In the quiet woods, the hum of voices was audible, even across the intervening space and through the obfuscating spells. The barriers were meant to guide people away and alert the casters should someone intrude in spite of the diversions. It also cloaked the smells of rot unless you were right next to the tree and muffled the sound of screams. The muffling made individual words impossible to distinguish, but couldn’t mask the din of such a crowd. Quinn estimated that all of the full members of the cult were present, or at least pretty darned close to it. There were probably a few people left to manage other tasks during this event, but leaving true believers out of the ascension of their prophet to godhood would be an insult. And a missed chance to cement Phenalope’s power in their minds.

It also might be a missed chance at a backup plan. Quinn couldn’t help but count the hundred or so people gathered in the clearing around the large blackgum tree and think that there was really something to Phenalope’s threat of doing the ritual from scratch with their mass suicide if necessary.

Meanwhile, on their side, they had… far less than a hundred people. Quinn’s team was composed of two agents, three ghosts, and a shifter. Actually, it was more like Quinn and three ghosts on one team, waiting to strike at the death mages, and Adam and a shifter guard on another, since Adam was staying on overwatch, communications, and ranged support. Then there was Team Two, which was led by Lucinda, with Mark and seven shifters as backup. They were armed with pre-prepped spell bombs meant to disable large numbers of average people and would be the shock troops and diversion. Frankie headed up Team Three, backed by the four best physical fighters in the pack. They were going to go after another of the death mages and any elite bodyguards that might get in the way. Team Four was led by a member of the security team Quinn didn’t know and was a mix of pack members, shifter and human alike, who were decent at fighting but were mostly there to support any of the other teams and to extract any of their own people who got in over their heads.

All the teams still only added up to twenty five or so people and a few ghosts. On the upside, their side had two mages, three shaman, and a bunch of shifters. That was a lot more magical aid compared to the three death mages in the cult. No more death mages had been spotted in the gathering than that and two of them would be tied up heavily with the ritual. Depending on what spells might already be cast on the cultists, their side would likely be able to make up for numbers with magic. Shifters were a pain to put down at the best of times and these shifters were pissed off, especially since the cultists had foolishly captured Norris, who served as the community heart for the pack. They were motivated.

Especially Maudy. The young guardswoman had joined up with Mark in Empire before they were able to get away from cleanup duty to rally for this fight. She’d been distraught at having lost Norris, even if the old man had urged her to run. This was her chance at redemption.

In the distance, the din of voices quieted and then went silent. A spell sparked into life in front of Quinn’s face, resolving into an image of a timer counting down.

Three. Two. One.

Let’s go.

Quinn took off at a run, hitting the magical barrier zone and feeling it wash over him. He was too skilled for the subtle nudges of the diversion spell to knock him off track, but he felt like eyes were burning all over his skin. Everything was too tight and--

He tripped over a tree root in the growing twilight, barely managing to keep from going down by stumble-hopping forward a few steps. Right. Quinn needed to focus. This wasn’t the time to let his ambling brain run loose and wild. He hadn’t activated his ghost sight spell to see in the dark because it messed with his ability to see other details and because the ritual site was lit up like a holiday party. He just had to get there without pancaking himself on a tree.

The noise of his running steps stood out against the quiet and blended with the rising voice chanting in Latin ahead of him and with the tempo of other running feet. Quinn had learned Latin, as it was a perennial favorite language for mages and their spells. Phenalope spoke in the cadence of rote casting, ignoring what would have been the natural intonations of the language.

Oh witnesses, see this sacrifice. Feel the power of their loss as it becomes my gain. I hang their death upon this spirit. I hang their life at my feet. I drape myself in the robes of their blood. Let their blood pour from their lips in praise of me.

Quinn shivered. He hated traditional death magic spells. The words and sentiments were all morbid hymns to the mage’s ego.

Shouts rose from the crowd, blurring the Latin chanting, as Team Two and Team Four hit first. Blooms of magic rose in front of him like visible shockwaves. He felt the pressure on his senses even outside of the range of the actual effect.

Then Quinn hit the edge of the clearing and slowed, eyes sweeping the scene to take it in. The large blackgum tree dominated the center of the clearing. The tree was large, a physically impressive specimen with branches reaching wide over the space, sheltering a surprising number of the gathered people beneath its boughs. More than that, its spirit practically thrummed, lending a solidity to the tree that was hard to quantify. It was like looking at a chair and trying to define what made it a chair and not something else, but also knowing that that chair was the definition of the ideal chair. Only with trees. Or trees of a specific type. Or, no, trees but also something else.

Something had roused the will of this spirit.

All these people standing around, dressed in fancy clothing, circling around the ritual setup at the base of the tree like an audience for a play. All these people staring at the tree. How many realized that the tree was staring back? Something had made that spirit care. Instead of being an implacable observer, annoyed to be disturbed, but aloof, the tree spirit watched the proceeding with an intensity that even a mage like Quinn, who wasn’t really versed in spirit stuff, could feel.

How did Phenalope not sense it?

Or maybe she did and her ego interpreted it as attention due to the solemnity of her ritual. Phenalope stood in the center of everything, blood-stained hands raised towards the tree and the sky beyond it, dressed like some sort of Greek-inspired fantasy priestess or goddess. The blood on her hands was black and dripped to mar the pale material of her toga-style dress. Quinn saw bandages on both of her forearms. Had she mixed her own blood into this ritual?

An altar sat in front of her. A bowl dominated the center of the altar, holding more of the black blood, ringed by magical circles and ceremonial objects set in specific positions. To each side of the altar sat a bound man. Norris looked dazed but otherwise hale and whole. Billy had lost his shirt and the gore on his front showed where the black blood had come from. His eyes were open and, to Quinn’s relief, blinked. His injuries bled sluggishly, already healing under the effect of shifter magic.

Behind the altar, tied to the tree trunk with his arms and legs spread wide, wearing only his battered and now bloodstained gray cargo pants, was Riordan.

Blackness writhed over the dark-skinned shifter like a choking fog. Even just looking at that mass of magic made Quinn’s eyelids droop. A sleep spell, overclocked with too much death magic. Riordan must have really pissed them off. Removing that curse was going to take more time than Quinn could spare in hostile territory.

“Riordan!” Daniel yelled, clearly about to snap to his friend’s side.

“Wait,” Quinn hissed. “Don’t go over there. You’ll just get tangled in that spell. You can’t help him here.”

Daniel spun to face Quinn, his eyes wide and chest heaving with panic and fury. The physical mimicry of the dead always fascinated Quinn. The unconscious constructs of life maintained into the alien state of death served as a means to preserve the mental and emotional integrity of the ghost. Right now, those constructs painted a picture of a man pushed past his limits but also so far out of his depths.

“If I can’t help him here,” Daniel said resolutely, “then I’ll go where I can help him.”

Before Quinn could raise any further objection, Daniel vanished. Quinn stamped his foot, frustration, worry, and hope all warring in his head. He couldn’t help Daniel in that spirit place.

“Focus,” Zeren’s voice cut through Quinn’s momentary distraction. “Look.”

Quinn did look, his eyes taking in the evolving situation even as his feet picked his way around the edge of the fray, watching for his targets and opportunities. Team Three had arrived. Frankie and her handpicked fighters appeared like magic right at the heart of the ritual, only to be countered by the one unoccupied death mage, Helena, and her own group of trained fighters. These were the Warriors of the cult. Quinn could see it in the way they moved and in the spells laid into them that buffed their abilities much as a shifter’s magic buffed theirs. The fight engaged and stalemated.

But it left a window for him. Alone but for Zeren and Ingrid, Quinn looked innocuous and unimportant. He made no threatening gestures, just circling, and the cultists ignored him in favor of the superhuman shifters bearing down on them. Actually, some of them were literally “bear”-ing down, having transformed from human into black-furred bears, adding extra fear and mayhem to the situation.

Quinn focused, stepping out into the sea of bodies. Some were fleeing. Some had panicked and frozen. Others were fighting. He dodged between them, not engaging, swimming closer and hiding under that cloak of bodies and shifter magic, his own energies pulled in tight and damped down.

Then he broke through to the inner circle. Phenalope still stood, hands raised and chanting, but her hands held a ceremonial blade now, laid over both palms like an offering. Gloria stood next to her, speaking responses to the chant as the ritual required and making sure each element was in its correct place and order.

Quinn grabbed a charm from his belt. Made of bone, sinew, and wood and wrapped in layers of death magic, peeled and shaped into a delicate cage of bones, the charm was one of the nastier pieces of magic Quinn allowed himself to make, though he stuck to using animal bones unlike the death mage who had developed the technique. His hand whipped forward, tossing the charm at Phenalope. As it spun through the air, Quinn called out the activation command, “Catch!”

The bone charm expanded into a cage of magic, the bones and wood splitting apart to anchor the structure. Phenalope’s voice faltered, but she managed to keep up her chanting. The power in the ritual… wobbled.

Quinn blanched, going from deathly pale to sheet white. The ritual had been conducted so smoothly, the power all contained somehow inside the spirit of the tree, inverted and shielded and contained. He had no idea why--

Except he did. That was what Riordan had done. He had threaded the power out of Phenalope’s reach using spirit magic and shifter pack bonds and then hidden it from her. But that meant Quinn hadn’t felt the roused energy as anything more than the spirit’s increased presence and weight. He hadn’t realized how close Phenalope had drawn the stored energy to the surface.

His cage spun through the air. If that hit her, cutting the ritual off-- Quinn didn’t even know what was about to happen. Or what would have happened. Gloria threw herself in the way of the cage, tossing a white powder into the air. The powder was sucked into the cage, which then snapped shut and shrank back down to its original tiny size. The powder clinging to Gloria’s hand dragged her hand into the cage. When it snapped closed, her flesh severed as cleanly and abruptly as if cut with an executioner’s axe.

Quinn and Gloria stared at each other for a moment and then the woman screamed as the pain penetrated the shock. Quinn, for his part, was horrified at the consequences of the spell. The cage would have only shrunk to a tightly confining size around a person, making movement nearly impossible. He hadn’t known that the boundaries of the spell could do that.

Gloria seemed to channel her pain into fury. She flung her arm out, splattering her blood across Quinn. He grimaced. A death mage’s blood was one of the best mediums and targetters for spells. He couldn’t let her cast anything.

“Quinn!” Zeren called out before Quinn could launch his attack on Gloria. He cast his gaze at Zeren who immediately directed his attention the correct way and pointed, “Stop it!”

Quinn’s gaze snapped to Phenalope. Her voice had risen to a fever pitch, the correct cadence completely disrupted. The ritual’s power continued to shake and rumble like the prelude to an avalanche. Then she lurched forward over the altar, barely avoiding upending the bowl of blood, and stabbed her ceremonial dagger into Riordan’s chest.