I. Hate. Necromancers.

No, seriously, I do. Necromancers are some of the worst kind of mages. They’re a disreputable bunch for a number of reasons, and that’s before you take into account their lovely habit of raising the dead for their nefarious purposes. Necromancy was a dark art, and its use perverted its users, luring them down a slippery slope to even darker powers.

I think I had brought up before that the fastest way to take out the thralls of a necromancer was to kill their conjurer. Of course, getting through the sea of undead now lurching our way would prove to be troublesome. And, on top of that, I had to deal with Lord Mattigen’s glavornak, too. Not to mention that the two Magister Lords would be throwing magic at us the entire time.

But compared to some of the scraps Alverd and I had been in, this wasn’t so bad. We’d faced necromancers before. We’d even gone toe to toe with a demon summoner once. Those encounters hadn’t gone all that well, but we had emerged victorious nonetheless. But those mages had been cut-rate criminals. These were powerful Magister Lords, the cream of the crop. Even with Albrecht and McFarlane backing us up, I wasn’t sure we could match the sheer numbers of Laspa’s thralls or the power of Mattigen’s demon.

No time for doubts, though. The glavornak gave a screech, taking to the air and sweeping toward Alicia. She ducked under the demon’s claws and continued her run toward the undead. The demon, deciding that a mage would be a better target, angled toward us and roared as it careened through the air. As it came close, it opened its claws and made to rip my face off.

Alverd dove in front of me and blocked with his sword. Surprisingly, the Sword of Evros didn’t cut through the demon’s skin; the glavornak had impacted the blade with its claw, sparing its hand from being severed. Alverd wrenched the sword from the glavornak’s clutches and bashed it in the face with his shield, causing it to take flight once more. McFarlane threw an ice lance at the demon, but missed as the creature soared through the air, making eerie sounds as it did so.

Alicia slammed into the first undead, sending its head sailing upward after a vicious swing with her hammer. She kicked the headless body in the abdomen, knocking it into another shambler, and followed with another hammer blow to the chest of another undead. She had begun yelling in some language I couldn’t understand, and every “kill” she accrued only fed her bloodlust. But the little Princess was about to get swarmed by the horde.

Alverd charged ahead and raised Evros high. He bisected a skeleton with a clean cut, then bashed to his left with his shield. It didn’t take him long to reach Alicia’s side. I reached into my body and pulled heat into a fireball, throwing it at a large group of undead that were preparing to flank the two warriors. The fireball exploded fantastically, eliminating the undead through intense incineration. Not even ashes remained.

Sheena wasn’t about to let me show her up. With a scream, she conjured a bolt of lightning and nailed the glavornak with it. The demon didn’t look too pleased; it gave a piercing cry and swept down to attack Sheena with its talons. However, when the demon had gotten closer, Albrecht waved his arms and whispered something under his breath.

The glavornak’s wings chilled and turned icy with frost, and it tumbled from the sky in an undignified heap. Hissing painfully, the demon raised its hand to cast a fire-based spell. But Captain McFarlane gave the beast no quarter. Already she was upon it, her quarterstaff twirling and spinning, striking the demon’s head and arms repeatedly.

During all this, Lady Kertouli was still performing her ritual at the altar. Blood was still flowing from the urn to the pillar, but what had once been a steady stream was now fading fast. Kertouli looked into the urn and scowled. She placed the urn back on the altar and grabbed the staff leaning nearby. In anger, she raised her hands and yelled a curse at Albrecht.

“We shall have her blood, Gerhalt! And if I must spill yours to get it, then I will!” Kertouli raised her staff and flung a lightning bolt at Albrecht, but he merely sidestepped the spell. He countered with a bolt as well, and the old woman had to duck to avoid having a hole burned in her head.

I wasn’t sure what was going on here. There was a horrible battle being waged, sure, but there was no sense to it, just chaos reigning in full swing. It occurred to me that the best thing we could do was get Sheena as far away from that altar (and the crazy Magister Lords) as possible. To that end, I called out to Alverd. He had just decapitated another thrall, and happened to make eye contact with me. I impressed upon him the need to get the hell out of dodge, and he nodded in agreement before impaling another thrall with the Sword of Evros.

We had to double back out of this area, through the catacombs and back to the Palace. If we made it there, we could escape and not have to worry about the thralls overwhelming us. We’d have to get through those thralls to make it to the catacomb entrance, but if the six of us worked together, we could probably get through them. But we’d have to worry about the Magister Lords dogging us.

But it was either that or stay in this cramped room waiting to die at the hands of these traitors. I knew we stood a better chance with the Royal Guard on our side. They’d see the thralls and know that the Council was orchestrating a coup. Unpopular or not, Sheena was still the Witch-Queen, and the Guard answered to her, not the Council. And even if that weren’t the case, I was sure Albrecht could manipulate them somehow.

I turned to look at the corridor that led out of here, back towards the catacombs. At the moment, nobody was looking in that direction, since, for some odd reason, no thralls were coming from the tunnel. However, I could hear something trudging down that tunnel. Even over the noise, I could hear something, the steady beat of footsteps. I brought up my staff, ready to strike down whatever was heading toward me. But I couldn’t believe what emerged from the shadow of the tunnel.

It was Deotra. But judging by the look on her face, it was her other personality, the aggressive one. She was dragging the “corpse” of a thrall behind her with her left hand. She locked eyes with me, and her psychotic grin bloomed on her face again. With her free hand, she beckoned to me. She pointed down the corridor, looked back at me once more, and then began walking down into the dark again, dropping the thrall. She gave me one last seductive wink, and then disappeared into the dark.

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It had happened so fast, that I didn’t have time to really react to Deotra’s appearance. But an explosion less than five feet away from me brought me back to my senses. I turned back, and saw that the battle was shifting out of our favor. Alverd and Alicia, despite their valiant efforts, were slowly being hemmed in by the thralls. Albrecht was cutting down a few of the thralls with his magic, but McFarlane and Sheena were struggling to fight the glavornak still hovering over their heads.

Laspa and Mattigen were still throwing magic of their own, and had decided to target me thanks to my moment of distraction. Their concerted effort had resulted in a near miss, but had they actually managed to tag with their spell, I would’ve been plastered across the walls. This was definitely the time to retreat. But we’d need a suitable covering action to do so.

I ran over to where the three mages were making their stand. I yanked on Albrecht’s robe, and the man looked at me. “We have to retreat, Albrecht! If we make it back to the Palace, we can get the Guard on our side! But we must go now!” I threw a bolt of lightning back at Mattigen, who was in the middle of winding up for another attack.

Albrecht grimaced, but he nodded. He pulled Sheena away and motioned for her to move back to the corridor. I called out to Alverd and Alicia. “Alverd! We have to leave, now! Let’s go!” Alverd sliced one last thrall in half, then grabbed Alicia’s arm and pulled her towards us. We ran towards the tunnel together, as Sheena, Albrecht and McFarlane covered us with blasts of magic.

Just as we were about to make it, however, an ice lance pierced McFarlane in the leg, and she fell to the ground in pain. Albrecht double-backed and dragged McFarlane through the tunnel, and Sheena and I rushed forward. We pelted our pursuers with fire and lightning, driving them back. Even the glavornak would not brave such an onslaught, and its frenzied cries echoed down the corridor menacingly.

We made it all the way back to the catacombs when McFarlane knocked Albrecht’s hand away. She pushed herself up against a pillar, overlooking where we had come from. She held her staff tight in front of her, staring down the darkened tunnel. She glared up at us, her face set in snarl. “You go without me. I’ll buy as much time as I can.”

Albrecht shook his head. “You are coming with us, Captain, and that is a fact. I will not leave you to die here like this.” McFarlane laughed. “This? This is a glorious end, Prime Minister. A finer death than any soldier could ask for. In service to my liege, I will lay down my life. As it should be.” She waved her hand at us.

Sheena sobbed again. “Captain, please, reconsider. We can carry you!” McFarlane snorted. “I’ll not be carried like some damsel in distress, Milady. Leave me the dignity of a warrior’s death.”

The sound of growling from the tunnel snapped us back to reality. We didn’t have time to debate this. Alverd nodded once and grabbed Sheena’s arm. “Sheena, we must go. We can’t dally here. If the good Captain wishes to lay her life down for you, we must abide by her wishes. Please, we have to leave.” Sheena sobbed one last time, and then shook her head in agreement. We left the Captain against the pillar and fled back up the stairs and into the Palace.

Almost immediately after leaving the catacombs, we stumbled across a pair of guards. Lord Albrecht called out to them, and they rushed over. “Lord Albrecht, is something the matter? We were told that the ritual was taking place…we’ve succeeded in diverting any and all soldiers who aren’t in on the plan away from the area. We have nothing else to report, sir.” Suddenly, one of the soldiers spied Sheena at the back of our retinue. “Hey, what is she doing here? Lord Albrecht, what is the meaning of this?”

Albrecht already had conjured the ice lance that was now protruding from the man’s chest when the man had focused on Sheena. Alverd swiftly took a cue from the Prime Minister and and cut down the second man before he could react. Both men toppled to the ground, lifeless.

Alverd turned to the Prime Minister. “If what they said is true, then help is beyond our reach. Is there some other avenue of escape?” Albrecht scratched his chin in thought. “There is one way. It is an ancient runecraft circle. It’s hidden in the Throne Room. In the event of a siege, the circle could be used to teleport its users a significant distance from this castle, about ten day’s ride by horse, if I’m not mistaken. It was created for the express purpose of allowing our royalty to escape death.”

Sheena’s head perked up. “But Uncle, will it have enough power to carry all of us to safety? The portal of which you speak was not meant to transport more than a few people. Will it really work?” Albrecht laid his hand on her shoulder. “It will work, Sheena. You must trust me on this. I have a plan. And everything is going according to it, so far. We must hurry.”

We fled to the Throne Room with all haste. There were no more corrupt Guardsmen, thankfully, but that did little to ease my mind. It meant that there was no chance of any loyalist (if there were any) guards coming to our aid. As we pushed through the doors to the Throne Room, Albrecht ran to the center of the room, where the empty chairs of the Council of Magic loomed before the imposing throne overlooking them all.

As soon as Alverd cleared the door, he took the massive deadbolt and rammed it shut, effectively barring the door. The door was made of dormicite, so it would probably hold for a while, but I wasn’t willing to tempt fate on that. Albrecht strode to the very middle of the circle of chairs and laid his hand of the ground. As if responding to his touch, the edges of a runecraft circle flared to life around him.

But it wasn’t enough. Almost a second after the circle began to glow, it sputtered out. Albrecht snarled a curse and tried again, but achieved the same result. He was about to try again when something hit the throne room door, hard. All of us turned our eyes to the door.

While the door was made of dormicite, the deadbolt was plain old wood. Laspa’s thralls were already making a mess of the flimsy reinforcement with their steady pounding. It wouldn’t be long before they were through. Albrecht waved at us. “You just need to buy me some time. I think I know what’s wrong with this stupid circle. A few minutes, that’s all!” Hmph. A few minutes against an army of undead was a damn lifetime as far as I was concerned.

But it didn’t faze us. Alverd and Alicia bravely took up the front line, with Sheena and I right behind them. When those undead freaks broke through, we would make damn sure they’d pay. And I knew just how to do it.

With a whisper, I focused my energies on my staff. I drew heat from within, drawing it into the Staff of Farewells in my hand. As the power collected into the ruby, I aimed the staff at Alverd’s sword. As I finished the short incantation, the Sword of Evros erupted in flame. It was a spell Alverd and I had used a few times over the years, a neat little piece of ingenuity I had come up with all on my own. The magical fire danced all along the length of the blade, sparing my friend’s hand through my own will.

Sheena thankfully seemed to understand the theory behind my spell, since she mirrored my action by coating Alicia’s hammer in similar flame. The four of us stood there, waiting as the deadbolt finally gave way. The dormicite doors wrenched open, and the thralls came flooding in. I downed one immediately with a fireball.

One down. About sixty more to go.