By the time Ber like himself again, hundreds of evacuees were streaming through the Uy Market, heading from the Crafter’s Quarter into the entrao a small shop on the periphery of the Market uhe dire of the Underkeeper Guards. It was not a small shop, sidering that Bernt had already watched at least two hundred people disappear inside.

  He didn't know the details of what Kustov had been doing with Janus, but it was clear that they'd been preparing a pce for people to evacuate to. Maybe it was just a kind of bunker, but the way he'd talked about it, he'd made it sound like he was expanding the Uy's capacity for perma residents. When he and Josie had brought their s to Ed, the archmage had decided to take measures to better shelter the people of the city. But was that all he was doing? It made Bernt wonder just how calg Ed was. At face value, Ed always seemed like a straightforward kind of person, but he'd been a high-ranking officer in the military before he was an Underkeeper, and he was an archmage. Was he using this as a way to angle for more influence?

  Whatever the case, they’d decided to fill the older parts of the Uy first, most likely because they were more fortable aer developed.

  The dwarf responsible for the project was busily warding the entrahat he’d sealed minutes earlier with runes even as Lin painted something different on it with a sludgy mixture that she’d ground together moments before. Her script was pletely unfamiliar to Bernt, made up of clusters of short li various lengths and ahat all branched off of a single “root” lihat ran horizontally under Kustov’s runes. He watched with i, trying to get a sense for it.

  Goblins, as far as he knew, weren’t supposed to have a written nguage, but that was obviously what she was doing. He looked around. The warlocks, including Josie, had withdrawn into the Underkeepers’ Headquarters, g that they o perform some rituals of their own to prepare, in case they were drawn into a prht. Bernt wasn’t sure exactly what they might be doing, but he supposed there would be a reason they didn’t do it out here where everyone could see.

  Most of the Underkeepers were standing or sitting nearby – they o be here in case the enemy broke through. Despite the seriousness of the rger situation, he had to smile as Jori scrambled up one of the massive pilrs that held up the cavern ceiling and flung herself into the air. She spread her wings, swooping past Nirlig and a small group of goblins and flung little sparks of hellfire out to both sides to cheers and a smattering of appuse.

  Wandering over to Lin and Kustov, he waited until the witch lifted her brush from the stoo dip it bato her odd writing mixture.

  “Is that a type of rune script?” he asked her. “It doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen in a spellform.”

  “No, no,” Lin said with a dry ugh. “This is not a ward. It is praying. Pnt ink here is to make e with a spirit – a spirit. Old patron, you say maybe. The shamans teach them the signs and they help us, when they are willing.”

  Kustov, having finished with his rune warding, was studying the old goblin’s markings with i now as well. “I didn’t know you had your own system of writing. I thought goblins didn’t have books at all.”

  “We don’t,” Lin sniffed indignantly. “Books are for people with tiny heads.” She mimed a small head on her shoulders. “Writing is sacred, not for foolish children who ot remember their songs.”

  Kustov looked very ied now. “Really? And you use it to direct a natural spirit? Do you think you could teach me?”

  “No,” she said bluntly and turned back to her work. “It is not for you.”

  ***

  Bernt’s stomach was starting to growl. It hadn’t been that long sihey sealed the main tunnel – maybe an hour or so, but he haden anything since he’d e down from the surface several hours before that. He’d found a semi-private er behind a massive pilr to practice his casting again, but he could still hear the dull roar of versation nearby – he would know if something happened. Determio find something to eat, Bernt stood up and stretched his legs. He doubted he was going to make any more progress today, anyway. Besides, he couldn’t afford to wear out his tration too much if they were going to fight again.

  If they were lucky, the army would e knog on their door, soon. All things sidered, it was better to pn for the worst. As he rouhe pilr, though, he saw that something was happening. The trickle of evacuees had dried up, and the warlocks were bad perf some kind of ritual out where everyone could see.

  Eae carried a tainer of some kind, ranging from buckets to leather skins, and was using the tents to paint on the floor with brushes and rags. Bernt found Josie in the crowd of people w a short distance away and approached her. He had to pass by another warlo the way and saw that the bck liquid was oddly foamy and smelled awful.

  Josie had a rge bucket – probably from the Underkeepers’ janitorial closet, and held a brush in one hand, with which she drew an enormous circle on the ground. She was using a string as a guide, which inned under Radast’s foot. The head solicitor stood at the ter of the rge pattern direg the efforts of his people, while the remaining warlocks drew plex patterns ihe circle.

  “What is that?” Bernt asked when he reached her. “It smells disgusting.”

  Josie looked up and grinned wolfishly. “It’s demon blood. We’re setting up a mass banishment ritual. If they break through here, we should be able to clear out a lot of the demons before they get into any of the neighborhoods down here."

  Bernt stared at her unprehendingly. He khat not all demons had burning blood like Jori did. Josie’s midnight hag didn’t seem to have any association with hellfire, and shades weren’t corporeal at all. But that still left an important question “Which demon did you get that much blood from?”

  “Which do you think?” She ughed. “If you want to banish a demon, the best way to do it is to use their own hierarchies against them. We got the blood from Varamemnon.”

  Bernt choked.

  “You bled a greater demon in the Underkeepers’ headquarters? How?!”

  At Bernt’s outburst, a few nearby Underkeepers turo look and he gave them a pg wave.

  “It’s not like that,” Josie said defensively and lowered her voice. “It erfectly safe. Mostly. We summohe blood directly.”

  “What do you mean ‘mostly’?” Bernt asked.

  “It’s pletely safe!” she corrected herself. “The ritual is just a modified version of a demon summoning, but instead of the entire demon, you just bring over a bit of it a bleed. It’s only dangerous if you summon the majority of its mass – then it might regee the missing bits, and you get aire demon. The bigger the demon, the safer it is to summon a good-sized k of it.”

  Bernt eyed the bucket, and then looked around at all the other tainers. There had to be enough here to fill a small barrel.

  “Does that mean you injured him?” he asked. “Over in the hells, I mean. If you just split a demon in half with a ritual from over here, why don’t warlocks just do that to get rid of all the most dangerous ones?”

  Josie ughed. “Because it doesn’t work. We’re not really taking aart of them on their own pne. We’re maing them in our reality. It’s more like a copy, rather than their inal self. Uheir sciousness came over with it, I don’t think they would even notice. Besides, I'm pretty sure Varamemnon is enormous.”

  “Ah.” Bernt said, chagrined. He supposed that, if it was that easy, someone would have do a long time ago already. “Do you think it’s going to work?”

  “Solicitor Radast knows what he’s doing.” The warlock said fidently. “You don’t bee a Head Solicitor at a major office like ours just by luck or circumstance.”

  ***

  Iria leaned out of her window and cast a magic missile, carefully modifying the spellform as she shaped it to give the projectile a much longer ra shot off toward a streeter, taking the head off of a duergar officer just as he poked his head around the side of a building.

  “Who do we have?” Iria asked he guild’s receptionist. She’d sent nearly everyoo assist in the main battle. The guild forces were currently pushing the duergar advance back with brutal effid the duergar were retreating back down toward the Uy Gate – unfortunately iively good order. They’d even mao bog down Ambrose using aire team of enhanced fighters of some kind that she wasn’t familiar with, though they hadn’t mao actually injure him yet. She wao think they were winning, but she suspected that the enemy had gotten what they came for.

  She’d lost colleagues and friends today already, and the uilds weren’t doing aer. The duergar had a way of pulling out surprises at the worst possible moments. Ironically, the simple ones were the worst. One of their warlocks had begun lobbing fire over an inner wall into the Lower District – into a neighborhood that they hadn’t mao evacuate. She had a pyromancer and a hydromancer on it, but it was already too te for hundreds of civilians and the fire wasn't under trol, yet.

  Those who remai the guild tower were too old or too unpracticed to put ih of demons and rampaging soldiers. It was her own godsdamned fault. She hadn’t been watg the walls. That was Righmond’s job. They still hadn’t been breached, for that matter – it was the first thing she’d checked when she realized that a group of nearly fifty Duergar was rampaging inward from the western walls. A teleport spell, most likely, and a very sophisticated oo have gotten through their wards.

  “There's the two of us,” Nole replied as he leaned out of the window o hers to get a better look, “and perhaps one or two of the engineers.” He raised his wand a a bolt of green lightning at the advang duergar with a crack. Seeing him appear, one of them lifted a staff, and the spell was redirected to strike it instead, shooting out of the bottom to disperse into the ground.

  Iria cursed herself as she sent anic missile into the street without looking and ripped a hellhound in half. This was what she got for turning her back thmond’s inpetence! She was an archmage, yes, but she was also a diviner. While nobody in their right mind would challenge her to a duel, there was a limit to how much rge-scale destru she could wreak. Nole was an aplished duelist, but simirly ill-suited to this kind of fight.

  “I hear fighting!” A reedy but eic voice said from the door. Iria looked behio find Pollock standing there, his hair and robes looking mussed as if he'd just rise from a nap. “Oh good, is it right out there? Why did nobody call me?”

  He shuffled toward them with his slow, geriatric gait.

  Something, probably a force spell, bounced off the wards so hard that it sent ripples of color along the invisible barrier that they marked. If that mage down there knew what he was doing they had maybe ten minutes before he figured out how to get through. The wards weren’t really meant to keep people out so much as offensive spells. They could do it, but not forever.

  Iria held up a hand, “You’re not in any dition to fight a battle, magister. You barely walk unaided!”

  Pollock harrumphed indignantly in the way that only genuinely old people could. “I’m not a berserker, girl, I’m a pyromancer. Get out of my way!”

  He tugged feebly at her sleeve and, after a moment’s sideration, she relented. Pollock really was the right person for this situation, or he would have beey years ago. The man’s true calling was as an academic, sure, but he was also one of the most dangerous people in this city.

  The old man poked his head out of the window.

  “They have an abjurer down there,” Iria filled him in. “Other than that, it looks like maybe an arist, a few specialized fighters, fire demons and probably some warlocks. It’s hard to tell them apart.”

  Without trag so much as a tral rune, Pollock hurled a familiar-looking grayish fireball down, followed half a sed ter by ahe abjurer below raised his staff again and caught one, but the other strue, taking an unfamiliar humanoid demon with goat legs in the chest. The fmes bored a hole straight through and the creature colpsed.

  “Well,” Pollock said, leaning bato the room with a grin. “Not bad! I would say the boy did alright with that spell, wouldn't you? Still, no sense iing them go to waste.”

  Drawing a gnarled looking wand from his belt, he leaned back out the window and began casting something. He took his time about it, nearly three seds, before Iria saw what he was doing.

  One of the hellhounds standihe back of the group made a loud hissing souirely uhe massive dogs that the creatures resembled. Then it rose into the air, and tilted oddly on its axis as the hiss intensified into a high-pitched scream. A momehe creature started glowing, and then it melted into a ball of roiling fmes.

  Someone shouted below, but it was too te to run. There was a sound like thunder and Iria had to back up and raise a hand to block the light ahat radiated up from the street.

  ared at the old man, his mouth hanging wide open. He robably trying to calcute just how much mana the old man would have had to el to create that much heat. It ointless exercise – Iria already knew he’d cheated.

  “Everyone always fets that a lot of these third-hell demons are practically made of fire.” Polloeo him in a lecturing tone. “Good stuff, too.” He looked as if he was about to tinue, but interrupted himself as he caught sight of something ireet. “Hey! I missed one!”

  Iria looked. The rui by the duergar bomber across the street were now well and truly gone. Heat radiated up from the street with sutensity that Iria could feel it toasting her face three stories up. But, sure enough, the duergar abjurer was still standing there, safe on a small circur patch of unburnt ground. He certainly looked rattled, though.

  “Don’t worry about him,” she said. “I think I’d like to ask him a few questions.”