The solider stared back at Akkali glassy-eyed and mortified, then clutched his sword and pulled it from the earth. She watched his expression morph from terror to one of pure, seething hatred.
She slid one foot back in preparation for what she knew was coming. Every person that had looked at her with those eyes had ended up trying to kill her. "Stay down. You saw what I did to that monster."
The next moment he lunged at her with a fanatical scream, cursing her as an unholy witch and the summoner of everything foul that was assaulting his compatriots before launching into a tirade of what she supposed were obscenities in a language she didn't know. Still, it wasn't all that difficult to comprehend what he meant.
Siphoning magic into her left hand she swept the blade aside and pivoted, slinging the staff around like a whip and slamming it across his spine at almost the same moment the point passed harmlessly to her side. He crashed back into the mud, snapping his wrist as he landed, which only made him howl even louder as he tried to summon help to kill her. Reaching around she clenched his jaw in one hand, then shoved his head down with one foot and twisted sharply backwards until his chin sat between his shoulder blades.
"Idiot."
Leaving the corpse for the crows she listened for Jansa's barking and headed towards the sound of the dog through the mist and thick smoke. There were dozens of the imp homunculi bouncing through the shadows like voracious demons, beating everything in sight with fists stitched together much like those of the larger trolls. Sparing a glance over her shoulder she saw that the blast she had leveled at the troll homunculus' ankle had deprived it of its entire left leg, though it was still managing to shamble on at a much slower pace using one arm in place of its missing limb.
Akkali ran across the field, dodging screaming and fleeing soldiers and smacking more than a few of the fools that looked to run her through in their panic, finally spotting the shaggy mutt circling Tiernan's feet, howling as loudly as her lungs could manage. With a shrill whistle she announced her presence and watched the Inquisitor's green eyes grow wide enough to pop out of his skull. Jansa bounded towards her and nipped at her heels in relief and she spared the dog a quick pet on the head.
Before he could ask any question he happened to have waiting she pointed back towards Baedorn. "Drys went to get your subordinate zealots. He's going to flank them, provided they listen."
He pulled an arrow from what was obviously a borrowed quiver and motioned to her. "Light something on fire for me."
"I'm not your magical match," she snapped. "Get your damn flint."
Wrapping a length of dyed blue cloth around the tip of the arrow he knocked it into his bowstring and said, "Please light the cloth here on fire for me, Akkali. I have an idea."
Sneering at him she reached out and wrapped her fist around the arrowhead, feeling the markings on her arm start to seethe as she pushed magic through into the cloth. It exploded into a bright ghostly blue flame just before she removed her hand. Aiming for a high point in the sky, Tiernan drew and fired, letting the arrow sail over the chaos on the field and leave a long glittering streak of slowly-burning witchlight through the air.
Akkali watched the mass of homunculi slowly shift their focus, first towards the witchlight overhead, then at its point of origin. Almost as one a section of the imps peeled off from their frenzied attack on the Wessinberg lines and began loping up the hill towards where they stood.
Letting loose a growl that almost matched Jansa's she shoved Tiernan to the side angrily. "Grand idea, Inquisitor. Now they know right where we are."
"We need to find Basilides," said Tiernan, turning towards the western woods and sprinting for the treeline. "He's controlling them from somewhere nearby if he could see that. That hex is only visible to living eyes, and only for four hundred yards."
"That fool need to ask the bastard why just can't be ignored can it!" she called after him.
"No, I've a powerful desire to cut the head off the son of a bitch," he shouted back over his shoulder. "Are you going to join me or just comment about how stupid we humans are until the smoke clears?"
"Both!"
Kneeling down she placed her hands on Jansa's shoulders, pressing her forehead against the mutt's muzzle. With a bit more concentration than she normally used she raised a barrier of magic around the dog, hoping that it would hold together long enough to keep her reasonably safe as they headed straight into the enemy's stronghold. Scratching her ears, she stood back up and ran after Tiernan down the sloping valley that contained the road up to the mine, then straight into the treeline from where all the homunculi had come.
She caught up with Tiernan easily, scanning the woods for any sign of life. They hadn't traveled more than a hundred yards in when a woman's shriek caused them to turn sharply north and tear through the underbrush towards its origin. A few moments later a maniacal cackle of the sort only uttered by vindictive witches in bard's tales followed. The trees ahead of them seemed to wither in the twilight as something sickly yellow overtook them in a thick cloud of miasma. It seeped into the bark like it was sap itself and then vanished from sight straight into the earth, pulled down like a blanket over something wholly unnatural.
Tiernan locked Akkali's arm in a tight grip and harshly yanked her to a stop. "Killing field."
"Papa! Mama!"
Hearing the shout she tore free of his grip and charged through the forest, pushing through the thick undergrowth until she reached the source of the sallow light. She recognized the stooped form of the barback Imarin, his flesh drained of any lifelike color as the ground itself reached up and pulled at every part of him, dragging him back down again and again as he struggled against the trap which had already stripped his soul. That he was still fighting the magic of the fresh killing field was astonishing; most gave up once they felt their spirit leave their body and resigned themselves to their damnation.
She ran forward and knelt down before the man. Recognition washed over his face as he grabbed her shoulders and fought the drive of the magic to kill her. "A madman-he took my little girl, killed my wife. We were just trying to leave this damn city. Please, please take Hallia from here!"
"Direction?"
Imarin managed to lift an arm and point further into the forest where the shadows clung to the ground like draperies. Then he grabbed her about the neck as everything left of the man was swallowed up in the foul hex of the killing field and tried to wrench her skull free of her body.
A broadsword cleaved the Enkiri's arms in two at the elbow, then came down and pierced through the back of the man's skull and sunk into the earth with a wet thump of finality. "Saor in seo animae Deireadh profanis."
Akkali pulled the severed limbs away from her throat and threw them on the ground, knowing that it would only be a moment or two before the magic revivified them to resume the attack. She rolled to her feet and took off in the direction Imarin had pointed, Tiernan close on her heels with his sword still drawn.
She shifted her grip on Arathron's staff, letting magic creep bit by bit through her body and into the wood. As she did it became even whiter than before, shedding the dull ash-gray it had been to take on the color of freshly fallen snow on a glacier. She could hear Tiernan stalking behind her cautiously, though she no longer worried about whether he was going to drive his sword through her spine. The look on his face as he had severed Imarin's head was one of cold and determined focus. He wasn't letting the man get away with what he had done to the girl's father, regardless of whether or not he was Enkiri.
If they managed to survive confronting the Oratio, she was going to have to let herself actually respect Drystan's religious zealot friend.
"Basilides!" the Inquisitor shouted. "Show yourself!"
Akkali turned from side to side, looking for an end to the odd curtains of shadow that had obscured the trees. While they looked as though they extended into an infinite distance she knew it had to be an illusion. There was no way Basilides was manipulating as many homunculi as she had seen while creating a killing field-not unless he had a dozen or so stripped souls bound to him bolstering his power. "Hunted many witches that are stupid enough to actually do that, have you."
"Not now, wretch," growled Tiernan, squinting intently at the shadows with his jaw locked in an angry scowl.
Shaking her head, Akkali shouted, "Hallia! Hallia, your Papa sent me! Scream so we can find you!"
Several seconds of silence ticked away before a mouselike squeak pierced the darkness to their left. Without waiting for Tiernan she ran head-first through the cloak of shadows and stifled the urge to scream herself as an ice-like chill seized hold of her chest with thin and frozen talons, trying to drag her to the forest floor. Planting the staff on the ground she propped herself up and caught the man by the shoulder as he stumbled past her through the veil and began gasping for breath.
Somehow Basilides had created a pocket within the world where nothing was as it should have been. The trunks of the trees engulfed by it were a sickly phlegm-like yellow, everything that ought to have been green a rotten and withered brown. The air smelled stale and thick, the settled must of a long-sealed crypt just opened to the world. It looked as though the man had sucked the very life out of the earth immediately around him, using it to power the web he had spun to conceal himself from sight and from attack.
Crouched over in the center of the decrepit circle was Basilides, one hand clamped over the mouth of a little girl not more than eight or nine years old. Her face looked remarkably like Imarin himself, but her eyes were a brilliant blue in comparison to his sandstone-brown.
"Let that girl go," snarled Akkali, looking around for signs of moving corpses or homunculi. There was nothing but rot and the foul stench of espiri magic surrounding them like a blanket of the thickest wool, but she could tell the ones that Tiernan had attracted were closing in. The longer she stood still channeling magic the more clearly she could feel their unnatural footfalls through the ground like pinpricks down her spine.
"I need a body," muttered Basilides, his voice a higher pitch than it had been in the cavern. "This stupid fool pissed away too much mana making our army. I can't even fashion a decent killing field anymore."
Tiernan moved in front of the Enkiri as he righted himself. "Oratio Cyril."
"I will not let the Empire fall to the likes of her," hissed the witch, throwing his hand up towards the empty ceiling. A disc of fire appeared in the air with an ear-shattering crack, launching itself at where they stood and exploding into a rain of searing droplets of liquid flame as it hit the ground while they dodged out of the way. The droplets splashed down to the earth and the ground wavered like the surface of a pool, undulating with each collision and growing even more unsteady beneath their feet. "You vine-skinned gits have no place upon Eral except at the heels or as the vessels of your betters!"
Akkali drove the staff into the soup-like dirt and focused a smaller stream of magic into it, hoping that it didn't result in blowing her legs off like she had unintentionally blown off the leg of the troll homunculus. The ground at her feet steadied but it did little good as five of the quicker, unmaimed imp homunculi that had broken off from the siege caught up with them, bounding through the shadowy curtain around the area and slamming into her back skull-first. The sudden impact pitched her onto the ground and left the imps to scatter, slightly stunned at their unplanned stop.
Clenching her teeth she levered her elbow back through the skull of the nearest creature. There was no way she was allowing Basilides to take Imarin's daughter too. Not while she could still kill things. And if Drystan wasn't lying and the staff she held really was a branch of the world-tree, she had a feeling that she could kill a lot of nasty little homunculi and one crazy bitch of a possessed Oratio.
"Go burn in your hell!"
She picked herself up off the floor and swung wide and behind her back, feeling the staff connect with something solid as it whistled through the air. Hopping back up to her feet she spotted Basilides dragging Hallia off towards the opposite end of the battle. She brought the staff close to her body and fended off the ceaseless torrent of blows coming from the three homunculi that had run into her, seeing nothing behind the hollows of their eyes but vapid shadows.
Beside her she heard the twang of an arrow being loosed, followed up quickly by yet another. Akkali seized the opportunity and lashed out, spearing the nearest imp trying to take after Tiernan through the chest. The staff passed through and through the creature, and though she didn't quite know why she wasn't about to pass up the opportunity. She pulled up and split the thing in two from stomach to crown and it toppled useless to the ground, flopping to a halt at the Inquisitor's feet where he walked right over it as he continued to fire arrows at Basilides' fleeing form.
With a bit of pride she noticed Jansa, still half-covered in the magical armor she had managed to give her, savagely ripping the throat out of another of the imp homunculi nearby. Akkali turned and spotted Basilides limping along, two arrows protruding from his backside. An eyeblink later a third pierced through his shin below the knee and anchored him to the tree he was passing, causing him to squeal with impatient frustration something like a spoiled child might.
Akkali brought her staff around and slammed it flat against the ground, forcing magic through it and watching branches of power snake through the ground and spear Basilides' free leg through the sole of his foot, holding the man fast where he stood. "Jansa! The girl!"
Keeping pace with the dog both she and Tiernan sprinted towards where Basilides was ripping his leg free of the arrow and pressing along with a hunchbacked limp. The Inquisitor reached him at the same moment as Jansa, and while the dog locked her teeth around Hallia's leg and drug her out of the man's grip Tiernan had dropped his bow and brought his sword to bear. With a one-handed backswing he struck the witch's head from his shoulders and sent it rolling off into the shadows to vanish among the sickly underbrush.
Nothing about the jaundiced scene changed as the Oratio died. The forest kept its unnatural colors and the homunculi behind them were starting to swell in number as the balance of the group that had taken off now caught up with their dismembered troop.
Akkali felt a sharp blade of panic twist its way into her chest and she ran to where Jansa had managed to drag the child. A placid grin uplifted the girl's drained cheeks and something unfeeling and hollow stared back at her from within her eyes. It wouldn't be long before all of Basilides, or Cyril, or whatever's soul took root within Hallia's body. The more powerful mage would obliterate whatever was left of the Imarin's daughter and claim the vessel as her own.
Ordinarily she would never have cared; Hallia meant nothing to her aside from the fact she was the daughter of a man she had spoken to for an hour or so days ago. And she could care less about Basilides making human homunculi so long as the madman stayed out of the warrens and well away from her clan. But she was sick and tired of loosing. First in Gendelheim with the escape of the graverobber, then at the first encounter with Basilides just a few days earlier.
"Not this time," muttered Akkali. She looked up at Tiernan, who had come to tower over her with pursed lips and a dour expression. "Exorcise this bitch, Inquisitor."
He looked at her questioningly, almost as though he had already decided the girl was a lost cause. Then he seemed to change his opinion and knelt down at Hallia's side. "I'll do what I can but you need to buy me time."
"Jansa, watch," Akkali ordered the mutt. Immediately she sat down and curled herself protectively around Hallia's bare feet. Turning towards the loping horde she gripped the staff in both hands and struck it into the earth between her boots. "You had better make this work, Brennan."