Ember and L’zar stood back from the battle a foot inside the hole Lumil had blasted into the wall. The fae girl’s eyes were wide as she watched the Crown’s servants racing across the room and leaping toward the rebels, attacking between snatching up various magic-stealing instruments and wielding them like weapons.
L’zar turned toward a metal shelf along the wall on his left, hands clasped behind his back as he studied the various supplies and ingredients stored there. He didn’t seem to notice when a goblin crashed into the shelf two feet in front of him, jerking under the electric jolts of red light consuming him. Then the drow disappeared.
Byrd hurled balls of green flame into the fray, shattering beakers and vials, destroying the metal cages in the pool, and striking the O’gúl servants’ faces and chests.
One massive ogre stood on the far side of the room, blocking the opposite exit. He was bare-chested except for an apron of slick, shiny black leather wrapped around his beefy gray torso, his flesh covered in burn scars and thick, slashing lines. A welder’s helmet rested in the lifted position on his head, revealing his full sneer as he watched the battle.
His orange-red eyes settled on General Maleshi Hi’et as she ducked beneath a skaxen’s attack spell of hissing green darts before bringing her glinting claws up to rip the other magical to ribbons from gut to gullet. Before the skaxen hit the floor, she whirled and saw the ogre.
“I’d heard a rumor,” the ogre growled. “Never know what you can believe these days.”
“I could say the same thing, Yarin.” Maleshi bared her teeth and stalked toward him, undaunted by the spells and sparking weapons and blood flying around her. Her silver eyes burned with battle fury. “Looks like you got the promotion you were so eager to snatch up.”
“Looks like you sold your honor for another furball and a washed-up prankster.” Yarin swayed from side to side as the nightstalker general approached him. “You’re finished, Hi’et.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
The ogre chuckled darkly before bringing a meaty paw up to slam the welding helmet down into place over his face. Maleshi snarled and raced toward him, her four-inch claws flashing in the magical light overhead. Yarin waited until the last second before letting out a bellowing roar and heaving a massive plate of metal out of the huge cauldron beside him. Whatever it was meant to be used for, the plate now served as the ogre’s shield. Sparks flew and blue fire erupted on impact as Maleshi slashed the plate. She darted in a silver blur around the ogre, lashing out where she could, and every time, she was met with a grunt and the ogre’s surprisingly quick reflexes in blocking her.
Cheyenne raised an opalescent black shield in front of her and Lumil when the pair of identical-looking skaxens aimed two metal hoses at them and unleashed a yellow-green cloud of acrid smoke. The smoke materialized against Cheyenne’s shield before dripping like syrup to the floor, eating holes in the stone and hissing madly.
Lumil grinned at the halfling, then spun out from behind the shield and raced toward the skaxens. Cheyenne blasted one in the face with a churning black orb and eyed the other skaxen, who had leaped away from Lumil onto a workbench. Glass vials and metal instruments crashed to the ground. Before the skaxen could get better footing to lunge toward the goblin woman, Cheyenne’s black tendrils shot from her hands and wrapped around one arm and leg. She whisked the rat-faced magical off the table with a snarl and hurled the skaxen toward Lumil’s waiting fist.
The crunch of breaking bones was masked beneath the other sounds of battle. The skaxen dropped to the ground, and Lumil cackled. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
The battle died quickly as L’zar’s band of rebels made short work of the Crown’s servants. The only battle still raging was between General Hi’et and the ogre Yarin. He kept a firm grip on the metal plate serving as his shield. Maleshi darted around him, denting the plate and sending silver bolts of lightning at it, but she was unable to bring the ogre down.
Cheyenne wiped something wet and sticky off her forehead, breathing heavily as she turned to watch the final battle. “No one’s gonna help her?”
Lumil chuckled. “Better not, kid. Get in the general’s way, and you might as well slit your own throat.”
Corian retracted his claws from a gray-robed goblin’s chest and turned to watch the other nightstalker battling the semi-armored ogre. Then he scanned the destruction littering the chamber, searching for survivors as the metal clang of Maleshi’s claws on Yarin’s shield echoed around them.
A thin, withered skaxen pulled herself from the wreckage beside the giant hole in the wall and the missing door. While L’zar’s party watched Ambar’ogúl’s greatest war general fight a shielded ogre, the skaxen crawled silently across the floor. She considered snatching up the motionless, hovering fae three feet away but thought better of it. Instead, the rat-faced servant of the Crown seized the opportunity and slunk out of the chamber, scrambling to her feet around the corner and racing down the hall to alert the Crown’s Heart to what had come for them.
The second the skaxen disappeared to sound the alarm, Maleshi’s claws shredded the metal shield in Yarin’s hands and the thing broke clean in two. The ogre paused, his helmet moving between the twin pieces of metal in surprise. He reeled backward when Maleshi advanced again, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough.
The general’s clawed hand pierced the shielded visor protecting his face, then she jerked down. The ogre stumbled forward, roaring, before the
