Alongside me, Elyse was doing her best to fight off a statue of a knight in full plate armor, using her ropes of light to try to bind her enemy’s arms. The statue was immensely strong though, and it kept ripping its arms free of the ropes and swinging its sword at her. Rami, meanwhile, was engaged in a furious fight with a female statue in the armor of a northern barbarian, while Sarge and the skeletal warriors ganged up on two more statues, and my zombie Crusaders battled three others.
I dodged two more punches from the assassin and then dived through a gap between its legs and tried to trip it up and bring it crashing to the ground. It was an attack that would have upended even a bear of a man, but the statue didn’t budge. I had to pull a quick roll to avoid being stomped on.
“Isu!” I yelled out as I dodged another swipe from the statue, “a little help here! What do we do to fight these damn things?!”
“Ooh, what’s this?” Isu asked from the top of the stairs, well away from the action, her arms folded across her chest and her lips curled into a haughty sneer. “The God of Death needs the help of a lowly necromancer, does he?”
“Cut the crap and tell me how to fight these fucking things!” I shouted, jumping back to avoid a vicious frontal kick.
“Give me your word that you’ll owe me a favor,” Isu said, “and I’ll help you.”
“Damn it, Isu!” I yelled. “Now is not the time to try to strike bargains with me!”
“It seems like exactly the right time to me.”
I ducked under two more savage punches. I didn’t have much of a choice here. She got me.
“Fine! You have my word that I owe you a favor if you help me out. Satisfied?”
“You’ll have my help now, Vance,” Isu said, “and I’ll expect yours when I ask it of you.”
“Fine, fine. You have my word, now do something!”
“What is Death’s greatest ally?” she asked as she began to walk calmly down the stairs toward the chaotic skirmish raging in the chamber.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled. “This is not the time for riddles; this is the time for answers!”
“Time, Vance. Time is Death’s greatest ally, for time never fails to deliver to Death what is owed. Time is the enemy of all living things, for they cannot fight it, they cannot defeat it… and it brings Death closer and closer, constantly. Time and Death are the most powerful allies. But Time, Vance, is not only an enemy to the living but also to the non-living, for it destroys and breaks down non-living things as surely as it brings aging and rot to living beings. So, when you are fighting something non-living, like stone, you need an ally who is able to bring destruction to that thing. An ally like Time.”
As Isu spoke, I ducked under another swing, dodged another kick, and jumped up and stabbed Grave Oath right into the statue’s glowing eye, hoping that might be its weak point. It wasn’t, and the blade glanced off without doing an iota of damage.
“Well, it’s very clear that we don’t have time on our side!” I growled. “Sure, in a million years, these statues will be nothing but dust, but so will we! And we’re talking about minutes and seconds here, dammit!”
“Ah, but you do have Time on your side now,” Isu purred as she walked up to the statue. “The Mist of Time…”
She stood in front of the statue and breathed out a cloud of mist that engulfed it. Then she stepped back. As the mist dissipated, I saw cracks start to appear across the statue. It staggered forward and lunged at me, but this time when I dodged the blow, one of the statue’s fingers flew off. I darted in under its arm and aimed a stabbing attack at its chest, and my blade ripped out a large chunk of marble. The Sentinel staggered back, and I pressed my advantage, darting in and stabbing it again, removing a fist-sized chunk of stone from its torso.
“Yes!” I snarled, ducking under a clumsy left hook that resulted in the statue’s entire left forearm flying off and smashing into shards on the floor. “Time really is on our side now!”
Isu moved around the room, blowing her magical Mist of Time onto each of the Sentinels. As soon as the magic took hold, the tide of the fight turned. Chunks of marble were flying everywhere, and my troops were beating the statues back, chopping them to pieces. Elyse was ripping off arms, legs, and heads with her ropes, while Rami was using her sais like chisels. Sarge and the skeletons were hacking merrily way at the other statues, lopping off limbs and heads, while the zombie Crusaders were using their longswords and tower shields to pulverize them.
“Yeah!” Cranton yelled from the floor. “Get those stone-assed sons of bitches!”
The assassin statue staggered back under the ferocity of my attacks. Every time Grave Oath bit into the marble, another chunk of stone was ripped out, and I eventually managed to land a heavy horizontal stab in its ear. By this time, the marble was so weak that my blade split it in half, dividing its front from its back. The two halves of the statue teetered for a moment before they toppled. With a boom, both halves hit the floor, and the entire statue exploded into a mess of dust and little chunks of stone.
Statues fell all around us until my Crusaders finally killed the last one. A cloud of dust hung in the air, and all of us spent a few moments coughing and staggering around until it finally settled.
“Thank you, Isu,” I said, somewhat grudgingly.
“Remember what you promised,” she said, a glint in her auburn eyes.
