The battle was joined with the surging of twelve corpses up the stairwell. Renaud did not disguise what they were, not now. The truth of their mangled, often tormented bodies was on full display as they clumsily swung the blades given to them. Their master had long since abandoned his grip on the strings. Arthur shouted a command, gripping his mace while his other hand prepared to grapple and parry. Twitcher and Julie joined him as the heavily armoured vanguard against the tide of elves and reanimated humanity whose blades drew showers of sparks, rivulets of blood and grunts of pain from the party. Solvi was ordered to remain behind the front line, slamming the axe of the Guillotine into any living dead too close for comfort. Fred could not bring his rifle to bear with the writhing mass of blades, magic and jaws that threatened to overwhelm them. Rather than load it, the stock was soon painted red with the crunching bones of his opponents. Without Solvi’s blade, they merely relented for a moment before coming right back. Dana used the momentary distraction of the Army member grappling her to sink her teeth into his neck with a feral shout. He yelped, staggering back as a trail of blood began to course down his body. As he whipped out his sword, he found the engineer’s hand upon it with a sadistic grin. He convulsed violently, his metal armour becoming his own enemy.
Mara stood with her eyes focused on her flagging friends, watching as the blades and spells of the Army threatened to overwhelm them. She reached out, calling into being the whistling fireball that would at least send a few of them to the courtyard below. As she did so, a blazing wall roared to life between her position on the platform and their lower holdings.
“Best pay attention, Mara. I wouldn’t want you to miss the lesson.” Renaud chastised as he drew the power of the storm above him into himself. The illusory forms of the burning buildings once again began to form, thin strings of purple light outlining the shattered remains of Ardan’s childhood. The necromancer allowed him this farce, taking a steadying breath. So, it had come to this at long last. She truly had exhausted every avenue. The screaming streets of Farsia, the city upon which Yan had built his empire, once again formed as realistically as they had in Avon Soram.
“Do you never get tired of reliving the same day over and over again?” Mara asked dispassionately, manifesting her claws with some weariness. Her sora’s eyes sparked with the same furious glare that had possessed him earlier. Though he swiftly tried to smooth it over with a smug expression, his junior did mark it. She slowly began to collate her remaining energy, diverting it from her other projects. To withstand the Crook, it would take everything. “Your fixation on this is why you failed, by the way. I wielded Avon Soram while you had to run and hide before it exploded.” Mara drawled as if fully in control of the situation, putting on a façade just as much as her sora was. Though hers was far more than a veneer for her insecurity. Renaud’s reaction was unexpected; his eyes widened with something approximating fear before the rage took over once again. A rage he could not hide.
“How?!” He demanded with such force that magic swept from him as a gust of frigid wind. “How could a creature like you control something that not even the Archmages would dare toy with?!” He screamed as he began to cast, a halo of blue light forming at the Crook’s head. With a vicious swing, he sent the screeching ball of lightning to impact at Mara’s feet. She leapt desperately to another shard of the platform which hung above her. Scrambling onto it with wide eyes, she looked over to her grinning sora with irritation more than anything. “Such an exemplary magical talent she can’t even counteract a mildly modified fireball.” He taunted with a sarcastic bite, beginning to charge another. As Mara began to run towards him with dreadful purpose, he casually breezed out of her reach. With a contemptuous ease, he flung another of the balls toward Mara. She quickly struggled over the shattered banister of a third platform to stand before the shards of the once-proud stained glass. This window had depicted Arawn’s proclamation, that all peoples would draw breath for no more than one hundred years.
Mara took possession of the glass shards, sending them towards Renaud as a deadly hail while he amused himself by summoning illusory versions of himself to attack her. The older elf evaded through the air with desperation before hissing in pain. One of the shards had collided with his cheek. Though as he drew away a bloodless hand, he cocked an eyebrow at his sana.
“Did you truly expect such elementary parlour tricks to hurt me?” Renaud mocked as he tapped the leathery skin beneath the illusion. Mara stood upright, straightening her robes as she donned a serene smile. His face fell before he momentarily turned to look through the illusion he’d generated.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” Mara smirked as she beheld the same scene Renaud now did. With one crucial difference. She began to harness a spell behind her back while looking at the fight outside the bubble Ardan had swaddled them in.
In the remains of the tower, the fight had not been going well for the party. Twitcher bore many more cuts and dents in their chassis, some even crossing the welding they’d done to repair themselves. Arthur’s armour had been rent, bent and outright broken in places as his bruised body attempted to stave off the horde of undead. Dana had failed to account for the reach her opponent possessed and so she was slowly being whittled away by the swift darting dance her enemy engaged in. Julie was sporting several injuries, the most prominent of which being the hand she held behind her back. Possibly broken, by the bruising. Solvi stood as a pillar amongst them, hewing anything that showed a momentary flash of bare flesh.
Their struggle was interrupted, so it seemed, by the hail of glass Mara had sent at the enemy forces. The angle had been just overshot, missing her party entirely but also a few living members of the Army. The dead were not so fortunate, sporting jagged shards that would have been fatal to ordinary humans. The damage though was not physical, Renaud realised as the shards began to glow a poisonous dark green. He turned with gritted teeth to see Mara’s shark-toothed leer. One by one, his puppets began to fall to the ground as the necromancer drained the energies used to animate them.
“Did you truly expect to attack the necromancer with undead minions?” She jabbed with a facetious imitation of Ardan’s own voice. He snarled almost like an animal before manifesting a plethora of spectral daggers, as he’d once done. Mara lashed out with a counteraction, several of the daggers vanishing before they launched. This was her saving grace as she dived to the ground to avoid the hail of blades that would have shredded her a second or two later. The necromancer looked up briefly to see her sora high above her, Crook held over his shoulder like a club. Without thinking, Mara launched herself as she’d once done in Annun, catapulting into an all too solid wardrobe. She’d curled into a ball, back striking the furniture. With a gasp, breath leaving her lungs, she wheezed onto her hands and knees. A lightning strike exploded just next to her, sending her onto her back as she coughed. Grasping her side, she felt something suspiciously like a burn.
With Mara’s intervention, the group soon found their second wind. Julie drove her sword into the puppet that had been menacing her, tearing it free to surprise the living Army member duelling Twitcher. The IXth Legion’s reputation for lethality was well deserved for Julie wasted no time in plunging her sword under his rib cage. He attempted to catch his breath, clawing at his own throat as his sword clanged to the floor. With a swift swipe of their sword, Twitcher sent head and body both tumbling to the ground.
Arthur, who’d been holding three soldiers at bay with his arms and armour alone, called out to Sirona for deliverance. His mace ignited with the bright flames of his goddess, sending one of his enemies screeching from them as her clothes were shrouded in conflagration. Her comrade sought vengeance, bringing his sword for a two-handed blow that would break even the strongest man’s arm. It clanged with an ear-splitting detonation as the sword shattered against a shield of radiance. Arthur completed his parry, destroying his enemy’s guard and sending the hilt of his blade spiralling away. As the third sought to take advantage of Arthur’s open posture, the cleric looked to him with glowing eyes and exhaled a plume of white flames directly into his face. The screech of pain was cut short by the crunch of a mace impact.
A clean crushing slashing sound was heard as Dana dove into her opponent’s guard and rammed her clawed fingers into his throat. She stood there a moment after, disbelief on her face before Fred’s cry for help sent her to his side.
The skitti had become overwhelmed on the flank by corpses whose faces had become bloodied masses of exposed bone and muscular tissue. Fred with his gore-splattered rifle in one hand and his dagger in the other desperately held back the yawning jaws of a feral undead. Using his dagger as a lever, point embedded in the floor below him, he tried headbutting the creature to no avail. Dana came to his rescue, using her shock glove to grip the base of its skull. The remains jittered aggressively before shuddering to a halt. Though it lacked the shard of glass to prevent it rising again, Fred was still immeasurably grateful. He gave his saviour a nod before working the lever on his rifle with a snort. Moments later, he spat a tooth from his mouth as he took aim at the Army members. It would be too risky to take aim at Renaud through the heaving black fog he’d enveloped himself and his sana in.
As the Army members slowly peeled away from the flagging flesh golems that served as their wall between the party and themselves, they took a considerably more defensive formation. Panic had set in, their eyes wild and their teeth bared like animals. One was deceptively calm however and Solvi took a special notice of him. It was only when she noted the sallow complexion and dark lips that she recognized the face of Albrecht Van Tuil.
Mara struggled to remain upright with the searing pain in her side, choosing to lope along bent double. Every so often, Renaud would send forth an illusory swordsman to engage her, only for her to violently dispel it with a punch. He sent another lightning bolt towards his sana with a vexed grunt. The younger elf careened from the platform above onto the smouldering wreck of the one he’d previously struck, shuddering in pain.
“What purpose did draining my minions serve? Death is before you, not behind you!” Ardan scorned as he began to manifest yet more blades for her to counteract. Rather than doing so, Mara stood her ground and stared her sora in the eye. He smiled, a small incredulous laugh leaving his lips. “You think to call my bluff? Die to prove a point? Well, Mara, as you wish.” The professor cackled as he sent the wave toward her. She stood firm, looking him directly in the eye as his blades threatened to impact her. With the rolling thudding of blades impacting wood, they sailed clean through the form of Renaud’s sana. As they did, his face fell as if realising what he’d done.
“Like meat to an alleg.” Her voice sounded behind him, just as her clawed hand dug into the back of his neck. With a scream he felt his life leave him as a flood of necrotic energy began to devour the spells keeping his desiccated form sapient. He looked to his hands, which withered before his eyes. The illusion he maintained faded just as Mara reached a ghastly hand forth to claim the Crook. He desperately clung to it like a child to their toy, whimpering with a mixture of fear and pain. Had this power all come from his puppets? Impossible. She had to be drawing it from elsewhere. His mind swiftly calculated as Mara flung him from her. He landed where her illusory self had been moments before. “Where is your bravado now, sora? Now that I’ve taken back your stolen power?” Mara demanded in an imperious voice.
Renaud looked upwards to see the floating form of his student. He could not believe his eyes as all about her, spectral blue flames began to ignite themselves. He swallowed his anxiety, feeling that his felling was all too nigh. He struggled to his knees, breath coming in hollow desperate gasps. His vision began to fade for she had taken his eyes along with his illusions. He could only hear her by the connection they shared and the reverberation of magic about them.
“You know what that staff will do if you use it!” He shouted over the fading sounds of his illusion as it began to unravel. He could no longer feel the stinging heat, the searing sorrow of that day. All he felt now were the staggering gusts and driving rain of the storm he’d redirected. Of course, she’d sensed that.
“I’m not going to use the Crook, dear sora. I want you to feel what you’ve done to yourself. Not mask it with help from the hereafter.” His student rebuked as she hovered before him, if the proximity of her voice was any indication. He was fortunate that he lacked lips to smile, he supposed.
“Even now, with the power of god in your hand, you lack the will to do what is necessary.” The professor chuckled, struggling to his feet. His withered frame barely sustained its own weight as he swayed in place, blind eyes trained on the area he felt her to be. With his muted hearing he heard the dull clash and clang of steel on steel. He grunted, head lolling forwards as he lost the ability to keep even that upright. “It seems your allies need your help, Mara. It would be a shame if this frail body were to fall just as you left to save their mangy hides. A piteous death, dashed to ribbons on the courtyard of his master.” Renaud threatened with a sadistic edge to his voice. Though she did not have footsteps to hear, he would sense if she chose to leave him. With a hidden glee, he felt no exertion on the flight spell she’d cast. She could be fast enough to catch him directly downwards. Otherwise, he held his life ransom.
Albrecht was as fearsome as his old self had been, his injury seemingly doing nothing to dull the speed at which he moved. Julie and Twitcher were occupied with the remaining Army members, and it fell to Solvi, Fred and Dana to deal with the elf lord while Arthur fended off attacks with his shield of light. The unique advantage of their enemy was that he did not use a single blade but three, all of which moved independently of the master. His illusions darted about Arthur, puffing into smoke whenever Fred could line up a shot on them. Solvi charged like an encroaching thunderstorm through a quiet summer’s day, casting aside his spectral blades as she went for the man himself.
“I let you live!” She bellowed as she closed the distance, her halberd’s axe head impacting the space he’d been seconds before. With the shrieking of splinting wood, Solvi rounded on the elf man with a snort of anger.
“Mercy and gratitude are your failings, not mine.” Albrecht replied tartly as he thrust forward with his sabre. The audacity of the attack caught Solvi off guard as she recoiled from his strike, sparks flying from her helmet as it took the blow for her. With a snap decision, the large woman took a hand from her weapon and sent a punch thudding into Albrecht’s helmet-sheathed face. He grunted with the impact, staggering out of Solvi’s guard as she reformed it. “I told my father about you. About Renaud’s pet. After I’ve dispatched you, I’m going to gut that family disappointment.” The deathly-looking elf spat, bloodied lip curling with disgust. Whether he intended to provoke his foe was immaterial; it worked regardless. A guttural scream rent Solvi’s throat as she brought a smashing two-handed blow to bear upon the elf, allowing him to deftly move aside and riposte. Solvi’s gorget saved her, redirecting the blow to slash along her jaw rather than her throat. Albrecht tutted in disapproval at his own form before whipping the sword about for another blow while his opponent tried to remove her weapon from the crater it had lodged in. A hand lashed out, grabbing his wrist. A stalemate ensued for he could not prise free his dagger and Solvi could not risk releasing his sword arm.
“Why are you shooting the illusions? He’s right there!” Dana shouted over her shoulder as she dug her electrified nails into the shoulder of an Army officer that had dared to get into melee range. Fred, who’d been firing bolt after bolt into the spectral elvish forms of their little lordling, snorted over his shoulder that they couldn’t allow Solvi’s anger to get her stabbed again. Dana thought for a moment as she allowed the twitching unconscious form of her opponent to slide to the ground. She then grabbed Fred’s dagger from his hip. “Keep them busy then.” The curly-haired engineer ordered, looking unsteady as she eyed the struggling pair. Fred, who had few better options, nodded to Dana as she ran toward Albrecht with dagger held in reverse grip. She’d drive its tip right into his black heart.
The elf noticed Dana’s charge and breathed deeply a few times. With a howling roar of exertion, he redirected his struggle with Solvi just as the dagger came to stab his neck. With a skittering of sparks, his armour sent the dagger and the woman who held it careening to the ground. One of his illusions, rather than running to attack Solvi, began running toward the stairs. Fred prioritized the one that began to heft its blade, its eyes glaring at the prone engineer. Albrecht sneered at Solvi as he flung her to the ground, dropping his weapon to get the leverage to do so. As she lay prone and the skitti reloaded, a claw-like hand gripped Dana’s shirt like a bird of prey. The cold predatory eyes of its owner glistened as the pair vanished, the illusory swordsman appearing in his place.
Dana found herself pressed against the broken wall of the stairwell, a grieved foot kicking the crumbling remains from under her. She looked up to see the disarmed Albrecht threatening to throw her onto the cobblestones far below.
“You should stay away from battlegrounds, little girl.” The elf sneered as he heaved her over the edge. She felt her stomach drop and panic begin to take hold. The memory of her mother flashed before her, a desperate rage pushing her into action. She whipped up her gauntleted hand to grip the hand that held her. With her other, she desperately dug away at the crumbling mortar to create a handhold. An unlikely chance of survival at the best of times, she continued to shock the surprisingly resilient Albrecht who resisted the convulsions with painfully tightened muscles.
“I suppose I should take your condescension as a compliment.” She shot back with a spiteful grin as she saw Solvi on the landing above him, her halberd in hand. Taking it as her cue, she leapt down with the spike of her weapon aimed at the soft flesh of Albrecht’s neck. The lordling’s eyes widened as the blow hit his armour and pierced it. With that leverage, Solvi threw him down the stairs. The dark-haired elf held an open hand aloft as he got to his feet in the landing below, sword skittering along the floor to enter his hand once more. Solvi braved momentary distraction as she tried to see if Dana was alright. The dark-haired elf woman dangled from her handhold her fingers white with desperate grip. Looking over her shoulder to see an advancing Albrecht nursing his shoulder, the Orsan ducked over the side. With a pained heaving sound, Solvi hauled the other woman into the relative safety of the tower.
“Get back up there. Stop Renaud. Save Mara.” She ordered as she readied her weapon. She did not know in that moment whether she could bring herself to end the Tuil warrior but knew that he would not allow them to leave even should his master fall. With that grim reality in mind, she set her jaw and walked to meet him on the stairs, butt spike striking sparks on the stone steps. The elf looked up at her with a sadistic grin as he readied his weapon. He commented briefly upon the fact that there were no rats to stop his surprise attacks now. “I was trained from birth to be a killer of men. Boys would steer clear for fear I’d beat them within an inch of their life. My mother took me to see executions at age eight. Throughout all this time, I have never had an appetite for violence, Albrecht. But when you threatened Mara? There are no lines I wouldn’t cross for her. Understand that before you take another step.” The Orsan warned with a steely stare that only seemed to enflame the young elf’s vigour for combat. He looked at her stance, her weapon’s heft and seemed to take account of his own injuries. Then, gleeful grin still in place, he took a step forward.
Mara floated before her sora as the platforms he’d conjured from the ruins of Bernard’s tower began to fall one after the other. The illusion of his past life now disintegrated into the purple motes of magic, allowing the true world to be seen once more. Both mages were now soaked through by the driving downpour that cleansed the naked tower apex of dust and blood. With a sad eye, the necromancer noticed a river of red flowing towards the stairs where Solvi and her friends battled to contain the dregs of Ardan’s forces. Her eye wandered still further to the crowds that had gathered beyond the high walls of the tower’s courtyard, several blue-uniformed Guard keeping them at bay. The miniscule figure of Eris Fairbrooke, her signature iron-grey hair and wide berth her subordinates gave her stood before the gates to the tower. It seemed that the pirate hunter had summoned the Legionnaires rather than risk the Guard on such cataclysmic spell craft.
“Well now. We have witnesses to your decision. Comically, you might end up in prison for my murder!” Renaud taunted with a crinkling of his eyes. The first genuine smile he’d worn all day, Mara thought. He then feigned looking down from the remains of the platform as if it were his scaffold. His sana’s gaze followed his to the courtyard below, where the splintered remains of the room now lay in jagged spikes. A cruel end for any who fell. “As I said before, to stop me you’ll have to kill me. Your piteous, churlish view of justice has me escaping my bonds in a human lifetime. And once I return, I will resume the great work.” Ardan spoke with conviction, though there was a searing point to his words. The necromancer turned with a realisation dawning on her. She’d learned too late as the withered skeletal form began to elevate itself, the illusion once again weaving around its frame. Renaud made good on his words in Avon Soram as he burned his very life to resume the fight. And in that moment of realisation, he counteracted her flight spell.
The fight between the Orsan and Albrecht grew ever more brutal as the pair held nothing back. Even the protections on the halberd began to wear thin as the elvish blade bit into it, adding yet more notches. Even as it was hewed, Solvi drew power from the enchantments that had lain dormant. She sustained her assault, appending kicks and punches to keep the sly elf and his illusory selves at bay. She’d deliberately chosen the stairwell to limit his options as she parried or blocked blows from both behind and before, her enchanted weapon taking a far greater toll on the man’s magical reserves than Fred’s more mundane rifle. Albrecht held his weapon with both hands, all too aware of how easily the Orsan would overpower him should he falter even for a second. Sweat traced canals through the dust that caked them both, blood congealing as it pooled in the contours of their straining forms. Their armour bore more nicks and scores than adornments now even as the elf flung his heavy overcoat from him. He could hide his armour no longer as the hem tangled his legs and risked his impalement more than once. He kept attempting to draw Solvi into the more spacious landing behind him, only for her halberd’s head to hook around him whenever he dared. And so, their combat had settled into a whirl of steel and wood between two floors, between maximal and minimal range.
The change came when Albrecht landed a lucky blow against the back of Solvi’s neck, momentarily stunning her as the blade flat left a throbbing, blinding pain in its wake. The elf seized on the opening, closing the gap where the head of the halberd could no longer threaten him. The larger woman saw the point of the blade heading toward her and released a hand from her weapon. With a screech of metal on metal, Solvi’s wide eyes sat inches from a now still blade tip. As Albrecht struggled with his sword momentarily, the Orsan muttered a prayer to the Mothers for their deliverance. She did not desire much, only that she not fail her comrades in this moment. Her enemy was dangerous, and she was moments from death. Albrecht had dislodged his dagger from its sheath and closed in with a deadly gleam in his eye. She felt her heart stop from sheer terror as the secondary weapon plunged toward her throat. She could not drop her weapon, for that was death also. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, her mind raced through every possibility and found nothing. Her life had led to this moment where she faced her enemy, freed from the yoke of her people and her mother. If she could save them, defend them rather than be defended by them, she would shake hands with the darkest spirits of the wood. She would open her heart to whatever foulness deigned to save her and hers.
Her eyes opened to the screeching crunch of steel and the subtler crunch of bone under flesh. Albrecht screamed with pain and fury as she beheld what had happened. A great spectral alleg now filled the stairwell, its bulk holding back the illusions as it crushed the arm that held the dagger in its jaws. Solvi’s mouth was agape with confusion, elation and recognition. As she looked to the halberd for answers, she saw that one of the aulind rings that jangled from its haft had illuminated with the same glow that manifested the alleg. Whether the weapon had judged her worthy or whether the dark spirits had answered her call she knew nor cared not. With renewed fury, she kicked Albrecht from her and set the alleg to work destroying the illusions. With but one arm and no magic to save him, Albrecht’s eyes looked about briefly before he once again traded place with an illusion. This one had been the same he’d used to dangle Dana over the abyss, allowing him to once again join his comrades. With a curse, Solvi used her spiritual companion as a vault and hefted herself to the floor above. The alleg lumbered up the stairs, growling at the terrified Army who now cowered behind cover. Fred unloaded shot after vengeful shot into the table that they’d upturned to defend themselves.
Albrecht’s arrival in the upper echelons of the tower had been meant to signal a second wind for the Army. But as he appeared in place of the illusion, the realisation of his folly came in the form of a stunning blow from Twitcher, which promptly turned into a leg sweep that sent him with a painful thud onto his injured arm. His scream of agony ceased abruptly as his eyes saw Solvi approaching him, halberd held aloft. He rolled onto his knees, eyes coming up to stare Twitcher’s sword at the tip. Fred remained busy with suppressive fire while Dana held a wrench aloft with malicious intent. Arthur stood between the table and the stairwell, his flames threatening to consume any who dared move. The elvish noble took one look at the situation in full, the people surrounding him then to his blade.
“Honour demanded I defend my oath. But I won’t sacrifice any more for this. No more.” Albrecht spoke in a gruff voice, livid eyes finding each of the party’s as they approached him. Solvi levelled the butt spike against his neck, as silent threat should he be committing perfidy. “I walked into this tower ready to die. If that be your will, I won’t stop you. But my soldiers? Whether in prison or not, I would see them live. We surrender.” Albrecht then threw his blade from his hand. Dana stooped to pick it up with suspicious eyes, knowing well that the elf could recall it. Solvi was all too aware that Albrecht knew what would happen should he try. And that there was no petty revenge to be gleaned in this situation.
“Bind them.” Solvi ordered with a stern voice. Fred turned to argue only to find the slavering, toothy jaws of the alleg positioned directly next to his face. He looked sheepish for a moment before lowering his rifle and pulling rope from his satchel. After seeing the use, it had come in their adventures, he deigned to carry it.
“They live on one condition.” Fred spoke pompously, as if imitating Countess Bourbon. “I get to ride the alleg when this is over.” The skitti jested with a cheeky grin as he began knotting the rope around the wrists and ankles of the Army members he’d just finished shooting at. For the most part they went quietly, knowing well the consequences. They were made extra clear when the revolutionary struck one with the butt of his rifle for attempting to draw a dagger. The unconscious elf was piled next to the rest under the alleg’s snarling gaze.
As the party prepared to enter the swirling mass of dark smoke, it began to dissipate. Moments later, a thunderous bang could be heard, the whole tower shaking violently. The party looked to each other, joy melting away as they realised their folly.
“Stay with the prisoners. We’ll go get Mara.” Solvi directed as she dragged Arthur with her. The rest of the party remained, a murderous intent taking shape in Fred’s eye as he returned to militaristic form.
The battle was joined with the surging of twelve corpses up the stairwell. Renaud did not disguise what they were, not now. The truth of their mangled, often tormented bodies was on full display as they clumsily swung the blades given to them. Their master had long since abandoned his grip on the strings. Arthur shouted a command, gripping his mace while his other hand prepared to grapple and parry. Twitcher and Julie joined him as the heavily armoured vanguard against the tide of elves and reanimated humanity whose blades drew showers of sparks, rivulets of blood and grunts of pain from the party. Solvi was ordered to remain behind the front line, slamming the axe of the Guillotine into any living dead too close for comfort. Fred could not bring his rifle to bear with the writhing mass of blades, magic and jaws that threatened to overwhelm them. Rather than load it, the stock was soon painted red with the crunching bones of his opponents. Without Solvi’s blade, they merely relented for a moment before coming right back. Dana used the momentary distraction of the Army member grappling her to sink her teeth into his neck with a feral shout. He yelped, staggering back as a trail of blood began to course down his body. As he whipped out his sword, he found the engineer’s hand upon it with a sadistic grin. He convulsed violently, his metal armour becoming his own enemy.
Mara stood with her eyes focused on her flagging friends, watching as the blades and spells of the Army threatened to overwhelm them. She reached out, calling into being the whistling fireball that would at least send a few of them to the courtyard below. As she did so, a blazing wall roared to life between her position on the platform and their lower holdings.
“Best pay attention, Mara. I wouldn’t want you to miss the lesson.” Renaud chastised as he drew the power of the storm above him into himself. The illusory forms of the burning buildings once again began to form, thin strings of purple light outlining the shattered remains of Ardan’s childhood. The necromancer allowed him this farce, taking a steadying breath. So, it had come to this at long last. She truly had exhausted every avenue. The screaming streets of Farsia, the city upon which Yan had built his empire, once again formed as realistically as they had in Avon Soram.
“Do you never get tired of reliving the same day over and over again?” Mara asked dispassionately, manifesting her claws with some weariness. Her sora’s eyes sparked with the same furious glare that had possessed him earlier. Though he swiftly tried to smooth it over with a smug expression, his junior did mark it. She slowly began to collate her remaining energy, diverting it from her other projects. To withstand the Crook, it would take everything. “Your fixation on this is why you failed, by the way. I wielded Avon Soram while you had to run and hide before it exploded.” Mara drawled as if fully in control of the situation, putting on a façade just as much as her sora was. Though hers was far more than a veneer for her insecurity. Renaud’s reaction was unexpected; his eyes widened with something approximating fear before the rage took over once again. A rage he could not hide.
“How?!” He demanded with such force that magic swept from him as a gust of frigid wind. “How could a creature like you control something that not even the Archmages would dare toy with?!” He screamed as he began to cast, a halo of blue light forming at the Crook’s head. With a vicious swing, he sent the screeching ball of lightning to impact at Mara’s feet. She leapt desperately to another shard of the platform which hung above her. Scrambling onto it with wide eyes, she looked over to her grinning sora with irritation more than anything. “Such an exemplary magical talent she can’t even counteract a mildly modified fireball.” He taunted with a sarcastic bite, beginning to charge another. As Mara began to run towards him with dreadful purpose, he casually breezed out of her reach. With a contemptuous ease, he flung another of the balls toward Mara. She quickly struggled over the shattered banister of a third platform to stand before the shards of the once-proud stained glass. This window had depicted Arawn’s proclamation, that all peoples would draw breath for no more than one hundred years.
Mara took possession of the glass shards, sending them towards Renaud as a deadly hail while he amused himself by summoning illusory versions of himself to attack her. The older elf evaded through the air with desperation before hissing in pain. One of the shards had collided with his cheek. Though as he drew away a bloodless hand, he cocked an eyebrow at his sana.
“Did you truly expect such elementary parlour tricks to hurt me?” Renaud mocked as he tapped the leathery skin beneath the illusion. Mara stood upright, straightening her robes as she donned a serene smile. His face fell before he momentarily turned to look through the illusion he’d generated.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” Mara smirked as she beheld the same scene Renaud now did. With one crucial difference. She began to harness a spell behind her back while looking at the fight outside the bubble Ardan had swaddled them in.
In the remains of the tower, the fight had not been going well for the party. Twitcher bore many more cuts and dents in their chassis, some even crossing the welding they’d done to repair themselves. Arthur’s armour had been rent, bent and outright broken in places as his bruised body attempted to stave off the horde of undead. Dana had failed to account for the reach her opponent possessed and so she was slowly being whittled away by the swift darting dance her enemy engaged in. Julie was sporting several injuries, the most prominent of which being the hand she held behind her back. Possibly broken, by the bruising. Solvi stood as a pillar amongst them, hewing anything that showed a momentary flash of bare flesh.
Their struggle was interrupted, so it seemed, by the hail of glass Mara had sent at the enemy forces. The angle had been just overshot, missing her party entirely but also a few living members of the Army. The dead were not so fortunate, sporting jagged shards that would have been fatal to ordinary humans. The damage though was not physical, Renaud realised as the shards began to glow a poisonous dark green. He turned with gritted teeth to see Mara’s shark-toothed leer. One by one, his puppets began to fall to the ground as the necromancer drained the energies used to animate them.
“Did you truly expect to attack the necromancer with undead minions?” She jabbed with a facetious imitation of Ardan’s own voice. He snarled almost like an animal before manifesting a plethora of spectral daggers, as he’d once done. Mara lashed out with a counteraction, several of the daggers vanishing before they launched. This was her saving grace as she dived to the ground to avoid the hail of blades that would have shredded her a second or two later. The necromancer looked up briefly to see her sora high above her, Crook held over his shoulder like a club. Without thinking, Mara launched herself as she’d once done in Annun, catapulting into an all too solid wardrobe. She’d curled into a ball, back striking the furniture. With a gasp, breath leaving her lungs, she wheezed onto her hands and knees. A lightning strike exploded just next to her, sending her onto her back as she coughed. Grasping her side, she felt something suspiciously like a burn.
With Mara’s intervention, the group soon found their second wind. Julie drove her sword into the puppet that had been menacing her, tearing it free to surprise the living Army member duelling Twitcher. The IXth Legion’s reputation for lethality was well deserved for Julie wasted no time in plunging her sword under his rib cage. He attempted to catch his breath, clawing at his own throat as his sword clanged to the floor. With a swift swipe of their sword, Twitcher sent head and body both tumbling to the ground.
Arthur, who’d been holding three soldiers at bay with his arms and armour alone, called out to Sirona for deliverance. His mace ignited with the bright flames of his goddess, sending one of his enemies screeching from them as her clothes were shrouded in conflagration. Her comrade sought vengeance, bringing his sword for a two-handed blow that would break even the strongest man’s arm. It clanged with an ear-splitting detonation as the sword shattered against a shield of radiance. Arthur completed his parry, destroying his enemy’s guard and sending the hilt of his blade spiralling away. As the third sought to take advantage of Arthur’s open posture, the cleric looked to him with glowing eyes and exhaled a plume of white flames directly into his face. The screech of pain was cut short by the crunch of a mace impact.
A clean crushing slashing sound was heard as Dana dove into her opponent’s guard and rammed her clawed fingers into his throat. She stood there a moment after, disbelief on her face before Fred’s cry for help sent her to his side.
The skitti had become overwhelmed on the flank by corpses whose faces had become bloodied masses of exposed bone and muscular tissue. Fred with his gore-splattered rifle in one hand and his dagger in the other desperately held back the yawning jaws of a feral undead. Using his dagger as a lever, point embedded in the floor below him, he tried headbutting the creature to no avail. Dana came to his rescue, using her shock glove to grip the base of its skull. The remains jittered aggressively before shuddering to a halt. Though it lacked the shard of glass to prevent it rising again, Fred was still immeasurably grateful. He gave his saviour a nod before working the lever on his rifle with a snort. Moments later, he spat a tooth from his mouth as he took aim at the Army members. It would be too risky to take aim at Renaud through the heaving black fog he’d enveloped himself and his sana in.
As the Army members slowly peeled away from the flagging flesh golems that served as their wall between the party and themselves, they took a considerably more defensive formation. Panic had set in, their eyes wild and their teeth bared like animals. One was deceptively calm however and Solvi took a special notice of him. It was only when she noted the sallow complexion and dark lips that she recognized the face of Albrecht Van Tuil.
Mara struggled to remain upright with the searing pain in her side, choosing to lope along bent double. Every so often, Renaud would send forth an illusory swordsman to engage her, only for her to violently dispel it with a punch. He sent another lightning bolt towards his sana with a vexed grunt. The younger elf careened from the platform above onto the smouldering wreck of the one he’d previously struck, shuddering in pain.
“What purpose did draining my minions serve? Death is before you, not behind you!” Ardan scorned as he began to manifest yet more blades for her to counteract. Rather than doing so, Mara stood her ground and stared her sora in the eye. He smiled, a small incredulous laugh leaving his lips. “You think to call my bluff? Die to prove a point? Well, Mara, as you wish.” The professor cackled as he sent the wave toward her. She stood firm, looking him directly in the eye as his blades threatened to impact her. With the rolling thudding of blades impacting wood, they sailed clean through the form of Renaud’s sana. As they did, his face fell as if realising what he’d done.
“Like meat to an alleg.” Her voice sounded behind him, just as her clawed hand dug into the back of his neck. With a scream he felt his life leave him as a flood of necrotic energy began to devour the spells keeping his desiccated form sapient. He looked to his hands, which withered before his eyes. The illusion he maintained faded just as Mara reached a ghastly hand forth to claim the Crook. He desperately clung to it like a child to their toy, whimpering with a mixture of fear and pain. Had this power all come from his puppets? Impossible. She had to be drawing it from elsewhere. His mind swiftly calculated as Mara flung him from her. He landed where her illusory self had been moments before. “Where is your bravado now, sora? Now that I’ve taken back your stolen power?” Mara demanded in an imperious voice.
Renaud looked upwards to see the floating form of his student. He could not believe his eyes as all about her, spectral blue flames began to ignite themselves. He swallowed his anxiety, feeling that his felling was all too nigh. He struggled to his knees, breath coming in hollow desperate gasps. His vision began to fade for she had taken his eyes along with his illusions. He could only hear her by the connection they shared and the reverberation of magic about them.
“You know what that staff will do if you use it!” He shouted over the fading sounds of his illusion as it began to unravel. He could no longer feel the stinging heat, the searing sorrow of that day. All he felt now were the staggering gusts and driving rain of the storm he’d redirected. Of course, she’d sensed that.
“I’m not going to use the Crook, dear sora. I want you to feel what you’ve done to yourself. Not mask it with help from the hereafter.” His student rebuked as she hovered before him, if the proximity of her voice was any indication. He was fortunate that he lacked lips to smile, he supposed.
“Even now, with the power of god in your hand, you lack the will to do what is necessary.” The professor chuckled, struggling to his feet. His withered frame barely sustained its own weight as he swayed in place, blind eyes trained on the area he felt her to be. With his muted hearing he heard the dull clash and clang of steel on steel. He grunted, head lolling forwards as he lost the ability to keep even that upright. “It seems your allies need your help, Mara. It would be a shame if this frail body were to fall just as you left to save their mangy hides. A piteous death, dashed to ribbons on the courtyard of his master.” Renaud threatened with a sadistic edge to his voice. Though she did not have footsteps to hear, he would sense if she chose to leave him. With a hidden glee, he felt no exertion on the flight spell she’d cast. She could be fast enough to catch him directly downwards. Otherwise, he held his life ransom.
Albrecht was as fearsome as his old self had been, his injury seemingly doing nothing to dull the speed at which he moved. Julie and Twitcher were occupied with the remaining Army members, and it fell to Solvi, Fred and Dana to deal with the elf lord while Arthur fended off attacks with his shield of light. The unique advantage of their enemy was that he did not use a single blade but three, all of which moved independently of the master. His illusions darted about Arthur, puffing into smoke whenever Fred could line up a shot on them. Solvi charged like an encroaching thunderstorm through a quiet summer’s day, casting aside his spectral blades as she went for the man himself.
“I let you live!” She bellowed as she closed the distance, her halberd’s axe head impacting the space he’d been seconds before. With the shrieking of splinting wood, Solvi rounded on the elf man with a snort of anger.
“Mercy and gratitude are your failings, not mine.” Albrecht replied tartly as he thrust forward with his sabre. The audacity of the attack caught Solvi off guard as she recoiled from his strike, sparks flying from her helmet as it took the blow for her. With a snap decision, the large woman took a hand from her weapon and sent a punch thudding into Albrecht’s helmet-sheathed face. He grunted with the impact, staggering out of Solvi’s guard as she reformed it. “I told my father about you. About Renaud’s pet. After I’ve dispatched you, I’m going to gut that family disappointment.” The deathly-looking elf spat, bloodied lip curling with disgust. Whether he intended to provoke his foe was immaterial; it worked regardless. A guttural scream rent Solvi’s throat as she brought a smashing two-handed blow to bear upon the elf, allowing him to deftly move aside and riposte. Solvi’s gorget saved her, redirecting the blow to slash along her jaw rather than her throat. Albrecht tutted in disapproval at his own form before whipping the sword about for another blow while his opponent tried to remove her weapon from the crater it had lodged in. A hand lashed out, grabbing his wrist. A stalemate ensued for he could not prise free his dagger and Solvi could not risk releasing his sword arm.
“Why are you shooting the illusions? He’s right there!” Dana shouted over her shoulder as she dug her electrified nails into the shoulder of an Army officer that had dared to get into melee range. Fred, who’d been firing bolt after bolt into the spectral elvish forms of their little lordling, snorted over his shoulder that they couldn’t allow Solvi’s anger to get her stabbed again. Dana thought for a moment as she allowed the twitching unconscious form of her opponent to slide to the ground. She then grabbed Fred’s dagger from his hip. “Keep them busy then.” The curly-haired engineer ordered, looking unsteady as she eyed the struggling pair. Fred, who had few better options, nodded to Dana as she ran toward Albrecht with dagger held in reverse grip. She’d drive its tip right into his black heart.
The elf noticed Dana’s charge and breathed deeply a few times. With a howling roar of exertion, he redirected his struggle with Solvi just as the dagger came to stab his neck. With a skittering of sparks, his armour sent the dagger and the woman who held it careening to the ground. One of his illusions, rather than running to attack Solvi, began running toward the stairs. Fred prioritized the one that began to heft its blade, its eyes glaring at the prone engineer. Albrecht sneered at Solvi as he flung her to the ground, dropping his weapon to get the leverage to do so. As she lay prone and the skitti reloaded, a claw-like hand gripped Dana’s shirt like a bird of prey. The cold predatory eyes of its owner glistened as the pair vanished, the illusory swordsman appearing in his place.
Dana found herself pressed against the broken wall of the stairwell, a grieved foot kicking the crumbling remains from under her. She looked up to see the disarmed Albrecht threatening to throw her onto the cobblestones far below.
“You should stay away from battlegrounds, little girl.” The elf sneered as he heaved her over the edge. She felt her stomach drop and panic begin to take hold. The memory of her mother flashed before her, a desperate rage pushing her into action. She whipped up her gauntleted hand to grip the hand that held her. With her other, she desperately dug away at the crumbling mortar to create a handhold. An unlikely chance of survival at the best of times, she continued to shock the surprisingly resilient Albrecht who resisted the convulsions with painfully tightened muscles.
“I suppose I should take your condescension as a compliment.” She shot back with a spiteful grin as she saw Solvi on the landing above him, her halberd in hand. Taking it as her cue, she leapt down with the spike of her weapon aimed at the soft flesh of Albrecht’s neck. The lordling’s eyes widened as the blow hit his armour and pierced it. With that leverage, Solvi threw him down the stairs. The dark-haired elf held an open hand aloft as he got to his feet in the landing below, sword skittering along the floor to enter his hand once more. Solvi braved momentary distraction as she tried to see if Dana was alright. The dark-haired elf woman dangled from her handhold her fingers white with desperate grip. Looking over her shoulder to see an advancing Albrecht nursing his shoulder, the Orsan ducked over the side. With a pained heaving sound, Solvi hauled the other woman into the relative safety of the tower.
“Get back up there. Stop Renaud. Save Mara.” She ordered as she readied her weapon. She did not know in that moment whether she could bring herself to end the Tuil warrior but knew that he would not allow them to leave even should his master fall. With that grim reality in mind, she set her jaw and walked to meet him on the stairs, butt spike striking sparks on the stone steps. The elf looked up at her with a sadistic grin as he readied his weapon. He commented briefly upon the fact that there were no rats to stop his surprise attacks now. “I was trained from birth to be a killer of men. Boys would steer clear for fear I’d beat them within an inch of their life. My mother took me to see executions at age eight. Throughout all this time, I have never had an appetite for violence, Albrecht. But when you threatened Mara? There are no lines I wouldn’t cross for her. Understand that before you take another step.” The Orsan warned with a steely stare that only seemed to enflame the young elf’s vigour for combat. He looked at her stance, her weapon’s heft and seemed to take account of his own injuries. Then, gleeful grin still in place, he took a step forward.
Mara floated before her sora as the platforms he’d conjured from the ruins of Bernard’s tower began to fall one after the other. The illusion of his past life now disintegrated into the purple motes of magic, allowing the true world to be seen once more. Both mages were now soaked through by the driving downpour that cleansed the naked tower apex of dust and blood. With a sad eye, the necromancer noticed a river of red flowing towards the stairs where Solvi and her friends battled to contain the dregs of Ardan’s forces. Her eye wandered still further to the crowds that had gathered beyond the high walls of the tower’s courtyard, several blue-uniformed Guard keeping them at bay. The miniscule figure of Eris Fairbrooke, her signature iron-grey hair and wide berth her subordinates gave her stood before the gates to the tower. It seemed that the pirate hunter had summoned the Legionnaires rather than risk the Guard on such cataclysmic spell craft.
“Well now. We have witnesses to your decision. Comically, you might end up in prison for my murder!” Renaud taunted with a crinkling of his eyes. The first genuine smile he’d worn all day, Mara thought. He then feigned looking down from the remains of the platform as if it were his scaffold. His sana’s gaze followed his to the courtyard below, where the splintered remains of the room now lay in jagged spikes. A cruel end for any who fell. “As I said before, to stop me you’ll have to kill me. Your piteous, churlish view of justice has me escaping my bonds in a human lifetime. And once I return, I will resume the great work.” Ardan spoke with conviction, though there was a searing point to his words. The necromancer turned with a realisation dawning on her. She’d learned too late as the withered skeletal form began to elevate itself, the illusion once again weaving around its frame. Renaud made good on his words in Avon Soram as he burned his very life to resume the fight. And in that moment of realisation, he counteracted her flight spell.
The fight between the Orsan and Albrecht grew ever more brutal as the pair held nothing back. Even the protections on the halberd began to wear thin as the elvish blade bit into it, adding yet more notches. Even as it was hewed, Solvi drew power from the enchantments that had lain dormant. She sustained her assault, appending kicks and punches to keep the sly elf and his illusory selves at bay. She’d deliberately chosen the stairwell to limit his options as she parried or blocked blows from both behind and before, her enchanted weapon taking a far greater toll on the man’s magical reserves than Fred’s more mundane rifle. Albrecht held his weapon with both hands, all too aware of how easily the Orsan would overpower him should he falter even for a second. Sweat traced canals through the dust that caked them both, blood congealing as it pooled in the contours of their straining forms. Their armour bore more nicks and scores than adornments now even as the elf flung his heavy overcoat from him. He could hide his armour no longer as the hem tangled his legs and risked his impalement more than once. He kept attempting to draw Solvi into the more spacious landing behind him, only for her halberd’s head to hook around him whenever he dared. And so, their combat had settled into a whirl of steel and wood between two floors, between maximal and minimal range.
The change came when Albrecht landed a lucky blow against the back of Solvi’s neck, momentarily stunning her as the blade flat left a throbbing, blinding pain in its wake. The elf seized on the opening, closing the gap where the head of the halberd could no longer threaten him. The larger woman saw the point of the blade heading toward her and released a hand from her weapon. With a screech of metal on metal, Solvi’s wide eyes sat inches from a now still blade tip. As Albrecht struggled with his sword momentarily, the Orsan muttered a prayer to the Mothers for their deliverance. She did not desire much, only that she not fail her comrades in this moment. Her enemy was dangerous, and she was moments from death. Albrecht had dislodged his dagger from its sheath and closed in with a deadly gleam in his eye. She felt her heart stop from sheer terror as the secondary weapon plunged toward her throat. She could not drop her weapon, for that was death also. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, her mind raced through every possibility and found nothing. Her life had led to this moment where she faced her enemy, freed from the yoke of her people and her mother. If she could save them, defend them rather than be defended by them, she would shake hands with the darkest spirits of the wood. She would open her heart to whatever foulness deigned to save her and hers.
Her eyes opened to the screeching crunch of steel and the subtler crunch of bone under flesh. Albrecht screamed with pain and fury as she beheld what had happened. A great spectral alleg now filled the stairwell, its bulk holding back the illusions as it crushed the arm that held the dagger in its jaws. Solvi’s mouth was agape with confusion, elation and recognition. As she looked to the halberd for answers, she saw that one of the aulind rings that jangled from its haft had illuminated with the same glow that manifested the alleg. Whether the weapon had judged her worthy or whether the dark spirits had answered her call she knew nor cared not. With renewed fury, she kicked Albrecht from her and set the alleg to work destroying the illusions. With but one arm and no magic to save him, Albrecht’s eyes looked about briefly before he once again traded place with an illusion. This one had been the same he’d used to dangle Dana over the abyss, allowing him to once again join his comrades. With a curse, Solvi used her spiritual companion as a vault and hefted herself to the floor above. The alleg lumbered up the stairs, growling at the terrified Army who now cowered behind cover. Fred unloaded shot after vengeful shot into the table that they’d upturned to defend themselves.
Albrecht’s arrival in the upper echelons of the tower had been meant to signal a second wind for the Army. But as he appeared in place of the illusion, the realisation of his folly came in the form of a stunning blow from Twitcher, which promptly turned into a leg sweep that sent him with a painful thud onto his injured arm. His scream of agony ceased abruptly as his eyes saw Solvi approaching him, halberd held aloft. He rolled onto his knees, eyes coming up to stare Twitcher’s sword at the tip. Fred remained busy with suppressive fire while Dana held a wrench aloft with malicious intent. Arthur stood between the table and the stairwell, his flames threatening to consume any who dared move. The elvish noble took one look at the situation in full, the people surrounding him then to his blade.
“Honour demanded I defend my oath. But I won’t sacrifice any more for this. No more.” Albrecht spoke in a gruff voice, livid eyes finding each of the party’s as they approached him. Solvi levelled the butt spike against his neck, as silent threat should he be committing perfidy. “I walked into this tower ready to die. If that be your will, I won’t stop you. But my soldiers? Whether in prison or not, I would see them live. We surrender.” Albrecht then threw his blade from his hand. Dana stooped to pick it up with suspicious eyes, knowing well that the elf could recall it. Solvi was all too aware that Albrecht knew what would happen should he try. And that there was no petty revenge to be gleaned in this situation.
“Bind them.” Solvi ordered with a stern voice. Fred turned to argue only to find the slavering, toothy jaws of the alleg positioned directly next to his face. He looked sheepish for a moment before lowering his rifle and pulling rope from his satchel. After seeing the use, it had come in their adventures, he deigned to carry it.
“They live on one condition.” Fred spoke pompously, as if imitating Countess Bourbon. “I get to ride the alleg when this is over.” The skitti jested with a cheeky grin as he began knotting the rope around the wrists and ankles of the Army members he’d just finished shooting at. For the most part they went quietly, knowing well the consequences. They were made extra clear when the revolutionary struck one with the butt of his rifle for attempting to draw a dagger. The unconscious elf was piled next to the rest under the alleg’s snarling gaze.
As the party prepared to enter the swirling mass of dark smoke, it began to dissipate. Moments later, a thunderous bang could be heard, the whole tower shaking violently. The party looked to each other, joy melting away as they realised their folly.
“Stay with the prisoners. We’ll go get Mara.” Solvi directed as she dragged Arthur with her. The rest of the party remained, a murderous intent taking shape in Fred’s eye as he returned to militaristic form.
