Grand Marshal Beren crossed the shattered threshold. The fundamental fabric of his reality shifted immediately.
The Earth's Cleaver radiated an aggressive amber luminescence. That singular light pushed back the gloom to cast jagged shadows against the corrupted walls. Heavy oaken doors slammed shut behind him with a hollow boom. The sheer physical press of the Iron Will Battalion sealing the nave caused the ancient timber to groan under their weight.
Unnatural acoustics built into the stonework swallowed the outside world. The howling chaos of the Holy Plaza vanished. The distant roar of the burning city faded into nothing. The air inside the Cathedral of Darkness felt highly pressurized. Beren inhaled a suffocating mist. It tasted of heavy incense mixed with pulverized masonry. The unmistakable metallic tang of freshly spilled blood coated the back of his throat.
Four hundred elite paladins formed a bristling half-circle around their commander. Hardened survivors of the Six Scriptures stood shoulder-to-shoulder with two dozen high-tier spellcasters. These mages immediately layered glowing defensive wards over the gleaming steel of the front line.
"Form the phalanx! Shield-bearers to the front!" Beren roared.
His booming voice served as the only anchor of sanity within the swirling storm of shadows.
"Mages, illuminate the vaulted ceilings! Priests, ready your summons!"
The nave stretched out before them. It was a cavernous monument to solemnity twisted into a grand theater of death. Ancient pews carved from blackened wood lay shattered into jagged splinters.
The corrupted flock stood amidst the wreckage. Hundreds of missing civilians populated the vast hall in eerie rows. Their faces hung slack. Empty eyes acted as shallow pools reflecting nothing of the encroaching amber light. They did not scream or run. merely existed as living statues manifesting the sheer malice of the Sorcerer King.
Beren felt his heart violently clench. A profound sorrow settled deep into his chest.
These were the people we swore to protect, the veteran commander thought. His jaw locked tight enough to threaten his molars. The bakers. The weavers. The innocent children of the gods. Now they are nothing but mindless meat shields for a coward hiding.
That brief flash of sorrow burned away into righteous fury. He served as the vanguard shield of humanity. He would gladly bear the terrible sin of this night. He would sacrifice everything to ensure the Cardinals escaped with the ultimate salvation of the world.
"There!" a veteran temple guard screamed. He pointed his heavy halberd toward the high altar.
Ambient shadows coalesced atop the sacrificial marble. The Eternal Death did not step out of the darkness. The creature physically extruded itself from the void. It manifested as a sleek nightmare encased in obsidian armor. Tattered shrouds drifted around its six elongated limbs. The assassin looked down at the finest warriors of the theocracy. Its multifaceted eyes burned with absolute apathy.
"Vanguard! Drive it back!" a captain of the Iron Will ordered.
A dozen paladins clad in enchanted silver plate charged at the altar. Their synchronized battle cry echoed off the vaulted ceiling to display years of strict martial conditioning. Heavy lances tipped with holy silver thrust forward to create an impenetrable wall of kinetic force. It was a legendary charge capable of breaking established demi-human lines.
The Eternal Death did not raise a weapon to defend itself. It merely twitched its lowest right limb.
A localized shockwave of pure kinetic force rippled outward from the altar.
The charging paladins struck an invisible wall. Their ash-wood lances shattered into useless splinters instantly. Enchanted breastplates caved inward under a unified crunch of collapsing steel and bone. The vanguard was thrown backward through the air. They crashed into massive stone pillars with lethal force.
Thirty elite Temple Guards broke formation out of sheer desperation after witnessing the massacre. They surged forward from the flanks, wielding two-handed glaives. Weaving rapidly through the silent civilians to surround the altar and pin the damned undead.
The form of the assassin blurred. It slid effortlessly through physical space to appear in the exact center of the advancing guards. Obsidian claws elongated into scythes woven from shadow. The nightmare spun once.
A silent circle of dark energy blossomed outward.
The top halves of thirty armored men slid cleanly off their waists. Internal organs spilled onto the polished stone floor long before dying brains registered the agonizing bisection.
The slaughter below triggered a frantic response from the high rafters.
"It's too fast! Lock it down!" screamed a cloaked survivor of the Wind Scripture.
Five elite assassins dropped directly from the upper balconies. They utilized highly enchanted cloaks to mask their magical signatures. Plummeting toward the eternal death from above, they aimed specialized daggers coated in corrosive wyvern venom at the sensory organs of the monster.
The undead construct did not bother to look up. It raised a single armored hand toward the ceiling.
Ambient shadows clinging to the high vaults abruptly solidified. They plummeted downward like falling spears. The five assassins were impaled mid-air flawlessly. Thick pillars of hardened darkness pinned them violently to the marble floor. The elite operatives writhed like trapped insects while their lifeblood pooled rapidly around the desecrated altar.
Beren watched the effortless massacre. The breath caught painfully in his throat.
Gods above, the Grand Marshal thought. Cold terror threatened to freeze the blood pumping through his veins. This is not a battle. We are children throwing stones at a hurricane.
He could not break. Humanity would die in this room if he surrendered to the panic.
"Casters!" Beren bellowed. He raised his glowing greatsword high to rally their rapidly fracturing morale. "Call the heavens! Tear this sanctuary apart!"
Specialized magic divisions standing safely at the rear of the formation unleashed their accumulated wrath.
Twelve combat mages chanted in overlapping unison. These men served as seasoned architects of the arcane. The stagnant air suddenly cracked with the scent of ozone. Complex geometric formulas flared around their raised staffs.
"Now!" the lead mage shrieked.
They unleashed a blinding torrent of [Lightning]. Jagged arcs of blue-white electricity tore across the nave to seek the massive concentration of negative energy.
High priests, beside the mages, channeled pure divine authority. A massive magic circle glowing with blinding gold light materialized directly beneath the vaulted ceiling.
"Archangels of the Supreme Six! Descend and cleanse this blight!"
Reality tore open with a sound resembling ripping silk. Four [Archangel Tyrants] plummeted into the nave. These towering celestial constructs descended in heavy golden armor. Featureless glowing visors scanned the corruption. They circled the ceiling rapidly. Bladed wings shed crystalline feathers that actively burned away the creeping shadows upon touching the stone floor.
"Converge!" Beren roared. His voice shook the stained glass remaining in its lead framing. "Converge on the blasphemy!"
The remnants of the military might rallied behind the blinding display. The physical manifestation of the angels bolstered their broken spirits to reignite a spark of holy zeal.
Beren stood at the absolute center. He stepped boldly over the bisected bodies of his own men.
"Fire!" he commanded.
He swung the earth's cleaver in a wide arc. The ancient enchanted blade unleashed a massive shockwave of earthen energy. The force physically tore up the stone floor to rush, like a localized earthquake, toward the flickering silhouette of eternal death.
The air inside the cathedral ignited completely. A hundred surviving paladins fired enchanted heavy crossbows simultaneously. The heavy bolts trailed long streaks of holy fire, hissing violently through the dark. The priests synchronized their casting to layer towering pillars of [Holy Smite] directly over the rampaging lightning.
The interior of the Cathedral of Darkness became a chaotic strobe light of destructive mana.
Simultaneously, the four [Archangel Tyrants] folded their glowing wings and dived. Their massive flaming swords carved through the ozone-rich air to leave trails of superheated gas. Their alien voices chanted a hymn of absolute judgment, causing the ears of the mortal men below to bleed.
Beren watched the epicenter through the blinding dust and violently intersecting light.
The Eternal Death did not move to dodge. It stood perfectly still atop the ruined altar. It tilted its nightmarish head slightly to watch the incoming apocalyptic storm with a cold gaze.
"We have it!" a heavily armored scripture member screamed in triumph.
He charged forward directly behind the cresting magical wave. He thrust a massive spear tipped with [God-Slaying Iron] toward the exposed chest of the creature.
"It's trapped!"
The combined ultimate might of the Slane theocracy's last desperate heroes slammed into the high altar with catastrophic force.
An explosion of holy energy and concentrated kinetic power rocked the sanctuary. It shattered every remaining stained-glass window in the nave simultaneously. A massive shockwave blew outward. Heavily armored paladins were knocked clean off their feet. Millions of colored glass shards rained down upon the ancient pews like a localized diamond storm.
A blinding white flash erased the world.
Grand Marshal Beren allowed himself to believe for a single heartbeat. He allowed himself the desperate hope that even a supreme nightmare forged by the Sorcerer King could not possibly survive the concentrated faith of a dying nation.