Sheets of pink light covered the world, blackening the vast reeds, catching arch-diviners and arch-wizards that were beyond the sorcerers’ weave, sending them reeling, tumbling from their perches. How harmed they were I couldn’t tell.

Along with Em’s pent-up aggression, we had one other advantage, here in Etherium.

My peers were not fans of the fey, were they?

Sarcamor and Sarminuid I settled near to the Lords of the Arrealbord. I brought through my scorpion and had it grow to maximum size, Sir Stinger backing up Sunspring as the gorilla pulled himself with his massive knuckles in the direction of the enemy druids. At the same time I opened a portal full of chattering golden squirrels in the general vicinity of their cadre of enchanters, then reached into crimson fire beneath my feet and pulled Khikiriaz through, carrying me up into the air.

The red-furred ikistadreng loosed a blood-curling scream of defiance when he saw a flash of what we were dealing with, and he reared up. I wrapped my legs tight about his flanks, as much to ensure he stayed on this plane as to stay atop his back.

“Khalor!” I commanded.

When he lowered his huge antlers, charging, I could see over his head the weave before us. I left behind most my barriers, to defend the others, carrying only my circle and triangle. Enough for me and my mount.

The others were fighting behind me – I could hear their cries, mostly psychic rather than physical, as they entered a battle against overwhelming odds.

I couldn’t listen.

Focus.

I gritted my teeth, fixed the shields, and set every force-blade in front of me, a pulsating blue spike, like a thousand lances conjoined into one –

I could’ve unfolded arms of force, tried to pin the weave in place to allow me to strike it – but that wasn’t how this was going to work. It was a weave. It worked on resolve. Something mind-controlled slaves lacked.

When I rode the hell-beast right through their weave and trampled the flickering bodies of Valorin and Shallowlie, I felt the inrush of energies as a group of our foes were sucked away from this plane. Either Min or the magister had lost consciousness, lost connection to their power, and with that loss those who bore their seal had been whisked away.

I couldn’t see Netherhame – she must have put everything she had into the weave. Nonetheless, I could hear a burst of the sound she made, her wail of anger; and when she reacted I got only a glimpse of the obscenely-huge shadow falling upon me, only a snatch of the zombie giant’s sickening song, before it struck me.

My triangle burst at a single blow, and Khikiriaz’s head caved in, antlers bent; he toppled, dying, and I went down with him, my leg trapped beneath him.

My leg turned to mush beneath him.

A flick-flick of warped invisibility revealed the zombie giant raising its dirge-chanting fist, comprised of unseeing, warbling blue corpses –

I raised my hand as though to ward it off, gasping –

It struck my circle-shield, hammering me and my dying demon into the dirt, and I saw the lines fraying, stars bursting even as I was rebuilding them – I dismissed Khikiriaz between gestures, an action that at once both relieved and tortured my useless left leg –

Zel was hanging there in the air beside the zombie giant suddenly, contorting strangely, and it was only as Spirit’s efforts washed across us that I realised she was actually standing on top of Netherhame’s head, burying the tip of her knitting-needle sword through the eye-slit in the sorceress’s mask. Trying to make her release her grip on the giant.

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“Princess!” the fairy yelled at me over Netherhame’s staccato screams.

Of course.

Jerking with the pain, I twisted my arm, pulling through portals – the zombie giant swung its other fist down at me to finish me –

Leaping through the jade mist from which she was birthed, my unicorn brought her glittering horn into contact with the towering hulk of cadavers, headbutting its descending knuckles –

“Esae!” she cried fiercely, joyously, a word probably best translated simply as, ‘Yes!’

Whatever Gilaela did, it burned up the zombie giant’s arm, turning the hundreds of bodies up to its elbow into dust. This seemed to undo a portion of whatever magic held it together, loosing the deluge of cadavers on top of me.

I preferred a rain of illusory puppies, but at least the rain of corpses couldn’t penetrate my shield as they cascaded down on top of me; they couldn’t bury me alive. They were still squirming around, teeming over my force-barrier. Though their strength was vastly reduced when almost separated, strung out like a string of pearls on a snapped necklace, the weight of them was immense. Too much –

“Feychilde!” I heard the unicorn’s concerned voice on the other side of the body-pile covering me.

I opened my mouth to command her –

And the zombies all over me were swept aside in a storm-wind, flickering back to Nethernum once the tempest separated them from each other.

I could see the glowing otherworld sky – and I could see –

Winterprince descending upon me.

His swords crashed into my shield, again and again, and a hail of sharpened ice-shards drove at me from all angles. A burst of them wounded Gilaela, forcing her back whinnying.

“Are – you – sure?” the wizard snapped as he shattered my stars, sent my blue ring shuddering to a halt.

Was I sure my neck didn’t have his name on it?

That was what he was asking me.

Sunspring went reeling past, shaking the ground underfoot – he was even bigger than before but his foes, not much smaller, were all over him: a silver-black tiger, a blue-brown rat… I wasn’t getting help from him.

Zel was stabbing Netherhame’s hands, her wrists, working at the tendons that let the arch-sorceress control her fingers. No help there.

My last star exploded while I was fumbling with my demiskin but my other healing elixirs eluded my fingertips, and I looked up in terror.

“Back – off me!” I cried, lashing out with a force-spike at the arch-wizard even as he pressed his advantage.

It was no good. I was too weak. My force-spike couldn’t drive him away, never mind pierce his ice armour.

I looked aside, doing my best to control the energies, summon my last reserves.

Our foes – visible, no longer flickering – my satyrs wrestling with Fangmoon; Stormsword sparring with both Elkostor and Starsight; the Arrealbord lords and Timesnatcher still safe inside their shields –

Could I draw on that power?

It was only then that I realised our enemies’ invisibility wasn’t reactivating; this wasn’t just a lull. It had truly dropped off. Spirit was keeping up his end, it seemed, or –

A tide of golden squirrels came to Zel’s aid just as Netherhame’s shields sent the fairy flying – they swarmed atop the sorceress, hiding her from my sight, burying her wards and all beneath their shining rodent bodies, rolling her across the grass.

What they’d done to the enemy enchanters I was unsure…

I looked back at Winterprince as he broke my starless circle – and brought my final eldritches to the front of my mind.

The arch-wizard was grinding laughter.

“You are mine!”

He launched the killing-blow.

He did it with his own hands. He wasn’t going to bring a lance of ice up under me. He wanted to do it himself. Feel the life leave me, as it’d left the young heretic.

This wasn’t all the dragon. This was him. His nature.

And it cost him dearly.

Xiatan, my treeman eldritch, I brought through right between us, even as Flood Boy appeared ten yards away.

The shining frost-blade bit deep into the dryad’s bark-flesh, far deeper than any ordinary sword ought, certainly one made of cold water; and, probably rather surprised by both the jadeway and the sudden attack, Xiatan released a shockingly human shriek and simply clobbered the ice-clad wizard with his branch-arms.

About half a second later, as Winterprince span away into the air and started gathering twin nimbuses of orange heat just beyond the tips of his swords, Flood Boy’s namesake arrived.

A tide of wine came like a river through a burst dam to slam into the arch-wizard, slapping him down to the ground, his fires – at least for now – extinguished in a whoof of explosive vapour.

I looked across at the faun and gave him a weak thumbs-up. The little guy’s eyes were wide as he played his thrumming tune and he didn’t look at me.

He’s… scared, I realised.

A huge scorpion-pincer, bigger and heavier than a horse, landed not five feet from me. I felt the impact as it rocked the ground, but it was a distant thing, somewhere beyond the pain.

My leg.

“Help!” Sunspring gasped over the link.

“Diviners are on him!” Em screamed.

* * *