Fight for Power

X-Cassandra-X

It began with a sound. One highly charged, immensely powerful, absurdly strong blast of arcane power slamming down towards Ark'thugal.

Ludibrium was now a wasteland, the city fractured by ice and arcane power. That was one hell of an opening attack.

Ground zero of where the attack hit: Even with Anti-Magic Shell activated, even with Ark'thugal attempting to parry with Shadowmourne, the blast still hurt. Goddamn.

And then another "presence" was known to Ludibrium. Beside that of Father and Fallen Seraph, this "presence" emitted an immense level of arcane and icy power, comparable to the two others.

The followup came swiftly, a very fast teal something rushing towards Ark'thugal at high speed. The Warboss's axe swing met only empty air; Cassandra ducking underneath the swing and then darting forward, slamming her arcane-infused fist into the Warboss's armor. Even with the durability of Primordial Saronite, small flakes of it fell away from the armor upon impact. Cassandra pressed her advantage; pummeling the armor like an enraged beast, attacking and attacking.

Bolts of blood and unholy to the face barely slowed her down; Cassandra was dead set on killing Ark'thugal.

"Well well, if it isn't Father's favorite toy. Here to follow up on that last threat? You know, the one where you called me... oh what was it... a 'slob'?" Ark'thugal taunted. "You'll have to refresh my memory if I'm wrong, I'm afraid I don't remember toys very well."

Said insult seemed to be successful in keeping Cassandra's attention on the Warboss. Before she could follow up on her attacks, the undead Eranikus slammed into her and then attacked her with his diseased breath. Ark'thugal himself exploited the opening by filling Shadowmourne with power and then swinging it down at the Teal Pikmin, who replied by encasing her hand in an arcane-infused ice gauntlet and punching upwards to meet the blow head-on.

The resulting shockwave was immense; the force blowing back Eranikus and leaving a crater in the ground. The clash left the ice gauntlet destroyed, with only a small trickle of blood escaping from Cassandra's knuckles that turned into a bleeding hand due to Ark'thugal's blood control. As Cassandra froze over her own hand to limit the bleeding, she encased her other hand in a similar gauntlet and then punched upwards into Shadowmourne, forcing the axe back. Cassandra then lunged forward, slamming her arm into Ark'thugal in a clothesline rush, more flakes of saronite falling from the Warboss's armor.

However, before Cassandra could follow up on the attack, she was promptly hit with several dozen Death Grips by the various Death Knights that had assembled to back up Ark'thugal. Even with the Warboss activating Anti-Magic Zone to mitigate Cassandra's arcane might, it would do little to slow the slaughter. Cassandra punched straight through a Death Knight's skull, ripped the spine out of another, and hurled both Death Knights with such force as to knock the undead Eranikus back, twin shockwaves erupting as the corpses impacted the undead dragon. She then stomped on the ground, sending a wave of deadly ice spikes that tore through the city and several dozen Death Knights.

Ark'thugal potshotted her at long range, but Cassandra responded by firing an enormous pillar of ice at the Warboss to cancel out the projectiles. She then lunged at Ark'thugal again to resume the mauling, dead set on annihilating him.

/|\Ark'thugal/|\

Ark was pretty sure if he grinned any wider then his face was going to split open.

"Oh, what's the matter, have I offended you?" he shouted maniacally, taking a step back to let some of his fellow Death Knights have a swing at her. She butchered them almost immediately, but that didn't really matter, as their only purpose for being there was for him to cast Corpse Explosion on them. Their own attacks might not have meant much, but the explosion of necrotic energy coming from their corpses caused some damage.

"And what of you? Too afraid to fight me yourself?" Cassandra sneered back at him, slamming her fists into the ground and blanketing it with ice. A moment later the ice exploded upward in crystalline spikes, though not around Ark'thugal.

"I can control ice too, genius," the Death Knight drawled, then swung his axe up to bat away her followup punch. As her arm swung away, she turned the momentum into a spinning kick to hit the Warboss in the head. Felt about like getting hit by a freight train, but he only bent slightly to the side under the impact, grabber her by the leg, and channeled unholy might into his arm and squeezed, producing a satisfying grinding noise. Before he could get the bone to snap, though, Cassandra swung her other leg up to kick him repeatedly in the face. He held on for a few extra seconds until she wrenched her leg free, then stepped back as she threw a massive haymaker, the wind from the punch skimming past his face hard enough to scrape.

That was when they were abruptly interrupted by something big smashing through the ice spikes surrounding them, followed by Putricide's customary, "Good news, everyone! I've finished the Abominations!"

The thing, as it turned out, was a twenty foot tall undead colossus, and it was followed by several more, with Putricide riding atop one in the back, laughing like a hyena.

Ark, meanwhile, took the moment to deal with the psionic message he was getting; Barrack, having finally woken up, was giving the retreat command, and the other Warbosses were converging on the Cathedral. There was a quick note about Blackfuse leaping off the ship in order to get back to his submarine in there, but he wasn't concerned with that.

'A little tied up at the moment. Leave me behind; I'll keep these jokers busy enough for you to get away clean and regroup.'

'Leave you behind?!? Are you nuts?' Barrack's psionic response came, 'We already have one dead Warboss, we don't need two!'

'Do you want it to be all of us, then? Leave. Me. Behind.'

X-Cassandra-X

As Ark'thugal rattled out another insult, Cassandra barely even heard it. This guy was obnoxious. Does he have a deathwish?

The teal Pikmin flexed, and all of a sudden, the arcane and icy aura she was exuding disappeared. All of that energy was rerouted into raw physical power.

A few of the undead giants made a move towards Cassandra. They would wish that they hadn't immediately.

With a single swipe of her arm, Cassandra sent forth a deadly pressure wave of cutting power, bisecting one giant. The next colossus received a massive punch to the gut that sent it hurtling skyward at very high speed. The third one was grabbed by the teal Pikmin, hoisted up as if it weighed nothing, and then hurled very violently at Ark'thugal, who simply sliced it apart with Shadowmourne.

Cassandra was rather suddenly in front of him. And then Cassandra's fist was rather suddenly in front of Ark'thugal's face.

The Warboss immediately knew something was away and thus let the force of the blow push him back a bit; that hit was f***ing nasty. He didn't really want to eat too many of those. That said, since his face was now dribbling blood, Ark'thugal used his blood control for a quick attack on the Teal Pikmin.

Cassandra was undeterred however, and lunged forward, following up with a massive punch to the gut. That punch slammed into the Warboss's armor, denting it. Cassandra then pushed, the fist inching ever closer to Ark'thugal himself, the armor's dent worsening and growing bigger. This attack, almost like a drill in function, was interrupted when Ark'thugal swung Shadowmourne down at Cassandra, who caught the axe one-handed. This was when Putricide decided to send the rest of the Abominations Cassandra's way.

Rather than get caught by that, Cassandra kicked off Ark'thugal, and then began killing the Abominations. Slicing them apart with arm swings, Cassandra then hurled the remains of some the way of Eranikus, Putricide, and the other Death Knights to fend them off before she kicked off another colossus, hurtling towards Ark'thugal in a diving kick.
_____________
X-Phoenix-X

f***ing s***head. Noisy, noisy asswipes. Just f***ing die.

As my teeth grew back, the musclebound freak rushed at me, attempting to hit me with another right hook. Unfortunately for the ass***, I'm faster. It was easy for me to just duck underneath the swing and slam a fiery punch in her gut. Unlike that other noisy dickwad, this one actually burns. Unfortunately, it felt like punching a brick wall. So I gave her a few more exploding punches to the gut, a few feathers to the face, and right when I was in the middle of kicking off her, she elbowed me into the ground. Joy.

You know what you f***ing b**** two can play that game I gave her a fiery leg sweep that knocked her off balance, jumped up, and then gave her an elbow drop of my own. This one with fire and explosions.

I still haven't repaid that s***face for those teeth, so I stomped her right in the face and added some f***ing FIRE to the mix. Yeah, eat that b****! As I stomped out her teeth, it became clear that she could regenerate as well.

And that was when she threw me off and continued screaming. I used my superior speed to dodge aside from her charge, while simultaneously sending a blast of fire her way.

And of f***ing course it's only just now that I notice that she was a Purple Pikmin due to those hairs on her head. Ugh, goddamn all this noise is going to give me a headache.

/|\Ark'thugal/|\

The kick never reached him; Ark simply extended a tendril of unholy energy, grabbed Cassandra by the ankle, and swung downward, slamming her into the ground in front of him. She rolled aside before he could bring Shadowmourne down on her, but the impact released a wave of unholy energy that blew her aside, immediately precluding a counterattack. Her response to that was to slam her hands into the street and yank upwards, pulling a huge tile - with Ark'thugal on it - into the air before flipping it like a table. The distinct sound of Ark laughing followed the tile until it impacted a building and broke up, collapsing the structure under it.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" came a thunderous bellow as Koltira dropped into the fight with a huge overhead swing from behind Cassandra that damn near took her arm off. She darted aside, the axe only grazing her arm, and gave the death knight a spinning back kick that sent him skidding away with a large hole in his torso. Koltira puked up some blood, which flowed down him and congealed over the hole until it was good as new. Undead new, anyway. Cassandra sneered. Nobody had the good grace to just die these days, did they? Always had to beat them into paste first.

"Hey, princess!" came the shout from where Ark had fallen, who now held a massive chunk of the building that had fallen on him over his head. "Have some yourself!" he shouted, then threw the hunk of debris at her. Rather than dodge, she simply caught it and moved to throw it at Koltira, only for Ark to suddenly appear in front of her with a hollow popping sound. At this close range, he was close enough to see that the dented section of his armor had now broken away.

"Desecrate," the Warboss growled, slamming his fist into Cassandra's midsection. A whole hell of a lot of Unholy energy came with it, billowing around the two of them as it spread outward, rotting the chunk of debris that Cassandra was holding, as well as the floor beneath them. When the piece of building broke up and fell around them, it took the ground with it, dunking both of them into the room below.

Father

Father's avatar continued its assault on Seraph, firing beams of holy light down at the Fallen for a few moments before Y'shaarj stepped up to the plate. Y'shaarj ran a few tests before confirming that his emotion powers had no effect on Father, so void powers it was. The fact that the Old Gods were actually present on the planet contributed to their threat level, and the void barrier Y'shaarj threw up was actually able to block Father's light beams at its current output level.

Father turned up the power output before his avatar began sparking in protest. Father gave said avatar a displeased glance before the void surrounded said avatar... for only a moment or so. Although Seraph took that opportunity to hit the avatar with as strong of a void/darkness combination attack as he could muster in this opening, Father's retaliation would come swiftly and brutally.

There was a sudden cleave as a single, concentrated blade of holy light erupted from the void, slicing through it and Seraph. Before the Fallen could respond, Father's avatar, now with its outer armor visibly cracked, slammed a flyswatter construct made of holy light down on Seraph.

The force of the attack caused an absolutely enormous crater, with the cracks running to the very edges of the city.
_____________
X-Cassandra-X

The Teal Pikmin's response to Ark'thugal's last attack was to grab hold of the Warboss's punching arm and squeeze, deforming the armor and drawing blood from the arm. Before said arm could be crushed significantly, Ark'thugal poured out a humongous amount of blood from the arm to force Cassandra back. However the teal responded by unleashing a pressure beam punch aimed straight at Ark'thugal's heart. The Warboss blocked that by cleaving the attack in half with Shadowmourne, this swing adding his own blood as an extra bit of kick.

Cassandra dodged away from that, however Koltira showed up again and then redirected Ark'thugal's blood to strike her. As the teal moved to rip apart Koltira, Ark'thugal Wraith Walked up to her again in an attempt to cleave her with Shadowmourne.

Even though Koltira was acting as a distraction, Cassandra read the Warboss's movement and delivered a powerful kick to the ankle, denting the armor in that region and knocking Ark'thugal off-balance. She then followed up with an elbow strike aimed straight at Ark'thugal's vitals, however the Warboss blocked that with his undamaged arm, which immediately turned into a bleeding arm with dented armor.

Ark'thugal himself was just acting as a distraction for Putricide, Koltira, Karrak, and the rest of the Death Knights to dogpile her. Even as Eranikus attacked her with plague breath, Cassandra was a vortex of murder. She hurled Putricide as a makeshift spear to impale Eranikus, ripped Koltira in half, and then eviscerated dozens of Death Knights.

This led to a temporary stop when Karrak, using Twisted Reflection on Cassandra, countered her punch with his own. Even with Karrak power copying Cassandra however, his body did not take the strike as well as the Teal had. Cassandra then threw the two halves of Koltira at Karrak to force him back, and then rushed at Ark'thugal to continue the mauling.

Meanwhile, at Megadakka...

Progress was slow-going. G3 had lead a pretty good spearhead into the Black Pikmin's defenses with his arrival, but now they'd rallied and were focusing a lot of the anti-air guns on the mech, which had forced it to go on the defensive. They weren't terribly accurate, but the sheer volume of gunfire they had going its way was enough to stop G3's offense dead in its tracks. The Ebo series had taken cover behind him; too much crossfire to risk going on ahead.

As the mechs pinged back for orders, something at the base of Megadakka began to spin, and with a startling suddenness the surrounding airspace was nearly empty of Black Pikmin air forces.

"Cannon firing sequence is beginning. Calculating an immense pressure shockwave when it does... it would be wise to take cover now," G3 noted, descending towards the ground, forcing the Ebo series to scramble to keep up with it. The AA was still coming in hard and heavy, after all.

As the spinning part ramped up, it began to glow with heat, and G3 sped up to get to ground level. Finding a relatively covered area upon the ice, the mech threw up a large barrier with its left hand for the others to hide under, and just in time.

The blast the gun made when it fired was deafening, and the burst of wind that came with it was intense. The shockwave battered down upon G3's shield, but it held. As the noise level dropped, they could hear the gun's firing mechanism grinding to a halt, followed by a blast of steam erupting from several portions of the facility.

"The gun is currently venting heat; it will be some time before it can fire again. Heat vents seem to go through the facility itself, and are likely used as a defensive mechanism," G3 noted, before springing back up into the air to resume its attack. It would take them a while to target it again, and it could cause some havoc in that time.
____________________
-{Grand Reaper Vizogg}-

It was with the sound of tearing flesh that the Grand Reaper entered the field. A sound he enjoyed oh so much.

A dozen of the Galactic Gods' minions dropped dead on the spot, their upper halves neatly removed from their lower, and Vizogg twirled his enormous bone scythe as he walked past them. This was his element. It certainly got attention.

"Hey buddy, how's your life insurance?" Cross called out as he dropped in on the Reaper, with a grin wide enough to match Vizogg's own. The high priest responded only by launching a large spear of bone at him, which Cross kicked aside as he dropped a huge axe kick on Vizogg's shoulder that cracked the ground under him. The Grand Reaper, however, didn't even budge.

"... Apparently its great!" Cross cackled as Vizogg went straight for his head. He bent over backwards and flipped away, a clatter next to him indicating that Pinocchio had caught up.

"Onii-chan found a friend? Oh goodie! You'll have to introduce me!" the puppet said merrily. Vizogg simply regarded both with an unwavering smirk.

"I am Grand Reaper Vizogg, of the Cult of the Damned," he said by way of introduction, brandishing his scythe. "I have been given the duty of gathering the skulls of the Old Ones' foes, among other things. Would you like to make a donation?" Vizogg said snidely.

"Well, dunno if blockhead here has any to give, but if you want my skull," Cross replied, pulling several blades from the air, "then you'll have to come and get it!"

Vizogg's grin simply grew wider. "Oh, I was hoping you'd say that..."

?-Orvtre-?

Bloodriver and I were busy tending to the injured when we received a report from G3 detailing how the Megadakka campaign was going. Simply put, progress was slow. With that in mind, we decided to send reinforcements there to speed it up to free up Omicron.

Mithril had already left Hero Squad HQ and was currently waiting at an unpopulated underground area, awaiting Trombe's arrival. She had informed us that it was extremely likely that Trombe would be seeking revenge, and she had left the Warboss some directions to the site of their upcoming battle.

Bloodriver, Gamma, and Orbin will stay at Hero Squad HQ to tend to the injured. Quicksilver will stay to watch over Juggernaut. Libera wants to go, but Gamma is gonna check his prosthetic first.

Beta, Sapphire, and Vashj quickly volunteered to go with me to Megadakka. As I broadcasted a video feed of the ongoing Megadakka campaign, Theta immediately noticed that said campaign was taking place on a glacier, and simply stated, "I'll go.". With that settled, the six of us (including Upsilon) headed over to Megadakka, with a seventh possibly on the way.

"There are two prongs of the pincer attack; I'll be heading over to where the Bloodseed are to shield them up and heal them up. The rest of you can join whichever prong you'd like."

Upsilon, Beta, Sapphire, and Vashj accompanied me to back up the Bloodseed. Theta went over to the robots to assist them.

Upon my arrival, I immediately fired off a large blast of electricity that electrocuted several Black Pikmin, and utilized the area's ice to impale several more Black Pikmin on ice spikes. Beta, Sapphire, and Vashj blasted away at the Black Pikmin and their anti-air guns with a combination water-ice attack.

Immediately afterwards, I put up some more shields for the Bloodseed and summons to hide behind, and I checked on their status to see if they had any injuries that needed to be healed.
_____________
X-Pinocchio-X

"Onii-chan is going to fight? Pinocchio will help!" exclaimed the crazy puppet, who proceeded to raise several evil trees and vines to entangle Vizogg. The Grand Reaper simply scoffed and sliced through the trees, before brute-forcing his way past the vines. However, said trees nonetheless persisted in attempting to tangle the Grand Reaper with their remaining branches, so Vizogg gave them a few more slashes. Pinocchio suddenly descended upon Vizogg, deepening the crack in the ground underneath Vizogg with an axe kick of his own. Immediately afterwards, the puppet was abruptly pulled away by strings, narrowly avoiding a bone slash sent his way by Vizogg.

While Cross was unleashing four blades charged with various elements on Vizogg, Pinocchio was helping his "Onii-chan" by throwing various trees and plants the Grand Reaper's way. The various flora literally began biting away at Vizogg, belching some kind of poison that sizzled away at his bone armor. Any attempts at Vizogg to hurl bone spears at Pinocchio were evaded by the puppet, who dashed aside and continued pelting him with plants.

Vizogg's focus turned to Cross again as Pinocchio's "Onii-chan" fired off some kind of unstable energy at the Grand Reaper. Clashing blades with the chimera 'min, Vizogg generated multiple bone minions to send after Pinocchio to distract him and limit the number of plant projectiles sent the Grand Reaper's way.

]]]Skys***ter[[[

"Hope yer all on board, cause we're blowing this joint NOW!" Skys***ter bellowed into the speaker system, then immediately slammed his fist on a big red button in front of the captain's seat. Every one of the Cathedral's thrusters exploded into life at once, causing the ship to jolt forward with surprising speed. Firing a few parting shots, the vessel turned to the east, headed back towards already conquered territory.

"Oi, boss, don't really feel right t'be running like wee little babbies," one of the bridge crew piped up. Skys***ter merely grinned back at him.

"Heheh. If we runs for it, it don't count as losing, see? Cuz we can always come back and give it anuvver go!"

Far below, in the waters surrounding Ludibrium, Blackfuse stomped through the halls of his submarine as the engines throttled up. Rather than head back upriver, however, it ran itself aground... then promptly sprouted a massive set of treads and headed off, a swarm of Crawbsters rolling along behind it.

Meanwhile, within the Cathedral, Trombe had found his way to into the halls of the church itself. It was dead silent, here; the Boyz had only been in here once, to celebrate their victory in Blackrock Descent. None of them felt particularly victorious, now, so the church was empty. The Warboss laid on the floor, staring upward at the stained glass and the enormous mural that graced the ceiling. Laying upon his chest was Epsilon's orb, now set on a chain. It was the only thing left of his fellow Experiment. The b**** had even taken his weapon.

A location drifted through his mind, an image of the metal 'min, but Trombe didn't move. He didn't care for what his opponent wanted. He didn't care for what his opponent had to say. There was only one voice he wanted the acknowledgement of right now.

'Why, you only needed to ask...' a dark voice filtered through his mind. Murder filled his thoughts. Violence. Revenge.

Hatred.

'Become the avatar of the vengeance you seek.'

Trombe rose soundlessly to his feet, grabbed his chainswords, and left the cathedral.
___________
/|\Ark'thugal/|\

"Well, that sound means the rest of the crew is outta here. Guess that means it's just you and me, princess," Ark noted, the roar of the Cathedral's engines being clearly audible even from within Ludibrium. That didn't stop Cassandra's charge; what did stop her charge was when she slammed into Ark and he didn't budge an inch.

"Which means the time for fun and games is over. Of course," he continued, green flames bursting out from the cracks in his armor, "I'll still be having fun!" the death knight cackled as he slammed his burning fist into Cassandra's face, the blow powerful enough to emit a shockwave and send Cassandra skittering across the room and through a wall. The powerful movement broke what was left of his breastplate, the two constituent pieces falling to his front and back, now in more like six pieces. He shrugged his shoulderplates off, then flexed his arms, s***tering his gauntlets. Without all the armor in the way, it was now clear to see his veins standing out in a vibrant, sickly green.

"Now, let's have ourselves a HELL OF A TIME!" he bellowed, drawing forth a massive orb of green flame and launching it through the hole Cassandra had made. The Teal Pikmin broke through another wall as that room exploded, blasting whatever was above it to pieces. A swarm of ghouls immediately set upon her and were detonated by Ark before she could shred them, earning a growl of pure rage as she charged at him, ignoring the injuries she'd gotten. They'd heal up shortly, anyway. That made them less important than removing that f***ing grin from his f***ing face.

<]-Mithril-[>

In an unpopulated cave system deep underground, where no light shines...

It's finally time. I can sense my opponent coming ever closer to my location. Trombe isn't even trying to be subtle in his approach; he's forcing his way through all the rock in what is probably an enraged attempt to get at me as soon as possible. And yes, that is as noisy as you think it is.

Trombe temporarily incapacitating three of our Hero Squad members is troublesome. I'm going to eliminate this annoyance before he causes further issues for us. Down here, I can go nuts with my more dangerous abilities without having to worry about friendly fire or getting someone else caught up in it.

That said, I still have to be cautious. Trombe, like pretty much everyone else, has a super secret powerup, one that I made just a little less secret for myself. I took a look at his powerset, and from what I saw, the way the power is structured... although it looks like it adds some immunities and resistances, it had probably added a few weaknesses as well. But honestly, this is like piecing together a foreign language puzzle sometimes, especially because Zeromus was a s***head when he designed his lackey's powers. You need to really think it over and be analytical. That, and test some things out.

Speaking of testing, my opponent is in range. And yep, he's using some kind of powerup, now wearing some kind of blazer and scarf instead of armor. His swords have became fancy, too. I can already tell from here that I should go Metal Gate immediately. So after doing so, I threw fired several dozen long-range shots at my opponent, followed by some white-hot fire. I like fire, so I gave those flames a bit of oomph behind them.

He had no problem blocking and avoiding the shots from this range, apparently. What was noteworthy, however, was the fact that he completely ignored said fire, rushing right through it without getting a single injury. I suppose that this is one of his immunities... ?

Time to test electricity then. As Trombe came ever closer, I sent two dozen or so clones, vehicles, and sharks juiced up with electrical charge at him. He was dodging, blocking, and cutting through all of that, but then I just threw up an "Iron Maiden" at him. Epsilon Mark II tore through that quickly, but that gave me an opportunity to fire a very high speed electricity charged lance at him.

He did not quite dodge that completely. The lance, although sliced into, split into several electrified strings, one of which cut into his shoulder and began the zapping. This lasted less than a half of a second before he cut it out, ending the zapping. It seemed to actually do damage to him, unlike the fire.

Did I mention that he was charging at me during all of this? Because Epsilon Mark II was rushing at me like the angry person he was, trying to slice me up.

I simply backed away from him, setting various mines and traps as I moved along the cavern. Now, what to test next? There's probably a weakness there somewhere, I just need to find it and exploit the hell of it.

Plan A is a go.

X-Cassandra-X

The next few minutes were a frenzy of murder. How many died, Cassandra did not count. The remainder of the Black Pikmin and Death Knights stationed in Ludibrium had rushed in to slow her down, in a vain attempt to tilt the battle in Ark'thugal's favor.

They were better off running for their lives. So many limbs flying around, now scattered like confetti. So much blood spilled, staining the floor in puddles.

If Ark'thugal had not budged from Cassandra's charge now, how long did he think that would last? As the fight drew on, Cassandra's rage grew ever larger. Just a few charges in, and Ark'thugal was forced back a step or two. The Warboss's cross counter, even armed with that vile magic, halted Cassandra... who slammed her feet into the floor, the attack not knocking her back as much as it had just a few exchanges ago.

Eranikus descended upon Cassandra again, for the final time. The teal would put him out of his misery. Cassandra grabbed ahold of him, and with one mighty motion, crushed him like a tin can and then hurled him over the horizon.

Koltira was next. Cassandra was tired of dealing with the healing that the Prime Disciple of Blood had been providing Ark'thugal; this ended now. The teal punched straight through Koltira's brain and then cleaved him straight in two, pummeled the remains into gibby bits, and then turned them into glimmers in the sky with a shockwave.

Before Cassandra could annihilate the remaining Prime Disciples, Ark'thugal brought Shadowmourne down, glowing with green light. Cassandra met the attack head on.

"Ikkotsu," Cassandra snarled, slamming a tremendously powerful one fisted punch straight at Shadowmourne.

The shockwave was deafening. Everyone on Ludibrium felt it. Everyone on this quarter of the planet felt it. The exchange took most of Cassandra's arm with it. It also, more significantly, chipped Shadowmourne, a small, almost imperceptible crack now existing in the very edge of the blade.

Cassandra's arm grew back as she moved to meet Ark'thugal's next punch. This was the beginning of the end for him.