The Rats that approached me from the edge of the canals staggered and fell forward; the metal screws, bolts, and nails stuffed within the hollow part of the pipes shredded their backs. Over 90 percent of the Rat horde lay dead. A few of them sat out on the outskirts, dazed, and injured. I grab hold of my spear and hop across the canal, and finish them off. The force of the blast laid low the mage, and the two archers nearest the explosion was now dead. I reform the shield that had been reformed as a half dome around my body. Lawrence was out for the count; he lay prostrate on the ground, but he was far enough from the explosion to avoid the shrapnel. The same couldn’t be said about my shield, however. Metal shards lay embedded in its surface, and curls of smoke rose from it.

Smoldering piles of flaming flesh waft black smoke into the air, and by the time I manage to push myself to my feet, the Rat mage was making a mad dash toward one of those. Taking one of my javelins in my grasp, I cock my arm back and let loose. Red pillars of roaring flame shoot out from the tip of the Rat mage’s can and consume the oncoming javelin before it could break the sound barrier. Even bracing myself, my feet still slide across the ground until the side of my foot presses against the wall. Scorch marks where the pillars of flame reached out to assail me scar the rough marble in front of me.

Seizing one of the nearby Rats, the mage leads it by the ear to a portion of the pocked, scorched earth, draws a black dagger from its hip, plunges it into the creature’s throat, and pulls it across until its head hangs off a sliver of flesh and spine. Dark red blood pours from the open wound into a pile of smoldering ash that it was forced to kneel in front of, and I reach back to feel my empty quiver. I click my tongue and reshape the Burl into a round shield, and hurry forward.

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The Rat mage raises its cane in the air. It clicks and clatters and chirps in its odd language as I cover the distance from the door leading out, and the edge of the canal. It glances in my direction with an arrogant sneer as it lets the still kneeling Rat’s corpse fall face-first into the pile of blood-soaked ash. As the Rat sank into the ash, it began to smolder back to life. The Rat mage hopped out of the way, and sent a ball of whirling wind my way, that caught the tongues of flame still licking the air, and breathed it to life in a small fireball tossed in my direction. I hold up my shield, and the ball of flame and wind splatters against it like water against a stone. Curling tendrils of flame and wind wrap around it and lick at the hair on my arms.

I lower my shield just in time to see the ash that the body of the sacrificed Rat had been laid in begin to move and swell. It floods into the open wound and forces its way into the detached head as the Rat mage snickers in the distance. I take a step forward, and I feel my skin begin to crackle and burn as the red fires of the breathing ash turn brighter and brighter and brighter. I retreat, step by step, and the heat follows. The Rat mage does the same, on the opposite side of the smoldering crater left by the explosion as the light emitting from the ash turns white.

A huge wave of heat explodes out of it as the ash truly breathes to life in a flash of white light and scorching heat that assails me beyond my raised tower shield. A dome of wind around the Rat mage had redirected the heat around its body, it seems as I take a peek around the curved frame.

In the middle of the crater, where the strange ritual had been done just a minute or so prior, was a figure made of pure, bright orange flame, glaring its hate at me.