The mechanical bone hell, controlled by the lich, froze in a pre-strike stance. Its sword a hideous alloy of smelted iron and compressed knuckles rose to the heavens, ready to crash down and mix them with the mud.
Corvus raised his rapier. It seemed madness — a reed against a club. But when the Mech's blade descended, Corvus met it not with his edge, but with force. A crimson glow, like condensed will, enveloped his blade, and the strike, capable of shattering rock, rebounded with a deafening clang. The ground beneath Corvus's feet cratered, but he held firm.
For a moment, something like surprise flickered in Nazrik's empty eye sockets. «An interesting specimen.»
The response was immediate. From the Mech's ribcage, two skeletal cyclists on bicycle frames burst forth and raced toward the group. Corvus darted aside, his movements flawless. Valos lunged, shoving Eldrid out of the way. They both tumbled into a nearby crater. The cyclists struck the ground beside them.
A thunderclap, a rain of sharp debris. Eldrid was shielded by Valos. Corvus, evading, did everything right. Almost. One shard, long and sharp as an awl, flew in from the side. With a sickening sound of tearing leather, it pierced the fabric bearing the Tropan crest on his chest and embedded itself in the leather armor at his side. Not deep. But it struck not steel, but a leather patch — a piece of tanned hide that stood out against the rest of his high-quality armor.
Corvus froze. He did not look at the wound. He stared at that patch. And something in him — something forged, bound, locked away in the deepest vault of his soul for years — cracked.
When the next explosive cyclist charged at him, he did not even dodge. He swept his rapier. And trailing the blade, through the air, arced a crescent of that same crimson light. Pure, perfect, cleaving space itself. It met the flying projectile, and it silently disintegrated into dust. Without stopping, the arc continued and bit into the Mech's iron sword. Metal and bone flared crimson for an instant — and the sword split in half, its upper portion crashing to the ground with a thunderous boom.
Silence. Nazrik, in his cockpit, stared at the stump in the Mech's hand. The Mech, having lost its main weapon, simply raised its leg to crush them like insects. Corvus, still snarling, drove his rapier into the sole of the bone foot, holding it aloft, preventing it from descending. Bone met will. A grinding screech filled the air. Corvus trembled; a thin stream of blood trickled from his nose, but he held.
And then a giant stone sphere slammed into the side of the Mech's head with a crash, staggering the construct aside. Nazrik, shaken, turned his attention.
Balin was charging. As a giant, each of his footfalls against the ground sent localized tremors, like hammer blows. In one hand, he dragged his mithril-obsidian pickaxe. Beside him, with an unpleasant hum, Lyra glided through the air, dragging Cassian behind her like an awkward kite.
Lyra, downing another potion mid-flight, dropped herself and the priest sharply beside Valos and Eldrid. She was breathing heavily; the crystal on her chest had dimmed.
— Lyra! My staff! — he shouted.
The girl, without even looking, raised her hand. The Fire Spear-Staff, lying a dozen meters away, tore from the ground and flew into her palm. She tossed it to Valos.
Valos, clinging to consciousness, thought feverishly. Direct combat was suicide. He remembered something. A trivial fact glimpsed while scrolling through his phone late at night. «Calcium… a mineral… found not only in bones… but also in soil… Earth magic works with stone and minerals.»
— Distract him! I need a minute to draw the rune!
Without waiting for an answer, he began tracing the artifact's tip across the ground, burning lines into the earth. A large circle. An inner circle. At the center, a complex spiral enclosed in a circle, then in a hexagon. Between the circles, his hand traced ancient, guttural symbols of Asterian, the universal language.
Balin, wasting no words, charged at the Mech. His pickaxe swung again, but Nazrik, using the stump of his sword, deftly knocked off the head. The mithril tip flew away with a crash. Cassian raised his banner. «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!» Golden light crashed down upon the Mech, freezing it for a second. Lyra, hovering above, with a tremendous effort, dropped the upper half of its own sword onto the Mech's heads.
Nazrik, stunned and enraged, melted the upper portion of the sword with jets of green flame. He surged into the sky. From there, from above, he saw Valos's nearly completed circle and the tiny figures within it. Rage, cold and calculating, overwhelmed everything.
— SLOT TWO: FIRE HURRICANE.
The air shrieked. From nothing, directly above the circle, a spinning column of flame and scorching ash was born. It reached toward the clouds; its vortex began to suck in everything with monstrous force: the remnants of the undead, the surviving cavalrymen with their horses. Cries mixed with the roar of the elemental force. Balin, without hesitation, threw himself over Valos, Eldrid, and Cassian, becoming a living stone wall.
And then, through the roar of the fire, another sound emerged. Quiet, like a breath. Corvus stepped forward. His rapier rose. A crimson arc, thin as a razor's edge and impossibly long, sliced the hurricane from top to bottom. The elemental force choked, split in two, and scattered into ash.
Corvus sank to his knees. Crimson blood trickled in thin streams from his ears, nose, and the corners of his eyes. His eyes, already red, now seemed filled with it. He breathed heavily, clutching the hilt of his rapier, which had cracked along its entire length.
Valos, choked by the hot ash, finished the final symbol. Between the circles blazed the Condition Rune — two lines crossed by a third. And the words: «racea ciuma cin ciuma ffate.» Replace calcium with calcium phosphate. The primary mineral of bones… with the same, but weaker.
Nazrik, seeing his spell destroyed for the second time, fell into blind rage. He dove, discarding the stump in the Mech's hand, intending to crush them all with the Mech's mass. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw that very discarded sword stump, which he had let go of, soaring into the sky, carried by Lyra's magnetic force.
Balin, sensing the moment, became a giant again and threw himself at the Mech, locking it in a powerful embrace. He did not strike. He pushed. He dragged and shoved this bone behemoth toward that damned circle Valos had drawn.
— NO! LET GO! — Nazrik roared, kicking, releasing jets of flame that melted the giant's stone arms. But Balin, losing mass, did not let go. He made one final, desperate lunge and hurled the Mech directly onto the circle's line.
The Mech, trying to keep its balance, stepped back. One step. Two. Three.
It was inside.
The circle flared with blinding white light.
Nazrik cried out — for the first time, in a truly living voice, full of terror. He felt the monstrous volume of mana that fueled his construct and himself draining from him into the circle. The mana he had hoarded, used to bind the dragon bones. In panic, in a final act of desperation, his consciousness reached for the last, most forbidden SLOT.
— SLOT THREE: MIND OPERATION.
From the Mech's "palm" burst a blinding flash of pure light, not searing the eyes, but striking directly at the mind. Valos, Eldrid, Balin, Lyra — all instinctively squeezed their eyes shut. Corvus, who could barely hear anyway, merely staggered.
And he *saw*.
*Fragments. An adult hand reaching out a piece of tanned leather to a boy with white hair. A voice: «Kid, take this. Don't forget this old man… the address… the work…»*
*Another voice, mean, mocking: «Look, his hair is white and his eyes are like a vampire's! Ee-hee-hee!»*
*Dozens of other voices, faces, fragments of phrases — a cacophony of other lives, other betrayals, other sufferings.*
The image crackled, wavered. In the lower left corner, a clear, blue message appeared: «EQUIPMENT DESTROYED BY ASTRAL STORM OF STRONG EMOTIONS.» A flat, impersonal female voice sounded from nowhere: «Apologies, Star Watchers. Our equipment could not withstand immersion into the Astral. Restoring transmission.» A new message: «SWITCHING TO BACKUP OBSERVATION POINT.»
Reality returned with cruel suddenness.
Balin, not having seen the flash but seeing the Mech frozen, rushed forward. He raised the haft of his pickaxe and drove it with all his strength into the construct's left "arm," shearing it off. At the same moment, from the heavens, guided by residual inertia and gravity, the red-hot sword stump dove down. It crushed both of the Mech's dragon "heads," and the remaining skull fragments crashed to the ground.
And Corvus, gathering the last of his strength, shouted. He shouted silently, with nothing but an exhalation of fury and pain. He swung his rapier, and it, unable to withstand the strain, exploded in his hand, showering his face with tiny fragments. But before it shattered, it released one final crimson arc. A perfect, surgical cut. It passed diagonally through the entire Mech construct, from right shoulder to left hip, neatly avoiding the cockpit with Nazrik. The upper half of the Mech slowly slid off and crashed down. Corvus silently collapsed onto his back.
Nazrik, now sitting in the shattered ribcage of his creation, stared in terror at the approaching heroes. His gaze fell upon the city. Upon the source of souls, of mana… He tried to crawl with his remaining hand.
A stone spear, grown from the earth, pierced the remains of the Mech's frame and pinned it firmly to the ground. Nazrik froze, turned. Balin stood over him, his stone face impassive.
— Go to the hell you crawled out of — the dwarf grated.
Nazrik laughed. A dry, desperate laugh. He reached into the folds of his black robe and drew out a simple, worn book. On its cover was burned a rune in the shape of a two-dimensional Eye.
— I'm afraid only you will go to hell! All of you! — he hissed.
The rune on the book flared with a lilac, poisonous light.
Balin did not hesitate. Stone closed around the book, tearing it from Nazrik's hands. 5… With his other hand, he wrenched out the stone spear. 4… He spun on the spot like a javelin thrower and hurled the glowing book with all his might away from the city, toward the barren hills. 3…
… 2 … 1.
First came the Flash. White. It illuminated everything for miles around, burned shadows into the earth, heated the air to unbearable heat. Then came the Silence. And after it, the Shockwave. A wall of invisible force, uprooting ancient trees, stripping away the topsoil, erasing hills.
— HIT THE DECK! — Valos screamed, and threw himself over the unconscious Corvus, covering him with his own body.
The impact. Pressure. The roar of a collapsing world. Then silence. Deafening, ringing.
They all awoke in a shallow, stone crater. The air smelled of ozone and ash. Valos, coughing, hoisted the unconscious Corvus onto his shoulder. He was alive, but blood seeped from beneath his closed eyelids. Nearby, Eldrid rose, Balin back in his usual form, and Lyra, leaning against a piece of debris. Cassian knelt; his broken banner lay beside him.
Silently, the priest rose. He walked to Corvus, placed his hands on the bloodied head and chest. His voice was a soundless whisper, but a golden light, weak as the first ray of dawn, flowed from his palms. The bleeding stopped. The superficial wounds on Valos, Eldrid, and Lyra closed, leaving only pink scars.
Cassian straightened, his face gray with exhaustion. Eldrid, leaning on his sword, nodded to him. — Stay. The city needs a priest like you.
Cassian shook his head, looking west, toward where darkness lay.
— My road lies there. Even more people need to be reminded what is worth holding on to. Peace be with you, Baronet. And… good fortune.
He picked up the fragments of his banner, bowed, and walked away, his figure quickly dissolving into the swirling dust.
Four of them remained. Valos, the unconscious Corvus on his shoulders. Eldrid, leaning on Balin's shoulder. Lyra, walking beside them, her uniform ruined, her crystal extinguished.
Silently, they trudged toward the city. In the east, the sky began to lighten. The heavy, black clouds, summoned by magic and the explosion, slowly dispersed. And in the gap between them appeared not one, but two celestial bodies: majestic Menna-Prima with its shining rings, and beside it, like a faithful companion, little Nycta-Seconda.
The rising of the two moons washed over the ash-covered battlefield with cold, ghostly light.
Valos gazed at the city walls, at the smoking ruins, at the stars twinkling beside the moons.
He felt not relief. Not victory. Emptiness and monstrous fatigue. And somewhere deep within — a cold, sharp interest, like Corvus's blade. The story was only beginning. And he, damn it all, was now part of it.