Detarr rolled the pinpoints of light in his eye sockets. “Look, I only said that appearances matter—”
“No! They don’t!” Jynn was shouting, solamancy and noctomancy wreathing his hands. “If you cared how we look, you wouldn’t be trying to raze the biggest city on Arth right now! This isn’t about how you look! This is about you holding me back!”
The liche’s lower jaw swiveled down, his skull agape. “How dare you?” he hissed, weaving his dark spell once more. A blast of black tentacles burst from Detarr’s skeletal fingers, reaching toward Jynn. “After all I’ve done for you?”
“Done for me?” snapped Jynn. He attempted to catch the spell in a web of omnimancy, but his father’s weaves were stronger than anything the wizard could manage, and he was forced to dodge away from the blast. He grunted in pain as the spell raked across his back. “You pushed me beyond my limits and then punished me for failure! You locked me away from the world and then degraded me for not having social skills! You ridiculed me as weak when it was you keeping me from my true power!”
“Your true power? Omnimancy? Yes, I kept you from shaming yourself out of a career.” The violet flames around Detarr’s skull grew into a towering inferno roiling over his black crown. “Gods, I make one remark on your stature and you lose your mind, boy!”
“It wasn’t one comment! It’s everything you’ve ever said! It’s all part of a larger pattern.” Jynn’s screams dropped to an awed whisper as he saw the truth of his own words. “It’s part of a larger pattern,” he said again, glancing down.
The interlocking grooves etched into the stone beneath his feet didn’t just have a few noctomancer’s runes; every line was part of runes drawn into the strata of stone and earth. The spaces between the great sigils of noctomancy were runes of solamancy. When arranged together in interlocking tessellation, they formed a third type of rune that Jynn had only encountered in the libraries of the Fane Amada: runes of the Twilight Order.
The Dark Spire of Nephan was an omnimancer’s artifact.
“Oh, and I suppose I’m the bad guy in all of this?” said the liche.
“Yes! How is that even a question?” Jynn twisted threads of light and shadow around himself. There wouldn’t be a second chance. “You could have supported me! You could have helped me instead of punishing me. Mother never cared that I was an omnimancer, but once she was gone, you kept me from weaving solamancy! You knew that was all I had of her!”
“You leave your mother out of this! You—” Detarr shook his head and leveled the Wyrmwood Staff at Jynn. “You never appreciated what I gave you. You’ll understand soon enough.”
There was a noise like a bumblebee shattering the sound barrier, and then the crystal on the end of the staff flared with pale green light. A shockwave rippled through the air, and behind it a wave of emerald sorcery rolled from the tip of the staff. The noxious plasma flowed toward Jynn like an elemental battering ram; ponderous and unstoppable.
The omnimancer feigned as though he would raise a ward, but at the last moment he slammed his weave into the runes of the Dark Spire of Nephan. Scintillating colors ran over the stones, running through ancient runes like water through canals. Light and shadow flickered as the air above the runes began to distort the view of the burning city around them.
Jynn could feel the matrix of omnimancy rising up, could sense it responding to the weaves. He twisted his fingers, tugging at the web as a puppeteer might maneuver a marionette. The threads of noctomancy and solamancy tugged and pushed on each other, pulling and repelling and reshaping magic in their proximity. Detarr’s oncoming spell was refracted through the fractal lenses of omnimancy. Threads of noxious energy flowed in every direction, spilling through the Dark Spire’s magical field like water through a sieve before bending back around themselves.
“And what exactly is that supposed to be doing?” snarled Detarr.
Jynn wasn’t entirely sure there was a term for it, but his hands moved with a certainty brought by years of spellcasting. Deftly twisting his fingers, he conjured weaves in helix patterns to adjust the polarity of the magical network. With some simple adjustments, he re-wove the liche’s spell into something new, a crude lance of lightning that the omnimancer fired back at his father.
Detarr raised a ward of shadow that easily deflected the bolt. “Was that supposed to impress me?” he snarled.
“No,” said Jynn. “It’s not all about you.” He extended his hand and held it open expectantly.
“What do you—gah!” Detarr shrieked as the Wyrmwood Staff lurched from his grasp and floated across the gulf toward his son. “No! For once, stop flailing about in ignorance and listen to me! You still don’t comprehend what you’re tampering with, you fool! Why must you always meddle and never think things through?”
“That’s not who I am,” said Jynn, reaching out. The staff landed lightly in his palm, pulsing with unexpected warmth as he gripped it. A tingling sensation washed over him, and as it did so his magically attuned robes shifted again.
Layered silks and fine embroidery sprouted among the ratty folds of his omnimancer’s robes. Tattered edges mended and grew emerald buttons. A long, white mantle grew from the shoulders, cascading down over the intricate pattern surging through the fabrics. Power and light wreathed Jynn as his robes acknowledged what no wizard could deny; with the Wyrmwood Staff in hand, Jynn was an Archmage of the Order of Twilight.
The liche stopped to study his son’s new attire. “Perhaps,” he said. “You may have come farther than I expected of you, but let’s be honest. That’s not difficult.” He punctuated the declaration with a burst of dark magic as wings of shadow and malice erupted from his back. The liche’s foul sorcery crashed onto the Dark Spire of Nephan, overwhelming and collapsing the magical matrix as the dark spell rushed toward the omnimancer.
Jynn studied the incoming spell without concern. With the power of the Wyrmwood Staff thrumming through his veins, the tide of sorcery seemed to drift lazily toward him, like leaves on the breeze. “Basic,” he said, erecting a shield.
His polarized ward absorbed Detarr’s spell and sent it back at the liche in a ball of lightning. The liche dodged and fired off another volley. Father and son darted and ran, wove spells and erected wards, spiraling around each other in deadly sport.
Jynn loosed a particularly powerful bolt of fire and lightning when something passed within inches of his face, forcing him to duck. He got a protective spell up just as the banshee’s wail washed over him. The world went wobbly as the ear-splitting keen rattled Jynn’s head. A moment later, a violet comet slammed into his back, sending him sprawling.
“I tried to make this easy for you,” said Detarr, floating a little closer to his son. “I would have raised you as something nice, something powerful. We could have ruled Arth together as father and son.”
Jynn pushed himself to his knees and took a deep breath. Gripping the Wyrmwood Staff in both hands, he drew fully from its power. Thick cords of light and shadow whipped around him, vaporizing the banshee and several other specters. Electricity buzzed in his teeth. A great wind rushed up from the ground beneath him, blowing away the smoke and ash in the air. The black leather glove he wore on his left hand burned away.
“I never wanted that.” Jynn stood, or rather, rose to a more vertical position, carried by the wind and magic that wreathed him. “I never wanted any of that.”
“Nobody wanted it!” snarled the liche. “Nobody said this was ideal! But if we want to continue on, sacrifices must be made for power. You know it’s true!”
“I wouldn’t make the sacrifices you have!” Jynn said. “Necromancy? Demonology? I’d never stoop to the evils you have, Father. I’m nothing like you.”
“Oh? And what have you done to yourself there?” The liche pointed at Jynn’s left hand. Or rather, what was left of it.
Jynn glanced down at the appendage. Using solamancy after decades of attunement to noctomancy had stripped the flesh from his frame. The bones of his forearm protruded fro
m a blackened stump, and they ended in a skeletal hand animated by Jynn’s noctomancy alone.
The omnimancer flexed his dead fingers, sending threads of fire dancing around the staff they gripped. “I guess I am like you in some ways,” he said, pointing the staff at his father. “Just not the ones that matter.”
A white beam of fire and lightning erupted from the tip of the staff. Detarr erected a quick ward, but Jynn’s spell punched through it as though it had never existed. The liche’s right arm disintegrated the instant the spell touched it. Half of his pelvis and one of his legs were sheared off as he tried to jerk away from the fiery light. The ray of brilliant energy continued through the second tier, punching through walls and carving holes in rooftops until it eventually seared into the laboratory of Creative Destruction Inc., where it completely vaporized an unfortunate Viscous Rhombohedron.
Detarr stumbled back and lifted into the air. What remained of his skeletal body was wracked with spasms as wisps of scintillating light strobed across his dark robes. The black crown on his head was hanging askew, and he gripped it with his remaining hand as he rose. “To me!” he cried.
Spectral figures swirled around the stricken liche. Skeletal and rotting soldiers clambered up the ruined gatehouse. Jynn incinerated the nearest zombies with a simple weave, but more were already flanking him and Detarr was floating away toward the outer gates. A wall of corpses and spirits pressed in toward the omnimancer, obscuring his father.
“This isn’t over, Father!” Jynn hollered at the retreating liche, though he wasn’t entirely sure that was the case. The Wyrmwood Staff’s energies were reaching their limit, and the omnimancer was as close to running out of magic as his father seemed to be. Yet Detarr didn’t have a swarm of enemies bearing down on him.
The lead specter in the mob of spirits broke away and swooped at the wizard, arms outstretched. Its face contorted into a leering scream, and then contorted farther still as a silver arrow bored through its translucent body. By the time the ghostly fighter had evaporated, a cloud of green smoke had enveloped the zombies and skeletons behind it.
Jynn grinned. “It took you long enough,” he said to Kaitha as she leapt spryly to the top of Fafnir’s Gate.
“Hey, blame the weaponsmaster,” said Kaitha, loosing another arrow. “He’s the one who got mortally wounded.”
“Is he well enough to fight?” Jynn watched Heraldin and Gaist whirl amidst the emerald clouds, lopping heads and limbs off the confused undead within. The weaponsmaster still clutched his side with his off hand.
“Laruna healed him!” shouted Heraldin.
“So… should he be fighting?” Jynn asked.
“He was actually worse before she did,” Kaitha added. “That’s progress.”
A storm of flames surged up from the opposite side of the ruined gatehouse, sending charred corpses flying out over the second tier. A moment later, Laruna climbed into view. “Would you just get going?”
With a nod to the solamancer, Jynn ran to the edge of the Dark Spire. It was a long drop down to the Base below, but Detarr was floating level with the top of the second tier’s walls. The one-legged liche wriggled through the smoke and ash like a leech swimming through a murky pond.
“I wasn’t at my full power!” Detarr tried to look back at his son, but his awkward flight sent his head twisting and bobbing in odd directions. “If I hadn’t been fighting all night, your little tricks wouldn’t have been enough to save you!”
Jynn raised the Wyrmwood Staff. “I’m sorry, Father. I really am.”
“I don’t need your pity!” shrieked the liche. “Stop laughing at me!”
The omnimancer’s brow furrowed. “I’m not laughing,” he said.
Detarr cocked his head. “Well, someone is—”
The wall of the closest building erupted in a cloud of splinters and bricks as a mad ball of fury burst through it. Most of Detarr Ur’Mayan’s physical form exploded in similar fashion as Gorm Ingerson slammed into his side, and what was left of it was dragged away by the trajectory of the airborne Dwarf. The liche’s ribcage crunched as Gorm landed atop it. A second later, the Crown of Iron Thorns bounced off the dirt next to him.
Heraldin shook his head in admiration. “He really does know how to make an entrance.”
“And an exit as well, I suppose.” Kaitha watched Gorm’s retreating figure. A fading cackle followed the Dwarf as he rampaged onward to parts unknown.
Jynn ignored the fate of his father’s body. The important part was Detarr’s head, still hovering in the air with stubborn purple flames flickering around it. With the liche’s protective spells all but obliterated and his skeleton removed, a glittering crystal was clearly visible at the base of the floating skull. Thin tendrils of necromancy wove outward from it like searching tentacles.
Detarr noticed his son’s attentions. “Jynn… No… You don’t understand,” he gasped.
“I doubt I ever will,” said Jynn, already weaving.
The air shimmered briefly as the omnimancer extended his right hand. Strands of air flowed from him as he reached out to the bottom of Detarr’s skull. His skeletal digits wound threads of fire and light around the wind, pushing aside the last wards protecting the liche. Closing his fist, Jynn pulled a long, violet crystal from his father’s head.
“No—!” moaned Detarr Ur’Mayan, and then his voice died with the flames surrounding his head. The inert skull hung in the air for a moment, the lights in its sockets flickering out. Then it dropped to the earth below and shattered.
The spell broke like melting snow.
When Tyren first felt the liche’s grip weaken, he could move his blade away from Aubey. A short while later, he dropped his weapon to his side and managed to say her name again. Soon the power of the liche faded entirely, but Tyren remained staring at his daughter. Everything around her seemed to fall away.
“You’re in control, aren’t you?” said Aubey, looking at his black and blasted armor. “Father?”
“Little Aubey,” said Tyren.
“Aubren,” she corrected. “I mean, nobody’s called me Aubey since you passed… well, I thought you were dead.”
“Technically correct,” offered Ted. He backed away with a rueful shrug as Tyren’s gaze fell upon him.
The young woman was clearly trying to avoid looking directly at the zombie. “Right, but… I meant, Mom and Chadwick said—”
“Let’s not talk about your mother and Chadwick. We don’t have much time,” said Tyren. Without the influence of the Crown of Iron Thorns, he could feel the undead all around. Hungry. Fearful. Furious. Barely restrained.
“But… you’re saving us, right?” Aubren said.
“Oh, yes, of course. Yes!” Tyren’s last affirmation was made with extra force.
Ned closed his mouth and slowly backed away from a panicked man in a cobbler’s apron.
“But I cannot stop the other undead for long,” the death knight continued. “I need to leave soon if you’re to be safe. And I… I just want you to know that… I know now I wasn’t the father I should have been. The man I should have been. But I love you, Aubey—Aubren. There wasn’t much good in me, but you had the best of it. Always.”
Aubren nodded. “Okay.”
An awkward silence hung in the air between the skeletal knight and his teenage daughter. “Okay?” he said. “Just okay?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just a lot to take in.” Aubren gave an apologetic shrug. “I mean, I barely remember you. Up until a few minutes ago, I thought you drank yourself to death.”
“Also not entirely inaccurate,” suggested Ned, earning a withering glare from the death knight.
“And now you’re here, but you know… you’re a skeleton in evil-looking armor. And you’re with a pack of zombies and a bear monster—”
“A bear monster?” Tyren asked.
“Mr. Stearn, if it pleases you.” The crowd parted to reveal the speaker: an undead, ursine creature wearing a predatory grin and the tattered remai
ns of a business suit. “Is nice to meet you.”
“This guy’s great!” said the Head of Marketing, bobbing into view next to Mr. Stearn. “He’s got big ideas, Knight-Commander. Big ideas!”
“Right. And the flying skull that’s on fire,” said Aubren, giving the Head of Marketing a sideways glance. “And then you show up and you save us and say you always loved me… This sort of thing takes time to, you know, process.”
“Right.” Tyren tried to take a deep breath with his missing lungs. “Right.”
The assembled townsfolk and unliving abominations glanced around and cleared their throats nervously.
“Well, we should probably… you know…” Tyren left the pause hanging in the air, watching Aubren for any sign of interjecting.
“Eat them all?” suggested Ned.
“Leave,” growled the death knight. “We should probably leave.”
“Sir, this is the largest city on the continent,” protested Ted. “You’ll not find a better place to invade.”
“I don’t want to invade anywhere. I don’t want to kill anyone. I wish to let people make whatever they want of their lives.”
Ned snorted derisively, “Well, that might work for you, sir, but the rest of us are under curses that—”
“We’re all cursed,” snapped the death knight. “We all suffer. We all still must make our own decisions, and let other people make theirs.”
The ghoul scratched his chin thoughtfully. “But if I choose to not let other people make decisions, vis-à-vis eating them, how would—”
“You will come with me.” Tyren said it with an air of finality, but the speed and coordination with which the surrounding undead all stopped and mechanically turned to follow still surprised him.
“There’s that magically-enforced social hierarchy again,” muttered Ted.
“But where will we go?” asked Ned.
Tyren thought for a moment. His mind drifted back to summers spent by the freezing, stinking salt bogs, wandering a dusty fortress. Castle Ur’Thos was leagues away from anyone, and his memories from the old family estate were mostly pleasant. “To my ancestral home. On the coastal marshes of the Icegale Sea.”
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