New Shalkar.

Several football fields over and away from the hornets’ nest of artillery, Yekaterinburg Tower drifted into place.

As it descended, its owner and commander, the Magi Igor Sakharov, ensured that his fortress’ external Walls of Force were angled perfectly to deflect the fusillade of Magma, Lightning, Fire and Earth hurtling in an arc through the air.

If possible, he would have preferred to land atop the city itself—though that option had become fantastical the moment he saw the defences surrounding the just-completed portions of the incomplete desert metropolis. Sakharov felt his rationale was self-evident, for the above-ground portion of the city was not even a quarter of its essential infrastructure. Even if he risked the destruction of his Tower to plunge like a dagger into the heart of Shalkar, he possessed no confidence that the city’s ley-lines could be hijacked from the Dwarven Citadel below.

That, and his objective was to disrupt and destroy the Mageocracy’s hopes of establishing a Forward Operating Base so close to the emerging interests of his hidden allies—a prospect that came with the added bonus of uprooting a potential World Tree.

From the projected windows of his heavily warded bridge, he could see the milling panic of the hundreds of thousands of creatures below, some Human, the rest Demi-human. Unlike his fellow Muscovites, Sakharov did not possess the weakness of believing in Human Supremacy and so felt sympathy for the mites below—an emotion he would soon purge.

The Tower shook, shaking off another sizeable volley of spells.

“Reserves are at ninety-four percent,” his First Officer announced. Four hundred counts until troop teleportation range. The mass translocation is assessed to consume six percent of Total Reserves.”

Sakharov was pleased with the performance of his undaunted crew. In typical Russo fashion, a living Officer Corp would have shown doubt and insubordination in the face of incontestable war crimes. As Vampiric Thralls, his crew obeyed the will of their progenitor without question, tapping into the utmost of their unrealised abilities. After all, as Undead, there were no promotions, punishments, or familial quandaries to preoccupy their mental faculties—at least until First Officer Andrei Vulpe gave them the will to do so.

“Vulpe, direct eight per cent power to the upper Mandala Arrays,” Sakharov ordered. If the Ljósálfar wanted Shalkar in flames, it was his prerogative to see it performed. “Let us soften the defences before our troops venture to feed.”

“By your will,” Vulpe announced to the deck. “Directing power to the upper Mandala Array…”

The metal walls thrummed. The projections grew a shade dimmer.

A cylindrical platform about of width of a man’s torso extended from the floor, its surface etched in mystical symbols too complex for even an upper-tier Mage to discern.

Calming himself, Sakharov focused his mind to a scalpel point.

A long, long time ago, with the help of the best Magitech engineers of his nation and the blood and sweat of his own brow, he had installed this very Mandala into the apex structure of his precious Tower. He was already an old man then, but his heart was full of youthful vigour. Now, as an older man, his milky eyes gleamed and twinkled as he placed the final invocation into place, his fingers slick with trembling joy as he ignited the Fire Dragon Core.

Mote by mote, synapse by synapse, the greatest spell Sakharov had ever envisioned but never utilised, fired into being for the first time since its inception.

Above the Tower, countless arrays formed like the Victory Day fireworks over the Kremlin. Within the Magi’s enmeshed mind, his myriad calculations played the fanfares of blacken burning over the future ruins of Shalkar. He was a maestro; his hands were the hands of a great conductor, conducting the final crescendo of Den' Pobedy as he called down the flaming blossoms of ash and ruin.

“Meteor Swarm materialising…” His first Officer meticulously informed the operational crew of their impending apocalypse: “Two hundred seconds to manifestation… sixty seconds… two seconds… Abjurers, UPPER BARRIERS AT MAXIMUM.”

The Tower shimmered as its omnidirectional barriers cast a sickly glow around the metal sheeting Yekaterinburg wore like a gothic dress.

From far above them and ranging from one end of the Mageocracy’s new city to the next and beyond, rents into the Elemental Plane of Fire tore into the fragile fabric of the Prime Material.

Chunks of molten, burning Elemental Magma ranging from the size of a man’s head to a house fell through time and space into the vicinity of the Bunker, filling the sky and every inch of open space with streaking trails of orange and black, acoustically compelled by the insane orisons of igniting air.

“Such sublimity…” Sakharov announced, his face pale with effort. He had just attained a lifelong dream and paid for its cost in the sole Fire Dragon Core his prior nation possessed. He had also lost most of the feelings in his dominant arm. The system, he realised just now, was designed by a haler, younger Sakharov with a greater capacity for Spell fatigue. As he was now, the next manifestation would only be in the domain of the Lich Sakharov.

Still—the Magi could not help but marvel at the manifested fruit of his labour, the apex of his long tenure under the Muscovite Mageocracy.

Such an intoxicating feeling.

By his hand.

By his will.

This landscape would change.

And the ownership of the region will change with it.

“Reserves at Eighty-Two per cent,” the voice of his First Officer stirred the Magi from his daze. “Milord, the Tower Core’s efficiency appears to have been diminished by the long period of disuse. Engineering reports extensive micro-fractures in the conduit array.”

Sakharov winced. His calculations, like his mortal body, weren’t what they used to be. He had tested the Tower’s capacity but had not considered the mana loss due to interaction with the feedback from the Tower’s internal conduits.

“It’s no matter,” Sakharov dismissed the damage. Once he was a Lich, the Tower would undergo an extensive transformation into the first flying Necropolis in Human history, meaning most of the existing systems would need to be repurposed for a different form of arcanistry. “As soon as our barrage ends, unleash the Legions.”

“Yes, milord. Deploying the troops will utilise…” Vulpe questioned a thrall without turning his head.

“Ninety-six thousand VMI, Sire,” came the monotonous voice of a thrall.

“Around nine per cent of maximum capacity,” the Vampire stated with confidence. “We are within acceptable margins, milord.”

Sakharov nodded, glued to the burning sea smothering the city below. As expected, Shalkar was very, very rich. Within its perimetry, multiple layers of interlocking and overlapping shields were parrying the rain of elemental destruction.

However, Shalkar’s famous orchards and wheat fields possessed no means of protection, nor did the Humans and Demi-humans who did not make it into the city in time.

“Lower the Tower, prepare to intercept the ley node’s mana lines,” Sakharov ordered, feeling assured of his triumph.

Within the hour, half of Yekaterinburg’s former citizens will be swarming toward Shalkar, keen to transform its tens of thousands of Humans, Dwarves and Centaurs, and a million and more of its Rat-kin into the new citizenry of an eastern Necropolis.

He watched an enormous meteor splinter over the city’s central command buildings.

For that, Sakharov had to admit the girl possessed a minimal level of competence. His spectral colleagues did not desire an all-out war with the Mageocracy, so he had only perfunctorily bombarded the ISTC Station. Once the girl’s noble guests realised they were rats aboard a sinking ship, they would flee. The city would then be a sturgeon carcass that Sakharov could squeeze as he pleased.

And if the Dwarven defences should somehow cause a stalemate too time-poor for his remote expedition…

Sakharov thought of the Ljósálfar’s gift, one given to replenish his expenditure.

“A final insurance”, the Elf had said, “it will summon a friend the Dwarves fear from the very centre of their Creature Cores.”

Sakharov scoffed. He felt confident there would be no need to tax a being so greedy and malevolent. After all, the instant Yekaterinburg tapped into Shalkar’s ley feed, the city’s fate rested in his hands.

After all, a Necropolis of Demi-humans was infinitely more productive than a wasteland of scorched husks.

Unnoticed by the mortal Mages below perspiring into the linings of their Parisian attires, the largest meteor aimed at the Bunker’s horn-like Sky Garden did not strike the shields but slid off to either side like silken tofu.

“Goodness,” Sythinthimryr, mother to Slylth, remarked with genuine interest as the falling Elemental Energies avoided her general presence like droplets repelled by a hydrophobic leaf. “You know what the Humans say—you never get a second chance to make a last impression.”

“It’s first impression, Mother,” Slylth corrected his mother’s fondness of mangled expressions. “But you’re right. Gwen is going to be very upset.”

“Awww,” his mother’s matronly face made Slylth feel a strange heat in his chest. “Does that upset you?”

“Should it not?” Slylth regarded the trio of Elder Dragons. His mother seemed to be entertained by the occurrence. Great Tyfanevius’ avatar appeared to be talking to his own mind, while the only genuinely displeased expression belonged to Illaelitharian, whose frosty mien had turned glacial. “Mother, I worked to make those yields a reality, you know. It took a lot of logistical planning to expand the fields as far as we did while maintaining optimum enrichment for future seasons.”

“Aww, it’s sweet that you’re upset.” Sythinthimryr’s statement made Slylth question himself. “Child, your mortal produce is just that, stuff. Assuming her Dryad takes root, the convergence of Elements should restore everything and more, both above ground and below. Also, don’t you see that Primarch Vulmari is right here? If Gwen begs, he could regrow the fields in a week, assuming Tyfanevius is in the giving vein.”

“She’s not a member of the Accord yet.” Great Tyfanevius laughed, shaking the head of his Elven Vessel. “If her city survives this, I’ll finalise her membership.”

“Tyfanevius, you realise this is the work of Tryfan’s kindred,” a wave of frigid cold accompanied Illaelitharian’s rebuke, dispelling the stifling, sulphurous air. “Need we debate that the labour of blasphemers is no scheming matter?.”

“Illaelitharian, speaking up for a Human,” the Lord of Emeralds snickered mockingly. “What would your sister in the north think if she heard?”

“We are of one mind,” the Lord of Frost snapped back. “Tyfanevius, dare you allow such a trespass against the Axis Mundi without redress?”

“Cousin, keep your cool,” Great Tyfanevius said, raising both hands, a very human-like gesture that surprised Slylth. The Regent’s forces are intact. A mere ninth-tier invocation tied to a Mandala isn’t so impressive that one of us should shift our weight to prevent the girl from learning the truth of the world. Besides, isn’t one of us here in both spirit and physicality?”

Slylth looked to his mother. If Sythinthimryr made herself known, the Tower would be gone in a wink.

“Slylthie dearest, do you want mummy to help your friend? Does she know the price your mother may command as a mercenary?” Sythinthimryr’s knowing smile made him shiver.

“No, mother.” Slylth was positive he preferred to face the Human Tower himself than allow his mother to intervene. Dragons were greedy beings, and his scarlet-scaled mother’s appetite made their moss and snow-scaled Kins saintly in their generosity. If, in the aftermath, his mother asked for ownership of Shalkar, what would become of his relationship with the female?

“I see. Then perhaps you should go and help your lady friend now,” his mother shooed him aside.

A little distance away, his good mate Golos exhaled in relief.

Gwen had already called them, but neither dared to mention the possibility of leaving until the elderly triumvirate dismissed them.

“Young whelps,” the Dragon who addressed them both was the Southern Seat of Frost. “A word of advice for your mistress.”

“Lord Illaelitharian.” Slylth bowed, as did Golos behind him.

“The Regent must remain close to the ley,” the Great Wyrm pronounced in High Draconic, conveying the certainty of his literal foresight. “Stray too far from where the Tree must bloom—and her city will burn.”

Shalkar.

The auditorium.

As a presenter who had persuaded her fair share of stockholders, Gwen knew well the golden rule of any finance presentation—that come fire, flood or Undead Tide, the Show must go on.

Therefore, her show remained loud, and the crowd remained docile.

A contributing factor was that there was little indication in the heart of the Bunker’s most fortified dwelling that there were any threats to her guests. Another was that she had opened visual channels to select regions of her city’s many corners to demonstrate her confidence in Shalkar’s civil engineers.

As a Frontier colony, it went without saying that no investor was likely to put down HDMs if there was no guarantee that, short of a natural catastrophe by the divine will of a higher power, their dividends would be safe.

By now, she should have planted Sufina’s seed and started the next portion of her presentation. But the moment wasn’t ripe or proper to peddle the tiers of membership available to the future guests of her World Tree Tower (™), so she instead took the opportunity to take a greater gamble. Heeding her Chief Security Officer’s advice, her role as Regent continued in the auditorium, lauding her city's many-layered defences as though she was in control all along.

Just as her voice clamoured over the patented, Dwarven-designed double-glazed Dragon Scale Dome (™), every projection she had tied to the outside world glowed red-hot, convexly reflecting the immense elemental energies of the city’s exterior upon her agitated guests.

For several seconds, the flow of words from her mouth ceased. Even in hubris, she could not imagine that her Dwarven-inspired infrastructure would undergo a live-fire exercise of this magnitude.

A barely perceptible weight alighted beside her right ear.

“I do believe…” the voice of Charlene’s father addressed her, issued from a silent, imperceptible crow perched upon the living fabric of her Elven gown. “… we are witnessing a serious strategic annihilation spell of the ninth tier, Regent. Will the city remain intact? Or should I propose an orderly evacuation?”

The dark Duke’s well-informed observation was accompanied by a flurry of Dings! from her Message device, including a belated statement from Thomas Holland, offering the same terms as the Duke.

Gwen’s mouth felt very dry as she sensed the throaty thrum of the Dwarven engines below, drinking deep from the ley’s river of solidified mana.

“Until it’s over, there is no place safer than here—” she spoke, her voice a little more hollow than she’d imagined. Her Dwarven Engineseers had created the shielding with Sobel’s Black Sun in mind, a threat equally if not more persistent than this passing squall of total devastation.

Addressing her duo of Dukes and her august crowd, Gwen’s voice rose above their nervous murmur. “Ladies and gents, even before this fated day, we knew our wealth would attract dangers. With the Fire Sea only a day’s Flight away, even Strategic Magic falls within the city’s design specifications.”

The crowd concurred, their faith attuned to the unmoving Duke of Norfolk and the coolly seated Thomas Holland, whose lives were immeasurably more precious than theirs. Gwen spoke a few more lines of pleasing platitude… then the largest of the meteors struck.

There was… a breath-clenching tremble as if the very Citadel shuddered in horror, and then nothing else in particular.

Her audience applauded.

But Gwen’s heart was not glad.

It smouldered instead.

Across the lumen projections, she saw the verdant fields grow ablaze with burning. She saw the cane forest explode as the moisture suddenly grew too hot to be contained within its sugared interiors. She saw Rat-kin, too slow to find shelter, grow suddenly still as craters were formed by living magma, starving the land of moisture and oxygen. She also saw Centaurs, both guards and civilians, helplessly dodge the rain of death until they were eaten by fatigue and fire.

Yet, the worst was to come. Though the immensity of the Dwarves’ designs diverted gargantuan molten skyscrapers trailing phoenix fire, the damage was not bypassed. Beyond the Dragon Scales, she witnessed the aftermath of the city’s success in parrying blocks of death and destruction into the surrounding countryside, pockmarking the canola fields with deadly debris.

And worse still, despite the horror, despite the insane atrocities happening to her innocent citizens, Ravenport’s prophetic, ninth-tier Meteor Shower continued minute after minute, seemingly inexhaustible in its duration.

Silently, the Mageocracy’s nobles watched.

Silently, Gwen felt her heart rend as though masticated by Golos.

Here was a land that she had transformed by hand and toil. Every greenery was a product of the blood and soil watered by the sweat of her Rat-kins’ brows. What now burned in those golden fields wasn’t just HDMs, Futures and Warrants but the hopes and dreams of her people.

Have I taken too little care still? She asked herself. Or were the heavens just unjust and envious?

Her teeth clenched until she felt as though a molar might chip. Was peaceful prosperity for her lost tribe of Humans and Demi-humans a stretch too far for this godforsaken world of Magic and Monsters?

Utilising her audience’s distraction, Gwen willed her Divination to implore the Security Office as fires burned both without and within. A brief security exchange of Glyphs followed, and then she gained access to the Clairvoyance of a dozen Diviners under her employ.

“Richard, report.” Her feelings were now numb to trauma. “How bad?”

“Bad. It’s hard to account for numbers right now. I think a few thousand at least, ten thousand at worst, mostly Demi-humans plus a few hundred Humans. More importantly, most of our autumn crop is gone, as are the exterior granaries. The aqueducts and all our roads will need to be rebuilt. That oasis that we came from? The original Shalkar? Gone, as are the pilgrims there.”

Gwen felt her fingers twitch. Against all her advice, the original oasis had become a holy site for the Rat-kin’s pseudo-religion.

“How are the troops?” She knew the answer but would prefer a confirmation.

“En route via the Low-ways. They’re headed for that blasted Tower. No casualties other than those who failed to muster inside the city.”

“Do you think we can handle the Tower’s barrages?” Gwen said. “With all the vegetation gone, I may as well invite Shoggy into the Prime Material to give our Tower friends something to chew on.”

“… actually,” Richard’s tone grew more serious, adding weight to their present circumstance. “Not sure if you answered Slylth’s Message, but he said there won’t be another Meteor Shower because he recognised the Mana Signature of a dead Dragon. He also said you needed to stay in the auditorium and stay close to the ley.”

“He did?” Gwen mentally filtered through the unanswered pings stacked on her Message Device, willing the clumsy software to find the latest from their Red Dragon Magus.

DING! “Regent! Golos and I are heading out to join Command Strun! STAY ON THE LEY! I can’t explain why you must, but you have to trust me. There will soon come a time when YOU WILL NEED TO PLANT THE WORLD TREE!”

The Red Dragon’s message made sense—but also didn’t. Without doubt, Shalkar had to exorcise the blasted Yekaterinburg Tower today and, in the aftermath, she had to plant the tree and finish the show—but the drake seemed to understand the future chronology of events better than she did.

“Right, Message received. Keep me posted.” Gwen waved away her cousin. “Petra… how’s the control room? Are we holding as planned?”

“Mana levels are steady,” her cousin replied. “Engineseer Axehoff is diverting mana from the Citadel and the unused Low-ways to feed the Dragon Scales. He says it’s a battle of attrition we can win—until Yekaterinburg steals our access to the ley-line. If it runs dry, we win. If the latter, our advantage stalls to a stalemate. Also, the Engineseer suspects we won’t be able to defeat it anyhow; it can leave any time, but we can’t uproot the Bunker to go after it.”

“I see. Are you certain we cannot hold primacy over the ley?” Gwen felt sorely repressed. If Yekaterinburg Tower could steal enough mana to sustain its operations, it wouldn’t matter that their Citadel hogged the Axis Mundi’s flow of living mana.

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“We cannot,” Petra’s reply needed no elaboration. After all, they had seen the same phenomenon when Ruxin stole the Jade Lode from the former ruler of Nagaland.

With sudden salience, Slylth’s cryptic message came to the fore of her mind.

As someone who had dealt with Dragons for most of her career and had been led by the nose by one for almost four years—she could smell the Divination dripping from Slylth’s warning like the corpse stench from Yekaterinburg’s vents. The Morden-taught Dragon was a professed novice at foretelling—so his wisdom had to come from an elder source he trusted—a source like the Red Queen of Carrauntoohil.

Stay at the node? Plant the World Tree?

Indeed, if Dwarven artifice cannot hog the ley-node—how about a sentient, Almudj-blessed Dryad?

Gwen was confident Almudj’s scale could do things with the ley lines that made the Dwarves drop their jaws—but could Sufina?

All around her and her audience, the Bunker purred as more meteors fell.

Whatever her doubts, there was one thing a cataclysm could not change, and that was her duty.

Her duty to her investors and their money.

And therefore, the show must go on.

Gunther “The Morning Star” Shultz, Tower Master of Sydney, had absolutely, without a sliver of doubt, expected that his day off in Shalkar would be interrupted by a small calamity.

He knew this, for that was his everyday experience.

Whenever he and Alesia scheduled a holiday away from the Tower, the Message spells would DING all day long with increasing urgency until his sense of duty superseded his patience, creating a pattern so uncanny that Gunther deeply suspected divine providence.

For instance, after reading a report by Gwen on the nature of organisational inefficiency, Gunther had implemented delegates and even hand-reared new Magisters from his loyal flock of followers. Yet, the moment his holiday began, inexplicable occurrences, from naturally forming rents in the Prime Material to random, unpredictable Mermen piracy, would blossom like hogweed after a humid summer in the outback.

Therefore, he had come fully prepared for his two-day break in Shalkar, knowing that his Sister-in-craft, may their Master weep in heaven, had a capacity for drama that made Alesia’s antagonism akin to the antics of a troubled teen.

That and Gunther had been expecting a calamity since Gwen approached him with questions regarding a World Tree with Almudj as a Patron and Sufina as the base. If their Master had been alive, Henry would have suggested that dropping a Shoggoth at every suspected Spectre location might be preferable—but Gunther’s ambitions for their Sister-in-craft were greater than their protective teacher’s.

In his opinion, the status quo of peaceful submission was the principal reason why Spectre's successes were so consistent. The Mageocracy, for all its power, had coasted along the rails of The Accord for enough generations that it lost the grit it once possessed during the Great War. For Gunther, what had happened to Sydney, Tianjin and the Ural region were not isolated events but evidence of the status quo rapidly slipping from man’s assumed control. More terrifyingly, what happened to the North and South Poles only demonstrated that not even the oldest powers of the Prime Material were free from disruption.

And that was why he genuinely supported Gwen’s grand experiment.

To create MORE World Trees, but under the control of Humans—that was, in his opinion, a breaking point against human entropy. The ordeal wasn’t what Henry wanted per se, but Gwen was doing what his Master could never achieve alone—bringing together all the stakeholders of the Prime Material into one tree.

Still, Gunther agreed with Alesia’s complaint that a ninth-tier Meteor Shower was a bit much.

“This cunt of a Magi…” Besides her master, Yue’s string of expletives made Alesia’s profane proclamations seem like a family-friendly limerick. “Leading a million rotten cunts in his cock Tower.”

“Fret not. Gwen seems to have countermeasures in place,” Gunther unconsciously filtered Yue’s speech, steering their gaze toward the city’s golden Dragon Scales. When the man-made cataclysm had first manifested, the very first thing his party had done was relocate outside the Bunker, putting themselves between the auditorium’s iris-lens and the Tower in the distance. There, even unaided by a Tower, Gunther was confident that his, Alesia’s and Yue’s “Firepower” was enough to deflect the worst of what would be incoming.

However, it seemed his woes had been unnecessary.

For reasons he could not discern, the falling blocks of meteoric magma and fire seemed to avoid the Bunker of their own volition, vastly reducing the strength of the spell’s impact and the strain on the mana engines. The excess capacity was also why there was barely a tremor as the city’s surroundings erupted in an unending chain of explosions, each as powerful as fifth and sixth-tier Evocations.

Whirrrrr—BWOOOM—!

Whirrrrr—BWOOOM—!

Whirrrrr—BWOOOM—!

Whirrrrr—BWOOOM—!

The artillery positioned atop the Bunker’s hillside exterior returned the favour, striking the angled shields of the descending Tower.

All around them, an orange-black sky of burning, combined with the screaming below, painted a vivid picture of the prophet Dante’s Inferno.

“I am impressed,” Gunther noted for his two companions. “That’s a few month’s worth of Yekaterinburg’s budget in the last fifteen minutes. I’ve never heard of a Tower expending its energies so generously.”

As a Tower Master, he understood the arithmetic of power and HDMs associated with operating a smaller Tower like Sydney’s original incarnation. The teleportation from Yekaterinburg would have been fuelled by its original ley-line, but thereafter, the Tower’s HDM reserves accompanied every operation.

“Whatever, I want to know what we can do,” Alesia spoke in muted tones, clearly touched by the milling portraits of misery below. “Between the three of us, can we make things easier for Gwen?”

His wife meant that since they could always escape into the shelter of the Bunker’s shields, the firepower the three possessed could probably drain the Tower’s mana stores by a significant margin. That and if a barrier partition failed, Gunther could cause enough catastrophic damage to discourage the Tower from remaining in the area.

“These cunts have destroyed everything,” Yue’s impatience was expected, though as a companion witness to Sydney, Gunther genuinely shared some of their youngest’s ire.

“Don’t let the rage cloud your head.” He allowed a warm envelope of Radiance to envelop the sooty flames dripping from Alesia’s Apprentice. The Positive Energy was minute, but it was enough to offset the corrosive side-effect of the Nightmare’s empathic resonance.

“Gwen built a paradise,” Yue’s fists were balled. “A fucking Tower, that’s cheating.”

Gunther concurred with Yue’s dismay. Not even he, the Master of a Superstructural Tower, had ever witnessed the Commonwealth’s most powerful aerial fortress used in this context. While Towers had been levied against Dungeons and dens, Mermen Swells and even Dragon lairs, the sieging of a friendly Human city was a first.

After this, even a victory shall be our loss, Gunther’s jaws clenched. The world was watching, and what the insane Magi of Yekaterinburg demonstrated to the rest of the Human world was the full might of a Tower laid against a Human settlement. Whatever happens to Gwens’ city now, the aftermath of Shalkar’s rise and fall had opened an unhappy portal of possibility.

“Yue’s right, Gunther.” His wife’s signature Elemental Fire was a beacon in the dusky smoke enveloping the landscape. “We need to tip the scales.”

“Of course, but also trust in Gwen’s foresight.” Gunther felt his forehead throb as his Fire sorceresses pulsed in sync. “Besides, we’re far too late to intercept Yekaterinburg now. If that thing is trying to dock with the ley node, then we need an opportunity to—”

Gunther did not need to finish. In the distance, the hazy silhouette of Yekaterinburg Tower shimmered, angling its exterior shielding to pierce the scorched ground like an obsidian dagger into a scorched carcass.

Gunther felt the hope of an easy expulsion evaporate. Once the Tower tapped in the ley, the battle would be long and drawn out. Perhaps then, they would receive the answer to another hypothesis, such as the contest between a Shoggoth and an empowered Tower.

That said, in a place without endless biomass, he failed to see how even the Shoggoth would dislodge the Tower’s parasitic capture of the Prime Material’s bloodstream. And without a means to definitely dislodge the invading fortress, Gwen would need to call in aid from the many allies she had made in and around the IoDNC’s rise to prominence.

Would House Ravenport, the major investor in the region, send its elite House troops?

Would the Britannic Mageocracy offer its sizeable military as a countermeasure?

Would the Factions keep faith in her ability to turn copper to gold?

Or was a single, catastrophic failure the extent of their loyalty to their Golden Goose?

Gunther scratched his chin, forcing his brows to relax.

His wife met his gaze, and he read her thoughts.

“No, I don’t think we can count on divine intervention.” Gunther had already considered Alesia’s hopeful hypothesis of what had happened in Sydney. “The Rainbow Serpent makes its home in the Antipodes for a reason. Even if Almudj traversed the Axis Mundi to arrive, its power won’t be anything remotely close to what can be manifested on our continent.”

The mana fields surrounding the Tower shimmered.

A dozen micro-Mandalas faded in and out of Gunther’s vision as he willed light to bend and focus.Through heat haze, the smoke and the sulphurous lava, he saw the silvery mana of Conjuration cascade from the Tower’s sides.

“The descent stopped?” Alesia’s voice grew hopeful.

“Strange, since they’re deploying ground troops—“ Gunther was also surprised. “Something must be preventing the Tower from penetrating the ley-line—AH!”

The two women looked to him for answers.

“It's the Low-ways!” Gunther felt a smile touch his lip. “If you recall, all the major ley lines here are converted to empower the Dwarven transit system. This design has never existed in any Human city before Gwen’s implementation. Therefore, Yekaterinburg must confused because the Stone Shape Mandala is failing to distort the space at its entry point.”

Gunther’s fingers danced through the air, bringing into view a projection of what his surveillance Mandala had provided for himself. “See there? The Tower has pierced the crust, but it isn’t Stone-Shaping anything below the first few meters. And if the Low-way under the Bunker extends all the way there, it means…”

The ground rolled.

Safe in the air, Gunther’s party could not feel the seismic shudders tearing through the earth. Even so, the visual spectacle unfolding upon the horizon, combined with the thunderous roar radiating across the landscape, made them feel the impact in their bones.

The next moment was one he would remember as clearly as the day he had met Sufina as a young man.

A Mongolian Death Worm, the largest Gunther had ever beheld, larger than even the IoDNC’s tallest skyscraper, pierced the charcoaled ruins of the wheat fields, its open maw as wide as two of Yekaterinburg’s dozen gravitational engines.

“HOLY FUCK—“ Yue echoed his and Alesia’s shared thoughts. “That’s a big worm.“

The Afaa al-Halak’s circular maw crashed into the force panes protecting the Tower from all harm. There was a singular moment of impact akin to the clashing of tectonic plates, and then Yekaterinburg blazed a retina-searing white.

The Walls of Force in the lower quadrants collapsed catastrophically, drawing so much energy from the Mandalas used to distribute power that entire sections of the Tower’s internal mechanism overloaded. The resulting overflow ran up and down the matrixes of the Tower’s rune-covered exterior like the aftermath of a lightning strike, gouging out entire sectors of Pocket Space that were no longer sustained.

Bodies rained from the Tower’s exposed sections into the blackened earth blow, bouncing from the Death Worm’s squirming carapace like rag dolls.

Unnoticed by his wife and Apprentice but not escaping Gunther’s all-seeing eyes, a spectral raven performed an aerial pirouette, then alighted on his shoulder.

Strange intelligence beholden only to those of the Mageocracy’s inner circles and the rare Tower Master passed between bird and man, then the raven made a bee-line for the shattered Tower.

Gunther’s hands moved independently before the Message even concluded, drawing two independent Mandalas without a micron of error.

“Alesia, Yue! We will take out their Tower Core,” Gunther released a precious cargo of Cores belonging to ancient Light-beings, representing a significant portion of what he harvested in his lifetime of service to the Mageocracy. Intricate Mandalas, each an artwork of priceless materials, manifested with muted Radiance as his mana conduits came alive, transforming the space above and below him into a blistering array of hallucinogenic runes. “Make some noise to cover my preparations and get Richard on the exchange. We’re going to get ONE shot at this…”

The Yekaterinburg Tower shook—or seemed to shake.

Within the parcelled space of a Mage Tower, it was impossible to feel the impact of mere physics striking the exterior of its created spaces.

Yet, the Magi and his crew were feeling it now, for there was no doubt that their Tower was no longer upright. Instead, despite the tortured, howling thrums from the gravitational wells pulling itself upward, the weight of the gargantuan Death Worm attached to its underside made it lean ever more dangerously.

“Milord! Structural loss at sixteen per cent!”

“Mana loss at twenty-four per cent! Our reserves are below fifty—!”

“Reporting loss of six hundred personnel and twenty-seven Legions of chattel troops!”

The Control Bridge was an indescribable mess of arcane fire and unforeseen outbreaks of tripped safeties feeding overloaded Magitech circuits.

A Tower was built to withstand many things, even a Dragon breath. However, it would seem that the bodily attack of a Mongolian Death Worm travelling at near-impossible speed, emerging from a Dwarven Low-way, was not within its designer’s specifications.

“Milord!” Another screen, called up by his first officer, confronted Igor with another absurdity.

In the lower decks, where the gravitational wells sat, were Rat-kins armed with Spellswords and armoured in strange, geometric plate mail.

“Why are there RATS in my Tower?!” Sakharov felt his world turn topsy-turvy. What he was seeing was a logistical impossibility. The lower Shields were down, but their Warding Mandalas were up and alive, ready to fry any Diviner or Conjurer foolish enough to test the Tower’s defences. Even with the Death Worm latched on, the Tower’s self-healing barriers were welded around its rocky circumference.

“I’ll dispatch the Neonate Battalions,” Vulpe’s console bloomed with Message spells. “As for where they’re coming from—they’re emerging from the Death Worm, Milord.”

“From inside the worm?” Sakharov’s voice was almost a shout. “That thing is a boarding ship?”

“The interior of the Death Worm is registering the same spatial energies as a low-tier Dungeon, Sire,” the Divination Desk reported to his First Officer, who immediately sent Sakharov the details.

Reading the spectrometric readouts, Sakharov could only concede that things had gone from strange to inconceivable.

“What’s the status of the Ley-tap?” His head throbbed. His weakness of the flesh, especially in the face of his collected followers, was shameful.

“Lieutenant, report,” the First Officer called for the engineering section.

“Milord. The ley-tap is unstable. Resonance is at thirty-four per cent,” a senior Magitechnician announced from the operations desk. “Our mana regeneration is below the sustainable threshold.”

“Defences?”

“The Evokers are laying down both Life Drain and Enervation, but the Worm’s vitality seems limitless,” the Major in charge of the enthralled Mage Flights reported as he passed the latest combat reports from the external Flight Deck.

Sakharov groaned internally. He knew his Tower lacked competent combat casters. Battle Mages were a precious resource, and in a Frontier as safe and ironclad as Sakharov’s domain, Moscow had not stationed a single Battle Mage with national renown. Instead, the best of his troops came from nepotistic lineages between the fourth and fifth tiers who came to the Urals to gild their resumes with his signature.

The fact that all of them were dead by his hand or chained to Necromancy did not help his present need for casters.

As for himself, the very idea that he, the most important existence in the Tower, would leave its safety to battle a monster was also insane. If he had been hale enough to melee a Death Worm, Sakharov wouldn’t have needed the Followers of Juche to begin with. In addition, the Elf had made it clear that in Shalkar, there was a Thunder Dragon, a Kirin, the creature known as Caliban, and the guests the girl had invited from all over the Mageocracy. If he should expose himself, and if a powerful enough being was feeling sufficiently suicidal—then his sacrifice of a million souls would have been for nought.

“Milord, the worm is preventing us from deploying our defences to full effect,” Vulpe said, pointing to the blaring red lumen projections in the bridge's engineering sector. “Likewise, its tether must be disposed of before we can reach mana parity. May I suggest that we draw upon a non-conventional contingency?”

Sakharov considered the Dragon Core burning a hole through his Storage Ring. With it, he had one more manifestation of his Signature Strategic magic—or he could use it for its intended purpose.

“How fares our ground troops?” He felt it necessary that the Elf’s command be their final option. “Perhaps an amassment of our Ghoul legions will discourage the Worm?”

“The battle below is ongoing, milord,” his First Officer’s tone was infuriatingly neutral. “Unfortunately, we will not know the extent of our success until attrition on both sides reaches equilibrium, wherein our tireless troops should outlast the foe.”

“Should?” Sakharov felt insulted. They were fielding the populace of a fallen city, and yet, his First Officer was merely optimistic? “Diviners, bring the situation on screen.”

The lumen displays switched to the mass melee below.

To the east, a Legion of Dwarven Golems numbering in the half-hundreds was laying waste to the erstwhile citizens of Sakharov’s domain with waves of purifying spellfire. These were not the Golems used in Yekaterinburg’s extensive mining operations but bipedal mechanical monstrosities created for the sole purpose of erasing a Citadel’s foes from the Murk. Unlike the intermittent eruptions of Spellfire attributed to Human Mage Flights, the Dwarven Fireteams unloaded their payload in succession, unleashing criss-crossing streams of Scorchers, volleys of Fireballs, lines of Lightning, and unceasing swarms of Cata-Bolts.

Where the wanton destruction wandered, entire swaths of Undead were swept away as though harvested by a flaming scythe. Feeling the heat in his cheeks, Sakharov waited for the counterattack from his vampiric lieutenants to break the Dwarven line.

There was no break. The Dwarves’ spellswords continued their endless volley until Sakharov could watch no more. At some point, perhaps hours later, the Dwarves’ patented batteries may exhaust themselves and their crystals may smoke and melt—but the solution Sakharov desired was something far more immediate.

His twitching eyes turned away.

On the western flank, Centaurs, their torsos brimming with vital energy, rode uncontested across the charcoaled landscape, breaking the phalanxes of darkened, ghoulish bodies. Even when a Ghast, an intelligent variant of the feral-minded Ghouls, latched onto a Horse Lord, their foes ignored the paralytic mana of Sakharov’s shock troops. Rather, a companion rider would skewer the Ghast with a careless swing from a hip-mounted lance, then fling the creature back into the howling horde to become mince meat under their iron hooves.

Now and then, when another tendril of his Undead seemed to enclose the Centaur spear tip, a volley of pilums would materialise from the Centaur’s saddle bags, skewering his troops so that while they clawed and kicked, they were wholly affixed by the weapons to the charred earth, unable to move.

And when Sakharov’s geometric grids of roving flesh made a counter-attack, a line of lightning from a Thunder Dragon would slice both men and terrain like wax. In the aftermath, the Centaurs would disappear into the pocket space of the Low-ways, only to re-emerge in the most unexpected flank.

Further to the south, swirling maelstroms of scarlet fire and smouldering ash were rolling toward his Tower, leaving no Undead standing in their wake.

The Tower shuddered once more. Its Levitation Engines, designed and crafted under the care of Sakharov himself, were screaming with exertion. The worm had not just bored into his precious Tower and deposited the filthy rats—it was trying to retract itself back into the earth with the Tower in tow.

“Milord.” His First Officer turned to face him, evidently confident that Sakharov could put his ego aside for efficacy. The creature’s subtle impertinence reminded the Magi that he was its employer, not its Master. For the loyalty and devotion that Sakharov desired, he would need to defeat the Regent of Shalkar, perhaps even pilfer whatever power she had prepared for the World Tree. “With all due respect, milord. Our current mana replenishment would put us in retreat in sixty-eight hours…”

“I can see that,” Sakharov ground his teeth, his mind finally made up. “Vulpes, ready the summoning platform in the foredeck. Shore up our defences. I will bring forth our Planar Ally. Then, we shall pierce this blasted land and drink its blood dry.”

Shalkar.

The Auditorium.

Despite the distorted conduits of her tortured heart, the Regent Magister of Shalkar felt very proud of her men and women.

Earlier, when Lulan had assured her that Strun had a plan and that Gwen should focus on placating the guests, she had felt shamefully tempted to leave the Bunker and join the fray with Caliban and Ariel.

However, when Garp had made a Hail Mary from the Low-way tunnels, the gasps of awe, shock and wonder erupting from the auditorium paralleled the volume of her own exudation.

The scene on the illusory screens was history in the making.

In all the annuals of the Mageocracy, in the history of Humanity itself, has a Tower ever been wooed by a Worm?

It was as though the battle was fought in reverse. Her Garp was the monstrous Death Worm, and her troops were the invading Creature Tide. Meanwhile, Yekaterinburg Tower, with its Mages and NoMs, was the bastion of Humanity, holding on for dear life.

Yet, in spite of her crowd’s hurrahs and claps, Gwen’s show had yet to reach the final act.

Once latched onto the Tower, another live Lumen-cast had sprung into being as a Divining stone found its mother beacon in the Bunker, displaying the interior of Yekaterinburg Tower.

Rat-men Centurions, the elite, Essence-blessed warriors selected from the best of the thirteen Rat Clans, flooded from Garp’s interior into the maze of real and Pocket spaces, looking to perform ultraviolence on its inhabitants.

They were met with Mages—not Humanity’s defenders, but pale-skinned Neonates, the Vampiric equivalent of low to mid-tier casters.

Together with her open-mouthed audience, they observed a dozen Rat-kins dashing into the shadows to re-emerge behind the screeching, fang-toothed casters while a phalanx of Rat-men in hulking Dwarven-Golem plates forged a path forward with their bodies. As the two forces clashed, it became evident that Gwen’s Rat-men had been doped with the same Shaman sorcery as the Centaurs, for her creatures cared nothing for the nauseating Necromancy smothering the Tower’s interior passageways.

For Many nobles and dignitaries, their virgin eyes finally witnessed the realities of a Necromantic troop’s unrivalled efficacy. Spells that Gwen had only ever read in forbidden manuals like Roving Nightmare, Creeping Blight, and Wave of Fatigue erupted from the Undead casters even as the Vampires were pierced by physical and Elemental magic.

Yet, drained as they were, de-buffed and corrupted, Gwen’s Rat-kin came on, their eyes red with hazy mist, their armoured bodies dripping with overcharged vitality.

Gwen’s viewers did not understand why her Rat-men did not fall—but she did.

Her Essence Tap, together with Sympathetic Life-Link, had tethered the chosen warriors of the Clans to the life force of Garp. No matter the Necromancy exhibited by the Neonate Mage Flights, they were useless against a natural disaster like a Death Worm—and so their paltry powers of blood and life-draining were useless against her Rats.

For indeed, what did it matter if the Undead drank the vitality of her Rat-kin like the wine of life? So what if their wounds healed and boned mended in minutes? No regeneration mattered when the Rat-kins bearing down upon them tore off their screaming faces with incisors that cut through concrete like cold butter and masticated their fangs like betel nuts.

“Exterminators, forward unto the Bridge!” Strun’s voice came through the broadcast, for he was the possessor of the Clairvoyance Device. “Shadow-kin—spread out and find the Levitation Engine maintenance shafts.”

Her Rat-kins tossed aside the limbless bundles of stuff in their claws, then let loose a screech that reverberated not only into the Tower but her auditorium. “BLOOD FOR THE PALE PRIESTESS—!”

As a group, the phalanx raised their gore-covered implements. “BLOOD FOR THE—“

Gwen muted the projection for the sake of her audience’s sanity.

She coughed to refocus her sponsors’ wandering minds.

“My friends—“ She stood in the centre of the stage, her multi-hued Elven dress illuminated by the flickering Lumen screens now lowering from view. “As observed, I believe our defences have things well in hand. The interruption from Yekaterinburg was unscheduled, and our agricultural season has indeed suffered a setback…”

She met the eyes of her dimly visible audience and felt the tactility of their thoughts like distended fingers reaching out to touch the trunk of a sacred tree.

In truth, she shared their awe.

She also shared their fear, anticipation, and hunger for hope.

So this was Shalkar al-Jadeedah; she could read from their expressions the thoughts traversing their brains. A Frontier in the process of abjuring a Tower occupied by a Magi and multiple legions of Undead, a feat not even a medium-sized state could hope to achieve. What terrible beauty it was! What profits might such a place hold?

“And so…” Gwen bowed, feeling the beckoning will of the seed in her possession. “Let us walk the next step together—for the formation of a World Tree was isn’t just a small step, it is a great leap for—“

The screen flickered, and then a section of her Lumen projections flared so brightly that all eyes were instantly drawn to the new development.

Gwen felt as though someone had kicked her ovaries. She was at the best part! The most important part of her oration!

She fought down the impulse to fly out and drop a Shoggoth upon the damned Tower itself and instead enlarged the shared vision for her audience to see. She had already made a spectacle of the battle, so she may as well see it to its natural conclusion.

Together with the new development, a dozen Dings screamed for her attention, not that Gwen couldn’t see for herself the new cataclysm trying to swallow her beloved city.

A singular force had shattered the Prime Material below the Tower. From a puckering, smoking gash in the Prime Material that looked like a festered burn wound, great gouts of Elemental Magma shot forth from a volcanic geyser, scorching the enormous body of her Death Worm, forcing it to squirm and coil.

The Golems too close to the rent projected their shields, then waded painfully through the rapidly expanding heat, failing by the dozen. Centaurs caught in the sudden eruption were likewise knocked into the undertow of the liquid fire and turned into howling torches of living agony.

From the flashpoint, she saw the familiar sight of Lulan’s enormous flying sword rapidly exit the eruption, towing behind her a Flight of Shadow Mages too slow to escape the all-swallowing flames. She saw her Golos, singed and enraged, skirt the expanding radius of elemental instability.

Gwen’s heart sank with every casualty.

Her lips grew too fatigued to spin the horror on screen.

The show must go on. She reminded herself—but her willpower was bruised and abused.

A secondary eruption compounded her worries, smaller but still the height of six or seven storeys. The lava burst did not end but quickly congealed into the humanoid form of a horned Elemental being, this time half-Salamander, half-Neanderthal.

And where its corrosive Magma splattered, they solidified into the serpentine likeness of their Master’s infamous Brass Legion.

Beside her ears, a raven shared her wordless dismay with a sigh.

“It would appear that a second Fire Sea is in the making,” the quiet, deliberating voice of Mycroft Ravenport reported what she knew to be true. “You should recognise our friend Zodiam. Undoubtedly, he is eager to repay the favour at the Caspian and Tianjin.”

“I know,” Gwen replied, assured that somehow, the Duke would hear. “I am aware.”

In her capacity as Gwen Song, she wanted nothing more than to call for a full-scale retreat to safety, to teleport her friends and allies away from this land of seemingly endless endangerment. With every gamble, she baulked from the stark weight of lives that had just begun and were soon to be homeless again, assuming they survived the fallout of Zodiam’s rage.

But she was also The Regent of Shalkar. She knew the Dwarves would prefer extinction over abandoning their rebuilt citadel. She knew the Centaurs would privilege annihilation over defeat by a foe they had thought bested. The Rat-kins would also not have another home if Shalkar was lost and would fight for their Goddess to the last rat.

As for her own species, the investors of Shalkar, Gwen did not doubt their aversion to martyrdom.

How human, Gwen thought wistfully. How privileged.

“The hour is dire.” Ravenport’s tone remained unfazed, a fact that juxtaposed her internal turmoil. “Please deliver a verdict. The Ladies Grey and Astor have the Middle Faction in check. I’ll handle mine, and the young Duke Holland will take responsibility for his. Fight or flee, make a decree as befitting the Regent of a World Tree.”

The Regent of Shalkar regarded the glowing projections, each detailing the extinction of living beings under her rule.

Zodiam, half-formed, was already conscious enough to hack at the body of her Death Worm with its flaming, multi-storey scimitar. With each strike, she felt Garp’s pain as her own, linked empathically through its Core and her Astral Body. As the immense heat erupted capillaries as wide as tunnels, the skin on her back felt singed and raw, plastering the leafy fabric to her skin with sweat turned the consistency of glue.

“Shalkar shall fight,” she raised her voice for all to hear. “I shall bring forth the Shoggoth. If Spectre desires mutually assured annihilation, then I shan’t be shy.”

“Spoken like a true noble,” Ravenport’s reply was not the protest Gwen had expected. Instead, his collected tone possessed a tinge of suppressed anticipation. “But fret not, Regent; you should have more faith in the allies you have collected. It’s good to be hands-on, but let’s not conclude every act with a Shoggoth, shall we? Our newest Frontier has a reputation to maintain.”

Perplexed by the devilish words warming her cheeks, Gwen looked to the box seats where the Ravenports were seated and where Mycroft had returned after their initial outburst. In the box next door, she saw only her Opa, who was standing near the edge, throwing hands in an attempt to boost her morale. Around the auditorium, almost all the guests were standing, each Faction following the lead of their senior leadership. Whether ready to fight or flee, the Human Mages awaited the Regent of Shalkar.

Gwen realised she had not seen Gunther, Alesia, or Yue on screen.

“There’s no need to wonder, Regent,” the Duke’s impeccably accented syllables entered her stunned ear as her gaze returned to Yekaterinburg Tower’s moment of triumph. “I trust Lord Shultz shall even the odds for his Sister-in-craft.”

The screens pulsed just once.

A singular line of spontaneous, retina-searing light moved from one projection to the next so quickly that it seemed to have circled the room a thousand times before their minds could locate the beam’s target.

On-screen, the light pulse struck the figure of Zodiam first, hitting the creature on the side of its mostly materialised head where the horns protruded.

With minimal effort, it exited the right side of the Fire Giant’s cheek.

Then struck a briefly appearing spot of crow-shaped soot.

A Mandala briefly formed, and then the beam angled upward.

Nipped Garp’s neck—then pierced the Tower’s lower quadrant.

A second later, the same beam emerged at the opposite end of the Tower, near its upper quadrant. The beam’s final journey was a fated meeting with the overlapping Walls of Force, enveloping the blurry panes with a thunderous, explosive eruption of rapidly expanding Radiance.

In IMAX ultra-wide, Yekaterinburg exploded, briefly transmigrating the best of Hollywood into a world that knew nothing of cinematic spectacles. Without delay, light from the explosion illuminated the auditorium, turning the minds of Gwen and her audience stark white.

When the Diviners finally recovered enough of their wits to refocus their projections, Gwen and her audience saw a scene that history books would print en mass in every new edition of the Mageocracy’s chronicles.

A Mage Tower was faltering, slowly but surely, and it was dragged into the earth by a half-baked, flaming worm squirming through a sea of lava. Beneath it, the headless Elemental Prince reeled.

On the floor of the auditorium, Gwen felt faint.

Her heart, her poor, mortal, thrice-battered heart, has suffered enough.

Even if a second Tower were to arrive with a legion of Liches, she would plant her blessed World Tree and damn the protest.

Her hand moved to the Druidic satchel.

Right now, in this moment of singular triumph—

“LOOK THERE!” A voice cried out in the dark, once more redirecting her audience. “What’s that in the sky?”

Gwen’s fingers trembled against Almudj’s Scale.

With supreme effort, using every ounce of will, she gazed upon the glowing screens orchestrated by her best Diviners like a jilted housewife.

From a firmament burned black by senseless burning, a meteor larger than any creation of Yekaterinburg's was descending amidst a swarm of sulphurous fireflies.

An eighth-tier Meteor Strike? Gwe's naked shoulders drooped with self-depreciation, determined to make good on her promise.

While every pair of eyes lay glued to the extinction of dinosaurs headed their way, Gwen coaxed open the circular iris shielding the ley node, then slipped into the waist-deep pool of concentrated mana.

Her living dress glistened, drinking from the richness enveloping her mortal body. It was a shame that no one was watching, for she had meticulously arranged the moment to mimic the likeness of Tryfan’s Bloom in White.

With both hands cupped, she let slip the seed and scale from its cargo pouch.

Soundlessly, she watched her prize slip into the depths, becoming enveloped by the murky mana below.

Done. She told herself. Whatever happened now. It’s done.

All around her, the sound of jubilation rose, first as gasps of disbelief, then as joy and wonder, breaking finally into shouts of celebratory applause.

Gwen looked up, her pale face warmed by the fiery destruction on the screen. Her dress bloomed as planned, studding its surface with fragrant white flowers that stirred from the vortex of mana swirling into the seed between her feet.

Overhead, Yekaterinburg Tower was no longer afloat. It was stabbed into the Magma portal below, stoppering the dimensional tear like a makeshift bath plug roughly shoved into a leaking tub. Its top half, once whole and impenetrable, was crumbled and deformed, its force panes spluttering as they failed.

“Oh…” Gwen felt a pang of guilt as she finally recalled the mana signature of the young man who had been teaching her for a month. “I was wondering where he'd gone…”