as vicious and powerful such as Diego. More than just awed by the sheer forces at work, she was confused by the airborne berserker’s motivations. If he was a Demonspawn, why was he fighting against the crusaders in the first place? Weren’t they supposed to be creatures of evil, ruled by primitive lusts and instinct? Moreover, the crusaders – sightless sheep that they were – fought and died here so that they could return their demon lord to the material plane. Should he not rejoice at the return of his kin? Yet, against all expectations, he fought harder than even the rangers and druids, he bled until there was nothing left to shed and filled his lungs and veins with the wyverns’ deadly poison, all the while not stopping to kill whatever he could get his hands on. Why? What kind of selflessness or hatred (or both?) could lead even a Demonspawn to make this sacrifice?

Of course, Hazzergash could not be allowed to be unleashed upon Reniam, certainly, but still... were she in his place, would she have done the same?

Jillian shook her head and picked up the pace, having momentarily stopped as she watched Diego fall from the sky, together with a wyvern and it’s rider’s corpses. [i]I guess even those born from a demon’s womb have a form of free will. Another lie they told me.[/i]

Moments later, the two magicians slowed down underneath a thicket of branches and leaves, an almost idyllic place were it not for the bloodshed, violence, fire and poison that threatened to engulf and consume the entire forest. Gerald was exhausted, but wasted no time to recover his breath.

“I am going to cast the spell now,” he hastily explained, followed by a description of what would happen next. Jillian swallowed and banished all distracting thoughts from her mind, as a mage always should, and as she has many times neglected to; but there was no room for leniency here. Her breath left her lips slow and steady, her senses becoming dull to the world around her. She was fully focused on Gerald and herself, and she felt a distantly familiar tingling in her stomach, that nervous sensation that one gets before an important test, or just before saying hello to the person one has a crush on. [i]What am I doing?! I’ve cast [/i]Hail of Ruin[i] a couple times before, it’s not a new spell. Why am I so flustered?[/i] She chided herself in thoughts, but could not get rid of that unnerving feeling. Was she afraid of failure? That she would not kill all the wyverns, or that she would kill some of her own people? Maybe even herself and Gerald? Or was it the opposite, the fear of success – that she would be consumed wholly by the powers of abyssal magic? Whatever it was, it gnawed at her like a starved wolf pup would at a fresh body.

“And if there is anything you want to say before this, now is the time; I can't guarantee that I will hear it once I cast the spell, and I definitely won't be able to reply,” Gerald offered as a final exchange before they would ascend into the skies.

Jillian’s mouth opened, but then stood agape. She didn’t know what to say. Good luck? Words of confidence? A warning? Or perhaps...

“Just promise me that we’ll leave this stupid forest alive,” she said, unnerved and agitated as she was, her green eyes fixed on the necromancer’s amber globes. She exhaled another controlled breath between thin, parted lips and readied herself for whatever fate had in store for her. She felt almost nauseous, and the wyverns screeched above like hellish tormentors from the pits below.

Whatever Gerald’s reply, he would soon enter a trance-like state upon casting, his limp body dropping harmlessly in the lumpy grass beneath his feet. Jillian could not see his shadow image appearing past the lush boughs above her head, but hesitated for a few moments to give the necromancer some time to attract the wyvern’s attention however he saw fit. That’s what they had agreed to after all; once they homed in on him, she would grasp his hand, hopefully appear next to him and send the wyverns on a journey back to the infernal holes they first crawled out from. She sat next to him while her eyes were glued on Gerald’s lifeless form as it lay next to her. He looked so helpless, practically dead. Seeing him like that, she felt the inexplicable desire to protect him until he came to, but alas she had her mission to fulfill.

[i]That’s enough time, girl. I have to act now.[/i] Her pulse was beating like a war drum, and she felt the heat rising to her temples.

“Trust me,” she whispered, trying to sound as calm and controlled as possible, but betraying a hint of her exhilaration in her tone. Then her meek, bony fingers reached for Gerald’s similarly malnourished hand, and she found their similarities to be striking. When their skin touched, she wrapped her grasp around his hand as tightly as she could before her consciousness left her body and ascended into the sky, unchained like a bird from the burden of earthly life.

Above in the wyvern-filled skies, a blurry shape manifested next to Gerald’s black form; an avatar reminiscent of the woman he had met less than an hour ago, yet had shared so much with already. Although her silhouette was black and shadowy like his own likeness, there was an uncanny glow within the dark, like embers sparkling amidst ashes and burnt-up coal. No words were exchanged between the pair of phantasmal ghosts, and without hesitation, Jillian’s ethereal shape began to draw symbols in the air that few arcane mages have ever seen, and that most in Rodoria would find blasphemous. Wicked runes traced in the fiendish Devil’s Tongue, the language of demons and Demonspawn. The poisoned air carried Jillian’s voice, sounding unusually harsh and hate-filled as it pronounced syllable after syllable of the accursed incantation. With almost the same bravado and passion as she had cast her composite, fire-lance spell earlier, she now completed the evocation of the greater [i]Hail of Ruin[/i], her palms extended to her left and right, facing away, and her arms horizontally aligned

[i]The deed is done,[/i] she thought, [i]it is all in your hands now.[/i]

The wyverns, meanwhile still oblivious to the fact that they were clawing and biting at incorporeal illusions, began to notice the manifestation of great heat from Jillian’s spectral form. The little sparkles in the smoke of her shape began to glow brighter, filled with lusting intentions of violence and gratification, pleasure and pain. An orb of dark red fire amassed in her ghost, about the size of small boulder, and merely a blink of an eye after its conception, was ejected from her like a shot from a gun. It blundered into a nearby wyvern’s open mouth and detonated with a fearsome, crimson explosion that obliterated the wyvern’s head, tore apart its throat, and scorched its shoulders. The rider lost balance and fell from his mount before that one followed after him, descending in a column of blood, meat and bones. Two nearby wyverns were also hit, one of them losing half of its face, the other lamenting the burning of one half of its left wing. Before they could either retreat or press the attack, more such projectiles blasted out of Jillian’s phantom body. Each of them caused a great, dark red explosion in the sky that sent fragments of shattered bodies and equipment raining down upon the forest and the battlefield, and each detonation was loud enough to be heard across the entire meadow. One blast succeeded the other, each more violent than the last; ribcages shattered, jaws dislodged, eyes burnt out or ejected from their sockets, wing membranes burned and the bones crippled, acidic blood burnt up by a flame hotter than they. It was a gruesome, glorious fireworks for all revelers of wanton destruction and bloodshed. The wyverns, once feared enemies of man, screeched helplessly as their ranks were thinned by the merciless barrage of fiery death.

The witch floated carelessly amidst the carnage, entranced by the disastrous fruit of her labor. Here in this ghostly shape, the world seemed so small, insignificant and distant. The lives she extinguished felt fake, as if she were merely putting her childhood dolls to the torch in a sacrifice to her infantile curiosity, and just like a child, she watched the catastrophe with a gleeful smile that was oblivious to the deeper consequences of her feelings. Each burst of energy that left her body and was thus burnt up sent chills of excitement down her spine, and her lifeless husk lying next to Gerald’s – far below – occasionally moaned or cackled without restraint or shame. She was a goddess; a flying deity that administered death and destruction upon all those who defied her. When the last wyvern fell, its body reduced to a torso whose hind parts have disappeared, and whose mouth and open ribcage puked and leaked blood all the way down to the ground, she was almost disappointed to find no more targets to kill, for her spell, greedy as it was... was not yet appeased. Amidst the rain of dead and dying wyverns and men, the hail of bone fragments, meat slabs and blood torrents, boulders of crimson fire now descended upon the earth, painting trails of unholy flames and dark smoke in the sky. They struck the puny world beneath Jillian’s disdainful eyes with impunity, obliterating trees and igniting entire patches of forest, striking the body of the crusader army and killing dozens of men in a single strike, and one missile even struck about four hundred yards from where the two sorcerers’ husks lay dreaming of death and destruction.

It was like a dream, and it might have been, given how surreal it was. And like with any dream, Jillian felt tired, her eyelids felt heavy, her breath became sporadic and strained. Here in the sky she could not see how her body in the forest below lost all color, nor could she see the trickles of blood that ran from her small nose and out from between her pressed lips. She did not even realize the crystalline tears that formed underneath her tightly shut eyes. Yet, she could feel how, of all those that had been ruined that day, she was one of them. The skies were clear, but the price had been paid. She lost her sense of sight, and could no longer control her body. The last thing Gerald saw was her inky apparition about to fall, her fingers slipping loose from his, before it vanished entirely.

Jillian did not open her eyes and her breath was irregular. All around her, the world was bloodied and burning brightly while her own flame merely smoldered, like a bonfire about to go out for the night.