– -but all of her attacks were smoothly either parried or blocked. The nameless Knight remained in her path, forced her to stop, gave Tarrin that critical moment he needed to complete the spell. The marilith looked down at her foe in fury, raising one sword to cleave his head in half as another darted in to strike at his shield, as a third clashed with the Knight's broadsword, and then a fourth plunged just inside his shield to drive through his armor and burst his heart, the sword's tip erupting out of the back of the armor.
The sword had no blood on it.
The sword that was high struck the visored helmet, but failed to penetrate it. It did knock the helmet off, however, revealing the man inside the armor. But it was no man.
It was Faalken!
There was no doubt, it was Faalken! The cherubic Knight's head was somewhat hazy, almost opaque, and Tarrin realized that the man within was nothing but a ghost, a shade, a spectre without form. The armor and weapons were real enough, but the Demoness could do no harm to the force giving them mobility. Tarrin nearly forgot the next word of the spell as the shock of seeing Faalken again hit him, and his voice stumbled slightly. But he kept chanting, not losing the spell, and then finally felt it reach its climax. He held up the amulet for the Demoness to see, presenting the holy symbol of his Goddess as an instrument through which she would deliver her might, and his voice thundered across the grounds. "In the name of Niami, Goddess of magic, I abjure ye, creature of darkness! Begone to the pit that spawned ye, or face the wrath of the Goddess!"
The Demoness screamed then, a scream of fury, rage, pain, and bitter frustration. "This is not over, Were-cat!" she screamed at him. "Your soul is mine! Mine, do you hear! I'll return to take it from you!" she promised, spitting the curse at him, and then her body simply evaporated into a hazy black mist, which itself vanished a second later.
There was a stunned silence on the field, which suddenly became a collective groan from the forces of the ki'zadun. It intensified when Camara Tal's reinforcments arrived and joined the lines, doubling the numbers of defenders they would have to defeat to break through. They just lost their general and their greatest weapon, and all of them had suddenly lost the will to battle with the deadly Knights and Vendari. But Tarrin didn't hear them, didn't see them cringe, didn't see the defenders give a great rallying cry and surge forward with renewed vigor. Tarrin's eyes were locked on Faalken, who just grinned that grin at him, gave him a wave of salute, and then vanished into nothingness just as the Demoness had vanished, leaving the armor and sword behind to clatter to the ground.
Just like that, he was gone. Faalken had saved him, protected him long enough to complete the spell. Even from the grave, Faalken continued to make his presence known, continued to aid his old friend.
Tarrin sank to one knee, feeling totally exhausted, and released the Weave to allow magic to flow again. He didn't know whether to feel happy or sad to see Faalken, and at the moment he was too tired to care about it. He crawled over to Thalia as the Knights and Vendari pushed the ki'zadun up against the breastworks, pinning them in place and then proceeding to slaughter them, but he didn't take notice. He rolled the Alu over onto her back as gently as he could, a hard job because of her wings, but he gave up being gentle when he looked into her glassy, blank eyes.
Thalia was dead.
She had sacrificed herself to protect him, just as Faalken had done for Dolanna. Despite being half Demon, she had given her life for the noblest of reasons, to protect someone else, and he felt a strange, towering pride for her. She had saved him, and in her own way, she had turned the tide of battle by giving him the time he needed to banish the Demoness. He said a silent prayer for Thalia, a humble beseechment of the Goddess that she look over the soul of Thalia and guide her to an afterlife deserving of her heroic actions. The shock of seeing Faalken again, of knowing that yet another had died because of him, it was a little too much. Tears formed in his eyes as he reached down to close her dark eyes, prepared to carry her back to her mother and apologize for what happened.
Then, to his absolute shock, Thalia took in a ragged breath. Those glassy eyes blinked, then she looked up at him in confusion. "What's going on?" she asked.
"I thought you were dead!" he gasped.
"It's possible to kill through the mind, but it's not easy," she said to him with a sudden grin. "It just took me a while to shake off the defeat, that's all. I guess I must have looked dead." Her grin faded as she realized that he was weeping. "Tears, for me? I'm very touched, Were-cat," she said gently. "But a little misplaced. I took on the marilith through the mind, knowing that she wouldn't be able to kill me with her swords. And I knew someone would come along behind me and keep her from finishing me off," she winked. "You know, the desperate defense of the fallen sacrificial lamb, and that sort of thing."
Tarrin laughed helplessly. Goddess, but Demons were cunning little things! "Thalia, you're just like your mother."
"Thank the pit. At least that means that I was paying attention when she taught me."
Tarrin laughed again, and then they struggled to help each other up. Tarrin was exhausted, totally drained, both physically and emotionally, after everything that had happened, but the result did seep through that as he saw the fruits of their labor and preparation. The enemy forces had been destroyed on their side of the fence, and the survivors were fleeing back into the city, leaving their screaming comrades still trapped on the fence behind. The loss of the marilith had crushed the will to fight out of them, and now they were running away in a full rout.
At least on their front, the battle had been won.
Now it fell to Kang and Darvon to win their battles, and the war would be over.
The battle at the breach in the fence was pitched and furious.
The remaining Wizards for the enemy were all concentrated there, and they used their magic liberally to burn at the palisade, to force the defenders away from the breastwork long enough for the soldiers crawling across the ditch to gain a foothold on that side of the ditch. The Sorcerers were taken aback by the flurry of magic, but then formed a Circle with Sevren leading and choked off the Wizards' powers, eliminating their advantage. It turned into a bloody stalemate as ki'zadun and the defenders exchanged blows over the palisade, neither side able to gain enough of an advantage to either push the attackers back or breach the lines of the defenders.
But that changed when Shiika and her lone Cambisi daughter entered the fray. Safe from Wizard spells, they waded over the palisade and attacked the ki'zadun with swords, and proved to be as devastating to the ki'zadun as the marilith had been against the Knights and Vendari. Neither of them even bothered to defend themselves, they hacked wildly at the men before them. They were invulnerable to the weapons of their enemies, and that protection proved fatal for the men facing the two Demonesses. They cut a huge swath through their opponents, pushing the ki'zadun back to the ditch where they were fighting. It went on like that for long moments, until the two of them pulled back to the defender's side of the palisade and took a short break to rest.
The stalemate raged even as the bodies began to pile up on both sides of the palisade. Kang engaged the enemy personally at the center of the lines, taking his own turn at the forefront of the breastwork to keep the enemy on the other side of it. The short Arakite proved to be a deadly warrior, a master of his longsword and the doom of every man who came up against him. Kang was a fencer, using his sword in light, delicate movements to brush aside the opposing weapon and deliver a lethal stab to the throat or chest, or a killing slash over the head, neck, or upper belly. The ground on the other side of the palisade from Kang began to pile up with the bodies of his opponents, and with his help, the line remained strong and unbroken.