Turncoat

  "To the Shard, at the heart of the fortress!" shouted Gillian. "Let's end this!"

  His words, filtered through the senses of the bleeding out Incubus, Oliver, hung in Marci's mind. She understood each of the individual words, of course, they were spoken in Altisch, a nguage which she felt as comfortable in as Edrainese. But together… it made no sense.

  Gillian was her friend. One of her best friends. He'd always treated her like a little sister; supported her when things got tough; even tried to convince Of to give her another chance before she'd been kicked out. So, it wasn't really conceivable to Marci that he could be trying to kill her. It was an impossible thought, almost the same as if someone had asked her to visualise a four-sided triangle, or hot ice. She couldn't do it. Gillian was her friend; he'd stayed her friend even when she'd blown her chance with the party.

  But she hadn't imagined the words, nor the pain that Oliver was experienced from his shattered ribs where Gillian had struck him with his magic hammer.

  Stunned seconds passed, Marci totally oblivious to the battle taking pce just a little ahead of her 'real,' or perhaps, 'primary' body.

  Then, something inside her snapped. Incredulous hurt and rage at the betrayal, that rose within her like a storm. Orders flew, huge chunks of her defending demons suddenly found themselves ordered back to the centre. She abandoned the western battlements entirely, ordering the kobolds to shut and seal the doors.

  Marci's mind poured into Oliver's, subsuming his will to hers. Pain flooded through her shifted mind, but she barely registered it as a bristling fireball roared from the man's fingertips, some arcane discharge arcing from his fingers due to the degree of clumsiness and mana-resistance his body had, unused to spellcasting.

  "How could you!?" screamed Oliver with Marci's voice as the fire shot forward-

  And was immediately intercepted by a conjured barrier, courtesy of Paloma del Oro, who had just gotten out of her magic-suppressing manacles. She riposted, joined by Gillian, who swiped his hammer and released a crescent of wickedly sharp ice as several, specific runes glowed on his hammer. Marci shielded, but as she did so Oliver began to panic, and fought back against her control.

  Unlike the link she had with Jonda, and unlike the demon cultist elf's fanatic loyalty, Oliver was just a scared young man, injured and bloodied and terrified out of his mind, and apparently Marci couldn't just totally puppet those whose bonds with her were contingent, like the demons she'd hired.

  The shield colpsed as he retook control, and the spell smmed into him-

  The link died, and Marci gasped as she felt his life slip through her fingers, his soul coiling up and out of his body like smoke and vanishing into the aether.

  "No!" she screamed as she whipshed back to her own body, tears rolling down her cheeks. "No!"

  The attackers, who had managed to regain a little ground against her fnk with Marci's distraction shied back as, buoyed on by rage and grief and guilt at Oliver's death, Marci did something she had never attempted before: to cast a six-level spell without the aid of another spellcaster. Specifically, she began to cast Müller's Null Sun, the single most devastating piece of battle-magic she knew.

  Perhaps it was the rage and grief sharpening her mind, perhaps it was the Shard compensating, perhaps it was both, but Marci felt her focus narrow to a razor's edge as thirty six runic sigils burned in the air around her, rapidly searing their way into being and bzing with golden energy as a spark coalesced, turning into an purple ember, then a fme, then a burning, purple and white sphere that grew and grew and grew, going from grapefruit sized to wagon-wheel sized to bigger than a barn door, writhing and trembling and shuddering in her grasp, excess energy overflowing and scorching and then devouring the stone around her from where she hadn't tuned the spell perfectly.

  "Get off my Dreadfort!" screamed Marci, before hurling it at the mass of shields that were snapping into being as every single other spellcaster, both on her side and the enemies, focused on defending from the massive attack that was not only usually the purview of archwizards, but was also never cast with so much power pumped into it without a team of wizards working together.

  It moved out retively slowly and sluggishly from her hand, and Marci panted, dripping sweat and covered in more than a few burns from the arcane backsh where she' been a bit sloppy. But a bit sloppy or not, she'd cast the spell, and with the inevitability of a triggered avanche it ploughed into the line of enemies and… kept on going.

  Some managed to throw themselves clear. Some managed to weather the storm with spherical shields that cracked and buckled but held. But most of the attackers, some fifty men and women and many gryphons too slow to take to the air, did not make it. They died on the spot—incinerated and then erased from existence by the terribly potent spell that kept on going after them, ripping its way through the thick stone battlements and wafting outwards towards a distant, snowy peak.

  But Marci didn't wait around to see if a version of this spell with this much energy behind it would cross the distance. She was already screaming through the air, darting between the shields erected to stop the attacking fairies from getting into the fortress, and bzing down the corridors towards the Shard.

  She could feel Gillian and the others already on the move, sprinting up the flights of stairs and heading towards the heart of the fortress from the other side, moving too fast for the kobolds she had told to sm the doors shut to get there in time, sped up by what was probably a Haste spell from Paloma.

  Marci raced up stairways, urging the demons converging on the throne room to move faster. It had been stupid of her not to leave at least a skeleton crew to guard her Shard. But how could she have predicted that one of her closest friends would turn on her like this? Betray her like this? She'd expined to Gillian that she hadn't meant to become a Shardkeeper, that she wasn't working for the demons. Why hadn't he believed her?

  The heroes reached the throne room, and split apart, Gillian running ahead for the Shard as the others guarded the door, erecting wards and bracing themselves for the pounding sound of demonic footfalls they could no doubt hear coming.

  The demons reached them a few moments ter, and Marci a handful of seconds after they engaged with blood-curdling war cries. Steel and spells crashed into the small group—the half-elf, the dwarf, the gnome, and the human—but they held, using the retively narrow entranceway to deny the twenty-odd demons the ability to press their advantage in numbers.

  Bernard, the half-elf hero, cut down three demons in quick succession.

  Gillian reached the Shard room's doors, which Marci in her foolish panic hadn't warded.

  Marci traded three spells in rapid succession with Paloma.

  The simple, mundane lock barely supported by spell work shattered beneath Gillian's hammer.

  "Faster!" screamed Marci, her heart roaring in her ears. "Kill them! Kill them!"

  Gillian raced forward, hammer raised.

  Marci free-cast a level five-spell, Pestilent Swarm, ignoring the massive backsh that ripped through one of her arms and unching a biting, ripping, tearing cloud of conjured, frenzied, arcane-devouring insects that ripped through Paloma's barrier and washed over the heroes, eliciting screams as their enchanted gear kept them alive, but not unscathed.

  Marci raced forward-

  Gillian brought down the hammer onto the Shard.

  Marci, along with the entire Dreadfort screamed, as cracks raced across its surface, and pain beyond pain radiated through her soul.

  She hurled herself forward, through the heroes' line, flying straight through a fireball and emerging, burning, on the other side.

  She crossed the throne-room in a heartbeat as Gillian drew back his hammer for another blow.

  Marci raised a bcked, burning arm and free-cast Pestilent Swarm for a second time. This time, she wasn't nearly as successful, and although the spell did successful cast, it ripped one of her arms clean off, and she crashed to the ground.

  The st thing she saw with her own eyes, before she felt her body shut down: Gillian writhing and screaming on the floor as her conjured insects tore into him.

  The st thing she heard with her ears: the sound of demons racing through the throne room.

  The st thought she had: a shred of relief and grim satisfaction within a sea of hurt and disbelief and anger.

  Then, for a second time, Marci died.