Mordecai hated dealing with the undead, in part because they were not vulnerable to what were otherwise his strongest attacks. The way in which the flow of life and death was perverted to create undead meant that void energy had no effect at best, and often it even healed them.

But he was a priest, and even if the shadows had little power over the undead, he had other options. His first prayer was a spell that created a nimbus of energy around him, manifesting as a cool, pale blue glow, reminiscent of the second moon.

A moment later, and a similar nimbus surrounded Moriko, though hers blazed with the fiery red of passion's heat, and then Paltira's prayer was completed, with an unusual effect. His nimbus was a swirl of the golden light of the sun and the silvery light of the first moon, a balance of Amirume and Mericume. It also caused his manifested dragon aspects to shift, leaving one wing and claw still golden and the other wing and claw turning silver, to match his aura.

But though the manifestations of the three priests differed, they all had the same primary effect. Vitality flowed from each of them at a constant rate, healing all living creatures within their radius and thus simultaneously harming all undead.

From here, their plans needed to diverge. "Focus on keeping the others healthy," Mordecai said, gesturing at the ten corporeal and two ghostly undead dragon moose, all of whom had the same hellfire aura as the big one. "I'll take on the boss!" The toxins in his spines would no longer be as effective, but many of them included corrosive effects that would work just as well on undead bodies as living ones.

Mordecai charged the oversized, blighted dragon-moose, who answered him with a bellow much like the one its living incarnation had used, but with waves of hellfire and void energy. The hellfire was more effective than normal fire, bypassing much of Mordecai's resistance. But this was the first time since entering Dersuta's territory that something had attacked Mordecai with a powerful void attack.

Thus, it was the first time that Dersuta witnessed Mordecai do the seemingly impossible, as he used the void energy to erode the damage caused by the hellfire.

It was a delicate balance that Mordecai only achieved from having seen Zushi use it instinctively. Before that, he would have thought it impossible for a living creature to accomplish while still reacting normally to vitalizing energy. But with a strong enough affinity with shadow and void, and just a touch of temporal magic in Mordecai's case, that entropic energy could be redirected to consume wounds instead of life.

Mordecai barreled through the blast waves of that bellow with scarcely any wounds to show for it, and slammed into the boss to grapple with it. He used his forelimbs to latch onto its head, digging into its face and neck while taking care to avoid where its antlers had once been, as new versions had grown in their place. These were made entirely of hellfire, and dealing with the creature's aura was bad enough without being gored by semi-solid hellfire.

The dragon-moose's aura scorched Mordecai's flesh continuously, but Mordecai's nimbus both scoured the dragon-moose's flesh and healed Mordecai's body, giving Mordecai an immediate edge. It was not a terribly powerful heal, but it mostly offset the burns caused by the hellfire. What it did not do, however, was offset the pain. While the purely physical pain was negated by Mordecai's alterations to his avatar, hellfire also assaulted the spirit, and that pain he was forced to cope with in a way that he'd not experienced in this avatar before.

Thankfully, Mordecai did have past experience from his previous incarnated avatars in dealing with pain and injury during a battle, so the sudden shock of feeling that much pain was not entirely debilitating, though he'd prefer to not suffer longer than needed. He also didn't have to win this fight by himself; he just had to be able to keep the boss from attacking everyone else while they worked on the smaller undead dragon-moose. But that wasn't going to stop him from doing everything he could that wouldn't create too big of a risk. Mordecai inhaled as he started forming a prayer-spell, then let loose a carefully aimed beam of chilling, holy moonlight.

Pale blue power countered the hellfire where they met, and froze flesh solid. The beam slashed across the boss's flank, then continued past to briefly engulf two of the smaller dragon-moose. It wasn't enough to take either of them out, but the unexpected attack did disrupt their movement as well as briefly suppressing their hellfire and inflicting damage.

While Mordecai tackled the boss and helped where he could, the rest of the party set about efficiently working on the rest of the moose, and he was pleased with the teamwork he was observing.

Moriko had switched up to mostly providing support, despite normally preferring to lead the attack. Right now, the team needed her black lightning to interfere with as many undead dragon-moose as she could manage while also needing the healing that she could provide. All of the moose now belched forth hellfire or void energy instead of their previous elements.

She was far too fast and agile for any of the moose to catch up to her, so long as she kept moving and changing direction. Their powerful wings could build up enough speed only if they were given the chance to chase her in a straight line.

Similarly, Kazue was entirely focused on dazzling and distracting a few of the moose, her form flickering with a mixture of illusion magic and short-range, semi-randomized teleports while she assaulted them with false images of other attackers and sprays of twisting, chromatic hues that each carried a different magical effect.

That randomized teleport spell was one he'd been helping her develop for a while, and it looked like fighting with the moose had helped Kazue master her understanding of the principles. The prismatic spells were something that she'd been working on since Hajime had shown off his particular brand of such magic. It did fit well with Kazue's aptitude for illusion spells and the chaotic aspects of her imbued fey powers.

Mordecai also noted that Kazue was flying much better than she had before, and suspected that was in part because she was far too busy to give her flying any thought.

Paltira was the only one, other than Mordecai, who was willing to close into melee range with the undead dragon-moose, though it was rougher on him than it was on Mordecai. At least any given moose didn't last long between his claws tearing at it, the vitality from his nimbus, and the assault of magic from Takehiko, Ruby, and Orchid, along with blasts of fire, lightning, and thunder from Carnelian Flame and Sparks. Fintan was more focused on healing, flitting to anyone who was injured to soothe hellfire-inflicted burns with his phoenix fire.

But the two spectral moose were a little harder to corral, as physical assault and most spells had trouble interacting with their bodies, though their hellfire auras and breath clouds had no trouble affecting others. They were flying around the edges of the other fights, attempting to wreak havoc with their hellfire breath weapons while doing their best to avoid the nimbus shed by Paltira and Moriko.

Then one of them flew close enough for Fintan to have a clean shot, and he exhaled a blast of white phoenix-dragon fire over the hellfire-coated undead moose.

Fortunately, the epicenter was where the holy flame met the hellfire aura, placing it much closer to the moose than to the hatchling. The resulting explosion flung Fintan away, spinning without any sign of control. Kazue was able to shift her location quickly enough to catch the baby dragon, and both Takehiko's faerie eidolon Kayda and Ruby flew over to check on Fintan.

The moose fared less well, its spectral body shredded by the explosion of energy.

That was not a reaction Mordecai had expected, but it made sense in retrospect. A feral grin exposed his teeth as he stared at the dragon-moose he was grappling with, and the boss immediately began doing its best to shake Mordecai off in a near panic. Technically a programmed response, as the original spirit was not present in the boss's body, but Dersuta was far too experienced to not have worked out generalized pattern recognition and appropriate responses.

It took several seconds for Mordecai to work through what he needed, and it took up some of his concentration. He'd certainly experimented with all sorts of bloodline magic before, but he'd never specifically had white phoenix fire, nor attempted to blend phoenix fire and dragon fire. But at this point, Mordecai was habitually describing every moment of combat to his core through the connection his earring provided, and his core was able to help him tie the key elements together by referencing some of the information gained from Ruby's delves.

The boss moose had managed to break loose before Mordecai had finished his calculations, but it had not had time to get very far. Of course, with this particular attack, having the target not be next to you seemed to be ideal, so he did not bother chasing after it, and instead focused on channeling the correct combination of spells and abilities as he started inhaling.

Mordecai's exhalation of white phoenix-dragon fire was not nearly as pure or efficient as Fintan's innate ability, but he was able to make up for a lot by using much more raw power.

His senses were briefly overwhelmed by the stunning explosion followed by an unexpected internal backlash, and for the first time during this delve, he lost track of everyone for a few moments in the middle of a fight. When he could make out the world around him again, he was tumbling through the air, though in what direction he couldn't tell.

Stopping his tumble by air-stepping was effective, if more than a little rough. Only then could he begin to evaluate his injuries and survey the current state of the battle.

His attack had been as effective as he'd hoped, and the remains of the boss's shredded body were falling to the ground below. As a bonus, the rest of the undead dragon-moose had gone limp and started falling a moment later, their hellfire burning out. Mordecai was not certain if this was thematic, with their pseudo-undead state tied to the boss's state, or if Dersuta had simply decided to end the battle cleanly. The real spirits of the moose were already at the nexus's core anyway; making pseudo-undead this way animated the body as if it were a construct, and the body was controlled by a special core inside, not by the original spirit or soul. At least, not if you cared about what that spirit experienced.

Unfortunately, Mordecai had not correctly estimated the size of the explosion. Moriko, Orchid, and Paltira had been caught in the edges of it, and Mordecai winced once he realized that all three of them were recovering from being hit by the shock wave. More people would have been caught if they hadn't gone to check on Fintan.

"I apologize," Mordecai said as he moved back to the group while shifting to his ambassador form. "I got a bit carried away, and I should have been more careful about making sure everyone was clear first." His shape-shifting could only provide him with a small amount of healing, given how much he had already healed himself that way throughout the day's series of battles and how tired he was now.

After a quick self-evaluation, he decided not to spend any more mana on healing prayers if he didn't urgently need it. He was functional, but low on mana, as was everyone else. "I think we're done, but let's go easy on healing spells for the moment. How is Fintan?"

"He's fine," Kazue said, fluttering up beside him, "just a little shaken up and taking a rest in Ruby's care. He said something about being emptied?"

Mordecai nodded with a sigh. "I didn't catch it when Fintan did it, but I felt it with mine. On top of the explosion, the interaction somehow eats at your energy in a type of backlash. I imagine that this happens on the other side as well, and was probably worse. Fintan and I were using bursts of power, but the moose were covered in auras of hellfire. That effect would have dug into their spirit from all sides. I do not recommend trying that if you don't need to."

She nodded, then asked, "How did you do that? I thought it wasn't one of your abilities?"

"It still isn't, not really. I do have the ability to breathe fire, and I know how to channel spells into it. This took blending the fire with a vitalizing spell and empowering it with a blessing for enhancing attacks against fiends and the undead. I had to balance the manifestations just right to create the imitation, and it cost me a lot more total energy than the real thing would have. But it was close enough." Mordecai slowly pulled himself together mentally and realized there was a strange thrum in Kazue’s emotions, which she was pulling back from their bond. Well, he could ask her about it when they returned to camp and everyone was taken care of.

As they spoke, everyone was slowly descending to the ground and checking each other over to ensure no one was badly hurt. Once that was done, and the group was ready to make their way back to the camp, Kazue glanced up at him at said, "We'll talk about your carelessly hurting Moriko and the others later."

Oops. He might be in a bit of trouble, and it was hard to say that he didn't deserve it at least a little. Though given that she was angry, Kazue was being unusually calm. She normally reacted strongly when upset. Mordecai glanced at Moriko, who looked amused as she shrugged. Well, at least Moriko understood that accidents like this happened in battle sometimes. Kazue's sensibilities were a bit different.

Also, he had probably scared her with his stunt. Kazue was getting better about containing her reactions until later, but in this case, it meant he was going to get to deal with all her fear and reactive anger directed at him all at once. So he would let her vent, then he and Moriko could give her comfort, and after that, the three of them could discuss it properly.