Syrook twisted his tail, pulling Lith close enough for his head to lunge at the exposed upside-down left membranous wing on the Tiamat's back.
Much to his surprise, Lith didn't try to break free from the grip nor to stretch his wings as far away as possible. The four bones in between the membranes flexed like fingers, forming what looked like a thumbs-down fist.
Then, the wing punched the Black Dragon's face with an uppercut movement that closed his mouth shut and sent his neck back like a whip.
'You are not the only one with extra limbs, pal.' Lith thought while he exploited the recoil from the wing's punch to pivot on his trapped leg and kick the Black Dragon square in the chest with the other.
His talons dug past the scales and into the flesh, making Syrook bleed as he was sent slamming against the walls of Zeska. The entire city trembled as if it had been struck by an earthquake and several people fell down the battlements.
Before the Black Dragon could recover, Lith unleashed one of the most powerful spells he knew, Primordial Roar.
It manifested the aspects of all elements, using air to create a powerful shockwave whose strength was boosted by fire while water froze the target, earth locked the enemy's movements, light needles pierced their body, and darkness coated everything else.
The hexa elemental Spirit Spell further intensified the quake, putting the arrays that protected the city under so much strain that they became visible to the naked eye.
Meanwhile, Solus had her hands full as well.
'Thank the gods all that insane training Lith put me through allowed me to master all the six elements and to manifest the emerald streak in my hair, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to use Domination on a Spirit spell.' She thought.
'I'm still too weak to counter every spell with another, let alone take them head-on. Domination, instead, allows me to exploit my surgical precision in controlling mana flows and to hijack spells with minimum consumption of energy on my side.
'On top of that, the Yggdrasill wood and the Evil Eyes offer me the perfect cover. Everyone will think that it's all thanks to my artifact while it just gives me the strength to keep standing.'
"I knew it!" Quaron laughed like a madman while darting toward her and dodging the hail of spells from the mages of the regiment. "There was no way that you achieved so much on your own, Verhen.
"Kwart was right about you, hypocritical bastard. Despite your pretty words, you are just like me. You sold yourself to a Divine Beast in exchange for power. You are a Harbinger as well!"
'The boosted core, the Origin Flames, and all of Quaron's strange abilities are just part of the powers of a Harbinger?' Solus was flabbergasted.
She knew of their existence, but it was the first time that they actually met one.
Quaron lunged with his polearm, taking advantage of its longer reach compared to War. If Solus dodged, he would keep the offensive. If she blocked, he would spin the staff and attack her with the blade on the other end of his weapon before she could react.
Solus was still recovering from the exertion of Dominating Breakdown and even if she wasn't, her body coordination was severely lacking. Knowing all of Lith's battle techniques was pointless if she was incapable of performing them.
'I could Blink, but he would see my exit point with Life Vision and I would have just wasted mana. I can't allow him to cut the armor. Not only would people realize that Lith isn't here anymore, but if Quaron notices that I have just a deep blue core, he only has to exploit my lack of mana to win easily.' She thought.
Instead of just blocking, Solus hit the polearm with War with all the strength she could muster. Quaron had taken Lith's insane physical prowess into account for his plan, but Solus was stronger.
The full weight of a nine-story mage tower struck the glaive, almost ripping it off the Ranger's fingers and pushing him off balance. Then, Solus lunged with the Sage Staff, hitting Quaron's exposed chest and sending him crashing against the city walls for the second time in less than five minutes.
"Fuck me sideways!" Solus cursed her stupidity.
Her strength faded with every move she made. She couldn't afford to chase her prey around nor waste precious mana with Spirit Spells. On top of that, flying or Blinking while inside the array field would expose Lith's identity as an Awakened.
Luckily for her, she had no need to.
"Attack!" The regiment of mages didn't waste the opportunity that had been offered to them.
Both the Dragon and the traitor were now nailed to the walls, making them easy targets. The barrage of tier five spells produced by the one thousand mages deepened Syrook's wounds and opened new ones.
Blasts of fire, ice, and darkness shook the east side of Zeska. The people behind the walls screamed in terror as the shockwaves caused by the spells made their houses tremble as if they were made jelly instead of solid stone.
As for Quaron, he survived only thanks to the many protective enchantments of the equipment that his master had given him. No barrier could fully block such an onslaught, but he was an Awakened.
Darkness magic allowed him to ignore the pain from the burn and freeze wounds, keeping his breathing rhythm stable. When the mages stopped their attack to let the dust settle and check the result of their work, he was unscathed.
Most of his artifacts had their power cores almost depleted and Quaron had only a few uses left of Invigoration before it lost any effect, but the mages of the Kingdom had no way to know it.
"He… He's immune to magic." A soldier with a deep green core said before collapsing onto the ground from exhaustion.
He had given his all, yet he refused to surrender. He tried to reach his blade but he lost consciousness along with all those too weak from the mana abuse.
"Nonsense!" Solus could feel the despair gripping the hearts of the soldiers and she shed it away with a burst of light.
Her tier three Light Mastery spell, Sunburst, generated a beam of incandescent light that struck Quaron exactly in the dent left by the Sage Staff in his armor. The Ranger kneeled in pain, groaning and cursing his inability to use Spirit Magic to Blink.
"See? He's just a man covered in stolen equipment. As long as we keep him near Zeska, he can't fly nor dodge. Take him down!" Solus regretted not having used a stronger spell, but she couldn't risk it being foiled by a mere Spirit Blink.
She was too far away to exploit the exit point and she had to keep Lith's abilities a secret.
'At least now I'm sure that Harbingers don't inherit their master's knowledge for free.' She thought, glad to have an army of mages that made up for the mana she lacked.
"Enough!" Syrook roared as the violet light that still shone on his chest spread throughout his body.
'We still have to check the armory and there's no guarantee that we can make them talk before the guards swarm the place. Zealots are tough nuts to crack.'
Solus memorized their energy signature and checked the direction they moved to after leaving the City Hall, to have an idea of where to find them later. Only then did she return to Lith who was still far from recovering.
'What do you think about this?' She asked after sharing her most recent memories.
'That it explains a lot.' Lith replied. 'Whoever this god is, those nobles are willing to temporarily take down the arrays just to talk with them, something they didn't do even for Quaron.'
'At least that we know of.' Solus pointed out.
'Also, the accountant part means that either they have a quota of goods that their "god" demands from them or that they are competing with the other cities in order to gain the god's favor.' Lith said.
'It makes sense.' Solus nodded. 'The City Lords of the Nestrar region rebelled from the Kingdom not just because Quaron spurred them, but because they really think they can win the war thanks to this god.'
'Letting those guys go was the right move, Solus. This way, they will talk freely during their meeting and when we get them, we'll have access to fresh information.'
Lith had to wait for more than an hour to stop feeling dizzy and be capable of using his peak strength in the case of a fight. The moment his life force stabilized, he went to the City Lord's office.
Just like the treasury, the armory wasn't a big vault in a deep dungeon. No one wanted a place hard to reach that would take a long time to open during an emergency.
The Kingdom always favored practicality so instead of safes it used a special kind of dimensional space that would work even under the effect of the elemental sealing arrays.
The problem, however, was twofold. One had first to find them and then to know how to open them. During his tour as a Ranger, Lith had learned that the armory would always be located in the Lord's office to give them quick access to the artifacts in case of need.
At least, that was how things worked in the north.
Getting past the enchanted door took just another Clean Slate spell, but once inside things got harder. The room was filled with arrays that would trigger on contact, from detection of movement or even of body heat.
'How the heck did those guys deactivate this madness?' Lith asked.
'They didn't. The silver key that opened the door must have been linked to the arrays' formation as well. Which means that the lock controls them. Wish me luck.' While Lith still stood in the doorway, Solus shapeshifted from a ring into a key.
'Clean Slate has removed the imprint, but the enchantment still works.' She thought as she fused with the lock, trying to take control of the defensive system.
Meanwhile, Lith used tendrils of Spirit Magic to search the room for anything that could hide the armory. The trick used by the Royal Wardens was to permanently stretch a portion of space.
Dimensional sealing arrays kept spells from being activated but they had no effect on an already activated enchantment. On top of that, the dimensional space could be easily hidden inside a drawer, a closet, or even right under the Lord's desk.
Lith had lots of places to search and no idea where to start.
The Spirit Magic tendrils were ethereal, but they would still trigger the movement detection array the moment they interacted with anything in the office. Lith could only use them to probe everything for spaces bigger on the inside.
As for Solus, she didn't fare any better.
After fusing with the lock, she had discovered that to turn off the arrays all she had to do was to push the magical equivalent of a switch. The problem was that the enchantment of the door had dozens of them.
One would deactivate the office's defense system while all the others would trigger them and sound the alarm.
'Fuck me sideways.' She thought. 'I should have stolen that damn key!'
Solus had to slowly merge with the pseudo core of the door so that she could check the mana pathways of every switch without the need to activate them. Luckily for them, the Royal Forgemasters favored practicality as well.
All the pathways of the fake switches converged to a single spell. The enchantment was too complicated to understand it quickly, but Solus had no need to. She simply triggered the only switch that had a spell of its own.
Fake mages had never considered the idea of a living artifact, leaving their masterpiece exposed to the attack of Solus's power core.
'I did it! We can get inside safely.' She said while telepathically puffing out her chest with pride.
'At least you have good news. There's nothing unlocked in this place. My tendrils couldn't get anywhere without pushing or pulling a spell so I'm still at square one. This might take a-' Life Vision showed Lith that the dimensional sealing arrays of Zeska had been turned off.
'The meeting with the god must have begun.' Solus had almost forgotten about it.
'Finally some luck!' Lith took out his communication amulet and called his supervisor.
Captain Estar had already informed command about Lith's plan, so it didn't take him long to explain why he needed to know where the armory was and how to open it.
"Shouldn't you exploit this opportunity to inform your men and raid the city?" Brigadier General Berion asked.
He was a man in his mid-thirties, standing 1.8 (5'11") meters tall with pitch-black hair and eyes. His pale blue uniform had a single gold star on the stripes of either shoulder and could barely contain his muscular body, giving to each of his movements an impression of strength.
"Negative, sir. They would be surrounded and outnumbered. On top of that, the moment the alarm sounds, the arrays will be restored and our mages would have no way out.
"One thousand mages cannot claim a city in such a short time and even if they did, the casualties on both sides would be massive." Lith replied while deactivating the armory's protections under Berion's supervision.
"It seems that your assessment was right." The General frowned when they discovered that the dimensional space had been completely emptied. "With that firepower, the city guards can easily dispose of mages who can't rely on movement spells."
"Maybe and maybe not." Lith couldn't stop thinking about the conversation that Solus had overheard. "Where's the treasury, sir?"
It was the only way to "casually discover" the issue of the missing funds without having to explain how he could have possibly read the logs of the past few months in such a short time.
"Bottom left desk drawer. Hidden under a lid in the chamber pot." Berion couldn't care less about the gold in those circumstances but he trusted Lith.
The General knew that there had to be a good reason for such a request.. Berion would wait for Lith's report before questioning his actions or asking him how had he managed to get inside the City Lord's office unhindered.
