Staring down at the amassed army, I was about to leap down to try to fight my way to the door when I felt my Instinctive Precognition give me a sharp warning that I was about to do something stupid. Stopping, I thought about that for a moment, considering the situation in which I found myself.

I looked at the crowd, and considered why they were there; not their motivation, but rather why the Blood Marshall – and his own army of Guards - had not simply swept them aside like wheat. Why there was no... fighting. It did not seem... like the Blood Marshall to simply allow an enemy to mill about outside their base, and certainly unlike the Guard in general.

The fact of their presence indicated to me - when I thought about it – that either Tain and the Guard were absent, or there were enough Pinnacle stage cultivators down there that the Marshal could not simply walk over them. I was fast, especially after my most recent modification to my cultivation, but even at my best, I was about half as fast as a peak Pinnacle; under most circumstances, that was more than enough to put me way ahead of most people, but against actual Pinnacles, it had an almost certain chance of simply falling short.

Of course, if they just were not home, then that was a different matter, but if that was the case, why had my Instincts triggered? That was when I re-addressed the situation again, and realised that I had been seriously thinking about attacking an enemy that numbered in the multiple thousands, at least. If they were Core stages, or Path stages, which seemed to be about the average for the world, I would be about twenty-one times faster than them at my new normal, which meant I could likely rip through them like wet tissue, but that presumed the lack of other speedsters, or strange abilities that hard-countered me, like frictionless shields, immovable objects, force-reversing powers... There were a surprisingly high number of variables for what amounted to a simple melee. That is the infinite variety of a magic system that was largely based on... whatever you wanted.

As the wards were obviously intact, trying to find my way in via another route seemed like a bad idea, and that left me slightly stuck. I did not want to leave; there was a good chance that one side would make a move sooner or later, and when then happened, I wanted to be on hand. I just did not like... waiting, when there was a fight in front of me. That was not a dragon.

Sitting back down behind the lip of the roof, I thought about the crowd again; one thing the grouping seemed to confirm was that the sects were indeed in bed with the Risen Throne, or at the very least a portion of them were. While the pockets of less ragged and bloody clothing were not grouped together, so as to indicate cooperation, they were also... just in the middle of everyone.

Peeking over the lip again, some impatience making it hard to sit still, I watched as the sects moved about, still clustered, among the strangely still army. As one group drew particularly close to the building I was hiding on top of, I began to make out details; a huge man in yellow and brown and who carried what looked like a long, octagonal metal bat that was at least as thick as his thigh was gesturing wildly down the avenue leading away from Stone and back again. The other members of the Forge of Flesh seemed to be trying to calm him down, but the big man only appeared to grow more agitated at the effort.

I watched for a minute or two, and I was starting to think there was going to be a fight amongst the members when I saw a new group appear, one made up of four people, three of whom wore the distinctive colours of the local sects and one in the drab grey and black of the gathered army, though lacking either the ragged tears or the stains. Their arrival, from the direction the big man had been gesturing, quieted the brewing squabble, and where there was visible movement, stillness rippled out, causing the sects to blend with those they interspersed.

I ducked down as far as I could while still keeping my eye on the new group; I got the impression that they were important, and that usually meant strong in the limited experience I had on that world.

After striking a dramatic pose, the figure in black and red drew back one arm and flung it towards the giant building at the centre of the square and from nowhere an iceberg the size of a small mountain and shaped like a dart appeared high in the air and was flung towards the Stone faster than I could see in my un-accelerated state. There was a boom, like a great whip had cracked; it was loud and sharp enough to hurt my ears, but it was followed by a sound like a billion stones cracking and a flash of pale green light bright enough to hurt my eyes.

As the light faded, I glanced towards to the fortress to see a giant pile of broken ice vanish as if it had never been, only to be replaced a moment later as more booms and flashes followed, beating a painful Rythm against my senses.

After several moments, I began to hear more sounds, and there were still more flashes, and in between I saw a mottled brown circle thousands of feet across spinning into the apparent wards of the Stone like a circular saw, throwing off sparks in bright white and green as uncountable pebbles and stones were blasted to molten motes, a roar adding to the staccato attack.

On the ground, a man of tiny proportions, less than a foot in height hammering at the doors with tiny fists, but each rang out with the same sounds as the frozen mountains, and I saw the stone cracked and broken underneath his feet.

I could not see the fourth figure that had been with the group, but I did notice cracks starting to appear in the building I was on; as the three attacked a spot hundreds of feet from me, the ground shook hard enough that buildings around the square began to collapse and I looked around for another place to hide, in the event that mine fell down around me.

Luckily, the assault stopped before that, and in the ringing silence I looked on, slightly dazed as the gates at the front of the fortress snapped open and Tain, as well as several Guard I did not recognise walked out, the tiny man springing back and creating a small crater as he did so.

The two groups faced each other for a tense moment as more of the Blood Guard filtered out behind them; some in the red and white coats I was more used to, and others in the plate armour I had seen at the gates on my first visit. They spread out into the open space that had been created by the attack, and further their grim expressions pushed the gathered sects back, and even the deathly still army took several steps in strange unison.

“That seems like just about e-Void-blasted-nough. I don’t know where you bought your new balls from, but you used to know better than to come knocking on my fucking door.”

Tain’s voice was loud, but not amplified; I could hear it from where I was, but it did not boom out over the square. Opposite him, the man that had been throwing the ice – from the Bleak Shadows by their colours – stepped forward and spoke, his own voice low and angry.

“You’ve kept us from what is ours for too long, Marshall. This city – and the treasure you hoard – should have been ours, and it will be.”

“You’re going to share? Doesn’t seem like any of you Void fucking egotists.”

“We have come to an arrangement, the city – and the treasure – will be split between us by our new ally, and then we will each have a city built of our own. To rule.”

Tain snorted, his contempt clear.

“Allies? You must mean these ‘Brasen Cones’ I’ve heard so much about. Don’t you worry, I’ll be having words with them too, once you’ve been shown out. And I’ve no doubt your Grand Elders will be more than happy to see you ground into ground, Void fucking, bloody paste!”

The Blood Marshall did not wait for a response, though I had noted that the fourth member of their group – presumably the Risen Throne representative here – had re-appeared nearby, and at Tain’s mention of the Brazen Cones, had stiffed. They did not seem much like a group that liked being mocked, and while I did not know if Tain’s inability to get their name right was intentional or not, it seemed to have pissed the cloaked figure off. Of course, that did not matter, because as I said, the Marshall did not wait, instead lashing out with one hand as he finished shouting, causing the sect elders – though apparently not top-dogs – to scatter wildly.

Five ripples sprang out from his hand, spreading like waves and slicing neatly into stone as if it was simple pudding. I felt my building shift and begin to slide as the perfect cuts he had created finished the job the earlier attacks had started.

Focusing and stepping onto my Path, I leapt over to where Tain and the Guard were; part way through my jump, it came to me that they might not interpret a person jumping at them from the direction of their enemies as a good thing, but I saw the Marshall’s head turn to track me, and a small nod of acknowledgement sent a small burst of relief through me.

As I landed, I saw my friends at the back of the group of Blood Guard, just inside the open gates, another mass in red and white behind them and pouring from the inner doors. It seemed like the Blood Guard were finally sick of their uninvited guests.

With a wave that I realised was probably too fast for my friends to see, I grimaced and turned, just as chaos exploded around me.

Tain and the others at the front with him sprang into motion, moving five times faster than me but still clearly visible in my new-normal state, each meeting one of the opposing elders in mid-air and carrying them off and away from the stone.

With a shrug, confident that I could handle anything short of a Pinnacle – or at least run away from it – I raced towards the waiting army, leaving the others far behind as I smashed into the frozen seeming line like an explosion, letting the destructive red lines of light spring out of me to do as they willed; it slowed me down a little, but as fast as I was it simply did not matter against the opponents I faced, who were blasted back and broken by blows they could not see.

Bodies scattered around me as I moved, space blasted around me as my hybrid cultivation was used to full effect for the first time, as I had imagined it so long ago. Defense, offense and speed.

It almost felt unfair to use my speed against normal cultivators, but these people had caused the death of so many in the city, and beyond that I did not let that stop me; I had been hesitant before, not knowing if they the sects were involved but one thing I knew for certain was if they were in the square, they were complicit.

As I moved through the virtually unmoving army, I noted that the majority of them – the ones in the torn and bloodied clothing – were strangely pale, and though it was hard to tell, they seemed more fragile than I would expect from a peak Core stage, their bodies sometimes even coming apart at a single blow.

I was honestly feeling too good to care much though; it felt good to run riot like that, without the fear of running out of energy, and even the normally corrosive feeling of the red lightning running through my channels was absent.

Of course, things could not simply go my way; as I fought – though I use the term loosely – I began to note people moving at a more normal relative speed towards me and was just about to go meet them when a familiar wisp of black caught my attention, drawing it upwards.

Above me – above the army – I saw a circle of darkness, dark mist falling from it and a figure hovering just outside of it, a glowing red crown atop its head.

It seemed the Shadow Faced Guy had come to play as well.