Chaos was layered, like a poorly baked pie. Below, at the foot of the wall where the rubble from the dragon-destroyed section had become a hellish funnel, a slaughter seethed. The dwarves, shields locked with the remnants of Vigar's militia and Eldrid's personal army, were fending off the furious but still chaotic assaults of the undead pouring through the breach. Without clear command, the army was blind, but no less deadly — like a mechanism that, having broken, continues to thrash around blindly.
Leonhard von Brackel, his armor splattered with black ichor and lime dust, stood on a surviving battlement, issuing orders as sharp as dagger strikes. "Second platoon — to the right! Seal the passage between the rubble! Archers — target the large ones! Don't let them organize!" His face was a stone mask, but his eyes burned with fury. He saw the ranks thinning. Help was needed not today, but yesterday.
And help came. But not in the form of reinforcements.
Through the smoke and cries, stubbornly as if swimming against a current, a solitary figure made its way toward the breach. A bald man in a worn robe, the symbol — a circle crossed with a bar — carved into his forehead, and a massive banner on his shoulder. Cassian. His banner, whose pole he used as a staff, was stained, but the symbol on it — the same as on his forehead — seemed to glow from within. He did not run. He walked. Each step was firm, as if he were driving invisible stakes of faith into the ground.
Reaching the thick of the defense, he planted his standard in a pile of rubble, right on the line of defense. Then he raised his hands, and his voice — low and quiet — nonetheless drowned out the clamor of battle, because these were not the words of a man, but the voice of conviction itself.
— «Two Principles! Hear the call of your flesh and the will of your spirit! Let the first strengthen, and the second illuminate! Let the living not waver, let the soulless crumble!»
From Cassian's banner erupted not light, but the very concept of light. A vast, radiant banner, woven from pure radiance and invisible will, unfurled above the defense sector. The soldiers upon whom its rays fell felt fatigue recede, and fear condensed into a cold, hard lump of resolve in their chests. Skeletons that entered this zone began to move as if through thick honey, and their bones emitted a thin, mournful ring, becoming brittle as old porcelain.
While this miracle unfolded below, at rooftop level another battle raged — titanic, apocalyptic. Balin, once again in the form of a stone giant, was locked in combat with the Skeletal Dragon. But the dragon had changed. In its empty eye sockets now danced not a green, but a cold blue fire — a sign of direct, manipulative control. This was no longer merely a reanimated skeleton, but a puppet on the strings of a furious genius.
Their struggle was like two enraged gods crushing a toy city. A lash of the dragon's tail toppled a bell tower. Balin's step crushed a tavern into dust. Then the dragon, pushed back a few steps, retreated, gained altitude, and exhaled a jet of that same green flame, but concentrated like a blowtorch. It melted Balin's stone, creating a thick, black, glassy crust of obsidian on the giant's chest and shoulders, constricting his movements.
Balin retreated, gathering stone from the ruined houses to restore his mass. But the dragon was relentless. The dragon was faster. The melting attacks came one after another. The stone melted faster than the dwarf could gather it. Inside his stone shell, Balin felt his mana ebbing away, cold despair creeping into his heart. «Not surrender. Not to this... construction!»
And then in Balin's eyes — those coals in the stone crevices — ignited not anger, but a fierce, impatient understanding. In his mind, honed for centuries working with stone, a lock clicked. The third circle. He was not merely gathering stone. He felt its song, its memory, its pain at being destroyed. Gathering his last strength, he drew into himself not only the rubble, but also the molten obsidian on his chest. His form grew again, becoming monolithic, gleaming with black mirror-like inclusions. But when he brought his fist down on the dragon, the creature's bones merely rang out, protected by that same violet barrier of magic. Stalemate.
And then between them, with the hum of electrified air, Lyra shot past. Her black cat ears were flattened against her head, her black tail and hair streaming behind her. From the bag over her shoulder, flasks of crimson liquid glinted. Over her modest maid's uniform, she wore a crude iron frame — an improvised rigid exoskeleton, at the center of which, on her chest, was mounted a blue, pulsing crystal.
From above, her green cat eyes picked out a detail in the chaos: a single figure not engaging in battle, but methodically, with blue fires in its eye sockets, directing the construction of the bridge.
Lyra, without a moment's hesitation, dove. Her frame groaned under the strain. She did not attack. She simply slammed into Stanislav from behind, wrapped her iron grip around him with her apparatus, and using the remaining momentum, dragged him away from the construction site, toward the defense where Cassian's banner blazed.
With a dull thud, she hurled the undead engineer at the priest's feet.
— Priest! — her voice, usually soft, was sharp with exertion. — Separate the head from the deed!
Cassian looked at the creature in the engineer's harness, at the blue fire in its eyes — a mockery of reason. In his gaze was neither pity nor anger. Only duty.
Stanislav did not even turn at the noise. He watched as his skeleton "brigades" erected yet another nearly completed bone bridge toward the wall. Cassian, barely touching the ground, swung his banner like a spear. The tip of the pole did not touch the body. It pierced the air at the engineer's temple, and Cassian whispered: — «Separate, spirit, from another's will. Find peace in inaction.»
The blue fire in Stanislav's eye sockets went out. His body went rigid, then slowly, like a marionette with cut strings, slumped to the ground. The skull, bereft of its guiding consciousness, rolled helplessly aside. In that same second, the skeletons building the bridge froze, then, losing coordination, collapsed.
— Thank you! — Lyra called out and, without losing a second, shot back into the air. Her gaze fell on a pile of armored zombies milling about at the wall. An idea, bold and simple, was born in her magic-overheated mind. She extended her hands, and the iron frame on her body answered with a glow. The metal of the undead's armor trembled and, with a screech as it tore away from the rotting flesh, flew toward her, forming in mid-air a giant, crude flying hand of rusted plate armor. This "hand" slammed into the new bone bridge with full force, smashing it to splinters.
Then she soared upward, into the clouds, toward where the dragon, having freed itself from Balin, was preparing another melting blast. She leveled with its head.
— Hey, lizard! — she shouted, though he could not hear her. — Catch!
And the armored "hand" she had been dragging with her plastered itself over the dragon's skull like a giant metal gauntlet, blinding and constricting it. With its own magnetic field, she pulled it down toward the ground, turning its dive into a controlled fall, and in that moment, Balin, who remained on the ground, acted.
Balin, seeing his stone was powerless against the magical protection, shifted his focus. His gaze fell upon the weapons scattered through the streets — a few mithril halberd tips, gifts from the dwarves. He extended his stone palm, and from the earth at his feet grew a giant, crude stone pickaxe. Then he pulled the mithril tips toward him. The precious metal, obeying his will, flew through the air and fused into the stone pickaxe head, forming a gleaming, incredibly durable tip.
This consumed a vast amount of mana. Balin felt the mana burning him from within. The price for such delicate work was monstrous. But there was no choice.
While Lyra, with the last of her strength, her whole body groaning, held the dragon's head with her iron hand, Balin swung.
STRIKE. The mithril tip sang, leaving a silvery trail in the air.
STRIKE. The blue fire in the dragon's eye sockets flared with fury.
STRIKE. Green flame erupted blindly, incinerating an entire city block, but Balin was already inside the dragon's reach.
STRIKE. A crack.
STRIKE. Another crack.
STRIKE.
With the final blow, the Skeletal Dragon's skull that massive, enchanted crypt split with the sound of a mountain breaking. The blue fire died. And the entire structure every rib, every vertebra, every link in its tail — crumbled like children's blocks, collapsing to the ground in a mountain of useless bone debris.
Balin emerged from his stone shell, which immediately collapsed into a pile of rubble. He stood leaning on his pickaxe, his real body trembling with exhaustion. Lyra landed beside him and, without a word, shoved one of her potions into his hand. He drained it in one gulp, and relief spread across his face.
Their eyes met. No words, no thanks. Only a nod. The nod of professionals who had done their job.
Balin re-entered his giant form. His gaze shot to the horizon. To where a lone group of riders was visible in the distance, and above them loomed a skeletal colossus — Nazrik's Skeletal Mech.
Without hesitation, Balin strode to the wall, wrenched from it a boulder the size of a cart, compressed it into a perfect stone sphere, and, spinning full circle, hurled it at the mechanical titan's face. The blow glanced off, but it made the titan stagger and distracted him.
Lyra, barely staying aloft, saw this. She released her iron hand, and it scattered into spare parts. She wanted to fly further, to help Valos and Eldrid, but a sharp pain shot through her head.
— Girl! — Cassian called out to her, running to where she had landed. His face was pale from the strain of maintaining his prayer, but his eyes burned. — I need to be there. The Baronet… is running out of options.
Lyra looked at his resolute face, at the heavy standard in his hands. She sighed. Then she nodded toward her bag.
— One potion will be enough to carry us both. But hold on tight, Holy Father. The flight will be… rough.
She snatched a vial and downed it in one gulp. Her body shuddered, but the frame blazed with blue light again. She grabbed Cassian by the arms, and they shot toward the horizon, leaving behind the battlefield where the light of his banner was already beginning to fade, and Leonhard was once again left alone to face the rising tide of disordered, but no less deadly, undead.