"Hexagram Formation — now!"
The five moved without hesitation to their positions. The Rhomb-Star Frames on their chests flared white, connecting — six points of light linking into a single structure.
"We walk upon this earth as the Prime Lord wills, as though walking within the Lord's own domain. Our words are the Lord's words. Our deeds are the Lord's deeds."
The six voices joined as one. Holy light descended from above and entered all of them simultaneously, vast and channeled, then discharged forward in a single expanding fan. Every Bone Mammoth in its path vanished. The skeleton soldiers vanished. The hell-bats vanished.
The light carried forward until it reached the castle gate, where it faded — the last ten meters an empty white silence — and then was gone.
Alan had been inside it. He'd been certain he was about to die. Boll — face slightly tired, as if the working had cost something — looked at him and said: "You're an ally. The priest gave you a protective charm. The holy light won't harm you."
Alan let himself breathe again.
The black fog began to reassemble slowly, but nothing attacked. The Lich, it seemed, had decided there was no point sending more constructs to be destroyed.
In the tower above, Evan watched through a far-sight spell and felt cold. If he'd been standing in that fan of light, there would have been nothing left of him — not even ash.
He also saw Alan in the middle of the formation, and something bitter moved through him. He pressed it down. He'd had no reason to suspect Alan of anything — Ashton's memories held nothing against him — and Ashton's life had apparently been full of people who'd left or turned when it mattered. He'd known that. He'd just forgotten to apply the knowledge to himself.
He was glad he'd sent everyone away before he'd had a reason to.
The five walked to the castle gate and stopped just outside the gargoyles' activation range. They knew their craft.
Yaltu raised his voice: "Nicolai Ashton. Your repeated attacks on the Church's cathedrals have cost many lives. Divine wrath and human fury both demand answer. Today is the day of your reckoning."
"Ha! A pack of attack dogs. You've come to die — don't expect to leave."
With the laugh came fog, and wraiths moving in the fog, and a sound that wasn't quite a sound — pressure waves in the air, invisible blades of compressed force. The moment it reached their ears, the Inquisitors' expressions changed. Unease, nausea, a rising irritability.
They knew the spell. They clutched their Rhomb-Star Frames and chanted the holy name; a thin holy light rose and the discomfort faded. All of them recovered.
Alan didn't. The Lich's Howl hit him without the Frame's protection, and in the enclosed space it resonated and built. He heard it as a roar inside his skull, his vision going red at the edges, and then rational thought simply left — he screamed and ran straight at the castle.
He crossed the gargoyles' threshold. The gargoyles opened their eyes.
"No—" the shout came from somewhere behind him, and then the gargoyles were already down, the nearest one's claws opening above his head, and Alan raised his staff and pointed it and black fog started to emerge from the tip —
The claws arrived.
Alan's head ceased to be a head.
Kencelli's spear and Bogo's chain mace hit the gargoyle in the same second, from opposite sides. It screamed and came apart.
The five survivors were past words. They came through the gate in silence, fury doing the work that planning had been doing a moment before. The gargoyles that dropped from the rooftop were handled quickly — seconds, not the extended fight Evan might have hoped for — and then they were at the main door.
Bogo's chain mace hit it once. It opened.
The bar hadn't been replaced. Evan had left it unlatched deliberately — he wanted them inside, not standing in the open where their formations had room to breathe.
They moved in tight and fast, weapons ready. There was a small room to one side, a bronze cannon in it, pointing away from them. They looked at it and kept moving. Evan's cast no particular threat in a room you'd already passed.
Oil coated the floor of the main corridor — a Grease spell, spread thin. They felt their footing shift and steadied themselves without breaking pace, contempt rising in all of them. Small tricks. Was this the best the Lich could manage?
Two doors opened simultaneously to either side: gargoyles, these ones mobile and fast. In the slippery corridor, with no room to step cleanly, their movements were compromised. Kencelli read the angle, dropped his center low, and drove his spear through a gargoyle's chest before it could close — the holy light did the rest. The others handled the second with difficulty but without casualties, though the Grease had cost them dignity and a few bruises.
Then three bone walls rose ahead and to both sides, and the gargoyles kept coming, and Yaltu called for the Hexagram Formation —
Kencelli heard something behind him and turned.
Three skeleton soldiers had pushed the bronze cannon out of the side room. One of them held a lit torch to the fuse.
He had enough time to understand what was about to happen and enough time to jump, shouting a warning, interposing himself between the cannon and the others.
The gun fired.
The grapeshot spread across the corridor. Kencelli was closest — even his holy light couldn't absorb a broadside at that range. He was thrown into the bone wall behind him and didn't move again. The others took the spread's edges. Bogo, Boll, Bitzel went down in the first volley. Only Yaltu's speed saved him — he'd thrown himself flat the moment Kencelli shouted, and the main charge passed over him. He was still struck. Multiple wounds. Blood he couldn't stop.
He got his hand on a scroll, tore it open, and activated the teleportation.
The corridor was empty where Yaltu had been.
Evan, watching from the shadows, was briefly speechless. A teleportation scroll. Those cost thousands of gold pieces. The Prime Church, apparently, did not send its people out underfunded.
He walked into the aftermath. Boll still had a breath in him — one eye gone, limbs at wrong angles, the remaining eye full of hatred watching Evan approach.
"Don't look at me like that," Evan said. "I'm the one defending myself here. You came to kill me."
Boll produced something that wasn't quite a word. Then he was gone, and the look of terror that had been building behind the hatred never finished arriving.
Evan stood in the corridor for a moment. Then he went to find the one who had run.