A/N: I'm alive! Sorry for the longer-than-usual delay, end of summer madness conspired with the fact it takes me forever to write action scenes, ha. The end is finally in sight here, so I hope you enjoy! Gah, I'll miss writing this.
Tun darted into the adjoining room, dagger held in what he imagined to be a ready position, and blinked in surprise. The room was empty. He lowered his blade, gaze drawn involuntarily to the glitter of his surroundings.
He'd imagined a demon's lair would be a noisome pit thick with felfire and mangled corpses, but this place was beautiful. Or rather, things of beauty resided in it. The overall effect was too gaudy to be really attractive. A great jet-colored table etched with pearly runes stood in the center of the room, and the shelves that jutted from the walls above his head were cluttered with spelled blades, brilliant jewels, magical tomes that blazed with power, and corrupted idols of strange gods. Treasures sifted from the wrack of a thousand worlds.
Na'rii motioned impatiently at him and Tun tore his gaze away with effort, feeling a pang of sadness for the creators of these relics, whose works had likely far outlived their peoples.
The troll had flattened herself against the black stone wall to his right, but once she attracted his attention she flitted warily around the runed table towards an archway on the far wall. It was one of a trio, but the arches on either side had been closed off with an enchanted lattice of delicate black steel and fel crystals.
Tun hesitated a moment, kicking out the wrench that wedged open the door to the outer chamber before following. The double gate shut with a quiet snick and a soft blaze of runes. He had no idea what magic would open it again, but it didn't matter. Flight was no option now. They would kill or they would die.
Na'rii nodded at him in grim approval as he joined her at the archway, but her bare foot tapped impatiently on the stone. "Quickly, mon," she said, breaking into an easy, loping stride. "Or they'll be followin', door or no."
Tun hurried to keep up as they passed through the arch into a wide, sloping corridor. "If I survive this I'll take a lap around the city every day, so help me Light," he muttered.
Na'rii chuckled at Tun's labored breathing. "Don' do it!" she said, a teasing gleam in her eye. "No one likes a skinny gnome. Makes the drumsticks all stringy."
"Very funny," Tun said between breaths. He gave his surroundings a disgusted glance. "Probably taste like demons by now anyway."
"No worries, mon," Na'rii said, grinning around her tusks. "The demon-y bits be all on the outside, we can peel it off like one of them fancy Silvermoon cheeses."
Tun wrinkled his nose at this suggestion, but further discussion of his gastronomical potential was cut off by a heavy iron and felsteel door that barred their path, slowing them to a halt.
The grin fled from Na'rii's face, replaced by a hard expression. Her eyes flicked to Tun, who nodded slightly, fingers tightening on the rough leather grip of his dagger.
She leaned her weight on the handle and the door swung noiselessly open on well-oiled hinges. Tun's view was blocked by Na'rii's legs, but he heard her quiet hiss and then a sudden crackling roar as red fire glare bathed his face. Na'rii sprang from the doorway towards the inferno, keeping the rough-chiseled wall to her right, and Tun bolted into the room at her heels, veering left and squinting against the heat and light.
His heart raced wildly as he scanned the cavern. A circular well stood at the center, ringed by obsidian-black obelisks whose surfaces writhed with demonic sigils. Low piles of boulders, almost like cairns, surrounded the obelisks, casting long shadows in the sickly green light of the well. The room's most prominent feature, however, was a howling firestorm of elemental flame that raged between the obelisks and the door they had entered by.
Tun squinted into the fire, trying to spy what Na'rii had caught in her conflagration. As the wind-fanned flames subsided, they revealed the blackened corpse of…something.
"Is that it?" Tun asked doubtfully, still clutching his dagger so tightly his knuckles were bloodless.
Na'rii narrowed her eyes as she fell into a hunter's crouch, white teeth bared. "There be two of them."
A cruel laughed echoed off the cavern's high-domed ceiling, and Tun looked up, heart sinking, in time to see the ugliest creature he had ever encountered swoop down to land heavily next to the corpse of his fellow.
Vathregyr.
"Visitors!" the demon said, smile revealing a mouthful of pointed fangs. He spoke Common, but his words were so mauled by a strange accent they took time to decipher. "How thoughtful." He turned over the charred body with a thick hoof, examining it disinterestedly.
Tun knew he should do something, cast some spell, anything, but instead he stood riveted, the air of Xoroth suddenly tight and oppressive against his skin. The descriptions he'd been given of the Tothrezim were a pale reflection of the reality. Vathregyr was even larger than Nerothos, despite his stoop, which elevated his top pair of bulging shoulders above his head. The demon had once had four arms, but his lower right limb had been wrenched off at the shoulder and was now a jagged stump. His upper hand on the opposing side was missing fingers, and the thick felweave bandage wound around his muscled chest was crusted with old blood. Evidence that Nerothos cornered had been a more formidable creature than Vathregyr had anticipated.
The Tothrezim turned his bulbous eyes first on Na'rii and then on Tun. "Nerothos' pets." His twisted face adopted an expression of mock regret. "Your diversion comes too late, I fear. But no matter. You will do until your master is retrieved."
Diversion? Vathregyr had it backwards, but Tun wasn't about to correct him. He reached out for the arcane, hoping to end this confrontation, but when he tried to lift his arms he found them pinned firmly to his sides. Alarm flooded his body, jagged bolts of fear shooting up his spine. He would've struggled, but he found himself paralyzed, held fast by shackles of thin green mist wound about his wrists and ankles.
Vathregyr regarded him with a hint of a sneer. "Stuck, are we? Pathetic. I wonder, did the dreadlord tell you this was a suicide mission?"
Tun couldn't have answered this if he'd wanted to, as his mouth was as immobilized as the rest of him. If he strained, he could barely see Na'rii's bound form out of the corner of his eye.
Vathregyr idly tapped a set of clawed fingers on one of the piles of stone scattered about. "Mortals make such poor entertainment," he mused, not at all bothered by his audience's silence. "You break like half-forged steel. But I will make do."
He waved a hand, and twin jets of fel energy arced from the well behind him and plunged into two of the cairns. Green light flared between the stones, and Tun's eyes widened in surprise as the rock piles stood up.
Boulder rose upon boulder, suffused in the poisonous glow of fel magic, until two infernals loomed at Vathregyr's flanks. The Tothrezim spread his wings, revealing a grotesque pattern of stitching and scar tissue, and flapped to the top of the largest pile of stones.
"Kill them," he commanded with a lazy flick of an uninjured claw.
The infernals roared in unison, the heat of their breath rippling the air, and charged.
Tun fought wildly against his bonds, ground quaking with every step as the monstrosity bounded towards him. Suddenly he was free. Caught between elation and terror, he scrambled instinctively backwards, raising his hands, and stared into the fiery fist plummeting to crush him.
Callista perched alertly on the back of her felsteed, pupils shining faintly green as she searched for pursuit. Summoning her mount had cost her a soul shard and a fair amount of mental energy, but had been worth it. She could never have kept pace with her two demonic companions on foot, and the rest combined with the cooler air of the upper passages had caused the worst of her exhaustion to subside.
Darmog scuttled along in front of her felsteed's burning hooves with his head down, cowl obscuring his flat face. Nerothos stalked at her back, silent since their exchange near the forges, but his displeasure was evident in the tense crackle of power in the air around him. Callista wished he would cut it out; the scent of strange magic was making her mount edgy.
She stroked the creature's sleek neck reassuringly. Barring any misfortune, it wouldn't be long now before they were reunited with the others. They had fled the scene of the explosion in the opposite direction of Vathregyr's stronghold and were now making their way back around in a wide arc, in part to avoid any pursuit from that direction, and partly to give Tun and Na'rii time to carry out their part of the plan before they came knocking at Vathregyr's gates.
So far, all was well. She sensed nothing out of the ordinary, and though she was blind to any demons outside the wall spaces, Darmog had assured her it didn't matter. Vathregyr had not gone out of his way to publicize the existence of these passageways, and it would likely be some time before the Xorothian guard remembered their presence.
Which was why, when the wall fifty yards ahead rippled and disgorged a quartet of snarling felguards, there was just a little bit of indignation mixed in with her surprise and fear.
"Plaguing hells!" she swore, as the felguards bellowed triumphantly and charged. She glanced down just in time to see Darmog give one terrified look to the felguards, one to her, and then dash through his own rippling portal to the outer passageways. Ugh, coward. She swiveled her head over her shoulder, already certain what she would see, and was only mildly annoyed to find an empty patch of air where Nerothos had stood.
"Very nice, you two," she muttered, but the sound was lost in the violent ring of the felguards' armored boots on stone.
She raised a hand, and just before a boiling sea of felfire filled the corridor between them she noticed that the largest of the demons had slowed and was fiddling with some sort of device cupped in its clawed hand. Callista didn't know what it was for and didn't intend to find out. She dug her knee into her felsteed's flank, trying to coax it to wheel around in the narrow corridor, but the agonized roar of the lead felguard as it plunged into the flames spooked it.
Its eyes rolled, showing a rim of whites, and it reared, hooves flailing. Callista cursed and yanked on the bit as she struggled to keep her seat, but to no avail. This was why she'd tried to summon a dreadsteed to begin with – the felsteed was a fine mount for carrying packs and riding about the country, but it was no warhorse. The combination of the claustrophobic space, the unfamiliar demons and the sudden fire had terrified it beyond reason, and now it was useless. She cupped her hands over its eyes, settling it long enough for her to scramble from the saddle and dismiss it back to the Nether.
The flames began to die down, and she hesitated, torn. She would prefer to flee (if Nerothos didn't care to fight this battle, she'd be damned if she did it for him), but she could never outrun a felguard on foot. Of course, the odds of her singlehandedly killing three felguards at once were also far from encouraging.
The fire was only waist-high now. She closed her hand on a soul shard and focused on the nearest demon, speaking the arcane words to subdue and enslave. The felguard howled in outrage, shaking and clawing at its head as though to throw off the magic tormenting it, but its partner was less foolish. Sneering viciously at Callista, it raised its axe and brought the flat of it down on its companion's skull in a crushing blow. The felguard crumpled, unconscious or dead, and the recoil from the half-completed spell snapped across Callista's mind like a whip. She reeled, leaning a hand against the stone wall for support. Nether, what a mistake.
A deep rumbling laugh shook the chest of the felguard who'd dispatched its fellow. It raised a metal-plated boot, intending to wade through the low fire separating it from the warlock, when every shadow in the narrow corridor seemed to rear up and then charge. The shadows leapt forward with a twisting, snakelike motion, solidifying as they merged. The felguard hesitated, but the attack was not meant for it.
The largest felguard, who had been ignoring Callista in favor of the device in its hand, snarled and sank its claws into its fellow's neck, yanking it around to use as a living shield. The shadows plunged into the unfortunate demon's chest, spreading a stain of oily blackness, and the felguard grunted in pain and went limp in its partner's grasp, helmeted head lolling.
The lone remaining felguard flung the body aside, grinning nastily. "Dreadlord," it snarled, jabbing a claw into one of the runes on the lump of metal and fel crystal in its hand.
The crystal flared ominously.
Nerothos snapped into visibility as the arcane sigils on his chest blazed in reply. He stood poised mid-strike, wicked claws inches away from the felguard's throat but unable to move any further.
Callista hissed in surprise from where she was propped against the wall, dismissed by the felguard as too weak to be threatening. The backlash from her interrupted spell had hit her hard; it felt as though a small razor-clawed animal was slashing its way out of her head. She tried to focus on a curse but could hardly hold the magic in her mind. She swore silently at Nerothos and herself, gritting her teeth against the sour ache in her skull and forcing her fingers to trace a spell pattern. It hurt, but fear was more motivating than pain. If she was captured, her death would not be swift, not after what she'd done.
The felguard barked a command, and, though Nerothos bared his fangs murderously, he lowered his claws.
Callista noticed that, despite everything, the dreadlord's expression was free of any kind of shock. The bastard had known this would happen! At least it explained his odd reluctance to venture off alone. She narrowed her eyes at him, angry that he'd allowed her to be blindsided in the middle of a battle, and clenched her fingers in the final gesture of her spell.
The felguard roared, black blood pouring from its eyes, and whirled on her in fury. It tossed aside the device it had used to subdue Nerothos and lunged, not even bothering to reach for the sword sheathed on its back.
Callista swore, stumbling backwards in alarm. That was not at all what she'd expected; the last demon she'd used that curse on had fallen to its knees in agony. Apparently this felguard was made of sterner stuff. Cursing her foul luck and the pain in her head, she muttered the words to another spell, hoping she could dodge the grasping claws long enough to finish it.
Blinded by its own blood, the felguard tripped over the body of one of its fellows and sprawled to the floor with the ring of armor on stone. Undeterred, it lunged forward again on its belly, catching Callista's ankle just as she summoned a seething gout of shadow. The felguard yanked her leg hard, looming over her as her back slammed into the stone floor and she reflexively loosed her spell.
It was a mistake.
The shadowbolt ripped into the felguard's neck from pointblank range, corroding through throat and arteries and showering her in hot blood. Callista yelped and rolled painfully away, bruised and winded from her fall, as the demon thrashed out its last breaths.
She lay still for a moment, just breathing and marveling at the fact that she was alive. She tried to rub the blood from her face with her sleeve, but only succeeded in smearing it. Disgusting.
"We must hurry." Nerothos' voice broke into her daze. There was an urgency in it she'd never heard before. "Reinforcements will surely follow."
Callista sat up, narrowing her eyes. Sure enough, the dreadlord had not moved from his last position, seemingly frozen in place. "You lied to me!"
"That is wholly inaccurate," Nerothos said, an unreadable expression on his angular face. The runes carved into his chest glowed the angry red of hot coals.
Callista climbed to her feet, ignoring the throb of her injured shoulder and the soreness in her back. Thinking back, she supposed he hadn't technically said anything untrue; instead he'd merely threatened and insulted her. The memory did not improve her temper. "Lies of omission count!" she snapped. She stalked over to where the felguard's device lay and swiped it off the floor, dangling it in front of Nerothos as she continued her tirade. "You didn't think the fact the first patrol we stumbled on would turn you into a useless puppet was at all worth mentioning?!"
Nerothos couldn't repress a hint of a snarl at that. "I assumed a solution would present itself when the time came."
Callista glared daggers. That showed such an appalling lack of foresight it had to be a lie. She translated it to mean, "I thought you'd seize the chance to slit my throat, so I didn't give you time to think about it," and it made more sense. If he really thought she was as treacherous as he was. She suddenly remembered the flash of surprise on his face when she'd refused to abandon the others, and realized that that was exactly what he thought. The idea rankled, striking a tender nerve she hadn't even known she possessed, and she dug her nails into her palm. Dreadlords were, by nature, nearly unerring judges of character; had she really become such a demon? It occurred to her with a shock that she wasn't sure, which only increased her aggravation. Damn him! It would serve him right if his judgement were true.
Darmog chose this moment to poke his head tentatively back through the wall. "They dead yet?"
Callista ignored what she felt to be a patently inane question in favor of shaking the demonic device at his disembodied face. "What in the Nether is this?!" she demanded.
Darmog sidled the rest of the way through the wall to pluck the device from her hand, turning it over with nimble fingers. He shot Nerothos a wary look. "Tracking and containment device. For transporting prisoners."
"Tracking device?!"
Darmog flinched at her screech. "Only short-range," he muttered defensively, but her ire was not directed at him.
Callista whirled on Nerothos, expression venomous. She really might've cut his throat then, if she hadn't been so loath to prove him right. "You…!" she trailed off, unable to find words vile enough in Common or Eredun.
Nerothos stared impassively back, just a hint of challenge in his fel-colored eyes. Ugh. Only he could manage arrogance while at the mercy of some sort of enslavement-in-a-can.
Callista rubbed exasperatedly at the bridge of her nose. Demons. Should she really even be surprised? She didn't have time for this. "We have to get out of here," she muttered.
"That would be prudent," Nerothos said.
Callista scowled, unable to tell if he was being snide or not, and decided she didn't care. She was angry in either case. "I don't know where you think you're going!" she snapped.
Nerothos matched her expression, flicking his wings defensively. "If I am made prisoner, you will be slaughtered. Nothing has changed."
"If you're made prisoner alive," she corrected acidly, laying a hand on the hilt of her weapon.
For the first time since she'd known him, Nerothos looked uncertain. "You wouldn't dare!" he snarled. "You would be hunted to the ends of your pitiful world!"
Callista doubted that, but they'd wasted enough time already. Her eyes lit on Darmog, who had slunk well away from what he expected to be a messy altercation. "Can you work that thing?" she demanded, jerking her head towards the device he held.
He shifted evasively, pale eyes sliding away from hers to examine the collection of runes and fel crystal in his hand. "Mechano-enchantment isn't really my field…"
"A felguard figured it out. How hard could it be!" she railed.
Darmog muttered a long string of technical gibberish under his breath, but didn't dare argue.
Nerothos looked suspicious of this sudden change of tack, eyes following her warily. "You owe me your life," he said to Callista, when she turned back to him. His gaze burned into her, as though he could sway her actions through sheer force of will. "You would have been butchered without my intervention."
"Yes, and you only did it so you could remind me of it at precisely this moment," Callista said hostilely, digging around in her pocket for a soul shard. "Try again."
"If I refuted that, would it matter?" he asked, watching her closely. The runes on his chest shone with an ominous light, flickering slightly with his breaths.
Callista looked at him irritably. Yes, of course it would matter, because she was just thinking that what she really hadn't heard enough of today was lies. "No."
"Then I won't waste my time," he snarled. His eyes narrowed as she held a glittering soul shard between her finger and thumb. "What are you attempting?"
She hesitated, not entirely sure herself. The hard, calculating part of her mind knew that she should kill him. He was an infuriating creature. Even Tun, the most softhearted person she knew, had wanted to leave him to whatever fate he'd earned in that cell. Nerothos had told nothing but lies and half-truths as long as they'd known him. His presence had drawn those felguards.
He was the only other living creature who knew how Folgrim had died.
He was malicious, a liability, would destroy her in an instant if he thought it would buy him a shred of advantage.
Except that he hadn't. Yet. And the more perverse side of her nature (which triumphed more often than was probably consistent with a long and healthy life) rebelled at the thought of confirming his cynical view of her character. Arrogant bastard. Dreadlord or not, he didn't know her.
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he drew his lip back from his teeth, revealing sharp fangs. He was a servant of the Burning Legion; most sensible people would find that more than reason enough to kill him.
Luckily for Nerothos, no one had ever accused Callista of being overburdened with sense.
Her expression grew rather wicked as she allowed the purple stone to drop into her palm. "Helping you. You're not going to like it, and I don't care."
Nerothos growled a warning, spreading his wings threateningly, but Callista knew very well he couldn't touch her. The soul shard dissolved into a thousand tendrils of dark, which flowed from her hand to meld with the shadows of the corridor, rising and coalescing to fashion the enormous hulking form of a voidwalker. Its eyes shone like white stars in its shapeless face.
"Must feed," it rasped, extending fingers like icy daggers.
"Later," Callista said, waving her minion off. "Now pick up the dreadlord, we're leaving."
Nerothos shot her an appraising look at that, and she thought she detected just a little incredulity in the expression. She stared back coolly.
"Master," the voidwalker hissed obediently, throwing a shadowy limb about Nerothos and half lifting, half dragging him down the passageway. The voidwalker was built along the same proportions as the dreadlord and, despite its insubstantial appearance, was immensely strong. Of course, as Callista had found out the hard way on several nasty occasions, its touch was bone-searing cold.
Nerothos bared his fangs in displeasure, though whether at the physical discomfort or the indignity was hard to tell. Though he didn't actually protest, the stare he leveled at Callista promised any number of unpleasant things once he was finally free.
Callista, for her part, had blacker fears weighing on her. It couldn't take them more than an hour to reach Vathregyr's stronghold, and there they would either find temporary safety, or their companions murdered and an army waiting to seize them. She fought to keep her thoughts from dwelling on the latter possibility, but it was a losing struggle. Her botched spell had been the cause of this whole debacle, and, if Tun was dead, no matter which Legion monstrosity had dealt the killing blow, it would be her fault.
With swiftness born of terror, Tun summoned a frigid burst of wind that swept over his head and struck the wall behind him, solidifying into a thick ledge of enchanted ice. The infernal's fist crashed into the unexpected barrier, chips of ice and burning stone rocketing from the point of impact, and the golem roared in consternation.
Tun stumbled backwards, back pressing against the warm stone of the wall, blue mist shining around his outstretched hands. His dagger lay forgotten on the floor. Maybe there existed some hero in some far-off place with the strength to drive a blade into the cursed rock of an infernal, but Tun knew it wasn't him.
There was a sharp crack, and a crystalline sheath of ice clenched around the infernal's fiery leg, cementing it to the ground. The golem continued to rage, raining blows like hammerfalls down on the ice ledge as Tun darted out from beneath it.
He emerged from the shadow of the overhang, searching desperately for Na'rii, and felt a surge of relief as he spotted her on the far side of the cavern, dueling with his infernal's twin. As he watched, the ground beneath the monster's feet cracked and split, and the infernal fell to its knees in the localized quake.
"How unsporting," Vathregyr said, still perched on his rock pile like some hideous gargoyle.
Tun whipped his head around to look at the demon just as he made an arcane gesture with one of his whole hands. A fel mist rose from the ground around his infernal's frozen leg, shrouding the ice that tethered it. The trap shattered with a sound like a rifle shot and the infernal wrenched its limb free, barreling once more towards Tun.
"This is less dull than I feared," Vathregyr observed, as Tun enveloped the infernal in a howling blizzard. Powerful gusts of ice-laden wind buffeted it, arresting its charge towards the gnome. "But you will be crushed in the end."
Tun ignored the fiend's musings, sweat beading on his forehead as he poured all his concentration into the storm. Blades of ice whirled within it, gouging away at the rock and enchantment of the construct it encompassed. He could destroy it this way, but what then?
"You should be grateful. This is a swift end," Vathregyr continued, watching the mortals' struggles with sadistic pleasure. "If Nerothos is wise, he will surrender himself to Hel'nurath before my forces seize him. The miserable pacts of the Nathrezim will not allow his destruction. But his meddling with my forges has cost me profits!" His face contorted into a grotesque snarl, suddenly enraged. "And for that, his final agony will span centuries!"
The Tothrezim's ravings were interrupted by a cry of triumph and the rumble of falling rocks.
Tun spared enough attention from his magic to glance in Na'rii's direction and found that she had destroyed her infernal, reduced it to a harmless scattering of stones. She leapt immediately towards Vathregyr, venom in her eyes. Her face was stony with concentration as she uttered prayers to the elements, and Tun allowed himself a brief moment of hope.
Vathregyr merely laughed unpleasantly. "How unexpected!"
Na'rii froze mid-leap as shackles of unholy vapor once again bound her. She thrashed wildly, yelling vicious curses in Zandali, as Vathregyr drew yet another rope of fel energy from the well at the cavern's center. A new infernal rose, bellowing in wrath as it lunged for her. Once again, Vathregyr released her barely in time to defend herself.
Tun's heart fell sickeningly. He had suspected it before, when Vathregyr had first begun to toy with them, but now he knew it for certain: they couldn't kill this creature. The infernals were relentless, impossible to stave off without bringing the full of one's focus to bear. And as soon as one perished, a replacement roared to life. This cavern was littered with the cairns of potential golems. They would become weary (Tun could already feel the familiar fatigue tugging at his mind, there was only so long a mortal could channel arcane magic before the strain became unbearable), and then they would die.
In this moment of doubt, his concentration on the storm slipped. The infernal seized the advantage, charging out of the gale-driven ice with a volcanic roar. It was on him before he could think, and then there was nothing to do but flee, sprinting pell-mell around the piled stones of the cavern.
Tun's mind churned as he ran, feeling the withering heat of the infernal at his back, the way its bounding footsteps made the earth shudder. It was gaining on him; he needed to slow it down, but any pause to fashion a spell would be fatal.
He spotted a crevice in the cavern wall, a narrow crack in the stone, and sprinted towards it with the same mindless instinct for safety as a hunted rabbit scrabbling for a burrow.
Vathregyr's grating laugh floated overhead. Tun felt a sudden jolt of fury, and it lent him new speed. He reached the crevice mere steps before the infernal and wedged himself in, peering outwards as he gasped the words to a spell. One more bound and the flaming behemoth would be upon him. That was alright; his magic would strike it before then, and it would be paralyzed, if not vanquished.
The infernal filled nearly his entire vision, a grinning maelstrom of fire and destruction, Vathregyr barely visible behind it. The Tothrezim watched with an expression of greedy malice, crooked fangs bared as the golem drew back an enormous fist to shatter the stone over the mage's head, and Tun knew with sudden clarity what had to be done.
He loosed his spell, and Vathregyr's face twisted in an expression of stunned surprise at the gleaming blade of ice that lanced from the cavern floor, erupting from his bandaged chest. Bitter satisfaction welled in Tun's heart as he saw the foul light leave the demon's eyes.
Then the infernal's fist crashed down, and all he knew was dark.