The last-resort plasma blast from Erica did give her that much-needed ticket to saving Dante, but the price proved to be very steep.
Neil, their in-house intelligent archivist, lay dead.
Juno, the soul-seer, knelt broke in the casting dirt, holding the fracture in his arm. There was great pain all over his face from the curse, which connected his wounds to Eric's.
They were barely alive with the most grief, and close to destruction. Then came the short silence that followed Erica's shot, thick enough to seem to carry the bond of an omen just that soon they would all die.
Derek's laughter broke the silence with his rough and disgusting tone. "Is that all you have? One last shot before it's done?" Again, he stood, smirk back on his face. "Your strategist is no good now, your healer is too busy and your best fighters are slowing down by blood loss. So, that's it."
Absolutely. Dante felt somewhat trapped in his own head.
The curse from the Maleficium user was a steady, strong push that turned every plan into hard work. It did not work out for him again; the unit was now being broken down into parts. They could not win this battle. Not in this state.
It was in that time of deep hopelessness that he saw it. In the middle of that mess, Juno looked at him. His face was white and marked with tears and dirt and his body was shaken by pain he was sharing with Eric's wounds. But the eyes were focused, bright, and holding a scary kind of last resolve.
He was not only looking at Dante; he was sending a message. His eyes moved from Dante to the curse user who was laughing loudly, then to the ground near him where a rough rock was.
But the thing hit Dante, nonetheless. Juno's skill, Soul Etching, was not only destined to find weak spots but links, too. He had seen the functioning economics of how the curse that stuck him operated. It wasn't just one-direction-they-drew-blood; he wanted to break the link.
It required a very big sacrifice: the last push, the last bold step.
That was all behind the last throw of expendable sacrifice to save his king in action of Dante. "Juno, No,", he thought.
He bid farewell with a weak sadly smiling face. It was the final farewell. Eich raced to grab the sharp stone with the other hand before anyone could move. No delay.
With one final, hurt shout, mingled of coup de grace and Neil's memory and some fight-back aggression, he pushed the stone somewhere deep into his own chest, right above the heart.
Shunk.
It was fast and terrible results though.
The Maleficium user, who had so far been preparing to cast another hex, only then let out the shriek that got whole rumbled. Neither winning nor triumphant in its kind, this was, rather, real, powerful agony.
Down he went to his knees, clutching his very chest, eyes widening in former pain of having received a deadly hit.
"Hex of Shared Pain" had absolutely turned into a very weapon to wound both sides. He felt the complete, strong pain of Juno's ending. Not dead but racked his mind by the feel of a killing blow, all making completely stuck.
Clouds of thought in Dante's mind suddenly vanished as if they had never existed. Sadness would wait, for now is the payback hour.
"Masha!" His voice sharp as a whip. "THE ILLUSIONIST! HE'S OPEN! ICE COFFIN!"
Holding onto the proverbial fire station, a Phantasm user had just caught unaware when one of his teammates fell, at a half second - a bit too late to act for Masha, whose face was full of cold anger. She put the sadness and anger into one point of very cold air.
CRACKLE!
Somehow, the earth nearby the illusionist opened wide, and a thick ice casing swiftly enveloped him, hardening his freeze into a silent scream for eternity.
Two down.
"PUPPET!" The command coursed through Dante, who pressed on with the battle. "GO THROUGH THE SHIELD!"
His shadowy apparition, still scratching at the wall of the user of Wardcraft, complied. The shield shook as its maker looked forth in terror at the frozen patch where his mate once was.
In that brief spell of distraction, the puppet flowed into an amorphous shadow-like figure. It passed through the magical wall, solidifying again within.
Shnk!
The shadow's hand sunk deep into the chest of the Wardcraft user, snuffing out his life before he could even turn around.
Three down.
The battle had not changed; now, it was chaotic.
"Talia!" Dante called. "The Graviton user is yours!"
Talia, now free of the illusion trickery, acted like the wind.
The tortured gravity Mage tried in vain to escape as his allies fell under Talia's decisively fast attack. With one well-placed thrust of her rapier to the nape of his neck, he fell to the ground.
Four left standing.
Derek was still facing Eric while his full back group disbanded in less than 30 seconds.
Derek screamed angrily as he saw his team fall apart. "You're all going to die for this!" He turned his sword, artifact powers fully unleashed, and a bright red light surrounded him, shooting not toward Dante but to the next person-Talia.
"Not very far separated, though-we're weak," said all in this regard.
"Eric, with her!" commanded Dante.
Eric had not bent down; he was standing against Derek's charge, bloody but level-headed; his shield absorbed most of the artifact's blow. The crack rolled beneath with waves across the ground, but he never moved.
Talia already closed her distance in, rapier lunging fast as Derek parried it, his weighty attacks contending well against her agile movements. Together, they kept him pinned, an executed team of two bludgeoning attacks and precise executions.
"Keep talking, Edgar!"
"His right side is exposed after a downward swing! The artifact makes him reckless!" Edgar shouted, his voice strong, his confidence building now that he was sure whatever immediate danger had passed.
While Masha and Erica defended the injured squad as her magic returned slowly, Masha slicked the ice on the ground near four remaining fighters and made risky their walking. Erica, keeping her concentration, sent little fire shots her way, just enough to sting and push her off balance and out of formation.
Then came an exemplary worst bit from Dante. He reached his hand, not to one body but to three. A Phantasmist, a Wardcrafter, a Graviton user: their corpses had all succumbed to a phantasmagorical reverie.
"Serve me," he commanded, directing his will toward the new dead bodies.
Three new shadow puppets emerged from the earth, their body shapes twisted to silhouettes of the boys they were. Then they opened their violet eyes, like an unholy covenant in triplicate.
He pointed at the four brawlers who were falling on Masha's ice and struggling hard to contend Eric's last enemy. "Overrun them."
His three new puppets were slow, silent, and dark. They plunged into the brawlers, who shrieked in terror as the shadowy visages of their deceased friends blanketed them.
The fight was over. It was a gruesome, bloody, and once so high-priced victory. Juno lay still before Dante, a jagged stone burrowing in his chest. He had sacrificed desperately to save them in that venture. Against the odds that cursed Dante's mind in those desperate instances, they had gained victory.
A cold heaviness increased inside him with sadness. Yet with Derek being crushed by Eric and Talia taking out Juno's last men through the spirits of their friends, one thing he was sure of: they would not waste Juno's sacrifice.