The Enlightened One's fingers curled into the top of her breastplate, ripping it away, and she drew in a deep, preparatory breath.
"Bring it on, you unholy bastard!"
Bastian Redigor's lip curled.
"Very well. We shall see how strong you are."
Lightning burst forth from his fingertips, smacking Gabriella directly in the chest. It had no physical effect other than to slow her slightly, discharging in bright arcs and cracks about her shoulders as she pushed against it. Redigor loosed another bolt, equally ineffective, and his eyes widened. He thrust his arms forward once more and this time a plume of fire lanced towards Kali's protector, bursting about her body. Kali ducked, but still Gabriella moved forward.
Now Redigor tried ice, and the crackling, steaming bolts of magical energy slammed into Gabriella with a serpentine hiss but, again, only slowed her in her tracks. It was like struggling forward against a strong wind, and this was exactly what Redigor tried next, summoning a gale to pummel Gabriella that, while it set every loose object in the Chapel flying, she strode through as if it were an inconvenient breeze.
The pair of them were halfway up the Chapel's aisle now, nothing stopping them reaching Redigor.
The Chapel was filled with shrieking hags as phantom horrors materialised out of every corner and swept at Gabriella, threatening to tear her apart. As they came, so too did great, writhing snakes whose wide, fanged maws bit down on her. Nor were they the last of what Redigor had to offer. Spectral daggers hurled themselves at her in wave after wave, fist-sized explosions detonated about her body, and stone barriers assembled themselves out of the floor, only to crumble before Gabriella's determined march. The Pale Lord actually looked visibly shaken now — was perhaps even becoming drained — but rather than feel a sense of impending victory Kali felt increasing concern for Gabriella. It was true that the Enlightened One seemed unstoppable in her progress, but Gabriella seemed at last to be weakening before it.
She moved more slowly now and, above the noise of the assault, Kali thought that she even heard Gabriella wheeze with strain. She wanted to say stop now, that's enough, you've done what you can, but she knew she couldn't. If Gabriella gave up now the two of them would be dead, and any chance of stopping Redigor gone for good. Suddenly all of Kali's attention was focused not on Redigor's continuing barrage but on Gabriella herself.
A great, unremitting river of destruction poured from Redigor's fingertips, slamming relentlessly into Gabriella. No one, however gifted, could withstand such destruction for much longer, and Kali's heart sank as Gabriella at last began to falter. She felt the sheer impotence of her own position, the fact that she couldn't help the woman at all. Knowing that she would be inviting instant obliteration if she stepped from behind Gabriella's protective guard, all she could do was will the Enlightened One onwards despite her mounting pain.
And more than pain.
At first Kali wasn't quite sure what she was seeing, but Gabriella's muscles were now less pronounced than before, and somehow deteriorated. Her skin had lost its golden sheen, becoming less vibrant. With horror Kali realised that this wasn't simply a reaction to the suffering Gabriella was enduring; she wasn't just weakening before Redigor's onslaught, she was aging before it. Kali placed a hand on her shoulder, felt bone rather than muscle beneath her fingers.
Oh gods, what's happening to her?
The answer seemed clear. As immune to magic as Gabriella had announced herself to be, she might have had the ability to spend her entire life shrugging off any one of the Pale Lord's individual attacks — of anyone's attacks — and somehow recovered. But what she had suffered from Redigor collectively in the space of minutes was already a lifetime's worth. She had been drained of everything she had in attempting to save her, in attempting to save everyone, and Gabriella DeZantez's life was ending right before her eyes.
Redigor's barrage continued and Gabriella, having almost reached him, faltered, staggered, and crumpled to the floor, more bone than flesh.
Redigor lowered his arms and looked down. His eyes widened and he bent and plucked the Deathclaws from Gabriella's twitching hands.
"Ah," he said, "I've been looking for these for a long, long time."
Kali's rage was incandescent as she stood before him, but she could do nothing. If she made a single move, the elf would reduce her to dust.
"Now," Redigor said, "wouldn't you agree that was just a waste of time?"
Kali's eyes rose to him, but the Pale Lord was calmly looking at her, awaiting an answer to his question. He wanted an answer, Kali realised, so that he could bask in his supremacy, and, in all honesty, she wasn't sure that she wouldn't have to give the one he desired. But not yet. Not yet. She looked slowly around the Chapel of Screams, at Slowhand, at Freel, down at Gabriella DeZantez, and then up at Makennon, from whose eyes a stranger stared haughtily down. She hoped that they understood she'd tried her best, and that this time her long shot hadn't paid off.
Her eyes returned to the Pale Lord. As they did, she heard something that the Pale Lord hadn't yet picked up on. It was a sound that she had been hoping to hear almost since she'd arrived at the Sardenne, a sound that when she had first heard it had filled her with dread, but which, now, buoyed her heart.
That was the thing about long shots, she guessed. Sometimes they took a while to arrive.
"Actually, no," she said to Redigor, "I wouldn't agree at all. What Gabriella did wasn't a waste of time, it bought us time."
Redigor looked up, now recognising the disturbance in the air above.
"That's right, Baz," Kali said, springing up and hissing in his ear. "Remember those?"
Redigor stared through the shattered roof of the Chapel of Screams, his face twisted with anger. Three massive machines hove into view, and whether Redigor had personally set eyes on the Engines of the Apocalypse before or not, there was no mistaking the immense cones for anything other than what they were. But if any more proof were needed, the sudden blare of their positioning sirens as they began to spin above the necropolis was more than adequate. Redigor snapped his gaze from them down to Kali and then to his rannaat. The twelve-pseudo elves looked at him with pleading, but already their features were reverting to human, his hold over them disappearing.
His hold over other things was disappearing, too. At the far end of the Chapel, Slowhand fell from where he was pinned against the wall, crashing to the floor with a thud. He picked himself up, his expression dark, and, clutching his broken arm, began to weave his way down the aisle towards Kali.
"No," Redigor whispered.
"Yes," Kali corrected. "That's right, Baz. That old black magic is going away. Quite ironic, don't you think, since that's how this whole thing began?"
"Impossible!" Redigor protested. "The Engines are designed to negate only elven threads, and my magic is… is — "
"The dead bits in between?" Kali said. "What remains of dragon magic, perhaps?" Kali shrugged. "Under normal circumstances, yeah. But, hey, you know, if you twiddle the dials, turn everything up to eleven…"
"No!" Redigor cried.
His voice echoed throughout the Chapel of Screams and he raised his arms, trying to propel Kali and Slowhand back along the aisle. Only Kali staggered back, and only because he physically shoved her. Redigor threw his arms wide, somehow finding the reserves for one last outburst of energy, trying to infuse his people with his own essence, to slow their reversion, but the energy fizzled even as it began to spread, dissipating into a cloud of nothing, and Redigor collapsed to his knees, spent. He stared in disbelief and could do little but watch as the whole sequence of soul exchange reversed itself before his eyes, the souls of the Ur'Raney pulled from the bodies of their hosts and back towards the pillar, and the pillar, in turn, brightening with the return of the human souls from Kerberos. Kali doubted that Redigor felt the same but the whole process was quite magical to watch, the whisps of humanity slowly twisting and twining throughout the Chapel, finding their rightful homes first in those who had been doomed to be the High Council and then travelling further afield, to the general tombs, to reinhabit those who waited there.