Burn In My Light

Hilfa watches as the groups get closer and closer, and her mind races with plans that muddle together, making her unable to commit to a single one. The wrongly wired brain in Hilfa's head loves the multitude of ideas, eager to be the grand conductor of a symphony of agony.

Hilfa powers up her left arm before plunging it into the floor. A second later, spiked stone pillars begin popping up, managing to pick off a few of the dwindling number of the giants group in the process. The non-giant group are having more luck dodging the spikes, Clarva even breaks through some that pop up directly in front of her, thanks to her shields.

The groups close in, ready to end this once and for all, but just as they get within twenty feet of Hilfa, a massive stone dome emerges from the ground, completely encasing Hilfa.

The Queen raises her hand, stopping her group from moving forward anymore. Clarva on the other hand, decides to continue barrelling forward.

Clarva brings her shields together, creating one complete shield wall as she charges the final few feet to Hilfa's stone dome.

Shields clashes against stone, and the entire dome shatters into thousands of tiny pieces that scatter across the entirety of the arena. The Queen's group, and the non-giants all look back up after taking cover from the flying stone, and their faces drop. Clarva is also still standing, her shields down from their previous combined position as the half-giant stares at what's in front of her.

Hilfa's entire body is darker than the infinite void of space, in fact, her body is so dark that it's almost glowing against the brown, black, and grey rock behind her. Her eyes that were swirling deep purple are now mixed with a burning red. Her scars that glowed an acidic green also share that same red mixture.

"Something I've always hated in fiction... is that the hero always waits until they're beaten and battered before unleashing their full power. Why wouldn't they just go all out from the get-go? It matters not, because I don't make the same mistakes." Hilfa says with a cracked voice, just barely above a growl.

Hilfa then lets out an ungodly roar before slamming her arms onto the ground, and the entire area begins to violently quake.

Large chunks of the ground disappear, falling into the lake of lava that's beneath them. The arena becomes smaller, and the groups all make their way to the center as the edges are becoming more and more likely to collapse.

"You know, I planned to just pillage this entire continent, but now? I'm content with just turning it all to ash! And that starts with all of you!" Hilfa says as lava shoots up from the newly opened holes in the floor, acting like a fountain that nearly sears the groups, but luckily for the non-giants, they're able to hide underneath Clarva's shields.

A few seconds later, the falling lava subsides, and the groups look back at Hilfa who is practically foaming at the mouth.

"Damn. How hard did you hit her, C? She's fucking pissed." Karray jokes.

Clarva grunts. "Not hard enough. She's still standing."

"Then let's fix that." Kyuala says, now standing beside Clarva.

Clarva looks left and right, seeing the smaller fighters beside her. She smiles, knowing that they're all just as mad as her, yet each of them are as brave as the Queen is big.

"Alright! Let's show these giant dickwads how we do it!" Clarva calls out before charging forward with the others following behind.

The Queen and the remaining giants watch on as the smaller group charges forth, and the Queen can't help but smile as she watches.

Musha looks at the Queen and sees that smile on her face. "My Queen, why are you smiling?"

"Because Musha, that bitch is trying to one-up us. So, let's prove why we're the rightful heirs of Muprosyll!"

With those words, the Queen rushes forward with her sword up once again. Musha is a worried about what might happen, but she'll be damned if she lets Clarva or even Kira get the final blow on Hilfa, so she charges a few seconds later with the last giants following behind.

Hilfa watches as the two sets of groups rush toward her, and it only brings another sinister smile to her face.

A large chunk of molten rock flies towards Clarva and the smaller group, but Clarva is quick to raise her shields, and the rock is destroyed upon impact. Before Clarva can lower her shields an inch, Hilfa shoulder charges the shields, and to everyone surprise, Clarva is **** back a few feet.

The Queen's group get over to Hilfa and begin swinging to try and take her head off, but Hilfa creates another stone barrier, successfully separating most of them away from the other group before Hilfa coats both her arms in molten rock.

Two giants that weren't separated by the sudden barrier charge towards the mage, swinging at their weapons at the same time. Hilfa raises her arms and stops the club closing in from her left, and the axe coming in from the right.

The rock around Hilfa's arms wraps around the handles of the club and the axe of the giants before pulling the giants closer to Hilfa. The spikes on the ends of Hilfa's arms stab right into the front of the giant's faces straight through the back of the giant's skulls, parts of the brain, skull, and some tendons from the eyes dangling on the stone spikes before Hilfa pulls her arms back, leaving the two lifeless bodies to collapse to the floor.

Hilfa's eyes look back to where she last saw the smaller group, and see that Clarva hasn't moved from her new defensive position. However, Clarva isn't the threat that Hilfa needs to worry about as some new spikes from beneath her, but Hilfa is quick to stop them before she looks back up.

"An earth mage? That must've been the cause of the surge I felt from above before the fraudulent Queen called me up. Interesting, but which one is it?" Hilfa thinks to herself as all she can see is Clarva's shields.

Terra breathing becomes heavy as she looks to the others. "She just stopped my magic in its tracks!"

"So, that's that plan fucked." Amilia comments.

"Well, let's see you come up with something better, kitty! Maybe you can try flirt with her!" Virra says in a half-serious, half-joking manner, but it's all wrapped in concern for their immediate future.

John looks around, seeing the others begin to squabble as they try to come up with a new plan, and for some strange reason, one single idea pops into his mind.

While everyone is brainstorming as best as they can, John begins to walk towards Hilfa, feeling confident in what he's about to do, after all, there's no way he can fail.

Step by step, John gets closer to Hilfa, who is currently distracted with some of the giants trying to cut her down. He sees the spike on Hilfa's right arm cut the throat of the nearest giant, unleashing a torrent of blood down her front until is pools on the stone beneath. His eyes snap back to Hilfa, seeing the fresh blood coating her arm and torso. John's entire body is quickly wracked with fear, but it's too late for him to back down.

At that moment, the rest of the group behind Clarva's shields notice that John is standing in front of Hilfa, and panic grabs hold of them all, but before they can do anything, Hilfa's large body turns towards John.

Hilfa's eyes then rest upon John mere seconds later, and her eyebrow cocks in surprise. "Hmm, their brilliant plan to follow up on the distraction was to send the human? That... certainly is a plan."

"It's the only plan we need." John says, trying to sound as cool as possible, but it just comes off like a badly written one-liner in an even worse movie. John shakes off that horrible attempt of being badass before raising his hand. "Time to do what I should've done from the beginning!"

Time seemingly slows down around John as he starts to focus in on his hand, waiting for the feeling to begin. The feeling of warmth that spread through his arm and down to his hand, the last memory he has of that fateful night in Reduna'z Gaze.

A familiar warm sensation begins in John's shoulder and begins to trickle down his arm. It flows through his veins, making it's way towards his hand. The warmth continues through every inch of his arm before reaching his hand. The warmth creeps up past his knuckles, travelling up to the tips of his fingers, and it's only then that John is ready.

"I think it's time you got a taste of real power, you overgrown bitch!" John shouts as he thrusts his hand forward, ready to eviscerate the corrupted mage.

John waits a few seconds before opening his eyes, and that's when he sees that everyone is looking at him, not in amazement or with gratitude, but with confusion. John's eyes also get wider as he sees that Hilfa is still standing in front of him.

"Did I blink and miss it?" Hilfa genuinely asks.

John quickly looks at his hand before thrusting it forward a few times. After a few moments, John looks at Hilfa. "Give me one sec. It's my first time actually trying this."

John shakes his hand a few times before going back to thrusting it forward, trying to get the Divine Blast to work.

"C'mon! Angel beam, activate! Go, go superblast! Fire super fucking killer power thingamajig!" Nothing happens as John continues his angered muttering. "Argh! What the fuck?! Why isn't this working?! Surely it can't be that hard to use?! If only my guardian angel gave me some sort of fucking manual!"

"Are you done? Or do you need a few more minutes? I'm afraid I don't know how long it takes for humans to fix their performance issues." Hilfa asks, poking fun at John with grin on her face.

"Just one more second!" John responds as he tries to wrack his brain for any sort of answer as to how to activate the Divine Blast.

Hilfa sighs in annoyance. "Time's up, little man. Now, I'm going to squash you."

Hilfa takes a step forward, but before she can get any further, the Queen cleaves her sword into Hilfa's shoulder, causing the possessed Hilfa to roar in severe pain.

"I don't believe we finished our business, you wretched cunt!" The Queen spits with venom before dragging Hilfa back towards her with the sword still buried in the mage's shoulder, and just as Hilfa gets close enough, the Queen cracks her with a huge left hook.

The **** of the punch sends Hilfa stumbling a few feet away, but because of the stumbling, the sword tears back out from her shoulder, leaving a huge crevice where flesh and some bone used to be. However, Hilfa's face doesn't even seem bothered in the slightest.

"I don't appreciate that, your highness." Hilfa says in a very disturbing tone, shaking John to his core, but the Queen stands firm.

"Then do something about it." The Queen challenges, eager to remove Hilfa's head from her shoulders.

Hilfa goes quiet, opting to show her next move instead of telling. The stone from her arms creeps up into the gaping wound, and begins to fill the hole, reconnecting the shoulder to the arm.

The air is quickly cut in half as Hilfa's arm shoots towards the Queen, connect with her nose, breaking it with a sickening crack.

John starts moving back towards the others as he's realizes that getting squished isn't exactly his idea of helping. As John runs to regroup, he notices that the amount of stone on Hilfa's wounded arm has drastically decreased, likely as a result of the massive wound on her shoulder, and that gives John an idea.

As John gets past Clarva's shields, he's immediately met with a slap upside the back of his head by his favourite orc. "What in the hells do you think you were doing?! Do you realize how close you were to dying, you fool?!"

"Uhh, Ky? If he didn't know about the chances of dying, he wouldn't exactly be fighting in a supervolcano, would he?"

Kyuala looks at Amilia with a scowl that Amilia is very familiar with, as it signals that it's time to shut the fuck up.

"John, what were you trying to do?" Terra quickly asks, interrupting the two old friends.

"I was trying to activate the damn Divine Blast, but apparently it doesn't work like that. I just wished Elliyah told me that before I nearly pissed myself!"

Kira's ears perk up as she immediately recognizes the name. "Wait a minute... Elliyah? As in the Angel of Prophecy? That Elliyah?"

"Yeah, it's a real long story. Point is, shit didn't work, but I did get something out of it. If we keep injuring Hilfa, the more stone she uses to heal herself, so if we deal enough damage..."

"She'll lose those stone arms, and we can kick the shit outta her." Kyuala finishes.

"Gotta be careful though." Virra interjects. "I think the stone is stopping her from using her magic, so if we get rid of the arms, she might start pulling out some crazy spells again."

"Then we just break the stone, then chop her arms off. Simple." Karray says with a little laugh.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's tear her limb-from-limb." With those words, Clarva begins to rush towards Hilfa, ready to cave in her skull, and she wouldn't feel to bad if she accidentally hits the Queen in the process.

John looks at everyone. "Alright. Terra, Lani, Karray, keep using your magic. Virra, you keep back and try to take out her eyes. The rest of us will run in and chop away at her legs. If we overwhelm her, she'll eventually crack, and that's when we finish it. Let's just avoid getting stood on."

"I love it when he does that." Kyuala mutters just before everyone begins charging forward.