The Zombie Knight

It was mayhem. A torrent enveloped Zeff--a product of his own materialization and yet still almost involuntary. His rage was so complete and so blinding that he felt almost possessed. Moving without thinking. A mobile storm of water.

He went straight for Gohvis, sending a flurry of attacks ahead of him. Water drills. Spikes of ice. Blinding steam. Sudden platforms beneath the Monster’s feet. And more that he didn’t even have the awareness to articulate.

Everything. He just sent everything.

But it wasn’t working. He could already tell. The drill hit ineffectually. The spikes bounced right off. The steam dissipated into nothing. Even the simple platforms of ice refused to materialize. Only harmless splashes of water appeared, wetting the ground around the dragon man’s feet, instead.

Not that Zeff was terribly surprised by any of this.

Despite everything, the Lord Elroy still had enough awareness to know who he was up against. To know that this was certain to be a fruitless endeavor.

He simply couldn’t control himself.

He went in with the Drillburst, aiming right at Gohvis’ center of mass.

The Monster caught his fist and stopped him cold. And those impossibly red eyes found him, staring straight into his own. “Calm yourself, Water Dragon. You need not die, this day.”

Zeff tried to pull his hand away, but it was stuck fast in the Monster’s grip. He growled in frustration, trying to materialize more, but only sputters of water appeared around him, not at all as he intended.

“Return my daughter!” he yelled.

“In time,” said Gohvis.

“Return her, Monster! Do not--!” The huge hand let him go, only to find his face instead, killing the words in his mouth. Truthfully, Zeff hadn’t even known what he was going to say next. Incensed yelling was the only thing that came to mind.

“Calm yourself,” said the Monster again, this time with a weight behind it.

A weight that, even in his current state, Zeff found somehow difficult to ignore. The words cut through the blind rage in his mind, not destroying it totally but still making a clear impression.

Zeff’s flailing arms slowed, and he felt abruptly more in control of himself.

And the huge hand released him.

Zeff found his feet, blinking. He stood there, before the Monster of the East, still ready to attack again but at least no longer feeling the immediate, unignorable impulse to do so.

For the guards, it was a different story. The light swirled around them--or sometimes skewered them--and wrapped them all up in radiant packages, rendering them unable to move, apart from only two who were still struggling.

Raga Marda and Mikas Cross.

Zeff could sense them both trying to break free--and nearly succeeding, too, if not for the Linebreaker suddenly being there to ensure their suppression.

“Take your kin and go, Rainlords,” said their mysterious ally. “I will clean up here.”

And abruptly, Zeff could sense Raul Blackburn arriving--or more specifically, being carried over to them on the crystalline wings of another bird. The young man was dropped off right next to Melchor, who’s relief was visible.

There came a peaceable moment, as everyone was no doubt caught up in the same feelings of disbelief and uncertainty as Zeff.

Was the battle truly done? Just like that? Zeff struggled to reorient his mind.

Melchor was the first to break the strange silence, speaking up loudly enough for all to hear. “Archangel! Is that you?! It must be, yes?! Where have you been all these years?! Why did you disappear?!”

The luminous bird was quiet for a moment, then said, “I am sorry for all that you and your kin have been put through. But please know that not all within the Vanguard are against you. Some of--”

The sentence went unfinished as the great bird’s head did a snap turn to the side, and then the light emanating from it grew suddenly bright enough to fill Zeff’s vision, blinding him entirely.

And Zeff felt his whole body stop listening to him, as if being enveloped in a warm blanket and put forcibly yet gently to bed.

Almost.

His mind rebelled. Refused to fall unconscious.

The light did not yet fade, but Axiolis’ senses still worked, so Zeff could tell what was happening to the battleground.

Everyone was being moved, shoved aside with urgency--and not for no reason, either.

Because yet another soul was arriving, and it would’ve barreled straight through the crowd of Rainlords on its way to its destination, which seemed to be Vanderberk’s smoldering, questionable corpse.

Zeff’s mind came alive with fury. With rage. It would not be brushed aside, put to bed like a child.

Because he recognized that new soul, and nothing in this world was going to prevent him from confronting it.

For that soul belonged to the man who had kidnapped his beloved daughter.

Lightning ripped through the air, illuminating the horizon and shaking the world with thunder. The wall of still-cooling lava shattered, creating red-orange geysers to either side of the cell block.

And Zeff saw a path of ruin below, a running crater that had been drilled through not just the lava but also the prison, ending just outside of Cell Block Y. A small mountain of disturbed rock and uprooted trees lay at the crater’s edge, along with a smoldering, motionless lump.

Was that... a person?

Yes, it took him a moment, but Zeff could indeed sense a living soul at the end of that destroyed path. And it took him another moment to recognize who it was, because the soul was noticeably distorted.

That was Vanderberk down there. The infamous Weasel of Abolish. One of the most powerful servants in the entire world, rendered into a smote pile of flesh.

Was he dead? Zeff genuinely could not tell, even with Axiolis’ reaper senses helping him.

Which was supremely strange.

What in the world had been done to him? It was like the man’s very soul had been twisted into knots.

Agh. Distractions. Whatever the explanation, it didn’t matter now. The only thing that mattered was freeing the rest of the reapers. Thankfully, the path that Vanderberk’s body had carved through the cell block had not touched any of the remaining captives. Had that been intentional? Had their mysterious helper been able to--?

Another brilliant flash of light arrived, this time bringing with it a great, shining figure. A bird? An avian monstrosity of luminous crystal. Lightning crackled off of it and up into the sky, disappearing into dark clouds. When had those gotten there?

From atop his hovering platform, despite the fact that he’d been trying to avoid getting distracted only a moment ago, Zeff could only stare with wide eyes.

“Rainlords,” came a great voice, seemingly from the giant bird. “Thank you for your help. Allow me to take care of the rest.”

And what followed, Zeff could scarcely comprehend.

Scores of smaller lights sprang out from the bird, a sudden and almost silent display of fireworks, all arcing down toward the sundered battleground and raining down on everyone.

It was alarming, to be sure--and so fast that Zeff wasn’t sure any of them could’ve responded to it even if they’d been prepared to.

But the light seemed harmless. For the Rainlords, at least.

Many of the guards were simply fleeing now, having given up entirely. It made sense. It was simple self-preservation at this point.

But the Rainlords couldn’t budge. They still had reapers trapped in here, not to mention the non-servants elsewhere in the compound.

They had to stop it. They could stop it. With. Just. A little. More. Effort.

Zeff saw kept pressing, kept dousing. Not letting up. From his overhead position, he could see almost everyone--their collective strength and work. Scores of servants, Rainlord and not, were all straining to push the creeping wall back. Many had even left the cell block entirely, having gone around the gargantuan lava mass to create street-sized trenches all along its flanks in an attempt to redirect its flow.

That seemed to be the work of destruction users, mostly.

The lava was still resistant to their efforts, though. The sheer mass and accompanying inertia, infused with an unknown quantity of hyper-potent ardor--it was almost like the lava had a will of its own. Like it did not wish to be moved by anything other than itself.

But even if that were the case, the Rainlords most certainly had a will to match it. They would not be moved, either. It may not have been at the forefront of his thinking, but Zeff could feel it instinctually, without a doubt.

Their collective intent. The Will of Lhutwë, perhaps. The Soul of the Rain.

It spurred him on. Resonated within his heart. Reminded of who he was. His duty. Of everyone he loved, of every single member of his kin here with him, right now.

And then, finally, mercifully, the wall of lava stopped. It still oozed around the rest of the compound, moving through dozens of freshly dug trenches, but the dripping down into Cell Block Y ceased, frozen in place.

He almost couldn’t believe it, not enough to let himself feel any sort of relief, at least. And he obviously wasn’t alone in that, because everyone kept trying to push the lava back even after it was clear that they had turned the tide. Perhaps everyone expected it to be suddenly reinvigorated by a new quake--a concern which would not have been without merit.

Either way, the work continued, and no one slackened their pace until the lava had fully retreated from the block and been diverted into the trenches.

Only then did Zeff allow himself to take a breath, to relax his exhausted mind and begin dematerializing without immediately rematerializing.

Then the sky split apart.

The two great waves of water and lava collided, making the entire horizon come alive with steaming explosions. The ground quaked again, though Zeff couldn’t tell if it was being caused by the clash itself or by the same mysterious source from earlier.

He wasn’t able to stay on his feet. That was the downside of using icy platforms. But it hardly mattered, because the quaking broke his platform apart, anyway, and he had to quickly to catch himself with aerial materializations, curving himself back up into the air like a bobsled making a vertical U-turn.

Then a hovering platform did the trick, though even that wasn’t entirely stable. The lava wave was pushing through his water one, slowed but not stopped by the continuous steam eruptions.

Others were contributing, too. Melchor with gargantuan pillars of frozen mercury. Leo with powdery geysers of boron, creating huge gouts of green flame on contact with the lava.

Flashes of brilliant light punches holes through the lava--or attempted to, at least. Some broke through, only to be quickly filled back in, while others just seemed to be absorbed. All the water might’ve been playing a bit of havoc with that, too, but it was impossible to tell for sure amid the mayhem.

Even the guards were throwing everything they had at it. Material, explosions, liquids, countless freezing attacks.

Yet the lava neared, nonetheless.

It was clearly slowing, but would it stop before it reached the prison cells? It was already flowing over the outer walls, spilling forth like an angry orange landslide, smothering and devouring each building.

Zeff didn’t stop. More water. More.

He hadn’t hit his volume limit in a long time, but he hit it now. Not enough. He had to waste precious seconds dematerializing before he could make more tidal waves, each one feeling that much weaker than the last, since he was in such a rush and not able to ensure that he was dematerializing everything. When his materialized water was absorbed, it became significantly more difficult to find and remove.

The lava neared. And neared. And kept nearing, forcing the defenders at the front to retreat.

It reached Cell Block Y, reduced to a crawl but still not stopping. It gooped over the blown out ceiling and began to drip inside, setting the busted walls on fire and melting them down until they simply collapsed under the weight.

Others were scrambling now. Friend and foe alike, seemingly. All moving either away from the approaching wall or toward it in an attempt to impede its path.

To throw up defenses before it killed them all.

Because it very likely would. The reapers might’ve been able to escape underground, but every non-servant here would perish--and the non-servants who didn’t die could still end up trapped.

The thing about lava was that it very frequently came up from deep within the planet, where untold amounts of ardor--the so-called “planet force”--flowed freely, empowering it without the aid of any servant.

That was why even very old servants were known to fear volcanoes. Sure, one might get lucky if the erupting lava happened to not be infused with ardor, but in the event that it was, there was not much that could be done.

Because the ardor added strength. Weight. Impact. Resilience.

Could the lava be redirected? Could it be shielded against? Could it be slowed or cooled?

It all depended on the force behind the eruption. A sufficiently powerful one was a death sentence for all but the most powerful servants in the world--and even they might still have trouble.

If naturally occurring dangers could all be categorized, then volcanic eruptions would be in the same category as feldeaths.

Every servant here knew that, which was why the battle was suddenly forgotten, why everyone was suddenly on the same side, trying to stop that certain doom headed their way.

And Zeff was no different. As much as he’d been focused on getting the reapers out just now, he knew that he had to help, too. His power might’ve been the one best suited to saving them all, in fact.

That was no guarantee, though. Ardor was known to be more potent than soul power. Even an absolutely colossal amount of water might not do enough.

But he tried.

He bounded upward on a platform of ice, needing to get above the attacks and walls of all the other servants who were trying to help. He wanted to douse the entire oncoming wall in water, and he needed a clear path to do so.

He summoned all of his concentration to create a tidal wave. He even manipulated its pressure a bit so that he could lower its temperature without freezing it--a particularly difficult technique when involving such massive volume.

Whatever that was, it was too far way to for Axiolis’ senses to pick up on it, but in that moment, Zeff still felt a tremendous and familiar unease. Like a whisper of something in his mind, an idea that wasn’t quite there--or maybe a memory that half-forgotten.

And he must not have been alone in that feeling, because the battle came nearly to a stop as everyone watched the sky.

It took everything he had to tear himself away, to remind himself that whatever was going on out there, it didn’t matter one bit when compared against the current mission.

In fact, this was a golden opportunity, he realized.

He set to work. With everyone standing so still and dumbfounded, it was suddenly quite easy to sense the fullness of the space around him. Every gap between souls, every break in the soul-infused prison cells--and every Rainlord reaper therein. Axiolis’ memory made it easy to identify them all.

He raised a benevolent wave to grab as many as he could, boxing them each in little icy cube for their own protection. With the wave, he could carry all of them to safety, just so long as everyone else stayed so distracted.

There wasn’t enough time. Already, he could tell that some of the enemies were returning to their senses. The sudden flood waters at their feet had no doubt grabbed their attention. And some of them were noticing the cubes, too.

Counter spikes solved that issue. The malevolent noticers were skewered through each of their skulls, save one, who was proving more tenacious.

Another quake arrived, the biggest yet, and even Zeff had to give pause again. He stayed on task, though. He could see in the corner of his eye that the sky was not just glowing, anymore. There was something blazingly bright there. But he had to keep everyone safe. He had to get them out of here.

Some of the other Rainlords had noticed his work, too, and begun helping. That was great, but this whole thing was hardly making any sense. Everyone getting so distracted in the first place. In the middle of a mission, no less? And not just any mission, but one of the most important they’d ever had?

This wasn’t normal. True, the sky seemed to be on fire, but was that really--?

He saw it.

Not fire.

Lava. A tidal wave of lava. Heading their way.

It did the trick. Raga Marda lost his footing, not enough to make him fall over, but enough for Zeff to fall down upon him with a one-handed, ice-fisted slam.

The floor cratered below the two of them as Raga Marda--still invisible--took the attack, and the nearby prison cells cracked open or even burst apart. The force was more than enough to shatter Zeff’s hand and most of his arm, but pan-forma would render that a non-issue.

The Demon’s Tiger, however, hardly budged.

Zeff had been aiming for the head, but the invisibility had made such precision all but impossible. It seemed to have caught him on the shoulder.

Marda twisted to counterattack, but Zeff was already following up with his other hand, this one bearing the same water drill that he’d attempted before.

Now it landed, though not without trading. Marda’s hand or claw or whatever it was--it tore through Zeff’s torso and sent him flying back amid a flurry of blood.

Marda didn’t escape unscathed, either, though. A hole ripped through the Invisibility, along with Marda’s chest, and the rest of the man became slowly visible again as the presumed aberration item’s power melted off of him.

Zeff needed a moment to recover, but he could sense that the others were seizing the opportunity to swarm him. Diego, Dimas, Salvador, and a half-dozen others pelted him with explosions and gunfire, and when Marda tried to push through it all like smoke, Salvador was there to shoulder check him through the far wall, opening up yet another hole in Cell Block Y.

Not bad.

Zeff reassessed. Marda was obviously not down yet, but was anyone else struggling? He sensed a couple Rainlords near the exit, trying to carry reapers to safety. A materialized barricade of ice gave them some extra cover before the guard on their tail could reach them.

After a second, the guards barreled through the barricade, so Zeff made another one, this time with spikes launching out of it.

That worked much better.

Another tremor arrived, causing the battleground to pause again, this time with even more uncertainty, because the entire chamber was starting to crumble now.

Where was that coming from? Zeff searched for the source, but he wasn’t sensing it. The storm from before was still trying to regather after he’d washed it away, so he doubted that was related.

Then, he didn’t sense it, but he saw it.

Through the vacant ceiling, the night sky in the distance came alive with a red-orange glow.

Axiolis’ senses couldn’t detect him, either. Maybe it was Invisibility and the bastard was just damn fast on top of that.

Zeff landed atop one of the reaper cells, both feet almost sliding off before he caught the cage’s rounded edge with one hand. He could sense Diego back up and mostly regenerated, but without knowing where Marda went, it was hard--

A blow struck him from nowhere, sending him flying up through the open ceiling. He toppled over himself as he sailed through open air, and disorientation was trying to annihilate his concentration. If not for Axiolis, it would have succeeded. The reaper’s senses could give him an almost disembodied picture of himself as he tumbled upward.

The wind was so furious and chaotic that it threatened to carry him away from the prison entirely. The invisible attack--presumably from Marda--hadn’t even been that strong, relatively speaking. It was this damn sky that was doing all the work now, trying to toss him around like a rag doll.

He didn’t have the presence of mind or the time to think it through, but instinctually, he felt that there was an underlying will behind this raging wind. Its fury seemed too focused and intense. But again, Axiolis’ senses were telling him nothing of that.

Didn’t matter, anyway.

The only thing that mattered to him here was not getting blown away. He absolutely could not allow himself to be removed from the battlefield where everyone else was still fighting, still in need of his protection.

So he killed the wind.

An oceanic torrent exploded outward in all direction, save that of the prison below. It shot up into the swirling clouds and washed them away like so much dust. For a lingering moment, a tidal wave blanketed the sky, undeterred by the cracks of lightning that it attracted.

And he surged back down toward Cell Block Y, chased by a rainstorm.

That was the ticket to finding Marda, he knew. He pressed his soul into his water and relied on Axiolis’ senses once again. Even if the reaper couldn’t detect an Invisibility user, he could certainly detect the gaps in the soul-infused rain. True, the mayhem of the battle made it more difficult, but with both of their minds focusing on it together, it was far from impossible.

There. Behind Diego. About to pounce.

Zeff put ice under his feet again, this time only to make him slip instead of launching him.

Every muscle in Zeff’s right arm flexed in unison as he focused on it, making a boxing-glove-sized water jet surge forth from around his forearm and fist.

Typically, when it came to fighting much older servants who had far stronger passive soul defenses, Zeff was of the opinion that pinpoint strikes were the way to go. The magnified application of force on a smaller surface area was necessary in order to help overcome their armor-like flesh.

But of course, the problem with such small attacks was that, while they might’ve been able to pierce more easily, they still weren’t likely to do much actual damage, especially to the undead. That was why he’d made this one fist-sized. A solid hit would do more than just puncture.

Zeff doubted Marda would let him get close enough for that, though, especially with how obvious his approach was. Raga Marda might not’ve been looking in his direction as he barreled through and bounded over various prison guards, but Zeff was quite confident that the man could sense him coming. Not to mention, the water jet was howling loud enough to draw plenty of extra attention, too, even over the battle’s clamor.

This was by design. For one thing, he wanted to get Marda off of Diego, and for another, the jet was only half of the attack.

More than anything, attacks on servants needed to debilitate, at least for a moment, so that further pressure could be applied. And to that end, big and obvious water jets were not the best weapon. Too easy to avoid.

That was why the other half of the attack was a simple platform of ice, raised up instantly beneath the Tiger’s feet.

It was one of the oldest tricks in the materializer’s handbook, but there was a reason for that. Compared to most techniques, it was disproportionately effective for how easy it was to perform. Being able to make someone lose their footing whenever you wanted was quite frankly unfair.

Zeff’s platform sent Marda airborne. As far as their intel was aware, Marda was a transfiguration user who frequently relied upon weapons and tools, so this was--

The man vanished in midair before Zeff could reach him. Zeff slashed at the empty space where he’d been, in case it was Invisibility, but the attack felt like it missed, meeting with no tangible resistance.

The man exploded into a cloud of blood, and the water that splashed outward from his position was stained a faint pink, drizzling the battleground.

Zeff was taken aback for a moment, having not expected that result.

That moment was too long, though. A blaze of soul-empowered gunfire caught him straight through the torso, tearing him open all the way up through his neck and threatening to detach his head.

Agh. How stupid. He couldn’t help scolding himself even as he mounted a counterattack, materializing an icy spike in the apparent gunman’s mouth and skewering him through the brain. The nameless man dropped instantly, and Zeff encased his entire corpse in ice.

Amateurish. Letting himself get distracted. And over something so trivial, too. If not for pan-forma aiding his regeneration, that might have been a far costlier mistake on his part. And with a clearer mind now, Zeff highly doubted that Riev was truly ended by that one attack, but it had bought him time to concentrate on someone else.

There were plenty of candidates to choose from, too. It seemed like more guards were funneling into the chamber now. Jorga, Mikas, and Marda were still the biggest threats, but the extra crowding certainly wasn’t going to help.

He was much more mindful of the reapers being rescued, however. They were the priority. Anyone not threatening them could be ignored for a bit longer.

But Raga Marda was. The so-called Demon’s Tiger of Abolish. With the aid of Axiolis’ senses, Zeff could sense him already engaging with Diego Redwater and Dimas Sebolt both.

And it did not appear to be going well for them. In fairness, Dimas was doubtless more focused on shielding the reapers he’d just freed, but Diego had less of an excuse, having already lost both an arm and leg while accomplishing little more than scorching Marda’s face and clothes.

The fight space was too cramped over there to resort to the Drillburst again. It would hit Diego and Dimas. But the Demon’s Tiger was not someone he could afford to pull his punches on. According to their intel, this man was at least seventy years old, putting him on similar ground with General Lawrence--a fight which had not gone well for Zeff back at Rheinhal.

True, he’d made considerable leaps in power since then. But just how considerable? How much had he really grown?

One way or another, it was time to find out.

The second he’d heard that Riev was here in Vantalay, he’d known that this would happen. He’d even gotten word, multiple times over the years, that Riev was itching for a rematch.

And if that was truly the case, then Zeff had to assume that the guy had gotten considerably stronger since then. No one would want to fight the same person a second time after having barely escaped with their life unless something had drastically changed.

Sure, the man could’ve just been a completely insane idiot--which was fairly likely, even--but the fact remained that Zeff still had to assume the worst.

He was not about to underestimate his enemy and be caught off guard as a result.

So he didn’t hold back in the slightest. When he sensed Riev making a beeline for him, Zeff did two things: he sealed Riev in a giant block of ice, and he began cooking up one of his most powerful techniques, the Drillburst.

That was the name he’d finally settled on for it, despite Axiolis’ insistence that it be called the “Water Bomb Drill.”

It was the first time he’d bothered naming a technique in many years. All the ones he’d named previously had long since become trivially simple to perform, and so using their names was a needless extra step.

The Drillburst, however, would likely require a very long time before that was the case. It was a technique that previously needed to brew in his mind for several seconds before it could be used, but with the name, that time was cut in half. And by using his hands to create a concentrated orb of howling steam in front of him, the wait could be shortened further still.

And of course, pan-forma helped, as well.

That was the real reason why he considered this one of his most powerful techniques, now. The speed of it. While he could almost certainly pull off something even stronger with enough time, being able to fire off the Drillburst in less than two seconds meant that he could almost turn it into a barrage, already.

Which was what he did now.

Riev broke out of the ice block with obvious ease, but that was perfectly fine, because the Drillburst finished charging. The ball of steam in Zeff’s hands vanished in an instant, and in the next, the thick, watery boom arrived right on top of Riev.

In the next moment, Linus was gone, as was Longvin--both disappearing in a flash of light.

Truth be told, Zeff had been skeptical of bringing the Linebreaker with them. Regardless of the man’s prowess, Zeff couldn’t help be suspicious of just about any non-Rainlord in their party. Having Leo with them was bad enough already, and now this guy presented another potential point of betrayal.

But even so, it was impossible to ignore how useful the man might prove to be here.

Having such a powerful light-wielder of their own in this battle was a fantastic boon. As obnoxious as light-wielders were to deal with from the enemy, they certainly made for great backup as allies. And if they managed to free Rayen Merlo soon, then their potency would double.

In the moment, however, Zeff was thinking none of that. He was focused purely on the battle, on trying to keep track of everyone positions and movements. Who among his kin needed help? Who among the enemy needed to be dealt with?

Enemy reinforcements were soon to arrive, no doubt, so he had to be on the lookout for those, too. The chamber only had the one entrance, but that was no guarantee, Zeff knew. The enemy could arrive from anywhere.

And indeed, when an enormous tremor arrived, he was not surprised. It shook the entirety of Cell Block Y with enough force to cause a momentary cessation of the battle as everyone tried to collectively understand who or what the source of it was.

Before a clear answer could be discerned, the ceiling cracked open like an egg and got sucked up into the sky, revealing a vast blanket of dark clouds. Zeff could already see a half-dozen twisters out there, surrounding the compound and crackling visibly with lightning.

Was that from the battle with Vanderberk? Or enemy reinforcements? Maybe both?

Impossible to tell for certain, but the reinforcements, at least--those had indeed arrived.

Axiolis recognized three of their soul signatures, making the fourth one easy to guess. Riev, Jorga, and Mikas were all obvious, so the last was almost certainly Raga Marda.

And Riev was coming straight for him.

Zeff had been expecting as much. He had a history with Riev Moros, the Stalker of Agvehl. They’d clashed once before, in Lyste. It had been one of the most grueling one-on-one fights Zeff had ever experienced, and even though he’d technically come out victorious in the end, it hadn’t felt that way, considering how much destruction the Stalker had wrought while still managing to escape.

The opening of the assault was arguably the most important. While the enemy was still scrambling and disorganized, that was the moment where they could recover the most reapers with the last amount of interference.

And Dimas Sebolt took full advantage, Zeff noticed. The man’s power of gravity alteration lent itself quite well to the purpose of carrying others, and with a bit of soul power, Dimas was quickly able to acquire more than twenty reapers by himself.

In fact, that was the signal for everyone else to begin the attack. Dozens of reaper cells burst open simultaneously, and then madness ensued.

Cell Block Y might’ve been a massive chamber, but in the middle of the fight, it became instantly cramped. The feeling that one wrong step might get one’s head blown off gave the room an oppressive sensation that stifled movement, but Zeff pressed through, regardless, cutting guardsmen down left and right with discs of bladed ice.

That alone wasn’t enough to keep most of them down, though, which was why he took to attaching a frozen coating to their remains--or if he could spare the extra effort, clapping boxes around them instead, filled with supercooled, pressure-manipulated water.

That alone was enough to keep most of them down. A moderately aged servant did not typically have the defenses needed to withstand this kind of quick-freeze attack on the brain.

Which was why Zeff took particular notice of the ones who were able to resist.

Vanderberk’s men were not yet here, though they were doubtless soon to arrive, so the two he sensed who were already able to withstand his attack were most likely Longvin and Kortell.

Their intel had been able to discover what they both looked like, but here and now, amid the chaos, there was no discerning which was which. Not until they started using their abilities, at least.

Longvin was a light-wielder. And one capable of using pan-rozum, no less.

Those were never fun to deal with.

But it was a tremendous help to know that ahead of time. All of the Rainlords knew that they could not let that man do as he pleased, and so their collective efforts fell upon him as soon it was clear who he was.

A bright light flashed, almost certainly in an attempt to blind everyone and conduct a concealed counterattack on many of them in the blink of an eye. But even before the light receded, Zeff could already sense that the man had been set upon by at least six different materialization users, one being himself.

Not to mention, the Linebreaker was there, too, with his huge arm through all of that material, having already gotten ahold of Longvin, apparently.

They’d decided to divide their efforts into two broad teams. One team’s job was to rescue and shield the captives, and the other team’s job was to neutralize enemy combatants.

Zeff had been quite tempted to choose the latter team. He certainly had enough pent up frustration to make the task a cathartic one. But in the end, he and Axiolis decided to take more of an intermediary role between the two teams. An overseer role, of sorts. Being a materialization user, his power lent itself well to both endeavors. He could easily shield others at range while simultaneously distracting opponents.

Not to mention, this middle ground was a way of keeping himself in check. If he were to fully let loose and go entirely on the offensive, it would endanger the reapers. While he might have been confident that he could control his ability with great precision, even he had to acknowledge that he was not in the most emotionally stable of mindsets, at the moment. And fighting emotionally was not what this mission called for.

Even with all his years of meditative training, all the time spent honing his mental discipline, reigning in his emotions was a struggle. The trick, Axiolis kept telling him, was to not think about himself. To think only of the others around him, of what they needed.

‘You are a ghost on the battlefield. You do not exist. You do not matter. What matters is everything else. Everyone else. Our kin. Listen and see them. React and think only for them.’

Easier said than done, to say the least.

But Zeff Elroy, the Water Dragon of Sair, did his best.

Pan-forma helped immensely. Being able to rely on Axiolis’ reaper senses to keep track of everyone made the chaos feel much less so. Plus, his awareness of the relative strength levels at work here helped him to prioritize which areas he should pay the most attention to. He didn’t, for example, have to worry about anyone in close proximity to Darktide. That man would take care of everyone around him.

The same could most likely be said for Evangelina and Dimas. Salvador and Diego were perhaps the most worrisome, but Leo and the Linebreaker were obviously the biggest wildcards here. While they were both potentially Melchor’s equals or even stronger, without knowing them personally, Zeff could not bring himself to consider them reliable.

Axiolis, too, seemed like he might know, but the reaper was being obnoxiously cagey about it.

‘I can understand Melchor’s reluctance to come out with it,’ said Ax. ‘Depending on who it is, their identity could become a distraction for us, which is one thing that we most certainly do not need, right now.’

Zeff could only partially agree with that, considering how much of a distraction the mystery already seemed to be to some of the others.

But whatever. Personally, he didn’t care all that much. If Darktide trusted this imposter, then that was enough for him. At the moment, the only thing that mattered to him was getting everyone out of Logden as quickly and safely as possible.

And to that end, the freeing of the reapers was paramount. While certainly, all the frozen heads they’d retrieved were an important starting point, without the accompanying reapers, those fifty warriors couldn’t be revived just yet. No doubt, they would be in for a rude awakening when they started being resurrected in the middle of the fight.

The plan also became clearer as the Rainlords gathered more intel on the guardsmen--as well as the other servants that Vanderberk had brought with him.

They’d confirmed the presence of Raga Marda, Jorga Dahno, Riev Moros, and Mikas Cross among Vanderberk’s personal forces. The guardsmen were considerably less threatening by comparison, but the Rainlords were still quite wary of the ones named Longvin and Kortell.

Thankfully, Jan Cross and the Seeker were not here, having been confirmed to be leading the assault on Ridgemark. Those two would have complicated matters considerably.

But on the whole, despite how threatening many of these opponents were, Zeff actually quite liked their chances here. With the likes of Darktide, Leo, Evangelina Stroud, himself, Dimas Sebolt, Salvador Delaguna, Diego Redwater, and even the Linebreaker of Ridgemark on their side, he felt they were more than a match for the enemy.

Sure, the opponent had plenty of hostages, but the Rainlords could choose when and where to strike. While infiltration was obviously made more difficult with the enemy being aware of their Invisibility, it was still far from useless.

And so, their first assault was timed to be in conjunction with that of the imposter’s attack on Vanderberk. While the biggest threat was busy, the Rainlords were going straight for Cell Block Y, where all of the reapers were being kept.

Apparently, they had an unknown ally in this venture.

Word arrived from the captured Raul Blackburn via his reaper, Arumoro. Someone had infiltrated Vanderberk’s ranks--and not only that, they’d managed to disguise themself as none other than Thaddeus Croll, the Killer of Krohin, who had been a problem for the Rainlords ever since the first team of them arrived here in Vantalay.

Quite the turn of events, to say the least. And naturally, Zeff and the others had not been keen to trust this new stroke of luck. Sure, maybe they were due for it after enduring so much misfortune in recent months, but still. This seemed far too good to be true.

And if they were talking about luck as a resource, then surely they’d already used up too much when Raul Blackburn stumbled upon the location of their captured brethren in the first place.

Interestingly, however, Zeff’s own reaper, Axiolis, was noticeably quicker to trust this new development than the rest of them.

‘You will no doubt think I am talking nonsense,’ the reaper had told him in private, ‘but this has always been the way of our people, even back in the days of the Armans, before the great invasion from the East. Tribulation comes calling, and it threatens to destroy us utterly. But then, whether through our own unbending resolve, divine providence, or some combination thereof, the tide begins to shift. Quite literally, on some occasions, heh.’

And while Zeff certainly still had his doubts, the reaper was at least partly proven right when word then arrived for Melchor Blackburn.

‘Grip the torch with both hands.’

That one sentence from the Croll imposter had shifted things rather dramatically.

They were words that belonged to Bernardino Blackburn, a turn of phrase that the man had been particularly fond of, apparently. Zeff had never known the man personally, but Axiolis did--as did, of course, Melchor and his reaper, Orric.

That connection to Bernardino was no minor thing.

And it sparked considerable intrigue in their minds, too. In the entire world, there could not have been many people left alive--servant or reaper--who had known the man well enough to not only learn that phrase from him but also to understand its significance to the Rainlords as a whole.

The imposter then promised to reveal his identity to him once the battle was done, but by Zeff’s estimation, Melchor already seemed to know who it was--or have a very good guess, at least.

While certainly, on a purely pragmatic level, it would have been beneficial to them to do so, there was far more at play in these circumstances than pragmatism alone could account for.

Between all of their collective histories and that of their reapers, they had too much experience and knowledge of the Weasel’s exploits. No matter how reasonably the man might have wanted to present himself now, Vanderberk was a mass murderer who gave orders to other mass murderers.

And not only that, he was known for doing so gleefully.

To say that such a person could not be trusted to keep his word would have been the understatement of the century. And even if, somehow, that were not a factor, there was also the basic moral component of it to consider.

“The rain fears not the torch.”

Those were their words, even now after all they’d lost. No. Especially now.

More than ever, they knew that they could not bend here.

And so, it had not taken them long in order to decide on their plan of action.

They were going to fight.

The mission to retrieve all of their captive kin from Logden Prison had proceeded fairly well at first. There were roughly four hundred souls to account for, and considering how few of these Invisibility rings they had at their disposal, they made respectable progress the first day, retrieving almost fifty frozen heads from cold storage.

Fifty warriors who could contribute to the fight, in other words.

Everyone was nervous now, and Zeff Elroy was no exception. There were still so many non-servants in the prison. They were always going to be harder to free than a bunch of frozen heads, but now that Vanderberk was here and all the guardsmen were on the lookout for invisible infiltrators, the task was yet more daunting.

The potential for casualties here was very high.

Not to mention, part of Zeff’s motivation for coming here was to recover his son, Francisco, who should have been among the frozen heads. But thus far, there was no sign of the boy or his reaper, Dennex.

At this point, Zeff was beginning to think that they might not even be here. And with how dangerous the situation was, he didn’t know if that would be a disappointment or a comfort.

There was, however, one confusing piece of good news that arrived before the fighting broke out.

Hmm. Maybe that had made him sound dumb, but oh well. Hector wasn’t about to try and argue that no, actually, he had really been trying to double check intel he’d gotten from the ancient, mythical Fusion Forge that he’d recently acquired.

He did still have another conversational line open to him, though. “Is there any way of corroborating the information that you’re providing?” he asked. “I’m not entirely convinced that the internet is less trustworthy than a reaper who was trying to kill me a couple days ago. No offense.”

‘Aha. None taken.’ Grigozo paused. ‘Corroboration... With regard to their ages, the only method I could think of would be to... ask other reapers who might know. As you’re no doubt aware, age is a sensitive subject for many servants.’

Hector was indeed aware of that. Increasingly, it was clear that public perception of a warrior’s strength was almost as important as the strength itself--hell, maybe even more so, in some cases. Hector didn’t think that was quite what Grigozo was getting at here, though. Unlike in his own case, Banda and Bloodeye’s true ages, according to Grigozo here, were actually significantly older than the public knew.

In a situation like that, Hector supposed the only reasoning behind it would be to make enemies underestimate them. Certainly, that factor alone might make all the difference in the world when it came to a life-or-death battle.

But it still seemed a bit weird, maybe because it was so exactly opposite to the problem that he’d been struggling with for what felt like ages, now. Ultimately, he wondered what the superior strategy was. To be feared and respected? Or to be underestimated?

At the moment, he couldn’t even imagine reaching a point where the latter was an option for him.

The conversation continued for a while longer, but eventually, the main doors to the Moonlight Hall swung open, and the arrival of Carlos Sebolt brought things to an abrupt end.

The man was looking directly at Hector, though he spared a glance for the reapers who would overheard what he was about to say. “News, lord. From... abroad.”

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