I was willing to bet that Ammun hadn’t felt pain in a thousand years or more. His soul might be writhing in tortured agony every moment, but the copy of his mind that piloted that skeleton didn’t feel any of that. Getting lit up by a mana burn spell was not the way to gently ease someone back into that particular facet of the human condition.

Regardless of his motivations, he’d decided he was done talking. There were no more threats, taunts, or insults. The next few minutes of my life were pure chaos as we flew circles around each other and lit the sky up with explosive conjurations. Planes of force met each other and cracked like thunder. Enormous orbs of fire scorched the air as they rained down on the ground below, and the wind shrieked as cutting gales streamed around us.

Mixed into the cacophony was the cold, silent, deadly beat of constant divinations and enchantments pounding on my brain. They wouldn’t work – couldn’t work, not against me. But they were a distraction, a gang of burglars rattling at my mental windows, seeking a weakness to exploit while I prevented an invading army from battering down the gates.

The whole while, my focus was thousands of miles away, watching my shadow teleport itself to my family’s sanctum, where Senica was battling the first wave of golems to pass through the portal. She’d barricaded it with transmuted earthen ramparts in an effort to prevent the ones already there from receiving reinforcements, but that was only a temporary stall.

I should have foreseen this threat and created a fallback shelter. The wards I had left in place were primarily designed to prevent the island from being scried out, or rather, the people on the island. The defenses were actually weaker than what I’d placed in New Alkerist because I’d lacked the time to properly fortify the hideaway.

That wasn’t to say there were no defenses at all. If that had been the case, there was no way my little sister could have held off a dozen murder machines. She was actually doing a masterful job of working with what tools she had available, stalling the golems’ advance while my father organized an evacuation of the tiny village deeper into the interior of the island.

I wanted to reach out to him, to tell him that was the wrong move to make, but the truth was the alternative wasn’t any better. Leaving the radius of the wards would leave them exposed, but staying where they were was just asking to be torn apart or disintegrated by mana beams. And it was obvious that Senica, brave and skilled beyond her years as she might be, was not going to actually stop the golems.

She was doing exactly what I needed her to, though. She was buying everyone enough time for my shadow to finish its teleportation spell and reach her. It needed three jumps, but after the first cast, it could use the platforms I’d scattered across Ralvost and beyond. Five minutes, maybe six, was all the time Senica needed to hold.

Stressful as it was to watch her work and know that there was nothing I could do to help at the moment, that nobody could get there any faster than my shadow anyway, I couldn’t focus on it. Ammun was a threat that required all of my attention, so I pushed the divination to the back of my mind, a little scrying mirror tucked away in the corner while I worked on something else.

Defeating Ammun here was important, but it was also just the first step in my plan. If I broke this body, it would set back his plans, give me more time to prepare for him, but he’d come right back. I wasn’t going to give him the chance.

The enchantments I’d placed over the area were primed, ready to unfold and encompass us both, but I held off on that. I wanted Ammun to think this teleport had been wholly about removing him from his prepared battlefield. No doubt he’d expect a few surprises here, and I’d give him enough to feed into those expectations.

But the real reason had to remain a secret, poised and ready to come down on him at the exact right moment. If he figured out what I was planning too soon, he’d break away and run. I needed to maneuver him into a position where that was impossible, first.

‘Keiran, the Global Order is mobilizing,’ the gestalt sent me.

I should have killed more of them back when I’d gone through their bases the first time.

‘How many, and where are they going?’ I asked as I blocked a conjuration that froze the air around me by sending out a blast wave of fire in every direction. At the same time, sparkling golden shackles appeared out of nowhere, constructs of pure, solid mana, and clamped themselves onto my wrists.

That would make it harder to direct my magic with my staff, but not impossible. It was a mild inconvenience at best, except that when I started to build my next spell, the shackles began pumping extra mana into it. Far from restricting my casting, they were destabilizing it. I would have laughed at the cleverness had it not been wasted on me. If Ammun wanted to give me some free mana, I’d take it and run.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I quickly leashed the excess mana and adjusted my own output to bring the spell back under control, then fired off a trio of black, jagged-edged discs that left shadowy trails as they sliced through the sky. The spell was specially designed to cut through necrotic energy webs, and it was a total mana hog. Originally, I’d only been planning to use one, but if I wasn’t paying for it, I might as well go all out.

The shackles broke apart into motes of light, their mana expended in an unsuccessful attempt at sabotage. Immediately, I flew straight up to put some distance between me and a handful of force mines Ammun was scattering around me. Their main strength was how difficult they were to detect, especially amidst all the mana we were dumping into the area, but if either of us bumped into one, it would detonate into a force wave that would likely throw us into the rest.

Defending against repeated explosions as I was tossed around the sky would quickly drain my mana, so it was better to just mark that part of the sky as a place to be avoided and move the battle off to the side. That way, all that happened was Ammun wasted some of his practically unlimited mana and, more importantly, his extremely valuable time.

‘Twenty-two,’ the gestalt finally told me a few seconds later. ‘They appear to be converging on various locations Ammun’s forces are attempting to occupy. The first group has begun jumping across the intercontinental teleportation bridge and is targeting Derro as their final destination. A second group is approaching Eyrie Peak. Individuals are moving on various towns that Ammun’s forces are assaulting.’

‘They’re working against him? Good. Do any of them appear to know about my family’s hiding place?’

I wasn’t sure which answer I was hoping for. If the Order did know about the island, then they might arrive sooner than my shadow could. But it would also put my family in danger from them, and that was far worse than the golems. If they didn’t, then I was still relying on Senica to stall the enemy long enough for my shadow to arrive.

‘Unclear. They could also be moving to reinforce the undead.’

‘Let me know once you know what their intentions are,’ I sent.

Could I do anything about it if they were hostile? The answer to that was complicated. There were resources I could spend, but ultimately it came down to a matter of priorities. If the Order helped wipe out Derro, I’d punish them for it, but I was willing to sacrifice that city for this shot at ending Ammun permanently.

Even if they were here to help, I’d expressly forbid them from setting foot anywhere on Olpahun, so I’d still need to have a conversation with them. Whether that was a stern reminder of boundaries or an execution event would depend on them. Either way, unless they found their way into my demesne or went after my family, I was too busy to do anything about them at the moment.

‘The wyverns are increasing in number as well,’ the gestalt reported. ‘Grandfather has collapsed the portal network. Seventeen brakvaw have been lost in other lands. Twenty-four are dead here.’

Another problem I didn’t have a solution for. Ammun deflected two of the black discs with some specialized necromancy designed to confuse the divination portion of the spell, a sort of mirror decoy to the one I’d used against his dragons earlier. The third slipped by, but it broke on the defensive enchantments of his robes without ever doing any real damage.

Another few minutes went by as our battle dragged itself across the sky, and I started to worry that I hadn’t given myself enough space to keep the fight contained. At this point, I was ready to activate the next stage of my plan, but I needed to pull Ammun back into the center. Unfortunately, he’d been liberal in scattering those force mines, so liberal in fact that I wondered if he suspected something in particular or if he was just operating under the idea that it was better to be anywhere but where I’d put him.

Either way, I needed a nice, non-suspicious way to recenter him in the formation. If those mines were going to be such a huge problem, well, I’d just have to take care of them. I closed in on Ammun, drawing a surprised gape from his skeletal face for just an instant before bands of necrotic energy leaped out of his hands to grab at me like so many icy cold fingers.

My wards kept me safe for a moment, but my time here was sharply limited. Without a second’s hesitation, I reached out and pressed the tip of my staff against Ammun’s chest, or at least as close as I could get through his layers of defensive magic. Then I released the same force blast I’d used on his dragons, only this time, there was no cloud of bone dust to accompany it. Ammun was far better protected than his hurriedly-animated minions.

What the spell did do, however, was throw him back almost half a mile, right into his minefield. To an outside observer, it would have seemed like that was my intention all along. His force mines exploded, shredding his wards and bouncing him back and forth through them while I closed in and helped the process along with several precision applications of my own force magic.

It wasn’t really doing any damage, just draining his mana reserves. Since I was never going to run him dry, there was no point in coming at him from that direction, but my hope was that he wouldn’t realize the true objective wasn’t to clear the mines or hurt him, but to keep him properly centered in my trap.

Besides, it was rather amusing watching his bony body get tossed around by hundreds of force mines over the span of thirty seconds. Had circumstances not been so dire, I would have laughed at the sight. Unfortunately, it was hard to summon up any mirth when my family was still threatened by Ammun’s creations.

It was about that time that my shadow finished its teleportation spell and jumped to the first platform. In moments, it would arrive at the hidden island to relieve Senica and destroy those golems. Now, that was something to smile about.

“What are you laughing about?” Ammun snarled at me. “Wipe that stupid grin off your face! Do you really think you’ve done anything more than inconvenience me for a few minutes while your pitiful mana reserves burn away to nothing?”

“I think stopping you from completing your doomsday weapon was a good start,” I told him. “But I’m not done yet.”