The mists parted from around the massive skeletal head draped with a dark shroud, its burning eyes fastened on her as the lich stepped out of the mist, its giant scythe aflame with ghostfire dragging on the ground behind it. A nightmare form that was as dangerous for a necromancer to assume as it was for those in its path, the lich presented a terrible obstacle. One that only grew in power and madness the longer the necromancer existed in that form, sacrificing bits of their humanity and soul to the construct until they could never get free from it.
Nervously, she backed away, aware that Ashul was drawing in closer to her. He hadn’t a chance against the lich. Although mortal weapons didn’t do much to harm the drow, the necromancer, especially in lich form with his ghostfire scythe, definitely could. She had to get through to the other necromancer and make him see reason. She only prayed that there was enough humanity left within him to penetrate the blind hunger of the lich. Perhaps if he returned to his true form, she could make him understand how imperative it was that she speak with the Grandmaster.
“Sebastian, listen to me. How long have you been like that?” she called out, backing another step.
The lich cocked his head, his flaming eyes shrinking to burning points in his sockets. “Days,” he drawled in a long hiss. She was hopeful for a moment, but that hope dissolved like smoke caught in her hand as he continued to speak. “Weeks. Months…. Yearsssssss. Time means nothing. Marquoras has given me this gift so that I would be strong and eternal.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
The heat from Ashul’s body warmed her as he drew to her side, his violet gaze flicking to her before returning to the lich warily.
“My love?” he murmured in soft query.
“Love,” Sebastian drawled, somehow hearing the drow’s quiet words. His burning eyes brightened as he locked his fiery gaze on her. “It is forbidden! You have betrayed Marquoras. The living do not lay with the dead. The necromancer does not lay with the risen,” he shrieked. He lifted a bony claw toward her.“Death is the penalty!”
A loud growl rumbled from Ashul, her mate moving defensively in front of her. Her blood pounded in her ears as she watched as the lich dropped his bony hand. Sebastian would attack at any moment, and there were things Ashul needed to know.
“Be careful. Sebastian has been in that form too long. I don’t think he could come out of it if he even wanted to. All that’s left of him is madness and hunger.” Her lips thinned with worry as another thought occurred to her. “It is possible that the entire monastery has come under threat.”
Ashul’s gaze darted to her and returned to the lich who had begun to lumber forward once more. “Good. Perhaps they will be grateful then with our arrival when we return with this thing’s head.”
Sebastian cackled, lifting his scythe and swinging it idly in the air. “Only your death awaits!”
Though he seemed to be speaking in response to Ashul’s words, the lich’s gaze was fixed firmly on her. He had no intention of letting either of them escape this encounter alive. Whatever madness brewed in Sebastian’s head now that he was consumed with the dark madness of the lich, that was his sole desire.
With an inhuman shriek, he charged forward, his scythe rising high behind him. Stepping back to brace herself, Robyn’s hands snapped through the air, weaving the energy of the power she drew up through her again. Curling her fingers, she cast the snare spell.
Dark energy surged up from the earth like twisted veins of roots, curling around the lich’s massive frame, ripping him back forcefully as it caught him in place. Muscles bulging, Sebastian strained against its hold, his shrieks alternating with howling roars. Robyn clung to the energy that threatened to tear away from him, but her heart was in her throat as Ashul circled with a snarl and prepared his attack.
A quiet prayer fell from her lips. Marquoras preserve them.
ChapterTwenty-Four
Ashul advanced on his prey, his entire being focused on the slightest shifts of the necromancer-turned-lich’s body. There was an unholy shroud of power that clung to it that extended beyond the cloak the creature wore. Foul thing. Even the necromancers among the drow rarely attempted such depravity. Never had he heard of it or seen it, and while the creature’s strength was impressive, the lich’s foulness filled the air with a putrid presence that seemed to soak into everything, twisting the natural darkness that his kind so loved into something ugly and terrible.
He would not call this thing—not even in his thoughts—by the name Robyn gave the lich. Whatever man the creature had been before, that person was gone, swallowed up in the corrosive magic of the tomb.
It was a pleasure to dispatch such a taint as well as one who stood between him and his goal. He cared not if the monastery suffered. It had earned nothing from him other than his anger on behalf of his mate at having a fate she did not want foisted on her. All he desired was that they remove his mate’s compulsion so that he could steal her away and hide her so deep in the sylvan woods that no human would ever be able to find them unless they wished to be found.
At Ashul’s approach, the sharp teeth of the lich’s skull open with a hiss as the male fought against his magical restraints, the monstrous head turning toward him. There was nothing sane that could be reasoned with from within the depths of the male’s eyes. There was nothing but a terrible, vicious hunger and a fanatical fire.
The hunger was something that Ashul well understood. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing his past self. Before Robyn, it had been the only pleasure he had known, and he empathized with the lich on that one point. But not the rest. The mad, restless fanaticism that demanded appeasement was repellant to him with its twisting insidious sickness.
“Ashul, watch out for the scythe! You can’t be hit by the ghostfire!” Robyn shouted after him.
He frowned in confusion at her words, but there was no time to ponder them. He filed her instruction away and narrowed his eyes at his target as he rushed forward, his blade pulsing with a sense of its own hunger as he gripped it tightly in his hand. The creature’s gray tongue whipped past his teeth, long strings of saliva flying at Ashul’s face as he came within range. Ashul dodged the slime only to note that it landed with a corrosive hiss wherever it hit the ground. The way the creature was twisting and the magical bonds slowly fraying, he knew that there would not be much time. Just enough for one such as himself to get a strike in.
Flashing his teeth in a grin that promised death, Ashul darted in close and drew back his sword to strike. The connection of metal to flesh sent up a spray of black blood. The lich screamed and recoiled, giving Ashul an opening to turn and plunge his blade in a second time before the male’s enormous body whipped up with a pulse of dark energy that destroyed its magical bindings.
They snapped with such force that the dark energy trailed pulsed through the air, forcing Ashul back as the male’s giant body rolled, but not far enough. The lich tipped his head back in a monstrous howl as he surged once more to his feet, the glowing scythe clutched in his gnarled hand. The ghostfire dancing along the scythe blade swept forward before the lich even got to his feet, slashing into Ashul’s side before he got far enough away.
His entire body jerked with the bite of the shockingly searing energy. He stumbled back, his hand pressing against his side. His hot blood pulsed between his fingers to drip to the ground. It did not slow, nor did it seal as it should have. The blood was flowing.
“Damn it, Ashul, I said watch the blade. It can injure you and will eventually kill you!”
Ah, that was the meaning behind her warning.
He bared his teeth at the creature as he scurried back, pressing a hand against his wound until it slowly, reluctantly began to knit back together. All the while he kept himself between his mate and the lich as he closed in and retreated, delivering brutal strikes at every opportunity and sometimes receiving a glancing blow too. Though massive, the lich moved slowly when it was not gathering speed in a charge, giving Ashul openings to wound the creature without exposing a path to Robyn as she continued to work her magic.