“Who wants to try something crazy?” I asked.

“Crazy is just about all we have left,” Xiphos said.

“As far as I can tell, there’s no range limitations on my portal ability. I can open it anywhere within line of sight. I could open it right into the heart of the city, and we can all just throw down with Trajan and Edgebreaker. See what shakes out.”

“That’s not crazy. That’s delusional,” Xiphos said.

“There’s no way we’d be able to stand against Trajan’s forces in the city in a stand up fight,” Pike said. “We’re talking hundreds of corrupted thralls that would swarm us in an instant.”

“Yes, we need to draw them out here,” Naginata said.

Everyone swung their heads towards Naginata like she’d just uttered an ancient curse.

“No, hear me out,” Naginata continued. “We three can draw the attention of Trajan’s forces across the bridge while Stiletto, Hatchet and Kaiser infiltrate the city. The enemy will have to come at us in a narrow force along the bridge, and there is no cover between the entrance of the city and this platform. We have plenty of ammunition, and we are strong enough to hold our own for a time.”

Xiphos nodded slowly. “Not forever, but we can hold the bridge for a while. Once the city is empty, Stiletto and Hatchet can neutralise the threat. Stop the ritual. It’s not quite as crazy as Hatchet’s hare-brained scheme. Pike, what do you think?”

“It’s as good a plan as any,” she said with a shrug. “One thing Trajan can’t do is build ranged capability in his corrupted fighting force. The thralls of Sare’zmei are animalistic, mostly tooth and claw fighters, except for those explosive ones. Even then, they need to get close to do any damage. This might be our best shot.”

“We’ll give you what ammo we can,” Stiletto said. “I only need enough ammo for Tasha. My stealth and edged weapon combo should be enough to take anything else down at close range. I’ve got plenty of assault rifle and SMG ammo I can leave here.”

“Me too,” I said. “I’ll stick to using my anima powers and Gravedigger, so I’ll keep my shotgun shells, but you can have the rest of my ammo. Here, take my SMG too.”

I gave my crafted SMG to Pike, and she took is gratefully.

“Then it is decided,” Xiphos concluded. “Under cover of Stiletto’s stealth field, Hatchet will open a portal in Adormitzeu. Stop this ritual, then for the love of all that is holy, open a portal for us to leave this place.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “Pike, where’s the best place for us to land?”

“Trajan and Edgebreaker are watching the bridges and-” Pike said, but I interrupted.

“Bridges?” I asked. “As in multiple?”

Pike nodded. “There’s another bridge on the other side of Adormitzeu, and it’s the fastest way back to the surface. Though there may be a quicker way. I did not see the Edgebreaker forces coming across either bridge, so there may be some other path that I’m not aware of.”

“We’ll figure that out if we can,” I said. “None of it matters if we don’t stop this ritual.”

“Stick to the rooftops,” Pike added. “Trajan’s forces are prowling the streets, but they’re not expecting an attack from above.”

I grinned at that. My anima ability Death From Above would come in handy here. It let me take down an enemy silently by attacking them from above. That ability, combined with my portal on a two and a half minute cooldown, it would be easy enough to escape if I found myself in harm’s way.

(A NOTE TO PATREON AND ROYAL ROAD READERS – you may have noticed that the ability Arboreal Assassin has been changed to Death From Above. This is intentional, and will be changed in edits before the final version of the book gets uploaded to Amazon.)

“Got it. You ready Stiletto?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Hell no, but let’s do it anyway.”

With that, I focussed on the open balcony of a tall building within Adormitzeu and opened a portal. Stiletto, Kaiser and I stepped through into the top floor. I turned back to the portal and watched Xiphos, Naginata and Pike reload their weapons for the fight to come. Naginata offered me a wan smile as my portal winked out of existence.

Suddenly she was so very far away. Mere specks on the other side of the bridge. Stiletto stood by the balcony and ushered me over without a word. A glance down into the street below revealed a mobilising force of nemorti that flowed through the city towards the city gate, heading right towards the bridge.

It wasn’t just nemorti that made up the horde though. Upyr, strigoi, and baubaus follow along in the flood of nemorti. Stiletto flashed me a stricken look at the sheer number of enemies below us.

This balcony faced the bridge, but the obelisk lay behind us. Still, there had to be something that I could do to try and thin these forces out while remaining undetected. Death From Above wouldn’t work here, and channelling what anima remained in my tank – just over 200 total anima – would just reveal our position.

There had to be something…

I quickly opened my skills list and found something that might be able to turn the tide.

Nemorti Control let me take command of a nemorti for ten minutes and give it any command I wanted, as long as the nemorti could follow the command. There were pretty much just anima zombies, mindless and savage, so I wouldn’t be able to ask one to solve an algebra equation or do the daily crossword for me, but perhaps the enemy had given us the weapons we needed to fight them from the inside.

Before leaving the balcony, I put two nemorti under my control for the next 10 minutes and gave them mental commands that would hopefully turn the tide in our favour.

With my anima almost depleted, it was time to figure out how the hell we were going to stop this ritual.

We headed deeper into building as quietly as possible. Creaking boards and shambling footsteps told us plainly that we were not alone. The enemy was here, and we would have to deal with them eventually. Stiletto walked over to the door, closed it, then braced it shut with a nearby chair. Bookshelves lined this room, and they overflowed with books.

If we had time, I would have loved to dig into them and uncover their secrets. The windows on the other side of the room gave us a much better view of the monstrous wings rising from the centre of the Adormitzeu.

There was a road directly beneath this window that led to the centre of the city. The obelisk in the town square looked identical to the one I’d received Balaur’s blessing from, except it burned red with corrupted anima.

Four stones stood in a square around the obelisk, and the ground between them shimmered like the surface of a molten lake. The two massive wings arose from that pool and stretched far above us. So far, the wings were the only aspect of Sare’zmei that had managed to pass from his prison into our world.

The four standing stones, one at each corner of the anima pool, ended in a smooth, conical cap. Each stone cap had a hole carved in the centre, which pointed towards the centre of the city. Three of those holes contained glowing anima gems.

One purple, one blue, and one green.

The last standing stone was covered in thick red vines that looked like of veins growing on the outside of a malignant tumour.

Bright red light coalesced in the empty space in the cap of that final standing stone. Trajan Cel Tradat stood beside it, letting corrupted anima flow through him into the glowing standing stone.

“There he is,” I said quietly.

“I see him too. He’s doing something funky with that last one. They must have run out of villagers, because it looks like he’s using himself as a conduit.”

“They must have known we were on our way down here. Edgebreaker tried to kill us before we made it into the caves, but they would have figured out we’d escaped their grasp. We may have forced their hand early without knowing it.”

“If they’re on the back foot and scrambling to make things fall into place, then maybe we can use that to our advantage.”

“I’m planning on it,” I said.

Once my plan with the nemorti was activated, things would be thrown into chaos. A chaos that we could take advantage of.

It was time to tell Stiletto the plan.

“In just under ten minutes, a bunch of explosions are going to happen on the bridge,” I began, and Stiletto looked stricken. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it under control. Those baubau monsters with the explosive collars around their necks, they explode when the glowing membranes are broken. I’ve got two nemorti under my control right now, and I’ve commanded them to stay back in the pack so they don’t get mowed down by Xiphos and the others, but to stay close to baubaus. Just before the control timer ends, those nemorti are going to detonate a nearby baubau and blow up dozens of monsters bearing down on our team. One nemorti is going to do this towards the front of the column, and another is going to do it towards the back, as close to the gates of Adormitzeu as they can.”

Stiletto’s eyes widened as he figured out what that meant. “When they blow, they’re going to take the bridge out with them.”

“That’s right. Which will trap the entire horde on what’s left of the bridge, or, if we’re lucky, send the whole thing down into the abyss. By then, we’ll have stopped Trajan and this ritual, then we’ll use the portals to bring the rest of the team across.”

“So what do we do now?” Stiletto asked. “Clock’s ticking.”

“Right. Well, I need to refill my anima tank, and we need to find a way to get to a better position to attack.”

“Can you open that portal thing of yours from behind glass?”

I hadn’t even thought of that. “I don’t know.”

“Because you could totally open a portal from here to another building top, drop me off to fight from a higher vantage point, then launch your own sneak attack on Trajan before he expects it. Then pow! I’ll throw everything I’ve got at him, hit him with an ensnaring shot. You and Kaiser can pull him away from that stone and stop the ritual.”

I glanced back out the window. Another tall building rose right behind Trajan, and each corner had a carved stone grotesque jutting out into the open space above the square. The faces of each grotesque resembled a wolf, with its teeth bared in grave warning.

“Yes, that’ll do nicely,” I said. “Where do you want to fire from?”

“Right up there,” Stiletto said, pointing towards a bell tower at the back of the square. “The higher I am, the more damage Tasha does. Plus I’ll be able to see the roads that lead back into the square from the bridge just in case they send any troops back to fight you.”

I nodded. “I’m going to go fill my anima tank, then let’s get going. I’ll need your stealth field.”

“You got it, hoss.”

We found a group of nemorti shuffling about the halls of the house and took them all down quickly and quietly. It wasn’t enough to fill my tank completely, but time was ticking. I’d have to make do with the 370 anima that I’d managed to siphon away and then draw on what I could during the fight with Trajan.

The whole reason I was here was the cleanse that obelisk, and there would be an untold wealth of anima to be drawn from there.

We headed back up to the top floor, and I tried to open a portal from behind the glass right into the bowers of the bell tower. To my surprise and delight, it worked. Line of sight was the only requirement for activation.

We stepped through the portal and saw the city of Adormitzeu from a new perspective. The forces of the enemy rushed across the immense bridge towards Xiphos and the others, glowing red like a hive of angry insects rushing to protect their queen from invaders. The wings of Sare’zmei stretched upwards from the town square, far beyond where we stood at the city’s highest point.

If this devouring corruption was given true form on this side of his prison, Sare’zmei would dwarf us. He would be so massive he would make the city look like a set of building blocks ready to be knocked down by a toddler.

The sound of gunfire rang out through the enormous darkened cavern. Tongues of flame lit up the dark from the other end of the bridge as our team opened fire on the horde that rushed towards them. I hoped they could hold out for long enough for my plan to come to fruition.

Bastard and Scythe were nowhere to be seen. If they had helped with the summoning, then maybe they’d already left? If they truly were in league with Trajan, then they must have gotten something out of this deal.

Would I be too late again, like I was on Mori Island?

Was this lock the entire reason why Bastard sought a sample of Altrighus’s anima? If so, then why was he nowhere to be seen? If this was his end game, he’d want to see things through.

Nothing about this was adding up.

My class ability came off cooldown again, which meant that the nemorti would be kicking the plan into overdrive in a few minutes.

I needed to get into position. I opened another portal to transport me down to the roof below, right above and behind Trajan Cel Tradat. Kaiser stepped through with me and followed me out onto the flat edge of the wolf-faced grotesque, ready to leap into the fray by my side.

This was it. It was now or never.

I summoned my claws, focussed on the dragonslayer, then activated Death From Above.