Mahrai stood back, arms folded, and laughed. She waved the soldiers back too, leaving the golem to deal with me and Kegohr.
Now, we were committed to the fight. We hacked at the golem with our weapons to almost no effect. Kegohr managed to smash away a few chips of stone with his mace, but neither the prongs of my trident nor the blade of my sword did any good.
“Back up!” I shouted to Kegohr. “I’ve got a plan.”
As we backed off, I called forth my newly developed powers to create a Mud Geyser around the golem. Mud blasted it from every side, and it stood still for a moment, keeping its feet while the ground around it churned.
As that first mud attack settled, I called forth another. The sand beneath the golem’s feet turned into a pool of muck thanks to Mud Entrapment. It sank up to its ankles, and the quicksand flooded in to fill the gaps.
The mud-covered golem heaved and strained, trying to free its feet.
“Untamed Torch!” I said to Kegohr.
We both held out our hands and blasted fire. As our techniques hit the golem, it baked the mud solid, just as it had done on Trohai. The golem’s moves slowed as it was encased in sections of solid clay.
I summoned more Mud Geysers while Kegohr kept up the Untamed Torch, until half the creature was covered in lumps of dried dirt.
The golem strained, and parts of the coating cracked, but none of them broke. Changing tactics, it roared and lunged forward. It overbalanced, toppled, and fell. I jumped back just in time to avoid being crushed as it crashed down.
The golem pushed itself up on its arms and heaved. There was a crack, and one of its feet came out of the ground, covered in solid clay.
I didn’t give it time to free the other foot. I summoned more Mud Geysers, targeting them to cover the creature’s joints. If we could bake those solid, then perhaps we could immobilize it, and then… Well, we’d worry about that when we came to it.
“Get up, you blasted lump of stone!” Mahrai shouted, her face a rictus of fury.
“I thought it was a waste that you’d taken the Straight Path,” I called to her. “But you’re clearly just a one-trick pony, so maybe it’s not so bad.”
“How dare you?” she snarled.
“Actions speak louder than words. If you were really so powerful, you wouldn’t be sitting back and letting your minion do all the work.”
“You think you can goad me into doing this your way?” Mahrai turned to the soldiers behind her. “You lot, get in there and kill them.”
The soldiers formed up and advanced slowly, clubs and war hammers raised.
“I’ve had enough of your games!” Mahrai shouted. “The so-called Swordslinger, striding in here like you’re the best thing Gonki’s ever seen. We’ll see how impressive you are against an army.”
“Stay focused,” I said to Kegohr. “I want to know if we can beat this thing.”
With half an eye on the approaching soldiers, I summoned more mud around the golem.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Mahrai said.
She snapped her fingers once more. The stone golem dissolved, its once-solid body turning to sand and then dribbling out across the ground. Within moments, it was entirely gone, leaving only the baked plates that we had formed around it, like the shell of some strange sea creature.
Mahrai strode away through the approaching army.
Kegohr and I raised our weapons to tackle the troops. They watched us warily and slowed their advance. Kegohr was still burning with magical fire, and they’d seen me summon both mud and flames before drawing a sword and a trident to fight them. If I’d been one of this horde of ordinary Hyng’ohr citizens, recruited to fight against magic with mundane weapons, I might have had second thoughts too.
“You’re smart to stay there,” I said. “I could easily destroy you all on my own, and as for Kegohr…”
The half-ogre grinned and swung his mace in a flaming arc.
The soldiers’ hands were white-knuckled around their weapons, their faces fixed and fearful. But they didn’t back off. Fear of their commanders was clearly just as powerful as fear of us. The Unswerving Shadows Cult had them in its terrible grip.
A man appeared on a rooftop at the edge of the village, looking out across the scene. He was six and a half feet tall, solidly muscled, and encased in segmented armor. His features were uncannily similar to Ganyir’s except that he kept his hair cut short and his beard more closely trimmed. He held his arms folded across his puffed-out chest. This could only be one man: Targin.
“What are you all waiting for?” he bellowed. “Get in there!”
The soldiers shuffled forward and raised their drooping weapons, but no one was close enough yet to fight us.
Mahrai appeared on the rooftop beside Targin. “My Lord,” she said as she sank to one knee. Across the silence between the soldiers and us, every word could be heard.
“What do you want, wretch?” Targin demanded.
“My Lord, I know I disappointed you, but I did my best. No one has ever brought the golem down like that before.”
I had to admit I was surprised. I’d assumed Mahrai and the cultist Saruqin had Targin under their thumbs. It seemed that she was in fact under Targin’s chain of command.
“And you think excuses make your failure any less wretched? Should I point out that you are a coward too, running away the first time your precious pet was threatened?”
“My pet is half the reason you are still in power.” Mahrai got to her feet and took a step back. She planted her hands on her hips and glared at Targin, while below them, the soldiers advanced at the slowest pace they could.
“Your pet is just one weapon among many, as are you, you malodorous bitch. But as long as I am Lord of Gonki, the two of you serve me.”
“I serve where I
