She clasped her hands together in prayer, her serpentine tail lashing against the marble floor.
A delicate, luminous pink light shot from her fingertips and enveloped Zedora, manifesting as a pulsating, semi-transparent sphere.
The magical ward hissed furiously as successive waves of acid and boiling gold splashed against it, but it held firm.
It bought the warrior a priceless moment of respite, shielding her from further grievous harm, even if it couldn’t free her from her gilded physical trap.
“NOW!
Bregg!” Lengos roared, shouting over the din of surging power.
“Shield Zedora and Perval!
We strike at his legs!”
But the Death Knight didn’t twitch.
The green flame in the slit of his helm burned with a dead, motionless glare.
He stood like a statue carved from shadow, deaf to the commander’s desperate orders, while the acid from the rupturing kobolds hissed against his armor.
Bregg was present in armor, but his spirit lingered in the abyss to which he belonged.
“Bregg?!
Dammit, move!” Lengos bellowed in disbelief, witnessing the behemoth’s passivity.
Yerga, perfectly safe in the rearguard, raised a crystal vial to her lips, sipping mana as if it were a fine vintage wine.
Her cat rubbed against her leg, entirely ignoring the chaos of the battle.
The necromancer rolled her eyes with theatrical exhaustion upon hearing the paladin’s shouts.
“Oh, Lengos…
how many times must I repeat myself?” Her voice was calm, contrasting drastically with the roar of the skirmish.
“He is not a hound you can whistle to heel.” The enchantress offered a lazy smile to the broad back of her spectral servant.”Bregg, darling, that big ugly thing wants to hurt us.
Do something about it.
If you feel like it.”
At the sound of her voice, the heavy helm twitched.
For a moment, it seemed the damned soul was actually considering the request.
Finally, with a slow, almost dismissive grace, he drew his two-handed greatsword.
He did not rush to aid the wounded, however.
He marched straight for the Custodian, nearly trampling the grounded Perval as if the monk were nothing more than a sack of potatoes.
“Watch it, you overgrown tin can!” he hissed, scrambling away at the last moment and cradling his shredded, bleeding hand to his chest.”We’re on the same side!”
Bregg reached his target.
He didn’t bother with finesse.
With the force of a battering ram, he drove his greatsword deep into the monster’s belly, piercing straight through the gilded armor and the flesh beneath.
The blade sank all the way to the crossguard.
And then…
he let go of the weapon.
He decided a single strike was sufficient contribution.
He turned his back on the enemy and began to lose his physical form.
“You’re feeling capricious today,” Yerga hissed at him, snapping her fingers.”You’re irritating me, Bregg.
Disappear.”
The Death Knight didn’t protest.
He melted into a thick, green smoke that swirled in the wind and vanished without a trace moments later.
The Gilded Custodian staggered violently, but it did not fall.
Worse still, the sword wound in its gut didn’t shed a single drop of blood.
Within seconds, the gaping hole filled with molten gold, which hissed and solidified, forming a new, flawless patch over the beast’s armor, firmly trapping Bregg’s weapon inside.
Figlin swayed on his feet, but his bleary eyes spotted a macabre opportunity.
Bregg’s sword still protruded from the beast’s belly like a gigantic steel splinter.
“Oho!
A handle!” he bellowed, his sheer greed momentarily shocking him back into sobriety.”That’s a fine piece of steel!” With a lightning-fast motion, he whipped a grappling hook from his belt and hurled it.
The iron claw wrapped tightly around the hilt of the sword embedded in the Custodian.
“Perval!
Pull!” the pirate roared, bracing his boots against the cobblestones.”We’ll gut the bastard and take the sword!” The monk, despite the agonizing throb in his mangled hand, grabbed the rope with his good arm and planted his feet firmly on the floor, ready for a final exertion.
His muscles pulled taut like ship’s rigging.
“Together, Figi!” he grunted through clenched teeth.”On three!”
The hemp rope stretched to its breaking point, groaning ominously.
“ONNNE!” they roared in unison, pouring every last ounce of their remaining strength into the pull.
They never got the chance to say ‘two’.
A hollow thump echoed, but it wasn’t the sound of steel sliding free from flesh.
Bregg’s sword, being an inextricable part of his essence, began to rapidly evaporate.
In the exact moment Figlin and Perval yanked with all their might, the weapon dissolved into a thick, green mist; exactly as its owner had done moments before.
The monk flew backward, landing hard on his back.
The dwarf tumbled over, getting tangled in his own rope.
“What gives?!
That’s it?!” Figi shrieked, staring in sheer disbelief at his empty hands and the useless hook.
He scrambled up and kicked the air in pure fury.”Where is it?!
Give it back, you dense bastard!
That was my iron!
I called dibs on it!”
Perval picked himself up, dusting the dirt from his shoulders.
“Well, technically speaking…
the sword was an extension of Bregg,” he explained calmly, as if delivering a lecture in a monastic library rather than standing in the epicenter of a battlefield.”Bregg is gone.
The sword is gone.
Magic, my friend.
A deeply ungrateful field of study.”
While they casually debated the ontological nature of summons, hell broke loose around the immobilized Zedora.
The remnants of the flayed kobolds, completely ignoring the slaughter of their kin and sensing an incredibly easy target, swarmed her in a frenzy.
They clawed wildly at Neira’s magical barrier, which was already beginning to flicker, desperately hunting for a gap in the barbarian’s defenses.
The paladin stood over her like a ruined, yet unconquerable, steel tower.
His shield was now little more than a battered scrap of metal, and his face dripped with a mixture of sweat and enemy gore.
He deflected blow after blow, refusing to let the vile creatures lay a single claw on his companion.
“You…
aren’t getting…
through!” he hissed through gritted teeth, deflecting a glob of searing acid.
One of the flayed kobolds, smaller and far more cunning than the rest, managed to slip beneath his guard.
It lunged with a wet hiss, aiming a hooked talon straight for Zedora’s exposed throat.
Lengos was entirely occupied parrying the frantic strikes of two other beasts; he wouldn’t be able to swing his blade in time.
Then, dropping from above like a bolt of crimson lightning, came Duria.
She landed with lethal precision squarely on the creature’s back, driving her wakizashi so deeply into the base of its skull that the crossguard slammed against the bone.
The kobold went instantly slack, collapsing dead at the paladin’s feet.
The vampire crouched atop the carcass, beaming up at the knight with a fiercely roguish grin.
“You’re looking a little winded, old man!
Daijoubu?
(Are you alright?)” she chirped, shooting him a playful wink before casually kicking away another approaching abomination.
“You owe me one.
Dinner, perhaps?
You’re buying.”
“Focus, Duria!
Cover the left flank!” Lengos barked back, though beneath the bone-deep exhaustion and his sheer irritation at her flippancy, there rang a distinct note of profound gratitude.
She giggled brightly, casually parrying another frenzied strike.
“Hai, hai!
(Yes, yes!).”
Yerga was left standing alone, though her solitude was not destined to last.
She watched Bregg vanish with a slight, disappointed pout before turning her gaze to the bloody courtyard.
Her eyes ignited with a ghastly, emerald glare.
She extended her elegant hands toward the scattered, minced remains of the flayed kobolds; the gory aftermath of Zedora’s axes and Duria’s daggers.
Her skeletal feline let out a soundless meow, sensing the surging magic.
“Well, since quality has so thoroughly disappointed me, let’s pivot to quantity.
And a touch of recycling!” she laughed, a dark, throaty sound that was infinitely colder than an open grave.
“Rise, my little atrocities.
I am not quite finished with you yet.
Surge Ex Morte.”
The necrotic magic slammed into the dead tissue.
The scattered remains began to twitch violently, slithering toward one another with sickening, wet slaps.
Shattered bones fused with raw meat in random, grotesque configurations, birthing lopsided abominations; mindless amalgamations of jagged claws, dragging entrails, and taut tendons, entirely devoid of pain or the instinct for self-preservation.
Yerga pointed one of her wicked sickles toward the Gilded Custodian.
“Eat him, darlings.
Or, at the very least, completely ruin his lovely little outfit.”
The shambling horde hurled themselves at the behemoth, swarming it like a colony of rabid fire ants overtaking a stag beetle.
They clawed, bit, and tore indiscriminately, effectively dragging the monster’s attention away from the trapped Zedora.
The situation, however, was rapidly spiraling.
Neira’s magical ward finally shattered beneath the relentless barrage, and the Gilded Custodian had clearly had enough of serving as a chew toy for rotting scraps.
Its molten armor began to vibrate with a low, deafening hum that made the outcasts’ very teeth ache in their skulls.
The monstrosity threw its arms wide, and hundreds of hair-thin, golden needles erupted from its body in every direction.
The lethal shrapnel tore straight through Yerga’s reanimated meat-puppets, instantly detonating in a blinding flash of holy light.
The army of macabre amalgamations was simply vaporized.
All that remained of the grotesque constructs was a greasy, black smoke that settled against the marble stones.
Yerga wrinkled her nose in profound disgust, pressing a perfumed lace handkerchief to her face to ward off the vile stench of scorched meat.
“Absolute savage,” she assessed coldly.”Not an ounce of respect for recycling.”
Dead center in the chaos, Zedora’s agonized screaming abruptly ceased.
It shifted, dropping into a deep, guttural growl that sounded exactly like the rumble of an awakening volcano.
The excruciating pain in her scorched legs was no longer a deterrent.
It became pure, unadulterated fuel.
A bloody mist clouded her vision as her pupils dilated violently, swallowing her irises whole.
Her musculature coiled with such terrifying force that the thick leather straps of her armor snapped like dry twigs.
“Zedora…
wait for support…” Lengos took a rare step backward, witnessing the horrifying transformation taking hold of her.
But she was entirely deaf to his commands.
She had become pure, feral instinct.
“RRAAAAAAAAGH!!!”
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