The cloying scent of Zelira's corrupted magic grew stronger with each purposeful stride, a foul perfume attempting to mask her cowardly concealment. As the distance closed, her voice slithered from the shadows, honeyed with malice, attempting to needle, to provoke.
"Oh, the poor little dwarf champion," Zelira's voice whispered, laced with feigned sympathy that dripped with venom. "Did your precious paladin fall down? Did the light go out? Such a pity… all that misplaced faith, snuffed out like a cheap candle."
The words, meant to incite, to wound, barely registered. Grief? Pain? Such fleeting mortal frailties were beneath his notice now. Normally, he might have flinched, might have roared. But he merely felt a flicker of contempt for such a pathetic attempt at psychological warfare. It was… tiresome. However, the mention of the fallen paladin… a fractional hesitation. Not of sorrow, but a brief, almost imperceptible pause as an alien echo, a whisper of the dwarf's former attachments, brushed against his consciousness. It was gone as quickly as it came, dismissed as irrelevant.
He reached the epicenter of her tainted energy. With a sound like a mountain cracking, he slammed the blade of his battle axe downwards. The superheated obsidian edge plunged effortlessly through the stone floor of the coliseum as if it were soft clay, sending tremors through the ground. Then, with a casual, almost bored gesture, he reached his massive, molten hand directly into the heart of the swirling shadows Zelira used as her pathetic veil.
His fingers, wreathed in white-hot fire, closed around something solid, something struggling. He ripped her out.
Zelira materialized, choking and sputtering, dangling from his grip by her throat. Her blood-red eyes, moments before filled with cruel amusement, were now wide with shocked terror. Her pale skin, already sickly, seemed to drain of even more color against the incandescent glow of his hand. He held her out, a mere trinket in his colossal grasp, and stared into her panicked, disbelieving gaze. The silence stretched, broken only by her desperate, rasping breaths and the faint, distant roar of the divine audience. He felt her scrabbling, claw-like nails against his molten wrist, a pathetic, futile gesture.
A sigh, like the venting of a volcano, rumbled from his flaming skull. This was taking too long. Slowly, deliberately, he began to funnel heat into his hand, into his arm. The temperature around his fingers spiked. Zelira's eyes bulged. She clawed, kicked, her body thrashing wildly, trying to choke out screams that died as gurgles in her throat as his divine fire began to sear through flesh and bone.
He watched, dispassionately, as the life began to drain from her, as her struggles weakened. Just as her movements were becoming mere twitches, just as her essence was about to be snuffed out completely by his cleansing fire, a cataclysmic shockwave ripped through the arena. The ground bucked violently. The sound was deafening, a dual explosion of raw, untamed power. Zeroth reeled his heat in slightly, his flaming skull snapping towards the source of the disturbance.
Across the arena, Ralgar, now a raging vortex of crimson and black corrupted energy, was locked in a furious exchange with Pyronox. The two figures, one a monstrously mutated kobold, the other a being of pure, controlled flame, were hurling massive blasts of destructive magic at each other. Pyronox unleashed a torrent of incandescent fire, met by Ralgar's howling vortex of shadow and tainted lightning. The air between them crackled and tore, the very fabric of the coliseum seeming to groan under the strain of their titanic clash. This… this was more interesting.
The spectacle of Pyronox and Ralgar's destructive ballet held his attention, raw power against corrupted ambition. It was a familiar dance, one he himself had orchestrated countless times. He felt a flicker of… something. Approval? For Pyronox's controlled fury. Then, a subtle shift in the elemental's energy, a momentary hesitation, a fractional faltering in the incandescent torrent he unleashed.
It was enough.
Ralgar, sensing the opening with predatory instinct, roared, his corrupted power coalescing into a monstrous, focused blast. The crimson and black energy slammed into Pyronox with the force of a falling mountain. The elemental cried out, a sound like shattering obsidian, as his fiery form was hurled backward across the coliseum. He carved a deep, smoking trench into the stone floor before his body finally slammed to a halt with a sickening thud, skidding to rest near where Zeroth held the near-lifeless Zelira.
The impact, the sight of his friend so brutally cast aside, caused something to stumble within the god's consciousness. A discordant note in the symphony of his rage. He looked down at Pyronox's sprawled, flickering form. Still alive, yes, but diminished. Likely no longer a match for the kobold's disgusting, parasitic magic. This was… inconvenient.
These moments of detached, almost idle calculation, of observing the battlefield like a grand, bloody tapestry, were his undoing. Ralgar, his mutated face alight with triumph and savage glee, had seen it all. He'd seen the casual, contemptuous execution of Zelira, the god-form of the dwarf barely acknowledging her existence as he snuffed her out. And now, with Pyronox seemingly neutralized, Ralgar's burning, hate-filled gaze fixed on the true source of his ire. The kobold shrieked, a sound of pure, unrestrained malice, as he began to charge another attack. Corrupted energy swirled around him, condensing, shaping itself into a colossal, jagged blade of raw, crimson power, easily twenty feet long. With another earsplitting cry, Ralgar hurled it. The ethereal weapon tore through the air, a harbinger of devastating pain, aimed directly at the distracted god-form.
"ZEROTH! WATCH OUT!" Tingle's frantic shout, tiny yet piercing, cut through the din, snapping the divine consciousness back to the immediate threat.
But it was too late.
The giant, jagged blade of corrupted energy slammed into his outstretched arm that was still holding Zelira's fading form. There was no resistance. The ethereal weapon sliced clean through molten bone and divine fire as if it were air.
A searing, unimaginable agony ripped through him. The severed arm, still clutching Zelira, thudded heavily onto the stone floor, dissolving into a shower of embers and fading shadow.
And then, something shattered.
Not stone, not bone, but the overwhelming, oppressive presence of Vulcanix. The pain, so absolute, so visceral, acted like a key, unlocking the cage where the dwarf's consciousness had been imprisoned. Zeroth's true self, his own thoughts, his own terror, flooded back to the forefront with the force of a bursting dam.
He screamed, a sound that was purely his own, raw and agonized, as the mixed essence of his god-blood gushed from the stump of his arm. The skeletal aspects of his Vulcanix-form wavered, flickered, then began to recede. The flaming skull softened, flesh reasserting itself, his familiar red beard, now streaked with ash and glowing embers, reappearing. The colossal height shrank, the molten armor cracking and falling away, revealing the more compact, lava-streaked godform he had painstakingly learned to control with Mira. He collapsed, crashing heavily to his knees, his one good hand instinctively clutching the bleeding, searing stump where his arm had been. The world swam, the roar of the crowd, the clash of magic, all fading into a terrifying, pain-filled haze.
Agony. White-hot, searing, all-consuming. Zeroth's vision was a kaleidoscope of blurred reds and blacks, the roar of the coliseum a distant, thrumming torment in his ears. His severed arm… gone. The bleeding stump where it had been gushed a horrifying mixture of his own blood and something that felt like liquid fire, the pain a constant, nauseating wave. His leg throbbed, the necrotic chill from Vrathax's earlier strike now a deep, gnawing ache.
He tried to push himself up, his one good hand scrabbling at the blood-slick stone, his body trembling violently. Each movement sent fresh waves of agony through him. He could barely breathe.
Then, a small, determined figure blurred past him. Tingle.
The gnome, his face a mask of furious, tear-streaked determination, sprinted away from where he'd been huddled with Ardric's still form and the recovering Varic. He didn't hesitate, didn't look back. He planted himself firmly between Zeroth and where Ralgar was now hovering, the kobold's mutated form radiating triumphant, corrupted energy as he cackled, gloating over the dwarf's grievous wound.
Zeroth watched, his mind struggling to process through the fog of pain, as Tingle reached behind his back and drew his gunblade. The moment the weapon was in his grasp, the golden, crystalline armor encasing the gnome pulsed with an intense light. Power, raw and immense, flowed from his Mana Binders, not just into his armor, but directly into the gunblade. The weapon began to transform, its metallic frame visibly shifting, growing larger, thicker, encased in the same shimmering, golden crystalline shell as Tingle's protective aura. It hummed with an almost unbearable energy. But Zeroth felt something else, too. A subtle, almost imperceptible current mixed within Tingle's golden surge. A quick, fragmented flashback seared across his mind: Thalamar, his expression grave, his hands glowing with an unfamiliar, ancient power, subtly weaving something extra, something potent and golden, into Tingle's essence just before Delores had summoned them. Not just arcane power, but something… divine?
While Tingle, now a miniature sun of crackling, golden energy, began to visibly charge something devastating within his altered gunblade, Pyronox stumbled to Zeroth's side. The elemental was battered, his fiery form flickering weakly, large chunks of his molten body missing or cracked, his own energy clearly fading fast.
"Zeroth… are you…?" Pyronox's voice was a strained rasp, the usual confident rumble gone.
Zeroth just grunted, still struggling to get his legs under him.
Tingle, his small body now thrumming like a contained star, didn't turn. His focus was absolute, his transformed gunblade, now almost as long as he was tall, leveled directly at the gloating Ralgar. Bolts of pure, golden energy began to arc uncontrollably from his form, from the weapon, from the very air around him, each one snapping with furious intensity.
"ZEROTH! PYRONOX!" Tingle's voice, amplified by the sheer power he now wielded, boomed across the arena, cutting through Ralgar's taunts. "GET AWAY! NOW! TINGLE IS ABOUT TO MAKE A VERY, VERY BIG BOOM!"
Zeroth didn't need telling twice. He grabbed Pyronox's flickering arm, hauling the weakened elemental with him as they stumbled, half-ran, half-fell away from the incandescent gnome. The sheer, unadulterated power radiating from Tingle was terrifying, a desperate, beautiful, horrifying thing.
As they scrambled for distance, two massive bolts of pure, golden arcane energy erupted from Tingle's back, arcing through the air like sentient lightning strikes, their paths wild and unpredictable as they speared towards Ralgar. The kobold, his gloating abruptly cut short, snarled in annoyance and hastily threw up blasts of his own corrupted red energy, managing to deflect Tingle's initial assault, though Zeroth saw him grimace with the effort.
Tingle, seemingly oblivious to everything but his target, began to slowly, inexorably step forward, his transformed gunblade still gathering impossible amounts of power. The humming of his condensed magic intensified, shifting from a low thrum to a high-pitched whine, then into a deafening, all-consuming roar. The golden light radiating from him pulsed violently, in and out, growing so intense that Zeroth had to throw his remaining arm up to shield his eyes, even from a distance.
Then, in the next instant, everything vanished.
All sound. All light. It was as if the universe itself had been instantaneously sucked into the barrel of Tingle's impossibly charged weapon. An utter, profound darkness and silence descended upon the coliseum, lasting for a few terrifying, suspended heartbeats. Zeroth felt his own heart hammer against his ribs in the sudden void.
As quickly as it had begun, the silence shattered. The roar returned, ten times louder, a physical wave of sound and force that slammed through the coliseum. It wasn't just an explosion of light, but a concussive blast that sent Zeroth, Pyronox, and even the distant, airborne Ralgar tumbling away, skidding across the arena floor like discarded toys. Ralgar, somehow, managed to arrest his fall, his corrupted wings beating furiously to keep him aloft, his expression now one of dawning horror.
Following the shockwave, a single, sharp click resonated from the small, golden figure, impossibly clear amidst the lingering chaos.
Tingle fired.
What erupted from the gunblade wasn't a beam; it was a cataclysm. An utterly massive, devastating wave of pure, golden electrical energy, wider than anything Zeroth had ever witnessed, tore through the air. But it wasn't just arcane power. Woven within the golden torrent, almost hardening it, giving it an impossible solidity, was the same ancient, potent force Zeroth had glimpsed Thalamar imbue into Tingle.
Ralgar shrieked, no longer with arrogance, but with pure, unadulterated terror. He threw up wall after wall of desperate, crackling red and black energy, trying to block the oncoming golden tsunami. It was useless. Tingle's blast, impossibly vast and overwhelmingly powerful, slammed into and through each pathetic barrier with contemptuous ease, its sheer scale dwarfing anything the kobold could muster.
The golden wave enveloped Ralgar. His terrified scream was cut short, swallowed by the incandescent fury. There was no struggle, no prolonged agony. He was simply… unmade. Obliterated.
But the blast didn't stop.
The monstrous beam of divine and arcane annihilation continued its trajectory, roaring across the arena, heading directly towards a densely packed section of the coliseum stands. Panic erupted amongst the divine onlookers. Zeroth watched, his own pain momentarily forgotten, as multiple powerful deities desperately threw up their own protective barriers, shields of pure light, condensed shadow, and shimmering force. Even their combined efforts barely managed to contain what was left of Tingle's apocalyptic shot, the residual energy sending cracks spiderwebbing across their divine shields before finally, blessedly, dissipating into a shower of fading golden sparks.
Silence, once again, fell upon the coliseum. This time, it was a silence born of shock, of awe, and of a dawning, terrible respect for the small, mortal champion who now stood, smoking and trembling, in the center of the ravaged arena.
Zeroth stared, dumbfounded, at the lingering, smoking path of destruction Tingle had carved across the arena and into the divine stands. The silence was heavy, punctuated only by the faint crackling of residual energy and the distant, shocked murmurs of the gods.
"Well, I'll be damned…" Zeroth breathed, his voice a hoarse whisper. He turned his head slightly towards Pyronox, who was equally stunned. "Tingle… Tingle actually might've won the whole bloody thing." A grim thought surfaced. "And Zelira… after that shockwave, no way she's still around."
As he spoke, the last vestiges of Vulcanix's overwhelming power, the borrowed might that had sustained his godform, finally gave out. The transformation, already unstable after his arm was severed, broke down completely. The intense heat faded, the molten armor cracked and dissolved, and his colossal form shrank rapidly. With a jarring lurch, Zeroth was himself again, a battered, bleeding, four-foot-two dwarf, kneeling in the blood-soaked sand.
His vision spiraled, the world tilting and blurring. The pain, held at bay by divine fury and adrenaline, slammed back into him with the force of a thousand hammers. His severed arm throbbed with an unbearable agony, blood still oozing from the crude stump. His leg screamed, the necrotic chill deepening. He swayed, his consciousness threatening to unravel completely.
Pyronox, despite his own grievous injuries, reacted instantly, his flickering, weakened form moving to catch Zeroth before he collapsed entirely. The elemental's support was shaky, his own essence perilously close to dissipating, but he held the dwarf steady.
"Zeroth…" Pyronox's voice was a low, pained rumble, laced with an unfamiliar gentleness. "Your essence… it dwindles too quickly." He paused, a sound like cracking stone escaping him. "I… I too, am close to the end."
Tingle, his golden crystalline armor now dimming, shedding sparks as it began to break apart, sprinted towards them, his small face etched with a desperate worry that transcended his recent, apocalyptic display of power. He skidded to a halt, dropping down beside Zeroth, his small hands reaching out to help Pyronox support the swaying dwarf.
"What… what do you mean?" Zeroth slurred, struggling to focus, to lift his head. His gaze found Pyronox's flickering, molten eyes.
Pyronox let out a sound that might have been a sigh, a plume of smoke escaping his lipless maw. "Thank you, Zeroth Velkyrr," he said, his voice soft, almost tender. "For showing me… a path. For giving me a chance to be… better than my creator." He paused, and the sorrow in his voice was unmistakable. "But I must apologize again. This… this is going to hurt. A lot."
A cold dread, sharper than any physical pain, pierced through Zeroth's haze. "No…" he rasped, his one good hand reaching out, trying to grip Pyronox's arm. "No, Pyronox, don't. I can't… I can't lose anyone else…"
But the elemental creature, with a final, sorrowful look, moved. He shifted behind Zeroth, his weakened form still radiating a significant, if fading, heat.
In the next instant, Pyronox slammed his molten hands down, not onto Zeroth, but into him. Into his back, into his shoulders, into the very core of his being.
Zeroth screamed, a raw, animalistic sound of pure, unadulterated agony, his body arching, convulsing as Pyronox's fiery essence, his very life force, began to pour into him.
"I'm sorry, my friend…" Pyronox whispered, his voice fading, his form flickering violently as the last of his power, his essence, his being, dissipated, flowing like liquid fire into the wounded dwarf.
The next few moments dragged into an eternity for Zeroth. His mind and body felt like they were sinking into the heart of a volcano, an unbearable, consuming heat surging through every nerve, every vein. But it wasn't just pain. It was power. Raw, elemental, Pyronox's power. The heat seemed to flow directly to the stump of his severed arm, a focal point of agonizing, transformative energy.
He watched, through eyes blurred with tears of pain and something else, something unnameable, as his flesh didn't regrow. Instead, something new, something alien yet familiar, began to form. Rocky, obsidian-like flesh, shot through with veins of molten gold and crimson–Pyronox's flesh–grew from the stump, shaping itself, hardening, forming a new, powerful arm. The same elemental energy surged through him, mending his other wounds, knitting torn muscle, sealing broken bone, washing away the necrotic chill from his leg.
He trembled violently, clutching his new, strange arm, the sensation of it both a part of him and a stark, painful reminder of the sacrifice that had made it so.