The sky was bright with sunlight and [True Sunlight Rifts].

The land was dark with shadows and monsters.

Brilliant as the sky but a monster herself, Jane descended, her prismatic sword following in her wake like the dorsal fin of a sailfish. Black moon reacher amalgams scrambled up the smoky crystal towers at the edge of the Brightwater, but they were only of the many monsters out there. A horde of ten thousand beasts, each one a horrible amalgam of several other monsters, crawled or flew or floated out of the black ocean below. They were the heralds of a soul ooze that would overflow the world…

Or something like that.

Teressa’s prophecy wasn’t real clear. But whatever!

They were monsters, and Jane was the bigger monster… And there was some sort of joke in there that caused Jane to laugh out loud as she fell to meet her enemy. She wasn’t sure of the exact wording she was trying to find, but there was humor in this situation—

Ah!

Being the bigger person meant moving on and not engaging!

But being the bigger monster meant eating the smaller monster!

… Not very humorous, but Jane took what she could get.

Her body sung with prismatic light as Jane angled her descent to meet the first many-armed black moon reacher. It had five arms and three legs and a mattress-like body that opened up as Jane neared, revealing a blender-mouth full of bright white teeth. Tiny hands on deceptively strong arms reached for her.

But she was too fast for the pitiful thing. This mockery of an enemy. The original versions had made Jane feel so awful when she realized she had almost died to them in her first real adventure out on her own. She had thought she had worked through this particular trauma and fear when she had helped her father eradicate the moon reachers of the Forest of Glaquin. Ten thousand reachers she had killed!…

… Maybe not that many, but whatever. Apparently Jane wasn’t over it as much as she had thought.

This particular moon reacher was an amalgam of a new type of reacher; one that could reach through magic. It was much more deadly than the first type, by far. Theoretically, it could even grab her through her [Prismatic Body]. That is what the reachers had done to Scallion, back in the unicorn hunts. Ripped his leg clean off! And he didn’t even know he was missing a leg until later!

Jane twisted her ten-meter wide spider body into threads of prismatic light and slipped through every single grasping hand. Her sword followed in her wake, spinning around as she went through the blender-mouth of the creature, bursting out of its back like dynamite exploding a whale carcass.

Arms and tiny hands and big teeth and hairy legs, all briefly ignited with prismatic fire. Prismatic fire turned to simple blue fire rather fast. Hunks of burning, half-[Cleanse]d meat rained like gore—

‘I’m helping you with targeting, but since I have to do many things at once, I’m just going to hand over some of my senses,’ Poi sent, ‘Mission: Kill moon reachers and disrupt their offensive before they can reach the base.’

Jane had no idea what the first half of Poi’s statement meant, but the second was very understandable—

She suddenly gained another sense. It wasn’t sight or sound or smell. It wasn’t anything she was used to ever before. Somehow, she could just tell where living things were.

Some monsters were more apparent than others.

Jane focused on the weaker ones first, to see if she was understanding this new sense correctly.

Most of the monsters were the same; like someone had taken a saturation slider on a monitor and turned it up. It was a halo around their body, sort of, but mostly concentrated around the head. Some monsters ‘felt’ more saturated than others, with the weakest minds out there —Yes, that’s what they were. Minds.— looking almost like nothing at all. And all of them were pointed upward, toward Forward Base. It was like the small edges of their halos were dragging them forward, toward Anhelia’s protected space.

Jane turned toward the larger threats.

The larger monsters were more than a simple saturation. They were like someone had taken a hammer to the very fabric of reality, shattering the world into color. This mind sense didn’t interfere with Jane’s normal sight, because what Jane actually saw with her real eyes was a whole lot of smoky crystal towers all around her. This sense allowed her to see through the crystal in every direction, all around, to see the locations of the most dangerous mental monsters.

It wasn’t [Greater Lightwalk], and it certainly wasn’t mana sense, but it was something similar and yet so much different.

Jane checked out her targets.

The crystal over there had two reachers crawling up the backside, out of sight of most people, but Jane saw them just fine. They were like sickly stained glass, crawling up the crystal, spilling noxious fumes out into the world as they went. Looking around, Jane saw ten more about a kilometer down. They were swinging between the smoky crystal towers like monkeys on vines, headed toward a soul ooze waterfall. Jane wasn’t sure how she knew what she knew in that moment, but she absolutely knew those reachers were going to go inside that waterfall, swim up through the ooze on the other side, and angle for a pincer angle on Anhelia’s base—

And then she realized she couldn’t actually see the ones down there at all. They were way too far out of sight, but she could ‘see’ them, and more importantly, she could hear their thoughts. How was Poi doing this? Was this how he saw the world all the time?

Poi answered her, ‘This is what Mind Mages do, Jane. We can hear mental monster thoughts more clearly than all other thoughts. I apologize for doing this to you without your permission, but desperate needs demand commensurate responses, and I can tell you’re not mad about this violation. Thank you for that, by the way. Once you’re done with those targets, I will step back from your mind and hand you off to Olirio, and then we need you to kill the soul casters. If you get rid of enough of them then Kiri and the archmages can come in with reinforcements. The mages will not deploy their large scale spells until they are clear to do so.’

Jane was already headed toward the hidden pair of moon reachers the second Poi started explaining. By the time she got to his apology she had already twisted through both of those first targets. Scattered, blue burning gore fell down through the bright, gloomy air. She moved on. She aimed at the group of reachers headed toward the waterfall of soul ooze.

By the time Poi told her of her secondary targets, Jane had raced through that second collection of moon reachers. The many-armed monsters didn’t know what hit them as Jane blendered them with her sword, spinning through the lot of them, turning them temporarily into prismatic flaming debris that rapidly calmed down to simple blue fire.

Flaming blue gore fell through the air, and Jane pivoted to the right.

Another minute passed in rapid flight through another twenty moon reachers, sending even more flaming blue gore to the soul ooze far below. Almost none of them were close to each other, but that didn’t matter right now. Jane moved without impediment and killed without mercy.

In two more minutes, she had zipped through the crystal towers, full bore through the next group of thirty amalgamized black moon reachers half a kilometer away.

She burned Mana to keep her Health high, and she burned Health because Blood Mana ensured she got a lot more mileage out of her resources that way. She would have used her Blood Weaver Ability to pull out more resources from the reachers, to gather more resources for more killing, but there was very little blood inside any of these skinny, horrible monsters. Only the largest amalgams had anything resembling blood inside them, but that blood was more ooze than blood these days—

‘Resources.’ Poi sent, ‘Check resources. And Rest, dammit! You’re going too fast!’

Jane slammed into the side of a wall, out of range of many monsters, and cut her spellwork.

Ah.

Oh. Shit.

She was down more than 4000 Health, sitting at 1550 Health out of nearly 5.8k. Her maximum Mana was almost 9.4k, but she was currently at 3500. The numbers suggested she had only spent maybe 60% of her resources. But she had spent more than that. A lot more. Maybe 40,000 Health? Most of her mana had gone into Health…

Jane had no idea. Actually.

Okay. Time to go slower.

… She was very much not over these moon reachers at all!

Jane just sat there, clinging to the side of a crystal tower, not exactly breathing because she couldn’t breathe with this body, but if she wasn’t moving or expending mana she could go for an hour without needing to actually ‘breathe’ by using[Greater Shadowalk].

She was too far down on resources for much of that, though, so she cast another [Rejuvenation] on herself in order to get more resources. Health was easy to regain, but Mana was not. Mana regenerated at 5-6 mana per second. But with [Rejuvenation], every second the spell ran she gained another 195 Health.

Ten seconds passed and Jane regained almost 2000 Health. She cast another [Rejuvenation] and used her Blood Mana Ability to run [Greater Shadowalk] so she could breathe. She had Favored that spell long ago, which brought the mana costs down to 2-3 mana per second. But since she was running it off of Health, it cost 5 Health per second. This was fine. Health came back quickly. Mana was her truly limiting resource… She had already thought that.

Okay. Her thoughts were spinning in circles. She was thinking about math.

This was fine.

She breathed now, and everything was good.

Net gains all around, really.

‘Don’t let it get that low ever again, Jane.’ Poi sent, ‘Wait there. You killed the main offense. We’re clearing minds. Look up, and see.’

Jane was already looking up.

A kilometer above, spellwork lit up the sky, turning the space at the tower tops into fire and explosions, killing monsters by the hundreds. It was not enough. Jane looked down, at her own level, and saw a hundred thousand more monsters. More kept climbing out of the ooze all the time.

All around her, in the smoky crystal towers, were monsters.

Most climbed, with too many long legs or arms or long, grasping claws, finding or creating purchase on the crystal, as they ascended. Some flew. All were headed in the same direction. None of the amalgams fought with each other, and they didn’t actually pay Jane much mind. They were still all focused on the target. Jane watched as a few of them glanced her way, both with their eyes and partially with their minds. But Jane wasn’t worried. She could tell that they didn’t care about her. She was a giant monster, after all. She was one of them?

Or something?

Why were they ignoring her like this? Amalgams usually did not ignore her? What the fu—

A freight-train centipede rose up from the muck far below Jane, headed up the same crystal tower she clung to. Its segmented body was made of giant screaming heads, and it tore up and around the crystal tower like a moving spiral staircase. All those heads for a body marked it as a dispelling amalgam. Ah. The amalgams in the other towers were under the direct control of the soul ooze, or something, weren’t they? Maybe. Maybe not. The slime had seen Jane, and was sending something to deal with her. The dispeller centipede had eyes and mind only for Jane.

Resource check.

She was good.

Shadows lightened and turned prismatic. Thick air poured off of every surface near Jane, even clearing some of the smoky crystal under where she stood. A flicker of [Rejuvenation] flowed across her, and she turned that Health into action—

She suddenly realized that the vague sense inside her head was very much telling her that there were more mental-ish monsters out there, and they were how the horde was being controlled. The dispeller centipede had some sort of large tendril coming off of its backside that led off to somewhere else. That was where the control was coming from.

This was a very useful ability, Poi!

She would get to the controlling monster problem later. The centipede needed to die, first.

The centipede screamed directly at Jane as it raced at her.

Jane descended onto the centipede, her sword flashing brightly as waves of dispelling power washed out of the freight train monster like the screams of the dead. At the last moment Jane pulled her sword behind her, protecting it from the waves of power pulsing from the black centipede. Those dispelling waves washed across her body, but she had pulled her [Prismatic Body] and [Cleansing Aura] inward; all the [Dispel] managed to catch was her [Rejuvenation].

Not too bad of a trade.

The dispelling song passed Jane by, either bouncing off of her or doing nothing, and then she reached the head of the centipede. An amalgamation of crushing jaws and chittering mouths lunged at her, but she released a small bit of her [Prismatic Body] out into the world and controlled the light and air around her to twist to the side, dragging her brightly glowing and now spinning sword behind her as she raced across the back of the centipede, chopping the monster into flaming bits. It screamed again, more dispelling power. Jane pulled her sword to her own back, protecting it with her body, and then she went back to chopping up the target.

She raced down the staircase made by the monster, slicing it apart as she went, turning most of the greater amalgam into fire and thick air that sailed down all around Jane, further evaporating in the presence of her [Cleansing Aura]. It was well and truly dead by the time she got to the end of it.

Jane took a small breather and then she focused forward. Poi hadn’t retracted his ability or handed her off, yet, so Jane was going to use it while she could, and she had noticed something else out there in the gloom. Something that needed to die. Which was probably why Poi let her keep this ability.

Like a fiery blue comet, Jane trailed thick air all around her as she followed the trail of smaller tendrils at the backside of every nearby monster. She hadn’t noticed them at first, but she certainly noticed them now—

She found it.

Visually, the target looked like a small bundle of eyes and tails and paws and calico fur that was latched to the back of a lizard. This lizard was in turn latched to the side of a crystal tower. They were actually separate creatures, too; not one single amalgam, for whatever reason. To Jane’s normal eyes, the target and the target’s ‘vehicle’ were nothing important; just another tiny pair of monsters in the middle of a thousand larger, more dangerous looking threats, all climbing or flying up together. But to her Eyes of Magic, and to Poi’s mind sense, the cat-like amalgam was the center of a knot of behavioral controls.

The smaller monster’s tails turned ethereal a meter away from the creature, becoming strands of invisible intent that burrowed into the bodies of every single monster within a kilometer. Every single one of those monsters was under the control of this small one. It was a minor general in a very large battlefield.

One of those tendrils tried to poke into Jane, too.

Jane introduced the amalgamated shadowcat —for that’s what it had to be— to her shining sword. Snicker snack! Click clack. Jane turned the cat and its mount into flaming, evaporating gore. Suddenly, the nearby horde fell into chaos. Every monster had been moving up, toward the target. Now, though, some amalgams fell out of the air as they lost the ability to control their magic. Some fell from the sides of the smoky crystal as they lost the ability to climb. Some jumped from the crystal, as they were not willing to be out in the daylight. Jane imagined those ones fell to their death, but if people could survive a sky high fall, amalgams certainly could.

Many monsters remained dedicated to attacking Forward Base, but Jane had done a lot by killing that shadowcat.

Jane moved on, finding the tiny targets among all the rest, and ending them.

The monsters that continued the assault were a bit slower. They were a bit dumber. Less organized and more prone to stupid tactics. Like they normally were, every single night.

It was enough, for now.

Poi sent something about how Jane’s actions were directly weakening the soul ooze’s assault on Forward Base, which was good, but Jane concentrated on killing. She dodged when something sought to harm her, and killed when she got a clear shot, and then she made sure she had actually killed whatever she had struck.

Jane was pretty sure that all the small bits of gore that she had scattered to the sky would fall down into the ooze where it would recombine into something else, later. But hopefully her flames and her [Cleansing Aura] would make the next battle that much easier.

After Jane killed shadowcat number 21 and random-monster-that-thought-to-attack-her number 45, she had to rest. Blood Mana was more painful the longer she used it; she would never complain, though. So far, it was a good kind of pain. But she had burned through another 40,000 Health of her 116k daily limit—

‘Moon reachers dead. Lesser mind magic targets dead. Target change after your rest,’ Poi sent, ‘Do not move until I finish telling you your new goal. Repeat to me that you understand this.’

Jane had been ready to move out even while Poi spoke, but she held herself back. ‘I understand.’

‘Good. Okay.’ Poi sent, ‘Your new goal is to kill the soul casters, but do it safely. There are at least 500 down there. Killzone and others will join you when they can, but the archmages and Kiri can’t move in to stop the flood of monsters coming out of the ooze until the soul casters are gone. We can hold off that flood up top for a while, but we will have to retreat again if air support can’t support us. Singer Nirzir is here at Forward Base ready to deploy some Undertows as soon as we know they won’t be corrupted away from her, like all of Kiri’s Sun Rifts were.’

Jane glanced toward the open area above the Brightwater.

All of Kiri’s rifts were turned to shadowy things, radiating protective gloom, or else simply gone. When did that happen?

‘Don’t worry about when that happened.’ Poi sent, ‘You were busy, and you’re still panicking slightly. You got all the moon reachers, Jane. If more get sent out I will tell you to take care of them. You and the Mind Mages and a few top rankers were the only ones not affected. New Frontier was hit worse than us, by far, but they’re recovering fast, too. Shade Farix is still a Shade so he was fine, and he has one real Mind Mage over there with him. They actually recovered faster than us, because they only have about 20 people over there, total. We have around 500.’

20 people! That was it!? Jane briefly felt the need to go help them, but then she realized that she did not want to be in that position, and those 20 people were probably each at the level of Mog, or something.

Poi sent, ‘If they need assistance, I will tell you.’

‘… Okay.’

Poi continued, ‘When you’re done with the soul casters, we want you to seek out whatever actually cast that large [Mind Fog] spell, and end it. Whatever did that was not the black moon reachers. They carried their own power, though, in full, and it is good that they are dead, but the soul ooze is displaying the power to mix and match monster abilities, so whatever actually cast that large spell is still out there. Maybe it's the soul ooze itself, but it's more likely something that the soul ooze made.’

Jane really needed to work on her lesser rivergrieve. Maybe up it to a true rivergrieve, though she wasn’t sure how. That Familiar Form had the innate ability Slick Scales, which deflected lesser spellwork and gave the creature a modicum of protection against lesser physical attack, but that was it. Theoretically, she could combine those scales with the innate reflection from the nacreous weaver’s Radiant Presence, but in actuality, she had failed that bit of magical understanding and implementation; going from theory to fact.

If she had managed to do all of that before today, she would likely be perfectly safe swimming around in the soul ooze, hunting for the fog pulsers, or the singular fog pulser, wherever it might be. But right now? Here in the middle of battle?

Probably a bad idea.

Poi sighed. ‘Please, Jane. No experimenting right now. On task. I’m pulling back my senses now. I fear I would take the rebound attack from those Soul Bolts if I were to stick around.’

Jane’s world dimmed.

She saw the gloom in the air, and death all around, and she felt lesser, as though she had lost track of every single monster all around her. Which she had. Now she had to use her eyes and Surround Sight to see and to fight, and Surround Sight had never felt more inadequate than at this moment.

‘Work on your mana sense and most of that might come back. You’ll have time when this is over.’ Poi sent, ‘I need to coordinate Nirzir and Kiri. Switching you to Olirio now.’

The switch was instant.

Olirio sent, ‘Greetings, Miss Flatt. I will also be leaving you when you engage the soul casters, but I will return at a moment’s notice, as soon as you are clear of them. Do you need mana?’

‘Heard and understood.’ Jane pivoted around the crystal under her feet, aiming herself toward the Brightwater. She activated [Greater Shadowalk] to get clear of the smoky crystal towers, which she did through a bunch of small hops that barely cost more than her natural mana regeneration. ‘I’m good for a few…’ And then she reached the edge of the smoky crystal. She saw the Brightwater in all its horrible glory. Her hearts beat hard. Hundreds— No. Thousands upon thousands of targets, only some of which were bloated corpse soul casters. Still too many for her, for now. ‘I do not have the mana for this. I’m coming in. Where should I go?’

Olirio sent, ‘Secondary fallback. Also, Lady Alandria wishes to apologize for screaming like that.’

Jane dove into the shadows all around and ascended back into the sky over the Brightwater. As she transitioned to [Greater Lightwalk] she saw the battle of Temporary Forward Base, unobstructed. The fight was going... Chaotically.

Forward Base was the top hundred meters of the tallest red-purple kendrithyst tower directly past the wall of the Brightwater. There were no shadows inside that spire because Anhelia’s [Domain of Light] had forced the shadows away, revealing balconies and houses and other assorted physical structures inside the crystal. That was the last line of defense; the edge of Anhelia’s Domain. From that edge, three hundred and forty mages, the number of mages brought to the battle, were lined up and spending [Fireball]s and [Decay Rain] and [Chain Lightning] and a hundred other long range spells out of their relatively safe space.

Those spells then passed through a second layer of defense that was like a whole bubble cast around the entire temporary defensive area. That bubble shimmered with an opalescent mana signature, for it was the work of Archmage Opal. And because it was the work of an expert Warder, all of the Army’s spellwork was able to exit the sphere without worry, to strike the horde of amalgams coming their way, but the amalgams were not able to enter the space.

The enemy had gotten close, though. They must have.

Jane had heard the plan before now, and the defensive plan was for a triple sphere of Solid Ward. Since there was only one sphere, and every single nearby tower was either gone or still falling down all around, Jane suspected that they had seen some rough shit in the last ten minutes. And still, spellwork flew out of the base, concentrating on every monster that raced at them under the sunlight.

Fire washed over twisted people-sized amalgams, as those amalgams flew at the base. A sudden dispelling centipede rushed up from down below, only to be met with a [Luminous Beam] from a Sunny, positioned just outside of the Solid Ward. She probably had to attack from outside the space, for [Luminous Beam], while able to exit the sphere, would likely just end up tearing a hole through the sphere, and that was no good. Kiri’s [Familiar]s were far enough away from the front line that they weren’t in danger of being corrupted, but it was still dangerous for her to be out here right now.

It was dangerous for Jane to be out here, too. Some of the monsters had seen her, and like proper amalgams, they switched targets to her… Those that could fly, anyway.

Jane turned left and zipped through the bright sky, to land twenty kilometers away at a temporary hospital where a mess of broken kendrithyst crystal had clogged up the skyline, forming an angled, yet open area. The space had been reinforced with some [Stoneshape]ing to prevent further collapse and set with defensive [Force Wall]s and otherwise before the battle, in case it was needed, but it was not meant to hold the hundred people it now held. It was too crowded. Most people looked to be healing others, or simply resting from what was likely a very harsh mental magic purge. Some people rested with ice towels over their faces, while some people got healed by a Mind Mage and then promptly vomited up their last meals onto the ground. The Mind Mage moved on.

The Army must have switched to a protracted campaign model.

Jane spotted Orilio up at the top of the angled base, exactly where he said he would be, alongside Nirzir and several other Fonts. They were all transferring mana to other people, or, in Nirzir’s case, simply projecting an air of power to keep everyone else calm. There was plenty of space for Jane on their makeshift dais, but she didn’t want to accidentally get any potential ooze on them, or frighten anyone who hadn’t been cleared yet. So Jane brightened herself to make sure people saw her coming, so they wouldn’t freak, and then she descended to the side, to hold onto the edge of a tower that was not actually connected to the secondary base. She was about five meters from them.

Nirzir stood strong in armored white robes, but she gave a heartfelt sigh as she saw Jane come in for a landing on the nearby crystal tower. She projected her voice, “Thank the gods you’re okay. How much mana are you down?”

“8000 mana down.” Jane’s horrible voice made people cringe, but not Nirzir. “You should be able to do it from there, right? I don’t want to get any ooze on you.”

Nirzir gestured to Olirio and two others. “You’re up.”

Olirio and two more people dressed in white robes came forward and shot a link of power to Jane, which promptly bounced off of her carapace. They instantly stopped channeling and the scent of fear trickled into the air. Jane thought this might happen. From Nirzir’s and Olirio’s expression, they thought this might happen, too.

Jane angled upward and showed them her open mouth, morphing it at the same time so that she had an open passageway to her interior. It should be enough to let them overcome her reflection. “Try aiming there. If you hit deep enough, it might actually stick.”

One of the Fonts on the platform smelled like he would have to [Cleanse] himself after Jane left, but he mustered the courage to do as Jane asked. A beam of soft light shot from the man’s hand, into Jane’s mouth, where it bounced around a bit before finally soaking in. Once he made the connection the rest was easy; the tether of light moved to Jane’s side. Olirio and the other two fonts had much the same experience, and in under thirty seconds Jane was back up to full mana. With a bit of [Rejuvenation] she was back up to full Health, too.

Their channels naturally cut off once Jane was full.

Jane joked, “Hopefully you get some levels out of this!”

And then she sealed up the vulnerability she had created in herself, running her [Cleansing Aura] just in case. The cleaning shouldn’t be necessary, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

The smelly Font gave a bright, hearty laugh that was way too forced to be anything but nerves talking. Jane and everyone else ignored it, and then Jane turned to light and went right back to the Brightwater. The Fonts had needed to aim deep, and their tether had needed to bounce around a few times in order to stick, so not only was Jane’s reflection stronger than even she thought it was, but they had probably wasted mana… Which was probably not good.

She sent, ‘You guys have mana potions, right?’

‘Yes. If you need one we have extra. But that shouldn’t be necessary.’ Olirio sent, ‘We can take the potions ourselves and give you full mana whenever you need it, which we’ve already been doing for whoever needs it.’

Jane felt a twinge of worry for them. ‘What about core generation?’

‘We’ve all had nascent cores removed before and we’re all trained on self-surgery, too. Don’t worry about us.’

Jane decided not to worry about them.

She reentered the airspace over the Brightwater, directly over the center and wondered what to kill next. Her targets were the soul casters, but...

Kiri had not been able to reestablish any Sun Rifts, to drive back the gloom below, but the actual sun was still a thing, and that kept right on working all this time. Now where was Killzone—

Ah. There he was. He was… Headed back to Forward Base? Yes. He was. Jane watched as Killzone streaked through the sky, racing away from the Brightwater, headed toward Forward Base. He veered off target to punch through the chest of a shadow-spewing giant made of giant heads, but he was very much headed away from the main fight. He had been down there for a little bit, though, Jane was sure—

Ah! There was Mog, too. And all the other elite forces, actually. Everywhere Jane looked, someone was either flying toward Forward Base, racing to get there, or flying up and directly away from Forward Base away like rats escaping a sinking … Ship? Huh?

Wonder why—

Olirio's voice came suddenly, ‘Don’t approach Forward Base or the sky! Get away! Further instructions to come later!’

Jane was already far away from both—

Kra-KOOOOW!

Temporary blindness lingered in Jane’s eyes and she had taken some sort of Thunder-based damage, making her entire body feel temporarily numb, but a quick flush of [Greater Lightwalk] pushed away both of those ailments. As her eyesight returned, she hovered in awe.

A Yggdrasil-sided bolt of lightning lingered in the sky, and all around the intact [Grand Shield] surrounding Forward Base. The Army and everyone in it seemed fine, but the bolt had come from the blue, and passed all around, touching everything alive and washing down every single tower in a kilometer radius. As seconds passed, writhing cables of lightning skittered across a several kilometer wide section of Ar’Kendrithyst, before vanishing into the gloom down below. That lightning had to have touched upon every single monster, frying them utterly, before passing down through the kendrithyst crystal to reach even more targets.

‘That’s exactly what happened,’ Olirio sent, sounding relieved. ‘Took Archmage Obsidian a while to get that up and running, but he did it. The soul ooze’s first assault had been broken. Your archmages are impressive, Miss Flatt!’

Jane giggled a bit to herself, almost involuntarily. She had no idea why she had that reaction, but there it was. She asked, ‘Can he do that again?’

‘… I’m being told ‘no’ but not being given a reason for that denial. We believe it might have cost too much mana, and so we have offered Font assistance but we have been denied. Security issues. Ah. Yes. Recluse archmages. I should have—’ Olirio cut himself off, then continued, ‘Apologies. Uh. I am being told that Miss Flamecrash and the others will be able to assist with the soul ooze now that Forward Base is once again secure. We will resume the original plan, after all the soul casters are dead.’

And that was Jane’s job, right there. Kill the soul casters.

Jane turned her attention back to the land directly below.

Far, far below.

As far as her eyes could see, the bowl of this once bright land was filled with gloom from edge to edge. It was less thick than it had been before the assault started, but it was still gloomy. The sun was doing a lot to clear away that mist, for the parts that were in shadow were deep in the gloom, but the sun itself was not enough.

For now there were monsters bobbing in the black ocean, casting spellwork to ensure the safety of the soul ooze far below. Jane didn’t see the monsters at first, but now, as she looked, she saw flying monsters floating through the gloom, like half-invisible disturbances in the black mist. It was almost as though they were on patrol. Which was different than normal. They were being controlled, obviously.

There were more oddities besides those flying monsters, though. To the north, and to the south, a great many amalgamated monsters continued to pull out of the fog and race toward Forward Base, and whatever structures Shade Farix had put in place for his own people. The ooze’s counter assault was still ongoing, though on a much less frantic timetable than before. The smaller monsters were not Jane’s problems, though. She had larger targets to kill.

‘I will be leaving you now.’ Olirio sent, ‘Please do not use your Health overmuch. It is the only true defense you have against the soul ooze.’

Jane sent, ‘See you soon!’

She felt as Olirio left her.

Suddenly, it was her against the world, and her hearts beat hard as she fell in love with this life all over again. Her sword held next to her left pedipalp, and she released it into the wind as she dove downward; a comet of blue light and a tracer of radiance with a dark, adamantium core. Thick air burst away from her as she began running [Cleansing Aura] off of health and [Prismatic Body] off of mana, transforming into a rainbow splash.

Jane struck the edge of the gloom and the gloom exploded away from her in a tidal wave of thick air.

She ignored the dispeller giants, who were made mostly from the bodies of the giants who used to live in Ar’Kendrithyst, under the auspices of the Shades. Now they floated in the air, hovering on wings from a thousand birds and the magic necessary to keep their mutated bodies alive. They were easy to go around; slow and ponderous, though full of power that she didn’t need to tangle with.

She raced around a patrol of flying humanoids that looked like old victims of amalgamization; orcol legs and dragonkin scales and human arms and incani horns, or some other combination on the very next one, all flying in sequence. They were controlled by another shadowcat amalgam, but this time the shadowcat was ready for her, and managed to dodge as Jane came in to murder it. Jane decided to ignore this battle, too, as the shadowcat’s entire squadron seemed ready for her. They regrouped and kept the shadowcat safe while they harried her with [Gloom Ball]s and [Shadow Lightning].

Jane raced away, and they could not follow.

Gloomy clouds parted for her power.

And Jane saw a target.

The first soul caster tried throwing three Soul Bolts at her, but Jane did not test her power against them. She dodged the slow-moving things, rushing around the bloated corpse of an enemy. With an almost casual flick of her sword she sliced into its flesh, parting it like warm butter that then evaporated under her [Cleansing Aura]. Jane entered the beast and started spinning like a blender, ripping it apart. It tried casting magic inside itself, to tag her with three quick Bolts, but Jane twisted her sword erratically, clipping two of the three Bolts with her sword, splitting and dispersing them, while Jane’s body reflected the third. There wasn’t a fourth Bolt. Jane had killed the amalgam.

Jane spun her sword around the whole of the soul caster’s insides, spreading blue fire everywhere, and turning the rapidly dying thing into thick air. With this much damage maybe the soul ooze couldn’t recycle the body. Jane could only hope. Then she exited the burning creature out the top, exploding the amalgam like an overripe white pumpkin.

Jane had been quick about the kill. It only took her 450 Health and 300 mana; the cost of 30 seconds of carnage with a [Strike] to start it all off. Travel time to get down here was 15 seconds, though, which was roughly 250 resources spent in the journey, split more toward Mana than Health. She was sitting at about 95% resources for both so she felt good about further kills, but there were lots of targets out there in the gloom.

Jane headed to the next soul caster, trailing her radiant sword behind her as she glittered with a blue cast of [Rejuvenation].

She dodged five shadowy Bolts and broke three more Bolts with her sword in her approach. A [Strike] from her sword left flaming blue fire on the amalgam, causing the 20 meter wide corpse-balloon to wail with pain, or anger; Jane wasn’t sure. She broke more Bolts as she spun inward, into the corpse, burning and cutting and evaporating the creature into thick air—

Blood!

There was blood in this one! Jane grabbed the blood with her Blood Weaver, pulling a noxious black fluid out of her clogged surroundings, and though most of it evaporated, she had secured some sort of resource from this large soul caster. Theoretically, anyway. She was currently inside the creature, and turning it into flaming, evaporating gore. Hard to tell what was going on, really.

Jane exited out of the roof of this one, too, carrying a new prize with her as she splattered the soul caster open and left behind a field of burning blue desiccated flesh and bone atop the black ocean. Her prize was pretty good, too. A sphere of pure red power. It wasn’t much by Jane’s estimates, at only about a meter across, but it represented about 550 Health.

Free Health! To spend on whatever she wanted.

She already knew what to spend it on. That floating ball of blood turned into radiance in her sword, and power in her [Cleansing Aura], evaporating bit by bit as Jane raced through the gloom, evading the monsters chasing her, zeroing in on the next soul caster. With a swipe and a terrible, ripping, breaking entrance, Jane dove into this soul caster too.

She came out moments later, hovering a new ball of glowing red blood atop her body.

This was a phenomenally disgusting and somewhat claustrophobic way to kill something, but with the larger monsters Jane felt this was the best way to do the most damage in the quickest amount of time. And who cared about getting messy, anyway? She was already running [Cleansing Aura], so she was already mostly clean.

This second blood orb was only worth about 450 Health, though. Jane checked her own resources. She was at 80% A bit low for these sorts of fights where the smallest mistake would lead to death, but Jane wasn’t making any mistakes.

She killed three more soul casters in half as many minutes, keeping her Health high the whole time, though her mana took a bit of a hit. With the discovery of blood inside the creatures, which mostly got spent on [Rejuvenation] for an even better resource conversion rate, Jane was able to keep going. She killed eight more soul casters before she had to surface for a break.

As she exited the gloom like a shining comet, her own private horde of monsters trailed behind her. That damned shadow cat and a few others had never stopped trying to get to her. Which was a boon, actually. Jane could have evaded them. She could have out raced them. But then they’d just disappear back into the gloom and that would be a waste of an opportunity.

She hoped that the people watching from Forward Base would see what she wanted them to do—

Olirio reconnected to Jane, ‘If you have the mana our casters are asking you to clump them up more, and then fly to the west of Forward Base.’

Jane laughed loud, the sound echoing and joining with the sound of the horde flying behind her. It was a terrible cacophony, and Jane loved it. ‘Heard and understood!’

She began flying slower, doubling back as necessary to let the larger monsters catch up, but to stay out of range of the thousand smaller amalgams. Her flight eventually neared Forward Base. She didn’t need to get all the way there before the shadowcats controlling the horde realized they were being taken for a ride. Luckily, Forward Base compensated.

The sky opened up with fire and lightning and ice and everything else in a grand concert of death and destruction, washing over the shadowcats and the amalgams and the giants and everything else that had tried to get to Jane.

By the time Jane set back down next to Forward Base, on a tower that was about a kilometer away because all the nearby ones were broken and scattered to the dark land far below, she was feeling a lot better about the rest of the day.

They only had about 6 hours in the ‘rest of the day’, though, and the sun was already starting to move away from directly overhead…

Which meant that the soul ooze was going to be fully out of the sun in… 45 minutes. Something like that. It was a long way down to the bottom of Brightwater, after all. Half of the thing was already in shadow, even without the original gloomy blanket protecting it from the light.

Err.

Someone needed to break out the big magics again.

Jane sent to Olirio, ‘There are more big magics coming, right? I haven’t cleaned up all the soul casters for there’s probably 200 still down there, but uh. I’m just a drop in the bucket, here— Where are Killzone and Mog?’

‘They’re killing soul casters down there. As for big magics…’ Olirio sent, ‘I am being told that— Okay… Uh.’ With professionalism hiding his concerns, Olirio sent, ‘Shade Farix and New Brightwater have finished their defense of their land, and the Shade plans to counter attack the soul ooze with— In fifteen minutes Farix will release a mutative cloud of Blood Magic that will blanket the Brightwater and turn all flesh into blood, and then he will use that blood to erase the surface of the ooze down to the core… Theoretically. He will wait for all of our forces to exit the land, first.’

Jane felt a chill at hearing the plan. ‘And we’re going to let him do that?’

‘… It has been determined that we’re far enough away and we can escape if needed, and also Miss Teressa and several other Prognosticators are saying that it needs to be done, by whatever means necessary.’ Olirio asked, ‘Do you need mana?’

‘No.’ Jane sent, ‘I’ll sit here. Let me know when the next offensive starts. How many other people are killing the soul casters? I can’t tell shit from all the way up here.’

Olirio sent. ‘Currently, General Killzone is engaged with the soul casters. Guildmaster Mog has killed two and pulled back. A few other people have killed a few from afar, but mostly anyone who engages them is a risk. New Brightwater has informed us that they have killed 47 since the start of the battle. This brings both sides up to a total of 113 soul casters killed.’

‘We should kill all of the soul casters before Farix’s magic.’ Jane asked, ‘What if they can corrupt his cloud-mutation spell?’

Olirio seemed to pull away for a moment, before coming back, sending, ‘I am being told it is akin to the ‘Red Dot’. It won’t be able to be corrupted because even if it is broken it will still activate. It can only be mitigated. Farix expects 25% effectiveness. Your concerns are already noted, though, and we are trying to kill as many amalgams as possible before the attack. The people down there don’t know this yet, though. They will be informed when they return to safe [Telepathy] range.’

Jane let that answer wash over her.

She was a soldier. She could fight on the ground and kill things, but grand strategy was not her expertise, nor did she want to be involved in that, at all. So she also focused on the idea that Farix was turning the land down there into blood.

‘Can I use that blood like it is normal blood?’

‘… Uh. I would caution against using blood that has been produced by a Shade, Miss Flatt.’ Olirio sent, ‘I would suspect that Farix will be using that blood himself, anyway.’

‘Ah. Yeah.’ Jane recognized she was highly anxious at the moment, and she was probably speaking too much, but whatever. ‘Probably right— Say? Did you guys get some levels? I noticed most of my kills were only for 92 percent.’

‘We have. Thank you for allowing us to profit off of your prosperity.’

‘No trouble no trouble.’ Jane gazed across the sky, using her smaller set of Deep Sight eyes from her primal frost owl Familiar Form. Flashes of spellwork on the south side of the Brightwater caught her vision, but she couldn’t tell what was happening, exactly. The problem was that she was using her smaller eyes for this. She’d have to spend mana to switch her Eyes of Magic and Deep Sight around in order to see better, from this distance, and she did not want to do that. So she just asked, ‘When will the larger fireworks start?’

‘Whenever we’re clear, we suspect. He gave us a 15 minute timer, and made it seem as though it would actually take him 15 minutes to cast his spell, but we suspect he is just telling us that in order to make himself seem weaker than he is.’

‘… Or maybe it’s so we can coordinate better? Without lying to each other?’ Jane sent, ‘Shades are some of the worst people you will ever meet, but they tend not to lie about the big stuff, and this is one of those big things. You can mostly trust a Shade to do exactly what they say they’re going to do.’

‘We defer to your expertise.’

Jane would have rolled her eyes if she could. ‘Killzone still down there?’

Why was she still talking? It was like diarrhea of the mouth. Or. Of the Mind. She was nervous, she supposed.

‘Yes. He has 5 more minutes to leave.’

‘Let me know if I have to rescue him. I’m shutting up now.’

A silent assent flowed through to Jane.

And she sat there, watching the Brightwater, and the other shore, about 25 kilometers away. It was like standing on one side of the Grand Canyon and trying to watch the other, or maybe gazing at the Rockies while standing in the middle of Denver Colorado.

All she could do was prepare for the next danger, so she meditated to put herself into Rest, to regenerate Mana and her Health. A Restful state caused both a person’s daily Health and Mana regeneration to go from daily, to hourly, after all, and she needed more… of everything.

She felt like a very small spider in a very large world.

Her father had talked about this a bit back after the ‘Battle of Chelation’ with Terror Peaks. Jane usually didn’t feel this way, but here and now, she did. And she didn’t have Erick’s ability to be ten places at once, with sky spanning spellwork and endless resources. She felt even smaller for that fact, too.

… Maybe she should pick Intelligence. Bump it up to 25. Then she would never be this low on resources ever again.

Or maybe she needed to get a Blessing of Rozeta for Immunity to Mana Exhaustion and Health Fatigue. How would she do that? Scion of Balance for double resistance was great, but it was nothing compared to immunity—

‘Killzone and everyone else is in retreat. All people accounted for. We’re preparing for Farix’s spell.’ Olirio sent, ‘Thirty seconds.’

The next thirty seconds passed with Jane and her thoughts as still as a frozen pond.

At the twenty second mark she had to switch her eyes around so that she could see what was happening on the other rim of the Brightwater. She spent the mana. Her large set of frontal eyes effectively gained the best zoom-feature she had ever experienced in her life—

Farix stood at the top of his tower. A few cows stood placidly to the side. The top was completely open, but the rest of the place looked well defended, with spellwork and solid metal and stone. It looked like they hadn’t taken any damage at all.

It could have been an illusion, but Jane did not feel it was—

The spell began.

Farix lifted his hands to the sky. His forearms sliced open on their own and blood flowed to form an orb, hanging above. Shadows lifted off of the shadowed areas all around and joined Farix’s spell. And then there was a pause. And then more blood flowed up and into the spell. Second by second, pulse by pulse. Blood flowed. Jane wasn’t sure if she was seeing it right, but it seemed as though Farix was packing the thing overfull, like he was stuffing a suitcase with everything he owned.

With his right arm still lifted to the orb, Farix moved his left arm to the side, to a cow.

Blood and shadows flowed from the cow, into the sphere, packing in tight. The cows didn’t seem to care. They were likely drugged. Or somethi—

The first cow dropped dead and a massive pulse of shadow and blood and something brighter left the cow and entered Farix’s spellwork. Jane wasn’t sure, but it had to be a soul. Farix moved his hand and grabbed at the life of the next cow. In three seconds that cow died, too, its life joining the orb overhead. Each cow’s death settled into the orb and sent a pulse of power along a briefly-visible artery of shadows and ethereal blood that filled the air around the spell, like it was a heart and Farix was jump starting the beating of it all.

At the sacrifice of the seventh cow, that was enough.

Farix sighed and the shadows of the blood orb pulsed stronger.

In a flashing instant, the shadowy, ethereal veins and arteries in the air grabbed hold of the light, and the whole working became a miniature red sun lined in white clouds. And then the orb expanded, lighting up from the inside, expanding and expanding, until Farix twisted his hands in the air above, crushing the orb back down to size; concentrating the spell. He held on to the utter death he had created in order to prevent the premature release.

The blood orb had to be at least ten meters across before Farix stopped the expansion, but the light that poured out of it was much larger—

No. That was wrong.

The blood orb still pulled in the shadows all around, transforming them, filling the world with light.

Some woman beside Farix boomed her voice out across the Brightwater, “Incoming!”

And then Farix pushed the red orb forward. It moved slowly at first, looking like it barely moved at all from this distance, but Jane could tell it had already moved a hundred meters in less than a second, glowing ever brighter as ten seconds, then twenty seconds, then a full half minute passed. It was almost to the very center of the Brightwater’s airspace, directly above the target, but it had angled down a lot. Jane felt a minor moment of panic as she realized that if that thing came any closer to them they would have to evacuate. It didn’t look like it was coming their way anymore, but Jane held no doubts that Farix could adjust the trajectory—

The orb reached the subtle gloom in the air over the once bright land, and like a dog sensing weakness, it launched directly downward, parting the gloom—

It was beyond her sight, now. Jane couldn’t help it. She had to see. She cast a [Scry] high into the sky, into the center of the Brightwater.

—The blood orb plunged down into the gloom, sucking in the shadows and spitting out light, growing even more powerful as it descended. The journey of the ‘red dot’ parted the black clouds above the black ocean like only an explosion could, and then it touched down into the very center of the soul ooze slime.

It detonated downward.

For a brief moment, Jane watched the Soul Bolts of five soul casters each try to reach Farix’s blood ball, but the transformative light of the blood orb sucked up those nearby Bolts and turned them into more power.

A wave of light and seeking veins of blood washed away the soul casters and turned them into red light, that became red blood.

The wave of bloody light passed across the entire Brightwater; a suddenly-released ocean of transformative power. The black ocean burned away, revealing amalgams below the surface and leaving everything to float in midair, briefly, before flesh and bone and everything else all transformed into even more glowing red blood. A great deal of material was lost in the conversion, but as the light passed—

Jane had many emotions at what she saw. She wasn’t sure where to even begin. Mostly, she felt awe, but there was a distinct undercurrent of wild anticipation of some emotion beyond her understanding, tainted with the thought of how much of a challenge it would be to kill Farix.

The destruction of his spell was absolute.

25% effectiveness! Bullshit!

Farix’s [Blood Conversion Orb], which was Jane’s tentative name for the spell, washed out from the center of the Brightwater, pushing away the black ocean while simultaneously converting every single amalgam into raw blood. The soul ooze was not fully gone, but the Shade’s magic had been directed downward, instead of going up at all, and thus it had burrowed through at least 25 kilometers of ooze, plummeting the new surface of the soul ooze to well below the old coastlines.

His spell had only actually stopped because it hit the bottom of the lake, along with other impediments.

For a very brief moment, the entire Brightwater, covered in blood, stood revealed. The coastlines to the north were wreckages of broken crystal towers and cathedrals and mansions and palaces. The coastlines to the south were more modest homes. To the far west were mountains and a bunch of ruins; the remains of what used to be floating castles, where people used to go to school to learn ‘proper magic’ before they were allowed to enter into the Script. To the far east were the soul towers, where the Spire reigned as the largest, only inhabited structure around. It was abandoned now, of course. It had also been submerged under the previous height of the soul ooze’s surface. Now, though, the Spire was revealed, but that didn’t matter as it was still very broken.

The other crystal towers near the broken Spire used to be home to a land of near-sentient dead souls; refugees from the old cosmology that lived a life that resembled their lives from well over 1500 years ago, and a universe away. The Shades sometimes picked prized shadelings out of those dead people, for the souls out in the rest of the city were too far gone to be turned into anything useful. That whole place, which used to shine with brightness, was now full of smoky crystal towers, full of the insane dead.

Farix’s spell had killed every amalgam. It had transformed them all into blood. That blood pooled here and there, and especially at the bottom of the lake, but there was one place that remained fully black.

The soul ooze.

Off-center of the lake bed, to the east, was a glob of black ocean sitting in a land of blood, like a bloody black booger. Farix had uncovered the soul ooze, but he had not damaged it. Domain had warred with Domain, and Farix’s spell had needed to go through a lot of fodder to get close to the soul ooze. Farix’s spell had been broken by the soul ooze itself.

Farix’s spell had cleared the way! And if that was all that it had done, Jane suspected that the kill could have proceeded from there with minimal issues. But the sudden release of pressure from the removal of a small sea’s worth of ooze had a catastrophic effect on the rest of the Brightwater. All the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst was still filled with black ooze, after all.

Gravity in the Underworld— for that’s what this was, once one got this deep— was wonky. Even so, water still flowed to the lowest possible point unless measures were taken to stop that. Thick walls surrounded all of the Brightwater, for the people of the Brightwater needed to keep monsters out of their homes, too, and walls were still the best solution to that problem, no matter how much magic there was in the world. There were holes in that wall now, though. Some holes had been caused by monsters, no doubt, but at least one was caused by the soul ooze itself, when it moved into this land.

To the west of the Brightwater, where the land was mountainous and full of ruins, Jane saw a conspicuously large, flat area, stretching from the walls to the former coastline of the Brightwater. A large hole was in that wall.

And now, there was a large difference in water level between all of the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst, and the Brightwater.

Black ooze poured in from that massive hole, and then the massive hole tore open wider. Crystal retaining structures broke. The black ocean flooded—

Several things happened almost too quickly for Jane to understand.

Killzone descended into the bloody lake, directly at the soul ooze.

Farix instantly killed his remaining cows and all of the blood inside the entire Brightwater began to glow in resonance.

The soul ooze released ten soul caster amalgams from itself, along with the large giant made of hands. It was the Hand Caster! The only amalgam that had shown the capability to think and to heal itself. It had been gone for a while, but it was here, it had shown itself! Jane wanted to rush in there and kill it right now. It had evaded her so many fucking times! It had killed so many people. It had—

A pit of dread and hate opened up inside Jane’s chest as she looked upon the Hand Caster, and saw some of its hands were tiny, and attached to very, very long arms. Those hairy black arms twisted at unnatural angles and began to join together, aiming upward, gathering shadows into a spell similar to what Farix had done, but—

Jane had no idea how bad it would be.

If she were an orcol, Jane was sure she would have been Raging.

The mother fucking Hand Caster had amalgamized moon reacher shit into itself! It was probably the thing that pulsed that large [Mind Fog] all across the whole Brightwater and beyond! Fuck that guy!

Olirio sent, ‘Help Killzone. Now.’

Right.

She was here for a reason, and to accomplish a specific goal.

Jane instantly did as she was told, transforming her eyes back to their proper arrangement as she dove into the red glowing Brightwater. She aimed directly for the Hand Caster all the way at the bottom, which floated directly above the soul ooze.

—she watched as the glowing blood of the whole area flowed into the gap in the western wall where the soul ooze’s main body was attempting to flood the area. That blood moved faster than Jane would have thought possible at these size scales, acting at first like a net, and then like a condom, to hold back the inundating ooze coming in from the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst like a balloon would hold back the water from a faucet. The blood bulged out, instantly, and Jane hoped Farix had a better idea than that—

Blood actually flowed up from everywhere, not only filling the main gap, but also every single smaller gap as well, but the smaller ones were not really concerning—

The balloon of glowing red blood suddenly transformed like the sudden appearance of a glacier, becoming massive crystals of blood that slammed into and out of every single break in the wall. The sound was astounding, and almost made Jane move off target. Some ooze had gotten through, and would continue to get past the blood crystals, either trickling or pouring—

Olirio sent, ‘Farix can give you five minutes. Maybe ten.’

She was moving too slow, too unsure. Things were taking longer to understand than they were to kill.

Jane got her head in the game.

Olirio sent, ‘This whole thing needs to happen before the soul ooze can regain all the resources of all the other monster parts in the rest of the ooze. Kill the guardians first.’

Killzone had reached the first of twenty surviving soul casters (Where did the extra come from?) long before Jane could join him. He had already turned two into exploded goo, while fending off and outracing a constant barrage of a hundred black bolts.

The Hand Caster was Jane’s target, though. It was wildly different from how Jane remembered, but it was still based on the general shape of a giant, with two large legs like massive tree trunks and two large arms coming off of a torso, but now it had a massive head at the top and a bunch of longer arms in the place of every tenth normal arm. It was a dispelling mental monster amalgam now, and it was casting some sort of large scale spell.

It floated, cross-legged, midair above the soul ooze, with all of its arms raised out and to the sky, each hand with an eye upon the palm, each eye staring at a mass of shadows gathering above its head. It was probably another [Mind Fog] attack. Jane hoped it was a [Mind Fog] attack.

It probably wasn’t. She proceeded anyway.

At Jane’s approach some of the hand eyes turned Jane’s way.

She would likely only get one shot at this. This damned amalgam was too smart, and it was too capable of self-healing—

A bright darkness took hold of the sky overhead as ten stars appeared as though from the deepest depths of Abyss, to shine their Void Starlight out into the world. Nirzir was here, somewhere! Or maybe she had finally figured out a [Familiar]. Jane didn’t have time for that, though. Tendrils of violet shadows instantly poured down from above, punching straight through the gathered spellwork of the hands caster, burrowing straight into the creature’s body. Violet glitters streamed up into the constellation above, the spellwork pulling out Health and Mana to empower itself.

It wasn’t the same as Erick’s [Undertow Star], for [Luminosity] wasn’t part of the Open Script yet, but it was functionally identical. Nirzir’s Void Song burned away at half of the gathered shadow orb overhead, and would continue to burn for as long as needed. She would have to cancel that spell before a soul caster threw a Soul Bolt at it, but it looked like Killzone had every one of those amalgams’ attention.

Killzone had killed five of them, so far.

Nirzir’s Star gave Jane an opening and so Jane descended on the Hand Caster with her sword swinging brilliance and her entire body lit up like a comet. Amalgamated arms flew away from the body of the monster as Jane slashed and sliced. The entirety of Nirzir’s [Undertow Stars] pulled at the entirety of the hand caster like drilling violet tendrils.

Jane latched onto the amalgam’s upper torso and face, cutting with all of her claws while her sword further clipped all of its severed limbs. She had already cut away every moon reacher arm; she made sure of that before she went in.

She tried not to think about how all of the arms could potentially have the moon reacher ability, even if they didn’t look like moon reacher arms.

The dispeller-head roared a blast of anti-magic directly at Jane’s own head, but it simply bounced away, unable to affect her inner spellwork, or touch her quickly-dodging adamantium sword.

All of Jane’s blue fire evaporated off of the amalgam, though. But she kept applying more and more spreading blue flames. In a flashing set of instants, blue fire engulfed the entire amalgam. The main head tried to cast another area [Dispel], but this time Void poured down through the amalgam’s throat, breaking its [Dispel] into something less harmful. Some of Jane’s fire went away, too, but that was fine.

The hand caster blipped.

Half of it, anyway.

Like shearing paper, twenty-odd half-severed arms and hands and eyes appeared to the left. Most of the creature didn’t blip at all. Most remained firmly trapped under Jane’s claws. Jane tore into the rapidly dying amalgam, ripping and tearing and cleaving and [Cleanse]ing as fast as she could, heedless of Mana or Health costs. In ten second she was left holding onto the chest of a corpse with stumps for legs and no arms that was rapidly disintegrating under her power. The hands that had blipped left had long since fallen out of reach, though Nirzir’s [Undertow Star] tracked them the whole way, for they still had life in them, until they fell into the Domain of the ooze below.

Nothing could get through that Domain, it seemed, unless the ooze wanted it to get through.

Jane felt the Hand Caster go limp under her many gripping legs, unable to fight her any longer, and so Jane ascended, holding on tight to the corpse to make sure that it was actually dead, ascending the whole time, ensuring that she stayed away from the ooze’s Domain, too.

She could feel the ooze’s Domain this whole time. Right below her. It was like an edge to the world, or like a black hole, threatening to pull her in if she got anywhere closer to the thing. If she got near, she knew she would die. She had fought off her fear this whole time while she attacked the Hand Caster, but now that the amalgam was dead and her job was done, Jane’s fear won out over her furor.

So she raced to escape.

Mog was down there helping Killzone kill the soul casters. She had killed her fifth, or something. Then she, too, was escaping to the north. Two other people who Jane didn’t know were escaping south. They were from Farix’s camp, Jane was sure.

Killzone finished off the tenth and last soul caster, and then he rocketed directly at the side of the soul ooze—

He struck the edge of the soul ooze’s Domain like a child would hit a glass wall. He bounced away.

“Jane!” Killzone backed up, yelling, “RUN! NOW! Not too far, though!”

Jane was already racing away but she wasn’t going fast enough, apparently. She clutched her prize and dragged it along with her as she moved. Her [Cleansing Aura] and her fire had begun to turn the thing to ash, and somewhere between kilometer five and ten of her rapid flight the Hand Caster’s remains broke apart into pieces too small to hold.

Behind her, the ooze quivered at the bottom of Brightwater Lake. It was a black gelatin the size of a football stadium, and was the only solid-colored thing in the area. Everything else was smoky crystal layered over with a combination of bright red blood and dead soul black sludge—

A shattering crack resounded through the bowl of the Brightwater as one of Farix’s blood crystal towers, holding back the flood to the north, broke. It wasn’t the large break in the bowl located to the west, but it was large enough for a waterfall of black gore and sludge to flow into the Brightwater like so much spewing mucus.

They had maybe minutes before every single one of the crystal dams broke.

Which was likely why Spur was pulling out the big guns.

Olirio yelled at her to get to cover.

Jane chose a large ruin behind a veritable plateau of crystal, and while the ruin had been reduced to puddles of blood and black sludge, the plateau itself was more like a minor mountain range than a ruin. Jane touched down in the ruins, and in that moment, she wasn’t sure if she had fucked up, or gotten very, very lucky.

On the other side of the plateau the world exploded in fire and lightning.

Jane, a very, very small spider, huddled behind her cover, in the black muck, and in the red blood. She had not turned off her [Prismatic Body] or her [Cleansing Aura].

Which is probably why the next event happened.

Her feet touched blood. Dirty, glowing black and red blood, and yet it was still filled with power, ready for the taking. For the first time since fighting these amalgams, or really, ever, she touched upon a treasure unlike any other. Both her Blood Weaver Ability from the Familiar Form of the same name, and her Blood Sense from her lesser rivergrieve, activated at the same time, unbidden. It was like touching upon a spider web that she had strung across the world.

And then [Cleansing Aura] truly started to work.

Black sludge evaporated away like thick air, and the blood concentrated.

Jane disassociated from the battle.

- - - -

Kiri sat in her chair and also in the sky far above the Brightwater.

Teressa stoically handed her a mana potion. The large woman’s blonde hair was a bit unkempt, a bit unruly from the neat bun she usually kept it in, while her emerald eyes were half sunken with hidden worry.

Kiri took the mana potion. It was as brilliant blue as a clear sky, and it weighed. It was her first potion of the day but it might not be her last. She decided, “I’m going for Intelligence as soon as Erick gets back.”

Teressa softly said, “That’s the dangerous one. Erick has to fight paranoia all the time. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes, but… Hmm.” Kiri sipped the potion. Her Mana Regeneration slowly climbed, and it would likely settle in at around triple regeneration for a good five minutes. It would be enough. She had to save some fuel for the treachery that was sure to come. No one truly Brightwater or Farix. Kiri said, “I have a support structure. I won’t go crazy from paranoia.”

Teressa said nothing.

Kiri leaned back and submerged herself into Sunny’s senses. Things happened fast.

The Brightwater was down below.

The soul ooze was in the center.

Killzone bounced off the soul ooze.

Jane retreated with her kill.

Nirzir’s spellwork broke as she canceled it, because the soul ooze pulsed and sent out a thousand globs of black ooze and also a pulse of shadows. Nirzir didn’t want to risk her spellwork being turned against them, for it surely would have been.

The ooze’s pulse turned all the nearby bright blood into dead blood. Black droplets, each a meter across, hung in the air around the ooze like a thousand floating [Force Traps]. Black puddles on the ground for kilometers around ripped into the air, into those hovering orbs, and then the larger orbs flowed back into the soul ooze. And the ooze began to grow.

A waterfall in the northern wall turned from a lazy gush of black water into a seeking tendril of the stuff, flowing directly at the soul ooze.

And the soul ooze began to rise into the air.

Slowly. Surely. It had cast [Fly] on itself.

‘No soul casters spotted and that wasn’t actually a Soul Bolt spell; Sentries confirmed. It was a [Dispel] from a dispeller still inside the thing.’ Poi sent, ‘You’re clear. Attack before it can regrow itself or escape.’

Kiri focused.

Sunnys rapidly descended into the bowl of the Brightwater. For a moment, just briefly, Kiri was surprised at the scope of the battle. From where she had been all of this looked like dots on a far away map. Now, the soul ooze’s size was readily apparent. It was at least two kilometers across, now.

Kiri and all of her [Familiar]s opened up with [Luminous Beam]s, switching out for [True Sunlight Rift]s as soon as their Script Second allowed them to, letting them keep up the burn for 5 seconds at a time while adding to the burn with sunlight. She began chain summoning her [Familiar]s, while commanding them to reapply spellwork and to get back out there as soon as they could.

Beams of absolute light tore at the soul ooze from ten different angles, while Rifts of pure sunlight lit up the bottom of the Brightwater like looking at the sun. The puddles of soul ooze on the ground, not swallowed up by the monster, instantly evaporated under such an assault. Her beams crashed into the thing like streams of high powered Water Magic tearing through particularly hard ooze. It was not as effective as Kiri had hoped, but it was still effective.

She was spending 811 mana per second and regenerating— Not enough. She downed the rest of her mana potion. Within seconds, she was regenerating 133 mana per second; ten times her usual max.

Each Sunny was able to cast five [True Sunlight Rifts] and two [Luminous Beam]s, meaning ten seconds of work for each Sunny before they were expended. In the first ten seconds of her assault she managed to get through one full rotation.

Huge swaths of central ooze evaporated under her onslaught. Everything that broke away from the ooze rapidly evaporated, but actually breaking anything away was a lot tougher than it should have been.

And then the monster pulsed with a terrible, vibrating scream of shadows, popping every single Sunny in the area and disrupting every nearby rift. The land was still filled with rifts, though, and Kiri had managed to interrupt the waterfall of mucus streaming in from the north, but it was not enough.

Kiri sent in more Sunnys.

Kiri’s second assault went better. Sun rifts piled up all around the thing while beams of light cleaved into the monster. But she could not keep this up. Not at this rate.

In 15 seconds, Kiri had summoned all of her Sunny again, expending all of her mana to do so. In those 15 seconds, she had regained enough mana to cast two more Sunnys, which she had to do because the dispeller inside the soul ooze was still breaking them when they got lower than half mana.

This was not the slow and steady race at the beginning. This was a frantic sprint to see how much damage she could do. And she was doing damage. She had also cut away whatever magic was enabling it to fly. The thing rested on the bottom of Brightwater Lake, like before.

The ooze had lost well over half of its diameter, too, meaning Kiri had cut through 70 to 80 percent of the creature’s size—

She clipped the dispeller amalgam still inside the ooze. She got a notification. She had killed it. But she was not killing the ooze fast enough. And yet… Maybe she had stabilized?

All of the Brightwater was now absolutely filled with Sunlight Rifts, removing the black mess in the bowl of the Brightwater, turning the entire land bright red. Farix had repaired the broken crystals in the walls, staunching the flow of ooze into the Brightwater…

Was she still on a timer—

‘Time to switch. Keep two Sunnys on the ooze, preventing it from flying.’ Poi sent, ‘All the rest need to start laying down Rifts near the other sides of the holes in the Brightwater. Farix’s magic will not last much longer.’

She was still on a timer.

Kiri moved on, quick as a mental shift in direction.

Eight Sunnys stepped through the sky, back over the edge of the Brightwater, most of them heading toward the other side of the western break in the wall. Barely three kilometers down from the top, Kiri encountered the gloom that was everywhere below the surface of Ar’Kendrithyst these days. There were surely more amalgams below that gloom, but they shouldn’t be a problem.

Right?

Poi answered her unasked question, ‘We never noticed soul casters anywhere except near the core of the ooze. You’re cleared to dive in and start killing anything and everything you see.’

Right.

Kiri did just that.

Soon, light bloomed in the dark depths, driving away gloom and then ripping through disconnected soul ooze like it did every single night, all around the walls of Spur. Massive whirlpools of ooze began to form here and there as Kiri’s Sun Rifts appeared under the surface of the waters. Lances of [Luminous Beam]s went out occasionally, killing the larger threats before they could become actual threats.

- - - -

Jane sat upon a pool of blood and felt as the sun seemed to shine upon her and every single piece of reality connected to her many legs. The day’s earlier revelation of how Mind Mages saw the world was similar, but different. Similar, in that Jane felt the world in a way she never had before, but different in the depths of that feeling.

Lights flashed overhead, but Jane sunk her feet deeper into the puddles of blood all around.

Her connection to the world expanded.

And she realized something, there in that bloody land, filled with the transformed remnants of dead and mutated life. This was not physical blood at all, but raw, Elemental Blood. Her new thought was, in the realizing of it, perhaps a trite revelation. What was actually important though, was what came next.

The impetus to the creation of her Prismatic Class. The reason she wanted to be ‘Prismatic’ at all.

She wanted to do everything. She wanted to be anything she desired to be. She wanted to be Everything. Maybe not all at once, but she certainly wanted to see all that life had to offer, from the brightest skies to the deepest depths, and everywhere in between. She wanted to cast magic and swing swords and hide and show herself and tank and backstab. To be whatever the situation demanded; that was what Jane desired.

[Greater Shadowalk] was just one version of her transformed self, no less able than her [Greater Lightwalk] self, which was again, no less useful than her [Air Body], or [Stone Body]. Everything had its place. Every power had its necessity.

And.

She had been artificially limiting herself.

There were six primary Elements, yes, but there were other Elements out there that also had their place of power, their usefulness. Poi’s Mind Mage powers were an Element, for sure. Blood was an Element which Jane was very familiar with, ever since gaining her Queen Blood Weaver, but even before that, with all the blood and violence necessary on Veird, Jane was familiar with blood.

Jane touched the world through the blood and felt a hundred million small secrets calling to her, telling her what she needed to know, that Blood was an Element, and that Mind was an Element, and that everything she could think of was an Element, because of course it was.

That’s how magic worked.

“You see now, yes?” Melemizargo spoke to her, from the Dark, the place beyond mere Shadows. “It’s all connected. Nothing is truly separate. All is one, and one is all.”

Jane heard someone talk to her, but she could not hear the words, or understand the speaker. She felt her legs sink into the blood. The stone rubble below seemed to part, drawing her down as a depth expanded from her soul. The wind and the sunlight touched her and she saw herself vanish, becoming one with both. The shadows under her welcomed her to join them, and she did so, plunging straight down into the rubble.

This was the Truth of it all. Everything was connected. Mana held all possibilities; even more than the Script allowed…

Which was perhaps a trite realization, but there it was.

In seconds, Jane touched upon the wall of Ar’Kendrithyst and felt a thousand years of spellwork upon that wall trying to rebuff her presence. Jane merely flicked a switch in her mind she didn’t know was there, becoming one with the spellwork, and then she passed through the wall.

She shouldn’t have been able to do that. People did not [Stone Body] through the wall of the Dead City and live. Even the soul ooze could not breach that absolute barrier. But it was like the wall had been primed to let her through. She had no time for that mystery, though.

Because she felt the world, and the world called to her.

She touched the ocean underneath the Crystal Forest, becoming one with the Abyss, feeling her connection between Shadow and Water deepen. For a moment, she was the Abyss itself. Deep dwelling eels lived down here, and they snapped at Jane’s passing, but all they got for their trouble was a smack on the face and a ripping of blood out of their violent bodies.

For Blood was everywhere, too. Blood was life, and life was Blood.

Jane became one with the Blood, and then she moved on.

A twist of direction brought her to a land of Fire and Stone; to Magma. Lizards made of Elemental Magma hunted on the edges of those fiery depths. The lizards snapped at Jane just as the eels had done, but she left them be, for she was fast as the bubbling Plasma rising up, and she had to keep going.

She followed an endless river of Plasma that became simple Air that blew up from down below, into a land of Shadows and Air and Elemental Sand. She became one with something that was more than pulverized quartz and broken obsidian, and quickly moving air. Nothing overt lived in this dark, endlessly hot place, except for the elementals swirling in the sand, watching as Jane passed by.

For she had seen something in the far distance.

She followed the Light, this time.

A brilliance of Light shimmered out of long forgotten Elemental Crystal, a mix of Light and Stone, in the middle of a cavern that was filled with bright water that was not water at all, but Elemental Healing. Jane giggled. ‘Elemental Healing’! What a silly notion. They couldn’t come up with something better to call it than simple ‘Healing’? The waters of this hidden place were filled with all manner of fish and grasses and monsters that Jane had never seen before, and they all shimmered with bodies composed of Elemental Healing.

A True Rivergrieve tried to chase Jane, to eat her deep, Forceful jaws snapping out from every part of its thirty meter long eel-like body as it gave chase. Jane laughed. She almost wanted to try her hand at becoming one with Elemental Force and to eat the rivergrieve right back, but not today.

Jane left that land, headed up, directly out of the Healing waters and into another cavern, lit with the light from those waters. This smaller cavern was not filled with Healing, but instead with Lightning, and Jane had to laugh even louder when she saw the creatures that lived here. Spiders. Thousands of them. They crawled over webs made of Lightning and they shot bolts of lightning down into the waters to catch fish for their dinners.

They tried to catch Jane, too.

But the Darkness guided her forward, dancing through the Lightning and the Stone and the Air and the Water. Nothing could touch Jane as she transformed herself right alongside the Darkness, like a child chasing after a playful giant—

Suddenly, the Darkness passed through the lower walls of Ar’Kendrithyst. And Jane followed. The walls let her through a second time as she chased the dragon into a world of Radiance, dried and dead Blood, and a sad looking soul ooze’s core—

Several things happened very fast.

At first, a notification appeared.

Greater Prismatic Body, instant, long range, 50 Mana per second + Variable

You are everywhere.

And Jane felt the world all around her, as she suspected very few ever could. She felt the stone and the crystalline floor of Ar’Kendrithyst. She was the air all around her, and the dried blood on the ground. How was the blood dried? It was wet not ten minutes ago. As Jane contemplated the dead blood all around she soaked in the light from a hundred different Rifts suspended overhead, feeling the world all around her as she never could before. From the stone underfoot to the hot, stagnant air, to the bright sky...

She was everywhere, but there were two places where she was not.

Both of those places were in front of her. One was crushed against the dried-blood bottom of Lake Brightwater; the core of the soul ooze. It was a black and radiant white at the same time; a tumor of a grand rad twenty-five meters across at its narrowest section, but with raised domes of crystalline growth all over the thing, and with a smattering of sharp spikes of black/white crystal as well. It was perhaps the second most dangerous thing Jane had ever felt and seen. The only reason Jane wasn’t more concerned with the soul ooze was because it was completely cleaned of black ooze, its Domain was broken and could not be repaired, and it was currently cowering from much larger power overhead.

For Melemizargo, like a black mountain of wings and scales and power, had one clawed hand resting atop the core of the crystal ooze. He was a thousand meters tall, or even larger. Jane had no idea. She had never seen him this big. He was using that size and his power to gently crush the soul ooze’s core into the bloody ground. He probably could have done it shaped as a three meter large snake, too, but he chose this big form because he could, no doubt.

Jane had no idea why she said it, but the words came out before she had time to think better, “You’re bigger than before.”

“Much smaller than I used to be.” Melemizargo leaned forward, like he was inspecting a very pretty bug, and said, “You’ve grown, too, and yet you’re still getting into deeper trouble than you know how to handle. Tackling this thing without a Domain. Tsk tsk. Reckless. I respect recklessness. All the best growth is done through adversity.” He eyed Jane with an eye brighter than the sun rifts all around. “But you’ll run out of mana if you keep doing that, so you can stop now. I’ve got everything under control.”

Jane’s power vanished in a flashing instant.

Suddenly, she was just a tiny blue spider facing off against a massive dragon and a world-threatening enemy that that dragon treated as one would treat a very small stepping stool. And yet, something was different. Something unrelated to the dragon or the ooze. Jane felt different.

Some eternalness clung to her body like an elemental miscellany, a fog, or a glow. She glanced at her blue spider legs and saw a prismatic sheen that was new. She had no idea what it was, but she could feel the world almost the same as before, but on a much, much smaller scale.

Aura control? Perhaps.

She would deal with that later.

Jane asked, “What are you going to do with the soul ooze?”

“Make you kill it, of course.” Melemizargo moved one of his talons around the soul ooze, pointing to a cleft that separated the left half of the grand rad from the right. Jane hadn’t even noticed the weak spot until Melemizargo pointed it out. “[Strike] right there. You don’t even need your black sword to do the deed.”

Jane suddenly realized her sword was gone.

And that she was talking to Melemizargo.

And she was standing about thirty meters away from the soul ooze’s core.

She was halfway dissociating due to the danger, but she was still cognizant enough to say, “This seems like a trap.”

Melemizargo’s entire face filled Jane’s view as he grinned, showing off some very, very large glowing white fangs. “They tried everything to kill this little guy, and still they could not break its power. I had to step in, you see, and only because you managed to get this far with your understanding of [Greater Prismatic Body]. You deserve a reward, Jane. This is that reward.” Melemizargo inclined his head toward the west. “Or… You could let that happen.”

Jane glanced to the west.

The blood crystals that had held the flood back were broken. The flood had been released. And yet, time was frozen, and like time, the ooze had frozen, too. Not wholly. Not completely. Jane watched as a blood crystal slowly spun away from the hole it had been covering and as the wave of black ooze flowed out of the hole like that Pitch Drop experiment she had read that one time. She had no idea why she thought of the Pitch Drop experiment, but there it was.

Jane fully turned back toward the ooze’s core. She conjured a [Flying Striker] in the shape of a very large ice pick…

It hovered above her, ready to [Strike]...

And yet, she had to repeat, “This feels like a trap.”

Melemizargo nodded sagely. “It is not, but I understand the trepidation. This whole scenario of me granting you a kill on a demonstrably greater power than yourself goes against everything I usually stand for. This little slime was pretty strong, and it was getting stronger, and if it were capable of overrunning this whole world I usually would have let it.

“But I’ve learned a few things recently, and… Hmm.” Melemizargo hummed, then pianoed his talons atop the ooze’s core, creating a series of terrible taps upon the crystalline surface. The ooze’s core vibrated in fear, though that could have been Jane’s imagination. “Tell you what. I’ll make this simple for you: I saved your life, and so you owe me one, and I’m calling in the favor. Kill the slime. In fact! I require you to kill this creature in my name. You need to say ‘I dedicate this hunt to Melemizargo, God of Magic’, before you strike the blow, or else I will depart and let things happen as they will. And to be sure you understand what will likely happen: The sun is fifteen minutes from setting. That boy of Rozeta’s is lining up his spellwork right now. You can’t tell, but this entire place is in shadow, and the soul slime still has a good connection to its body, all the way out there. That’s why Farix’s spellwork has finally failed, and why Kiri’s blasting of the ooze beyond here has also failed.

“This place will become a crater in five minutes unless you kill this thing here, and now, and with my name upon your spidery lips— Actually! We’re going to do this properly. Transform back to a human. Now.” Melemizargo added, “And put everything you can into the [Strike].”

Jane…

Transformed back into her human form.

Feeling a lot less strong, and a lot smaller, Jane Flatt stood before the God of Magic, naked as the day she was born save for the rings her father had made upon her fingers. At least she hadn’t lost those. She did not flinch at the Dark Dragon’s grin. She did not waver as she readied her flying weapon.

Jane simply walked forward and enveloped her conjured weapon with the power she had learned. The dried blood all around her held a little power, and so she used that power along with stone and air and light and shadow, swirling them all together, transforming her [Flying Striker] into lightning and abyss and brilliant blue fire. The modifier for using all of these elements in a proper [Strike] should have been in the tens of thousands of mana costs, but it was a lot less than that. Easier, now that Jane had found her Truth.

She was everything she needed to be, and this [Strike] reflected that part of her Truth. Instinctively, she knew that it would shift to become the Element it needed to be to inflict the most damage possible. She felt rather good about that part of herself.

It felt… Very correct.

With a directed thought she hovered the weapon ten meters away from the weak point in the core—

“Speak the words, Jane Flatt.” Melemizargo said, “And thank me for saving your life back in Songli.”

“… Thank you, Melemizargo, for saving my life. I do this for Veird, and for your eventual sanity.” Jane said, “I dedicate this kill to Melemizargo.”

She struck.

Melemizargo could have prevented the strike with a casual tilt of his claw, for his claw held right beside the weak spot in the ooze’s core, but he did not. He merely grinned.

He had not stopped grinning this whole time.

Jane was honestly surprised as her conjured spike, which shouldn’t have been able to do anything, pierced the soul slime. As the length of elemental power drove deep into the core the black-white grand rad cracked in all directions. Radiating fractures spread out everywhere, and then deepened. Parts of the whole shattered without preamble. A tumorous growth of crystal broke away from the top. Another outcropping of sharp crystal shattered away from the left side. The entire right side cracked fully in half, the whole thing slipping apart—

Melemizargo lifted his claw and the entire grand rad fractured and broke like a disintegrating pile of magic, slowly at first, and then rapidly.

And then Melemizargo pulled his trick.

He slammed his claws into the center of the disintegrating soul slime and pulled out a pearl of white light. It was beautiful. It was pure. And then it was gone. It had vanished sideways, disappearing from sight in some way that Jane couldn’t tell. What had he done?

“What was that?” Jane found herself asking.

Melemizargo smirked, and then told her, “The soul slime was a unique existence, only possible because of a hundred small factors that normally never would have happened. A broken artifact here. A consumed artifact there. A feast of dead souls and a magical impetus allowed to run amok. A hundred small failures that I can only attribute to Fate, but there’s only one current Walker of the Path right now, so, by all rights this should have been his burden to bear. His monster to kill. It was, after all, a horrible amalgamation of every bad thing to ever come before. The perfect monster to foil Erick.

“But apparently Erick’s Fate is not a normal Fate.

“He guided you this far, and he guided me to be here, too. He gave spellwork to his apprentice in the form of [Luminous Beam] and powerful weapons to his daughter and his guards. He helped that one archmage from Songli with that inspired Undertow effect. He helped from afar, which was exactly as it was meant to be. Apparently. Not how I expected it to happen, but the mana is always a bit mysterious in its workings.

“But that wasn’t really your question, was it? Your question was about the thing I took from the broken core.

“The answer to that is simple to explain and hard to grasp due to the scope involved. That glowing fragment is the Truth of the soul slime. A fragment of power left over from the twisted life which birthed it, which I shall change into something nicer. Something to go along with this new world your father is forging.” Melemizargo eyed the world around him, then turned back to Jane. There was a newfound joy in his supernova-bright eyes. “Technically, I also saved your life today, Jane, but I won’t be calling in that favor. We’re even, if you wish for us to be even.”

Jane had no idea what to say to any of that.

She blinked.

Melemizargo vanished.

Time resumed.

The ocean of ooze flowing in from the west hit the sunlight-filled bowl of the Brightwater, and broke, evaporating away in great swells of wind and steam and air, becoming nothing but a hot breeze. It reminded Jane of how it was every night out there on the walls, fighting under the very same lights. She wasn’t worried about drowning, though.

Jane suspected that if the soul slime was still alive, then it would be producing more slime itself, since the sun was already setting beyond the Dead City’s walls.

All these lights in this land wouldn’t have mattered at all if the slime was still alive.

But it wasn’t.

Jane had killed it.

At Melemizargo’s behest, but still. The soul slime was dead. Jane was alive. Spur was alive.

At that thought Jane’s emotions came crashing down. She was a naked woman alone in the center of the red lake bed of the Brightwater with a hundred false suns hovering overhead and a tropical heat hurricane flowing at her from the west. If she wasn’t mostly immune to environmental effects thanks to the Class Ability that granted her that immunity, she likely would have been cooked alive, like the blood under her feet. That blood was dry and dead, and flaking under the sun and the sudden hurricane-force breeze.

She held up her hand to look at herself and a shimmer of thick air drifted off of her body, but more than that, she could see the world around her, through that shimmer, and a bit beyond. It was different from Surround Sight…

So both mana sense, and aura control, eh?

Not a bad haul—

“Jane?”

Killzone stepped down onto the land ten meters away. He looked ready for war, with his thin black plate armor that was just his body but shaped differently, and a helmet over his head. He had no eye slits and he didn’t really need them, either; they were just weak points anyway; places for goo to accumulate. He padded forward, his feet barely touching the dried blood underneath him. He was still flying but he wasn’t trying to be obvious about it. He was obviously stressed out, though. He twisted his head and body this way and that. And then he focused on Jane.

“… So hey!” Killzone’s helmet dissolved into a hood that he pulled back, revealing his face. His smile was pure joy lit by the light of a hundred suns, and his stupid southern-ish accent came back in full force, as he said, “Looks like ya’ killed it! We tried everythin. Lightnin. Fi-er. Heck a lotta light.” He held up his fists. “Adamantine battering ram!” With a chuckle, he said, “But then you up and steal all the glory! I ain’t complaining, though… But… Where’d you go? You freaked out Poi good and deep for a long while.”

He was trying to be non-threatening, as one did around Shades and other possibly-horrible things inside the Dead City.

Jane breathed out, then looked at herself again. And she realized she could actually look at herself from outside her body. And she could move around mana outside her body. This was strange. Aura control and mana sense were weird.

Killzone was acting weird.

This whole thing was odd.

And Jane admitted to herself that she was likely compromised in some way.

Jane said, “I’m going to conjure some clothes.”

Killzone gave no objection.

Jane conjured some clothes and felt a lot better about standing around in the open, but a lot worse in an entirely unexpected way. Her clothes were pastel blue, but also dark blue, and with splashes of rainbow in them. It wasn’t anything organized like a proper tie-dye outfit, either. It was a bunch of random colors splashed onto her body in the shape of clothes.

But…

So her conjuring was bad! So what. She would deal with that later.

Jane said, “I went on a journey. I don’t know why, but… Got [Greater Prismatic Body].” Which she decided to Favor right then and there. 50 mana per second was way too much, but 12-13 mana per second was easy enough to deal with— She ignored the math for the moment. She focused on the problem now facing her. “Found Melemizargo. Or he found me. He saved my life in Songli, and he guided me or dragged me or directed me… Not sure. I went on a journey and then came back here and he asked me to dedicate the kill of the soul slime—”

A notification appeared.

You have slain Soul Amalgamator Slime!

15% Participation!

+1.9 e25 experience

She shot straight up to level 99, and theoretically, she should have hit level 100.

The Fibonacci sequence, upon which the whole leveling system mirrored to a certain degree, dictated that level 100 should require 3.4 e22 experience, but according to what Jane was now seeing in her Status the required experience to reach level 100 was 1e100. A one followed by a hundred zeroes.

Literally no one was ever going to reach that number. The soul slime had only reached something like 12.6 e26, if her math was right.

Jane’s own Status now showed her as 1.8 e25 out of 1 e100 to the next level. The barest bit of what she gained was all that was needed to put her well past this soft ‘cap’.

From his expression, Killzone was reading the same sort of notification. Jane wondered how much experience he had gotten. Less than her? She had dealt the killing blow, after all.

But that was a topic for some other time.

Jane defended herself, “Melemizargo asked me to dedicate the soul slime kill to him, or else he was going to release it back into the world, and I don’t think whatever the Headmaster had planned would have worked. So, I agreed. And then I killed it in Melemizargo’s name. And then he took some Truth from the soul slime’s core and spoke about changing it into something nicer. Something to go along with the new world…” Her voice trailed away. “He thought that my father should have been the one to kill the Soul Slime, but then… We were here. And then this happened.”

For a long while, Jane just stood there, putting on a brave face.

For a long while, Killzone also just stood there, thinking.

With a voice almost devoid of his usual accent, Killzone said, “I don’t know what sorta fuckery went down here, but the current result is good and I’m pretty sure you were forced between a rock and a hard place, and Spur protects its own, of which you are still a part. So this whole thing is not a big deal, and especially so if this was us succeeding on foiling the Worldly Path.” He pulled back a bit, as though realizing something. With a softer voice, he said, “This is likely the best possible result we could have asked for. Good job, Jane. Report for decontamination and some debriefing, then you can go home and rest.” He turned half away, looking to where the breaking soul slime core had left a black and white scorch-like mark upon the ground. “Dismissed.”

“… Okay!” Jane saluted, then walked to the left two steps before realizing that walking wasn’t the best way to leave this place. And also she was missing something. She stopped, turned back, and asked, “Say, uh? Sir? Have you seen my sword?”

Killzone remained focused on the scorch mark, frowning a bit. “Ah. You didn’t use it here, eh? … I have no idea where it could be. You can search for it tomorrow, but if one of our guys finds it then it will be returned to you.”

Jane gave a small nod then decided that she could check at least one place before she reported back to town. She turned to prismatic radiance and went searching in the most obvious spot; the stone behind that one plateau, where she started her elemental journey.

The sword wasn’t there.

The ruined land was swirled like someone had taken a [Greater Stonewalk] to it and then dove inside, leaving a splash of half-smoothed rock behind. As Jane hovered there in her prismatic light the stone seemed to soften under her brilliance. Parts of the land burbled, releasing air trapped in the stone, and Jane could feel the start of a deep and twisted tunnel of transformation that led off far below.

… Now was not the time to investigate all that.

Jane dropped her [Greater Prismatic Body] and turned on her [Greater Lightwalk]. The land stopped burbling. It was going to take her some time to understand exactly what her [Greater Prismatic Body] did, but that time was not now.

For now, Jane zipped up through the Sun-Rift-filled sky of the Brightwater, to hover high above the place and gaze out at the bowl of land below her. She watched as Sunnys deposited even more Rifts here and there, but primarily at the holes in the Brightwater’s defending wall, to evaporate more spewing ooze before it could get too far. That tactic worked phenomenally well. Perhaps even better than it had before. Kiri would likely need to deposit these Rifts all across the whole of the Dead City, though, to clean up the deeper dregs of the soul slime.

Silverite would probably order her to do that, actually—

Poi’s rough voice came through, ‘You made me worry almost as much as your father does.’

Jane laughed loud.

With a more relaxed tone, Poi sent, ‘There’s a debrief and you’re either going to have to take it here or at the Courthouse. From what we already saw through [Witness] there’s nothing for you to worry about.’

Jane breathed out a ragged breath, then sent, ‘I’ll take it at the Courthouse.’

‘I’ll let them know… Report to conference room 3.’ Poi added, ‘The main celebration of the kill will likely commence tomorrow night. Everyone is tired.’

Jane smiled brightly at that. Yes, she wanted to sleep, but she was also looking forward to another grand celebration. The one after Champion Yetta’s journey through Ar’Kendrithyst and the one after Last Shadow’s Feast had been fun.

For a brief moment, Jane was a shining beacon of temporary joy in the middle of a red and gold sunset sky.

And then she got back to Spur.

- - - -

In conference room three, Jane sat before Quartermaster Liquid and Silverite, while Poi and Kiri waited outside. Silverite’s questions were normal enough. ‘What was the full and complete nature of your meeting with Melemizargo?’ ‘What do you think happened there, at the end?’ ‘Are you aware you were manipulated?’ ‘Why did you allow yourself to be manipulated by the Dark?’ ‘What was the feeling you got when the Dark spoke of your father’s Worldly Path?’

The interview took an hour, but it was an easy hour. Jane answered succinctly and clearly, for though the questions themselves were barbed, the manner in which they were given was not. Silverite was just doing her job to keep her city safe, and she had been dealing with the Dark for over 550 years. There were no surprise handcuffs or surprise killing spells. There was no hostility at all. There was just a mayor wondering what new shit had landed on her doorstep, and if it was worse than what came before.

Toward the end, after everything had wrapped up, Silverite leaned back in her chair, and eyed Jane.

And Jane realized she was suffering from stress fatigue, or maybe she was having a War Response, or something along those lines, because this had been a true judgment all this while. Suddenly, she wondered if she had fucked up.

And then Silverite saw Jane tensing, and she relaxed herself. “Jane. You’re not in trouble.” With a soft voice, Silverite said, “The guidelines we have in place to define what constitutes a betrayal to the Dark includes killing in his name, but I am not one to condemn someone for breaking those guidelines in this particular manner. We are more than rules. We are a city of people working against the Dark, and the Dark likes to toy with us, to see how far we will break. Well I’m not breaking over this, and you shouldn’t either.” She added, “But you should go home and get some rest and stay away from adventuring for a while. Try to get a softer hobby. Something that is as far away from killing as possible, because you have taken on a lot of burden recently and I don’t want to see you pop. Okay?”

Silverite’s sudden and real compassion caught Jane off guard.

Jane wiped away an unruly tear and chuckled, saying, “Ah. I must need a break if— Ah. How about low level quests?”

Silverite frowned.

Liquid frowned even deeper, though. She was deeply unhappy. “When you came to me with that completed application and I warned you away from this life for the second time, and then you told me that I’ve never seen a kid like you? You remember? I responded with 90% of kids like you die their first year.” Liquid said, “You don’t see it, but you should have died at least 3 times over. Once with the Moon Reachers, once with being anywhere near your father’s Worldly Path, and then again, tonight, and for any hundred of small incidents— Oh! And there was also Champion Yetta’s shit! You have been remarkably lucky.” Liquid softened a bit, though her voice still had an edge. “You are also remarkably skilled and I am very glad to have you in Spur, but please take less risks.” She suddenly spat, “And get a damned Domain! That soul slime should have killed you ten times over!” And then she wiped away her own annoying tear, huffing and breathing hard.

Jane sat firm, taking it all in, and said, “I think I unlocked my aura and a mana sense. I’ll work on that, and also a Domain. Thank you for your care.”

Liquid nodded quickly, then she turned toward the closed door to speak loudly, “And Kiri needs a Domain, too! She’s the second damnedest fool of the evening. You two kids walking around with all this power and no ability to actually step into the deepest Dark! And you continue to step into the Dark! Foolish beyond words.”

Liquid’s words hung in the room for a moment.

And then the moment broke.

Silverite leaned forward, saying, “Good work out there, Jane. Very good work. Now. Do you have any questions for Spur?”

Jane did have one, actually. One that possibly only Silverite or Liquid might know. “Why is level 100 impossible to reach? Why the shift in required experience?”

Liquid gave a shrug. “Limitation to power under the Script.”

Silverite said, “Liquid’s answer is the accepted answer, but no one really knows. Monsters normally never reach anywhere past level 90. The ones that get higher than that get there through killing many, many other such monsters who also kill other high level monsters. The soul slime was an extreme example of this, while also being a Soul Summoner, or some other such variation. Necromancer. Flesh Crafter.” Silverite shook her head. “Fucking necromancers.”

“… What is experience?” Jane asked.

“A measure of soul strength,” Liquid said.

“A measure of overall strength,” Silverite added. “Not just soul strength.”

The two of them had a slight disagreement over that answer. Jane didn’t want to get into that disagreement, so she moved on to the big question, “Any idea what Melemizargo is going to make?”

Liquid frowned at nothing in particular.

Silverite shrugged. “Some horror similar to what the soul slime was in life, no doubt. But it’s out of our hands. Now, the gods get involved.”

Now, Liquid was angry again. “Four ‘Holy Paladin’s from four different churches tried to break that damned soul slime! They all failed.”

Jane was suddenly wide awake. “A lot happened when I was indisposed?”

“Quite a lot.” Silverite said, “Which is why it is likely a good thing that you did what you did. I’d have given the Headmaster’s attack a 95% chance it would have worked, but since Melemizargo was in attendance and working on his own ends, and this was supposedly part of Erick’s Worldly Path all along, that 95% is more like 5%.” Silverite said, “So thank you for that, Jane. You probably did save Spur and this whole area a lot more heartache and devastation.” She stood, saying, “You can get the whole story from your people. I have work to do, as do all the rest of the support staff. You’re done for a while, though.”

Jane and Liquid stood.

Liquid said, “Good work, Team Leader. Smaller celebration parties will likely begin around midnight, but the main party will be tomorrow.”

Silverite said, “I expect you to be the guest of honor tomorrow at the official celebration, too, so be prepared for that.

Jane bowed. “Thank you, Mayor. Quartermaster.”

And then Jane left.

Kiri and Poi and Jane blipped directly home—

To where Teressa and Nirzir had set out a feast worthy of several heroes, where Sunny played several musical instruments in the background. The little couatl played the flutes and the chimes and the drums, and though she played them poorly, she was trying, and Kiri was super excited.

“No one is going to die tonight!” Kiri shouted as she hugged Jane tight. “Or tomorrow, either!”

Jane laughed as she hugged Kiri back. There was a lot of sudden joy and relief from the battle, and Jane felt both overwhelmed and supremely grateful. And she wasn’t the only one. Everyone was happy in their own way.

The feast was delicious. Fries. Pizza. Fried chicken. Spicy sauces set aside just for Jane that no one else wanted to touch. Soda berry water that Kiri had managed to make through Particle Magic and Elemental Illusion two weeks ago, after Jane had told her how to make the stuff. And then came dessert. More chocolate cake. Cinnamon bread. And beer! And harder stuff, too.

Poi spoke of how every single one of them had gotten at least a single percentage of the soul slime kill, and how they were all level 99. He wasn’t sure what to do with all of his extra points, but he was likely going to save them for some spellwork he had been eyeing for a while.

“I’m going to take a look at Soul Magic,” Poi said, to the suddenly silent room.

A moment passed in contemplation. Cheese slid off of Teressa’s slice of pizza.

Jane said, “There’s no one I trust more with that sort of magic than you, Poi.”

Poi practically blushed, though his blue scales just turned a bit darker.

Nirzir rapidly said, “I agree with Jane’s assessment. If you wish for access to Songli’s resources, I will make them available to you.”

Poi was suddenly a bit more reluctant than he had been. “Ahhh. I’ll… I’ll figure it out. I finally decided to go after it tonight. But. Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer later.”

“I think it’s a fine idea.” Kiri said, “Soul Magic is terrifying, but it can do a lot of good in the right hands.”

Teressa was less sure, but she just shrugged a little, then she picked up the spilled cheese, put it back on the pizza, and ate it.

Nirzir spoke of how her [Undertow Stars] needed something more, for the spell didn’t fully stop the Hand Caster from partially blipping. It did lock down Healing, though, both because of the Void she had put into the spell and some Elemental Decay mixed into the working.

“So that’s why the thing didn’t heal itself!” Jane exclaimed, then started laughing.

“It’s not a perfect solution,” Nirzir said, “After all, with the target having more Health that means I can absorb more resources from it. But this is likely a foolish line to walk. I might keep the Decay in my next iteration, or I might remove it entirely. The whole Undertow branch of spellwork is completely new to me, so there is a lot of experimenting to be done.”

Jane almost spoke of how Melemizargo had mentioned Nirzir’s success with Undertow spellwork, but she decided against it, for now.

Over a third round of beers, after dinner was done and the leftovers had been put away, Teressa spoke of how she saw the choice Jane had needed to make, and she congratulated Jane for making the right one. The outcomes of Melemizargo taking the soul slime’s soul were unknown, but if Jane hadn't done that…

“The Headmaster’s spell would have failed. Only a 15% chance of it working.” Teressa said, “Prognostication is never a sure thing, but I’m pretty sure you made the only choice that had a good outcome.”

Jane smiled softly. “I hope it works out— Oh!” She asked, “Have you seen my sword?”

Teressa laughed. “Nope! I already looked, too. It’s probably a thousand kilometers deep in the Underworld. Do you remember all the places you went?”

“Fuck! … No.” Jane sent, “I can probably track my path. But… Not tonight.”

Kiri had gone out of the room for something, but she came back wearing a nice green dress. With bright, joyful eyes, she said, “Let’s go out to a dancing room!”

Jane hopped off her chair, “Okay!”

Poi decided to be a wet blanket, though. “How about tomorrow? Let’s go tomorrow. Please?”

Kiri rushed to the man and grabbed his hands, pulling him off his chair. “No! Tonight! I can already hear the music outside! It’s calling to me, Poi!”

“How about just a music bar, then?” Jane tried to compromise.

Poi said, “Yes! I’ll do that. Compromise, Kiri.”

Nirzir said, “My people have a party going on at the Upper Bough for the night. All the Fonts who touched Jane hit level 99, and they’re all there.” With a happy little smile, she asked, “We could go there?”

Teressa smirked. “I’ll grab my coat.”