Chapter 8: The Gambit
The silence in the archives was thick enough to choke on. Vorlik's face was a mask of conflicted fury, his knuckles white where they gripped the edge of the map table. The lieutenants looked between their captain and the young man proposing insanity.
"Hunt a demon general in his own territory?" one of them finally spluttered, breaking the tension. "With what army? The handful of you who can barely control your parlor tricks?"
"It is not an army we need," Leander countered, his voice unnervingly calm. "It is a scalpel. An army would be seen, expected, and crushed. A small, focused team might slip through. Pythios is arrogant. He believes he has us cornered and cowed. He will not be looking for us to come for him."
"And if you fail?" Vorlik's voice was low, gravelly. "If you die out there, and we have sacrificed our best defense for nothing?"
"Then we are no worse off than if we starve here," Leander said, the brutal truth hanging in the air. "But if we succeed, we break the siege without losing a single soldier to his trap at Silver Ridge. We shatter his confidence and show Deimos that his tools can be broken."
The gamble was laid bare. The potential reward was immense. The cost of failure was total.
It was Elpis who tipped the scales. "He's right," she said, her voice quiet but firm. All eyes turned to her. "I've felt that… that *cold* in the blighted areas. It's not natural. It's a presence. It's *his* presence. I can feel the direction it pulls from, like a foul wind. I can track it."
That decided it. They had a hunter and a trail.
The team was the same as the ambush in the Blackwood: Leander, the anchor; Roric, the shield; Elpis, the fire and now the tracker; and Orion, the fist. They moved out under the cover of a moonless night, slipping through Cyrus's drainage tunnel like ghosts. The air outside the walls was heavy, the silence a physical weight. The forest was a graveyard of stillness.
Elpis led, her eyes closed part of the time, feeling for the subtle, sickening pull of the blight's source. It was slow, painstaking work. They moved not as soldiers, but as shadows, avoiding even the chittering of nocturnal insects, which had also fallen silent.
After hours of tense travel, Elpis stopped at the edge of a clearing. In its center stood a massive, petrified oak tree, its branches skeletal claws against the sky. But it was what lay at its base that stole their breath.
A pulsing, veined sac of dark energy, the size of a small hut, was rooted into the earth. Tendrils of palpable shadow spread out from it, snaking across the ground in the direction of Last-Hope. This was the source of the blight. And standing before it, one hand resting on its foul surface as if communing with it, was Pythios.
He was not alone. Two hulking, new demons stood guard. These were not Scavengers. They were brutes, with thick, obsidian-like hides and arms that ended in crushing stone mauls. Their eyes glowed with a dim, malevolent intelligence. The Corruptor's personal guard.
Leander's mind raced, the plan forming in an instant. He gestured silently: Orion would take the brute on the left, Roric would engage the one on the right and hold its attention. Elpis would target the blight-sac itself. Her fire was the only thing that might purify it.
And Leander? His target was Pythios.
They struck.
Orion erupted from the foliage with a guttural roar, his fist of solidified force slamming into his target with a sound like a shattering bell. The brute staggered but did not fall, its hide proving incredibly resilient.
On cue, Roric lunged forward, his shield of light flaring brightly, drawing the second brute's enraged charge. The demon's stone maul crashed against the luminous barrier, sending out shockwaves of energy.
Pythios turned, his expression one of mild, amused surprise. "The little scalpels have arrived. How… enterprising."
He made a casual gesture, and a wave of pure psychic force slammed into Orion, throwing the brawler back into the trees. He then turned his gaze to Roric, and the guardsman cried out, his shield flickering as Pythios's will sought to unravel his concentration directly.
This was the moment. While Pythios was distracted.
"Elpis, now!" Leander yelled.
A torrent of focused white-hot flame shot from Elpis's hands, not at Pythios, but at the pulsing blight-sac. The veined surface blackened and sizzled, and a shriek that was not of this world echoed through the clearing.
Pythios's amusement vanished. His focus broke from Roric, his full attention snapping to Elpis with murderous intent. "You dare!"
He raised a hand, dark energy coalescing to strike her down.
But Leander was already moving. He didn't attack with light or force. He did the one thing Pythios would never expect. He reached out with his own consciousness, not to fight the demon's power, but to *understand* it, to feel its structure. He found the connection between Pythios and the blight-sac, a tether of corrupted energy.
And he *squeezed*.
It was like grabbing a live wire. Agony seared through Leander's mind. But he held on, his will a vise. Pythios staggered, the dark energy in his hand sputtering out. He turned to Leander, his molten gold eyes wide with shock and then dawning, incandescent rage.
"You… you insect!" he hissed, his voice losing its silken quality for the first time. "You touch what you cannot comprehend!"
The two brutes, seeing their master threatened, disengaged from Orion and Roric and began thundering towards Leander.
"The sac! Finish it!" Leander gritted out, blood trickling from his nose from the strain of holding Pythios's power.
Elpis, her face a mask of determination, poured everything she had into a final, concentrated blast. The blight-sac erupted in a silent explosion of dissipating shadow and purifying fire. The veined tendrils withering away to nothing.
A scream of pure, undiluted fury tore from Pythios's throat. The loss of the sac was a tangible wound. The clearing, once choked with death, suddenly felt… clear. The oppressive silence broke, replaced by the normal, tentative sounds of the forest.
But the fight wasn't over. Enraged beyond reason, Pythios and his two brutes now focused solely on Leander. Orion and Roric moved to intercept the brutes, but they were battered, their energy low.
Leander stood his ground, facing the charging Corruptor. He was drained, his mind aching. He had no weapon, no shield. Only his will.
And in that moment, he knew. He couldn't win. But he could make Pythios pay.
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Author's Note:
The gambit is in motion! The blight-sac is destroyed, but at a terrible cost. Leander is isolated and facing the full, enraged fury of Pythios. How can he possibly survive this?
The battle reaches its climax! Thank you for your incredible support. If you're on the edge of your seat, please consider adding the story to your library or leaving a rating—it fuels the journey!