Richard Byers - Prophet of the Dead

He slapped his arms and chest, activating the magic in his tattoos to enhance his strength, quickness, and endurance. Then, like huge living toys of hinged metal and stone, the first constructs charged into the foundry.

The layout of the caves was such that, having breached the gate they did, the enemy had to pass through this chamber, and in Aoth’s professional judgment, the space ought to serve for a killing box. Ledges partway up the walls afforded the defenders the advantage of height, and the carved stairs that ran up to them were steep, narrow, and thus easily defended.

At first, the scuttling golems, and then the undead rushing in behind them, didn’t even appear to notice the men crouching behind the improvised and uncompleted battlements. And despite their edginess, the Old Ones, the Pure Flame warm them, didn’t lash out as soon as the first foes came into view. As instructed, they awaited Aoth’s signal.

When the floor below was teeming with foes, Aoth leaped up, pointed his spear, and snarled a word of power. A red spark shot from the point down at the pale, robed figure of an undead wizard, and, if Tymora was smiling, one of the Raumvirans skilled at managing constructs. With a boom, the streaking point of light exploded into a flash of flame that tore the creature limb from limb. It half ripped the head from an articulated bronze panther too, and the golem froze. But other constructs engulfed by the blast weathered it unscathed.

Rising from behind the makeshift parapets to the extent necessary, Old Ones called words of command and lashed wands, staves, and orbs through mystic passes. The blue and argent figures they’d created previously glowed to life atop or just inside the floor.

A steel minotaur and a ceramic preying mantis lurched into immobility. A thick-bodied giant of stone with golden eyes pivoted ponderously and slammed its fist down on top of a skeleton, shattering the undead from the top of its skull all the way down to its pelvis. Yellow light flickered over a two-headed iron mastiff, and then its metal body burst into flame.

So, despite the frantic haste and improvisation with which the Rashemi had completed them, the snares were working, but not on every automaton. Some of the ones on the floor simply seemed impervious, while none of the flyers were falling out of the air. All the golems still capable of purposeful action turned to assail the ledges, and their undead masters were right behind them.

Aoth looked over his section of battlement and saw a man-sized, eight-legged contraption like a mix of rat and spider climbing the wall. It noticed him too, and spit dark liquid straight up at him. He recoiled and avoided the spew. The drops that splashed down on the parapet sizzled and smoked, and the fumes smelled hot and vile.

A moment later, the golem’s spidery front legs hooked the top of the barrier, and then the rat head appeared. Aoth drove his spear between its jaws and released some of the power stored in the weapon. The resulting white flash blew the steel skull apart, and what remained of the automaton lost its grip and fell away.

Toward the back of the attackers, the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket aimed her wand at him. He dropped back down behind the parapet for a moment, and when he peeked over it again, she’d turned away to find another target.

That was her mistake. But before Aoth could take advantage of it, he sensed danger on his flank. He whirled to confront it and found himself looking into dark, lustrous eyes in a narrow bone-white face. Except that an instant later, that countenance was neither long and thin nor pallid, anymore. It was Cera’s round, mischievous face, bronzed by the sun she served and adored, and after all the time apart, all the days and nights anguishing over her fate, all he wanted in the world was to kiss her.

But a war mage, especially one whose fate it seemed to be to frequently battle undead, learned to defend against psychic intrusion, and Aoth spoke a word of liberation and visualized a symbol of clarity by pure trained reflex. And as the illusion fell away, he thrust his spear into the vampire’s chest and conjured sunlight from the head of the weapon. The creature screamed as holes opened in her flesh, beams of radiance leaped forth, and the magic ate her from the inside out.

Aoth turned and destroyed a swooping eagle-sized dragonish construct made of silver and leather by riddling it with darts of green light. And that, it appeared, had been the last foe striving to kill him. Most likely, something else would try in another moment, but meanwhile he could take a breath and assess the progress of the battle as a whole.

Along the ledges, Old Ones hurled power as savagely and relentlessly as possible. A few, using their affinity with the divine, scourged the undead with beams and bursts of holy light. More relied on the products of their particular arts, swapping one talisman for another when the first ran dry.

As Aoth had expected, some of the unfinished weapons failed to function properly even once. An Old One tried three inert wands in succession before simply throwing his weight against the section of rampart in front of him, toppling it and dumping the pieces on the brass centipede that had been on the verge of crawling over it. One of his fellows pointed a crystal-bladed dagger at something on the cavern floor, and instead of ice forming around the target, it surged backward from the cross guard and encased his arm to the elbow.

At a few spots, other automatons and undead had succeeded in flying or climbing onto the ledges like the vampire Aoth had destroyed, and there, Old Ones threw down wands and staves and snatched up blades. A broadsword burned like dry wood, only without being consumed, and a pair of hand-axes roared like bears as their wielder chopped at a hovering wraith.

Despite failing talismans and foes that managed to make it to the high ground, Aoth judged that he and his comrades might actually be winning, if only gradually and by the slimmest of margins. Then, however, a glowing line or glyph at a time, the figures on the floor began to dim, and as they deteriorated, inert constructs started to stir, while others that had been acting erratically remembered their proper functions.

Aoth turned to Shaugar. “I see the problem!” the Old One snapped.

“Then fix it!”

“I’m trying!” With the tip of his staff, Shaugar drew a glowing blue pentagram on the air. “But the spells have already held longer than I expected!”

For a moment, Aoth had no idea what to do about that. Then he spotted the ghoul with the pearl in her eye socket again.

She was standing behind a brass and steel centaur that was shuddering in the middle of one of the fading magical figures. Surely to quicken its return to functionality, she was chanting and tapping the automaton with her wand.

Recalling how she’d brandished the same arcane implement to send the stone thrower after him, Aoth pointed with his spear. “I think that creature’s wand helps her direct and repair the golems,” he said to Shaugar. “If you had it, would that help you?”

“How should I know?” the Rashemi replied. “Maybe.”

“Keep working!” Aoth scrambled to the top of makeshift parapet and jumped.

For one instant, swallowed by the cold darkness of the maze, betrayed by a comrade whom, despite his better judgment, he’d started to trust, held in place with dozens of undead rushing up the passage at him, Vandar froze. Then a flash of the anger that was the source of a berserker’s prowess jolted his mind into motion once again.

When it did, he realized the thing gripping his ankle could only be the hand of the zombie he’d crippled previously. The creature had crawled over and grabbed him.

Guessing at how it lay on the floor, he hacked at it, then tried to yank his leg loose. After a moment of resistance, it came free all at once, sending him staggering off balance to bang the backs of his thighs into Jergal’s pedestal. He could still feel leathery fingers wrapped around his ankle, though. The zombie’s forearm must have pulled apart at the point where the fey sword had cut it. Vandar kicked and shook the severed hand loose.