Julia and the elves bolted out of the treeline atop the water, Julia sprinting behind the elves to the sound of a ruckus far behind them. The elves rode their raqsalin, just as graceful as before her modifications, but now leaving a trail of ice behind them.

  As Julia followed, she further reinforced the ice below her feet, lowering the temperature and making the ice as strong as she could while she ran.

  They had planned this sprint to the marsh around the barges they could see, so they proceeded unmolested.

  This was her plan for dealing with the undead under the water. They weren’t a threat if they couldn’t attack, right? The ice should also obscure their life energy, making it harder to spot them from below the water.

  Julia had carved a simple ?????? (Freeze) instruction into the bottom of their raqsalin. She wasn’t even close to being skilled enough to integrate the runes into the existing inscription, so she had to settle for carving it separate from the others.

  Effectively, the raqsalin pushed water behind them to propel the wearers forward. Julia simply added her inscription after that effect to freeze the water being pushed away. It wasn’t perfect, as the ice that was formed was not very thick and only extended about a stride around them, but it was good enough for their purposes.

  The other downside was that while the raqsalins’ enchantments were simple and elegant enough to function solely on ambient mana, Julia’s freeze enchantment required mana from the user—not much, but still some. This placed a time limit on how long one could use them, but it was more than manageable for a quick jaunt to the marsh interior.

  Julia could hear the sounds of a commotion from behind as they ran. The other part of her plan had come from her pondering the circumstances leading to the previous conflict. A great plume of smoke had attracted a large number of undead to its location. The more she thought about it, the more it sounded like a perfect diversion.

  However, she knew just from her brief interaction with it that the felllord was intelligent enough to recognize a simple diversion. She’d have to get crafty, which was where her new Skill informed her. She had a theory that she’d been testing the past few hours with the skeletons around the swamp.

  Taln?r had described her as “radiating life like a torch,” so she theorized that, considering her body was formed from her mana, her mana must possess traces of whatever that “life energy” that both the elves and nashiin could see was. And, with the culmination of all her Class Skills from Arcane Demi-Spirit, she now had an unprecedented degree of control over her body, mana, and domain.

  She spent a few hours casting part of her domain (which just meant “grabbing” the mana in the cloud outside her body and sending it to a location) close to the unmoving skeletons beneath the swamp water. They all, without exception, awoke and attacked the cloud of mana. That told her whatever the undead looked for in living bodies, they could find in her mana alone—or maybe it was there because her mana was her body. Whatever.

  She had gone to a section of the swamp a few journeys from the marsh’s edge and begun her work, apologizing to the trees she was carving all the while, and infusing a portion of her mana into the carvings. The trees were strong; they should last at least a few hours, even with her mana running through their bark.

  The enchanting was the most complicated she’d ever done. She essentially had to carve out a template of the enchantment into the tree, as the actual effect she wanted would be created using Mana Runes. She was creating an enchantment to create a separate enchantment out of mana runes…which was not easy.

  What she designed was a very simple illusion, the only differentiator being that she was going to use the mana she infused into the trees to create the illusion, thus giving it the life energy that the undead so craved.

  The enchantments would be cascading, each activating another—what was it Braden had called methods like this? Daisy-chaining? The kick off would be the fire; she was going to carve a very simple incineration enchantment into a cluster of trees that would start the chain of illusions. Once the trees burned down to stumps, the nearest illusion would be activated.

  The real cleverness was that she was enchanting each illusion to cascade into the next, but they would all circle back around—meaning that, left to its own devices, the illusion chain would continue perpetually until the bark that the templates were carved into burned out, or the mana she’d stored did—whichever happened first.

  “Or that…that’d interrupt my enchantments,” Julia thought as a huge plume of purple fire burst from the forest several journeys behind them. The felllord must’ve tired of the illusions; the thought made Julia smile. The smile quickly fell away as the ice just behind her cracked and smashed, a great behemoth pulling itself up through the hole.

  “Hah…go figure,” she exhaled, slowing to a stop. She had a sneaking suspicion this stalker was going to show up. She was tired of him.

  “My Lord dislikes this swamp; he grows disinterested and underestimates you as a result. I will not. You will join our ranks and contribute to our cause,” the black knight rasped as he rose to his feet. He stood straight and tall, a towering colossus that struck fear into Julia’s heart, already gripping the handle of his flail in his right hand.

  “You know, all I’ve ever done is run,” Julia said calmly as she slowly turned around.

  The elves, whose raqsalin had carried them farther away, began to circle back.

  “Back when my parents died. Back in Rockyknoll. When I first encountered you. When we fought the second time. When I confronted your Lord. I was even forced to flee against my will by the Abyssal creature that teleported me. It’s all I’ve ever done, run—survive,” she said while drawing her sword, slowly and methodically.

  “But you know what? I’m starting to think survival isn’t the only thing that matters.” The elves jumped out of their glide and skidded to a stop just behind Julia, who was staring the knight in the eyes, sword held beside her waist, and quickly removed their raqsalin.

  “What’s the point of surviving if everyone I’ve ever cared about dies? What’s the point of surviving if you have nothing that allows you to live?” The elves drew their weapons, taking up positions around Julia.

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  “I’m strong. I’ve earned my strength. I’ve been tested over and over, and I’ve survived.” Sahira stood in front of Julia and slammed her Motherwood shield down, fracturing the ice where it impacted.

  “And you know what?” Nadhem drew his shortbow, his right thumb and two fingers gripping an arrow he knocked while his back two fingers gripped the hilt of a Motherwood dagger in his palm.

  “I think I’m finished surviving.” Taln?r gripped his staff with white-knuckles, a golden glow emanating from him, encircling the party. They felt invigorated, as though their bodies were suddenly filled with energy.

  “I think I’m ready to start living,” Julia finished, bringing her sword up in front of her. A crackle of blood-red lightning flared along the blade, and a shining shield of crimson water covered her body.

  “...You will make a thol’gurat,” the knight rumbled, “to rival all others.” It held its flail up to waist level, prepared.

  There was a tense moment of silence, where it felt like even the world itself was holding its breath.

  The knight burst forward with a strength that broke and splintered the ice beneath its feet. Its flail started spinning on its right, but it lowered its shoulder as it charged, intending to plough straight into Sahira’s shield.

  Sahira braced, Julia put her shoulder into Sahira’s back to reinforce her, and the other two split off to either side just as the knight collided with the shield. The force sent both Sahira and Julia skidding back a stride or two—ice was not the ideal setting for melee combat.

  Trixy fired off Julia like a bolt of lightning, attaching herself to the knight's helmet. She hissed and sent a great torrent of yellow lightning arcing down the knight’s armor. It reared back from the shield it was pushing and grabbed Trixy with a giant mitt of metal, throwing her away. So great was its strength that she sailed far off the ice and into the marsh water.

  Nadhem loosed an arrow that ricocheted off its helmet, discharging some kind of golden light reminiscent of Taln?r’s magic. The knight shook its head as though slightly disoriented before shifting its weight into a half-spin, flinging the mace head of the flail into Sahira’s shield.

  Julia quickly pressed her hands into Sahira’s back, drawing water from the ice below her up her body until it attached to the surface of her shield. The mace cracked against the water-covered shield, making Sahira, and Julia—whom she stumbled back into, grunt. The shield seemed no worse for wear, but the mana cost for absorbing even some of that strike was significant.

  Julia’s little stunt with illusions in the swamp had taken a full third of her mana, so she was already starting at a disadvantage. She’d have to make her mana count, but she was also not alone this time.

  Sahira staggered back under the weight of the flail but shrugged the shield, sending the head of the flail off to the side. She stepped into the knight’s guard while it was still disoriented by Nadhem’s arrow and smashed the side of its helmet with her mace. The helmet went flying off to the side, skidding across the ice.

  Julia gasped as the now-headless knight casually recovered and grabbed Sahira by the front of her cuirass with its free hand. A dread aura surrounded Sahira, and the golden glow that previously encircled her winked out like a snuffed candle. She staggered suddenly, as though she’d lost all her energy.

  Julia dove forward and slammed her sword into the arm holding Sahira, discharging a spark of red lightning into its armor. At the same time, she melted the ice under the flail’s head, sending it down into the depths of the marsh while she slammed the pommel of her sword onto the knight’s flail-hand. Another arc of crimson lightning detached the flail from its hand, sending the entire weapon deep below, while Julia stepped back—dragging Sahira with her.

  “Its fell curse has robbed me of my strength,” Sahira spat, staggering a little.

  “Just keep the shield up; it’s almost over,” Julia said, her tone confident—though she only hoped that was true.

  Nodding, Sahira stood firm and ground her shield into the ice once again. The knight looked at its empty hand—a curious thing, being that it lacked a head. It reached behind it and drew its huge sword. Julia could also hear pounding from below the ice—the undead below had stirred. The fight must’ve drawn their attention.

  The clock was ticking; it was time—all or nothing. The party exchanged knowing looks, and the knight charged. A cloud of black energy billowed out of it, surrounding it with an aura that spoke of certain death. Taln?r cast a wide-range spell that covered the entire iced-area in a golden glow, lessening the effects of the aura, though not eliminating it.

  The party’s movements became slower when the aura touched them, but there was nothing for it but to keep going.

  The sword slammed down onto the shield, the ice beneath Sahira making distressing cracking noises as she grunted. The knight drew back and leveled a horizontal slash to his side, having seen Nadhem coming.

  Nadhem threw himself to his knees and bent backward until he was sliding on the ice almost completely on his back, underneath the slash. He sprang to his feet and drove his Motherwood knife into the gap between the knight’s plates under the arm.

  At the same time, Trixy came streaking through the air and latched onto the knight’s back, blasting it with as much lightning as she could muster.

  Nadhem released the dagger, leaving it caught between the plates under the arm, and grabbed one of its arms, holding it in place. Sahira released her shield and lunged forward, grabbing the knight’s other arm and holding it.

  Julia stepped onto Sahira’s back and vaulted off her cuirass, grabbing onto the knight’s shoulders and slamming her arm, wreathed in blood-red lightning, into its torso through the neck hole. It had to have a core of some kind in there.

  Her arm pierced through what was undoubtedly a shield made of some kind of “death” magic, but her consumption lightning punched right through it. She grabbed a…strand of flesh—that’s what it felt like. There were strings of flesh stuck to the inside of the cuirass like a spider’s web. It wasn’t the core itself, but it was good enough.

  “Aaaahhh! Your Lord wasn’t the only one who underestimated us!” Julia screamed through gritted teeth as she channeled as much mana as she could without passing out through her arm. The lightning streaked down her arm and into the knight, melting the metal and sublimating the flesh inside. She felt her lightning hit a central point in its torso shrouded by that death energy—its core, most likely.

  The lightning flooded the crystal suspended within fleshy tendrils until it shattered. A great scraping sounded from the knight, and it thrashed around like a creature gone mad. Julia pulled her arm out of the metal and was thrown from the knight in its fit. The others backed off as well. It fell to the ground and thrashed for a few seconds before falling still.

  Julia usually kept her notifications minimized while in combat, but she pulled this one up specifically, for it was what she’d been wanting to see for over a week.

  “It…is ended? A fell captain has been vanquished! Dahm'Zahra, you’ve done it!” Nadhem exclaimed in triumph.

  “We’ve done it. Now, hurry! The undead pound on the ice even now, and we must not be here when the felllord comes to investigate!” Julia said, grabbing raqsalin and throwing them to the elves.

  Trixy wrapped around Julia, and they took off into the marsh.

  Reaching Veshari was only the beginning.

  The entire swamp still groaned beneath the weight of the dead.

  END OF BOOK 1