"Order Departs!"

A wash of purple-gold Mana swept over them all, and Gabby gagged in blessed relief from the pressure. She craned her neck to see Elowen, hovering in midair as she lifted her thick arms upwards, rejecting the Elementals' fallen weight.

“Dear god, you’re heavy!” The creature was pushed up off Gabby’s armor by trembling inches, enough for her to move.

“Everyone, get ready to run!” Gabby canceled her Raiment. Immediately, the Legionaries fell, tumbling onto the broken stone of the collapsed wall. She, too, fell hard, Vess at her side.

"Go!" the general hissed. "Get out of here!"

The Legionaries didn't argue. They ran, fleeing away from the Elemental that still stood above them, struggling against Elowen's might. Gabby spat blood, taking Vess’ hand as they stood up on the collapsed pile of masonry. The Swamp Elemental was held above them, coated in a layer of purple-gold, but it wasn’t enough.

Defy Me Not, Scum!

The voice wasn’t much more than a whisper, but it echoed across Hevaan louder than any explosion. Gabby flinched like she’d been punched in the gut. She knew that voice.

“Marzul…” she growled.

The night pulsed. Shadow across the sky gleamed in hidden light, an oil spill that rippled across every Elemental in sight. The Swamp Elemental screamed—not a potent bellow, but a howl of primal terror—as dark tendrils fused around its stony arm like muscle. It bulged, a flexing serpent that forced the Elemental’s fist down. Elowen’s knees buckled, slamming down into the ramparts. She screamed right back, blood pouring from her nose, her power not slacking in the slightest.

"We have to help," Gabby said, climbing to her feet. "Vess, get her out of there! I—"

Vess gasped. "Blind gods.”

The Theron Unbound burst into incandescent light. “Core Manifestation: Tome of the Witness!”

The world shifted—not far, but all at once. Gabby nearly lost her footing as she was drawn

fractionally toward the power that radiated from Elowen. Purple-gold coated her, a gleaming shell of Mana that thickened from molasses into something hard and crystalline.

The shadow screeched as it pressed the Elemental’s limb lower. That crystalline radiance pressed back. Elowen, blood pouring from her face and hand shaking, stood up.

The shadow quaked.

"Thank you, Marzul. For being so easy to read.” She smiled through bloody teeth. “Chaos Beckons!"

The Elemental was pulled forward, its balance shifted unexpectedly. It fell, arm careening elbow-first into the wall, collapsing another portion of it, but twisting the Elemental around entirely.

"Order Departs!"

The Elemental spun, its gargantuan bulk used against it even as shadow tendrils lashed outward. They latched onto the wall, crushing stone and metal beneath its scrabbling fury.

“No.” Elowen flipped her hand, and her power sent loosened stones tumbling.

The tendrils slipped. Telekinetic magic twisted it around, crashing it into the wall and bouncing off to the right. The Elemental gave a strangled yowl, and it fell into the watery muck outside.

Vess gave a breathless laugh. "It seems she needed less help than we did. Yin!"

The Dawn Wyrm flew by, and Vess followed, soaring off toward the downed Swamp Elemental. "We have this! Stop the rest, Gabby!"

While a part of her ached to put her finger in Marzul’s eye, the bigger piece of her was grateful for the reprieve. Wearily, Gabby looked back to Beef and the battlefield that the outer parts of the city had become.

Elementals raged amongst the buildings, while Legionnaires hemmed them in with their concerted Skills. Ground-shaking attacks uprooted the Earth Elementals, and burning blades sliced through charging Ice Elementals—but only the Lesser and Minor variations. The Major Elementals were overpowering all but the largest Talons, with only the Legion’s numbers putting a stop to their attacks. But they did stop.

No one was dying.

Nearer to hand, an explosion of blackened green light tore through the staging grounds. Beef lurched back, waving away smoke. “Gabby! Look!”

The Earth Elemental he'd captured had gone crazy, writhing on the ground beneath heavily layered chitin restraints. Several Risen Exults were flung off, but more jumped on, their Bodies gleaming with Beef's power.

"It's right here! The connection between the Elementals and the Dwarves. It's like—" Beef panted, unable to catch his breath. “—It's like my Risen, at least conceptually. There's a link, and there's something that facilitates the link. The sigaldry is doing a lot of work to hold it all together.”

“Oaths are gone," Hallow said from beside him, as if that explained everything. "They are working with something else entirely here.”

“A workaround, yeah.”

“How do we free them?” Gabby demanded.

“We gotta break the sigaldry. But not all of it—they’ll go into shock otherwise! Here."

The Risen Exults flipped the stone Elemental onto its back. The false Dragon snapped its jaws, but the Multipede leaned against its head, holding it still, as its chest was uncovered from chitin bands. Beef reached out, prying back stone plates to reveal a wash of blackened green energy.

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"There," he said, pointing to the center, where a tangle of glyphs rotated atop a construct in the thing's chest. "Break this sigaldry, the whole slave array falls apart."

He reached out, chitin sheathing his fingers like claws, and sliced through the glyphs. Marred, they immediately started spraying Mana, like a sundered heart. Necromantic Mana pooled, funneled there by the array all around it, and it emptied itself, pouring straight upward in a cloud that congealed into a wail of compressed screams. It faded, and the Elemental went slack in its bonds.

The Multipede stood up, and the false Dragon didn't snap at anyone. It looked around, blearily, before it fell on its side. Exhausted, but alive.

"Yes!" Gabby said, pushing energy into her slacked limbs. She stood straight, no matter how low her Mana had gotten.

Hallow pointed at the sleeping Elemental. "Aim for the glyphs. It's going to be center mass every time."

"On it," Shadow said from above. Gabby hadn’t even noticed the Kobold, despite his new, rangier Body. In a blur, the dark Kobold took off across the buildings, heading deeper into the city.

He took aim and fired.

Arrows ripped through the streets, faster than gunfire, bashing into two Ice Elementals. Their frozen hides shattered, pieces no bigger than a quarter opening up across their broad backs. Sigaldry gleamed, exposed by those small wounds—a ready target for the second volley.

Shadow fired true once again, and like puppets with their strings cut, the bestial Elementals crashed into the paved streets. His brother followed his example, as vines and brilliant blossoms swelled across avenues, cutting off three Major Elementals as they chased the Legionnaires. Legs tangled, limbs splayed, their backs and chests were broken open by poisonous darts the size of swords. They fell into twitching unconsciousness.

As if aware, the Elementals turned on Beef and the Inscriptionists, rushing down the streets en masse. Legionnaires were left alone, and the hiding townsfolk were abandoned. They converged on the staging grounds, shadow Mana trailing from their forms in dark streamers.

Beef strode forward, ahead of the Inscriptionists, clad in Hallow’s crystalline armor. “I’m sorry. This should only hurt a little.” He raised his hands. “Entropic Paradigm.”

Power rolled from Beef’s feet, directed by an unflinching Intent as it swept forward through the cut stone streets. Chitin surged, piercing upward beneath the charging horde and stabbing through every single Elemental arrayed against him. It wasn’t enough to greatly wound any of them, let alone kill them. It was only a scratch.

That was all they needed.

Glyphs screamed, the release of necromantic Mana venting in hissing sprays from a hundred different Bodies. The Elementals collapsed.

"If that's all it is, then I got the big one!” Archie ran through the crowd. "Primeval Conduit!"

Like a fish into water, Archie vanished without a splash. Gabby had seen it before, but it awed her just the same. The man appeared above a house, launched from its tiled roof and into an arc through the night…before he struck another building and sank into its surface. Gabby could only barely sense his location through the sheer terror she felt in his Spirit. Faster than she expected, he shot up the wall, emerging from the battlements in a rush that sent him skyward, up in another arc that headed towards the greater Elemental outside.

Gabby leapt atop the wall once again, following Archie’s descent into chaos. Vess and Yin circled the Swamp Elemental, bathing it with storming Spears and the Wyrm’s brilliant breath. The Elemental was not idle—it swung on the pair even as it struggled to stand—but its strikes were met by cushions of purple-gold Mana that foiled its aim again and again. Elowen stood shakily on the battlements, her gaze distant and her face bloodier than ever. As Gabby watched, the Theran mage gasped, her power cutting short.

The Elemental slammed a wide palm into Yin’s chest.

The Wyrm fell, crashing into the water. Vess followed, though not before peppering the Elemental with her Spears.

Archie howled. “Time’s up, bog bitch!”

He dropped from the sky, faster than gravity could account for, dagger held before him as if it were going to break his fall. With a contemptuous flick of its wrist, the Greater Elemental swung at the man—but Archie sailed straight through its stone fist, falling across its body like a comet, unerringly headed for its chest.

The Swamp Elemental trembled and shook, clawing at its chest as darkness pulled at its fetid construction. Bursts of necromantic Mana fired from its rocky crevasses, pouring out like blood as pieces of its slave array broke and fell. Distantly, Gabby felt a flare of Will and a presence that shocked her with its potency. All at once, the Greater Swamp Elemental stiffened.

It fell. The water parted beneath it, splashing once again up Hevaan’s walls, only this time, it carried almost no Elementals at all.

Archie emerged from its chest, panting and wet with unnameable fluids. He coughed. "Oh God, that was horrible."

Gabby leaned over the crenelations. “Is it—?”

Blearily, he looked back up its island-sized chest. “It’ll be fine. I think.”

Gabby grinned. They were going to do it. They—Gabby started. “Watch out!”

The Delven yelped as shadow congealed around his heels, but he leapt up, flaring his Primeval Conduit. It swam him through the air just ahead of its grasping coils. Behind him, the Greater Elemental was seized by occluded bands of darkness. They clung to it, an oily vapor that dragged it deeper into the water and the muck below.

Vess and Yin emerged, dripping but brilliant as the luminescence of a stormfront clad their limbs. All around them, the creatures they freed were grabbed by the same power. Divine power.

“She is doing something,” Vess hissed. “We need to stop the shadow!”

Gabby gave it no thought—she leapt down onto the Greater Elemental, Heliacal Blaze surging as she hit. The golden light blasted apart the shadow where she touched it, but more came—far more than had clung to the Elementals so far. It flashed, flaring through her blaze and hurling her free of the Elemental's Body as frost snapped across its form.

Warning!

Your Health Has Dropped To 40%!

Instead of hitting the water, her back crashed onto thick ice before she slid up and through a frozen wave. All around them, the surface of the false lake had gone solid as darkness poured upward in a gelid rush. Elementals from Lesser to Major were trapped within its embrace, many still fully under control. Yet their Bodies splintered, cracked, as darkness poured from one to the next. The Elementals died, their bodies riddled with shadow and frost.

A vast pop of displaced air hit them like a soft mattress, shoving Gabby back across the ice along with the others. In place of the Greater Elemental, a corpse of broken pieces released a wave of shadow that darkened the night. The waning moon and stars vanished for five entire seconds…before the dark was gone entirely.

The night went quiet, and the stars returned. Gabby stood on the ice, staring at the remains of enslaved Elementals all around.

"That spiteful asshole.” Gabby cursed. Marzul was nothing if not consistent—if she couldn't control the Elementals, then no one could.

Vess landed beside her, her face equally twisted into anger. She set her hand on Gabby's forearm, and though it was gentle, the woman couldn't help but flinch.

"We'll make her pay for this, too."

Gabby grunted. "Damn straight we will.”

Yin landed at the side, too bright in the dark. “All of this was a trap, meant to weaken us and drain our resources."

Vess nodded. "If that's what she wishes to do, then we can play her game.”

Gabby frowned. “What do you mean?"

"She built a trap for us, yes? It is time, then, to build one of our own."