Chapter 158: Dealing With A Dozen Demons

"Let’s get dangerous!" Syraleth grins before her wing lash out behind her, sending a wall of dust and grit rolling through the team before she explodes forward, barreling toward the beckoning Maribelle.

The demon was a blur of black plate and crimson wings, tearing a smoking streak of fire and fury through the earth beneath her, reaching Maribelle in a half-a-heartbeat, wind screaming off her in a pressure wave that flattens the grass flat for yards in every direction.

Until, she suddenly vanishes into a puff of smoke a dozen paces short of impact with Maribelle’s waiting blade. Gone as suddenly as she’d appeared.

Then, a breath later, a dozen Syraleths ripple into existence all around the entire team in a wide, encircling ring, each one grinning the exact same hungry, patient grin, wings flexing in perfect, unsettling unison, cackling with delight as they all bear down on the team.

A shudder hits Vuvi’s spine and she stumbles backward as a screaming Syraleth bears down on her. Vuvi hesitates, then swings her Boombuster toward the baroness streaking straight for her, firing point-blank as its claws reach for her face.

It bursts into a swirl of shimmering smoke.

So does the one Sera hits. And the one Raikya tackled. And the four Maribelle swept through a moment ago.

Then a new Syraleth appears directly behind Vuvela’s mother, raking three burning claws cleaning across her back before the elven warrior can even turn, tearing through borrowed power and armor alike. Maribelle is sent screaming face-first through the mud in a spray of blood and torn up earth as the real Syraleth vanishes again a moment later, her cackle of delight echoing behind her.

The chanting around the battlefield slowly grows louder as dozens of fresh clones ripple into being across the field all at once, twice as many as before, all of them grinning, laughing then attacking simultaneously from every conceivable angle.

"There’s too many! She’s completely overwhelming them!" Mysa mutters helplessly. "... are you? Seriously! Stop crying!"

She and a shivering, sobbing Raenly, lay half hidden in a wheatfield a short distance away, watching in growing dread as the whole battlefield erupts into a chaotic storm of magic, steel, and detonating illusions, explosions blooming one after another until the air itself tastes of ash and metal.

Raikya leaps through the fray, claws swinging on pure instinct through what she’s certain is the actual Syraleth, but connects instead with Bilorial’s very real, very solid back, sending him sprawling across the mud with a bellowing cry of betrayal and confusion.

"THAT HURT!" He barks, blood soaking through his suit.

"SOOOOORRY!" Raikya howls after him, already pivoting to swing at the next silhouette, unable to stop. Unable to tell friend from illusion in the churning smoke and rubble flying about around her. "THIS IS INSANE! I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING!" she screams into the fog thrown up by the battle.

Veena, spinning hard to dodge and counter a lunging clone, instead, catches Xenara squarely across her flank with a barrage of violet orbs meant for someone else entirely. The impact knocks the towering Broodmother clean off her legs and sends her skidding through the mud with an indignant, wounded shriek.

"THAT WAS ME!" Xenara bellows, "I AM NOT THE ENEMY!"

"I KNOW THAT!" Veena shouts back, already scrambling to dodge the next threat entirely.

A trio of clones leap out of a cloud of dust, dodging and weaving between the team, tireless, identical, laughing in perfect unison as blades pass harmlessly through smoke again and again, and the fight collapses entirely into a mess of uncoordinated, uncontrolled violence. Allies running into and tripping over allies, instructions crossing wires, spells detonating in the wrong hands, blades swinging wide through smoke and far to close to friendly flesh. A cacophony of confusion and finding nothing but smoke and teammates.

And pain.

Because while everyone struggled to find their real enemy, somewhere, in the middle of it all, hidden in plain sight, among a dozen identical faces, the real Syraleth moved unhindered. She shifts amongst her clones with predatory grace while every single one of her opponents keeps swinging uselessly at her endless, empty reflections in her wake.

And as she moves, she dismantles them one by one, landing blow after devastating blow while they pound away at smoke.

She appears at Vuvi’s shoulder without warning, soft as a whisper. She backhands Vuvi with a strike that lifts her clean off her feet with a disrespectful amount of ease, sending her crashing through the mud hard enough to take Veena down with her in a tangle of limbs and torn grass.

Xenara and Bilorial go next, in rapid, brutal succession.

A blade of crimson light manifests out of nowhere, beaming along the ground past the arachna general, shearing three of Xenara’s eight legs away in one clean, surgical sweep, dropping her into the mud, leaving her screaming and clutching at the raw, searing pain.

A fist wreathed in searing black magic crosses the clearing in a blink of an eye, punching straight through Bilorial’s shoulder a heartbeat later, the impact spinning him violently through the air in a spray of blood and bone.

Both demon generals lay sprawled in the mud, groaning, broken and bleeding.

Raikya and Maribelle don’t last much longer as a triple barrage of magical orbs converge on them from three separate directions at once, no possible angle left to dodge through.

Maribelle throws her own body over the wolf-kin at the last possible second, absorbing the worst of the blast herself, and the impact sends both of them skidding across the field in a smoking, bloodied heap. Maribelle’s borrowed power flickers weakly beneath scorched, torn armor, one arm curled protectively around Raikya’s massive, unconscious form.

One by one, the remaining clones wink out of existence in scattered puffs of smoke and embers, until finally, only the real Syraleth remains standing in the middle of the ruined, smoking, wreckage of what was once pristine dwarven farmland. Now littered with groaning, broken bodies, cratered earth, and the last stubborn flickers of a fight that never had a chance of going any other way than hers.

Eris twitches weakly above it all, her fury frozen in time as Syraleth smiles below her, sufficiently satisfied with the way her day was turning out.

She begins strolling across the wreckage of her own war zone with the unhurried, contented satisfaction of a woman who never once doubted the outcome, treading neatly around the fallen like they’re nothing more than scattered leaves, her eyes focused fiercely on person amongst all the wreckage.

Vuvela Blackthorn.