She might already be dead. The other woman carried no weapons, and Yanko felt her drawing upon power, trying to attack the soul construct with her mind while the men leaped at it with swords. They had dropped their bows and were trying to hack at it like loggers, driving it away from the woman. The creature must have known she was the most dangerous, because it wouldn’t be distracted from her.
No longer bothering to hide himself, Yanko tried to come up with an attack he could use. His first instinct would have been to collapse part of the chamber and bury the monster. But with the Kyattese all around it, he couldn’t risk burying them too. He considered how rock-like the construct’s body was and wondered if earth magic had been involved in its creation. If it was comprised largely of stone or clay, maybe he could affect it with his earth magic.
He stretched his hand toward it, as if that might help him get a sense of faults and weaknesses within the blocky body. His vision blurred as he tried to see how the pieces had once gone together, seeking tiny fractures he might exploit. But the thing seemed to have been melted together with great heat, and he could not find any cracks inside of it.
The construct knocked one of the swordsmen aside with a massive arm. The man cried out as he was flung into the air. He smashed into the wall with an audible crack, his head striking stone. He crumpled and did not rise.
Yanko cursed himself for hesitating, for taking so much time to assess the creature when people were in trouble. He threw an attack, trying to snap and break off one of the creature’s arms, using the same method he would to sheer rock from a cliff.
The construct screeched and spun toward him. Its arm did not fall off. It was as if his attack had slid right off the creature.
Both of those bulky arms raised, and it sprang toward Yanko, more like a cougar than a heavy two-legged monster. With no time to concentrate on magic, Yanko relied on his reflexes. He leaped to the side as the construct sailed toward him, throwing out a desperate slash with his sword.
The blade met what felt like solid stone, clanging uselessly off and jarring his arm. At least he avoided being hit. He rolled several times before coming up. A bow twanged and another arrow bounced off the construct. The creature did not even notice. It ran after Yanko again.
Cursing himself for wasting his surprise attack doing something that hadn’t worked, Yanko sprinted along the wall, trying to keep ahead of the construct. He glimpsed Lakeo—she was rummaging in the goods, but she leaped out of the way, pressing her back to the wall as Yanko raced past followed by the construct. He wanted to yell at her to help, but arrows and swords were doing nothing. It would take magic, powerful magic.
A gust of wind slammed into the construct with such ferocity that it tottered, bumping into the wall. Yanko felt the tail end of that blast and was almost hurtled into the wall himself. He caught his balance, sprinted to the other side of the chamber, and turned back, hoping he had time to launch an attack.
The construct’s attention had once again been diverted toward the weather mage. The Kyattese woman, her blonde hair tangled about her face, her clothes torn and stained with blood, stared grimly at the creature. She raised her hands and threw another gust of wind. It struck the construct, but again did not damage it, only delayed it. Still, it gave Yanko the seconds he needed to try another magical attack.
“Go with what you know,” he muttered and examined the ceiling with his mind. The chamber might have been carved out by a mage decades ago, the walls smooth and unmarred, but he sensed the ancient and porous lava rock above it.
As the construct recovered from the wind attack and started toward the woman, Yanko channeled his power into some of the pockets of air in the rock above the center of the chamber. Snaps and cracks sounded, a warning of the inevitable. The Kyattese heard it and understood what it meant—the two who still stood and fought skittered back to the far wall. Yanko held his final thrust of energy, waiting for the construct to step beneath the spot. Then he threw his strength into