Celeste took a slow breath, considering the situation. She would never say it out loud, due in no small part to the fact that doing so would spell doom for the Isylan population, but most of their people were weak. While many inherited complex and invaluable abilities to twist space and time from Kiara's bloodline, her world-cracking power had been diluted over the generations. After Rasha's death, only Rumia and Adageyudi could claim to possess true power.

In summary: the people standing beside her were the only salvation for the city behind them.

She looked to Shiara. "Do you trust me?"

Shiara hesitated; that was not the sort of question one wanted to hear on the battlefield. "What do you need?"

"Trust," Celeste said. "I don't have time to explain Attunement on the battlefield, but if you're willing to trust me, I can work with your magic."

"R-right, like we did when healing Ada?"

"Similar," Celeste said. "Now, concentrate on the strongest focus spell you have. Think about setting one of them on fire, draw upon and use the spell, but don't choose one target. Think about it for each of them, individually. Slow down for a moment before you complete the spell."

"That..." Shiara took a slow breath. "Okay, I'll try. All of them. Every one. An entire army of zombie animals, with just my power alone." A dark thought crossed her mind: she has that power, it was just a question of how many of her friends would die if she used it.

Celeste had other concerns. She and Shiara weren't too dissimilar in the nature of their magic, though they had a different balance and different core power. Her power was focused upon creation, drawing power from possibility. The power of the soul, the power of turning Nothing into Something. She felt Shiara's magic blossom outward, and changed it before it erupted. Instead of burning one of the countless undead, it burned the concept of an army.

In practical terms, the wave of walking corpses became a wave of walking corpses that were now on fire. Some small few of the dead had the presence of mind to scream in agony or attempt to retreat from the inferno that had been an army, but most marched forward even as the smallest and most fail of their numbers crumbled to ash and bone fragments.

Shiara looked away and fought down her tears. This is different.

"Are you okay?" Ada moved closer to Shiara. She knew something was wrong, though she mistook the reason. "Don't exhaust yourself early; this is a marathon, not a sprint."

"I... I'll be fine, just give me a moment." Shiara took comfort in the support of her princess, even if it wasn't the way she would have liked.

Then rain started falling upon the corpses, fighting back the fire. Charred corpses grew more visible by the moment.

"Wait... that's not fair!" Shiara shouted at the scene before her. "They're undead! They can't do that! Even the ones that have some weird tainted powers don't have elemental spells!"

True statements, to the best of all of their understanding of the world. "Once again, Shadowblight doesn't care what you think is possible," Arakash said.

"You did an excellent job," Rumia said. "Now it's time for me to do my part." She slotted her arrow in spite of the distance, but kept it aimed at the ground. Space and time folded around her, twisted into a long-practiced and familiar form. Her perceptions mapped the battlefield in four dimensions as best they could. Near the hoards her senses faltered; the overwhelming tainted aura disrupted her magic.

"Celeste, I'll need your guidance," Rumia said. "This much taint is warping my magic."

"Of course." A quick incantation from the daeva pulsed outward against the distorting effects of the taint, then folded inward. Celeste frowned, closed her eyes, and pushed as much power as she dare into her aura, driving back the darkness and forcing her spell through.

Rumia smiled. "Thank you." With her focused enhanced by Celeste's bolstering magic and the conflicting energies cancelling one another out to a significant extent, she returned to the map of reality created by her tendrils of void. She drew her bow and fired down in front of her feet. In the distance, a bear rocked sideways as the arrow impacted its skull. It fell into what might have been a deer, though both managed to right themselves.

"That was incredible," Shiara said. "How many times can you do that?"

"A few hundred, normally. Perhaps half that with all the taint in the way. " Rumia smiled at the redhead's enthusiasm. "I did say I was a better soldier than leader."

Arakash huffed at the show of magic, if only to hide his concern. He was coming to understand how Kiara was able to face a Pillar of Reality and come away the victor. He wasn't a mystical scholar, but even he could appreciate how terrifying the power wielded by Isylans would be when backed by the raw power of a Goddess. "Next time, don't waste a shot on the skull. They don't need eyes to see or brains to think, if they think at all. Aim for the legs, take their mobility."

Shiara turned to face the demon. "An awful lot of words for someone who's done nothing to help so far."

"I'd say giving advice is about the most I can do right now." Arakash smiled now that Shiara wasn't. "Noctrel magic works best against living things. Against the walking dead, our only advantage is we're not vulnerable to taint. And the ability to offer advice." He wasn't an expert on that subject, either, but noctrel didn't have to fear death by a single organ being pierced, either. He hoped they didn't realize he revealed the best way to fight his people as well.

Rumia fired another shot, and another, during the argument. The bear's left leg and left arm came off at the joints, causing it to fall on its side. While it didn't stop coming, it was quite a bit slower now. "Thank you for the advice. Never had to fight the dead, before." Her smile grim, she began picking off limbs one at a time.

"Nice shot." Arakash kept smiling, watching the light blush creep up Rumia's face while luxuriating in Shiara's impotent rage. "But we need a way to wipe out more of their numbers before we're overrun."

A wave of distorted time shot forward at waist height. It wasn't much wider than a man at the shoulders, nor was it fast by spell standards. Against a foe smart enough to move, it wouldn't be much use, but where it struck it cleaved flesh, bone, and anything else in its path. In its wake, a path of shattered bodies were left behind, ignored by the horrors marching on either side of them. "I... I won't be the only one who doesn't fight." Ada gasped as she bent over and rested her hands on her knees. "Sorry, that was harder than I expected."

Rumia stared with wide eyes at Ada. "Don't apologize, that was incredible." Skill and finesse were lacking, but the only Isylan she had ever witnessed who could work with time magic to that extent was her mother. "You're more talented than you realize."

"Still doesn't do us much good. You've destroyed perhaps a twentieth of their numbers." Arakash rather enjoyed being the bearer of bad news, and again made certain Shiara was looking at him. "At this rate, we'll have to abandon Isyla to the dead."

"Leave that to me." With all the passion of the inferno she unleashed, Shiara turned to face Celeste. "Can you do that thing you did before with my magic?"

Celeste resisted the urge to glance at Arakash, but she had to wonder how much of his needling was a ploy to anger Shiara and push her into using her power to its fullest. The manipulative demon's talent for being worst combination of frustrating and useful didn't seem to be going away any time soon. "I believe I have strength enough for one more."

"Good, let's use it." Shiara's voice crackled with internal heat, moments before her skin burst into flame. Flesh converted to fire, she drew into the true reservoir of her strength, and hoped that Celeste's control would succeed where her own failed time and time again.

Celeste began muttering under her breath, twisting and warping the flow of magic and mathematical principles of creation magic. A value added, another reduced, function begetting form and reality changed for a brief moment.

There wasn't time enough for the army to react to the conflagration that erupted from within their cores. Small bones reduced to ash, large bones converted into shrapnel propelled by the explosive heat. Above, the supernatural rainclouds were dissipated and Rumia's sensory magics were eradicated alongside much of the Taint of undeath; Shiara's Aspect had forced back all other forms of magic.

The fire burned out as fast as it had erupted; it had consumed all possible fuel and left nothing to sustain itself in the scorched earth.

Shiara's elemental form flickered out, leaving a young redhead gasping for breath. "Good." She gasped again. "Enough?" She collapsed to her knees, and the leaves beneath her legs began to smolder.

"Well, you solved the first problem." Arakash pointed at the distance, behind the ashen field that was once an army, where two humanoid figures stood. "The cannon fodder is gone, and it accomplished its purpose by forcing us to burn up most of our magic. Now we just have to kill the enemy generals. Who were hand-crafted by Shadowblight, Itself."

Shiara didn't have the strength to hold her head up and watch them approach, let alone make a clever remark.