Hugo yelled in rage and rushed forward, glowing with radiant golden light; his shield and spear glowed especially bright.
The blood angel, which had been rushing at Icarus, was intercepted.
It was clear that the Paladin had gone slightly mad at the death of the warrior, as in a way, he had already failed at his vow of protection because of it.
Nevertheless, he successfully stopped the creature's charge and began stabbing the creature wildly with his spear.
The creature returned his brutality with even further madness. Most of its attacks were deflected by the shield, but one got through and nearly tore the paladin's arm off.
All this had happened in around a second, a period of time which Icarus had not wasted; he fired off his magic missile, which tore through the angel's left eye and sent it staggering back.
Blood seeped out, and the demon clutched at its eye.
Hugo had fallen to the ground in pain, clutching at his arm. Lei was rushing to his side, and Bjorn's sword was now coated in a sheen of grey-blue light.
He swung from a huge distance, the light left his sword before it slashed through the Beast's side.
Icarus recognized it as the same technique Cal Yuen had used to kill Lance when he was in his original ancient bronze form.
Of course, on a far smaller scale.
Jean let out his own yell and hurled three bolts of fire towards the monster.
They exploded and engulfed the creature in flame. It clutched itself and let out muted cries that could hardly be heard through its stitched mouth.
When the fire dissipated, the creature was still thrashing wildly. Bjorn lunged in to attack it, but it suddenly vanished and appeared by the altar, displaying truly astonishing speed.
It stared up at it, seeming distracted from the fight at hand.
They could only stare; moments later, the demon seemed to remember it was in a fight.
It turned and reached its hands up to its face.
It grabbed its mouth, trying to remove the stitches.
It failed.
In anger, the creature ripped its face off.
Screams of absurd volume rang through the cavern.
The bloodied face lowered, dripping with gore, and it locked back onto the humans.
With no lips or muscles on its face anymore, the skull was locked in a permanently twisted smile.
Without further theatrics, it attacked once again.
The strange actions of the creature had made the entire group freeze in fear and shock; even Icarus, who had lived a terrible life, had been taken aback.
Bjorn was the first to snap out of it and raised his blade before dashing forward and clashing with the Demon.
They disappeared into an explosion of earth and dust from the ground. The clashes between the swordsmen's blades and the creature's claws were heard, but their movements were obscured.
The ranged fighters were unable to assist. Jean, Icarus, and Alice were each tentative to fire off an attack due to the lack of visibility.
Lei was healing Hugo, who was still writhing on the ground, clutching at his arm.
Suddenly, a loud crash sounded out, and from the cloud of dust flew Bjorn's sword.
Icarus stared at it in horror
But one moment later, Bjorn jumped out, performing an acrobatic flip before landing and picking up his sword.
Astoundingly, he was unharmed, evidently winning each one of the exchanges in the cloud of dust.
He heard shallow breathing coming from inside the dust, and it occurred to him that now was the time to attack.
All this time, Lance had been waiting inside a spell seal he had gotten from the Elf Ria, waiting for the command to attack; he had been too afraid to let the dragon roam free in this strange place, but now was the perfect opportunity to let it out.
A spell seal formed in the air, and Lance appeared from it, his eyes glowed with golden fire, and he was already poised to attack.
A golden stream of fire ripped through the dust cloud, and he heard an inhuman shriek sound out.
The attack continued for a few seconds before fading out.
Satisfied with the dragon's attack, he recalled his Lance back into the spell seal.
The creature was shielding its body with its twisted bone wings; the skin between the bones had been burned, leaving just a thin charred layer of flesh.
The wings unfurled, revealing the state of the body beneath.
Dozens of cuts, likely from Bjorn's blade, laced the demon's body; almost every inch from head to toe had some amount of blood on it, making one wonder how the being had endured that much damage.
However, it was clear to Icarus that the reason behind its durability was definitely something to do with its origin; the strange creature seemed obviously different from everything else they had seen so far.
It was far more horrifying in every way.
He pointed his staff at the creature, its unmoving one-eyed gaze and twisted smile locked on him.
A magic missile formed at the tip of his staff, and its light illuminated the creature's twisted features in exquisite detail, leaving an image that he was sure would be with him until the grave.
But, inexplicably, the creature did not attempt to move, attack, or simply flee.
It allowed itself to be obliterated by the spell, the radiant white light separating its legs and head in an instant by reducing the creature's torso to ash.
The group stared in disbelief at the scene, the two parts of the monster's body already disintegrated by the time they fell to the ground.
The creature's bone obelisk had coincidentally been behind it as the attack hit, and as such had also been obliterated.
As the cave fell to silence, Icarus could not help but shudder.
.
.
.
It took some time for the group to collect their wits; they had grimly and wordlessly grouped up and assessed damages, including the death of Michael, and the wounded state of Hugo. Other than that, they were okay, physically at least...
It was then that Bjorn spoke, "Well, we should look for the exit now, it will be somewhere in this cavern."
Icarus nodded; he and Skew went off one way, and Bjorn and Jean the other. Lei was still tending to Hugo, whose wound seemed to be hard to heal, or at least for some reason or another, he was still writhing in pain.
Alice was watching the way they had come in, just in case.
After a while, it was Icarus who found the exit.
A staircase of dark stone that led straight down, so far down in fact that it appeared to fade completely into darkness.
When he had brought Bjorn to see it, he saw something on the man's face that he never expected.
True and utter terror.