The creature wrenched the spur from Noctessa’s shoulder, eliciting another cry of pain. It prepared to stab her again, but Riggs wrapped his arms around it, dragging it off the druid. It immediately lashed out with its spurs, failing to penetrate his chainmail more often than not. He raised the creature off its feet and slammed it down on the altar behind him as hard as he could.

The creature’s skull cracked and its spine crunched.

Riggs and Noctessa dragged themselves a few steps back, wheezing. Noctessa’s left arm hung limply at her side and she clamped her working hand over the wound to staunch the bleeding. Shakily, Riggs drew his hammer then looked to Noctessa.

“Thank yo-”

“Look out!” Lyraal crashed into him, pushing him out of the way of the statue’s attack and into Noctessa. The two stumbled and fell, too exhausted and injured to keep their balance. The giant sword crashed down into Lyraal's staff in his stead, the force dropping them to a knee. The sword didn't stop: it drove the staff down, chopped through the brigandine with a screech of protesting metal, and bit into Lyraal’s clavicle with a crack.

“Wretched child of Vulkhad!” The necromancer shouted, its head lifting despite the broken bones. “Finally, a soul worth offering to the God Emperor.”

The statue wrenched its bloody sword out of Lyraal’s body and raised it for another strike. As it looked down upon them with its shorn face, Lyraal saw tears spilling from its stone eye. Teeth grinding together from the pain, the Warden traced a quick, simple spell circle onto the ground with their good hand, leaving a marking of blood in the spell’s wake. The guardian’s sword fell and the Warden’s staff rose to meet it.

The blade met the staff.

Battered it aside, deflected only slightly by the effort.

And cleaved through brigandine, flesh and bone, shearing Lyraal’s arm off at the shoulder.

They collapsed, blood spurting from the hideous wound. Rolling in agony, their blue cloak turned red, but they made no sound despite the traumatic injury. The smell of cinders touched the air and they raised a burning hand towards the crying statue as it raised its sword once more. Then, the hand pointed towards the necromancer and unleashed a single burst of white-hot fire.

“Insolent wretch!” It recoiled and raised its remaining arm to protect its face, flesh melting like wax on a candle and chainmail sizzling and slagging. But the necromancer was undeterred. “Such a futile, final gesture.”

Lyraal’s lungs expanded once more as the sword plunged towards their chest. “Break the amul-”

The heavy blade impaled Lyraal, the ground cracking as the sword was driven through their chest.

“No!” Riggs roared, lunging from the floor and tackling the statue driving it away from the Warden.

But too late.

The statue raised its free hand to shove the big man off, but he pulled it aside and then smashed at its shoulder with his hammer. The cracks left by Lyraal deepened from the resounding blow. His next blow landed with even more force, shattering the shoulder, but also snapping the haft of his hammer.

“You fools are the same in every Age, always unwilling to surrender when beaten.” The necromancer snarled and the magic it began to channel pulsed outward like the beating of a giant heart, the force of it reverberating through Riggs’ bones.

Riggs slipped as the statue’s arm came off and it used the opportunity to roll on top of him. Beyond the statue he could see the necromancer drawing a large spell circle, its remaining hand tracing runes that emitted an eerie, dark mist. With an ear-shattering roar, a lion pounced onto the necromancer, the spell’s circle dissipated away as their caster was driven to the ground. He could hear large claws flay flesh and gouge bone.

Riggs blocked the mauling noises from his mind as a huge shield fell towards his face like a meteor. He deflected it so the shield glanced off his chest and boomed into the stone floor instead of obliterating his skull. His ears rang from the concussive force and he felt shrapnel from the ground slash at his neck and face. He gasped for breath and pain stabbed into him where his chainmail links shattered into his chest. The statue pulled its shield back for another blow and he saw the tears pouring from its stone eye. He kicked at the foot it stood on with desperate energy, the fractured heel cracking and the foot snapping off.

“I said enough!” The lion’s victim rasped and Riggs felt more sickening magic.

The statue lost its balance, and Riggs pushed to roll on top of it. He grabbed the shield arm with one hand, pinning it to the ground, and with the other he palmed the statue’s broken head. The statue struggled, trying to buck him off, but was too damaged.

Riggs lifted its head off the ground, then slammed it back down. It cracked as fractures webbed across it. He smashed it back into the ground with a deep crunch, chips skipping across the floor. With his final blow, the head crushed into rubble in his hand. With the whisper of a sigh, the statue stopped moving.

Riggs stood and turned towards the necromancer, expecting to see nothing but mauled remains. Instead, he saw something between a lion and woman writhing on the ground, dark energy coursing over her and turning her own spell’s energy against her. Behind him, he heard the barred doors give away in the distance and footsteps shambling towards him.

“Shaya, please...give me the strength to put this evil down.”

The necromancer turned to face him. What looked at him was no more than a bare skull, scarred by claws and fractured from repeated blows. Points of dark purple light hovered where his wife’s eyes used to be, boring into him. The jaw rattled, and he could hear the grin when it spoke: “You are alone. Your friends, dead or dying. Beg for mercy and maybe I will spare you.”

Riggs spat a glob of blood on the floor and took a step towards the necromancer.

Then another.

He watched the necromancer draw another circle of dark energy, felt the sickness as it channelled dark magic. He made it two more steps before the necromancer finished its simple spell, a black mist enveloping him and sapping away his energy and his will to live.

They’re dead because of you.

He fell as his maimed leg gave out, pain overwhelming him as his adrenaline drained from him.

You should have been the one to die, boy.

He caught himself before collapsing to the ground and held onto the sword that impaled his friend, fighting to draw breath.

Promise me!

“Shaya...please,” he murmured. “Please...let me honour those I have failed.”

You should know your place, you stupid ox.

“You pray to a dead god, you fool,” the necromancer sneered, “There isn’t a spirit left in this abandoned world sympathetic to her unrealistic ideals.”

Stay down, boy.

He felt fresh tears streak down from his right eye.

Get up, Riggs. Andromeda’s voice – said to him countless times in their life together.

The widower groaned as he stood. He placed two hands on the hilt of the large sword and looked down at his friend and their ruined, blood red cloak. The friend who had supported him. One of many, but only one of two who had died for him.

“Impossible!” The necromancer snarled, “Lie down and die!”

Dark magic coursed through the room, a deathly chill putting every fibre of Riggs’ being on edge. He thought he heard the screams of the damned claw at the back of his mind. Saw the light as it filtered through broken stained-glass windows, distorted by shapes that drifted around him. Felt a haunting, phantom caress on his bloodied cheek.

“Andromeda. Lyraal.” Riggs murmured. “Your deaths will not be for nothing.”

The warrior pulled the giant sword out of Lyraal, slick with their blood. He stepped over them, advancing on the necromancer. Gnarled, skeletal fingers traced complex arcane runes into a large spell circle, malevolent energy seeping into the world, but the trained motions grew more panicked as the distance between them closed. Riggs gripped the statue’s sword in two hands, the hilt a perfect fit, and raised it above his head.

“How can you resist my magic!?”

“Kitahm blood.”

The big man lunged forward and swung downward with all of his might. The giant sword split the necromancer’s warped corpse in half, the blade slicing through chain links left brittle by Lyraal’s final fire and then carving through enchanted bone with ease. The body parts fell to the ground, the complex, nearly complete spell circle shattering and sprinkling over the remains like shattered glass.

I love you.

He felt a phantom wind rush through him, the haunting screams and chill vanishing in an invisible vortex along with the broken spell energy.

The blacksmith reached down and pulled the amulet off the necromancer’s corpse, his every breath lancing pain throughout his entire body. He stepped to Shaya’s altar and set the amulet down as if it were a forge’s anvil. He raised his sword once again, arms trembling, and brought it down on the amulet. The hall rang with the sound of the blow, the onyx shattering with a burst and the necromancer's soul erupted from it, a dark mist howling in agony and shrieking in terror.

Riggs felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, as if something watched him. His blood curdled from the weight of that gaze, knees trembling as he struggled to remain standing. He felt the necromancer’s soul scream like nails on a chalkboard, before being snuffed out like a candle. The hideous sensation vanished and what little strength he had returned to Riggs’ limbs.

As the dark mist dissipated, so did the necromancer’s magic. And all that remained was the amulet of red-gold metal, unmarred by the sword’s blow.

“Is it...over?” Noctessa groaned, lying on the ground in her human form, the dark energies around her gone. The transformation left her shoulder in even worse shape, blood soaking entirely through the quilted armour covering her arm and torso. Her eyes were in a similar state, pupils floating in an orb of blood.

“Yes.” Riggs hesitated, then grabbed the hollow amulet. “Well, almost,” he looked from Noctessa to Lyraal, “Now we just need to get everyone home.”

“I can walk.” The druid climbed to her feet, unsteady, but driven. “And heal any injury that would hold us back.”

They saw to their most pressing injuries, applying tourniquets and bandages to staunch any further blood loss. Rather than push herself further, Noctessa grudgingly acquiesced to drink the vile, coarse potions that Riggs recovered from Lyraal’s pack. They rested for a time as the potion’s took effect, then gathered their belongings, Riggs slinging the guardian statue’s sword and shield over his back. They did their best to clean up Lyraal’s body and wrapped their Warden’s cloak about them.

Riggs looked around at the desecrated keep, covered in the blood and bones of so many fallen. “I will return to fix this, I promise.”

Then he lifted Lyraal with both arms and they all headed back to Honour, where their life changing journey together had begun.