The tower loomed in the distance, taking hit after hit from the bombardment. Flames spread around it every few minutes only for the bombardments to resume. Even from the corner of Lexa’s eye, she could tell that it was being worn down. Arkk had stopped trying to repair less essential parts of the tower and the areas he was focusing on didn’t manage to recover in the brief reprieves. Worrying, but nothing that Lexa could focus on.
She had her hands occupied with the endless demands of the battlefield. The avatar was somewhere nearby. She could almost feel him. The golden aura had faded before she could get her eyes on him, leaving her searching.
Lexa had figured he would be easy to locate once she got close enough. The avatar’s host bodies were distinctive, both in that they were shorter than what was typical of the human-dominant army and their tattoos stood out. Especially when the tattoos were glowing. Venerated as he was, Lexa assumed that whoever he was possessing would have been surrounded by retainers, sycophants, and other attendants. At least someone to manage the child when he wasn’t possessing them.
Lexa couldn’t find a hint. This was a battlefield, not even one at the Evestani base of operations. It was possible he would have left such attendants back at Woodly Rhyme. With all the bulky armor of the soldiers blocking her view and Lexa’s own deficient stature, she was having more trouble than she would have thought.
The frustration left her looking around.
She found her gaze drawn to the distance. She had been focusing on her task, not the status of the tower, trusting that Arkk would figure something out. But a subtle distortion rippling through the air around the fortress drew her attention to it in full. It was like waves of heat rising from a sunbaked stone. Initially, it seemed inconsequential. Just another anomaly amid the tumult of war. Lexa started to dismiss it, knowing that Zullie was trying to get something better than her previous defensive spell so that Arkk might have a window for an offensive maneuver, but as the distortion intensified, it became impossible to ignore.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lexa caught sight of an impossible phenomenon—a second tower, identical to the first, materialized beside it. Her curiosity piqued, she turned her head sharply to focus on the spectacle.
That swift motion proved a disorienting mistake.
Every degree her gaze shifted, the tower transformed. Its shape and presence fluctuated wildly. One moment, it stood as a solitary monolith. The next, it vanished completely, only to reappear in the next movement of her head as a multiplied, chaotic assembly of towers jumbled together at bizarre angles. Some iterations soared skyward, impossibly tall, as if trying to swat down the airships hovering high over the battlefield. It was as if she peered through the slits of a lattice, each narrow gap revealing a wildly different scene.
Lexa wasn’t the only one to have noticed. A chorus of gasps, hisses, and even the sounds of retching from those overwhelmed cascaded throughout the battlefield. Unfortunately, with Evestani’s backs to the tower, Prince’s forces bore the brunt of the disorienting vision. In a fight to the death, even a brief instant of distraction and disorientation cost more than most could afford.
A practiced flick of her wrist sent one of her daggers flying through the air, catching one sand-gold-clad soldier in the side of his neck, just below the bulbous shape of the helmets characteristic of their elites. It saved one of the Prince’s men from certain death. Another dagger flew true and struck one of the soldiers just to the left of his nasal bar, digging into his eye and cheek. But alone, Lexa couldn’t help everyone. Even if she had enough daggers hidden under her cloak, she didn’t have enough hands.
Soldiers fell. They weren’t of Company Al-Mir, nor were they innocent children. Lexa wasn’t going to shed tears over them. Still, it rankled, their losses gnawed at her. Every advantage for the Evestani army was a disadvantage for her.
The mesmerizing distraction of the tower’s transformation didn’t remain isolated to one side of the battlefield for long. Even outside the visual spectacle of whatever Zullie had done to the tower, which drew plenty of eyes, the airship overhead continued its destruction from the skies. Or tried to.
The streaks of alchemical cannon fire in the sky never quite reached the tower. It was hard to tell with the shifting mirage that the tower had become. The shifting mirage of the tower defied the trajectories of the shots. Instead of striking true, the shoots veered unpredictably, scattering in wild arcs around the fortress. Some even ricocheted back toward the airship, similar to light reflecting off a well-polished mirror. One such rebounding shot forced the airship to veer sharply, cutting off its bombardment as a fierce gust of wind drove the projectile in the opposite direction.
More chaos in the already disordered battle.
Evestani had been setting up at a distance, right at the edge of the range for their bombardment magics and siege engines. That distance protected them from most of the reflected shots, but not all.
Lexa’s eyes widened as a hurling ball of flame, arced high in the air from the tower, started its descent straight toward her.
Wrapped in the cloak of darkness, she was as notable as any other shadow on the battlefield. That kept her safe from the soldiers. It would not help against a giant ball of fire. Springing off, muttering every agility and speed-enhancing spell she knew, Lexa ran as hard as she could perpendicular to the incoming fireball.
A beam of golden light shot up into the air, making Lexa skid to a stop in the dirt and muck. The light wasn’t as large or as powerful as the one that had knocked out the tower’s first protective array, but it was enough to scatter the ball of fire into a thousand harmless embers. The beam of gold didn’t stop there. It swept downward, aimed for the tower. It probably wouldn’t be enough to do much damage, but the avatar must not have wanted to waste what power he had gathered.
As soon as the light crossed into whatever shifting effect enveloped the tower, the beam split. It split and split and split. A million rays of gold lanced out from the tower in every possible direction. Lexa hurled herself to the ground, taking cover behind a fallen soldier whose colors were so caked in mud and blood that she had no idea to whose faction he had once belonged. One thin beam of gold strafed the ground directly in front of her nose.
It barely left a mark on the ground.
Already weaker than the beam that punched a hole into a mountain, splitting the beam so many times must have weakened it further. Everyone on both sides of the battlefield cowered away, hunkered down, but ended up looking surprised as the rays passed over them mostly harmlessly. The only real effects were faint streaks of gold now adorning everyone’s armor.
A beat of unusual silence hung over the battlefield before a surge of wind just about swept Lexa off her feet. It rushed toward the multitude of towers. Dark lightning reminiscent of some of Zullie’s more dangerous spells crackled along the surface of some of the towers, right at the mid-point. Bits of brick peeled away, pulled outward while still connected by those streaks of lightning. They froze in the air, looking like time stopped just as an explosion had gone off.
Lexa wasn’t sure what that was about. Hopefully nothing bad.
Some idiot shouted and started the fight once again.
Lexa paid it little mind, focused on her task.
She had seen where that ray had come from.
Throwing herself to her feet, still enhanced by all her spells, Lexa rushed through the battlefield, dodging soldiers and weaving through battle lines.
There he was. A small ring of guards surrounded him, but none of them were particularly notable. None of those gold-armored knights like the one Dakka had slain in Elmshadow. They were simple sand-gold elites with those bulbous domed helmets. In the middle of the ring, a young boy, human and probably no older than fifteen years, stood with glowing gold eyes and intricate tattoos etched into the crown of his head. The snarling look of anger didn’t quite fit the boy’s face.
He was upset.
Good.
Lexa didn’t know who the avatar was possessing. It was probably someone he had brought with him rather than an unwilling captured child. The children she had tried to rescue in Elmshadow hadn’t been well taken care of, dressed in rags and imprisoned in the remnants of that church building. This one had ornate robes, lined with golden threads and flashy mosaic patterns of blue, gold, and white.
Would it have made a difference if he had obviously been possessing a slave? Not to Lexa. Even if he had been in the body of someone so obviously innocent, such as a mere baby, she would still have proceeded. She had already resolved herself to do so. One baby’s death was worth preventing what happened in that Elmshadow church from ever happening again.
Lexa’s fingers brushed over the silver sphere she carried beneath her cloak. The sphere sealed off the effigy’s effects for now, but as soon as she opened it, things would change. The avatar would surely notice. She needed a full plan, a fool-proof plan, both to get in and to get out. Arkk said he would teleport her, but he had warned her that his magic didn’t work on employees who ended up captured. That included immobilized people, such as those who had been trapped in ice during an engagement with the inquisitors before her joining.
It also worked in reverse. His captives could be teleported even if they weren’t employees. Prisoners at Fortress Al-Mir could be moved about at will—Arkk’s will.
Lexa eyed the surroundings, narrowing her gaze. A distraction would work best. The avatar would probably be most distracted right as he began to attack again. Unfortunately, Lexa didn’t know when that might happen. If the avatar swapped bodies before she struck, she might lose him completely.
The avatar knelt as Lexa watched, resting on a large rug that covered the ground. The rug matched the rest of Evestani aesthetics with its mosaic pattern and predominant gold. Despite the gaudy and eye-catching attire of the avatar, the rug gave him enough camouflage to make him almost invisible except for his head. Fortunately for Lexa, the camouflage only extended to the edges of the rug. The entire assortment stuck out in the forest to the point where she had trouble believing she had been having difficulty finding him.
The anger on the boy’s face vanished as he closed his eyes and took up a meditative pose. Lexa’s heart lurched, fearing she had missed her window of opportunity. The glow in the tattoos didn’t subside, however, letting her calm back down. The avatar was probably trying to hasten his recovery so that he might try one of the large rays again.
Lexa wasn’t sure if that was a wise idea with what happened to the weaker beam. It might end the conflict, but probably not in the way the avatar wanted. Then again, when one didn’t put themselves at risk, obliterating everything on the battlefield including their borrowed body probably didn’t sound like that big of a dealbreaker if there was even a slight chance at success. Though Lexa doubted Evestani’s imperial allies would agree.
The meditation gave her an opportunity. The avatar’s eyes were closed. A part of her wanted to rush forward now, not wanting to waste that opportunity, but she couldn’t be too careful. She wasn’t about to underestimate the avatar and believe that he had simply decided to take a nap. A misstep here and she would surely die.
Except for two, his bodyguards were focused on the nearby battle raging on. It hadn’t gotten close yet, but it wasn’t far off. The tide had turned back against Evestani with the addition of the hordes of undead goblins. The little skeletal beings were utter menaces, hopping and bouncing around like they had coiled springs for shoes. They would jump on someone’s back and stab them in the neck before bounding away to find another target.
None lasted long if they took a hit. Small and barely held together as it was, a single slash of a sword or, more effectively, a blunt hit from a mace or hammer would scatter their bones across the battlefield. The only reason they hadn’t been destroyed within seconds of clawing their way out of the ground was their size and agility.
It wasn’t quite enough for the Prince’s forces to surge forward and claim victory. Three hundred goblin skeletons added to a conflict of nearly twenty thousand just wasn’t enough on its own, not even when some of their victims got back to their feet only to attack their own side. Especially not with the Prince’s army viewing the skeletons with just as much hostility as the Evestani. More than once, Lexa had witnessed a skeleton get clobbered from behind by the very people they were supposed to be helping.
But if Lexa could rope a few of them into helping her, it might just prove the distraction she would need to deal with the avatar. If she could push the battle a little closer to the avatar—just close enough for his bodyguards to be forced into more active defense but not close enough for the avatar to take action himself—she would have the best opportunity she would be getting.
Hopping away and climbing a small tree, Lexa surveyed the larger battlefield, looking for what she needed.
A cadre of goblins acted just like real goblins as they worked together to take out a few larger targets. The poor Evestani soldier ended up isolated in the middle of the battlefield. They likely would have been overran by the Prince’s forces already had the presence of the goblins not been keeping them wary.
They weren’t close to the avatar. Not by half. There were a lot of people to fight through on the way. But again, Lexa didn’t need them to reach the avatar. They just needed to get close enough to cause a disturbance.
With one last glance at the avatar, making sure the tattoos were still glowing and that he didn’t look like he was going anywhere anytime soon, Lexa took off.
Three minutes after setting off, one of the soldiers the goblins were having trouble with had a dagger through the front of his throat. The other soldier didn’t have time to look surprised before he joined his friend in the mud at the hands of one of the goblins.
The rest of the little skeletal creatures froze upon her arrival, their bones clattering and their jaws grinding. Lexa wasn’t sure if they could sense her or not. They lacked eyes that could track anything, leaving their heads just vaguely pointed in her direction. It was as if they were trying to decide if she should be a target as well.
With a suppressed shudder, Lexa didn’t stick around. She started back the way she had come, driving a dagger into the back of some knight’s knee on her way. The goblins mostly followed her, drifting around to do their part in causing chaos. More importantly, the rapid deaths they were causing made a hole in Evestani’s defensive line. The Prince’s army started pouring in, adding their own blades to the mix. They still kept a ways away from the goblins, but that was fine for her purposes.
Fine until they got a reinforcement of their own.
A short, stout man bounded into the fray. Blood coated him from head to foot as if he had deliberately bathed in it. He knocked aside a goblin with an absent-minded backhand, dispersing the skeleton’s bones in every direction as he took over the goblin’s target. The Evestani knight didn’t stand a chance. Despite his rotund belly, the man easily slid around the swing of the knight’s sword. His arm thrust out, slamming into the knight’s armored elbow, shattering the metal with the blow even as the man’s elbow bent in the wrong direction. The knight didn’t even get to scream before the man reached forward with his bare hands, thrusting his fingers through the knight’s breastplate, only to rip out the man’s heart and crush it in front of his face before the light left his eyes.
All with an expression of absolute rapture on the rotund man’s face.
He then turned, eyes finding another target. He rushed forward and ripped off someone’s head. Another knight lost his arms, only to be beaten to death with them. The man continued, charging through the opening Lexa had created with an unstoppable frenzy. He didn’t even use a weapon.
It took Lexa far too long to recognize the man underneath all that blood. The leader of the Prince’s forces. She had considered assassinating the man after his foiled mutiny to retake the leadership position over Arkk, but had been sent off on a mission before she could start plotting. Seeing him now, Lexa wondered how much she owed her life to that distracting mission.
She hadn’t realized the Prince’s force contained any specialists like Company Al-Mir had. The man fought like a less dignified version of Kia.
The man, Mags, turned. Despite her cloak of darkness, despite all the stealthy spells that even the avatar failed to notice, Mags turned to directly face her. With the way his head angled downward to her height, there was no mistaking his look as mere coincidence.
There was something different about Mags. Something other than the thick layer of blood he wore as clothes.
His eyes shifted, catching the light. They were green, bright, and divided in two by a long slit-shaped pupil.
Demon.
He grinned at her, smiling as if daring her to do something about it.
There was nothing she could do about it. She wasn’t equipped with counter-demon weaponry. Even if she was, she wasn’t suicidal enough to think she could take him on. Not when he easily bent in half, dodging a sword strike he couldn’t possibly have seen coming for his back. He righted himself fast enough that his headbutt dented the attacking knight’s armor, knocking him clean on his back. Mags pounced on him, straddling his armored chest as he started crushing the knight’s skull with his bare hands.
The head burst apart like a watermelon, sparking movement in Lexa’s feet. She took off, running back toward the avatar. The demon fought Evestani. That was good. She wasn’t an enemy of the Prince. He couldn’t attack her.
And what could be more distracting than a demon?
But she had to act fast. If the demon got to the avatar before she did, he would kill him. Easily, even. The avatar would survive and probably possess someone else, but then Lexa would have to start all over again to find him.
That couldn’t be allowed to happen.