The attackers were, naturally, the demons Evenson had left behind.
Taylor and the others had been standing in the middle of nowhere, waiting for their notoriously forgetful master to summon them home.
Instead of a summoning spell...
A portal opened.
To an ordinary person, that would’ve been reason enough to panic.
Not to veteran soldiers of the Burning Legion.
Unexpected portals were practically a routine part of the job.
Taylor made an immediate decision.
"Hide."
Dumen, the Voidwalker, silently expanded into a sea of living shadow, swallowing the entire group.
It was already nighttime.
The surrounding wilderness lay in darkness.
Making one patch of darkness even darker wasn’t likely to attract attention.
Only moments later, Clark and Yonas stepped through the portal.
Just as Taylor expected, the two sorcerers were so overwhelmed by the lingering corruption saturating the ritual site that they never noticed the demons concealed nearby.
Taylor crouched beside Habus and patted the felhound’s head.
"Don’t let them escape."
The felhound immediately resumed its true form and bounded from the shadows.
Its tentacles lashed out.
The portal trembled...
Collapsed...
And vanished into Habus’s maw.
At the exact moment both sorcerers turned toward the grotesque beast in shock...
Taylor attacked.
His battle axe roared through the air.
They weren’t allies.
That was reason enough.
Clark barely managed to raise a golden barrier before the axe crashed into it.
CRACK!
The magical shield survived...
Barely.
Jagged fractures spread across its surface.
Not because Taylor’s physical strength alone was overwhelming.
Magic barriers naturally dispersed much of a purely physical impact.
The real danger came from somewhere else.
Even demons who relied on brute force infused their weapons with fel energy.
Otherwise, Vol’jin’s formidable troll physique wouldn’t have been fatally pierced by a single spear.
Fel magic corrupted everything it touched.
Even Titan-forged arcane power couldn’t completely resist it.
The mana sustaining Clark’s shield simply wasn’t strong enough.
The barrier hadn’t shattered outright only because fortune favored him for a fleeting instant.
Too dangerous.
Retreat.
That was Clark’s only thought.
He could already feel an unfamiliar force eating away at his magic.
He had no way to counter it.
Continuing the fight was suicide.
He shot Yonas a desperate glance.
I’ll hold them off.
Open a portal.
Run.
After years of working together, Yonas instantly understood.
"I’ve got you!"
He raised his staff and fired two brilliant bolts of magical energy toward Taylor.
A low, distorted whisper drifted across the battlefield.
"...I am from... the Void..."
"...and to the Void..."
The spell twisted in midair.
Instead of striking Taylor...
Both projectiles abruptly curved toward Dumen.
Suffering.
The Voidwalker’s signature ability.
It redirected enemy attacks onto itself, particularly magical ones.
The spells vanished into Dumen’s smoky body.
The massive demon barely rippled.
Nothing more.
Clark almost coughed up blood.
"I told you to open a portal!"
"Why are you trying to fight them, you idiot?!"
Working with Yonas, he thought bitterly, had been the worst partnership of his career.
The man had somehow misunderstood everything.
Before Yonas could correct his mistake...
Habus threw back its head.
"ROOOOAR!"
The shrill howl tore through the air.
Yonas staggered violently.
His concentration shattered.
The portal spell collapsed before completion.
Spell Lock.
The felhound’s infamous anti-mage ability.
A supernatural howl that disrupted a spellcaster’s control over their own magic.
Yonas barely had time to recover.
Habus was already on him.
The massive beast slammed him to the ground.
Its tentacles plunged into his body, greedily draining his mana.
At the same time...
Its jaws closed around his throat.
Blood sprayed across the ruined ritual site.
Yonas managed only a single scream before his body convulsed helplessly beneath the demon.
Clark never even had a chance to help.
Spell Lock had affected him as well.
His mana still existed.
He could feel it flowing through his body.
But no matter how desperately he tried...
He couldn’t command a single thread of it.
The felhound’s reputation as a mage killer hadn’t been earned lightly.
During the War of the Ancients, countless Moon Guard, Queen Azshara’s elite spellcasters, had fallen to creatures just like this.
On modern Earth...
Outside of a handful of truly exceptional individuals...
Very few sorcerers could hope to defeat one.
Cold despair settled into Clark’s chest.
Yonas was dead.
His own magic had been sealed.
Even raising the simplest barrier was impossible.
Think.
There has to be a way.
Then he made a decision.
With a shout, he leapt backward, slipping outside Taylor’s immediate reach.
He landed in a low stance, spinning his staff before gripping it with practiced confidence.
If magic failed...
He still had martial training.
The disruption was already beginning to fade.
He only needed to survive a little longer.
Just a little...
Until—
An arrow to the knee.
Well...
Not literally.
A blazing firebolt erupted from the shadows and struck his leg.
The explosion hit with the force of a high-explosive grenade.
Everything below his waist disappeared in a storm of fire and shattered bone.
"Finally!"
A shrill, smug voice echoed across the clearing.
"I actually managed to blow through somebody’s knee!"
A wiry little imp shuffled out from behind Dumen, rubbing its hands together with obvious satisfaction.
"What was this guy, anyway?"
"A sorcerer?"
"Or some kind of monk?"
The imp shrugged.
"Doesn’t matter."
"I’ve always hated tall people jumping around in front of me."
Clark lay sprawled across the ground.
His lower body was simply...
Gone.
He coughed up blood with every breath.
"The... Sorcerer Supreme..."
"...will..."
"...punish..."
"...all of you..."
Taylor approached without haste.
He rested the broad blade of his axe against one shoulder before raising it overhead.
"Countless great archmages have already fallen before the Burning Legion."
His eyes burned with cruel certainty.
"He’ll simply be the next."
...
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