Jane landed atop the second wall, feeling restless in her blue tarantula form.

It was night and the battle was going as expected, but a few drops of corrupted soul matter clung to the bright blue hairs of her abdomen. The last greater amalgam had been another slug-type that sprayed especially viscous goo that clung to her through all her [Prismatic Body] and personal [Cleanse]ing efforts, and it would cost her too much mana to actually clean up the problem herself. She just had to wait. Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. The motto of any army, on Earth or on Veird. Whatever! The solution to this particular problem was already on his way.

Jane’s foot claws gripped tight on the edges of the wall as Moriz, her [Cleanse]r for the last few weeks, stepped out of his rest area to the side of Jane’s prep station and opened up his aura. Thick air began to roll away from Jane’s massive, tarantula form, and she started to feel better. Lighter. With her Surround Sight, she took in the kid standing between her first and second legs on her left side, well inside the range of her fangs, and yet, Moriz had long since lost his fear of her.

He yawned.

Jane would have rolled her eyes at him if she could, but spiders lacked certain capabilities that most animals were able to do; rolling her eyes was one of those. The night was not over and protocol demanded the kid remain vigilant, but Spur had long since lost its fear of the black ooze.

They were farming the greater amalgams, now, when an easy kill presented itself. Silverite was doing some political shit that was apparently great for Spur, according to the full streets, and hotels, and bustling businesses all across the city...

Jane was still enjoying this, though. Adrenaline, or whatever the spider-equivalent, was still pumping through her circulatory system. Moriz’s lax attitude kinda pissed her off, but that was fine. Jane focused on herself, and this adrenaline-feeling inside of her. She had been trying to fix her biology for a long time now, to try and understand all of what was inside her when she [Polymorph]ed, and all this downtime between big battles was great for her mana sense practice. She hadn’t actually managed to make a mana sense, yet, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. She could feel her insides rather well these days.

Most small spiders didn’t actually have real veins and arteries and normal circulatory systems. In a way, her tarantula form was like those small spiders, but Jane had incorporated a more normal system into her larger, chimeric form, mutating the nascent circulatory system that her mutated body already had into something stronger. Additional hearts and arteries, and a few other systems, kept her body feeling fresh without the need to use [Greater Shadowalk] all the time in order to properly breathe. With a nice set of lungs attached to her abdomen and another breathing hole near her mouth, she could actually breathe normally.

‘Normally’.

There was absolutely nothing normal about her chimeric form, but it felt nicer to have some lungs she could open and breathe through when she was waiting for the next battle. Besides the normalcy, which was nice on its own, this way she could conserve some mana between fights, as she didn’t need to run [Greater Shadowalk] in order to oxygenate her blood. And with all those changes, she had even gone a bit further and decided to use the Queen Blood Weaver’s mimicry voice box, combine it with the Shadow Spider’s, and add in some more lungs up front, so she could actually talk normally now.

Surprising even herself, she had gotten tired of the horrific voice of her past spider forms. She didn’t think that was possible, but then it happened, and now she was here.

Moriz yawned again, then he sleepily asked, “Think there’s gonna be any more amalgams before sunrise?”

She spread her fangs a bit and exposed a second mouth located above the first, behind her chitinous lips. With her normal, human-form voice, Jane said, “Probably not, but vigilance is never a bad thing.”

“I stayed up too late yesterday.” Moriz said, “I can barely stay awake now. This is tiring.”

At that, Jane smiled, with both her mouths. “It can be.” She glanced up and noticed the first rays of sunlight touching the highest clouds. “Sunrise in half an hour and then another hour of cleanup after that, then you can go home and sleep.”

The land ahead of them was already awash in sunlight from the hundreds of [True Sunlight Rift]s Kiri had littered across the front lines, and atop the outermost wall. Despite the name of the spell, though, it was still fake sunlight. The sky was still dark, and beyond Kiri’s line of light was an apocalyptic ocean of black, dead souls, churned into an ooze that spread out every single night from Ar’Kendrithyst. It attempted to cover the land with its power; to take every living thing it touched and meld it with the other nearest living thing, creating amalgams. Those amalgams then swam in that ocean of dead souls, looking for more living things to absorb. Each one was at least level 70, and some were all the way up there as level 95. Jane had been killing the things for well over a month now and she had gained level 98. One of the highest levels that Spur had ever before seen. And yet...

That ocean of darkness was soul mutilation, death, or a fate worse than death, depending on who you believed back in the city. People argued every single day about what the soul ooze actually was, and where it came from. They argued about ways to properly defeat it…

And recently, they had begun to openly speak of ways to keep milking it for all it was worth.

Jane wasn’t the only newly-minted level 98 person in Spur. This level of Levels on the Surface was unheard of. Killing them was still horribly fucking dangerous, with people dying every day when they failed to respect the enemy, but… The amalgams were comparatively stupid and weak.

They were still each at the power level of an Ancient, though. One wrong move and you died. One failure-of-reconnaissance or failure-of-execution and people died. Or worse, they became one with the amalgams, making even more of a problem for the people who would eventually have to put down the newly-empowered amalgams before they could breach the walls.

Moriz, with his [Cleansing Aura] still flowing across Jane, asked, “I heard the Mayor talking in town about finally ending the soul ooze, but that was a week ago. You heard anything else?”

Jane frowned, unsure how to answer the kid. Despite the surety of the defense of the walls of Spur, they were still one bad night, one oddly-empowered amalgam away from needing to abandon the city. And the problem of the ooze wasn’t getting any better. Moriz was likely hearing the same things Jane heard in town about ‘farming the ooze’.

Jane said, “I’m just a grunt. I don’t know anything.”

Moriz huffed a laugh. “Yeah right.”

The kid had obviously seen through her lie, but it wasn’t that much of a lie. Jane said, “I might know a bit more than you, but I don’t have access to the inner workings of Spur. I don’t sit in on any meetings. All I know is that I need to defend this section of wall.”

“… Aye.” Moriz sighed again.

“You need to get better sleep. That’s the tenth yawn tonight and we still got an hour of cleanup after daylight breaks.”

Moriz sighed, and this time the word came out sadly, “Aye.”

“I would have more sympathy for you if you hadn’t gained 65 levels just from cleaning me every night. I still don’t know why Phagar gave you that 1% that one time.”

Jane’s barb had found a sensitive spot.

Moriz practically shouted, “I almost died when that amalgam broke through!”

“Yeah yeah.” Jane smirked, then telekinetically flickered her black sword into the air ahead and gave it a good spin. Prismatic light spun from the suddenly-appearing ten meter length of Force extending from the blade. And then she stilled it, saying, “You were never in any danger.”

Poi’s voice came through, ‘Don’t play with your sword on the backlines. It makes people nervous.’

Jane ignored the voice in her head.

Moriz had another complaint about how he almost died. Jane assured him he was fine.

… The little shit had almost died, but Jane had been there, and there was no need to panic the kid anymore than he already was. Jane knew he wasn’t getting any sleep. A lot of people weren’t sleeping well these days. There had been more incidents of amalgam ooze transporting itself on people, who then went back into the city, where the ooze grew in darkness and swallowed those people whole, turning them and their neighbors into amalgams.

One of Moriz’s neighbors had suffered that fate early on, and now the kid was out here with the Class ‘Cleanser of Rozeta’, and dedicated to keeping the world cleaner than it was before. Apparently the kid was quite devout, but he never spoke much about that part of his life.

Eventually, the sun broke the horizon and the black ocean of dead souls screamed as it evaporated in the light. The shadows spilling out across Ar’Kendrithyst’s wall retreated, plunging back down into the depths of the Dead City; out of sight for another day.

Another hour of cleanup later and Jane was cleared to exit her [Polymorph] and return home, which is exactly what she did.

Back at home, Jane dug into a fried potato and beef stir fry dinner that Teressa had kept warm, just for her. Everyone else had already eaten and some of them had already headed off to bed, but at least two people were still awake. Jane went upstairs, to the war room, where Teressa and Poi stood beside a wardlight map of the area.

They always looked a little bit worried every morning, for they weren’t enjoying the thrill of the kill like Jane was. But today was different. They were almost somber.

“What’s the bad news?” Jane asked, as she entered the room, glancing at the map.

The map showed Ar’Kendrithyst in the center, about a decimeter across; large enough to show the major geography of the dead Geode but too small to have any detail. Spur was a simple dot on the north side of the map. Frontier, or ‘New Brightwater’ as ‘Blessed Shade’ Farix and the survivors of Brightwater were calling it, was a dot on the south side of the map. Kal’Duresh was another small dot, about half a meter away from Ar’Kendrithyst to the west. Below the map, sat a stack of papers. The papers could be flipped through to show the history of each previous night; where monsters appeared, how far the ooze managed to flow, everything of large importance. There was apparently a bigger version of this mapping system inside the Courthouse; the official map of the battle that would be saved for all history, if possible. There were a lot of maps like that in the Courthouse.

Jane looked at their small, private map, and she saw why Poi and Teressa were concerned.

“… Oh,” Jane said.

Teressa said, “It’s getting worse.” She gestured to paper maps, saying, “Flip through, but I guess you remember the parameters of yesterday’s map.”

“That’s… A lot faster expansion than everyone thought, right?” Jane leafed through the stack of maps, which had been laid down in a three-ring binder of sorts, and flipped to yesterday’s map. She frowned again, then she flipped back to today’s map, saying, “That’s a hundred more kilometers covered in a single night? Than the night before? I knew it was bad, but… this bad?”

Poi said, “120 more kilometers; yes.”

Teressa added, “But the bigger thing is that this large increase coincides with Anhelia receiving assistance with more Light Domains yesterday, and grabbing three more kendrithyst towers instead of her normal one. This confirms our theory that her tower reclamation is the direct cause of the size of the ooze.”

Jane’s eyes went wide and as she looked between Poi and Teressa and saw that neither were lying. She felt a pit in her stomach. “Ah. Shit.”

“Shit is right.” Poi said, “Everyone else will have noticed this after tonight, too.”

“What’s going to happen?”

Poi said, “Kal’Duresh will either appreciate amalgams at their doorstep tomorrow, instead of needing to venture out into the black sea to find them, or they will not. That’s all this really comes down to.”

Teressa said, “Everyone likes the free levels.”

Poi said, “We’ve started to notice Kendrithyst Mimics out in the Crystal Forest, too. First one was spotted this morning, sitting out there in the desert like a spike of red-purple crystal. It died to adventurers about half an hour after it was spotted.”

When the ooze retreated every morning, it left behind presents of amalgams all across its area of effect. Those amalgams were greatly weakened and ripe for the picking, which is what practically every adventurer in the guild or in Spur did every single day. The crystal mimics cleaned up the rest.

Jane found herself frowning even more. “This is all asinine, though. Right? I love fighting the big ones as much as anyone, but… People are asking me when this is going to end. And every single night, some stupid adventurer thinking themselves stronger than they are throw themselves against amalgams they can’t handle and die. Every night, it’s like this.”

Nirzir spoke from the doorway, “It is more power than most people will ever grasp.”

Jane had noticed her come into the room thanks to her Surround Sight, but said nothing until now. She glanced at Nirzir’s silk-thread nightclothes that were practically good enough to wear out on the town, and said, “I thought you were asleep?”

“I couldn’t sleep once I heard you talk about the iron wrought’s [Domain of Light].” Nirzir said, “My people noticed this long ago, but I was waiting for the night to be over before I had this discussion…” She asked Poi, “Has your Mayor changed her position in light of this irrefutable evidence?”

Jane stared a bit. “You noticed this a while ago?”

Nirzir gave a small, polite nod, saying, “It was unsubstantiated until today. Now we know. Anhelia’s [Domain of Light] is expelling something from those kendrithyst towers, into the Dead City, and this is [Grow]ing the soul ooze.”

Teressa gave a small sigh.

Poi said, “Kiri is having this discussion with Silverite and the archmages right now, at the Courthouse. They’ll tell us what’s what when they’re done. From what I have already heard, we think there will be a full-scale attack to try to discover a possible core to the soul ooze. If there is one, then we will kill it and that will be that.”

Nirzir nodded regally, looking a lot more relaxed in that moment than before. “Thank you. This danger is too large to let it flourish too much longer, no matter what boons it might bring, and I appreciate that Spur is doing the right thing.”

With some fatalism in her voice, Teressa said, “This soul ooze has been too profitable for too many people, just like Ar’Kendrithyst when the Shades were in charge. Their pure wealth has blinded everyone to the danger, and suckered even more people into the abyss with them.” She thumbed at the window, saying, “You see that new mansion out there, right? The big one? New human nobles; more refugees from Ar’Frontier.”

“People are calling it Ar’Frontier now?” Jane was already looking out the window. “… The white one?”

“The ivory one past that.” Teressa added, “The ‘Ar’Frontier’ thing is new, but I think it’ll catch on.”

Jane stared at the massive ivory house, saying, “… Oh. That’s a big one.”

Nirzir asked, “I was under the impression that nobility did not exist in Spur? That Silverite could just decide things and it would happen. Could she not just order the Army to assault the core? Or whatever it is?”

Teressa chuckled once, then said, “Silverite does what she can, but it’s hard to tell rich nobles with a myriad of political connections that the party is over.”

“Ah.” Nirzir nodded. “Plutocracy. Not true nobility.”

“We could use more venturacracies, in my opinion.” Teressa said, “That’s what Spur used to be.”

“Spur still is that, Teressa.” Poi said, “Silverite, the Adventurer’s Guild, the Mage’s Guild, and the Army still have majority control over the city. Nobility from all across the world used to have their adventuring holds here. Silverite knows how to deal with these people.”

Teressa frowned, saying, “Yeah… yeah. You might be right. But if you ask me, I think we should end this threat, and soon. Within the next few days… Because...” She blinked.

Teressa stared to the south, her eyes fixated on a stone wall that held nothing.

Jane glanced at the wall to make sure that there wasn’t something she was missing.

The large woman just stood there, looking into the far distance, but all that lay ahead of her was the room they were in. She could be looking at something outside of the space. Her mana sense range was at 200 meters these days, but she just stared at the wall, unblinking.

Nirzir looked Teressa over. “Uh?” She asked everyone else, “Is that…?”

Jane asked, “… Teressa?”

She almost reached out to touch—

Poi grabbed her hand, sudden fear in his eyes as he whispered, “Don’t. Don’t anyone do anything. Everyone quiet. Shhh.”

Nirzir instantly straightened her back, her eyes going wide. She stared at Teressa with comprehension in her own eyes. She knew what was happening.

Jane could only guess.

Teressa stared off into the distance. A flicker of grey magic dashed across her eyes, like an image reflected off a mirror, revealing something in the room that wasn’t actually there. And then her eyes glazed over with grey light. The room turned cold. Jane breathed out a puff of clouds as her skin prickled, both from the cold, and from the sudden terror of the moment. Nirzir looked half-panicked. Poi gained a few new psychic tendrils around his head.

Teressa’s voice came out of her as though from a deep distance, “We need to end this threat before it can find or produce…” Her voice trailed away, like a dying echo in a deep tunnel. And then her voice came back, and Teressa spoke with power, “Before the soulless ooze can carve a permanent home on Veird, the hands of the living must bring True Death to the deepest wells of the ooze’s power, or else death will march forth and consume us all.”

And then her voice vanished back down the tunnel.

No one said anything. They all waited.

And then Teressa blinked hard as she groaned and held a hand to her head. “Ah. Shit. Fuck was that.”

Nirzir whispered, “A True Premonition.”

Kiri’s green couatl summon, Sunny, who had been curled up on a pillow in the corner of the room, listening, perked up. Kiri demanded, “What the fuck was that, Teressa?”

Nirzir breathed out, “A warning.”

Poi agreed, “A warning.”

Teressa collapsed on her ass and Jane moved fast, doing her best to heal the larger woman. It was a confusing few minutes after that, but Teressa was more or less fine. She did sit down in a chair and lean back, though. With a conjured ice pack draped over her closed eyes, she rested while she healed.

Elsewhere, news was spreading.

- - - -

As morning’s light rose higher into the sky, twenty people of importance had gathered into a long room in the Courthouse of Spur. Kiri was one of those people of importance these days, and though she loved it at first, recently, there had been an issue. An issue of politics.

She had long since told people that she wanted to end the threat of the soul ooze, but the benefits of the ooze’s presence were much more than that of Ar’Kendrithyst when it was inhabited by Shades. Privately, Silverite had told Kiri that she wanted to end the threat, too, but she had public obligations, and the threat of the soul ooze —as long as proper procedure was followed— was not a great threat. The soul ooze was even less of a threat now that Kiri’s magics were up to the challenge of truly defending the city. She still needed help now and then from the true archmages of Spur, and the adventurers in town were pulling a lot of their own weight (for profit, of course), but Kiri could handle the basic defense all on her own.

People were gaining levels. People were moving to Spur. Humans and incani were meeting in the streets, and though there was violence, of course, there was also a lot of newly-discovered comradery. Frontier was dead, after all, captured by the Blessed Shade Farix and turned into New Brightwater. And Spur welcomed the humans with open arms.

But in coming here, those humans wanted certain things, like experience and power which they could take from the greater amalgams in the form of levels.

And so, the arguments for killing the ooze had quieted.

But now...

Today’s argument was special only because they now had a clear link between the size of Anhelia’s cleaned territory and the size of the soul ooze, and representatives from Kal’Duresh had gotten involved fast and were already in this room, arguing for nothing to change. Their message was simple: Kal’Duresh was ready to accept the soul ooze at their walls. They were prepared and they wanted to ensure that the soul ooze kept coming, and that no one did anything to stop it. They wanted to enjoy all the bounty that Spur enjoyed! Who gave Spur the right to make this decision on the behalf of everyone present?

And so on and so forth.

The words themselves were politer than that but Kiri was very tired of this shit.

The representatives from Kal’Duresh weren’t even in the room, either, so Kiri couldn’t be mad at the person actually there. They had sent some sort of magical lightward construct in their place. And besides that, one of the images had Kiri hold back her more vitriolic comments; it wouldn’t do to go upsetting an archmage, no matter who Kiri’s master was. They wanted the bounty of levels, or more specifically, the bounty of powerful people attracted by the promise of relatively easy levels. That was the backbone of all trade in the Crystal Forest, anyway; these cities all traded on providing safe harbor for people to venture out and have their middling-level adventures.

People ran from everything larger than a crystal mimic until they had killed enough crystal mimics to reach level 35, or feel safe enough to continue, and then they hunted the larger, more dangerous prey that ranged from level 45 to 55. At level 50 you were eligible for a Class, and that was as far as most people went with this lifestyle, unless they truly did love the life.

It was that second group of people, who truly loved this life, that flocked back to Spur and the rest of the crystal forest because of this soul ooze. This ooze represented power and a draw to keep these powerful people in the area, and maybe they could settle down here.

Because, after all, it was only these powerful people who could actually defend a city from the actual dangers out there. People like Kiri, or Jane Flatt, or any of the thirty-or-so other adventurers out of a hundred thousand that moved around in search of true adventure.

Kiri thought all of these concerns were rather stupid. And since she had a bit of power in this land, she chose to say something to that effect when she could. “This soul ooze regularly kills hundreds of people every night and day, and the danger of an accidental spreading event grows ever larger as the beast grows commensurately. We need to kill the thing.”

Silverite said, “I agree with Miss Flamecrash. Kal’Duresh will be lucky to survive its first night. I would like to move this discussion toward ending the threat, or at least to speak of how we would go about ending the threat when it proves necessary for us to do so.”

Kiri was too practiced at politics these days to smile at that, but she felt great to finally hear Silverite speak on the side of reason.

But of course, the delegation from Kal’Duresh only got more belligerent.

The image of a woman in black and gold robes, the Stone Archmage Peatrice Shallowhammer, said, “We do not believe you are correct. What might actually be happening here is that you have allowed the humans into your land and they have gained power, but now that it seems we incani of Kal’Duresh might get a taste, it is time to shut off the spigot.”

A human noblewoman by the name of Gwynewyn Clayfield, who was Kiri’s neighbor, diplomatically stated, “We new humans of Spur have been allowed exactly as much access to the walls and to the greater amalgams as the incani who live here have access.”

Silverite spoke, “Guildmaster Zago, who would be here if not for the necessity of maintaining the walls, has reached level 95, alongside her Summoner daughter. They both routinely help in the trenches, as well. And please, Archmage Shallowhammer, we know your power can defend your land, but the simple fact is that the Cleansing of Ar’Kendrithyst is eventually going to make a problem too large to ignore, and I would prefer we end this threat right now.” She added, “It is quite possible, since this whole thing started with [Domains of Light] cleaning out the place, that even more soul oozes will form. We could have a whole two years of these things happening, but this one, now, is too large to ignore, and we shouldn’t let it get any bigger.”

Shallowhammer inclined her head, and then she hammered on her points yet again.

The conversation moved back and forth, with Kal’Duresh’s stance clear and Spur’s stance also clear. No one made any headway.

Which was why Kiri was gazing through Sunny, looking at everything else happening all around Spur, when she saw Teressa’s True Revelation happen, as it happened.

Events proceeded rapidly and chaotically from there. She, of course, told Silverite what had happened, but her warning had been redundant. Poi had already told Silverite. The Mayor did ask Kiri to stand up and tell everyone what had just happened, though.

Which she did.

There was a bit of panic. And then people started yelling.

The arguments heated to an unprecedented degree.

One man from Kal’Duresh called out how Kiri was obviously a plant, and how her words and Teressa’s ‘revelation’ could not be trusted. The man saying that used nicer words than that, but Kiri knew a shit talker when she heard one. Peatrice Shallowhammer put the shit-talking man’s words into better context, making their message plain, that Kal’Duresh wanted the soul ooze to continue.

And then the more rational heads —Sirocco Zago (who came running as soon as she heard what had happened), some farmers on the council of farmers, Gwyneyn Clayfield, and a goldscale merchant ‘noble’ named Ordal Atriz, who Erick did some [Cleanse]ing for back before he became an archmage, if Kiri recalled correctly— spoke of how it was time to devote resources to ending the threat. It had gone on long enough. Kiri was glad to hear that.

Silverite was glad to hear that.

Kal’Duresh was silent after the fact, reevaluating their positions and likely talking to people off-image, as news spread fast.

But then some new human from fallen Frontier spoke of how he wanted his guards to gain some levels, and how he wasn’t allowed on the walls often enough. Kiri almost checked out of the conversation at that point since those words from that man were the absolute most asinine thing for anyone to be arguing about. More time on the wall? Fucking heavens and hells, man. If a warrior could handle the wall, they were put on the wall. Everyone knew that. This guy was just being stupid. Maybe he wanted to get his guards killed.

Gwynewyn Clayfield eyed the new noble like he was a stain on the world, and she wasn’t the only one.

Kiri did not check out, though, because the human man’s words caused the lightform presence of the incani from Kal’Duresh to go apoplectic, screaming at the refugee, calling them a pink pig who hoarded all the bounty for themselves. Shallowhammer did not participate in that screaming, but everyone could tell she wanted to. The human noble shot back how Kal’Duresh, and the specific person who was using the [Telepresence Construct] was just—

At that Quiet War shit, and at the name of the spell, Kiri checked out, because she liked the [Telepresence Construct] spell, and she wanted it. Silverite had mentioned the name of the spell at the beginning of this meeting, but Kiri hadn’t heard correctly the first time. Sunny was great, but Kiri only had 10 of her, and this spell seemed like a great way to regally appear where you didn’t actually want to—

Silverite slammed her hands on the desk, cracking the wood. The room went silent. Silverite stood. She spoke calmly, and clearly, “Due to a half-revelation from one of this city’s best and most trusted Prognosticators, Spur will now be taking steps to eradicate the soul ooze. We already have leads to follow, and we have the methods necessary to delve deep into the ooze itself without suffering the consequences of amalgamation.” Silverite said, “I suspect, that unless we encounter something awful in the next few days, that it will take maybe a week for us to actually solve this problem, though we will be doing our best to end the threat as soon as possible, in accordance to Prognosticator Rednail’s revelation.”

A man from Kal’Duresh yelled, “This is intolerable! Kal’Duresh demands you let us benefit from the bounty you have already received!”

Silverite stared at the loudspeaker, saying, “We have had enough debate. Spur is ending the threat.” She turned to the archmage, saying, “It was a pleasure to speak with you again, Archmage Shallowhammer. Please give my best to your Baroness.”

Shallowhammer inclined her head, saying, “It will be done.”

The yelling man at Shallowhammer’s side almost said something but his lightimage winked out in that same instant.

Silverite declared, “Everyone! This meeting is over! We’re killing the ooze as soon as reconnaissance is complete!”

There was a lot more yelling, but Silverite had made her decision.

And it was a good decision.

Kiri looked upon Silverite, standing there resolute against the world, a dragonkin above all, and she liked that, a lot. Sure, Silverite was actually a wrought, but she had the form of a female dragonkin and she wore clothes like a normal person. If one didn’t know better then they’d surely mark Silverite as a dragonkin; a lot of people made that mistake until they actually got a good look at her. It was the eyes that gave it away, mostly. And the teeth. Silverite was solid silver, without any variation.

It was time to move on, and prepare.

Silverite, though, had politics to contend with, and to wrangle the people in that room into all moving in the same direction. Kiri was already on board, though; whatever she decided, Kiri was there.

With a wave and some small words of leaving, Kiri blipped back home to get away from the political mess. It was all quite stupid. People were dumb. They needed a hard hand to guide them right, just like Silverite had done. Just like how Erick also did, all the time.

You see something wrong? You take care of it.

You see monsters everywhere? You kill them all.

You see idiots speaking words when they should be taking action? You shut them down and do what needs to be done.

Once back home, Kiri relayed what had happened in the room and then she went to bed. The next night would surely be a big day. As she fell asleep she wondered what Silverite’s leads were; what did she know about the soul ooze that no one else did? Probably a lot. That woman knew everything.

… She should ask Silverite after her Domains. She probably had one, right? Or at least she had some recommendations. Nirzir’s Void Domain was no good; not for Kiri. Light wasn’t right, either. Now fire? Fire was wonderful. Years ago, back in Tower Town, when the wyrms attack, a Fire Mage had wrapped a rampaging wyrm in [Death Spiral Fire], ending that threat and simultaneously showing Kiri the power of Fire Magic. That’s why she took ‘Flamecrash’ as her mage name.

She still hadn’t managed to make a good version of [Death Spiral Fire]. She had tried. She had thought herself hot stuff back when she was learning Erick’s way of spell creation, and of ritual. But she failed the most standard combination for [Death Spiral Fire]. It would take 26 more years until she could try that combination again; the Script was ruinously harsh toward failed spell creation, after all. Kiri never should have tried to make [Death Spiral Fire], when she did. Pure hubris, is what it was.

Even Erick didn’t make that one right when he tried his hand at it.

Kiri’s methodology toward that spell had been wrong, a lot.

But these days… These days she was working well with the Permanency techniques that Erick had shown her. A good Permanency might be all it would take to get [Death Spiral Fire] working properly. A good Permanency was all it took to make some proper riftwork, and to make her [True Sunlight Rift].

True Sunlight Rift, instant, super long range, 1750 mana

Call a fraction of the sun to your cause. Causes minimal damage but acts as true sunlight, with all the attendant effects thereof. Lasts 12 hours.

Her [Firelight Rift] did a lot more damage, but that thing only lasted minutes. Her [Sunlight Rift] did a lot more damage, too. But none of her Riftwork was nearly as good against the black ocean as [True Sunlight Rift]. Even Archmage Obsidian hadn’t been able to copy this spell yet.

Kiri had expected Obsidian to reach out to her, to ask how to make the spell, for Obsidian loved to be able to make and have all the magic that everyone else had. But he never had. Perhaps because Obsidian knew that she would rebuff him. He had rebuffed her, after all.

But more than that, she had to rebuff him about this particular magic.

Erick had trusted her with a lot, and the Secret of Light and the true secret of Radiance as a form of light-based radiation was one of them. The man had even gifted Kiri with [Luminous Beam]! And it was that spell, much more than [True Sunlight Rift], actually, that helped Spur remain afloat amid the nightly ocean of dead souls lapping at the walls.

… Erick’s ‘Harmonic Domain’ wasn’t suitable for Kiri, but a Particle Domain of Fire? A control of the heat of the world, both in radiant form, and in molecular form? And perhaps, most gruesomely, a control of the rate of oxidation of various existences within her Domain?

All of that had promise, actually.

Especially since she had [Greater Lightwalk], thanks to Erick. She still needed an actual [Domain of Light] in order to form a ‘sunform’ as he did, and she wouldn’t be able to run three auras at a time… But that’s what Sunny was for. Sunny could run her theoretical Super Large Area Domain, whatever it might be called.

A [Domain of Myriad Immolation]?

Kiri stared at the ceiling of her room, unable to sleep, but as her mind touched upon a goal she knew beyond any doubt that she needed to work on this magic...

She got up and went to the chalkboards.

- - - -

Jane woke to the smell of dinner (breakfast) flowing in through her cracked door, and the world outside her window turning dimmer with the promise of sunset. She probably still had an hour to go before it was time to actually take the wall, though, so she got out of bed in a slow manner, yawned, stretched, and with a flick of a mental command, floated her sword off of its place on the wall. With barely any adjustment at all she put the black length of adamantium at her back, to hang out until needed.

With a trip to the bathroom and then a [Cleanse] to start the day (night!), Jane moseyed downstairs to the empty kitchen, where she helped herself to a nice, huge dinner (breakfast!) courtesy of Poi. She was the last one to eat, though, as everyone else was elsewhere, doing their own thing; either upstairs in the war room, or in Kiri’s rooms talking about magic, or whatever.

In that moment, Jane realized she missed when her father ‘enforced’ family dinner time; when he made everyone eat at the same time, at the same table. It was an odd, surreal moment, that she had all by herself, at the table, alone, as she ate her rice and not-really-teriyaki fish.

She finished up fast then cleaned the minor mess she had made, and then she went upstairs to join everyone else. The war room had yet to fill up, as it did every night, but Poi, Teressa, Kiri, and Nirzir, along with three of Nirzir’s bodyguards, were inside the room, animatedly talking over the wardlight map.

“I expected to be woken up for an assault on the soul ooze today.” Jane walked into the room, saying, “But not happening, eh?”

Teressa frowned. “It should have happened today.”

“That assault will happen when it happens, but for now, I hope you’re ready, Jane,” Poi said. “You’re on the whole west side today.”

“Uh!” Jane laughed a little as she walked up to the map, to see what they were all looking at with her actual eyes instead of with her other senses. “You’re joking. How? I don’t have that much mana.” The map was the same as last night, except there was now a searching grid over the city, with several Xs and one question mark over where the Brightwater used to be. Her eyebrows rose as her heart beat hard. “Something in the Brightwater? Does the ooze have a core?! I want to go!”

Poi smirked. “Too bad. You’re on the whole west side.”

“I can’t do that by myself, Poi.” Jane asked, “Unless someone finally took the Font Class? Even that kid who [Cleanse]s me didn’t take that Class.”

“A lot of stuff happened while you slept, Jane.” Teressa said, “Silverite is trying to end the ooze, now. We’re not farming it anymore.”

Jane felt a thrill run up her spine. “That’s great! I want to help search for the core even more!”

Kiri complained, “You and I are too valuable on the front lines so we’re holding up the walls while others go exploring.”

“Bah!” Jane spat, “Who is searching, then! There’s nothing but black ooze down in the depths of Ar’Kendrithyst now, and only I or Killzone— Ah. Shit. He’s going in alone, then?”

“It should have been him and some people from Kal’Duresh and some nobles from Spur.” Poi said, “But that didn’t happen, so he’s going in with a team. He knows what to look for and so he can probably find it.”

“And what is he looking for?” Jane asked. “The Well of Souls? I’m guessing it's the Well of Souls.”

Kiri said, “Silverite still won’t tell people what she’s having him actually search for, but the current rumor is the Well of Souls has gotten corrupted.”

“I knew it!” Jane said, “That was my guess from the very beginning.”

“I always heard it called ‘Melemizargo’s Heart’,” Teressa said.

“And she hasn’t actually told anyone what she’s going after,” Poi said. “Rumors are just that: rumors.”

Jane said to Poi, “Well. Fine. But I can’t hold down the west side by myself. That’s a fact that isn’t changing any time soon.”

Poi looked to Nirzir.

… And then so did Jane. “You have extra Fonts?”

Nirzir nodded, saying, “I apologize that I could not offer any extra until now, but we should have at least four more Fonts arriving within the hour.” Nirzir added, “In addition, I’m taking all of the east side, tonight. I will ask you, Jane, to allow the Fonts I send you to leech off of your kills, for I have been charged with granting these clansmen at least 30-odd levels for their time spent on these frontlines.”

A smile of genuine joy came to Jane, and she said, “Well sure! Then that solves the problem of resources.” She asked, “What changed?”

“With Silverite’s declaration that this was going to end as soon as she could make it end, due to half-revelations from trusted prognosticators, some of the people back home have decided that haste is a virtue.” Nirzir said, “You will still have to be wary of Mana Exhaustion and Health Fatigue, though; this basic problem is only heightened by the use of a Font.”

“Ah. Well. Thank you for the Fonts; I’ll be sure they get some levels tonight.” Jane frowned. “Not sure what to do about the Exhaustion and Fatigue problem, though.” Scion of Balance granted double resistance to Health Fatigue and Mana Exhaustion, but Jane was already touching that limit every night. She’d sail right past it with the Army’s assigned double workload. “And I need food, too. I’m actually going to need to eat tonight if I’m doing this, Poi.”

“We’ve made arrangements.” Poi said, “A few cows will be sedated and ready for you, whenever you need them.”

“I have a solution to your Exhaustion and Fatigue problem.” Kiri offered, “I can make some glass bracelets and help you enchant them, and you can take both double-Regen Class Abilities. It would double your Exhaustion or Fatigue limit.”

“Double Mana Regen is always useful,” Nirzir said. “I still have it myself.”

Jane said, “Ugh. I probably should just do that, shouldn’t I. Haven’t had much time to unlock Elemental Dedication or Healthy Form, yet.” And honestly, Healthy Form wasn’t all that impressive. Diet-related Familiar Form powers, like specialty spider threads that drained mana and stopped casting, or threads that naturally resisted fire, were not that high on the list of needs. Not right now, anyway. Elemental Dedication, though… That one she would still want.

Nirzir gave a small bow, saying, “I appreciate that you have not lived as that spider form while I am here. I know it has been an imposition. I am still willing to assist you with Elemental Dedication at any time you choose.”

Jane made a decision. “Yes. Okay. I’ll take a Vitality and a Focus ring, Kiri— Ah. You’re going to need to make them capable of holding 35 Vitality and 95 Focus, now.”

Kiri winced. “The Vitality isn’t a problem. The Focus might be. But I can do it.”

“I’m sure you can make a good one; it only has to last ten seconds or something, anyway.” Jane looked back to the map. “So we’re finally going to kill the golden slime, are we? Took Silverite long enough.”

Kiri nodded—

Teressa’s eyes flickered grey. Jane felt her hairs raise, but then Teressa simply focused forward, on the map, and she spoke in her normal voice, “Tell Killzone to search Brightwater again, Poi. Near here.” She touched the map near the center. “At the deepest part.”

Jane relaxed. Nizir breathed out, then gave a small, nervous chuckle.

Poi nodded, then looked away, speaking to other people.

Jane took off her rings and went to the Registrar. Irogh was open for special hours for the Army’s needs, so Jane got a slot in the sunset schedule, and since she was special forces, she got to the head of the line. Her actual meeting with the salt-and-pepper haired orcol lasted only 3 minutes.

By the time she got back home, Jane had two Quests ready to go and Kiri had two glass bracelets ready to combine with those Quests. The first was a simple thing of near-perfect clarity, but rounded and polished enough to make it work. Kiri made the lightward, and the bracelet, but it was Jane that actually enchanted the thing.

Jane slipped on the first ring—

And it disintegrated. Half a second later, a blue box appeared.

QUEST COMPLETE!

Enchant an item, or items, that give you twice as much Health Regen, then wear those items, consuming them in the process. 1/1

Reward: Double your Base Health Regen

Jane felt her Health Regeneration expand, like she could run a mile and not feel winded at all.

… She could already do that, though. Jane blinked, and the sensation of expansion slowly normalized, before becoming a new baseline of power.

Kiri smiled to see that it had worked. But then she glanced over to the next item. It was a massive belt of glass and wrought-quality iron, and it reminded Jane of a wrestler’s trophy belt, but thick all around, and crystal clear. Kiri picked it up, wrapped it in a temporary cyan lightmask, then wrapped it in a [Luminous Trap], turning it darker than black, but with a cyan glow around the edges. She handed it over, saying, “Now this one is rather… This is going to be difficult. Getting to 95 Focus will be hard. The Trap will make it easier, but… Go slow. It’ll probably pop.”

Jane took the belt and put it on, saying, “Thanks, Kiri.”

The belt shattered at plus-92 Focus, scattering fragments of glass everywhere.

Jane frowned. Kiri frowned. The belt was ruined. Luckily, it was a shit belt; not too magical at all. Kiri [Mend]ed it, and Jane tried a second time.

The second time was successful. The belt disintegrated into cyan mana as Jane crossed plus-95 Focus, and another notification popped.

QUEST COMPLETE!

Enchant an item, or items, that give you twice as much Mana Regen, then wear those items, consuming them in the process. 1/1

Reward: Double your Base Mana Regen

Another expansion occurred inside Jane’s body, but this time it was a deepening. She had submerged herself further into the mana, and that mana swelled within her, ready to move and to shake and to influence the world.

She had a small epiphany then about her Prismatic Body, but the feeling was small and gone before she even recognized its existence.

A dream deferred. She frowned a bit—

Kiri asked, “Something wrong?”

“… Not… Really.” Jane absentmindedly put her father’s rings back on, now that she wasn’t in danger of accidentally absorbing them, and said, “I thought I felt something shift in a good way. But… It’s gone now.”

Kiri frowned, this time. “Is your Status okay?”

“What? Oh. Yeah.” Jane waved her off. “That’s fine. Exactly as it should be, there.”

Jane Flatt

Human, age: 23

Level 98, Class: Prismatic Polymage

Exp: 1.01 e22 / 2.18 e22

Class: 10/10

Points: 5

HP

5820/5820

11,640 per day

MP

9420/9420

18,840 per day

Strength

35

+62

97

Vitality

35

+62

97

Willpower

95

+62

157

Focus

95

+62

157

Favored Spell waiting!

Favored Ability waiting!

Favored Ability waiting!

Favored Ability waiting!

TRIPLE YOUR AVAILABLE FAMILIAR FORM SLOTS

UNLOCK ABILITIES

SHEDDING FORM

SHIFTING FORM

DRACONIC INOCULATION

HIDDEN MONSTER (Surround Sight, from Flame Ooze)

BLOOD MANA

EXTREME SURVIVOR

DOUBLE HEALTH REGENERATION

DOUBLE MANA REGENERATION

Five points left in reserve for whatever New Stat she decided on taking. At this rate, she was leaning toward Intelligence, but all of them were good options. Perception might be what she needed to finally understand and unlock her mana sense, which would then allow her to get all the Sight spells, which would also allow her to switch out her Class Ability Hidden Monster for Surround Sight with something else.

Maybe she’d keep these doubled regens and switch out Hidden Monster for Elemental Dedication. For some reason, she was pretty sure that she needed that one to truly advance in her Prismatic Class.

Jane said, “As soon as I get [Greater Prismatic Body] then I’ll probably Favorite that one. Or maybe if I figure out a Domain that I want I’ll Favorite that, instead… Or I could work on a Domain with Health costs, and use Favored Ability on it… I don’t know. Any success on your Domainwork, yet?”

“Maybe!” Kiri happily said. “I did some work on it this morning but I didn’t last long before bed called me back.”

That was new.

“So you have an idea then.” Jane asked, “What idea?”

Kiri smirked. “I’ll tell you when I have a better grasp of it.” She stood from her chair. “Anyway! I have to get to my [Scry] chair, and you have to turn into a horrible spider again.”

Jane laughed, saying, “Spiders are great. I have like… All of my good Familiar Form Abilities in that form, too.”

“If I knew it wouldn’t kill you, so I am very much telling you to not do this, but a [Cleansing Domain] is rather strong.” Kiri added, “You use that spell a lot out there, anyway, and [Cleanse] is all about balancing the mana and erasing threats.”

Jane stopped in her tracks. “Ah.”

Kiri stressed, “But I’m warning you… [Cleanse] is dangerous. The base spell includes a lot of highly sophisticated targeting with Elemental Destruction, so it kills almost everyone who tries to take it apart. But it’s also an elemental balancing spell. You could focus on the second half, you know. Ignore the Destruction all together.”

Jane stared off into nothing for a long moment, thinking. And then she smiled, telling Kiri, “But the Destruction is the fun part!”

Kiri punched her in the arm, “You’re horrible! Don’t mess with [Cleanse]!”

Jane laughed loud, saying, “I am a horrible spider, yes ma’am!”

- - - -

Jane, resplendent in her blue tarantula form, stood atop the western wall, watching as the sun set in the far distance. As the final sliver of gold light passed beyond the horizon and twilight gathered, Sunny brought back a bit of the day by dropping [True Sunlight Rift]s all along the outermost wall, returning sunlight to the land one kilometer-wide stretch of wall at a time.

The Fonts and a few other guards from Songli stood on a part of the wall that had been extended outward to serve as a minor staging and recuperation area. This area was larger than Jane’s usual roost, at nearly thirty meters wide and filled with secondary support structures meant to assist her on her major defense of the wall tonight. They had combined both Jane’s and Killzone’s support staff for this. Sergeant Nanark was wrangling it all together though, so Jane didn’t need to worry about logistics. Logistics were a pain in the ass. All she had to do was actually kill things, and that suited her fine.

As the black ocean poured up and over the walls of Ar’Kendrithyst and the soft gasps of the newly arrived Fonts filled her senses (they were completely new to this view, apparently), Jane merely watched, and waited. When the black ocean reached Kiri’s Rifts, the corruptive liquid began to boil. To burn. To evaporate into gloom that then vanished under bright lights.

As nothing happened, Jane’s mind wandered.

She considered a [Cleansing Domain].

If, like her father and Kiri had told her, [Cleanse] was little more than ‘setting the Elements to balance’ as well as targeted Elemental Destruction to turn various matter into mana… Okay. Well. Using the terms ‘little more than’ in conjunction with that whole suite of effects was likely foolish to the extreme. It was like saying ‘spiders are little more than legs and venomous fangs’ or ‘magic is little more than combining it all correctly’.

Jane filed the idea of a [Cleansing Domain] away, next to the idea that she could maybe go back to Songli, back to the grass travelers, to talk with Koori of Clan Pale Cow about her [Cleansing Domain]. None of that was happening now, though. Not when there were amalgams to kill.

… Not when there were usually amalgams to kill.

Some small beasts had begun to drag themselves out of the black ocean and over the outermost walls, exposing themselves to True Sunlight as they did, baking away much of the black goo on their bodies. And then they dropped off that wall, into the trenches. Eventually, those amalgams would make their way through the funneling trenches to the killing fields, where other people would handle those smaller beasts. Jane was only here for the larger ones; the ones with too much power for most people to handle. The ones that could actually break the wall.

She smiled a bit at that fact. She was strong. Stronger than most. Being strong felt good. Sure, she wasn’t as strong as her father, but she was still capable in her own ways. Jane breathed out, settled in, and as [Fireball]s and [Force Crash]s altered Decay began to spread across the land between the second and third wall, she tilted over a bit, toward her staff.

Jane asked, “Battle Status?”

Biggie, a fellow soldier who Jane had been working with for the last month, stepped forward, saying, “Nothing spotted yet.”

Another soldier named Fireball stood beside a [Viewing Screen] that showed a closer image of Ar’Kendrithyst’s wall. “I’m not seeing anything on [Scry]. Nothing coming over the walls.”

Jane turned back toward her targeted wall and whispered to herself, “Hurry up and wait,”

And then she settled in just a bit more.

Eventually, she decided to practice her mana sensing.

Eventually, morning came.

And not a single greater amalgam had appeared all night long. Jane wasn’t complaining too much for she had gotten in a lot of mana sense practice. Maybe a few more weeks and she might actually see something. It would probably go faster if she was able to actually focus on her mana sense, instead of needing to be half alert the whole time, but such was life.

She tried not to think about how having zero battles an entire night made her feel more nervous than meeting the Headmaster for the first time. Everyone around her was nervous for similar reasons and it would be good to panic anyone else. A ‘night of no battles, and what that might mean’ was a lot less worrying than meeting Melemizargo that first time, anyway.

So. Small mercies.

As the sun rose and Jane’s cleanup took a lot less time than normal, she helped out with the [Cleanse]ing of others to make it go faster, or to at least spend all the new mana that she had gotten for herself. She had been topped up all night long, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

But nothing happened.

- - - -

“What the fuck was that!” Jane asked, storming into the kitchen where everyone was.

Teressa squashed burgers on the grill while sipping a beer; she looked mad. Maps had been spread on the kitchen table, where Poi, Nirzir, and Kiri stood, going over them. Everyone but Teressa looked up as Jane rushed into the room; the last one to show.

“Not a single amalgam!” Jane said, “And your side didn’t get any either, Nirzir. I know; I asked.”

Poi said, “They all went after Killzone instead.”

Jane jerked. “Is he okay?”

“Oh yeah. He’s fine.” Kiri said, “Lost sight of the target, though.”

“Well he obviously needs some personal help to find and kill the Well!” Jane said, “I volunteer.”

“We’re not allowed to get close.” Kiri said, “No Domain makes us easy targets and the Well uses Soul Magic. It’d rip through us like adamantium through paper.”

Poi said, “You would die if you got close. It could probably target you through Sunny, too, since it targeted Killzone’s watchers through their [Scry]s.” Poi told Jane, “We’re calling it a soul ooze, and it amalgamized three of Killzone’s watchers through their [Scry]s. Killed four people total, including the original three watchers before it could be put down.”

A spike of worry slammed into Jane’s side. Four Army watchers were dead. How many had she known? Being a watcher was rightly considered the least dangerous job out there. Almost nothing could attack through a [Scry]! And even if it did, the attacks were usually weak things, to just let someone know they were unwanted; like the False Damage of an unwanted [Telepathy].

But she had seen first hand how her father had been attacked through Ophiel...

And that was a thought, wasn’t it? She didn’t want this to be a part of her father’s Worldly Path, but it sounded like it was.

Jane focused on the part of this she could actually solve.

“Did the watchers have reflective magics?” Jane asked, already knowing the answer was ‘no’.

Poi told her, “Silverite is now considering calling your father back to Spur to take care of this problem. It might be a part of his Worldly Path.”

Jane repeated, “Did the people in the watcher’s room have reflective magics active while they were [Scry]ing.”

“No,” Kiri said, staring at Poi. “It was an understandable lapse of judgment from the Army. The amalgams and the ooze have never been able to target through [Scry] orbs before. This is new.”

Teressa spoke up, “We need to kill it. Today. We can’t wait for it to develop any more capabilities.” She smashed another burger patty flat, adding, “It learned how to pop Kiri’s Rifts, but Kiri can add more whenever needed, so that’s not a big deal. Then there were the [Grand Dispel]s that ripped apart spellwork, which rapidly became counterspelling and smothering, but you can use internal Elemental Bodies and avoid that. The greater amalgams used to attack one at a time, or whenever they spotted Spur, but now they sometimes wait until there are three or four out there, and they attack together.” Her eyes turned hard. “Killzone discovered the eye-arm caster today; the one Jane has been trying to kill for a month. It wasn’t dead to some other force; it was hiding near the Well, shaping amalgams into better forms. It’s learning. They’re all learning. The soul ooze has a subordinate general, now, like how the Shades used to do it when they went to war. They raised up their terrible dead and kept raising them, so that they learned from their mistakes and the next time would be different.” With controlled grey light in her eyes, she stared through Poi, and Kiri, and Jane, and Nirzir, looking elsewhere, as she said, “The soul ooze is close. So close… to something I cannot see. The soul ooze needs to die today. Drastic measures need to be taken.”

No one spoke for a long moment. The only sound was the sound of sizzling beef.

And then Jane said, “So this means I’m going in, right?”

Poi frowned. “Your father would murder me if I got you killed, Jane.”

Jane burst out laughing.

No one else laughed.

Jane scoffed loudly, saying, “He would not! Holy fuck, Poi. This is bigger than my father, anyway.”

Nirzir kept all emotion off of her face; she was a viewer of this drama, and not a participant. Kiri looked away, not wanting to get involved in this particular argument. Teressa flattened another burger as she stared at Poi.

Poi glanced from Teressa to Jane, then said, “Erick is in a tense situation, and you dying would put a strain on the entire world that we don’t need to have.”

Ah.

He was serious.

… He was serious.

Jane had to mull over that fact twice before she actually accepted it. And then she almost roared at the man, but the tension of the room made her rethink how she handled this. After a calming moment, she said, “Then it’s time for some extreme magical measures. Runic bombs from Enduring Forge. Maybe Songli has access to the dirty bombs that were used against them. Get some [Duplicate] extreme light materials from the Headmaster for the material and drop those bombs into the heart of the Well. Hey Nirzir? Want to learn the truth of sound that my dad never got to show you? Blow up that mountain that you never got to blow up? I’ll tell you how if you get those dirty bombs here. And Kiri. Have you tried to make [Vivid Gloom] yet? Make some [Vivid Gloom] oozes and drop them into Ar’Kendrithyst.” Jane said, “And don’t forget some [Cleansing Slime]s. A lot of people have to have that spell, right? Just have them fly over the city and release millions of them over the course of a day. That might be enough to solve this problem, or at least expose it.”

“We have some plans.” Poi said, “There’s no need to go that extreme yet.”

“You’re wrong, Poi.” Teressa said, “This problem needs to be solved today. It will be a miracle if we live past tonight.”

Poi bargained, “Okay. Okay. Silverite is now aware of the severity and she—” He paused. He looked away, his eyes going wide. After a moment he sighed.

Teressa suddenly relaxed, her eyes flickering grey as a small, hopeful smile played across her face. And then it was gone, and she realized that they were all still in danger.

Poi said, “Shade Farix of New Brightwater has reached out to Spur, as of ten minutes ago, asking to assist in solving the soul ooze problem. All of his prognosticators are foretelling utter doom if he does not act now, and with every possible force at his disposal, which includes allying with Spur.” He added, “There will be a 30 minute meeting and then, if everything goes well, our forces will work next to each other to kill the soul ooze. Standard Shade-operation rules apply. Jane, you’re to be read-in and involved in the final assault, along with practically everyone else who has proven capable of following orders. Kiri, we expect you to remain on sky support.”

Jane felt relief and trepidation war within her. She was ready for a final assault, and had been ready to do as much for the last twenty days, but Spur benefited from the soul ooze, so Silverite hadn’t pushed for an end to the ooze until now. After a moment, Jane decided that she was relieved. She was ready for a final fight, and to put the danger of Ar’Kendrithyst to rest. It should be easy as soon as everyone started to work together to solve it, right?

Right!

… Hmm.

For a long moment Jane wondered if she should take this more seriously.

Like, obviously she was a bit worried.

But more than that, she was ready to end this looming, highly profitable threat. She had gained level 98, after all. A lot of people had. Guildmaster Mog had even gained level 99, apparently. Jane wanted level 99, too, and she wanted to know what Mog had seen after reaching level 99 that she wasn’t willing to tell anyone else. But the world didn’t need to suffer this soul ooze any longer.

Jane considered how she should feel about everything, while Kiri did the same, and Poi spoke to the other young woman in the room.

“Nirzir.” Poi said, “Spur would ask you to remain as a final line of defense, please.”

Nirzir, who had been rather informal while living with them and working closely with the defense effort every night, code-switched back to her former self. She spoke with the authority of her people behind her, saying, “Songli has soldiers eager for glory so my people will join the final assault, while I remain here operating as I have before.”

“Your wishes will be followed.” Poi gave a small bow. “Spur thanks Songli for your dedicated assistance.”

Teressa flipped the final burger out of 15 onto a waiting bun, saying, “Before you move out: eat something, and take a break. Sleep, too. The diplomats are moving fast but we won’t be moving out for a few hours.”

Nirzir rapidly went back to her friendly, almost sister-like demeanor, rushing over to the kitchen, saying, “And I made a cake, too!” She hoisted out a great big chocolate-covered monstrosity, half a meter across, that seemed to have way too much icing along with shaved chocolate, white chocolate accents, and chocolate drizzle.

“Holy gods.” Jane chuckled nervously, saying, “You made it.”

“Death by chocolate! I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind and I finally made it several hours ago in my downtime.” Nirzir set the cake to the side where it could warm up a bit and wrapped it in a protective [Ward]. “But that’s for later.” She breathed in all of the burgers Teressa had made while the larger woman grabbed the fries out of the oven. “Oh. That smells so good, Teressa.”

Teressa smiled a little, but it was a sad sort of smile, as she said, “Made with lots of bluebell, too.”

Kiri set the table while Teressa handed out plates with food, and soon, everyone was digging in, together, at the same table. That hadn’t happened very often, but it probably happened more than Jane remembered. The only person missing was Erick. He would have really liked the cake Nirzir made, for it looked like everything one could ever want from a ‘death by chocolate’ cake. Or, at least, it probably was. Jane had never had one of those kinds of cakes before, but she had read about it a few times.

In her opinion, and without actually tasting it yet, Nirzir looked like she had done a great job.

After dinner, Poi informed everyone that a meeting with Shade Farix and a delegation from New Brightwater would be meeting at a neutral location to the west of Ar’Kendrithyst in three hours; right before noon.

Poi said, “So get as much sleep as you can. You’re going to need it. Anyone want a [Sleep]?”

“I’d take a [Sleep]; yes. Thanks,” Jane said.

Kiri and Nirzir both accepted a [Sleep], too.

As Jane fell asleep, she thought it would be nice to have the [Sleep] spell herself, if only for this exact reason; to be able to fall asleep on command.

Hours later, it was time to get up and go save the world.

… Now. Honestly. Being real honest with herself for a moment: She knew she was acting flippant about the whole thing. Too flippant. Jane knew the severity of it all. She had almost been killed a hundred times over in her life on Veird, from moon reachers to the Ancient Unicorn Queen, to the Shades of Ar’Kendrithyst, to Melemizargo himself.

She would not be saving the world today. The whole of Spur and even New Brightwater, apparently, would be saving the world, together. Or at least they would be saving this small part of the world.

But holy damn, was it empowering to transform out of her weak human body and become a true monster that could withstand everything and tear apart the world as she wished. There was the major problem of not having a Domain yet, so, like, being even more honest with herself, she was lucky that she was even being allowed to participate in this assault on the Well of Souls, otherwise known as the Dark Heart of Melemizargo.

Jane had some thoughts about that, and told them to Poi. “I’m basically going to be backup here. Aren’t I? Like when the Champion went into the Dead City?”

Poi frowned a little, then said, “Shade protocol applied there, and thus you were untouchable unless you broke convention. This is just a soul monster, Jane, and it has a Domain, so that makes it so much worse.” He added, “I don’t know what position they’ll ask you to take, but it likely won’t be forward position.”

- - - -

In the Courthouse, in one of the prep rooms for the Army, Jane, Kiri, Poi, Teressa, and Nirzir walked into a meeting that was almost ready to go. They had arrived last, but only by ten seconds. Several soldiers/delegates at the front of the room stood ready to receive their orders. Some of those delegates Jane recognized from Songli, but she didn’t get a chance to say anything more than a quick nod as she filed in with them, to stand at the front. Guildmaster Mog got a quick nod, too; Jane was surprised to see her here, but as soon as she realized she was surprised, she realized she shouldn’t be.

Killzone, Liquid, and Silverite were at the front, going over maps, along with Anhelia, and another black wrought in the shape of an incani man.

Poi, Teressa, Kiri, and Nirzir stood at the back along with ten other people who were on support.

Silverite pulled herself away from maps and stepped to the front of the room. She told everyone, “Prognostication has informed us that we have today to solve this problem before it becomes untenable. We don’t know the exact nature of this worst-case scenario, but we imagine such a scenario will involve the soul ooze breaking its bonds of captivity and escaping into the world. We still don’t know why it hasn’t dug down into the Underworld, for it surely can, but that is neither here nor there.

“This is how it’s going to go: Shade protocols are in effect. You all are meeting with Farix and his delegation in 20 minutes. Killzone, Guildmaster Mog, and Team Leader Flatt are at the front.”

Jane almost flinched. She did not expect that.

Silverite continued, “Anhelia will go with you and devise a Forward Base somewhere around Brightwater. From this location, you will assault the soul ooze until it dies. Failure is not an option. If we fail today, then bad things happen.” She said, “Killzone.”

Killzone stepped forward. “While I was not able to kill the thing when I attempted to solve this problem last night, I did discover a few things we did not know before today. First: As you get closer to the center, the ooze is stronger the deeper you go into it, working corrupting your Health even through reflections and Domain power, therefore a full-powered [Cleanse Aura] is needed at all times to keep the ooze off of you, and because of the power of the soul ooze multiplies when you get near, the range of the aura drops down to skin-tight. The best way to actually find the heart of the ooze is to have a [Cleanse Aura] running at all times, for when your aura begins to crush inward, you will know you are close.

“Second: There are soul monsters that will begin to attack when you approach the center of the ooze. These monsters are not Domain empowered, but their spells will carve through all weak levels of reflection. This is why I, Mog, and Jane will be at the front; those with the strongest reflections in this city. Once we encounter those monsters, Jane will be providing the most body-blocking defense she can, while Mog and I are on offense. Those monsters look like bloated white bodies, with arms and other limbs here and there, poking out of them. Their main attack is an [Ethereal Dispelling Soul Corrupting Scry-Piercing Bolt], or something to that effect. We don’t know what it is called, only what it does, and what it does is [Dispel], corrupt Health away to try and attack the soul to force amalgamation, travel right through unenchanted armor, and it travels through [Scry]. It has to be blocked by some living body with a soul. The thing will go right through a [Scry], as well, hitting you and draining Health, attempting to turn you into an amalgam, so there will be no normal scouting.

“The good news about that, is that it is a very slow Bolt. Traveling at about the pace of a fast walk.

“The very moment the scout team sees one of these things, they are to cancel their spell. Those [Ethereal Soul Bolt]s, or whatever they are, will strike at you through your [Scry] orb if the spell manages to connect. I cannot overstate this danger.

“Third: good news. As you might have already guessed, the soul ooze is not actually an ooze. It might technically be a slime. It has a core. The thing is fifty meters wide and radiant like a grand rad; you can actually see it once you get within about a kilometer. The thing is so large it can’t actually move through most of the Dead City, which is why it is locked into the bottom of the Brightwater, where the sun can’t easily reach.” Killzone added, “Also, maybe good news: Kiri’s Rifts might be able to blast through to the edge of the monster’s Domain, but from there, we go in on our own.

“Fourth: We will encounter all of the normal greater amalgams that we fight every night. My pressure on the soul slime’s core last night caused it to recall many of its minions in order to fight me. This was ultimately why I had to retreat. That hands-caster, the spell cancelers, and then all the other oddities, and even more amalgams that we haven’t seen yet, are there. All of them began to show when I got too close to the core.” Killzone said, “I expect we’ll have to kill them all before we can actually take down the core, along with the soul bolters, and that means killing about 165 greater amalgams, and a comparable number of bolters.”

A small, collective gasp passed through the room. 165 greater amalgams was a lot, especially if they were odd variants. The odder they were, the harder it was to know how to kill them quickly. Having to fight a similar number of ‘soul bolters’ was an unknown threat, but considering those bolters were what had killed Killzone’s support team, they were just as serious as the amalgams themselves.

“And finally: we think the soul ooze came from the old Well of Souls, but as I checked that place myself and saw nothing, we don’t believe it is a location of interest.” Killzone. “When we get there, Anhelia will produce a temporary Forward Base where we will organize the attack. Sergeant Nanark and Liquid will be handling planning from Spur. Understood?”

Nods all around.

Silverite took center stage back, saying, “Shade Farix is a Shade, but he has been Blessed into growth by a joint effort of Erick Flatt and Koyabez. This, however, has merely mutated his base nature. No matter how easy he might look to kill, or how weak of a person he might seem, he can turn you into a writhing mass of pleasure if you piss him off, and he won’t feel bad about it. You do not antagonize the Archmage-level Blood Mage.” Silverite added, “No matter how much there seems to be a connection between Farix’s ability to mutate people into lumps of flesh and how lumpy all the amalgams look, and are, do not antagonize the Shade. Understand? I’m looking at every single person here in front, but mostly the people who aren’t part of Spur’s Army; those who have never dealt with a Shade before.”

Her gaze flicked over the people from Songli, and lingered on a noblewoman about Jane’s age. Jane hadn’t even noticed her. To be fair, that noble was further back than most people in front. Jane tried to think of her name but that knowledge evaded her. She was human and one of Jane’s neighbors, though.

When all Silverite got back were nods, she relaxed a fraction. “Good. Now get out there and save the world. Dismissed.”

- - - -

On a perfectly flat stretch of desert to the west of Ar’Kendrithyst, where the sun beat down from directly above and the wind rushed from the north, Jane walked south, dressed in her overlapping dark blue armor. She felt a bit small in this form, compared to the giant of a man on her left.

Killzone stared straight ahead, his black body relaxed, but with a certain tension that showed he was ready for a fight. Killzone wore his adamantium flesh like casual clothes and a bit of armor, but nothing overmuch. On Killzone’s other side stood Guildmaster Mog.

Mog was dressed in bright white fullplate, either adamantium and enchanted to look white, or covered in a layer of holyite, Jane wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it was layered over with red-tinted Force; her [Reflective Armor] spell, and done in the same style as Poi’s armor. Or, actually, Jane probably had that backwards. Poi got his armor ideas from Mog.

Or, more realistically, they both got their ideas from some common idea that ‘real armor is good’. Probably some plays or whatever; Jane didn’t know, and she put those thoughts away. It was time to work.

Their various other forces hung back, about 300 meters behind.

Because up ahead was the delegation from New Brightwater.

Jane recognized Shade Farix, with his blue skin, white horns, white hair, and bright white eyes that were uncommonly bright, which marked him as a Shade. The other two at Farix’s side were unknown to her, but while one was a shadeling, perhaps, with dim yet white eyes, the other was a normal blue dragonkin with normal blue eyes.

Jane’s own eyes were dark black, for she had incorporated her shadow spider’s Eyes of Magic into her form, along with a few other capabilities that she hoped not to need to use. Farix’s team was running magic, but only the normal kind. No traps lay in the sand ahead, or anything like that.

The two groups faced off, both stopping ten meters from each other. And then Killzone and Farix each took a single step closer. No one spoke. One moment of silence turned to three. Tension rose.

Ah. Jane did not miss this part of danger; the comparing of egos, to see who would break first and talk first, and thus prove they were beneath the other person in the meeting. But! Shade protocol had a solution for this, and so, since this was an emergency meeting—

Jane faked a sneeze.

Killzone spoke over his shoulder to Jane, “See that you get that [Cleanse]d before you get into the city.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Jane replied.

Farix said, “Your people are always sneezing around me. It’s quite unbecoming. One would think your vaulted [Cleanse] wasn’t actually capable of cleaning up anything at all!”

Killzone said, “[Cleanse] is not meant to solve every problem we encounter. It’s just an assistant, to help us help ourselves.”

“Feh! Whatever.” Farix said, “Here’s how this joint venture is going to go. My teams are coming in from the south. Yours come in from the north. My woman here—” He gestured to the blue dragonkin woman at his side. “Is a former Mind Mage, rescued from death by the Dark, and given a new life on this land. She stepped away from the Dark, though, in order to be allowed to rejoin her original people. She is coordinating for our side. Who is coordinating from your side?”

Killzone glared at Farix. “… It is unkind to do this, here, at this juncture.”

Jane had missed something. She did not like missing anything.

Farix said, “She’s a Mind Mage! They’re all scrupulous to a fault and she is no different.”

Jane controlled her breathing, but she wanted to gasp. She realized that the dragonkin woman looked familiar. She looked like Poi, but female. But… No? Couldn’t be.

‘Poi?’ Jane sent, ‘Are you seeing this? Is this really your sister?’

‘… Less chatter,’ Poi sent, reluctantly.

‘Ah! Ah. Shit— Shutting up, now.’

Jane mentally wiped her brow and then she filed this development into the category of ‘not my business’. She’d keep an eye on whatever this was, of course, if only because Farix was probably going to use her, too, in order to get closer to Spur and also her father. Jane wasn’t at the center of whatever fucking mess this Shade wanted to make, but she was adjacent, and that made her a target, just like how Poi was apparently a target, too.

Briefly, she wondered if they had targeted Kiri already? They probably had?

It was a Shade who had fucked with Kiri in the museum back in Treehome, wasn’t it! Which Shade, though?

… Could have been any of them, really.

… And also, had they targeted Jane, yet? They probably had, she considered. Either at the escort of Champion Yetta, or when Melemizargo stepped out at Oceanside and asked her if she wanted his ‘Blessing’ so that she could ‘clean house’ for him. It was probably more complicated than that, though, since their plans for her father were long term, so perhaps their desires for her were longer term, too; broader and deeper than a single instance of temptation.

Killzone and Farix had banded veiled threats and smaller insults at each other for the last minute, but that was rather normal for this sort of situation. It was considered improper to involve oneself in the bickering of powerful Shades, for to listen too closely was to directly involve oneself in the banter, and if you failed, the outcome was usually death. Or, since Farix was Blessed into Empathy, and as Silverite had said, the ‘bad outcome’ here was to get Blood Magic’d into a body that sensed only pleasure.

Jane was glad that Silverite spoke of the connection between Farix’s ‘amalgamation’ of people into puddles of self-pleasuring flesh and of what they were seeing from the soul ooze every night. Jane hadn’t even considered that, but it made sense as soon as she heard about Farix’s predilections. Some other Blood Mage had even made some sort of [Greater Abomination] spell, or something, and scattered that magic into the darker parts of the Dead City long ago. So maybe Farix was planning something devious today, but...

How that didn’t tick off her father’s Blessing was beyond Jane, but it was probably some trick of Farix’s own mind that allowed him to operate under such a restriction. Whatever the case, Jane and no one on their side would be testing Farix; not yet.

He might have to die before the day was over, though.

Killzone pivoted his talk, turning back to the subject at hand, “Shade Farix! Enough of this nonsense. We need action. We need to end the soul ooze. Your prognosticators have seen the same thing we have seen. If the ooze gets another night, disaster will strike.”

“And we will move to the clouds to get away!” Farix dropped a minor, but expected bombshell. The shape of the bombshell was unexpected, but everyone suspected the Shade had some way to get further away from the ooze, and to protect his people. “I already have several cloud giant castles under my power, for you didn’t think my people were only protecting our land from that ooze every night, did you? No! We know the truths of magic. We have proper learning. We don’t actually need to participate in this battle at all! We could escape, and let you fail. Which is why we demand compensation to assist in this battle.”

Killzone glared. “What sort of compensation?”

“We wish to purchase goods and services from Spur.” Farix said, “We’d link up with Candlepoint, but we’re staying away from Erick’s Worldly Path, and if we did that, he’d come running. So! We want to link up with Spur, instead.”

Killzone instantly said, “100 percent markup. You’re not allowed inside the city. We will set up soldiers by the east gate which will take your orders and purchase your desires inside the city.”

Jane blinked. That was fast. Silverite was probably listening and feeding Killzone information in real time, but to make such a decision that fast? A decision of this magnitude? This was promising to have further deals with the Dark, and that was strictly against the rules of engagement. Spur has done this many times before, but never so openly, because the problems actually came later when other people heard that Spur was trading with Darkness, and then those other people cut off their trade—

Wait a second.

Was all this for show?

Jane wasn’t sure, but the thought that this was an act struck her, and she couldn’t let it go. Whatever! She shouldn’t be surprised. Spur had been dealing with the Dark long before now. Not Jane’s problem. Jane’s problems were all monsters, and she liked it that way; those issues were much more fun to solve.

Killzone added, “You will have a single month of trade, and if nothing untoward happens in that time, and if Ar’Kendrithyst calms down, then we will talk about extensions.”

Farix stood tall, looking like he was mentally going over the offer, and then he said, “The bargain is struck. Our Mind Mages will coordinate the battle, and our forces will not mix.”

Killzone agreed, “Our forces will not mix.”

Farix stepped backward, rejoining his people.

Killzone stepped backward, to stand beside Jane and Mog.

Poi’s voice was a loudness in the air, as he spoke to everyone on their side, ‘Shade Farix has set up their fallback point to the south of the Brightwater. Anhelia has already set hers to the north. Grab your [Teleport] partners and meet on site. Further instructions to follow.’

Killzone privately sent to Jane, and also Mog, ‘Farix is going to sweep in and attempt to control the soul ooze at the last moment. Be ready to let him take it. A monster controlled is better than what we have now.’

Jane jolted, and then she made the mistake of glancing at Farix on the other side of the field. He lightly stared at her, as though glaring through her armor to see the person beneath, and then he smirked. And then Jane turned to stare at Killzone, her anger boiling inside her—

Killzone held out his hands to Jane and Mog, sending, ‘He has to take it first, proving he is untrustworthy, before we can kill him with impunity.’

Oh.

Well that was fine? Wasn’t it?

Jane took Killzone’s hand.

In groups of three, the two groups left the field, briefly flickering colors into the desert air with their passing.

- - - -

It had been a while since Jane had been inside the Dead City.

Being this close to the Brightwater was completely new, though. This land had always been wholly off limits to every single person who valued their life. But… Since the rise of the ooze and the destruction of the civilization of the Brightwater, this was a new time in the ‘life’ of the Dead City’s.

In her spider form, and well-rested enough to move out, Jane clung to the top of the second-tallest red-purple kendrithyst tower in the area. The whole of their temporary ‘Forward Base’ was located in the actual tallest crystal tower, just west of this one. That space was a fallback point, and covered in light from Anhelia’s [Light Domain]. Most of the soldiers were still over there, inside the revealed interior structure of the crystal, inside the rooms and on the balconies and in the watchtower on top, going over last-minute prep and viewing the target area through very carefully controlled [Viewing Screen]s that were themselves wrapped behind reflective magics.

Everyone else was getting ready.

Jane was already ready. She had been briefed on her mission statement and was prepared to accept the two people who they assigned her, but those two people were still up there in the main tower, getting briefed.

Jane wasn’t the head of the spear —that was Killzone, and to a lesser extent, Mog— but she was the backup, and she knew she would be needed. And so, Jane gazed out and tried to see what she could, to further prepare.

Ar’Kendrithyst was, and would likely always remain, a land of red and purple crystal towers that swirled with hidden shadows, each spire too tall to ever exist without the assistance of magic. Almost all of the ones around Jane were at least 30 kilometers long. All she could see were the tops, though. Though it was high noon, the depths of the city were deep enough that light failed to penetrate to the bottom. The shadows swirling inside the towers were to blame, dimming an otherwise gorgeous view with darkness.

At least all of the usual monsters were not present. Usually, there would be a horde of munchlings or a leviathan centipede or an actual leviathan to contend with, if one hung around this area long enough. But all the monsters were gone. They were likely under direct control of the soul ooze, though, but no one had actually seen the usual monsters.

Maybe the usual monsters had become food? Maybe they hadn’t been amalgamized into larger, and more dangerous horrors?

Yeah right, Jane thought.

Anyway. The Brightwater was completely different than how it usually was, and Jane wished she could have seen it a year ago. She likely would have been killed if she had tried, but to gaze upon a land of clear crystal towers above an ocean of light would have been a sight to behold.

Now, though, the walls that separated the red-purple kendrithyst from the clear kendrithyst were broken. The auto-magical summoned defenders and the shadeling personnel that usually manned those walls were gone. Shadows from the city had flowed into that once-bright land and turned clear crystal into smoky quartz. The Spire, once the brightest, tallest structure of Ar’Kendrithyst, was gone from the skyline. Apparently Shade Farix had already scouted the place and found nothing, corroborating Killzone’s scouting report.

Taking Farix at his word was foolish, though.

And besides that, every single prognosticator in the area had—

“Yo, Jane.” Mog stepped into the air next to Jane’s tower. “Scoot to the side. I want to talk to you before we go in, before your team shows up for you.”

Jane obliged, granting the comparatively small woman half of the kendrithyst tower’s ‘roof’. “What’s up, guildmaster?”

Mog’s armor didn’t make a sound as she moved to stand next to Jane, planting her feet atop the kendrithyst. “I like how you changed your voice. It makes you more approachable. Also makes you damned scarier in a completely different way.”

Jane smiled. “I’ll have to switch this speech center away once the battle starts to seal up all my vulnerabilities, so the horrible voice will come back. But it’s been nice, yeah.”

Mog nodded, and then she sent, ‘…’

Mog flinched. She stared at Jane, and then tried to connect with a tendril of thought again, but the magic bounced off of Jane’s carapace.

Jane made the connection herself, sending, ‘I can’t turn off the reflection. What’s up?’

Mog frowned, but Jane got the impression that it was more at her own situation, than at Jane. And then she sent, ‘Look. This mission needs to go right. We’re keeping it quiet, but we all knew this could become a crystal mimic scenario if we let it, so we’ve been covertly trying to kill it ourselves for the last twenty days. This thing has rebuffed all our attempts to kill it.’

Jane’s leg hairs stood on end as she involuntarily flexed her abdomen upward. This was news to Jane, and it did not make her feel confident about their chances today.

Mog continued, ‘All of Killzone’s and Silverite’s actions? Acting like this was a new threat? Lies. Obfuscation for the masses. Playing it off like we could handle it at any point in time was necessary because you gotta project confidence as a leader, you know? But know this: Today is our final chance to solve this threat on our own, and we are pulling out all the stops. With these combined forces we should be able to kill the thing, but… This is a breaking point for Spur. If we fail tonight, then we fail more than you know.’

Jane breathed out. ‘So the backup plan is that bad, eh?’

‘Yes.’ Mog gazed across the crystal landscape ahead. ‘If we’re not out ten minutes before sunset the Headmaster is going to bomb this place himself, along with a hundred of his Elites. He’ll make a crater a hundred kilometers across, wiping Ar’Kendrithyst from the map and likely causing untold destruction to Spur and the water table and probably opening up multiple entrances to the Underworld. No one wants that except for the Headmaster; he wants to blast this place to dust, and is quite mad we haven’t let him come in to do just that. Such an action would be the ruination of Spur and the destruction of a great city, full of possibility.’ She added, ‘Maybe we should just let him do that, but…

‘We can do this, Jane.

‘Spur. The people here can solve our own problems.’ Mog sent, ‘That’s what I really came over here to say. Spur has a long history, but we look to have a much longer one than we already have, and Ar’Kendrithyst is still full of treasures to be found. We want you to take a larger share of the responsibility, and the prestige, and the power that this place has to offer. If you want to stay past this calamity. Either way, we’re raising your clearance to a 9-star adventurer. The only thing left to get you 10 star is a Domain. That would mean the whole world is open to you, through the Adventurer’s Guild, with challenges everywhere to be found, but there’s still a lot left to be found here, in Spur.

‘If we can kill this thing and prevent the Headmaster from needing to turn our goldmine into a crater.’

Hitting a high clearance in the Adventurer’s guild would open up the world to her. Dangerous quests. Problems that needed ending. Ohhh. Oh. This was good.

Jane instantly said, ‘I’m on board with this plan.’

With a greatly relieved tone, Mog said, ‘Good. Glad to hear it.’ She added, ‘This might not be a ‘save the world’ mission like Silverite said, but this isn’t a suicide mission, either. We’re doing this safely and with all our people alive at the end of it, no matter the final outcome. If the Headmaster needs to do what he needs to do, then so be it, but this is our home.’

Jane just smiled a little. She liked Mog; the Guildmaster was a good woman. Jane wasn’t happy with how Mog was sweet on Erick, but her father didn’t reciprocate, so that was fine.

Mog glanced up at Jane’s adamantium sword, floating next to Jane’s left pedipalp. ‘Adamantium might be the only thing able to break the core.’ She held up her spiked gloves. ‘I got my own set. Use your sword against the [Ethereal Soul Bolt]s, too; don’t risk your reflection working like it should, especially once we get closer to the core.’

‘Heard loud and clear.’ Jane detached her sword from its position near her pedipalps, and swished it through the air ahead, controlling the near-artifact with the [Flying Striker] spell she had imbued earlier. ‘I really do like this thing, you know? Adamantium is great, but the runework is really amazing.’

‘I had a runic armor set, once.’ Mog sent, ‘It got stripped from me by a Shade that imbued it with [Control Armor] and [Clothe]; pulled it right off of me in the middle of a battle. I prefer plain armor these days.’

‘… Yeah. But…’ Jane sent, ‘They could have taken it from you either way, right?’

‘Aye. Took me a long time to understand that.’

And since Mog had shared something, Jane decided to share something, too, ‘I really do like ending threats, you know? It just feels good to make the world safer by erasing the bad parts.’

Mog smiled wide, her glinting lower fangs barely showing through the slits in her helmet. ‘Soon as you get a Domain you should try the Walk to the Core; see what true monsters look like. I bet this soul ooze would fit right in down below amongst all those greater monsters. Gotta get a writ from a Geode before you do, but that shouldn’t be hard. From what I heard your father is doing great down there.’

‘I wanted to make that journey as soon as he told me about the Variant monsters.’ Jane sent, ‘But they’re no good for Polymage?’

‘Ah. Yeah. Don’t eat any of the monsters down there. They all have Domains and that means that they can try to control you even after they slot into your Familiar Form list. Safer to just fight them instead. See how far you can get.’ Mog stepped back into the air, then made her way back to the main tower, sending, ‘Shouldn’t be long now. Kiri and the archmages will open the way, but we’re going to have to finish it.’

Jane nodded, then went back to watching the shadows swirl inside the crystals of Ar’Kendrithyst.

- - - -

The Brightwater was no longer anything like its name would suggest.

Ringed with crystal towers, the thirty-kilometer deep, 25-kilometers wide at its widest oval-shaped dimensions, Brightwater used to be filled with misty light that obscured everything inside. The mist was still there, but it was a gloom of shadows these days; a byproduct of the constant solar-induced destruction of the ooze down below. That mist protected the ooze from further during the day. The core itself was located somewhere deep below the mists, and below the sea of black ooze hidden by the mist. It was under at least 15 kilometers of ooze. Maybe as much as 20.

Kiri had her crown on today, though, so she was good to go for a lot of mist and ooze destruction…

At least she thought she was, according to the math she had done. [Summon Sunny] cost her 1622 base mana, which was 811 mana after Clarity. At her own modified Focus of 200, thanks to the [Luminous Trap] and All-Stats permanent lightmask crown upon her head, she regenerated 48,000 mana per hour, thanks to Scion of Focus, or 13-14 mana per second. This meant it would take a little over 1 minute to recast Sunny. With her modified Willpower of 200, this meant that every Sunny would come into being with 12,000 mana. 2000 mana would then be instantly spent on a [Reflective Personal Ward]; Kiri was decently happy with that spell, but she could probably do better once she got some more pointers from Erick.

With such a defense, and then running [Greater Lightwalk] the whole time out there for 10 mana per second, Sunny would have been losing mana without access to a Restful space. But Kiri had already solved this problem with a [Restful Ward] that she made a month ago, which cost 250 mana. She could attach these Restful spaces to rocks, which Sunny would then carry with her.

Kiri would eventually be able to make a [Restful Reflection Personal Ward], she was sure, but it hadn’t happened yet, and it likely wouldn’t happen for a while longer. She needed time to work out the math, and she didn’t have a lot of that these days.

Anyway.

With a bit of planning and careful casting, Kiri could pump out a Sunny every minute, and maintain a concentrated burn for a very long time. She couldn’t go full power all the time, but she could contribute a lot, for a long while.

It might be enough.

‘Might’ be enough, because, of course, Silverite and Killzone and the other archmages (who didn’t do much on the battlefield these days) have been trying to kill this thing for the last week. Now how Kiri had missed that, she had no idea.

Poi poked his head into the room. “Your show, Kiri. Light the way.”

Kiri froze, and then she relaxed. She leaned back in her chair, feeling the weight of the crown on her head, and the weight of the world on her shoulders…

Well.

This wasn’t really ‘save the world’ time, but more like ‘prove she was capable of playing in the big leagues’ time.

Kiri focused on the battlefield ahead…

- - - -

Jane had been joined by two people meant to assist her when necessary. A Font from Songli who had been near Jane last night, who hadn’t gotten a chance to assist with the battle because there had been none, and the noble girl who was Jane’s neighbor.

Jane greeted the man first, the Font, saying, “Greetings, Olirio Wild Song. Thank you for joining me again for the day’s events.”

Olirio Wild Song was a demi man with white skin that was the barest violet. All of him was like that, except for his armor, which was fully violet and covered him almost completely. He held his helmet in his hand to bow and greet Jane, as he said, “Greetings again, Jane Flatt. I look forward to actually seeing some action this time.”

It was a polite joke, so Jane gave a polite, small chuckle. Olirio nodded and Jane nodded back, but since she was ten meters wide and three meters tall at the moment, and also a massive blue tarantula, it probably came off more scary than she meant. The noblewoman, who Jane knew, but did not know, controlled her fear response very well, but as Jane moved, the woman started to sweat.

Her fearful sweat made the air taste good, and that made Jane uncomfortable. Jane did not like this good flavor, and she was 100% sure that this fear sense was coming from her leaky lesser rivergrieve Familiar Form. That form was more trouble than it was worth, but it would likely prove itself if she had to swim sometime. Hopefully not today, though, even if the black ooze was technically liquid.

Poi had tested her, though. Jane was still herself, according to the experts!

Jane said to the woman, “I apologize, Lady…” Jane was sure the woman was a Lady, as in a Lady-of-the-Court, but beyond that, she was drawing a blank. “I know we are neighbors, but we have not been introduced yet. I do not actually know your name.”

The girl was caramel of skin, with black hair and bright blue eyes. Her leathers were enchanted, and she wore a clear suit of [Conjure Armor] over those leathers; completely clear magic, too. Either she was skilled in some ways, or she had lucked out with that color.

At Jane’s direct addressing of her, she seemed to relax a little, and said, “Lady Alandria Clayfield of the Greensoil Republic. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. When this is all over, I would like to invite you over for tea, perhaps at a nicer time in the middle of the day than the odd schedule that we’ve been keeping for the last month.” She turned to Olirio, saying, “I would also invite Singer Void Song and her entourage to participate.”

Olirio politely said, “I will pass along the invitation at our earliest convenience.”

“Thank you,” Alandria said, and then she turned to face south, to face the Brightwater. Her fear spiked a bit, according to Jane’s senses, as she said, “I am a Replicant Warrior who will follow in your lead, Miss Jane Flatt. It is my understanding that I and my replications will be acting as decoys to assist you as you kill the big ones; taking the heat off of you as needed.”

Jane smirked a little, though the movement of her large fangs probably came off as something different. Another spike of fear rolled off of Alandria. “I have those replication spells, too. Every elemental version that I could make.”

Alandria nodded. “I understand that my mana is to be used to make replications, and you’re to do what you need to do to take down the targets. And Olirio will keep us both topped off. It will be a slow, methodical kill, with no room for mistakes.”

“Yes.” Jane said, “Slow and steady. We’re mainly keeping the monsters away from Kiri.”

“Ah! Where are my manners.” Alandria said, “I would invite Miss Flamecrash to tea, as well. But anyway: With any luck today, our integration as a unit will go smoothly, for Silverite has called in some Mind Mages from Oceanside. We expect to need to kill 250 greater amalgams, and anywhere from 20 to 40 soul casters.”

Jane said, “The number keeps growing. I’m sure Poi and them can keep it together, though.”

Olirio said, “The Mind Mages are rather good at creating unit cohesion, so— Ah. It’s starting.”

Jane, and everyone else, was already focused south.

Nine Sunnys, looking like pinpricks of green light, entered the sky fifteen kilometers ahead.

Jane could barely see them, and only because of the primal frost owl eyes she had added to the sides of her large frontal eyes, which remained her Eyes of Magic from the shadow spider. She certainly saw the effects, though.

Nine [Luminous Beam]s, like tracers of white laser fire, danced down from the sky above to carve through the gloom below. Jane could not see the target from here, atop this kendrithyst crystal well away from the edge of the Brightwater. It wasn’t time to move up yet—

Killzone’s voice rang out, “Into positions! Forward into the Dark!”

‘That’s the cue,’ Poi’s voice came to her, and also to everyone else in her small, three person group. ‘Handing off your specific delegation to Mind Mage Olirio. Good luck.’

Well wasn’t that a fun little revelation.

Jane felt herself connect to Alandria and Olirio, and then—

Alandria whipped her head toward Olirio. ‘OH.’

Olirio sighed, sending, ‘I am not actually a Classed Mind Mage.’

‘On task, people!’ Jane sent.

With a show of [Greater Lightwalk], Jane and everyone else in her small party moved a kilometer south, and then Alandria cast a [Force Platform] underneath the three of them. It was a perfect, synchronous movement, with Alandria to Jane’s left and Olirio to the right, and the platform perfectly clear and wide enough for Jane not to feel cramped.

And now, she saw the Brightwater as it was, full of gloom from horizon to horizon, like a black ocean of mist, swirling past shorelines made of crystal towers, flowing toward the brilliant center, where light carved a hole into the mist. The mist was a kilometer deep, and Kiri’s [Luminous Beam] had an effective range of several kilometers, but the beam didn’t actually end until its power was absorbed into the surrounding matter. For all Jane knew, Kiri’s [Luminous Beam]s reached ten kilometers deep, burning away the ocean where they touched.

All across the northern edge of the Brightwater, people watched the light show from their own platforms. A few people flew on their own. And the tenth Sunny flickered across the gloom, depositing [True Sunlight Rift]s as she went. Brilliant white light burned away gloom like nothing else. That Sunny spent herself casting orbs everywhere, all along predetermined ‘best positioning’, whatever that meant. Kinda looked like a messed up grid pattern.

Didn’t take long for Sunny to fully expend herself, either; ten orbs, and she was done.

All the while, the Sunnys in the sky continued to drop carving [Luminous Beam]s into the gloom, evaporating the environmental effect. But it was like boiling away the center of an ocean; there was always more water to fill the hole.

It didn’t take long for a shift to occur in that ocean.

For all across the entire Brightwater, and indeed across all of Ar’Kendrithyst, the gloom flowed to where Kiri boiled it away, rushing in to replace that which was lost. More little green couatls came in to replace those who expended themselves, in a slow, methodical pattern, with a few of them continuously keeping up the [Luminous Beam] burn in the center, which arguably erased the most ‘water’ of the ocean, while even more dropped Sunlight all across the darkness, keeping the burn sustained. It was the same scene that played out all across Spur’s outermost wall, every night, except this time they were here, in the heart of this dark land.

And the [Luminous Beam]s were a new tactic. Jane had only guessed that they burned away a lot more black ocean than the Sunlight orbs, but truthfully, she didn’t know. Perhaps they did. More importantly, though, they gave the monsters under the ocean a direct target to focus on, wherever those monsters might be down there in that ooze.

Maybe Jane finally would finally get to kill the thing today. Or maybe Kiri could do it on her own. Maybe, all that was needed was Kiri, doing this for a few hours, to solve this entire problem. Maybe, once she uncovered the ooze’s core, she could kill the thing all on her own with all of those Beams she was laying down. The Army was actually hoping for this outcome, and a small part of Jane was, too, but they expected Kiri’s spellwork to fail as amalgams started to appear and fight back.

This was why all the rest of them were here, after all.

Jane’s dozen spider hearts beat hard inside her abdomen and chest, as Kiri’s magic finally burned through the gloom, exposing the black ocean below it all. With the ocean exposed, the noon sun above helped to break apart the ocean, rapidly breaking up the surface, dropping that surface down a meter each second. Kiri followed the descending ocean with more layers of orbs. There were three layers now, each 100 meters lower than the layer before, each of those layers locking down the flowing gloom pouring in from all the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst, to ensure the black ocean remained uncovered.

That black ocean roared in from the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst, flowing toward the Brightwater. An ocean of dead souls poured through gaps in the wall, rushing forward, forming black waterfalls and filling the air with even more mist that failed to protect the dark waters. But there was something else inside. As Jane looked with her Eyes of Magic, she saw a force inside that black ocean, drawing it into the Brightwater. Some of those waterfalls weren’t just falling. They were being pulled into the Brightwater like intestines from a stomach; dead souls knotted together into something more than simple liquid.

And yet, no amalgams appeared. No defenders. No bloated soul casters.

Jane calmed down a bit, as nothing continued to happen. The black ocean boiled under the combined might of Kiri’s ever-deepening layers of Sunlight Orbs. Four or five Sunnys continued to blast away at the center with [Luminous Beam]s. And Jane waited—

At once, every single Sunny doubled up on their [Luminous Beam]s and traced their attack to the left, carving a dancing swirl of light into a newly apparent target. Something died far below. The layers of orbs were now ten deep, and getting deeper.

‘Position holding,’ came Poi’s voice, to what Jane assumed was everyone. ‘Assume amalgams soon.’

Olirio answered Jane’s unasked question, ‘Kiri tracked and killed an amalgam; that’s what that was. Not a soul caster, though. A normal one. The soul ooze is starting to fight back.’

One of the lights at the lowest level blinked out. And then another vanished. Down below, under the ocean, looking like a skull of a giant just under the waters, that skull spit [Dispelling Bolt]s upward. It was a dispelling amalgam. They all looked like that. They waited in the ooze and you didn’t see them until they [Dispel]ed you.

Jane watched as a black bolt stepped off of a platform to the far left and descended to the ocean below like a javelin thrown by a god, aiming directly at the dispeller. Killzone was taking the first amalgam.

‘All platforms descend one kilometer,’ Poi sent. ‘Slow and steady.’

As one, that was exactly what Jane and her companions did, dropping out of the sky and flickering down into the Brightwater. Alandria cast another clear platform and they resumed their positioning about 150 meters above the black ocean, Just outside of [Dispel] range. Smoky crystal towers rose behind them while Kiri’s rifts hung in the air before them. The black ocean boiled, and in the daytime, and this close, Jane could see that calling it a ‘black ocean’ wasn’t exactly true.

Alandria gasped a little as she looked down. Olirio frowned. Jane watched as a sea of people-shaped black souls, all jammed together into a writhing mass, burned away under Kiri’s light, their faces appearing and then vanishing as they silently screamed their torment into an uncaring world.

‘That’s normal’. Jane sent them, ‘I guess you can finally see them, though. Now that it's daytime. The shadows inside the kendrithyst are like this, too, but only if you really look. This liquid state makes them a lot more visible.’

‘Oh, by all the bright gods.’ Alandria sent, ‘It’s true, then. Are they really Melemizargo’s followers from the Old Cosmology?’

‘That’s what I hear.’ Olirio sent, ‘I did not put stock in those rumors until now.’

‘We’re not actually sure what they are, but that’s the most accepted interpretation of what is inside the crystals.’ Jane sent, ‘And I guess that’s what these things are from. I have to wonder, though, if the soul ooze has a core, and any oozy thing with a core is a slime then this thing is actually a slime, and it’s doing what slimes do; it cleans up dead things.’

‘Slimes are cute little things. Cleaners.’ Alandria sent, ‘Not this abomination.’

‘If it’s actually cleaning up these old souls, then maybe that’s exactly what is happening,’ Jane repeated, for she didn’t think Alandria heard her.

‘… Maybe.’ Olirio sent, ‘Maybe that’s exactly— Jane.’ He pointed to the right. ‘That’s yours.’

A certain kind of calm came over Jane in that moment and she relished the feeling. As she lit her sword with prismatic light and turned herself into the same, sweeping out with a [Cleansing Aura] the very next Script Second, she was ready. Down below was her target; the only one in sight, though that was certainly going to change soon enough.

All across the dark ocean of the Brightwater, amalgams were beginning to surface from the blackened souls of the long dead, like horrific visions of life that should not be alive. Arms attached to heads. Legs attached to arms. Eyes were on chests as intestines spilled out all across the surface of the ooze. The basic building blocks of the amalgams rose from the depths, and then, they shifted.

Arms went to the sides of bodies where they would provide the most leverage to cast spells or wield giant [Conjured Weapon]s, like swords ten meters long, or clubs of the same. Eyes went all around heads. Torsos gained legs, and then those legs morphed together, twisting into fish tails, or water strider legs so they could stand atop the ooze and move freely.

Jane’s target was a water strider twenty meters wide and ten tall, with ten legs and ten sets of arms, half of those arms wielding swords and the other half holding onto balls of shadowy magic, just waiting for something to target. It had a massive giant head for a head, proving itself as a dispelling amalgam with tricks.

Jane leapt off her perch and dove straight at it.

Her sword flickered fast to deflect three separate, instant attempts to strike her with dispelling bolts. Ten other attempts simply missed. With a strike made of light and everything else, Jane carved the creature through from top to bottom, carving the skull-head in half as she landed below the amalgam. Her legs stopped a bare fraction before she would have plunged into the boiling black ocean, while her [Cleansing Aura] burned away the slight goop still left on the creature, and then got to work on the soul ooze below. The amalgam flopped a little, arms on one side trying to hold onto the arms of another side, trying to hold its head together, but it could not. It was not dead, yet. So to get the message fully across, Jane took her sword, empowered it even further, and spun it like a blender blade above her body.

She cut through the legs of the creature, causing it to fall into her spinning prismatic light, and Jane ascended, turning the greater amalgam into a whole lot of dead pieces that were both on fire, and already getting [Cleanse]d away.

Jane left the dead, half-[Cleanse]d thing behind, ascending back up top to rejoin her small group, but on a separate platform. Alandria had conjured the second one for her, specifically, so they wouldn’t be exposed to any potential ooze drippings.

Olirio asked, ‘Health? Mana? Soul ooze status?’

‘I’m good.’ Jane glanced at her Status. ‘Still immune to the soul ooze soul attack and I was running [Cleansing Aura] the whole time. Only took 500 Health and Mana to kill that thing and I already got a [Rejuvenation] going to replenish most of that Health. My Mana Exhaustion limit is 180,000, while Health Fatigue is at 110,000. I can kill 300 more like that one, no problem.’

Alandria sagged a little with relief. ‘You are very good at this, Miss Flatt.’

Olirio sent, ‘With any luck you will not reach that limit.’

Jane lifted a leg and pointed across the land, southward, sending, ‘New Brightwater is taking care of amalgams on their side, too, so I don’t think I’ll be anywhere close to that limit— Ah! That one looks different. Oh! Is that one of them? The soul bolters?’

‘… Yes,’ Olirio sent, looking pensive.

A large, bloated white thing, like the corpse of a whale that forgot it should sink, had bobbed up to the surface where Kiri’s beams burrowed into the soul ooze. Kiri broke off her attacks instantly, each Sunny vanishing from the sky as though dismissed.

Olirio sent, ‘That’s a soul amalgam. They’re… Oh. Uh.’

A second soul amalgam bobbed to the surface near the first one. It was half again larger than the first one, looking like a true balloon, but with eyes and arms scattered across its whole surface. Those eyes tracked the Sun Orbs Kiri had cast into the air and the hands spit out blobs of shadow that slowly, methodically tracked up to the rifts.

The first shadow bolt struck the first rift and corrupted that rift into something darker. Shadow poured out of the rift, breaking every single sun rift in the area before popping and filling that part of the sky with gloom. That airy shadow then spread like a cooling blanket across a kilometer-sized section of the ocean, preventing the surviving rifts in that area from further boiling away the soul ooze.

The actual sun and all the other rifts were still burning it all away, but Jane doubted that there were only two soul casters down there in the black muck.

Ah. Hmm.

Kiri would not be able to do this on her own, it seemed.

Jane tried not to be too happy about that as she sent, ‘Shame, I guess. So which one am I killing?’

And at that, something in Alandria seemed to snap, ‘One misstep and these things will kill everyone! How can you be so flippant!’

Jane had to smile at that. ‘See. There’s this thing about magic under the Script: Every magic has a built-in weakness, and the weakness of Soul Magic is the Health of the thing it’s targeting. I have over 5,000 Health and a very strong reflection. That Soul Magic isn’t going to affect me.’

Alandria blinked as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Olirio, however, was right there with Jane, sending her, ‘They have no Domains. General Killzone is on the large one. You are on the small one. Attack in three. Two…’

Jane shot through the sky at one.

The approach was not instantaneous. The soul amalgam had hundreds of eyes everywhere around its body. It saw Jane just long enough to get off a few slow-moving Bolts. One bit of dark soul magic bounced off of her bright blue hairs, while the other got split in half with the radiance of her sword. And then she entered the creature, cutting a slit in the side of it and ripping her way inside as even more [Dispel]s clashed with her body like ripples of shadow, but she kept her [Cleansing Aura] running on her insides, along with her [Prismatic Body]. Her reflective carapace and hairs were innate biology; this magic couldn’t do shit against her.

With a ripping, spinning, continuous slash of power, Jane ripped through the soul caster amalgam. She exited the other side and half of the creature’s mass exploded out with her, sprinkling the surface of the ocean like so much chum. Some of it evaporated away under her [Cleansing Aura], but some sank out of sight.

To her side, Killzone exited from the larger amalgam, bursting the thing like armor-piercing ammo exiting a skull, shattering the thing wide open.

Sunnys descended and erased the half-dead amalgams from existence with a coordinated attack of ten [Luminous Beam]s at once.

Jane retreated back to her waiting position, atop her platform.

Kiri reset her rifts across the battlefield and resumed drilling with [Luminous Beam]s.

Alandria whispered, “That was… Dangerous, Miss Flatt.”

Jane smiled wide, sending, ‘It might not be as impressive as a sky full of burning light, but monster forms can be a lot better in certain—’

‘Apologies for interrupting.’ Olirio sent, ‘Amalgams are surfacing everywhere. We will begin methodical eradication procedures.’

The entire Brightwater burbled with power as bodies surfaced and stitched together into macabre amalgams. Seven greater amalgams appeared right underneath Jane and her team. At a glance, Jane counted a thousand, or maybe three thousand; she had no idea how to estimate what she was seeing. That was probably her own fear response talking, for she spotted at least a hundred soul amalgams bobbing up among the rest, like bloated corpses.

But what was worse were all the monster amalgams.

Spur hadn’t seen many actual monster amalgams in the nightly sieges. But now, here they were.

Centipedes that had hunted inside Ar’Kendrithyst like freight trains slipping around crystal towers, now wormed out from the black ocean, rushing up the crystal towers exactly how they used to move in life. But now they had about a thousand extra heads, all along their bodies, all screaming at once. Dispeller amalgams, version two.

Kendrithyst mimics, the granddaddy version of crystal mimics and each thirty meters tall, at least, pulled themselves out of the muck. They had eyes now, all along the lengths of each red-purple-shadow crystal spike, and a mouth at their base that screamed, warbling the black ocean as they flowed across the surface like the water strider amalgam.

Giants, twisted to foul purpose and fouler bodies, pulled themselves out of the black ocean, dripping soul ooze the whole way, as they then climbed into the air like they were slowly stepping up invisible stairs—

HOLY SHIT. THEY COULD FLY NOW.

An ethereal blast of black light pulsed up from below, instantly spreading through the sky before fading away. Jane didn’t even have time to step into the air under Alandria and Olirio, to body block for them. She guessed it was an aura attack from the soul ooze itself, but the light passed, and Jane’s Status held steady, and neither Alandria or Olirio looked affected…

Ah.

Ah.

This was going very badly, wasn’t it. As she looked to her temporary companions, Jane giggled a bit with nervousness. They were looking around and acting like they were still alive. So maybe that wasn’t an amalgamation aura? It could have just been—

And then she froze.

She hadn’t taken her sights off the monsters crawling up from below, and now, she saw one that she did not want to see. Long skinny arms. Long skinny legs. Small hands and feet that could not truly support the body of the creature, which was a great big mouth attached to a fluffy body. A person could easily mistake the main monster for the top of a palm tree at night, if you didn’t know any better. The creatures were blacker than the ooze they had crawled from, and each had a dozen beady little black eyes to go with their amalgamated bodies.

‘Retreat has been called.’ Olirio sent, ‘Now.’

And they did. Up, up, up. All the way to the top, back to where they started this battle.

The twisted monsters followed.

Jane sent to everyone near her, and also Poi back in Spur, ‘You saw the black moon reachers! Right! They’re here! We’ve been looking for them since they first appeared and here they are!’

Alandria stared down at the encroaching horde, asking, ‘… Did we leave all the monsters behind?’

… What?

No. They were still right down there. They were still a kilometer away but—

Ah.

Jane felt a horror creep up her abdomen as she glanced down and really saw the horde. They were mostly stuck to the crystal towers, climbing manually, but a few floated or flew through the air, like they had cast [Fly]. But one in particular, barreling right at Jane, flying through the sky, right at her, was a black moon reacher with five arms and three legs.

And one of her temporary companions was acting like the monsters were gone.

Alandria stared down through her Platform at the encroaching horde with a puzzled look upon her face.

Olirio sent, ‘Holy shit. Uh. Alandria. Listen to me. Evacuate—’

At that moment, Alandria finally looked to Jane. Her eyes went wide as moons.

And then she screamed and blipped away.

Jane ignored that and sent to Olirio, ‘You should evacuate too. I can’t protect you from them.’

‘I’ll be at Forward Base, clearing minds. Kill the reachers first and don’t get touched; they can reach through magic. Find me when you need mana.’

And then Olirio blipped away, too.

Jane turned back toward the ascending horde and psyched herself up.

This was going to be dangerous fun; the absolute best kind.