Fortress Al-Mir

Lightning crackled in the air, hopping from one soldier to the next. In a second, the bright flash faded and twelve men clattered to the ground. Arkk didn’t spare them a second glance. He beckoned, waving at his employees.

Claire, along with an injured orc and a gorgon, hurried across a gap between buildings.

The dark elf clutched a hand to her arm, stymieing the flow of blood from a wound. Jorr’or looked like he could barely walk, being dragged along more than anything. While Vissh didn’t look too injured, Arkk could feel a level of pain in the link coming from the gorgon.

Yet there was no judgment in their eyes. No accusations about how he could have shown up earlier or sent more support. Claire gave him a thankful nod of her head as she headed into the older house he had emerged from. After they helped Jorr’or onto the teleportation circle, Claire hopped on next and vanished. The gorgon quickly followed.

Arkk didn’t join them. With a muttered incantation, he summoned up a lesser servant. It ate through the evidence of the teleportation circle as Arkk hurried out of the small home.

Claire’s group, albeit unknowingly, had been traveling a mere street over from Kia’s half of the strike team. He had provided Claire with an alternate escape but Kia was still heading toward one of the original escape points. Vezta provided another alternate teleportation point, closer to where Kia’s team was headed, but the servant had gone to reinforce Joanne’s group.

Arkk rushed through the streets, stepping over bodies. Not all the dead were his and Company Al-Mir’s doing. Some were regular citizens of Gleeful Burg who either hadn’t escaped before Evestani moved in or simply decided to stay. They were just left in the streets to rot and feed the rats.

It was a warning.

Evestani hadn’t put everyone to the sword. Not in this nor any other occupied burg. At least not yet. As far as Arkk could tell, as long as they didn’t cause trouble, the Evestani left most citizens alive.

They did displace a lot of them. The entire keep and its surrounding buildings had been cleared out. The outer wall of the burg and all the people who lived along its perimeter had been relocated as well, cramming the people in small groupings throughout the city.

What he was doing now would get more killed. Even if Evestani continued to leave them alive, the food was gone. They would starve. But… Arkk had a feeling that they would have starved anyway. The army needed supplies and it was doubtful that they would share with the civilians.

It was possible they would kill the citizens after this. A retaliation. A message. Don’t mess with us or we’ll kill everyone. Arkk… had to believe that they were already dead. Better this way than Evestani marching forward to do the same to other burgs and villages.

He had to believe that.

“Electro Deus,” Arkk intoned, blasting a crossbowman off a roof before he could loose a bolt at Kia’s group.

The other dark elf had a larger force at her side. One more gorgon, Vezz, and six orcs.

Two had already died. One in the initial blast, one later on during the escape.

Innately aware of where his minions were, Arkk waded into battle with no hesitation. He didn’t have to take even a split second to decide whether a target was one of his or not. Soldiers fell, crossbowmen seized and misfired, and a spellcaster turned to stone—though that last one was Vezz’s doing.

The tide turned with Arkk’s appearance.

Kia jammed her sword through the stomach of someone who should have been wearing armor. She wrenched it out the side of his body with a flourish, sending blood across the muddy street in an arc. Hakk’ar bashed a helmet in with a heavy hammer. A glob of caustic venom sailed through the air, splattering across someone’s arm, forcing them to drop their sword.

They could likely have taken care of everything on their own. Kia and Claire’s group were made up of experienced raiders. Arkk’s intervention just facilitated a faster and safer resolution.

After looking over the street with narrowed eyes, Kia hurried over to Arkk. “Claire—” she started, only for Arkk to hold up a hand.

“Already back at the fortress,” Arkk said, not stopping as he hurried across the street to one of the abandoned homes. The door was locked. Or jammed. A long spell blasted the door off its hinges. “Inside quickly,” he said, waving a hand to draw Kia’s entire group over to him. “You’ve done well. Hale is waiting to tend to any injuries on the other side of the ritual circle.”

One by one, the orcs and gorgon stepped through the teleportation point. Kia stayed behind, watching each to ensure they got through. As soon as Zojja made it through the portal, she looked at Arkk.

“We lost Yatt’el and Farr’an.”

“I know,” Arkk said, voice hard.

“Yatt’el went up in flames with the warehouse. Farr’an covered for us, blocking a path while we fought through another group. I watched him fall. He took out three armored soldiers on his own before succumbing.”

Arkk just nodded his head, not trusting himself to speak. Those two weren’t the only two who died tonight. They were the only two who had likely died because of him. If he hadn’t made those bombs so volatile, the crossbowman wouldn’t have been able to detonate it. The entire group could have stayed together, fought better. Yatt’el wouldn’t have been incinerated.

Kia, somehow, managed a smile. Or… perhaps it was that she didn’t feel all that much at their loss. Since their joining, Arkk had felt that Kia and Claire were… a little off. Emotionally. They were a little too hungry for a fight and the latter rarely spoke. Even though Kia was leagues more personable than Claire, Arkk was fairly sure it was an act.

In a war like this, Arkk didn’t much care. As long as they were loyal to him and weren’t harming anyone at Fortress Al-Mir. They could spill as much blood in battle as they wanted.

Kia didn’t say anything else. She hopped onto the teleportation circle and vanished.

Arkk didn’t move for a long moment, standing in the dark, abandoned home. The only light came from the roaring orange flames consuming the city. He scanned through everyone still in the city. Agnete and Lexa. Joanne and her group. Vezta. Dakka was out along with her team and now Kia and Claire’s team were safe.

Agnete and Lexa were still headed toward their target. Theirs was the only one not aflame.

Was it worth it to continue? Would they be in danger if they did? Should he pull them back now, before they wound up in over their heads? Three teams had successfully burned their assigned warehouses already and lesser servants had consumed a few of the smaller stores in all the chaos.

They weren’t in trouble now. The city was alert. He couldn’t scry on the keep but he did not doubt that whoever was in charge had noticed what they were targeting. With three storehouses down, there was only one main target left.

The real question was whether or not Agnete and Lexa could handle themselves. All Agnete needed was a glimpse of the storehouse and it would go up in flames. Lexa, with her stealth-based magic, could get them out.

They could do it. That was why he had sent only the two of them.

The lesser servant from the previous ritual circle made it to the abandoned building, curling around Arkk’s legs as it headed toward the ritual circle. It would be ready to consume it as soon as he left. And he needed to go.

While Vezta was assisting, Joanne’s group needed more help.

He stepped toward the ritual circle only to feel a tingle on his arms. A strange sensation of his hair standing on end. Some deep well of power formed elsewhere in the city and it was…

Arkk’s eyes widened.

It was just like at Elmshadow.

He dove backward, throwing himself out of the abandoned home and into the muddy street, hands over the top of his head.

The sound went dead. The distant roars of flames fell silent. Shouts and clattering armor went still. The general noise of wind and settling buildings stopped in its tracks as the entire world held its breath.

A ray of gold filled his vision. It wasn’t hot. No heat burned at his back.

The sound came rushing back in a deafening cacophony. As if every sound that stopped during that brief pause had to make up for the time lost. Arkk grit his teeth, forcing himself up and out of the mud.

The abandoned house was gone. As were its neighbors. And their neighbors. An entire row of the street had turned into a shallow trough.

Gritting his teeth, Arkk threw himself to his feet.

Vezta was assisting Joanne’s group. They were practically on the other side of the burg. She hadn’t noticed the golden beam or his situation. Once she returned to the scrying team, she would immediately provide an escape. Arkk didn’t know how long that would take. Joanne’s team was bogged down heavily at the moment.

The scrying team would alert others to his situation. They lacked the ability to rapidly craft teleportation circles so they would use one of the preexisting ones to send reinforcements through.

Arkk pivoted, scanning the newly changed layout of the city around him. He knew the map. He had scried the burg enough on his own to know it well enough. He knew where the concentrations of Evestani forces were holed up, which routes they would likely take to reach the towering infernos, and which areas might be safer.

He took a few steps, breaking into a run. There were no soldiers around in the immediate area but after that golden light, some would surely—

“Leaving so soon?”

“Electro Deus,” Arkk snarled, throwing his arm toward the voice before even turning his head.

Blinding, overpowered lightning split the air with a sharp, deafening crack. The violet bolt of lightning crackled through the air.

A flash of golden light deflected it, sending it off into one of the remaining buildings on the other side of the street. The wood and stone blasted to pieces. Bits rained down onto the muddy street.

“You caught me off guard with that before. Never again.”

A child stood along the edge of the trough. A middling teen girl who couldn’t be any older than Hale. She stood in a casual pose with an easy smile on her face. The glowing gold tattoos around her shaved head and matching eyes were more than enough to keep Arkk fully on guard.

He wasn’t Agnete. He didn’t have a way of avoiding that golden ray. When told of the problem, Zullie hadn’t managed to come up with anything beyond ‘don’t get hit’.

“I thought I smelled anathemic magics around here,” she continued, looking off to where the abandoned building had been standing a few minutes before. “Naughty, naughty. You do realize that pokes little holes in reality, right? They leak all sorts of unpleasant magics and take forever to heal back up.”

Lightning crackled between Arkk’s fingertips, just waiting for him to sling it off toward the child once again. That deflection had him wary. It was too similar to Chronicler Greesom’s defensive magic. Arkk’s employees had wound up injuring themselves more than the inquisitors during that encounter. Neither Greesom nor this child had reflected his lighting at him directly but both cast it off to the side.

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it,” Arkk said. If the child wanted to talk, talking would buy him time to think. “Seeing as we’re enemies and all.”

A dozen other spells flicked through Arkk’s mind. Nothing offensive. Anything that directly struck the child could turn against him. The child wasn’t invulnerable. Assuming it was the same being from the Duke’s party and Elmshadow, Vezta had killed the ones at the party and he had blown the arm off the one at Elmshadow.

Judging by the tattoos, Arkk had no doubt it was the same person. Just possessing… a child.

A flash of anger coursed through Arkk at the thought. He didn’t like the idea of possession in general. While he had possessed both Vezta and Zullie, they had both offered prior consent. The latter for research purposes and the former simply because she viewed it as a kind of honor.

Had this child agreed to be a puppet? What about the one from Elmshadow? Arkk had taken that child’s arm. Had the golden-eyed being released the child, discarding the boy as soon as he lost some of his use?

Arkk forced his jaw loose. He was getting distracted by his own anger. That wasn’t productive for the immediate situation.

Returning his thoughts to spells, he considered. Something like the Road of Stability he had used at the Duke’s party… something that enhanced its user. Those kinds of spells would work.

But the incantations were long. Long enough that someone who did not need to speak words would be able to fling off a ray of golden light at him well before he could finish speaking.

Arkk needed a moment. A slight chance. A distraction. And if he had a distraction, wouldn’t a lightning bolt to the skull be a better option?

It was a child. It didn’t deserve…

Arkk clenched his teeth.

He had to decide quickly. A distraction was on its way.

Arkk kept the lightning curling around his fingers. Constantly funneling magic into the spell to keep it going without having to repeat the incantation. Every instant would be important.

The golden-eyed being had said something during his thoughts, something he hadn’t quite registered in his anger. Unable to reply to it, Arkk had to keep the conversation going. Just a bit longer. “You’re the one from the Duke’s party? The assassins?” Arkk asked.

The girl raised an eyebrow. “You…” She paused. “You can’t be this ignorant. You haven’t figured out what I am yet?”

“You’re an avatar of the Heart of Gold.”

“Oh good. I had a genuine fear that [Servant]/[sliver]/[STAR]-[slave] hadn’t bothered to tell you anything.”

Vezta. He was talking about Vezta.

“Awfully considerate of you to worry over me. And here I thought you wanted to obliterate me,” Arkk said with a casual wave to the trough that had cut through the burg.

“You are, ultimately, inconsequential. You are a mortal. You will die eventually. You’re just an obstacle on the path to [her].” The child chuckled. A very… uncanny chuckle. It was not the kind of laugh a normal child would give, but rather someone far older. More jaded than a child should be. “I should be thanking you. We knew there was one more unaccounted for. By dragging her out into the light, we can finally—”

A spiraling column of flames erupted into the skies, filling the night with a bright red-orange light. Even from the distance he was at, Arkk could feel the heat wash over him, warming him from the otherwise chill winter air. The familiar sensation of Agnete’s fire spread across the clouds.

He had told her to make it big and showy. More in the hopes of cowing the army, maybe even burning the whole of the keep down.

The child tensed, on guard. But her guard was focused on the flames in the distance, not on Arkk.

The lightning had been dancing between his fingertips, curling around his arm, fueled by minutes of constantly pouring magic into the spell to keep it going… Arkk barely twitched his fingers and the lightning was gone. It careened through the air in the blink of an eye, slamming into the child with the force of a hundred of his most powerful bolts. The resulting thunderclap boomed over the burg, stronger and louder than any Arkk had heard before.

He fell backward from the shockwave, landing in the mud, entirely unable to see thanks to the spots in his eyes. Arkk blinked his eyes several times, trying to clear the seared bolt of lightning only to remember that he didn’t need eyes to see himself. Like at the Silver City mines, Arkk focused on himself with the link from the fortress.

It didn’t offer a good field of view. Just a top-down perspective like he was scrying on himself from a point directly overhead. It was enough to get him on his feet and oriented in the direction he needed to go. He didn’t know what happened to the golden-eyed being or the possessed child. They were too far from him for his current perspective to see.

The fact that he wasn’t dead from a ray of golden light was telling.

Hopefully, it had been quick.

Arkk started running. He assumed that most guards would be focused on the inferno at the keep. That didn’t mean he wanted to stick around in this Evestani-infested town even a moment longer.

He made it a street over from the teleportation circle before he started to feel that build-up of tingling magic on his arms once again. Gritting his teeth, he veered off from his current course, throwing himself between two buildings.

Another ray of golden light crashed through the city, taking with it another narrow slice of land, buildings, streets, and everything in between. It was smaller than the previous ray, not enveloping the entire street. That just meant that debris came crashing down as the buildings collapsed, forcing him to duck and dodge as he dashed through an alley.

“Electro Deus,” Arkk muttered, panting heavily. He didn’t fling a bolt of lightning straight away. Aside from knowing the direction the beam had come from, he didn’t have a target. Instead, he just funneled magic into the spell once again, hoping that overcharging it like before might let it penetrate whatever defenses the golden-eyed being could come up with.

A much narrower beam of gold light tore through the building Arkk had his back against. Not even as thick as Arkk’s arm. It swept a few paces, slicing a small hole into the building. The cut wood behind Arkk cracked and broke, falling and collapsing into itself. The building opposite Arkk suffered the same fate.

He ducked down, crouching low as part of the wall fell.

Another thin beam of light did the same to the buildings on the opposite side of the fresh chasm.

He was… mostly certain that he had made that thing upset.

Blinking his eyes a few more times helped his vision return. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough to see by. With a grimace, he peered around the side of what was left of the building.

The golden-eyed being had taken on a new form. An older boy stood at the far end of the road. Late teens. Maybe even in his twenties. He had the same tattoos around his shaved skull but, this boy looked… in poor condition. Welts, cuts, and other marks marred his body. Like he had been strapped to a pole and whipped. The tattoos around his head looked raw and had streaks of red all around his shaved head. They had been bleeding recently.

The boy, looking off after the most recent beam of light, whipped his head toward Arkk as soon as Arkk revealed himself.

He raised an arm, golden light forming at the tips of his fingers.

Arkk slung his lightning bolt. It wasn’t as charged as the previous one and that came through in the dampened crack and less blinding light. Nevertheless, it forced the boy to swipe his hand, deflecting the lightning off to the side.

He immediately lowered that hand and raised his other, forming another light at his fingertips.

Arkk sucked in a breath, wincing in prescient knowledge of his own bisection. He threw another lightning bolt. This one weak in the wake of the previous, not having been even mildly charged up.

The boy didn’t even dodge, seizing slightly upon it striking him but otherwise ignoring its effects as he continued to build that golden glow at the end of his fingertips.

A crossbow bolt slammed through the boy’s extended arm, sending the beam of gold off into the skies.

Arkk didn’t question his good fortune even as the boy snapped his head toward where the bolt had come from. Instead, he repeated the incantation, “Electro Deus,” and threw out a fresh bolt at the golden-eyed boy.

It struck at the exact moment another blast of golden light fired at the source of the crossbow shot.

A scream echoed off the half-toppled walls of the buildings around Arkk.

The boy went into a seizure, crumpling as black smoke wafted from his form.

Dead? Not? Arkk didn’t move to find out. His eyes were drawn to the scream.

A woman. Not one of his minions. At first, Arkk didn’t recognize her, figuring she must have just been a civilian who had picked up a fallen guard’s crossbow. She wore tattered clothes and had a grime-covered face. One of her legs, along with half her side, sat in the mud apart from the rest of her, cut off by that last golden beam. She was missing an arm as well, but bandages around the stump meant she had lost it well in the past.

It was her grimace-set face, brimming with determination like she could pull through having been cut in half, that clicked in the back of Arkk’s mind.

Master Inquisitrix Sylvara Astra.

His first instinct was to leave her. Abandon her. She was, likely, an enemy.

But she had saved his life.

Swearing under his breath, quickly checking every relevant employee of Fortress Al-Mir, Arkk made the decision. He sprinted across the open terrain, down and back up the shallow trough that the large golden beam had cut. The golden-eyed being hadn’t gotten up. Arkk assumed he was dead or injured enough to not matter for at least a few minutes. There was probably another tattooed child waiting in the wings but, for at least a moment, he was safe from golden rays of light.

He swore the Flesh Weaving spell under his breath.

The Inquisitrix was missing a leg, part of her hip, and her forearm. Her shoulder and chest were still intact, as were the vital organs contained within. She had probably lost something important along with her hip but Arkk didn’t have the time to do any in-depth repair. He swept his hand over her fresh wounds, sealing them shut and little else.

She didn’t speak upon his approach or while he was healing her, leaving her face locked in that determined grimace. Her eyes glared daggers at him like she resented being saved.

“Leave me,” she said without unclenching her teeth. “Just promise you’ll kill that bastard. The real one.”

“I can promise that. But you aren’t being left behind.”

The second he finished speaking, a teleportation ritual carved itself into the ground at his side. Vezta appeared within.

She didn’t have a comment. She didn’t ask what he wanted. As if she could read his mind, she reached out with long tendrils and grasped hold of the inquisitrix. Arkk summoned a lesser servant in the short time it took them to disappear before hopping on the teleportation circle himself.

The lesser servant was likely unnecessary. Just before he vanished, he could feel the hairs on his arms rising on end once again.

The lesser servant blipped out of existence in a blast of golden light.