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Eiline's expression softened. "I'm hoping that after today, you won't have to."
"You want to tell me what you meant by I am the spell?" he asked.
Eiline shook her head. "Wait a little while longer. It will be easier to show you once we are there. We had best get moving."
Vanth tilted his head back and sighed in frustration. "If you are wondering, Elektra, yes, she is always this stubborn."
"So that's where you get it from?"
Eiline laughed. "Wait until you meet his father."
They followed a trail through the gardens and into the forest. Elektra knew it well because it used to be a part of the course she used to run every day she was at the temple. At the edge of the border, Eiline re-activated the wards, and a silvery dome of light covered the temple.
"Good luck to any of Lazarus's cronies wanting to break that," Eiline said smugly.
Elektra stared up at them in awe. "You are going to have to show me how to do that one day."
With every step they took, Elektra could feel a pressure building in the air, and Vanth's power began to leak from his skin in whispy tendrils. They hiked up a small hill, and Elektra's breath caught. The lush valley of trees that used to be beneath them had been stripped to bare earth. The Veil rose up behind it, its lavender-gray wall of light shimmering.
"Holy fucking shit," Vanth gasped, his eyes staring up at it. "How come we can see it?"
"It's because we aren't in the real world anymore. Things present literally here," Eiline explained. She squatted down on her heels and stared at the cleared trees. Figures in black and red robes were walking about like industrious ants. Two glass and copper constructs caught the light, and a shiver swept up Elektra's spine. They were the size of concrete trucks and hummed with an aura that made Elektra's mouth go dry as dust.
"Those are the batteries. They are a fuck ton bigger than the ones I found at the ghost trappers months ago," Vanth said, tearing his eyes away from the Veil. "I'm assuming one was charged with ghosts, and the other was from magic stolen from people and creatures."
Elektra studied the lines of the camp and spotted cages. "Look! They have prisoners. I can't see their faces, but I would bet any money they are reapers. Lazarus could have been using the temple as bait, so when they returned, he had people to capture them."
"Then why wasn't anyone at the temple when we were just there?" Vanth asked.
Eiline made a hissing sound. "Because the bastard has the power he needs."
There were shouts of orders from below, and people began to move around one of the batteries. A flash of gold, and Lazarus himself appeared. They were too far away to see what he did, but suddenly, the battery exploded, and icy cold power hit them like a shock wave.
"That was what was left of the ghosts," Vanth growled. "I'd recognize that energy anywhere."
Elektra cried out as her connection to the Veil inside of her was yanked hard. She clutched at her chest, winded by the assault.
"Elektra!" Vanth was beside her in a second, catching her before she could hit the dirt. "What is it?"
"Look!" she gasped, pointing.
Where the battery had been, there was now a tear in the Veil, like curtains had been parted, and there was only darkness beyond.
"He did it," Eiline said, her voice trembling. She held a handkerchief to her nose, catching the blood dripping from it. "He tore off the patch holding the Veil together."
Figures began to move out of the darkness towards Lazarus. Ghouls and skeletons tore themselves free of the earth and began to form around their high priest. Fear gripped Elektra as they kept coming, an army assembling between their general and the forest.
Lazarus's living followers moved to the other battery. It was the biggest of the two, and Elektra could make out the black lines of a blood sigil on the earth around it.
"We need to do something," she said, pulling her sickles free. "Whatever he's about to do with that other battery, we can't let him."
Vanth pulled his sword free and stared at the army of the dead beneath them. "I'm with you. How do you want to approach this? I can try to wrestle some of those undead out of his control if you two want to rescue any of the reapers and stop Lazarus from charging his spell."
A roar shook the world above them, making the three of them hit the earth as something big swooped over them. A gold and black dragon landed among the army of the dead and roared again, fire spewing out of its fanged maw.
Vanth cringed. Maybe he shouldn't have flipped Azhdaha off.
"Well," he said with a terrified laugh. "I guess that's one way to start a fight."
