We headed toward the storeroom as my Wizard Eye zipped ahead of us, looking for any workers this late at night.

  I paused it by the entry to the next room. Across the next supply chamber were two Zharalim standing guard in tireless motionlessness beside a hallway leading deeper into the mountain.

  ‘Lady Magos, let us be patient a moment while you cover the areas to the west side that we haven’t been in,’ Master Ben Ten /said as we stayed near the wall of the supply hall, out of sight of the Zharalim. Konrad had chopped apart the triggers and firing chambers of the magical traps with the magical Axe that Briggs had made for him, the adamantine Weapon clearly inspiring the others to get Warfang upgrades to their own beloved Blades.

  ‘Very well.’ It was the wisest and most patient move, and since I dumped everything it saw into the HUD, they could follow right along as I shifted the course of the Eye back and through side tunnels, mapping out the place swiftly and precisely.

  We did indeed locate the sleeping areas and offices, along with a couple more storage chambers, a dining area, privy, bathing area, and a kitchen. Some were converted from other rooms, or repurposed from individual to group use. The kitchen and dining area had been greatly expanded in size, of course, while multiple meeting rooms and working areas had been turned into barracks for those living here… as well as a couple sinister chapels with closed doors and margul sentries waiting outside them I wasn’t going to tempt.

  Since the primary purpose was to find Harlune, we didn’t waste time going after the sleepers, although we certainly could have. Guards would be getting relieved sooner or later, so we would have to move.

  There was virtually nobody around, so the Eye could zip around and plot out everything while we moved Invisibly into position opposite the unmoving undead Zharalim.

  They probably had some exposure to the skills of the Tanada assassins who’d been trying to imitate Oswald and his students, so I didn’t consider our Invisibility anything resembling perfect cover. More than likely the Zharalim were going to notice them unless they stayed out of sight, unless they moved very slowly and stealthily.

  Coming in from the side instead of straight on, and giving them no notice due to Sound Bubbles covering the sound of motion, would all help, too.

  Also, we had to disarm the trap that was engaged at the other entrance, which Zeks accomplished with his Telekinesis and my attention by pulling out a couple important springs before they could trigger.

  From there, it was basically walk slowly and quietly up on the two of them, and then charge them with three men each, giving them no chance to respond.

  I could have blasted them, but I was keeping violent magic use to an absolute minimum, for reasons that weren’t hard to imagine. Thus, I simply watched as the two Zharalim were cut down in seconds, caught by surprise and unable to defend themselves from the coordinated attacks.

  The masters stepped back, and Zeks moved the corpses well off to the side before I Darted them with vivus, making sure Nuhmudira wouldn’t be able to keep them enslaved to her will any longer.

  Master Ben Ten was stroking the dark metal of the locked door there. ‘There is no lock, and it is sheathed in lead, Lady Magos,’ he /informed me, clearly wary of what might be behind it.

  I just looked at it up and down, Detect Magic at VII+1 analyzing it instantly. ‘Magically bound shut, released with an attuned command or magic, but not very effectively. Weapons out and up, gentlemen. I’m going to Upcast a Knock and open it up.’

  I inserted the spell into the complexity of the locking spells, keying off their triggers as if I was also the master of the spell.

  With a quiet creak, the doors opened, and a billowing dark mist with something hard to see at the middle of it swirled out at us.

  ‘Black Breath!’ Konrad /swore, he and Sumzun instantly in front of me with their Shields, while the others collapsed around it instantly.

  I had other concerns, namely the stench of the magic that leaked out of the place.

  ‘Dropping a Graysphere! Hack her dead!’ I /said before they could tell me to blast it.

  The world lost all color, drained down to black, white, and shades of gray as anti-magic filled the air. This not incidentally prevented the impossibly resilent Shade girt in a whole lot of weapon-absorbing materia from Casting spells and alerting the fuck out of this place.

  It was also the hard way for them to kill it, as all their Named Weapons went inert in the field of anti-magic. They started hacking into the Shade as it started swiping at them with monstrously powerful limbs… but all of them had Improved Armed Strike, and so all that did was give them something to attack.

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  Black Breaths were infamous for the amount of armor they had, combined with their Fast Healing and spell use. Mages could blow through them fast enough, but weapons just had a time of killing them.

  That said, there were eight of them, and they were all master combatants with Ways of Water. They clove into her Damage Reduction like nobody’s business. She definitely was not expecting them to be able to hurt her like they did, circles of blows that opened ways for one another as she tried to press past them to get at me. She realized quickly that she couldn’t Cast, and her only hope to live was to beat her way through the surrounding warriors… and that simply wasn’t going to happen in a circle of braced paramounts intent on containing her and bringing her down.

  It was a testament to her resilience that with seven master swordsman and one fellow with a Jadework Axe named Vernicht in old Aluvian, it still took them a full minute to chop her apart and drop her to the ground in a boiling cloud of dark shadowy energies.

  ‘Pull her into the room, and I’ll give you Crown to set her alight.’ I was effectively not very useful at the moment with the Graysphere up, but I passed off my Staff to Sumzun, who took it somberly as two of the others dragged the fallen Black Breath to the side.

  Just taking Crown out of the Graysphere was enough to ignite the miasma of darkness around her, the undead staying well back as the vivus collapsed on her and began to devour her corpse with great speed.

  ‘Okay, for the moment I am a walking barrier of anti-magic and can Cast no spells,’ I /informed them all. ‘That makes me a fallback point against magical barrages and means your weapon skills become all-important here. There’s no magic in the Gray around me at all.

  ‘I’ll be able to bring it down after ten minutes minimum. We can wait here or proceed.’ I looked down the hallway ahead of us, enchanted torches guttering there with a definite crimson tinge to it. ‘There’s Blood Magic active ahead of us, it is so thick in the air I can taste it. This is definitely the right way to go.’

  ‘Shields, take lead. I will be responsible for the Lady Magos,’ Master Ben Ten /ordered firmly. ‘If we must take magical fire, let her be our shield as we will be hers.’

  ‘I am not worried about missile fire, and I can definitely be an annoyance in melee if required, although don’t expect me to kill anything with half a brain to it.’ Especially with no magic to defend my unarmored self. Unlike before the Fall, Casters didn’t get to traipse around in full armor anymore, so I had basically never worn any.

  Bracers of Force Armor were quite useless in a Graysphere, ironically enough!

  ‘Expect Void Magic use if they can call in the Black Breath,’ Master Ben Ten /inclined his head to agree. ‘Go!’

  I couldn’t command or get a relay from my Wizard Eye while the Sphere was up, so I just let it dissipate and followed the undead as they advanced ahead, closing the doors behind us so no surprises would come that way, the magic automatically locking them shut.

  The big white spot where the undead Zharalim and Black Breath had Burned would be hard to miss, but that didn’t mean they could get through the doors easily.

  I sniffed. The skeletons were normally dry and almost odorless, all things considered, so the surrounding smells came in pretty clear, even without my Whiskers of the Wild active.

  ‘I’m smelling blood now,’ I /said softly.

  Mental nods indicated they could smell the same with their undead senses. ‘Human, not animal,’ Ugisko /confirmed quickly, a difference I couldn’t discern, but which those sensitive to negative energy certainly could. Sapient souls were simply more potent.

  An intersection, leading off to left and right as well as straight ahead.

  ‘We can’t risk them coming up behind us,’ Master Ben stated. ‘Konrad, Shouzon, with me to the right. Ugisko, lead the others left. No survivors if possible. If Nuhmudira is found, then we will have to attempt to find Harlune with a rush.’

  Highly undesirable, considering how many guards we were likely to alarm. The five warriors nodded and spun to the left, leaving the closed doors we could see at the end of the corridor for later, and headed out left.

  ---

  Master Ben Ten’s choice of directions was fortuitous. To the right was the quarters of various Raven Hand Cultists. To the left were the rooms and barracks for the Freebooters and their workers.

  All of them jumped to their feet to attack the undead intruders, who even were nice enough to open their visors and helms to make it totally plain they were undead forces come to attack them!

  Only one group of them immediately resorted to magic for an edge… magic which dove into the Graysphere and went absolutely nowhere, before three master swordsmen were on top of fellows who, eh, weren’t.

  The freebooters, on the other hand, were actually decent with their rapiers and cutlasses and whatnot, but it was night time, they weren’t in armor, and there weren’t a lot of shadows for them to be backstabbing from, while their frantic calls for help were nice and loud and were heard by nobody.

  I just helped out by clonking opportune knees and elbows, setting up openings for my companions, who capitalized on them nicely. If the Raven Hands went down in rather bloody messes, Konrad was quite happy to take up Crown, press him down to the corpses, and light up bodies replete with negative Void energies to ignite like oil-soaked tinder into unwhite flames.

  No vivus on the other side, which meant the Freebooters might be getting away and setting up the alarm somewhere else.

  Or, there would have been, if Ugisko hadn’t pulled out a rather ceremonial Knife that lit up with vivus out of a lead-lined scabbard and almost ritually finished off each one of them, carefully resheathing it after setting them en vivus.

  Fifteen minutes later, there wasn’t anyone in this section of the complex left alive to worry about taking us from behind, unless there were secret chambers somewhere on HUD that we couldn’t see.

  We reformed up in the main corridor soon enough, the bloody work done, and the very unfriendly doors looming ahead. Scattered about them were symbols we didn’t want to look at too closely.

  ‘Hold up the symbol,’ I /told Shouzon, who lifted up the amulet he’d taken off a senior cultist in front of him.

  Was pretty sure some of those symbols turned to regard the unholy symbol of a black feather on a red background.

  I felt the doors part before I saw them, as the magic streaming off what was beyond picked up immediately… as did the smell.

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