“I’m here to help your cousin,” I said. “Not you. You follow my lead.”
“If it will allow me to cleanse the filth from my clan, then lead the way.”
Hamon joined me at the narrow window of the tower and gazed down into the courtyard. It spanned out below us in a rough circle. Stone stairs led up to the battlements on each side of it, and two sets of huge doors led into the belly of the castle.
“Ethan, what the hells?” Vesma demanded.
She burst into the tower with Mahrai at her heels. Her eyes widened as Hamon offered her a polite bow, and Vesma turned to stare at me in confusion. I made a negative gesture. A mass of black-furred demons and armored soldiers pushed through the castle’s main doors below us and streamed into the courtyard by the dozen.
“Short version: Hamon’s helping us kill the demons and get Cinder out of here,” I said.
Vesma’s knuckles whitened around her spear as she glared at the fire elemental beside me. “You can’t be serious. He’s a prick. Once a prick, always a prick.”
“He’s a fiery prick now,” I told her. “So long as he’s causing trouble for the bad guys instead of us, we can use him.”
“They’re gathering in force,” Mahrai warned us. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“We need a plan before we take on the garrison.”
Mahrai nodded and waved a hand at the doorway. Just outside the door, her golem melted out of the stone steps under its feet, and in seconds, the classic Greater Stone Golem blocked any entrance into the tower. A cry of alarm filled the courtyard, and a satisfied smirk stretched across Mahrai’s face. Hamon turned on his heel and gestured to the ceremonial armor and weapons around us.
“Take whatever you need,” he offered.
Vesma’s glare turned venomous. “I don’t want anything from you, Wysaro.”
“Ves, pick up some armor,” I told her gently. “You’re going to need it.”
She glanced down at the courtyard. The demons and Jiven’s loyalists halted in formed ranks, and captains shouted orders. They’d seen what Hamon had done to the last wave, and they weren’t in any hurry to run up the stairs. There didn’t seem to be any end to them.
Vesma sighed, set her spear against the wall, and examined a set of armor to her left. She pulled off her outer robes with a quick movement and rapidly clad herself in a tight set of black, gold, and red steel. It hugged her petite form, and a small cloak hung around her thighs as she tightened the greaves around her shins. Gold trim sparkled in the low light as she pulled a fresh spear from a rack of ornate weapons and gave it an experimental spin.
A narrow, razor-sharp head curled into the shaft of the spear, and Vesma took a moment to appreciate its workmanship. She turned, found a thick quarterstaff, and tossed it to Mahrai.
Mahrai caught it, weighed it in her hands, and glanced over the ends. “I could imagine crushing demon skulls with this,” she said as she nodded appreciatively.
Snarling dragon heads of solid steel stood out at each side of the staff, and a studded leather grip swept around the shaft to give the user better control of the weapon. Mahrai set aside her simple brass-capped staff without a second thought and nodded her thanks to Vesma.
Vesma caught my look and glared back at me. “What?”
“You both look like goddesses of war,” Hamon said before I could answer. “An echo of my once-great clan. It will be an honor to fight by your side to cleanse my people of my father’s treachery.”
“I hate to agree with the human bonfire, but he’s right,” I said. “It suits you.”
Vesma and Mahrai blushed in unison, and my chest swelled with pride.
“We’ve just let them build up their forces while I’ve wasted time getting pretty,” Vesma said.
“Allowing them to gather their forces outside gives us more fish in the barrel,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
Mahrai waved her staff, and her huge golem thundered down the stairs with crashing steps. I sprinted after it, leapt off the stairwell, and took to the skies with a burst of Flight. The courtyard shrank below me as I took up a vantage point above the frantic melee below. I raised my hand to the sky and let an Untamed Torch ripple out of my hand. Environmental Vigor rushed into the small gout of flame, and an enormous pillar of fire blazed a hundred feet into the air.
If Kegohr and the others remembered my instructions, then they would now know that our worst fears had been realized: demons had overrun Wysaro Castle.
I hovered down a little lower and dodged a howling demon as it flipped through the air. Mahrai’s golem waded through the enemy forces and hurled demons and guards like tennis balls. Flashes of flame washed over the golem as an Augmenter or two tried to take it down, but their elemental attacks were useless against the stone colossus.
“Now,” Nydarth breathed, “you can unleash your true power, Master.”
“Or I can experiment a little,” I countered.
I studied the enemy ranks as I dipped into my reserve of Vigor. The Wysaro captains howled orders at the demons and pulled their forces back away from Mahrai’s golem to regroup. I stretched out my free hand, and Plank Pillars erupted from the gaps in the pavestones under their feet. I fed the wood technique with the raw Vigor of the world around it, and in seconds, a rough maze appeared in the courtyard.
Barbed walls stitched together and broke the ranks of the enemy into a confused mess. The Vigor it cost barely scraped the surface of the power boiling within me, and the rush of excitement threatened to break my focus as I hovered over the battlefield. The guards scrambled to reorganize, but the demons took a simpler approach. Their claws dug into the thick walls
