Manohar had them brought to the City Hall, the most secure location in Zeska.
The Royal Seal also granted him full control over the arrays and the enchanted prisons in the underground dungeons. Manohar was confident that only an Awakened might escape from there and only if they knew Spirit Magic.
According to Lith, however, Skinwalkers couldn't Awaken without dying so they had no way out. The god of healing had them watched 24/7 by multiple guards at the same time, just to be safe.
"What a cunning daughter of a bastard!" It had taken Manohar a lot of time to find the runes of the slave spell hidden under the folds of the Skinwalkers' life force. "This is without a doubt the longest diagnosis of my life.
"Almost two hours to identify the problem, one hour to devise a spell to spot the runes, and two more to dumb it down enough for everyone to use it."
A lot of time according to his standards, of course.
"Yes, fine. You are the greatest Healer of Mogar, Manohar. We get that." Queen Sylpha sighed in annoyance at the painstakingly accurate retelling of his most recent feat that had taken most of her afternoon.
"Now if you're done preening your feathers, I'd like to know how many Skinwalkers you found and who they replaced."
"Of the over two hundred nobles that Quaron imprisoned, only 163 have been replaced by Skinwalkers." Manohar said. "You have no idea how terrible it was when I examined the first subject and found no anomaly.
"For a second I almost doubted my talent, but after moving on to the next, I understood that I had just been unlucky and that the guy was actually human."
"Gods, it must have been heart wrenching." The Queen said with all the sarcasm that her voice could convey. "How bad is the intel leak?"
"Well, you are thoroughly screwed, Sylpha. Thrud's goons had access to every database and vault of the region. By now they must have taken whatever they wanted and learned everything they needed.
"You need to change every access code and-" A rumble of thunder accompanied the explosion of the wall behind the City Lord's chair where Manohar sat.
The violence of the blast and the heavy debris flying through the room like bullets would have been enough to kill an ordinary mage, but nothing about Manohar was ordinary.
The moment he had perceived a distortion in the arrays, he had used his chair as a framework for a hard-light construct, turning it into an impregnable shield. At the same time, he had activated the Featherwalker armor he wore so that it would cover his ears.
The shockwave that was meant to send him sprawling on the floor and to damage his sense of hearing left him unfazed.
"Dammit, you are still as good as I remember." Said a feminine voice while performing the impossible.
The City Hall was surrounded by dimensional and air sealing arrays, yet the armor-clad figure rode atop a thundercloud while walking out of an emerald fissure in space.
"I had many stalkers in my life, but you are definitely one of the craziest and most stupid." Manohar said. "Do you have any idea how arrays work?"
It took him but a thought to turning off the magical formations. The god of healing cast a flight spell and took his weapon out of his dimensional amulet, floating at his opponent's eye level as the alarm resounded.
"Do you really don't remember me?" The helm disappeared, revealing a stunning young woman with ebony skin that seemed to devour all light and sensual full lips that curled up in a cruel smile.
Her silver waist-long hair fell like a cascade down to her hips and her round eyes without pupils shone red like blood moons.
"No clue." He honestly replied, activating the City Hall's defensive system.
A burst of fire, thunder, and darkness assaulted the Horseman from every side with uncanny violence and surgical precision. The onslaught produced a terrifying noise, but the spells were so finely controlled that not one spark of energy affected the room.
"I resent you for both forgetting about me and cheating. The arrays were supposed to seal your magic and leave you solely with your precious light magic." Night spun her spear, Thorn, blowing away the dust cloud surrounding her.
Only then did Manohar notice the darkness element that had burst out of her chest and weakened the spells enough for her armor, Black Rose, to block them without taking any damage.
The layer of darkness shrouding her was so thick that her face was but a blur, yet Black Rose and Thorn still glistened under the moonlight like precious gems.
"Your magic can ignore arrays and your equipment is made out of Davross so I'd say that you are the biggest cheater here." The god of healing took his Royal Forgemastering wand in his left hand to even the field.
"Don't sell me short, little man. I'm just getting started." Night smiled in the face of the Warp Steps opening all around Manohar.
He knew that Thrud would have tried something, and even though the appearance of the Horseman of Night was outside his calculations, Manohar's plan covered every worst case scenario he could imagine.
Mages and soldiers swarmed the place, surrounding Night from every side. They were armed with alchemical weapons that wouldn't suffer from the arrays and with their numbers they would more than make up for their quality.
Manohar had his armor completely covered in golden runes down to the metal feathers of his armor's wings and when the array turned on again, Night was both outnumbered and outmatched.
The god of healing had learned from Balkor that even though Spirit Magic couldn't be sealed, its cost would make the Horseman run out of mana way before he could run out of reinforcements.
On top of that, he had practiced enough with the wand to learn all the Spirit Spells he needed to counter most of what Night could do.
Or so he thought until the air and earth sealing arrays came back online, cutting off all the Steps around him. All but one that shone with emerald light right behind him.
The Horseman charged forward with a mad laugh, her body sucking the darkness element from the world energy and using it to conjure a black avalanche. Manohar knew that it would seep past his constructs and armor, decimating the soldiers.
A simple flick of his wrist turned the hard light into nigh-solid darkness that clashed with Night's. It saved the lives of dozens between mages and soldiers, yet it also made him fall for Orpal's trap.
From a standing position, Manohar couldn't resist the momentum from the charge. His spell kept Night's at bay, but it also pushed him back and through the Warp Steps that she had disguised among those of his reinforcements.
The Horseman focused the black avalanche around herself, turning into a living bullet that quickly followed the Mad Professor through the portal. The emerald Gate closed behind them, leaving the reinforcements and the Queen who was still spectating through the amulet flabbergasted.
"This doesn't bode well.." Manohar said as he noticed that they were now in the middle of nowhere, in a place he had never seen before so far away from Zeska that the city wasn't even in sight.
