Haldovon

The sky cracked open with flame and shadow. Haldovon didn’t waste time gawking at the titans tearing the heavens - his eyes were on Shira, clutching Misdielle’s hand and trembling. “Form up!” he bellowed, maul slamming into the ground with a thunderclap. “We’re getting out of here - now!”

The ground shook as Ogrémoch took a step in the distance, flattening legions beneath him. Imix roared somewhere beyond the smoke, his fire reflecting in Divin’s silver glaive. The others fought around him - Sails vanished and reappeared between demons with bloody grace, Minravints unleashed sorcerous fire, and Divin’s echoes danced like ghosts, all while Misdielle did her best to heal any wounds that appeared, as Shira still clutched her hand - but Haldovon stood at the center, unmoving. Every time a demon got too close to the group, his maul met it first.

“Stay behind me!” he barked, as a horned beast lunged - he met it with a roar of his own, smashing it into cinders. “I didn’t leave Hidden Hope to lose anyone here!” He knew Mika was out there, walking toward the darkness of Tharizdun himself. So Haldovon fought like a wall that would not break - not today, not while people still needed him.

Maxi

Magic clashed with steel, with tooth, with claw. Across the battlefield, the sky tore and the gods fought titans - but down here, it was chaos in the dirt. Maxi’s hands trembled. Her spells surged at her fingertips, but Mir wouldn’t come. Her connection felt smothered, like reaching through smoke and finding only cold. She tried again. Nothing. Around her, demons snarled - feral things, not soldiers. Qiran darted past her, hurling a dagger into a charging beast’s eye. “Maxi! Stay with me!” he shouted. He didn’t see the elemental blast. She did.

The firestorm hit him mid-throw - an explosion of heat and light that hurled him like a broken puppet across the field. She ran to him, calling his name, but there was no response.

Her breath caught, her thoughts scattered. The runes across her body pulsed once - then blazed, uncontrolled.  Along her arms, her runes surged, blazing with violet-white energy. Magic spilled from her in colorful arcs, her body no longer quite solid, but pure magical energy. The next wave of demons didn’t even reach her. With a single, shaking hand, she lifted them - and turned them to ash.

Turron

The earth screamed beneath him. Where Ogrémoch walked, the land broke. Forests flattened. Stone turned to splinters. The Prince of Earth towered like a walking mountain - but Turron did not yield. He stood firm, roots of magic twining up from the ground and into his limbs. “You will not touch the Tree,” he growled. “You are not welcome here.”

He raised a hand, and the world answered. Vines as thick as tree trunks erupted from the soil, spiraling and twisting like serpents. They wrapped around Ogrémoch’s arms and legs, burrowing into cracks and crags, rooting the titan in place. Chunks of stone tumbled from his limbs as moss and growth spread across him like a binding shroud. Ogrémoch strained against it - grinding, groaning - but the vines held. Then came the scream.

A nearby explosion cracked the air - wind and lightning tearing through the sky. Turron turned, just for a second, eyes widening as Yan-C-Bin descended in a spinning cyclone, slicing clean through a wing of mortal cavalry. The air itself howled. And in that heartbeat of distraction -

The cyclone passed low. Turron turned back -

- too late. The vines were gone. Sliced. Scattered on the wind.

And Ogrémoch’s foot came down. Just one step. A crater where Turron stood. The vines went limp.

Ferwin

Another demon fell with a clean twist of his blade - an elegant, practiced motion. Ferwin barely looked. His echo stepped in to meet the next, blades moving in perfect tandem. He grinned, breathless but exhilarated. “You lot really thought this would do the trick?”

But then the sky tore open again. A flash of molten red lit the field as Imix swept across the battlefield like a wildfire given form, and Ferwin’s laugh caught in his throat. The heat hit him hard. His skin blistered, then healed. Blistered again. He could feel his body working to knit itself back together - faster than most - but slower than the flames.

His echo dissolved mid-strike. He summoned another. It flickered. Ferwin’s stance shifted. Not cocky. Not calm. Something was wrong.

He looked around and saw mortals burning, gods clashing in the sky, and the Planar Tree itself shaking like it knew it was dying. For the first time, something crept into his chest that didn’t belong.

Fear. 

He didn’t say a word. He just fought harder.

Eldoril

The wind howled around them - razor-sharp and seething with malice. The tempest-born traitor, the one who freed Yan-C-Bin, floated ahead, surrounded by a spinning shield of wind so dense it bent arrows mid-flight and shattered weapons on contact.

Vorathor let out a thunderous growl beneath him, wings fighting to keep level through the chaotic sky. The other dragons flanked - crimson flame to the left, toxic green to the right, frost and shadow sweeping in from behind. Together, they dove as one, breath weapons igniting the sky. Flame roared. Acid hissed. Frost crystallized the air mid-flight. Vorathor opened his maw and unleashed a bolt of pure lightning, blasting into the storm shield—and for a heartbeat, the winds parted.

Eldoril didn’t hesitate. He drew the arrow - his magic coiling through Stormcaller, lightning surging up the shaft. His eyes narrowed, and time seemed to slow. And then he loosed.

The arrow screamed through the gap - straight and true - and struck the being square in the chest. Lightning exploded outward from the impact, rippling through the storm’s core. The winds buckled, then collapsed entirely. The being of air convulsed, twisted by his own broken power, before his form tore apart in a final crack of thunder and was gone.

Kharis

The battlefield reeked of salt and blood. Waves from Olhydra’s wake churned through the shattered roots of the Planar Tree, and at their heart stood the one who released her - no longer a man, but something oceanic and alien. Tentacles writhed from his head, water curling around his form like armor, his trident humming with abyssal power. 

With his moonblade, Kharis carved through demons and elementals alike, maneuvering around the broken and drowned roots of the Planar Tree. This place had once been sacred. His people had sung here. Prayed here. Breathed here. He wouldn’t let it end without a fight. 

Drawing on the wellspring of his mind, Kharis sent a wave of telekinetic force crashing into the enemy lines, flinging creatures aside like driftwood. Then he vanished in a shimmer of psionic energy and reappeared mid-air above the tideborn aberration. He twisted, blade flashing, and came down hard - the moonblade slashing a deep cut across the creature’s chest.

The aberration staggered, shrieking. But it did not fall. It hissed, dark blood gushing from the wound as tendrils lashed in all directions. The shriek pierced Kharis’ mind, stunning him for just a moment. But a moment was all it took.

In a blur of movement, the being turned and drove its trident straight through Kharis’ torso. As the breath was ripped from his lungs, he gasped, and the moonblade slipped from his hands. The creature held him upright a moment longer, impaled like a banner.

In that moment, all Kharis could think of was Gabriel, and the promise he had now broken. Then, with a flick of the trident, the aberration cast him aside. He hit the ground hard, eyes dimming as the distant rustling of leaves overhead faded into silence.

Hiserius

The tide-born aberration roared, and Kharis’s body hit the ground with a sickening thud, discarded like driftwood. His moonblade clattered beside him, still glowing faintly. Hiserius didn’t flinch.

He stepped over the elven warrior’s fallen form, gripping his maul tight - forged from the soul of his dragon, every strike a memory, every swing a promise. Sparks of electricity danced along the head of the weapon, humming with restrained fury. The aberration turned toward him, trident dripping, tentacles writhing. Hiserius raised his voice for the first time. “You don’t get to desecrate this place and walk away.”

The maul came down like a meteor - lightning flashing, thunder cracking. Tentacles intercepted each strike, catching the brunt with unnatural speed. One. Two. Three - still, it blocked. Hiserius snarled, letting go of his maul with one of his hands.

His hand closed around the moonblade. With one clean, brutal arc, he cleaved through three tentacles at once, opening the way. The aberration reeled, shrieking in pain - and in that breath of weakness, Hiserius swung his maul with all of his strength. Lightning surged from the core. The air sizzled. He drove the maul forward with all the weight of vengeance - straight through the aberration’s chest, killing it.

Luminara

The flames tore through the sky like falling suns. Luminara met Imix head-on, sword blazing with radiant energy, her wings stretching across the battlefield like dawn itself. Every clash sent shockwaves through the air - divine light against roaring inferno. Beneath them, the Planar Tree cracked and withered, leaves turning to ash with every breath Imix exhaled.

She held the line. Held it for the mortals, for the Tree, for her children, and for the world her children had finally seen as home.

And then she heard the scream. Her head turned, eyes scanning—she saw Rehael’s arrow veer off-course, Ira slashing desperately through swarming demons, Esme shielding the others - and then Carel fell. A clawed hand through his back, his light sputtering out. Kaelen roared, her maul crashing through two beasts before three more dragged her down.

Luminara’s wings snapped open with a thunderous crack, and she was gone from the skies in an instant, streaking toward them like a meteor of wrath. But she was too late. She landed in the blood-soaked grass just as Kaelen’s breath hitched its last, the shattered haft of her maul still in her grip.

The light around Luminara faltered. For a moment, just one, she was no longer a solar - just a mother kneeling beside her children. And in that breath of sorrow, he appeared - the one in the obsidian mask, veined with embers. She sensed him a moment too late.

The blow was swift. Silent. Precise. The light faded from her eyes, and the sky above the battlefield burned a little brighter. And then it dimmed.

Aerdria

Above the battlefield, where smoke touched the stars and the sky wept light and ash, Aerdria danced like a storm incarnate. Winds howled in her wake, and where her hands moved, tornadoes bloomed - great silvered spirals of wind and blade, filled with razor-sharp leaves, spinning faster than thought. Demons were lifted, torn apart, scattered like dust in a divine hurricane. Her hair streamed like a banner, her wings of wind cutting wide arcs through the sky. She did not speak. She was wind itself, moving through chaos with impossible grace.

Below, the gods fought beside her. Sehanine’s moonlight rained judgment, Rillifane’s roots tangled entire warbands, Corellon’s blade flashed with elegant fury - but it was Aerdria who held the canopy in the sky, where the branches met the planes. 

Then came the Princes.

Imix roared through fire, Ogrémoch crushed forward like a continent, Olhydra surged in a spiral of crashing waves, and Yan-C-Bin circled high above, his cyclone crying a song of madness. They came together. No words passed between them. Only raw, elemental force - a convergence of chaos. A pillar of flame. A shockwave of wind. A tidal surge. A quake. It hit her all at once. And Aerdria - goddess of air, daughter of the primordial winds, keeper of the Tree - shattered. Wind screamed across the field, every leaf in her tornadoes going still in the air for a single breath, suspended in time like silver tears.

Then they dropped. Her body vanished in a flash of white-gold light, but her magic did not. It lingered, coiling through the branches of the Planar Tree like a final breath. The other gods felt it. Grief turned to resolve. Corellon raised his blade, drawing the magic in, shaping it into a brilliant sigil that hovered above the battlefield. Sehanine whispered a prayer, and Rillifane drove his staff into the ground. And then the sky tore itself open.

A pulse of raw, divine force erupted outward—a shockwave of Aerdria’s final breath, channeled through her siblings-in-arms. It swept across the battlefield with impossible speed, white light washing over everything. The Princes staggered.

They howled - stone crumbling, fire sputtering, waves retreating, wind dying. One by one, they were ripped from this plane, their forms unraveling as they were cast back to the Elemental Chaos. Banished. Broken. Gone. They would reform, in time. But not soon.

And the demons who could not flee fast enough - those who hesitated, who roared in defiance - were caught in the light and turned to ash, scattered like smoke on the wind. When it ended, the battlefield was silent. The Tree still stood - but barely. Its branches blackened, its roots trembling. It’s canopy unraveling. And above it all, silver leaves drifted downward, gently, on a wind that no longer had a goddess.