Chapter 41: Chapter 37 – Danse Macabre

"To describe Dame Ambervale when she fought? Why, my friend, the best answer I could give would be that the battlefield was a dance floor, and the Dame, she danced a Dance of Death for those that stood in her path." - Mustafa bey Leung, current Marshall of the Army of the Al-Shan Empire

 

Now left with two opponents - Septem was busy with being disemboweled, and the acolytes that arrived and tried to join the fight from time to time never lasted long, taken down either by stray projectiles from their own allies or by Cal herself -, Cal focused her efforts on the Archbishop. The Golem was quite fast and agile for its size, but it was also a less threatening opponent for her now that it no longer had the element of surprise.

 

She chased Archbishop Faris all over the temple courtyard, and used buildings and trees as footholds as she leapt around much like a cat would, while the man desperately tried to stay out of her reach using paths of ice he glided on, with ice lances thrown at her from time to time. The stone golem with the Crone on its back chased after her but could not quite keep up, and Cal purposefully kept herself between the Archbishop and the Crone.

 

Faris finally ceased his escape when they circled back to where Septem laid - by now a corpse with his face locked in an expression of despair and suffering - and raised a massive wall of ice, easily twice as thick as the one he raised when she first attacked him. His intent appeared to be to threaten a pincer together with the Crone, and at least force her to alter her course.

 

So Cal did the last thing they expected. She charged right at the wall and struck it so hard it nearly shattered outright. When the stone golem came behind her and swung its fist, she did not dodge it either, and braced herself for the impact instead as she took it to her left side, while at the same time angled herself so she would be launched right at the spot where she struck the wall earlier.

 

Her mangled form burst through the wall as the stone golem's fist pushed her out, and to Faris's surprise, she eyed him with a savage grin even as she flew out with cuts all over and the left half of her torso mangled and broken. He still stared at her in surprise when she threw her halberd like a javelin right through his chest, and collapsed dead on the ground with a befuddled look on his face.

 

With a slight limp, Cal walked to the Archbishop's corpse and extracted her weapon from his chest - her broken left arm basically controlled purely with her mana at this point -, and turned to the shocked Crone atop her golem, who had just burst through the remains of the ice wall herself.

 

The Crone was quite clearly specialized in stone manipulation, and specifically in the usage of golems. Golems themselves as a rule have some massive advantages in combat against most foes. A golem feels no pain, and knows no fatigue.

 

Unfortunately for the Crone, the same could be said of a Blood mage of Cal's caliber, which turned it into a battle of attrition based on who had deeper mana reserves.

 

Fists, then crude weapons of stone clashed with the Halberd of Mithril and Ebony Heartwood, where stone was rapidly found wanting. The Crone found her mana rapidly consumed when she was forced to repair her golem over and over and over again, whereas despite her outwardly horrible condition, her opponent fought on with strength utterly disproportional to the slender figure, and stamina that just seemed unending.

 

The Crone started to entertain thoughts of retreat the third time her crudely conjured stone club was shattered by her opponent's much smaller weapon, but dismissed the thought as she woefully realized that her opponent was much faster than her.

 

By now the commotion the battle caused had long attracted the attention of the city guard, who despite the delays from the assurances made by the temple's acolytes at first, finally decided to barge into the temple, where they got to witness the scene of utter devastation and carnage that spread all over the temple courtyard. After the example made by several foolish acolytes who tried to interfere with the fight that went on unperturbed despite their arrival and promptly got taken down one way or the other, the guards all wisely decided to withdraw and just keep an eye on the situation from a safer distance.

 

They watched, mesmerized as Cal's slender figure just got right back up even after she took hits from the golem, hits that would have pulped most normal humans on the spot. Some exclaimed in disbelief when she managed to demolish one of the golem's arms with a well-placed strike of her weapon, just for the golem to grab its dismembered limb and strike her into a building with it. Cal came out in better shape than the building did.

 

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The fight between Cal and the Crone went on for hours more, until the first rays of dawn started to lift the veil of the night, before the Crone slowed down, her mana reserves down to the last dregs, her control of the golem worsened. Once that happened, Cal dismantled the golem into pieces within five minutes, and roughly extracted the crone out of her protected spot behind its back.

 

Without a word, she pulverized the Crone's wrists and ankles with her hands, putting the old woman in so much pain she would not be able to concentrate on a spell at all, before she turned towards the now pale congregated group of guardsmen.

 

She had fought the Crone the hard way for two reasons. One because she wished to create a large enough commotion to the point that it would be impossible to ignore, and second because things would be much easier when she could use the Crone as a live prisoner among the cards she held. Had she merely wanted the Crone dead she'd have just climbed the golem and struck her down instead.

 

"Who is in charge among you?" Asked Cal loudly and sternly in a commanding voice.

 

"I-I am." Said a guardsman dressed in finer clothes than his brethren, clearly someone aware that the issue at hand was several magnitudes above his pay grade from the destruction he could see abound. Cal noticed - and approved - that the majority of the guardsmen had some mixed lineage, a simple yet effective countermeasure for the situation.

 

"Do you recognize what this means?" Cal asked as she rudely removed the Crone's cloak and displayed the cultist robes she wore beneath for all to see.

 

"I do." The guardsman stated coldly, some hatred seeped into his voice. Now that Cal took a closer look, the man looked like he probably had some elven ancestry himself. "One of those pox-ridden dastards that had plagued our country. I owe them a debt of vengeance for my sister's child."

 

"Well, that makes things easier I guess." Cal said. "As you can tell, this hag here's probably pretty high up among them. Doubt an archmagus would be low on the ladder." She explained while she dangled the Crone from her arm.

 

"Also if you check the corpses around, you might find some surprises there. They walked with her last night." She added with a glance towards the Archbishop's corpse. "I'm certain you're clever enough to put two and two together."

 

The guards captain gestured to his men to do just that, and to no surprise, the few acolytes that remained reacted poorly and assaulted them when they made for the corpses. There were too few left of the acolytes however - the Archbishop likely staffed the main temple entirely with his cronies, since basically all the acolytes had been accounted for by now -, and the guards subdued them quite rapidly. One had tried to attack Cal but was just put down with a dart to the throat instead.

 

A search of the temple revealed that most of the acolytes had kept cultist robes hidden in their wardrobe, and some of the guards also brought Ergan out of his prison, where he was understandably flabbergasted when he saw the carnage and destruction that had unfolded. He repeated his story to the guards, who also gave him some warm mulled wine to calm his nerves. He gave Cal a grateful nod when he caught sight of her approach the guards captain who he was in the middle of a conversation with.

 

"Make sure you have some trusted men keep him safe." She told the guard captain as she pointed to Ergan. "And you might want to send a runner to minister Nicodemus Fargo on the double. Just tell him this might blow up into a diplomatic incident with the Al-Shan Empire if he doesn't get his fat ass here, soon." She added with a wicked grin.

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