”Is everyone here? Great.” Alice started briefing the group of adventurers about the two necromancers they would be facing soon. “According to my boss, what we have against us is two very capable necromancers armed with most of the gear Alizarin made for the inquisition. While Anastacia and I can intercept most of those, they probably have a whole deck of aces in their sleeves.”

Dammar, Maximillian and Xamiliere had insisted on helping, even though Anastacia had hoped that they would stay in the city, since it wasn’t really their problem and they could have probably helped with the retreat if there was going to be one. But they seemed to think that it would be exciting and wanted a piece of the action.

“Carmine is a pretty straight forward type of a guy, he typically handles the straight up attacking while Cerise focuses on picking off their enemies one by one. Expect him to close in and draw as much attention as he can. He should probably be handled by the spriggan and the simulacrum if possible. Together you should be able to overpower his offence, and handle taking a couple of hits better than the rest of us. I’ll do my best to keep him using traditional means instead of necromancy.” Alice continued. “Cerise is a whole another matter though… She’ll more than likely focus on Anastacia and only Anastacia, so the rest of you need to keep her safe. Expect a lot of thrown weapons, poisons, sneaky necromancy and dodging. Anastacia, you need to make sure she doesn’t have the chance to use any of the more powerful tricks she has.”

“I’ve got a question.” Xamiliere said and put her hand up. “Are we just going to go out there and fight them? Couldn’t we like… wait this out and get more people or something?”

“No, waiting is out of the question. They would use that time to find a way into the city, burn this inn and take Anastacia during the chaos.” Alice answered. “If anything, just going out and facing them will minimize the deaths.”

They strapped on whatever gear they were still missing, except for Anastacia, who took off her daggers, gauntlets and mail. Maximillian handed her a normal dagger, just in case.

There was no reason to wait longer, so the group headed outside and told the guards what was going on. Finding the inquisitors was simple and they only had to walk for about a kilometer before Alice could feel their enemies nearby.

“Remember, if either Anastacia or I go down, run. It’s all gone horribly wrong at that point and fighting stops being an option.” Alice pointed out. “If it’s me, then someone needs to go back to Mournvalley and… ANASTACIA! ABOVE US!”

The necromancer was interrupted by a hail of bone needles. Anastacia recognized the attack from the last fight with the pair, if it can even be called that, and defending against it wasn’t a problem. As she lifted up her hands, the needles stopped in the air above the group. But something else was coming down after them, something bigger.

“It’s Cerise!” Alice yelled and pointed up.

Anastacia didn’t have time to respond, as a cow carcass crash landed in the middle of the group, and on top of it, Cerise, who jumped off right before the hit. The nimble inquisitor quickly proceeded to throw a few more needles towards Anastacia. To Anastacia’s luck, Emilia was near enough to put herself in the way and catch the needles, unfortunately one of them hit a gap in her armor and the priestess began to feel the poison’s effects and collapsed.

By this point the rest of the group had gotten a grasp of the situation and Dammar took a swing at the inquisitor, who leaped out of the way and out from the middle of the group.

“There’s a big guy running at us!” Xamiliere pointed out. “Come, my stoney friend, this one is ours!”

She and King ran off to clash with the other inquisitor. Alice knew that having lost the element of surprise, Cerise was now about a hundred times more manageable, so she felt safe leaving Anastacia and ran after the spriggan and the simulacrum.

King prepared to swing his new sword at the necromancer but was flung up in the air by a mass of bones that suddenly rose from the ground. The simulacrum flew harmlessly over the inquisitor, who had found out about the mass graves in the fields around Valor, as he continued to run towards the other group to help his colleague.

“No no no, your fight is with us!” Xamiliere smirked while her vines sprung up from the ground and tied down the inquisitor’s feet, stopping him in his tracks.

Carmine glanced at Anastacia’s group and turned to Xamiliere.

“Fine. I’m not needed there, she can handle that much.” Carmine stated and pointed his hand towards the spriggan, but nothing happened. “Who is interfering with my… Ah, one of Coquelicot’s new pets, I assume? I need to tell her I’m sorry about Alizarin. I honestly liked the guy, but work comes first.”

“Guys, I’ll do my best to slow him down, just finish him off quickly!” Alice shouted, having finally caught up with her allies.

The fight was successfully split into two, and despite Emilia being temporarily incapacitated, things were looking good for Anastacia and her friends. Gilbert, Dammar and Maximillian were able to keep pressure on Cerise, while Anastacia made sure the inquisitor couldn’t use necromancy against them and King managed to keep Carmine on the defensive as the necromancer’s efforts were hindered by vines and interference by Alice.

But then Cerise dug out something from one of the pouches on her belt and threw it up in the air. It exploded with a deafening sound and released a blood-red cloud, but nothing else seemed to happen.

Alice turned to look at what caused the sound and went through the inquisition signal colors in her mind. She remembered what red meant and cursed under her breath.

“What’s that?” Xamiliere asked.

“It’s a signal.” Carmine laughed and tore off some more vines from his legs. “It means she decided that this is up to me now.”

“What?” The spriggan asked, hoping to get a more precise answer.

“It means she’s no longer trying to capture Anastacia.” Alice explained. “She’s giving up and taking as many of us with her as possible. We need to finish this one quickly!”

Alice had remembered correctly, as Cerise abandoned her defensive fighting style and rushed the adventurers who were defending Anastacia. Maximillian’s arrow pierced her left shoulder but that didn’t slow down the inquisitor, and she threw a dagger at the elf to return the favor. The sudden change in the fight had taken Maximillian by surprise and he wasn’t able to dodge properly, allowing the dagger to hit his hand. The next target was Dammar, who was considerably less fortunate as the inquisitor pounced him, shoving a blade in the dwarf’s gut.

Anastacia could only watch from the side as the plan was rapidly failing, she could feel the panic attack coming yet again, as her vision narrowed and thoughts became blurry and she fell on her knees.

Cerise switched her attention to Gilbert and charged at him, noticing the lapse in Anastacia’s concentration, she flung up shards of bone from the skeletons below the ground and aimed them at the Adventurers.

“NO!” Anastasia yelled and slammed her fists on the ground.

And everything stopped.

“What the shit is this?” Xamiliere wondered and poked at Carmine who had suddenly become completely immobile. “Alice, are you doing this?”

The apprentice necromancer was similarly stuck, their eyes were still moving and Carmine seemed to be trying to scream but it only came out as unusually loud exhaling. King wasn’t too worried about their opponent’s sudden frozen state and sank his sword into the inquisitor’s neck, decapitating him. The head didn’t fall off, but instead it just kept floating where it was.

Xamiliere peered over to the other group, who were about seventy meters away from them. Everything was frozen in place there too. Everything but Anastacia, who slowly stumbled towards Cerise.

Anastacia had barely overcome her panic and still couldn’t think very clearly, all she knew was that Cerise needed to go. With unsure steps, she walked over to the immobile inquisitor and tapped Cerise with her index finger. Blood began pouring out from the inquisitor’s ears, eyes, nose and mouth, forming a foam as the necromancer’s voiceless screams mixed it.

Slowly realizing what she had done, Anastacia felt ill, vomited until there was nothing more to vomit and passed out just barely missing the puddle she had made. As she lost consciousness, everything became able to move again, the bone shards fell harmlessly into the ground, Cerise dropped dead right next to Gilbert and the adventurers rushed over to help Dammar. Emilia was still heavily intoxicated by the needles but was able to drag herself to the dwarf to begin her prayer as Gilbert held her up.

“Guys! what the fuck happened?” Xamiliere asked as she, King and Alice ran over.

“The lass did her thing!” Dammar laughed and winced from the pain.

Xamiliere ripped off Maximillian’s sleeve and tied it around his hand to hopefully stop the bleeding until Emilia was done with Dammar.

“That was insanely dangerous. She could have stopped our hearts.” Alice pointed out and tried looking for anything she could help Gilbert with.

“Now she just needs to learn to pull that off before everyone almost dies.” Gilbert noted jokingly. “I don’t think Dammar can get stabbed often enough for this to be reliable.”