“We need to drive him outside the wall!” Stainsberry yelled.
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Giant-Hilda roared back in exasperation. She was standing on top of the inner wall opposite the collapsed wall and holding her hammer as if it were a croquet mallet. She was trying to knock the stone golem hard enough on the chest to trip it over the rubble behind it, moving it closer to the outside. “I could really use a thaumaturge to turn this thing to mud!” she boomed in her giant form.
“Can they do that? Melt stone?” Stevos asked.
“I have no idea; I would hope a sufficiently powerful one could do so,” Hilda replied.
Talarius glanced around once more to ensure that the adjoining courtyards — thank Tiernon for the segmented nature of the Citadel and its courtyards — were finally emptied. Carpets had been ferrying people wounded by the collapsing of parts of the inner walls as the stone golem careened off them. There had been a lot of casualties; he had no idea how many deaths.
Talarius looked to Stainsberry, who had suddenly moved to one of the walls and was rummaging through his Bag of Safekeeping. Good thing the interdiction was lifted, Talarius thought. Unfortunately, he could not think of anything in his own bag that would be more useful than his bow. His Rod of Smiting could chip away, but to get the most damage he would need to be braced upon the ground, or something other than the air under his feet. He let loose another volley of arrows in quick succession, but all the stone golem had to do was blink to protect itself. It singed its stone eyelids, but did little else.
Talarius heard a whistling noise and looked up to see Ruiden spinning towards him. The spinning glaive stopped rotating and reformed into a golem beside Talarius.
“In its stone form, there is not much I can do against this golem,” Ruiden said.
“I know; I’m in the same boat,” Talarius said. “We are going to have to come up with plans for such situations in the future. This is not something I had ever seriously considered.”
“Our challenges have certainly expanded under Lord Tommus,” Ruiden noted.
Talarius chuckled. “I cannot argue that.”
“Okay,” Tom said out loud, “now all we have to do is keep the normal Unlife away from our recovering friends.”
“That’s not going to be a problem!” Darg-Krallnom shouted. Tom looked towards the commander, who gestured to the Unlife that had been surrounding them. “They are in retreat, I suspect to reorganize. Surround the leadership, protect them at all costs. A very good thing for us!”
Tom grinned and turned back to Inethya.
“Incredible!” Inethya said, shaking her head. “That dagger was able to do what my rituals could not.”
“This was a very strange situation. The Storm Lord’s spells were guarding the antimus tightly, but more importantly, the core souls of the risar were locked inside as animus. They were imprisoned within their own incarnated forms,” Tom said.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Inethya said.
“Nor have I,” a new voice said behind Tom. He turned to see that Beragamos had returned now that the interdiction had been shut down.
“I note that someone has once again been stealing mana from heaven,” the archon said sternly.
“You try to re-turn three risar controlled by thirty-nine very powerful liches, now permanently slain, without using every drop of mana you can get your hands on,” Tom said somewhat sarcastically. “I also admit that Tiernon’s mana is very pure and most efficient.”
A tremendous crashing sound from the other side of the Citadel brought their attention back to the fact that there was still a fourth risi attacking the Citadel.
“Enough resting. We have more work to do!” Tom said, launching himself into the air. “Morok, bring your people with m;, the rest of you guard the risar in case the Unlife return!”
Tom had to blink at the clouds of dust and debris rising from the north side of the citadel. The outer wall had been breached, and two of the three inner walls in that courtyard segment had also collapsed. Those walls had contained corridors and rooms embedded within them; he hoped everyone had gotten out.
Two giant knights, two hundred feet tall, were battling a stone golem. Talarius was flying around shooting lightning bolts out of his bow as Ruiden periodically dove in to scrape the risi. Stainsberry was on one of the walls, casting a spell. Several other avatars were flying around shooting various beams of light at the stone golem, all to little affect.
Tom glanced back towards Stainsberry, suddenly recognizing the cloud forming in front of the Knight Magus. “Stainsberry! No!” Tom yelled, moving towards the Knight Magus while keeping close watch on the Cloud of Disintegration.
“Stainsberry, there is a live, non-antimus soul trapped inside the giant. He is possessed and being controlled by liches! I can cure him! Shut down the cloud!” Tom yelled.
Stainsberry looked towards Tom and nodded, then abruptly changed his chant and the motions of his hands. Tom hoped he could get the Cloud of Disintegration shut down safely.
“How do you propose stabbing that?” Inethya yelled.
“We need to force him into his mortal form!” Tom yelled back.
There was vwooshing sound as Morok and his elite squadron drew their lichtshwerts. Tom nodded at the twelve D’Orcs to dive in.
“We need a stone-to-mud ritual,” Hilda said, although at two hundred feet tall, her voice boomed louder than a normal shout.
Tom looked to Beragamos, who looked pensive and finally nodded. “I think I can make something work. It’s not part of what I normally do, but it should work with some modifications.”
“Great. I need him to stay in flesh long enough to stab him, maybe a little longer!” Tom shouted. He noticed that Morok’s crew was able to cause burns on the stone golem. That was more than most could do.
Beragamos nodded and began chanting and gesturing. Within perhaps a few minutes, the sharp corners of the stone golem began to visibly soften, to melt. Tom moved to get into position. The golem staggered as one of its feet started to melt. It turned, ignoring the two giant knights, and swatted at one of Morok’s D’Orcs, glaring at Beragamos.
Tom assumed it was the fact that the archon was glowing and shouting things about mud and stone and Earth that tipped off the golem drivers — the lich commune — as to who was responsible. Tom moved to reposition himself even as the golem moved to try and swat Beragamos from the sky.
As the golem’s arm moved upward, his forearm began to bend the wrong direction as his elbow began to liquefy. The golem roared in anger and suddenly flashed to flesh. Tom lunged quickly, assuming he had only a small window. He had to aim high, at the base of the neck, to avoid the risi’s stone plate armor.
In! Excrathadorus Mortis pierced the giant’s neck and Tom began to clean the giant. After the first three he had gotten an optimal pattern down, balancing the tendrils fighting him and the necessary cleaning. However, this big fellow needed a lot of cleaning.
The risi started changing back to stone! He could not blame it because Morok’s people were getting in very solid blows. Tom took his left claw and carved it into the stone golem’s neck to hold on. Excrathadorus Mortis was in and linked to the blackness. It would not be dislodged, but Tom might be. He opened the flood gates to Doom, the Doomalogue and Tiernon’s god pool. He had a lot of work to do and he needed to do it fast, before the golem did too much more damage.