Riven hurried towards the centre of the village. Thank the Scions Mhell had taken care of his leg and he no longer had trouble moving. He’d always taken his ability to use his legs for granted—who wouldn’t if they never got their legs hurt enough to be unable to walk properly—but he promised himself that he’d be properly thankful for it from now on.

Viriya was faster. She dashed after the blacksmith, then outstripped him easily. Riven went past the man soon enough too, but he couldn’t focus on catching up with Viriya. A part of his mind was still back at the house he had infiltrated, near which all those unmoving soldiers lay.

Not dead. Not unconscious. No, all Riven knew was that they were unmoving.

Riven hadn’t killed them. He was sure of that. Well, he was sure he hadn’t intended to do so. But what did it matter? He had killed that unsuspecting guard at the border fence of Providence Demesne, so who was he to baulk now? It was hypocritical.

He was beyond any flimsy and stupid attempt at some sort of redemption.

Never mind that, he had to focus now. Aross was coming in with the envoy. They might have taken care of most of the soldiers, but Riven sure as the Chasm knew that hadn’t been all of them. “Viriya, what if there are Essentiers there?”

She didn’t slow her pace. Her gun was out and held close to her body, her eyes glittering like emerald daggers. “Then we take care of them. We need to make sure the envoy doesn’t become too defensive until we launch the attack. There’s no point in any surprise if they come prepared anyway.”

The main central street of Tollisett was empty. No Essentiers haunted the shadows, no soldiers lined the road like this was a royal procession. No sign of anyone waiting to welcome the envoy into Tollisett.

Riven and Viriya hid in the gloom. It was off. Something was severely wrong, and they needed to find out what. Riven couldn’t help thinking they had been sussed out. Orbray’s agents knew their enemy was here, and they had laid a trap.

But were they to spring it or not? Light glinted far off. The envoy was coming closer every second.

“Go call the others,” Viriya ordered the blacksmith. “Get down here, and hide the best you can. Don’t make any grand entrances. Wait until the fighting starts, and if it looks like we might be overwhelmed, that’s when you and your friends come in and cause some chaos. Understand?”

The blacksmith hadn’t properly met Viriya yet, but she was using her commanding voice which was like some sort of spell. There was no hesitation from the man, no doubt as to who was in charge, or if he should even consider listening to someone he’d never met before.

He simply nodded, then rushed off. Riven smiled grimly. There was no time to entertain doubts now.

“Now we wait?” Riven whispered.

Viriya nodded. Silence wrapped a suffocating blanket over them and Riven couldn’t help but think he was with those soldiers, stranded inside his bubble of golden Essence, air running out fast as though it was a leaking balloon. He could try for some stupid conversation again like he always did, but it felt better to wait.

Aross was coming, and so was the envoy Orbray had assigned. More soldiers, possibly more Essentiers. There was such a thing as mental preparation for that, after all.

Besides, the envoy soon came close enough for Riven to make out the specific details. What he found wasn’t pleasing in the slightest. There were a lot of vehicles. Trucks were mostly reserved for the military and occasional use for moving important things, and Orbray had assigned a lot of trucks to the envoy. There were six in total, and each of them had to be carrying a dozen soldiers. That made over seventy soldiers just in the trucks alone. Then there was the motorcade of the dozen cars circling around the central vehicle. Who knew how many soldiers those were bringing in.

Riven couldn’t take his eyes off the centre car, though. Aross. The Invigilator of Rennervation Demesne was somewhere inside that envoy, perhaps at the very centre.

Unless this was a huge setup to draw Riven and Viriya out, but he didn’t let his thoughts stray too far in that direction. They were committed and had come too far to back out now. Riven intended to see this through to the end, no matter what.

The first car entered the village proper and slowed a little but didn’t stop. Its garish lights lit up the whole street from one end to the other. Trucks followed, then more cars, all their lights revealing just what Riven had feared. Soldiers, and a lot of them. There was no way Riven and Viriya could take them all on their own. They needed help.

They needed Mhell.

Riven placed his hand on Viriya’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure he had touched her at first for it felt like his palm had met solid rock. But then the light of a truck flashed by, revealing that Viriya had tensed up and turned rigid as an iron rod left outside in winter.

“Now?” he asked.

“Wait,” she said through gritted teeth.

Mhell. They were waiting for Mhell. There were too many, and even with the help of some of the villagers, they needed the Spectres. It would be a massacre otherwise.

But the witch hadn’t come yet, and the envoy was still moving instead of halting as they had assumed.

The truck moving past where Riven and Viriya hid jerked to a halt all of a sudden. Thanks to the light from the other vehicles, Riven saw the soldiers inside shaking inside the truck. He followed their gazes to what they were watching. Then he stared, eyes growing wide.

Mhell was standing in the middle of the road, blocking the truck and any other vehicles from moving on.

The truck honked. Somehow, and for some reason, Mhell had allowed about half the envoy to go past where Riven and Viriya hid before finally stepping in. It neatly bifurcated the convoy into two, but what was she playing at? Riven turned, blinking past the bright lights from the many cars and trucks, and his eyes widened in realization. The main car was close. Close enough for Riven to dash for it, get to it, and get Aross out faster than it would have possible at any other time.

Smart. Mhell was very smart. Though how she had known where Viriya and Riven had hidden themselves was another question.

A woman got out of the car. “Hey! You drunk? Can’t you see this is an important convoy? Get out of the way, or I’ll come over and make you get out.”

Riven blinked. Couldn’t they see who they were facing? He stared at the middle of the road and found that Mhell was hidden in a large cloak. The lights from the vehicles made it difficult to see properly.

The woman approached the cloaked figure. “I said get out of the way!”

Just as the woman reached Mhell, the witch threw back her hood. The woman froze. She was petrified for the briefest of seconds before her training kicked in and she hurtled backwards, mouth opening to scream. Mhell didn’t let her get a single step back. A wave of greyness shot out, overtaking the soldier who went down and didn’t move, splotches of grey running all over her body, eating away her clothes and embedding onto her skin like some kind of horrible rash.

The grey wave didn’t stop there. Even as the soldiers in the truck yelled out warnings and screamed that they were under attack, Mhell waved her arms expansively. More grey shot out, a tidal wave that swamped the truck that had just started to reverse as the soldiers started to climb out the back. They only got to move a few steps before they too were overwhelmed like their comrade.

They didn’t make any sound either. Mhell’s Spirit had turned them into statues.

The other soldiers didn’t wait. All the cars and trucks had stopped, and every soldier they carried evacuated, their rifles pointing forward. Cries of “Deadmage!” reverberated through the entire area as the first shots blasted towards Mhell.

Not that she had anything to worry about.

She didn’t move or give ground. Waves of grey formed walls in front of her, and none of the Sept bullets went through. Mhell waved her arms. Her Spirit shot forward, but whether by design or by happenstance, the vehicles formed a good barrier, slowing down the waves of grey enough for the soldiers to fall back. The cars and trucks behind the ones that were hit retreated.

“We need to attack now,” Riven whispered. There was enough noise from the shooting rifles and the shouts of the soldiers to swamp anything he said, but he still didn’t want to be too loud. There was a strange balance here, and it felt weird tipping it.

But they needed to rescue Aross. She was their priority.

“Not yet,” Viriya said. Her shoulder was tenser than ever. Riven could have broken his hand by hitting her.

“Why?”

“Come on.”

She moved off, and Riven was mistaken in thinking she was going towards Aross’s car. Instead, Viriya went through side streets, staying in the shadows while still keeping the battle in sight.

Mhell was finally advancing, moving past the cars and trucks lying dead on the road. More shots blasted at her but her Spirit stopped them all with no effort. She gestured at the buildings on either side, and her Spirit swept out on either side of the convoy. Riven and Viriya drew back as the grey waves infected the buildings they were hiding behind, turning the walls the colour of fine ash. A moment, later, they collapsed inwards.

The soldiers screamed as they were crushed. Rocks and debris fell in a deadly avalanche on the front row of vehicles who had no space to retreat. Orbray’s soldiers fell back, but those who were shooting from within the vehicle never made it out. The rubble killed them all.

It looked for a moment that Mhell had inadvertently stopped herself, but her Spirit washed in like an ocean. Wave after grey wave battered the roadblock as the soldiers regrouped. Their respite was too momentary. The debris cleared as the grey waves buts through, bearing Mhell like a sea deity worshipped in distant Kyrilna, rising out of the depths to swamp the whole land.

She forced more of her grey waves forward, and Riven stood, watching breathlessly. Those soldiers had to be dead now. Maybe this was what Viriya was waiting for—Mhell was clearing the way for them.

Light swirled in. Someone stepped up and pale green light formed a spiral in front of the rushing grey. The grey wave met the spiral, twisting in mid-air before it was shattered and sent spinning in every direction away from the soldiers. Bits of grey Spirit splattered against the walls that still stood, flecked down and dotted the streets everywhere, struck the few lampposts that the street held. In every spot that it touched, it dissipated, leaving gouged holes and deep marks.

Corrosion. That’s what Mhell’s Spirit was. That was how she had pulled apart those buildings and stopped those vehicles, and probably killed those soldiers as well.

But how in the world did Corrosion help stop the pain in Riven’s leg?

“So, one of you finally came out,” Mhell said. She took a step forward. “I was waiting. But I was hoping there would be more of you to play with. Two alone is terribly boring, you must understand.”

The short man who had stopped her grey spirit straightened to his full height, which wasn’t much. “Your path of destruction ends now, Deadmage.”

“Are there more of you hiding in there, somewhere? I’d rather kill you all at once.”

“You won’t even be able to kill me.”

Pale green light swirled over the man’s head again. His Essence formed a miniature twister and he rammed his hands down into the ground, the twist of lime Essence sinking into the ground and disappearing from view. Nothing happened for a second, but then the ground started shaking.

Riven started vibrating like a tuning fork, and he kept his mouth tightly shut. The slightest opening would put his tongue in danger of being snipped right off. But he watched on, eyes growing wide at the sight before him.

Twists were opening everywhere. On the walls of the buildings that still stood, on the street and the vehicles that populated it, even in the air everywhere, whirls popping up like a thousand invisible hands were grabbing a thousand places in the world and twisting them like a schoolteacher does to a mischievous student’s ears. All of the whirls bled the same light green light that made up the short man’s Essence.

Mhell was undaunted. She sent wave after wave of her Spirit, all of which was repelled by the twists. The whirls ate them up like famished enormous mouths with their favourite meal. All the grey waves disappeared in moments.

Then she started to sink. A huge twist opened up underneath her feet, the ground turning into a whirlpool as Mhell started to sink like she was on a bed of quicksand. Riven shook, but he stared on. She didn’t look fearful in the least, her face set and her posture steady as ever. The waves of grey that still hadn’t met the Essentier’s twists receded back to her, all of them coagulating together with her at the centre, forming a giant blob of whirling, sickly grey.

Then the blob fountained up. It shot upwards like a geyser, shooting chunks of grey into the sky as though Mhell had caused an eruption. In moments, her Spirit started to rain down.

Viriya pushed Riven under the eaves of the nearest building as the grey Spirit started to rain in among them. Riven didn’t argue. A single touch of that greyness would be bad. But then, what was going on with his leg?

The Essentier’s twists might have been able to block her waves, but this was far too fine, far too widespread for him to block entirely. Soldiers screamed as their clothes fell apart and their flesh rotted before their eyes, hair falling from their heads, teeth dripping down with their bloody spit, and nails popping from their fingers. They were starting to dissolve. Corrosion. That was what Mhell’s Spirit was. She was reducing them all to mere particles, destroying the chemical bonds that held anything her Spirit touched.

“Hold!” the Essentier screamed. “Find cover, and hold your position.”

Easier said than done. The soldiers heard the command though, and did their best to comply. Even as the grey Essence broke them apart, creating unhealable patches on their skin and turning their clothes into ash, they took shelter under their trucks and inside their cars. Not that it would protect them for long. The grey rain was eating through the metal roofs and creating little potholes on the streets.

Mhell wasn’t going to stop until everyone on the street had turned to dust and bloody mush. The fountain was still spouting grey Spirit into the sky. Riven didn’t have to be much of an Essentier to see that her Spirit was going to kill Aross along with everyone else too.

“We need to get Aross out,” he muttered past his clattering teeth. Scions, that damn Essentier needed to stop too. His shaking was going to make them all fall apart too.

Viriya didn’t move. Well, apart from the Essence-induced trembling. “Is she really there?”

“What do you mean?”

“This battle would make sure they were all going to die. It’s too dangerous. Yet I haven’t seen a single car trying to retreat, or anyone getting out of that car in the middle.”

Iven swallowed. “We’ve come too far to start thinking this whole thing was a decoy.”

“Maybe. But we still be cautious even as we check.”

“That’s what I mean. We need to check.”

“Not yet.”

“But—”

“Just watch.”

Riven did, if sullenly. Viriya was letting her doubts get the better of her. Letting her suspicion that Aross might not even be in the car affect her judgement. She was cautions yes, but overly so.

The Essentier was trying to make a counterattack. He held one arm up over his head, the hand holding more swirling, lime-green Essence. He shot it towards Mhell’s Spirit spout, but it was too large. It had turned into a funnel, a grey tornado that ripped apart anything it touched. The green Essence whirl brushed it and immediately disappeared.

He cursed loudly. All the other whirls everywhere died, and more Essence swirled all around the man. Riven blinked. Everywhere there had been whirls immediately started to crumble, leaking Mhell’s greyness as though they had been stuffed with it from the inside. Oh, so that was it. The man’s Essence was some sort of teleportation, where the whirls were gates that transported whatever it ate up to another spot where there was another whirl.

Riven ignored the sudden urge to try to note that down somewhere. It was in his mind, and he’d remember when it became relevant.

The man’s Essence rose to form his own light-green tornado. It started moving, and was about to strike Mhell’s grey spout when eerie screams shot through the area. Riven froze for a moment, a chill running down his spine as he turned.

“They finally came, the bastards,” Viriya muttered.

This must have been what Viriya was waiting for. The Spectres were coming in. Scores upon scores of ghostly figures lined in shimmering outlines were rushing towards the main road.

Mhell’s reinforcements had finally arrived.

Riven drew closer to Viriya and farther into the darkness as the Spectre of an old man rushed past him. The ghost didn’t see him. None of them did. They charged into the mass of soldiers, many of whom were still panicking at the assault of grey rain. Not a single soldier was prepared for the ghostly charge. The Spectres attacked, not heeding the rain of grey Spirit, and began a massacre.

“Now!”

Viriya rushed after them. Heart thundering, Riven followed.

Scions spare him from death. He held his sword out as he charged into the fray, the Coral blade catching the tiniest bits of light to glimmer blue. This was close-quarters work. Perfect conditions for him to use his sword. Not that he was some kind of expert at sword work, especially with this big bastard of a blade, but he’d figure something out.

Viriya had her gun out. He’d never got to ask where she’d found it, for this was clearly a different model, but so long as it was serviceable, it didn’t matter. The madness swirled around them, and Riven forgot all about guns and swords.

They were able to evade most of Orbray’s troops. Mhell’s Spectres were doing a great job, and the few who spotted them were soon swarmed by ghosts. They had a free run.

The first soldier who saw them and wasn’t engaged by ghosts did the sensible thing. He shouted a warning to the rest of his colleagues, then pointed his rifle at Viriya, who was several steps ahead of Riven. Her shot took the soldier in the chest, blood bursting out of the red hole as he and his rifle fell to the street. Thanks to his sacrificial alert, the other soldiers brought their guns around to shoot off a volley of Sept bullets. Riven was ready. With a little focus, he brought up his golden Essence to form a protective shield around him and Viriya. The bullets cracked in but didn’t penetrate, and more golden Essence repaired his shield and pushed the bullets out to clink to the ground.

Viriya nodded. Riven relaxed the shield in front of them, keeping it up overhead to stop the rain of grey Spirit. Viriya’s golden-green shot blasted into the truck behind the soldiers, throwing up a green cloak over the whole vehicle. Another shot poked a hole into the street, and more glittering green carpeted the whole street.

Then it all exploded. The earth broke apart as it rose to meet the truck, which rolled towards the ground, both of which caught the unfortunate soldiers in between. They were either crushed by the truck or torn apart by the rocks flying like the very bullets they had fired.

“Clear,” Viriya said for Riven’s benefit before charging forwards again.

He followed as best as he could. No need to use his sword then but more chances would crop up soon. Though Viriya wasn’t going to let them get up close. They repeated the strategy of using Riven’s shield to block incoming bullets before Viriya sent return fire loaded with her Locking Essence. Soldiers who weren’t already busy fighting for their lives went flying, were crushed, or were killed or incapacitated in some other way thanks to Viriya and her Essence.

At some point, Orbray’s troops decided to perform a counterattack. Riven had gotten used to the bright headlights but it still limited his visibility. Viriya’s too probably.

How else had they both missed the trucks rolling in front of them?

They blocked off passage to the central car that was supposedly—hopefully—bearing Aross. Guns poked out of holes on the side specifically designed for this kind of shooting.

Riven had his shield ready for them. The rifles fired, and the bullets cracked in and fell back at his Essence’s strength. But they were surrounded. The trucks had stopped on all sides, cutting off all forward progress unless they could somehow get past.

All that was left was retreat, and that wasn’t an option. Where were the damn Spectres?

“Hit me,” Riven said. More cracks spread across his golden shield as more bullets hammered in, but the pressure flowed out of him and pushed out more Essence to repair his shield as quickly as it got damaged. “Use your Essence on me and then shoot at the bastards.”

Viriya didn’t argue. She punched Riven on the shoulder with her green star. He let his shield drop for just a second. The danger made his heart spike as more shots went off and bullets whizzed by, barely missing both of them, but Viriya got her shot off. Riven refocused, the shield reforming around him. Just around him this time. Viriya moved to stand behind, at an angle to the soldiers so that they had no way of shooting straight at her.

Her golden-green bullet hit the forward truck and Riven was pulled forward all of a sudden. He shot towards the truck as fast as the bullets flew, ramming into it with enough force to nearly make it tip onto its side as his golden Essence cacked. The soldiers shrieked as they fell from the top and were thrown within. All shots from the forward truck ceased, and the surprise of the motion was enough to make the other two stop as well.

Perfect. Riven let go of his shield and rushed into the truck. Then he started killing.

The men and women inside were still recovering from being thrown. Riven didn’t have the luxury to hesitate. His first swing took off the nearest soldier’s head. It was so easy. One little swing, and the head went flying, bouncing around the inside of the truck like a crazed ferret, blood spraying everywhere like a gushing spring.

No time to waste on marvelling. He stabbed another soldier trying to get up, kicked back a woman who was aiming her rifle at him, then hammered the hilt into the head of another soldier who’d thrown himself at Riven. The golden Essence stopped him from being thrown out of the truck. There was a loud boom outside, followed by a brilliant flash. There was no time to check what that had been.

More swung their rifles at him, shot at him, struggled against the death and destruction he had brought. None of it hurt Riven. None of it touched him. He was an avatar of death in this tiny space.

By the time Riven had finished swinging, he was breathing heavy and leaning against the blood-daubed walls, sweat dripping into his eyes. The soldiers had all fallen and died, blood spilling from holes, cuts, stumps of chopped-off limbs. He had done it. Riven had killed them all, made them all pay for following Orbray’s orders, showed them what happens when they were guilty of the crime of following orders.

Following the enemy’s orders.

Riven slipped and slid his way out of the truck. The other two trucks had somehow been neutralized by Viriya. They had crashed together, and the soldiers had all died in the resulting explosion. She must have used her Locking Essence somehow. He stared out, ignoring how more fires were spreading out and the soldiers were locked in a fight to the death with the Spectres. Where was Viriya?

There! She was charging towards the car in the centre, still standing there with a few soldiers as guards. Riven ran after her. Idiot. She’d die if the soldiers started shooting.

Viriya used her favourite technique—she shot two of her golden-green bullets at the soldiers before she got close enough to be shot at, once to target the guards, and another to make the ground erupt as her bullet threw up a glittering emerald carpet. The soldiers died and fell as the car was pelted by rocky shrapnel.

Riven slowed a little. He was stupid to worry. Then he sped up again.

Viriya had stopped entirely.

The car door had opened. A man stepped out, wearing the navy uniform of an Ascension Essentier, the gold pin glittering on his shoulder marking him as a Secondmarked. He was quite young, not much older than Tam who had couldn’t have had more than half a dozen years on Riven.

“You’ve caused a huge mess, haven’t you?” the man said.

“Step aside and no one needs to die,” Viriya said.

“Ah, you won’t even do me the honour of asking who I am?”

“Will that make you run away faster?” Riven asked. He didn’t stare at the man. There had to be more soldiers near them, and Riven would be damned if he let any of them sneak up and get a clear shot at them.

The man laughed. “No, but it might make you stop. Might make you run too. You see, I know you’re here to free the Invigilator.” He tapped the roof of the car. “You’re right, she’s right here.”

“Then get the Chasm away.”

“I can’t. You see, I’m Aross.”