As he spoke, he raised his skeletal fingers to the sky. His skin had grown translucent and the moonlight glistened off his stark white bones.

“What does the book say?” Jorick hissed. “How do we stop him?”

Fumbling with her satchel, Bet pulled free the Practical Guide and flipped through its pages, struggling to read it by moonlight.

Sefron the Ebon Lord cackled and Evin looked up just in time to see a ball of flame whooshing from his hand straight at them.

“Move!” He grabbed his friends by their arms and jumped to the side. The fireball exploded against the ground where they’d just been sitting, setting the sick potion ablaze. Beside it, the glass orb that had once contained the boiling blood began to melt from the intense heat.

“On your feet!” Evin cried. “Hurry!”

Jorick and Bet followed him, the elf not taking her eyes off of the book. They ran to the southern edge of the wall. Sefron did not follow, but merely hovered in the center of the roof, cackling madly. Two more fireballs flew from his fingertips, filling the night with an orange glow as they barely missed their targets.

“We have to distract him!” Bet cried. “Until we can figure out how to stop him!”

“On it,” Jorick growled.

Before anyone could protest, Jorick grabbed his sword and ran straight at the hovering lich. Leaping over one of the holes blasted into the roof by the chimera, he skid to a stop right beneath Sefron and lashed out. The blade sliced through the monster’s dangling robes and severed his foot.

Lowering his hands, Sefron looked down at Jorick. “Ouch,” he wheezed. Then laughing once more, he lowered himself to stand right in front of the boy. As Jorick gasped for air and held his blade high, tendrils of magic reached out from the lich’s ankle and grasped the severed foot. The tendrils pulled the foot back beneath the folds of the lich’s robes.

“Did you find it?” Evin urged Bet. “Anything?”

Bet swallowed and pointed to a passage. “‘Attack methods,’” she read. “‘Various spells, paralyzing touch.’”

Gasping, she turned her attention to Jorick, who now backed away slowly as the lich advanced on him. “Jorick!” she screamed over the crackling of the fire. “Don’t let him touch you!”

But she was too late. Scowling, Jorick had rushed the lich, bringing his blade down. As he did, the lich suddenly appeared to move three feet to his right in the blink of an eye. Jorick’s sword sliced uselessly through the air as the lich floated behind him. Extending his slender, skeletal fingers, the lich touch the back of Jorick’s neck.

Jorick gasped as his body went stiff. The lich pulled his hand back and tilted his head to watch as the boy collapsed to the ground, motionless but still breathing.