Chapter 156: Crisis
Fortunately, the enemy hadn't intended to strike in the middle of the busy district either, which let Evan breathe a little easier — though it sharpened his caution further. Their restraint told him something important: they were confident enough not to need the cover of chaos to strike. Whoever was coming for him now, they were strong. He murmured a few quiet words to Xiaoshuang.
She nodded and faded from sight, drifting off his shoulder. The subtle shift in Evan's manner caught both women's attention. "What's happened?" Jessica asked.
"Someone's tailing us. Xiaoshuang says she feels killing intent from them. It may be aimed at me," Evan said.
Both women startled, though they steadied quickly. "Why would it be aimed at you specifically? It could just as easily be us," Jessica said. "After what happened with the Gonuo Society, this might be retaliation. Whoever it is, if it's you they want, we're not letting them off either."
"Fair enough. They didn't move in the busy district — sounds like they're waiting for somewhere more isolated. Let's give them the opening," Evan said, hailing a carriage and instructing the driver to drop them off out past the city's edge.
As the carriage got moving, Evan focused his attention, and something dim and half-formed surfaced in his perception — four powerful presences trailing behind them, though one of the four seemed to belong to a different party than the other three. A sensation he'd never experienced before, hazy and indistinct. What Evan didn't realize was that this was his own spiritual sense stirring for the first time, still entirely beyond his conscious control — he simply received it passively. In his mind's eye, physical shapes blurred, yet those four powerful presences never once wavered or lost him.
He came back to ordinary awareness and sent his Wraith Eye up above his head, letting it fade from sight as he used it to scout the four pursuers.
The Wraith Eye carried neither form nor color, but the moment it drifted near one of them, Abraham the Shadow Punisher's body jolted. "We've been spotted."
He flicked a hand, and a wave of grey-white light swept upward, revealing the shape of a floating eye — which promptly burst into black smoke with a crack.
Inside the carriage, Evan's face went pale. They'd reached a stretch of road running through a stand of trees. "Stop the carriage!" he called out.
The carriage halted. Evan and the two women stepped out. Evan pulled out a gold coin and pressed it into the driver's hand. "Keep the change. Don't look back, whatever happens here. Keep going straight, and at the crossroads, take the other road back into the city. Remember that."
Without waiting to see whether the driver obeyed, he turned to face the seemingly empty stand of trees ahead. "Friends, no need to keep hiding. Come out!"
The driver, badly startled, snapped the reins and sped off down the road in a hurry, a trail of dust vanishing quickly into the distance.
"Impressive that you spotted us at all. No wonder you've escaped Raphael's hand three times over," Augustin the Dark Punisher said, stepping calmly out from cover, a charming smile lighting his sun-bright face — nothing about him suggested a member of the Inquisition at all, save for the emblem on his black uniform: a cross-star with a bound witch beneath it, wreathed in flame, marking his true allegiance clearly enough.
"You're with the Inquisition?" Jessica said.
"Allow me to introduce myself, lovely heretic. I am Augustin, the Dark Punisher. Unfortunately, it falls to me to reclaim your life on the Creator's behalf." Augustin bent into a courteous bow.
"Why?" Jessica said, baffled.
"For spreading heretical doctrine. Werewolves are creatures of inherent evil, and yet you call them mere victims of infection, extending sympathy where none is due, excusing what cannot be excused," Augustin said, elegant as ever.
"Augustin, you talk too much. Heretics only need purifying, not a lecture," Abraham the Shadow Punisher said, stepping out as well, his tone flat. Unlike Augustin, he had no interest in wasting words on Evan's group at all.
The third hadn't shown himself yet, and a fourth remained unseen entirely. Evan's brow furrowed. An enemy hidden in the dark was always more dangerous than one standing in the open.
Once Abraham emerged, he exchanged a look with Augustin, then pointed. Countless bone claws burst up from the ground, racing toward Jessica and Shirley. The instant Evan moved to intervene, Augustin said, "You're mine, Mr. Lich."
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Jessica and Shirley began their chants at speed, too focused on the bone claws erupting beneath their feet to catch what Augustin had said. Jessica's fire giant appeared, while Shirley raised a ring of earthen wall around herself, expanding outward to hold the claws at bay.
Augustin gave his hand a shake, and the small, cubit-long spear he carried flared with sudden light, unfolding into a true, full-length lance — its edge thick with holy light.
Evan pointed and unleashed Yin-Chill Strike, a pillar of white mist surging straight at Augustin. Augustin gave a cold laugh. "A parlor trick."
He touched his lance to the mist, and it collided with a crack like thunder splitting the air. The mist dissolved — and his body shuddered, a note of surprise slipping out. "Now that's interesting." An attack aimed at the soul had done him little real harm, but the twin nature of the strike had genuinely startled him. No wonder Raphael had come away worse for it.
Evan seized the moment of hesitation, drawing his blade in a flash of white light, faintly tinged with grey. In that instant of distraction, sword-force reaching a dozen cubits had already thrust home.
Augustin's spear shattered the strike, milky holy light flaring across it. Real will had risen in Evan's blade by now, but against Augustin, it remained far too weak. He twisted the lance in his grip and thrust once, and Evan felt a powerful will lock onto him at once.
But Evan was no ordinary mage — dual cultivation ran in his blood. He fell back at once, his left hand flicking out a Grand Disintegration already prepared. The lock on him held, but Evan was no longer the Evan of before; troublesome as it was, he still had ways to break free of it.
Light and shadow tangled together, a dome-like effect closing over Augustin in an instant. He shuddered, afterimages trailing behind him as his lance flicked forward and back in rapid succession, dispelling the Disintegration's effect within moments — but the lock on Evan's will broke along with it.
Evan moved to press the advantage when three throwing knives streaked in from nowhere — Fiso the Schemer, striking from hiding at last. Each knife aimed at one of the three, all still tangled in their own fights. A well-chosen moment, no denying it.
The crescent blade appeared in Evan's hand, wind and thunder-fire wrapped together, exploding outward like a coiling thunder-dragon. Evan had already braced for exactly this kind of ambush, and the moment it came, several cubits of whirlwind-lightning-fire tore straight toward the two knives aimed at Jessica and Shirley. As for the one flying at himself, a flick of his blade knocked it out of the air.
The whirlwind-lightning-fire swallowed both incoming knives, shattering them to fragments. But Jessica and Shirley found themselves in genuine danger — Abraham had reached Arcanist level and senior thief rank both, while the two women were only senior mages. Jessica had already summoned her Blaze-Spitting Fire Tree alongside the Water Dragon Beast.
The fire tree and fire giant guarded her front and back, while the Water Dragon Beast tangled with Abraham's summoned skeletons and gargoyles. Shirley held the defense, earthen walls and spikes weighted with strange gravitational force foiling Abraham's repeated attempts to slip past their guard using his thief's stealth. Even so, his ghostlike, unpredictable strikes kept both women in genuine peril throughout.
The throwing knives, though flaring white, clearly carried nothing more than a temporary infusion of sword-force rather than true magical construction, and the whirlwind-lightning-fire shattered them instantly. Evan didn't recall the crescent blade — instead, he pointed, and it spun forward, whirlwind and lightning-fire trailing behind, straight for Abraham's back.
Abraham startled and blinked out of existence, reappearing twenty cubits away — the crescent blade spun and followed regardless.
He hurriedly swung up his bone staff, a wall of bone rising before him, while Evan spared a glance at what Augustin was doing.
Augustin, seeing this, felt his own fury rise. That Evan had dared, in the barest blink of an eye, to turn and strike at Abraham instead — he roared, and holy light wrapped around his body as he rose into the air, trees splintering all around him as his presence climbed steadily.
Descending from above like some vengeful god, the pressure grew unbearable. Evan had no time left to direct the crescent blade — its light guttered out at once, dropping to the ground. He sheathed his sword and drew instead a black, spiral-shaped spear, dark and gleaming, hurling it upward at Augustin with a single motion.
There was a thunderous crack, trees toppling in every direction, a skull materializing amid a spreading haze of black smoke, every living thing nearby drained of vitality in an instant. Augustin was flung backward by the blast — unharmed, even wreathed as he was in the black smoke, entirely unshaken by it. His holy light flared brighter still. "You've made me angry," he said quietly.
He knelt slowly in midair, chanting a hymn under his breath, and a cross-star materialized in the sky above, taking the shape of a great sword. At the sight of it, something in Evan went cold. He began chanting furiously, walls of bone shooting skyward one after another, layer upon layer, packed dense enough to block out the light.
The other fight paused for a moment, both sides slowing without meaning to, watching the confrontation unfold — one side summoning a sword of holy light, the other defending behind a wall of bone. No telling who would come out ahead.
The cross-star sword seemed to pierce heaven and earth itself, its blade stretching hundreds of cubits at its core, crashing down with overwhelming force. The bone wall tore apart like paper, nine layers cut through in an instant. Evan cried out, spewing three or four cubits of green phosphorescent fire from his mouth, ghostly flames flaring in the dark. The blade hadn't struck him directly, but he'd still taken the strike's outer edge, and it left him grievously wounded. He hadn't looked inward, but if he had, he'd have found half the light within his cells extinguished. He didn't cough blood — instead he spat phosphor fire, the very essence of his lich nature laid bare.
A single blow, not even a direct hit, and Evan had already been badly hurt. There was no time to laugh at the irony of it — the greatest crisis of the fight had only just arrived.
Dust filled the air, obscuring everything. Both sides froze without meaning to. And in that same instant, a streak of blue-green sword-light fell from the sky, driving straight down toward the crown of Abraham the Shadow Punisher's head.