He wanted to solve the Mara problem. The urge was a steady pulse, calm and constant. But the dog had teeth the size of his forearm and looked like it could rip a tree out of the ground. Fine. Use her. Point the angry necromancer at the problem. Once the eye did something—once the rules changed, once the bigger picture was clear—he would shut her down for good. Simple.
He tallied what he had.
The hobgoblin thrall: a professional. Sword work. Throwing knives. No fear.
The temple demon: stupid strong. Armor like snake scales. A freezer-burn wrecking ball on a chain that drained energy on impact.
Mara: life drain at range, a sword, enhanced strength. Dangerous. Still weaker than the demon.
Himself: a spear, short-range portals, enhanced strength. Also weaker than the demon.
Jamie: fast, strong, could make ice shields appear from nothing. Still not strong enough.
Alone, any of them died. Together, they might be a bad meal—something that broke teeth or caused a fatal stomachache.
If they killed the tiger, he could watch the eye. If the eye moved, if it intervened, if it revealed how tight the leash really was—then he’d know what kind of fight this was.
Then he could deal with the eye.
Then he could deal with Mara.
"Its level’s too high," Jamie whispered in a frantic hiss, his voice strained. "Close to twenty. I'm still stuck at nine!"
"It's going to run us down," Mara said, her eyes fixed on the demon. "That thing will smash you flat. It's stronger than all of us. We can't beat it. Unless we get stronger." She didn't look at David. The statement was aimed at the air between them.
David watched the censer. It pulled at the energy in the air, drawing the faint light into the iron. "The weapon drains power. A hit will weaken you, maybe freeze you. We break its grip. Destroy the hand or the chain."
The demon howled, a deep noise that sounded more like air being sucked in than released.
"We surround it," David said. "Jamie right. Mara left."
Mara didn't move. "Your plan gets us killed separately instead of together."
"My plan is the only one being said. Move, or explain your better idea to it." He gestured with his chin toward the creature.
"I have six dead things in the ground outside this ice. Your brilliant plan cut me off from them. I have a sword and attacks that needs me to touch that... thing. Your plan is a suicide pact."
"Then stand here and die with your great ideas." David kept his eyes on the demon, which was now shifting its weight toward Jamie. "Jamie, on its right now. Shield up. Drop ice on it. Mara, if you're staying, make it count. Try not to pick your own grave."
"Your future sight. Share it with me." Mara's demand was flat, stripped of any request.
"No." David's refusal was immediate. He kept his focus on the demon's shifting feet.
Through the thrall link, the feedback was a silent eruption—a blistering wave of pure fury, a sharp spike of desperate, covetous interest, and beneath it, a corrosive layer of resentful greed.
Ha. Greedy much. She wanted the advantage just so she could figure out how to turn it against him. The preview was nothing but a highlight reel of possible deaths, one after another. He still wouldn’t give it to her.
The four of them split. Jamie darted right, his hobgoblin went left, and David circled wide. Mara hung back, slowly advancing.
A jagged shard of ice materialized in the air above the demon and slammed down onto its right shoulder. It cracked against the dark scales but didn't pierce. The hobgoblin's daggers flew, thunk-thunk-thunking into softer patches of flesh near its joints.
The demon’s head snapped toward the thrall. It launched forward, the censer swinging down in a brutal arc. The iron sphere cratered the icy floor where the hobgoblin had been, erupting in a burst of frost that coated the ground in a slick, freezing film.
David was already moving behind it, spear aimed at the exposed stretch of its back. The demon should have been committed to its strike.
The Demon stumbled. Its massive foot skidded on its own new ice. The stumble became a sudden, violent pivot, its whole torso torqueing, the heavy chain already whipping back around in a furious backswing aimed at David's head.
He saw it coming—a split-second preview of the censer caving in his skull. He dropped and rolled as the metal ball hissed through the air where he’d been.
Mara was already there, having lunged in from the side during its stumble. Her sword was a flash of silver, cutting a shallow line across its thigh before she danced back, her face a mask of cold focus. She’d struck early, drawn its aggro, and completely blown the plan to pieces.
The cold leaching through his boots was a problem. My energy siphon doesn't work on cold. Cold isn't an energy source. It's an absence. I can't steal from zero. He watched the demon's censer trail that frozen mist. They couldn't win a slow fight in a giant icebox. So we make it a fast one. Unplug the freezer before everything inside gets frostbite.
The censer’s impact didn’t just crater the ground. It erupted with streams of icy mist that clouded the air, and from the point of impact, jagged spikes of ice shot up through the floor, rising to knee height like a field of frozen caltrops.
David smashed through a spike with his boot, the enhanced strength making it shatter, but a wave of cold numbness shot up his leg. The reality of his disadvantage hit home.
It wasn’t just a hunch. My siphon really is useless here. He felt some energy leave him. It’s just… empty cold.
“Hob! Hit its left side, keep it turning!” David yelled. The hobgoblin obeyed, darting in with its sword to slash at the demon’s flank.
“Jamie! Fill its mouths! Stuff them full of ice, now!”
Jamie’s focus sharpening on the demon’s gaping head-maw and the wider chasm of its stomach. Jamie threw his hands forward. Two massive, rough-hewn blocks of ice slammed into the demon's faces—one jamming into the head-maw, the other cramming into the stomach-chasm. The ice held for a second, a sudden plug in the endless holes, before it evaporated mysteriously into the dark depths.
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"Again! Don't let it clear!" David shouted.
Jamie kept it up, manifesting block after block of ice, forcing the demon to constantly twist and shudder as its consuming mouths were momentarily stuffed.
The hobgoblin thrall was a blur on the creature's left. It dodged a slow, grasping claw, ducked under the sucking pull of the stomach-mouth, and sliced its sword across the demon's thigh. The creature seemed less interested in crushing with the censer held in its right hand now, and more focused on grabbing one of them with its free hand or drawing them into a mouth.
David used the mist and the spikes, moving low and quiet, circling to get behind the thing. His thrall was the perfect distraction—a skilled, annoying target.
Mara lunged in from the other side. Its right. She wasn't following any plan. She just attacked, her sword striking the demon's right weapon wielding arm seperate from the hobgoblin's own attack, her movements aggressive, powerful, and messy. She was helping the thrall, but it was stupid, chaotic help that threatened to box the hob in or draw its attention the wrong way.
"Fall back, Mara! Now!" David's command was sharp.
She ignored him. She parried a backhand swat from the demon's free hand and tried to go for its wrist, putting herself right in the path of the hobgoblin's next strike.
David stopped his stealthy advance. Her idiocy was about to get his useful thrall killed. He changed his grip on his spear.
David filled himself with demonic energy. He felt the cold, violent power circulate through him, a buzzing current under his skin. He pushed it outward, expanding his demonic magic field as far as it would go. A faint, dark shimmer hung in the air around him, an aura of his own energy.
In the second the creature was being assailed—ice in its mouths, his thrall on its left, Mara being a chaotic mess—and before Mara could ruin the moment and distract its attention from the left, David raced forward openly.
He dashed to its right side.
With a swing and a portal channeling magic field and spear, David cut off the hand holding the censer.
It crashed to the ground as the creature reeled. So demons can feel pain. Good to know, David thought.
David grabbed the chain where it was still attached to the severed hand. The censer was heavy as all hell. The iron sphere felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. He had to pull more demonic energy into his legs, back, and shoulders just to lift it off the ground.
He didn't try to swing it well. He just hauled it up and slammed it down into the demon's legs as it stumbled.
The impact erupted in a burst of frost. Jagged ice encased the creature's legs, locking them to the ground.
"Now!" David grunted, dropping the chain.
His hobgoblin thrall was already there, sword hacking at the frozen joint of a knee. Mara, the freeloader, didn't need to be told twice. She drove her blade into its thigh, her face set in a grimace of pure spite.
David joined them, his spear stabbing into the creature's side. They hacked at it, a messy, brutal dismantling of a trapped monster.
The creature’s body shuddered. The open voids of its mouths began to pull. The air started rushing towards the twin abysses with a low, building howl. Loose ice chips skittered across the floor, accelerating. Vacuum cleaner from hell. That’s new.
David dropped the heavy censer. He wrapped the chain around his forearm and planted his feet. The pull was strong enough to make him lean. "Hob! Anchor!"
The hobgoblin drove its sword deep into the frozen ground and held on.
"Jamie! Get a wall up, now! Cover yourself!"
Jamie threw his hands out. A thick, jagged wall of ice erupted from the floor between him and the demon, cracking as the wind slammed into it.
David opened the thrall link to his hobgoblin. He didn't send words. He sent a compressed burst of sensory information—a half-second preview of the creature's likely lunge, the angle of a potential grab. The hobgoblin adjusted its stance, understanding the warning.
The demon, enraged, swung its remaining arm in a wide, clumsy arc. David shared the predictive flash of imagery senses and insight with his thrall again. They moved together, a feint to the left that made the creature overcommit.
Now.
David had refrained from ordering Mara. Now, he sent a single, direct mental order to Mara through the thrall bond:
She froze. It was just a split-second of perfect, unnatural stillness.
The creature's massive hand shot out and closed around her torso. The crunch of bone was audible. Blood flecked her lips.
Her arm, outstretched from the impact, entered the void of its stomach-mouth. The flesh and bone disintegrated on contact, the entire limb vanishing into the gut’s darkness.
David and the hobgoblin were already moving. Jamie's ice spear shot from behind his wall, stabbing into the creature's neck. The hobgoblin wrenched its sword free and hacked into the demon's leg. David drove his own spear up under its ribcage, aiming for whatever passed for a heart.
They disabled it before it could finish squeezing the life out of her. David and his thrall withdrew their weapons and cut off its head and arm. The vacuum pull cut off abruptly. The demon swayed, somehow still alive, and collapsed.
Mara dropped to her knees beside the corpse, clutching her crushed ribs, her face pale, her left arm ending in a smooth, vanished stump at the shoulder.
The creature still wasn't dead. It was twitching on the ground, a low gurgle coming from its maw. David put his spear through its spine. The hobgoblin drove its sword into the thing's heart. Jamie just stood there, breathing hard, until David nodded at the body. Jamie concentrated, summoning a final large spike of ice high above, that fell from the top of the dome and punched through its chest.
It stopped moving.
[You have defeated a Temple Demon, Lvl 19]
[Lvl 10 → Lvl 11]
The moment she’d shown she could circumvent his Infernal Thrall, the moment she became an obstacle and his biggest personal threat, he'd stopped giving her orders. He'd pulled back the hostility. He quit playing the 'we're mortal enemies' game that people with no real plan liked to waste time on. For this moment.
Mara was on her knees a few feet away. She clutched her ribs with her one remaining hand. Her breath came in wet, shallow hitches. Her eyes were glassy, barely focused.
Jamie rushed over and dropped down beside her. "Oh—oh god, Mara? Look at me. Look—You're gonna be okay, right? Just hold on, we'll get out and get Chloe.” He turned to David, his eyes pleading. “Will she be OK? It looks… really bad,” his voice trembled.
David walked over. He held his spear in his left hand and dragged his new mace-like ice-censor in his right, and looked at her. He looked at the ruin of her torso, the missing arm, the blood at the corner of her mouth. "Yeah," he said, his voice flat. "She'll be just fine."
She's totally dead. Or will be in ten minutes when the next horror from beyond steps out of the temple—or when we go in it. She has high constitution I'm guessing, but that mouth void was freaky as hell. Internal bleeding, punctured organs, shock, and major limb loss. No healer in here. Just a freezer. He watched Jamie try to prop her head up. The kid's hands were shaking.
Mara’s head turned slowly. Her eyes found David’s. The look in them was pure, undiluted hatred. Her body trembled, but her one good hand fumbled across the ice for the hilt of her sword. She was preparing for a fight. On her knees. Dying.
David closed off the thrall connection between them. The feedback of her pain and rage vanished, leaving a silent void in his head. He opened a narrow, direct channel for a command.
He could absorb energy. That was his thing. So he should be able to absorb the energy that animated her undead. He wouldn’t turn into a zombie. Probably. He just didn’t want to lose six perfectly good corpses. If this doesn't turn me into a zombie and I get cool death powers. Maybe I’ll get a skeleton toothpick or something. Fingers crossed.
His elite hobgoblin thrall watched her from a few feet away, its expression blank as if watching a falling leaf. Or a problem solving itself.
Jamie was crying openly, whispering ‘no, no, no’ under his breath. Bless his soul.
Mara obliged. She had no choice. Her body shuddered as she forced the command out, a wet cough spraying blood across the ice. Her sword arm rose, the gesture weak and trembling. To David, she just looked like a super heavily injured dying woman making a last, pointless gesture.
Well. Mara did say a showdown between them was inevitable. Through the link, he sent a final thought to her.
Throughout the fight, the giant eye above the temple had kept its gaze on David, never looking away, following his every motion. He looked at it. The eye still watched him, unmoving. You just wait your turn, David thought, turning back to Mara.
David opened the thrall link between them, and felt a rush of the sickly, dark, and powerful energy of death from her skills, surge to him, and before the skill could reach him and fail.
He breathed it all in.