Events proceeded rapidly after her father vanished from sight, but Jane still had to live through those events.

Darabella yelled about how the Beginning Pad simply wasn’t capable of not linking with the Destination Pad. Yarlinnia collapsed to the ground, holding onto the wall so that she didn’t collapse all the way. Visions of Implications of this happening in her house crossed her face like dark thoughts. She was in deep shit, and she knew it. Nirzir started crying like the little girl that she was as she finally realized that Erick was actually gone, which caused tears to fall from Teressa’s eyes, too.

Jane wiped away hot tears of her own, thinking, perhaps unkindly, that if this was what it was like to deal with the death of a loved one, then she was glad she only had the one. She was already exhausted. She wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a day. But that was only her first reaction. Not one second after that feeling came, it went, and Jane resolved herself to emotional strength…

Minutes passed with Darabella yelling about how this wasn’t possible and Yarlinnia saying the same and Nirzir demanding answers and Jane being numb to it all—

And then Jane realized that being sad was probably premature. Sure, Ophiel had collapsed and ‘died’ rather spectacularly, and in a way Jane had never seen before. But...

Jane asked Poi, “Is Yggdrasil still out there?”

While staring at the Teleport Pad that had taken Erick away, Poi said, “Yes.” All eyes in the room locked to him, as everyone suddenly went silent and hopeful. Poi elaborated, “Yggdrasil is still at both Candlepoint and Holorulo, but he’s as dim as a normal tree and the rainbow crown is almost completely gone.”

Jane’s chest tightened. “What does that mean?”

“We’re not sure. We’ve asked the Arbors of Treehome, but they are currently without consensus. They haven’t had enough time to understand what just happened.” Poi turned away from the Teleport Pad, to look at Jane, and then glance at everyone else. “News is spreading very, very fast, with many people having noticed that something massive and unknown shifted in the future of the world the very second Erick willingly stepped on that pad. This is how Redarrow thought to contact me, and how that conversation started. There is absolutely no covering up that this happened.” He looked to Yarlinnia, who had recovered some of her noble bearing. “So before anything gets too out of hand, and to prevent future problems for you, Scion Yarlinnina, and for the rest of us, I’m asking for everyone here to allow for a Mind Mage recording of the mind and memories of the last three hours, for all future investigatory purposes. Does anyone here have a problem with this?”

It had been three hours already? Jane frowned at herself— No. it had only been fifteen minutes since Erick vanished.

Ah.

She was probably in a bit of shock. Ah. Yeah. She was. She was sitting down in a provided chair. When did that happen? Anyway. Poi was calling for a recording all the time so far, starting at when they entered House Whitesteel’s property. Yeah. That made sense.

Yarlinna said, “I consent. I had nothing to do with this, and neither did House Whitesteel—”

Darabella yelled, “It’s the same people who killed Goliro! It has to be!”

“Please,” Yarlinnia whispered, but apparently not loud enough for Darabella to hear.

Darabella accused, “The Pads worked as they should have all this time until now! But now they didn’t? When they’re meters apart? Impossible! Someone was involved in shifting the magic, and—”

“Darabella!” Yarlinnia yelled. “Please. Not right now.”

Nirzir demanded, “What do you think is going to happen now, Poi? What is going to happen here? Will there be an investigation?”

Yarlinnia paled. Darabella’s hope soared.

Poi spoke with authority, saying, “There are many people who are allied to Archmage Flatt, and they will be coming down on this land and this house like a storming archmage— Which is oddly appropriate.” He continued, “Whatever these Teleporting Pads are doing will be investigated a lot more than they have been before. I advise everyone here to keep their emotions in check, and to only speak the truth.”

Jane suddenly realized the depths of what her father had done; this was a worldwide problem, now.

Teressa, who had been silent this whole time, stared hateful daggers at Yarlinnia and Darabella, but she remained silent.

Nirzir looked at the Teleporting Pads and obviously ran some ideas about them through her head. She seemed to readily come to the conclusion that she should take advantage of the situation for Clan Void Song, and take the pads for herself, but then she stared a bit more, frowned, and looked away from the pads. Jane wasn’t entirely sure what she was seeing in Nirzir, but she guessed that the young girl had changed her mind about something.

Darabella looked as though she gazed upon a sunrise for the first time in a long time.

Yarlinna resolved herself. She said, “House Whitesteel has nothing to hide and neither does Enduring Forge. We will not allow foreign powers to infiltrate our land, but diplomatic inquiries are acceptable, as is a Mind Mage certified memory of the last few hours. We planted no traps for the Archmage, and I would like the rest of the world to know this, now.”

Poi nodded. “Then you consent to a Scan?”

“I do.” Yarlinnia stepped toward Poi, saying, “I consent.”

Poi began scanning Yarlinnia. Teressa was next because she wanted to get it over with before people started showing. This proved to be prescient of her, for people did start to show right away, and everyone was interrupting Poi’s scans to get him to talk to them.

For a moment there, as strangers yelled and demanded and questioned, Jane imagined that Erick was truly dead.

… She didn’t believe it, though, and she told the strangers as much.

But.

… No. He was alive. He had to be.

- - - -

People stood outside of the tower rooms, waiting for Jane, Teressa, Poi, and Nirzir, by the time Jane and everyone else made it back to that space. Those people gestured to the [Prismatic Ward]s wrapping up the area, and spoke of how they couldn’t exist with her father dead. None of those people knew that [Prismatic Ward] was a Permanent spell, and Jane didn’t feel like correcting their erroneous thoughts.

She cleaned up her living space and packed away everything that she needed to pack away, while Teressa, Poi, and Nirzir did the same with their own living spaces.

There was a sudden concern halfway through packing.

Jane met with Nirzir in the workshop room.

Nirzir said, “I want all of it. The record players, the runic webs, the sparse notes. All of it. Even the rusted staff of [Grand Fireball]s. I will pay a handsome sum for these items.”

“Take them, Nirzir; they’re a gift.” Jane glanced to the staff, and thought that her father could have done better; he could have splurged for rustless steel. Yesterday, the staff looked fine, but today it looked more like a metal spike that someone had left at the bottom of a swift-moving river for a century. It was rusted and pitted and looked like it would break under the slightest touch. Jane said, “I don’t want this shit, and he’ll be back.”

Nirzir stared for a moment, then she nodded. “Thank you for your gifts. Songli will always remain open to you and to Erick. When he returns… Make sure to send word?” Her voice almost broke as she asked, “Please?”

Jane nodded, saying, “I will tell you if he shows up.”

“… Dead or alive, Jane.” Nirzir said, “I have to know.”

Jane froze. After a moment she gave a small nod, then said, “Good luck with this rune stuff.”

Nirzir bowed a little.

Jane returned the gesture.

Time seemed to move swiftly. Soon, they were packed, and some porters from Void Song had come to help Nirzir take her new toys away. Jane was thankful that Poi and Teressa didn’t seem to care that Erick’s work was being taken from them. They were rather hopeful that he was coming back, too.

As they exited the Watcher’s Roost, the [Prismatic Ward]s remained.

Which was rather concerning, but not for the reasons that other people found them concerning. A lot of people had odd ideas about her father’s magic, but it had been a few hours by now, and if he was alive then he would probably go to ground and make a safe space for himself, and in such a case, he only had access to eleven [Prismatic Ward]s; one for each Ophiel, and one for himself.

As he cast Ophiel’s [Prismatic Ward]s, the oldest ones got taken down, first.

And so, even though there were only seven [Prismatic Ward]s around this tower, it had been at least half a day since he vanished. If Erick were alive should be recasting more [Prismatic Ward]s somewhere else, thus automatically removing the [Prismatic Ward]s from this area.

… He could be limiting himself to 3 [Prismatic Ward]s to keep people thinking he was dead— Or more realistically, to ensure that the four of them had a safe place to be while he was gone. That first option didn’t sound like her father, but the second one did. He could be purposefully not taking these ones down just to keep Jane safe; she could see that.

But even so! Her father would know that Jane and them would move back to Spur soon enough, so if the [Prismatic Ward]s around the Watcher’s Roost started vanishing on their own (because Erick would surely need them, right?) then he was alive.

But then, as they were getting ready to leave and Poi gave some parting words to Arakag, the mayor of Enduring Forge, the plan to watch the [Prismatic Ward]s was ripped away.

Some assholes in the gathered crowd, which Jane later discovered were from the Church of Storm and Thunder, having noticed that Erick was gone and every one of his party members was leaving, decided that they personally needed to investigate his rooms. Their goddess Sininindi had given them a Quest to discover Erick’s whereabouts, and so, the high-ranking cleric and several of his friends all cast [Ward Destruction]s, popping every single [Prismatic Ward].

Jane would have gone apocalyptic—

Except that Poi had stopped her, avoiding an international incident.

Time seemed to flow unceasingly toward the future, toward a moment when Jane would find out her father was dead, and Jane was lost in the flow.

Soon enough, it came out that the clerics had gained Enduring Forge’s blessing to cast their spells. Everyone wanted inside Erick’s rooms, for maybe there was a clue about what the man had been thinking when he decided to try his luck with untested Spatial magic.

While Jane was still simmering in the background, almost insensate, with Teressa’s hand on her shoulder, Poi managed to tell everyone exactly how much they had managed to fuck up by breaking the [Prismatic Ward]s, and he had managed to do it without screaming. Jane wouldn’t have been able to manage that, at all. Once the depth of the collective idiocy had been revealed there was a lot of shame to go around, but there was nothing more to be done about any of it.

Jane put that anger behind her.

Jane, Teressa, Nirzir, and Poi left Enduring Forge without further fanfare. Once they were on the Surface, in the Northern Tribulations where the snow fell fast and layered everything in ice, they bade a quick farewell to Nirzir. There were platitudes about ‘always being welcome in Eralis’ and ‘You could visit Spur if you want’, and while Jane tried to remain polite, and Nirzir was as pleasant as she’d been this whole time they had traveled together, there was no mistaking that there was a class divide between them. Not only was Nirzir a princess, she was also a near-archmage, and Jane had no problem believing that the young girl would cross that final bridge to tier 8 and tier 9 spellwork in the coming months. Jane was still having difficulty combining tier 5 spellwork, and though gridwork had helped, it could not make up for pure talent.

They lived in different circles, and Jane was only able to step foot into Nirzir’s because of her father bridging gaps. And now that time was over.

Jane shared some of those thoughts with Nirzir, and it looked to hurt the girl deeply, but it was true, and so Jane said it. Nirzir wiped away a frozen tear as she blipped away in a shattering of violet light, leaving the rest of them there on that mountainside, under the heavy snow.

“Just us three, then,” Jane said, her voice half-stolen by the wind. She held out her hands, “You’ll have to excuse the blipping; I’m not good at lightwalking. It’s the lack of a Domain.”

“You’re not the only one bad at spells, Jane.” Teressa took a hand, saying, “Your father is abnormal, and so is Nirzir.”

Poi silently took the other hand. Jane could tell he had words to share, but he held them back for now. Jane was in no mood to hear them, anyway.

It would be twenty [Teleport]s to get them all the way back to Spur, but that was only if they went in a straight line, and they couldn’t go in a straight line. That was fine, though. Jane began blipping west, landing them on mountainsides and frozen tundras that she had already passed by when she was working with the Elites at Oceanside, helping people the world over.

And just like that, she let her thoughts move to more pleasant places. She had gained a lot of personal strength on this trip, and that was nice. Her power would be enough to get all three of them to where they needed to go without stressing her resources.

Jane Flatt

Human, age: 23

Level 75, Class: Prismatic Polymage

Exp: 1.52 e15 / 3.41 e17

Class: 8/10

Points: 4

HP

4389/5820

5520 per day

MP

4735/8220

8220 per day

Strength

35

+62

97

Vitality

30

+62

92

Willpower

75

+62

137

Focus

75

+62

137

Favored Spell waiting!

Favored Ability waiting!

Favored Ability waiting!

Favored Ability waiting!

She had even gained the Class Ability Blood Mana, so she could go as hard and as fast as she needed to go. The Class Ability Quest had even been the same for her as it had been for her father; ‘Create a well-made tier 3 skill or spell born of a Health-cost skill and a Mana-cost spell.’ She had chosen [Strike] and [Flying Weapon], to make [Flying Striker], which was what she used with the adamantium sword that her father had gotten for her…

Jane had briefly shown her own [Flying Striker] to her father, showing him how she had copied his spellwork and made it her own…

There were differences, of course. Her own [Flying Striker] cost a bit more than his, and the [Strike]s cost Health, instead of costing Mana like her father’s version of the same spell.

Flying Striker, instant, close range, 280 MP + Variable

Create a nigh unbreakable weightless weapon that flies around at your command and Strikes with your personal strength, draining your Health with each Strike. Lasts until dismissed.

In the moment of those thoughts, Jane had a minor breakdown. Her father had always tried to get her to do more magic, but she had never been good enough at it until recently. She hadn’t even shown him half of her spellwork, for she was embarrassed by inadequacy, but now… She might never get to show him any of it.

Gridwork, and even a bit of runework, and Charm Magic lessons from Riri Star Song, and [Polymorph] work… She was getting decent. She was achieving success.

She was much better than before.

But right as she was ready to go off on her own, to prove herself as competent and adequate...

Her father goes and runs off first.

“Gods dammit, dad,” Jane whispered to no one in particular, as she stopped blipping and the world resolved into full focus, instead of just flashes of light and momentary landscapes.

The three of them landed on a stormy beach that was half frozen and too cold to support much life. Icebergs rolled in the ocean as ice floes threatened to roll up the beach and swallow Jane’s feet with every passing wave. A cold wind bit at her face, tossing frozen salt into her eyes. She teared up, and in that moment, something about everything was too heavy to hold. Jane could only feel the weight of it all pushing her down to the ground. She wanted to fall. She wanted to give in.

But she didn’t.

“I… I need a moment,” Jane said, walking back up the beach, out of the threatening waves and their swallowing ice. She eyed a block of ice up the beach that she needed to sit on. “A little while. A few minutes.”

Poi followed to get out of the waves, but Teressa just stood there, not making a sound. The massive woman faced the sea as the frozen ocean rolled over her boots, but her [Conjured Armor] was pretty great, so she didn’t seem to care. She simply watched the world for a bit, allowed herself to be covered up to her knees in ice, and remained. Jane went and had her meltdown a dozen meters away, up the shore, upon a cold, blue hunk of ice. Poi stood nearby, remaining as silent as his silent armor.

Jane’s meltdown rapidly flowed through the normal stages of pain, and then moved on, taking her to odd places filled with odd thoughts.

She also found she didn’t really care about the weather, like Teressa, but for different reasons. Jane had gotten the Class Ability Extreme Survivor which greatly reduced the damage she took from natural environmental effects and even mitigated magical environmental effects. From a bit of testing, if an aura was large enough, it counted as an environmental effect; bit of a nice bonus from that Class Ability, in Jane’s opinion.

So being out here on this stormy, icy beach was probably as horrible as being at a real beach down in Florida in the winter, which was to say it probably wasn’t that bad at all. But she had never been to Florida, like her father had when he went to help after the hurricanes. Maybe a more appropriate analogy would be... This felt about as bad as being at the edge of Lake Michigan in the summer.

Whatever the case, this physical experience wasn’t that bad at all. She could go for a swim and feel fine, for sure. The emotional experience was something Jane tried to distance herself from, and she mostly succeeded.

Teressa seemed fine.

As for Poi? The Mind Mage’s black adamantium armor gleamed silver in the grey light of the cold world. Poi’s metallic armor seemed like it would have been a weak point in cold environments like this one, but he was used to protecting himself from the heat, anyway, so it was probably a small adjustment to protect from both the heat and the cold. Apparently he had figured out a cosmetic spell to make the adamantium appear to be silver, too, so that he could maintain regulations while not always being reflective—

And Jane was trying to distract herself from her pain. It was easier to think about anything else at all, than it was to think about her father, and what he had done.

Poi’s voice was a small thing, “It’s okay to grieve.”

Like a dam had burst, Jane roared, “But how can I grieve when I don’t even know if he’s dead?” She barely had the cognizance to yell at the air, instead of at Poi, but she turned herself away from the man, and screamed, “AND THOSE IDIOTS WHO DISPELLED THE—” She guttered, her voice becoming a whisper, “Those idiots who broke the [Prismatic Ward]s… Why? Why did they do that?”

Teressa sighed; it was a small sound from all the way over there by the waves, but Jane still heard it.

Jane accused Poi, “And you can’t sense him, can you.”

Poi instantly said, “No. I cannot sense him, and I would tell you if I could, so don’t get like that with me, young lady.”

Jane felt bad all over, for different, compounding reasons. She muttered, “Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” Poi said, “Anyway: I have some small news on that front. Necromancer and even a few Arch Necromancers are trying their luck at summoning his soul. I’ll let you know if any of the ones we know succeed.”

Teressa whipped around, scattering ice as she moved. “Shit!”

Jane stared at the ground. “Shit.”

Poi stared at the horizon, his voice going hard as he said, “We won’t let anything bad happen to his soul, but we have to know.”

A cold wind blew.

Jane stood. She said, “We could check on the other places that he wanted to go. The Orrery. Oceanside. We could even go to the Core.” Jane knew that they would say no, and honestly, she had no idea why she suggested those places. In a bit of brightness, she suggested one place that they might agree to, “Yggdrasil at Candlepoint?”

Teressa instantly said, “Yes. Let’s go see Ygg—”

“No.” Poi said, “We’re being recalled to Spur, and both of Yggdrasil’s bodies are rebuffing all attempts at communication. He started off calmly telling people to go away, but now he’s responding to every petitioner with full-lightning [Fulmination Aura]s. Someone tried to attack him with a [Dispel Familiar].”

Anger blossomed like a volcano unleashed.

Jane roared, “Who the FUCK at Candle—”

“The attempt to [Dispel] was at the Yggdrasil at Holorulo, where he has no defenders,” Poi said. “The shadelings and others at Candlepoint are heavily protecting Yggdrasil.”

Jane suddenly had no idea what to do about anything.

Teressa calmly, strongly, said, “I want to kill something. Let’s find a few monsters to end.”

“And this brings me to the next topic.” Poi said, “There are enough monsters to kill at Spur. I didn’t want to say this while Erick was with us, but there are certain truths that must be shared now that Erick has moved on.

“Kiri and the archmages and a few of the true powerhouses, like Killzone and Merit and Mog, are all that stands between the life and death of everyone in Spur, since you can’t count on random adventurers to do what needs to be done.” Poi said, “Dark, dead souls flood out of Ar’Kendrithyst every single night like an endless, black ooze. We think that Melemizargo and the Shades no longer have a leash on the souls of the trillions of people from the Old Cosmology who once openly worshiped the old God of Magic, but whatever the case, the black ooze is deadly to all life. Brightwater has been abandoned. The Blessed Shade Farix —that’s what he’s calling himself— has taken his people and occupied the destroyed city of Frontier. He has rebuilt that land into an impenetrable fortress in order for his people and himself to survive the dark floods each night. Anhelia and her Land of Light inside the Dead City either exacerbates or is the long term solution to the problem —we’re not sure which— for she has created a beachhead inside the Dead City, which is her attempt to take back Ar’Kendrithyst for the wrought.” Poi looked to Jane and Teressa, saying, “Our place is at Spur, and they have more than enough problems to keep us busy while we’re waiting for Erick to come back.”

The depth of Poi’s words sunk in…

And Jane asked, “Why not tell us—” She answered her own question, “Because then dad would have quit the Path.” She looked to Teressa, saying, “That explains the shadows in the [Future Sight].”

Terssa frowned.

Poi said, “According to Silverite, operating as though Erick had the option to quit the path was never an option for us, or for Spur. According to the answers Erick got on the Sliding System, this answer tracks.” Poi explained, “So, if Erick had heard about this problem, then it is Silverite’s opinion that the Path would have eaten Spur alive. The Path certainly fucked up Songli. It was only after that disaster that Erick operated to avoid another such problem at the grass lands. Perhaps if he went to Spur now, after Enduring Forge which seemed a complete success, he could have solved this black ooze problem in the space of an afternoon. He was getting good at that.”

Jane gave a small, strangled smile; her father was getting better at that, wasn’t he.

Poi continued, “But there is no way to know that, and Silverite was not willing to take that chance. It was a calculated risk to deal with the problem this way, and she took the risk. I believe she was right to take this risk.” He stated, “So these are the problems we must solve for ourselves. With any luck, we people of Spur will be able to solve this problem on our own, without Fate fucking us over… But it is very possible that Erick will show up at the absolute last moment and fix everything, though we should not count on this.” He added, “It would be preferable if we solved this problem before he gets back.”

Jane steeled herself. “We can solve problems without dad, for sure. Thank you, Poi,” for the reminder.

Teressa breathed deep, then exhaled; the seams of her armor around her neck briefly billowing out thick air. She hadn’t spoken much since Erick vanished, but she did so now, saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’m shit against oozes. What the fuck do you expect us to do at Spur? Sit on our asses? Get swamped protecting the mages?— Not that I’m necessarily against getting swamped, but— I’ve felt useless for too long, Poi.”

Poi said, “Magic is the primary force that harms the dark souls, but [Cleanse] makes them physical enough to actually injure, so Kiri and the Archmages have been the primary forces to deal with them. For a while they were doing fine, but the problem has mutated. A few weeks ago, they experienced the first living dead amalgam, and it’s only gotten worse from there.” He said, “Sometimes, the dead souls congregate around a host body they’ve found inside the city, or, at night, when they spill over the walls, the ooze finds a host among the defenders of Spur, or in the crystal mimics or other monsters or animals out there. These dead souls change those hosts. The soul amalgams that spill out from the Dead City are the worst, for they’ve had time to acclimate to their power; they’ve had time to discover what they are in their new life. All of them show sentience, but some actually show sapience. But the ones that happen outside of the city, the ones that are born each night the ooze spills out, those get crazy. Both types of dead-soul monsters are twisted into near-Ancient levels of power.” Poi told them, “That’s what you’ll be killing.”

Jane nodded. “Then that’s what I’ll be killing.”

Teressa breathed a sigh of relief, agreeing, “Then that’s what we’ll be killing.”

Jane amended, “—what we’ll be killing; yes.”

Teressa breathed out something that was near a laugh, but also too tired to be anything joyous. “Then if you’re done having your pity party, let’s get going, Team Leader Jane.”

At that, Jane laughed. “Ma’am yes, ma’am!”

Poi said, “Before we continue, I need to say a few more personal things.”

Jane and Teressa looked to Poi.

Poi said, “Jane. You need to send a letter to Nirzir to smooth over the shit you said back there. You really hurt her. She thought you were friends.”

Jane frowned and felt a sudden pain in her chest as Poi’s words hit unexpectedly hard.

Poi continued, “Also, I apologize for stopping you from killing those priests.”

“Ah. No.” Jane said, “I’m sorry that you had to do that. I should have kept my cool… And my words to Nirzir might have been too harsh. You’re right to say what you said about that, too. I barely even remember what I said… it all happened too fast.”

Teressa said, “You were right about us being in different circles, though. Erick could barrel through that shit because he belonged wherever he felt like belonging, but we three are uncivilized adventurers, and we do as the barbarians do. We cannot move to Nirzir’s circle, but she can move to ours.”

It seemed the large woman’s mood had improved.

“Teressa is also right.” Poi breathed, then said, “As an addendum: I hope that Erick returns, soon, and I will also act like I expect him to return, sooner or later. We shall all pretend like we know that he will be back. But there is a certain subset of people who will pounce now that he is gone. Expect what happened back there at Enduring Forge, with the [Prismatic Ward]s, and how they tried to [Dispel] Yggdrasil at Holorulo, to happen again. Again and again, we will all be tested.” He said to Jane, “Which is why it is important to ensure that you antagonize none of the enemies that your father might have made. You should send that apology letter to Singer Nirzir so that we don’t have Songli as an accidental enemy; this is what you should hope for as an outcome to that.”

“… Right, right,” Jane said.

The cold wind blew.

Jane looked up at the cloudy sky and at the dim sunlight past the clouds to the south, asking, “When it it turn into fucking day? Wasn’t it night? I blipped us west, didn’t I? That means it should be darker...” She looked around, saying, “Yeah. This is the right beach. I’ve been here before.” She pointed south. “The Forest of Glaquin is past that ocean. Isn’t it?”

“It is.” Poi said, “We’re on the right path. You simply didn’t realize how deep the grief is hitting you, and how much time has gotten away from us. If you want to talk to a therapist there are some at Spur I can put you into contact with.”

Jane groaned.

Poi added, “I had hoped that your father would take the offer before we left, but it is what it is. We already have some therapists down at Candlepoint talking to the shadelings, too, and that seems to be going well.”

“Are the shadelings real people?” Jane asked.

“Real enough as anyone.” Poi said, “So take that as you will.”

“I’m not opposed to a Forest jaunt...” Teressa stared south. “But why’d we come this way? Don’t want to go through the Republic?”

“Absolutely not,” Jane said, glad for the change of topic. “Done that before. Never again. Border patrol got a [Leash] on me and I almost had to kill them to get away. If I had a Domain like dad I probably could have clipped their [Leash] easily, but… I haven’t made one of those yet, either.”

Teressa nodded. “Me either.”

After another moment of silence, Poi said, “It’s fucking freezing. Let’s get to blipping, please.”

Jane smiled. “Yeah, yeah.” The party regathered and Jane held out her hands, saying, “That was the halfway point. The ocean is a few blips away, and then we’ll be in the air, moving as fast as I can. I’ll support us with [Greater Lightwalk], but it’s not that strong. Don’t test the flooring.”

Teressa took her hand, saying, “Don’t fall; got it.”

Poi took her other hand.

And then they were off.

- - - -

The northern coast of Glaquin was yet another frozen wasteland, but then they passed the coast, and headed into the skies above the Forest. The flashing landscape below grew taller, and greener. And then, after a few more blips, the Wyrmrest Mountains appeared. Another two blips put them firmly beyond the reach of those craggy peaks, which seemed much smaller and carefully organized when compared to the Tribulations. They were now in the Crystal Forest.

Jane, Poi, and Teressa, stood upon cold, orange sands as the sun rose in the east, shedding light upon orange dunes. They had managed to beat the sun here, but barely. There had been some minor falterings in the skies over the Forest, but they were here, and safe, for a relative definition of ‘safe’, anyway.

A typical example of a normal crystal mimic grew upon the rocky sands, not forty meters away. It reminded Jane of home.

She asked if anyone was against walking for a bit, for she was down to a third of her resources. Teressa gave a small joke about facing a wyrm attack while she rested, for this was the start of wyrm season. Poi said that any wyrm unfortunate enough to meet any of them would end up very dead, and he wasn’t sure one of Teressa or Jane would kill it faster.

Teressa laughed. “It would be a contest, of course! To see who could land the killing blow!”

Jane into the spirit, saying, “You think you could actually kill one these days? Last I saw, all you could do was stand in the way.”

“Hey now! I could take on an eyebeam wyrm these days.” Teressa moved her left arm and her massive shield moved with her, to attach to her left arm. The magically enhanced shield was bright silver, but it reflected the dawn, becoming gold in the light. “We got trained up like proper warriors over in Songli.”

Poi grumbled, “Reflections make everything so much tougher for teammates.”

Jane laughed, then tapped his shoulder, saying, “So that’s why you got reflections in your adamantium, too, eh!”

“My armor has multiple modes of use.” Poi said, “And thankfully, I’m getting the hang of its reflective nature. It’s a sight better than full-body reflection.”

Jane asked, “You can still get through telepathically with the full body reflection, though, can’t you?”

“I can, but it’s not that easy.”

Jane smirked. “As long as you can get through it at all, then that’s good enough for me.”

“Me too.” Teressa said, “I still prefer the directional reflection, though. It’s stronger.”

“Reflective armor is the best of both styles,” Poi said. “Directional, but without compromising telepathic communication, and you can still touch the exposed parts for healing spells.”

They walked for a while, talking about nothing in particular, for no reason in particular. Jane would later reflect on this moment and see that this was the calm before the storm, but the storm was still a ways off. So for now, they shot the shit, and everything was as good as it could be, considering the circumstances. It felt like a return to normalcy, which was important. They were soldiers against the monstrous world, and that’s what they needed to be; not an archmage’s attache.

… They were also putting off their meeting with Silverite, but no one actually spoke of that. They were each afraid in their own way of what the Mayor of Spur was going to say or do when they finally returned. But they were all responsible people, and they needed to talk about responsible things. Poi got to that point before the other two, though.

“Silverite hasn’t explained,” Poi said, “But I’m assuming that Kiri is going to be our new assignment.”

Jane felt like her feet were suddenly twice as heavy as complicated emotions swirled in her mind. She rapidly picked one of her multiple, sudden problems out of the maelstrom, asking, “How does inheritance work in Spur?”

Poi said, “At Silverite’s decree.”

“… Ah.”

“You’d get the house, Jane,” Teressa said, “But let’s leave things like they are for a while longer.”

“I wasn’t going to do that— I mean. I would never— But we’re going back and my father isn’t with us, and I want to be prepared for… I suppose I’m thinking more like Earth-inheritance rules and that shit...” Jane winced. “Ah. Fucking shit. Do I have to pay taxes on dad’s money?”

“Yup.” Teressa smiled. “And if you don’t want to pay them, then you’re probably not getting anything.”

“… Silverite wouldn’t do that.” Jane asked, “Would she?”

“She’s done it before.” Poi said, “I doubt she would change for Erick… But Erick was a different kind of— He is a different kind of person.”

Jane felt her heart seize all over again.

The conversation moved on.

Jane was perfectly fine being ‘on Kiri duty’, whatever that meant. It was nice to get a heads-up before the fact, though. Eventually, Jane’s Mana and Health ticked up high enough that more blipping was in order, but Jane sent a [Scry] orb ahead to check out the place, first; to get an overview of what sort of city she was coming back to.

… And Spur looked perfectly fine. Despite news that the place was under difficult siege every single night, and that there were three more sets of concentric walls around the place, all of the walls were intact and many of the buildings were occupied. The Mage Guild District and the Adventurer Guild District were absolutely packed with people, going to and fro. Guards were out and keeping the peace, but there were no fights happening at that particular moment. There were never that many discipline problems inside the city.

Jane smiled to herself. Adventurer lands weren’t that much more uncivilized than all the rest of the world. Like, sure, the people here were much higher powered, and they fought, for sure, but they took their fights out of the city, because anyone caught fighting inside the city was promptly fucked up by the city guard. Her father’s interest in massive population oppression didn’t make sense to Jane, because when left to their own devices and allowed to level off of monster killing as much as they wanted, people either lived peaceably with their neighbors, or they were kicked out to fend for themselves. And this was fine.

Spur was doing well, despite the shadows looming all around!

Jane recast her [Scry] into the designated spot inside City Hall, the one where Poi told her to check, to see if the location was good to blip—

“Ah.” Jane froze. “They’re ready for us. We’re headed right into a debrief.”

Teressa breathed deep, then said, “Sounds like fun.”

Poi held out his hand, saying, “Let’s get this over with.”

Jane took their hands, and then they were off.

- - - -

Jane stood in the center of the room flanked by Poi on one side and Teressa on the other. The three of them stood at parade attention, while their bags had been laid to the side, for now.

Silverite sat at the judge’s seat, as she usually did, and she looked exactly as Jane remembered; a completely silver dragonkin who wore clothes, unlike the vast majority of wrought. Today she wore a blue pantsuit. The Mage Guild’s Sirocco Zago sat in the audience, beside her granddaughter, Sizzi; the two of them resembled one another, as both of them were violet-purple incani with upturned horns and white hair. Guildmaster Mog Mog, of the Adventurer’s guild, was the same massively muscular orcol woman who Jane remembered. She sat alongside one of the receptionists from the guild. Aside from those major faces, Jane knew most of the other people in the room, from some farmers who farmed the lands surrounding the Human District, to people in the Army. Liquid and Killzone were present; the Quartermaster and the General. Both were wrought, with Liquid resembling a female dragonkin of iron, and Killzone resembling a male orcol made of adamantium. Both of those wrought were technically nude, but their skin had been shaped to appear like clothes; they were more normal wrought, for sure.

Killzone didn’t seem to appreciate the new adamantium armaments in his midst, though. He glanced at Teressa’s shield, and Poi’s currently-silver armor, and Jane’s sword, strapped to her waist.

Well nuts to him.

Liquid and Silverite took a moment to look at the adamantium, too. Perhaps they were more ambivalent? It was hard to tell.

The other people in the audience —and there were quite a lot!— Jane had no idea who they were. Some of them sat near to the positions of the actual powerful people in the room, and were themselves dressed quite nice. Jane guessed, at a glance, that they were all nobles of some sort, or perhaps they were the merchant powers that existed in Spur, instead of standard nobility. But some of the nicely dressed people present were human, and that set Jane to remembering that there were some changes of the ‘human nobility’ kind going on back before they left for the Worldly Path. She had never paid attention to them, but perhaps she should have; she could have matched her new neighbors to the faces out there.

The various [Familiar]s of the archmages were also present. They hung to the side of the room, floating near the wall. Wave’s floating blob of water, Opal’s pearlescent white sphere, Obsidian’s spiky black ball. They were all watching.

Kiri was not there, and neither was her [Familiar]; Sunny the shapeshifting couatl.

There would have been a lot more people in that room if the clamoring public outside had been allowed into the courtroom, but they were not. The air would have been chock full of [Scry] orbs, though, if Obsidian hadn’t cast some sort of autonomous-[Scry]-orb-popper into the air in the room. As it was, that construct had been popping a thousand [Scry] orbs every second, just to keep the air clear of those damnable prying eyes.

A full minute they stood there, Jane and Poi and Teressa, while the crowd was calmed down by soldiers appointed to City Hall and everyone finished taking their seats. It had been a hastily assembled debrief, but it had assembled nonetheless.

Silverite brought the gathering to order, her voice filling the air and rapidly drowning out all others, “We are here, today, to find out what happened to Archmage Flatt. Jane Flatt. Teressa Rednail. Poi Fulisade. You were there when he vanished. One of you, speak. Explain what happened, without divulging secrets best left covered. Tell us: are we at war? Did someone take Erick from us?”

Jane suddenly reevaluated everything about the moment. She wasn’t on trial. The rest of the world was at trial. She blurted out, “No one took him from me. He left willingly.”

The crowd gasped.

“Explain,” Silverite demanded.

Jane didn’t even know where to start—

Poi, thankfully, started speaking. He gave a concise account of what happened, talking about how Erick was getting into runework and he wanted to increase the range of [Teleport], for it might help him with the creation of [Gate]. Erick had learned a lot from Enduring Forge, who had been nothing but extremely helpful and informative, but then Erick saw an opportunity.

Erick stepped on the testing pad of his own volition.

Other people started talking, accusing individuals of Enduring Forge, or elsewhere, or bad intentions, of traps and intrigue. Of assassination. Someone got the idea that a dragon of Ooloraptoor had something to do with Erick’s disappearance, while others spoke badly of the nobility of the Highlands. After everyone had a chance to vent, Silverite shut down the outbursts and guided further questioning.

The debrief took three hours.

Poi spoke for most of it, but Silverite asked questions of Jane and Teressa, and so they had to speak, too. Words about The Worldly Path came out, because they had to, but most of those words came out in a nebulous manner that hid what the Path really did to a person, and to the world, when someone walked it.

Poi, Teressa, and Jane, were not on trial, and never were.

In the last half-hour of the debrief, Poi spoke the words that would become Spur’s reaction to Erick’s disappearance, “I don’t believe he is dead, for Yggdrasil is still alive, and that is the biggest indication that Erick survives. If anything: Erick is merely further along on the Worldly Path than anyone else before him. And so, I will wait, and I will ensure that his house does not fall down while he is gone, and when he does return, then I’m going to at least punch him for doing this to me, and to us.”

The debrief eventually ended.

The courtroom dispersed. No one was happy, but everyone was at least less mad.

Jane, Poi, and Teressa, picked their bags back up and followed Silverite into the room behind the courtroom. Killzone and Liquid joined them. Soon, it was the three of them inside a small room, made smaller by the two orcol-sized people.

And then Silverite screamed out her anger, roaring at the floor and at the walls and at the table, filling the room with a hateful sound that washed over Jane like a raging ocean. And then Silverite stopped. She stood, silent and threatening, her solid silver eyes boring into Jane’s.

Silverite said, “Not your fuckup. You’re fine. I’m angry, though. He could actually be dead.”

“He’s not dead,” Jane found herself saying, with extreme vehemence.

“Well I hope you’re right, Jane.” Silverite half-yelled. She forced herself to calm again, briefly closing her eyes and focusing on something that wasn’t the people in front of her. She opened her eyes, and asked, “Have you heard about the dead souls thing we got going on, now? Ar'Kendrithyst’s little death knell?”

“Poi told us on the way over here,” Teressa said.

“Then he has followed at least those directions correctly.” Silverite said, “You’re going to be involved in that defense. All three of you, and primarily through Kiri. Kiri now has most of the spellwork that Erick had— Has.” She paused. She said, “Kiri has most of the spellwork that Erick has. She’s done differently in a lot of places, though, and she doesn’t have a Domain yet. Probably gonna take her decades to get that good, like most normal mages of her caliber. Problem is we don’t have decades— Wait. Teressa. You’re good with mana sense now, yes?”

“And basic prognostication.” Teressa said, “It’s a lot easier to do without Erick being around, too.”

“Yay for glimmering sights,” Silverite said, sarcastically. Then she spoke seriously, “I want you to take the tests for certification. We can use another proven prognosticator of any ability at all, and you’re supposed to be good, to hear Poi tell it. You still need to prove you’re good, and then I have a good place for you.”

“I understand.” Teressa said, “I will get this certification.”

“Then you’re on that. Report to Liquid when you can in to take the tests.” Silverite looked at Jane, saying, “You’re likely gonna end up on major monster detail. Poi will be on coordination efforts, through Kiri and you. Teressa might be involved elsewhere, or settled down next to Kiri inside the [Prismatic Ward] around your house—” She roared, “At least that spellwork is still there—” She calmed, “Unlike the [Prismatic Ward]s around the rooms in Enduring Forge…” She breathed. She said, “He never shifted the spellwork around his home so I doubt it would shift now, but to ensure that it won’t be taken down by anything less than Erick himself, I had Archmage Opal enact some extra layers of defense around that particular spellwork; long lasting [Force Wall]s and other such spellwork. The three of you will remain stationed in that safe space, of course, but you’re gonna have to [Blink] to get through Opal’s spells.”

A swell of emotions rolled up and out of Jane, as she felt hot tears roll down her face. She wasn’t sure why, but she was really touched that Silverite cared— Of course she cared, but… Actions mattered, and this was good. Jane said, “Thank you, Mayor Silverite.”

With a momentarily softer voice, Silverite said, “You three survived being accomplices on the Worldly Path; you have no idea how rare that is. At least one of you should have died. Possibly all of you. But Erick is Erick, so I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. Hopefully, he’s simply on his next step and he’ll return when he can. With any luck, it won’t take him more than a month to get back to us. Maybe two. Two months is my timetable before I start worrying.” She spoke stronger, “So I want this black soul ooze sorted well before then, because if Erick comes back here and he doesn’t have [Gate]... Then that means we’re on the Path with him, and I do not like what that means for us, or for Spur.”

Jane felt a need to speak, so she did, “Earlier, in the debrief… We spoke of the Sliding System and what the machine had said. I get the impression that my father would not be allowed to leave the Worldly Path? Is that why you didn’t want him coming here?”

“Exactly right, Jane, and I’m glad to hear you actually ask this question because that means that my information embargo worked. That you’re even able to ask it at all gives me good hope that we’re far enough away from his Worldly Path that we’re not currently under Fate’s fist. Which is fantastic.” Silverite explained, “Many people on the Worldly Path have come to Spur before, for Melemizargo is at the end of all iterations of the Path. This information comes to everyone who walks the Path. In turn, those people come here, hoping to get into Ar’Kendrithyst to find more answers. Sometimes those people are total failures, though, so Melemizargo lets them quit, for he has grown tired of their presence. But for your father? The man who brought him out of his insanity?” Silverite stressed, “Dragons don’t let shiny things go, Jane.”

Jane’s chest felt tight. “… Is it possible for him to ever complete it, then?”

Silverite said, “I don’t know.”

Killzone spoke up, “He can complete it, but he’d need to find a different Wizard to do the final step. I doubt Melemizargo would let him complete the Path in the normal manner, either.”

Jane stared at the big man. “Wizardry? Really? That’s the final step?”

Silverite frowned at the big man. Teressa scowled at nothing in particular, her eyes flickering with grey light as she looked elsewhere. Poi sighed, and Liquid shrugged.

Liquid said, “It’s a theory. We’ve seen a lot of various Walkers come and go over the centuries, with some coming a lot closer to [Gate] than others, and with at least two that I personally knew that had it in their heads to go chase down a Wizard for assistance.”

Killzone said, “I’ve personally seen three Walkers try to find Wizards.”

“And I’ve seen twenty four.” Silverite said, “One and all, every Walker that tried that route ended up dead.”

Jane said, “Then I’m glad my father didn’t know of this, or we would have tried— Oh. He taunted a dragon with the threat of finding a wizard that would transform the dragon from Elemental Shadow and Ooze into Elemental Truth, with the goal to get the dragon to speak truths.”

Liquid, Killzone, and Silverite each listened, but she could tell they had heard this fact already. Probably from Poi.

But Jane hadn’t been a part of that conversation, so Jane continued, “And Goldie appeared to us before that, directly telling us that dragons only truly cared about one thing; finding Wizards. Which is why dad taunted the dragon in that way.”

Silverite spoke first, “Sounds like I’ve now reached 25 of my Worldly Path Wizardly count.”

Liquid said, “That’s a lot of purely circumstantial evidence since there’s never been anyone who actually solved [Gate] magic the hard way... But I’m officially up to three-Wizard-mentions.”

“Four.” Killzone said, “And that’s more than enough circumstantial evidence to put that at the true final step of the Worldly Path.”

“Possibly only near the end; maybe not a true final step,” Liquid said.

Silverite waved a hand, saying, “Okay. That’s great.” She said, “Teressa, Jane, Poi; We’re glad to have you back. Welcome home. For now you’re assisting Kiri and on nightly monster-killing duty with everyone else. Liquid will sort you out before sunset.” She looked directly at Jane, saying, “We’re going to end this black ooze threat, and then you can go search for Erick. Am I understood?”

Jane latched onto the goal, sounding off in time with Poi and Teressa, “Yes, ma’am!”

“Dismissed.”

- - - -

Home was exactly as Jane had left it.

The mansion was three stories of near-Victorian architecture, but done in solid orange stone, with a mage tower at the north for Jane, and a mage tower at the south for her father. To the west, in the front of the house, grew a garden of earthly vegetables and fruits alongside veirdly varieties, while on the east side was an… An orchard of cocoa trees, apparently. About twenty cocoa trees. That was new. There had only been a few cocoa trees in that secondary garden patch when they had all left for the Worldly Path, but apparently the ladies of ‘And Dessert!’ were doing well with their chocolate.

The house also had a proper fence now, which was different. It was a thick stone fence, lit up with politely-worded lightwards telling people not to cross onto the property. The warnings seemed to need to be enforced, though, since there were guards from Spur stationed inside the property. Some of those guards were actually gardening, or at least they were keeping the place looking nice. Jane even knew them. One of the guards was Biggie, a dragonkin with dark grey scales who Jane and Kiri had worked with when Jane was stationed under Sargent Nanark, back at her time in Ar’Kendrithyst, before she became a Team Leader and was mostly independent.

The Human District had changed, though.

Where once was mostly empty, flat orange stone, surrounded by distant farm beds, there were seven new mansions dotting the land here and there. One of them was mostly built when Jane had left with her father on the Worldly Path, and now it looked fully built and occupied. That house belonged to a noble with a name that escaped Jane at the moment, but which would probably come to her later. Most of the other houses looked similarly fancy, except for one. The mage trio’s house, to the north, retained its normal look, almost mirroring Erick’s house; it looked a bit neglected, actually. Even Erick’s house looked run down when compared to all the others, though. The noble vacation/adventuring houses had paint on the walls, or colored stone layered atop the orange. Some even had fancy fountains in their lawns and gardens.

At least no one had built directly next to the house. Silverite probably had something to do with that. Security concerns and common decency and prestige; take your pick, they were all valid reasons.

Jane, Poi, and Teressa, had bypassed almost all of the security measures, though, and taken the shortcut directly into the house’s foyer. But there was one security measure that Jane did not think would be a problem, and here that problem was, hovering in front of them and hissing at them. Jane had even checked the target location with a [Scry] before she blipped, but it seemed that Sunny barely remembered any of them.

Jane let Poi deal with Sunny.

The little green couatl screeched loud, again. Though it hadn’t attacked with any spellwork, it certainly made a racket. How could Kiri sleep through this? Jane almost sent up some light to poke at the woman, but she didn’t want to make any large movements; not when the one Sunny in front of them contented itself with screeching, but the other Sunnys, hiding here and there around the house, looked ready to pounce.

Or more accurately, spew lightning, or something.

Poi spoke calmly, though he was beyond agitated. “Sunny. You remember us—”

Kiri stepped into view at the top of the stairs. She was in night clothes and half wrapped in a quilted blanket that trailed behind her, while her emerald eyes were puffy. Her tears were held back by the barest of threads. All at once, every Sunny suddenly relaxed and flitted away from the foyer. Kiri whispered, “Erick isn’t with you.”

Jane said, “He’s alive, but he went on without us.”

Kiri sniffled, then asked, “He left you behind, too?”

“It’s complicated.” Poi said, “We can speak more of all of it, but it comes down to this: We’re here now, and we’re your backup.”

Kiri huffed a nervous laugh. From one moment to the next, she seemed better. Her tears dried as she dropped the blanket, revealing nightclothes and chuckling once, before sobbing deeply and turning to light to appear right in front of Jane. Jane’s eyes went wide as Kiri crashed into her, hugging tight, before moving on to Teressa and then Poi, saying, “I’m so glad you’re back. It’s been difficult and I’ve tried to keep it together but we’re losing people every night and it’s—” She hugged Jane again, and this time Jane was able to hug her back. “It’s been—” She broke down, sobbing briefly, before saying, “It’s been tough.”

Jane held her for a while, and she found that she had missed Kiri. She had missed the house. She had missed Spur. She said, “We’re back now, and I’ll help with the near-Ancients, or whatever they are.”

Kiri whispered, “Thank the gods.” She sighed, as she pulled away and looked at them all, saying, “Sorry about that. It’s been rough, but I guess you guys went through a war, too.”

Teressa said, “Aye, we did. But it looks like you went through this war all on your own.”

“No one else can enter the house, and this is where I’m safest— We already had—” Kiri glanced at the bags, saying, “Uh. I’ll help you with those.” The bags vanished in flickers of rapidly-moving Sunnys. “So I’m awake, now. Let’s talk about everything.”

Poi frowned a little, saying, “I think you should go back to bed. We’re here, you’re safe, and you need the rest. We should all probably go to our own beds and sleep, too. Tonight will be difficult and there’s no need for more stress at the moment.”

Kiri lashed out, “Erick could do this just fine! I—” She pulled back, closing her eyes as she waved a hand. “Sorry. Sorry. I thought I could do this, too.” Kiri breathed out, saying, “Yeah. I’m going back to bed. Wake me up an hour till sunset, please?”

“Sure thing, Kiri,” Jane said.

“I want to know all about it.” Kiri said, “Everything. Okay?”

Jane smiled. “Yeah. We’ll tell you.”

“Even the shit you wouldn’t tell anyone else,” Kiri stared a bit, then she softened, and whispered, “Okay?”

Jane nodded. Teressa hummed assent.

Poi just flicked his eyes upward, to the second story.

Kiri sighed and flashed into green light. When she resolved, she was upstairs, and walking to her room, muttering, “Sleep, sleep, sleep.”

Everyone parted to their own parts of the house. Teressa went straight to bed. Poi went to the third floor, for whatever reason. Jane went to the kitchen, to see if the place was stocked, or not.

The kitchen had more food than any one person could ever eat; the kitchen was fine. And yet, Kiri had felt thin when Jane had her arms around her. She had looked thin, too, but… She had always been thin, right? No. She hadn’t always been that thin.

Hmm.

Jane explored the rest of the house, quick as a shadow—

She reappeared on the third floor hallway, because she had seen what Poi had gone after. In the third floor of the house, in one of the larger rooms, her father’s [Prismatic Ward] did not exist. Erick had left it that way on purpose so that he could experiment with smaller scale magics without the interference of that dense air.

The Army had turned this part of the house into a miniature command center.

The space was empty of people at the moment, but there were chairs and tables and a chalkboard and a lightward 3D map of the battlefield between Spur’s walls and the entire surrounding battlefield to ten kilometers out, including a bit of the walls of Ar’Kendrithyst to the south. Poi was already inside going over papers and checking out recorded monsters and their abilities. Jane joined him. Soon, Teressa showed, and she got in on the action as well.

As Jane read over the recorded monsters —officially called amalgams— she got more and more concerned, but also more than a little bit excited.

Teressa said it best, “These aren’t simple monsters… They’re dead people. People.” She enunciated, “As in multiples of people. Thousands, in some cases.”

Poi was reading something else as he commented, “The more dangerous ones act as fully-linked mage covens, which means they can either cast multiple spells at once and cooperative cast for massive effects.”

Teressa shook a small folder, saying, “The most dangerous one so far was a three-person meld. From our own side! Gone to sleep in the same room and woken up changed, and crazed.”

“So don’t get the shit on you and [Cleanse] for at least 30 seconds after every battle.” Jane held up her own folder, saying, “This one was five shadow giants and a hundred shadowolves, melded together into one massive monster of limbs and jaws and claws and with the regenerative properties of a wyrm.”

Teressa frowned, but Jane could tell she was interested.

Jane teased, “You complained about not fighting enough monsters! See what complaining gets you!”

Teressa huffed a small laugh. “I see what complaining gets me.”

“And now we’re all here in the deep shit with you,” Jane said, smiling. “Oceans of deep black shit.”

Poi put his papers back into their folder, then began putting the folder away, saying, “I’m going to get some sleep while I can. I suggest you all do the same.”

A round of agreements had everything put back where it was supposed to go, and then they all left to their rooms.

Jane collapsed onto her bed —her own bed!— and it smelled like home… Probably a bit too much. She got back up, [Cleanse]d, put away shit, took off crap, hung her sword on the wall—

Gods, that was a beautiful sword.

Jane smiled at the straight-back weapon that would be killing many, many monsters in the coming hours and days, and then she crawled back into bed, feeling a lot more weary than she expected. She set an [Alarm Ward] to go off in 6 hours, with a personal-only sound, giving her some time before nightly siege. Jane closed her eyes.

She was out in minutes.

She dreamed of her father.

All too quickly, the alarm woke her up. Bleary-eyed, Jane got out of bed and brushed the tears from her eyes, and then she went to go see about dinner. Teressa was already up and cooking up a storm with copious amounts of meat and a lot of bluebell seasoning.

Jane teased her, “You really like that shitty little flower spice, don’t you?”

“I do!” Teressa laughed. “It’s been too long since I had it, too.”

“Wanna try that 12 star spice?”

“Fuck you. No.” Teressa said, “Don’t you go ruining my food with that shit, either.”

“Oh! Come’on! You might like it!”

Poi came into the room—

Teressa latched onto Poi’s leadership, saying, “Poi! This Team Leader is about to commit 12-star culinary crimes! What’s her punishment?”

“Send her out to fight for her life against monsters that will eat her alive.”

Jane laughed. Poi smiled.

Teressa seriously said, “I don’t want to be put on background duty, Poi. Don’t let that happen.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Poi said, “But we’re all getting the assignments we need, and you made yourself an indispensable prognosticator with a natural mana sense range of 120 meters and an eye on the big picture. Blame yourself.”

“Yeah yeah.” Teressa said, “Point taken.”

Jane went to the pantry, asking, “How can I help make dinner?”

“I want mashed potatoes,” Kiri said, coming into the room. “Like how Erick made them.”

“Then that is what we shall have.” Jane moved toward the cold room, asking, “Who wants to start explaining?”

Kiri said, “I want to know where Erick is, and why you think he isn’t dead, even though Yggdrasil has been shown to survive when horrible things have been done to Erick. And then I want a highlight of everything else you think is important.” She added, “And I want to know about the runic armaments you all got, but I can wait on that. We probably don’t have enough time to get through everything before the nightly siege.”

Jane glanced to Teressa, who glanced to Poi. Who was going to start?

Poi began, “So there was this Teleporting Pad in this place called Enduring Forge, located under the Northern Tribulations; the mountain range that runs all throughout Nelboor. It was there that…”

Poi explained a lot of things.

Kiri listened. She calmly raised objections. Poi elaborated. Jane joined in sometimes. Teressa took over once she was done with the major cooking, weaving a story of the Worldly Path fit for a bard. As they ate nice steaks and copious mashed potatoes with lots of butter, they got back to barracks teasing, and assorted stories, and gallows humor. Kiri broke down a few times for reasons she didn’t go into, but Jane, Poi, and Teressa were there to lift her back up. By the time dinner was actually over and cleaned up, Kiri remained concerned about what happened to Erick.

Jane said, “He’s alive, Kiri, because if he’s dead then I’m… I’m not sure what. It’ll be bad.”

Poi said, “We have Minds on various necromancers the world over, who are already trying to call forth Erick’s soul from the manasphere. There’s a small chance that he could slip through those nets, but it’s a low chance. Very low.”

Jane looked to Poi, and asked a question that had been burning a hole in the back of her thoughts. “Quilatalap?”

“Yes,” Poi answered.

Teressa breathed deep, mumbling, “Fuck.”

“If that’s how it is, then that’s how it is. Okay. Fine.” Kiri breathed deep, then she seemed to appear lighter, as though she had set aside her worries, and moved on to other ones. She declared, “Dammit all to fucking shit. I missed out by coming back to Spur, didn’t I!” She looked to Teressa, saying, “Fucking world-class prognosticator.” She looked to Poi. “Adamantium armor!” And then Jane. “And enough Points to make everything easier!”

“Yup!” Jane said, “And don’t forget the runework! And the gridwork! And the reflections. That’s probably the biggest deal to come out of all this. All three of us can reflect most directed spellwork.”

Kiri scowled. “Why don’t they teach us that in Arcanaeum!”

Teressa smirked. “And I got aura control and Remade every single Shaping spell and a lot of the basic ones, too.”

Poi said, “You made out very well, Teressa.”

“I did, didn’t I?” Teressa smiled.

Kiri said, “This is infuriating! I thought I had a good education, but I didn’t get a sponsor until I came here… Granted, my sponsor is Erick, but... Dammit.” She asked Teressa, “Which do you think is more important? Aura control, or all the senses?”

Teressa said, “Aura control, for sure.”

Jane said, “Yeah. Aura control. I’m working on it, but I haven’t had much luck.”

“There’s gonna be a lot of downtime in the coming siege,” Poi said, “So you got time to practice.”

“But besides all that, reflection spellwork is super important.” Teressa said, “The reflection-thing is mostly used against people, though, which isn’t something that happens a lot in Spur.”

Jane said, “Dad knew about the importance of reflections before we went to Nelboor.”

“He did.” Teressa said, “And I think I was rather dismissive at the time; shows what I know.”

Kiri looked a bit lost—

Poi said to Kiri, “Spur would have lost a lot more people without your presence. And besides that, Erick will eventually be back. I’m sure he’ll pick up some equally world-changing magic aside from [Gate], too, and he’ll want to share.”

“Oh yeah.” Teressa said, “100% gonna happen.”

Jane smiled.

Kiri gave a small grin. “I can only hope.” And then she frowned, and said, “I’m glad to be here, but… It’s been… Sometimes I’ve felt as though I’ve saved someone from themselves only to find their corpse among the dead the next day. And these idiots— These traveling adventurers from Greensoil are the worst. They’re all FUCKING IDIOTS.”

“Ah. So nothing has changed.” Teressa nodded.

Poi said, “Yup. You were saving idiots back on your tour of duty in Ar’Kendrithyst, too, so this shouldn’t be that much different.”

Kiri frowned. “… I suppose the scale is different. I actually see every individual body these days. I see every failure to communicate, and every failure of orders. Every single night at least 10 to 15 people die trying to kill a big amalgam because the big ones can be anywhere from level 75 to 95.” She stressed, “Everyone wants the easy levels and none of the idiots are prepared to actually fight at that level.”

Jane smiled softly, feeling suddenly giddy as she said, “Then it’s a good thing we’re back. I’m going to kill-steal all of those amalgams.”

“Good fucking luck!” Kiri exclaimed.

It was good to be home.

Poi said, “You will follow orders, Jane, and not deviate from them.”

Jane waved him off, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Poi gave her a pretty impressive glare.

Jane held her hands in the air, saying, “I’ll be good! I swear!”

Teressa grinned. Kiri smirked.

Poi mm-hmm’d.

- - - -

It was almost go time.

Kiri took Poi, Jane, and Teressa to the top floor, into the command room, where she walked to the file cabinets and scrounged around, saying, “Now I know they wrote up a primer for these soul beasts to hand out to every… one… Not sure where it is.” She opened and shut a few cabinets before turning to say, “I’ll get one from the Adventurer’s Guild.” Sunny vanished from around her neck and then reappeared almost as fast, clutching onto paperwork. Kiri handed out the papers, and began, “Okay. So. In case you didn’t notice, Spur has more people than ever. Current population is at 300,000 and climbing. We might not have Erick, but we have archmages and rain and we’re in the middle of desert, so it’s an attractive proposition now that the Shades are almost all gone. But add to that the fact that the largest, most dangerous amalgams— The official names of the monsters are ‘Dead Soul Amalgamation’ according to their Kill Notification, but everyone calls them amalgams. Well. They’re high level. And that means a lot of experience.

“As you can read, we’ve got a lot of basic intel on them, for we’ve fought at least three to ten every night for the last three weeks. One time we had twenty. That was not a good night.” Kiri said, “The Kill Notifications for all of them are the same, no matter the size, but the level does vary considerably. The bigger they are, the more varied or powerful they are.

“Thing-to-know One: They go after living souls. That is their goal. So far we’ve found no correlation between level or Class or Mana pool or Health pool size, to whether or not the amalgam will chase you, or not. Number of clumped living souls does matter, though, as well as distance to the nearest clump. An amalgam will almost always chase a group of people running in one direction rather than a single person running in the other direction. If they get too close to Spur, then we’ll have to evacuate because then there will be no way to correct their trajectory away from large population centers.

“There are variations of this normal behavior, though, because of number Two: How odd they look correlates to crazy, and the larger they are, the more they have a chance to look truly odd. It is generally easier to fight the larger, messed up amalgams in groups of three or more, because they’ll be distracted with so many nearby living souls to chase.

“Beware the amalgams that look like normal monsters.

“There are variations of all of that, though, because of number Three: In almost all ways, and especially if you give them a single target, the amalgamated souls will work together. This usually means cooperative casting producing some very, very large, singular-direction spells. [Force Bolt]s the size of a person; or a thousand at once. [Force Beam]s the thickness of a tree, or a thousand beams at once. That sort of thing.” Kiri frowned. “Though since both Teressa and Jane have reflective spellwork, then that might not be a problem. You might be expected to kill the larger, magically inclined ones. Those are the dangerous ones.”

Teressa said, “Chances are I’ll either duo with Jane or hang back and prognosticate. Depends on Liquid and Killzone, but I’m guessing that a prognosticator is more important than a warrior.”

“You’re right,” Poi said, half listening, but mostly reading notes.

Teressa shrugged; she had known that this would happen.

“Well then! More for me! I’ll be ripping it up as the biggest, baddest spider you all have ever seen,” Jane said. “And I’ll do it while fully reflective and immune to most magics.”

Poi looked up from the notes, to look at Jane. “I am hesitant to sign off on you looking like a monster around people… But in this case it might be for the best, since you will be expected to go solo.”

“Ah!” Kiri spoke up, “That reminds me. Thing-to-know Four: the amalgams go after the bigger threats. Orcols, usually, but a giant spider would certainly make you a primary target. You might end up drawing too many of them, but if you have a good reflective magic, then that should be fine.” She asked, “What is your reflective ability, anyway? Spell? Skill?”

“Monster body Skill called Radiant Presence. I have to be a spider to use it, but it works well. It’s from a variant Nacreous Weaver known as a Radiant Nacreous Weaver.” Jane said, “Spells won’t touch me.”

“My current reflective spell breaks too easily,” Kiri said.

Teressa said, “I’ll work with you tomorrow if you want to try your hand at [Reflective Flying Shield].” She handed off a spell to Kiri, continuing, “Erick managed to make one that reflects everything—”

“Even [Strike]s!” Jane piped up.

“—even [Strike]s. [Animadversion], Erick called it. That spell is amazing, and he can hand it off to others, too.” Teressa said, “This one is not that, but it’s useful. I’ve found a directed reflection is better than an aura, full body reflection—” She paused, then asked everyone else, “Erick made [Animadversion] directly after Kiri left?”

“He did,” Poi said.

Kiri blinked a bit, both at Teressa, and at the spell she had been handed. Kiri dismissed the blue box and said, “I have a [Personal Ward] reflection, like Erick had at the beginning. I run it on Sunny when Sunny is out there, but a directed shield might be better, if only in a set-and-forget sort of manner.”

Teressa said, “My [Reflective Flying Shield] lasts basically forever when it’s attached to the shield, so that’s a plus.”

“… Yeah.” Kiri looked to the paperwork for the amalgams. “I think that’s everything— No wait. Uh. Yes. The most important part. The black goo uses [Soul Burn], which is a spell that—”

“We ran into that,” Jane said, smirking.

Poi frowned at Jane, saying, “This is a variant [Soul Burn].”

Jane scoffed—

“HA!” Kiri proclaimed proudly. Then she happily glared, and said, “I encountered something you didn’t so fuck you and listen.” She smiled as she said, “Don’t go below 500 Health out there, or else the goo will be able to begin to curse you…” She lost her smile, as though realizing what she was saying was in fact truly terrible. “If you drop to 0 Health while you’re cursed, you’ll be vulnerable to amalgamization with anyone else who is also cursed, which usually happens to be the amalgam you’re currently fighting. This is perhaps the most dangerous problem, so don’t ever get any goo on you, because several things will happen. Health will start to drain and you’ll begin to forget what your Health should look like. It’s a variant of the uncleanliness curse from curse slimes, and it’s present in every single drop of the black ocean. The dead soul flood might be related to the death of the Witch, but we’re not sure. There are a few theo— We’ll go over theories, tomorrow.”

Teressa had gone solid, all mirth flowing away as her focus crystallized into mentally preparing for the coming night.

Jane recalled that curse slimes had been the first domino to kick off a chain of events that ended up killing Teressa’s entire team, and her whole family up in the Forest of Glaquin. Of course, it was more accurate to say that the Witch killed all of those people, but if Teressa and her team hadn’t fallen into complacency due to the uncleanliness curse of the curse slimes, then the Witch never would have happened.

Or at least it would have gone down differently.

And that was the end of the mirth for everyone, apparently.

Jane went hard, too. She fucking hated mental threats, especially ones that lulled you into complacency.

Kiri waited. She probably expected Teressa, or someone, to say something, but that didn’t happen. So Kiri continued, “The teams will be checking up on you throughout the night, Jane— you and everyone else. They’ll ask for Health totals and such, and if you look like you’ve gone too low they’ll call you in, because you won’t come in on your own and you might think that your Health looks fine, even though you’re sitting at zero.” Kiri said, “As for how the drain actually works, it seems to be a minimum 10 Health per second drain, if you’ve got any ooze on you at all. This is important. Any ooze at all means you’re taking a drain. The good news is that if you’re fully covered, even if your size is increased due to skills, or whatever, the max rate of drain seems to be around 100-125 Health per second.

“Active skills which decrease damage taken also decrease the drain. [Defend] is good for a full minute of half-damage from the ooze. It costs a tenth of your capped Max Health, but it’s worth it if you’re unable to flee the ooze.

“Otherwise, there are [Cleanse] stations set up each night with people providing cleaning services. Sewermaster Al is out there every night providing a massive [Cleanse] retreat for everyone. Others, too.

“You are not allowed inside Spur if you’ve been out fighting for any length of time; not until the sunrise. This ooze can spread in the darkness, so it's very dangerous for anyone fighting it to go indoors.” Kiri said, “Sunlight evaporates it a lot better than [Cleanse], so we rely on that now for everyone who actually fights on the front lines or uses the cleaning stations. Quarantine breaks killed too many people too many nights in a row for us to take anymore chances with allowing people inside the city to rest between floods of monsters— Some asshole is always breaking quarantine, but you don’t have to be that asshole.” She paused. She said, “Other good news: [Cleanse] does rid you of the curse if you run it long enough, but we’re still not taking chances with more outbreaks. Other good news: Despite all the danger and unknowns, this is a winnable fight. Very rarely do any of the amalgams fly. More good news: [Cleanse Aura] will usually keep the threat of the ooze away, as it will actively prevent ooze from clinging to you, and it will usually weaken the monsters you’re fighting.”

“Question,” Jane asked, “Do you know what a [Sunlight Rift] is?”

Kiri perked up. “Yes. Archmage Obsidian deploys them everywhere across the forward wall. They help to destroy much of the ooze and reveal the amalgams underneath.”

“Related question: Are they made with real sunlight, like how dad taught you to make?”

Kiri lightly stared. “Do you know how to make a rift? Because I tried, and Archmage Obsidian will not help me. I’m not a ‘real archmage’, he says; I’m ‘playing at one’.”

Jane glanced to Teressa.

Teressa nodded. “Yeah. We know how to make rifts. I’m here anyway, so I’ll talk to you about all that stuff while Jane helps to kill the big ones.”

Jane was a bit surprised at her willingness to remain behind, but sure.

Kiri grinned. “I would like that very much.”

“I’m on coordination detail,” Poi announced, to no surprise at all.

Jane said, “And I’m getting level 90 tonight!”

Kiri laughed lightly, happily, saying, “Good luck dealing with the idiots.”

There was a bit more talk and a bit more elaboration of previous threats, but soon enough, people from the Army started blipping into the third floor room and setting up for the coming night. Poi took charge of that operation center while Kiri went to the next room over, to sit in a specially-made [Scry]ing chair that leaned back and supported her body.

Jane looked to the young girl, who was barely younger than herself.

And Kiri looked like she was shaking. She was probably deeply worried.

Jane went to Kiri and touched her shoulder.

Kiri flinched. “Yeah?”

Jane said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you more, back when someone fucked with your memories in that museum.”

Kiri huffed a tiny laugh. Sunnys curled in the air around the room, and turned to light as they flew away. Kiri took a moment, then she said, “Thank you. I’m— I’m really glad you’re all back. Knock those amalgams dead, Jane, and—” Kiri suddenly stared at Jane. “When Poi —or anyone else! When Poi tells you to come in because you’re compromised, you listen. Understand me?”

“I understand.” Jane changed the subject, “What level are you now?”

“93.” Kiri’s eyes flickered green as she looked elsewhere. “You’ve got some catching up to do.”

“Ha! I guess I do—”

“Jane!” Poi called from the other room, “You’re moving out in five. Get ready! Whatever form you want. Transform near people, but not directly near them!”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Jane’s stomach was ready to lift out of her chest and exit through her mouth, but that feeling was quickly replaced with a sparking tension in her shoulders and a need to stand on her toes, to flex, to get ready for what was to come. Her breath came out faster as her heart beat hard.

She left Kiri to her station as she went back into the command center, across the hallway. The room was now full of soldiers and their Screens. They were there to keep Kiri on task, and they would do a good job of it, too. Sergeant Nanark, the large orcol who had been Jane’s commander for a while when she was inside Ar’Kendrithyst, was there and talking to Poi and Teressa. At Jane’s entrance the sergeant included her in the quick discussion, completing the transfer of Kiri’s support system over to Poi.

Poi would also be handling Teressa, who was on prognostication duty for all of Spur until situations demanded otherwise, though Teressa would remain stationed here for convenience. Jane was to move out to the frontlines immediately, alongside Nanark. The two of them would be meeting Killzone on the front lines, along with a few other Soloists and Team Leaders. While Nanark would oversee a few teams so he wouldn’t be working with Jane directly, Jane shouldn’t need it, anyway; Jane’s support system would be handled through Poi and Kiri, as their ‘team’, between Kiri and Jane, were expected to handle the massed threats and the larger threats. Almost all normal adventures and soldiers were on medium threats, the amalgams between three meters tall and ten.

Jane should only expect assistance with the larger threats if it seemed necessary.

Nanark explained that the bulk of the Army was organized along generalized defensive lines, manning several walls that might not stop the ooze, but they would funnel the ooze and the amalgams in certain ways, giving defenders precise areas to blow up, instead of everyone needing to defend everything, everywhere. No one thought that they would need Jane to handle the actual defensive line, but it was important that she knew where she could retreat, if needed, and where she would need to help out, if needed.

“Above all else,” Nanark drilled into them, “If you engage an amalgam or the ooze directly, or if you’re near the black shit at all, then you’re to remain outside of the city until dawn. Got it?”

“Sir yes, sir!” Jane said.

“Good.” Nanark said, “Then it’s time.”

The sun dipped low in the west.

Jane breathed easy.

She smiled.

Jane and Nanark took the shortcut to the frontline.

- - - -

Shadows lengthened all across Spur, and in the Crystal Forest. Mixed-height walls of stone, which were more like large, triangular hills, than actual walls, wound back and forth like open-air labyrinths between the living city and the Dead City. Among those labyrinths were three highly visible main walls.

These larger, circular walls with no openings at all, were the actual lines of defense between life and death, surrounding all of Spur like three concentric rings. The battle would start off coming from the Dead City, but by an hour past sundown, the black ooze would have settled out across all of the nearby Crystal Forest, completely surrounding Spur. It would soon rise up to a level that eclipsed that outer wall. Long before that, though, every defender would already be hunting and killing amalgams as they rushed over the outer wall, aiming for living targets.

The first ring wall was expected to fall, but in falling, it would condense the attack to manageable sizes and areas.

The second ring wall was expected to hold. It might break around midnight, though, as it had for the last five days in a row. The attacks were getting worse.

The last ring wall had to hold. All of the cleaning stations and otherwise were between that inner wall, and Spur’s city wall. That wall had fallen once, back in the night of 20 major amalgams, but Spur managed to beat back the horde and retake the wall before casualties started piling up. That night led to a worse day because some people had fucked off into the city; scared shitless, and they had brought dead soul ooze in with them. That ooze multiplied in the shadows.

“The stuff doesn’t break down in the deeper shadows of a house, or inside the Dead City itself,” sergeant Nanark explained to Jane, and to others nearby. “So don’t go fucking off into Spur if you get a little scared…”

Nanark was explaining everything to everyone, all over again, but Jane didn’t need to listen, for she had already heard all of this before.

The major forces, which included Jane and others of her power, had lined up on the second major wall, situated amid the second major labyrinth wall. They were a kilometer south from the support stations and the first wall nearer to Spur. On this land, this major wall was a solid ten meters wide and thirty meters tall. The labyrinth walls down below were half that. All of the walls were sloped toward the ground, rather than flat. Spur could have raised the walls three times this height, but that won’t do any good. Flat walls got pushed over too easy.

The sun began to set.

Nanark, and everyone else, gazed south as twilight took hold of the world. People whispered about this and that, with green soldiers discussing the known threats of the dead soul ooze, reminding themselves and each other about what they faced, and adjunct adventurers —mostly groups, though there were a few soloists like Jane— talking about how they were gonna get level 90 tonight.

Everyone was talking a lot.

And then the sun was gone, and everyone fell silent.

The walls of Ar’Kendrithyst loomed upon the southern horizon. They were so large and so even that they formed a false horizon, and above that new edge of the world, light glowed; red, purple, orange, and white. Seeing that half-hidden radiance was like catching a glimpse of hidden holiday lights, half-obscured by a blackout curtain.

Except these curtains covered a quarter of the horizon, and were a kilometer tall, or some shit.

Numbers didn’t really register to Jane at that particular moment.

A spiky ball of black whizzed overhead, moving quickly toward the first wall. It was Archmage Obsidian’s [Familiar]. Soon, the conjured thing went out of sight. Moments later, a minor sun appeared in the sky, directly over the first wall. Brilliant white and gold! Radiant and warm! Light shone down one orb, then two, then five, all in a string, bathing the first kilometer of the wall in false sunlight. More suns continued to appear atop that major, first wall, like a string of radiant pearls set in the sky, as Obsidian’s [Familiar]s flew east and west, planting the seeds of day atop the land. In less than a minute the entire first wall, all 100 encircling kilometers of it, was lit with false sunlight.

The real sunlight had vanished.

Jane almost missed seeing the black ooze crest the actual wall of Ar’Kendrithyst, but she didn’t miss the collective gasps of every nearby rookie as they witnessed a minor, nightly apocalypse begin to spread. Jane almost gasped herself.

The light behind Ar’Kendrithyst’s wall was suddenly lesser, with only a single, small stretch of white glows lingering beyond the edge. Everywhere else was crawling darkness. Black ooze rose up and poured down the massive walls of the Dead City like overflowing ink. Black death raced to the ground like clumpy, black blood. Dark waterfalls poured over every single available meter of wall, all across the entire Dead City.

Those clumps were the larger monsters. If Jane could see them from this distance of a few kilometers, and with the wall as tall as it was, that meant that those clumps were massive.

Jane remembered to breathe. She shivered in the sudden cold of the night. She had not yet transformed into a spider, so she should probably do that.

Soon.

Nanark spoke to his contingent, which included Jane, “Alright! If you follow the plans, and listen to the tacticians you’ve been assigned, we’ll make it out of this night alive and with a lot more levels! HOO RAH!”

For a startling moment, Jane found it ridiculous that ‘levels’ were the main attractor to the people here; this was a world-ending event that Spur was stemming. If this spread to elsewhere...

But then she realized that she had originally been happy for the promise of easy levels, too. Jane doubted she was the only one reorganizing her priorities in the face of the enemy.

And then Jane got her head in the game and joined her voice to the others’, “HOO RAAH!”

- - - -

Hurry up and wait.

Hurry up and wait.

Feel the world turn wet as the sky clouds over and light flashes behind the deepening heavens. Rain falls down, briefly, and that is not all. Watch as green lightning arcs across the sky in an ever-expanding web. That lightning then crashes into the black ooze on the other side of the forward wall, lighting up the world with green brilliance. Listen to monsters die by the hundreds. Smell the petrichor wind as lightning leaves behind streamers upon streamers of molecular wire, absolutely shredding everything that is remotely solid. But the ooze gets through, the amalgams can slip by or survive being cut in half, and Kiri can’t keep her offensive all night long; all she can do is stem the tide.

Taste the rain as a light mist collects upon your extended fangs.

And taste the fear of those who watch what you watch. Men and women stand upon the wall at your side, preparing against the oncoming horde, but they can’t bear to stand within 50 meters of your powerful form—

‘Jane,’ Poi’s voice came through, bringing Jane back to herself. ‘Forward right, 80 degrees off south. We expect a breach in less than two minutes and you’re up. Take it slow, but take it down. Killzone, Mog, and Merit are occupied. You will not be getting major reinforcements for at least 10 minutes. Orders are to hold out if you can’t kill it. Killing is preferred. Your reflective magics should fully protect you from ooze and most spells, but I’m going to bother you for Health totals every 20 seconds anyway, to be sure. Be prepared for that.’

Jane listened to Poi’s voice. The hair upon her eight legs shivered, flexing off water droplets. Jane gently angled her body toward the right, moving for the first time since she transformed and settled in to wait. A spike of fear radiated from her fellow defenders as she did so, but they said nothing.

Jane wasn’t quite sure which parts of her Familiar Form was letting her taste fear. Perhaps the lesser rivergrieve? But whatever. That was a query for another time.

At least waiting as a spider was better than waiting as a person. Spiders were made to sit still for long times. It actually felt quite relaxing. Better than the pacing and fidgeting Jane usually did when she was forced to wait for calls to action.

Jane was once again a tarantula of massive proportions, and also bright, bright iridescent blue that seemed to catch hold of every single light source and make a small part of it her own; this was both on purpose, so other people could see her, and a side effect of Perfected Form and Radiant Presence. She didn’t have Mutable Form, which would allow her to actually mute the color a bit, but this was fine. Jane felt good like this. She was big, and she was strong, and she was ready. If she wanted, she could have stretched from one side of the 10-meter-wide wall to the other, and a little bit beyond. As she was, she was simply comfortably placed, taking up half of the wall. She had been oddly content to watch for a while. With her large eyes taken from her Primal Frost Owl form, she was able to see every single battle happening all across the land before her.

But it was time to work.

Jane did a partial [Polymorph] and changed her main, forward eyes back to those of the shadow spider. The world moved further away, becoming slightly less precise, but gaining a whole new dimension. Magic flowed in the dark ooze, covering the land ahead, like an iridescent sheen inside the black.

She could almost make out faces inside the ooze.

She could definitely see all the teams and individuals down on the grounds between wall 2 and 1, fighting with countless spellwork against the amalgams that had made it over the first wall, and past the still-bright sun orbs. Those damned sun orbs didn’t seem to be doing much except decrease the ocean of ooze washing toward Spur by a factor of a half…

Which was objectively worthwhile.

Without those orbs, the black ocean would have surely rushed right over the outermost wall, just like it rushed over Ar’Kendrithyst’s wall.

Jane flicked her fangs, and flexed her legs. She had knocked together everything she could into this body, and it would have to be enough. From what she saw down there, it probably was. From what she saw trudging through the ooze outside of that first wall, walking toward Spur like towering masses of arms and legs and death… It might be enough.

Poi’s voice returned, ‘ETA in 5, 4, 3…’

Jane couldn’t lightstep like her father, for she had no Domain, but she could lightstep a bit, and so she did. With five tiny hops upon ethereal light, hopping across the myriad of floodlight orbs scattered across the land, Jane moved into proper position near the forward wall.

She reached the forward lines, looking like a blue firework made flesh, right as a massive monster rose from the ocean of black ooze beyond that first wall. It was a screaming thing, thirty meters tall and covered in countless arms, all of them long and stringy and dripping black ooze. The whole amalgam was slug-like, except for the arms. It had been fully submerged in the ocean of ooze and was still half under the black waves. It might have been 50 or 60 meters tall if it stood upright, but it could not stand tall.

Jane would need to take it apart piecemeal, for only by separating it into chunks could it actually be ‘killed’.

It wouldn’t actually die without extensive spell damage, though. The dead souls that made it up would just return to senescence; return to the black ocean. But the black ocean could dry up if exposed to enough light, or to enough [Cleanse]…

Jane had a plan. It was time to implement that plan. Testing came first, though.

The amalgam noticed Jane standing in front of it like the world’s shiniest blue beetle. It reached for her with a hundred oozy arms, but she dodged, stepping across the light to stand behind the beast, hovering midair. Half of the amalgam’s attack continued on to the wall, crashing into the stone, breaking it a bit and sloshing ooze over the edge, sending a minor flood across to the other side—

‘Don’t let it attack the wall,’ Poi sent.

Jane didn’t want to actually touch the monster, but fortunately, she didn’t have to. She had gotten a sword recently, and now it was time to test that sword out. The black length of adamantium soaked in power and pulled away from Jane’s second left foot, to hover like a glowing toothpick—

… A bit of [Greater Lightwalk] fixed the size issue.

The sword remained small, but the blade of light coming out of the sword extended to ten meters, becoming a solid edge of cutting force. [Greater Lighwalk] demanded a bit more mana to keep this shape running, going from five mana per second to seven, but it was well worth the mana.

Half of the amalgam twisted, its entire body moving toward the living soul hovering behind it. Arms reached, and Jane responded.

‘Snicker snack went the vorpal sword,’ Jane sent, as a good twenty hands and half-arms clipped off and fell away, like broken ooze.

‘Don’t get cocky.’ Poi sent, ‘Health?’

‘5750. Small cost due to [Strike].’ Jane dodged further left, repositioning upon the light cast by the sun orb in the sky.

Poi went silent.

Jane engaged the amalgam and she found that everything in the reports had been true. Amalgams (or at least this one) weren’t very smart creatures. Jane was able to dodge left, cut, dodge left, cut, and repeat. Limbs rained from the air. She had only been fighting for about 35 second so far, and in that time, she had spent nearly 350 mana, with 250 of that cost going toward normal upkeep. She was Meditating, though, so she had also regenerated almost 80 mana. She didn’t do much math beyond that, for fighting and mathing was rather difficult, and something shifted in the amalgam as Jane cut away limbs. The first shift came from the eruption of even longer arms out from the slug’s body. The second shift came more gradually, though. The amalgam was fucking fast, and it seemed to be getting faster.

The wind whistled as forty arms came for her, and half of them were swiped away in a flash of normal sword slashing; no [Strike]s were needed for this part of the conflict.

The monster twisted in on itself as Jane stepped to the left, again. She had traveled completely around slug amalgam twice now, and it was bent in half, like its spine couldn’t twist any further. But it had no spine according to her false rivergrieve’s Blood Sense; or at least not one that mattered. It certainly had a lot of blood, though.

So Jane tried Blood Weaver, trying to rip the red liquid right out of the slug amalgam to both use for her own spellwork, and to harm the amalgam. This failed for some reason. Perhaps the ‘blood’ inside the creature wasn’t real blood? Or perhaps the thing was just too naturally resistant to Blood Magic. Jane should have been able to get some sort of grip on the monster, but she couldn’t, for whatever reason.

Jane splashed it with a [Fireball], instead.

Dark blue flames struck near the twisted base of the amalgam and spread everywhere. The flames wouldn’t last long, but it would help to weaken—

Five arms rapidly grew from the side of the slug and reached for Jane, clipping her right forward legs as she desperately moved left, faster than she thought she needed to move. Suddenly, more arms reached for her again, extending a hundred meters and more trying to get to her. Jane retreated further still, pulling back into the air high, high above the ooze, away from the wall. The second set of arms had managed to clip her, though.

The bastard was moving faster. Much, much faster.

Jane started burning [Hunter’s Instincts]; she was at a 3 Health per second drain, in addition to the 7 Mana per second from [Greater Lightwalk]. Her sword glinted with deeper light, flickering blue down the edge, turning harder, if that was even possible.

The slug amalgam, all fifty meters of the beast, moved through the ooze like an ocean liner crashing through ice floes. Black, strangely solid waves crested left and right as arms came for Jane. She saw, for the first time, eyes and maws among the slug amalgam’s body, glaring, chomping. It wanted to eat her, to make her a part of it, and she could not let that happen.

Light slashed as Jane counter attacked, stepping through the light, aiming for the slug’s head, her sword and power cleaving apart hands and arms as she passed by—

‘Health,’ Poi demanded, before he took that information for himself, telling Jane her own numbers, ‘5400.’

Jane focused on the fight.

The slug’s upper three meters slipped away from the rest of the body as the body turned and attacked without rest. But that upper part still moved; still clambered like a many-armed beast that was wholly separate from the main body. Jane sent a [Fireball] at the separated piece as she moved again.

The next three meters of the top of the slug fell away from the rest.

Jane got a good look at the interior of the monster, then. It was full of mouths and teeth and fur and bone and blood, all mashed together like a tumor.

But then ooze rolled up across the creature’s wound, sealing the hole—

‘Step away now, Jane,’ Poi sent.

Jane complied, stepping high into the sky, far out of the reach of the slug amalgam because that was what you did when your CO told you to retreat.

‘Check yourself for ooze.’

Jane did a quick check. ‘I have none.’

‘And your Health doesn’t look to be going down...’ Poi relaxed a fraction. ‘I’m being told that traveling through an amalgam like that usually drenches people in ooze, killing them rather rapidly. Tell me the numbers on your Health for the next ten seconds, and I will corroborate your numbers at the same time.’

‘5297, 5299, 5300, 5302, 5303, 5305, 5306—‘

‘Enough. Seems like your Radiant Presence is adequate. Use some healing spells and get back in there. Use Blood Mana to split costs. Less experimenting; more killing. You have two more coming your way.’

‘Do these things have cores?’ Jane sent, ‘I don’t see any.’

‘Most do not.’

Jane had angled downward to watch the creature try to reach for her, but fail to come within 10 meters; it seemed to have a limit to arm length. She could have retreated further, but then the creature might have moved on to other targets. As it was, the slug was already relaxing back down into the black ocean, its eyes and mouths retreating back into its body. It was going to go after a different target, soon.

Well!

She couldn’t let that happen!

Time to try out the big guns.

Jane became more than light. She became shadows, and fire, alongside solid stone and freely moving wind and water. Her sword took on the same [Prismatic Body], flickering rainbows like all the rest of her.

She slammed right down through the center of the amalgam like the brilliant rainbow comet that she was, burning and slicing and burrowing through the creature, heedless of bone and sinew and blood, and of the screaming voices of the dead and dying all around. She carved like a butcher, spinning as she went down, her sword’s radiance poking out here and there among the amalgam’s skin before she exited the creature at black-ocean level, out the side, splattering gore everywhere.

She spun, severing every arm that reached for her and casting away all remnants of ooze that attempted to cling to her body. The fight wasn’t over yet, but it was about to be. The carved-up creature and all of its suddenly limp, wounded arms laid upon the black ooze like a garbage patch on an ocean. It could probably pull itself together if Jane left it alone for long enough, but that wasn’t going to happen. To end it, and to be sure that she was actually clean, she turned on her [Cleanse] aura, and stepped onto the air directly above the twitching body. Arms reached for her, but they were no match for her power. For not the first time, Jane witnessed an interaction between [Cleanse] and [Prismatic Body] that made everything seem a bit more magical today, than the world had been yesterday.

Erick had once spoken to her about how [Cleanse] was more than a simple cleaning spell. Back before the Sundering, every culture in the Old Cosmology had a [Cleanse] of their own to clean the environment, with the intent to harmonize the mana into a receptive state for easier magics. Here, on Veird, [Cleanse] cleaned everything, sure, but it also fulfilled that ancient role.

And boy did it ever.

The world in Jane’s immediate vicinity turned to vibrancy, as mana aligned under her [Cleanse], and her control. Rainbow light cascaded away from her eight-legged form, crashing into the reaching arms of the slug-amalgam and twenty meters of black ocean in every direction. Jane clipped off arms with her sword, while the ocean boiled. Severed arms did not fall to the waters; they vanished like so much mist, becoming thick air. The slug dried and crumbled to dust. The black ocean rapidly began to evaporate into a fountain of thick air that rocketed up and away; Jane had set off her own tsunami of thick air, just like her father.

But the rest of the black ocean remained, and liquids naturally tried to even themselves out...

So Jane became the center of a cleansing maelstrom that sucked in even more black ooze, destroying the remnants of the slug while the sudden vacuum drew in a dozen smaller amalgams that saw Jane, and diced into pieces with her ever-moving rainbow sword. The black ocean flowed toward Jane like flowing waste, only to vanish long before it could ever reach her. Smaller amalgams died by the dozens in half as many seconds.

And Jane was happy to let them come to her, pulled in by their own pestiferous nature. She was overjoyed to kill the slug amalgam, too, for it had to be level 89, or something close to that.

You have slain Dead Soul Amalgamation 394!

95% participation

+4.44 e19 experience

She was now level 83.

Plus 8 levels from one monster! If all the rest of the large amalgams were of the same level, then Jane was going to hit 90 rather soon. Maybe even tonight. Maybe she would out level her father! Wouldn’t that be a fun surprise to show him when he returned.

‘Jane. Focus.’ Poi sent, ‘Here comes large amalgam 2 and 3. Conserve mana. Turn off that killing technique until you’ve irreparably harmed the things and you won’t be wasting resources.’

Jane instantly did as Poi said, stepping up out of the black ocean’s returning surface as it crashed together, covering up the smaller amalgams who had come along for the ride, that she hadn’t yet killed. Her [Cleanse] hadn’t actually harmed those ones at all. Ah.

Yes.

She needed to approach this less like a fight and more like a war of attrition.

Right—

Ah. Wow. She had spent about 540 mana to ensure the large amalgam was actually dead. That… That was way too much. She was down to 4900 mana; she had spent 3600 mana to kill that thing.

Okay then.

She had 20 points now. Might as well spend a few of them! She shoved 5 points into Willpower, and 5 into Focus. For the next amalgam, she would use Blood Mana and split her costs into Health as much as she could, like Poi suggested. In fact… After a moment, Jane reorganized her [Greater Lightwalk] into an uncomfortable but minor Health drain. She’d use a lot more Blood Mana going forward, so to that end, she cast a [Rejuvenation]. The spell started ticking for 147 Health gained every second.

And not a moment too soon.

The next major amalgam was almost here.

It was a creature of two massive legs and a body made of small arms and small hands, with an eye located in the center of those palms. A thousand eyes stared at Jane as she hovered in the light of Archmage Obsidian’s [Sunlight Orb].

And then suddenly the army amalgam was directly on top of her. No warning. No shifting of magic. It had [Blink]ed, and then every single eye-hand cast at once, sending a thousand [Force Bolt]s of screaming black magic directly at Jane.

Jane responded with a twisting spin of cutting light. The [Force Bolt]s tracked her, but they touched only reflective chitin and hairs and eyes, to scatter away in every direction like Jane was a disco spider and her dance partner was nothing more than a side piece, to showcase Jane’s own flashiness. With a twist and a rush, Jane’s adamantium-empowered blade cleaved through one leg as she dashed under the monster, switching to [Greater Shadowalk] when she was inside the amalgam’s shadow. She twisted backward as another barrage of a thousand Bolts crashed into her and reflected away, to spill across the black ocean like so much scattered darklight. With a blade of sudden shadows, Jane carved straight through the squishy amalgam’s chest, bursting out the other side, back into the light.

The amalgam began to falter as its severed leg finally twisted out from under the horrible creature. The amalgam fell backward—

Pure telekinetic power wrapped around the leg, shoving it back into place as more telekinesis sealed the hole in its body. Waves of power washed across the creature, as spellwork eerily similar to the [Rejuvenation] currently surrounding Jane also washed across the creature, like black oil stains on reality. Every single wound Jane had inflicted was gone in the matter of a single flashing second.

With so many amalgamated souls, working toward the same process, the dead thing was easily able to repair itself as fast as Jane could damage it.

‘Hurry. Kill it.’ Poi sent. ‘No playing around.’

‘I got it.’

Specialized Decay Venom poured from her fangs, and collected in the air around her sword of light and shadow. The Radiant Nacreous Weaver’s Venom Weaver had turned that venom into an edge along her weapon.

Jane went across the amalgam’s side, letting [Force Bolt]s splash against her, ineffective, while she cut wounds into the creature that would not easily heal—

The amalgam cast a [Cleanse] on Jane, evaporating all of her exterior venom at once, and erasing the venom upon her sword.

‘It’s locked on you, but it doesn’t look able to harm you overmuch.’ Poi sent, ‘Kill the other one, instead.’

Jane rapidly reoriented to the next target; a four-legged amalgam with stringy hair for a body that rose thirty meters tall out of the black ocean. Black, inky hair dragged all the way to the ocean below. The hair moved on its own. As Jane left the light, and switched fully over to [Greater Shadowalk], other people appeared in the sky near the caster amalgam.

The caster amalgam had been chasing her, but it switched fully over to the new, plentiful targets—

‘Ignore them. Focus on the hairy one,’ Poi sent.

Jane did so. The hairy beast reached for her with its hair, revealing—

It was nothing but long black hair and four legs. Jane cleaved with her swor—

The black sword bounced off of the stretching hair. The hair continued to reach for her. Jane barely had time to rip through the shadows, flowing down and around to get away. The thing had still managed to grab one of her legs, but as a shadow, she still managed to escape…

That leg started to tingle—

Fwoomph!

Long, stringy hairs had managed to wrap around her legs, around a joint, and come with her through her movement only to self-immolate when she returned to normal reality. Jane turned to fire herself, activating [Fire Body] alongside [Greater Shadowalk], taking control of the insolent flames and the tangled hair. With a twist and a rip, the tangled hair dislodged, falling to the black ocean below, where it quickly snuffed out under the inky waves.

Okay.

This was dangerous.

Jane stared at the hairy monster with hair that would not cut, and which traveled with her when she moved, only to catch her on fire causing her to waste more Mana and Health. Then she glanced to the self-healing monster of a million spells, fighting with the other team in the background. The other team was not doing any better than Jane had done; if anything, they were doing much worse. Only one of their five fliers seemed to have a reflective spell.

Okay.

So.

Shit.

Jane rushed the hairy monster with a [Strike] prepared. Hair reached for her, almost preternaturally, and she met that attack with a [Decay Strike] of her own. The black, shadow sword briefly lit with blue, cloying light, before the edge struck the hair and bounced away. The amalgam’s hair wrapped around two of her forward legs.

Jane frantically got away, ripped the flaming hair off of her, then switched her spells. [Cleanse] and [Prismatic Body] instead. [Cleanse] made the monsters weaker, so it might help with the inky hair.

The world turned to prismatic wonder and Jane’s sword clipped through hair like it should have in the first place. Cut hair tried to ensnare Jane, but she ignored it, for fire was hers to command and the hair unfurled from her even as it tried to latch on. She continued onward, slicing a storm to the legs of the monster, and then through. Spiral cuts, dancing slashes; one leg was cut, then two, then all four. All of the dragging, telekinetic hair of the beast folded in from all sides, trying to grab Jane directly, but the inky, oozy hair practically evaporated this close to her.

She let the body fall onto her, aiming upward like a piercing spear. She exited the monster in a shower of evaporating gore. Soon, another notification alerted her to another 3 gained levels, and another 6 awarded points, but at less than half resources, this was not a good way to fight.

Jane hit herself with another [Rejuvenation], giving herself more Health to spend through Blood Mana to keep up her major spellwork, but this was not good. This was not sustainable.

‘Health check.’ Poi sent, ‘You’re good. Kill the other one. Those people will pull back the second you approach.’

Jane moved back into the light, back toward the caster amalgam, coming in like a prismatic, [Cleanse]ing comet in the night. The people fighting the caster amalgam dashed away. They looked wounded, for they had been pelted by [Force Bolt]s from every single outstretched hand this entire time. But now Jane had the monster’s full attention.

Spellwork bounced off of her as she dove directly into the creature’s soft body and eviscerated it from the inside out, breaking jumbled bones and evaporating nonsensical, dead organs with every second—

The thing repositioned with a [Teleport] or something, moving itself south a hundred meters while Jane remained behind. Jane almost faltered, falling to the ocean below, but she was better than that. The amalgam didn’t look too great, though; it was half collapsed in on itse—

Black light flashed over the amalgam and it was suddenly, fully healed.

Just like that.

Instantly.

And then every single hand and central eye, thousands of them, lit with fire.

[Fireball]s in record number flowed from the caster amalgam, aimed at Jane. Most struck and bounced from her blue radiance, to then fall to the black ocean and set it alight, turning the night to a fiery day. Some exploded directly, but those weren’t a big deal, either, as that fire also curled and flowed away from Jane.

Jane entered the amalgam’s chest again, cutting and tearing and breaking and [Cleanse]ing, all at once, all around her, the adamantium sword carving a large swath through everything it touched, but Jane also used the claws of her monstrous form to inflict as much damage as she could.

She even managed to finally get [Blood Control] from her Queen Blood Weaver to ‘catch’ onto the blood of the caster amalgam, shredding it from the inside, ripping resources directly from its—

Jane was suddenly midair.

And the caster amalgam was completely gone.

‘Where is it!’ Jane sent, worriedly.

‘Already searching,’ Poi sent, calmly.

Hurry up and wait.

Hurry up and wait—

‘It’s gone.’ Poi sent, ‘Retreat back to the middle wall. Recuperate.’

Jane did so without question, rapidly moving through the sky like a firework to land exactly where she had been before. Nearby people were not truly nearby, but they did freak out that they were under attack, but cooler heads and louder commanding officers took control. Soon, everyone saw that the ‘monster’ in their space was not a monster.

Once she was sure she was safe again, Jane turned off her magics. She fired off a single [Rejuvenation] to speed along the restoration of her Health, which was nearing 1/3 full, but other than that, she relaxed. Soon, some rookie approached her, talking about him being there to [Cleanse], and if she was okay with him doing his job. The kid, who had to be 16, was scared shitless, but he was also there, doing what he needed to do, so that counted for a lot.

Jane told him to go ahead.

The kid opened up his own [Cleanse Aura], and moved most of it over Jane, but he was missing her furthest foot. She told him to come closer, and that she wouldn’t bite, trying to tease the kid. The kid, like a perfect little soldier, did as Jane asked, coming to stand right beside her forward foot. He was barely the size of her fangs.

Brave kid.

Jane waited.

The kid finished and moved on. When he went back to his little group they all rapidly asked him what it was like, and the kid started talking up a brave story. Jane would have smiled if she had a mouth capable of such.

- - - -

That night, Jane would fight eleven more amalgams. She didn’t experiment with any of them, anymore. She went in full powered, and ripped them apart from the inside, if she could, but from the outside, if she had to. She never allowed herself to get low in resources, like she had with those first three.

The caster amalgam never showed again.

Daybreak dawned, evaporating the black ocean. The Crystal Forest returned to how it was before.

Only now, after a night of siege and bit of understanding, did Jane notice the actual land around Spur, beyond the walls. There was a severe lack of crystal mimics anywhere within a hundred kilometers of Ar’Kendrithyst. There was a severe lack of any desert life at all anywhere near the Dead City.

When Jane went through official decontamination and was fully cleared, she finally transformed back into a person and felt exhausted. She wasn’t about to risk an infection by turning human during the night, and there wasn’t much food for a spider to eat during the night, so she was damned hungry, too. After conjuring some clothes and saying hello to Savral and Al, who were both on cleaning detail back at the innermost wall, Jane went back home.

As Jane went through the delicious process of devouring the wonderful, expansive meal set out by Teressa, Jane said to Kiri, “I didn’t meet many adventuring idiots today.”

Kiri was all smiles, and had been ever since Jane returned from the night’s work. “They stayed away from you! It was lovely, actually. Practically the entire south-east side was run exactly as it should be! No one taking any stupid chances! Not with the Blue Comet around absolutely shredding the larger amalgams.”

“… Oh? I guess that’s good.” Jane shrugged as she stuck her fork in a sausage. “I hit 91.”

Teressa smirked, saying, “You’ll have to power level me sometime, Jane.”

Jane nodded. “Sure.” She added, “These shits are really, really dangerous, though.” She stared a bit, to make sure her point was understood. “Really dangerous.”

Poi said, “Only four deaths tonight, and each of them transient adventurers not from Spur. The four were all part of the same team, who snuck out to take a big amalgam on the north side while Killzone was already fighting four at once, so he couldn’t save them. Everyone was busy.”

Kiri stabbed her omelette, briefly looking less-happy as she said, “Every night. Every night it’s the same fucking story.” After a moment of silence, Kiri resumed eating.

Jane had seconds, then thirds.

Teressa joked, “Maybe I should cook for two orcols and two smalls, instead of one and three.”

“Smalls?” Kiri asked, slightly offended.

Teressa smirked. “It’s a diminutive term of endearment.”

Jane laughed, saying, “We have that saying on Earth, too!”

Teressa chuckled, saying, “Ya know? I’m still concerned where you’re going to put all the food I’ll feed you. I still don’t understand how eating in human form gives enough energy to move around as a giant spider.”

“Oh. It won’t.” Jane said, “I’ll need to go hunting as a spider sometime, soon.”

“… Now you’re making even less sense,” Teressa said, frowning. “How does that work?”

The four of them talked for a little while about stuff that didn’t matter and about the nuances of magic, which probably did matter, but they were all exhausted. Apparently, Teressa had averted utter disaster five times, saving a hundred lives, at least. The attacks were getting very bad, and tonight could have gone horribly. There had been a total of 32 greater amalgams, making this night almost twice as bad as the night that almost killed Spur. But they didn’t fall. Teressa had a lot to do with that. She was even the one who told Poi to tell Jane to move away from the caster amalgam and focus on the other one.

All in all, it had been a very good night by all metrics. The first wall hadn’t fallen, at all, and the damage done was easy to repair in the morning.

As the sun rose in the sky, Jane laid down to sleep and wondered if her father was doing okay. It had been at least two days since they last saw him; Jane’s idea of time was a bit messed up, but it wasn’t that messed up. Yggdrasil was still okay— Well. Yggdrasil was alive, and that was the important part. He probably couldn’t survive if Erick was dead.

So that made Jane feel better.

Her father was fine.

… And if not ‘fine’, then he was at least alive. For sure.

- - - -

Another night of black ooze passed much like the first, but with only 5 greater amalgams the whole night. Jane did have someone try to kill-steal the single amalgam that came for her side. That was unexpected, but also, at the same time, expected. Jane wasn’t quite fast enough to save that idiot from himself, though, as the tentacle amalgam grabbed him tight in its death throes and ripped him apart, right before the amalgam died, too.

The third night saw 15 greater amalgams and four kill-steal attempts. Jane thwarted every kill-steal attempt that came for her. The third night also saw the greatest defensive addition to the walls, thanks to Kiri. Thanks to various clues shared by Teressa, Jane, and Poi, Kiri had successfully created a [True Sunlight Rift]. Where Archmage Obsidian’s [Sunlight Orb] did well to evaporate the black ocean and keep the attacks manageable, Kiri’s brilliant white rifts of light obliterated the black ocean almost like Jane’s [Prismatic Body] and [Cleanse Aura] combination did, but on a much, much larger scale. The only problem was that Kiri’s rifts only lasted an hour each, but thanks to her efforts, it seemed that they might have crossed a hump. Thanks to her [True Sunlight Rift]s, Kiri was able to almost completely evaporate the ooze that came directly at them from the Dead City.

It was still an ocean of black ooze, though. So… Kiri’s efforts were great, but not enough to solve the problem.

Jane sent a letter to Nirzir detailing the current problems of Spur, and wishing Nirzir success in her runework. As soon as this black ooze and level 92 monster threat was gone, then Jane was probably going to get into runework, too.

The fourth night saw a large increase in the number of large amalgams, with 39 appearing that night, and the arrival of the first of a new, much more dangerous breed: the dispelling amalgams. There were three breaches of large size that night and Jane ended up falling out of the sky a few times and taking heavy wounds for the first time since the start of the siege. Around midnight, Teressa demanded a full retreat to the second wall, and that probably saved hundreds of lives as the sudden appearance of five dispellers ripped apart every defense upon that frontline.

But they still needed to kill the dispelling amalgams. Which is exactly what the archmages and Kiri did. Lightning and crashing stone and black fire, sent from far away, ripped apart what no one else could touch. After those dispelling amalgams were killed, Jane and Killzone retook the first wall, and Archmage Wave was able to repair it. The front line moved back up to the front.

The fifth night was simple, at only 9 greater amalgams in total, except for the return of the many-armed caster amalgam. That monster showed up on Mog’s side of the wall and Mog would waste too many resources trying to kill it, so Jane was ordered to go in and take care of it. All Jane succeeded in doing was driving it away again, for it fled the second it experienced Jane’s first dive-in attack.

Also on that night, Jane helped Teressa to kill a good-for-her amalgam. It was one of the few amalgams that were simple brute fights, without too many tricks, and Teressa hit it rather hard with a massive mace while she ran a [Cleanse Aura] the entire time. With some outside assistance setting the stage for her, it was enough for Teressa to kill the thing. She grabbed almost all of the Participation of the fight and many levels.

As Jane went to bed that morning, she wondered when the dispelling amalgams would show up again…

But mainly, she wondered where her father was.

Was he eating well?

Was he safe?

Poi reported that none of their necromancers had captured his soul, so he probably wasn’t dead. Yggdrasil continued to rebuff all communication, but he was still alive, too.

Erick was probably fine.

- - - -

It had been a full ten days since Erick vanished on that Teleport Pad. Today was the date when Darabella’s husband’s soul responded to the summons of a necromancer, but Erick’s soul did not come to them. Jane had gone to the Church that morning, to speak to Phagar, but the priests would only tell her that Erick did not accept The End, and Phagar did not see fit to respond to her pleas for answers. And so, day ten came and went.

Nirzir’s response came. She was thinking of planning a trip to Spur, to help with the level 92 monster threats. Many of her people might want to come too, for it wasn’t that often that you found such monsters on the surface of Verid. 

Jane smiled. 

Day eleven had more dispelling amalgams and also the return of the caster amalgam. The archmages were quick to respond to the dispelling ones, while Jane went after the caster amalgam. The caster got away again.

And Erick remained missing.

- - - -

- - - -

- - - -

There is a land far below.

- - - -

- - - -

- - - -

A place of gentle, rainbow glows.

- - - -

- - - -

Further down,

- - - -

And further still,

- - - -

Where thick air drowns,

- - - -

And monsters kill,

- - - -

A land of death that lurks and dwells

in darks and lights; they are unseen.

So bring your best, your swords, your spells,

and Travelers ware the deeper queens.

- - - -

The cavernous tunnel was quiet, and dark. The only sounds and movements and lights came from the ethereal rush of thick air that flowed through the center of the tunnel, like a suspended, gently-glowing river that rushed through the cavern, ever onward, and down. The thick air was pink and green and yellow and blue, but it was also none of those things at all, for it was a mirage of dense mana. More than any true illumination, the river of possibility only served to make the shadows in this place deeper than they had any right to be.

And yet, if one were to look…

Nothing obvious lived here in this dark, rushing place, for everything that was obviously alive was either a predator, or a trap.

The river rushed as it was wont.

The monsters hid, until they found something else living down here, and then they hid no more. Gnawing, mashing, crunching sounds came and went, along with screams and barks and roars. But soon enough, the monsters went back into hiding, to await the next fool stupid enough to disturb the peace—

A change came upon the cavern like the rising of a sun.

A white eddy of brilliance swirled in the edge of that empty river of thick nothing, showing the darkness what true light could be. The monsters were mesmerized. It had been an age since this place saw light that bright, and no one knew what to do with it.

But then the white light calmed, folding back into the river, vanishing into the flow—

Suddenly, the light flashed bright, coming to the surface of the river like a man rising out of the drowning ocean. A white hand reached out. A white face tried to take a breath. The land stood illuminated.

Eyes and maws and claws. Everywhere. The monsters had come out of hiding.

And then they all saw each other.

Eighteen smaller battles instantly started between thirty five smaller monsters as predators finally recognized each other as food. The light was ignored, for everything else was actually made out of delicious meat. Besides, other, bigger monsters were always waiting in the wings to investigate any large disturbance, and they didn’t always go after the first thing to show itself.

The light died again, falling back into the river. And then it came back, like a drowning man struggling to escape the waters, but the river didn’t care. It dragged the light with it, drowning it one again, pulling it under and along, traveling on its journey toward—

The light ripped itself from the river.

A bloody man and his backpack crashed out of the thick air, into the cavernous tunnel, spilling light everywhere.

And now, we get a scale. The man was small and wounded. His clothes were torn and his left foot was gone. He is but a speck below the massive river, and among the kilometers-large cavern. But he was not too small to go unnoticed, for he was very, very bright.

Erick saw monsters, and the monsters saw him.