reached in to grab him.
Lightning shot through the claw of her hand straight into Shasee’s chest. His teeth clamped down, and he fell to the ground, unable to move as his muscles clenched into spasms.
Dumas smiled down at him and walked away. Her blade shot out on its own, cutting three quick slices into an undead creature about to attack her. She ignored the ones advancing on him, however.
Shasee struggled to move, to defend himself, but two creatures were upon him already. They grabbed his arm and his leg and pulled. He felt the decay overtake his limbs, like a torch being passed over a field of his nerves. He struggled to fight back, but it was too late. A terrible cold overtook him, not enough to numb him from the pain, but enough to sap his strength. That was when he felt his joints pop and the fabric of his skin rip.
Hort stood his ground between the trees and the ritual circle. He wanted to advance, to help Dumas, but the mad gleam in her eye was foreign to the woman he knew. A feral countenance had slipped over her, and it recognized nothing else beyond what lay in her pin-point focus. He wasn’t sure she wouldn’t strike at him if he approached too suddenly. And she’d just left her foe to a terrible death at the hands of the creatures. It was an act wholly without mercy or humanity. This new Dumas, whoever she was, frightened him more deeply than anyone ever had. Loyalty kept him from retreating, but fear stopped him from advancing.
Instead, he fought the closest creatures with his axe, its viscera-clotted edge deftly slicing through them. Those that thought distance was safer, however, met with his spells. He cast nothing terribly fancy, just the type of arcane magic that bent the advantage in his direction. There was no time to use the crossbow strapped to his back, not at that range.
Hort unleashed filaments of web from his fingertips, catching four creatures in the strands suspended between two rocks.
“Archers, shoot!” he cried, backing away from the monsters.
When no arrows whistled in response, he turned and saw Migress and the surviving mercenaries fighting a retreat back to the tree line.
“You’re on your own, madman,” Migress shouted.
An undead creature deftly avoided the sword stroke of one of the men next to him and latched its puckered mouth onto his throat. The mercenary fell but Migress came to his man’s rescue.
A sharp pain cut into Hort’s shoulder then, and he cursed himself for being distracted. One of the creatures was on his back and clawing at him. Pain blistered his skin, the first whisper of death. Hort swung backward, overhead, with his axe. His blade sliced cleanly into the undead. It screeched in his ear and tried to drop away. Hort pivoted and slammed his axe and the undead into the ground, driving the blade deeper into it.
The creature stopped writhing, and Hort’s back tingled as life slowly returned to it. At least the putrefaction wasn’t permanent, Hort thought, but he faced an ugly proposition. He couldn’t stand alone here. He was making himself a target, and there was safety in numbers. He wanted to retreat, but he didn’t want to abandon Dumas. She meant too much to him. Despite everything, she remained his friend. He owed it to her to save her.
Hort advanced toward the ritual circle, slaughtering any of the creatures foolish enough to approach him. But then, they were all fools that day, he thought.
Berthal yelled in rage, a frustrated cry of anger so foreign to his nature that Tythonnia glanced at him fearfully. Shasee had died, in the most inhuman way possible, and the huntress Dumas was heading straight for her and Ladonna.
Mariyah rose to her feet with Hundor’s help; he continued knocking creatures about with a glance or a head toss. He appeared weakened, however, each effort costing him. Tythonnia felt exhausted, her spells gone, her energy drained through the vortex of the gate. Ladonna helped her up, to her own peril. She didn’t see the creature at her back.
“We have to leave now!” Ladonna said. She began pulling Tythonnia out of the circle.
“Not without the others,” Tythonnia said, tugging herself free from Ladonna’s grip.
“I don’t care about the others,” Ladonna replied. She was about to say something else, but a terrific explosion almost knocked them off their feet.
Berthal and Dumas were fighting.
Staff rang against sword, neither of them giving an inch. Spell slammed into counterspell, obliterating one another in showers of sparks and fire. As Berthal and Dumas struggled, each one a master of their craft, Hundor and Mariyah kept the creatures at bay and away from their leader. Tythonnia broke from Ladonna’s grip and joined her friends. They couldn’t help Berthal fight; they had their hands full with the blight shades.
Berthal twirled his staff around, striking out with the hardened bottom, but Dumas parried the blow. She couldn’t match force with force, but she was skilled enough to deflect his best efforts.
Each collision of wood and steel produced a flicker of sparks as each arcane weapon tried to defeat the other. Dumas deflected another staff thrust and spun away, her hand on her metal tome, her mouth moving. Her sword arm shot out, unleashing a clash of bright hues that threatened to overtake Berthal. Instead he slammed his staff into the ground, sending out a wild distortion wave that broke the back of the incoming spell.
Before Dumas could unleash another spell, however, Berthal rushed forward to close the gap. He barely deflected two rapid strokes, but a third one nicked him on the arm. He backed away, but as Dumas tried to press the advantage, Berthal leveled the staff at her. A fire sphere appeared between the two dragon heads and shot out like an arrow. Dumas raised her arm to shield her face. The ball of fire struck her and exploded. Streams of flame curved around her body. She caught some of its heat, her clothing combusted along her arm, but otherwise was unhurt.
And so they continued sparring, trading cut for cut, injury for injury.
Tythonnia struggled to remember and cast her remaining spells, but Mariyah seemed harder hit. She fumbled her incantations and dropped reagents through leaden fingers. Hundor fared best as he motioned across the gap between them and the gate that disgorged more undead; a wall of flames broke free of the ground, sending sheets of fire upward. Tythonnia suspected their relative skills in magic dictated who had gotten hit the hardest and who survived the curse the best. As it was, she was scraping bottom, her spells nearly depleted or useless. Hundor still had learned magic and Wyldling ways to spare.
Thankfully, Ladonna was with them, adding her spells to the mix. If she’d hoped for a quick escape with Tythonnia, that was no longer an option. The creatures were attacking steadily-uncoordinated but steady. Ladonna, however, was ready for the worst. Her spells punished the creatures for their advance, destroying any that skirted around the wall of flames. From her fingers flew a ray of sickly green light that overtook two creatures. They collapsed to the ground and struggled to rise.
Tythonnia glanced at Berthal. The fight with Dumas obviously had taxed him, but he didn’t show any sign of surrendering. Both Berthal and his opponent moved fluidly from parry to stroke to spell as though it was all one beautifully choreographed move.
Hundor had other ideas, however. With the fire wall extended around them, he turned his attention on the preoccupied Dumas. His hands flew into deft motion, his movements graceful and precise as he grabbed the spell’s reagent from the battle pouch on his wrist. The spell was just materializing on his lips when he staggered back.
The crossbow bolt had appeared out of nowhere; it pierced Hundor’s chest. He cried out in pain and gripped the wound around the shaft with one hand, as though to stop the red spot that raced outward. With the other
