It is a commonly held belief that rumour can exceed even light’s notorious speed, spreading cancer-like through a population. Whilst this was not technically true, rumour could get places light could not, it seeped through walls, crept through stone and stepped through doors without even bothering to knock.

The rumour today was a juicy one indeed; Erebus the Grey Mage, Vanquisher of K’dain, Faebane and Daemonfriend was a captive of the Paladin order. It even had the advantage of being true, but the people who would prove most interested were also the kind not to go on rumour alone where an enemy was concerned. It would take vital hours to confirm it through official channels, fortunately for Erebus’ friends and allies did operate off rumour.

Still some were slow to take precautions, perhaps they thought their positions would protect them, or that they were too insignificant to make anyone’s list, or perhaps they just didn’t hear the rumour. Whatever it was the overnight death toll was staggering.

Deep in the Necropolis three necromancers leading an exploration party of senior students through their first tour of the Wraith Vaults only had time to scream as wards flickered then failed.

In Velmide, Pala and Delen, herbalists renowned for their sensory enhancements potions, were found slain in their beds, no visible wounds upon them but faces a rictus of terror.

In the great paladin capital of New Pax vampire slayer Johannes the Grim would be seen chasing his quarry into a darkened alley only for neither prey nor predator to ever be seen again.

And that was just some of the easy fare, the pieces that could be plucked casually from the board with their guardian unable to object. For those who would be able to aid the condemned mage rather than benefitted from his protection a more sincere effort was required…

*

The blizzard battered against the shield of the small strike team trudging through the snow, they’d been inserted by mirror (the object prepared decades ago for when such an attack was viable), just twenty miles away from the uncreatively named Winterhome Castle, ancestral home of the Aegis Borealis, or so it was said, in truth the Aegis was too young an organisation to really qualify for an ancestral home.

A young entity on Contemnere, weighing in at a mere century, it had been a thorn in the sides of many for its staunch, bordering upon fanatical, defence of its borders, a near perfect pentagram of forts, fortresses, walls and castles (each enchanted to the last stone) to guard its heart where the Queen of Ice made her lair, not the Queen of Winter, one of the fae – it was a common mistake which had cost scores of lives – but the ruler of the frozen wastes and rolling tundras of the north.

There was no trade to speak of, and no ships even dared try and slip past its waters anymore – to the fury and despair of many a merchant. Few were allowed within, cryomancers and a few aeromancers were permitted to enter for the purpose of joining their ranks, but of actual visitors there were very few indeed.

But though many had wished to bring down the self proclaimed Shield of the North it had weathered every effort until now.

It had taken years for the Vedec Enchanter’s Syndicate to get the mirror so deep inside. They hadn’t dared enchant it for fear the tiny drop of mana would be noticed by a patrolling mage, and to get an actual person past the circle of the pentagram of defences was all but impossible. Some meticulous scrying and long ranged telekinesis done by a full coven had moved it a few feet a night until it had finally penetrated deep enough that Winterhome was just a mile away.

Even dropped almost on the doorstep of their target it wasn’t easy going, the blizzard battered against their wards, air deflection ones rather than something truly helpful like temperature stasis. They didn’t dare use fire or ice magics this close to the Queen, it would be less the equivalent of putting up a flare and more like putting on a fireworks display. The only thing holding back the bitter winter chill was their thick clothing and the wards to stop the wind.

Even with them Troubleshooter Madain was bleeding from several cuts where an errant piece of hail had punched through the ward and sliced into flesh, nothing deep but enough to know they’d be carved to ribbons without them. All six of them were feeding their magic into the totem powering it.

They couldn’t see the target, and this far north the compass was useless, so they just had to trust their sense of direction and the occasional pathfinding spell to reorient.

It was perilous work, but this wasn’t the first heavyweight they’d expunged for the Syndicate, the more powerful of the magically inclined were arrogant to a fault and seldom took lesser mages seriously and though they lacked the sheer power of the Queen any two of them should be able to take her. Six of them was frankly overkill.

At least it should have been six, as Madain did a headcount of his squad and found it one short, maybe the cold had gotten to them or they’d simply fallen behind, either way outside the ward they’d have been killed swiftly.

At least they hadn’t gotten any spells off that would reveal their approach. It did present a problem though, in the thigh deep snow it was slow going and with only five to share the strain of the spell even slower still but they still should have been able to make it.

The next time one of them dropped Madain saw it, for just an instant, an icicle that might as well have been an arrow, hidden amongst the hail and snow, took Salah in her goggles, piercing through the spell-forged glass as only a magical projectile could, the wardmistress, a twenty year veteran in the Syndicate dropped without even a gasp.

“Ambush!” He yelled, whirling, but the sound of it was swallowed by the storm, still it wasn’t hard to work it out, with them now at four strong and their leader clearly bursting into action, the four erected a true shield spell, a barrier against kinetics to stop the storm outright. It didn’t help, another icicle punched through, shattering on Madain’s personal shield, the artifact now active. Again a moment of insight as it shattered, the Troubleshooter able to see the runes inscribed, perhaps even grown, into the ice that were allowing it to punch through a shield that would have held up to a minor meteor strike.

The four moved back to back, shrinking the shield to make it more efficient, and finally it began to hold up to the impacts as they searched for a target, but whatever was striking them was invisible in the blizzard and out of range of any more esoteric senses. All they could do was endure the bombardment.

An hour later, as the storm subsided for a few scant minutes there was no trace of the bodies buried in the snow, the landscape smooth, snow white and glistening as the strike team vanished without trace, unknowing that they’d never even been noticed by their enemy, the icicles just a defence measure placed into the storm as a precaution. Just like every attempt before them.

*

Karatas Du Pois was a man with a lot of friends and very few enemies, something bordering on a miracle for the Paladin Ambassador to the Necropolis. Polite, kind to a fault and humble to boot, it was hard to put a flaw to his name, but if one were to put a flaw to it it would be the way he’d used his position to protect his old commander. Using his influence amongst the Paladin Order to protect him from necromantic reprisal and vice versa.

And worse the man was aware of secrets the Umbral Temple would see taken to his grave, a secret held by only two outside the temple. The two legendary survivors of the Maltz debacle had committed the cardinal sin by knowing there was a third who had, after a little bit of magical skulduggery, walked away as well.

Now with the opportunity to remove one and weaken the other the temple acted.

Deep in the night, before morning would break the news to him of his friend and mentor’s peril, death found its way into his family’s quarters in the Necropolis.

Three of the Umbral Temple’s Nightblades, every bit the darkest stereotypes of umbramancers, able to move unnoticed wherever they chose, leaving bodies in their wake. These three were well known to the Necropolis, they knew its people well, with their organisations maintaining close ties since time immemorial, it was therefore child’s play to bypass the wards on the room. When they made the final shadowstep inside it was from over a mile away, no witness would be able to put them near it.

Alamaya would confess to being conflicted on this one, and she’d have been surprised if it wasn’t a feeling shared amongst them though they all were far too professional to put voice to their misgivings. She knew Karatas, knew him well enough there was a good chance she’d end up invited to his bloody funeral, and she knew Jonas did as well.

Hells she knew the kids who’s bedroom door they ghosted past, shadows tightening around them to muffle their footsteps, the unreal made soft and solid. And yet she swore she could hear each footprint like the clang of a funeral bell. This was insane! What possible prize could be worth this? Even with all the deniability in the world this was going to a major incident for the Necropolis, a paladin ambassador murdered on their soil. What she was doing now could start a war. Could start The War.

Still she didn’t turn back even as the same technique put silent a hinge that Neia, the ambassador’s long suffering wife, had long complained was far too noisy, and no amount of oiling seemed to fix. This wasn’t the kind of job you could just quit, even if Inigo and Jonas went along with it they’d spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders.

As Alamaya ghosted across the floor to the bed where the couple was sleeping there’d be a soft little gasp from Jonas, followed by a muffled thud as his long knife hit the carpet. It’s normally at this point in a tale that she would say something like ‘and it saved her life’ but the terrible truth was it had been far, far too late the moment they’d entered Karatas’ quarters. Turning on a heel to chastise her noisy subordinate she’d find herself the only person in the room bar the sleeping couple.

She didn’t cry out in shock, responding swiftly by erecting a kinetic barrier but she doubted it would do much good, whatever had happened to Jonas and Inigo for all it had been fast it had none of the hallmarks of high impact magic.

Out of the corner of her eye the Nightblade caught movement, something in the shadows only to whirl and find it behind her again. And then the attacker revealed itself.

Alamaya gasped, her barrier dropping and her blade fell from suddenly numb fingers as she simply stared while the shadows in the room began to shift, parting to reveal what could have been mistaken for a hole in the world itself. A patch of perfect darkness, a silhouette stood upright and casting no shadow of its own, advancing slowly towards her.

The Nightblades were considered peerless assassins, unnoticeable unless they wanted you to and singularly patient when needed, for no one could maintain their guard all the time. But the Umbral Temple had forgotten they were not the only ones with an interest in the necromancer, and some of them had access to real monsters.

She knew what this was, but for a moment she simply couldn’t believe it. She’d seen it’s like before, hovering at the edge of where the shadow world met reality – though they could only be seen shadow-side – the nightmare that haunted the entire art of umbramancy, devourer of mages, no defence worked, no offence mattered a damn. They’d called it simply ‘Them’ for fear that to give it a name might give it the strength needed to pass into this world.

The idea that one might fully manifest in the realm of shadow was the worst fear no one ever spoke about. The idea that one might manifest in the real world would have required sedatives.

“M-m-m-mo-mo-m-mon-monst…” There was a flicker in the air and the Nightblade’s head slid smoothly from her shoulders as Neia sat up in the bed, one hand extended where she’d channelled an airblade. Before the blood splatter could coat the room the creature struck, consuming the corpse even as it plummeted towards the floor.

Neia stared at the terror that lurked in the heart of all shadow mages, hand still outstretched and the magic still glowing in the spell-ring she’d worn to bed, old habits died hard afterall, and old mages died even harder. As she took in the wound in the world that walked she’d let out a soft sigh of relief, lowering her hand, “Susan. Call me paranoid but I’m going to presume this isn’t a social call.”

“Sorry Nei.” The shadow said, expression not just unreadable but nonexistant, though her voice was soft and genuinely contrite, “I need to borrow your idiot.”

The necromancer gave a little half-shrug, not yet elbowing her husband awake, “How many were they? Are the kids-?”

“Just three, and no, they never did more than glance at the door.” Susan assured her, “Though perhaps for your peace of mind you should go check.”

“And don’t press my ear to the door while you talk. Got it.” Neia’s laugh was a bit strained as she gently shook her husband awake. It turned out waking the soldier turned diplomat would take a while, the man, now in his fifties but due to the perks of his position still appearing in his late twenties clearly hadn’t kept the youthful vigour that should have gone with it.

Still after a brief rub of sleep from his eyes and a couple slaps to his stubbled face, applied by his own hand to help shock himself awake he’d be sat at rapt attention to listen to Susan as Neia left the room to give them some privacy, and check on the kids. Despite Susan’s assurances part of her had to make sure for herself.

“So want to tell me why I’ve got blood soaking into my carpet?” He asked tiredly, rubbing at heavily bagged eyes, an extended youth hadn’t meant lots of sleep.

“Oh Neia got that one before I did.” Susan explained, a shrug barely noticeable from the silhouette.

“Cute.” Karatas growled – attempted murders made him cranky.

“Fine, fine, always so hasty even now you’re old and crotchety.” She observed, sitting down beside him, but keeping a fair distance to ensure they couldn’t touch even by accident. “Our mutual friend is in trouble.”

“And they’re worried I might what? Pick up a sword and go charging off to the rescue?” He snorted, trying not to blow up at his friend, and the unofficial survivor of Maltz

“More likely write a strongly worded letter. If I’d left a body you’d have the Umbral Temple by the shorthairs right now.”

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“That would have been useful.” It wasn’t quite a chastisement.

“I try not to screw over my own people when stopping them from doing something stupid.” Susan replied, and though she had no gaze to avoid Karatas still got the sense she was avoiding his.

“Yeah I know, I know.” He rubbed tiredly at his eyes, “When you catch up to him, tell him… tell him I can’t help him this time. And that I’m sorry.” This time he was the one avoiding her gaze, instead focusing on the blood soaking into his carpet.

“Anything I can do or say to change your mind?” She asked gently, somehow that was worse than what he’d envisaged, he could have taken being called a coward, wanted it even, but that quiet disappointment hurt.

“I’ve got kids Sue, your folks at least keep it impersonal, but what if someone had decided to ‘send a message’. No, I owe him more than I can put in words but I just can’t this time.”

“What about if I can get him to the Necropolis?” She tried, one last attempt for old time’s sake.

“If you can somehow manage that, then yeah, I’ll write some strongly worded letters as you put it.”

“Can’t ask for more than that.” And with that she moved back into the shadows and was gone. Karatas wished he hadn’t felt his honour go with her.

*

Argyris Alchemists & Artificery, or Triple A to those who made regular use of its services, was one of those places that never slept. Even if there had been no people around, and there always were at least a few whether it was someone abusing the twilight hours to etch runes into a breastplate without fear of someone distracting them at a crucial moment, catching up on the latest alchemical almanac or illegally testing their latest potion on themselves, the place bustled with the activity of the golems that did a lot of the heavy lifting, monitored the vats and, under careful supervision combined with a total lack of self-preservation, were programmed to try and make more golems.

Yet tonight silence had finally fallen upon Triple A, leaving Lydia Argyris, last scion of the Argyris line who had owned and operated Triple A since its inception centuries ago, to wonder just how she had allowed it to come to this as she hid behind one of the alchemy tables in a barricaded lab.

If there was another living soul left in Triple A she’d have been surprised, even she had survived on luck and she would have liked to believe she knew the complex better than anyone, though clearly not well enough.

She had been in her personal artifact lab when it had all gone wrong, her and three journeymen, who would likely have been acknowledged masters anywhere else, had been putting the finishing touches to a potion of regeneration, always a tricky business given its tendency to react to any organic matter at all. Noone wanted a repeat of the Skin-Cell Simulacra incident, especially so soon after dinner. People often assumed the hard part was the regeneration itself, those people were, in Lydia’s considered opinion, morons. The hard part was getting it to stop.

She’d been dressed in full safety gear and directing the golems to add the last ingredient, two grams of powdered unicorn hair freely given (for a vat she could nearly swim in), when all hell had broken loose. One of the golems, a vision of quartz and silver, had grabbed one of her colleagues, she hadn’t been able to tell who past all the protective gear, and thrown him into the vat. Without the unicorn hair there had been no stopping agent, the results had been… unpleasant.

If she survived this she was definitely going to pay a handsome sum to have the memory of those screams removed.

To her credit she didn’t freeze, presume a malfunction or try to negotiate with what might be a rogue golem that had gained sapience, Lydia ran for the door, sealing it behind her. It was cold-blooded but there was no way that the door would hold long and her employees would buy vital seconds to get to one of the artificeries and grab a weapon or one of the on-site guards to put down what had to be a sabotaged golem.

That had been the plan at least, the blood in the corridors told a different story, not one sabotaged golem but many, the strength of the factory turned against itself.

Lydia had tried anyway, suspecting it was futile as she crept from lab to lab, trying her hardest not to step in the blood and gore, not out of any particular squeamishness but a desire not to leave a trail. The golems of the lab were as intelligent as she’d been allowed to make them. Not actually sapient, not capable of learning, but with such an extensive list of responses to stimuli it would have been hard to tell without a lot of observation – that or a brief conversation.

She wanted to say she’d nearly made it but honestly it hadn’t even been close, there’d been a golem guarding the armoury and, going by the way two of her colleague’s skulls would need professional assistance to pick the shards out the walls, they weren’t inclined to help. There was something tragic about the idea of being stuck in a weapons factory unable to get her hands on anything more dangerous than a hammer.

She’d kept the hammer, tucking it into her belt as she snuck out of battlestave assembly. It wouldn’t achieve anything. On even a cheap clay golem, as much as a golem could be cheap, you’d need a sledgehammer and the muscles to back it up to achieve anything and Triple A’s golems were far from cheap. They started at things like marble and azure and got more excessively grandiose from there.

It hadn’t been pure ego, alchemy could be strange at times, sometimes even gold, infamous in mortal chemistry for its sheer lack of reaction, could set a potion off catastrophically, and the bizarre assortment of materials used in Triple A golems usually resulted from a specific need for something that wouldn’t detonate, dissolve or deform on contact with the product. Over centuries they’d built up quite the eclectic collection and now it was coming back to bite her.

With the armoury unavailable she had two choices left, other than just waiting to die, get down to the loading dock where there would be weapons aplenty, a bit of a trek down through three floors – perhaps not having external windows had been a mistake – but not out of the question, or head to her private office, much closer and it had her trouble kit but it always had two golems guarding it, each handcrafted by herself.

And therein lay the big question, how had Triple A’s golems been subverted, one was perhaps understandable, a traitor in maintenance, a recent alteration, it was doable, not easy but not the kind of thing tales would be sung about either. To subvert the entire golem staff…?

She had a suspicion about that. There was no way to hide that level of tampering, which either meant someone had managed to buy off, corrupt or blackmail her entire maintenance department, twenty men and women all told, and while it wasn’t out of the question that a few had been bought off or pressured her people came from such a wide variety of backgrounds and institutions that it was hard to imagine a single serpent capable of it or a broad enough coalition of malefactors to achieve the same without internal discord outing them. Which left option two; that the golems had been replaced entirely.

The audacity of it was breathtaking but it was the only conclusion Lydia could reach as she slunk slowly up a stairwell to the fifth floor, darting quickly back down a few steps as she saw a patrolling golem step past the door, the artificer running the theory over and over in her head, partly to keep her mind busy but mostly because she was about to stake her life on it.

If she was right then the replacement would have to take place during maintenance, it would be the work of years to get all the details needed to create a replica able to pass that level of inspection and then have a copy made and swapped in. Who and why could wait until they were staring down the tip of her wand, but if she was right about how then just maybe she had a chance, because the golems that guarded her office had never been worked on by anyone other than herself, and even that within said office, they should still be clean. Still programmed to protect her person, and unlike the rest these ones had been explicitly designed with combat in mind.

Much to her surprise she made it, finding the corridor to her office indeed defended. In fact she found it a warzone, her two guards engaged in a battle they’d never been designed for but faring well as they went hand to hand with four of the stirring golems, thick, oddly jointed and fairly mobile designs that were posing a surprise threat to two top-of-the-line combat models. It was the programming, as it nearly always was, for all they’d been designed for battle they’d never been intended to fight anything that wasn’t humanoid and the odd disposition of limbs was allowing them to strike blows that even a superlative martial artist would never have landed, a shattered pile of what had been a marble and jade arm evidence of their efficacy.

They also clearly weren’t the first, rubble worth a king’s ransom lay heavy upon the floor, enough that Lydia was worried for the floor – it hadn’t been intended for this sort of weight.

The problems didn’t end there, she had no way past the melee to the safety of her office, if she were a master mage she probably could have snuck, finessed or simply forced her way through, trusting to shield spells and kinetic bursts to see her safe but as one of the few non-mages at Triple A that was the equivalent of simply wishing she weren’t in danger – which she did.

And now the golems had noticed her, trying to disengage from their opponents to rend limb from limb. Her bodyguards nearly got them all, but with only three arms between them and four golems it was never going to work.

As Lydia turned to run, knowing she’d never outpace it, she found herself face to face with Mercury Max, the only quicksilver golem on the premises. For a moment she allowed herself hope, if there were any other golem, any other at all, that could have escaped compromise it would be the only liquid golem on the premises.

Then Max engulfed her, pouring over the startled woman in a tidal-wave of liquid metal.

She’d been so close.

*

An old man walked unsteadily down the roads of New Pax, weight supported by a five pronged walking stick that was worn close to through and took a wagon out towards the Aegis Borealis, and nothing troubled him for some things scared even monsters.

*

No sane person would go searching for a vampire inside a volcano, perhaps no sane person would do anything inside a volcano, even suicide, there were much less unpleasant ways to leave the world.

Nevertheless if one were to venture deep into the bowels of the Academy Vulcanus, to a small chamber where magma roiled and bubbled beneath a thin spit of rock leading to a small platform barely large enough for a person to sit they would have found Amara Sunwalker, pyromancer, vampire and one time master to a young(er) Erebus the Grey Walker.

The woman was sat cross-legged and nude, her clothes the unfortunate victims of a momentary lapse in concentration years ago, ebony skin that should have been roasting in the superheated air not even glistening with sweat as she sat in the silent meditation that had consumed her in the last decade, and would soon end when she finally reached the point of starvation.

It was a great honour to be allowed her time, the students of the Academy would work together to assemble a collective heat ward strong enough to last a few questions before the inferno forced them to flee. Anyone with the ability, by whatever means, was permitted to enter. In a few rare cases cryomancers, transitioning to true thermomancy would meet with her, liches with heat wards inscribed into their bones would sit with her, some to seek wisdom, some to test her concentration and resolve.

Amara could sense through the fluctuations of temperature in the tunnel to her little sanctum a fresh group approaching, standard heat wards across the board and strong ones going by the way the temperature went from able to melt glass to pleasantly warm. Uniform though, clearly some sort of bought ward. She bit down on her disapproval, with her soul and mood as tightly bound with the volcano as it was after so long here it would be as good as murdering those young souls to hold enmity towards them and besides she had said any method.

There were seven of them, five who’s faces she couldn’t make out through the heat haze wearing the vivid crimson of Vulcanus and not the apprentice’s robe either. Now that was surprising, any journeymage accredited by Vulcanus should have no need of such crutches even in this excessive heat, at least not for the duration of a conversation. The other two surprised her, the perfect darkness of their garb, covering every inch of skin as well as hair and eyes along with the lack of a shadow gave away their origin, Umbral Temple. Again there should have been little need for the wards, a skilled umbramancer could use their shadow as a nigh-perfect heatshield and these clearly had the skill.

It was a testament of just how far she had to go in her own mastery that the magma below her swirled and bubbled to her confusion. Still even if it showed on the glowing orange-yellow surface below her it didn’t show in voice or face as she greeted them, bowing her head respectfully, “Welcome sisters and brothers. How may I help you?”

“We uh… that is…” One of them said clearly not having thought this far.

“Speak Brother Malfior. There is no judgement here.” She assured him, as her disquiet deepened. Malfior was a master pyromancer, and a personal friend at Vulcanus, skilled enough that not only did he not need a preconstructed heat ward but could have likely gone paddling across the surface of the magma chamber and gotten off with only light burns.

There was only one reason for him to bring a heat ward, Amara realised too late as the condensed will of five master pyromancers crashed down upon her own ward as the two Nightblades threw something down at the magma pool.

Whatever it was turned out the lights, the magma simply ceasing to glow and plunging the chamber into total darkness as one braved the narrow spit of rock, footing perfect as he ran out to her, weapon in hand.

It was a perfect attack on a pyromancer, on a vampire it was lacking. She didn’t need to see to know where her foes were, every heartbeat might as well have been an alarm bell as Amara’s concentration wavered in the few moments it took her to rally her will to match them – and got some nasty flashburns for her trouble – vaulting over the top of the approaching Nightblade and kicking them off the spit and into the magma below.

The scream ended almost instantly as he hit the molten rock though whether his heat ward had failed on direct contact or the impact had killed him – magma was only soft in the relative sense – Amara couldn’t tell, and didn’t care, already sprinting down the spit.

For all they were skilled fire mages, they were poor combatants, but that was what the remaining Nightblade was for. As the five kept up the pressure on her shield, he lunged at her, keeping her on the spit whilst trying to tag her with his weapon, she couldn’t see what it was but he used it like a club, Amara blocking him carefully at the wrist and forearms, not daring to touch it – the club was certainly enchanted and probably with something nasty.

Still she had to do something to get rid of him, for all she could have bested any two of the pyromancers trying to collapse her ward she was barely able to hold it in place against five, each mental blow like a hammer, and like a hammer on stone cracks were beginning to spread.

Fortunately for her again the five proved unskilled combatants, instead of just keeping the pressure on and waiting for her to fail one of them ceased their assault to send a beam of pure heat through the rocks, slagging the stone in moments, the slim spit collapsing beneath her feet.

With the unnatural strength of the undead she pushed off against the stone, vaulting up high, the Nightblade was not so quick or strong, desperately lunging up and managing to take a grip on the molten stone of what remained of the spit with his left hand, weapon discarded. Letting his fingers sink deep into the lava to the hard stone beneath, heat ward holding strong. Amara stole the heat from the molten rock as she landed, throwing it to splash uselessly against the barriers of the five mages against her. But that hadn’t been the point, the Nightblade’s hand now sealed firmly in place to dangle on the ledge, unable to make the gestures needed to cast his magic.

Then she was amongst them, and for all they were masters of fire their hand to hand was beneath pathetic with their magic reflexes sluggish to boot, unable to shift their shields seamlessly from fire to kinetics, with Amara’s vampiric speed it was the work of moments to snap necks and crush throats, leaving just the unfortunate Malfior standing, and even that was just because she was hungry.

A decade of isolation and attunement down the drain and she was starved from it, on top of the injuries from the fight she needed to feed and soon, barely hesitating before biting down on the neck of her treacherous friend, not stopping until he’d fallen limp, allowing the body to vanish in the magma pool as it toppled off the ledge.

That left just the Nightblade to get answers from, it hadn’t just been blind bloodthirst, Malfior had still been a master of fire and interrogating him for any length of time could have proven difficult with him trying to collapse her ward with his mind until his last breath. The Nightblade had no such capabilities and now unable to flee was the best way to get answers.

“I surrender?” The sable-robed assassin tried tentatively as she approached him, light starting to return to the magma pool as whatever alchemical powder had been dumped into it finished its work.

“Very well.” She mused as she stopped by his dangling hand, “Tell me who sent you and why and you walk out of this on your own two feet.”

“Ah.” Beneath the hood he looked surprisingly sheepish, and young, they’d sent children to kill her (which was to say someone under a hundred), “I don’t actually know, I just got the order to be outside the tunnel an hour ago, equipment was provided and a description of the target.” He paused, clearly realising this wasn’t quite life-saving information and thus adding, “they didn’t know either, just a letter with the right password and seal.”

“Did they say what the seal was?” Amara asked, staring down at him.

“One of the major elemental cults, they didn’t say which.” He looked up at her hopefully.

“Got any next of kin?” The vampire inquired politely, smirking as she watched his expression fall into resignation.

“If begging for my life would help at all I’m fully prepared to do it,” He tried weakly, knowing it was hopeless.

To Amara’s credit she considered it, “Afraid I need to minimise the evidence.”

“Make it quick please.”

That… was a problem. She couldn’t really approach him without risking being dragged into the magma pool below, nor could she simply free his hand to let him fall as freeing him would let him cast again. Which meant she had to go through the heat ward, quick and painless it wasn’t even as her condensed will brought the chamber up to such a temperature that the walls began to run with cherry red liquid rock, rapidly glowing to a fiery orange.

The Nightblade began to scream, his purchased ward too strong to just collapse and too weak to diffuse the heat fast enough. It was a long, slow process, or it would have been if the Nightblade hadn’t reached into his robe with his free hand and cast the ward down into the magma below, gently drifting ash followed it moments later.

The vampire would sigh with relief, she was not a fan of torture but she’d been alive way too long to take risks when she didn’t have to.

One by one she’d push the bodies off the ledge, letting them be consumed by the churning inferno beneath. Now to get to the bottom of this…

*

The final ally went unmolested because no one had even thought to look for her.