"Waaaaaaagh!" wailed the monster, hovering towards them in a flashing second that felt like an eternity.
"Let's go, William!" Miris squeezed his hand, both rushing to the left. The crooked monster raised one arm and slashed it, a sweeping claw that would have reduced them to tiny bits.
They tried to not trip over any tombstone or thick root on the soil below. But as they had advanced less than five meters, a light flash moved through the black soil below their feet and stopped three meters ahead as a light ball.
It sparked, and the ghastly aberration manifested herself before them, spreading her engulfing arms and letting out a howl of suffering rage.
Damn it. She had them trapped, capable of outrunning them wherever they moved. William felt adrenaline rushing through his body, his respiration agitated. Looking at the floor, he picked a bulky rock and catapulted it against the putrid apparition, striking her right on the chest.
She hunched back, letting out a chirring sorrow. Her gone eyes burned. Raising both lanky arms and then slamming them against the air, she shot a wave of steaming energy at both young liches, hitting them before they could even move away. Both were sent flying away like ragdolls.
"Wagh," William struck a tombstone, breaking its sign in a splash of rocks and dust. His hands bled with mud in the dark, his torch having felt six meters away.
"Wraaaaagh!" the ghost screamed, rushing in a race that made his skin freeze and his phylactery about to break in buzzes.
But his senses reacted; he felt as if he was no longer connected to the ground, his body fine and nimble. The monster had already reached his position in nearly the blink of an eye, but time went normal in his mind; he instantly rolled to his right side as the rotting ghost raised both clawed hands and slammed them against him.
She smashed them against the tombstone, rocks, and dust flying away with a dry din. William felt his left arm wet; feeling it, she managed to rose his bicep, maul part of his coat, and make his arm bleed.
About to pick another rock, the monster got her claws off the ground and went against him, enraged.
He got up and tried to run away, but the apparition flinched as an orange light shined at her back. Miris appeared, shoving her torch against the monster's raggy back like an assassin stabbing his target.
"Wraaaaaagh!" she screamed in eye-piercing volumes.
With both liches at each side, she swept each of her clawed hands once in the air, and two waves of slamming energy ragdolled them through the air in opposite directions.
William hit a tree some meters behind, rolling down its trunk as he heard Miris yelling. His head was dizzy and his back numbed, but his senses and adrenaline didn't give up. He got up.
But his mind was succumbing to doubt. How in the hell were they supposed to fight against that abomination? Other than stunning her, nothing seemed effective, and they'd take serious damage if they continued like that. They had to get out of there.
"GraaaaaaAAAAAGH!" the ghost shrieked in an even more painful tone.
Looking up, a festival of green fireworks rained on her body as bursts of fireballs flew through the dark and struck her, making her totter back in uncontrolled flinches.
"Zho!" Miris reached William's position, helping him straighten up. Her shawl covering her head was gone, blood spilling from her forehead or mixing with her black hair.
Spotting a wonderful scenario like the one he saw when he woke up, Zho was suspended in the air, a bubble of lilac-colored magic engulfing his still human body.
He gracefully moved inside it, moving his hands like a fine dancer as swirling energy got summoned in them, and he directed it through air punches against the monster like raining meteors.
"GraaaaAAGH!" screamed the ghost, the incoming magical attacks locking her from counterattacking.
Zho got dangerously close. Raising both of his arms, a giant fireball burned above him. He launched it against the monster like a god would shoot lightning, and between a spiraling explosion of green, pink, and cyan colors, the rotting creature was gone with one last deflating yowl.
Nothing remained but falling ashes and burning leaves.
"Hey, are you two okay?" Artur approached both William and Miris. "Dang it, how in the hell did you end up fighting that thing? You had to make more than making angry some unresting soul."
Zho's magical barrier dazzled and evaporated as his body absorbed it. He finely fell to the ground, sauntering calmly to his students with a stoic expression. Two orange lights suddenly illuminated strongly on the ground; their torches, the thing interfering with their light gone.
"Are you alright? The bound guardian is gone. We should leave this graveyard. I'm sure Inanna's guards will come after all this noise."
William breathed deep, feeling adrenaline fade out in a tiring burn-out. What the hell was that? He grabbed his bleeding arm, cleaning the sweat on his forehead with the other. Miris used her scarf to clean the blood on her head. Their cream-colored clothing was a dirty mess.
"You called that monster a what?" asked William. "Don't tell me you were expecting that thing to—"
"A bound guardian," interrupted Zho. "An artificial creature used to guard and protect special items or places. Someone summoned her to be here, and no one to take lightly if they are able to summon such a powerful creature. And no, that was unexpected. This, someone, was here before. The relic I was after is gone. They stole it and left this bound guardian as a trap. C'mon. Let's return."
He turned around and walked ahead, the young liches trading looks before following him. Artur shared his water canteen with both. William and Miris traded tired half grins with each other.
But William only got frustrated feelings. Even if Zho wouldn't explain why he wanted that relic, getting tangled amidst that supposed deathtrap made him feel involucrated in whatever was going on.
It was also contrastingly jarring how Zho could dispatch that monster like that. While both Miris and he were outpowered, got smacked and wounded, and had little going for them, Zho made the creature look like an insignificant pest.
And he showed much less power compared to when William woke up! How powerful was he in reality? Maybe those legends about Okkos Zeimey weren't wrong. The powers of a lich were nothing to play with...
He took a deep sigh, wondering if that wasn't a bad dream. When he once thought ghosts were only something to scare children back in his homeland, Reniram demonstrated they were a real thing more horrid and monstrous than people imagined them to be.
How many dangers did that land hold? Maybe he made the right choice in joining that lich order, after all...