At first Zae Zin Nim had blundered into the smoke, using only her qi senses to search for anyone else. The area had become more complex due to the destroyed walls and she thought that Omilaena had fought her way into side chambers, but it was impossible to tell where she was.
Then everything around her exploded and she knew where at least one battle was.
Zae Zin Nim ran through a door of what had been an underground chamber and into the empty air. A massive crater had been blasted out of the city, including partially underneath the First Crest. If there had been any Crestguards outside in the area, there was nothing left of them. Now she could clearly see the First Crest, cables leading to a column that must be a weapon. She flinched when she saw Matiavel there, fighting some sort of monster.
No, that was her monster.
Kai had transformed into an even larger monstrous form, but she could see something of him in his face despite the toothy jaws. The form was partially covered in the Beggar King's Rags, which were proving their worth by growing along with his new form.
But against one of the great powers, Kai was clearly at his limits. Zae Zin Nim saw him make an admirable attempt to evade the ferocious assault, but he was off balance. When the flames began to close in on him, Zae Zin Nim was ready to leap to his defense.
For a split second she was hurtling toward the ghostly flames that killed anything, which was absolute madness. She had already gathered her qi, though, increasing its phase as far as she could. When she released a qi technique, surrounded with the Coldfire Corona, it managed to strike a single one of the demon's flames and they neutralized one another.
She reached through that gap, grabbed Kai, and pulled him to safety. They leapt across the crater as the flames crashed together, eerily silent but terribly destructive. Another part of the city burned away into nothing.
"You alright?" she asked as they regained their footing.
Kai growled in response, but one of his claws settled on her shoulder in a way that made her certain he was still himself.
If only the two of them together would be enough.
"The weapon looks damaged," she thought out loud. "I don't think we need to do more than that. Let's get Omilaena and get out of here."
Another growl in response - good enough. They moved back toward the destroyed levels, only to be stopped by a massive wall of fire. It wasn't as intensely destructive as the ghostly tongues of flame, but she could feel the heat even from several paces away, so it could have only one source. Zae Zin Nim turned back, already certain who she would see.
Matiavel floated in front of the weapon, hovering like a true cultivator. Up to that point he must have been conserving his energy in preparation for other opponents, because she felt his power pouring forth like never before. First in a dome of flame that defended the weapon, then in a wave of ghostly techniques that spread throughout the death zone between the walls of flame.
Staying next to Kai was impossible - they were both stretched to their limits just evading the attacks. But even separated and dodging, even with the changes to his face, she saw that he was looking toward the weapon. It had been damaged enough that it couldn't take much more...
They managed to coordinate wordlessly: Kai unleashed a massive claw technique that forced Matiavel to take a moment to deflect it. That bought Zae Zin Nim time to release a qi technique of her own, a bolt that arced around the defensive fires. She didn't think she could pierce the central walls of fire, but her target had been the lines of power that flowed from the Insanity to the weapon that tried to harness its power.
Omilaena cast off the remnant of her old self and looked at the battlefield again. Kai and Zae Zin Nim were down there and they needed her help. She would take them all away if it meant saving their lives, but she would never, ever abandon them.
They seemed to be hard-pressed, but would jumping down there truly help them? Working together, their coordination might be able to inconvenience Matiavel, but if they failed for even a moment... she could imagine the horror of watching a loved one die, and the rest of them would probably be consumed immediately after. No, they were only going to get through this via careful work.
She knelt down and focused on herself, trying to refine her newest experiences. The absolute most she could hope was one opening, so it had to count.
When the flame walls exploded and knocked the others down, for a terrible moment Omilaena feared that her hesitation might have killed them. But at that moment an elven vessel arrived, launching teleporters and then even an Elder. In an instant the tide of the battle turned.
"Cease this at once!" Elder Graveylin commanded in a ringing voice. One of the surviving Commonwealth soldiers threw down his arms, but Matiavel sneered.
"So you guessed that this weapon was for you? Come down here and you can experience it yourself."
The two great powers seemed locked into a battle of wills, flames drifting on one side and being pushed back by soul presence. It seemed like they might be vulnerable, but when one of the elves tried to loose an arrow at Matiavel, it burst into flames before it got close to the demon.
They wisely turned their attacks toward the weapon instead, releasing javelins and qi techniques against the flames that shielded it. While Matiavel was locked in place they pummeled it, Ceryyn and other elves unleashing their own techniques. The others had recovered, so Zae Zin Nim added a burning qi flame and Kai leapt closer and unleashed Baleful Breath. Even Omilaena jumped up and hurled a globe of acid into the flames to try to overwhelm them.
For several seconds the flames flickered and it seemed like they might overcome Matiavel. But when he seemed to fall back, he instead stomped on the ground, and all his flames exploded again. Kai and others were thrown back violently and even the elven ship was swept back.
Everyone was stunned except for a single elven archer. Omilaena hadn't thought about him in a long time, but she recognized Yonto Bludshard, the amiable guard from the north. In the silent moment that the flames became explosions, he loosed his arrow.
When it left his bow, the feather on the back crackled with thunder. It shot forward in that instant, piercing the weakened flames and smashing into the side of the weapon sphere.
Immediately it erupted, further devastating the crater. Matiavel was partially caught in the blast, and though he emerged able to fight, he abruptly dropped to one knee.
"That's enough." Graveylin fully fixated her divine gaze on him, and in his unbalanced state, Matiavel couldn't resist. He grimaced and tried to rise, fighting against her overwhelming presence.
Omilaena breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that her desperate work might have been completely unneeded. But she'd made an extremely foolish miscalculation. This was the center of the demons' power, and not all of Matiavel's allies had been killed or disabled.
A group of demons, too weak for her to have noticed them before, unleashed a weapon from a nearby building. It was nothing compared to the destroyed super-weapon, but several black columns sailed through the air toward the elven elder. The sigils on the side began to glow as their anti-glamour aura flowed over the city.
Graveylin cried out and stumbled, clutching her head. And in that instant Matiavel rose, a triumphant smile on his lips and fire leaving his fingertips.