“You got it.” The goblin woman raised both bespelled fists and approached the doors.
L’zar moved down the line and stopped in front of Cheyenne. “Make sure you’re ready with the marandúr. If it’s not immediately accessible, make it accessible. You won’t have another chance after this to go through your things to find it.”
“Sure.” Cheyenne grimaced when a curdled wail seeped through the stone walls, punctuated by short, shrieking bursts of terror and agony. She slipped her backpack off her shoulders and tried to hold it and unzip it at the same time. L’zar grabbed the straps and held it up for her. “Thanks.”
“Quickly.”
She unzipped the main pocket and dug around in the bottom. When her fingers brushed the cold metal of the gold marandúr coin, she fumbled quickly to get a good grip, then pulled it out and flashed it at him.
“Good. Put it away.”
Cheyenne stuffed the coin into her back pocket and frowned at him. He’s giving short-sentence orders, and I’m hopping to it. Never thought I’d be in a place where I trusted what he’s saying. We’ll see how long it lasts.
When she finished, L’zar lifted her backpack higher and held it for her like a jacket as she slipped her arms through the straps. “Thank you, Cheyenne. I feel much better knowing you’re as prepared for the next few steps as you possibly can be.”
“Yeah, well, you know, I’m just doing it for your approval and shit.”
He gave her a tired smile, and one of his eyelids drooped over a golden eye before he opened it again. “I’m sure neither of us wants that to be true. We’re almost there.”
Cheyenne couldn’t help but offer a quick smile in return, then L’zar turned away and headed back toward Lumil and the metal door.
“You said thirty seconds, but I figured I’d wait for you to finish whatever that was.” The goblin woman shrugged. “Go time?”
“By all means.”
Lumil let out a whoop and charged toward the metal doors leading into the next room. Her fists flashed with the rotating patterns of blazing red runes, and she drew her arm back to lay into the door where it met the wall. Stone and metal shards and small, sparking bits of O’gúl tech flew in every direction. The screaming on the other side of the door didn’t stop.
The rebel group charged after Lumil through the hole she’d punched in the wall. The goblin woman led the battle with a bellow, throwing punches at the startled Crown servants before the smoke and dust had halfway cleared.
Cheyenne summoned black orbs of sparking energy in her hands but paused when she realized what she was looking at inside the next chamber.
It was another circular room, this one with a massive round pool in its center. The pool was sectioned into six wedge-shaped metal cages rising two feet above the surface. Inside each cage was a magical chained to the metal bars above their heads by the wrists. Most of them dangled helplessly from their manacles as they shrieked and screamed and wailed nonstop, bobbing within not water but a black, bubbling, steaming sludge letting off the smell of rotting meat, cooking meat, and something distinctly floral.
Metal rods protruded from the bars, suspended on pulleys, every single one aimed at a caged magical. The last loyalist in dark-gray robes to notice the invasion by L’zar Verdys’ rebel party got in one more good prod at the troll woman in the cage in front of him. His gloved hands wrapped around the metal rod and struck her between the shoulder blades. The tip of the rod sparked with blazing red light, the troll woman screamed, and the black sludge in her cage flashed with different colors before the brilliant blue steam rising out of it was quickly vented up into a clear glass bubble the same size and shape as the pool suspended from the ceiling.
This is where she takes their magic.
Cheyenne’s fury boiled in her more violently than the black sludge in the pool. A roaring battle cry burst from her mouth as she charged the orc loyalist. He looked at her with a vicious snarl as she lashed out with her whipping black tendrils. They snaked through the bars of the troll woman’s cage, coiled around the orc’s neck, and jerked him forward. His face smashed into the metal cage three times before Cheyenne finally released him and darted around the large pool to finish the job.
The orc swayed on his feet, blinking and trying to regain his bearings. She curled her fist with a black energy sphere inside it and landed a cracking uppercut to the orc’s startled face. He flew across the room, and the halfling raced after him.
A dozen servants of the Crown battled the rebel group inside the magic-stealing chamber, most of them goblins and skaxens. The orc Cheyenne blasted across the room a second time before turning to fight a snarling goblin wielding one of the magical cattle prods was one of two. She grabbed the rod before he could poke her with it and sent a concentrated stream of black fire racing across the metal. The flames ate the goblin’s gloves in less than a second and started to consume him. The goblin screamed and reeled away, flailing as her drow fire did the rest of it for her. Cheyenne squeezed the metal rod with both hands and shattered the thick pole.
Then she turned toward her next fight.
Corian raced across the chamber in a flash of silver light and landed a powerful blow to the skaxen standing in his way, and the orange-skinned magical sailed into the sectioned cages. The top of the one he landed on broke beneath his weight, and he crashed into the black, steaming goo with a shriek.
