Eldritch flames erupted out of me in a nova that dissolved his chains before they could touch me. As I avoided him, an annoyed look crossed his face. He drew a wand in one hand and a whip of conjured white light appeared in his other. “Even if you are stronger now, you are still nothing,” he snarled.

“I’m going to shove my hand down your throat and rip out your goddamn heart,” I snarled right back.

Despite my bravado, the man scared me. I had the edge and speed, but that was only because I was burning a lot of resources to stay ahead of him. Leaping back, I cast a spell through Mercy, and a bolt of purple eldritch lightning erupted between us. It was stopped by a white barrier, but I noticed a crack in that barrier as it faded.

Theonis responded with a crack of his whip that hammered the barriers projected by my armor. That section of my barrier shattered. I struck with Mercy, he tried to deflect with his wand, using it like a dagger, but I still scored a gash along his arm. That gash was infected and would not be easily cured.

Snarling in pain, Theonis cast a spell that cauterized the flesh, cracking and splitting under intense heat. A moment later a bolt of power sent me flying backward. My precognition allowed me to put a section with my barrier still intact in its way, but the kinetic force had still been a lot.

A bolt slammed into the high inquisitor before he could take advantage of my momentary vulnerability. Othniel had joined the fight. In a smooth move, Raven came from behind him, her sickles slicing horrendous wounds into his back. The robes he wore were not meant for turning aside such weapons.

A nova explosion sent Raven flying back. Before she hit the ground, chains erupted from the air around her and sought to encase her. Raven had grown a lot as well. A flare of black magic and Raven was replaced by a zombie which was wrapped by the chains and reduced to red pulp.

I charged back towards the high inquisitor. Magic swirled around me as I released another spell. A beam of necrotic energy flew from my outstretched hand. It hammered into Theonis’ defenses. The crack widened.

The fighting in the square had died down, the Dread Thirteen had dispatched all of the enemies in the area. Now undead swarmed to where I clashed with the inquisitor. He didn’t even seem worried. A storm of white projectiles ripped apart the undead even as the Dread Thirteen poured in attacks. Our mounts were busy trampling the blood zombies that were now trickling into the square. The last thing we needed was them causing problems.

Unfortunately, his confidence was justified. Even as attacks pounded into the inquisitor he stopped moving. The barrier surrounded him shattered only to be replaced by another. One by one the silver chains erupted from the ground and wrapped around the Dread Thirteen, dragging them down. They chased Ehud for several long moments before they finally caught the elusive fighter.

Eldritch power funneled into Mercy as I attacked. His barrier was not just to stop magical attacks though. Mercy’s blade bit into it and eldritch power exploded through the barrier tearing apart, but the hole healed too fast.

I switched Mercy over to its plasma form, needing to bring that barrier down quickly.

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Raven leapt through the air, ritual dagger drawn, going for his neck. The spell inside that dagger would no doubt kill the man, if she could land it. Her attack left her exposed, and the chains caught her and bound her to the ground.

“Now it’s just you and me.” Theonis smiled. “I will beat you and then one by one I will purify your friends before your eyes. But first let me show you the difference between you and me.”

Theonis struck. His whip wrapped around my foot before I knew what to do and he threw me across the square where I slammed into the stone wall of a building, breaking through it. I leapt to my feet and blocked another spell with Mercy as the inquisitor charged. He was now taking this more seriously.

I fell into defense as I tried to stay ahead of him. Dozens of magical projectiles fired from his wand every second as his whip left searing wounds that weren’t solely physical. I did manage to land a few blows, Mercy slicing through his robe and flesh with ease, but he didn’t even seem to mind. Magic flooded those wounds the second they were made searing them closed even as his robes knit themselves back together.

With a mental order, I sent Shadow running away leading the other mounts. He wasn’t meant to engage this kind of threat and I did not want to risk the nightmare. The distraction of the mounts fleeing gave me an opening and I ran Mercy through Theonis’s stomach. Twisting and yanking the blade to the side, I opened a terrible wound.

The high inquisitor clutched at the wound. He did not sear this one shut, instead he built magic. I tried to attack only to be repelled by a series of kinetic force spells fired from his whip that cracked the air. I clenched my fist and released my own kinetic spells to disrupt his building magic. It failed.

Intense bloodred light suffused him, and every wound on his body closed and healed completely. Even the blood staining his robes disappeared. He looked like we had just started the fight.

Precognition warned me just in time to deflect a spell. A bolt of sizzling power flew off of Mercy and into a building where it detonated, destroying a large section of the wall and causing the roof to collapse. I recognized the taste of divine power in the air.

“I see you have to rely on your god to accomplish anything,” I mocked him. “Too bad you’ll never amount to anything more than a pathetic puppet following a mad god. What a pathic puppet you are.”

Spittle flew in the air as Theonis yelled, “You know nothing of what madness is!” A red haze of magic surrounded him. “Olattee will purify this entire world, bringing it closer to perfection. Madness is resisting the coming of the perfect world.”

“Is that divine blood magic?” I asked, falling back. This wasn’t something I expected at all.

“Why yes, it is,” Theonis said, a hint of instability entering his voice. “Let me show you what it can do.”

He was suddenly much faster than I was, and it felt like the first time I’d seen him when he had been upon us before I knew what to do. The high inquisitor had dropped his whip and wand. His fist collided with the side of my head, my armor crunching under the impact followed by the bones of my jaw.

The force sent me flying sideways, but before I slammed into the building, Theonis appeared, driving fists clenched together down into my shoulder. My armor smashed apart as I was hammered into the ground. My precognition warned me these things were coming, but there was nothing I could do.

He proceeded to pummel me with his fists until every section of my armor broke. Even if I had the concentration to use the second tier death energy, I doubted it would make me fast enough, and there was no point in wasting it. Barely on my feet, I looked through bleary eyes at his fist, where a wound so deep the bone showed through healed over his knuckles.

“Any more words, pathetic little Lich?” Theonis sneered.

I channeled enough death energy to fix my jaw. “Yeah, suck my dick. Like your mom did last night.”

Fury clouded his eyes as he grabbed me by the throat and picked me up into the air, a position that was oddly familiar. “I decided I should kill you first. And don’t worry, like last time you only have to die once.” I recognized the surge of soul energy that pulsed from him and into me, at least I now understood why he had it.