Energy streamed forth from Vhostym's hands, saturating the room beyond, and the tower's defenders began to scream. But not before a ball of flame, a bolt of lightning, and a wave of negative energy streaked through the door.
The flames, lightning, and life-draining energy passed through Vhostym's incorporeal form without harm or dissipated into nothingness on his wards. Only the flames from the ball of fire reached Kostikus, and the devil, immune to fire and heat by virtue of his fiendish flesh, stood in the midst of the inferno and laughed.
In the room beyond, the high-pitched, agonized screams of the defenders rose to a crescendo and ceased. A wet gurgle sounded for a moment, then nothing.
Vhostym floated through the doorway and into the room beyond.
From behind, the now euphoric fiend shouted, "Roasted manflesh!" and impaled a partially immolated soldier on his spear. The smoke from burning flesh chased Vhostym through the doors.
Every living creature within the room lay dead. Many were scattered over the stairs, but most lay in a heap on the floor of the main corridor. Vhostym's spell had left the corpses thin, pruned, desiccated. Night clothes and piecemeal armor hung from the dead as if they were skeletons. A layer of cloudy, pinkish water soaked the stairs and the floor. Vhostym's magic had sucked the water from all his victims' bodies, drawn it through their eyes, ears, their very flesh, and left little more than husks.
Vhostym started to float upward but remembered that he needed to kill the prisoners the Cyricists kept in cells below the tower. Leaving behind for the moment his magical sensor and his void orb, he floated down through the now-empty first floor to the dungeon level, blind for a moment until he reached the open space of one of the dungeon's hallways. Numerous cells and several torture chambers filled the level. Moans and whimpering sounded from down the hall.
Vhostym would put them out of their misery.
He took a small black pearl from his component pouch, weakened it with his mind, and crumbled it between his fingers. As he cast the fine powder before him, he recited the words to a necromancy spell whose power snuffed out all life forces but his own within thirty paces in any direction.
One of the prisoners must have heard him pronouncing the spell.
"Help us," the man cried, his voice plaintive and broken.
Vhostym finished the spell. The moment it took effect, the dungeon fell silent. Vhostym glided down the hallway, looking from side to side, and saw naught but corpses, all of them of prisoners. They had died instantly and painlessly, better than their captors. He floated up through the ceiling.
Nothing moved on the second floor. Vhostym was alone with the dried corpses. Kostikus was gone, as were the bodies of the soldiers Vhostym had immobilized. Vhostym had as yet seen only a few mages and priests. He assumed the temple's remaining forces had realized that they were trapped within the tower and were organizing a stand on one of the upper floors. Probably they had assembled around Olma, the highest ranking priestess in residence, perhaps in the sanctum itself. Vhostym would get to them soon enough.
Methodically, he moved through the rooms of each floor one by one. He easily countered the defensive wards cast on the doorways of important chambers. He found a few guardsmen and a wizard seeking to hide, and two guards trying and failing to squeeze out of an arrow slit. He touched them all with his void orb, reducing them to dust. He also used the void orb to disintegrate the various religious icons and statuary that he encountered. Slowly but inexorably, he was effacing Cyric from his own temple.
When that work was done, he floated through the ceiling and found the next floor abandoned. As he had surmised, the survivors had gathered on the fifth floor, in the sanctum of Cyric. Again, he took time to destroy the Cyricist iconography and ensured no one was trying to hide from him. He found no one.
Only a single stairway led up to the fifth floor, into a foyer with double doors that led into the sanctum. Vhostym hovered near the base of the stairs. He could hear chanting leaking down from above. He studied the stairs, activating a permanent dweomer on his eyes that allowed him to detect and analyze magical dweomers.
The surviving priests and mages had been busy. Several glyphs warded the stairs, as did a firetrap. Should anyone ascend, they would cause an explosion of fire, lightning, acid, and cold, and trigger an unholy symbol that would wrack the body with agony. Of course, Vhostym did not have to ascend the stairs. He could simply float through the floors. The tower's defenders had not anticipated that.
The wizard concentrated for a moment, took control of the arcane sensor he had created, and sent it up through the floor.
Though the eye, he saw that the armored skeletons he had seen in the room earlier now stood assembled around the top of the stairs, just before the sanctum's double doors. They were designed to slow him, nothing more. Behind them, just within the sanctum, stood nearly a dozen priests and mages, including Olma Kulenvov in a hurriedly donned breastplate and vambraces, and fully two score guardsmen. The priests and mages held wands and staffs pointed at the stairs, and the warriors held bare axes and swords. One of the mages turned to silence a warrior with a glare and his gaze fell upon Vhostym's sensor. His eyes widened and he gave a shout. Clearly, the wizard had magic that allowed him to see invisible objects.
Olma whirled around, brandished her platinum holy symbol, the jawless skull, and cast a spell that attempted to counter Vhostym's sensor. The priestess's magic met Vhostym's and was overpowered. Her lips peeled back in a snarl and she shared a look with the other priests and the wizards. All of them visibly tensed. They had an inkling of the power of their foe and it visibly frightened them.
Vhostym decided to give them another inkling.
Still standing near the bottom of the stairs, he summoned arcane power, pictured Olma in his head, and softly whispered a single word of power. "Die."
In the room above, Vhostym watched through his sensor as the priestess grabbed her chest and paled. The other priests scrambled about, looking for the source of the attack. Vhostym expected Olma to fall over dead, but the attack passed and she grinned fiercely. She must have protected herself with a deathward.
Prudent, Vhostym thought.
A shout of challenge rang out from the assembled troops.
"For Cyric!" they called, and "Come up, wizardling!"
Vhostym supposed he would need to use blunter tools. He softly intoned the words to a sophisticated glamer and crafted a highly detailed illusion of himself. He structured it around his annihilating orb, masking it. He sent orb and illusion up the stairs and into the foyer. For good measure, he caused the illusionary Vhostym to incant a spell as he ascended.
The entire stairway vibrated with the impact of spells and wand fire as the defenders let fly with wands, staffs, and evocations. Smoke, flames, and green energy poured down the stairwell. A scream suggested that at least one of the defenders tried to touch the illusion, encountered the orb instead, and was reduced to nothingness. Vhostym floated away from the stairs, estimated the position of the middle of the Sanctum, and floated up into the room.
The illusionary Vhostym advanced up the stairs and through the foyer, seemingly unharmed by the storm of arcane and divine power. The illusion continued to incant a spell that would never be cast. A soldier lunged at him, blade extended. When the blade hit the orb, man and weapon turned to dust. Two skeletons, mindless automatons, did the same and also turned to dust.
The defenders fell back before the illusionary juggernaut.
Behind the defenders, the real Vhostym began to cast one of the most destructive spells he knew.
"A ruse," Olma shouted, finally recognizing the illusion for what it was. She ordered the skeletons to cease destroying themselves on the illusion and turned around. Her vision must have been magically augmented, for she saw the real Vhostym.