It was the wood wight that responded to the flames first, the unnatural patchwork of splintered wood and scattered human remains staggering down the street at a pace only slightly faster than the scarecrows had managed.

  Tenebres’s mouth tightened to a grim line when he saw just who the wight used to be. Siroh hadn’t been his favorite person, but the brawny young warden had done a job worth doing–and he had apparently gone down fighting a threat worthy of any battle-gifted.

  Tenebres knew that the warden was long dead, and that only the most powerful necromancers and outsiders were capable of overcoming the magic of a soul to enslave it, but he still promised himself that he’d put the warden to rest, there and then.

  Moving past his initial horror, Tenebres inspected the wood wight more closely. Its arms ended in thick knobs of wood and bone, parodies of the wooden clubs Siroh had wielded in life, and thin branches sprouted from the corpse’s torn back, stirring with an animation of their own. While not quite a match for the crustacean horror Sloan had commanded, it was an imposing presence nonetheless.

  That didn’t stop Oli from barreling into it. Her plain steel shield caught one punishing slam with a metallic thud, and her longsword parried the other arm away before she began swinging powerful, crude cuts down at the wooden undead, throwing up splatters of half-dried blood and chips of wood with every strike.

  Tenebres felt his red imp as it turned away from the ignited ruins and noticed the combat, and he clamped down on the minor fiend before it could interfere with the fight. Its urge to destroy, to burn, seared through his mind, but all of the practice fights he had staged for Allana to get used to her new gift had made him significantly better at commanding his weakest fiends, and he was able to turn back to the fight without releasing the imp.

  The wood wight had, unfortunately, recovered from Oli’s startling opening, and even if the eclipsed swordswoman was able to handle the ceaseless pounding of the undead’s clubbed fists, she was unable to counter the branches that had begun lashing out over the wight’s shoulder. Her tunic, with its odd, dull gray sheen, somehow managed to hold up under the thin, whipping branches, but her face and arms were still largely exposed, and the shallow cuts were rapidly taking their toll.

  Tenebres ground his teeth together as the red imp threw itself against the bars of Tenebres’s will again. He physically staggered in place, and the imp managed a brief couple steps before he got it back under his control, but it was a losing battle.

  Fine. If the imp wanted to join in, he’d let it.

  “Oli! Back out!”

  The skilled swordswoman barely hesitated. Oli took a single long step backwards, and when the wight tried to take advantage of the space to send another crushing swing of its knobbly arms at her, the warrior’s runeblade was suddenly there, potency glittering as she met its attack with her own special attack, and the limb went flying away.

  That was opening enough for Tenebres. Equations danced through his head, converting the stored magic of his gift into kinetic energy, shaping that force into small spheres that leaked a dull blue light, and projecting one, then two, then three force missiles at the wight.

  In life, Siroh likely would have waded through the trio of projectiles with barely a missed step, but the wood wight wasn’t Siroh. Corpses, especially those days dead, were lighter than living bodies, and the old, dry wood didn’t make the undead any heavier. Still shocked by the loss of its arm, the wight was thrown back by the rain of force missiles, and Oli was able to make more room, stepping further back from the reeling undead.

  Then the red imp leapt forward, cackling wildly, and released a gout of flame larger than its entire body onto the undead monstrosity. Dead wood went up like kindling. The parts that were corpse instead of wood fared a little better–at least, until Oli lifted her sword and released a brutal gust of swirling wind. Fed by the sudden burst of air, the flames flared ever brighter, and the imp eagerly added to the conflagration with another breath of flame.

  A small smile spread across Tenebres’s face. That had gone even better than he had expected. The wight was still standing, but its smaller branches had already burnt to ash, and he had no doubt it would crumble soon.

  Oli seemed to feel similarly. The swordswoman had sheathed her sword to pull out a plain looking silver flask, which she took a small swig from. She grimaced at the taste, but seemed otherwise relaxed, catching her breath before the second wight arrived.

  Then the wood wight lashed out with a still flaming arm and caved the red imp’s head in, before staggering forward, somehow still animate even as the flames ravaged it.

  “Not good,” Tenebres muttered. Oli, realizing that the fight wasn’t over, fumbled to draw her sword again, forced backwards as the undead approached her. Whatever defensive abilities she had, they apparently didn’t protect her from the heat of the burning undead. Oli instead lashed out with her blade, sending some sort of barely-visible wave through the air to defend herself, but the cuts seemed to lack enough power–or potency–to do any significant damage to the shambling mess of tinder.

  Worse, a wet slapping sound announced the arrival of the water-logged second wight. The corpse of the tall, lean, man was particularly disgusting, its bloated flesh looking ready to melt off of its bones, water still dripping from its gray skin with every step. Still, it clutched a warped spear in its doughy hands, and Tenebres now knew better than to underestimate the undead.

  “Very not good!” Tenebres groaned to himself before running to Oli’s side, sending a couple force missiles ahead of him to force the wood wight back another step. If the two met, Tenebres had no doubt the water-aspected well wight could put out the still-crackling flames. Tenebres didn’t have the stamina to invoke his red imp again, and without those flames, they’d never be able to defeat both of the undead.

  “Deal with the other one,” Tenebres told Oli. The girl turned, apparently taking notice of the approaching well wight for the first time. A brief sickly expression crossed her face.

  “Why do they all have to be so gross?”

  “If the other girls don’t kill Xythen, you can insult his aesthetics then.”

  Oli sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Are you sure you can handle this one?”

  “Sure,” Tenebres replied, with more confidence than he actually felt. “I just have to keep pushing it back. It’ll be fine.”

  Oli frowned, but nodded. “I’ll try to help as soon as I can.”

  Tenebres was too busy to respond, already sending another force missile hurtling towards down the road at the bonfire that had once been a warden, but he saw Oli edge away, and heard the sounds of struggle behind start shortly thereafter.

  Stolen story; please report.

  He had to trust that Oli would be able to fight a wight single handedly, because there was no way Tenebres would have any attention to spare to help her. He still hadn’t quite figured out how to handle his own foe, besides hoping that his mystic energy would outlast the undead’s vitality.

  The advantage of a Mage gift, like Tenebres’s gift of the evoker, was versatility. Where most Novice level gifts might have two or even three abilities, the gift of the evoker granted just one.

  [Novice Evocations] - Spell - Gain access to Novice level evocations, utilizing your mystical well as a resource. Spells require study in order to learn.

  However, that single ability gave Tenebres access to six different spells, and in his time working with Geoffrey and Allana in Emeston, he had mastered the equations behind all of them. Unfortunately, they were all of little good at that moment.

  His light spell was obviously useless, more of a utility cantrip than an offensive tool, and the burning pillar of undead was shedding more than enough light to see by. Kinetic shield and force burst were equally untenable. Primarily defensive tools, they’d only be of use if the undead got up close, and if that was the case, Tenebres was likely to already be severely burned.

  The remaining three spells were his main offensive tools. Force missile was the most basic, a simple bolt of kinetic energy that hit about as hard as a thrown stone. The other two were just variations that focused that same burst of force in different ways, with one manifesting the projectile from a location other than his own hands, and the other using it to throw objects with a similar amount of force.

  There were no handy objects worth throwing around, and while Tenebres kept a small knife ready for just that purpose, it would be of little use against the wood wight’s innate potency. Desperate to buy more time, Tenebres sent a trio of force bolts at the undead from its left side, attempting to throw it into a nearby ruin to slow it down.

  Unfortunately, even if the fire had so far failed to destroy the wight, it had robbed it of no small amount of solidity. Instead of throwing the undead back again, the force missiles simply produced puffs of charcoal and embers on impact, leaving behind small craters in the blackened wood without actually pushing the seared wight at all.

  “Extremely not good,” Tenebres told himself, mind working rapidly as the wight staggered towards him. While his gifts were versatile, he was hitting a wall with them now. Even looking to his fiends, there was no easy answer to his problem. His strength and stamina were too low to risk a second invocation without crippling himself. Speed and awareness wouldn’t give him anything with the ability to slow down the wight. Coordination and resilience were his normal go-to’s for delaying enemies, but his slime and fright would both be roasted by the fire surrounding the wight.

  He always had the option of invoking a stronger fiend, but that could end up just making things worse. Best case scenario, whatever he called would kill the wights, but then he and Oli would need to kill it instead.

  Desperate, Tenebres shot a look over his shoulder at Oli–just in time to see the well wight lunge forward, rubbery flesh oozing towards the warrior, before the undead suddenly went flying backwards, thrown by a pulse of force from Oli’s runeblade.

  Her runeblade. Which worked on the same principles as Tenebres’s spells.

  Which meant…

  Tenebres grit his teeth. This is a stupid plan. But the wood wight wasn’t going anywhere, and even if it was burnt down to a pockmarked charcoal skeleton, it was still probably strong enough to kill him before it burnt out. So… it was probably the best he was going to get.

  Tenebres held out a hand in the general direction of the shambling mass of scorched wight, and focused on the eternal gnawing of the brand over his heart.

  [Void Invocation] activated

  Coordination attribute sacrificed

  Minor fiend tentacular fright successfully invoked

  The wiggling, writhing ball of tentacles promptly appeared in Tenebres hand–and the weight of it nearly sent him toppling over, forcing him to grab it with a second hand before either he or it could fall. Slick black tentacles, confused by their location, quested around Tenebres’s arms, but didn’t try to wrap around him. Like all fiends, the fright seemed to instinctively perceive Tenebres as an ally, and even if he didn’t give it specific instructions, the knot of demonic appendages didn’t try to grapple him.

  “Sorry little guy,” Tenebres muttered to the fiend, surprised by his own reluctance–unlike the imps, the fright wasn’t actively malicious. Its movements were more instinctual, as if it was simply driven to grab and constrict. Still, it was his best option.

  Equations floated through Tenebres mind, computing the conversion of mystical to kinetic energy once again, but condensing it even more this time. Rather than a flying bolt of force, the spell manifested as an instant pop of directed force in his palm–right underneath the fright.

  The fiend went flying through the air, propelled as if launched by a catapult, and slammed into the shambling shape of the almost burnt-out wood wight. Tentacles began to crack and sear on contact with the undead, but it still did its job. The weight of the thrown fiend forced the wight backwards, as the force was dispersed enough to not simply break through the increasingly fragile undead, as Tenebres’s force bolts had done.

  Of course, by itself, that still wasn’t enough. The undead grabbed and tore at the fright, ripping off seared tentacles, and depriving it of the reach and mass it needed to truly entangle the wood wight. But even as the charred undead struggled, Tenebres sent more force bolts in, one after another, carefully targeted at the newly exposed joints of the wight. Even with Tenebres carefully avoiding the strength of his Blood Magic, the wight was damaged enough that it couldn’t ignore the projectiles, forced to choose between Tenebres and the fright.

  A knee went first, sending the animate corpse lurching to one side. Before it could recover, Tenebres hurled his dagger with another directed force spell. The point hit with enough speed to ruin the undead’s hip joint, and its other leg fell free, quickly burning down to cinders. Still it struggled, but with only one arm left and no legs, it could barely crawl towards Tenebres. Reluctantly, Tenebres reached for the additional energy offered by his augment.

  [Blood Magic] - Void, Evoker - Passive - You may take damage in order to enhance the power of your evocation spells.

  Silvery pain carved its way up his arm in a familiar pattern–and then a blood red force missile shot from his hand and hit the wight directly in its exposed skull, shattering the burnt bone to powder.

  Tenebres blew out a breath as the wight’s movements fully ceased–then he watched as, with the animating spell broken, the entire monster simply faded, crumbling to ash in the vague shape of a person. A poor rest for a warden, even a bit of a skeevy one, but a better end than being turned into the very kind of monster he had dedicated himself to defeating.

  Then a crash reminded Tenebres that the fight still wasn’t over.

  He turned to see Oli thrown backward by a gushing spray of foul-smelling brackish water. The warrior’s shield just wasn’t enough to fend off the pressurized burst, and she was sent sprawling as the gushing blast tapered off.

  “How’s it going?” Tenebres asked, reaching out a hand to help the eclipsed swordswoman up.

  Her face looked a little more green than usual, but she took the help and climbed to her feet gamely enough. “Bad,” she replied, taking a moment to take another swig from the flask at her side before she picked up her sword.

  The well wight looked worse for wear, but after the impossible vitality of the wood wight, it clearly wasn’t anywhere near defeated. “Its skin is weird,” Oli explained. “Most of my attacks just bounce off, and I only have one more Reckless Strike in me.”

  Tenebres nodded, looking at the open, almost throbbing, gashes left in the wight’s puckered gray skin.

  “Any ideas?”

  “Nope,” Olivia replied grimly. “And I think that water it sprayed poisoned me.”

  Tenebres shot the warrior a wide-eyed look. “Seriously?”

  “I’m feeling weaker than I should. I can push through, but we need to end this, quick.”

  Tenebres nodded, worried, and turned back to the wight. At the very least, it was no faster than the last one had been,leaving it slowly shambling towards them, but given its water-logged appearance, Tenebres doubted it would be as lightweight as its wooden counterpart.

  “Okay,” the boy said with a sigh. “Let me charge your sword up quick. Then… Well, we’ll just have to figure it out.”