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“Damage report?”

“Constructions two, four, and five have suffered catastrophic structural failure. We have been unable to stop the bleeding in any and, in the case of five, stockpiled ordinance went up with the blast. Eight of our engineers were killed in the resulting explosion.

“One and three suffered minor damage thanks to your timely intervention. It will set us back but is salvageable. The alchemical explosives the enemy planted under six failed to explode and merely caused a small fire that was swiftly dealt with.”

“I see.” A tall woman seated at the table gave her adjutant a shallow nod before dragging her knife through the slab of roasted meat.

The meat was perfectly seared, its exterior a rich, caramelized brown that protected the savory flavors within. Juices pooled on the plate as she cut through, revealing a tender, succulent interior. Roasted root vegetables, crisp and decorated with fragrant herbs, sat beside the meat. It was the sort of meal befitting a king in a palace, not a general at a battlefield.

Lucky for her, she was both.

“Make a note of the dead. Their families are to receive adequate compensation upon our return,” she said before popping the slice of meat into her mouth.

The adjutant, a wiry man with a perpetually furrowed brow, scribbled in his notebook as if the pen had personally insulted his mother. The scratching noise echoed in the otherwise silent chamber. Outside, the distant rumble of yet another explosion made them both pause.

To the best of her knowledge, their enemy had fully retreated.

“Go,” she said, grasping the goblet of amber-colored wine. “Find out what that was.”

“Yes, Empress,” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper. He dipped his head in a respectful bow before scurrying from the room.

Watching the doors swing shut behind him, she slowly stood, leaving her meal half-eaten while keeping the goblet of wine. She approached the windows with a frown, peering out into the darkness. There had been a second one out there tonight. She was fairly certain they had perished, but it boded ill to assume anything in this war. The enemy was cunning and had a knack for turning the tide when least expected.

More distressing was the idea that additional active Hearts existed out in the wild. One fortress was nothing if not expected. Thousands existed in ages past and finding every last one of them was a task beyond even her abilities. Keepers cropped up now and again, often drawing far too much attention to themselves, before being put down by one of the three. Even if they carried on for long periods of time, they weren’t problems. Just selfish people trying to scrape together what power they could until they inevitably burned out.

This time, this Arkk, was different. The Golden Order already confirmed the presence of a Servant of one of the old gods. Someone standing behind the scenes, guiding and pulling strings, ensuring that the power didn’t consume the Keeper. There was little doubt that the influence of this Servant was the true cause of the fracture in the sky leading to the domain of boundaries.

Then the walking fortress appeared. Those had all been destroyed. With how obvious they were in comparison to the deeply buried fortresses, there was little question that she or one of her contemporaries had demolished every last one centuries ago. Yet it existed today, standing tall, with stonework crafted from shadowy bricks. A Heart belonging to the old god of darkness.

It was possible that the walking fortress had been inactive, its Heart stored within the confines of another fortress, but the likelihood was low. It had only appeared after the fractured sky.

She sipped the amber wine, her thoughts too loud to savor the rich, velvety liquid.

That second Keeper tonight, she had felt them, their connection to their own Heart. They had a walking fortress somewhere out there. Missing one walking fortress was almost believable. Two? Both operating in such a short timeframe, so obviously allied to one another?

Gods were intervening where they had no business anymore.

Turning from the window, she approached the table. A large map spread across its top was covered in small pins and points. Mystakeen’s terrain was replicated in detail. Most pins were centered around Elmshadow. It had certainly become the main base of operations for their enemy. However, it wasn’t the location of the main fortress. That lay somewhere further to the east.

The Golden Order suspected Cliff City. It was known to have housed a fortress in its mountainside once upon a time. The idea that the Heart had somehow survived wasn’t out of the question. Especially considering it was the Holy Light’s territory; the recent duplicity coming from the avatar of the so-called god of wisdom meant everything had to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, including claims that she had destroyed all Hearts within the land the Light touched.

There was further evidence, however. Upon her arrival at Mystakeen, the Eternal Empire launched a surprise attack, intending to draw out proof of the Golden Order’s suspicions. The city was heavily defended, first by mundane magical arrays. Then, when those arrays overloaded, boundary magic protected the city.

And a demon destroyed a warship.

The fact that the demon had not been seen since gave some hope that it had only been summoned as a temporary defensive measure and had since been banished, but she wasn’t willing to waste men and resources assaulting the city again. Best to whittle down their enemy’s power and forces from this side of the country instead. If he did summon a demon again, at least two avatars together stood a chance at defeating it.

It did mean they would end up with a cornered rat, but they intended to corner it all along. Now they simply knew what to be wary of.

The Empress traced her finger along the map, her eyes narrowing as she considered the strategic points. Three of her six weapons of war were gone in one night. Others were in construction, but they were lagging behind, intended to be used if this turned into a protracted siege rather than the swift destruction of that tower. Perhaps two and four could be cobbled together to salvage one, but it was still a blow. And then there was a walking fortress somewhere. Likely a smaller one to keep it from being found. Elmshadow was a thorn in her side, but Cliff City was the festering wound. She needed to cut it out and cauterize it.

The Golden Order and their listeners weren’t often wrong, but she had learned to trust her instincts above all. At the moment, her instincts told her that there was something wrong with the picture they had. Something missing. Elmshadow wasn’t truly important. Leaving the Golden Order to keep it busy while she advanced to Cliff…

The door creaked open, the return of her adjutant interrupting her thoughts. His face, pale and drawn, brought the bad news before he even opened his mouth.

“Empress,” he began, bowing his head before lifting his gaze to the level of her neck—no further. “The explosion was at site two. An uncontained fire spread to the stockpiled armaments and—”

She waved a hand, stalling the rest of the report. “Dead?”

“Only three confirmed. There may be more.”

“Viability of salvaging the construction?”

“About on par with site five.”

She gently placed her goblet on the table, nodding her head slowly. So much for cobbling together the remains. “Abandon site four, have everyone focus on growing the other three. I want them in the air by the week’s end.”

“So soon?” His eyes flicked up in surprise before darting back down. He suddenly found his shoes fascinating. “With everything that has happened, I’m not sure if they’ll be finished on your schedule.”

“They don’t need to be finished. They merely need to be airworthy. It will be troublesome, but we can complete them in the air where they are safe from similar attacks.”

“I… understand.”

“If we move the remaining engineers over from the destroyed projects and stagger labor throughout both day and night, we’ll at least have the frames ready. Detail the schedule immediately. Have it put into place the moment we have finished confirming the status of anyone caught in the recent explosion.” She paused, staring at her adjutant for a moment before adding, “See it done.”

“Understood.”

Orders given, she turned back to the map on the table. The door clicked shut behind her back as her adjutant departed. That left her with nothing but her thoughts.

Her thoughts and that feeling that something was still missing in the larger picture.

“Wᚺat are you working on now?”

Agnete didn’t stop to respond. This was delicate work.

She stood over a small archway constructed of a crystalline lattice, amber in base color but with an iridescent sheen that changed color based on the lighting and the angle one observed it. Meticulously etched runes dotted the sides while several thick bolts and metal clamps affixed it to the ground. Burning heat from Agnete’s fingertips fused a fresh chunk of the amber crystal to the main structure.

She had to control her heat carefully. Too much and the crystal would crack, score, or melt entirely, deforming it and losing the magic properties she required. Too little and it wouldn’t be part of the structure, just an odd hanger-on. It was by far the most precise she ever had to manipulate her heat.

Agnete doubted her old self would have been able to manage. Ever since meeting with… that thing—she still wasn’t convinced that it was the actual Burning Forge and not just an avatar-like construct—the heat in her chest wasn’t constantly leaping to escape, to burn everything around her. It was like the difference between when she had been working under Vrox and when she joined up with Arkk except now Arkk was the former party.

Finishing with the large rectangular block of crystal, Agnete paused and looked down at her hands. Molten seams of glowing golden metal ran through the cracks in her flesh, looking like veins. Using one of the magnifying eyepieces that had been provided to her, she had gotten a close look. Despite being molten, runes covered the metal, shifting and flowing as it moved through her skin. The runes were unlike anything she had seen before—and that included some of Zullie’s more heretical ideas. Agnete hadn’t bothered trying to analyze it. She was no researcher.

“Are you alrighᛏ?”

Agnete looked up, staring at the mechanical copy of herself. Who stood to the side, head tilted to the left. Agnete had tried to tell her to change the name now that they could communicate comfortably, only to be refused. To Who, her name was something her creator had given her and she didn’t want to lose it. Despite the fact that Agnete hadn’t been trying to give her a name at the time.

“I’m fine,” Agnete said, lowering her hands to her sides. “Just busy.”

“What is this?” Who asked, moving around the small archway.

“Something I’ve been working on while you were out. Did you procure the parts I requested?”

“I did,” Who said without taking those mechanical eyes off the archway. “You failed to specify a quantity. I decided to ship a wᚺole train of them in. They’re waiting at the station.”

“Bring in five, please.”

“Five?” Who’s deep, mechanical voice took on a note of distress. “I have ᛏᚺousands out there.”

“Yes,” Agnete said, carefully controlling her facial expression to keep a small smile off her face. She had known this would happen. The same thing happened the last time Agnete hadn’t been perfectly clear. “Thank you, Who. Five will suffice.”

The quiet clacking of metal tapping metal filled the air as Who crossed her arms. A gout of white steam puffed out from her ears. Gears and servos shifted behind the plates on her face as pistons pushed her mouth open in what was sure to be an irritated response. However, Who’s voice stalled as her gaze shifted to one side. “And what is that?” she asked.

Agnete turned to find the lesser servant slop out from the ventilation duct. It landed with a splat and looked up, froze, and then quickly tried to scurry beneath one of the workbenches.

Who didn’t let it get away. Another blast of steam emitted from her legs with the sound of a low horn, propelling her into motion. Her arms extended outwards, grasping hold of a few stray tendrils. Some of it oozed out between her fingers. Just enough of it maintained cohesion when she pulled to drag the whole thing back out into the open.

“Wᚺaᛏ ᛁᛋ ᛏᚺᛁᛋ ᚠᛚᛖᛋᚺᛃ, ᛋᛩᚢᛁᛋᚺᛃ ᛏᚺᛁᚾᚷ?”

Agnete let out a small sigh. “Don’t harm it, please.”

“You know wᚺaᛏ ᛏhis is?” Who asked, looking back even as the servant struggled in her grip. She looked more curious than murderous, which Agnete took to be a good sign.

“It is a servant. It has been helping me construct the portal,” she said, gesturing toward the small archway.

“Portal. Like the one you wanted to visit a while ago?”

Agnete nodded her head. “I don’t suppose you discovered where it is? It certainly would be easier to use. Though I doubt it matters now.”

Who continued to grasp at the servant, continually readjusting where her hands were as the amorphous blob shifted out of her grip. Her head turned almost completely backward to look at Agnete then turned just a little more as she gave a negative shake. “Sorry. I was not created with that information and requests regarding the subject have been denied.”

“Unfortunate. But that is why I built this.”

“Portal.” Who said again, now turning to the amber archway. “The thing you wanted to use to leave? You’re leaving?”

“Not permanently, I hope. I have created a great many useful things that I need a larger portal to return to my home. To answer your question, however, yes. I cannot—will not stay here indefinitely, even at the behest of a god.”

Ratchets clicked, gears turned, and metal clanked in the silence that followed. The steam-filled pipes in Who’s chest thronged in a distressed note. “You’re the only one who can make… me. Things like me.”

“If the Burning Forge wishes me to stay and mindlessly toil in the factory until the end of time, She should have selected a different avatar.”

“But… You’re leaving me?”

Agnete stared at the metal copy of herself, wondering why she had fashioned it in her image. With a slight shake of her head, she sighed. “Not permanently, as I—”

“ᚾᛟ.”

“Who?”

“ᚾᛟ,” Who repeated, dropping the lesser servant. She turned, steps suddenly heavy against the metal floor as if she weighed ten times as much as she had five minutes ago.

It quickly scurried off, squeezing itself behind the workbench. Two thin stalks popped up over the top, forming thin yellow eyes.

Agnete paid it little attention, focused entirely on Who. “Do you think you can stop me?” Flames curled around her arms, flowing up toward her shoulders in thin streams. “I don’t want to hurt you, Who.”

“You can’t just make me and then leave me,” Who snapped. Her fingers clenched and unclenched repeatedly, making heavy thunking noises with each movement.

Agnete blinked. Smiling slightly, she let her flames die down. “Then come with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me,” Agnete said again, motioning to the portal. “It isn’t like only one person can get through.”

A hiss of steam spread out around Who, coming from her back, as she deflated. “With you?”

Nodding her head, Agnete turned to the portal. It should be finished. And if their haphazard communications hadn’t gone wrong, the lesser servant coming through the vents should mean that Arkk was ready on the other side. So, with a slight tug on the link, she let Arkk know that she was ready in turn.

It took a minute. Several minutes. Eventually, a magical hum started up around the portal. A liquid-like membrane spread through its interior, first shimmering silver, then shifting to display what Agnete recognized as a part of Fortress Al-Mir. The maze-like tiles and violet glowstones were almost nostalgic with how long she had spent here in the Anvil.

“What now?” Who all but whispered.

“Now we go through. Let me go first. The ones on the other side will probably attack anyone they don’t expect. You can follow in a minute.” Agnete started forward, only to frown. Unfortunately, the portal only went up to her chest. That meant she had to squat down and make an undignified crawling walk through the shimmering membrane.

Arkk, Zullie, Zullie’s two assistants, and a contingent of orc guards all stood on the other side. The first two had smiles on their faces, Arkk’s welcoming while Zullie just looked pleased that her cobbled-together portal actually worked. The assistants were near the portal frame, monitoring it. The orcs stood in an array around, weapons out but not raised.

All ten individuals stumbled back as soon as Agnete put her head through the portal. Morvin and Gretchen let out clipped shouts, jumping away while Arkk and Zullie staggered.

Agnete pulled herself through in a rush, worried something had gone wrong, only to come to the slow realization that they were pulling away from her, not the portal. It took another moment to realize why.

The tiles beneath her feet were melting.

Closing her eyes, Agnete took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down, to pull in that ever-present flame. Perhaps, in the Anvil, it hadn’t been easy to control. It was just that she hadn’t noticed she wasn’t controlling it.

The room slowly cooled down, both in temperature and temperament. “I apologize,” Agnete said. “I didn’t realize.”

“That’s alright,” Arkk said, slowly getting his smile back. That smile froze suddenly as Arkk stiffened, cutting off whatever he was going to say. He went on guard, wary once again. A few of the others took up more defensive positions, as if expecting a fight.

Exactly one minute had passed since her arrival.

Who, arms and legs crawling along the ground like a mechanical spider, slipped through the portal frame, crawling up right behind Agnete before straightening in one smooth, utterly inhuman motion.

Agnete stepped forward, making sure to place herself between Who and everyone else in the room. Her body language alone made it clear that anyone wishing to harm the construct would have to go through her first.

Obviously not wanting a fight to break out, Arkk quickly gave the hand signal for everyone to stand down. He still looked wary, but he trusted her enough to put on an air of welcome. “I saw through the servant, you looked like you were fighting with this… Who is this?” he asked, clearly forcing himself to be polite.

“That’s correcᛏ,” Who said, her low tones sounding pleased.

Arkk blinked, taking his eyes off Who to look at Agnete. “What’s correct?”

Agnete looked back, watching as Who took in the situation around her. Nodding her head, she looked at Arkk. “Who.”

“Who?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“No. This is Who.”

“I’m…” Arkk scrunched up his face, scratching at the side of his head. “I don’t know.”

Who, stepping forward with a small tuft of steam escaping from her legs, gestured toward Arkk. “You’re I Don’ᛏ Know?” she asked in utter innocence.

Agnete stared at Arkk. Arkk stared back. Eventually, she sighed.

 

 

Arkk, Kia, Olatt’an, Vezta, Zullie, and Abbess Hannah teleported into the undead storage room, the rapid movement still feeling slightly sluggish but not as bad as it had been. All carried a veritable armory of the counter-demon weapons Zullie had developed. In the five minutes since escaping the demon’s captivity, he had devised a tentative plan for dealing with the entity. He wished there was more time, but he couldn’t allow a demon to roam unchecked through his fortress.

There was so much to do. So much he needed to do.

The demon had to be dealt with first.

“What is that smell?” Hannah asked, pressing the back of her gloved hand to her nose.

“There’s a demon on the loose and you’re worried about smell?” Olatt’an grunted, his eyes never leaving the darkened chamber.

It was a large, open room, meant for holding undead until they were needed. He had first used it for the undead soldiers, then the goblins. Speaking of which… Arkk sent a mental command to the goblins under his control. They were no longer needed out in the field. Things out there had gone…

Focus, Arkk told himself.

With another thought, he teleported a dozen smaller glowstones throughout the room, dropping them into the large chamber to provide light. The light didn’t make that much difference for him—he had a near-perfect omniscience of his own territory—but it would help the others. Because of that, he already knew what he would find.

“No demon,” Vezta said.

“Would you stick around?” Hannah asked with an abrasive edge to her words, still pressing her glove to her nose. Arkk was well aware that the Abbess considered Vezta little better than a demon.

“If I thought I could ambush anyone coming after me, yes,” Vezta said. In contrast, her tone remained cool and neutral.

“It can’t attack us,” Arkk said, peering around the chamber. He hadn’t seen it through his localized omniscience, but he had hoped there would be something obvious to the naked eye. “Not as long as we and the Prince are not enemies.”

A long stretch of silence followed as the group’s thoughts churned. Based on their faces, Arkk could tell they weren’t thrilled with such a flimsy defense. Arkk wasn’t even positive that it was accurate. It was just the only thing that made sense given the situation.

Otherwise, he was fairly certain it would have killed him.

Instead, they had a brief talk, just before Vezta showed up.

One of the group decided to voice their thoughts. “What exactly constitutes his ‘enemy’ anyway?” Zullie asked, humming lightly. “Like if I say I don’t like the aesthetic of his shoes—”

“Probably best not to think of ways of becoming his enemy, witch,” Hannah said, sneering before her eyes went wide. “Oh Light,” she murmured. Her eyes darted back and forth, suddenly full of fear. “Prince Cedric summoned a demon and I’m a member of the Abbey. We’re… There’s no way I can’t not be his enemy… Oh Light—”

“Weren’t you excommunicated?” Olatt’an asked as calmly as if he were asking about the weather.

Although the fear didn’t fully flee her eyes, Hannah shot him a withering glare. “That’s beside the point. I still hold values incompatible with demons and their summoners—”

“Shouldn’t we focus on the demon? It shapeshifts, right?” Kia asked, her voice echoing with her afterimages as they looked around. “What if it turned into a rock?”

Zullie huffed in annoyance, casually swinging a black-bladed knife around her finger by the hole in the handle. “Did you not read the information packet on demons that I gave you and Claire? I didn’t go through all that effort—”

“Enough,” Arkk cut in. “Kia is right, focus on the demon. It will be humanoid. Maybe gremlin-sized at the smallest, minotaur-sized at the largest.”

Kia nodded slowly, taking that in. “Alright. If it isn’t here, where did it go?”

That one, Arkk didn’t have an answer for. “I have all doors sealed in the lower levels. Only I can open them. If anything tries to damage a door, I’ll know instantly… but I still don’t know how it got down here in the first place. It shouldn’t have gotten inside without breaking at least one door.”

“Maybe you didn’t notice?” Olatt’an asked, walking a few steps back toward the hole in the wall Vezta had made. “Too distracted with the operation going wrong?” Shuffling around, he pied off the corner with his crossbow raised. The tip of his bolt ripped through the world as he moved.

Kia moved up as well. Afterimages moved in front of her, peering out down both sides of the corridor at the same time. Apparently seeing nothing, she stepped out fully with Zullie following shortly after. The latter still languidly spun the short blade around her finger.

“It is hard to describe,” Arkk said. “And it has only happened a few times, but when something attacks the fortress itself, there is no way to ignore it. The fortress might as well scream in my ear, hammering gongs and setting off blinding blasts of magic. It is safe to say that nothing has damaged part of the fortress without me knowing.”

“A demon will do anything to fulfill its contract, even violating laws of magic, though I suspect that takes a special kind of contract. It is part of what makes them so dangerous,” Zullie said. Snapping the knife into her grip, she slashed at the air. A black void opened up, much like the openings Olatt’an’s bolt was causing except much larger. Although it started to seal shut, Zullie reached in and, after rummaging in the void, pulled out a solid black sphere. “It can break reality as easily as I can if its contract requires. Unfortunately, we don’t know any details of its contract. All we can assume is that it is only allowed to directly harm those aligned against Prince Cedric.”

Zullie moved back into the undead storage room, waving around the black sphere. Nothing obvious happened from Arkk’s perspective, but Zullie occasionally stopped, brought the sphere close to her face, and let out a few mild humming sounds.

“Could be that it has been here for a while,” Olatt’an said. “If it can appear like you convincingly enough to fool the dark elves, who can say it hasn’t been wandering the halls as an employee.”

“If it did sneak in and manage to get hired, I would have noticed it before it attacked me. I would have been able to teleport it away and I would be able to locate it now.”

Zullie looked up from the black sphere. With the tip of the black dagger against the corner of her glasses frame, she adjusted her lenses over her empty eyes. “What part of violates laws of magic do you not understand?”

Arkk nodded his head, conceding the point. “Fair enough. But it still seems… unlikely.

“What seems more likely is the direction it went,” Arkk said, turning away from the corridor. The opposite end of the undead storage room opened up into a large tunnel. “That way leads to the surface.”

“Directly to the surface?” Olatt’an asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Rekk’ar would be complaining about fortress integrity and security right about now.”

“This room is normally full of hundreds of undead goblins,” Arkk said, mildly offended. “The path toward the tower is a labyrinth filled with all manner of traps until you reach the border of Elmshadow where the fortress proper begins. Seems like enough security to me. More than half the other entrances have.”

“Just a thought,” Olatt’an said with a light shrug. He moved up with Kia, crossbow aimed down the dark tunnel. “No doors down there?”

“There are two before the surface,” Arkk said. They were more to protect from anyone accidentally stumbling in than to keep people out, but they still functioned like every other door in his domain.

“So it couldn’t have gotten in that way without you knowing.”

Arkk almost answered in the negative, only to pause as a thought occurred to him. “I had just sent the undead out. The doors opened for them. The demon could have slipped past them.”

“That sounds like one mystery solved,” Zullie said in a chipper tone.

Arkk closed his eyes, mentally pausing the goblins. No sense recalling them now when they might just open the door for the demon to escape through the same way it had come in. He didn’t like leaving them out in the open where anyone could see them, but nothing to do about it now.

Vezta shot the witch a glare. “I am still concerned it knew where you would be, when you would be here, and how to gain access.”

“Alright,” Arkk said, sighing. He had thought they were prepared. They had weapons and tools and people like Kia and Claire. If Zullie was right, just being touched by any of them should shunt the demon back into the netherworld. It was as simple as that.

Simple.

Right, Arkk scoffed to himself. As if. Something that could break into his fortress without him knowing, assault him, and then vanish from his sight was a bit more than he was expecting. He doubted even the Golden Order’s avatar would have been able to hide within the fortress. Not that the avatar would have bothered, but that was beside the point.

And there was so much else that still needed his attention…

“We’ll head up the tunnel on foot,” Arkk said. “If we find nothing, we call it there—”

“Call it?” Hannah said with a gasp. “And leave a demon wandering around?”

“Of course not. But standing around arguing with each other isn’t productive. We have an ongoing emergency, we might have just kicked Evestani into action, and…” He pressed his lips together. “Other things have gone wrong. Stumbling around in the dark won’t find us the demon and won’t solve any other issue. We’ll need a plan. Now that we know a little more about the demon, how it can hide itself and disguise itself, and even some of its limitations, we can make that plan. And maybe, just maybe, we won’t have to worry about the demon at all.”

Hannah looked genuinely offended that he was considering leaving even after the explanation. Arkk understood but at the same time, what did she want him to do? Camp out down in the undead storage room until it showed itself again? Shaking his head, Arkk did a quick check around him.

He counted heads, making sure there were still only the six of them, then checked to make sure all six had a link. He didn’t think it was possible that any of them could have been suddenly replaced by the shapeshifting demon, but he also wasn’t about to take any chances. Thankfully, everyone was who they appeared to be. With that done, he motioned down the tunnel.

“Let’s go. Eyes and ears open. Try to keep everyone else in sight at all times while also keeping a lookout for anything amiss.”

Olatt’an gave Arkk a look. Assuming the old orc was going to ask him to prove that he was still the real Arkk, Arkk teleported himself to the head of the group and rearranged everyone into columns behind him. There was a slight jostling as everyone adjusted but nobody questioned him.

If a demon could replicate all his [HEART]-granted abilities, they were already screwed.

“What do you mean, we won’t have to worry?” Hannah asked.

“The demon… stole my magic? Ate it? Something. I couldn’t do anything for a few minutes and I’m sure you felt that teleport wasn’t as snappy as usual.”

“Yeah,” Kia said. “Like we were swimming through water.” She paused and looked over the group. “Shouldn’t I be in the lead?” she asked as they continued walking down the tunnel. “I’m the one most likely to be able to take a hit from the thing.”

Arkk hesitated and almost waved her forward until Zullie let out a scoff.

“If we get ambushed in a relatively small tunnel like this, the demon will probably be able to pick and choose who it strikes at without worrying about who is where.”

“Point,” Arkk said, then waved the dark elf forward anyway. “Having Kia in the lead will allow her freedom of movement without the rest of us getting in the way.”

A quick shuffle occurred. Abbess Hannah positioned herself in the middle of the group, near Arkk and Vezta, while Kia took the lead and Zullie shifted to the rear. Olatt’an remained next to Zullie, keeping his crossbow raised but making sure he never aimed it at one of them.

“In any case, while the demon has to obey the contract, it still seems to have its own desires. Namely, it wants to eat magic—probably. Before you showed up to save me, I tried to tell it that Evestani and the Eternal Empire are full of magic and are already enemies of the Prince.” Arkk shrugged. “Not saying I shook hands and formed an alliance, but maybe it has decided to focus on them over us. For now.”

An uneasy silence followed. While arguing in the undead storage room had bounced between tense and lighthearted—the latter likely only there to help cover up just how tense some of his employees were—the time for games had passed. The tunnel wasn’t exactly narrow, having been designed to allow the undead to flood out to the surface, it was still a great deal more confined and claustrophobic than the storage room.

Smaller than the storage room, the lighting wasn’t quite so dim. He still supplemented the wall-mounted glowstones with a constant teleport of the loose glowstones onto the ground ahead of them, keeping everything nice and bright.

Arkk and the others made little haste as they moved. It had him growing more and more antsy with every step. Ilya was on her way back. He needed to deal with that. Most of the other groups were already back, all of whom he needed to deal with as well, but Ilya’s was the most important. The most… distressing.

And he had a demon on the loose that could disguise as him. Until he told Ilya, she would be vulnerable to it appearing in front of her. It could take on the appearance of him, her mother, or anyone else. With that, it could easily convince her to head somewhere of its choosing. Even if it couldn’t directly harm him or anyone who didn’t consider the Prince an enemy, Arkk wouldn’t put it past the demon to leave someone out in the middle of nowhere, deep inside a pit they couldn’t escape from, and let them starve to death.

Then there was the question of how much he should reveal to the rest of his employees. It wouldn’t be good to start a panic or throw everyone into a state of paranoia where they couldn’t begin to trust each other. The last thing he needed in the middle of a war was for his army to start turning on each other. At the same time, if the demon showed up somewhere he wasn’t paying attention—talking to a team in private or even managing to take command of a unit in the field—it could send his employees to their deaths with him none-the-wiser.

They needed to deal with this demon as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, they reached the closed door at the end of the corridor without encountering anything strange. There were no marks or damage on the door, no indication that anyone had forced it open. He had already seen that through his omniscience of his territory, but some part of him had hoped they would find the demon standing by, waiting for the undead to reopen the doors.

Unless Zullie’s information was wrong and it could disguise as something other than a person, the demon wasn’t here.

“Could it be elsewhere in the fortress?” Olatt’an asked, the first to speak in the last ten minutes. Hannah jolted at his sudden voice.

“It has to be,” Arkk said, frowning at the wooden door. “Unless it can teleport around at will. If that’s the case…”

If that was the case, they were, again, extraordinarily screwed.

“Kia, Olatt’an, Zullie. Remain here and keep an eye on the door. I’m recalling the undead. The door will have to open for them.” Unfortunately, the undead were a little odd. They weren’t employees or property, so he couldn’t teleport them around at will. They had to walk. “If you see the demon, alert me. Otherwise… Stay safe.”

The old orc snorted at that.

“Before you go,” Zullie said, stepping forward, “if you aren’t fighting demons, Vezta, mind swapping?” She held out the black dagger in one hand, asking for the curled staff Vezta carried in her tendrils. “The Veilstaff is probably better for fighting in these quarters than the Threshold Blade. Not enough reach.”

Vezta glanced at Arkk, getting a nod confirming that he didn’t intend to hunt down the demon at this moment, before tossing the staff toward Zullie. It warped the air around it, bending light ever so slightly towards it. Though blind, Zullie caught it out of the air with one hand.

“Keep them both,” Vezta said when Zullie started to offer the knife.

“Any other questions?” Arkk asked, looking around once.

Hannah had her lips pressed into a thin line but clearly wanted out of here more than she wanted to keep searching for the demon. Her fingers on both hands were clamped tight around a little ring that Arkk was fairly certain was supposed to be on her finger. Olatt’an kept his crossbow up, aimed just over everyone’s heads, while Kia was already looking in every direction with her afterimages.

“I’ll drop us off in our quarters—”

“Alone?” Hannah hissed.

“Probably better to be alone,” Olatt’an mused. “Given our enemy can appear as others.”

“But if I’m alone, there won’t be anyone else there to stop it from stabbing me in the back!”

“I’ll put you in the operations center. Keep with the scrying teams. They might still be able to locate the demon. Vezta and I will meet with Ilya and her group as soon as she is in range of teleportation.” Arkk glanced to his side, nodding at Vezta. “As soon as the undead are inside, if nothing happens before then, I’ll teleport all of you back to the operations room. We’ll decide what to do from there.”

After getting an acknowledging nod from each of them, Arkk teleported himself, Vezta, and Hannah. Hannah went to the operations center as he said. He and Vezta reappeared high up in the tower, in his private quarters.

She looked at him with a heavy frown. “You were trying to broker a deal with a demon?”

“Not like that,” Arkk said. “I was more pointing out that, if it wants magic, there is an avatar and those things the Eternal Empire has been building. Just the magic rendering them invisible has to be considerable. I’ve no idea how they’re managing it. Before you arrived, I think I was convincing it.”

“You cannot trust anything a demon says. Or does. Even if it nodded its head and said it would only go after the Evestani from now on, you should expect it to strike you in the back the first chance it gets,” Vezta said with a heavy scowl. “We need to find it. Or a way to detect it, at the very least. You cannot be compromised like this again.”

“Agreed. But that isn’t exactly why I’ve brought us here to talk.” He looked to Vezta, lips thin, and said, “Leda is dead.”

The eyes on Vezta’s face closed for a moment, then reopened. “Unfortunate. Her contract with the Walking Fortress Heart will have collapsed.”

“I had a thought. Since we opened the portal to the Necropolis—”

“Have the First and Last Primeval Lord revive her? I suppose that might be worth exploring, but we don’t know if some preparations or rituals must be done in order to revive her as a cognizant undead versus the mindless normally revived with necromancy.” Vezta paused, turning to face Arkk fully. “More importantly, it won’t repair the contract even if it works. It will have broken with her death.

“That means we have have an active but unaffiliated [HEART] out in the wild, vulnerable. It must be reclaimed as soon as possible.”

 

 

Ilya drew back an arrow on her bow, held it for a brief moment as she repositioned her aim, then loosed the arrow. It soared through the forest, missing trees and branches by the thickness of a leaf, narrowly avoiding being knocked off course. The forward scout of the Evestani Army dropped with the arrow sticking out the back of his neck.

A quick motion of her hand had the Shieldbreakers charging forward, backed up by Dakka’s team of shadow-armored orcs. The remaining eight scouts tried to put up a defense. Between the shadowy scythes and the Shieldbreakers’ enchanted weapons, they may as well have hidden behind a thin sheet of paper. From the first scout falling to the rest of the team joining him in the dirt, only a few seconds had passed.

“Clear,” Dakka said.

“Clear,” Lyssa echoed. The werecat sounded almost disappointed as she started looping her chain back around her arm.

It was the third such team they had eliminated. Barring movement from the enemy, it was also the last between them and the members of the sabotage team who had gotten trapped above ground. Ilya turned slightly and then pointed off in the direction they needed to head.

“Let’s go.”

“Why this way?” Dakka asked, trudging after her but with hesitation in her steps. “This isn’t the way we were headed before.”

Ilya glared at the short orc. “You think you can lead a team through the forest at night without getting turned around? Be my guest—”

“Woah,” Dakka said. The tone in her voice was the verbal equivalent of backing off a step. Physically, she moved forward, more in line with Ilya. “Just a question.”

“We took a detour to make sure that scouting team didn’t end up behind us,” Ilya hissed, narrowing her eyes as she scanned their surroundings for any sign of danger. “Now we’re getting back on track. That answer your question?”

Dakka didn’t respond, so Ilya took that as an affirmative.

With the distraction out of the way, Ilya focused on her surroundings. She could see well enough. Better than humans could—allegedly, not that she had ever seen through human eyes—it still wasn’t much in the moonless night. Her ears were the real secret weapon. Hearing far-off voices was how she found this last group of scouts in the first place.

Dakka and the other orcs weren’t exactly silent. Their steps were heavy, the non-shadow parts of their armor clanked, and even their breathing felt loud and heavy in Ilya’s ears. In contrast, the Shieldbreakers—mostly made up of beastmen—moved with far greater stealth. Probably because Lyssa and half the others were doing the same thing she was doing.

Concentrating let her tune them out, listening for distant sounds. Anything unnatural might mean a target to remove, an imminent attack, or another kind of danger. Rustling of leaves and even the crunching of underbrush weren’t uncommon in a forest. Any animal, small or large, could make those noises. The real giveaways were often more subtle. The sloshing of water in a half-filled canteen, metal clinking against metal, and especially voices meant someone was around.

“I know you’re worried about Arkk—”

Ilya jolted, half frightened out of her boots at the relatively loud voice in her ear. With how much she had been trying to tune down nearby sounds, Dakka’s sudden whisper might as well have been yelling. A short distance away, Lyssa let out a long hiss of her own, probably for the exact same reason.

“I’m not worried about him,” Ilya lied, snapping back at the orc. It wasn’t fair that she was taking out her anger and worries on the orc, but she found it hard to care at the moment.

It was one thing for Arkk to go missing. He had a lot on his plate. A lot of different moving components to keep track of. Vezta assured her that he was alive, so she had mostly ignored the situation, focusing on what she could do to help out with the ongoing operations.

Then she had been told that Arkk was facing down some copy of himself. Some being that Vezta suspected was a demon.

Arkk could take care of himself. But against a demon?

Ilya ground her teeth together. There was nothing she could do about it. She had half a mind to get Zullie to do to her what the witch had done to the dark elves. If she hadn’t known that it would be days if not weeks of recuperation, she would have right then and there. Now, all she could do was try to keep things from falling into further disarray.

Ilya took a step forward only to feel a massive tug across that ethereal link. The strongest she had ever felt. It wasn’t an attempt at teleporting her—she was far too far from Elmshadow’s fortress to teleport as it was—it was more like a warning.

She wasn’t the only one who had felt it. Everyone in their squad stopped abruptly. Alfred let out a quiet whine while murmuring erupted among everyone else.

“I take it we all felt that?” Viola asked, one of the few human members of the Shieldbreakers.

“The link, right?” Maria said, nervously shuffling. “Haven’t felt it like that before.”

Aya and Monika glanced at one another, nodding in agreement with Maria.

“Arkk is back in action, I take it,” Ellen said.

“Quiet down,” Lyssa hissed before Ilya could say the same thing. As relieved as she was that Arkk was seemingly in contact with them again, they still needed to survive this outing. “We’re still in enemy territory.”

“Do we keep going?” Alfred said, now in a barely audible whisper. His dog-like features took on a concerned look. “Or was that telling us to go back?”

“We haven’t completed our objective,” Ilya said, taking a step forward.

As soon as she did, she felt another massive tug. It was completely metaphysical, a pull somewhere within. Yet it had been strong enough that she almost stumbled.

“Or maybe not.” Something must have happened. Perhaps another team got to Joanne and Kevin first. Perhaps they… didn’t make it. The link was unfortunately not that great at passing on detailed information. “Let’s head back,” she said, turning back toward the east.

However, as soon as she took a step, she felt yet another tug.

The rest of the squad jerked to a stop after only a step or two.

“Again,” Ellen said with a frown. The taurus beastman, standing a little taller than even Ilya, tried stepping a little to her left, only to pause once again before taking a step to her right. “Ah?” She turned fully, looking southward, and took a large step. Then another. Then a third. “This way?”

“South?” Ilya said to herself as she took a few quick steps after the taurus. Sure enough, there was no heaving pull from the link. That meant the right direction, right?

“Why this way?” Dakka asked, moving up alongside Ilya again. “You get us turned around after all?”

“Absolutely not.” Ilya cast a subtle glance around, checking constellations in the sky and the growth of moss and other plants around the forest floor. No. They were headed toward the south without a doubt. “We’re not headed back, but we aren’t headed toward the enemy either. Maybe Evestani is on the move?”

“We’re supposed to be the rescue party. I don’t like the idea of us getting stuck out here and needing rescue ourselves.”

Dakka wasn’t the only one. A sudden alteration to the plan like this had Ilya’s nerves on edge. It meant something had gone wrong and she hadn’t the slightest idea of what or how to prepare for it.

“If I could make a request,” Dakka continued. “Maybe put a higher priority on communications to field soldiers? Surely Zullie can figure something out that’s better than a vague pull from Arkk. In fact, I even got some ideas for her. How about a hole in the world that lets us talk through it? Sounds like something right up her—”

“Dakka,” Ilya said, trying not to be harsh. First, she had been worried about Arkk. Now she was worried about their survival. “Later. Can’t do anything about it now.”

More importantly, she needed to concentrate. The beastmen did as well. Before, they knew roughly how many groups of scouts they would come across, it had just been a matter of noticing them before the squad got noticed. Now, for all she knew, they might be moments away from stumbling into a full detachment of Eternal Empire soldiers.

She didn’t think Arkk would lead them into something he didn’t think they could get out of, but things were weird right now…

Best to be cautious no matter what.

“I can sense them,” Vezta said, eyes focused on a point along a wall.

One of the undead storage rooms. It felt empty, from this side of the wall. She didn’t know where the undead had gone and, frankly, she did not care. All that mattered was what she could sense on the other side.

She was close enough now to feel her master distinctly form the background of the fortress. The demon wasn’t quite so loud, if it was still there at all. Odd given that she had expected a demon to have an aura of overwhelming pressure.

Her sole previous experience with a demon had certainly been that way. She still remembered the feel of it approaching from miles away. Contracted to destroy portal gates, it had ignored almost everyone who hadn’t been in its path. Those who hadn’t gotten away ended up dead without exception.

She reached out across the link with a metaphorical tendril, lightly tugging on it. Her link was a little different than that of any other employee. She was directly contracted to Arkk, bypassing the [HEART]. The end result wasn’t all that different, but it did help her locate Arkk. Vezta could almost see her tendril stretching through the wall, ending someone on the floor on the other side.

There was no response. Arkk could easily have teleported them into the room to try to catch the demon off-guard. A part of her was disappointed he hadn’t. But perhaps it was for the best if what Kia and Claire had said about the demon was at all accurate.

It would be all too easy for the demon to take the guise of anyone else, throw a little confusion in the mix, and end up causing chaos. How would Olatt’an and Kia handle two Veztas each accusing the other? Arkk would have been able to tell them apart thanks to the link, but in the short few seconds it took to register what happened, it might be too late.

Taking that into consideration, the slow route might be for the best.

Vezta looked at her side. Kia stood, eyes scanning around. Olatt’an, meanwhile, had hardly taken his eyes off Vezta and Kia, clearly wary of either of them somehow being replaced by impostors. If only they had enough eyes to keep track of everything at once…

“Ready yourself,” Vezta said, looking to Olatt’an.

Olatt’an at her side readied his crossbow, drawing the cable back with both arms as he used his foot to hold the end of the crossbow in place. He then took a small jar from a pouch. Vezta wasn’t sure what demihumans saw when they looked into the jar, but Vezta saw stars. Not the [STARS]. Just a starry scene that changed based on her position. If she were under the jar, she could look upward into the starfield. If she stood over it, she could look down at a completely different starscape.

One of Zullie’s creations. Although it looked like a liquid hole in the world, it wasn’t alchemical in nature. Truly, Vezta didn’t know how she had crafted it. The only explanation Vezta could come up with was that, since losing her eyes and performing a few rituals on herself, she had somehow come to grasp knowledge that belonged to Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. Not quite an avatar—though close—but just extremely in tune with knowledge from the god of boundaries.

Olatt’an dipped the tip of a bolt into the liquid-like concoction. The metal head of the bolt… did something. It was like it slid aside to make room for the starry liquid. Except instead of aside, it went elsewhere. One of Kia’s afterimages, watching the process, shifted her eyes as if she were tracking something that nobody else could see.

Then she shuddered.

The result was a star-tipped bolt resting in the slot on the crossbow. As Olatt’an moved the bow, after carefully stoppering the jar, the tip sliced through the air. If reality were a fabric, that bolt sliced through it like a sharp blade through a hung sheet of linen. Unlike a sheet of linen, reality sealed itself back together in the bolt’s wake.

Vezta honestly wasn’t sure if Zullie should be messing with stuff like that. If she were a true avatar, she would likely understand innately what was too dangerous to touch and what wasn’t. As it was, she was an overly curious human dipping her toes into the realm of a god.

But it was useful.

“Don’t miss,” Vezta hissed. “I’m going to breach the wall. I will point out Arkk. Both of you are to do your utmost to eliminate anyone not Arkk or us in the room. I presume tricks may be played. We may not be able to trust our eyes precisely. Try to stick together to avoid ourselves becoming targets for the demon to disguise themselves as.”

“I need to get close to use my abilities,” Kia said. “They don’t work at range.”

“You are on defensive duties. If Olatt’an’s bolt doesn’t work, we move as a group to confront the demon.” Vezta stopped, considered, and rephrased. “Or rather, we move to extricate Arkk. He is conscious, I can tell that much, but he must be in some way captured. Once we free him, he will be able to aid us more directly with the power of the fortress.”

Vezta looked between the two, waiting for any further objections or questions. Olatt’an had already questioned why so few were going to Arkk’s aid. Against a demon, anyone else would be nothing more than casualties at best. Vezta wasn’t sure that Olatt’an was the best man for the job here, but he had been available when much of Arkk’s minions were out and about.

The old orc had somewhat fallen out of favor following the events of his expedition into the Underworld and subsequent accidental portal opening to the Anvil. It was nothing official. Vezta doubted anyone but herself and Olatt’an even noticed that Arkk had started seeking advice from others whereas before, Olatt’an would have been at the top of his list. All that wasn’t exactly relevant to today, excepting perhaps the notion of Olatt’an wishing to regain some of that lost favor.

Vezta hoped he performed well.

She stepped closer to the wall, her arms and limbs spreading out far further than she normally allowed while maintaining her humanoid guise. Maws of razor-sharp teeth whirred across her oily flesh as she pressed up against the wall. The magical reinforcements in the brickwork meant nothing to her. They crumbled as easily as loosely packed dirt.

Stuffy, stale air rushed out into the corridor as Vezta consumed the wall. In mere seconds, there was a gap from the corridor to the storage room big enough for an orc, an elf, and a monster to step in without losing track of one another.

Kia took the lead, afterimages fanning out in front of them in a protective formation. Olatt’an, crossbow raised to his shoulder, peered down over the top of the bolt.

Vezta glanced from one Arkk pinned to the ground by another Arkk. “Demon is on top,” she said.

Before her words were fully out, Olatt’an pulled the trigger. The starry-tipped bolt sheared through reality. At the range they were at, the bolt crossed the distance at the speed a human took to blink.

The demon Arkk flattened himself against the real Arkk, grinning wide as he avoided the bolt by the hair on his back. As soon as it was clear, he flipped backward, flinging Arkk away—

The scenery changed in… not quite an instant. The familiar feel of teleportation, rather than a sudden jolt, felt like a slow drag on Vezta as she found herself within Zullie’s laboratory. Olatt’an and Kia remained at her side, unmoved relative to her.

Arkk stood in front of them, face set in a grim, angry scowl. He wobbled slightly, steadying as Vezta placed a hand on his back and chest.

Kia started forward, only to pause as Vezta shot a look at her, blocking her way.

“Are you alright, Master?”

Arkk looked over the three of them. “I’m fine,” he said, trailing the word. “But Leda…”

Ilya lowered her bow without loosing the arrow. The group ahead of her squad were not hostiles this time. They were…

She stepped forward, slowly, lips pressed into a tight line.

Priscilla sat face-down in the dirt, sending out a trail of ice crystals with every one of her shallow breaths. Kevin and Joanne sat behind her, hunched over a small figure with both their hands alight with magic. Magic Ilya easily recognized, having seen it up close more times than she wished. Flesh Weaving.

The arrow sticking out of the small fairy’s body was far too large for her frame. A coagulated droplet of blood fell from its tip, staining the grass around her. Glassy, sightless eyes stared upward at nothing.

 

 

They didn’t have long. Three people and a comatose dragonoid made noise, left tracks, and otherwise made it extremely easy for others to find them. They couldn’t move with any real haste. There was no easy way of finding their allies.

They were, in short, in a deep pit of shit.

Leda followed along, trailing just behind the human and the beastman. She kept glancing around, expecting a platoon of enemy soldiers to pop out from behind the trees. At the same time, she tried to rack her mind for any spell that might help their situation. First on her mind were offensive and defensive spells. Electro Deus and Incendiary Explosio. Desidia was supposed to make others feel like they were moving through a vat of sticky syrup, slowing them down, but she needed a line of sight for that. She also wasn’t sure how many it could affect. There was another spell Arkk had taught her, one that made people move fast, but the words for the incantation just wouldn’t come to her stressed mind. Longer spells were right out. It was a wonder that she had remembered Flesh Weaving. They just had too many words. Like, she knew Zullie had some spell or ritual that could lessen the weight of objects—that would help with Priscilla immensely—but Leda could only remember the first three words of twenty or so.

There had to be a better way. There had to be something she could do.

Leda scowled as she trudged through the forest, wondering what Arkk would do in her situation.

He wouldn’t have forgotten spells, first of all. Arkk was dedicated to his studies. Zullie knew more and could probably have created a shoddy spell on the fly, but that was only because she had been working with magic since she was little. Leda hadn’t paid enough attention. She had been so enamored with the magic crackling under her fingertips that she had felt practically invincible.

Now, she had all that magic but nothing to do with it.

So what would Arkk manage in her situation assuming he also didn’t know a wide variety of spells?

He had the fortress. Walking Fortress Al-Lavik, he called it. Leda hadn’t named her tower—Al-Mir, Al-Lavik… she didn’t really get his naming conventions. But Elmshadow was a distance away. It would ruin his underground tunnels, disconnecting the tower from them, but he would have immediate reinforcements and a place of safety. Once it moved close enough, he could teleport straight to it. Leda could teleport herself and the others as well as whatever subordinate she was to Arkk, but she couldn’t make the tower move closer.

Leda didn’t have Walking Fortress Al-Lavik. Her tower was out in the middle of nowhere, awaiting orders to charge into Evestani. Even though she could peer through its halls and direct her shadow servants, it was too far to be of any use.

Or was it?

It wouldn’t arrive here in any appreciable amount of time, but it did give her a quick idea.

“Slave Natum,” she whispered, waving her hand.

The shadows around the forest came alive, swirling and twisting to her fingers. It took longer than the bubbling masses of Arkk’s minions to form up but a shadow coalescing into a vaguely humanoid form was far less nauseating. As soon as the shadow could move, Leda gave it a quick mental command, and off it went.

It trudged through the bushes and trees, moving roughly north-east. Leda’s group was heading almost directly east, a bit south. Unlike her and her companions, the servant didn’t try to hide its trail. Her shadow servants weren’t all that great at digging through rock and stone—as far as she could tell, fortresses granted by the Lady Shadows were all designed to be above ground—but they could obliterate softer materials with ease.

Leda hopped forward, quickly catching up with Joanne and Kevin. The former shot her a questioning look.

“It’ll make a trail for our pursuers to follow,” Leda whispered. As soon as she spoke, a second idea popped into her head. “And once far enough from us, it’ll cause a ruckus to draw attention in case they don’t fall for it.”

The look Joanne regarded her with was… probably approving. The human didn’t smile or anything, but she gave a curt nod of her head. “Got any other tricks?”

“I’m trying to think of more…”

“It’d be nice if you could get one of those teleportation rituals.”

Leda thought a moment. She didn’t know the ritual, but through her link to her tower, she could see one—the one they used to transport people and supplies to her tower. A brief spot of hope welled up in Leda as she thought to copy it. The enemy could likely use them as well, but if they could get to reinforcements first, they could turn around and ambush anyone who came out of the ritual. Or she could have a servant destroy it after they left. Arkk had used that trick before.

Just as she started looking around for a clear patch of ground to scribe the circle into, a thought occurred to her.

All the teleportation rituals were slightly different. The base design was the same, but they had coordinate arrays to determine where the exit would end up. Leda didn’t know how to determine the exit point or even which parts of the circle were the coordinate array.

The ritual circle in her tower exited east of her tower, further into the Duchy.

If she copied the one in her tower exactly, would it also exit to the east, toward Elmshadow? Or, since her tower was to the west, would it point in the other direction? That was dangerous. If it worked like that, using it might drop them off in the middle of the enemy base. Or it might not work at all if it tried to go to the exact spot her tower’s ritual exited, since it was too far away. Or it might kill them if they tried to use it for the exact same reason.

Leda didn’t know enough about the teleportation ritual.

She could… experiment? Summoning a servant worked, so she could send one through to see where it ended up. Arkk liked to test things on his lesser servants too.

Leda glanced back, peering through the forest. The glowstone lights in the distance were closer now. Would they give up ever? Or chase them all the way to Elmshadow?

“I might be able to. It might be a waste of time,” Leda said, honestly unsure which case it would be. “But let’s move on foot for now. Get away from here and hope the decoy does its job. That’ll buy us some time to draw out the circle.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Kevin said as the two resumed their careful walk.

Leda felt a little spark of elation light up in her chest. “It does, doesn’t it,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.

She made a plan. A real plan. One that might even have a chance at succeeding.

And she wasn’t done yet. Realizing that she could look in and copy the teleportation ritual from her fortress reminded her that she could look into anywhere in her fortress. There weren’t as many books in it as there were at Fortress Al-Mir, but Leda had some. All it took was ordering one of the shadow servants to open a book to a page and she could look down at it and study.

They would get out of this mess. She would get them out of this mess.

A small, hopeful smile spread across Leda’s face.

The false-Arkk leaned in close, forcing the real Arkk to turn his head aside. Pinned as he was, unable to struggle against the strength of the creature, he wasn’t able to do much else besides run through a list of spells in the back of his mind. He only needed to break the creature’s hold for an instant and he would be able to teleport again.

“Bankorok Pargon Sant—”

The false-Arkk opened his mouth wide. Too wide. A thin black tongue darted out, more like a gorgon’s tongue than Arkk’s—or a segmented worm. It lashed against Arkk’s cheek with the crack of a whip. He felt a stinging burn trace a narrow line from his ear to the corner of his eye. A spray of blue-green motes of magic surged from the cut, drifting through the air before dissipating into the aether.

The demon—for what else could it be—smacked his lips repeatedly, as if assessing a new flavor. “Spicy,” he said in Arkk’s voice. “A little tingle on the tongue. You enjoy lightning a bit much, hm? Over reliant on it, I’d say.”

Arkk barely heard his copy’s words.

Something was wrong. Something within. It was like a door slammed shut in his face, like he walked behind a large stack of hay. The Heart still beat in both his fortresses, but they were somehow muted, soft and distant. In a panic, he tried to teleport a simple pen from one side of his desk to the other—he could still see his territory, but it was through a hazy fog. The teleport felt slow. The normally instantaneous movement had to pass through a vat of honey before it could reach the other side.

“That’s it!” False-Arkk laughed. “That’s the face I wanted to see.”

In a feat of acrobatics, False-Arkk flipped backwards, landing on his feet to Arkk’s side.

The moment he was released, Arkk tried to teleport himself. Just like with the pen, it was slow and sluggish, as if his feet were trapped inside a thick layer of cold molasses. His counterpart simply reached out and grabbed him, ripping him out of the malformed teleport, throwing him back to the floor.

“You may or may not have come to this conclusion already, but allow me to clear up any lingering doubts. I am a demon.”

“Contracted to Prince Cedric.”

The Arkk in front of Arkk put on a sly grin. “You aren’t as foolish as you look.”

Arkk didn’t take his eyes off the copy of himself. Although he had guessed that already, hearing the confirmation brought an irritated twitch to his eye. The fact that a demon had been summoned after all meant there was a serious flaw somewhere in his methods of information gathering. If he had missed the Prince summoning a Light-damned demon, who knew what else slipped by.

In retrospect, this was what the Prince had been warning him about during their meeting. He hadn’t said it directly. At the time, Arkk had thought that he simply didn’t want his men engaging in a mutiny that would end with half of them dead while Evestani was knocking on the door.

Fixing the information network was a problem for future-Arkk. Present-Arkk had a demon standing over him. A situation ever-so-slightly higher on his list of problems to deal with.

Arkk rolled off to the side, away from the demon. Gingerly, as he pushed himself up to his feet, he touched at the spot on his cheek where the demon had licked him—or lashed him. His fingers came away moist, slick with blood. There was something in the blood. A faint green glow that sparkled with tiny motes of magic.

“What have you done to me?”

“Just had a little taste. Blood is well and good but creatures like you,” the demon grinned. “More magic than flesh… I can’t tell you how much I’ve been suppressing my cravings.”

The demon leaped at Arkk, mouth opening beyond the capabilities of a human. And it just kept going from there, like a creature within were trying to escape.

Arkk stumbled to the side. The demon went flying past him, reforming into Arkk once on the ground again. Arkk clenched his teeth. His legs and arms felt slow and sluggish. Poison? Had he been poisoned? No magic. Weakened constitution.

He pulled out a thin black dagger from a sheath on his back. Even without knowing that the Prince had summoned a demon, they had still been preparing and walking around without one of the products of their research felt irresponsible at best. However, all their creations required magic to activate.

His magic wasn’t gone, just diminished. The thumping beats of the Heart, muted though they were, were slowly increasing in force.

He brandished the blade, holding it in front of him as he eyed his counterpart.

That he still wasn’t dead was suspect. The demon just stared at him, grinning wide. His copied red eyes didn’t even flick down toward the dagger. Arkk mirrored each step the false-Arkk took with a step backward.

“What do you want?”

That segmented tongue flicked out of the demon’s mouth again, though with the distance between them, it didn’t come close to Arkk. “Simply to squeeze every last drop of magic from your blood and lick it from my fingers.”

It wasn’t doing a particularly good job of that. Was it really just playing with its food? Or was there something more going on? Why was he still alive at all? With Kia and Claire out of action and his magic on the fritz, why wasn’t he dead? Why the dialog? Why pin him to the floor? Why admit what it was?

“Come on then,” Arkk said, shifting his stance as an idea wormed its way into the back of his mind. “If you think you can, do it.”

“Confidence. Almost as enjoyable as magic.”

The demon lunged again.

Arkk stood upright, lowering the dagger. No matter how much of his weakened magic he shoved it into it, it remained stubbornly inert. Hardly any different than a simple metal blade. He stood straight, not even bothering to dodge.

In the last few months, Arkk had done research. He had spoken with Abbess Hannah, Vezta, Sylvara, and just about everyone else who might know anything about demons. They were creatures from another realm, somewhat like the denizens of the Underworld, the Necropolis, or any other world he had visited lately, except they allegedly lacked a god. It hadn’t always been like that, but the people of their realm had somehow killed their god, all of them gaining a sliver of that power in exchange. All of which, for all Arkk knew, was hearsay with little basis in reality.

What wasn’t hearsay was how demons typically functioned. They could be summoned through a complex ritual involving the sacrifice of a varying number of people. The exact number depended on the magical strength of the sacrifices. Upon being summoned, a properly designed ritual would entrap the demon until a contract could be formed. An improperly designed ritual might lead to a rogue demon—a situation in which several teams of inquisitors would be called in to deal with.

Contracts were surprisingly simple, all things considered. A verbal agreement between the summoner and the demon, usually following a negotiation. Demons were said to be master wordsmiths but they couldn’t lie during the contract process. Whether that was some quirk of their species, a compulsion from their dead god, or magic interwoven into the ritual circle wasn’t known to anyone Arkk had asked.

Once an agreement formed, the circle would release the demon or, in the case no agreement could be made, banish them.

The demon crashed into Arkk. Its maw, jutting out from its mouth, snapped at Arkk’s throat as they both fell back to the ground. But it didn’t bite. It snarled at Arkk. It postured and posed. And, most of all, it looked… uncertain.

“You can’t, can you?” Arkk said, donning the demon’s former grin.

“You…”

“Let me guess… Can’t kill those who aren’t enemies of Cedric? You admitted to being his demon, trying to get me to see him as an enemy. Perhaps the wording is slightly different, but that’s the gist of your contract.”

All emotion vanished from the demon’s face. Since it was Arkk’s face, it looked almost like he had been knocked out, though his eyes were still open. It was just for a moment, but that sudden shift made Arkk think he was wrong about his guess, that whatever pleasure the false-Arkk had been taking from their little spar had run dry and he was simply going to snap his neck.

“Most don’t take so kindly to the one setting a demon on them,” the demon said.

“You don’t know that the Prince warned me of you. If he wished for me to die at your hands, he wouldn’t have done so.”

The reinforced fortress floor tile behind Arkk’s head shattered as the demon clenched its fist, crumpling it like it was a simple sheet of paper.

“He warned you about me,” the demon snarled through teeth clenched so tight they were starting to crack. A clawed, scaled hand grasped at Arkk’s face, skimming his skin. A few more hot streaks of pain crossed Arkk’s skin, but without that drain on his magic. More importantly, the demon was clearly trying and failing at crushing his head. “Bastard.”

Arkk remained still, even lessening his own smile. It was tough. The relief he felt—he had not been sure about that little gambit—was difficult to suppress. But he had confirmed what he needed. Antagonizing the demon further wouldn’t help.

Especially not as more plans started to form.

“You want magic, do you? Does it have to be mine?”

The demon snarled, maw all but ready to bite off Arkk’s face.

Leda wiped away a layer of sweat from her brow as she finalized the ritual circle that would hopefully take them closer to Elmshadow.

Joanne and Kevin stood guard, watching out for any sign that their pursuers hadn’t fallen for the decoy. Priscilla still hadn’t woken up, resting with a log as a pillow.

Leda couldn’t help but bite her lip. If this worked, it would be great. They would be home free. If it failed, they all would have done nothing but waste twenty minutes that they could have used putting more distance between themselves and danger. If it catastrophically failed, they could end up with a ritual circle directly to the enemy encampment, one that their enemy could use in reverse to appear right in their midst.

Leda gnawed at her lip.

Maybe it was best to drop this idea before it backfired terribly.

“Finished?” Joanne whispered. She had been growing increasingly nervous over the past several minutes. It wasn’t hard to see why.

The glowstones in the distance, although they seemed to be following the decoy’s trail, had come a hell of a lot closer.

“Priscilla first then? Get our injured out of here—”

“Servant first,” Leda interrupted before muttering the incantation to summon another mass of shadows. “Then one of you. Someone will have to move Priscilla away from the ritual circle after she goes through.”

Kevin and Joanne glanced at one another. They must have been good teammates because they both quickly nodded their heads. Without a word passing between them, Kevin stepped closer to the ritual circle.

The shadowy figure Leda summoned moved forward first, taking its place in the center of the circle. It moved carefully so as to not disturb the ritual circle. That was something they would have to be cautious about when it came time to move Priscilla into place.

Leda hesitated. Her fingers trembled. This could go very wrong or it could go very right. She glanced around, first to Kevin and his unreadable face, then to Joanne who tried to keep the pained grimace off her face even as she had been limping and pressing at her side the entire time. Her eyes came to a rest on Priscilla, still unconscious but still alive as her faint breaths misted the air around her face.

Leda didn’t know if the dragonoid would be alive for long. Her breathing wasn’t quite as strong as it had been earlier. The skin around her missing wing and arm was blotchy and blackened. The haphazard healing job Leda had done clearly wasn’t enough. She needed Hale.

She needed Hale soon.

“Okay,” Leda said, pressing her hands on the circle. Either it worked or it didn’t. That was a fifty-fifty chance, right? She just needed to get lucky. “Okay. Here we go.”

Pulsing her magic into the ritual circle made it flash. The servant vanished, teleported elsewhere, but Leda sat stunned. It wasn’t normally a bright flash. Here, in the dark, lightless forest, with her eyes accustomed to the dark, it might as well have been as bright as the sun.

Her eyes didn’t readjust instantly. She could barely see. Joanne swore somewhere to the side. Kevin hissed as well, hiding his face with his hands.

In the distance, Leda heard shouting carrying through the trees. Cries of alarm.

“Leda,” Joanne hissed. “I hope it fucking worked.”

“Just a second,” Leda said, shocked back into focusing on the task at hand. She closed her eyes and followed the link to the tower, then followed the link to the shadow servant. They weren’t in exact opposite directions. The servant was south and east. More south than east. Looking around it, it seemed to have cut into the side of a tree in its appearance, destroying a slim chunk of the trunk. But it was otherwise safe. Safe, not in the middle of the enemy encampment, and far away from here.

“Okay. Kevin!”

The spider beastman didn’t say a word. His spindly legs stepped right over the ritual circle’s delicate drawings and into the center. He didn’t bother waiting for Leda to activate the circle, choosing to push a little of his own magic into it.

He vanished with another blinding flash of light.

Joanne was already trying to get Priscilla up on her back. Without Kevin there to help, it wasn’t exactly an easy or fast task. Leda, tiny as she was, couldn’t help. The most she could do was help heft up Priscilla’s feet so they didn’t drag through the circle as Joanne maneuvered her into position.

Joanne didn’t bother setting Priscilla down nicely. She dropped the dragonoid like a sack of rotten potatoes.

Leda lacked the time or wherewithal to complain about the treatment of her friend. She slammed her hand into the ritual circle and, as soon as Joanne was out of the way, pulsed her magic.

“Okay,” Leda said, letting out a small sigh of relief at seeing Priscilla off to safety. “We have to wait until Kevin drags—”

Something slammed into the tree next to Leda, vibrating with a twang just above her head. She slowly looked up, gulping at the sight of the arrow that would have hit her head if she had been just a little bit taller. Her eyes dropped, looking in the direction the arrow had come from.

The glowstones weren’t just glowstones anymore. She could see people. Knights armored in black.

“Electro Deus,” she shouted, flinging a bolt of lightning through the trees. It struck an archer just as he drew back another arrow. “Electro Deus!”

Lightning crackled in both of Leda’s hands. She felt the magic flowing from her tower straight into her, filling her with power. It was almost enough to make her start laughing as she slung bolt after bolt at the armored knights. Although they usually crashed to the ground after being hit, they didn’t seem to stay down. Something about their armor just absorbed her lightning. But that hardly mattered.

“Try to get up after this,” Leda barked out with a nervous laugh that she just couldn’t help. The tension in her stomach released with the laugh, making her feel a little better. A little more confident. She brought both her hands together, sending out a continuous wave of unlimited power.

“Leda!” Joanne called from her back.

A quick glance at her shadowy servant with Kevin and Priscilla showed the all-clear. “Go,” Leda said, not stopping the flow of lighting. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Joanne looked like she wanted to argue. It looked like she wanted to grab Leda and throw her onto the ritual circle first. Her eyes roamed over the lightning and she shook her head. It was a bad idea to touch the lightning fairy.

A pulse of light signaled Joanne’s departure.

Cutting off the lightning, Leda turned and hurried back to the ritual circle. “Slave Natum,” she said, forming another shadowy servant.

This one would destroy the ritual circle as soon as she was gone, keeping these soldiers from following her.

“Electro Deus,” she shouted, flinging another lightning bolt over her shoulder. It was a blind shot, but it would hopefully keep them hunkered down for the short few seconds it would take Joanne to vacate the destination circle.

As soon as she saw the circle clear through her link with her other shadowy servant, Leda pulsed her magic into the ritual circle.

A fiery pain struck her back just as the bright light engulfed her.

Leda staggered out of the end circle. Joanne smiled at seeing her, a brief moment of joy at having successfully gotten out of that situation. The smile only lasted an instant before a look of horror crossed her face. She shouted something but it didn’t quite reach Leda’s ears.

Leda stumbled forward, feeling something warm run down her back and her front. She looked down, finding the sharpened point of an arrow sticking straight out of her chest.

Her knees hit the dirt. Joanne rushed over, grasping hold of her before she could fall forward into the dirt. She was trying to cast a spell. Kevin was too. But their faces were foggy and hazy.

Some part of Leda’s mind focused outward. The shadow servant she had left behind. It needed a job. What was it again?

Destroy the ritual circle.

That was it.

As it swept its shadowy arms over the ritual circle right in front of the armored knights, everything went dark.

 

 

“Priscilla?” Leda whispered, eyes darting around with fear and worry.

She had finally found the dragonoid. It hadn’t been difficult. Priscilla plowed through the trunk of a tree, sending it toppling to the ground, and then left a massive gouge through the dirt for a good hundred paces, crashing against another few trees in the process. All Leda had to do was follow the destruction. The hardest part had been getting out of the harness in the tree.

One of Leda’s wings was broken. She hadn’t even noticed at first. The adrenaline kept the pain down and other pains, such as the stabbing ache in her chest, only served to cover up the relatively minor pain in her wing. The first she noticed her wing was when she unlatched the harness and went tumbling straight to the ground, unable to stop her fall.

She was out. On foot. And now stood beside Priscilla’s unmoving form.

Kneeling down, Leda tried pushing against the dragonoid’s shoulder. Her good shoulder. The other shoulder was… not exactly present anymore, along with a wing and arm. Were this anyone else, Leda would have taken one look and dismissed them as being dead.

Priscilla was different. Ever since hearing about Company Al-Mir and its supposed magic-granting contract, Priscilla had been Leda’s constant companion. There was Camilla as well, another fairy who joined at the same time, but they had always been assigned different tasks. That just left Priscilla.

It wasn’t always easy being the grouchy dragonoid’s spare eyes. There had been several points, practically after every outing, where Leda thought about asking to be reassigned to anything else. But she never had. For as much trouble as Priscilla could be, for as terrifying as flying with the dragonoid was, there was a thrill to it. A glimpse into what might have been had fairies possessed natural magic.

Now, because of Priscilla, Leda could feel that magic. It swirled around her, inside her, fueled from the distant tower Heart. She could use magic now. Not just the little parlor tricks that contracting with Arkk brought, but full, actual magic.

Leda couldn’t just abandon Priscilla. Not after all that. Maybe if she was actually dead.

But she wasn’t.

Every so often, a faint dusting of ice coated the plants and brush in front of Priscilla’s mouth. Every shallow, pained breath sent a flurry of snowflakes through the air.

Priscilla was alive.

Glancing back over her shoulder, Leda squinted at the glowstone lights. They were distant still. There was time. It was a good thing Priscilla had been flying at such speed. It got them away from the army that now searched for them.

But that distance wouldn’t last for long.

Leda rubbed her hands together, closing her eyes. “I can do this,” she whispered to herself. “I can do this. I’ve got this. It’s easy. I saw Hale do it a hundred times…” She took a deep breath. Then another one. She focused on the words, trying to remember them. “Okay. Okay. Tenun bebarengan otot lan daging lan balung, gabungke rong bagean sing kapisah kanggo nggawe siji wutuh.”

For a moment, she thought she got a part of the spell wrong. Nothing happened. The Flesh Weaving spell didn’t leap to her fingers like the lightning bolt from earlier. A sick feeling in her stomach threatened to spill over until one tiny corner of the back of her mind reminded her that the long spells required more than just words. They required focus on certain themes and, occasionally, specific hand movements.

Leda closed her eyes again, this time muttering the incantation while keeping her mind focused on the idea of knitting, the element of flesh, and focusing her hands.

This time, the warmth of the magic swirled around her fingertips. Leda sucked in an exhilarated breath. Even in the situation she was in, she couldn’t help but feel thrilled. Especially at trying out a new spell. Flesh Weaving was something she had seen Hale perform over and over again in the past few weeks, modifying her body to be more like Priscilla’s. A lot of it squicked Leda out—she didn’t like the way Hale just mushed about her own body like it was a clay pot she was shaping—but she had seen enough to have an idea of how it worked.

Leda didn’t need to get it perfect. Hale could fix it up if they got back. When. When they got back. All Leda needed to do was get Priscilla back on her feet.

Leaning over the uncomfortably still dragonoid, Leda pressed her hand into Priscilla’s shoulder. There was no way she would be able to regrow the arm or the wing. If she had them on hand, maybe she could try reattaching them. That seemed simpler. But it was dark, neither limb was nearby, and searching would take more time than Leda figured they had.

So she just smoothed over the wound, hoping that the spell would do most of the heavy lifting. The gristly, twisted flesh, bone poking out, blood pooling everywhere… all of it slowly coalesced back into Priscilla. Leda’s fingers felt sticky and gross, her stomach was already churning from the situation and putting Priscilla back together wasn’t helping. She powered through anyway.

She couldn’t just leave Priscilla behind.

“Come on,” Leda muttered. Even as she continued sealing Priscilla’s wound shut, she started rocking the dragonoid back and forth. “Wake up. Wake—”

A twig snapped behind Leda. She jolted, losing control of the spell. The magic dissipated into the ether as she spun around, the lightning bolt spell on the tip of her tongue. “Elec—”

She expected to be surrounded by those knights in black armor. The Eternal Empire. Or maybe Evestani’s more sand-gold-hued armor. But neither were around. The glowstones searching the forest were still off in the distance. Closer, now, but not close enough.

Instead, two people stood in front of her. A human and a spider beastman.

A familiar human and spider beastman.

“Joanne?” Leda whispered, trying to squint into the darkness.

“Yo. Not exactly the rescue I was hoping for—”

Leda shirked in on herself, feeling guilty.

“But I’ll take whatever I can get at the moment,” Joanne finished. She was leaning on the spider beastman—Kevin, if Leda remembered right—using him for physical support. Blood covered the mail and leathers of her armor but she didn’t look like she had any open wounds. “The dragon girl alive?”

Leda squeaked a little, spinning back around. Priscilla hadn’t moved. Her shoulder looked… less gristly. That was about the biggest compliment Leda could offer at present. At least she wasn’t bleeding out.

But that was okay. She wasn’t on her own anymore. Leda was beyond happy to see anyone friendly, even if it was some of the people they were supposed to be rescuing. A fairy couldn’t do much on her own, phenomenal magical power or not. At least not with the limited amount of spells she both knew and felt confident in using in a high-stress situation.

But a human and an arachnoid?

Leda drew in a breath.

She wasn’t just another employee anymore. The Heart wasn’t just a magical device funneling power into her. She was supposed to be more like Arkk. A leader. As soon as he dealt with the avatar, she was supposed to march her tower into Evestani and stomp their capital city into dust until they finally gave up. She couldn’t just keep going like she had been.

She had to turn around and take charge.

Leda drew in a breath and turned around.

“Joanne, Kevin. Are you able enough to carry Priscilla?”

They looked at each other. Eight eyes met two.

“I don’t know about carry,” Kevin mumbled.

“We can drag her.”

“I can spin up some rope if that helps.”

“Good,” Leda said. “Do that. Do either of you need healing?”

“We patched ourselves up,” Kevin said even as a pair of his arms reached down to a spinneret to start pulling thread. Leda forced a grimace off her face a the sight. “It isn’t perfect.”

“It’ll do for now,” Joanne said as she crouched down over Priscilla, looking over the dragonoid’s prone body.

“Good,” Leda said, trying to keep the relief off her face. If she never had to mush about someone’s body with Flesh Weaving again, it would be too soon. “Good. There’s a ground team coming in. More than one, actually. Two through the tunnels and a specialist team over land. We need to meet up with the latter. I mean, the former would be safer, but unless either of you has access into the tunnels…”

“Sorry.”

“Nope.”

“Overland it is,” Leda said with as much confidence as she could muster. Despite that confidence, she wasn’t exactly… confident. The big problem was that she didn’t know exactly where she was.

Riding on the back of Priscilla, it got extremely easy to get turned around, mixed up, and lose any kind of spatial awareness. Doubly so when the final moments of that flight had been erratic movement trying to avoid orbs of death careening across the sky. Triply so when they had landed in such a spectacular crash.

She needed to get a perspective of her surroundings.

Her wing was broken. Just remembering that little fact sent a jolt of pain through her back.

For a moment, she considered asking Joanne and Kevin if they knew where they were. But that wasn’t any more likely. The briefing said they had been in the middle of an explosion. That had to be disorienting.

More relevant, Leda remembered something.

She wasn’t just a simple employee.

Following the link to her Heart, Leda slightly turned her head. It was halfway across the country, but she knew exactly where it was. And if her tower was in that direction, then… She turned. It was the blinding beacon of her own tower, but there was a faint link toward Elmshadow. It probably wasn’t exact, but heading in that direction would at least get them closer to more reinforcements.

“Are you two ready?”

Although the rope Kevin had formed was merely a thin string, Joanne used it to heft Priscilla up onto her back and keep her there despite the human’s injuries. Kevin, meanwhile, forwent his threads and simply used his multitude of lengthy arms to help relieve some of Priscilla’s weight. One of his hands kept her wing pinned down, keeping it from flopping about and getting in the way of their movements.

“Ready,” Kevin said, his voice soft, almost a hiss.

Joanne didn’t say much of anything. She just grunted.

“I’ll watch our backs. I can use magic like Arkk. You two just focus on getting yourselves and Priscilla away. Okay?” Leda waited a moment, looking at Priscilla’s slack face. Neither said anything. She wasn’t sure why. Did they not trust her?

Leda clenched her fists. She had to give them a reason to trust her.

“Okay. This way,” she said, pointing her finger in the direction she hoped was safety.

If there was one thing Arkk had learned since stumbling across Fortress Al-Mir all those months ago, it was that there were some very scary people out in the world. All of whom wanted something. If he could figure out what that want was, communication, partnership, or even friendship wasn’t out of the question.

Duke Levi Woldair was one of the first names that came to mind. A man granted power by the King to command armies, levy taxes, and—through barons and other lesser nobles—generally manage the territory of Mystakeen. He could have been much more dangerous, but he was a lazy slob wanting little more than to coast through life on the backs of others.

The gorgon certainly counted. Between their caustic venom, petrifying gaze, and natural strength, they were deemed highly dangerous. So much so that a small colony had been allowed to almost destroy a city by blocking that city’s economic flow. As it turned out, they only wanted a safe place to live and, with their needs satisfied, were fairly laid back and easygoing.

Darius Vrox stood tall as an agent of order, doing his best to keep the world safe from dangerous magics and the individuals wielding them. He had been after Arkk, believing Arkk to be one of those dangerous individuals, basically right up until the beginning of the war. At that point, there were more dangerous individuals to worry about, especially because Arkk felt he had done a fair job of convincing the inquisitor that he meant no harm.

Related to Vrox, Purifier Agnete, or perhaps Avatar Agnete, freely wielded flames that could burn just about anything not already infused with powerful magic. Arkk hadn’t known her much prior to hiring her, but after, she found herself enjoying her time down in the forge, tinkering with whatever new ideas popped into her mind. Even now, a world apart, she tinkered away in some massive workshop, building things that Arkk could barely wrap his head around. Or she would have been if she wasn’t trying to assemble a miniature portal frame with the aid of the lesser servant in the Anvil.

Avatar… The Golden Order’s avatar was another subject. Despite all their interactions, Arkk still didn’t know his name. Or even if he was a he. It was a minor concern. Of a far more pressing concern was the fact that he was powerful and wanted Arkk wiped off the face of the world. Unfortunately, that was a desire functionally opposed to Arkk.

The orcs wanted a good fight and a good job. Lexa wanted gold—or she used to, nowadays, she spent most of her time plotting vengeance against the Golden Order’s avatar. Like Lexa, Sylvara wanted the Golden Order’s avatar dead for good. Zullie wanted to crack the mysteries of magic. Richter Porter wanted to defend his homeland from invaders. Lyssa wanted vengeance against slavers. Priscilla wanted to restore the glory of the dragons and dragonoids. Savren wanted his curse undone. Yoho wanted a fresh breath of life in his domain of undeath. Kia and Claire… actually, it was probably best not to think about what they wanted; Arkk liked to fool himself into thinking they were good albeit intense people.

Vezta, Arkk was a little less certain about. She wanted someone in command of Fortress Al-Mir and wanted help in carrying out her former master’s final order. Neither of which really sounded like her desires. But then, she was a Servant from the Stars. Having been literally inside her head on a handful of occasions, Arkk knew that she didn’t exactly think like most demihumans or beastmen. If he were to guess, Arkk would say that she just wanted to serve.

The point was, Arkk had done a fairly decent job of figuring out what people wanted. Sometimes he couldn’t do anything about it, like with the Duke and the Golden Order. They were fundamentally incompatible with him. But, in the vast majority of cases, he had been able to turn most people to his side. Even if they started out as enemies, like Darius Vrox, the gorgon, Agnete, Savren, and even Priscilla—arguably.

Arkk stared down his clone, looking into his own face. He couldn’t move. Despite the clone looking like him, it wasn’t him. He was pinned to the ground with a strength far beyond anything Arkk could manage. It felt more like he was sparring with a fully grown orc. Maybe someone more like Priscilla, not that Arkk had ever dared try to spar with the misanthropic dragonoid.

The point was, Arkk was alive.

Against a being that could crush him as easily as it had pinned him down, Arkk was alive.

That meant it wanted something. That something wasn’t his immediate demise. Depending on what it was, perhaps Arkk could hire another strange sort into his ever-expanding mercenary company.

If not, Arkk still had a chance. All he needed was for the being to release him. Just for a brief instant. A slip of its fingers for one second and Arkk could teleport himself out, reevaluate the situation from afar, and come up with a proper solution.

Failing that, Arkk could still teleport others to him. He might be held in captivity, but nobody else in his employ was.

What happened to Kia and Claire made that prospect less appealing than it should have been. Not everyone should collapse like they had, but that would almost be worse. If the fake version of himself convinced someone like Dakka that he was the imposter, he would lose his head to her shadow scythe before he had a chance to correct the misunderstanding.

“What,” Arkk ground out, glaring at his own glowing red eyes, “do you want?”

A cruel grin, the likes of which Arkk would never have tried, split the clone’s face in two. “What do I want? Don’t you mean to ask what am I?”

“What or even who you are doesn’t interest me,” Arkk snapped back. “All I care about right now are your intentions. Why are you here? What do you want?”

That smile shrank a hair, making Arkk internally wince as he feared he accidentally insulted the creature. Insulting the being pinning him to the ground didn’t sound like the best way to escape the current situation. He needed tact.

“My apologies,” Arkk said with as conversational of a tone as he could manage in the situation. “I merely assumed you had something you wanted beyond assaulting me. If not, it would be best if we simply got out of each other’s way, right?”

False-Arkk slowly tilted his head from one shoulder to the other, adopting a look of bewilderment. “You know what I am, do you not?”

“I can guess.”

“Quite cordial, aren’t you? Are you sure your guess is correct?”

Arkk stared back, eyes narrowing.

False-Arkk’s smile returned wider than ever. It disturbed Arkk to look at it. Some malevolent creature wearing his face, accosting him while his employees were in danger…

He needed to get away.

 

 

“Two Arkks, you say?”

Vezta stood at the table. Her eyes—the ones in the usual spot on her face—swept over the group of five. Olatt’an, Kia, Claire, Zullie, and Hale. Everyone else was busy with the operation. Vezta had half a mind to put an end to it, to focus on uncovering what happened to Arkk, but Fortress Al-Mir had enough personnel to carry out multiple operations at once these days.

The real problem was that of an imposter, period. If the story the dark elves told was true, an Arkk could show up, order people around, and cause all kinds of havoc if the rest of the minions weren’t made aware. At the same time, informing them would undermine authority, damage trust, and harm morale. Was it better to inform them or try to solve the crisis quietly while everyone was distracted by the compromised teams stranded behind enemy lines?

“They both looked exactly the same,” Kia said, taking the silence as a prompt to elaborate on her story. “Green tunic, scruffy beard, glowing red eyes. Everything. We appeared next to one of them, who raised his hand to point at the other. ‘Seize the imposter,’ he said. We turned to face the other Arkk, started toward him, and were immediately teleported away. Don’t remember much after that.”

“Their contract was broken,” Zullie cut in. “We rehired them, mostly to keep them conscious over a longer period of time without draining my vault of glowstones.” The witch paused, then added, “Without the fortress providing a steady supply of magic, the changes to their bodies drain them near instantly.”

Kia’s dark brown eyes narrowed as the dark elf shot a glare at Zullie. “Which is a complication we were not made aware of before agreeing to your experiment.”

Zullie didn’t look bothered in the slightest. “It wasn’t a problem as long as the contract remained in place. Don’t know why you’d care.”

“Arkk is human,” Kia said. Her hands’ afterimages slammed into the table just before her actual hands. “We’re dark elves. We may not live as long as Ilya and her mother but we’ll outlive Arkk easily. What are we supposed to do then? Fall over and die?”

“I hardly see how that is my problem.”

“You—”

“Enough,” Vezta said. “What you say isn’t accurate. As long as Arkk’s connection to the [HEART] remains unbroken, he will outlive the oldest elf, the most ancient dragon, and possibly the entire world. Your concerns are unfounded. As long as Arkk stays alive,” she added with emphasis. “If he dies, you’ll have a problem. So let us focus on ensuring that does not come to pass. You can bring up your long-term future once your immediate future is secured.”

Kia’s lips curled into a snarl while Zullie simply shrugged and turned aside.

Claire was the one to lean forward, getting the briefing back on track. “We were tricked.”

“The Arkk they appeared next to was the imposter,” Olatt’an agreed with a firm nod of his head. “They turned on the real one and started to attack him, thus breaking their contracts.”

“Likely,” Vezta said. She could see no fault in that reasoning. “But currently irrelevant. I will be able to tell apart Arkk no matter how convincing of a disguise this other has. The important thing now is to locate them.” Vezta looked between Kia and Claire. “Well?”

Despite looking like she was in the midst of licking a particularly sour lemon, Kia took a breath and said, “It was a darker room. No windows. Air was a bit stale and foul-smelling. Somewhere underground, I think, though still part of the fortress.”

“Considering the labyrinth that Arkk has dug out underneath Elmshadow, I would prefer something a little more specific than ‘underground.’”

“The air smelled like death,” Claire said. “Not recent death. No coppery blood. But death just the same.”

“Undeath?” Hale asked, perking up for some reason.

Claire just shrugged. “A corpse smells like a corpse,” was all she said.

Olatt’an stood, moved off to one side of the meeting room, and started perusing a thick leatherbound notebook. “There are no maps of the Elmshadow underground,” he said as he flipped a page. “But Arkk did note down the locations of a few important areas in case we needed to know while he was busy elsewhere. Ah. Here we are.”

Walking back to the table, Olatt’an placed down the notebook on an open page.

Undead Storage

There were three large chambers where Arkk stored his undead, according to the notebook. All were out far beyond the borders of the actual Elmshadow Burg. All were also to the west. If the Evestani army ever approached the burg and undead hadn’t already been used, there were instructions in the notebook to open several passages that would allow the undead to emerge right underneath the army’s feet.

Unfortunately, the three chambers were not right next to each other. It would take time to search them. Given that it had been a quarter of an hour since Kia and Claire regained consciousness, and a good quarter of an hour after having disappeared in the first place, meant that this imposter had at least a half an hour to run amok and cause havoc.

“Arkk is still alive.” Vezta knew that without a shadow of a doubt. “The fact that the fortresses still function is evidence of that,” she said. But even without the fortresses, Vezta had a connection to him. A little strand of Stars that said he was alive. “But I do not know for how long that will be the case. Anyone not already out in the field should report to search the rooms and corridors on the lower levels near Undead Storage—”

“Hold up,” Zullie said, looking back. The little twinkling lights in the backs of her empty eye sockets dazzled with a fresh thought. “The fact that he pulled these two, out of everyone in the fortress, to come to his aid has me… concerned.”

“Does that matter?”

“It does when Project Liminal was specifically designed as a counter-demon project,” Zullie said, shuddering slightly. “He didn’t pull anyone else to try to help him, even after these two ended up tricked. That makes me wonder just what he thinks he is up against.”

“A demon,” Vezta hissed, unable to unclench her teeth.

“I mean, Arkk can teleport anyone instantly, can’t he? Priscilla was still here when these two did their thing,” Zullie said, pointing a thumb at Kia and Claire. “If it was someone normal, why not try to use Priscilla against them after the dark elves failed.”

Kia bristled at the accusation but didn’t speak. Probably because she couldn’t exactly argue.

“Or anyone else for that matter,” Zullie continued. “Dakka and the orcs with shadow armor can take on just about anything, gorgon can stall just about anything long enough to do something about it, Lexa can sneak around and stab people in their backs before they know she is there, I know a plethora of magical spells which includes a collection of esoteric spells derived from a god, so on and so forth. This fortress contains a collection of some of the most dangerous beings I can think of all in one space, all available to Arkk at a moment’s notice. So why these two and no one else?

“Look, I don’t want to admit it, so I’m happy to hear of alternate possibilities, but tell me that doesn’t make sense.”

Vezta looked over the group with a heavy scowl. Her skin bubbled in anger and irritation. Nobody had any alternate possibilities. She could see it in their faces. Olatt’an had his brow furrowed as if he were deep in thought. Kia stared at Zullie with wide eyes, her earlier anger at the witch seemingly forgotten completely. Hale scowled to herself, glaring at the table as if it had answers. The final dark elf was as blank-faced as ever.

And Vezta couldn’t blame them. She didn’t have a better idea either. Zullie’s words were logical. They weren’t necessarily correct. Arkk could be facing something that he had mistaken for a demon.

But Vezta couldn’t take that chance.

“I have a few other items from our counter-demon research,” Zullie said. “Most back at Fortress Al-Mir. If we equip—”

“What are you waiting for? Get them. Immediately. The moment the thought of a demon crossed your mind, you should have—” There was no time. Vezta clenched her teeth. “Go. You,” she said to Claire as Zullie pulled back from the table. The witch stared a long moment, almost as if frightened, until Hale took her hand and started leading her away.

Vezta paid them no mind, focusing on Claire. Claire was the most sociopathic of the two dark elves, the one most likely to carry out the job Vezta needed her to do without question. “Your new task is to enter the [HEART] chamber. You will kill anyone who approaches. You will kill Arkk, you will kill Kia, you will kill myself. You will do so immediately upon seeing anyone and without so much as speaking to them. The only way you are relieved of this duty is when Arkk teleports you out of the Heart chamber. Do you understand?”

“Protect the Heart,” Claire said with a nod of her head.

“Go,” Vezta said, turning to the rest of the room. Olatt’an and Kia sat, fully alert. Which was good. The seriousness of the situation could not be understated. She looked to Kia first. The [HEART] here was at the highest risk, but there was a possibility that the [HEART] at Fortress Al-Mir was in just as much danger. It would take traveling through the teleportation circles to reach, which were under guard. But no guard would stand against a demon.

If only there were more like Kia and Claire. But, unlike Vezta’s former master, Arkk asked for volunteers.

If she sent Kia away, would Zullie’s trinkets be enough to get the demon away from Arkk? Did Zullie have anyone trained in using her trinkets? Which was the greater risk? That the demon would go after the [HEART]s or that they wouldn’t be able to rescue Arkk?

“You two,” Vezta said, coming to a decision that she wasn’t sure she liked. “Are going to come with me. Kia is not to leave my side. I can identify the real Arkk and point out the imposter. We three are going to stick together. If any of us is separated from one another for even a moment…”

They had to find Arkk.

“Now this is the life! Don’t you think?”

Leda didn’t think. She didn’t think at all.

The poor fairy grasped the harness as Priscilla tucked her wings behind her. They plummeted straight down. Wind rushed past fast enough that it felt like someone grasped the back of Leda’s hair and yanked. Her tiny frame felt like she was a mere hair’s breadth from slipping out of the leather harness.

And the stupid dragonoid was cackling. Cackling!

When Leda claimed the Heart of her very own walking fortress, she had figured she was done with this kind of work. She was supposed to be living the high life, relaxing in her tower with the magic flowing around her fingertips. So why was she here? Why did Priscilla need her anyway?

The dragonoid spread her wings, abruptly turning their hasty descent into a swift horizontal sweep. Priscilla blasted the ground beneath them with snow and ice. A sheet of sleet covered plants, trees, and animals that had just barely recovered from winter. As soon as her sweep finished and her icy breath ran out, Priscilla angled her wings, sending them soaring straight back up into the sky, far out of range of any bows, crossbows, or even most magic while she waited for the elemental crucible in the core of her chest to recover enough for another run.

Even if Leda knew that what went up had to come back down eventually, the going up wasn’t as mind-shatteringly terrifying. That gave her the opportunity to look around down below. She could see the streak of ice reflecting what little starlight there was, shining bright white against the otherwise dark forest. And she could see, off far in the distance, glowstones that belonged to the enemy forces.

The ice had come nowhere near the glowstones.

Not even close.

Leda let out a groan, wondering how that witch saw without eyes. If Priscilla could do that, Leda wouldn’t have to be out here screaming her little head off.

“We’re off target!” Leda shouted over the rushing wind. Grasping a strap of the harness, she gave a firm tug to point the direction. “That way!”

“On it!” Priscilla shouted back, dipping one of her wings, banking their flight.

Leda waited, peering over Priscilla’s shoulder, watching the glowstone lights approach underneath them. She just needed the right moment, and… “Go nowahhHHH!”

Priscilla tucked her wings back, making them drop like a stone.

A gale of ice joined the wind, forcing Leda to burrow her face into Priscilla’s back. The dive only lasted a few seconds before Priscilla pulled up again. Once again, as had been their continued pattern, Leda looked down below to see if they hit their target.

They had. Partially. It had been a large group of glowstones, each of which presumably belonged to someone out searching in the forest. About half of the glowstone lights were coming from the icy area. The other half had managed to escape or were on the edge of the icy run.

Leda was about to tug on the harness again to get Priscilla swinging around for another pass.

A thought occurred to her.

This wasn’t like the other times Leda had helped guide Priscilla. She had magic of her own now. She was strong. Maybe not as powerful as Arkk, but…

The words to most of the spells Arkk taught her were all jumbled about, tossed and turned by the constant up and down arcs of their flight. But one of the shorter spells didn’t have enough words to be so easily forgotten.

“Electro Deus!”

Hanging from Priscilla’s back, Leda threw her hand downward. A bright, blinding blast of lightning coursed from her fingertips. A larger blast exploded out from where the lightning hit, blinding her even more. She had to blink the streaks out of her eyes as she wondered what happened. Electro Deus wasn’t supposed to explode. Maybe she had hit some remnants of the alchemical bombs?

As her vision returned, she realized that she might have overdone it a little. In fairness to her, it wasn’t like she had much practice in high-stress combat environments.

A hole big enough for three orcs to stand shoulder-to-shoulder had been blasted through the tree canopy straight to the ground where a shallow crater formed. A scattering of glowstones had been left behind along with a few toppled suits of armor. There must have been something else there to have caused that explosion but Leda didn’t care what it was.

She grinned as Priscilla leveled out their flight, angling such that the dragonoid’s body obscured the view of the ground.

“Did you see that?” Leda called out with a laugh.

“No.”

The utterly flat tone in Priscilla’s voice choked the elation right out of Leda’s throat. “Oh. Sorry.”

Priscilla let the awkwardness hang in the air just long enough for Leda to wonder if she really offended the dragon woman, only for her to bark out a laugh of her own. “I’m messing with you! I felt that blast in my bones, and that isn’t easy. Congratulations!”

“Thanks…” Leda mumbled. The joy of casting magic felt a bit diminished but, at the same time, she couldn’t help but smile to herself. The normally frosty dragonoid was joking around with her? That was a good thing, right?

Or maybe she was just in a good mood since she got to unleash her icy breath on all the humans down below.

“Can’t let you have all the fun though. Where next?”

“Just a moment,” Leda said, trying to look around. There were still a few moving glowstones back at the previous spot. But their task wasn’t to wipe out one or two people. They needed to cause a big commotion, get eyes on them, and buy time for the other teams to rescue the people who needed to be rescued.

It was dark. It was night. A golden glow sufficed throughout the burg in the distance, but Arkk had insisted they keep well away from the avatar. There were supposedly other targets near the forest edge, large constructions hidden by magic, but Leda wasn’t sure how they were supposed to find them.

At least, she wasn’t until a massive explosion, orders of magnitude larger than the one her lightning bolt had made, ripped apart a portion of the treeline just to the north. Leda started to tug on the harness but Priscilla was already banking in that direction.

Leda squinted, trying to peer ahead of them. A dark cloud of dirt-filled smoke blossomed up into the sky, but her eyes were focused on the ground as she searched for fresh targets. Or, she supposed, for anyone from Company Al-Mir in need of a distraction.

A heavy gust of wind rushed outwards from the site of the explosion, well after the blast had finished. Priscilla jostled and jolted in the turbulence. Her wings thumped as she fought to stay in the air. Whatever good mood Leda had been in vanished in an instant as she grasped hold of the harness for dear life.

The wind cleared away the smoke and dirt from the explosion. There was a wreckage underneath. A twisted heap of scrap metal and splintered wood. A lone figure stood next to it, dwarfed in size yet somehow standing taller. A woman in a fine black outfit with blonde, shiny hair. Something hovered just behind her head. A ring of knives.

Despite the distance, despite her being as big as Leda’s thumb in perspective, when the woman turned, it felt like she was right in front of her. She could see that ever so slight frown of disappointment cross her features. Bright white glowing eyes looked up, staring directly at Priscilla and Leda. One of her hands rested atop the hilt of a long, straight sword at her hip. The other hand, she slowly raised to the level of her shoulders.

A loud snap from her fingers echoed out.

Priscilla swerved, turning in the air hard enough that Leda was almost thrown from her back despite the harness.

Something rushed past them, flying through the air faster even than Priscilla at her best. An orb of darkness surrounded by a ring of white light. It shot off into the sky, vanishing into a pinprick.

Not that Leda got a chance to watch it for long. Priscilla dove and climbed and twisted and turned as more and more of the black orbs flew toward them. She curled up, her wings wrapping fully around Leda and herself as she spun, barely managing to avoid two of the orbs streaking by at once. Her wings unfurled, catching them in the air.

Leda, eyes wide and covered in a fearful sweat, twisted in the harness. She looked backward. Despite having flown off for several seconds now, the woman was still there, still staring directly at them with those white eyes.

“Electro—”

A black orb rushing straight at her cut her off. Thanks to twisting, it skimmed right past her without hitting her.

Priscilla wasn’t so lucky. The orb tore through one of her wings, her shoulder, and the harness all in one.

Leda didn’t even have a chance to make a squawk of surprise before the harness came completely undone. Priscilla went one way, slamming into tree after tree before finally thumping into the ground. Leda went the other, beating her little fairy wings—fueling them with as much magic as she could—to try to stop herself from suffering the same fate.

She still struck a tree branch, snapping it in two, then another, and a third. The remnants of the harness looped around a fourth branch, finally bringing her to a stop. The harness, wrapped around her legs, her waist, and her shoulders, saved her from a hit to the ground.

Fire still burned through her chest. That first hit against the tree felt like it broke something in her ribs. Her heart hammered as she swung back and forth, dangling from the tree. When the swinging harness finally settled to a stop, she slumped, too hurt to try to keep upright in her harness.

Leda didn’t know if Priscilla was still alive.

Watching little lights from glowstones swarm through the forest, Leda didn’t know for how long she would be alive.

 

 

“He isn’t responding.”

“Did something happen?”

“The dark elves are still out.”

“They’re fine… I think,” Hale said, leaning over the two unconscious elves. Neither were injured in any way that she could think to check. Because of some of Zullie’s experiments, their bodies weren’t exactly usual. Having sat in for some experiments, including Project Liminal, Hale was somewhat well-versed in abnormal magical effects. Because of that, she could see only one thing that might be a problem. “Both appear to have used an excess of magic over a short amount of time. Because of the link we have with Arkk, that normally wouldn’t be a problem. They should have recovered by now.”

The muscles in Kia and Claire’s faces were tense, as if in a constant, painful grimace. They were still using magic, even now. Or rather, they were trying to use magic. But they didn’t have much to use. That left them strained and… broken.

Hale stood, enjoying the strength in her new muscles. She had been thinking about asking Zullie if there were any of her projects suitable for someone like her. After seeing this, perhaps that wasn’t the best idea. Her new legs and arms were her. She would get tired if she exercised too much but that wasn’t any different to how it had been before. This power the dark elves had was more like a leech, always active, always draining.

“I think I can fix it,” Hale continued, stepping clear of the two dark elves to an empty space in the command room. “I just need to infuse their bodies with some more magic.”

“You’re going to drain glowstones to get them on their feet?” Zullie said, frowning as she stepped closer. “It won’t last long.”

“It’ll be temporary,” Hale agreed, bending down to start drawing out an infusion circle. Basically the reverse of the ritual used to fill glowstones in the Underworld. “Hopefully we can get them talking long enough for them to tell us what happened.”

Hale tugged off one of her gloves. Tensing all the muscles in her hand made a long, thin claw pierce through the tip of her finger. With that, she quickly started etching the ritual circle directly into the stone floor. The lesser servants could fix the damage later.

Unfortunately, she had to pause as large orcish boots stomped into place directly in front of her. “You’re going to use up glowstones right before a battle?” Rekk’ar growled.

“She’s not wrong,” Olatt’an said, stepping around the large table. “If something happened to Arkk and the only ones who know what happened are unconscious, getting them talking is vital. Our fighting tactics hinge on Arkk’s abilities.”

Rekk’ar showed off his tusks. He looked like he was about to say something, but hesitated. He stepped aside, allowing Hale to continue. “We fought for years without him or his powers.”

“Were we against slavers or forest monsters, I would agree,” Olatt’an said with a nod of his head. “But we are fighting an avatar and an army. While the hope was that the avatar would stay protecting his army while we extract our team, we cannot guarantee the avatar will stay there. It is best to have all our cards up our sleeves. Expending one or two glowstones still leaves us with enough to enact plenty of siege magic.”

Hale tuned them out as she started working again, only to have to stop when Zullie stepped forward, blocking the spot she had been working on. “Is finding Arkk not an emergency?” Hale barked out, starting to get upset. Looking up and finding Zullie not even facing remotely toward her only made her more upset.

The eyeless witch was turned toward the orcs, standing with her hands on her hips. “Now, now. Hale has the right idea but she isn’t experienced enough to realize we can perform this experi… this operation without any glowstones needed.”

Hale let out a loud huff.

Turning in place, Zullie pulled out an extensible metal rod. The kind used to draw out ritual circles in dirt or other soft ground. She tapped it to the ground and swept it in a circle. It wasn’t sharp enough to gouge the ground, but it did leave a faint mark. Even without eyes, she managed to sketch out the ritual circle almost perfectly.

Hale stared at it for a moment before realizing exactly what Zullie meant by not needing glowstones.

“You’re going to use the fortress to funnel magic into them? It will only be a trickle. That isn’t much—”

“They aren’t a bombardment array. It doesn’t need an instant burst of magic, but low-sustained and constant magic. Just a little bit to ease their strain,” Zullie said. “The fortress is perfect for that. In fact, it should be doing that anyway… I suspect their link to Arkk, and thus the fortress, has been severed, resulting in their current state.”

“Ah… Ah! Of course. That makes sense. But can’t we just rehire them to fix that?”

“Need them to be conscious.”

“Right,” Hale said. While she thought she had learned quite a bit from Zullie about magic, she was fully cognizant that Zullie knew much more about the fortress and its mechanics than she did. So she quickly got to work, using her claw to finish the ritual circle according to Zullie’s patterns.

As soon as that was done, she and Zullie moved Kia into place. She was more likely to be the talkative one of the two, so her first. It was a bit of a cumbersome affair, moving her, but it couldn’t be helped. Project Liminal caused… changes to their bodies. Those afterimages could be deadly if touched improperly. Even now, disconnected from the fortress, they were still leaving them behind. Though they seemed inert, Hale could feel them flaying away at her hands. Active use of the Flesh Weaving spell counteracted that.

Hale wasn’t sure how Zullie avoided being torn to pieces. She didn’t have tough, draconic skin nor had she uttered the Flesh Weaving spell to repair her body as she moved. She simply touched Kia without regard for danger.

Zullie was strange. Stranger after having lost her eyes.

Hale paid her no mind. She had a patient in need of help. With Kia in the center of the ritual circle, Hale planted a hand on the trigger point of the circle. A tiny pulse of magic was all it took to activate it.

The entire tower shuddered as the ritual circle lit up with a bright blue light. Hale tensed, gripping her claws into the ground even as she wished she had gone ahead and figured out how to give herself wings like Priscilla. But the shudder was a one-time thing. The Walking Fortress stabilized and went still once again.

Kia wasn’t still. Her afterimage lurched forward, gasping, followed swiftly by the actual dark elf. Kia’s eyes darted around. Afterimages of her head and arms swirled around her as if she were trying to protect herself from a sudden attack. One of those afterimage hands lashed out toward Hale, making her scramble back from the reality-flaying hand.

Zullie stepped forward, swatting away the ghostly arm with her bare hand. “Calm down,” she said, leaning forward without any fear. “Where’s Arkk?”

Kia’s eyes, wide and fearful, latched onto Zullie as if the witch were a rope thrown down an oubliette. She stared a moment before her hands grasped either side of her head, rubbing at her temples. “Two of them,” she said slowly, her words echoing in her afterimages. “There were two Arkks.”

“Of course, I’m worried about him. That doesn’t mean we can sit back,” Ilya strode forward, moving alongside Alma. “Leave Arkk to the others. We have our people to save.”

Arkk, whatever he was doing, wouldn’t want everyone to drop the rescue operations and focus on him. He had been gathering crews to head out without him. There was no need to hold them back.

“I’m taking command for now,” Ilya said.

The beret on Alma’s head twitched. “Is that the wisest course of action given the situation?”

Ilya paused and half-turned, glaring at Alma with such intensity that it almost felt like her eyes were glowing just like Arkk’s. “You’re suggesting we leave them? They’re still alive.”

Alma shied away, her ears flattening against her head on their own. “N-No. Of course not. I would never… I meant you being in charge. Is that wise?”

Alma hadn’t thought it was possible but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Ilya’s glare intensified tenfold. The tall elf fully turned, her face set in stone. “Alma,” she said slowly. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” the werecat squeaked, feeling more like a weremouse. “Nothing at all.”

Ilya stared a moment longer before turning away without another word.

Alma shook her head and took a breath, trying to throw off that intense pressure. She had always thought Ilya was something of a pushover, but this did remind her that, during the incident that got her hired on in the first place, Ilya had been the one to suggest outright killing her instead of torturing her. She had almost forgotten. Intentionally. For as poorly as her service to Company Al-Mir had started, she rather liked her duties these days. She felt a managerial role fit her perfectly. Company Al-Mir didn’t treat her poorly—or anyone, for that matter. Even Luthor was starting to regain some of his confidence.

But they had effectively kidnapped her, threatened her, and forced her into her contract. She tried to forget that bit.

It wasn’t that Alma doubted Ilya’s ability to get things done or to command some troops—Ilya had done some of that before Alma joined up, before the war started, and before she got injured at the Duke’s party. Alma’s main objection to her being here was Arkk. He wanted to keep Ilya safe. And if something happened to the elf on Alma’s watch…

Alma shuddered to think what might happen.

Ilya ahead of her threw open the doors to the ready-room. Inside, a handpicked group of Shieldbreakers, battlecasters, orcs with shadowy armor, and gorgon stood at the ready. A few donned looks of confusion at seeing Ilya in the lead, but nobody was too alarmed. It was well known that Ilya and Vezta were effectively the next level of Company Al-Mir’s hierarchy beyond Arkk. Olatt’an, Rekk’ar, and the research team were just below that.

Alma was somewhere under the rest of the advisory group. She wasn’t exactly sure what she had done to earn such a lofty position—apart from learning about a plot to overthrow the Duke, that was. She supposed it was either keep her close to keep an eye on her or throw her off in some corner of the dungeons to keep her quiet. Alma certainly wasn’t going to complain. Not that it mattered anymore.

The Duke was dead.

As for the rescue teams, they probably assumed nothing was amiss.

“Arkk is unavailable for this mission,” Ilya started. “As are the Project Liminal dark elves. Priscilla and Leda will be flying overhead, working with a bombardment strike team to draw the enemy’s attention. We will be on extraction duty. Any questions?”

The gorgon with the iridescent black scales and mechanical end to her tail slithered a step forward. “Iss Arkk—”

“Unavailable,” Ilya interrupted. “Any other questions?”

That was one way to shut down questions. Probably one of the more alarming ways. Not how Alma would have handled it.

Ilya simply looked over the group as if she honestly expected more questions after her interruption. Finding none, she turned and pinned a hastily drawn map to the wall. “We have three groups trapped behind enemy lines. Two underground, still in the tunnels, and one group above ground,” she said, updating the briefing from earlier “The latter will be the more difficult, so team leaders?”

Zharja, already slithered forward, stayed where she was as a battlecaster and one of the elven archers moved to join her.

Ilya looked over the three, then shifted her eyes over their shoulders, examining their particular groups. All three were mixed in their makeup, but Zharja’s had Lyssa and the majority of the Shieldbreakers while the archer had the majority of the ranged combatants. The battlecaster had a fairly healthy mix of melee and magic.

“Zharja and Lyssa,” Ilya settled on. “Your teams will be with me, responsible for the above-ground unit. Vector—” She looked to the battlecaster. “—will be in charge of recovering unit two. Maya will recover unit three. Here is how we’ll be doing this…”

Joanne clasped a hand over her mouth, trying not to hiss at the stabbing pain she felt in her side. It hadn’t been so bad earlier—or perhaps the adrenaline covering the pain faded away—but now, up here?

With her other hand, Joanne clung to the branch of the tree. A thin yet strong thread of spider silk helped her stay in place, supporting most of her weight. Even without being injured, she still would have been uncomfortable. With injuries?

Pain was all in the mind. Just the only way her body had of relaying that it was injured. As she already knew that, it didn’t mean anything. Or so she told herself over and over again while trying to keep her mouth sealed shut.

Below her, bright glowstone lights scoured the forest floor. A dozen armored men searched for any sign of interlopers. Injured and broken, Joanne and Kevin quickly realized they weren’t going to outpace the soldiers. Aside from the trail made while dragging her away from the explosion, which really could have been anything, she had no idea how they knew anyone was on the surface, let alone intact after that blast. But there they were.

Searching.

They were focused on the ground. If any one of them looked up, if she coughed or wheezed or just made the wrong rustling noise with her armor, that would be it. She didn’t know if they would try to capture her or if they would just kill her immediately with arrows or magic, but either way, it wouldn’t be good for her.

Lifting her gaze, Joanne looked over at another tree. Even with all the glowstones moving around below, she could barely see the silhouette of Keven. The arachnoid clung to the tree like he had been born to climb and managed to keep himself almost completely in shadow no matter where the lights were below. If he were on his own, he would have easily escaped. Even now, Joanne was sure he could have slipped away if he wanted. Yet there he was, watching and waiting and making sure she was still safe.

It irked. He shouldn’t be here. Just like she shouldn’t have bothered trying to save him. She could have gotten further down the tunnel if she ran when she ordered the others to, past the point of collapse, and made it back with Viv and the others.

In her foolishness, she had stayed behind. And now, he was staying behind.

Joanne couldn’t help but think that they would both end up paying the price.

Luck, that fickle wheel, chose the moment that thought crossed her mind to play its latest trick on her. The spider thread letting her hang from the tree even despite her injuries slipped. It didn’t break. It didn’t send her tumbling to the ground down below. But it slipped, scraping away some old, loose bark from the side of the tree. A small chunk fell, knocking into one branch and then another before finally landing in the underbrush, rustling the leaves.

The closest guard whirled. He didn’t hesitate for a single second before jamming his pike into the bush. So much for taking prisoners, Joanne thought with glum realization. That, in turn, got the attention of the rest of the search party.

It could have been a rabbit or a fox. All they had to do was shrug their shoulders and walk away.

Don’t look up. Don’t look up…

Joanne didn’t know if it was luck, strategy, or just Arkk, but just as one of the soldiers started tilting his head back, a blast of icy wind swept through the forest. A cascade of sleet and snow rained down a dozen paces back, back where the explosion had just gone off.

There, high in the moonless night, barely visible between the branches of the evergreen tree, a dragonoid’s scaled wings caught the starlight, glinting as she swooped around to come in for a second strafing run.

The guards down below scrambled and shouted, fully alert. They were looking up, but not at her. Their eyes were on Priscilla. In mere seconds, they were rushing out from below, heading back the way they came.

Joanne sagged, her relief threatening her grip on the tree. She let out a breath that she couldn’t guess at how long she had been holding. For the first time since that dragonoid appeared and got herself hired, Joanne was glad to see her. Looking up, she met Kevin’s gaze. Inhuman though it was, she still saw the flood of relief in his multitude of eyes.

Her relief combined with a sudden surge of adrenaline. Joanne let out a small, soft laugh at making it through.

Only to feel a sharp, piercing pain directly in her gut. Joanne looked down to find an arrow punctured through her mail.

One of the guards, trailing just behind the others, started shouting even as he drew a second arrow from his quiver.

 

 

“Hey? You still alive?”

Consciousness returned to Joanne like a mallet to the back of the head. She let out a hiss, reaching back as she lifted her head from the dirt floor. Her fingers felt an unpleasant wetness. Blood, most assuredly. Strangely enough, she didn’t feel any real wound. There was no stinging sensation that she recognized as cuts in her skin.

Or else the stinging was simply drowned out by the sheer ache that coursed through the entire rest of her body.

“You were banged up. Lucky I learned a little of that Flesh Weaving spell. Doubt I did a very good job though.”

Joanne lifted her head enough to see eight glossy black eyes staring down at her. The arachnoid. Kevin. The hard chitinous armor he naturally had looked worse for the wear. It was cracked in places. One of his many forearms was missing entirely along with the stump haphazardly sealed up. Probably with the Flesh Weaving spell.

Seeing his face brought a rush of memories back to Joanne. The sabotage mission, the explosive pots, the wind in the tunnel, and…

Joanne groaned, pressing a hand to her temple. She had a splitting headache. But she couldn’t just lie down. Planting a hand on a nearby tree, she used it to help get herself back to her feet. Her balance was unsteady and the world spun around her, but she forced through the dizzy sensation with pure willpower and…

Tree?

Joanne looked around with narrowed eyes, trying to force the world to stop spinning.

They weren’t in the tunnel anymore?

Looking back behind her, she found a long trail through a forest’s underbrush, though she couldn’t see much of it in the dark. Bits of dirt and grass clung to her mail armor, stuck in the little gaps. Kevin must have dragged her here.

“The others?” she ground out, wincing at the volume of her own voice. “Lyre, Opal, Viv?”

Kevin shook his head. “Not with us. The tunnel collapsed just ahead of where you and I dove for cover. I don’t know if they’re buried or managed to outrun the collapse.”

Joanne clenched her teeth. She had lost enough Claymores. Them too? Not if she could help it. Turning, she faced the trail her dragged body had left behind. “Situation?” she asked. It was a struggle to not rush back to dig them out with her bare hands.

Getting herself killed wouldn’t save them.

“The blast took out the roof of the tunnel over our heads, thankfully. Or we might have been buried as well.” Kevin paused, eyes flicking around the forest. Joanne had no idea how well arachnoids could see in the dark. The moon wasn’t out tonight. She could barely see his silhouette now that they were a few paces apart. “I don’t think the Eternal Empire was expecting the explosion. They seemed to be in disarray. I managed to carry you out before they could surround us.”

“How far away?”

“Not very,” Kevin said, stepping forward. He pointed one of his arms off to the side of the trail in the brush. “Those lights over there are their glowstones.”

The world was still spinning, but not as violently. Turning to look didn’t make Joanne want to throw up, at least. That was a good sign.

The mass of twinkling lights through the forest was not. They were a whole lot closer than she had expected from how casually they were speaking. Both Joanne and Kevin were whispering—her, mostly because her head was aching to the point where any louder and she might just crack—but even that suddenly felt too loud.

One thing was certain, if that was the site of the explosion, she wouldn’t be getting back to dig through the debris without alerting every guard in the area.

“So?” Kevin said. “Orders?”

Joanne crouched down, suppressing the urge to groan as she didn’t wish to make more noise than necessary anymore. “I don’t know if I should be giving orders. My head isn’t exactly on straight. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, in enemy territory, injured, with no support, and no equipment.”

“If we try to trek back to Elmshadow, we’ll likely be caught,” Kevin said. “The whole reason we were going through those tunnels was to avoid forward defenders and scouts.”

“Can we get back inside the tunnel system somehow?” There weren’t supposed to be other entrances into the system. But… “Have the other teams blown their explosives? Or were they caught as well?”

“Unknown.”

Joanne swore under her breath. She turned her head upward, trying to figure out what time it was. The explosives were supposed to have gone off all at once, or close enough to it, based on a signal given by Arkk. But with the problem with her team, would he still go through with the others? It would be just the distraction she needed to try to get back to the blast area and dig through to the tunnel. Assuming there was anything left of it.

Assuming they could dig through to the tunnel. Who knew how much dirt was in the way. Or whether they could dig without collapsing more of the tunnel.

If Lyre and the others had made it far enough and had collapsed the tunnel using the ritual marks, they might have been able to find an entrance further down the line.

Joanne was certain Arkk already knew about the situation, but delved deep into herself, found the link from the contact, and pulled on it. Nothing happened save for a faint tug back from the other side. Unfortunately, the link wasn’t exactly great for communication. He was aware. Knowing Arkk, he would try to help as best he could.

But watching those lights search around the blast area, Joanne doubted his help would come soon enough. They would have to help themselves first.

She had an injured arachnoid and herself, also injured. He had a short sword. Her sword seemed to have gone missing, either in the blast or while being dragged over, but she did have a smaller mail breaker in her boot and a small dagger sheathed at the small of her back.

Evestani or the Eternal Empire or whoever that was would find them soon enough. If not for the darkness hiding the trail where Kevin had dragged her, they probably would have found them already. There was a whole army behind them and scouts and defensive forces between them and safety. No way to easily access the tunnels.

Their situation was, in a single word, shit.

“Our first objective is getting away,” Joanne said. “Without getting caught and without running into any scouts. Once we have some space around us, we can figure out a plan forward from there. Sound good?”

“Lead the way. I’ll watch our backs.”

Joanne nodded her head. Taking one breath and focusing, she forced away the last of the dizziness.

Arkk had better figure out something soon. A dragonoid sounded good right about now.

“Priscilla! Kia! Claire! Emergency situation. I need you three ready to move now.”

All three stood bleary-eyed with that disoriented look people got when unexpectedly teleported. Unfortunately, Arkk didn’t have time to let them acclimatize. He was mentally teleporting others around, moving key personnel into their stations, and readying everyone for immediate combat. The scrying team was on full alert, soldiers were teleported to the armory, and Elmshadow’s defensive rituals were staffed by Lelith and her team—more of a precaution given the incident had occurred close to Woodly Rhyme, but it was good training if nothing else.

If something did happen closer to home, better to be prepared than caught out.

“Olatt’an will go over the details,” Arkk continued, then frowned as he looked at Leda. The small fairy hovered near Priscilla, looking as uncertain as ever. “I’m sorry, but I’ll need you to guide Priscilla again.”

Priscilla stepped in front of Leda, disorientation gone as she raised an anger-filled fist. “You want me to carry around dead weight while I’m trying to fight an avatar?”

“The avatar is confirmed to be in Woodly Rhymes Burg, protecting the majority of his army with that golden magic. You won’t be fighting him. You’ll be on search and rescue outside the burg—for which you’ll need a guide. As I said, Olatt’an will brief you. Now get to it!” Arkk snapped, teleporting all four of them a few paces away to where Olatt’an stood at the table.

Just to be sure that they—Priscilla mostly—wouldn’t turn around and argue with him, Arkk teleported himself down a floor before bringing the next group to him.

While Priscilla, Kia, and Claire were currently his heaviest hitters, there were a few other specialists in his employ that he would welcome contributions from toward the current emergency.

Lyssa, the full werecat, still had a manacle on one of her wrists. But the weaponized chain attached to it wasn’t just a bladed chain anymore. Zullie had worked her magic, turning it into something that could shatter anything Lyssa saw as a barrier. That included magical shields as well as walls, armor, and mundane, metal shields.

It was almost as effective as the shadowy scythes and yet could be made into any shape. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work as armor, so they had regular gear instead of the nigh-indestructible shadow armor, and it took a great deal of effort to produce while requiring a specific mentality to shatter shields. Only Lyssa and a small squad who had started calling themselves the Shieldbreakers possessed weapons with the barrier-rending enchantment. Expanding the squad was a task in progress, but it required specialized mental training because the enchantment worked off the user’s perception.

Zharja, Kahn, and Jann slithered up alongside Lyssa and her Shieldbreakers. They were mostly unaugmented, save for the mechanical end to Zharja’s tail that Agnete had constructed. It had a large stinger on the end and internal cavities to hold the caustic venom that gorgon naturally produced. Besides that, all three had glowstones embedded into the chest of their many-segmented armor. The glowstones weren’t high enough quality for use in rituals but could hold enough magic to let them use their petrifying gaze far more rapidly, though they wouldn’t last forever.

Richter Porter, Abbess Hannah, a Protector who had taken a liking to the abbess—much to her chagrin—and the battlecaster Vector represented the majority of the men who had deserted the Duke’s Grand Guard. The entire force wouldn’t fit into the small room, so these three would carry orders back to their men.

There were others present. Two freshly hired twin dryads, both with reddish blonde hair and bark-like skin, a quartet of elves plus one dark elf, a slime monster that Arkk still wasn’t quite sure how it got hired, and a recent hire. A syren. A beastman similar to a harpy with scales instead of feathers. They could cruise through water as easily as the skies and could sing songs that would hypnotize anyone who heard them. They tended to sink ships at sea and then plunder whatever loot they could carry away from the wreck. Most demihumans and even other beastmen treated them with suspicion and wariness, somewhat akin to gorgon…

And yet Arkk now had two working for him. Igvile and Primvila heard rumors that he had gorgon and dragonoids and other monsters and wanted to see for themselves what all the fuss was about.

“I apologize for the sudden meeting,” Arkk said as Alma stepped up alongside him.

The half-werecat had a calm face but reached up to adjust her beret in a way that Arkk recognized as a nervous tick she often had. Luthor, the chameleon of the scrying team, stepped up alongside her, looking far more nervous. Once again, he wasn’t going to be doing the briefing himself.

“An emergency situation has arisen that requires an immediate response. Alma will be providing details while Luthor can answer any questions about current battlefield conditions.”

One of the Shieldbreaker beastmen called out, “Atta boy, Luthor!” leading the already nervous chameleon to shuffle and wave an arm.

“Silence,” Alma snapped out, stepping forward with her eyes narrowed. She flicked her gaze to Arkk, to which he nodded his head, before drawing in a breath. “The situation is as follows…”

Arkk didn’t stick around to hear the rest of it. If there were any problems, a tug over the link would have him back in an instant. He had his own task to see to.

A freshly risen horde of undead goblins stood ready to receive his command. They were a bit more animated than the undead army he had previously used against Evestani. The goblins bounced around, hardly able to sit still, and even nipped and bit at their neighbors. They weren’t alive in the same sense that the denizens of the Necropolis were alive, but they were certainly more independent. A result of some of the books Yoho had provided in their dealings.

Arkk hadn’t wanted to use them here and now. They were going to be a secret weapon, burrowing out of the ground directly underneath the Evestani army when they finally assaulted Elmshadow again. But they were undead he had created specifically to protect those still living.

They needed direction. More precise control than the previous army, which had just been told to attack everything they saw.

They had a brief march ahead of them. Sending three hundred goblins through a teleportation ritual was a good way to drain him right when he needed his magic the most.

With a force of magic, a visualization of their destination and how to get there, and one word, “Go,” they were off. They scampered, hopped, and climbed over one another as they rushed through the tunnels beneath Elmshadow. Arkk would catch up later via teleportation ritual. Until then…

“Using them already? I thought they were to remain secret.”

Arkk jolted, turning to find Ilya sauntering toward him. Her silver hair flowed in a way that implied wind but, down in the tunnel, there was nothing that strong.

“What are you doing down…” Arkk trailed off, confused for a moment before he realized. “You aren’t Ilya.”

There was no link between him and the person in front of him. The real Ilya was up in Elmshadow’s tower, readying the defense just in case Evestani chose now to attack.

An annoyed click of her tongue came from the false Ilya as she planted her hands on her hips. Now that he was watching her move more, Arkk noticed more and more wrong. The way she put her weight on her left hip, the back of her hand against her waist instead of the palm of her hand, even the posture wasn’t right. Not since her injury at the Duke’s party.

And her fingernails were black for some odd reason.

“Found out that quick?” she said, mouth in a tight frown. “Even the boy prince takes a minute and he knows about me.”

Mentioning the Prince set off the tolling of the alarm in the back of Arkk’s mind. In the blink of an eye, he teleported Kia and Claire on either side of the fake Ilya.

Except, she wasn’t Ilya anymore. Arkk found himself staring into his own glowing red eyes.

The shock cost him.

The fake version of himself raised an arm and shouted, “Seize the impostor!”

That momentary disorientation from teleporting was likely the only thing that saved Arkk. The afterimages of the dark elves turned away from the Arkk they had appeared next to and to him. He felt the rising tension of the link about to snap. Arkk teleported them back, straight to the top of the tower.

The link shattered just as they reappeared. He couldn’t see them anymore directly, not with the link gone, but he could see everything in his territory. Both Kia and Claire collapsed right in the middle of the command room. Why had they collapsed? He had seen the link break before and it hadn’t done that. Was it because of Project Liminal? Their bodies could require more magic than they could produce on their own. Without the link, they…

Were they alive? Arkk couldn’t tell anymore. Olatt’an and Leda rushed over to see if they could help, but…

“Annoying abilities you have.”

But he couldn’t concentrate on that now.

Arkk narrowed his eyes at the… demon? Was that what he was looking at?

He needed to escape and—

The moment the thought of escape crossed his mind, the demon was upon him, tackling him to the ground. Arkk tried to teleport, but the false Arkk clamped his hands around Arkk’s wrists. The teleport failed with a shudder. It was blocked. The same thing happened when fighting Vrox and the ice marble fell to the ground, trapping everyone in a sheet of ice.

The grip was too strong. Arkk didn’t think he weighed that much or was that strong, but the false version of himself pinned him to the floor with ease.

“Leaving so soon?” the false Arkk asked with a cruel smile. “I don’t think so. I’ve been watching, waiting for a good opportunity… Looks like this is it!”

Arkk clenched his teeth together, running over his options. He had magic. He could still teleport other things. He could bring someone else down here, but that might lead to their link breaking as well.

But he would probably only get one chance.

 

 

 

Joanne moved through a series of tunnels with some of her fellow former Claymores. Working with people she had known for years made operations like today’s go smoother and easier. Not that working with Arkk’s other units was particularly difficult. She had thought it would be.

As a human who had been in a human-majority organization, their tactics and training were designed for humans. Although demihumans, such as orcs, were relatively similar to humans, their favored tactics often differed. Orcs, with their large builds, thicker skin, and ability to effectively use heavier weapons and armor, could charge straight into a battle that would see a human torn to pieces in an instant. Then there were beastmen. Beastmen tactics varied greatly depending on the exact species, ranging from aerial attacks from harpies to the slower, burrowing abilities molemen could execute. Humans—most demihumans—weren’t compatible with those kinds of tactics at all.

And monsters like gorgon? Joanne had no idea where Arkk dug them up or how he convinced them to work for him—she had never once heard of gorgon willingly working for a human unless they were blindfolded and in chains—but she couldn’t deny that they were welcome supports in hectic battles.

Whether through good intuition or pure luck, Arkk had a knack for getting all those differing tactics working together effectively. Sometimes, that knack came through in the form of splitting up, as they were today, and other times, they mixed together to cover each other’s weaknesses.

When Joanne had signed up for Arkk’s recruitment drive back at Cliff, she had only distantly heard of Company Al-Mir. They had gotten into a few minor scrapes across Mystakeen. More importantly, they were paying out the ass. A full four times what the Order of the Claymores had been paying even their senior members. She had figured their leader to be some rich scion of some minor noble or other, wanting to pretend to be a knight. Someone with more wealth than sense. For that price, she had been more than willing to play along.

She hadn’t expected a magic fortress or portal to another world. She hadn’t expected a literal creature from before the Calamity to be the effective second in command—and then a dragonoid almost as old showed up. She had not expected a war to break out immediately after signing on. She definitely had not expected to get involved in that war.

But most of all, she hadn’t expected so few casualties in that war. When Arkk had started up his memorial wall listing all of the deceased members of Company Al-Mir, Joanne had thought it would end up a depressing reminder of the grim future, harming morale just by existing.

If anything, it was the opposite. Even with names going on the wall on a semi-regular basis, the fact that there were so few names just spoke to how insanely overpowered—and, she was willing to admit, overly cautious—Arkk was.

The Order of the Claymores wouldn’t have been able to put up one of those walls without destroying morale. In fact, the Claymores couldn’t do that. Not anymore.

She had heard from some former Claymores that came to Company Al-Mir after the fact; The Claymores and several other smaller mercenary companies ended up forming a coalition to help repel the invaders. That coalition had been all but destroyed in a series of retreating skirmishes.

There wasn’t an Order of the Claymores left. Only a handful survived and none of the leadership. Most had come to Company Al-Mir. A few others migrated to the First Legion or the Society of the Burning Shadow, but…

“Hey. Jo? You alright there?”

Joanne sucked in a breath, shooting a glare at Lyre. The vanguard carried a heavy shield and sturdy pike—the former being made from the strange shadow material that made up most of the orc armaments these days. The visor of his helm was up, letting her see his worried face.

“You looked distracted,” he said with a kindly smile.

Joanne pressed her lips together. Lyre had been one of those who had come from the destroyed Claymores. An old friend that she had left behind in pursuit of gold.

Could she have saved more if she had stuck around? Or would she have ended up in the ground?

Deciding against voicing her thoughts and bringing up the past, Joanne focused on now. “Just thinking over the plan again.”

“What’s there to think about? It’s a simple plan. Get in, drop off the alchemical explosives, and get out. Just like we did at Gleeful Burg.”

“Four people died at Gleeful.” That had been the incident that made Arkk build that memorial wall in the first place. “I don’t intend to let us follow suit.”

Lyre shook his head, almost rolling his eyes. “It’ll be even easier than what we did at Gleeful Burg. We don’t have to sneak around a city this time. What could go wrong?”

Joanne almost socked him straight in the face for that. Almost. Clenching her fist, she managed to restrain herself to just a long groan. One echoed by Opal and Viv as they pulled the cart of explosives behind them.

“What? What’d I say?”

This time, Joanne did reach up. She slammed down his visor a little more forcefully than was strictly necessary. “Just keep ready,” she hissed, eying their surroundings.

There wasn’t much to look at. They were traveling through a tunnel. Not one of the fortress tunnels with their patterned tiles and well-lit glowstones. The walls and floor were bare-faced earth and stone. The only light they had were a few dimly lit glowstones hanging from the lanterns on their belts.

Their squad of five was otherwise alone.

Tempting fate was just asking for trouble. Especially now that she knew that gods of luck and fate were more than just superstition. With a name like The Fickle Wheel, Joanne bet that even minor tempting could have great consequences. Or no consequences at all. That was assuming its name could be taken literally.

Joanne wondered if there was some kind of prayer or ritual she could perform to try to counteract bad luck. Every company had its superstitions and little rituals. Sometimes it was as simple as polishing a pin before setting off. Other companies had large and grandiose affairs that involved Abbey personnel, feasts, or loud group chants. Company Al-Mir had nothing like that. At least nothing uniform, some people brought along traditions from wherever they came from. Joanne always thought they were silly. She hadn’t believed in that kind of stuff.

But…

The Order of the Claymores shined their swords with fresh oil before every outing, then held their swords out over a fire filled with sprigs of whatever herbs they could source at their locale and smoked the swords. Joanne hadn’t believed, but she had participated if only to make a group effort.

That clearly hadn’t worked in the war. If it worked at all. It wasn’t like they could stop right now and hold their swords out over an open fire.

The Society of the Burning Shadow, a smaller mercenary company, allegedly had lucky scarves that had been passed down through the company’s members for a hundred years. They wore those whenever they donned their armor. First Legion was more a group of bounty hunters than a mercenary company, but even they had a fairly well-known chant they used before starting something dangerous. Joanne felt that was more to hype themselves up than anything else.

They couldn’t get scarves out in the field, but chanting?

Possible, but maybe not the best idea. Joanne didn’t know how deep these tunnels were or where exactly they were. All she knew was that they delved beneath the supposedly invisible constructions that the Eternal Empire was working on.

Those were the targets of today’s operations.

If the tunnels were too shallow, starting up a song and chant with the crew here could jeopardize everything. Everything being their lives more than their task.

Joanne sighed. Maybe good luck just wasn’t something they could harness on a whim.

With the tunnel bare and lacking in proper flooring, the cart of explosives had to be pulled slowly and carefully. Even still, the occasional bump would jostle the clay pots. They made a fairly steady rattling noise.

A divot in the floor caught the wheel of the cart, making the jars clank together.

Everyone froze. For a long moment, no one moved. No one even breathed.

Slowly, Joanne let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. The jars weren’t that volatile. If they were, transporting them like this would have been impossible. A loud noise like that still made her nervous. “Careful,” she hissed. “Watch where you’re going.”

Opal carefully pulled the cart forward while Viv moved around the side to make sure the wheel wasn’t stuck. “Really wish those undead would do this,” the latter grumbled. “Don’t like being around them but, if I have to, might as well put them to good use.”

The corners of Joanne’s mouth twitched into a frown. “Arkk’s undead are too clumsy. They can swing a sword but setting explosives? They’re more likely to blow themselves up.” Not that she disagreed. They could have at least dragged the explosives out here. “As for the other undead… they’re apparently more like people than what you or I think of as undead.”

“Still…”

“We have our job and we’ll do it,” Joanne said, her tone of voice rendering all arguments invalid. “Let’s just try to be a little more careful. Don’t want to look bad in comparison to a bunch of skeletons, do we?”

Lyre let out a laugh that wasn’t entirely genuine. “He might decide we’re more useful as skeletons.”

“Ugh,” Opal shuddered. “Don’t even joke. I heard Gunther, that former First Legionnaire, has been thinking about leaving because of them.”

“It’s because he’s First Legion,” Viv said in a hushed, almost conspiratorial tone. “A few years back, First Legion was just about destroyed by some necromancer out in the boonies. They took on the job willingly, but it was more than they could handle. People who bunk near Gunther say he’s been waking up lately screaming about zombies or something.”

“Quiet,” Joanne said.

She hadn’t heard about that. She supposed it made sense though. First Legion usually went after smaller targets. They probably figured a lone necromancer wouldn’t have been much trouble. But necromancers could be tricky. It was always difficult to tell just how many servants they could raise. All they needed was a graveyard to be something unfeasible to take down.

“Lyre. How much further?” Joanne asked.

The large man paused a moment to fish a small black stone from his pouch. Joanne wasn’t sure how it worked. It was some magical device Arkk—or one of those nutjobs he called ‘researchers’—developed. He had been trying to work some artifice and create more crystal balls. These were the failures, apparently. Useful ones, which was the best kind of failure.

Using a regular crystal ball, one could mark a location that these black stones would home in on. Lyre tapped a finger on the crystal ball, unleashing a small spark of magic. The black stone emitted a bright blue glow, looking more like a glowstone now.

“Oh, almost there,” he said as he kept walking.

Except, as he walked, the bright glow started to fade away.

“No,” he paused, turned back, and started walking toward the cart. “Wait… I think we’ve gone too far.”

Another chorus of groans echoed throughout the tunnel.

“Calm down, calm down. It isn’t far,” he said as he hustled back past the cart. He stared at the orb the entire time, watching as its glow turned brighter and brighter. “Maybe fifty paces back!” he called after a minute of walking.

He had gone so far that Joanne couldn’t see much of him besides the glowing ball he carried. With a shake of her head, both angry at him for being so lax and herself for not checking in earlier, she headed over to Opal and Viv.

“Not enough room to turn the cart around,” Viv said with a sigh. “We’ll have to push it backward.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not really. It might be more prone to tipping if we hit a bad bump since we’ll be putting force on the wrong side.”

“A bump like the one we just hit a moment ago?”

Viv didn’t say anything. An absence of an answer was an answer too.

“Right,” Joanne said. “Wait a moment.”

Around the back of the cart, seated next to the clay jars with his six hands lightly pressed to their tops to keep them steady, was the sole member of their five-man group who hadn’t been with the Order of the Claymores. He was an arachnoid, a spider-like beastman. If Joanne were being honest, the way he looked over to her with eight full eyes unnerved her just as much as the undead. Doubly so because his diet seemed to consist of raw blood. Was he some kind of vampire arachnoid? Or were they all like that?

From what little he had said, he had seen one of the Protectors, saw some kind of kinship in it, and decided to join up.

She didn’t have a problem with him. The unease was more like a visceral reaction in the back of her mind. The way his chelicerae moved about over his mouth when she approached didn’t help.

“We’re pushing the cart backward a bit,” she said, completely professional. She wasn’t about to treat a comrade in arms poorly because of some instinct in the back of her mind. “So be ready for that. And let’s keep an eye out for any uneven spots in the tunnel, alright?”

A chittering noise that made the back of her neck tingle came from the arachnoid. “Understood.” Those eight flat black eyes angled on his face before his head turned, shifting to the ground below.

Suppressing a shudder, Joanne planted her hands on the side of the cart. “Right. I’ll help guide it. Ready?”

“Ready!” Opal called out.

The cart slowly started moving again. Joanne made sure to lean her weight against it to push it slightly off to one side, avoiding the divot that they had fallen into earlier. She called out a warning as well to make sure Viv and Opal didn’t catch their foot on it. At half the speed as it was being pulled, it took a few minutes, but they eventually caught up to Lyre. And without incident too.

The orb in Lyre’s hand emitted a bright white light now. Almost all traces of blue were gone. That meant they were right at the spot Arkk wanted them to be.

Joanne looked up at the ceiling of the tunnel. It was no different than any other patch. Yet, somewhere above them, the Eternal Empire was busy constructing some kind of ancient weapon of war. Something dangerous enough that it had Arkk nervous, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was.

And there were several of them. Joanne’s team was hardly the only one out in these tunnels.

Which was fine with Joanne. If Evestani and the Eternal Empire didn’t want to fight fairly, why should they do the same? Blow their secret weapon to the skies. And blast their army to pieces while they were at it. Several others were en route to Woodly Rhyme directly to try to take out the army.

Arkk had doubts about it working, unfortunately. During their trek through Mystakeen, Evestani had been able to detect more than half the traps they had laid in advance. The avatar could protect too much at once.

But hopefully not everything.

“Alright,” Joanne said. “I presume we have some time to rest. Arkk will tug on the link when it is time to set the explosives.”

These had extended timers on the ritual activation built into the lids. Once turned, they would have fifteen minutes to get as far down the tunnel as they could go. From his earlier experiments planting explosives in front of the Evestani march, he had learned that the explosion would prefer to travel through the tunnel instead of going up into the target overhead. This was why he had built small runic arrays into the walls that would collapse parts of the tunnel, which Joanne and her crew would activate on their way back. The blast would spread through the intact portion of the tunnel—going fully underneath their target—before being forced upward.

Hopefully.

Arkk said he tested his work multiple times. It had worked nine times out of ten, the first time being the one failure. A flaw which he had fixed in the latter nine tests.

At this point, Joanne could only hope he was right.

“Say,” Opal said, walking back around the cart. “Do you suppose…”

She trailed off, pausing with a frown.

There was a whistling coming from further down the tunnel. It was supposed to be a dead end at some point. But a whistle like that came from the wind.

Wind wasn’t supposed to exist in these tunnels.

“Did they find the tunnel?” Joanne hissed, now tense. This was the worst possible time for something to go wrong. They were as deep into enemy territory as they were going to get. And they had pots of volatile explosives just sitting here.

The wind picked up. In an instant, what had been a slight breeze barely able to move her hair turned into a whipping gale that shook the cart. The clay pots rattled together despite Kevin’s best attempts to keep them steady. He had his chitinous arms wrapped around and between them. It wasn’t enough.

“If those pots crack, we’re dead,” she swore. Her eyes flicked from the cart to the end of the tunnel where the wind was coming from. Could they move them to the ground? Spread them apart so they couldn’t hit each other? Joanne wasn’t sure it would matter before long. The wind was still picking up. Even the cart was starting to shake. Looking over the worried faces of Opal, Viv, Lyre, and even Kevin, she made a decision. “Go! Run!”

There was a moment of hesitation as they looked at each other. Just a moment. Opal, Viv, and Lyre—her Claymores—followed orders.

Kevin didn’t. Perched at the back of the cart with his arms still wrapped around the pots, he chittered. “If I let go, the pots will clang together more violently.”

Joanne had to raise her voice. The wind was roaring now. “The whole cart is going to upend if you don’t. We need to run now before it gets worse.”

She gripped the front tuft of coarse hair that covered his chest. He was lithe and light which made lifting him as easy as lifting a sack of potatoes. He had the good sense to let go of the pots before he knocked them over. Joanne slung him over her shoulder and booked it, running from the clattering and clanging noise as fast as she could move.

The nearest array that would collapse the tunnel was supposed to be five minutes of hasty walking away. Lyre had more orbs that would direct him to them. She doubted he had the wherewithal to pull them out now.

And it wouldn’t matter much even if he did. A minute at full sprint and Joanne still heard the tell-tale sound of shattering pottery.

Joanne threw herself and Kevin to the ground even as she felt the rush of wind explode toward her. Hands clasped over the back of her head, face pressed firmly into the dirt, she could only hope that if she were to die here, it would be quick and painless.

 

 

Noise and machines, sparks and fire, pistons and gears.

The Anvil of All Worlds was, as always, in motion. It was a world of sound. A world of lights. A world of endless work. It never stopped. There was a sun in this world—though the thick layer of smog completely obscured the sky, the world itself still brightened in the morning and darkened in the evenings. Yet the machines never stopped. Even lesser servants paused their work and enveloped themselves in a starlight cocoon for brief minutes of rest every few weeks. Nothing here did. Metal didn’t tire.

Amid the crushing macerators and conveyors to building-sized furnaces, a lesser servant slung a sloppy tendril over a gap between catwalks. Oily tar oozed along the bridge, moving mass to the other side little bits at a time to keep the tendril from snapping under the weight. As the grotesque ballet of ever-shifting sludge continued, one of the sparking serpents crossed high overhead.

The lesser servant stilled, still looped between the catwalks, trying its best to look like nothing more than a puddle of pollution and oil. The harsh industrial lights gave it the needed iridescent look, though anything intelligent would have noticed a blob of oil failing to fall through the catwalk’s grated gaps.

Keeping itself from falling through was something of a struggle. If the gaps were wider, it would have been impossible, but it could form mouths filled with sharp teeth on its undersides. As long as it was careful, it could use those teeth as platforms to balance the rest of itself above the catwalk. It did leave a trail of small gouges, but nothing had noticed the trail yet.

The serpent also failed to notice the lesser servant. It drifted on high in the air, undulating languid and without apparent alarm.

Once sure that the serpent wasn’t going to loop back around, the lesser servant finished pulling itself across the gap. The last trail of its tendril sucked into the main mass with a slurping noise that was drowned out by a whirring blade cutting chunks of metal apart.

It continued along, carefully balancing on its sharp teeth. It didn’t know where it was going. The master directed it from afar, sending nudges through the Stars, commanding it over the endless factory. It could only hope the master knew what it was doing. It had a purpose to fulfill. If the master fumbled or if it failed to execute the master’s commands correctly and ended up returned to the Stars, it wouldn’t be able to fulfill that purpose.

It didn’t know what that purpose was just yet. Nudges through the Stars weren’t enough to know the end goal. Yet the master must have an end goal. Unless that end goal involved its death, it couldn’t do anything to risk that purpose.

The latest nudge pushed it toward the conveyor belt leading away from the large furnace. That was good. The furnace heat boiled away the outer layer of its oily skin if it got too close. The air here did help against that—it was thick and foggy and left a protective residue over everything, including its outer layer—but it didn’t help to the point of being able to get too close.

One of the mechanical eyes swung past on a gantry. The off-yellow light crossed directly over the lesser servant, making it freeze once again, but swept past without pause as it started inspecting the macerator.

At the end of the catwalk, a railing prevented anyone on it from accidentally stepping onto the conveyor. Tall metal barrels of liquified glowstone cruised along the belt, moving from one part of the impossible factory to the next. It wasn’t the fastest conveyor belt around, but it wasn’t the slowest either.

The lesser servant oozed between the gaps in the railing, unhindered. It clung to the edge and waited for the right moment. If it tried the slow oozing way it had used to cross the catwalk gap, it would end up stretched to the snapping point. Instead, it had to wait and watch the barrels.

One went past now, now, now, now—

It jumped, pushing off the railing. One barrel zoomed past underneath. The leap carried it along the route of the conveyor belt, matching the momentum enough that its tendrils snapping down to latch onto the barrel didn’t sheer it to pieces.

Squirming around, it quickly maneuvered just behind the barrel, using it as a shield to block the rushing wind. As the factory tore past, it settled in to wait. It wouldn’t be getting off the conveyor belt anytime soon.

Arkk peeled his hand off the crystal ball, taking a short breath. Scrying into the Anvil drained him a whole lot more than scrying around Mystakeen. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, but it was notable.

But he had some time to rest for the moment. The lesser servant would take at least an hour to reach its next destination. He would check in half that time, just to make sure it wasn’t in danger of overshooting its stop, but that was mostly a precaution.

Portals in the Anvil were far and distant apart, just as they were in the Underworld and here in the regular world. But, unlike the Underworld, the Anvil had ways of moving rapidly around its land. Not as rapidly as the teleportation rituals, but enough.

They had finally found another portal. This one wasn’t under constant observation.

That meant they had opportunities.

“Are you sure Agnete got your message?”

“She saw it,” Arkk said with certainty as he looked over to Zullie. The witch sat on top of one of the workstation tables where a littering of crystalline shards sat around her.

The crystalline shards came from the highlands portal structure, carefully removed under Zullie’s direction so as to not impact its functionality. They had tested it by connecting to the Silence after shaving off portions.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Arkk asked, frowning down at the assembly she was making.

Using magic that Arkk couldn’t begin to identify or explain, Zullie was slowly shaping the crystalline fragments into an archway of their own. Deep violet light clung to her fingers as she moved them over the fragments. In that violet light’s wake, the crystal shards were sealed back together as one single structure.

It was much smaller than a proper portal. A full-sized carriage could go through those. This could fit a gremlin upright or a human if they crawled. Dakka might be able to fit through if she stripped out of her armor and even regular clothes. Most orcs would probably get stuck at the shoulders. Lithe and far narrower than orcs, elves could fit through.

Zullie frowned, huffing indignantly. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

She pursed her lips. “No,” she said. “But I’m not steering you wrong now. I can see how the portals work. I can do this. They are planar magic on a level far, far beyond anything I ever saw before coming here but they are just planar magic. I’ve been investigating this magic for longer than I’ve known you.”

“Alright,” Arkk said. “We probably only have one chance at this—”

“I’m aware.”

“Are you sure you don’t want Savren here? Or even Hale?”

Zullie dismissively waved a hand before plucking another shard of the archway off the desk. “We all have our specialties. This is mine. They would only be bumbling around, distracting me.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Arkk. You’re distracting me. Go busy yourself with your skeletons or… anything else.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t more interested in the skeletons. You sure abandoned any research involving the Necropolis awfully quick.”

Zullie shrugged. A little spark of light jumped from her finger to the crystalline archway, fusing the shard to it. “Just because it’s taboo doesn’t mean I’m all that fascinated with necromancy. I enjoyed learning it, but it is hardly my passion.” She paused, looking up toward the ceiling. “Besides,” she said slowly. “They kind of creep me out.”

“They… creep you out?”

“They’re too… real? Yeah. Something like that.”

Arkk squinted, not quite understanding what she was getting at.

Despite being blind, she noticed his confusion. “Necromancy, the kind I learned and the kind I taught you, is like… We animate a dead body instead of a pile of sticks because of various magical principles tying the deceased form to motion and life. But it isn’t all that different from grabbing a few sticks and waving them around like a puppet. They are puppets. Nothing more. Just puppets made from bones.

“Those undead from the Necropolis? They’re like people.” Zullie frowned, picking up another shard. “No. Not like people. They are people. I don’t like the implications. Honestly, the whole experience soured the idea of necromancy for me.”

“I spoke with some of them about the necromancy we’ve been using. None of them seem to mind. In fact, Yoho taught me a better way to raise undead. Mindless still but far more… limber and mobile. Much more effective warriors.”

Zullie pointed the shard at Arkk—except she missed the angle by several degrees—and scowled. “That only makes the situation more disturbing. Why don’t they care that we’re puppeting around dead bodies? Those puppets could have been raised into people like them. It’s weird.”

That was a fair point. Arkk supposed he hadn’t given it much thought. Maybe there was something wrong with the bodies he had brought back. Maybe they were too old to have been raised back into people or… something else. Yoho had looked over the small army of goblin undead he had risen without a hint of disapproval.

Maybe Yoho just didn’t like goblins.

“Anyway,” Zullie said, fusing another shard to the full structure. “Get out. You’re still distracting me.”

Arkk decided not to argue this time. He stepped over to the door, looking back one more time as Zullie, without uttering any incantation, picked another shard from the pile and zapped it to the small archway.

He wasn’t sure if she had noticed what she was doing. He wasn’t sure if he should comment on it.

Shaking his head, Arkk turned to the door and left.

There were no parts of the Anvil of All Worlds that could be considered desolate. Not a single patch of land had gone untouched. Over the last few weeks, the lesser servant had slipped around, sneaking through pipes and over tall buildings. Not once had it come across natural ground. There wasn’t a single stone, not one tree, not even a blade of grass poking out between metal tiles.

If the world had ever been anything but the factory, there was no evidence for it.

Except, that wasn’t quite true. Raw ore, stone, even trees all entered the factory, carried on massive locomotives in bulk. They split off, carried throughout the factory by conveyor belts and mechanical arms to be turned into parts and products. They had to come from somewhere.

It wasn’t the lesser servant’s problem. At no point did the lesser servant care about the properties of this world. It would never have considered the idea of where the raw material came from if not for the nudges in the Stars from the master wondering the same thing.

But the master was more concerned with other things at the moment.

The lesser servant crossed over a long stretch of empty pathway. One of the few places in the entire Anvil that wasn’t in motion. It felt… vulnerable. If a gantry swung past with one of those mechanical eyes, there would be nowhere to hide. It could try to burrow away—its teeth could easily chew through the metal tiles—but previous experiments conducted by the master showed that the mechanical eyes were particularly alarmed when they discovered any damage to the factory. Even a small hole bored through a panel that wouldn’t ever cause structural problems or interfere with operations brought down a yellow-light alarm.

When the yellow lights began spinning, hordes of mechanical men emerged from buildings and over catwalks, rushing to repair whatever damage the eyes discovered. That would only draw more attention here.

At best, the lesser servant could spread itself thin, hoping to be seen as nothing more than a puddle of spilled oil.

It could see its destination now. A tall crystalline archway, covered with runes and markings. Unlike the one it had come through, this section of the Anvil was sparsely populated. A transit route with a great many conveyors and locomotives but few actual machines and even fewer of the creatures that lived in this realm.

The archway was inactive. No liquid-like membrane was stretched over its center. That was what the master expected.

But it couldn’t get started right away. Instead, the nudges from the Stars directed it to hide, pressed up into an amorphous blob right at the base of the archway’s leg. There it waited, and waited, and waited…

It waited until an off-yellow light crossed overhead as one of the eyes swung past on its gantry. The mechanical eye continued on its gantry’s tracks without pause, not noticing anything amiss.

The eye certainly would have raised the alarm if the servant had already started. Now, it had time to work. The nudges in the Stars told it that the gantry here only crossed over once a day or so, leaving plenty of time.

Its task was an unusual one. The typical duties of a lesser servant were to dig and build. The magic that linked the creatures to the fortress would convert everything they consumed to its equivalent value in gold, deposited in the treasury. When the time came to construct, it did the opposite, taking gold and converting it into reinforced stone, tiles, and whatever else was needed.

Here and now, its task was to take apart the crystalline archway and carry it elsewhere in the Anvil. It couldn’t consume the archway. It had to carefully use its sharp teeth to peel it apart into shards.

A daunting task, but a possible task.

The lesser servant got to work.

“So, problem. How is Agnete going to assemble the portal on her side?”

Zullie paused her work, turning her head toward Arkk. She didn’t answer right away, instead lifting her glasses up ever so slightly, resettling them on her nose. Slowly, she looked back down to the few remaining crystalline shards on the desk.

“Zullie?”

“Uh… Why don’t we take a few of these down to the forge and see if we can figure out another way to merge them together.”

Arkk pressed his lips into a tight frown. Zullie got too hyperfocused on things to have noticed the problem herself. This was his fault. He should have thought of the problem earlier.

“We better hurry,” he said.

They wouldn’t have much time once discovered.