We dropped out of the tree and landed on the rubble of the vaults below us, which had completely collapsed. Only the immensely sturdy outer walls were still standing, but the entire interior was nothing but a pile of broken stone. We picked our way through the rubble, then climbed out and used the assassins’ ropes—assassins always had ultralight but immensely strong climbing ropes on them—to rappel down the outer walls.
Then we were in the streets, where chaos reigned. Blood Demons, wearing the armor of Resplendent Crusaders, Consecrated Knights, Palace Guards, and other elite Church of Light troops, were rampaging through the streets, slaughtering the panicking citizens en-masse. Some crusaders, knights, and guards were not, however, under the spell of Elandriel and the Blood God. These were valiantly attempting to defend the citizens, but were getting cut down by the much stronger Blood Demons, whose armor and weapons glowed with the red aura of Blood magic.
I resurrected a few citizens who’d been killed by falling rubble and gave the container with the embalmed Dragon Heart for them to carry, so I could free myself up to fight.
“Take out as many of the fuckers as you can!” I roared before I somersaulted over a fleeing mother and her child and cut down the Blood Demon who was pursuing them, hot on their heels. “We fight our way down that way, to the Southern Gate!”
Two more Blood Demons, attired in the armor of Consecrated Knights, charged out of an alley with a roar, coming at me with their greatswords whistling in deadly arcs. I ducked under the first demon’s slash and sliced his body in half, hacking the Dragon Sword through his waist. Then I spun and parried my second adversary’s cut before I shattered his greatsword with my magical blade and diced him into quarters with four swift strokes. Even when his chopped-up body parts hit the ground, his severed head rolled toward me, his jaws snapping at my feet. His right arm and half of his cut-up torso dragged itself toward me, the fingers reaching for me with a voracious hunger. The other demon’s legless torso was dragging itself across the cobbles toward me, undeterred by the fact that it had lost half of its body.
I booted the head away, sending the grisly thing sailing through the air like a ball, where it crashed through the window of a collapsing tavern. I spun around and slashed the crawling legless torso into even smaller pieces.
All around me, the assassins, the Lord of Light’s loyal warriors, Yumo-Rezu, and Friya in her werewolf-form were engaged in a furious battle against the hordes of Blood Demons. We fought our way through the narrow cobbled street, while buildings collapsed around us and panicking people ran screaming in terror past us.
If I was ever around for the end of the world, I imagined it would look something like this. If my forces and I lost the coming battle, this would, of course, be the actual end of the world.
“Take courage, my children!” the Lord of Light calmly called out to the fleeing citizens as they ran around in utter panic, like chickens with their heads chopped off. “The Light shall prevail, and ye whose faith remains pure shall be protected from the scourge of evil!”
“Why don’t you help your people out by killing some of these fucking Blood Demons instead of preaching, dumbass!” I yelled as I skewered a rabid Blood Demon on my sword.
“A wise idea, I suppose, God of Death,” he said, and raised his hands. The sun above us seemed to grow impossibly bright. Intense beams of white-hot light started blasting down from the heavens, frying every Blood Demon they hit to a crisp, leaving behind nothing but smoking piles of ash where these foul creatures had been.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you could do that?” I yelled while exchanging a flurry of blows with three Blood Demons who were all attacking me at once.
The Lord of Light shrugged. “You did not ask me, God of Death.”
“Well do it some more, asshole!” I yelled. “There are too many of these things!”
Just then, two ten-foot-tall werewolves charged out of a side alley, roaring and slavering. They pounced on two of the Blood Demons I was fighting and started tearing them to shreds, roaring and howling as they ripped the demons’ limbs off. I gave them a nod, thanking them for their assistance, then proceeded to thoroughly dismember the remaining Blood Demon in front of me.
The Lord of Light called down more potent rays of sunshine. Yumo-Rezu continued to use her tried and tested method of rapid-firing multiple Cold arrows into a Blood Demon’s head and then shattering its frozen skull into splinters before it could counteract the magic. The assassins were fighting hard, using every weapon and dirty trick they knew on the nearly unstoppable Blood Demons. The Lord of Light’s troops, under the spell of his magic, conjured searing hot rays from their greatswords, much like Elyse shot from her mace.
It was hard going, especially since we had to avoid causing collateral harm or accidently killing the thousands of civilians who were streaming in panic through the streets. However, after around an hour of intense fighting, we made it to the gates at the bottom of the hill. They had been left wide open and abandoned by most of the terrified guards, who had fled along with the civilians. Streams of people, tens of thousands in each stream, were flowing out of the city gates as the Blood Pyramid rose from the dying city. We forced our way through them and came to a clear spot on the plains that provided a good view of Luminescent Spires.
It was a surreal sight. The entire hill, as well as the plains around it, were shaking violently, and buildings were tumbling off the slopes and collapsing into
