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He put an end to the "alarm" system that he'd been using with the little clumps of metal, and silence finally returned. Banda and his men took notice, pausing at the sudden change.

Hector made the three golems' heads snap-turn in unison--dematerializing then rematerializing in an instant. Little cubes full of molten iron began orbiting around their bodies, readying themselves to be launched.

Banda's group hesitated again, watching the golems for a long moment.

Perhaps Banda could tell that this wasn't an empty threat now. Even if the man didn't exactly know what he was looking at, the intent had to be quite clear, no?

Controlling the orbiting cubes at a distance was certainly more difficult than just making them orbit around his own body, but it helped that the golems were immobile. And that the cubes were small. They wouldn't pack nearly as much of a wallop as the most powerful version of this technique, but they would almost certainly be more than enough to shred through that aberration like tissue paper. And with the thinned crowd, Hector had a pretty good lock on the aberration's location.

If Banda still felt bold enough to keeping walking forward, Hector would fire off a warning shot.

And wouldn't ya know it, Banda did exactly that.

At that first step, Hector fired off a molten cube right in front of Banda's face, exploding the rocky ground a few short meters away from the man.

Banda turned toward the sight of the explosion, perhaps to assess the damage done as the cloud of dust dissipated, then looked toward the golem that had fired the shot.

Hector made the missing cube regenerate as Banda watched.

And for a long time, no one moved.

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Another one of the Abolishers bolted. Banda was there again to stop them, but two more followed suit this time and managed to break away from the group. Then another two, and another three, and then they were all just scattering.

Hector blinked to himself, hardly able to believe that his plan had actually worked. He could sense them fleeing. Twenty-seven enemy combatants, all running away. Wow.

Except.

Ah.

Not all. A few were returning.

Now Hector understood. Banda had thrown the aberration over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes while trying to keep the others pinned down. He'd probably wanted the aberration to keep as many people invisible as possible before they got too far away. Hector was fairly certain about that much regarding Invisibility, at least. It had a limited range, like a bubble.

Poor Banda. He didn't realize that he was wasting his time. If the guy wasn't an infamous, mass murdering psycho, Hector might've felt a little bad for him.

Banda only managed to round up thirteen others in the end, some by force and some who simply never left his side to begin with.

Hector had to be particularly mindful of those latter ones, he felt. Those men were loyal and unaffected by his intimidation tactics.

But the numbers had been thinned. Thirteen down from twenty-seven. Not bad.

'Banda's pissed,' said Pauline.

Yeah. Hector could guess as much just from his gait. The anger and intent was clear with each decisive step the man took toward Warrenhold. They started circling around the three golems that he'd erected earlier.

Okay. Hector felt like he'd done just about all he could with intimidation alone. There was probably no scaring off this Banda motherfucker. Things were about to get real bad.

But he had had one last tactic in mind.

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And since they weren't budging, Hector went ahead and made a second golem. This one, he positioned on the left, close to the aberration. Ideally placed for launch a soul-infused barrage of iron spikes, if need be. Unless the aberration was really powerful--and Hector suspected that it wasn't--that would probably be an instant kill.

The Abolishers took immediate notice of the new golem, and this time, their formation shuddered noticeably. They clumped together a little more, backing slightly away from the second guardian.

Banda, whose aerial outline Hector had made sure memorize, moved through the small crowd and pulled the aberration into the middle.

Hmm. Damn.

Perhaps he'd just given up a valuable opportunity. The aberration would be much harder to kill now.

Bah. He made a third golem, this time on the right.

The group of Abolishers compacted further. They had to realize that they were almost surrounded now. There was only one direction remaining. The direction opposite of Warrenhold.

C'mon, you bastards. Leave. Get the fuck out of here, already.

Hector honestly didn't know if he would be able to win this fight. Conventional wisdom suggested that he stood no chance against someone as old as Banda, but at the same time, he felt like it wouldn't be impossible, either.

And perhaps that dangerous thinking. Perhaps that was the psychological problem of emergence that Garovel had told him about. The slow build up expectation reduced stress and therefore the likelihood of emergence.

Hector tried to remind himself that he had to be exceptionally careful here. His reputation was built on a mountain of lies and half-truths. If he started buying into it himself, that would very likely spell the end of everything.