The fireball hit the dirt at breakneck speed in a clap of white light and a crash of thunder. Kendrick’s wagon avoided the brunt of it—the explosion still knocked their wagon over, spilling all passengers on the side of the road. Their horse staggered and whinnied in terror. Fragments of rock and embers clung to Kendrick’s clothes as he jumped to his feet. It was unclear if any other wagons were destroyed or damaged in the impact.

“Parto reig!” several spellcasters called out in unison. There wasn’t even time to assess other incoming threats—they reacted as soon as they were standing. Looking around, though, Kendrick could see no other impending dangers, nor any enemies. The translucent aural shield around them wavered impotently with nothing to deflect.

Although his lens had just shattered, he still touched his temple—a muscle memory by this point that would take time and repetition to break.

It wasn’t destroyed for nothing, he thought. Urobius is here. Somewhere. But how close?

“Everyone all right?” Olser barked to the group. It was more of a demand for a status report than anything else. Most members of the group gave curt replies to the affirmative. “Very well then. Move along!” The wizard waved on the wagons ahead of them, after confirming the absence of casualties. Riders of the other wagons waved back and commanded their horses to run again. Meanwhile, all the displaced passengers chipped in to help right the overturned wagon, and then they piled back inside.

“Not a jinn, was it?” one of the older witches suggested. “Couldn’t be. That was massive, even for an act of self-destruction.”

“No, it’s him,” said Kendrick. “The Dark Lord.”

“Aye, lad,” Olser replied gravely, clenching his fists, his beard furrowing in anger. “I take it that’s what happened to your lens.” Kendrick nodded. Another witch, the one driving the wagon, flicked the reins and they were off again. The horse neighed uncertainly. “We’re not far from the Plains of Anurath now. By the Overworld... Even still, the Dark Lord’s reach is mind-boggling. We are not safe, even when the god is not yet visible on the horizon. Stay sharp, all. We may need more hastily-thrown barriers before we reach our destination.”

The sky grew dimmer and smoggier the farther they traveled down the River Road. After a while, the sun looked like any ordinary candle flame hidden behind a sheet, its light only faintly seeping through. The air grew cold and smelled increasingly of rotting eggs. Whatever wildlife had been present in the past was now long gone; only the wind and the sounds of their caravan punctuated the otherwise unnerving silence.

“Diverting course! Hold tight!” the driver shouted to the passengers. Looking ahead, Kendrick saw another fireball descending from the sky.

Only it wasn’t made of pure fire. It was a flaming chunk of rock—and it was headed straight for a cluster of wagons ahead of them.

The Slayers of Adrogan wagon had enough advanced warning to avoid the projectile. Two of the wagons in its trajectory, however, were not so fortunate. Sudden screams were abruptly cut off in an explosion of dust and smoldering wagon wood. There were no remains—the victims were incinerated.

“Six-caster barrier! Now!” Olser roared.

“Parto!” three witches and a wizard obliged. They opted for a horizontal shield over their wagon rather than an all-encompassing sphere—Kendrick guessed that the overhead coverage would be denser that way. Another witch jumped in after a moment’s hesitation.

“You, with the blue hair!” said Olser, jabbing a finger in Sahni’s direction. “We need six on this!”

“Oh, right,” Sahni groaned, shaking off her aura-sensitive fugue. “Sorry. Parto.” She held up her hands and added her own spellcasting strength to their makeshift meteor umbrella. Kendrick was relieved to see that the crystal-enhanced circlet she was gifted seemed to help in staving off her sickness, or at least blunting it. Her sixth sense for aura was delicate enough to detect approaching imps; sensing the divine aura of the second most powerful being in the Three Realms probably would have been overwhelming for her without the circlet.

In a pang of sentimentality, Kendrick missed his lens. It felt like he had lost another friend to the Underworld. Then he remembered that, although it had been a useful tool that served him well, it was the Psysword that enabled him to channel his aura, to defend himself and those he cared about—it was the Psysword that empowered him to destroy his enemies.

And it would serve him again this day.

“I see him!” said the little wizard, craning his short neck out of the wagon’s window. “I see the Dark Lord! Aldiel above... he truly is a god!”

“Hold fast, Slayers of Adrogan!” said Olser. Kendrick could hear the slightest wavering in his voice that betrayed a sliver of fear.

Kendrick poked his head out of the opposite window as well to get a better look and his stomach flooded with ice water. In memories, he was instantly transported back to the Rift, that short-lived and hopeless battle that already felt like it happened ages ago rather than days. The Dark Lord Urobius towered over the landscape; if the Prime Sin Adrogan had been the size of a fox, then by comparison, Urobius would have been the height of a man, or perhaps an orc—and with the build to match. The god’s head cleaved the gathering clouds with each tremorous step he took.

The origin of the meteors became clear when Urobius bent down to scoop up a boulder-sized chunk of the Ecumene in his titanic hand. A plume of purple fire lit the rock hunk ablaze. Then, with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible for a being of his size, he hurled it across the landscape toward the approaching caravan. All the wagons scattered prematurely this time, jockeying for safety.

There were thousands of spellcasters in the caravan and tens of thousands of conventionally armed soldiers. There were other detachments behind the Slayers of Adrogan now, too. It was a far cry from the swordsman and the two witches who had tried to stop the invasion on their own.

Kendrick still wasn’t sure if it would be enough.

To his horror, not only did they have a god to contend with, but he saw charging demons, swarms of jinn buzzing the caravan, and what looked like a carpet of imps moving over the Plains like walking grass. He was sure plenty of shades were in there somewhere, too. Wizards and witches slew demons with spells. Soldiers—humans, orcs, and elves alike—used swords, clubs, maces, and arrows to bring down imps as fast as possible.

Urobius was such a colossal force that even his footsteps crushed scores of his minions beneath his gargantuan hooves. He squashed them like insects without an apparent second thought; only the fortunate ones survived. The battlefield was already utter pandemonium and things were just getting started.

“Everybody out!” Olser announced to the group. “Our last stand is here! Fight well! For the Ecumene!”

“For the Ecumene!” most of the group echoed. They scrambled out of the wagon, spellcasting hands at the ready.

“Hey,” said Bellara. She squeezed Kendrick on the arm. “If you die out there...” She looked at him, then at Sahni. “Just don’t, okay?”

“Same to you,” he replied. They exchanged a friendly nod and Kendrick tried not to think about the way she had kissed him recently. It was an unwelcome distraction in the moment. He wondered if she tried not to think about it, too—then he banished the whole subject from his mind.

Bellara put her hands on Sahni’s shoulders and spoke more quietly to her best friend. They put their foreheads together and had a quick conversation. Kendrick heard Bell say, “I knock them down, you fix us up, okay? I knock them down, you fix us up. Just like always.” They were still exchanging some more words when a demon emerged from a copse of shriveled trees, sprinting for the Slayers of Adrogan.

Kendrick crouched behind the wagon. Thuuum. He drew his Psysword for possibly the final time. The demon ran for a pair of wizards in the group, who saw what Kendrick was doing—then the swordsman emerged and slammed his blade through the monster’s torso. It was killed instantly, dissolving into dark aura.

“Skillfully done, Kendrick!” one of them congratulated him. “Keep doing that!”

I’m flattered, he thought. I don’t even know that guy’s name. “This is happening! We can do this!” Damn, that didn’t sound very inspirational. How does this Olser guy do it?

The group worked their way through the crowd of Underworld troops. Demons roared, imps hissed, jinn howled menacingly—all fell to the forces of the Ecumene. There were casualties on both sides, however; Kendrick numbed himself to the reality of stepping over fallen Kanthian soldiers and even spellcasters, some with demon wounds and others with imps still suckling at aura. Kendrick did what he could, popping the impish parasites like pimples, ensuring the injured got attention from healers... and trying to forget the sight of the dead.

“We must attack the source at once!” Olser hollered over the melee. “Every battle mage, I want a concentrated aural blast straight for the Dark Lord! Are you ready?”

“Ready!” several of them, including Bellara, replied instantly.

“Ready in three... two... one... Now!”

“Synkentronai zin ampla!”

At once, multiple beams of glowing white aura shot forth from their fingertips, rocketing straight at Urobius. It was a dead-on shot—but Kendrick guessed that if even a sorcerer like Zorgen knew to protect himself, then surely a god would, too. The combined white beam ricocheted suddenly and veered off into the surrounding Plains of Anurath. Urobius was unscathed.

Clung! There came a distant sound like the whacking of a bell a moment later.

“Why are you taking random potshots like that?” Kendrick challenged him. “Even I could have told you that wouldn’t work.”

“How much aura would you estimate you expended?” Olser asked the spellcasters, ignoring him. They replied with numerical estimates, Bellara being the slowest to gauge hers. “All right. We’ll try double that this time. Third level spells. Ready?” He coached them through firing their next salvo at the god. “Two... one... Now!”

“Synkentronai zin dynamus!”

This time, the beam didn’t bounce off—rather, it bored straight into the forcefield like fire melting through thick glass. Dark purple cracks snaked out from the epicenter like veins. There was no sign, however, that the attack had broken through the field completely.

“We’re onto something now!” Olser cheered. “Yes! I’ll go rally some more hands for the next attempt. Hold fast, warriors!” Olser broke off from the group, sprinting and blasting his way through the Underworld horde to gather some other spellcasters militant to keep tinkering with this latest strategy.

Kendrick gave him a nod of respect and readied his blade to slay some more imps when he noticed his vision darkening. At first, he worried he was about to faint. But then he turned his gaze to the sky and saw the omen he had long feared—the Ecumene’s moon began to pass in front of its sun.

The prophesied eclipse was beginning.

“OH SMALL CHILDREN... OF THE ADVERSARY...” the Dark Lord Urobius boomed, his thunderous voice rebounding off the landscape around them. “YOUR SHORT TIME... IS AT AN END...” As the dark god spoke, the black disc floated across the sky and obscured even more of the sun. The morning was now dim as dusk and growing darker by the moment. “NOW THE ADVERSARY... SHALL ATONE FOR HIS SIN... AND YOUR WORLD... SHALL BE... HIS SACRIFICE!”

The ground shook and Kendrick stumbled, almost losing his balance. Everyone did. A few individuals did lose their footing, falling flat on their faces or onto their backs. The others helped them back to their feet and Kendrick’s original trio huddled together warily.

“This is it,” Sahni lamented with a grimace. “The solar eclipse. The moment when the Ecumene will be plunged into the greatest darkness we’ve seen in centuries...” She closed her eyes and had to brace against the wagon for balance. “Even with this circlet, I can barely stand the dark aura I’m feeling right now. It feels like I’m plummeting into an abyss!”

Kendrick stole another glance at the now half-swallowed sun in the sky. Some instinct told him not to stare at it for too long.

“It’ll be okay, Sahni,” he told her. “I promise. If we can wait out the eclipse, that’ll weaken Urobius that much more, won’t it?”

“Who knows how long it will last?” Sahni replied. “For all we know, it could plunge us into night for days!”

“All days are the same length in the Ecumene, right?” The blue-haired witch nodded. “And the moon moves at the same rate through the sky?” More nodding, less patient this time. “The eclipse started a little while ago. When the sun is completely covered, it means the eclipse is about halfway over. Then we’ll just have to wait that same amount of time longer and then the sun will come out again. Get it?” How do I know this stuff? My world must have had eclipses too, I guess.

“Even if the eclipse only lasts the rest of the morning,” said Bellara, “that could be plenty of time for Urobius to level the entire continent.”

“That’s why we’re here!” Olser shouted, approaching the trio with more witches in tow. “We are the obstacles in the Dark Lord’s way! And if we can't stop him, by Aldiel, we’ll be a pain in his hooves as he tramples us! Isn’t that right?” The wild-eyed wizard didn’t wait for an answer, meandering off behind the wagon. Kendrick began to wonder if he was now pep-talking himself rather than the group. “The crystals in this box of holding will be utilized as a last resort—aura bombs, should the need arise. But first we try another concentrated beam spell, this time with even more spellpower! Understand?”

“Understood, sir!” most of the Slayers of Adrogan barked back.

“Wait,” said Sahni. “Um, could you—could I say something?”

“Out with it, lass!” Olser growled, tucking the box under his arm. “Now!”

“Um, I-I... The beam spell won’t work.”

“How would you know?”

“That last attack... I could feel his forcefield bending, so to speak, but I think even doubling the attack wouldn’t break all the way through. Do you know what I mean?”

Olser eyed the other spellcasters almost angrily, as if he were already disappointed in them. His face betrayed the panic of battle. “So, the crystal bombs, then.”

“I-I think, um, if you used the crystals with the beam spell... Time them all to go off at once?”

Olser shook his head. “No, no, we couldn’t even do that against Adrogan. And today we don’t have the benefit of a weak spot to target. This is brute force we—”

CRRRACK!

An explosion rocked the ground between them. Kendrick was thrown onto his back—his instincts held the Psysword steady and kept him from accidentally impaling himself in the fall. “What the—?!” Kendrick gasped. The wind was knocked out of him again.

He worried it was another meteor that may have destroyed some more unlucky souls in the path of the Dark Lord’s wrath. But when he looked up, he saw no crater, no smoldering rock—only a scorch mark on the dirt and a puff of smoke wafting up into the darkening sky.

Urobius channeled dark aura in his house-sized hands, casting indigo bolts of lightning across the plains. They seemed to hit at random—burning trees up like matches, hitting unpopulated swaths of land, but also striking the helmets of soldiers and burning through the cloaks and hoods of spellcasters. Angry electricity snapped and chained through groups wherever it struck, shocking multiple people at once.

Those who took the brunt of each bolt fell flat on the ground, motionless. Kendrick could not tell if they were dead. Those surrounding them fell to the ground as well, convulsing and smoking.

“Sir!” Sahni snapped now. “With all due respect, listen to me!”

“Aye, lass, all right,” Olser conceded. “Time is of the essence. Everyone who knows how to set a magic charge, take a crystal! Concentrated beam spell, third level, I’ll prime them to activate—let's go!” He shoved crystals into the hands of every spellcaster in the group who would accept them. Once he finished distributing them, he ran back to the purple-bearded wizard, the first one to enchant a crystal, and took it back from him. Kendrick observed as Olser muttered a spell against each crystal he collected, as if he were telling each one a secret. “Throwing spell’s too imprecise—who here can portal worth a damn?”

“I’ll do it,” Bellara volunteered.

Olser nodded. “Good on ya, lass. Defenders! Any aura you can spare on barriers—Aldiel knows if they’ll do anything to stop that black magic. But it’s all we’ve got!”

Kendrick lurked lamely on the sidelines. He picked off a stray imp every now and then, but otherwise he felt utterly useless. The spellcasters, those truly skilled with aura, worked their literal and proverbial magic without him—and he was supposed to be the one summoned to the Ecumene to save it. Maybe they had it covered all along, he thought. Maybe they won’t even need me for this. He flashed back again to the horrors of their fight at the Rift. Lucky me...

“We may get to sit out the big finale,” Tanathil said to him. The elf sauntered over and poked him with a friendly elbow. “It’s just as well to me. I was never one for the battlefield. As soon as Olser dispatches me to do some healing, though, you can count me in.”

“Them,” Kendrick said, up-nodding at a cluster of lightning strike victims among another detachment of fighters. A healer was already tending to them, although she was doing a lot of hand-flailing and darting from victim to victim. “Could you heal them? Will they make it?”

Tanathil squinted in their direction, exchanging a look with Kendrick that did not inspire confidence, but he replied, “We just have to hope for the best, Kendrick. Do what must be done and... take stock at the end.” It was a much more pragmatic and noble thing to say than Kendrick had expected of Tanathil, the battle-shy elf whose ghost town Kendrick had saved not long ago. Here he was in the middle of the fray at the end of the world. Kendrick felt a kind of kinship with him in that moment.

“Ready!” Olser barked. “Portal in two... one... now!” He tossed the bundle of crystals, which had been tied together tightly with rope, into the air.

“Vintreu vecto!” said Bellara, and with a spin of her wrists, a white portal flashed open to swallow the crystal stack.

The next instant, there was a tiny glimmer of light in the air by the hulking abdomen of Urobius. Olser jabbed a hand forward. “Synkentronai zin dynamus!”

A flash of white light. Reminds me of something, Kendrick remembered foggily. A camera!

The oversized beam of concentrated aura blasted out of the crystal stockpile and punched a hole straight through the forcefield of the Dark Lord. Then there was a small pop of sound that followed shortly thereafter, slower than the light that preceded it. The forcefield cracked at the impact site and then shattered gradually like failing glass, violet remnants of the shield cracking off and spinning weightlessly through the air.

Cheers could be heard erupting over the sounds of battle across the Plains of Anurath. The Slayers of Adrogan cheered the loudest. Almost instantaneously, other spellcasters across the battlefield fired off a coordinated bombardment of fireballs, aural beams, and other magical attacks at the now-exposed Urobius. It was a decisive turning point.

Almost as soon as these new attacks resumed in earnest, a black cloud enveloped the god, obscuring him from view. Kendrick looked up and saw that the eclipse was now in full effect. Despite the morning, the Ecumene had become as dark as night.

It didn’t matter. They’d crossed one of the greatest hurdles of the final battle already. Now it was only a matter of time.

“Sahni, you did it!” Kendrick exclaimed.

“We did it!” she corrected him humbly, but she jumped with joy all the same. “We really did it! I was afraid it wouldn’t work.”

“Good show, Sahni!” Olser congratulated her, clapping her on the back. “Now, then. Urobius is regrouping. Let’s discuss our next move while we can!”

“Is he gone?” Kendrick wondered aloud hopefully. “Maybe we don’t even need to do anything else!”

Bellara shook her head. “Not likely. Now is when the toughest part of the fight truly begins.” She smiled at Sahni. “But this is just the upper hand we needed, and it’s thanks to Sahni’s quick thinking and her sixth sense for aura. She knew just what it would take to knock down the Dark Lord’s defenses.”

“I almost didn’t say anything,” Sahni giggled timidly. “Sometimes I think my ideas aren’t very good. You’re all so great at spellcasting, and, well... I’m just glad I could be useful today!” She turned and smiled then at the wielder of the Psysword. “And Kendrick, I should have said this earlier. I have a hard time saying a lot of things. Kendrick, you—”

CRRRACK!

The heat of the blast bit Kendrick’s skin. His limbs seized—he’d been stricken.

The realization came before the pain set in, but when it did, he felt like he was set ablaze from the inside out. A million little prickles of pain twisted every nerve ending he had, most of which he didn’t even know existed—like an entire nest of wasps was somehow buzzing through his bloodstream and stinging him internally again and again and again. He was hopeless to do anything but let it happen to him.

“Owww-w-ww-w-w...” he mumbled incoherently, his teeth rattling as his body shook.

Mercifully, the worst of the pain eventually passed. It felt like an eternity, but that was merely his own agonized misperception of time, he knew.

As soon as his limbs obeyed him again, he sat up. The Psysword was next to him on the ground, still lit. He snatched it at once. The bolt had incapacitated several Slayers of Adrogan, but he realized then that he had not been the principal recipient of the blast, only caught in the crossfire of the chained lightning. Olser was down, still convulsing. So was Tanathil, the purple-haired witch, and the little wizard. They must have gotten it even worse than him.

That was when he saw Sahni.

“NO!” Bellara shrieked, running for her friend.

Sahni was face-down in the dirt. Her gray dress was now black, singed with the edges still smoldering. Thin ribbons of smoke twisted up from her body.

She had taken the Dark Lord’s thunderbolt head-on.

Sahni was still as a corpse.