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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Besides, there was another possibility.

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

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

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

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

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

“Darkwood,” Agnete said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or maybe that was just her natural heat.

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

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

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

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

“Am I understood?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I concur.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only then did he turn toward the stairs.

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

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

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

“Thanks,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

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

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

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

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

Could he cast again?

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

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

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

“Sir, you’re alright!”

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

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

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

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

“They weren’t with you?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Understood. Make way! Casualties coming through!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Claire, Kia. You two good to go?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alright,” Arkk said. “Let’s move.”

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

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

“Do it,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crystal ball was still useless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, time limit.

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

While they worked, Arkk looked down at the wooden planks and the shaped brass ritual circle. The craftsmanship was clearly on another level. The smooth fastenings keeping the brass to the polished wood, the latches keeping the wooden planks together that fit seamlessly into the overall ritual circle, and the gleam of the brass in the light of the distant fires… It almost seemed a shame to destroy. Arkk knew more than enough ways to make an explosion. It wouldn’t be hard to burn the wood at the very least. A fire might not ruin the brass, however, and that was the really important part.

Moving over to the targeting array, Arkk crouched down. It was… amazing. Toothed gears and easily grasped knobs allowed easy adjustment. It removed all calculations from the process and offered fine-tuning to a point where Arkk could hit the gate, the keep, or even a specific house within Elmshadow.

Or…

Looking overhead, Arkk noted the positions of the relevant stars. Regular stars. He shuddered a moment, recalling that shattered sky that Vezta could see, before looking back down to the ritual circle. He twisted the knobs and adjusted the levers, double-checking with the sky twice more before finishing. Then, he moved over to the side and pulled out a small metal rod. Using it, he quickly inscribed a transportation ritual, aiming the coordinates next to the circle already in the basement of the Elmshadow keep.

Once finished, Arkk stood and motioned the others closer. He couldn’t speak without breaking their stealth spell but he was fairly sure that they got what he wanted through a quick miming session.

Lexa, Claire, and Kia split off, heading to the ritualist positions. Neither dark elf was capable of casting spells naturally but the employee link between him and them should suffice for this spell. The rock conjuration would drain them but as long as they only activated the ritual once, they would come out alright.

Giving each a look and making sure they were ready, Arkk knelt and planted a hand on the center of the circle. He pushed his magic out, slowly at first before ramping it up until the brass began to glow with a faint golden light. The light spread across the ritual circle, joining with light from the other three spots before funneling into the targeting array. From there, the conjuration began.

It took two minutes. Two minutes of profuse sweating, eyes darting around, fully expecting someone to come to check on the golden light that now illuminated the area. Perhaps they were all used to it—it was their ritual, after all. When the light snuffed out and the ritual finished, Arkk had to hold in his sigh lest it break their cloaking spell.

Nothing happened for a long moment. Arkk quickly started unlatching the wooden planks, twisting simple locks and brass ties to free the boards. Lexa helped after watching him for a moment. Claire and Kia, panting heavily, didn’t move to assist for a long moment as they struggled to regain their stamina. With the urgency of the situation, they forced themselves to move well before they looked alright to do so, helping in hauling each piece over to the transportation circle he had drawn.

A ground-shattering quake threw Arkk off his feet before he could unlatch the third plank.

Bits of loose earth, dirt, and mud crashed down around him, falling in small pieces like rain. Painful rain.

He hadn’t seen it drop. Perhaps if he had been looking up rather than down. Even then, in the dark, moonless night, he doubted he would have seen the boulder falling. From the cries and shouts and fresh waves of alarm that rippled through the encampment in the wake of the quake, he figured he had hit his target.

A house-sized boulder should have crushed the central tent of the bivouac. Probably the surrounding area as well. The rain of dirt likely blasted outward around the impact site, hopefully decimating the army. Or at least its commanders and leaders. Given the commotion with the purifiers, none might have been present. Still, at the very least, he hoped that was where they had kept their supplies.

Sieges, those of the drawn-out variety, revolved around food. That went for both the defenders and the attackers. If their stores of food were destroyed, they would have to deliver food through their supply route, likely not nearly as defended as a full army of ten thousand soldiers.

A strike against Evestani’s supply lines was something to talk about with Hawkwood later. For now, Arkk didn’t even bother looking up to see the results of the boulder drop. As soon as the rain of mud settled, he got up and continued stacking plank after plank onto the teleportation circle.

With the final plank stacked, Arkk bent and pushed magic into the ritual circle.

On the other end, in the pitch-black cellar, he ordered the lesser servant who had been ready to destroy the teleportation circle to begin moving the planks away from the destination. At the same time, he spoke, breaking the shadowy envelope that hid his presence.

“Slave Natum.”

A fresh lesser servant pulsed and bulged into existence, squirming and unfolding from wherever it had come from. Kia took a hasty step back, looking at the thing with undisguised revulsion. Claire just stared. Her sharp eyes roamed over the servant like she was trying to decide the best way to kill it.

“We’re getting out of here. Kia, you first,” Arkk said, pointing to the circle.

The dark elf didn’t hesitate to step closer to the servant, though she kept her eyes on it right up until Arkk pulsed his magic and she vanished through the teleportation circle. Claire moved into her place without needing a prompt and vanished as well.

As Lexa vanished to the keep, Arkk felt a chill run down his spine. The hairs along his arms tingled and stood on end. Some sixth sense screamed at him to move aside.

Bright golden light struck the lesser servant. It shriveled to ash before the light faded.

Arkk whirled around. “Electro Deus,” he intoned, flinging a high-powered bolt of lightning straight at the only person around.

A young boy. His head, shaved bald, had bright golden paint—or tattoos—in intricate designs all around the crown of his head. A Pious of the Golden Order? He couldn’t be older than Hale. And yet, with a casual backhand, he batted the bolt of lightning aside. It struck one of the carts around the former ritual site, setting it ablaze. It came with a cost, however, blasting off the boy’s arm at the elbow. Blood dripped and muscle hung loose, twitching and flexing from where it hung from the boy’s dangling skin. The stump of bone protruding was even smoking.

Not that it looked like the boy cared. He looked down at his missing arm with no change to his facial expression. Then he looked up at Arkk, ignoring his arm as if it were nothing more annoying than a small scratch gotten from a summer day of roughhousing.

His eyes glowed a bright gold, a familiar gold. The same color as the assassins from the Duke’s party.

“[You]/[interloper]|[stand before]/[exist within]/[experience]|[self]/[deity]/[GOLD]/|[bow]/[submit]/[cower mortal].”

Something struck Arkk. Nothing physical. Nothing magical either. It was just those words. He had heard the [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE] many times in the past from Vezta. That part wasn’t unfamiliar to him. It was the bit where the being identified itself. [GOLD]. Something about that concept slammed into Arkk’s chest with the force of a bull. But instead of pain, there was awe.

This thing before him wasn’t like Vezta.

Vezta was certainly something from outside the regular world.

But this?

“[Understand]/[comprehend]|[you]/[interloper]| are little more than [meat]/[insect]/[irrelevant]. Die,” he said, dipping out of the [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE] in his words. Arkk lacked the time to question why. The boy lifted his hand, aiming straight for Arkk’s chest.

Arkk stood there, watching as a golden light gathered at the boy’s fingertips. Tears welled in his eyes. Not of fear or sadness, but of joy. Such a beautiful golden light. And it was coming for him, all for him. It was—

Something jolted Arkk. Some distant tug across the link of Fortress Al-Mir. A pull—a warning, snapping him out of a discordant revelry. The malignant golden glow at the tips of the boy’s fingers was coming for him and it was, in no method of description, beautiful.

“Slave Natum,” he snapped as he jumped aside.

The golden beam skimmed past his shoulder, striking some poor soldier who had been coming up from behind that Arkk hadn’t even noticed.

Arkk stepped on the teleportation circle and threw his magic into it.

He reappeared in the dark of Elmshadow Keep’s cellar.

The poor lesser servant, so swiftly brought into existence back at the Evestani encampment, opened one of its many maws and swallowed the teleportation circle whole. Right before a golden beam struck it and Arkk felt its connection to Fortress Al-Mir vanish.

Arkk stumbled back into the cellar, back hitting hard against the wall as he tried to catch his breath. Lexa rushed over, small hands grabbing his arms as the short gremlin did her best to support him.

“Are you okay? I saw a light,” she said, trying to pull him off the wall. It didn’t work until Kia came over and planted a hand on his other shoulder.

“I’m fine. I just…” He took a deep breath, conjured all his willpower, and forced himself to balance properly. He took a second breath, swallowing a lump in his throat. “We need to signal the inquisitors. Immediately.” He tried for the door only to stumble. Kia caught him. “Then… I need to talk to Hawkwood. There is something out there…”

 

 

Magic was exhausting. At least for normal people. Arkk had yet to come across a situation that had drained him to the point where he had to take a seat. He owed that to Fortress Al-Mir, however. Most people didn’t have a direct connection to an ancient magical artifact that acted like a reservoir, pooling the combined magic of everyone in his employ and the very land that he claimed as his own.

To maintain an active siege—or a defense—for anyone else, they would have to rotate out their spellcasters on a fairly regular basis. Large spells capable of destroying walls or ballistae were often multi-person castings. Rituals not too different from what Zullie, Vezta, and Savren were finalizing back home. Though, with a different aim.

For that reason, active magical bombardment over any length of time required the use of hundreds of spellcasters. Not exactly a feasible option most of the time. Spellcasters weren’t rare but quality spellcasters were. That was why normal armies still used siege engines such as trebuchets, catapults, and siege towers. Assuming they didn’t just have their army encircle wherever they were sieging until the food supplies ran low and the besieged were forced to surrender or starve.

What Evestani lacked in mechanical siege engines—left behind to swiftly move across the Duchy—they more than made up for in terms of spellcasters.

Elmshadow’s walls shook and the soldiers trembled as another stone the size of a small house fell from the sky and shattered against the protective dome. The ritual circle concocted by Hawkwood’s spellcasters flickered with the impact and, shortly after, the ground rumbled as bits of the boulder rolled off the dome and struck the earth outside the wall. One of the three casters around Arkk sagged, letting out a long groan before some of Hawkwood’s men dragged him away. A young woman that Arkk recognized from a few hours ago, already looking haggard, replaced him. Margarete, if Arkk remembered her name right.

Arkk stood at the anchor position. The same spot he would assume during Fortress Al-Mir’s ritual. It was the most magically intensive spot yet, six hours after taking it up, Arkk barely felt a faint sheen of sweat touching his brow. For all he knew, that sweat came from the way Agnete stared at him from the sidelines, still hidden in White Company’s armor. Any exhaustion he felt was purely physical, a product of having to stand around in one spot for several hours.

Even if he was fine, he couldn’t run the ritual on his own. Hawkwood was running out of fresh spellcasters and having to use people who weren’t fully recovered.

“Hawkwood,” Arkk called out. “We’re running out of time here!”

Above, standing on the wall, Hawkwood shouted back. “With that last one, I believe we’ve pinpointed where they’re casting from. Get up here. Kelsey, take his spot!”

A young man, younger even than Arkk, looked up with heavy eyes. He was a capable spellcaster, one that was easily on par with Zullie or Savren, but he had been inside the ritual circle three times as much as anyone else. Arkk watched his sluggish movements as he stood from where he had been resting. He was about to object—Agnete could take the spot—but didn’t get a chance before Astra’s stern voice called down.

“Hold. Allow us. Chronicler.”

Arkk pursed his lips as the gaunt Chronicler Qwol looked to his superior, frowned, and then slowly headed toward the stairs. Compared to Greesom, who had fought with agility and gusto despite his heavier frame, Chronicler Qwol didn’t look like he could fight a twig, let alone an orc. Even the way he took the stairs down from the wall was akin to an elderly man who had forgotten his cane.

As he approached the protective ritual circle, Arkk looked into his sunken dark eyes and couldn’t help but ask, “Are you okay taking over?”

The man licked his dry lips, eyes meeting with Arkk’s for a short moment before he shuffled into the ritual circle. “As long as you lasted? No. But I shall suffice for now.”

Arkk frowned, watching a moment as he took the spot Arkk had been keeping. Looking up, Arkk found the faint glowing embers within the steel helmet off to the side. He gave a brief nod of his head. The glow intensified ever so slightly as Agnete nodded back. With that, Arkk turned for the stairs leading up to the wall.

He hoped Agnete understood what he meant by that. He felt like it was pretty obvious. If that chronicler did anything to sabotage the ritual, she was to take him out and take his position as fast as possible. Hopefully before any golden arrows or house-sized magical boulders dropped on Elmshadow.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Arkk looked out over the snow-covered fields. He no longer required a spyglass to see the Evestani army. Hawkwood’s archers kept them from approaching too close but it was still daunting to look out over the sea of people so close. He had thought the goblins attacking Langleey had been bad. Or the monsters assailing Darkwood. While this group lacked the ability to climb or jump atop the wall—they were all human—the scale of the army was simply on a different level.

He couldn’t help but feel like he was out of his depth once again. Just as he had been getting used to being a mercenary leader and had been making plans to expand—mostly to protect himself and Fortress Al-Mir—this came along to show him that things could always get worse.

Master Inquisitrix Sylvara Astra stood with her hands on her hips, stance wide, as she looked out over the wall. To her side, the maniacal-eyed purifier brought up his hands in front of his eyes, one hand upside down. He drew his fingers apart like he was framing the army, except a black void sprung up between his thumbs and index fingers.

Out in the distance, another sphere of inverted colors spread out. With a disjointed giggle and a snap of his fingers, the sphere collapsed. It didn’t quite reach the invading army but it did keep a small group who had been getting brave from approaching any further.

Hawkwood shot the two inquisitors a look before meeting Arkk’s eyes and shaking his head. “Sorry to put you in that position.”

“I’m fine,” Arkk said.

“Indeed?” Astra asked. “Quite the constitution you have.”

“That’s about my only redeeming quality,” Arkk shot back, wondering if he should have played up being exhausted. He had been too concerned with powering the ritual circle, keeping people alive to worry about that. Too late now. “You found their casters?”

“The majority of their force is stationed in a protective ring in roughly the center of the army. That is just a decoy, however. The bombardment rituals are being conducted just off to the side, currently in the shadow of the right mountain,” Hawkwood said, though he didn’t point or even look in the direction. He just handed over the spyglass. “Don’t be too obvious about looking. We would rather not have them move before we’re ready to strike.”

Arkk focused on the main encampment of the army, the area Hawkwood first indicated. It wasn’t his first view of the Evestani army since he had scried on them multiple times. Still, seeing them through the lens of the spyglass rather than through the crystal ball made them somehow feel more real. Rows upon rows of pikemen, soldiers, calvary, and even spellcasters filled the area between the mountains. They were setting up tents and, in a few areas, looked to be cooking some kind of stew. Clearly, they didn’t intend to conclude their siege before the day ended. Longer, starvation-styled sieges could take months yet that didn’t fit with how Evestani had operated thus far. They likely intended to be inside Elmshadow’s walls within a week.

Did they know of the approaching Duke’s men? Did they think they could take them on as well as Hawkwood’s forces?

Arkk didn’t know. All of this—war, sieges, even battles beyond a dozen people tactfully striking surprised targets—it was so far out of his realm of knowledge that he could hardly believe that Hawkwood was bothering to include him in these kinds of events. He wasn’t Hawkwood’s aide nor a military scholar. He just had a few odd spells, a few odd creatures, and a magical fortress that wasn’t much help in defending distant lands.

Swallowing his nerves, he carefully swept the spyglass back and forth, casually observing each side of the army before settling back in the center.

“There are identical encampments on either side. How can you be sure which is which?”

“That would be thanks to our inquisitorial allies,” Hawkwood said.

“Purifier Tybalt possesses the ability to detect magics,” Inquistrix Astra said, turning her red eyes on Arkk. “Especially miracles and anathema.”

Arkk tried not to glower. She knew who he was. She completely knew who he was. If the purifier’s abilities were accurate, they probably even knew of Agnete’s presence.

Well, if she was going to politely ignore who he really was, who was he to complain?

“Plans?”

“That…” Hawkwood started, shifting slightly. “We have a plan. How do you feel about working with the inquisitors?”

Arkk, possessing unimaginable powers of foresight, saw that one coming. He looked back to Inquisitrix Astra, who offered a polite smile that didn’t reach her cheeks, let alone her eyes.

“I have heard you are quite the resourceful man,” she said. “This operation will require resourcefulness in great qualities.”

Arkk smiled back, lips straining. “What exactly are we planning?”

“This calls for a chirugeon’s blade, cutting out the heart of their spellcasting capabilities. Myself, Purifier Tybalt, and Chronicler Qwol are capable but slipping through the ribcage that is our enemy’s encampment to strike at the heart is tantamount to suicide.”

“Ah, yes, because adding one extra person will make this strike team succeed where it was otherwise destined to fail,” Arkk said, trying and failing to keep the snide out of his voice. Turning back to Hawkwood, he asked, “Can’t we bombard them back?”

“They will have defenses of their own.”

“If their spellcasters are busy powering defensive rituals, they won’t have time to launch attacks. I can get eight more spellcasters here within two hours. If we can hold out for that long—”

“Brace yourselves!”

The cry that had become uncomfortably familiar over the past day made Arkk tense up. He spread his legs, steadying himself in preparation. The sky darkened as the protective ritual strengthened in anticipation of the incoming boulder. The boulder itself blocked out the sun, casting the wall in an even greater darkness.

It struck the protective barrier, breaking apart into much smaller fragments. The ground shook and the wall trembled as bits and pieces, still the size of large animals, tumbled down the barrier and slammed into the ground outside the wall. Arkk grit his teeth, gripping the parapet to steady himself.

A loud cry from the direction of the protective ritual circle made Arkk’s blood chill over. The haze keeping the chunks of rock from crushing them blinked twice then failed. Rubble, no longer supported by the barrier, tumbled directly toward the wall.

Arkk grabbed hold of Hawkwood, throwing them both to the ground just in time to avoid a cow-sized chunk of rock. Smaller bits and pieces showered down on them, forcing Arkk to cover the back of his head with his arms. He’d have welts all down his back in short order but figured that was a better outcome than being crushed.

One man, still with the wherewithal to keep watch, shouted out, “Another one!”

Arkk’s eyes widened. Despite the pain in his back and arms, he threw himself to his feet. The chunk of the boulder that had almost crushed him and Hawkwood had collapsed a portion of the wall behind Arkk, separating him and Hawkwood from Astra and the purifier. Judging by the shouts, not everyone on the wall was as lucky as they had been but Arkk didn’t have time to help anyone.

Using the same spell he had used at the Duke’s party, an ethereal road formed in front of him, granting him the swiftness and surety of step to dash down the stairs as fast as possible. The Electro Deus on his tongue stalled before he could fry the chronicler, however.

Chronicler Qwol sat crouched in the center of the ritual circle, gaunt face contorted in a look of concentration. Agnete strode forward, not to incinerate him for his sabotage or treachery but to take over the position of Margarete, collapsed and unconscious in one of the radial spots.

Heavy boots landed at his side. Astra, having vaulted from the wall, stood from her crouched landing. Arkk glanced at her, watching the way she cracked her neck as she straightened her back. He didn’t say anything, instead rushing forward with the last of his enhanced swiftness. When one member of the ritual circle fell, it sapped magic from the others at an increased rate. All four were wobbling. One looked ready to collapse. Arkk reached the caster, grabbed the man’s shoulders, and all but threw him from the ritual circle. No time to be polite about it.

Sylvara Astra, hot on his heels, did the same to the other wobbling caster, hefting the man up with little obvious exertion before stepping into the spot herself. She added her magic to the array just in time for the second boulder to slam into the barrier. Although a bead of sweat rolled off the side of her face, the ritual circle didn’t even flicker.

Emboldened by the initial failure of the barrier, Evestani sent another dozen boulders at Elmshadow in such rapid succession that they had to have exhausted their spellcasters. With Arkk, Agnete, Astra, and Qwol powering the defenses, not a single pebble made it through.

When the attacks finally ceased an hour short of nightfall, even Arkk was feeling a little drained. At least he was on his feet. The chronicler, who had been stuck in the anchor position for the duration, collapsed into the arms of one of Hawkwood’s men. Agnete, still wearing her armor, shuffled away with slumped shoulders and heavy breathing once one of Hawkwood’s men could take over. Their time in the ritual circle had afforded some much-needed rest to White Company’s spellcasters.

“Eight extra spellcasters… would be handy right about now,” Sylvara Astra said, taking deep breaths between her words.

Arkk tried not to look too guilty. While he could probably get them here, there was one small problem. He had eight spellcasters but they weren’t his. Following the invasion, he had offered Katja asylum within Fortress Al-Mir because he needed them for the ritual. They weren’t his employees and Katja wanted to charge an arm and a leg for their services. Fortress Al-Mir wasn’t exactly hurting for gold right now but it very easily could be if he had to ask for more than what he had already negotiated.

He had a discount thanks to offering them asylum but Katja knew he needed her and wouldn’t kick her out. That, unfortunately, gave her a fair amount of bargaining power. With practically every other spellcaster in the nation tied up in the war, he doubted he would be able to find others on short notice.

When Hawkwood and Astra had told him the vagaries of the plan, he had suggested bringing over the spellcasters mostly because following the plan of a potential assassin hadn’t sounded like the brightest idea. Now… it was safe to say that he had changed his mind about their theoretical status as assassins.

If they were working with Evestani, they would have simply allowed the defensive ritual to fail.

“You… have quite the frightening constitution… Mister Arkk.”

“You knew?” Arkk said, his train of thought broken at hearing his name.

“I have read all of Inquisitor Vrox’s reports. His depictions of you were extensive.”

Arkk’s fingers twitched. “So? What now?”

“Now?” Astra planted on hand on her hip, looking up to the wall.

She delayed speaking, probably still trying to catch her breath. If he was being honest, her constitution frightened him far more than his own. Arkk was a cheater, using Fortress Al-Mir to power his magic. Astra, on the other hand, looked less winded than Agnete. While it was true that Arkk couldn’t see Agnete’s face to confirm, the heat around the ritual circle had faded to next to nothing over the last hour. That alone made Arkk think that she had been putting everything into the ritual to the point where she couldn’t even maintain her heat.

“This may come as an insult to your pride but you are no longer our priority. The war greatly concerns the Ecclesiarch. We have orders to hunt the dragonoid. You are a person of interest but not worth pursuing. Especially given Vrox’s assessment.”

“Assessment?” Arkk asked. “What’s he been saying about me?”

“That you and your anathematic magics are contained and do not represent an immediate threat to the greater Abbey of the Light or the good people of the Kingdom of Chernlock. I believe he also mentioned that you are utterly unassailable, though I believe that to be Vrox’s attempt at saving face over his disastrous assault.”

Arkk pressed his lips together. If Vrox were here himself, telling him all this, he would likely have believed it. That was the nature of the trust he had in Vrox. Master Inquisitrix Sylvara Astra, on the other hand, he knew nothing about. Only that she had helped defend Elmshadow just now.

“Thus, I propose the following. We eliminate the enemy’s ability to cast siege magic. Then you and I go our separate ways. I make a report that you are contributing to the defense of the realm as I hunt this dragonoid and you… carry on until such time as the Abbey of the Light deems your continued existence no longer palatable.”

Arkk folded his arms over his chest. “I can agree to that, I suppose. Though I would prefer if my continued existence wasn’t on the line.”

“That isn’t something I can directly affect,” Astra said, red eyes flicking from him to the purifier at the top of the wall. “Cooperation, I imagine, can open many doors. Making yourself known as a defender of the Duchy isn’t hurting, I assure you.”

“Fair enough. I assume you have more to this plan than marching through… What was it? The enemy’s ribcage?”

“A metaphor,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Are you willing to hear the actual plan?”

Arkk put on a fragile smile, wondering if this was how Agnete had felt anytime the inquisitors made use of the Binding Agent. Hopefully, she didn’t still feel like that with him. “If it stops these attacks, I’m up for just about anything.”

 

 

Arkk did his best to look at ease as the heavy portcullis over Elmshadow Burg’s western gate lifted.

Everything was prepared. Everything was planned for.

He stood alongside Hawkwood, the latter having been informed of Arkk’s suspicions. In the eaves, lurking in the dark and vacant homes near to the burg’s entrance, Hawkwood had positioned his finest marksmen, supposedly capable of striking an apple at a hundred paces with their crossbows. A full contingent of wary guards stood behind, sporting White Company’s chevrons, alongside a smaller company of orcs with Company Al-Mir’s compass maze insignia hidden behind chevrons as well. Two pairs of gorgon, one to petrify and one to free the other if their magic ended up turned on themselves, haunted the guardhouse, ready to strike.

Agnete, though not wishing to make herself known to the possible inquisitors or their purifier equivalent, nonetheless burned hot at Arkk’s back, wearing concealing armor on loan from one of Hawkwood’s men.

If these were inquisitors, Arkk hoped they would appreciate the precautions in the face of possible danger. If they were assassins…

He hoped they would be surprised.

The woman strode forward ahead of the others, her black uniform bearing the inquisitorial eye, golden regalia of the Abbey of the Light, and the blue and white striped shield of the Duke. Vrox didn’t wear the latter two. Was that a clue? An adjustment made for wartime? Or inconsequential difference in uniform? Her long silver-blue hair flowed over her chest from underneath her peaked cap. Red eyes beneath the brim looked over the welcoming party like hardened steel with little obvious concern.

They were, thankfully, not glowing red eyes. The color was common to dark elves and gremlins. Given the average height and lack of pointed ears, Arkk figured that she had ancestry of one of the two, maybe three generations back at most.

A rapid, excited clapping pulled Arkk’s attention away from the leader of the group. “Oh! Are you going to play with us?” The man who had been creating those statue-swallowing spheres let out a childish giggle. “Please say yes. I so rarely get to meet new friends and, when I do, pop! They’re gone.” His laughter cut out, leaving behind a sorry moan of disappointment. The way the grin never left his face and his wide, black eyes kept darting from soldier to soldier didn’t do anything to set Arkk at ease.

A mere glare over her shoulder from the lead inquisitor was enough to get the man to lock up. His back stiffened, the heels of his boots clicked together, and beads of sweat even started rolling down his pale face.

Arkk wondered for a moment if he was also on some kind of leash, much as Agnete had been. The ice marble, referred to as a Binding Agent, caused extreme pain and duress, even evoking a fight or flight instinct that leaned toward the latter since it stripped her ability to generate flames. A fleeting thought of recruiting this man out from under the inquisitors, the same way he had recruited Agnete, crossed Arkk’s mind.

One look into the man’s maniacal eyes, which regained their fervor the moment the woman looked away, made Arkk shut that idea down. Although he had recruited criminals and raiders, Arkk was confident that none were quite so… zealous.

“You are Company Commander Hawkwood?” she asked, striding forward without so much as a glance at the array of defenders in front of the gate.

At least, not until everyone shifted, readying weapons. Her gait stalled as she slowly turned her head, sweeping her gaze over the assembled group. Her arms remained down at her sides, stiff but well away from the narrow sword’s hilt at her hip.

“I apologize for the rude meeting,” Hawkwood said with a smile that failed to reach his eyes. “But there are some mighty suspicious happenings around these parts. An inquisitor showing up out of the blue—”

“Inquisitrix,” she corrected, gaze returning to Hawkwood. “Master Inquisitrix Sylvara Astra.”

“I’m sure those fancy titles make a number of men bow out of your way but I’m going to need some proof of identity.”

Astra pursed her lips before glancing back over her other shoulder. “Ludwig.”

The gaunt man with a long, narrow face stepped forward, reaching into a leather bag at his side.

“Chronicler Qwol will see to your needs.”

The chronicler pulled out a few fine pieces of paper as he approached. Intricate scrawl, written with golden ink, adorned the pages. Arkk’s eyes focused on the top center where the Luminous Mandala, the primary symbol of the Abbey of the Light, sat. Normally, it was simplified to a series of concentric rings. This piece of paper had the full version, a harmonious blend of geometric precision and ethereal elegance. It appeared as a sunburst filled with a lattice-like pattern, rings following rays of represented light as they spread outward.

To either side were the lesser regalia of the Abbey of the Light. Icons that represented the Heart of Gold and the Almighty Glory, according to Vezta. Arkk ignored them for the moment, eyes roaming up to the intricate pendant hanging from the chronicler’s neck, a simplified representation of the Luminous Mandala. It was identical to the one Greesom wore, further validating their claims. Were it not for Agnete, Arkk might have taken the papers, the outfits, and the pendant would have convinced him.

Hawkwood shot Arkk a glance and nodded his head. The information on the papers looked legitimate.

He handed it back but, before Qwol could place the document back in the leather bag, Hawkwood gripped his wrist. “Authenticate it.”

The chronicler’s eyes jumped up his forehead. He glanced back, wordlessly asking Astra a question. The woman’s hard eyes narrowed but she nodded her head.

Arkk tensed, ready to fling a lightning bolt when the assassins revealed themselves, only to deflate entirely as the chronicler grabbed the pendant from his neck and overlaid it atop the Luminous Mandala on the piece of paper. A warm, white glow coursed through the symbol, flowing over to the letters as well.

They were genuine.

“Satisfied?” Astra asked, one hand on her hip.

Hawkwood, frowning behind his messy beard, released Chronicler Qwol. “I apologize, Inquisitrix. Evestani has a penchant for using disguised assassins. Your timing and direction of approach are suspicious.”

Astra turned again, glaring at the horizon. If looks could kill… She turned back with a more thoughtful expression beneath the brim of her peaked cap.

“So…” The man with black eyes slumped his shoulders. “No games today?”

“Quite. I suppose it is your lucky day, Hawkwood. We were in the area pursuing an… unrelated target.”

Arkk shifted, wondering if that referred to him, Agnete, or something else.

“Purifier Tybalt felt the touch of forbidden magics,” she continued without even looking in his direction. “We followed his instinct to the animated constructs.”

“Those were my men,” Hawkwood said, rough voice cracking at the end of the sentence. He licked his lips, taking a moment to recenter himself. “Struck by enchanted arrows of the Evestani army. We… I had hoped we could find a way to return them to normal.”

Astra glanced to the chronicler, who shook his narrow head. “It is the opinion of the Light that such magic could not be undone. Your men died. Take solace in knowing they are no longer a threat to their fellows anymore.”

Arkk spoke before he could help himself. “What did you do with them?” he asked, only to grimace as everyone’s attention turned to him. Now knowing that these were true inquisitors and not assassins, he should have just left and let them handle everything. But this was new magic. Even beyond his personal interest, knowing what might face him and Agnete should the inquisitors turn out to be less friendly than Vrox felt vital. The sudden attention still made him balk. “I just… thought purifiers used holy flames.”

“They have been detained,” the purifier exclaimed with an overabundance of ardor in his voice. “They shall await the end, safe and sound until the stars dim with not but the void for company!”

Astra snapped her fingers, making the purifier flinch back. “Ignore him. He is disturbed.”

“All stars will burn out eventually,” Purifier Tybalt said, shrinking in on himself. A small smile spread across his face as he looked at his leader. “Some sooner than others.”

“Rest assured,” Astra said, ignoring his words, “their existence no longer concerns this reality.”

Arkk tried to keep his expression as neutral as possible. Two words among everything said since his question stuck out to him. Detained and Void. One of the statues at the Fortress Al-Mir temple room was the Jailor of the Void. The patron of time, eternity, and emptiness. The one statue that Vezta had been unable to explain why it might have manifested.

If this purifier was like Agnete, an avatar of the old Pantheon, Arkk had a feeling he knew to which god he owed his abilities. Did that help anything? Not necessarily right now. Perhaps it would make it easier to find a countermeasure or at least figure out all that he could do.

“As for holy flames… Three purifiers wield them. They are flashy, obvious, and destructive. It is hardly a surprise that rumors have spread that all purifiers utilize fire.”

Arkk resisted the urge to look back at Agnete. He felt he had a better source than mere rumors. Then again, she had said that she didn’t know all that many inquisitors.

“You said this is my lucky day,” Hawkwood said, drawing attention back to him. “Sure doesn’t feel like it.”

“Our hunt has stalled. Given our purview and the Golden Order’s usage of anathematic magics, it is well within our rights to assist in breaking this siege.” She paused, leaning over to the chronicler as the gaunt man started whispering at her side. “Ah yes. We also wish to inquire about those… skulls surrounding the valley. They ran off our horses.”

“You didn’t destroy them, did you?” Hawkwood asked, alarmed. “Those are the only things keeping Evestani at bay.”

“Not yet.” Her eyes hardened. “You constructed them?”

After letting out a brief sigh of relief, Hawkwood shook his head. “A colleague. He said he had a way of protecting the area. I didn’t ask. Learned it is generally better not to when he is involved.”

Arkk pressed his lips together, eying Hawkwood. He most certainly had asked. He hadn’t been too approving of using the dead, even if the skulls were from ancient barrows. That was how people got themselves cursed, he said. Quite a similar sentiment to Edvin’s concerns.

“This colleague being Arkk of Company Al-Mir?”

Arkk stiffened at the mention of his name, only to realize that none of the three were looking in his direction.

“You know him?”

“Of him. He is a person of interest.”

“The target of your hunt?” Hawkwood said, asking the question Arkk had wondered earlier.

“No. We seek one roaming the skies. A dragonoid was spotted in the area. I don’t suppose your scouts have any information for us on the matter?”

Hawkwood started, as did Arkk. “In the Duchy? Did Evestani bring it?”

“Unsure. Thus far, we’ve had no reports of it attacking anyone. Given the information troubles with the war, that is only a matter of time. Our goal was to detain it.”

Detain. There was that word again. Judging by the gleeful look in Purifier Tybalt’s eyes, he doubted they meant to detain it in any regular cell. Which wasn’t all that surprising. Dragonoids were something of an enigma. Not dragons, though related to them to the point where their armored scales made them nearly indestructible to any conventional weaponry and normal magics. They possessed natural magics akin to beastmen but on a far greater scale. A flame dragonoid might give Agnete a run for her money in terms of destructive prowess. If a dragonoid and Agnete were to fight, Arkk doubted he would put his money on his employee. Agnete was still a fleshy human behind her fires.

If Evestani was fielding dragonoids, the war might already be over. They just didn’t know it yet. It was said that dragonoids were hostile to almost every human. However, he wouldn’t put it past the Golden Order, backed by a member of the Pantheon, to have a way of controlling them.

“Well, I’m afraid we can’t help with that. Your assistance with the siege will be appreciated. We planned to hold out for the Duke’s men to arrive, projected to be in about four day’s time, and then use the reinforcements to turn the tides once—”

“Sir!” One of the gate guards leaned over the top wall, waving one of the spyglasses. “Movement on the horizon! A large force is approaching!”

Arkk’s eyes widened. He looked down at the inquisitors, still half expecting them to reveal their treachery and attack. When they didn’t, he had to confirm. “You didn’t destroy the mausoleums, correct?”

Red eyes centered on him once again. This time, she was more discerning, looking over him for a long moment even as Hawkwood started barking out orders to his men. Positions needed to be taken up, defenses raised, spellcasters on alert for falling arrows, and reserves woken. The purifier turned around, eagerly looking out Elmshadow’s gate. At Arkk’s back, he felt the chill of the winter air vanish as the heat escaped Agnete’s concealing armor.

Master Inquisitrix Sylvara Astra merely regarded Arkk with an uncanny calm. She leaned over and whispered something to the chronicler, who turned his half-lidded eyes onto Arkk as well. He didn’t say anything back, however, merely watching as well until Astra spoke.

“I believe I said that I did not. And you would be..?”

“My adjutant, Tavyn,” Hawkwood said, looking to Arkk. “Have you got your crystal ball?”

Arkk nodded his head, mumbling thanks to Hawkwood as he turned away from the inquisitors. Back to them, he summoned the crystal ball to his waiting hand while acting like Agnete was handing it to him. Turning back around, he held it up while pushing magic into it.

Whatever magic the Evestani had used to cloak themselves from his prior scrying attempts must have only worked while they were stationary. The army was marching forward, just barely reaching the point where the mausoleums should have sent them fleeing in terror. He saw the line in the front flinch, perhaps even losing their grip on their weapons. A golden light, emanating from the bald Pious of the Golden Order that each company counted among their number, suffused throughout the advancing soldiers.

Whatever they were doing wasn’t a perfect solution. More than a handful broke ranks and fled. The rest of the army didn’t try to stop them. They simply continued forward until the first company reached the closest set of mausoleums. As soon as they did, they started hacking and beating, using horseman’s picks to chip away at the stone the lesser servants had constructed. When the first of the mausoleums fell, the vanguard lifted their weapons in cheer, emboldening the other companies as they started hacking at the rest of the defensive line.

“It appears our time is limited,” Inquisitrix Astra said, having stepped closer to peer in alongside Hawkwood and Arkk. “What will it be, White Company? Admit us entry to assist or continue this…” She trailed off, allowing a snide grin to cross her face. “This inquisition.”

Arkk shared a look with Hawkwood. He wasn’t completely convinced. They still hadn’t heard a proper explanation about why the inquisitors had approached from the direction of Evestani. Arkk felt like it was even more suspicious now. What if those golden statues had been a threat to their own side, willing to lash out at anyone and not just Hawkwood’s men? It could be that these inquisitors cleared them away and still had a plot to assassinate everyone here, just in time to open the gates for the approaching army.

Then again, the inquisitor’s papers had checked out just as Agnete had said they would. Not only that, but Agnete hadn’t touched his back. That was supposed to have been the sign that she noticed something fishy with their authentication.

After a brief hesitation, Arkk nodded his head. He wouldn’t be leaving Hawkwood alone with them, that was for sure. The current crisis warranted risks. Elmshadow couldn’t handle those golden arrows raining down upon it. Once the Duke’s Guard arrived, they would present additional targets for those golden arrows, at least until informed of and secured against the danger. With Agnete only able to melt the ground to pacify the golden statues, having a purifier on hand who could detain them sounded almost necessary.

Hawkwood frowned behind his mustache, clearly displeased. He likely had the same thoughts and had been hoping that Arkk would shake his head, giving him an easy out. But he hadn’t. Thus, Hawkwood turned back.

“Get inside. I’d welcome you to Elmshadow but it wouldn’t be much of a welcome,” he said before tilting his head back. “Seal the gate!”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Arkk said in a low whisper. Astra probably heard but Arkk didn’t much care. She didn’t react one way or another.

“We are specialists, not generals,” Astra said. “I will defer to your expertise. Direct us where you will but know that we will not follow orders that sound like they will lead to unnecessary deaths.”

“Right,” Hawkwood said, voice gruff as the portcullis slammed down. “Let me get my men in order, then I’d best find out more about your capabilities to know where to place you.”

He turned and started marching through the assembled troops, shouting an order to one of his actual adjutants as he moved. Arkk made a quick motion to Agnete, warning her away. The woman was getting too hot—she would be found out in an instant if her armor started glowing red. As it was, he thanked the chaos and the crowd that her heat hadn’t been noticed thus far.

As soon as she turned, heading toward the contingent of orcs that weren’t following along with the rest of White Company’s men, Arkk hurried after Hawkwood. As he moved, he watched his back the same way he had while blindfolded in the Silver City mines, making sure that the inquisitors following behind weren’t about to launch a surprise attack.

Siege or not, he wasn’t about to let Hawkwood go anywhere alone with these people.

 

 

What was one to do while being sieged? Especially when the enemy was only sieging one side of the burg. It was entirely possible to evacuate the citizens out toward the east. But to the east was Evastani’s goal. Anyone fleeing toward Cliff would just have to face them again down the road. Some had gone on their own. Others stayed behind.

Perhaps they could have headed north or south once they cleared the valley. Those weren’t safe either. This army of Evestani’s wasn’t their only force in the Duchy, just the one pushed into the territory the most.

“At least your mausoleums are keeping them well away from the walls,” Hawkwood said, lowering a telescoping spyglass. Since setting up their encampment, Evestani had done something to obstruct scrying. It wasn’t the complete shutdown that the inquisitors had tried. The crystal balls just fogged over, making it difficult to see anything through the glass.

Did they know they were being scried upon? Or were these typical precautions anytime they made camp? Arkk couldn’t be sure as he had only scried on troops on the move in the past.

It was annoying. Crystal balls, along with the teleportation rituals, were his greatest advantage, in his opinion. Even more so than the likes of Vezta or Agnete or gorgon. Having people shut that ability down didn’t help his paranoia. It was perfectly rational to shut down magics like that. Arkk even wanted to do it as well, even though he wasn’t sure that anyone was actively scrying on him. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder what all these people who couldn’t be scried upon were doing where he couldn’t spy.

“I shudder to think what might happen if their archers got close enough to fire their golden arrows into the burg,” Hawkwood continued. “One of those monstrosities in confined quarters? Evestani would have a whole burg of golden soldiers by nightfall.”

Arkk lowered his spyglass. They stood on the wall of Elmshadow Burg, watching out over the snow-dusted fields. The Evestani army had set up a camp, looking like they were going to stick it out here rather than try to go around the bulky mountains.

The golden soldiers that Agnete had fused to the ground had all stopped moving. Without venturing closer, he couldn’t tell if they had given up on trying to free themselves or if whatever magic animated them had finally run dry. If it was the latter, they had lasted about twenty-four hours. Plenty of time to cause widespread destruction within the burg’s walls. He couldn’t help but nod his head, feeling numb at the thought.

He glanced over. It had been three weeks since he last saw Hawkwood in person. Through the use of Swiftwing harpies, they had remained in contact and Arkk had scried upon the man’s position several times. Still, it was disconcerting to see his mentor and friend as he was now.

At the Duke’s party, Hawkwood had been a bit large. Not fat—the man kept himself in shape—but still with plenty of girth. His neck had hardly fit inside his collar. He wore his hair styled in a wealthy fashion, slicked back, and had a bushy yet tidy mustache.

Now, if Arkk had to describe his appearance in one word, it would be haggard. Gone was any spare fat on the man. He might have lost some muscle mass as well, forced to survive on rations of hardtack and pottage. His brown hair, longer and unkempt, traded its groomed luster for frayed and wild strands. A beard had joined his mustache, both of which looked like he had forgotten about them entirely, leaving them to fend for themselves out in the wilds of the Duchy.

“The Duke’s Men will be here soon,” Arkk said, trying to console the man. “Combined with White Company, we’ll outnumber them by a few thousand.”

“A few thousand doesn’t mean much in a protracted battle. Getting two armies to fight isn’t easy either. Not to mention… I am no longer convinced that a large force is wise.”

“Those arrows?” Arkk asked.

Hawkwood nodded. “My casters have determined that they are miraculous in nature, though my bishop claims to have never seen anything like them.”

“Your casters and bishop?”

Hawkwood put on a smile, thin and lacking humor though it was. “You aren’t the only one who has recruited those well-versed in magic. Proper utilization of casters is a force multiplier. A squad of ten has even odds against ten men. Add in a caster and they can take on twenty with confidence.”

“Yeah. Learned that myself.”

Zullie wasn’t that much of a force multiplier. She wasn’t much of a combatant. Agnete, on the other hand? Arkk doubted she could take on the entire Evestani army before someone got a lucky hit in but he didn’t fear much for her safety if he sent her alone against ten or even twenty opponents. More if they were fighting from a position of ambush. The gorgon and Vezta acted much the same, though they weren’t spellcasters.

“That said,” Hawkwood continued, “I don’t suppose your people have come up with any countermeasures?”

Arkk winced. “No. They are… working on something else,” he said, feeling a bit guilty.

“Something that will help with the war?”

“I hope so.”

Hawkwood stared for a moment before offering a brief nod of his head. He didn’t ask anything more, simply bringing his spyglass to his eye once again.

Arkk started to follow, only to freeze as he heard a noise. A building drone like a bow drawn over a dozen stringed instruments all at once, reaching a high crescendo without any harmony. At the peak, the sound went silent. A low, vibrating tone echoed out over the vacant fields, slamming into the wall along with a brief flash of light out in the distance.

He tensed, fearing an attack that had gotten through the mausoleum defenses. Taking up his spyglass, he swept it over the distance only to spot a deep gouge in the land. A perfect void, like someone had taken a spoon and carved out a bit of land.

A black sphere formed in the distance, surrounding a trio of the golden soldiers, bringing with it another discordant noise of rising strings. Except, it wasn’t quite a black sphere. The colors inside the expanding sphere were wrong. The snow turned black but the gold of the soldiers turned blue-white. Shadows turned light and light turned dark. The sphere expanded until it encompassed the three golden statues, hitting that crescendo once again. With the low-toned thrum, the sphere collapsed along with everything inside it. The soldiers disappeared along with another scoop of the ground.

“They’re… exploding?”

“Not quite,” Hawkwood said, tone gruff. “To the left.”

Arkk, noting Hawkwood pointing a finger, followed along until he spotted three figures standing out in the fields. The one standing ahead of the others pinched the tips of his fingers together, using both hands. As he spread his hands apart, another of those inverted spheres began growing around the next group of golden soldiers. It was not a quick process. If those golden soldiers could move, Arkk imagined they could have walked out of the sphere even with their sluggish movements.

That said, when the process finished and the man clapped his hands together, Arkk couldn’t help but shudder at just how everything was gone from inside that inverted sphere.

He watched another dozen spheres, each consuming the unmoving statues, before he focused on those working the magic. He didn’t recognize any of them but his heart skipped a beat nonetheless. One woman stood back with another man, watching with keen eyes as the one in front made sphere after sphere. Their uniforms, long black coats with a series of straps holding them closed in the front, were uncomfortably familiar.

The man creating the spheres was thin, gangly so. He kept hunching over and shuddering between working his magic, clutching at his stomach the way someone might if they couldn’t control their laughter.

Neither of the other two looked amused. The man, the shorter of the two, looked like he could have been Chronicler Greesom’s brother. Arkk couldn’t make out too many details at a distance but he was shorter, thinner, and had a gleaming pendant dangling from his neck that bounced lightly as he wrote in his notebook.

The woman stood tall, hands on her hips as she watched. Her long cloak fluttered behind her in a breeze while the brim of a peaked cap hid most of her face. Flowing silver hair—perhaps tinged with a hint of blue—made Arkk wonder if she was an elf. She didn’t look quite tall enough. Perhaps a half-elf. Either way, she, along with the others, had beads of sweat forming on the back of Arkk’s neck.

“Inquisitors,” Arkk said, stomach dropping. He couldn’t make out the eye-shaped pin from this distance, even with the spyglasses, but there was no doubt about their identity. The way one stood back, one wrote in a small notebook, and one performed the dangerous magic only confirmed that suspicion.

Did that mean the man creating the spheres was another purifier? Arkk had imagined all of them as flame-wielders like Agnete. Not… whatever this was. Though, given what he knew of Agnete, he supposed this made sense. Agnete was a chosen of one member of the Pantheon. Vezta had implied that there would only be one avatar for any given member of the Pantheon at once. Both Zullie and Agnete said that there were other purifiers.

Thus, other purifiers had to belong to different deities or else there was some other explanation for their powers.

The man creating the spheres turned away from his task for a moment, looking straight at Arkk with wide, manic, and strange eyes. His solid black eyes, illuminated by a single ring of white, made Arkk shudder. Not just because of the strange appearance but because of the way the supposed purifier looked directly at him despite there being no way even an elf could pick him out at this distance.

Arkk lowered the spyglass, knot tightening in his stomach. “I… should go.”

Were the inquisitors here for the war or him? He honestly couldn’t guess one way or the other. If it were Vrox, he would have said the war. These new inquisitors… he didn’t know anything about them. He couldn’t trust them like he trusted Vrox.

“I need to get Agnete out of here,” he said, tone slightly more urgent. He did not want to see what a fight between two purifiers looked like. Even if, with how long it seemed to take to form those spheres, he figured Agnete might win. And that was only true if the inquisitors didn’t have another countermeasure to Agnete’s abilities along the lines of those ice marbles.

“Arkk.”

Arkk paused, looking back to Hawkwood.

The man reached out, clapping a hand on Arkk’s shoulder. “Thanks for all you’ve done.”

“I hardly did anything. I wish I could do more. Maybe those inquisitors—”

“Nonsense. Were it not for your mausoleums, I fear we would all be golden soldiers by now.”

“Ah. Speaking of that, if the inquisitors give you trouble over it, feel free to blame it on me. They already don’t like me.”

“To be fair, those mausoleums were all you,” Hawkwood said, smiling properly now. “Go. I can handle a few inquisitors.”

Arkk dipped his head. “I might be back if I think of something else I can do to help. Otherwise… you know where to send the Swiftwings. Stay safe.”

“You as well,” Hawkwood said, giving Arkk one firm squeeze of his shoulder before letting him go. “You as well.”

Arkk took the stairs off the wall and hurried through town. Elmshadow was a fairly sizable burg. Not as big as Cliff but larger than either Darkwood or Moonshine. Its garrison and keep stood tall at the center of the burg, currently occupied by about half of White Company while the rest of Hawkwood’s men camped out outside the eastern wall. A large market, currently devoid of any people, sprawled out around the main garrison entrance.

While White Company occupied the majority of the garrison, Company Al-Mir had a few rooms for their personnel. At the moment, that consisted of Agnete, four gorgon, and six orcs. Hardly anything in comparison to White Company’s four thousand or the local baron’s guard which had several hundred.

It took only a few seconds to round up the gorgon and orcs. Arkk had to check in on where Agnete was using his employee link, though he wasn’t too surprised to find her down in the garrison’s local smithy. Ever since hearing fully about her patron, the Burning Forge, smithies tended to be her regular haunts, whether in Fortress Al-Mir or elsewhere. She didn’t usually participate in the work, often just watching or, occasionally, sitting entirely within the kilns and forges.

Whatever made her comfortable.

Today, she stood hovering over the shoulder of some poor member of White Company as the man fixed up a battered breastplate. The embers in her eyes lit bright as she watched and scanned, observing—even judging—the way he beat down the bent metal back into place.

“Agnete. We need to go.”

The wild mane of black hair she had shifted as she turned her head. “An attack?” she asked, embers in her eyes intensifying.

“No! No…” Arkk said quickly, both for her sake and the sake of the tense blacksmith at her side. He motioned, taking her outside and well away from anyone else before continuing. “Inquisitors. With a purifier who… I don’t even know how to describe it. He made spheres that destroyed everything inside them.”

“Purifiers wield holy flame,” Agnete said with a numb tone in her voice. She didn’t look worried but the glow under her skin started to brighten.

Arkk blinked, frowning to himself. Had he misunderstood? Perhaps there were more like Agnete and this new inquisitor was some other class of enforcer. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter at the moment. He could try to figure out what to call this new inquisitor later. “Whoever they are, they’re dressed like inquisitors. I’m not too interested in meeting them and I doubt you want to either.”

“Can you scry on them?”

Since scrying hadn’t been working on Evestani and the other inquisitors Arkk knew of had ways of blocking it, he hadn’t even tried. He quickly conjured his crystal ball. Fortress Al-Mir possessed two, one he kept to himself for the most part. The other had a team working day and night, scrying on various locales of import. Mostly areas Hawkwood had pointed out as being strategically valuable.

It did feel a bit bad that he kept one near himself when he wasn’t even using it every second of the day.

The value of being able to peer across a battlefield without resorting to Hawkwood’s limited spyglass couldn’t be understated.

He first did a quick check of the Evestani encampment. The crystal ball just went foggy. It was like Evestani had some spellcasters summon up a thick fog. That could easily have been what they had done. Arkk didn’t envy sitting around in a cold and wet fog in the middle of winter. Then again, he didn’t have that golden light staving off the elements.

Hawkwood had sent out lookouts throughout the mountains, making sure that no forces were hiking through with the intention of dropping those golden arrows on the burg. The mausoleums only protected the valley, after all.

Thinking of the valley, the viewpoint changed, dragged over to dozens of scooped-out divots in the terrain. The inquisitors were still working and were not doing anything to hide their presence from scrying eyes. Able to look closer with the crystal ball, Arkk spotted the familiar eye-shaped silver pin with a vertical bar in place of the pupil.

“Inquisitors,” Arkk said. “Recognize them?”

“No.”

Arkk felt a chill run down his spine as a new thought occurred to him. Were they inquisitors? They dressed the part. They had the right numbers, including one man who had a notebook, but that might only mean that someone had done their research. Taking an extra moment to think about it, something didn’t quite add up.

Where had they come from? They were out in the fields between the mausoleum defenses and the burg. They hadn’t passed through the burg or someone would have noticed them. Hawkwood’s scouts around the mountains had a whole system in place to check in on each other, making sure nobody disappeared and let anyone through. Thus far, the alarm hadn’t gone off.

Did that mean they had come from the mausoleums? Somehow avoiding that mental magic? Judging by Vrox and Greesom reflecting a gorgon’s petrifying gaze back upon the gorgon, Arkk wouldn’t be surprised if they could get past easily. But that meant that they were coming from the Evestani side of things.

“Are these inquisitors?” Arkk asked, voice a little more intense. “Even if you don’t recognize them, could they be new or just unknown to you?”

“That is likely,” Agnete admitted. “I can name… six inquisitors. Not including myself.”

“Six… that’s… Is that a lot? How many inquisitors are there?”

Agnete shrugged. Pinching a length of black hair between her fingers, she rubbed it in thought. “Three dozen? Maybe four. I don’t have exact numbers. That is a guess based on our typical operating area.”

That wasn’t many but it also meant that Agnete wasn’t likely to know any given inquisitor. Arkk bit his lip as he stared into the crystal ball, eyeing the woman, who he presumed to be in Vrox’s role within this group. She did not have pointed ears, he noted. The man at her side didn’t quite look like Greesom from a closer perspective. Their similarities ended with their height. Where Greesom was fairly rotund in a muscular manner, this man was thin and had a gaunt face. Maybe he had been ill recently, even.

The last man, the one causing the imploding spheres, looked mad. He had wide, crazed eyes and kept descending into fits of laughter. The woman snapped at him nearly constantly, though Arkk couldn’t hear what she was saying through the crystal ball.

“Is there anything that gives them away as impostors? Their clothes or that strange magic?”

Their clothes were almost identical to what Agnete was wearing now. Agnete’s weren’t official inquisitor clothing, but rather something made by the fortress tailor. From a distance, it was doubtful that anyone would be able to tell the difference—not taking into account Agnete’s lack of sleeves, having burned them off at some point or another. From close-up, it was a different story. The seams were bulky while parts that should have been protruding were flat. The stitching lacked regular finesse and the hems weren’t even. Were Agnete to stand next to a proper inquisitor, she would look like a cheap copy.

“Inquisitors seek out strange or anathematic magic. We don’t merely destroy it, however. We contain and, oftentimes, utilize that magic. Anathematic magic went into the Binding Agent that was used to control me.”

That fit with what Vrox had said to him in one of their meetings. He wanted Vezta and the artifact used to control her. With that in mind, it wouldn’t have surprised Arkk in the slightest if they intended for Vezta to take on a similar role as Agnete or this black-eyed man.

“As for their clothes,” Agnete continued, peering closer into the crystal ball. “I see nothing amiss. So long as they have the proper credentials, I wouldn’t blink an eye if they introduced themselves to me. Does something stand out to you?”

Arkk pursed his lips, staring down into the crystal ball. “The situation. They show up and start destroying the golden statues. Great. But where did they come from? With Evestani’s penchant for disguised assassins… Hawkwood will just let them in at the gate. They walk in, act like inquisitors. As soon as night falls, they take out anyone in a leadership position. Maybe try to find a weakness in the mausoleums. Assuming they don’t just use that magic to destroy them.” Drumming his fingers against his thigh, he looked to Agnete. “These proper credentials, would someone like Hawkwood be able to tell if they were true or forged?”

“Hawkwood has mentioned in the past that he doesn’t have much experience with inquisitors.”

That was a no, then. “Can you?”

“Unless something drastic has changed since absconding from the organization.”

Arkk ground his teeth, hating what he was about to ask. “How dangerous do you think it would be to meet them if they are real inquisitors?”

“Not any more dangerous than if they were assassins.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

 

 

“Edvin, get back to Fortress Al-Mir,” Arkk said, lowering his crystal ball. “I want Agnete here immediately. The gorgon as well. Have Vezta show you which ritual circles to use to reach her.”

“Me? Interact with the scary pyromaniac? Are you—”

Arkk turned, eyes casting a red glow over Edvin’s face. “Now,” he said.

“Going!” Edvin said, his voice tinged with forced cheer. He fled, not bothering to hide his rush as he dashed out of Elmshadow’s garrison office that Arkk and Hawkwood had taken over.

They had a teleportation circle in the dark cellar with a lesser servant burrowed beneath, ready to destroy it if anyone unauthorized so much as stepped into the room. Fortress Al-Mir was seven hops back. Arkk hadn’t liked using them before but found them to be too efficient. Now, however, their tactical advantage in moving small numbers was too great to ignore. There were traps and decoys around each actual teleportation circle, other circles were designed to look like a proper teleportation circle but would kill or maim any users. He worried it wasn’t enough. All it would take would be someone scrying to reverse engineer where the teleportation circle went, then they could follow that straight back to Fortress Al-Mir.

It wasn’t so much of a concern with the inquisitors as they already knew where the fortress was—even if he hoped his ruse of moving the fortress was still intact. Arkk didn’t know if that was true of Evestani, however, and fully intended to keep the location as hidden as possible. He didn’t know Evestani’s scrying capabilities but imagined they had some methods of keeping watch on distant matters. He wanted to find out how the inquisitors were blocking his scrying so that he could use the same protection around the teleportation circles. Until he—or, more likely, Zullie—figured that out, he had taken to enclosing the ritual circles in pitch-dark environments, easily constructed with the help of lesser servants.

He did wish there was a way to move larger forces around. Scaling up the ritual circle did not work. It would only transport one ‘thing’ at a time. A person. A horse. A cart. A person could carry another person or things, but there was a limit. A cart couldn’t even be fully loaded. At some point in loading the cart, seemingly at different levels every time they tried, it would just leave behind everything beyond the cart itself. Neither Zullie nor Vezta had an explanation as to why. In addition, for everyone beyond him, Vezta, Zullie, Savren, Agnete, and Hale, activating the ritual circle more than once or twice quickly became magically exhausting. Even they would tire after a dozen or two uses.

Not exactly a feasible option for transporting thousands of soldiers, their supplies and sustenance, and all the support personnel required for running an army.

Which was incredibly disheartening now of all times.

Standing, Arkk turned to the window in the garrison’s office. Elevated above the rest of the burg, it allowed a clear view out between the Twin Elm Peaks, over the wide and currently vacant fields nestled in the valley. Far in the distance, near where he had been setting up Elmshadow’s defenses, he could just barely make out the movement of the approaching White Company, fleeing from a few dozen golden soldiers.

Arkk wasn’t sure what was up with those things. Nor why Hawkwood had his company, four thousand strong, fleeing from no more than fifty of them. They were sluggish and heavy, judging by how deeply they sunk into the ground with every step. When Arkk had first scried on Hawkwood’s fleeing army, they had been much closer. Now, Hawkwood had put some distance between them. Their movements seemed stiff and janky, not at all like how a human would move. When he had scried on them earlier, he hadn’t noticed any flesh under their detailed armor and cloaks, just more gold.

The mausoleum defenses needed minds to target. These things looked more like animated statues. Had that all been a waste?

He hoped not. Even if the golden soldiers got close, the mausoleums should survive. The lesser servants had constructed them to be sturdy enough to hold up to all but the most dedicated of long-range bombardment. They would have been useless if any old archer could have knocked them over. A sword, especially a soft golden sword, would break before the hard stone.

The army made it past the mausoleums without problem. That was one small thing he had been worried about, especially with them being chased, but the talismans were exceedingly simple to make. Just a few quick marks that redirected the specific magic used. They weren’t even magically active themselves, more like an extension of the fear-inducing ritual that didn’t do anything while too far away.

Unfortunately, the golden soldiers followed. They didn’t stop to attack the mausoleums but neither were they turned aside by their power.

A heat at his back signaled the arrival of Agnete. With the temperature rise, she didn’t even need to announce her presence. Khan slithered into the room at her back, a step behind.

“Agnete, can your flames melt gold?”

She quirked her head to one side, sending her wild hair bobbing with her head. “I have encountered exceedingly little that my flames will not consume.”

“Good enough. Khan,” Arkk stepped closer to the pair, crystal ball in hand. “What do you make of these golden statues?”

The gorgon’s tongue darted out of his mouth as if it were possible to taste the statues through the ball. He shook his head a moment after. “They move. Thiss iss not gorgon magicss.”

“I figured,” Arkk said, tone polite yet deadpan. “Can you stone them? Or at least solidify them?”

“Unssure. I have never encountered ssuch creaturess.” He leaned in closer. “Sshow me their eyess.”

Arkk, looking down at the crystal ball, adjusted the scrying angle. Several of the golden soldiers were wearing armor and helmets. Only a few were lacking. He quickly closed in on one dressed as a priest, focusing on its face.

He recoiled involuntarily at the sight of the golden statue. The skin was nothing short of astounding. It bore an uncanny resemblance to human flesh, capturing every intricate detail with perfect precision. Every dimple carved around its lips, every wrinkle etched upon its forehead, and even the faintest scars were faithfully rendered in gold.

What truly sent a shiver down his spine was the hair. The tiny, delicate hairs that adorned the statue’s face. He had a trim beard, minute stubble on his cheeks, and even faithfully crafted eyebrows, drawn up to the golden man’s forehead. It was a masterful display of craftsmanship that Arkk couldn’t quite comprehend. They were being used as soldiers. Surely the artisan wouldn’t have bothered in going quite so in-depth when it was likely the solder was going to take a bludgeon to the face, deforming it all.

And the face… What a face. The expression frozen in such intense detail was an amalgamation of fear and terror. As if the artisan had looked upon a dying soldier and decided to use that pained visage as the inspiration for his construction. The eyes, so lifelike, held a silent scream of anguish that made him shudder.

Tearing his eyes from the crystal ball, Arkk noted his two companions. Agnete, though stony-faced as always, had taken a half step back. Khan looked unaffected. Being a gorgon, perhaps a human posed in such a state didn’t affect him or perhaps his inhuman features were simply better at concealing his disquiet. Either way, Arkk couldn’t help but wonder if there was some magic to these statues beyond simply animating the gold. A fear effect much like what he had tried to erect around Elmshadow would explain why Hawkwood was running instead of just crushing the soldiers.

“Their eyess are not flesshy,” Khan said, startling Arkk into a small jump. “Gorgon magicss won’t work.”

“Alright. Thank you for your input. Agnete, you up to turning these soldiers into puddles?”

The embers in her eyes intensified and the glow in the scars marring her face doubled over. She didn’t say a word but she did nod her head. Arkk could feel the sudden eagerness coming off her in the form of heat.

“We’ll take some of the garrison’s horses,” Arkk said, moving around the two. “Khan, stay ready here. Agnete, let’s ride.”

“I thought you said your fire could melt gold!”

“Give me a gold coin and I will make it flow like water,” Agnete shouted back, one of the few times Arkk had heard her raise her voice.

A gout of flame hot enough to make Arkk dive to the ground surged forth from Agnete’s extended arm. The fire wasn’t aimed in his direction, but rather toward a golden knight bearing the chevron of White Company. Orange flames wrapped around the statue, intensifying to the point of turning a nearly transparent blue. Snow evaporated in an instant, plants buried beneath went up in smoke, and even the ground turned to glass.

The golden knight took another step forward, foot sinking deep into the molten glass.

Although unharmed, that at least gave it pause. Once its other foot sunk up to its knee, it couldn’t move forward. Arkk’s eyes widened. “Stop, stop!” he shouted, hoping Agnete could hear over the roar of the fire.

She did. Agnete quenched her flames. In the absence of the immediate heat, the ground quickly returned to a solid state, solidifying around the golden man’s legs. Arkk watched from his spot on the ground for a long moment. The statue could have easily hacked away at the ground with its sword until the rough glass chipped and broke away from his feet. Instead, the thing merely wiggled back and forth, clearly lacking the intelligence necessary to free itself.

There were other golden statues steadily approaching.

“Can you do the same thing to the others?” Arkk asked, latching on to the solution, even if it was only a temporary one.

Agnete, the sleeves of her long coat completely missing, let out a misty breath of air as she straightened her back. She looked down at Arkk but didn’t offer a hand to help him up from the ground. Arkk probably wouldn’t have taken it if she had. Burns and boils on his hands were the last things he needed right now.

Although all the snow had melted off, Arkk still felt muddy and damp as he stood. Taking a few steps closer to Agnete, who was now aiming a baleful glare in the direction of the nearest statue, solved the damp feeling. Unfortunately, that left dried mud caked all down his front. Brushing himself off a few times, he backed away, letting Agnete have some room as she spooled up the heat once again.

Agnete deliberately waited until the next of the still-mobile statues was a fair distance from the first. Arkk figured that she didn’t want to risk softening the ground under the first’s feet. Once she felt ready, flames surged forth once again, this time focused on the earth. The golden statue walked right into the liquid-yet-viscous earth, sinking clear up to its thighs before Agnete cut off the flames.

Gaining confidence in the strategy, Agnete advanced, preemptively melting the earth in front of an approaching trio. One stumbled from the uneven terrain and ended up knocking the other two face-first into the viscous glass. Their legs and arms sunk in, leaving them stranded even more than the others. Agnete smiled at the sight, a faint red glow illuminating her teeth.

Arkk let her move on, staying behind to get a closer look at the closest of the statues.

Not too close of a look. They had passed Hawkwood’s forces on the way, leaving their horses behind to avoid cooking them alive in Agnete’s heat. While there, they had been handily informed not to, under any circumstance, engage the golden statues in melee combat. They were far stronger than they looked and could turn their victims into more golden statues. Hawkwood hadn’t been sure if it required death or just a grievous wound but he had personally witnessed several fine soldiers turning those golden blades against their own.

“Electro Deus,” Arkk intoned, opening the floodgates to his magic. A thick bolt of electricity hit the statue, lasting far longer than any natural lightning bolt. It did have some effect. The statue spasmed and seized, twitching and thrashing far more violently. Arkk kept the bolt of lightning going for nearly a full minute, stopping just as he felt the beginnings of fatigue setting in.

Fatigue was something other spellcasters had to worry about. Even Agnete, an avatar of the Burning Forge, couldn’t throw around flames continuously for too long. Zullie, the next most powerful caster in his employ, could only manage about a dozen Electro Deus casts of brief, instant lightning before collapsing. A dozen more than before she had entered his employ by still only a handful compared to what he could unleash.

And yet, the golden statue still twitched and jerked. His lightning affected it but what he had just put into the statue would have turned any normal person to ash and dust.

Arkk waited, watching the statue. It continued to twitch and did not resume its smooth yet sluggish movements. He must have damaged some of the spell that was keeping it animate. Zullie had taught him some diagnostic magic that should tell him for sure and might uncover what these things were and what kind of magic powered them as well. That would be the first step in figuring out how to stop them permanently. Unfortunately, that would also require getting far too close.

Perhaps if Agnete managed to trap one on its hands and knees like the trio without any upright nearby, he could try.

However, he had a feeling he knew what was going on. Not exactly and he didn’t know how to undo it or shut the magic down. Still, he had enough information to know that this had to be the work of a miracle passed down by one of the three traitors to the Pantheon. The Heart of Gold, he guessed just based on the name of the deities.

He had suspected before. The assassins suddenly having glowing eyes, the fact that Evestani was home to the Golden Order, and the suddenness and unexpectedness of the invasion, which nobody seemed able to explain. Now these golden soldiers with magic that even Agnete was struggling to defeat.

Arkk wasn’t sure if it was him or something he had done, Vezta or something she had done, or just that they existed at all, but it was clear to him that they had garnered the ire of a god. This, more than anything else, made him sure that Evestani was after Fortress Al-Mir, not Cliff City and the Duke.

Would he still have accepted the power of Fortress Al-Mir if Vezta had mentioned that it would make him an enemy of the only three gods that could access this world? Probably, if he were being honest. The situation at the time had felt dire, the most harrowing event he or Langleey Village had ever faced at the time. The threat of the orcs and goblins and, later, demon summoning had been a very real and lethal threat. On the other hand, gods were some vague and distant entities, only spoken of in terms of vague myths by Abbess Keena during the Suun sermons. The source of power for healing miracles. Not something that could or would bother to affect regular people.

The situation did make him wonder about the traitors and their intentions. The Abbey of the Light, the dominant religion within the borders of Chernlock, likely owed patronage to the Holy Light. So why was the Golden Order of Evestani in the middle of a full-scale invasion while the Abbey of the Light had sent out three inquisitors who hadn’t understood the scope of the situation. Vrox, as he had admitted, wanted to control or contain Vezta and other archaic magics. They hadn’t known anything about what Vezta actually was.

Those assassins at the Duke’s party had been taken over by something. Possessed, or some similar spell. The one that spoke had recognized Vezta and had even used the [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE]. Evestani knew. Maybe not the soldiers marching across the Duchy. Their leaders? The one sending them here? They knew.

So what about the Abbey of the Light then? Could they be allies? He had brokered some kind of truce with Vrox. Then again, Vrox, in his ignorance, could have gotten the entire scope of the situation wrong. Maybe he had been imprisoned and was suffering torture or even death for letting Vezta out of his sight. Arkk didn’t know. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Vrox since the night of the Duke’s party.

Looking up, watching as Agnete immobilized the rest of the slow-moving statues, Arkk frowned. It was something to keep in mind. Thinking about it in terms of what Vrox had said, he couldn’t trust the Abbey of the Light because he didn’t know how they would act or what they wanted. The same was true with the Holy Light and the Heart of Gold. He didn’t know what they wanted, other than him and Vezta. He wasn’t even sure that it was possible to know what a deity truly wanted. They were being of such incomprehension that even Vezta, who supposedly knew them better than anyone alive, couldn’t guess what they wanted beyond their stated domains.

“Arkk.”

“Is that all of them?”

“All the ones chasing White Company,” Agnete said, steam roiling from her bare shoulders. “If any broke off… They may find their way to an undefended village…”

“Damn it.” Arkk grit his teeth. She was right. Hawkwood and his army had been focused on not falling to the golden soldiers as they fell back to Elmshadow. He might not know if any had separated. “Get back to Fortress Al-Mir. Have the scrying team focus on the area around here and around where Hawkwood was camped. They’re slow and shiny. Should be easy to notice.”

“Understood.”

“Return here after. If Evestani has more tricks up their sleeves, we might need you.”

Agnete nodded her head. “There is one other thing,” she said, raising a scarred yet muscular arm. The embers in her scars were at a low glow, visible only thanks to the overcast skies.

Arkk followed her pointing finger.

Evestani’s army had followed along in the wake of the golden soldiers. It probably wasn’t all of them, merely their vanguard. Arkk watched as a small squad, mounted on horses, rode across the vacant fields and empty plains. Perhaps, seeing that there were only two enemies out here, they intended to rush forward and take his and Agnete’s heads.

Whatever they wanted didn’t matter.

Their bravery and courage despite witnessing Agnete’s flames vanished in an instant upon approaching the mausoleums. Even from the distance, Arkk heard the blood-curdling screams of terrific horror, the shrill whinnying of their horses, and the violent clattering of armor. Horses threw their riders, falling to the snow-slicked ground before scampering in the opposite direction. The riders scrambled along the ground, crying out in long shrieks of fright. They fled, arms forgotten on the ground, back toward the bulk of the army.

“Well at least that is working,” Arkk said, glad that they had finished the line of mausoleums before Hawkwood had to retreat. He wasn’t sure how long it would last, whether or not those affected would continue running until they collapsed from exhaustion, or if their comrades would be able to bolster their courage once more.

Such was the consequence of using experimental mind magic from a man who had thought it was a good idea to live for months in an abandoned mine, surrounded by creatures who would have killed him in an instant if they knew what he was.

“Come, I don’t want to stand out in the open any longer. Get back to Fortress Al-Mir and return as fast as possible.”

“Shall I fetch Zullie to investigate these golden soldiers?”

Arkk hesitated. She might be able to figure something out. Maybe she knew of some longer-distance diagnostic magics that she hadn’t taught him. But every time he took her, Savren, or Vezta off the ritual project, it just delayed it. She had said one week just a day ago. Disrupting that now…

“No. We’ll have to be enough.”

 

 

Arkk stood back, supervising a trio of lesser servants as they assembled an idea that Savren had come up with.

The Evestani Sultanate had marched their army far further in two weeks than Arkk—or even Hawkwood—had thought possible. Aided by holy magics keeping them safe from the elements and assassins targeting the leadership of burgs in their paths, opening the gates for the invading armies, they had managed to cross a quarter of the Duchy before Hawkwood rallied and assembled White Company to act against them.

Smaller villages in between the larger burgs had been raided. Their storehouses, full at the start of the winter, had been taken by the advancing armies to fuel their march. Refugees fled eastward, putting strain on every burg and village they crossed. A few villages had tried burning their stores at the first sign of the approaching armies but Arkk, watching through crystal balls, could only say that a handful had been successful. The rest had been saved by sudden squalls that he could only describe as divine intervention.

Given the golden glow protecting the armies from the elements, those storehouses being saved probably were divine intervention. Or at least holy magics worked by the Golden Order’s miracle men.

But all that momentum was going to stop here.

In the shadows of the Twin Elm Peaks was a large and normally prosperous burg that went by the name Elmshadow. The mountains did not span the entire breadth of the Duchy by any means but they, and Elmshadow’s valley, stood in the most direct path further eastward, toward Cliff and the Cursed Forest. It was possible to navigate an army around the mountains but that would buy time for the Duke’s Grand Guard to make their way here. Hawkwood was already out west, doing his best to stall the advancing army for just a few more days.

Long enough for Arkk to finish his task.

It was a trying battle for him, Arkk well knew. Unlike their opponents, Hawkwood and White Company didn’t have the holy protection against the elements. White Company had a few priests and abbesses on retainer but none knew how the Evestani army was doing what they were doing. They were on hand for healing and other minor miracles only.

“Have I mentioned how creepy this is?” Edvin called out from where he sat at the head of a cart.

Arkk looked up at him with a frown before shaking his head. “Only once per hour,” he said, moving to the back of the cart. Peeling back a tarp, Arkk revealed an array of skulls. Looted from the barrows not far from Langleey Village. Taking two of them, one in each hand, he crossed the short distance to where the lesser servants had finished dragging over piles of stones. Vague stone mausoleums stood out at the mouth of the valley in a long line. These latest constructions extended that line clear to the base of the other mountain.

It was sloppy work. The lesser servants couldn’t work their construction magic out here like they could in Fortress Al-Mir. Nonetheless, they were still adept builders even while using stone brought over from Stone Hearth Burg’s quarry.

They were his only option at the moment. Everyone else was back at the fortress, preparing, training new recruits, or otherwise engaged in vital tasks necessary for the continued existence of Fortress Al-Mir.

It was a bit harrowing. Based on the reactions of the assassins at the Duke’s party to him and Vezta, Arkk had a feeling that their end goal wasn’t actually the Duke or Cliff City but him.

Tucking a skull under his arm, Arkk reached out and planted a hand on the ritual circle one of the servants had inscribed on the roof of the squat, four-pillar mausoleum. The intricate design pulsed once with a sickly green light before going idle. Taking one skull, Arkk slid it underneath the circular roof of the mausoleum and let go of it at waist height. It bobbed twice but remained floating in the air.

Slowly, it swiveled, peering out from between the pillars to face him. Ominous violet light filled the skull’s empty eye sockets.

Arkk felt the talisman hanging around his neck heat up for just a moment before cooling back down. The skull, losing interest in him, turned away and sought out other targets.

“You know,” Edvin said, tremble of obvious fear in his voice, “my mother always said not to mess with the remains of the dead. That’s how you get cursed, that is.”

“Your mother was probably far wiser than I am,” Arkk said absently, moving to the next mausoleum to repeat the process. “But I’m hoping that these skulls of our ancestors would rather their remains be used to keep the Duchy safe rather than curse us.”

“And you trust that Savren guy? Mother always said you couldn’t trust a necromancer because it doesn’t matter to them whether you are dead or not.”

Arkk paused, considering. He hummed a moment and then, in his most diplomatic tone, said, “I trust Savren about as much as I trust you.”

Edvin blinked once and straightened his back, looking proud of himself. “Be that as it may,” he said, trailing off at the end.

“Savren isn’t actually a necromancer,” Arkk said, taking another pair of skulls from the cart. “And despite what it looks like, this isn’t necromancy. It is mind magic. Anyone not wearing these talismans will be struck with such an intense and utter terror that the entire army might just drop their weapons and run back to Evestani.”

“You think it will be that easy?”

“Of course not. Despite Savren’s confidence in this magic penetrating the golden magic used by Evestani, it is a delaying tactic at best. Buying a little more time for reinforcements from Cliff to arrive. Maybe even the King’s army from Chernlock, if they’ve even heard of the situation.”

Arkk had no idea what the greater situation was in the Kingdom. He barely knew what the Duke was doing and that was only thanks to Hawkwood passing information to him. Ilya was still at Cliff but she was in no shape to spy or otherwise engage herself with the goings on there. The healers had seen to her but the emergency healing Arkk had provided had messed something up that couldn’t be healed normally. The same was true for Hawkwood.

Although both might have died if not for Arkk using that spell from the black book, something about it negated proper healing. It took all Arkk’s willpower to not rush back to Cliff and try to figure out how to undo what he had done. If he couldn’t check in on Ilya and see that she was sitting up and occasionally walking around for short bursts of time, he probably wouldn’t have been able to resist.

“You have much greater faith in the officials of this land than I, my friend.”

Arkk didn’t agree in the slightest. Hawkwood was someone he trusted. Master Inquisitor Vrox, even—though that was more of a ‘trust in the man to act in accordance with his duties’ sort of trust. As much as Arkk didn’t trust Edvin not to stab him in the back if the man saw some way of profiting from it, he probably still trusted the conman more than the Duke or any of the Duke’s advisors.

Which… That lack of trust in Edvin was most of the reason he was here.

Dakka, Rekk’ar, and Olatt’an were training the new recruits. Arkk wasn’t about to throw them into war without making sure they could survive. The rest of his orcs were split up, some running tasks around the Duchy to try to evacuate villages or shore up defenses. Zullie, Vezta, and Savren were finalizing the ritual—hopefully still on schedule to be performed in about a week. Agnete and the gorgon—the latter of whom weren’t enthused with leaving the warmth of the fortress outside Agnete’s presence—were evacuating small villages that might be targets of Evestani’s resupply raids. Lexa, Lyssa, Alma, and a few of the other recruits who could handle themselves were helping with the civilians while Larry had a full team working the kitchens.

Everyone was busy with an important task. Arkk, the only one aside from Vezta able to direct lesser servants, had to be out here as well. That only left Edvin.

“I trust in the nation’s officials to desire the continuation of the Duchy and the Kingdom, if only so that they might remain in a position of power,” Arkk said eventually, taking a leaf from Vrox’s book. In only a few words, the inquisitor had given him a different perspective on how others could be trusted even if Arkk didn’t trust them on a personal level. “Evestani threatens that.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

As soon as Arkk placed the final skull into its holding spot, it and the three nearest skulls all swiveled in place, aiming at a distant shape coming out from the cover of the trees on one of the mountains. An elk froze, staring for a split second before its legs thudded against the ground. Sliding on the snow-covered ground, it slipped and went tumbling down but that didn’t stop it from getting right back up and bolting off into the treeline.

That was as good of a test as any. “In any case, we’re done here,” Arkk said, hauling himself into the now-emptied back of the cart. The three lesser servants oozed into the cart alongside him. “Get us back to Elmshadow.”

Two armies meeting each other in open battle was not a common occurrence. Not now, not during the war thirty years ago, not ever. The simple fact was that most people didn’t want to die. Hawkwood knew that as well as any competent commander. White Company, gathered and assembled from across the Duchy, four thousand strong, were no different. Most of them weren’t even active soldiers. A company like White Company paid the majority of its members a small retainer for them to show up in situations like this but otherwise, they were simple farmers or regular peasants.

They were trained. Hawkwood made sure everyone in his organization not only received training upon signing up but also organized training camps throughout the duchy that members were expected to attend bi-yearly or risk expulsion. They also had equipment. Part of the retainer was meant for weapons and armor. Not everyone had the same make, style, or quality. The core of White Company, made up of about four hundred, weren’t even identical in uniform, let alone the rest of the masses. Nevertheless, inspections had been performed and everyone present outside Elmshadow Burg had worthy gear.

So, while prepared and equipped, now called to perform the task they had signed up for, actually rallying the men into battle was a near impossibility. From the last war, Hawkwood knew well how hesitant armies could be. They might talk big in the camps but put them on the battle lines and everyone was perfectly happy to shout and jeer at the enemy from the safety of a distance. Even once they started marching forward into actual combat, one army would more than likely turn tail and rout. Should two opposing armies actually meet, it still took hours of psyching people up, rallying cries, speeches, invoking the Light, and other tactics just to get people to march the last few paces into melee.

Hawkwood hadn’t bothered with any of that. White Company stood strong, showing a force, well in advance of the Evestani army. A protracted battle was not a victory condition at the moment. Nor was victory likely if they did charge into open combat.

Evestani’s army numbered upwards of ten thousand. They weren’t all gathered together right here, the opposing force was spread across the Duchy. White Company was still heavily outnumbered. Not to mention the miraculous magic on display, another penalty to the morale of his troops.

Thankfully, even despite their greater numbers, the same hesitance that White Company suffered from also affected the enemy. Just by moving his troops out here and planting them in the middle of the road, they had slowed the lightning-fast advance of Evestani. It wouldn’t last forever. Nobody wanted to rush into combat and take a blade to the skull. The Evestani army’s leaders would have a far easier time rallying their men into battle just by pointing out the numbers difference and the magic they wielded. White Company had its own spellcasters but their efforts toward battle were far less obvious than the golden light that suffused throughout the soldiers of Evestani.

It wouldn’t last forever.

In fact, Hawkwood doubted it would last another day. There had already been some advancements from Evestani. Only his archers and spellcasters had kept them from crossing the gulf that was the wide-open plains in the shadow of the Elm mountains. He had already given orders to be prepared to make an organized retreat should Evestani start charging.

This was why he almost collapsed in relief when the Swiftwing harpy dove out of the sky, spreading her wings right at the last moment to slow her descent. She touched down, taloned feet gripping the ground as she fluttered her wings. A few of the jumpier soldiers in their midst let out cries of alarm. The hard men of the group quickly calmed the others with no input from Hawkwood.

Harpies, like about half of all beastmen, lacked humanoid hands. They did have sharp claws on their wings. Combining those claws with a specially designed harness allowed the harpy to retrieve a thin letter, sealed with a violet-hued wax bearing a compass rose on a maze-like pattern. “Message for you, Sir,” the harpy said, voice scratchy like most of her kind.

“Thank you, Talan,” Hawkwood said, wasting no time in snapping open the seal.

It was a short letter without even a proper greeting. Just a few words, in fact. The defenses around Elmshadow Burg were ready.

“Adjutant,” Hawkwood called out.

Neil, ever at his side, stepped forward. “Sir?”

“Order the retreat. We’re falling back behind the Elmshadow defenses. Make sure that everyone has their talisman equipped.”

With a salute, Neil turned to carry out his orders, delegating to the various squad captains and everyone else who needed to know. Everyone should already be ready to move. By nightfall, four thousand of White Company should be back behind the defenses Arkk had cooked up. Hawkwood hoped that they worked but wasn’t going to count on them holding out forever either. Or even for a short time.

Falling back to Elmshadow was still the best option. The Evestani army was not hauling siege equipment. No catapults, trebuchets, battering rams, or breaching towers. It was likely they had magical bombardments but there had been no need to use it thus far. That had surely been one of the factors in their swift advance through the Duchy. They couldn’t have moved as fast while hauling heavy siege engines. They didn’t need any of that when their assassins could take out key figures in the guard and leave the gates wide open.

Hawkwood and Arkk had found two assassins lying in wait at Elmshadow, both discovered thanks to the efforts of one of his spellcasters’ proficiency in the anathema that was mind magics. Even if they had missed an assassin or two, it would take a lot more to take out White Company. Those gates wouldn’t open as long as one of his officers yet lived. Given its strategic location, Elmshadow Burg held several cannons and ballista for fending off attackers. Combined with Arkk’s new defenses, any siege should fail. Evestani would have to take the long treks around the mountain if they wanted to continue their advance.

By then, the Duke’s Grand Guard should arrive in force.

Evestani’s scouts would notice the activity. They had to hurry. Fighting while attempting a retreat would lead to unacceptable casualties.

“Talan, take to the skies and warn us of any—”

“Incoming!”

Hawkwood’s eyes widened as he turned in the direction of the shout. Evestani had launched the occasional volley of arrows in their direction but never without the scouts warning them that archers were assembling. White Company’s spellcasters were already filling the air with a haze, well-trained as they were, but it wasn’t fast enough.

Gaps in the haze over the army let golden arrows pierce through. Shouts and cries of pain and distress sprung up throughout the army. Shields went up and metal clanked against metal. The falling arrows lasted only a few seconds but the effects carried on.

“Casters!” Hawkwood bellowed. “Keep the skies clear! Clerics to the wounded! Have every man—”

Lethis, struck through the gap in between his helmet and his breastplate by a falling arrow, started screaming a dozen paces away from Hawkwood. For a moment, he thought it was the pain or the shock only to realize that something else was going on. Molten gold leaked from the seams in his armor, spreading out and coating the painted white gear. It ran down the outside of his gauntlet, forming a sword of gold to replace the one he had dropped when struck.

The screams stopped abruptly and Lethis stood. He jerked and jittered. Someone started to approach only to jump back as that golden sword lashed out.

A cleric cried out elsewhere. Hawkwood could only see his back and the golden sword pierced through. The sword ripped back through his body but the gold remained, spreading across the cleric’s back and clothes, slowly coating the thrashing man.

“Get away from anyone hit!” Hawkwood shouted over the fresh wave of shouts of alarm. He raised his shield, blocking a blow from one of his own men, now turned to a gold statue. “Shields up! Knights get between those golden soldiers. Everyone else, fall back to Elmshadow!”

 

 

 

The last rays of a peaceful sun set over the Evestani Sultanate. When the sun next shined down, it would be stained with the blood of war.

Sule, Sultan of Evestani, sat with his legs crossed atop an oversized chair. Below him, two rows of young women leaned over shallow bowls of water placed in front of each, listening to the ripples. Every few moments, one would lean back, babble a few incoherent words, then lean back over their bowl. An interpreter, sitting in the center of the room at a circular table, would then spin in his chair until he found the book he was looking for, scan through it, and scribble down his best guess on a thick tablet.

After managing to make something coherent, the interpreter handed the tablet to Zarkov.

Sule, fingers drumming on the armrest of his chair betraying his nervousness, watched the Grand Vizier’s reactions.

The doors to the chamber slammed open, striking the wall hard enough to shake dust from the rafters. The closest row of listeners let out identical screams as the waters in their bowls rippled from the sudden shock. One fell forward, face splashing into the water. Zarkov had to maneuver around the central table to pull the listener back before she could drown in the shallow puddle.

Sule’s eyes shifted, looking to the door as his second daughter stormed inside, golden dress billowing in her wake.

“Kala tells me you sent assassins after my husband.”

“General Kala speaks too much for her own good,” Sule said. His drumming fingers stopped as he frowned at his furious daughter. “And you have no husband. You were never married. You are no longer engaged.”

Mihra’s fingers curled around the fabric of her dress, crushing it in a slowly tightening grip. “Is this because I chose it? To get away from you? Alya and I had plans, we were going—”

“This has nothing to do with you, Mihra,” Sule said, speaking in a defeated tone as he closed his eyes. “Nor that elf.”

He would like to lay all his problems at the feet of that elf but, truthfully, he couldn’t. In fact, Sule had been quite supportive of their endeavor. Anything to help keep things going as they had been.

Thirty years ago, Sultan Mehmed’s untimely death brought a messy and chaotic end to the war against the Kingdom of Chernlock. The fighting hadn’t ended, however. With no heir, Evestani fell into a civil war with the regular citizens getting caught between a trio of generals, the former vizier, and… well, Sule himself.

As a mere civil administrator, Sule had tried keeping the people he could safe. Lacking a proper military, it hadn’t been easy. They were farmers, craftsmen, and the general working peoples of Evestani. That included some old veterans, enough to form a militia of their own to protect what farmland they could. And that was the extent of their power. They had been able to do little more than protect themselves as the rest of the nation tore themselves apart.

Help came from an unexpected source. An elf, bearing gifts of supplies, food, weapons, and even people from the very nation the former sultan had tried to crush under his expansionist heel. All given freely so long as he was the one to come out of the civil war on top.

Sule had. And now he was here, betraying that gift.

Sule’s eyes drifted away from his upset daughter to the other man in the room. A man wreathed in golden light with darker skin and short, light hair. Literally light. It looked as if the man had implanted tiny amber glowstones all along his scalp. He sat in a small wooden chair, head tipped back and eyes closed as if he were asleep.

“Father—”

The golden man’s eyes slowly opened. Just a crack. Just enough to cast his cheeks in a thin sliver of white light.

“Guards!” Sule said, standing before his daughter could continue speaking. A pair of soldiers entered the room, having been posted just outside. “Escort Mihra back to her room. She is distraught.”

“Distraught? Damn right, I’m—Unhand me you—”

“Daughter. Return to your room. We will discuss this later.”

Brown eyes glared as Mihra struggled against the hands on her upper arms. Her fingers nearly tore a hole in her dress as she clenched her fists. All at once, the motion stopped and an odd calm crossed her face. “And you wonder why Razie vanished without a word. Unhand me! I can walk on my own,” she snarled as she shoved the guards aside. Her dress trailed behind her as she stormed out of the room.

One of the guards looked at him, offering a small shrug. Sule barely saw it as he sank back into his chair, elbow hitting the armrest as his hand covered his eyes. Hearing his first daughter’s name in a situation like this… He would have to post other guards. Make sure no one else disappeared before he had a chance to explain things.

But first, he had a monster to please.

“Zarkov,” Sule said, voice low and firm. “Is it done?”

The Grand Vizier, looking up from a fresh sheet of interpretations, raised an arched eyebrow. He stroked his light-brown beard with two fingers. “Done? Sultan, we are only beginning.”

Sule drew in a breath, throwing his gaze up toward the ceiling for a brief moment. “Not in the mood for your theatrics, Zarkov.”

“Apologies, Sultan,” Zarkov said, sweeping an arm under his chest as he bowed. “We have successfully taken Moonshine Burg. Their storehouses are ours.”

“That was never in question,” Sule said with a glare. “What of the Duke?”

“The Duke… yet lives. Along with the elf.”

Sule’s eyes shifted to the corner of the room where the man wreathed in a golden light sat. He didn’t move a muscle at the disappointing news. His eyes were once again closed. Not allowing himself a small sigh of relief, Sule turned his attention back to Zarkov as the vizier began to speak.

“The assassins were able to take out a majority of the targets. However, it seems they were interrupted by a rather interesting individual right in the middle of the Duke’s party. A man with glowing red eyes accompanied by a monster of indescribable horror.”

The man in the corner of the room stood slowly, eyes opening fully to flood the room with a glowing golden light. Sule wilted under his gaze.

“It’s her,” he said, voice reverberating as if a dozen of him were speaking as one. “The last one has finally found a new master. The stars are shifting once again.” Stepping forward, he held out his hand toward Zarkov.

The Grand Vizier, holding only the interpreted notes, quickly handed them over before stepping back with a bowed head.

Sule wasn’t sure the man even noticed the sudden nervousness with which Zarkov moved. The man’s eyes shifted ever so subtly, casting light on the pages as he read. With teeth looking like finely cut glowstones, the man smiled.

“We will still them.”

Sule paced in front of the door to his daughter’s chambers. Though the evening had been stressful enough and he wanted nothing more than to huddle up in his room, trying to avoid thinking about anything that was going on, the upcoming week was not going to be any better. He had to get this done tonight. It had been left to fester for too long as it was.

The Palace of the Sultan wasn’t a particularly large or grandiose building. The original had been destroyed in the civil war and, when Sule came out ahead, he hadn’t wanted to rebuild it to be something overly opulent. Not at a time when the people of the country needed to focus on their rebuilding efforts. Its construction hadn’t even started until eight years ago, well after the war had ended and he had been sure that shelter and food had been fully secured for Evestani. Nonetheless, it still stood tall on its hill with a great number of rooms for family, workers, visitors, and servants.

He had hoped it would be a guiding light into how Evestani handled itself in the future. An example of balance between the ruling class and the people’s needs, a far cry from the original Mumthaz which had been built with gold and precious gemstones covering its rounded ceilings and tall spires.

Now he stood outside his daughter’s door, trying to decide how to explain that the future he had envisioned had all crumbled to dust.

“Mihra? Are you there?” he called through the door.

His daughter didn’t respond. Knowing her, he would have been surprised if she had. Especially after ordering the guards to drag her away. It had been for her safety but he well knew that was just an excuse. If anything, he was surprised that she hadn’t thrown a shoe against the door in response.

“Things have been complicated as of late,” he said in a half-sigh, leaning against the door’s frame. “The Golden Order has… Well, there’s a great evil threatening…” Sule closed his eyes, leaning his head back before deciding to focus on one particular thing she had said earlier. “Your elder sister, Razie, left because there were some things she didn’t agree with. She didn’t vanish without any words to me. Rather, it was more because of how many words she had for me that she felt she couldn’t stay any longer.

“Razie is a headstrong girl who never felt right smiling and accepting the people’s adoration. Skilled and talented, she always felt people only saw her because she was the princess and not because of her personal feats and accomplishments. In contrast to you, she never took well to being called a princess and when the prospect of political marriages came up, we had extensive arguments…”

Sule paused, waiting to see if his second daughter would say anything. He wasn’t even sure if she was still awake. Meetings and plans, organizations and generals, and the Golden Order had consumed the majority of the night. There was so much to do and so much he couldn’t delegate to others.

“Though her absence pains me, she didn’t up and vanish as you might suspect. It was the prospect of being married to a count in the Tetrarchy that truly infuriated her. When the prospect of marriage to Duke Woldair first came up with regards to you, I had expected the same, honestly. Marrying off any of my daughters to a pig like the Duke made me ill at ease. I had hoped you would object as well.”

“But you didn’t. Then the Golden Order came to me and I tried to make you see reason, to see the Duke for what he was and that elf for the puppeteer she is…” Sule opened his eyes, looking around the hall. There were certain things that he shouldn’t say. Especially not out in the open like this. It had been made readily apparent that, despite his station as Sultan, he was not a necessary component of this country.

His eventual replacement should he leave the throne vacant, a figurehead though they might be, was an unknown. Would they try to shield the people as much as they could from the consequences of the Golden Order’s actions? Or would they revel in the chaos as the warlords of old Evestani had? He couldn’t let someone else take the power. Not if Evestani wanted to continue.

“Mihra, might I come in?” Sule asked after another long stretch of silence. He tapped his knuckles against the wood of the door. When the silence continued, a small pit of worry fell into the back of his stomach. “Mihra?” he called, knocking harder. “I’m coming in, Mihra.”

Grasping the door’s handle, he shoved into the door. It opened a handspan before getting caught on something. He shoved his shoulder into it again and again, pushing it open a little more each time until whatever was on the other side gave way. A chair clattered to the ground as the door swung open.

“Mihra?” Sule called, stepping into the dark room. The glowstones in the lamps were missing. Taken. He charged past the books and shelves, into the bedroom proper, only to freeze.

The bed was empty, with thin sheets lying atop a flat mattress. The window, open to the night, clattered against the wall in a heavy gust of wind. Sule rushed over, peering out into the night. “Mihra!” he called. The bushes down below looked like something might have landed in them. A foolish daughter, perhaps. That daughter was nowhere to be seen.

“Guards!” Sule called, turning. “Guard—”

He froze as a younger man entered his daughter’s quarters, eyes glowing a brilliant gold.

“Y… Your Holiness…”

The man’s eyes shined their light around the room as he took it in, though his face betrayed an utter absence of emotion. “Sultan,” he said eventually, even offering a respectful bow. Sule didn’t believe in its genuineness for a moment. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s… my daughter. She has fled the palace.”

“Is that a problem?” the man asked, head tilting to one side as if he couldn’t understand the reason Sule was even making noise with his mouth.

“Problem? Of course, it’s—”

“Will it affect our operations?”

“I—” Sule’s jaw clamped shut as the man’s golden eyes turned to face him fully. He suppressed a shudder but couldn’t help the step back, bumping into the ledge of the window. Swallowing, he tried to smile. “No. No, it won’t.”

“Good. Then in light of the information we have received this evening, I think it would be prudent to accelerate our advance into the Duchy.”

“Advance? We’re already marching into winter. How much…” Sule trailed off, realizing just how little the man cared for anything he was saying. “Sorry, Your Holiness. I… What kind of advancement were you thinking?”

“I am glad you asked. Come along,” he said, turning back to the door.

Now that the golden light had turned away from Sule, he drew in a shuddering breath. He glanced back over his shoulder and made a decision.

He would not look for his daughter. Either of them. Though it pained him, getting away from the palace was perhaps the safest thing they could have done, even if they didn’t know it. He could only hope that Mihra would find her elder sister out there somewhere and they could support each other.

“Sultan?”

Sule jolted and hurried along, leaving the vacant bedroom behind.

 

 

Master Inquisitor Darius Vrox stared around the throne room, grimacing at every body his eyes crossed. As an inquisitor, he walked alongside death more than most. That didn’t mean he was a cold and heartless being, not even toward those he didn’t particularly enjoy the company of. Which, unfortunately, included most people the illustrious Duke held in confidence.

Still, few deserved to be ripped apart by the force of a violent explosion. Several of those closest to the blast weren’t recognizable. They ceased being people and instead became piles of mulched meat and bone. The Abbey of the Light had sent out their healers. They were taking care of those who had survived.

It was a wonder he had survived. The Duke as well. The trapped chandelier had fallen just in front of the throne, not ten steps away from where he had been standing. Darius eyed the raised platform where the Duke’s throne had sat before being shattered against the wall. It was a stone dais that only went up a few steps. It was not flush with the back wall, however. There was a small gap. Throwing the Duke in before taking cover himself had saved them.

It had been a close thing. Closer for him than for the Duke. The blast, or the flying bits of brass and glowstone carried through the air, had shredded his back. One had gotten deep into his leg. A cane slammed down onto the tiles, taking pressure off that leg as he turned around. Tap, step, light-step. Tap, step, light-step.

He found it somewhat amusing that he had come away with more grievous injuries incidentally from being in the periphery of an attack on the Duke compared with a direct assault on Arkk. Yet, as much as he would prefer to investigate just how the assassins had infiltrated so deeply into the Duke’s midst, he had his duty to perform.

Darius wasn’t quite sure what to think of Arkk at the moment. They fought. He abducted Purifier Agnete. Then he shows up in the city like nothing happened, brazenly walking around as if he knew that the inquisitors wouldn’t lay a hand on him while there were so many potential hostages around, not to mention Greesom’s continuing convalescence. Darius didn’t think he would take hostages—he felt he knew Arkk better than that—yet orders were orders. He had maintained a distance, observing only. The party provided a few moments where he felt he could interact without disobeying orders. He had planned on needling Arkk a bit, perhaps discovering what the man had done with Agnete.

Then this.

Darius stepped outside the throne room and looked to the nearest guard. One who had been too frightened to follow him inside. “He isn’t here.”

“What? But… I… That’s impossible,” the man stuttered, tripping over his words as he dared to peer into the throne room. “The only ones in or out have been White Company. They carried the wounded out. I think we would have noticed that thing slipping by,” he said with a visible shudder.

Did the guard not understand where the creature had come from in the first place? It could disguise itself or everyone at the party would have known about it well in advance of it making an appearance. Darius didn’t bother entertaining the guard any further, tapping his cane on the ground with every other step as he made his way through the entrance hall of the Duke’s manor.

He had already run through a quick check of all the injured. Arkk wasn’t among them. Neither were any of Company Al-Mir.

A few mercenaries wearing the black chevron of White Company stood about, mostly helping the healers where they could. Darius chose not to waste more time with them. They might have known something. It was just as likely they did not. He hadn’t waited around to be healed fully before leaving specifically because he expected that this might happen. There was limited time and he only had one real lead on where Company Al-Mir might be.

Darius limped out of the entrance hall, leaving the building. Guards were in place to try to stop most people from going anywhere, leaving the guards within to try to find any further evidence of hidden assassins. As with the members of White Company, they might know something or they might not. He stalked right past them. They didn’t bother to stop him.

Unfortunately, walking across Cliff wasn’t possible at the moment. Not with his fresh injuries. His own coach wasn’t present. It was likely that Douglas or some other church authority had already started using it for other purposes. Perhaps ferrying healers around or moving the less wounded to somewhere they would be out of the way. There were several horses and coaches outside the manor, ripe for the taking. So long as he wore the regalia of the Inquisition, no one would stop him from commandeering one.

Darius snapped the reins, sitting on one of the coaches. Given the darkness of the night, the horse was understandably wary of moving too fast through the streets. Especially while pulling one of the smaller carriages. Darius would have preferred leaving the coach behind and taking the horse alone. With his injuries, such a prospect did not seem all that viable.

Nevertheless, he made good time through the city.

The Cliff’s Edge stayover stood tall and bright with glowstone light leaking from its many glass windows. Darius spotted no movement in any of them but that didn’t necessarily mean that nobody saw him approach. The Abbey’s oracles already believed that Arkk possessed a means of scrying. Likely a genuine crystal ball. Not common but not altogether rare either. The inquisition had taken up precautions to avoid scrying but he wasn’t in any position to maintain the spell at the moment.

It didn’t matter if he was seen one way or another. It might cause Arkk to flee but Darius doubted it. Arkk… might not be the most intelligent of people. What could one expect from someone raised in some no-name village? That said, he had enough of a head on his shoulders—not to mention working eyes—to see that Darius wasn’t here to fight. He was in no shape to.

Limping through an utterly deserted lobby, Darius took the stairs one step at a time, grimacing the entire way. It didn’t feel good to be out of breath by the time he reached the floor above. Most of his body didn’t feel good but this was a psychological pain. He really shouldn’t be walking around at all right now. If he injured himself further or even delayed proper healing for too long, it might wind up that the healers wouldn’t be able to do much for him. A permanent limp would have him behind a desk for the remainder of his days. Not at all what he wanted.

Darius stopped at the door he knew to be Arkk’s. He thought about throwing it open. He knew enough combat magic to force a flimsy door and his poor physical condition wouldn’t change that. In the interest of not starting a fight, he instead knocked. Heavy, firm, yet polite enough.

The door swung open far sooner than he expected.

Darius felt his heart skip a beat as his breath caught in his throat. He stared into a pair of burning eyes. Not the burning eyes he had come to discuss but a different, far more familiar set. The faintly glowing scars on Purifier Agnete’s face didn’t twist in rage or surprise. Her messy black hair hung loose around her ears as she quietly regarded him. A dozen spells sprung to Darius’ mind. None made it to his lips. Purifiers were magical abominations that didn’t need lengthy incantations to wield their power. She would incinerate him before he could start.

Licking his lips, Darius put on his best smile. He had been told that his smiles weren’t at all reassuring. It was better than nothing.

“Purifier Agnete,” he said slowly, making sure she knew that he wasn’t casting any spells. “I see you are still alive.”

“Should I not be?” she said, head tilting to one side. Her eyes flicked up and down the hall with the motion, checking for other inquisitors, perhaps.

“I feared that Arkk, in his ignorance, would overuse the Binding Agent. To a catastrophic point.”

Agnete drew in a deep breath and let out a faint sigh of heated air. Having backed up against the wall opposite from the door, there was an entire hallway between them and Darius still felt like he was traipsing through a desert on a particularly dry day. “Your concern is noted but unwarranted. Arkk has not had cause to use it.”

That was an interesting tidbit of information. Agnete could not control herself around fire. Even a little campfire would require monitoring and readying to keep her contained. There were no flames around now but had that been the case for the last several weeks? Or did Arkk’s method of controlling that creature extend to Agnete as well?

He pressed his lips into a thin smile, deciding to bring that issue up with his superiors later on. Although they had suspected, knowing for a fact that he had Purifier Agnete working for him alongside the creature from beyond the stars and his cadre of more mundane beings would only make any action against him all the more dangerous. He had quickly grown to be a problem that a single inquisitorial cell couldn’t handle.

Things were going to get… unpleasant very quickly.

Unless Darius could do something about it. He honestly didn’t know what. He had come here more out of desperation than because he had a good plan. There was little incentive for Arkk to hand over his secrets or his companions. Threats could only go so far before they had to be enforced—Darius had been the one to screw up that enforcement with the debacle in the Cursed Forest. Nonetheless, he had to try.

“Is Arkk here at present? There are matters of which we must speak. Especially now that his creature has been seen by many.”

“Seen by many?”

“Ah. You haven’t heard. That means he isn’t here,” Darius said with a frown. “Am I right in assuming that he will be here to retrieve you before he leaves the city?”

“I hadn’t heard anything to the contrary,” Agnete said slowly. “Though I am not sure how much information I should be giving away. Familiarity may have caused me to give away too much already despite me being unable to say that I particularly enjoyed working with you.”

“If it makes you feel better, you’ve hardly given anything away that I didn’t already expect or assume. Or realize upon seeing you alive,” Darius added after a moment of thought. “Might I wait for Arkk—”

It turned out there was little need to wait. Several sets of footsteps started climbing the stairs, echoing up the stairwell. A few of the footfalls were heavier than others. An orc, Darius guessed just as the short orc crested the top of the steps. Although far filthier than she had been at the height of the party, Darius recognized her as the orc that had accompanied Arkk. She froze upon spotting him and immediately dropped into a combat stance despite her lack of weaponry.

“What’s—Oh.” Arkk was the next up, quickly followed by the other members of his entourage. And Hawkwood. Darius had encountered the mercenary leader in the past but hadn’t interacted to the point where he would claim to know the man.

Both Arkk and Hawkwood didn’t look like they were in the best shape. Hawkwood kept one arm reaching around his side while Arkk sported linen bandages wrapped around his head.

“Hello, Arkk,” Darius said, eyes shifting over the young man’s shoulder.

The being from beyond the stars stood just a step behind him, hands clasped on Arkk’s arm, supporting him with a demure expression on her face. She was the only one not to look surprised at his presence. He doubted she knew he would be here in advance—nothing the oracles mentioned indicated abilities of prescience—she simply didn’t care. The creature’s eyes, burning yellow suns in a black starfield, flicked over him with an utter apathy that even a depressed fairy would fail to match.

“Are we still pretending to be friends?” Arkk asked, far more tense than the monster at his back. “Or are we going to ruin the polished floors with a fight?”

“Please,” Darius said, holding up his hands. His cane dangled limp from one. “I can barely stand. I would very much prefer it if we avoided unnecessary violence. At least tonight.”

Arkk visibly relaxed. Darius had to wonder if he would have believed that from anyone else. Although he was genuine, any other enemy of Arkk’s could easily get the man to let his guard down simply by saying what he had. Then again, Darius allowed his eyes to drift over the others in the hall. Tension didn’t bleed out from the orc, Zullie, or even Agnete. Hawkwood, behind his scowl, looked mildly confused but wary of the situation. Even Arkk, on a second glance, didn’t look fully at ease. Darius wasn’t sure that he had ever seen Arkk let his guard down.

And the monster… Darius had seen her handily deal with the assassin that had been targeting the elf. She could emulate a demure expression as much as she wished, her inhuman thoughts and physiology meant that anyone letting their guard down around her would be the king of fools.

“We must speak, Arkk. With your creature having revealed herself—”

“This again?” Arkk said with a sigh. “All that happened tonight and you’re still worried about Vezta? You saw with your own eyes that she harmed nobody but the assassins. I would think that they would be a far more pressing issue.”

“I’m sure they are the topic of every conversation going on in the manor this evening,” Darius admitted. “The Duke’s spymaster, especially, will be investigating every one of the staff and checking just how far they might have infiltrated. We all have our duties. Mine lies in containing or controlling esoteric magics before they wreak havoc on the world.”

Darius could feel Agnete stiffening at his side. The rise in temperature wasn’t exactly subtle. He wasn’t even talking about her at the moment. Sweat beaded down the back of Darius’ neck, not all because of the heat. Did Arkk have the Binding Agent on him or had he foolishly left it behind?

“The Inquisition of the Light is the Abbey’s dagger,” Darius said, trying to move the conversation along. “A precision instrument for dealing with issues that arise. It is not the only tool in the Abbey’s arsenal. Carrying on as you are, flaunting your monsters in public, and showing blatant disregard for any concealment is going to bring down a force far greater than myself. One you are not going to be able to fend off with a few orcs and a few tricks.”

Arkk closed his eyes and sighed deeply. When he opened them, there was a slight glint that someone less attentive than Darius might have dismissed as a trick of the light. Darius, however, narrowed his eyes, wondering why Arkk had glowing eyes as well.

“One thing after another,” Arkk mumbled. “Thanks for the warning. I appreciate it.”

“Warning?” Darius said, a smile slipping from his face. “Arkk, I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation. I believe you to be a reasonable man. That is the only reason I am here attempting to reason with you rather than standing back and watching the sword fall on your neck.”

“And I appreciate that. You wanted me to hand over Vezta and some object that doesn’t even exist that allows me to control her. That will never happen. If you know me half as well as you think you do, you would already know that.”

Darius sighed. “I do,” he said slowly.

“I imagine you would want Agnete back as well?”

“It wasn’t confirmed that you kept her alive.” Darius glanced to his side. “Confirmation will only increase the severity of the situation.”

“Then don’t confirm it. You’re the only one who knows, right?”

“You can’t ask that of me.”

“I am.”

“Even if I did, the oracles would discover the truth eventually.”

“As long as it buys us time. I know we aren’t friends or allies… or even like each other, but you said you trusted me. Right now, I think I need to use some of that trust.”

“You’re stretching my words far beyond what I intended, Arkk.”

“You know I’m not some maniacal villain bent on destroying the universe—or whatever you think Vezta represents. So I’m asking you to buy me time. Tell your superiors that I’m coming around to what you’re saying or that you think I’ll join them. Whatever it takes to get them off my back for just a little longer.”

“Why would I ever agree to that?” Darius asked, tone flat.

“Because war approaches.” It wasn’t Arkk who answered, but Hawkwood. The mercenary leader stepped forward, shoulders broad and back straight despite a grimace on his face. “Master Inquisitor, you might not know me but I am the head of White Company.”

“I’m aware.”

“After the events of the evening, White Company might be the only large free company with its leadership still intact. This war isn’t a far-off thing. It is happening now.”

Arkk held out a hand. A crystal ball appeared in his grip, the image within shifting and changing. Curious despite himself, Darius approached enough to see within. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. Rows upon rows of soldiers marched past a high plateau, trudging through the darkness with only a handful of torches to light their way.

“They’re already at our borders,” Arkk said. “I have an employee there who contacted me in the middle of all the chaos this evening.”

“Are they mad?” Darius couldn’t help but ask. “It’s the start of winter!”

“They must think they can weather it,” Hawkwood said. “Or perhaps they don’t care about their soldiers. Whatever the case, they are half a day out from Moonshine Burg. I’ve dispatched Swiftwings to rally White Company. It will be up to us to buy time while the rest of the nation puts itself back together.”

“Company Al-Mir isn’t exactly at a size where we can fight in a war but we do have specialists and… esoteric magics. We can help, but not if I’ve got to fight off the Abbey of the Light and their misconceptions about my employees and companions.”

“Readying White Company won’t be possible before they arrive,” Hawkwood said. “Moonshine Burg has strong walls and should have full storehouses of food. They can last a seige… If tonight’s incident was any indication, this has been in the planning for some time. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Moonshine Burg’s leadership has been taken out already and the gate guards replaced with agents who will keep the gates open for the invaders.” He took a deep breath. “No matter what we do, they will have a stronghold inside our borders by this time tomorrow. I don’t know if they plan to stop there for the winter or march through it.” He paused and glanced at Arkk. “With the Duchy in disarray, we need all the help we can get.”

“Did the Duke survive?” Arkk asked.

“He did.”

Arkk schooled his features but not before letting a flicker of disappointment through. He nodded his head. “I see.”

“He’ll need to be made aware of this,” Hawkwood said, giving Darius a pointed expression. “I would myself but I’ve got a war to run. Arkk promised transportation to White Company’s nearest stronghold.”

Arkk nodded. “Vezta, get everything ready. Send Zullie through first. Zullie,” he said, turning. “I want a progress report by morning. And I want to hear good news.”

The witch rolled her eyes. “Lovely. Staying awake all night after what we went through?”

“You stay awake every night anyway, don’t you?”

“Doesn’t mean I wanted to stay up tonight,” she grumbled.

“Master, is me leaving your side the wisest action given current circumstances?”

Darius shifted uncomfortably. Agnete represented a very real threat of a fiery death. She was still human, however. This creature barely looked at him. When she did, her eyes disregarded him so thoroughly that he felt utterly irrelevant in her presence. It was a wonder anyone else here could stand being under that gaze for long.

Then again, she didn’t look at Arkk like he was irrelevant. Perhaps ascribing emotions to such an inhuman being was wrong but he felt like there was an undercurrent of fanatical obsession hidden in those fields of stars.

Arkk didn’t notice or had grown used to it. “You’re the fastest at crafting ritual circles and we’ll need a lot before the night is over. Don’t worry. I can handle a crippled inquisitor on my own,” he said with an easy smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Not that I think Vrox intends any harm toward me.”

Darius frowned at the implied question. “I already said that I am not here to fight.”

“And calling the church down on me?”

“You’re playing a dangerous game here. Nothing can be hidden from the oracles for long. It is just a matter of them finding the right question to ask.”

“As long as it buys some time. Enough for other, more qualified mercenary companies and the Duke’s Grand Guard to get back on their feet.”

Darius remained silent for a long moment, thinking. This… He knew what Arkk was like. Everything he had learned about the man pointed toward this being an utterly and quite pathetically genuine attempt to help the nation at large. He wanted a stay of execution, not to escape but to help as best he could. It…

It was enough to make Darius laugh. He didn’t. He had more self-control than that. Still… Drawing in a breath, Darius spoke slowly, “I will file my report. If the chaos of the evening means it gets lost for a short time, then I suppose that is simply bad luck.”

Arkk put on a smile, wide and genuine. For a moment, it almost looked like he wanted to clap a hand onto Darius’ shoulder. He managed to restrain himself.

“Vezta, after you get Zullie and Hawkwood situated, get Dakka to the plateau.” Arkk turned to the orc. “I don’t know why an army would be interested in a tiny flopkin community, but let them know that we can house them if they feel in danger. Then both of you and Agnete get to Katja’s encampment. Let her know what is going on, offer asylum as well. We need her mages. If she declines…” He looked from Vezta to Agnete and back. “Well, don’t take no for an answer.”

“And you, Master?”

Arkk drew in a deep breath. “I don’t want to leave Ilya…”

“She survived,” Darius offered. “The healers are tending to her at the behest of… her mother, I presume.”

“I know.” He grimaced before hefting the crystal ball. “Scrying is handy. Her mother is doing well, is she? She is at her side.”

Darius didn’t react. Scrying on the Duke’s manor shouldn’t have been possible. It was as protected—if not more—as a temple. With its wards raised because of the attack, there shouldn’t have been any way to get magical information past its walls. Arkk had said that he received a cry for help in the middle of the attack as well, hadn’t he? Had that been before the alarm went up or after?

Darius nodded his head, filing the dangerous information away for later. They already knew of Arkk’s dive into esoteric magic. It was good to know capabilities but the fact itself wasn’t surprising.

“If I am headed back to alert the Duke to this invasion, would you like me to pass on a message?”

Arkk grimaced again, likely not favoring the idea of relying on someone that he wasn’t all that enthused with. “Tell her not to worry. I won’t leave her there. Let her know what is going on as well, if you would.”

“Very well.” Darius drew in a deep breath.

“Thank you. Vezta.”

“Understood, Master.”

Darius shifted away as the creature walked right past him without a second glance. Or… maybe it was staring at him the entire time. With her back to him, he had to take his eyes off her face and promptly found an oddity running down her spine, dark fields spreading the white of her outfit apart with glowing yellow eyes staring out.

Shuddering, Darius moved past Arkk only to pause. “Arkk.”

“Yes?”

“You went after that assassin.”

“Naturally.”

“Is it? I doubt many men would put themselves in danger like that. They would rather leave it to the guards to handle.”

Arkk simply shrugged.

“You didn’t succeed in stopping him.”

The casual shrug shifted as his shoulders slackened. “Can’t win them all.”

“Well, for what it is worth, I hope you and Hawkwood win this one. Don’t betray my trust.”

Arkk’s smile turned a little more brittle than Darius would have liked. With all the vague threats, Darius couldn’t exactly call that unexpected. Still, he kept it in mind as he descended the Cliff’s Edge stairwell one step at a time.

 

 

Hawkwood hadn’t expected to wake. Ever. He could remember what happened well enough. The commotion at the party. A sharp stabbing sensation in his back. The attempt to call for help as his legs went weak. The shocked expression on Arkk’s face. Finally, the sudden rush of lightheadedness, akin to standing too fast except far, far more severe.

He knew then, as the darkness took him, that he was dead. His heart stabbed straight through.

Now, he could feel his heart hammering in his head, throbbing and aching, he was awake. He blinked bleary eyes up at a mural-covered ceiling that was familiar but one he couldn’t quite place. Not until he managed to look around. It still took him a long minute.

People were lying in neat rows. Bodies? Some were alive. Some… weren’t. An abbess rushed past a few, stopping at a man Hawkwood recognized. The leader of the Order of the Claymores. A golden, holy light dripped from the fingertips of the abbess. A healing spell and a fairly powerful one. Hawkwood recognized that as well. Behind the abbess, two alchemists, dressed in the typical garb of their profession with long beak-like masks and dark cloaks, mixed a thick, green-colored ungent. Another healing concoction.

Slowly, Hawkwood turned his head. This was the Duke’s entry hall. Large and crowded. It was filled with injured people. Healers of varying professions moved about by the dozens, tending to those injured. Guards stood at every door—and not just the ceremonial guards in shining armor that the Duke kept around for show, but more rugged guards clearly pulled from the garrison.

Pinching his eyes closed, Hawkwood ground his teeth together and pushed himself up. A pinching pain in his back kept him from getting fully on his feet. It was like someone had grasped hold of every scrap of loose skin and was pulling it tight. Sitting, he tried to feel around his back—someone had removed most of his clothing during his unconsciousness, leaving him with a thin white bandage wrapped around his chest—but he couldn’t quite reach the spot with the most pain.

“You shouldn’t be up. You need rest.”

Hawkwood turned to find a priest moving from one of the wounded to another. He didn’t stop to chat but did settle down not far from Hawkwood. “I’ll rest when I’m dead. What happened?”

“Don’t know the details,” the priest said, peeling back bandages to inspect a wound. “Heard that there was an attack. Several were outright killed before an explosion claimed and wounded many more. Excuse me,” he said, reaching into the folds of his robe. He withdrew a small talisman that he quickly slapped against the man’s chest, muttering a prayer as he did so.

Hawkwood didn’t disturb him any further, letting the man walk away to tend to the next victim. Taking a breath and using the wall as a support, he dragged himself to his feet. He needed to find someone who knew what was going on. Someone who wasn’t a healer. Hawkwood knew better than most that in a situation like this, it was always better to leave the healers to their duties.

He had a headache and a pinch in his back. Walking wasn’t all that difficult or taxing, however. His legs worked and his balance was good enough. This wasn’t the first time he had woken while wounded. In fact, out of all the injuries he had received, this affected him the least. Given that he had been sure he wouldn’t wake at all, that was saying something. The healers must have done good work.

Hawkwood started toward a guard captain, only to pause as he realized that it wasn’t just the Duke’s men present. The distinctive black chevron of White Company stood out among the blue and white striped shields. Once he realized that his company was present, it didn’t take long to pick out Field Captain Rurik. He was somewhat surprised that they hadn’t been at his side. Then again, sitting at the side of an unconscious man didn’t help anything.

While the Duke’s men and garrison guard stood watch at the main entrance and prowled through the injured, clearly looking for any threats, White Company took up position around the large doors to the throne room. As he approached, he heard a knocking on the door. A specific pattern. Rurik tensed at the first knock but quickly relaxed and motioned for the others to open the door. They did so, admitting another pair of White Company soldiers who were carrying a body between them. One that didn’t look particularly healthy. Hawkwood couldn’t even tell if she was alive. Half her face had been burned away and bits of stone stuck out of her chest.

Hawkwood was pleased to note that neither of the ones carrying the wounded—maybe dead—girl stopped to acknowledge him. Aid ran before all. Those of White Company who were not carrying a body, on the other hand, quickly saluted him as he stepped closer.

“Sir, shouldn’t you—”

“One word about me needing rest and I’ll have you digging latrines next training run.”

Rurik snapped his jaw closed, though not without a slim smile touching the corners of his lips. “Good to see you up, sir. You didn’t look too injured but when we heard you were specifically targeted…”

Hawkwood closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath. “What happened? Report.”

“Assassins disguised as servants. Three, it seems, though we can only account for two at the moment.”

Rurik took his eyes off Hawkwood, looking slowly around the room as if he might be able to spot the third one now that he had mentioned it. Hawkwood did the same, though hopefully less obviously. He did reposition, making sure White Company was at his back and not the larger room.

“They targeted at least six individuals specifically before causing an explosion in the throne room that resulted in this,” Rurik said, continuing with a wave of his hand around the entry hall. “Of the six specifically targeted… it seems only you and Vizier Alya have survived.”

“How?”

“Not sure. At least in your case. Someone healed you. A few guards were going on about a glowing-eyed demon attacking you but not who helped you.”

“Demon?” Hawkwood said, narrowing his eyes as he cast yet another suspicious glance around the large hall. A demon certainly could have caused this. The fact that he was alive probably meant that it was an exaggeration, however. Stress and panic in a situation like what had happened would be far from unheard of. “Who else was targeted specifically?”

“General Yurt and General Josen of the Duke’s Grand Guard, Commander Rozen of the Red Rose Company, and Welkins Huntz of Huntz Trading Company.”

“Not Duke Woldair?”

“He may have been planned as a target but reports say that the Master Inquisitor Vrox made it to him and protected him just before the incident occurred.”

“They made it out then?”

Rurik looked around then dropped his tone to a near whisper. “Not exactly. Neither got a knife in the back like you did but they were at the center of the explosion. The Duke’s guards carried both away before we arrived. I presume they are somewhere else in the manor, somewhere less trafficked than here. I guess the Pontiff Bernardin arrived early on and was taken straight to them. Haven’t heard anything from them since. That would have been well over two hours ago now.”

Hawkwood pursed his lips in thought. Two generals of the Duke’s men, three mercenary company leaders, the elf advisor, and the head of a trading company. The last was a small outlier in the pattern until he recalled that Huntz Trading Company made its name during the war thirty years ago when they provided heavy logistical support to the soldiers.

“The Evestani Sultanate?”

“Sir?”

“Tensions have been high for a few months now. We figured war would begin in the spring when armies could march. Yet here they are trying to cripple the leadership of the armies and large mercenary companies…” Hawkwood swallowed, weight dragging his shoulders down. “Where is the Duke’s spymaster? How did we get caught so unaware?”

“Sorry. I don’t have any other information. Except…”

Hawkwood frowned as Rurik went uncharacteristically silent. It wasn’t like him to be hesitant about reporting information. He, and all of White Company, knew that Hawkwood was not the type to get upset at messengers. Even if they were at fault for something, as long as they were genuinely sorry and attempted to make amends, he wouldn’t be too harsh. “Except?” Hawkwood had to prod.

“There is something else. A… situation inside the throne room. The reason we’re here instead of the manor guards.”

“I didn’t know you were so good at dancing, Rurik. You sat out at Piter’s wedding. If I had known you were this good, I’d have insisted you show us your talents.”

Rurik gave Hawkwood a flat look, rolling his eyes before glancing at the door. “I don’t know about demons… but there is something in there. It hasn’t attacked yet but…” Rurik shuddered. “The Duke’s men and spellcasters have sealed all the doors except this one and we had to insist, taking responsibility here, just to get injured out.”

“Now you’re starting to make me worried.”

“Maybe it is best if you see for yourself,” Rurik said, backing up to the door. At their approach, two more of White Company, Felix and Tavyn, pulled open the throne room doors. They started just a crack, the latter peering inside as if worried something might rush out. When nothing did, they opened the doors just wide enough to admit Hawkwood and Rurik.

Bodies were strewn everywhere. More toward the far end of the room than the front. Given that walls were scorched, stone had cracked, the ceiling had partially caved in, and two chandeliers were missing, Hawkwood assumed that was where the explosion had taken place. Far from where he had been standing with Arkk when he had been attacked.

Where was Arkk anyway? Hawkwood hadn’t inspected the entirety of the entry hall but hadn’t noticed the other company leader in any of his cursory glances.

While the chaos and carnage of the far end of the room drew his eyes initially, movement closer to him pulled his attention. He tensed, somewhat nervous from Rurik’s words, only to relax.

He didn’t know where Arkk was but recognized two of Arkk’s people working in the dark room. The orc that had joined him for dinner, Dakka, was at one of the chandelier winches, slowly lowering it to the ground.

“Slowly. Slowly.” The one introduced as a magical researcher stood between the orc and the wall, using the orc’s large body as a shield between herself and the chandelier.

“I know,” Dakka snapped.

“Almost there. Gently. Gently.”

“Will you shut up?”

“Three, two… Lock it in place.”

The orc slid a pin into the winch, keeping it from turning any further. She curled her lips back, baring her tusks at the researcher—who didn’t seem to notice or care—before realizing that they had an audience.

“Dakka, Zullie, was it? Is Mister Arkk—”

Hawkwood started forward only to be held back by a hand on his arm. Rurik gave him a sharp look before nodding back past the lowered chandelier and the two members of Company Al-Mir.

It took Hawkwood a moment to notice. That whole end of the room was dark with the missing light and there were plenty of bodies and scoring in the walls that drew the attention. Staring at it a second time, Hawkwood realized that one corner was just a bit too dark. Shadows churned against the walls, twisting and moving in ways that didn’t make sense given the stillness of other lights. Then there were the bright yellow orbs hanging in the darkness. Orbs that shifted, moved, and watched.

Hawkwood felt a sudden weakness in his knees. If not for Rurik keeping him steady, he might have fallen in shock. It didn’t help that he already felt somewhat unsteady from his headache and the pinch in his back. Seeing… something, as Rurik had put it, had his heart hammering in his chest.

“—some magical bombs made to explode when jostled,” Dakka was saying to him while the witch started circling the lowered chandeliers. “All the room’s chandeliers were made to explode but, whether due to flaws in construction or simple luck, only two did. We disarmed those two,” she said, throwing a thumb over her shoulder. “Not too keen on having them explode on us.”

“I would say it is luck they didn’t all go off in sequence when the first one did,” Zullie grumbled, not looking up. She reached out with a scoring knife and, with sweat dripping off her brow, made a few careful marks on the upper part of the chandelier.

“Exactly. Don’t know what else might set them off so she’s… what was it again? Dispersing the stored magic or something like that.”

“What…” Hawkwood said, “is that?”

Dakka, following his pointed finger, stared at the abyss. The abyss stared back but apparently not hard enough to warrant more than a casual shrug from the orc. “Oh, that? Just Vezta. She’s watching over Arkk. He took a bit of a knock in the explosion. Still alive and he has started to stir a bit. Hope he wakes up soon because I would really like to get out of here before some people get funny ideas.”

Hawkwood barely heard what Dakka said beyond the name. It was familiar. It didn’t take long to figure out where he heard it from. “The demihuman with a skin condition?”

Dakka looked back to the abyss again. “Uh. Yes. Her… uh… skin condition is quite bad today, as you can see. Another good reason to leave soon. I don’t suppose you can help with that? Arkk should have a few ways to get us out of here but he’s out. I doubt he wants us fighting our way out. I don’t favor that fight either. Too many against too few.” Dakka paused as Zullie grumbled something else. “Right. That too. I don’t suppose you know where Ilya is? They carted her off along with her mother.”

“I…”

Hawkwood didn’t know what to say. Though looking at that abyss against the far wall of the throne room, he did have a feeling that he knew how Arkk managed to get to the gorgon in Silver City without being petrified. Vezta. That… thing over there had been at his dinner table, looking odd but not like that.

What was she? A demon as the guard suspected? They had said someone with glowing eyes had been standing over him. He had been near Arkk. Vezta being associated with him… But Arkk hadn’t attacked him. He had been surprised. That shock on Arkk’s face was burned into Hawkwood’s mind. It was the last thing he saw before he passed out.

“Is… she dangerous?”

“Only if you want to harm Arkk,” Dakka said with another casual shrug. “Told your men she wouldn’t be an issue. Didn’t stop them from tiptoeing around though. Really, I would be more worried about this.” Dakka waved a hand to where Zullie was making another scoring line on the main shaft of the chandelier.

A loud hissing noise came from the metal. Both of them jumped back. Zullie lost her grip on the scoring knife, leading to a loud clatter as it hit the floor. Rurik tried to pull Hawkwood back but his efforts were unnecessary. As quickly as it started, the hissing stopped. Everything went silent save for the tense breathing of the four people.

“That didn’t happen on the other ones,” Dakka said, taking another wary step back.

“I think it is a good sign,” Zullie said, also taking another step back.

“You think?”

“Well it didn’t explode, did it? Just a harsh dispersal. Nothing to be worried about.”

“That why you jumped out of your boots? Your tool is over there, right next to the stupid thing. Why not pick it up?”

“Why not shut up?”

“Do you even know what you’re doing?”

Hawkwood watched the byplay between the two, slowly relaxing. If either were concerned with an imminent explosion, he presumed they would have turned tail and run in the opposite direction. He found his gaze wandering beyond them to that abyss against the back wall. No matter what Dakka said, he found that far more worrying.

Although he had been more or less confined to a desk for the better part of the last five years, Hawkwood considered himself a well-traveled man. He had been a part of several mercenary organizations in his time, fighting everything from simple bandits to foreign armies, delving into ancient tombs and climbing to the highest mountains, sailing the seas, and crossing the volcanic planes of the Dead Isle. With all he had seen, very little surprised him.

This, he didn’t recognize. He had written the book—or at least several chapters—on tactics against beings with unusual abilities. It, this Vezta, was monstrous to the point where his mind could only jump back to ancient myths and legends. A pre-Calamity monster.

Where had Arkk dug up something like this?

It was little wonder that the throne room had been sealed off by the Duke’s spellcasters. Even if there truly was no danger, Hawkwood couldn’t help but feel a tingle of pride at his men braving this room to recover any survivors who had been left behind. They were a gallant crew, better than he deserved.

The problem was, what happened now? Even if it was only the guard and his men, something Hawkwood doubted given the situation, people would talk. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if the only reason the Duke’s men hadn’t charged in was because this incident had shaken their organizational structure. Who was calling the shots? It sounded like the Duke was incapacitated and two generals were dead. There was a hierarchy but some captain who had been woken up in the last hour with no clue as to what was going on couldn’t command effectively.

The inquisitors… were already harassing Arkk. Probably because of this monster. Master Inquisitor Vrox had been incapacitated as well. That might be the only reason half the church wasn’t bearing down on this room as well. That wouldn’t last, however. There were other inquisitors. Other officials. Like with the Duke’s men, it would take some time but they would get organized eventually. Likely sooner than anyone would like.

What of him? Hawkwood considered himself and his men. White Company was large. Per their contract, only the Duke could order them around. Still, if a threat befell the city, White Company would act even without orders. Throwing them against a pre-Calamity monster that they knew nothing about wasn’t something he aspired toward. It was clearly strong. Arkk hadn’t mentioned it before but it did fill in a few gaps of just how Arkk managed to convince a bunch of raiders to take up a more noble profession, not to mention his other seemingly unlikely feats.

Trying to attack the creature was, at the moment, unnecessary. It wasn’t doing anything but guarding Arkk. If the Duke or the Abbey of the Light decided to act, however, it would be a disaster. Another tragedy on top of an already trying evening.

The Evestani Sultanate had attacked, clearly aiming to weaken those in command. Send the Duchy into disarray. They didn’t need more good men dying against something that wasn’t even an enemy.

Was it the right thing to do? Hawkwood wasn’t sure. He wasn’t a cleric and knew nothing of such beings. Perhaps this would end with the inquisition harassing him. Nevertheless, he stepped forward, brushing off Rurik’s hand in the process, certain that a fight with Company Al-Mir was not in anyone’s interests.

“We have to get you out of here.”