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"The battle isn’t over yet," Nyrielle said, taking Ignatious hand for support as she forced herself to stand. "Collect Hamdi’s body. He isn’t dead, but he shouldn’t wake easily after what I’ve done to him.

I’m afraid that his progeny has finally arrived.

If we don’t stop the battle upstairs soon, tonight will be even more of a tragedy for both sides. "

She was certain that Hamdi would hate her for decades to come for what she’d done to him, but at the moment, it was still possible for things to recover. Matters could begin and end between them.

If the damage to his household grew much greater, however, she was afraid that things would turn into a blood feud that would never end until his entire lineage had been exterminated and that was something she wanted to avoid almost as much as she needed to avoid losing any of her own progeny in this battle.

"Battle upstairs? How do you know what’s happening up there?" Ignatious asked in genuine confusion as he scooped up the much-diminished figure of Hamdi.

The charred body felt impossibly light in his arms. It, or rather, he was nothing like the towering presence that had dominated his existence for decades. Holding his body, in its charred and desiccated state, it was hard to even think of him as a person.

Each time Hamdi’s limp head lolled against his chest, Ignatious trembled in a combination of shock and disbelief and he had to look down to remind himself that this moment was really happening.

How many times had he imagined it? How many hours had he spent imagining reducing his tormentor to ash and cinders until he’d given up all hope and lost the ability to imagine anything different than his current suffering?

For decades, the only thing he had desired more than the sight of this man’s death was finding a way to end his own life and for much of that time, the only thing that kept him from staking himself out for the sunrise was the idea that one day, he might live to see Hamdi fall.

Yet now, holding what was little more than a burned and blackened corpse, he felt none of the satisfaction he’d imagined. Instead, his heart swelled with a long-forgotten warmth as he watched Nyrielle push herself forward despite her injuries.

Seeing her determination, the hatred and bloodlust that had fueled his vengeance seemed to have burned away with his holy flames, leaving behind a deep desire to live on at his Mistress’s side, serving the woman who had touched his soul in a way that he realized the Holy Lord of Light never truly had.

"I gave Zedya her Mesmerizing Eyes," Nyrielle said, her voice pulling Ignatious back out of his thoughts as she began walking toward the door.

With a slight smile, she tapped next to one midnight blue eye to reveal the slightest hint of an amethyst glow.

"Since I gave her that power, I’ve long been able to see what she sees. "

"I expected that Hamdi might order his men to cause some trouble for our people," Nyrielle explained as she picked her way carefully across the floor.

The flames had all gone out when Ignatious drew on the flames within the room to construct his avenging wraith, but the floor was still littered with the debris of her clash with Hamdi, and navigating through it while she was injured was more difficult than it appeared.

"That’s why you gave Zedya orders to kill anyone who offended her," Ignatious realized. "You knew that Hamdi would send his men to move against her." He’d always known that Nyrielle was a powerful force and a skilled strategist. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have been capable of delivering so many crushing defeats to the combined forces of Lothians and the Church of the Holy Lord of Light.

After spending so many years being ground down under Hamdi’s cruelty and witnessing the power and might of the Tangled Wood, he realized that his impression of Nyrielle as a strong and cunning leader had also eroded.

It was only now, as he held his former tormentor’s unconscious body in hand and realized the depths of her foresight that he remembered why the Church had dubbed her the ’Demon Lady of the Vale. ’

In a single night, with nothing more than herself, a handmaiden, a few soldiers, and a badly broken progeny, she was bringing the mighty Tangled Wood to its knees.

And in the midst of everything she was doing, she still made space to help heal the wounds that Hamdi’s skinning knife had carved deep into his soul.

The more he thought about it, the greater the sense of awe and admiration he felt as he gazed upon his Mistress.

"It was always my intention to provoke Hamdi," Nyrielle said, picking up her pace as they entered the corridor that was clear of debris. The empty hallway was easier for her to walk through with nothing in her way and only the stones worn smooth by centuries of footsteps beneath her feet.

She still couldn’t move as quickly as she wished and she trailed one hand along the cold, stone walls to support herself as they walked. Once she reached the floor above, she was certain that she would need every ounce of strength she had remaining if she was going to put a stop to this.

"Without a clash, I was certain that he would keep treating me like the little girl I was when I was when we first met," she explained as they walked. In truth, her only goal for this evening was to clash with enough intensity to compel Hamdi’s cooperation.

She wanted to borrow the power and prestige of the Tangled Wood to summon other local Eldritch Lords to meet with her here, rather than approaching each of them as a visitor, like a beggar with her hat in hand.

Hamdi’s support could have made it much easier to sway the Eldritch Lords who dismissed the human threat and saw her as weak for failing to defeat the Lothians after so many years.

Those plans had suffered a severe blow because things had gone so far but she hoped that her ultimate goals could still be salvaged.

Before she could think about those adjustments, however, she needed to finish dealing with Hamdi’s forces.

"Then, you expected all of this to happen?" Ignatious asked, holding up the ancient vampire’s slumbering body.

"No," Nyrielle said, shaking her head. "His reaction was much, much worse than I expected.

" She hadn’t realized that Skoll held special significance to Hamdi and that had been the first miscalculation of the evening, pushing him harder from the start than she meant to, but there had been other missteps along the way as well.

Each of those small mistakes added up to create an avalanche that it was almost too late to avoid. Or perhaps it was already too late for everyone who accompanied her on this journey to escape this conflict unscathed.

"Now, if we don’t reach Zedya in time," she said as she pushed her battered body to move faster. "I’m afraid that my miscalculation will cost too many of our people their lives. Now hurry, we don’t have much time."

Amethyst light flashed again in Nyrielle’s eyes, giving her a glimpse of the chaotic battle above... and the terrifying figure who had arrived to rescue Hamdi’s soldiers from Zedya’s overwhelming power.