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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2898014" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 605Within a storm of power, Graz’zt exalted. Cal watched in horror as the expanding radiance engulfed each of his friends, paralyzing them, drawing their life energy along the insubstantial but very real links that connected them to the demon prince. He had a dispel left, but he recognized the magic being wrought as an epic spell, and knew that his own paltry powers would have no chance against it.  If only his patron had seen fit to include a disjunction in the blue book, then he might had a tiny fraction of probability…Unless…There had been one more spell in that book, an incantation of the highest valence, the summit of magical power that few mortal mages ever met.  That spell now burned in his memory, taken in anticipation of this confrontation.  But while he could possibly save one of his companions with it, what would that gain?  There was nowhere left for them to escape to, no place they could run to hide from the dark lord of Occipitus.  But then, he looked deeper.  Callendes, lying on the ground, his ruined wing hanging over him in a bloody mess, stiffened and screamed as the wash of the epic spell caught him.  Cal was now the last, and the gray radiance continued to expand, a last tendril of energy already creeping outward to engulf him as well.  That sphere filled his vision, with the Prince just a dark blotch deep within.  There was no time left. Cal cast the spell. The spell vanished into the maelstrom.  It was drawn to the Heart of Axion, the currents of magical power vanishing into the tiny gray orb, which flickered with the life of a miniature sun trapped within. Cal sagged as the strain of the casting left him drained, and he stumbled back, falling upon his backside.  He could only look at the light that expanded over him, promising oblivion. But then, the power of the Heart flickered. For Cal had cast his spell not at Graz’zt, but at the Heart itself.  A spell that was the culmination of all of his years of study and craft, a spell of the highest arcane valence. Freedom. The epic surges around Graz’zt exploded outward in a new violence, but now they were wild, uncontrolled.  The Prince screamed as several of the gray tendrils pierced his body, cutting swathes through the very core of his being.  A gray fire surged from the Heart, which blazed now with an unrestricted fury and intensity, like a smoldering fire that had suddenly found a cache of fresh fuel.  The surviving companions were hurled back as the connection between them and the demon was suddenly and traumatically sundered.  They rolled to a stop in an expansive ring around the Prince, whose screams grew as he clawed at the raging inferno burning within his eye socket.  The skin around that opening began to melt and run, the ruined flesh abused once more by the intensity of a greater power.  Graz’zt began to rise, drawn up by the flows of power, which grew more insistent and substantial as the entity within the Heart escaped the bonds that had held it captive. And then, all at once, the glow, the surrounding power surge, it all just abruptly vanished.  Graz’zt fell back, and something fell from a bloody claw, plummeting toward the ground.  The Heart of Axion struck the iron floor, and shattered.  Arun was the first to stand.  Reaching down, he picked up his hammer, the heavy head sliding on the floor as he slowly started toward the crippled demon.  But before he could reach Graz’zt, the Prince stumbled back, falling into the embrace of his throne.  The demon drew aside the iron seat, and manipulated something in the hollow space beneath. Arun brought up his hammer, and charged. Graz’zt turned, and hissed something, a sound that bubbled between the ruined hole that had been his mouth.  The flesh covering the right side of his face had melted, dripping in long trailing bulbs that occasionally parted to reveal the white skull beneath.  There was no way he could have still lived, had he been a mortal creature.  His other eye was thick with a milky film, but somehow he still sensed the approach of danger.  A dark opening appeared in the air beside the throne, which the demon hurled himself through, vanishing from view.  Arun rushed forward, apparently intent on pursuit regardless of where their foe fled, but just before he reached it, the portal slid shut and dissolved. Graz’zt was gone.</blockquote>

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