I stared at the woman, trying to guess what she would do once freed. My gut told me she’d just scream, but I didn’t want to risk her casting a spell or some other working of magic.

  “Listen to me. My party mates do not want to kill you, but we cannot spare someone to remain here with you. Nod if you understand.” The woman nodded; her face splattered with scarlet.

  “Mika is going to remove the golem’s hand from your mouth on my count. You will remain silent until I ask you a question. Am I understood?”

  The woman agreed, and I motioned for Mika to remove the golem’s hand. I should have communicated better because Mika launched his golem away from the woman as if burned rather than simply raising the hand a few inches like I wanted.

  Mouth freed, the woman surprised me and remained silent. She worked her jaw, which clicked as she did so, and shifted her shoulders beneath the claws of Mika’s golems. As the woman got comfortable, I shifted around the bed and towards Ellen and Nora. I didn’t know what this woman was going to do, but I wanted to be nearby to protect them if something happened.

  Nora still held onto the woman’s feet and was nervously trying to watch me and the woman at the same time. Ellen looked almost bored. Her eyes kept studiously away from Trevor’s corpse, feigning an air of ease with the way she leaned on her maul.

  Too calm eyes scanned the room. She took each of us in, gauged where our weapons were and moved on. Her eyes always came back to Trevor’s body and anger flashed before she suppressed it and move on.

  They always came back, however. I was almost at the foot of the bed when I saw her take a deep breath. Within Iona’s grasp, there was no fear. All that remained was the knowledge that this woman was about to scream.

  I Moved as fast as possible to get back into position, but she was faster.

  The woman screamed, full of anger and resignation. In one fluid motion, she shouldered out of the golem’s grips, their claws igniting bright red lines down her shoulders, reached under her pillow, and lunge forward at Nora with a knife.

  In my effort to reach the woman, I’d moved myself too far to stop her. Nora still held onto her ankles and had no way to get out of the way, either. The woman’s knife was about a foot away from Nora’s throat when a maul swung down and killed the woman.

  The woman’s body collapsed over the frame of the bed like a weave of air had slammed down on it, and the knife clattered onto the floor to tumble into a distant corner.

  Nora collapsed onto her knees, panting and in shock, her hands holding onto her throat where the knife would have entered. Ellen held her maul across her body in a limp grip, eye focused on the blood dripping from the polished steel head.

  No one spoke as they took in the red soaked room. Trevor’s blood soaked the bed and even reach the ceiling while the woman’s spread out in a growing puddle at the foot of the bed. The green light from the walls intensified as the sun set further and provided less competition.

  “Everyone, get ready and be quiet. Mika, brace the door.” I commanded.

  One of the runic series that traced up the nose on his baker golem flashed with light and its mouth dropped open on the hinge Mika had designed for this, but nothing came out. The light died as Mika rushed to hold the door.

  The golems slammed into the door with a hollow thud and again the golem’s mouth dropped open and nose flashed only for nothing to happen. This time there came a moment of hesitation after it closed its mouth, like Mika was trying to process something. It tried a third time to speak and failed, and this time Mika brought a hand up to the golem’s neck and slashed across it.

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  “You cannot speak?” I asked.

  All three of Mika’s golems nodded.

  “Then I will take over command.” That got another nod from all of Mika’s golems while both the girls gave smaller, more hesitant ones.

  “Things are about to get bad.” I said. “They have twenty plus people out there while we only have six combat capable beings. If we want to survive this, we need to have a clear plan before we leave this room, understood?”

  Iona’s grip had tightened again, and she sent more of the Howling Winds to invade my body. Intellectually, I knew I should be a nervous wreck right now. Trapped on a narrow catwalk with one exit, facing a force almost four times as large as our own. I knew there was a better than decent chance I would die here, but within the grasp of the Black Hand, I felt none of those nerves.

  Iona’s touch enhanced me, turned me into a tool worthy of use.

  “Yes.” Ellen and Nora said in near unison. Nora’s voice was meek, while Ellen’s filled with a grim determination and something more vulnerable I couldn’t parse.

  “The catwalk is narrow and restricted to one entrance, so we’ve lucked out there. The ranged combatants on the ground floor will be a problem, though. Mika, Nora, your job’s to cause havoc down there. I don’t need you to kill them all. They just need to be distracted enough to give us some breathing room.”

  I got small words of agreement from Nora and nods from Mika before I continued.

  “Ellen, you’re rearguard. Lend support when you can, but your principal duty is to make sure no one gets behind us. Nora, you’re the most vulnerable amongst us. Stay close and stay behind my shield when you can.”

  Nora looked nervous for what was to come, while Ellen put on a fa?ade of control, broken by the way she looked at the corpses on the bed. They were both right to be worried. We were outnumbered, and too low tier to take healing potion without risk. Our only advantage came from the fact the catwalk was thin and I was too large to get around me without going through me.

  I placed a hand on each of their shoulders and squeezed. It was as much warmth for them as I could muster at the moment. Nora brought her hand up to mine and squeezed in return, while Ellen kept her eyes silently on the door. Through which I could hear the sounds of a compound gearing up.

  I gave the command for Mika to back off from the door and cracked it, shield raised.

  Sparks flew as an arrow skipped off the rim of my shield, across my helmet, and into the ceiling. A second later and a bright ball of fire roared at me from the ground floor to impact on my shield. Tendrils of flame licked over the rim and the smell of burnt hair filled the air as my eyebrows singed.

  I kept the door open and bunkered down slightly to see what else came. A few arrows impacted on the door and door frame, but nothing else could thread the small gap I stood in.

  The warehouse was in a panic, people scrambled to get up and armored, some ran to various crates and revealed stores of arrows and bolts which they hastily dumped into quivers. Others raced to clump up with their friends. When a crossbow bolt impacted the inside of the doorframe and sent slivers of wood exploding outwards, I closed the door and turned to Nora.

  “They’re ready for us. I need something to distract them while we get out of here.”

  Nora bit her lip nervously and nodded. Within moments, a red tinged mist emanated out from around her feet, the spell absorbed not only the ambient water but the blood within the room as well. Nora went paler at the sight of the red fog but continued to cast.

  The thin wave of mist advanced towards the door like the tide and I opened it ever so slightly, not enough to let an arrow pass through, but enough for her fog to spill out onto the catwalk. We waited in that room for long minutes, the sounds of chaos dying as the Ivory band got organized. All our eyes locked onto Nora as she cast what was becoming her signature spell.

  When she told us we could leave the room, I did so with the same caution as before. Shield first and covering as much of my armored body as possible. Fog pooled at the end of the catwalk, but thin tendrils rose over the partition onto the ground floor.

  Barely visible over the catwalk’s half wall, I could spot something moving through the thin fog and between six members of the ivory band who stood with bows and wands trained on the door. Nora moved her construct through the mist, picking up speed.

  At first, the construct was slow enough that all it could do was nudge the band member’s legs aside and throw off their aim. The result was arrows littering the doorway around us and a small section of the door frame blackened from where a [Mage’s] spell hit before someone yelled at them not to use fire and they switched to blades of air instead.

  I heard it when her construct landed the first actual blow and dented the metal greave of an [Archer]. The man cried out, his arrow firing wild as he dropped to ground and desperately pulled at the straps keeping his greave on.

  It took only seconds more after that before the fog had grown dense enough for Nora’s constructs to reach the speeds that allowed them to take chunks out of people’s legs. As soon as I saw the first spray of blood launch through the mist, I left the doorframe, the rest of the party following shortly behind me.

  “Ellen, I’m going to shield you. Drop the golems onto ground level.”

  Ellen listened and dropped her maul to pick up one of Mika’s golems. I positioned myself so my frame covered most of hers and what little it didn’t was close enough that I could move my shield to block. Ellen worked quick and dropped two of Mika’s golems onto the ground floor, leaving the statuette of the woman up here to help. Mika golems took the impact like it was a drop from a foot instead of ten and rushed off, either into cover or into the dense mist. A small wake trailed after the one who entered the mist.

  As I watched the golem disappear, I saw Nora’s constructs pull away from hits. Nora had dropped two of the [Archers] and they were in perfect position for her to attack their heads. Instead, even with a second construct she’d formed, Nora avoided landing any fatal blows and instead kept striking at shins and ankles. Worse, she used her second construct to keep the ranged combatants penned into one area. Launching no truly crippling strikes.

  Her efforts were not good enough, and had allowed for another group of five to set up within her mists.

  “Nora!” I barked at her, saying her name in the Low Chant by accident. The tone of the word carried its meaning even if she didn’t understand what I said, and Nora’s eyes shot to me.

  “Continue to hesitate and you will kill us instead of them. I told you to keep the fucking ranged combatants busy.” Briefly I switched back to the Low Chant to curse.