The first truth Malas had to face: he had no weapons strong enough to harm me.

He tried it all in the first ten seconds. Any time he tried to form blades of force on the edges of his shields, the threads of my net would simply swirl about the surface of the purple sphere and bite clean through them at the base, releasing the spikes into the air to drift like snipped-off chunks of hair. I danced about him, controlling his every move, and against the eldritch attacks he could muster my own star-reinforced shapes were no less impenetrable than his own. A barrage of Infernum-red arrows formed before his chest and came hurtling at me, only to disappear in clouds of orange sparks as they collided with my azure walls. The great ethereal paw of the Queen of Moths extended, and shattered into a thousand pieces of green glass when I reached out a blade to greet it. The black smoke of a dracolich poured from his maw with reckless abandon, yet my shields pushed the dense, noxious fog aside, not one errant whiff of its lethal odours reaching my nostrils before Orcan silently drew it away into hidden vents.

That was when he busted out the eldritches. There was nothing stopping him from summoning piles of his minions on top of my head, so that was just what he tried to do, making a valiant attempt to dislodge me from my mid-air perch, regain some of his freedom… flee me again…

Nothing stopping him, until I turned a sliver of my attention to the portals opening above me. Those dimensional doors too far-flung for me to shut dribbled monsters onto me, but the nearest ones shivered and sealed themselves when exposed to my scrutiny. His sloppiness was showing. A flurry of force-blades served to disintegrate the lesser eldritches he spewed forth through his gates, and an array of carefully-placed walls would divert the greater ones, whose special strengths or sheer physical mass I couldn’t afford to slip through the net –

He managed to distract me.

He moved an inch before I realised he’d succeeded – I threw up a shield to block five amethyst lances that came shooting from his talons – I brought up the shape to divert the catastrophe of a full-grown bintaborax bearing down at me – I drew tight on the leash, panting, forcing him to be still –

But that was the second truth he had to face: I too had back-up. Back-up with the ingenuity of my very scary siblings. I could hear them in the background of my mind, doing their best to keep me appraised of their plans without actually stealing my attention. It was a delicate line to walk, but, if anyone could walk it, it was them.

Malas’s clouds of imps floated up into the shadows to lay down ranged fire on me, but they found themselves enveloped in the webs of some extremely hostile giant spiders. My own imps entered the fray, and the first thing Pinktongue chose to do was teleport up to the ceiling – I spotted him casually assassinating those of his kin the spiders hadn’t yet gotten to devour, baking their heads in hell-fire from his hands.

Soon a variety of enlarged subterranean insects were showering down on my foe, doing to him exactly what he’d tried to do to me. And his own enormous nature hardly helped him – the physics didn’t change, not in Materium at least. Apparently if he had access to size-changing eldritches, he hadn’t joined with them, or didn’t think to shrink. His shield was huge, and therefore presented an easy target. Contact with his barriers would spell the death of Kirid’s augmented bugs, but before they perished to his blades the pressure of their malice would work to weaken him. Tremendous mites fell like black hail, skittering about and biting at the magenta air as soon as they landed. Bloated worms infused with the radiance of the ceilings squirmed across his shields, steaming blue clouds as they rolled –

It amused me to see how, when those worm-beasties were cut in two, they did not die, but only multiplied, living long-enough for Greenheart’s healing power or their own native regenerative properties to restore them. The dracolich was forced to redouble his efforts to exterminate them, and check his work over after each pass. It might tire him, and it would certainly frustrate him.

Death by a thousand cuts. Defeat by a thousand attacks. It was the only way, with a sorcerer of his calibre. Wear down the shields. Break through, bit by bit.

And it was not, of course, just Kirid Oanor who came to my aid. Arch-wizardry was something to behold. It’d been a long time since I’d last witnessed the plumes of fierce orange-gold fire dancing in the darkness, erupting into magma, fire careening in sheets and ribbons from every point of contact, every withered husk of a body. Malas had brought through a pair of zombie-dragons almost immediately upon commencement of the battle, but he seemed to give up on the idea once my wizard lit them up like bonfires. Orcan was even using his power to shape elementals, binding the most powerful eldritches in stone, at least long enough for my own hit-squad of greater demons to deal with.

In this, however, Orcan enjoyed only mixed results. The enemy bintaborax were, of course, proving incredibly troublesome, smashing through the wizard’s rocky servitors with ease. Mrs. Cuddlesticks had taken a hammer-blow to the chin from one of her filthy dracolich-serving cousins, rotating her head a hundred and eighty degrees – this hadn’t stopped her from getting involved in the action, but I hoped it was something that would fix itself soon. Khikiriaz was duelling a whole coven of vampires; several were already impaled on the deadly tips of his antlers, limbs and torsos well-skewered by the morass of black horn. This didn’t stop them trying to wriggle free, of course, and it seemed to hamper the ikistadreng in his dealings with their swift-moving fellows.

Once the battle was fully joined, we both started piling our reserves on top, looking for an advantage. When Mal Malas deposited a few dozen gaumgalamar on the floor, I buried them in hundreds of wight-like elf-zombies. When he dropped a host of spectres on my demon hit-squad, I backed them up with the elf-ghosts.

Before the dracolich could react to my deployment of extremely-killy undead, I whipped around Malas, adjusting his position as a molten river came cascading towards his forces. I was careful not to completely eclipse the lava flow, but I brought his shields into the stream all the same, letting the fire-spell glance off his barriers. It damaged his defences, and most of it still sprayed down over his troops, melting through nethernal bone and infernal scale with equal, scarily-rapid effectiveness. He tried his best to catch the lava, scoop it away with his magenta shapes, but it was starting to prove too much for him. His first attempt, he successfully splashed it on my wights, wiping a score or so of them out. His second, he failed and the orange, almost-gelatinous substance spattered all over a bunch of his obbolomin. Their animal-like screams would have been chilling, mortifying in any other context – but here and now? Here and now, the agonised dirge of their combined death-song merely filled me with glee.

I was distracted, repositioning my net – I almost missed when he sent a series of flaming green skulls blasting into my shields, rocking me, forcing me to painstakingly rebuild –

His gambit worked, and I did miss as he opened portals above me again. I felt the impact like a shower of hail, a number of small intrusions, tiny demons peppering the upper sections of my shield and clinging there.

Too late, I recognised what they were.

“Copycat,” I muttered.

Not one, not two, but ten or more yithandreng were poised atop me.

“Klerez! Thanatar!” Malas shrieked before I could act to dislodge his fiends.

‘Grow! Destroy!’

No creativity at all. He read my memories, and he didn’t even understand how to use a size-changer correctly.

They swelled to near-full mass in less than a second, becoming long, many-legged snakes, claws scratching at my burning shields. I dropped under their weight, but I didn’t release their master, dragging Malas down with me.

He’s getting desperate, I observed as I descended aggressively. If he thought a trick like this would work… Perhaps he thought I’d have to release him in order to escape this trap. How amusing.

I used the wizard-flight to propel myself, and went down into the ground, smashing the yithandreng into the rock.

Silent darkness blanketed me for an instant as I submerged myself in the cool earth.

Let’s give him what he really wants.

I reversed direction, ascending swiftly, emerging back into the cavern amidst a gang of dazed-looking yithandreng being dog-piled by ghosts. As I went I shortened my whip-tendrils, still approaching the dracolich, bringing us together despite his attempts to resist, pull away.

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He had opened a portal above him, an inky darkness leading to Nethernum’s dank underworld. But nothing was coming through this gateway to aid him. No – it was an escape-route. One he wasn’t going to get chance to use.

What a pity.

His reticence to commit to the combat we’d engaged in only fuelled the fire in me, and I yanked the lines with renewed purpose, reeling him in to meet me as I rose.

We were about to collide, and only the gods knew what would result from that meeting.

Coming back up from the cavern floor, I was afforded a brief glimpse of the battle. My forces were losing. Malas had centuries’ worth of eldritches, a veritable army of undead and demons, even some fey critters in the mix. I had fewer. My dark-elven ghosts were formidable, and they slew three for every one they lost, but lich-fire proved capable of destroying them, and each loss rang out in my mind. Orcan was still doing his best to reinforce the battle-lines, drawing dozens of elementals out of the walls even as he laid down defensive strikes, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Khikiriaz was on his own, cut off from support, surrounded by the vampires. His red ikistadreng-essence was leaking out into the air from dozens of savage wounds criss-crossing his blurry flesh.

I looked back up at my enemy as we crashed together. The undead draconic visage was locked into a grin like mine.

But was my smile as wretched?

Shields contacted, and exploded.

I passed into him, carried on a wave of velocity ignorant of sorcerous forces. I passed into him, through him, and he passed through me.

There was an instant, before I emerged on the other side, in which I sensed the eldritches in him. I couldn’t get a firm grasp on them – their shapes were amorphous, borders disguised by virtue of the number of them. Twelve or thirteen, at least.

Disguised not just by their number. Their host, too. It was so easy to forget, what with him being an arch-sorcerer in his own right, that Mal Malas was himself an eldritch. He had sacrificed something to gain power, and that sacrifice had left him empty, vulnerable inside.

Before I exited on the other side of him, I whispered it in Netheric, from one insubstantial substance to another.

“Be mine.”

And I felt the way his own eldritch-essence lurched, the entirety of his consciousness swaying in response.

He couldn’t submit… or could he?

Cackling, I streamed free of his undead flesh, ripping my tendrils loose after me.

Carrying at least five of his joined entities along for the ride.

I could hear the twins cheering telepathically. Malas was descending, still caught in the pull of my downwards yank, but now he plummeted faster than before. When he spread his battered wings and spun about, he caught the air easily, with the suddenness of real motion, and it was then I realised – he was no longer able to switch back to a wraith-state.

One of the screaming eldritches trapped in the barbs of my whips was the ghost of a dragon, a young drake by the looks of things, much smaller than its master…

Even without watching, I could sense the way my five captives were dying. The azure tendrils had mostly affixed themselves to the extremities of Malas’s joined entities – ankles, wrists, tails – not their throats, from what I could tell. Yet as I cast my mind over their patterns, I could see that they were being burned up from the inside all the same, throbbing with incandescent blue light, clearer and keener than the smoky purples of their substances. It would only be a matter of seconds before the doomed entities were ashes, and my whips would be free to use as weapons once more.

Malas, for his part, finally seemed to realise what had happened. I came to a halt above him, hearing the twins crowing in success in the back of my mind, and then I swiftly reversed direction, plunging back down at his long-horned, black-crowned head. Even as I moved back at him, plummeting like a meteor trailing a chorus of wailing monsters, I saw him casting about blankly. He was searching his regiments of minions for suitable replacements, something to fill the inner void I’d created in his stable of bound slaves. His shields stuttered back into place, looking weaker than ever before, just in time to protect him from a group of my elven spirits that went surging up through the air at him.

Finally getting a good aerial view of the confrontation, I suddenly realised why Malas had spent so long surveying the scene, why he had thought to flee – what had changed down there. The twins’ jubilation was made plain. A full third of Malas’s forces had stopped acting. Not his demons, no, but over half his nethernal slaves. Ghouls cowered in their masses. Khikiriaz was snickering as he pounded his vampiric prey into mush, moving from one dazed blood-sucker to the next and goring them without meeting a whit of resistance.

I’d been lying to myself again, hadn’t I? I’d made it all more complicated than it had any right to be. I undermined myself, again and again, and it was all because I was afraid to face the truth of my power.

It was me who thought of his inner shields as impenetrable. It was me who thought the only way in was death by a thousand cuts. But I’d been wrong. I’d thrown my force into his and maybe we both won. Maybe we both lost. Both shields had been shattered. But it had been his eldritches destroyed in the aftermath, not mine.

Maybe it was just that I was used to this kind of combat. I’d been weaned on it, even before I was a sorcerer. Not the sitting on your backside kind of fighting. The in your face, twisting and turning away from death kind. I’d always been the same. Shields were only ever a form of reassurance. A way of pretending to myself that the knife would never touch my face again. I’d never have to stand there paralysed while I was hurt, humiliated. Such a beautiful lie – yet a lie nonetheless.

Shields were a crutch.

I let go the crutch. This time when we met, I didn’t shape the shields – only a single spear. Not protruding from any protective shape. Not like anything I’d seen in the books.

Just me. I formed it and fixed it by pure will.

I heard the twins’ simultaneous gasp in my mind, but they wouldn’t stop me now. They understood. They had to trust me.

I am the shield… and I am the weapon, and the weapon is me. I can’t be used by anyone else, but to make it true I have to do it. Accept it.

I have to…

I must wield myself.

I saw it in the bottomless purple eyes when we collided again – he knew it too.

It was over.

The lance of force I thrust out before me penetrated the magenta sphere as though the shape had fewer defensive properties than a gremlin’s illusion. In a torrent of shield-shards, I pierced him right through, neck to belly.

He took the blow, merely growling in response in spite of the wound’s severity – and the moment I penetrated his barrier he clutched at me. The talons riddled with amethyst grooves, awash in their own nethernal magic, sank effortlessly into my wraith-flesh.

But now I wore an ascended ancient. Now I had the death-touch, the shadow-transfer, the same as him. He couldn’t wound me that way.

My body pulsed with its own amethyst light as he punctured me, and he gasped for what had to be the first time in centuries, the instincts of living flesh kicking in as agony laced him. He kicked and bucked, trying to writhe free.

I sank my new fingers, the fingers he had bestowed upon me, inside the hulking dead cavity of his chest, clutching at him, searing him with the true power of an arch-sorcerer.

Materium’s trustworthy, unwavering blue fire.

Together we crashed to the ground, crushing an untold number of corporeal eldritches beneath us. I was enveloped within the morass of wet, sliding scales and dry, stone-like meat that was the dracolich’s material frame. Were it not for the twins’ ability to read my mind and comprehend the truth of the situation, I had little doubt my Telese allies would’ve been despairing at the sight. As it was, I heard them reassuring Kirid and Orcan. I supposed the increasingly-desperate sounds the dracolich was making might’ve given it away.

Inside him, I couldn’t see, couldn’t really hear. But I knew my task. It was deliciously simple.

I tore him to bits.

Mal Malas was incapable of remaining aloof and silent now. The ancient tongue wreaked vengeance on the air, his once-noble, authoritative voice reduced to an ear-splitting warble that reached me in bursts. That was the only vengeance he could take, now. The only thing left here he could defeat was the silence, the only thing he could do to harm us:

Scream at us.

The banshee in him was strong, its magic striking my body despite the twins’ protections and my own. I shook and shuddered – but only briefly. The banshee would die, soon enough.

I slipped through the layers of scale and bone, filtering the lens of my sorcerer’s-eye so that I could adapt my new weaponry’s dimensional vector as I moved. With a little effort I dragged tons of his outer layers with me into the empty vaulted hall where his heart should’ve been hidden, caving in his torso, flooding it with slick scales.

I could feel him in here with me, in the soft purple radiance of his bones. The spirit. The soul. The ghost which would be all that was left of him once we were done here.

He was a lich, an archlich. I couldn’t kill him, not anymore than I could kill anyone. He would move on to Nethernum, his power depleted. But he would remain, in one form or another. His soul was outside my hands. I supposed chance or fate, or perhaps the gods themselves, would determine the hour of his coalescence.

Let it be millennia hence.

As I slid through his caved-in cavities I fixed tendrils to the pillar-like rib-bones of his internal structure. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a vampire that had been joined with him burst free of a wall of cold flesh, leaping at me. What perk let his vampiric brood operate, functioning fully in the daylight, I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

I simply added the strange vampire to one of the tendrils, looping the whip about its throat so that when I set forth once more, it would be decapitated. More merciful, I fancied, than letting it hang about to be incinerated. The vampire apparently didn’t think too much of the idea, snarling and grasping for me, straining against the smoking blue rope wrapped around its neck. I did my best to be polite – I even gave it a wave as I exited the hollow inside the dragon.

When I finally slid free of him, not only did I leave everything inside him in ruins – I drew out and slew all the other remaining eldritches trapped inside him. A frightened thastubabil and an offended-looking vamelgarit bearing an amethyst bow instead of a sword. A tiny moss-imp, and a gnomish zombie, barely any taller than the demonoid, in an incredible state of decay. The banshee, long grey hair snaking out almost as though she were descending through water. A blind rhimbelkina, hands in chains. And, of course, a distended goblin whose acquaintance I’d made before.

All of them bubbled and boiled away in the knots of my new tools.

* * *