It actually worked!Never before had she needed to use the defensive and offensive spells of her training with her preferred path of focus. Granted it was a low-level spell meant as a means of destroying those risen as a safeguard, but seeing it in action sent a giddiness through her that rode on the heels of relief.
As she turned toward Ashul, she smiled as he went flying into a skeleton. His sword shattered the spinal column that broke the mobility spell. The moment it crashed to the ground, he brought his sword down, piercing the top of the skull and shattering the summoning spell. The skeleton burst into a swirling cloud of bone dust, and her mate drew his cloak around his face as he stood and stepped away from its center. Another pile of dust was located a short distance away where he had already taken care of another one.
Ashul exchanged a grim look with her as he straightened from his crouched position. Brushing away a lock of white hair that had fallen forward into her face, Robyn turned and peered into the trees. There was only one person she knew of who had that hyena laugh and a preference for hiding. He mastered his concealment spells long before he had even been able to do a simple summoning. He also used it to sabotage the work of other students, though she had never been able to prove it. For a guy who worked so hard to earn as much acclaim with as little work as possible, she was not shocked at all that he was the one who had come after them.
Where is the little shit?
“Show yourself, Sebastian Ward,” she shouted furiously.
Ashul’s eyes slid back to her, his brows rising in surprise. She scowled back at him, hating to admit that she even knew the man. A thick, magical fog rolled in from between the trees, and she watched it eat up the ground to form a magical barrier. It seemed that Sebastian was more interested in adding more confusion into the situation and delays to tip odds in his favor.
“Why, I wonder, do you look so disgusted, Robyn?”
“Not hard to figure out when you are attacking me for no reason!” she shouted back to the mist. “And hiding behind a barrier spell like a coward while you do it. The mist will not protect you forever, Sebastian.”
“Really?” the necromancer mused. “It seems that I am the one with the upper hand here. Not you. You are nothing more than a fly caught in a spider’s web.”
Ashul growled, his body practically vibrating with rage, as Sebastian hummed, the sound carrying from some unknown point within the mist.
“You may call me a coward, but I call it a tactical advantage,” Sebastian continued in a lazy, unconcerned voice. “I’ve been just behind you ever since you came within range of Davendale, planning how this would all end while you were unaware. Only yourcreaturethere sniffed out my presence, but even he was incapable of stopping me. He was nearly as blind as you.”
He laughed as the shadows shifted around them, revealing more menacing figures. Robyn wrinkled her nose. This was absurd.What cemetery did he rob?
She gave an impatient sigh. “Look, I don’t know what game you’re playing at, but Grandmaster Gavvery is not going to be pleased that you are interrupting the fulfillment of my duty.”
Ashul’s eyebrows arched at her, but she ignored him. She spoke the truth. If it weren’t for the magical compulsion, she wouldn’t be anywhere near the monastery or in the current situation she was in.
“Your duty?” Sebastian cut in, his voice cracking. “You have that thing half off its leash rather than tethered obediently to you. I saw that in the town with the way it guarded you, and it certainly proved as much now. There is no duty going on here. Only compulsion that brings you to answer for your crime.”
“Crime? What crime?” she demanded, her eyes focusing on a humanoid shadow deep within the music that seemed to shift and move from second to second and yet seemed unnaturally large.
It couldn’t be Sebastian. When they both received their necromancer marks, Sebastian had been only half a head taller than her and possessed a gangly physique that she could easily overpower if she put her mind to it. In the few times she’d seen him since, even from a distance, he had appeared mostly unchanged. Perhaps a little sallower but no significant change. With the way he clung to the shadows of the monastery, she had long since dismissed him from her mind outside of her distaste for his bullying that he’d engaged in whenever he thought he could get away with it.
Ashul had taken note of the shadow presence too, his eyes tracking the subtle, fast movement as his tongue slipped over his fangs.
“What crime, she says,” Sebastian mocked, letting out another giggle. “One,” he snarled, “you resurrected a nonhuman being without special license. That is in direct violation of our laws.”
On cue, the mist surged forward with a terrible stench, and a putrid scent filled the air. Fingers clawed at the air as a rotting corpse stumbled out of the fog, its skin splitting and sloughing off from the rest of its decaying tissue. Its milky, sightless fastened on her, and it shivered before taking off at a clumsy run toward her.
Toward her. Her mouth fell open in shock and her hand snapped up and begin to weave the spell to consume flesh as she enunciated the twisting patterns of words. It staggered, its flesh falling off in mushy green boils that erupted with pink pus as the power fueling it trickled into her. The risen corpse was beginning to resemble a lit candle in the summer heat, but it did not halt its attack even though its rapidly advancing decay slowed it considerably.
It wasn’t trying to attack Ashul. In fact, the corpse, like the skeletons before it, seemed to be trying to avoid its elven aggressor as it rushed her. Unfortunately for Sebastian, her mate struck with the speed and fury of a viper, laying waste to what remained of the animated corpse with the same lethal efficiency he used to dispatch the skeleton before it. As his sword sunk into its skull, the bone caved in on itself with a wet, slurping sound that she hated. Yanking his sword free, he turned toward the mist with a menacing smile.
“Is that all you have, necromancer?” he snarled.
“Why… no,” Sebastian replied, his laughter growing louder as the large shadow shifted within the mists again.
It somehow seemed to get bigger than what could possibly be natural as it loomed closer, its movements lumbering as it appeared to drag something heavy. Robyn fell back a step, her skin prickling. There was something that tugged at her memory anxiously, but she couldn’t quite determine what it was.
Ashul gave her a concerned glance, his long ears twitching, and she attempted a reassuring smile. He needed to focus on the fight rather than be distracted by worrying over her, but as the mist thinned around the colossal figure emerging from it, her heart picked up a frantic beat. Her mate’s ears twitched and he crouched low, readying himself for attack.
She shook her head in disbelief, her eyes widening at the sight of the thing gradually becoming clearer. It was no normal human form. And if it was one that Sebastian was maintaining, it was no wonder that he kept himself so concealed.
“Sebastian… what have you done?” she rasped.
The thing half-hidden by the mists giggled again, the sound louder and somehow shriller now that it was closer.
“I think that much should be obvious, Robyn. I have become as powerful in body as in mind. I have done the high summoning, the ritual of attainment, and Marquoras has favored me!”