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Doevm lifted his head. Far below the gaping hole left in the spell\'s wake, hundreds of demons trampled shards of translucent crystal. The battle reached a brutal peak as he wasted time trapped within Brannath\'s web.

Doevm\'s wide, battle-hungry grin turned to a deep scowl behind the mess of bloody hair matted to his throbbing forehead. Copper life essence surged.

He exploded out of the web. Severed tissue sealed shut over his exposed bones. He ran faster than ever before towards the lone Grand Shaman.

Brannath gasped and flew back as Doevm\'s fist hammered down with a resounding thud. Newly regenerated wings extended and she kicked off the cloud. Doevm caught her by the ankle, twisted it, and threw her down. She bounced hard, the wind knocked out of her.

"It won\'t be that easy to take me down!" Brannath\'s mana condensed into three enormous claws which all lashed out. Doevm crouched below one, flipped over the other, and landed a moment too late to dodge the third. A sharp pain split his ear open and blood dripped onto the edge of his curled grin.

Doevm fell back, dragging the flailing shaman with him as the three claws relentlessly pursued. \'I can\'t take them all,\' he thought.

Eventually he had to let go as a strike nearly severed his arm. The two combatants separated with Brannath, taking to the air while Doevm retreated to where his spear sat idle. He kicked the demonic weapon into his grip, ripped off the seal, and his boiling blood finally settled. A red, powerful aura mixed with his newfound energy and a deep, joyous laughter echoed inside of his mind.

"You\'re back!" Larque, the demonic weapon, said. "Forbidden One, how long I\'ve waited for your full return!"

"We\'ll talk later," Doevm responded as the three claws rushed in for another round. Doevm\'s body seemed to blur. Sloppy footwork earned him cuts and scrapes. He weaved through their attacks, blocking and parrying in the few instances he could. Adjusting was manageable but painstaking. His smile widened. \'It\'s been far too long.\'

"Doevm," Larque warned. "Our contract was damaged. I can\'t suppress all your rage. Snap out of it!"

Meanwhile, a scheming shadow rose in the night. Brannath held out the second shrunken fairy head, which turned to ash with three simple incantations. Her magic surged anew. Dozens of magic circles trapped Doevm like a fish in a barrel. Hot, searing smoke flooded through the cold night air. "Foolish boy," Brannath cackled. "Never allow a magic user their distance."

"Now!" Doevm bellowed. Brannath\'s back lit up with a light sigil.

"When did you manage this?" Brannath gasped.

As the first, bright sparks of hellfire flashed, a second shadow slinked through the starry night sky and crashed into Brannath. Vile, green breath. Sticky, uncontained drool. Cold, clammy hands. The creature\'s claws raked through Brannath\'s dry skin, scrambling for anything it could get a hold of. Ground and sky flipped again and again as Brannath struggled to stay airborne.

\'You only noticed a flash,\' Doevm thought. \'You trusted in fate and overlooked my last, desperate spell. I trusted in my Undead, and the orders I gave them before I engaged in battle with you. Banshee, who has so kindly responded to my signal, please finish this.\'

The Undead\'s jaw extended down several feet. Brannath stared into a black abyss and blinked. The Banshee\'s ear piercing screech echoed throughout the valley. Blood shot out of Brannath\'s ruptured eardrums. Her eyes rolled back as her focus broke and her magic shattered. She entered a thirty foot free fall. Doevm willed it and the sigil on her back shone again. A second Undead rose up into the night sky and acted as a cushion for her, the bulbus Undead known as a Bulber. Doevm ordered both Undead to step aside with a thought.

"Where?" Brannath gasped as she regained consciousness in mere moments. She lifted her head up.

"Surrender," Doevm said as the point of his spear stared down the poor, ignorant demon. "And tell me about your god."

Brannath\'s eyes went wide. She scrambled back and forced out a nervous laugh: "Fate brought me back to consciousness. You can\'t win." She extended her hands and called upon her regenerated mana to form eighteen claws around her. The sigil on her back lit up for a third time and a third Undead crashed into her. "Where are these coming from?" She growled as she wrestled it off of her and leapt to her feet to see Doevm inches away from her face. She reflexively lashed out.

Doevm caught her blind strike and inverted her elbow with his own. As she cried out he swept her legs from under her, grabbed her throat, and slammed her to the ground. Then, he beat her. Shattered, bloody fangs clinked against the black cloud. Bruises swelled over one of her eyes. More Undead landed around their master, all except the Guriant who had been helping them up.

Doevm reeled back for another punch but a bird flew in the way of his fist. He furrowed his brows and reeled back again but slipped on her blood before the hit could connect. A third strike missed because she twitched to the side.

"That\'s enough, Forbidden one," Larque\'s voice came from Doevm\'s spear. "You should calm down."

Doevm paused. "I am calm. I was conducting a test."

"Y-you\'re in control of yourself?"

Doevm nodded. "Why wouldn\'t I be?"

Larque went silent for a moment. "Look at her."

Brannath struggled to breathe. Only one eye peered up at her opponent. The other one had swollen over. She kept staring. The edges of her mouth twitched. "You still can\'t kill me, nor can you beat fate," she seemed to say.

Doevm removed Brannath\'s spatial ring and, upon a quick inspection, found a sacrificial dagger inside it. He placed it in Brannath\'s hand and moved the blade over her throat. "I know what you want to say," he told her. "You want to tell me that you cannot die from physical and or magical means because fate protects you, right? It\'s simple, right? It\'s the truth, right?"

He took a breath and continued: "Mumbling Prophet\'s prophecy about you, the Demon King, the hero, and others has never before been broken. That is not to say, however, that fate does not have its limits. Every rule has exceptions. Say, for instance, if one were to get ahold of this "power of fate", would they be able to kill you?" He leaned forward, multiple lifetime\'s worth of curiosity surfacing.

"W-What?"

"Let\'s experiment." Doevm said as he pulled parchment, quill, and ink out of his spatial ring. From Brannath\'s spatial ring he pulled out a light crystal. The Undead rose from their defensive stances to specified roles such as a lamp, a table, an event recorder, etc.

Brannath\'s eye widened as she sensed a strange power emerge. "Wait, that\'s impossible. It\'s impossible!"

Doevm took a deep breath. "Die," he said with a bit of soulmagic. Brannath raised the dagger and plunged it into her throat. Blue blood gushed.

"One, two, three," an Undead moaned the seconds while another\'s hand flew across a piece of parchment.

"Temperature and heart rate is rising," Doevm said after he placed a hand on her forehead and another on the side of her neck. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

She reached out in a last ditch struggle and swiped at him. The tip of her fingernail got caught in the threads of his torn robe. "Are you afraid that fate is no longer this immutable fact you and the rest of the world have accepted it as?" Doevm asked. Her heart rate fluctuated in response to the question.

"Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen..."

"Temperature lowering. Heartbeat slowing. No sign of resurrection magic, miracles, artifacts, or healing."

"Forty, forty-one, forty-two..."

Brannath\'s mouth opened and closed but her last words were just an unintelligible gurgle. "Mark the time of death." Doevm closed her single, open eye and stood up. "Erase the corpse." The Undead closed in on Brannath\'s body and he turned his back. \'I\'d like to respect the dead but this is an exception,\' he thought.

Doevm walked to the edge of the dark cloud and gazed at the valley. \'It\'s simply an exception.\' Again, that thought went through his mind. He willed it and a single spark of mana appeared in his left hand. Like a muscle he\'d always had, copper life essence emerged around his right hand. He cleared his throat as he called upon his soulmana again, like asking another being for aid. \'Mind, body, and soul. Was it really just an exception, denying fate? Can all of the legacies accomplish this?\'

Doevm took a moment to spectate the battle raging below him. \'Is that why the Demon King wants my father\'s map so badly, so he too can defy fate?\' He swept his gaze across the valley and found the ruined church that he and his companions had taken shelter within during initiation. His hands curled into fists. \'Is that map why my family suffered at her hands? Is that map really what I want?\'

The screams carried from the battlefield. He shook his head and dragged himself from his train of thought. He reached into Brannath\'s spatial ring and withdrew her communication stone. 

"Why aren\'t you firing damn it?" Zolgon\'s voice came through it. "The hero is right in front of me, as well as that map. We are so close. Just a little further."

"Greetings Demon King," Doevm said.

Zolgon paused: "Who is this? What happened to Brannath?"

"My name is Doevm, the one who just executed the Grand Shaman."

"What? That\'s impossible. What have you done to her? Give this stone back to her, now!"

"I told you what I did to her and I won\'t repeat myself," Doevm said. "You\'re next." He shattered the communication stone and stepped off the cloud.