Before they reached the bottom of the stairs, Jasper held out his hand for them to pause. Despite what the seraph had said, there was no sign of any guardians roaming about and, instead, they appeared to be peacefully slumbering in their coffins. “Last time I was here, they didn’t wake until I stepped on a trap. Is there a reason you can't just sneak your way through,” he asked the woman.

Maratāni shot him an odd look. “Traps? There's no traps here.”

Jasper had a clear memory of stepping on a pressure plate which had woken the giants - for the sheer terror that had followed as the sarcophagi lids exploded into the air had been firmly crystallized in his memory. There was no way he was mistaken. Yet, he also didn’t see much reason for her to lie. Remembering the barrier to the portal, he realized that perhaps the presence or absence of traps also depended on your heritage.

“If there weren't traps, then what caused them to come after you?” he followed up.

“As soon as we step off the stairs, the guardians awoke,” she replied. "We barely made it three steps before they emerged."

“And then?”

“They attacked, of course.”

“I assumed that,” Jasper replied. He pointed to the coffins where the seraph guardians were once again slumbering, or perhaps, just pretending to. “But you seem to have had a different experience than I did, so I want to make sure we get as much info as possible. Once they attacked, how far did they pursue you? And did you see how long it took for them to return to their coffins?”

“They stopped at the stairs,” the woman replied, confirming that this detail at least meshed with his own memory, “but I cannot say about the second. We didn’t stick around to watch.”

“Well, that tells us something at least," he said with a slight grimace. "Maybe..." He ran his fingers through his hair and stared at the floor. "If we don't touch the floor, maybe they won't attack. We might be able to take out one at a time.” He glanced at Tsia. “Think you’re up to a little flying?”

Her lips twisted wryly, but she bobbed her head. “I’ll manage.”

His gaze turned to the other two. “And who wants to use my second cast of Spectral Wings?” Ihra and Maratāni's hands shot up immediately, while the scout only reluctantly raised his hand after noticing the others looking at him.

Not wanting an unwilling volunteer or an unknown quantity, the choice was clear. Jasper placed his hand on Ihra’s back casting Spectral Wings and then cast it on himself. The wings beat silently, lifting him into the air, and he flew away from the safety of the stairs to hover a few feet above the floor of the sunken hall. He paused for a moment to see if the undead guardians would arise, but all remained quiet. So the floor probably is the trigger.

“We each taking our own, or are we all attacking the same one,” Ihra asked as she joined him.

It was a good question, and he mulled it over before responding. The last time, he’d managed to take out a few of the guardians by taking advantage of their inability to cross the stairs and through his own sheer persistence, but he had no idea how dangerous they'd be in actual combat or how high their level was. Still, he could make a few guesses. Having met plenty of other seraphs now, he knew they mostly looked like humans at lower levels. The guardians did not.

“Let’s try taking one out first,” he decided. “If it goes well, then we can split up.”

With a nod, she darted off to the nearest sarcophagi and he followed close behind. But when Tsia went to join them, she applied a bit too much power to her spell. She zipped over and above their heads and smashed into the wooden scaffolding that connected the hall’s monolithic pillars. With a yelp of pain, she fell toward the ground. Wind swelled around her, bringing her to a safe stop a few feet above the hard stone floor. What it didn’t stop, though, was the ancient wooden platform that, after crumbling from the collision, smashed into her. With a second cry of pain, she was driven to the ground.

A faint glint of silver in the torchlight was all the warning Jasper got as a urumi whipped out of the coffin and straight for his head. He didn’t move in time, but Ihra did.

Metal clanged as she intercepted the blow with Aphora’s misericorde and deflected it to the side. The edge of the urumi still nicked his head, tearing off a chunk of flesh and hair as he darted to the side a half-second too late.

Blood dripped down his ear, getting into the crevices, but Jasper ignored it. He shot higher into the air, hopefully out of reach of the blades, and cast Shooting Star at the rising giant. Quick flashes of fire staggered the beast as the fiery orbs bombarded it, and its body stiffened a second later as a blade of wind struck from behind. Tsia lashed out again, and the head slowly began to slide off its perch, dropping into the coffin with a thud.

Jasper wasn’t sure if that was enough to actually put the guardian down, but they didn’t have time to stop and investigate. Eleven more were almost upon them. The nearest three converged on Tsia, their glistening urumi whistling through the air with such synchronized movement that the blades almost resembled an undulating river.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

A howling cyclone of wind rose to greet the blades, whipping them off their targets, and she leapt forward, lashing out with wild, uncontrolled strikes that sliced deep into their rotting flesh. Satisfied she had the situation in hand, Jasper did a quick cast of Fiery Shackles to bind them in place before moving on to the next target.

The fourth of the seraphs had locked in on Ihra. A half-dozen arrows quivered in his flesh as he raced toward her, but he seemed unbothered by them. Then again, she wasn't expecting them to do any real damage. Soaring higher in the air, she drew another arrow and, pouring the piercing the previous hits had piled up, released Executioner’s Arrow.

It missed the creature’s neck as the seraph launched himself into the air toward her, tattered wings straining to bear him aloft, and buried itself in his chest instead. She spun to the side as the seraph flicked its urumi at her, unconcerned with the arrow lodged in its heart, and then the ability took affect. The guardian's ribcage exploded in chunks of flesh and bone as the arrow’s tip expanded into a smoldering blade. To any mortal, it would have been a killing blow, but the undead seraph kept moving, closing the distance on her in a flash.

Her bow fell to the ground as she grabbed for the dagger, frantically parrying the second flicker of its urumi, but she had no blade nor shield with which to block the clawed hand that followed in its wake. But it never made contact, as Jasper smashed into the Seraph from the side, propelled by the full force of Seraph’s Burst. The metallic wings hacked and slashed at the aged flesh as the two spiraled across the hall and collided with one of the stone columns.

Unfortunately, Jasper drew the short straw, getting sandwiched between the massive guardian and the equally monumental stone pillar. His ribs popped and the breath was forced out of his lungs as the Seraph slammed into him. He pushed at the guardian, trying to shove it off, but the guardian latched on and raised a claw hand above its head. A blur of motion followed, and it took Jasper a moment to process that it wasn’t his head that had been torn off.

A quivering plank of wood had buried itself straight through the seraph’s skull, spine, and chest. Though no hand was touching the plank, it suddenly swung to the side, dragging the impaled guardian with it. Ignoring the seraph, Eran ran forward, fumbling with his pouch for a potion, but Jasper waved him off with his one working hand. “Don’t worry about me – help them.” His fingers twisted with Circle of Forgiveness and his bones knit together. It took two more quick casts before he staggered to his feet and, taking a moment to steady himself against the pillar, darted back into the air.

In the short time he'd been incapacitated, they'd beaten down several of their attackers. Ihra, after retrieving her bow, had taken down one on her own while Tsia, with a triumphant yell, decapitated the last of the three that attacked her. Only seven remained now, but as Jasper lurched back into the sky, rubbing gingerly at his hastily repaired ribs, he saw that something was changing.

As one, the remaining guardians turned and ran toward the far side of the chamber. Placing their backs against the wall, six of them blocked off the entrance to the stairs in a half-circle that protected a seventh in the middle. The seventh seraph hunched over, hiding whatever he was doing, but as Jasper got closer, he saw the subtle movement of his hands. “He’s casting a spell,” he roared out in warning.

Steadying his glaive, he cast Flame Charge and shot forward. Shadowy flames billowed behind him as he dove toward the undead mage, but the silver urumi rose as one to greet him. He pulled up, spinning just out of reach of the deadly blades, and as he passed harmlessly above them, the mage completed his spell.

“Elû mūtū u urdū kimtūni.” The creature’s voice was afflicted with an almost unintelligible rasp, but the effect took.

In the two times Jasper had been in the crypt, he’d been too busy trying to survive to pay much attention to the sunken hall’s walls. He hadn’t noticed the hundreds of small stone slabs embedded in the sides nor the inscriptions on them, shrouded as they were in the gloom of flickering torchlight, but he certainly noticed when they simultaneously exploded.

White clouds of rubble filled the air as the stone slabs disintegrated, and Jasper scraped the ceiling as he tried to fly up and over the cloud, rubbing at the dust that filled his eyes. Time ticked slowly as he frantically blinked and then, through the haze of the dust-filled air, he saw something that made his blood run cold.

The dark walls were suddenly polka-dotted as aged, yellowed skeletons clambered out of their humble crypts. The first wave dropped to the ground and charged toward Erin who, as the closest to the explosion, had yet to clear his vision.

Instinctually, Jasper dove to scoop the scout up, but, fortunately, he remembered the flames consuming him before he arrived. Instead, he swerved past Erin to intercept the skeletons. He swung his glaive like a madman, and with every blow that landed, fire and bone were sent spinning, but for each one he killed, another stepped forward.

He was dimly aware of others besides him, of wind and lightning, metal and wood flashing past him, but it was all he could do to fend off the horde. Step by step he was forced back as a seemingly endless army of skeletons rose to meet him. The flames guttered out, and he cast Flame Charge again, keeping a wary eye on his essence. He wasn’t out yet, but he knew the remaining guardians were still out there, seemingly content to let the skeletons grind them down, and he couldn’t afford to run dry. So as much as possible, he relied on his glaive, hacking and slashing until his arms throbbed and the glaive felt like it was made of lead. He reached the brink of his endurance, and pushed past unilt, wiith a strangled cry, he thrust the glaive forward and met nothing but empty air.

Is it over? He sagged against the glaive wearily and surveyed the hall around them. The floor had disappeared beneath a sea of shattered bones, but no more skeletons met his eye. He spied Tsia and Erin a few dozen feet away, their backs pressed against one of the sarcophagi for protection, while Ihra had managed to lift herself up to a small ledge on one of the pillars. He also spied the group of seraph guardians; dozens of wooden beams stuck out of their bodies in a haphazard fashion, like a grim cosplay of a porcupine, and he flashed Erin a weary thumbs up.

It was a harder battle than he’d expected, but at least they’d won. But even as the thought flitted through his mind, Jasper felt a sudden pressure emanate from the far side of the chamber, and, as one, the torches extinguished.