Page 63

IRIS

Vhex bowls into the horde. He mows through their outer ranks, blazing hellfire hot enough to melt a track through the cavern floor.

Remy disappears into the blooming smoke. Shadow spears flash. Monsters screech and yowl.

Tan moves with me while Simms handles the fight behind. Hellfire, shadows, and earth walls shield and lash around us, thinning the attack, but with so many monsters crashing toward us, the Sentinels have to focus on the biggest threats.

A dried-out kobold mage barrels at me. Shadows slice into it, but losing an arm and half its shoulder doesn’t stop it from casting a fireball with its leftover hand.

I dodge the blast and swing my glaive.

The corpse is old. One slash cuts through the brittle neck bones, but a strip of skin dried to beef jerky keeps the head attached. It hangs by a sinew.

With its skull knocked upside down, the snarling kobold lunges at me again.

I tangle my glaive between its legs, and it finally topples. When the kobold hits the ground, I stomp its skull.

One down.

One million to go.

I take down kobolds and skeletons.

Clangs, screams, and explosions echo in the open-shaft pit. The lich king’s deathly power squeezes my brain. My head throbs as I move through the chaos while calming Vhex and Remy’s souls.

I sidestep a mummified lizard-man’s sword-thrust.

Before I can counter, he spits acid at my face.

Time slows.

I start to duck, but I can’t avoid the spray.

As I wince, something strokes my cheek. There’s a rush of air and then a choked-off hiss.

Acid drips off my shadow shield. The lizard lies in two twitching halves, both clawing to attack me again.

I move away, leaving the corpse for Vhex to burn.

Fresh monsters replace each one that falls.

There are too many.

The flow of the battle drives me farther away from Tan.

We’re safer watching each other’s backs.

I circle to him through a rush of skeletons. Tan fights the same wave of bones, only I luck out with human-sized skeletons, while he battles two hulking orcs tall enough to reach over his shielding wall of sand.

As I’m nearing, a draugr vaults the wall in Tan’s blind spot.

Simms bellows, but he’s pinned by dozens of ghouls.

“Tan!” I scream and lunge.

My blade tip grates off the draugr’s ribcage. Its sword is knocked aside before it slashes Tan’s throat.

“Shit.” Tan dodges and smoothly slices through the draugr’s sword arm.

I sever its other hand before it can launch the black lightning in its palm.

It hisses as we hack it apart, chopping like we’re felling a tree.

Its fingers are still twitching to cast when a sinkhole sucks it through the ground.

“Thanks,” Tan gasps, already pivoting to counter the ghoul attacking our flank.

Shadows twirl its ankles and drag it down for us to chop. When the ghoul lies in pieces, I pause to breathe and shift my grip. “Stick near the wall with Simms.”

“I can’t take that order,” Tan says, wiping his palms on his ripped-open jacket. “We’re with you until the end.”

My pounding heart stutters.

Is this what it’s like to have a team?

Together, we advance.

For every inch we take, we slay a dozen monsters.

We have to move faster.

The lich king’s aura rots my Sentinels’ power quicker than I can heal them.

Remy’s control shakes.

Vhex ricochets off the walls, covered in flames. He cranks closer and closer to murder-caveman mode, where he’ll lose all reason and the ability to hear my call.

When I try to move toward either Sentinel, monsters block my path. I soothe their silks as best I can from a distance, waiting for an opening to sneak closer to one of their backs.

When Vhex tosses a red orc the size of four bundled refrigerators, he plows a flaming path through the horde.

“Go to him,” Tan calls, swinging his sword. “We’re right behind you.”

I rush into the gap.

I’m not even halfway there when my hair stands on end.

Something’s wrong.

I windmill to a stop. Planting the butt of my glaive, I spring backward.

Jaws snap from a blurry patch of air. Hot, fishy breath blows back my hair.

Its pointed snout whips sideways, ready to bite.

That’s a lot of teeth.

Suddenly, shadows muzzle its jaw, forcing its jaws to snap shut again. Steam pours from its nostrils. I retreat while the monster flails and finally see what we’re up against.

The monster rears on its hind legs, flapping stretched wings pocked with holes. The huge, armless pseudo-dragon is covered in blue-black scales.

Zombie wyvern.

I shudder.

The monsters are getting stronger.

That means we’re getting closer to the king.

Vhex dives onto the Wyvern’s back ready to ride the bull. Hellish pink flames duel with dragon-fire, melting the ground into a volcanic bowl.

Vhex’s magic rages.

He’s burning, rotting, screaming ?—

Fire and death roil in my gut, but his pain dulls with every breath.

Not because I’m helping.

Because we’re losing the connections between our silks.

Remy too.

He feels dark and distant, winking in and out. Every shadow blade he shoots claws at my heart.

My silks aren’t enough.

We need skin.

We need touch.

We need time that we don’t have.

The wyvern’s thrashing tilts the battle, driving me away from Vhex. Tan and Simms are dragged in on his side of the fight. As Simms manipulates the ground to make the Wyvern stumble, a wave of sand pushes me out of the fray.

I land closer to Remy, with only skeletons blocking between us.

Dusting them, I rush forward, stretching out my silks, trying to reach out before the shadows overtake him.

His psychic pain bites sharper than the lich king’s magic.

As our silks fray apart, fewer fireballs flare to defend me. My shadow armor thins.

The monsters sense the change.

Kobolds and lizard-men swarm.

I strain, using every inch of my glaive’s reach to keep their fangs away.

I can hold my own if the enemies are staggered.

At two-on-one, I’m pressed.

Beyond three-on-one, in a constant melee, I’m gasping.

If Vhex and Remy forget me…

My throat pinches.

I grit my teeth against a wave of ghouls.

Simms comes in clutch, herding them away from me with a well-placed wall of earth.

I’m not alone yet.

I grip Vhex and Remy’s weakening silks and scream into their souls.

Don’t you fucking dare abandon me.

Their last silks spiral, desperate to hold on to me.

Goosebumps pebble my arms.

They’re fighting.

I have to fight just as hard.

The earth wall that saved my ass also blocks my path. I get all turned around in the smoke and chaos.

Skeletons rise so thick they block my view. I can’t sense anything beyond flashes of Vhex and Remy’s agony and the overwhelming energy of death that presses in from everywhere at once.

I keep pushing. Slashing. Dodging flakes of bone.

Then my heel hits open air.

I glimpse the rim of a crater as I tumble down.

My shoulder hits the wall first.

I try to ball myself as I tumble, protecting my head with my arms, but there’s no slowing the roll. I smash down the slope, pummeled and sliced on razor-sharp, black rocks.

Obsidian , I realize as I come to a stop on my back.

My vision spins.

The endless darkness of the open shaft stretches above me.

I must be underneath the original seal.

Groaning, I try to move.

My glaive is gone. I drip blood from more cuts than I can count or even feel.

As I push up, my hands hit the dull, gold lines embedded in the rock.

More arrays.

Please tell me they still work.

“You’ve kept me waiting.”

It sounds like two voices roped together with barbed wire—one is light and annoyingly familiar, the other echoes deep, dry, and eerily discordant.

I lift my head, bracing to fight Kevan’s possessed corpse.

It’s not him.

Luca stands at the bottom of the pit.

His ripped Guide uniform flashes graying skin. Dried snot crusts his upper lip.

Those big eyes aren’t coy or even brown anymore.

They gleam maggot white, no pupils and no humanity left.

My gut churns.

“Where…” Still reeling, I search for my glaive.

I spot it a few feet away, the pole wedged in a crack between rocks.

Lich King Luca coldly watches me stumble to the weapon.

My body throbs, and hot blood trickles down my forehead.

I can’t feel Vhex or Remy.

I swallow hard.

Let’s not bet on them remembering to rescue me.

I brace against my glaive to stop my knees from buckling. My grip slides in blood.

Yeah. This is going to be fun.

When I square up, I squint to stop my vision from twinning.

Lich-Luca hasn’t moved.

A subtle glow shines beneath his feet. I can’t trust my eyes right now, but I swear I see ghostly gold chains, crisscrossing beneath his skin.

Some part of the original array is still working. Even with a fresh body, the lich’s soul must be locked in place.

He’s not all-powerful.

There’s hope.

Slowly, I move closer to him.

The crater isn’t as deep as I thought when I was rolling down the edge. I can still see monsters fighting at the rim, and full-flame Vhex going at the wyvern.

Lich-Luca watches me advance.

When he’s almost in range of my glaive, the air shimmers.

Magic crawls over my skin.

Suddenly, I’m surrounded by monsters.

I shiver.

Not suddenly.

They’ve been here all along, concealed by the king’s power.

The elite draugr look like elvish skeletons, gaunt and gray with jeweled crowns and dense auras that drive my toes into the cold ground.

My gaze slides beyond the powerhouses to the row of fallen Farguard Sentinels.

I recognize their blank faces.

My chest aches.

I was too late.

Kevan stands among them, dead-eyed.

He’s not the prize he thought.

The lich king doesn’t seem to give a fuck about the Kyorgos bloodline or Kevan’s powers. The duke is just another puppet for the army.

If I were his Guide, this wouldn’t have happened.

The thought loosens something in my chest.

“Why take that body as your host?” I ask, hoping to distract the lich as I move in. “Guides are physically weak.”

Lich-Luca lifts his hand, rolling wisps of green energy between his fingers.