I’d thought that I had seen Fossor angry before. When we ruined his first attempt at this spell, when we made him abandon his home because I brought a horde of his enemies down on him, when his former ghost slaves had brought that same army right here before he was ready, or even just a moment earlier when my mother had destroyed his second attempt at the spell. I’d thought, as the man had brought his foot slamming repeatedly down on my hand in his best attempt to crush the bones within to dust, that I had seen the limits of his temper.
But I hadn’t. Not then. Because the anger I’d seen in those moments held nothing, not the slightest flickering candle flame, to the white-hot, blinding atomic rage I saw in his eyes when he realized what I had just done. And why wouldn’t he be angry? He had spent literal millennia building up his invulnerability. He had been untouchable, in every sense of the word. The most powerful beings in the universe couldn’t kill him, because he was able to pass every bit of real damage they did off to billions of hostages over on his own world. Hell, a lot of those enemies had gathered together after he’d nearly wiped out humanity the first time, just to use a spell that was supposed to banish him from Earth. But it hadn’t. It had simply forced him to step on the ashes of his own people to avoid losing his connection to that world, a ‘sacrifice’ that he was more than willing to make.
He spent all that time, all that effort, beat everyone who had aligned themselves against him. Yet, in two seconds, I took all of it away. I destroyed his invulnerability, not through a clever spell taught by a wise old mentor, not through eons of training or some incredibly rare, mythical artifact that I quested for weeks to obtain.
It was a rock. I took his power away with the same rock I had carried around in my pocket for over a year. The rock that had been with me in that field, the one I had tossed through my first portal back when all of this had been completely new to me. The rock that had become our team mascot. The biggest goddamn hero in this or any other world. The Fossor-Slayer. Herbie.
And boy was Fossor pissed about that. Even as the full realization of what I had managed to do settled into him, the homicidal rage took over. His foot lashed out toward my face before I could so much as blink, before I could do anything at all. This wasn’t the same as the blows he’d been hitting me with before, back when he’d been dragging things out and intentionally making me suffer. No. This was a man who could likely kick through solid steel, intending to pop my head like a melon and put an end to me once and for all, even as a deafening bellow of unimaginable wrath erupted from him. I was no longer something to play with. I was an ant to crush. And, in that particular moment, I posed about as much of a chance as one.
But this was one ant who wasn’t alone. Just as Fossor’s foot was literally less than an inch from my face, as I could feel the rush of air and motion with the certainty that I was about to pay for what I’d done with my life, the shield surrounding us disintegrated under the combined blows of Gabriel Prosser, Hisao, Dare, Kohaku, Deveron, Avalon, Shiori, and Asenath. It shattered like glass, and a hand caught Fossor’s leg by the ankle a millimeter or so from making contact with my face.
“That’s… my… daughter.” Mom snarled the words, her grip iron tight on the man’s leg just before her fist collided with his face with so much force that he was sent careening away, flying a good forty feet before he came down on his back.
He picked himself up a moment later, even as all eyes turned that way, the fighting briefly coming to a halt. Fossor’s nose was bloodied and broken. He had been hurt. Visibly hurt.
We tried to follow up immediately, of course. No way were we just going to stand there. Even if my own hand was practically crushed and still gradually healing. But even as we made a move that way, to finally finish this fucker, he shouted a command word. More than a dozen of the huge Meregan zombies vanished from other parts of the battlefield where they had been, appearing directly in front of the Necromancer himself before they immediately exploded. The energy from their deaths was instantly converted into two things. First, a shockwave that knocked almost everyone down. I was thrown to the dirt next to my mother, even as the second part of his spell manifested. It was a glowing forcefield dome to keep Fossor safe. At least for a moment. He’d casually sacrificed those Meregan forces to create a new shield.
It wouldn’t keep everyone out for long, but Fossor didn’t need it to last long. He was glaring at me from behind that forcefield, the loathing in his gaze enough to send a chill through me despite everything. A snap of his hand made the blood on his face vanish, the damage undone as if it had never happened. At the same time, one of the ghosts nearby made a sound of distress before falling apart. He’d sacrificed the ghost to heal himself.
Yes, he fixed the damage immediately. But he’d had to sacrifice one of the ghosts he had here to do so. Just like he’d sacrificed those Meregan. They wouldn’t be coming back. There was no more connection to his world. What he had right here on Earth was everything. He couldn’t pull in more reinforcements from his world, couldn’t pass every bit of damage to those billions of hostages anymore. If we could destroy everything he had on this planet, we could destroy him.
If we could kill everything he had here, we could kill him.
Fossor had clearly come to the exact same conclusion, and he was nothing if not pragmatic. Angry as he was, he wasn’t going to pursue a vendetta against me right now if it meant sticking around to face his enemies in anything within the same zip code as a fair fight. Instead, he instantly sacrificed another half a dozen of his prepared troops while producing a small octangular medallion of some kind, snapping a word that sounded more like a threat than a spell. There was a flash of energy and then… nothing. He was still there, still standing behind that protective forcefield, surrounded by his assortment of minions and enemies. And he looked just as confused as he was angry.
“Sorry,” Deveron informed him, sounding anything but as he stepped up on the other side of my mother. “All transportation magic out of this place is officially shut down for awhile.” He gave the man who had done so much harm to his wife a toothy, vindictive smile. “Our son really wanted to make sure you didn’t turn tail and run like the pathetic coward you are. Took awhile to set up, but thankfully you’re just enough of an arrogant prick to give them time to do that.”
Even then, standing there with so many powerful forces arrayed around him and cut off from his primary source of power, Fossor didn’t look beaten. How could he? Even without access to his own world, he still had literally thousands of ghost and zombie minions filling this quarry. He could still draw from them for power and health, could still use them as cannon fodder. He could still overwhelm us through sheer numbers.
And, of course, he was accustomed to beating the odds and destroying his opponents. He’d been doing so for thousands of years by this point. No one had ever truly beaten him, not in any lasting way.
So, I was hardly surprised when the vindictive piece of shit snarled, “You think this means you’ve won? You think being cut off from my own world will be the end of me? I am not so easily vanquished by a child. You say no one can leave this place? So be it. You will all die.” Even as he spoke, hundreds of those undead creatures put themselves between us and him. Those hundreds became thousands, forming a blockade to keep us away from their master. Between them and that forcefield of his, I’m sure he felt about as safe as he could.
At the same time, I saw dozens of ghosts fly straight into Fossor, vanishing as they were absorbed by him. He was making himself stronger, converting their very lives (or unlives) into strength and power for himself. I saw enchanted artifact after enchanted artifact appear in his hands before activating with various flashes of light and sound. He was pulling out all the stops, using everything he had to make himself stronger and to give himself the edge before we could get through his shield.
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“I’ve brought more than enough to this place to finish each and every one of you,” his furious voice declared. “You think me foolish enough not to prepare for this eventuality? You’ve already exhausted yourselves against the hordes that were here before, yet look around you. My legions in this quarry have not dwindled, while you have thrown yourselves again and again against the bloodied rocks. How much more do you have in you to continue this fight?”
It was my mother who spoke. “Enough,” she informed him, “to see you dead.”
That prompted what sounded like a mix between a near-hysterical laugh and a snarl. “No. No, you don’t. Believe me, Joselyn, even now there are not enough of you to end this the way you so desperately want it to. Not even with everything your little girl has done and all the allies she has summoned. While I admit she is quite charismatic, even she doesn’t have enough friends for that.”
Lifting my gaze up toward the sky at a bit of motion, I did a double-take, then smiled despite myself. “Who said I only summoned friends?”
Fossor, in turn, followed my gaze by looking up. Which gave him a nice view of three jagged, four-foot-wide bolts of red energy that shot straight down side-by-side before slamming into his forcefield. The shield blew apart, leaving the Necromancer stumbling backward as he took in the sight above him.
“Hello again, old man,” Ruthers, hovering in the air above Fossor, greeted him in a voice filled with the sort of anger and hate that had spent centuries simmering. Part of that deadly red energy still crackled around his hand, adding emphasis to the words. “It’s been a long time.”
Yeah, I had included Gabriel Ruthers in my beacons (which had apparently successfully triggered at some point in all of that). Because beating Fossor was too important to worry about anything else. So I even called him for help. And not just him. Hovering on either side of the man were a couple more Committee members, Calafia and Percival. They were the sources of the other two beams that had worked together with Ruthers’ to blow apart Fossor’s shield.
Once again, I was rewarded with a look of total surprise as Fossor took in the realization of what I’d done. He truly couldn’t comprehend that I would have deliberately called for help from Ruthers of all people. Nor that Ruthers hated him so much he would show up and focus on him while ignoring my mother and me.
Soon, however, he found his voice. Still surrounded by his army of undead, an army that seemed to have grown larger in that time as scattered members formed up in position to protect their master, the man snarled, “Well isn’t this just a wonderful sight? Sworn enemies working together. It tickles me, it really does. Makes a man feel special.” His eyes narrowed then. “But you won’t be enough. All of you weren’t enough before and three won’t be enough now. Surely you must realize that I don’t have to win this battle. That spell they’ve been using to keep me here? It can only run at the power it needs to trap me for so long. I only have to delay you and keep you posturing long enough for it to run out. Or should I say, only had to delay, because–”
“The spell won’t be running out.” That was Percival, who stared down at the man with almost as much hatred and disgust as Ruthers. “Sorry, but it’s not just three of us. It’s five, and the other two are busy making sure this spell stays just as charged as it needs to be to keep you right here.”
Needless to say, Fossor didn’t like that. Delaying us long enough to run out the spell that was trapping him here had been the only reason he stayed as calm as he was. Now, with the news that the power of two full Committee members had been added to keep the spell going, he knew that was useless.
He had one chance, just one. If he could get out of range of the spell, he could escape. Then none of this would actually matter. I could see that realization come to the man. His only chance to get out of this was to make a run for it.
Ruthers saw it too, because just as Fossor’s mouth opened to say something, he vanished from his place in the air. He didn’t teleport, he simply moved so fast he might as well have. There was no blur of motion, no sign of the man at all aside from the zombie and ghost bodies that were blown out of his way as he tore through them in a straight rush to reach Fossor. It happened in an instant, while the Necromancer’s mouth was still opening. Then, with a satisfying crack, Ruthers put his fist into Fossor’s face, knocking his head to the side even as a shockwave of concussive force rushed out, knocking a dozen or so nearby zombies to the ground.
In that single blow, the Committee man hit Fossor with enough force to have pulverized a tank. As for the Necromancer himself, he simply blew apart. Literally, his body popped like some kind of water balloon, sending a spray of ectoplasm stuff in every direction.
Wait, ectoplasm stuff?
“It’s not him!” Calafia shouted, her voice magnified to fill the entire quarry. “But he’s still here! The Necromancer has disguised himself as one of his own creations! Stop them!”
Of course. Fuck, fuck! Fossor was just that fucking slippery. Of course he hadn’t just now realized that his best bet for escaping was getting himself out of range. He’d probably known that since the moment Deveron had revealed that he was trapped here. Or even back when I’d used Herbie to strip the bulk of his power away. He was, as usual, at least a step ahead.
He’d also obviously figured out that being the target for a lot of really powerful people was a pretty bad position to be in. At some point, probably when he was activating all those spells, he’d managed to switch places with one of his own undead things, disguising himself as a zombie or a ghost or something. Either way, it was a trick, and now the real Fossor could be any of the thousands upon thousands of creatures in front of us. Thousands upon thousands of options, and knowing Fossor and his magic, he could have disguised himself as any of them.
As one, every zombie, ghost, and skeleton spoke in a chorus of a single voice, Fossor’s. A chorus of one voice that flooded the quarry. “Why, it looks like you have a bit of a problem. Why don’t we add to it?”
With that, and with no further warning, an incredibly bright, near-sunlike explosion erupted right where we’d thought Fossor was, where the ectoplasm of his undead double was still splattered over the ground. Instantly, before the explosion had grown much larger than a large van, Ruthers, Prosser, Percival, and Calafia all snapped their hands out. Energy leapt from them to surround the explosion. Yet it didn’t go away. Whatever spell Fossor had triggered, it was strong enough that it was taking all four of them just to contain it.
That was the point, I realized immediately. Whatever that spell was, it kept those four busy. They couldn’t let it go or it would kill all of us. And we couldn’t retreat because of Wyatt’s spell keeping us here. We either had to lower the spell, allowing Fossor to escape that way, or keep it up and let four of the biggest guns we had stay off the board to stop the explosion from killing everyone.
Oh, and because that wasn’t enough, all the beings Fossor had summoned, every single undead creature of the thousands upon thousands that filled this quarry, broke and rushed in every direction. It was a flood of monsters, running every which way. All of them intent on escaping the quarry. And somewhere in that rush, somewhere hidden amongst them, was the Necromancer himself.
It was total chaos. Which was, again, just what Fossor wanted. Everyone was fighting, everyone was screaming. I heard ten voices in ten different places say they found him. Fossor, messing with people. Making different zombies look like him to throw people off. I saw Avalon nearby, taking the head off one ‘Fossor’ zombie, only for the head to revert back to its very non-Fossor appearance as it rolled along the ground. All around me it was the same story. People found ‘Fossor’ only for it not to be him. A dozen zombies were killed instantly as my mother snapped her hand up, making metal spikes rise out of the ground, impale them, then disintegrate the remains.
All the forces we had, all the literally staggering amount of power in this quarry, meant that killing the fucking things wasn’t an issue. The problem was the sheer numbers. Because I’d been wrong in my estimates. This wasn’t thousands of zombies. It was hundreds of thousands. It had to be. Between everything flying in the air, to everything on the ground, to the fact that they just kept fucking coming no matter how many were killed, there were hundreds of thousands of Fossor’s minions in this quarry, and Fossor could have disguised himself as any of them. I’d cut Fossor off from his own world, but he was by no means helpless. He still had all of his forces that were already here on Earth, and he’d put every single one of them in this single quarry to serve as distractions.
Ruthers, the other Committee members, Prosser, together they probably could have wiped out this entire army much faster than we could. But they were caught holding back that explosion spell or whatever it was. They couldn’t take their focus off it long enough to end this.
It was up to the rest of us. We had to find the real Fossor. We had to figure out which one of the hundreds of thousands of things rushing to escape the quarry was actually him.
Because if we didn’t figure it out, right now, he was going to escape. And then all of this would have been for nothing.