“Ironic. You talk way too much.”

Killstop was behind him – right behind him – and in her hands, her own luminescent dagger, and the sliced ends of the chain about his neck.

How…?

He reacted, she reacted – I couldn’t tell. When the motion-blur resolved, they were standing side-by-side for a split-second before running away – together.

But I knew for certain when I felt a druid’s magnificent healing and energising spells entering my body that the tide of the battle had turned.

I sat up, straightened my mask, and peered down at the tremendous blue condor crouching over my leg. She was taking a spray of lightning from an arch-magister with her wings, protecting her head, and just ignoring the damage as though it were nothing. The feathers that were withering away were being replaced just as swiftly as they vanished, I saw. The pain didn’t even appear to bother her.

I expanded my shields around her anyway, cracked my knuckles, and smiled.

“Thanks, Glimmer.”

The druidess nodded to me, and I looked about, silently praising Yune.

Timesnatcher – his robe was withered away, touched by flame or lightning, but the flesh beneath was pink and he’d been placed in a position of repose. Someone had seen to him already.

The politicians – they were huddled together, shieldless, with Lord Haid crouching protectively over the other two, a look of never-before-experienced horror on his bulbous face.

All three of them, alive.

Shadowcloud, dipping and weaving through the ethereal sky like a ghost, created a shell of lightning around the enemy wizard who’d been throwing spells at Glimmer – a shell which only seemed to absorb what his foe drew in and threw out.

A moment later it congealed inwards, frying the magister where he floated; Glimmermere left my side, catching the magister, taking him under the power of her magic.

Killstop had brought Zakimel – that was what had given us the edge. Now, accompanied by Starsight, they were putting things right. Direcrown was with them, and he was riding a winged demon – it was the size of an elephant but it appeared very much like a small dragon, with savage-looking rust-red claws and teeth, black-metal wings and scales. It only differed from a young drake out of the story-books, as far as I could tell, in that it possessed three long, tapering tails. There were spell-effects in different shades and hues crackling about the trio of barbed tips, waving dangerously in the air.

The sorcerer had crossed the field to help Stormsword take Winterprince apart, and I felt a flush of pleasure watching the ice being torn from the wizard’s limbs.

Winterprince’s amulet had to be inside there somewhere, right? Had Lovebright gotten him to expose one of his arms for him to take the seal? There was no other explanation.

It felt strange to imagine a living man inside the ice armour all of a sudden – but the armour layers were so thin now that I could see him, properly, for the first time. He was drowning in a deluge of magma spewed straight out of my girlfriend’s hands, drowning in a deluge of blows from some of the most-fearsome demonic talons I’d ever seen.

But he was a man in there. A mage clad in a plain blue robe.

I had to do it – it would be glorious.

I leapt up, ran over to them, and cried out: “Enough! Take pity on the poor guy.”

Em looked at me; Direcrown murmured in Infernal to his mount; and then, just as Winterprince staggered back into an upright position and raised his head defiantly, Killstop visited him.

She smashed her fist right through the crust of his frozen exterior, then pulled back, clutching his pendant; a second later she held the amulet up in the air, swinging it before his still-ice-masked face.

“Thanks, your Highness,” she chirped – then vanished, off on another errand.

Winterprince, far smaller in stature than was normal, shrank down further into himself, curling up and sitting down on the grass.

He put his head between his knees, unmoving, silent. I could now see right through the thinnest ice leg, the one that contained no flesh and bone below the thigh. Where something awful had wounded him, irreparably.

Strange, that my words had been so wrong, and so right. Having fun at his expense wasn’t glorious – it was stupid. Pathetic. But now I did pity him. Whatever I thought of him – whatever part of it was or wasn’t the dragon’s doing – he was a champion. He was crippled, because of his commitment to the cause, and yet he didn’t retire – he kept on fighting. He’d beaten me. He was strong; he deserved his pride.

And today he’d been puppeteered into a shameful battle, then had all his protections whittled away to nothing, for everyone to see.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Despite everything, I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him – not now.

He kicked Flood Boy’s corpse off his sword.

As I surveyed the smoking, spell-blasted clearing between the reeds, I realised it was over. Killstop and Zakimel had used their superior talents to bring the other arch-diviners to heel first, then used them to emancipate the other combatants. A number of magisters were helping the three politicians to their feet, checking them for injuries.

There were over two dozen entities, eldritches included, scattered about the battlefield. Many of the human faces showed panic, disgrace. They were receiving the pertinent information from Spirit or someone, it seemed.

My satyrs had survived, though they had champions’ blood up their arms. My sylph was seeing to my unicorn. Zel came through unscathed, too; I saw her, fluttering around the almost-completely dissolved remains of Olbru.

Stormsword was before me suddenly, and I hugged her, whispered my gratitude for the last-second rescue.

“Zat is vot I’m here for,” she whispered back, smiling broadly as we parted.

I looked across at the others. “No fatalities?” I yelled.

“No fatalities?” I repeated telepathically, just in case someone had gone too far to hear me.

Then I got to sigh in relief at the sheer number of dubious confirmations. No one knew for certain, even out of the diviners, but the fact no one thought they saw a body lying in front of them was definitely a good start. I couldn’t sense any, though if some had slipped back to Materium –

“I think we’re all okay,” Killstop hedged, over the psychic channel.

“What in Twelve Hells happened, Killstop?” Spirit asked.

“This is beginning to Bor me.”

It took me a second –

There was a pause, while Spirit parsed what she said, then he piped back up: “No magisters. Pruned the link – just us now. What happened, Tanra?”

“I found her charm under the Ceryad. Destroyed it. Once I did that, it was easy to get Zakimel on board. She’s panicking, you see. She’s decided to stop spending her forces, go back to the long game… Something like that. She wants to pick our minds back up! If she can make us forget this ever happened…”

“What do you mean, about Zakimel?” I asked, feeling worried.

“What do we do now?” Shadowcloud called down.

I’d been staring at Killstop, her back to me as she bent over Timesnatcher, but now I moved my eyes to look up at the wizard. His grey robe with the yellow lightning-bolt was rippling in the breeze of his power, his misty mask and leathery gloves all in place.

He’s back, then? I thought in wonder. The reports had all indicated he was destined to… well…

No one else replied to his question directly, breaking off in small groups and muttering.

“We have to get her,” I called up to him.

“We will finish this,” Stormsword said.

I felt a tingle in my fingers, and looked down at Em’s hand in my own only to see a little trail of pink electricity still running across her knuckles.

I smiled at her, and she smiled back.

Drop it. This dragon has to die.

Killstop and Zakimel moved towards the centre, oddly in concert, almost as though the seeress was doing her best to keep on top of the seer. Behind them, Starsight, Bookwyrm and Bladesedge were all doing something to Timesnatcher, crouching down and waving their hands rapidly back and forth, as though they were tickling the air just above the fallen hero’s unconscious body.

It must’ve been strange for the two arch-diviners, to come out of a several-year-long stupor into the midst of this chaos. Though, knowing diviners, they’d probably each taken half an hour to get over the shock of it, somewhere between one footfall and the next.

“It is fortunate you came to me,” Zakimel said, only a little boasting in his tone, his gaze passing over me, scrutinising me, as he cast his eyes across the champions. “We’ve successfully removed the amulets, and now we must consider a rational course of –“

As I’d anticipated, with everyone staring, Killstop sprang on him.

No one else here was possessed of speed enough to aid her – or him. No one conscious, at least. It was a one-on-one duel of frightening scale, even though it lasted at most three seconds, coming through almost as a series of still images:

Tanra, her backside on his chest, legs wrapped about the magister’s upper body to pin his arms as she dug into the neck of his robe –

Zakimel, both arms high over his head, holding the champion by one heel, swinging her up into the air to bring her crashing back down to the ground on her skull –

Tanra, kneeling atop his shoulders, thighs holding his head tight in a vice as she gripped the chain beneath his chin –

Zakimel, bringing a blade down at her face as she lay on the ground before him –

Tanra, crouching over his body, the hilt of one of her knives protruding from his sternum.

“Damn it, Zakky!” she cried. “Quick, someone fix him!”

She pulled her knife free, releasing a gush of blood – I noticed immediately that it was only the kitchen knife – and she started backing away slowly. As she went, I could see that she was dragging the pendant by its chain from beneath the torn fabric of his robe.

The confrontation might’ve only lasted three seconds, but now I had to worry about the magisters here – I saw the scowls, the renewed battle-readiness entering their features, their postures –

Will we have to fight again?

The other Magisterium diviners here hadn’t acted… Lady Sentelemeth and her cronies were watching, wide-eyed, all their power and authority deserting them in the face of a true crisis.

And then within three more seconds a number of druids had already reached out with their spells, evidenced by the greenish mist settling about him. Before anyone even got to Zakimel’s side to apply a greater level of healing, he snapped into an upright position, his hand on his wound.

“Who’da thought Zakimel would shave his chest?” Spirit asked into the link, sounding genuinely curious.

“Are we done?” Killstop said aloud, still backing away. Her voice was nasal, as though she were holding back a sneeze or yawn or something. “Are we… can I…”

She fell; Zakimel reached her side first, lowered her to the ground, and gently placed her head down inside her hood.

“She must rest,” he said, an unusual quiver in his voice. “We’ll do what we can, to help her, but… but she’s exhausted her magic.”

I thought back to everything she’d achieved – everything that would’ve gone disastrously wrong today if she’d not been as powerful as she was.

“I should damn-well hope so,” I said, looking down at her, her sightless eyes staring out through the mask. I flicked my eyes across to Lady Sentelemeth. “Killstop’s the Liberator of dropping Mund.”

But, as the others started debating our next steps, my glance lingered on a tiny creature in a blue dress, sitting beside the slowly-evaporating remains of her old friend.

Zel. Zel is the Liberator of Mund.

* * *