Greatness is the Path of Humanity.

Greatness is not found in oneself.

Greatness is how one affects those around him.

Greatness is that which does not lie in strength alone, but the noble employment of power; for one is greatest whose strength carries the weight of other’s hearts.

The Credo of La Réunion

Damien had already begun his work when a bird entered the workshop he occupied. To his side laid a dagger and a spear. He decided to pretend to be too busy to notice Lucille. As he expected, a flash of silver light – the signature of the School of Conjuration – illuminated the room. “Hello again, Jean,” he said without looking at his friend. “You’re just in time.” He turned. “And I see Louis didn’t come with you?”

“Apparently, his sister has him covered” Jean responded. He sat down, looking at the weapons. “Let me guess. You were supposed to make a Lesser Elemental Weapon, but you decided to add in a little more. Right?”

Damien smiled. “You know me so well. I added the mandala to hold a Sword Burst in the second Core of the dagger. It’s a Swarm Core so it wouldn’t take anything bigger than a cantrip anyways. I thought that something to disentangle you would be nice. I just need you to fuel it with your Elemental mana, and it'll be done. The mana reserves are shared between the two cores. In total, it’ll give you about two and a half minutes of continuous use of Lesser Elemental Weapon, or 5 Sword Bursts. You know how Lesser Elemental Weapon works, right?”

“I may need a refresher… I wasn’t really paying attention during the class explaining the lesser weapon enchantments.” Jean looked away, slightly embarrassed. Lucille sang.

“It’ll sheathe your weapon in your Element and trigger small explosions when you stab something.” Damien explained, condensing half an hour of Spellcraft theory into a single sentence.

“That’s cool. What are you planning for Manon and Julia?” Jean asked, curious as ever.

“I’ll re-purpose the spear for Manon, so she can use it over her Wooden Walls. Lesser Elemental Weapon doesn’t work with Wood, so I think I’ll replace it with an Elementally neutral Booming Blade and add in an Entangle in the second Core. There’s also the fact that the spear is the default elemental weapon, and I don’t think that her father would be thrilled if he knew she has a non-standard weapon. He's on the Council, after all, and we know how they get about spending 'unnecessary' resources.” Damien responded thoughtfully.

“And Julia?” Jean insisted

“For now, a Ray of Frost reserve, with five shots. I’d want to change that to a Shield as soon as possible, though I’d need a better Core for that. As for the weapon… I’ll keep that a surprise.” Damien teased Jean.

After a few more minutes of banter, the two boys returned to their training.

Two weeks and five days later…

“I still think this was a bad idea,” muttered Cynthia. As the eldest member of the team, she had been named as their leader by their teachers. She and her younger brother, Louis, were both smaller than most of their teammates and sported black hair, and eyes just as dark

The reason for Cynthia’s frustration was simple. Traditionally, when a 'holiday trip' - as these outings were called - was scheduled, the Acolytes would be escorted by Senior Combat Mages charged with their safety. In their absence, she had to get 'dead weights' through the tunnels without losing them to the Fire Ants. This task would have been simple enough, had they not been assigned to the lower route, where the insects were most often seen.

So here they were, spelunking between cramped passages and cavernous, eons-extinguished magma chambers. At least the tunnels had been mapped, and they had studied the maps. They passed through one, then two of the great chambers, but when they approached the next passage, Jean stopped abruptly. “Fire Ants. A Swarm of… five hundred, and six Soldiers.”

“Alright, guys.” Cynthia began, taking charge. “We can circle them, but if there’s that many here, they might have taken over the next chamber. I say we do this by the book and grind the hive down. Any objections?”

“How do we know how big the Hive is? We might not be able to continue fighting long enough to grind it down,” Damien pointed out. “Jean, could you send Lucille ahead before we engage?”

Jean observed the fissure. “Bad idea. The ants could block her in the next chamber. I suggest we abandon our current route and use the upper chambers. We can alert the Council about the Ants proliferation in the lower chambers once we get to Le Port.”

Cynthia shook her head. “We can take down the swarm that’s here. I’m not doing insane detours just because of a few Ants. Manon, Louis, begin setting Walls. Damien, work with them to set up a kill-zone.” Once she finished giving orders, she began buffing them. “Mass Enhance Ability. Mass Aid. Mass Bark Skin. Mass Resist Element. Mass Strengthen. Julia, you’re going to be our main source of damage, this'll help you: Freedom of Movement, Haste... Gaseous Form.”

While the first few spells had been classic buffing spells aimed at helping their recipients in various ways in battle, the last one was especially impressive. It had transformed Julia into something like a ghost, all but immune to physical attacks. Julia waited nearby while the other prepared the defences. Finally, Damien announced that he’d created the widest Ember Circle he could manage, augmented by multiple Sun-fire Glyphs. This was a new design, improvised on the spot to withstand a siege by detonating multiple Sun-fire Glyphs instead of a single one. The mana drain was substantial, so he announced that he would prefer not to have to cast any more spells. Louis and Manon had worked together to force any attacking Ant into entering its area of effect while he was preparing by creating Wooden and Earthen Walls.

“Ready?” Julia asked, her voice distorted by the effects of Gaseous Form. She placed herself in full view of the Ants.

“Good to go!” Damien replied.

Damien watched as Julia briefly closed her eyes, allowing Polaris to manifest and empower her alpha strike. “Maximized Snowball Swarm!” At her call, a dozen snowballs materialized in the Prime Material Plane and hurled themselves at the swarm of Fire Ants. When they touched the rock, they unleashed a portion of the Para-Plane of Ice onto a dense conglomerate of Ants, including two of the Soldiers. Those directly affected, or worse, touched by one of the snowballs immediately flash-froze, their heat no match for her spell’s freezing temperatures.

However, the ants were numerous and too dispersed for Julia’s AoE to touch them all. The survivors immediately identified the source of the attack and formed a furious mass of overheated bodies intent on reducing her to ashes and devouring her bones. Julia waited as three Soldiers closed in on to her. When she saw them stop and rear their heads, she unleashed the second part of her offensive. “Ice Dragon’s breath!”, she cast, leaving the task of actually unleashing the breath to Polaris. The Ant soldiers had been about to unleash their own Fire Breath upon her, if she'd allowed it. Instead, Polaris's breath made them into chunks of frozen meat.

“Three Soldiers down. 150 ants down.” Jean counted. He then saw a Soldier was running up behind Julia. “Careful...” He began.

“Shield.” Louis interrupted. The creature exhaled its Lesser Fire Breath just behind Julia. However, instead of dispersing her Gaseous Form, it encountered an Earthen Shield that redirected the flow of flames on itself. The creature screeched, but survived. Jean finished it with a quick Air variant of Infestation, summoning mites made of elemental Air to assault it.

“Only two more Soldiers. Nice job with the back-burn, Louis!” Jean congratulated the young Abjurer.

“Julia, try to blast the last two Soldiers. Jean, Damien’s Circle and I should be enough to defeat the Swarm” Cynthia ordered.

Julia began peppering the surviving Soldiers with Freezing rays and Frostbolts, sparing her mana reserves while using the speed conferred by Cynthia’s buffs and the quasi-immunity to the swarm’s physical attacks brought by Resist Elements and Gaseous Form to kite the Soldiers. Finally, she finished them off and passed over Damien’s Ember Circle, exhausted.

The ants pursued. When they entered the Circle, they visibly slowed and their legs began smoking. They tried to avoid the circle, climbing on Manon and Louis’s Walls. “Grease.” Cynthia intervened. The ants fell from the Walls, now glistening and impassable. Jean cheered.

“They can’t get past! We’ve - Oh no.” He abruptly paled. His Divination Sigil was warning him of imminent, deadly danger. Looking behind, the others saw what had stopped his celebration. In the tunnel they’d taken was another mass of red ants, considerably larger than the first. “Wipe out what’s left on our side of the Walls, quick! Don’t skimp on Mana!” Cynthia ordered.

“Dust Devil.” Jean conjured a small tornado in front of the tunnel, delaying the ants. “It won’t hold that many ants for long,” he warned.

Damien sighed, then began casting. “Ember Knife”.

A gray knife, pulsating with red veins appeared in his hands. He gasped at the effort but managed to throw the knife directly onto the greatest concentration of ants on the other side of the barricade. It pierced one of them at the midsection, then exploded. Shards of scarlet ember touched the creatures and began to absorb their heat until the embers became hotter than the ants’ bodies. Exoskeletons melted at the joints, and the creatures died in droves. Damien fell to his knees. “Don’t count on me doing that again,” he warned, panting “the drain... would knock me out at least, and you don’t want to drag me... out of here.”

They passed through the Circle, eliminating the few remaining ants with Rays of Frost and Gusts.

“Damien, check if you can find some Cores if you can’t cast,” Cynthia told him.

He began scanning the dead bodies. First, the Soldiers. “One Core... It’s cracked... but it should be usable.” He announced.

“My Dust Devil is coming down in fifteen seconds!” Jean warned.

“Cynthia, help me out with checking the bodies!” Damien requested. “Mage hand.” He seized a pair of Cores from two Ants that had melted under his Ember Knife.

“I got two.” Manon muttered. “Good job, Cûn Anûn!” She gingerly petted the monstrous dog-shaped plant Spirit, which held two Cores in its maw. Meanwhile, Cynthia pocketed one last Core.

“We’re really in trouble, now,” said Jean, showing the path from which the first Ants had appeared with his thumb. Menacing lights were gradually appearing from it.

“Oh damn. Queen incoming!” Cynthia panicked. “We need an escape route!” Every children palled, terrified, before their training took over.

A few dozen ants passed over Damien’s Circle, with exoskeleton-melting consequences. However, instead of causing one of his Glyphs to explode, as expected, it simply lit up. He frowned and retraced the Circle and the Glyphs in his mind. His eyes widened in realization

“Uh oh. Guys, I messed up! Move as far away as possible from the circle and turtle up, NOW.”

The others saw that he was panicking, and did as he told them. They all fled as far as possible into the depths of the cave, pursued by ants, soldiers, and even an enormous creature that Cynthia had identified as a Queen. Thankfully, she was slow, and they arrived at the cave’s walls before she could even leave the narrow passage she was emerging from.

“How much should we turtle in, Damien?” Manon asked.

“As much as possible,” Damien answered, speaking as fast as possible. “With the number of ants incoming, we’ll have a detonation in… thirty-one seconds”

“Alright”, she nodded. “I need cover or suppressive fire”

“I’m OOM.” Julia, Damien, and Cynthia answered in unison - “The weapons” Damien remembered. He and his comrades were not yet used to having a reserve of cantrips. He unsheathed his own, a short sword enchanted with the ability to throw his version of Infestation and become a Lesser Elemental Weapon, while the others extracted theirs.

“One volley of two spells every three seconds,” Cynthia commanded. “First, Damien and Julia. Now.”

Julia took out her weapons, a pair of knuckles. She immediately aimed at an incoming Soldier and produced a Ray of Frost, slowing it down while mites of Sun-Fire, blindingly hot and bright, manifested as Damien unleashed an Infestation with a flourish of his sword. They damaged a whole wave of ants, hampering their movements, but not stopping them.

Next, it was Jean and Cynthia’s turn to shine. Jean used his Infestation, having yet enough mana to use the cantrip. Cynthia unhooked her weapon from her thigh. Damien blinked at the sight. It was a work of art in the shape of a mace, made of a merman’s skull -probably a Priest- and filled with what appeared to be transmuted granite and steel one another. He could guess that at its heart was hidden a Core from a dangerous aquatic creature, of Danger Rating 4 at the very least. When she waved it a wave of water appeared, drowning the advancing swarm. This routine repeated thrice, while Louis and Manon prepared to cast protection against the incoming conflagration.

Finally, they succeeded. “Spirit Guardian,” Manon cast, fusing her primal mana with Cûn Anûn’s considerable power, her spell manifesting as a carpet of green moss on the ground and trees linked by creepers. Then Louis finished his spell too. “Maximized Earth Dome.” It finished manifesting just in time, using Cûn Anûn's trees as pillars.

They could see the explosion’s brilliance through Louis’s Earth Dome. Then, they felt the shock and the aftershock. Finally, they heard the sound of millennia-old rock formation collapsing on Louis’ already-tortured dome. Now, only Cûn Anûn’s powers held it together.

“Well, at least the ants are no longer a problem.” Jean mused wryly.