Atop the highest tower garden of his palace, he looked out over his glorious city. Across all the branches of Arbor Mundi, there were none that bloomed with such resplendent colours as his fair Ambiellar.

Footsteps crunched across the gravel behind him. Feeling a surge of hot rage, the Imperator rounded on the intruder. “Who dares enter my…” His words trailed off as he beheld the pale eyes; the cloak of mist. “Deus forgive me. I didn’t know it was you.”

The figure didn’t speak. Only beckoned for him to follow.

Jecham followed, and soon found himself passing into the forbidden wing: the old god’s abode, a section of the palace no alvar was permitted to enter. Not even he had been here before this day. They passed into a chamber with a black obelisk at its centre. There, he closed the door, and waited.

In time, the door opened, and in stepped…

His heart pounded against the walls of his chest as he beheld the demon’s dreadful visage; her long curved claws; her rock-hard flesh and dull grey armour. Involuntarily, he took a step back, until he realised she couldn’t see him. Her red slitted eyes were fixed on the obelisk. She reached for the slab of darkness—

And spun about, growling in outrage, as figures leapt at her, and plunged their blades into her back. They were his alvari, Jecham realised. Quickdraws and shadowmasters. They’d been lurking here under a web of shadows, awaiting her arrival.

But he had ordered no such attack. He would have if he’d known she were coming…

Ah. So that was what this was. This hadn’t happened yet. It was what must come to pass.

“I will do as you command,” he told the pale figure. “But will they be enough? She and her allies already defeated the Second Legion, and now a sizeable portion of them stand as traitors against me. I can’t afford to underestimate her a second time.”

Again, the figure beckoned to him. They passed out of the forbidden wing, and into his private vault, filled with curiosities of incalculable worth, gathered across the ages by his forebears. A mist-swathed hand pointed at a vial of silver liquid sitting on a nearby shelf.

“Okael’s Bane,” said Jecham. “You would have me turn it against the demon.”

A feeling of bliss suffused him as he spoke the words. Yes. This was what he would do. The demon would wither and die. She and her allies and the traitors alike would taste the bite of cold justice—each and every one of them!

He awoke to find Unaeshe straddling him, insatiable as always.

“Get off,” he told his concubine. “There is work to be done.”

 

Harsh blue light stabbed into her eyes. Still disoriented from her dream, it took her a moment to realise that she was not, in fact, Jecham the Absolute, Imperator of the High Empire. She was Saskia Wendle, the person he’d…what had he done to her, exactly?

Whatever it was, she was still feeling it. Her throat was dry. Her head felt as if a hedgehog was nesting inside it. All she could see was this piercing blue light, and a blurry shape moving beside her.

“Welcome back, Sashki,” said a familiar voice. “I told you I wouldn’t let you die on us. Not today.”

Slowly, the blurry form beside her resolved into Ruhildi’s face, half covered in her metal mask. The other half was a mask of worry. She wore nothing but her duanum shell. That was a little odd. These days, Ruhildi considered the shell as part of her own flesh, so she usually wore clothes over the top.

Behind her stood risen corpses in various states of dismemberment, guarding the door of the control chamber. Okay, so they were still in the Imperator’s palace, in Ambiellar.

Wait, that couldn’t be right. Ruhildi hadn’t been with her when she entered the palace.

“What did you…how did you get here, Ruhildi?” asked Saskia, clutching her head.

“Methinks you ken,” said Ruhildi.

There were only two possibilities. The first was that enough time had passed for Ruhildi to fly in on Iscaragraithe, and fight her way through the palace to reach her. One peek out of Zarie’s eyes had just eliminated that theory. The bone dragon lay exactly where they’d left it, in the hills above Ambiellar. That left the second possibility. Somehow, Ruhildi had teleported to her.

“I had no idea you could teleport on your own,” said Saskia.

“Nor did I,” said Ruhildi. “I saw you were…ill. I needed to be here. And then I…were.”

Saskia looked down at her own body. Her arm had already started to grow back, but it was a blackened, twisted thing. Something oozed beneath the cracks in her flesh.

“So I’m still…dying, then?” said Saskia, unable to keep a quaver from her voice.

“I have slowed the spread of the corruption,” said Ruhildi. “’Tis an odd pairing of life and death. Fair slippery and hard to contain.”

“How long do I have?” whispered Saskia.

Ruhildi frowned. “Mayhap Garri and Nui can help me drive the corruption out.”

Her friend was being awfully evasive. The fact that they still had things they could try gave her some hope, but alarm bells were screaming in her head. Something was seriously wrong, and it may very well be the death of her.

What a clusterfrock this expedition was turning out to be. Sarthea wasn’t here. Thanks to Abellion’s warning, the Imperator had clearly known they were coming. He’d set a trap for her with that silver liquid. Okael’s Bane, he’d called it.

Hell, Abellion was probably the one who lured her here. It shouldn’t have been possible for him to invade her dreams after she drove him out the first time, but maybe he’d figured out how to worm his way back in. And now here she was, minus an arm, barely able to sit up, and quite possibly dying.

“We’ve got more of those bastards heading our way,” said Baldreg through the oracle link.

He and Kveld and Velandir were concealed under a web of shadows just outside the control chamber. More zombies guarded the halls of the so-called forbidden wing of the palace. Not so forbidden now, was it? Orange and red dots approached from the south and east. Distant horns blasted somewhere outside.

Saskia groaned inwardly. They needed to get out of here, but whenever she tried to sit up, the world began to spin, and the needles in her head began stabbing anew. Because of her, they were stuck here.

“Don’t worry, Sashki,” said Ruhildi. “The control chamber’s zone of influence covers most of this wing. My minions can protect us. Their numbers swell as our foes weaken.”

“Then what?” said Saskia. “We’re still deep in enemy territory. We still need to get out.”

“Rest,” said Ruhildi. “We’ll away when you are ready. That time isn’t now.”

Saskia nodded slowly. The pain in her head was starting to ease, but in its place, a feeling of drowsiness was creeping over her. Dogramit, hadn’t she slept enough already?

She surrendered to sleep’s cold embrace, all the same. Just a little nap, then she’d be up and about, and everything would be fine.

 

“We can’t get to them, Sire.”

“Feckless fools! You said there were only four intruders! Four!” Jecham glared at the centurion, daring him to deny his words.

The centurion seemed only too happy to oblige him. “There were four, including the…traitor, Velandir. But another dwarrow appeared out of nowhere and…” The captain grimaced. “She has command over the dead. Any alvari we send against her are quickly slain, and only add to her strength.”

Jecham slammed his fist down on the table. “The revenant. The revenant is here.”

“I believe so, Sire.”

The revenant was the demon’s second, and by many accounts a greater threat than her mistress. Her army of the dead had been instrumental in the defeat of the Second Legion. It was said she commanded the abomination that prowled the skies of Lumium, flinging lightning bolts down upon his people.

Jecham growled. “So be it. If you can’t reach them with blade or poison, we’ll burn them with fire. Prepare the blasting powder.”

 

Saskia awoke with a start. She was feeling a bit better now, but if that dream was to be believed…

“We have to get out of here,” she said.

“You think you can walk?” said Ruhildi.

Saskia rose onto wobbly feet. “I’ll try. They’re going to use blasting powder. I think I know what that is, and I know we don’t want to be here when it blows.”

“You mean gunpowder?” said Kveld, stepping into the control chamber, followed by Velandir and Baldreg. Kveld had heard some of Dallim’s tales of Earth technology, but it still surprised her to hear him speak of it.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Saskia. “Could be totally wrong, of course. I’d rather not find out.”

Velandir tugged on her essence, and she watched as he and her friends vanished under creeping shadows. Well, two of her friends. Ruhildi remained in plain sight. Her minions gathered close, forming a protective wall around them.

“Why aren’t you invisible?” asked Saskia.

“My web of shadows can’t hide the dead,” said Velandir. “That includes your friend.”

“No matter,” said Ruhildi. “I’m fair tough, and I have my minions to guard me. You should get Sashki to safety.”

“Not a chance,” said Saskia. “We go together.” She eyed the keystone dubiously. “Is it safe to touch now?”

“Aye, Sashki,” said Ruhildi. “We gathered up the poison, and wiped the keystone down after. I touched it with no ill effects.”

“But you’re already dead,” pointed out Saskia.

Ruhildi frowned. “’Tis true.”

“It’s okay,” said Saskia. “I’m already infected. It may have been a trap, but there’s a chance Sarthea really did want me to come to this keystone. I’m not about to leave it here to get blown up.”

Saskia leaned down and pressed her partially-grown infected hand to the dark obelisk. When nothing happened, she hesitantly swapped to the other hand. This time, it responded. With a verbal command, she ordered the keystone to decouple from the site. It shrank down into a fist-sized dodecahedron, which she quickly stowed.

Dashing out through the crumbling hallway, Saskia dithered for a moment over which direction to go—either way, they’d be evading or fighting angry elves. It was just a matter of how soon, and how many.

“This way,” she decided, opting to head straight for a balcony on the opposite side of this floor. The secret passage out of the city had lost its appeal, now that stealth was out of the question, and this palace could come crashing down around them at any moment.

A wall of armoured fighters awaited them just outside the forbidden wing. Behind them, four burly elves were hauling what looked like a large cauldron through the hallway. No prizes for guessing what’s in there, she thought.

Popping out of stealth, Baldreg fired straight at the line of elves. The floor shuddered as a concussive blast tore into half a dozen bodies, sending them clattering into the walls, limbs askew, amidst a billowing cloud of dust.

The cauldron lay on its side, its contents spilled across the floor. By some miracle, it hadn’t ignited.

Saskia sent Baldreg an angry glare—though he obviously couldn’t see her. “Seriously? That’s blasting powder over there! Did it not occur to you that you might get a bigger boom than you intended?”

The moment she said it, she realised he probably had no idea what what might set it off. Why would he? The dwarves and elves of Ciendil had never used the stuff before.

“I…no,” said Baldreg, hastily swapping out his explosive bolts for normal ones. Then he vanished once more under the cover of the web of shadows.

She led them away, eager to put distance between them and the blasting powder. Another group of elves came charging down the hallway from the other direction. Kveld tugged on her essence, and suddenly, a wall of stone rose up, sealing off the elves’ corridor from the one she and her friends were in.

“See?” said Saskia. “We could’ve just done that. No need to blow things up!”

“Aye, but blowing things up is much more satisfying,” said Ruhildi.

A flicker of movement to her right was all the warning she got that another side corridor wasn’t as empty as it appeared. Two cloaked figures had seemingly materialised out of thin air, lunging at Ruhildi with shadowblades drawn. Saskia snatched up one of the attackers with her good arm, and used him as a shield against his partner. Moments later, she’d absorbed the arlium out of their cloaks, disabled their magic. She tossed her new vassal aside.

Some of Ruhildi’s zombies lurched toward them, but Saskia called her off. “They’re harmless now.”

“Not entirely harmless,” said Kveld.

One of the shadowmasters had drawn a rapier, and crawled toward them on wounded legs.

Saskia stomped down on his hand, wincing as she felt the bones shatter beneath her feet. “Now he’s harmless.”

The elf with the two broken arms drew in a deep breath and bellowed at the top of his lungs: “The demon is this way! Avenge us! Death to the invaders!”

Baldreg popped out of stealth again, and Saskia saw that he’d used the elf’s own rapier to stab him in the throat. The shouts tapered off into a low wheezing gurgle, and fell silent.

Saskia sighed, but didn’t say anything as they kept on running. That brief scuffle had taken a lot out of her, and now it felt as if she was running on fumes.

“If we don’t kill them, the Imperator will,” said Ruhildi, apparently reading her thoughts again. “Like as not, he sent them here to die, just so they could block our escape.”

Right. Because of course everyone was expendable to him. This wasn’t the first time he’d resorted to such tactics. Velandir had spoken of him wiping entire towns off the face of Lumium, just to get at a few rebels hiding within. No wonder Velandir had been so quick to swap teams. And yet still she’d distrusted him…

Maybe she should be trying to be rid of Jecham once and for all. But now wasn’t in the right mental state to be making such decisions. Her head was still fuzzy. Right now, she had to focus on survival.

They dashed out onto a wide balcony overlooking the city. A wide staircase wound its way down the outside of the palace. Trees and colourful shrubs sprouted from a strip of soil atop a low wall on the outer edge of the staircase. They’d do a good job of shielding Ruhildi and her undead retinue from archers on the ground, and atop nearby parapets. Saskia felt more exposed up here, but she was also invisible. She should be okay, unless—

A cloak billowed in the air, as its wearer fell upon Ruhildi, shadowblade slicing in a downward arc. This woman must have shimmied down the vines that covered the palace walls. Saskia drove her claws through woman’s chest. Ruhildi casually stepped aside, and the corpse landed at her feet.

An arrow thudded into the blackened flesh of Saskia’s regrowing arm. She didn’t feel the pain of the impact, but it sent her stumbling to the side. Oh right. By attacking the shadowmaster, she’d just revealed herself.

It was a curious flaw—the fact that attacking someone briefly disabled the web of shadows. Video game stealth usually worked that way, because being killed by someone you never even see is not fun. But there was no reason real assassins should have to play by such rules. Freygi sure hadn’t. Maybe whoever had come up with the shadowmaster spell had realised how ridiculously dangerous it would be for anyone to have access to perfect, permanent invisibility, and had built in a deliberate weakness. If that were the case, they might be able to come up with their own, more overpowered version of the spell…

Stop it, she told herself. Now isn’t the time to be thinking of these things. We’re running for our lives, here.

“’Tis a good idea, though,” said Ruhildi.

“What is?” asked Velandir.

“Later,” said Saskia. “Let’s just try to get out of here in one piece, okay?”

Not only did they have to get off this deathtrap of a palace, but they had to find a way out of the city. There wasn’t time to plan their escape. They were going to have to just wing it. Sadly, there would be no actual wings. Iscaragraithe lay in an inanimate heap far outside the city, and so it would remain until they got Ruhildi close enough to reanimate it.

They’d barely cleared the first couple of flights of stairs when an orange glow suffused the air, turning rapidly red.

“Get down!” she yelled.

Overhead, the walls exploded outward. A wave of heat swept over her, driving the breath from her lungs. Gigantic blocks of masonry tumbled through the air, swathed in billowing smoke.

 

Jecham watched with savage exultation as the forbidden wing of his palace shattered, and vanished behind an expanding cloud of black smoke.

“Deus,” muttered Illiur, Legate of the First Legion. “How many of our people were in there?”

“It matters not, as long as the demon is dead.”

“And if she yet lives?”

Jecham scowled at the legate. There was a note of disrespect in Illiur’s voice that disturbed him. He might have to look for a replacement.

“Imbecile,” he snarled. “Does that look survivable to you?”

“No. But this is a demon we’re talking about. It would be foolish to underestimate her or her allies.”

“She is surely dead. And if she isn’t, she will be!” said Jecham. “An imperator does not allow his enemy to steal into his home, and live to tell of it.”

“No,” said Illiur. “An imperator does not.”

Saskia awoke with a groan. Her headache was back, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the infection, or…this. The air was thick with smoke, and it smelled of burning flesh. Through the haze, she spotted a blackened body, half covered in rubble. She really, really hoped it wasn’t someone she knew. A quick check of her interface, and she let out a relieved sigh. Her vassals were still alive; their mirrors unbroken.

She herself had been protected from the worst of the blast. Most of her body was encased in duanum armour, and the parts that weren’t covered were as tough as the walls that had fallen on her. As for why she wasn’t buried, she had Ruhildi and Kveld to thank for that.

Ruhildi looked relatively unscathed, although the skin of the exposed side of her face was a bit singed. Her zombies were a write-off; either burnt to a crisp, or buried. The other two dwarves had sheltered under a shelf of stone Kveld had extruded from the wall. They also wore duanum, protecting them from the worst of the heat.

Velandir, though…

Well he wasn’t on fire. Entirely by accident, Saskia had fallen over him, protecting him from the worst of the blast. She’d also crushed him beneath her enormous bulk.

He was unconscious, bleeding, and parts of his body were scorched. Saskia bit into her wrist, and with great effort, managed to puncture her skin and get blood flowing. She moved her wrist to his lips—then halted, seized by a horrifying thought.

What if her infection could spread to others? Ruhildi said it was mostly contained, for now, but there could be traces of the poison all through her body. If it did this much damage to a troll, what would it do to a fragile elf?

Inspecting his body with her medical interface, she decided it wasn’t worth the risk. None of his bones were broken. Those were second-degree burns. He would almost certainly survive without her blood’s healing effects—if they could get him out of here.

Saskia hauled Velandir up onto her back, and the four of them began to scramble down the pile of rubble that had formed around the wall. A large chunk had been taken out of the palace, and now lay scattered across the ground. So Jecham had really done it—blown up part of his home, and a bunch of his followers, just to get at her.

Stepping out of the smokey haze and into the battered courtyard, Saskia looked up at the far window where Jecham had been standing in her last vision. Grinning a toothy grin, she raised her good hand, and waved.

It wasn’t long before another hail of arrows came their way, followed soon after by a column of high elves on the ground. More and more of them poured through the gates, blocking her exit. At the fore stood dozens of quickdraws, whirling blades in intricate patterns that seemed to spell out her death.

Placing Velandir gently on the ground, she limped toward them.

Oh yeah, there was an arrow in her knee, wedged between two plates of duanum. Guess my adventuring days are over, she thought wryly.

“We wish to parley,” she said.

The high elves did not seem amused. They charged at her, bellowing war cries.

“No?” she said. “Oh well. It was worth a try…”

The ground began to heave violently, courtesy of both Kveld and Ruhildi. The quickdraws somehow managed to maintain their charge; feet barely touching the ground as they swept forward. Behind them, their mundane brethren sprawled on their butts.

Here we go again, she thought, as she prepared to unleash her wild magic. Then she hesitated. A thought had suddenly occurred to her. Without even consciously deciding to do it, she switched from releasing her essence to drawing it in. There were dozens upon dozens of essence sources around her: the arlium shards embedded in the quickdraws’ wrist and ankle bracers. She drew upon them all, just as her father had taught her. It was a complex process—there were so many separate channels, and each of them were so tiny—but in this moment, she knew she could do it. And so she did.

Some of the quickdraws halted in their tracks. Others kept coming—and began to stumble. Still others sprawled in the dirt. Slender streams of arlium spilled forth from their bracers. Hundreds of slender amber threads, writhing and coalescing in the air.

All of them flowing into her.

She slammed the off button on all of them at once. And in that instant, dozens of super-soldiers became harmless pussycats, unable to stand up straight.

A few minutes later, a trio of invisible assassins lunging at her from the shadows met the same fate.

Now she brought out the wild magic. It probably wasn’t doing much for her image, but she couldn’t suppress the cackle of delight at the elves’ bewildered expressions as they beheld their sparkly new purple armour. Sadly, the colour change wouldn’t be permanent.

After that, their passage through the city was slow, but steady. Velandir stirred and awoke, but Saskia waved him off when he tried to cast another web of shadows over them.

“Let them see us,” she said. “This battle is already over.”

Indeed, the high elves seemed to have finally cottoned on to the fact that she didn’t want to kill them—but could if she had to. And so they kept their distance.

At the city centre was a statue of a long-dead high elf hero, carved out of pure arlium. For a moment, she considered absorbing the whole thing, and from Ruhildi’s hungry eyes, she could tell her friend had the same thought. Then Saskia grinned at her, and brought her will to bear on the statue’s face.

Ruhildi chuckled at the sight of the handlebar moustache that had spread across the statue’s upper lip. “Do human males truly wear those?”

“They were popular in the nineteen dicketies,” said Saskia.

As they stepped away from the statue, she saw that there was a procession coming toward them from the palace. A column of armoured soldiers dragged a struggling, bedraggled elf between them.

“We offer this as tribute,” said the legate, Illiur. She recognised him from her vision. “Do with it as you will. We ask that you cease your attack, and accept our unconditional surrender.”

“Don’t think this is over, traitors!” gasped their prisoner. “You will all—”

The legate’s steel boot drove into his face. He sprawled in the dirt, gasping and retching.

Imperator Jecham the Absolute spat blood from between broken teeth, and glared up at her.