The Eternal Dance of Light and Dark

by The King of Ravens

Having just survived a nine year long civil war, those of Lucael would be forgiven for entertaining the notion of peace. However, new threats are rising, and as the son of the king, it is Caiellis's job to combat them, despite his youth. But as the leaders of a rival nation declare war and mysterious figures pull strings in the shadows, Cai will be drawn into the fate of the world.

35. Avarice's Cost

The stench of corruption was thick in the air as Tybalt ascended the circular floors of the central and largest Tower of Ecstasy, his bones aching due to his age, though he ignored them and kept up the pace with the bloody Swords of Silence that lead the charge into the most heavily guarded regions of the glittering and opulent Augur's Quarter. It had been hard fighting to get in here, with multiple Sancturia Summonings needing to be deployed and many lives from the stalwart soldiers of the City of Rebirth lost in the push through the street outside.

The atmosphere inside of the building was clammy and hot, and although Tybalt was grateful because it meant that they could be out of the pounding rain of blood outside that prevented healing (although it would still do that as there was no way that the Hierarch could purge it from the soldiers, but it was more the psychological effects of an endless torrent of gore that the aged man of seventy seven was concerned about) the interior of the gigantic edifice was humid and the Hierarch could feel the sweat dripping down the interior of his lightly reinforced robes and across his wrinkled brow that was still stained with crimson fluid despite the fact that he had brushed it several times already.

The building was saturated with such potent corruption that even several warriors that Tybalt had known were veterans of the civil war hadn't been able to stop themselves from throwing up, vomit dripping through the visors of their helmets despite the fact that they stayed quiet and didn't ask for help from their comrades. None of the elite Swords of Silence were perturbed by the hedonistic blight of turpitude that infected the golden Tower of Ecstasy, but the Hierarch supposed that they had all lived through the destruction of the first City of Quiet where reportedly the walls had swelled and become demonic themselves, veins and arteries stretching across buildings that bled torrents of oily blackness as demons ripped themselves out of reality by the thousandfold and feasted upon the banquet of millions of innocent souls presented to them. To those few survivors of that horrific night, this would be like a relaxing walk in a photogenic garden by comparison.

Tybalt could smell a sickly sweet scent that wafted obtrusively into his nostrils, like a mixture of the coppery tang of spilt blood in the floor of the building that they were on, the corpses littering the floor that had been hacked apart by Lucaelian steel or blasted to pieces by his thunderous magic of light, and an aromatic but also overwhelming smell of perfume mixed in with that, the effluvium of debauchery and decadence permeated Tybalt's nose. He had already equipped himself and the quiet Swords of Silence with golden respirators that would help somewhat in purifying the air, deducing that the smell was probably the burning of some sort of drug that the Welkalites used to spur themselves into an intoxicated frenzy.

He followed the heavily armour and silent warrior of Gol in front of him as they ascended one of the many spiral staircases from each floor within the tower, hoping that the magic immunity properties that the Tower possessed – as originally Tybalt had attempted to destroy the huge glittering cylinder that must have required absurd amounts of work to create (although it was nowhere near as impressive as the magisterial yet practical monuments and ancient structures within the Kingdom of Light) from the outside so that they would not have to conform to the young Master of Wealth's obvious and incredibly egotistic plan of them fighting their way up it, but the Tower of Ecstasy and greed had been enchanted with some sort of Black magic that nullified his bombardment of shining light and was reinforced by geomantic Red spells that made its foundations stretch far underground – conferred to its interior as well so that the tower couldn't be collapsed in on itself and make the building a death trap for them all.

However, Tybalt sensed a malignant presence at the pinnacle of the Tower of Ecstasy, a corrupted wielder of dark mana that could only be the Master of Wealth, and it did not fit with the personality type that the Capitalia Lux Hierarch had assessed the youthful and clearly pampered Welkalite to destroy the largest structure in his territory and sacrifice himself to kill the Hierarch and the Guardian of Gol Secondus. Despite the reality that he hadn't spoken or even introduced himself during the negotiations in that fateful meeting located in the neutral assembly hall of the Scholaria Magnus, the Master of Wealth who must have been the pale youth at the back of the representative party of the New Empire of Passion (showing that the Welkalites had made sure to bring all of their most powerful mages in order to ensure that they could abduct the princes with minimal interference – and it still made the seventy seven year old's blood boil to even think of it) seemed to Tybalt to be arrogant and preening, vain and narcissistic, and that reflected in his tactics.

The arrangement of soldiers throughout the Augur's Quarter and the tower that they were now besieging (as other forces were taking care of the minimal resistance within the other two towers while Lelia lead the attack in the central one that Tybalt was now in) was standard, showing that the Master of Wealth had delegated the duty to his generals instead of coming up with some master strategy himself (though Tybalt always kept a figurative eye open for any sudden changes that could mean that there was an alteration of the plan in the Welkalite scheme), and the fact that he had situated himself at the top instead of leading his forces against the righteous Lucaelian crusaders smacked of arrogance. He would wait for the (most likely tired at that point, with their numbers reduced at any rate) soldiers of the Kingdom of Light to come to him and then fight them, which showed that he had an extremely elevated sense of self-importance and would gladly throw away the lives of his troops in a pointless endeavour to delay the implacable and unstoppable Lucaelian advance in the name of meaningless theatrics.

Tybalt flung out his mana into the tip of his oak staff, using the weapon that had served him well against countless enemies (although that was an overstatement and Tybalt could remember every single foe he had faced very well in his comprehensive index of a mind that was kept active by his Blue mana) to channel purifying White mana into it as he lanced a beam of incandescent light at a group of chittering devils covered in vivid red flesh that glowed despite the low light levels within the building (that would make whatever hedonistic acts the rich Welkalites were committing within it more atmospheric), but lit up even more as the White mana crashed into the abominations of Red mana that were heavily influenced by Black as they had been created by demons and gifted to human Summoners to establish greater control.

The beings squealed and screamed as they were ripped apart by the blinding spear of luminescence, and Tybalt slammed the bottom of his staff into the ground, conjuring up a shield of protective White and nullifying Blue around the elite soldier who stood in front of the aged Hierarch and had lead the charge through this stairway into the next floor (which would be the second to last and the resistance had been increasing exponentially at each floor they passed through). The devils exploded in gouts of flame that crashed through the air towards the woman, who raised her large shield instinctively in front of her to protect her from the blast that was absorbed by Tybalt's wall of shimmering White and Blue, the man having predicted such a reaction from the devils' demise after seeing it multiple times with others.

The Summoners of the now banished beasts and perversions of nature then charged at the one in front of Tybalt, both of them wielding large whips that crackled with hellfire as they sped down the staircase, wearing little armour besides masquerade masks that concealed their identities in the shape of inhumanly proportioned rictus grins, though the face-pieces did nothing to hide their bloodshot and wide eyes that suggested heavy narcotic abuse before this battle.

They were both tall and slender men that rippled with tanned and lean muscle foolishly unprotected by but also unencumbered by any forms of armour as they jumped, using their elevation to their advantage. The woman from Gol that was their target who Tybalt dearly wished that he knew the name of flung out her Lucaelian wisp with one hand, the helpful ball of light that blessed so many in the nation, like little candles of illuminescence that when banded together could banish the darkness, enchanted with silencing magic that had been taught to the veteran survivor of the City of Silence as it spun around the first attacker, preventing any attempts that he might try to conjure up magic in his assault unless he dealt with the Sancturia creature.

The second, obviously relatively familiar with those that were invading the Tower of Ecstasy probably due to reports from others who had now died, saw that the silencing wisp was stopping his partner from casting spells and took advantage of that, his free right hand (as the whip was in his left) sparking with unstable light as he conjured his Red mana into in preparation for releasing a flaring bolt of flame. Tybalt weaved countermagic derived from his Blue mana into the air with his free hand, the symbols of aqua that he etched onto the torpid air in front of his fingers snuffing out the Red mana that had been channelled into the Welkalite's hand before he could release it in a delayed explosion of extinguished mana that immolated the man's hand but didn't seem to faze him one bit.

He lashed out with his flaming scourge just as his partner did the same with his own fiery whip, the first blocked on the shield of the Golian warrior as the second arced through the air towards her helmet. The woman crashed her heavy yet one-handed mace into the primary attacker who had already landed, but the man rolled out of the way in the cramped stairway as the Golian's morningstar smashed into the wall in a spray of debris and shards of the volcanic igneous rock that had been used to construct the interior of the Towers of Ecstasy (or at least this one).

The whip wrapped around her helm, about to incinerate the flesh within and cook her inside of her own armour before Tybalt reacted quickly, a swipe of his staff erasing the fiery auras around the coiling weapon and returning it to a much more mundane state as he shot a beam of White magic at the other devil Summoner who had just dodged the attack of the Lucaelian woman. It didn't kill him instantly, but punched a hole in his bare chest and into his lung (barely avoiding the original target of his heart as he tried to fling himself out of the way but had no room for acrobatics in the cramped stairway), and he thrashed. His own whip which was still flaming arced into the air, and the second attacker dragged his weapon back as he tried to dodge the flailing weapon of his downed comrade.

The second Welkalite somersaulted backwards away from the snaking and thrashing weapon of his ally that would have burnt apart his unprotected flesh. He was met by the woman's morningstar halfway into his back flip. It sent him crashing backwards, the spiked ball end of the weapon smashing into his chest and sending him flipping over multiple times as he was launched up the staircase, the muscular Golian's already potent strength augmented by her own auras and Tybalt's many enchantments that he had gifted to the front of their charge through one of the four staircases.

Blood exploded out as the man's chest ruptured, instantly killing him as droplets of his vital fluids sprayed over Tybalt and the man stood behind him who would have originally been in the place the aged Hierarch was but the eldest Capitalia Lux Light-bearer had made sure that he was near to the front so that his magic could have the greatest effect in the ascent. The woman that Tybalt really needed to learn the name of as she was an exemplary warrior then slammed her armoured boot into the other wriggling Welkalite who was still thrashing around and coughing up blood because of the hole burnt through his lung, cracking his skull with her substantial armoured weight before carrying on.

A gout of lava rushed down the spiralling stairs a second before the Hierarch raised his shield to protect the Lucaelian advance, immolating the silent woman who to her credit didn't even break her Vow of Silence in death and died without making a sound, the magma spraying over her with her armour providing no protection as Tybalt finally raised his shield although it was too late now to save her.

Although the Hierarch was still saddened by the death, he had lived through far too many years of bloodshed (with the war with the Grafnica nation, the civil war and now this conflict with the New Empire of Passion) to be shocked by every single death that he witnessed, and instead of focussing on the downed woman who had died honourably but he hadn't had the chance to learn the name of he flicked his gaze upwards, Blue enchantments swirling around his vision and augmenting his aged eyes to the point where they were as sharp as he had been when he had been a youth, although he wore glasses normally as he didn't want to have to use mana constantly when reading (something that he often had to do as mentor to the youngest Lucernas).

He saw one of the Enforcers of the innocent-extorting Order of Wealth clad in golden armour that glinted in the molten orange light of the burst of lava and the Red mana swirling around his gauntleted hand, the other holding a long halberd that shone with the same sort of geothermic glow and assured Tybalt that the ornate commander's weapon would be able to carve through any armour that the Lucaelian legionaries might wear.

The man was definitely a captain of the golden Custodians that Tybalt had read (from the very few Yentarian accounts of such things lent to him by one of his contacts in the Republic city of Orchid Eye) defended the vaults of the richest Order that controlled the taxes of the people so that they could fund their own expensive depravity, and his helm covered his entire face (shaped similarly to a masquerade mask much like the other warriors had worn, although like the other Enforcers it wasn't actually a mask) had two ostentatious and curling horns of gold shaped like that of a ram. At least the horns aren't coming out of his head, Tybalt thought to himself, having seen similar when fighting those who had always lived in the corrupt abyss and been mutated by it and, significantly more disturbing, those Fallen who had gained demonic boons from their dark patrons that had given them inhuman growths. Tybalt wondered how many starving Welkalite children on the streets would be given a sustainable source of food from the elaborate armour.

He wore a cloak of deep scarlet and his eyes shone with fire out of his helm, and Tybalt shouted a warning as the man behind him surged past the seventy seven year old to face this new opponent of theirs. The Swords of Silence had acceded to his wishes to be near the front lines of the group, but had (without words) insisted that someone be in front of him at all times because he was too old to be fighting in physical combat against their enemies. It wasn't meant as a sign of disrespect, and Tybalt didn't take it as one because he knew that their concern was not unfounded and that he had never been a particularly big or strong man in the prime of his life and certainly wasn't now that he was more than halfway into his eighth decade of living.

He knew very well how much the survivors of that awful night in the City of Silence respected him deeply, seems as he was a spiritual leader of the people as much as a magistrate and a strategist, but he found it quite ironic that the veterans of one of the worst massacres in Lucaelian history looked up to him and held him in extremely high regard because of the fact he had been a Hierarch twice now after his prized student Mithres was cut down by Johnias as he gave his life to save King Marik and because he had spent nine years travelling through the darkness and in between cities with the two princes so that the Arch-Heretic could not claim them and helped win the war in that matter, just as he admired them for their tenacity in the face of all that the darkness threw at them even millions of their fellow citizens died around them and their selfless vows of silence and remembrance, something that he could never do but something that he afforded them much honour because of in choosing to fight alongside them.

The aged man sensed a relatively large presence of emotional and explosive Red magic coming from above them – a creature that wouldn't have normally been of a massive mana cost or power but was bolstered by the increased amount of energy from the Enforcer Custodian, although obviously the other soldier that had launched his attack on the Welkalite to protect the venerable Hierarch from any potential assault by the tall enemy evidently did not have the sensory capacities conferred to the eldest Light-bearer by his powerful mana. Tybalt raised another shield of orderly White and Blue mana, feeling the strain of the Tempest of Craving's drain on the latter and bolstering his former to make up for it, the sapphire barrier placed above the man melting as another spray of lava was blasted by the nameless Enforcer commander once again.

The Lucaelian man didn't make any sound, bound as he was by his Vow of Silence, as he rushed at the Enforcer, perfectly happy to die to protect the aged Hierarch despite the fact that the seventy seven year old thought that that was foolish – he was old and wouldn't last much longer at any rate, so the Golian who looked to be only about twenty five (meaning that he would have been in his latter teenage years in the massacre at original Gol) should really have gone behind him so that he would have a greater chance of living out his life instead of preserving Tybalt's.

He swung his shining sword at the Enforcer, who blocked the weapon upon his glowing halberd, the ostentatious armament that aptly highlighted how rich the members of the parasitic Order of Wealth were not particularly suited for this small stairway (although it could be used well for defending the top of it and preventing non-magical foes entering), and the Sword of Silence pulse White mana into his blade that would temporarily prevent the Welkalite captain casting any more spells, but Tybalt knew that the real threat was closing in from above them and because his shield had been destroyed it would be a few seconds before he could cast anything else. He would have Summoned Bruna, the Light of Alabaster and one of the greatest Second Sisterhood angels that were Daughters of Hope, but there was nowhere near enough space in this confined area for him to do so – and it would also take too long.

He could only watch, cursing inside at the young veteran of the City of Silence's wilful ignorance of the attack from above and the fact that he was fully willing to sacrifice his life for the aged Hierarch, as a worm like creature covered in chitinous and segmented plates with many large legs like a massively oversized millipede of a photogenic garden crawled down from the ceiling, arcing his large and eyeless head round backwards and reaching round with glinting teeth towards the Lucaelian, who flinched forward instinctively without making a sound or even turning around as his sword ground against the blade of the Enforcer.

The medium sized creature that looked gigantic inside of the claustrophobic staircase that was clearly never built to hold battles within it – a geopede, Tybalt remembered from some obscure Yentarian literature on different Unbound creatures of different locations little Caiellis had once begged him to read to him (as it was one of the only books in the small library on the outskirts of one of the cities they hadn't ascertained the loyalty of yet and the youngest prince was young enough that he still wanted other people to read to him) that would now serve him well – extended its large jaws towards the man who must have known that his death was coming, the heavily armoured chitin of the back of its head presented to Tybalt whereas he knew that its under side exposed to the younger man would be glowing with a molten light from the Red mana in its interior.

Tybalt scowled, blasting a beam of light and dispelling force from Blue mana (that would hopefully deal damage as well as disrupt the being's connection to the Mind Realm of its owner and as such reduce the amount of mana its Summoner gifted it with) into the protected back of the creature without being able to channel the full amount of his magical energy into it that he had wanted to, but the soldier would die extremely quickly otherwise and the Hierarch was loathe to allow that to happen. He used some more of his mana to enchant the man that he could no longer see with a reasonable shield of encasing plates of gold that would hopefully protect him against the plated geopede as his bolt of gold coiled with spiralling words of Blue impacted upon the Sancturia creature of Red mana with little to no effect, barely scratching its heavily armoured back and coming nowhere close to knocking it off balance as its legs wriggled from above, an idea striking Tybalt although he knew that it was too little, too late for the man that was now closed off from him.

He slammed the bottom of his staff into the ground again, gripping the middle of the trusty stave with both hands as he blasted mana upwards through it, ignoring the sounds of hard jaws clamping down on armour and teeth piercing through flesh as the noise of the two weapons grinding against each other stopped and another sound replaced it, that of bones being crushed under an immense force and armour being bent out of shape. Several scintillating particles of light flashed upwards in the dark area (as none of the blaring lights of the lower floors penetrated up here and the candles that had illuminated the darkness were snuffed out by the violence) above the Hierarch, revealing more of the distended geopede that had leaned forwards and upside down to get its meal so that its chitinous plates were presented to the mage priest.

Tybalt moved the twinkling spheres of luminescence with his Blue mana, conferring additional mobility to his magic of light and allowing them to land on the ceiling and moved round to the certainly not weak and tender but less guarded underside of the geopede, infusing his sight with the mana of clarity and perception that allowed him to see through the beast instead of having to simply look at its back and locating the legs that were gripped onto the igneous rock of the underneath of the floor above, concealed by the segmented natural armour of the Summoning that would have been born on the volcanic mountains of Sancturia.

The sounds of crunching metal armour like it was paper were slowly dying down to be exchanged for the sickening noise that Tybalt knew all too well of a body being bisected in half by monstrous jaws, but the man had died an honourable death in combat against the corrupt forces of the New Empire of Passion and the seventy seven year old mentor to the Lucerna princes couldn't mourn the deaths now, he would have to do it later otherwise the amount of Lucaelian lives lost would prevent him from doing anything if he let if affect him. He pulsed more mana out of the top of his staff, beams of light meeting the small orbs of radiance that had nestled next to the comparatively small legs of the geopede and piercing straight through its dark plates like it was a transparent substance (the manipulative Blue mana that was secondary to Tybalt's White allowing him to do this and change the properties of materials) without doing any damage, but they weren't supposed to and only supposed to give Tybalt a connection to the magic that he had sent out.

As the creature swivelled its long head towards him, the last remnants of the bloodied man pulled inside of it as it swallowed, the Hierarch of Capitalia Lux swung his staff to the side and, like strings attached to a puppet, the glimmering strands of mana attached to the balls of luminescence followed the path of the oaken sceptre topped by a crystal of white quartz that shone with the mana it helped to focus (the staff had been a gift from King Garius II himself at his ascension to the post of Hierarch and while it was not as ornate as some of the relic alternatives it still had its own strong power) as he pulled it to the side. The orbs of light followed the path of his sceptre, dislodging the creature from the ceiling as it was yanked to the ground, chittering and screaming as it was pulled down onto the stone floor with a crash, its weak underbelly exposed.

Tybalt cast another spell, detonating the balls of light now that he had no more use for them as he cast a hex that would weaken the mana bonds between Summoner and Summoning with his meddling Blue magic, explosions of powerful incandescence blossoming into life at the revealed weaker areas of the creature that mewled and writhed as the legs across that part of its body were blown off (dissolved by the magic of purifying light) as it tried to twist and snap at the Hierarch, who was well aware of the fact that the other soldiers behind him couldn't get to his aid and were delayed by this battle.

He blasted a beam of radiance at the geopede as it managed to reverse the angling of some of its stubby and wriggling limbs to try to propel forwards at this new threat, forcing it to remain on the ground as his light cut straight through it in the burning of insectoid but pure flesh (as there was nothing tainted about the geopede, although its Summoner was probably just as debauched and depraved as the rest of the Order of Wealth – or even more so considering the amount of gold the man seemed to have covering him which suggested a high ranking within the group) as the being shrieked in pain. Tybalt raised his staff and suffused the wooden handle of it with protective and fortifying White enchantments as the Summoner, unperturbed by what was happening to his Sancturia creature which aptly emphasised how the denizens of the New Empire of Passion saw them only as tools, and blocked the molten halberd that arced down towards him as he leapt into the air over the geopede that was returning to his Mind Realm.

Tybalt ignored the jarring force of the impact that rattled his teeth and "old bones" as he had always put it, muttering inside that he was far too old for this as he blasted a shockwave of reactionary White mana into the assaulting Enforcer to force him back away from the mage who was well aware that he was weak in close quarter combat.

The Custodian whose golden armour glittered in the light of the shining discharge of mana pulled back to avoid the attack so that he didn't get crushed inside of his expensive armour, but only for a second that allowed Tybalt to step one forward before he attacked again, obviously aware that the man fighting him was old and aged and as such wouldn't be as fast as the younger him or as strong. He let go of his halberd with one hand as he sliced it towards the Hierarch, weaving a jagged and impatient pattern that disregarded all spell casting ritual (as disobedient Red mana was wont to) and about to fire a spray of superheated lava at the Lucaelian opponent that would melt the flesh from his ancient bones and show the old bastard that the young would inherit this world.

Tybalt calmly countered the spell, scattering the essence of the conjured mana to the winds as he contemptuously slashed his own free hand to the side, the fingertips of his slender digits lit up blue by the gathered mana of thought within them dispelling the feeble attempts of the undisciplined Enforcer of casting his offensive spell, but was unprepared for the sudden burst of speed the man up on as his armour flashed Red and several enchantments swirled around him that were too fast for him to counter, acceding that he had been outwitted and that the conjuration of mana at first had just been a ruse meant to bait him into countering it.

Adrenaline (that, if one counted the amounts of time that it had poured through him due to being in bloody combat, must have taken years off of his life) coursed through his veins as the Welkalite closed in, hacking a blindingly fast strike at the Hierarch that he was hard pressed to avoid and only did so because of a release of numbing and controlling White and Blue mana that he coated his opponent with and slowed him down to barely evadable levels (instead of completely unavoidable ones), the halberd hacking into his enchanted white robes that were stained with blood and ash (though he wore light armour underneath) as he moved to the side.

He had never been a particularly good duellist, much preferring to launch magical missiles from afar into the combat and augmenting his close combat orientated allies (such as that young whipper-snapper Guardian Tristram) with auras of power, and that was exacerbated in his old age and something that he had been forced to contend with all of the way through the civil war that had started when he was sixty eight years of age. He realised that the strike of the Welkalite had been precisely directed to corral him into a specific area that would prevent his magic working as well, and instead of using his large glaive that would have been awkward in the lack of space the Enforcer lowered his head, the surprisingly sharp tips of the ram horns upon it becoming ensorcelled by Red mana that sparked around them as Tybalt was about to find out that the decorations of the Custodian's helm were not just adornment but had a very practical purpose indeed.

That was until a large broadsword pierced straight through his armoured chest, the shining edge of the Lucaelian steel weapon that had once belonged to the eighteen year old Guardian Lucasse of the City of Quiet but now was wielded by his younger sister in remembrance of the time before the civil war that had ripped apart her only family dripping with blood. The Welkalite coughed, his forward momentum instantly halted as he keeled over, the greatsword that was almost as big as King Marik's ancient weapon keeping him upright as he gripped it weakly with his gauntleted hands. Tybalt dismissed the huge amount of mana that he had been about to release indiscriminately around him, glad that it was able to be conserved as otherwise he may not have been able to Summon Bruna, as the blade was wrenched out of the back of the Custodian general.

The aged Hierarch that was not as tall as he once was (although even then he had only reached a height of five feet and nine inches, which was small by tall Lucaelian standards as the average man reached about 6'2'') looked up to see Guardian Lelia staring down at him, her dark blue eyes full of resolution and determination as well as veneration for the old Hierarch that the modest Tybalt didn't think he quite deserved. She wore a sort of elegant steel helmet that kept her young and beautiful face bare, and while others would have hidden the horrific jagged scar that missed her left eye by inches the Guardian of Gol Secondus kept it visible, although whether it was to highlight the price of treachery or to remember the awful night of the surprise attack on Gol was unknown and the Guardian had little ways of communicating it.

"My thanks, Guardian Lelia," he nodded respectfully and in gratitude to the twenty two year old that had remembered back when he had attended the ascension of her older brother, but then she had only been thirteen and an excitable girl happy for her sibling's success. How war could change someone... The Guardian hadn't saved Tybalt's life, but she had stopped him from having to use up huge amounts of mana and prevented him getting hurt for which he was grateful, and the woman inclined her head deferentially back despite the fact that they were arguably the same rank (although being the Hierarch of the capital city placed him slightly above the other Light-bearers and his age meant that he was afforded respect as all elders should be).

Evidently Guardian Lelia's advance up the second staircase had been much faster than Tybalt's and she had breached to the second to last floor first, as shown by when he followed her out onto the circular room that was covered in dismembered corpses of mostly Welkalite origin. Because of that she had been able to assault the last remnants of defence of the other stairways from behind and allow the rest of the Swords of Silence to make their way here and consolidate briefly before entering the pinnacle of the Tower of Ecstasy. It was extremely melodramatic and theatrical, and if not for the disrupting force of the Tempest of Craving which severely weakened his precision requiring Blue magic he would have eschewed fighting their way up here and paying in blood every step of the way as they slaughtered the opposition but took heavy losses in return he would have Summoned Bruna and initiated a mass teleportation spell to bring them to the top floor instantly and ambush the preening Master of Wealth.

Tybalt fully expected there to be more guards inside of the top floor of the central and largest Tower of Ecstasy, but the presence of the Master of Wealth was like a blot of darkness upon his magical sixth sense and it prevented him from discerning if any other Welkalites were located within the room. The brat had already Summoned, and he communicated as much to the stoic Lelia if in some way she hadn't already noticed, a greater demon of quite a significant magnitude against them when they entered.

The floor outside of the final one extended up to it with two large single and spiral staircases that extended the whole way across the room and were coloured purple, and the floor, like many others, was circular with a hole in the middle whereby the bottom few floors could be observed through it, although this one unlike a few of the others near the top actually had golden railings for safety which suggested that these past few floors were reserved for those important guests of the Augur's Quarter that had enough economic backing to purchase the seats, whereas further below the dressing room nature of other floors indicated that this would be where whole tower acts would take place. There seemed to have been one of them quite recently, perhaps one or two days ago, but all evidence of the revels had been washed away by the massacred defenders of the tower.

At the end of each of the spiral staircases to the last floor was a door of some sort of Welkalite wood etched with golden symbols but also smoking sigils of demonic taint that hurt Tybalt's eyes to look upon them but to the bristling Hierarch seemed to be inviting the Lucaelians in to partake in the celebrations with the Order of Wealth, to give up and let the Festival of Bloodshed (Tybalt wasn't sure how the name had popped into his head, but as he glanced over at Lelia her grave eyes that were full of righteous hatred confirmed that she had been informed of the knowledge by the debased symbols as well) take them, to let their inner desires be free and submit to the rule of the Lord of Riots.

Tybalt would have given an inspiring speech worthy of his position as a Capitalia Lux Hierarch if he had felt that the Swords of Silence needed inspiring and were not exemplary warriors in their own right, and each was quietly mouthing their own hymns without giving voice to the words as the Hierarch made his way over to one of the doors, having decided that it would be far more efficient for them to attack the pinnacle from one of its two entrances and under the cover of his magic, and pressed his staff to the door. The guarding magic placed on it was crude and would only require a tiny bit of Tybalt's mana to dispel, but the point of it had not been to prevent the entry of the crusading Lucaelians – it had been to invite and intimidate them, although the Hierarch knew that the Master of Wealth had only succeeded in the former respect.

The sigils of dark magic snapped and hissed at the presence of his purity, the representation of what they hated, and Tybalt bade them gone as he pulsed a beam of White mana out of the tip of his oaken staff and the quartz crystal embedded within it shone with the cleansing illumination, slowly scouring the taint away from the embellished double door until it became a normal one once again. The Hierarch heard an arrogant, young and vaguely insane laugh from behind the door, the caster of the enchantments evidently realising that it had been destroyed and that the forces from the Kingdom of Light were coming to bring him to justice for the attacks on Lucael, the abuse inflicted upon the innocents of their nation, consorting with foul demons of hedonism and depravity, and most of all the abduction of the precious Lucerna princes without which the nation of Lucael could not exist (and Marik would have been forced to pick another wife and have children with her to continue the holy bloodline).

A rumbling boom of tempestuous thunder that sounded disturbingly like a psychotic laugh resonated across the silent but elevated room of the Tower of Ecstasy, and the few windows in of the second to top floor flashed crimson as a bolt of lightning from the Tempest of Craving crackled past as Tybalt finished removing the last traces of sybaritic blight coupled with the malicious and spiteful tinge of Black mana placed upon the doorway.

"Ave Lux!" Tybalt cried, his voice infused with White mana as he felt the reassuring presence of the Swords of Silence stood resolutely behind him and ready to back him up when they entered, completely quashing any apprehensiveness of this course of action and wondering if he or Lelia should Summon now since the greater demon of the Master of Wealth was already active, but they needed to conserve their mana and the fact that the boy had foolishly pre-Summoned his Sancturia creature he would run out of mana much faster. He blasted a thunderous discharge of White mana at the door, exploding it wide open and smashing the wooden rectangles that were covered in gold etching off of their extravagant but impractical hinges.

The two blocks of wood crashed into a triplet of Enforcers with long spears that had been stood behind the door, waiting for their advance, and knocked the Custodians off of their feet as the wave of shining incandescence slammed into two more behind them and disintegrated them in a blinding flash that didn't leave corpses at all. The blades of two of the Swords of Silence scythed into the Wealth Enforcers that were trapped underneath the heavy remnants of the doors, quickly dispatching them and putting them out of their misery as the Lucaelians charged within the large final floor of the Tower of Ecstasy. It was ridiculously ornate, showing features from both the Old Empire's greed for wealth and to impress others (as the Towers had been constructed in the reign of the old tyrants ruling Welkas) and the New Empire's lust for passionate self indulgence and freedom from any sort of constraints, whether they be the bounds imposed upon them by rulers (deeply ironic and hypocritical) or the restrictions of morality and decency.

The ceiling was a flamboyant, gaudy and tasteless plafond of scintillating chandeliers that were emitting the orange and pink light of corrupted flames that did little to pierce the almost overwhelming darkness of the large room caused by the stain of the greater demon in the distance.

Two large pillars entwined with gold like everything else in the ostentatious pinnacle chamber seemed to hold up the circular plafond of ornate gold above them and were situated on a raised dais with more stairs leading to it in the centre, but Tybalt knew just from the structure of the room that they were nowhere near strong enough to support the full weight of the roof and as such it would probably have been held up by the circular walls.

The ceiling was extremely extravagant, fresco paintings of ancient dragons not seen since the disposition of the Last Tyrant combined with images from the history of the New Empire of Passion and revolutionary scenes, but they were all very young and lacked the magisterial splendour of similar Lucaelian architecture and decoration, a poor imitation that the Hierarch paid no heed to. The normal Welkalite artwork was far more about a spontaneous expression of the emotions of the passionate artist, but this was similar to reports that the Hierarch had read about the narcissistic Emperor of Light having many stained glass windows made in his image (as Xarius had reportedly been obsessed by his own reflection up until one point where he had commanded that all mirrors in the palace be destroyed and replaced by images of him, as if he had stopped being able to look at what he had become in his corruption) that were smashed into ruin on the orders of the newly crowned Queen Matrice – far more arrogant Black that chaotic Red, but even so it displayed the impatience that was not present in magnificent an awe-inspiring Lucaelian art.

His gaze landed upon a figure swathed in robes lounging in the large throne atop the raised dais and guarded by two more glittering Custodians, and the shadows behind him that surrounded the massive figure of his demon that smiled down at the Lucaelians, exposing a fanged maw of curved teeth that glinted in the window light from the flashes of crimson lightning outside.

It was tall, with pale white skin similar to that of its master (who Tybalt would gaze at next but for now the demon captured his attention in the split second that it took to analyse the final chamber) that was blackened by corruption and promises of forbidden decadence. It had huge bat like wings covered in leathery flesh and had huge "fingers" (if bat anatomy was to be used to describe the wings) of bone that scraped the painted ceiling as it opened them wide, and a strangely tail that seemed to be made from pure shadow that coiled around below it – although all demons seemed to have unique characteristics and the only things that linked them were their relation to the mana of darkness and horns of bone, of which this demon had two stubby ones coming out of its head.

A mass of shadows swirled round behind its head and in between its huge wings, blocking out the light from the chandeliers around it and mixing with the intoxicating smoke coming from braziers burning with unnaturally coloured flames all across the sides of the room with several other figures laid beside them in a narcotic induced slumber mixed with an orgy and were covered in expensive robes, each of them wearing the masquerade masks that the "nobles" (as such a term was loosely applied to the Welkalites who lacked nobility in its entirety) of the Augur's Quarter seemed to favour heavily.

Tybalt frowned when he saw the Welkalite people out of the corner of his eye, but ignored them as he stared into the pupil-less white pearls of the greater demon that gazed back magnanimously before he pulled his eyes away, knowing not to stare into the eyes of a demon. In the centre of its forehead was a third eye that was more like a jewel of black that pulsated with shadow and seemed to be the source of its power, but such things could be deceiving and it could easily just be a part of the denizen of the forsaken nether's anatomy.

It had two large circular rings of what seemed to be solid gold piercing its pointed ears, but what was more eye catching was the fact that out of its statuesque upper torso and chest extended four large arms, each adorned by a golden bracer that glimmered with glittering green gemstones and crystals that could send even the most temperate person begging the demon to give them it and willing to exchange anything in return for the merest touch of the riches this being could offer.

Its long legs that were not even on the ground as it flew in the air in the cavernous chamber and above the huge and ludicrous throne of the Master of Wealth that the boy lounged upon, but instead of being as muscular and "perfectly" (as the Hierarch was loathe to refer to anything demonic as anything less than vile and repugnant, and knew that the demon's physique was tailored to look flawless) formed as the rest of it they were long, disjointed and blackened by corruption, a clear sign that the bargains of this being were not to be taken lightly as the foolish youth that lead this order and was currently the master of this demon would soon find out when the Light-bearers of Lucael killed the brat.

"I'm so glad that you could join us, my Lucaelian guests," the conceited voice of the Master of Wealth blared across the large throne room from numerous speakers scattered across the walls and in the sections below as Tybalt felt the reverberations from the floors that they had already passed through, allowing anyone with the amplification device to project their voice throughout the central Tower of Ecstasy – and probably the others as well – as he laughed and Tybalt turned towards him, already mustering his magic within himself in preparation for his Summoning as Lelia did the same and the Swords of Silence dutifully surrounded them as ranks of golden Custodians closed in on their location, although the two sides were equally matched in numbers, "I am Eras Stormwind, the Master of Wealth, and I will be your host on the day of the Festival of Bloodshed."
If Tybalt hadn't already hated the youthful Master of the Augur's Quarter the seventy seven year old now despised the pathetic and self-assured brat that radiated overindulgence and misplaced hubris. Perhaps it was because his youngest student little Caiellis had always been compared to Xarius due to the fact that they were the only two that had ever had access to the Angel of the Black Sun and as such the Hierarch had always had to convince his equals that there was absolutely no way that modest and thoughtful second prince would ever turn out like that, or maybe it was due to the fact that he had always disliked such people because he had never been one to extol his own virtues or revel in them, but for as long as Tybalt could remember he detested these sorts of arrogant figures that believed that they were absolutely perfect and flawless in every aspect.

He switched his gaze to the Master of Wealth who still lounged in his large and comfortable throne which was filled with embroidered cushions of many different soft fabrics (entirely unsuited for a battlefield, or indeed a throne room in which the Master of Wealth should address the rest of his Order) and swathed in a black robe trimmed with gold at the edges that hung off of his slender and pale figure (through only the fact that he was still a teenager instead of any excess exercise that the pampered youth would do). The boy held a sabre made out of pure gold that had clearly never seen battle before in his right hand that was also encased in a golden gauntlet that did little to dispel the thinness of his long fingers. Tybalt could tell that Eras Stormwind was not wearing any heavy armour underneath his own robes, but he still wore a golden mask etched with several lines of rare gemstones that would conceal a conceited smile.

It was like a death mask that an important person in other cultures would wear after they passed away, and it made the Master of Wealth seem more intimidating despite the fact that the only thing the Capitalia Lux Hierarch was concerned about was the huge demon leering at them from behind his master and stretching out its four arms. Two slits in it allowed the boy to see through his ornate disguise and Eras's rare yellow coloured eyes shone with his haughtiness and also madness, dark power lighting them up an opulent but also false and corrupt gold as he glanced at the Hierarch, who glowered stonily back as he prepared his Summoning ritual, stoic Lelia by his side doing the same and neither replying to the Master of Wealth.

Eras watched in amusement as the two completed their Summoning rituals, circles and sigils of magical power surrounding the air around Tybalt as a sphere of golden light collected above him, the symbol of Avacyn's Collar lighting up underneath his feet as well, whereas Lelia chanted silent words and slashed her sword in wide arcs around her as she tossed balls of harsh White light around her that echoed with peace and serenity exposed to the reality of war. He leaned forwards as the White mana in the room increased dramatically, the rest of the Lucaelian soldiers fighting against his Enforcer Custodians that meant little to him in the grand scheme of things in a bloody melee of flashing light and flames and dismembered limbs. His eyes followed the contrails of blood as they arced through the air and spattered on the expensive carpets of the pinnacle of the central Tower of Ecstasy that Eras liked to pretend belonged to him – as if the Archlord Tradax ever found out about the fact that the Master of Wealth was splayed out across his throne then there would be severe consequences.

As Tybalt whispered the wise words of the Alabaster Hymn that had been taught to humans by Bruna, one of the earliest angels to make themselves known to the Lucaelian people (even before her creator Avacyn, Angel of Hope who had been the Summoning of one of Queen Tidisa's daughters that didn't inherit the throne) and the Summoning of the second Hierarch of Capitalia Lux (the first being one of Matalis Ortus Lucerna's close comrades that did not Summon a holy angel), he sensed a vast surge of Black mana combined with a specific facet of Red, ferromancy if he identified it correctly, and with pulse of shock that almost disrupted the concentration and mental discipline required to enact his Summoning ritual he realised that he would not be able to counter this powerful spell.

A wave of avaricious Black and metal manipulating Red mana pulsed across the room from the Master of Wealth's outstretched gauntlet, coils of shadow wrapping round his extended hand and collecting into a sphere of greed that radiated the false light of promised gold above his open palm as the glinting mana swept through the embattled combatants of the Welkalite defenders and the Lucaelian aggressors who were protecting their two Second Sisterhood Angel Summoners, darkness from the twisting blackness behind the greater demon flowing down from the morass of darkness behind it and swirling around the seated form of Eras.

The nineteen year old was smiling inanely behind his expensive metal mask as his magic progressed through friend and foe alike, including the high ranking members of the Order of Wealth that lay, inebriated by powerful intoxicants and hallucinogenics, around the edges of the room, and with a vaguely impatient (which emphasised his upbringing whereby everything he had ever asked for had been presented to him on a golden platter near instantaneously and as such he hadn't developed the patience to wait until quite recently – although all of the other Masters believed he still wasn't capable of it. Well, perhaps apart from Ilentia) and greedy rush he rammed his gold clad fingers into the sphere of mana, crushing it in his desire for violence and adulation from those around him.

The first things that Tybalt held were several undulating screams of pain, but he was too focussed on his precise Summoning ceremony to pay more than a slight modicum of attention to the happenings in the wider chamber as he collected his powerful White mana and infused it with his secondary Blue magic, completing the Summoning ritual as the sphere of light above his head began to be compressed into an angelic figure at the sanctimonious emblem of Avacyn's Collar underneath him shone with a blinding force and gifted illuminescence to the other symbols of divine power swirling around him, and as Tybalt opened his eyes he was presented with a shocking sight that had him widening his eyes (but not otherwise reacting because truth be told in his long years of war he had seen worse – not to say that this wasn't extremely disturbing and potent).

Both the Welkalites and Lucaelians were writhing in pain and grasping at their throats, spasming but still remaining upright as they fought to stay stood up and continue on with their battle, some falling to the ground as the dark magic wielded by Eras and most likely gifted to him by his demon gathered within them, but those that had been rich enough to pay to get into the Augur's Quarter and participate in whatever vile celebrations had been held within the Towers of Ecstasy had no such discipline and were already succumbing to the magic that the brat on the throne had fired indiscriminately out into the room. Bruna materialised in reality as each and every one of the "lesser" people within the circular chamber began to claw at themselves like something was burning within them.

Tybalt winced as some of the writhing Golians accidentally and involuntarily broke their Vow's of Silence, gurgling in pain as they coughed and choked, and Tybalt used the power that came with his Summoning of Bruna to blast a shockwave of formidable purifying magic across the room that was instantly opposed by a mass of shadows that vomited out of a tear in reality that ripped through the walls of the material realm in front of the Hierarch as the Light of Alabaster (so called as she was the most powerful angelic Daughter of Hope in the Flight of Alabaster, one of the three Flights created by Avacyn that exemplified specific characteristics of the Angel of Hope) landed and protected her aged Summoner with a shield of White and Blue mana that bade the shadows back as they rushed towards him, but that didn't protect the soldiers as the Red and Black mana was focussed into them. The demon smiled at the aged man exultantly, its eyes like glittering pearls that coveted worship and wealth, having moved one of its four arms (the upper left limb) and swiped it across its chest, curling its fingers round to a malignant symbol as it had prevented the Hierarch aiding the troops, and the seventy seven year old glared at the vile being.

They clutched at their throats, none of them able to stand any more as the spell rippled through them and the smell of charred flesh rose to Tybalt's nostrils, the shadows pressing against Bruna's magical shield not preventing the Hierarch seeing what he was powerless to stop as he growled in hatred of the boy, wondering how insane one had to be to kill friend and foe alike and giggle as hysterically and arrogantly as Eras Stormwind was now. A strange, molten liquid fountained from the gorget and mouth of one of the Welkalite Enforcers, and it was obviously not blood because it was thick and it was burning through the bare skin of his face as he tried to speak, gurgling imploringly to his master who didn't pay him much attention as he swept his gaze over the rest of the occupants of the room, surveying them like a monarch would observe their subjects and making Tybalt's blood boil with rage at this imposter of anything regal.

A sense of horror made itself known in Tybalt's mind as it finally clicked what was happening to the soldiers – they were vomiting up molten gold from within that was burning and coating both their skin and evidently their insides as they writhed on their knees and on the floor and gasped choked screams of pain. The liquid and immensely hot gold, a mixture of Black's insatiable lust for wealth and unearned admiration and Red's manipulation of the land and heat, poured over them from within as they screamed and threshed, some of the Lucaelians trying to raise feeble shields of White that were swamped by the tide of dark and forbidden gold that washed over them and seared their flesh, melting their armour into their skin and burning them from within as they died, all of the Welkalites screaming in the agony rushing through them while for the most part the Lucaelians remained silent and stoic in the face of their deaths, the occasional Sword of Silence gasping in pain which Tybalt was sure did not count as breaking their holy vow.

He glowered at the Master of Wealth, shocked at the unholy power gifted to him by his greater demon as the soldiers and corrupt civilians began to be turned into golden statues, gilded by the dark magic of Red ferromancy combined with Black greed and amorality as the gold cooled around them and killed them, froze them as monuments of glittering expensive metal – Tybalt was aware from what research he had done upon the four main elemental manipulations of Red mana (electromancy, pyromancy, geomancy and ferromancy) that it was unheard of for any ferromancers, a facet of geomancers that could control molten or solid metal and wield it with their mana, to use metals rarer than iron or bronze in their magic, but it seemed fitting for a spoilt Master of Wealth that had clearly inherited the role from some member of his debased family to use gold with his magic – and it spoke volumes of the rapacious nature of Black mana that influenced his control over metals.

He refused to let the vile murder of the noble soldiers by the giggling brat affect him more than fuel his hatred of the young Master of Wealth who couldn't be much older than eighteen but still wielded a position of power that he was clearly unsuited for as the pinnacle chamber became quiet, all of the soldiers and Welkalites other than Tybalt, Lelia and Eras preserved as golden statues that captured the expressions of horror and pain etched forever more upon the faces of the Master of Wealth's victims.

Tybalt looked over at his furious angel, light surrounding her and instantly forming a multitude of different auras from the blessed luminescence that bled from her intricate armour, plates of white etched and trimmed with golden thread and covered in blue symbols of Avacyn's Collar that left most of her tanned upper body bare, with two large and majestic white and gold wings framing her head and elegant brown hair that spilled from it. Her eyes were the colour of pale and wise sapphires and shone like intelligent jewels, although they were tinted by her hatred of the demons, her want to avenge the wrongs inflicted upon the innocent Lucaelian soldiers, and her shock at the fact that Eras had indiscriminately killed friend and foe alike and turned them into golden sculptures.

She held a long and elegant golden staff topped with the ubiquitous sigil of her divine creator the Angel of Hope, which thrummed with huge magical power that would only get more and more potent the more enchantments the Hierarch augmented his powerful Second Sisterhood angel with. She glanced back at Tybalt, nodding to the man who she had fought alongside for seventy years and knew very well, before turning back and sending a flick of her angelic eyes towards her sister-cousin (as all angels in the Second Sisterhood viewed themselves as sisters whereas in a normal human family they would be known as cousins), the once Daughter of Serenity but with the death of the First Sisterhood angel was now a Daughter of Vengeance that threw themselves into the most dangerous combats to avenge their peaceful and innocent creator who had exemplified tranquillity and calm and was traded away and sacrificed by the Arch-Heretic for an Archdemon of tremendous power.

Lelia's Second Sisterhood angel had taken the Vow of Silence similar to her Summoner, as with all of the Daughters of Vengeance who felt that they needed to repent for what had happened to their perfect creator, and was a darker and more sorrowful being than most angels that Tybalt had seen. She wore armour that would have once gleamed golden but hadn't been polished for years and stained with blood of the all the dark creatures she had slain in service to the Golian Guardian, and a sword that would have once radiated with the light of holiness and serenity but was now dulled with its own duty left – to achieve vengeance and wipe out the stain of darkness from the twinned worlds of mankind and Sancturia.

She was known as Orphia, formerly the Angel of Mercy but now the Angel of Retribution, and was one of the strongest Daughters of Vengeance – bitter revenge had never glowed so bright nor sang so sweet, Tybalt mused at the beautiful angel that glared, full of divine hatred for the greater demon who smiled back at her and exposed its large and sharp teeth dripping with some sort of unholy and probably venomous fluid. Tybalt felt his heart swayed to sadness and the need to avenge the murder of one of the divine benefactors of the Kingdom of Light swirling within his breast at the sight of the Guardian's silent angel that shone with a harsh golden light that spoke of potential cast to dust by the evil advance of the darkness and why it was necessary to fight against such vile corruption so that it could rend no more innocents asunder and break more peace within the world.

Her face was as angelic as Bruna's, but harder, more knife like, thin and pale as opposed to the purity of the other angel's perfect features. That wasn't to say that the Angel of Retribution's face was not infused with the same angelic flawlessness that all holy seraphs from the divine heavens possessed, but it was more drawn and full of grief turned into the need for vengeance instead of the exalted sublimity of the Light of Alabaster. She represented what could happen if the darkness won, whereas Bruna was her opposite and was a manifestation of what the light of the Sanctum Angelica was, both of the seraphim two sides of the same coin that would work in perfect harmony regardless, as all of the hosts of heaven (besides one select member of them that Tybalt's youngest student was well acquainted with) were part of the holy choir that sang of deliverance and salvation.

Bruna made a respectful symbol with her hands to Ophelia, bowing her head deferentially and mournfully at the lost daughter of dead Serenity, but the other angel paid no heed and simply glared at the grinning demon. Eras stopped his constant and high pitched giggling, reclining back in his opulent throne as he regarded his Lucaelian opponents with a mixture of haughtiness and curiosity.

"Severkarkyis, the Archfiend of Depravity," Bruna spat as she beat her wings and remained aloft above her aged Summoner, as if by saying the words of the demon's name she was invoking her right to purge it from the world and assigned it as her new target, and the creature opened its four arms wide and invitingly as it scraped sparkling chandeliers above with its huge wings and smashed some of the glass of the crystals within the intricate decorations, evidently to the disgust of Eras who shook his head at his demon. Her voice was like singing steel, the purity of her angelic wisdom mixed with her exalted and intrinsic detestation of the demon opposing the Lucaelian forces that had wiped out the honourable Swords of Silence, contrasted by the deep but also honeyed whisper mixed with an exultant cry of an atavistic and greedy fallen underworld god that was the reply of the Archfiend of Depravity, "Ah, Bruna, the Light of Alabaster! What a pleasure to see you again! Have you come to kneel at the foot of my altar of hedonism and prosperity for a second time? My gifts are welcome for any to take, including you self-righteous angels, and all I ask for in return is your worship!"

"Welcome, angels of the Lucaelians! I am Eras Stormwind, your host for the Festival of Bloodshed that is about to start!" the boy on the throne proclaimed loudly, his amplified voice resounding across the room as Bruna raised her eyebrows incredulously and glared at the extravagantly clothed Welkalite youth, who had obviously become annoyed no longer being the centre of attention of the head of the conversation, making Tybalt dislike him even more and wish for him to find out the folly of giving in to the temptations of the darkness even sooner than he would.

The angel shared a glance with her aged Summoner who she knew extremely well because of all of the years fighting alongside him, sensing his thoughts and fully agreeing with them apart from the fact that she thought it was incredibly bad that this foolish boy had traded away his former Summoner for a demon and participated in an Infernal Bargain at so young an age, that he would never be able to participate in the things that those his age should because of his folly and greed, but supposed that with the manipulation of his order and the taxation upon the people this Eras Stormwind had stopped many from having the childhoods that they deserved. The nineteen year old spoke again, wafting his hand in an imitation of magisteriality towards the still gilded statues of the humans who had once stood in the room, "Don't they just look so pretty? My power really is something to behold, is it not?"

Although it went against his ethos to speak to those who had willingly given up their souls in exchange for dark power from the denizens of the abyss and served the forces of evil, Tybalt still demanded back, his voice hopefully booming intimidatingly across the room like Hierarch Incedian's tones had used to back when the man was still alive and like that boy Marik's did now, "Hold your tongue, you disrespectful brat! Why then, if your power is so mighty, did you spare us?!"

The Master of Wealth flicked his gaze back to the Hierarch, his golden eyes bleeding the malicious light of depravity and the glow of false prosperity from behind his ornate mask that concealed whatever narcissistic expressions he may have been wearing, and he opened his slender arms wide as he declared, "Why would I kill you all? Who then would be left to play with me?"

If he had been expecting a response from his Lucaelian enemies with that extremely bold and insane statement, Eras Stormwind was not going to get one as the Light of Alabaster released a bombardment of holy light from the end of her staff that fulminated across the room towards the seated Welkalite, powerful incandescence that thrummed as it travelled towards its intended target and was blocked upon a shield of gold that the boy raised reinforced by the shadows that the Archfiend of Depravity pulled down to protect its Summoner as clearly Eras's protection that he had conjured was inadequate to guard him from the bolt of Bruna. It crashed into the gold and the darkness, reminding Tybalt heavily of what he had seen from Caiellis's magic of light and darkness combined but with none of the majesty and awe-inspiring qualities of the youngest Lucerna's spells. The gold was simply that, a base metal representing the greed of the caster, whereas the golden colouring of Cai's magic was a manifestation of the imperious heavens and the protection of the divine light.

Orphia and Lelia then attacked, as if Eras thought that he was going to be able to sit on his throne and taunt the Lucaelians for the length of the battle then he was severely mistaken as the Angel of Retribution flew towards him, her large sword carving apart the ornate throne as he leapt up off of it (with Red enchantments augmenting his otherwise lacklustre speed) and splitting the gold in two like it was nothing. The Guardian of Gol Secondus was intercepted by the being named Severkarkyis, two of its arms arching down with darkness encircling the long claws at the ends of each of its fingers that were blocked on the greatsword of the twenty two year old, the silent young woman's inner light blossoming out from within her as it stood against the greater darkness of the demon that pressed in at her from all sides.

The Archfiend of Depravity swung its other arms at the Golian commander who had witnessed all of her personal squadron slaughtered by its dark magic, and Lelia spun away from where her weapon had been straining against two of the claws of the being, directing the brunt of the second attack away from her by blasting a beam of light encircled in silencing runes that would prevent the demon casting spells for a short amount of time as she pulled back, hefting her large greatsword again as she prepared to charge for a second time. Tybalt infused Bruna with an aura that would increase her physical power as she leapt into the air also and dove at the demon, channelling light to the end of her staff and swiping it at Severkarkyis.

"Hmph. You seek to harm me with that pitiful attack?" the demon laughed, blasting a bolt of darkness at Lelia with one hand that she had to leap back away from as it left a smoking crater of endless and completely unnatural black flames in the floor of the last section of the Tower of Ecstasy where she had been stood, and with two other arms (the top left and bottom right) created a shield of screaming black mana that dragged Bruna down with hands of solid murk that reached out from it and gripped onto the handle of her weapon as she strained her muscles against the being's strength. With his last arm, the second limb located on its left side, it created projectiles of swirling gold that glowed with blight and promised eternal wealth if one would just submit and fired then at the Angel of Retribution who was relentlessly and vengefully pursuing the Master of Wealth across the circular and large room, smashing her blade into golden statues of fallen Welkalite Custodians that Eras himself had killed in his dramatic display of dark magic.

Ophelia hacked apart the shards of false promise with the unyielding steel of her resolute blade, her blue eyes glinting with the hatred of demons that all of those who followed the divine path of the light felt as she flung a crashing bolt of avenging light at the Welkalite youth. Eras stood his ground, holding his sword with two golden gauntleted hands as he wielded his Black and Red mana around him to defend himself, a wall of glittering gold interposing itself in between him and the Angel of Retribution that smashed apart into thousands of coins that scattered across the floor as the seraph flew at it, her strike of magic only ever meant to be a distraction.

Bruna meanwhile managed to manipulate her sceptre topped with a representation of Avacyn's Collar round to release a discharge of White mana in very close proximity to the Archfiend of Depravity, who spun round away from a lashing sword strike from Lelia (who had been recently augmented by an aura from Tybalt that would improve the damage her strikes dealt to demonic flesh and as such making Severkarkyis unwilling to get hit by such a blow) that left lines of light in the almost solid sickly sweet darkness that permeated the entire damned structure, and grabbed hold of the bolt of close range luminescence with all four hands. Corruption instantly fountained forth from the demon, with all four hands emitting a deep taint that smelt like thousands of souls indulging in the most vile hedonism with the demon revelling in it all the while as they pledged their entire existences to it, and the crystal inlaid into the centre of the blighted skin of its forehead grew darker still as shadowy tendrils reached round from behind it and added more ethereal arms to the four demonic ones already grabbing the light.

Bruna gasped, but not in surprise as she had heard of this demon's foul technique but perhaps thought that her powerful light would have been made immune by the auras surrounding her – increasing in potency every second as Tybalt heaped more upon her instead of casting offensive magic, figuring that the three combatants could hold off the two Welkalite-aligned beings well enough whilst he blessed them from a distance until their force became overwhelming enough to overrun their foes – as her magic slowly became infected by flecks of tenebrosity that increased in number every second, streaks of wriggling blackness rushing through the blinding light like pulsing veins that carried a cargo of taint and evil as the noble purpose of the seraphim's spells was turned against them by the Archfiend of Depravity as even it seemed to give into the temptation to throw itself at the demon's feet and beg for the pleasure that it promised.

The spell backfired, turning it on itself as the pure White mana became corrupted and infused with the contamination of Black as it turned on its wielder, rushing the opposite way through the radiant staff of the Light of Alabaster and coursing into the flesh of Bruna as she was blasted back by the darkness that ran through her holy veins. Tybalt cried out in empathetic pain, the corruption afflicting his angel far more potent than he had ever seen it affect Bruna before as he raised his staff to the ceiling and cast a very high power dispelling spell that required large amounts of concentration to complete in the hope that he could protect his angel. Ophelia kept up her attack on Eras as he conjured several small elementals that were not bound to a specific Summoner and made from alloy compounds of gold that attacked the Angel of Retribution as she cut them apart one by one and got closer and closer to the haughty and egotistic teenager, whereas her silent Summoner leapt to the defence of the stricken Daughter of Hope, her deep blue eyes alight with anger at the damage done to the holy messenger of the heavens.

She blocked a two overhead strikes of two clawed hands on her blade as she held it sideways, placing her left palm on the flat of her large and gleaming blade stained deep crimson with the blood of those that she had slain in this massive battle for the City of Pleasure that still in her experience paled in comparison to the massacre at Gol despite the fact that the power levels of those within this city were higher as she took the brunt of the attacks directed at the downed Bruna on her broadsword, sliding across the floor with her armoured shoes carving deep gouges into the carpets that bedecked this final chamber as Lelia was shoved backwards, but for now she was holding off the Archfiend of Depravity that was smiling sadistically at the pain in had caused the stricken angel.

Tybalt blasted his cleansing mana at his corrupted Summoning, the black lines that had streaked across her tanned skin and made it significantly more sickly and pale – similar to that of an ill human's which did not speak well for the state of the Light of Alabaster at all – pulsating and throbbing in time with a beat that Tybalt knew wasn't the pounding of the angel's divine heart. The signs of defilement on the angel's pure flesh were slowly erased by the outraged magic that he was pouring into her, reminded heavily of the last vampire's curse upon the seventeen year old middle Lucerna that had almost killed him when the angel coughed up a black and tar like liquid, and Lelia held off the greater demon while this happened.

That was until she was hit by a hail of incredibly hot metal that crashed into her armour and carved sparking lines down it as they sliced straight through her metal platemail and drew blood underneath, knocking her sideways with the force of the bombardment of shards of shining gold fired from the outstretched hand of the Master of Wealth. The Red mana blasted into Lelia from the pieces of metal that impacted upon her, knocking her off of her balance and forcing her to drag her blade away from the Archfiend of Depravity before she was ripped apart by the demon. She raised a shield to try and protect herself from the rain of metal coming from the Welkalite youth, but the pieces pierced straight through it and cut into her in an even greater frenzy with Tybalt unable to help as he was focussing all of his efforts onto his angel – as he was not able to simply Unsummon her and then call Bruna into the world of man again as the corruption would take hold in an even greater amount, and even worse get inside of his Mind Realm as well and potentially turn him to the darkness also.

Severkarkyis sprung into the air, crashing his one large fist into the Guardian of Gol and sending her flying across the room, where she smashed into one of the golden statues of the rich Welkalites who had been writhing in an apparently intoxicating combination of pain and ecstasy as the agony caused by the Master of Wealth had been heightened and turned into a form of perverse bliss by the powerful hallucinogenics they had ingested. She shattered the statue apart underneath her armoured bulk, not even making a sound as Lelia was rammed into the wall by the force of the impact and probably fractured some of her bones, and the demon dove down towards her with dark curses spilling out of its long talons and suffusing them with venomous spite.

Ophelia abandoned her attempts to corner and murder the Master of Wealth and rushed to her twenty two year old Summoner's aid, opening her wings wide and shooting towards the stricken form of Lelia who raised her sword in defiance of the demon that was diving in for the kill, enticed by the possibility of ending one of the Second Sisterhood angels' Summoners, and the Angel of Retribution just managed to get her blade in front of the swiping talons of the demon as she rammed another dagger of light into its stomach. Severkarkyis snarled at her, ignoring the wounds and straining against her sword with two lower hands while it plunged the two upper arms into the morass of shadows that followed it like a malevolent aura exuding dark malice and spite, drawing two large shadow whips itself that it quickly wrapped around the sword of Ophelia and yanked the seraph forwards.

A bolt of light crashed into it from behind, more powerful than had been conjured so far and with the power of surprise on its side as the straight beam of radiance pierced straight through its chest and dissipated just as it would have hit the trapped Angel of Vengeance and Lelia behind her. Bruna stood up, spitting the black tar that had been filling her lungs and wiping the disgusting remnants of it from her face, her eyes alight with hatred and righteous fury at what the demon had dared to do to her, attempting to turn her against the Lucaelians through its dark magic of enslavement, and the Light of Alabaster showed why she had been titled that by her First Sisterhood creator as she increased the intensity of the beam.

The Archfiend of Depravity shrieked in pain, its flesh melting under the divine light, the antitheses of demons, that had penetrated through one of its pectorals, and dragged a large amount of mana from within its Summoner in its anger that almost caused Eras to topple over in shock as a feeling of dizziness rushed through him and made the world spin like he had just taken a healthy dose of Serpent Nectar. Severkarkyis crashed all four of its arms together, channelling a huge amount of purely Black mana into its intertwining fingers and releasing it almost instantly, a massive blast of hatred ripping into what was in front of it and corroding the essence of whatever it touched as it was discharged in the direction of Lelia and Ophelia. It took out the wall behind them, and a large chunk of the floor and ceiling that was eaten away by the magic of enhanced decay and the death of all things, revealing the roiling sky of the Tempest of Craving around them that was far closer to them then it had been when Tybalt had been on the ground in the streets of the Augur's Quarter below.

Lelia and her angel both nodded their thanks to the Hierarch and the Light of Alabaster as they stood next to them, Blue displacement mana mixed with the protective qualities of White that sought to aid and save allies and innocents in danger spiralling around Bruna as she weaved her staff in a circle that was now vanishing behind the two silent and stoic warriors of very different origins but very similar goals, and the angel returned her sceptre to its ready position once again. There was a snarl of pure hatred mixed in with copious amounts of dark and violent irritation as the Archfiend of Depravity realised that its prey had been teleported away and rescued by the meddling Blue magic of the Daughter of Hope that had been combined with the salvation offering properties of the energy of light that the demon abhorred more than anything else in the two worlds.

Eras beckoned magnanimously over to his demon, the sweeping gesture imbued with a subtle infernal imperative that nonetheless still forced his Summoning to acquiesce to the one who controlled it's wishes for now, and Severkarkyis, growling and scowling all the while, flew over to the side of his young and supercilious Summoner and stayed aloft by the slender nineteen year old's side, glaring all the while at its current foes and one of the angels that he detested most besides those out of the First Sisterhood.

The maelstrom of tenebrosity that leaked out of the demon's very essence behind its head and conjured by the glittering onyx pearl set within its forehead reached out from the back of the spawn of the abyss and pooled within its awful wounds that had been leaking a black substance similar to that which had temporarily infected the now recovered Bruna and which must have been the corrupted blood of the demon. The huge hole in the upper chest of the demon slowly began to reknit itself as the shadows formed another black lung like the one that had been incinerated by the purging magic of the Light of Alabaster, strands of pure darkness becoming the demon's flesh as it paid no heed to the regeneration.

"Are you enjoying the gifts of Severkarkyis ... Lucaelians?" the ever-insufferable Eras asked them, still within his pantomime fantasy of this being anything more or less than a battle within a war, and with the pause that he had left (and was now leaving) the pampered fool had clearly expected Tybalt and Lelia (and perhaps their respective angels) to introduce themselves like they were in some form of nursery and they were still children, but the Guardian certainly wasn't going to break her Vow of Silence because of this wretch of a nineteen year old and Tybalt was less than inclined to communicate with him. His golden eyes periodically flashed between complete lucidity and focus that Tybalt would expect from a high ranking official and then insane exultation similar to that of a demon but less malicious and more simply mad.

The silence drew on as the demon repaired itself and Bruna gathered up more mana from within her to fortify the auras that her Hierarch Summoner had originally cast upon her, and Eras's eyes twitched impatiently, obviously not used to being kept waiting nor being ignored by those that he talked to; Tybalt was sure that underneath his mask that hid his face he would have been wearing a sullen and bratty pout similar to that that the two young students of the eldest Light-bearer had sometimes adopted after their arguments when they had been a lot younger, but far more spoilt than the ones that Alexander or Caiellis would ever have worn.

The Master of Wealth without all of the robes that he had been swathed (or some would say drowned) in looked vastly more fit for combat, although he wasn't quite there yet. He still had a drape of expensive fabric over his chest like a tunic, and wore extremely opulent golden armour that seemed far more ceremonial than practical apart from the fact that Eras's ferromancy would allow him to manipulate it, although it still didn't make his slender form seem any more muscular or less insubstantial.

Eras waited for a few seconds, not failing to notice how his demon glowered at him begrudgingly out of the corner of its gleaming eyes and occasionally its shadowy tail would flick round next to him and curl around the armour around his throat before he pulled it away, executing the actions almost casually whilst inside he was amused at the threat of the demon – as if everything went according to plan he would be trading away Severkarkyis soon for an even greater power. The Archfiend was not strong enough to disobey the restrictions of the diabolical contract that bound it to the nineteen year old, and so as such couldn't put any pressure on the boy's neck despite wanting to and wanting to rip this child to shreds or make him worship the demon forever more. He rolled his eyes at the two defiantly silent Lucaelians, and his voice was a false lament as he moaned, "Of all of the Lucaelian leaders and important figures that stormed my Towers of Ecstasy, why did I have to be landed with you two? An old man, and a mute! How boring!"

He went on, stepping round in front of his demon as the eyes of the forces of light followed his every move and planned to attack him when he was at his weakest, complaining, "Where are the two Lucerna princes? I never got to see young Alex or Cai when they were in the city because Tradax swept them away the second we abducted them, and I certainly never got to play with them either. I am sure that they would have made fantastic playmates for me, but-"
"The exalted princes are fighting much more important foes than you," Tybalt cut in, his voice harsh and adamant, dripping with his scorn of those who would choose the side of the darkness, and he interrupted the Master of Wealth's monologuing that was getting tiring now which highlighted his insanity. Though he wouldn't normally have spoken to his foes he enjoyed the way that the boy's eyes widened as if in shock that the enemy had dared to break in on his speech. He was getting tired of this brat who had clearly obtained his post without having to put any work in to it whatsoever – as while the Lucerna family were given their roles since birth, it was a responsibility just as much as it was a privilege from them and Tybalt certainly did not envy the rulers of the Kingdom of Light, especially when they were young and the natural feeling of teenagers and adolescents that the whole world was resting on their shoulders and everything was out to ruin their lives was massively exacerbated by the pressure placed upon them because of their exalted heritage and the expectation that they should be far more than humans when that was what they were – the Lucerna family was still human, but many of Lucael worshipped them like they were gods incapable of making mistakes.

They had been able to avoid that in the most part with Alexander, who still had been and was still (as he was only seventeen and very young) affected by his hormones and felt that he was under large amounts of stress due to his role and not wanting to fail and disappoint the people, his elders and most prominently his younger brother, as the eldest prince had been a desire for action and rebelliousness in dating with numerous girls and throwing himself into the battles they fought against the many enemies that attempted to endanger the two heirs to the throne, and Tybalt knew that Alexander had been very difficult at times, sometimes cocky, loose and incredibly reckless in his want to impress his younger brother and pushing himself far more than he should have, launching himself into very dangerous situations to protect others and for the adrenaline rush that came with fighting.

Although sometimes Alexander had taken out his teenage anger on his younger brother during the civil war, saying things that he shouldn't have to the smaller boy that had still been a prepubescent and took all of his brother's words and actions to heart, because of the fact that he dearly loved his sibling he had never really hurt Caiellis in a way that would have ruined their relationship. Yes, the brothers had often shouted at each other and their guardians had to break up heated arguments more regularly nearer to the end of the civil war as Alexander went through puberty and was affected by his hormones, especially when Caiellis started to go through the early stages of the same that would have ended in violence without their intervention, but that was completely normal between brothers and for the most part the eldest prince had avoided depression and sorrow.

However, it seemed that the Lucerna family would not get off so easy with little Caiellis (who was admittedly Tybalt's favourite ever student that he had been given the privilege of teaching – that didn't mean that he preferred him to any of the other royals, as he liked all three of them equally, just from a purely educational standpoint Caiellis was possessed of the greatest desire to learn through books and to listen to Tybalt's lessons, his endless curiosity for more knowledge (which the Hierarch knew full well had not left the youngster, but the fact that he was more reticent to speak to others meant that he was less vocal about it and his greater independence meant that he would rather choose his own reading material instead of asking the aged Light-bearer for advice) always making the Hierarch feel younger).

His sudden rush into teenage angst coupled with the events of the past month combined with his very unfortunate short life so far meant that Caiellis had become withdrawn, barely speaking to anyone apart from his brother (and presumably Orzhova) unless he was arguing with his father – and the fact that Marik had only been able to have an extremely limited amount of influence on the boy's life and the impression that Caiellis had got from the king had been extremely negative from the first talk they had had after the war and the argument they must have had after Alexander's near death experience meant that Caiellis was even less inclined to listen to the Lucerna patriarch.

It was very sad, Tybalt knew, because in spite of not speaking to Caiellis very often recently because he didn't want to break the isolation that Caiellis had put upon himself and not wanting to put him in an even worse mood, the eldest Hierarch knew that the core personality of the boy had not changed at all, and while if none of these bad events had occurred and the relationship between father and youngest son was perfect the littlest Lucerna would still be shy, quiet and unwilling to talk to others very often because that was the sort of person that the adolescent him was he would have helped Marik much more and they would have built up a fantastic relationship matching the one that Alexander was beginning to develop with his father.

Caiellis was very much like Marik had been when Tybalt had been the mentor of the current king when he had been a teenager as well, and the Hierarch wished that Marik would remember that and use the knowledge of that to try and do to his youngest son what he would have wanted from his own father in the past, although he had to wary because despite all their similarities they were still very different people and Marik couldn't just assume that the same things would work on his son. If there had not been a war that they were now fighting within that had divided father and son even more and widened the rift between them, Tybalt would like to have said that they would have repaired their relationship in no time whatsoever, but he wasn't entirely sure that would have occurred and the seventy seven year old could aptly empathise with Alexander in being concerned over the interactions between the eldest and youngest Lucerna that almost always turned to bitter arguments feeding upon all of the sadness within each of their lives.

At any rate, what this train of thought that Tybalt's mind, augmented by Blue mana that made it much faster, processed within less than a second of thought as the Master of Wealth reacted to his words, lead to was the fact that ruling was a duty to help the subjects of the sovereign just as much as it was an honour and entitlement to be treated differently and afforded great respect, however Eras Stormwind and indeed any of the Masters of Passion did not show this quality – they were cruel and dictatorial tyrants that paid little heed to the well being of their citizens instead of caring for them and giving them safety, spoilt and overindulged brats playing at being leaders that lorded their supposed superiority over those that they ruled and took advantage of those that looked up to them for help.

Added to the fact that this Master of Wealth referred to the Lucerna princes and Tybalt's prized students as "play mates", suggesting a very nefarious purpose that he had in mind for them and making him seem like a pampered child, made the Hierarch want to defeat their current opponent even more and tear down the Orders of Passion that utterly controlled Welkalite society and consorted with hedonistic demons of the most foul variety judging by the blot of Red and Black mana at the centre of Usnaan which had eclipsed the White and Black magic of young Caiellis that could only be what was known as an Archdemon.

Eras glared at him for a moment, his golden orbs emphasising how irritated he was at the idea that there were any more important enemies in the City of Pleasure than him, until a sudden changed overcame the Master of Wealth like a spontaneous change of season (not that the seasons made much difference in Lucael apart from there being heavy snow in winter and heavy rain and thunderstorms in summer – although it was still very cold no matter what time of year it was) and his eyes reflected the smile he must have worn. Eras grabbed his ornate and heavy mask that he wore, and ripped it off, tossing the expensive disguise to the floor where it clattered and bounced until it landed at Lelia's feet, the Guardian taking a precautionary step back in case the Master of Wealth had infused the death mask with magic or decided to use it as a weapon in his ferromancy.

"Oh, I am fully aware of that," the boy laughed, the sibilant noise full of feigned mirth as well as genuine and disturbingly enthusiastic amusement as his pale features felt the wind from the massive chunk of the wall (and floor and ceiling) that his demon had destroyed with its vindictive magic that had been opened up to the elements, the violent breeze from the Tempest of Craving sending the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling swinging back and forth dangerously. Eras closed his eyes, savouring the tingling sensation of the draught from the storm brushed across the bare skin of his soft face, and feeling the mana saturating the air blown into the middle Tower of Ecstasy touching his flesh.

Strangely enough, the fact that what should have been fresh air was being blown into the pinnacle chamber of the gigantic cylindrical edifice of greed and corruption didn't make the room feel any less stuffy nor reduce the intensity of the sweetly scented narcotics diffused into the room by large censers tainting the air was disturbing to the Capitalia Lux Hierarch, and it spoke volumes of the greater corruption outside of the building that permeated the entirety of Usnaan. The Hierarch was quite worried about the state of the soldiers outside of the city, although he refused to let his eyes be drawn to the large gap in the wall to observe some of the occurrences in the lower city because he knew that any distractions could be fatal.

Instead he stared at the Master of Wealth who had just taken off his mask, the smile he was wearing exactly what venerable Tybalt had imagined solely from seeing the brat's eyes. He was pale, almost as much as a Lucaelian would be but sickly and ill looking instead of light coloured and still healthy, which was very strange for a Welkalite as they lived underneath a baleful sun and that tanned every other resident of the New Empire of Passion Tybalt had seen so far. It indicated that Eras spent significant amounts of time inside, and it made him look boyish and quite young. His skin was flawless however, evidence of many vain beauty treatments evident on his pale features, and he had a thin head of medium length blonde hair that was buffeted around by the wind that had sprung up.

"I was merely saying that I would have liked to be able to speak to your exalted young princes, for a sense a common soul between them and me," he smiled, and Tybalt bristled at the insult but did not rise to his incredibly obvious baiting as he stood up taller, stepping round to the side of his demon, grinning even wider all the while as he stared at the two Light-bearers, "It seems that I will have to deal with you and any other Lucaelians that try to destroy my precious Towers of Ecstasy until the princes or their scary daddy come to deal with me."

He opened his arms wide once again, like he was addressing a large audience of enraptured subjects showering him with cries of adulation and worship instead of four silent enemies that wanted him dead, and Red and Black mana swirled around his outstretched and thin limbs that were only that way because of his metabolism (as to all intents and purposes they should have been pudgy and fat) and played around his long fingertips, becoming a pattern of shadows and false gold that also spiralled around the long sabre he held loosely in his right hand.

"Do not let the Master of Wealth touch you," Bruna cautioned quietly to her allies, her intuitive Blue mana allowing her to perceive the effects of the aura that Eras had cast upon himself, "Any contact with his fingers or blade will end with you being subjected to the same magic that the poor Swords of Silence died to."

Tybalt and Lelia nodded at the angel's advice as a spray of dark tendrils was shot at them by the Archfiend of Depravity, Ophelia instantly leaping forward and carving the attack of darkness apart with her blade, not allowing the corruption to take any hold upon her sword as she blasted purifying and cleansing mana down its length to keep the weapon pure and untainted at all times – the silent Angel of Retribution did not want to suffer the same fate that respected Bruna had almost succumbed to and would have without the aid of her aged Summoner.

If Tybalt had thought that Eras Stormwind enchanting himself with auras that only worked at close range would have made him want to challenge the Lucaelians in close combat and charge at them he would have been sorely mistaken – the Master of Wealth was arrogant, but he certainly wasn't stupid, and it seemed that the gold curse aura was simply a precautionary action to give the warriors of the Kingdom of Light pause if they sought to engage him in melee proximity. The Hierarch was fully prepared to accede to those wishes, his own speciality long range combat whereby he would bombard his enemies with holy magic out of the range of retaliation, and a glance at Lelia (who was clearly trying to make her semi-enigmatic blue eyes as open as possible whenever she looked over at Tybalt so that the older Lucaelian would be able to infer what her plans were) showed that she was willing to engage the demon and its master in close quarters while Tybalt and Bruna provided support from behind.

Severkarkyis roared at the approaching Angel of Retribution, drawing bloody patterns into the air with each of the fingers on its four different hands that oozed vile temptations that whispered unrestrained depravity and excess on the winds of the unholy Tempest of Craving outside into Tybalt's ears before he pushed them aside and ignored them, focussing upon enhancing Bruna with one last aura that would aid in protecting her from Red and Black mana and was in the form of an iridescent sphere surrounding her that split apart the light touching her into the different colours of the spectra (although as the light was holy these scintillating colours were different to what a Yentarian scientist would discover when doing the same) and formed intricate defensive patterns around the Light of Alabaster, who nodded her thanks to her august Summoner.

In Tybalt's mind, Eras had waited far too long playing games with his opponents instead of ending them as soon as possible, as while they had been fighting the capital's Hierarch had been casting numerous subtle auras upon Bruna that were only now blooming and empowering her already formidable strength – if the Master of Wealth had capitalised on his earlier advantage and killed the Hierarch when his angel was nowhere near as powerful as she was now (and there was a very good reason why the Light of Alabaster was considered one of the strongest Second Sisterhood angels) then he probably would have achieved victory already, but now it would be significantly harder for him as Bruna's power was multiplying further.

Ophelia blocked two consecutive strikes of the greater demon's claws that left bloody contrails of shadow in the air that festered instead of dissipating precisely as the ones that he had created earlier were, and it hit Tybalt that now Severkarkyis was creating some sort of pattern into the air that would probably have diabolical implications should it be allowed to come to fruition and be finished. Lelia shot a beam of light from her sword at the Master of Wealth, a standard attack of Lucaelian battle mages that was blocked easily enough by a spray of molten gold the nineteen year old conjured into the air with an upwards slash of his sword, wielding the weapon like he was the conductor of an orchestra of dark symphonies as the liquid metal absorbed the bolt of light and solidified.

The Guardian assumed that, while the enchantment he had cast would turn enemies that he touched with his gauntlets or elegant sabre (that was now gold whereas before it had been steel) it would also improve the insufferable Master of Wealth's ferromancy also and grant him a greater manipulation of metal, but without any way to communicate this information to her aged comrade she could only hope that the intelligent and wise Tybalt had come to this conclusion as well – who was she kidding? The man had probably realised it the second he cast the aura was already coming up with several strategies for using it to their advantage.

Lelia was perfectly happy simply following orders, as while she knew that she was a reasonably good leader her strategy wasn't the best – it was apparently her devotion to the cause of Lucael and her utter determination never to give up in the face of the darkness, her leadership in times of great tragedy despite her young age that set her apart from most Lucaelians according to King Marik, who had appointed her as the Guardian of Gol Secondus when the rebuilding process began and after nine years of her fight alongside him after the refugees of the City of Silence met up with the supreme monarch's army. She supposed that it was quite remarkable that she had rallied the survivors of the slaughter in the city to fight their way out of it at the age of thirteen, but liked to think that if she hadn't done it then someone else would have taken up the role and lead the Golians that still lived.

She leapt at the Master of Wealth, knowing from the way that he held the sword that while he may have participated in some brief combat training with weapons (showed by the way that he gripped the sabre in a similar way to a fresh-faced recruit who had been given a few months of practice but not been in any real combat against enemies out for their blood) he was still inexperienced overall and not used to the movements one would have to make within combat. He held himself like a magistrate or some form of ruler instead of a fighter, standing up straight and putting all of his weight on his legs instead of the balls of his feet which would hinder his manoeuvrability and prevent him moving as fast as Lelia would. The silent Guardian was confident that if she could force Eras into playing a reactionary game or perhaps panicking because of her aggression that he thought he would have prevented with the threat of his transitional conversion magic, then she would be able to avoid any attempts that he would make to make contact with her.

Besides, she wasn't sure yet whether her own defensive spells of light would nullify the boy's magic or not, and her role was to simply distract the Master of Wealth by being in his face all the time and stopping him from contributing his magic to the engagement while her vengeful and dependable seraph did the same to the Archfiend of Depravity. It was a technique that had been taught to her twice, first by her older brother back when she could still use her voice and the two had trained together in the art of swordplay, and more significantly and recently by King Marik himself who had taken the time to school the thirteen year old her personally in the more powerful spells of White mana and in combat methods.

The king had informed the younger her (who still desperately wanted to fight in the war to avenge the destruction and defilement wreaked upon her once magnificent and tranquil city which had been established long ago by the first princess to have wielded the Angel of Serenity who had also been slain by Johnias's treasonous crimes) that he wanted to assess whether or not she would be suitable to fight alongside him and the other militant survivors of the Silencing, as he was loathe to send a thirteen year old to war even in one as desperate as this one and in spite of the fact that she had proved herself in the evacuation.

Evidently she had been satisfactory to the king, and one thing that the glorious man had taught her (expanding upon her brother's preliminary lessons that in another life without the betrayal of the Arch-Heretic he would have continued with) was that when fighting enemies that depended upon their magic or when one gained an advantage within combat relentless but planned and not reckless (as that would end in the aggressor throwing away their life) attacks were key to victory to prevent them from getting a hold of their magic.

To that end she leapt at the Master of Wealth, intending to use silencing mana on him that would also hinder his ability to wield his ferromancy or his dark magic gifted to him by the Infernal Bargain he must have undertaken, her large sword darting round towards him. Eras laughed at her seemingly brazen but in actuality methodically planned assault, sweeping his own blade round in order to intercept hers as he conjured up Red mana with his other hand.

As opposed to countermagic, which could dismiss an opponent's attempt to cast a spell once the idea for that spell had been formed, silencing prevented the formation and expression of the spell before the mana had been gathered up – in essence it delayed better than countermagic did, nullifying all attempts to use magic, but it did not drain the target's mana like countering their spells or Summonings did – this meant that silencing was powerful against mages who cast many spells at once but not as useful against those that relied upon one single overpowering spell to achieve victory, whereas if said spell could be countered and nullified then foiling spells would be far more useful (although some of the more powerful magical energies could only be prevented by huge amounts of Blue mana wielded by master of countermagic).

While Lelia sealed the boy's lips with censuring White mana that drowned out all sound coming out (and had the added quality of life benefit of shutting the boy up) she could not prevent this first quick spell of his being cast.

The chaotic and creatively destructive Black and Red mana pulsed into the ground as the Guardian leapt to the side instinctively, her physical and magical senses honed by nine years of almost constant warfare to the point where she could often anticipate an opponent's move just by hearing it, knowing that she needed to keep up with her constant attacks before her silencing spell wore off and Eras started releasing more and more spells at her – as a disadvantage of silencing was that the necessary state for casting magic built up while they were unable to use it, meaning that the second it wore off the spell could be cast and making chaining spell-prevention magic together difficult.

A large spike of gold rammed up out of the floor, crashing up out of the igneous rock and sending rubble cascading everywhere around it as Lelia dodged, about to turn to attack the Master of Wealth again before she sensed that the mana he had released hadn't been fully used up yet as more claws of gold reached up violently out of the floor, smashing apart golden sculptures of people as they extended towards the Guardian of the City of Rebirth, arcing through the air and already solidified to increase the amount of impact damage that they would deal as Lelia juddered side to side and evaded, her armour and broadsword not weighing her down much because she had always trained with weapons and protection far more encumbering and heavy.

Additionally, respected Hierarch Tybalt had heightened her speed through the blessings of Alabaster which made the evasive manoeuvres easy enough to execute, though the only spell that the Master of Wealth he had cast before he had been forced to focus his mental energy on breaking free from the restraints placed upon his magic (as, like countermagic, silencing for any length of time required the caster and the target's magic power to be of a similar level at least for it to work) was distracting her from getting to him a drastic amount.

More spikes of expensive metal thrust themselves at Lelia, forcing her to blast one of them apart with a bolt of light which therefore lessened the amount of mana she could focus on stopping Eras casting his spells of Red and Black as she diverted her magic to prevent the attack of metal impaling her through the stomach – as her armour would be no defence.

She leapt into the air, using the newly grown spire to propel herself upwards as Lelia enchanted herself with wings that made no sound as she glided through the air towards the Welkalite brat, who opened his eyes again and relaxed his face after screwing it closed and concentrating hard, capitalising on the quiet Guardian's distraction caused by the semi-sentient mana he had released to remove the restraints she had placed upon him that he had never seen before – although to be fair Eras had never before fought against powerful wielders of White magic due to their extreme rarity within Welkas. He smiled, the facial gesture full of smugness at breaking free from her magic, bringing his sword round and reaching into the place where his soul that had been tainted by the presence of a demon was and dragging out homicidal Black mana that screamed with the lust for killing Eras had become familiar with recently.

As the woman charged at him through the air, her ghostly and mournful wings that the Master of Wealth didn't see the significance of allowing her to fly and dive towards him, he ran the Black mana through his ornate blade that had been a gift from his now dead aunt Gretia (who had been assassinated by Tradax in the Archlord of Rapture's ascent to power and dominance over the Orders of Passion, one of the many reasons why Eras would usurp him and schemed against him) who had spoiled her only nephew and taught him what he knew of ruling now, replicating a technique that he had seen his greater demon use that Severkarkyis had never taken the liberty of teaching his Summoner, which meant that Stormwind's own version of the spell would be different.

He drew up blight from within, swirling corruption around his hand and glad that it was gauntleted and not touching his flesh because such a thing was repulsive – which was exactly why he would use it against the Guardian. Eras channelled his mana into his sword, Black mana whirling around it in small flecks like a swarm of carrion flies circling a freshly murdered corpse, although instead of the buzzing of insects the sound that it made was the shrieking of those that had been subjected to the Archfiend of Depravity's magic before combined with the insane and malicious laughter of the demon as it revelled in the murders.

The magic that would pollute and contaminate the target with a vile sickness that would eat them away from the outside and corrupt them from within was pulled into the tip of the blade with Eras's natural ability to control the manipulation of metal allowing the mana to flow more freely through the gold of the sword, and he prepared to blast it out in a twister of death directed at the incoming Guardian of Gol Secondus (a city that Eras had never heard of, made irrelevant by the fact that he didn't know the rank or even the name of the woman that he now fought – nor did he really care), before opening his eyes wide in confusion and almost childish stupefaction as the magic died and spluttered out before his eyes, the flecks of deep Black that had been increasing in concentration and power every second he used up his internal mana by pouring it into the spell now disappearing peacefully.

He stamped his foot and cursed profusely in a petty tantrum of irritation when out of the corner of his eye he saw the damned old man holding his staff aloft and with the crystal within it that didn't look very valuable at all to Eras's judging eye (nor was it pretty in any way like some of the rich Lucaelian things that they seemed to reserve for their royals that the eternally fickle Master of Wealth wanted, although his wants changed as quickly as his moods) shining with a shimmering aquamarine with coils of luminescent White mana that represented order in all things and shut down Eras's chaotic magic. The adolescent in the last year of his teenage experience did not have long to focus on that, nor did he even glance at the image of his greater demon beset on both sides by two Second Sisterhood angels (with Bruna taking care not to expose herself to corruption again and augmented by the many auras cast upon her) as Lelia flew towards him.

The Lucaelian woman slashed her sword round, avoiding a hail of shrapnel that the Master of Wealth desperately blasted at her in a frantic attempt to get the armour bulk of the Guardian away from him as his demon ignored his commands to come and help, forcing her to get close to his aura that would gild her much like he had killed all of the lesser humans in the room if contact was made with his gauntlets or his sword. His eyes opened wide in shock and panic as she fell for his ploy intentionally, clearly willing to risk being turned into gold by touching him, and he blocked the longsword arcing towards him on his own slender sabre, his mind working in overdrive to try and think why she would do this and if she was more suicidal than he had anticipated.

The Guardian had honed her ability to perceive what people were thinking from their body language alone, remembering one of her aged teacher's wise words of many years ago, that if one watched more than participated then one will get the chance to spot things that many others may miss. The words that she had taken to heart after being reprimanded after a lesson because of her constant chattering and had always been at the back of her mind rose to the fore when she took her Vow of Silence, and being unable to enter into conversations had allowed Lelia to discern things that many others, especially the ones involved in the talk, would never notice. She had translated this ability to the battlefield, able to see things that others didn't whilst they focussed on talking as the Master of Wealth had done, noting that one of the Welkalite soldiers nearby had dropped his jewelled glaive weapon in an attempt to somehow rip his armour off and escape from the doom his own master had caused. That meant that the armament had remained unafflicted by the curse of gilding running through the Welkalite and was still usable.

This was when she had been avoiding the attacks from the ground, and moved in a specific pattern to force the clearly inexperienced Master of Wealth who did not realise the importance of positioning within a battle nearer to the fallen soldier of his who had been gripping his helmet with his hands before they had been turned into gold. Her large longsword that she could wield with apparently superlative skill for a weapon so heavy – although her personal tutor throughout the war who had schooled her in the usage of such an armament had been the king of the entire nation and as such she was confident in her skill with the blade that had killed many heretics in her time and would help her in slaying one more, and although it would pain her to part with such a weapon it had served her well throughout the years and could be replaced – as it was not a relic greatsword nor was it enchanted by ancient magic that could no longer be replicated.

Lelia's large blade smashed into the slender sabre wielded by the Master of Wealth with a loud clang of metal on metal and with an extremely jarring impact on the nineteen year old who was sent skidding backwards and almost broke his arm by absorbing the brunt of the blow upon his sword instead of deflecting the large force behind it away from him like a more trained warrior would do so jolted his arm back violently and probably almost broke some of his weak bones, putting them under immense strain at the very least.

The sword instantly began to turn into gold, the solid and dependable Lucaelian steel of the blade gilded by the magic of Eras that ran along it like a virulent curse or plague spreading with very high speed, and Lelia immediately dropped the heavy weapon after forcing it forwards with only her right hand gripping the handle to ensure that her target was off balance. The sword scraped against Eras's own as it was flung away from the twenty two year old, Lelia knowing that she needed to get her armament away from her as fast as possible now that it was infected by the curse of cold that Eras seemed to have the power of manipulating, a combination of his Red ferromancy and his greed which was powered by his covetous Black energy that the nineteen year old had most likely obtained when he had initiated his own Infernal Bargain and gained the power of the Archfiend of Depravity.

The boy staggered backwards, unable to take the strength of the Guardian that was pressed against him, and quick as a flash of moonlight from the rarely seen lunar orb of Lucael the silent Guardian swept up the discarded Welkalite blade from the floor with her free left hand and swung it round it a wide arc, enchanting the blade with quietening White mana to aid in preventing any spells interfering with her and having the side effect of making the glaive's progress hushed and silent as it quietly cut through the air and hacked into Eras – the aura surrounding the edge of the Welkalite weapon would also allow it to carve through the armour and bone of the unrighteous, wielding their faith against them and making the sudden attack strike true.

To his credit, the Master of Wealth's instincts must have been honed enough and enough adrenaline must have been coursing through his corrupt veins to allow him to react in the split second before the blade cleanly took off his head, leaping backwards in an attempt to avoid the arcing glaive from one of his own warriors as the weapon shot towards him.

It lopped off his left hand, hacking effortlessly through the golden forearm vambrace (and as such avoiding having this weapon affected by the foul magic of the Master of Wealth like the last one had) and carved a line down his chest, splitting apart his robes and the armour underneath as a spray of vivid crimson blood jetted out from the wound and exploded into the air. Eras would have found the contrails of gore that whipped out of his chest and burst forth from the stump of his elbow artistically pleasing had the attack not been executed upon him, and as it was the first time that he had ever sustained a wound caused by another person before he shrieked in pain as he fell backwards. Panic surged through his mind, combining with the need to wreak his potent vengeance upon the silent bitch who had hurt him, dared to defile his perfect flesh with her weaponry and damned self-righteousness that prevented her from acknowledging his superiority.

A gigantic blast of Black mana that Eras didn't care would significantly reduce his lifespan as he engaged in extremely fast demonic pacts with Severkarkyis that provided him with a large amount of dark energy erupted from his chest as well, knocking Lelia back as the magic instantly broke past the barriers of silencing she had placed upon the boy. A shield of White mana that must have come from Tybalt helped to block some of the screaming wave of outraged magic that twisted to form gnashing skulls filled to the brim with impossibly sharp teeth and hacked at the Guardian with blades of malignant and corrupted shadow as it crashed into her, the sound unlike anything she had ever heard before as it distorted the shriek of pain from Eras into something demonic and immensely loud as it shuddered into her ear drums.

Lelia was reminded of some of the foul demonic magic that she had seen used by the Fallen in the Silencing of the first Gol, and most prominently the powerful wave of blackness and diseased murk vomited at her by the traitorous Teylaisian Illustri that had prevented the thirteen year old her coming to the aid of her brother and had held her still as the Guardian of Vectura hacked the young Guardian of the City of Quiet apart and had slowed her down when she had finally broken out and allowed the bastard to inflict the scars that were still prominent on her face before she had fled, running screaming and crying out of the Gola Atria as it burned with the dark fire of night. While that tide of magic had been nauseating, slowing her down as it eroded her resolve and ate at her immune system as it tried to infect her with a loathsome plague which had afflicted many of the reanimated dead of the City of Quiet, this one was formless and drank sustenance from the Master of Wealth's arrogance and hatred to fling her across the room as it grew thousands of spikes to try and rip her to shreds, to spread her internal organs across the walls and make her pay for daring to harm the controller of this magic.

She crossed the bracers of her arms over one another, invoking the silent defensive magic within them as her ears began to bleed and all sense of perception and where she was within the room faded as the magic that Tybalt had conjured to aid her cracked and fractured into a million shards of alabaster light under the strain of the howling wave of Black mana that send pounding reverberations through her skull and blood pouring from every orifice on her face. Even though it trickled down her mouth, she kept it resolutely clamped shut, smothering the scream of agony which had rose up unbidden within her as she felt the plates of her armour corroding and splitting apart – not that anyone would but her would know if she broke her Vow of Silence, any noise that she would make drowned out and muffled by the shrieking din of the dark magic surging around her, but she would not break her holy vow unless the time came for the Arch-Heretic to be slain. The shield of mana enveloped her, shushing the screaming of the demonic magic roiling around her like she was in the dark heart of the Tempest of Craving, although because of the ringing of her skull Lelia wasn't entirely sure whether it had been her tranquil last resort defence silencing the air around her or she had been deafened by the howl of Eras's emission of mana.

The shield prevented her being killed and ripped apart by the blast of shrieking shadows, but only just, and Lelia could feel several blood vessels rupturing within her forearms at the strain of holding back the magic that would ram into her and scour her soul from existence by devouring it the instant it touched her in the full and overwhelmed her final defence. However, it did not stop the physical implications of being hit by the shockwave of darkness and hatred, and Lelia was pretty sure that she sailed across the circular room and landed with a loud crash on an uncarpeted and hard region of the floor.

Lelia knew that she needed to get up, that she was a prime target for assault laying her in the floor, but was pretty sure that with the angle she had fallen at one of her legs was broken, twisted in an unnatural direction that no human limbs were designed to move at and aware that the rain of blood she had been stained by outside would stop Tybalt healing her and reducing the damage. She pushed up with her hands, her vision blurry with blood and the hallucinogenic narcotics sprayed into her face by a nearby censer that diffused potent drugs into the air around it that wouldn't have normally affected the Guardian but with her wounding and removal of all auras it could. She was almost shearing off her tongue with the effort of keeping her mouth closed to ensure that she could not make any groaning sounds and inadvertently sunder her vow, and could taste the coppery tang of her blood as it flowed around her mouth, every sensation that she felt heightened to unparalleled levels by the adrenalized blood rushing through her vessels and the miasmic effluvium coming from those damn Welkalite drug censers.

That unfortunately also included the pain that she felt, and at the back of her mind she wondered how powerful some of the other Welkalite opiates were if these were the effects of those that she hadn't even ingested in a great amount – Lelia already knew the answer to that, as in different rooms of the Tower of Ecstasy that she had crashed into expecting enemies on the other sides had been filled with individuals she had at first thought were dead but had were instead in an induced and inebriated slumber with colourful drool salivating out of their gaping mouths and running down their faces. A few had had their eyes open, bloodshot with the pupils completely eclipsing their irises, and the expression of utter bliss on their faces had shocked Lelia before she put them out of their misery.

Damn it! Stop getting distracted! Lelia harshly admonished herself, sensing that the perception-altering qualities of the drug combined with the concussion she must have sustained in her fall making the idle and needless pathways of thought within her mind that the mental discipline she had attained by not giving into the temptation to speak like any normal teenager would have would normally have allowed her to ignore come to the fore and push aside her essential thought processes.

Tybalt cried out Lelia's name as he saw her flung across the room by the twisting vortex of shadow that had consumed her after it had burst forth from the heavily wounded Master of Wealth, the Guardian crashing into the ground in a painful impact and almost certainly breaking her leg with a loud snap of bone that the Capitalia Lux Hierarch could do nothing about. Instead of being diminished by its Summoner's injuries and the massive release of mana from the boy, Severkarkyis seemed to revel in the torment inflicted upon Eras and stood up taller, beating its wings in a frenzy as it raised its head, exultation glittering in the malicious pearls of its eyes as the shadows condensed and coalesced with a much greater intensity around his sculptural but heavily impure body of darkness.

A resurgence of Black mana from within the Archfiend of Depravity took them all off guard, its power levels rising to absurd levels within a split second as it shot forwards, trails of writhing tenebrosity surrounding its limbs as it slammed into the Angel of Retribution. Ophelia, already weakened by her Summoner's pain that reduced the amount of mana that was coming to her, hacked her sword into the demon that flung itself at her, tearing into her lower abdomen with one hand as it grabbed her around the neck with one more. Severkarkyis gripped her sword with one of its palms surrounded by protective shadow that burnt underneath the purifying mana of the holy weapon, and lifted the angel off of her feet.

With such a speed that Bruna's countermagic that she laced into the air with by spinning her staff in her certain pattern was not ready, the Archfiend of Depravity entwined its two free hands together, the bony joints of its fingers dislocating, snapping and elongating in a way that was utterly inhuman but reminiscent of some sort of serpent or reptile as it left a space in between the two hands, the fingers of each wrapped over the thumb of another that would have produced a square if done by a human but instead formed an unnatural heptagon. A sigil of forbidden wickedness that Tybalt pulled his eyes away from before it consumed him and transfixed his eyes to it until he was overwhelmed with the temptation to tear them out of his skull formed in between the extended fingers and thumbs, and Black mana concentrated into that specific spot into an orb of the purest darkness and corruption.

He rammed it into the angel, who was paralysed by the debilitating and nauseating curses Severkarkyis had already afflicted the seraph with through the claws that were piercing into her throat and chin and polluting her blessed blood with the reviled toxins of the forsaken nether realm that crossed borders with the material plane primarily in the abyss outside of Lucael. It detonated, releasing a spray of venom and roiling and corroding shadow into her chest, ripping apart the angel's flesh and tearing the feathers from her wings as it dissolved her skin, melting piles of her once pure epidermis sloughing away as she stayed resolutely silent, closing her eyes and accepting her fate as she was forcefully returned to the Mind Realm of her Summoner, causing Lelia even more pain as the rush of mana that had come from Summoning dissipated and left her feeling even more exhausted.

The greater demon laughed and howled its dominance at the same time, and then blurred into a mass of shadowy serpents that slithered at a frightening speed across the room towards Lelia, overwhelming her in a mass of dark snakes as the demon formed up out of them again. Severkarkyis laughed once more, a deep and malevolent sound that sent tremors through Tybalt's body, although if what he felt was fear (and he was too old and experienced to know that it wasn't) he would not let it affect him as he blasted a gigantic ray of light out of the tip of his staff, the luminescence flaring forth from his weapon combining with the one shot forth by the Light of Alabaster, the twinned lances of incandescence spiralling through the air at the Archfiend of Depravity who had now picked up the semi-conscious Lelia who weakly batted the hand gripping her waist.

Severkarkyis chuckled again, the demon's power levels rising every second as the Tempest of Craving screamed outside and gifted each of the demons that were the servants of Rakdos (not that any would ever admit it, especially not Severkarkyis who was one of the very few demons left that had been created by Malfegor and not consumed by the Lord of Riots as his original creator had been) with huge amounts of energy formed from the tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of souls slain underneath the hedonistic storm. The Archfiend used this to corrupt and taint the magic of pure light coming towards him at a much faster rate than he had done to Bruna originally.

Tybalt had to break off from the magic extremely quickly as the darkness spread through it in an immensely and frighteningly fast manner, ignoring and pushing aside his countermagic, and he could only watch with growing horror as the demon glanced over at him, smiled sadistically, and tossed the heavily armoured Guardian out of the gaping hole in the side of the pinnacle chamber.

Tybalt didn't waste words shouting the Guardian's name or let the mounting sense of horror that he felt creeping up his aged spine which was really too old for this type of combat influence him in any way, instantly whipping his staff round in an arc of Blue runes that imprinted themselves onto the air, and attempting to use his sensory mana to located the small presence of Lelia – no mean feat with the disruptive energy of the Tempest of Craving percolating throughout the air and preventing him getting an accurate sense of the location of the silent Lucaelian. He felt Bruna gifting him with her mana of clarity that he was grateful for, though he did not waste time communicating that much to the Light of Alabaster who would already be aware of that, and managed to pick up on where the swiftly falling Lelia was. The Hierarch hopefully surrounded her in Blue mana, knowing that teleportation with the effects of the storm above distorting it would be a very risky procedure but also aware that a fall from such a height would definitely kill Lelia because she was too weak to create her own shield.

A bolt of Blue mana shot out of his outstretched palm, bouncing over to Bruna's hands so that should could further manipulate the magic of salvation and infuse it with numerous blessings before letting go of it herself. It shot past the Archfiend of Depravity, who glared at it as if aware of its purpose but was too late to intervene and stop it as it turned and exited the gaping hole in the wall which the Guardian of Gol had just been thrown out of, and Tybalt dearly hoped that it would teleport Lelia back into the lower floors of the Tower of Ecstasy where she would probably be safe and not be damaged, but could pay no more heed to the fate of his comrade as he sensed a build up of mana from the Master of Wealth. He swivelled his aged head back to the youthful Welkalite who had been heavily wounded by Lelia before emitting the shockwave of vengeance and hatred which had ended with her hurled out of the top of the tower (although perhaps not dead, though Tybalt could no longer sense anything below this room so had no way of discerning her status), supply the Light of Alabaster with extra mana as she began to pre-emptively lay down magic in the space between the Lucaelians and the demon worshipper which would reduce the potency of their offensive magic and slow it down.

Eras howled in pain again, clutching his side and chest as the blood poured out of it and the upper arm of his left side flailed around as if trying to re-attach itself to the amputated forearm, and staggered towards the centre of the room, holding out his hand and grasping onto the golden statue of the Welkalite troop who had abandoned the weapon which had wounded his vindictive and uncaring master who had killed him. Severkarkyis intercepted an opportunistic bolt of light that Tybalt shot at the Master of Wealth, smiling sickly all the while and clearly entertaining the idea of letting it hit before he clamped down and destroyed the magic as his young Summoner staggered and swayed.

Eras coughed up thick streams of blood that frothed forth from his mouth, extending his left arm to try and wipe them away as if not yet coming to terms with the fact that it had been hacked off by his foes, and hissed in agony. He turned at the sculpture of the Welkalite attempting to remove his helmet, the golden eyes of the man open wide in fear behind his helmet and depicted exactly as they had been in the instant of his death, and rage filled the boy's mind at finding the traitorous soldier who had provided the weapon which had wounded him so. He punched the golden and dead man with his last remaining arm, gurgling and screeching in his tantrum-esque and incredibly petty fury, before it bounced off the hard gold and he was almost sent flying backwards.

Much as I enjoy watching you like this, a sharp voice, tinted with sadistic amusement and indulgent exultation, pierced into Eras's mind like a precise surgical instrument that had been rammed into his brain, and the boy cried out, blood-flecked spittle splattering over his chin as he clutched at his head, almost falling to his knees as the torment surged through his body which had never sustained more pain than having a servant "accidentally" cut him when manicuring his nails (said servant had been slowly and agonisingly dumped in a vat of molten gold made from the latest taxes from the Welkalite people and the funds from the parents of those sent to the Scholaria Magnus), before realising that he would toppled over if that happened and grabbing hold of the statue again. I would again like to remind you of the finer points of Black mana usage, which as usual you seemed to ignore when I informed you about the Inaurogos Maledictum. Get up and help me, you foolish brat, otherwise you will die and for all that I would like to see that I also wouldn't be able to remain in the world of man if that I happened.

The youngest remaining heir of the Stormwind noble family but the most powerful shot a glance that was twisted by the pain he was in a blurred with the tears of agony pouring out of his eyes directed at his greater demon, Severkarkyis not even looking back as he raised shadowy shields of corruption and debauchery to block the increasingly intense rain of light from the Lucaelian old man and his pompous bitch of an angel. "Mutual hatred" would be the best words to describe the relationship between the Master of Wealth and his new Summoning, but they both knew that Severkarkyis needed Eras to be his conduit to the material plane as otherwise he would be stuck within Sancturia and unable to influence reality much.

He smiled maliciously as he remembered the words of the demon (who had only ever been a tool to Eras just as he knew that the demon saw him as a human slave to project his will through), and ran malevolent and narcissistic Black mana through his last remaining hand. Severkarkyis had informed the nineteen year old that while the Inaurogos Maledictum sundered the bodies of the victims, and sent their souls into the nether realm, it left much of the essence of the person's soul within the statues they became – not enough to ever return the victim to life, but enough for what Eras was intending to do now. He was too above thanking his demon mentally for the information, but not above capitalising upon it and using it to his advantage.

While the Archfiend of Depravity held off the bombardment of incandescence mixed with countermagic that nullified many of the demonic creature's attempts to use mana in defence of its only link to the material plane, Eras plunged his right hand which was surrounded by selfish and parasitic dark energy mixed with rage of Red that powered his ferromancy (although now that the Master of Wealth could access Black mana his power levels had rose from almost nothing (as he had lacked the necessary passionate emotions to sustain much Red mana) to huge now that had was able to use magic that aptly reflected his internal personality). The gold that had subsumed the Custodian melted and rippled aside from his gauntlet due to his manipulation of the metal, and he sunk his hand deeper into what was once a living and breathing person but was now a life size figure of valuable metal.

The gilded Enforcer began to to melt, the solid form of the man turning molten because of Eras's magic but instead of flowing to the ground it was sucked in on itself, wrapping around the hand of the Master of Wealth as a glittering dark energy that twinkled dark purple mixed with avaricious gold sparkled across the metal. Eras knew that this was the life essence of the foolish man who had allowed him to be hurt, and greedily pulled it from the circulating coils of molten gold, ramming it into the stump of his elbow as his demon guarded him from attack. A sensation of lavish bliss sent shudders of ecstasy through the nineteen year old's body, and his golden eyes reflected his rapture at the feeling of the soul being used to repair his body – if this was what it felt like to drain the spirit and life essence of a person away, this utterly addictive and revitalising sensation that sent tremors of pleasure cascading up and down the Master of Wealth's spine, then he would have started doing it much earlier.

The gold particles began to shine with a dark and malicious light as they swirled around the stump of his forearm, and he couldn't resist the urge to laugh delightedly and triumphantly as his arm began to be repaired, the soul essence of his loyal warrior converted into a much better cause as a new arm began to be reconstructed – this one blossoming with darkness and inflected with twinkling and opulent glow and much better than the first, although it felt lacking in some unknown way that Eras simply put off to it not being finished yet. He greedily devoured the rest of the soul, his eyes roving and instantly alighting upon the closest statue of a Lucaelian who defiantly stared at the location the Master of Wealth's throne had once been in, but smothered the desire to begin consuming all of the gilded in his lust for more soul essence, knowing that he needed to fight before his demon was overwhelmed and that the spirit he had already absorbed would be more than enough to restore him for now.

Tybalt muttered a curse that he would have never let young Caiellis or Alexander hear from their mentor as the boy (who was technically an adult) began laughing insanely, blood still dripping from his open mouth and crimson-stained teeth from where he had coughed it up as his arm began to be regenerated by the darkness which had been fuelled by the consumption of one of the golden statues, a malignant purpose which Tybalt should have guessed – although in his folly he had assumed that the Master of Wealth had simply done it to expand his prosperity and make an impression on the Lucaelians. Although his eyes still highlighted his arrogance, there was a deeper insanity now nestled within the golden irises mixed with his desire to kill the invaders who had hurt him that Tybalt knew made him far more dangerous.

However, it was still shocking that the Welkalite was able to heal with the rain of blood- damn it! I should have thought of that, Tybalt harshly admonished himself, wondering where he got this reputation for being an intellectual giant from and hoping that his lack of foresight hadn't passed on to any of his students (apart from Johnias), as he realised that Eras had not been touched by the torrent of gore from the unnatural storm above, and as such would be able to revel in the full gourmet of draining powers afforded to him by amoral Black mana, not that he had used any yet.

Nevertheless, Tybalt could still change that, as the repairing process seemed to be taking quite an extended period of time because of the fact that the reconstruction of an entire arm that couldn't be even be achieved by White mana unless the wielder had immense healing power and mana was a length procedure – one that the Hierarch would disrupt. He sent a glance up at Bruna, who nodded, evidently having thought the same as him, but her eyes remained fixed on the greater demon who was still smirking perniciously at them, the four arms of the Archfiend of Depravity prepared to summon up masses of darkness that would drown out their light.

Tybalt levelled his staff, holding it with both hands and lowering it so that its tip was pointing at the demon, and blasted another scorching spear of radiance at the beast which was empowered by his hatred of all things born in the darkness of the world combined with the enchantments that made his mana usage more efficient and as such less draining that he had been given time to cast while the Master of Wealth had been screaming in pain. Severkarkyis smiled, reversing two of its touching hands and vomiting out a spray of solid murk from them that muffled the power of the light and drowned the sacred incandescence with its repulsive stench which was strangely appetising to the senses until Tybalt blocked it out by re-conjuring the ethereal respirator and purifier he had worn earlier which had been destroyed by the demon's magic.

Bruna shot her own shaft of luminescence circled with runes of Blue that would improve its accuracy at the demon, who absorbed it with another cast portal into the void that gluttonously drank the light before closing off. Severkarkyis laughed this time, the sound at once malicious, sibilant and tempting, and bellowed, "Why do you keep trying, Bruna? You have already established the futility of such an action, so why bother? Is it just the stubbornness of angels and those who blindly follow them and suckle the sacred milk of the sanctimonious teets that you feed them with preventing you from giving in? Or something else?"

Tybalt knew full well that without expending all of his mana in a single blast that would leave him wide open to the Master of Wealth (even then it might not work) he wouldn't be able to banish the admittedly very formidable demon back into the cantankerous Mind Realm of Eras, but he was not aiming for the spawn of the forsaken abyss – merely carefully manipulating the Archfiend of Depravity out of the way of his real target. Tybalt wasn't possessed of Blue mana that would allow him to catch glimpses of the future like some oracles of different cultures (or the Sightless Sibyls of the Grafnica Dominion which had been used to predict the movement of Lucaelian forces during the war with them), but his magic of foresight and perception coupled with his cognizance enhancing enchantments still allowed him to see the perfect areas to strike that would move the demon exactly where he wanted him.

"I'm getting tired of you now, old bastard," the voice of the Welkalite boy floated from across the room and into Tybalt's ears, though he paid the words no heed as he launched another sphere of brilliance at Severkarkyis in time with Bruna's frequent blasts of light, forcing the being to swat it aside as it slammed into the floor and expanded, exploding in a release of blinding illumination which lit up the dark chamber as the demon protected itself from the relentless barrage of flashing rays from the Light of Alabaster. Eras continued as if they weren't in the middle of violent battle, "If you give up quickly I promise to give you a quick death so that I can see the princes soon."

There was a slight modicum of hope inflecting the child's (as that was what he was, irrespective of his age, although it insulted children that Tybalt knew/had known to be compared to the Master of Wealth) voice that almost had the Capitalia Lux Hierarch laughing scornfully at the absurd notion that he would simply surrender and the even more ridiculous possibility that the Welkalite would make his death quick even if he did, and he kept up his assault on the Archfiend of Depravity made possible by his Blue mana that allowed him to form the spells within his mind much faster. Eras sighed, though their was nothing genuine about it, and growled, "As I thought. I'm going to make your death painful, old man. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll keep you alive and force you to watch as the rest of you damn Lucaelians are ripped apart by the Lord of Riots with me at his side. Actually, that sounds much more fun than simply killing you. I can always do that afterwards, after I have made you see the Kingdom of Light that you loved so much laid to ruin and plundered of all of its riches by the burning fire of the New Empire and every person you hold dear agonisingly tortured by our artisans of pain and killed right in front of your eyes. Oh yes, that sounds much more satisfying."

If Eras thought that this was going to intimidate Tybalt, who had heard much greater and more meaningful threats as he stared down greater demons, his hopes would be dashed, although he was correct in thinking that any pain inflicted upon those that the Hierarch cared about was infinitely worse than anything done to the seventy seven year old himself. He directed a glance over to the bloodied Master of Wealth who looked far less pampered now that he had blood pouring from the wounds in his chest (as the repairing of his arm was currently using the soul he had devoured), his wrist beginning to be formed by the dark and depraved magic he was utilising.

The boy was gazing at him and his angel, and Tybalt switched his vision back to the much more important Archfiend of Depravity. Blue mana swirled around his sight of the demon, his mind informing him where to strike next to make sure that the beast moved even further away from his target and knowing that because of the build up of offensive mana he sensed from the lord of this tower and his Summoning knew that he would have to enact his plan soon.

"Perhaps I will start with your beloved princes first, just to prove that the Lucerna line that you love so much is just as mortal and insignificant as the rest of us, and that under immense amounts of pain they too will submit. I think I will begin with the small one, precious little Caiellis who is really too young to be going to war, and do unto him what that silent bitch did to me a thousand times more painfully, of course," Eras taunted, probably having seen by now how protective the Lucaelians were over their Lucernas – especially the youngest prince, as the Master of Wealth had seen him when he had been abducted. The adolescent knew that he was saying things that would fill the Hierarch with rage, but instead of provoking a furious response and disrupting Tybalt's concentration the seventy seven year old simply used it to nourish his hatred of those who had given in to the honeyed temptations of the abyssm, and Eras continued, a hint of frustration at no response being drawn out from his dour opponent creeping into his voice, "He was absolutely adorable when he was in pain, and the looks on all your faces – especially his daddy's and big brother's expressions – when Arendus brought him back into the Scholaria hall were priceless. I'd love to watch him writhe again while they watch, powerless to help. Yes, I will definitely start with him."

He may be very young and small, even for his age, but Caiellis would kill you before you could even try. If Alexander hadn't already ripped you apart for stepping within a hundred metres of his brother with the intent to hurt him. Or Marik hadn't yet hacked your worthless hide to pieces for even daring to mention causing pain to his sons, Tybalt thought, though he did not let those metal musings show on his face as an expression of utter concentration despite the insulting words of the Master of Wealth that sounded like they were being whispered vehemently into his ear, a technique that would scare those inexperienced with the ways of demons or those who used their dark power to further themselves.

Eras wiped blood from his face, before gathering Red and Black mana into an orb at the end of his free hand as it reacted to the presence of his own life fluids, combining his rage at what had been done to his arm and chest (that was still bleeding heavily, making him feel incredibly faint but accentuating the effects of the narcotics and stimulants effused into the clammy air of the pinnacle room and making every sensation sing to him, heightening the pleasure that he felt).

He noticed how Severkarkyis was defending him from each of the enemies' attacks, knowing that while the demon would never give up anything for him that Eras was the only way that the Archfiend of Depravity could enact its own personal plan in the world with the advent of the Lord of Riots – which would allow all of his servants to enter the material plane from Sancturia, as some were doing through the Tempest of Craving even now, but would be too late for his demon's own agenda. The nineteen year old smirked. He didn't know what the plan of Severkarkyis was, nor did he care because his use for the demon was coming to an end (a new, more enticing Summoning had recently entered Usnaan and the Master of Wealth could sense that dear Archlord Tradax had been slain by Prince Caiellis already, meaning that this … opportunity was free for the taking), but it must have been very important for the Archfiend of Depravity if it was risking its well-being (regardless of the fact that it would heal within Eras's Mind Realm should it be hurt or slain) for the teenager who he very clearly hated.

Eras let his ambition that had been brought to the fore with the information that Tradax had been murdered and leadership of the New Empire of Passion was up for grabs but subsumed by his panic and pain caused by that Lucaelian whore who had dared to wound him run through him, strengthening his Black mana with his longing (or perhaps lust) for even greater power and influence and most of all adulation as the orb that was like a physical representation of the Welkalite sun apart from the fact that it had a core of molten gold and emitted streaks of deep darkness instead of solar flares. He giggled, almost hysterically, as he visualised the amount of pain this would cause to the old bastard who was in his way now and attempting to stop his ascension, imagining his aged body crushed to a pulp and immolated beyond recognition by his magic that absorbed his venerable but still strong soul.

The Master of Wealth hurled the miniature sun at the Lucaelian and his angel, knowing that they could not use their pesky countermagic to prevent it because of the amount of mana he had poured into the huge fireball of superheated liquid gold and tenebrosity. Tybalt placed his trust (and some extra mana) within Bruna as she shot towards the huge release of mana, the haft of her staff luminescing with Blue mana as the tip was still shining with pure light. She span it in a circle, etching the symbol of Avacyn's collar into the air interposed by a triangle that could have represented the three daughters of Avacyn who led the three Flights of the rest of the Angel of Hope's angels, and closing her eyes as a hymn of words spilled from her angelic lips and took physical form as they collected around the impressive sigil she had created in front of the rushing projectile of the Welkalite youth.

Tybalt launched another incandescent array of light at the Archfiend of Depravity to keep his attention distracted from Bruna as she prepared to deal with Eras's attack, to which Severkarkyis battered each one aside with his hands coated in shadow, the reflected rays carving deep grooves into the ground and burning apart the opulent carpet which had mostly been destroyed because of the fighting upon it. The demon was still gazing at the Light of Alabaster in spite of Tybalt's relentless assault of blinding flashes and beams of radiance that nevertheless manipulated the nether beast into almost the exact position he wanted it, close to the ground and its master that it evidently detested but was willing to protect for now.

Bruna gathered Blue mana to the bottom of her staff, a tip of sapphire that was supplemented by blinding light from the White part of the magic forming upon the Sancturia metal as the emblem of Avacyn's Collar gleamed with holy light as the burning assault of molten (or even gaseous and boiled it was that hot) metal and darkness approached the Light of Alabaster. She knelt down, furling her majestic and bright wings which had been covered in soot and darkness because of the battle the had been fighting but had lost none of their exalted grandeur, and slammed the bottom of her staff into the ground, wrapping her hands around it as if in prayer or repose.

The triangle symbol combined with the emblem of the Angel of Hope flashed brightly with both protective and avenging White mana and altering Blue magic, and as the gigantic spell that left contrails of sickly sweet darkness in its wake impacted upon the sigil which was growing in size every second, the light of Bruna's magic eclipsed the darkness and fire of the Master of Wealth's magical assault and repelled it. The ideogram etched into the air in front of the Light of Alabaster stayed resolutely still in the face of the corruption and rage blasted against it, and had Tybalt been on the other side he would have seen that the triangle now reflected a mirror image of what was occurring on the other side of it. Reflective Blue and White mana shot out of each of the three corners of the symbol, arcing in coiling trails around the fireball and suddenly flashing with incandescence.

The Hierarch did not watch, knowing from many long years of fighting alongside his intelligent and wise angel what she had been planning to do to the assault of the impudent and arrogant Eras (perhaps it would teach the brat a lesson in patience and that hubris never paid off). The flames turned back on themselves, and the trajectory of the missile of fiery taint and gold switched entirely. The inferno changed direction with none of its energy lost, shooting through the air towards Eras who raised a wall of gold quickly as he cried out in utter panic and shock, his mask of self confidence and superiority dissolving in the face of this spontaneous reversal, and Severkarkyis placed barriers of twisting shadow in front of the shield that his Summoner had created before realising the intended target of the redirected unnatural conflagration.

"Don't protect yourself, you foolish brat! Guard the ceiling!" the demon roared as the roiling fiery explosion of shadow, ambition, greed and hatred rushed towards the ornate plafond which was covered in numerous portraits and murals depicting the Orders of Passion as saviours that had helped free the Welkalite people from the yoke of their oppressors and aided Jarred Redhand in slaying the Last Tyrant and establishing the culture of freedom and independence that now apparently filled the liberated New Empire of Passion – though in the Capitalia Lux Light-bearer's mind, the Welkalites had simply swapped one set of dictators (the ancient and inbred line of despotic tyrants who had ruled with the dragons inherent and exclusive to their bloodline in a savage parody of the Lucerna monarchs of the Kingdom of Light) for another (the Masters of Passion, ravenous, avaricious and extremely ambitious individuals who acted in their own interests and consorted with foul demons of hedonism and destruction in the furthering of their personal goals).

Eras ignored his demon's words, ensuring that his wall of roiling molten gold was centred firmly around himself in case any attacks from the two servants of light were directed towards him, and Severkarkyis snarled in frustrated fury as it beat its wings and launched its demonic form into the air. It destroyed the fireball with a slash of noxious gloaming which split the inferno in two before it could crash into the ceiling, the two halves of it smashing into the ground in bursts of flame and liquid metal that sloshed around and solidified – to Eras's horror and anger two of the statues infected with the curse of the Inaurogos Maledictum were destroyed by the careless deflection of his attack.

The Archfiend of Depravity paid no attention to the boy's protestations, dislocating and snapping the twenty totals digits of its four hands in sickening and inhuman extensions of bone as it spoke with a forbidden tongue that Tybalt had to focus on mentally blocking out unless he wanted the deepest recesses of his mind to be forever stained by the rancid touch of the darkness. Shields of shadow were conjured into the air as Tybalt stepped up his luminescent assault, increasing the amount of power he was pouring into his attacks as the amount of obstruction from his target of the plafond was increased by the demon.

Severkarkyis roared at him, the sound splitting the air and vomiting out a spray of dark shadows that formed claws from the glittering jewel inlaid into the centre of the demon's pallid forehead. The arms of darkness cut through the air towards Tybalt, swiftly followed by the demon himself, Severkarkyis evidently deciding that a combination of offence and defence would be necessary for him to prevent the strategy of the Hierarch as he flew towards the aged old man who stood defiantly in the face of the snarling greater demon that descended upon him. More shadowy tendrils ripped themselves out of the miasma of absolute and degenerate darkness that wriggled behind the spawn of the infernal realm, adding themselves to their brethren that already lashed towards the aged Tybalt, and each one of the grasping claws of the shadow split off from each other, dividing in two and then into four equal sized tendrils like some sort of malicious and debased hydra or the roots of a corrupted tree, massively increasing the amount of protection covering the ceiling as several of the talons of blackness carved smoking glyphs of corruption into the air that formed their own shields of void energy.

Tybalt made no moves to avoid the rush of the demon, Bruna already countering some of the spells that the Master of Wealth was attempting to cast and fortifying the shields around herself and her old Summoner, but mostly channelling mana into the venerable seventy seven year old so that he could use his own magic to its fullest effect. A sphere of light sprung up around Tybalt as a wave of weaker darkness washed over him, scratching at the inviolate protection he had conjured around himself by crashing the bottom of his staff into the ground, several other spheres spinning around the first as arcing lines of runes etched themselves around the orb encapsulating the form of the old man, grand characters spinning in orbiting circles throughout the interior of the sphere of safety that burnt the shadows scrabbling against it and spilling forth from the ancient quartz topping Tybalt's oaken sceptre.

Severkarkyis growled at him and raised its two upper hands above its head, gripping onto the shadow as bolts of light from Tybalt began to puncture some of his dark miasma before being consumed by the tempestuous and frenzied tenebrosity. The hands gripped more of the shadow essence, increasing the power of the rest of it with the demon's foul hatred of all things that derived their source from the holy wellspring of light that was the Sanctum Angelica in Sancturia, and gigantic mouths of darkness began to be formed out of the darkness, glowing and poisonous saliva dripping from their gaping maws as they gnashed their ravenous teeth together in expectation of the meal presented towards them as they rushed towards the Capitalia Lux Hierarch, designed to prevent him penetrating past the demon's magic to the plafond that was his target above.

However, there was a reason why Tybalt Litria was once of the most renowned mage priests to have ever lived within the Kingdom of Light. If one thought that the Lucerna family had powerful usage of the magic of light, they would be shocked to find out that he had taught each living Lucerna what they knew now of the spells of incandescence – even though each had developed their own conjurations of radiance that matched their respective types of mana and inner personalities, each one had started out with the basics that Tybalt had taught them to allow them to wield and manipulate the light with their emotions, thoughts and mana.

Blue and White mana surged through the man, who felt younger than he had done ever since he had last cast a spell of this potency during the civil war (as it had annihilated the greater demon possessing old and stubborn Hierarch Incedian which had almost killed the young princes and their Guardian and corrupted the armies of Civitas Sol into fighting against the loyal legions of King Marik), the intensity of the magical energy flowing through him revitalising his aged limbs and infusing him with a sense of purpose that filled his mind with solace knowing that he still had power to wield in defence of Lucael and the children that would inherit the kingdom from the old. He lifted his staff up above his head, orderly White and Blue mana coursing through the handle and making it thrum with lawful and righteous power as the energy of the mind and of devotion to the light coalesced in front of his palms.

The shadows buffeting the shield around the Hierarch were burnt away by a pulse of cleansing mana carried on winds of pure force that sprung up around Tybalt, the movement of the air in opposition to that of the violent and tainted squall from the Tempest of Craving, the circulation of air around the Lucaelian forming an orderly zephyr of light as the intensity of the luminescence puling from every atom of the crystal topping Tybalt's staff rose to levels that would have been compared to a Lucerna's had any been there. Tybalt was apprehensive of the possibility of finishing the entire fight with the Master of Wealth through this single spell, but he knew that if it was uninterrupted then it would turn the tide to him and bring him even closer to ending the narcissistic brat who did not in any way deserve his position of power.

Tybalt raised his staff, Severkarkyis swooping low in an attempt to snatch him up with his claws or devour him with his summoned mouths of darkness, but the light pulsating from the Hierarch's position was moulded by the Light of Alabaster into alabastrine restraints that wrapped around the Archfiend of Depravity as it shrieked in frustration and was dragged to the ground, thrashing and screaming every second and almost breaking free within less than a second before being hit by several bolts of light and meddling Blue mana that disrupted its magical power for short moments. It would not be imprisoned for long, that much was certain, but Tybalt only needed a few seconds to complete his spell.

Golden circles of holy words in the revered language of the angels which had been passed down in fragments to their fervent devotees of the Kingdom of Light shone into being around the floor of Tybalt, reflecting the Summoning ritual of Alexander Ensis Lucerna in that respect but not shining upwards with overwhelming force, instead conjuring winds of holy power that far surpassed any gales of mundane origin that zephyr mages of other factions could call into existence, each of the winds carrying hymns of Hope that sang within the highest room of the largest Tower of Ecstasy and drowned out the depraved screaming of the darkness.

"Suprema Iudicium!" Tybalt proclaimed, his voice coloured only with righteousness and detestation of the darkness, but no emotions other than that as it split through the din of the battle and finished his massive spell. A beam of light shot upwards from the Hierarch, a single shaft of incandescence that far outclassed any of the Archfiend of Depravity's pitiful attempts to deflect or absorb it as it smashed into the ornate ceiling, the air in the room saturated with thrumming energy as Tybalt raised his staff to the sky. The plafond exploded, massive chunks of rocks sent crashing into the room below it, splattering statues of men and women which had once been living and breathing people into pools of gold and smashing apart priceless riches as the entire roof of the Tower of Ecstasy was destroyed.

Eras shrieked in pain when he realised too late why Severkarkyis had been so intent on protecting the ceiling instead of his master, as the torrential rain of blood outside of the tower that indiscriminately affected and drowned both friend and foe splattered onto him and the interior of his precious pinnacle room. Tapestries were soaked through with the contents of the perpetual and endless Rain of Gore, masterpieces of art and passion ruined by the downpour of lifeblood that stained them forever crimson and turned them sodden and unusable, but Eras cared nothing for that when the rain touched him. A spiking pain thrust its way through the Master of Wealth's entire body, but mostly in his new arm, the hand that was in the process of being formed spasming uncontrollably and sending pulses of agony throughout the nervous system of his slender form. The golden arm instantly started to corrode and burn under the effects of the Rain of Gore that prevented healing, and if Eras had been in less torment he would have cursed his cunning opponent who would wield the demonic blessings of their dark patrons against him and prevent him regenerating his limbs.

More agony rushed through him, making him fall too his knees as white hot reverberations of sheer pain spread through his limbs. The dark purple and forbidden gold glow of his healing magic which used souls instantly exploded in a spray of sadistic and vindictive darkness combined with black and red flames of hellfire which punished his healing and fluoresced obtrusively with a violent and vibrant scarlet core that caused him even more burning pain on that side of his body and started to melt his new limb, choking smoke of the most malicious origin rushing into the boy's face and making it seem like every sense receptor on his body was on fire, a sensation that wouldn't have been unwelcomed had it been planned and combined with the ecstasy of proper and rapturous torture.

The Master of Wealth coughed, placing his other and still natural hand in front of his face as the dripping remnants of the other began to slough away from it, the gold melting off of the new bones and exposing the fleshy and ugly corruption beneath which had been hidden under the pretence of the false grandeur of the expensive metal once coating his new arm, the original of which had been amputated by the other Lucaelian warrior that Severkarkyis had killed. That was until his last remaining golden gauntlet began to melt into the skin of his organic hand because of the sheer heat of the suffocating and malignant soot which reminded him of a darker and much more powerful version of his own magic. He coughed again, a hacking and wheezing sound that had him vomiting up blood from his chest wounds that had not been repaired as his robes were stained by the Rain of Gore that the cursed Tradax had allowed to pour down upon the city of Usnaan, the expensive fabrics ruined by the downpour of blood that Eras had until this point been immune to.

His blood was extremely sticky and flecked with droplets of tar from the smoke which had lodged within the boy's lungs, almost stopping him from breathing completely and making him extremely light-headed, which was not an entirely unpleasant sensation as the Master of Wealth was well used to the feeling, but it amplified his pain. And this was not the good type of pain, not at all. Then it stopped, the agony related to the healing punishing impact of the Rain of Gore which would normally not have affected the Welkalite warriors coursing through every single molecule of the nineteen year old ceased, but with it the healing that his new arm growing where that Lucaelian wench had dared to desecrate his noble flesh stopped repairing itself.

Eras brought the last dripping remnants of the once perfect limb in front of him, the gold that he knew now was a cheap fake already melted off and leaving a structure of unnaturally fused unnatural bones resembling some sort of savage claw in its place. The bones were blackened by the fire of hell which had raged through them, leaving them charred parodies of human anatomy that still hurt a huge amount, but more than the pain was the horror that Eras felt at having this as one of his arms, like he was some sort of filthy celebrant from the other inferior Orders of Passion which modified their own (admittedly impure) bodies to further their experiences of lesser and vulgar pain or begged for mutations from the demons wielded by their respective Masters. No, Eras was of pure Stormwind blood that had been untainted by mating with those of other bloodlines, and this was a defilement of that. However, he knew that he could heal it if he erased the stain of the Rain of Gore upon him and kept the statues of soldiers infused with their soul essences until after this battle.

Nonetheless, Tybalt was not yet done, and this was the only the start of his spell in his plan to end the Master of Wealth and remove his arrogant taint from the world of mankind and to banish his foul demon into the depths of the abyss like the animal it was. He spoke a few more holy words in the language used in Matalis Ortus Lucerna's time as more mana flowed through him – as the first pillar of light which had shattered the protection the ceiling offered and annihilated Eras's shelter from the Rain of Gore which would stop his foul form of healing – but these were drowned out by the glorious and heavenly sound of the spell he was casting. Severkarkyis launched himself at the Hierarch, intending to batter through his shield now that the old man's mana was diverted to casting the Suprema Iudicium instead of protecting himself, but was intercepted mid-air by the Light of Alabaster.

The angel and the demon tangled viscously, the maws of shadow around the Archfiend of Depravity snapping at the seraph as she warded them off with blasts of White mana. The two flew across the room as the demon pushed against the angel, Bruna holding him off with swipes of her shining staff as the spawn of the nether realm tore at her with its claws. Neither remained unscathed, Severkarkyis sustaining heavy burn wounds from purifying light shone onto its corrupted flesh, and Bruna was raked with malicious claws that tore through her intricate armour which was now blemished with the Rain of Gore and her own crimson blood leaking out through her wounds as she smashed the demon away and erased the noxious toxins already running through her angelic blood vessels with a pulse of dispelling energy which ripped into some of the murky shadows encompassing the demon.

Another holy pillar of golden light, this one from above the Tower of Ecstasy and with much more power within its incandescent structure than the first which had obliterated the ostentatious ceiling, crashed down from the roiling heavens, and although it had originated from just below the dark mass of the Tempest of Craving it appeared as such that it seemed to penetrate through the unholy storm of chaos and blasphemous pleasure. The celestial column slammed into the ground, blasting blinding and orderly light everywhere across the room and eradicating each and every one of the Welkalites and Lucaelians who had been turned into golden effigies of their former selves so that the Master of Wealth, who was screaming in indignation, greed and pain, could not use them for any more debased purposes like consuming them to heal himself.

The sickly sweet scent of the massive amount of gaseous drugs effused into the clammy atmosphere inside of the Tempest of Craving was destroyed by the huge ray of light that crashed into the building, the only weakness of the Suprema Iudicium the fact that the caster could not aim it precisely at a specific foe and that it was supposed to be utilised against swarms of weaker enemies, but this one of Bruna's ultimate spells was extremely powerful no matter in which circumstance it was called upon to purge the heretics from the world. The light blinded the occupants in the room apart from Tybalt and the Light of Alabaster who channelled more mana into her Summoner so that this second part of the spell could be completed fully – as if he lost control of the mana or it was somehow disrupted the consequences could be potentially catastrophic.

The winds blew Tybalt's robes which had been blessed ten times by the previous Hierarch Mereditha, one for each of the First Sisterhood angels (including Orzhova, which at the time much younger Tybalt had been slightly shocked about that as the Angel of the Black Sun (whom he did not know the true name of until Caiellis unlocked her as his Summoning) had been removed from presumably all other rituals in the church of Lucael), the golden lettering etched upon them from all of those years ago glimmering with a dazzling luminosity as they rose upwards with the magic that he was casting, the golden circles around him revolving at an implacable and inexorable speed which represented the endless determination and faith of those from the Kingdom of Light against the darkness and in their Lucerna leaders who had been their saviours from the predations of the abyss and the powerful civilisations which had chosen the path of evil and preyed on the humans loyal to White mana until they had all been crushed under the might of Lucael.

The light was all consuming, ripping apart the furniture inside of the pinnacle chamber into its constituent elements and scattering them on the winds of order and devotion, and Eras was assaulted by it on all sides as it reacted to the corruption of his dark heart and aimed itself towards him. The boy shrieked in sheer panic and tried to scramble away, falling over backwards with his mangled claw of an arm raised in front of his face like it could do anything to protect him, Red and Black mana flowing around him and forming shields of darkness and liquid gold in the face of the wrath of this extremely formidable old man who had never even given the Master of Wealth his name.

Severkarkyis! DO SOMETHING! The boy's mind howled desperately, a frantic plea for assistance from his demon that he had no idea if it reached or not – he could barely hear it himself over the deep and booming rumbling of the spell that his opponent was in the midst of casting, random beams of light flashing out from the main incandescent pillar and crashing into objects in the room, dissolving them into flecks of dust which were carried away by the tempestuous but not chaotic hurricane which had sprung up through the man's mana and that was strangely reminiscent of the beating of angel wings, just on a vast scale and multiplied to an immense magnitude of power.

Eras was sure that he could feel his very soul, condemned for its crimes against the Welkalite which was his birthright as a noble blooded scion of the Stormwind house, being ripped out of his body by the scouring winds that accompanied the blinding light which he would have been thankful hadn't touched him yet and continued to destroy the middle of the chamber if he could manage any thought other than fright. White and Blue mana combined was starting to become something that the young Master of Wealth hated more than anything else, as it was controlling, dominating and restricted all forms of passion in a way that White did but amalgamated with manipulating and peaceful Blue which made it even worse to Eras. It was the fact that it was sanctimoniously condescending, like it saw the nineteen year old as only a small child that had thrown away its chance of a life before it had even started it, like a foolish youth that knew nothing of the world and that he had caused himself to die by choosing the darkness over the light like he had had a choice in the matter and like the light would have ever given him the power that he deserved.

However, it saw him only as something to be killed, not forgiven for his apparent crimes which was only him exploiting his position to its fullest extent, but as it attempted to erase his individualistic existence it also pitied him for what he was, that he had never been allowed to experience the blessings of the "divine" Lucaelian angels that the people of that zealous, hypocritical and judging nation practically worshipped from what he had seen, like Sancturia creatures were anything more than tools to be wielded as their Summoners saw fit before they died and their Summonings were returned to the other realm.

That in turned sparked Eras's defiance, but also reinforced his panic rushing around the small flame that was his opposition to this magic which made him feel immensely stupid for dismissing his enemy as a senile old man and wanting to fight the Lucerna princes – as this aged bastard was clearly almost, if not more powerful than the rulers of the invading Kingdom of Light (although to be fair to the Lucaelians the Welkalites had provoked them in and had wanted a war with them at one point – just not now, as the princes were never supposed to have escaped and they should have been delivered to the one who had only been known as the Fallen when they contacted him).

The magic pulsed throughout the entire Tower of Ecstasy, destroying corruption and purging taint wherever it touched the blight of forbidden pleasure, but its effects were most focussed upon the top floor where it was searing itself into Eras's closed retinas and extirpating the room around it, the ceiling utterly destroyed with the walls that had been holding it up crashing to the ground as everything was covered in blood which was subsequently evaporated by the Suprema Iudicium before the pouring Rain of Gore stained everything with its crimson vitae once again. Eras was still pleading in his mind for the Archfiend of Depravity to help him, to save his life like it as his Summoning was supposed to, although he had no clue as to whether Severkarkyis could hear his mind voice (or if the mental communications even worked both ways) or had any intentions of aiding him even if he had.

Tybalt finished whispering the words of his spell, and as he did so a bolt of light slammed into the Master of Wealth, pushing him up against one of the walls which was crumbling precariously and almost placing him in the same position as the silent bitch who had hurt him. It destroyed his shield of corrupt shadows that he traded away portions of his life for as well as his ferromantic protection of gold which should have guarded the nineteen year old from the magical light, and a burning sensation without any form of heat powering it swept through the boy's already ravaged (in his opinion, at any rate) nervous system and would have made him fall spasming to his knees if he hadn't been held up by the luminescence. Instead, his limbs settling of thrashing uselessly, his clawed hand of fused bones opening and closing in a futile display of defiance as he cursed the stupidity of his demon in not saving his life.

Tybalt located the Master of Wealth, and tried to focus his mana on him so that the Archfiend of Depravity which Bruna was fighting with in a bloody and brutal display of savagery which had them both bleeding from numerous wounds could be banished back to Sancturia where it belonged, but it was a very ponderous process getting the central beam of light to move or be concentrated upon anything but the floor that it destroyed in front of it, the second to last tier of the Tower of Ecstasy visible through the annihilation of the middle of the pinnacle's flooring.

Then, something out of the corner of his eye caught his gaze, flashing towards the Tower of Ecstasy from the Tempest of Craving (disgusting names if he had ever heard them) with a blood red glow mixed with fire and ash. Instead of letting it break his concentration when he was so close to finishing and having expected aid to come from the damned storm for the Master of Wealth earlier since it had been depositing horrors that were mad creations of an atavistic and savage mind all across the battlefield, he simply poured more mana into the spell of judgement that he was casting, hoping that it would destroy the interlopers before they could even get close and make them regret their choice (or perhaps it was random and chaotic) of attacking the forces near the Tower of Ecstasy.

The whole building shook, rubble from its obliterated ceiling cascading down one side and pitching towards the battlefield below, a massive fall which would kill anyone easily, although the Towers of Ecstasy were not the tallest buildings that Tybalt had ever been in – the Cathedral of Salvation back in Capitalia Lux held that position. The aged Hierarch tried to keep as steady as he could without breaking off his spell that was very close to finishing, but at the back of his mind he was already calculating the speed at which the enemies from the Tempest would reach and how long it would take him to complete the Suprema Iudicium, coming up with strategies on what to do next instead of simply concentrating on his spell in lieu of all else.

He could take a massive risk and finish it, although that meant that if he misjudged the amount of time it would take for him to complete his spell and the speed at which the new enemies were approaching as they streaked out of the storm he could easily be killed or forced to close off the Suprema Iudicium too quickly without the proper ritual, a potentially volatile cause of action as the amount of mana coursing through his aged and non-Lucerna form could easily explode out of him and destroy everything in the vicinity without his controlling and guiding will regulating it.

Or he could slowly allow his mana to dissipate and lose the advantage he had gained, turning to face these new foes as they allied with the already undeservedly formidable Master of Wealth and reclaiming the energy he had spent with his Blue spells, but that would allow the Welkalites to regain the initiative and he probably wouldn't get another chance to enact the Supreme Verdict again. This was the much safer option, and while Tybalt had always been conservative and thoughtful in his fighting much like his youngest student was, less inclined to take risks and preferring longer but less dangerous battles (which is often why his and Alexander's personalities had clashed when the elder of the two was teaching the middle Lucerna), that did not mean that he was above taking heavy risks in his service to the kingdom – as if his sacrifice was to be worth something then he would have to, and if he wanted to die in battle like a Lucaelian should instead of withering away back in the kingdom then he had to be at the forefront of every battle.

It was the youngsters with their entire lives ahead of them that shouldn't be taking many risks, Tybalt personally thought, though he knew that it was precisely because they were young, naïve and slightly foolish that they endangered themselves and took unfavourable gambles (in his eyes, at any rate, which he knew were old and no longer in touch with the youth of the kingdom as much as he liked to try), because they didn't quite understand the value of their lives and how much longer they had to live for. However, this was precisely why the older generations had to throw themselves into hazardous situations – so that the younger members of the kingdom didn't have to and could live happy lives until it came to the point where they had to make that sacrifice for the next generation.

The Tower of Ecstasy shook again, the whole building swaying dangerously in a manner that it had clearly not been designed for as some of the fiery spawn of the Tempest of Craving impacted into the floors below, hopefully not near young Guardian Lelia if she still survived, and Tybalt made his choice. In spite of his mental speech to himself about the fact that the elders of the kingdom should be the ones that took the risks necessary to ensure the survival of Lucael in the unkind world, finishing his spell with the closeness of the new attackers would have been impossible even for one of Tybalt's power. It had nothing to do with being cowardly – as he was still in massive danger – but carrying on with the Suprema Iudicium would have ended in his death.

Nonetheless, the Capitalia Lux Hierarch still increased the intensity of the magic crashing into Eras Stormwind and sending waves of cleansing mana periodically washing over him and tearing apart his robes and armour as their dissolved molecules were blown away by the wind, and instead of instantly stopping his output of magical energy he converted the huge beam of light destroying the tower from within into several scintillating bolts of luminosity that scattered into the air when the man swept his shining staff to the side. Now that he no longer had to be utterly focussed on the ritual of the spell which he had decided not to follow through with because ending it in the time period he had would have been unrealistic (although he still devoted lots of mind power to ensuring that the mana he had emitted was returned to him safely instead of becoming hazardous and rushing back into him), he could see what was approaching the huge edifice to greed located on the crossroads between the Augur's Quarter and the Hedonist's Quarter, not that there was much to distinguish the two by.

There were several flaming imps trailing clouds of soot that flickered in the fiery embrace of vibrantly pulsating embers which had a strangely organic quality to them, but more concerning than the minor foes were the meteorites streaking past them towards the city that had been spat out by the rumbling storm which drank upon the violence in the City of Pleasure below it, huge masses of flame and volcanic rock that left contrails of smoky fire behind them as they seemed to target themselves at the exposed pinnacle of the tower Tybalt and Eras had been battling in.

The Tempest of Craving was also growing in size and proximity to the ground, no longer just an unnatural storm but glowing with a hellish light as the dark and angry clouds spat crimson lightning at an even greater frequency, making the Hierarch glad that it had not yet hit the Tower of Ecstasy considering that the gold plated cylinder was like a gigantic lightning rod which would easily conduct the atavistic and bloodthirsty electricity through its length.

Along with the lightning, numerous meteors like the ones which would be depositing fresh enemies and slaves of the dark to attack Tybalt were vomited out of its furious roiling depths, along with jets of angry fire that licked the air and made Usnaan into even more of a hellscape than it already was. The Hierarch felt sorry for little Caiellis and his father (and perhaps the middle Lucerna, as Tybalt had long since stopped being able to sense anything in the wider city past a gigantic influx of pandemonium inducing Black and Red mana that hurt the seventy seven year old's head and caused a headache in the background that he paid no attention to blotting out everything else, so Alexander could have made his way to the rest of his family without the Hierarch being able to know or not), as the land warping power of whatever was causing this would be heavily magnified at the origin point of the Tempest which drank upon the battle beneath it.

He could sense Red and Black mana not belonging to the Master of Wealth closing in on his position from the abused sky, and instead of quaking in his boots and doing nothing about it he split off the mana which was saturating the air without direction that had been part of his spell, instead aiming it at these new foes from Sancturia that were about to land and ruin his advantage over the almost broken Welkalite youth, though he supposed that the fact that they were attacking here meant that they weren't reinforcing the Welkalite troops as much elsewhere (as many were) and directing themselves at an old man who wasn't even a Lucerna.

The light split off into different beams of incandescence as Tybalt moulded them, using a form of a technique that he had seem Guardian Tristram used and asked the much younger man to teach him should they ever need to use it without the tallest of the civil war party being able to (the man had obliged politely, because this was at the time when the two had formed a bond over caring for the youngest Lucernas).

The White mana began to form a shimmering barrier of sparkling golden light under Tybalt's expert ministrations, though he fortified the energy of righteousness and community with Blue mana that would weaken the connection of the beings starting to attack him to the material world and thus allow his Lightmine Field to wreak more damage upon their insubstantial forms despite the fact that the city of Usnaan was permeated with power and currently a very strong link with Sancturia as the two worlds overlapped due to the power of what could only be an Archdemon which Caiellis and Marik were hopefully dealing with.

The field shone with mana, and the first of the screeching imps dove at the top of the Tower of Ecstasy, heedless of the danger. It charged through a shimmering but infinitesimally thin ray of magical energy which was an anathema to its abyssal form, and let out a strangled scream as it was cut in half by the enchantment, the two halves of the being shredded by more of the Lightmine Field as the imp was silently hacked into thousands of pieces by the incredibly sharp yet not brutal light that it passed through. The burning flesh of the desiccated Sancturia resident landed with a wet splat at Tybalt's feet, which normally the man would not have paid attention to but as it didn't dissipate it emphasised how much the foul domain of the Archdemon was overlaying over the material City of Pleasure whose masters had invited this corruption upon themselves and those who they were supposed to protect.

He didn't solely use his mana for defensive purposes, however, and Tybalt levelled his staff as he felt a surge of defiance of the darkness run through him and invigorate his venerable limbs most likely coming from Bruna, the canny seraph able to focus on aiding her old Summoner as well as fighting in very close and vicious quarters with a daunting greater demon. He wielded his thoughts and his emotions with a skill born of seventy years of using magic as he turned the desire for the youth of the kingdom to be able to live safe lives and his want of the Welkalite people to be safe from their oppressors as well so that their young (as even the old empire wasn't over three hundred years old yet) empire could develop and bloom into a peaceful civilisation into powerful weapons that swirled around the quartz of his old and modest but very strong sceptre.

He held the oaken staff with two hands as he aimed it at one of the closest imps of chaos the shrieked in a frenzy of pleasure in the ascent of their dark master and hunger for bloodshed which had passed through the Lightmine Field unscathed (partly because Tybalt's usage of the technique wasn't as good as Tristram's as the Guardian was a warrior heavily associated with defence and his Summoning was a daughter of Iona, the Angel of Protection). A pillar of light shot out from it, golden phosphorescence lancing out from the tip of the staff and splitting through the centre of the beast, but instead of stopping there Tybalt swept it around, cutting through several other imps and meteorites that when broke open ejected their cargo of howling devils that were also eradicated by the Hierarch's magic.

There were far too many of them for him to stop alone, although he reaped a formidable tally amongst the enemies that tried to get to the Tower of Ecstasy with his lances of incandescence that destroyed their tainted forms and ripped apart their corrupt essence, killing hundreds of enemies while the Archfiend of Depravity and the Light of Alabaster fought. Eras had scurried away, probably behind some pillar somewhere to nurse his wounds and recover now that he had been delivered from certain doom by the reinforcements which had luckily decided to aid him.

The nineteen year old hid behind one of the broken walls as he saw the flaming meteorites disgorging their foul cargo of devils onto the plaza, the beings ignoring or not seeing him as they flung themselves at the aged Lucaelian who had tried to kill the Master of Wealth. Eras was breathing heavily, clutching the wounds on his chest with his last remaining hand as he spat blood from the injuries he had sustained at the hands of the invaders who were more powerful than he had anticipated. However, he would not accomplish anything by hiding away here, and the need for vengeance burned bright within his breast, more mana pouring out of him than ever before and infusing him with a dark vitality that made his wounds all the more pleasurable. He needed more power. This sensation was intoxicating, and Eras was knew that he was on the cusp of something very special and needed to live long enough to see it through to the end – and that meant killing the old bastard who had delayed him this long already in the battle for Usnaan.

He placed his claw hand over his heart, pulling up more Black mana from within it that wrapped around the mutated and degraded limb that nevertheless was more adept at channelling the magic of darkness than his original hand, and winced at the glorious pain of sections of his spirit and life being given to the denizens of the dark for more mana, but it was necessary for him to achieve victory and Eras intended to gain immortality or at least a massively empowered longevity through his plans for the Lord of Riots. And anyway, what was a silver of one's soul compared to unimaginable wealth and power?

Tybalt erased a screeching devil that threw itself over in his direction from one of the projectiles of rock and hellfire which had landed on the exposed top floor, punching through one of the walls and destroying the igneous masonry, banishing it from the world in a release of controlled White mana. He then blasted a wave of Blue at another four that had been trying to sneak up on him, the force of the pulse knocking them backwards as their strength was sapped. The Blue mana took advantage of their lack of intellect to confuse and distract their primitive brains, manipulating their instinctual and simple though against them as their hunger for blood was turned towards one another. One devil started attacking its comrade, ripping chunks of flesh from the other creature of a psychopath's nightmares before it was impaled by a brutally spiked spear wielded by its victim.

By that time, Tybalt had generated enough White mana to annihilate them all in an explosion of blinding light, but now he was beginning to feel the strain of the battle on his old limbs. A sixth devil loped across the ground, its blood red flesh slick with more gore from the unholy tempest it had emerged from, and the Hierarch spun around, smashing his staff through its head and augmenting his unimpressive physical strength with White auras and magic that caused the head of the being the explode with little resistance as the man caved it it. His instincts that were not as honed as some warriors' but heightened by his perception augmenting Blue mana screamed at him to move, and the seventy seven year old dove forwards, ignoring his aching bones.

A savage and barbaric axe missed him by millimetres but was instead embedded within his enchanted robe, the fabric that was suffused with mana only tearing slightly in the face of the weapon, though the fact that Tybalt was caught on the weapon sent him lunging forwards and whipping backwards instead of executing the roll perfectly. A snapping face plunged in front of his own as he was dragged backwards by his robes, spittle infused with unnatural blood and making bile rise within Tybalt's stomach dripping down his face as the devil stared down at him, its small, piggy eyes alight with a hunger to cause this new victim pain and devour his flesh in an orgy of gluttony.

Tybalt instantly activated one of the many spells woven into his Hierarch outfit that did not require much of his own mana nor for him to think about it much. It only affected those that were touching the robe and those that were incredibly stupid, but the devil came under both of those categories and blinked in surprise when the Hierarch faded from vision. It squinted, cocking its head to one side with an expression of utter bemusement forming similar to that a young child would wear forming on its cruel features as it stared at the place that its prey had been in. Then, dark frustration began to work its way into the being's glowing eyes, and it hissed, sending its foul saliva flying all over Tybalt's face as a forked tongue cut itself on unnaturally sharp teeth that couldn't fit in the devil's medium sized mouth.

The Hierarch scowled contemptuously of the idiotic foe and touched it on the forehead with the three middle fingers of his free hand. A pulse of dispelling and cleansing White mana erupted from it, sending the devil sprawling back, and while Tybalt had never been invisible in the first placed it seemed to the spawn of the storm that he had materialised out of nothing, before the man put the being out of its misery with a jab of the bottom of his staff which was coated in White mana.

Then a massive impact sent the seventy seven year old sprawling as hot air washed over him and seared his skin, shards of rock embedding in his robes as some pierced to the wrinkled flesh underneath and drew blood as the man was sent flying. The world passed by him in a blur as he landed, cracking his head against a rocky piece of debris as he scraped his hands on pieces of destroyed masonry, a ringing sound exacerbated by the rumbling of the storm combined with the shaking of the earth which he had realised was not strictly from the cataclysmic impacts of the meteors but more tectonic.

Blearily, Tybalt blinked the blood out of his old eyes before erasing it fully with White and Blue mana as the world kept vibrating and shuddering like the entire central Tower of Ecstasy was in the midst of some sort of convulsive fit, and cursed his ageing body for suffering more from these wounds than a normal Lucaelian soldier would – especially with the healing gifted to him by White mana denied by the bloody torrent. His vision was blurry until his magic cleared it, and the man stifled a gulp of fear as on the ground where he had been stood a cavernous tunnel had now been cleared, and out of it rose a gigantic wurm that stared down at him with small and blind eyes indicating that it lived most of its life in an underground Sancturia habitat.

The wurm's mouth opened as more of its vast snaky body emerged from the hole it had burrowed, its skin like the rock of a desolate wasteland as its entire being was suffused with a hunger for violence and food that told Tybalt that this was no Summoning from the Order of Wealth. The mouth of the huge creature was gaping and cavernous, and out of the gaping maw of the wurm emerged a woman that walked on her Summoning's gravely tongue and paid no attention to the being's massive teeth that dripped with its saliva. If Tybalt had been observing the creature from a distance, he would have recalled that wurms were usually beings of Green mana, not that much was known about the Erian Conclave and the creatures that lived within their Deep Forest or its corresponding location within Sancturia, but right now he was only concerned by thoughts of survival.

The woman was wearing a gladiator's mask that concealed half of her face, and dirty orange hair fell down the other, almost hiding her eyes that were violet spheres. She was wearing the garb of a fighter from the Order of Violence, but somehow more refined than the other gladiator outfits that Tybalt had seen the rangy and lean members of that order which lived for the thrill of bloody combat clad themselves in, and while she was lean with muscle she gave off the impression that she fed very well.

She looked exactly like one would envision if they combined the Order of Gluttony with the Order of Violence, and Tybalt postulated that she may have been a member of the former before joining (or defecting to because the Hierarch didn't pretend to remember how the Orders of Passion worked) the latter, before removing the irrelevant trains of mental musing from his mind. Who she was did not matter, and why she was here also did not matter, all that did matter was that she was attacking Tybalt and trying to kill him which went against the seventy seven year old's current modus operandi of slaying the Master of Wealth who had probably recovered by now.

She jumped out of her wurm's mouth, giving it an affectionate pat on the nose (if that was what those two holes were) before drawing a large cleaver and advancing on the Hierarch, who noticed that the rocks around him were moving through the usage of geomancy and encircling round his wiry limbs as her wurm rose up and stared down at the trapped man as its tongue licked its huge and circular lips.

Tybalt gasped in shock as a familiar angelic figure lanced down from the sky, her face set in grim determination as her silver armour reflected her hated of all things associated with evil. The blade of steely retribution in the angel's hands sang as she plunged down from the sky, and rammed straight into the wurm's head as she landed atop it in an explosion of White mana that punched through the being's brain and had it thrashing before dissipating from the world. As if unconcerned by the death of her Summoning, the woman charged towards Tybalt with more haste and urgency than before as her rocky magic clamped down hard on his arms and legs with enough strength to leave painful bruises.

Another angel flashed into vision, this one far more familiar to the seventy seven year old as she shot towards the newly arrived Welkalite. Her staff was extended outwards, and Bruna flung it at the woman. It hit her around the waste, lifting her off her feet with the force of the impact as Tybalt's angel performed a short range and flickering teleportation to her sceptre, the Avacyn's Collar symbol topping the elegant and distinctive weapon holding the woman still as Bruna transported herself through the aether to it. She lifted the Welkalite off of the ground even further, and blasted a large beam of White through her staff that killed the almost random woman instantaneously as the cleansing mana eliminated her life force.

Bruna turned to Tybalt, the Light of Alabaster's face dripping with blood that almost made her seem haunting and terrifying (and reminding him very much of Caiellis when he had seen the boy after his most recent migraine) but instead emphasised her purity in the face of evil as well as making her look more grim. The angel hauled him out of the rubble, the touch forceful and firm but gentle and not causing Tybalt any pain as he silently thanked his angel, before turning to his other saviour who had killed the wurm.

Ophelia stared back, emotionless apart from her detestation of demons, though there was a glimmer of respect for Tybalt in her perfect and almond eyes that the man thought was entirely undeserved, though the fact that the Angel of Retribution was here confirmed that Lelia still lived and had recovered enough from her ordeal to Summon. The Guardian of Gol ascended the tunnel that the wurm had just emerged from as it burrowed through the tower, bowed her head towards Tybalt and holding two Lucaelian swords that she must have taken from one of her dead men in her hands that were slick with devil blood, suggesting that she had been attacked wherever she had been delivered to by the Hierarch's magic.

Tybalt returned the wordless thanks, before a voice that dripped with contempt and conceit which he had hoped to erase completely broke into his mind, "So you're still alive, mute? No matter. I'll enjoy killing you much more with my own bare hands this time around."
Tybalt turned to Eras again, noting that Lelia was exhausted despite the fact she had saved him and knowing that the Angel of Retribution would not be able to last much longer with her Summoner's declining mana, and saw the Master of Wealth stood in the centre of the crumbling room next to a heavily breathing Severkarkyis, though all of the demon's wounds were reciprocated onto Tybalt's own heavily injured angel. Black mana surged around the boy, giving his golden eyes an exultant tint of deep darkness that made the Hierarch wary of him, and the boy extended his new claw towards the four loyal warriors of light as devils surged around him, more meteorites landing behind him and emptying its foul cargo of foes onto the pinnacle chamber.

"I am going to make you both pay so much for what you have done to me. I wonder how much pain it will take to break you and make you scream!" the boy shrieked, insanity suffusing every syllable of his sybaritic voice as he howled in pain and hatred at the Lucaelians and laughed at the roiling sky. Tybalt shook his head disapprovingly, knowing that Eras had completely lost all semblance of sanity but that it made him more powerful and that he must have bargained away significant portions of his life for more mana as it would not regenerate this fast otherwise. This was going to be a hard battle, but the Hierarch was determined to win it and rid the world of the blight of the Master of Wealth.

---

New Summonings in this chapter:

Eras Stormwind: Archfiend of Depravity

Welkalites: Plated Geopede, Pitchburn Devils, Reckless Wurm

Tybalt Litria: Bruna, Light of Alabaster.