The battle restarted with the lightning Mage continuously zapping her with lightning while dancing around the men that had fallen to their knees. In fact, he entirely avoided them, despite one managing to stand and throw himself in a last-ditch, desperate attack. The remaining four still standing alive fought with more intensity than Minerva had ever seen out of them but soon enough, he stopped charging the outside of his swords with lightning as well and they were kept at bay with the mundane swords alone. After the lightning stopped, Minerva could almost taste the fear radiating off her men. The attacks they had to deal with had lessened, and yet despite this being a boon in any other battle, in this one it forecasted their inevitable deaths.

One of the metal whips swept upward towards them, forcing the men to either back off or risk a deep cut across their abdomen. Unlike the other three, one dove forward instead, a look of desperation etched on his face as the reaping metal flew upwards, catching itself around his knees and sawing through them in a flash as they retracted. The man cried out in pain but simply extended his wings and continued on, diving into the space between her and the enemy Mage.

His perpetual smile turned into a frown then, causing Minerva's frayed emotions to surge with hope and confusion as she followed her suicidal soldier in, intending to get an attack in by any means necessary. He'd chosen to be a meat shield for her and she'd gladly take advantage of that. Or she would have, if her danger sense didn't once again warn of her death, forcing her to leap away as one of the metal whips moved faster than she'd ever seen it before, striking from above and causing the man before her split into two pieces.

"Not enough pain, killing them too fast..." the Mage grumbled as he glared disdainfully upon the Hellial before looking back up and resuming his slaughter.

Two more of Minerva's men fell after, never to move again, followed by the third. Then a fourth. The man's smile returned, somehow darkening his expression with each of her men that dropped to the ground, grasping at their chests. Suddenly, she was being pressed as he had been. Her limbs were numbing and soon, she only had three of her retinue supporting her left, all women. The fight was no longer even. He had received another three cuts from her daggers, but they were all too shallow, and she'd paid the price in wounds of her own to inflict them. Like his wounds of ice she'd inflicted, they numbed her to the bone. Her left arm was the worst, slow to respond to every request.

Only a few minutes had passed since they'd begun fighting. The core of their skirmish had been with Minerva and the Human, largely ignoring the outside forces as they jostled back and forth through the cavern. At one point they'd gotten close to the entrance before Minerva noticed he'd been moving that way to get more of an advantage. Now, they were closer to her troops as she took every opportunity he gave her to retreat further into the cavern. She'd have demanded they all try to bring him down together if she hadn't feared the prisoners would begin to attack. One hadn't been collared yet, as the Nivari were the ones charged with that task and the... other Human had killed them all off before this one had emerged, leaving the collared one without a master currently.

She knew now that this thing in his body was toying with her and her men. He could have ended them by now, or maybe at least her troops, and only didn't because he craved their suffering. She could see it in the way his eyes were alight with malice and glee. It was infuriating, and terrifying to Minerva, the way he reveled in their despair. Fitting, for the way they lived. She held no illusions of killing him any longer, though. She needed Uhren if she had any chance of getting out of this alive, and she couldn't have him if the prisoners were going to attack them from behind. If they were to survive, the prisoners needed to die.

Minerva broke away from the engagement and looked down the cavern at her troops guarding the prisoners. They were less, one motionless on the ground. She felt relieved at that, worried that more would be down from the earlier bolts. She'd ignored them so easily while aiming to kill him earlier, yet if she'd known the real intention of those attacks, perhaps she'd have tried to intercept them.

"Uhren!" she yelled across the cave, causing a few heads to snap to attention at her call.

Even the man in front of her seemed to focus for the moment, watching her every move with one eye more intently than he had been the entire fight. His gaze almost gave her pause, it certainly caused a shiver to run about her body. Her head tilted to the side in a harsh motion as she met her subordinate's eyes, and he knew what needed to be done. Thankfully, he started with the Celestial.

"That is a bad call," the man before her said, hand shooting up to his left shoulder and grabbing ahold of something as he watched Uhren hold the Celestial up by the throat, slowly choking the life out of her.

"Let him watch while you delay and let her die," Minerva replied scathingly. "He's choking her to death, if you act now you might be able to save her."

If this truly was a separate being inside of the man before her, perhaps the way he reacted to this would be a point of contention for them in the future. If she were to die here, at least that would be a small concession. And, in the event he moved to save her, Minerva could run.

The thing before her shook his head and opened his mouth to respond but abruptly stopped. Both of his eyes snapped to attention, glowing blue suddenly, looking at her together. Her goosebumps halted at the same moment, and Minerva stopped herself from grinning as her mind sharpened. Forget in the future, it seemed it was a point of contention right now.

"Stop fighting, fool! I'm handl- He's killing-"

Minerva watched the young man before her struggle, jerkily moving as he spoke aloud to himself. Slowly her body came back under her full control, no longer worried she'd die at any moment, no longer panicked that any second would be her last. She didn't understand what was happening in totality, but Minerva could put the pieces together for the most part.

She waved her troops back that seemed jumpy to take advantage of the moment of confusion. If they attacked the argument would halt and she had a feeling the other personality would resurface. If that happened, she knew they would die. Hell, even if they managed to get away now, she knew the being would track her down afterward outside. And if she was afraid of the storm Mage here, out there in an actual thunderstorm...

"I'll handle it, let's talk-"

But if this argument continued and the original regained control? That would be their chance.

" No! We go now! Or- I'll get to her once-"

She looked at Uhren and gave him a nod. His grip tightened on the girl's throat, sweating and shaking from the extra exertion.

"Just let me- Enough!"

The cavern almost seemed to quake as the human spoke, his body going entirely still. Minerva's eyes snapped back to him as a naive intelligence full of wrath filled his eyes, both focusing intently on her. His hand slowly opened up and left his shoulder. Without warning, the swords lashed out, beheading each of the remaining three nearby as a bolt of lightning shot toward her chest. If she hadn't gotten used to the telltale mana trail the man had to line up before each attack, it would have hit and potentially bored a hole through her. But she got her arm up in time, and reinforced it with ice. The strike did little more than to cause her arm to numb further.

She grinned wildly and willed her ice to shatter outward once the attack landed, blinding him for a moment as she dove inward. Her claws found his left side and left a deep gash where a shallow one had been as he tried to roll out of the way. Ice filled the wound and he cried out in pain, giving her no small amount of satisfaction. Once she'd finished her strike, she rebounded off a patch of ice and set toward him again, leaving the boy no time to gather himself as she lashed out again and again, pressing him back as he dodged and created a field of lightning around himself, defending where he could and running when he couldn't. She kept bouncing around him, changing directions, waiting for him to slip up, biding her time, and pressing him to the walls to corner him.

His movements had changed entirely, no longer confidently dodging at the last moment but staying well clear of her attacks. Whenever he struck back, it was with precision, intent on hitting and holding back from being frivolous with mana. No more lightning came from outside the cave to recharge him, in fact.

And then, it finally happened. She'd been on the offensive for almost a minute, striking, backing off, and striking again, only to hit lightly and receive equal damage in return, when finally his back bumped the wall. If his face was any indication, it was a great surprise to the boy that it had happened, and his head almost turned to look behind him. She grinned internally as her body moved on instinct, diving forward for the kill while throwing her wings out to the sides. He had nowhere to back up to and sure, he could move left or right, but if he tried, she'd ensure her wings pinned him into the wall while breaking every bone in his chest.

Maybe he'd forgotten she could move them, or maybe he assumed they were too damaged, but she didn't care either way. She lunged forward, eyes intent on the kill as his surprise deepened. He wasn't even trying to dodge it seemed, just standing still like a sheep waiting to be minced.

When she was halfway to him, milliseconds away from ending his life, a warning bell rang out in her mind. The look on his face matched hers then, turning into a grin that sunk further and further backward, disappearing from sight as his wounds rapidly closed.

Minerva stopped unwillingly as a sharp pain erupted from her stomach. Her right hand, a deadly sharp layer of blood red ice covering it, was stretched forward and reaching for a throat that was no longer there. Her eyes scanned the area the boy should have been but only saw the cave wall, then traced the wall downward to look at where the cave met her stomach and legs in a few spots, holding her standing even when she decided she'd rather slump to the ground.

She coughed wetly and saw her blood splatter outward onto the spike in her abdomen. Her mind raced to catch up with the real world and finally, she looked over to where Uhren had already dropped the Celestial and was running toward her. She wanted to scream out, warn them, warn him, but the warning didn't come out in time. Instead, she watched helplessly in the low lightning as a figure erupted from the ground behind the last group of her men, reaping their lives as the swords snaked through their guarded arms and wrapped around their throats.

By the time Uhren had looked back toward them, the remaining four lay on the ground headless. Slowly, she pulled herself off the wall and made the decision she'd been struggling with making. She'd lived for one hundred and twenty-three years. She'd been taught the old ways, fought and killed more than ten thousand warriors and innocents alike, and had finally learned their kind's blood magic. Throughout all of her one hundred and twenty-three years of life, two things had kept her going: Her desire to kill, and her fear of death. Both were always there. Always hanging over her, inevitable, demanding.

She was only supposed to have the former. Most everyone chose as a child. Did you want to kill more, or did you fear dying more? Would you end others at the risk of your own life, or cling to it desperately? It was obvious when someone decided the latter, and most were disposed of. Sometimes, they fooled those around them long enough to escape, but most of the time they were used as practice targets or for breeding.

Minerva had never decided and, as a consequence of that, lived her life harder than anyone else of her kind. Everyone assumed she'd chosen; the way she killed had always been brutal and very personal. She'd even learned blood magic, sacrificing your own life to become stronger, to kill even more!

Really, Minerva had only developed her particular combat prowess out of a need to fool those around her when she was younger, and gotten lucky enough not to get killed along the way. When she'd been offered to be taught blood magic, she didn't dare decline. It was considered a high honor, and only the cowards turned the opportunity down. Yet still, she hadn't chosen yet. Now though, now that she had... she felt half of the weight she carried throughout her life lift off her shoulders, and an icy calm radiate across her body.

Finally, she'd chosen.

Not that she had a choice, really. She knew if the second personality resurfaced, she'd die. It was something darker than she. Something fundamentally greater; Minerva could feel it. It would kill her when it wanted to. It was an inevitability. A definition of her life. She realized it when the boy had taken control back and she sat, pinned to the wall. A Human had done that to her while she was overconfident, while whatever had been attacking her earlier had simply ignored other elements it could use to toy with her. She knew it had let her hurt it for fun, to give her hope....

Minerva laughed, loudly. She looked down and watched her blood fall from her deep wounds and cackled. Burn it all away. Try and kill them. Her eyes began to bleed, glowing dimly as she watched the boy hunch over the girl as Uhren gripped his chest tightly, staring at her, waiting. He hadn't been told of the old ways. He was already dead, like the others. If she could have lived here, she might have gotten the chance to warn them, and maybe they'd teach the younger generations to protect themselves again. She wished she'd have taught Uhren; he was a good subordinate.

Minerva's body began to glow the same dangerous color as her eyes. She took a step toward the man who was hunched over, yelling out in pain for some reason. She continued laughing, walking forward, jogging, running, sprinting, flying.

Laughing as she wondered which of the two personalities of his she'd die to.

Damien roared in pain, mind nearly tearing itself apart as he passed out. Normally, that would be the end of it, but it wasn't. The other thing inside of him didn't let him simply disappear into a blissful slumber until the pain went away, no. It kept him awake, forced him to feel the pain, and heal through it.

'I'll kill the Hellials, you heal the damage you've done to yourself,' it had said.

And just like that, Rai took over Damien's body as if it could have assumed control at any point in time since they'd made their deal. It almost seemed like he controlled their body better than Damien could if the way he moved like he was part of the Matrix was any indication.

Damien grit his imaginary teeth hard and began healing his brain though, doing his best to ease the pain. It was swollen in multiple places and even other parts of his body that he'd moved too quickly were torn as well, not to mention his right fist. He'd need almost a full day of healing to fix all the minor fractures he'd caused in that...

Damien ignored the wounds Rai incurred while fighting at his request. Something of a mental tactic the God was using, or so he claimed. So long as it didn't get them killed, Damien didn't care much. He just healed what he could in the background while observing the fight, nervously learning as he watched the God play with his food.

Damien was proud of himself for having gotten this far without Rai's intervention to be honest. He'd managed to kill all the Mages and even a few of the Hellials. In fact, it looked like the God was using the same tactic he'd used earlier, hitting them with weak bolts meant to disrupt their heart rather than do any real damage to the body. The only thing Damien regretted was taking it too far with hasting his mind, though he could blame Rai for that more than himself. Perhaps that's what the God had intended for Damien to do when he downplayed how much it would hurt him, not that he would ever admit to it.

Either way, the battle was largely in their favor due to the first few things he'd done at the start, and Rai seemed to be slowly winning the skirmish. Everything was going swell.

That is, up until the woman jerked her head and the other man at the far end grabbed Lexi's unconscious form.

Damien recognized him now, and not just from outside. He was one of the ones that had abducted her, the one that had killed Adrenna. He was standing near the other that had lived through their attack, seemingly looming over Alexa and Krissa, until he lifted Alexa up by the throat. Krissa didn't even respond to the motion, sitting lifelessly against the wall while shaking. If Alexa had been awake, Damien knew she'd be fighting back or trying to help Krissa, and the evidence of multiple wounds already on those around her showed that the few times she had woken, she'd attacked people.

'That's my girl,' he thought with a slight warmth.

They'd likely decided to keep her unconscious due to the effort it took to let her be awake. His mind wandered to how they'd knock her out to make her harmless and just like that, any trace amount of pleasant feelings disappeared. Unlike Rai, he was going to kill them all quickly. Get it over with, get her, get out.

"That is a bad call."

Rai's words snapped Damien out of his thoughts and he focused on the world again. He felt Kastra erupt with rage and move as if she were going to go save Alexa herself, but his hand reached up and grabbed her immediately, holding her still with enough force to injure the Fae if she were to try and change size or move at all.

'Unhand her!' Damien yelled out, only to be ignored entirely by the being possessing his body.

"Let him watch while you delay and let her die," the Hellial responded. "He's choking her to death; if you act now you might be able to save her."

'Go to her NOW!' Damien raged in his mind, still not in control of his body enough to yell but now slowly fighting to grab ahold of his brain.

He could feel the foreign being controlling the pieces of his mind that dictated how the body moved, and like he was kicking someone out of a chair he wanted to sit in, Damien had to begin jostling for his own body back.

'Stop this foolishness, mortal! I saved your life! Be grateful! I will get to her in time!'

'We save her, that was the deal!' Damien yelled back. 'He's killing her!'

Whether because the God just wasn't used to it, because Damien had similar training from Reinal and his parasites, or because it was his body, Damien found it was quite easy to rip the steering wheel away from Rai. Not as easy as just willing it to happen, but when he actually put forth an effort, the God began losing his supremacy fast, but not fast enough to put Damien's mind at ease.

'That was NOT what was agreed upon! You inane buffoon, you'll just get us killed! Damn Mortals and their idiotic-' Rai went on as Damien shut off his mind from the God, muting him to focus entirely on getting to Alexa even one second quicker.

The first thing he gained control of was his eyes, thankfully. Rai had a habit of pointing them in different directions and it had been causing Damien no small amount of disorientation. He directed both to the Hellial before him while he finished shoving Rai out of the driver's seat.

"Stop fighting, fool! I'm handl-" Rai began, using Damien's mouth since he'd stopped responding in their shared mind.

"He's killing-" Damien started, beginning to panic.

"-I'll handle it! Let's talk-" Rai interrupted him, still grasping for control as Damien felt Alexa's connection to the pact begin to weaken.

He had no time for this, but the God wouldn't give up or listen to reason. They were wasting time, and it seemed this was what the Hellial had wanted, because she wasn't attacking them.

"No! We go now or-" Damien screamed out, finally gaining control of one leg and trying to move it toward Lexi.

He could feel Kastra writhing beneath his grasp but a small part of him didn't want to let her go. She was strong, but strong enough to take on five Hellials alone... he wasn't sure.

"I'll get to her once-" Rai started, and then it happened.

Whether enough time had passed, the man had strengthened his grip and broke something, or they'd done some other unspeakable thing to her, Damien felt Alexa's consciousness disappear from their pact. Not in the way that she would when falling asleep, being knocked out in a duel, or how she would when expending too much mana, but in a permanent sense. He felt her link shatter as a presence he vaguely recognized and incredibly subtle invaded his body through her void in the pact for his eyes, an idle thought from him stopping it cold. The foreign body moved elsewhere then, surfacing to his skin as his neck burnt the same way it had when they'd first made the pact, something deep inside him splintering, never to be whole again, and the loss...

He knew. If he were to will their contract to come before him, it would once again show only two names on it.

Kastra's end of the pact erupted into confusion and despair. He felt her body go limp in his hand while her mouth opened in a soundless, agony-filled cry. He imagined what it would have sounded like had she not been warded to prevent others from perceiving her existence. He didn't want to know.

"Enough."

As if Rai had sensed something in him shift in a way that was unnatural, the God's attempt to hold on faltered and Damien ripped what little control he'd had left away. Focusing on his mana sense, he noticed the Hellial had tossed Alexa's limp body to the ground, but hadn't broken anything, only stopped her breathing and her heart. Damien didn't let relief take over yet, but he slipped a bit of hope through the pact at Kastra, quieting some of her despair. He could still feel her body shaking when he let her go, but she made no attempt to leave, to Damien's relief. If there was any chance he could bring Alexa back in a similar manner to how he'd killed the others, he had a very limited window to do it in and her cooperation was important.

He began to move. Quickly, efficiently, and with a purpose. He enhanced his mind again, but to a much lesser degree. He knew based on watching Rai's fight with the woman that if he didn't he wouldn't even be able to see her move.

His swords arched out and beheaded the Hellials that were dying slowly without any blood flow and then lashed out toward the Hellial in front of him. If he couldn't kill her fast, he'd get away from her.

The swords failed to end her life but each strike began to whittle at her nerves, electricity shooting into her muscles with each blocked strike, and she began to slow. Each time they got close to severely wounding her, she sped up more inhumanely fast than she was already moving and evaded. After three failed attempts, Damien realized he wouldn't end her quickly and decided to move on. He took on a few larger non-threatening wounds to make her feel at ease and began maneuvering towards a wall. Tactically, he knew this was a bad idea for a battle like this if someone wasn't adept and ground manipulation, and he was banking on the Hellial believing that as well. He'd only been using electricity since they'd began fighting, so if she took the bait...

And she did. Pinning her down had proved impossible, but if she'd willingly pin herself, maybe he'd be able to kill...

'No,' he thought, mentally shaking his head and stopping himself from risking it.

She'd evaded every seriously deadly attack he'd thrown at her so far. If that was because she was talented enough to avoid what would permanently injure her, Damien might have risked it. But on the off chance she had some sense that would warn her of an incoming attack like that, it would ruin everything. It wasn't worth the chance that she'd avoid; he'd already wasted almost a minute here.

Carefully, he shaped the attack in his mind as he began to hollow out the wall behind him and a path towards Alexa. The Hellial came forward as he'd expected, aiming to rip out his throat as the mountainside swallowed him up and five sharpened lances of stone shot out of the ground and the wall he closed back up. His view had gone dark, but he could still very much see them land as he willed the rock and stone out of his way while he used a wall behind him to shove his body forward. He was glad he couldn't see or it would look a lot like he was constantly about to slam into an endless amount of walls that barely moved out of his way in time.

Finally, he halted his movement and did slam into the rock wall in front of him. He'd managed to soften the blow, but he still felt his nose and a few ribs fracture from the impact. He ignored them as he silently flew up out of the ground, right behind four of his remaining six enemies. Kastra was doing wonders with her warding right now, and if it weren't for her, they'd have been alerted at least ten seconds ago when he'd been shooting himself under the cave, let alone when he moved the ground aside to eject himself up from it. That combined with the almost complete lack of lighting gave Damien the advantage he needed as none of the four so much as flinched when he arrived behind them.

Damien glanced at his mana sense as he set his swords to work and felt the leader still impaled on his trap, luckily. He knew she could still move, though she'd be hurting with each motion, so she must just be stunned. Too confused or surprised to move yet. Damien silently thanked her either way. It had been exactly one minute since Alexa had disappeared and he needed every second he could get.

The four pairs of eyes widened in surprise as Eira and Kiara slithered out and wrapped around each of their throats soundlessly. Damien willed the blades to constrict and return to their inert form and then there was sound that Kastra couldn't conceal, the metal shrieking as it contracted and rubbed against itself around its multiple wraps on their necks. Four bodies fell to the ground after, their heads following shortly after.

Damien wasted no time and moved for Alexa, idly launching a bolt of disruptive electricity toward the lone Hellials heart that was still nearby. His hadn't been fully affected but was already beating very irregularly. To Damien's surprise, it stopped entirely with the new bolt. The man's weak heart quit on itself and Damien saw him hold a hand up to his chest in pain and surprise. He had moved more than halfway toward his leader, leaving Damien alone with Krissa and Alexa, thankfully.

"Ok, ok here we go," Damien idly talked to himself and Kastra, sending electricity into Alexa's body.

He pushed it to beat her heart, feeling none of her mana fighting back against him. That caused worry to build up in his throat again as he shoved it back down angrily. That meant nothing. He felt her heartbeat and could see her blood moving again, cycling through her brain. After a mental sigh of relief, he breathed air into her lungs with his mouth before thinking better of it and manipulated air directly into her body, beating her heart again for her.

"I... I thought you had a... That-that's why you..." Kastra started, then sobbed quietly, pain once again dominating her side of the pact. "You can't, Damien."

"Not yet. You can bring people back like this," Damien reassured her, confident.

She was a Fae. She had to know about CPR and Defibrillators. They knew everything across the different worlds. Why would she-

"Not here, you can't."

Damien laughed.

"You can do it anywhere, Kastra. It's just restarting the brain and heart-"

"Not here, Damien," she choked out. "Mana... the soul... it's different-"

"No it's not!" he shouted. "Science doesn't just change! You can't alter the way things work! It's- It's just how it works!"

He continued beating her heart, working her lungs, and probing her brain. Everything inside looked fine, but still, the Celestial had yet to move or give any indication she was alive.

"If that's how it works, then how-how did you even come to life!" Kastra yelled back, voice choking as she landed on Alexa's body. "Your body was dead. They weren't keeping you alive, and then you were suddenly! That's not how your science works!"

"That was... it- Magic! I don't know, Magic!"

"THIS IS MAGIC!" she shouted back waving her arm at Alexa. "It's different! We need to leave! I can't lose you too!" she cried out, hugging the side of Lexi's face while sobbing as if she meant for only him to get away.

He could feel in the pact that she wouldn't leave even if he'd tried to pry her away. In this, they were in agreeance, it seemed.

"You won't lose either of us," he replied, worry beginning to set in as he felt the woman slowly prising herself from the wall. "How do you bring someone back in this world?"

"You don't, ever." Kastra said after a moment, shaking her head. "You can't. Her mana signature is gone; from the ring, the pact, our bodies... something we don't speak of takes it away along with a dead person's soul."

"What, the Reapers? How'd I come here then?" Damien asked, determined again.

"I don't know! I don't-" she choked back, crying while holding onto Alexa still.

"Mana is the only difference here," Damien said, thinking aloud and ignoring his own grief while he kept Alexa's body functioning. "On Earth, there is no mana. You can bring people back. Their soul comes back, or never left. But here, there is mana."

Kastra wasn't responding any longer. Damien expected her to be the more logical one of them in a moment like this, but she was practically made comatose by the situation. He needed her helping, being her usual self!

"I hope she stays dead, you-" Krissa started from behind them.

The Hellial down the tunnel began laughing, loudly at that moment. Damien felt his time running out as his swords tossed Krissa's body into a nearby cracked apart wall, where she landed in a bloody, albeit alive, heap on top of a very charred and very dead Hellial. He'd deal with her later.

He watched the Hellial that had choked Alexa hit his knees as he chanced a glance toward the laughing maniac further away.

Turning back to Alexa, he began pleading again.

"Kas, focus, come on! You said something takes her mana from everything. Maybe when... something takes, they have to take the mana as well or... I don't know, the soul comes back!" he said, grasping at straws as Kastra looked up at him again. "Maybe they're tied together."

"Maybe," Kastra nodded at him, sniffling while rubbing at her multi-colored eyes as he continued, frantically.

"Maybe the soul I met gave me some of its mana on accident, the reaper was focused on holding it in place, and I went through the tunnel? Maybe- how do we get her mana?!" Damien half-shouted.

"It's gone, can't you feel it?" she sobbed. "Mana's in the h-heart. If it stops beating, your mana fights to keep you awake and your soul home. When you're empty, you go unconscious, and nothing can fight the pull as your soul is ta-taken. If you're already out of mana, nothing stops them from taking it all right away. It's over. It's gone. Forever. Even from the pact. Her print, her mana in the silver, it's all..." she trailed off, sobbing again as she materialized their pact, proving Alexa's signature to be gone as if it had never been.

"It has to be somewhere," Damien said, ignoring the silver slate. "They tore her from there, but..." he started, idly reaching up to the stinging on his neck. "I felt my eyes being tampered with but nothing was..." he muttered, stopping suddenly, reaching up and resting a hand on the side of his face near his right eye. "Kastra, what color are my eyes?" he asked.

She glanced up, meeting his eyes, but he didn't need her to answer because he could see it. See hers. Glowing the same color they always did. Silver, grey, and red.

Hope flared from her end of their two-way pact for the briefest of moments.

"That still doesn't-"

"It's her, right?" he asked, and Kastra nodded.

"But it might not-"

Damien didn't need any more than that. Focusing on his own body, he could feel Alexa's mana, feel the same presence in Kastra's eyes the same as he always could when she'd been alive. If the body needed a link of some kind, mana, even if it wouldn't work, he'd give it a damn link.

One of his hands shot to his face, mechanically. He was controlling himself with his own mana as much as moving naturally as his fingers grew sharp protrusions of ice on the ends of them before digging into his eye-socket and pulling something out. He let out a guttural cry of pain, slumping forward a tad as he looked down at Alexa while Kastra screamed up at him in words he couldn't understand right now. Almost immediately, he felt the eye being assaulted by a foreign mana and he saturated it with his own while closing his fist, fighting off the increasingly aggressive attempts at getting to the eye until it stopped altogether, Kastra's mana forming a barrier of her own around it.

He felt the Hellial begin moving toward them and ignored her for now, his injured right hand shooting downward and gouging a hole in Alexa's shoulder. He clenched his jaw in immense pain as his fractured fingers pulled back from the hole, nearly dropping the eye in his left hand as regret, nervousness, anxiety, and certainty all roiled around his mind. He offered a silent apology at the hole in Alexa's shoulder and drove his eye inside of it.

The Hellial had begun flying toward him at the same time he'd yelled out, so Damien dove away from Alexa with a final touch of electricity on her heart as Kastra landed upon his shoulder, hopeful, frantic, and protective. Despite the Hellial's wings being savaged, she was flying toward him faster than she ever had, aiming for her subordinate first, though Damien could feel her bloodthirst for him regardless of her trajectory. One eye focusing on them, he almost believed himself to be hallucinating as she tore the man in half and continued on, laughing hysterically as the dying man's blood began to fly through the air after her.

"TO THE DEATH, THEN!" she shouted out while flying, avoiding several lightning bolts and taking a few as they curved through the air to hit her.

Same now as before, they didn't affect her as much as they had the others.

Damien's swords lashed out but did nothing to the glowing woman as they glanced off her skin, hard as metal. She didn't even register them as threats as she slammed into the floor a few feet from him, ripping thick lines out in the floor wherever she lept and rolled to avoid his lightning strikes. She was faster than before, and stronger. The ground exploded with her movements and even if he turned into sand beneath her feet, it barely dampened the speed that she came at him with.

He lept backward as a clawed hand nearly bisected him and instead found a four-lined gash erupt across his stomach, deep enough to tear into his muscle. His mind sped up further as he began to force electricity through the rest of his body to demand it move faster than before, hands and fingers directing bolts of lightning around him in much the same shape his swords had, swirling around the cavern to cover as many angles of attack as possible as the woman lept over, ducked under, and then finally flew directly through one. The kaleidoscope barrier around Kastra flared red as an explosion sounded out.

Ignoring the pain it caused her, the Hellial's left-wing met a barrier of air on his stomach as well and he folded around it, sent flying backward and slamming into the wall near Krissa before collapsing in a heap. The Hellial was crushed into the ground, the skin on her back burnt through by the point-blank ejection of a Nivari [Fire Lance] with her left wing ripped off entirely by the force of her forward movement and the compressed air exploding.

Damien's diaphragm refused to let him breathe without him forcing it to with electricity and his movements became jagged as he shoved himself off the ground. Feeling the wall behind him with tremors, it was compromised near its breaking point and looked ready to collapse backward into that strange vent it had been concealing.

"You have one of those little shits, too!" the Hellial cackled from his front, voice muffled and skin burnt blacker than her feathers had been when she'd had them. "And air, you're just too much! If you'd had just a bit longer to live, maybe I'd be dead! But I'm taking you with me!"

Damien didn't respond, not that he could. Remembering why, he forced his diaphragm to contract and expand again, taking air in in a more manual way than he ever had before. His opponent was lying on the ground facedown where she'd landed in a heap and seemed to be twitching slightly. She still hadn't stood up yet, but whenever his lightning approached now, it grounded itself before touching her. Cautiously, he threw a few stone and ice lances at her, but found they shattered helplessly against her head and body as well, so he began healing himself while leaning on the wall and keeping an eye on Alexa.

His ribs were almost all either shattered or broken, only one was lightly fractured. He had multiple bruised organs and was bleeding internally in a few locations where his broken bones had sliced open or punctured veins and arteries. His muscles were torn, ligaments barely hanging on in his right shoulder and arm. It was all too much to heal in one sitting, but a few quick patches made sure he wouldn't bleed out right away. He'd have to apologize to Vanessa later or she'd never heal him.

Krissa stirred behind him, but made no effort to move yet. He checked her out, finding a few broken ribs and multiple bruises, but nothing life-threatening.

"You need to go," he said to her as the Hellial began to stir. "Just head straight down the mountain until you hit the road. The Caravan should be closer to the cross. Tell them what happened and send help."

She didn't respond for a few moments and Damien wondered if she'd be another liability, but she finally nodded slightly before disappearing. A small amount of relief went through his mind at that, allowing him to focus back forward.

The Hellial had lifted her head, leaving him surprised to see it unblemished, despite everything. She was bleeding from her eyes, but there were no scrapes or any visible damage to her head, yet everywhere else was burned or cut horribly.

"She's not invincible," Kastra said quietly, responding to his internal turmoil. "She takes damage every time her body is overwhelmed in multiple places. She exclusively protects her head without fail, though. Try hitting her with multiple attacks at once."

Damien was thankful she was back to her usual self. She wasn't fairing too well after the small back and forth either and seemed groggy from being thrown back into the wall with him. Besides watching the Hellial, she was focused on healing him before herself. Her body was in good enough condition to forgo her own needs.

He nodded to her and moved his right arm jerkily upward. The left one was in better condition and could actually function without being forced, so he was trying not to damage that one in case he needed it later. Using his hand and arm as the trigger, five spiked pillars of stone shot upward and struck the prone figure, one in its head, two in the chest and stomach, and two on each thigh. His eyes widened in surprise as her thighs moved upward from being pierced through with ease while the other spots were met with impenetrable skin.

"Figured it out finally? The other you would have killed me by now!" the Hellial mocked, laughing hysterically as more spikes tried to impale her relentlessly, lifting her body up off the ground.

"You're done," Damien stated, limping toward Alexa a bit but staying twenty feet away from the Hellial as he rested. "Just die, please."

"Not yet! We die together!" the thing screamed at him, gnashing its teeth.

Damien didn't respond but focused on her body as he found the arteries providing blood flow to her brain. Without those, she'd pass out and die eventually. She was protecting her vitals, obviously, but she couldn't protect everything.

"I'm going to eradicate your kind for this," Damien said, speaking his thoughts out loud as he sent another charge into Alexa's body, then refocused on the Hellial, crafting ten smaller spikes underneath the suspended woman and distracting her as he lifted them into place just a few inches from her skin. "I'm not stopping until you're not a threat to anyone ever again. I'm going to get the continent united against you all, track every single colony of your despicable race down, and end you."

It laughed at his declaration, and then laughed harder after a moment.

Damien shook his head, focusing on each spot he'd strike. After, he'd pull the needles back out and let her bleed to death.

"You'll never succeed with people like her around," the Hellial said in a moment of lucidity, no longer cackling.

Damien wondered what she'd meant when Kastra yelled out and he felt a sharp object go through his back. When he looked down, he saw a sword of ice protruding out of his stomach as Krissa kicked at the back of his knees.

His mind raced as his knees fell to the ground and a sonic boom hit Krissa in the chest, Kastra's hands outstretched while the Dresmyr hit the cave behind them with a loud crack.

Too focused on the Hellial, Damien had missed her intent. She hadn't moved much after disappearing, but he assumed she was gathering herself to go get help.

He tried to move but watched in horror as his knees continued to the ground, feeling his arms respond, yet his legs unable to. A quick check of his body showed his spine severed. Not a fatal wound, at least directly.

The Hellial's eyes in front of him widened with glee as her smile returned.

"Together!" she yelled as a block of ice appeared behind her strung up legs, kicking into it, obliterating her own feet but breaking apart the pillars of stone holding her in place as she shot forward like a cannon ball.

It was almost as if she'd blinked across the twenty feet separating them in an instant. The top of her head drove into his midsection and he buckled again, a pocket of air barely doing anything to dampen the blow as his back slammed into Krissa behind them. Every last bit of electricity he had remaining on his body went into the Hellial, feeling as her defenses fell apart as they all flew into the cavern wall. His organs either tore apart or stopped functioning immediately as the wall forced his body to stop and take the remaining crushing momentum of her attack into his body, cracking the Hellial's skull and his internals in tandem while Krissa herself crumpled under their combined weight.

Or, that's what should have happened.

Instead, the cavern wall buckled almost immediately, breaking from the impacts it had suffered throughout the fight, the final three bodies hitting it with more force than it could withstand. They tumbled through the hole created into a place void of light and fell soundlessly, unconscious, dead, or simply unable to speak and breathe.