Darius slashed at the armoured god, their weapons clashes causing sparks to fly out.

The distant sound of the sea moving back towards them serving almost like a timer for their fight.

“Sword Charge!” Darius exclaimed, the ability pushed him forward as the god of magic, Melnym fired down a barrage of ghost hands onto him.

“Severing Slash!” his blade cut the air as if it was an in-game animation, a ‘slash’ flew at the warrior,

One strike after another, it was as if Darius has endless stamina; unfortunately, that was not the case.

The witch fired murders of crows after the god of raids, Delirax.

He cut them down, his arm now regrown allowing him to not only kill the birds but also all the undead that rose from the earth.

With one ghost hand, Melnym knocked the witch into the air and with another, she slammed her back into the ground with a crunch.

The impact created a crater in the sand.

Darius’ eyes darted back to his companion, much to his relief she got back up from the small crater that formed under her.

“Sword Charge!” Darius exclaimed as he flew at the sickle god, catching him off guard and piercing him through the heart.

“Two-on-one? What the hell?!” Delirax demanded falling to the ground, he placed a hand over the wound.

“That hurt!” he exclaimed.

Darius jumped back only to suddenly feel himself get pummelled by the armoured god, his fists feeling like cannonballs.

When Darius spun around to block the assault, he got punched square in the face, the force of the impact sent him flying backwards, rolling in the sand for a few seconds.

The witch reached into her bag and pulled out a health potion, she tossed it to the wolfman.

“There, drink it!” she instructed.

Darius got up to his shaky feet and drank the whole bottle.

His arm healing back to normal, his cracked ribs feeling whole again.

“Hey, witch…”

“What?”

“How many potions do you have?” he asked.

“Those were our last healing potions,” she replied.

From above, the hands of Melnym came down, Darius dashed over to the witch and picked her up, carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“One of them is missing!” Darius gestured to the three gods.

“Oscar…” the witch remarked.

“He’s after Thal and Mattius,” Darius explained.

“They might be able to deal with one god…” the witch replied.

Darius shook his head, “He sounded like their leader… I’m pretty sure he’s strong…”

“I’ll hold them off here, you go help the others,” said Darius.

The witch breathed a sigh.

“You realise you won’t survive a three-on-one fight with the gods, right?” she asked casually.

Darius smiled, “Wasn’t this a suicidal mission from the start?” he couldn’t help but laugh, after all, they were finally close enough to grasp their freedom.

The witch shrugged.

“As someone so detached from life and death, I don’t particularly admire your sacrifice or anything,” the witch continued.

Darius continued dodging the hands.

After some seconds of thought, the witch replied.

“Fine, I’ll go help the others, I hope you weren’t expecting a tearful goodbye,”

“Not really, but it would have been nice,” Darius chuckled.

“Hm, I see, in that case – you were the best pet dog a witch could ask fo-” with that, Darius flung the witch into the distance.

“FUCK YOU TOO!” he called back as he turned to face his final opponents.

Darius summoned manifested a blade for his regrown hand.

“Foolish move, your plan of buying the others time just ended,” Delirax said smugly.

While the god of the raids continued taunting Darius, the god of magic, as well as the god of defence, looked at him intensely.

Darius heard it before already, and he heard it again, the voice of the ring, beckoning him, offering him strength, the promise to increase his strength and speed.

Until now he wasn’t desperate enough, he finally accepted the offer.

Nekraxx, the avatar of rage and hatred began lending his bodily power to Darius.

In a flash, Darius flew forward, Nekraxx may have been a depressed drunk for the last few millennia, but his strength was a welcome boost to Darius.

He zoomed over the sand and onto one of the ghost hands, he sprinted atop it until he was close enough to Melnym to burry his blade into her skull causing the god to fall unconscious while the wound healed.

“MEL!” cried Delirax as he charged at Darius, not that there was a need for that as the wolfman bounced off the unconscious god’s body and towards him.

Mid-air Darius was struck by Timmothy, the armoured god, he flew across the battlefield once more only to charge back seconds later, he jammed both of his blades into Timmothy’s armour to no effect.

He felt the sickles of Delirax slice and dice his back as Darius spun around.

“SEVERING SLASH!”

The god of raids was split down the middle as both halves cried out in pain.

“AH! YOU ASSHOLE!”

Darius’ right arm was grabbed by the armoured god only to be cleanly torn off.

Darius didn’t even flinch as he jammed his blade into the armour once more.

He jumped back as a stream of blood began to leak from his nose.

“I understand… the source of your newfound power is one of us…” Melnym remarked, she was already healed.

Darius found it difficult to form words, he just wanted to continue the fight, he wanted to stab them until they pleaded him to stop and then continued long after, he was grateful for their immortality, not for their sake but for his.

“You should know that power is killing you,” Melnym continued as Darius charged as her, is patch was blocked by the partially-healed Delirax was once more cut in two, this time horizontally.

Darius felt blood coming from his ears.

Does it even matter? Blood is meant to be shed, he felt fine, he could keep fighting forever.

This time he felt his leg get grabbed by the armoured fighter as he was lifted into the air and smashed into the ground creating a crater that only got deeper as he continued being smashed into the ground over and over again.

Darius let go of his swords and grabbed the armoured god’s arm, with his ring he created an item, a stick of explosives.

His bloodshot eye was inches away from Timmothy’s, he could see no human in there, only bloodlust.

"EXPLOSIVES!?" cried the god as he tried to shake Darius off to no avail

A cloud of flames engulfed both of them, Darius healed in a flash as he felt the taste of metal in his mouth.

The explosive cracked open the god’s armour, the cloud of the gas-like body of the god coiled around a red gem in the shattered armour, Darius smashed the crystal with his sword causing the god to disperse into the air and fly away.

“YOU ASSHOLE!” Melnym exclaimed, she extended her hand towards Darius, on the tip of each finger emerged small bolts of flame, they all flew at Darius, explosion after explosion filled the air as Darius ran straight through them, sword-in-hand.

With a newly summoned sword, he severed Melnym’s head, holding it up by the hair as he turned to the still healing Delirax.

“I will reduce you to minced meat… demon!” Darius growled, slowly he was regaining his humanity not that he got the upper hand.

Just as he was about to slice Delirax into bits he saw a single, more see-through ghost hand manifest from Melnym’s decapitated head.

It moved over to Delirax.

Darius glanced down at the head and saw that it was in fact unconscious.

The hand caressed the god’s face as he got up to his feet.

“I’ll get you for this, bastard…” he said through gritted teeth.

Darius looked the god in the eyes and saw not a demon, but a cornered animal, full of bloodlust but more importantly fear.

With his blade, Darius clashed weapons with the god.

For the first time since the start of this fight, he had a clear upper-hand.

Delirax was quick, but with Nekraxx’s reflexes, Darius could easily block him.

With a single, well-placed strike, Darius smashed his weapons into bits and chopped his head off.

He grabbed him by the hair as well.

With the ring he created a spear, to it he attached the two heads, piercing their brains as he impaled them.

Darius felt his breathing begin to feel weird, his missing eye began to hurt, his skin bled all over.

With the remainder of his strength, Darius thrust the spear into the distance, sending the two, still-healing, unconscious gods towards the others.

When he felt the spear had landed, he removed the ring and in that same moment collapsed to the floor, bleeding from just about everywhere and with his vision blurry, he didn’t even feel pain at this point.

Darius felt strangely satisfied, well, except for the potion-hangover.

As the distant rumbling came closer, and as the moon that lit his fight this entire time was blocked out by the tall wave of seawater returning from its exile.