Showdown

“Of course,” Aldous said tiredly to himself, as his brother just rushed in like a wild bull running toward a waving red flag, having seemed to already have forgotten their prior talk. This was childish, even for Soularous. “Why does Soul always have to be so reckless and emotional? And he styles himself the next Supreme Being? Truly that is just bad comedy.”

Unlike his brother, Aldous walked in casually through the heavy black doors and looked about him with what might have appeared like only mild interest. The seemingly empty foyer was lit at the edges with glowing balls of mage light in a manner that was familiar to him from his countless years posing as a mere wizard's servitor off and on over the millenia. Gelt's decor did not offer many surprises or deviations from what he had seen in the homes of thousands of other mages. He stepped across the room's threshold just in time to hear the loud leonine roar as the Kragan suddenly sprang from their hiding places and attacked Soularous en masse.

Aldous's eyebrows rose, having to admit to never having quite seen their like before. He judged them to be something not born in any natural way and doubted that they were even a real species at all, though he supposed they might be capable of becoming one if they had some means of reproduction. He hated to imagine the things breeding like rats across Aeran. They would be more than a match for just about anything — anything mortal, that is, he thought as he watched his brother easily slaying them with all the raw might and power of a demon lord made flesh. Soularous was drawing most of their attention, but a third of the abominations soon spotted him standing there in the foyer and came at him fiercely with their deadly black blades.

The Incubi King sighed at the tediousness of combat, even as he flicked his hands a few times and cast a few minor spells, one of which covered him in a nearly translucent blue dome of protection. The first of the creatures reached him, and upon making a chopping motion through the air with his hand, a crescent arc of what looked like distant heat on a hot day shot through the beast. It seemed, at first, to have no effect. Then in another instant the creature exploded in a shower of gore, its cooked insides hitting and sliding off his magical shield.

“Right then…” Aldous said as more moved to attack. "Come on now. Haven’t got all day.”

The second Kragan to launch itself at him met another gruesome end. Below its feet and above its head two glyph covered circles appeared, slamming together in the middle as though they were made of insubstantial vapor. A feral laugh escaped its lips as it too seemed at first to go unharmed, but before it could continue its charge the magical circles gave off a dull glow and there began an ominous hum. The bottom circle almost mechanically twisted half a clock's turn, in the process twisting the creature's lower half the wrong way around. Its feet faced its back by the time its body burst apart in a sickly blue-green flame.

Aldous smiled. “Yeah, I admit it. I'm just amusing myself by trying to make this a bit interesting for me," he said, speaking more to himself than to the slavering beasts. "I think I've probably got an imaginatively creative way in mind for each one of you all to bite it, so let's just keep going then, shall we? Who's next?”

A third Kragan leaped forward swinging its sword and Aldous quickly reached in a pocket and tossed what looked to be a simple bead of jet stone. Falling short, the Kragan took another step and its foot came down on the bead. Aldous cracked a pleased smile, pointing at the creature with two fingers and dragging then downward so that the air around the beast rippled and there commenced a sicking crunching sound as it was slowly pulled to the floor by an unseen force that snapped every bone and reduced every organ in its body to jelly as the created gravity well thoroughly crushed it.

"Gravity, here endeth the lesson," Aldous grinned. "But not the whole lesson. The natural philosophers at the University of Aelmere call gravity a fundamental force, but like the number of sides to a pentagram, there are five fundamental forces in total. The next one we will explore today is--"

One of the monstrosities had circled and come up behind him, slamming against his shield and shattering it. Aldous took a few inelegant steps to the side, smoothing his robe. "So that's how it is, is it? You just want to keep things simple and straightforward? How's this then?" He lashed out and backhanded the Kragan across the room. "For every action there is an opposite reaction. Simple enough?"

He turned as half a dozen Kragan rushed him all at once in a roaring mass of savagery. He quickly swiped his hand in front of them, unleashing a terrific burst of hellfire. They were forced back momentarily but suffered little visible injury and he guessed that their physiology was one part devil, giving them resistance to both magic and fire, but only to a certain degree. On a whim, he decided to test this inherent resistance they possessed and cast one of his strongest fire spells, sending balls of blazing flame into their chests. The magical fire instantly engulfed their whole bodies. Through the glow Aldous saw them flailing in agony as they were burned alive, but not as fast or as quite so easily as any other creature would.

This was interesting and not a little bit alarming as anything less than magical weapons would be useless against these things. He rather hoped he and his brother would be able to eradicate the Kragan down to the last, even as they ended the threat posed by Gelt, whose shadowy existence few on the continent were even aware of, much less prepared or equipped to take on directly.

At the moment his brother seemed to have things well in hand so Aldous decided to indulge in some good old-fashioned looting. Walking past Gelt’s spoils of war, several items were on display and one in particular caught his eye. A sword made of obsidian polished to a razor edge, void black leather wrapping the handle and an onyx stone inlaid in the pommel. The weapon was thousands of years old and forged by a famous demon swordsmith. “Oh, it must be my birthday,” he exclaimed, disabling the protective spells with a wave of his red hand and taking the weapon down off the hanger. A few purple runes sprung to life on its blade at his touch.

“Faaancy!” he exclaimed, feeling all the dark magicks emanating from it as he gave it a few swings. The surviving Kragan, their legs blown off and unable to prevent his burglary of their master's house, growled balefully at him from where they lay strewn about and he smiled back. “Finders keepers,” he told them.

Making the sword quickly vanish into his robe, he continued on his with his flagrant looting until the great wizard saw fit to show himself, at which point the showdown could really begin.