The Castle in the middle of nowhere.

Luia laughed, but her laughter was cut short when she felt the dagger bounce off something as she recoiled back, dropping her weapon. With shock painted on her face, she noticed that the Hero disappeared, but she could still feel his killing intent. Luia couldn't waste another moment, and with her plan to sacrifice herself failed, she used some of her Necromancer skills to regenerate herself. She barely ducked the Hero’s attack, only to be grazed again by Zephyr's dagger. Suddenly she felt intense pain as the Hero's sword pierced her chest and she slowly dropped to her knees, too weak to fight more. It was cold and started to get dark, but the only thing she saw was her own hand trying to take out the cold steel from her chest. She was too weak. How could that be? How could some small fries like these two beat her? She closed her eyes, but instead of the icy cold sensation of frozen ground, she felt the flames and smiled.

•••

When I saw a black dagger in the Necromancer's hands, I knew we had to stop whatever she was planning. While I was too far away even to blink in time, Jester was right there. He saw what the Void Touched woman tried to do and placed the blade of his broad cleaver to protect her own heart, creating the armour which blocked the Necromancer's dagger. After watching the blade bounce and then drop into the snow, I blinked and, after taking a quick stab which nearly struck her, I killed the Void Touched with my second hit. Without any moment lost, I blinked back to stay away from her corpse, leaving Jester nearby, just in case.

"We got her?" Zeus teleported near us, heavily breathing. "In my name! That was exhausting! To think that a simple mana drain would be this effective..."

"I don't know what she had planned with that dagger, but it's good we stopped her." I sighed and motioned towards the webbings. "Hestia took this personally, didn't she?"

"You bet! I think it was the first time I saw her illusions to be this convincing." Zephyr smiled but suddenly he jumped on Zeus and myself, knocking us down into the snow.

Instead of asking stupid questions, my eyes went wide as the fragment of ground where we stood a moment ago was shattered by an incredible force. The Void Touched was standing, shifting and glitching. Her features became unrecognisable, as if this world was rejecting her presence. She changed into a human-like shape-shade with two bloody red eyes. It hurt to just watch her stand in front of me, but I gritted my teeth and triggered all my battle gear and skills once again. She couldn't seem to move, since she was just standing in front of us like a figure made of thick darkness, inside of which a bright light resided. Zeus didn’t hesitate; I sensed the impressive surge of power as he charged his lightning bolt. Zephyr, on the other hand, put his hand on my arm and held me back.

"Wait! You can't touch her now! I will tell you when, Theon!" Zephyr yelled, and I noticed that even sound was sucked into the place where the Void Touched stood.

I nodded briefly and raised my weapon, pointing the tip towards her. Large magic circles started forming behind me when I heard the angry buzzing of Lance.

"My Lord!" he shouted. "You can't use magic to fight that monster! Lady Stella just confirmed that it will simply devour all magic!"

"Damn it!" I quickly dissipated my Magic Minigun spell and felt the recoil of unused magic. I looked accusingly at Zephyr. "Why didn’t you tell me?!"

"I didn't know!" Zephyr clenched his hand on my shoulder. "This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever seen a Void Touch take such a form!"

I quickly ran through options in my head and, in a panic, realised I did not have many choices regarding my fighting options. If not magic, then what? Close combat? Just the mere memory of everything disappearing after hitting the Void Touched made me simply discard that idea. Throwing my swords at it? Still stupid, but better than nothing, I guess. A pike!

"Theon, after it finishes taking form, you will be able to fight it normally!" Zeus tried to shout over the roar of the lightning he had been charging all this time. He held in his bare hands a plasma lance that was crackling and swirling, but it was obedient to the Thunderer's will. Before too long, he tossed his lightning and screamed, "NOW!"

The lightning hit its mark, and the beast in front of us roared angrily. The thick black-red ichor dripped and sizzled on the snow, before disappearing from this world. I summoned one of the unused, over five-metre-long pikes and started weighing it. It would do. It had a blade on its top. I almost chuckled at my own sense of humour; what did we used to say back on Earth as quarrelling kids?? I won't touch you even with a five-metre stick? I should be fine then, since my stick was more than five metres long. This thought was like a flash inside of my head, though it changed my current mood completely. I became calmer and stopped perceiving the Void beast in front of me as an impossible foe to defeat. It was reduced to just that: a beast that I had to put down. The monster roared again and tossed itself towards us. Zeus took it upon himself to act as a tank, but then I realised our folly. I stepped back and closed my eyes. After partly switching to RTS mode, I marked the Void creature for all the ballistas on the castle walls that were in range and opened my eyes to yell for Zeus to fall back. As soon as I could, I engaged the monster with the pike, which proved to be a bit weak for continuous use.

As my pike shattered on the monster's claws, it accomplished what I needed it to do. With those few seconds needed to destroy my weapon, the monster stood still. The whooshing sound of javelin-sized bolts pierced the air, and not a heartbeat later, they sank into the body of the former necromancer. The glowing red eyes turned round in shock before dimming. The glitching and painful outline of the creature returned to something more normal before soon dissipating completely. I saw once again a woman who looked at me with tears of happiness in her eyes. Taken aback by this sight, I saw her body start to wither as if the time itself was taking the dues she owed. Her black hair turned ash-grey and then white, and her young body turned old. Before she died, however, she managed to utter the words that left me even more surprised.

"Thank you for setting me free from the worst mistake I have ever made." She crumbled into dust with all the undead she raised.

The uncomfortable silence that befallen us was finally broken by me, asking the simplest question that came to my mind at this time.

"What did she mean?"

"I... I don't know." Zeus really looked ashamed.

"Heavens, have mercy upon her soul..." Zephyr dropped to his knees, visibly shaking. "I peeked inside her soul before she perished..."

"Wait... You can do that?" My question fell on deaf ears as Zephyr just stared at the bloodied bolts that killed the woman.

"She foolishly allowed herself to believe in the lies of Void and the temptations of Chaos. Her soul was ripped and almost devoured, but the thing that took her body decided to amuse itself by tormenting that woman for centuries." Zephyr collected himself and stood up, but his face changed from shock and fear to contempt as looked at women's ashes below the bolts. "I would pity her, if not for all the evil she had done to achieve this 'worst mistake' of herself to happen. She was a cultist, craving for power and ultimately she bit far, far more than she could chew."

I simply nodded at that and looked around with quite an obvious question painted on my face. However, the Eternals were reluctant to give me any answer until Hestia showed up next to me. She was breathing heavily for a moment, but given how everyone was exhausted, I wasn't very surprised.

"You should bury her, Theon. Seal her, or her remains, within the walls of your domain, so she can never rise again. If you don't, her body might be raised by the forces she meddled with. She was a powerful Necromancer after all, and in the end, most of them strived to become Liches one day." She smiled at me, but I saw how incredibly pale she was and started wondering if she was alright.

"Thank you, Lady Hestia." I bowed politely and addressed her officially. I used my powers to collect ashes immediately and gave Hestia a brief look. "Are they all like this?"

"No." She bit her lip and shrugged with a painful moan. "Most of the ones I fought were all weaker ones."

"She was weak?" I asked in shock, recalling the amounts of mana she had at her disposal.

"Oh, yes, and no. If you consider her during the fight against us, she was strong, probably on the verge of evolving into a Void Born." Hestia shrugged while Zeus and Zephyr just looked at her with their jaws dropped and strange gazes. She frowned at them and she continued. "But ultimately, she was weak. You weren't fighting her, because her soul was nothing more but a prisoner and plaything of the being that overtook her body. You fought that thing."

"Fair enough..." I agreed and collapsed on the ground after spending so much mana.

"That fight looked so easy." Hera finally showed up, looking with concern at us, but when she looked at Hestia, she just covered her mouth.

"That easy fight cost me almost ten million mana. Void Touched are troublesome enemies..." I gathered some pristine snow to rub on my face. "Any good news?"

"The Mountain Dungeon Army regrouped with some elements of the Cridian Army." Hera sighed and clenched her fists after Hestia shook her head at Hera. "They are now trying to encircle Avalon."

"I asked for good news..." I observed them with little understanding; it was as if Hestia had forbidden them to say something important to me.

"No one is attacking us at the moment?" Hera giggled somewhat humorlessly.

"That is something, I guess..." I reluctantly agreed. "The bad news?"

"Korkas and unidentified Void Touched took most of their army and are heading towards Cridia City."

"Nothing can be done at this point... But that is really bad news." I agreed and stood up. "Any other news?"

The four of them looked in silence at each other, while Zephyr opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if he was uncertain what or how to say something. I, in the meantime, surveyed the area and ordered my Rats and Ratlings to gather the remnants of fallen Cridian Soldiers. A sudden realisation made me freeze in place.

"All these people that Korkas brought here were meant to die. They were just walking materials for the Necromancer."

"I am afraid you are right." Hestia once again offered a reply and looked deep and long in my eyes. To be honest, it was longer than I considered comfortable, and I felt very strange about it. "Theon, I am not sure if you are aware of what you have accomplished here."

"We killed a Void Touched. Isn't that a job I am supposed to do?" I shrugged and was about to focus on the defences of Avalon when she giggled, acting even stranger now.

"You are funny. No Hero before you managed to even wound a Void Touched." She still was giggling, and I finally understood why Zeus and Zephyr were looking at her with dropped jaws.

"Hestia! Your presence is vanishing!" I ignored her last statement.

"Oh, I know..." Her face suddenly twisted in pain as she stumbled and I barely caught her. "It can't be helped."

I immediately teleported to Irene. With relief I noticed that the rest of the Eternals followed me, but with grim faces. When Irene saw me with Hestia in my arms, she paled. I felt warm blood on my hands, yet I couldn't see any wounds.

"What happened?!"

"She was fatally wounded by the Void magic." This time it was Zeus who spoke, and I could sense the wrath in his voice. "This kind of magic is destroying the very soul. It would be fatal for anyone, even you could not respawn after that, Theon. I am so sorry... We can't do anything to save her."

"When did it happen?" I asked while Irene tried her best against what Zeus had just told us.

"Zephyr pushed us to snow, saving us from brutal strength. You were a target, but I knew I would survive its attack. The moment that monster solidified, I cast lightning at it. But it already had a spell prepared that I couldn't deflect or even see. I wasn't sure..." Zeus stuttered.

"I felt a brief flash, a presence..." Zephyr continued. "Now I understand. I have never seen her so fast. She shielded you with her own body and disappeared to not distract us."

"Why, Hestia?" I looked at her eyes, losing their golden glow.

She reached her arm towards my face and smiled for the briefest of moments. I could feel her pain and how much effort this cost her.

"I wish to say that I only did that to save our only hope to save this world..." Her voice was no louder than a whisper. "But I think I wanted to just save you..." She swallowed painfully. "... the only man who accepted me as I was... Someone more than a friend..."

Her arm went limp and Hestia lost consciousness in the utter silence disturbed by the quietest of sighs. At first, I felt sorrow and resignation that I wasn't able to protect everyone, but after that single moment, I could only feel the flames of wrath.