They weren’t guardian golems summoned into the room, of that I was certain. I’d already gone through the whole place looking for wards and traps. That meant this was the active work of one of the diviners who also had a solid grounding in conjuration, probably one of the three mages with stage four cores who’d survived my opening attacks.

Unfortunately, just because they were solid mana given a facsimile of life didn’t mean I could just ignore them. The first one had already proven itself to be monstrously strong, easily powerful enough to batter through my shield ward if I let it. I put up a wall of force to delay it, but that would only stall the construct for a few seconds.

The ceiling was too low to fly over them, and the other two were moving quickly and with intelligent purpose, spreading out in either direction to flank me. If I wanted to get to the mages behind them, I was going to have to go through them.

Fine. I could do that. I had plenty of mana, and, whatever I spent, I’d replace by stealing it from Ammun’s demesne.

There were two ways to dispel a construct. The first was to attack its mana matrix directly, which was easy enough when it was unattended but became much more difficult when the summoner was around to actively contest the attack. The second was to use enough physical force to destabilize its body, which a summoner could attempt to mitigate by rebuilding things. That was significantly harder and more mana-intensive than holding the mana matrix together through sheer willpower.

However, I didn’t have a lot of time, and breaking the mana matrix was by far the faster of the two options, assuming I could overpower the summoner. I had a lot of confidence in myself, and not just because I was an archmage. I had no plans on fighting fairly.

Explosions started going off behind the constructs, not necessarily the fatal kind, though they absolutely could kill someone caught in one directly, but ones that were deliberately louder and brighter than they needed to be. They made for a very good distraction when I went after the closest construct’s mana matrix. Whoever had summoned it must have been very close to one of those explosions, because it took me less than three seconds to dismantle the construct.

I didn’t bother with the other two. A pair of quick force walls slowed them down enough that I slipped past them while blocking a set of force bolts four diviners had collaborated on creating. It was more bewildering than anything that they even knew a ritual for such a simple spell. It was a lot of force bolts, I supposed, but still, it was kind of pathetic that they needed to work together to attack with a basic-tier spell.

Three of them were on my kill list, so I shot off a lightning bolt to arc through their group. The fourth mage was one of the ones that my informant wasn’t sure about, which meant I didn’t take any special care to avoid catching him in the spell.

Their distraction was almost enough for another one of the scythe-armed constructs to catch up to me, but a blast of sonic energy rippled out across the room when I slammed the end of my staff into the floor, flattening several mages nearby and breaking apart a dozen spells in the process of being created.

Surprisingly, one of the constructs vanished on its own. Whichever mage was controlling it must have been shaken hard by my last spell. Then the last one sped up and blurred across the room, cluing me into what had actually happened. Both of them had been under the control of the same mage, and they’d sacrificed one to devote their mana and attention to the other.

It brought its arms down in sweeping slashes at the same time its foot lashed out to catch me in a kick. Any of the attacks could easily be fatal if I let them through, and my shield ward was already dealing with the multitude of weak attacks the diviners who hadn’t run off were throwing at me. It could withstand a hit from this construct, maybe two, but I could do better than that.

A force wave rolled out in every direction, picking up mages who were too close and hurling them through the air to slam into walls. The construct was far too heavy to suffer the same fate, but with one leg already in the air, it was also too unbalanced to stay upright. It toppled over and, in a remarkable display of agility for something that big, rolled backward to come back up on its feet and lunged back in.

The second’s delay was all I needed to fly away. I passed through a net seemingly made out of strands of interwoven fire, killed the diviner who’d thrown it at me with a single force bolt of my own, and finally reached the stage four mage that had summoned the construct.

“Bye,” I said.

Force magic clamped onto the man’s neck and twisted. His wards resisted for a second, then gave out. Humans, even those empowered by invocations, were only able to resist so much pressure. This one wasn’t that strong, and he definitely wasn’t reinforcing himself with magic. My spell tore his head off in a fountain of blood. Behind me, the charging construct collapsed into pure mana.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The whole battle had taken less than a minute, and throughout my dance with the constructs, I’d kept picking off targets. The only people left in the room were diviners I’d mentally tagged as safe. Of course, they didn’t know that I wasn’t going to kill them, so it wasn’t that unreasonable of a response that they kept attacking me.

“Enough,” I said, my voice magically amplified. “This battle is over. You have two choices. Walk through the portal and be spirited out of Ammun’s reach, or stay here. This choice expires in the next thirty seconds. Decide quickly.”

I didn’t mention that anyone who didn’t take the portal wouldn’t be left alive, but I expected they were smart enough to figure that out on their own. It wasn’t a difficult decision. They filed through, leaving me alone in the enormous scrying room, now pitted, scorched, and littered with bodies.

I probably had a minute to spare, so I produced a few enormous vats and stole Ammun’s supply of liquid mana before activating the remaining parts of the shattering spell I’d laced the room with and stepping back through my portal.

* * *

There wasn’t nearly enough room in Querit’s workshop for the fifty or so diviners still alive, so I’d teleported them to the surface. They were talking among themselves, holding conversations both verbal and mental, and I gave them time to get situated while I refilled my mana reserves and debated what I wanted to do with the group. They certainly weren’t staying here, but they were too dangerous to just let go, and there were far too many to exile them like I’d done with Laphlin.

The diviner who’d first noticed me wasn’t having a good time of it. From what I’d gathered, he wasn’t well liked by his colleagues, and his decisions about who was trustworthy, or more accurately, who’d lived and who’d died, were heavily criticized. I suspected that he wouldn’t survive much longer if I didn’t intervene.

While I observed, Querit flew up from his workshop and made his way over to me. “I was only gone for twenty minutes,” he said. “What did you do?”

“Found a dissident in Ammun’s ranks. The rest of his diviner corps are dead – all the ones that showed up for the morning shift, at least. How’s it going with the zombie attacks?”

“We’ve lost at least nine villages completely,” he said. “I rescued survivors from them out in the wastes, but the villages themselves are gone. I took them to Derro. They’ve also been under assault, by the way, but they’re easily holding the invaders off. What are you going to do with these people?”

“I haven’t decided yet. As soon as I’ve recovered from the fight I had with all the ones who stayed loyal to Ammun, I’m going to get all the information they have on his moon project out of them. After that… I’m open to ideas. There are too many to just exile and hope none of them find their way back to Ralvost.”

“Do we have time to wait?”

“I think so,” I said, “but just in case, maybe you can do some research for me. Take this one with you and question him.”

I plucked the diviner who’d let me into Ammun’s tower out of the angry crowd with telekinesis and pulled him over to where I stood in the air. “This is my companion,” I said to him. Querit, still encased in his gore-stained combat frame, nodded at the diviner. “He’s going to verify your information before your friends down there kill you. You’ll be going with him while I deal with the rest of these people. You can fly, yes?”

The diviner nodded and I released him. He tumbled twenty feet or so before his spell took hold. He drifted back up to us and said, “My name is Ashinder. What’s yours?”

“Querit,” the golem said. “Come with me, please.”

The two flew off, and I turned my attention back to the group. They were all looking up at me now, a few of them rising into the air on their own flight spells to approach. I let my magic carry me down closer and studied them.

“Choose someone to represent your interests,” I told the group. “I’ll speak to that person. You have five minutes.”

That time limit was more important than it seemed. Without it, they’d no doubt argue in circles for hours. With it, they’d be pressured into coming to a quick decision. No less than four of them were trying to ignore the order and approach me directly, but they backed off when I turned a glare on them. None of them needed a reminder of the kind of violence I could commit, not when I’d just demonstrated it ten minutes ago.

Just because I didn’t want to speak to their whole group in an open forum didn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention, and it quickly became obvious that they were essentially divided into two camps. One wanted to help me strike back at Ammun, or at least, that was what they were saying. It was quite possible that I had my own crop of saboteurs looking for ways to disrupt my plans, cause damage, and then escape back to their own faction.

The other group, I trusted more. They wanted nothing to do with the fight, and they were smart enough to know that as long as Ammun was alive—so to speak—they weren’t going home. Their arguments were mostly centered on where they could wait out the war.

The problem was that I’d said I wanted one representative, and the group was split evenly between what they wanted to do. Finally, annoyed with the delay and with their five minutes up, I said, “One representative from each side step forward. We’ll meet here.”

I pointed a finger at a clear section of ground between two enormous petrified trees, and a stone table with a trio of chairs rose out of the ground. I flew over and sat down at one, leaving the open two chairs on the other side of the table for them.

Two mages quickly separated themselves from the crowd, one a tall man with gray hair and a weathered face who looked vaguely familiar to me. The other was a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with a fierce scowl and eyes that flashed with anger. She sneered at her companion with such contempt that I wondered if I’d be forced to intervene, but they marched side by side and took their chairs.

“Now,” I said, “let’s talk about what’s going to happen next.”