Chapter Nine
Here be more then dragons
Blinding azure light filled the room, the last act of the portal as it imploded. The group had been battling wave after wave of Dragonspawn, each portal they shut down quickly gained them a little breather before the next one appeared.
While the group recuperated a portal appeared in the centre of the room, a magus Dragonspawn shot forth from the blue portal. The dragon moved too quickly for the heroes to do anything before it reached one of the static chambers that housed one of the creatures the Kirin Tor had imprisoned.
Upon reaching the chamber the blue Dragonspawn exploded, the concussive blast hit the heroes as they turned to try and shield themselves from it. The heroes turned back to face where the Dragonspawn had just been, only to see that the stasis chamber that it was next to had shut down. Silence reigned; the group stood still, transfixed as each of them waited to see what horror has been unleashed.
As they watched, the chamber before them seemed to absorb all light; the darkness seemed to be seeping out of it as shadows spread across the floor. The group prepared themselves; each one could feel the gaze of the horror that lurked within.
As the shadows moved across the floor they started to grow, as if it was feeding on the light within the room. The mass continued to get larger; the front of the chamber was completely hidden behind a cloud of pure darkness. Then suddenly it began to contract, the shadows seemed to get denser, shapes started to appear within the darkness. The shapes could not been seen as such, these shadows reflected no light; it was the different shades of darkness that allowed the heroes to make out how it looked.
The darkness seemed to form some sort of casing, like some oversized body armor that hovered around the centre of the shadowy mass. Two orbs began to glow red where the head should have been and shadows seeped out of two holes on either side of the armor, where arms should have been, ending in claws. The red orbs moved from one hero to the next, focusing on Naralissa the shadowy fiend charged.
Marsh' flared his unholy might at the beast, taunting it. The red orbs turned on him as it moved to face him. The two clashed as their unholy energies met. The demon creature clawed at Marsh', trying to tear at his eyes, Marsh' was able to hold his own however as he parried the creature's blows with his ruined blade.
Naralissa seeing this light eating creature before her filled her with divine fury, channeling this she brought down a divine storm upon it. The creature roared as Naralissa's blade cracked the armor, however the light upon her blade vanished as a shroud of darkness surrounded her.
Klash tried to come to her aid, calling upon the spirit of wind to blow away the shroud. The creature turned its orbs upon him. Klash screamed his body felt like it was being torn in two. He called to the spirits for aid as he fought to keep his body together; shadows filled his vision as everything turned to degrees of black.
He fell to one knee as he tried to fight against forces pulling him into the world of shadow, he could only watch his friends as they fought the demon. Marsh' clashed against the beast, forcing it to focus upon him, as Naralissa tried to crack the armor incasing it, her blows hampered however as she fought against the darkness to channel the light into her blade.
Bella was doing everything within her power to heal Marsh, his runeblade unable to prevent all of the creature's attacks as the shadows seemed to be able to twist and turn, striking him at angles impossible to predict. She also gave what help she could to Klash as he fought against his body being shifted into the void.
Looking to their leader Klash watched as he appeared to dance around the room. What looked like hundreds of smaller void creatures tried to surround and claw at him, it looked to Klash like he was unable to see them however, his cloths would tear and he would react with cat like reflexes to avoid any more damage, but his focus was only upon the void creature that Marsh was facing. Klash watched him as he jumping from place to place in an attempt to avoid the creatures surrounding him, in some sort of bizarre void dance.
While Klash focused on trying to keep his body from being torn into the void he was buffeted by a surge of energy that washed over his body, he turned toward the source. Naralissa had broken a small hole into the void creature's armor, the shadowy substance within burst forth. The blast knocked Marsh and Naralissa from the beast. Marsh landed hard on the stairs, but Naralissa was less fortunate as she was blasted into the wall, her body crumpled to the floor.
Blinding fury filled Klash's world, his anger burst forth as he watched Naralissa collapse. Thunder struck him and obliterated the shadowy shroud around him. Rising, lighting crackled around his body. Calling to the spirits he poured their energy into his hammer and charged the void creature, leaping into the air he called for the wind to push him toward his foe as he brought it down upon the hole in the armor.
The force of the blow numbed Klash's hands, as he fell back from his charge. Where the hammer had struck the armor, the crackling energies from his weapon had poured into the hole and struck the shadowy mass within. The two energies raged within before exploding. Klash tried to shield himself as the forces he had unleashed reacted with the shadow energy and now burst forth threatening to surround him.
Just as the explosion reached him the blast receded, within an instant they imploded back in on themselves. The energies were sucked back into the centre of the armor that had protected the demon, as the last of the energies were sucked back into the twisted nether the armor shuck and then fell to the floor, a testament to the horror they had just faced.