A Deus Ex Machina

The fight raged. I was a goddamn whirlwind, a laughing, screaming avatar of destruction. Goblins and orcs were no longer threats; they were just meat. More bodies to break, more blood to spill. I laughed, a harsh, grating sound that tore at my throat, but who cared? It felt good. Every punch, every blast of fire, every slicing gust of wind—it was pure, unadulterated fun.

But even a madman gets tired. My limbs, buzzing with borrowed power, started to protest. The mana, once an endless well of ecstatic energy, now felt thin, frayed. My vision, sharp as it was, occasionally flickered, a faint ringing in my ears growing louder. The beautiful, burning star of madness inside me was starting to dim.

The Demon, that big, ugly bastard, was still standing. It had taken hits, scorch marks and shallow gouges marring its dark form, but it just kept coming. It was learning. Adapting. Its movements were no longer reactive, but predictive, anticipating my chaos. The damn thing was almost as annoying as Einar, always calculating.

A heavy blow from an orc's club, one I barely dodged, sent me stumbling. Another goblin swiped with a rusty blade, tearing a shallow cut across my side. Pain. A dull throb, then a sharp sting. I barely noticed. My focus was on the Demon. It was closing in, its dark aura pressing down, suffocating. The remaining goblins and orcs, a swarm of green, pushed me back, back, until my back hit the shattered stone of the gate. Cornered.

"Well, well, well," the Demon rumbled, its voice like grinding stone. "The little toy finally runs out of spark." It raised a hand, a dark, swirling energy gathering in its palm. A finishing blow.

This is it, isn't it? The end of the ride. What a shame. …But hey, if I'm going out, I'm going out with a bang!

A grin split my face, wide and manic. "Spark, huh? You think that's all there is?! You think you've seen me?!" I roared, mana surging through every fiber of my being. It was a wild, uncontrolled surge, pushing past every limit, every theoretical boundary He had ever considered. My skin tingled, my hair felt like it was standing on end. I was going to explode. A glorious, beautiful, destructive explosion. And it wouldn't hurt a bit. Asverta said so. Magic can't hurt me.

"Let's see how much you like this, you ugly piece of shit!" I screamed, pulling all the mana I could gather, all the raw, unstable power, into a single, concentrated point within my core. This wasn't just a blast. This was everything. A self-destruct. A final, glorious middle finger to the universe.

But then, a blinding flash of pure, white mana erupted from somewhere behind me. Not my mana. Not the Demon's. It was cold, precise, and utterly devastating. It slammed into the Demon with the force of a collapsing mountain. The air shrieked, the ground trembled.

The Demon's sneer froze, replaced by a horrific expression of pure, unadulterated shock. Its massive body contorted, then shattered. Half of it simply vanished, disintegrated into motes of dark dust, the other half collapsing with a sickening thud, a ruined, smoking husk.

The surge of mana I was gathering, the glorious, suicidal explosion, faltered. The external mana interference was too great, too overwhelming. My vision swam, the world tilting. The raw power I had summoned, now uncontrolled, began to dissipate, leaving behind a crushing exhaustion that felt like a physical weight.

My eyes, blurring, caught a glimpse of a figure stepping through the smoke and dust. Long purple hair, white eyes. Asverta. Her face was serious, but there was a hint of something else there, something like... relief?

"You truly are... something else, Einar," her voice, distant and echoing, reached me. "Perhaps... you'd consider being my apprentice?"

The world spun faster. My body hit the ground. The last thing I registered was the cold, hard stone, and then... nothing.