FMH ~ 53!

OH NO! All we have left is the Epilogue!!!!! :P

“Not like this!” Zed screeched, his organs and skeleton able to be seen due to the approach of the intense red light shining toward them. An ocean of bloody illumination was expanding in a sphere; upward, side-to-side, and even digging through the ground as it moved. Only a second into activation, the spell was already moving as fast as a normal man could run… and gaining speed.

“Everyone get behind me!” Andre stood tall, power flowing out of him and into the ground. With everything he could put into his abilities, he bound himself to the earth and threw a hill-sized rock directly into the light. It was broken to the smallest bits in an instant as the light touched it, but strangely enough his connection remained. He realized that the hill had been separated out, and everything that it had been composed of was separated into neat piles of ores, mulches, and stones. “This spell… all it does is tear apart, neatly stack, and store what it touches?”

“We are mostly made of water, but that doesn’t mean I want to get turned into a pool!” Zed fell to the ground, all the fight having left him. A second, maybe less, until everything was gone.

“Cleanse!” Taylor’s voice sounded, and the three males were pulled into a heap and tied together by their clothes. “Unsummon Arthur right now! This is already going to be too close!”

“What?” Andre got out before he found Taylor laying across all of them, as spread-eagle as she could manage. The remainder of his words couldn’t be heard over the roar of the red flood and… something else.

A klaxon call drowned out all other noise; the scream of strange butterflies that had appeared the instant before the red light touched them. The all-encompassing red light reached for them, then simply vanished as the butterflies spread further and seemed to eat a tunnel through the assault. 

“Three, four, five…” Taylor was counting, the panic in her voice rising with each passing second. Just after she said ‘eight’, the light was gone, flowing over them and into the distance as an unstoppable tsunami. The four began to fall, dropping a dozen feet as the ground beneath them vanished.

“How?” The voice shook the air as they rose to their feet. Luke looked up, seeing an unending river of resources flowing out of the red light and forming into neatly stacked piles. Hills - more properly - at this point. Gethedrel was walking toward them, but he seemed exhausted and drained. “You should be dead. Your constituent parts should be impossible to determine at this point. How. How are you still here?”

“A benefit of being so beautiful.” Zed’s voice was muffled, seeing as he was still under Andre. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Flames boiled out of Gethedrel, only to be countered by an explosion of ice and water vapor, courtesy of Taylor. “Mongrels! I’ll eat your hearts!”

Luke was tossed at the creature by a vine, and his left fist caused a brilliant light to shine around Gethedrel before it vanished. Luke was furious. “Stand still so I can kill you!”

“No! For it is I who shall be doing the killing!” The wind began whipping, in this case, literally. Thin streams of solidified air began lashing out at Luke, causing his armor to light up with every attack. Not even bothering to continue paying attention to the Murderhobo, Gethedrel released more air. This sent all the spores that Andre had released flying back at him. Obviously, it wasn’t a danger, but it did still disappoint the Druid.

The scene repeated over and over, only interspersed with the spells that Taylor was throwing at him. Something had to give eventually, and it turned out to be Luke’s armor first. With a sound of shattering glass, Luke’s cuirass shattered into motes of light. Angry red lines began appearing on his skin, and blood began to flow.

“Ah, finally,” Gethedrel chuckled as the small tears of blood dripped from the whip-cuts. “I was wondering how much punishment you could take. Well… no need to hold back! Thank you for the meal!”

Blood shot out of Luke in a fountain, and Gethedrel opened his mouth to taste the coppery blood. After a deep gulp, the chimera started laughing. “Such power in you! This taste…! How much Potentia have you gained in your short life? There must be the hopes of a million invested within you! It… it’s…”

Gethedrel stumbled and Luke sank to his knees, the loss of blood taking a serious toll on him. 

Health: 110/250. Weakened: Blood loss. Damage output reduced by 30%! Bleeding (minor): -2 health per 5 seconds.

I Have Concerns has taken effect! Someone was foolish enough to try a taste, huh? Initiating the unicorn-goring!

“What is happening?” Gethedrel tried to vomit out the blood, but it stayed in him, as if it had a mind of its own. “So… so disgusting! Do you all taste like this? What is in your blood? You’re venomous?”

“I’m poisonous. Venomous would be if I bit you.”

“Pathetic creatures! How dare you!” A Shatter Shot took Gethedrel off his cloven hooves, but he blinked to another position mid-fall. Mana built up around him again, and his eyes were leaking bloody tears. “This is a potent venom-”

“Poison!”

“-but I’ve survived worse! I am done playing with you; it is time to start the invasion!”

“Abyssal demon! Stand and fight!” Andre shouted as he attacked over and over again. It was useless; his attacks couldn’t land on the otherworldly beast. Arthur may have been fast enough, but the bear had been unsummoned just before it was hit by the red light. Andre had taken Taylor’s advice, not wanting to see what would happen if the summoned version of Arthur was pulled apart.

“I can’t land another hit either,” Taylor admitted after her initial excitement about blasting the invader once had faded. 

“I could kill it if I could land just one clean hit,” Luke snarled, yanking open his waterskin and downing the last of his liquid mana. His wounds healed quickly, and his armor *snapped* back into place. “Tell me how to force a demon to hold still.”

“What?” Zed did a double-take at Luke’s words. “That isn’t a demon.”

“I don’t play guessing games, Zed. Andre called it a demon. Spit out the answer or shut it.” Luke’s growl emanated from deep in his chest.

“That’s a Satyr.” Seeing Luke’s lack of understanding, Zed explained, “These creatures are all chimeras, yes? That one is well-known, a magic-focused cross between a human and a goat. A Satyr can-”

Zed almost fell over as Luke Bum Rushed Gethedrel. The Satyr gathered a wash of mana into its hands, “This again? Enough! Die for your impertinence, you-”

“Baaa!”

Gethedrel froze in place, then took a slow step toward Luke before coming to his senses. “What was th-”

Goat Call was super effective!

Luke damages Gethedrel: 89 blunt damage!

The mana shield around Gethedrel flared and shrieked. The Satyr himself blinked away, staring at Luke with a shaken expression. “How are you able-”

Once more Luke was in front of him, but as Gethedrel tried to blink away, Luke activated Goat Call again. The Satyr froze for a split second, and another punch landed.

Luke damages Gethedrel: 125 blunt damage!

The mana shield shattered, and Gethedrel screamed as Luke’s mana-created horn dug deeply into his left eye. “No! No! I will not be defeated on this backwards plane!”

His next blink brought him next to the Scar, and he dove through before anyone could react. Taylor watched as Luke followed closely on the Satyr’s hoofsteps, diving through only a moment after Gethedrel had made it in. “Everyone in! The time difference!”

By the time the other three had joined Luke in this new plane of existence, both he and Gethedrel were bloodied and heaving for air. Gethedrel took another hit, landing heavily on the ground. A thin mana shield wavered into existence, shattering as Luke hit it, but taking all the damage. “You think you’ve won? Y-you’re right! I… I admit defeat. I’ll make any concession-”

Critical hit! Luke damages Gethedrel: 433.21 blunt damage!

Gethedrel’s head exploded, and the rest of his body flopped to the floor, a light bleating noise escaping his exposed trachea. Luke stood over the corpse for a long moment, his breath starting to slow after only thirty seconds. “I…”

Potentia distributed based on participation! Andre: 1,500 Taylor: 2,600 Luke: 3,200 Zed: 700. 

Quest completed: Sending Monsters After Monsters (Repeatable). Return to the quest assigner for your rewards!

“You did it!” Zed squealed at the Murderhobo. “Now we just need to find a way to close this Scar, and the reward will be massive!”

“I don’t think we need to worry about that.” Taylor stated sadly, waving her hand behind her. The Scar had already snapped closed. Only the faintest distortion in the air remained to indicate the massive energy structure that had once stood there.

“How? How did that-” Zed’s complaint was cut off when Andre kicked Gethedrel’s clenched right hand and revealed a shattered stone disk.

“It was a trap - a failsafe - or a getaway attempt.” Andre sighed knowingly, knowing that they were abyssed. “Either we were lured here in the unlikely event that he died, so that his armies would eventually eat us, or… he never thought that we would be so quick to join in, and he was trying to escape by slamming the door behind him.”

“I hate goats. They always have something planned.” Luke finished his thought. “What’s going on, now? Where are we?”

“Before we fall into despair,” Taylor spoke pointedly at Zed, who had already dropped to the floor in a despairing fetal position, “we need to remember that we can hold out. We can work together and figure out a new way home. If the door exists-”

Feet pounding on the earth began to shake the ground, and bestial roars suffused the area as uncountable millions of creatures realized that their master, their protection against the rest of this world, had been slain. There was sorrow in the howls, fear… and rage. They were coming. They would destroy the ones that had done this before they lost their lives to the hordes of the other pillars of this plane. 

“A-as I was saying,” Taylor’s pale face allowed her true emotions to seep through, but she powered on, “we may have saved not only the Hollow Kingdom, but our entire world! Even if no one knows our names, or remembers our stories, we can rest in peace knowing that… we…. Luke, what are you doing?”

Power was gathering around Luke and accumulating on his fists. He lashed out, and the world reverberated. 

*Wub*.

“Weak point right here. Can’t go to Murder World, but I can go back to ours. As much as I appreciate what you are saying, I’d like to live.” Luke was beating on the distortion in the air at an even pace over the course of the next few minutes, and with every blow, more and more mana came from somewhere to assist in opening the door between dimensions. “Just gotta tenderize it a little.”

“You can’t just punch a hole back into our world!” Taylor tried to help Luke save face. “I don’t know what you are doing, but-”

“Tier Eight: Open Up!” Luke shouted as he lashed forward one last time. A portal appeared, and they could see their world beyond it. Luke dove through right away, seeming to move in slow motion on the other side as soon as he crossed.

“You!” Taylor froze in shock as Zed dove through as well, having gotten to his feet in record time. “You can’t use a Tier Eight spell in under three minutes! This is impossi - yipe!”

“To be fair, he did tell us that he could punch it closed a few times. If he can do something that ridiculous, why couldn’t he punch it open?” A vine grabbed Taylor and tossed her through the portal, and a chuckling Andre followed after her, moments before the portal snapped closed and the area was overrun with monsters.