These weren’t ordinary lesser earth golems. They were tainted by the evil magic of the Cult of Unswerving Shadows.
Together, the humanoid monsters raised their arms and advanced.
Chapter Sixteen
The golems stepped out of the craters and walked with steady purposefulness toward us. The dark veins running through their features added an extra menace that their counterparts in the desert hadn’t displayed.
On the balcony, more robed priests were emerging to join the three already standing there. The edges of their black garments glittered as they swayed their arms from side to side. Their chants became a heady concoction that blurred the senses, and I fought it off with slow breathing and focused thoughts.
The ground shook, and more craters started to form around the edges of the courtyard.
“We need to take out the priests before we’re overrun with golems,” I said.
Vesma ran across the courtyard and grabbed me. “Hold on tight.”
I had an idea of what she was planning, so I wrapped an arm around her middle and held on for all I was worth. Vesma pointed one hand at the ground and bunched her legs. She leaped and fired a blast of Untamed Torch. The intense burst gave her a boost that carried us both into the air. We soared in a steep arc toward the wall of the stronghold’s keep.
We reached the wall halfway up to the priests and a little to the left. I got one hand through an arched window only six inches wide and grabbed hold of the sill. As we lost our momentum, the two of us hung there, with Vesma clinging to me and my arm straining beneath our combined weight.
Vesma scrambled up my body to the window. It was too narrow for even her to fit through, so instead, she kept climbing. She kicked off her sandals and used fingers and toes to find grips in the gaps between worn stones, then started moving insect-like up the wall.
“There must have been an easier way to do this,” I said, still hanging beneath the window.
“I’m the one who got us halfway up here,” Vesma said. “You got carried. That is the easy option.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I brought my free arm around and sent a surge of Vigor through my palm. I fired Stinging Palm thorns into the gaps between the stones. At last, I had something to rest my feet on.
A rock hit the wall six inches to my left. Several corrupted golems had gathered at the base of the wall and were aiming projectiles at me. It was time to get moving.
I fired more thorns into the gaps to my right and above. I started scrambling up, using the holds I’d made, the frames of windows, and any gap in the stonework wide enough to take my fingers.
“Follow me,” Vesma said.
She scrambled across the wall, clinging to gaps I could barely see, until she reached the stones directly beneath the balcony. Here, the faces of the blocks had been carved with the shapes of animals native to the Gonki Valley. From a fennec fox to a beady-eyed vulture, each one offered a strong and substantial handhold.
A rock cracked against the wall near Vesma’s head, but she ignored it. She grabbed the statues and climbed.
I followed only a couple of feet behind her. I kept one eye on the ground below, watching out for any golem that might come close to hitting me. A rock came sailing straight toward my head, and I pushed off with one hand to swing wildly away from where I had been. The rock smacked off the wall, and a moment later, I swung back to grab the vulture’s wing, seconds before my other hand lost its grip.
“Grab my foot,” Vesma called down.
“You can’t take my weight!”
“Foot. Now.”
I reached up and took it. Vesma pointed her hand down, and there was a flash of fire. We soared into the air again. As we passed the balcony, Vesma stuck her spear out between two of the pillars of its carved rail. We spun around that pivot and landed, Vesma upright and me on one knee, amid the chanting cultists.
Up close, the priests were even more unsettling. Their robes were as black and deep as space, trimmed in a gold thread whose shimmer emphasized the darkness. Their faces were sheltered by hoods that cast shadows so deep as to seem unnatural and made it impossible to see their features. They chanted in deep, dissonant voices, and when they spoke, they spoke as one.
“You forsake the Straight Path.” Their rasping chorus set my nerves on edge. “You will be crushed beneath our hordes of stone.”
“Your hordes down there?” I gestured to the courtyard far below. “Might take them a while. And in the meantime…” I drew my sword. “You’re stuck up here with us.”
The priests stepped back, and I braced myself, expecting to be hit by some impressive earth Augmenting power. Instead, they fumbled for weapons, some fastened to their belts, others left in corners of the room. Were they such badasses in combat that they wouldn’t need to use their magic now?
Then, I remembered Mahrai and how reliant she had seemed on her golem. These guys weren’t reaching for their weapons because they were great fighters; they were doing it because they were limited Augmenters. Vesma and I were facing a bunch of one-trick ponies, and we had plenty of tricks of our own.
Vesma went first. She raised her hands, placed them together, and summoned a ball of fire between them. The Untamed Torch shot from her palms straight at the nearest priest. It hit with a blast of heat and light that engulfed him in a torrent of flame. He
