The legs of the first zombie crumbled to the floor, the top of the torso staying put, clung to the mosquito’s wings. Without the weight of over half the body gone, the wings began to rapidly flutter, increasing in speed until the zombie was thrown across the chamber.

  Free of one assailant, the devil spun to focus on the one Bill had lodged his axe in and pushed it away with three legs as it used one set of wings to maintain balance. The zombie collapsed backward, taking Bill’s axe with it.

  Bill stepped back, bringing his fists up and punching at the devil. His metal armored fist hit the chitinous armor of the creature with little effect. The devil in turn tried to pierce Bill’s heart with its proboscis but failed to penetrate the plate.

  The droning hum in the room intensified as the wings sped up, and it pushed Bill away with a kick before flying straight toward Ellen and Grom.

  Ellen brought her hand up before her, conjuring a shield and Grom brought his mace up ready to swing. The demon plowed through it, paying it no head. The spell shattered on contact, pushing Ellen off her broom onto her back in the much. Grom never had a chance to swing, the passing of the devil pushing him back into the wall of the sewer.

  He moved to chase, only realizing that Ellen was struggling in the muck. He winced at the mess, but didn’t allow that to slow him. Dropping to his knees, he lifted Ellen out of the filth, pulling her into a sitting position. A sickening slurping gulp filled the sewer in the silence left behind from the devil as her head left the thick sewage, and once fully up, Grom threw up all over her, the disturbed filth too much for him to bear any longer.

  “We have to follow it!” Ellen said, ignoring all the sewage and vomit covering her, inured to the stink from a childhood of tutelage under the instruction of an ooze.

  She reached for her broom, still hovering where she’d fallen from it, and it pulled her completely out of the muck. Once free, she mounted it and took off down the hall.

  “Stop leaving un behind!” Grom shouted.

  Behind him Bill screamed.

  Grom’s zombies had shambled over to their master, one pulling itself along with its hands and the other fighting to retain its balance with Bill’s axe lodged in its chest. Bill had just pried his axe free of the standing zombie when he notices the creatures crawling out from the wound.

  Grom turned toward the source of the commotion was in time to see fist sized mosquito devils pouring out of the openings in his zombies. The creatures also crawled out of the two un-undead cultists, but with only the one would to the heart, the process was slower.

  Bill swung his axe once, cutting through on of the newly born demons, still trying to get their bearings, but after that dropped his great axe, pulling two hand axes off his belt.

  “Never mind!” Grom shouted to Ellen. “Go stop it!”

  Bill swung frantically at the bug demons, but for every one he killed two more came out of the bodies and they were getting past his defense. They’d yet to find a gap in his armor, but it was only a matter of time with their numbers.

  “Fall back,” Grom said to Bill, and then uttered a prayer.

  Bill obliged, and when Grom had finished his spell, the sewer filled with a golden light, and a legion miniature angels filled the space. They attacked the devils with glee on their tiny face and they began falling to the ground in pieces. They tried attacking at the spectral angels but passed through with no effect.

  The last time Grom had used this spell, he’d caught glimpses of some other form the angels had, and this time he could see it clearly. The angels were a false image, overlaid over the true form of the spirits he’d summoned.

  Pixies, grinning with mischievous smiles as they flittered about bisecting insectoids.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He shot a glance over at Bill, but the truth detecting warrior—no, paladin—was blind to Grom’s deceptions.

  What is going on with this guy? Grom questioned himself and his mischievous godly patron he was now certain was who Ellen claimed.

  The pair slew all the devils that went for them, but some escaped their onslaught going out the other entrances to the large chamber. Grom and Bill split up to pursue the creatures out the other two openings, but they knew it was too late for them to catch them all.

  Outside, Ellen flew from the tunnel entrance, leaning low on her broom to reduce her profile. Sewage flew off her as she took off into the air as soon as she was free, blinking back from the sudden bright light. She was already a dozen feet in the air when she realized her conjured steed had dispersed, likely torn to pieces by the demon. Despite its fearsome appearance, the spell she’d used to conjure it had been an illusory one at it’s core, and the creature couldn’t withstand even the most superficial wound without dispersing.

  Her conjuration magic had changed drastically since she discovered this new spellbook.

  Previously it had been rooted in the fey realm in which she’d been raised. Her connection to that place giving her keen insights into the magic of conjuration, allowing her to pull beings through with far greater ease than most. But her childhood had not been a happy one. She’d excelled at conjuration despite hating the source of her excellence, drawing all manners of creatures from the fey plane and bending them to the shapes of the natives of her own.

  But now, with this new book and her contract with the outsiders, she could apply her expertise gained from a lifetime of conjuration to pull beings from another place entirely. Not another plane, but a place between them.

  Traditionally, summoning spells took a great deal of time to cast, making them ill-suited for mid-combat deployment, but Ellen had found within this book the means to bypass many of the restrictions imposed on her previous means of conjuration. Aided by her contract, the outsiders were eager to enter her plane and helped in their own summoning, weakening the barrier between her plane and the nothing beyond, allowing for her to more rapidly bring them forth.

  The faster she summoned them, the less influence she had over their form however, resulting in the grotesque appearance of the steed that had since vanished.

  Newt, who now flew beside her broom in a mostly raven form, was a slight exception. He chose his own form, picking whichever he thought best to accomplish the tasks Ellen commanded of him, and when Ellen conjured multiple familiars to aid him, he commanded them as his own subordinates.

  These thoughts raced through her mind as she flew through the air in pursuit of the devil. What she’d learned in a youth cleaning up the aftermath of fey revels was that when faced with an unpleasant task, put you mind elsewhere and let your body perform its work. The filth that covered her was quite unpleasant, and she sought refuge in her thoughts as she followed the devil. It flew towards the castle of the Count, and Ellen and Newt were slowly gaining on it.

  While she wanted to catch the creature for her own purposes—most of which were rooted in her desire to protect the people of the city from it—Newt had within him his own deep-seated desire to see it destroyed. The outsiders of the eternal nothingness were in constant conflict with the devils which ever sought to expand their hells, turning the nothing into something.

  Ellen could sense this desire through her familiar connection, and for the first time got a glimpse of the merging of her grandfather with the being she’d bonded it to. She’d not really been sure what to expect when she’d made the deal. She’d thoroughly examined the terms of it, modifying it to close some loop holes, and offering up her grandfather as the bonded sapient in place of herself—which the author of the spellbook had so unwisely done.

  While she hadn’t known what to expect, she’d honestly expected to have experienced far more downsides than she’d seen thus far. Making deals with extra planar beings was famously a terrible idea, and Ellen wasn’t so full of herself to think she was an exception to the rule, but as far as she could tell, this had been pure upside for her.

  She wasn’t blind to the effect Newt and her summons were having on others, but so far, those who have suffered serious side effects had deserved it.

  Ellen neared enough that she could begin casting spells at the devil, but all her went wide, her target easily evading her poor aim as she was atop a broom. She failed to stop it as it flew over the walls of the castle. The guards on duties fired their crossbows at it, some even hitting, but none pierced the creature’s armor.

  By the time Ellen reached the outer walls of the castle, the devil had gotten out of her sight, diving down into the hole in the ceiling of the banquet hall that had yet to be prepared from the previous such attack.

  Surprisingly this won’t be the worst state I’ve been in at a banquet, Ellen thought as she headed for the opening.

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