Chapter 42
Thirty of the RGK’s royal knights spilled into the room. All of them were draconic Kinadain, with spiral horns and scaly tails. They carried gleaming swords and deftly cast powerful spells as they charged at the League mages from the rear.
Ten robed figures collapsed from the opening volley, gaping holes opening in the torsos and heads.
The rest of the mages responded expertly. They spun and projected barriers, which caught the next volley of magical lances. But then the knights were on them, and more mages went down.
Standing behind the Gorgrian knights was a solitary gentleman in a suit—Leth. He tipped his hat to Rys, then disappeared as silently as he arrived.
“Please tell me that these sudden noises are due to Labyrinth monsters and not, say, an attempted assassination,” Varian said.
“It’s Gorgria,” Maliah drawled, staring at the attacking knights.
“Bother.”
Then Maliah’s eyes bulged as he spotted someone in the attacking force.
Standing amid the knights was an astoundingly beautiful figure.
Faeris herself strode through the Labyrinth, wearing a set of form-fitting plate armor and a cloak with elven runes woven into it. She carried a pair of battle-axes, and each was connected to a golden band on her wrist by a glowing thread.
“You disappoint me, Talarys,” Maliah said. He stood, eyes blazing.
“Ah, so it’s betrayal. How disappointing,” Varian said. “I suppose this means I’ll need to finish the pact the hard way.”
Then his voice fell completely silent. Rys presumed that the mage had stopped casting whatever spell he used to communicate with them.
Ordinarily, Rys would feign ignorance of the ambush. Nobody had noticed Leth. Presumably, the League mages had no clue how Gorgria had snuck up on them.
But while Faeris was strong, and her royal knights were cutting the mages to ribbons, the battle turned swiftly against her.
The grand magisters remained untouched and had the time to cast complicated spells. A wall formed of mirrors sprung up between the mages and knights, and redirected the Gorgrian attacks upon them. Flaming geysers sprang from the cracks between the stone. Skeletons swarmed in from the entrances, now that the illusion was shattered.
Graem and Mave hesitated, but moved in to defend their nation. They gave Rys a sideward glance.
“You can worry about Faeris later,” Rys said.
Before Maliah peeled away to focus on the object of his hatred, Rys lunged at him. In a single motion, he drew his axe, prepared an infernal blow, and swung at Maliah.
The archwarlock roared in defiance. He defended himself with his scepter, which cocooned him in a protective field of blood red energy.
The explosive force of the infernal blow shattered it like an egg. Maliah barely moved, maintaining his grip on his scepter and baring his teeth at Rys.
“is that all?” Maliah sneered.
Instantly, a ball of red energy gathered in his hand. It was far too similar to Graem’s spell to be a coincidence.
Rys didn’t waste time on it. His subordinates were already moving.
Maliah’s spell flickered as he launched it, then veered and exploded against the ceiling. Fara pointed at him with a look of intense concentration, her tails continuing to rapidly cast disruption arrays in anticipation of his next spell.
Grigor surged forward, axe swinging. Maliah blocked it with his scepter.
Impossibly, Grigor stopped dead upon impact. Maliah tensed, his muscles visibly bulging beneath his robe. He raised a hand and summoned a dozen magical lances.
Rys smothered him in hellfire. He heard Maliah scream in pain. A moment later, the archwarlock leaped free, wreathed in flames from head to toe.
One of the grand magisters noticed and attempted to disrupt Rys’s hellfire, but failed.
“What sorcery is this? It’s like it’s not magic!” the mage shouted, backing away.
In the nearby melee, Faeris began to push forward. Graem and Mave fought her half-heartedly. Both sides knew that the other was in on the assassination, but Faeris wasn’t aware of how badly Maliah wanted her dead.
Her axes flew forward in the blink of an eye and exploded on impact, unleashing some sort of spell. Sometimes the spell was a fireball, an explosion, raw magical power, or even a spray of acid. The axe itself struck hard enough to dent armor or sever limbs, as many mages found out.
Mave and Graem could deflect the axes and withstand the spells. When they counterattacked, Faeris revealed herself to be protected by powerful barriers. She was also a capable duelist and deflected most blows before they landed.
“Enough stalling,” she declared.
Both of her axes returned to her hands, recalled by the glowing threads attached to them. Then she slammed them into the ground and blew apart the Malus League defensive line with explosive spikes of earth.
The mages scattered, trying to keep skeletons between themselves and the knights while they cast new protective barriers. But half of them were already dead, and they actively sought to retreat now. Only the fact that there were five senior mages still fighting kept them in the chamber. More skeletons poured into the room, and Yoam continued summoning them from behind a wall of bones.
Maliah finally put out the hellfire, but only with an intense surge of blood red energy that seemed to ooze from his body. His eyes and mouth bled prismatic light as the man seemed to transform into a magical generator.
Stopping short of Maliah, Rys stared at him in shock. “Are you trying to blow yourself up?”
“I have gone beyond the limits of humanity. No mage can hope to match me, Talarys,” Maliah boomed.
Rys had to agree that Maliah wasn’t human anymore. Whatever had been done to him had twisted his body as much as Rys’s had been changed by Lacrissa’s fleshcrafting.
The two men traded spells again. Rys cast hellfire, and Maliah a series of magical lances.
Faeris continued to approach, and Maliah’s attention wavered.
“Enough of this. I prepared for some sort of betrayal,” the archwarlock said.
He snapped his fingers. A magical circle spawned into existence across most of the chamber—far too large for Maliah to cast, unless he expected Rys to read a book during the battle.
Then Rys looked at the circle and realized what it was.
A containment circle. For infernals.
More specifically, for a specific infernal by the name of Demon Lord Grishaw.
“Stop him!” Rys roared.
His mind raced. He didn’t have the time to cast Absolute Disruption. Not to mention that the only way to stop a summoning would be to disrupt infernal sorcery. A very bad idea given Rys relied upon it.
That left an infernal blow. He leaped across the chamber, axe glowing with power. Faeris’s axes flew toward Maliah, and so did Grigor’s.
Maliah glared at all of them in defiance. His body exploded with raw magical energy.
Faeris’s axes struck first, but practically bounced off. Her explosive spells failed to penetrate Maliah’s protective barrier.
Grigor’s axe slammed into Maliah, cutting almost a foot deep into his shoulder. The mage grunted, but barely even reacted to the massive weapon despite the blow.
Then Rys struck him. Like last time, the infernal blow did little more than shatter his protective barrier. Rys followed up with hellfire, but it was too late.
Maliah slammed his scepter into the ground. The ruby shattered. The magical circle glowed bright enough to nearly blind Rys.
His vision turned black as the telltale burst of shadow signaled a successful summoning.
“So you finally call me out,” Demon Lord Grishaw boomed, as he erupted into existence in the middle of the chamber. “I’m glad you took up my suggestion of a temporary summoning.”