Gulgrim’s Kutlass manages to punch through the armour on the Steelheart’s back, approximately where its head fuses with its body – it would appear that direct exposure to Jharm’s light had weakened its daemonic hide. His strike at the back of the creature’s knees is less successful however – the Kutlass manages to cut a gash into the metal, but fails to penetrate deep enough to cripple the Daemon. Before the injured Steelheart can whirl around to respond, Gulgrim has already disappeared.
Meanwhile, Soul Reaver is about to strike what was to be a final blow when Danyael’s ghostly orkish double springs in front of him, arms spread wide. Its outline flickers momentarily, before it destabilizes into a powerful blast of energy, directed straight forward.
The blast impacts on the Retribution Shield and pushes through to Soul Reaver, scorching his flesh, throwing him off-balance and sending him skidding a couple of meters back – and most importantly, interrupting his strike.
Soul Reaver finds himself surrounded now. In front of him, Danyael manages to throw off the Greater Hold spell and launches himself forward, past where his doppelganger had been standing. Behind him, Sepher and his double hurtle through the air, the point of his spear gleaming wickedly and pointed to land straight between Soul Reaver’s shoulderblades. Gulgrim appears on his left, a jet of green flame issuing from his mouth, and Kitharsis advances on the right, his skeletal minions weaving antimagic sorcery while Kitharsis and his skeletons move to within melee range. Directly above, Jharm bears down toward him as well.
Soul Reaver’s senses are pushed into overdrive as he attempts to counter all the simultaneous threats against him. His left arm thrusts outward, unleashing a disk of smoky shadow that swallows up Gulgrim’s scorching breath, at which point both powers seem to mutually annihilate each other with a bright flash.
Gulgrim does not remain on the battlefield however, teleporting back at the Steelheart to resume his attack. The Steelheart however has already seen Gulgrim teleporting around enough that, by now, it expects such an attack. It swiftly steps to the side and counters with a swift right-handed punch that will hit with enough force to knock the Ork out of the air. Meanwhile, the damaged metal around its neck and at the back of its knees has started flowing like liquid, gradually repairing the damage it has taken.
Above Soul Reaver, Jharm attempts to seize one of the tendrils, but it is no more substantial than a dream, and he finds his hand passing through it – which, in turn, allows it to start to feed. However, this does not continue for long – when he attempts to channel holy energy through the tendril, the undesirable energies cause the tendril to evaporate into nothingness, leaving him clutching nothing but air.
The efforts of Kitharsis’ mages are more successful, as they begin to unravel Soul Reaver’s control of the spell. Rather than allow it to be seized from him, Soul Reaver dismisses his spell with a mental command, immediately banishing the writhing shadows.
Both Sepher and Danyael dash toward Soul Reaver from opposite sides while Kitharsis throws his first punches. Soul Reaver takes a vicious punch to the temple, sending blood spraying from his mouth, but refuses to budge as he brings Blooddrinker up to deflect Danyael’s thrusts and slashes. He seems too preoccupied with Danyael to notice Sepher’s spear – he seems completely set on seizing a tiny opening in Danyael’s attacks, using his supernaturally enhanced agility to bypass those small gaps in his defences. Just as a blow is deflected, his taloned phantom arm thrusts toward Danyael…
At the last moment, Sepher sees Soul Reaver turn his head ever so slightly, a reddish glint in his eye, just as Sepher’s spear punches through the Retribution shield and directly through Soul Reaver’s back…
…but something isn’t right.
Soul Reaver’s body seems to flicker and shudder. For a brief second, Soul Reaver still seems to be where he was, but then suddenly he is standing a few centimeters to the side – the Shimmer spell having distorted his position. Sephers’ spear hasn’t impaled Soul Reaver – it merely punched through the flesh at his flank… far too little flesh, as it turns out, to stop Sepher’s momentum. At the same time, Soul Reaver’s talon has yanked Danyael toward him with inhuman strength, hurling the warrior onto the freshly-bloodied tip of Sepher’s spear.
Soul Reaver doesn’t waste any time – he was still in extreme danger, with Kitharsis throwing another flurry of punches at his side, as well as Sepher and Kitharsis’ doubles, and Kitharsis’ skeletal warriors arriving to join in the fray. He spins to face Kitharsis, tearing his body free from Sepher’s spear. Another mighty punch from the mighty Tirthandara suddenly goes wide as Soul Reaver bends backward and dives beneath it. He continues his forward momentum, sliding prone through the mire, beneath Kitharsis legs, slashing at the hulking warrior’s Achilles tendons as he does so
He leaps to his feet again behind Kitharsis, face-to-face with the Tirthandara’s skeletal minions and ghostly doppelganger.
The numbers were arrayed against him and his foes were not relenting, and attacking anyone who had a living doppelganger was clearly dangerous. It was time to thin their herd.
Soul Reaver’s insubstantial black talon forms a fist, and a line of smoky blackness rises from it, forming a shaft and then a long, wicked curving blade – a phantom reflection of the scythe that had once been wielded by Blooddrinker prior to his imprisonment.
Blooddrinker blocks a punch from a hulking, Mohawk-wearing Ork phantom and slashes to keep two skeletal minions at bay while Soul Reaver begins to spin the scythe in his hand.
Then, with a mighty swing, he slashes the scythe in a wide arc.
A thin, glowing orange line seems to flash brightly for a moment as the scythe unleashes its horrifying power, cutting clean through the torsos of the minions engaging him, ork and skeleton alike. A shockwave of cutting power, it continues for as far as the eye can see, slicing through steel and flesh as though it were air. A metal girder sparks and slides into two neat halves, a concrete slab flies apart into shards.
And then Soul Reaver is in the air, launching himself at the rocket-pack wearing Orks. Blooddrinker stabs upward, punching through the chest of one of the orks above him and detonating his rocket pack in a massive fireball. Obscured by the smoke and flame, the scythe slashes once, twice, three times – and three shockwaves blast from Soul Reaver’s position into all directions. Vast swathes of both airborne stormboys and the orkish infantry alike erupt into gore and flames, and Sepher and Jharm's doubles find themselves cut clean in half with the same blow.
Soul Reaver’s feet slam into the ground near the orks. Their thick blood runs in a roaring torrent upon the black ichor; it rains hot from the skies. Blooddrinker’s tip touches the mire and a maelstrom of gore forms around the blade as it lives up to its namesake.
Dark mana boils up around Soul Reaver as he begins to chant once more, and more smoky shadows rise around him. And something stirs behind him – a vast, bloated horror pulls itself from Inferno, a massive, filth-encrusted spiked mace held in its hands.
