Another keyturn.

Victor reached out, taking hold of the dead meat which surrounded him… And he used it as fuel. The corpses of Eisen, Aase, Buhaug, and a few Ramdalls alike writhed only to erupt with great tendrils of gore from betwixt whose many fibres wicked thorns of bone protruded. Like gruesome blossoms, Devil’s Teeth grew upon them, demanding only the Aer and Ignis for their fuel.

They surrounded the both of them in a ring of fleshy brambles, and before Victor could complete the spell, Ismaar hucked another quill at him. It was struck right out of the air by one of his Devil’s Teeth, but Ismaar had already rushed in, striking and biting with the desperation of a man on the precipice of death.

“Fast. But… I can see where all his movements go. Every errant muscle twitch. Where his eyes point, what moves his stance is conducive to. Is this what it’s like for her?”

Never once did he come close to landing a blow on his opponent, and all he had to show for it were calcified, weeping burn wounds caused by the jets of bonefire that erupted from Dawnwolf’s vents to assist its wearer’s movements.

Eventually, Victor found a space. He willed the key to make another half-turn and, with a rocket-burst of flame, struck Ismaar such that he went careening straight into the wall of flesh-brambles behind him. He could finally finish the cast. Bringing the Oculus into hand’s reach, he grabbed for the mass of flame within its eye. It transformed into a phantom bundle of fleshbrambles, gripped in his waiting hand.

Ismaar slipped out of the world of consciousness for a moment, but returned just in time to see that thing staring at him, just standing there.

“I apologize - what gave you the misbegotten idea that you would leave this place alive?” asked the bone-armored monstrosity with a quizzical tilt of its head. It suddenly yanked on the phantom brambles in its hand, and the very real fleshbrambles around Ismaar responded in kind. Several tendrils shot out of the bramble-wall, binding him so tightly that both his arms popped out of their sockets and his breath escaped him with an impotent wheeze. Another wickedly-spiked tendril rose up in front of his face.

“I ought to run you through end-to-end with one of these and wait for Mistress Zelsys to return so we can give you to the Skinless One. Wouldn’t that be nice? Your worthless soul might contribute some value to the world by becoming part of her weapon. But alas… I am not so blinded by rage as to give you a chance at survival. Beg for death and I may yet grant you a swift one, nidingr.”

Even if he had been so inclined, Ismaar couldn’t muster anything more than a wheeze. Bound by these brambles of flesh and bone, he had no choice but to watch his own demise take form around him. Many of the spiral-grooved drill projectiles that the stranger had used previously grew from the fleshbrambles around him. This “Dawnwolf” let go of the phantom brambles, but Ismaar wasn’t released. Instead, channeling a black torrent into the now-empty ring of his staff from his left hand, the monster raised its massive right hand. The key in its belt turned again; its jaws slammed shut, jets of black flame erupting from the armor’s many gaps before they reopened with a great flare of black fire. At that moment, a torrent of Devil’s Teeth riddled Ismaar with holes, maliciously gnawing through him as the brambles which bound him were made into a pyre.

Just behind Victor, just outside the fleshbramble perimeter, Gunnar stood, seemingly watching in paralysis. He didn’t move an inch, he didn’t even breathe. The young wizard was keenly aware of his state, but his focus remained sternly fixed.

The flame which Victor set forth from the Oculus was no flamethrower, but a spray of tiny devilbone centipedes enveloped in the same sticky, congealed flame he had once used against Von Burgghusen. Each one was a servitor controlled by a copy of Gamma, and they all in unison slithered right into the holes that had been drilled through Ismaar’s flesh, ensuring that he was enveloped in calceramic inside and out.

It wasn’t long before both the flesh-brambles and fire-snakes crumbled away, leaving only a hole-riddled statue of Ismaar… A statue that bled through its shell and shuddered in place. Chips of calceramic rained down, and lo, the Statue of Ismaar screamed. He bit down, shattering the casement ‘round the lower half of his head, with long cracks spidering down his body, but it was too late for him. Even the impending reinforcements whose arrival he heard down the road would be far too late.

“At least thirty individuals on a sled train. Four tundra bears. Possibly a captured brambleback.”

“They will be no issue.”

“Of course they won’t.”

Victor permitted most of his fleshbrambles to be consumed by flame, their mass crumbling away; all but those behind him, these only growing denser to protect those behind him. He took up a forward-leaned sprinter’s stance as he raised his right hand, its massive fingers curled into a mace-like fist. In the same act he also gripped the Oculus in both his left and third hands, spearpoint forward. Sputtering bursts of black spilled from the nozzles on Dawnwolf’s legs, back, and gauntlet, sharpening to brilliant-white jets with cores of blackest black. He formed a small spiraling detonation engine at the Oculus’ staff-end, in order to balance its thrust with that of his fist and to ensure its exhaust wouldn’t penetrate his own bramble barrier.

By some horrifying feat of superhuman willpower and constitution, Ismaar managed to shatter his calcified prison. His screaming, skinless countenance leaned forward as if to charge Victor, but it was too late.

A comet with twin black tails ripped right past the sound-speed barrier and erupted out the front of the Hulson longhouse slathered head-to-toe in gore, leaving not even the slightest suggestion of Ismaar’s existence in his wake.

ERADICATION SIGN

EVIL-SHATTERING COMET OF RIGHTEOUS FURY

MAGUS GESTALT FORMATION: BONEYARD GENOCIDER