Utterly Spent

A silence fell across the battlefield as the Siren's Song suddenly stopped. This would surely have affected the Imps' morale, except that there were no longer any Imps around. Every single one of them had been converted into Mana. Every thought, every feeling, every impulse, spent on various spells. They would respawn in time, but for now, they existed only in the miasma of potential surrounding the Realm.

Bazzog the Unrepentant marveled, for a moment, at the sudden silence.

Then he broke that silence, not with a laugh or even an order, but with a slam of his mighty pincers upon the ground. The crash of cracking stone rang out across the suddenly empty plains. With a roar, Bazzog's shadow demons and Mephits lashed out as one.

The Mephits on Xylyra's side suddenly realized that the enemy had been conserving their strength for a brutal last stand. And with their own Mana no longer regenerating, with no orders to guide them, they didn't so much fall back as abandon their positions entirely.

But as Bazzog's forces rushed towards a specific Node, Bazzog himself stayed behind. He took a seat in a desecrated marble throne. With the power of this corrupted Nexus, he had one last trick in his shell. And so, he donned a mask made of grotesque purple moss, and began to speak, not to his army, but to a single Succubus, deep within her own Realm.