Up above, Arklem Greeth wasn’t finished. He ignored the sudden reversal his assault on Brambleberry, and particularly upon beloved Deudermont, had wrought in the army around them, their fear quickly turning to outrage aimed at Greeth alone. Like the one point of calm in a world gone mad, Arklem Greeth followed his earth-shaking spell with an earthquake that had all around him stumbling and falling. The line of the tremor was aimed perfectly for the loose mounds at the sides of the chasm he had created. He meant to bury the Waterdhavian lord and the good captain alive.

All around them realized it, though, and came at Greeth with fury, a roiling throng of outrage closing in on him from every side, throwing spears and rocks—even swords—anything to distract or wound that being of ultimate evil.

“Fools, all,” the archmage arcane muttered under his breath.

With one last burst of power that broke apart one side of the deep hole, Greeth fell back into his wraith form, flattening to two dimensions. He narrowed to a black line and slipped down into the ground, running swiftly through narrow cracks until he stood again in his own chamber in the Hosttower of the Arcane.

Exhaustion followed him there, for the lich had not utilized such a sudden and potent barrage of magic in many, many years. He heard the continuing roar outside his window and didn’t need to go there to understand that any gains he’d made would prove temporary.

Dropping the leaders had not turned the mob, but had only incensed it further.

There were simply too many. Too many fools…too much fodder.

“Fools all,” he said again, and he thought of Valindra out along the southern rocks of Cutlass Island. He hoped she was dead already.

With a heavy sigh that crackled across the collection of hardened mucus in Arklem Greeth’s unbreathing lungs, the lich went to his private stash of potent drinks—drinks he had created himself, fashioned mostly of blood and living things. Drinks that, like the lich himself, transcended death. He took a long, deep sip of one potent mixture.

He thought of his decades at the Hosttower, a place he had so long called home. He knew that was over, for the time being at least, but he could wait.

And he could make it hurt.

The chamber would come with him—he had fashioned it with magic for just such a sudden and violent transportation, for he had known from the moment he’d achieved lichdom that the day would surely befall him when he’d have to abandon his tower home. But he, and the part he most coveted, would be saved.

The rest would be lost.

Arklem Greeth moved through a small trapdoor, down a ladder to a tiny secret room where he kept one of his most prized possessions: a staff of incredible power. With that staff, a younger, living Arklem Greeth had waged great battles, his fireballs and lightning bolts greater in number and intensity. With that staff, full of its own power to taste of Mystra’s Weave, he had escaped certain doom many times on those occasions when his own magical reservoir had been drained.

He rubbed a hand over its burnished wood, considering it as he would an old friend.

It was set in a strange contraption of Greeth’s design. The staff itself was laid across a pyramid-shaped stone, the very center of the six-foot long staff right at the narrow tip of the great block. Hanging from chains at either end of the staff were two large metal bowls, and up above those bowls, over the staff and on stout stands of thick iron, sat two tanks of dense silver liquid.

With another sigh, Greeth reached up and pulled a central cord, one that uncorked plugs from the mercury-filled reservoirs, and dropped out chutes directly over the corresponding bowls.

The heavy fluid metal began to flow, slowly and teasingly dripping into the bowls, like the sands of an hourglass counting down the end of the world.

Such staves as that, so full of magical energy, could not be broken without a cataclysmic release.

Arklem Greeth went back to his secure but mobile chamber with confidence that the explosion would send him exactly where he wanted to go.

They were winning the field, but the Luskar and their Waterdhavian allies didn’t feel victorious, not with their leaders Brambleberry and Deudermont buried! They set a defensive perimeter around the churned area, and many fell over the loose dirt, digging with sword and dagger, or bare hands. A torn fingernail elicited no more than a grimace among the determined, frantic group. One man inadvertently drove his dagger through his own hand, but merely growled as he went back to tearing at the ground for his beloved Captain Deudermont.

Fury rained upon the field: fire and lightning, monsters undead and magically created. The Luskar matched that fury; they were fighting for their very lives, for their families. There could be no retreat, no withdrawal, and to a man and woman they knew it.

So they fought, and fired their arrows at the wizards on the balconies, and though they died ten-to-one, perhaps more, it seemed that their advance could not be halted.

But then it was, with the snap of a magical staff.

Someone tugged hard at his arm, and Deudermont gasped his first breath in far too long a time as another hand scraped the dirt away from his face.

Through bleary eyes, he saw his rescuers, a woman brushing his face, a strong man yanking at his one extended arm, and with such force that Deudermont feared he would pull his shoulder right out of its socket.

His thoughts went to Brambleberry, who had fallen beside him, and he took heart to see so many clawing at the ground, so much commotion to rescue the Waterdhavian lord. Though he was still fully immersed in the soil, other than that one extended arm, Deudermont somehow managed to nod, and even smile at the woman cleaning off his face.

Then she was gone—a wave of multicolored energy rolled out like a ripple on a pond, crossing over Deudermont with the sound of a cyclone.

The sleeve burned from his extended arm, his face flushed with stinging warmth. It seemed to go on for many, many heartbeats, then came the sound of crashing, like trees falling. Deudermont felt the ground rumble three or four times—too close together for him to accurately take a count.

His arm fell limp to the ground. As he regained his sensibilities, Deudermont saw the boots of the man who had been tugging at his arm. The captain couldn’t turn his head enough to follow up the legs, but he knew the man was dead.

He knew that the field was dead.

Too still.

And too quiet, so suddenly, as if all the world had ended.

Robillard kept his forces tight and organized as they made their way north along Cutlass Island. He was fairly certain that they’d meet no resistance until they got within the Hosttower’s compound, but he wanted the first response from his force to be coordinated and devastating. He assured those around him that they would clear every window, every balcony, every doorway on the North Spire with their first barrage.

Behind Robillard came Valindra, her arms tightly bound behind her back, flanked by Maimun and Arabeth.

“The archmage arcane falls this day,” Robillard remarked quietly, so that only those close to him could hear.

“Arklem Greeth is more than ready for you,” Valindra retorted.

Arabeth reacted with a suddenness that shocked the others, spinning a left hook into the face of their moon elf captive. Valindra’s head jolted back and came forward, blood showing below her thin, pretty nose.

“You will pay for—” Valindra warned, or started to, until Arabeth hit her again, just as viciously.

Robillard and Maimun looked to each other incredulously, but then both just grinned at Arabeth’s initiative. They could clearly see the years of enmity between the two overwizards, and separately reasoned that the taller and more classically beautiful Valindra had often been a thorn in Arabeth’s side.