Day 4 Evening

[Magus]

She was dead.

She was dead!

He’d seen her die with his own eyes. The red haired bitch who’d attacked them with the Mouse and the odd one and the traitor. They’d murdered Kopaka and they had taken her life in turn.

So then why had she been brought back and not him?

“Murderers,” Magus glowered at the girl and the Mouse and their compatriots, his glare hovering especially long over Link. “Fucking hypocrites.”

He shambled forward, his whole body screaming at him to just stop, to just give in. Blood, old and new, burned against pale, scarred flesh. He was going to die, he knew that. But he wouldn’t die a coward. He already knew death wasn’t a constant in the Omniverse, but still – he’d never done it before.

The bite wound on his neck stung, the cuts all over his body, the bruises, the lumps. His body was finished, and he’d hardly accomplished a thing. Lavender hair hung in greasy, messy strands, obscuring his vision.

“Y’know, you’ve been awful quiet for a while. They say shutting down like that is bad for mental health,” the demon said, having suddenly appeared to his side as he trudged on toward the mouth of the cave. Magus had misjudged him, thinking him a slimy, evasive creature. Maybe on the surface, but Crowley was no turncoat.

“Are they the same people who used to say radiation was good for you?”

“People used to say that?”

Magus’ withering gaze burned into Crowley for a moment, before he cast his eyes back to his destination.

“You’re the perpetual buzzkill, you know that? You’re the cure for optimism,” Crowley retorted. “Kind of a dick, too, sometimes.”

The wizard stopped at the mouth of the cave, ignoring the crashes of battle within, and again turned to look his travelling companion in the eyes. His face was grey and expressionless, and then his lips curled into a frown. Magus kept hobbling forward. “I appreciate you.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Uh-” he began, and then closed his mouth, having thought better of it.

Quickly, Magus could feel the effervescent energies of powerful magics surging all around him, invigorating him. He stepped quicker, in spite of the pain surging through his body. He’d fought Lavos and had nearly been killed a number of times. It didn’t stop him then. It wouldn’t stop him now.

A gargantuan explosion shook them, and the small woman who had charged in ahead came hurtling back at them. Magus moved to catch her, but balked at a sudden pain in his ribs. Crowley, however, didn’t fumble and was nearly crumpled to the ground by Ururu’s fearsome impact as he caught the girl.

The two of them righted themselves even as Magus continued ahead, chainsaw in hand. “You,” he called. “Girl,” he looked over at her. “Let us help you.”

A freshly summoned horde of the undead charged toward him. “Necromancy,” he breathed, revving up his motorized blade.

Chains bit into flesh, splattering foul, blackened ichor, bone, and sinew onto the walls, the ceiling, everywhere. Even him. He wore the blood and guts like war paint, carving his way through unliving flesh as he forced his way into the heart of the cave.

He saw the source of the opposing power, the supposed Warlock who had caused them all so much grief in the past several days. A withered, horrible looking lich stared up at him with hollow, sullen eyes.

“Necromancy, lichdom, conjuration,” Magus noted, looking up at the ceiling and around himself. “Interesting. But your magic is crude.”

“What?”

“Makes sense. I wondered what on earth Teucer was thinking when he summoned us to the island but stripped us of our powers. I thought him afraid of us, but… it was you, wasn’t it? You took our powers because you’re the coward.”

“You dare-”

“Let’s be honest with ourselves; if I was still in control of my magical faculties, we wouldn’t be speaking now, as you’d already be dead,” Magus flashed the decaying spellcaster a deadly grin. “But I don’t need magic to tear you to shreds. I’ve gotten ample experience with this,” Magus revved his chainsaw to punctuate his point.

Fizzling energies crackled along the Warlock’s knuckles as he prepared a succinct rebuttal.

“Girl!” Magus snarled, unlooping his pilfered bullwhip from his belt. “I suspect you’ve been stripped of your powers, too. Take this,” he threw the weapon to Ururu, who caught it handily. “Crowley,” he added. “Do it.”

The formerly well-clothed devil didn’t need him to elaborate and unleashed a torrent of wubs and jarring, split-second samples of television violence. It was too much for the Warlock, who unleashed his counter-attack in the form of un-aimed magical devastation. Twin blasts of primal magic smashed into the wall and ceiling, sending huge hunks of stone crashing down upon them.

The trio of warriors charged at the Warlock, evading the crushing rock and attacking all at once. Another wild burst of dropped beats crashed into the awful creature, before Magus’ blade impaled itself into the Warlock’s gut, carving straight through the other side.

The two mages locked eyes and all the while Magus tried to force his blade to move, to end this here and now with one last, grisly cut. But the weapon would not be moved.

“Where is your bravado now?” the grotesque thing demanded, before a blast of kinetic energy launched Magus, chainsaw and all, into the far wall. He smashed the stone with a sickening crack and crumbled to the floor.

The girl he’d given his weapon to didn’t let it go to waste, immediately snapping the whip out and wrapping it around the Warlock’s forearm, pulling his arm away and leaving him wide open to another aural blast from Crowley’s bizarre weapon.

Magus coughed, spattering some of his own blood on his chin, before coughing up a scarlet river that spilled onto his chest. The new blood vanished instantly in the sea of gore already clinging to his flesh.

He struggled, fighting to climb to his feet. If he had to die, he would not die on the sidelines.