Had he been alone, Gaius would've scaled the nearest wall and gone above the alefs. That wasn't exactly possible thanks to Esven's heavy armor, Victor's lumbering lack of coordination, and Alessia's restrictive dress and general physical shape. In all the time he'd known the witch, he didn't see her so much as jog.

  Having obscured their retreat with a thick cloud of fog, Gaius wiped his brow and took point, doubling back until he found a suitable house.

  He pointed at the door and gave Victor a nod. A cupboard was propping it up, but that didn't matter much after the northerner smashed into it with his entire frame.

  A couple of elderly Siembrans armed with cutlery huddled together on the other side. When they spotted Esven, the captain took the brunt of their explosive displeasure with the situation.

  Doing his best to ignore the heated bickering, Gaius turned his attention to the broken door. He fished out a yellowish rock from one of his pockets and placed it at the threshold. After mouthing an incantation, Gaius stepped back. An illusory door that looked as solid and weathered as the rest of the house stood before him.

  Victor touched the illusion only to jerk his hand away, as there was resistance to his touch.

  "You'd need to push with all your might to dispel this image," Gaius explained and headed further inside the house.

  He located the basement, unlocked the door with a piece of wire, and dragged Esven away from the townsfolk despite their protests.

  A quick inspection of the basement revealed a narrow tunnel. Following it placed the group outside, several blocks away from the main cluster of alefs, but not far enough to put them in the clear.

  "Rime and frost. Water and sleet. Whatever the cost. They're not gonna eat. Ahem, me."

  A sallow, sickly man wrapped in a thick blue robe was staring down a crowd of alefs.

  The overabundance of bags and pouches revealed the man as an adventurer. His attire pegged him for a wizard.

  "I hate rhyming wizards. So undignified," was all Gaius had a chance to say before he was forced to turn his back to the street, covering Isabella with his body. To his side, Victor did the same with Alessia.

  That left Esven the odd man out. Lacking the understanding of what was going on, or the instinct to copy those who did, he had the front row seat to an astonishing feat of sorcery.

  All the bits of heat and moisture drained from the air, creating a localized winter on that particular Siembran street. Winter of the kind that makes the stoutest of northerners wrap themselves in furs and shuffle closer to the fire.

  A biting wind that chilled to the bone followed, rolling down the road towards the alefs. Everything this gust narrowly avoided got covered in hoarfrost, icicles grew from surrounding roofs, and even Esven's mustache turned white.

  The alefs weren't as lucky. One moment they were doing their usual exploratory shuffle, the next, they were encased in ice up to their waists.

  "And now descend. And make them repent," the wizard yelled.

  His magic was stronger than his rhyming skills. A sphere of ice appeared above the alefs. It hung in the air for a few seconds before recognizing its targets and descending straight down to shatter into a million razor-sharp pieces. The impact all but disintegrated the frozen alefs, leaving Esven with his mouth agape and teeth chattering.

  Safe from immediate danger, the wizard disappeared in the weave of Siembra's buildings, leaving behind an ice-coated road.

  Warming themselves with a palm-sized orb of fire Gaius produced, his companions gathered to assess the situation.

  "How'd you know those old bone bags had a tunnel in their basement?" Esven asked. Each word cost him a great deal of effort.

  Gaius' keen eyes of a thief could spot a building with a secret passage based purely on how it sat on its foundation. It was an indescribable sense he managed to develop after spending a lot of time in towns and cities, learning their language, and attuning himself to their secrets. This was the same sense he used to predict where Donny would emerge after making his escape.

  "Doesn't matter," he said. "Just follow me and we'll get to where we're going."

  "And where's that?" Isabella asked. "Because right now we're further away from the eye of this alef storm than we were before."

  "Yes, I understand you're not too fond of me abandoning you in my futile attempt to avoid dealing with this." Gaius pointed to the bits of slowly thawing alefs before them. "But now I'm here and I intend to see things through. I don't want this town to fall any more than you do."

  "Ugh, just shut up already, you two," Alessia groaned.

  Gaius killed the flame and started moving. He could feel a lot of explaining in his future, but right now, he preferred to focus on the more pressing issues.

  Following Gaius' lead, their group managed to avoid the bulk of the alefs while gradually getting closer to the spot Esven told him about. At one point, they even took a detour through a hiking trail up the mountains to then descend down and approach the alef source from behind.

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  A metal tube about shoulder-wide protruded from the ground. It was surrounded by a concaved barricade made of overturned carts and sharpened logs. The barricade was open towards Siembra, funneling in a steady stream of alefs.

  "What in Mallia's name is that? Should we blast it?" Esven asked, his eyes stuck to the tube.

  "I don't think we should announce our presence just yet," Gaius said, searching for hidden traps or signs of ambush.

  "I say we blast it."

  This wasn't so much an idea as it was a declaration of action. Esven wasn't halfway through that short sentence when he let loose one of his special bolts.

  The bolt exploded into a flower of fire a good few steps away from even the barricade, revealing the soapy bubble of an arcane shield.

  Gaius considered getting stuck on the minute differences between a shield like this and its divine cousin protecting Isabella, but had to cut that train of thought short when it became clear Esven's bolt didn't make them any new friends.

  A wave of energy washed over him, leaving barely enough time to warn his companions and duck.

  Whoever was driving this show wasn't as flashy as Gertrude or the rhyming hydromancer. A wave of bone-breaking force simply descended on Gaius and everyone around him.

  Isabella was the only one left standing after the initial blast. Others were scattered around the barrier, unwell to a varying degree.

  Prone and dazed, Gaius lifted himself up on his elbow to see one of the logs tear away from the barricade, shoot up, and dart towards Isabella.

  The knight made no effort to move away, which was as admirable as it was foolish. Unless Gaius was very mistaken, the log was about to bounce off Isabella's shield into the other, less invulnerable members of the group.

  Before that happened, Gaius used whatever strength he had left in him to jerk forward and start crawling.

  Esven was nowhere to be seen and Victor was already walking the blast's effects off. This left Alessia, who was still on the ground and barely moving.

  A quick glance at Victor confirmed that the northerner was still dazed, mumbling something to himself as he was stumbling around without any clear goal.

  "Why am I the one who has to do everything," Gaius growled, as he grabbed Alessia under her arms and dragged her away from the spot that not a second later got impaled by the log.

  The shock of this near-miss got the witch moving. She wrestled away from Gaius who was too busy spitting out the dirt produced by the log's impact.

  "Just you dare give me any lip now," Gaius said between coughing fits.

  Unharmed by the log, Isabella was lost in a prayer off to the side by the barricade.

  "This won't work, my dear," a squeaky voice announced.

  As that happened, an invisibility spell faded, revealing a wizard and his pair of bodyguards.

  Normally, the bodyguards would be the remarkable part of this trio as they were a couple of reanimated skeletons. And not the kind that bordered on zombies - half-decomposed and still wearing bits of armor and clothing. No, these guys were the real deal. Clean ivory bone with two ruby-red flames glowing inside their empty eye sockets.

  But these circumstances were far from normal, and so the wizard attracted the majority of Gaius' attention. His robes were practical once, now sullied and tattered. And his features, sunken and lifeless, were quite familiar.

  He was one of the Sea Boars, the adventuring party that robbed Vasily's Emporium a while back only to then find their doom after Gaius lifted their antidote. If Gaius had to guess, the skeletons were once Sea Boars as well. Their missing gear was now sitting on a shelf in his store.

  "I was told to expect company, but I never imagined it would be you," the Boar wizard moved his head to face Gaius. "Now, we'll have us some fun."

  A boulder jumped up from a big pile by the mountain and flew in a wide arc towards Gaius. Its near-miss was accompanied by a grim cackle, as Gaius' dodge put him right on top of Alessia to the wizard's abundant joy.

  "Who exactly is this necromancer?" Alessia whispered in the ensuing scramble.

  "Just a disgruntled customer," Gaius said. "And I believe he might be quite dead himself."

  "Good."

  "How so?"

  "Just keep him distracted for a bit and you'll see," the witch said, staying very still and lifeless.

  Gaius stood up, his entire body aching. He spent a moment to catch his breath.

  The wizard wasn't too happy with that. He chucked another boulder at Gaius.

  This one missed as well, while Gaius got a few steps closer to the arcane barrier.

  To the side, Isabella finished her prayer. A bolt of white lightning pierced the sky and electrified the air, only to fizzle out when it reached the barrier.

  "Told you this wouldn't work." The wizard was jumping with glee, his joints moving in ways most unnatural.

  "You sure are more talkative now that you're dead," Gaius pointed out when the wizard shifted his attention to him.

  The wizard's sunken eyes were colored with unbridled malice when he said, "My brothers have no tongues now, thanks to you." He threw a quick glance at the skeletons behind him. "This leaves me as the face of the Sea Boars."

  "And who exactly do you have to blame for that, buddy?" Gaius asked, unfazed by the supernatural nature of the conversation.

  Instead of an answer, he got a hiss and another boulder. This one missed Gaius and bounced off the barrier.

  "This won't work either, merchant," the wizard's features were stretched with a mocking grin.

  In the corner of his eye, Gaius spotted Alessia limp closer to the barrier. Her dress was sturdier than it looked, but whatever enchantments protected it from disintegrating, were powerless against dirt. That, paired with a streak of blood covering one of Alessia's eyes, made her look like a proper swamp witch, the kind that'll steal your kids and eat your cattle, or maybe the other way around.

  The skeletons behind the wizard turned their flickering gazes towards Alessia. The wizard copied that move and raised his arm to conjure something most nasty, but he was too late. A vial appeared in Alessia's hand. It uncorked itself, letting out a gust of billowing smoke that surged at the three undead Boars right through their barrier, engulfing them whole. When it dissipated, it left behind two piles of bones and a lifeless corpse.

  The endless wave of alefs was still marching into Siembra and that was a big problem, but for the moment they seemed completely oblivious to the battle that just happened right behind them.

  "What did you do?" Gaius asked Alessia who was too preoccupied with dusting off her dress to concern herself with the blood streaking down her face.

  "Undead. Their existence is an affront to nature. My concoction reminded it to right itself. Simple as that."

  "Why didn't my prayer work then?" Isabella asked.

  She had just finished channeling healing energy into Esven whose heavy armor only amplified that initial blast of force.

  Alessia considered if she had to even acknowledge Isabella's presence, but under Gaius' stern gaze, she relented.

  "Divine magic, arcane magic. Still magic. Shields are very good at deflecting it. My concoction? Just heavy air. No wizard creates a barrier that stops air unless he wants to suffocate."

  "This one didn't need to breathe," Gaius pointed out.

  Victor tried to step through the barrier, only to get zapped away and land on his ass with a loud thump.

  "It's still standing, hun," he said from the ground. "Shouldn't it disappear now that the mage is dead for good?"

  "It really should," Gaius said, reaching for his axe.

  Story Facts - Chapter 27