“Found you,” Arkk murmured.
It wasn’t a big thing. A small sliver of a wall going missing. Perhaps the length of his hand and the width of a finger. But Fortress Al-Mir’s Heart was incredibly sensitive to any disruptions. Any damage to its structure set off alarm bells in the back of Arkk’s mind. Alarm bells were currently tolling in one of the vertical shafts blocking the way forward.
Arkk teleported to the shaft, standing on a small grate made specifically to prevent anyone from moving up and down the shafts. Lesser servants were already there, burrowing small holes through the shaft’s walls, digging into a vacancy on the other side. Kia, Claire, and Agnete were primed and ready, anticipating a teleport at any moment. The two dark elves were quite eager for revenge.
Arkk just needed to make an opportunity.
With the Empress outside the fortress proper, it wasn’t an easy task. If he hadn’t tried to kill her with the trap room, he likely would have had a solution by now. Even if that solution was a slow death from starvation in the Maze of Infinite Paths. Her being in her own little tunnel was an inconvenience, although he did have to thank her. With her in there, he had a little more time to plan rather than try rash things like his earlier attempt that got six of his orcs detained.
An idle part of his mind wondered if he could visit the temple and make a plea to the Jailer of the Void for their release, assuming detained meant what it sounded like and wasn’t just Tybalt’s euphemism for obliterated.
He would try that later. Once the danger passed.
Once this Empress was in the ground for good.
There was a cavern on the other side of the wall. His servants swarmed through it, searching. Despite the alarms having tolled only seconds ago, there was no sign of the Empress within.
Which was concerning. When he had initially ordered the shaft construction, it had been a defensive action. Insurance to make sure that the Empress couldn’t reach the Heart just by popping up beneath it. But upon later thought, and a brief meeting with Rekk’ar, they realized that the Empress would likely be surprised to dig through what she expected to be dirt only to suddenly find herself back in the fortress.
Arkk had planned on capitalizing on that brief moment of surprise.
But she wasn’t here… and the hair on Arkk’s arms was tingling.
Arkk teleported.
A void swallowed the ledge he had been standing on an instant later.
“Did you find her?” Agnete asked, standing with flames coiling around her bare arms. She was ready to fight at any moment.
Kia and Claire stood in the ready room as well, the latter looking stormy after her collapse. It was good she was back on her feet for this. In the future, he would have to find a solution for them—a magic-filled amulet that would keep them active when the Heart couldn’t or when something threatened to disrupt their connection. They both had swords in their hands, gripped lightly. They all had been waiting for a teleport, not for Arkk to teleport to them.
He shook his head, scowling. “My trap for her turned into a trap for me,” he said, trying to sense the level of damage. Had the Empress slipped through to the inner part? Past the vertical shafts? Lesser servants had dug out a second layer of shafts a little closer to the Heart, just in case he somehow missed her here.
Lesser servants swarmed over the area, scouring up and down the vertical shafts in the first layer. The Empress had to be nearby. There was no sign of loosened, collapsed tunneling in the area between the shaft layers. Arkk directed the lesser servants to seal the opening off immediately. Other servants in the outer section were claiming territory in the cavernous area as fast as possible.
One touched something. It felt something that should have been emptiness.
“Ready!” Arkk shouted, the only warning his specialists got.
Kia and Claire teleported near each other, arriving the moment the servant claimed the land in his name.
They immediately split apart, their bodies reaching out with dozens if not hundreds of afterimages. Each ghostly silhouette sliced through the air in a different direction, intent on leaving not a single space larger than a kitten untouched by their power.
A spurt of blood flew through the air as Claire’s blade sliced through an empty spot. All the afterimages immediately shifted, some collapsing back into their parent forms, the rest all swinging toward the spot Claire struck.
A bright flash filled Arkk’s vision. Without hesitation, without even being able to see, he teleported Kia and Claire back.
He mentally blinked away the blindness.
The Empress was there, standing tall in her black, militaristic attire. She was closer to the shaft now than she had been, but she was facing the spot where she and the dark elves had just been standing.
A black void now encompassed that area. It collapsed down to nothing, taking part of the wall, floor, and a lesser servant with it.
“I got her,” Claire hissed. “I felt it. Felt her blood.”
“She doesn’t even look injured,” Arkk said, scowling at the Empress. All her other abilities left him unsurprised that she could heal as well. “Sending you back.” They reappeared next to the now-visible Empress. “Agnete, going to pop you behind her the moment she tel—now!”
Kia and Claire were back as a flash of light filled Arkk’s vision.
Heat and flame flooded the small cavern off the shaft. Agnete didn’t bother trying to hit the woman precisely. She simply unleashed everything she had. Warning bells went off as the fire started eating at the reinforcement magic of the fortress, but Arkk put them out of his mind.
He hadn’t seen where the Empress teleported to. He didn’t think it mattered with what Agnete was doing.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t see through the flames. Even using his link to directly observe Agnete, she was so wreathed in fire that nothing else was visible. Nothing except a sudden flash that washed out the flames.
Arkk teleported her out the moment after noticing the flash, sending her to one of the deeper level rooms to avoid a sudden rush of fire incinerating anyone else. He couldn’t risk leaving her near the Empress for any length of time. Not while he couldn’t see what she was up to.
He couldn’t allow Agnete to be detained.
Lesser servants returned to the tunnel. A few died in the heat haze of the air, but the few seconds Agnete had been there weren’t enough to truly turn the cavern into a furnace. Some started reclaiming land destroyed by the fire. The rest surged through with no gap between them, searching for anyone invisible.
In the meantime, Agnete had lowered her flames. He teleported her back alongside Kia and Claire.
“Did you feel her in the fire?” Arkk asked.
Agnete slowly shook her head. “I can tell when the flames curl and wrap around bodies. There was something like that, but only for a moment.”
“She must have teleported again the moment you arrived. I don’t suppose it is too much to hope for that your flames caught her on fire and are now eating her despite her teleport?”
“Couldn’t say.”
“I have to assume no then,” Arkk said with a frown as the lesser servants reclaimed the cavern.
There was no invisible woman inside, as far as he could tell. She must have teleported just out of reach. Not in the shaft. The grates were still in place. Her teleportation was too blinding to manage to teleport up the shaft without notice. Unless she could render the flash unseeable as she could herself. Still, there were solid walls and doors in the way.
If she could teleport through them without revealing herself, Arkk felt like she would have done so a long time ago. Her teleport must require line of sight—or else was otherwise limited. She had never teleported more than a few steps away from her position.
“Back to the cat-and-mouse game,” Arkk said as he scowled in concentration.
It was getting irritating. But the mouse was running out of places to scurry.
Any little slip-up could be a clue to her location. Movement of dust and dirt, a shift in light, obviously any attack on the fortress or servants.
“If possible, aim for her head,” Arkk said as he scanned the corridors, halls, and newly claimed territory in the cavern.
“Oh yeah, sure. Aim for the invisible bitch’s head,” Kia said with a frustrated sneer.
“If possible,” Arkk stressed. “I think I’ve got her. Ready…”
The cavern wasn’t the entirety of the tunnel. One of the lesser servants, boring small exploratory holes, found another pocket of air just on the other side of a thick dirt wall. The Empress reached over and crushed the servant with her bare hand before it could claim any territory.
“Hold,” he said, redirecting all available servants to swarm into the new air gap.
The Empress couldn’t kill every servant. Not without magic. Even then, she had to be wearing thin. The Heart of Gold’s avatar hadn’t been able to use his full strength repeatedly. Of course, the Heart of Gold’s avatar could have blasted a hole straight from the bomb room to the Heart. He had already shown that he could bore a hole through a mountain with one of those blasts.
Was the Empress not as strong? Or was she deliberately restraining herself?
The latter being possible only made Arkk want to end this immediately, before she did anything else.
When the Empress stopped killing his servants, drawing in on herself with her eyes closed, Arkk almost teleported all of them straight into the chamber.
A little niggle in the back of his mind was the only thing that saved them from an explosion of air that spread out, flinging lesser servants against the walls with enough force to render them little more than smears.
The Empress, in addition to fine black attire, wore one unusual piece. A halo that hovered just behind her head. It bore nine sharp blades made from gold, arranged around the ring in the same manner as the Eternal Empire’s banner. It, along with the golden glove she wore around on her right hand, was the only bit of color she had on her. Everything else was black or white.
Except three of the nine spikes weren’t gold anymore. They had tarnished, withered, and lost their luster. Another withered and tarnished as she continued with her wind spell. It started ripping apart the freshly claimed tiles, ignoring the magical reinforcement of the fortress. Dirt and rock tore apart and the small holes the servants had been using to invade the space widened and split as more and more wind rushed through.
Storage for magic? Or spells? Something akin to glowstones that let her use stronger magic? If she needed such an aid, perhaps she really wasn’t on the level of Agnete or the Heart of Gold’s avatar.
Not that it helped the lesser servants. They couldn’t stand against the gale. The wind liquefied their already amorphous bodies, splattering them against walls and floors before the walls and floors ripped off the ground. Bits of the newly claimed chamber—and the cavernous chamber adjacent to the shafts—lost their connection to the fortress. The servants joined with the wreckage, moving away from the woman in the only direction they could.
Up the shafts, tearing out metal grates as they rushed past.
The Empress drew her hands together, taking in a deep breath as she opened her eyes. Without hesitation, without looking around to see the result of her magic, she immediately started moving forward once more. With the shaft cleared out, she simply looked upward and jumped.
“Acceleratæ,” Arkk said, casting a haste spell on Claire.
The moment the Empress touched down on the upper level, Claire teleported beside her.
“Acceleratæ,” Arkk said again, repeating the spell on Kia.
He could feel the drain on the Heart. After their enhancements, both were a drain on the Heart rather than a boost for the same reason as their collapse after the demon tricked them into snapping the link. Two wasn’t a problem normally. With the acceleration spell on them, it was like having a hundred employees of their abilities.
Arkk could handle it. For now. He wouldn’t be able to maintain two spells for any length of time. But he didn’t need a great deal of time, just enough time to stab an Empress.
Watching Claire, he couldn’t even track her movements, nor the movements of her afterimages. She struck at the Empress from a hundred different angles at the same time.
Even with the haste spell, he fully expected the Empress to teleport before she could take real damage.
He did not expect her to reach out and grab Claire by her wrist. The moment she made contact, all the afterimages collapsed back into one, leaving Claire with a dagger aimed directly at the Empress’ face but unable to move.
As the Empress reached her other hand out toward Claire’s face, Arkk teleported Kia in on the opposite side.
“Acceleratæ,” Arkk said one more time.
Accelerating Agnete didn’t drain him much at all. Presumably, because most of her power came from the Burning Forge, not from the contract with his Heart.
Kia, much like Claire, split into a multitude of possibilities. With her haste spell, she must have guessed at what happened to Claire. As the Empress switched from reaching toward Claire’s face to extending a hand to block Kia’s attack, the afterimages snaked away, slipping just out of her grasp. The Empress swept her hand backward, striking another afterimage just before a blade could go through the side of her head.
The contact collapsed the afterimages into one point, leaving Kia stumbling slightly from the force of the blow.
Claire didn’t remain idle. Having their afterimages disrupted like that seemed to startle them but, with a flick of her captured wrist, Claire flung her blade straight toward the Empress’ face. Her other hand swung out, grasping a shorter dagger that she pulled off her belt.
She still wasn’t splitting into her afterimages.
“The others will be present,” Arkk said to Agnete as the Empress simply tilted her head, dodging one blade completely and taking nothing more than a slight cut from the flung sword. He did not want any accidents when she went in. “Kill the Empress if possible. Free Claire if not.”
Arkk teleported her before she nodded her head.
Agnete appeared directly in front of the Empress. She didn’t hesitate. Her fist slammed into the Empress, hitting her sternum hard enough to crack steel, while her other hand swept down, striking the arm that held Claire. The flames followed both, swirling around Agnete’s arms and into the Empress. Arkk could see her skin blacken and peel apart.
He saw it until a bright flash filled his vision.
Arkk teleported all three out.
No void appeared where the Empress had been. She hadn’t even moved. All injuries, from the minor cut on her cheek to the gaping wound in her chest, were healed. Rather, her clothes had healed. One more of her halo’s daggers was tarnished. They were wearing her down, but could they exhaust the remainder of those daggers without her either reaching the Heart or killing one of them?
Or could they get rid of it more directly?
The Empress didn’t look around. Back in the upper hallways, she started walking again. There was a slight change to her previous actions. Again, she started detaining anything in her path, cutting out large parts of walls, doors, and even furniture in the rooms she was charging through. As she did so, Arkk watched one of the daggers, formerly withered, start to regain its luster.
Either detaining the surrounding environment charged them up or simple time passage fixed them. Exhausting them just became less realistic of a goal.
Arkk had half a mind to go back to the Maze of Infinite Paths idea again, but he wasn’t sure there was time to implement it now. The Empress was past the first vertical shaft. She wouldn’t have far to go before she reached the second shaft Arkk had dug.
After that, the Heart.
“Ready to move,” Arkk said, watching the way the Empress moved. He could see the tension in her shoulders, the way she flicked her eyes around, watching for another teleport. He had little doubt that she was ready for another teleport attack.
So he watched and waited.
“Acceleratæ,” casting the spell on himself.
That was a drain.
“Kia. Swing, mid-level. Left to right. Claire high-level. Right to left. Agnete, relieve her of her halo. Ready…” Arkk held his hand.
“Electro Deus.”
Arkk teleported all four of them. Him directly in the front, already slinging a lightning bolt. Kia and Claire on the left and right side of the Empress respectively. Agnete in the back.
Kia and Claire’s blades both came from the front. The Empress caught Arkk’s lightning bolt with her golden glove. She swiftly transitioned into blocking Claire’s sword with her glove, like she was about to catch it, and slipping to the side, letting Kia’s multitude of afterimages all just barely miss.
Arkk swapped Kia and Claire even as he threw another lightning bolt.
Kia and Claire’s swords came from the rear, still swinging from before their teleport, barely avoiding Agnete. If they hadn’t been in mid-swing, they would have sliced the purifier to pieces.
Instead, Kia’s sword dug deep into the back of the Empress. Claire’s sword clipped just beneath the halo, slicing through her neck.
Even with that, even with the blade passing straight through her neck, the expression on the Empress’ face remained neutral. No surprise. No pain.
Not until Agnete’s fingers closed around the halo. A faint light flashed from one of the daggers, but her burning hands were already destroying the artifact. The gold ran molten, dripping between her fingers in an intense glow. The ring folded in half as the blades, both tarnished and golden, fell as if they had been held in place by willpower alone.
The Empress’ eyes widened ever so slightly. The luminous white glow within flickered.
Her head hit the ground with a thump. The rest of her body collapsed on top. Kia and Claire’s multitudes sliced into the body, cutting it to pieces, while Agnete continued melting away the halo.
Arkk stared, waiting, expecting one final trick.
The Empress remained in a heap, blood running thick across the tiles of Fortress Al-Mir.