Lothos was the only one among them who looked pleased—so pleased, in fact, that he was grinning at Carey, despite the Cebrons circling overhead.

“They’re here! The Forge!”

The merchant pointed south. Carey leaped up and phased into his owl form. He scanned the distance and saw soldiers—heavily armored and wielding swords and crossbows—pouring through the streets, shouting and engaging the army of enemy soldiers with painted faces. As Carey watched, a wave of white levathons carrying Forge riders descended from the clouds and headed toward the Cebrons.

Carey phased back into his human form.

“Let’s kill them all,” he shouted as he dropped.

He landed, catlike, and scampered across the roof toward a Low Mage who had gotten off his Cebron and was trading spells with Will. The Cebron didn’t notice Carey, and he took the opportunity to sneak attack the creature, stunning it. Wally appeared by his side and killed the creature with a single blow, severing its spiky, triangular head from its long, leathery neck.

Carey then watched as the Low Mage put up a defensive wall of sparking elemental vines that caught Will’s lightning spell. The crackling burst pushed him back a step, sending a tingling sensation through his body. He threw a Nullifying Crystal Shard to disable the shield, making it flicker, then whipped out his bow and used Calm Overdraw to execute a headshot that flung the Low Mage’s hood off his pale, hairless skull, doing massive damage in the process. The mage doubled over, one hand over his eye. Before he could cast a spell, Carey immediately hit him with a Throwing Hammer that knocked him on his ass.

Will finished him off with a fire spell that summoned a shower of flaming meteors, a few of which slammed into the Low Mage with thundering booms.

“Where is he?” Carey shouted, looking up to see the levathon riders engaging the Cebrons. This was his opportunity. “Where did Sam go?”

“The cathedral.” Beatrice pointed into the distance. “I saw him heading there!”

Carey sprinted toward the edge of the roof and leaped off, already in owl form by the time the tips of his toes touched the edge.

Will was shouting for him to wait, but Carey ignored him. The rage, the blood lust, the murderous energy in his bones and muscles—it was as though he’d ceased to be an owl and had become one of Will’s fireballs, hissing through the air and leaving a trail of smoke.

The fire ran out, Stamina depleted. He phased back into his human form above a plaza and made sure to drink another Stamina potion—he literally chugged it in midair—so he could phase back and keep going.

But before he could transform, three Pestilent fighters appeared in the plaza, one crawling across the face of a surrounding building, another emerging from an alleyway, covered in blood, and the third dropping from the sky to fall right before his eyes.

Carey and the Pestilent fighter landed at the same time. The fighter phased into a giant hornet, complete with a horrendous buzzing noise that made Carey’s teeth vibrate and his hair stand on end.

The Pestilent covered in blood phased into a giant scorpion with a blood-red carapace. The last one became a rattlesnake the size of a garbage truck.

The snake slid toward him. The scorpion clicked across the stone. The hornet pointed its stinger and advanced. The insect’s buzzing drone echoed off the buildings and filled the otherwise empty plaza, loud enough to drown out the clashing battle sounds filling the neighboring streets.

Carey darted behind a tree and dove into sneak mode. The snake was closest to him. As it approached, Carey crept around the tree, staying out of sight, and jumped out as the giant creature shot forward and missed him. While in midair, Carey unleashed his Whirling Attack and became a tornado of pain. His blade flashed, landing most of its strikes, one of them a critical, and the snake flipped itself away from the attack with a loud rattle.

Something large and heavy slammed into the grass of the little park section of the plaza. Wally had leapt over a building and stood frowning at Carey, an enormous broadsword clenched in one hand. The blade was dripping blood.

“Hit them with arrows, mate,” he said. “I’ll engage melee.”

“On it.” Carey chugged a Drink of the Spider God and felt his Perception and Agility tense like a swollen muscle tightening.

Wally spun around and slashed at the advancing hornet, sending it bobbing backward through the air. His next move was a special attack of some sort; he slammed his booted right foot into the ground and cast an earth-splitting vibration toward the hornet which erupted in a geyser of loose stone that engulfed the creature.

Carey drew back the bowstring and fired an arrow, which split into three separate missiles. One hit the rattlesnake, which advanced with hate-filled eyes and a tongue the size of a skateboard that darted in and out of its mouth, while the other struck the scorpion. Varying levels of fire, shock, and frost damage made the creatures flinch as magical energies representing each element seized them and rippled across their bodies.

As the scorpion was jolted by electricity and the rattlesnake rolled across the grass to extinguish the flames burning its leathery flesh, Carey flipped backward several times to get out of their proximity—then tossed a Cluster Bomb above the two enemies.

The bulk of the impact missed, as they had already begun advancing, but some of the smaller bombs hit their targets, the booming sounds so loud Carey thought the buildings around the plaza were being blown up. Handy little weapon.

Wally had finished off the hornet. He ran toward Carey, conveniently behind the scorpion, which he grabbed and began to wrestle. For his next special attack he flipped fifty feet into the air, his arms around the scorpion in a powerful embrace, then descended toward the earth, as if shot downward from a cannon, so he could slam the scorpion into the ground and smash it once more with his boots.

As luck would have it, the advancing rattlesnake was ensnared by a magical patch Carey’s enchanted boots had left on the ground. He brought out his bow, mentally aligned the arrow, and shot it directly at the snake’s face just as it opened its mouth in protest. Two of the arrows hit their targeted spot, forcing the snake to thrash wildly as flames rippled across its tongue.

The snake’s next attack happened so quickly Carey could barely move out of the way. The creature spit a burst of poisonous acid at him. Luckily, the liquid hit his armor and not his face, though drops splashed against his neck, causing a sort of burning pain he’d never experienced before.

“Wally,” he screamed. “Son of a bitch!”

“What’d you call me, mate?”

Carey wasn’t in the mood for jokes. He turned and ran, scampering up the side of a building, the rattlesnake at his heels—he could hear its slithering, rattling, hissing noises—and it was only Carey’s parkour skills that got him away from its next acid attack, which slammed against a window and shattered the glass, leaving a gaping hole that sizzled and steamed.

He consumed several potions as he worked his way up the side of the building, propelling himself off window ledges, and launched himself from one rooftop to the next. When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw that the rattlesnake had turned red and its eyes were flaming orange…

A special attack mode?

When it spit at Carey again, the toxic acid came out like bullets from a machine gun, covering a wide area. He phased into his owl form and broke through a window. The liquid made splashing, thumping sounds against the face of the building.

Carey crouched under the window frame, again in human form, taking deep breaths.

“Don’t panic,” he told himself. “Don’t panic!”

Bow ready to fire, he rose and took a step back and aimed at the rattlesnake’s hideous face. It had raised its body, stretching tall enough to face Carey through the window, then hissed loudly at him. Carey hit it with all three arrows, causing elemental damage, and this time—before the snake could slide away—he made a Cluster Bomb appear in one hand, launched himself through the window, grabbed the snake’s triangular head. Carey’s body flailed as the creature tried to shake him off, but he successfully managed to stuff the Cluster Bomb down its throat.

With a kicking motion, he jumped away, phased into his owl form, and was almost knocked out of flight by the incredible force of the explosion. He dropped, human once more, to the ground as pieces of something soft and wet slammed into him.

Chunks of snake. The pieces fell everywhere, and as he turned, a piece hit him squarely in the face, the creature’s blood entering his mouth. He spit out what he could and looked around. Wally approached, grinning at Carey.

“Mate, that was the coolest thing I’ve ever s—”

“Where are they?” Carey cut him off. “Will and Beatrice.”

“I dunno. Let’s look.”

Carey drank a Stamina potion, phased into his owl form, and flew a hundred feet toward the sky until he could see Tyrathon spread out before him. The sounds of battle rang out beneath the smoky sky—men shouting, steel clanging against steel, Cebrons screeching as they flew overhead, and levathons neighing like horses caught in a barn fire.

And there, in the distance, someone was waving…

“It’s them!” Carey shouted in human form, phasing again as he fell to stretch his wings and glide toward the robed Sorcerer. Phasing in and out of owl form had become as natural as shrugging off a baggy coat.

Buffed by Beatrice and her constant stream of magic, Will had been flinging elemental spells from the roof of a building down at enemies swarming a different plaza, this one located at the foot of an enormous cathedral. The building’s spires and circular front window and beige stone walls had stood out to Carey earlier, but he’d thought nothing of it.

Now, Will was pointing at it and shouting.

“Riven Xor,” he was saying. “He went in there!”

The closer Carey flew, the more he could see of the cathedral. Forge soldiers were running out of it. There must have been some sort of battle going on inside.

But why were they running out? Shouldn’t they have been going in to fight the enemy?

“This is our chance,” Will shouted, as Carey joined him.

As soon as his human feet hit the ground, Carey was hit with one of Bea’s buffing spells, which made white particles of energy rise around him like water drops falling in reverse. They began to spin wildly, lifting him through the air and flipping him upside down, until his skin was covered by a tingling layer of oil that made it shiny and reflective. He knew without reading any stats that he was now significantly protected against elemental magic. As he floated back to his feet, he looked as though he’d been dunked in olive oil.

“Thanks,” he said, and Bea winked at him. “Is he in there?”

“Sam, yeah, he is,” Beatrice said. “Feels like he’s building a portal of some sort. Maybe to summon something.”

“Summon what, exactly?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt it’ll be fun.”

Carey motioned for them to follow. Joined by Wally—who tapped his fingers against his eyebrow in a casual salute and said, “Hey, mate”—the four of them either flew or jumped across the plaza toward the cathedral.

It was several degrees colder inside. Carey noticed a darkness that seemed to pulse. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Riven Xor standing by the pulpit at the other end of a dozen rows of wooden benches. He had his back to them, and his arms were stretched above his head as he incanted a spell, a smoldering blood crystal in each hand.

The effect of the spell was hard to miss. A sheet of absolute darkness, like the surface of a black hole hanging in outer space, stretched across the wall in front of the Low Mage. It made a rhythmic sound somewhat like the pulse of a slumbering god—the god of all that was dark and horrible.

Something roared inside the void.

Riven Xor turned to face Carey and his friends. He was no longer Sam Solsteim, son of the inventor of Luminether Online, but a villain much more powerful and deranged than the spoiled bully Carey had met back in his apartment in New Hampshire. Tossing away the now-empty blood crystals, Xor tossed his head back and laughed. The sound echoed in the vast space inside the cathedral.

Then he stepped aside, and something else took his spot, its huge body emerging like a toppling stone falling into the light. The creature swung its massive frame, demolishing the pulpit and pulverizing the stone pillars on either side of it, Xor using a magic shield to protect himself.

“What the f…”

Carey was rendered speechless. He lifted his bow, but the creature at the other end of the cathedral, so huge it actually loomed over them despite being far away, scared him to the point of freezing the blood in his veins, until he stood paralyzed, unsure of what to do next.

“Cerralobos,” Wally said next to him, his voice shivering. “Attack dog of Xelios.”

The ash-grey, thickly muscled beast pulled its twenty-foot-tall frame out of the void and stretched. Seeing Carey and his friends, it narrowed three sets of bright yellow eyes into slits, sniffed the air with three different snouts, and yawned open the jaws of three separate heads to growl loudly enough to make the cathedral’s many rows of stained-glass windows shatter outward.

As if the noise had awoken them, several dark shapes rose from the wooden pews, their moans filling the cathedral. Some stood taller than others, a few bent almost double due to the decay of their bodies and spines.

Zombies.

No—Risen Ones, they were called here. Undead beings summoned back to a vile half-living state by the brothers of the Tenefraterni.

“I’d like you to meet my friends,” Riven Xor shouted. “Have fun!”

He snapped his fingers, and several traps went off around Carey and his group. The traps caused shimmering red force fields to magically spring up on all sides, blocking all the windows and doors so no escape was possible.

This had been his plan all along. To lead them here. To trap them in a room with a mythical three-headed beast and a bunch of zombies.

“We have to run,” Beatrice said.

“We can’t,” Will said. “Those force fields are impenetrable.”

Carey was silent. He watched in disbelief as Riven Xor cast his final spell, this one a real slap in the face that made him despise the guy with a burning, murderous hatred.

Wrapping himself in a tornado of black smoke and thundering orange cracks of light, the Low Mage laughed once more before vanishing.

Gone.

The coward had teleported himself out of the battle.

Cerralobos tipped his middle head back and unleashed a mournful, ear-piercing howl, then sprang forward on powerful legs, three sets of jaws opening to attack.