No one had anticipated the arrival of a second paladin.
Not even the Balor.
It had never imagined that this feeble plane could harbor two legendary beings capable of matching it through brute strength alone.
It could not imagine where Dawn had come from.
But by the time that dazzling golden light shone in its pupils, her blade had already pierced its arm. The force of her charge sent it crashing into another patch of ruins.
"ROAR!!!"
Two humiliating falls had left it seething. Rather than climb to its feet, it used its wings to steady itself and glared at the figure who had likewise spread her wings in the sky. Yet the fury in its eyes vanished, as though extinguished.
It grew bewildered.
Those golden wings, that dazzling radiance blooming along her blade—and the hilt at the end of that radiance—were all so terribly familiar.
Its thoughts seemed to drift back to a far more ancient age.
Perhaps hundreds of years ago. Perhaps thousands.
Back when it had yet to become a Balor, when it had charged on the front lines as a lesser demon. Back to the radiance it had witnessed firsthand on the battlefields of Avernus—
Demons, devils, even demon lords and archdevils.
None could escape that dazzling blade unscathed, unless, like it, they fled the battlefield out of cowardice.
The legend of her and the three pairs of golden wings at her back remained branded into the souls of fiends even now. Whenever those memories stirred, the hellfire in their hearts cooled.
"But you're not her!"
Flames rekindled around the Balor's curling horns.
"She died at the entrance to the Gates of Hell! Even her soul was utterly erased! Imitating her majesty won't make me afraid!"
In truth, it was afraid. But what enraged it even