Castle Edmari did, in fact, fly. Silenos felt the inertial shift as it lifted itself from the ground, the sudden horizontal weight against him as it accelerated diagonally skyward. His balance threatened to break for just a moment before he adjusted, whilst Falls just lost his footing entirely and rolled back to hit a wall.
“Stand, idiot.” He demanded, shifting his gaze up and down the hall, anticipating an attack.
“Where are the others?!” Falls asked, scrambling to his feet, currents of wind coiling around him with the same restless energy that now animated their controller. “We need to regroup, splitting up was a mistake.”
“Down that way.” Silenos nodded, turning to the doors and unleashing his cannon. The rattle of compressed air shot out across the room just as its projectile hit the surface. There was a flash of magic in Silenos’ arcane sight, suddenly denser by far than anything else the castle had mustered, and he watched as the supersonic block of ceramic tissue simply rebound on impact.
He watched the magic diffuse itself once more, spreading out across the rest of the structure the moment its attack ended. A remarkable enchantment, concentrating so much power so instantaneously into whichever site happened to be attacked in the moment. Remarkable, and incredibly inconvenient for him. There would be no escaping it.
Footsteps hit SIlenos’ ear, rapid and closing fast. He looked up just in time to find a man approaching with all the speed and unerring trajectory of an arrow. The Toxicologist, he recognised quickly, closing in just as he had some weeks prior, except now there was no sign of Galukar to help stave him off. Behind the reanimated Hero charged more undead, each one humming with magical presence of the highest order. He responded quickly as they closed.
Silenos let one blast out from his cannon as single-shot, watching the Toxicologist try to lunge from the path of the projectile, and feeling no small amount of satisfaction as it succeeded in gouging a chunk from his shoulder regardless. As the blast forced him to the ground, he transfigured his weapon again.
By the time his body had finished changing itself, the row of undead had drawn in and were separated by only a handful of metres. It was as devastatingly close a range as could have been wished for. A dozen balls of mercury-dense death were spat from Silenos’ weapon and bit into the enemy, drilling through armour, rupturing the putrefied meat below. Three fell in the first shot as black blood filled the air in ropes and flecks. He was reloading just as Falls unleashed his own magic.
Wind blasted out like an avalanche, snagging each of the remaining undead, slowing them, almost forcing them entirely to a stop. They kept advancing, strength enough to overcome the resisting pressure, but it bought Silenos time enough for another shot. This one destroyed two.
The Toxicologist was up a moment later, flying over the heads of the other undead and tossing something before him. Silenos watched Falls adjust his winds too late, as the glass vial broke itself against the ceiling before it could be thrown back, spilling its contents out and letting the stone above them begin to erode and weaken. He leapt back, Falls a moment after him, just as tonnes of rock dropped down to fill out the space between them and the enemy.
Even before the dust had cleared, the Toxicologist was scaling the pile of boulders, and more vials were flying. Falls tossed up a wall of air which caught them both, but this time the fluids inside detonated upon their breaking, shockwave throwing the magus off of his feet and leaving Silenos standing alone as the remaining undead charged in. All of them were armed with heavy armour and blades, close quarters fighters without question, and at their proximity there would be little time to force them back.
So Silenos didn’t, he merely doused the pile of rubble with his flamethrower and made them all scale a mound of white-hot fire to reach him. By the time the first of them had overcome it, their armour was glowing cherry-red with thermal transfer, and came apart in an instant as it caught the blast from his cannon. The second and third attacked as one, before he could reload, but Silenos had already prepared a lance of nacre similar to the one he’d once used in his combat form. His weapon ran fully through the first of them, propelled by his own lunge as he vented detonating air from his back and shoulders. The second of them sidestepped, paused, then turned to flee. Kraika the Toxicologist, he saw, joined it.
Silenos fired as they moved, but the flames he’d cast before him ruined his aim by exhaling thick smoke out in all directions, and they were gone within a few moments. He turned to Falls, finding the boy trembling, but unhurt.
“That was incredible.” The magus gasped. Silenos felt a smile.
It was almost disappointing to have won so easily, and denied himself the chance to find and remove further flaws in his weaponry.
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Fighting alongside King Galukar was nothing like Ensharia had expected. In the stories he had been a man without mirror, a peerless warrior. Two Heroes in one, dashing enemies with every swing of his sword, towering over every soldier around him and proving his prodigious strength with each and every stroke he made.
In reality, it did not feel like fighting alongside a man at all. More like an engine of war.
They’d been attacked by a horde of undead, each one as fast and strong as a Dullahan, all clearly made by a Necromantic genius. Ensharia would surely have died or lost within moments, had she not been gifted a new body by the Saviour. As things were she fought them with a greater ease than ever before.
Her mace took heads off with one or two hits, her body twisting aside from bladestrokes. Her armour, destroyed in Abaritan, had long since been replaced by a suit made of the same pseudo-organic plates that Silenos used in his own body’s protection. Lighter and stronger at once, turning aside the impacts of dark weaponry even as Ensharia focused on crushing their wielders.
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But she was still the weaker, when measured against King Galukar.
Where he moved, things died. Where he stood, blows rebound from whipping steel. Sparks and viscera trailed after him like an afterimage, and the corridor shook around them each time he broke an enemy down with his strength. Ensharia was so awed by his power that it almost distracted her from her own fight. She’d never seen a man move like him, not as fast, as graceful, and certainly nowhere near as strong. She doubted there was a Paladin in the world who even rivalled him.
An undead reared up before him, feet taller than even Galukar and almost as wide. The stone floor rattled where its boots came down, and in one arm it wielded a sword even bigger than the Godblade. That sword came for the King’s head like a sling bullet, catching the iron edge of his own weapon and making the air shiver as both blades ground against one another. Ensharia saw strips of steel fall where they met contact, the metal shaved from her enemy’s blade by the divine power of her ally’s, then Galukar’s feet shifted, arms twisted, and in another instant he’d buried the Godblade in the undead’s chest.
Light exploded from its eyes, obliterating and solar in its intensity. Ensharia had barely a second to appreciate the sight of God’s own wrath channelled through His weapon, then the undead fell as a charred heap, and King Galukar was whirling around to hack the head from another one’s shoulders. She fell in to to guard his back.
Undead were abominations, less than mere beasts, less than the most vicious of monsters. To see one was to be exposed to an evil so distilled that it left only instantaneous combat to the death as a logical response. And yet, surrounded on all sides by that same taint, Ensharia smiled. She could be of use, like this. With muscles forged by House Shaiagrazni and nerves carrying thoughts faster than any regular matter, she could make a difference.
The thought lasted Ensharia as long as it took her to swing her mace twice more. Then a new presence washed over her, pricking instincts like the sensation of hot breath against the back of her neck. She looked ahead to see an undead smaller than most of the others, but unmistakable in its danger.
Sir Oltick was not hard to recognise. He’d been famous for his crystalline plate, which the reanimated monster he’d been reduced to still wore as it stepped forwards.
One hand was closed around the handle of a flanged mace, the other about a broad tower shield of solid steel. He- it- moved with the unnatural ease common to all creatures whose strength was great enough that their weight no longer even registered.
He did not say a thing as he approached them- it, damnit, always an it. However many legends and myths were weighing down across the shoulders it had stolen with necromantic evil, that thing was still an it. And it remained silent, but the one responsible for inflicting her magic upon the Hero himself did not.
“I see recognition in you, Paladin. A study of Oltick’s legends, were you?”
Ensharia did not panic, nor did she let the creeping paranoia reach her. Instead she merely observed the fact that, clearly, this Necromancer was able to observe and speak to her from somewhere else in the sprawling castle, then tucked it away for later use.
Her focus was well needed, because Oltick came on like a lightning bolt.
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Silenos wasted no time, but Falls did. Or tried to. The moment their enemy was gone, trauma set into the magus, freezing him up into useless spasms and locking his feet where they rested.
“We need to try and leave again.” He croaked. “Did yo-”
Silenos slapped him harder than he had before, and Falls almost fell to the ground before mastering himself and turning to glare daggers at him.
“Our best chance is regrouping with the others and consolidating our power.” He told the boy, already moving in the direction Ensharia and the King would have gone. “Come, unless you’d rather stay by yourself.”
Unsurprisingly, Falls turned out to not prefer staying by himself. The two of them made quick progress down the first corridor, then paused as they came to a fork in the path. Silenos frowned.
“The floor is scraped.” He observed. “And recently, scraped right along…” Yes, an arc in the ground, the very sort that would have been left by a wall shifting its position. He considered blasting through the offending stone, but decided he hadn’t the time, nor did he intend to let his presence be so easily triangulated. Silenos followed the new path, eyes peeled.
With luck he’d be moving down the same pathway that Ensharia and the King had, and without it…Silenos had consulted Galukar about the floor plans on their journey, he knew there were only so many places a man might be redirected on the lowest levels of the castle. He had nothing to lose but time.
He could only hope he had enough to spare.
One turn, another. Sharp corners and short corridors, Silenos powered down the hall for close to half a minute before he heard the scraping of movement running down it. A glance over his shoulder revealed more undead, and behind them was the Toxicologist. He shifted his arm to the scatter-shot, murmuring a warning to Falls, then looking ahead just in time to see yet more undead closing in before them.
No, not undead. Armour. Suits of steel plate armour, enchanted with durability, locomotion, animation. He’d been told about them, part of Castle Edmari’s defences, a way of circumventing the agreed upon rule that only one man could be custodian at a time. They clanked and clattered as they shot for him, faceless and unhesitating, numbering close to a dozen.
SIlenos thought quickly, then turned. He blasted himself almost to the ceiling as his cannon shifted form again, took careful aim, and fired. The blast went clean through Kraika the Toxicologist’s chest, erupting out through his back in a spray of hot viscera. Silenos landed just in time to begin the fight.
As ever more armour closed in, he found himself certain it was a doomed one.
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Oltick’s sword met the Godblade, and the knight was sent stumbling before his former King. Galukar closed to press the advantage, swinging low and just barely missing as the castle’s custodian sidestepped, then retaliated in kind. The two men fought at a speed even Ensharia’s new body couldn’t have managed, one wielding more power than perhaps any other Hero alive, the other having his own already exceptional gifts bolstered by the reanimating powers of a Necromancer.
Her own fighting was less glorious, and far more supportive than Galukar’s. Ensharia focused on keeping the rest of their enemies from overwhelming the King, fending them off like rats beaten from a grainstore. She struck until her arms grew weary, until her spit tasted of acid, and then she struck some more. Galukar took great chunks out of the Knight’s armour, letting dark blood seep from the wounds he left in steel, but it was Ensharia who let them down. A mace caught her head, and then more swings followed in the moment of her unbalance. She was soon pinned down beneath several undead at once, watching as yet more fell upon Galukar.
Even his preternatural strength was overwhelmed by such a concentration of power, and the last thing Ensharia had the consciousness to perceive was King Galukar being wrestled to the ground alongside her.