This is it, Tythonnia thought. This is how we die.
The undead readied themselves for the final onslaught.
“You will not have me!” Ladonna screamed at them. “It is I who will have you! Rogan xur grig!”
For a moment, Tythonnia thought she was hallucinating. Ladonna stood with straightened back, her arms out by her sides as though ready to become airborne. In the sunlight and in the orange glow of the world beyond the aperture, her jewelry seemed to sparkle. Then all at once, the precious stones lifted from their settings and hovered around Ladonna. A dozen or more egg-shaped stones of the most vibrant purple surrounded her. They orbited around her on a dozen separate trajectories that brought them into intersecting paths, but never once did they collide.
The undead hesitated at the spectacle but for only a moment. Then the stones circling Ladonna flared and flashed, and from each, she unleashed hidden spells.
Tythonnia shielded her head as daggers of light-too many to count-burst outward from the stones. They filled the air with their numbers, each one zigging and zagging around the others and leaving trails of light as the arcane darts found their marks and peppered the undead. Still more daggers of light exploded from the stones until they filled the air with their singing whine. It was almost beautiful.
There were too many of them; it was impossible to halt the tide. Par-Salian and another sorcerer, a Vagros barely old enough to call himself a man, were at the edge of the camp. They were trying to save people-Par-Salian with learned spells and the young man with the erratic magic of the Wyldling.
The blight shades were everywhere, and the cries of anguish and agony wouldn’t stop. The most terrible of the screams came from the children, their high-pitched terror as the undead slaughtered indiscriminately. Par-Salian wished he could gouge out his own eyes and tear off his ears. A senseless dark would have been better than this horror.
Par-Salian summoned another sphere of flame and directed its path to protect those in the greatest danger. He maneuvered to avoid the bodies littering the ground already, but it was growing more difficult.
The Vagros continued unleashing what paltry magic he possessed and swinging his club when he had a chance. He was crying and struggling to keep the tears from blinding him, but he fought with a frenzied fervor for his friends and family. Par-Salian’s heart broke for him.
Among a clutch of wagons, Par-Salian spied Snowbeard struggling to protect a young boy of eight. One arm dangled by Snowbeard’s side, bloody and useless, while the other still hefted an axe. He was swinging it freely to keep two blight shades at bay, but his last swing unbalanced him, and Snowbeard tripped over Lorall’s body. The undead creatures mauled him while the boy looked on and screamed.
One of the monsters noticed the boy then, its head snapping up in attention.
“Save him!” the Vagros sorcerer shouted. He batted at the head of a blight shade nearing him, but the creature, after stumbling, sprang back to its feet, angrier than ever.
Par-Salian nodded and ran for the boy, only barely recognizing him as one of his history students. He directed a sphere of flame ahead of himself with a flick of his hand, catching the undead from behind. Its gauzy cloak and hood caught fire, and it threw itself against the earth, thrashing, trying to extinguish the flame. Its high-pitched shrieks filled the air, and its compatriot leaped away from Snowbeard’s decayed corpse to avoid the same fate.
The boy was still screaming when Par-Salian reached him. The child clung to his leg, sobbing Par-Salian’s name into his thigh. Par-Salian wanted to pick him up and console him, but he needed both hands free. Another two blight shades loped toward them. They were surrounded; only Par-Salian’s blazing sphere kept the monsters at bay.
A sudden flash of light caught their attention. Even the undead glanced back at the incredible spectacle unfolding at the ritual circle.
Par-Salian could barely see his friends through the black bodies of the undead, but the air over their heads glowed as dozens of hornetlike lights spit out in all directions. He watched in amazement as missiles angled off. The air seemed filled with a never-ending cascade.
Ladonna’s Death Blossom, Par-Salian realized. She’d been preparing for the attack for days, slowly storing one single spell again and again in the magical stones hidden in her jewelry. It would be her final desperate act if the monsters were about to overwhelm her, he knew. It meant that conjuring a horse to escape with Tythonnia was impossible now. It meant that reaching her to teleport away was equally unlikely. It was the end. She was in mortal peril, and he could do nothing to save her.
He could barely save himself and the boy with him.
Just then, Par-Salian felt the pull of some critical force … toward the gate. The boy cried out in panic, as his feet seemed to lift into the air. The blight shades howled in panic and clawed at the ground to anchor themselves.
Farther away, creatures, a few corpses, and renegades who had escaped were already aloft and flying through the air, back toward the gate. Just before they reached Par-Salian, however, they stopped in from their flight, fell and landed hard.
The pull is greater at the periphery, Par-Salian realized. It was a collapsing bubble that was about to sweep over them and push them back toward the iris and into it.
Par-Salian abandoned the flame sphere and lifted the boy in his arms.
“Run!” he screamed. He wasn’t sure anyone was left to hear him, but he ran, the undead be damned, for the gate.
And at his back, he felt the growing pressure of the collapsing bubble.
Once caught, nothing could escape it.
The deadly darts blasted the undead, peppering them with shots and leaving behind ruined bodies. Tythonnia knew the missiles wouldn’t touch her, yet found it impossible to budge. It was time for her to act, to do something.
Berthal was on the ground, struggling to rise and bleeding heavily. Hundor lay deathly still, though Mariyah gripped him like a drowning woman looking for purchase on the ocean. Everything seemed surreal, the moment too insane to grasp completely. As Tythonnia watched in shock, she saw the limp bodies of the destroyed creatures begin to roll away, toward the patch of ground beneath the iris. More monsters landed on the ground, intent on coming through. But some of the others were being tugged upward.
Then Dumas rose slowly to her feet. She didn’t seem to notice the angry gnats of light buzzing around her. A furious mixture of hate and pain swelled her face. Berthal was forgotten in her eyes, but Ladonna was there to slake her blade’s thirst.
In that moment, Tythonnia never hated another human being as much as she did the huntress. Dumas was not yet broken. Tythonnia wanted to shatter her. She wanted to hear the woman scream in agony, to match the unholy wails in her own thoughts.
Tythonnia envisioned her tattoo, her gift from Amma Batros, and imagined the full circle of black ink drain away. She felt the power of the tattoo slip through her skin and into her veins and arteries. The power infused her, made her skin ache. She shivered.
Dumas advanced on Ladonna, stumble-stepping with her blade in her hand. Ladonna did not see her. Tythonnia did, and moved to counter her once and for all.
Tythonnia was spent of her learned spells, but the Wyldling was still hers to command. She fell into familiar motions. Her fingers flew together. They flew apart. Her mind became a mirror. And in that mirror where Sutler had once stood was Dumas. She was blurry and distant somehow, but the tome on her chest was visible and distinct in each detail. Also in the reflection, standing behind Dumas, was the very thing to end her.