Valery twirls with her staff, leaning her strength into a strike as the end of her weapon shimmers into the tip of a polearm. The Major clasps the glinting blade between his fingers. Unfazed by Valery's tricks, he pulls her out with strength beyond a normal Human and sets to palm strike her jaw when a shard of blood pierces his side.

Valery breaks free, slicing off a finger as she rips the Chimeric Armament out of his grasp. Roaring, the Major curses and quickly tries to reattach the severed finger, pressing it onto the root and holding it there as he hacks out another ball of thick, green-yellow phlegm.

Glaring at King's Draugr, he demands, "You… unnatural fiend! What have you done?"

"Do not relent, Valery," King says.

Clicking her tongue at her last Demon, it charges out in a zigzag pattern. Valery's polearm shimmers into a pair of heavyset crossbows that have her leaning back. The imp feints and vaults over and under the Major, a nuisance for the large, sick man, but not nearly enough to give Valery the time to prepare.

The imp leaps over a kick, cackling until the Major caves in its chest, smashing his forearm in a swing that sends the pesky pest flying. The Major rips out King's blood shard and strips himself of the medals decorating his shirt, bringing them to his mouth and feeding them in.

He rattles off in some language King is too slow to [Mesmer], coughing out more bile as Valery rattles out a barrage of dense mana bolts and cries, "Ikail!"

An otherworldly power engulfs him, quaking the earth and knocking everyone over. King's quick on her feet, and Valery shimmers a scimitar. The Major's hunched over. An ethereal aura hums over him, hugging and seeping through his every pore.

Muscles ripple and bones crack as he grows even larger than the exaggerated figure he was. An orange mane bursts out of his white beard, entrapping his snarled, tusked mouth within it.

"Warlock." King curses under her breath as the reverberating aura settles within the Major.

"Hero!" he roars back.

Valery signals behind the Major, and vines crack through to snatch his feet. His claws flame at the vines, but they lift and toss him far left of King.

A wall of flame erupts around his disoriented form as King dashes at him, scalding through the Draugr's frozen body. Still, King pushes through. Uncaring for the undead's continuity, she slaps its palm against the flaming Major and yells, "Drein!"

The flame extinguishes, revealing the orange-maned beast beneath. He swats at King, and she barely manages to block the attack, cracking her Draugr's shoulders as she continues pressing its flat palm against the Major. His skin flakes away and Blood shards shatter against the rippling muscle.

"Enough!"

The Major picks the Draugr up by its feet, swinging and smashing it down. His flames return as Valery peppers his exposed side with dense mana bolts.

Unfazed, he stomps down on King's Draugr, keeping it beneath him as he endures the barrage. "Valery au Hescaria, your father has been the only one to bring me to this form, and now you. It's ill-fated you'll both die by it."

With his other leg he stomps the ground, summoning a wall between Valery and her barrage while his fire grows, engulfing him in entirety and burning out the Draugr beneath his feet.

King, amazingly, doesn't switch to a different undead. Instead, her whispers grow intense as she manipulates a weave of mana and undeath within and without.

"And you," the Major starts, glowering down at King through a curtain of flame and fur. "You must be the one, the Lost Sorcerer who calls herself King."

A Demon breaks through the wall with ease, arm poised to skewer through the Major, if only. He catches the offending arm of the floral Demon and lifts it overhead, flinging it right at Valery who's charging out with a scimitar and a single crossbow.

"Futile interrupt-!" Four ghasts tackle the Major, grasping at his waist and locking his arms while two others grapple the leg pressed against King. They manage to lift it an inch, letting a free gust of locusts and thick emerald mists to spring forth out of the Draugr's caved-in chest.

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The locusts fry and pop in contact with the heat but explode with even more of King's necrotic mist. With his free hand, the Major crushes the heads of the ghasts lifting his leg. The moment their heads are destroyed, King has the rest of them explode as well, pelting the Major with shrapnel of bone, teeth, and guts.

Knocked back, if only by surprise, Valery slides underneath him, cutting at his ankles with twin blades as King's Draugr rises, eyes burning with necrotic power. King lets out a wail, screaming into the sky as thunder clouds form over, arching lightning through as bones from the ghasts reform the Draugr's chest and blood pools, orbiting right around her.

The Major snatches Valery by her hair before she can steal away, the tendons in his ankles fixing themselves even faster than Valery cut them open. She yelps and slashes at his eyes with a dagger. He leans out of the way, but she shimmers the blade into a polearm and pokes out his eye.

"You bitch!" Sure to not let go, the Major cups her head. It disappears in his grip as he raises her with it. "Die already!"

A burst of Essence protects Valery from losing her head as the atmosphere grows colder and clouds darken the already black night. The Major loses two fingers for his troubles and Valery rolls away, panting with her ear and eyes bleeding out.

King motions the flow of blood with her hands. Clapping at the Major, she releases thin, curved crimson blades that shatter and boil against his ethereal flame skin. After bodying three of these, the Major's gut slices at the fourth— the effects of King's necrotic mists set in just in time as a heavy snowfall covers the field.

"Valery!" King calls, and she's already on cue, taking the cursed snow and cold temperature to fashion icicles beside her.

Launching out, Valery springboards a gust of wind that King manipulates. Her staff shimmers into existence and the Major roars up at her, his flames growing defiant of the cold, but King isn't having it. Blood chains, frozen and cursed with mists of necrosis, snap at his fat hands, locking them to the ground as Valery lands one, two, three heavy strikes and skewers his exposed, weakening flesh with icicles as long as herself.

The Major heaves out a huff and falls to a knee. Flexing his arms, he ignites a pathetic spark as the icicles spread their frost throughout him. Sluggishly, he shatters the blood chains and starts to pick himself up.

King doesn't mind though. She sets the Draugr's arms over one another and a bonesword slides out of its arm, falling into the other. Breathing the cold emerald mist over the blade, she surges at the Major, clearing the distance in powerful lunges.

The Major groans a blackened hand into a fist. It bursts, leaking fluid, and King vaults over it, stabbing the cursed bone up his chest till its tip scratches against the icicles Valery put in.

Stumbling through the snow, the Major rasps, nostrils greedy for abundant air. King looks over for Valery and finds her in anxious stance: a longbow and a bolt of Essence and mana drawn at the Major, ready to launch at any time.

"Do it."

With an exhale, she does. The bolt of ichor wobbles out at the Major, tearing the snow and earth as it travels to smite the Major's head.

A void swallows it, and far beyond us an explosion quakes the earth.

"What!" Valery startles, quick to pull Essence from somewhere and merge with mana to form a second bolt of ichor.

The Major expels blood and water from his mouth, staining his orange mane and toppling over on his side— King's made sure the [Curse of Necrosis] will kill him, if nothing else.

As the void in front of him grows, a black-haired, bright white-eyed woman takes form from its depths, the Void Hero. Valery lets loose, sending the bolt of ichor hurtling toward her, only for it to sink in, slowly digested by the dark void enveloping the Hero. Soon after another explosion has the earth trembling, but not disturbing a hair on her head.

She looks away from King to Valery and in a nurturing voice speaks, "Valery au Hescaria. You and your sister have aligned yourself with a force far greater than you comprehend. King, that Sorceress witch, will consume you and disrupt the balance of the Gods if she's allowed."

"Please, say more," King says.

The Void Hero only stares. She plants a shadowy hand on the Major and her darkness envelops them. Before vanishing, she says to Valery, "Tell Lumina to be satisfied in this victory and relinquish the Demon. We bear no ill toward Hescaria."

When all that's left is silence, King threads through snow to Valery. "Advance, some stragglers still remain," she says, pointing out at what's left of the Major's army—many of whom deserted as the battle progressed.

Valery catches her by the arm, pulling her back to seethe, "What have you done to concern the Heroes? What are you really after in Kyis?"

"When that concerns you, you'll be the first to know."

"What did she mean by that? What wars are you dragging Hescaria into?" Valery presses, her brows furrowed and stained with suspicion.

"Are these words yours? Or do they come from that Warlock?"

"Warlock?"

"She just saved the man who murdered your father, and you challenge me?" Ripping her Draugr's hand away, she repeats herself, "Get your head out of your ass and advance. This war isn't over until Kyis burns and Lumina has Deran's head."

That said, King relinquishes control of the Great Draugr, finding darkness before awakening back at the dull lair; Lumina immediately brightens the hideaway, cradling the Egg as she snoozes away.

Snorting, King plants a kiss on the Egg and Lumina's forehead, lingering a bit to Mesmer blissful dreams of King's vision, her utopia. "There's work to be done yet. Rest now and then…"

King pets and tucks at Lumina's hair, glancing at the mirrors, glaring at my reflection staring right back. "Pay attention, Nil, these will be the most important moments in history."

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