They were completely surrounded, but no one moved to stop them from checking on their wounded. They knew that they’d won. Nearly thirty revenants lay dead. Most of the elementalists were resistant or had some way to protect themselves from heat with their abilities, so the beast-types had been hit the hardest. Nearly everyone had burn injuries of some kind, though.

Idrin, who had nothing to fear from flames, had pulled as many people out as she could, and quickly got to work sorting the wounded under Rory’s direction. Starting with the most serious injuries, Reshid began healing in earnest.

Just hours ago, Reshid would have exhausted himself after every patient, but his essence reserves had grown far beyond what he would have thought possible before. At first, he worried that he’d somehow overdrawn—that he’d become more plant-like, the way Hasan seemed to have partially petrified. He didn’t look any different, though.

He’d drawn the essence from his stone pendant—a soulstone, he knew. He’d never felt any kind of power in it at all, never mind interacted with it. Now he had managed to draw it in like he did the cultivation essence. And, instead of changing his attunement or driving him mad, or any of the other possible horrible effects that such a reckless move might have had, it had just made him stronger.

He had known that it was a type of essence crystal, of course. Thelonius, the trogg who originally gave him the stone, had told him—but he hadn’t been very forthcoming on the details regarding exactly what kind of essence it generated.

A shout went up, and Reshid stopped working for a moment to look. A few revenants were hauling Hasan up out of the ground, where he had apparently buried himself to escape the flames. He was unconscious, but he didn’t look too badly burned. Behind the group, Reshid could just make out the Lich standing with a group of his minions. His arms were still raised to the ceiling in an unnecessarily dramatic fashion, and he was staring at the cavern wall in concentration.

Sighing, Reshid bent back down to his task. For a moment, he thought the man before him must be wearing some kind of wooden armor that had been charred to cinders, blood weeping out through the cracks. Then he realized that he was looking at Leif. Part of his body was covered in wood, or maybe it had turned to wood entirely.

A rush of essence brought bark growing up from cracks, closing the wounds and slowly swallowing up the blackened wood around them, like burn scars on a tree. Reshid sat back, out of breath and only now realizing that he’d been holding it in concentration. Dully, he noticed that Leif’s chin now had patch of moss growing from it like a green beard. How odd.

The revenant’s eyes opened a moment later, though it took another moment before they focused.

“I live.” Reshid hadn’t spoken to Leif before, and was surprised to hear that he spoke with an accent. The man tried to sit up, succeeding with effort. His eyes widened when he saw the enemy all around, gaze moving from them to the blackened bodies on the scorched soil.

“They are not attacking?”

Reshid shook his head, too tired to explain. He didn’t really understand it himself, anyway.

“You are the gardener—one called Reshid, that’s right?”

Reshid blinked. “Well. Yes. I don’t know anything about gardening, though.”

He knew the term came from his attunement, but it seemed like more than a little bit of a misnomer. He had never actually grown any plants. In fact, he’d only ever taken essence away from plants, except for the tree that he’d been trying to condense a crystal from back at the village.

“Never mind.” Leif shook his head tiredly. His eyes wandered back to the bodies again.

“How many?” He asked with a hitch in his voice. “Who did we lose?”

“I don’t know. At least 20 dead, probably more.” Reshid didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t really known them, not even the other revenants that had arrived with him in chains at Hasan’s nameless village. Mostly, he’d trained alone or with his team, otherwise spending his time by himself as much as possible.

Leif cursed softly. Reshid left him there and began working on his next patient.

In his life on the surface, he’d spent most of his life traveling alone. Integrating into a tight-knit community wasn’t easy for him—much less when they were obviously preparing to fight in a war that he had no personal interest in.

But his friends had an interest, and now he was in the middle of it.

Those friends, if they had survived, were mostly up inside that sealed stairway, heading toward the surface right now.

That thought gave Reshid some comfort. If all went well, they’d be able to warn the city in time. The Guardians weren’t sorcerers in any sense, but they could call down the wrath of their respective gods to smite the forces of darkness—which he supposed included himself and everyone else that the gods didn’t allow to live on the surface. Regardless, surely the power of the gods would be enough to solve the lich problem.

Then, they could all go back to the village. Maybe Hasan would decide not to trust the Confederation so much after Geoffrey’s betrayal. Maybe they wouldn’t need to fight anymore at all. Who knew, maybe the organized ghoul attacks that Agatha had complained about would stop without a Lich down here riling everyone up—then Frederik wouldn’t even have a reason to continue poking around in the Deep Paths.

There were other revenant towns and villages down here, but they didn’t communicate much. With Hasan’s little army, they could secure roads and develop safe trade routes. Maybe he could go right back to being a merchant. Maybe they could all do it together.

A sudden bloom of heat against his cheek interrupted Reshid’s thoughts. He looked up to find the Lich glowing with light, and beyond him, the cracks in the cavern wall began to seal. The entire rock face turned a cherry red color, melting together and putting off heat like a massive furnace.

That, finally, seemed to take something out of the sorcerer. His arms fell limply to his sides and he staggered for a moment before catching himself. As he raised his head again, he caught Reshid looking. Their eyes locked, and cold sweat broke out all over his back. There was something deeply, fundamentally wrong in those eyes. The hairs on his neck rose.

Then the lich’s gaze flicked down and around, taking in the dead, wounded, and recovering revenants. The creature nodded in a businesslike manner, and turned to one of his minions.

Reshid let out a shuddering breath and got back to work.

–---------

Hasan woke up on his own before Reshid got to him. He’d eventually run out of essence, but it had lasted long. So long, in fact, that both his tiny essence crystal and his soulstone already recovered somewhat, allowing him to draw a little more—more than he could have previously held, but far less than he’d just used.

As they saw him sitting up, a handful of the Antonius’ personal guards approached him and escorted him over to the Lich. When Idrin and some other revenants moved to block them, Hasan waved them down and didn’t resist. Either he had given up, or he’d decided that they’d done enough. The Lich was resting and didn’t seem to be in a hurry to catch up to the escapees, who would reach Duskhaven in a matter of hours.

As they talked, Hasan’s expression went from stoic to stormy. He turned to look at the wounded, then found first Rory and then Reshid. He turned back to the Lich, looking defeated. Eventually, he nodded, not saying anything. The lich dismissed him with a wave, and he trudged back toward them.

Reshid wasn’t the only one to watch the exchange. Idrin appeared next to him a moment later.

“I don’t like that look.” She muttered to him. As Hasan approached, she raised her voice and called. “I don’t like that look, Hasan!”

Hasan frowned at her, then turned to Reshid. “You’re going with them to Duskhaven, you and the pinky medic.”

“You can’t!” Idrin interjected, then continued more quietly. “The Guardians are going to wipe them out. That Geoffrey guy knocked us all on our asses by himself. What happens up on the surface with an entire group of them drawing down the attention of multiple gods on an actual lich?”

“Keep your mouth shut!” Hasan hissed irritably, looking around. “Who knows how well those creatures can hear.”

Reshid agreed with Idrin, though. This was exactly the opposite of what he wanted to do. “I don’t like this. Why would we go with them?”

“Because we’re completely in their power, and they’ll cheerfully start killing us off if you don’t cooperate.” Hasan snapped. “If you didn’t want to get drafted, you shouldn’t have just miraculously healed half an army of their grievous injuries in plain view of an absurdly powerful sorcerer.”

“Ah.” Reshid answered eloquently.

He didn’t really know how to respond to that. “So, we go with them and you go free?”

“Heh.” Hasan snorted humorlessly. “No. I’ve just been graciously accepted as Antonius’ vassal. He just ordered me to fortify the village and begin acquiring humans and rotters for him in anticipation of his return. Apparently he’s planning to set up his own personal fiefdom down here. If his attack on Duskhaven succeeds, I expect that’s just the start.”

Idrin frowned. “Seems complicated. Why not just kill us and do it himself? He already knows we don’t want to work with him.”

Hasan shook his head. “I was thinking about that. Why didn’t they just kill us here? It’s not about fighting us, or the humans, really. I think he just wants the stairwells—it’s about resources. He needs rotters and humans the same way we need crystals—as essence sources. But he can’t sit at the bottom of every stairwell himself, and he can’t very well trust a ghoul to handle the job. He needs minions, and preferably ones that won’t use up those same resources unnecessarily.”

Idrin nodded, frowning. “He wants to catch the freshly awakened rotters coming down from the crypts. Same as what we should have been doing, really, just a lot more nefarious.”

“Yes. Well, there’s a reason for that.” Hasan responded. “Ghouls always hang around stairwells. It’s not a good place to build a community if you want to keep people safe.”

Reshid waved a hand in front of the two.

“Hold on.” He said, voice growing heated. “So, you’re just throwing me to the ghouls? Why in the Darkest Depths would I go along with this? I didn’t sign up to be a martyr.”

Hasan growled. “You’ll do it, and you’ll be just fine. What are you worried about? You just stood inside a magical furnace and came out of it without even a scar. It looks like you just about healed all of the survivors as well, and you’re still on your feet.”

Idrin frowned at him thoughtfully. “Yea. I didn’t know you could do that. Since when have you been able to do that much healing at once?”

Reshid looked back and forth between Hasan and Idrin. He didn’t want to tell them about the soulstone, they would almost certainly take it from him. Ugh. They’d probably end up giving it to Agatha.

“Anything that can kill a Lich can kill me.” Reshid complained, not sounding petulant at all.

Hasan leaned forward, towering over him. “I’m not making you go,” he said, nodding at the lich, “he is. And none of us are in a position to argue. Do you want to try explaining your objections to him?”

Reshid looked down.

“Then try not to draw attention to yourself.” The stone elementalist said heartlessly.