The attack was more sprint than battle, just like any good blitzing assault was. Hexeri and the dozen paladins tore off down the corridors with every ounce of their considerably superhuman speeds, mustering a wind ahead of them and practically shaking the walls with the sounds of their footfalls.

  Hexeri winced. She was loud enough already, sprinting like this. Any one of the paladins, clad in hard, heavy steel as they were and with all of a living body’s innate clumsiness, would have been louder still, twelve of them at once must surely have alerted every enemy within the whole fortress.

  And they were numerous and widely spread enough that there was simply no avoiding them, regardless of speed.

  Dullahan came by the tens, but perished fast. Hexeri had expected the powers she knew were typical of a paladin, these ones exceeded even that. None save Ensharia was even close to her equal- and even she did not hit that mark fully- but the other eleven all fought with a physicality and skill that was rare amongst their kind. One unit of defenders after another was torn apart, tied into combat by the wider mass of paladins and then cut to pieces as Ensharia or Hexeri turned their own strength to the encounters.

  Fomori came, and put up more resistance. But fell too. Then, after a while, more concerted efforts to halt them were made. The group smashed into a hastily-assembled barricade, tangling with the Dullahan manning it just as Fomori smashed through the wall at their backs and pincered them from the other side. It was the most vicious fighting yet.

  Hexeri rolled beneath a tendril, lashed shadows at the creator and watched it stumble. A Dullahan’s axe came for her head and she caught it by the handle, drove it back to its wielder’s face and thumbed one of the undead’s eyes out. It didn’t spasm with pain, but when she burst the other it began swinging wildly. Tireless or not, unfeeling or not, the simple mechanical facts of sight were still a limit. Hexeri switched to more pressing threats.

  She smashed another Dullahan’s helmet in, filled a third with shadow and watched the Necromantic substance writhe and crush it from within. The fighting was dying down, casualties mounting. Ensharia was mounting the neck of a Fomori, smashing its skull with mace-blows so strong every impact sounded like rolling thunder. Hexeri ignored her, ignored everything. Just focused on fighting and killing, keeping her back guarded, her body in motion, her magic in flight.

  All told, they lost a paladin and two more were wounded, forced to hang back. The others seemed to do so with heavy hearts. Hexeri just noted that one of the ones she’d been worried about turning on her were among the discarded pair. As they disappeared around the corridor, closer, now, by far to the centre of the Dark Lord’s power, a figure emerged ahead.

  Small, lithe, sinewy. Its body seemed covered entirely in scar tissue, from head to toe, face bound behind a metal mask.

  They all froze. It wasn’t a large creature, not well armoured. It twitched with life, rather than undeath, moaned as it moved, pain seeming to rack its body with even the slightest motion. Hexeri could make out ridges of bone pressing up at every joint, as if it had shattered its whole body and healed improperly. Her hearing, superior to the mortals beside her, could even hear the malformed skeleton creaking and groaning with movement.

  But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to approach the creature. Couldn’t bring herself to even try.

  “Stay back.” She warned, glancing at the paladins and finding herself surprised to see them obeying. Some instinct, perhaps. An intuition of what they were facing.

  Hexeri’s thoughts on the matter were interrupted before they could advance much farther. The creature moved.

  It gasped, jaw unhinging with the cry of pain that erupted from it. Legs spread wide, fingers splayed, nails gouging into the stone underfoot, it shivered and shook, rattled and rocked. Roared a scream of agony so intense and pure that even Hexeri had never heard its equal. Not in life, not in centuries of unlife. She felt the magic washing from their enemy, then saw the change.

  Skin split, hair emerged. Thick in some parts, gone in others. Covered by open wounds in others still. Blood streaked down the creature and sickening cracks filled the air as its every bone snapped, twisted, lengthened and re-knitted back together. She realised what was happening only as its mask split apart and a scarred face fell to the ground beneath.

  Where once something human had been, there was now only the simian-canine shape of a wolfhead. The werewolf roared, and pounced. Stone exploded beneath it like a trebuchet had struck the floor. Fifty yards separated it from Hexeri, gone in a second. Then it came down upon the nearest paladin like the guillotine blade upon a condemned neck.

  Enchanted plate availed nothing, Vigorous anatomy less. The man just erupted, body caved in, bones pulverised, meat pulped. He exploded like a charnel sack crushed beneath an elephant’s boot, spraying the air with gore, obfuscating the werewolf’s position for a single instant.

  That instant was time enough for raking claws to open another man’s chest spine-deep and drop him beside his obliterated ally.

  Hexeri backed off, blindly hurled shadow at the lycan and watched her magic roll off its hide like water on stone. This was bad, this might be the end of them all.

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  Ensharia, of course, did not hesitate for a moment. Even as her own allies backed away in fear, she closed and swung her mace like always. The werewolf twisted aside, faster than thought, and retaliated with another swipe. The woman’s armour wasn’t enchanted plate, though. Hexeri had recognised the mysterious substance Shaiagrazni called “keratin” earlier, and saw its strength now as magic claws dug in, penetrated, but failed to do more than draw a few beads of blood from its wearer. The surprised lycan took another mace-swing, this one successfully landing under its jaw and sending it back.

  But only half a step. Faster than them, stronger than them, tougher than them. Hexeri took a moment to marvel at the stories of the creature- the Vampire-killer. And marvel at how all of them had managed to fall short.

  A hand whipped around, caught Ensharia’s helm. Close-fisted, not clawed. She still flew back, body hurtling like she was cast from a sling and smashing into the wall hard. The corridor trembled, and the other paladins attacked with a cry.

  Of the ten swings coming for the werewolf, less than half hit. It was so fast the mere humans, though successfully encircling it, may as well have been moving through liquid. Hexeri watched an axe barely break the skin, a flail bounce off its skull, a warpick dig into its thigh, a hammer rebound from the ribs. Then the werewolf’s moves came, two men opened up like meat on the carving block. It was the chance she’d needed, and her blood magic reached a crescendo as Hexeri lunged, grabbed the lycan and concentrated.

  But the ichor in this enemy was too magical, too potent. It warmed, but didn’t boil, and the werewolf struck her as it had the others. She flew the full length of the corridor before hitting a wall and being embedded into it.

  Hexeri’s skull broke like an eggshell. It wasn’t easy to render a Vampire incapacitated, scarcely moreso than killing them. But she’d found the limit. Her body began to shut down, consciousness drift, anatomical damage simply too intense for her vessel to continue housing whatever cannibalistic imprint still remained of her spirit. Her mind wavered, ran, drizzled away. She would waken, that much she knew. This was not a killing wound.

  But this fight was no longer hers. She watched the werewolf tear apart those paladins who still stood to resist it, and found her thoughts racked by a final question.

  How could I have been so stupid…?

  ***

  Hexeri awoke, gasped reflexively for air she didn’t need, plucked herself from the wall. She heard the ruckus before she saw its product, a wall blasted inwards and flying debris filling the room. Then the tide changed.

  She’d been gone for a minute, maybe. Long enough that the paladins had all either died or stopped their fighting, cowering back from the werewolf as it circled around them snarling and twitching. The beast looked up at the explosion, coiling itself back for another pounce as a tall, broad-shouldered bald man strode into the corridor. His skin was black, eyes considering. Magic an ocean’s weight against her senses.

  Hexeri recognised Archmagus Mafari just before his enemy sprung into motion.

  The werewolf struck something which might have been translucent to mortal eyes, but stood out in Hexeri’s vision as a great discoloured plane in the air. The shield buckled, collapsed just a moment after Mafari’s eyes widened and the Archmagus disappeared. He re-emerged from nowhere, twenty yards from the werewolf and raising his hands in a sweeping gesture.

  Already, the lycan was turning to smash into him. Too slow this time. The air ruptured, peeling back into a great circle of orange-hot something. The stuff sprayed out in a torrent, as if there were some great pipe it was exiting, moving impossibly fast and blasting the lycan off its feet upon impact. The creature screamed, slid back as it was driven down the corridor and buried under glowing, burning, bubbling…

  Magma. It was magma. Conjured through a portal, pressurised, somehow, and left to vent itself into the enemy. Mafari stemmed the tide only after a few more seconds had passed. His hands were already moving as the werewolf got to shaky feet.

  It was hurt. And Mafari wasn’t done. The Archmagus gestured again, and more light glimmered before him. This time Hexeri didn’t see what emerged, not fully. Just streaks of grey- rock, she thought- before they smashed into the werewolf faster than anything not fired from Shaiagrazni’s cannons. The creature flew back, rolling, scraping, blood flecking from it. Another distortion in the air emerged beside it, and another jet of magma thundered into its body while it was down. The werewolf was driven into the corridor’s wall. Then through it.

  Hexeri watched it just disappear, plummeting down out of the fortress to smash against the stone below. Could it survive that?

  She wasn’t sure. It was a large creature, heavy and dense. It would fall faster than a man, and land harder even at the same speed for all its mass.

  But it was so, so durable. She caught herself hoping against hope that gravity would do what she hadn’t managed, then rose, shakily, to her feet.

  Other figures were entering the corridors now, magi. Hexeri saw the deferent gazes they shot to Mafari, the awe. She half-understood it herself now. But that didn’t change the cold fear of having his gaze fall upon her.

  “I know what you are.” He told her, calmly, flatly. The tone of a man ready and willing to do everything he just had all over again. Unnecessary, the first gout of magma would crush Hexeri by itself.

  “Progeny of Lilia.” Hexeri confirmed. “At your service.” She was loathe to defer, but she was much more opposed to death than she was humiliation. The Archmagus just turned. “Detain her, and the paladins. Let us venture farther inwards.”

  It all came as a blur. No more frenzied flight through the fortress, just an orderly march. The resistance was, Hexeri realised, destroyed. The Dark Lord’s servitors and guardians either crushed already, or driven away. She was impressed, despite herself.

  But not half as impressed as when they entered what was surely the Dark Lord’s laboratory.

  “What is that?” One of the magi gasped, staring, Hexeri presumed, at the great ripple in the air, and the humming, glowing, whispering construct of matter and magic which surrounded it.

  “An abomination.” Another growled. “Archmagus, do you want me to destroy it?”

  Mafari eyed the man as if he’d just been propositioned.

  “Of course not, doing so could cause whatever dark magics it channels to spiral out of control. Can you not feel their intensity already? This fortress, the land around it, and perhaps the continent, would be razed.”

  Every face present, save those which were too black or bloodless to do so, paled.

  “We will guard this area.” Mafari continued, heedless of the fear. “I suspect the New Dark Lord, perhaps Shaiagrazni too, have disappeared through this gateway. They will return if so. I will find a way to close this portal and trap them. Failing that…I will meet them as they leave it, and crush them both.”

  Without another word, the Archmagus vanished.