The silence that followed the destruction of the stone slab was profound. Dust and debris hung thick in the air, golden and grim under the harsh glare of the false sun overhead.

  Through the crumbling threshold, four figures emerged, silhouetted against the shattered remains of the great tomb’s entrance. They shielded their eyes from the light as they stepped forward, boots crunching over the broken fragments of the barrier that failed to keep them imprisoned.

  Then, as their eyes adjusted and the dust finally settled, they stared in disbelief at the sight of the courtyard, now changed beyond recognition. Wreckage, ramparts, pillars, and a writhing mass of undead.

  “Help us!” Brynhildr shouted as she spotted them, her eyes wide with a desperate hope.

  The adventurers snapped out of their daze, and they bolted toward the warrior woman. But Khenemhotep, of course, was not going to let them reach her unchallenged. The tomb guards turned at once, charging to intercept with an eerily precise coordination.

  [Should we have Sebekton join the fight as well, Master?]

  “Not yet,” Viktor replied. “Let the skeletons wear them down a bit first.”

  The tomb guards halted just short of the adventurers, stamping their feet into position, arranging themselves into a tight formation three ranks deep. In the front, shields were raised and locked, their edges overlapping to form an impenetrable wall. Behind them, two lines of soldiers planted their spears over the shoulders of those ahead, creating a forest of barbed tips ready to stop any advance dead in its tracks. This was not merely a barricade, but a fortress of bone and iron. The undead didn’t hesitate. The undead didn’t waver. They moved as one—a single, cold, and unyielding engine of war.

  Even Ba’atar, who typically plowed through opposition like a bull drunk on rage, skidded to a stop, his momentum faltering like a cart stuck in the mud. The foes before him now were not the brittle skeletons he had shattered a hundred times before in the desert. They were the size of ogres, each one as tall and broad as he was.

  Renee raised her hand, summoning a fierce gust of wind to blast away the tomb guards. But the skeletal soldiers stood firm, bracing themselves as though they were designed to endure exactly this type of attack. Compared to the power of Sebekton’s Reliquary, the gale was little more than a whimper, sliding past them without any effect. So, the line held. It didn’t even stagger.

  “What the hell is this?” Mandragora snapped. “Why are these bloody skeletons so damn big?”

  Her eyes narrowed, her jaw clenched, her voice teetered between outrage and awe, but her hands didn’t mirror the confusion etched across her face. The tattooed woman’s fingers dove into her satchel, rummaging through its contents. She didn’t even glance down, as if she knew what to look for just by her touch. A second later, she pulled out a vial and threw it at the ground in front of her.

  Glass shattered on impact.

  A plume of green smoke erupted from the broken vial, hissing as it swirled, moving like a living thing. It slithered low as it spread, and wherever it touched the ground, the earth reacted instantly. With a groan and a shudder, the soil split open, and from the fissures, vines burst forth. Not the lazy, climbing weeds Viktor had seen at his old castle, but barbed, thorn-wrapped tendrils, clawing upward with a hungry screech.

  The nearest tomb guard’s legs were seized in an instant, vines coiling tight around earth-reinforced bones. Others followed, snaking between knees, winding around ankles. Normally, it was the dead who clawed their way out of the earth and dragged down the living. Here, it was the opposite. The undead soldiers shifted, staggered. For the first time, cracks began to appear in the formidable war machine.

  This is going to be annoying...

  Ba’atar let out a roar, then charged at the disrupted formation, each footfall hammering the stone of the courtyard, sending tremors through the earth. Behind him, Renee raised both arms, fingers dancing through the air as she shaped the wind with her will. The gale came screaming. It slammed into the hulking warrior’s back, propelling him forward. His speed tripled. His silhouette blurred. He crashed into the weakened line like an avalanche. The wall of spears went flying, scattered like brittle branches as Ba’atar’s massive curved blade carved through them in one devastating arc.

  As the formation’s cohesion crumbled, the tomb guards were picked off one by one by the combination of Mandragora and Renee’s magic. At the aeromancer’s command, gusts of wind launched the skeletons into the air and flung them bodily against the nearby ramparts. Meanwhile, vines hissed and wailed, climbing the legs of every undead soldier they could reach. Then they wrapped, they pulled, they constricted, they shattered.

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  This party is indeed troublesome, Viktor thought. They were all capable fighters in their own right, but it was their flawless coordination that truly set them apart. They adapted on the fly, covering each other’s vulnerabilities and capitalizing on every weakness their foes presented.

  Still, he wasn’t overly concerned. The tomb guards weren’t there to win anything. They were meatshields without the meat. Their job was to get in the way, soak up the punishment, and blunt their enemies’ blades while the others prepared the killing blow.

  And sure enough, high above, the artificial sunlight waned as a colossal form passed overhead, its wingspan casting a sweeping shadow across the courtyard. Lahmia’s phoenix was joining the fray.

  “Incoming!” Ekon bellowed.

  Ba’atar spun, anchoring his feet into the ground and swinging his greatsword upward in a brutal arc. Blade of steel met talon of hardened sand with a thundercrack, the impact driving the Easterner stumbling back. Mandragora’s vines whipped through the air, unleashing a storm of green fury upon the phoenix, but it swatted them aside with a wingbeat, then vaulted back into the air.

  “Damn you stupid bird!” Renee shouted, already launching herself skyward, staff firmly in her grip, its steel-capped tips glinting as she soared.

  As the young aeromancer pursued the phoenix, the other three were already in motion. They sprinted toward Brynhildr, weaving through the walls Dagnar had conjured, using them as cover from the relentless hail of rocks and earthen spears raining down around them.

  “Help him!” the warrior woman cried when they reached her side.

  Only then did they realize the man’s condition. Three jaws dropped in unison.

  “How... how the hell is he still alive?” Mandragora said, eyes wide with disbelief as she stared at the man sprawled on the raised platform with a massive ballista bolt driven clean through his body, who was making a lot of noises, though the sounds were more like the whines of someone mildly inconvenienced by a stubbed toe than a man who was being skewered through the guts.

  Ba’atar, on the other hand, wasted no time. He knelt beside Dagnar, gripped the wooden shaft, and broke it in two. Then, he yanked the jagged remnant free from the man’s torso.

  This is going to drag, Viktor thought. With Ekon’s party reaching Brynhildr and Dagnar now free and on the move, what had started as a neat execution was turning into a long, bloody slog. A battle of attrition. He might need to take down one or two of the helpers before he could strike at his target again.

  Renee was airborne, exposed, separated from the rest. A perfect opportunity.

  The bolt he had left idling above was drifting in gentle, lazy loops like a bored predator. It was time to use it. He gave the command, and it immediately changed its course, slicing through the air toward the unsuspecting wind mage.

  To Renee’s credit, she spotted it at once. Well, experienced aeromancers knew better than anyone how vulnerable they were in the open sky, so they never let their guard down, always keeping an eye on any projectile that might come their way.

  She veered to the left. But so did the bolt.

  She spun sharply. Right, down, even pulled a full evasive spiral. Very fancy. The bolt curved after her, however, like a hound with wings that had caught the scent of blood.

  And then, as if things weren’t bad enough for the woman, Lahmia’s phoenix screamed back into the fight. Realizing that there was no way she could handle both a guided bolt and an angry magical bird, Renee made the only sensible decision available.

  She turned and ran.

  Smart girl.

  Not that he would let her go, of course.

  The bolt stayed locked on her trail, relentless and tireless. Now and then, Renee snapped around mid-flight, hurling a blast of wind at the incoming projectile, hoping to swat it out of the sky. But every time he saw her turn, he immediately adjusted the bolt’s trajectory, steering it just clear of the gust.

  The gap narrowed. The predator was closing in on its prey. Soon, the aeromancer would share Dagnar’s fate. And unlike that insufferable manchild, she didn’t have the benefit of some arcane nonsense to cheat death.

  Suddenly, Renee veered toward one of the pillars. Was she trying to use it as cover? A futile effort. The bolt was too close now, far too close for that trick.

  The pointed end of the bolt was only a few paces behind the woman. It was going to plunge into her back, right between the shoulder blades, punch straight through her spine, and burst out the other side like a harpoon through a fish.

  Three seconds. Maybe two.

  But then, it stopped.

  What?

  Vines. Out of nowhere, coiling things shot out and wrapped around the bolt mid-flight. They tightened, and with a sharp crack, the projectile splintered under their grip.

  “Damn it!” Viktor muttered, staring at the broken fragments falling from the sky.

  He cast a glance back at the battlefield below. Looked like while he was busy hunting the aeromancer, Mandragora’s creeping tendrils had not been idle. They had spread out, climbing up the pillars, probably to attack the skeletal mages on the top. So Renee had seen her chance and flown straight toward them, hoping those thorn-wrapped vines would help her get rid of the bolt.

  Viktor let out a frustrated sigh. Quick to adapt and covering the others’ weak spots—those were fine qualities in a friend, sure, but definitely infuriating when they belonged to one’s enemies.

  [Master.]

  “What’s the matter?”

  [Khenemhotep is asking whether he should call forth a sandstorm.]

  The ancient priest had a point. Blanketing the entire courtyard in dust would blind the adventurers. They would no longer be able to see what they were fighting, and they would no longer be able to coordinate with each other. The dead, on the other hand, would not be hindered. It would make no difference to Khenemhotep and his shambling minions, who didn’t need eyes to kill.

  Yet, Viktor’s forces were not all undead, and they needed a clear line of sight to do what he commanded them to do.

  “Hold it off for now. Let me try something else first. If it doesn’t work, then he can bury the place in sand.”

  [Understood.]

  “Tell Sebekton to join the fight. And tell the Tengu to be ready.”

  As for him, he needed another bolt.