[h2]Tempest[/h2][hider=***]

All around the group, even as they made their choices, the air grew shimmered with an unnatural quality and simmered with a burgeoning heat. Any who had noses to smell with could clearly make out the reek of sulfur. 

Among them, suddenly, was Edyta Laska, fresh from having tracked Dory and Johann to the mines and eavesdropped on their words. Still in communication with Sister Charity, she arrived just on time to see her fellow Biros sell pieces of themselves to those foul birds - the same ones she'd encountered in Mandelein - in exchange for short-term power. She did not trust the beasts and she [i]would[/i] not take an offer. The Gods had given her, already, what she required to succeed in her holy mission. [color=f26522]"I make no deal, and neither should the rest of you."[/color]

Marci, about to clamour for the boons that the birds offered, turned on the spot at the nun's arrival. [color=598527]"Nice of you to show up,"[/color] she snapped, [color=598527]"and with such welcome advice, too."[/color] Yet, as the energy within the cathedral grew, she reached out in alarm with her senses, pricked by the nun's words to remember her duty as tethered. The air around them positively [i]roiled[/i] with dark energy in such abundance as she had never felt in her sixteen years upon this Sipenta. Her eyes bulged and she felt her pulse behind her ears. [color=598527]"Guys!"[/color] the tethered girl shouted, drawing, herself. [color=598527]"He's coming! He's [i]everywhere[/i]!!"[/color]

There were people who were about to die by the [i]hundreds[/i], and Marceline thought, once again this holy week, not of herself, first of all. She stretched further, beyond the cathedral, and sent the lowest-power arc lightning she could across the idling thralls. It ripped and crackled up and down the walls, across ceiling, and up the belltowers, which let out a pained, ghostly ring. Tendrils of electricity spidered across the gathered people and they shrieked and writhed. In those few moments, hundreds fell and then rose again. [color=598527]"[i][b]"RUN!!![/b][/i]"[/color] she screamed, amplifying and redirecting her voice with sonic magic. [color=598527]"[i][b]"Run, you fools! Run if you're exhausted! Run if you're bleeding! Run with broken LEGS! Get OUT of here!!![/b][/i]"[/color]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8BwHHEopec[/youtube]

She paid for her warning with incredible violence. In less than a second, an enormous ghostly hand solidified and swatted the little tethered from behind as if she were a mere insect. Marci was hurled clean across the cathedral and pummeled into the wall hard enough to crack stone. She stuck to it for a second or two before her body peeled off and fell to the ground, not a flicker of life remaining.

The two avians shuddered and twitched their heads in multiple directions before flapping their wings.

"It is done." they said in tandem, ominously, eloquently. 

The radiant sheen of the first faded while the other let out a caw, distinct from the usual squawk. 

Those tempted by the creatures felt but a singular warmth before normalcy returned. A fragile normalcy to be shattered by the coming colossus.

"It. Is. DONE!" they wailed before taking a hurried flight. 

The twin birds circled the heavens above, watching like vultures like a sadistic audience that just had their little meet and greet with the fools that were about to shut up and dance. 

A singular red down fell from the blackened sky, and found the cold hand of the recently deceased girl that should have stuck to her gut.

Ingrid could not believe what she just saw. Marceline was dead. Just like that. There was no time for mourning the loss of her friend. All she could do was anchor herself to avoid the same tragedy.

[color=#cbc66d]"Marci!"[/color] Roslyn screamed through the bellowing bell. 

For a moment, she expected to see her friend rewind time and rise again. As time ticked away, it was clear that wasn't going to happen. Her friend was gone. Anger burned in her heart and tears flowed as she gripped tightly onto that feeling. She glared back at the direction the ghostly hand came from. [color=#cbc66d]"Iptacht, I'm going to send you back to the hells for that!"[/color] 

She held the odd little coin in her hand.

Xiuyang stood frozen, shaking as she beheld her dead friend. It all made sense now. The nuns spared her because they knew she would struggle and die here, buying them time. Just like the Zenos of the old guard. She was nothing but a tool to be used until broken.

The woman who confidently barked an order to attack Saivel was all but gone. If only she could teleport, she and Roslyn and Ingrid could just be gone. This was an Arch Zeno problem.

But she was here and there was nothing she could do but fight, or abandon her friends to their fate and go back on everything she just said to Mother Madrona.

She blinked and steeled herself. She was ready to die. [color=slateblue][i]*In our next life, Ciro. If we fail here, you won't keep me waiting long, will you?*[/i][/color] She took a swipe at the grand demon with what she hoped was her fiercest blood magic, and promptly whiffed. Iptacht was a haze and she could not find her mark.

With that, Xiuyang turned her attention to her allies, as if to seek direction from them, but they were fighting each other. A horrid miasma overcame the cathedral, and she was the only one not suffering. Everyone was being hurt, and there was nothing she could do. The grand demon itself was miasma. She'd not taken the birds' offering of insight, unwilling to put her friends in danger, but she still felt helpless to save them all.

She could not heal everyone. She had to prioritize. Who was in the worst shape—no, it wasn't quite so simple. Evander and Ingrid had temporarily anchored themselves. They had to take lower priority if it came down to it, but for now, it was Ingrid suffering the most. The so-called "boon" was a plain curse.

Ingrid was healed, and the biros were holding their own. Xiuyang was starting to believe that maybe the nuns' faith was not misplaced. Maybe they could really do this! As if in defiance of that very thought, she became possessed for her troubles. She found her hands defying her will as she raised them to heal the grand demon. It was too late to resist—Iptacht had caught her in a moment of pride. Yet, her omniphage coils were able to interfere, pulling her hand back and leaving the work incomplete.

Ingrid was a wonder to behold, her movements brutal and quick even as her life slipped away with every move. Xiuyang only wished that she could put the courage she was inspiring in her to work instead of being a bystander in her own body, a terror she had felt when she first learned of the omniphage coils but not truly experienced. Adrenaline spiked as Ingrid came for her—a fact that would have spelled her death a year ago—and was surprised to rebuff her easily.

No, that wasn't right. Ingrid was not trying to kill her. Neither was Roslyn, who incidentally dislocated her shoulder with her kinetic attack. She was freed from her possession, but now Laska came for Roslyn. Was Laska possessed? Was everyone confused? It was total chaos. She needed to focus!

She could feel, behind her, Marci. The tethered was not dead, and yet, a horrible thought haunted the Revidian—was she on their side, or had Iptacht claimed her? [color=slateblue]"Marci!!"[/color] Xiuyang shouted for joy—a feeling that seemed so far from what was appropriate in the circumstances, and yet, welcome. She was not possessed.

Roslyn was in danger of death, and so she healed her. The miasma was getting nearly unbearable, and was even starting to affect Xiuyang, though her body was still holding strong. Ingrid and Evander dropped dead and were restored to their temporal anchor, leaving Xiuyang the most injured of the lot. She could never get an attack in, but she'd found a chance to heal herself, her lowest priority. Surely they were winning this thing—she thought, but caught herself.

[color=slateblue]"Not this time!"[/color] she shouted, beating the grand demon's influence back. She felt her items lose their power, and she staggered a moment as her sight returned to the present. The grand demon was denied the heal it had—far more urgently this time—demanded. Ingrid, possessed, came at her, and she defended herself—this time for real—and her success spelled her doom. Again, she was possessed of Iptacht.

Now, all her allies needed a heal—and she could do nothing. Xiuyang, a girl with holy blood in unholy veins, would outlast all of her friends. At best, she would watch them die, helpless, before the grand demon finally allowed her to perish. At worst, the miasma would never claim her, and her earlier caution would be in vain—Iptacht would use her body to slaughter Lindenholdt.

Marco and Roslyn would spare her this fate. Marco hit Iptacht with all he had, forcing the demon to take partial corporeal form and Roslyn finished him off. Freed, Xiuyang came at Iptacht like a mad woman and rolled him into Marci's open portal. Fittingly, the woman who would have died alone in a desert if not for her friends had sealed the grand demon to the same fate.

Her eyes sought her allies before she fixated on Xiuyang. Black eyes like Evander and Laska stared back at her. Running on instinct and gut, Roslyn pushed in close. Her hand wound back for a strike. Her friend's tendrils curled in to block when she slapped the shoulder. A subtle pop dislocated the bone from the joint. 

She flinched, but had no time to think. Laska appeared again for another round. Her dark eyes narrowed on the smaller girl with unholy fury. Roslyn braced. She tore off a bomb and tossed it up between them. It exploded, halting the nun’s attack. 

Roslyn kept her guard before she noticed her wounds mending. Evidence of her friends coming back to their senses. She held onto that tight ball of rage in her core even when her expression remained calm. Killing Iptacht was the only thing that mattered to her now. 

The dark boons filled her. She pushed down the dread about the price. Spotting the reddish outline, she raised her rifle. She had chosen her poisons and she'll accept the ending this day.

Again, she hit her mark. 

Again, Iptacht roared in pain. 

As the sound died, both Ingrid and Evander crumpled only to reappear moments later. 

Her distraction left her open to Iptacht's attack. Icy shards impaled the rifle woman's flesh as she stumbled forward, her blood dripped across the stone floor. A vengeful scream escaped her chest. Hearing her cry, another warm tingle raced through her skin leaving it intact once more. The relief didn't last long. Suddenly something squeezed her insides and she dropped to her knees. Light faded from her eyes while Eshiran's arms reached to welcome her into the goddess’ embrace. The last words she heard were, "What the sschiesse!?"

Instead of the drifting sensation she expected, a hot ember settled in her chest. It burned away the cold and denied her peace. She couldn’t die here. Not now. She had a vow to keep. A purpose to finish and a demon to send to the hells. 

Her eyes snapped open and the girl gasped to life. She shot upright to see Marci, alive and well, next to her. Words caught in her throat, but her fingers reached for her rifle. 

[color=#cbc66d]"That was... unpleasant."[/color] She rose back to her feet.  

Her eyes witness Marco drawn in massive energy, his final strike ready to slice the demon in half. Everything trembled at the power and even she found herself left in awe. Sensing his end nearing, Iptacht faced down the Revidian’s smaller form.  

[color=000000]"You think you are heroes!"[/color] he wailed, [color=000000]"But you have just [i]doomed[/i] the world!"[/color] His form faded and darkened.

 [color=000000]"[i]They[/i] are coming, and you've just slain your best chance to defeat them."[/color]

With that, the energies in the damaged cathedral swirled and reformed.

Iptacht flickered in and out of resistance and his eyes burned with a desperate, vengeful fury. He was nearly corporeal and, with this power, he reared up, preparing to lunge at Marco.

As the grand demon and man clashed, Roslyn held her breath and her shot. She hoped for the best and braced for the worst. Nothing was certain in this life anymore. 

Almost at the moment that the demon transformed, however, the overwhelming aura of the demon slayer, Marco Terranova, began to eat at his essence. He reeled and then swiped at Roslyn, but he left himself wide open. Marco’s pupils swallowed his eyes like the others then also came at her. Behind her, her friends rushed to her aid and the young girl exhaled.

[color=#cbc66d]"No."[/color] A cold certainty came from her lips. She wouldn’t be denied this. Iptacht wouldn’t win. He wouldn’t hurt others or her friends. Immense gravity slammed down on the man and forced him onto the floor. 

Iptacht’s claws reached for her when she turned her attention toward him. Ice and fire burned in her eyes, her resolve set in her heart. She repeated her vow from the beginning. [color=#cbc66d]"I told you I would send you to the hells."[/color] 

She pulled the trigger. The shot rang out and punched through his core.

Loss.

That was Lindenholdt’s quiet inheritance. 

Loss of truth. Loss of families. Loss of light. 

Loss of life.

The spirit of sorrow no doubt would linger in Lindenholdt for some time after the students left. The massacre of Dom St. Adelheid would forever mark Lindenholdt's legacy. The blood of all those children, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters would remain in the minds of everyone who survived. It'd eventually become a grief too old to name and too deep to fade. Eventually, time would heal some wounds, but not all. This would be the tragedy of a once promising city, now coiled back to a darker age.

Evander watched in horror. His jaw agape without realizing as he witnessed Marci slapped across the cathedral. A rage boiled inside, flickering flames in his eyes. He wanted to charge... to retaliate immediately. Yet, he knew better. He was better.

The demonic ghostlike fiend was powerful. Evander could sense the enormity of it's strength. It was not an enemy he could just win over, he needed to prepare for the worst. Before making any moves, Evander anchored himself temporally. As he did so successfully, something else came into his mind.

It began as a tremor, subtle, almost imperceptible. A ripple through Evander's veins, like a foreign pulse beating beneath his own. His breath hitched. He couldn't hear quite clearly. A voice threaded through his thoughts like black silk, smoothing over his senses and reflexes. He was no longer in control. 

Evander staggered. He tried fighting whatever caught hold of him. It was for not. The edges of his perception melting into a slow blur. His heartbeat doubled, then tripled, until his fingers twitched. Until, he attacked Roslyn.

All while she defended. All while he watched from a point of view that could only be described as disassociation. For a moment, he felt what it was like to be possessed by a demon. Buried deep, every movement felt like mockery, as if the demon was laughing at Evander's inability to resist. It was Roslyn's arcane that ripped the demon out of him. The burning sensation crackling throughout his body as a blast of light seared across the nave, throwing Evander's body backward, slamming into the cold stone floor. The impacted rattled through his bones. Good, he thought, they're mine. He reassured himself.

The burn of pain reminded him he was back in control, even if only barely. The haze peeled from his mind in jagged layers, his breathing ragged as he tried to orient himself. The world swam in color and smoke, shattered glass, blood, and the stench of his burned flesh now caught his nostrils. Through it all, this thing, this demon, this disgusting monstrosity still loomed overhead, puppetting the biros instead of engaging himself. The coward.

Before Evander could even think to heal himself. Ingrid was already on him, face half-hidden behind her tangled hair, her eyes glossed over with that same look of the townsfolk. When their gazes met, Evander froze, he recognized it wasn't her. He didn't want to hurt her. None of them could afford it. But he couldn’t stop her either.

Evander dipped back, his body vanishing in a shimmer of displaced air and reappearing near Marco. The landing this time wasn't graceful; he staggered to one knee, coughing, his clothes singed and torn where Roslyn's blast had struck him. The Hellish Miasma was suffocating his lungs and they felt as if he were being burned from the inside out, while having been burned on the outside too. His chest was wet, seeping blood, and his body wanted to rest, but his mind resisted.

Marco would bring him back to speed, pressing a hand against Evander, healing, and knitting wounds only a skilled binder could manage. Evander turned to the armor cladded man representing the churches order and nodded, "Thanks." He looked around, "Now where is it?"

There!

Iptacht was in view. Evander clenched his fist. Magic flared, temporal energy distorting the air around him, sparks of magnetism dancing along his arms. He dashed forward, time bending around his stride, and struck. But the demon flickered, intangible, and the blow sliced through empty space.

"This piece of shit!" He growled.

If they couldn't bring it down faster, everyone would soon be looking at their lives ended and their bodies merely extensions of this beast. He couldn't let it happen, he wouldn't. There was a timeline somewhere where he saw stronger foes than this, but, it wasn't his own. For some reason, this felt more personal. It felt as if the demon mocked their very existence. 

It would be the demon's downfall to treat them any less than effective mages who were well worth their salt when stakes were high. In his next opening, arcs of blue-white energy carved through the fiend's form. But he couldn't let up, they hadn't won, they weren't even close. Iptacht shrieked slightly as if stepping on a tac, yet, it didn't seem to come from an origin of pain. Then, he felt it...

...pressure.

His world spun into a blur of white and red. One instant he was standing firm, fire still simmering in his veins, and the next his body weightless. Thrown like a ragdoll through smoke and fractured light. He tried raising a divine armor, he tried staying in the fight. Instead, the cathedral floor shattered under him into the abyss. His ribs caved in a flash of pain sharp enough to cut any thoughts that tried entering his mind, his vision broken, sky, snow, stone, blood, spinning and blending into one. 

He hit the far wall. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of air leaving his lungs under muffled ears and the ringing of his heartbeat slowing in his ears. He tried to move. Tried to command his body. Only fingers twitched. Only two. Only one. He went limp.

The world began to pull away, colors dulling, sounds fading until it was... quiet. 

So this... is what it feels like to stop fighting.

Strangely it was calming, he almost accepted it, then he remembered... fuck demons.

Evander's consciousness snapped into motion like a thread drawn taut, yoinked backward through a tunnel of fractal memories, each shard reflecting something familiar: Marco's healing, Ingrid's eyes, Roslyn's strike, and Iptacht's mockery. Then, abruptly, impact. 

He gasped as air filled his lungs again. His body, once broken and still, reassembled around him at the point of his temporal anchor His heart slammed against his ribs and his vision swamed back with colors bleeding before snapping into focus. There was the lingering of pain in his chest like a phantom pain, but he knew it wasn't real. His skin prickled with cold sweat, and his hands slightly trembled. 

"What the... that worked." He murmured, his voice raw and almost surprised at himself. 

He would never forget what it was like to die and he would never forgive who paid him that due. His eyes locked on Iptacht. He steadied himself. The air shimmering faintly around him, ripples of displaced time still settling. A golden thread trailed from his chest to the spot where his anchor had been placed, drifting away. The line between his survival and oblivion had been thin. 

He clenched his fist. "Never again."

While Iptacht was busy defending and taking shots from others like Marco's massive sword strike. Evander rejoined, pressing the assault. He surged forward, pissed and prepared to light this demon a smack down. The air around his boots warping as kinetic energy built beneath him, pressure coiling tight like a spring ready to snap. The ground cracked as he launched, his body streaking upward in a blur of motion. 

Wind screamed past his ears as he twisted mid flight. He drew heat into his right leg, veins flaring with converging energy, magnetic sparks snapping along his half, and fire split up, blooming from the shin to the toes. By the time he reached his apex, his foot was a streak of burning gold. With a sharp exhale, he spun, momentum folding into precision, diving the top of his foot and shin across the demon's neck. The impact landed with a thunderclap, the strike detonating in a flash of searing flame and kinetic backlash. 

The creature's head whipped sideways, a burst of black ichor sprayed in violent arcs through the air as fire licked across its shoulders. Evander hit the ground in a predator's crouch, boots skidding across the scorched stone, smoke rising where his feet kissed the floor.

He rose slowly, straightening himself, exhaling through his nose, while embers writhed up his leg like hungry serpents.

"Back to the abyss you crawled from demon!"

And they made it so. Strike after relentless strike. Iptacht thrashed, flailed, and failed. Desperately the beast swung slower than the last. Until there was nothing left but the fog it had slightered in on, dissipating like the coward it had always been. It's death wouldn't resurrect the massacred. But it wouldn't be in vain either. 

Their deaths had bought a most precious thing: their children's future, Lindenholdt's future, Kerremand's future, Severna's future, and Sipenta's future. 

Evander scanned the bloodied, battered, bombarded nave of the cathedral. A realization crystallized, cold and cutting as the winter rushing in through the broken walls. 

This is no longer a place of worship, but a place of mourning. All these innocents. Slaughtered for nothing. For a demon's hunger, and the ambitions of the blind.

He needed to remember this, to burn it in his mind, what pointless violence wrought. What senseless cruelty looked like when it finished feeding. 

Because war was coming.

And war...

Brought violence, oceans of it, drowning the guilty and innocent without prejudice. He had to be certain whatever blood he spilled, whatever destruction he unleashed, it meant something. That it bought Sipenta something more than another field of corpses, another cathedral of the dead. If war was inevitable, when the killing was done, the world would be better for it. Or, he should hang his laurels now.

"May we never forget," he breathed into the frozen air, the words a vow as much as a prayer.

The Century bided his time as chaos unfolded all around him. Patience was required more than anything else, and he could not afford to waste his strength attacking carelessly. He had fought this kind of battle before, when he destroyed Iptacht’s servant not too long ago. The same principles that allowed him to seize victory then would surely apply here. He could see the demon’s core floating inside the air mass, hidden behind a blanket of sickening fog. All he needed to do was strike it with his sword, and even a grand demon’s manifestation could be banished back to the aether between worlds. But if he missed, he would leave himself open to grave danger, so he had to be careful. 

[color=7b6c64][i]Damn poison… I can hardly breathe![/i][/color] Marco’s lungs were burning. He wondered if breathing was even worth the trouble if it hurt just as badly as suffocation. The mist stung his eyes and throat, blinding him with tears and wracking his body with an irresistible urge to cough until he was exhausted. Even still, he managed to stay focused on the fight, which had already started quite badly. 

Marco’s allies were dying too quickly. The grand demon’s power of possession was greater than any malevolent spirit he’d banished before. Even the most willful amongst them lost control as soon as its influence touched their minds, and as the biros turned on each other, he was forced to give up any openings he had to attack in order to keep the others alive with his healing magic. They tore into each other with the demon’s intent to kill, and every time he saved someone, Marco could feel the monster trying to worm its way into his own soul as well. He was the only one who possessed a gift that allowed him to resist its possession, and even then Marco nearly lost control of himself. Some kind of divine providence, or perhaps a helping hand from a friend, pulled him back from the abyss at the last moment before he was compelled to unleash his full power on the other students.

Ingrid, Evander, Roslyn, everyone was pushed to death’s door repeatedly in the heat of battle, either by the betrayal of their allies or the opportunistic attacks of Iptacht. Marco was torn to shreds at least once by a slicing whirlwind, and even as he was able to staunch his wounds the miasma continued to seep into his body and weaken him. The effect was getting stronger! He finally realized that this battle had a time limit. Just keeping the students alive wouldn’t be good enough, someone had to land the kill shot before they were all slain by the poison. 

Maybe some of them did die. Marco could definitely feel the aftershock of several temporal anchors triggering one after another. Fates were being written and erased every moment, and the growing sensation of deja vu left Marco feeling disoriented. To call this a desperate struggle would be putting it lightly. 

Like threading a needle, Marco finally found the opening he sought. The repeated attacks from the other biros had weakened the grand demon. Its apparition was moving sluggishly, and all of its focus appeared to be concentrated on controlling its human puppets. With its metaphorical back turned on him, the Century took the one chance he had to hit it with a single decisive blow. 

[color=7b6c64][i]Eshiran give me strength![/i][/color] Marco choked down one last mouthful of tainted air and brandished his beloved Haghoridir. He would end Iptacht’s wretched existence with a single blow. Anything less than a quick kill, and it would only flee and recover its strength, just like its minion tried to do in their previous encounter. If there was one thing he knew to be true of all demons, it was that they feared their end more than the mortals they sought to consume.

Marco had given the world a taste of the Beastbane blade in Palapar, when he used one of his sword arts to slay half of Virang’s elite vanguard in an instant. The Broken Halo was one of the Revidian’s specialties, and if it landed, Iptacht was dead for sure. The problem was that it was a one shot technique that gave the user little opportunity to adjust their aim. Could his sword strike true, or would he waste all of his effort attacking a wall as Marceline did moments ago? 

[color=7b6c64][i]I think your little buddy taught me how to hit you properly.[/i][/color] By adjusting the flow of time, Marco wouldn’t be able to freeze the grand demon, but he could slow it down enough for his eyes to follow the core. 

There was no point holding anything in reserve. Counting on the inherent ability of his manas to protect him, Marco breached his natural limit and overdrew to the breaking point, drawing enough magic energy in that single moment of time to threaten even the likes of Hugo or Jocasta. If they had not enhanced their own strength with mana brews and Hegelan enchantments, the others might have fainted in his presence. Marco was about to faint himself. The weight of the time pressure was more suffocating than the mist, and he was also containing a sufficient amount of magic energy to make his entire body explode. 

[color=7b6c64][i]This is all for you! Savor it![/i][/color] Marco swung Haghoridir like a bat and rended the air itself, pouring every drop of power into his muscles and his sword. Air molecules were pushed forward at the speed of sound, creating a blade of force that left a vacuum in the atmosphere. As oxygen and nitrogen rushed to fill the gap, Iptacht’s ghostly manifestation was sucked towards Marco, giving it no chance to avoid his wrath. The core was split in two, causing the demon to shriek in pain and terror as its essence spilled out like a leaking barrel. In the aftermath of his assault, the remains of the cathedral visibly shifted and groaned underneath the weight of its broken ceiling. His desperate attack had almost managed to cleave the church in half. 

At that point, Marco’s memory went blank. [i]Something[/i] happened, and then the next thing he knew he was kneeling on the ground beaten to a pulp, and the grand demon was finally gone. The survivors were congratulating each other and celebrating their… victory? They won? He guessed that he had been taken control of at the very last moment before someone knocked him back to his senses, and after visually confirming the number of people still standing, he was relieved to see that he hadn’t been allowed to kill anyone during his brief possession. 

With the poison gone, Marco could finally fill his lungs with fresh air. He felt like he had been run over by a carriage, and his bruised arms hung by his sides like anchors. It would take time to recover from the damage caused by the demon’s miasma, as well as the recoil of his own attack.

He gasped and dropped his sword. With the fight ended, Marco’s thoughts went towards the wounded villagers. There wasn’t time to celebrate with the others, nor to treat his personal injuries. Many of the townsfolk had died, but dozens more were still alive, writhing in agony on the ground or underneath piles of rubble. He had to help them now, or there would be even more graves to dig in Lindenholdt. Marco slipped on a puddle of blood and nearly cracked his head as he rushed to the side of Baron Fritz, who had the foresight to set up a triage area to administer first aid to the wounded. The two of them nodded wordlessly to each other before immersing themselves in the shared burden of treating the demon’s victims, neither man openly acknowledging the fact that the young knight was barely standing on his feet. There would be plenty of time later to rest, and process the events of the past week along with everything he had learned since then: about the Knowers, Marceline and Roslyn, and now Xiuyang as well.

Fin.[/hider]