"I think I lost myself somewhere in there," Jor'Mari says as I pull away from him. His hands linger on me, the points of his claw-like nails snagging fabric, but he doesn't hold on, doesn't stop me from turning his attention. "I thought you were dead."

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

"No." His skin is like electricity, buzzing beneath the pads of my fingertips as I caress the side of his face. "You didn't know, couldn't have known. You already avenged me. That is more than enough."

"This bastard?" he turns, looking down at the corpse next to us.

I think for a moment to use my eye, to make certain that the three are dead, but something in the look on his face halts me, makes me turn the Eye of Volaash on Jor'Mari. The sensation as I activate the enchantment is like a razor blade being run over the surface of my brain. The vision in my left eye blinks out with a popping sound, and for an instant, I am worried that my eye has exploded. Through my half-blindness, I see words written on the air above his head.

Jor'Mari(Rank 2 Level 83), Son of Duke Cla'Mari of the Mari Duchy Demon Conflux<Vitality Specialist><Strength Specialist><Magic Specialist><Defense Specialist><Magic Defense Specialist><Speed Specialist><Recovery Specialist><Perception Specialist>

"Charlene?" he asks as I hiss through the sudden pain, a hand covering my blinded eye.

"I'll recover," I say, taking deep inhales to push the pain aside. "Something is wrong with my eye."

"The one Arabella gave you? It's black and red; I thought you already knew that."

The confusion on his face lasts for only a few seconds as I glare at him, splitting into that infectious smirk of his as he fails to hold a straight face. Through the pain, the exhaustion, and the delirium, I can't help but find light in the way he smiles at me. I can't help but laugh, and for the first time tonight, it doesn't come out strange and mad. Standing here, in the mud made from once lovely gardens, my shoulders shake as I share a laugh with this man. Leaning into him, I feel the bass of his deep chuckle, but he can't let go fully, allowing me to lean against him while he stands strong.

The world has turned into a terrible thing, or maybe it always was. Either way, when I stand with him here in this dark place beneath a hellish sky, I feel secure.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asks. "About your eye. There were healers in the palace, but…" He trails off, his eyes following the climbing trunk of the dead tree that dominates the palace grounds toward its barren crown.

"Not unless you are a master enchanter," I tell him, reluctantly stepping away again. Movement out of the corner of my eye pulls my attention toward the group of guardsmen standing not far off. Among them is Jor's sister, Yor. A spark of hatred, an ember that burns so bright I am afraid it might set my soul on fire, ignites at the sight of her. I have to remind myself that she wasn't the one who attacked me. I don't hate her. The one who did it is dead.

"There were healers with the 4th," I tell him, trying to distract myself from the image of the woman being carried on a stretcher toward higher and safer ground. "We should get these people across the field to them."

He doesn't look at me, his eye climbing high overhead, blank orbs staring at the bursts of magic taking place above the dead branches of the tree. It's been going on for a while now, sporadic detonations that shake the dead tree so hard that the bark groans. The sound is like the earth shifting, and every time I hear it, I worry the entire thing will fall over and destroy half the district.

"It is up there," Jor'Mari says. I can't be sure if he is talking to me or not. "It killed him. Ripped him in half right in front of me. Now it has my father up there; I have to kill it." I grab onto him as he steps forward. Jor halts, stopping at the edge of my reach.

"Killed who?" I ask him.

He blinks, turning to look back at me. "Fas," he chokes on the word, one hand reaching up to clench the robes over his heart. Only, his robes are torn, leaving him grasping only empty air. "That thing ripped him apart like he was nothing. It has to die, Charlene. We have to kill it."

"We will," I tell him. It is an effort to turn his attention away. I point him toward his sister. "But if we don't help here, now, you might lose your sister."

His eyes widen, as if he didn't know Yor was out here. "I think the healers are dead."

"Not the ones the 4th brought with them," I tell him again.

"The 4th. They are here?"

"Some of them," I confirm. "It seems like Illigar expected this awfulness to happen and sent part of the army back to the city. There are some from the 2nd here too, helping to hold the position at the broken gates."

"Dovik…Jess."

"Alive," I tell him.

A part of me feels like it's a lie. Even with all the effort the healers in the dome put toward helping my friend, there's no guarantee she will live. But I can't speak about that to him, not now. Even as he stands here, scanning the battlefield as if it is the first time he is seeing it, I can see how his shoulders sag, how his face twitches with a deep tiredness. He always grows exhausted after using his ability to grant him an attribute specialization. I can only imagine the fatigue he must be feeling from using so many at the same time. I, more than anyone, know that weariness. Somehow, looking after him, trying to keep him focused, helps me keep my exhaustion at bay.

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There is relief in his exhale. "Good. That is good." Turning, he sees the men and women gathered together on the platform. The demons, their numbers severely thinned throughout the night, stay away, hissing at him but refusing to advance. He looks over the battlefield. "This all feels familiar."

"It is here," I tell him. "The same monster we saw in the tower."

"I thought the Willian Guild had killed that thing."

"Maybe they did," I tell him. I kick the misshapen corpse near our feet. "That monster is like these, maybe the same kind, I don't know. I killed two more as I made my way here. They weren't as strong as the one in the tower, but when they showed their true faces, they resembled it." My eyes linger on the corpse at our feet. Something about how it felt as I kicked it…

"The one in the throne room looked like that thing as well," he says, turning to stare back up at the crown of the tree. "The one that killed Fas. The one that summoned this tree."

At the base of the twisted height of malignant bark, its enormity truly begins to set in. Before, I saw Lady Forendous summon some aquatic beast; I had thought that to be immense. But this thing, this evil tree growing from the center of the destroyed palace, dwarfs anything I have ever seen. No, that is not necessarily true. At the start of the trial, a massive wall of magic had been created, slowly advancing upon us to push us down the course. It had been a rank four magician who created that wall. Just how powerful is the creature lingering at the height of the great tree? How powerful must those combating it now be to stand against it?

I'm pulled from my thoughts and plans by the sound of collapse. One of the already abused buildings on the lot moans out its final protest before the south wall begins to collapse in a shower of black brick. The small demons scattered around the field begin to run then, as afraid of the rumbling of the crushed brick as they appeared to be of Jor'Mari. I realize that I recognize the building. I saw it almost fall apart from afar when I first escaped the underground. The memory of strange shapes moving in among the broken pieces comes back to me.

I glance to Jor'Mari, finding him standing just in front of me, his arm out to shield me from the building's destruction. There is no chance for us to exchange words before a sensation ripples out from the stirring rubble. I don't see it, the magic is too diffuse for that, but my new magical sense picks it up all the same, a taste like bile on the back of my throat. I would recognize it anywhere; I spent so long inside of its influence after all.

"It is in there," Jor'Mari says to me, letting me know that he feels it too. "Go!" he shouts to the guardsmen assembled around his injured sister. "Retreat now, you are no match for this thing!"

The men and women take little convincing to begin falling back. They carry Yor between them as blood drips from the rag wrapped around her thigh. The demons don't seem to pay them any mind, whatever counts as moral for the infernal creatures, finally breaking as they begin to scatter.

"Are we a match for it?" I ask Jor'Mari. My moonsilver staff appears once more in my hand, and I focus on the thrum of magic running through the metal. There is fear, more than I ever felt for any other monster. I still remember how it broke my back, how it swatted me like an annoying fly, staring up and watching its flat teeth stretch wide to bite off my foot. No, even with all that I have done since the tower, I don't think that I am a match for that thing.

"There are magicians still left on this battlefield," Jor'Mari says. With a flourish, I see the outline of an invisible mace drop into his hand, summoned by a ring. "All we have to do is hold it for a time."

"I can do that."

What emerges from the brick, crawling forth on tentacles the color of night, is not the monster I remembered from the tower. I have honestly never seen anything close to it, have no real reference to describe the monster. It might have been a giant woman if her lower half did not give way to a tangled mess of twelve thick and rubbery tentacles, each as big around as a pear tree. As she rips herself from the rubble, she pulls herself straight, the tentacles bunching beneath her to leave her standing almost twenty-five feet tall. A chaotic mess of red lines covers her naked skin, moving over every part of her in a pattern that hurts my eyes to focus upon. From her head sprout seven horns, the tips converging toward a space above her silvery hair. It is a demon; I know that somehow, but what my eye is drawn toward is not the grand aspect of the monster, but rather the metallic sphere embedded in its forehead. The sphere pulses with energy, and the air around is distorting with raw madness. That sphere is a seed of chaos, the source of the terror gripping Danfalla.

"So, that is what became of Evilynn," Jor'Mari says, the grip of his weapon whining as he squeezes it tighter.

I only hear the fading sound of his final words, the wind whipping past my ears stealing it away. The ground streaks past beneath me, and I start to realize that I am sailing forward when I watch the demonic woman begin to grow as I near. There's a compulsion, a dragging force inside of myself, screaming that I must take that orb or destroy it.

One of the huge tentacles of the demon arcs forward, a wave of air pushed before it like a concussive force. It is too slow, far too slow. As it nears, entering the range of my contracted aura, weight presses down on the rubbery appendage. It sinks, the intended blow falling off target as I continue to fly toward the giant's face.

Somehow, Jor'Mari beats me to it. He is there in a flash, behind the head of the monsters with his weapon grasped in both his hands. The skull-splitting crack as the head of his mace connects with the head of the demon rattles my teeth. The monster doesn't so much fall over as it is driven to the ground face first, bricks splashing like water as it crashes into the ground. Jor'Mari is sailing away, unable to navigate the air and entirely at the whims of his strike's after effects, but he has given me a window.

I have to weave to avoid the flailing tentacles that wave, the demon trying to recover its balance in the instant before it is driven into the broken stones. A dozen orbs of dark sand form around me as I call upon all of my power together. The globes array about me like the glowing teeth of a dragon, my pointing staff the center and throat for the gout of flames that pour forth. An orange waterfall of burning magic falls toward the stunned monster, bathing it in baptismal destruction. The air itself screams along with me as I push as much mana through my reinforced channels as possible. The ground beneath me becomes a conflagration, a lake of flames spreading out and crawling over everything within forty feet.

In just a few seconds, I exhaust half of my mana. The strain is incredible, my incredible recovery working overtime to fix the damage to my mana channels as I overtax them. The dragonfire pouring down from me wanes, slowly retreating and becoming nothing. I stare down at the flames from the air, watching the carpet of burning color roil beneath me. There is nothing there, nothing as far as I can see, just a blanket of fire upon the stone.

Jor'Mari gets my attention, waving at me from the edge of a broken walkway. As I land, preparing to exchange words, he does not react to me, his eyes focused upon the lake of fire. I don't understand his distraction for a long moment, not until I look inward, not until I realize that I still taste that burning bile at the back of my throat. Turning, I stare into the flickering fire, and deep inside, I see movement.

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