“You’re late,” Althyr scolded Coyote. They’d been waiting for this for days while the people on the ground messed around with tricks and information gathering, yet Coyote was more than an hour late after the big showdown started? The viewing party was his idea! “What kept you?”

Coyote rolled his eyes and settled down on the rug in front of Althyr. His fur was matted and Althyr saw some blood; that was unusual, even alarming. It looked like the other Beast-God had a good reason for his delay.

“The Empire has a new dog-catcher,” Coyote grumbled. “I didn’t expect her. She didn’t expect me either; she thought she’d caught something small. I had to show her some tricks. She has no idea how I managed it, at least, but I think she knows I got into their messages. Bad news there; they know about the Library, and they’ve made the connection to the Repositories. Good news is that they’re pretty sure their highest ranking local agent is dead or defected, so they can’t do much about it. Seems that he’s been out of contact since the early attacks.”

“Must have been quite a fight.” Althyr hadn’t seen Coyote in such a state in decades. Come to think of it … “Wasn’t the last time you got hit like that also the last time the Empire changed dog-catchers?”

Coyote grumbled and nibbled at the matted fur on his tail for a moment before he looked up at Althyr. “Yeah. It’s best if they see me run away hurt once.” Magic swelled around the Beast-God; moments later, he stood on all four legs and looked as if he were freshly groomed. “Makes them feel good.”

Althyr shook his head at his old friend and his tricks. “I prefer to make it clear where we stand. They don’t have dragon-catchers.”

Coyote barked in amusement. “And that’s why you come to me when you need something done secretly. If you went in, they’d know you have an interest in that young dragon of yours. Speaking of, how are things going for him?”

Althyr waved at the scrying image. “Not great. They failed to stop the Hollow One ritual from activating and it partially caught a couple of his allies. No full conversions yet, but they’re both spellwarped. They also haven’t managed to kill any yet; their best candidate for that was one of the two caught, and it warped his Affinity.” Althyr paused, then grinned. “You’ll have to shift to another form before I share my popcorn. I’m not letting you drool on it all again.”

A bucket of heavily buttered popcorn appeared in front of Coyote. “Guess I’ll just have to eat it all then.” He stuck his muzzle inside the bucket as he spoke.

Althyr checked the spot next to him where his popcorn was when Coyote walked in and sighed. How much of that presentation was specifically so that Coyote could steal the popcorn? He’d probably never know, but at least it was fixable. Althyr reached out and grabbed another of the popcorn buckets he’d prepared for the show and preserved, perfectly piping hot.

He was able to grab exactly one handful of popcorn before the bucket vanished and reappeared next to Coyote. “Stop stealing my popcorn!”

“I don’t see your name on it. It does have my, what did you say, drool.”Coyote took a large bite out of the popcorn on top of the new bucket. “Very nice, this is perfect.”

Althyr shook his head and called for another bucket. This time, it had ALTHYR emblazoned across the bucket in several places. It was easier to go along with Coyote’s silliness than to try to fight it. This time, the bucket didn’t disappear after the first handful of popcorn.

When he looked up at the image, Serenity was fighting a Hollow One. There were a couple of others in the picture, but they were both being managed by the people behind Serenity; Althyr didn’t care about any of them. The only other people in Serenity’s group that Althyr cared about were safely on the surface; they’d be able to run if the ritual reached far enough. Serenity couldn’t; Althyr already knew that there were Hollow Ones between him and the exits. A portal would get the young dragon out, but Althyr already knew Serenity wasn't going to ask his Sterath follower to make one here. It just wasn't in him to abandon his allies. Althyr approved, though he wished Serenity was a bit more cautious.

Each time Serenity swung, a piece came off the Hollow One in front of him. He was faster than the creature, and for some reason the Hollow One wasn’t healing the way Althyr knew it should be. He usually handled them by complete obliteration; they couldn’t heal from a state of nonexistence. Serenity clearly didn’t think he could manage that and he was probably right, but why wasn’t it reattaching the parts as soon as they were cut off?

“How is he doing that? I know the Death Affinity won’t do that to those things.” Coyote’s words echoed Althyr’s thoughts.

“He’s not using his Death Affinity.” The smug comment came from Althyr’s right.

Althyr’s head swung towards the voice. There wasn’t anyone else in his study, he knew that; who could that be?

A pale, dark-haired woman wearing a long black robe with the cowl pulled back to hang loosely behind her head stood next to him. Her hair was the same color as her robe; once it was past the obvious cowl, Althyr had a hard time telling how long it was. She wore heavy black makeup, especially around her eyes. The silver bauble she wore on a necklace that peeked out of her robe was clearly for its appearance; it held no power other than her own.

The power she radiated was familiar but it still took Althyr a moment to reconcile the power with the lowered hood and altered voice. “Death?”

Death inclined her head. “Would you share some of that popcorn? I’ve heard good things about it, but I’ve never had any.”

Althyr couldn’t take any more shocks today. He pulled out another bucket of fresh popcorn and handed it to Death. It was a good thing he’d made more than enough while he waited for the attack to start.

What was with this decade? It seemed like the past few years were full of one surprise after another. The next thing he knew, Serenity would be solving the Age-old issue of dragon reproduction; that would be a real shock. A happy one, but still a sign of things changing too fast for Althyr’s comfort.

The last time things changed this fast, they seemed positive at first. The time before, as well.

Serenity infused his Solar Affinity into his manablade and started trying to see what worked. He already knew it wouldn’t heal as quickly, even if he wasn’t quite sure why. He could worry about the why later.

Deep cuts into the Hollow One weren’t very productive; even though they were slow to heal, they did heal and they didn’t seem to have to heal in sequence. They probably took more power to heal, but the Hollow One didn’t seem to have a mana shortage.

No, the way to go was definitely cutting it into pieces. The first time he did that, he kicked the Hollow One’s hand away and kept fighting. Moments later, he felt a slight hint of Death from the direction he’d knocked the hand; just as importantly, the Hollow One hadn’t yet regrown its hand.

The Hollow One moved sharply, twisting its body in a way that should have been impossible; the body was flexible but ribs shouldn’t squish like that. It caught Serenity by surprise and thumped him in the chest with a punch from its armless hand.

Serenity was knocked backwards about ten feet. He pulled himself to his feet; he needed to be up with the creature, not back near Gabriel. His job was holding off the Hollow One.

“That looked like it hurt! Do you need healing?” Gabriel seemed to have forgotten that he couldn’t actually heal right now.

Serenity shook his head and found that he had to force a breath before he could speak. “No, I’m fine.” The blow hadn’t even knocked the wind out of him. That was actually a little odd; he’d had to gasp to speak, but he wasn’t feeling it the way he remembered a hard blow making it difficult to breathe in his pre-undead days. As time went on, he was reminded more and more of his time as a relatively fresh conscious undead; the only big difference seemed to be his healing.

Admittedly, that was a huge difference.

Serenity ran back towards the Hollow One. It’d only taken two steps towards them, but that was two steps in the wrong direction. As he ran, he started to feel the burn of an invasive spell on his scales. Serenity growled softly and pushed back against it; his Arcane Affinity flowed across his scales and the prickling sensation eased. He’d need to keep it there until he was sure the effect was truly gone. It was another annoying drain on his mana.

More importantly, he needed to avoid having that happen again. He’d need to fight even more carefully.

Serenity stayed back at the edge of his range and made the Hollow One move in on him while hitting it only with the tip of his manablade. It wasn’t the strategy he preferred, but it gave him a moment to feel out his opponent and see if he was going to make more unnatural motions.

The answer was yes; the Hollow One moved like bones were a suggestion instead of solid, but it punched as if they were solid. Serenity simply kept moving out of the way. It really wasn’t his preferred style of fighting; Serenity preferred to take the hits and keep pounding. Against this Hollow One, though, that wasn’t a great option. He’d found that a lot since coming back in time; he felt so much more fragile than he once had, even though he knew he was incredibly sturdy for his Tier.

Serenity dodged around a strike and found himself to the side of the Hollow One. It was the perfect position to take its left arm at the shoulder, so he did. The arm bounced off the Hollow One’s knee, so Serenity grabbed it and flung it behind him before it could attach itself. His hand tingled like his chest had earlier; the magic of the Hollow One was clearly not gone.

This was too slow. One Hollow One was slowly forcing Serenity backwards and there were three here; if it kept up at this rate, they’d never get to the ritual. Worse, Serenity knew there had to be a lot more Hollow Ones throughout the base. They were probably wandering at random until they saw someone to attack; that was the only positive thing about the entire situation. If they were lucky, the other Hollow Ones weren’t between the group and the ritual, but Serenity couldn’t count on that.

The Hollow One charged him and tried to knock him over with its weight. Serenity started to move out of the way, then realized he couldn’t afford to do that. Gabriel wasn’t close behind him, but there were still probably only ten or fifteen feet separating them, ten if Gabriel hadn’t backed up. The healer couldn’t go back too far and keep reinforcing the Ice Wall he had up to keep the last Hollow One from joining the fight.

Serenity couldn’t move but he also couldn’t afford to just be bowled over by the Hollow One. He brought his sword up and tried to slice it in half; he was strong enough and fast enough, but it was going to take a lot of mana to keep the manablade live.

Two pieces of Hollow One hit Serenity separately. He stumbled but kept his feet. The next thing to do was to cut off the hands where they would surely grab him.

Wait, why didn’t the Hollow One grab him?

Lillene

There are several ways to kill Hollow Ones. The three most common are “cut them off from their source of magic/healing then hit them until they stay dead”, “cut them into itty bitty pieces and keep them from rejoining”, and “blast them until there isn’t anything to regenerate”. I’ve mentioned each of these over the past few chapters.

They’re hoping to get to the ritual to do #1; Serenity has figured out how to do #2 but it’s very slow. The Final Reaper used to do #3 (and it’s Althyr’s preference as well).