"Says the godless heathen heretic," I shot right back at him coldly, cutting through his rant like a knife. The Immortals were not gods, after all. That they weren't made him godless, and that he claimed they were made him a heretic! "You think I cannot see the darkness on your soul, Hellbound blasphemers?" I directed at him, at all of them. "You have the blood of innocents on your hands, you demented fool!" I sneered at them without expression, and their faces paled. "You don't go to Heaven with those stains on your collective souls." My crimson eyes met his squarely. "I can see them, you butcher. The innocent souls hanging around you, calling not for vengeance, but for JUSTICE."

They came swirling in around me from around the bastards, black skulls forming, roses blooming from their eyes, seven of them… and what these bastards saw in the shadows around those skulls had them shouting in alarm and horror.

"You, you defile the dead-!" the Cleric in charge blurted out, his face twisting as he stared at the skulls, and saw faces, faces that should have stayed dead and gone.

"You burned them alive, you cut them down in cold blood, you murdered them on whims of zealotry, and you are surprised the dead can come back for you?!" I sneered at him. Behind me, Fireballs were gathering in an ominous assortment of hues, and fanatics or no, these heavily-armored and zealous templars knew things were about to get very, very bad. "Blood and souls, blasphemer of the Immortals!" I threw right back at him. "Your sentence awaits you!"

"Kill the lying-"

They were just setting spurs to mounts when all the spells went off together, while arrows and bolts twanged and whistled past me.

Screaming men and horses were swallowed in roars of flame. Streaking Skulls flashed in, trailing Holy flames and Banefire to humans in equal measure, shrieking at the wide-eyed men who screamed to see them coming, and even as the fires blazed and blasted all around them and filled the air with roaring elemental fury.

They'd spread out so they wouldn't be caught in the area of multiple spells, but my Skulls weren't so easily restricted, spreading out from their initial impacts and leaping from one to the next to spread out the base damage, even if the Kickers only applied once.

Corpses blasted to ash inside their armor were torn from their saddles and scattered. Neighing horses expecting to be incinerated pranced and danced wildly, and yet were completely unharmed by the flames which had finished the job of blasting the fanatics to ash.

"Calm down, horses. You are unhurt," I informed them blandly. The startled but well-trained warhorses did indeed calm down, finding that not only were they not singed in the slightest, the ground wasn't scorched, the grass wasn't burnt, and the smell of cooked human flesh was residual and quickly dissipating as vivus did its thing to the bodies.

The metal armor had survived the men, although the leather and cloth on them had not. However, the horses were completely unharmed.

A large glowing wheel of Rune signatures on the ground flickered with blue-white arcane energy for a moment, then slowly dissipated into nothingness.

"Horses, line it up and accompany us," I snapped my fingers calmly, while a couple of Disks peeled off a stack of them and the armor and weapons littering the ground began to flit over and stack themselves atop the containers.

"Lady Edge, this will likely cause some trouble," Izzimaior began hesitantly, at the same time not saying it was the wrong thing to do.

"You mean it might lure out more of these fanatics to die?" I asked him, unmoved. I swirled up some Caravan Magic, which would double the distance these horses could cover in a day without being fatigued. Ebony Skulls zipped back and forth over the beasts, dropping colorful tulip petals on them to liven their steps.

He nodded to that, adding, "Aye, it will be stirring up some trouble with the Church of Siricil, then, I think?"

"I'm sure the local priest of the Hellenar Church will absolve me of any spiritual malfeasance for my part in removing such tainted souls from the horror and despair of having to cling to life," I responded with exactly the same lightness as discussing removing lint from my clothing. "In return, I have found a number of horses and suits of armor I am sure he can find proper homes for among the faithful of his church."

Snorts of amusement rose from behind me as we started on our way. Izzimaior could only smile and go along with me.

-------

The road… petered out.

Really, it was just gone. It had been reduced to a rutted path of ancient stones once we'd actually crossed the Ulesos River on an ancient bridge that had once been covered with some rather revolting religious iconography, at least before it was chipped and shattered.

Also, a whole nest of gargoyles was imitating statues on the bridge, and they were really surprised when Duum came out of nowhere and began ripping them apart, sending shattered stony bodies falling from the sky and the pilings as he tore them apart, then happily hounded the fleeing survivors for miles, killing all that he could.

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I guess that was why the suspicious locals had called it the Gargoyle Bridge.

The ancient bridge proved to be the only thing surviving the years well. The road leading to it from the west had been falling in quality, as if the combination of nifloid tribes infesting the lowland hills, slavers running about looking for victims, treacherous locals willing to sell outsiders to said slavers, and general apathy from the kingdom hadn't been enough to maintain the roads, which had become overgrown, had to be hacked through at places, and no, no, there weren't obvious ambush sites, muddy stretches where it would be easy for wagons to break down and throw a wheel, becoming easy prey to watching brigands nearby, nopers.

Like the caravan carrying heavy sacks of salt bogged down ahead of us, two wagons with completely thrown wheels, six nearly rim-deep in mud, and what looked to be about forty whooping orcs harrying them and getting up their courage to charge.

"This looks summat familiar. Less mountains and more hills and bogs, tho?" the Mick said cheerfully. Duum had already spotted the fight from above, so this was no surprise to us.

"And likely humans working with the orcs, again," I agreed coldly, as the wagoners and the guards took shelter behind the wagons against the intermittent arrow fire, occasionally popping up to offer a shot back at the orcs. The nifloids outnumbered the humans two to one, and were clearly steeling themselves to charge the line and see if they could overwhelm the humans there.

The Illusionary Wall in front of me disguised us from those looking up the road for strangers, but we'd arrived at the Tribanks Keep and passed on through before any messenger or signal could be sent to warn anyone of our coming.

That, and the abrupt deaths of nine members of the garrison who objected to our not paying the percentage-based wealth tax and wanted to clap us in irons and send us to the mines, nopers, that didn't really silence anyone following us.

They should have stuck with my offer of five gold coins for each of us, but it was a cheap way for them to sell their lives… and since five of them were working with the local slavers, judging by the treachery in their Auras, two were agents of the Black Wolf Marquis, and two were simply uncaring bastards happy to fill their pockets and look the other way, well, the garrison needed some airing out.

If the prisoners decided to riot while the garrison was under-staffed, that would be unfortunate for them.

-Duum, any humans looking on?- I /asked him calmly.

---

Duum banked leisurely, getting down closer and surveying the area. Nobody was really looking up, a bad habit, but he was Invisible, anyway…

-It looks the man they sent riding on is a traitor, as a man in a guard's uniform is waiting with a dozen others out of sight past the nearest copse of trees there.-

-Chains?- the Great and Dread Mistress /asked perfunctorily.

-A wagon filled with them,- he /replied, knowing quite well what that implied.

-Cleave through them all. Make sure you get the leader and the traitor guard on the first pass.-

Very dexterous feet reached up, clasped the Lance of Duum, and set it into position as he wheeled over in the sky and began to pick up speed nicely.

They were hidden in the trees, but there was always room for a bat used to maneuvering between columns of stone in an unforgiving dark world. He could have been blindfolded and made this attack as he picked up speed.

Down, faster, faster, branches shattering as he opened his jaws and shrieked.

Reflexes froze them in place as the scream hit them, paralyzing them for the wrong second they needed to be moving.

The Lance took the big fellow in the most expensive armor right in the chest, punching on through his breastplate and continuing on to impale the traitorous guard next to him. Duum let it go as he snapped his wings out and wide, dumping his velocity with magical speed… and crimson blades of magical force lit up all around his wings and claws.

The snap of his wings going out echoed with the crunch of bone and silenced shouts. Severed heads and crushed skulls crunched and rang as his wings smashed through the slavers, equal parts blade and bludgeon, and he delicately reached out with the talons that had just let go of the Lance now some sixty feet away and impaling two luckless human refuse to a rather sizable tree over there. He seized what were likely the lieutenants of the slaver about the head, clenched, and tore as he spun with impossible agility in midair, the edges of his wings dipping and spinning even as the horses screamed and scattered.

What looked to be a spellcaster of some kind looked up at him, his Monocle read the magic on the man, and for some reason the man didn't think his Hat was all that reassuring.

Especially when Duum's jaws closed on his head and tore it off his shoulders before he could get a spell off.

Pissing the Mistress off doesn't go well for these sorts, Duum thought. The hyn were much smarter about such things...

-All dead, Mistress!- he /told her cheerfully.

-Fly on up and proclaim your victory, would you?- she /asked him with a mental snicker.

One flap of his wings exploded him up through the trees, where he triumphantly declared himself Da Ruler and Chaaaaampeeen to all and sundry for a good few miles around. If there were any dragons around, they'd probably come running. If there was anything else, it would probably go hide.

------

The orcs stopped attacking as the enormous Bat they could see from literally a mile away rose above the treetops… and then it started coming in their direction, somehow managing to trail a stream of bloody light from its wings as it did so, making big, expressive flaps that seemed to have bloody light falling down from them…

And that's about when the wizards came drifting in on their levitating Disks, looking supremely unconcerned with all of what was happening.

Their guards were not so unconcerned, and the thrum of bows and crossbows followed orcs pitching over… and the lead elfin gesturing with a flick of her wrist, and a trio of screaming black skulls raced out to kill the orc chieftain and the two sub-chiefs by expediently drilling burning holes with four different colors of magical flames through their armored chests.

All three of them gaped at the results, then fell over, starting to crumble apart from those wounds as phantom roses unwound from them.

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