Hump did a quick count. Nine flesh prowlers, one of which was a goliath—the gorger had eaten the other—and ten or so shades.

Those were bad odds.

However the creatures didn’t act as he’d expected. As the gorger came fully upright, its flesh still bubbling as it assimilated the new matter, the flesh prowlers turned to face it, instinct driving them back as if they knew they’d be next. They snarled at it like confused dogs turned against their master. It hissed back, like a shade howling through a cave. Hump felt essence stir. Then the snarling stopped. The flesh prowlers turned away from it and faced them once more, snarling at them, the fear gone and only puppets remaining.

“This doesn’t look good,” Dylan said.

“Trust me, looks better than the other side,” Hump said. “Where’s Randall’s party?”

“Defending the town,” Bud said. “We’re on our own.”

“Well thanks for coming anyway,” Hump said.

The gorger’s lips curled up as it smiled, raising an arm toward them. “Feast.”

Its army charged, but not for them. They circled slightly to each flank, and Hump realised they were heading for the townsfolk that had fled to the back of the temple. The shades swept overhead. They were close enough to the ceiling to be out of range.

“They’re going for the townspeople,” Bud shouted.

Hump knew they couldn’t face these numbers in a head on fight. He didn’t have the firepower to take down so many shades when they were spread out like this, and he certainly couldn’t bring down all the flesh prowlers. He could buy some time though. Enough that the townsfolk might find shelter, and for his party to thin out their numbers. Knowing the new ability of his spellbook, it became clear why his master had always focused on crowd control. Such large scale spells were inefficient and difficult to pull off without a formation. There was too much that needed doing to be held within one’s head. At least, not at Hump’s level.

“I can delay the flesh prowlers with earth magic,” Hump said. “Not all of them, but I’ll hold back as many as I can.”

“We’ll handle the rest,” Celaine said, letting loose an arrow into the closest of the creatures. It hit the ground with a cry, rolling through the water then struggling to stand at the other side, an arrow through its eye. Dylan’s vines rose around him, ready to ensnare any that stepped in range. Vivienne focused on the shades above, unleashing a ray of sun with Dawn Breaker, consuming half the shades in only a few seconds.

The gorger took that chance to strike. It barked something in a foreign tongue, and essence shot forward. The water stirred before its feet, stone rupturing in a line through the ground, tunnelling in Vivienne’s direction. A spike shot from the earth half a second later, moving so fast, Hump couldn’t even shout out a warning before it pierced Vivienne’s chest.

Only, it was her illusion that stood there. As if from thin air, beads of water emerged from the pool around them, dozens of them forming a circle around the gorger.

“Water Missile,” Vivienne uttered, her voice everywhere.

The gorger screamed as the projectiles tore into it from all sides. It raised its arm, guarding its heartstone, and stone armour formed across its back. As it peered out from behind its arm, Vivienne made a wide sweep with her wand and launched a Wind Blade at its eyes. The air howled. There was a crash, dust and blood splattering from the gorger’s face, staggering it. It growled, glaring back at her. A deep gash carved a line through one hollow eye up over the brow of the other, deep into the rock. Though within, the light of its eye still shone.

Before it could recover its balance, she followed up with a Water Shot. A stream of water swept up from the temple floor, and she jettisoned it in the direction of the gorger’s eye. It zipped forward like a thick thread of silk, shimmering like waves in the moonlight. She wanted to burst the wound apart.

“Help the townspeople!” she shouted. “I’ll handle this beast.”

“You’ll handle me?” the gorger bellowed. Its body morphed and ballooned. The injury in its head filled with swollen flesh, and the Water Shot missed its mark, digging into the armoured bone of its should instead. The bone cracked, but left no serious damaged. “Weak, pathetic witch. You are a meal that does not yet know it.”

The gorger’s will descended on them. It swept through the room like manifested despair, filling the space around it with thick, violet essence. Hump swore he saw the ghostly images of faces within. He felt the madness from it, sending shivers down his spine and making every hair of his body stand on end. He wanted to run. There was screaming coming from within. The voices of all the souls it had consumed—hundreds of them, perhaps thousands—a symphony of suffering.

For a second, Hump thought about how easily he could have been one of those souls. Perhaps he still would be, along with his friends. He forced himself not to think back on his time in the gorger’s den. Forced himself to be logical and turn his attention to the flesh prowlers. Vivienne had said she would handle it, and he didn’t have the strength to help her. Instead, he’d help take care of the rest.

Dylan had already moved to the left where five of the nine flesh prowlers charged, and was quickly closing the gap. Celaine had jumped onto a pile of rubble and now channelled arrows of silver, imbued with Predator’s Intent. Bud fell back behind them, blocking off the path of the four taking the longer way around to the townsfolk.

Hump decided to focus on Dylan. The goliath was there, and it was the shortest path. He channelled his essence through his spellbook, then cast it out into the earth, reaching for the ground ahead of them. The spellbook shone yellow, essence rising from it thicker than he could ever produce without a formation. Tendrils of bronze sparked from its pages and his staff, piercing the ground.

He softened stone and earth with his will, then dragged in their feet as they passed as if he had a thousand tiny hands at his command. He hardened the stone over their claws, trapping them. They fought it, panicked and screaming. Where those behind the first tried to leap over it, he dug pits beneath them, sending them below water where they cried out in panic. When the first surface, Celaine’s arrow pierced through the centre of its forehead. It fell silently back beneath the surface.

The goliath made it through though, breaking Hump’s stone with ease. Dylan charged it head on. One man against a beast almost as tall as him, and at least three times as heavy.

It unleashed its predatory aura—dull in comparison to the gorger, but still a threat at such close range. Dylan’s Aspect of the Bear rose to meet it, howing back with fury. The two clashed like titans. Dylan caught the creature’s jaws on his staff, then grew spines from the wood piercing the flesh of its mouth. It howled. Vines wrapped around its legs, coined around its torso, snaring it. Hump saw a chance and unleashed a Focused Beam into its side, knocking it to the side, leaving a fierce wound bleeding on its belly. Celaine’s arrow pierced the wounded flesh, piercing deeply into its underside. It huffed out a breath, and Dylan brought up his staff and delivered a devasting blow to its head.

“We’ve got them,” Celaine said. “Bud needs you more.”

Hump nodded, whirling to Bud. The four flesh prowlers were closing in fast. The knight stood stoic, the water around his feet freezing from the cold of his aura. Hump targeted the two at the back, trusting the knight to handle the others. They tripped into the temple’s depths, snarling as they came up, but he had them by the legs.

Bud took the chance to charge the others, frostfire raging around him. He carved his way through the first, a line of ice splitting its side in two as it tumbled dead to the ground. The other rushed past, and there was nobody to stop it.

Lucile stepped forward, staff shining white. A gale swept out from her, blasting water through the air like a giant wave. It all crashed into the flesh prowler, sending it flying through the air where it came down in a crash. It limped to its feet but Celaine’s arrow was already there to finish it off.

Hump prepared another spell as Bud charged the final two, when he heard Celaine’s shout.

“Hump, above you! Shades!”

He whirled around in time to see their black figures descend on him like , wraiths in the dark, vultures out for the essence of life. He launched a blast at them, sending two hurling backward, but three more came for him.

He tried to raise his shield, but cold touched his back. He screamed, the burning pain searing at his soul. He sheltered in his cloak, the brunt of its attack taken off, but he could feel it breaking through. He shaped a Shield all around him, pressing them back. The shades hissed, trying to fight through before it could fully form. He swept out at them with his staff, fire bubbling from the focus, setting their cloaks on fire and forcing them back up into the air. Two were consumed by the flame, but the other two managed to retreat to the shadows above, smouldering and wounded, but still alive.

“You’re tiring, witch,” the gorger yelled. It laughed. “Once you fall, nothing will stand in my way. Your souls will be mine.”

Hump turned in time to see it fling out its arm, and daggers of bone shot out. Vivienne flicked at them with her wand, flashes of essence appearing before them as she sent them flying with Parry Shield. Then the gorger brought both arms up over its head, each one moving slowly, as if it was struggling beneath their weight. It clapped them together.

The water in the temple stirred, waves sweeping out away from Vivienne. Then two slabs of stone rose into the air on either side of her, seeking to crush her.

Vivienne cut the air with her wand. “Dispel.”

Its magic vanished, the slabs collapsing back to the ground. The gorger growled. Hump knew the shock of having ones power wiped out like that, and was amazed she’d managed to pull it off against a monster this powerful.

They fired spells back and forth. Wind and water against flesh and stone. Power against precision. Hump thought he’d seen what it meant to be a wizard of her rank before, but seeing her pushed to her limits was something else. She was everywhere at once, her illusionary forms casting as she walked around invisible. Or she’d appear and unleash a serpent of water, then bury the gorger in an array of lights, before cutting at its legs with blades of wind.

It seemed to be a stalemate. A battle of attrition to see who could last longer. A gorger with its reserves gone, or a wizard with only her own essence.

Suddenly, the gorger grinned.

“No!” Dylan shouted.

A circle of red expanded on Vivienne’s stomach. She glanced at it, pressing her left hand to the wound and not hesitating a second to lash out at the gorger once more.

Hump had forgotten one thing. It wasn’t just a battle of attrition. The gorger could heal. It could take damage and survive, for it was a spiritual being. Vivienne though, was a being of flesh. All this time she’d made not a single mistake, but it took only one slip up for a wizard to fall. One moment of lapse. One stray arrow.

She seemed to consider something briefly, then took out a small glass tube. She raised it to her nose and breathed in deeply, her eyes going wide, her irises shining with violet light. Hump felt her aura double in size, her essence stirring the air wildly. He felt the chaos of her aura, full of rage and anger, like the power of the other world.

Then he realised, this was what she’d been doing here. When a Chosen reached the seventh circle, their soul transformed. No wizard had ever replicated that. The expansion from manifestation. This was her attempt to breach the barrier of the seventh rank. She was trying to change her soul and take the next step. To form her Soul Domain.

It's too soon, Hump thought. She hadn't reached the sixth rank yet. But if that's not it, what is she doing?

The essence gathered around her, fighting to break free of her grip even as it condensed into a faint violet mist, cloaking her in power. It loomed over her like an evil force trying to take over. No, it was worse than that. She’d manifested her soul, and then she’d corrupted it on purpose.

All at once, the air went still. The violent blasts of essence ceased, and Vivienne readied her wand. Her smile reminded Hump of Kassius.