The blood sinks into the monster. She could swing its attacks around, with Acererak in one place, but this abomination... she doesn't want it to continue to exist. She'll turn its destructive focus upon itself, and boil it from the inside out at the same time.

"Oh, naughty, naughty, naughty," Acererak taunts. "Can't let you do that, can I?"

She makes the same grasping motion towards Eliana as she had towards Hisame. (Ripping people's hearts out is just so much fun.)

It's surprisingly hard to concentrate enough to do magic when your heart is ripped out of your chest.

The soulmonger doesn't particularly care about the origin of souls it reaps.

Acererak laughs.

Hisame screams.

(She can't do anything, she's still weak and exhausted and limited - she's never going to be as healthy as she was, not without serious healing - )

(No. Think.)

(There are an awful, awful lot of souls in reach, right now. Some of them - many of them - are even powerful.)

A spectral gate appears behind her.

"Outer Path," she gasps out, "Samsara of Heavenly Life!"

A blast of light pulses out from Hisame.

The soulmonger shatters. The atropal screeches, splitting open.

The wisps within both rush out, many of them pouring up in a tight spiral, out of the dungeon -

Many of them falling down into the chamber, lashing onto clear points.

A paladin, mace clutched tightly in her hand, hatred in her eyes as she glares at Acererak.

A wizard, straightening, already casting.

A cleric, standing now behind the group that had been fighting Acererak alone.

Dozens more, the most powerful and determined of the souls, their anger turned as one against the one who cursed them.

And Hisame dies.

"Well, this is awkward," says Acererak.

The Keres screams, in rage and fear and grief.

Acererak vanishes beneath her assault.

Acererak survives.

She's injured, though, and it gives an opening to her horde of opponents -

She's immensely powerful, of course, but so are they.

She stops time again.

A glowing wound in reality rips open around Acererak as the Keres drags her forcibly back into the common timestream. She's not allowed to use that trick twice.

The Keres is going to see every single failure she ever has had or ever will have.

It's mind-shattering, for most people, failure after failure after failure, stretching into eternity -

Hisame-

"Oh, snap out of it," Elatra snarls, calling forth waves of blood.

Eliana seizes control of them, taking the power to step into the Keres' place attacking Acererak. She duplicates the most effective strategems as best she can.

Nearly all of Acererak's opponents see Eliana doing that.

Several of those replicate what Elatra's doing, making exponentially more blood for Eliana to control.

Acererak rips the air out of several people's lungs, slaughters twelve of the weaker of her opponents with a single gesture, kills one of the highest level ones with a pointed finger and a snarl -

And then a glowing paladin finishes working her way up to Acererak.

The explosion when her mace lands shakes the walls of the dungeon.

Acererak stumbles back, and begins to cast.

 - "She's trying to teleport!" one of the mages facing her shouts.

With all this blood at Eliana's disposal, Acererak will find it exceptionally difficult to concentrate. In addition to fueling magical attacks, there's enough of it that she can use it to physically disrupt Acererak, winding around her limbs, slipping inside her eyes, forcing into her mouth and nose.

Elatra counterspells-

Acererak's teleport fails.

She's still dangerous, but she's now severely hampered by the blood, and she's quickly having to try not to be murdered by a very angry epic tier paladin - she gets a dagger lodged in the paladin's ribs and starts boiling her blood -

She kills half of the people now trying to engage her in physical combat with a scream -

Her ranged options are quickly dropping, and she's having trouble quickening her spells even as she starts burning her last ninth tier slots on attempts at swift teleportation -

Somewhere in that, a lucky blow gets through.

A look of horror passes over Acererak's face.

And she unwinds, like she'd been made of thread someone cut, the galaxies beneath her skin winking out -

Her gear falls to the ground, inert, as she turns into motes of light and fades.

Good.

The Keres stumbles over to Hisame's body and falls to her knees.

One of the clerics who'd been standing alongside them comes over.

"She was the one who broke the Soulmonger," he states more than asks, a weary look in his eyes. "I can put her back."

"Do it."

He starts to chant.

It takes a while. Ten minutes, in fact, during which most of the other clerics busy themselves using less powerful resurrection spells to raise their fallen comrades.

And then Hisame gasps to life.

The cleric pauses, incants something else, and then Hisame's previous health, before Acererak tried to rip her heart out, returns.

The Keres hugs her tightly, crying into her shoulder.