Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

Seraphina was not a trained mage weaving a complex spell. She was acting on the purest, most terrifying force in the universe: emotional rejection.

She didn’t want him dead; she wanted him gone.

She wanted the filthy, disgusting monster that ate children to be erased from the canvas of reality.

Her core, completely untethered by magical theory, simply executed the command.

The mist continued to wrap around him.

It was no longer just vines. The shadows were merging, bleeding together, expanding upward from the ground to envelop his entire form.

The Trickster watched in paralyzing horror as a thick, impenetrable dome of black mana curved over his body.

It was weaving a shell, building a cocoon.

The darkness crept up over his chest, swallowing his ruined, garish coat. It crept up over his shoulders, sealing his arms permanently to his sides, and rose to the back of his head, curving over his pale, curse-marked face.

The demon opened his mouth, pouring every ounce of his remaining life force into his vocal cords, intending to unleash a final, desperate, ear-shattering shriek of agony that might alert his demise.

He screamed.

But the moment the sound left his lips, the dark mist surged forward, plunging directly into his open mouth.

The shadows filled his throat, pouring down his windpipe, silencing the scream instantly. The cocoon snapped shut entirely, sealing perfectly over his face.

The Trickster was plunged into an abyss far deeper than the one he worshipped.

Inside the pitch-black cocoon of dark mana, there was no sound, no light, no air. There was only the crushing, suffocating, absolute zero temperature of the void. He was suspended in a state of sensory deprivation that his mind began to fracture almost immediately.

And then, the cocoon began to shrink.

It did not shrink slowly but contracted with the sudden force of a collapsing star.

The dark mana pressed inward from all directions simultaneously, acting as a massive, metaphysical vice grip. The pressure exerted on the Trickster’s physical body was unimaginable.

CRUNCH!

The first sound inside the muffled, silent cocoon was the snapping of his collarbones. The bones didn’t just break; they pulverized under the pressure, turning into jagged shards that drove directly into his own lungs.

The demon could not scream, could not thrash. He could only experience the horrific, agonizing, inescapable reality of his own body being slowly crushed into a singularity.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK...!!!

His ribs gave way next, imploding inward, puncturing his heart and organs. His long, spindly legs folded in on themselves, the femurs snapping like dry twigs, the joints popping out of their sockets with sickening, wet pops.

The dark mana was completely merciless. It wasn’t just crushing his bones; it was actively draining him. As the pressure increased, the cocoon began to forcefully extract the corrupted demonic mana from his core.

It was feeding.

The Supreme Dark Core of Seraphina von Nacht was using the cocoon as a straw, slurping up the demon’s life force, neutralizing its toxicity, and digesting it as pure, raw energy.

Outside the cocoon, in the silent, desolate clearing of the Verdant Reach, the visual was the stuff of nightmares.

Hovering three feet above the muddy jungle floor, suspended in the stagnant air, was a perfectly spherical, pitch-black ball of dark mana, roughly the size of a large boulder.

It was shrinking.

As the sphere contracted, compressing the entity trapped within, the physical matter of the demon’s body had to go somewhere. The human disguise, the blood, the flesh, the fluids, could not withstand the compression.

With a sickening, wet SQUELCH, the dark ball began to bleed.

It was as if an invisible giant were violently squeezing a sponge soaked in crimson dye. High-pressure streams of thick, dark, corrupted blood burst out from the surface of the pitch-black sphere, shooting out in every direction.

The blood rained down upon the ancient banyan tree, splattering against the broad fern leaves, soaking into the damp moss. It fell in a heavy, macabre downpour, painting the surrounding jungle floor in a horrific, saturated shade of red.

The sphere shrank smaller. From the size of a boulder, to the size of a barrel. From a barrel, to the size of a melon.

The horrific, muffled crunching of bone and the tearing of flesh continued within, accompanied by the steady, gruesome torrential spray of blood escaping the gravitational crush.

The Trickster’s consciousness held on just long enough to experience the final, agonizing moment of his skull fracturing under the pressure. His arrogant mind, which had dreamed of ruling the hidden courts and sitting at the right hand of the Archdemon, realized in its final millisecond of existence that he was not dying to a knight.

He was not dying to a holy spell.

He was being crushed into juice by a toddler who found him annoying.

The sphere contracted a final time, shrinking down to the size of a marble.

With a sharp, final POP, the dark mana simply winked out of existence.

There was no explosion, no flash of light. The mist dissipated into the humid night air, leaving no trace of the magical construct behind.

And there was no body.

The Trickster, the demon who had stolen the children of Oakhaven, the monster who had terrorized the grand hall, had been eradicated. Not a single bone, not a shred of patchwork clothing, not even a pile of ashes remained to prove he had ever existed.

The Supreme Dark Core had consumed his demonic energy, leaving behind only the biological byproduct it did not want.

The clearing in the deep jungle was completely silent once more. The only evidence that a terrifying, ancient predator had met his end in this spot was a massive, circular puddle of pooling blood soaking into the muddy roots of the banyan tree.

It was a gruesome, violent, unholy execution, carried out with the cold, apathetic efficiency of an apex predator erasing a pest.

And miles away, deep beneath the earth, the architect of this horrific slaughter was currently engaging in an entirely different kind of behavior.

***

In the cavernous, treasure-filled grand hall of the underground catacombs, the atmosphere had undergone a monumental, whiplash-inducing shift from terror to chaotic relief.

The shattered, freezing remains of the heavy double doors lay scattered across the polished stone. The piles of cursed gold and silver armor were coated in a thick, glittering layer of frost left behind by Duke Kaelus von Nacht’s explosive entrance.

In the very center of the hall, sitting on the cold obsidian dais, Kaelus was entirely immobilized.

He was not pinned by magic.

He was pinned by a Koala.

Seraphina von Nacht had wrapped her arms around the Archduke’s neck, her small legs locking firmly around his armored waist. She had buried her face so deeply into the crook of his neck, pressing her nose against his dark canvas tunic, that she was practically attempting to merge her body with his.

She was clinging to him with a strong grip, but she wasn’t crying anymore; she was simply holding on, drawing in deep, steadying breaths that smelled of his familiar ozone, cold iron, and pine.

Kaelus sat on the floor, one knee raised to support her weight, his arms wrapped securely around her back, acting as an impenetrable, physical fortress. His cheek rested gently against her unruly dark hair. He was rubbing broad, soothing circles between her shoulder blades, his eyes closed, his own breathing slowly returning to a normal rhythm after the heart-stopping terror of the past hour.

He didn’t care about the gold or the fleeing demon.

”I’m here,” Kaelus murmured, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that he repeated like a protective mantra. ”You are safe. I have you. I am never letting you out of my sight again.”

Seraphina squeezed him tighter. ”You took a long time, Papa. The clown was really annoying.”

Kaelus let out a soft, wet huff of laughter, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. ”I apologize for my tardiness, Seraphina. I had to audit several locked doors on my way down. They were uncooperative.”

”It’s okay,” she mumbled into his collarbone. ”I forgive you.”

As they sat in their insulated bubble of father-daughter relief, the sound of heavy, frantic, echoing boots heralded the arrival of the cavalry.

Through the shattered doorway burst Sir Lucas, Sir Boris, and Sir Gallahan.

The three legendary commanders of the Vanguard looked absolutely feral.