…
Hazkar slammed a jet of water directly at Garin's chest. The Shrouded Lord recoiled. Despite the lack of eyes on his stitched, leathery face, his hollow gaze snapped abruptly toward the Grand Temple. The blinding flare of crimson blood-magic and silver runes cutting through the oppressive mist was impossible to ignore.
"No!" Garin hissed, his ghostly voice vibrating with millennium-old fury. He realized instantly that his control over the beacon was being threatened. He abandoned the maimed river god and surged toward the temple, commanding the dark, corrupted waters to carry him.
He did not make it ten paces.
A colossal, shimmering chain of roots and vines violently erupted from the misty ruins. It whipped through the air, wrapping securely around the Shrouded Lord's levitating form and slamming him brutally back down into the damp cobblestones.
"Your fight remains with me, Garin!" Hazkar roared. Though he was missing an arm and bleeding golden divine ichor, the river god stood resolute, anchoring the massive chains with his remaining hand.
Garin shrieked, struggling fiercely against the divine binds. Realizing he could not break free in time to stop the ritual himself, he unleashed a deafening, guttural cry. The command rippled through the Taint. As one, the sprawling horde of thousands of Stone Men abandoned their encirclement of Hazkar and pivoted completely toward the Grand Temple.
From the high temple steps, Hadrian watched the endless sea of petrified flesh surging toward them like a tidal wave of grey rot. Behind him, Hermione was meticulously etching the inner arrays in her own blood; she could not be disturbed, not even for a second.
Hadrian stepped out of the sacred boundary, walking alone down the steps to meet the horde.
He drew his heavy goblin-steel broadsword in his left hand, the Elder Wand humming vibrantly in his right.
The vanguard of the horde crashed into him. Hadrian became a blur of lethal precision. He ducked beneath the heavy, club-like fist of the first Stone Man, his broadsword sweeping up to cleanly decapitate the creature. He spun on his heel, driving the heavy blade straight through the chest of a second before blasting a third away with a point-blank, bone-shattering Confringo.
Blood, pus, and shattered grey stone rained across the plaza. Hadrian's physical prowess was unmatched; he butchered the rabid creatures with brutal, unyielding efficiency, severing limbs and crushing petrified skulls. Yet, for every Stone Man he felled, three more mindlessly crawled over the shattered corpses of their kin to reach him.
They were feral. Relentless. Driven only by the corrupting will of Nemesis.
Hadrian kicked a hulking Stone Man back down the stairs, his chest heaving. The sheer numbers were insurmountable in a protracted physical melee, and the runic circle needed absolute protection. Severing their limbs was not enough; the shrouded lord's control would simply reattach them. He needed something absolute. Something that severed the very animating force driving them.
He raised the Death Stick. He closed his mind to the horror of what he was forced to do, tapping into a cold, pragmatic well of power.
"Avada Kedavra!"
A jet of blinding, sickly green light erupted from the wand. The Killing Curse struck the closest Stone Man perfectly in the chest. There was no explosion, no physical wound. The abhorrent magic of the curse instantly severed the twisted remnant of life from the vessel. The Stone Man collapsed like a broken puppet, completely inert, the dark magic animating it instantly extinguished.
Hadrian did not stop. He slashed the wand through the damp air in a continuous, sweeping, aggressive arc. Inside he was driven by memories of a past he had long tried to forget. A past tainted with pain, suffering and hated enemies. He pictured their visage as he continued to cast.
"Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!"
Flashes of apocalyptic green painted the ruined courtyards. Every time the emerald light found its mark, a Stone Man dropped dead. It was a cruel and terrifying sight. He stepped forward into the tide, a harbinger of death, dropping the feral creatures before they could even cross the distance to his blade.
As he watched the broken, corrupted humans fall lifelessly to the stone, a heavy sorrow weighed on his chest.
'I do not wish to use this spell, but I am bound by my circumstances', Hadrian thought grimly, his glowing emerald eyes reflecting the lethal flashes of his wand. 'I pray your soul is at peace.'
Hadrian did not allow his sorrow to slow his blade. He became a tempest of emerald light and goblin steel, standing as the solitary bulwark between the endless horde and the desecrated temple.
A cluster of four Stone Men lunged at him simultaneously, their petrified fingers outstretched like claws. Hadrian spun, his broadsword severing the nearest creature in half at the waist, before he snapped the Elder Wand forward.
"Confringo!"
A localized, superheated blast of energy struck the centre of the group. The explosion shattered the three remaining Stone Men into jagged shards of flying shrapnel, sending chunks of grey rock raining down the temple steps.
Yet, the gap in the horde was instantly filled. They poured over the plaza like a mindless, grey plague.