With Vaijon and the others staying back, that left Verdan, the three Witches, Kai, Ruthin and Cullan. It was quite the concentration of power, so between them, they had little to fear in a straight fight with any bands of Cyth they came across.

Ambushes and surprise attacks were still very much a possibility, though, especially where the Cyth were involved.

“I’ll lead the way,” Cullan said, hefting his greatsword with a savage grin. “Just tell me the way to go.”

“Straight ahead,” Hedda said, cocking her head to one side as though listening to something distant. “Slightly to the right, but mostly straight.”

Cullan nodded and set off at a loping jog, his scale mail rattling with each heavy footfall. Subtlety wasn’t exactly Cullan’s strong suit, but he’d rip through any Cyth they found.

Gwen went next in their group’s order, followed by Hedda, Kai, Macha and Verdan, with Ruthin trailing along at the rear. With only a few dedicated fighters, they would keep them spread out, just in case.

Verdan, Gwen and Hedda could manage if it came down to close quarters fighting, but he doubted the same could be said for Macha. Keeping her between him and Kai meant at least one of them could stay close and look after her.

Cullan kept his pace as they advanced down the street, avoiding the scattered bodies and debris that littered it. As best Verdan could tell there had been a fighting retreat of some sort through here.

The majority of the dead were Cyth, which was encouraging, but that changed as they reached a crossroads.

Crude stone barriers had been raised to block the Cyth, forming a fortified area for the defenders to fight from. Whatever had come here had broken through, however, and most of those walls were little more than broken debris.

A braying cry came from off to one side as Cullan stepped into the crossroads, but Gwen was quick to lift a hand and call down a bolt of lightning on whatever had made the sound.

By the time Verdan got there, all he saw was a handful of charred Cyth adding to the old corpses already present.

“Which way?” Cullan asked, gesturing to the different paths into the city.

“Roughly that way,” Hedda said, pointing in between two of the paths. Glancing at Macha she gestured to the crows overhead. “What can you see, Macha?”

“Give me a moment, I’ll see what I can find,” Macha said, closing her eyes to better commune with her crows.

Verdan left the two Witches to identify their way forward, instead looking over the damage to the city and wishing they’d been able to get here sooner.

“I think the evacuation worked well,” Kai said, moving over to join him as he nodded to a burnt out building to their right. “Lots of collateral damage, but no sign of civilians being run down or dragged out. All the dead I’ve seen have been city guards or from the Sects.”

“I hope you’re right,” Verdan said softly. He started to say more before freezing as a distant bellow of pain echoed across the city. “Cyth Dregg.”

“Someone is still fighting, that’s for sure,” Kai said, turning back to Macha and Hedda. “Which way?”

“This way, and take the second turning to the left,” Macha said, gesturing to the righthand path. “I can’t get any closer as there’s a band of Cyth there. They’re quite spread out, so I didn’t get a good count, but I saw two Cyth Baynes. I also saw at least four Cyth Dregg in the distance, but I’m having to keep my birds low to stop the Baynes from attacking them.”

Verdan frowned as he considered how best to deal with the Cyth. Their biggest danger was being overwhelmed in a mass charge, but he had an idea to help with that.

“Macha, how far away are they?” Verdan asked, eyeing the rubble around them with growing enthusiasm.

“Not far, a few turns away for the closest Cyth. The Dregg are much further, and at least two are fighting, so we should be able to deal with the closest group without them joining in.”

“Good. Ruthin, could you see how many you can draw back to us here?” Verdan asked, gathering his Aether as he looked over to the agile Sorcerer.

“Now?” Ruthin asked, arching a brow questioningly before shrugging at Verdan’s nod. “Alright, I’ll be back with some guests.”

“Alright, Verdan, what’s the plan?” Cullan asked as Ruthin raced off to harass the Cyth.

“This is a reasonable defensive point, so we should take advantage of it,” Verdan said, nodding to the partially broken walls. “Also, I can do this. Garreg dyn challyn.”

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The loose rubble shifted and rumbled as it flowed together under the guidance of Verdan’s spell. Within moments it had been transformed into a humanoid figure the same size as Cullan and armed with a tower shield of stone and a thick stone spear.

It wasn’t as powerful a construct as some of the others that Verdan had created, but that meant that it was less of a cost for him to create and maintain it.

The trade off was that it would be easier to damage, but Verdan could always infuse it with Aether if needed.

“Ah, not a bad plan, and clearly modelled off the peak of physical perfection,” Cullan said in a sage voice as he stood next to the stone construct and gave it a once over.

Verdan had to admit that there was something to what Cullan was saying, the construct did look vaguely similar. Then again, Cullan was one of the strongest and most imposing fighters Verdan knew, so it made sense that his subconscious would reflect that onto the construct.

“Alright, Macha, Hedda, stay in the centre. Cullan, you work with the construct, and I’ll cover the flanks with Gwen. Verdan, I’ll leave your assignment to you,” Kai said, getting everyone into position, ready for the fight to come.

Verdan nodded absently as he assessed the drain of maintaining the construct. It wasn’t a spell he used often, but it was far from his least efficient. As it stood, the construct was draining more Aether from him than he was gathering with his spiral, though with the introduction of his new breathing technique, that gap was far less than it had been.

In fact, he was fairly confident that once he’d practiced both the spell and the breathing technique more, he could support one of these constructs indefinitely even without increasing his gathering spiral.

The possibility of having multiple active constructs like this was alluring, and the numbers possible would only grow as Verdan thought of other ways to reduce their Aether upkeep.

A memory of the Sigil-inscribed Automaton flickered through Verdan’s mind and he froze in place, his eyes widening as he felt a shiver run down his spine.

Was he retracing the steps of some ancient Wizard? Was he following the same path to go from a realisation like this to the eventual production of something like the Automaton?

Then again, if he knew what the final product looked like, why not skip a few steps?

Grabbing a piece of broken masonry, Verdan fixed the Sigil for Aether gathering in his mind. “Sia.”

The stone in his hand shifted as the Sigil was formed by the spell, its proportions defined by the image he’d held mentally. Keeping the spell active, Verdan formed two more Sigils, filling the piece of stone he held.

As soon as the Sigils were in place he stretched out with his Aether senses and watched as a slight trickle of Aether fed into them. The amount was negligible thanks to the material the Sigils were carved into, but it was there.

Trying to calm his pounding heart, Verdan dropped the stone and hurried over to the construct. “Sia.”

One by one, he carved Sigils into the construct, filling its torso and head with them. He could hear the distant braying calls of the Cyth as they chased after Ruthin, but he kept his mind calm and his focus on the task at hand.

More than half of the object needed to have Sigils for them to work, Verdan knew that much, but the exact ratio he was unsure of. Battle damage would disable some Sigils as well, so he kept going until the last moment before the Cyth arrived.

“Verdan!” Kai’s warning shout came right as Verdan stepped away from his construct and turned to face the oncoming pack of Cyth. There was almost thirty of them chasing after Ruthin, and he could see more coming round the corner in the distance.

“Thanr bel!” Verdan conjured a tightly compressed mote of flames and threw it into the midst of the Cyth. The explosion as it shattered tore through the bestial creatures, killing several outright and badly burning many more.

Ruthin breezed past Cullan and the construct a moment later, with the closest Cyth a dozen steps behind.

"Gwth,” Verdan made a sweeping motion with his staff, sending a ripple of force along the ground at knee height. The front ranks of the Cyth struck the spell head on and tripped heavily, only to be crushed beneath the cloven feet of their comrades.

The second row barely registered the death of their allies and instead howled and brayed as they threw themselves at Cullan and the stone construct.

Wood-like clubs shaped from the abyssal Wyrchwood hammered down at the stone shield of Verdan’s construct, only for their wielders to be impaled on a stone spear as thick as their arm.

A lunge into a shield bash knocked the Cyth back as the construct withdrew its spear before stabbing again and again. Verdan’s meagre martial training did its best to guide its movements, but the real threat to the Cyth was Cullan.

The thick scales of Cullan’s armour blunted and deflected a dozen attacks in the first few moments of the fight as the Idrisyr focused fully on slaughtering his foes. A few claws and spiked weapons caught exposed flesh as Cullan swept through them, drawing blood from the big man.

In return, however, Cullan smashed into their formation like a crimson thunderbolt, his greatsword humming through the air as he put every ounce of strength into swinging it that he had.

Black blood sprayed across the fight as each swing of his blade tore Cyth apart, leaving them in pieces behind him as he forged onward.

“Thanr!” Verdan called out, levelling his staff at Cullan’s back and releasing a gout of flames that charred burnt any Cyth that tried to outflank him.

Cullan’s sister Branwen had been able to withstand the direct assault of a Defiant Flame Elder, so Verdan was sure that a little fire here would be fine.

A flicker of dark green and black from beyond the flames caught Verdan’s eye as a Cyth Bayne revealed itself with a concentrated lance of Malfease.

Verdan’s hand rose, a shielding spell on his lips, only to pause as his construct stepped sideways to block the attack. Verdan could feel the spell infusing the construct shudder from the strike, but the steady flow of Aether from both him and the Sigils was enough to keep it moving.

A blinding flash of light came from the rough direction of the Cyth Bayne, followed by the thunderous roar of the growing storm overhead as Gwen made her displeasure known.

Verdan held spells at the ready as Cullan and the construct finished off the remaining Cyth, eventually letting the Aether fade as the construct impaled a wolf-faced Cyth through the heart.

Up to this point, he’d been using these constructs in emergencies or against overwhelming force as a delaying tactic. Now, seeing it fighting alongside Cullan, Verdan realised just how much potential it held.