As the second shot pierced the remains of the Beast's eye, he flung his head swiftly to the left before swinging it to look upwards, using the momentum to help him stand upright. Diabolus stood still for a brief moment, then his massive body began to tremble. A deep roar began growing in his throat as his neck seemed to tense up. The black iron of his helmet started to moan, as if under great pressure. After bending and warping, the front of the helm split open and began to tear towards the sides as the Demon opened his mouth. There was a moment of silence as the creature seemed to draw a breath, before the full force of his roar blasted into the air. Reaching decibels of 180, the pressure from the sound alone was enough to shake the nearby buildings and shatter the remaining glass.

The pit where his broken eye rested became covered in a thick layer of black ooze, sealing off the opening as it began to solidify. The Demon lowered its stance, turning to face the area where Shen stood.

The beasts roar shook the rooftop where Free was standing. He knelt down touching the ground. When the trembling stopped Free stood returning to his stance and held his hand out his magical energy coalescing in the palm of his extended left hand. It formed a small ball as more energy swirled around it growing its power. "Soon you will know my true power" Free said. This was his charge up to an ultimate attack apocalypse preparation. His stance was level and his hand wide open, he was aiming at the beasts center mass.

Shen groaned loudly as the implausibly loud roar filled his ears, making him feel like a pair of drills were trying to bore through his eardrums. He briefly went through his knee from the sheer pain of the sound, but kept his grip firmly on the fireball in his hand. When the demon stopped roaring, it left a strong ring inside Shen's ears, but he was able to rise to his feet, unharmed but disoriented.

As he was trying to consider what to do next, he noticed the faint twinkle of the mage's charged attack way above. Especially in this state, he couldn't tell if it was a threat to him or not, but decided he couldn't take a risk, not now that he was in such a bad state to be dodging anything. On impulse, he turned his back to the skyscraper Free was on, aimed the fireball in his hand diagonally down in front of his feet and jumped. Rather than throwing the fireball, he converted it into a different attack: an empowered flamethrower. The jet of fire hit the ground and the force of it propelled him further into the air, launching him several stories upwards to crash unceremoniously in into the skyscraper through one of the broken windows. It was a clumsy move to make, but would win him some time to recover from the demon's roar, and probably put him out of the danger zone of whatever the mage was about to do.

The noise didn't hit Ahven as hard as it had Shen, thanks to his position behind the origin point, and while the roar was still loud, it would do no significant harm. While the roar was still resounding around the city street, he climbed out of his perch between the horn and the head and made his way swiftly across the expanse of the brow, then dropped down in front of the beast's other eye. He too, had seen the glimmer of power emanating from the palm of the man atop the skyscraper, and it would be better for them all if the monster did not. Once again he took aim with his pistol, firing into the eye before the lid could draw down for protection. He was praying fervently as he pulled the trigger, hoping beyond hope that the mage's attack would be as devastating as he suspected, because if it wasn't he'd just turned a rampaging monster into a catastrophic event.

As the third shot damaged his remaining eye, Diabolus began to thrash his head back and forth to dislodge Ahven from his helm. Nearly throwing his own balance off, the Beast slammed the side of his head into the heavily damaged section of the building he had charged before. More chunks of steel debris fell from the frame of the structure, and the Demon continued to scrape his head on the loose debris. He did not know if Ahven was still on top of him, but he aimed to get rid of the 'pest' somehow. Enraged and blind, he swung his hands at his head and gripped at various areas of his horns and helm between ramming the building. At the same time, the thick black ooze covered his newly destroyed eye, hardening into the same metal as the rest of his armor.

Free watched the other man blind the creature then it slammed its head into the building once more clawing for him. Free aimed his charged magical energy at the beast and released it. As he did so he yelled "Now feel the power I bring. Apocalypse!". A beam of blindingly white energy shot forth from his outstretched palm. The beast was hundreds of feet away so the cone was massive, but did not lose any of its force. This ensured that more than likely both the beast and all the surrounding buildings would be obliterated. This blinding white energy crackeled with all the elemental types and was so bright it made even the sun seem dim. As it rushed towards the monster eviscerating everything in its path a faint smile could bee seen on Free's lips under his hood.

Ahven leapt free of the beast as its rampage continued, landing against the side of the building moments before the behemoth's head crashed into it, warping metal as it thrashed back and forth in an attempt to dislodge the nuisance that was no longer there. He kept moving, staying just ahead of the wave of debris the monster was creating, and a single glance upward as he moved told him now was the time to leave. With one last breath, he reached inside himself, grasping at that putrid mass of inky darkness in the very furthest corner of his mind and embracing it without hesitation. His body flooded with power and his mind opened to wonders others could only dream of as his eyes drifted closed and he cast his body into the roiling filth that was the demon realm.

Not many could survive the journey he had just initiated, and had there been another way to insure survival he would have taken it, but he doubted that an attack capable of slaying that monster outright, or at least one the caster believed to be capable of that, would leave the surroundings untouched. No, he could not risk being caught in the midst of an attack of that nature.

Without his eyes, Diabolus had no way of seeing the blast that rapidly approached him, though he could hear the hum of the energy itself. The Beast turned its head to face the sound as the cone of blinding light enveloped him. Immediately, the blast ruptured the earth, quaking as the rock was split apart and disintegrated. Concrete and steel shared the same fate as everything within range was demolished without mercy. Centered on the Demon, the beam effected everything within hundreds of feet, collapsing the towering structures around it inward as it bore a crater into the Earth.

As the beam turned Diabolous and the surrounding buildings to ash Free smiled. The beam dissipated and he exhaled. Suddenly the building lurched and groaned. Looking down Free realized that he hadn't accounted for the beam hitting the building, and he turned and began to run the opposite way of the roof. The building lurched forward as he grabbed the edge and swung his body over the side. As the building fell he stood on what had been the side of the building braced himself and leapt towards the building it was falling beside. He missed the roof, but landed inside an office space that the window had been blown out of by the demons roar. He was reathing heavily as he caught his breath "shit that was a close one".

As Shen rose to his feet, he heard Free's ultimate attack tearing through the concrete above him and knew that his attempt to escape the blast zone had been futile. "God damn mages." he grunted, before apocalypse's beam came down upon him, destroying everything in sight except the indestructible Usurper, which would soon become buried beneath the rubble of collapsing skyscrapers. Although his body was destroyed, Shen's soul hung on, vaguely aware that even death wouldn't liberate him from the curse. If Usurper couldn't find a new wielder, it had other, stranger ways to bring itself back into use...

As the rubble and debris settled and the cloud of dust began to dissipate, the battle looked to be won. Large beams of partially destroyed steel were strewn about the area of the massive crater, leaving the smoldering piles of rock and concrete hidden beneath them. However, the debris hid something else as well, the deep raspy breathing of The Maul. Straining and groaning, the Demon pushed the layers of destruction off of his form, now a different sight than before. The once thick armor was in shambles, torn to pieces by Apocalypse and showing the true body of the beast. Where Diabolus may have once had hide, Free's attack had stripped it nearly completely. Beneath the shreds of armor, hung thick strands of red flesh, clinging to blackened bones and oozing the same foul, black liquid that once filled his now vacant eyes. Deep within his chest, a pulsing aura of dark red light shone through the revealed ribs of the demon.

His life force, protected by the thick armor and hulking mass of the beast, had survived the blast, though not by much. With a thunderous roar, the demon raised his bleeding hands skyward as a black shadow began to take shape, gathering darkness from the very shadows given off by the beating heart of the colossus. The form of Diabolus' great maul was beginning to take shape, and with it, the weight of nearly 500 tons of iron. Regardless of actions taken against him, the Beast's focus was on the hammer, pulling it from the dark void to destroy everything within reach. It did not take long before the weapon was fully formed and the Demon gripped the shaft tightly as chains bolted themselves around his damaged hands. With the weapon already raised, Diabolus was determined to unleash everything he had left.

Free noticed the hulk summoning something. As its now shattered shell began to glow from the inside. He could see the red light and grimaced with dissatisfaction. The hulk summoned a maul. Gripping both of his estus of flame free put magic into them. He ran to the window and launched them both directly at the foul beasts heart. Should the hit they would cover the entire area in a lava like substance burning through bone and flesh as if it weren't even there. His aim was for the direct center of the heart, but if he missed the splash should still be enough to hit it.

While the flasks did not directly hit their mark, the splash from them certainly did. The first estus passed through the armor, shattering on contact with the bones underneath, while the second barely missed, hitting the outer shell. The damage from the combined flasks was potent, decimating the remaining innards of the beast, and burning away at the pulsing core that was his heart. Through the pain of death, Diabolus swung his massive hammer, carrying the momentum down to meet the impact point. With the deafening crack of a shock wave, the maul clashed with the ground, causing a violent upheaval of rock and showering the area with the buildings' debris. The eruption quaked the city, and the ground collapsed around the crater the beast stood in as subterranean tunnels and caverns crumbled beneath the pressure. Like an explosion, the wave carried into the surrounding blocks, covering four hundred feet away in all directions. More buildings collapsed under the shock and the remaining roads split into ruin.

As the dust settled, the form of Diabolus could be seen gripping the hammer tightly, hunched over with barely anything holding him together. The now faint red glow of his heart ceased to burn, and the corpse of the beast crumbled apart, turning into a thin black mist before vanishing completely.

The Maul was defeated, but far from gone. It would return, one day. Hundred, perhaps thousands of years from now, in another world, or another Time. Such is the way of The Eight.

Free had been buried in the rubble, but didn't die. In fact he had minor cuts and bruises but was otherwise unharmed. Kicking his way free of the rubble he stood in the center of the now desolated building. Spitting on the ground he yelled out to the world "I AM FREE AND I HAVE SLAIN THE DEMON DIABOLUS!". He stumbled to the demons now dissipating corpse and kicked a piece as it crumbled. "fucking demon." he muttered as he began the long walk back to civilization.