The Three-Edged Sword: Rallying to War

[Soul Reaver]

The golems blast themselves into fragments, unleashing waves of negative energy.  It took only a second to hit Soul Reaver, but he recognizes its signature from his earlier encounter with the Shaiton Lord.

Soul Reaver had long learned to channel his emotions to his own benefit, and knowing what he did now, he allowed the surge of anger to find expression and focus through him, lunging forward into the retreating Shaiton ranks, slashing and tearing through them with elevated ferocity.

His Daemonic allies, strangely, did not seem too affected by the wave - short of a subtle widening of Blightwing's fanged grin.  Perhaps their nature was such that increased hatred and anger was not even within the realm of possibility?

Soul Reaver's spell, meanwhile, shifts in its nature.  With a deafening crack the ground heaves upward, opening a web of deep fissures that swallow those Shaiton too slow to leap to safety.  The cold rain turns into freezing, razor sharp shards of ice the size of daggers, driven by the gale-force winds straight at the enemy, yet somehow missing Soul Reaver's allies by a hair.

Soul Reaver's rage subsides, and he slows his assault, leaving the ground behind him littered with bisected Shaiton corpses.  He turns his head - how did his companions fare?

[Shadow Chorus]

The bellowing Warboss roared his triumph as the Golem crumbled underneath his blazing fists, the darkness of their deaths washing over him and his forces like a wave of spilled blood, relishing in the triumph of a glorious battle.

For Orks, rage, violence, exultation in carnage, and bloodshed are integral parts of their very being. The influence the darkness attempted to assert upon the Avatar of Gork and Mork was like throwing a bundle of kindling onto a roaring inferno. The Warboss hardly noticed the difference, and kept plowing his way through his enemies with the same single-minded glee he always did. A few of his boyz may have gotten a bit more rowdy than normal, and a few brawls may have broken out among his forces, but the Nobz, similarly used to being saturated in fury and violence, though perhaps not to the same extent of their Warboss, quickly got the ladz back in line, directing their fury and bloodlust back at the gits they were supposed to be krumpin'.

If anything the effects of the wave may have made the Orks more dangerous to the Shaiton than anything; a green wedge was driving its way into the enemy forces now, the Boyz even more eager to get stuck in than before. With the Seraphim all hiding behind shields or writhing on the ground like they'd already been snikked, the only fight worth having was dead ahead in the Shaiton lines. And the boyz took to it with gusto, bullets, axes, and flung Grots rending the air like a tidal wave as they hurled themselves heedlessly at their designated foes.

A right an' propa WAAAAAAAGH!!!, all things considered.

[Fallen Templar]

As the golems detonated, Phaerys hastened to create a gout of flame that would fend off the oncoming waves of darkness. However such desperate measures did not afford the same degree of protection as Jharm's shield of light. The darkness swept over Phaerys and the Seraphs surrounding him, some of them engulfed by dark fire and others falling into a mindless rage. The Ataran's conjured fire guttered like a candle in a strong wind, and he felt that same irritation as before. This battle was a distraction from directives sorely neglected, and the berserk Seraphs were viable specimens for further study.

Phaerys fell upon the nearest one in a whirlwind of taloned limbs, catching them in mid-lunge. Armour and flesh alike were stripped away at the molecular level as he attempted to examine the full extent of the corruption. How did it spread? Could it be halted?

Of course, a warzone made for a poor laboratory environment. Phaerys' efforts were stymied when he was blindsided by an attack from a Shaiton amid the battle still raging around him. A blade bit deep into the Ataran's back, opening a small rent and causing the energy that made up his true body to vent out like a small solar flare. The Shaiton was caught right in the face by the intense light and heat, giving Phaerys an opening to swiftly turn around and cast a handful of alloy shards into its torso.

With a moment to spare, Phaerys quickly reached an arm back to repair the suit breach. That fleeting moment of peril was enough to have brought him back to his senses. It may not have been his duty, but their battle line had to hold firm. And Gulgrim's green tide was sure to swing the momentum back in their favour. Falling back to a suitable position near the Orks' destructive wake, Phaerys prepared to offer fire support once more. A volley of fireballs arced overhead and into the Shaiton around the backlines, softening them up for the inevitable advance of the main force.