Dae rose from where she had landed atop Iana’s Warbringer and surveyed the scene before her. They were standing in a blasted wasteland. Everything in sight in the direction of Senkin was a smoking ruin. On the Green Council’s side of the border, the trees were still lush with life though and the destruction was limited to a swath of ash that had been burned into the landscape.

And there was a chained god towering before them.

That was interesting.

She looked around for Alari and found her standing in the shadow of the Warbringer. Protected.

That was good.

A blast of divine force, irresistible and final, slammed into her.

She didn’t have the protection of being a citizen of the Green Council. She wasn’t a god herself. The destruction from the blast was almost absolute, rendering to particles anything it touched.

Dae waited for it to stop and rolled her shoulders when it did.

“That’s…” Dagmauru said, stuttering over the words, “That’s not possible.”

Of course it was. The blast was only “almost absolute” in its destruction.

Dae skipped down off the Warbringer and stood before it and Alari, shielding them both.

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking up and down at the massive form of the Divine Sanction.

The sight was, by some measures ridiculous. Behind Dae, Iana’s Warbringer rose like a giant, it’s roots and vines dwarfing her body. Before them both, the Divine Sanction rose into the sky, it’s form ever changing, sometimes suggesting a humanoid structure, sometimes suggesting a more primal, bestial nature. Compared to it, Dae was the size of a mouse, but her presence halted the Sanctions advance nonetheless.

“Defending my realm,” Dagmauru said.

Dae’s head twitched towards the sound and then looked away again.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said.

“I’m trying to defend the Queen,” Iana said, her voice a mixed bag of confusion, awe and hope.

“Thank you,” Dae said. “It looks like you’ve done a good job. But I want to hear from them.”

She pointed at the Divine Sanction.

“I am Dagmauru, I speak for the Green Council, and I demand to know what sort of abomination you are.”

Dae laughed.

“Still not talking to you,” she said.

“I believe she’s speaking to the god you have bound up in there,” Alari said, stepping forward to stand with Dae.

Her gait eased as she moved, turning from a pained shamble to a slightly stiff shuffle to a free and easy walk.

“Yeah, explain yourself,” Dae said. As addresses to a god went, it lacked a certain amount of reverence. Given what the god was demonstrably capable of doing it seemed exceedingly unwise to be so informal and blunt. Weighed against that was what Dae was demonstrably able to endure.

“They’re bound,” Alari said. “And the strongest bindings seem to be ones that silence them.”

“I cannot tell you how good it is to see you ok and in one piece. Wait, you are ok right?” Dae asked, letting her attention turn away from the Sanction at last.

“Better since you got here,” Alari said. “This didn’t play out quite like I’d planned for it to.”

“Yeah, we’re going to have a long talk about your plans when we get back to the castle,” Dae said. “I get veto rights on anything that involves you risking your life without me.”

“I find myself less inclined to argue that point after this little adventure,” Alari said. “If Commander Iana hadn’t been here, things might have gone somewhat poorly.”

“I officially love you Commander Iana,” Dae said. “Now the question is what do you want to do about this thing. It looks really dangerous.”

“It is,” Alari said. “In a few minutes it’s probably going to overload, kill its pilot and then wipe out a good portion of the Blessed Realms.”

“I’d rather that didn’t happen,” Dae said.

“You overestimate your chances,” Dagmauru said. “We have power to spare to keep the Sanction operational. You are not walking off this battlefield no matter what sort of enchantment you’ve wrapped yourself in.”

“I’m not enchanted,” Dae said.

“About that,” Alari asked. “What did you do to yourself? You’re…different.”

“Kirios wouldn’t give me any more magic,” Dae said. “He said it was too dangerous, that I’d become a Berserker if I lost control of it.”

“That doesn’t seem to have stopped you,” Alari said. “I can’t tell where your magic begins or ends. Your Pact Bond is completely obscured.”

“It’s not obscured,” Dae said. “It’s gone. I had to let Kirios go.”

“But you’re using magic still. How is that possible?”

“I promised I would protect you,” Dae said. “You know I’ve loved you since we were teenagers. Being apart didn’t change that. You being with the Bastard prince didn’t change that. I’m only myself, my best self, when I’m with you. You make me brave and strong. Being a soldier at Stars Watch didn’t change that, being with the Dawn March didn’t change that.”

Dae felt silent for a moment and Alari waited.

“Being a Berserker hasn’t changed that either.”

“Adae,” Alari said and reached toward her.

“It’s ok,” Dae said. “I needed the power to save you, and this was the best option I had.”

“Then you have failed your liege, warrior,” Dagmauru said. “We know of Berserkers. We have studied them extensively. We know your weakness. Time is your enemy. Before long you will succumb to the madness that swirls within you. We don’t have to do anything more than keep you here and you will be our agent of destruction.”

“How bad is an out of control Berserker?” Iana asked.

“I can shrug off this things attack’s,” Dae said. “How bad do you think it will be when I lose control?”

“It doesn’t have to come to that,” Alari said. “You’re still my subject, your magic is still Gallagrin’s magic, and thus mine to command.”

“Go ahead,” Dagmauru said. “Take away her magic. Save her from the Berserker’s madness. Commander Iana’s Warbringer is disenchanted, without your pet monster you will be defenseless before our power.”

“He’s got a point,” Dae said. “And there’s another problem, but before we get into that, we need to deal with him.”

“You being here has helped restore me a lot. You’re giving me a connection to Gallagrin that I can call on through the Pact Spirit,” Alari said. “Even with the piece of Gallagrin that you represent though, I don’t know that together we have enough power to take that thing out.”

“I said I came here to protect you,” Dae said, letting a broad smile spread across her face. “I never said I came alone.”

From the clouds, ships began to descend and beside them flew shining warriors.

“Who?” Alari asked, utterly befuddled.

“I raced ahead a bit, but your nobles wanted to show you that they had your back,” Dae said as scores of Gallagrin’s most powerful Pact bearers began to descend to the destroyed battlefield.

“But the ships?” Alari asked, visibly stunned at the support that was arriving.

“Just a little force from Senkin that we ran into,” Dae said.

“Senkin’s here too?” Alari said, her eyes going wide.

“Not the queen herself,” Dae said. “I gather she’s mopping up what’s left of Blighted Legion that attacked them. Apparently they can only absorb so much power before they explode. It turns out the force that saved the Senkin Queen was headed this direction anyway, so we grouped up with them.”

“The force that saved…” Alari began and then understanding lit in her eyes. “Haldri! Haldri saved Senkin?”

“And us,” Dae said. “The rest of our forces could never have gotten here in time without her. I guess after she had the brainstorm of bombing the Blighted Legion from the air, she decided to fly her forces into the Council’s land and make sure the job got finished properly.”

“You’ve delivered all of my enemies to me in one place?” Dagmauru laughed. “How will I ever thank you. With this my victory will be an unalloyed success.”

“Just one problem,” Dae said. “You have to go through us.”

“Oh,” Alari said. “Yes, I have a lot more power to draw on now. Thank you.”

With a wave of her hand she struck the Divine Sanction with a blast of force that sent it sailing a half mile back into the forest.

“You’re welcome,” Dae said. “This is for all those times I couldn’t find a proper birthday gift for you.”

The Divine Sanction sent an earthquake rumbling through the land as it regained its feet, steam billowing from its back as magic surged through it to move its massive bulk. It reared back a head that looked like a bear’s and belched forth another atomizing blast of divine power.

Dae met the blast in mid-air. She was a pebble in front of a raging torrent.

And the torrent stopped.

Or more precisely, though it was wider than a river, the blast funneled down into her outstretched hand, leaving a soft golden glow surrounding her as she landed gently beside Alari.

“No attacking the people who’ve come to watch you fall. What part of ‘you have to get through us’ was unclear?” she asked.

Dagmauru tried to crush Dae under the Sanction’s heels but Alari slapped him back again. Another wave of force rebounded off the Sanction’s chest as Dagmauru brought its defenses into play.

Again it lashed out at Dae, and this time Alari’s counter attack slid right off it.

The fist-like appendage that slammed into Dae didn’t move her in the slightest, despite the first being three times the size of her entire body.

Dagmauru threw another blow and another, experimenting with raw physical power where divine energy had failed. Raw physical power, in the end, didn’t do any better though.

“Keep punching me if you like,” Dae said. “Watching you get frustrated hasn’t gotten old yet.”

“This is not possible!” Dagmauru said. “Even as a Berserker there is no possibility that you have this much power. Nothing is more powerful than our gods!”

“Still think your magic reserves are deep enough to outlast us?” Dae asked.

“I have personal reserves as well,” Dagmauru said. “Powers untapped since the age of the gods.”

“They won’t be enough, but go ahead and try them anyways,” Dae said.

Dagmaura threw root spears ten times taller than Dae, followed by bile sprays, and a hundred variations of fire. None of them worked either.

“It would seem that your defenses are sufficiently formidable, for now,” Dagmauru said. “You cannot win though. You’re attacks are meaningless. Nothing can harm this incarnation of divinity.”

“Let’s put that to the test,” Alari said and drew back her hands, gathering a maelstrom of power between them.

Acting in unison with her, the Senkin lancers and the Gallagrin nobles pooled their efforts. At Alari’s command raw power streaked from her hands, joined by a blistered curtain of enchanted arrows and spears of light.

Over and over they struck, hammering away at the Divine Sanctions defenses as Dae watched, ready to defend against any return attacks.

The Divine Sanction was silent though. It soaked each of the attacks and returned looking none the worse for the wear.

“This is incredible,” Dae said.

“We’ll need more than incredible to beat this thing I guess,” Alari said.

“Oh, not that,” Dae said. “I mean it’s incredible that the bound god still isn’t talking.”

“The constraints the Green Council has them under are too strong,” Alarti said.

“We could always change that, couldn’t we?” Dae asked.

“If the Sanction slips out of control it will destroy everything in the Blessed Realms,” Alari said.

“Sure, that could happen,” Dae said. “But I think we might get to see something else instead. Do you trust me?”

“With my life,” Alari said. “Ever since you first confessed how you felt.”

All around them the world had gone silent, as though it sensed the moment that was to come.

“Then let’s end this threat,” Dae said and entwined her fingers with Alari’s.

The bolt that flew from them was formed of golden light and lightning. It smashed into the Sanction and did no more damage than the others had.

At least at first. The beam didn’t let up. Instead it started digging.

Not into the flesh of the god, but rather into the chain which blocked off the god’s mouth.

As the links severed, the world was bathed in a light so searingly bright that it washed away everything before it.

Iana knew they couldn’t win. Dagmauru had too many of the Blighted Legion on the field and they were capable of disabling a Warbringer too easily. Wylika and the rest of her troops had another fatal weakness too. None of them were inside their Warbringers like Iana was. They were all safely back in their control bowers. Safely surrounded by their support staff, who were all safely under Dagmauru’s control.

“We were never taught the words I would need to tell you how grateful I am,” Iana said to her troops along the link she’d established with them. “When Dagmauru thought I was corrupted, he locked me in and sent fire spiders to burn me alive. I will not let that happen to you.”

“Wait Iana, don’t! Let us buy time for you to get away. You’re the only one of us who can escape,” Wylika pleaded. A hard lump formed in Iana’s throat. Wylika knew the peril she was in, they all did, and they’d chosen to stand against Dagmauru anyways. For her. They’d chosen to stand for her, and they were going to die for her.

“No. I won’t accept that. You cannot die. I won’t allow it. This is my order; do absolutely whatever it takes and live for me instead. Warbringer Command Override: Pilot Ejection on my mark. Mark.”

With the order given, every Warbringer on the field except hers slumped over. Wylika and the rest of the Warbringer pilots under her command had been spat out from their control bowers and, if Iana knew them, were about to start carving a path through any support or security that tried to capture them.

That didn’t mean they were out of danger. In truth, Iana had no idea how any of them would manage to escape the compound they were held in. There were too many troops loyal to Dagmauru and the Council around them. If Wylika could unite them, Iana’s troops, her family, might stand a chance but there was nothing left that Iana do to help them.

What she could do though was show Dagmauru what a bad idea it was to have her as an enemy. Iana knew she was going to lose but she wasn’t going to sell Dagmauru his victory cheaply.

“Clever,” Dagmauru said. “You’re the first person to defeat an entire company of Warbringers. You will also be the last.”

“I certainly hope so,” Iana said. “Unlike you, I care about the future of the Green Council.”

“You know nothing of our future,” Dagmauru said. “And you will see none of it either.”

With a gesture from the Divine Sanction, he ordered the Blighted Legion to attack. Iana was surprised that he didn’t have the Sanction join the fray but it seemed to confirm Alari’s guess about it’s limitations. Even in bondage the God of the Green Council’s wouldn’t act against one of their own citizens. At least not under the command that Dagmauru had been able to bind them with.

The Blighted Legion were under no such restriction though. They served because they were built to serve, as crafted and supernatural as the Warbringer Iana controlled.

When they’d first fought, Iana had engaged the Legion’s soldiers with the strongest defenses she had available. The problem with that approach was that the Legion could drain those defenses and claim the magic that powered the defenses as their own. Iana hadn’t faced an opponent like that before, but, unlike the Legion, she was no mere machine of magic. She could think, and react, and imagine new paths and strategies.

As the Legion advanced, thorns as tall and thick as a full grown dwarf sheared through them.

The Warbringer’s size was it’s primary combat advantage but they were a well matured and battle tested design which meant they possessed every advantage the Council had been able to afford to build into them. As a result, with centuries of research and development packed into her Warbringer, Iana had a very deep arsenal to draw on.

The first wave of Legion soldiers were splattered across the landscape by the thorns, but that didn’t keep them from regenerating. It also didn’t keep the second wave from advancing even faster than the first.

Iana waited until the second rank of Legion’s soldier had closed as near as the first rank had and unleashed her next volley. The shots flew faster, but with the homing spells from the Warbringer to guide them each of the thorn spikes found their mark.

And then exploded.

The force of the explosion was fueled by a pair of highly antagonistic chemicals that mixed together on impact. The Warbringer’s designers had liked that feature because it was very efficient in terms of the magic expenditure compared to a purely mystical fireball. Iana was pleased with the results because the blast offered the Blighted Legion no magic to absorb.

“Nice work,” Alari said. “If you can hold them off for a little longer we may be able to get out of here.”

“You’re not leaving this field, Gallagrin,” Dagmauru said.

“How much longer do you think you can hold it?” Alari asked. “I can see what the binding spells are costing you.”

“We have reserves that are deeper than you could ever dream of matching,” Dagmauru said.

“I don’t have to match them,” Alari said. “I just need to wait until someone on your side sees what a colossal waste this is.”

“By placing yourself as the prize to be won, you’ve ensured that we can afford to spend ourselves almost down to nothing if victory requires it,” Dagmauru said.

Alari laughed, but it was a laughter that was shot through with pain.

“I’m not the prize,” she said. “I’m the bait. I would have thought you’d have noticed that by now.”

“What do you think have you baited out?” Dagmauru said. “All of your actions have played exactly into plans I laid out before you were even born.”

“And that didn’t worry you at all?” Alari asked.

“What cause have you given me for worry?” Dagmauru asked.

“I did just what you thought you wanted,” Alari said. “Surely you’ve tried to implement schemes in the past haven’t you? Do they ever run according to your original plan?”

“They do when sufficient care is taken to adapt for the variables involved,” Dagmauru said.

The Blighted Legion were beginning to coalesce from the small bits Iana had blown them into. It was a slow process, given the damage she’d inflicted but also an inevitable one unless she could find a means to disenchant them.

“If I am a variable that you have adapted your plan for, then why are we having this conversation?” Alari asked.

“Because you don’t yet know that you’re beaten,” Dagmauru said. “For all your bluster, you are weakened and frail. Your magics can barely keep you standing erect and you cannot call for any more.”

“Well at least you noticed that,” Alari said. “I was wondering if everything was going to escape you.”

“I am not going to destroy you,” Dagmauru said. “But I can promise that we are going to learn every secret there is to know about Gallagrin’s magic and we are going to do so in the most efficient manner possible. You should be aware, in regards to that, of the techniques we possess for keeping you alive through experiences that mortals were never designed to endure. Since you seem to be talkative, perhaps we will learn something new about those states as well. Our usual subjects become quickly unresponsive when they are spread across a forest acre.”

“You could save us both that kind of pain if you surrendered now,” Alari said.

“Commander Iana’s Warbringer is serving as an admirable defense for you,” Dagmauru said, “But she is burning its reserves, and for as clever as she is, they won’t be enough to last more than another few minutes. She knows this, I know this and, if you are honest, you know this too.”

“I do,” Alari said. “It’s why I wanted her to leave while she could, and why I am humbly grateful that she stayed.”

Alari looked up at the towering behemoth above her. The colossal frame blocked her view, but Iana somehow felt like they were gazing directly into each other’s eyes.

“Iana, for what you’ve done here today, I offer you my thanks and the love of Gallagrin,” Alari said. “If you wish it, there is a place for you and yours in my realm and in my house, from today and ever onwards.“

“We probably need to survive this though right?” Iana asked.

“That would make the offer somewhat more meaningful, yes,” Alari said.

“You know that once this is done, Gallagrin will be mine,” Dagmauru said. “Or has it escaped you that without the Royal Pact Spirit, your realm can’t hope to stand against our power.”

“What makes you think they won’t have the Royal Pact Spirit?” Alari asked.

“Because in just a few minutes you will be captured, I will control the spirit and there will be none left who can threaten the Council.”

“Allow me to rephrase, what makes you think I will have the Royal Pact Spirit when you capture me?” Alari asked.

Dagmauru started to speak and then paused. For a long moment there was silence on the battlefield.

“What do you mean.” Dagmauru’s words were slow and deliberate.

“Exactly what I said. Did you really think I would come here if there was any chance it would endanger my realm?” Alari asked.

“You have the Pact Spirit,” Dagmauru said. “It is what allows you to stand in the face of the Sanction’s glory.”

“Yes I do, and yes it is, but that doesn’t mean I can’t relinquish it to my heir,” Alari said.

“That’s impossible, you have no children,” Dagmauru said.

“True, but I do have an heir,” Alari said. “Gallagrin law is quite open in that regards. The crown can name whomever they wish to speak for them or to act as their heir.”

“A convenient fiction. You have announced no heir to your people,” Dagmauru said. “Our spies in your court would have relayed the news.”

“The heir doesn’t need to be announced. Only the Pact Spirit needs to know of their status, so most monarchs wait to publicly name the heir. The heir represents a weak point in their reign since they can chose to contest for the throne at any time, but I have someone who I trust with my life, my heart, and my soul.”

“You planned on giving up your crown?” Dagmauru asked. “That’s absurd.”

“No, I planned on safeguarding my crown,” Alari said. “You will never discover the secrets of Gallagrin’s magics. Not from me, and not from anyone else. There is no prize for you to win here today, no return on the investment you’ve made. For that reason and dozens of others, you’ve already lost.”

“What else have you done?” Dagmauru’s voice was a low, primal growl. Iana had never heard that tone from him. Alari had struck a deep nerve there, Iana just wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not.

“I expect you’ve attempted to invade Inchesso by now?” Alari asked. “How’s that the turning out for you?”

“What do you know of that?” Dagmauru asked.

“I know that Council are the most adept casters in the world,” Alari said. “I know you have magic reserves far beyond what the size of your realm would normally support. Most importantly though, I know how spell designers think. Good is never good enough, you always want to push the boundary farther, make your enchantments just a little stronger. If it costs an unsustainable amount of magic that’s a problem you fix once you’re out of the prototype stage.”

Dagmauru made a low growling sound but said nothing.

“Of course once a conflict shows up, you’re going to want to use your best and most powerful devices and sorceries,” Alari said.

“You know nothing about us,” Dagmauru said.

“Don’t I?” Alari said. “You showed up to fight a queen outside her own realm and thought the right weapon to fight with was a bound God. That’s absurd on a level most can even envision much less execute.”

“It looks absurd to you because of Gallagrin’s primitive skills with magic. For the Council this is well under our control.” Dagmauru said.

“I can see the magic you are burning to keep the divine forces under control. I bet it feels indescribable but, be honest, without Inchesso’s wealth, you can’t afford to keep that abomination active for more than another few minutes. Can you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dagmauru said. “Inchesso’s magics will be ours and Gallagrins as well. Even if you release the Royal Pact Spirit, we will simply take it from your successor.:

“Oh, you definitely don’t want to try that,” Alari said. “I gained the Royal Pact Spirit through sheer, bloody effort. Since then though I haven’t needed to call on its power often, so I’m not that precise in my use of the magic it offers. My successor though? She lived for years with her magic restricted to the level allowed to a peasant, and she practiced with it enough that she could slay a noble. If she gets her hands on this spirit, not even the Grand Assemblage of the Gods will be able to save you from her wrath.”

“We shall see,” Dagmauru said, and stepped forward as the Blighted Legion rose, renewed once more.

“No, you won’t,” Alari said. “Inchesso will not fall to your forces, and Senkin is protected as well. This field is the end of your journey. Surrender now and our judgement against you will reflect the wisdom you showed.”

“Your judgement and your vision are both fatally flawed,” Dagmauru said. “I will not offer you the same choice though. Your surrender is irrelevant. Legion, destroy them both.”

Iana met the charging forces with bursts of thorn fire that filled the air around her with an exploding cloud of death. The Legion soldiers were radiant with their own power though, greenish-gray light pouring from their eyes and mouths.

The thorn bolts did as much damage as they had before, but the enchanted soldiers reformed hundreds of times faster thanks to the additional magic Dagmauru gave them to draw on.

Iana tried to aim her bolts carefully, targeting the tiny spell cores within them when a Legion soldier was blown apart enough to make their core visible. Those soldiers she was able to permanently destroy, but there were so many that by sheer weight of numbers they were able to press relentlessly inwards, forming a tighter and tighter circle.

The Legion soldiers were being cut down less than a dozen feet away from where Iana’s Warbringer towered over Alari when Iana had to admit that the end had come.

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking advantage of her last remaining seconds. “I should have believed you sooner.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Alari said. “You bought us time.”

“Not enough,” Iana said as the Legion soldier closed the last few feet and touched her Warbringer again. Magical power began failing all through the goliath and Iana knew it would only take the Legion seconds to pierce the command capsule and drag her out to her death.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Alari said, looking skyward as a smile spread across her face.

“No one can save you now, Gallagrin,” Dagmauru said.

Lightning struck Iana’s Warbringer and the thunder clap that followed blew the Blighted Legion backwards, arcs of electricity incinerating them before they could touch the ground.

“I beg to differ,” Daelynne Akorli, the Queen’s Champion, said.

Iana gritted her teeth and forced her injured Warbringer to its feet. The Blighted Legion had ripped apart critical pieces of the giant plant machine and its self repair magics were struggling to undo the damage with only the barest trickle of the power they usually had to drawn upon. The Legions magic draining touch had made controlling the Warbringer feel like she was piloting a mound of mud, but if that was all she had, then Iana was determined to drown her foes in mud.

The good news, from her perspective was that the Blighted soldiers weren’t an issue anymore. Iana was free to sink fast growing taproots deep into the ashy ground and gobble the life energy that lay dormant there. Alari had destroyed the Blighted Legion in the blink of an eye. Even the Warbringer’s enhanced sensors hadn’t fully tracked what she’d done and they weren’t affected at all by the magic drain that depowered the ambulatory systems. Given time Iana knew she could restore the Warbringer to full fighting capacity.

The bad news was, predictably, that she was out of time. The Blighted Legion wasn’t the tool the Council had counted on defeating Alari with. The Blighted were expendable shock troops sent in to herald the arrival of a far worse threat.

Iana didn’t know what the Divine Sanction was, but she could feel its power radiating in waves across the ashed plain. Even the impenetrable bulk of the Warbringer was little more than a curtain of gauze between her and the unfathomable being that towered over the landscape.

It had appeared from the forest, and crushed Gallagrin’s Queen with an invisible blow. In the wake of that short conflict it had walked closer and then watched, waiting for Alari to regain her feet.

Iana found the behavior puzzling, as though the controller of the Divine Sanction was distracted. Then she saw it venting clouds of steam.

She knew what that meant for a Warbringer and guessed that whatever horror the Council had crafted, it used some of the same mystical techniques that were employed to make the Warbringers.

If so, the pilot wasn’t distracted. They were rationing the power they spent on controlling the Divine Sanction. For unskilled Warbringer controllers, there was a tendency to use far more mystical force than was required in order to direct and control the units. Fledgling drivers would force the units to retain balance by nearly levitating them, or expend tremendous amounts of energy on creating explosive visuals for attacks which inflicted relatively little damage to the target.

Iana took advantage of the lull to pull as much power back into the Warbringer as she could and rose only when the Divine Sanction began to stir again.

“You…were…supposed…to run,” Alari said from the bottom of the crater the Sanction had smashed her into.

Watching the Gallagrin Queen as she haltingly pushed herself back to her feet, Iana’s heart snapped. Each movement Alari made was interrupted by a spasm of pain or a jerk of agony but the Queen didn’t let the discomfort stop her. Though she was the smallest combatant on the field, Alari countered the awe the Divine Sanction was broadcasting with a poise and bearing that spoke of an indomitable regal spirit.

In response, the Divine Sanction swelled, growing vast at the challenge presented by Gallagrin.

Iana saw the tremble in Alari’s clenched fists and knew the Queen did not have the power to withstand another blow like the one that had felled her. Whatever Pact Magic was supporting her, it was being stressed to its limits just resisting the terrible gravity of the Divine Sanction.

Without thinking or choosing, Iana stepped forward, blocking the Sanction’s path to Alari, shielding the Gallagrin Queen with the one Warbringer in the world that was free of the Council’s control.

The attack, when it came, was apocalyptic. For miles around them, the ground simply vanished. All life in the blast zone across the border was extinguished in an instant, leaving behind only burned shadows.

But Iana was unharmed. As was everything sheltered behind her.

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Alari said, a weary note of hope in her voice.

Another blast rocked the landscape, and again Iana and the area she protected stood unharmed.

“Who stands before us?” The voice came from the Divine Sanction but even with the horrible warping effect of the projected sound, Iana recognized it immediately as her long time mentor.

“Dagmauru! What are you doing? Why are you attacking us?” she plead, not trying to hide the anguish in her voice.

The Green Council wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to protect and nurture. The only thing they destroyed were the monsters that lurked in the Lost Glades and even then only the ones who posed a clear danger to the rest of the realm.

“Iana?” Dag asked. “Are you piloting that abomination?”

Iana flinched back. Abomination? There was nothing different about her Warbringer. Alari had taken control of it briefly but she’d relinquished her hold on it. The Warbringer wasn’t under any lingering magical compulsions, Iana had triple checked that.

And that was the problem. The Warbringer would only respond to her. It couldn’t be overriden by a higher authority. With Alari’s modification, it could never be used to trap her in its control web to wait for fire spiders to come and burn her alive.

Iana’s stomach turned sour, but the taste in her mouth wasn’t acid. It was betrayal.

“Yes. It’s me Dagmauru. I am in full control of this unit, and I require an answer immediately. Why are you attacking us. Do you have the Council’s blessing for this or are you operating under only your own authority.”

It was a formal declaration, phrased in the specific words Dagmauru had forced her to learn. It was as much an accusation as it was a question. Dagmauru’s actions were so grievously against the Green Council’s principals that she was asking him if she should treat him as a traitor to the realm or if there was some profound misunderstanding at work.

She’d been expected to make that request and declaration in the event of one or more of her troops turning mutinous or in the event that another commander rebelled against the Green Council. The idea that Dagmauru would be the one to turn against her realm would have been unthinkable, except for the evidence before her eyes.

“Stand down Commander,” Dagmauru said. “You are sheltering an enemy of the Green Council. Any further interference will be judged to be treason and you will be dealt with accordingly.”

“Why are you attacking us. Do you have the Council’s blessing for this or are you operating under only your own authority,” Iana repeated, not budging an inch.

“The Divine Sanction can only be activated by the will of the Council. The vote was taken earlier today. Now stand down and accept the discipline of your superiors.”

“No.”

She said the word before she knew her mouth was moving. As she did the world collapsed into the singularity of that one syllable.

No.

No, she wasn’t going to stand down.

No, they weren’t her superiors.

No, she wasn’t going to let Dagmauru murder Alari.

She’d denied the attacks Dagmauru had sent after her. She’d blinded herself to the reality of what being a Warbringer pilot meant. The early death she could expect. The coercion that was an omni-present part of her life. The lack of any future apart from being recycled into the green to make room for the next generation of recruits.

It felt like with one word she’d washed away the whole world that she’d built for herself. Despite being clothed in depths of the Warbringer, she felt naked, but, in the heat of the Divine Sanction’s glare, a wild madness gripped Iana and she embraced the feeling.

“No. I will not stand down.” She stepped forward, challenging the god that stood before her. “This has gone too far. I’m going to stop you or die trying.”

“If that is your decision, then die,” Dagmauru said, his voice heavy and dark with frustration.

Iana felt a new stab of betrayal. Dagmauru had been her mentor for all of her life. He was the closest person she had to a parent. She thought that he’d valued her. That she was somehow worthy of his attention given her elevation to the rank of Commander.

He was ready to cast her aside without any discussion though. The feelings of closeness and concern she’d experienced were a lie. Her whole command was a lie too, a convenient fiction to make delegating tasks easier, while the Council held her leash so tightly that she’d become numb to the constraint.

“Fine! If you want to kill me, then come and do it!” She was screaming, her short decade of life wrapped up in rage and unbearable sorrow to be spit like poison onto the wind.

“He can’t,” Alari said. “That construct. You woke one of your gods didn’t you?”

Iana shuddered. She was facing a god, one of her gods, in battle, and yet Dagmauru had managed to commit an even greater blasphemy. With the will and approval of the Council, he’s violated the most sacred of beings in the realm and turned them into a weapon for his war machine. Her vision of her homeland crumbled.

That the Council was capable of such a feat wasn’t surprising. They were the best magic workers in all the realms. That they were capable of choosing to perform such a feat did come as a shock though. The Green Council that Iana knew, or at least the one she believed in, could never have committed such a sin.

Which, Iana realized, meant that the Green Council she believed in didn’t exist. It had never existed. At least not as anything more than a fairy tale in a young girl’s unquestioning mind.

“Yes, the Divine Sanction is barred from doing harm to any citizen of the Green Council,” Dagmauru said. “It was the only option to ensure its terrible power wouldn’t be used against us. But I have more forces at my disposal than the Sanction.”

From the forest, a new wave of the Blighted Legion, stepped forward and from the sky Warbringers fell.

Iana didn’t recognize the Blighted Legion troops. They were all cut from the perfected forms of dead elves and humans and dwarves whom she had never known.

The Warbringers were another story though. She recognized those.

“Wylika! What are you doing here?” she asked, sending fresh roots out to connect with her former Second-in-Command.

“Commander Iana?” Wylika asked. “We don’t know! We lost control of our Warbringers when the transport Rocs arrived.”

“Can you get control back?” Iana asked.

“I think so,” Wylika said. “We’re on full ready status. The Warbringer’s have us locked out except for the sensors and communication systems, but that will change as soon as the order to attack is given.”

“Dagmauru, why are you doing this?” Iana called out.

“The fall of a commander is the fall of their troops,” Dagmauru said. “The Divine Sanction cannot damage you, but they can.”

“We’re not going to fight the Commander!” Wylika’s objection was echoed by a chorus from the rest of Iana’s troops.

“You will do as you are ordered to or the Council will be forced to recognize that Commander Iana’s corruption has spread to you as well,” Dagmauru said.

“What does he mean Iana?” Wylika asked.

“He’s the one who arranged for the creche to be destroyed. He’s the one who caused all the devastation around us,” Iana said. “Now he’s trying to use our gods to spread it further.”

“Is that true?” Wylika asked.

“This is on your Commander’s shoulders,” Dagmauru said. “Hers and the woman she protects. She brought a foreign power onto our soil. The Queen of Gallagrin, who none of you could stand against. Only I was able to protect us from her. Now strike your former commander down and prove your loyalty to the realm that gave you life!”

An eerie quiet settled over the battlefield and Iana felt her nerves draw as tight as harp strings.

“No,” Wylika said. “Our loyalty is to our sister and our leader. Commander Iana, what are your orders?”

Dae was more than hurt. She was dying. Unfortunately it seemed that the Blighted Legion had medics among their unnatural ranks because they’d repaired just enough of the damage that they’d done to her that she was pretty sure she was going to live long enough for them to get her into a lab somewhere. Once that happened she was certain she wasn’t they’d repair all the damage to make sure she lived. The problem was that she was equally certain that living was going to be immeasurably unpleasant thereafter.

Consciousness faded in and out, as though the nights and days of her life were streaming by a thousand times faster than they should have. Focusing on the present was difficult but with the last scraps of her strength Dae fought to hold the narrative of her life in place, clinging to the hope that she could find some path that remained open to her.

The Gallagrin nobles hadn’t fared well in their battle against the Blighted Legion. Their morale had been tenuous at best and largely based on the ease of the victories they’d won against the Green Council’s regular forces during the battles in Gallagrin. Fighting on their enemies ground had been a far less inspiring experience.

Once the Blighted Legion showed up on the field, the Gallagrin advance had turned into a retreat. They could fight foes of the Legion’s caliber but not forever and the Legion showed no sign of tiring as it continually stole magic and strength from the Gallagrin nobles.

Dae remembered her position being overrun. She remembered trying to fight the Legionnaire that attacked her. She remembered screaming at Kirios that they needed to transform.

But they didn’t.

After that she remembered very little.

Forcing her eyes open, Dae saw that only a little time had passed since her capture. An hour, a week or a year though, to some extent it didn’t matter how long she’d been unconscious, if her magic was lost to her.

In darkness that followed as unconsciousness reclaimed her, a dream came to Dae, sweeping away the present and the pain of battle. With the easy, fluid logic of dreams, decades crumbled and Dae was a girl once again.

“It’s ok if I get sent away,” she said as she brushed Princess Alari’s hair. There were tears in the younger Dae’s eyes, but she kept their echo from appearing in her voice.

“No it’s not,” Alari said. She help herself rigid in the chair, her head bent down rather than looking up into the mirror in front of them, to watch Dae work.

“If the King blames me, then he won’t do anything to you,” Dae said, repeating in the dream the words she’d spoken so long ago that they felt like they belonged to a stranger.

“I don’t care what he does to me!” Alari said, whirling around in her chair to face Dae.

“But I do!” Dae said, meeting the fierceness in the Princess’ gaze with an unyielding determination of her own.

“Adae, he’s not just going to send you away,” Alari said.

“He won’t send me to the chopping block,” Dae said. Even in her dream Dae didn’t remember what their exact crime had been. There were too many things that the Butcher King reacted to with lethal force. It was probably reading from the ever growing list of forbidden tomes. Alari and Dae had long ignored the proscriptions against reading volumes written by “traitors and malcontents” since those tended to be the works that provided the clearest picture of the realm’s history and held the most interesting information on Gallagrin’s neighbors.

“No, he’ll send you to hard labor,” Alari said. “You won’t die in one stroke, but he’ll still kill you. It will just take weeks or months instead.”

“Better me than you!” Dae said.

Alari surged to her feet and shoved Dae backwards.

“Why!” she demanded. “Why is it better that you suffer than I do? He’s my father. What he does is more my fault than yours.”

“That’s insane,” Dae said, not daring to rise from bed she’d tumbled back on. Alari rarely got mad, so seeing her livid was ever so slightly terrifying. “Nothing the King does is your fault. Nothing at all.”

“I benefit from it,” Alari said. “And I’m going to inherit his throne, so if his sins land on anyone, they’re going to land on me.”

“No,” Dae said. “They won’t. What he does is on him. You can’t control him, you can’t stop him, and I don’t know if you can even influence him anymore. That’s why I need to take this punishment.”

“Why are you so determined to die like this?” Alari fought to keep her voice below a scream. “You don’t deserve any of this. You shouldn’t be punished at all! Why won’t you let me protect you?”

Dae met Alari’s eyes. There were things they’d never spoken of, secrets that had never needed words before.

“He might kill you for this,” Dae said, looking away, unable to confront the intensity in Alari’s eyes.

“So what?” Alari said. “Do you think I want to live if it means he kills you in my place?”

“I’m just a servant,” Dae said, her breath clenching in unbearable spasms.

Alari made a strangled squeaking sound and turned away before speaking again.

“Is that it?” she asked. “You want to protect me because I’m a princess, because of my royal blood, because I’m your ruler?”

“No,” Dae said, her voice little more than a whisper but somehow loud enough to fill the Princess’ bed room. “Even if you were stripped of your title, I would still have to protect you.”

“Why?” Alari asked again. “Why protect me? Why can’t you let me do this one thing for you?”

She turned back to Dae and stared with an unflinching gaze despite the tears in her eyes.

Dae swallowed. Blood was thundering in her ears and her mind was swimming in fear and doubt. She knew the truth, but putting it in words, even the three simplest ones, required more courage than she could ever imagine possessing.

“Please, Adae,” Alari said. “Just tell me.”

A moment of silence, silver and serene, stretched out between them as Dae drew in her breath and let the words she’d held back from even herself tumble out.

“I love you.”

“We say that all the time,” Alari said, her expression softening as her breath caught in her throat.”

“I can’t let the king hurt you because I love you,” Dae said. “Not as a friend, not as a princess, not as my ruler. I love you and I think I have for a long time now.”

Alari choked back a sob and put her hand to her mouth.

“I know I have no right to,” Dae said. “I know you can never be free to love me, I know I’m not special enough…”

She was cutoff by by Alari stepping forward and sweeping her into a desperate, passion soaked kiss that neither held back from.

“I love you too,” Alari said when they finally broke apart. “I may not be free to marry as I please, but you have had my heart for years now, and you always will.”

Dae couldn’t fight back her tears and found herself sobbing helplessly against Alari’s chest.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Adae,” Alari said. “I…I never thought you’d need to leave me, and I was never brave enough to hope that you’d stay if I told you how I felt.”

“I don’t ever want to leave you,” Dae said. “But I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, not even your father.”

Alari kissed Dae again, softer this time, not as urgent, but no less electrifying for either of them, and the dream dissolved back into the painful reality of Dae’s present.

The Blighted Legion was carrying her into the Green Council’s realm. Her and several other Gallagrin nobles.

In her pain addled mind she saw the Council’s plans. The best plunder from another realm was it’s magic and, with the Blighted Legion, the Council had the capability of continuously draining the strongest of Gallagrin’s magic from anyone they captured. She and the other nobles would be living wells that the Council would draw magic from at will.

The pain from her shattered body lanced through Dae sending her into a twilight unconsciousness once more.

“Why can’t I transform?” she screamed, though on some level she knew no one could hear her since she was trapped in a dream again.

“It’s not your fault.”

Dae looked up to find her father standing before her, the mists of death rolling away from him.

“Poppa?” she asked, “No, he’s gone. Who are you?”

“I needed a voice you would listen to.”

“Well you picked the wrong one,” Dae said. “I don’t listen to hallucinations.”

“I’m not a hallucination. You know me. And I know why you can’t transform.”

Dae looked closer and saw the spinning stars that filled her father’s eyes.

“Kirios?” she asked.

“Yes, that is the name you have given me,” the Pact Spirit said.

“What the living hell is wrong with you?” Dae was on her feet in the dream and holding the spirit by his shirt. “They need us. Transform me.”

“I cannot,” Kirios said and lightning crackled over his body. “I thought things would change after our battle against Haldraxan, that we could return to how we were, but I see now, through you, how impossible that is.”

“What do you mean?” Dae asked “What’s changed? Are you injured?”

“No,” Kirios said. “I can’t be injured, at least not as you conceive it.”

“It’s me then?” Dae asked, sparks dripping from her fingers. Fear tried to grip her stomach but she pushed it away, acknowledging that it was present but refusing to listen to it.

“You aren’t injured either,” Kirios said. “You’ve grown.”

“And that cost me your magic?” Dae asked, her anger came out as bolts of golden lightning that struck the ground at Kirios’ feet.

“Yes,” Kirios said. “You know the power we invoke when we transform into our merged state and you know the danger that lies in it.”

“Yeah, without our bonds the magic would overwhelm me and I’d go berserk,” Dae said. “But our bonds are strong, maybe stronger than anyone’s except Alari.”

“We have worked together well within them,” Kirios said, playing with the lightning that swirled around him and forming it into scenes from their shared past. “And I have learned so much from you.”

“We’re not done yet!” Dae said, lightning surging from her in vicious arcs. “Alari needs us! They all need us! I’m not going to become an experimental carcass in a Council lab somewhere. I have to save them. I have to save her!”

“I can’t give you anymore magic,” Kirios said, closing his hand and banishing the sparks that flew around him. “As much as I want to, as dear as you have made the Queen to me, I can’t give you the power to transform.”

“Why? What’s wrong with me?” Dae asked.

“You’ve outgrown our bonds,” Kirios said. “There is no fear left in you that can constrain the magic I could provide. If you call on me, and I don’t refuse, we will both be lost in a flood of magic.”

“I’ll go berserk?” Dae asked. “After I resisted Haldraxan, you’re saying if I try to transform again, I’ll wind up as a mindless Berserker?”

“No,” Kirios said. “I’m saying that if I give you magic the only thing left of either of us will be a mindless berserker. You won’t be part of it at all.”

“They’re taking us into the Green Council’s realm,” Dae said. “Even if we’re mindless, as a Berserker we could do enough damage to turn things around.”

“You would destroy yourself?” Kirios asked.

“You’ve been with me through my darkest hours,” Dae said. “You already know the answer to that.”

“You would destroy me too?” Kirios asked.

“You’re a spirit, I thought you couldn’t be destroyed?” Dae said.

“Most spirits can retain their core inside the maelstrom of a Berserker,” Kirios said. “But few Pact Knights have your prowess. Nothing of either of us would survive your Berserker.”

“Then I’m going to have to avoid becoming a Berserker,” Dae said.

“Thank you,” Kirios said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Dae said. “I’m not giving up.”

“Without the magic I could give you, what is else left?” Kirios asked.

“I am,” Dae said and held up her hand that was blazing with a storm of lightning brighter than the sun.

Balmauru left Dag’s control room with every fiber, root and ounce of sap trembling in frustration. Centuries of communication, every argument Balmauru could think to make, and it came down in the end that Dagmauru simply didn’t want to see the world as it was.

He hadn’t always been like that. When they’d stood freshly sprouted before the majesty of their gods, their roles had been so clear. The Council’s gift was the magic of life itself and so they were made to be Undying, able to endlessly renew themselves, living across uncounted seasons as the stewards of the will of the Green Gods.

Then the youngest of the Green Gods had fallen in battle. Authzang’s gods were victorious in that encounter but the pools of godsblood that splattered their realm proved to be the deadliest of toxins. The blighted horrors rose that from the those unhallowed sites still plagued Authzang and likely would until the ending of the world, but the damage done wasn’t limited to Authzang’s borders.

The loss of one of their own turned the Green Gods inwards. They were the avatars of life, diverse in their number as life itself must be. Death was part of the cycle they designed for mortals but not something that was ever supposed to come for them.

Under their focused scrutiny, the Green Council became the most magically adept of all the realms. It was a mystical might that was always held in check though. None of the Green Gods would allow their mortals to use their divine gifts against the other realms. No revenge for the fallen god was ever allowed or spoke of.

By the express order of their divine will, the Green God’s magic was for the Council’s realm and people alone. What trade occurred with the Council’s neighbors was limited to naturally produced items being exported from the Council in exchange for materials and foods which couldn’t be found within the Council’s realm. They weren’t cut off from the world entirely, none of the gods of the Blessed Realms would tolerate that, but from within the deep forests only a narrow slice of the rest of the realms was visible.

Balmauru regretted never trying to expand on that after the fall of the gods. It had taken so long though to accept that they were gone. So long to believe they had left their servants to fend for themselves. Some of Balmauru’s deep roots still quested for the gods. Still longed to hear their voices and feel the warmth of their regard. The Green Gods were not always kind, but their simplest gestures offered a greater security than anything Balmauru had felt in the centuries since they passed.

It had been that deep rooted desire for their presence that had made the idea of resurrecting them palatable.

To be fair though, Balmauru sighed, Dagmauru was also extraordinarily persuasive when he chose to be.

The Silver Pool was Balmauru’s favorite meditation room in the Council headquarters. It was far from Dagmauru’s command room but the long and winding path was so familiar Balmauru could walk it without paying the slightest attention. At its end, a familiar seat by the glittering pool sat waiting and open.

“Perhaps I need to clear my head more than I thought,” Balmauru mused, moving to the well worn perch.

Waiting beside the seat were two of the ubiquitous Blivets. They were the only ones in the Silver Pool room aside from Balmauru, which wasn’t surprising in itself. With the Council still technically in-session until the immediate crisis was resolved the other councilors and their support staff had more important tasks to attend to than a bit of quiet meditation.

Balmauru looked at the Blivets more closely though. It wasn’t odd, as a general case, to see them aorund, but these two in particular stood out. The first detail that supported that observation was their coloration. They were identical, and Blivet twins were extremely rare.

But these weren’t Blivets. Balmauru noticed that the moment they turned towards each other. Their movements were too similar. And their auras were all wrong for being Blivets.

“Who are you?” Balmauru had a guess as to their identities but it was such an unlikely scenario that it was still a root curdling surprise when the two dropped their disguises and stood revealed as Gallagrin Knights.

“I am Jaan Lafli, and this is my sister Jyl,” the one on the left said.

“We heard you speak before the assembly,” Jyl said. “We’d like to help you pull the Council away from its wartime footing.”

“You risk much in coming here,” Balmauru said, trying to take their measure. Pact Knights were dangerous, and the Silver Pool was an isolated enough location that any help was bound to arrive far too late.

“It was her idea,” Jyl said. “She claimed that you have connections with the Lafli family.”

“I have connections with many people,” Balmauru said. The Lafli family were one of the more voracious of the Council’s lost clans. They’d fled the Council’s lands during the diaspora that followed the Green Gods descending into their slumber. The Laflis already had strong ties to Gallagrin at that point and had managed to claim a noble position there.

In the centuries that followed, the Lafli’s had done little to distinguish themselves in Balmauru’s estimations. Opportunists and schemers to a fault. To find them present inside the Council’s domain at this juncture was sufficiently out of character for that family that Balmauru was more than half convinced they were nothing more than simple spies.

But what sort of simple spies could penetrate into the most tightly defended place in the Green Council’s realm?

“We aren’t looking for special consideration,” Jaan said. “Nor, I believe, are we acting against the best interests of the Green Council in this matter.”

“And what do you imagine the best interests of the Green Council to be?” Balmauru asked.

“Certainly not war with three of your neighbors,” Jyl said.

“And yet war is upon us,” Balmauru said. “It seems the time for words to avoid that has passed.”

“Maybe not,” Jaan said. “We heard the Council vote in favor of releasing the Blighted Legion and the Divine Sanction, but if those initiatives fail, there’ll be a window to call for an end to this madness.”

“A member of the Lafli calls war a madness?” Balmauru asked. “In my experience your clan has always stood ready to profit off conflict. I can’t recall the last time a Lafli attempted to suppress a war.”

“This isn’t a war we can profit from,” Jaan said. “That is what makes it madness.”

“More importantly,” Jyl said. “This isn’t a war that the Council can profit from either.”

“And how would you have me convince the rest of the Council of that?” Balmauru asked.

“When the Blighted Legion and the Divine Sanction fail, let us speak before the Council,” Jyl said. “I am one of Queen Alari’s Guardians. I do not carry her voice, but I can bear witness as to her intentions in crossing into your realm.”

Balmauru chuckled.

“Your words might indeed sway those not fully committed to this war, and there are enough of them to easily swing the decision back to peace. Alas you will never be able to address them.”

“Why?” Jaan asked. “If Dagmauru’s forces are the problem, we can deal with them.”

“It’s not Dag’s troops that are the obstacle,” Balmauru said. “They’ll need to be dealt with, but the primary reason you won’t be able to address the Council is because the Divine Sanction cannot be overcome.”

“Anything can be overcome,” Jyl said. “You just need to know what its weaknesses are.”

“The Divine Sanction has no weaknesses,” Balmauru said. “It is perfect, as befits its Divine Nature.”

“Divine nature?” Jaan asked. “What have you done?”

Balmauru saw the dawning of expression of horror on the sister’s faces.

“It is as you imagine. We have distilled the essence of our gods and brought them back into the world. The Divine Sanction has the harnessed heartfire of the Green Gods themselves.”

“That’s…” Jyl stammered, and blinked.

“..an abomination,” Jaan said, her eyes colder than ice.

“Yes, an abomination. And the ultimate blasphemy. And a sacred working,” Balmauru said. “We have chained our gods and made them answer to our will. By some measures that is the greatest sin imaginable, by others it is the deepest expression of love.”

“In what insane world could that ever be love?” Jyl asked.

“For we so loved the Green Gods, that we did not let even death itself divide us from them,” Balmauru said. “This was the only choice we had to bring them back, and so bring them back we did.”

“Why?” Jyl asked.

“You never knew the touch of the gods. You never felt them speak to your soul. You do not know how empty this world is without their presence,” Balmauru said. “If you did, you would never ask why, or at what cost.”

“You didn’t just bring them back though,” Jaan said. “You weaponized them.”

“I could say that it was Dagmauru who did that,” Bal said. “I only wished for their presence, but I knew where our research would lead. Their power was meant to serves as a shield for us. To protect us and keep our realm safe as it had been before they left.”

“Doesn’t seem like it’s doing much protecting at the moment,” Jyl said.

“Not true,” Jaan said. “Dagmauru is using both the Blighted Legion and the Divine Sanction to protect the Council’s interests. But the Council’s interests are no longer ones that agree with what the Green Gods would have chosen for it, are they?”

“No, they are not,” Balmauru said. “But with the power of a god to enforce his will, there is nothing in the realms that can stand against Dagmauru.”

“The Divine Sanction can’t be perfect though,” Jyl said. “It may have distilled a god’s power but it was made by mortals and we’re nothing if not a bunch of screwups.”

“The Sanction is the product of the centuries of the greatest research ever performed by a Mindful race,” Balmauru said. “Even the few flaws it has do not work in our favor.”

“Why? How is it designed to fail?” Jaan asked.

“We brought our gods back for the defense of our realm,” Balmauru said. “Or pieces of our gods. Even with our greatest magics we couldn’t do more than summon simulacrums of our deities. The Sanctions are no mere copies though. Within them each lies a true spark of the Divine, and even that fraction of their power is still infinite.”

“That’s not possible,” Jyl said. “You’d never be able to control infinite power.”

“We don’t,” Balmauru said. “The god controls their power. We simply control the god via a series of transcendental binding spells.”

“And if those binding spells are broken?” Jaan asked.

“Then the one who controls the Sanction will burn in its power and the divine spark will rage outwards without restraint.”

“But if the power is infinite?” Jyl asked.

“Yes, with infinite power comes infinite devastation,” Balmauru said.

“The Council would be destroyed too though wouldn’t it?” Jyl asked.

“In the event of a catastrophic failure, yes,” Balmauru said. “Which is why the Divine Sanction was only to be used as a tool of last resort. If the Green Council faced an existential crisis then there would be little harm in risking annihilation to prevent it.”

“Except for the harm you’d inflict on the rest of the realms,” Jyl said.

“We have a serious problem,” Jaan said.

“Yes. Perhaps, if I keep you with my staff, I can arrange for some sanctuary for you once the fighting is complete.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jaan said and glanced at her sister.

“You think our Queen can break the bindings?” Jyl said.

“You know her best,” Jaan said. “Based on what she’s done so far though, would that be so implausible?”

“No,” Jyl said. “No it wouldn’t be. That raises another question though.”

“Can she stop a god from going berserk and destroying the world?” Jaan asked.

“Nothing mortal can withstand the force of a Berserker God,” Balmauru said. “Even your Queen with all the might of a divinely gifted spirit is still not the same order of being as the Divine Sanction. No matter what is done to strike at the Council’s forces from this point forward, there can be no victory. Your queen has already fallen. Dagmauru will collect her for study unless she finds the strength to rise again, and if she can manage that, he will destroy her, of that there is no doubt.”

Eorn itched to transform. A skin of iron and a blade that could cleave stone felt like desperately good ideas under the circumstances. Conversely, sitting unarmed and unarmored atop a hill while an enemy army advanced on them hand felt like the opposite of a good idea.

“This is literally the worst plan you could come up with wasn’t it?” she asked.

“No, of course not,” Teo said. “The worst would be to greet them naked.”

“Without our pact armor, we pretty much are naked,” Eorn said.

“Think of the epic tale you’ll get to regale your family with then,” Teo said. “Who else in history has faced down a realm conquering army without so much as a dagger in their hands?”

“A large number of corpses,” Eorn said.

“That’s a valid point, but just because no one’s ever pulled off a scheme like this before doesn’t mean we can’t be the first,” Teo said.

“There are many gravestones that should have those words carved into them,” Eorn said. “I have to confess I was hoping mine would be adorned with something at least a trifle less embarrassing.”

“Well it looks like you’ll have plenty of time to pick out the phrase of your choice,” Teo said. “If things were going according to plan, there would be a thousand soldiers marching out of the Council’s forest at us already.”

“See it’s that part of the plan where I begin having problems with what we’re doing,” Eorn said. “A thousand soldiers seems like a low estimate for how many the Green Council send to invade another realm, but a much higher number than I’d want to be waiting for without any tools to defend myself with.”

She looked down the north side of the sharply sloped hill to where the thick forests of the Green Council had grown up like a wall, hedging the ancient realm in and all foreigners out. The hill they sat on ran for miles to the west, rising as it went, until turning into the foothills that lead to Gallagrin’s mountainous cliffs. To the east, the hill slowly dwindled in height before plunging into the Swamp of Tears that formed an all-but-impassable border between the Council’s lands and Inchesso’s northern provinces.

The dense undergrowth of the forest showed no signs of movement, but a preternatural shadow lingered under its canopy that could conceal almost anything and was definitely the product of some odd branch of sorcery.

While, they couldn’t see any movement from within the Council’s lands, Eorn felt like far more than a thousand pairs of eyes were trained on her.

“You’re probably right,” Teo said.

“That we should transform?” Eorn said.

“No, that a thousand soldiers is too low a total,” Teo said. “That was Queen Alari’s guess at the minimum force they would send, but on this scale a thousand soldiers amounts to a small raiding party.”

“I wish we could know how things were going on the other fronts,” Eorn said.

“It could be a good sign that we’re not seeing troops from the Council yet,” Teo said. “If Senkin is winning, or our forces have pushed in far enough…”

“Then communications wouldn’t be silent,” Eorn said, cutting Teo off.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true. That doesn’t mean we need to assume the worst has happened though.”

“It’s not the worst possible outcome I’m worried about,” Eorn said. “It’s all the horrible things that are more likely than that but not quite as bad.”

“I know,” Teo said. “I feel the same. Ren should be safely ensconced in the diplomatic wing at the Royal Palace in Senkin. He should be far away from danger and able to flee the country long before any of the Council’s forces can menace the capital. I’ve been reminding myself of that every five minutes or so.”

“He’s not the type to stay behind in safety though is he?” Eorn asked.

“No,” Teo said. “Sadly he is not.”

“Neither is Undine,” she said. “Maybe if we’re really luck they won’t be on the front line itself though?”

“Knowing Ren, that’s likely,” Teo said. “But only because that idiot will volunteer for a scouting mission that’s even more dangerous than frontline combat.”

“Ah, yes,” Eorn sighed. “And Undine will be right there beside him.”

“Is there irony in our complaining about our loved one’s putting themselves in danger when we’re sitting here?” Teo asked.

“Probably,” Eorn said. “But they deserve it.”

“Just so long as we’re agreed on that,” Teo said.

“You don’t have to sit with me by the way,” Eorn said. “It will only take one of us to spot the Council’s army and one of us to greet them.”

“That could as easily be me as you,” Teo said.

“Yes, but it’s my job to keep you safe,” Eorn said. “You have no such obligation in return.”

Teo rolled his eyes.

“Perhaps not by direct royal mandate, but we all have a responsibility to each other. That’s what the Queen is fighting for.”

“She’s not what I expected her to be,” Eorn said. “She’s so…”

“Thoughtful?” Teo guessed.

“I was going to say ‘soft’, but that works too.”

“Her ‘Bloody Handed’ nickname does seem like a poor fit,” Teo said. “But remember that she earned it in a literal sense. What you see as ‘thoughtfulness’ is a studied, self-willed trait. There’s more strength in her than many people ever glimpse. Too much I sometimes worry.”

“Worry? Why?” Eorn asked.

“When she held us, Ren and the other nobles, locked up, I think her ‘thoughtfulness’ was being tested severely. If not for the distraction of this war, I don’t know how events might have played out. Ren trusted her, but I’ve seen what power does to those who possess it and it hasn’t been a pretty thing in my experience.”

“But you still serve her?” Eorn asked.

“The answer is more complex than a simple ‘yes’ I’m afraid,” Teo said. “I stand with my husband, always, and he stands with her. More than that though, I serve the ideals she sees as the best part of Gallagrin’s spirit. Even if she falls short of them, those ideals are worth upholding.”

“Unto death?” Eorn asked, and gestured to the forest’s edge that was bristling with movement.

A faint smile crossed Teo’s lips.

“Well, unto someone’s death,” he said, fangs lengthening slightly as he watched the first of the Council’s troops stride forth from their supernatural cover.

The good news, Eorn decided, was that there weren’t a thousand soldiers in the enemy’s forces. At least not in the groups that marched out onto the broad open grassland at the foot of the hill she sat on.

The bad news was that there were an awful lot of giant plant monsters in their number – Warbringers if her briefing was correct – as well as a contingent of green goo covered people who were about as natural as a snowstorm in Paxmer in the summer.

“Interesting troops they’ve brought to visit us,” she said.

“Easier to move special forces around,” Teo said.

“Also harder for us to kill,” Eorn said.

“There is that too. Think they’ll be interested in talking before the violence begins?”

“I kind of hope not,” Eorn said.

Teo glanced over at her with a raised eyebrow.

“The sooner the violence starts the sooner I can transform,” she said. “Until then I am not going to feel safe.”

“You are a very unique woman, do you know that?” Teo asked.

“Lady Akorli seems to feel the same,” Eorn said.

“In my experience the Queen’s Champion is not a good subject to measure one’s sanity against,” Teo said. “But perhaps sanity is not precisely what’s needed at this juncture.”

“Perhaps not,” Eorn said. “It looks like a small party is advancing.”

“Seems sensible, they’ll want to know what we have waiting over the hill for them.”

“They’re bringing one of the Warbringers and two of the gooey people,” Eorn said. “Can we take a Warbringer, six regular soldiers and two gooey people?”

“Certainly,” Teo said. “It’s the hundreds of reinforcements behind them that may be problematic.”

“One problem at a time though, right?”

“Exactly.”

The contingent from the Council’s forces advanced without displaying a flag of parley or truce. It would have been within Eorn’s rights to transform and strike them all down the moment they stepped on the hill and entered Inchesso lands. That, however, was not part of the plan, so she held her place and sat uncomfortably, waiting for them to close to speaking distance.

“Inchesso citizens,” the leader of the Council forces called out in a surprisingly good version of the North Coastal Inchesso dialect. “This land and the magics contained therein are hereby placed under Divine Annexation by the Holy Order of the Green Council. Vacate our domain or be subject to Council law!”

“Divine Annexation?” Teo said, speaking in the same dialect and raising his voice enough to cover the hundred or so feet that separated them. “That’s a doctrine that slumbers with the gods, and even they put it aside centuries before they left us.”

“Your gods may still sleep,” the leader called out. “Ours do not, and by their holy will, this land is now ours.”

“What do they mean; they’re gods aren’t asleep anymore?” Eorn asked quietly.

“I have no idea,” Teo whispered back, not looking away from the Council army or allowing his smile to fade. “Sounds just wonderful for us though doesn’t it?”

“We have very different definitions of wonderful,” Eorn said, her frown deepening.

“So, these Woken Gods,” Teo asked in a loud, Inchesso, voice. “I don’t see any of them in your number there. I’ve always wanted to meet one, they’re not a bashful sort of god, are they?”

“Blasphemy against the Holy Order is punishable by death,” the leader said.

“I meant no blasphemy good Captain,” Teo said. “But come, advance closer. We are no threat to you at this moment, and I believe it would be good for you to see the land you hope to claim.”

The Council forces followed their Captain up the hill under they were standing just below the top of the rise.

“Welcome to Inchesso Captain,” Teo said. “Though I am afraid I cannot offer you a formal invitation for passage beyond the border. We are foreigners as well you see.”

“Who are you?” the Council Captain asked.

“You may address me as Sir Telli, husband of the Duke of Tel of Gallagrin,” Teo said. “My companion is the Queen’s Guardian Eorn Bromli, also of Gallagrin.”

“The reports were true then, Gallagrin did try to launch an attack on Inchesso before we could,” the Council Captain said.

“See for yourself,” Teo said and gestured to the south where two armies stood facing one another across an impossibly small divide.

On one side stood the massed forces of Inchesso’s Northern Regiments. On the other stood a mixed forced composed of Gallagrin’s Royal Army and Paxmer’s Far Riders. Each force was roughly triple the size of the Council’s army that lay to the north of the border awaiting the Captain’s order to march.

“We arrived just as you were about to begin a battle?” the Captain asked, confusion and disbelief warring for possession of his voice.

“In a manner of speaking,” Teo said. “More accurately though, you kept us waiting to start a battle. Now that you’ve so kindly stepped foot on Inchesso’s domain though, that problem can be rectified.”

At Eorn’s signal, the two opposing armies pivoted in place so that both sides presented a common face to the north, ready as a single force to engage with the Council invaders.

“You have some special troops with you,” Teo said. “Before that gives you too much confidence, allow me to direct your attention to the new construction on the far side of the battle field. Do you know what that is?”

“A weak wooden stockade of unusual height,” the Captain said. “That won’t be enough to slow my troops though, you have no idea what we’re capable of.”

“Oh, we have some idea I’d say. Word spreads fast from Senkin and Gallagrin’s northern border. What you’re missing though is that the structure over there is not a stockade. It’s an embassy.”

“An embassy? For who?” the Captain asked.

“Paxmer,” Teo said as a flight of dragons lifted into the air.

Dagmauru watched the Queen of Gallagrin fall and felt a giddiness sweep through him that he hadn’t known since he was a child.

The Council had voted. They’d given him authorization to deploy a power no mortal, not even an Undying one, had dared harness before. Far away, but as close to Dagmauru as a second skin, a god walked at his command, fought under his control, and conquered the only being who could have opposed him.

Centuries of planning, of research, of tireless, focused vision all came together in the moment the Bound God struck down Alari Gallagrin.

The Warbringer controllers had to be taught to restrain their power. The awesome force of the giant plant monsters had sent more than one recruit on dangerous, intoxicated killing sprees. Dagmauru felt tremors of the same madness running along his roots and coursing up through his sap. It would be so easy to unleash the god’s full power and obliterate his foe. He could march forward and destroy Senkin. Not the ruler, not her armies, but the entire realm. Divine force was irresistible and with it under his control, no one could ever threaten the Green Council again.

There was blood on Dagmauru’s hands, but in his heart sang the chorus of all the future generations he’d saved by spending a fraction of the current one.

The Bound God writhed closer to the fallen queen, emerging fully from the cover of the forest and Dagmauru felt thrills of victory surge within him. Each movement was holy and profound and undeniably perfect.

With an effort of will, he wrenched himself from the control bower.

“Personality absorption was at 43% sir,” a Blinet said.

“Excellent,” Dagmauru said. “We beat the previous maximum by three percent.”

Harnessing the power of a god, even a Sleeping one, had not been without its costs. The earliest controllers had burned from within, hollowed out by holy fire. Redirecting the blasphemy inherent in controlling a god  into reinforcing the god’s bindings hadn’t been easy but it turned out that anything could be made to hate itself. Even a god.

“This isn’t a triumph,” Balmauru said. Dagmauru shot up and turned to face the unexpected visitor. “The Divine Sanction was never supposed to be used for the destruction of others.”

“I haven’t destroyed the Gallagrin queen,” Dagmauru said. “You know that she’s worth far too much alive.”

“I do indeed,” Balmauru said. “The things we could do with that kind of transformation magic transcend imagination. My point still stands though. This isn’t what we made the Divine Sanction for.”

“Yes it is,” Dagmauru said. “This is what defending the realm looks like. This is what all of our plans have led to.”

“All of your plans,” Balmauru said. “I never believed the Council would authorize the Sanction’s use like this. I am, apparently, an overly hopeful fool.”

“No,” Dagmaru said and walked over to take one of Balmauru’s hands. “For all your hopefulness, you have never been a fool. Some part of you must have known that this would be required.”

Balmauru ran a hand through the sensitive flowers that presently adorned Dagmauru’s head.

“We have always disagreed on this, and we will continue to do so,” Balmauru said. “Just as you hope to convince me that we must be monsters to fight monsters, so too must I cling to the belief that you will see those we struggle against as people no better or worse than we are.”

“We have danced through this debate for a millenia,” Dagmauru said. “You believe our enemies are the same as we are and I am afraid of how true that might be.”

Balmauru stepped away, and sighed.

“I suppose congratulations are in order. No one else has ridden the Bound God for as long as you have, or braved the rigors of battle in the pilot’s web.”

“It is phenomenal,” Dagmauru agreed. “More than we ever could have dreamed it to be. But there are still dangers.”

“The fifty percent threshold?” Balmauru asked.

“Yes. If the pilot’s will loses ascendancy, the god may go out of control,” Dagmauru said. “We haven’t solved that one yet. Fortunately it’s easy to feel when the line is approaching.”

“What is it like?” Bal asked.

“Euphoria and agony,” Dag said. “It feels like perfection and absolute mastery, like the world is worshipping you, and at the same time you can feel yourself starting to burn. From the core outwards.”

“Are you injured? You rode for so long, I won’t believe that you aren’t,” Bal said.

“I was,” Dag said. “We have secondary magic feeds for the pilot though.”

“I thought you rejected that idea?” Bal said. “The cost was supposed to be prohibitive.”

“It is,” Dag said. “We’re burning a season’s worth of magic every second between the basic bindings and the restorative magics for the pilot.”

“So we need to shut down the Sanction then?” Bal asked. Their roots were drawn in and tense.

“We can’t,” Dag said. “We’re at the tipping point. We can either march forward or we’ll fall back and never be able to mount an offensive like this again.”

“But if we preserve our strength…”

“We will have lost the element of surprise,” Dag said. “Even if Senkin and Gallagrin are cowed into submission, if we show that this is the limit of our power, Authzang and the Sunlost Isles will turn their eyes towards us. This is our chance to establish our position for the next millennium or more.”

“We don’t have seasons worth of magic to burn every second though,” Bal said. “And you can’t survive the kind of damage that much magic is protecting you from. If our reserves run dry, you’ll burn in an instant.”

“Both of those are true,” Dag said. “That’s why we need to take the next step.”

“What next step?” Bal asked, eyes narrowing to slits.

“The Inchesso Initiative,” Dag said.

The three words hit Balmauru like a series of hammer blows.

“That’s impossible. We can’t open a third front in the war.”

“We have to. Neither Gallagrin and Senkin have the free standing environmental magic that we need. We can only get that from Inchesso. We don’t even need to conquer them. Not immediately. A strike force to secure the unguarded resources along their border will keep us supplied with the magic we need to complete this campaign and raise an adequate defense afterwards.”

“No, I mean you can’t open a third front in the war because there’s no time,” Bal said. “The Council is reconvening in a few hours, but they’ll debate for days over the idea of attacking Inchesso. You won the vote for the use of the Divine Sanction, but there are too many of us who will oppose you for a vote to attack Inchesso to be carried.”

“More people on the Council back my plans than you know,” Dag said.

“Perhaps, but even if so, mounting an assault on Inchesso will take weeks, which is time we do not have, by your own reasoning,” Bal said.

“I know,” Dag said, “The Red Grove Legion and the two Marshland Irregulars from the Deadwoods are at the border already.”

“What? When did they move there?” Bal shivered, alternately shifting towards the exit to Dagmauru’s command lair and staying rooted in place to hear the rest of the story.

“It was their training exercises for the the season,” Dagmauru said.

“But those aren’t under your purview,” Bal said.

“As I said, I have more supporters on the Council than you know,” Dag said.

“You’re going to attack without authorization from the Council,” Bal said. “You planned to this whole time.”

“I did,” Dag said. “I couldn’t let our future be squandered in deliberation.”

“And you didn’t trust me enough to tell me your plans.”

“No. I trusted you enough to know that I couldn’t tell you of them.”

“How is that trust?”

“Whatever else you become, however the centuries will change us, you will always be Balmauru,” Dag said. “I know your heart Bal. You could not have sat idle knowing these plans. It would have been the utmost cruelty to ask you not to interfere. If I told you what I planned, you would have worked against me, and I would have failed.  I have too much respect for your ability and your charisma to think otherwise.”

“That is not respect you speak of,” Bal said. “Respect would have involved believing in me enough to share your vision fully.”

“I couldn’t risk it,” Dag said. “This is the moment we have spoke of for so long. This is the crux on which history will turn. You came here to sway me, to convince me to put away the Divine Sanction, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Bal said.

“I won’t,” Dag said. “The Gallagrin Queen is beaten. We can harvest her magic. The Senkin Queen and her armies will be drained dry by the Blighted Legion. With the fall of Inchesso we will have no neighbors left to threaten us and we will be too powerful for any realm to stand against our forces. By the next cycle of seasons, I will be able to give you more than safety. I will be able to give you the world.”

“I have never wanted the world Dagmauru,” Bal said. “And the world you describe can never be a safe one.”

Dagmauru shook his head and grimaced.

“A world out of control is a world that can never be safe,” he said. “Only once all of the realms are united can we be sure that no one will seek to do us harm.”

“And what of the harm we do ourselves?” Bal asked. “If you follow this path through to its end, if you conquer the world out of fear and bigotry, can’t you see what damage you will do to our spirit? We do not define ourselves as conquers. We are the ones who live and grow. We change with the seasons and become more than we were, striving ever upwards until the earth reclaims us and we pass on to a new life. The world you describe is not a safe one. It’s sterile. Swept clean of anything we don’t understand or that scares us. And if we should grow into something new, or something that scares you? We will be swept away too, over and over again until all that remains is you, alone. The most controlled world is a barren one. Life cannot prosper in that soil. It is not meant to be predictable. It must be free, or it will wither and pass away.”

“You speak from a position of faith,” Dag said. “You do not know your words to be true. You don’t know what limits life can endure. But we do know the death that chaos brings.”

“All things die,” Bal said. “Even we Undying, even the Sleeping Gods, are not truly immortal. We cannot let a fear of death poison our lives though. Whether it’s for a century, a season or even a single day, we have to make them as great as we can, and there is no greatness to be found in the destruction or subjugation of others.”

“Life feeds on life, Bal, we are no different.”

“Of course we’re different,” Bal said. “We are Mindful. We can see ourselves. We can understand each other. We alone of all the living things in the world can be better than our basest natures.”

“Someday, perhaps,” Dag said. “But you look forward to a day too far in the future. This day we know only war and strife. We cannot live as though a bright and peaceful future lays beyond the next sunset. We must met the tomorrow that we know awaits us and that means opening our eyes to the blood that has been shed and that awaits us.”

“You will not stop this madness then?” Bal asked.

“It is not madness, and no, I will not cease. Not until our victory is secured. But you knew that. So what is your next move, old friend? Will you strike me down? It is the only choice you have if you wish to stop me.”

“I brought a vial Winter’s Kiss,” Bal said.

“A good choice,” Dag said. “All you need to do is drop it and this entire command center will be frozen for a season. You can stop me without killing me. I applaud the foresight.”

“But I’m not going to,” Bal said. “As you know.”

“Yes, I do,” Dag said. “Though I must confess, I’m not sure why?”

“Because I need to do more than stop you old friend,” Bal said. “Violence against you will only energize your supporters. I haven’t convinced you yet, but I am not going to stop trying. You can be a reasonable soul. I have faith in that too, and even if you do this thing, I will keep that faith in you. You can be better than this, and you will be better than this, even if I have to die trying to convince you.”

“I won’t let you die Balmauru,” Dag said. “And maybe someday that will convince you. For now though, I have our victory to secure. There is no one left to oppose us, but I will not take any chances. By this time tomorrow, we will rule three realms and hold the greatest collection of power ever accumulated in mortal hands.”

Alari watched as an army exploded from the forest before her. The Council hadn’t held anything back this time. Their troops were organized and well armed and coated in a sheen of green that marked them as touched by the supernatural.

No Warbringers were in evidence among the ranks of the Council’s forces. That didn’t surprise Alari though. She’d already proved that she could suborn those. Throwing more of them at her would accomplish little more than swelling the forces that Alari had at her disposal.

“What are those things?” Iana asked, the Warbringer stepping back in response to her unease.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Alari said.

The green goo coated army advanced with a steady singularity of purpose, marching in the sort of perfect lockstep that only derives from external control.

Scanning the forces, Alari counted over a hundred of the elite warriors converging on her position. They were flying no flags that suggested they were interested in negotiations, or even in demanding her surrender. Instead their blades were drawn, their shields readied and their eyes fixed.

Or not their eyes. Where eyes should have been there were only empty voids. Alari looked at the lines of power that ran over them. Each was woven around the warriors in so many places that it looked like they could barely move, and all of them ran back behind the warriors towards a single point in the distance.

Her true opponent had entered the field of battle. Alari was sure of it. What seemed out of place though was that the ominous rumbling was behind Blighted Legion and still approaching.

“You should run,” she said to Iana.

“I can’t run, this is my home,” Iana said.

“Stay behind me then,” Alari said. “These aren’t here for you this time, but they’ll probably still try to kill you if they see the opportunity.”

“What are you going to do?” Iana asked.

“I don’t think they’re going to offer me many alternatives,” Alari said.

“Can you run?” Iana asked.

“That’s a possibility,” Alari gestured behind them. “But they’ve already outflanked us on the ground.”

A rustling to their rear resolved into another contingent of green goo covered warriors emerging from the forests on the Senkin side of the border.

“You can fly though, can’t you?” Iana asked, panic edging into her voice as the two armies drew closer.

“Yes, and I doubt they could catch me in the air,” Alari said.

“Then why are you waiting?” Iana asked.

“I can fly, but you can’t,” Alari said. “If I leave now there’d be no one here to stop them from killing you.”

Iana was silent for a heartbeat.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said at last, “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sure you can,” Alari lied. “But I think this is where I need to make a stand anyways.”

With a quiet exhalation and a slow, focused gesture, she drew forth her royal scepter from thin air.

Many monarchs have symbols of their office. They are almost uniformly decorated in priceless gems were designed either by the gods or by a master craftsman in antiquity,

Alari’s scepter was an exception to that rule. It had spikes where other royal implements had gems. In place of a glass or crystal rod, the device in Alari’s hand had a shaft of enchanted steel. There was silver adorning the Gallagrin Scepter but it was there in a functional capacity, meant to provide an extra bit of insult should any were-creatures antagonize its wielder.

Few of Gallagrin’s monarchs had carried the Scepter of State. There were other, more elegant, symbols of the royal office. In Alari’s view though no other device captured the heart of Gallagrin as well as her scepter. It was a rough and ugly tool when viewed from far away. It spoke of a realm that valued harsh practicality over any sort of aesthetic beauty, and yet, when you looked closely at the scepter, a stunning level of detail work sprang to life.

There were etchings over every square inch of the scepter, beautiful depictions of Gallagrin’s people, monarchs and gods. From the base of the handle to the top of the tiny crown that was mounted on the great spikey ball at the far end of the scepter, the etchings told the story of Gallagrin’s history. With the right eyeglass, one could even see the miniature words each figure in the etchings was outlined in. Together, the icons and the scepter, captured some of the earliest years of the realm, and the lives of those who had first helped shape it.

As the first wave of the Blighted Legion charged them, Alari let her power flow into Royal Scepter and watched it burst to life as a sphere of electricity crackled to life around the spiky business end of the weapon.

The first member of the Blighted Legion to reach them received a lightning hammer blow to the face and fell back as a pile of splattered goo. Even his brief contact with the scepter was enough to drain away the lightning orb that surrounded its end though.

“Do let them touch you!” Alari didn’t look at Iana as she gave the order. She couldn’t take her eyes off the army that was coming them.

In the instant between felling the first of the Blighted Legion and destroying the next, Alari weighed her options.

They were constructs of some type. The evidence she could see pointed to that clearly. They were expensive to make though and the Council had a limited supply to work with. The testimony for that came from the late stage at which they were deployed, and the depth of magic they carried.

To absorb magic from a target, especially a foreign one, took a level of casting prowess Alari hadn’t known existed. Not as a certainty at least. From her first estimations of the geopolitical landscape following Paxmer’s defeat, the Green Council had stood out as a problem not because of past aggression or any special capabilities they’d demonstrated but because of how little change had been observed in them over the years.

Everyone knew the Council’s strength lay in life magic. Alari had read between the lines on the old reports she’d dug up and seen that of all of the realms, the Council’s was in some senses the most adaptable. The lack of visibility into those slow improvements told her that the Council had to be hiding some truly nasty surprises for the right moment.

She’d struck the twentieth Blighted warrior down when she saw that the first pull itself back together from the pile of slime it had been reduced to and begin maneuvering again for a strike at her.

Indestructible, magic stealing warriors with enhanced strength and speed certainly qualified as a nasty surprise in Alari’s book. Seeing their power though didn’t leave her overly afraid.

With a jolt of magic into her scepter she slammed the next warrior and watched them implode, sucked into the impact point faster than they could even scream. Around her scepter, a green glow swirled. It wasn’t easy transforming the Blighted Legion’s magic to reverse its course and expel magic rather than drain it. Only through sheer brute magical force was she able to win that contest, and as more of the Legion flooded onto the field, Alari gave serious thought as to whether she would be able to sustain that level of effort for long enough.

“I’m not letting you fight alone!” Iana said and stepped forward to ward off a Blighted Warrior that was trying to run a spear through Alari’s left kidney.

Iana’s Warbringer was close enough that she got its hand into the path of the blow. Alari watched as the Warbringer’s arm dropped limp and dead though, drained of the magic that animated it in exchange for the protection it provided.

The bad situation turned worse as the the Blighted Legion took notice of Iana’s Warbringer and spread out to focus their attacks on it as well.

Alari shifted into a faster form, channeling magic to give herself speed beyond the ability of the eye to follow. With hurricane winds in her wake, she tore through the battlefield, lightning arcing from one warrior to the next as merciless impacts exploded them into gross chunks which then imploded out of existence.

The Gallagrin Pact Spirit soared within Alari’s mind, joyful at the union with its host and willing to offer far more magic than Alari could hope to shape.

Panting and dancing on the edge of control, Alari exhaled and surveyed the damage she’d done. Her course of devastation had led her in a wide spiral around the battlefield. The ash that remained from Senkin’s destruction of the area had been swept up in her wake and had opaqued the entire region with a choking cloud.

With a leap, Alari rose above the cloud and hung in the air on wings of light.

Beneath her, the Blighted Legion was in full retreat. Alari could see the trails of magic that connected to each of them through the fog. They were mindless drones, but that didn’t mean their controller was willing to spend them needlessly.

Except their loss hadn’t been needless.

One moment Alari was surveying the threads of magic that directed the fleeing Blighted warriors and the next she was tumbling to the ground as a source of magic brighter than the sun blazed from the forest.

She didn’t feel the hit that swatted her from the sky. She barely felt the impact with the ground. It wasn’t that either of these didn’t hurt, the damage was simply too great to immediately process.

The Gallagrin Pact Spirit reacted in tune with Alari’s will, feeding her power to reconstruct the damage she’d taken and raise layers of magic defenses to prevent it from happening again. She’d been focused on moving quickly, which was critical when fighting an army. Against the new foe had arisen though speed was not sufficient.

As Alari stood, she felt the weigh of her defenses press her down. She outmassed Iana’s Warbringer by a factor of ten or more. With how bright the oncoming peril was though, she wasn’t sure if that would be anywhere near enough.

“What happened?” Iana asked, stomping the Warbringer to Alari’s side.

“The Council has something larger at their disposal than I’d expected,” Alari said.

“What is it?” Iana asked, scanning the treeline for foes. Without the ability to perceive magic directly though she couldn’t see the blinding radiance of the threat that approached.

“I don’t know,” Alari said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Even at the height of her battle with her father, as they both struggled for the heart of Gallagrin’s Pact Spirit, Alari had never seen power to equal the being that approached. A cool wave of fear washed down from her collarbone to her toes.

She’d made a mistake. A desperate, deadly mistake. She’d underestimated the Council as much as she’d counted on them underestimating her.

A voice whispered in her head telling her she was going to fail. All her clever plans would be undone through sheer brute force. She’d leave the world more shattered and bloody than it ever would have been without her.

And she wouldn’t see Dae ever again.

She stepped forward.

That wasn’t going to happen.

Whatever it took she was going to win.

Power like she had never gathered before coalesced in her scepter and combined with the green radiance she’d stolen from countless warriors of the Blighted Legion.

She readied herself to face the worst the Council could throw at her, and then, from the forest’s edge, something impossible happened.

A god stepped forth.

“The Green Council issues the Divine Sanction against Gallagrin.” The voice that spoke carried holy authority and its words became manifest as they were spoken.

Faster than Alari could react the world was enveloped in a blistering light. Divine force slammed her from all sides, ripping not at her body or mind but at the essence of her being. Flesh cracked and bones shattered under that pressure, but still a snarl escaped from Alari’s lips, until she was flung back, off the battlefield and into an unquiet darkness.

Dae didn’t like what she was seeing.

“Those things eat magical armor,” Ogma said. “That’s going to be a problem isn’t it?”

Below them, on the rolling, grassy field that served as the border between Gallagrin’s sharp cliffsides and the Green Council’s lush forests, armies marched. Armored nobles, the strongest warriors in all of Gallagrin, clashed against hollow abominations of green ooze shaped into the form of the Council’s dead humans and elves.

“Wasn’t something we expected to run into,” Dae said as she watched the battle churn and spin in front of her.

“We knew the Council was going to have special forces though,” Ogma said. “Didn’t we?”

Dae watched as one of the Blighted Legion grabbed a Duke and rotted his armor so badly that the transformation effect was undone. Two of the Duke’s companions stepped in bought him time to make a retreat but the fight was not going as easily as it had.

“We knew it would be more difficult once we tried to cross into the Council’s terrain,” Dae said. “Kicking them out of Gallagrin was always going to be the easy part. The key here is judging how far we try to take this fight.”

“Aren’t we moving in to rescue the Queen?” Ogma asked. “My scouts told us where she is after all.”

“That’s not what the nobles are fighting this battle for,” Dae said. “At least not most of them.”

“What? It’s all about greed?” Ogma said.

“Not all,” Dae said. “But the conquest and plunder of another realm is an intoxicating idea for a lot of them. If you look at what they were most unhappy about after the battle with Paxmer, it was that they weren’t given the chance to pillage the Paxmer’s countryside and claim new and exotic forms of wealth.”

“Isn’t gold enough for them?” Ogma asked.

“They didn’t get that either, but the most valuable loot another realm holds is its magic. Steal that and you gain all kinds of advantages.” Dae said.

“So this is an attempt to placate them?” Ogma asked. “The Queen’s plan is to let them pillage the Green Council and buy their loyalty like that?”

“That’s probably what they think is happening here,” Dae said. “Or it’s what they were thinking until the Council decided to get serious about this fight.”

“They sent thousands of troops across our border, how was that not being serious?” Ogma asked.

“It was deadly serious for the troops they sent,” Dae said. “But when you look at the quality of the troops they led with and the kind of equipment they carried you can see that the vanguard was far from their best.”

“Why would they send weak troops in to attack us?” Ogma asked.

“Lots of reasons,” Dae said. “To test our defenses. Because that’s all they needed as long as we stayed at each other’s throats, and, most importantly, because they were still more focused on Senkin.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Ogma said. “They sent in troops to attack us so that we’d keep our armies at home for defense rather than sending them to join the war effort on Senkin’s behalf. That doesn’t seem like a great long term strategy though.”

“It’s not,” Dae said. “It leaves them divided and weak. Plus it pulled us into the war when we might have been willing to sit it out.”

“The Queen sort of destroyed the idea of Gallagrin remaining neutral when she invaded on her own, didn’t she?” Ogma asked.

“Queen Alari’s plan was to contact and speak with the Green Council’s leaders. Give them a chance to tell their side of the story and then verify if they were telling the truth,” Dae said. “Given that the fight’s gone on this long, it’s safe to say the Council wasn’t interested in talking the issue out.”

“At least we know where she is, roughly speaking,” Ogma said.

“Yeah, your scouts are going to deserve a medal for that.” Dae said.

“I don’t think they’ll want one,” Ogma said. “It was less a matter of ordering them in and more a matter of unlocking the leg irons I’d been holding them back with.”

“You work with some disturbing individuals,” Dae said. “And I want you to consider who’s saying that.”

“Can’t be all together sane if you’re idea of a good time is heading into enemy territory without backup or support,” Ogma said.

“You wanted to go with them yourself didn’t you?” Dae asked.

“Let’s just say I’m planning to ask for a demotion once this crisis is solved,” Ogma said.

“Based on the job you’ve been doing, I don’t think you’re going to get it,” Dae said. “Gallagrin needs people like you. Queen Alari needs people like you.”

“Do you think she’s going to be ok?” Ogma asked.

“She’s heading back to the border,” Dae said. “That wasn’t in the original plan, which is a bit worrisome.”

“Could something have gone wrong?” Ogma asked.

“Yeah, that’s a pretty safe bet,” Dae said. “It’s not surprising. Something always goes wrong with every plan.”

“So that means the Queen does need a rescue then right?” Ogma asked.

“Not necessarily,” Dae said. “The Queen can more than take care of herself. We’re just here to enact one of the parts of her plan.”

Dae wished she could have felt as certain of Alari’s invincibilty as she sounded. Intellectually, she knew that Alari had more power at her disposal that perhaps anyone else in the world. Dae also knew Alari had the wits to use that power well. Despite all the arguments for why Alari had to be fine though, the question of “But what if she’s not?” returned again and again to plague Dae’s thoughts.

She knew she had to trust Alari. It was far too late to walk back on that decision, but that did little to hold back the worry.  For as strong and clever as Alari was, Dae knew that there were still forces and people who could be a threat to her. Even with the full power of Gallagrin’s Pact Spirit at Alari’s beck and call there was no absolute guarantee that she would make it home safely and there was nothing that scared Dae more than that. If was the one fear that surpassed even the Dragon Fear she’d managed to overcome. The one fear that Dae clung to because the letting it come true would destroy her.

“Should we join the fray?” Ogma asked. “Or is it time to sound the retreat?”

“Not one hour ago, you threatened to tie me up in chains if I tried to do anymore fighting,” Dae said. “So we wait, and you get to see how fun being reasonable is.”

“If you would just transform, I’d wouldn’t need to break out the chains,” Ogma said.

“It’s not time yet,” Dae said. “And anyways I wasn’t too much of a burden fighting outside of my armor.”

They both knew that was a lie. Even with a lifetime of training, Dae was barely a match for the weakest of Pact Warriors and presented an insignificant threat compared to one of the nobles. She’d survived the battles against the Council’s forces that invaded Gallagrin through careful positioning and the help of the pact Bearers who fought at her side.

“We’re starting to get our butts kicked out there,” Ogma said. “When will the time be right?”

Across the battlefield the Gallagrin nobility moved like flashing stars, tearing into the ranks of the Blight Legion that advanced relentlessly towards Gallagrin’s border.

Each individual exchange was tilted heavily in favor of Gallagrin’s defenders. Pact Spirits were stronger and faster than the Blighted Legion. The nobles could flit in, rend one their enemies to pieces, and then zip away before a retaliatory strike could be made.

Most of the time.

The problem the nobles were facing was that they didn’t have just one opponent to fight. The Blighted Legion outnumbered them by a hundred to one and, despite the damage the Gallagrin nobles were doing, those odds weren’t changing. With each of member of the Blighted Legion that fell, the Legion regained the magic that had been animating its fallen warrior. Destroying one attacker simply meant that a new one would arise to take its place.

Given a Pact Knight’s endurance, that wouldn’t have been an insurmountable problem. What was turning the battle against Gallagrin’s defenders was that they were making mistakes. Only little ones, but they were small errors that the magic draining powers of the Legion made it difficult to make up for. Like the Duke whose armor had been rotted away, too many nobles were overextending themselves by inches and paying it for it with crippling damage to their Pact Armor.

What had started out as a fun adventure in the high fields of Gallagrin was turning out to be something very different at the Green Council’s border. The noble’s had descended from Gallagrin’s mountains drunk on victory and run into the most painfully sobering of foes. One that could withstand all of the damage they dealt and steal their strength in the process.

It wasn’t hard to see the change in the tenor of the battle. Without being ordered to, the nobles were forming up into strike teams rather than racing into the fray on their own. Where they’d begun the fight eager to take ground and push their charge into the Green Council’s forests, they were turning back towards the high ground that lay behind them. It wasn’t a rout, the noble’s Pact Spirits were too powerful for the Blighted Legion to manage that, but Gallagrin’s forward advance had been halted and was being pushed away, one fallen noble at a time.

“Why aren’t they retransforming?” Ogma asked.

“I don’t think they can,” Dae said. “Watch, you can see how some of them are trying to, but no transformation is taking place. The rot must be lingering on them. It doesn’t just steal magic or eat it, it creates a siphon.”

“So all they have to do is hit us once and we’re out of the fight?” Ogma asked.

“It’s a lot worse than that,” Dae said. “If I’m right, once the rot sets in, they absorb our magics. So we lose our transformations and they gain them.”

“But none of them are transformed!” Ogma said.

“None of them are transformed yet,” Dae said. “That would cost them magic that they can’t replenish except by draining it from us. If I’m right, they’ll do that sparingly.”

“Unless they can capture some of us,” Ogma said. “Then they’d have access to all the magic they wanted.”

“That would explain the lack of fatalities on our side,” Dae said. “Corpses can’t feed them magic. Or at least our corpses can’t do that.”

A Duchess a hundred yards away fell beneath a pile of the Blighted Legion. She was up a moment later but her armor hung from her in tatters. Before she could run, another wave of creatures piled onto her and dragged her back into their ranks.

“Signal for a retreat but order one of the strike teams to retrieve her,” Dae said. Coordinating the nobles was going to be no easy task, but with the fear instilled in them by the Green Council’s elite forces, Dae thought her job might be slightly easier than it otherwise would have been.

Fate, perhaps, disagreed with her.

“What are those?” Ogma asked, pointing to the sky.

Above them, giant birds, hollow eyed and covered in the same green ooze as the Blighted Legion soared overhead and rained down a deadly hail of soldiers.

“They’re cutting off our retreat!” Ogma said.

“They were waiting for us to start falling back,” Dae said. “This is bad.”

Several of the Blighted Soldiers landed inside the command post and leapt to attack the moment their feet touched the ground. Dae was driven up the steep slope by a figure that looked like a dwarven woman. Glancing around Dae saw that Ogma and the other people at the command post being pressed as hard as she was.

Struggling to stay calm, she reached out to Kirios, calling on her Pact Spirit to give her the magic she so desperately needed.

No magic came though and Kirios was silent.

Undine found the heart of battle to be a strangely comforting place. His pact blade sung a song of merry death as it sliced through the Council’s aerial assassins, and his heart sang with it.

It wasn’t the thrill of bloodshed that drove him onwards into the nightmare of chaos that surrounded Queen Marie. The enemy troops barely registered in his awareness as anything living at all. Each was nothing more than an obstacle, a moving challenge, designed and constructed to test his ability to execute the martial forms and magics he’d spent the majority of his lifetime practicing. Each one that fell confirmed that he was what he strove to be. Worthy.

“Forward flanks, fall back,” Queen Marie commanded.

She stood at the head of the largest single army Senkin had ever raised. From her hands solar power flowed like heaven’s wrath. When Queen Alari had joined the battle, she’d changed the conditions of the field with a wave of her hand. Marie didn’t fight like that. Senkin’s magic wasn’t centered on transformation. In Marie’s hands lay the fires of the heavens. Purification through destruction, and for the first time in millennia it wasn’t being restrained.

Undine speared a pair of giant hornet hybrids that had survived the general aura of devastation around the Queen. They’d been armored in mirror bright steel that turned aside the streams of star bright fire that raged across the battlefield. The Council knew what their foes powers were and had come prepared for them.

What the hornet troops weren’t prepared for though was a Gallagrin Knight in full battle regalia. Mirror armor could withstand the incredible heat of Senkin’s fire but the cold steel of a pact blade backed by the superhuman force of a Pact Knight punched right through their heaviest guards.

Undine danced back behind Queen Marie, turning to defend her from attacks from the rear. The Queen smiled as he moved and focused her attention forward, unleashing a rolling wave of fire that chewed through the yellow mist that had been closing on them.

“We’re clear to entered Senkin territory,” General Pentacourt said. His armor showed the sort of damage that often accompanied identifying a corpse, but the Senkin commander was unbowed by whatever wounds he carrried.

“That means we’ve reclaimed the ground they took from Senkin,” Undine said.

Up to that moment, everything they had done was unquestionably in defense of a realm. With the first step onto foreign soil though, all of that changed.

Undine wished the fight would pause for a moment. He wished that either side would raise a flag to allow for even one minute of diplomacy. By taking the battle into the Council’s territory, Undine was moving well beyond the writ Queen Alari had given him. She had brought him and the rest of her people to Senkin to facilitate a restoration of peace. What would she say of one of her own aiding in the conquest of another realm?

The question had plagued Undine on the trip to Senkin’s front lines and he hadn’t come up with a satisfying answer to the dilemma.

At least not before the battle began.

Once the violence began, there wasn’t time for dilemmas. There was only act and react and do it better than the things that wanted to kill you.

It was a relief, in one sense, to be stripped of responsibility by the urgency of the situation, but Undine was too good at what he did for even the ferocity of the battle to completely strip away his ability to reflect on what he was doing.

He could refuse to go forward. He could stay behind to protect the troops and civilians of Senkin from the Council’s reprisal. But he wasn’t going to.

Queen Marie’s fight was the real fight for Senkin’s future, and by extension the future of the rest of the realms. Conquering the Green Council was far more than Queen Alari had authorized any of her people to do, but if the realms were going to know long term peace again, Undine suspected they needed an undeniable example of how catastrophic it was to attempt to solve global problems with violence in place of diplomacy.

“The Green Council declared war on us,” Queen Marie said. “We shall make the argument for peace. If they are fortunate, the Council will even survive long enough to hear it.”

“Our forward flanks are ready to redeploy,” General Pentacourt said.

“If I may suggest. Your Majesty, hold them back,” Ren said.

He and Undine had been given “Special Advisor” positions in the Queen’s immediate guard.

In Undine’s case no one had any issues with that. The general consensus seemed to be that if he was proficient enough to act as a guardian to the Queen of Gallagrin, then he was a welcome addition to the ranks of those tasked with protecting Senkin’s Queen.

In Ren’s case, opinions started out more mixed. As a Duke, Ren’s position was one of inheritance rather than merit. Since Gallagrin’s nobility rarely entered the field of battle, most of Senkin’s forces were unaware of the power a Gallagrin Duke could bring to bear by virtue of the special bond they shared with their Pact Spirits.

The reservations against Ren’s presence had last for all of thirty seconds though after the fighting began. Queen Marie brought overwhelming force to bear but the Council’s army had grown since Alari devastated it and the battlefront was much larger. That Senkin managed to contain and push back the entrenched Council forces was due in part to the unpredictable attacks that Ren and Undine launched deep into the Council’s ranks.

“What patterns do you perceive Duke Telli?” Queen Marie asked. “Our window to advance shrinks with every moment.”

“The Council has had many defenses prepared and yet they quit this field with minimal losses,” Ren said.

“They have left behind a trap for us?” Queen Marie asked.

“Definitely,” Ren said. “They had to know it would be possible you would join the battle. You are Senkin’s best hope, so your defeat would our worst nightmare.”

“So they have a plan for our demise on this field. Or they are bluffing and hoping to stall for reinforcements,” Queen Mari said.

“That is possible too,” Ren said. “It’s a difficult situation to resolve.”

“It doesn’t need to be,” Undine said.

“What do you have in mind Guardian?” Ren asked.

“Traps rely on surprise and tend to fail if they are sprung too early or against the wrong targets,” Undine said. He eyed the open field before them. It wasn’t the prime location for an ambush. Or at least it didn’t appear to be. Which in turn might make it the perfect spot for one, depending on what magics the Council had to work with.

“You’re thinking that you and I can go spring the Council’s trap early I take it?” Ren asked. The look of amusement in his eye suggested that this had been his plan all along.

“I was thinking I would go alone,” Undine said. “Your company isn’t unwelcome, but I am not sure if I should be risking the life of a Duke on this venture.”

“You won’t be,” Ren said. “I’ll be risking my own life. No one is allowed to say I can’t do that.”

“You are wrong, Duke Telli,” Queen Marie said. “We are allowed say that. Senkin has its own personnel to handle reconnaissance. We do not need to risk ambassadors from our friend Gallagrin in this matter.”

“Your pardon, Your Majesty, but I believe you do,” Undine said.

“Explain,” Queen Marie said.

“If there is a trap, it will be configured for you,” Undine said. “Your subjects cannot draw on any powers which you don’t not possess in greater abundance than any of them. If the trap has a prayer against you, it will obliterate anyone with the same type of powers but who holds them to a lesser degree.”

“Guardian Undine and I on the other hand are a problem they have not accounted for,” Ren said.

“Sending two into an ambush meant for an army is suicidal,” General Pentacourt said.

“No one else can keep up with us,” Undine said.

“And the window of opportunity is still shrinking,” Ren said.

“Go then,” Queen Marie said. “The army will continue its advance in five minutes, find us at its head to report your findings.”

“We’ll be back before the army steps into the Council’s lands,” Ren said.

With a rush of wind both he and Undine vanished from Queen’s circle of advisors and protectors.

“What are we looking for?” Undine asked as they came to a stop on the far side of the Green Council’s border.

“Anything hostile,” Ren said. “If it’s powerful enough to pose a threat to Queen Marie then it should be fairly obvious.”

“Could it be something within the boundary of the Council’s forests?” Undine asked. “A ranged weapon of some kind?”

“Possible, but unlikely,” Ren said. “Marie should be able to incinerate any projectiles they cast at her.”

“What if it’s a ball of explosive fire?” Undine asked.

“That would be a monumental mistake on the Council’s part,” Ren said. “Senkin’s magic deals in light and fire. The Queen would literally grab the fireball from the sky and turn it to whatever ends she wanted.”

“Nothing aerial then,” Undine said. “And I just felt the ground shake.”

“I did too,” Ren said. “It’s something burrowing underneath us.”

“A lot of somethings,” Undine said as the ground shaking got worse.

“Let’s stop them here,” Ren said and summoned a dozen blades from his armor.

Undine did the same, working out the trick from seeing Ren do it, and they both launched a storm into the earth below them.

Swords don’t normally penetrated very far when thrust into stone. Swords are not normally composed of metal transformed from pure magic though, nor are they normally hurled with anything near the force possessed by a Pact Knight.

The ground exploded into dozens of puff of dusted rock as the hail of swords pierce the earth and burrowed through stone seeking their prey. The ground exploded again a moment later as hundreds of creatures burst forth. The swords had found their mark.

Undine had two precious seconds to wonder if the choices he’d made had possessed any wisdom whatsoever when he saw their enemies.

They were perfect replicas of the Council’s Mindful races. Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Sylphs. But they were hollow. Empty sockets gazed back where eyes should have been. Worse, a foul smelling sap oozed from shatter lines on their skin. They swarmed towards the two Pact Knights and each of their movements drew forth hellish screams that seemed to come not from their throat but from every rip in their skin.

“Hmm, wasn’t expecting that,” Ren said a moment before he was buried under a horde of thirteen of the supernatural creatures.

Undine accelerated, dodging past a half dozen of the monsters, as he started to choke on the stench that arose from them. For all their ruin and decay though, the Council’s newest troops were neither slow nor weak. Two of the creatures managed to grab Undine at once and stabbing each through the head produced no change in their behavior or capacity.

As both of the creatures dove forward, slime covered teeth barred, Undine willed his armor to grow serrated spikes. And retract them. And grow them again. Retract and grow, retract and grow, over and over, faster than the eye could follow. With the spikes each acting like a high speed rip saw, Undine was able to close the distance to Ren’s position the same as a cloud of insane knives would have.

Ren hadn’t been able to shear through the monsters attacking him as easily. Instead he lashed out with mailed fists, each strike knocking one of the creatures a hundred feet or more away. Normally that would have been enough to easily create a clear space around himself, but Undine noticed that something was wrong. Or rather several things.

First, the creatures showed no fear or hesitation at all. When one was cast out, two more rushed forward to fill their place.

Second, the Duke’s armor was not withstanding the punishment inflicted on it.

It was rotting.

All along the Duke’s arms and in several places on his chest and legs, deep patches of rust were visible.

Undine looked down at his own armor and saw similar damage was accruing. The spikes he summoned were shot through with rust and there were splashes of  dusty red decay splashed all over his chest.

He tried to call for a new transformation to repair the damage and found his magic was blocked. Or rather, the decay was eating it. And getting stronger the more he called on extra power since it all went to the rot rather than to him.

It took less than a second after noticing that for Undine to grasp that this was a fight they couldn’t possibly win.

“We need to leave, now,” he said.

“Yes,” Ren said. “They seem to disagree though.”

As in confirmation of that, another thirteen of the Blighted Legion joined the fray.

Undine wondered what his final thought would be and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was of Eorn. She wouldn’t be happy that he fell in battle, but if he had to go, at least it was in a manner and against a foe that she could feel proud of him.

He slashed and kicked and punched, determined to leave a monument behind that would be the envy of every other Queen’s Guard who would serve the Gallagrin or Senkin thrones.

The fatalism of his actions faded though as a beam of searing light as wide as a boulevard swept over the Blighted Legion.

Queen Marie and her troops had joined the fray!

Then the light began to fade as the Blighted Legion consumed that too.