[h3]Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown[/h3]
The ceramic wraith's glowing orbs seemed to shift to Jordan just an instant before the creature reached him, his truncheons ready to catch it mid-leap, and for just a fraction of a second its posture seemed to change. What would be the equivalent of its shoulders seemed to just slightly sag, its hands lowered almost imperceptibly, and the light of its eyes dimmed to mere faint embers. It did not even seem to attempt to dodge the squire's attack – though all attempts at this point would have been in vain regardless – but rather almost as though it resigned itself to its fate.
Then iron met dinner plate, pottery and possibly a mug or two in the mix, and with a loud crash of shattering ceramics the once-cohesive mass that was the wraith seemed to instantly lose the magical influence holding it together. Carried onward by the inertia of the now-absent divine's leap, the shards – at least the ones not pulverized by Jordan's bludgeons – and one errant carving-fork continued onward into the hall, clattering noisily but mostly harmlessly to the floor.

The headless ghoul – clumsy for a trained warrior, but quite adept considering the handicap of its head missing – attempted to make a wide, telegraphed slash with its silver-sword, only for a real trained warrior to completely invalidate it as an opponent. With one swing of his sword Yanin both severed the ghoul's left arm and block the other's blade, and then moved in to once more introduce the spirit within the corpse to iron directly by plunging the truncheon into the open neck, straight through the green visage imitating a head. Even before reaching the ghoul's body itself, the reaction to the truncheon would be immediately obvious as the misty faux-head seemed almost as though it detonated on contact, the ethereal oval seeming to unravel and scatter and the eyes extinguishing, fundamentally incapable of maintaining structure in the same space as the metal.
A wet noise could be head as the weapon impacted, and the body – letting the silver-sword slip from its nerveless fingers – collapsed on the spot like a puppet having its strings cut.

While the western side of the hall now seemed to be all clear with the exception of the one-armed, weaponless ghoul currently engaged with Nabi, Lhirin stepped past the now-motionless body of the ghoul that had been stabbed by Freagon and went to finish off the last opponent on the eastern side of the hall. The deigan half-breed climbed the stairs to the ghoul up there – who had been clawing at its chest halfway up the staircase – while activating the Lightning-rune on his rune sword, feeding the magic only a little magical energy. He correctly assessed that an electric attack with magic would require significantly less energy if he were to touch his opponent with the source of the lightning.
Despite this being true, Lhirin also incorrectly assessed that the ghoul – which had indeed been distracted by the needle in its spine enough to let the other move ahead alone while it stayed in the relative safety up the stairs – was sufficiently distracted or disabled to continue to ignore him even as he climbed toward it. The moment Lhirin started up the steps toward it the ghoul ceased clawing pointlessly at the front of its armor and, with a hissing exhalation through gritted teeth, instead gripped its spear with both hand and jabbed it at him, not moving forward enough to actually stab the deigan, but at the very least preventing him from advancing up the stairs. With the reach-disparity between the ghoul's spear and Lhirin's rune sword, there was no way he would be able to touch it directly and deliver his magical payload.

Below the eastern staircase Freagon moved back around to the foot of the steps, behind Lhirin, at what seemed like an almost leisurely pace that stood in stark contrast to the blinding speed at which he had moved just a couple of seconds ago. He planted one boot heavily on the back of the one-legged ghoul he had dismembered and impaled and, switching to holding his sword low in his right hand, seemed to just watch what everyone else was doing.