They burst from the wave of magic with a shudder, and Swick had to suppress a nervous laugh. He was almost in disbelief of his own survival- almost in disbelief that he could possibly have executed a plan so well.

  Then he looked back, and the disbelief was crushed under the heel of cold, weighty reality. He just barely glimpsed Felicia climbing on board as the rope holding her and Shaiagrazni snapped, dumping the caster down to land among the enemy below.

  She looked at him, apologetic, but Swick couldn’t care less what expression was on her face. She’d fucked them all either way.

  Down belief, the New Dark Lord landed. If there was any consolation to the disaster it was seeing his multi-ton body absolutely pulverise an entire row of undead, pinning and crushing them practically into juice as it came down atop them. That didn’t last long however, for the dust cleared soon, and the original Dark Lord was soon approaching with a mace in hand and murder dripping off every inch of his armoured body.

  He seemed to be taking his time, for some reason. Perhaps he had an enjoyment of the dramatic, Swick really couldn’t say.

  He on the other hand, hurried.

  “INTO FIRING POSITION!” He screamed, knowing all the while how useless it would be. The ship was facing away from Shaiagrazni now, and its back hadn’t been outfitted by cannons. It would take precious moments to slow, precious more to haul the artillery around. Longer, in total, than the Dark Lord would need to kill even three Shaiagraznis.

  And then the ranks of undead around him just melted, falling apart into puddles of hissing black sludge as someone stalked out from among them. Sphera, Swick recognised, and a moment later Collin Baird was behind her- followed by the Princess Ado and…

  The Vampire. Well, now was no time for grudges, she was annoying to fight which meant she’d be annoying for their enemies to. He repeated the turning order, a shade more hopeful now, a lot more enthusiastic.

  With a gesture, the Princess Ado threw out a great wall of ice between Shaiagrazni and the enemy. She was powerful, Swick thought, because the structure was big even as it appeared near-instantly. Five paces wide, four high, and a good few inches thick.

  The Dark Lord didn’t even bother to hit it, just kept walking and smashed the barrier to pieces with the sheer weight of his pace. Swick grinned, realising he’d fallen for the trick hook, line and sinker. Because it hadn’t been meant to impede him, just block his line of sight. The moment he emerged through it, Baird’s arrow- timed as perfectly as Swick had ever seen of anything- caught him right in the chink where breastplate met gorget.

  It dug in, drawing out a trickle of blood and sending the Dark Lord back a step. The Vampire was next.

  She wasn’t nearly as fast as Baird’s arrow though, and the Dark Lord blocked her attack with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. The next block of ice came down from above him, forcing him to sidestep, and Swick saw him quickly backing off to the horde of undead at his back. Thinner, now, compared to when the battle had begun. But numerous enough. He reached them before the Vampire reached him.

  And then the undead started clawing at him, as Sphera grinned and gestured hundreds of the things to pile in and around him, climbing, biting, thrashing at the Necromancer as they tore themselves apart in the attempt to destroy him.

  Not a bad trick, Swick realised. Who’d have noticed a few hundred undead among thousands of times as many?

  But it was hardly a damning move- Baird barely had a weapon able to hurt the Dark Lord, these creations certainly didn’t. He shook them off like a dog casting water from itself, continuing the fight.

  Baird’s next arrow missed- or was dodged, rather- tearing through ranks of enemy undead far behind the Dark Lord and ripping them to pieces of flying limbs. The mace came for Hexeri, missing but clipping her shoulder. Swick winced, seeing the limb mangled instantly as she shot back. A third arrow, dodged again, and Mortascia dropped down a new wall. Thicker, this time, perhaps intended for actual defence.

  The Dark Lord saw fit to grace this one with a true strike, and smashed the entire thing into crystalline rubble as if it were nothing more than air. Swick’s stomach dropped out of him. They couldn’t fight this thing. They couldn’t even try.

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  Baird tossed his bow aside as the Dark Lord closed, drawing a pair of long-knives and going low. He whipped up at the last second, cutting a nice circle across the enemy’s arm which did absolutely nothing for the strength of his armour. Baird danced around him for a few moments, actually competing with the Necromancer’s speed. Eventually, though, his luck ran out. A fist struck his gut, and he shot high into the air only to fall back down with blood torrenting out of his mouth.

  Ado Mortascia and Sphera were the only ones left. Both moved at once, conjuring a wall of ice and doing something else. The Dark Lord broke this one, stumbling back as shadestuff burst out of the hollow inside it and soaked him. A normal man- plate or not- would have been eaten down to a puddle at such an attack. The Dark Lord merely continued on, armour hissing and damaged. But only slightly.

  Swick knew, then, that he was moments away from seeing the women die. And then the fireball came.

  It was huge. Bigger than huge, it was monstrous. Like an entire palace engulfed in flame, but with no supporting fuel at the centre. Nothing but a burning tsunami washing across the landscape and closing in on them all. The moment before impact, it compressed downwards, becoming a writhing, twisting vortex of heat which homed in on the Dark Lord and impacted him hard enough to drive the Necromancer back a few paces. The fire exploded apart from his mace’s impact, reforming moments later.

  It was the Demon, Xekanis. Prince Nemo’s pet. And the very world was sizzling at its presence.

  Do it, Xekanis, destroy him.

  Xekanis was all too eager to obey, practically burning the very air as he leapt into battle the Dark Lord. It didn’t matter that his magic was, for once, the inferior party, it didn’t matter that this was a Demonologist who may be perfectly qualified to best him. He saw prey, and he attacked. A beast unchained, a guillotine left to fall.

  Nemo had always known he would be like that, he’d always known his friend was only a single word away from being unleashed. He expected to feel something at the sight, but he didn’t. Perhaps he’d already filled himself up with too much emotion.

  Turning, he saw the twitching body of Silenos Shaiagrazni. Nemo felt tears well at the sight. Trembling, he forced himself to speak. For all the good it would do.

  “I’m sorry.” He whispered. “None of this…None of it would’ve happened if I…I’m sorry.” Nemo looked away, too ashamed suddenly to even take in the sight of Shaiagrazni. “I’m sorry you got hurt, I’m sorry I couldn’t be better.”

  Something shifted. Nemo blinked, stepped back, tried to look through the distorted sheets of his tears. The moisture of his eyes was so thick that he almost thought he saw…No, he did.

  Shaiagrazni was rising to his feet!

  It sent an instinctual, terrified jolt through Nero’s body to see such a mountainous tower of flesh rise to its feet. Shaiagrazni, he knew, was the same man he ever was beneath it all, but there was something fundamentally intimidating about this body. Eleven feet high, broader than three men, covered with such a mass of armour he wondered whether it made up the majority of his weight. And moving easily despite it all, body propelled by such a primal physicality as to manage its own weight like some performing acrobat.

  He couldn’t move, and wouldn’t have even if he’d been able. Shaiagrazni was unsteady for a few moments, remaining still as organic matter formed and reformed around him- creating a lance across one arm, a cannon barrel in the other. Then he lurched forth.

  Nemo winced, expecting a blow which never came. When he looked up, Shaiagrazni had already torn for the Dark Lord with a speed which seemed impossible for even half his mass. The ground exploded under every stride he took, legs coming down like battering rams, musculature driving him along. His enemy was looking away as he closed, lashing at Xekanis with some strange whip of black energy which tore chunks of flame out and left it to fall as liquid away from the Demon’s body. Nemo felt his eyes leak ever more with tears at the sight of his friend’s agony, his voice unable to even escape as a cry.

  Then the Dark Lord turned to Shaiagrazni, just in time to be bowled fully off his feet by a tackle strong enough to bring down castle walls.

  For an instant, the two of them were held together. Bound by Shaiagrazni’s pillar-thick limbs as they rolled, grinding out deep trenches in the dirt and flattening formations of undead. Then the shot rang out.

  Even fifty paces back it strained Nemo’s ears, the snarl of Shaiagrazni’s cannon. He saw the Dark Lord fly back with smoke hissing from his chest, clearly caught at point-blank range. He landed among his own creations.

  He lost sight of him, stared, froze. Then the Dark Lord rose again atop a mound of shifting, necrotic bodies. Mace in hand, magic ablaze, bearing down on Shaiagrazni. Something shifted to one side, and a grotesquery slammed into the pile of undead. It broke apart and bodies flew in all directions; some fell straight down, others flipped fully over the towering grotesquery’s head, some remained clinging to its body and trying to stab through its skin. So big was the creature that most failed, but the stronger among them irritated it at least. They bought the Dark Lord a precious distraction to scale it himself, bringing his mace down on its head.

  The thing was dead before it hit the floor, and the Dark Lord was moving onto its master next.

  Nemo was far from a Fleschrafting expert, but he could see that Shaiagrazni was still injured- or at least fatigued. If he fought the Dark Lord directly, now, the outcome would be far from ideal. Xekanis was still writhing in a heap, and Nemo couldn’t bring himself to even reach his friend.

  It was King Galukar and Lilia’s ambush, coming just before the Dark Lord reached Shaiagrazni, which changed things.