Zeroth Moment: My Cheat Skill Is Stupid, So I'll Just Ignore It

As Takano expanded, lightning began to crackle around him; winds swirled violently through the area, clearing a space between him and the gimlet-eyed figure of Tyal Ex Zedeus. The demon general watched on with an unreadable expression (though Topher was pretty sure it was grim approval), but made no move to attack; it seemed a tacit understanding had been established between the two fighters, and they were waiting for some signal to begin. In every direction, demons were locked in brutal combat; fighting with shadows, fighting with the C-Rankers and D-Rankers and the Sheonn soldiers, and fighting with each other (which confused Topher a lot, but he wasn't about to complain). Through the mindlink, he felt consternation and anxiety bleed through from Sahlerra. This is wrong. They're committing too many reserves. Why aren't they falling back?

Who, the Sheonnites? Topher responded, befuddled. Where would they fall back to? They worked really hard to get here!

Not them, the Archmage fretted. The demons. This is just a minor battle! Why would they--

However, Topher never got the chance to find out what it was that was confusing Sahlerra, because at this point Takano was exactly the same height as Tyal Ex Zedeus -- a fact which both warriors seemed to find suited them well enough. In the barest hint of an instant, they erupted into deadly motion.

Topher's breath rushed out of his body in awe as the demon general flashed through the air, all six swords weaving a prismatic tapestry of slaughter; dozens of times per second, they swept and stabbed in intricate attacks, feints, and killing blows as her giant body danced with impossible agility across the battlefield. But Takano gave no ground; he turtled up, weathering assault after assault, and struck back with heavy shield blows and thunderous strikes which blasted sheets of lightning and fire in every direction. His eyes burned as though his soul was ablaze; again and again, he rejected or parried or dodged by the slimmest of margins attacks that Topher was sure would reduce him to ribbons or impale him upon the bloodthirsty blades of his opponent.

Takano was powerful. He was strong. He was seized with an immortal fury of the sort that only a young man hopelessly in love with an idea can muster, and it granted him might far beyond what anyone would ever have guessed.

He lasted almost twenty seconds.

The blow, when it came, happened somewhere in a flurry of other attacks Topher couldn't even perceive; he was standing there, awestruck, with half of his mind piloting a towering ghost dragon made of shadows and the other half trying to figure out how soon he could get Sahlerra Siukh off him, when Tyal Ex Zedeus's middle right sword (bright purple) abruptly ceased to be flashing through the air at impossible speed and instead manifested through the middle of Takano's abdomen. Sahlerra shrieked, dismay and horror reverberating through her entire soul, as Takano coughed up a bright ribbon of blood.

No. Oh, no. Takano.

He didn't know if the thought was his own or the Archmage's; their minds had been melding for so long through such intense emotion that things were getting a little hazy. But what Topher did know was that he was fed up with this bullshit. Rage, wounded rage such as he had not felt in recent memory, began to boil up from the black depths of his heart; it was slow at first, but began to gather momentum like the first boulder of an avalanche.

You bastards.

His chest was a searing cage of iron; his hands twisted as though to strangle. Runes began to flow through his mind, hot and raw, as his sorrow and fury mingled with the evil of Vashyarl's black quintessence and Sahlerra's despair.

You bastards.

Angrily, Topher began to weave.

Forgetting he was still hosting Vashyarl's essence.

Forgetting he was still soulbound to Sahlerra.

Forgetting everything except the pain he'd felt, holding Haruko as she died in his arms, and wanted never to feel again.

YOU BASTARDS.

The brutal, vicious impulse to violence which constantly ticked like a time bomb at the bottom of Topher's consciousness -- the sleeping-but-not-quite-dead remnants of his harrowing that had been used as raw material for the lex animus's phantom -- stirred. Raised its featureless muzzle, scenting the winds.

And then came at his command.

Direly, with severity, he strung it like bloody entrails between Vord and Ury and Byshk; weeping bloody tears, he twisted and pulled it through Dahf again and again until the band of his akasha screamed with tension. And thus, forlorn and heedless, Topher Bailey did what he'd sworn he would never do again; a light, crimson and pulsating, took form between his hands.

Before anyone knew what was happening, the Wyrd came forth.

It shot outwards faster than the space between a heartbeat; like the bright ember of a sparkler tracing a shape in the night with its afterimage, it cris-crossed the battlefield a thousand times in an instant, seeking out every demon with uncanny precision. It blasted through them like a pitiless augur, but left no mark upon them; for the demons were strong, too strong to be harmed physically even by its preeminent rancor. But they felt it just the same.

It tore through their minds and their souls like tissue paper, searing and scouring as it passed; imprinting upon each who fell under its influence the same vicious and hateful emotion; revenge. REVENGE. Like a mote of white phosphorus, it consumed them; This is what you did to me. Feel what I felt. You bastards.

The demons fell in droves, clutching their heads and hearts; writhing, they howled piteous shrieks of agony as the Otherworlders pressed their advantage. Silent, calculating eyes turned towards Topher, and psionic barbs of death lanced through mindspace towards his small, unprotected consciousness; but Sahlerra Siukh's mind, melded together with Topher's keening will, is a little more aware of the situation than he is and fends off most of the attacks with aplomb.

Most of them.

For Aldabath Zerom, who killed Ayame Arima, is among the demons' Psi-Corps at this battle, and he is a little bit more on top of his game than an Archmage who doesn't know her psychic ass from a psychic hole in the ground. Deftly, but with undeniable skill and power, he slips through her defenses; and although her towering, brazen mind lies helpless before him for a bare instant, he is in too much agony from the other mage's vicious noephrasty to resist an opportunity to cut off its source. A killing attack, designed to rupture Topher's mind and explode all the blood vessels in his Circle of Willis, dives home with murderous force; this accomplishes absolutely nothing, because Topher's mind is shot through with the power of an Edict, but he does feel an intense burning sensation followed by an ineffable malignity which redoubles the power of his Wyrd and sends it scything back through the demon forces another fifty times before anyone can blink.

"You bastards! You bastards!!" Topher screamed at the sky, shaking his fists in outrage; despite it all, akasha still streamed from palm to palm, ignoring his clenched fingers as though they were no more substantial than smoke. "Isn't this enough for you?! How many children do you have to kill?!" Like a madman reaching for a rock to throw blindly, he gasped at his Wyrd in a fury; and the smoky, shadowy claw of Vashyarl's projection, mimicking his movements, closed its titanic claw around the little red mote as it zipped by.

Topher's mind cracked open in agony.

The backwash of emotion and fury, feeding through the runic channels given shape by Vashyarl's True Rune, burned throughout his whole consciousness as a dark thing -- vile and powerful, angry and violent, and above all else unbound -- was unleashed from the ritual. It expanded, flowing outwards over friend and foe alike, as scything shadows consumed everything; but the mortal wound of Shuji Takano had apparently broken his concentration upon his Zealous Unity Skill, and thus the shadows seemed to have lost their killing power. Instead, the battlefield was merely blanketed in an anguished darkness deeper than the pits of hell, sowing pain and pandemonium throughout everyone's ranks as Topher and Sahlerra grappled for control -- sometimes aiding each other, sometimes fighting each other, and sometimes getting tangled up within each other in the confusion -- until everything broke down completely.

It is at this point that Topher loses consciousness, which is very much a mercy; for he, at least, doesn't have to watch what happens afterwards.

Shuji Takano, naturally, dies upon the blades of Tyal Ex Zedeus, because even fury and vengeance and otherworldly power and an extremely broken Class are not really much of a match for five centuries of experience and a nine hundred-and-fifty-eight Level gap. To his immense credit, it is a fantastic death; he takes Tyal Ex Zedeus with him, utilizing his Immovable Defense Skill to trap the demon general's swords within his own failing body, and headbutts her to death during his final moments. He also manages to gasp out his death poem, which is a bit of a shame because nobody actually gets to hear it during the chaos despite it being a real banger. Still, all in all, it is perhaps the best death of the war so far -- heroic and bloody, extravagant and soulful, and worthy of remembrance in story and song.

Making Quint Aumraham's little ploy that much more regrettable.

Unseen amongst all the chaos and bedlam, two portals appear on the battlefield; one is a clever little thing about a centimeter wide, which disgorges a small assembly of rods and gears that rapidly assemble themselves into a large three-meter hoop carried aloft on a bevy of small, glowing propellers. The other is about the size of a grapefruit, and emits only Quint's hand, which lingers just long enough to very gently drop a round, sparkling crystal upon the dirt between writhing demonic bodies. Quint pulls his hand back, and the portal closes; the crystal, left behind, glimmers and begins to glow more brightly with each passing second.

Over the next half-minute, its radiance quietly burgeons and swells, totally unnoticed by everyone since they're all screaming and fighting and blind in any case because of the colossal shadow monster swirling all over the place; in the background, frantic with mechanical energy, the little portal-on-propellers zips back and forth across the battlefield, sweeping over isolated figures and whisking them away to somewhere else.

It picks up Naomi Naoya ("Naonao"), the C-Rank Time Mage who was instrumental in moving the Sheonn army the critical last few miles at impossible speed; it plucks Kayo Izumi, D-Rank Mage, from a perilous spot in between two furious demons, but is unable to rescue Rokuro Ogawa (D-Rank Unholy Archer) from a similar predicament before he is torn limb from limb by a Loivaktaon (which is a minor tragedy since he had been instrumental in encouraging the lower-ranked Summoned heroes through many of their darkest hours). It scoops up Natsuko Kikuchi, Kotone Sawaya, and Eri Yamagata, but not Ryuu Jin, who died of a heart attack a week ago before they even reached the battlefield; Rewind Time is a stressful Unique Skill for someone who is both extremely passionate about helping others and also wrestling with a lot of demons thanks to puberty. Nobuyuki Tahara (C-Rank Ice Shaman) and Takumi Tamaki (D-Rank Arcane Trickster) don't make it, but Shizuko Hiraoka (D-Rank Priest) does; Masahiko Oshita (C-Rank Blade Magician) heroically gives his life to push her into the path of the portal before being decapitated by a Capras flailing about in a berserk rage.

In a single sweep, the little hoop passes over the knot of tangled bodies at the heart of the darkness -- Rudo, Sahlerra, Topher, Hana, and Zanasha all disappear in a silent instant from the battlefield. In a final, mad dash of desperate hope, it plunges into a thick knot of fighting in a valiant attempt to reach Misena Gorflame (because Jeneren Cuthbert has been dead for nearly two minutes now), but doesn't quite make it, because about halfway through the process the little crystal at the center of the battlefield explodes.

It is not a small explosion.

Quint Aumraham, over the course of the last four weeks, has been pouring millions upon millions of MP into this crystal; it bears a very specific enchantment which is derived from a simple Fireball spell, but includes an awful lot of math and extradimensional shenanigans to perform some very clever things that are fairly inscrutable to anyone not familiar with the mechanical underpinnings of both physics and Damage. The result is, naturally, a bomb; but, like Yul Aut Melagrat, Quint has forgotten that air has mass, and has also made a very tiny mistake while scribbling on a chalkboard under a crushing weight of sleep deprivation and gotten his exponent mixed up with his factor.

The resulting flash of light carves a ten-mile sphere out of the world.