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Every time Arkk closed his eyes, he saw a god.

That brief glimpse that he had gotten with his actual eyes before Vezta pulled him down replayed in his mind over and over again. Even just walking into a dark room made him feel like that looming presence was going to pop out of the shadows. It might not be harmful. Xel’atriss might have even been helpful.

Arkk didn’t think he wanted to go before any god ever again.

It wasn’t even that he was afraid that it would do something. Arkk feared that he would be unable to resist peeking even knowing that a split-second glimpse of the being had him lying in bed, awake and wide-eyed, the entire night.

With everything stable in the fortress—nothing was blowing up and no mass invading army came through the crystal archway—Arkk had called for a hold on the exploration. One night’s rest, ostensibly for magical recovery after the ritual. The others, with the exception of Agnete, had all been drained to the point of lethargy as well, so his excuse hadn’t sounded all that strange.

It was more that he just wanted to process.

And what a process it was.

“That was real, right?” Arkk asked as the door to his room opened.

“Master,” Vezta said as she stepped up to his bed. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

Arkk hadn’t even changed out of his sweat-soaked tunic before crawling into bed. He had stared up at the maze-like pattern that covered the ceiling, following the lines and pathways as they twisted about. Even now, with Vezta at his side, he still stared up at that maze, wondering why he couldn’t find a way out.

Vezta folded her arms across her chest, looking down with a disappointed expression. “Master.”

“Did you sleep?” Arkk asked. “Could you sleep? I mean, who goes and has a chat with a being like that and just goes to sleep.”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.” Arkk’s head drifted to the side, looking at Vezta from top to bottom.

The servant was the picture of calm, standing with fully-formed legs and her hands clasped at her navel. The starscapes that surrounded the burning suns of her eyes shifted and pulsed as she looked him up and down. Her violet hair dripped a glob of dark tar onto her shoulder. The tar remerged with the rest of her body as soon as it touched. That little oddity made Arkk narrow his eyes, looking at her closer. Her face, drawn tight into a frown, looked somehow more liquid than usual. Like congealed slime. The eye at the base of her neck sagged, lopsided. When she opened her mouth, strings of that black tar stretched thin from her tongue to the roof of her mouth.

“Master? Are you alright?”

“Am I alright?” Arkk repeated, forcing himself up. The motion made him dizzy but he shook it off. “I should be asking you the same question,” he said, reaching out and poking Vezta in the shoulder.

His finger sunk into her body like it was a pool of thickened honey.

Her eyes widened and, with a slight glare at his finger, she firmed her body, forcing his finger out. He prodded a few more times in a few more places. She felt normal now, at least, but it was probably taking more concentration.

“We’re kind of a mess, aren’t we?”

“Time dulls memories,” Vezta said. “This will fade. In light of that, it may be prudent to delay this morning’s expedition for a time.”

Arkk shook his head, feeling another wave of nausea, before forcing himself to his feet. “Can’t. Shouldn’t have even delayed one day. Every minute that passes, the Evestani army and that golden-eyed avatar get closer. People die. Villages burn. Hawkwood says that the King is sending an army but it won’t be here anywhere within a reasonable timeframe.”

Pressing his lips into a shallow façade of a smile, he shrugged. “It’s up to us. Get the expeditionary team ready at the archway. I’ll be there shortly.”

Vezta stared a moment longer, eyes once again taking in Arkk’s stance and appearance. For a moment, he thought she was going to protest. To insist that he stay in bed for another day at the very least.

If Arkk were being honest, he would have appreciated the excuse.

However, another day of rest was not to be had. Vezta nodded her head. “I will see it done,” she said, bowing out of the room.

Arkk waited until the door shut behind her before moving to the basin of water in his room. He splashed his face, smacking his cheeks. All-in-all, he didn’t feel that bad. He had pulled a few sleepless nights in his time, usually when danger was spotted near the village. For most of those, he had been entirely wiped out by morning. Instead, he felt… not well rested but at least not exhausted. He entertained the idea that he might have fallen asleep with his eyes open at least at some points during the night.

Looking up in the mirror, frowning at the increasingly scraggly beard on his face, he took some solace in the fact that, at the very least, he wasn’t melting.

Taking his razor in hand, he decided to do a little something to keep his mind off other things. This was twice in the same thirty days that he had seen something impossible. Arkk wasn’t quite sure how much more he could take. And now he was headed off to some plane of existence that nobody knew existed, filled with who knew what?

He hoped that between the [STARS] and Xel’atriss, he was building up some kind of mental immunity to world-shattering experiences.

Based on recent trends, he would need it.

Beard trimmed—he would need a haircut as well one of these days, but that could wait—Arkk changed clothes, grabbed a sword just in case magic didn’t work in a different reality, and finally teleported straight to the archway room.

A quartet of guards, three orcs and one gorgon, were keeping watch on standby. All four jumped at Arkk’s arrival but quickly settled back down once they realized who had appeared in their midst. None of the expeditionary crew had assembled yet. Vezta was still gathering them up.

Arkk turned his attention to the archway. He had examined it the night before but hadn’t been in too much of a state of mind to really think about it.

The archway room was one of only two rooms that hadn’t been eaten by the lesser servants. The other being the [HEART] chamber. Aside from tidying up broken bodies and repairing cracked tiles, the lesser servants had left the archway alone.

It was a giant of an arch. Three times as tall as the doorways in the fortress, all of which could easily fit even the tallest elf without requiring stooping. Golden crystal, jagged and blocky, jutted up out of the ground on one side of the room. It didn’t bend so much as it had been grown up and to the side and up and to the side, over and over again until it reached its apex. At that point, it went down and to the side until it reached the ground once more.

Inscrutable runes and sigils covered the entire thing. Carvings that no one seemed to understand. Zullie and Savren hadn’t seen a single one of the runes before and Vezta couldn’t explain their origin. They weren’t even the same script as what Arkk had seen in the few salvaged books from the original fortress library.

Prior to the day before, the sigils had been inert. Little more than decorative carvings. If not for knowing that the archway was a magical portal to another realm, Arkk might have thought they were just decorative. Now, however, they glowed. Much like everything else in Fortress Al-Mir, they preferred a rich violet hue.

Of course, they were barely notable next to the portal. The opening of the archway formerly looked out onto the back wall of the room.

It lacked the spinning gold ring of stars that Arkk had seen Xel’atriss create. Nonetheless, it was the same place. A flat, desolate wasteland that stretched out as far as Arkk could see, broken only by the towering pillars of shadow. The main difference between what he saw before and what he saw now was that the perspective then had felt aerial, looking down on the world. Now, it was ground level, looking out over what anyone else might confuse with the Cursed Forest.

And there were buildings out there. Not built around the other side of the portal but in the distance, poking up as little nubs on the flat horizon.

That would be the first stop, then. It didn’t look like there was much else around. If Arkk had a harpy in his employ, a scouting flight might have found more. As it was, they would have to hope that some people did live in those buildings who might be able to connect them to the rest of the world. If the entire place was like this little desolate section, it wasn’t hard to imagine everyone over there joining up just to get a chance to see blue skies or grass.

Would scrying work over there?

Magic?

What did they eat?

And…

Curious, Arkk walked around the outside of the crystal archway, wondering if he could see in the other direction from the other side of the portal. Instead, he saw the four guards.

No back side to the portal then.

By the time Arkk made it back around the portal to the front, the door opened up. Vezta walked in first, leading the expeditionary group behind her.

The expeditionary crew had undergone a few changes over the night. Nothing major. Olatt’an stood at the forefront, dressed for battle with his crossbow-axe slung over his shoulder. He was one of the few orcs to still wear his old armor, not the new plate gear that the blacksmith had been making. Behind him, Dakka stood a head shorter even despite the short spikes on top of her helmet. Five other orcs, Zharja, and Joanne—formerly of the Claymores—rounded out the main warrior group.

In addition to the main warriors, Lyssa stood with the group. The formerly one-armed werecat still had a manacle around her right wrist. The chain, however, had been lengthened with spikes jutting off from the last few links. A heavy spearhead sat at the end of the chain. Her left arm didn’t match her right. As Hale’s grasp of the Flesh Weaving spell grew—and in need of a willing assistant to help her learn the spell—they had… fixed Lyssa’s arm according to the werecat’s specifications. Rather than the more humanoid paw that werecats normally possessed, Lyssa’s right arm terminated in a truly monstrous clawed gauntlet. Each ‘finger’ was about as long as Arkk’s hand, tipped with a razor-sharp protrusion of bone.

That was the kind of work that Flesh Weaving had truly been designed for. Not mere sealing of wounds. It was… Well… Arkk had to admit to being a little worried about Lyssa’s mental state. She didn’t talk much beyond making requests of Zullie and Hale for more ‘improvements’ to her body. Thicker muscles. Stronger legs. And so on. But she had yet to harm anyone at the fortress so Arkk was relatively content to leave her be.

Lexa, Alma, and Kelsey strode in behind Lyssa. The gremlin sported a cocky smile as she spun a blade around her fingers. Her eyes, already large for her smaller head, went even wider as she caught sight of the portal. Most of the orcs and gorgon had seen it the night before while standing guard but this was Lexa’s first time. She missed a step, almost tripping over her own feet.

Alma didn’t exactly look like she wanted to be present. But that wasn’t anything new. Of all of Arkk’s recruits, she was easily the most reluctant. Arkk hoped the half-werecat would eventually come around. Especially because the few bits of what she overheard during the recruitment session hardly seemed to matter these days. That said, neither she nor her companions had asked to be released or otherwise disbanded. They had volunteered for this job.

Zullie was the last member of the expeditionary group to enter. Her eyes gleamed with awe but not surprise. She and Savren had investigated the portal before Arkk sent everyone off to rest. They made sure that it was stable and not likely to cause any harm to the denizens of Fortress Al-Mir. She looked much better today; her steps were filled with energy rather than exhaustion.

While the expeditionary group moved up closer to the portal, more people entered the large room. Rekk’ar and Khan made up the defending group along with the rest of the orcs and several of the new hires from Cliff City—mostly beastmen. They would be securing the portal from the other side to the best of their ability, with the aid of lesser servants, to ensure that Fortress Al-Mir couldn’t easily come under assault. A smaller contingent would be waiting as backup inside Fortress Al-Mir, led by Agnete, both as a last line of defense in case something hostile did come through and to support any retreating that had to be done.

And to incinerate the bandits, or Edvin, if they caused problems in everyone else’s absence.

Arkk clasped his hands behind his back while waiting for everyone to assemble. Despite having practically the whole of Company Al-Mir present, it didn’t take long. Despite recruitment, they still weren’t anywhere near the level of a large organization. It was a bit depressing but…

No, it was much too soon to get his hopes up about possible recruits from the other side of the portal. First of all, it looked like a desolate wasteland. Was anyone even alive over there?

“Thank you all for coming,” Arkk said as the movement and shuffling died down. “Sorry for the delay. In case you missed the explanation, that ritual was a bit more draining for those of us involved than expected.”

Zullie let out a commiserating scoff, drawing a few eyes.

Arkk just gave her a nod. “You all know your tasks so I won’t bother with another explanation or long speech. This is… quite literally the adventure of a millennium. I think we’ve delayed long enough.”

Rekk’ar cupped his hands over his mouth. “So which idiot goes through first to see if it is safe?”

Arkk opened his mouth.

Vezta beat him to speaking. “I will,” she said.

Arkk glanced to his side. Vezta didn’t look quite so melty now. Whether that was because she was feeling better or because she was concentrating more, he couldn’t tell. Either way, he considered objecting. As the leader of Company Al-Mir and the Keeper of Fortress Al-Mir’s [HEART], it felt like it was his responsibility to go through first.

It was also his responsibility to ensure the safety of the people who placed their trust in him. Not to mention, he didn’t exactly want to die. Especially not before seeing Ilya again. And if anyone in this room could survive in a hostile environment long enough to get back safely, it would be Vezta. Her unique physiology gave her that advantage. Not to mention her unique perception. Perhaps her eyes could see dangers that everyone else would miss.

Arkk didn’t think that Xel’atriss would intentionally open a portal to somewhere dangerous after all that he had experienced yesterday. Why offer a warning against performing that ritual a second time if walking through the portal would get him killed? That said, a being like that might not even realize that the ants beneath its feet required air to breathe.

Was there air on the other side of the portal? He didn’t know.

But Vezta was significantly more valuable than certain other test subjects he had in stock.

Holding up a hand to stop her from going forward, Arkk pulled one of the lesser servants from elsewhere in the fortress. A wave of his hand commanded it through the portal.

There was some hesitance as it crawled forward. The faint shimmer of the portal grew more intense as it approached, almost turning opaque in the small area around the lesser servant’s body. But it kept going, puncturing through the film of the portal.

It made it to the other side and… seemed fine. It moved. It didn’t seem in distress. Interestingly, he could still see it through his Keeper ability. However, he couldn’t teleport it back to the fortress despite it being a mere few inches away. The way he plucked up minions to teleport them simply slid off, like trying to grasp water from a bucket. Another command had it return, slinking back through the portal. Unfortunately, it couldn’t talk or communicate much about what it had felt over there—if anything. So Arkk looked to Vezta and relented with a nod of his head.

Vezta turned on her heel, marched toward the portal, and stretched a hand out. Her hand stretched further and further, coming apart in a thick strand of oily flesh as she pressed it through the membrane. Arkk could see the resistance. There wasn’t much, like pushing through a curtain hung over a doorframe. Just enough to be visible.

Her arm punctured through and, after waving it about for a moment—during which she opened both eyes and mouths along its length—she pulled the arm back. Giving Arkk a shrug of her shoulders, she said, “Seems okay.”

With that, she stepped through fully.

Arkk watched for any sign of distress. He could see her on the other side, pacing around the dead landscape.

At one point in time, there might have been a building around the other side of the portal. Maybe a fortress like Al-Mir or maybe just a housing structure. It had long since withered away, leaving mounds of brown dirt up against the remains of crumbled walls. Vezta moved up to a carved pillar and brushed her fingers over its surface. She looked down, rubbing at the residue between her fingers.

Her fingers turned into one jagged mouth which she used to take a small bite out of the pillar.

After a few more minutes of walking about on the other side of the portal, she stepped back into Fortress Al-Mir.

“The air seems breathable and I am not sensing any toxins in the ground,” she said, hands clasped in front of her once more. “I doubt the environment will be deleterious toward mortal life. At least in the short term. Without further exploration, I cannot confirm that there is a source of water or food.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem as long as Fortress Al-Mir remains intact,” Arkk said. “Though, Zullie, your first task on the other side is to ensure that the portal structure over there is stable and not likely to collapse. Physically or magically.”

Zullie nodded her head, excitement unbridled in her expression.

“Well, people. A whole new world awaits.”

 

 

Arkk stared through the void around him, hesitant to take a single step. The world had shrunk down to the size of a small sphere, upon which only he and Vezta stood. It was about the size of the [HEART], though despite feeling like he was standing at an angle, he didn’t feel like he was about to fall off.

There was nowhere to fall to. No up or down, just the sphere and the void. It was as if he stood on the edge of a dream.

Vezta was looking around just as much as he was, a frown firmly planted on her face.

“Think that was supposed to happen?” he asked, forcing a note of levity into his voice.

Vezta, with her burning yellow eyes, looked at him. She opened her mouth to respond but, before a single sound could come out, lithe fingers emerged from the shadows of the void, large enough to grip the sphere he stood upon with long, violet-colored nails.

A face, as large as a church, loomed out from the void, peering down at the sphere held in the palm of its hand.

Arkk stared up, meeting those violet eyes. He opened his mouth, a cry of fear welling from the back of his throat.

Vezta’s tendrils wrapped around him, looping around his face, his mouth, and the rest of his body, dragging him downward.

For a fleeting moment, Arkk panicked. He feared that Vezta had just attacked him. He didn’t know why she would. They had been working together for months now. He knew her. He had possessed her. They had shared quiet moments and planned strategy together. She wouldn’t just attack him out of the blue.

He forced himself to calm down. Vezta wasn’t trying to break his neck or even restrain him. She was just holding him. Arkk still didn’t know why.

His faith did not go unrewarded. As soon as he ceased struggling, he felt a breath on his ear.

“Do not move or open your eyes. We’re in the presence of the [PANTHEON]. Just looking could have… deleterious effects.”

Arkk’s mouth went dry. They were what? That wasn’t supposed to happen. That was definitely not supposed to happen.

Thinking about it made him start shivering. It was a completely automatic response. He couldn’t help it. And yet, he was fairly certain he had recognized that face that had appeared, despite only seeing an instant of a glimpse.

He had seen it dozens of times. Even just a few minutes ago. One of the statues in the temple room, Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. The patron goddess of barriers, locks, boundaries, and separation… according to Vezta. The only thing missing from reality versus the stone depiction was the door that stood behind her. Unless that had simply been too large to comprehend, he hadn’t seen it.

Arkk wanted to peek again. Just a glimpse to confirm that his memories weren’t inside-out. But for all the start she had given him, he did trust Vezta to know what she was talking about. Peeking would likely not end well for him. Just thinking back to the half-glimpse he had gotten, in which his imagination was likely filling in a vast sea of blanks, had him trembling uncontrollably.

Still, it made sense. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, held dominion of barriers and boundaries. Their whole ritual had been about knocking down the barrier separating the world from the Underworld.

Why had she shown up? Was this god upset at having mortals intrude upon her domain? Would she crush them in her massive grip or just swallow them whole?

The lack of sight was making him nervous. What was going on? Was Vezta talking to this being? Probably not. Arkk imagined a single hum would shake him to the core. One word would have him reeling. A full sentence would end in his death. Perhaps Vezta was keeping her head down and not looking either. She certainly wasn’t moving. Was this situation as terrifying for her as it was for him?

Arkk moved one arm. Vezta tensed for a moment until his slow movements reassured her that he wasn’t trying to escape her grasp. Once he could bring his hand up to the level of his head, he gently patted the tendril clamped against his mouth.

Vezta hesitated. He could feel the tension in her tendrils. With a second pat, however, she relented. The tendril around his eyes and ears remained in place but the one over his mouth slackened and hung down below his chin. Arkk took in a breath of air and tried to swallow only to find his mouth far, far too dry.

He had his mouth free now. He could speak.

But what to say? What did some nobody mortal have to say to a god?

“Hey there.”

Vezta hissed and promptly clamped her tendril over Arkk’s mouth once again. “What are you doing?”

Arkk couldn’t respond. Not with Vezta holding him ever tighter.

He patted at the tendril around his mouth once again. This time, Vezta was even more hesitant to release him. It took several increasingly insistent pats to get her to peel away from him. Free to speak once more, Arkk cleared his throat and licked his lips.

“Sorry about that. She’s just nervous.”

Entangled so tightly with Vezta, he could feel her indignation. Hadn’t this being been the one to bring her down from the [STARS]? She shouldn’t be that worried, right? Or… had she not actually seen Xel’atriss back whenever that happened? Arkk hadn’t asked. The master of boundaries might have simply opened a door that Vezta then stepped through, never having physically encountered Xel’atriss at all.

There was no response to Arkk’s words. No voice, thankfully, but no other meaningful response either. If Vezta had him blinded and was keeping her own eyes clamped shut, Arkk had to wonder if the being was even still there, standing over and watching them. For all he knew, they were just sitting and huddling to themselves. Surely a member of the [PANTHEON] had better things to do than stare at some mortals.

Or… maybe they didn’t. If the Calamity had severed them from the rest of reality, they might have just been floating around in a dark void with nothing going on up until now. But now, Arkk was just wildly speculating on things he couldn’t know even the most minute details of. An active imagination wasn’t going to get things back to normal.

“We were just trying to break down the boundaries between worlds just enough to reach the Underworld,” Arkk said, hoping he wasn’t insulting the being’s intelligence by explaining. If it so wished, he was beyond sure that he would be rendered into paste with a simple flick of its fingers, never mind whatever other powers Xel’atriss might possess. “Sorry for disturbing you.”

With that apology, something shifted. Not Vezta, who remained utterly still. Neither was it a physical shifting. Xel’atriss hadn’t spoken. Neither had it crushed them.

But knowledge stabbed into the deeper parts of Arkk’s mind anyway. The border between ignorance and knowledge moved. Not much. He had no grand revelations about the nature of life, the universe, or anything. The concepts needling into his mind were concepts of understanding and acknowledgment.

It did make him grimace in a pain not unlike that which he had experienced when exposed to Vezta and her [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE] before contracting with the [HEART].

The barrier of knowledge shifted once more, bringing forth a sensation of approval. But also a warning. This ritual they had done was wrong. It did not have the intended consequences. Rather, it had drawn the attention of far more beings than just the Lock and Key. Even at this moment, others were bearing down their gazes upon Fortress Al-Mir. They were unable to act. Most of the [PANTHEON], separated as they were, couldn’t act.

Only Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, lord of barriers, could interact with their ritual to breach boundaries today. But it had been a close thing. A slight variation, a different intention, or even a small change in the cosmology of the universe and Arkk could easily have been staring down the Almighty Glory. For as long as the Almighty Glory would have entertained his presence before crushing him like an insect.

“I… I understand.”

The line in the sand between knowledge and ignorance shifted more toward the side of ignorance. It was almost a playful shove. Like this god was trying to say that he did not understand but that was fine because his puny little mind couldn’t understand.

“Well, thank you for the warning, then.” Arkk wasn’t sure what else to say. “I don’t suppose there is anything you could do to help. We’re… I am in over my head here and really have no idea…”

Arkk trailed off as something else moved. It wasn’t some line between ignorance and knowledge, this time. Instead, he found that he could see. Not with his eyes. Vezta still had her tendrils firmly wrapped around his face. Yet he could still see. It was more like he was using his sense of Fortress Al-Mir or the many minions contracted to him. He saw from an outside perspective, looking down upon…

Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, drifted in the abyss. One hand, fingers splayed out, hovered beneath the small planetoid that Arkk and Vezta occupied. The twisted and warped version of the ritual’s central platform. Her fingernails glowed a cool violet in the void. Following her arm, Arkk found that rippling galaxy of a dress—like a slice of the night’s sky made into fashionable wear. Twin-black locks of surprisingly normal hair dangled down on either side of her chest. The back of her hair was pulled up into an infinitely spiraling bun.

Her violet eyes, half-lidded as she stared down at the planetoid, slowly drifted upward until they met with Arkk’s point of view. Like moons hung in the cosmic expanse of the universe. Holding up her other hand, she plucked a pair of stars from the void. They rotated around one another, spinning faster and faster until the two points of light became one solid ring. She held it up for him to see.

On one side, he could see Fortress Al-Mir. The crystal archway room specifically. Dakka, Olatt’an, and Rekk’ar, along with several other orcs and gorgon, stood at the ready, watching and waiting.

Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, rotated her wrist, showing off the other side of the spinning ring of stars.

Arkk looked out into a world unlike anything he had ever seen. A great, desolate landscape expanded outward, flat and mountainless as far as he could see. It wasn’t too dissimilar to the Cursed Forest except for how vast it was. A river flowed through, black as the night, and in the far distance, great spires of shadow jutted straight up and into the red haze of the sky.

With a casual, almost lazy wave of her fingers, Xel’atriss tossed the ring of stars into the distance. Arkk followed it until it became nothing more than a pinprick of light. Even that vanished after a moment.

Arkk turned back to find the goddess almost reclining. She curled her free hand, folding it so that her chin rested on her knuckles. Maintaining that pose, Xel’atriss stared. She looked so relaxed and calm, unbothered by anything or anyone. He had to wonder if the Calamity was as big of a problem as he had been led to believe. At least for this member of the [Pantheon], it didn’t seem to be the case.

She was one of the few who had a statue at the temple. Along with the known traitors. Arkk had to wonder if the one holding dominion over barriers could have shattered the Calamity at any time if she so chose.

Arkk didn’t get more time to consider. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, hefted up the planetoid that held him and Vezta. He didn’t feel anything—no movement nor even a gust of sudden wind. Not until she flicked her finger and sent the marble hurtling through the void. That ripped Arkk’s stomach out from under him.

But before he could so much as panic, awareness of the void cut off and awareness of Fortress Al-Mir returned in full. He felt the minions, from the nearby casters to the orcs to the distant Ilya, currently dragging her mother through a room in the Duke’s manor. He could see the hallways and the rooms in the ever-expanding fortress. The beating of the [HEART] thrummed louder than ever in both the walls and his chest.

Arkk sat on the central platform in the temple room, wrapped in Vezta’s tendrils. She still had a hold of his face but within Fortress Al-Mir, he didn’t need eyes to see. The other casters were in varying states of panic. Hale had her eyes squeezed shut, trembling violently. Agnete’s eyes were alight and her teeth clenched. Savren and Zullie weren’t in an outright panic, both simply looked resigned.

The bandits who had joined in were by far the worst, shouting and frantically looking around.

Had everyone seen what Arkk had seen? Or were they still in a panic over being unable to stop the ritual?

Speaking of the ritual, the central platform snuffed out. All the light in the array vanished at once, leaving only the glowstones in the room to provide light. The thrum of magic died off and a distant ringing started up in Arkk’s ears.

Zullie got to her feet in an instant, now smiling at herself. “And that’s it. See, I told you all nothing to worry about. We just had to let the magic run its course and… Arkk? What are you doing?”

Before anything else, Arkk pulled one of the lesser servants from the gold mine and dropped it on the altar. It promptly started eating away at the central component, destroying the ritual circle. Arkk grabbed the two prototypes from the library and dropped them into the vault. He would debate destroying them later.

Only once he was sure that the ritual couldn’t possibly be triggered again did he give Vezta a soft pat on her… herself. She wasn’t at all in a humanoid form at the moment. Her body had reverted to her natural state of an amorphous, oily mass, covered in pulsating eyes and snapping mouths that looked like a larger version of the lesser servants. “I think we’re back,” he said softly. “Are you alright? Can you get up?”

Vezta didn’t respond. She did squirm somewhat. Through the magic of the fortress, Arkk could tell that she was physically okay.

“I can sit here as long as you need. However, the minions are in something of a panic and the archway is working.”

Vezta didn’t peel herself away. If anything, she wound around him a little tighter. “Are you alright after that? You conversed with a being mortals can’t even comprehend.”

“I don’t know if I would call that a conversation,” Arkk started. He trailed off, looking inward. Contemplating.

Something changed in him. He wasn’t being flippant for the sake of being flippant. Nor was he defaulting to his usual methods of charging right in and dealing with the consequences later. Something was different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what. It was like his perspective had been broadened.

“I think Xel’atriss did something to me. Made me more okay with what happened. When I first saw it, before you pulled me down, I could feel the terrible awe bubbling in the back of my mind. But now? It was an extraordinary situation, to be sure, but I think I’m alright. We’ll see if I don’t wake up screaming from endless nightmares tonight.”

A bright golden eye formed on the tendril that peeled away from Arkk’s face. She wasn’t humanoid at all and yet, he knew her well enough to feel the incredulity in that look.

Forcing a smile, patting her on… whatever again… Arkk slowly disentangled himself and stood.

He looked to Zullie. “We’re not running this ritual again.”

Zullie adjusted her glasses, looking around. “Yeah. We’ll have to figure out what went wrong and try—”

“No. Nothing like this again,” Arkk said, feeling the weight of the warning heavy on his head. “The portal is open but not because this worked as intended. If we do it again… We’ll probably all be dead.”

“What? No. As long as people don’t move,” she said, glaring at the empty spot in the ritual circle. “It’s perfectly safe. We just need—”

“Need nothing. Divine intervention saved us. Nothing more.”

Zullie’s jaw clicked shut. She stared down at the array around her for a long moment before her glare found Savren. Aside from a small huff as she crossed her arms, she didn’t say anything.

“Hale, are you alright?”

The youngest ritualist in the room forced a shaky smile. She pulled herself up on wobbly legs. “That… was a rush,” she said, voice trembling. Her smile faded and she put her hands to her head. “I don’t feel…”

Arkk teleported her straight to him, catching her in his arms before she could fall. “I got you,” he said, holding her tight. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.”

She didn’t respond. One hand grasping his tunic, she leaned against him. Her eyes fluttered closed.

Agnete, stoic as ever, managed to stand without trouble. Savren did as well.

“Escort everyone out, Savren,” Arkk said, looking around the room once more. “Make sure they get a good meal in the…”

Arkk blinked three times as he noticed something new in the room. Another statue. One standing at the wall that previously held no statues. The sixth occupied pedestal in the room held a woman, draped in a shadowy veil that obscured all her features save for the outline of her body. The veil, long and flowing in an unfelt wind, dispersed into ethereal wisps like the trails of smoke from dying embers in a campfire.

Arkk knew without even needing to ask Vezta who this was.

The Cloak of Shadows. Lord of the Underworld.

 

 

It might have been in the middle of winter with a war going on but the world continued to turn and life had to move forward.

The morning started as any other for Jacob of Loan. He got up with the sun, headed out to the coops, and did a patrol around the perimeter. Coyotes, wild dogs and cats, and even harpies all liked to feast on the chickens any time but winter was an especially vulnerable time of the year. A lot less food to go around with the cold.

No alarmed squawking had woken him but still best to make sure the fence was intact. Didn’t want the mangy mutts prying something loose one night and then breaking in too fast to react to the next. Finding no problems in any of the likely areas, he opened the coop gate, stepped inside, and started spreading feed. With the chickens happily enjoying their feast, he started collecting eggs. Egg output dropped in winter months as well but it didn’t stop completely. With enough chickens, there were more than enough eggs to go around. Keeping them happy and safe helped.

Heading back inside, he handed off the eggs to his lovely wife. She was already prepping for breakfast. Leaving a peck on her cheek, he headed back into the bedroom of their small house to rouse the boys. Jacob’s father had never let him sleep in. While Jacob was a little more lax, there was work to be done.

James, the older of his two boys, got up without complaint. With a gargantuan yawn, he headed off for the latrine. Jims, however, wasn’t even asleep when Jacob entered the room. His youngest boy sat back on the bed, eyes wide as he stared up at the ceiling. Jims had his fingers gripped tight on the edge of the blanket, knuckles as white as his face.

With a sigh, Jacob sat down on the bed and rested a hand on his son’s chest. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. “Did you have another nightmare?” he asked, giving his son a firm squeeze of his hand. “It’s alright. Everything’s fine, Jims.”

Jims turned his head, eyes unblinking, to stare at Jacob. In the hoarsest whisper, he spoke two soft words. “It’s happening.”

“Nothing is happening, Jims. It was a nightmare. A dream. It can’t hurt—”

“It’s today,” he half-shouted, lurching forward as much as he could with Jacob’s hand on his chest. “The sky is breaking!”

“I was out there not five minutes ago and the sky was fine, Jims. Did you get any sleep last night?”

Slowly, still without blinking, the young boy shook his head.

Jacob let out a heavy sigh. He didn’t know how to handle this. He knew what his father would have done. Under no circumstances was he about to bend the boy over his knee and whip him until his bottom bled. Instead, he just patted his son on the chest. “Close your eyes, Jims. I’ll have your mother bring you something to eat but try to sleep, alright? Everything is fine. I promise.”

As if those words were the only thing he needed, Jims nodded his head and slowly closed his eyes. Jacob sat still on the bed for a long moment, watching as the tension drained from his son’s grip on the blanket. After a moment, his breathing slowed and steadied and he fell asleep. As easy as that. With a sad shake of his head, Jacob got up from the bed—carefully; he didn’t want to wake his son—and quietly stepped back out into the main room of the home.

Annette gave him a concerned look. Jacob could only shrug. He was about to explain when he heard his eldest son calling from outside.

“Dad? Daaaad?”

Hearing the undertone of fear in his voice, Jacob rushed out, grabbing the heavy club that rested by the door. If some coyote had been prowling around the latrine, it wouldn’t even know what hit it.

But his son was just standing outside, halfway between the house and the latrine. Jaw open and eyes wide, he stared upwards.

Bugs eating at his stomach, Jacob slowly followed his eldest son’s gaze.

The sky, the bright blue sky, wasn’t so bright or blue anymore. A dark, vibrating line split the gray sky in two, stretching from horizon to horizon. The club slid from Jacob’s loose fingers, thumping lightly against the ground. The chickens in the coop were going wild, clucking and thrashing and beating against the fence. In the distance, he could hear the baying of dogs or coyotes, howling as if they were being torn apart.

Color fled from the world. There wasn’t much color to begin with in winter but the browns of the house’s wood faded to a mute gray. The green needles on distant trees, cloaked by a dusting of snow, turned completely black. His son’s brown hair turned to a snowy white.

Jacob, mouth dry and fingers numb, just stared.

The slit in the sky peeled apart, warping and twisting the dark gray of the cloudless sky. The vibrating lines of the fissure trembled and shook violently, like a continuous bolt of ever-changing lightning. It continued widening, filling the sky with a void filled with numerous tiny lights. Like stars except… not quite. They danced around, darting here and there.

A moon rolled into place, obstructing most of the void. It wasn’t the normal moon—he could still see the normal moon, low in the sky and somehow less real than usual, lacking not just color but presence. This new moon, covering a full third of the entire sky, was a deeply violet moon with bright purple jagged lines radiating out from the black center.

Something snapped in the back of Jacob’s mind. He sank down, knees settling in snow-damped soil. It soaked into his clothes but he barely felt it. He was too busy staring up at the sky, watching as the sky stared back down at him.

It happened.

It was today.

The sky broke.

Priscilla barreled through three trees before she lost enough momentum and the next caught her. She tumbled and fell, snapping branches and scattering needles to the wind. The frost-covered ground was as hard as a rock but dragonoids were hardy. It barely felt any worse than crashing into several trees had.

She was too preoccupied to think about pain anyway.

Sightless eyes stared up at what had been a perfectly normal sky only moments ago. The great burning stars overhead had been shoved aside like they hardly mattered. In their place, a beacon formed.

Priscilla wasn’t one to admit fault. Ever.

Leaving her mountaintop without a guide had maybe not been the wisest course of action, however. She had been stumbling along, flying toward nothing more than a feeling. She hadn’t known where to go and the Stars, though they clearly had been pointing something out, had never been something she had been that good at reading. Too vague. Too far off. They just didn’t have the context to give proper signs to any who might watch. Good for asking about something as grand and ever-changing as the future but not so good for asking specific directions.

Now, it was as if a finger jammed down out of the sky, practically pointing out exactly where she needed to go. Like the powers of old had seen her fruitless wanderings and decided to take pity.

Well, she wasn’t one to ignore the old ones offering a gift. More than a gift, even, a sign. This was it.

Priscilla stared up. This wasn’t something that only she could see. Everyone would see it. Everyone would know.

Claws dug into the tree as she pulled herself back to her feet, all without blinking even once.

That fiery dragon heart she had left at the base of her mountain would see as well. She would know. And she would come.

But Priscilla would get there first.

Sule nearly fell out of his chair. To be fair, aside from the listeners, everyone in the room at least jumped. The listeners went into an outright panic as the movement caused ripples in their bowls. Some screamed short, clipped squawks of fear and surprise, others faceplanted straight into the water.

When the resident monster in human skin with bright gold eyes jumped to his feet and rushed out of the room, it was hard to maintain a semblance of calm. When he first jumped up, Sule had thought that that was it. The golden-eyed monster was finally going to dispense with niceties and platitudes and just usurp the position of sultan in full. He was already running practically everything.

But he just left. Not a word.

That was… odd.

Normally, the man moved with a practiced lethargy. As if nothing, no matter the situation or the people involved, could possibly be a bother to him. To see him rush out like he had contracted a sudden bout of dysentery had more than just Sule staring at the door. Zarkov, his Grand Vizier, gathered the presence of mind to rush through the room, pulling the listeners away from their disturbed pools of water. As soon as he finished, he turned to Sule and quirked a single eyebrow.

Sule, supposed Sultan of Evestani, sighed. “I suppose I’ll go see if he’s… alright?”

“I would hate for him to reenter in a distressed state.”

“Of course,” Sule said, not bothering to fight the sneer off his face. He heard what Zarkov hadn’t said. The man didn’t want to risk their resident monster returning upset so better calm him down. The coward was just worried over his own skin.

With one last look over the large table and the map it held—their campaign into the Duchy of Mystakeen was going quite well, especially with the golden magic their monster provided—Sule stalked out of the room and searched around for where he had likely gone. It didn’t take long to notice the foot-shaped cracks in the stone floor. Figuring they would lead him in the right direction, Sule left the central area of the palace, heading to one of the guest rooms. The nearest one. The door was wide open and half hanging from its hinges.

The golden-eyed monster stood out on the balcony, staring up at the sky. His fingers, gripping the balcony’s railing, clenched tight enough to crush the smooth stone in his grip.

Sule felt he had a working survival instinct. That instinct screamed at him that approaching would not be the wisest course of action if he ever wanted to see his daughters again. He was about to turn around and walk away—he could figure out what had happened later when he wasn’t in immediate danger of having his head crushed—when something strange started happening.

The colors left. The guestroom bed, covered with a rich red blanket and translucent blue curtains, simply lost all of its brightness. The red turned dark. The blue faded to a gray. The floor even lost its color. Which didn’t quite make sense given that the black and white mosaic tiles didn’t have color to begin with.

Confusion made Sule step into the room. Rich dark wood turned pale. The amber glowstone lights dimmed to the point where he could barely see. In the polished silver mirror, his own face, normally a healthy brown, looked like it had been coated in ash.

Staggering forward, nausea filling his stomach, Sule stepped out onto the balcony. If this was a counterattack, he wasn’t quite sure what its purpose was. Nevertheless, the source was outside.

Stopping just behind the man with the golden eyes, Sule couldn’t help but gape.

In the far east, on the distant horizon, the sky had been torn apart. A great not-moon hung in a black void. So vast and so encompassing—

“Don’t look at it.”

Sule blinked. He was on his knees for some reason, staring up. But his view of the sky was blocked by the back of the glowing-eyed monster. Sule couldn’t see his face but he could hear the barely-concealed rage vibrating just beneath his calm tone.

“That is what we fight. That will be the end of all if we fail. We must not fail.”

Sule could still see the holes in the sky on either side of the monster’s shoulders. He didn’t dare move, however. Not if it meant seeing that not-moon again. He simply nodded his head, perspective on this war altered. Perhaps it was more important than he had thought.

Ilya folded her arms across her chest, glaring up at the sky.

“What? W-What is this?” Duke Woldair stammered.

Alya, Ilya’s mother, had a hand clutched to her chest as she stared up with nervous eyes. Beads of sweat dripped down her face. Two other advisors had rushed over along with seemingly half of the manor’s guards. All to her room. It was on the right side of the manor to see the event in the sky in full but there were surely other balconies to watch from. Then again, they could have seen it from practically anywhere. It was almost directly overhead. Not even the mountains shading Cliff could obstruct that thing.

From the manor balcony, Ilya could easily see the streets of the rest of the city. Not all of them, of course, but enough to guess that everywhere was probably the same. The streets were crowded, packed full of people. Many were on their knees, staring up. Praying, perhaps, though whether out of fear or reverence was anybody’s guess.

With everyone in varying states of panic, Ilya felt like something of an outsider. She was the only one not experiencing some level of distress. Worry, certainly. It was hard to not worry when the whole sky split open. Yet it wasn’t the all-encompassing dread that seemed to have hit everyone around here.

There was some sensation in the back of her mind that this was fine. Not normal, but fine. This wasn’t going to kill everyone or destroy the world. It just… was.

The other major emotion running through Ilya’s mind was a tinge of irritation. She didn’t know exactly what this was but, given that she was apparently the only one immune to whatever they were experiencing, she had a feeling that she knew who to blame for it.

There had been one large ritual they had been planning. The ritual that would weaken the barriers between planes so that the archway could reconnect to the Underworld. There had been concerns that it was too strong of a ritual, that it would do something far more than what was intended. Savren and Zullie were supposed to have tuned it back.

Was this what they called holding back?

Ilya had a feeling that the whole fortress was falling to pieces without her there to make sure everything ran smoothly. Arkk was good but he got focused on his ideas, often rushing off to handle them personally. Vezta was an inhuman monstrosity who probably didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘restraint’. The orcs, gorgon, and thieves were hardly reliable. She had thought that Zullie, at least, had a good head on her shoulders…

Now?

She needed to get back.

Her wounds were better these days. She wouldn’t be drawing back a bow or running through a forest anytime soon but she was at least back on her feet. She could make her way back now. Perhaps not on her own, but…

Ilya looked at Alya. Something must have caught the older elf’s eye. She managed to pull her gaze off the spectacle in the sky.

“You… knew?”

“Knew what, Mom?” Ilya said with a glare. With their voices, the Duke had managed to drag his eyes off the sky, though he didn’t quite look all there. He stared in confusion.

“This… you knew it was coming,” Alya said, eyes wide and fearful.

“I didn’t know anything of the sort,” Ilya said as she glared up at the purple moon thing. “I’ve been trying to tell you, Arkk and I went into the Cursed—”

“This is my fault. We were warned of this. I’ve failed.” Alya’s shoulders slumped. “I left, thinking I could stop another war from starting. And I failed at that too. I left my position behind and now… My whole life…”

She sagged, leaning up against the doorframe that led out to the balcony. Like the weight of all her centuries hit her all at once. Ilya could only stare, wondering how her mother had ended up like this. She was warned? Warned of what, exactly? And who warned her?

Ilya tried to ask but, with tears in her eyes, Alya just shook her head.

Grabbing her by the wrist, Ilya dragged her back indoors. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Now,” Ilya said. “I don’t know if I’m well enough to travel on my own—damn Arkk for destroying the teleportation circles on his way out—so you’re going to help me. You’re going to explain everything on the way. No more deflections, no more lies.”

“Where are we going?” Alya said, her voice sounding steadier as Ilya dragged her away from the balcony.

“Back to Fortress Al-Mir. You have explaining to do. Arkk has explaining to do. And I’m sick of that handsy duke coming into my room to check on my condition,” she growled. Her mother could throw herself at the Duke all she wanted. Ilya wanted none of it.

Even with that Fissure in the Sky, the Duke paid far too much attention to the women. Ilya made it a mere five steps before he called out after them.

“Guards! Guards! Stop them. They know something!”

The pair of guards, normally posted outside Ilya’s room for her protection, stepped into the room. They hadn’t left their posts with all the commotion. They hadn’t fallen into a stupor after seeing the sky. They did glance at one another, surprise riddled in their faces when they realized the Duke was pointing at his chief advisor and the guest they had been guarding for the past several weeks.

Their confusion didn’t stop them from lowering their pikes, stopping Ilya in her tracks.

At Ilya’s side, her mother looked back and forth with just as much confusion as the guards must have felt. It was like she couldn’t quite comprehend what was going on.

Ilya glared. Not at anyone in particular. Just at the situation. Slowly, she raised her arms in surrender. “Perfect,” she hissed. “Just perfect.”

 

 

“Places, places everyone!”

Arkk and Vezta stood at the very center of the ritual circle. Arkk took the anchor position, the point where the most magic would flow, while Vezta stood in a symbolic spot. She existed less as an active participant in the ritual and more as a simple connection to the beings that brought her to this world as well as the idea from ages past that people could traverse planes as easily as Arkk could hop on a horse-drawn carriage and travel the Duchy. There was a large altar between them, covered in intricate metalwork designed to channel magic this way or that.

As much as Arkk felt he could craft working ritual circles and maybe even design a few aspects himself, staring at the altar boggled his mind. He hadn’t the slightest idea how Zullie and, later, Savren had worked out what was needed. Not to mention how they assembled such a large and complex ritual.

Arkk didn’t want to say that he would be surprised if this worked. That implied a lack of faith in his employees. Still, if they all stood around and nothing happened, he doubted he would be particularly shocked.

There was an undercurrent of fear lingering at the back of his mind. Not that it would work but that he would manage to screw something up. Having spent most of his life blowing up ritual circles—or animals affected by his magic—standing at the very center of this complex, experimental, and even theoretical ritual circle didn’t exactly fill him with feelings of reassurance. Savren and Zullie were here. He doubted they intended to blow themselves up. The pylons jutting up from the waters drew his eye. Four large pylons stood in the water between the bridges. Not high enough to connect to the roof. They were each topped with smaller ritual circles, tangentially connected to the main ritual via thin wires.

“Those weren’t in the original design,” Arkk had commented upon first seeing them in the small model.

“Magic bleeders,” Zullie had answered. “We weren’t sure about the level of magic you or Agnete would output but, anticipating too much, we’ve decided to err on the side of caution and add magic bleeders into the array. If the level of magic increases beyond safe levels, the excess will be channeled into the pylons where smaller arrays will disperse the magic safely.”

Arkk had nodded along. “They were absent from the original design because you wanted to overpower it anyway.”

“The original design was made before Agnete was a consideration,” Zullie had said with a shrug, “but yes, there wasn’t any concern then.”

So they had some precautions. Nothing should blow up today. Still…

The real reassurance was knowing that he could teleport himself and all his employees instantly should something go wrong. The bandits wouldn’t be safe but… Callous as it was to say, Arkk didn’t feel nearly so conflicted about leaving them behind.

Savren and Zullie were the only two who weren’t in position, as far as he could tell. They were running around the room, making sure that everyone else hadn’t stepped out of their spots in the time it took for everyone to get settled. They were all standing up, some looking quite a bit more nervous now than they had been during the meeting earlier.

He spotted one bandit out of position, having stepped forward to peer down into the smooth silvery water. Arkk was about to yell at him to get back but Zullie saw him first, grabbed him by the shoulder, and wrenched him back. She promptly started chewing him out. “What did I say? Don’t touch the water, don’t move, don’t even breathe. Do you want to be the one explaining to your boss why we had to cancel to find a replacement? My boss isn’t going to be happy with your boss if that happens.”

Noticing that they were looking in his direction, Arkk glared. A faint red light reflected off the silvery water—odd because it didn’t reflect anybody. He maintained the glare for just a moment, making sure that the bandit noticed, before glancing aside with a small smile.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“More than I should,” Arkk admitted to Vezta. “I look forward to the day I can get them out of my fortress. It just feels… dangerous to have them around. Throwing a little weight around, making sure they know who they’re dealing with, that does feel nice.”

“I have to say, it is an unconventional situation. Most Keepers in the past would never have allowed potential enemies so close to their [HEART].”

“After that little stunt one of them pulled trying to get into the treasury, I did make up some extra security features in the hallway outside both rooms. Lesser servants are standing by, ready to drop anyone who approaches either door down a large pit. Beyond that, we should be able to handle any ideas that they might get. You, me, and Agnete.”

“For the majority, I agree. Some of them, those here, possess magic that is harder to plan around. While we could handle them, I’ve no doubt, I do worry about potential damage to your [HEART] before we can react. Seeing the gremlin’s stealth spells makes me worried.”

“Ah, damage to the Heart would be a concern if we were playing host to someone like Inquisitor Vrox. Thieves, however, are going to be less inclined to immediately attack a magical artifact. They’ll want to steal it. Assuming the piles of gold surrounding it don’t draw their eyes first.” Arkk shook his head. “I’m more concerned about a knife in my back while walking through the hallways.”

“Master, someone of your status doesn’t walk through hallways.”

“Not since inviting them here, that’s for sure,” Arkk said with a sardonic chuckle. He continued looking around the room, making sure that nobody else was causing problems. His gaze landed on Hale.

The young spellcaster looked nervous, shuffling her feet and rubbing her hands while looking around the room with ill-disguised awe. She wore a relatively nice dress that the tailor servant had made. It was simple, like most everything the servant crafted, but still leagues nicer than anything someone from Langleey would have worn. Arkk couldn’t help but feel like she looked out of place here.

Agnete, eyes glowing and face stoic, stood opposite from Hale, wearing an outfit fashioned after her old inquisitor uniform, a long coat with several straps holding it closed across her chest. In comparison to Hale, she looked perfectly at ease. Maybe even a little irritated with how long Savren and Zullie were taking.

Having a sudden thought, Arkk teleported Zullie straight to him. The witch stumbled but was used to moving around enough that she quickly caught herself.

“Problem?” she snapped, lips tight and tone terse. “If not, I’ll thank you to leave me to my job. This is stressful enough without—”

“I just wanted to ask about Hale.”

“Hale?” Zullie quirked an eyebrow, turning her head to look over the bridge. “What’s wrong with her?”

“You did tell her what she needs to do, right?”

“It’s just like activating a ritual circle. Let your magic flow.”

“I know that. Does Hale? Or did you assume she already knew?”

Zullie crossed her arms over her chest, glaring over the top rim of her glasses. Notably, she didn’t say anything. That did not reassure Arkk in the slightest.

“Go remind her,” Arkk said with a small sigh. “And do be nice about it.”

“Nice? I’m always—”

Arkk teleported her away before she could finish, dropping her off right at Hale’s side. The younger girl let out a small yelp, hopping aside before realizing who was there. Zullie shot Arkk one more glare, which he returned with a light wave of his hand, before bending at the waist to speak to Hale.

“Will she be alright?” Vezta asked, watching them as well.

“Hale? Or Zullie?”

“Both,” Vezta said with a light chuckle. “Mostly the smaller of the two.”

“Zullie says her magical capacity is surprisingly high for someone who wasn’t taken to an academy as a child. Honestly, I’m more worried about the bandits. According to Zullie, none of them have a formal education. They all just stumbled through magic, teaching each other rituals and spells. Not often very successfully. Lexa says that everyone had their spells that they kept secret from the others, not wanting their usefulness usurped. It wasn’t uncommon for some to try to sabotage others. Likely by teaching them bad practices.”

Vezta shook her head, touching her brow with her fingertips. “Something of a mess, isn’t it?”

“Nervous?” Arkk asked. “I am. But I’m excited as well. Like… What if this works? War aside, casting great magic like this is something I dreamed of when I first started blowing up my ritual circles. I mean, not exactly like this, but—”

“Arkk,” Savren called out, now standing at his position in the ritual circle. “I’ve accomplished assessment and appraisal of all our allies. Awaiting your adjuration.”

Waving a hand to show his acknowledgment, Arkk turned to find Zullie hurrying past several of the ritualists, moving from Hale’s position back to her own. As soon as she arrived, she opened her mouth to call out as well only to notice Arkk watching. With a huff, she nodded her head.

Arkk took a breath, flashing a smile at Vezta. “This is it.”

“I eagerly await the outcome.”

Humming, Arkk raised his voice. “Alright. We’re beginning. Listen for Savren and Zullie’s callouts.” With one last sweeping look around the chamber, Arkk knelt and planted a hand in the designated spot.

“Arkk,” Zullie called out from across the water. “Start slow. Ready when you are.”

Arkk nodded and began pushing magic into the ritual array. Just a touch at first. Like he had done before finding Fortress Al-Mir. The tiny scraps of magic he pushed into the circle were more prodding than proper flowing as he worked to make sure nothing was amiss.

“Good. Increase output slowly.”

Arkk obeyed, moving from his careful probe into a more proper flow, much like he might do if he were powering a regular ritual array. The large altar in front of him began to glow. Slowly at first; his magic took its time to weave through the interlaced diagrams of metal. It accelerated as he turned up the flow rate of his magic, flooding through the altar array. With a slight popping of his eardrums, the entire altar thrummed with a low violet light.

“Hold. Maintain output but don’t increase any further,” Zullie called out. “Alright, stabilizers! Your turn. We’re starting with the four closest to me and Savren. That’s me and the idiot opposite from me in case you lot haven’t been paying attention.”

“Simply sluice the sigils set before you,” Savren added, speaking a little quieter as he looked to the two bandits at either side.

Arkk kept his head down, eying the array to make sure the intensity of the glow didn’t increase or decrease. At the same time, he could peer throughout the room using his total knowledge of Fortress Al-Mir. In sort of a double-vision, he kept monitoring the altar while also watching the ritual arrays around the bandits light up as they followed directions. Their purpose here didn’t require anything quite so complex as the altar around them. It was more like, should someone’s magic output dip for any reason, their magic would make their way through the ritual circle to steady it out until the original caster could correct their error.

Even with only the four active, as soon as some of the light made its way across the bridges and to the central altar, Arkk found himself relaxing. It wasn’t quite as strenuous to maintain the exact level of magic output that he had been when Zullie called for him to hold.

“Excellent. Alright, Hale, Agnete. You’re up. Take it slow at first. Steady. Breathe, Hale. You’re fine.”

Turning his attention to the youngest person in the ritual circle, he watched as Hale clenched her fists. Her hair, tied into two long ponytails on either side of her head, wafted about her shoulders in a way that normally would have required a fairly stiff breeze. The levels of magic in the air, continually rising as the ritual went on, charged the currents with enough energy that magic alone held her hair against the forces of gravity.

The smaller rituals atop the pylons in the water were slowly brightening, their intensity helping to illuminate the room. Arkk wondered if he should pull back somewhat only to shake his head. Neither Zullie nor Savren had said to stop. Everything must be going according to plan.

Hale took a deep three breaths, eyes scrunched shut, before she slammed her hand down on the platform. The components around her feet immediately lit up with a bright violet.

“Slower, Hale. Pace yourself.”

The metal channels around Hale’s feet immediately dimmed, only for some of the stabilization magic to divert, keeping it at a low steady glow much like that of the central altar. Aside from some winces from the bandits, everything seemed fine on that side of things.

Agnete, calmer and more experienced, didn’t require any assistance or beratements from Zullie. There was a bit of an oddity, however. Rather than the violet that suffused throughout the rest of the ritual circle, the array components around her feet were a dim orange. More flame-like.

While Zullie was focused on Hale, Savren noticed the oddity around Agnete. He stared for a long moment. Arkk could see the wheels turning in his head. But he didn’t say anything. A few moments later, when Zullie looked around, she also stared, thought, and decided to proceed anyway.

“Next stabilizers,” Zullie said. “That’s anyone who isn’t currently doing anything. Start pushing your magic into the array.”

The remaining bandits, and one orc, followed Zullie’s directions. Arkk watched carefully for any sign of subterfuge from the bandits. He didn’t expect anything from them, however. Not after that whole discorporealization warning from the meeting earlier.

“And now us.” Zullie’s voice carried over the gently rippling pool of water, though she was talking more to herself. She and Savren locked eyes over the top of the central altar for a brief moment before both knelt.

Violet light coursed across three bridges. Amber light emerged from the last. They merged together at the central platform, brightening the few dark parts of the array around Arkk. On the other side of the altar, the rings around Vezta brightened as well. Vezta’s many eyes darted back and forth, watching the changing and movement of the light as it swirled around her. Her expression, calm and serene, belied an almost frantic anticipation in the back of her eyes.

After spiraling around her, the magic funneled back toward Arkk, cresting the edge of the circular altar. The light’s path took it directly to the center of the metal diagram. A shaving from the crystal archway stood upright at the center point. The magic poured into it, bringing forth a brilliant luster from the formerly rough piece of crystal.

“Okay. That looks good,” Zullie said. The genuine surprise in her voice was a bit disturbing. “Arkk, next part. Remember, you need to—”

Arkk knew the ritual front to back. He might not have been involved too heavily with its actual design but he had gone over every detail, in detail, with Savren and Zullie. Yet, whatever reminder Zullie thought he needed fell by the wayside as the ground shook. Roiling waves of the silvery water crashed out from the central platform, rippling out to the outer edges of the pool.

Hale shrieked in shock and several of the bandits shouted. The glowing light on the altar flickered even as Zullie shouted out, “Calm. Do not move. Do not stop! Everyone keep pushing magic into your arrays or you’ll destabilize the whole thing!”

Savren echoed her sentiments, though in his far more verbose manner.

They kept speaking, kept trying to calm everyone down. It worked. The flickering of the array ceased and the low violet light glowed steady. Even still, there was an undercurrent of nervousness suffocating the large room.

“Was that supposed to happen, Zullie?” Arkk called out once the witch stopped trying to get everyone under control.

“Look, Arkk,” the witch shouted back. “There isn’t some book I can cross reference that says ‘Oh, in case of quakes, divert more magic to the paradimensional entanglement array’. This is cutting-edge magic here.”

“So is that a no?” Arkk said, trying to keep levity in his voice. A little humor helped calm people more than shouting at them any day of the week. It helped show that nothing was wrong, everything was under control. If he wasn’t worried, nobody else should be either.

Even though he was worried. The fact that even Vezta looked mildly alarmed was enough to set the hairs on his neck on end.

Connected to Fortress Al-Mir as he was, he didn’t detect anything wrong with the rest of the place. That quake hadn’t damaged anything. No lesser servants were scurrying around trying to repair the damage. It was almost like it had only occurred within the room.

“Back down before barrier-breaking breaks our backs,” Savren said, voice raised.

“Right,” Zullie agreed. “We’ll shut everything down, examine what that tremor was, and try again in a few days.”

“Start with the stabilizers or the strong-sigils won’t stop.”

“Yes, Savren. Thank you. I know how to shut down the ritual. We’ll go in the same order that we started with. That means the two closest to me and the two closest to Savren. Pull back slowly so that—”

One of the bandits, the one directly to Zullie’s left, started to scream. “I—I can’t stop! It’s—” Gripping his hand with his other wrist, he tried to rip it away from the array. With a vigorous wrenching of his arm, he succeeded, though not entirely. Bits of flesh from his fingertips and palm remained behind, trailing sticky strings of blood. Hand still gripped to his wrist, he stumbled to his feet and teetered backward. He tried to steady himself with a flailing of his hands.

Tried.

The moment both feet left the protective ring he had been positioned within, he froze.

He didn’t quite stop moving. Like a feather floating loose through the air, he started drifting lazily toward the vaulted ceiling. His hair, short and brown, turned gray as it grew at an alarming rate. The young skin of someone in his mid-twenties paled, wrinkled, and started crumbling away. His eyes shriveled up along with his tongue. By the time the man drifted into the ceiling, he was little more than a withered skeleton. Even that crumbled to dust at the gentle impact.

Most everyone in the room stared with undisguised horror. It was some small consolation that Hale had her head down, focused on the array in front of her. She hadn’t seen the man’s gruesome demise.

“Damnit. I told them… Nobody move. What part of do not move do you people not understand? Sit where you are and don’t do anything you aren’t told to do. Now, you there, on Savren’s left. We need to balance the array. Slowly pull back your magic.”

“I… I can’t either. It’s like it’s sucking it out from me,” the bandit said, voice unsteady.

“Okay. Don’t panic. Just… Okay.” Zullie sucked in a deep breath, eyes darting back and forth over her array. A thick dribble of sweat worked its way from her brow to the lens of her glasses where it dripped down to the glowing lines below. “Okay. Think. Give me a minute to think.”

Savren was just staring up at the crumbled bones and decaying clothes, frowning in deep thought.

Agnete looked stoic. She simply kept her hand down and the lines around her steady.

“I can teleport us away,” Arkk said, offering up that possible solution.

“All at once?”

“Yes,” he lied. He wouldn’t be able to bring along the bandits, being non-employees. Perhaps with the rest of them gone, the ritual would shut itself down and they would be safe. Perhaps not. “Unless you’ve got a better—”

Another quake shook the room. Far more violently than the first. Arkk had to grab onto the altar to keep himself steady. His other hand was still pressed down against the array. Like the bandit, he couldn’t remove his hand. He didn’t try.

Instead, he tried teleporting everyone.

His mind shuddered. Nobody moved. Locked in place, they were stuck. It was a feeling he had felt only once before. When the inquisitors invaded and that ice marble fell to the ground, freezing a number of them in place, his powers had refused to function. It was the same now. They were trapped in place, held captive by the ritual circle.

“Arkk, get us out of here.”

Arkk blinked. He tried again only for that same lurch to throw his mind.

He tried peering out of the ritual room, only to find a black void awaiting him. Even if he could remove them from the room, he couldn’t see anywhere to place them down at. There was no territory around. It was like the only thing that existed was the ritual chamber.

“Arkk?”

A third quake hit. This one warped the space around him. The central platform started to stretch and bend, twisting into a small marble that he and Vezta stood upon. The rest of the world fell away. The walls, ceiling, floor, and water twisted in space, stretched off into infinity. His awareness shrunk further, cutting him off from Zullie and the others as the space they occupied spread out.

He and Vezta stood atop a sphere the size of the [HEART], alone in a black void.

Alone until two violet lights burned down from the expanse overhead.

 

 

Arkk poured one vial of clear liquid into a larger kettle of clear liquid. Stirring with a narrow metal rod, he watched for a long moment until, all at once, the liquid turned a deep and translucent green. Pausing, he quickly glanced over at the book open on the counter and skimmed to find the next step.

Green was the correct color. As long as it was a clear green and not a murky green.

So far so good. This alchemy stuff wasn’t that hard.

Well, the book he was reading didn’t have anything too difficult in it. It was a step more advanced than the beginner treatise that he had gotten from Morford in Darkwood Burg but far from the theoretical concepts and more research-focused invention of new methods and recipes. Fortress Al-Mir, despite having more than doubled its population of employees since the Duke’s party, still had exactly zero alchemists within its walls. Arkk had thought it would be a good use of his time, familiarizing himself with everything he could from the books he had on hand. Not to mention, it was a good way to keep his mind busy on productive tasks rather than remembering once more how useless he had felt at Elmshadow.

Alchemy was a powerful discipline. It could create a wide variety of potions, powders, materials, and, if Morford was to be believed, even life. From something simple like the soakless solution that kept rain from drenching cloaks to those ghasts that had been the product of life alchemy. Some magical spells could be solidified or liquified for use in different ways.

But it was a rare discipline. Unlike magic, for which there would generally be obvious signs of propensity that would result in someone being sent off to an academy, there was no propensity for alchemy. It was pure hard work, having to learn the uses of hundreds of different materials, the uses of dozens of different pieces of equipment, and the dangers of combining them improperly. Not all too dissimilar to having to learn components of rituals or words for magic—which could be dangerous if spoken incorrectly—however that was only the first problem.

Magic could be performed with a stick dragged through some dirt. Cheap. Everyone had access to sticks and dirt. Alchemy required precision measuring tools, glassware formed into all manner of odd shapes, and the materials themselves which were often rare or simply located only in specific parts of the Duchy. It took gold to make and gather the equipment. That alone made it impossible to use for nearly everyone and unpalatable for the few wealthy enough to afford the materials. It was cheaper to hire a spellcaster on retainer than it was to hire an alchemist or learn alchemy.

But magic couldn’t solve everything. Or maybe it could if someone knew enough but there were some things that alchemy was geared more toward solving than magic was.

Ladling a small amount of the clear green liquid into a small glass, Arkk took a hesitant sip. Just a taste. Not even enough to properly swallow.

“Oh. That’s…” He grimaced, shuddering.

“Too hot?”

Arkk shook his head, sending pins and needles down his spine with the movement. It lasted but a second before being replaced with a soothing cool. He drew in a content breath, sighing in relief. “That’s rather good,” he said, shaking out his shoulders. Rather than pins and needles, that just sent the soothing feeling down to his fingertips and back. “Bit of a surprising kick at the start but I think this should work well. Not as smooth as what Morford sold us. Hope that’s alright.”

Katt’am shrugged. He patted his thighs right above where his legs ended in stumps. “It’s just the itch,” he said. “Drives me crazy. If it makes that go away for a little bit, I’ll be happy.”

“If I’m reading this right,” Arkk said turning back to the book. The pins and needles came back as he moved. The tiny droplet he had tasted was already starting to wear off. He ignored it with a shrug. “About as much as in this glass right now should last about a day. So the whole pot is roughly two weeks of the stuff? I’ll bottle—”

“Master.” Vezta stepped into the room, hands clasped together at her waist. She offered a bow to him and a smile at Katt’am. “They are ready for you.”

“Right. Thank you, Vezta.” Arkk handed the glass off to Katt’am. The legless orc didn’t hesitate to down the whole dose. He shuddered but, when it didn’t look like he would keel over, Arkk gave him a nod and pulled a large glass bottle from the shelf on the wall. Carefully, he poured the remainder from the kettle without spilling a drop. “Don’t drink more than I said,” Arkk said as he stoppered the bottle and handed it over. “Can you get back alright?”

Katt’am, looking far less tense than he had a moment ago, nodded a loopy nod. Setting the bottle in his lap, he reached down and patted the large wheels attached to the sides of his chair. A third, smaller wheel sat front and center where his feet would have been. “Made it here just fine, didn’t I?” Even his tone sounded far more mellow. “A chair with wheels. Who would have thought?”

“An obvious solution to an obvious problem,” Vezta said. “Though, if you would like, I could assist you back to your quarters.”

“Naah. You two go do your important things. ’sides,” he said, looking completely content. “Promised the kith I’d let them pile on my chair while one of the older boys pushes them around.”

Kith. A word from the orcish native tongue that essentially meant ‘battle children’. Orphans of war or other similar tragedies. Culturally, they would be raised by the group for the good of the group, whether that group was farmers, fishermen, or raiders. Arkk wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about the orc effectively saying that he was indoctrinating children for use later on as raiders—or mercenaries—but at least it was just fun and games and not throwing them into the arena with real swords.

Katt’am, after losing his legs, had found a new purpose acting as the primary point of contact between the refugees and the rest of Fortress Al-Mir. For a warrior who couldn’t fight, Arkk had been worried that he would be offended or miserable or otherwise disagreeable toward the arrangement but he had taken to it with gusto.

According to Dakka, he had always wanted children but not to raise them in an environment like what their former chieftain had cultivated. Fortress Al-Mir was at least marginally a better environment and a whole litter of children, many of whom had no parents or other caretakers, had landed right on his lap.

How someone who loved children, apparently of any species, wound up in a group of raiders made Arkk wonder if he had some story like Larry’s accusations of murder that had driven him out of more wholesome societies. Arkk hadn’t wanted to pry, however, so he hadn’t asked.

With a thanks thrown over his shoulder, Katt’am wheeled himself out of the makeshift alchemy laboratory. The doors opened automatically for him and closed behind him. Arkk looked over to Vezta. “Everyone’s ready?”

“All relevant personnel have been gathered in the meeting room.”

“Good,” Arkk said.

In a blink of his eyes, Arkk and Vezta found themselves outside the meeting room door. He took a long breath of fresh air before realizing something.

“Do I smell like alchemy lab?”

“Fairly strongly. I wasn’t going to say anything—”

“Just a moment.”

Arkk teleported away again, reappearing in his private quarters. He quickly tossed the dark green tunic aside and started washing his face and hair in a small water basin he kept on the table. Hoping that at least helped, he grabbed hold of a black suit and quickly threw it on. It was a little more militaristic than the tunic he had on before, more akin to something Hawkwood would have worn. Not in battle, but around Cliff. It had a high collar and trim lines down the sides.

Looking less like he had just rolled out of bed and into a vat of potions, he teleported back to Vezta’s side. The servant waited patiently as he straightened his suit, only to brush his hands aside to smooth it down for him.

“Is the smell better?”

“Marginally, though you look more regal.”

“It will have to do.” He didn’t want to keep everyone waiting for too long.

Not everything could go according to plan all the time, unfortunately. There were hiccups, factors outside Arkk’s control, or just plain inaccuracies in what he expected versus the reality of the situation. There weren’t too many things that could be done to prevent such situations. Nevertheless, Arkk tried to account for as many issues as possible.

Hands clasped behind his back, he stalked into the meeting room. The table had been pushed aside, leaving an array of chairs. Everyone relevant to the ritual sat before him. Agnete, Savren, Zullie, and Hale—the latter with John at her side, along with Lexa and the other bandits capable of spellcasting. Behind him, seated at a long rectangular table, were all the primary advisors and ‘section heads’ as he had taken to calling them.

Rekk’ar and Olatt’an represented the orcs. The former wasn’t too happy with delving into the unknown of this ritual. Arkk fully expected that of him given that he wasn’t happy with too many things that fell outside ‘orcs doing orc things’. Although Arkk appreciated his caution on occasion, he often ignored the man’s grumblings. Olatt’an, on the other hand, maintained a calm demeanor on the outside but there was something in there… an anticipation in his eyes like he had been waiting for this for a long while.

Khan represented the gorgon in the matter. Although, Arkk had mostly included Khan as a courtesy. The gorgon didn’t have much input one way or another here. Which did feel a little strange. If Vezta was correct, the gorgon—or their ancestors—came from an alternate plane of existence. They weren’t native.

Katja, with Horrik crossing his arms as he towered behind her chair, was here as a courtesy as well. She wasn’t an official employee but he was using spellcasters loyal to her for this ritual. Arkk had… concerns about her presence. None of the bandits had been allowed to see the ritual chamber so far. Arkk didn’t want them getting any ideas on how they might utilize it toward their ends or otherwise sabotage it.

Arkk had spoken to Zullie about the potential issue. The bandits would be occupying the less vital segments of the ritual. All they needed to do was contribute a bit of magical power. Without having seen the ritual beforehand, the most she suspected they would have to worry about was people deliberately not pouring magic into the ritual or people trying to overload it. The latter notion had elicited a small laugh along with a quip about how weak their tests had proved them to be.

“Capable of parlor tricks and little more,” Zullie had said with a scoff. “Lexa is far and large the most talented of the bunch and her power is likely being augmented by her employee contract. I wish I could have tested her before but…”

If they simply did not contribute in an attempt to sabotage the ritual, it should fail gracefully, leaving him frustrated but perfectly able to try again. A second attempt would have to wait until after casting Katja and every single bandit out of Fortress Al-Mir. He wasn’t quite sure if he would toss them to a burg or not. They had a lot to worry about with the war and didn’t need a hundred and fifty bandits dropped in their laps.

Vezta, sporting an anticipatory grin far more obvious than Olatt’an’s, made up the final member of the table as she entered behind him, taking a seat up at the front. That left just one seat empty.

Ilya should have been there.

As he did every time he thought of her, Arkk quickly checked in on Ilya. At the moment, she looked to be in a session with some healers. It was hard to tell with no real communication and no way to listen in, but as far as Arkk could tell the gouging that the assassins had done was almost completely healed. The emergency work that Arkk had done to keep her alive until the proper healers could arrive, on the other hand, still looked exactly how Arkk had left it, raw and half complete. He wanted to go to her. He wanted her here. Unfortunately, Inquisitor Vrox had told him in no uncertain terms that entering Cliff would do no good favors toward their ‘ignore each other’ truce.

There wasn’t much he could do aside from make sure that the Duke wasn’t harming Ilya.

If that changed… well, screw that truce. He would be there as fast as Vezta could scribe teleportation rituals.

Shaking the distraction from his mind, Arkk focused on the task at hand. “Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming. We will be conducting the ritual today. Individually, on your parts, it will be quite simple. You are to stand at your assigned spot and, on cue, pour magic into the ritual array. Zullie will be the primary monitor for the ritual. Savren will be the secondary. They are positioned on opposite ends of the room so everyone should be able to hear at least one of them,” Arkk said, indicating the positions on the diagram on the wall. “You will adhere to their commands. It shouldn’t be anything more complicated than adding power or holding back.”

“Also, should we call out ‘Stop’ please cease any magical expenditure entirely,” Zullie added, finger in the air. “Though that will only be called out if we detect something going catastrophically wrong.”

Arkk nodded his head and then looked back to the rest of the room. “Any questions?”

One of Katja’s bandits raised his hand. A young man with a chin as wide as his face. “I’ve never actually done any ritual that requires multiple people,” he said. “What does catastrophic mean in this case?”

“Tumultuous tremors tearing terra to tiny tidbits or malefic monstrosities managing migration to materiality—”

“What my esteemed colleague is trying to say,” Zullie started, shooting a glare across the table, “is that you shouldn’t worry because any of our projected possibilities are extremely improbable. However, there is one thing you all should be aware of. No matter what seems to be going wrong—or right—please do not move from your assigned positions. There is a not-insignificant chance that you might experience a sudden discorporealization event if you do.”

“Discorpo-what?” the same bandit asked.

“You will find yourself feebly flailing as your fingers fail to firmly find footing, falling from our foundations into fantasy.”

Arkk shot Savren a flat look, rolling his eyes. Not for the first time, he wondered just what kind of curse he suffered from and whether or not it re-translated his thoughts with alliteration in mind or if his vocabulary was simply good enough to push through it, even if his meaning came out somewhat less clear than it otherwise should have been.

The ritual they were doing was designed to weaken the boundaries of reality, allowing the portal to reconnect to the [UNDERWORLD]. If things went wrong, there was a possibility that some people might fall out of reality. Or so Zullie had put it.

“Uh…”

Seeing the confusion on most of the bandits’ faces, Arkk decided not to elaborate on what Savren had been trying to say. He didn’t need to frighten them all off now of all times.

“Just don’t move,” Zullie said, removing her glasses to rub at the bridge of her nose. “We have safeguards in place within the ritual circle and once the ritual is depowered, everything will go back to normal.”

“Any other questions?” Arkk asked, forcing a little cheer into his tone. Better to get off this track sooner rather than later.

“We being paid?” another bandit asked.

“Katja has already received a sizable compensation for your services,” Arkk said before the bandit lord could answer. Smiling, he continued, “I presume she will distribute your portions according to your working contracts.”

It was brief but Arkk spotted Katja shooting him a glare as she carefully crossed her arms. He watched her a moment longer through his Keeper vision, fully expecting some kind of complaint. Maybe even an argument that he would be paying them more than he had already agreed. However, she simply looked at her caster and nodded her head. Arkk wasn’t sure if he should feel alarmed or relieved.

“As for those of you working for Company Al-Mir,” Arkk said. He was mostly speaking to Lexa and the one orc that Zullie had cleared, Vezz’ok. Agnete, Zullie, Hale, and Savren might want to know as well though they were already likely aware. “This counts as an active task—but not a hostile task unless the ritual turns dangerous—and will be compensated accordingly.”

Vezz’ok nodded his head. Lexa just grinned, winking at Arkk. Not sure what that wink was for, Arkk ignored the gremlin and looked around the room. When nobody else brought up a question, he clapped his hands together. “Okay,” he said, feeling a fluttering in his stomach at how close they were. “Zullie and Savren will escort everyone related into the chamber. No one else will be permitted entry due to the aforementioned hazards for those wandering around outside the ritual circle.”

Arkk took in a deep breath, rubbing his fingers against his thumbs as he watched the room shift and move. His two spellcasters quickly maneuvered people out of the room and down the hall. He leaned back against the wall, resting for just a moment.

“Second thoughts?” Olatt’an asked, his voice calm as usual.

“Nervous,” Arkk said. “Honestly, I almost want to delay a bit. Savren and Zullie deciding to redo the original ritual design did make me a little worried that this might not be correct either. Another competent caster’s opinion wouldn’t have hurt…”

“But the war…”

Arkk nodded his head. “Dire. Too dire.”

He had already been through a long debriefing regarding the events in Elmshadow with all his advisors. That golden light, likely an avatar of one of the traitor [PANTHEON] members, was far too potent. More potent than Agnete’s flames or Tybalt’s void fields.

At least they had their answer as to how Evestani was crossing the winter terrain with such ease. Before Elmshadow, Hawkwood had a whole team trying to figure out what Evestani was doing that was allowing their troops to move so quickly even through areas of heavy snow and icy winds without succumbing to frostbite. Now they knew. It was divine intervention.

“Additional allies, boons from gods, lost magics, and who knows what else we might find.” Vezta had given him a long list of possibilities. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been there in well over a thousand years, since before the Calamity was a thing. Knowing anything for certain was simply impossible. “I imagine a hundred beings like Vezta would be able to stop that army’s march where they stand.”

“Master,” Vezta said, stepping into the conversation. “I did warn you not to expect more of myself. I am quite unique.”

“Like you, not you exactly,” Arkk said, shaking his head. “Even a hundred beings on par with orcs or elves who are willing to join us would bolster our forces. I don’t know about stopping the army with just that but it would be a start.”

He had posted notices around all the nearby burgs stating Company Al-Mir’s intent to recruit. They were hardly the only ones, however. White Company, the Order of Claymores, First Legion, and practically every other mercenary company had similar notices out there. Having spoken with Hawkwood, Arkk was well aware that almost every recruit who might have thought about joining up with him had gone over to White Company instead. That wasn’t a bad thing. Hawkwood could use recruits more effectively than he could at the moment.

Still, Arkk felt Company Al-Mir desperately needed additional forces. Especially if his suspicion about the assassin’s reaction to his glowing eyes was correct. They were coming for him. Not the Duke or the Duchy as a whole.

Rekk’ar leaned back in his chair, scowling at Arkk. “Not sure you’re going to have a lot of success. What idiots would go to a whole other world to die in a war unrelated to them?”

Vezta was the one to answer him, looking over with several of her eyes. “Those who wish to see the world restored and the Calamity reverted. Just by reaching the [UNDERWORLD], we will show our sincerity and capability in getting tasks done. While there may still be persuasion required, it is likely not as hopeless as you believe.”

“Bah,” Rekk’ar said, standing. “Don’t know why I bother. Let’s get to the archway,” he said, clapping a hand on Olatt’an’s shoulder.

Arkk quickly checked through his fortress. Dakka stood at the head of a contingent of orcs and gorgon, equipped in full armor with shiny new weapons hot out of the blacksmith’s quencher. Not literally… but they all had mostly new equipment.

While Vezta promised allies, Arkk was taking a slightly more pragmatic approach. No one, including Vezta, could say they knew what would be on the other side of the portal. Arkk felt it only prudent to set up defenses and guards to make sure nothing unpleasant slipped into the fortress.

In the worst-case scenario, Arkk had lesser servants standing by, ready to collapse the entire passage. He could teleport all of his minions out of the way and then pull the ceiling down on anything that looked too much for his guards to handle.

“Remind them not to attack first if anything comes through,” Arkk said. “We’re trying to get allies, not more enemies.”

Rekk’ar rolled his eyes but Olatt’an gave a firm nod of his head. “When we go through ourselves, I will be at your side,” the latter said.

Arkk blinked. That was quite possibly the first time he had ever heard the older orc make anything resembling a demand. Still, it wasn’t anything unreasonable. Arkk nodded back. “According to Vezta, we might have to go through just to get the portal open in the first place. I’m fine with you joining. Speak with Dakka while you’re waiting. We should go through with a few people. Get some volunteers.”

“My pleasure,” the old orc said as he departed with Rekk’ar.

Agnete stepped up to Arkk as the others left the room. He could tell even without looking simply because of the warmth that followed her around. He looked over to her, one eyebrow raised. “Agnete. You sure you’re alright?”

After her collapse and exhaustion in Elmshadow, Arkk had kept a close eye on the purifier. It had been a few days since she had diverted that golden ray of light, saving his and Hawkwood’s lives. Almost all of which had been spent in her room. She had spent a great deal of time sleeping, an activity broken only to eat.

Agnete merely nodded her head, so Arkk asked, “Input from a former inquisitor?”

“Not exactly,” Agnete said, voice soft. “This Underworld is… the locale of a being titled Cloak of Shadows, correct?”

Arkk slowly nodded, looking at Vezta.

“Accurate,” Vezta said.

“The Cloak of Shadows is a being similar to the Burning Forge. This implies that the Burning Forge has a locale as well.”

“Correct. It is referred to as [ANVIL OF ALL WORLDS].”

“Will it be possible to visit this… Anvil?”

“The [UNDERWORLD] is, metaphysically speaking, the closest plane,” Vezta said. “It is why we are attempting to breach it. The Anvil is fairly distant and will likely require the power of at least one additional [HEART] along with additional territory and minions, though I do concede that we may find alternate routes, methods, or assistance inside the [UNDERWORLD].”

“Why are you interested?” Arkk asked, feeling like he knew what the answer was going to be.

“I am supposedly an avatar of this Burning Forge. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know anything about myself or why or how I came into this power. All I know is that I have been used all my life. I would like to know why.”

Arkk nodded along with her words. It wasn’t exactly what he had been thinking but close enough that he wasn’t even mildly surprised. “I don’t know if it will give you answers but, if we find a way, I will bring you along. Here and now, however, I would prefer if you remain inside Fortress Al-Mir.”

“Remain behind? But—”

“Rest assured that even if we find a convenient door to this Anvil place over there, we’ll stay out of it until you’re with us. It’s just that you are probably the most powerful person here. I would like you to stay behind and make sure nothing goes wrong while we’re on a completely different plane of existence.”

The faint glow of embers in Agnete’s eyes dimmed as she shifted her gaze across the room. Katja was leaning against the door with her arms crossed, Horrik at her side. From the way she was standing and the fact that Arkk met her gaze when he looked over, she had positioned herself there so that Arkk couldn’t slip past without running into her.

Well, he could just teleport away. It wasn’t like anyone could stop him while he was within the fortress’ walls.

“I understand,” Agnete said, voice even quieter now. “I will maintain order in your absence.”

“Thank you, Agnete,” Arkk said, resting a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t maintain contact for long, quickly pulling his hand back. He flicked his wrist a few times through the air, trying to cool it back down. He hadn’t burned himself. At least not bad enough to rush to a pool of water. He made a mental note not to pat Agnete on the shoulder again. “Although it might not be soon,” he continued. “I promise we’ll look into the Burning Forge more thoroughly after things calm down.”

Dark lips pressed together, Agnete nodded her head. She walked away after, heading through the door without a single glance toward Katja.

Arkk let out a small sigh. All things considered, Katja wasn’t that terrible of a person to deal with. He had to keep in mind that it could be worse. Edvin could have been the leader of the Moonshine Burg thieves.

“Sorry if I ruined any plans to further plunder my coffers,” Arkk said as he approached the door where Katja was waiting. “I’m not too keen on double-dippers. That said, if you are interested in more gold, you could join up officially.”

“And die when you put me on the front lines?” Katja shook her head, sending her black hair swinging around her shoulders. “Not interested in your war. I intend to cruise through it and come out the other side as rich as possible. Maybe take over the ruins of a larger burg. Hell, might even pretend to be benevolent, and get myself a fancy title from the Duke. Wouldn’t say no to Queen Katja being made official.”

“I… don’t think the Duke has the authority to give away the title of Queen.”

“No, but Duchess Katja declaring herself Queen of Mystakeen after the tragic death of her husband sounds about right. Maybe after, you would like to become my King? You’re certainly rich enough for it.”

“And wake up the morning after our marriage to find a dagger deep in my heart? I’ll pass, thank you.”

“I’d make sure you died happy,” she said with a lascivious grin that would put Lexa’s more lecherous smiles to shame. “Your loss,” she added when he just shook his head.

Arkk just shook his head, slipping past her. “If that’s all…”

“For now,” Katja said, licking her lips. “Do keep what I said in mind though. Word is you aren’t keen on the current rulers of our fair nation. Should a most unfortunate incident befall our beloved Duke, do remember those who helped you out.”

Arkk looked at her with a frown, wondering if Lexa had been talking to her former employer about things that she really shouldn’t have been talking about. “Right,” he said slowly before turning away.

It was time.

The ritual awaited.

 

 

Clarkson pulled his cloak tight, shivering in the winter wind. Snow clung to his face and stung his eyebrows. It was all he could do to keep moving forward. One foot went in front of the other, slowly yet steadily. The light sack hanging over his shoulder thumped against his back in a lethargic rhythm.

He wasn’t the only one out, moving across the plains. Vanny and Kev stalked along to his left, eyes dead as they stared at the snow-covered ground. Kumm’av snapped at the reins of an ox, trying to keep it moving the cart filled with children. Branson, hardly seen without a smile on his face, now looked like the only thing keeping him moving was a necromancer pulling his strings.

Having seen more than one of his fellows fall to the snow in the past nine days, Clarkson wouldn’t find it surprising in the slightest if a necromancer actually was trailing after them. They were leaving enough bodies behind to fill a small crypt. Mostly the elderly. Gemmy had been the first to fall. His enthusiastic façade withered away by the second night as his nose and fingers started turning black. Although they had kept the fire going hot all night, no one had been able to wake him in the morning.

Clarkson tried not to think about the lack of feeling in his toes.

He just had to keep moving forward.

They were almost there. Almost to Joydale Village. A little community north of Elmshadow, nestled in a far narrower valley. It wasn’t the closest village. Clarkson, along with most of the others, had decided to head toward it anyway. Most nearby villages and burgs would be overwhelmed by the sudden influx of refugees. To avoid the risk of traveling for days only to be turned away, Clarkson and the others had elected to head further out.

They hadn’t counted on the sudden plummeting temperature. It turned a cold winter into a positively frozen winter.

Miserable. Deadly.

But they were almost there.

“Holding up?”

Clarkson looked over to find Erwin looking… well, not happy. The man, older than Clarkson but younger than most, had been one of the more enthusiastic ones for traveling out to Joydale. Said he had family out there who would take in their group, assuming they couldn’t stay somewhere like the village church. While he had lost a lot of his good cheer along with everyone else, Clarkson could still see the forced smile in his eyes.

“I’m moving,” Clarkson said. Peeling open his lips for the first time today felt like driving pins and needles into the skin around his mouth. But that was good. Pins and needles meant that he was feeling something. “You think everyone who stayed behind is still alive?”

“Still alive.” Unlike a number of their group. “I don’t know. No one I talked to knows why they’re attacking. Maybe they just hate us. Maybe the Duke said something offensive.”

“Would they take it out on us? We’re just farmers…”

“Let me tell you something. I spent some time with the Knights of Longview. Two hundred people caravanning around the deserts of Chernlock. We were a free company, fully registered with the garrisons and yet, I distinctly remember coming across a village that had been beset by bandits. Not our commission but we were fresh on our journey and itching for a good fight…”

Erwin trailed off. His eyes, glassy as they poked out from between the hood of his cloak and a thick scarf around his mouth, stared off into the distance.

“Commander died early on. Caught a stray arrow. His second couldn’t keep control—we were hardly the disciplined sorts and nobody particularly liked Yorya. Killed the bandits easily enough but, by the end of the night, I doubted that the villagers would have been able to tell the difference between us and those who had been raiding them.

“Now, an army should be more disciplined but an army is far larger. Trying to keep a few thousand in line, keep them from raiding and pillaging the people they just conquered… sounds impossible. If I were their commanders, I would say let them have at it. Blow off steam on the poor souls who stayed behind. Loot whatever they wanted and so on and so forth.”

Clarkson pressed his lips together. There hadn’t been a good option if that was true. Still, leaving six of their group behind, dead in the snow… Traveling didn’t feel like a good option. Maybe a closer village wouldn’t have turned them away.

“Why ask? Regret leaving?” Erwin asked, cocking his head. “It is a bit late for that. We’re almost there!”

Clarkson blinked and looked to Erwin. The man had his eyes up on the horizon. Following, taking his eyes off the snowy path ahead of him for the first time, Clarkson spotted the gleaming white walls of the village church. It practically glowed against the dark overcast clouds in the background.

A change in the caravan’s mood rippled through the travelers with Erwin’s words. Energy returned to the group. It was a subtle thing but their pace picked up. Even the ox seemed to sense the nearing destination.

Safety. Warmth. Healing, hopefully.

Those white walls of the bell tower, adorned with golden sigils of the Light, called out to Clarkson, drawing him ever closer. Just seeing it brought feeling back to his toes. By the time they reached the building, Clarkson was walking upright. He had even tugged off his own scarf.

Erwin made arrangements. The local priest brought out a heavy pot of stew. It was thin gruel, mostly water with a few dry plants and tubers from the storehouse thrown in. Yet seated within the chapel, feeling the warmth waft from his bowl onto his face, it was the most delicious stew he had ever eaten.

“Light be praised,” Clarkson whispered.

Erwin looked over, hefting his bowl in agreement. “Damn those Golden Order heretics.”

Clarkson winced at the memory of those golden beams that had torn through his home. Elmshadow was in ruins. It might never reach its former glory. The city guard and those mercenaries hadn’t stood a chance in the face of their enemy’s might.

Looking up at the glass windows of the chapel and the ornate golden symbols covering the panes, he had to wonder…

Why hadn’t the Light protected them? Was the Golden Order’s god simply stronger?

It was… a sobering thought.

Hands clasped together, Vezta walked the halls of Fortress Al-Mir, enjoying the atmosphere. With Zullie passed out from exhaustion and Savren finally satisfied with the alterations they had made to the ritual, she had no pressing tasks around the fortress. That gave her plenty of opportunity to take time for herself.

It had been so very long since Vezta last felt the beating of the [HEART]. It wasn’t something every resident could perceive. She could feel every thrum. Each and every pounding thud, echoing against the walls. The way the beating grew faster when stressful situations found her master, the soothing calm when he fell asleep. She could guess what he was doing at any moment just from the intensity of the beats.

It was so lively. Merely thinking about it brought a spring to Vezta’s steps. She had spent so long in isolation. Upon returning to the fortress to find her master missing and all residents slaughtered, she had fallen into a state of torpor, only to be awoken centuries later by a powerful magical presence crossing through the land.

It had taken effort to wake from her lethargy. The lack of energy within the fortress—and the world itself as a result of the Calamity—had kept Vezta slow and sluggish. Nevertheless, she had managed to open a gaping hole in the fortress ceiling just in time to draw that magical presence in. It had been a gamble to allow him to leave but a reluctant master was no master at all.

Everything had turned out so well.

People wandered the halls that had stood empty for a thousand years, carrying out tasks, training, and donating their magic to the collective of the fortress. Furnaces burned, hatcheries spawned poultry, and lesser servants scurried about, maintaining everything. For a long few hundred years, Vezta had feared that no magical peoples still existed in the world and the [HEART] of Fortress Al-Mir would never beat again. Now they had a dozen within the fortified walls. Not all were employees, it was true.

Vezta wasn’t quite sure what to think about that. Two groups within Fortress Al-Mir had not made a contract with the [HEART]. The first were rescued slaves and refugees of the war.

Inviting random people to live in a fortress wasn’t something Vezta could recall having been done under her former master. Not at such a scale, in any case. Perhaps a particular individual of note or small group that would be advantageous to bring inside for protection. Arkk was rather unorthodox. Understandable given that Keepers of the [HEART] had been effectively exterminated from the world. He had no context for precedent.

Aside from a few words of advice or offerings of how her former master ran things, Vezta was quite content to allow him to act as he would.

That didn’t mean that she wouldn’t, as the humans put it, raise her eyebrows at some oddities. Walking through the refugee wing of the fortress, there was certainly a different air to it.

People sat around for the most part. They acted more like captives than guests. It probably didn’t help that several guards patrolled the halls. Mostly the original orcs Arkk had hired. They were around solely to ensure that no fights broke out—a fairly common occurrence, understandable given the stress of losing everything—but the impression they gave off wasn’t necessarily the best.

Three hundred people had found themselves invited into Fortress Al-Mir since the start of the war, plus a hundred rescued slaves from just before the war’s start. Only a handful had joined properly, wanting revenge or just to have something occupying their hands if not their minds. The rest were… leeches. As Vezta walked past one room, she peeked her head inside to find a few dozen men and women of varying ages sitting around, talking in hushed tones. No one was really sure what they were supposed to be doing.

The only real ‘job’ they had around the fortress was to harvest and consume the food produced by one of the large refugee hatcheries and fields that Arkk had constructed specifically for them. Beyond that, their job was to sit around and hope they could return to normal life once spring came. Though, with the war, the prospects of that happening were not all that likely.

They should be booted out or hired—and thus donate whatever scraps of magic they had to the greater fortress.

But Arkk wouldn’t go for that.

Still, at least they were peaceful.

The other group of unaffiliated persons currently housed within Fortress Al-Mir were not quite so content to sit around.

Vezta’s leisurely walk took her past the main treasure vaults. That was one issue that needed to be addressed. It wasn’t a problem yet but the fortress turned gold and magic into food for consumption. With so many people, especially so many non-employees, their gold reserves were starting to diminish. They would need to find additional sources of income if Arkk did not send everyone away.

Before that, however, was the problem of the dark elf kneeling at the treasury door. Only three rooms had reinforced doors. The [HEART] chamber, the treasury, and the flame witch’s private quarters. That meant it was fairly obvious that something valuable was hidden within.

No normal person should be able to open any of those three doors. And yet, this dark elf had a pair of metal bars wedged in the frame. He was trying to force it open.

The moment he spotted Vezta, his eyes widened and he started sprinting down the corridor.

He was fast but couldn’t compete with her once she unraveled her tendrils. A gaping, tooth-filled maw clamped down on his leg with enough force to take a small chunk out. More tendrils thrust forward, wrapping around his arms and shoulders. He fell to the ground, kicking and screaming. Vezta drew him back, deliberately drawing it out, giving the man time to contemplate his actions.

“You…” Vezta started, pulling the dark elf around to face him. “You are one of Katja’s men.”

“Get off m—”

A thick tendril squirmed over his face, sealing his mouth shut.

“Answer me one question. You will nod your head for yes or shake your head for no. Were you sent here by Katja or one of Katja’s underlings? Answer honestly. I will be displeased if I detect a lie.”

The dark elf froze in Vezta’s grip. He still kicked his legs and tried to twist his arms out of her tendrils but his head stilled to the point where it was clear that he wasn’t answering. Vezta waited half a moment more before closing her eyes.

“I see.”

Vezta let him drop, still wrapped up in her tendrils. Opening one of her mouths, she let out an unnatural whistle, sharp to the point where most mortals wouldn’t be able to hear it as it crashed through not the air but the aether. It took a minute but one of the lesser servants slowly slithered up the hall. Vezta simply waved at the door. Her meaning clear to the servant, it moved forward to eat the metal bars and repair the minor damage the dark elf had managed.

“Come along,” Vezta said to the elf, not giving him a choice as she dragged him over the ground.

Katja’s entire crew from Porcupine Hill had accepted Arkk’s generous offer of housing on the condition that her spellcasters participate in the ritual. While Vezta understood that spellcasters were a precious commodity, both because of the way the Abbey of the Light had their hands in tutoring spellcasters and because the war had seen most spellcasters joining up with various mercenary forces or the main army of the Duchy, she still felt like inviting a bunch of thieves to the fortress had been a mistake.

It wasn’t that they were thieves. It was that they weren’t employed.

Katja had her own guards posted throughout her wing of the fortress. Arkk had his orcs and gorgon patrol outside it but they weren’t to enter without him. Nobody wanted fights breaking out inside the fortress. Someone must have slacked off to have allowed this dark elf access to the rest of the fortress. That was a disciplinary issue that she would see to later. For now…

A few of Katja’s guards tried, halfheartedly, to stop Vezta. Seeing her dragging one of their own, tied and bound—and a little bloodied from where her mouths had taken small bites from him—had most of them moving aside the moment her eyes crossed over them. The only one who did stand in her way without budging was the giant of a human who served as Katja’s main bodyguard.

He crossed his arms, stepping in front of the door to Katja’s private chambers. “Halt,” he said.

“I will speak with your leader,” Vezta said, keeping her tone as polite as possible. “Whether you have all your limbs when I do is up to—”

“Horrik!”

The door opened, prompting the large man to step aside.

The leader of the bandits stepped out in a translucent gown, striped tattoos visible on her bare arms. Her eyes traveled first to Vezta, then to the dark elf on the floor behind Vezta, before settling on her bodyguard.

“Horrik, I have asked you to not antagonize our benefactors.”

The man did not verbally respond but he did let out a lengthy noise from the back of his throat as his eyes focused on the dark elf.

“I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for this,” Katja said, patting him on the arm. “Well, benefactor? What is the reasonable explanation for Len’s poor treatment.”

“I found him outside your wing of the fortress, attempting—”

“I don’t recall other trespassers being treated quite so roughly.”

“Attempting to access restricted areas.” Vezta pulled one of her tendrils taut. The snap of the elf’s arm made a few of the gathered onlookers wince. The muffled moans escaping from behind the tendril clamped over his mouth quickly degraded into whimpering. “I take such violations quite seriously.”

The dark elf’s eyes widened and he started twisting back and forth, very obviously trying to shake his head in the negative. Another bone snapped as Vezta bent his leg in the wrong direction.

“You are here because my master would like to use your spellcasters. He has generously offered shelter and financial compensation.” The dark elf let out another cry as his arm twisted far enough to pop out of its socket. “Relations between our groups need not sour. I believe Arkk wishes to work with you in the long term on other projects. But I cannot abide any threat to Fortress Al-Mir.”

Slowly, Vezta started to twist her tendrils. She watched the expressions on everyone’s faces. Katja had her lips pressed together, trying to look neutral. Horrik had a heavy scowl that deepened with every passing moment. Most of the other bandits ranged somewhere between disgust and apathy. One, standing nearest to Vezta, even had a smile on his face. Perhaps someone who didn’t particularly like this dark elf.

The elf’s head twisted fully. His struggles went limp. Vezta pulled her tendrils back to herself, reforming her dress and legs in full. The body dropped to the floor, twitching.

“There will be no warning. No mercy. Anyone caught violating the sanctity of Fortress Al-Mir will meet a similar fate.” Vezta smiled, deliberately stretching her lips just a little too wide. “Good day, Katja, Lord of the Bandits.” She turned but didn’t quite make it a full step before feeling the familiar tug of teleportation.

She found herself in the false fortress, directly in front of the array of teleportation circles.

Feeling the presence of her master, she turned and smiled. “Welcome home… Master?”

Arkk stood covered in sweat and grime, clearly tired. Something in his eyes had changed. The hope of the young boy who had initially made a contract with Fortress Al-Mir was missing.

“Are you alright?”

He drew in a deep, heavy breath. “Do I want to know what you were doing just now?”

“Meting out disciplinary measures,” Vezta said without hesitation. “Your absence has resulted in several… trespasses among Katja’s men. Most were simply returned to that wing of the fortress.”

“I trust that man did something to deserve more?”

“Your trust is well placed,” Vezta said with a bow. “He attempted to break into the treasury. I felt a need to make clear that we won’t have them walking over us.”

“If this causes problems with…” Arkk drew in a breath, straightening his back. His eyes regained a little light. “The ritual. Is the ritual ready?”

“Zullie and Savren are both happy with the alterations and I, in my limited knowledge of ritual magic, see no reason why it shouldn’t work. Once you adjust the temple room, we can begin.”

“Good. Good,” he said, reaching out and grabbing Vezta by the shoulder. He gave her a firm squeeze. “We need to do it as soon as possible. Now, even.”

“Is something wrong?”

Vezta’s master looked empty once more as his face went blank. He stared at her but not the kind of stare that would really see her. His sight was set on his thoughts. Vezta remained still, offering her support with a smile while letting him process everything he needed to.

Eventually, he spoke.

“Elmshadow… was a disaster.”

 

 

If there was one good thing about the purifier going rogue, it was that his actions gave Arkk an idea.

Inquisitrix Astra came forward and confirmed the death of Purifier Tybalt. It felt a little too easy to Arkk. An Avatar of the Jailor of the Void, felled by a lightning bolt. Then again, he was just a human, albeit with strange magic. Agnete was no different. Perhaps she could use some aspect of her flames to avoid a bolt of lightning, but Arkk couldn’t see how. If she got hit, especially with him giving it his all, he doubted she would be any better off.

Unfortunately, his death did not pop the wall back into existence. It was a large gap in Elmshadow’s defenses. Fifty armed and armored men standing shoulder-to-shoulder could walk into the city at once. It wouldn’t be easy. The ground curved downwards into a trough that was slowly filling with water from somewhere. Melted snow, perhaps. Even with that, it was still a worrisome opening that hindered White Company’s ability to defend the burg.

So far, despite it having been several hours, Evestani had only now started marching over to take advantage. Arkk was hoping that he had taken out their leadership. That way, at least he would have done something, even if that something only meant a delay.

The magical bombardment had started up again, covering the army’s advancement. Not boulders dropping from the skies this time. Thankfully, they weren’t using golden rays or golden arrows either. Instead, flaming balls of fire came down on the city far more frequently and were dangerous, especially if they made it through the barrier and started raining down on the wooden structures within, but they were also far less substantial than a solid mound of stone. Much easier for those manning the defensive rituals to weather. Arkk doubted they intended to shatter the defenses. They were just tying up spellcasters to minimize the few magical counterattacks that Hawkwood could mount against the approaching army.

He was trying. There was no large ritual in place to bombard them in turn—and not enough casters to reliably work the ritual array he had stolen from Evestani—but the army in motion was vulnerable to lesser spells and the mounted ballista. The spellcasters with the vanguard of the army didn’t quite manage to defend from everything.

Arkk, arms crossed as he stood on an intact segment of the wall, watched as winches and a claw ratcheted back two stone spheres connected by a heavy rope. The ballista could be a precision weapon at times but at the moment, hurling a ball and chain through as much of the army as possible would do the most damage, both in terms of physical damage as well as morale.

No one wanted to rush closer to their deaths.

With a heavy thwung, the strained arms of the ballista released their tension, rocketing the oversized bolas off into the distance. Arkk lost sight of the projectile against the gray skies, only to spot it once again as a barrier quite similar to that which Zullie had developed popped into place. Where Zullie’s projectile blocker spell grabbed hold of incoming projectiles, this one deflected the bolas up and over the top of the forward soldiers. It did come back down again but at a greatly reduced velocity and a far sharper angle. The dozen soldiers in the way had plenty of time to move, clearing the landing zone before it crashed down.

Not every group was as lucky. Spells or bolas occasionally struck true. It just wasn’t enough.

Arkk was not flinging his spells. Nor was he putting his meager archery skills to good use. He stood atop the wall, focusing not on the army itself but on the ground under their feet. He had to focus lest his mental map of the terrain shift askew.

Purifier Tybalt had given him the idea. Or perhaps reminded him that he had more at his disposal than just orcs and a former purifier.

He glanced over at Hawkwood and gave the man a firm nod of his head.

Hawkwood, held up a stalling hand, scowling as he looked out at the approaching army. “Where?”

“The forward group. I think I can time it so that we get the majority of the spellcasters.”

Watching the army move, both with scrying and a spyglass, it quickly became clear that they tried to keep their spellcasters as protected as possible within each battalion. The active spellcasters, the ones maintaining the defenses, would move to the front. When exhausted, they would retreat toward the middle of the group and recover.

“Hold,” Hawkwood said. “Let them pass.”

“What? But—”

“They are the vanguard. The forward soldiers the enemy is throwing away to fall upon our swords and clear the way for the rest of the army behind. The unit following is larger and better equipped.”

Arkk peered into his crystal ball, comparing a few soldiers from each of the advancing units. What Hawkwood was saying wasn’t wrong. Evestani’s army wasn’t wholly uniform across all units. They favored a black and gold theme, painting their armor and wearing regalia primarily colored along those lines. The golden sun against the black background did stand out and look striking.

The forward group, however, looked more like how Arkk pictured a well-funded militia to look. Or perhaps a mercenary company along the lines of First Legion or the Society of the Burning Shadow. A group of people who all worked together but were left to their own devices on how to equip themselves. They followed the theme of black and gold but depictions of Evestani’s golden sun were few and far between.

“Conscripts,” Hawkwood said, answering the question on Arkk’s mind. “Perhaps taken from mercenary companies. Perhaps taken from the streets.”

“Fake soldiers or not, they’re still carrying real weapons.”

“They will be poorly trained and thus easier for us to deal with. Easier to rout as well. Even easier still should their backup fail to arrive.”

Arkk glanced around. White Company numbered roughly four thousand strong. Not all of them were present at the wall. Elsewhere around Elmshadow, other parts of the Evestani army were approaching, likely to put strain here, allowing their men to break through. White Company had to spread themselves out along the entirety of the west-facing wall or risk being overrun from behind.

The gap in the wall was still the weakest point and thus warranted Hawkwood’s personal attention. And Arkk’s as well.

Arkk licked his lips, stomach aching from the sight of ten thousand marching forward across the vacant fields. It wasn’t even mildly comparable to facing down a few hundred goblins. Especially not when he had a horror from the Stars at his back and new magic making him feel invulnerable.

He was no stronger than Purifier Tybalt or Agnete. A stray arrow or an oblique spell and he would be gone.

“I hope your men are ready,” Arkk said, resisting the urge to step back. “They’re almost here.”

“Just hold steady until that second unit advances a little more.”

“Right. Steady.” Arkk took a deep breath, regretting sticking around. Fresh idea thanks to Tybalt or not, this felt like suicide. “Not going to give a big rallying speech? Get everyone’s spirits up?”

“The general riding up and down the lines, belting out a morale-boosting speech, is entirely the fiction of bards and poets. I could turn and shout as loud as I could and only a dozen would be able to hear me,” Hawkwood said, offering Arkk a grim smile. “Every squad has battle-hardened hype men. Those who have been with White Company for a time, seen and fought in plenty of fights. They will rally those around them. Not often through the use of flowery words and purple speech. Listen,” he said, cupping a hand to his ear. “Even now, you can hear them psyching themselves up.”

Arkk turned slightly, not quite sure what Hawkwood was referring to. A thunderous sound had risen along the wall in the last few minutes. Clanging of metal against metal and shouts of discordant hype. Arkk had thought it was from the sound of the approaching army but, now that Hawkwood had pointed it out, he realized that at least some of it was coming from the soldiers stationed on the wall and behind the large divots.

They stomped their boots. They struck their own shields with the pommels of their swords. The pikemen raised their spears into the air, cheering.

They readied themselves for war.

Arkk often felt out of his depth. Never more so than now. Despite all the cacophony and the vibration of war in the air, a rather silly thought flittered through his mind. It was a good thing he had relieved himself just an hour ago.

“Ignore it. Their job is to fight with sword and shield. The archers are to rain down death upon the enemy. The casters are to protect from the same happening to us. I am to be seen leading the fray. You focus on your job. The second unit. Wait until the perfect moment. No one will know when that is except you.”

Arkk swallowed a dry lump, nodding his head absently.

Focus.

On the rolling waves of armored figures marching across the plains, set to crash into Elmshadow Burg and sweep it away like a flooded river through a small hamlet.

“The hardest part of leading men to war is getting the men to cross the final few paces that will bring them within reach of the enemy’s weapons. Hours of ‘battles’ have been ‘fought’ without a single blade crossing that threshold as soldiers shout and jeer, wearing each other out until some poor fool crosses that threshold.

“They are usually the first to die.”

Thousands of soldiers marched forward, their hype building as the distance between the two forces narrowed. Orders went out. Arrows flew through the air. Shouts merged with taunts, stomping with marching, and the hammering of metal drowned out everything but Hawkwood’s voice.

“That is not a situation we will face today. The enemy vanguard will march straight and true, without falter. For to falter means to flee. These conscripts have nowhere to flee but into the swords of their own countrymen. The rear groups are the lynchpins of this operation. Take them out and not only will the vanguard be without reinforcements, they will also be without that sword pressed to their spine.”

Arkk’s eyes darted back and forth over the army. The landmarks he had been using, odd slopes or tall stones, fence posts, and even the divots created when Tybalt had erased the golden soldiers, all had vanished beneath the tides of the opposing armies. He tried to keep track of where everything was just through feel but that didn’t work quite as well. He wasn’t at Fortress Al-Mir with its perfect map of its interior constantly nestled in the back of his mind. Out here, he had to rely on guesswork.

“Are you trying to say that we can win this, but it all relies on me?”

“No. I don’t believe we can. Not now that they’ve smelled weakness. There are too many of them.”

“What?” Arkk took his eyes off the soldier-covered plains outside Elmshadow. “Then what—”

“We are buying time.”

“For the Duke’s men?”

“Evestani is aware of their imminent arrival tomorrow. They won’t let up because of that. If they take the burg, they will have the advantage in facing the approaching armies. Failing to take it will mean either a retreat or more of that esoteric magic. I can’t speak on the possibility of the latter but the former doesn’t sound like an option if they wish to continue their advance.

“No. We are evacuating. Buying time for the citizens of the city to escape. You will buy us a reprieve to evacuate ourselves.”

“Evacuate?”

“Wasn’t that your plan before that inquisitor blew up the wall?” Hawkwood asked, raising an eyebrow. “I gave the order to my adjutants early in the morning after reports came in of the damage to the food stores. We’ll carry what we can and torch the remainder. Burn the whole burg to the ground. Give them their victory but hollow it out as much as possible.

“Elmshadow lies in a strategic position, it is true,” Hawkwood continued, perhaps seeing the questioning on Arkk’s face. “But it isn’t worth dying over. It isn’t the only chokepoint in the Duchy. We need to retreat, analyze this esoteric magic, find a defense, and then put up a fight when we are more prepared. And have the Duke’s men joined with ours from the beginning.”

“That… I don’t know if that adds pressure or takes some away.”

Hawkwood laughed. It was his usual boisterous laugh but it had a shallower feeling to it. “Just know that it is our lives on the line. Not everyone who lives in the burg. And, if you feel the need to destroy the entire burg, go for it.”

Arkk turned his eyes back to the armies. “I think you overestimate my abilities. All I’m doing is digging a little hole.”

A dozen lesser servants darted around underneath the ground, hollowing out large pitfalls directly in the path of the army. Tybalt’s destruction of the wall and the ground it had been built upon reminded Arkk of his very first tactic employed against the orcs while they were still working for their former chieftain. The same tactic that Vezta had wanted to use on the inquisitors during their invasion of the false Fortress Al-Mir.

He had conjured them up and sent them out to take out the vanguard. Now, the vanguard…

“They’re here,” Arkk said, the tension in his stomach threatening to double over. He took his eyes off the horizon for one second and spotted the vanguard. They were at the wall. At the divot. Though shallow, it would be an uphill climb—White Company stood on the other side, ready to stab down with their spears as Evestani tried to scale it into the city.

Evestani clearly knew it too. Their advance had stalled. It wouldn’t last long, however. The rows of men were pushing forward from behind, crowding those in the front toward the waiting defenders. Behind them, as Hawkwood so eloquently put it, the blade of their own countrymen advanced. There was a gap, a wide swath of still empty farmland, but it wouldn’t last.

Not unless Arkk had something to say about it.

“Focus,” Hawkwood said, clamping a hand on Arkk’s shoulder. “And good luck. I need to be seen.”

Arkk hesitated, considered objecting to being left alone, then clamped his jaw shut. As Hawkwood had said earlier, he had his role just as Arkk had one of his own. Hawkwood had already spent plenty of time getting some country bumpkin who had stumbled into a bit of power and prestige up to speed. Keeping him from his actual duties as commander of White Company wasn’t something Arkk could do.

Though, he did wish that he had pulled Vezta back.

Arrows were flying through the air from both sides now. The casters kept up their barriers the whole time, catching even the occasional golden arrow. From his point of observation, he could see that Evestani’s barriers didn’t quite catch every arrow. Some made it through, either from good luck at striking the exact right spot or from the short swap between one exhausted caster to the next. If arrows were getting through Evestani’s barriers, they were surely getting through those of White Company, just not where he had noticed.

Shouts, cries, and the clashing of metal against metal erupted down below the wall. Hawkwood’s voice belted out indistinct shouts, voice discernable only because of how familiar Arkk was with the man.

Arkk took a breath and shut it out, focused on directing the lesser servants. The rear unit had strayed somewhat off the path that the vanguard had followed. It was hard to tell where the lesser servants were in relation to the rest of the army, but if he cast a wide enough net—or rather, dug a wide enough pit—he should catch enough to make a difference.

He just had to wait for the opportune—

A blinding light filled the periphery of Arkk’s vision. He turned, fully expecting the beautiful golden ray to be the last thing he ever saw. No warning from Fortress Al-Mir could get him out of the way this time. There was nowhere to dodge and no flame witch to divert the beam.

But it wasn’t aimed at him. The golden ray tore through the city at an angle, coming from further south. It faded behind several of the buildings, snuffing out entirely without striking Arkk nor any of the defending White Company in the area.

Shuddering, Arkk swallowed a hard lump of air. There was something about that light… Unpleasant yet so very enticing all the same. He wasn’t the only one to feel it either. The soldiers on both sides had stopped for a few seconds, just staring with bated breath as the remnants of the light faded.

A cry from someone down below and a sick squelch of torn flesh started the battle anew.

Arkk shook himself, focusing once again. The lesser servants hadn’t been idle, able to operate independently. He left them to their continued expansion of the pits as he tried to figure out what had just happened. Adjusting the crystal ball’s point of view quickly filled him in on the answer.

Another section of the western wall was simply gone. Along with it, a fair portion of White Company who had been defending the southern segment.

Arkk looked up, quickly finding Hawkwood at one of the turrets. He was about to call out and warn him but it didn’t seem necessary. Hawkwood shouted an order to one of the men. A moment later and the repeated hammering of a brass gong echoed out, louder than the sounds of battle down below. All up and down the wall, as much of it as was still standing, more gongs started echoing out, joining the first.

The men on the wall started moving, retreating. They fired their last arrows, threw their last stones, upended a pot of boiling pitch, and then made way for the ladders and staircases.

They had to retreat now. Lest they wind up surrounded by the other detachments of Evestani’s army.

Arkk, glaring out, over the battlefield, pursed his lips.

It was too soon. The rear unit was still advancing over the pitfalls his lesser servants had dug.

Yet, he couldn’t stay here either. Not unless he wanted to surrender to that golden-eyed boy.

With a snap of his fingers, the lesser servants heard his command. They ceased expanding and began digging upwards, eating through the earth directly underneath the army’s feet.

Watching the enemy army, it was easy to tell the moment the soldiers noticed something wrong. The entire unit slowed to a stop.

Then, the first of them fell. A gap opened up in the lines of soldiers, first only a pair of soldiers wide. As the ground beneath their feet weakened from his servant’s efforts, a ripple effect spread out. The ground collapsed in on itself, naturally falling into the pit and taking along with them large, circular chunks of the wave of soldiers. Panic sprung up as the troops fought each other to escape, trampling atop their fellows and knocking others into the pits with their actions.

A full quarter of the rear unit fell into the sinkholes. A good half short of his goal.

There were still so many soldiers. He had barely made a dent in the army.

He couldn’t stay longer. Turning, Arkk sprinted to the nearest ladder and practically jumped from the top straight to the bottom. He set the remainder of the lesser servants to opening up all the pitfalls. Afterward, they were to dig and dig and dig until they died. He hadn’t gotten as much of the army as he wanted but the terrain—and the fear of more pitfalls opening—would at least slow them, keeping this section of the retreat from being instantly overrun.

Arkk didn’t know where Hawkwood had gone. He could hear the man’s voice somewhere. The sound of battle, screams of dying men, metal clanging against metal, and the continued ringing of the gongs on the wall made Hawkwood’s exact position into a mystery.

But there was nothing more that he could do. He flung a few lightning bolts and helped White Company make their retreat even as he fell back in a slightly different direction…

It all felt so… blank. A numb sensation filled his mind as he stalked across the channels of blood flowing through the streets.

He could only hope that Hawkwood would make it out. And as much of White Company as possible. That golden beam would have decimated them. A few hundred dead in an instant.

Hawkwood would surely retreat to the eastern side of the city, likely setting it aflame as he went as per his plan. Arkk retreated toward the keep. It wasn’t long before he found himself walking alone on empty roads.

He descended the stairs beneath the keep to the teleportation circle in the cellar and, with a taste of regret in the back of his mouth, left Elmshadow to fall.

 

 

 

There were no more rays of gold for the remainder of the night.

The burn of smoke lingered in Arkk’s nose. They had managed to extinguish the fires but not before half the garrison burned to the ground. Any building in a narrow cone behind the main keep had been on fire at one point or another. Some multiple times, if Arkk or the others fighting the fires failed to fully extinguish the last embers. Residences, workshops, and storehouses beyond the garrison’s walls went up in flames as well. As soon as Arkk realized that one of the main granaries was on fire, he rushed straight to it, skipping past buildings in between.

The threshed corn stored within survived in part. The fire started at the top of the granary, burning down like it was a giant candlestick. Everything at the top was little more than ash at this point. The slate of ice capping the top was slowly melting from residual heat, dripping water into the parts that really should stay dry. At the moment, the citizens of Elmshadow were digging through the wreckage, salvaging and relocating what they could.

While he had made it to the threshed corn storage in time, the same couldn’t be said for all of Elmshadow’s food stores.

Two granaries filled with oats had not survived. A storehouse of smoked meats got a bit too smokey.

Elmshadow wasn’t going to starve this morning. There was enough food spread throughout the burg in personal larders or dry pits to survive for a few weeks. Losing the main storehouses and granaries was still going to be a death sentence for the burg.

Arkk was well aware that people were already leaving. Some already had—as soon as Evestani appeared on the horizon, a number of the more affluent merchants had departed eastward. Now, practically anyone with the means was evacuating. Farmers loaded up their carts. Some left on foot, packing a haversack and leaving everything else behind. Faith in White Company’s ability to stave off the siege crumbled as quickly as the keep.

No one had tried to stop anyone from leaving. It was pushing the problem onto other burgs but here and now, it meant fewer mouths to feed, fewer people to worry about getting hit by those golden arrows and becoming enemies, and fewer casualties if Evestani did make it through the walls.

Arkk sat on a bench inside the infirmary, left hand pressed to his forehead while his right hand rested on Agnete’s arm. Overusing the ice marble to extinguish the flames hadn’t come without cost. His fingers were numb. Not discolored or otherwise displaying signs of frostbite. Thankfully. But he could barely flex his fingers and couldn’t feel a thing besides a pulsing ache. The heat from Agnete soothed the ache.

He hadn’t slept. He was so exhausted. Even before this night, his sleep had been restless and intermittent. There was so much to do, so many preparations to make. So much going on.

Arkk didn’t know how to help anymore. Everything he did barely gave Evestani pause. Hawkwood had been completely routed by those golden arrows, forcing White Company to abandon a number of their supplies to Evestani. The mausoleums had stopped them for a time but Evestani worked out a countermeasure. He had stolen the boulder-dropping ritual and, potentially, destroyed Evestani’s leadership in the area. In turn, Evestani had taken out several Hawkwood’s men who had been in the upper keep. Agnete wasn’t awake yet. He didn’t know when she would wake or even if she would have the energy to fight once she did. All he knew through the employee link was that she was stable.

Even if he brought over all of Company Al-Mir, he didn’t know how they could possibly help. Vezta wasn’t omnipotent. Zullie and Savren were but two casters up against an entire army. Some orcs, a few gorgon, and the fresh recruits would just die on Evestani’s swords.

The Duke’s men would arrive shortly. Another day. They would bring with them men and spellcasters in far greater numbers than Arkk could field. At that point, proper counter-siege magics could commence, not just exhausted casters pouring every scrap of magic into a defensive array.

They could do something.

He couldn’t.

His ability to render assistance had hit its limit. There was nothing more he could do.

The thought was simultaneously freeing—a relief at realizing that nobody could possibly expect him to pull a miracle out of his ass—and disheartening all the same. It was clear that he couldn’t fight off a proper army. Why had he ever thought he could depose the Duke? Ultimate defensive and offensive object? More like a broken piece of crap that tethered him to one spot in the world.

The sound of sure-footed boots crossing the stone floor of the infirmary made Arkk open his eyes.

Agnete was hardly the only one present. Between bits of the keep flying through the city, the fires, and injuries accrued through recovery efforts, the infirmary was packed. Yet most footsteps were rushed or unsteady. Either healers moving through from one person to the next or discharged patients making their way to the exit. As such, it came as little surprise that the confident footsteps belonged to someone who was neither a healer nor one of the injured.

“Inquisitrix,” Arkk said, dropping his hands to his lap. The numb feeling swiftly returned to his fingers but he wasn’t willing to tie himself to Agnete if he suddenly needed to fling a lightning bolt. “I see you made it out unscathed. Not even a hair under your peaked cap looks out of place.”

The woman glowered, red eyes darting from him to Agnete and back. “Arkk. I’ve been looking for you. They told me you were helping around the burg.”

“I was. All the fires are extinguished so I decided to check in on my employees. Not much else I can do,” Arkk said with a smile he didn’t feel. “Give me a dozen of your types to fight and I’ll do it all day long. But this army? What the fuck am I supposed to do against ten thousand warriors, spellcasters, and whatever that golden-eyed abomination is?”

Astra folded her arms over her chest, tapped her boot against the floor, and raised one eyebrow. “You done?”

“Yeah. Sure,” Arkk sighed. “I was just about to head home and hope you people and the Duke’s men would handle everything. But let me guess, you’ve got some risky plan you need my help with for some reason? So what is it? We sneak in again, kill ten thousand soldiers in their sleep? Maybe you’ve got your own golden beams of light that will blast through their defenses to wipe out the army all at once? Or—”

“Tybalt is missing.”

Arkk blinked, stared at her face for any sign that she was joking, and then decided to laugh.

What else could he do?

Astra dropped one arm to her side while her other hand rested at her hip. She had a sword, he noted. A long rapier. Had she always worn that? “You find that amusing?”

“Not in the slightest,” Arkk said, still chuckling. He shook his head, slapping at his cheeks in an attempt to wake himself up and knock the smile off his face. “Let me guess, you think I had something to do with it because I poached Agnete from Vrox? Hate to break it to you, Inquisitrix, but I wouldn’t go near him under any circumstances. I remember when Hurtt and Jorgen tried their hands at carpentry. I’m pretty sure that table was more stable than your purifier after one of its legs fell off.”

Astra didn’t react to his story. She just stared a moment, fingers drumming on her hip. “Qwol and I lent our assistance following the incident. It wasn’t until a few hours ago that we realized Tybalt had disappeared at some point. Qwol is seeking revelation to locate him while I—”

“On his own?” Arkk asked.

“Revelation is best sought in private.”

“Do you want a dead chronicler? It sure sounds like you want a dead chronicler. I don’t know if you noticed but your purifier isn’t exactly fond of you.”

“The Binder is still on Tybalt’s wrists. He cannot remove them nor use his powers.”

“How well do they stop him from picking up a sword and jamming it through your stomach?”

“I have the utmost faith in Qwol’s combat abilities.”

Arkk wondered if she had functional eyes. Qwol was gaunt and thin to the point where a harsh breeze could fight him off. Then again, he was a chronicler. If he was anything like Greesom, he could probably pose a threat.

Letting the line of thought drop with a shrug, Arkk looked up to Inquisitrix Sylvara Astra and asked, “What do you want from me then? I don’t have your purifier. My own isn’t well at the moment and I would rather not leave her to wake up alone given what her last memories likely are. Burning down the infirmary in a panic is hardly going to help the war effort.”

One of the healers moving behind Astra jerked to a halt and shot an alarmed look in Arkk’s direction.

Arkk just gave him an apologetic shrug.

“Why even come to me?” Arkk continued. “Unless I have severely misread the room, your organization doesn’t particularly like me.”

“The Inquisition of the Light is not currently seeking conflict with you. I thought it best to inform you of the situation lest you believe we had something to do with sending him after you.”

“Me? Why would—” Arkk pinched his eyes shut and shook his head. “Never mind. Of course, he is coming for me. Why would I expect anything else?”

“I don’t mean he is targeting you directly, just that you may be an incidental target. I imagine I am his primary target. Yet I wished to ensure you are aware of the situation,” Astra said. Minutely adjusting her cap, she turned on her heel and started moving, only to pause as Arkk called after her.

“How likely is it that he finds someone else to remove his bracelets? Can other people remove them or is there some magic built in that only lets you take them off?”

Astra looked back over her shoulder, frowning for a moment. Arkk wasn’t sure if she was thinking about the question or trying to decide whether answering it betrayed some secret of the inquisitors. Whatever the cause for her hesitation, she eventually shook her head. “Only those capable of enacting miracles can remove them. Any member of the Abbey would note the inquisitorial eye and refuse to assist.”

“And what if he holds a knife to the throat of some abbess?”

“Then she should accept her death with dignity.” Astra turned away, speaking as she resumed walking. “Informing you was a courtesy. Rest assured, we will handle this.”

“Should,” Arkk grumbled, watching the woman’s back as she departed the infirmary. “Not would.”

Not that he thought someone should throw their life away over the mistakes of the inquisitors anyway. Still…

Arkk looked down at Agnete. While he would have liked to let her rest and recuperate after saving his and Hawkwood’s lives, a mad purifier on the loose was not the best time to be so vulnerable. That said, he also didn’t want to go up in flames the moment she opened her eyes. Keeping one hand in his pocket, hovering next to the icy marble there, he nudged her shoulder. His gentle motions turned a bit more rough as she failed to wake.

Standing, Arkk moved across the room and used a small cup to scoop up a bit of water from a basin. Water used to cleanse wounds. He didn’t take much, not wanting to deprive those who needed it. Moving to stand over Agnete, he frowned down at the faint glow deep within the recesses of her scars.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, upending the cup over her face. There wasn’t time to let her wake naturally with that other purifier on the loose.

The water did the trick. She flinched as it splashed against her face. Her eyes snapped open, glowing bright. The water droplets on her face and in her hair exploded into a cloud of steam. Arkk stumbled back but did not go for the ice marble despite the alarmed cries from those nearby.

There was no fire.

Agnete, hands pressed to her forehead, slowly sat upright. She didn’t notice or care about the loose blanket falling aside. Groaning, she leaned over the bed, planting her elbows on her knees as she heaved. For a moment, Arkk thought she was about to throw up. It never came. The heaving died down to steadier breathing, though she did not remove her hands from her eyes.

“I’m alive?” she whispered.

Arkk leaned down, hand on her shoulder. “Yes. Though you might not feel like it.”

“My eyes feel like I’ve been staring at the sun for too long again.”

“Again?” Arkk asked before shaking his head. “I wanted to let you rest as thanks for saving me and Hawkwood. It would be the least I could have done. Unfortunately, the Inquisitrix showed up.”

The muscles in Agnete’s shoulders tightened under her skin, tensioned.

“Not for you,” he quickly added. “Rather, it seems they lost their purifier somewhere. I didn’t want to leave you asleep with him running around.”

The strain in her scarred back slowly lessened. Agnete peeled her hands away from her eyes, blinking rapidly several times before staring up at him. The embers in her eyes were a bit hazier than normal. A bit dimmer, further recessed.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine. Just tired.”

“Well…” Arkk trailed off, glancing around. He sat down on the cot next to Agnete and dropped his voice. “I think it is time we get back to the fortress. I’ve already sent the orcs over. Half the burg has already evacuated. The other half probably won’t be far behind. The Duke’s men will be here before long. I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do to help. Better we prepare.”

“I understand. My flames feel distant and weak. I am not sure how much assistance I would provide.”

Arkk nodded his head. That sealed it. If even Agnete was calling it quits, he really couldn’t do anything more here. At most, he would be just a magical anchor for a ritual. Hawkwood’s plans for a counterattack ritual were buried under the rubble of the keep. Arkk could assemble the boulder drop ritual and help cast that until Hawkwood’s other spellcasters had exhausted themselves. However, a defensive barrier had gone up around most of the Evestani army—they knew they were missing their ritual circle and had taken precautions against it being used on them.

At this point, Hawkwood planned to hold out for the Duke’s men, keeping round-the-clock spellcasters at his own defensive ritual. Hopefully, the reinforcements would be able to break the siege or at least provide some way of counter-attacking.

But that golden ray had gone straight through the defenses to hit the keep. They hadn’t used it a second time. Yet. Arkk had a feeling that next time, it would be aimed lower, intending to wipe out as many of the forces stationed in the burg as possible.

Arkk didn’t want to think that he was running away. He had tried. He had run out in the middle of their army to sabotage them. It wasn’t cowardice. It was pragmatism.

“Help me up.”

Arkk’s eyebrows crept up his forehead at the request. Rather than comment, he just leaned over, letting Agnete swing an arm over his shoulders. Dragging the blanket up and around herself, Agnete used Arkk as a crutch as they made their way out of the infirmary.

The area around the keep was cordoned off. Bits of it kept falling off, often knocking into other parts of the keep—or even other buildings. Even though only the top of it had been struck by that ray, enough of the top had collapsed in on itself to make the entire place unstable. It had been designed to hold its weight on its walls, not on the floors or ceilings.

The guards still let Arkk pass without complaint. Enough of White Company knew him. Or maybe they just didn’t want to mess with a pair of people with glowing eyes. Either way, he helped Agnete down into the cellar—which had thankfully not yet collapsed—and onto the ritual circle hidden within.

“I’ll be following shortly,” Arkk said, stepping outside the circle. “Just going to inform Hawkwood.”

Agnete closed her eyes, hunched somewhat as she stood on her own, and nodded her head. She didn’t say anything else. It didn’t look like she had the energy to say anything.

With a flash of magic, he sent her on her way.

With that, it was just Arkk and the lesser servant hanging in the corner of the cellar. Everyone else from Fortress Al-Mir was either back at the fortress or on their way.

Arkk headed back up the cellar stairs. Hawkwood wasn’t an employee, so he couldn’t instantly locate the man. At this point, Arkk guessed that he would be back at the outer wall, keeping an eye on the enemy.

Just as Arkk reached the inner keep wall, he heard it. A strange rising whine, long and drawn out. The same sound that he had heard when the purifier used his inverted spheres.

Arkk’s heart skipped a beat, fearing the noise was aimed at him. Yet he saw no sign of Tybalt’s magic anywhere near him. As the drawn-out whine grew in intensity, he saw the top of a black bubble crest the roof of a nearby building, far in the distance.

The crescendo ceased as the bubble collapsed, sending out a low, vibrating thrum that struck Arkk inside his chest. The deep tone did not stop him from rushing forward, dashing through the burg toward where he had seen the bubble form.

Coming out from between two homes, Arkk skidded to a stop in the dirt streets. He could see the Evestani army in the far distance, well across the empty fields around Elmshadow. Closer, a deep divot in the land cut into the outer wall of the burg, leaving an empty gap half the size of the keep. Guards, both on the wall and gathered around the edge of the divot, started shouting alarms.

A second higher-pitched whine started. A sphere that turned the gray clouds black and the dark stone of the wall white started forming at the next segment of the wall. Guards atop it ran in either direction, trying to escape it as it slowly formed. Some jumped off, landing hard in their heavy armor. One, in shock, just sat and stared as the bubble enveloped him.

Arkk tore his eyes away from the wall and the bubble forming around it. His eyes scanned along the street until he spotted a man with his hand outstretched, wearing a heavy cloak. If the outstretched hand wasn’t enough, the wide grin peaking out from the cloak’s hood sealed the man’s identity.

“Electro Deus,” Arkk shouted. Lightning gathered at his fingers, magic given form in electrical plasma. Stretching out his hand, arced the lightning, sending a powerful bolt straight at the mad purifier.

Unaware of the incoming attack, Tybalt offered no resistance or defense. The man flew backward with smoke trailing out from under his cloak, his cry drowned out by the sudden thunderclap that followed. The inverted bubble collapsed in on itself, taking with it a smaller segment of the wall.

A second bolt of lightning followed the first, sending the downed man’s body into a heavy seizure. He shook and trembled, cloak igniting from the power. When Arkk finally released the magic, Tybalt went still. Arkk couldn’t say if he was dead or not. That had been possibly the second most powerful lightning spell he had ever unleashed. The golden-eyed boy had survived the night before, however, so he wasn’t willing to make assumptions when someone with glowing eyes was around.

Keeping his focus on the downed body, Arkk glanced at the wall.

Two whole segments were just gone. Guards panicked. The city, already without morale from the golden ray, wouldn’t be able to repair the damage in short order.

Evestani had already noticed.

 

 

“Possession,” Arkk said, looking around the table. “It fits. The assassins at the Duke’s party also gained glowing eyes once things started going wrong.”

Hawkwood’s tired face twisted into a frown. “Possession is something only ghosts or gods can accomplish. Ghosts tend to shamble about, trying to resolve whatever anchors are keeping them tethered to the world. This doesn’t sound like that…” His fingers tightened into fists on top of the table as he looked to the inquisitors, perhaps hoping that they would reject the notion entirely.

Sylvara Astra sat with her arms crossed and her eyes closed, leaning back in her chair as if asleep. Chronicler Qwol held a wet rag to his forehead, nursing a wound. Despite them having been nowhere near the impact site, he had been struck by a bit of falling debris from the boulder Arkk had dropped on the Evestani bivouac. Purifier Tybalt sat in a squat with his feet on the seat, grinning as he listened intensely to what Arkk had to say of the excursion.

Agnete sat on Arkk’s side of the table. As was typical of excursions where she made use of her abilities, she had returned without clothes. Apart from that, she had made it back safe and sound. Evestani hadn’t managed to touch her and the inquisitors had honored their agreement to essentially ignore her presence. Her presence made the entire room uncomfortably hot to the point where they had to open the window despite it being the dead of winter.

When Astra didn’t react, Hawkwood looked back to Arkk with an even deeper frown. “I hope you are not implying that we are up against a deity. Light protect,” he hissed, drawing one hand down his arm in a protective gesture.

“It is the position of the Abbey of the Light that the gods have departed the world,” Astra said without opening her eyes. “Only the Radiant Light still casts His gaze upon the world, evidenced by our miracles, revelation, and the very sun rising every morning. The Pious of the Golden Order are heretics playing with forbidden magics. Nothing more.”

Arkk shared a look with Agnete. What Astra said was roughly the same as what Abbess Keena preached during her Suun sermons. He had never been all that invested in her lectures but he had paid attention. None of it was ever stuff that mattered to daily farming, hunting, or anything else he did.

It was not what Vezta believed. Arkk was more inclined toward Vezta. Besides her being a pre-Calamity monster who spoke of the [PANTHEON] as if she had personally interacted with at least a handful of its members, he had seen the [STARS]. Things just made more sense with her story, with how the Calamity came about, the statues in Fortress Al-Mir’s temple, and where Agnete’s powers came from. And those of Purifier Tybalt.

Arkk didn’t say so, however. He didn’t need heresy added to the Abbey’s ever-growing list of grievances they had with him.

Besides, there was another possibility.

“Mortal humans can possess others,” Arkk said, leaning forward. “I’ve experienced it.”

He doubted… He hoped that literal gods weren’t directly acting upon the world. If they were… Well, Arkk didn’t hold much hope that even Vezta could fight against the power of the [PANTHEON]. They brought her to this world, after all. They could probably send her back. Because of that, he had to believe that this golden-eyed being was something tangible and fightable. Maybe something like Vezta given its use of the [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE], maybe something like Agnete and Tybalt given its spell usage with no incantation. Maybe even something like him, a practitioner of older magic who knew more than he did about how to cast it.

Otherwise, he didn’t know how they could possibly win.

“You’ve experienced it?” Astra snapped her eyes open, leaning forward with a heavy scowl. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

Arkk clamped his jaw shut, not about to admit that he had possessed anyone at any point. Not in front of an inquisitor.

“Darkwood,” Agnete said.

Snapping his fingers, Arkk quickly nodded. “Right. Darkwood. There was a horde of monsters being directed by a spellcaster who could possess those monsters, leading them. He jumped from body to body, always with glowing bright eyes. I spoke with the man once. That’s how I know it was the same person every time.”

“Master Inquisitor Vrox sent me through some old tunnels infested with monsters,” Agnete added. “I can attest to glowing-eyed creatures impeding my progress. After killing the creatures, a being appearing as black smoke emerged before finding a new target to possess. In the final attempt, I managed to burn the being, proving its tangibility. All of this should have been in the report Chronicler Greesom submitted regarding the incident.”

Astra’s red eyes shifted back and forth, searching for something on Arkk and Agnete’s faces. Digging her knuckles into the top of the table, she looked to her chronicler. Qwol gave her a slight dip of his head.

“I see. Well. That is news,” she said, retaking her seat. “However, the information changes little. It just means we know without a doubt that the Golden Order is investigating anathema. Just as I said.”

“As much as a relief as that is,” Hawkwood said as he motioned with his hand once again. “Is there anything we can do about it? What capabilities might this anathema offer them? How do we attack it and defend against it? Are they likely to assault us with new and strange magic now that we’ve destroyed their ritual circle?”

Astra and Qwol shared another look. Arkk and Agnete glanced at each other as well. He wasn’t sure what their little silent conversation was about—though he guessed that they knew something about Evestani’s capabilities that they hadn’t yet said—but for his part, Arkk had a feeling that their excursion had not done nearly enough. Before knowing about the glowing-eyed person, he figured that Evestani’s casters weren’t educated enough to plot out their own ritual circles, thus necessitating the use of the prepared ritual. Anyone could copy a design from a book but certain parts of the circles needed to be adjusted for their environment.

Most of his early attempts with magic blew up either because he put too much power into them or because he failed to configure them properly.

In the case of the boulder-dropping ritual, it the targeting component was the most complicated bit of the array and something that couldn’t be copied from a book.

But if this was possession, it wasn’t the same as his possession. Arkk had reappeared on his feet next to Vezta rather than in mid-air where he had cast the spell. The assassins at the Duke’s party, on the other hand, had been possessed from afar and, when they died, they had not ejected their possessor out at their sides.

Come to think of it, when Arkk had killed the Darkwood Keeper of the Heart, the Keeper had appeared beside the possessed body in a misty, smoky form. That form then rushed off back toward the Darkwood fortress. Had that been the same possession spell that he knew? Or some variant?

It was hard to say. While Arkk considered himself proficient at flinging around lightning bolts and quite adept at summoning lesser servants, he had only used the possession spell three times. He hadn’t taken the time to experiment with it or its limitations. It just wasn’t a spell he liked using.

Give him a slaver to kill and he would pull the gallows lever without hesitation. Controlling the minds of his friends and allies? That, he balked at.

But perhaps it was time to investigate the spell more thoroughly. If his enemies were going to use it, he needed to know what it was capable of, its limitations, and everything.

That would have to wait until he was away from the inquisitors, however.

“I’m hoping that I managed to crush most of their leadership,” Arkk said, finally turning away from Agnete. He wasn’t sure that the former purifier had gotten what he was thinking—any of it—but she gave him a reassuring nod that sent a lock of her chaotic black hair in front of her face.

“Yes. Using their spell against them was quite inspiring.”

“I wish I could have gotten their spellcasters as well but any further and we would have been caught, so I saw the opportunity and took it.”

“Our casters are standing by at the defensive ritual but so far, no sign of any counterattack. Hard to tell in the night using spyglasses alone. What we can see is that it looks like they’re still trying to put out the fires.”

Agnete’s black lips drew taut into a grim smile. She straightened her back and looked directly at Purifier Tybalt. Even with Agnete’s naturally subdued emotions when away from open flames, Arkk could still feel the smug satisfaction at being praised radiating from her.

Or maybe that was just her natural heat.

“What a show, oh what a show!” Tybalt giggled, clapping his hands together. The joy vanished in an instant as he leaned forward over the table, a dangerous look crossing his face. “But while you were traipsing about with your yelling about the beauty of flames, I spotted no less than seven spellcasters who were trying to put you down. One moment, they slung incantations, the next!” He laughed again and pointed a finger toward a pitcher of water on the meeting table. A small inverted sphere formed around it before it vanished with a low reverberation shaking the room. “Detained!” he laughed.

Astra swung an arm, standing as she did so. Her fingers gripped Tybalt’s throat. She didn’t stop there. His chair tipped over with him still squatting in it. He bounced off the ground as his back hit but Astra slammed him back down.

“Do not use your abilities without authorization, Purifier Tybalt.”

The man had a smile in his eyes even as he gripped her wrist with both hands, trying to push her off his throat. Because of the way he had been sitting on the chair, his legs were pinned under him but it was clear he was trying to struggle away.

“Am I understood?”

He grinned and tried to nod his head. He couldn’t speak or move much with Astra’s hand clamped down. She just narrowed her red eyes, keeping him pinned. For a long few moments, Arkk wondered if she was going to kill him there and then. His lips were even starting to turn blue. Around the time his eyes started to roll back, she reached into the pocket of her black coat and withdrew a hard-shelled bracelet. With one hand, she clamped it around his wrist. A faint white glow covered the silver band with letters that Arkk couldn’t understand.

She released him, wiping some of his spittle on his chest, then stood fully.

Tybalt heaved and choked on the ground, sucking in breath after breath. Despite it all, his grin only grew wider. He pointed a finger at her only to freeze as the runes on his bracelet brightened once more. Despite gasping for breath only seconds ago, it looked like he stopped breathing once again. He stared, looking on the verge of tears.

“I apologize,” Astra said, dragging the catatonic purifier to his feet. “I must tend to my team. Perhaps now, in their chaos, it would be a good opportunity to set your casters on the offensive. You do have books on siege magic, do you not, Hawkwood?”

Hawkwood, as stunned by the display as Arkk was, shook his head in a sudden waking from his thoughts. “Yes. Yes of course. I’ve already set some of the scribes to drawing out a few rituals.”

“Good. I will be retiring for the evening. If this golden-eyed being makes an appearance, contact me at once, otherwise, I wish to be undisturbed until morning. Qwol, the door, if you please.”

As the chronicler opened the meeting room door, Astra hooked an arm under the dazed Tybalt’s arm and marched him out of the room. They closed the door with a dissonantly soft click.

Arkk, Hawkwood, and Agnete just stared. A long minute passed before Arkk glanced over to Agnete. “Was Vrox…”

“Not like that,” she said with a small shake of her head. “If I stepped out of line, he would go straight for the Binding Agent. I believe the thought of touching me disgusted him.”

Arkk pressed his lips together in distaste but didn’t say anything more. Hawkwood rose to his feet, gingerly touching the concave divot in the table where the pitcher had been. It was simply gone. Like a carpenter had taken a large hook knife to the wood. Naturally, there was no trace of the pitcher either.

It hadn’t taken Tybalt long to create that sphere. Just a second or so, quicker than Astra could react. Compared to the near minutes he had taken to do the same to the golden statues, Arkk had to wonder what the difference was. Was it exhaustion? He had removed a few statues before Arkk started watching him. Or perhaps it took longer based on the amount of space he intended to detain. That was a particularly sobering thought. If he could remove someone’s head from their body, he could do it rather quickly in that case.

“As much as I appreciate their help earlier,” Hawkwood started, frowning as he removed his fingers from the smoothed surface. “I am not sure I’m comfortable around that purifier.”

“I concur.”

“Same,” Arkk said. “He seems… unstable. Intensely so. If Astra has to keep those bracelets on him to keep his powers suppressed… well, that just seems a whole lot less proactive compared to the ice marble.” Seeing Agnete shiver at the mention made Arkk wince. “Sorry.”

“No. It isn’t incorrect. If he decides to dive into the madness while she is more than a step away from him, I don’t know what could be done.”

“Perhaps they have other countermeasures that we simply haven’t seen,” Hawkwood said, turning away. “In any case, I will see to the spellcasters and their counterattack. By morning, the tables will have turned and we—” He paused, trailing off as he looked down at his hands.

Arkk felt it too. A tingling sensation that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.

Before either could comment, light as bright as the morning sun illuminated the window. Except it should have been the dead of night.

Arkk stared, watching the window for a moment. Hawkwood mumbled something under his breath, a curse or a question.

Agnete lurched to her feet, leaving scorch marks on the table as she slammed her hands against it. The embers in her eyes and facial scars lit up as a rush of heat filled the room. She dashed to the window, spreading her arms wide just as a thundering boom threw Arkk from his seat.

The entire keep rocked and shook. Stone crumbled from the walls. The ceiling disintegrated, shedding bits of pieces into the aether over a few seconds. Everything above was simply gone. The window and wall exploded inward, igniting as they passed through a wall of flames that had enveloped Agnete.

With the walls and the roof missing, Arkk could see the golden beam of light strike Agnete’s flames, deflected up into the night sky toward the east.

Agnete let out an anguished cry. At the same time, Arkk felt the pain over the employee link. The flames snuffed out, followed swiftly by the ray of gold. The whole thing lasted no more than five seconds.

Arkk, dazed but unharmed, crawled out from under the table. The floor, slanted at an angle from the lack of an entire wall of the keep, creaked as he put weight on various planks. He started for Agnete only to recoil before he could get more than a few steps. A haze of heat boiled the air around her body. Just reaching out a hand felt scalding. She had fallen backward at the end, unconscious and missing her clothes entirely. Though she had fallen back into the room, she was still half dangling over the edge of the building, the entire window wall and floor gone. Her life, weakened yet present, thrummed over the employee link. She wasn’t in immediate danger…

At least not from the after-effects of that golden beam.

The table’s weight proved too much for the floor. Two planks crumbled away beneath it, sending the table crashing down to the floor below.

A firm hand closed around Arkk’s arm. “We have to get out of here,” Hawkwood shouted, “before the whole keep collapses!”

Missing a whole wall, it was a wonder that it hadn’t already.

Shrugging Hawkwood off, Arkk grit his teeth and stepped forward again. Agnete was very likely the only reason they were alive, forcing that beam up and into the night rather than straight through the entirety of the keep. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave her behind.

The ice marble, kept safe in the cellar alongside the transportation circle back to Fortress Al-Mir, appeared in his hand. He sent a sliver of magic into it, chilling the air and extinguishing the lingering fires around Agnete. Not enough to cause harm.

Her body, scars glowing brightly, was still hot to the touch. Not hot enough to force him back this time. Wincing at the burn against his palms, he hauled her up and over his shoulder. A slight chill, emanating from his pocket, seeped up his side and over his shoulder. It wasn’t much. Arkk didn’t dare pour more magic into the marble of ice while he was carrying her. The cold did help soothe against her heat as he steadied her, making sure he had her in a firm grip.

Only then did he turn toward the stairs.

The stairs were gone along with that entire side of the keep. Hawkwood, leaning over the edge to see the floor below, waved him over before leaping.

Creaking of wood and groaning of stone followed the thud of his landing down below. Arkk had to freeze, off balance with Agnete over his shoulder, as the scorched wood under his feet started crumbling. As the entire section of the meeting room sagged, he stepped forward and jumped.

Arkk landed on the upended table, knees screaming at the weight on his shoulder. He stumbled forward, trying to maintain his balance even as each step made him grit his teeth in pain. Just before he crashed head-first into the wall, a hand clasped against his chest, steadying him.

“Thanks,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

“What in the name of the Light was that,” Hawkwood said in response, throwing open the stairwell door. Only attached to the wall by one half-melted hinge, the whole door collapsed to the floor.

At least the remains of the stairs were on the other side. Below, Arkk could see others scrambling down, trying to escape the keep. At the same time, out on the grounds below, he could see others making their way closer, likely intending to help.

“How should I know?” Arkk grunted, testing his weight on the husk of the stairwell. It loudly protested but didn’t give way. It would only need to hold on for a few seconds. Fighting through the ache in his knees, he lumbered down the steps behind Hawkwood.

Judging by the damage, the golden ray had struck only the top portion of the keep. It was a tall keep, standing with seven distinct floors. It towered over the rest of Elmshadow. The one who cast that spell—the one with golden eyes, it had to be—had to have known that they were meeting up there. He had taken off the entire top of the keep and half the floor below it.

Could he cast again?

Arkk hoped not. If he could, they would have little in the way of defense with Agnete out. She had burned herself out deflecting that one beam. Another would surely kill her.

“This is not a siege spell I’ve ever seen or heard of,” Hawkwood shouted, now sounding more angry than fearful. “What in the blazes am I to do—Neil!”

Hawkwood’s chief adjutant stood in the stairwell, directing a contingent of White Company as they made their way down the stairs. He looked dusty and haggard but not injured. At hearing Hawkwood’s voice, he turned and immediately saluted.

“Sir, you’re alright!”

“Get the keep evacuated. Carefully. The upper floors were collapsing. Then get me a head count of everyone who was inside.” Hawkwood grimaced. “I saw Kang and the upper half of Reginald. They didn’t make it.”

Arkk blinked. He hadn’t noticed anyone dead. Then again, when he had jumped down, he had been facing the stairs and hadn’t turned toward the rest of the room.

“Damn it,” Neil swore, slamming a fist into the wall. Despite being stone, it had a little more give than Arkk would have liked to see. “I’m sorry to hear that, Sir.”

“Where are the inquisitors?” Arkk asked, shifting Agnete’s weight on his shoulder. He could feel his clothes turning to ash where she touched him. “Did they make it out?”

“They weren’t with you?”

Hawkwood shook his head. “Left just a minute before.”

“I’ll see if anyone spotted them,” Neil said before turning and shouting down the stairs. He called a few specific names, delegating to others in White Company. “Do you need assistance?”

“Agnete’s hurt. Exhaustion, mostly. She deflected most of that attack.”

“We’ll make room in the infirmary.” Neil stepped closer, reaching for Agnete. “Would you like—”

“No,” Arkk said, wincing at the burn against his neck as he shook his head. The icy feeling in his shoulder crept up his neck in response. “I’ll carry her. She isn’t to be touched.”

“Understood. Make way! Casualties coming through!”

With White Company’s discipline and Neil leading the way, Arkk and Hawkwood made it out of the keep with little trouble. When he turned around, staring up, he could only grimace.

Bright orange flames erupted from the top of the shorn-clean stone, making the entire top of the keep look like an oversized brazier. The keep, while it had been the only thing directly hit by that ray of light, wasn’t the only thing damaged. Debris, likely flaming debris, hand exploded outward behind the keep, setting fire to a great number of buildings. White Company hurried around, throwing buckets of dirt and sand while spellcasters conjured torrents of water.

Hawkwood broke off, moving through the crowd to bark out crisis control orders to his men. Arkk, ice tingling at his side, carefully set Agnete down against the outer walls of the keep. Spotting Orjja, coming to see what had happened along with a small contingent of Company Al-Mir’s orcs, he quickly waved her over.

“Keep her safe,” he shouted over the cacophony of soldiers rushing about. “Make sure nobody touches her. If she wakes, let her know that she is safe and was successful at protecting everyone. Everyone else,” he said, turning to address the rest of the orcs. “Help where you can. Listen to Hawkwood and anyone from White Company. If you see those inquisitors…”

Arkk hesitated. Their departure, once again, had suspicious timing. They weren’t Evestani. Arkk was quite confident in that. That didn’t mean that their chronicler hadn’t somehow received a revelation of impending events and orchestrated events to get themselves away, leaving him and Agnete behind to take the attack. Was it coincidence or deliberate?

“Keep away from them. If they approach, call for me immediately. I won’t be far,” Arkk finished, removing the ice marble from his pocket.

He hurried off to hopefully quell the flames before they engulfed the entire city.

 

 

 

“Lexa, Kia, Claire,” Arkk said, addressing the gremlin and two dark elves. “We’re almost ready.”

“You’re finally back and all we get is an almost?” Lexa, with bright red hair held down by a thick scarf tied around her head, rubbed her small hands up and down her arms, shivering. “Why aren’t we just teleporting in?”

“First, while I’m fairly certain the inquisitors know, I don’t want to advertise more than necessary. Second, according to Hawkwood, the first thing any competent commander does when setting down is get the casters to set up proper wards—including wards on planar magic since no army wants a demon summoned in their midst. Finally, it is a bit too flashy. They have thousands of people. Even if we aim the portal behind some tent somewhere, someone will notice and raise the alarm.”

“Alright, fine,” Lexa snapped. “Why aren’t we teleporting here when it is time and spending the rest of this night back in the warmth of the keep instead of freezing my tits off?”

“Same third reason. There is no moon tonight. Even small flashes from the teleportation would be easy to see for Evestani’s watchers.”

Lexa glowered, grinding her sharp teeth together. “You could have at least brought that walking furnace with you…”

Arkk just shook his head. He didn’t like leaving Agnete alone. For all the intensity of her flames, she was only human. She could be distracted, she could be exhausted, and she could be overwhelmed. Nevertheless, her destructive potential couldn’t be understated, thus warranting using her elsewhere.

Namely, with Inquisitrix Astra. He didn’t like leaving Agnete with them either. Were it not for Astra making a solemn vow on the Light itself that Agnete would come to no harm from them for the duration of the evening, he wouldn’t have agreed at all. But he couldn’t deny that he was looking forward to seeing what two purifiers could accomplish when working together.

“Claire, Kia. You two good to go?”

The two dark elves opened their eyes as one. Claire had muted brown hair, ragged and unkempt all around her face. It didn’t look like she had put any work toward trimming it and preferred to hack it off with a rusty blade whenever it reached her shoulders. A few locks hung down over her face, partially hiding her wide, icy blue eyes that were sharp enough to cut glass. Her skin, an ashen grey, blended well with the dark of the night.

Kia, although her skin roughly matched Claire’s, had a golden blonde color to her hair, currently matted with mud to diminish any reflecting light and tied in a neat ponytail. With her hair tied back, she showed off the entirety of her long ears. She had enough piercings to forge a small sword.

Neither shivered or trembled because of the cold. They weren’t even wearing as thick of cloaks as Lexa was, just a thin gambeson and mail that had to be frosty to the touch.

Kia put on a radiant smile that showed off her midnight-black mouth when Arkk looked in her direction. The smile didn’t reach her eyes.

Although they had black tongues, mouths, noses, fingernails, and even internal organs, that was not where the ‘dark’ distinction of their name came from. Arkk had, perhaps embarrassingly, asked upon meeting one that passed through Langleey Village years ago. The old elf had laughed and said that no, they weren’t elves at all, they just bore superficial similarities. Mostly in possessing pointed ears. Dark elf homelands weren’t somewhere they could reach anymore but its name, ‘Undir Myrkrid’, translated to something like the Deep Dark. Over time, people started calling them dark elves.

Arkk, knowing what he knew now, wondered if that unreachable home wasn’t another plane that had been cut off from the world because of the Calamity.

“We are quite well and eagerly anticipating the fight,” Kia said, her tone just a hint too cheerful. She was the only one of the two to ever speak. They came as a pair and rarely left the other’s side. Kia was the personable one, always happy to chat, happy to meet people, and generally just happy to the point where Arkk was sure that she was faking it.

Claire, on the other hand, could talk, as she had said her name and answered a few other questions during his interview, but only did so if it seemed like an absolute necessity. Despite that, Arkk had watched the dark elf take a bow and arrow to a swallow in flight that he hadn’t even seen until it dropped to the ground with an arrow wound through its chest. Ilya was a good marksman but he doubted she could have managed that feat.

Arkk grimaced as he thought of Ilya. Almost reflexively, he checked in on her through her employee link. He could tell through the link that, while she was getting healthier, she was still not fully healed. At the moment, it looked like she was trying to exercise, lifting a small stack of books repeatedly. Though she had to pause as Alya entered the room and immediately set to a hurried speech—probably berating her for exerting herself while still wounded.

He wasn’t sure why Alya cared now all of a sudden. It left a bitter taste in his mouth just thinking about her strutting around as some high advisor to the Duke while leaving Ilya behind in the village. He hadn’t actually given her a chance to explain herself. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear an explanation. All of his indignant anger would feel… petty if it turned out that she had a good reason.

Then again, what reason could there be for not even sending a single letter?

Shaking his head, Arkk tried hard to suppress a shiver creeping its way up his arms. Loathe as he was to give Lexa validity to her complaints, it was freezing out tonight. Sitting down, watching, and waiting, was the worst. Movement kept the body warm.

He could only imagine the complaints the gorgon might have if he had tried to get them out here. They did not handle cold well.

Claire pushed off from the tree she had been leaning against. The dark elf’s ears twitched as her sharp eyes looked down from the low foothills of the larger of the Elm mountains.

“It is time,” she said in a whisper so quiet that Arkk wasn’t sure if she had spoken or if he had just imagined her words on the wind.

Before he could ask, a bright orange light forced him to squint and turn aside before it ruined his night vision.

A gout of flame surged through the far side of the Evestani encampment. Not quite in the encampment itself but just outside it. Agnete and the inquisitors were likely taking out those on watch, unable to proceed further inside without either surrounding themselves or causing a commotion.

“Alright,” Arkk said. “Let’s move.”

“Finally,” Lexa groused. “Come close and remember, you can step on twigs or whatever because that is the twig making the noise, not you. You speak, you sneeze, you even blink too loud and the effect will break.”

Arkk looked at the two dark elves as they approached the small gremlin. Kia smiled and nodded while Claire just stared.

“Do it,” he said.

Lexa closed her eyes and clapped her hands together. She drew in a deep breath and then, all in that same breath, intoned, “Oh rahasia malam yang mendalam, selubungi tubuh kami dalam kegelapan dan biarkan musuh kami memandang kami dalam ketidaktahuan.”

Arkk looked around, back and forth. The orange light of the fire faded as a dark shadow seemed to envelop the group. The sound of yelling soldiers and the distant clangs of metal scraping against metal faded to a numb sensation in Arkk’s ears. Even the rustling of the trees in the faint breeze died out and vanished.

The sound of heartbeats started up. Three sets of thump-thumps pounding inside their chests. Lexa’s heart, small though it was, just a little faster and a little louder than that of the elves. With a frown, Arkk looked down at his own chest. He couldn’t hear anything coming from him. Was that something to do with the spell… or…

Claire, after looking around at the sudden silence, spread her lips into a feral grin. She looked to Kia, who gave her a jaunty nod, before grinning more. The elf dashed off, a small portion of the dark envelope following after her as she ran. Kia offered Arkk a wave before following after with her sword in hand.

Lexa drew a pair of daggers, one held tight in her main hand while the other looked like she was ready to fling it. The latter spun around her finger three times before she tossed it in the air, caught it by the blade, and offered it to Arkk.

Fingers on the hilt, Arkk accepted the dagger before heading down the hill toward the Evestani encampment.

The crystal ball was still useless.

Inside the Evestani bivouac, Arkk could see clearly. They had not filled the area with that thick white mist that he saw while scrying. The camp was totally clear to the point where he could see from one end all the way to the flames and inverted spheres that kept erupting on the opposite side.

The goal of the operation was not to destroy the enemy army. There were too many. That would be a job for the soldiers and Hawkwood’s men, assuming the events of the evening didn’t rout the Evestani troops. Tonight, the goal was to remove the enemy’s ability to bombard Elmshadow with magic.

With two purifiers and two inquisitors running hit-and-run strikes on the far side of the assembled mass and Lexa’s spell concealing his group, Arkk had little trouble entering the camp. It wasn’t perfect. Kia had slit the throats of two guards who had been using a spell that had detected them. One managed to shout out before she got to him. In all the commotion, it went ignored or unheard. Either way, they were now leaving behind bodies.

Even with their haphazard attempt at hiding the corpses, it wouldn’t be long before Evestani realized that someone had infiltrated their group.

He considered it good fortune that he found what they were looking for after only fifteen minutes. At least, he was fairly certain. He hadn’t been able to get close just yet.

Despite the periodic explosions in the distance, a ring of guards stood around a wooden platform. It looked like a series of planks, each topped with brass segments of a ritual circle, had been assembled into a full circle. The planks could be folded up onto each other for transport, allowing them to set up the ritual circle anywhere they needed. The most ingenious part of it all was the targeting array. A segment of the circle almost identical to the teleportation rituals that he made such frequent use of. Rather than having to be drawn out and calculated when constructing the ritual circle—something Vezta could do almost instantly given the coordinates were relative to the stars above—the brass segments of the targeting array could be moved and adjusted, changed to fit the new locations on the fly rather than having to be reforged.

The rest of the ritual circle wasn’t that complex. Arkk had to draw on everything Zullie had taught him over the last few months just to parse what it did. The flow of magic, coming from four ritualists, first flowed through the targeting array before the command array, a material conjuration targeting stone, took over. Counter-gravity magics kept the conjured mass at the target point until the conjuration finished at which point all magic ceased. The rocks would fall and anyone underneath would die.

Large and powerful, making use of several spellcasters, but simple in end function. Most of the power of the spell went into the conjuration of material—a fairly intensive process according to what he knew from Zullie.

This was the boulder-dropping array. Destroying it beyond repair might stop the assaults. It depended on whether or not any of the spellcasters present knew enough to draw out a new one in the dirt or if they were all uneducated ritual batteries.

The original plan had been to kill as many spellcasters as possible. Thus far, Arkk hadn’t seen anyone who looked like a spellcaster, just a lot of martial soldiers. All the spellcasters might have been on the other side of the camp, trying to deal with the inquisitors. Purifier Tybalt was to focus on them if that happened but they had been hoping that most of the spellcasters would remain behind near the origin of the bombardment attacks.

Arkk looked to Claire and gave her a curt nod of his head. The marksman drew back her bow in a move that looked awkward with one arm up and over her head. It did let her stay crouched low. There wasn’t much cover in the bivouac. Only a handful of tents had been set up, mostly around the center of the encampment. Around the circle, several carts were strewn about. Likely how they had transported the large planks of wood for the ritual circle. That gave some small privacy to this area but nothing that would last long. Arkk was counting on the commotion in the distance keeping their activities quiet. At least for now.

Claire loosed the arrow. It stayed in flight for a split second but she had already nocked and loosed a second arrow. Both slipped between the sides and the protruding nose guards of Evestani’s helmets, driving deep into the skulls of the two soldiers she hit. One collapsed instantly, twitching and thrashing on the ground. The other clasped hands to his face. He started to scream but a third arrow through his other eye made him drop to the ground.

The commotion didn’t go unnoticed. The other guards around the circle didn’t shout out immediately, perhaps in shock or just not sure what had happened. Most had their eyes on the distance.

It didn’t matter. Daggers from the darkness drove into the throats of two of them while Kia, swinging her sword in two hands, lopped the head off the last guard.

Arkk eyed the area, straining his ears for footsteps or cries of alarm while trying to ignore the gurgling of one of the ones with a dagger in his throat. Lexa, jumping on the downed guard, swiftly dragged her dagger across the rest of that one’s neck, silencing him.

There were footsteps but only in the distance. A lot of shouting and orders being given. Nothing to indicate that anyone noticed anything amiss with this little corner of the camp.

Still, time limit.

Arkk hurried forward with Claire hot on his heels. Kia was already dragging one of the still twitching bodies over next to one of the carts, making sure it was out of sight. Lexa was helping, though her shorter stature made the task difficult until Claire moved over and grabbed the guard’s heels.

While they worked, Arkk looked down at the wooden planks and the shaped brass ritual circle. The craftsmanship was clearly on another level. The smooth fastenings keeping the brass to the polished wood, the latches keeping the wooden planks together that fit seamlessly into the overall ritual circle, and the gleam of the brass in the light of the distant fires… It almost seemed a shame to destroy. Arkk knew more than enough ways to make an explosion. It wouldn’t be hard to burn the wood at the very least. A fire might not ruin the brass, however, and that was the really important part.

Moving over to the targeting array, Arkk crouched down. It was… amazing. Toothed gears and easily grasped knobs allowed easy adjustment. It removed all calculations from the process and offered fine-tuning to a point where Arkk could hit the gate, the keep, or even a specific house within Elmshadow.

Or…

Looking overhead, Arkk noted the positions of the relevant stars. Regular stars. He shuddered a moment, recalling that shattered sky that Vezta could see, before looking back down to the ritual circle. He twisted the knobs and adjusted the levers, double-checking with the sky twice more before finishing. Then, he moved over to the side and pulled out a small metal rod. Using it, he quickly inscribed a transportation ritual, aiming the coordinates next to the circle already in the basement of the Elmshadow keep.

Once finished, Arkk stood and motioned the others closer. He couldn’t speak without breaking their stealth spell but he was fairly sure that they got what he wanted through a quick miming session.

Lexa, Claire, and Kia split off, heading to the ritualist positions. Neither dark elf was capable of casting spells naturally but the employee link between him and them should suffice for this spell. The rock conjuration would drain them but as long as they only activated the ritual once, they would come out alright.

Giving each a look and making sure they were ready, Arkk knelt and planted a hand on the center of the circle. He pushed his magic out, slowly at first before ramping it up until the brass began to glow with a faint golden light. The light spread across the ritual circle, joining with light from the other three spots before funneling into the targeting array. From there, the conjuration began.

It took two minutes. Two minutes of profuse sweating, eyes darting around, fully expecting someone to come to check on the golden light that now illuminated the area. Perhaps they were all used to it—it was their ritual, after all. When the light snuffed out and the ritual finished, Arkk had to hold in his sigh lest it break their cloaking spell.

Nothing happened for a long moment. Arkk quickly started unlatching the wooden planks, twisting simple locks and brass ties to free the boards. Lexa helped after watching him for a moment. Claire and Kia, panting heavily, didn’t move to assist for a long moment as they struggled to regain their stamina. With the urgency of the situation, they forced themselves to move well before they looked alright to do so, helping in hauling each piece over to the transportation circle he had drawn.

A ground-shattering quake threw Arkk off his feet before he could unlatch the third plank.

Bits of loose earth, dirt, and mud crashed down around him, falling in small pieces like rain. Painful rain.

He hadn’t seen it drop. Perhaps if he had been looking up rather than down. Even then, in the dark, moonless night, he doubted he would have seen the boulder falling. From the cries and shouts and fresh waves of alarm that rippled through the encampment in the wake of the quake, he figured he had hit his target.

A house-sized boulder should have crushed the central tent of the bivouac. Probably the surrounding area as well. The rain of dirt likely blasted outward around the impact site, hopefully decimating the army. Or at least its commanders and leaders. Given the commotion with the purifiers, none might have been present. Still, at the very least, he hoped that was where they had kept their supplies.

Sieges, those of the drawn-out variety, revolved around food. That went for both the defenders and the attackers. If their stores of food were destroyed, they would have to deliver food through their supply route, likely not nearly as defended as a full army of ten thousand soldiers.

A strike against Evestani’s supply lines was something to talk about with Hawkwood later. For now, Arkk didn’t even bother looking up to see the results of the boulder drop. As soon as the rain of mud settled, he got up and continued stacking plank after plank onto the teleportation circle.

With the final plank stacked, Arkk bent and pushed magic into the ritual circle.

On the other end, in the pitch-black cellar, he ordered the lesser servant who had been ready to destroy the teleportation circle to begin moving the planks away from the destination. At the same time, he spoke, breaking the shadowy envelope that hid his presence.

“Slave Natum.”

A fresh lesser servant pulsed and bulged into existence, squirming and unfolding from wherever it had come from. Kia took a hasty step back, looking at the thing with undisguised revulsion. Claire just stared. Her sharp eyes roamed over the servant like she was trying to decide the best way to kill it.

“We’re getting out of here. Kia, you first,” Arkk said, pointing to the circle.

The dark elf didn’t hesitate to step closer to the servant, though she kept her eyes on it right up until Arkk pulsed his magic and she vanished through the teleportation circle. Claire moved into her place without needing a prompt and vanished as well.

As Lexa vanished to the keep, Arkk felt a chill run down his spine. The hairs along his arms tingled and stood on end. Some sixth sense screamed at him to move aside.

Bright golden light struck the lesser servant. It shriveled to ash before the light faded.

Arkk whirled around. “Electro Deus,” he intoned, flinging a high-powered bolt of lightning straight at the only person around.

A young boy. His head, shaved bald, had bright golden paint—or tattoos—in intricate designs all around the crown of his head. A Pious of the Golden Order? He couldn’t be older than Hale. And yet, with a casual backhand, he batted the bolt of lightning aside. It struck one of the carts around the former ritual site, setting it ablaze. It came with a cost, however, blasting off the boy’s arm at the elbow. Blood dripped and muscle hung loose, twitching and flexing from where it hung from the boy’s dangling skin. The stump of bone protruding was even smoking.

Not that it looked like the boy cared. He looked down at his missing arm with no change to his facial expression. Then he looked up at Arkk, ignoring his arm as if it were nothing more annoying than a small scratch gotten from a summer day of roughhousing.

His eyes glowed a bright gold, a familiar gold. The same color as the assassins from the Duke’s party.

“[You]/[interloper]|[stand before]/[exist within]/[experience]|[self]/[deity]/[GOLD]/|[bow]/[submit]/[cower mortal].”

Something struck Arkk. Nothing physical. Nothing magical either. It was just those words. He had heard the [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE] many times in the past from Vezta. That part wasn’t unfamiliar to him. It was the bit where the being identified itself. [GOLD]. Something about that concept slammed into Arkk’s chest with the force of a bull. But instead of pain, there was awe.

This thing before him wasn’t like Vezta.

Vezta was certainly something from outside the regular world.

But this?

“[Understand]/[comprehend]|[you]/[interloper]| are little more than [meat]/[insect]/[irrelevant]. Die,” he said, dipping out of the [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE] in his words. Arkk lacked the time to question why. The boy lifted his hand, aiming straight for Arkk’s chest.

Arkk stood there, watching as a golden light gathered at the boy’s fingertips. Tears welled in his eyes. Not of fear or sadness, but of joy. Such a beautiful golden light. And it was coming for him, all for him. It was—

Something jolted Arkk. Some distant tug across the link of Fortress Al-Mir. A pull—a warning, snapping him out of a discordant revelry. The malignant golden glow at the tips of the boy’s fingers was coming for him and it was, in no method of description, beautiful.

“Slave Natum,” he snapped as he jumped aside.

The golden beam skimmed past his shoulder, striking some poor soldier who had been coming up from behind that Arkk hadn’t even noticed.

Arkk stepped on the teleportation circle and threw his magic into it.

He reappeared in the dark of Elmshadow Keep’s cellar.

The poor lesser servant, so swiftly brought into existence back at the Evestani encampment, opened one of its many maws and swallowed the teleportation circle whole. Right before a golden beam struck it and Arkk felt its connection to Fortress Al-Mir vanish.

Arkk stumbled back into the cellar, back hitting hard against the wall as he tried to catch his breath. Lexa rushed over, small hands grabbing his arms as the short gremlin did her best to support him.

“Are you okay? I saw a light,” she said, trying to pull him off the wall. It didn’t work until Kia came over and planted a hand on his other shoulder.

“I’m fine. I just…” He took a deep breath, conjured all his willpower, and forced himself to balance properly. He took a second breath, swallowing a lump in his throat. “We need to signal the inquisitors. Immediately.” He tried for the door only to stumble. Kia caught him. “Then… I need to talk to Hawkwood. There is something out there…”