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“I will,” she assured him. Pyetar looked at her long and hard, his hooded eyes tracing her carefully. And then he gave her a quick nod before moving out.

“Stay close to Pepha,” Iryana ordered Hadima, giving her a tight hug and hoping it wouldn’t be the last time.

“I’ve got her,” Pepha promised, Hadima following up with, “I will. Don’t worry about me, focus on yourself.”

Iryana watched Pepha and Hadima head toward the side of the temple.

A mild earthquake caused them all to still, to brace themselves, but it passed quickly.

“Ready?” Mezhimar asked.

Iryana nodded, following him to the vantage point they’d picked out. She was all lethal focus now.

Iryana climbed the back of one of the furthest piles of rubble, carefully pulling herself up each large block of stone that had once sat above the well, making sure she didn’t make a sound. Mezhimar moved just as silently beside her. When they were almost at the top, just barely out of sight, they exchanged a tense look before peeking over.

From their vantage point, they could more clearly see the magic the Keepers were pulling out of the well. It moved in thick cords of dark purple-red, trailing out of the depths of the pit and into a growing, roiling mass of magic behind the Keepers.

The man with the forged cane stood at the far end of that roiling mass, as if directing the magic into the growing creature. She didn’t know how large the bird would be, or how close they were.

“Ready?” she said in a low, quiet tone to Mezhimar.

He inclined his head and ducked down before forming his metal-forged bow. Iryana followed, bracing herself before forming the magic bow, feeling the magic rip out of her. Instead of her arrow forgings, she reached for a regular wood and steel arrow. It was an attempt to preserve her magic as much as possible.

As she nocked her arrow, Iryana realized that the stormy purple-gray of her forging had taken on a hint of blue. As if her intermingling magics had begun to infect each other. It was something to worry about at a different time.

Iryana picked Pyetar’s shape out from the snow-dusted pines and waited for his signal. When his raised hand dropped, Iryana and Mezhimar quickly fired a volley of arrows toward the Keepers. One Keeper collapsed into an unmoving pile of robes, another dropped, clutching at his side as he screeched. Two other Keepers pulled up enough of a shield to protect themselves in time. But the Keepers turned their focus toward Iryana and Mezhimar, the cords of maroon magic falling back into the well.

“This has always been inevitable,” one Keeper called out in an aged, gravelly voice. “It’s futile to try to stop it.” The Keepers around him were still scrambling to protect themselves, forming forgings and summoning shields. She recognized a few as dual-forged magic.

“Give up now and we’ll let you live,” Iryana ordered, though they had no expectations that the Steelsworn would accept such an arrangement.

The same Keeper who had spoken before laughed. “The final night is almost upon us! And none of us will survive it!”

Why the man seemed so excited about the idea of his own death was beyond her, but Iryana didn’t care. She let loose another arrow, aimed straight at his chest.

With a blur of purple, the man knocked her arrow aside with his forged staff.

“Attack!” she shouted, shooting arrow after arrow by Mezhimar’s side.

The rest of her group burst from the trees. Lidishta charged the Keepers, swinging two swords like Karvek had, and knocked one of the robed Keepers into the pit. The rest of the Keepers seemed shocked by the sight of her swords, at the dual-forged magic they were obviously composed of, which gave Vaneshta an opening to rush in behind them, her own spear swiping across their backs.

One of the dual-forged Keepers, a sword forging in hand, met Vaneshta’s spear. Despite Vaneshta’s superior skill, her forgings were outmatched and quickly shattered by the fire magic in the dual-forged Keeper’s sword. Lidishta was suddenly there, able to match the man’s sword with two of her own.

Iryana tried to keep tabs on the others. She found Vabihn and Pyetar engaged with a group of Keepers, trying to avoid the ones that were dual-forged lest their forgings be shattered too.

Lidishta, like the other dual-forged, seemed to move faster than the others, shattering through regular metal-forgings like a game. But while their team picked off the metal-forged Keepers well enough, Lidishta couldn’t hold the rest off on her own.

She heard Lidishta’s roar rip from her throat as she cut off the head of one of the dual-forged, kicking his decapitated body back into the pit.

Vaneshta covered Lidishta’s back while she rampaged, deflecting the blows she could with her smaller metal-forging and steel falchion. For a moment, Iryana reflected on how useful Shahn with his shield forging would have been, but then her attention was pulled to providing cover for Pyetar as he and Vabihn dealt with another wave.

While her team was engaged, a handful of Keepers gathered at the far side of the pit and began pulling magic from the pit again, their shields too strong for Iryana and Mezhimar to pierce with their arrows.

“I’m heading in,” Iryana told Mezhimar, scrambling down the pile of stone.

She formed her water-forged staff before releasing her bow, leaving the metal magic nothing to fight with as it settled back inside her. It wasn’t gentle though, and she nearly stumbled, gasping through the pain as she rushed toward the fight.

A quick glance showed her staff now had lavender-tinted smudges.