The demon fortress loomed like a hellish mountain of blackened stone, smoke pouring from its jagged towers. Red banners embroidered with unholy symbols fluttered in the sulfur-scorched wind. Somewhere within those towering walls, ten thousand demons awaited, snarling, sharpening weapons, and listening to extremely aggressive pipe organ music.
The hero party stood in front of the massive iron gate, a suspiciously confident sparkle in their eyes.
"Alright," Thorne grinned, "everyone stand back."
Cael narrowed his eyes. "You're not seriously going to—"
But it was already too late.
BOOOOOOM!
The gate exploded into molten fragments, launched halfway into the stratosphere. Fire blasted outward like an angry phoenix with indigestion. Smoke choked the air. Dust clouded the heavens.
Thorne stood in the middle of it all, holding a nearly empty sack labeled:
"Definitely Not High-Grade Magical Explosives"
"THORNE!?" Cael shouted, coughing, "You brought explosives again?!"
Thorne dusted off his hands. "Of course. You never know when you need to make a door."
"That was a door!" Lys wheezed.
Alaric gave an approving nod. "That was very dramatic. I give it a nine out of ten."
"Ten out of ten," Renna corrected, eyes wide. "There was a whole fireball shaped like a skull. It was… kind of metal."
But their moment of chaotic triumph was cut short by an ominous… silence.
Too silent.
No alarms. No chaos. No panicking demon guards.
Just... footsteps.
Thousands of them.
Marching.
Together.
In formation.
The smoke began to clear.
And there, on the other side of the former gate, stood an army.
An organized demon army.
Like they had expected this.
Because they had.
"Oh," Alaric said, lowering his sword. "That's… a lot of demons."
"They made ranks," Lys muttered in horror. "They're standing in ranks."
"I thought demons were supposed to be chaotic!" Renna whispered.
A voice boomed from somewhere atop the black fortress walls.
"You idiots blew up the front gate. We saw you coming from ten kilometers away. We've had three days to prepare."
A demon war horn sounded.
Drums began to pound.
Shadowy banners rose into the sky.
And then the demon general stepped forward, massive and spiked, grinning with fangs made of obsidian.
Cael pointed dramatically. "THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!"
"Well," Thorne said, summoning his lance, "at least we made an entrance."
Renna cracked her neck. "Guess the plan's the same as always?"
Alaric's eyes glowed with light. "Absolutely."
Lys unsummoned her bow. Then resummoned it. Then hit it against her palm like it was a bat. "Chaos?"
"Chaos."
Cael screamed into the void. "I AM SURROUNDED BY MANIACS—"
And then they charged.
The battlefield turned into a storm of chaos, flames, and extremely questionable decision-making.
The moment the five heroes charged, the fortress courtyard erupted. Demons roared from every direction—hulking orcs, shrieking harpies, and snarling goblins joined their ranks like some infernal monster buffet. The sky above filled with wings, the earth trembled with stomping boots, and somewhere in the distance, a goblin started playing bagpipes for morale.
"ARE THOSE—ARE THOSE GOBLINS!?" Cael shouted as he dove backward, firing a spray of shadow bullets into a horde of incoming orcs. "HOW DID THE DEMONS UNIONIZE THE GOBLINS?!"
A harpy swooped toward him with claws extended. Cael blinked, and a shadow spike erupted from the ground like a vengeful javelin, impaling the creature mid-screech.
"I'm not saying I'm impressed," Cael muttered, eyes twitching, "but I'm definitely suspicious."
From above, Alaric came crashing down like divine wrath wrapped in man glitter. His body shimmered with light-infused power, veins glowing golden-white. He swung his summoned sword downward, and with a thunderous BOOM, a flame wave exploded from the slash, tearing through a battalion of goblins like they were party decorations.
"FLAAAAMING JUSTICE!" Alaric bellowed.
"What part of light magic makes fire!?" Cael shrieked.
"I DON'T KNOW!" Alaric called back, eyes blazing with delight. "IT JUST FEELS RIGHT!"
Meanwhile, Thorne had become a one-man storm.
His entire body crackled with lightning, his spear charged so heavily that each thrust sounded like a miniature thunderclap. He zoomed through the battlefield like a caffeinated thunder god, zapping demons mid-air, mid-run, mid-sentence.
"MOVE! MOVE!" an orc screamed before being speared so hard his boots flew off.
"THIS IS SO EFFICIENT," Thorne yelled, summoning another lance mid-run, "I'M STARTING TO UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL OF LIGHTNING!"
In the rear, Lys remained calm, collected, and dangerously academic.
She fired precise ice shards and razor-sharp wind blades, every shot mathematically calculated, every target reduced to a frozen popsicle or sliced clean in half.
When a demon brute dared to break through her line, she didn't flinch—she simply swung her glowing bow like a bat and home-run'd the brute across the field with a sickeningly satisfying BONK.
"Next," she whispered, adjusting her glasses, deadpan as ever.
Renna, meanwhile, was a blur of color and carnage.
Her summoned rainbow knife glowed with every known element—and probably a few undiscovered ones. She sliced through the enemy like a living rainbow chainsaw, slashing so fast the blade left trails of fire, lightning, frost, and sparkles. She zigzagged around demons faster than they could blink, her cloak fluttering like a dance of death.
"You guys see that triple backflip stab?" she shouted. "I think I invented a new combo!"
"I just saw you ignite a goblin's soul," Cael muttered. "I didn't even know that was a thing."
Amid all the chaos, watching from the upper balcony, the demon general stood still—massive, horned, and terrifyingly calm. His red eyes scanned the battlefield with unsettling amusement.
He leaned on a massive obsidian blade, tapping his clawed fingers on the hilt as if watching a stage play.
"So," the general mused, voice smooth like fire on velvet, "these are the so-called heroes? Intriguing. Very intriguing."
Below, the fortress courtyard had become a war zone of light, shadow, ice, lightning, and elemental rainbows.
The heroes had brought the storm.
But the fortress… hadn't brought everything yet.
The fortress walls howled with dark energy, and from the spires above came the real welcome.
"INCOMING!" Cael screamed.
A fireball the size of a horse came screaming from a demon warlock on the balcony. It exploded into the ground like an angry sun, launching Thorne ten feet sideways and lighting several goblins on fire—none of whom seemed particularly concerned.
"DID THEY JUST NUKE THEIR OWN GUYS!?" Alaric yelled while catching a flying imp mid-air and slamming it into the ground like a wrestler.
"I—I think they don't care!?" Renna yelled, barely dodging a rotating crystal spear that shattered against the stone beside her. "Why are demons so bad at teamwork?!"
"They're demons, Renna! They signed up for this kind of chaos!" Cael shouted, diving behind cover as a stone boulder the size of a wagon came hurling through the sky, pulverizing several wooden towers—and also a few dozen goblins that were too slow to move. Goblin parts rained down like confetti.
Another massive magical barrage flew down from above—dozens of glowing spells in every shape and size.
Purple fire that danced like liquid,
Chains of lightning that crackled mid-air,
Acid arrows whistling like angry bees,
And a spinning orb of teeth that growled as it flew.
"Okay!" Cael shrieked as he put up a large shadow barrier that blocked most of the incoming damage. "WHO THE HELL CAST A BALL OF TEETH!?"
Lys, still sniping with eerie precision from the back, muttered, "That was definitely not in the Magic for Advanced Idiots handbook."
Meanwhile, Alaric powered through the chaos, glowing with so much light magic he looked like a walking explosion.
"YOU CANNOT OUT-CRAZY US!" he bellowed as he slashed upward with a searing flame wave, cutting a flying demon in half—and incidentally lighting a section of the wall on fire.
"Stop setting everything on fire!" Cael howled, shielding his face. "This is an indoor situation!"
"I WAS BORN FOR DRAMATIC DESTRUCTION!" Alaric countered.
Thorne skid to a halt next to him, panting, covered in scorch marks and slime, and still sparking from head to toe.
"I'm out of spears," he said grimly.
"Then just make more!" Alaric replied.
Thorne squinted. "What if I make bigger spears?"
"YES."
Lys launched a wind blast so sharp it decapitated three imps and sent a goblin cartwheeling through a window.
"Targeting priority: mages on the balcony," she announced like a war machine.
"Why?" Renna asked, stabbing a demon repeatedly in the shins until he toppled.
"Because they are currently trying to explode us, Renna."
"Oh. Right."
The battle intensified. The courtyard was now filled with lava cracks, burning goblins, and at least two possessed siege weapons that had started rolling toward them like self-aware angry furniture.
And through all this, high above, the demon general chuckled, his massive claws tapping together.
"Let's see how long your chaos lasts… little heroes."
The battlefield roared.
Screams. Fire. Blades and shadows dancing in the blur of chaos.
And then—
A gust of unnatural wind cut through the carnage like a silent scream.
The demon general moved.
A blur of dark, winged mass—faster than a thought—crashed into the center of the battlefield. His massive hand wrapped cleanly around Alaric's face, lifting him like a child's doll. The general's other arm carried a colossal sword, its jagged edge dripping with molten red energy that twisted and hissed like a living thing.
Before anyone could breathe—before anyone could blink—he shot upward.
Straight into the sky.
The clouds parted. The storm above trembled as the wind howled in his wake. Alaric, barely able to move, his body surging with light magic, tried to retaliate—
Too late.
They passed the cloudline. And then—
The slam.
The demon general twisted mid-air and drove Alaric down like a meteor.
The sky cracked.
And Alaric fell.
CRASH!
He tore through the fortress's upper towers.
CRASH!
Through the stone corridors.
CRASH!
Through steel and bone, earth and ancient marble.
CRASH!
Until he hit the deep, cold floor of a forgotten underground chamber, carved from obsidian-black marble, echoing with demonic runes long buried.
Alaric gasped, his bones trembling. His sword had returned to him, but even it flickered like a dying flame.
He had never felt pain like this.
Not since the first summoning.
Not since the fall of his world.
Above him, the demon general hovered in the gaping hole that stretched all the way to the sky.
His glowing crimson eyes narrowed.
"You glow like the sun," he said, voice deep and bone-dry, "but stars still burn out."
He descended slowly, sword in hand, dragging it across the floor with a sound like screaming steel.
Alaric rolled to his knees, bleeding, coughing, struggling to pull himself up.
Outside—
None of the party had moved.
Cael's mouth was open. Renna still held her knife mid-swing. Thorne's arm was cocked back, frozen mid-thrust. Lys's bow trembled in her grip.
None of them had seen the general move.
One moment, Alaric had been there.
The next—he was gone.
"…What…" Cael whispered, shadow magic already gathering around him. "What the hell was that?"
The battlefield still raged around them.
But something had shifted.
The air was heavier.
The laughter of demons had stopped.
Lys clenched her jaw. "He took Alaric."
Renna's hands tightened around her blade. "And he's still alive. I can feel it."
Thorne's eyes narrowed. "Then we go get him."
Cael swallowed hard. The fear in his gut was growing. That wasn't just a demon. That thing… planned. It hunted. It waited for an opening.
And it moved like a hunter.
He didn't say that out loud.
Because if he did, the others might realize what he already feared.