Author: Tower Curator

 

“Well, that looks good.”

Arkk snapped his gaze to Zullie, raising his eyebrows. “Why do you sound so surprised?” he asked.

The witch stood atop a freshly drawn ritual circle. One that he would rather not have had inside the command center if at all possible. They had a whole sealed room specifically for these kinds of rituals. The dangerous kinds. The Maze of Infinite Paths was beyond dangerous to the point where Arkk didn’t want it inside the tower at all. Yet, in a situation like they were in, compromises had to be made. Zullie didn’t have the time to figure out how to get it working from afar and did not want it down on the lower levels with the other maze ritual which was protecting the tower legs. The interference between the rituals could prove catastrophic, in her words.

Thus, she had set up in the command chamber.

He opened his mouth to say more, ready to berate her for experimenting in the middle of battle, only to brace himself as another volley rained down from the cannons overhead.

He didn’t feel a thing. The tower didn’t shake or tremble from an impact. He watched using his fortress-localized omniscience as each of the incoming projectiles hit the wobbly barrier Zullie had just erected. They warped, stretching into long, thin versions of themselves while looping about the air, bending at odd angles, and splitting into a hundred separate projectiles. After a few sections of the warping, they emerged from the field, aimed in completely random directions. Mostly random, anyway. They avoided the most important direction—toward the tower.

“Oh… That does look good,” he said, moving to the scrying team to get a few different perspectives on the situation.

Plenty fell down upon the army amassing for a second invasion, Arkk noted with some satisfaction. Some went right back up at their attacker, forcing them into an evasive movement. Unfortunately, most of the volley scattered randomly throughout the surrounding forest, not likely to do any immediate damage to the things he wanted to immediately damage.

“Can we aim the rebounding…” Arkk started, only to trail off as he felt a tingle on the back of his neck—his hair rising.

Having felt that before, his eyes widened. He immediately tried to move the tower. The legs were still trapped but it could lean.

A spear of golden light, aimed far too high, swept downward toward the tower. It wasn’t as large or as powerful as some he had seen the avatar use. That didn’t mean he wanted to take his chances. But with the tower trapped and the movement of the beam, there was no avoiding it.

Just before he teleported everyone in the tower down to the tunnels below, the ray crashed into the protective membrane around the tower.

Dazzling golden light filled Arkk’s vision, both inside the crystal ball and from his omniscience. It cut off almost immediately, but the brilliance of it all forced Arkk to blink several times. He busied himself inspecting the damage to the tower while he waited for his eyes to recover.

Except, the tower wasn’t damaged. Not in the slightest. A few lesser servants who had been out there at the time were still going about their tasks, repairing the damage to the tower without any sign they had even noticed the attack.

A drawback to his localized omniscience was that it focused on his fortress and its inhabitants. He couldn’t simply turn his head to see a different view. But what he could see on the edges of his vision was gold. Lots of thin gold streaks drawn across everything. The soldiers down below, trees, even the airships overhead.

“Report!” Arkk shouted. The command chamber was mostly empty. With the majority of the tower, including Rekk’ar, down managing the defenses of the tower from the army—just in case the protections on the tower legs failed—it was just him, Zullie, a Protector, and the three members of his scrying team. Hale, having finished her work on his arm and eye, was back to healing everyone else who ended up injured in the infirmary.

Camille and Harvey were both still blinking away the spots in their eyes, but Luthor heard him and took control of the crystal ball. Images flickered across its surface.

Arkk focused on the crystal ball with Luthor for a moment until he noticed something slightly more concerning.

“Damn, damn, damn…”

Arkk blinked away the last of his blindness to find Zullie rushing about the ritual circle. This one used a combination of the natural magic generation of the fortress to keep the ritual stable and glowstones to account for spikes in magic draw. At the moment, three of the six glowstones were smoking—a hissing and sputtering filled the air, accompanied by odd sparks. Black lightning-like streams of magical energy crackled over the ritual’s surface as it flickered and pulsed.

He felt a sudden uncomfortable reminder of the Duke’s party and the glowstone-based bombs Evestani set up in the throne room’s chandeliers.

“Don’t teleport us!” Zullie snapped as if she could sense what Arkk had been about to do, pointing a finger directly at him. “If this fails without being properly shut down, the entire tower will—”

The glowstone she had been reaching towards let out an enormous spark, shooting motes of magic directly into her face as she recoiled. She swiped her hand forward, knocking away the glowstone’s debris as she planted her own hand in the spot it had once occupied.

The ritual circle stabilized. The flickering in the ritual array steadied out, still oscillating but in much smoother, gradual pulses compared to the erratic pulsing from a moment ago. Zullie’s lips twisted in concentration as the lightning-like surges of magic still coursed around between the remaining glowstones, but even those were dimming and steadying out.

Arkk let out a small sigh of relief. He quickly started moving people about, resuming his management of the battle. The airships were dropping more eggs and they needed dealing with. He could figure out what had gone wrong with this ritual in a few minutes, once everything stabilized and returned to the status quo.

Except, that moment never came.

He heard a groaning in the stone around the room. The groan quickly shifted to a scream of stress. The air vibrated with the deafening sound of the fortress tiles cracking under pressure as arcs of energy lashed out, ripping through the command chamber. One struck the chair Arkk used. Another careened just over the heads of the scrying team in their depressed pit. The map and the entire table it was on took the brunt of one of the arcs, throwing it through the room as little cuboids of white matter trailed in its wake. The table slowed down abruptly, leaving it floating in the air with all the tiles and tokens they had used to mark positions drifting in the air around it.

A cataclysmic pulse erupted from the ritual circle, radiating outward in a wave of blinding magic.

It all happened in an instant. Arkk had no time to react.

The heatless shockwave struck him, knocking the breath out of his lungs. He felt his feet lift up off the ground, picked up with those same cuboids of white drifting in the air around him. The walls of the command center buckled. A ripple ran through them as if the stone were liquid. After an instant of a delay, the reinforced walls of the tower exploded outward, drifting a short ways before the cuboids and arcs of magic locked them into place in the air.

The cubes began to change. Their surfaces rippled and began to hollow themselves out. Tiny square-shaped voids appeared on each face, as if a sculptor was carefully carving away the solid material. Yet the cubes didn’t diminish. They became more intricate, more complex. And they grew. The material hollowed out from the smaller voids spread outward, building up more of the cube, only for more and more hollows to appear.

Chunks of the map table vanished as one of the cubes near it grew into it, eating away small hollows just like the source. The table didn’t break. Splinters didn’t go flying through the air. It was a lot like Purifier Tybalt’s abilities, simply removing small square chunks of the table as the cubes grew through it.

Arkk tried to teleport himself. That same locked-in feeling that stopped him from teleporting while trapped in the inquisitor’s ice blocked him. He tried to teleport Zullie, the Protector, Camilla, Harvey, and Luthor.

Only the Protector made it, being the furthest from the ritual circle.

The cubes didn’t stop growing. They didn’t stop spreading. They closed in on him, chunking away bits of his body. He tried to scream. It didn’t hurt, but the sensation was anything but pleasant.

One of the cubes spread in front of his face, hollowing out as it grew more and more, closer and closer. It closed in on his face and—

Darkness enveloped Arkk.

But his awareness didn’t cease. He couldn’t see, but the tower was still there. One of its walls had blown out from the explosion, but some part of it was still connected. Somehow. The sponge-like magic cubes slowed their growth about halfway through the floors above and below the command chamber. Arcs of magic tethered the stones, keeping them from falling to the ground below.

“Damn, damn, damn.”

It took Arkk far too long to realize that he was intact. Hearing Zullie’s voice in the distance, swearing up a storm, brought some level of comfort. He patted himself down, feeling relief with each touch of fabric and skin and hair. His vision was still gone, but not because his eyes had been removed by those expanding cubes. It was more like someone had simply snuffed out the lights.

“Zullie?” He tried calling out.

“I’m not an idiot,” she snarled. Arkk didn’t get the impression that she was angry with him, but at herself. “I planned for that.”

He tried looking in on her through the employee link, but he only got darkness there. Other employees were fine. Rekk’ar was still organizing the defense, Lexa was making her way through the Evestani army, and Ilya was rapidly approaching the Evestani capital. It was just Zullie, Camilla, Luthor, and Harvey. And himself. The five of them were somewhere trapped in utter darkness.

“Of course we were going to be hit by something the avatar could throw out but the ritual couldn’t withstand. I deliberately designed a weak point in the ritual that would fail if overloaded first, saving the rest.”

“Zullie? Can you hear me?”

“I’m not an idiot!” she shouted again.

Fingers clutched at Arkk’s tunic, yanking him through the darkness. He stumbled only to stop abruptly as a head thumped against his chest.

“I planned for that.” She ground her face into his chest, still clawing at his tunic. “It was just… too weak of an attack to overload the failsafe component but too strong for the ritual to withstand. Pure luck. Nothing else.”

That Fickle Wheel appearing in the temple hovered in the back of Arkk’s mind. He didn’t know if that god had anything to do with the current situation, but he was starting to dislike the Fickle Wheel despite that. Of all the Pantheon, the Fickle Wheel might just be his least favorite.

The light, squeaky voice of a terrified fairy called out into the darkness. “Is someone there?”

Arkk pursed his lips, disappointed. “Camilla?” he called out, gently resting a hand on Zullie’s back. The construction of a failsafe implied she knew this was a possibility. She had neglected to warn him of it, likely because of a supreme confidence in her own work. “Camilla, can you hear me?”

“I hear you. I—”

“Wh-Where are where?”

Luthor was out there as well. Harvey too.

“Follow the sound of my voice,” Arkk shouted. He tried to teleport them, but there was no nearby destination. The tower itself felt distant and far off. “Gather together.”

This was partially his fault. As much as he could blame Zullie, they had secure chambers for a reason. Compromising by having her set up in the command center was entirely his fault. He could have denied her, hastily built a new containment room away from the others, or just not have her set up inside the command room but a floor below.

“Gah!” Harvey grunted after a slight thump echoed in the darkness. “There’s some kind of wall here.”

“Wall?” Arkk asked. “Just a minute.”

If they were safe, he had other things to focus on for a moment.

He could still see the tower. It was distant, yes, but still his. It was like looking in on the tower from the Underworld. Moving things and personnel about was doable as well. He tested on a few lesser servants, moving them to try to repair the damaged command chamber. The whale ships, seeing the weakness for what it was, tried launching another volley of their eggs.

Several splattered against the walls of the tower. Arkk simply moved Agnete to the furnace room, opening the vents for her to blast her flames up along the walls of the tower. He could send her out to take care of the few that she would inevitably miss afterward.

Though he would have to be careful.

The sponge-like cubes looked like they had stopped growing. The entire top portion of the tower looked disconnected from the rest because of them. But that couldn’t be the case because he still had control over the territory both above and below the command room. Some connection existed.

The eggs that crashed down near the command floor didn’t quite make it. Lashings of magical arcs scattered through the air, pinning the eggs in place just as Arkk had been stuck. The cubes didn’t continue spreading to the new victims, however, leaving the eggs and their tendrils squirming helplessly in the air. He would have to teleport Agnete out there, though at a distance.

The lesser servants he sent to try to repair that chunk of the tower ended up stuck and floating as well, just like the eggs.

As a test, he tried to teleport one directly into the command chamber, only to… fail. It was like the command room wasn’t there at all. It was probably broken apart, hidden behind the endless cubes, but there should still be something there. He could sense it.

But he couldn’t see it.

Raising an eyebrow, he slowly let go of Zullie, lightly patting her on the back in some form of reassurance. Kneeling, he felt the floor.

It was made up of stone tiles. Familiar stone tiles engraved with a faint maze-like pattern on their surface.

He was still in the command room. It was just…

Not in the tower?

“W-Where are we?” Luthor asked, sounding much closer than before.

Arkk tried a small light spell, murmuring the incantation.

It didn’t so much as light up the room as the darkness pulled back. Either way, he could see. The large seat he used was toppled on its side, cracked and broken. The map table had finally crashed into the floor. All its pieces and markers were scattered about. A few steps away, down in the scrying pit, Luthor’s nose poked up above its edge.

Zullie still clung to him, though she had loosened her grip enough for him to move. Anguish and distress lined her face. It wasn’t hard to imagine what was going through her head. More than a couple of her projects failed, many quite catastrophically. To have one that started out so promising end up like this? Arkk was angry with her for several good reasons, but he still felt a pang of sympathy somewhere underneath.

“Everyone alright?” Arkk said, earning a frightened nod from Luthor. He stepped toward the pit. Rather than have them try to navigate toward the stairs in the inky darkness, Arkk extended a hand. At the same time, he teleported Agnete around the exterior of the tower to handle the straggler eggs. “Let’s get you out of there.”

Luthor accepted his hand without reservation, practically clawing his way up Arkk’s arm like it was a rope thrown down an oubliette. Harvey and Camilla, being much shorter as a flopkin and a fairy, forced him to kneel. On the plus side, they were much lighter and easier to help out of the shallow pit. Harvey even had the wherewithal to grab hold of the crystal ball on his way out of the pit.

“Where…?” Harvey asked, trying to look around as he found his feet.

“A very good question,” Arkk said, trying to keep his voice calm and reassuring. The last thing they needed was panic. “Zullie. You can be angry with yourself later. I’ll even join you in your anger—”

The witch wilted, making him regret his words before he finished his sentence.

Nothing to do about it now. Words couldn’t be unspoken. Unless you were Savren and could wipe minds. “I need you to focus. Where are we?”

“Where?” she asked, turning her head this way and that. “We’re… likely in one of two places. One bad. The other worse.”

“Lovely,” Arkk bit out. “Where?”

“It would be better if we were in the domain of Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. The Maze of Infinite Paths utilized her boundary magic to try to weaken the barrier between our reality and other planes, just enough to warp everything. Like a portal without the portal itself providing structure. Chaotic and wild.”

“We’re in another plane?” Arkk said, feeling a sudden chill down his back. No wonder it felt like controlling his tower from the Underworld.

“Yes,” she said before a sudden look of worry crossed her face. “I hope we’re in another plane. Let me rephrase my earlier answer. We’re likely in one of three places, one bad, one worse, and the other… disastrous.”

“Disastrous being?”

“Between planes. I… Planes are accessible through the portals. But if we’ve somehow ended up between planes—No. It couldn’t be. We wouldn’t be alive. It has to be one of the two planes… yes. Definitely.”

Arkk let out a sigh, not feeling reassured in the slightest. “We’re either with Xel’atriss or where?”

“The plane the Maze of Infinite Paths is designed to weaken barriers between is… well, the Maze. We could very well be in the domain of Unknown, the Enigma.”

That chill down Arkk’s spine turned to a cascade of ice. The one domain that Vezta had warned him against entering, fearing a single step would see him lost for eternity, and he had somehow found himself there.

Arkk swallowed, lips pursed into a thin line. “Lovely.

“Just lovely.”

 

 

The tower loomed in the distance, taking hit after hit from the bombardment. Flames spread around it every few minutes only for the bombardments to resume. Even from the corner of Lexa’s eye, she could tell that it was being worn down. Arkk had stopped trying to repair less essential parts of the tower and the areas he was focusing on didn’t manage to recover in the brief reprieves. Worrying, but nothing that Lexa could focus on.

She had her hands occupied with the endless demands of the battlefield. The avatar was somewhere nearby. She could almost feel him. The golden aura had faded before she could get her eyes on him, leaving her searching.

Lexa had figured he would be easy to locate once she got close enough. The avatar’s host bodies were distinctive, both in that they were shorter than what was typical of the human-dominant army and their tattoos stood out. Especially when the tattoos were glowing. Venerated as he was, Lexa assumed that whoever he was possessing would have been surrounded by retainers, sycophants, and other attendants. At least someone to manage the child when he wasn’t possessing them.

Lexa couldn’t find a hint. This was a battlefield, not even one at the Evestani base of operations. It was possible he would have left such attendants back at Woodly Rhyme. With all the bulky armor of the soldiers blocking her view and Lexa’s own deficient stature, she was having more trouble than she would have thought.

The frustration left her looking around.

She found her gaze drawn to the distance. She had been focusing on her task, not the status of the tower, trusting that Arkk would figure something out. But a subtle distortion rippling through the air around the fortress drew her attention to it in full. It was like waves of heat rising from a sunbaked stone. Initially, it seemed inconsequential. Just another anomaly amid the tumult of war. Lexa started to dismiss it, knowing that Zullie was trying to get something better than her previous defensive spell so that Arkk might have a window for an offensive maneuver, but as the distortion intensified, it became impossible to ignore.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lexa caught sight of an impossible phenomenon—a second tower, identical to the first, materialized beside it. Her curiosity piqued, she turned her head sharply to focus on the spectacle.

That swift motion proved a disorienting mistake.

Every degree her gaze shifted, the tower transformed. Its shape and presence fluctuated wildly. One moment, it stood as a solitary monolith. The next, it vanished completely, only to reappear in the next movement of her head as a multiplied, chaotic assembly of towers jumbled together at bizarre angles. Some iterations soared skyward, impossibly tall, as if trying to swat down the airships hovering high over the battlefield. It was as if she peered through the slits of a lattice, each narrow gap revealing a wildly different scene.

Lexa wasn’t the only one to have noticed. A chorus of gasps, hisses, and even the sounds of retching from those overwhelmed cascaded throughout the battlefield. Unfortunately, with Evestani’s backs to the tower, Prince’s forces bore the brunt of the disorienting vision. In a fight to the death, even a brief instant of distraction and disorientation cost more than most could afford.

A practiced flick of her wrist sent one of her daggers flying through the air, catching one sand-gold-clad soldier in the side of his neck, just below the bulbous shape of the helmets characteristic of their elites. It saved one of the Prince’s men from certain death. Another dagger flew true and struck one of the soldiers just to the left of his nasal bar, digging into his eye and cheek. But alone, Lexa couldn’t help everyone. Even if she had enough daggers hidden under her cloak, she didn’t have enough hands.

Soldiers fell. They weren’t of Company Al-Mir, nor were they innocent children. Lexa wasn’t going to shed tears over them. Still, it rankled, their losses gnawed at her. Every advantage for the Evestani army was a disadvantage for her.

The mesmerizing distraction of the tower’s transformation didn’t remain isolated to one side of the battlefield for long. Even outside the visual spectacle of whatever Zullie had done to the tower, which drew plenty of eyes, the airship overhead continued its destruction from the skies. Or tried to.

The streaks of alchemical cannon fire in the sky never quite reached the tower. It was hard to tell with the shifting mirage that the tower had become. The shifting mirage of the tower defied the trajectories of the shots. Instead of striking true, the shoots veered unpredictably, scattering in wild arcs around the fortress. Some even ricocheted back toward the airship, similar to light reflecting off a well-polished mirror. One such rebounding shot forced the airship to veer sharply, cutting off its bombardment as a fierce gust of wind drove the projectile in the opposite direction.

More chaos in the already disordered battle.

Evestani had been setting up at a distance, right at the edge of the range for their bombardment magics and siege engines. That distance protected them from most of the reflected shots, but not all.

Lexa’s eyes widened as a hurling ball of flame, arced high in the air from the tower, started its descent straight toward her.

Wrapped in the cloak of darkness, she was as notable as any other shadow on the battlefield. That kept her safe from the soldiers. It would not help against a giant ball of fire. Springing off, muttering every agility and speed-enhancing spell she knew, Lexa ran as hard as she could perpendicular to the incoming fireball.

A beam of golden light shot up into the air, making Lexa skid to a stop in the dirt and muck. The light wasn’t as large or as powerful as the one that had knocked out the tower’s first protective array, but it was enough to scatter the ball of fire into a thousand harmless embers. The beam of gold didn’t stop there. It swept downward, aimed for the tower. It probably wouldn’t be enough to do much damage, but the avatar must not have wanted to waste what power he had gathered.

As soon as the light crossed into whatever shifting effect enveloped the tower, the beam split. It split and split and split. A million rays of gold lanced out from the tower in every possible direction. Lexa hurled herself to the ground, taking cover behind a fallen soldier whose colors were so caked in mud and blood that she had no idea to whose faction he had once belonged. One thin beam of gold strafed the ground directly in front of her nose.

It barely left a mark on the ground.

Already weaker than the beam that punched a hole into a mountain, splitting the beam so many times must have weakened it further. Everyone on both sides of the battlefield cowered away, hunkered down, but ended up looking surprised as the rays passed over them mostly harmlessly. The only real effects were faint streaks of gold now adorning everyone’s armor.

A beat of unusual silence hung over the battlefield before a surge of wind just about swept Lexa off her feet. It rushed toward the multitude of towers. Dark lightning reminiscent of some of Zullie’s more dangerous spells crackled along the surface of some of the towers, right at the mid-point. Bits of brick peeled away, pulled outward while still connected by those streaks of lightning. They froze in the air, looking like time stopped just as an explosion had gone off.

Lexa wasn’t sure what that was about. Hopefully nothing bad.

Some idiot shouted and started the fight once again.

Lexa paid it little mind, focused on her task.

She had seen where that ray had come from.

Throwing herself to her feet, still enhanced by all her spells, Lexa rushed through the battlefield, dodging soldiers and weaving through battle lines.

There he was. A small ring of guards surrounded him, but none of them were particularly notable. None of those gold-armored knights like the one Dakka had slain in Elmshadow. They were simple sand-gold elites with those bulbous domed helmets. In the middle of the ring, a young boy, human and probably no older than fifteen years, stood with glowing gold eyes and intricate tattoos etched into the crown of his head. The snarling look of anger didn’t quite fit the boy’s face.

He was upset.

Good.

Lexa didn’t know who the avatar was possessing. It was probably someone he had brought with him rather than an unwilling captured child. The children she had tried to rescue in Elmshadow hadn’t been well taken care of, dressed in rags and imprisoned in the remnants of that church building. This one had ornate robes, lined with golden threads and flashy mosaic patterns of blue, gold, and white.

Would it have made a difference if he had obviously been possessing a slave? Not to Lexa. Even if he had been in the body of someone so obviously innocent, such as a mere baby, she would still have proceeded. She had already resolved herself to do so. One baby’s death was worth preventing what happened in that Elmshadow church from ever happening again.

Lexa’s fingers brushed over the silver sphere she carried beneath her cloak. The sphere sealed off the effigy’s effects for now, but as soon as she opened it, things would change. The avatar would surely notice. She needed a full plan, a fool-proof plan, both to get in and to get out. Arkk said he would teleport her, but he had warned her that his magic didn’t work on employees who ended up captured. That included immobilized people, such as those who had been trapped in ice during an engagement with the inquisitors before her joining.

It also worked in reverse. His captives could be teleported even if they weren’t employees. Prisoners at Fortress Al-Mir could be moved about at will—Arkk’s will.

Lexa eyed the surroundings, narrowing her gaze. A distraction would work best. The avatar would probably be most distracted right as he began to attack again. Unfortunately, Lexa didn’t know when that might happen. If the avatar swapped bodies before she struck, she might lose him completely.

The avatar knelt as Lexa watched, resting on a large rug that covered the ground. The rug matched the rest of Evestani aesthetics with its mosaic pattern and predominant gold. Despite the gaudy and eye-catching attire of the avatar, the rug gave him enough camouflage to make him almost invisible except for his head. Fortunately for Lexa, the camouflage only extended to the edges of the rug. The entire assortment stuck out in the forest to the point where she had trouble believing she had been having difficulty finding him.

The anger on the boy’s face vanished as he closed his eyes and took up a meditative pose. Lexa’s heart lurched, fearing she had missed her window of opportunity. The glow in the tattoos didn’t subside, however, letting her calm back down. The avatar was probably trying to hasten his recovery so that he might try one of the large rays again.

Lexa wasn’t sure if that was a wise idea with what happened to the weaker beam. It might end the conflict, but probably not in the way the avatar wanted. Then again, when one didn’t put themselves at risk, obliterating everything on the battlefield including their borrowed body probably didn’t sound like that big of a dealbreaker if there was even a slight chance at success. Though Lexa doubted Evestani’s imperial allies would agree.

The meditation gave her an opportunity. The avatar’s eyes were closed. A part of her wanted to rush forward now, not wanting to waste that opportunity, but she couldn’t be too careful. She wasn’t about to underestimate the avatar and believe that he had simply decided to take a nap. A misstep here and she would surely die.

Except for two, his bodyguards were focused on the nearby battle raging on. It hadn’t gotten close yet, but it wasn’t far off. The tide had turned back against Evestani with the addition of the hordes of undead goblins. The little skeletal beings were utter menaces, hopping and bouncing around like they had coiled springs for shoes. They would jump on someone’s back and stab them in the neck before bounding away to find another target.

None lasted long if they took a hit. Small and barely held together as it was, a single slash of a sword or, more effectively, a blunt hit from a mace or hammer would scatter their bones across the battlefield. The only reason they hadn’t been destroyed within seconds of clawing their way out of the ground was their size and agility.

It wasn’t quite enough for the Prince’s forces to surge forward and claim victory. Three hundred goblin skeletons added to a conflict of nearly twenty thousand just wasn’t enough on its own, not even when some of their victims got back to their feet only to attack their own side. Especially not with the Prince’s army viewing the skeletons with just as much hostility as the Evestani. More than once, Lexa had witnessed a skeleton get clobbered from behind by the very people they were supposed to be helping.

But if Lexa could rope a few of them into helping her, it might just prove the distraction she would need to deal with the avatar. If she could push the battle a little closer to the avatar—just close enough for his bodyguards to be forced into more active defense but not close enough for the avatar to take action himself—she would have the best opportunity she would be getting.

Hopping away and climbing a small tree, Lexa surveyed the larger battlefield, looking for what she needed.

A cadre of goblins acted just like real goblins as they worked together to take out a few larger targets. The poor Evestani soldier ended up isolated in the middle of the battlefield. They likely would have been overran by the Prince’s forces already had the presence of the goblins not been keeping them wary.

They weren’t close to the avatar. Not by half. There were a lot of people to fight through on the way. But again, Lexa didn’t need them to reach the avatar. They just needed to get close enough to cause a disturbance.

With one last glance at the avatar, making sure the tattoos were still glowing and that he didn’t look like he was going anywhere anytime soon, Lexa took off.

Three minutes after setting off, one of the soldiers the goblins were having trouble with had a dagger through the front of his throat. The other soldier didn’t have time to look surprised before he joined his friend in the mud at the hands of one of the goblins.

The rest of the little skeletal creatures froze upon her arrival, their bones clattering and their jaws grinding. Lexa wasn’t sure if they could sense her or not. They lacked eyes that could track anything, leaving their heads just vaguely pointed in her direction. It was as if they were trying to decide if she should be a target as well.

With a suppressed shudder, Lexa didn’t stick around. She started back the way she had come, driving a dagger into the back of some knight’s knee on her way. The goblins mostly followed her, drifting around to do their part in causing chaos. More importantly, the rapid deaths they were causing made a hole in Evestani’s defensive line. The Prince’s army started pouring in, adding their own blades to the mix. They still kept a ways away from the goblins, but that was fine for her purposes.

Fine until they got a reinforcement of their own.

A short, stout man bounded into the fray. Blood coated him from head to foot as if he had deliberately bathed in it. He knocked aside a goblin with an absent-minded backhand, dispersing the skeleton’s bones in every direction as he took over the goblin’s target. The Evestani knight didn’t stand a chance. Despite his rotund belly, the man easily slid around the swing of the knight’s sword. His arm thrust out, slamming into the knight’s armored elbow, shattering the metal with the blow even as the man’s elbow bent in the wrong direction. The knight didn’t even get to scream before the man reached forward with his bare hands, thrusting his fingers through the knight’s breastplate, only to rip out the man’s heart and crush it in front of his face before the light left his eyes.

All with an expression of absolute rapture on the rotund man’s face.

He then turned, eyes finding another target. He rushed forward and ripped off someone’s head. Another knight lost his arms, only to be beaten to death with them. The man continued, charging through the opening Lexa had created with an unstoppable frenzy. He didn’t even use a weapon.

It took Lexa far too long to recognize the man underneath all that blood. The leader of the Prince’s forces. She had considered assassinating the man after his foiled mutiny to retake the leadership position over Arkk, but had been sent off on a mission before she could start plotting. Seeing him now, Lexa wondered how much she owed her life to that distracting mission.

She hadn’t realized the Prince’s force contained any specialists like Company Al-Mir had. The man fought like a less dignified version of Kia.

The man, Mags, turned. Despite her cloak of darkness, despite all the stealthy spells that even the avatar failed to notice, Mags turned to directly face her. With the way his head angled downward to her height, there was no mistaking his look as mere coincidence.

There was something different about Mags. Something other than the thick layer of blood he wore as clothes.

His eyes shifted, catching the light. They were green, bright, and divided in two by a long slit-shaped pupil.

Demon.

He grinned at her, smiling as if daring her to do something about it.

There was nothing she could do about it. She wasn’t equipped with counter-demon weaponry. Even if she was, she wasn’t suicidal enough to think she could take him on. Not when he easily bent in half, dodging a sword strike he couldn’t possibly have seen coming for his back. He righted himself fast enough that his headbutt dented the attacking knight’s armor, knocking him clean on his back. Mags pounced on him, straddling his armored chest as he started crushing the knight’s skull with his bare hands.

The head burst apart like a watermelon, sparking movement in Lexa’s feet. She took off, running back toward the avatar. The demon fought Evestani. That was good. She wasn’t an enemy of the Prince. He couldn’t attack her.

And what could be more distracting than a demon?

But she had to act fast. If the demon got to the avatar before she did, he would kill him. Easily, even. The avatar would survive and probably possess someone else, but then Lexa would have to start all over again to find him.

That couldn’t be allowed to happen.

 

 

On a map, Evestani was a large territory, sweeping out over the northern quarter of the continent. South of Evestani, the Beastman Tribes ruled over an expansive wasteland with little outside interference. Further south, the Tetrarchy maintained their borders at the edge of their jungle. Each of the three was far, far larger than the entire peninsula that the Greater Kingdom of Chernlock occupied and enormous compared to Mystakeen.

However, in Evestani’s case, a large portion of their territory was the same wasteland that the Tribes occupied. It wasn’t uninhabitable. Ilya had learned from her mother that much of that wasteland was filled with buried riches in the forms of rare metals, opal mines, and more than a few gold mines. But it wasn’t the lush plains or dense forests that covered much of Mystakeen. The kind of land that made life comfortable. It was difficult to live when you couldn’t put a piece of bread on your golden plate. For that reason, beyond a few scattered villages and frontier towns mostly occupied by miners and fortune-seekers, Evestani’s population was concentrated not far from the border of Mystakeen.

In the past, Ilya might have thought all the wars between Mystakeen and Evestani stemmed from the latter wanting the former’s land. Any other excuse, whether ideological, political, or religious, was simply that: an excuse to push the border forward and claim better land. Knowing what she knew now, even land was nothing more than an excuse. All the wars in the past thousand years boiled down to the personal wants of a single man.

The avatar.

Ilya never would have expected that she would be the one to put an end to it all. Granted, she wasn’t fighting the avatar himself—at least, she hoped she wasn’t as her spire wasn’t prepared to fight him—but even without him, the constant back and forth between nations wouldn’t come to a dead stop immediately. Yet here she was, standing, arms folded across her chest, staring out through the smoked windows as Evestani’s land moved beneath the spire.

Because of the less hospitable land in much of Evestani’s territory, the Sultanate’s palace wasn’t that far from Mystakeen’s border.

“We’re going to arrive before nightfall.”

Ilya glanced back over her shoulder at the more agreeable of the two commanders she was hosting. Sydney Roman stood almost directly behind her, eyes wide as he stared out the window. From the lines on his face and the graying color of his short beard, Ilya guessed that he had seen plenty in his time. Still, nothing quite compared to the view from one of the walking fortresses. Maybe the peak of a mountain would come in a close second, but mountains didn’t tend to move.

“The spire isn’t fast relative to its size, but it can still cross a field in a few steps,” Ilya said, keeping her tone polite. The man had been incessant in his questions about how the spire worked, what it cost to build, how tall it was, how long it took to build, how much weight it could carry, and everything else that popped into his mind. Ilya understood that he was curious, but they were invading another country. Now wasn’t the time.

Besides that, she didn’t know the answer to any of his questions beyond magic did everything.

“Another outpost,” Hawkwood said at Ilya’s other side. He held a spyglass to his eye, frowning.

Ilya squinted. Her eyes were better than human eyes, but distance was distance. Still, she followed the line of Hawkwood’s gaze to a small fort constructed from wood, surrounded by palisades and a few smaller buildings. It was the fifth such fort that they had come across. This one didn’t look to have the same upkeep budget as the ones closer to the border. Ilya was a little surprised there were so many, all deeper and deeper into Evestani territory.

Mystakeen maintained several similar forts, but they were all in one long row at the border, not staggered into the land.

Maybe these forts had been built at old borders that had since been pushed in. That made a disturbing amount of sense.

“Splendid,” Sydney said, almost giddy despite his age and appearance. “If possible, I’d like to be on the ground watching from a short distance before you kick over the walls.”

“Is that necessary?” Hawkwood asked, lowering the spyglass. He shot a doubtful glance at Sydney, lightly shaking his head. “I see a dozen people already fleeing. I imagine that is everybody stationed there. Hardly a threat worth delaying for.”

“We aren’t the only group advancing into Evestani. This operation is large with several of the King’s lords all moving their own armies forward in our wake,” Sydney said. “If they get stopped at a keep like that, forced to siege it, it will only drag this war on longer.”

“Forced to siege a keep of a dozen men? I’m surprised that the place is staffed at all. Even the border outposts only had three dozen. I imagine Evestani had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get their army together after their losses at Gleeful and Elmshadow.”

Sydney tutted in disappointment. “Given the right terrain and circumstances, an army of a mere three hundred could hold off an army of a hundred thousand.”

The doubtful look on Hawkwood’s face deepened. The way his eyes flicked to Ilya made her feel a hint of his exasperation. Not that she disagreed.

“We won’t stop,” Ilya said. “We can swing wide to knock it down on our way past, but we won’t go out and capture prisoners or supplies this time. Or to let anyone out to watch. None of the other outposts had anything worth stopping for. This one won’t either.”

Although she spoke with confidence, she still cast a glance around the room, one she tried to disguise as one of those meaningful looks to ensure the others wouldn’t argue. Hawkwood gave an almost relieved nod of his head while Sydney looked disappointed. A fair distance back, off near the wall, Olatt’an nodded as well. The old orc seemed to understand why she was glancing around, giving her a nod of reassurance rather than simple acknowledgment. The only other person in the room, the red-gold adorned commander from Vaales who had still not named himself—not that Ilya cared to ask—remained impassive and stiff on the opposite side of the room from Olatt’an. Were it not for his faint breathing, Ilya might have thought he had befallen the petrifying gaze of a gorgon.

That was another good reason to not stop. The sooner he was out of her spire, the better.

Even with Olatt’an keeping an eye on him and her own Black Knight guards posted around the room, Ilya still felt a little nervous about turning her back to the commander.

At the same time, his silence and menacing distance were almost welcome compared to Sydney’s general excitement.

True to her words, the spire took a slight detour. While not as tall or bulky as Arkk’s tower, it still caused minor quakes with each step. She didn’t need to kick down the walls. Just walking alongside the fort tore its aged structure apart. The men from the fort were gone, hiding out in the wilderness, probably trying to avoid being noticed by the giant walking building. Even if they returned, the rest of the King’s men following behind the tower shouldn’t have a problem with them.

If an army did have a problem with a dozen morale-broken men who lacked walls to hide behind, this invasion would end up in dire straits.

Well, the invasion would be fine. Ilya and the spire would see to that. How they handled themselves afterward was their business.

“The roads are slowly growing nicer, more obviously used,” Hawkwood said once they were well past the outpost and two smaller villages. “You think… Look! Is that it?”

Ilya flicked her eyes over the horizon, quickly finding what Hawkwood was pointing out. Rather than force herself to squint, she held out her hand. “Spyglass.”

To his credit, Hawkwood didn’t hesitate. He passed it to her and she quickly brought it up to her eye.

The mountains were the first notable thing. Ilya might have passed them off as any other mountain range had she not accidentally started out looking too high. The Auric Mountains weren’t as tall as Cliff’s ridges, nor were the mountains as close to the city, but they had a certain odd quality. They caught the light of the sun and reflected it, gleaming in shimmering golden light. As if where snow would normally dust the peaks of the mountains, someone had instead gone out and cast them in gold.

It could have been the hour of the day. The sun would be setting to the west—behind the mountains—but at the same time, Ilya couldn’t help but wonder if the mountains were capped in gold. If so, which came first? The avatar or the mountains? It couldn’t be a coincidence. That golden avatar either settled here because of the way the mountains looked or changed the mountains to fit with his favorite metal.

The spire crested a small hill as it continued its forward march, leaving a clear view of Chrysopelea sprawled out before the jagged ridges of the Auric Mountains. The city was a labyrinthine maze of winding streets, broken apart by towering obelisks that jutted upward, each capped with a small golden pyramid. From the height of the spire, the city appeared as an intricate mosaic. She could almost see where the different districts of the city divided it up. The styles of the buildings changed. The more reserved, smaller buildings were homes. They dotted the majority of the city. The large domes—also capped in gold—might have been churches or temples or whatever the Golden Order called their places of worship. The rugged buildings had to be garrisons.

A river snaked its way through Chrysopelea, a dark ribbon of water that reflected every hint of gold in the city. Bridges arched over it, joining the two halves of the city. A large barge moved slowly along its surface, headed toward Ilya, with its cargo hidden beneath protective tarps.

The central part of the city had to be the ruling quarter. The Sultan’s palace wasn’t anything particularly grand or special, but it was large enough to be notable from afar. Ilya had heard that the previous palace had been extravagant, but it had been sacked and ruined in the wake of Evestani’s civil war. Now, the modest palace had white-washed walls rather than gold, for some odd reason, and simple obelisks at each of the four corners. An onion-like dome sat in the center. More notable than the building itself were its surroundings, predominantly green from a lush garden. A little oasis in the otherwise arid city.

“What must they be thinking right now?” Sydney mused, more to himself than anyone else present. “They’ll have noticed us now if they hadn’t before. Do they have defenses they can raise? Will they roll over and allow us to take the city unimpeded?”

The palace’s relative humbleness made her wonder about the Sultan. Ilya didn’t know much about the man. From the few letters exchanged between him and Arkk, it almost sounded like the Sultan didn’t want this war, as if he were being forced into it against his will. From the words of her mother, the Sultan was someone who, for the last fifteen or so years, had been entirely devoted to easing tensions between Mystakeen and Evestani.

For all she knew, he would roll over and allow them to take the city.

But that wasn’t something they could rely on. Focusing the spyglass in response to Sydney’s words, Ilya scanned over the edges of the city. There were no walls to hide behind or ballistae mounted on tall towers like Cliff had. Just an open city.

They surely weren’t defenseless. Even without the avatar, the fact that Evestani had been in so many wars meant they had to have some preparations. Whatever those preparations were, Ilya couldn’t spot them from up high.

She did see people fleeing from the sparsely scattered homes and buildings that dotted the fields outside the city. Ilya wasn’t sure of the wisdom in fleeing toward the city though. It should have been obvious where the spire was headed. If she were in their positions, she would have fled away. Not toward the city and not toward the spire, but off in other directions. But panicked people didn’t often behave rationally.

It should have been impossible at this distance and with the tower stomping along, but Ilya could have sworn she heard the city tolling its warning bells.

“Are we certain we won’t be facing the avatar?” Hawkwood asked, squinting as he stared into the distance. Ilya handed his spyglass back, but he didn’t resume using it. Instead, he looked at her, serious eyes betraying a hint of nervousness.

“Coward.”

Ilya flicked a frown in the Vaales commander’s direction. She wasn’t about to dignify the man with a response.

“I saw what that thing was capable of in Elmshadow,” Hawkwood said, failing to follow her example. “It isn’t human—or demihuman or beastman. More of a force of nature. It wiped out a quarter of my men in an instant. It punched a hole through the Elm Mountains. It isn’t something we can fight.”

In response, the commander pushed off from where he had been leaning against the wall. “My Prince won’t have sent us to our deaths.” He scoffed, shaking his head. “Stay if you fear so much. Hide in the tower. I will wrap up this city and gift it to Prince Cedric without your aid.”

With a final sneer, he turned, shoved past the orc guards—who let him go after a small wave of Ilya’s hand—and started descending through the spire’s stairwells. Hawkwood, Ilya, Sydney, and Olatt’an simply watched him go. Vezta didn’t bother turning her head to track him, but with the multitude of eyes dotted around her body, she couldn’t have missed him.

A short silence followed. Sydney broke it with a small shake of his head. “Where does he think he is going? Can’t exactly leave this place while it is in motion.”

“Probably to his men. Rally them for the fight,” Hawkwood said.

Ilya, able to watch the commander even after he left the room, made sure to keep him in an active part of her mind. She doubted he would try to do anything to sabotage the rest of them, but Ilya didn’t like him and she didn’t like the Prince. Neither could be trusted.

“Arkk is handling the avatar,” Ilya said, returning to Hawkwood’s actual question. The commander didn’t warrant any further thought or discussion. “We shouldn’t have to worry about him.”

“The avatar possesses bodies. In addition, his real body is likely here.”

“As I said, Arkk is handling that. You and your soldiers secure the palace.” Ilya narrowed her eyes, gazing out the window at the rapidly approaching city. She turned, meeting Olatt’an and Vezta’s eyes. “We’ll find the avatar’s real body and ensure he isn’t a problem.”

“On your own,” Hawkwood said as if he didn’t believe that she could do it.

Ilya didn’t blame him for doubting. Not with him having seen the avatar in person. But Arkk had taught her all the spells he knew and she could cast them. Olatt’an had a trinket from Zullie and Savren that should point them in the right direction. Vezta was present and would hopefully get them anywhere that they couldn’t reach.

They weren’t expecting a fight, however. That was the only reason they might succeed.

“We’ll take care of it,” Ilya said, voice firm. “It’s time to end this.”

 

 

“Zullie!” Arkk barked as the tower rocked again under fire from the Eternal Empire airship. “You told me we would have defenses.”

“All things in time, Arkk. All things in time…”

“Don’t exactly have time,” Arkk snapped back.

Brickwork, reinforced by the tower’s magic, cracked and fractured under the sustained bombardment. Small cracks of daylight made it inside before the lesser servants could repair the walls. The Eternal Empire’s continued cannon firing was getting stronger, each volley shaved away more layers of the tower than the last, like the bricks had been designed to ablate rather than be the nigh-invulnerable material that the walls were supposed to be. Part of it was those eggs. Anywhere the eggs touched the tower crumbled away far easier than any other section, like they had permanently damaged the reinforcement magic.

Arkk wanted to send out the lesser servants to dismantle and rebuild whole sections of the tower entirely, but with the bombardment, they wouldn’t last more than a second.

If they could get rid of the spell holding them in place, he would have rotated the tower just to give the one side a break.

Once the servant got the daylight sealed away, reforming the brickwork from inside the tower, the heavy thumping and explosions on the outside of the tower came to a stop.

It wasn’t a reprieve. The only times when the cannons stopped were when the whale ships were about to begin another round of their bombardment.

Several walls slid aside with a thought, moving to open periodic vents around the base of the tower. Agnete, seated in the middle of the otherwise empty chamber, tilted her head up. The embers in her eyes ignited into plumes of flame that billowed out around her. Fire flooded the chamber, exploding out the vents where it swept up the exterior of the tower. Just in time to incinerate the first of the eggs crashing into the walls.

Something about the avatar’s latest golden ray left behind golden residue on the tower, dripping and leaking. The eggs weren’t able to find purchase on it, either bouncing off or sliding down it depending on the angle they came in on. Neither could Agnete’s fire reach above it. It didn’t seem to harm the tower as much as it was an obstacle in defending it. It somewhat reminded him of those golden statues, except it was affecting his tower instead of people.

The encroaching, dripping gold had slowed its spread since the initial attack. Arkk hoped Lexa would finish her task before the avatar felt up to a repeat performance.

Arkk teleported outside to several preconstructed ledges, using his own fire spells to fry off eggs above the gold where Agnete’s flames failed. As he did so, he teleported Agnete out of the tower to another ledge. The brief pause in the bombardment made it safe to go outside, temporarily.

The armored soldiers of the Eternal Empire surrounded the base of the tower. Their armor wasn’t as good as that golden knight, but it was enough to resist Agnete’s flames. They had already tried to sweep the fire through their forces and, while it did cause some damage, the soldiers weren’t the priority.

She lifted her hand, sweeping the fire around her arm and up to a point. A thin beam of concentrated flame rushed upward. It wasn’t fast. Faster than most fire should move naturally, but quite a bit slower than a magical fireball and far, far slower than the near-instant golden rays the Heart of Gold’s avatar could produce. The airships overhead, both whale and regular, ceased their attacks as they drifted to the sides, separating to avoid the flames.

Arkk dropped a black marble onto the bombardment team’s docket.

The defensive array had shattered. The feedback from taking the brunt of the golden beam had almost killed Kassa. The rest of the rituals were still intact. Lelith didn’t waste time.

One of the whale ships drifted in the opposite direction as the primary ship. The primary ship was the one defending them from all Arkk’s efforts to bring them down. Separated, they were vulnerable.

A black void opened above the separated ship. One of Zullie’s spells, the same one he had used at Elmshadow’s recapture. Hurled out from the void, orbs of tiny stars warped the world around them, bending sight as they drifted toward the whale ship.

The metal shell encasing the organic interiors twisted and bent, ripped away and pulled into oblivion as the orb skimmed the ship’s surface. Exposed red flesh, meaty and bloody, began dripping in large, chunky slews. Some were pulled into the starry orbs, the rest fell atop the army below.

Lyra had said that they were vulnerable from the inside. That was well and good. Currently, Abbess Hannah and Sylvara were conversing with the avatar of the Holy Light to allegedly learn some spell that would ignore the whale ship’s armor, overseen by Savren. It would be great if it worked, especially because there was at least one more intact whale ship that had yet to join in on the fight. But just because the avatar said it would work didn’t mean Arkk wasn’t about to give up trying his way.

He couldn’t trust the avatar any further than he could throw the Holy Light’s statue.

At the same time, Agnete wasn’t finished. Sweeping her arm downward pulled the beam of fire, drawing it back toward the ground as if it were a massive, tower-long whip. The prime airship, in the process of maneuvering back toward the separated whale ship, had to abort and dive to avoid the flames. The second whale got away with a scorching of its metal, but nothing more.

The flame whip crashed into the ground. The Eternal Empire’s soldiers, caught in its direct path, did not look like they survived. The following explosion as the compressed flames spread outward and upward threw several of the armored knights into the air and over the heads of their comrades.

As the cannons on the underside of the prime ship began glowing once again, Arkk teleported both Agnete and himself back inside. Just in time to avoid the renewed bombardment.

At least the first wave struck the ground where Agnete had been standing rather than the tower. That gave the lesser servants clinging to its exterior precious few extra seconds to conduct their repairs.

“Report!” Arkk shouted the moment he was back in the command center.

“Some kind of… wind came from the prime ship,” Camilla said, peering into the crystal ball. “It disturbed the void spell enough to destroy it.”

“Damage to the whale? How severe is it?”

“It looks bad,” Harvey said. “Wouldn’t want the wound on myself. But the ship is still in the air. Doesn’t look like we hit it hard enough to knock it out of the sky.”

Arkk scowled as a flash of anger stirred inside. He did not want to have to rely on Lyra. “We hurt it. We do that a few more times and we can take it down.”

“If we can,” Agnete said, taking a deep breath. Heat haze clung to her bare shoulders, wafting off in waves that distorted the air. The light in her eyes was as bright as Arkk’s, if a bit more yellow-orange than red. “I doubt they’ll be foolish enough to split apart like that again.”

“We’ll just have to make them split apart.”

“E-Egg report:” Luthor said, looking like he wasn’t sure he wanted to interrupt. “All lower tower eggs were incinerated before they could form proper tendrils. The ones you dealt with, A-Arkk, weren’t removed as… uh… swiftly.” His face contorted like the report was causing physical pain. “Faster than last time though!”

“Thank you, Luthor,” Arkk said. That wasn’t anything he hadn’t expected. He wasn’t Agnete. He wasn’t an avatar. Frankly, it was lucky he knew a flame spell good enough to get rid of them.

Those things were made to take out towers like his. The way they drained magic and weakened the reinforced walls would have seen his tower crumbling around him if Priscilla hadn’t given him that inferno spell. Even with it, they were still being worn down.

The situation needed to change. Fast.

“Your mechanical forces are almost fully assembled down below,” Arkk said, looking to Agnete. “Do you think the voltcoil wyrms can damage any of the airships?”

Agnete hummed, pursing her lips. She strode toward where the window used to be, peering slightly upward as if she could see the ships through the opaque bricks. “Now that I’ve seen them in person, I doubt it. They may be able to cause some damage to the prime ship, seeing as it is made from wood, but not the whales.”

“A distraction might suffice. Enough for you or our bombardment to get a good hit in.”

“True. If the airship is focused on them rather than me—”

“Sir,” Camilla shouted. The fairy looked up with wide yellow eyes. “The army is moving again. Back towards the tower.”

“In addition, I’ve s-spotted at least a portion of the Eternal Empire’s other soldiers. Estimated one thousand are heading to reinforce Evestani.”

Rekk’ar, leaning over the large map table, curled his lips in a scowl that showed off his tusks. “The King’s army is still engaged with Evestani’s soldiers. They got in a good hit against Evestani spellcasters and siege weapons. Hmm… Maybe we just let them get torn apart?” he said, scowl changing to thoughtful reflection.

“Careful,” Arkk hissed, throwing a glance around as if the demon might have heard. At the moment, the demon was presumably clashing with Evestani. He didn’t want to do anything that would change that. “I have my undead goblins in place, ready to support Mags. Three hundred isn’t much, but their very nature will make them a perfect distraction to let them get the upper hand. Especially if they remind Evestani of their previous encounter with undeath.”

In a single battle that resulted in no losses for Arkk, he had cut down nearly one-fifth of the Evestani army. They would be hard-pressed to not remember that.

Lexa was out there as well. A quick check showed her skirting around the edges of an ongoing battle. Presumably to get closer to the avatar.

She needed to pick up the pace.

Arkk muttered a small prayer that the effigy would work. He had never been much for religion. He participated in the Suun lectures more because they were something to do in his little village and less because he was an actual believer. Ironically, he felt he believed less now. Not that the gods didn’t exist—they empirically did—just that they cared. Even still, a whisper to the Eternal Silence or Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, or anyone who might listen felt appropriate. That effigy had to work.

If it didn’t, he had likely sent Lexa to her death.

If it didn’t and the avatar used another golden ray, he might have consigned everyone present to their deaths. Unless Zullie could get her impenetrable barrier working. Speaking of… “Zullie—”

“Sir,” Camilla interrupted before he could start, “soldiers at the base of the tower are reorganizing. I believe they’re prepared to renew their assault.”

Arkk let out a small breath. Finally some good news. “Zullie, the Maze of Infinite Paths?”

“Ready to go. Just drop me off in the containment room.”

“Good. Make it happen.” Command given, Arkk sent her off. It would delay the barrier, but it would hopefully solve one issue.

“Sir?” Camilla asked. “Maze?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. In fact, avoid scrying into the tower legs for the time being.” Arkk stumbled slightly as another volley struck the tower. The maze wouldn’t take long to activate, but they really needed to get their defenses operational again. Lesser servants were in the process of repairing the ritual room, but even once it was repaired, Lelith would still have to scrawl out the protective ritual.

With daylight peaking through parts of the tower walls again, they might not have that kind of time.

“Shall I hear out what the other avatar has to say?” Agnete asked, apparently reading his mind.

Arkk pursed his lips into a heavy frown. “Not knowing what she wants from you, I’m wary. She wanted me to return you to her, which is how someone speaks of property, not people. I would prefer if we heard second-hand through Abbess Hannah and Sylvara. But I’m also not going to stop you if that is what you wish.”

“I don’t know if we have the option of waiting,” Agnete said, watching the lesser servant form a fresh layer of bricks in the command center’s walls. “Barring mind-altering elements in the avatar’s speech, I don’t see harm in hearing her out.”

That was one of the reasons why Savren was in the room as well. It hurt taking him off the research projects that Arkk needed done as soon as possible, but he was the expert in mind magics. If Lyra Zann did have some way of controlling other’s thoughts, he would hopefully notice before they could take effect.

The other main reason was that he also was loyal to Arkk, which meant that if Lyra put forth some ideas that Sylvara or Hannah should betray him, Savren would be able to warn Arkk well in advance, before Hannah even tried to break her link with him, hopefully. He was well aware that Sylvara’s motivations were a lot like those of Lexa—both wanted the Heart of Gold’s avatar wiped off the face of the realm—but without the fallback of gold and general comradery to ensure she wouldn’t turn on him. He didn’t think she would do that. Sylvara was pragmatic more than dogmatic, but he well knew she would likely leave his services once the war ended.

Whether her inquisitorial nature meant she would be forced against him or not was another matter entirely. It would be good if he could reach some kind of agreement with Lyra, keep the Abbey off his back through her, but with her repeated insistence on wanting Agnete returned and his repeated denial, he wasn’t sure that was possible.

But that would be a problem for the future. For now, “I’ll send you down there. Be forewarned that I may teleport you away at any moment once the whale ships begin another of their egg attacks. Or should an opportunity arise in the current situation.”

“I’ll keep myself running hot.”

With a nod of his head, Arkk sent her off.

A brief dizzying sensation hit him a moment later. Nothing to do with Agnete. It was Zullie activating her maze. It suddenly felt as if his arms were twisted into chaotic breaded pretzels. The stairs expanded, continually moving upwards and downwards. The tower legs split into a multitude, all slightly different yet all slightly the same, all occupying the same space. Corridors and chambers divided, splitting apart even as more and more grew to fill in the gaps. Both legs of the tower became a liminal space of conflicting passages. The kind, once one entered, they would never be able to find their way out from.

There was a sudden urge to look into the affected area, just to see what it looked like from an outside perspective. It wouldn’t kill him, but keeping his head on straight was too much of a priority in the current situation.

As soon as Zullie tugged on the link, he teleported her back up. Her research station had been relocated here so that she might inform him of any immediate changes to her progress faster than otherwise. Every second could count.

“That went well,” she said with a smile. “And it gave me an idea.”

“No,” Arkk said. “Defensive spell or something to destroy those ships. No more ideas. You’re the one who didn’t want to swap projects until you finished.”

“But that’s just the thing,” Zullie said, casually taking off her glasses. She pulled at the side of her robes and started cleaning off some bit of dust. “The maze project is already finished. Any further applications of it won’t take long to implement. Not like crafting new ideas from scratch.

“We’ll power it with the Heart—by the fortress itself—so no need to rely on glowstones at all! No personnel to get blasted apart if that golden boy hits us. Just a weak connection that will snap if it tries to drain too much at once. The perfect spell, utilizing the fortress to its fullest potential.”

Arkk let out a small sigh. This again. Zullie had the notion that the Heart could be used to power all rituals. It didn’t work like that in practice. Unlike the portal, rituals weren’t part of the fortress, but something overlaid on top of it. Small amounts of magic could go to rituals under certain circumstances, but that was closer to what happened to rituals in the Underworld. The abundance of ambient magic helped activate them.

“No, no. I know that look,” Zullie said, reseating her glasses on her nose. “It will work. Imagine a bottle with no end… it has no openings and no volume, yet can hold… No, imagine a torus which can’t… A ribbon with both sides…” The witch stopped, lips pressed together.

“Zullie…”

“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “But it will work. Our little maze downstairs is evidence. Look in at the ritual. No glowstones, right?”

Arkk blinked twice, doing as she asked. The containment room was one of several similar rooms that were completely sealed from outside access. Only teleportation could get in and out. There were some glowstones set to the side, meant to power rituals, but the predominant ritual circle in the center of the chamber didn’t have any. Its inscribed rings still glowed a faint, pulsing violet.

At the three points where glowstones or spellcasters would have been required, something was strange. The space there twisted, folding in on itself. It was as if, sweeping his eyes from left to right over the ritual circle, he suddenly started staring all over the place—up, down, inside-out, and all around—before his vision simply continued sweeping to the side. Staring too long, trying to figure out what happened there, was starting to give him a headache.

He pulled back, frowning at Zullie. “You experimented in a situation like this?”

“Naturally. It is in my nature to constantly seek improvement.”

“In less time than it would take to finish your other research.”

“Ten minutes. I’ll be reusing almost all principles in the Infinite Maze for this.”

That was better than her expected hour for her other idea.

“And you think this will get us protected again? Properly? No flickering out or failure.”

“For anything less than a golden ray? Yes,” Zullie said with a confident nod of her head. “In fact, I think I can do more than protect us.” A smile spread across her face. “Why waste all that energy just blocking attacks, Arkk? Let’s use their own weapons against them.”

 

 

The damp air of the tunnel clung to their skin as the soldiers huddled together. Dim glowstone lights flickered as a tremble ran through the ground. At the center of the group stood Eadric, the unit’s seasoned hypeman. His voice was a steady beacon amidst the low murmur of anticipation. His words pulsed like the beat of a drum, charging the air with energy. Soldiers, gripping their weapons, nodded along, their fear transmuting into a steely resolve.

Eadric moved among them, clasping shoulders and meeting eyes. He knew his presence was a tangible reassurance. A reassurance they needed. Even as an experienced warrior, one of the King’s men who had fought in seven different battles for the realm, served in a mercenary company for over a decade, and possessed more accolades than any two others in the entire army, he had seen things here that he could never have imagined. Monsters of all varieties, massive walking buildings, and flying ships to name a few. And they hadn’t even encountered the enemy yet.

That was soon to change.

War was upon them. Quite literally. In a few minutes, they would burst forth from the ground, assailing the Evestani invaders from the rear. Some, those inexperienced, called it a cowardly move not to face them head-on. Eadric called it smart. Only bards cared about honor. For everyone else, it was life or death.

They would understand. They would understand or they would die.

“Ready men!” a call rang through the tunnels.

Eadric let his own words fall silent as he turned.

Prince Cedric’s commander held a large copper cone in front of his mouth, projecting his voice through the tunnel. Eadric wasn’t sure what to think of the man. A pompous sort like him who clearly got his position out of kinship more than ability normally grated on Eadric’s nerves, yet the man was the head of the army, fully ready to be the first to charge into battle. Whether he had a death wish or was just ignorant of the brutality they would face in a few minutes, Eadric couldn’t decide. If anything, he wished the man would move back.

He wasn’t well-liked among the soldiers, but if the banner the commander carried fell, it would harm morale.

“Tonight, we bathe in the blood of our enemies! Tomorrow, we dance upon their corpses. Huzzah!”

Eadric expected more, but Mags was finished. He tossed the copper cone aside, whipped his horse’s hindquarters, and shot off out of the tunnel. He was the first into the daylight. The first to meet the enemy.

Probably the first to die.

Eadric could only shake his head before echoing the cry. With any luck, Mags would die with the majority of the army none the wiser. It would only be after the fact that anyone would realize they had trampled over his body in the opening minutes of the engagement.

The army surged forward, following after Mags. It was divided up, split between a few different exits to the tunnels so that they might better encircle Evestani, getting the drop on them from all sides with the element of surprise.

Eadric stepped out into the sun, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. He didn’t stop moving. He knew his role. His own banner hung from his back, rallying his men. He was here to be seen, to bolster everyone. He couldn’t be seen to falter or waver. Heavy armor-crushing mace gripped in one hand and his shield on his other arm, he waded forward.

Evestani’s army stood in the distance. Most still had their backs facing the oncoming battle. Siege weapons, bombardment magics, and all manner of spellwork had been set up as far from the front as possible. That left them open to be the first to go down. Spellcasters normally wanted as much heavy armor and shields between them and conflict as possible. Coming up behind them like this would rip away the advantage of magic from Evestani.

It wouldn’t be an easy battle, but compared to some of his engagements? Evestani still outnumbered them. That said, Eadric could get used to fighting like this. Spellcasters were often the most troublesome part of a proper army.

In the distance, dwarfing the mass of soldiers, a giant sphere of swirling wind raged amid a forest. With the sun angled just right, he could almost make out the silhouette of the walking building that his army chased across the land. Floating above it, one ship somehow hovered in the air while a second metal monster lingered in the air nearby. The latter looked like some kind of creature with a wide, gaping maw and thin tendrils dangling down below it. If not for the metal hull, he might have thought it was a monster.

And a second monster was drifting overhead, moving to join the first two flying ships.

Eadric pulled his gaze back down as the clash in front of him began. There was no time to pay attention to anything else.

Trails of blood arced through the air as Eadric pulled his mace back. The stubby spikes were made to break armor. Bones couldn’t hold up. He bashed one fleeing caster straight down his spine, hearing that crack over the yells, shouts, and clashing metal. A magical array of unknown intent dimmed and faded as the maintainers fell or fled. He let out a shout of his own, indistinct among the cries of his comrades, doing nothing but hyping up his unit as they charged.

Chaos amid the blood, dirt, and bodies reigned. A whirlwind swirled around him, threatening to rip him off his feet. One of his unit shoved a pike through the caster’s head, freeing him to bash down someone’s skull who was conjuring up a wall of ice to buy time.

The first armored opponent charged at Eadric with a stubby straight sword, swinging as if he had never used it before. Eadric batted it away with his shield, using the opening to thrust his mace forward into the chest of the soldier. The metal chestplate dented. That alone wouldn’t have been enough, but it knocked the soldier off balance. A second strike to the side of the head and a third to the man’s shield arm elicited that cracking of breaking bones along with a pained scream as the soldier went down. Another follow-up strike to the helmet made the man still.

Eadric didn’t stop. Even as he bashed down the soldier, his eyes roamed around, seeking his next target. A caster was giving one of his men a hard time. A row of hastily assembled archers were readying their bows. More soldiers were moving forward, disorganized and erratic.

He took a single step.

Bright golden light flooded his vision. Eadric reared back, raising his shield as a distant heat washed over him, soaking into his armor. He blinked as fast as he could, trying to regain his vision even as he kept his shield up and pointed at where he thought the enemy was.

He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t hurt. Whatever that had been, it hadn’t been aimed toward him.

Fearing the worst, he quickly looked around the moment he could see more than spots.

Everyone was in a similar state. Not just his army, but Evestani’s as well. Everyone was cowering, waiting, as if they expected that to have been an attack from an enemy. There wasn’t even any noise. The only one moving, Eadric noted, was Mags. Seeing the portly man slam his fist through the helmet of some Evestani soldier, smiling with a toothy grin on his face, made him wonder if he wasn’t seeing things.

Nobody seemed hurt beyond the momentary blindness. Eadric swung his mace, knocking aside some soldier who was still recovering, before realizing what had happened.

The tower was visible. The swirling maelstrom that had been protecting it was nowhere to be seen. A chunk of its smokey walls was covered in what appeared to be liquid gold, dripping down its sides.

The airships overhead, the monstrous ones, opened their mouths. Dozens of sacks of meat came spewing out, flying through the air toward the tower.

At the same time, flames erupted around the tower, swirling around as it moved up the sides of the walls. Some of the meat sacks burned away in an instant while others struck the tower, sticking to its bricks.

Arrows striking Eadric’s shield pulled his eyes back to the ground. One punctured deep enough to clip his arm. The pinch of pain wasn’t much, but it did make him hiss.

There was no time to worry about the tower. He had a war to win.

Lexa felt the hairs on her skin stand on end. An instant later, the tower rocked, tilting back far enough that she felt like she was going to go flying.

“Confirmed location of the avatar,” shouted one of the people hunched over the crystal ball. They weren’t disturbed at all by the sudden shock to the fortress. None even blinked. “Location displayed.”

Lexa didn’t have a clue who they were talking to. Arkk wasn’t here. He had rushed back to Fortress Al-Mir to get Agnete and her machines. The Protector loomed over their crystal balls. Maybe to distribute information to Rekk’ar who would then use more Protectors to order around other teams.

“External d-damage appears minimal—” another of the scrying team started as the image in the glass flickered.

“Incoming attacks from above. Egg drop!”

“Agnete is already outside, teleported by Arkk. Nothing to worry over.”

“The protective spell is down,” a fairy said, quickly changing the crystal ball to show somewhere inside the tower. Her face twisted into a grimace as it flickered to whatever else she needed to keep track of. “Looks like an explosion went off inside the ritual chamber. Kassa is down and Lelith looks like she got slammed against a wall. Backlash from the spell hitting the shield?”

“We’ll be vulnerable to sustained bombardment…”

“Where is Arkk?”

That was what Lexa wanted to know. He said he would only be gone for a minute, just long enough to get Agnete and her machines moving. The avatar had attacked. Now was the optimal time to enact their countermeasure against him and she was stuck sitting here, twiddling her thumbs. Agnete warranted a teleport out to take care of the eggs, meanwhile, that avatar was recovering.

Fate, or perhaps some Fickle Wheel, chose that moment to strike. The moment the thought crossed her mind, Lexa felt that tug that came with teleportation. Like someone picked her up by the scruff of her neck, whisked her through space, and dropped her off in a long, empty tunnel. Not having been expecting the teleport, Lexa stumbled slightly as she whipped her head around to get her bearings.

Arkk had not dropped her into the middle of combat. That let her relax ever so slightly. The tunnel she was in had two ways to go. One way narrowed to a small hole that not even a gremlin could fit into. A slime or one of the servants would be the only ones capable of traversing that route. The other way was an upward-leading ramp where the majority of the tunnel’s light came from.

With only one direction to go, Lexa didn’t need telling twice.

She quickly checked herself over, making sure she wasn’t missing anything. Her shadow cloak, wrapped loosely around her, fluttered in the faint breeze coming from the tunnel’s entrance. All her knives were in place in their holders—she withdrew two, one in each hand—the flower was still pinned to her shirt, and a small metal sphere engraved with runes hung from the belt on her hip. Within, the effigy sat, safe and contained for the moment.

A surge of doubt crossed through Lexa’s mind. It was the only effigy. She wasn’t sure if it was because another one couldn’t be made or if Zullie and the others had simply focused on perfecting this one, but its weight suddenly felt ten times what it had been a moment ago. If she failed, if she lost it, if it didn’t work…

Well, if any of those happened, she would probably end up dead. Then it wouldn’t be her problem anymore.

With a shake of her head, Lexa ascended the sloped path out of the tunnel.

War raged around her.

The tunnel’s exit led directly to a battle. Red and gold armored soldiers fought alongside blue and yellow against an army clothed in white, black, and gold. Metal clashed against metal. Spells flew overhead in both directions. People screamed as they were cut down. Soldiers stampeded over the bodies of the fallen, too frightened and too hyped up on adrenaline to think. Blood soaked into the ground as arrows thunked against armor, shields, and people.

Lexa had seen fighting before. She had been one of Katja’s bandits for around ten years. They raided caravans and killed people, even assaulted a small village one year for food and supplies. People bled out and died. Plenty at her own hand. With Arkk, she had seen plenty more. Between assassinating the Duke, Gleeful Burg, and reclaiming Elmshadow, she had seen her fair share of blood and death. But she had never been in the thick of a war. She had always been off on the side, targeting special objectives.

The scale of the battle before her couldn’t compare to everything else she had seen even if she combined all her experiences into one bloody lump. Tides of people clashed, dozens fell on both sides only to be replaced with more yelling and charging from the ones behind them.

Lexa had to dart and weave, using all her skills and even a few agility-enhancing spells to keep from being crushed underneath metal boots. It helped that she couldn’t stand around in a stupor. Being forced to move kept her active.

She narrowed her eyes, cursing her short height as she tried to figure out where her target might be. If Arkk dropped her off here, that meant the avatar should be somewhere nearby. White and gold, with a light brown thrown in, were the predominant colors of Evestani. Maneuvering around a clash between them and some of Vaales’ red and gold, she headed further into the Evestani line.

It wasn’t easy. Even with nobody paying attention to her thanks to her spells and cloak, the battlefield was packed. If she remembered right, Evestani marched with roughly ten thousand men. The King’s army was smaller, but it sure didn’t feel that way. Combined they formed a wall. Not just a wall—she could have gotten over a wall. It was a mass of swinging blades that extended outward in every direction, constantly moving back and forth. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to get anywhere.

Trees were standing. Evestani had set up their siege equipment in a relatively clear spot in the forest, but it wasn’t completely devoid of trees. Most fighters on both sides avoided them. At most, people used them as cover against the archers, but, from a short observation, most archers didn’t bother to aim their shots at trees when they could randomly arch their shot high into the air and likely hit someone.

Lexa kept a wary eye out for any golden arrows. The ones that turned people into living statues that then infected more people. So far, neither the statues nor the arrows were present. She wondered if it had something to do with the avatar. Although powerful enough to blast a hole into a mountain, he did not have infinite power. It took time to rebuild that power or else he would simply walk on his own, blasting down everything in his path with rays of gold. If maintaining or otherwise using those gold statues or arrows took some of that power, he might ignore it in favor of focusing on the tower.

Clinging to the side of a tree, Lexa flicked her eyes up. The tower stood in the distance, looking worse for wear. Smoke billowed out of one of the floors in the upper levels. The ritual room, probably. Fire wreathed the tower, trying to keep it clean of those meaty eggs the whale ships were spewing. Gold dripped down its sides where the ray had struck, seeming to snuff out the flames. All the while, the cannons of the airship didn’t let up, blasting off lesser servants in droves as they clung to the exterior, trying to repair the damage.

A black void opened, intercepting a few volleys of cannon fire and eggs. It flickered and collapsed before long. The small reprieve it bought did allow a few focused beams of fire to fry several of the eggs the larger wreath had missed.

Lexa forced her gaze back down. Dealing with that wasn’t her job. She had to find the avatar. She had to find the avatar before he gathered enough strength to strike the tower a second time.

Again, the Fickle Wheel thought it must be funny to coincide events with her thoughts. As soon as she turned her eyes back to the battlefield, a warm, golden aura spread out from the center of Evestani’s army. The tides of war below her shifted, with the King’s army pulling back in response to the unknown magics, readying themselves to defend from spells. Protective shields popped up all throughout their side of the battle. Evestani, on the other hand, found themselves bolstered. Everyone wearing their colors straightened, gripped their weapons with newfound strength, and raised their banners as they shouted war cries.

The clash began again as the light faded. This time, the side with the advantage was plain and obvious. Evestani’s forces still died. It wasn’t like they had become immortal or even gained any amount of strength. Lexa watched their blades clash with those of the King’s army. Nothing looked too different.

Had anything even happened? Was it pure morale that shifted the flow of battle? If Lexa were in the avatar’s position, she wouldn’t have bothered wasting power on her followers while her true target stood ahead, taunting in its very existence. But if a little trick of light was enough to turn a fighting retreat into a forward push, she would have thrown up a quick sparkle too.

Unfortunately for the avatar, her elevated position gave her the perfect vantage point to see where that light had originated from. She might not have long. The avatar wasn’t immobile, after all, and he might decide to swap possessed bodies at any point. But it was the best lead she had.

Scanning through the ocean of fighters below, she picked a route, keeping close to the more densely packed trees and far from the actual people. It would be a roundabout path, but one actually traversable compared to pushing through an active battle.

“I’m coming for you,” Lexa hissed as she hopped to the ground and took off in a sprint. “Just you wait…”

 

 

Arkk had a brief window of reprieve. He had to make the best of it.

After changing their tactics, the airship overhead fired all their cannons at once, then the whale ship spewed eggs, both took a few minutes of rest following that—presumably, time taken to reset things for their next attack. The main army was outside the tower, reevaluating their tactics. Evestani was about to engage with Mags and his men.

Arkk did not like the idea of leaving the tower during the battle. He could move about personnel whether or not he was present, but there were some things that he could respond to far better in person—for example, teleporting someone like Dakka, Kia, or Lyssa to him and casting a haste spell before throwing them back into combat. In addition, while he had spoken with the bombardment team about targeting the tower with an inferno spell to burn off those eggs, it had not been tested.

But there were some things only he could take care of.

“Agnete,” Arkk said, starting and ending his greeting with just her name. There wasn’t time for more. “I’ve prepared teleportation rituals leading directly beneath the tower’s current location. However…”

Arkk looked around the portal chamber. The vastly enlarged portal chamber. Having seen what Agnete was bringing through from his link with her, he had known in advance that the machines from the Anvil wouldn’t fit in the room’s previous configuration.

They barely fit now. The lesser servants had torn down the walls and joined the nearest dozen rooms together, moving everything of value off to some other corner of Fortress Al-Mir. Even with the modifications, the room was packed to the brim with bulky machines that, despite owning a much larger walking tower, he still felt a little intimidated by purely from a sense of scale.

“The teleportation rituals strain at moving a large carriage,” Arkk said with a frown. If only they had a full-scale portal out at Elmshadow.

“They are transports. If given access to the surface, they can move on their own,” Agnete said, gesturing to the bulky, brick-like machines that moved on treads.

“The battle is ongoing. I need to be back now.” Arkk frowned, watching as Agnete made a noise of understanding. “They won’t have time to cross half of Mystakeen.”

“You’ll find them faster than you expecᛏ,” Who said, stepping up alongside Agnete.

“While true,” Agnete said, looking to her mechanical contemporary, “the distance they must traverse to reach Elmshadow is… roughly the distance from the molten metal refinery stack to our workshop.”

“Ah…” Who’s cogs whirred down in what Arkk assumed was disappointment.

“I have had the lesser servants copying the ritual circles,” Arkk said. “About twenty individuals can move at once, at least as long as they can spark the circles with magic on their own. Otherwise, I’ll have to dedicate my men to doing so.” He turned, looking at one of the large Iron Mongers, as Agnete had dubbed them. They were like an entire foundry on treaded legs. “No idea how to get the larger things through.”

“Throughput issues,” Who said with an odd hiss of steam that Arkk equated with a scoff. The disappointed shake of her head only reinforced his guess.

Arkk chose to ignore her comment, focusing on the task at hand. There wasn’t time for banter. “Before that, however, there is one thing. If you… If it is possible to hire you as employees, I can assist in keeping you and yours safe. I’ve been teleporting people around, dodging attacks, and setting them up for perfect blind-side strikes.”

He honestly hadn’t the slightest idea whether or not he could hire them. They were metal constructs. Machines. Mobile statues. It sounded absurd to think that he could hire a statue. But at the same time, they were beings. His interactions with Who weren’t any different than his interactions with Agnete or Perr’ok. They could make decisions and act autonomously.

So which did the Heart consider them? Statues? Or beings?

Agnete and Who looked at one another. Arkk imagined their thoughts were running along the same path.

“Safety isn’t as important for us as it might be for squishy meatbags. If our casings are destroyed, we can simply construct a new one. Our black boxes are us. They were built by a god. They won’t be destroyed so easily.”

“That sounds time-consuming. Why waste that time when I can prevent ninety percent of your casualties in the first place?”

Who hesitated again. Arkk wondered if she was coming up with excuses just so she wouldn’t have to test this out. Rather than debate philosophy, he conjured up a gold coin from one of the increasingly sparse stacks in the treasury and held it out for Who to take. It was the quickest way to get an answer.

“Accept the payment and I’ll hire you. If you can speak for the rest of the Anvil’s forces, I can hire you all at once.” That had worked with Richter and his men, after all.

Who hesitated a moment longer throwing another glance at Agnete, before she reached forward and took the coin.

The link formed immediately, first with Who then it branched out to the rest of the assembled machine lifeforms. In one exchange of a coin, Arkk had tripled his number of employees. And it wasn’t just the Who-like machines who were mostly inside the transports or the flying serpents. Everything from the anvil gained an employee link. That included the transports as well as the large smithies on legs.

Arkk staggered in place as a sudden wave of vertigo slammed into him. Before this, Richter’s three hundred deserters had been the largest group to join him at once. But even aside from the numbers, there was something different about the group from the Anvil. Normally, he received some small amount of magic, an increase in his reserves, when someone joined.

If anything, he felt drained after they joined. Not completely. If he were to apply numbers to it, each of his new employees increased his reserves by ten, but at the same time, they started siphoning off nine. A net increase but only by a minuscule amount.

Who straightened further, her visible cogs and gears whirring with vigor Arkk hadn’t seen on her before. “Interesting,” she said, looking over the coin as if that was the source of her feelings.

Arkk had a theory. Or rather, an extension of Zullie’s theory. Zullie suggested that the Anvil’s relatively low ambient magic and extremely active environment were related. The Burning Forge was using the heightened magic levels caused by the Calamity to power everything, including the living machines. They were a drain on the magic of the Anvil, keeping the levels low. The theory didn’t quite fit, given that he was still gaining more from them than they were taking, but he chalked that up to some magical oddity he wasn’t aware of. Zullie might care to research it further.

He had more practical things to worry about.

“It worked,” Arkk said, alleviating the concern on Agnete’s face. “Who, you know your fellows better than anyone in my employ. If you can command them—”

“I possess no combat experience,” Who said, only to pause in a brief moment of thought. “None of us do. There are hostile lifeforms in the Anvil, but automated stationary defenses handle them, pushing them back so the Infernal Engine can expand. Some of the serpents occasionally assist, but that is far from their primary duty. However!” she quickly added, as if worried Arkk might send them away. “We are fully combat capable.

“From when Agnete made her petition to the Burning Forge to now, weapons development increased,” she continued. “Most carry portable lightning slingers—Agnete described your favored spell and we already had similar technology in the wyrms. It was simple to adapt to an automaton-portable, albeit less powerful, version. Our plasma cutters are also well beyond capable of inflicting damage on meatbags like yourselves. I believe most engineers, being familiar with the cutters, would prefer that.

“We just don’t know how best to use them.”

Arkk pressed his lips together. He preferred to keep cliques within Company Al-Mir together. They tended to work best like that. That was why Richter had near full command of the men who came with him, why Joanne was in charge of the Claymores, why the orcs were all mostly grouped, and so on. He mixed the groups often enough when he felt the situation called for more diversity, but the ones in charge were still the ones with the most authority over their respective factions.

“It sounds like your automatons using lightning will mostly serve a similar role as battlecasters while the remainder will engage in the frontlines,” Arkk said, musing on the lightning weapons they wielded. “I have a few casters who I can move into a leadership position with you, though I would still prefer if you stayed on as an advisor. They won’t know the capabilities of the Anvil forces, nor what might be too much for you or what might be a waste of your talents.”

“I’m an engineer. I’d prefer being in the production line. Agnete could—”

“Agnete’s power will go to waste as a commander. She needs to remain an independent specialist.” Arkk shook his head. “Would that we had more time, we could have come to a more satisfactory arrangement. For now, we need to move and you’re in charge. I’ll start teleporting them to the ritual circles. You’ve used one before, can you inform the rest of your men what to do?”

Who sighed. A long, crackling, static-filled sigh. A few odd notes and pitch changes filled certain parts of the static before she finally went silent. It was a bit exaggerated, in Arkk’s opinion. If she didn’t want to be in charge to that extent, it probably was best if he replaced her with anyone else. A few of the other machines in the chamber echoed her sigh, including deep noises from the transports. He was about to say so when she straightened again.

“Done. Everyone is informed.”

“Uh…”

“Some strange way of speaking among their kind,” Agnete helpfully provided. “While I can understand most of their other language, this one is well beyond me.”

“I see…” Arkk shook his head. If that sigh hadn’t been a complaint, he supposed he would let it by for now. “We’ve wasted enough time. Agnete, Who, and myself through the hops first. I’ll move individuals to the ritual rooms to follow. We…”

Arkk trailed off, frowning as a change in the fortress caught his attention. “Agnete and Who will go through first. I’ll be following shortly. There is something else here I need to take care of while I have a moment. Agnete, the enemy has been launching some kind of egg-like things at the tower. If I’m not back by the time of their next attack, I may teleport you outside the tower. Burn them off as fast as you can.”

“Understood,” the former inquisitor said with a nod of her head. The smoldering coals in her eyes brightened as if someone shoved a set of bellows in her ears.

“Everyone else will regroup while I take care of things and find some battlecasters to take over.”

“The walking factories can remain here,” Who said after a deep noise erupted from one of the machines. “They’ll manufacture spare parts, armaments, and other items. A logistic team can move the created parts. We set up material conveyors in the Anvil to deliver raw materials for the factories to use, so not being able to move is probably best for them.”

“We’ll have to swap the portal back to the Underworld to charge glowstones before long, but we can switch it back and forth in a relatively short amount of time.”

“Excellent.”

Arkk waited for a bare instant to see if there were any further questions before he took a breath. “Teleporting you two and the first batch of automatons—along with a few of the serpents—to the rituals now.”

With just one extra moment for objections, passed in silence, Arkk moved them out. He teleported himself as well, reappearing in the temple room.

He swept his gaze over the statues, ensuring that none of them had changed, before settling back on the Holy Light. The statue wasn’t in its usual heroic pose. Arms crossed and a frown on its face, it looked occupied. As he teleported another group of automatons to the ritual room, he stalked closer to the statue. Two silver candles at the base of the statue burned slowly, sparking occasionally. Those were what had drawn his attention in the first place.

“Anyone home?” he asked. “Avatar?”

The statue shifted, its eyes swapped from a vacant, distant look to a glare at Arkk. “I believe I have said to call me Lyra.”

“Right,” Arkk said with a frown of his own. “Do you have anything valuable to say? Or are you here to waste my time begging for my employees.”

The statue let out an audible sigh. “I understand you have made contact with our enemies.”

“Our enemies? I’m sorry, I don’t see you out there fighting.” Arkk was a little upset with the avatar of the Light. He wasn’t sure what he had expected. The avatar came to him with an offer of an alliance and then told him a bunch of half-truths before demanding Agnete, among other concessions, for her offers of intelligence. Every time they spoke, his opinion of the Light diminished more and more.

Vezta was right. The Light couldn’t be trusted.

“And I have a fight to get back to,” Arkk said, turning away. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Hold, Arkk,” Lyra said with a soft note in her tone. Almost begging. Arkk knew she would try to stop him. It was why he hadn’t simply disappeared. But begging? “We haven’t seen eye-to-eye on a number of matters—”

“Just your insistence on returning Agnete to you, as if she can’t make her own decisions.”

“But! I do have a vested interest in seeing my contemporaries fail before they decide to turn their armies on Chernlock.”

“You have an interesting way of showing that interest,” Arkk said, folding his arms over his chest, only to stop and hesitate. One of his arms wasn’t there anymore. With his cloak, it wasn’t obvious. Otherwise Agnete or Who would surely have said something about building him a replacement. There wasn’t time for that now anyway. He teleported another batch of automatons. “Two minutes. That is all I can spare.”

“Before anything, you have not let any eggs hatch, have you?”

Arkk shook his head, deepening his frown. He hardly needed the avatar of enlightenment to tell him that it would probably be a bad idea. After that first had shocked him, he had egg removal duties as the highest priority. Even above saving his men. He did not wish to find out what would happen if the eggs were allowed to mature.

“Good,” Lyra said. “Don’t.”

“You could have warned me about them.”

“I warned you that the Eternal Empire would be deploying ancient weapons long since banned,” the statue said, transitioning to a shrugging pose.

“Well thanks for the advice,” Arkk said, purposefully injecting as much sarcasm as possible into his tone. “But unless you’ve got a way of taking those airships down, I think we’re done here.”

This time, the statue adopted a smug pose. “I do, actually.”

Arkk could only sigh. If Lyra had said no, he could have simply left. Now he had to hear her out. “They avoid, deflect, or otherwise ignore all the bombardment magic I’ve thrown at them. The only thing that worked was an overpowered Electro Deus, and that took more out of me than it took out of them.”

“They aren’t invincible. The creatures within are vulnerable on the inside.”

Arkk already knew that as well. Lexa’s successful destruction of one of the incomplete whale ships attested to that. But he didn’t exactly have a good way of getting someone up into an already flying ship. The harpies and syrens had wings, to be sure, but if the airship could knock a massive boulder off course, he doubted human-sized creatures would manage. He had already tried forming a boulder—and some of the other bombardment spells—directly inside the airship holds. Unfortunately, the magic that generated the stone required an absence of solids in its vicinity. It was one of the reasons they formed so high up, to ensure nothing would leech the magic before the boulder fully formed.

And those whale ships were leeches. Even trying to conjure a boulder, flames, or anything else in their relative vicinity ended up with the spell eaten before it could do anything. It was one of the reasons Arkk had ordered the stop on the continued attacks. If those eggs inside the whales ate magic, he didn’t want to feed them more than he had to.

Unless those eggs hatching inside the ship would be bad for it. If that were the case, he could spare a bit of magic.

He posed the question to Lyra.

The horrified look on her face told him the answer well before she could speak the words. “Light, no. I don’t know which specific weapon the Eternal Empire has deployed against you. I can think of four egg-shaped entities that absorb magic in their arsenal. The least of which absorbs that magic until it reaches a critical point and erupts. I did mention that our wars reshaped entire landscapes, did I not?”

Arkk just sighed. “Then how do you propose I damage their insides to take them down? And that regular-looking airship too, I’ve hardly been able to damage it either.”

At this point, he was hoping that Agnete’s return would provide some solutions. With her increased control over her abilities thanks to her time in the Anvil, she could almost mimic the golden rays with her flames. If that couldn’t damage the ships…

A tug across the link, coming from his scrying team, had him jolting. “I have to return to the—”

“Wait! Accept this.” The statue of the Holy Light changed once again, kneeling with its arms outstretched. Its hands were just above the height of Arkk’s head, holding a shallow bowl. “It will allow us to remain in communication. In addition, you have an inquisitor among your ranks other than Agnete, correct?”

“Sylvara…”

“Bring her to the basin at your earliest convenience and I shall impart knowledge of spells that can pierce any material. Any other trained Abbey clergy may also benefit, if you have any others in your company.”

Arkk pressed his lips together, still not trusting the Light’s avatar. But at this point, any additions to his arsenal weren’t something he could overlook. Taking the bowl in hand, he stepped back, only to freeze as he noticed one more oddity in the room.

Another statue.

All the other statues in the room were beings, most in a humanoid shape. This statue was a thing. A large round wheel made from rich, polished wood. Large golden symbols adorned each of the wheel’s spokes. Cards, chance cubes, stars, a black cat, a shattered mirror, and more. All symbols of luck—both good and ill. Engravings along the rim, written in a language Arkk didn’t understand, gleamed with a bright orange light. At the front, attached to the spoke of the wheel, a set of scales hung. Unlike the other statues, the wheel was in motion. It lazily turned, rotating forward and then reversing. The scales at the front tipped side to side, never remaining perfectly balanced.

The Fickle Wheel.

It had appeared during his conversation with Lyra. He couldn’t say during what part. He hadn’t noticed. If not for the subtle movement in the corner of his eye, he might have teleported away without noticing.

The sight of it made Arkk feel sick. The only other statue to have spontaneously appeared was that of the Laughing Prince immediately after Arkk wielded a massive undead army. Undeath being in the Laughing Prince’s domain, that made sense to him. But the Fickle Wheel was the god of random chance, gambling, and luck. And not necessarily good luck.

Arkk teleported, feeling an urgent need to find out what had happened in the last few minutes.

 

 

“How do you suppose the others are fairing?”

Olatt’an leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. “Certainly a difficult question,” he said. “Idealistically, quite well. Realistically? The situation is pure chaos. Four different factions on two different sides, none of whom seem to trust their supposed allies, all likely believing they have tricks up their sleeves that the others don’t know about. All of whom likely believe they can deal with whatever tricks the others have come up with, leaving the tide turning in their favor.”

Ilya scowled. Her leg thumped against the ground in hasty, repeated nervousness as she chewed on the edge of her lip. “I wish we knew for sure.”

“Arkk can observe anything connected to him. Can you not do the same?”

Ilya opened her mouth but Vezta interjected first.

“Arkk is the Master while Ilya is a subordinate. He can observe her and anyone she is connected to, but the reverse is untrue. At best, Ilya can assist by teleporting some personnel or materials, but lacking the innate knowledge of those contracted to Arkk—those in need of teleportation to safety—her ability to do so from a distance is hindered.” Vezta paused, looked to Ilya with a small frown, then added, “My former master rarely made use of subordinates. Those few he had were all too eager to stab him in the back the moment they thought they had the upper hand, wanting his power for themselves.”

“I would never,” Ilya said, shooting a fierce glare at Vezta, daring the monster to disagree.

Vezta didn’t say a word. She simply resumed her position at Ilya’s side, clasping her hands at her waist while staring straight ahead.

“If only we had more of those crystal balls,” Olatt’an said, his tone turning to a low grumble. “Possibly the most useful object in Arkk’s possession and he hasn’t tried to get more.”

“Not true. He had a few minor expeditions to search out more. They’re just rare and hard to make…” Ilya trailed off, her words turning to a grumble of her own. “Would be useful though. I won’t deny that.”

“I have full faith in Arkk,” Vezta said. If Ilya had to put a word to the tone in the monster’s voice, it would have been pride. Ilya wasn’t sure if she was pleased with Arkk or with herself for selecting Arkk to be her master. Either way, Vezta adopted a fond smile. “He has overcome much. True, he has occasionally stumbled along the way, but when it counts, he can become quite clever.”

“Your opinion is hardly objective,” Olatt’an grumbled.

Though she didn’t wish to speak ill of Arkk, she agreed with the orc. Arkk got ideas in his head, set forth to implement them, and then abandoned them in the next thought as he came up with different ideas. He flew by impulse and instinct, his primary impetus being the protection of those he viewed as having a responsibility toward. Any appearance of cleverness was an illusion crafted in retrospect after succeeding because of luck.

Perhaps that was too harsh. Arkk had gotten them through several rough patches. If he relied solely on luck, it would surely have run out by now.

Ilya turned to the opening door. Modeled after the Al-Lavik command room, Ilya’s spire had a large seat from where she could direct the spire and all those who had recently contracted themselves to her. An ornate window with smoky panes of dark glass ran almost the full circumference of the circular spire’s top, giving her a view in every direction. Two depressions on either side of the war room table were there for supposed scrying teams to operate distraction-free… if she had any.

Couldn’t Zullie have come up with some way to bend the barrier of observation to see distant events, or some other nonsense involving her patron deity?

“Here we are,” Hawkwood said, stepping through the door. He was not alone.

Beside him, a tall man bearing the red and gold of Vaales and another, shorter man with a blue and yellow tabard of Chernlock strode in, their gazes sweeping around the room. Commanders of the armies Ilya had picked up, presumably. The Vaales commander narrowed his eyes in poorly concealed suspicion as he took in the room, only to narrow his eyes further to an angry squint as his gaze settled on Vezta, Olatt’an, and Ilya. Blue and yellow, on the other hand, looked more impressed than anything.

Ilya wondered what the Vaales commander knew—or thought he knew—or if he was just naturally suspicious. The look he gave Ilya went far beyond suspicion. Was it because none of the people standing before him were human? She had heard that Prince Cedric wasn’t kind to beastmen and demihumans. One had allegedly been responsible for the death of his bride years ago. It would make sense that he would surround himself with like-minded individuals.

Which was just another burden on Ilya. Another faction that was supposed to be an ally but one who Ilya didn’t know if he could be trusted.

Ilya’s eyes flicked to the guards on either side of the door. Most of the Black Knights were with Arkk, but he had assigned a handful here. There were no better bodyguards. Well, none better with the exception of Kia and Claire, but the two dark elves needed to remain where the demon was likely to show up.

“Everyone inside?” Ilya asked, looking at Hawkwood. While she already disliked the Vaales commander and didn’t know much about the Chernlock commander, she knew and liked Hawkwood. Her relationship with him wasn’t anything like what Arkk had, but all their meetings had been perfectly pleasant.

It was a shame he wasn’t the one in charge.

“White Company is accounted for,” Hawkwood said with a kindly smile.

“As are my men,” Chernlock’s commander said, stepping forward with an offered hand. “Roman. Sydney Roman. I am the lord representing King Lafoar and am in command of his soldiers.”

“Welcome,” Ilya said, accepting the handshake. If he was going to be polite, so would she. As soon as Roman stepped back, she turned her gaze to the red and gold Vaales commander.

His lips warred with his words, twisting and grimacing in obvious distaste. It was a bit much, in Ilya’s opinion. Even Mystakeen’s most vehement discriminator toward non-humans didn’t fly into a spittle-flinging rage upon being confronted with an elf.

“My soldiers are present,” he eventually said through terse lips. No introduction. No handshake. His hand did move, but only to rest on the hilt of his sword.

Ilya glared back, noting the flinches on all three of their faces as a faint red glow washed over them. Here she was, offering a free ride straight to Evestani’s capital. No walls could stand in her way, no army would give her pause, and as long as Arkk was distracting the avatar, they wouldn’t have to worry about facing something insurmountable. And this man had to fight himself just to remain cordial.

“If you have a problem, get out and walk,” she snapped, eyes flicking to the man’s sword. The red emission in the room flared as she spoke before diminishing to a faint color.

The orc guards at the door shifted subtly, their hands changing their grip on the scythes to better ready themselves. Likely an unnecessary movement. Vezta glided up next to Ilya, lightly touching her elbow. Vezta might not consider herself much of a fighter, but her presence was welcome. She could easily dispatch a single—or even a trio—of magically unenhanced men.

The commander stared a moment longer before sliding his gaze over to his contemporaries. Hawkwood, face set in a fierce scowl, gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Roman looked far too concerned with the change in Ilya to notice the glance the other commander was giving him.

“No problem,” the commander said. His lips remained tight but he dropped his gaze and removed his hand from his sword.

“Excellent,” Ilya said with a joyless smile. The last of the red light in the room diminished to nothing. “Then sit back and relax. Enjoy the ride. We’re not stopping until we’ve crushed to dust whatever hovel Evestani calls a palace.”

They could take command of the city from there. Ilya would leave them, returning to help Arkk—though she doubted the tower would make it in any reasonable amount of time. The Prince could head over to Evestsani, doing whatever he had done in Vaales over there, and leave Mystakeen to Katja and Arkk.

A perfect plan if ever there was one.

The plan was not going as perfectly as Arkk had hoped.

“Purple marble on the bombardment team’s desk. Charged glowstone quantity down to fifty percent.”

“Evestani army closing in on our position. They are setting up trebuchets.”

“Airships a-aren’t taking meaningful damage from our counterattacks. T-They knock away everything that looks like it will do d-damage and ignore everything else.”

The scrying orb flickered between scenes. The image within the glass changed faster than Arkk could blink. The scrying team had so much to focus on, so many things he needed updates on, that it was a wonder they could even comprehend what they were seeing before it flicked to the next intelligence target. Arkk couldn’t comprehend it, but he hadn’t trained with the scrying team. They were practiced in this.

Occasionally, for more important matters, the image lingered for a few moments longer. Those moments were the main way Arkk was getting his first-hand information of distant events. Closer to home, Arkk just used his localized omniscience. For everything else, he had to trust that his scrying team’s reports were accurate.

If only they had more crystal balls. There should have been two here for two teams to use, lessening the burden. One was currently in the possession of the bombardment team. That team was supposed to use the large windows in the ritual room to select and aim at their targets.

With the occasional shots making it through the protective magics from the airship, Arkk couldn’t take the risk of leaving open windows everywhere. The tower was fully sealed.

Some things were going well. His men, combined with his attentive efforts to keep them as safe as possible, forced the Eternal Empire back from the tower. They hadn’t done quite as much damage as Arkk would have hoped for. Nothing decisive. The Eternal Empire wasn’t fleeing in terror. They just took a step back to reevaluate their strategy in taking the fortress.

Allowing them time to plot wasn’t the best option he had. Still, he was making use of the reprieve. Besides ensuring everyone saw the healers in the infirmary, Arkk conducted a slew of repairs. Lesser servants were repairing damaged traps, building new ones, and narrowing certain passages to the point where he found it unlikely that bulky knights would be able to continue their invasion. That would let him focus on other matters.

“Trebuchets launching the first volley. Looks like Evestani is setting up magical bombardment as well.”

“As expected,” Arkk said.

He watched the crystal ball, following the trail the heavy stones arced through the air. They struck the shield, failing to penetrate. Instead, the swirling winds carried them off, throwing them to the side where they crashed down into the forest below. One of the trebuchets hadn’t launched a stone. A fireball exploded against the winds, doing little harm.

Arkk bit his lip. “Eyes on the avatar?”

“Center of the camp,” Harvey said instantly as the perspective flipped again. “Seems to be overseeing the assembly of bombardment rituals… He is staring directly at us with a heavy scowl on his face.”

Arkk clasped his hands together. The avatar was present but hadn’t launched one of those golden beams yet. Arkk assumed he wished to wait until the shield went down, just to ensure he did the most damage possible to the building. If Arkk had learned one thing about his opponent, it was that he was prone to rash decisions if he got frustrated. His encounter at Gleeful was proof enough of that.

If the shield managed to weather a few minutes of bombardment without apparent falter, the avatar would use his golden ray to destroy it. He had never used a large ray twice in a short timeframe, which told Arkk that he couldn’t use it too rapidly. So, he would only get one shot. Either destroy the shield or hit the tower. Not both.

Arkk dropped a white marble onto the bombardment team’s receptacle. Zullie’s hastily modified spell had better work.

“Another i-incoming attack from the airships!” Luthor shouted.

Clenching his teeth, Arkk pulled all the lesser servants off the exterior of the tower. Just in time.

Every cannon on the Empire’s airship fired as one, blasting a hole in the roaring wind of the shield. Several shots made it through, knocking chunks of the tower’s reinforced walls to pieces. But the real threat came after. Before the shield repaired itself, that whale ship vomited large globs of red, meaty mass.

Two splattered against the reforming shield, but four made it through. They struck the side of the tower, sliding down with long red streaks in their wake. He immediately felt the Heart tolling the alarm bells. The egg-like globs stuck to the tower’s walls, digging thin tendrils into cracks in the dark bricks. They wormed their way in, draining magic from him to use to fuel their growth. The eggs swelled, forming more tendrils to dig in and drain even more magic. A cascading effect of exponential growth.

If he hadn’t had Fortress Al-Mir, if this had been his only fortress, he would likely have died. The first one that got through shocked him. But now, he had a tactic.

Teleporting a lesser servant out to the side of the tower, just above one of the eggs, it swiftly constructed a small platform. As soon as the platform was stable, Arkk teleported himself.

The roaring wind filled his ears as his cloak flapped and fluttered in the gale. A misting of moisture dusted his cheeks. Had he been unprepared, he likely would have been swept off into the protective storm. Instead, he crouched down.

“Incendiary Explosio,” he intoned.

The egg below him shuddered, reacting to the surge of magic in the air. His spell ignited a brilliant blaze, a concentrated ball of flames that detonated on impact. A fiery shockwave rippled across the tower’s surface. The egg burst apart, its fleshy tendrils snapping and curling into ash as they were consumed by the flames.

Arkk barely paused to admire his handiwork. The three remaining eggs clung stubbornly to the tower, each pulsing ominously as they continued to siphon his magic. He didn’t know if there was more to them than he had seen so far. Their purpose could simply be to drain magic… or they could drain it in build-up to something worse. Arkk bet on the latter. Of everything he had faced so far, these eggs seemed made specifically to deal with people like him.

To deal with fortresses.

He teleported to the next platform the moment the lesser servant finished it. Another Incendiary Explosio ridded him of one of the eggs. Two more teleports and two more spells and the tower was clean. Every available servant moved to the tower’s exterior at his command, scurrying across its surface to repair all the damage.

A tug on the link had Arkk teleporting straight back to the command center. Out on the exterior, he was open and vulnerable. If the avatar fired off one of those beams while he was out there, he could kiss his life goodbye without a doubt.

“Report,” Arkk barked as soon as he reappeared.

“Evestani bombardment rituals are fully set up and staffed,” Camilla said. The fairy stared at the crystal ball with worry etched on her face. “I thought they were going to use them, but…they aren’t activating them. Waiting for something?”

“Maybe t-timing them with the airship bombardments?”

“Or the golden ray to take down the shield?”

“Maybe they don’t want to hit the Empire soldiers?”

“Doubt it,” Harvey said with a shake of his head. “Speaking of soldiers, the King’s Army is almost directly underneath the tower.”

Arkk flicked his gaze to the tunnels underground, noting the army. They were making their way through slower than Arkk had expected. Maybe wary of the noise and explosions above ground. “I’ll go speak with them. We should have a short reprieve before the Empire launches another volley at us. Alert me if anything notable changes in the situation.”

It was a bit concerning. Three times, those eggs had made it through the barrier. The first time, only one egg hit the side of the tower. It was a good thing too, given his delay in dealing with it. The second time, two hit. Now four.

It was a good thing he had managed to take out so many of those whale ships before the fighting even started. If there had been nine to fifteen of the things, he could only imagine how covered in eggs the tower would have been. Arkk doubted he would have been able to burn them off before dealing with them.

One was bad enough.

“Mags,” Arkk said, appearing a short distance in front of the Prince’s commander. Claire was at his side, as was usual when meeting with anyone from the Prince’s faction. He gave her a small hand signal while Mags stumbled back in exaggerated shock, letting her know that he was who he appeared to be. Just a little precaution.

“You—” Mags started, only for Arkk to interrupt him.

He didn’t have time for games. “The tower is under attack on all sides. We’re holding strong for now,” Arkk said, truthfully, though perhaps downplaying the situation somewhat. “Evestani’s forces have set up in a bombardment position a short distance away. Their army is primarily made up of normal men and women with only their avatar as an exception. Their army is likely the only part of the conflict your army can meaningfully contribute toward. So, I have taken the liberty of extending the tunnel out behind their forces. You’ll be able to emerge with an advantage.

“Deal with them or cower here,” Arkk continued, speaking a little louder to perhaps spur on some of his men. He still wasn’t sure if Mags was the demon. Given the shapeshifting ability, Mags might be real sometimes but might also be a demon at other times. Arkk could never be certain with whom he was speaking unless they were an employee. “I don’t believe they’re going to play a consequential role in the current battle regardless.”

Mags narrowed his eyes, twisting his pudgy face into a frown. “What of the avatar?”

“I have a plan to deal with him. Though… he is undoubtedly an enemy of the Prince,” Arkk said, watching how Mags reacted carefully. “Perhaps I should leave him for you to deal with.”

Mags didn’t give anything away, one way or another. “I’ve read the reports. Your reports. You expect regular men to deal with a monster like that? Preposterous!”

“I believe someone in your ranks stands a chance against him,” Arkk muttered. Taking a breath, he spoke louder. “As I said, I have a plan to deal with him. Ideally, he’ll be dealt with before you arrive. Realistically, I’ll use the chaos you create to ensure he goes down. In the latter case, I hope to do so before your forces suffer too many losses.”

“Thank you for your generosity,” Mags said with a sneer.

Arkk just raised an eyebrow. “Is this not what you wanted? Is this not what you came here for? This army was on the verge of mutiny against both you and me because they were being sidelined. Now is the time for you to step up. The blood of Prince Cedric’s enemies awaits spilling.”

A small smile spread across Mags’ face. “That it does,” he said. Turning, he raised his voice. “Well? You heard the man! We’ve got heretics to slaughter!”

Arkk raised his other eyebrow, shooting a glance at Claire. The dark elf shrugged, her afterimages copying her motions. “I’ll leave you to it then,” Arkk said. “Just follow the tunnel. You can’t miss the exits.”

He and Claire teleported away before Mags could argue further. If he was the demon, hopefully he would keep himself busy for a while and not interfere with Arkk. If he wasn’t the demon, his distraction would still have value.

Another tug across the link hit Arkk just as he reappeared in the command center. He felt a moment of panic, snapping his gaze to the scrying team, only to realize it hadn’t come from them. It came from afar.

Agnete was back home once more. This time, with a caravan of mechanical soldiers at her back.

Arkk took in a deep breath, relishing in the one note of good news he had seen in the last hour.

 

 

Dakka stood back, watching with narrowed eyes.

The legs of the walking fortress were equipped with magimechanical defenses, a joint venture by Perr’ok and Morvin. There wasn’t much to them. Metal wheels attached to a magical array that made the wheels spin. The large scythes attached to the wheels turned them into defenses that should have sliced-n-diced any human who dared to walk into it.

It worked. The first of the invaders stopped short, not daring to move forward. A few at the front tried disabling the trap by slamming their swords down in the way of the scythes, only for those dark blades to slice through the metal like it wasn’t even there. All the while, the men and women at Dakka’s back launched their assault on the invaders.

The black-armored soldiers had allegedly shrugged off siege magic. Dakka wasn’t sure what a few dinky lightning bolts or balls of fire were supposed to accomplish. Unlike the gold version of these soldiers, they couldn’t even splash acid into their helmets. They lacked the grated visors, instead having a smooth front with a wide visor of glass letting them see out. Dakka had no idea how they breathed. Her own helmet felt stuffy and it was full of small gaps and holes to try to alleviate that.

That didn’t stop the battlecasters from trying. They threw everything they had at the intruders. Flickering lights in a myriad of colors dazzled around Dakka’s peripheral vision. Green fire, black-and-purple bolts of shadow, an alchemical bomb flung over the spinning blades, an illusory sword jutting out of the ground before shattering into a thousand violet fragments… Someone even whipped out one of the counter-demon spells.

A black void filled with distant stars drifted past the barricades with almost lazy effort. It started small. A faint star in the middle of the air. Halfway across the room, well away from its caster, it erupted into a wide orb of night sky. Crackling tendrils jumped out from it, latching onto the ground, walls, the barricade, and even passing spells. The reinforced elements of the fortress ignored the tendrils, weathering the void. A lance made from ice fell in as it tried to shoot past. A pair of fireballs ended up swirling around and around until one of the tendrils absorbed them. Then they fell in as well.

The surge of spells from behind Dakka slowed. She could feel the collective bated breaths at her back, waiting to see if that void accomplished anything or if the assembled knights trying to figure out a way past the trap would just shrug it off as they had ignored everything else.

The Eternal Empire backed away, but they couldn’t go very far. One man would have had plenty of time to descend the steps and cross over the traps they had already disabled, clearing the path, were it not for one small problem. They were packed in. The stairs in the tower legs were large and wide, spacious enough to facilitate transporting those walkers, but trying to cram a few thousand people up one leg?

It wasn’t that the Eternal Empire were idiots. They weren’t. They had left themselves plenty of space between units to avoid exactly this. It just wasn’t quite enough.

Dakka imagined they were used to fighting in wide open spaces, outdoors, rather than inside the tower’s confines. She and the rest of her men had trained for the opposite since building the tower.

The closest of the knights didn’t back far enough away. He raised his shield, huddling behind it. Made from the same material as the rest of his armor, Dakka half expected him to ignore the orb.

A tendril lanced out, curling around the shield. While the thin void fizzled out after a moment, the effect remained, picking the shield up and dragging it toward the central orb. The knight fought against it, planting his feet as he tried to pull back. The brute force was relentless, a gravitational hunger. The knight slid closer, his boots skidding across the smooth floor of Fortress Al-Lavik with sparks in their wake.

Deciding the shield was a liability, the knight pulled at a strap, letting it free to fly off toward the orb. But it was too late. He got too close. More tendrils snapped out, licking at his boots and gloves. The sparks of his boots disappeared as his feet left the ground.

That cosmic predator pulled him ever closer. His form began to distort in the eerie light. The process was subtle at first, a slight elongation of his limbs as he tried to swim through the air back to his companions. It was as if he were being stretched on a taffy puller’s rack. One of his fellows tried to reach out, grabbing hold of his arms, only for the tendrils to lick him as well.

The distortion grew more pronounced as the screaming began. Both knights weren’t pulled toward the orb so much as they simply fell into it. As they fell, the elongation grew. Their limbs stretched out like molten glass dripping off a punty. The screaming stopped at some point. Dakka wasn’t sure when. Somewhere between knight and thin filament.

They didn’t get a chance to fall into the orb, however. Not like the spells and shield it had eaten. Too early, it splashed against the back wall, dissipating into thin wisps of void before snuffing out completely.

The thin strands of metal and flesh clattered to the floor, still wiggling and twisting as if the two knights were still alive, thrashing against their newfound fate.

Dakka hoped they weren’t, for their sakes.

A brief silence fell over both sides of the battle. She wasn’t sure that anyone had seen something like that before. Not even the spellcaster who used it. Arkk had explicitly warned everyone against using such spells unless they were up against something truly insurmountable. Hardly anyone even knew them, as far as she knew. The few battlecasters trained to use those spells obviously hadn’t used them against anything living.

Two people behind Dakka collapsed. One, Dakka knew, was the caster. Based on the wobble before the fall, she pegged the fall as magical exhaustion—another reason not to use those spells. The other, one of her orcs, wasn’t a spellcaster at all. Brann’on just fainted.

Both vanished, whisked away to elsewhere by Arkk.

That broke whatever stupefying spell everyone had fallen under. The Eternal Empire let out a collective roar of anger before charging forward.

It was only when they started moving that Dakka realized the spell had taken out more than just the two soldiers. The trap that had been keeping them at bay now sat twisted and broken off to one side of the room.

“Ready up,” Dakka barked, fingers gripping tight around her scythe’s haft. “They go no further!”

Dakka swung her scythe, leaving a trail of darkness in its wake.

Arkk concentrated, eyes closed, upon his throne in the command room. Leaning forward, he covered his face with his hands and watched through his omniscience of his territory.

A sword slipped through a thin gap in an orc’s armor. It didn’t make it far. Just enough to draw blood. He pulled the orc back, leaving the enemy knight falling forward with the sudden lack of resistance. Two others were on the unstable knight immediately. The shadow scythes didn’t easily slide through the Eternal Empire’s armor, not like they did with just about anything else they touched, but they still cut. A few heavy hacks to the same spot and one of the shadow scythes punctured through, its tip diving deep into the knight’s spine.

In another part of the fortress, the Shieldbreakers engaged with their group of opponents. Enchanted weaponry crashed against enchanted armor, both nullifying the other’s effects. Brute force won out there. Aya and Viola were both a hair away from getting a sword to the face. Arkk moved them a step back, opening a way forward for the taurus Ellen to slam down a massive battle axe.

Richter led a team of soldiers, backed by his battlecasters and several gorgon. Unfortunately for the latter, the helmets of the Empire didn’t let them effectively utilize their caustic venom, nor could they petrify any of their targets through those reflective visors. Their entire group was losing ground. Arkk kept everyone out of danger to the best of his ability, moving anyone too injured straight to the infirmary, but he needed to do something about the situation before the Empire broke through fully. A shuffling of the combatants…

Arkk threw Kia into the mix. She had been warned that she might be teleported abruptly, so she barely flinched before dozens of afterimages drew her two-handed sword. More effective than the shadow scythes, she cut their armor with ease. If something required two swings, there were two afterimages in place. A dervish of death, she spun through the enemy, buying Richter some breathing room while Arkk tried to find a more permanent solution.

She was, after all, only one person.

Claire was at Arkk’s side, ready for surprises. Arkk wasn’t expecting the demon to pop up and take his head off, but he couldn’t discount anything at the moment.

Dakka’s team was losing ground as well. They had spellcasters but not as many of the Shadow Knights, too few compared to what was needed to fully hold back the onrush. Arkk teleported Dakka directly in front of his seat, her arms already in mid-swing, and cast a haste spell on her. In less time than it took to blink, she was back in the fray. Her super-speed enhanced swing easily lopped the head of one of the knights off. The spell wouldn’t last forever, but it would give her a temporary edge.

Arkk moved his focus to the next—

“Sir! The airship! It’s plummeting out of the sky.”

Arkk threw Vissh into the infirmary as he looked up. For just a moment, he felt a spark of hope. Whatever fire his lightning bolt caused must have damaged some critical component of the airship. Maybe a ritual array that kept it afloat, maybe some structurally important piece of wood. Whatever it was, it crashing to the ground would rid him of at least one problem.

One look at Luthor’s face and that hope snuffed out.

“It’s coming straight for us,” the chameleon beastman said. “And it isn’t a-alone.”

Arkk clicked his tongue as he repositioned Franna out of the way of an enemy sword, leaving her with a clear shot at the soldier’s side. “Not alone?”

Harvey, crouched over the crystal ball with large floppy ears hanging back over his head, looked up as Luthor looked back to the ball. “One of the whale ships is coming down as well. No idea where it came from.”

If it turned invisible before positioning itself overhead, they never would have noticed. Annoying. Arkk reflexively checked on Lexa. The gremlin was on her way back to the tower, mission presumably accomplished. He would have to keep an eye out and make sure to teleport her to the tower the moment she came in range. “But they’re both visible now? And they’re both coming in range of our siege magic?”

“Yes and yes.”

Arkk dropped several colored marbles for Lelith to decipher. At the same time, he dropped Maria into the infirmary and moved two battlecasters out of the way of an enemy spell.

Why come closer when it puts them in range of magic? The airship had been maintaining its bombardment from high up just fine earlier. They could have protective spells of their own. Arkk expected it, even. But a bombardment would wear down the spellcasters eventually and with his reserve of glowstones, he could power offensive magics far longer than he imagined any spellcasters could last. Even a highly capable inquisitor like Sylvara would wear down eventually.

Speaking of, Arkk couldn’t teleport Sylvara around as she hadn’t actually joined Company Al-Mir. She was a powerful spellcaster and adept with a blade, but he was still reconsidering his decision to let her join in the fighting.

Rather than teleport her away from danger, Arkk teleported in an alchemical bomb—one of the smaller ones—directly behind the soldier attacking her. The explosion wouldn’t harm the soldier through his armor but it would knock him around. It wasn’t a trick he could pull too frequently. Mercury was in the lab making more, but they were still limited in quantity.

“Counter a-attacks on the airships underway,” Luthor said as a bright green flash lit up the narrowed windows of the command center.

Arkk nodded his head, refocusing on making sure as many of his men survived this as possible. For as careful as he was being, for as quickly as he maneuvered people out of danger, he had already failed two of his men and the fight was only beginning.

“Bombardment having trouble hitting the ships. T-They’re moving too fast. No sign of them slowing.”

“Do they intend to ram into us?” Arkk asked, teleporting a few dozen lesser servants onto the exterior of the tower. Most of the windows had already been sealed up or reduced in size. The last few gaps were nothing more than a liability at this point.

“It will only be a few moments more if they—”

The protective spell around the tower started up again, swirling the wind around into a mostly opaque barrier. It formed just in time to avoid something… strange.

Arkk cast his gaze over the crystal ball, frowning. The whale ship tried something. It opened up, roughly where he presumed a mouth would be on an actual whale, and spat something out. A large glob of reddish-purple meat hurtled downwards, moving even faster than the ships. The gale of the protective dome sheered it apart, sending a splattering of red mist off into the distant parts of the forest.

“Didn’t get a good look at whatever that was,” Luthor said after a moment. “More are coming down. Doesn’t look like they’re getting through the shield spell.”

“They’re finally slowing down,” Harvey said. The flopkin opened his mouth to say more, only to hesitate as his eyes widened. “Cannons underneath the main airship are deploying. They’re going to bombard us again.”

“The bombardment team will handle it,” Arkk said, hoping he was right. With the army outside the tower, he couldn’t exactly go out there and try to lightning bolt them off his back again. Maybe he could stand atop the tower, but that would just put him closer to their cannons.

“T-The whale ship doesn’t look like it has defenses, but the other ship is keeping close. Some random wind keeps picking up right when a spell is about to hit them.”

“Not random then,” Arkk said. He shuffled around a few groups in active combat, ensuring the ones who had been fighting since the start got at least a brief moment of reprieve. “The other ship has some way of defending the whales.”

He leaned back and closed his eyes again, diverting all his attention elsewhere. He kept the battle in a constant place in the back of his mind, maneuvering people around as needed, but he quickly refocused on the lesser servants trying to destroy the ritual holding the tower in place. Much of the enemy army was still outside the tower. He doubted all of them could make it inside, not before the stairwells ended up filled with bodies. If the tower were free, however, he would be able to crush the army and end the siege all in one move.

With the ritual active, he had to break the circle or force the magic to redirect in order to disrupt it. Or kill whoever was maintaining it. With such a large ritual circle, he had no clue where its operators could be. Thus, he had been working on damaging the circle itself. It was more resilient than he had initially thought. It kept… repairing itself.

Which did make an unfortunate amount of sense. It was designed to capture his tower. If the tower walking across the ritual circle broke it, it wouldn’t have been very effective. It had to have a way to withstand or otherwise regenerate the extreme forces of the tower’s legs coming down on the ground.

While several lesser servants continued to eat away at it—maybe its regeneration component would break under the continued strain—he had even more servants out looking for whatever was powering the circle. He guessed a minimum of eight people were out there, standing in designated spots to fuel it. Maximum of twelve. It was a large ritual but it couldn’t possibly be as strenuous as blowing open a hole in reality to meet with a deity.

Not one of the servants had detected a human out there yet. Nor any glowstones that might be powering the ritual. He had scoured a quarter of it already, which meant he should have found between two and four people, but there was nothing. Either they were all concentrated in one spot… or they were using the Eternal Empire’s cloaking ability to hide away. If the latter was the case, he wasn’t quite sure what the best option was.

“Sir. E-Evestani is marching out of Woodly Rhyme.”

“After all that effort in setting up their defense, they’re going to come out to play?” Arkk scoffed. “Couldn’t stand to be showed up by the Empire, huh?”

He was significantly less concerned with them at the moment. The only thing they had going for them was the avatar. The rest of their soldiers would die to bombardment or conventional weaponry much easier than the Empire’s knights. In fact…

“Where are Mags and his men? They should be in the tunnels behind us, right?”

Harvey and Luthor both leaned over the crystal ball. Normally, that was something he would have looked into himself. Keeping an eye on every little bit of fighting going on was taking too much concentration, so he left them to it while Arkk occupied his time continuing the same thing he had been doing for the past twenty minutes, making sure his enemies died and his friends and allies didn’t.

The flopkin leaned back, nodding his head after a short moment. “Yes, Sir. They’re moving forward. Looks like their pace has slowed because of multiple branching paths and narrowed tunnels, but they’re headed toward us.”

Pausing his focus on the battle for a brief instant, Arkk removed the lesser servants from the tower’s exterior and set several to digging proper tunnels while one other plopped down right in front of Mags. The portly man didn’t flinch. For a moment, Arkk thought Mags was going to attack it, but the servant doing its best to beckon Mags forward made him rethink his actions.

“Check in on the tunnels occasionally. It isn’t a priority. Alert me when they get underneath our rear foot. In the meantime…”

If the golden avatar was on his way, Arkk had a present for him.

Unfortunately, his original plan of having either Priscilla or Agnete deliver it was not an option at the moment. Priscilla was unconscious and Agnete was directing a small army of her own toward the Anvil’s portals. She would be through shortly, but in time?

He wasn’t sure. Maybe. Maybe not.

One other entered his sphere of influence right as the thought crossed his mind. Reaching across space and time, he teleported the short gremlin directly in front of him. With her came a stench. She was covered from head to foot in some kind of tar that smelled of fetid offal. Taken aback by the sudden smell and her appearance, he didn’t even get the first word in.

Lexa tensed, drawing her blades in surprise at the sudden relocation, only to look up at Arkk with a look of surprise. Squelching that surprise, she shuddered. “That thing was horrid. You would not believe—”

“Sorry,” Arkk said. “We’re under attack. No time for a proper debriefing.”

“But—”

“Not under imminent threat of attack. The battle is ongoing. The Eternal Empire has trapped the tower and we’re fighting off their army.”

Lexa’s eyes widened before she clenched her fists around her daggers even tighter. “What do you need of me?”

“Have you ever considered the profession of a diplomat?”

“What?” Lexa cocked her head to the side. “Are you mixing me up with Edvin?”

Arkk shook his head, teleporting a dozen more of his men around during the short action. “No. You see, I have a gift for the leader of the enemy army. I’m sorry I can’t give you time to rest after your successful mission, but I think you might be the only person who can deliver it.”

“A gift… A gift,” she said, slowly grinning. “For the avatar?”

“Just a little something between opposing commanders. Wouldn’t want him to think I never thought about him.”

Lexa’s grin turned especially vicious. “How soon can I go?”

“Soon.”

 

 

“It’s good to see you again.”

Ilya nodded her head, clasping hands with Hawkwood. She had wondered where White Company’s leader and its remnants had gone. The last she saw of him, he had been playing attendant to Prince Cedric. A fairly concerning position given the Prince’s reputation. When he dropped off the face of the world, Arkk had feared the worst. It was nice to know that fear was entirely unfounded.

“You as well,” Ilya said. “Shame Arkk isn’t here. He would have been relieved to know you’re alright.”

Hawkwood’s neatly trimmed mustache twitched. He looked much better than he had around the time of Elmshadow’s assault. Like he had actually managed to get some rest in the last few weeks. Thinner, probably from the constant marching and war rations, he still managed to jiggle his stomach as he chuckled. “You thought something happened to me? I can’t die yet. Too much work on my desk.”

“It’s just that, with the Prince, we weren’t sure…”

“Ah. I understand,” Hawkwood said, frowning as he rubbed at his chin. “To be honest, I’m not sure what I think of Cedric. At times, he acts the ruthless man his reputation portrays him as. Five minutes later, he offers a more gentle hand, caring for his men and his country. Regardless of his current mood, I don’t believe he would be one to throw away subjects both loyal and useful as White Company are.”

Ilya pressed her lips together, wondering if that demon of his took on even Cedric’s guise on occasion. It would explain the discrepancies in his actions. Or he was ill in the head. The latter had empirical evidence. No one with their head on straight would consider summoning a demon, let alone go through with it. Even Vezta, a monster whose thoughts didn’t align with those of anyone normal, found the very prospect loathsome.

Rather than voice her thoughts on the Prince, Ilya let the subject change. It wasn’t productive at the moment to start whining about the bastard.

“So you’re leading the charge into Evestani?” Hawkwood asked, cocking an eyebrow. “A Swiftwing reported that we would have allies, but I never expected you to be our reinforcements. This isn’t the same tower that retook Elmshadow, is it?”

Hawkwood took a step back, turning his head back and forth as he looked around the main entryway which was currently flat against the ground for ease of access. His logistic personnel rushed back and forth, carrying boxes and supplies inside around him. The soldiers marched inside in twin single-file lines, taking stairways up to the barracks levels. It was obviously not the same tower. The walls were far more shadowy than brick-like, the architecture was more akin to a church—especially one of those temples in the Underworld—and it was far, far smaller. Still huge for a giant walking building, but not that big relative to Arkk’s tower.

“We built another one.”

“The fact that you can build more than one is… alarming. Didn’t Arkk say it required a rare magical artifact? The kind that simply couldn’t be found anymore.”

“We found one more.”

“If you’ve found two of these relics in such a short amount of time, I imagine you have a third somewhere else. Perhaps more?”

They hadn’t. Not unless Arkk was keeping something else from her. Ilya didn’t think he would do so. Not after he had come clean about his undead army. But with so many moving parts within Company Al-Mir, it was possible that he had simply forgotten to mention something like that. Either way, “I don’t think I’m at liberty to say.”

With a knowing nod, Hawkwood smiled. “Of course not. I’d expect nothing else. And if our invasion of Evestani goes as smoothly as the retaking of Elmshadow because of this tower, I shan’t complain.”

Ilya wasn’t sure that retaking Elmshadow had been smooth. Plenty of people perished, including a significant fraction of White Company. But, she supposed that compared to a more conventional battle, it likely felt smooth. “We won’t have any of the specialists,” Ilya said. “No dragonoids, inquisitors, or purifiers. On the plus side, we aren’t likely to have to face anything like that either. I imagine Evestani’s avatar is a bit preoccupied at the moment. Near as we can tell, the Eternal Empire is also focusing the entirety of their forces on Arkk.”

A long moment of thought-filled silence passed. Hawkwood’s expression shifted from pleased at hearing that to a dour frown. “Two full armies plus that avatar?”

“Before you suggest we turn around to help him, we are helping him.” Ilya turned to the entrance of her tower, knowing exactly how many men were still meandering outside while waiting for the queues to move. They were almost loaded up. “As soon as everyone is inside, we’re setting out.

“Today is the day Evestani falls.”

Whatever else happened, the Eternal Empire’s airship backed off. That was an opportunity that Arkk couldn’t ignore. Before he even got to his feet, the tower was moving once again.

He had not been idle during the delay. Weathering the bombardment gave his lesser servants time to burrow ahead, digging long and narrow tunnels poised to receive the legs of the tower. It would let them move rapidly, much as they had when first marching out of Elmshadow, at least for a short distance. It wouldn’t be as fast as if they had marched unimpeded, but it would let them make up a little lost time.

They had to be ready. The airship could begin bombardment again at any moment.

At this point, Arkk had no clue where the deserters had ended up. There were only three real possibilities. Either they had fled and deserted for real, they had gotten lost somewhere in the forests and Arkk had passed them, or that airship had spotted them earlier and already wiped them off the face of the planet. Whatever the case, they were nothing more than figurants in the conflict going forward.

Arkk hoped they survived if only to keep the Prince off his back. Otherwise, he couldn’t care less.

The engagement had begun. Whether or not he found them, he could only follow through in ending this.

“Coming up on our opponent’s reinforcements,” Rekk’ar said.

Arkk peered out the window, using his one remaining hand to hold up a spyglass. His left eye didn’t have the dark line through it that his right eye did, but he still brought the spyglass to his right eye before having to correct himself. His vision wasn’t perfect, even in his left eye, but it was good enough to see.

The reinforcements weren’t more flying ships. Nor were they the whale ships. Of the latter, the one that had taken to the skies was still unaccounted for while Lexa was ensuring one other couldn’t take off. Best he knew, the third was still grounded, though Arkk doubted it would remain so for long after what happened to the second.

No, the reinforcements were down below. Where Evestani had erected their barricades and began reinforcing Woodly Rhyme, the Eternal Empire’s army marched forward. It wasn’t their full reserves. Roughly a hundred score of their black and white armored soldiers stood in a wide field. The ordered rows and columns held fast with no sign of panic or chaos. Each step of the tower sent a jolt through them, but not one turned and fled.

Arkk wasn’t sure of the wisdom of splitting their army. Both inter-army divisions between Evestani and the Eternal Empire as well as the latter sending only two thousand to meet with him. They certainly had some kind of plan. Arkk almost hoped they did, or else the tower would crush them underfoot as easily as it crushed the trees.

The soldiers were alone down there. No trebuchets or siege engines. He didn’t even see any sign of magic among them, both in terms of rituals and battlecasters.

“Spot anything?” Arkk called out, turning to move backward.

A flat-clawed hand thumping against his chest stopped him with more force than he expected. “Stop moving,” Hale grumbled as she worked his flesh with her favorite spell. She was in the process of regrowing his arm. Already, he could see scales forming around his shoulder, roughly similar to those of Priscilla and Hale.

It itched.

“Sorry,” he muttered as the scrying team responded.

“No heavy weaponry or glowing tents,” Luthor called back, confirming what Arkk saw through his hazy eyes. “Just a bunch of soldiers. Most carry longswords.”

“Enemy airship maintaining their increased distance,” Drek said right after. “Looks like they put the fires out. I’d expect them to move forward again.”

Arkk flinched. “Not what I want to hear.”

“Thought you ought to know anyway.”

He had a point, but Arkk wasn’t sure what he would or could do if that thing started attacking again. He had just about killed himself the first time around. Zullie, Savren, and the rest of the research team were working full-tilt on some kind of extreme-range solution for him but he didn’t know when or even if that would bear results. He could try to hit it with a lightning bolt again. Maybe with a few more precautions.

He had a feeling Rekk’ar might not let him. The orc’s eyes kept drifting over to Arkk whenever he thought Arkk was occupied with something else. It was a little touching, if Arkk were being honest. There was genuine concern in Rekk’ar’s constant glances. Knowing Rekkar, the concern in his eyes was probably more for his own sake than for Arkk’s, not wanting the one in command of the tower to pass out and leave everyone stranded, but it was still touching.

Rekk’ar didn’t have anything to worry about. Arkk knew he had been injured. He could see the lack of an arm clear as day. It didn’t hurt. Not even a little. Even jostling his shoulder only felt strange in that he was expecting a familiar weight there. Hale had done good work numbing him.

Except for the itch as new muscle and sinew spread out beneath her fingertips.

Under lighter circumstances, Arkk would probably have been freaking out about now. He had lost an arm! But, at the same time, he was cognizant that it wasn’t the debilitating injury it should have been. Not with Hale. He had almost turned her down, thinking he could always go to Agnete. Even before visiting the Anvil, Agnete had built a set of mechanical legs for Katt’am that worked well enough. But Agnete was busy and Hale wasn’t. Arkk was nothing if not practical.

He could always chop it off again if he decided to go the machine route. And wasn’t that a strange thought to float through his mind.

Even outside of knowing he could replace the arm, there was something else suppressing the panic. His arm just felt too… small to care about. It was a strange thing to think, given that his arm was practically a fifth of him, but the feeling remained. An arm was just an arm. It wasn’t like he lost his Heart.

“I don’t like this.”

It was Arkk’s turn to look to Rekk’ar. The orc glared through the small hole in the window, staring down at the army assembled ahead of them.

“Something bad is going to happen. I’d be browning my pants if I was ordered to face down this fortress with nothing but a sword and shield. They ain’t even flinching.”

“Could they carry enchanted weapons that they think will cut the reinforced stone?”

“And what?” Rekk’ar said, turning on Arkk. “Hope to bring down the tower by nicking the legs? Even if their swords could cut stone like a knife in a bucket of lard, only the most delusional would think they stood a chance at harming the tower before it stomped on them.”

“Maybe they think they can rush the doors and get inside before the legs—”

“Large-scale magic array!” Drek interrupted with an alarmed shout. “Dead ahead!”

The legs of the tower slammed down, stopping its forward momentum instantly. Glowing white lines surged through the forest between Arkk and the army, forming a massive ring with several crisscrossing lines. Arkk recognized some parts of it instantly. An entrapment array. There were some added bells and whistles that he didn’t understand, but its main purpose was to keep whatever was inside from moving.

Whatever was inclusive of the two tower legs that were stuck inside.

“They’re holding us in place,” Arkk said, pulling up the spyglass again. The army wasn’t standing still any longer. They were advancing. If they stepped on the ritual circle, they would become trapped as well… but of course, the army setting up the trap would have some countermeasures.

“You might have been right about them rushing the doors,” Rekk’ar grumbled. “We fight them out there?”

Arkk shook his head. “I have full battlefield control within the tower. Not enough land claimed outside it to be effective. It also funnels their army into tight corridors, taking away their number advantage.”

“They would know that. They must have a plan.”

“Well, you think on that. My plan is to get us unstuck as soon as possible. I’m having the lesser servants eat their way up to the surface to try to disrupt the ritual. And…”

Arkk dropped a yellow marble into the slot down in the bombardment team’s chamber. In less than thirty seconds, a rain of colorful fire cascaded down on the ritual array. Boulders fell from the sky. A dark cloud welled up, lazily wafting around the tower’s highest point. Black rainfall started, first as a drip, as if it were water wrung from a filthy rag. It quickly accelerated, becoming a monsoon of black. Trees withered and dried out, the grass and bushes of the forest below first turned an unhealthy yellow, then dried out to a crispy brown, before finally turning to black necrotic plants, dead in every way that mattered.

The Eternal Empire didn’t care. They marched forward. An acid-yellow flame hit the ground ahead of one of their units, but the soldiers marched through. The caustic fire licked their armor but did nothing more. The black rain just made their armor glisten, doing nothing to stop them. Only the house-sized boulder crashing down did any damage. For all Arkk knew, the soldiers it hit were still alive, just pinned underneath.

It was like an entire army outfitted with that golden knight’s armor.

The shadow scythes could stop it. The magic in those dark blades ruined whatever enchantments had been on that armor. They cut through with some resistance, but easily compared to anything else they had tried.

Arkk idly wondered who had copied who. Had the Eternal Empire captured some of that golden armor? Or the other way around? If the Empire outfitted all their soldiers with indestructible armor, it certainly lent credence to Rekk’ar’s report of them never losing battles back in their homeland.

“An army that doesn’t know defeat,” Arkk mumbled to himself as he lowered his spyglass. “Guess I’ll have to deliver their first. Rekk’ar, I’m moving you to the orc barracks. Inform them of the goings-on. Organize a defense at positions six, eight, ten, and fourteen. You have command. Tell them, Dakka especially, that the enemy equipment may act like that golden knight’s armor. She’ll best know how to explain it to everyone else.”

“You don’t think you’ll stop them from reaching the tower?”

“I’ll certainly try. But, as we expected, they had a plan. Best to prepare for the conclusion of that plan.”

Rekk’ar grunted, nodding his head. He was gone before he could finish.

Arkk stayed where he was, narrowing his eyes. He found himself trying to blink away the dark streak that ran through the right side of his vision. Useless. “Alert me immediately if anything about the situation changes,” he said, looking to the scrying team. With no further preamble, he teleported to the bombardment team.

He grimaced at the slight flare of pain once outside Hale’s presence, but the activity in the ritual room provided a distraction.

“—ignoring everything—”

“Focus the forward groups!”

“Can’t maintain circle three any longer. Necrotizing rainclouds dissipating. Replacement glowstones required.”

“Focus on disruption, not destruction!” Lelith barked. “More boulders. Quit with the flames. They’re useless.”

“Circle four deactivated. Circle one already instantiating boulders as rapidly as possible.”

“Would the siege shield stop them?”

“With how they’re ignoring everything else? Doubt it.”

The entire room was in such chaos that nobody noticed his arrival. Igvile, Bertram, Lelith, and Kassa rushed around the room. Lelith reconfigured rituals, rapidly altering their targets, while the others hurried around activating them. Igvile kept up with the regular status reports and Bertram seemed in charge of the glowstones. Their movements meshed together perfectly even as they argued over possible solutions to the enemy army.

“Circle thirteen prepared. Circle seven deactivated.”

Arkk found he had little to add to the situation. His suggestion would have been to add more boulders to the lineup, given that the boulders were the only thing he had seen that had worked. But his team was more than capable of coming to that conclusion on their own.

“Activating the—”

Arkk teleported away, reappearing in his research team’s library. They were engaged in a flurry of activity as well, running about. Zullie called out for notes from passages to be read aloud while Savren and Morvin rapidly exchanged papers between them. Unlike the bombardment team, they noticed his arrival. Zullie first, then Gretchen, then the others.

Zullie grimaced. “You aren’t here to change our project again, are you? We’ve switched focus three times today alone. Nothing will get done if you keep doing that.”

The exasperation on everyone’s faces at the prospect of another shift in their priorities was evident beyond Zullie’s voiced annoyance. Arkk looked around with a small frown. “No,” he said, leading to a collective sigh of relief filling the room. “Everyone continue as you were. I just have one question for Zullie. The project you called the Maze of Infinite Paths—”

“I believe your orders were to never bring that one up again.”

Arkk forced a smile. “The fun thing about being the boss is that I can change my orders whenever I wish. In this case, I’d like to deploy a small instance of the project directly ahead of the tower. Preferably in the next… three minutes, maximum.”

“Three minutes?” Zullie balked. “I’m all for breaking the rules of reality, but in…” Pausing, she frowned to herself. “How small of an instance?”

“Let’s say the size of one of the fortress legs.”

Zullie clicked her tongue three times inside her mouth before turning. “Gretchen, fetch me the book on the third shelf—No, not that one, the one you have to reach outside the library to grab.” Adjusting the rectangular glasses over her nose, Zullie turned back while Gretchen hesitated, wiggling her fingers in nervousness as she stared at a small black void on one of the bookshelves. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” the witch said with uncharacteristic concern in her tone.

“Me too… Me too.”

 

 

Frying the bastards was easier said than done.

Arkk stood out in the gale caused by the tower’s defensive spells, staring up at where he thought the enemy craft should be. He couldn’t see it. Even if the twisting winds weren’t there, he doubted he would have been able to see the ship. It was just so far above them that his pitiful human eyes couldn’t see more than a black spot that the rest of the sky bled over.

Electro Deus didn’t like not having a target. On the rare occasions he had tried to use the spell without anything around, such as the attention-drawing lightning bolt during his and Vezta’s defense of Langleey Village, he could force it eventually, building up the magic until it had to go somewhere. He was hoping that, with a target up above, it would naturally gravitate toward the ship despite his inability to see or aim clearly.

Lightning sparked around Arkk, branching out from everywhere on him to the ground and the tower’s walls. They were far from the tower, but stray bolts of lightning seemed especially attracted to its stone walls. He could feel each as a tickle, as if they were grazing his own skin. But the tower’s magical reinforcement took the energy of the bolt and just channeled it straight back to him.

He had chanted the incantation two minutes ago and had spent the intervening time holding it in and building it up. He was trying to prevent as much lightning from escaping him as possible. Unlike at Langleey Village, he wasn’t trying to blast it off the moment he could.

He needed more.

Every scrap of power he could muster.

His hair stood on end. A spark jumped from his fingers to his thigh. It pinched, hurting more than it hurt when striking the tower; the magic of the spell still reentered him, joining with the rest of his pooling power. It did, however, burn a small hole through his trousers.

A larger bolt escaped, crackling through the air as it struck a nearby tree. Splinters of wood exploded into the air, showering down around Arkk and the others while the rest of the tree went up in flames.

“Keep it steady!” Rekk’ar shouted in perhaps the least encouraging tone he could manage. “Igvile, get these flames out.”

The syren nodded his head and promptly started a much longer incantation than Arkk’s usuals. He conjured up a small stream of water, drenching the ruined wood with a loud hiss barely audible over the swirling winds and crackling lightning.

“Lelith,” Rekk’ar barked. “Status?”

The tower’s resident geometric dark elf gave the orc a withering look. “Based on the levels of magic around Arkk, I’m not sure we’re back far enough.”

Arkk’s defenders, watching for any even minor failure in the shield, ready to defend him with knives that sliced through reality—the same ones he had used against the Eternal Empire’s attack on Cliff—had once been standing at his side. Then they took a step back. Then another step. Now, they were distant enough that Arkk could only hear the louder arguing that went on between them.

And it was apparently still too close.

“Not what I was asking.”

Lelith ground her teeth together. “I don’t know, alright? Can Arkk damage it? No idea. What is it made out of? Does it have any defenses? Any magical reinforcements? If it were a regular ship, I would say try now. But it isn’t. The only thing I know for sure is none of this should be possible.” Her red eyes flicked to Arkk. “Human bodies can’t contain that much magic. He should have exploded by now.”

“We’ve done a lot of impossible things,” Arkk shouted back. His tongue tingled as he spoke. He was positive that lightning was jumping around between his teeth.

He swallowed, somewhat nervous all of a sudden. How much magic could a human body hold before it turned into a spray of chunky red mist?

“But maybe we’re ready to try,” he added with a nervous flick back overhead. “Is the ship still in place?”

Following a quick consultation with her crystal ball, Lelith nodded. “Hasn’t moved relative to the tower. Oddly, the volleys have slowed down. Half the cannons haven’t fired in the last minute or so. Running out of magic or alchemical munitions?”

“More like they’ve realized they aren’t doing any damage since Zullie altered the shield spell,” Rekk’ar said, softer and barely audible over the crackling and the distance. “Now they’re just keeping us pinned.”

“Or they’re about to change tactics again,” Arkk said with a scowl. He did not want to deal with whatever they were planning. “Now or never. Lelith, I’m sending you back to the ritual room. Give us sixty seconds to prepare. Then take down the shield the moment it looks safe enough. Between volleys, if possible.”

“Understood,” the dark elf said, disappearing the moment she finished speaking.

“Igvile, Bertram,” Arkk continued, addressing the two members of the bombardment team who were here to assist in defending him. “We’re about to be vulnerable. You know what to do.”

The syren and the goose beastman nodded their heads in turn. Only Igvile moved, returning to his position after having extinguished the burning tree. Both were much closer than Lelith and Rekk’ar’s position further out. Bertram had one hand on a ritual circle meant to protect from Arkk’s lightning and another hand on a smaller version of the large shield that enveloped the tower. If anything got through, he was to activate the shield.

Igvile, on the other hand, stalked closer, clearly wary of the lightning that was practically cascading off Arkk at this point. His scales, seemingly freshly polished, reflected the dazzling light of the lightning back at Arkk in a million different directions, faceted and diffused. While his purpose was to act as a backup for Bertram—being the one holding the void blade—he also had one important task.

A ritual circle under Arkk’s feet, designed in haste by Zullie, should provide something akin to a tunnel for his lightning to travel through. It didn’t extend to the airship, only just above the tower, but it should keep the lightning from veering off and striking the tower. As long as Zullie hadn’t made any mistakes in its design.

He couldn’t activate it himself, not without sending all his accumulated magic straight into it, likely blowing it—and him—up.

Thus, Igvile.

Unfortunately, with the lightning cascading off Arkk, getting close was a hazard. That hadn’t been in the plans. Arkk watched as Igvile muttered the incantation for a variant of Zullie’s spell, one designed to counter magic rather than projectiles. With all the magic and lightning coursing through his veins, Arkk wasn’t sure it would be enough.

He teleported a flat sheet of metal from the armory. One of the scrap pieces meant for Perr’ok’s walkers. It appeared just at the edge of the ritual circle, partially embedded in the ground. It wasn’t much, but it would hopefully take the brunt of any stray bolts of lightning. The spell Igvile had on would protect from anything else.

Igvile huddled behind it, barely reaching out with a scaled wing to touch the ritual circle under Arkk’s feet. Most of the lightning flowing out of Arkk went to the makeshift shield, as he hoped. A few stray sparks jumped to the syren, but Arkk felt nothing from the employee link to indicate pain—just a tense worry.

The ritual activated. Nothing visibly happened. No additional shields or tornados of wind. He felt a slimy, slick presence in the air around him, though that could have been his imagination.

Arkk cast his gaze back to the skies. The swirl of the dome would stop in a moment, as soon as Lelith saw an opening. He had to be ready.

Sixty seconds felt like an eternity. The bombardment team was one of the few teams in the entire fortress that could even measure seconds, having a fairly precise sandglass. It was needed to make full use of Lelith’s geometrics. Most of the rest of the fortress used water clocks which reset every hour. Because of that, he knew that she knew how long sixty seconds was.

But it still felt like forever.

Then, all at once, he felt it. A few last bright spots appeared overhead, the last shots in the airship’s volley hitting the shield dome. Before the final spot faded, the entire dome collapsed. The swirling winds slowed to a stop and the taste of magic in the air dropped.

Arkk didn’t hesitate. He squinted, spotting the dark smudge in the blue sky, adjusted the aim of his arm, and released the tension in his stomach.

Magic flooded from his fingertips in an unbridled fury. He stood his ground for a fraction of a second. A sudden, violent explosion erupted with a sharp, searing crack, as if the air itself was shattering to pieces. The sound was immediate and overwhelming, a deafening roar that engulfed Arkk’s senses.

He wasn’t quite sure why he was flying through the air. One moment, he had been standing in place, the next, he found himself flung off his feet and into the sky. Pain erupted in his mind, both his own and some from an employee link. Almost automatically, subconsciously, he moved Igvile to the infirmary for Hale to handle. Bertram and Rekk’ar followed him, both in some level of pain that was mostly concentrated in their ears.

His back clipped one of Fortress Al-Lavik’s legs, turning his soaring arc into a nauseating spin even as a fresh blast of pain raced up his shoulder and down his arm.

A teleport righted himself. He stood, inertia reset, atop one of the legs. Half his shirt was gone, torn off from the impact. Blood rushed down his arm from a fresh gash. He was pretty sure something back there was broken.

But he paid it little mind.

Not yet. Pain could be dealt with in a moment.

Now, he squinted, trying to see up into the sky.

The black smudge on the sky was… larger? It was hard to tell. Almost like a dark cloud had spread around the original dot. Smoke from a fire?

He could only hope.

The tower rocked, knocking Arkk off the leg. Fresh impacts struck it all along its front side, blasting bits of brick off. The protective dome returned, slow wind picking up speed as it blocked the remainder of the volley.

Arkk teleported himself from his fall straight to the bombardment room.

“Did it hit?” Arkk called out.

Lelith turned to him, eyes widening as her gaze traveled over him. She opened her mouth, clearly speaking, but Arkk could only hear ringing. He tried to wiggle a finger in his ear, only to find he couldn’t raise his arm at all.

He looked down at his arm with a grimace.

“So that’s what hurts,” he mumbled, wobbling in place. Overwhelming lightheadedness hit him in a sudden rush. He staggered, vision swimming, and fell into Lelith’s arms. “Hale…”

Lexa beat a hasty retreat. Her hands, moist with sweat, clenched the cloak of darkness around her. If she never had to enter one of those Light-forsaken whale ships again, it would be too soon. Just considering the slimy, fleshy walls of that creature’s heart chamber made her ears ache. The blank faces of the people, merged with the meat of the walls… The bright red tendrils of flesh pulsing, swelling, and deflating, within their noses, mouths, ears, and even eyes.

Lexa shuddered.

She wasn’t quite sure about their opponent. Evestani, obviously, was under the control of the Heart of Gold’s avatar. There was no doubt about that. But the Eternal Empire, unless something had changed recently, was supposed to be involved with the Almighty Glory’s avatar. Nobody was quite sure if that avatar was present in person, if they used a similar possession ability to keep themselves safe like Evestani’s avatar, or if Evestani had only called in regular soldiers for aid and left the other avatar at home.

The whale ships didn’t feel like something the Almighty Glory would use. Granted, Lexa was far from an expert on any god. She never once attended a sermon with the Abbey of the Light or any other organization. Outlaws like herself weren’t typically welcome in such environments.

But the Almighty Glory, to the best of her knowledge, was the god of pride, strength, and power. Lexa couldn’t begin to imagine how meat ships piloted by people fused to the walls could possibly represent pride. Vezta might know better, but at the moment, Lexa was wondering if they had the wrong god. If one of the Pantheon hadn’t disguised themselves as the Almighty Glory… or if the Almighty Glory wasn’t what everyone thought they were. His domains did seem to overlap with those of the Red Horse, the only major difference being the swap of pride with war.

Then again, she hadn’t questioned it before, but it seemed a bit strange for gods to constrain themselves to categories that could be summed up in a few simple words. A handful of concepts.

What were gods?

Lexa shook her head, continuing her run. The topic of theology was far beyond her pay grade.

At least, out here, she could breathe in some fresh air. It didn’t have that tang of iron-filled meat that the entire interior of the whale ship possessed. There were still two of those things intact. One in the air—which she wouldn’t be able to do anything about unless she suddenly grew wings, thank… whatever. Another one was still on the ground. Arkk might want her to try to take it out, but she would have to return for more bombs.

Lexa used up everything she had on the one she was trying to distance herself from. When Mercury, a relatively newly hired alchemist, had first loaded her up with the bombs, she had thought it would be overkill. Enough to blast apart a keep if all the orbs had been placed strategically enough. It wasn’t the overwhelming explosion the larger clay jars were capable of, but a single one would certainly have demolished stone brick load-bearing columns with ease, plus all the surrounding walls and pillars.

And she had placed every last one of them around the heart of that whale.

Lexa paused her running and looked back over her shoulder.

It should be right… about…

Lexa had heard about real whales. Sailor tales. Who could tell if they were true, exaggerations, or outright fabrications? But she had heard about the massive creatures swimming in the depths of the ocean. Some of the larger haulers even managed to fish them up. But the story she remembered at this moment was that whales, when they surfaced, tended to blast up a spray of water through holes in their tops.

The top of the whale ship ripped open, filling the air with thick, meaty chunks of flesh that flew higher than the tops of the surrounding trees. A red mist followed the chunks, coating leaves, grass, and the several workers outside the whale all in a glistening sheen. The noise of the blast rocked Lexa back, hitting her just after she watched the whale ship fall apart, collapsing in on itself in the wake of the explosion, which was quickly followed by a long, droning whine.

That whine made every nerve in her spine tingle. It could only be the sound of the whale ship, hopefully its dying breath.

If it survived that…

Lexa shook her head. The workers outside the ship, some of whom fell to the ground following the blast, were now scurrying about. Lexa stayed where she was, watching for a moment. Could the workers fix the ship? She had half a mind to run down there and stab them all in the backs of their necks. Just in case.

Best not to leave matters up to chance.

Lexa took a step.

The loudest crack of thunder that she had ever heard hit the trees with enough force to rattle their leaves and needles. A long, shaking rumble in the air followed, coming from almost directly opposite the whale ship. Lexa whirled around just in time to catch a fat beam of lightning fading out high in the sky over the tops of the trees.

That had come from the direction of Elmshadow. Of the walking tower.

Something was going on back there?

Lexa threw one glance over her shoulder, frowning at the workers even as her eyes roamed over the ruptured hull of the whale ship.

Could they fix it in the time it would take to march the tower forward?

Was she needed back at the tower?

Lexa bit her lips, gnawing.

She had been assigned a mission. And that mission was to ensure that as few of those whale ships took to the skies as possible. Arkk and the others could handle whatever was going on back home. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind about that.

Lexa drew the blades from under her cloak and stalked back toward the whale ship, hoping she wouldn’t have to enter it again while dealing with the workers.

“Welcome back.”

Arkk blinked, trying to clear up his fuzzy vision. A long streak of jagged darkness ran from the top to the bottom of his vision, making everything within harder to see. It happened occasionally when he fired off lightning bolts. Usually, a few moments would have the afterimage burned into his eyes fade away.

He blinked a few more times, frowning at its continued presence obstructing his vision.

“I think I can fix that, but you might not like how.”

Arkk blinked again and focused on himself through his connection to the fortress rather than through his own eyes. Blackened skin marred part of his face. Long lines of burned skin that fractaled out in jagged streaks. It ran down his neck, down his bare chest, and curled around his left arm. Judging by the thickness of the lines, it must have actually started at his right arm, then moved up and down him from there. He couldn’t tell for sure, however.

He didn’t have a right arm.

“I can fix that too. Much easier, even, though it would be faster if we could recover your arm.”

He adjusted his focus, finding Hale seated across from his bed. Her black twin-tails were tied back to keep them out of the way.

She had taken off the cloak she had been wearing since returning from Leda’s tower. That left her shoulders and arms bare. They were… far more muscular than they should have been. Scaled as well. Draconic. Yet she seemed perfectly at ease, relaxed in the chair as she looked over him.

“Did I hit the ship?” Arkk asked.

His tongue felt too big in his mouth. Was he slurring his words? Was that from Hale’s healing or him hurting himself?

“I heard that you did,” Hale said, not having any trouble understanding him. “Scorched it all along its side. Didn’t destroy it but you did enough to get it to back off. Temporarily, I presume. Once they realize that you won’t be able to do that again…”

Arkk ground his teeth. All that and he hadn’t destroyed it? He supposed he should count himself lucky that he had hit it at all. But…

“Actually,” Hale continued. “I think you could do that again. Again and again, even. All we have to do is rearrange your insides a bit, make you a bit more resistant to electricity, and maybe even put in something akin to a dragonoid’s elemental crucible.” She tapped a claw-like finger to her own chest. “Something that acts like a magical capacitor. Could even do a few of those big lightning bolts in a row if my ideas work out. I put a crucible in myself—based off Priscilla, so it is a bit colder than I would like—but I think I can modify it to work better with your lightning—”

“I hear talking. He’s awake?”

Arkk shifted his focus, moving it to encompass the rest of the infirmary. It was mostly empty—no fight had yet broken out. Rekk’ar marched through the open door, scowling down at Arkk.

“Sorry,” Arkk said, trying to enunciate as best he could. “Should have been more careful with the lightning.”

“Don’t care. It worked. For now. But we need you up and ready. Reinforcements are here.”

Arkk tried to push himself up, only to stumble as his right shoulder pivoted uselessly without an arm attached. He wasn’t in any pain, likely thanks to Hale, but… “Agnete?” he asked, using his trembling left hand to push himself up. “She made it?”

Rekk’ar scoffed. “I wish,” he mumbled. “They ain’t our reinforcements.”

A sinking sensation settled into Arkk’s heart as he processed those words.