Rory was saved by the lich herself. Well, not directly. He had no doubt the lich would have preferred if he had crashed down and splattered on the floor below. Sadly for her, she hadn’t foreseen that the snow of her own blizzard would have provided the perfect soft landing Rory needed.

Of course, soft was relative. Rory still thumped down into the snowdrift that had fallen under him. It was better than striking the hard floor, but his body still protested the rough treatment.

At least the incident put a stop to the battle as everyone was lost in the debris and the snow. The pause showed Rory what exactly he had received for Sigils from the Woven souls.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Rage. Enhance your natural anger with this Sigil, granting yourself some nice bonuses every time you display your wrath.

[Argent VI] allows boosts outgoing damage by 18% when berserk.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Ordinary

Tier: Argent VI [0%]

Efficiency: Low [8%]

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Heat Wave. You can now throw out heat in waves.

[Argent VI] allows heat wave manipulation in a 12-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Element

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Argent VI [0%]

Efficiency: Low [17%]

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Vibration. Set yourself or anything else in your reach to vibrate with a single touch.

[Argent VI] allows raising natural frequency by 6%.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Argent VI [0%]

Efficiency: Low [15%]

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Heated Embrace. Anything in your vicinity will warm up, heating faster and higher the closer it gets.

[Argent VI] allows raising temperature by 2% every 2 minutes in a 2-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Remarkable

Tier: Argent VI [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [25%]

So many Sigils to do with heat. He’d been Weaving souls, a very weird concept in and of itself. The people they’d belonged to had probably died by the lich’s hand, so it was likely their last thoughts had revolved around getting warmer before they froze.

Rory’s thoughts hadn’t been focused when he’d been Weaving earlier, so it was surprising he hadn’t received any Sigil options. Maybe souls just worked in that strange way.

It was high time he took note of his surroundings. The dust made it hard to see, though a few shadows were moving in the distance. Nearer at hand, Rory grimaced to see Ned groaning on the ground, his prone body unmoving. He ignored the spasm in his leg and headed over to the younger man, breathing out in relief when he found a pulse.

“My, my, aren’t you a resilient lot,” the lich said.

She descended to float serenely about a foot off the ground, her baleful icy glare taking them all in.

The dust had cleared enough for Rory to survey the area too. They had fallen to the bank’s main hall. Columns stretched the length of it, and a long receptionist’s table fronted the left wall, the right one letting in the morning light through floor-to-ceiling length windows. Snow and frozen rocks blanketed the ground, dust still swirling thick and heavy.

It was the people Rory’s eyes fell to, though. Trish had landed safely thanks to Allen’s rubber, and they had shielded Evelyn from the fall’s damage. Ned looked like he had nearly drowned. He had likely used his water to survive the plummet.

But besides the living, there were the dead too. Ghosts ranged across the hall, passing through columns, debris, and even living people as though they didn’t exist. Rory swallowed. He’d been wrong to think he’d dealt the lich a significant blow. She’d had a miniature army at her beck and call.

“Is the futility clear enough yet?” the lich asked, her frosty gaze now locked right on Rory.

“No such thing as futility,” Trish roared before Rory could answer.

She charged at the lich, holding a round steel shield and a spear like an Ancient warrior. Her steps thumped down hard, a layer of rapidly hardening concrete extending out in front of her towards the lich.

Rory stopped paying attention. For all her growing prowess and bravado, Trish wouldn’t be able to stop the lich, not even with the others’ help. So, Rory turned on his Weaving and focused it on the Sigils he held.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Pyroclastic Hellfire. You can now burn anything to ash within moments of ignition.

[Argent VII] allows pyroclastic flow manipulation in a 21-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Element

Rarity: Exceptional

Tier: Argent VII [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [34%]

The new red-and-grey Sigil had a picture of a bonfire spewing a column of smoke. Rory breathed out hard. This had better work.

Rory looked up to see who he could throw the new Sigil too. Everyone was too busy in the raging fight, however. He had resumed paying attention just in time to see Trish throw a spear weighted with concrete around its head. It shattered right through the lich’s icy barrier.

But that was only a distraction.

“Take this,” Trish shouted.

Her next step threw her at the lich, an axe materializing in her hand. She was too fast for the lich to react. Her powerful swing carved a large opening in the icy hemisphere, sending shards and chunks flying in every direction. Trish threw in a stream of concrete into the hole she had carved in the lich’s defence, hoping to petrify the monster in place.

But the lich had been busy too. While Trish was attacking, she had twisted her staff and shoved it high in the air again. Once more, an enormous blizzard blasted out of the staff’s frozen skull.

Trish tried to steady herself with a lot of concrete this time. The others had stayed back and now dived behind the columns and other debris to escape the worst of the ravaging wintry storm. Rory didn’t get to see how successful they were. He’d been trying to reach a column of his own.

Sadly, he was too slow. The blizzard blasted into him and slammed him against the column, nearly freezing him in place. He could barely keep his eyes open in the wind, could hardly even move or check to see if the others were all right. Maybe he should have stuck to taking out the ghosts instead of crafting yet another Sigil.

“Do you now get my meaning?” the lich said, her voice threading through to reach Rory even in the wintry maelstrom. “You cannot hope to defeat me. You cannot hope to stand before my might. Now freeze, and rot away within your icy prison till you are no more than—oof.”

A light had burst to life from the left of the lich. Fire went up, enwreathing the monster, and she screamed. The blizzard died just a bit, enough for Rory to spot what was happening.

Evelyn.

She had finally found a Sigil with which she could attack. The Sigil of Pyroclastic Hellfire. It had fallen from Rory’s hand at the onset of the lich’s storm, and by the grace of good luck, rolled all the way to Evelyn.

Even as he watched, she pointed her palm at the lich, who was quickly snuffing out the flames. She didn’t just throw plain fire. A strange mix of scarlet flames, blistering magma, and glowing smoke and ash blazed out of her outstretched hand, vaporizing its way through the storm and the lich’s shield to strike the monster once more.

The lich screamed. “Every trick you pull only stokes the fires of my wrath. Beware what you summon, mortals.”

Evelyn was undaunted. As the blizzard grew weaker, Rory saw her face scrunched up and red from crying, glaring with pure hate at the lich. Her fires raged brighter and hotter, turning the spot the lich stood at into a bubbling cauldron of an active volcano.

Then it stopped. Evelyn looked as shocked as Rory felt, but it took only a second for him to realize what had gone wrong.

Mana.

What few Mana crystals she’d had must have run out. As a background, non-combat healer, she’d only had a small stash of Mana, the majority of which had been spread out among the rest of them who’d have been at the forefront of the fight.

Rory cursed, then pushed himself off the column and towards her. He still had his Sigil of Locomotion, and it took him towards Evelyn to get her his Mana faster than he would have thought.

But he wasn’t quick enough yet anyway. The fires died down and the magma cooled to solid rock. The lich emerged, more furious than ever.

Thankfully, Trish and Ned had recovered now that the storm had decreased in intensity. They hammered the lich with their water and their steel and concrete, though still failing to get past the lich’s impenetrable defences.

That was fine. It gave Rory the time he needed to reach Evelyn, which was the main goal.

“Are you getting the hang of it?” he asked, pulling her to her feet.

She looked a little shellshocked, staring at the back of her hand in wonder. The Sigil glowed. Then she looked up. Her grief and rage had annealed into steely determination, fixated on the lich.

“Let’s kill that thing,” Evelyn said.

“Agreed.” Rory turned around, just in time to face the renewed onslaught of the lich’s blizzard. But he was ready this time, his Weaving already activated. “I’ll create an opening. Keep close so you can use my Mana.”

He forged ahead, holding his hand over his head like he was warding off harsh sunlight. It was working. The fury of the storm didn’t let him see what had become of Trish and Allen, but within a few feet around him, there was a sea of enforced calm. Elsewhere, the floor cracked under the blizzard’s heavy pressure and the columns started to buckle, but his lines of light kept him and Evelyn safe. They were getting closer and closer every second.

“Ah, a Weaver,” the lich said, voice icier than the wind that tried to slice him. “Your kind have always been a thorn. Always best to nip you in the bud.”

A bolt of blue burst through, and Rory faltered. He was about to switch his Weaving’s focus to it when Evelyn rushed forward. She placed one hand on his shoulder and used the other to match the lich’s attack with her own blast of Pyroclastic Hellfire. The two met with a furious burst.

Despite Evelyn’s good intention, it wasn’t going to work. While Rory focused on the storm to keep it off them, the mixture of Evelyn’s and lich’s powers was creating a toxic cloud of ice and burning ash, pitting the ground with spurts of flaming lava. The lich would still be able to keep them at bay.

Unless…

Rory shifted his Weaving’s focus to take in both the storm and the chaos created by the blast of powers. That was it. He was starting to understand that his Weaving focused on a certain aspect of something, which was why it could give multiple Sigil options from a single object.

So now, Rory went deeper than the storm, deeper than the attacks from the lich and Evelyn, and focused on the fact that it all combined to obstruct him.

It all disappeared. The lich’s icy blasts, the fiery, pyroclastic flow from Evelyn, even the storm in their vicinity, all turned white as the lines of light from Weaving sank into them and coalesced to form a glowing Sigil in Rory’s hand.

“Impossible!” the lich said.

She waved her staff, an arc of vivid cold rippling outwards. But the storm’s intensity had fallen everywhere, allowing Trish and Allen to interpose. A flying steel spear pulled the lich’s attention to the left, a wave of water then tugging it to the right. Just the opening they needed.

Rory only had to press down on Evelyn’s arm once. She stepped forward, her Sigil already glowing white-hot.

The blast of fire, ash, and magma—all wrapped in burning, grey smoke—that shot from her hand was her most powerful yet. It rocketed at the lich as though Evelyn’s palm was a cannon. The monster had no time to react. Even as the lich brought around her staff, the fire engulfed her, and her scream ripped out hard enough to slash into Rory’s ears.

“You cannot do this,” the lich shrieked, burning and falling apart. “You will fail, and when you do, you will rue the day you came to claim victory over me.”

“Die, you monster!” Evelyn shouted back. She focused harder, stoking her flames until it was a blistering blaze. “This is for everyone you killed. For everyone you murdered. This is for my family.”

There was no stopping Evelyn. The lich tried to fight back, to use her ice powers to claw out another moment she could live, but the pyroclastic flow was unending. It turned into an infernal conflagration, the pit of a volcano now birthing where the lich stood.

With a final, soul-rending scream, the lich exploded.

The wintry storm afflicting the main hall died almost instantly. Burning bits and pieces of her flew everywhere. Rory caught sight of her skull shattering against a column, a piece of her armour lodging in a crack on the floor while her crown rolled off farther behind the hall.

Her staff clanked down a few feet before Rory. In her original position, there was nothing but a pitted and cracked floor, filled with flames and ash and lava.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Rending Blizzard. Engulf your friends and foes alike in a wintry storm that deals extra damage to anything fully solid.

[Viridian III] allows summoning, finely manipulating, and remotely activating a rending blizzard in a 115-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Atmosphere

Rarity: Exceptional

Tier: Viridian III [0%]

Efficiency: High [60%]

The Sigil had an image of a straight lines shot through with cracks and dots. It was bounded by a deep green line with three triangles. Rory pocketed it for later.

He felt like flopping down. The lich was gone. They were safe. It should have been a moment to enjoy, yet he couldn’t muster the effort to do so. He almost staggered, but there was work to be done, first.

The debris made navigating the terrain to a safe spot difficult, but they managed to find shelter on one of the tables near the left wall. Ned had been hurt badly, his back bleeding and his shoulder stooped. Evelyn still looked torn between shock and grief and volatile rage, but she managed to concentrate on fixing Ned’s injuries.

“He’ll be okay,” she said, dragging in a shaky breath.

“Good,” Rory said.

“Got to fix Rory up next,” Trish said.

Rory was about to protest that he didn’t need to be “fixed up” yet, but Allen grunted first.

“Uh, guys,” he said, pointing back out towards the hall. “Why are the ghosts still moving?”

Rory frowned as he followed Allen’s finger. He had expected the ghosts to simply dissipate to nothing once the lich was dealt with, but there was no change in them. The apparitions floated towards the back of the hall in unison, moving slowly like sailboats in a breeze.

Before Rory could formulate any hypothesis as to why, the doors to the main hall burst open. Dez, Viv, and Miles hurried in, wide-eyed and clearly harried.

“What—”

“It’s back,” Dez said. Rory had never heard him be like this. Scared, panicked, nearly overwhelmed, and desperately trying not to show any of it. “The Thunderclaw Knight is here.”