Jackal Among Snakes

It was monumentally challenging for Anneliese to keep her wits when the earth fell out beneath her feet, yet it proved infinitely more challenging when it rose up to swallow her just as things were calming. Dimocles’ great gash in the earth was not the end to the assault—it was merely a change of arena, one over which he had more mastery.

Dimocles’ flesh was his to control, and it felt as though that ability had extended throughout the whole of the earth. The walls of this vast crater writhed and twisted like something alive, and she heard the screams of thousands of lives extinguished. Other times, she didn’t hear screams at all—she saw people trapped, compressed, and turned to nothing more than gore beneath thousands of tons of earth. They crunched and cracked like meat and bones in earthen teeth.

The earth hunted her, too, though without precision. Great mounds of dirt, sand, and rock attacked from beside and above as she fell, and she dodged them with practiced use of her enchanted boots. Before long the assault became too heavy, and she was forced to counter with two powerful blasts of wind that sent rock upward where it once had fallen. She saw Dimocles, and rather wished she hadn’t.

Dimocles descended down into the crater, too, in the center of this vast crack. His body stretched unfathomably thin and branched out to bridge the whole of the gap as though he was a giant daddy long-leg. Only the head, still bearing the visage of Ji Meng, remained undistorted. Thousands of teal eyes on his elongated limbs frantically searched the pit below before one spotted her after she’d been forced to burst free of the pit. Every eye turned to her at once, their teal light shining like lanterns. Then, she saw vast quantities of magic erupt at the edges of the crater as Dimocles sent commands into the earth.

Anneliese finally reached the bottom of this pit, landing upon the wet sand at the bottom. Meanwhile, the walls themselves started to fold inwards, the faint light above narrowing as it inched ever closer. Dimocles’ colossal and spider-like body slowly recompressed as the edges of the crater came back to bury all that had fallen.

But Anneliese’s goal remained unchanged. She was to kill Dimocles.

Rather than wait, she ascended upwards, powerful bursts of air echoing throughout this vast cavern. The floor beneath spurred into action, gargantuan earthen hands rising up to grasp her, to stop her. Clever wards that she used as platforms stopped them, and the unquantifiable magic within the attacks fueled her ascent.

A great arm erupted from the walls moving slowly, yet when it neared golden-armored palace guards burst from the knuckles, jumping madly. She hoped she might make allies of them, yet she noticed the black malignance of necromancy bursting within them one second too late. Dimocles must’ve killed them, seized them, and repurposed them. They cut through the ward she’d made with their magic-dispelling divine armaments, and then the great hand of earth slammed into her.

The Inerrant Cloak stopped the mighty attack in its track, draining the whole of her magic. Some scant drops of magic flowed into her being, yet it wasn’t enough for a sufficient counter. Knowing attack was her defense, she frantically cast lightning magic at Dimocles, and his conjured wards rejuvenated her enough to facilitate a rapid flight to retreat downward. She used gravity and the force of her magic winds to propel herself as fast as she’d ever gone, whereupon she collapsed ungracefully at the bottom, the Inerrant Cloak absorbing the damage from the fall.

The now-undead palace guards landed all around her from the skies as the walls continued to cave in. Light was thinning to nothing more than small circle… yet suddenly, their unceasing advance stopped. The vast quantities of magic bursting free of Dimocles ceased, and she realized the five minutes were up. The walls’ unnatural movement halted, and this chasm was now a slave only to the forces of nature.

Dimocles, unable to flee, curled those thin and disgusting arms back inward and fell down where undead servants caught him and set him down gently like the emperor he disguised himself as. Anneliese calmed her breathing as the chaos of the fight waned, yet even as she watched, more and more of the palace guards crawled out from the crumbling ceiling and the tumbling walls, broken yet kept walking by necromancy.

magic. You have no way of getting more. No one would be foolish enough to follow after us into this… this sinkhole.”

the ceiling, casting great stretches of the misshapen crater down as boulders and landslides. Anneliese neared the center, where tumbling rocks

could keep you,” Dimocles continued. “No—one way or another, I will,” he swore, gesturing to the undead minions.

Dimocles’ face was inscrutable, and she could discern no true emotions from it. No—it was she, alone, against the undead palace guards that could dispel magic with their weapons, and an S-rank spellcaster who knew of

been stolen; if

she was near certain. Even still, she knew it prudent to keep others informed, and so she swallowed pride and informed her sister-in-law

was sent, she walked

nodded. “Dead, alive… it doesn’t matter to me. It’s

an ice spear straight into the undead’s neck. As it

shouted in panicked

earth magic Dimocles had amply displayed, Anneliese cast a spell into the ground. The earth rumbled in an obvious wave as magic carried her will, and then a spike erupted forth where the palace guards were concentrated. Their blades mitigated the effect slightly, but their formation was largely shattered and the spike continued on toward Dimocles. He was forced to block with a ward, and yet more magic

calmly stood atop the spike of earth she’d just made as yet more portions of the wall and ceiling shook the ground

here, Dimocles,” she told him. “With a face not your own, in a land

thought of a response. Just as he opened his mouth, a huge boulder landed behind him and he turned his head back in surprise. Anneliese quickly cast lighting magic, and three bolts of lighting spread out

turned and retaliated by instinct with a high-ranking ward. Dimocles was losing composure, forgetting his plan. Anneliese hammered upon it with low-ranking lightning magic that the palace

crude undead wearing the skin of elite soldiers. They didn’t learn, didn’t adapt, and one-by-one she dismantled them efficiently to absorb the magic within them at less expense than she used to end him. Dimocles tried time and time to again to work alongside his creations to land a blow… but even if he had been more competent, she

the palace guards remained, she looked to Dimocles. For the first time, she read him as clear as day. Fear, panic. It oozed from him as he accepted this was his inevitable confrontation with death. In his fear and panic, he

his mouth… but Anneliese merely went to the air, leaving behind a B-rank ice spell. An axe blade descended on Dimocles like a guillotine, cutting right through him and sending two parts of him

and their power at his beck