The Orcs were herding her. It was a slow, deliberate, and deeply insulting process. A dozen of Grummash's warriors, their tusks stained and their axes sharp, were not charging with their usual berserker fury. They were flanking, feinting, their coordinated movements a brutal ballet designed to force Veridia back step by agonizing step. Each move was calculated to push her into the waiting embrace of a collapsed bell tower, its jagged stone a cage of her own making.
Exhaustion was a physical weight, a shroud of lead draped over her limbs. The fight that had led her here had bled her reserves dry, and the Curse was beginning its familiar, hollow ache. Her movements were sluggish, her parries a fraction too slow. She was being toyed with, and the sheer indignity of it was a fire in her gut.
A blast of shadowy energy, more theatrical than threatening, erupted from the edge of the ruined courtyard. It struck an Orc in the chest, sending him stumbling back with a theatrical grunt but leaving him otherwise unharmed. Seraphine appeared in a whirlwind of feigned fury, her form shockingly solid, clad in black leather that seemed to drink the dim light.
"Sister, hold on!" she cried, her voice ringing with a false urgency that was clearly a performance for the Patrons. "I'll deal with these brutes! Just try to stay alive!"
Seraphine engaged the Orcs, a dancer in a storm of steel. A spectral blade shimmered into existence in her hand, parrying an axe swing in a shower of purple sparks. She spun, a kick sending another Orc staggering, but it was a push, not a blow. Veridia watched, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. There was no killing intent. No blood. It was a beautifully choreographed, utterly pointless fight. Every move was perfect for the camera—a dramatic pose here, a narrow dodge there. It was a stage fight, and a poorly disguised one at that.
Seraphine fought her way closer, using the Orcs as moving obstacles to mask her true approach. Veridia felt a nauseating thrum in her soul—the life-link bond, flaring with the shared adrenaline of Seraphine's "desperate" battle. It was a lie. A wave of secondhand pain, as hollow and performative as her sister's attacks, washed through her. She wasn't fighting for her. She was fighting *to* her.
*This isn't a rescue,* the thought was a shard of ice in her mind. *It's a mugging. The bitch is using her own soldiers to stage a mugging for my artifacts!*
Seraphine was within ten feet now, her eyes not on the Orcs surrounding them, but fixed with greedy intensity on the simple leather Bag of Holding at Veridia's hip.
***
The courtyard's outer wall exploded inward, a concussive blast of stone and dust that ripped through the air. Castian the Vowed entered through the breach, a figure of absolute, focused violence. His silvered blade was already dripping with Orc blood from the sentries he'd cut down outside, his face a mask of cold, righteous fury.
The Orcs, startled by the new threat, abandoned their game with Veridia. They turned, their discipline momentarily broken, raising their axes to face the crusader. Their grunts of surprise shifted to bellows of rage. Castian met their charge not as a man, but as a force of nature.
The battlefield devolved into a three-sided melee of conflicting agendas. Castian was a whirlwind of lethal efficiency, his every move designed to kill. He ignored the demons, carving a bloody path through the Orcs to clear the board. Seraphine, seeing her chance in the new chaos, abandoned her theatrical fight entirely. She lunged, not at an Orc, but directly at Veridia.
At the same moment, the rubble from Castian's entrance shifted, and a heavy slab of granite slid down, pinning Veridia's leg. She cried out, a sharp cry of real pain shooting up her thigh as she tried to fend off her sister's greedy hands. An Orc axe swung wide, embedding itself in the stone inches from her head with a percussive crack.
The life-link bond became a symphony of agony. Veridia felt the jarring impact of Castian's sword shattering an Orc's collarbone, a phantom pain that blossomed in her own shoulder through Seraphine's alliance with Grummash. She felt her sister's frantic, selfish adrenaline, a sickening counterpoint to her own rising panic. Their shared connection, designed for torment, was now a conduit for the chaos of the entire battlefield. Both sisters felt their strength draining, their reactions slowing, their vision blurring at the edges as the feedback loop of violence overwhelmed them.
***
The battle raged around them, but for the two sisters, it had shrunk to a pathetic, ugly struggle in the dirt. Seraphine grappled with the trapped Veridia, her nails scrabbling at the ties of the artifact bag. It was a desperate, undignified brawl, a far cry from the grand magical duels of the Court.
Castian, meanwhile, was being overwhelmed. For every Orc he cut down, two more took its place, their brute strength wearing down his disciplined skill. A heavy axe blow glanced off his pauldron, the force of it sending him to one knee with a grunt of pain. Another blade opened a deep gash on his arm, and his own blood, bright and real, stained the holy runes of his gauntlet.
He looked up, his one good eye taking in the scene with terrifying clarity. He saw the two demons, the twin sources of this world's corruption, wrestling over trinkets while their monstrous allies bled around them. His face hardened, the pain and frustration forged into a grim, final certainty.
Ignoring the Orcs bearing down on him, Castian slammed his uninjured hand onto a large, rune-carved flagstone in the center of the courtyard. He roared a single word of holy power, a name that burned the very air with its purity.
The flagstone erupted.
A massive pillar of pure, white light shot into the sky, a silent, blinding beacon that scoured the shadows from the ruins. A wave of energy expanded outward, absolute and soundless. Every trace of demonic magic in the courtyard was instantly purged. The shadowy energy clinging to Seraphine evaporated into nothing. The faint, corrupt glow of the boons in Veridia's bag fizzled out, their power extinguished.
The life-link bond between them did not just go quiet; it snapped. A psychic shriek of pure feedback, like a cable under immense tension suddenly breaking, ripped through their minds. It was a soundless scream of severance that threw both sisters to the ground. They landed in a heap, gasping, the comforting, ever-present hum of their innate demonic power utterly gone, stripped away as if it had never been.
Veridia and Seraphine, stripped of all magic, lay vulnerable on the cold stone. The Orcs recoiled from the holy light, their red eyes wide with confusion and a primal, instinctual fear. In the center of the brilliant, unwavering beacon, Castian stood. Wounded, bleeding, but resolute, he turned his cold, victorious gaze upon the two helpless demons.