And that’s exactly what he delivers. He barely even gives Abaris and Pearl a chance to cast combat spells on him – some kind of strength boost and a skin toughening spell, respectively – before he charges headlong at the fully-reformed statue.

Meanwhile, Izahne circles around looking for an opening while rapidly forming her natural short sword. It’s clear to me from how she moves that this isn’t how she’s accustomed to fighting, but I’m not sure how I know that.

I also have no idea how exactly I’m supposed to participate in this, so I just hit it with Aura of the Unwound and Consume.

Neither of which seem to have any effect, since its mana appears to be continuously recharged by the swell of the stuff throughout the city and immune to my Aura entirely.

Huh.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a battle where I couldn’t decisively participate before.

While Abaris begins casting another spell – a fireball, from the words, Pearl continuously maintains a slow regeneration spell on Omorth. So far, it appears to be keeping up with the battering the barbarian is receiving from our foe.

Watching the surprisingly precise footwork of the two melee fighters as they dance around each other locked in battle, I have another interesting idea.

I phase into the ground and travel behind the animated statue, and then rise behind it, manifesting dozens of feelers which I wrap around it, attempting to restrain it.

It struggles, clearly physically stronger than I am, but this isn’t the extent of my idea.

Using a full half of my feelers to pin both of its feet to the ground, I abruptly force one of them sideways, causing the monstrosity to stumble and nearly fall. Omorth doesn’t miss this opportunity, and roars “Savage Rend!” before driving his massive sword cleanly through its neck.

Which, unsurprisingly again, doesn’t take it down, although it does create several large cracks spiderwebbing down its body.

My death knight chooses this opportunity to flash forward in a burst of black particles to drive her weapon into the largest one, wedging free a large piece of its torso before its flailing in response launches her across the gate-fronting battlefield.

Its efforts are so pronounced that it even manages to tear free from the majority of my feelers, reducing them into swirling ash that requires next to no effort for me to retrieve.

I’m its next target apparently, either because I’m nearest at the moment or because my restraints have indirectly led to most of its damage. It fruitlessly charges through my rapidly dispersed body, doing nothing more than causing my ash to swirl.

All the while, its body is visibly repairing itself – except for that large missing section that Izahne tore free, which is only slowly rebuilding from the edges. The inside of the gap shows a slowly rotating object with lots of flat surfaces, all of which are covered with intricate series of text. I’d ask Nyx to read them, but I can read them myself now with Spellspeech apparently, and I doubt she’d answer willingly if I asked. I do know she’d answer, System Assistant compulsion and all, but I’m pretty sure that would have other repercussions or just make our current issues even worse.

Hmm, now that I look at it, the edges of the gap are slowly emitting black particles as well... Izahne must have used Desiccate when she pried that chunk of its body loose. It’s probably also why that spot is regenerating so slowly.

Omorth continues rolling out of the way of the guardian’s swings, lashing out at the joints on its arms and legs whenever the opportunity presents itself, when Abaris’ spell finally completes and a glaringly bright sphere of scintillating fire materializes above him, shattering the darkness that’s surrounded us since we first arrived on the Shadowed Plane. It streaks forward and entirely removes one side of the statue’s body, causing it to crash to the ground where it lays flailing its two remaining limbs.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

An unexpected side effect of the powerful spell, however, is that all five of us stand blinking dumbly at the sudden blinding long enough that our foe reforms its one remaining leg into two shorter ones and regains its footing, promptly taking a devastating swing at the now-impaired barbarian.

He flies across the open space, impacting the castle walls with a sickening crunch while the rest of the party looks on in horror. Meanwhile, as always, I feel nothing aside from the inconvenience of losing my front liner.

And then, when my vision finally finishes clearing, I notice the five other statues running along the castle circumference toward us.

“It’s time to go!” I shout, frantically lashing out feelers in every direction to retrieve the surviving party members and Omorth’s shattered frame before taking flight, moving as quickly as I can away from the gathering mob of difficult prey. Unlike before, unfortunately, they continue their pursuit past the area fronting the gate and continue following until we’ve entirely left the city – after which two of them force the outer gate closed and then take places to the sides of it to stand guard.

That could have gone a lot better.

I verbalize the same sentiment to the party.

I probe Omorth’s body for his will, and oddly enough find it still as strong as before.

“He’s conscious,” I flatly say to Pearl, who promptly starts casting every healing spell in her repertoire to try to revive the large eldra.

***

After what must have been hours of treatment on the now bloodstained dining table, the party front liner is finally stabilized.

For whatever that’s worth.

As far as I can tell, he’s never going to recover from this. When Pearl finished her ministrations, she sobbed loudly for a full ten minutes before transitioning to muted weeping on Izahne’s shoulder. Abaris periodically lets out a large sigh without breaking his serious and somber expression.

The most the large human has been able to accomplish since then is lifting his head, blinking his one remaining eye, and moving one shoulder.

“We need to be a lot more cautious with picking our enemies in the future,” I flatly say. I turn to the distraught healer and ask, “Is this the limit of what your healing magics can do?”

She sniffles before responding. “Unfortunately, there’s not much more I can do. Flesh and bone are pretty easy, but the nerves connecting them? We might need to grow him an entirely new body. There’s no way anyone like me would have that kind of power.”

Huh.

“Would a god though?” I offer.

Pearl nods without looking up from my death knight’s shoulder, which she continues to slowly soak all the way through.

How convenient, I happen to be one. So, I may as well give this a try.

From the healer’s comments alone, I know that nerves are things that connect flesh and bone... I’m not sure if that’s enough to work from, but it’s a starting point. I focus on Omorth's fractured yet still living frame and use True Sense to see all of him at once, inside and outside.

The sudden pain piercing my mind is excruciating, but I ignore it and instead focus on the information in front of me. Hmm... I can see the pathways she was referring to; it looks like they draw small branching lines all over his body.

The issue is the number of them now severed by regrown bones.

Did Pearl actually make this worse by trying to make it better? Because it sure looks like that’s what happened here.

I... have no idea where to even begin now.

There is no doubt in my mind that if the old Nyx were here, she’d be warning me not to say that to Pearl unless I want her to break or something.

Yes, I know you’re still the old Nyx. That’s not what I meant, it’s okay. You’re okay.

She doesn’t respond, but she also doesn’t react negatively... I’m going to call that a small win at least.

“I have no idea how to fix this,” I say. “I can see the problems, but I have a bad feeling that if I try to do something this complicated, I’ll just end up making it a lot worse.”

The healer starts sobbing loudly again as I exhale a small cloud of ash.

The party minus one takes seats in the sitting area, slowly letting the current situation set in. I can see the look of shock still stuck on the faces of most of them.

It’s unfortunate. It’s really unfortunate. I have no idea what we’re going to do about a front line now... There’s no way that Izahne can fulfill that with her new Class, which appears to be more specialized for hit and run tactics than any kind of tanking damage. The single blow the statue managed to land on her did noticeable but easily healed damage – specifically, healed by me when I dispersed and reformed part of her body’s... ash...

Wait.

I’m thinking about this all wrong.

Rising to my feet, I return to the side of the dining table and the broken barbarian upon it.

I take a deep breath and focus my thoughts. I remember exactly how it felt when Ananke spoke through me and channeled my mana and divine essence.

And then as the words come to me unbidden, I say directly into his soul...

BECOME MY AGENT. BECOME AN AGENT OF THE ALL-DEVOURER, THE QUEEN OF HUNGER, AND BY SO DOING BECOME MY RIGHT HAND, THE SHIELD TO COMPLEMENT MY SWORD.