I cast Slipstream and careened around the podium in the blink of an eye, positioning myself behind the gnoll. I expected a backstab and critical hit, but thrusting Creeper penetrated only empty air. Winterbyte’s Anticipate triggered, and its thin chime removed all uncertainty as to what had happened to my target. While it gladdened me to have it out of the way, I would have enjoyed delivering 100 points of damage more.

  Anticipate violently yanked the 8-foot tall gnoll to the side, where she performed an ability called Grab that seized my spear. A spear’s reach made them effective against beasts, but they fell prey to disarming maneuvers against prehensile opponents.

  I tried casting a quick Compression Sphere. All of my Animal Communions with Jasper had ranked up my nature magic to 19, so the spell might have enough kick to knock her into the aging field. It seemed a long shot, but bumping the 8-foot creature into the aura justified the attempt.

  Winterbyte thought so, too, and Counterspelled it.

  Fabulosa ran to her other side, so either she or I would receive a backstab bonus. She hadn’t used Slipstream because its path would have drawn her through the aging aura. It wasn’t clear if she would instantly age if she briefly passed through the invisible field, so she erred on the side of caution. Simple decisions like this showed her battlefield awareness. She knew the subtle difference between facing danger and taking unnecessary risks.

  Winterbyte had no intention of being flanked. When she yanked Creeper from my grasp, she almost threw me across the room, and I stumbled on the uneven floor. My strength numbered nearly half of my other stats, and the Exhaustion debuff hadn’t helped. While I recovered my footing, Winterbyte tossed my spear into the aging field and reached into a pouch.

  Without minions, Fabulosa and I stood to a two-on-one advantage. We didn’t need to be fancy. My primal spells packed slightly more punch without a weapon, so I launched a Scorch for 40 damage before pulling out a regular short sword.

  Once again, being disarmed reminded me to keep better backup weapons on my person. I’d blown through many of my cooldowns, but even a simple blade would help Fabulosa achieve a backstab bonus. Critical hits would help us in the endgame.

  As Fabulosa reached melee range, Winterbyte exposed another straw figure in her paws and spoke an incantation I didn’t understand. Her canine jowls caused her to lisp and hampered her hurried pronunciation.

  A plume of purple smoke erupted from the doll, and my body numbed. A familiar debuff icon appeared in my peripheral vision.

  She used another suppression mechanic that I recognized from my fight against the cacowight beneath Our Lady of Balance. My agility usually stood at 26, but the Exhaustion and Frozen Blood debuffs brought me to -7. Too slow to block or swing, the debuff removed me from the melee. I stiffened mid-step and toppled like a useless manikin on the crypt’s uneven floor.

  Winterbyte dropped another voodoo doll at her feet, and I could see, prone on the ground, that she had fashioned it in my likeness.

  Fabulosa didn’t bide her time. Her Compression Sphere sent a shockwave toward the gnoll as she ran. The vector would have pushed a medium-sized creature into the magic field surrounding the sarcophagus, but Winterbyte caught her balance and barely avoided dying of old age. Her hair, ears, whiskers, and tail bent in the air blast, and drool splattered across the ground.

  Fabulosa drew her Phantom Blade. Instead of deflecting the blow, Winterbyte ignored it, and the saber bit deeply into the gnoll’s shoulder for a critical hit.

  Winterbyte’s free arm caught Fabulosa’s sword arm.

  Somehow, our opponent’s reach, strength, and speed looked different. She wasn’t the middling melee fighter we had faced before. The combat log showed Winterbyte performing a maneuver called Overpowering Grapple.

  With one claw around Fabulosa’s sword arm, Winterbyte’s other reached to seize her neck.

  Fabulosa blocked the grab, and her paws enclosed around the mithril armor instead.

  A panicked fighter might have leveraged their leg to intercede in the hold—leg muscles always beat arms, but footing next to the deadly magic aura became more critical.

  I cast Detect Magic to see how far away the aura stood.

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  They stood briefly before Fabulosa’s strength gave way to her opponent’s.

  From her minions to the voodoo dolls, Winterbyte’s strategy hinged on taking me out so she could face Fabulosa one-on-one. And Winterbyte had all but succeeded.

  That I still lived to witness their struggle seemed to be my only victory. I lay on the ground, helpless. Barely five seconds elapsed in Frozen Blood.

  Fabulosa’s face twisted with effort as if losing an arm-wrestling match. Winterbyte bent my partner backward, causing Fabulosa to lose her footing.

  In this position, Fabulosa held onto her opponent more for support than leverage.

  Winterbyte performed another combat maneuver called Transpose, switching their positions. Now, the coffin’s magic aura lay behind my partner. The gnoll’s muscles shook as she pushed Fabulosa toward the sarcophagus. Fabulosa’s 50 percent boost in health from my new commander power, Protector, couldn’t have gone unnoticed. But health pools wouldn’t be a factor if the gnoll killed her with old age.

  The gnoll braced its feet against the uneven ground and pushed Fabulosa toward it.

  Fabulosa’s legs kicked helplessly, and her hair rustled in a whoosh of air as she tried to use Slipstream to escape. The combat log registered the spell’s failure because of her Grappled condition. The panicked move fizzled the magic, preventing her from casting it for five minutes.

  Fabulosa grunted under the strain of the hold. The gnoll braced her footing, tightened her grip, and lurched toward the aura.

  I could do nothing with my body, but Frozen Blood hadn’t hindered my spellcasting potential. It hadn’t stopped me against the cacowight, so it shouldn’t stop me here.

  I opened my interface to stop time. None of my spells would bear on our struggle, and Frozen Blood shut down my combat abilities. I looked at my available spell list in the dim hope I’d ranked up a magic school high enough to unlock a new choice.

  The menu offered nothing new, but one spell promised a reprieve. I spent one of my power points on Move Object. This telekinesis magic only worked on small objects, but that’s all I needed. I opened my character inventory and selected the silver cylinder that deactivated the deadly aura.

  When I cast the spell, I lifted the cylinder into the air with my mind and inserted it into the podium-shaped projection nearby. The cylinder clicked into the hole without a sound. I’d cut it a little close—the invisible magic field disappeared inches from Fabulosa’s head. Neither grappler knew I’d deactivated the deadly magic.

  I wouldn’t be able to use Move Object for another hour.

  Fabulosa grimaced as she struggled, unaware the imminent danger was no more. It pained me to watch her, but I couldn’t tell her without tipping off Winterbyte. Every second they wasted wrestling brought me closer to outlasting my debuff.

  Frozen Blood would expire in 97 seconds.

  Winterbyte pushed Fabulosa closer and closer to the coffin. Drool dripped from the corners of her jowls as she used my partner like a coal mine canary. Fabulosa hadn’t aged, but her head almost touched the sarcophagus.

  Winterbyte’s brow furrowed, and she cast Detect Magic, barring her teeth in a canine grin at the result. She realized I’d somehow deactivated the aura, leaving nothing to stop her from taking the relic.

  I cast another Scorch. The gnoll had barely lost half her health, but I could do little else while paralyzed.

  The combat log showed Winterbyte’s Overpowering Grapple ending, but Fabulosa didn’t seem to be in any better position. She couldn’t overpower her opponent’s strength, and her ineffectual kicks only accomplished glancing blows on the gnoll.

  Frozen Blood showed 75 seconds remaining.

  Fabulosa spun herself and braced her feet against the sarcophagus, pushing off with her legs, and it took all the gnoll’s focus to resist her efforts to escape. Though her legs shook, they outmatched the gnoll’s grip only because Winterbyte split her attention between maintaining her grapple and the sarcophagus lid.

  Frozen Blood had 63 seconds left.

  When one of her paws slipped, Winterbyte released her hold on my partner. She seized the lid, wedged her nails beneath it, wrenched it aside in a single jerk, and toppled it from the sarcophagus with a weighty thud.

  The relic rolled onto the floor, barely outside the reach of our opponent.

  Fabulosa twisted against the remaining paw holding her. This time, Winterbyte groaned in the struggle as Fabulosa became the one holding on. Winterbyte strained to reach her prize, but Fabulosa had two hands around one of the gnoll’s hairy wrists.

  Frozen Blood counted down to 56 seconds.

  I grunted to speak, though my tongue felt numb and inarticulate. “Fab, get out!”

  Fabulosa gave me a pained look as I tilted my head to the side to confirm my garbled words. She looked at the gnoll, whose other arm reached for something inside the sarcophagus. Fabulosa slipped from her grapple and dove away from the gnoll. My partner had plenty of mana and began charging up a Lightning Bolt.

  As soon as Fabulosa released her grip, Winterbyte sized the relic and crowned herself. “The harder I plays, the luckier I gets.”

  With the relic on her head, Winterbyte’s health pool jumped by 80 and her mana by 240. A blue Mana Shield wrapped around her, absorbing Fabulosa’s 40-point Lightning Bolt by consuming only 4 ticks of mana.

  The gnoll’s expression wasn’t triumphant or crazed. She looked at peace. Her holy grail made her impervious to damage. A pale blue light radiated from her eyes, and her nameplate changed.

  The gnoll spoke to herself in a barely audible voice. “Greetings, master.”

  I cast Magnetize on the silver cylinder. The metal’s natural magnetic pull proved strong enough to dislodge it from the podium’s socket. It plopped onto the floor and rolled to a stop by my paralyzed fingers.

  Winterbyte’s hair lengthened and whitened before she disappeared. Her gear hit the ground with a muffled thump. All that remained of Shelly amounted to a tidy bundle topped by a cracked core.