Each shield she broke slowed her, each a blip on an otherwise-unerring attack. I gasped as she tore through them, and fought to rebuild them –

Her claws entered thin air, Timesnatcher ten feet away already.

If he was slower here, it was hard to tell; the flight-spell on him granted him enough speed that with his diviner-powers on top, whatever ‘weird time’ he was suffering from was imperceptible.

Killstop fled with him, moving almost as rapidly in spite of the fact this was her first ever flying experience.

They were the eolastyr’s weak-spots. She couldn’t read their futures properly. They could upset her plans.

We couldn’t lose them.

The tigress-demon had no access to flight, and started to drop back towards the ground –

Lightning. Fire. Ice.

Raw elements were the scenery through which she danced, descending.

Even while she fell she cracked the whip again, sending us staggering like hummingbirds as we hovered there –

And by the time I’d collected myself again she’d already struck off the ground in another mighty leap, pouncing at Timesnatcher once more.

This time, she wasn’t alone.

Her minions were with her, hurling themselves into the air towards us, each eyeing a different opponent.

Our wizards struck again. And they all danced on the air.

They couldn’t break the shields – not alone at least. But the eolastyr was still ripping them apart without any visible effort on her behalf and losing just a shred of her incredible velocity on the border of each barrier, a momentary delay that bought just a speck of time for her prey to dive aside, escape. And almost all of the fiends passed through the free space she carved, before I could get the shields back in-place.

Dustbringer and Redgate’s shields were there, but the blue spheres stretched no farther than a thirty-foot radius, and served to protect only a couple of the others. None of the sorcerers’ innermost defences had been touched yet, but I had a feeling that – no matter how I reinforced my circle – it wouldn’t be enough to stand up to the eolastyr.

A man with the distended teeth of a rat and a long, sinuous tail was about to crash into me, his beringed, clawed fingers poised to rip into my flesh.

I had a number of options.

I pinched a spike together on the outside of my shield and flung it at him.

And he barrel-rolled over the glimmering spear of force.

It was invisible, I was invisible, and he was barrel-rolling casually to evade my strikes.

What are these things, Zel? I thought as I evaded and rebuilt more shields.

“Obbolomin. Same as your dog-faced men, but a different clan, obviously. Crude things, first rank. She must’ve done something to augment them.”

The rat-man recoiled from my pentagon, and my hexagon caught him up in mid-air, thrusting him back even farther.

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They can do that?

“Eolastyr can do things you can’t even imagine. This is… a game to her.”

I looked across at Em as an owl-man, his wings unfurled to display a magnificent brown plumage, pressed the attack upon her with his six-inch talons. I saw him slip past four great gouts of flame, getting no more than singed, and was about to fling my shields around her –

The owl-man was plucked up by a tornado spinning above him, sending him reeling towards the ceiling, and Em sped after him in pursuit, hurling lightning this time.

Striking him.

For an all-too-brief time, it looked like we were going to handle things.

“It’s time,” Zel said to me, and I knew she was right.

I pursued my rat-man as he fell, trapped him in a diamond, and slew him with a ring of inward-pointing spikes.

Shadowcloud’s enemy couldn’t avoid his lightning-bolt while trapped in a spray of Winterprince’s ice. Glimmermere and Nighteye let their opponents catch them in the air and fought with their bare hands, ignoring the pain of their quickly-resealing wounds as they leveraged their overpowering physiques to snap their foes’ limbs in two. Neverwish and Lovebright doubled and redoubled themselves until there were dozens of intangible enchanters in the air, the beast-men trying to spring upon them leaping unknowingly into stray blasts of elemental energy. Redgate used some kind of scream to blast his enemy aside, just before force-blades shredded it into pieces. Dustbringer’s sapphire sword bit through flesh and bone without even noticeably slowing.

And all the while, Timesnatcher and Killstop kept moving out of the eolastyr’s way, defended constantly by flurries of illusory champions, waves of white frost, shields of force…

As the last of the obbolomin perished, we all focussed our attention on the tigress.

The wizards went high to find angles that wouldn’t hit the rest of us as we struggled to resume our semi-circle around her – she was bouncing again and again from the red-lit gold floors, seeming to only move faster and faster –

My spikes couldn’t catch her, and I suspected that, if they did hit her, the forces I was capable of exerting from the outer shields wouldn’t compare with those from my reinforced circle. Would such distant blades carry the weight, the sharpness of will to slice her unfathomable flesh? Yet I couldn’t risk approaching her to try to do more damage, not when there was no guarantee even then that she would be hurt, or that she wouldn’t tear through my circle and its stars, tear me in half –

“You’re right – you can’t risk it. You’re not going to be the one she takes. Just… outlast this.”

How can you possibly know that?

“I don’t know it, not for certain. I’m just guessing. But I’m not going to be wrong.”

The powerful fiend was bounding at Timesnatcher’s face, and he was going to cut it close.

Dustbringer was nearby – protected by his blinding weave of shielding, he brought his vamelbabil blade up and swung it at her back –

She didn’t twist in the air to evade his strike, yet I had no doubt she knew his blow was in motion. For the first time, she turned to directly face an attack.

The sapphire weapon struck her in the centre of the brow and recoiled from the circlet about her head with an audible twang.

Her positioning – more than merely perfect.

It was as though its weight suddenly came back to the sword, and the gigantic, unwieldy blade toppled back at him.

Somehow, it was not ill-will. It was an accident. A twist of fate. A dreamer’s vision.

It ignored the last-remaining, closest shields about him.

The sword’s bitter inner edge plunged into Dustbringer’s collarbone and sheared through his torso, getting almost to his navel before it tipped and fell free of his body.

The demonic weapon vanished into the air as it left his nerveless hands. The spectral essences he maintained were plainly dispelled in the moment of his failure, his robe’s cloudiness ripped away to reveal the gushing dregs of the man beneath.

Aghast, I stared –

“Nighteye! Glimmer-”

Timesnatcher’s cry was cut off as a crack resounded through the room, dizzying me, sending us all fluttering off like pollen-drunk bees –

By the time I could focus my gaze again, she was sitting on her throne once more, Dustbringer’s body laid across her lap, his head and feet lolling off the arms of the chair.

Her hand was above Dustbringer’s chest, and it was pulsing with white light.

The corpse-face mask, a symbol of his prowess, was now turned into a mockery. He looked dead already.

“No!” I cried; the others were crying out too, lightning was rebounding from what I could now see as a red sheen in the air, an infernal barrier of force protecting her, surrounding the dais –

“Can’t heal him!” Glimmermere gasped, then –

“Demons!” Zel shrilled.

“Demons!” I repeated her warning, turning back to look –

They were coming out of the fires now. More imps, more obbolomin, and summoners, too – I saw a nabburatiim, a black stick-man, taking shape in the crimson flames.

* * *