“Make sure you take the wind speed and direction into account, it feels to be picking up,” the captain commanded.

“Yes, my captain,” Arles of the House of Many Things replied as he struck a hand to his chest in salute.

The captain then turned and strode off to the next circle of magic casters, assumedly to tell them the same thing.

He himself turned back towards his own circle, a group of seven men, aside from himself, and two women. All mages; All experienced veterans of combat.

He said nothing to them as it would have only been an insult to their years of experience, merely nodded to signal that they should start.

Each of them turned to face inward towards the centre of their circle, a simple thing formed by their own bodies. No chalk, no paint, nothing that would have been an absolute necessity for any initiate caster who hoped to summon magics for their use. Not that an initiate could have even hoped to have been able to cast anything near as powerful as the spell as they were about to form, the simplest of fireballs being far too complex and intricate for someone whose mind had not been honed by years of practice to risk casting.

Each of the mages present began chanting. A harmonic sound filling the air as they started to channel and combine their magics into the constructing of the siege spell that they were to use against their far-off enemy. A delicate task, one that would prove their undoing if any one of them erred, a slip-up between now and the point that they sent the spell flying resulting in their demise as the held energies would burst outward, the power-consuming anyone nearby.

At least…that was what normally happened. Sometimes other things would occur. Generally, also lethal in their effect, but sometimes not. Sometimes the results would leave one merely wishing that they were dead.

But those were unneeded thoughts, Arles mentally rebuked as he chastised himself.

The air around the group began to charge with the energy of their shared magics, the steady hum of their chants causing it to vibrate.

Anyone paying attention would have noted a discrepancy in what was actually being said each member of the circle, the words being chanted differing from person to person as they went about building their spell.

That was because those words of power were in reality unnecessary to the practice of magic, having no real use other than being a way to help limit distraction and error from occurring within the mind as the casters focussed on their work. Each word associated with a certain step in the process, created and assigned to it by the person chanting.

There had been efforts to standardise the chants, the creation of a universal formula to allow for greater harmonisation and possibly even greater ability to chant power, but while there had been some successes in said effort, it had been abandoned for the more personalised word associations. There was an emotional aspect to magic, the element associating itself to all things to do with the mind; And even though the words held no power in and of themselves, the individual’s association with them, whatever the meaning behind it may have been, helped to increase the flow of magic as emotion and memory helped to momentarily expand the pathways that mana would flow through.

Not to any significant effect, though, the increase barely present enough to have been measure, but, as the saying went, every little bit helped.

Arles stilled his mind, clearing it of all distraction, filling the void that remained from its absence with the sound of his voice; The words he chanted calling forth the next step in the process as they passed his lips.

The spell was slowly formed before them, the orb of power growing with each passing moment. A thing of fire and light. Their group’s speciality, though the spell itself was not; special, that is, fireballs being a common favourite of the military’s strategists. More for its ability to spread devastation and fear after impacting the enemies’ position, a growing blaze, no matter how mild, easily able to inspire terror within people. Even those experienced in war.

More chanting drifted in on the wind as the other circles down the line began on their own castings.

Once completed, they were to hold the spell for as long as possible, only unleashing along with the rest in a grand bombardment once the captain signalled for them to do so.

All was going well the efforts took shape, but Arles began to feel a strange heat begin to fill his body, rising up from his left leg as he focused on the task before him. He ignored the sensation, thinking it merely the result of his muscles being too tense or an effect of the weather; perhaps an unseen cloud above had passed, thus allowing the sun to shine down upon him?

Whatever the cause, it was a needless concern; One that could kill him if he fouled up in maintaining the magical construct taking form before him, the lethal magics rending the area asunder should he lose focus now. He returned his mind to the obviously more important task at hand.

Or so he had thought, but a moment later as his head began to swim and his vision started to blur, he realised that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

He started losing control of himself, his body falling forward, his vision fading as he did so; The light of the spell before him was the last thing that he would ever see.

It was a small mercy that his blackout prevented him from experiencing the soul-shattering pain as his body was ripped apart at the molecular level by the explosion that resulted from the spell’s collapse, the screams of the others never even registering in his mind.

The fireball, instead of succumbing to the true nature of magic and flooding the area in a field of chaotic energies, simply bathed it in fire. The seemingly accidental discharge interrupting two more circles along the line, which in turn resulted in even more collapses.

The circles had been spaced out as much as possible to prevent such a series of events, the military long experienced in the possibility and horror of such chain reactions; But there was only so much that they could do the prevent such things without simply refraining from casting magic in the first place. And thus, the area became what those from Earth would have described as a hellscape, the field where they stood bathed in fire, the air filled with the screams of the dying.

That expanding inferno, however, had nothing to catch onto except the still-wet grass beneath it as the camp had been constructed well away from the potential area of effect. A standard safety measure against such inevitabilities. Several squads of warriors were not so fortunate, succumbing to the devastating energies as they passed over them, a dozen more squads falling as the flames completely consumed the air in the immediate area.

As unfortunate as the incident may have been, it was not an uncommon event in war and the experienced soldiers of the legion of the long night that were stationed along the southern side of the blockade quickly reformed and returned to their given duties as they prepared for the next assault.

>>>>

Her Majesty raced on to her next target, briefly slowing as she sensed a surge of mana expand outward in the world above, which was then soon followed by two more bursts in quick succession. She dared not rise to see what it was though, the phenomena obviously dangerous, but the memory of her wounding from the last time that she had been caught in a similar such burst of mana was still fresh in her mind, a trauma she was unlikely to get over anytime soon and a fear that would no doubt bar her from facing such elements in future.

She carried on, heading for the other end of the line formed by the groups of mage circles. Her intent to target them as they were mid-cast, a sudden and unexpected disruption of their circle leading to the most enjoyable of results.

A moment passed; a vast distance crossed. The time it took to reach the end of the formation increased due to their spacing out of the mages rather than their sheer number.

Her Majesty rose quickly, launching herself from the dark place into the world of light to latch upon the exposed leg of another caster, a manoeuvre that the boy had taught her, one that she had perfected on the vermin that had infested the tunnels beneath the city; A hit and run attack that allowed her to limit the amount of time that she exposed herself in the outside world as she went in for the kill.

She had not much opportunity to use it on her journey from the Boy’s former home as it had a low chance of success against moving and armoured targets.

Even though the rats could run as fast as most any other creature in the world, they, like most other animals, would refrain from doing so without a reason to, and their unprotected bodies, when assaulted from the side, were more than wide enough to allow for a decent margin of error when launching herself at them.

Against larger creatures, however, her efforts became harder, their legs the only thing on offer for her to target and even the bulkiest of calf proved hard to hit due to its thinness and general motion. And quite often they were covered; scales, coarse hair, a thick hide, even light clothing could prevent her fangs from properly sinking in. And then, of course, there was the bone beneath, something she had more than once lost a fang to.

In general, the useful attack was ill-suited for combat as the rapidly moving bodies and the chaos of the battlefield made it hard for her to successfully deliver herself without also risking her own safety let alone allow fur successful delivery of her venom.

A Problem that she was delighted to be free of thanks to the hubris of her victims.

Why these people wore nought but robes, was beyond her current understanding, but the exposed flesh of their legs and their inability to move as they cast their spells made for an enticing target.

Ones that she took full advantage of as she sank her fangs deeply into another limb, delivering her venom into the fool whom the leg belonged to before pulling away to secure herself back within the other realm.

As she re-entered the dark place, Her Majesty sped off, once again making for the opposite end of the line, the one that, even now, was doused in the flames of magic gone awry. She would stop short, of course, her aim for the surviving mages nearby that were even now continuing with their spellwork. A moment later, a lone burst echoed out from far behind her.

If she had the capacity to smile, she would have.

Another success; Another circle down. A few more notches in her belt, whatever that meant, and much less danger to her and the boy.

And more of the power needed to level up, she remembered. Perhaps, this time, the options presented to the boy would finally be the best and she would once again be allowed to grow.

The joyous tingling that filled her slender body spurred her onward, the little shadow demon picking up speed as she flew through the void of the shadow realm.

Her Majesty would work her way back and forth until none of the casters remained. Then, she would move on, to one of the other lines. The west, perhaps, that shots coming from that direction were more numerous than the rest, so whittling them down a bit would do much to alleviate the forces of the waggon train.

Yes, the west.

There would still be plenty of soldiers left alive in the south once she had finished, but they were little more than cannon fodder…another alien notion, and at the moment, an unimportant one; She had to focus on the people that could do the most damage to the caravan.

She had to kill.