L: The first rule of magic duels is don't get into magic duels. The second is to remain calm; if ya lose your s***e, ya soon won't have s***e left to lose.
The first to move is Tanglepork. Dodging an opportune swipe of Ioana's claws as she runs away, she reloads her gun. She quickly turns and fires, but her nerves betray her and the bullet barely misses the lycan's head.
Ioana's fierce gaze remains locked on her prey as she commands the air to twist around her. It becomes like a miniature tornado as she chases after the gnome.
Gudrun locks eyes with the minotaur. "Obey me," she says, her eyes alight.
L: The third rule of magic duels is to know what your opponent can do and prepare to counter it.
"Not this time, b***h," says Honeycrisp, shaking off the force trying to insert itself into his mind.
Gudrun pulls out a silver wand. "Fine."
Honeycrisp focuses and magic courses through his body, accelerating him. Sparks dance upon his horns.
L: Corollary: Know what your opponent knows ya can do and don't do it.
Ling raises a wall of ribs, splitting a third of the room away, isolating the lycan and the deputy from the rest of them. The massive ribs connecting ceiling to floor have gaps too small for most of the room's occupants. "This way, Porky," commands Ling, as she positions herself by the passage to the portal room.
J: How many wall of bones spells do there really need to be?
"Ling," whines Zingiber, "You're supposed to be fighting me." She releases a blast of glittery fire into Ling's face, but the gex licks her eyes clean.
Tanglepork takes a liking to the idea of people not seeing things and turns invisible, then attempts to sneak around Ioana to reach the bone wall. Her steps are calculated to match the rhythm of the other fighters.
Ioana sniffs about and detonates a burst of fire where she believes the gnome to be hiding, but by some gnomish trickery (possibly breakdancing), the deputy remains unharmed.
Gudrun fires a purple beam from her wand, but Honeycrisp defects it with his horn. "S***e," she says, calmly. Foreseeing the sheriff's next move, she conjures a shield in front of her.
Honeycrisp charges forward, his horns smash open the shield. While his target is unharmed by that, the hook to her face makes quite the impact, knocking free a tooth, which explodes. The shrapnel then defies physics and embed themselves in the dwarf's neck.
Ling conjures a facsimile of a dryad -a type of tree nymph- that wraps her arms around the elf. "Hey there, cutie," says the dryad with a wink.
L: Preventing your opponent from casting at all is the strongest option. A lot of magic requires somantics.
Zingiber forces an arm free. "Getting off on this, Dr. Ling?" She gestures wildly. "Then check this!"
Unfortunately for Zingiber, her spell fails for multiple reasons: Tanglepork is out of the area, Honeycrisp (bull) and the dryad (plant) don't have the targeted anatomy, and Ling, because of her experiences in Wizard School, always begins the day with protective spells like Genital Mirror Shield. Thus, the caster herself is the only affected person.
Zingiber clutches her guts as her Ovarian Explosion nearly rips apart her insides. "Mistake."
J: Who even crafted that? Why make that?
"Serves ya right," shouts Ling.
Invisible, Tanglepork sneaks up to the ribs while quietly reloading her weapon and squeezes through. Aiming back through, she takes another shot breaking her disguise. The bullet, buffeted by the wind, glances the lycan's shoulder. "Oh, come on," the deputy grumbles.
If Ioana were the beast she looked like, she'd just run up to the ribs and try to smash through, but the witch is smarter than that. The bones form a fence she can cast through and, with the wind making her a difficult target, she's free to do so. She condenses a suffocating cloud around the gnome. "You can't escape," she growls.
"Help me," demands Gudrun to Zingiber, taking a defensive step away. She locks eyes with Ling and a mental bomb causes her to recoil in pain.
J: How many counters do you have? L: One more than I think I'll need.
"Time to put you b***hes in your place," says Honeycrisp.
"Can you shut your f**king mouth for five b****y minutes!" yells Ling.
"Great idea!" Honeycrisp forms a zone of silence around himself and lunges headfirst into Gudrun, impaling her on his horns and lifting her off the ground.
L: A lot of magic requires incantations too.
Now unable to hear, the false dryad looks to Ling for instruction. Ling gestures for her to keep Zingiber in that area close to the sheriff. Ling then condenses the cloud around the deputy into a shield of water.
Zingiber punches and knees the dryad, bashing onto bark-coated flesh. Breaking free, she scrambles out of the inaudible zone.
Tanglepork peers around the shield (reloading) and focuses on that first bullet, the one that's still in the back of the lycan's skull. The tiny piece of lead becomes hotter, burning its way into the witch's brain.
Screeching with pain, Ioana draws in through the floor as much spiritual energy as she can. The sheriff cannot avoid having part of his soul drained and the dryad wilts, while Tanglepork's fidgeting about causes her to be less effected and Ling avoids it entirely by hopping onto the wall, taking note that Zingiber is casually unaffected.
Gudrun thrashes about, desperately trying to free herself from the horns. Her punches and kicks are not enough, however.
A bright light flashes the room as Honeycrisp channels electricity through his horns and Gudrun's body. He then charges at Zingiber slapping her across the room with her dwarven cohort's charred, but still living body.
L: Anything is a weapon. Everything is a weapon.
Ling takes a moment to think. Two of these witches should be dead now; why aren't they? It must be that contract. She commands the weakened dryad to grab the elf again (which she does). Ling yells, "Porky, we need to leave."
Zingiber once again forces her arms free to aim another spell and then shoves the dryad away. The sheriff collapses as his muscles detach themselves from his bones. Ling recognizes her own spell, Tendon Tearer.
As Tanglepork continues to burn a hole through Ioana's head, she yells to Ling, "How?" She takes another shot from the other side of the shield, sinking a bullet into the lycan's chest. "Eat that!"
Ioana retreats to the entrance door, as if daring her enemies to try to get through her. She stomps on the ground, causing the already misshapen cubes of the room to twist around becoming a series of crude pyramids. Now even just standing here is an issue.
Gudrun pries her body off of the sheriff's horns and pathetically crawls away. Her bleeding, burnt body struggling to cross the threshold of sound due to the floor's sudden shift.
Honeycrisp sends a message via vibration directly through the floor and wall to Ling's ear bones. While she doesn't know the exact meaning, it isn't hard to guess the intent.
J: Why would you keep saving him? L: Because it's the right thing to do. A: Meat shield.
Ling restores the sheriff's ability to move -his muscles reattaching themselves- and orders the dryad to muzzle the elf; the dryad's solution is to shove her hand into Zingiber's mouth.
Zingiber bites the hand and pulls a brown jewel out of her robe. She stabs it into the dryad's ear and detonates it. The dryad's mostly headless body dissipates.
Tanglepork pulls a glass bottle out of her pocket and lodges it into the barrel of her gun. The special bottle is launched by the force of her shot and explodes on impact with the lycan, whose whirling winds erupt into flame. "Give up already!"
Ioana quickly draws the moisture in the air (and the water shield) onto her person, suffocating the fire. Realizing her wind had burned away, she conjures a shield to deflect further gunfire.
Gudrun crawls further from the sheriff and attempts to scramble his brain, but cannot tell what effect she actually has.
Honeycrisp leaps with intent to crush the elf, but his vision is blurred and wobbly like a drunkard, and he smashes his fist centimeters away from her head. She weaves around the following blows.
Ling continues to rack her brain. She kicks off a burst of mental energy, accelerating her thoughts. Zingiber mentioned several construction-related spells and this lair is blatantly artificial, that entity needs mortals to interact with this world, and the witches seemed to have thought that sacrificing children into the portal was the point. ...Maybe they built the portal? So, having them harm it would break the contract?
"Porky, this way," she yells as she forms an arrow of light pointing to herself in front of Honeycrisp, "Pull back!" Ling hopes that the witches will follow after them.
While Honeycrisp is distracted, Zingiber sees an opportunity. The sheriff's horns are covered in her friend's blood. Reaching up and grabbing them, the elf drives the blood like knives into his skin and rips his face off.
A: I like this woman. Obviously became a demon.
"You f**king b***h!" Tanglepork's rage cannot penetrate the muted bubble the elf remains in, but her bullet can, barely grazing Zingiber's nose.
"Time to end this," says Ioana, teleporting right behind the deputy. A swipe of her claw slices open the gnome's backside.
"Help me," calls out Gudrun, putting pressure on her bleeding wounds. She tries to lock eyes with the deputy, but the gnome is too wrought with emotion.
Bleeding profusely, Honeycrisp slams his fists into the elf's guts, sparks passing through her organs with each strike.
"Can't get near the k**bhead," Ling grumbles. She calls upon the sheriff's flesh to mend itself, stealing pieces of Zingiber's hands in the process.
Zingiber dodges another swing as she rolls out of the silent bubble and does a wild swinging display spraying her own blood about into floating runes that drive themselves into the sheriff. On contact, the pieces of herself stuck in his face explode, taking his head with them.
Screaming with rage and grief, Tanglepork races toward Ling across the crooked, spiky floor and tries to shoot the blood-dancing elf. The bullet comes nowhere close.
Ioana chases after and commands pieces of the stone floor to erupt as a cage around the gnome, but the agile deputy leaps to freedom.
"Stop," demands Gudrun, but the deputy refuses.
L: But the most important rule of a magic duel is:
"We're getting the kids," yells Ling, ostensibly to Tanglepork, "And then we're getting the f**k out of here." She conjures a massive potato to block the lycan's path.
"No, you're not," yells Zingiber forming further runes. With a great forceful push, the corpse of the sheriff is launched at the doctor, who dives out of the way. The body tumbles into the corridor and explodes, collapsing the tunnel.
L: Never forget why you're fighting.
"Zingiber, you fool!" yells Ioana, but it is too late.
From the liquid metal in Ioana's brain and the burnt, ruptured organs in Gudrun's body, the two die with no fanfare.
"What?" Zingiber staggers forward in confusion, the blood-loss killing her slowly. "That's not fair."
Tanglepork stops running. Ling and she carefully walk toward Zingiber. "You killed my boss," says Tanglepork, out of breath.
"Whatever," says Zingiber, focusing on Ling, "Going to kill me, Ling? Plenty of ways to make me suffer. You could sta-"
"I'm talking to you," says the deputy.
"I don't want y-"
The deputy helps Zingiber paint the ceiling a delightful new shade of pink.
"Bl'ell, Porky," mutters Ling, "You didn't-"
"It's over." Tanglepork sits down.
Ling turns to the collapsed passage. "I'll get the kids..." She looks around at the bloody mess that was once three witches. "...And ya... deal with this?"