465

Chapter 463: A Cage of Light

CECILIA

My impatience stung like nettles under my skin, but watching the surge of effort from the Instillers and their Wraith protectors was a balm to my nerves. The last two weeks had passed slowly and with increasing frustration, but it was finally time. Everything was in place within the Beast Glades. Although complicated by the dragons’ increased patrols and taking over the flying castle hovering to the east, we were ready.

Under a shroud of mist that hid our signatures, swallowed the noise of our passage, and obscured us from view from above, my people moved into place.

There were at least fifty Instillers, Agrona’s most trusted and knowledgeable servants, all carrying a plethora of dimensional storage devices. I flew above while they marched in jagged lines like many ants below. Ten full battle groups of Wraiths flew around us, keeping to the cover of the drifting cloud of thick mist so their signatures wouldn’t be noticed by any dragon guards.

I could neither see or sense any dragons—not nearby, anyway. A patrol of guards was passing over the encampments built by the defeated Alacryan soldiers to the north, and a few blurred together within the flying castle some way to the east.

Just above us, suspended in the sky a hundred feet or so above the trees, a very different sort of mana signature seemed to simmer just beneath the surface of what was normally detectable to the bare senses. There was no visual distortion, at least not from within our misty cloud and beneath the canopy of thin, half-dead trees.

It was fascinating, really. Although we’d been calling it a “rift,” it was more like the mouth of a waterskin, and through it—within the waterskin—was all of Epheotus. The magic required to bend space in this way, forcing a piece of our world to bulge out into some other realm, was incomprehensible to me. But the mechanism by which it remained hidden, that I now understood.

The presence of the rift, or rather the intense pressure of the mana flowing into and then back out of it, caused distortions that rippled out for a hundred miles in every direction. When the inward flowing mana—which was being drawn into Epheotus—was balanced with the mana being projected back out of it by the asuras, that equilibrium disguised the rift’s real location in the midst of all that disturbance happening elsewhere. It required only a bit of effort on the dragons’ part to bend the light so that there was no physical manifestation of this.

Once found, though, it was now impossible for me not to see. Neither Nico nor any of the Wraiths who had already been here could sense it, no matter how specific I was or how much they stared, but when I looked beneath the surface of what was shown, I saw the cyclone of mana beneath, simultaneously being drawn in and expelled.

I indicated exactly where the rift was, and the Instillers got to work. Spreading out, they began to rapidly withdraw equipment from their dimension artifacts, assembling large devices in a circle around where the rift hovered high above. The mist spread as they did, creeping across the hard ground and between the crooked and dying trees that dominated this section of the Beast Glades, ensuring they remained obscured and undetectable.

As I watched the Instillers set about their work, I thought of Nico, hoping he would be safe. Dicathen’s defenders had been busily scuttling into strongholds across the continent. As Agrona had anticipated, Grey seemed to have vanished, going underground, but the information from our spies was conflicting. Even his own people seemed convinced that Grey was in multiple places at once.

My lips curled into a sneer. As if Agrona would be fooled but such a weak attempt at a diversion.

The closest location was the Wall. As I waited, I expanded out my senses. It took time to go so far. The feedback was weak—a dim cluster of distant signatures. I could feel Nico and Dragoth, as well as a bright spark of mana that must have been a Lance. It was subtle, but beneath the undercurrent of everything else, there was a small distortion in the mana, like an opposing force pressing against it.

Grey and his dragon companion? I wondered, trying to parse what I was sensing. I’d tasted the dragon’s mana, and there was a hint of it there, but it felt as if they were shrouding themselves somehow. Surely it won’t be so easy as that…

My eyes snapped open and my thoughts wrenched back to my own task. The ring of artifacts was half in place. It was time.

First, I felt for the edges of the spell distorting light to wrap around the rift. Though powerful, it relied largely on the swell of magical energy to disguise its very presence. Once I had the spell in my grip, I dragged it aside like a curtain over a window. Unexpectedly, the spell resisted, as if there were someone standing on the other side holding it closed.

I pulled harder, and the spell ripped, pulling apart in a visible shower of pure mana. White light sparkled out in every direction to rain down on my people, and a sickening twist of mana seemed to churn the air inside my lungs.

The white sparks burned brighter, hotter, as they fell, and I realized the danger almost too late.

“Shields!” I shouted, waving my hands to conjure a protective barrier over the Wraiths and Instillers. Wherever the white sparks settled, they burned against the shield, mana crackling and popping against mana.

After a second of surprise, the Wraiths began to conjure their own barriers, buttressing mine against the intense potency of the falling sparks.

Above, the rift was now fully in view, a gash in the sky, the air seemingly to fold around it at the edges, like flesh opened by a sharp blade. The sky beyond was a slightly different shade of blue, just alien enough to conjure gooseflesh along my arms and neck. Inside the ripple in space, three distorted figures floated.

The Wraiths burst into action, four battle groups remaining at ground level and focusing purely on defending our Instillers, without whom everything would fail, while the other six broke and flew away, maneuvering around well outside the shower of sparks and flying high, encircling the rift.

I floated upward after them, moving the mana barrier with me, warping it to envelope the remnants of the strange burning-spark spell, the opposing forces grinding against one another like two tectonic plates. As the sparks failed and faded, the shield broke down, and I absorbed the remaining mana; it was tinged with a draconic attribute.

The three figures flew free of the rift, and the atmosphere—the very fabric of reality itself—seemed to tremble at their presence. Inside me, Tessia stirred in response. She was afraid.

They spoke as one, three voices echoing over and under and through each other. “This holy place is under the protection of Lord Kezess Indrath. To attack it—to affect it in any way—is sacrilege of the highest order. The punishment for your presence here is immediate death, reincarnate.”

I smirked up at them, enjoying the theatricality of it all. They were even dressed like they were in some kind of play and not on the field of battle, their ceremonial white robes gleaming with golden embroidery the same color as their golden hair. “The bravery of your words is only just a little bit spoiled by the fact you were cowering behind a spell to keep you hidden from me. You know who I am, but maybe you don’t know what I can do. If you did, you would have turned around and flew right back where you came from.”

Mana rippled in the way it did around Arthur and his weapon, and the three dragons blinked away, appearing outside the ring of Wraiths. Their amethyst eyes lit from within, and violent purple beams of light blazed between them, creating a triangle around us all, with the rift at its center.

Panic surged up from deep within me, sudden and visceral and so certain. “Attack!” I screamed.

The sky transformed with dozens of spells as six Wraith battle groups unleashed their full offensive power on the three targets.

A cage of light spread from the beams of what could only be aether, spilling down to the ground and closing over our heads. The Wraiths’ spells burst against the inside of the cage, sending soft waves undulating across its surface. The sound of hissing acid and crashing thunder and blood iron shattering against the aether made my ears ring, and the smell of toxic water and scorched ozone burned my nostrils.

On the other side of the barrier, the three dragons seemed in a trance. They did not blink or flinch as so many powerful spells crashed into their conjured barrier. They didn’t chant or gesture with arcane meaning. Except for the breeze blowing through their gleaming golden hair and white robes, and a subtle pulsing inside the brightness of their glowing purple eyes, they were motionless.

My heart hammered inside my chest as something clawed up at me from my guts. There was a feeling of wrongness within the cage, a sense of inevitable ruin. The Wraiths fought through it, but the Instillers on the ground had ceased their work, paralyzed by the oppressive force of the aetheric spell.

Something was growing inside the cage with us—an empty nothingness, like a hunger that couldn’t be sated.

Reaching out with desperate claws of mana and pure force, I ripped and tore at the inside of the aetheric walls, willing the mana to dissipate the aether. The aether rippled forcefully, but it didn’t break.

The Wraiths continued to bombard the walls as well, and I could sense my own desperation bleeding into them as they grew first uncertain and then panicked, but I struggled to rein myself in.

Abandoning my attacks, I grasped for the mana on the other side of the barrier, but I couldn’t reach it.

And still, the three dragons were cold and emotionless. No glint of victory reached their eyes, no grimace of strain bared their teeth. They were like three frustrating statues emanating their aetheric spell. Even as I thought this, though, all three sets of eyes shifted slightly, darkening and focusing on the rift. My own gaze was pulled slowly along behind theirs.

Black-purple light began to emanate from the rift, which was within the cage with us. The something that was being called, that I had felt from the instant the cage appeared, was coming through, closing in on us. I felt hunger gnawing at me, the bitter coldness of it gripping my bones in teeth of fear.

I stared into the void, conjured through the walls between the worlds to swallow us whole. It spilled from the rift like a dark cloud, like blood from a cut, like fetid breath from a rotting mouth.

Reaching out, I took hold of as much mana as I could and condensed it around the rift, a storm of ice and wind and shadow. The void consumed it, dragging the mana into itself, where it was snuffed out. And I suddenly understood. The void would spread throughout the cage, devouring all within. It was a trap from the beginning.

My fear gave way to anger and frustration. I slammed a wall of mana into the void, attempting to disrupt it or push it back into the rift, but the emptiness only swallowed my mana, and my efforts only seemed to speed its growth.

I needed to subdue it, delay it—anything to give myself time to think. How did one stop nothing?

I vacillated rapidly between wanting to keep attacking the cage in an attempt to break free or focusing on the growing black-purple darkness.

“You, you, and you, bombard the barrier! Focus on a single point—make a dent, a crack, anything!” I ordered, gesturing to three battle groups. “All the rest, hold your positions!” I finished, watching breathlessly as the cloud of purple-black nothing spilled down from above.

All the beautiful blues, greens, yellows, and reds of the atmospheric mana dissolved to colorless nothing as the cloud crept down the sky. Soon, there would be no mana left inside the aetheric cage with us at all, and then…

Knowing that I would need that mana, I pulled it away from the void, emptying the air around it of mana, matching it with a void of my own making.

Its progress seemed to slow, oozing left and right, spilling outward like a puddle, and I startled. It reminded me of nothing so much as a wild beast sniffing around for prey.

“Wrastor, take your battle group and circle around. Get above the emanation, above the rift,” I ordered.

The Wraith did not hesitate, snapping into motion as he and his brethren skirted around the edge of the darkness, disappearing from sight above. But I could feel the signature they were giving off, and so, apparently, could the void, because its downward progress gusted to a halt while it began inching its way up toward the Wraiths, expanding as it did so, filling up every space it passed over.

The five Wraiths conjured barriers of protective mana around themselves so that they were wreathed in flame, shadow, and wind. I drew away the mana between them and the void cloud, but this time, it did not stop. They were too close, perhaps, their signatures too strong.

Tendrils of black-purple darkness reached for them, forcing them to fly up, but they were near the ceiling already. So close, the void seemed to be dragging the mana away from them, their shields spilling into it, the mana particles blowing off them like dandelion seeds before vanishing.

A tendril brushed against a Wraith’s foot, and the appendage dissolved, conjuring a surprised scream.

The mass of hungry emptiness sped toward the five Wraiths, spilling up into the sky above the portal.

“Everyone, focus on the walls there, there, and there!” I shouted urgently, pointing to the spots closest to the dragons.

As if broken out of a trance, the other battle groups joined the first two I’d assigned to attack the walls, bombarding the aetheric barrier with every spell at their disposal as they released a colossal outpouring of destructive mana. Blood iron, soulfire, void wind, and bile water-attribute spells struck, hammered, splashed, and sliced the walls containing us, all contained to those three narrow points.

But my thoughts were condensing too slowly. There was only so much mana in this small slice of ground—only so much in me—and the void cloud was consuming it rapidly.

Cursing under my breath, I wished suddenly that Nico was there. He was the smart one, the one with the plans. He would have some clever idea, some way to turn the void against them…

Outside, the three dragons remained in their trance, apparently concentrating all their effort on maintaining their spells.

The dark cloud spread above us, cutting off the five Wraiths. The wounded woman attempted to fly around it and rejoin us, but the void moved with her. She tried to reverse course, but too late. With a truncated scream, it subsumed her, leaving nothing behind but more emptiness.

In doing so, it brushed against the outer walls. When the first tendril of the moving void touched the aether of our cage, the vibrant purple energy shimmered, trembling outward across the entire surface of the vast magical structure, and the void recoiled, drawn toward four remaining Wraiths instead.

Outside our cage, the dragons shifted for the first time, a trembling tension shared between the three, as if concentrating on their spells had just become that much more difficult.

It was confirmation enough.

Grasping the mana around the four Wraiths, I plunged it like a tether into the gnawing emptiness. As I’d expected, it took in the mana hungrily, drawn naturally upward to fill the space above the rift. One by one, Wrastor and the rest of his team vanished within it. With the void suddenly expanding rapidly, it couldn’t help but press against the walls and ceiling, sending crackling waves of energy rippling across the outside of the towering pillar of purple light that entrapped us.

One of the dragons shouted in dismay.

“Ready your spells!” I screamed, my voice cracking with fear and anticipation.

The remaining Wraiths paused in their assault, focusing instead on the dragons as they waited, buzzing with tension and magic.

Sweat trickled down the dragons’ brows, and their statuesque stillness gave way to geriatric quivering.

What I had learned about dragon aether arts returned to me through the fog of war. They did not control aether in the same way I controlled mana, only coaxed it to do as they wished. This spell was incredibly powerful, so much so that it took three of them to conjure it. And the void…whatever dark arts they used to summon it, surely their control over it was limited. I could see that in their strained and fearful expressions through the transparent walls of aether.

This was an act of desperation. They were pushing themselves and their magic to the edge of their control to destroy me.

Even as I realized what I needed to do, the darkness began descending yet again, creeping into the emptiness I had conjured between us and it.

The atmosphere at the bottom of our cage was thick with all the mana that I’d transplanted to create that barrier. Now, I took hold of it, pulling it all close to me. Some of the Instillers and Wraiths cried out as they felt the mana go, but I had no time to explain.

When all that condensed mana of the area directly around the rift was forced together like a hot white soup sloshing in the air around me, I took a long, shaking breath. With one last glance at where the void crackled and dragged across the aetheric walls, I hurled the mana upward, forcing it as far and as fast as I could.

The living darkness of the void took it in greedily, absorbing and unmaking all the mana I could give it. It swelled and seethed, growing rapidly, surging down toward us and pressing against the barriers constraining it, dark tendrils digging into the aetheric walls. Like ice freezing the cracks between cobblestones, the void expanded.

There was no explosion, no fireworks, not even a noise. One moment the cage surrounded us, the next it simply dissolved into purple mist and then to nothing at all, and the void lost form and shape, like a wisp of cloud quickly blown away.

The dragon to my left sagged under the backlash of the spell’s failure and could do nothing to defend himself as the Wraiths’ spells converged on him. As ancient and powerful as he perhaps was, he was still flesh and bone, and under the rain of destructive magic, his skin broke open, his bones shattered and turned to dust, and only very little of him at all remained to tumble like a wingless bird into the Beast Glades below.

Despite a sudden punishing fatigue that made my arms feel like lead and my skull pulse with each desperate beat of my heart, I rushed to take hold of the mana around the dragon to my right and ripped it away, creating a pocket of empty space around him. His eyes rolled back into his head as he struggled to keep hold of his own mana, fighting back at my control and slinging out wild spells.

A gout of silver fire scorched the air between us, and I intercepted it with a gleaming shield, my body aching with the effort. Burning whips cracked around the shield’s edges, emanating from the silver flames, and I severed them with conjured blades. The flames combusted, launching apart in several smaller fireballs that all dropped like catapult stones toward the Instillers still struggling to set up the equipment below.

But the flames flagged and withered to nothing as I fought to cancel out the spell, releasing the mana back into the atmosphere.

From the corner of my eye, I saw spells flying at the other surviving dragon, but dozens of interlocking plates of bright violet energy appeared around her, moving smoothly past each other like the cogs of a complex watch to catch the Wraiths’ attacks and diffuse them, never taking the full brunt of so many spells on any single plate.

The dragon whose mana I had forced away was struggling to stay upright, but my arms still trembled as I deflected his spells. We sat in equilibrium for a moment, both red-faced and sweating, his pure mana flashing between us with each attack. I bided my time, just for a moment, trying to catch my breath and still my quivering muscles.

Each attack was weaker and slower, until I was able to reach out and snuff a bolt of pure mana on the dragon’s very fingertips. With a wary, desperate moan, I clenched my fist, and around him, the mana I’d pulled aside surged back in, crushing his unprotected body like an insect between my fingers, and then his corpse also plunged from the sky.

Mana moved behind me—not condensing into a spell, but being brushed out of the way of one—and I dodged just as a short spear of aether thrust at the base of my neck. The blow, viper-strike quick, nicked the top of my shoulder, drawing a hot line of pain and blood.

Elsewhere, dozens of other spears appeared out of thin air at the same moment, and several of my Wraiths cried out simultaneously as aether pierced their cores.

Cursing, I barely dodged another attack, then a third, unable to strike back or assist the others as spear after spear formed and stabbed, each one coming from a different direction, intercepting my path or even attempting to thrust into the direction I would be forced to dodge.

Remembering my battle with Arthur, I wrapped my hands in mana and feinted an off-course, lurching dodge away from one spear. When I felt the shifting of the air and mana that indicated a new spear forming, I grabbed it with both hands even before it could launch itself at my throat. Mana swelled into my arms, shoulders, and chest, my physical strength surging, and I spun through the air.

Before a new spear could manifest, I launched the one in my hands, wrapping my own mana around it. It flew like the bullet of an old earth firearm, almost too fast to see with the naked eye. When it struck the spinning mechanism of clockwork magic plates, the aether spear shattered one small shield before slamming into the woman’s stomach. Her body lurched backwards, colliding with her own spell, which battered her back and forth several times before both the spear and the shields faded.

She fell in slow motion, still conscious enough to channel her magic but lacking the strength or wherewithal to keep herself aloft or prepare new defenses.

Or so I thought.

In the moment of hesitation that followed, the Wraiths all looking to me for orders, the woman launched herself toward the rift, becoming little more than a streak of white and gold as her body expanded rapidly outward, wings sprouting from her back, scales growing over her flesh, her neck shooting forward as it elongated.

Pushing off against the mana as if it were a wall, I hurled myself into her path.

The enormous dragon’s neck twisted around, glowing amethyst eyes alight with fear and fury. She bared teeth as long as swords and snapped at me.

Gravity increased so quickly and with such enormous pressure that the reptilian jaws snapped shut again, teeth breaking and embedding themselves into the flesh of her mouth. Her wings bent awkwardly, the membranes tearing and the light bones snapping like twigs. All her forward momentum was absorbed by the gravity, and she tumbled back the way she had come. Not straight down, which would have damaged the equipment, but at a slight angle. When she hit the ground, several Instillers fell as well, the shockwave of her impact digging a hundred foot long trench into the hard-packed ground and obscuring her in a cloud of dust.

The surviving Wraiths, each one with a spell burning in their hands, arranged themselves around the dust, prepared to eviscerate the dragon at any sign of movement.

But I could feel her struggle, see the weak effort of her mana to push back against the gravity well. Under the cover of the dust, I saw her outline in mana shrinking, resuming her humanoid form. Unhurried, I drifted down into the dust. A breeze blew around me, pushing the dust away to reveal, lying at the bottom of a huge crater, the final surviving asura.

I wondered, very briefly, who these three had been. How long had they labored to learn the aether arts they had performed today? I could only imagine the heights of their presumptuous arrogance as they accepted the task their lord gave them…and the depth of their regret and despair as they realized that they’d failed.

The woman coughed up blood, her body spasming with pain, then relaxed, unfurling across the ground to stare up at me. The weight of millenia settled on me beneath her gaze. All that life…and I have undone it. This thought was met with pride and confidence, but also…something deeper and harder to identify.

I shook it off and kneeled beside the dragon. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed with difficulty. I thought perhaps she would say something, beg me for life or admonish me for my service to Agrona, but she was silent.

Reaching out, I gripped her mana and began to siphon it away from her, absorbing it fully. Arthur’s companion had only given me a taste, but it hadn’t been enough to really gain a sense of the dragons’ magic and abilities. I needed that insight in order to more fully counter their mana arts.

She fought me—she could hardly do anything else, I imagined. It was instinct, like clawing at hands wrapped around her throat. But she was too far gone, and her efforts were feeble.

I braced myself for whatever might come with the mana, afraid but also tantalized by the opportunity to see her memories. However, it seemed as if that part of the process was something unique to the phoenixes—or, I realized somewhat uncomfortably, perhaps even a purposeful effect by Dawn in the moments of her death—because all I experienced was the power itself.

The particular aspect of dragon mana—pure mana—unfolded in my mind. No lesser core had ever clarified mana so brilliantly, even my own. It shone like snowflakes on a cold, bright midwinter morning. In some ways, it was the opposite of basilisk mana, which was dark and twisted, resulting in their decay-type mana arts—or perhaps because of them. I breathed it in, reveling in the energy and power that suffused me.

The asuran woman shivered, her flesh collapsing inward as the mana-suffused tissue beneath it was wrung out. Her eyes faded to a pale lavender, her skin grayed, and her hair thinned. Her handsome beauty, like her strength, left her. And then…she was dead.

I sucked in a deep, fortifying breath, the infusion of draconic mana crackling in my muscles and behind my eyes, undoing some of my fatigue.

And then my eyes snapped open as I felt the distant movement of similar mana signatures. Similar, but less, I noted. None of the dragons I could sense had the strength of these three, but eight—no, ten—dragon mana signatures were approaching rapidly from the north and the east.

“Quickly, complete the arrays!” I snapped, shooting up into the air.

Below me, the Instillers hurriedly continued the process of setting up the equipment. I scanned the horizon, but the dragons were still too far off to see. Can the remaining Wraiths and I hold off so many? I asked myself, but I knew the answer. It had never been the plan for me to fight all the dragons on Dicathen at once.

As I watched the Instillers finish their work, my mind turned inward. Frustration flared as the adrenaline of battle wore off and I was able to consider the fight that had unfolded. That the dragons would be protecting the portal was obvious, but that spell, or combination of spells, or whatever the hell the dragons had been doing…

My fists clenched, and the mana around me warped outward. I knew I couldn’t have escaped this trap on my own. Without the Wraiths, without Wrastor’s team’s sacrifice, I would have been dissolved within that void, everything that made me me just gone.

Bile rose up the back of my throat, and I tried to push the frustration—the cold and sickening rage—back down deep. I was the Legacy. I couldn’t just…lose—just die. And I shouldn’t need anyone to save me, I thought desperately.

Needing something else—anything else—to focus on, I turned my smoldering ire on Tessia, who had been silent throughout the battle, but whom I had felt writhe in disgust as I drained the dragon dry.

No scolding, princess? I asked bitterly. Aren’t you going to tell me what a terrible person I am? How evil and irredeemable? How blind?

‘It appears there is nothing left for me to say that you don’t already know,’ she replied, her voice dim, distant, and empty of emotion.

I scoffed but couldn’t come up with a reply. I wanted to argue with her, to fight her. I needed to defend myself, to make someone understand.

Clenching my jaw, I tried to shake off the childish impulse. There was nothing to defend. I was doing my job…what I had to do. That was all.

Below me, the last of the devices was assembled, and the power emitters—like antennas that collected and stored atmospheric mana—were being placed and connected.

Struggling to be in the moment, I did the mental math. The Instillers were working too slowly.

On the horizon, I could now make out five dots growing quickly larger from the east.

Cursing, I dropped down. The array was all connected together, it just lacked the power it needed. Steadying myself, I pressed both hands against the first of the mana crystals. I envisioned mana traveling through me, then through all the wires and cables, filling each device and letting it fulfill its purpose.

Thought became reality, and the huge circle of artifacts began to hum with energy, each one emitting at first only a soft glow. This light radiated outward, slowly at first but with building speed and intensity until, with a sudden rush of mana, a dome of protective force curved over us to surround the rift, cutting it—and us, off from the outside world.

Only moments later, a missile of pure mana crashed against the side of the dome, which trembled under the force. I pushed more mana, and then more still, thankfully swelling with it from absorbing the dragon. Another spell, and another collided with the barrier rapidly. Cracks ran across its surface, and the shield emitters began to whine.

“Get the rest of this mana battery up and running,” I said in a low, strained voice. There was a frozen moment as no one reacted. When my gaze swept over them a second later, the Instillers jumped and hurried to comply as more spells impacted the side of the dome.

I needed more power—more mana—to rapidly bring the emitters up to their full capacity. If only we’d had just five more minutes!

My searching gaze settled on the rift above me. Little mana was being drawn into it now, but a significant amount was still pouring out. Tethering myself to the crystal with mana, I launched myself off the ground and flew into the middle of the distortion, not quite entering the rift but floating in that same in-between space the dragons had occupied before the attack. There, I drank deeply from the wellspring of that mana, but I did not hold it within myself to be purified. Instead, I pressed it downward through the tether and into the array, which pulsed with energy as the projected shield surged and thickened, visible ripples of light pulsing along its surface to collide at the very top.

The dragons arrived, their spells and breath and claws battering the barrier.

I grinned, relief draining the fear out of me. The shield held.

NICO SEVER historical

I fidgeted as I watched the light show happening to the east. It was too far for me to know if it was working or not. Although the shielding technology had been designed by Sovereign Orlaeth to hold back even High Sovereign Agrona, and I had seen it stop even Cecilia from breaking through, it still seemed like it was asking a lot for it to hold up under constant attack by who knows how many dragons.

And then there was the disruption technology we’d developed based on the prototypes Seris left behind in the Relictombs. With it, we would interrupt the ability to travel through the rift, so Lord Indrath couldn’t send dragons through from the other side. Like Seris had done on the second level of the Relictombs, we would cut the two worlds off from one another.

“Are we doing this or what?” Dragoth asked, scowling as he loomed over me.

The rift was Cecilia’s task to complete. I had my own.

“The other teams have confirmed everything is in place?” I asked, more to get my head back in the process than because I worried they hadn’t.

One of the handful of Instillers who accompanied us snapped out a nervous, “Yes, sir.”

I checked my timekeeping artifact, which had been synced with several other Wraith teams now spread out across Dicathen. “Power up the teleportation frame.”

The Instillers began activating the twenty-foot-wide teleportation frame. I watched them with a mix of trepidation and pride: it was an artifact of my own design.

While Cecilia had been searching the rifts, I was scouring dungeons in the deepest parts of the Beast Glades in search of a complete djinn teleportation relic. The long-distance portals they developed still held up and were used throughout Dicathen and, to a lesser extent, Alacrya. They could even reach from one continent to the other, as they had been used during the war.

But Agrona’s Instillers had never learned to replicate them. I figured it out.

The frame emitted a low hum, then a curtain of energy spilled down within the large open rectangle. I checked the timekeeping artifact again. “Complete the link.”

The lead Instiller programmed in the directions to a portal frame in Alacrya. The mana shifted, gaining clarity. A moment later, it rippled, and a row of soldiers stepped through. Behind them, another row stepped through, and then another. I knew that our forces were pouring out of identical portals all across Dicathen, set up by teams of Wraiths moving near-invisibly.

Apprehension filled me.

Despite the effort that went into this moment just to allow these soldiers to step foot on Dicathian soil, I knew it was the easy part. As rank after rank of men filed through, I steeled myself for what was to come.

No stone unturned, no village unburned…those had been Agrona’s words.

Clearing my throat, I turned toward the Wall, less than a half-mile distant. And so begins the second invasion of Dicathen…

“Dragoth, you know what to do.”

Chapter 463: A Cage of Light

CECILIA

My impatience stung like nettles under my skin, but watching the surge of effort from the Instillers and their Wraith protectors was a balm to my nerves. The last two weeks had passed slowly and with increasing frustration, but it was finally time. Everything was in place within the Beast Glades. Although complicated by the dragons’ increased patrols and taking over the flying castle hovering to the east, we were ready.

Under a shroud of mist that hid our signatures, swallowed the noise of our passage, and obscured us from view from above, my people moved into place.

There were at least fifty Instillers, Agrona’s most trusted and knowledgeable servants, all carrying a plethora of dimensional storage devices. I flew above while they marched in jagged lines like many ants below. Ten full battle groups of Wraiths flew around us, keeping to the cover of the drifting cloud of thick mist so their signatures wouldn’t be noticed by any dragon guards.

I could neither see or sense any dragons—not nearby, anyway. A patrol of guards was passing over the encampments built by the defeated Alacryan soldiers to the north, and a few blurred together within the flying castle some way to the east.

Just above us, suspended in the sky a hundred feet or so above the trees, a very different sort of mana signature seemed to simmer just beneath the surface of what was normally detectable to the bare senses. There was no visual distortion, at least not from within our misty cloud and beneath the canopy of thin, half-dead trees.

It was fascinating, really. Although we’d been calling it a “rift,” it was more like the mouth of a waterskin, and through it—within the waterskin—was all of Epheotus. The magic required to bend space in this way, forcing a piece of our world to bulge out into some other realm, was incomprehensible to me. But the mechanism by which it remained hidden, that I now understood.

The presence of the rift, or rather the intense pressure of the mana flowing into and then back out of it, caused distortions that rippled out for a hundred miles in every direction. When the inward flowing mana—which was being drawn into Epheotus—was balanced with the mana being projected back out of it by the asuras, that equilibrium disguised the rift’s real location in the midst of all that disturbance happening elsewhere. It required only a bit of effort on the dragons’ part to bend the light so that there was no physical manifestation of this.

Once found, though, it was now impossible for me not to see. Neither Nico nor any of the Wraiths who had already been here could sense it, no matter how specific I was or how much they stared, but when I looked beneath the surface of what was shown, I saw the cyclone of mana beneath, simultaneously being drawn in and expelled.

I indicated exactly where the rift was, and the Instillers got to work. Spreading out, they began to rapidly withdraw equipment from their dimension artifacts, assembling large devices in a circle around where the rift hovered high above. The mist spread as they did, creeping across the hard ground and between the crooked and dying trees that dominated this section of the Beast Glades, ensuring they remained obscured and undetectable.

As I watched the Instillers set about their work, I thought of Nico, hoping he would be safe. Dicathen’s defenders had been busily scuttling into strongholds across the continent. As Agrona had anticipated, Grey seemed to have vanished, going underground, but the information from our spies was conflicting. Even his own people seemed convinced that Grey was in multiple places at once.

My lips curled into a sneer. As if Agrona would be fooled but such a weak attempt at a diversion.

The closest location was the Wall. As I waited, I expanded out my senses. It took time to go so far. The feedback was weak—a dim cluster of distant signatures. I could feel Nico and Dragoth, as well as a bright spark of mana that must have been a Lance. It was subtle, but beneath the undercurrent of everything else, there was a small distortion in the mana, like an opposing force pressing against it.

Grey and his dragon companion? I wondered, trying to parse what I was sensing. I’d tasted the dragon’s mana, and there was a hint of it there, but it felt as if they were shrouding themselves somehow. Surely it won’t be so easy as that…

My eyes snapped open and my thoughts wrenched back to my own task. The ring of artifacts was half in place. It was time.

First, I felt for the edges of the spell distorting light to wrap around the rift. Though powerful, it relied largely on the swell of magical energy to disguise its very presence. Once I had the spell in my grip, I dragged it aside like a curtain over a window. Unexpectedly, the spell resisted, as if there were someone standing on the other side holding it closed.

I pulled harder, and the spell ripped, pulling apart in a visible shower of pure mana. White light sparkled out in every direction to rain down on my people, and a sickening twist of mana seemed to churn the air inside my lungs.

The white sparks burned brighter, hotter, as they fell, and I realized the danger almost too late.

“Shields!” I shouted, waving my hands to conjure a protective barrier over the Wraiths and Instillers. Wherever the white sparks settled, they burned against the shield, mana crackling and popping against mana.

After a second of surprise, the Wraiths began to conjure their own barriers, buttressing mine against the intense potency of the falling sparks.

Above, the rift was now fully in view, a gash in the sky, the air seemingly to fold around it at the edges, like flesh opened by a sharp blade. The sky beyond was a slightly different shade of blue, just alien enough to conjure gooseflesh along my arms and neck. Inside the ripple in space, three distorted figures floated.

The Wraiths burst into action, four battle groups remaining at ground level and focusing purely on defending our Instillers, without whom everything would fail, while the other six broke and flew away, maneuvering around well outside the shower of sparks and flying high, encircling the rift.

I floated upward after them, moving the mana barrier with me, warping it to envelope the remnants of the strange burning-spark spell, the opposing forces grinding against one another like two tectonic plates. As the sparks failed and faded, the shield broke down, and I absorbed the remaining mana; it was tinged with a draconic attribute.

The three figures flew free of the rift, and the atmosphere—the very fabric of reality itself—seemed to tremble at their presence. Inside me, Tessia stirred in response. She was afraid.

They spoke as one, three voices echoing over and under and through each other. “This holy place is under the protection of Lord Kezess Indrath. To attack it—to affect it in any way—is sacrilege of the highest order. The punishment for your presence here is immediate death, reincarnate.”

I smirked up at them, enjoying the theatricality of it all. They were even dressed like they were in some kind of play and not on the field of battle, their ceremonial white robes gleaming with golden embroidery the same color as their golden hair. “The bravery of your words is only just a little bit spoiled by the fact you were cowering behind a spell to keep you hidden from me. You know who I am, but maybe you don’t know what I can do. If you did, you would have turned around and flew right back where you came from.”

Mana rippled in the way it did around Arthur and his weapon, and the three dragons blinked away, appearing outside the ring of Wraiths. Their amethyst eyes lit from within, and violent purple beams of light blazed between them, creating a triangle around us all, with the rift at its center.

Panic surged up from deep within me, sudden and visceral and so certain. “Attack!” I screamed.

The sky transformed with dozens of spells as six Wraith battle groups unleashed their full offensive power on the three targets.

A cage of light spread from the beams of what could only be aether, spilling down to the ground and closing over our heads. The Wraiths’ spells burst against the inside of the cage, sending soft waves undulating across its surface. The sound of hissing acid and crashing thunder and blood iron shattering against the aether made my ears ring, and the smell of toxic water and scorched ozone burned my nostrils.

On the other side of the barrier, the three dragons seemed in a trance. They did not blink or flinch as so many powerful spells crashed into their conjured barrier. They didn’t chant or gesture with arcane meaning. Except for the breeze blowing through their gleaming golden hair and white robes, and a subtle pulsing inside the brightness of their glowing purple eyes, they were motionless.

My heart hammered inside my chest as something clawed up at me from my guts. There was a feeling of wrongness within the cage, a sense of inevitable ruin. The Wraiths fought through it, but the Instillers on the ground had ceased their work, paralyzed by the oppressive force of the aetheric spell.

Something was growing inside the cage with us—an empty nothingness, like a hunger that couldn’t be sated.

Reaching out with desperate claws of mana and pure force, I ripped and tore at the inside of the aetheric walls, willing the mana to dissipate the aether. The aether rippled forcefully, but it didn’t break.

The Wraiths continued to bombard the walls as well, and I could sense my own desperation bleeding into them as they grew first uncertain and then panicked, but I struggled to rein myself in.

Abandoning my attacks, I grasped for the mana on the other side of the barrier, but I couldn’t reach it.

And still, the three dragons were cold and emotionless. No glint of victory reached their eyes, no grimace of strain bared their teeth. They were like three frustrating statues emanating their aetheric spell. Even as I thought this, though, all three sets of eyes shifted slightly, darkening and focusing on the rift. My own gaze was pulled slowly along behind theirs.

Black-purple light began to emanate from the rift, which was within the cage with us. The something that was being called, that I had felt from the instant the cage appeared, was coming through, closing in on us. I felt hunger gnawing at me, the bitter coldness of it gripping my bones in teeth of fear.

I stared into the void, conjured through the walls between the worlds to swallow us whole. It spilled from the rift like a dark cloud, like blood from a cut, like fetid breath from a rotting mouth.

Reaching out, I took hold of as much mana as I could and condensed it around the rift, a storm of ice and wind and shadow. The void consumed it, dragging the mana into itself, where it was snuffed out. And I suddenly understood. The void would spread throughout the cage, devouring all within. It was a trap from the beginning.

My fear gave way to anger and frustration. I slammed a wall of mana into the void, attempting to disrupt it or push it back into the rift, but the emptiness only swallowed my mana, and my efforts only seemed to speed its growth.

I needed to subdue it, delay it—anything to give myself time to think. How did one stop nothing?

I vacillated rapidly between wanting to keep attacking the cage in an attempt to break free or focusing on the growing black-purple darkness.

“You, you, and you, bombard the barrier! Focus on a single point—make a dent, a crack, anything!” I ordered, gesturing to three battle groups. “All the rest, hold your positions!” I finished, watching breathlessly as the cloud of purple-black nothing spilled down from above.

All the beautiful blues, greens, yellows, and reds of the atmospheric mana dissolved to colorless nothing as the cloud crept down the sky. Soon, there would be no mana left inside the aetheric cage with us at all, and then…

Knowing that I would need that mana, I pulled it away from the void, emptying the air around it of mana, matching it with a void of my own making.

Its progress seemed to slow, oozing left and right, spilling outward like a puddle, and I startled. It reminded me of nothing so much as a wild beast sniffing around for prey.

“Wrastor, take your battle group and circle around. Get above the emanation, above the rift,” I ordered.

The Wraith did not hesitate, snapping into motion as he and his brethren skirted around the edge of the darkness, disappearing from sight above. But I could feel the signature they were giving off, and so, apparently, could the void, because its downward progress gusted to a halt while it began inching its way up toward the Wraiths, expanding as it did so, filling up every space it passed over.

The five Wraiths conjured barriers of protective mana around themselves so that they were wreathed in flame, shadow, and wind. I drew away the mana between them and the void cloud, but this time, it did not stop. They were too close, perhaps, their signatures too strong.

Tendrils of black-purple darkness reached for them, forcing them to fly up, but they were near the ceiling already. So close, the void seemed to be dragging the mana away from them, their shields spilling into it, the mana particles blowing off them like dandelion seeds before vanishing.

A tendril brushed against a Wraith’s foot, and the appendage dissolved, conjuring a surprised scream.

The mass of hungry emptiness sped toward the five Wraiths, spilling up into the sky above the portal.

“Everyone, focus on the walls there, there, and there!” I shouted urgently, pointing to the spots closest to the dragons.

As if broken out of a trance, the other battle groups joined the first two I’d assigned to attack the walls, bombarding the aetheric barrier with every spell at their disposal as they released a colossal outpouring of destructive mana. Blood iron, soulfire, void wind, and bile water-attribute spells struck, hammered, splashed, and sliced the walls containing us, all contained to those three narrow points.

But my thoughts were condensing too slowly. There was only so much mana in this small slice of ground—only so much in me—and the void cloud was consuming it rapidly.

Cursing under my breath, I wished suddenly that Nico was there. He was the smart one, the one with the plans. He would have some clever idea, some way to turn the void against them…

Outside, the three dragons remained in their trance, apparently concentrating all their effort on maintaining their spells.

The dark cloud spread above us, cutting off the five Wraiths. The wounded woman attempted to fly around it and rejoin us, but the void moved with her. She tried to reverse course, but too late. With a truncated scream, it subsumed her, leaving nothing behind but more emptiness.

In doing so, it brushed against the outer walls. When the first tendril of the moving void touched the aether of our cage, the vibrant purple energy shimmered, trembling outward across the entire surface of the vast magical structure, and the void recoiled, drawn toward four remaining Wraiths instead.

Outside our cage, the dragons shifted for the first time, a trembling tension shared between the three, as if concentrating on their spells had just become that much more difficult.

It was confirmation enough.

Grasping the mana around the four Wraiths, I plunged it like a tether into the gnawing emptiness. As I’d expected, it took in the mana hungrily, drawn naturally upward to fill the space above the rift. One by one, Wrastor and the rest of his team vanished within it. With the void suddenly expanding rapidly, it couldn’t help but press against the walls and ceiling, sending crackling waves of energy rippling across the outside of the towering pillar of purple light that entrapped us.

One of the dragons shouted in dismay.

“Ready your spells!” I screamed, my voice cracking with fear and anticipation.

The remaining Wraiths paused in their assault, focusing instead on the dragons as they waited, buzzing with tension and magic.

Sweat trickled down the dragons’ brows, and their statuesque stillness gave way to geriatric quivering.

What I had learned about dragon aether arts returned to me through the fog of war. They did not control aether in the same way I controlled mana, only coaxed it to do as they wished. This spell was incredibly powerful, so much so that it took three of them to conjure it. And the void…whatever dark arts they used to summon it, surely their control over it was limited. I could see that in their strained and fearful expressions through the transparent walls of aether.

This was an act of desperation. They were pushing themselves and their magic to the edge of their control to destroy me.

Even as I realized what I needed to do, the darkness began descending yet again, creeping into the emptiness I had conjured between us and it.

The atmosphere at the bottom of our cage was thick with all the mana that I’d transplanted to create that barrier. Now, I took hold of it, pulling it all close to me. Some of the Instillers and Wraiths cried out as they felt the mana go, but I had no time to explain.

When all that condensed mana of the area directly around the rift was forced together like a hot white soup sloshing in the air around me, I took a long, shaking breath. With one last glance at where the void crackled and dragged across the aetheric walls, I hurled the mana upward, forcing it as far and as fast as I could.

The living darkness of the void took it in greedily, absorbing and unmaking all the mana I could give it. It swelled and seethed, growing rapidly, surging down toward us and pressing against the barriers constraining it, dark tendrils digging into the aetheric walls. Like ice freezing the cracks between cobblestones, the void expanded.

There was no explosion, no fireworks, not even a noise. One moment the cage surrounded us, the next it simply dissolved into purple mist and then to nothing at all, and the void lost form and shape, like a wisp of cloud quickly blown away.

The dragon to my left sagged under the backlash of the spell’s failure and could do nothing to defend himself as the Wraiths’ spells converged on him. As ancient and powerful as he perhaps was, he was still flesh and bone, and under the rain of destructive magic, his skin broke open, his bones shattered and turned to dust, and only very little of him at all remained to tumble like a wingless bird into the Beast Glades below.

Despite a sudden punishing fatigue that made my arms feel like lead and my skull pulse with each desperate beat of my heart, I rushed to take hold of the mana around the dragon to my right and ripped it away, creating a pocket of empty space around him. His eyes rolled back into his head as he struggled to keep hold of his own mana, fighting back at my control and slinging out wild spells.

A gout of silver fire scorched the air between us, and I intercepted it with a gleaming shield, my body aching with the effort. Burning whips cracked around the shield’s edges, emanating from the silver flames, and I severed them with conjured blades. The flames combusted, launching apart in several smaller fireballs that all dropped like catapult stones toward the Instillers still struggling to set up the equipment below.

But the flames flagged and withered to nothing as I fought to cancel out the spell, releasing the mana back into the atmosphere.

From the corner of my eye, I saw spells flying at the other surviving dragon, but dozens of interlocking plates of bright violet energy appeared around her, moving smoothly past each other like the cogs of a complex watch to catch the Wraiths’ attacks and diffuse them, never taking the full brunt of so many spells on any single plate.

The dragon whose mana I had forced away was struggling to stay upright, but my arms still trembled as I deflected his spells. We sat in equilibrium for a moment, both red-faced and sweating, his pure mana flashing between us with each attack. I bided my time, just for a moment, trying to catch my breath and still my quivering muscles.

Each attack was weaker and slower, until I was able to reach out and snuff a bolt of pure mana on the dragon’s very fingertips. With a wary, desperate moan, I clenched my fist, and around him, the mana I’d pulled aside surged back in, crushing his unprotected body like an insect between my fingers, and then his corpse also plunged from the sky.

Mana moved behind me—not condensing into a spell, but being brushed out of the way of one—and I dodged just as a short spear of aether thrust at the base of my neck. The blow, viper-strike quick, nicked the top of my shoulder, drawing a hot line of pain and blood.

Elsewhere, dozens of other spears appeared out of thin air at the same moment, and several of my Wraiths cried out simultaneously as aether pierced their cores.

Cursing, I barely dodged another attack, then a third, unable to strike back or assist the others as spear after spear formed and stabbed, each one coming from a different direction, intercepting my path or even attempting to thrust into the direction I would be forced to dodge.

Remembering my battle with Arthur, I wrapped my hands in mana and feinted an off-course, lurching dodge away from one spear. When I felt the shifting of the air and mana that indicated a new spear forming, I grabbed it with both hands even before it could launch itself at my throat. Mana swelled into my arms, shoulders, and chest, my physical strength surging, and I spun through the air.

Before a new spear could manifest, I launched the one in my hands, wrapping my own mana around it. It flew like the bullet of an old earth firearm, almost too fast to see with the naked eye. When it struck the spinning mechanism of clockwork magic plates, the aether spear shattered one small shield before slamming into the woman’s stomach. Her body lurched backwards, colliding with her own spell, which battered her back and forth several times before both the spear and the shields faded.

She fell in slow motion, still conscious enough to channel her magic but lacking the strength or wherewithal to keep herself aloft or prepare new defenses.

Or so I thought.

In the moment of hesitation that followed, the Wraiths all looking to me for orders, the woman launched herself toward the rift, becoming little more than a streak of white and gold as her body expanded rapidly outward, wings sprouting from her back, scales growing over her flesh, her neck shooting forward as it elongated.

Pushing off against the mana as if it were a wall, I hurled myself into her path.

The enormous dragon’s neck twisted around, glowing amethyst eyes alight with fear and fury. She bared teeth as long as swords and snapped at me.

Gravity increased so quickly and with such enormous pressure that the reptilian jaws snapped shut again, teeth breaking and embedding themselves into the flesh of her mouth. Her wings bent awkwardly, the membranes tearing and the light bones snapping like twigs. All her forward momentum was absorbed by the gravity, and she tumbled back the way she had come. Not straight down, which would have damaged the equipment, but at a slight angle. When she hit the ground, several Instillers fell as well, the shockwave of her impact digging a hundred foot long trench into the hard-packed ground and obscuring her in a cloud of dust.

The surviving Wraiths, each one with a spell burning in their hands, arranged themselves around the dust, prepared to eviscerate the dragon at any sign of movement.

But I could feel her struggle, see the weak effort of her mana to push back against the gravity well. Under the cover of the dust, I saw her outline in mana shrinking, resuming her humanoid form. Unhurried, I drifted down into the dust. A breeze blew around me, pushing the dust away to reveal, lying at the bottom of a huge crater, the final surviving asura.

I wondered, very briefly, who these three had been. How long had they labored to learn the aether arts they had performed today? I could only imagine the heights of their presumptuous arrogance as they accepted the task their lord gave them…and the depth of their regret and despair as they realized that they’d failed.

The woman coughed up blood, her body spasming with pain, then relaxed, unfurling across the ground to stare up at me. The weight of millenia settled on me beneath her gaze. All that life…and I have undone it. This thought was met with pride and confidence, but also…something deeper and harder to identify.

I shook it off and kneeled beside the dragon. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed with difficulty. I thought perhaps she would say something, beg me for life or admonish me for my service to Agrona, but she was silent.

Reaching out, I gripped her mana and began to siphon it away from her, absorbing it fully. Arthur’s companion had only given me a taste, but it hadn’t been enough to really gain a sense of the dragons’ magic and abilities. I needed that insight in order to more fully counter their mana arts.

She fought me—she could hardly do anything else, I imagined. It was instinct, like clawing at hands wrapped around her throat. But she was too far gone, and her efforts were feeble.

I braced myself for whatever might come with the mana, afraid but also tantalized by the opportunity to see her memories. However, it seemed as if that part of the process was something unique to the phoenixes—or, I realized somewhat uncomfortably, perhaps even a purposeful effect by Dawn in the moments of her death—because all I experienced was the power itself.

The particular aspect of dragon mana—pure mana—unfolded in my mind. No lesser core had ever clarified mana so brilliantly, even my own. It shone like snowflakes on a cold, bright midwinter morning. In some ways, it was the opposite of basilisk mana, which was dark and twisted, resulting in their decay-type mana arts—or perhaps because of them. I breathed it in, reveling in the energy and power that suffused me.

The asuran woman shivered, her flesh collapsing inward as the mana-suffused tissue beneath it was wrung out. Her eyes faded to a pale lavender, her skin grayed, and her hair thinned. Her handsome beauty, like her strength, left her. And then…she was dead.

I sucked in a deep, fortifying breath, the infusion of draconic mana crackling in my muscles and behind my eyes, undoing some of my fatigue.

And then my eyes snapped open as I felt the distant movement of similar mana signatures. Similar, but less, I noted. None of the dragons I could sense had the strength of these three, but eight—no, ten—dragon mana signatures were approaching rapidly from the north and the east.

“Quickly, complete the arrays!” I snapped, shooting up into the air.

Below me, the Instillers hurriedly continued the process of setting up the equipment. I scanned the horizon, but the dragons were still too far off to see. Can the remaining Wraiths and I hold off so many? I asked myself, but I knew the answer. It had never been the plan for me to fight all the dragons on Dicathen at once.

As I watched the Instillers finish their work, my mind turned inward. Frustration flared as the adrenaline of battle wore off and I was able to consider the fight that had unfolded. That the dragons would be protecting the portal was obvious, but that spell, or combination of spells, or whatever the hell the dragons had been doing…

My fists clenched, and the mana around me warped outward. I knew I couldn’t have escaped this trap on my own. Without the Wraiths, without Wrastor’s team’s sacrifice, I would have been dissolved within that void, everything that made me me just gone.

Bile rose up the back of my throat, and I tried to push the frustration—the cold and sickening rage—back down deep. I was the Legacy. I couldn’t just…lose—just die. And I shouldn’t need anyone to save me, I thought desperately.

Needing something else—anything else—to focus on, I turned my smoldering ire on Tessia, who had been silent throughout the battle, but whom I had felt writhe in disgust as I drained the dragon dry.

No scolding, princess? I asked bitterly. Aren’t you going to tell me what a terrible person I am? How evil and irredeemable? How blind?

‘It appears there is nothing left for me to say that you don’t already know,’ she replied, her voice dim, distant, and empty of emotion.

I scoffed but couldn’t come up with a reply. I wanted to argue with her, to fight her. I needed to defend myself, to make someone understand.

Clenching my jaw, I tried to shake off the childish impulse. There was nothing to defend. I was doing my job…what I had to do. That was all.

Below me, the last of the devices was assembled, and the power emitters—like antennas that collected and stored atmospheric mana—were being placed and connected.

Struggling to be in the moment, I did the mental math. The Instillers were working too slowly.

On the horizon, I could now make out five dots growing quickly larger from the east.

Cursing, I dropped down. The array was all connected together, it just lacked the power it needed. Steadying myself, I pressed both hands against the first of the mana crystals. I envisioned mana traveling through me, then through all the wires and cables, filling each device and letting it fulfill its purpose.

Thought became reality, and the huge circle of artifacts began to hum with energy, each one emitting at first only a soft glow. This light radiated outward, slowly at first but with building speed and intensity until, with a sudden rush of mana, a dome of protective force curved over us to surround the rift, cutting it—and us, off from the outside world.

Only moments later, a missile of pure mana crashed against the side of the dome, which trembled under the force. I pushed more mana, and then more still, thankfully swelling with it from absorbing the dragon. Another spell, and another collided with the barrier rapidly. Cracks ran across its surface, and the shield emitters began to whine.

“Get the rest of this mana battery up and running,” I said in a low, strained voice. There was a frozen moment as no one reacted. When my gaze swept over them a second later, the Instillers jumped and hurried to comply as more spells impacted the side of the dome.

I needed more power—more mana—to rapidly bring the emitters up to their full capacity. If only we’d had just five more minutes!

My searching gaze settled on the rift above me. Little mana was being drawn into it now, but a significant amount was still pouring out. Tethering myself to the crystal with mana, I launched myself off the ground and flew into the middle of the distortion, not quite entering the rift but floating in that same in-between space the dragons had occupied before the attack. There, I drank deeply from the wellspring of that mana, but I did not hold it within myself to be purified. Instead, I pressed it downward through the tether and into the array, which pulsed with energy as the projected shield surged and thickened, visible ripples of light pulsing along its surface to collide at the very top.

The dragons arrived, their spells and breath and claws battering the barrier.

I grinned, relief draining the fear out of me. The shield held.

NICO SEVER historical

I fidgeted as I watched the light show happening to the east. It was too far for me to know if it was working or not. Although the shielding technology had been designed by Sovereign Orlaeth to hold back even High Sovereign Agrona, and I had seen it stop even Cecilia from breaking through, it still seemed like it was asking a lot for it to hold up under constant attack by who knows how many dragons.

And then there was the disruption technology we’d developed based on the prototypes Seris left behind in the Relictombs. With it, we would interrupt the ability to travel through the rift, so Lord Indrath couldn’t send dragons through from the other side. Like Seris had done on the second level of the Relictombs, we would cut the two worlds off from one another.

“Are we doing this or what?” Dragoth asked, scowling as he loomed over me.

The rift was Cecilia’s task to complete. I had my own.

“The other teams have confirmed everything is in place?” I asked, more to get my head back in the process than because I worried they hadn’t.

One of the handful of Instillers who accompanied us snapped out a nervous, “Yes, sir.”

I checked my timekeeping artifact, which had been synced with several other Wraith teams now spread out across Dicathen. “Power up the teleportation frame.”

The Instillers began activating the twenty-foot-wide teleportation frame. I watched them with a mix of trepidation and pride: it was an artifact of my own design.

While Cecilia had been searching the rifts, I was scouring dungeons in the deepest parts of the Beast Glades in search of a complete djinn teleportation relic. The long-distance portals they developed still held up and were used throughout Dicathen and, to a lesser extent, Alacrya. They could even reach from one continent to the other, as they had been used during the war.

But Agrona’s Instillers had never learned to replicate them. I figured it out.

The frame emitted a low hum, then a curtain of energy spilled down within the large open rectangle. I checked the timekeeping artifact again. “Complete the link.”

The lead Instiller programmed in the directions to a portal frame in Alacrya. The mana shifted, gaining clarity. A moment later, it rippled, and a row of soldiers stepped through. Behind them, another row stepped through, and then another. I knew that our forces were pouring out of identical portals all across Dicathen, set up by teams of Wraiths moving near-invisibly.

Apprehension filled me.

Despite the effort that went into this moment just to allow these soldiers to step foot on Dicathian soil, I knew it was the easy part. As rank after rank of men filed through, I steeled myself for what was to come.

No stone unturned, no village unburned…those had been Agrona’s words.

Clearing my throat, I turned toward the Wall, less than a half-mile distant. And so begins the second invasion of Dicathen…

“Dragoth, you know what to do.”