“AAAIIIIEEEE!!!!!” The high priest wailed in agony as my railgun tore a hole through him, and caused a small explosion as it impacted the ground behind him and the archmage. While the spell had no fire component to it, the massive amount of air resistance had melted the outer portion of the bullet, and ignited the high priest’s robes.

“I’m gonna need some aiming practice.” I muttered. I was looking to hit him center of mass, but had instead done a mostly glancing blow to his hip. Oh it was a devastating attack, and the partial miss had also destroyed the archmage’s staff, but neither one was fully dead. Not the best return on 5,000 mana. Time to blind them. Life sense worked on sensing the spirit of a creature, the same thing as what was sent through prayers. I sent just about half of my spirit, 300 health, and 3,000 mana into a massive swirling storm centered on the open area. The spirit particles were so thick that hopefully the undead would be blinded.

“Stifling darkness! Rejuvenating night!” The high priest was busy tending to his own wounds, and I was swiftly vacating the area where I had just attacked from.

“Remain calm! Focus fire in the general area he was last seen in!” The archmage stepped up, giving orders and calming the chaos of being effectively blinded. Too bad for him I was already out and across the way. Using a bit of light magic, I turned myself into an unassuming zombie mage. I meandered through the throngs of students, occasionally adding my own magical attack to the random attacks. That was covering my three true purposes. First, I was biding time to recover some mana. Sure, I was at half a tank, but there were still a lot of powerful enemies out there. While I was doing that, my partitioned mind was leaving small mana packets at the base of the skulls of the healers. It wasn’t much, just enough to create a void bomb two inches in diameter. A lot of people would overlook it, but two inches in the right place can absolutely wreck things. And I was going to get full use of those two inches! My final task was to occasionally leave a claymore attached to someone, just to further the chaos.

There are two major strategies for dealing with healers. If you have the ability to kill with one or two swift attacks, then healing doesn’t matter. The lone exception being if they have a resurrection spell, but those are usually costly. The other main method is to target the healers first. Healer’s prolong the battle, making it more difficult for your side. You might take more damage taking them out early, but it’s worth it when you are the only one with healing at the end.

“Your wounds can wait. We can reattach lost limbs after killing the human. Besides, you don’t even use your legs.” I heard the archmage arguing with the high priest.

“Don’t tell me what to do! You want the human? I’ll drive him into the night! CURSE OF ETERNAL NIGHT!” Waves of darkness shot from the staff of the high priest, coating the area and blocking out all the light. I immediately switched to darkvision with a bit of mana vision to provide some highlights, and kept moving normally. “There! Now the human can’t see. Just blast away at anyone stumbling around, and leave me to healing myself.” I figured this was the perfect time, and detonated the void bombs.

Instantly all the priests except the high priest died. It’s rather hard to live without the base of your skull and all the important bits that protects. A few were even decapitated. “My disciples!” the high priest screeched. Following the actions of all the other undead, I took a step away from the body that had dropped right next to me. I had stayed close to the healer in the back, hoping for the high priest to do something foolish.

In his grief, he didn’t disappoint. He surged down the steps, being able to hover making them much less of an obstacle. “Carnwen!” He said, cradling the body. “Oh, what have they done? How did they manage to take out all my disciples at once?” He demanded, turning to face the archmage.

“And how the hell should I know? I can see exactly as much as you can through this blasted spirit particle storm! And what happened to him being blinded?”

*KABOOM*

Everyone turned to see the explosion on the far side of the courtyard, as I had detonated one of the claymores. “Where did it come from?” Demanded the archmage.

“Enough of this. Buy me one minute.” The high priest demanded. “I’m bringing back my disciples.” As he stood up, I set off three claymores with a few seconds in between, all in different areas. While everyone was looking around in confusion for a direction the attacks were coming from, the hair on the back of my neck was raising from the dark magics that the high priest was calling forth. I had a bad feeling he was going to harness the spirit particles to cast a revival spell, and undo all my hard work.

“Forces of night that repel the light, I call you now. Reclaim the souls sent to our phylactery, and use my mana-“ He stopped as a glowing blade of light erupted from his throat.

“Ah, ah, ah. We can’t have that now, can we?” I whispered in his ear before wrenching the blade back and forth and removing his head. The archmage must have sensed the energies starting to run wild, as he immediately called attention to me as I pocketed his amulet.

“He’s here among us! Targeted! Amplify Mystic Damage Curse! Mana draining curse!” He started hitting me with spells, and curses that I wasn’t expecting.

“Solar flare!” I sent a gout of flame in his direction, wings bursting from my back as I charged at him instead of escaping to the air. Five teachers stepped in my way, four of them obviously mages while the fifth looked like a twin to the pugilist that had so thoroughly kicked my ass at the city gates. Luckily for me I wasn’t the same mage I was several days ago.

“Void storm.” I said, sending out volleys of blades and spheres of void energy. To my surprise, the pugilist managed to deflect them somehow, but the mages behind him were too trusting in their shields. The fires in their eyes died swiftly as their bodies were sliced and diced by the impossibly sharp blades.

“Crushing blows! Phantasmal overlap!” The pugilist started raining blows in my direction, each fist seemed to have at least three more slightly out of phase as the phantasmal fists didn’t quite line up with his real fist. As I flew backwards from the impact, both of my arms broken, he started laughing. “You must be feeling great, having defeated my little brother. Did he ever mention I taught him everything he knew?”

“Let me guess, you didn’t teach him everything you knew though, right?” I asked, groaning as I stood up. I casually blocked a barrage of low level spells with a mana shield, spells that were oddly on target considering the distance they were launched from.

“Ha! I like that!” He laughed, smashing his fists together and releasing sparks. “You are right, I might have a trick or two held back.” With that, he launched himself forward, and I smiled at the slight opportunity he had unwittingly given me. I smiled as the gravity field caught hold of him, holding him in the air where he couldn’t gain any purchase.

“Rule one. Never leave your feet.” Before he could use his brother’s trick and use a phantasmal fist to move himself, I created a mana barrier around him and filled it with plasma. His screams only lasted a fraction of a second.

“Elemental fury!” My victory was short lived, as a barrage of high powered elemental spells slammed into me, sending me bouncing along the ground. Shards of metal that unleashed jolts of electricity, softball sized hail, and most painfully chunks of rock the size of my torso pummeled me as blades of wind shattered against my mana armor. “I do hope you haven’t forgotten me.” The archmage said, switching from elements to bullets as I used a bit of gravity magic to boost myself into the sky. I kept moving as fast as I could, swerving around as I desperately sought cover. The bullets would swerve slightly, but were moving too fast for perfect accuracy. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the lesser elemental spells that were dragging down my mana regeneration.

“You won’t be able to hide from my targeting spell!” The archmage called, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise as the air became electrically charged. “Lightning obliteration!”

“Ride the lightning!” I desperately invoked my armor’s special skill, launching myself out of the path of the lightning bolt. A bit of it traveled with me, but the majority flowed around me as I was in electrical form.

“GAH!” I groaned, rolling across the roof I had targeted. The residual lightning was causing my muscles to lock up. “Sonof a bitch.” I groaned, creating a thick iron cage above me, fully expecting another lightning attack.

“Thunderfall!” I managed to close my eyes, but the flash was so bright and the thunder so loud that it didn’t help much. At least my impromptu lightning rod managed to deflect the bolt before it started melting. Thankful once again that I had picked troll’s regeneration, I stumbled to the edge of the building and dropped down to ground level, leaving behind a mesh of iron between the buildings.

I took a moment to get my bearings. My health was fine, but my mana was already down to under 5,000. I was just about to launch myself out of the alleyway when my heart stopped for a second.

“Frozen hellscape!” I rocketed out as fast as I could, watching Elendria descending like some avenging angel, backlit by the setting sun. Her spell froze and shattered all the low level undead, leaving just the archmage left.

“You dare slaughter my students?” He screamed, sending a few bullets her direction. He must have forgotten the spell that was on me, as the bullets curved away from her and towards me slightly, ultimately missing both. I sent some bullets in his direction, though they shattered harmlessly on his shield they did draw his attention like I wanted.

“Annoying cockroach. Creeping Death.” He sent a black cloud in my direction, but a blast of plasma destroyed it while he was busy shielding against a barrage of ice from Elendria. Before he could retaliate, I took off one of his legs with a void slash. “Wha?” He managed, before the distraction caused his shields to fail and for him to be impaled by a few ice spears. As his body froze, the ice holding him in midair, I got close enough to see him smiling.

“Happy?” I asked.

“Very.” He said. “I am soon to return to the phylactery, and the compulsion is at its weakest. I can easily fight off the urge to kill you. So yes, I am happy. For this slightest bit of freedom. Will you continue on?”

“Yes.” Elendria said. “We are going to try and destroy the phylactery, breaking the curse.”

“Good. Before you go, be warned. It won’t just be the royals up there, but their guard as well. You have already slain the assassins available to the public, but ask yourselves. Do you honestly think that royalty who are petty enough to steal karma from their own people would allow them access to the best of anything?” As he finished his question, his body crumbled to ash, leaving behind the keystone amulet.

“Did you get the other one?” Elendria asked.

“Thank you.” I said, pulling her into a hug. “I’m sorry for earlier, and you came at just the right time.”

“You’re welcome.” She said, a slight smugness to her tone. “Now let’s head out, and leave the curse area for the night. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect.” I said, following her. I gave one last look to the ziggurat, but like always the dark shield only allowed me to make out the shape of the building beneath it and the massive crystal above it.