A silent, unspoken understanding passed between Eryndra, Zehrina and Vol. This was no longer about individual duels or tactical skirmishes. This was about eradication.
Eryndra's vents snapped fully open, the black, viscous fluid of her Apparition Mode pouring out as a thick, oily torrent. She didn't go translucent; instead, the fluid coated her armor, hardening into a second skin of shifting, midnight-black energy, her form becoming a solid void of pure power.
Zehrina, her movements fluid and graceful, rose into the air on a swirling disk of her own dust. Her elegant black robes, once a symbol of her restrained power, began to unravel, actively dispersing into a storm of fine, obsidian particles that swirled around her like a personal nebula. She commanded the dust with gentle motions, shaping it with a thought into a terrifying arsenal of ethereal, dust-forged weapons that hovered in the air around her, each one humming with a low, menacing energy. Beneath, her sleek, ventless armor gleamed, a mirror image of Eryndra's own.
"The Sisters Born of Thunder," Roy whispered, a spark of awe cutting through his pain.
They attacked as one. Eryndra was a battering ram of raw, physical force, each punch and kick a contained explosion that shattered the air itself. Zehrina was the artist, the conductor, her storm of dust-forged weapons, spiked flails, razor-sharp sabers, brutal war hammers, assaulting Vol from every conceivable angle, a symphony of synchronized violence.
Vol, caught in their combined, relentless assault, was finally, truly put on the defensive. He roared, his conjured blade of darkness a desperate blur as he parried, blocked, and dodged. He batted away a dust-saber with one claw, only to take a staggering blow from Eryndra's fist to his spine. He lashed out with his barbed tail, catching Zehrina in a glancing blow, but before he could follow up, Eryndra was on him again, her attacks a brutal, unending rhythm of destruction.
The plaza became a canvas of apocalyptic fury. The ground cracked and splintered under their feet. The air itself seemed to scream as weapons of dust and darkness clashed. Roy, watching from behind the Presidroid line, felt his mana reserves stabilize, the drain from Vol lessened now that the demon was fully occupied with not being torn limb from limb. But Eryndra and Zehrina fighting still drained him.
The air itself seemed to warp around Eryndra and Zehrina as they unleashed their full, terrifying potential. This was no longer a series of calculated strikes; it was a storm, a hurricane of pure, focused destruction.
Eryndra, a solid void of black, crackling energy, became the epicenter of the physical assault. She abandoned all pretense of defense, her every movement an overwhelming, explosive offense. She rocketed forward, the ground shattering beneath her feet, and met Vol head-on. Their collision was a cataclysm. He caught her first punch, his arm groaning under the strain, the bones within audibly grinding. His other claw slashed at her face, but she ducked under it, her own fist driving deep into his solar plexus. The air left his demonic lungs in a whoosh.
He retaliated with a furious, desperate flurry of blows, his movements a blur of grey skin and black wings. But Eryndra was his equal, his mirror. She met him in the crushing intimacy of close-quarters combat, their battle a chaotic, brutal ballet. Fists blurred, impacts cracked like lightning, and shockwaves radiated from their clashes, turning nearby stone structures to dust.
Above them, Zehrina was the conductor of this symphony of violence. Her robe, now almost entirely dispersed, had become a swirling nebula of weaponized dust around her. At her silent command, a dozen massive, dust-forged sabers shot forward, a swarm of obsidian death. Vol was forced to break off his clash with Eryndra to conjure a shield of dark energy, the sabers shattering against it with ear-splitting screeches.
But it was a feint. As he was occupied with the sabers, Eryndra slammed into him from below, her uppercut powerful enough to launch him a hundred feet into the air. He flailed, momentarily disoriented, and Zehrina seized the opening. The dust that had been sabers instantly reformed into a massive, spiked flail. It whipped through the air with terrifying speed, wrapping around Vol's ankle and yanking him violently back down towards the ground.
He crashed into the plaza with the force of a meteor, the impact creating a new, spider-webbed crater in the already ravaged cobblestones. He roared in fury, a wave of dark power blasting the dust-flail into nothingness.
Eryndra didn't give him a moment to recover. She was on him again, her fists a relentless barrage. Vol, now enraged, met her fury with his own. They grappled, two titans locked in a struggle that seemed to shake the very foundations of the city. He broke his fangs on her armor, the tough, energized armor groaning but holding. She responded by grabbing his head with both hands and slamming it repeatedly into the stone floor, each impact a dull, sickening thud.
Zehrina, ever the strategist, did not waste the opportunity. The dust around her coalesced again, this time into hundreds of small, razor-sharp needles. They shot forward in a silent, deadly cloud, bypassing the physical struggle and aiming for the joints in Vol's wings, the vulnerable membranes between the bone.
Vol shrieked, a high, piercing sound of pure agony, as the needles found their mark. He thrashed violently, flinging Eryndra off him as he tried to shield his now-tattered wings. But the damage was done. His flight was compromised, his movements now more desperate, more grounded. The sisters had taken away his sky, or so they thought.
Vol soared upward, his battered wings beating a powerful rhythm that kicked up a whirlwind of dust and debris. He laughed, a sound of pure, arrogant triumph, as he gathered the last vestiges of the life force he had stolen, mixing it with the siphoned mana from Roy. He held the swirling, chaotic energy above his head, a churning, black-and-white orb of pure, unadulterated annihilation. This would be the blow that ended it all.
Eryndra and Zehrina shot into the sky after him, their own powers flaring in a desperate, final gambit. They were a breathtaking, terrifying spectacle.
Eryndra a solid void of absolute power, Zehrina a radiant storm of weaponized dust, the two of them a perfect, synchronized instrument of retribution. They met his rising power with their own, preparing for the final, cataclysmic clash.
Then, something shifted.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a sight. It was a feeling.
For Vol, a being of immense, ancient power, it was a sensation he hadn't felt in millennia, a feeling he had hoped to never experience again. A sudden, absolute, soul-crushing silence fell over the flow of life and death around him. A cold, ancient shadow, impossibly vast and utterly indifferent, fell over his demonic soul. It was a terror so profound, so primal, that it bypassed all conscious thought, all reason, all his carefully constructed rage, and spoke directly to the terrified, cowering core of his ancient being.
Vol's demonic eyes, which had been blazing with triumphant fury, widened in raw, abject terror. His head whipped around, his gaze locking instinctively, helplessly, onto the distant, silent silhouette of the Nightshatter. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, no new weapon, no gathering energy.
But he felt him.
From the deck of that iron beast, an aura of pure, unadulterated necromantic dread, an authority over death itself, washed over him. It was a power that made his own demonic might feel like a child's tantrum. He saw, not with his eyes, but with his soul, a figure standing on that distant deck. A figure clad in regal, nightmarish armor of bone and solidified shadow, eldritch flames of black and orange dripping from his skeletal form. A tyrant beyond measure. The Mourning Tyrant.
Vol's concentration, his rage, his very will to fight, shattered into a million pieces. The catastrophic orb of energy he had been gathering above his head sputtered, wavered, and then dissipated into harmless, drifting motes of light. For the briefest, most infinitesimal of moments, he froze mid-air, his guard completely, utterly down, his entire being consumed by a single, paralyzing thought.
He is here.
That single hesitation was all Eryndra and Zehrina needed.
Zehrina, with a sharp, precise flick of her wrist, shaped a spinning, solid platform of black dust beneath Eryndra's feet, twisting and amplifying her momentum with incredible, gravity-defying force. Eryndra, her own eyes now glowing with a cold, focused light, seized the final, most formidable looking of Zehrina's dust-forged weapons, a long, wicked black scythe, its blade a sliver of solidified night that seemed to drink the very light from the air. She catapulted forward in a fierce, unstoppable spin, her silhouette a blurred vortex of black dust and righteous fury. They moved as one, a single, devastating instrument of retribution.
They slashed through Vol in a single, silent, ferocious arc.
Vol gasped, his burning eyes locked on the two figures before him, a look of stunned, almost pathetic disbelief on his face as the scythe sheared him clean in half. For a heartbeat, he hung there, his body suspended in the twilight air, a grotesque, bisected statue of defeated rage. Then, he began to disintegrate into swirling, inky fragments, bits of his dark, leathery wings dissolving into fine ash on the wind.
He let out a final, ragged hiss, his voice a trembling, hate-filled rasp. "You… you know not what curses... you have just unleashed upon this land. My hold… my wards… millennia of plagues… unleashed…" His last words trailed off into a choking, gurgling sound. Then, his fading, terrified eyes turned towards the kneeling, sobbing figure of Val below. He reached out a desperate, disintegrating hand. "Val... I tried t—"
But his form, and his final, unspoken words, crumbled into nothingness before he could finish.
Silence. Heavy, profound, and absolute. Eryndra and Zehrina landed on the broken cobblestones, gasping with exhaustion, their own powers receding. Roy, his body trembling with the sudden cessation of the mana drain, slumped to his knees, his own breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. The draining presence, the oppressive demonic aura, had vanished along with Vol's body. Roy's mana, which had dipped to a terrifying sixteen percent, began to slowly, sluggishly, stabilize.
Val remained on the sidelines, his head bowed, silent tears dripping from his chin onto the dusty ground as he finally, fully, realized that the father he had both idolized and feared, the complex, monstrous being who had defined his entire existence, was truly, irrevocably gone. Warrex and Lutrian, their own injuries forgotten, stood near Roy, silent guardians, their faces a mixture of awe and grim relief. The battered plaza, illuminated by the flickering, scattered lights from the Presidroid line, felt deafeningly quiet.
The final blow had been struck. The monstrous Archduke was obliterated.